flux

This afternoon I went to my local bookstore in order to see if I could find something on nanotech to whet my most recent appetite for information, but I had no luck and thus found myself in the science fiction section (where I inevitably end up during most trips to the bookstore). After picking up Perdido Street Station, which I have wanted to read for quite a while now, I looked to see what they carriedd in the way of J.G. Ballard. I didn't succeed until I moved to the straight fiction section, in which I found his "Best of" collection, which is full of dystopian futuressome of the best and most creative speculative fiction I've ever read. This, of course, got me to wondering.

When I went to pick up the second installment of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, I commented to whomever I was with that writing a single science fiction novel forever dooms the author to the niche shelves. Stephenson's newest work is all historical fiction, albeit historical fiction in which scientists are major characters. Why is it stuck among the tidy, cheap paperbacks with rockets and dragons on them while Ballard is placed with the "legitimate" fiction? Because it is a question of legitimacy. The science fiction and fantasy section (a grouping that I take issue with) is associated with flights of fancy, childishness, and an inability to deal with the tasks at hand in the modern world.

Gulliver's Travels is in the exact same vein as The Mote in God's Eye, it is only tailored to a society without solid concepts of space travel. The issues aren't trivial; they reflect modern man in the mirror of our future.

I can't wait for the day when someone wins both the Nobel for Literature and the Nebula.


That's enough for one night. I saw Flogging Molly again a few days ago with Deckwreck and his little sister, and it was a good, fun show with plenty of jigging in the pit, as it should be.

Oh, yeah, can anyone (I'm thinking specifically of baudot) point me to a good hardcopy discussion of nanotech? I've got to finish constructing my grey goo suit. Can't let the bitty-bots get me!