Promos and PSAs
Just a couple of quick announcements while I finish scribbling argumentative notes in the margins of Eric Hoel’s book on consciousness.
First, there’s this guy called Guy d’Andigné, runs sfss: a classy, minimalist little site that reprints science fiction shorts from the public domain and the creative commons, ranging from Voltaire to Doctorow. He also does interviews (he even interviewed me once, many years ago). He never bothered to monetise it; it was strictly a labour of love. Now, though, hard times have hit (as they’ve done to a lot of folks, post-Covid) so Guy has curated an anthology of old classics (and I mean old—the latest dates from the sixties, the earliest from the seventeen-hundreds) and released it as a pay-what-you-feel-like ebook over at Ko-Fi. There are some Big Names in that ebook—Wells, Vonnegut, Lovecraft and Dick to name a few—and while the names are familiar, I bet at least some of the titles aren’t (I know I’d never heard of Afred Bester’s “The Unseen Blushers” before now, at any rate). So if you’ve got a few bucks to spare, and you’re interested in getting back to our roots, check it out. Do a good deed, discover some classics.
But enough about someone other than me.
.
I’ve been dropping hints about a couple of upcoming forays overseas; a few of you in the comments have taken the bait. So now, for those who haven’t noticed the new entries over on the sidebar, I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be a guest at Bulgacon later this month, over in (you guessed it) Bulgaria. I haven’t been to that country in person since my Ratio appearances back in 2017 and 2020, and those were both in Sofia. This time the location is—don’t know if I’m pronouncing this right—Plovdiv. A new place to explore, although I probably won’t have much time; they tell me I’m slotted for eight events.
Moving on to November, I’ll be in Madrid (assuming Madrid isn’t on fire then; these days, you never know). This isn’t a con but a conference: a five-day riff on the subject of “Synthetic Minds” hosted by Matadero Medialab. They’re still taking proposals for things they’re referring to as “Lab Projects”; anyone out there interested in presenting has until September 17 to submit a proposal. One thing that appears to be nailed down is that I’m going to be delivering a keynote address. I’m glad we’ve got that settled.
Now I’ve just got to figure out what the fuck I’m gonna talk about. And then write the damn thing. I make no promises.
But at the very least, these Medialab people have got a kick-ass graphic designer.
The Spanish link in the sidebar is the Bulgarian one 🙂
No one expects the Spanish Link.
Trying very hard not to be the old fart, going on about more money = more ass hauling, finding second jobs, etc. etc.
So on topic, if you’re planning any other EU trips in luxurious penthouses with champagne and reefers, Muddy or no Muddy in the background, it’s all good, kindly let us know more in advance?
(takes time to organise; one step, arthritis; two steps, forgot why i’m doing this. Three steps out and she yells at me to get back in the house ’cause now it’s late. So.. it takes time, lol)
Goddammit. Fixed. Thanks.
A somewhat similar theme to “The Unseen Blushers” was done, much better, in 1955 by William Tenn (The Discovery of Morniel Mathaway). [and I am a HUGE Bester fan for many years]. It remains a question whether Klass knew or read the Bester story.
Hi Peter,
Are those argumentative notes on Hoel’s book born of excitement for its ideas, or anger at the lack of them? I’m trying to decide if it’s worth the $20 for the Kobo etext…
It’s a mixed bag. The first two chapters are basically filler, then he plays around with various theories of consciousness (he was a member of the IIT crowd for a while) and concludes that none of them really solve the Hard Problem (duh). He makes an interesting argument that a rigorous true theory of consciousness might be impossible for Gödelian-incompleteness reasons, and finishes it off with a Scientific Argument for Free Will. He admits it’s speculative, and I’m not sure I buy his arguments (hence the scribbled margin notes), but it’s interesting to see how he gets there.
Also I feel an understandable lack of confidence in my own counterarguments, when going up against an actual neuroscientist on his home turf.
Thanks for that! I think I’ll buy it. I suspect that filler for you may be new insights for me. That he sees his arguments as speculative is also a plus.
I am disappointed it doesn’t contain an irrefutable answer to the hard problem of consciousness (cough), but one can’t have everything.
Maybe you’ll write a column based on those notes at some point?
All the best for your upcoming travels. I think Madrid (if not burning, or under fascist rule) is a beautiful city. (I’ve never been to Bulgaria.)
I would like to second the interest in a post based on your notes.
Yeah, I think I could probably squeeze one in. But then you’ll have to wait longer to find out my universal solution for The Alignment Problem.
Did you see this one?
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adh2458
Hello, Peter! First time commenting here 🙂 I’m actually a stone throw away from Bulgaria and would love to come listen to you. We’ll see how fast they can issue a visa nowadays.
Looks like they are still working on the exact schedule. I’ll keep an eye on their website, but are you planning to post about your events when you get the programme?
I’ve only seen the preliminary program, but it’s a multi-threaded beast (bigger than I was expecting, in fact). The panels I’m (tentatively) assigned to include “Biology of the Future Bodies”; “Synthetic Minds: Instincts and Fitness Functions” (guess who suggested that topic); maybe something about First Contact; and I’m doing a reading. There may be others when the dust settles. There was the suggestion of some kind of coffee/beer-klatch with an author and maybe a dozen fans, but I’m dubious there’d be sufficient interest in my case. I don’t think I’m especially big in Bulgaria.
Well damn, I’m not going to make it to Bulgaria this time. Hope to see you at some other event in the future (and drown you in even more russian fanart which you’d be too kind do turn down, I’m sure)!
In November? Madrid could be the headquarters of a near fascist Spanish government by then. On the bright side, I wouldn’t worry about literal fires, floods are taking care of that already.
Welp, when you see my climate change denialist, anti-vaccine, far right voting neighbors, send them my heartfelt hate.
Good luck!
I did not realize. There are so many fascist governments springing up these days, I guess I lost track.
Maybe, if that happens, protestors will be setting fires in the streets. Same result.
Hello there Peter! Your novels were superb, best in class. Starfish, Blindsight, Echopraxia, even The Freeze Frame Revolution. And your short stories are also great – my god, The Things. Have you decided to never write another novel again?
Peter, goddamn it, when is that new book coming?
It’s been 5 years since I read Blindsight and 4 since Ecopraxy
I haven’t been able to find anything that might even come close. You ruined the genre for me.
But for real, when can we expect a new book from you?
This is exactly how I feel. After Blindsight and Echopraxia, I search and search but just cannot find anything that lives up to Peter Watts’ work. And, from what I can see, he is held in v high regard within the genre. With all this good will and admiration and respect – in a world where new aspiring writers cannot get their book read – why, why, why on earth is Peter Watts writing blogs, commentaries and everything else (for years now) except new novel?
The first thing you gotta know is, I really like writing novels, I’ve got at least a few more in me, and I fully intend to squeeze ’em out.
The second thing you gotta know is, I haven’t put out a novel since 2018 (even that was only a novella), and my income has significantly increased since I stopped concentrating on those puppies. My main US publisher is/was Tor; I’ve had, let us say, a rocky relationship with those guys (I could list the ways, but that would be a couple of blog posts in itself). Tor is contractually entitled to right of first refusal on my next novel; and while I’d certainly work with them again, it’s not a prospect that floods me with enthusiasm.
At the same time, I’ve reached the point where people actually reach out and solicit my input on other sorts of projects. About 40% of my income this year has been movie-related. I also do the occasional videogame gig, and I take commissions to write both fiction and nonfiction in a variety of outlets most of you will probably not have heard of. (I’ve just finished a story that ties in with a German art exhibition, and another that’s going to appear in a French volume on the works of Arthur Jafa). Those are relatively obscure, but they pay way more than I’d get for a short story on the usual SF platforms (although you may have noticed that I have been getting short stories out on a pretty regular basis).
Finally, I’m self-employed—and a Canadian old-age pension doesn’t come close to life-support levels even assuming it still exists by the time I need it. So while I’m making a decent living now—way better than I ever had any right to expect—I’m not just earning for this year. I’m stashing up for old age (which should be starting about…oh, last January).
Given a choice between lucrative projects for people who value my work, vs. returning to a publisher known for low-balling its midlisters (and who’ve generally treated me as a Difficult Author anyway), it’s an easy call.
Still. That said.
Let me emphasize: I will write more fucking novels. I am wired for that, and I would not change that wiring even if I could. I have in fact been working on Omniscience and new Sunflowers work around the edges. But once I’ve written one, I will have to go on bended knee and ask a publisher if they deem it worthy. They may tell me to fuck off, or offer an advance so low it doesn’t justify my time and effort (probably that second thing—as I understand it, that’s just where the industry is these days). So the gamble is going to take a back seat to the sure thing.
Although hell, I probably could have finished half a chapter of Omniscience in the time it took me to write this comment…
Dr. Watts, you don’t have to write anything if you don’t feel like writing – we love you anyway! 🙂
But I personally would appreciate a short side story from the Blindopraxia universe. We never got to know if Valerie and Sarasti knew about each other, or how did the Theseus crew trainings look like, or any details about that vampire named Gandhi…
Can’t answer that just yet but there is a story set in the Blindopraxia universe that’s been ready to go for a couple of years now. It’s just that the anthology it’s supposed to appear in seems to be on hold for some reason. I do not know the details.
In the meantime, the story is out in French and Polish. And some major N’Am types have liked it a lot, including an astronaut and the cofounder of Neuralink (who thought it was absolutely awesome and wanted to hang out until I told her that the story was actually about all the things that would go catastrophically wrong with Neuralink if it worked as advertised. I never heard frlm her again.)
So it’s in the pipe. Just don’t know when it’s coming out.
Oh… are there any other short stories set in the Blindopraxia universe besides “ZeroS”, “The Colonel” and “Insect Gods”? I was sure I’ve already read everything published in all languages…
> Tor is contractually entitled to right of first refusal on my next novel
Could you write a really half-assed novel about a guy who needs to get out of his deal with an abusive publisher, offer it to them, and thus be done with it?
If that was the only problem, that is.
I kind of did, once. Back when David Hartwell was still alive. Submitted a proposal for a faux-academic “Proceedings of the Biennial Conference on the Evolution and Biology of Vampires”. (I didn’t think it was half-assed, but everyone else thought the idea sucked). Hartwell rejected it, but went on to say that he didn’t consider it my “next novel” so I’d still have to show him the one after that.
Another problem is that the next real novel will probably be Omniscience, and no matter how much it rocks, there aren’t many publishers who are likely to publish the third book of a trilogy whose first two volumes are owned by a competitor. There’s at least one—Head of Zeus over in the UK has also published Blindsight and Echopraxia—but it’s a small pool.
If your contract sucks so bad my advice is challenge Tor’s contract, but you need to be arsed to do it as it would require an IP lawyer.
It can be done. I suspect they’ve breached the terms and conditions, and given your profile, a lot of pressure could be levered against them to either release you from the contract, or remove that first pass clause.
Of course, you have to be arsed to do it.
I’m the guy who didn’t know you were for Ratio in Sofia when we were doing the Pride parade. I’m going to Bulgacon this year, so I guess we’ll meet.
Exporing Plovdiv — I should get you to my favourite place in Kapana.
Maybe not. My wife has Covid. I think I’m getting it too.
Looking over the schedule, I think you’re slotted for four events.
I’ll have to do them online. I’ve just had to cancel the in-person trip. Fucking Covid.
I hope you’re feeling better, you looked quite beat up. Fucking Covid.
Please pay no attention to the doctor’s carbon footprint as he wings over the Atlantic, back and forth and forth. The ends justify the means and good doctor hasn’t reproduced so It’s All Good. It’s shame I have children or I could be rolling coal in a lifted diesel this minute, my conscience as clean as dissonance can make it.
I showed you the chart, dude. The numbers don’t lie. I suspect that any dissonance is all your own.
Although, given the number of times you’ve harped on this point in the past—and given that you continue to do so without introducing any new facts or contradicting any of the claims I’ve made— I suspect we may agree on one thing at least: it’s a shame you have children. Given the father who’s raising them, they could grow up to be jerks.
Just Zoom in to those conferences, good doctor, and I will stop harping. I do feel like a jerk for pointing this issue out every time you mention your international travel, FWIW. But you have taught me to speak my conscience more on environmental paradoxes.
If it’s only a “paradox” to you because you’re too dull to interpret factual evidence (or too much of an intellectual coward to admit you’re wrong), you’re not really ‘speaking your conscience”, right? You’re simply speaking out of your ass.
Also, what’s up with the reproduction references you seem unable to let go of? A bad case of breeder’s remorse?
I think Dr. Watts can defend himself, but “intellectual coward”? NYT gave airplane travel as 1 of 4 significant activities one could curtail as an individual to assist with climate change. I took the list to heart, and especially notice the doublespeak on this item as it remains a habit of the affluent. I call the doctor (and others) out on his airplane travel which seems a touch paradoxical because, well, duh, he’s Peter Watts. I’m no coward, unlike his roadies. Well, I guess I’m as much of a coward as any anonymous internet poster.
The reproduction references earlier conversations on this topic, where he essentially said I contribute much more to climate change than him because I had children. He is correct.
And likely I’m a dull ass, with dull ass little dolt children (no remorse however). But I gave my oldest Blindsight to read last month so there’s that.
“He is correct.”
If you concur that he’s correct, and that the added emissions from air travel can be more than offset by cutting down on other emission-producing activities, thereby reducing one’s overall carbon footprint… what is it that you’re actually arguing?
You’re not only an intellectual coward (doubling down on an argument after it’s been discredited, yet unwilling to find a position he can defend logically), but also an attention-seeking dullard, getting high on his own farts.
“But I gave my oldest Blindsight to read last month so there’s that.”
“But” is typically used to connect contrasting ideas… but I’m no grammarian.
If you’re talking about their “Student Opinion prompt” from 2021 (which is the only NYT piece I could find that lists 4 personal steps), it might be helpful to quote the entire list:
“In reality, the most meaningful change would be to have fewer children. The next three are living car-free, avoiding air travel, and eating a vegetarian diet.”
I can check boxes 1, 2, and I’m about 90% of the way to 4 (I’m mostly vegetarian, although we occasionally eat fish and I’ll very rarely eat red meat in a restaurant— maybe 3 times a year). I’m willing to bet you wouldn’t come close to that, even if all those things had a comparable impact. But in fact, not having a kid has over 24 times the impact of the first runner-up.
You mourned that being a parent constrained you from rolling coal to your heart’s content. In fact, rolling coal would be a far more environmentally friendly choice. On average you’d have to coal-roll each of 5,860 trucks 10,000km/year to match the impact of your sprogs (assuming you only have two). And that’s just the excess carbon resulting from coal-rolling; if you factor in the baseline emissions you’re even worse off.
Bottom line, Greta Thunberg gets to lecture me. You do not.
However.
It’s beyond dispute that neither your personal lifestyle choices nor mine (nor the coal-rollers’, for that matter) matter a good god damn when it comes to the environmental crisis. The problem is systemic: you have to restructure society at large to fix things. Companies have to leave the fossils in the ground; governments have to stop subsidizing the industry; disposable plastics have to be banned, deforestation has to be stopped, conventional growth economics has to be scrapped and replaced with something steady-state. It’s not enough for a few of us to swear off internal-combustion engines when those same engines drive the delivery of the world’s consumer goods. Internal-combustion engines have to be banned at the legislative level. In fact, the whole concept of a carbon footprint has been weaponized by the fossil fuel industry to try and redirect responsibility from corporations to individuals.
I try to eat low on the trophic web, to minimize my ecological (not just carbon) impact. That also factors into my reproductive choices, although to a lesser extent. My dietary choices also reflect my own attitudes towards inflicting unnecessary suffering on sentient organisms. I do this simply because I want to minimize my personal impact, not because I think my choices make a significant global difference.
And when I have the opportunity to spend some of that accumulated capital, to travel and address an audience that might be swayed to my way of thinking, I don’t especially worry about it—because there are potential ecological benefits as well as costs, and because the finger-pointing whatabouters in the audience are virtually guaranteed to be way more guilty than I of whatever gotcha sins they’re railing about this week. It throws into stark relief the fact that those people really don’t give a shit about the environment. When the factory farmer calls out the fly-fisher for cruelty, you know that’s not really what’s at issue. They—you—are fighting about something else entirely.
Exactly what that is, I leave as an exercise for the reader.
Because I’m a librarian, I’ll cite my NYT source which I should have initially…not to rehash the argument, which goes the way of all internet arguments (although I am very diligent in refraining from insults & comments I would not deliver FTF, unlike others here).
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/15/opinion/how-reduce-carbon-footprint-climate-change.html
Also, a fascinating, somewhat unrelated read:
https://studio.ribbonfarm.com/p/a-whole-new-cope?utm_campaign=email-post&r=24la8e&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
I appreciated your lengthy response, Dr. Watts. Seriously touched that you took the time to engage on the thread. Although I was calling your behavior out, I also have enormous respect for you. And will continue to have/ do both.
“although I am very diligent in refraining from insults & comments I would not deliver FTF, unlike others here”
That’s very hurtful, if aimed at my previous comment. I’m infinitely more pleasant and less confrontational online than in person, having put considerable effort over the years into moderating myself in situations where tone, body language, etc., are not part of the conversation. You really ought to consider the impact your words have on others.
Perhaps I was a bit rash in calling you an intellectual coward, or, even worse, a tiresome chud engaging in “Mr. Gotcha” behavior (without an actual “gotcha”), likely due to unresolved inferiority complexes. However, given that you a) refuse to define the point you think you’re making, preferring to skulk out of the discussion when challenged, b) fail to address the question I posed to you in a previous comment, and c) continue to re-bleat an already discredited argument without introducing new material – what option did I really have?
“And will continue to have/ do both.”
And I’m looking forward to every moment of it 🙂