Ken MacLeod's comments.
The title comes from two quotes:
“If these are the early days of a better nation, there must be hope, and a hope of peace is as good as any, and far better than a hollow hoarding greed or the dry lies of an aweless god.”—Graydon Saunders
Contact: kenneth dot m dot macleod at gmail dot com Blog-related emails may be quoted unless you ask otherwise.
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Putting the Science in Fiction
At lunch-time I found a handful of people from the disciplines of media studies and science studies in a huddle, aghast at the naivety of the ideas the rest of us had about science and fiction. As mere practitioners of one or the other (or both) we were treating each in their different ways as quite unproblematic representations of reality, and the problem as matching them up. I saw their point, but it was somewhat blunted by an earlier coffee-break conversation I'd had with a science studies guy who assured me that all scientific knowledge was confirmed by social processes, not by further experiment (or words to that effect). When I protested that a lot of scientific discoveries had become established fact, literally solidly proven by (e.g.) the very floor we stood on, he assured me that that sort of thing (what goes into making trains, planes, and automobiles, etc) was 'engineering knowledge' and not science at all. Nevertheless I tossed a plea for some attention to critical media and science studies into the afternoon's discussion, where it sank without a ripple.
My own preferred model (sketched out in late-night conversations with Iain Banks, long ago) for how scientists and SF writers should interact with movies and television is the approval-stamp from the American Humane Society that you see in the credits. A little line saying 'No elementary scientific truth or serious science-fictional speculation was harmed, distorted, or mangled beyond all recognition in the making of this motion picture' would not be much, but it would be a start.
'It's life Jimmy, but not as we know it'
The National Library of Scotland has an exhibition, running until the end of June, of science fiction in Scotland. The exhibition is compact but comprehensive, with proportionate weight given to SF work in genre and mainstream modes, to comics, TV and films, and with unabashed exhibits of garish covers and artwork alongside fragile manuscripts and antiquarian rarities. SF is treated with the kind of respect and attention to detail that you might expect from someone who has a real love and knowledge of the genre - which turns out to be the case, as curator John Birch (above) explains.
In related videos you can see (so far) me, Charlie Stross and Gary Gibson give our various takes on being SF writers. Eventually these videos and others will be on the NLS site, but for now, enjoy on YouTube and, if you happen to be in Edinburgh in the next couple of months, drop in on the exhibition.
Labels: local, self-promotion, skiffy, writing
Upcoming manifestation in New York
I'm delighted and honoured to have been invited to be on a panel on 'Life in the Panopticon' on Saturday May 5th at the Cooper Union in NYC, as part of the upcoming PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature.
Tiny surveillance drones that hover and stare. An Internet where every keystroke is recorded. The automated government inspection of hundreds of millions of e-mails for suspicious characteristics. The technological advancements spurred by the computing revolution have improved our lives, but have also diminished our privacy and enhanced the government’s power to monitor us. Writers and directors who have grappled with technology’s mixed blessings join civil liberties advocates to discuss ways of preserving our freedom in an era in which we all dwell in Bentham’s Panopticon—a prison that allows our wardens to observe us at all times without being seen themselves.
Labels: coming attractions, libertarian, self-promotion
Alt.Fiction
One person I met was Ian Sales, who sold me a copy of an anthology he's edited, Rocket Science, and his own stand-alone novella Adrift on the Sea of Rains (which he talks about here. I read the latter on the train back and it's very good indeed, as are the stories I've read so far in the anthology, including 'Going, Boldly' by the Edinburgh SF gang's very own Helen Jackson.
Big thanks to the organisers, especially Catherine Rogers and Adele Wearing, who looks back on the weekend here and links to others' impressions of the festival here.
Reviews round-up
Intrusion continues to get good reviews, from newspapers at interestingly different quarters of the political compass.
Here's the Daily Mail:
Dramatising a novel of ideas is the opposite of easy but Ken MacLeod manages it at an apparent stroll. He also conjures up a scarily plausible and cleverly detailed vision of mid-21st-century life - the weather (damp and really cold), computers (with wraparound specs and virtual keyboards), health Nazism (the illicit backyard cafes, where people eat bacon butties and smoke), and the looming brave new world offered by bio-engineering. Excellent.
Well to the Mail's left, a review of this and other books in the weekly Socialist Worker says:
Left wing science fiction author Ken MacLeod brings us a dark vision of a dystopian future in a novel that some have likened to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.
This tale of totalitarianism revolves around “the fix”—a pill that change your genetic make-up to fit into a world of forced conformity.
It’s a world where New Labour-style “freedom” is forced down your throat, while you live a life surrounded by CCTV and surveillance drones.
Expect MacLeod’s characteristic imagination, wit and venom in the latest novel from the author of The Execution Channel and The Night Sessions.
David Langford, in a round-up of recent SF/F in that fine old Tory daily The Telegraph, writes:
Big Nanny State is watching you. In Ken MacLeod’s near-future Intrusion (Orbit, £18.99), surveillance drones blanket London, all the databases are linked, and routine police torture is followed by trauma counselling. When the pregnant heroine refuses the pill that should correct her unborn child’s genes, she finds such crimethink is no longer tolerated… Thoughtful, plausible and scary.
In a similar round-up for the only English-language socialist daily paper, my comrade and friend Mat Coward writes in the Morning Star:
In Intrusion (Orbit, £18,99) modern SF's leading Cassandra Ken MacLeod turns his fire on nannyism, that moralistic false turn which has contributed so much in the last 20 years to isolating the left from its natural supporters.At (very) different times in my chequered political past, I've sold Socialist Worker and the Morning Star, and I still read both regularly (and buy them when I get the chance) but I'm not entirely sure that I still count as a 'fellow socialist' - as I explained when I was interviewed a couple of years ago by the then up-and-coming and now world-famous radical journalist Laurie Penny for, yes, the Morning Star. I am sure, however, that these two left-wing newspapers have caught something about the book that's been missed by likewise generous reviewers who see it as a 'socialist dystopia'.
In a near-future Britain where women can't buy alcohol without proving they're not pregnant and second-hand books are no longer sold in case they carry traces of fourth-hand tobacco smoke, a Londoner named Hope, expecting her second child, decides that she won't take The Fix, a single pill designed to eradicate genetic "defects" in foetuses.
Under a benevolent, neo-democratic regime, The Fix is, of course, voluntary - until you try to refuse it.
MacLeod certainly delights in raising questions which creatively discomfort his fellow socialists.
But he shuns the cynicism and defeatism which mars most satirical writing - not to mention the defiant unreadability of many of his famous contemporaries.
Labels: libertarian, Marxism, reviews, self-promotion, skiffy, writing
Impending Manifestations
Friday 13 April, 5.30 pm: Human 2.0, a panel on transhumanism/posthumanism with bioethicist Andy Miah, SF writer Justina Robson and sociologist Professor Steve Fuller at the National Museum of Scotland, as part of the Edinburgh International Science Festival.
What does it means to be human, past, present and future? As we re-engineer the human body, and even the human genome – through technology, drugs and genetic manipulations – how do we define and value our humanity? What are the social, political and cultural challenges inherent in our enhanced future? As part of our Future Human mini festival, sociologist and author Professor Steve Fuller, and sci-fi writers Ken MacLeod and Justina Robson, join ethicist Andy Miah to mull over these compelling questions. Are we facing a re(evolution) of the species?The following morning, I expect to bounce out of bed, shower, get dressed, pack, grab some toast and rush to the station to travel to Leicester, to arrive mid-afternoon for:
Saturday 14 to Sunday 15 April: I'm one of the Guests of Honour heading up a guest list that most SF/F cons would kill for at the lively and highly commendable annual 'fantastic weekend for readers and writers of science fiction, fantasy and horror', now in its sixth year, Alt.Fiction, Phoenix Digital Arts Centre, Leicester.
And that's not all! Later this month, I have another two events one night apart:
Genetic Fictions: Genes and Genre, Tue 24 Apr 2012, 18.30 - 20.00, at the Conference Centre, British Library, London, Price: £7.50 / £5 concessions.
Join leading Social Scientists from the ESRC Genomics Network, including Dr Joan Haran (Cesagen, Cardiff University) author of the forthcoming book 'Genetic Fictions: Genes, Gender and Genre', along with award-winning playwright Peter Arnott and Science Fiction author Ken MacLeod as they consider how genes and genetics are represented in literature and theatre. There will be plenty of time for questions and discussion. The evening will be chaired by Jude England, Head of Social Sciences at the British Library. [Further details here.]Another day, another sci/lit event:
Wednesday 25th April 9:30am to 5pm in Zochonis TH A (B5), University of Manchester: a day-long workshop 'Putting the Science in Fiction' Interfaculty Symposium on Science and Entertainment.
Many people look suspiciously at science in fictional media and may ask themselves: Why don't the creators of fiction ever talk to real scientists? In fact, those who write novels, craft television scripts, create movies, and produce stage plays do speak with scientists on a regular basis. This workshop explores how science provides challenges and opportunities for the creators of fiction. By bringing together leading entertainment professionals, novelists, arts scholars, and scientists the workshop will forge new relationships between the scientific community and the arts/entertainment community. One goal of the workshop is to begin discussions about creating a "Science and Entertainment" collaboration programme in the UK equivalent to the Science and Entertainment Exchange run by the National Academy of Sciences in the US.This event is free but spaces are limited - you can see how to book a place by clicking on the link.
Labels: coming attractions, local, self-promotion, skiffy, writing
The Restoration Game is a Prometheus Award finalist
I'm delighted and honoured to learn that The Restoration Game is among the six finalists for the Prometheus Award from the Libertarian Futurist Society.
I'm also, I have to admit, surprised. The Prometheus Award is for SF/F novels that 'stress the importance of liberty as the foundation for civilization, peace, prosperity, progress and justice.' While I whole-heartedly agree with that premise, it was far from uppermost in my mind when I wrote the book. But I quite see how it could be read that way, and I'm glad that it has been.
The Restoration Game contains more incidents based on real events than any other of my books. The Ural Caucasian Mineral Company's annual report was based on one from the real-life Ural Caspian Oil Corporation that I found in a dusty brown envelope. This and other incidents are described here.
Labels: libertarian, self-promotion, skiffy, writing
Fictitious narrative considered harmless
Twenty-first century science has caught up with my grandmothers. Fiction is indeed nothing but lies, and the best that can be said for it is that it is a harmless if unprofitable diversion. It keeps us out of mischief and passes the time.
The one thing it cannot do is help us to understand human nature and the motivations of other people. If it did, the work done in Departments of English (etc) Literature would be of enormous interest to Departments of (e.g.) Business Studies, Politics, and Sociology. Oddly enough it is not.
For real insight into human behaviour, practical people turn to science.
Psychology has, over the past century, moved from misty speculation and hazy introspection to hard, repeatable laboratory and field experiment. Neuroscience is a hair's-breadth from tracking our thoughts in real time. The dismal truth the convergent sciences of the brain and behaviour have delivered is that our own spontaneous understanding of these matters is specious.
'Folk psychology' and introspection give us no insight at all into our own minds, let alone those of others. The most it can give us is a rough-and-ready 'Theory of Mind' that enables us, with notorious unreliability, to predict the day-to-day actions of our fellows.
How, then, could literary or genre fiction, based as they are - at best - on folk psychology, give us any insight into the human condition? Reading the greatest works of literature will no more help you to understand human behaviour than watching Star Trek will help you discover a method of reaching superluminal velocities. The most it will give you is a selective and partial (in every sense) understanding of the author's own folk psychology.
Reading Jane Austen will certainly help you to understand the mind and heart of a young woman: Jane Austen. It may give you a limited insight in that particular young woman's Theory of Mind. But this is not a great deal of use to you, because you will never meet Jane Austen, who is dead.
And Elizabeth Bennett never existed, except as a figment of Jane Austen's Theory of Mind. Not matter how deeply you think you understand Elizabeth Bennett, it won't help you to overcome pride and prejudice to find the love of your life. Finding the love of your life must be surprisingly easy, considering how often it happens, but this truth is far from universally acknowledged.
[Note, added 2 April, the day after posting: the most significant line in this post is the date-stamp.]
Labels: bookfestival, squibs, writing