Proximal Eye – Page 5 – Mark W Tiedemann

Reformed Colonizing

February 22, 2023 No Comments

In some form or another, the idea of terraforming has run through science fiction for decades. The term was coined by Jack Williamson back in his 1942 story Collision Orbit, which involved the hammerblow of an asteroid impact. Gradually the idea seeped into the general body of science fiction as the problem of actually stumbling on a habitable world to settle became apparent and more intrusive measures were proposed. By the late 1980s it had blossomed into an accepted practice. Most of the early examples dealt with Mars. The fascination with colonizing the Red Planet had always been there. After the hoped-for suitability of Mars was thoroughly dashed by actual probes, other solutions informed new stories. The difficulties are nicely laid out in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy. The sheer expense of the endeavor rose to daunting prominence. More solutions came to the fore. Nanobots, microfauna, slamming a planet with iceballs (comets). Proposals from the other end of the problem

2022

January 18, 2023 No Comments

I have been remiss in not doing these annual reviews more regularly. I have no excuse. Other words get in the way sometimes. But this, one year into my “official” retirement, I have no excuse not to do. So. I read, cover-to-cover, 89 books in 2022. Compared to 48 in 2021. I try to make it through 70 to 80 a year, but some yearswell. A handful in ’21 were doorstops, but really, I have no excuse for not getting through the nearly 100 books I read only partly. Of the 89 this past year, 40 were some species of science fiction. That’s up in percentage from the past few years. A handful were rereads, like Samuel R. Delany’s Tales of Neveryon, Heinlein’s Space Cadet, Laumer and Dickson’s Planet Run, Greg Bear’s Heads. As I’ve noted before, I rarely reread. I read slowly, compared to some, and I have too many books on my TBR pile to choose to go

Jeff Beck

January 14, 2023 No Comments

Some sounds fix a moment, sink us in time, and underscore our responses to the world ever after. The potency of music in organizing our ongoing experiences isalchemical. Usually we don’t even know it’s happening. The sine-wave of neural resonance simply buoys us and each time we hear a kindred chord or strain of melody, a particular alignment of motif and rhythm, a pleasurable ache opens up. Nostalgia, certainly, but much more than that. The parlor psychologist will tag these moments to pivotal experienceswhere were you when, what was the first time, who was there, etcbut I think this is facile. Not wrong, but it tends to relegate the music to the status of placemarker rather than the primary event, a parenthetical scaffold to presumably more important associations. While this is certainly the case in many instances, it becomes a rote evocation of mutual recognition. But often the question has to be turned around. Where were you when you first

The Long and the Short and All Between

December 8, 2022 No Comments

Of all the things that make up the borders and textures of our lives, how many do we ever consider doing without and what that might mean? Because anything we do in the least technological, there was a time when we didn’t. Often such times were so long ago we have no cultural (much less personal) memory. We live as if we have always lived a certan way, even when we know better. Take measurement, for instance. There was surely a first time, when someone, somewhere, thought to mark down something to keep track of how many, how much, how long or short, and thus invented measurement. Since then, measuring has become part of the cultural air. We notice it when we use it, but rarely realize consciously just how ubiquitous it is. Basically, almost everything we do is measured. “If we could not measure, then we could not observe the world around us; could not experiment and learn…it is

Ministering To The Present…For The Future

November 15, 2022 No Comments

Among the most attuned voices in the climate change discussion, outside of straight-up science, Kim Stanley Robinson has long held a commanding position as a legitimate observer. The power of fiction combined with clear-eyed assessments and a grasp of practical as well as philosophic morality is nowhere better demonstrated than in his long career addressing “real world” issues through the lens of science fiction. Go back to the Mars Trilogy, the core of the three novels is climate. The politics, the economics, the science, all anchor the characters to a set of questions demanding attention. Iy is possible to see that early work as a stand-in for what could be reclamation work here on Earth. Over time, book after book, Robinson has focused on one major conceptual questionwhat is the optimal relationship between humans and their environment? Even his interstellar exegesis, Aurora, is about this. In a way, it’s a central questionfor science fiction primarily, but really for any literature to

Of Time and Depths of Contemplation

October 25, 2022 No Comments

Sea of Tranquility is Emily St. John Mandel’s sixth novel. Once again, she is indulging in a science fiction scenario, which she also did in what may be her most famous work, Station Eleven. She denied she was writing science fiction, but the novel has been adapted into a streaming series to good effect and is undeniably post-apocalyptic SF. (The reasons literary authors like Mandel find it necessary to disclaim that their work is SF are many and varied and could serve as an interesting study. Suffice it to say that it is a tradition now and originated in the simple reality of market share. That would no longer seem to be valid, given the bankability of SF these days, so we are left musing over sensibilities and pretensions.) Like Margaret Atwood before her, Mandel seems now to have come to terms with her relationship to science fiction and has produced a work that cannot be plausibly read as anything

People, Problems, Politics, and Possibilities

October 5, 2022 No Comments

I remember as a child I once asked my dad where all the smoke from the smokestacks went. Into the air, obviously, but after that? I don’t remember exactly what he answered, but it was reassuring, something about how it just got diluted until it sort of wasn’t there anymore. Years later we would have debates about pollution and climate change and it was clear that he simply could not grasp how, the Earth being so big, that we mere mortals could possibly have the kind of impact environmentalists were claiming. It was frustrating and oddly appealing, because reassurance works that way. One of his arguments rested on the production of CO2 and methane by the Earth itself, among other particulates such as my be spewed out by volcanoes, and how meager our own output was by comparison. Like other such arguments, its legitimacy rested on those factors left out, like accumulation over time. Some of the first work done

Fatal Prose?

August 19, 2022 No Comments

The year of the fatwa, an acquaintance of ours hurried to a Walden Books store that still had copies of the book. He had called around to find them, only to be told time and again that they had been packed up and returned. This one outlet had not yet sent them back and he askeddemanded, reallythat they not, he would come in and buy them all. I’m not sure why they believed him, but he told us afterward that as soon as he walked into the store all the employees showed stark terror. He was dark, black hair, what you might call Mediterranean. He looked to them, apparently, Arabic. They had ten copies and he did in fact buy them all. He gave us one, which we still have. It’s a First Edition, second printing. Until this global scandal and the media coverage attendant upon it, I had never heard of Salman Rushdie. This, I learned, was his fourth

Intrusions

August 7, 2022 No Comments

The latest eruption of reaction from certain viewers of the new Sandman series on Netflix is another example of a phenomenon that I, in my 20s, would never have thought to indulge: the intrusion of the audience directly into the aesthetic choices of an author. I grew up in a time in which you either liked or did not like something, and if you did not like it you would then go off to find something you did like. What you did not do was presume to publicly dictate to the creators what was wrong with the work as if you had any place in that process. Professional (and amateur) critics would analyze and examine and write pieces about a given work to explain what does and does not work, but rarely, if ever, would you find a demand that a work be different. Certainly lively discussions among those interested over a given work were common and healthy, but that

Reflections In Stone and Story

July 28, 2022 No Comments

John Crowley opens doors for readers to walk through into worlds that rest on the faint border between the Real and the Perceived. In his most famous novel, Little, Big, doors are explicitly present, and going through them defines the universe. The act of stepping through makes present what is otherwise only felt. Doorsentrancesare offered as opportunities, both for the reader and for the characters.Often they are narrow and only shadows can be glimpsed through them. To know, one must step through. Stepping into a Crowley novelone finds a complete world, unexpected and fascinating. While his reputation is as a fantasy writer, he has produced equally immersive literary mainstream novels, albeit with historical settingsThe Translator, Four Freedoms, Lord Byron’s Noveland there is ample historical connection in his best fantasies. His facility for blending history and fantasy is impressive. His newest does this magnificently. Flint and Mirror takes on the subject of Ireland and England. Hugh O’Neill, ostensible heir to the

Mark W. Tiedemann

Author. Blogger. Photographer.

The Proximal Eye