Shaun Duke

Shaun Duke is an aspiring writer, a reviewer, and an academic. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Digital Rhetoric and Writing at Bemidji State University. He received his PhD in English from the University of Florida and studies science fiction, postcolonialism, digital fan cultures, and digital rhetoric.

World in the Satin Bag

Should SF Be More Optimistic?

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You should all be reading Futurismic by the way. It’s a wonderful blog with a lot of great articles, such as the one I’m about to talk about.Mr. Raven recently wrote about SF being so dismal and depressing and whether or not it should try to be a little more optimistic. While I agree on principle, I think there is something being forgotten about SF. SF isn’t a genre about bubbly happiness and it never was. Yes, there will always be that level of “awe” where new and bizarre things take place that inspire and strike people with interest. But, SF has evolved from the Golden Age and it is primarily dealing with real world issues that we may one day face. The genre is like an early warning system in that way. It deals with realistic issues of what may be based on the technological advances of today (for the most part at least).There is also the idea of conflict, which is central to any work of fiction being successful. Conflict, unless in a comedy, isn’t generally happy, since that would sort of defy the nature of conflict, barring of course the possibility that the main character loathes being happy.Is optimistic SF possible? Of course it is, and when you look at SF it is very optimistic. Granted, it deals with issues that are negative (technology going wrong, people blowing themselves up, war, etc.), but generally the end result is optimistic, right? Maybe a way to look at SF is trying to see the overall picture: that despite the negative future that might exist, mankind will prevail.But then we’re left with that negative future, which is the root of the issue, I suppose. Well, I think it would be incredibly difficult to move away from that inherently negative future. Part of what creates conflict in SF is that technology does go wrong, people do freak out and blow each other up, interstellar wars will exist so long as us humans exist. These sorts of things are just being realistic. There are always going to be negative things about society, no matter the time. If we look at today we can see all the negative bits in the world. Genocide still exists; governments are going wacky and doing crazy things; economies are struggling, etc. Perhaps being optimistic is to look at the bright side of things, and perhaps what makes SF so pessimistic is that the bright side is often only survival. To be optimistic might mean that SF needs to approach the future from a point where everything has gone right and only one person has done something stupid. I think of a murder mystery. Society is advanced, technology worked out, and wars mostly don’t exist (at least any more than they do today), and all you have is a cool detective hunting down a bad evil man who murdered and old lady. So, there’s optimisism, since the invention of technology has changed the world, in theory, for the better (maybe cops can do things better, crime is relatively gone in such a massive world that would be somewhat overpopulated, etc.). But there’s still the negative aspect to it, of course. I don’t know.So, what I ask is this: is there a way to write optimistic SF without it still being somewhat pessimistic? Is having the main character or the good guys win enough to make it optimistic? What exactly is optimistic in SF? Is it just having technology do nothing but good, and if so, how do you create conflict from that?

World in the Satin Bag

RIP: Gary Gygax

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Mr. Gygax died today. Who was he? Remember that game D&D that all those weird geeks used to play with the dice and the magic missiles? Yeah, that’s it (he did a lot of other things too by the way, like creating Gen Con, the world’s largest hobby-gaming convention). Okay, jokes aside, let’s face it, this guy has done wonders for the world of fantasy, and probably SF too. I’ve played my share of RPGs–they are quite fun when you play with friends and don’t take it too seriously–and I have to hand it to Gygax for creating something so addictive it has almost literally changed the social structure of the U.S., and probably other countries too. After all, when Gygax first started all this, how many games were there that let you pretend to be the magic elf wizard Baltul or the dwarven king Zakor? Yeah, zero…exactly.For your reading pleasure I bring to you io9’s batch of Gygax trivia. Mr. Gygax will be missed. I make jokes, but I do really respect what he did, and out of respect I’ll make jokes, because I imagine he would have found them funny…heck, he probably came up with his own jokes. He sure left his mark and I thank him for all the games that found a home because of the popularity of D&D (like Rifts).

Book Reviews, World in the Satin Bag

Book Review Up: Ten Sigmas by Paul Melko

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My review of Ten Sigmas & Other Unlikelihoods is up at F & SF Lovin’ Book Reviews. Check it out here. This is one hell of a short story collection and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes SF shorts, and even to people who might not read that much in the short department. Great read! Also, on a side note, I have Ch. 4 almost read for SoD. I’m going to start editing it tonight. I’ve been working really hard on a story for the second quarter of the WOTF Contest, so SoD was pushed to the side a little. The chapter is written, I just need to give it a good run through. More action will be coming in Ch. 5 and then there should be quite a bit of action from that point on (the sort of silly fun of the third storyline with Presh will probably end by Ch. 7 and then it will be crazy city). Ch. 4 will be up by Wednesday, if not sooner. Thanks for the patience. (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this)

World in the Satin Bag

Waste, Recycling, and Space: Where Are Our Recycling Robots?

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What is the world’s ugliest building? Esquire says it’s the Ryugyong Hotel in North Korea. The interesting thing about the hotel is that it’s only ugly because it’s not finished, but if you finished it and get it a nice color and flashy lights it could very well be the coolest hotel outside of Las Vegas. It looks like a spaceship, or a spired pyramid of sorts. If you spruced it up it would look awesome. Heck, you could even go as far as to make it a space-themed hotel!    So what’s the problem with the hotel other than it’s ugly? Well, apparently it’s unfinished and it will never be finished. That means that North Korea has poured millions of dollars into this thing only to quit a good portion of the way through for whatever reason. Rumors are it’s because there is some structural problems, but I don’t buy that. My guess is that they simply ran out of money, or stopped funding it, or some such. It seems too idiotic to build something so massive only to get most of the way through and realize “oh, well that’s not going to work”. The North Koreans are not that stupid. Sure, they might think it smart to shoot test missiles over Japanese waters, but since we’re dealing with a nation that has some idea what its doing, even if some of those things are rather stupid, we can assume they’re just not dumb enough to screw up on a project of this size.    Additionally, if they never finish this hotel we can expect it will just rot. Not only did they waste money, but they also wasted a lot of material that could be used for other things. It’d be interesting to figure out how many houses or apartment complexes could be build from the materials of this hotel. This is a regular thing for us humans. We’re incredibly wasteful. All of us are, even in those little countries that think they aren’t. You’re lying to yourselves; you’re wasteful, just not as much. But this isn’t a contest. One pound of waste or ten pounds of waste is still waste we have to deal with. The U.S. might be one of the most wasteful countries in the world, but to point the blame at us is somewhat hypocritical. Until you’ve achieved zero-waste, you can’t really complain.    We don’t just waste materials on the planet either; we waste in space. Sure, space is this vast, seemingly never-ending place, but space debris can be dangerous not only to us (the folks on the ground) but to the astronauts (those folks up in space). What do we do about it? How should I know? I don’t work for NASA. There are probably options, but are they worth spending the money on? A lot of the debris in space falls down of its own accord, burns up in the atmosphere, and is never seen again. Some of it stays up there for quite a while. Some of the oldest debris is from the 50s. One thing we really have to start paying attention to on this planet is our waste output, not just in space but everywhere. We could probably manage to ship a lot of our junk into space and shoot it off at the sun where it would burn up entirely–wouldn’t it be great to do this with nuclear waste? The problem is that any waste we send up to space is a potential disaster in the making. Space travel, as we are all painfully aware, is not 100% reliable. If anything it’s only about 90% reliable, which might be good, but isn’t what we really need for something as dangerous as moving waste. If one of those 10% times happens there will be massive problems for thousands, maybe even millions of people, especially if we’re sending anything more harmful than some typical garbage stuff from your average household. One screw up could ruin the lives of a lot of people. Probably our best bet for shooting waste into space is not doing it at all, or building a space elevator–there is a company actually doing that by the way, or at least planning it, since a space elevator is much more reliable than a space ship at this point.    What about recycling? Well, unfortunately there is only so much we can do at this point for recycling. Currently most of us aren’t recycling everything. When I say “most of us” I mean everyone on the planet and by “everything” I mean anything and everything from banana peels to Styrofoam. One of the easiest ways to combat the ever-growing piles of waste is to develop the means to recycle everything. The problem with that is getting people to recycle properly. In all honesty I am not the type who likes separating the recycling into cans and cardboard, etc. Other people are like this too. The problem is that those out there who want recycling to be done by everyone are also trying to force laws on the rest of us that say we have to do it. The legal route is the wrong route because often times it punishes good people on top of the bad people. Some cities require you to pay a recycling tax and put your recycling in the little green bin. Some cities have fees and legal action if you don’t do what they want. Rather than thinking about this from a humanistic perspective, law makers are taking a rather dictatorial approach: “You will recycle or else”.    The greatest way to fix the recycling system is to create a machine that automatically does it all. Create a machine that takes garbage, digs out all the materials and puts them in their own sections, breaks it all down so it can be used again, and repeats itself. This would be a lot easier than we might think. With the Japanese doing things with robots that were unheard of twenty years ago and

World in the Satin Bag

SF/F Links: February Roundup Part Two

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(My apologies to anyone who was trying to get to the post via the “Read More”. It wasn’t working for some reason. Now it should be. Thanks for your patience.) Alright, time for part two of this month’s link roundup (click the read more): La Gringa over at The Swivet is officially a literary agent. Read the announcing post here. Remember that air car I talked about a while back? Well it’s probably being released this year or early next year! It’s a compressed air car that can go 125 miles at 68 MPH. Guess how much it costs. $2 USD per fill-up. That’s better than your gas engine by a long shot. 10 SF movies every SF fan should watch. Including the SF staple food group Blade Runner. Space junk. Want to know what our immediate space looks like in terms of what’s left behind up there? Now you can know. It’s really crowded. The maps are rather cool too. Reaction Engines Limited is another company trying to help push space flight into the commercial scene. Of course by the time this stuff happens it will only be for rich folks and chimps, so, yeah. How common are Earth-like solar systems? Well they might be more common than we once though since we’ve found one that is similar to our own. The digital tattoo display. Basically a Bluetooth device you shove under your skin that displays imagery (like a touch screen) that you can poke at and make do things. Well, it’s more complicated than that, but you get the idea. Futurismic also has an article on it here. Dark Party Review doesn’t like Blade Runner and here’s why. They also have a list of notable gunslingers, thieves, etc. from the old west. Awesome list! Nancy Kress found the following YouTube video which is rather bizarre. People just froze in the middle of Grand Central (New York)!! The Stargate is real. Okay, no it’s not, but CERN really looks like the Stargate This is what the world looks like at night. Big Belly Solar. A trash disposable that uses solar energy to reduce waste. Really interesting. How does it work? I haven’t the foggiest. Neuromancer concept art! Really cool! The solar flare. Dangerous, destructive, and beautiful. The power of the sun in nobodies hands. Futurismic: Gravitational Lensing is pretty, and really useful. We can find golden pieces of candy with it (yes, that part was a joke because the lensing makes it look like there is a little ball of golden, glowing candy in the middle). Haagen Dazs wants to help with the honey bee problem (you know, that they’re dying out due to things like Colony Collapse Disorder). How are they going to help? Make a bee-themed honey ice cream and give the profits to bee research. The first video of an electron! This is so cool! Nokia is making a flexible phone that can be worn as a bracelet. Tis cool. Needless to say, nanotechnology is involved. The next big thing in energy might be these energy islands that use ocean waves to produce power. The list of alternatives to nuclear and fossil fuels gets bigger. io9: Georgia Tech students are building a fossil fuel car that has no emissions. Good luck with that. Post-apocalyptic concept art: More post-apocalyptic are here. Disney’s House of the Future is getting an upgrade. See Mickey Mouse as a cybernetic killing machine. Well, not really, but that would be cool. Nuclear power plants that are almost waste free. I’m in, let’s do it. While we’re at it let’s build a plant that runs on old banana peels, since I’m sure there is an overabundance of those anyway. Well, we might not need to go to another star system to find another Earth. Apparently scientists believe there are loads of Earth-ish bodies out in the Oort Cloud just waiting to be pushed into a new, warm orbit and defrosted. Sort of like a mini-pizza, only more valuable and without the freezer burn. Apparently New York had something called a Pneumatic Subway that pulled a little car back and forth via air pressure. Really cool and totally retro. Self-healing rubber. Self-explanatory. Journey to the Center of the Earth, a remake for the twelfth and a half time with Brendan Fraser, looks like crap. Slapstick idiocy. See the trailer here. How many internal organs can you live without? Well, quite a few it seems. Technology has come a long, long, long way. 5 Ways to Hack the Surface of the Earth. Granted, stupid ways, but interesting nonetheless. It’s not meant to be taken as serious things to do, but more like a way of looking at what we can do. Akira, one of the greatest anime films ever made, is being turned into a live action flick! I’m stoked! A-ki-ra! This disease map gives an idea where we can expect the next epidemic to hit. Somewhat scary, but the Chinese should be a bit more worried than us. I mentioned it before, but we’ll be able to manipulate a single protein in your brain to turn you autistic, like an on/off switch. Scary, but strangely intriguing. Remember that satellite us Americans were planning to shoot down just to show that we could? Well, watch it happen for real! We did it! Kaboom! Eat that China! This chart is fascinating. It shows that when the economy is doing well, then there are more dystopian novels, but when it’s doing bad, there are less! Really cool! Patrick Stewart is to be in a new show called The Eleventh Hour. I’ll watch it because it’s Patrick Stewart and he is possibly the coolest actor ever. He makes fun of himself in American Dad! A LOT! Massive radio telescope project in Chile due for completion in 2012. Yay for space exploration and discovery! Proof that the Internet won’t bring us together. Pakistan, in all their ever so free glory, have banned YouTube. Yup, because that’s progress. The

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