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After Philip K. Dick got his first glimpse of Bladerunner (based on his “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”) he wrote this letter to the production company:

October 11, 1981

Mr. Jeff Walker,
The Ladd Company,
4000 Warner Boulevard,
Burbank,
Calif. 91522.

Dear Jeff,

I happened to see the Channel 7 TV program “Hooray For Hollywood” tonight with the segment on BLADE RUNNER. (Well, to be honest, I didn’t happen to see it; someone tipped me off that BLADE RUNNER was going to be a part of the show, and to be sure to watch.) Jeff, after looking –and especially after listening to Harrison Ford discuss the film– I came to the conclusion that this indeed is not science fiction; it is not fantasy; it is exactly what Harrison said: futurism. The impact of BLADE RUNNER is simply going to be overwhelming, both on the public and on creative people — and, I believe, on science fiction as a field. Since I have been writing and selling science fiction works for thirty years, this is a matter of some importance to me. In all candor I must say that our field has gradually and steadily been deteriorating for the last few years. Nothing that we have done, individually or collectively, matches BLADE RUNNER. This is not escapism; it is super realism, so gritty and detailed and authentic and goddam convincing that, well, after the segment I found my normal present-day “reality” pallid by comparison. What I am saying is that all of you collectively may have created a unique new form of graphic, artistic expression, never before seen. And, I think, BLADE RUNNER is going to revolutionize our conceptions of what science fiction is and, more, can be.

Let me sum it up this way. Science fiction has slowly and ineluctably settled into a monotonous death: it has become inbred, derivative, stale. Suddenly you people have come in, some of the greatest talents currently in existence, and now we have a new life, a new start. As for my own role in the BLADE RUNNER project, I can only say that I did not know that a work of mine or a set of ideas of mine could be escalated into such stunning dimensions. My life and creative work are justified and completed by BLADE RUNNER. Thank you..and it is going to be one hell of a commercial success. It will prove invincible.

Cordially,

Philip K. Dick

Via Tim Maughan, who also wrote an excellent book, Paintwork, which you can and should buy here. 

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The Dystopia Display at The World's Biggest Bookstore. Technicolor Ultra Mall is top right.

I have a couple pieces of news regarding Technicolor Ultra Mall.

The first is that my publisher has made the ebook version available through the Amazon Lending Library. So, if you’re an Amazon Prime Member, you can borrow it for zero dollars.

If you’re old fashioned like me, it looks like the Canadian Amazon has one print copy left. So you can also buy that. Or not. I’m not your mama.

The other thing is that, this year, the Prix Aurora Awards are giving away a package to members that includes excerpts or full e-copies of all nominated works. Technicolor Ultra Mall is one such work, being short-listed for best English novel.

Through that package, Technicolor Ultra Mall is available in its entirety. I decided to do it that way because, well, if you pay the $10 to register and vote, I figure you should get something for your money — even if I don’t. My publisher was good enough to agree.

So go register and get some Aurora short-listed work. Then vote. If you’re already registered, just go enjoy the fiction then vote. You can do all that here.

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Social Media’s Small, Positive Role in Human Relationships is an interesting article.

If anything, social media is a counterweight to the ongoing devaluation of human lives. Social media’s rapid rise is a loud, desperate, emerging attempt by people everywhere to connect with *each other* in the face of all the obstacles that modernity imposes on our lives: suburbanization that isolates us from each other, long working-hours and commutes that are required to make ends meet, the global migration that scatters families across the globe, the military-industrial-consumption machine that drives so many key decisions, and, last but not least, the television — the ultimate alienation machine — which remains the dominant form of media. (For most people, the choice is not leisurely walks on Cape Cod versus social media. It’s television versus social media).

There’s a lot to agree with in this analysis. What I object to the notion that one form of media is intrinsically more alienating than another. (Unless we’re talking in terms of alienating labour but I suspect that’s not what’s meant here.)

Television is an alienation machine but so are computers. So are books. But are you better off reading a harlequin romance or watching The Wire? Are you better off reading that romance with an interesting analysis or watching The Wire slack-jawed and covered in Cheetos?

The medium really isn’t the message.

The ratio of crap to good is probably about the same through all platforms. And some people can wring a lot of good from crap while other people can turn gold into shit.

Social media has played both positive and negative roles in my relationships. So has television. And books. But none of these things have played as large a role in my relationships as I have.

For good or ill.

You can’t expect too much out of these glowing boxes and screens. Most of what you get out of things is what you put into them. That holds up across every medium.

I’d say try to be a better user of all of them.

via Nathan Jurgenson

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This 1949 letter from Aldous Huxley to George Orwell is from Letters of Note. While these two authors shared a dystopic view, they disagreed on how it would be realized. Not to put too fine a point on it, Huxley feared the carrot while Orwell feared the stick.

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For Earth Day, the Toronto Star asked 15 science fiction writers, including me, how we’d tackle climate change. To save some space, my answer was edited down.

Here’s my full reply:

The environment is something I watch on TV. Narrated by Sir David Attenborough, it’s a pristine world free of human interference. But it’s also the concrete, the highrise and the little blue screen. Where animals are pests. The destruction wrought on the so-called natural world results from the false division between humans and it. Humans need to fuse with nature. Using biotech, houses should be grown not built. Towns designed with no clear line, aesthetic or technological, between human and environment. Euclidean geometry must be overthrown. Only by reaching such a state of obvious symbiosis can we end this conflict with the world we inhabit. The alternative is an increasingly alienating spectacle that will end in the circus of our own destruction.

You can read everyone’s answers here.

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Popular stand-up philosopher, Slavoj Žižek has an interesting little essay on Corporate Rule of Cyberspace. My favourite part:

There are two tell-tale words here: abstraction and control. In order to manage a cloud, there needs to be a monitoring system which controls its functioning, a system which is by definition hidden from the end-user. The paradox is thus that, as the new gadget (smartphone or tiny portable) I hold in my hand becomes increasingly personalized, easy to use, “transparent” in its functioning, the more the entire set-up has to rely on the work being done elsewhere, on the vast circuit of machines which coordinate the user’s experience. In other words, for the user experience to become more personalized or non-alienated, it has to be regulated and controlled by an alienated network.

With the sale of Instagram to Facebook for a cool billion dollars, this seems like a good time to pay some attention to who owns the Internet.

There’s little reason to think that these entities will act any better with a monopoly than any past entity ever has. Other than the fact they wear dungarees to work and don’t have cubicles.

If they even still do that. Who knows?

via Bruce Sterling

Continue reading »]]> This is an interview that occurred in late January and will be hitting 12 television stations and 80 radio markets in about a week via TVCOGECO. It’s for Brent Holland’s Night Fright Show.

Ryan Oakley – Technicolor Ultra-Mall via Skype from Toronto Canada. What if in the future Toronto had been turned into a huge indoor mall? But the class hierarchy is dominated by roaming gangs intent on enforcing their own version of what makes up a society. Free of authority, free of military, free of…order? Ryan draws upon the current “Occupy Movement” and a certain amount of libertarian doctrine as his prose. Would a society be better off under these circumstances, worse off because of roaming gang mentality or just same old same old? And that is the challenge of his book and our show together. We challenge each other’s conventions throughout this show and expose many shocking government policies that may already be in place and not in the future. Profound.

This is the first interview I’ve ever done of this type. (Radio, television, sound and image.) So yeah, I was a bit nervous. It should come as no surprise that I’m most comfortable in print.

But Mr. Holland was quite friendly and I think it all went off pretty well.

And cool shit about the internet, if you want to ask any follow up questions or anything like that, there’s always the comment section here.

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If you’re online, you’ve probably heard about this Kony character and the campaign by Invisible Children to stop him. Their campaign is obnoxious. At best, it’s an ineffective and dangerous product of white privilege. At worst, its little more than a cynical profit grab that panders to racism.

Here’s a little known fact about Africa: It doesn’t need you to save it and it’s not your fucking laboratory. So before you start talking about kickstarting armies and whatnot, take a deep breath.

Can you guess which three of these men founded Invisible Children?

You have no business running around other people’s countries with guns and you have no business raising money so that they might do the same. Unless that is your business. In which case, you are the problem.

Kony is an evil man. The world is teeming with evil men.

But this?

This is obscene.

Hard as it might be to believe, the world’s problems will not be solved by T-Shirts, buttons, bracelets and action guides. A measured reading of history would probably indicate that, more often than not, these things create problems.

Especially when they promote boots on the ground.

Foreign boots. On ground they don’t know about, don’t care about and don’t have to live on once the fad passes.

From the white man’s burden of colonization, to Belgians putting Tutsis in charge of Hutus based on the most recent “racial sciences” to the devastating effect that charities have on economies, many of Africa’s problems were and are caused by white people thinking they’re doing good.

This instinct has been used and abused by people who suffered from no such illusions. By people out to make a buck.

And all of that is to ignore that quite a bit of Africa is doing quite well and that it is an incredibly rich continent. The African people are not “half-devil, half-child.” They do not require our help. If anything, they just require us to stop looting them while saying it’s for their own good.

But, I didn’t mean to go off on a tirade here. Better informed people than I have written on this subject. I just wanted to let you know where I stand and to share a couple of relevant links.

They are below.

A Peace of my mind: Respect my agency 2012!

It is a slap in the face to so many of us who want to rise from the ashes of our tumultuous past and the noose of benevolent, paternalistic, aid-driven development memes. We, Africans, are sandwiched between our historically factual imperfections and well-intentioned, road-to-hell-building-do-gooders. It is a suffocating state of existence. To be properly heard, we must ride the coattails of self-righteous idiocy train. Even then, we have to fight for our voices to be respected.

On Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 Campaign

My main concern is that Gulu – and Uganda - has gone through some incredible changes. The economy is booming. The region is re-stabilizing. While Kony’s men continue to kill, rape and slaughter elsewhere, Gulu is not a static, unchanging place. Neither is Uganda, neither is the continent. Portraying a region like Gulu as such, and sending the mass message that the whole continent reflects this, is damaging. It undermines possibilities of investment. It clouds story of entrepreneurship, success and innovation. This goes hand in hand with saying “I work in Africa.” Lumping the continent as one messy area.

You Don’t Have My Vote

This approach obviously denies realities on the ground, inflates fantasies abroad, and strips Ugandans of their agency, dignity and humanity- the complexity of their story and history. The work, consequence, and impact are all focused on Uganda, but the agency, accountability, and resources lie among young American students. Clearly a dangerous imbalance of power and influence; one that can have adverse lasting effects on how and what people know of Uganda. It reduces the story of Northern Uganda, and perhaps even all of Uganda, into the dreaded single narrative of need and war, followed by western resolve and rescue. As we have seen from the past, without nuance and context, these stories stick in the collective memory of everyday people for years in their simplest forms: Uganda becomes wretched war. Whatever good IC may advance in raising more awareness on the issue or even contributing to the capture of Joseph Kony, it can never do enough to erase this unintended (I hope) impact.

Worst Idea Ever?

First, organizations like Invisible Children not only take up resources that could be used to fund more intelligent advocacy, they take up rhetorical space that could be used todevelop more intelligent advocacy. And yeah, this may seem like an absurdly academic point to raise when talking about a problem that is clearly crying out for pragmatic solutions, but, uh, the way we define problems is important. Really, really important. Choosing to simplistically define Congolese women as “The Raped” and Ugandan children as “The Abducted” constrains our ability to think creatively about the problems they face, and work with them to combat these problems.

Second, treating their problems as one-dimensional issues that can be solved by a handful of plucky college students armed only with the strength of their convictions and a video camera doesn’t help anyone.

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This gun, created by Japanese researchers, is capable of stopping speech at a range of 30 metres (100ft). I’m sure we could all think of a use for it.

The dystopian, silence the protesters, angle jumps right out at ya. But I would remind people that the police already have used bullets, batons, tear gas and tazers. They’ve also got sound cannons, drones and microwave rays. All of which they’re just itching to use.

So that quasi-dystopian angle leaves me with a feeling of ennui. Or, as the kids say, meh.

More interesting is this, from Extreme Tech:

The researchers were looking for a way to stop “louder, stronger” voices from saying more than their fair share in conversation. The paper reads: “We have to establish and obey rules for proper turn-taking when speaking. However, some people tend to lengthen their turns or deliberately interrupt other people when it is their turn in order to establish their presence rather than achieve more fruitful discussions. Furthermore, some people tend to jeer at speakers to invalidate their speech.” In other words, this speech-jamming gun was built to enforce “proper” conversations.

A proper conversation according to whom? The person holding the gun, of course.

Reminds me of my childhood dinner table. And toilet training, come to think of it.

Rather than calling out someone who is being rude, it’s considered more polite to pull out some weird machine and induce a feeling of Delayed Auditory Feedback? People will certainly go to some lengths to ensure they never feel awkward about anything.

via Robb Eason

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In August, a blogger and book critic, acrackedmoon, reviewed an interview by speculative fiction writer R. Scott Bakker. She did so from a feminist angle and, from this perspective, found the fellow and his politics deficient.

Six months later, the science fiction community has caught a case of the hysterics.

For a chronology, I refer you to Requires Only That You Hate – the blog that started the ruckus:

You will have heard of the Bakker brouhaha, if you are here. Let’s have a chronology:

• Requires Only That You Hate – R. Scott Bakker: Prince of Misogyny – dated 16 August 2011
• R. Scott Bakker – Sweet Manna - dated 16 August 2011
• R. Scott Bakker - Misanthropology 101 – dated 1 February 2012
• R. Scott Bakker - Requires Only Haidt – dated 6 February 2012
• R. Scott Bakker - The Halftime Show – dated 10 February 2012
• R. Scott Bakker - That Empty Place – dated 16 February 2012
• Peter Watts – In Vicarious Defense of R. Scott Bakker – dated 16 February 2012
• R. Scott Bakker – Um, does anybody got a mint? – dated 18 February 2012

I’ve never read Watts’ or Bakker’s books. I’ve only recently started reading Requires Only That You Hate. I know that I’ll be seeing Watts at conventions. I’ll probably never meet acrackedmoon.

Should she ever read my novel, I suspect she’ll find it wanting.

But who knows? It’s not up to me to speak or think on her behalf and she’s doesn’t require it. The lady can take care of herself in an internet knife fight. She’s chopping heads. I’m just wading through the blood.

What I need to speak to –because I am a straight white male who shares an occupation and community with these authors and one could, from that, reasonably believe my silence is a form of approval or, worse, the sort of cowardice, born from ambition, that I patently loathe– is how she is being spoken to.

I do not approve. I think it’s fucked up.

Peter Watts expressed some doubts about calling acrackedmoon “a rabid animal” and called her that anyway. I’m not going to pretend to have any doubts about calling Mr. Watts a scoundrel and a fucking goof.

And I don’t need to read his books to do so.

You see, I just don’t know what else to call a man — a straight, white man, like myself– who would refer to a woman of colour as an animal. That he would do so, while defending his friend from a charge of sexism means he must be fucking stupid. That he tries to defend it makes him exceptionally shit-headed.

I guess we won’t be friends. The loss pains me.

Without exception, I have found acrackedmoon’s criticisms of works I have read to be valid. That’s not to say I’m always in total agreement with her. I think the political interpretation of work can be limited. But all criticism, from whatever angle, is limited. As is writing.

I’ve reviewed and been reviewed. It is, as they say, easier to fight the bull from the bleachers. But that’s not to say that it’s easy. Critics are still fighting the bull and they are important. They enter into a serious dialogue with art. They’re readers.

Books do not exist without readers.

I do not mean as consumers. I mean the art does not live without people reading it. It does not become important without people discussing it.

Outside of what they’ve written, authors cannot and should not direct the interpretation of their own works or the conversation about it. Their intent and personality is irrelevant. There is no reason to bring forth character witnesses.

If I should ever have to bring forth character witnesses to defend my books, I’m good and fucked. Even my friends can hardly stand me. It doesn’t matter.

What I think has happened here –at heart– is that writers are arguing that their interpretation is the most important one. This position is noxious. It’s marketing.

This position is made combustible by the addition of race and gender. Because now these authors have moved on to assert their control over the conversation about these elements in their work.

How dare anyone who doesn’t even know them find fault with their politics and hurt their sales?

They’re defensive. It’s inappropriate.

When reviewers attack.

Far from being a rabid animal, acrackedmoon is an excellent and perceptive critic. Her point of view is not only reasonable, it’s important. Voices like hers are too rarely heard in a community that still thinks Tolkien’s racism is in the magical realm of maybe or that Orson Scott Card is anything but a homophobic hack whose greatest work is a defence of genocide.

Instead of people just shutting up and listening, using her observations to improve their writing, here’s what we get:

1. Motherfuckers pretending that she’s a troll.

There is nothing in her work that indicates that she’s trolling. Her posts are well thought out and angry. If people need her anger explained, they need only look at their own reaction to it.

That shit makes me angry too.

Am I a troll for being so? If so, you’re a fucking goat. And get off my bridge.

2. Motherfuckers calling her race and/or sex into question.

Many people are saying that acrackedmoon may not be a Thai lesbian at all. The perversity of this is beyond me. What difference does it make?

She says she’s a Thai lesbian. Even if she’s not, I’d rather take her at her word and be wrong than attempt to take away someone’s race and sexual orientation to defend my work.

To do so without evidence is insane.

3. Motherfuckers calling her names.

Commenters, left unmoderated by the authors in question, have engaged in all the usual shit about how she must be ugly and worse. Addressing that is, frankly, beneath my dignity. Try as I might, I cannot think like a toad.

But for science fiction authors to refer to her as “a rabid animal” or as “The Dude” is revolting. I should not have to explain why but here we are . . .

White people are not allowed, under any circumstances, to call people of colour animals, let alone rabid ones, and straight people are not allowed to call lesbians “The Dude.” These are deeply hurtful terms that not only attack an individual but a whole class of people.

You want to know how you look and sound when you do that?

If she was a gay man, would you call her The Lady or Miss?

I wouldn’t think so but, then again, I wouldn’t think professional writers would call her the things they have. Like they don’t know the power and meaning of words.

And if you think you can justify it, I wish my Nan was still alive so that I might introduce you to her. I’d take great pleasure in watching her slap the shit out of your dumb ass.

Then she could read your post about a Thai woman, done in the style of a god-damn nature show, and beat your ass again.

Swear to God, a big problem with the internet is that you can’t roll it up and hit people with it.

4. The overall tone motherfuckers are taking.

The general position adopted by these authors is that they are reasonable, open-minded gentlemen trying to deal with a shrieking, hysterical harpy. It’s as if they shake their heads, look at each other, jerk their thumb in her direction and say: “Crazy dames, I’ll never get ‘em.”

And that’s before they start using words like ‘primitive’ and ‘tribal’ and ‘animal.’

They’re acting so scientific. So rational. Meanwhile, they’re portraying acrackedmoon as engaged in some sort of in-group building, us versus them, exercise in tribalism.

I reject their so-called science. It’s little more than intellectual posturing. A bloated and pompous defence of the indefensible.

I was unsurprised to see a commenter bring up the half-baked and pseudo-scientific musings of Watson on race to attack ‘political correctness’ or, as I like to call it, decent manners.

I was a little more surprised to see . . .

5. Motherfuckers pretending they have no bigotry.

Or, in the case of Bakker, pretending his biogotry of choice is misandry. That is, he’s biased towards women. He loves them. All of them. They’re just adorable.

Invoking misandry has all the weight of “I love equality so when’s white history month?”

So let’s put his patronizing claim aside. Most of this seems to be people taking umbrage with being called bigots. The narrative has escaped their control. Panic ensues.

I don’t know why folks can’t just be straight about their bigotry. We all have prejudices . We are not perfect. I have them. These writers have them. I’m sure acrackedmoon has them.

Pretending we don’t is to close our eyes. We have to accept that we do, be honest about them –make them visible to ourselves through our art– and, once we gain awareness, try to check them.

When other people check them for us, the best response is not to launch into a hysterical defence of our good character. The best defence is to forget about defence. Just listen and think about it and try to be better.

Maybe say thank you.

Having prejudice is entirely human. So is attempting to do better

Do better, motherfuckers.

Because, as things stand, you’re embarrassing yourself, you’re embarrassing me and I’m ashamed to even share a skin colour, let alone a profession or community, with you.

The white man does have a burden. It’s you.