Flatland

R. A. Lafferty didn't like modern society. He used the term "Flatland" (possibly inspired by Edwin Abbott's novel) to characterise a world which he he saw as unstructured and bereft of an spiritual dimension. Furthermore, Lafferty believed that the ability to remember the previous -more wholesome- state, and to perceive the degradation of the current one, was lost in the transition.

I am speaking literally about a real happening, the end of the world in which we lived till fairly recent years. The destruction or unstructuring of that world, which is still sometimes referred to as 'Western Civilization' or 'Modern Civilization', happened suddenly, some time in the half century between 1912 and 1962. That world, which was 'The World' for a few centuries, is gone. Though it ended quite recently, the amnesia concerning its ending is general. Several historiographers have given the opinion that these amnesias are features common to all 'ends of worlds'. Nobody now remembers our late world very clearly, and nobody will ever remember it clearly in the natural order of things. It can't be recollected because recollection is one of the things it took with it when it went...

(R. A. Lafferty: The Day After the World Ended. Collected in his essay volume It's Down the Slippery Cellar Stairs)

Maybe Lafferty selected the year 1962 as the "upper bound" of the End of the World because of Vatican II?

There is a vage memory that this late world had a large and intrincate superstructure on it, and that this came crashing down. There is some dispute as to whether we gained by the sweeping away of the trashy construction, or whether we lost a true and valid dimension in the unstructuring of our Old World, and wether we do not now live in "Flatland." There is no way to settle this dispute since the old structure cannot be recaptured or analyzed.

There is even some evidence that "Flatlands" are the more usual conditions, and that the worlds with heights and structures are the exceptions. Even if we could go back there, a Time Machine from Flatland and eyes from Flatland would not be able to see a dimension not contained in Flatland.

(ibid.)

The fourth (as yet unpublished) volume in Laffety's autobiographical series In a Green Tree is titled Incidents of Travel in Flatland. It covers the sixties and the seventies. I would love to take a look at it.

The idea that "it sucks, you just don't realize it sucks" is interesting, but the catch is that it can be used to argue that anything sucks. It's not that different from the approach taken by the Frankfurt school when they, too, tried to show that "it sucks". (Not that Lafferty would agree on anything with that bunch of pinkos, mind you.) On the other hand, "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle".

This concern of Lafferty shows in many of his works, most of the time in a veiled manner. Which is probably good, because I suspect I wouldn't like his philosophy if he had made it completely explicit. Instead, we have his stories and novels.

Predicando

Y Paul Le Jeune se quejaba en 1635 desde Nueva Francia porque un chamán local, viendo comprometida su propia reputación como sanador milagrero y hacedor de la lluvia, solía "divertirse a mis expensas, sugiriéndome palabras indecentes en su idioma [para que] tomase nota de ellas y asegurándome que no hay nada malo en las mismas, a fin de conseguir que yo pronuncie esas palabras soeces en presencia de los salvajes".

(Jonathan Wright: Los Jesuitas)

El episodio recuerda un poco al sketch "El diccionario de húngaro" de los Monty Phyton:

No es prudente aprender la lengua local precisamente de la persona a la que pretendes dejar sin trabajo, y que se encuentra comprensiblemente preocupada por tu intrusismo laboral. Me pregunto si serían posibles versiones más sofisticadas de la treta, por ejemplo: en vez de hacer decir palabrotas al pobre jesuita, construir cuidadosamente el "diccionario" de manera que lo que predique resulte herético para su propia doctrina.

First seen in science fiction?

The narrative device of having one character annotate a work written by another character, grossly misinterpreting it to suit his own cynical ends and/or delusional worldview, is most famously used in Nabokov's Pale Fire where, in fact, the anotations to an (intentionally) dreadful poem constitute the bulk of the novel. Gene Wolfe has mentioned his admiration for Pale Fire in one interview, and it's easy to see how the book influenced Wolfe's own oblique style and penchant for unreliable narrators.

A previous, more limited use of that device can be found Bernard Wolfe's Limbo, published ten years before Pale Fire. One section of the book consists in the old diaries of the main character, written amidst the horrors of World War III. In them, he expounds a demented program for achieving world peace that involves the mass voluntary amputation of limbs as a way to curb the aggresive instincts of the human race.

The plan was clearly intended as satire by the protagonist, in the "Irish people should eat their children" manner. However, a former colleage of his got hold of the diaries, and took them literally. In fact, he goes on to become the leader of a post-apocalyptic US on a pro-amputation platform. The diaries are published as a kind of seminal political manifesto, conveniently and obtusely annotated to justify a literal interpretation.

Are there other uses of the "misguided commentary" device that predate both Pale Fire and Limbo? Or is Limbo the first novel to feature it, even if it is circumscribed to one part of the book and does not overwhelm the "main" text?

Anyway, Wolfe's novel is unjustly forgotten, and worth a read despite its misogyny and overuse of freudian jargon. Some (not misguided!) commentary on the book here.

Impotencia selectiva

el 11 de mayo de 1453 el arcediano de Segovia, sede vacante a la sazón, leía un sentencia de divorcio por él pronunciada, declarando nulo en matrimonio entre Enrique y Blanca a los trece años de contraído. [...] La causa de nulidad alegada era la impotencia de Enrique, aunque sólo en relación con Blanca, puesto que el arcediano había recurrido al testimonio de ciertas mujeres públicas de Segovia, las cuales estaban dispuestas a jurar que, con ellas, había tenido "trato y conocimiento de hombre con mujer".

(Luis Suárez Fernández: Nobleza y Monarquía)

Calabresas, Islandesas

Las mujeres tienen en la Ndrangheta un papel importante. [...] Las mujeres también son las que mantienen vivas las faidas, las venganzas, además de organizar matrimonios de conveniencia entre las familias amigas. "No os he criado para pagar las facturas de la luz y el agua", se escucha en una interceptación a Saveria Strangio, viuda de un capo, durante las escuchas que la policía realizó en la casa milanesa de uno de sus hijos.

(María Signo: El poder de la mafia calabresa. En La Voz de Galicia del Domingo 26 de Agosto)

"Cold are the councils of women" reads a famous line from Njáls Saga, and in times of feud women are repeatedly portrayed in the sagas as demanding blood vengeance. Demanding and getting are not the same, and the self-willed women of Njáls Saga at times found it difficult to goad their men into action.

(Jesse Byock: Viking Age Iceland)

"Bolli, your brother's killer, lives there. You have certanly turned out very different from your noble kinsmen if you don't want to avenge a brother like Kjartan. [...] It's a sad thing to have shirkers for sons. [...] Olaf's worst misfortune, that he was cheated when it came to the kind of sons he got."

(Laxdaela saga, quoted in Jesse Byock's Viking Age Iceland)

Zibarro

I have just finished All-Star Superman #8 and enjoyed it a lot, especially the character Zibarro.

Despite superficial appearances and Zibarro's own proclamations, I think he is an opposite of Superman like regular Bizarro, only in subtler ways. He gives up easily while Superman perseveres, he despises the other bizarros while Superman -basically an alien god- loves and appreciates normal Earth people, and so on.

Finally (this might sound far-fetched, but let's remember that Morrison has a penchant for playing with the fourth wall) while Superman is a character in a story, Zibarro is himself an author of stories. At the end of the issue, he is tasked by Superman with writing the events that have just transpired! Maybe the whole issue has been written by Zibarro?

Una nueva y excitante tecnología

El explorador de hipertexto no lee, no escucha, no ve televisión. El explorador de hipertexto navega en un vasto océano de información textual, sonora y visual, buscando sus propios caminos de conocimiento a medida que se adentra en niveles cada vez más profundos del libro absoluto.

(Muy Interesante, Especial Comunicación. Verano de 1990. 350 ptas.)

En el hipertexto, la información se organiza de la misma forma como lo hace la mente humana. Y el sistema de recuperación funciona de manera muy parecida al cerebro cuando quiere acceder a los datos almacenados en la memoria: por asociaciones de ideas y por el contexto en que se producen. [...] Sólo que en el hipertexto, en lugar de un desencadenante neuroquímico, como ocurre con los mecanismos de la memoria, utilizamos una herramienta electrónica: el ratón o la pantalla táctil.

(íbid.)

Para explicar estos conceptos, se usa como analogía el libro poliédrico. Imaginemos un libro en forma de cubo que se pueda abrir por cualquiera de sus seis caras. Cada una de ellas representa el comienzo de un camino distinto para recorrer el contenido de todo el libro. Se empiece por donde se empiece, al final hemos alcanzado toda la información, aunque por caminos diferentes. Los jóvenes lectores de novelas interactivas tal vez estén más preparados para comprenderlo. En el hipertexto, cada portadda del libro poliédrico -que no hace falta que tenga únicamente seis caras- simboliza un bucle de presentación a partir del cual parten, hacia dentro, decenas, centenares o miles de otros bucles interconectados. Y por ellos navega el lector-explorador.

(íbid.)

En el horizonte: la megapedia universal que reúna los archivos históricos de toda la humanidad. [...] Cualquier ciudadano, desde su propia casa, tendrá la oportunidad de conectar su terminal doméstico al gran conocedor, un superodenador central con billones y billones de fichas-bucle.

(íbid.)

Suena excitante, casi como un salto a un estado superior de conciencia. (Supongo que no se estará hablando de una simple evolución de las referencias, índices, y notas a pie de página de toda la vida, ¿no? Eso sería tan prosaico....)

Las "novelas interactivas" que leen los jóvenes supongo que serán aquellas de "elige tu propia aventura". Ah, tiempos...

Aprovecho para mencionar el excelente blog Paleo-Future, dedicado a cartografiar cómo era antes el porvenir.

"Glassy-eyed zest"

This blog post comments on a felicitous turn of phrase by Jack Vance: "spasm of zeal".

For my part, I want to mention another one I like very much: "glassy-eyed zest". It appears in the first chapter of The Green Pearl (freely avaliable here in PDF form for you to sample, dear reader.)

The expression is used in the context of some erotic exertions on the part of one of the characters, performed with a certain lack of genuine enthusiasm.

Dead Brothers

Dick’s early history is at once tormented, hustling, and oddly lit by the bright California sunshine of the late fifties. Born in 1928, he had a twin, a sister named Jane, who died when she was only a month old; like Elvis Presley, who also had a twin sibling who died, Dick seems to have been haunted for the rest of his life by his missing Other.

(Adam Gopnik: Blows Against the Empire)

Another insane/weird genius haunted by a lost brother (although not a twin) was Salvador Dalí:

When he was five, Dalí was taken to his brother's grave and told by his parents that he was his brother's reincarnation,[8] which he came to believe.[9] Of his brother, Dalí said: "… [we] resembled each other like two drops of water, but we had different reflections."[10] He "was probably a first version of myself but conceived too much in the absolute."[11]

(Wikipedia entry on Salvador Dalí)

Calle Amargura

A ver si alguien más puesto que yo en toponimia urbana me puede resolver la siguiente duda...

Existe una Calle Amargura en el casco viejo de A Coruña. En ella se encuentra una librería de segunda mano que suelo frecuentar.

Hay calles con el mismo nombre en Pontevedra, Sevilla, y Cáceres. Para la de esta última ciudad, al parecer existe una leyenda que atribuye el origen del nombre a ciertos eventos trágicos que sucedieron en ella. Pero entonces, ¿cómo se explica que otras calles en otras ciudades se llamen igual? ¿Cuál es el verdadero origen del nombre?

Edit: También hay una Calle Amargura en Tarifa. Y en Málaga.

Edit#2: Y en este otro sitio.

Edit#3: Resulta que existe una Virgen de la Amargura. Más información, aquí. Imágenes, aquí. ¿Relacionado?

"Al agote garrotazo en el cogote"

Nunca había oído hablar de este grupo étnico.

Inhumanity makes us human

Inhumanity, n. One of the signal and characteristic qualities of humanity.

(Ambrose Bierce: The Devil's Dictionary)

I posit a theory: the privileged being which we call human is distinguished from other animals only by certain double-edged manifestations which in charity we can only call "inhuman."

(R. A. Lafferty: Arrive at Easterwine)

A barrage of divine truths

Like the Marinids, the Mamluks, and other crude conquerors fresh from the steppe, the Ilkhans were quick to surrender to the sophisticathed civilization that enveloped them. Indeed the mind of the Mongol warrior was so culturally deprived that it presented a vast blank on which all sorts of refined and humane influences could be written.

(Ross E. Dunn: The Adventures of Ibn Battuta)

Genghis had set a policy of toleration for all religions within the empire, and ultimately the formless tribal shamanism to which he remained loyal withered under a barrage of divine truths which missionaries of all the world-universalist faiths fired at his various successors.

(íbid.)

Oh Lord, give me chastity, but do not give it yet

The Principle of Diachronic Integrity

Profundando

Era un barbeiro de sábado que amaba os libros que non entendía e gustaba de lélos todos enteiros. Unha vez atopéino coa testa pousada nas mans, ó xeito dun pensador, e díxome:

- Estou profundando.

(Castelao: Cousas)

Un día pousóu os ollos no mar -endexamáis reparaba en cousas miúdas- e dispóis de ter profundado un bo retrinco de tempo deitóu na orella do seu compañeiro ísta frase:

- O mar ¿sabes? O mar... ¡é un fenómeno!

(íbid.)

Simpatizo con el barbero, a pesar del retrato satírico que de él hace Castelao. ¿Qué tiene de reprobable, o de risible, entrar en comunión con el misterio numinoso del océano?

I knew it

From here:

"There's a lot of hype around the alleged harm that people do to themselves" with enhancements, Hughes says. "But in head-pounding sports, you face a lifetime of disability. In soccer, heading the ball often enough lowers your IQ".

Myself, I have always been wary of heading the ball. I surmised the practice wasn't doing any favors to my beleaguered neurons. Thank God I no longer play that brutish sport.

SFnal Titles

I think it was Samuel R. Delany who said that science fiction is better understood as way of reading than as a property of the texts themselves. For example, consider the sentence: "Her world exploded". It could simply refer to a woman undergoing psychological trauma, or... to an actual planet exploding (I suppose the woman in question would suffer psychological trauma in that case too). See here.

It also happens with titles. In fact, some mainstream book titles would be perfect for science fiction novels! I have no idea what A Thousand Splendid Suns is really about, but to me it conjures visions of an epic voyage of space exploration.

In Search of Lost Time? What better title for a time-travel story?

One Hundred Years of Solitude is obviously the tale of posthuman astronaut marooned on an unhabited planet.

And, of course, there's Invisible Man:

Mr. Ellison said, ''Once the book was done, it was suggested that the title would be confused with H.G. Wells's old novel, 'The Invisible Man,' but I fought to keep my title because that's what the book was about.'' Mr. Erskine recalled, ''His novel doesn't have the article in its title, although the mistake keeps cropping up, and I've been telling people to drop the word 'the' ever since the book came out.''

(Ralph Ellison, quoted in this article)

On the other hand, Nabokov's Pale Fire sounds like part 1 of 5 of a trashy fantasy series. Ditto for Heart of Darkness and The Magic Mountain.

Talking about movies, it's simply criminal that Last Life in the Universe is not a piece of far-future sf. And Till Human Voices Wake Us (beautiful title!) should be about a couple that enters suspended animation shortly after a cataclysmic event, and awakes to a drastically changed future.

The trouble with AI

This article (spotted at Brains) is an excellent reminder of the problems with Artificial Intelligence, a welcome dose of reality against the naive triumphalism of people like Ray Kurzweil.

When the author discusses the connectionist approach, he touches on the intractable complexity that would plague the development process of a connectionist brain:

If each synapse were handled by the equivalent of only a single line of code, the program to simulate the cerebral cortex would be roughly 25 million times larger than what’s probably the largest software product ever written, Microsoft Windows, said to be about 40 million lines of code.31 As a software project grows in size, the probability of failure increases.32 The probability of successfully completing a project 25 million times more complex than Windows is effectively zero.

He doesn't mention potential ways to sidestep that problem. For example: evolving a population of complex artificial brains from a population of much simpler ones, through the use of random mutations and artificial selection. Conceivably, AI could be achieved by that method without the need for humans to understand in every detail how the evolved brains work, or how to design them explicitly.

Of course, that approach would face severe problems of their own. As the article mentions, simulating a single human brain would require a humongous amount of computing power. Simulating vast populations of them through innumerable generations would require much, much more. And then there are the problems of finding the proper encoding of the "genomes", the proper mapping between "genotypes" and "phenotypes", how to measure fitness, and so on.

Interestingly, the author does not claim that AI is impossible in principle. He never mentions arguments like Searle's The Chinese Room, or the ones spoused by Penrose involving non-computability. (Myself, I think the virtual mind/systems reply is a very convincing answer to Searle. I don't fully understand Penrose's argument, but I suspect the non-computable, Gödel's Theorem-defying aspects of the human mind he talks about are not really there.)

Edit: See also this post on Gene Expression.

Recursive Science Fiction

This is an interesting site about science fiction works... that are about science fiction. (Spotted at Tim R. Mortiss' blog, La Explanada de Avente.)

Polygamy

In societies where rich men are much richer than poor men, women (and their children) are better off sharing the few wealthy men; one-half, one-quarter, or even one-tenth of a wealthy man is still better than an entire poor man. As George Bernard Shaw puts it, "The maternal instinct leads a woman to prefer a tenth share in a first-rate man to the exclusive possession of a third-rate one."

(Psychology Today: Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature)

In some instances concubines had wider latitude to act in their own interests than they might have had in poor marriages. An Icelandic folk saying of uncertain age goes, "Better a good man's frilla [a kind of concubine] than married badly."

(Jesse Byock: Viking Age Iceland)

Since some icelanders had more than one woman, others must have felt very cold indeed, alone in bed during those icy icelandic nights. The disadvantages of polygamy for non-elite males should be evident to anyone who was taught New Math at school:

Non-injective and non-surjective: BAD (unless you are lucky A, that is)

Bijective: kind of OK for everybody I guess. Surely better than this.