Laws of Stupid

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Following on from my thoughts on a non-stupid year, I’d like to remind you that human stupidity is by no means a new concept. In fact,  Carlo M. Cipolla codified human stupidity into a series of practical laws back in 1976, almost like Newton’s Laws of Motion. When you get a moment, I think you’ll find his Laws of Stupid to be quite useful in navigating daily life. Wikipedia has a breakdown of the Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, too.

Being aware of stupidity – how it works and why it works – can help us push back on stupidity in science fiction when we see it. What we see as ‘toxic behavior’ in the community can often be described as stupidity. After all, how smart is it to complain about Rose in Star Wars? What, are they going to un-make the movie, re-cut it, and re-release it just to make you happy? Of course not, that’s stupid.

That’s just one example of sci-fi stupidity. It might be helpful for all of us to be aware that it exists, so that we can say to each other from time to time: “Hey … that’s kind of dumb.”

These laws are provided as a caution: being aware of of the laws of stupidity doesn’t mean you’ll never break them. We’re all weird, naked apes when it comes to it. All we can do is try to be aware of our stupidity and mitigate the risk whenever possible.

Write on! 🙂

Gee, I called it a ‘Neurolink.’

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Imagine waking up, coffee in hand, to read the news before you start your writing day. You click on Reddit and you see one of the central components of your scifi novel on the front page. Elon Musk is designing a computer / brain interface. Or he’s started a company to do that. He’s calling it ‘Neuralink,’ and all you can say is ‘Gee, I called it a ‘neurolink.’

That was me five minutes ago. To be clear, I didn’t plan this.

Let’s catch up: I’m writing a near-future scifi novel called ‘Mesh’ and within the story I cover a lot of cool toys and tricks … a YA scifi novel with a vibe somewhere between Back to the Future 2 and Blade Runner. With me so far?

One of the things I talk about are computer/brain interfaces, nothing new there. The kids of Miramar Techncial High (where Mesh takes place) get them installed as part of their work building secret tech projects. A neurolink has a low-level AI, interfaces to the Internet, and more.

So I’m sure you can understand how weird and cool it is to hear that Elon Musk is talking about doing the same thing. He wants to make a chip that gives you ‘the digital intelligence needed to progress beyond the limits of our biological intelligence. This would mean a full incorporation of artificial intelligence into our bodies and minds.’ I read the article going “check, check, and check.”

So this blog post is part ‘hey, that’s neat,’ and part ‘don’t call me a rip-off.’ I’ve been talking about this since the beginning, just ask my Beta Readers. Does that mean I think E.M. is ripping me off? Of course not. We’ve been discussing neural network interfaces as a species for decades now. I want to talk about what a neurolink might do to society in the future, but that’s definitely not a central core of Mesh’s plot.

Plus, it’s not like the Neuralink is coming next week. If the hive-mind of Reddit is any indication, neurolinks are a long way from reality. However, the fact that different components of Mesh are popping up on the radar of our existence is pretty cool. It also means I better finish this thing before any other parts of it appear. 🙂

Write on!

Into the Home Stretch

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64,000 words into this draft of Mesh. We’re into the home stretch, kids. Our protagonists are about to make the horrible discovery, leading to their moment of truth as they decide to fight the bad guy and save the world. Lots of action and pyrotechnics in the last few chapters. You’re going to love it.

I’m sorry that it’s taken me so long to get here. I wish I could set a Dalton Trumbo-like pace, turning out a hundred pages in three days. For some reason, this is as fast as I can move if I want the story to make any sense at all. Trumbo’s legacy does inspire me: the guy wrote a lot of stuff that got rejected, too. Every writer seems to have two stories inside of him. The first story is what he’s working on. The second story is how he manages to make a buck. Both are equally important.

Want to know what the weather is like where I’m working? I found a web cam for the campus a few miles from my house – you can watch life on Planet Jackson as it unfolds. I’m hoping Mesh’s final form is part of the planetary landscape soon enough.

The Post-Stupid Year

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Sorry, forgot one. I need to include another wish for 2019 … I hope that this the  year of Post-Stupid.

With the success of Bird Box, Netflix has had to issue the following warning regarding the new ‘Bird Box challenge.’

Yes folks, from the civilization that brought you the Ice Bucket Challenge, the Tide Pod Challenge and planking comes an entirely new unnecessary fad, The Bird Box challenge! Here’s how it works: I actually have no idea how it works. Someone please tell me.

Is the Bird Box Challenge real? Is it clever marketing? Who knows. The main point I want to get to is that I wish for 2019 to be the year we stopped being dumb. No more challenges. No more ‘trending on Twitter.’ We’re all people, right? We all want to be loved and respected. There’s nothing creepier than a world that seems to re-route our attention at will, pointing our gaze at the gratiutous, whenever it chooses to.

I’m getting tired of it. I’m interested in people who are tired of it, too.

So let’s make 2019 the Post-Stupid year. No more fads. No more hot buttons. Latest pearl-clutching hot topic on 24-hour news? Not listening. You’re trending on Twitter? That’s nice, don’t care. It’s great that you went viral, but so did syphilis and Rebecca Black. That doesn’t make you a superior human being.

Living in a post-stupid world has its benefits – here are a couple:

  • You save time and energy – no more jumping on the bandwagon or complaining that people on the bandwagon are dumb. Nobody cares. It’s stupid, and we’re post-stupid. Let the stupid take care of the stupid, while we remain unto ourselves.
  • You save money – How much did you spend on ‘raw water?’ How much did those adaptogenic superfoods cost down at Whole Paycheck? How much did you spend on those moscow mule cups you never use anymore? It wasn’t an investment, it was a rip-off. It’s okay to say it, and resolve to put the Amazon Prime account down.
  • You save your health – Social media and fads aren’t just annoying, they’re stressful and potentially hazardous to your health. Nobody said you had to be an ‘Instagram influencer.’ Just relax. Let Kendall Jenner fall into a black hole while you go live your life. I promise you, I like you more than Kendall Jenner already.

Say it with me: 2019 is the Year of Post-Stupid. In fact I’ll write 2019 a few more times to get used to it. Let’s do it together! 2019. 2019. 2019. 2019. There, that should help. Too easy to write 2091 for some reason. Maybe that’s a subconscious wish to live in the future I’m imagining.

Welcome to the future. It’s time to be awesome.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Three Scifi Wishes for 2019

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We did it! Despite some of the darker predictions that took place this year, we managed to last through the demonic wasteland that was 2018 in America. Please take a moment to congratulate yourself. In the last few hours of the year, I was thinking about what I hoped for in 2019. It came down to three wishes for scifi, or you might call them fervent prayers. Pour yourself a glass of whatever you’re drinking, and let’s dream together:

Adults Being Adults

In 2019, we come to the end of adults acting like poop-flinging gibbons. Maybe not for the whole world, but just for us. More stories, fewer hot buttons. Fewer ‘wedge issues’ that mean absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. We’re here to take a chunk out of the universe. We can’t get to the stars until we climb out of the gutter. No more toxicity, no more trolling. Let’s be the adults we’re capable of being.

Make Room, Make Room!

This year, we widen out instead of closing in. There’s room for everyone in the metaverse of science fiction. If you check out my Instagram, I’ve been highlighting some artists that make truly evocative and unique science fiction. I’ve been making some, myself! Make room for everyone. Give everyone their fie seconds in the spotlight. You never know where the next J.R.R. Tolkien or Ralph McQuarrie is coming from.

 

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Less Machinery, More Humanity

This comes from one of my favorite movies, The Great Dictator. Charlie Chaplin makes an impassioned speech at the end that’s still relevant eighty years later. More than machinery, Chaplin pleaded, we need humanity. He’s absolutely right.

Corporate entertainment has a stranglehold on science fiction, but it doesn’t have to be that way. I still love Star Wars, and I still love Marvel, but they have enough of our attention. Escape the Disney-Marvel-Lucasfilm Industrial Complex and get back to the real science fiction. The ideas, the stories, the characters that shaped us. We’ll get there when we champion the makers instead of the takers.

So there you have it, my three scifi wishes for 2019. May you live long and prosper, may your dreams be bigger on the inside, and may your journey toward success happen in less than twelve parsecs. I’m working on some new scifi art and I can’t wait to see what the new year brings.

Six Ways to Defeat Scifi’s Toxic Tribalism

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I took a while to process this article, and I would encourage you to do the same. The news arrived that yes, the sci-fi community’s hatred of The Last Jedi was stoked by online trolls and bots. Just as in other communities, scifi is vulnerable to manipulation and deceit. If we care about ourselves and each other, we must defeat toxic tribalism within the scifi community.

In the past, I’ve had conversations about this but the community at large seems torn. Does toxicity exist? If it exists, is it possible to remove? If it’s possible to remove, is it my responsibility to do so? There are many different arguments for doing nothing. In the end, though, is that the world we want to live in?

Assuming we want to live in a culture that champions creativity, fosters connection, and embraces individuals, toxicity has to be managed. How do you go about it?

I found a really great article about defeating toxic tribalism on Medium, and am passing it along for consideration by the sci-fi community. If this is something you feel is worth changing, then these suggestions can serve as a template for individual action and change.  Continue reading

Storytelling – Four Things Robert Zemeckis Teaches You

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Baby, it’s cold outside. No, I’m not trying to be a creep, I’m just explaining why I’m inside the house, catching up on a lot of old movies. After all these years, I still enjoy the Back to the Future trilogy, among other classic sci-fi movies.

When you think about the guy who made BTTF, you realize that Robert Zemeckis can teach you a lot about the art of storytelling. I decided to jot down four things that his movies taught me.

Before you say, “But Zemeckis is a filmmaker, not a storyteller!”, remember that filmmaking is storytelling, using light and sound where the rest of us use pen and paper. Before he was a director, Robert Zemeckis was a screenwriter. His ability to craft authentic stories over the past forty years and his insistence on telling stories in a unique way is why Zemeckis will always be one of my favorite directors. 

So with that in mind, let’s talk about four things his movies will teach any person who wants to tell stories for a living: Continue reading