Tag Archives: science fiction

SF Reading Recommendation: Alastair Reynolds

Posted on 05.06.2009 by Stephanie Booth

[fr]

Si vous aimez la science-fiction, je vous recommande vivement de vous intéresser de près à ce qu'écrit Alastair Reynolds.

[en]

If you like science fiction, specially the space opera techie kind, you should try reading something by Alastair Reynolds (he has a blog, too).

I actually first encountered his writing in one of the SF short story collections that I own, but really noted his name down after reading Pushing Ice, which was given to me by a friend. I was, honestly, completely blown away by the story.

Some time later, another friend sent me Chasm City off my wishlist. Again, I couldn’t help but wonder how on earth a human being can come up with such incredible worlds and stories.

When I was in Leeds a few weeks ago, I went on a shopping spree (clothes, DVDs, books) and bought both Revelation Space and Redemption Ark, the two first volumes of the Revelation Space trilogy.

I finished them at the chalet, and as soon as I got back online, made an order from Amazon. It’s just arrived, have a look:

Amazon Order Arrived!

Just in time to keep me busy for the rainy week-end that’s about to start!

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Posted in Books | Tagged alastair reynolds, Books, reading, recommendation, science fiction, sf | 1 Comment

Lift09 — Matt Webb — Scientific Fiction and Design

Posted on 27.02.2009 by Stephanie Booth

Book: Cusp, Robert A. Metzger. SF (steph-note: sounds like a crazy story, need to read it!)

This is not the SF we’re talking about here. No flying cars, silver skullcaps… Here: Scientific Fiction (World War Z — zombie story; the book unfolds, and “it makes sense”). This is what Matt wants to talk about — this kind of book.

Taking pleasure in watching things unfold. (Shows us videos of marbles in “mazes”.) Human nature: it’s almost compulsive, we want to watch things happen.

The impossible triangle: Human nature, Society, Things. How do SF stories read through this triangle? One thing changes, other things have to change too.

Cf law of perfect gasses, linking pressure, volume, temperature. Linked. SF is walking the landscape of possible future worlds.

Lift09 110

Problem? inventing, imagining the future: hard.

Which products work in the landscapes of possible worlds? Discover it through:

  • market research
  • economics
  • evolution (start with something that you know works, and change it very slowly)

steph-note: making good note of this for my fiction writing

In the process of invention: prototypes. Process?

Middle of the paper, draw your new invented radio. At the corners, contexts => you evolve your radio, create hybrids, cross-breeds. steph-note: some kind of visual/drawing braingstorming! Matt: not a storming, random process. It’s very methodical, process of deconstruction. What emerges is the discovery of what it is about that original radio that persists.

The process continues to physical objects.

History: the past is another set of possible worlds, just like the future. One process of fictionalizing these worlds is to change one important event (steph-note: didn’t get the term for that… counter-fractures??) — What if Kennedy wasn’t shot? What if the war of Independance had been lost?

Prototype phone for Nokia, made of metal that melts at 47°C. Good for redoing it, but don’t keep it too close to your ear (contains lead ;-) )

Materials. Soft furry phone. Soft on your face, and can stroke it when on the table. Hair you have to tie up to see the screen. Patchwork phones.

Lift09 111

“Design is the conscious and intuitive effort to impose meaningful order.” Victor Papanek

Scientific Fiction:

The story is the laboratory. Reading is your research. Writing is your experiment.

steph-note: this is giving me food for thought, about my difficulties in creating stories and worlds and my incapacity to design anything graphically.

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Posted in Live Blogging | Tagged lift09, matt webb, notes, science fiction, scientific future, Stuff that doesn't fit | Leave a comment

Lift09 — Change — Patrick J. Gyger — Science Fiction and the Future

Posted on 26.02.2009 by Stephanie Booth

Lift09 021 - Patrick Gyger Amazing stories (pulp magazines). Looking into the future. Thirties. This is when SF started becoming a genre.

SF starts creating a new 20th century. SF zeitgeist, science programme. SF moves over to other media: films, radio.

Commercials start using SF backdrops for all sorts of commercial goods. Up to the 60s, the future is used to promote goods.

What will the future be like? (based on SF, predictions)

Home of the future. Revolutionary transportation. We’ll all have flying cars! But actually, flying cars did exist, in the twenties (René Tampier). <–photo–>

Despite the real flying cars, they remain in the realm of imagination, they are still an object of the future.

SF plants the seeds of dreams and desire. It has to stay in the realm of imagination. There is no place for the flying car in the present, because it is an object of the future, by definition.

Some objects have made their way from SF into our world.

  • wrist pager / wrist phone
  • cybernetics, artificial limbs (cf. Kevin Warwick last year at Lift08)
  • robotics
  • communications, videophone (Skype)
  • jetpacks (want to see your neighbour soaring above your head in the morning, off to work?)

Lift09 027

Failures — or not there yet:

  • invisibility doesn’t really work
  • cryogenics (not too good)
  • teleportation for transportation — we’re not there yet
  • time travel

The future did not take the shape of our SF dreams of the past. steph-note: not altogether surprising imho, as SF is really talking about the present

Right now, we live in Utopia in the Western world — we don’t feel the urgency to dream up our Utopia. Some technology utopias have been realised, but have not brought what we hoped from them.

We also live in Dystopia — aware of the dark sides of technology.

“We live in the dreams and nightmares of our grandparents, at the same time.”

Belief of the grandiose views of flying cars: machines, not politics, will produce beneficial social change. We don’t believe that anymore.

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Posted in Live Blogging | Tagged gyger, lift09, science fiction, Stuff that doesn't fit | Leave a comment

“Alors ils leur font la guerre”

Posted on 26.09.2004 by Stephanie Booth

[en]

I'm a bit worried by the omnipresence of war as the outcome when the heroes meet the aliens in my pupils' SF essays. Is conflict the only way to meet "the other"?

[fr]

Je corrige des compositions françaises sur le thème de la science-fiction. Les élèves avaient comme point de départ un “canevas” qui plantait le décor (leur donnant le contexte de leur histoire) et leur donnait des instructions assez précises pour guider leur texte.

Parmi celles-ci:

Le personnage central est un représentant pacifique d’un système qui veut repeupler la terre.

(Je souligne.)

A quelques exceptions près, les histoires sont construites sur le schéma suivant: nos héros arrivent sur terre avec leur vaisseau, rencontrent d’autres êtres (autres mutants, extra-terrestres, ou même Aliens), et pour une raison ou l’autre on se fait la guerre, et tout finit en destruction (de la planète, des héros, des ennemis, à  choix).

Personne n’a imaginé qu’ils discutent? Qu’ils trouvent un intérêt commun et qu’ils s’entendent? Qu’ils fuyent? Le conflit semble être la seule voie possible face à  l’altérité.

Oui, ils ont entre 13 et 15 ans, c’est un peu normal.

Je reste toutefois un peu songeuse, et un peu soucieuse.

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Posted in Stuff that doesn't fit | Tagged altérité, canevas, composition, conflit, Education, élèves, extra-terrestres, guerre, Pieces of Me, Psychology / Sociology, rédaction, science fiction | 16 Comments