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November 22, 2006
'Ilsa changed herself to meet the empty centuries'
'Long Shot' by Vernor Vinge
This is one of the few SF stories I can think of that's based on problems and speculations from Computer Science rather than the traditional hard sciences. (Although some Engineering and Astrophysics do enter into it.) This makes sense: Vernor Vinge is a CS Professor and it is difficult to know where to begin in saying more about him - so much else has been written about him and I could fill up the length of this entry with link after detailed and well-written link about him. (See below!) His published work spans the mid-60s through the present.
'Long Shot' is a relatively early story (1972), but the problems it is based on hold up well. (I can think of plenty other computer-based SF that might as well print its decade (or half-decade) on a neon sign.) Vinges story is also an interesting exploration of the thought process of an AI (rather than a human adapted to run a space ship as in Anne McCaffreys The Ship Who Sang) and how damage to an AIs system or software would affect that very throught process. (Just as organic damage to the brain affects the human abilities and consciousness.)
I wont spoil the surpise in this story, it's a series of such intriguing 'hows' that one forgets to ask 'why', and it is also a meditation on the feminine characterization of ships: an AI has no intrinsic gender. (Arguments about stereotypes and essentialism can be added to our upcoming discussion of Daughters of Earth, an anthology of feminist SF. ;)
Big List O' Links:
Web Page: http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/misc/
Audio: http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail711.html
Bio: http://www.answers.com/topic/vernor-vinge
Works: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ch.cgi?Vernor_Vinge
Awards: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/eaw.cgi?Vernor_Vinge
Interview: http://www.farsector.com/quadrant/interview-vinge.htm
Salon Article: http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/1999/04/05/vinge/
Observer Article: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,11913,865638,00.html
An Appreciation: http://mindstalk.net/vinge/
Another Appreciation: http://members.aol.com/tishede/vvinge.htm
More Background: http://www.kurzweilai.net/bios/frame.html?main=/bios/bio0007.html?
A Coversation on His Work (including this story):
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.fan.heinlein/browse_thread/thread/8d47b88e5da202c3/28ad96840d93f2a2?lnk=st&q=%22Vernor+Vinge%
22&rnum=19&hl=en#28ad96840d93f2a2
More Background: http://www.scifan.com/writers/vv/vingevernor.asp
Conversations about Vinge and SF:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.written/browse_thread/thread/b995a33b96c8a6bd/2c5b0a00870cd9a1?lnk=st&q=%22Vernor+Vinge%
22&rnum=54&hl=en#2c5b0a00870cd9a1
CoolTime Sink *kof* Resource: http://www.literature-map.com/vernor+vinge.html
Next time, the final story of the anthology, one by Phyllis MacLennan.
Yours,
LV
Posted by lisav at 12:53 AM
November 10, 2006
On Frankenstein and Krakatoa
Another interlude -
Ive been reading Simon Winchesters Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883, prompted by a vague memory of the book The Twenty-One Balloons. Winchesters book has a great more geology than Id anticipated (but, alas for du Bois fans, no diamonds) - and it takes the book five chapters to get to the Boom.
(Note: 'Boom, sooner or later. BOOM' - Commander Ivanova, Babylon 5)
Second note: it was heard nearly 3,000 miles away (as contemporary science writer E. M. Aaron explained, this would be like hearing the noise of a Philadelphia explosion in San Francisco.) According to Winchester no technologically-produced sound in the 20th or 21st century has equalled it.
Winchesters book also brought to mind another flight of fancy, by direct mention:
It is said that Byron composed his most miserable poem, 'Darkness' - Morn came and went-and came and brought no day-under the influence of that dismal year [after the eruption]; and Mary Shelley may have written Frankenstein while gripped by a similarly unseasonable melancholy.p. 293 Krakatoa
You be the judge:
By the quantity of provision which I had consumed, I should guess that I had passed three weeks in this journey; and the continual protraction of hope, returning back upon the heart, often wrung bitter drops of despondency and grief from my eyes. Despair had indeed almost secured her prey, and I should soon have sunk beneath this misery. Once, after the poor animals that conveyed me had with incredible toil gained the summit of a sloping ice mountain, and one, sinking under his fatigue, died, I viewed the expanse before me with anguish....- from the last chapter of Frankenstein
(I though at first that the final, ice-bound section of the book referred to sunsets like the ones Krakatoa produced, but not so, only the mood of disaster and cold ...)
Spragues Browsing collection has all the books mentioned, except for The Twenty-One Balloons - for that youll have to go to Honnolds Special Aviation collection. (Honest! :D Check it in Blais.)
Yours,
LV
Posted by lisav at 01:07 AM