Wednesday, February 17, 2021

Always a pleasure

 I've been a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, aka IEEE(*), for (cough cough) years. Among my favorite perks of membership is the monthly magazine, IEEE Spectrum

(*) The world's largest technical professional organization for the advancement of technology

There's some bonus satisfaction when an article or entire issue channels some aspect(s) of my own writing. As happened with the current month's issue ...

"How so?" you ask. (Go ahead. Ask. Humor me.) Well, see the zine cover's stylized neural net for the control of that prosthetic arm? The hero of my 2008 technothriller Fools' Experiments had just such a prosthetic. The underlying technology played a major role in the novel's plot. (As does AI, if not always in the sense of the Spectrum articles.)

IMO, the magazine's art would've worked better for the novel than the art of any of the editions to date. The latest novel cover is nearby. (Should you be curious about the title, it's from a Charles Darwin quote: "I love fools’ experiments.  I am always making them." A quote that's entirely germane ....)

As it happens, I also covered neural interfaces in Trope-ing the Light Fantastic: The Science Behind the Fiction (2018). I really like that book's cover art.

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