4nomore.net » scifi

Jasper Fforde: Der Fall Jane Eyre

xabbu — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 23:21:37 +0000

Auf dieses Buch bin ich nur durch Zufall gestossen – und wie mich das freut!

Eine Welt auf den ersten Blick wie die unsere, aber in der die Menschen viel grösseres Interesse (bis Fanatismus) für Literatur haben. So dass es schon mal Revolten gibt, wenn Surrealismus verboten oder wieder erlaubt wird.
Die Hauptperson ist Thursday Next, die eine Agentin der SpecOps für Literatur-Verbrechen ist. Und obwohl das eine der untersten Schichten (27 von 30!) der SpecOps ist, hat sie einiges zu tun mit dem grössten Schurken Acheron Hades.
Auf den zweiten Blick ist es doch nicht so ganz wie in unserer Welt: Acheron Hades hat einige geradezu übersinnliche Fähigkeiten, die Grenzen zwischen Realität und Fiktion sind manchmal fliessend, Thursdays Onkel hat ein paar fantastische Erfindungen – darunter auch ein ProsaPortal, mit dem man in Bücher eindringen kann, und Thursdays Vater ist bei der ChronoGarde, die – nun ja – die Zeit patroulliert und kontrolliert.

Das alles gibt einen für mich absolut mitreissenden und spannenden Mix – etwa im Stil The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy von Douglas Adams oder vielleicht wie etwas von Terry Prachett.

Hier findet sich dann auch eine Erklärung zum Ende des Romans Jane Eyre – nett wie das zusammengereimt ist!

Sehr empfehlenswert – und freue mich schon auf die Folgebände!

Amy Thomson: Virtual Girl

xabbu — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 20:46:50 +0000

I like this book very much – I just read it again after many years. It is the story of a ‘virtual girl’ – which means a robot girl in this context. Created by a human in a world which had had some very bad experiences with AIs which lead to the prohibition to all respective research.

The creator Arnold is, though the sun of a rich father, living in the streets of a future US to flee his father and his strong will – and to pursue AI and robotics research, culminating in a robot so humanlike that it can fool all people. She is called Maggie and her story – though she is a robot – is a some kind of story how to become human.
Looking at the humans in the world, with some senses more powerful than humans, she sometimes can understand humans better than humans themselves – as she is certainly less preoccupied.
It is fascinating to see how she learns about the world and the humans she meets – how she is drawn to the other AIs on the net because they have a much deeper relationship (faster for example), but still likes to live in the ‘real world’. The story contains also very different responses of humans who eventually find out or get told that she is a robot.
Contained in the story are also some more philosophical thoughts about what makes a person, including what it means to be able to copy one and have duplicates, and what it means to be ‘programmed’ – which basically are the same questions coming up for humans too, if you think about it …

All in all it is a very positive and quite moving story about robots and AIs, in a more or less paranoid and somewhat dystopian environment of humans.

Marion Zimmer Bradley: Das Haus zwischen den Welten

xabbu — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:40:51 +0000

Diese Buch habe ich jetzt wohl zum dritten Mal gelesen. Ich weiss eigentlich nicht, warum ich es noch einmal aus dem Regal gezogen habe, aber es hat mich wieder fasziniert.

Es handelt von einem Experiment mit einer neuen Droge in einem parapsychologischen Institut in den USA. Zum ersten Mal können echte Ergebnisse vorgewiesen werden, aber – wie wir anhand der Erfahrungen des Hauptakteurs Fenton lernen – beruht das auf einem viel weitergehenden als ‘nur’ das Auftreten von ESP-Fähigkeiten. Es zeigt sich, dass diese Droge Zugang zwischen verschiedenen Parallelwelten verschaffen kann. Fenton glaubt zuerst auch, dass er halluziniert, wird dann aber immer mehr von der Realität dieser Welten und deren Bewohnern überzeugt – diese wird aber selbst unter den Parapsychologen nicht akzeptiert.

So thematisiert dieses Buch auch die Frage von was ist verrückt, wie kann ich rational mit solchen Erfahrungen umgehen etc. Gleichzeitig greift es viele bekannte Mythen wie etwa die Feenwelt auf und stellt sie damit auf eine reale Ebene – sehr geschickt gemacht.

Am besten gefällt mir die Steinwelt allerdings, wo alles Leben eins ist … und man sich leicht darin verlieren kann.

Ich kenne nicht so viel anderes von der Autorin, aber ich finde dieses Buch viel besser als etwa die so bekannte Nebel von Avalon.

Greg Egan: Schild’s Ladder

admin — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 21:38:00 +0000

Another one of the great scifi stories by Greg Egan – he is really incredible rich in transcribing ideas of new physics into a story in/of the future, trying out the thoughts in fictional reality.
This time the story starts out far in the future where uploading, backup, nanotechnology – and therefore basic immortality – have all come true, only distances remain far as the speed of light is still a limit. During some test of the fundamental physical laws a new stable state of the universe is created which spreads with half-lightspeed … Several twists and turns let us see our part of the world as the strange and degenerated quantum world whereas the ‘novo-vacuum’ is in fact a much richer quantum superposition.
Interesting is here that though this plays in a distant future with unbelievable progress in technology, people are still people with similar problems as today – can this be true?
Also the picture of the development of oneself – a continously changing entity with some feeling of continuity – as a vector parallel transport (which is the Schild’s Ladder in the book) is quite fascinating – so staying oneself (parallel vector) but the outcome of the process depends on the path the vector has gone through.

It was the kind of behavior that could only occur when people had been trapped for thousands of years staring at the same sights, fetishising everything around them, spiralling down towards the fullblown insanity of religion. You didn’t need gates and barbed wire to make a prison. Familiarity could pin you to the ground far more efficiently.

Orson Scott Card: Speaker for the Dead

admin — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 21:48:00 +0000

Second book of the Ender series – lots of new ideas, a new alien race, with a mysterious lifecycle and ecology – quite nicely revealing during the book out of the human perspective.
I like also the Hierarchy of Alienness of utlannings – framlings – ramen – varelse introduced in this book.

Orson Scott Ender: Ender’s Game

admin — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 21:22:00 +0000

A multi-faceted story set in some future of humanity: on one hand it is about highly gifted children and how this separates them from the rest: Ender is not only special compared to the average children, but even in the selected group of children to go to International Fleet training. On the other hand, it is about a war between humans and alien ‘buggers’ who attacked humanity in two invasions some hundred years ago. And the children are a selection to train for being soldiers and leaders in this war.
Yet, the most fascinating aspect to me is the description of the trade-off between happiness of the individual (here especially Ender’s) and the pressure exerted on him to learn to build and use his potential to the fullest. In that respect, it is also strongly connected to the question how much we are or even can be in control of our life.
It is also about the trade-off needed between the empathy needed to understand the enemy and the problem still to be able to fight and kill.
Maybe a bit melodramatic, but somehow this story really sucked me into it and kept me reading.
And the end of the book has yet another fascinating turn opening up the room for continuation.
… which do exist, but I read that they are not that good … but probably I will have to judge myself.

Vernor Vinge: Rainbows End

admin — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 19:22:00 +0000

Another very nice story situated in the near future. New treatments allow to recover various existing diseases, though not every one and not perfectly. In any case, an old poet being in Alzheimers coma is now brought back – and is confronted with a changed world he has to accommodate in and find his place. It is world where everyone is connected via wearable computers, contact lenses allow to overlay anything onto the real view, to various degrees. So there is a sliding transition from reality through augmented reality to virtuality possible, adjusted to the situation, not either or.
Finding his place back he gets involved, or rather is being used, in convoluted plans behind plans of others. As in that time it is possible for single people to get access to weapons of mass destruction – putting lives of millions potentially into the hand of a some disgruntled guy on the corner. Are potentially even much worse pieces of warfare into the hands of organized crime. Therefore there is strong police/military/intelligence in place to help preventing the worst.
Our protagonist is, unknowingly, in the midst of it.
Very entertaining, full of tension – interestingly geeky stuff out of the future.

6 Word SF

admin — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 23:34:00 +0000

From Wired 14.11 – very short stories – science fiction in 6 words.
Some are really very funny and creative – my favorites:

Failed SAT. Lost scholarship. Invented rocket.
- William Shatner

Computer, did we bring batteries? Computer?
- Eileen Gunn

Vacuum collision. Orbits diverge. Farewell, love.
- David Brin

Machine. Unexpectedly, I’d invented a time
- Alan Moore

Longed for him. Got him. Shit.
- Margaret Atwood

Internet “wakes up?” Ridicu -
no carrier.
- Charles Stross

Epitaph: Foolish humans, never escaped Earth.
- Vernor Vinge

Lie detector eyeglasses perfected: Civilization collapses.
- Richard Powers

whorl. Help! I’m caught in a time
- Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handel

Thought I was right. I wasn’t.
- Graeme Gibson

Mind of its own. Damn lawnmower.
- David Brin

Sum of all fears: AND patented.
- Charles Stross

Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash

admin — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 18:39:00 +0000

Rasant und abgefahren! Ganz klar jetzt, woher die Second Life Leute ihre Ideen wohl haben, hier ist das Metaverse schon detailliert dargestellt (am Rande: nette Idee – wenn zu viele Avatare zusammen sind, werden sie semi-transparent und ‘non-physical’ – andererseits: kein Teleport!) … dabei ist das bei so vielen Handlungssträngen nur ein Teil! Es geht um eine halb-apokalyptische Welt, in der der Pizza-Lieferservice von der Mafia geleitet wird, wo es High-Tech gibt, die enormes machbar werden lassen (das Super-Skateboard zum Beispiel), andererseits vieles im Argen bleibt und grosse Probleme ungelöst sind. Regierungen zum Beispiel haben ziemlich verloren. Viele andere Ideen tauchen auf, z.B. auch cyborg-Tiere.
Es geht am tiefsten aber um die babylonische Sprachverwirrung, die hier für einmal für etwas positives steht, der Anfang der eigentlichen Menschwerdung sogar, dabei eine Art Schutzmechanismus gegen Geistesviren (die allerdings auch einen körperlichen Teil haben, mit dem sie sich festsetzen und ausbreiten können – daher auch sexuellen Regeln in den Religionen etwa …). Und Snow Crash ist wieder so ein Virus … und der Untergang der Menschheit muss mal wieder abgewendet werden …
Cool!

Greg Egan: Luminous

admin — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 23:27:00 +0000

I have to admit upfront that I am a big fan of Greg Egan – I think he is one of the best writers of hard science fiction. This book contains 10 stories, I can see most of them as kind of Gedankenexperiments where he uses some more or less fancy ideas and in a playful way explores the results of these ideas, often by contrasting the new ideas with some conservative forces, more closely resembling our current world views, inside the stories.

These ones I like best:

Luminous Basing on the Gödel incompleteness theorem, what if mathematical statements become only true or false in the moment a physical realization in the universe forces it to decide? And therefore, many statements are still out the and not yet decided. Then you could do new calculations and by that force decisions on the truth of these statements, push boundaries between true and false …

On a side issue, he also mentions the computer Luminous which is base solely on the interaction of light rays: for any specific computation, a new pattern of rays is ‘compiled’ and then implemented to run the program …

Mister Volition Here the author plays with ideas of current scientists on the topic of consciousness: an individual tries to find the inner self which does the decisions in his life – but maybe there simply is nothing like this? Actually, I believe this to be true …

Transition Dreams A wonderful story, also about consciousness. If the consciousness, the experience of the inner self, is based on physical/physiological processes – as for example the influence of drugs or injuries to our brain suggest -, these physiological processes are our consciousness. So for example if these processes are simulated, the consciousness should happen. If one could hypothetically transfer the processes from body to machine, the buildup of these processes should be consciousness building up and dreaming probably strange transition dreams. Or if the being is decaying …

Reasons to be Cheerful From all of these, this is my favorite. Why are we happy? Is it a physiological state, so and so much of that hormone? In this story, this is played through various levels, looking at the feeling of our self, free will against determinism and all. In the beginning we see an individuum having always a high level of a certain neurotransmitter – always being cheerful. After an operation to fix this, he is devoid from all possibilities to feel satisfaction – superbly pictured. On the last level, another surgary will result in the possibility that he himself can choose to enjoy whatever he wants to enjoy …

- The Planck Dive Plays in a world where bodies are not necessary anymore, humans can be uploaded, transported etc. A group of scientists is planning the dive into a black hole, and proceeding with it.

The complete text of this story is available online on the homepage of the author.

I can highly recommend this book, if you like thought provoking stories!

Charles Stross: Accelerando

admin — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 21:51:00 +0000

A science fiction book for Slashdot geeks … I would guess it is quite hard to understand, if one is not a bit dedicated to this world and has not heard of these terms (Matrioshka brain etc) before and does not know the background related to (like the Free Hardware Foundation [But actually, there is a Accelrando Technical Companion available!]. It is a nice read, but on the weird side – at least for me. It recounts the history of a family – kind of four generations, but stretched – due to the various new possibilities of up- and downloading from meatspace to brainspace and back, the duplication, freezing etc – over a much longer time.
It nicely plays in the beginning with the description of the increasing augmentation of a normal human by adding external (and later internal) extensions – until the main character, when robbed of his extensions at one point, feels completely disoriented and helpless (nicely described here!).
As the title tells, it also describes the ever accelerating development of new technologies, up to the Singularity – and beyond. I am impressed by many of Stross’ ideas, for example when he is following the idea that an advanced intelligence will try to convert all dumb matter in a solar system into computronium – but after that, will find it hard to spread any further because of the bandwidth limitations and latency when trying to expand further out.
And another one: that the enormously growing complexity might not lead to ultimately powerful beings, but maybe to the descendants of companies and law structures, which evolve and evolve – but not in the sense I would have hoped for, ultimately becoming stupid or rather senseless (to my limited human feeling) again.
Stross continues the story by following the characters who chose to keep in some sense human and a human individuality. I am not convinced by this picture of the very far future, where the beings stay in or get back to a human form, producing children and everything, although unbelievable powerful – having habitats spread (through wormholes) across light years.
Inbetween are a lot of interesting twists of splitted persons meeting their counterparts, or having to face the actions of the counterparts and many other funny things and surprising turns.
Very enjoyable read all in all!

The complete book is freely available at www.accelerando.org.