I spend my life cultivating and exploring questions at all levels from the inane to the putatively profound. Part of my job is asking questions–in fact, if you squint hard enough and look through enough lenses, you will be able to find a question or cluster of them behind every story I write.
As I prep to tackle the next round of The Antithesis Progression and another pair of SF novels later this year, I’m having fun wrestling with some biggies. Long story short, I thought it would be fun to share some of them with you guys, partly for the fun of the conversation, and partly to give you a peek behind the curtain for those of you who are interested in seeing the process that begins with a question and ends with a story or a novel.
So, to kick it off, here’s my nomination for one of the biggest questions anyone has ever asked.
“Where is everybody?”
Biggest question…seems kind of a grand claim, but I’m going to go a step further: I think it might be the single most terrifying, and the single most exciting, question anyone has ever thought to ask.
To illustrate why, I’ll give you a little context. This is the question that a man named Enrico Fermi asked when he turned his radio telescope at the heavens to listen in on television and radio broadcasts from alien civilisations, and found only static.
The universe is a big place. If carbon chemistry is common (as it seems to be), and if life bootstraps really easily, (which is now virtually certain), then in a big universe there should be at least some other folks out there who are building civilizations, and since all civilization is defined by energy use, they should be making some noise.
So…where is everybody?
It only took humans one generation between the invention of the radio (the ability to make cosmic noise) and the nuclear bomb (the ability to silence that noise forever, without reprieve). What if everybody eventually, inevitably, succumbs to self-destruction? Terrifying, isn’t it?
On the other hand, what if we’re the first? What if we are truly alone? This one’s terrifying too, but it sure is exciting–there’s a lot of universe out there that’s not being used, and oh, the places we’ll go!
But there are other answers, and some of them are very intriguing. Certainly, we haven’t figured out all the potential answers yet. I’ve got some ideas that I’m exploring in projects I’m currently working on, I’ve even got a few opinions.
It is a big question, though, maybe one of the biggest. Because whatever the answer is, it will forever define our relationship with the universe around us, and will profoundly affect the way our civilization unfolds as it winds out into the solar system and beyond.
Read more about this question here, then tell me…What do you think about this question?
This is the last politics post for a good long while. Click on the “more” link to read it–I’ve positioned it very high up so that those of you who are uninterested in the topic don’t need to read about it. Continue reading ‘SOPA Aftermath: Boycott’
For those of you following the SOPA/PIPA to-do, be warned: if you live in California, both of your Senators are flogging hard for this thing. Because of that, for these two characters I actually wrote a note rather than just calling, tweeting, or petitioning.
There will be a new newsletter out shortly after the new year, but as we’re winding down this year I wanted to take a moment out and give you all a wave and huge thanks.
2011 has been a remarkably productive year, and the last four days are going to be some of its busiest as I hurry to package a few new short stories, finish up two books, and put together a kickstarter video.
But the best part, the part so many of you have been waiting for, has already started:
The recording studio is back up and running. We’re recording audiobooks for Free Will (which will be podcast), for the Clarke Lantham books, and for a few other things that we’ll announce later on. And today, we’re also recording new episodes of Apologia.
I can’t tell you how excited I am to have it all ticking over again.
More soon. Until then, have an excellent year’s end!
I had the fortune to meet Christopher Hitchens briefly during his stop in Palo Alto in 2007–I found him to be drunk, surly, and completely irascible. It was not a disappointment.
Going through life we collect intellectual heroes. As someone who was raised with academic ideals (critical thinking, intellectual integrity, fearless inquiry), I quickly fell in love with Hitchens when I happened across him during my late 20s as a result of his book The Missionary Position: Mother Theresa in Theory and Practice. More than a mere polemicist, here was a rabble-rouser who embodied the classical Western values, who didn’t give a damn about what people thought, but cared passionately that people thought. Right or wrong on any given issue, he never failed to provoke in me the determination to examine anything I might care about, and to engage and understand–rather than dismisss–my opposition.
He was not the first such hero, nor will he be the last. But when it comes to rehtoric, to eloquence, and to an unshakable sense of groundedness in his own arguments, I can think of no finer example since, perhaps, Robert Green Ingersol. Though perhaps Stephen Fry was correct in his assessment when he said of Christopher: “He is the greatest debater since Demosthenes.”
From his delight in literature, to his determination in moral argument, to his flair for wordplay, to his rambunctious humor and the desperate love he displayed for all that is best in humanity, Christopher Hitchens was one of the rare figures who truly was a public intellectual. Such people enrich and invigorate democratic societies, and I’ve got my glass raised to all of you in the hope that the vacuum he leaves will not remain long unfilled.
Almost a year ago, during one of the worse phases of his illness, Hitchens debated Bill Dembski in front of an audience composed mostly of Christian elementary and Jr. High school children. My friend Dr. Zachary Moore was there, and recorded it. He’s posted a three minute excerpt in which Hitchens sums up his life with an invitation to everyone to join the conversation.
You’ll find that video below.
Good night, Christopher. You will be sorely missed, but we’ll keep the Enlightenment lit for you. Cheers!
I’ve been holding this post for a while, because the situation is moving so quickly and the feelings are so high, but I’ve had enough people ask me about it that I thought it would be good to have a centralized place to direct them. This post is political, but it’s not partisan. If political analysis of that sort bugs you, feel free to click away. Continue reading ‘The Judean People’s Front? Or Not?’
I remember, back in the ’90s, when I used to laugh at people who would smack electronics to get them to work, or hit their desk or their keyboards to make the computers work. You remember the drill, right?
Bad picture? Smack the monitor. Computer hung up? Smack the thing. CB or tape deck started acting up, get a big baseball bat and whack the thing.
Disk Error Reading Drive C: <A>bort, <R>etry, <I>nfluence with large hammer
People did this because back when things were all vacuum tubes and copper wire, intermittent contact due to heat swelling was the most common cause of failure. If your TV went out and you gave it a good hard whack, it might make the connections shift and restore the picture. But in the 1990s, everything was electronic and solid state, even the CRTs. In fact, the only things with parts that could be effected by the whack was your hard drive and your VCR, and those depended on such a delicate mechanical balance that whacking them could screw them up permanently.
Obviously, the practice of hitting electronics is useless and stupid, not to mention potentially expensive. Electronics have no moving parts. They have nothing that could be affected by shaking, whacking, or moving them around.
So, now it’s 2011. I have a smart phone. With an accelerometer. And some functions require…well…hitting the phone. Or waving it around. Or tapping it gently. And it’s giving me flashbacks to those old TV sets.
In the great search for other earth-like planets, things have oscillated between encouraging and downright weird. So few of them seem rocky at all–mostly just gas-giants–but we’ve assumed that it’s just because the detection methods we’ve been using (gravitational wobble) are biased toward finding gas giants in close orbit.
Warning: This blog post is about politics. Proceed at your own risk.
Yesterday, I had occasion to visit an old friend–a conservative Rancher who’s occasionally been very active in Republican politics, who I hadn’t seen in close to five years.
After the normal catching up, talk turned to writing and ranching, new projects and old, when from nowhere came a question of the species I’d been dreading:
One of the side effects of having a little sports car is that there are some times when you need something different. Maybe you’ve got to take your collection of old computers to the surplus store, or help a friend move their piano.
Me? I had to go to Reno, for the second time in three weeks. In my case, the sports car is really ideal for this trip–unfortunately, it was in the car hospital getting a brake rotor transplant. And the trip couldn’t wait.
There’s an upside to situations like this: you get the chance to test drive cars you’re curious about. I’ve been curious about the new Dodge Charger since I noticed that the cops here had traded in their Crown Victoria Police Interceptors for these new muscle-car-styled sedans. So I rented one. Continue reading ‘Review: Dodge Charger’
“We are at our best when we move together, and we are at our worst when we move together. When our leader was killed by your people, we went mad together. We stayed mad for a very long time, a madness that almost consumed your world, until finally, before it was too late, we woke up together.”
–Delenn, from Babylon 5Ceremonies of Light and Dark, by J. Michael Straczynzki
The temptation persists to substitute a few nouns…
So, you want to make your work–book, movie, sculpture, whatever–perfect, don’t you? You want it to shine. And you’re going to polish it, rewrite it, re-imagine it, and retcon it every chance you get? Or maybe you just can’t resist adding those few last-minute flourishes?
Well, you’re in good company. The impulse to tinker is universal. So universal, that some people make vast fortunes just so they’ll have the ability to tinker endlessly. People like, for example, George Lucas. Continue reading ‘Tinker, Tailor, Topple, Die’
Compared to ancestors in eras past, modern Americans are pikers when it comes to ritual. We tend not to like them when they’re formal, and we’ve gotten rid of most of them. But there are a few left, and of those there is one that is easily the most barbaric of all:
ITV in Britain is currently airing a show which, for my money, is one of the finest pieces of television going anywhere in the world right now. In fact, I’ll go one step further and say that it’s a show built entirely around the very best aspects of human nature, and is more entertaining than almost anything I’ve seen recently (and I’ve just finished watching The Tudors , which was a fine piece of drama).
But this show isn’t drama–it’s essentially a game show. Another foray into the genre–reality TV–which the Brits perfected and which is by far my least favorite form of entertainment, as it’s neither reality nor does it frequently feature anything interesting enough to be worthy of display on a television screen. But I digress.
Because this one deals a lot with the law again, the usual disclaimers apply: I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. This is one man’s opinion on how business is done. Always consult a qualified legal professional when seeking legal advice.
It’s come to my attention that in some of my business posts I’ve inadvertently fed an unspoken, and erroneous, business assumption shared by many people in the arts (and, frankly, most people in society at large). It goes something like this:
“Corporations are all-powerful. They have bigger lawyers than you do. You’ll never find a lawyer to take your case if one rips you off, so you’re just going to have to roll with it if your record label cooks the books, your movie studio subjects you to creative bookkeeping, or your publishing house pads their returns. You’re only the talent–you should expect to be the victim. The talent always loses.”
In other words, you can’t fight City Hall.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is a con. You CAN fight City Hall. And you can win. But you have to be savvy.
First Things First
When I say things like “You don’t want to be a test case,” as I did in my chapter on the Peggy Lee decision and its implications for artist contracts everywhere, it’s easy to hear that as reinforcing the erroneous idea I’ve delineated above–an impression for which I owe some of you an apology. It’s true that in untested areas of law, a dispute on a point that’s not entirely clear is a test case, by definition, and that these kinds of cases are a pain in the ass. It’s also true that these kinds of cases are, by their nature, uncertain in their outcome. However, by stating that being a test case is a pain, I don’t mean to advocate fear of lawsuits, or a strategy of folding before parties who have bigger lawyers than you do. Not at all.
What I meant to advocate, and what that chapter will more clearly advocate when these chapters are edited and collected in a book, is a basic principle which I’ll call “Defensive Business.”
“Defensive Business” has its analog in “Defensive Driving” rather than in “paranoia” or “social defensiveness.” You don’t have to be paranoid or live in fear to practice defensive business–in fact, paranoia will usually lead you to rash behavior that can get you into trouble.
