A Time Foreclosed

Last updated January 2, 2023: This 2013 chapbook was a marketing experiment. The chapbook is now out print and ebook formats (but for now still available on Audible). On the bright side, both stories in this chapbook -- having been being well received and among my favorites -- are included within 2022's The Best of Edward M. Lerner. So you might want to check that out.

As a working author, I've followed -- with more than a little interest! -- various publishing experiments and emerging sales channels. One of those experiments is the freestanding novella. What had been an impractical story length has become, in the era of ebooks and print-on-demand, eminently doable.

And so: on to my experiment and breaking news ...

A Time Foreclosed, newly released, republishes -- under a new and improved title -- my recent time-travel novella "Time Out." (It originally appeared in Analog, January/February 2013 issue.)

Or as the publisher puts it:

¿Que passa? (Maybe all of us)

What's happening? Lots! (It'll even, if you bear with me, explain that atrocious bilingual/pidgin-lingual pun.)

With the NSA's insatiable data hoovering at the top of the news, herewith a skeptical look at the perils of Big Data. From Technology Review, see "The Dictatorship of Data: Robert McNamara epitomizes the hyper-rational executive led astray by numbers." A key passage:

The use, abuse, and misuse of data by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War is a troubling lesson about the limitations of information as the world hurls toward the big-data era. The underlying data can be of poor quality. It can be biased. It can be misanalyzed or used misleadingly. And even more damning, data can fail to capture what it purports to quantify.

We are more susceptible than we may think to the “dictatorship of data”—that is, to letting the data govern us in ways that may do as much harm as good. The threat is that we will let ourselves be mindlessly bound by the output of our analyses even when we have reasonable grounds for suspecting that something is amiss. Education seems on the skids? Push standardized tests to measure performance and penalize teachers or schools. Want to prevent terrorism? Create layers of watch lists and no-fly lists in order to police the skies. Want to lose weight? Buy an app to count every calorie but eschew actual exercise.

That's not to say I'm unalterably opposed to Big Data or to dot-connecting searches for national-security threats. I'm not. I worry, however, about algorithm not sufficiently balanced with judgment. I worry about data used (and misused) for purposes other than why they were first collected.

And in a bit of good news (reported by BBC News, among many others), "FBI and Microsoft take down $500m-theft botnet Citadel." Why good? Because:

The Citadel network had remotely installed a keylogging program on about five million machines to steal data ...

The cybercriminals behind Citadel cashed in by using login and password details for online bank accounts stolen from compromised computers.

This method was used to steal cash from a huge number of banks including American Express, Bank of America, PayPal, HSBC, Royal Bank of Canada and Wells Fargo.

An open letter to (a few) ebook shoppers

It happens all too often ... an online shopper looks at an ebook at Amazon or bn.com or ... and disagrees with the vendor's price. That's fair.

And proceeds to give that book a one-star review, "justified" with a rant about greed and/or the evils of ebook pricing. That's often quite unfair, and that bit of venting claims the author as collateral damage.

First, the background: opinions differ on ebook pricing. Some shoppers feel that ebooks should be far cheaper than any physical book because an ebook can be replicated for free. Authors, editors, cover artists, distributors, and publishers expect to earn something for their contributions to a book -- and that requires a nonzero price on books, even ebooks. (Especially ebooks, as that format claims more and more of the book market.) Ebook reader vendors, meanwhile, sometimes use ebook content as a loss leader. The device vendor's short-term motivation is to lure/lock customers into a particular content ecosystem.

Publishers and etailers have long tussled over these issues. Even as I type, a major antitrust suit about ebook pricing is at trial between Apple and the Department of Justice -- the big publishing houses having settled out of court.

Do I know the "right" price for an ebook? No (other than nonzero, in the belief readers want authors to continue writing). Do I know how the tussle among publishers, etailers, and the DoJ will come out? Again, no. 

Here's what I do know ...

Catching up

My virtual clippings folder is again bulging, and if I add one more article, it might just explode. (Cue Monty Python.)

So: a few items of likely interest to SF and Nonsense readers ...

Extension cord extra

From the Department of Digitally Enabled Snoops: here's yet another company's good graces upon which you (*) are asked to rely. From Fortune, see "Tesla's Elon Musk Reminds Media His Cars Can Spy On Them."

(*) If you own -- or would aspire to own -- a Tesla electric sports car.

You're diligent about malware defenses and regular updates on your computers and router, even your tablet and phone -- and you're still at risk. From PC World, see "Researchers find new point-of-sale malware called BlackPOS."

The good, the bad, and the carbon-intensive

In my recent trip to California, one of my stops -- all but mandatory for a person with my background -- was the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, in the heart of Silicon Valley.

Short version: The museum is very well done.

Now that's a disk drive!

Longer version: This museum has one heck of a collection. Hardware from throughout my education and (first) career is well represented. Keypunch machines and an IBM 360 mainframe. Chunks from the ILLIAC IV, an early massively parallel supercomputer (and due to its Defense funding at the height of the Vietnam War, a cause for massive demonstrations during my freshman year at the University of Illinois). One kilobit(!) memory chips. DEC minis. (I go back, IIRC, only to PDP-8s, but the museum also has a PDP-1.) Atari's Pong. A Cray-1. Lots more. Seriously cool.

Steampunker's delight

Not to be topped in terms of showmanship -- and certain to delight steampunk fans as well as computer aficionados -- is the modern implementation of the wholly mechanical Babbage Difference Engine. It calculates polynomials. It's programmable. It prints -- with word wrap. Now consider that Charles Babbage died in 1871 ...

(And on that last link, check out the video! The real machine is more than man-tall, weighs five tons, and clatters most impressively as it operates.)

Faster than a speeding photon

I'm just home from a trip to California -- at no point traveling at anywhere near the pace suggested by the subject line. I went for SFWA's annual Nebula Awards. (This year's Nebula winners here, courtesy of SFScope.)

I wasn't in the running this cycle for a Nebula, but I am delighted to have come home with a different award.

Regular visitors here at SF and Nonsense will remember that I write frequently for Analog Science Fiction and Fact. Mostly those Analog appearances are fiction, but (as befits a physicist and computer engineer with thirty years experience in IT and aerospace) I also sometimes contribute science and technology articles.

In the Analog Readers Poll for 2011, I came in second place -- tied with myself! -- for best fact article. Those runner-up pieces were for "Lost in Space? Follow the Money" (about the retirement of the space-shuttle fleet and the dawning era of commercialized spaceflight) and “Say What? Ruminations About Language, Communications, and Science Fiction” (a title that explains itself).

"Making Appearances Frequently In Analog"

For 2012, I'm pleased to say that in the fact-article category, my “Faster Than a Speeding Photon: The Why, Where, and (Perhaps the) How of Faster-Than-Light Technology" took first place in the readers poll. I suspect the scope of that article is pretty self-evident, too.

Something for everyone

Is Glass half empty or half full?

Think you're ready for Google Glass? Maybe think again. See "Google Glass: A Treat for Hackers":

The report said that hackers will also be able to monitor Google Glass' users' activities on their smartphones ... 

How about another cutting-edge personal product: a smart watch? Maybe what's old is new again. Check out "8 myths about the smartwatch revolution."

Let's move on to more revolutionary tech. I've long been fascinated with nanotechnology (an interest best illustrated by my 2009 novel of medical nanotech: Small Miracles). One of my primary research sources was K. Eric Drexler, commonly credited with bringing nanotech to public attention through his 1987 (and still quite popular) book "Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology."

The road to hell ...

You can complete that adage, right?

On occasion, that road might be literal. See "Pluto's Gate Uncovered in Turkey." In the Latin, Plutonium. Considering the element plutonium -- highly radioactive, maker of big booms, and chemically toxic -- that's a very apt name even today.

Is the Internet your world? Here are some key finding of the Spamhaus attack that for a short while brought down much of said world. See, "Massive cyberattack: Here's what happened (Q & A)." (How big a deal was this? "At the peak of the attack, it was generating 300 gigabits per second of traffic."

Maybe your idea of the apocalypse involves rogue robots.