The Early Days of a Better Nation

Theatrical, cruel, and implausible events

2009-07-13T21:08:00.002Z

My old mate Ellis Sharp has sent me a copy of his new book, Dead Iraqis. Already reviewed enthusiastically in the Guardian by Nicholas Lezard, and with shout-outs by China Mieville, Lee Rourke, Iain Banks and me across the cover, this greatest hits compilation can't be expected to get a cool, objective review here, and it isn't going to get one. In the long-vanished fanzine New Dawn Fades, I described the stories in one of Sharp's earlier collections (from which four of the stories in this selection come) as 'free world samizdats [...] used to smuggle uncomfortable truths past the censors and border-guards of consciousness'. I've cited, quoted, alluded to, referenced, imitated, aped, mimicked and quite likely plagiarized some of them for decades.

All I can say is this. If you have a taste for experimental writing, and if the world has ever seemed to you to be in some measure a matter of 'Theatrical, cruel and implausible events organised upon the curving surface of a large globe hurtling through space, vulnerable to collisions, explosions, innumerable disasters both natural and man-made, a world squeezed beneath capitalism and state capitalism, crawling with hungry worms beneath every foundation stone and bed of roses and green well tended lawn' then this book is for you.

If you are easily offended, or are of a sensitive disposition, this book can be recommended as a small step towards ridding yourself of these afflictions.

Odious little vermin

2009-07-13T20:24:00.004Z

Terry Eagleton says:

"Dawkins deeply believes in the flourishing of the free human spirit which makes him a liberal humanist rather than a tragic humanist. He believes that if only those terrible guys out there would stop stifling and shackling us, then our creative capacities would flourish. I don't believe that. As a Marxist I reject that simple liberationism. I'm not again[st] humanism. I'm for a humanism which recognises the price of liberation. And that's what I call tragic humanism. The only idea of emancipation worth having is one that starts from looking at the worst, that starts from Swift's race of odious little vermin. If you're the kind of humanist who can understand what Socrates meant when he said it would been far better if man had never been born, you're on. A humanism like Dawkins's and possibly that held by Hitchens isn't worth all that much. It's too easy."

This makes me want to spit.

I very much prefer the spirit of the humanist who wrote:

The criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the highest being for man, hence with the categorical imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, forsaken, despicable being.....

Son of Orange Walking with Dinosaurs

2009-07-10T21:02:00.006Z

My brother James (mild-mannered professor by day, acerbic cartoonist by night) has been inspired by the third post below to send me this. 'Couldn't resist it,' he says. 'The joke wrote itself.'

The actual views of the Orange Order on evolution can be guessed at from these fascinating sidelights on Six Counties politics. And, in the name of parity of esteem, there's always the Catholic Church taking a stand for scepticism and against superstition, especially when it comes to worshiping trees.

A stone age social revolution

2009-07-09T11:54:00.003Z

We begin with 'a patriarchal society of bitter destructiveness: the gloomy temples dug into the mountain like caves served to maintain power in a society that was obviously rigidly organized through open terror: human sacrifices. In the temples of all building levels huge amounts of blood were shed which the excavators retrieved in thick crusts on daggers, altars or draining funnels which were designed specifically for that purpose. The analysis of the isolated blood pigment haemoglobin revealed that it was generally human blood. In the chambers of one of these temples there were the skulls of more than 70 people and parts of skeletons of more than 400 different individuals "neatly stacked up to the ceiling".'

So far, so familiar. We've all seen depictions of societies like that, in Conan movies if nothing else. However ...

'On a certain day 9200 years ago the manorial houses at the north side of the large square in Çayönü were burnt down, and this happened so fast that the owners were not able to save any of their treasures. The temple was torn down and burnt, and even the floor was ripped open, the stone pillars around the free space were taken down and the taller of them were broken up. The place itself - previously maintained and kept meticulously clean for more than 1000 years - was converted into a municipal waste dump. After a short chaotic transition all houses had been torn down. The slums in the west disappeared for good, but only a few steps away from the spot where the ruins of the manorial houses had burnt the new Çayönü was erected. The new houses were comparable in size to the old manors but there were no more houses or shacks built to an inferior standard. In all houses, work was done and all hints to social differences were erased.'

I can't help being thrilled at the thought of these stone age revolutionaries, burning the big houses of the masters and storming that terrifying temple, perhaps fearfully at first, then joyfully turning the gruesome house of the gods into a tip.

But we all know what happened next, don't we? The new society of equals was crushed by outside invasion, or a new caste or class of officials arose and things were soon worse than before ... something like that, yes?

Actually, no. The new type of society spread for thousands of miles and remained free, equal, happy and peaceful for three thousand years.

The site from which I've excerpted the above quotes (stripping out the numerous references to the archaeological literature) interprets this stone age classless and stateless society as communism. (Thanks to the latest issue of International Socialism for the pointer.) This may be controversial, but the archaeology is entirely mainstream, and there is no disagreement that the neolithic societies of ancient Anatolia, whose best-preserved site is Çatalhöyük, were very remarkable indeed.

Zimmer on Genomics

2009-07-09T11:24:00.003Z

Carl Zimmer explains that genomes are complicated, and that genomic medicine has a long way to go.

In cheerier news, scientists may have found the first steps to the life-extension pill.

Orange Walking with Dinosaurs

2009-07-07T13:26:00.001Z

Last week, working backwards:

On Saturday I saw 'Walking with Dinosaurs: The Arena Spectacular' at the SEC. This event - pretty much sold out, remarkable considering the competing family attraction of an Orange Walk in the city centre - was expensive but worth it on a when-are-you-ever-going-to-see-something-like-this-again? basis, thoroughly enjoyable, scientifically sound and educational at a sort of visceral level: it takes life-size animatronics to convince the reptile lobes of my brain just how big dinosaurs could get. They could get very big. I now know that in my bones.

Thursday evening's 'Mutant Scum' event turned out all right on the night, with over fifty people in attendance and a high standard of story and delivery. The best, and certainly the one that came closest to the brief, was Stefan Pearson's vernacular take on the problems (and solutions) of genetic testing having become a component of the social security interview process: 'Gattaca for neds', as he put it.

Monday afternoon and all day Tuesday I and Pippa joined a dozen or so SF and fantasy writers in the Blackett Lab of Imperial College for 'Physics for Fiction', an ambitious outreach event organised by Dave Clements. It was fascinating to listen to actual research scientists talking about their work, and quite a relief to me to find that New Scientist and the pop sci books haven't been misleading me all these years. Yes, Virginia, there is dark matter. Simon Bradshaw took photos.

Quotes of the day, from my notes:

'We don't have an inflaton.'
'Cosmologists do not like coincidences.'
'"Splotch" is a technical term.'
'You can divorce topology from geometry.'

- Prof Andrew Jaffe.

'Telescopes are cheaper than starships.'
'Imagine making a planet out of cigarette smoke.'

- Dr Mark Thompson

'You measure your career in three missions.'

- Dr David Clements

Little Brother wins Prometheus award

2009-07-07T09:25:00.002Z

Cory Doctorow's fine YA novel Little Brother has won the Prometheus Award for libertarian science fiction. Congratulations Cory!

The Human Genre Project

2009-07-05T10:39:00.001Z

A while ago I was staring at a poster of the human genome produced by the US Dept of Energy, and I remembered Michael Swanwick's Periodic Table of Science Fiction. Cue lightbulb moment.

Why not set up a website that displayed short pieces - stories, flash fictions, poems, and reflections - inspired by genes or genomics, and arranged them (as far as possible - I soon found myself applying for an artistic licence) according to the chromosome that carries the gene that inspired the piece?

Everyone I told about this idea thought it was a good one. The distinguished poet Laura-Gray Street contributed two published poems straight away. Best-selling fantasy writer Alma Alexander sent me an original short story. My good friend Mike Holmes volunteered witty song lyrics he'd once offered to Hawkwind. Other writers and poets assure me they have work on its way.

Now, thanks to enthusiastic work from Emma Capewell and Claire Alexander at the Genomics Forum, and the creative skills of web designer Damien Noonan, The Human Genre Project has gone live. It's early days yet, but it looks good and it's just waiting to be filled up with new writing. If you have something you think might sit well behind one of those colourful chromosomes, here's how to contribute.

Genetically Modified Readings

2009-06-25T16:12:00.005Z

WRITERS' BLOC and THE ESRC GENOMICS FORUM proudly present:

Mutant Scum! Live readings of original fiction

WHO: Writers' Bloc spoken-word performance group, plus guests Ken MacLeod and Pippa Goldschmidt

WHERE: Pleasance Cabaret Bar, 60 the Pleasance, Edinburgh EH8 9TJ

WHEN: 7:45 p.m., Thursday 2 July 2009

HOW MUCH: £3.00 (£2.00 concessions)

What do the following words have in common: zipper, mad/max, hip/hop, agnostic, werewolf, mindbomb, tigger, brokenheart and zinc finger? They're all names of genes.

DNA databases, designer babies, GM foods, genes "for" this trait or that, the human genome, evolution -- they're all in the headlines. Genetic screening and paternity tests already affect many people's family lives. Genomics is everywhere. You could almost say it's in our DNA...

Writers' Bloc is proud to present a night of literary mayhem featuring original fiction that gives the double helix an extra twist.

ESRC Genomics Policy and Research Forum Writers in Residence Ken MacLeod and Pippa Goldschmidt will be special guest performers for the evening. The show will also feature new fiction by Writers' Bloc stalwarts including Jack Deighton, Gavin Inglis, Stefan Pearson and Andrew J. Wilson.

Expect genetically modified footballers, an investigation of whether death is an acquired trait and something that can only be described as Gattaca for neds...

Writers' Bloc is Edinburgh's premier spoken-word performance group. Its members include published and prize-winning poets and novelists, who present original material with attitude.

For more information:

E-mail: embassy@writers-bloc.org.uk
URL: http://www.writers-bloc.org.uk/
http://www.myspace.com/blocspace

or find us on Facebook!

A Superfluous Science

2009-06-22T15:14:00.006Z

But all science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided. Marx, Capital, Vol. III, ch. 48

Superficially, the Iranian Revolution of 1979 was a gigantic reactionary mass movement to establish an Islamic theocracy. Likewise, a couple of years later in 1981, the insurgent Polish trade union Solidarity superficially appeared to be a Catholic, nationalist mass movement to overthrow the unpopular People's Republic and restore capitalism. And today, the Iranian uprising seems on the surface to a brave and massive, but minority, protest movement in favour of the neoliberal Islamist candidate who may (or may not) have lost the election and against the right-wing populist Islamist candidate who may (or may not) have stolen the election.

In all of these cases, and many more, Marxists have warned anyone who would listen that the superficial appearance shouldn't be mistaken for the essence, for what was really going on under the surface of events. The underlying essence varied, and varies, according to the Marxist but whatever it is, you can be damn sure it wasn't something you would have thought of yourself, or gathered from the biased reportage of the bourgeois press. Not many people would have looked at a photo of shipyard workers kneeling to take Mass and thought, 'What they're really after is socialism from below.' Not many people could hear millions of voices chanting 'Allahu akbar!' and think, 'Ah yes, the power of the people is greater than the man's technology.' Crowds hauling down statues of Lenin didn't look as if they were celebrating the spirit of 1917, but that just goes to show how deceptive appearances can be.

Wittgenstein: “Why do people say that it was natural to think that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth turned on its axis?” I (Elizabeth Anscombe, a friend and pupil of Wittgenstein) replied: “I suppose, because it looked as if the sun went round the earth.” “Well, he asked, what would it have looked like if it had looked as if the earth turned on its axis?”

A tangent to the Great Accommodationism Debate

2009-06-19T20:20:00.009Z

There's a ~~spectacular brouhaha~~ fascinating debate going on in the evolution education advocacy community, over what is being undiplomatically called 'accommodationism'. A few days ago Jerry Coyne gave a link round-up, and it's already gone further: the best way to catch up is to go to his blog and scroll down. (Of course, if you're reading this much after June 2009, go here.)

Accommodationism, in this context, means emphasising the compatibility of religious faith with the truth of evolution. Few would object to merely pointing out that "Acceptance of the evidence for evolution can be compatible with religious faith." Of course it can.
The problems arise when we read a little further in this authoritative statement:

Science and religion are based on different aspects of human experience. In science, explanations must be based on evidence drawn from examining the natural world. Scientifically based observations or experiments that conflict with an explanation eventually must lead to modification or even abandonment of that explanation. Religious faith, in contrast, does not depend only on empirical evidence, is not necessarily modified in the face of conflicting evidence, and typically involves supernatural forces or entities. Because they are not a part of nature, supernatural entities cannot be investigated by science. In this sense, science and religion are separate and address aspects of human understanding in different ways.

The more I think about that statement, the more it seems likely to irritate scientists and philosophers as much as believers and theologians - which is one way of demonstrating compatibility, I guess.

Coyne's view is that rather than make lots and lots of (often arcane) statements about compatibility, science advocacy organizations should stick to science and keep schtum about religion:

Am I grousing because, as an atheist and a non-accommodationist, my views are simply ignored by the NAS and NCSE? Not at all. I don’t want these organizations to espouse or include my viewpoint. I want religion and atheism left completely out of all the official discourse of scientific societies and organizations that promote evolution. If natural selection and evolution are as powerful as we all believe, then we should devote our time to making sure that they are more widely and accurately understood, and that their teaching is defended. Those should be the sole missions of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Center for Science Education. Leave theology to the theologians.

Well said.

Speaking for myself, I used to be a compatibilist and accommodationist. Now, I'm not so sure. I'm no more a scientist than I am a theologian. But for a heartfelt exploration of how these questions play out in real life, it's hard to top this:

Years ago I was fighting the good fight of creation on the Internet. I argued that evolution was impossible, for it required that the genetic code had to be changed to make new kinds of animals. It did not seem feasible to me that evolution could do this. I argued in the CompuServe debate forum, basing my arguments on Michael Denton's Evolution: A Theory in Crises. My favorite illustration was the difference between mammals and reptiles. The differences between living mammals and reptiles are substantial. Mammals all have hair, mammary glands, a four-chambered heart, and the distinct mammalian ear, with three little bones inside. These features are found in no living reptiles. I argued that this is because there is no viable intermediate between the two, that an animal could have either the reptile genetic code or the mammal code but could not be in the middle.

An evolutionist disagreed with me. He told me that in the past there had been many intermediates. He said that there were animals that, for instance, had jaw and ear bones that were intermediate between reptiles and mammals. How did he know this? He gave a reference to an essay in Stephen Gould's Ten Little Piggies . I wrote back that since the local library had a large collection of children's book, I should be able to find that book. (I thought I was so funny). I borrowed the book, and found an interesting account of how bones in the reptile jaw evolved and changed through millions of years to become the mammals' ear. That sounded like such a clever tale. How could Gould believe it? Perhaps he made it up. But there was one little footnote, a footnote that would change my life. It said simply, "Allin, E. F. 1975. Evolution of the Mammalian Middle Ear. Journal of Morphology 147:403-38." That's it. That's all it said. But it was soon to have a huge impact on me. You see, I had developed this habit of looking things up, and had been making regular trips to the University of Pennsylvania library. I was getting involved in some serious discussions on the Internet, and was finding the scientific journals to be a reliable source of information. Well, I couldn't believe that a real scientific journal would take such a tale seriously, but, before I would declare victory, I needed to check it out.

On my next trip to the university, I found my way to the biomedical library and located the journal archives. I retrieved the specified journal, and started to read. I could not believe my eyes. There were detailed descriptions of many intermediate fossils. The article described in detail how the bones evolved from reptiles to mammals through a long series of mammal-like reptiles. I paged through the volume in my hand. There were hundreds of pages, all loaded with information. I looked at other journals. I found page after page describing transitional fossils. More significantly, there were all of those troublesome dates. If one arranged the fossils according to date, he could see how the bones changed with time. Each fossil species was dated at a specific time range. It all fit together. I didn't know what to think. Could all of these fossil drawings be fakes? Could all of these dates be pulled out of a hat? Did these articles consist of thousands of lies? All seemed to indicate that life evolved over many millions of years. Were all of these thousands of "facts" actually guesses? I looked around me. The room was filled with many bookshelves; each was filled with hundreds of bound journals. Were all of these journals drenched with lies? Several medical students were doing research there. Perhaps some day they would need to operate on my heart or fight some disease. Was I to believe that these medical students were in this room filled with misinformation, and that they were diligently sorting out the evolutionist lies while learning medical knowledge? How could so much error have entered this room? It made no sense.

[...]

The impact of that day in the library was truly stunning. I didn't know what to say. I could not argue against the overwhelming evidence for mammal evolution. But neither could I imagine believing it. Something had happened to me. My mind had begun to think. And it was not about to be stopped. Oh no. There is no stopping the mind set free. I went to the library and borrowed a few books on evolution and creation--diligently studying both sides of the argument. I started to read the evolutionist books with amazement. I had thought that evolutionists taught that floating cows had somehow turned into whales; that hopeful monsters had suddenly evolved without transitions; that one must have blind faith since transitional fossils did not exist; that one must simply guess at the dates for the fossils; and that one must ignore all of the evidence for young-earth creation. I was surprised to learn what these scientist[s] actually knew about the Creationist teachings of flood geology, of the proposed young-earth proofs, and of the reported problems of evolution. And I was surprised at the answers that they had for these Creationist arguments. And I was surprised to see all the clear, logical arguments for evolution. I read with enthusiasm. I learned about isochrons, intermediate fossils, the geologic column, and much more.

I would never see the world in the same light. Several weeks later I found myself staring at the fossil of a large dinosaur in a museum. I stared with amazement. I looked at the details of every bone in the back. And I wondered if a design so marvelous could really have evolved. But I knew that someone could show me another animal that had lived earlier and was a likely predecessor of this dinosaur that I was observing. And I knew that one could trace bones back through the fossil record to illustrate the path through which this creature had evolved. I stared and I pondered. And then I pondered some more.

Within days, I had lost interest in fighting evolution. I began to read more and speak less. When I did debate, I confined my arguments to the origin of life issue. But I could no longer ignore what I had learned. Several months later I first sent out an email with probing questions to a Creationist who had arrived on the scene. He never responded. I have not stopped questioning.

Preach it, brother!

'The moment a spaceship turns up, you've lost me.'

2009-06-19T19:47:00.006Z

Asked what his take is on the transhumanist genre of science fiction (Ken Macleod, Alistair Reynolds, Iain Banks, Richard Morgan, etc.) and their take on technology and politics Michael Moorcock answers:

I'm not entirely sure about transhumanist fiction. It holds no attractions for me. Assuming I really know what it is. I've only really ever been interested in 'humanist' fiction. That is, fiction about people. As I've said, I don't read sf for pleasure and very little of it for review, so I'm no expert. I think I'm probably sympathetic to the writers you mention, but personally believe political fiction should be set in at least some version of the here and now. [...] This was always my argument about sf -- that generally, by abstracting it, putting it in some 'other place', you lost some of the relevance. That said, I haven't been vastly interested in technological advance since I was young. I have every sympathy with Banks, Mcleod et al, but to be honest I've been no more able to read more than a page of their stuff than I have Heinlein's or Asimov's. The moment a spaceship turns up, you've lost me.

Ah well. I've always enjoyed what I've read of Moorcock's work, and I never imagined that anyone would ever ask him what he thought of mine. It's a bit more startling to find I'm part of 'the transhumanist genre'.

A very friendly interview with me - spaceships, container trucks, and all - by journalism student Ewan Angus, is in the current SF Crowsnest. It includes some questions and answers about The Restoration Game, due out in March 2010 and (mostly) set in the scientifictional year 2008.

An uprising that will stun the world

2009-06-16T20:54:00.004Z

Early in 2001, the Iranian revolutionary communist Mansoor Hekmat said:

In Iran [...] the reality is that the rise of political Islam and religious rule has caused a staggering anti-Islamic backlash, in both ideological and personal spheres. The emergence of political Islam in Iran has become the prelude to an anti-Islamic and anti-religious cultural revolution in people's minds, particularly amongst the young generation, which will stun the world with an immense explosion and will proclaim of the practical end of political Islam in the whole of Middle East.

[...]

In my opinion, the Islamic movement in the Middle East and internationally will run out of breath with the fall of the Islamic regime in Iran. The question is not that Islamic Iran will be a defeated model, which others can disassociate themselves from. The Islamic Republic's defeat will arise within the context of an immense mass secularist uprising in Iran, which will touch the foundations of reactionary Islamic thought and not only discredit but condemn it in world opinion. The defeat of the Islamic regime will be comparable to the fall of Nazi Germany. No fascist can easily hold on to their position by merely distancing themselves organisationally and ideologically from this fallen pole. The entire movement will face decades of stagnation. The defeat of political Islam in Iran is an anti-Islamist victory, which will not end within the confines of Iran.

I don't know if he was right. But I hope he was.

Zero

2009-06-13T11:29:00.005Z

Joan Woods, who taught English at Greenock High School when I was there around about 1970, had some unorthodox methods even by the standards of that time, let alone of this. For one class she played tracks from Simon and Garfunkel's 'Bridge Over Troubled Water', handed out sheets with the lyrics, and set us the exercise of writing about them. Another handout she shook us up with was of pages and pages of cyclostyled purple ink lines that looked and read like nothing we'd hitherto seen as poetry. Hardly any of it rhymed, some of the lines ran on past the margin, and it included phrases like 'the iron lung my uncle got with his Embassy coupons'. Some of these poems were by Brian McCabe, who has since gone on to great things and has just published Zero, a collection of poems reflecting his recent fascination with numbers.

Here he is at the book's launch, reading the one about the invention of Roman numerals by a mafia boss. I think he's just reached: 'We got a hundred: C.'

A teacher as inspiring of mathematics as Joan Woods was of English could use that poem and several others, but would probably get the sack.

SF authors in fake UFO shock!

2009-06-12T10:30:00.011Z

Last weekend I was one of the author guests at Schlosscon in Schwerin, Germany. Despite my shameful inability to understand more than a few words of German, I had a great time. The fifty or so fans there were enthusiastic and friendly. Schwerin is an attractive old town, centred around a castle on a lake, and is the site of this year's national garden show, around which three fans took me on Friday before the con started. I took at least a hundred pictures at that show alone. Here are some of the rest.

German SMOF Birgit Fischer (known to all as BiFi) with a copy of The Cassini Division in German.

Magazines and logo of the Science Fiction club Deutschland.

SF publisher Dieter von Reeken (left), and fan Dieter Schmidt (right) with an astounding array of fantastic books.

Karla Schmidt and Dirk Fleck with their German Science Fiction Awards.

Mario Kanzenbach displays his incredibly detailed models, including one that made the cover of the International Plastic Modellers Society journal.

Fellow author GoH, hard-SF writer and professional photographer H.D. Kline shows what to do with a landscape photo that has too much sky.

Special thanks to Ecki Marwitz, Matthew (Matthias Kunkel), Thomas Recktenwalds, BiFi, Alex, Dieter Schmidt, Mario, and Roger. And best wishes to the British fan Wilf James, who is himself a member of German fandom, who'd hoped to translate for me, and was sadly unable to make it to the con, as he was in hospital.

Manifestations

2009-06-04T06:27:00.002Z

This weekend I'll be a GoH at Schlosscon, in Schwerin, Germany. I'll tell you all about it when I get back.

Comments regular Roderick T. Long has a post up about the new editions of the Fall Revo books, so go over there and thank him with a long, insightful comment thread.

Life Ascending

2009-06-02T12:42:00.003Z

Nick Lane's book Life Ascending:The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution, gets an enthusiastic and informative review at Pharyngula.

Divisions

2009-05-29T18:29:00.004Z

Divisions, the second half of the Fall Revolution books, is out. (Following on, logically enough, from Fractions.) It comprises The Cassini Division and The Sky Road, and it looks good, with a very classy cover.

Readers new to the Fall Revo books may like to know that the second book in this volume takes place in an alternate future to the first.

Does Genomics Need Darwin?

2009-05-22T11:00:00.004Z

Darwin's legacy and its relevance to genomics, as well as the hot topic of New Scientist's 'Darwin Was Wrong' cover splash, are among the issues discussed in the Genomics Network's latest newsletter - available for download here. If you'd like a hard copy, just ask. My own piece on Sociology, Genomics and Science Fiction is there too, stylishly presented and illustrated.

On a lighter note ...

2009-05-19T14:21:00.004Z

... and belatedly, here's a link to this year's Locus April 1 story, in which I get a passing mention. Fame at last! Sending it to me, Lawrence Person wrote: 'P.S. I would totally read those novels.' To which I replied that I'd totally write the second one.

Don't miss the other spoof stories in the Locus sidebar.

The Invasion Dream

2009-05-18T21:31:00.009Z

1.

The details vary, but it's always the same dream.

I'm outside my home, or in some other familiar place, and the sky fills with flying machines that engage in slow or sudden movement. Within the dream I remember previous instances of the dream, as dreams, and feel surprised that I'm now seeing it in reality. A few nights ago I saw bursts and trails of sparks in a twilight sky, like fireworks, but far bigger, and silent. I remember thinking that this was like the recurrent dream I have, of a sky filled with machines that sometimes look like ghostly outlines of gigantic military aircraft, and sometimes blocky shapes of complex alien spacecraft.

I feel no fear; at most, some apprehension. The main feeling is awe, and a sense of anticipation.

I wake and, as usual, I haven't had enough sleep. Many years ago I read of an experiment where volunteers lived in a cave without any information as to whether it was day or night. The object was to see whether they would continue to show evidence of a diurnal cycle. Sure enough, their bodies settled in to a circadian rhythm, but for a twenty-five hour day.

I miss the longer days of the home planet.

2.

On the home planet there are enough hours in the day. You remember this. You know what I'm talking about. You recognise the suspicion. Have you ever felt at home here? Doesn't the word 'home' mean someplace other than 'Earth' to you? Maybe not, in which case I envy you, and intend to avoid you. To ca' canny, to evade, to back off. In fact I have never met anyone who knows what I'm talking about. I'm looking for you here, now. This is what this is about: SETI.

Some banal music does it. 'Sailing' by Rod Stewart. That's a good one. It's diagnostic. It's like hearing a chord or a bar from your national anthem in a foreign country.

Nostalgia was originally classified as a disease. People died of it. It has been bred out. Perhaps we are adapting. There are insects whose eyes are most sensitive to wavelengths not present in the spectrum of the sun. They can't have been here long.

3.

Still missing the home planet, I get a coffee and a cigarette and connect to Antiwar.com. It's a terrible way to start the day. I should start with some science site, or NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day. I might recognise something. What I find on Antiwar.com is always familiar.

Outside, overhead, I hear the heavy choppers. Peering through the window as the sound gets louder, I see them. Black helicopters, in real life. Other military aircraft will fly over at some point today. If they are loud enough I might go outside and look. It's childish, I know, but I always go outside and look. I used to think I could predict upcoming wars by upticks in local military activity: low-flying aircraft, army trucks refuelling at Tesco. These days it's harder. The baseline has moved up. It's like background radiation.

I walk to the local co-operative supermarket and buy the broadsheet for myself and the tabloid for my wife. She's still asleep when I get back. I make a bacon sandwich and eat it over the paper. I skip. I've read most of the interesting articles already, on Antiwar.com. I've read the science news in this week's New Scientist. Being the science correspondent of a British quality newspaper must be the easiest job in the world. On the evidence I see I could file a week's stories every Friday before breakfast. And I wouldn't perpetrate stupid errors, like saying that nanotechnology deals with particles so small that they are not affected by the laws of physics. Sometimes this thought drives me to flashes of berserk rage.

Calmer now, I take the red-top and the cereal up to my wife, kiss her and disappear for the day. I bound up the steps from the back of our street to the main road, in time to smoke a cigarette at the bus stop. A white van from Environmental Services loiters, engine idling, a few yards away. When I finish the cigarette I walk to the litter bin, stub out the cigarette and drop it in. The white van moves off. I wonder if they were waiting to slap a fine on me for littering. (You think I'm paranoid? This really happened.) A black helicopter labours across the sky from north to south, like a water-boatman rowing itself across the surface tension.

There's a lot of surface tension these days. The bus arrives and I take the front seat on the top deck. When I was a child I used to sit in that same seat and imagine that I was gliding above the street on a gravity sled. I still do.

4.

Flying three metres above the surface of the planet, I arrive in Edinburgh. At Festival time players and promoters pester passers-by like cults. I once had an idea for a story about a play at the Festival that started a cult. A real cult, not a cult hit. It was a science fiction play called Mine! All Mine! The idea presented in the play was that we are a lost mining colony. 'Face it,' the play's promotional leaflets would say, 'we never liked the place. That's why we've messed it up.' We are alien visitors inserted into the genes of a promising hominid species, warping it to our own ends, which are to dig up all the metals of the planet. When we have fulfilled this function the mining corporation fleet will arrive with our pay packets and return tickets. Then we can all go home and at last get enough sleep. This proves to be so popular that the protagonist sees it take off and become a real movement to strip-mine the earth. At the end we see him very old, waiting on a ruined Earth for the great ships that will carry him home. We know that they are not coming.

What distinguishes his situation from ours?

5.

Around the city centre I orbit widdershins. I go up Lothian Road and left along Bread Street to the West Port and the Grassmarket. There I describe three epicycles, around Armstrong's, Transreal, and Mr Woods' Fossils. In the first I find costumes for my characters. In the second I find science fiction. In the third I find aliens.

From this lowest point of the Old Town there are short cuts through space-time to any part of the city I want to visit. Through a wormhole gate I arrive at the Library. I sit down at the information terminal and search the index, then go to a shelf for a book. On the home planet, great racks of shelves of books index the information stored on the computer network: a much more rational system. I leave the Library and walk to Word Power, where I scan shelves of books on anarchist spirituality, feminist quantum mechanics, holistic terrorism, and pesticide resistance.

6.

Sometimes I think resistance is futile. The next war is pencilled in like a summer holiday. The aircraft are booked, the cargoes are loaded and the sunshine is packed.

'How do you avoid being worried all the time?'

My daughter needs a lift, in more senses than one. During wars our family car becomes a tiny revolutionary cell.

'For one thing,' I said, 'I do worry a bit. But, yeah. Well, I have other interests. There are things to get on with. Anyway, in the long run I'm not all that worried. People want control over their working lives and they don't want to be thrown out of work by forces they have no control over, and so on and so on. Now we could get that - not without struggle, but without a violent revolution. As for war, well, I think there'll be some more wars, but there's no reason why there should be a world war. Once this mad American and British project to conquer the Middle East is defeated, there'll just be different powers. Their interests could clash, but that doesn't have to lead to war. Lenin said it did, but that was before nuclear weapons and television and the Internet.'

'So you're quite hopeful really?'

'Sure,' I say. 'In the long run.'

She grins and hops out and disappears into her block of flats. I wave and drive away. The Bridge is bright in the evening. Burn-off gas flares from the refinery beyond the horizon. Landing lights come on over the North Sea, staying still in the air for minutes on end. I drive past the hill where her brother and I watched the New Year fireworks light up the horizon from Leith to Grangemouth. We walked back between the wooden walls of gardens. The Ferry with its trees and houses, its noisy peace, the faded covenant in the museum, the Covenanter Lane between the war memorial and the harbour, is surrounded by a great wheel of engineering work - the bridges, the airport, the motorways, the naval yard, the refinery - like a space habitat or a generation ship. It carries me home.

Apardion

2009-05-18T15:19:00.006Z

Apardion! It sounds like the name of a city from the Hyborian Age, and it nearly is: it's the Old Norse name for Aberdeen. I only learned this at the opening session of Word 09, which was a launch with readings for Silver: An Aberdeen Anthology, edited by Alan Spence and Hazel Hutchison. The earliest poetic reference to the city that they found was an account by Einarr Skulason of its sacking in 1153. Several of the contributors were on stage, to read one of their own poems and one other.

The 'Granite City' cliche is true: almost every building seems to be grey, with edges you could cut yourself on. It's like living in high-definition monochrome. Poets have noticed.

Thursday, the evening before the opening, saw the launch party and a concert by the Mugenkyo Taiko Drummers, a quite astonishingly energetic performance preceded by Alan Spence's readings of a few of his Japanese-inspired poems and haiku:

sudden gust -
the seagull scudding
backwards

My Wednesday talk, chaired by Ken Skeldon, for Cafe Scientifique went well, as did my festival event, with journalist Susan Mansfield as able and friendly interlocutor. I thoroughly enjoyed them and the rest of the festival, where all the writers were made welcome and were well looked after: thanks to Carley Williams, Karen Scaife, and Kelly, among others. Word 09 had a strong science thread, including a display of photos with text behind them, 'Fifty Words on Science'.

At a session titled 'The Evolution of Evolution' Ralph O'Connor, author of The Earth on Show, talked about the lively popular discussion and eventual widespread acceptance of the antiquity of the Earth and life, and even of evolution, in the half-century before Darwin published the Origin. Stuart Piertney followed this up with an account of the development of evolutionary theory from 1859 to the publication of Julian Huxley's Evolution: The Modern Synthesis (1942) - which according to Dr Piertney was intended as a popularization. There were giants in those days. At the end of the session we all got to marvel at some of the books from the university library's Special collections, including first editions of the Origin and of Vestiges of Creation.

The same evening, the King's College Centre was packed out to hear Joan Bakewell talk about her first novel, All the Nice Girls. As a nice girl in 1942 herself, Bakewell did a very good job of explaining how different the Britain of that time was.

Afterwards, I joined journalist Fiona Lang and poet Kelley Swain in the nearest pub. On the strength of a fascinating conversation I bought Kelley's book of wondrous poems, Darwin's Microscope, the following day, and Kelley was kind enough to sign it. Matter has a new singer.

Another really good science talk was an interview with Nick Lane, author of Life Ascending:The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution, which I've just started reading and which looks great.

Why Evolution is True

2009-05-12T16:06:00.001Z

I've recently read Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True, and it's as good as everyone is saying. One point the book hammers home is that evolutionary theory makes predictions, and that these predictions are regularly and reliably borne out. A particularly elegant example is the discovery of marsupial fossils in Antarctica. Marsupial fossils, in rocks of a particular age, were predicted, searched for, and found in the right place. Coyne's account of this is interwoven with the tale of another triumph, of geology (plate tectonics and continental drift) in making sense of the distribution of not only fossils but also the scrapes left by ancient glaciers in the southern continents. In South Africa, the marks on the rocks seem to show that glaciers once flowed uphill and inland, from the sea. Once the past positions of Africa, Antarctica, and Australia are worked out, all these marks fall into place as downhill, seaward, and outward from the South Pole.

You can read more about this book, and about evolution, at Jerry Coyne's blog.

Gigs

2009-05-12T14:24:00.002Z

I have two gigs in Aberdeen this week: Wednesday 13 May, 7.30 p.m. at Cafe Scientifique (Waterstones, Union Bridge Branch, Union Street, Aberdeen), where I'll be talking about SF and public understanding of science; and Friday 15 May, 2.30 p.m. at the Talisman Theatre, King's College, on how my background in zoology and IT has influenced my writing. Both events are part of the University of Aberdeen Writers' Festival, Word 09.

A Jura for Julia

2009-05-09T15:36:00.006Z

Last week I was on Jura, the Scottish island where Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four, at a workshop on surveillance organised by the Institute for Advanced Studies. Most of the dozen or so present were associated with the journal Surveillance and Society. From a variety of backgrounds - in sociology, criminology, organization theory, law - they've all contributed to the small but fast-growing field of surveillance studies, which Kirstie Ball in the opening session rather wittily described as a 'trans-disciplinary sub-discipline'. She went on to show that the standard sociological definition of surveillance coincides with the standard organization theory definition of management. So - does that make management sinister, or surveillance banal? Or does it point to some lack of precision in the definitions?

Just what constitutes surveillance, and whether defining a situation as one of surveillance is necessarily to take a critical or oppositional view of it - and, indeed, whether the activity of surveillance studies might itself sometimes have harmful consequences - was discussed quite thoroughly at several sessions and workshops. This was more interesting and more productive than it sounds.

I was there to give a presentation on surveillance in science fiction. The convener of the workshop, Mike Nellis, preceded me with a talk based on his chapter on surveillance in fiction in the just-published New Directions in Surveillance and Privacy. In the written version he covers SF and other popular genres with respect and expertise, but in his presentation he left SF to me.

What I said was something like this.

There are a couple of paradoxes in the relationship of science fiction with our understanding of surveillance. One is that science fiction has provided the language and framework for discussion of surveillance - Nineteen Eighty-Four, of course, being top of the list. What's paradoxical about that is that no society has had, or even attempted, the sort of universal technological surveillance we see in Orwell's book - even the most repressive socialist states relied (and those in existence still rely) on secret police and informers far more than on bugging. And if we read Nineteen Eighty-Four as SF we can see certain problems with its world-building. For instance, just as pervasive surveillance breaks down trust, maybe pervasive propaganda breeds skepticism. Even in the book, we see Julia convinced (rather like a 9/11 Truther) that 'the rocket bombs which fell daily on London were probably fired by the Government of Oceania itself, "just to keep people frightened".' For these and other reasons I once wrote a short story whose best bit was the title: 'Nineteen Eighty-Nine'.

The second paradox is that there isn't much SF specifically focused on the issue. Rather, SF and related genres shape our concerns about surveillance by imagining scenarios of coups and conspiracies and so on which have so far at least been a lot rarer in real life in the advanced countries, and which often don't relate very well to how government agencies, multinational corporations and other such usual suspects actually work, even when they do terrible things in secret.

To summarise what I then went on to say about surveillance in SF: we can identify three phases: pressing down, spreading out, and hacking back. In the first phase, pervasive surveillance is a feature of dystopia. In the second, it becomes a default feature of most imagined future industrial societies. In the third, the emphasis is on ways in which citizens can subvert rather than evade surveillance (the perfect example being Cory Doctorow's Little Brother - I can't remember whether I put Paul McAuley's Whole Wide World, perhaps the most thorough recent SF exploration of surveillance, in the second or the third group).

In the course of the talk I mentioned some relevant bits of my own work, for instance the significance of small cheap video cameras, referred to in The Star Fraction as making torture difficult to keep secret. I hadn't, however, predicted that the torturers would use the cameras to make their own home movies.

It was only after I'd finished the presentation that I realised that the three phases could be neatly mapped to the increasing cheapness and availability of the technology of surveillance and data processing: from being only available to states, to being available to large companies, to being mass consumer items. As Teresa Neilsen Hayden once said of Photoshop: 'The tools of dictators! In the hands of the people!'

The discussion was followed by David Murakami Wood (who blogs here) giving a presentation on surveillance in the work of Philip K. Dick, and Michael Nagenborg talking about surveillance in video games. Both talks were interesting and well-informed.

The symposium got down to brass tacks about databases and DNA and electronic tagging and so on in the subsequent two days, which I wasn't able to attend. It'll all be in a book some day.

Meanwhile, there's some excellent discussion on Nineteen Eighty Four in the latest issue (PDF), guest edited by Pete Young, of James Bacon et al's fanzine Journey Planet. I was particularly taken by Tony Keen's '"If there is hope ...": An optimistic reading of Nineteen Eighty-Four', which makes a case that the Appendix on 'The Principles of Newspeak' is the book's real, and happy, ending - and, even more intriguingly, that Oceania's end is foreshadowed in the very chapter where we see Winston Smith finally broken and learning to love Big Brother. I like to think that some day - perhaps sooner than we might expect, maybe even by 1989 - in the Chestnut Tree, a bottle of Jura replaced the Victory Gin.