I am an Amazon affiliate and receive a small commission that does not cost you anything if you buy from this link. It helps pay for this blog! We all fight over our favorite books, but I find the more interesting question to be: what are your most frequent books? WHY DO WE RETURN TO BOOKS? With no conscious decision, there are some books I've read dozens and dozens of times, and in contrast, there are some books I love so much or that are so life-changing, I know repeated exposure will never match the feeling, so I've never gone near them again. WHAT distinguishes them? I don't know. This isn't a definitive list of the best books or anything like that, but just a peek into the weirdness and deeply personal experience of reading. I've covered my favorite libraries in fiction before, some other books I've read again and again. BOOKS I'VE READ DOZENS OF TIMES Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen Mostly because I needed something slightly engaging to fall asleep to and … [Read more...] about What Books Do You Read Again and Again?
Why Money is Just a Rollicking Good Story
WE'RE BAILING OUT THE BILLIONAIRES AGAIN It’s getting to be rather a bad habit around here. And it all started with the Magna Carta. Bear with me. Many more qualified people have explained the ins and outs of the recent bank failures in our crazy financial system, here and here. I also have talked about the energy implications of money before. I don't want to talk about FDIC insurance. I want to talk about story. MONEY IS A STORY It's a story we made up when we moved beyond a barter economy. It's a brilliant story! I make cloth, and you grow apples. I want apples, but you don't need cloth. So I give you a tiny piece of metal instead, trusting that eventually somebody is going to need cloth and will replenish my stores of metal. None of us need the metal for anything, but it stands in for everything we do need. Evolve that miracle system long enough, and apparently, you get pure imaginary money where we don't even need the little pieces of metal, and we just tell each … [Read more...] about Why Money is Just a Rollicking Good Story
If We Lived in A Sci-Fi Novel, How AI Changes Everything & Nothing
Last week, I talked about science fiction's most famous AIs and how they compare to the current chatbot invasion. They're going to affect far more than science fiction. THE MAGIC OF WORLD BUILDING When authors build a new world, they change one variable and see how it plays out in everything from religion to politics to ecology. It's my favorite part of writing. It's been kind of amazing to see that play out in real-time with these language-learning models (that aren't really AI at all...) HOW AI CHANGES THE WORLD? LAW We have legal fights about who owns it, the words it produces, and what they're allowed to train them on. It's going to be a big mess until we all understand what we're looking at and how we can adapt copyright laws written when people were still physically moving little metal letters around and the new American congress was restricting books and maps to the author for 14 years. The United States was all of three years old. ECONOMICS We have … [Read more...] about If We Lived in A Sci-Fi Novel, How AI Changes Everything & Nothing
ChatBots are Here. Did Sci-Fi Get It Right?
The Internet has exploded in the last month with news of GenerativeAI taking over search, authorship, art, and various other industries. And how it has gone promptly off the rails. DOES IT LIVE UP TO THE DECADES OF HYPE? Speculative fiction has been taking on AI for YEARS. How good a job did the sci-fi author of the past in predicting how this is going, and where is it going next? And how did those doomsday stories affect the development of the thing we have now IT'S NOT INTELLIGENT OR SENTIENT This is all a little disingenuous because ChatGPT/Bing/etc are not artificial intelligence. They're certainly not sentient. The wild turkeys in my back yard are capable of greater intuitive leaps. My favorite explanation as to why is from The Verge about the mirror test. (When you put a mirror in front of an animal, do they know its them or do they think it's another animal?) TOTAL side note, the only species to PASS the mirror test, who know they're looking at themselves … [Read more...] about ChatBots are Here. Did Sci-Fi Get It Right?
How to Make Music & Babies with Sunshine
Last week, I talked about how complexity is our true sticking point, not endless energy (from fusion or anywhere else). WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU DON'T HAVE ENOUGH COMPLEXITY? I'm struck by this question whenever I can fortify myself to dip into the news (see my article about outrage addiction). We talk about the energy crisis and oil and gas and fracking. Then we talk about climate change and CO2 emissions. Then we talk about the economy and inflation. Then we talk about a childcare crisis (at least in the US). And then we talk about our crumbling infrastructure and skyrocketing debt. And we do this like we are talking about different things. THEY ARE ALL THE SAME THING. How are they possibly the same thing? Let me explain, and in the process, hopefully, I can pull back the curtain and reveal the wizard behind our economy, and our governments, and our art, children, health, everything on earth, really. His name is Dan. But let's start at the beginning. DAN THE HYDROGEN … [Read more...] about How to Make Music & Babies with Sunshine
We’ve Had Enough Energy Since 1870. What Have We Done With it?
Last time, I imagined what a world with endless energy might be like in light of the new fusion breakthrough. This is one way an author can world-build a totally new civilization: you take one variable like the energy supply, change it, and see how it might affect everything from the morning coffee to marriage customs to the global economy. But lest you think our problems would be solved with enough energy (without the downsides of torching the world), I don't think it's going to be that simple... WE'VE HAD ENOUGH FOR OVER A CENTURY According to some sources, we've had enough energy to feed, house, clothe, and care for every human on earth since about 1870. Yes, it came with the downside of torching the world, and no, we haven't actually done that with our munificent bounty, but not enough energy is not our problem and hasn't been for a while. The problem and opportunity, and challenge, are what we build with that energy. The true constraint is taking that raw energy … [Read more...] about We’ve Had Enough Energy Since 1870. What Have We Done With it?
It’s Been 10 Years Since the End of the World
Remember the Mayan Calendar and the doomsday of December 21, 2012? I wrote about one of the worst predictions I personally experienced, but 2012 took over the world. Like so many things that crossed cultures, the real story was far less doomsday and far more cultural ignorance, at best. Most of the images of the circled stone were actually from the Aztec, not the Maya, who didn't really traffic in apocalypses. In reality, the Maya used two calendars: one with 365 days and one with 260 days. Every day had two names and reset every fifty-two years. In addition, they had a long count of years like the Roman calendar we use today. 2012 was a reset year for their two differing calendars. That's it. IN 5000 AD, WHAT WILL THEY THINK? Imagine a civilization in 5000 AD digging up one of our paper calendars with cute cats or hot firefighters on it, seeing December 31st, calculating what day it would be for them, and panicking because December 31st was in two of their months! … [Read more...] about It’s Been 10 Years Since the End of the World
How to World Build a New Future with Endless Energy
A scientist made a tiny sun on earth a few days ago, and it took less energy than it produced. It's been all over the news with good reason. It's huge. Endless energy for everyone! Well, maybe. Someday. It's important to note that sustaining a tiny sun on earth may never be possible; though we said that about the energy! At the very least, this solution is decades and decades away. If it ever happens, what does it mean? Let's do a little world-building, shall we? One of the most fun and important steps of writing speculative fiction is, well, speculating. Change a variable in your made-up world and play out all of the implications on money, religion, gender, power all of it. Variable: We now get energy from fusion, not from ancient dead plants. What does a world like that look like? POWER INDUSTRY I feel like this would be the least changed, ironically, since it doesn't fundamentally change electricity. We already have the grid. We even have real estate for … [Read more...] about How to World Build a New Future with Endless Energy