science fiction

Bilingual

The End of Everything by M. John Harrison
2 months ago
- M. John Harrison's short story 'The Crisis' features ambiguous alien-like entities called the iGhetti that transform London into a spectral zone, yet society largely ignores them.
- In Harrison's novel 'The End of Everything', set in the 2040s, collective denial of disaster continues as coastal towns maintain normalcy despite routine violence and collapse.
- The protagonist Phillip Tennent discovers a mysterious biological artefact from the iGhetti, which grows and learns, becoming a central enigma in the plot.
- Harrison's writing emphasizes ordinary experience and the inexplicable, rejecting linear plotting and legible motives in favor of dreamy puzzlement.
- The novel reflects Harrison's belief that science fiction should embrace the inexplicable, not the explicable, challenging readers to accept ambiguity.
A Rant About “Technology” (2005)
2 months ago
- Le Guin rejects the claim that her science fiction avoids technology because she writes 'soft' SF.
- She argues that all genuine science fiction inherently includes technology, even if focused on minds, societies, or cultures.
- Technology is defined as 'the active human interface with the material world,' encompassing basic tools and systems, not just advanced gadgets.
- The word 'technology' is often misused to only refer to complex, recent innovations, while ignoring simpler but equally technological objects like matches or paper.
- Le Guin suggests readers ask if they know how to make an object to appreciate its technological sophistication.
- She distinguishes her work as 'easy science fiction' with technology hidden inside, like bones versus an exoskeleton.
<antirez>
2 months ago
- After two years of work, the author's first science fiction novel, Wohpe, has been published in Italian bookstores, on Amazon, and other digital stores.
- Writing a novel-length prose was a learning experience from scratch, akin to a novice chess player learning to evaluate moves with coherence and intent.
- Beginners lack a personal style and cannot judge their own writing; true learning comes from writing itself and rereading chosen models, not just reading broadly.
- The Italian publishing market is brutal: a successful sci-fi book sells 500 copies, while most sell under 100, a stark contrast to the millions of users for even a mediocre program.
- Despite the disproportion between effort and audience response, writing prose is deeply satisfying, and the author encourages others to write for the intrinsic rewards.
- The author is at a crossroads—whether to continue writing, coding, or both—and awaits the reception of Wohpe in Italian and its upcoming English translation.
From Nodes to Stories
2 months ago
- The author contrasts two responses to AI displacing white-collar workers: Citrini Capital's fictional memo focusing on job losses (S&P down 38%, unemployment at 10.2%) versus the author's focus on new jobs created.
- The author uses fiction (short stories generated with Claude) as a thinking tool to concretize abstract concepts from the 'Traffic Jam Explorer', such as 'Computational Experience Reviewer', finding stories more effective than trees of nodes.
- The author launches 'Near Zero', a weekly short story project set in a world where software building costs have collapsed, exploring new professions and problems; the first story, 'The Executable Muse', is about a 'Senior Computational Experience Reviewer'.
Lesser-known science fiction movies
2 months ago
- The author loves all forms of science fiction and distinguishes it from fantasy, finding the pairing 'sci-fi and fantasy' annoying as they consider them opposite.
- Recommends lesser-known sci-fi movies, including 'The Man From Earth' (dialogue-driven), 'Primer' (complex time-travel), 'Pandorum' (serious spaceship thriller), 'Upstream Color' (more approachable than Primer), 'Coherence' (reality-bending), 'Timecrimes' (time-travel paradox), 'Prospect' (immersive universe), 'Vesper' (similar to Prospect), and 'The Artifice Girl' (philosophical horror).
- Mentions 'Tales From the Loop' as a brilliant series and notes a cameo by Shane Carruth, who directed Primer and Upstream Color.
- Also lists some big-studio movies and TV shows that the author likes mostly due to nostalgia, admitting they are somewhat low quality.
The Estranged Worlds of J. G. Ballard
2 months ago
- J. G. Ballard was a perplexing and brilliant post-WWII fiction writer, initially part of the SF New Wave but later diverging from traditional science fiction.
- His fiction focuses on cognitive estrangement within contemporary postindustrial society, treating everyday elements like cars and malls as alien landscapes, as seen in novels like 'Crash' and 'Kingdom Come'.
- Ballard's work has been adapted by diverse filmmakers such as Steven Spielberg, David Cronenberg, and Ben Wheatley, reflecting its wide appeal across different temperaments.
- The biography 'The Illuminated Man' explores Ballard's life, including his childhood in Shanghai, internment during WWII, and later sedate life in Shepperton, without reducing his fiction to mere autobiography.
- Ballard transformed personal and historical trauma into fiction with an objective, orderly style, creating cognitive dissonance and dark humor through mismatches between events and characters' responses.
- His writing blends pulp genre and avant-garde experimentation, rejecting conventional literary norms, and features recurring literal images like shopping malls and drained pools that suggest the exhaustion of meaning.
- Ballard's themes grapple with finitude, mortality, and the absence of finality, mirrored in the biography's own incomplete nature due to co-author Christopher Priest's illness and death.
I Left Harry's All-Night Hamburgers (2013)
3 months ago
- The narrator works at Harry's All-Night Hamburgers in Sutton, West Virginia, a remote diner that becomes a hub for interdimensional travelers due to its location being a stable point across parallel worlds.
- He encounters bizarre customers, including a heavily bundled man and three topless women, and learns from them about infinite parallel universes where every possible event occurs, and travelers can never return to their exact home world.
- Inspired by travelers' stories of wonders, the narrator considers leaving with a traveler named Sid, but another traveler, Joe, convinces him to explore Earth's own marvels first, emphasizing he can always return to Harry's for an interdimensional ride later.
- The narrator leaves his job and West Virginia with Joe, who drives him to Pittsburgh, starting his journey to see real-world wonders like New York, Machu Picchu, and space shuttle launches, while realizing the value of being able to return home.

science fiction

The End of Everything by M. John Harrison

A Rant About “Technology” (2005)

<antirez>

From Nodes to Stories

Lesser-known science fiction movies

The Estranged Worlds of J. G. Ballard

I Left Harry's All-Night Hamburgers (2013)