AI: Chips & Custard

Words written: c.34000
Stories completed: 4
Rejections: 70
Acceptances: 1

We, all family, recently sat down to watch Spielberg's AI: Artificial Intelligence, his realisation of Kubrick's dream of bringing Brian Aldiss' short story to the screen. I thought it deserved a few thoughts.

Unlike my earlier brief movie reviews, this is a film that I'd seen before, although my recollections of it were limited.  In fact, my only clear memory was of its Lord of the Rings-like ending; outstaying its welcome for a good twenty minutes.  I suspect that I'll be struggling to remember it again in another decade, a product of its cut-and-shunt nature, trying to blend Spielberg's schmaltz with Kubrick's more autistic approach.  Truly chips n' custard; I like them both, just not necessarily together.

Watching it with a nine- and an eleven-year old (and, yes, it is a 12) was a somewhat uncomfortable experience, moving, as it does, from a safe family setting to dangerous outer world, simultaneously prurient and pussy-footing.  It made me wonder who these elements - particularly the jarring Gigolo-Joe - came from.  I suspect it was Spielberg's reading of Kubrick's notes, attempting to humanise robotic male prostitution where Kubrick himself would have portrayed in in the cold style of Eyes Wide Shut, deserving of PhD theses and critical admiration but not much in the way of engagement.  It's as if that's the best Spielberg could come up with to contrast with the safety and comfort of David's family life; delivering a view of the gritty end of life informed through the lens of others' books and movies, nothing ringing true.

One of the most interesting elements - and I suspect this is tantamount to a criticism of Brian Aldiss not being able to foretell the future accurately - is that, whilst Gigolo Joe presciently tells David that information is the most valuable commodity, the pay-per-search Doctor Know makes data searching expensive.  Whereas, in reality, we've had a race to the bottom: the search engine that has succeeded is the one that can tell us the most the fastest, powered by advertising.  Even in the relatively recent past when this was made we hadn't quite realised how we'd monetise the net; not by getting customers to pay for what they want but by making it free and charging the symbiotic leeches of the advertising industry that then ride on untrammelled demand.

But enough soapboxing.

Far be it from me to criticise Spielberg's ability to tell a story, but a rule I have to be very sure about breaking is never to include a character or other vital element in act two or three that hasn't been foreshadowed in act one (maybe the door is still open at the start of act two, certainly not beyond).  The reason why the end feels so clunky, for me, is that the aliens are dropped a propos of nothing into the story.  I suppose the getout clause is that they deliver the opening voiceover, but that would give Morgan Freeman the right to leap out in the third act of about twenty percent of Hollywood movies without any other justification.  Even a brief glimpse of them upfront would have joined the elements together.

I want to end on an upnote or, rather, two upnotes.  Firstly,  the effects still stand up very well, particularly the partially exposed android skeletons in the flesh fair.  Secondly, I had forgotten how good Hayley Joel Osment's performance, both unwordly and other-worldly, was.  Shame that he seems to have grown up into an adult wearing a Hayley Joel Osment mask, if his photo on IMDB is anything to go by.

Oh, and is that an early appearance for Ted?

We may have peaked as a species…

Words written c33500

Stories completed 4

Rejections 66

Acceptances 1

We’re all realists, aren’t we?

I mean, on the outside we range from clown on-duty to clown off-duty, but through our own eyes we’re all pretty much mid-spectrum.  I see myself as a cynic and a sceptic, but balanced between pessimism and optimism; a balance made harder to shift by an adherence to the viewpoint of Mackay.  Me?  I’m a realist.

However, recently, I’ve detected a slight doomsayer tendency.  In the last post I repeated my rejection of a teleological view of (future) history and the possibility that we are sleepwalking towards a new Great War-style slaughter.

Well, add to that a belief that we’re living in a golden age, a mere blink of the eye in the span of human history, during which antibiotics are anything more than placebos.

Then there’s global warming and the rate at which we’re using and abusing the planet’s resources.  What we need won’t be around forever.  Unlike, say, waste plastic.  We’re a species heading for a cliff-edge.

But watching BBC’s Horizon: The Trouble With Space Junk has opened up a whole new dystopian playground of the mind.

You see, space has more rubbish than the verge of a dual-carriageway.  And whereas on Earth a crisp packet blowin’ in the wind has all the impact of a protest song, in space a fleck of paint acts much like a round from Dirty Harry’s Magnum.  And each impact begets a dozen other flecks, at least.  Someone say ‘geometric progression’?  And that’s before we consider all the stuff that’s bigger than, say, your toenail.

The only thing that keeps space from being like Indiana Jones’ last few steps before grabbing the artefact is its size.  But extrapolation of the sea of space junk (the fact that America is tracking all the objects Sputnik-size and upwards is itself jaw-dropping) shows it spreading and that before too long we’ll have created a cloud of dust with the chances of lethal impact being a small but too-large-to-risk one in four hundred.

And that means every satellite and space station pretty quickly ends up as a pretty fiery ball.

So, what happens then?  Well, I think we all know that GPS relies on satellites.  Stop to think and we’d add the emergency services, mobile phones, the internet, and cashpoint machines to the list.  The stock markets depend on space technology plus any business geographically dispersed like farms.  Not that many businesses are still up and running.

Plus some less-obvious examples, like hedge funds using spy satellite technology to assess the state of investments, at least ones like construction projects that can be seen from space.  You may be more sanguine about this last loss but, remember, you probably won’t get to hear about their problems.

All these ‘advances’ may be impossible in a matter of decades.  We may have peaked as a species…

I did consider submitting a story for the Gernsback Writing Contest’s last round, the theme of which was the solar system 250 years in the future.  I couldn‘t find a story that fitted so didn’t; maybe I should have penned something with semaphore and corsets and slow journeys by horse and map…

I'll say this only once

Words written c33000

Stories completed 4

Rejections 65

Acceptances 1

One of the characteristics that makes the interweb what it is is the lack of social cues.  What I mean is the iterative process of judging what we should be doing by what other people are doing.  It’s what stops the A381 resembling a scene out of Mad Max, or John Lewis the Somme.  This is despite the emphasis on ‘social medja’.

Take social cues away and what do you have?  Well, I suppose the example that springs to mind first and foremost is trolling.  But there does appear to be some default within the human brain that goes after the easy-to-grab-hold-of negative example.  So, what about positives coming about from the lack of line of sight to what the cretin at the next desk is up to?

Which leads me to two instructions very commonly found in submission instructions to sci-fi magazines and small presses: no simultaneous submissions; and no multiple submissions.

The latter is a no brainer line not to cross - I think they’ll spot more than one submission coming their way!  But the former?

I don’t do it.  Honest.  Recently I even noticed that I had misread my spreadsheet and had sent off a story that was already out.  I almost had sleepless nights until a rejection from one came though.

But is this just me?  You won’t find a blog shouting out that their author is a serial multiple submitter, but am I just being naive?  Perhaps, in reality, everyone is at it.  What’s the biggest risk?  An apologetic withdrawal of a story should it be accepted twice?  (Take a look at the numbers above if you want to judge the likelihood of that).  Perhaps it’s like jaywalking - in America it’s a law whereas here in Britain it’s just a pragmatic approach to crossing the road.

Look at it this way.  I’ve had a story with tor.com since September 2013.  If every publisher took two years to respond I’d barely have a chance to get my wares out there before my sci-fi became historical fiction.  Surreptitious multiple submissions are very tempting.  How wrong is it?  And will it make me go blind?

The reality on response rates is somewhere between tor.com and Clarkesworld, of course.  But even so, authors all know the feeling of waiting for months to receive a ‘no thanks’, or worse, a ‘near miss’.

Again, the tally of completed stories has ticked up by one.  I’ve rewritten the near future military sci-fi mentioned in my last post to a far-future far-fetched tale for Cohesion Press’ SNAFU anthology.  Character names, location (now the dumbbell twin planets of Corobus Rama and Corobus Dala sharing an eccentric tumbling orbit around twin suns) and title have all changed.

I don’t currently have both stories out at the same time.  But what if I did?  They have strong similarities, but they aren’t the same story.  I’d probably withdraw one if the other got accepted, but until then... Would they be simultaneous submissions?  Is it just between my conscience and me?  After all, damned if I can see what everybody else is doing…

Is there honey still for tea? A pessimist responds

Words written c32000

Stories completed 3

Rejections 59

Acceptances 1

As I may have said before, I don’t subscribe to a teleological viewpoint; in other words that we’re heading towards a better tomorrow, as opposed to just tomorrow.

Yes, you can’t unthink an idea or uninvent an invention, so in that sense we’re incrementally improving.  But, at the same time, you can run out of things forever like fresh water, dodos or human kindness.

Take ISIS or IS or ISIL or whatever they’re called this week.  There’s something mediaeval about them that makes the terrorists of my youth look positively gentlemanly.  No code words called in ten minutes in advance by this lot.

Regarding their defeat we seem to have a choice between repeating Vietnam - a lot of expensive military technology against an enemy that melts into the jungle (for jungle, read desert) - or World War One - throwing sufficient numbers of boots on the ground to take sufficient numbers of bullets in the chest.

In all honesty, I can’t see the former working, and I fear that we’ll end up with the latter.  The idea of armies fighting through shear weight of numbers is meant to be something we’ve moved on from.  Isn’t that the better tomorrow that the invention of nuclear weapons gave us?  The idea of conscription is meant to be up there with the barber-surgeon and phlogiston.  But then again, TB is back in vogue, so why not call-up papers?

I look at my eleven year old and sometimes think that, if these were the Edwardian years, he’d be a dead man walking.  It wouldn’t matter how clever and talented he was (and he is), if he were destined for Flanders he would be unilaterally entered into the most cruel of lotteries.  And, in those sunny early century summers, there’d be no way of suspecting.  All would seem well with the world.  How could we possibly end up there?

And who’s to say that we’re not there again?  Who’s to say that he won’t be fighting and dying in the Levant, one of tens of thousands?  Who’s to say that the drones and the smart bombs won’t work, and what will be required will be hand-to-hand combat?

I really hope that in ten years time this piece reads as paranoid rather than prescient.

Which leads me to the obligatory link back to the world of sci-fi, tenuous though it may be.  Dear reader, look back at the numbers which head this piece and you may observe that a third story has been completed; a near future military sci-fi yarn regarding the hubris of fighting the oncoming hordes of jihadists through the forests of Austria with technology.

Oh, and Clarkesworld, of course, have rejected it in less than twenty-four hours.  Business as usual, then…

George Osborne's 7"

Words written c31000

Stories completed 2

Rejections 59

Acceptances 1

I am more often than not living my life six weeks or so in the past.

I’ve been watching David Lynch’s Lost Highway in occasional chunks (which really doesn’t lose any narrative sense), recorded off SyFy about six weeks ago, whilst – not simultaneously, I hasten to add - taking in a six-week old sermon from the Church of Wittertainment.  In that sermon Dr Kermode mentioned that Lost Highway garnered its best reviews when French critics were shown the reels in the wrong order.  Serendipity, huh?

What he failed to mention, however, was the similarity between Balthazar Getty and a young George Osborne.

Meanwhile, in a similarly aged copy of the Week, which I was reading in the bath, I noticed that a collection of every UK hit single ever, ever was going under the hammer (metaphorically); 27,000 7” singles were estimated at just £7,000 (they ended up going for a lot more).

During my youth I amassed a weighty collection of vinyl, often bought on the mere recommendation of Melody Maker, or even just on the strength of the name (little did I expect Daisy Hill Puppy Farm to turn out to be Icelandic proto-metal).  Most of it disappeared on eBay over the years for a lot more per disc than was being quoted. 

The reason is obvious, of course: what I sold was the willfully obscure, as opposed to the widely available, and a proportion had become very collectable.  (Unlike top 40 singles, which tended to leave buyers with a morning-after did-I-really-do-that feeling.)  For every Sidi Bou Said there was an early PJ Harvey; for every Faith Over Reason a Rough Trade Singles Club Catatonia.

But could you do that today?  Digital appears to have sucked the joy out of leafing through racks of records, considering the cover, the information, the label.  Not hearing it until it’s bought, paid for, and taken home in a plastic bag swinging from your hand.

Now we have the convenience of hearing it before buying – try explaining that that should be the end of the process.  Where’s the anticipation, the thrill of the hunt?  The sense of buying a gem, which can only come with the experience of buying more often than not, well, Daisy Hill Puppy Farm?

And, in what sense, can you buy a rare gem when it’s just ones and zeros, replicable an infinite number of times over?  I had vinyl that only a handful of others had, and unavailable to anyone running after the bandwagon.  Nowadays your download will be same as mine, even if I downloaded it after being one of three blokes seeing them in a pub, whereas you heard them on national radio.

Jimmy Voldemort (his name must not be uttered!) presciently said that Top of The Pops would last as long as people bought records, and he was right, although I suspect he meant ‘forever’ when he said it.

No more porky prime cuts in the run-off groove.  The youth of today just won’t understand those words…

Earth 'Entering New Extinction Phase'

Words written: c30000

Stories completed: 2

Rejections: 59

Acceptances: 1

Earth 'entering new extinction phase', screamed the BBC news headline.

Except it didn’t.

When I first stumbled across the story it was number four in the pecking order, somewhere behind a baby being chewed by a terrier.  All highly unfortunate for said baby and its family, but not really on an all-enveloping scale compared to the story that caught my eye.

Later that day it fell to number eight, and was thence ejected to the ‘magazine’ section.

Douglas Adams would have loved it.

I’ve always been impressed by the human animal’s ability to see the relatively-trivial here-and-now and miss the glaringly relevant on the horizon.  A case of admiring the tattoo but not seeing the skinhead.

It’s inextricably tied up with wanting our jam today rather than the full cream tea tomorrow.  Human foibles that have a genetic basis in wanting our jam today because by tomorrow we’ve probably become somebody else’s cream tea (just ask that baby).

We may have invented the internet and self-checkouts and mortgages, but genetically we’re still hunting mammoth.  Talk about a species getting too big for its boots.  And we know where such hubris leads to, don’t we kids?  If not, cast your eyes back to the title of this post…

Star Trek - The Next Generation

Words written c28500

Stories completed 2

Rejections 54

Acceptances 1

I have to come to terms with the fact that the bairns don't like the original Star Trek.  In fact, scrub that: they hate it.

They find all the standing around talking boring.  They find the lack of shoot-first-ask-questions-later alien encounters boring.  They find the lack of whizzy CGI boring.  And when the obligatory science officer or ensign with a waist smaller than her hat size but a centre of gravity just below her neck appears, they practically hide behind the cushions in the expectation of Captain Kirk's impending sexual harassment.

I try to tell them that Star Trek is pure science-fiction: the fiction of ideas.  Each episode is like a science experiment, where you change one variable and see what effect that has on the world.  Except the variable isn’t pressure or temperature: it’s being able to implant ideas with a machine or what if the Athenian Gods were real.

I try to tell them that Star Trek has been the inspiration for more of the current generation of scientists than anything else (I may have embroidered a throwaway piece of anecdotal evidence I picked up somewhere).

But they just find it boring.

I find this odd.  Yes, it’s a bit static and talky and much more 1960s than twenty-third (or whatever) century.  But, they're nine and eleven, and bright, the sort of combination that should be intrigued by the ideas - and the best sci-fi is always about ideas, not robots hitting each other.

Thinking about this has led me to ponder two trends, but I’m struggling to decide whether they contradict or complement.

The first, let me illustrate by way of anecdote.  The Film Program on BBC Radio 4 recently ran a series of reminiscences over first film memories.  One man fell in love with cinema in 1950 at the age of nine by being taken to see The Third Man.  Chris Nolan watched 2001, mesmerized, at a similar age.

My point is this.  Fifty, sixty – even twenty - years ago there was a limited diet of what a young mind could be presented with.  Whatever Walt and Looney Tunes could provide was quickly consumed.  Get past a few cowboy B-movies, that week’s Children’s Film Foundation output, and very quickly kids were left with ‘adult’ movies (by which I mean The Third Man, I mean, not Shaving Ryan’s Privates).  Kids got to glimpse a more adult world, and in so doing had to get used to thinking.

Nowadays a child need not have their minds stretched unless they want to.  I’d like to show the kids The Third Man (we tried 2001, with disastrous consequences).  Instead, recent cinema trips have been for Big Hero 6, Paddington, Shaun the Sheep.  And when it’s not the cinema, there are DVDs, 24-hour kids’ TV, Minecraft, Fifa15.  There’s been an infantilisation of, not just cinema, but popular culture.

But, at the same time, we’ve got bloody good at it.  Compare those three movies I mentioned - Big Hero 6, Paddington, Shaun the Sheep – to, say, Doctor Doolittle, Mary Poppins, and Swiss Family Robinson – and I know which I’d prefer.  I even have a soft spot for Frozen, that cinematic equivalent to Slush Puppy.

Even so, it’s like we’ve taken baby food to a new level.  It’s haute cuisine baby food, two Michelin star baby food.  But it’s still baby food.  You have your teeth: use them.

And that, I think, is why Star Trek falls on deaf (non-pointy) ears.  Yes, its static and talky and badly acted and full of sexual harassment of the most jaw-dropping sort.  But its also full of ideas, challenging, stretching ideas.  But we don’t do ideas much any more when there’s so much plain vanilla available letting us get away with being superbly entertained whilst being barely challenged.

Bread and circuses and robots hitting each other.  Progress of a sort, I suppose.