Category: science

The Golden (Silver?) Good Ol’ Days

Posted on June 21, 2012June 21, 2012 By Mark Tiedemann

I just finished skimming through a fascinating little bit of fannish history, Earl Kemp’s Who Killed Science Fiction?Â Fannish in the sense of science fiction fandom.Â It has a rich and varied history and the concerns within the genre are as fraught with angst, ennui, and ambition as any literature.

I am always a bit bemused when I read about this sort of thing, because I came into science fiction through the rotary rack at my local drug store.Â (Literally—Leuken’s Pharmacy, on the corner of Shenendoah and Compton, a good old fashioned drug store with a soda fountain, a magazine stand, and two circular racks for paperbacks, two blocks from my house.)Â …

Preferred Position

Posted on May 8, 2012May 8, 2012 By Mark Tiedemann

I really like Neil deGrasse Tyson.Â He’s my kinda scientist and he speaks well.Â Please watch the entire video before continuing with my little bit.

Okay, there’s a lot in that with which I agree.Â In fact, he gets to my preferred stance on the whole issue, that I would rather not have to deal with the categories and all the rhetorically inevitable garbage that comes with them.Â The problem is that most people actually won’t let you do that.

If I am asked honestly about my thoughts on whether or not there is a god, my answer is usually predetermined, not by me but by the person asking the question.Â …

All Or Nothing

Posted on May 2, 2012December 29, 2023 By Mark Tiedemann

I don’t do many posts about evolution here. It is a topic of interest to me and many years ago I went through a spate of reading everything I could find by Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Dawkins, and a few others to try to wrap my head around it. What I came away with—and this is very important for a point I intend to make later on—is that I am persuaded that evolution is real, that this is a pretty accurate description of how life operates, and that our future understanding of biology will be based solidly on these principles.

I do not have to be an expert on it to accept it.…

What Is Wrong With Conservatives?

Posted on January 16, 2012May 22, 2024 By Mark Tiedemann

I wonder sometimes how a modern conservative maintains.

Romney has won the New Hampshire primary. All the buzz now is how he’s going to have a much tougher fight in South Carolina, primarily because of the religious and social conservatives who will see him as “not conservative enough.” There is a consortium of social conservatives meeting this week in Texas to discuss ways to stop him, to elevate someone more to their liking to the nomination. And right there I have to wonder at what it means anymore to be a conservative.

I grew up, probably as many people my age did, thinking of conservatism as essentially penurious and a bit militaristic. …

China Mieville and the Ideology of SF

Posted on November 4, 2011November 15, 2023 By Mark Tiedemann

Now for something fascinating having to do with writing. I just saw this lecture by China Mieville, who I feel is one of the most interesting writers working today. He’s tackling a subject I’ve chewed over quite a lot—the distinction between SF and Fantasy and the theoretical arguments about SF exceptionalism. I have some quibbles, but I would love to sit down with this guy and hash this through, because, to my ear, he’s exactly where I’ve been in terms of what to look at when talking about this.

I don’t disagree with a single critical element he brings up—and, as he points out, none of what he brings up is particularly new.…

A Few Thoughts Concerning Margaret Atwood

Posted on October 24, 2011October 24, 2011 By Mark Tiedemann

Actually, just one.Â I’d like her to stop trying to be an authority on science fiction.Â I haven’t read her new book of essays on the topic, but I’ve heard her in interviews and read some of her thoughts in the past, and based on that she’s pretty much a tourist.Â Back when her publisher thought claiming her work was science fiction would hurt her sales, she misunderstood the genre magnificently (“Oh, sci-fi has rockets in it.Â I don’t do that.”)Â A lot of it reminded me of Susan Sontag’s egregiously off-base attempt to define it.

Of course, being in the same company as Sontag isn’t a bad thing, especially not if you want to remain within the fold of the folks who persistently fail to “get” any kind of genre work.Â …

Steve Jobs: A Quality of Expectation

Posted on October 6, 2011 By Mark Tiedemann

I do not own an Apple computer.Â I do all my work on PCs because, well, it worked out that way.

I had an Apple.Â First-generation MacIntosh, to be precise.Â It didn’t last.

My partner, Donna, got interested in computers back in the early and mid-80s.Â When I say “interested” I mean on the level of “hm, that looks cool, I wonder what it would be like to…”Â and not on the level of “that way lies the future, we gotta have one!”Â Being somewhat dense when it came to reading her enthusiasms (and separating hers from my own), by various strange avenues, she ended up getting a MacIntosh for Christmas.Â …

Denial of Agency and Being Off Base

Posted on September 26, 2011September 26, 2011 By Mark Tiedemann

Recently I participated in a brief exchange on Shelfari that annoyed me.Â On a science fiction thread a commenter said he (or she) had recently read Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot and had enjoyed it even though the fictional conceit was off base.Â I asked why and the response wasÂ “His worldview is off-base because it is humanistic – it excludes God.”

That annoyed me.Â Actually, it pissed me off.Â The exchange ran a little while and then I suggested it be moved or abandoned.Â The admin allowed that it was a troublesome thread and it would be better to just stop it.Â …

Fiction Matters

Posted on September 9, 2011 By Mark Tiedemann

What I do puzzles some people.Â Always has, even before I was doing it.Â All those jokes about bookworms have a solid basis in real experiences—a great many people in our lives do not understand the importance of reading.Â Worse, they have no clue about the pleasures of reading, which often makes me very sad.

I was followed around the play ground at school once by three of my classmates who were determined to stop me from reading.Â I don’t even remember the book anymore, only that I had finally found a way to enjoy recess, one that took me out of the rough-and-tumble of schoolyard hierarchical nonsense.Â …

Our Dreams Are Sleeping

Posted on August 19, 2011 By Mark Tiedemann

Neil DeGrasse Tyson is my favorite science pop star. He is right up there with Stephen Jay Gould and Carl Sagan in terms of ability and scope and style when it comes to explaining science to the public. I’ve heard that a follow-up mini-series to Sagan’s superb Cosmos is in the works with Tyson as the narrator.

After this, I have to say, I love this guy:

Back in the Seventies, Robert A. Heinlein testified before congress about the benefits of the space program—the ones people don’t generally know about. Among some of them was the surprising fact that suicides among seniors was sharply down since the Gemini program and the announcement of the Apollo program.…