Shakes his head ...

Do the folks organizing the Year of Science not know what a science is?  Or do they just not care?

Physics is the study of matter and energy and their interactions.  Chemistry is the study of the composition and properties of substances.  Biology is the study of living organisms. (Don't ask me to draw precise boundaries between physics, physical chemistry, and molecular biology.) Ecology is the study of the interrelations between living organisms and their environment.

What you don't see in any of those definitions is a value judgment.

This month's YoS theme is Biodiversity and Conservation.  Is anything wrong with preservation and efficiency? No (at least within limits). But this month's theme is about what to DO with nature, not how stuff in nature WORKS.

What goes beyond a reasonable limit? One extreme approach toward maintaining biodiversity (NOT suggested by the YoS folks) is the voluntary human extinction movement. That values conservation of every species but one: us.

My other gripe with this month's theme is that "conservation" sometimes masks a retreat from the notion of progress. Take eliminating the smogs that once blighted London and Los Angeles. Progress -- better ways of generating power; catalytic converters; more efficient auto engines -- had at least as much to do with that happy outcome as conservation -- driving fewer miles.

A note to YoS organizers: if it's not too late, let's talk about ... science.

Trope-ing the light fantastic (nanotech & replicators, part II)

As I obviously believe nanotech is for real, why am I using the trope subject line?

In that recent post, I cited the industry's road map, from nanomaterials to nanocomponents to functional nanosystems, all the way to scaled, atomically precise, productive nanosystem array systems. The trope possibility comes from the word you did not see: replicator.

Replicator, of course, is the SFnal term for things that copy themselves -- for plot purposes, generally without limit. They come from an idea in K. Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation, which popularized the notion of nanotech. Drexler discussed nanomachines called assemblers that would (duh!) assemble other machines, including -- and here is where the madness begins -- machines like themselves.

Trope-ing the light fantastic (nanotech & replicators, part I)

Nanotech a trope? Say it ain't so!

In fact, I'm not saying that. Nanotech is quite real, an up-and-coming revolution in how we will build most everything. Last year I said that in a lot more detail in two science articles, "Follow the Nanobrick Road" in Analog and "The Old Gray Goo, It Aint't What It Used to Be" in the The Bulletin of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

Both articles resulted from my attendance at a 2007 conference, Productive Nanosystems: Launching the Technology Roadmap. I was at the conference merely as a journalist (and multitasking by gathering research for a future book). If you want to know much more, here's a link to the 200-page overview pdf.

The interesting attendees were nanotech luminaries across government, academia, and industry. They were there to publically release their vision of where nanotech is going -- or perhaps more precisely, where they are taking it. One highly visible organizer and speaker was K. Eric Drexler, whose 1986 science popularization The Engines of Creation brought nanotech into the popular culture. (The 1987 paperback edition still does respectable business on Amazon.)

We already have materials with nanotech aspects, even if sometimes used in comparatively trivial applications like sunscreens (exploiting really tiny particles of zinc oxide) and golf clubs (made lighter and more flexible by the use of carbon nanotubes in the shaft's composite material). The steady march of Moore's Law means electronics will be nanoscaled any day now. And over the next few decades, expect to see commercial nanotech steadily progressing from nanomaterials to:

• nanocomponents (like motors, pumps, and bearings), to
  
• functional nanosystems (combinations of nanocomponents), to
• atomically precise productive nanosystems (nanoscale systems able to produce other nanoscale systems), to
• (not my term -- it's way too clunky) scaled, atomically precise, productive nanosystem array systems (swarms of nanoscale manufacturing devices that cooperate to build macroscale objects).

And here is where we segue from tech to trope. Stay tuned for our next exciting installment ...

(And that neat image? It's a simulated nanogear, each dot being an atom, from the online gallery of Nanorex.)

State of the art

A few days after the fact, I have copies of Fools' Experiments -- the mass-market paperback re-release -- in hand.

Liking what Tor Books did with the new cover, I'll let it speak for itself.

Reason (or lack thereof)

Happy Labor Day weekend, all.

As I'll be laboring -- too many plot threads coming together -- must continue into alien warfare and other assorted mayhem -- I'm limiting this weekend's update to a favorite quotation:

It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a theory he never reasoned into.

- Jonathan Swift

Apply that observation to the close-minded whomever of your choice :-)

Fools' Experiments redux

2009MM PB cover

Latest update: September 3, 2024. New editions: hardback, trade paperback, and ebook. Huzzah!

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We are not alone, and it's our own damn fault.

This is a commercial announcement ...

Fools' Experiments -- my 2008 novel of artificial life, artificial intelligence, and unintended consequences -- was re-released today as a mass-market paperback. This latest format joins CD and tape options from Recorded Books, an audio download from Audible.com, a book-club edition, and an ebook from Amazon Kindle.

I posted about Fools' Experiments when it was newly released last fall, and my website has a sampling of the rave reviews. Here's one I quite like:

"Lerner’s physics and computer science background serve him well for this pulse-pounding yarn about the creation of the first artificial life form inside cyberspace."

— BookPage Notable Title

But the proof of the book is in the reading, so here, courtesy of the publisher, is an excerpt.

And this being an admittedly commercial announcement, here's the Amazon link for Fools' Experiments.

One year (and counting)

One year ago today I made my first blog post. And while the traditional U.S. first-year anniversary theme is paper -- hardly apt for a blog! -- the modern theme is clocks. So let's look at what's happened over time.

In the blog's first year, I've posted 87 times. Which topics most interested you, the readers? That, it turns out, is hard to determine.

• The free version of Sitemeter -- fairly enough -- offers only limited statistics. And Sitemeter doesn't count all traffic: it misses, for examples, views of cached web pages and via many blog readers.
• Sitemeter misses, in particular, views of syndicated blog copies. For about two months this blog was featured at Analog and Asimov's web sites. The blog remains syndicated on an ongoing basis through Amazon.com.
  
• When readers arrive at the blog's front page, does that indicate interest in the most recent story or a routine drop-in?
  
• How does one compare topics that generate lots of reader comments with topics that get a lot of views?
  
• How does one contrast onetime topics with ongoing themes?

There are other complications, but you get the idea: The list of popular topics I'm about to give has an element of subjectivity to it. I am unrepentant :-)

Herewith my best guess of your interests. (Don't read relative rankings in the order of the list. The method is too imprecise for that.)

• tropes in SF (a series)
• alien aliens (a series)
• science/technology news & opinion
  
• my own writing
• the state of the genre

That'll be input to -- but not controlling of -- future posts.

Thank you all for clicking in, commenting, cross-linking, and emailing. I appreciate your interest over the past year and look forward to continuing the dialogue.

An anniversary toast: to more SF and Nonsense.

Just the facts, ma'am

For anyone old enough to recognize the subject line: it's part of the Webb of truth. (I'll pause for you to groan.)

ANYway, I refer to the November 2009 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, which has already found its way to my mailbox. I've not yet ready any of the stories, but I did read all the nonfiction -- and what I read was thought-provoking.

One of my lengthier -- and most commented upon -- post series deals with tropes in SF ("Trope-ing the light fantastic"). In brief, a trope in SF is a science-centric author/reader agreement to willingly suspend disbelief. As in: what if faster-than-light travel were possible?

Some folks find such tropes unacceptable in *science* fiction. For them, there's a movement called "mundane SF." No FTL (for the lack of a basis in current science). Perhaps no interstellar travel of any kind (too hard). No time travel. Etc. Mundane SF stories tend to be Earth-centric and near-future.

In "Aiming High -- Or Low?", the editorial in the November issue, editor Stan Schmidt takes exception to the premise that what exceeds present-day science is beyond science (and beyond legitimate SF). Stan's challenge, in my brief paraphrase, is: we don't know what we don't know. A hundred years ago we didn't know -- to name only a few items -- about quantum mechanics or general relativity or plate tectonics. If a story's "science" premise can't be disproven, and if the imagined new science/technology is used consistently within the story, then, Stan would have it, it is legitimate SF.

New topic.



The adjoining graph, typical of many in the global-change conversation, shows a dramatic change. Note that that is somewhat a matter of representation. By showing only changes around a recent-year mean, the changes are emphasized. And by showing only a short period of time, long-term climate trends are left out. A graph of temperatures referenced to absolute zero and covering all the years since the Little Ice Age would look much different. I say this not by way of stating a position on the extent of global change but to emphasize we're dealing with measuring small (in relative terms) changes.

Which brings me to physicist (and SF author) Jeff Kooistra's "Lessons from the Lab" (an instance of the monthly Alternate View feature). I've long been aware of the measurement problem caused by heat islands: the effect of (for example) the expansion of paved areas on temperatures measured in cities. Jeff adds the complication of perhaps improperly calibrated weather measurement stations around the country. The article cites meteorologist Anthony Watts and his "surface stations" project, which surveys measurement stations of the National Weather Service. The project reports:

• different paints used in the instrument enclosures (paints differ in how they reflect or let through energy),
  
• extraneous equipment (that generates heat!) within enclosures,
  
• measurement stations sited too near external heat sources (such as parking lots and air-conditioner vents).
  

Climate-change science deals with prospective changes of a few degrees over centuries -- the details really matter.

Finally, we come to the main science article. "Rock! Bye-Bye, Baby" deals, as you might expect, with possible asteroid/comet strikes on Earth and what might be done to prevent them. Current thinking has it an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs. And astronomers very recently saw something smack Jupiter. It made an Earth-sized black mark.

Said Analog science article was written by Your Humble Blogger, a followup to attending last year's Asteroid Deflection Research Symposium. Writing SF is one of the cooler jobs in the world.

So there you have it ... much to think about.