{"id":2689,"date":"2012-01-19T17:59:44","date_gmt":"2012-01-20T01:59:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=2689"},"modified":"2012-01-19T18:00:33","modified_gmt":"2012-01-20T02:00:33","slug":"mind-melds-chimeras-remixes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=2689","title":{"rendered":"Mind Melds, Chimeras, Remixes."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m thinking about the whole should-we-or-shouldn&#8217;t-we dilemma regarding the release of research into genetically-modified avian flu.\u00a0 I&#8217;m reading about pros and cons.\u00a0 I&#8217;m trying very hard to make sure that impartial empiricism doesn&#8217;t get overwhelmed by my visceral desire for a planet-scouring megademic (there:\u00a0 that ought to provide enough fodder to keep Lanius happy for a while).<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not quite ready to talk about it yet, though.\u00a0 Probably in a couple of days.<\/p>\n<p>In the meantime, a few links have accumulated that some of you might find interesting:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Geneticist Ellen Giorgi <a href=\"http:\/\/chimerasthebooks.blogspot.com\/2012\/01\/tackling-mysteries-of-evolution-peter.html\">interviews me<\/a> on her blog <em>Chimeras<\/em>.\u00a0 It covers the usual bases \u2014 Creative Commons, the inspiration behind <em>Blindsight<\/em>, my rocky relationship with the publishing industry and the complementary mistresses (mistressii?) of Science and Fiction in my life \u2014 and those of you who&#8217;ve been compulsively stalking me for decades won&#8217;t find anything really new there.\u00a0 Those of you who&#8217;ve adopted more healthy pastimes, though, might find it interesting.<\/li>\n<li>Likewise, in that brief post-holiday lull during which I unexpectedly had a few minutes of free time, I got a chance to weigh in once again over at <em>Mind Meld<\/em>: this time, on the question of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sfsignal.com\/archives\/2012\/01\/mind-meld-current-politics-in-sff\/\">how SF writers should respond to the politics of their time<\/a>.\u00a0 I&#8217;m up there with Heather Massey, Paul Graham Raven, Rachel Swirsky,\u00a0 and Chris Brown \u2014 and if my thoughts on the subject aren&#8217;t quite as depthy as theirs, they are at least far more vulgar.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/AmbientThings.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-2690\" style=\"margin: 10px;\" title=\"AmbientThings\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/AmbientThings.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"375\" height=\"285\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/AmbientThings.jpg 469w, https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/AmbientThings-300x227.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 375px) 100vw, 375px\" \/><\/a>Finally, a treat for whatever fraction of the base that can&#8217;t get enough of &#8220;The Things&#8221;.\u00a0 There&#8217;ve been a couple of multimedia interpretations of that story \u2014 Jes\u00fas Olmo put together a wonderful digital coffee-table book of the story that laid the text up against morphing fractal graphics, and I seem to recall a weird little video somewhere online where 8-bit Star Trek characters moved around in a pixelated snowstorm to stage directions lifted from &#8220;The Things&#8221;&#8216;s prose.\u00a0 (And if anyone can provide a link to prove I didn&#8217;t hallucinate that, I&#8217;d be grateful.\u00a0 I&#8217;m typing this after two bottles of Fuzion at the Duke of Somerset, so I&#8217;m not really in comprehensive-search mode.)\u00a0 Anyway, a recent random ego-surf led me to a two-part <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=jsJoit7EQU4\">video remix<\/a> (second part <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=NPSKmD7dfr8&amp;feature=related\">here<\/a>) of Kate Baker&#8217;s sublime reading:\u00a0 it&#8217;s the same haunting performance you&#8217;ll find at the <a href=\"http:\/\/clarkesworldmagazine.com\/audio_01_10\/\">Clarkesworld download site<\/a>, but set to an ambient soundscape and a series of Ken-Burns-like slow pans across wastelands both Antarctic and interstellar, shapeless multicolored aurorae, translucent anatomical humanoids with bioluminescent viscera; impressionistic pencil sketches and menacing Malamutes.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t know who this <em>alexander3333333 <\/em>guy is (although he seems to like NIN, which is a good sign), but he&#8217;s put together quite the hypnotic performance, if you&#8217;re not yet sick of the story and you have an hour to kill.\u00a0 Personally, I like it a lot.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m thinking about the whole should-we-or-shouldn&#8217;t-we dilemma regarding the release of research into genetically-modified avian flu.\u00a0 I&#8217;m reading about pros and cons.\u00a0 I&#8217;m trying very hard to make sure that impartial empiricism doesn&#8217;t get overwhelmed by my visceral desire for a planet-scouring megademic (there:\u00a0 that ought to provide enough fodder to keep Lanius happy for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ink-on-art","category-interviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2689"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2702,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2689\/revisions\/2702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}