15 things I actually did know about sf, and a Neal Stephenson question

This list of 20 things some people might not already know about sf (at Discovery Magazine) had caused a somewhat silly discussion at io9.

There were no surprises, there are only five things on the list I could not have mentioned myself. ("Even the biggest geeks can't know everything"!) Among them, I was surprised to read about Neal Stephenson's influence:

13 Neal Stephenson’s acclaimed 1992 novel Snow Crash has inspired two major online creations: Second Life (derived from Stephenson’s virtual Metaverse) and Google Earth (from the panoptic Earth application).

I had to find out, and after googling a while I have to say that it doesn't look like this is entirely true. I haven't found any evidence that Second Life is derived from Stephenson's Metaverse -- maybe he inspired people, but I haven't been able to find any official acknowledgement of this. The closest is this article, but it doesn't state that the people behind SL were directly inspired by Snow Crash.

With Google Earth it seems that Stephenson might have been a source of inspiration for one of the co-founders, but it's not a clear-cut answer.

Conclusion: good story, but I don't think the statement #13 in the list is exactly correct.

And as you might notice, I support the use of "sf" rather than "sci-fi" (the io9 rant therefore places me among old men with beards -- ha!). There might not be any real arguments for making the distinction, but it's a real cultural difference -- it's a case of how groups and tribes form and distinguish themselves also within a subculture if you will. People who write and publish science fiction say esseff, and therefore most people who are primarily interested in reading use sf rather than sci-fi. Sci-fi seems to have been adopted by the "media" people (those who approach the genre from the tv and movie side), who might be seen as newcomers who don't care about the jargon that is established in the core of the people who think and write about sf. Silly, but that's how people are. Stupid thing to argue about. Nowadays I don't really care, but I consistently say and write sf (not even SF, but sf) -- that's just a convention I have adopted, and I see no reason to change it. (I sort of liked the argument that sf is better because it covers speculative fiction, a larger cathegory than science fiction. Fair enough -- let's now rationalize our use in this way!)

I should read Michael Swanwick again

Yesterday I bought Year's Best SF 12. My husband noted that there is a story by Michael Swanwick in this collection, and we started talking about things we have read by him and why we haven't read anything by him for so long. I really think Swanwick is a good author, but I haven't read anything by him since "Scherzo with Tyrannosaur". I sort of lost the interest when it looked like he was so much into dinosaurs. I also always read too little short fiction, and so I miss almost everything he's been writing lately.

Michael Swanwick was the guest of honour at a convention we arranged in Uppsala in 1999 (long ago!). I was very impressed by his earrings, which always looked like they could hurt someone. I was also very impressed by his writing. At Interaction I listened to him talking about some of the exercises he went through to teach himself to write better, which made me curious about reading something by him again. (But dinosaurs? Well, I'm not sure why I'm not interested, but, well, it just seems a bit boring. I feel vaguely bad about this, since I remember being extremely fascinated by dinosaurs when I was six. I guess I lost something since then.) But I haven't.

Now I just found and listened to an interview where Michael Swanwick talks about his new novel The Dragons of Babel. It is set in the same world as Iron Dragon's Daughter, which is a novel I really, really liked.

I guess The Dragons of Babel is now on the list of extremely many books I would like to read some day.

Ten things I've done that you probably haven't

Wow. How many strange things people have done! (Funny that Sweden is mentioned five times in the comment section, given that it's a country with a population of 9 millions I think it gets lots of attention.) I rarely care about memes, but I want to try this too. Given enough time everyone will experience some weirdness, and so have I. (But I sure know people who have experienced way weirder things than i have!)

So, here are ten things I have done that you probably haven't:

1) Visited the geographical South Pole.

2) Been filmed in a ruin, wearing a cape and mask, for a death metal music video. (Hmm. Well. It was fun, actually.)

3) Collected people to a cuddling pile on a street corner. Or whatever you might want to call it. I'm talking about a lot of people laying and leaning more or less on top of eachother, just to talk and relax. This was during the Falun Folkmusik Festival in 1993 or 1994.

4) Now that I think of it, most people have not done this: defended a PhD thesis in particle physics.

5) Worked in a cleanroom 2000 meters underground.

6) Arranged a science fiction convention nearly alone (70 members, 2 guests, one conrunner on the brink of total insanity). At least I had gophers, and people helping out with some of the practical aspects.

7) Tried to teach math to 30 13-year-olds who instead climbed out on the roof of the school.

8) Visited several student bars wearing a baby on my chest. (No, of course I didn't drink!)

9) Made a catalogue of a collection of thousands of fanzines (which was later donated to a library).

10) Looked very scientific, filling and shaking test tubes dressed in cleanroom gear, as a backdrop to some special founding announcement.

The last item was added today. Our local lab has a cleanroom with transparent walls at the back, and we were asked to go in there and work and show what science looks like (hmm, well, or something...). It could almost have been fun if I had not felt like a fish in a bowl, or a monkey at the zoo. I helped our radiochemist with preparation of some samples, I haven't done anything like that since I was still in school (that is, before I went to university). Very scientific! But all the time people were pointing cameras at us, and talking importantly in front of us. (And when I tried to ignore it I forgot that it was a show going on and talked too loud so that the listeners outside the cleanroom walls could hear it, which gave me a very angry look from one of the organizers.)

Which Philip K Dick story are we in today?

Via David Nessle: a blog comparing news to PKD stories. Wow. Someone knows all PKD stories by heart, I think.

Fandom lament

Tuesday this week was the second Tuesday of January. This means meeting with the Fearless Fantasy Fans. Unfortunately it looks that we are now down to two fearless, sitting lonely in a café and wondering where all the other readers of fantastic literature hang out.

Could it be that other readers don't feel the urge to talk about the books they read? That they don't like sharing the experience with others? Or perhaps it's just that everyone else prefers a boring life, going home to sit in front of the tv after work instead of meeting other people? What's the matter with everyone!

I don't know. But I really miss the monthly pub meetings with the fans in Uppsala. We were rarely less than twenty showing up, and often some of us would stay past midnight (not me, for a long time, but I used to). We talked about everything, because these were not any organized club meetings but just a gathering of people with a background in the same interests. (The common denominator was reading science fiction and fantasy, but the local fans were also often into gaming, linguistics, computers, science and mathematics. The usual stuff.)

Then we had book meetings as well, and sometimes we did other things together. We arranged to travel together to conventions. And we held our own conventions.

Describing this all in past tense it is like it's all over just because I moved away. I think Upsalafandom still lives. Now I just want something similar over here. To me fandom has always been about making friends, and the last ten years most of my social life has been related to fandom in some way -- online and offline. Now I feel strangely isolated. Fandom can often be dissapointing, and fans can be very annoying, but I cannot help thinking of it as my people, my
tribe.

I have been trying a bit to get into English speaking fanzine fandom, but I find it difficult to get into the habit of reading and responding to fanzines. Strange. I have to try a bit more. But I would also like to meet people IRL. Talk about books and everything else.

So where are all of the protofans that could be gathered into a group? Why don't they jump with joy as soon as they see our ads, why don't they stand in line to come to our meetings?

Happy New Year!

As a celebration of the new year 2008 I post what is probably one of the best music videos from 2007, and I'm not biased ;-) Elias and the Wizzkids, with a song about coming out of depression:



It's even science fiction: there are rockets, and it ends in the future.