Actually, we need an artists contribution. We need a vision of what we’re trying to accomplish with the Singularity. Right now, I picture the community as some nerd, absorbed in a Rubik’s cube of technology, walking oblivious towards the edge of a cliff. We will explore AI, nanotech or biotech until it blows up in our faces.
Way back when, written science fiction was some kind of vision of the future. A limited one, but at least an attempt to say what we wanted, or what technology would do to us. Now, there’s almost nothing. Go into the SF section of a bookstore and it’s alt-history, various type of war stories, thrillers and lots of fantasy novels.
The only two “near-term” SF things I’ve read recently are Accellerando by Charles Stross, and Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge. We need a lot more of that. I’d even like to see someone make a decent SF movie based on this kind of material. It’s hopeless to get that through a studio, but perhaps you could open-source produce it and distribute it over the net. Seems like it’s time for that kind of thing to start happening.
So I’d welcome all the artists! Please come and dream for us.
I’m 7 years late on this, but if anyone else has this problem with the current state of SF (or you have email notifications, is that a thing?), might I recommend Schild’s Ladder or Incandescence by Greg Egan? I wouldn’t quite call them the “artists perspective”, since there’s a lot of physics involved*, but they also have quite a lot of focus on the characters and more specifically the interpersonal interactions in the age when there are no other problems left, sometimes in a quite beautiful way.
(well, most of the time there are no other problems left: Every actual story focuses on people experiencing some sort of incredibly unusual event. But we do see the background of what sort of issues people in these societies experience in their normal lives)
On the other hand, I enjoyed Incandescence just fine despite not knowing enough about relativity to have any idea if the characters were on the right track. Knowing the science already might actually be a spoiler. Still, being able to at least enjoy pages-long discussions of physics is definitely a plus- if you do* enjoy it, his books are amazing.
On a more general note, be aware that “go into the SF section of the bookstore and it’s all X, Y and Z” isn’t necessarily a good indicator that nothing of a given type is being written; that just means that the majority of what’s being written, or at least of what is popular, is like that. A bit like Sturgeon’s Law, I think.
Actually, we need an artists contribution. We need a vision of what we’re trying to accomplish with the Singularity. Right now, I picture the community as some nerd, absorbed in a Rubik’s cube of technology, walking oblivious towards the edge of a cliff. We will explore AI, nanotech or biotech until it blows up in our faces.
Way back when, written science fiction was some kind of vision of the future. A limited one, but at least an attempt to say what we wanted, or what technology would do to us. Now, there’s almost nothing. Go into the SF section of a bookstore and it’s alt-history, various type of war stories, thrillers and lots of fantasy novels.
The only two “near-term” SF things I’ve read recently are Accellerando by Charles Stross, and Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge. We need a lot more of that. I’d even like to see someone make a decent SF movie based on this kind of material. It’s hopeless to get that through a studio, but perhaps you could open-source produce it and distribute it over the net. Seems like it’s time for that kind of thing to start happening.
So I’d welcome all the artists! Please come and dream for us.
I’m 7 years late on this, but if anyone else has this problem with the current state of SF (or you have email notifications, is that a thing?), might I recommend Schild’s Ladder or Incandescence by Greg Egan? I wouldn’t quite call them the “artists perspective”, since there’s a lot of physics involved*, but they also have quite a lot of focus on the characters and more specifically the interpersonal interactions in the age when there are no other problems left, sometimes in a quite beautiful way. (well, most of the time there are no other problems left: Every actual story focuses on people experiencing some sort of incredibly unusual event. But we do see the background of what sort of issues people in these societies experience in their normal lives)
On the other hand, I enjoyed Incandescence just fine despite not knowing enough about relativity to have any idea if the characters were on the right track. Knowing the science already might actually be a spoiler. Still, being able to at least enjoy pages-long discussions of physics is definitely a plus- if you do* enjoy it, his books are amazing.
On a more general note, be aware that “go into the SF section of the bookstore and it’s all X, Y and Z” isn’t necessarily a good indicator that nothing of a given type is being written; that just means that the majority of what’s being written, or at least of what is popular, is like that. A bit like Sturgeon’s Law, I think.