1 post tagged “computer science”
Sunday morning, we went to a session called "Zooming to the Silver Screen: When Books Become Movies." Panel participants were Melinda Snodgrass (moderator), Doug Beason, Steven Gould, William Stout, and Carrie Vaughn. The focus of the panel was to discuss movies that were actually better than the books that they were made from, which is rare, but does happen. One of the common themes at the conference was authors lamenting the fact that editors rarely edit, anymore, particularly when the author is successful, much to the detriment of the literature. I think one of the reasons movies are sometimes better than the books upon which they are based is that the act of making it a movie sometimes forces the screenwriter to cut out the deadwood.
Other times, the ideas behind the story are good, but the writing itself is boring or just too unbelievable to follow. Pretty much anything by Philip K. Dick falls in this category. The ideas are compelling, but given half a chance the movie has to be better than what the author actually wrote. Unfortunately, that's not saying much, and many times movies based on Dick's ideas are still pretty aweful (Total Recall, Minority Report) with the occasional near-gem (Bladerunner).
Immediately after this was the Guest of Honor Presentation, in which the Toastmistress Jane Lindskold grilled Vernor Vinge for an hour and a half about where he comes up with his ideas, how he writes, etc. One of the many things discussed was the fact that Vinge (pronounced Vin-gee) had introduced the concept of a "technological singularity" to describe the idea that the predictable extrapolation of artificial intelligence is that someday machines (or humans enhanced by machines) will become so intellectually advanced that present-day humans would not even be able to comprehend their culture or world. The term singularity, here, is borrowed from astrophysics, in which it describes the central point of a black hole, which is both infinite and immeasurable. In the same way, the advance of intelligence in machines is increasing at an exponential rate, and as with any exponential curve that curve must eventually become too steep for unaided humans to keep up.
How does this relate to science fiction? It means that if you are writing about humans in the very far in the future at all, you have to come up with some reason why humans haven't all become replaced by machines. It turns out that science fiction writers have been doing this for some time. In Isaac Asimov's Foundation books, for instance, artificial intelligence is considered somewhat taboo, and robots are shunned. Planets that do use robots become stagnant and eventually die out because they rely on the robots too much, so they don't advance artificial intelligence any further. In the Dune series, by Frank Herbert, artificial intelligence is somewhat of a religious taboo.
In Vinge's own books, Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky, quantum mechanics operates differently near the center of a very large gravitational object, like a galaxy, than it does at a distance from that center. Phenomenon like quantum tunneling, etc., are more noticeable on planets closer to the galactic core than out on the rim, meaning that computers are harder to build and won't work as efficiently near the core, but will work great out near the rim. The result is that computers of immense power, even beyond the ability of humans to understand, are capable in the dark places between galaxies, but impossible to build near the galactic core.
I was highly impressed with Mr. Vinge, particularly with the fact that he has done all of his writing while having a whole "day-career." Many authors have day jobs, but he has had a full-time career, and still managed to become a published and well-regarded fiction writer. It gives me hope.
After lunch (which I will write about later), we came back for "Slime Creatures from Outer Space: Creating Aliens." Panel participants included Yvonne Coats (moderator), Doug Beason, Mark Ferrari, Jane Lindskold, Laura J. Mixon, and David Thomas. This was a panel about how to create believable aliens in your fiction. The consensus seemed to be that no matter what we do as writers, it won't equal the strangeness that an alien species is likely to possess. Aliens in science fiction tend to be humans altered in ways that are metaphorically useful, not nearly as odd as real aliens would likely to be.
I actually don't have a problem with this; as fiction writers, we have to keep our characters, whether human or alien, sympathetic and identifiable for the reader. Making our characters so bizarre an incomprehensible that the readers couldn't possibly care about them is not conducive to good fiction. Furthermore, I don't really subscribe to the notion that intelligent life would be totally inscrutible to humans. If they (the alien species) are similar enough to us to develop technology, then they would have to have a lot of traits in common with humans, even if they came to have those traits by a completely different evolutionary path.
Following the "Slime Creatures" panel, appropriately enough, were the "Green Slime" awards, in which books, movies, and other commercial science fiction ventures are given awards for being particularly bad science fiction. I don't remember who all won, but I remember that the Sci-Fi Channel was mentioned several times.
Then, it was the closing ceremonies, and the conference was over.
There was a post-conference party in the Con Hospitality Suite which we attended. This party is called the "Dead Dog Party," and we didn't stay long. Most of the people there seemed nice enough, but like a typical Mensa meeting there were one or two blow-hards that seem intent on showing everyone that they are smarter than the other smart people, nerdier than the other nerds, and generally just more of a fan than you. They also really don't like being corrected when they talk off the top of their head and get facts wrong.
It's late now. 'Night.
