{"id":5933,"date":"2015-05-24T07:33:19","date_gmt":"2015-05-24T15:33:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=5933"},"modified":"2015-05-24T18:08:38","modified_gmt":"2015-05-25T02:08:38","slug":"aurora-campbell-panoptopus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=5933","title":{"rendered":"Aurora Campbell Panoptopus."},"content":{"rendered":"

Some of you may have noticed that Echopraxia<\/em> made it onto the longest short list<\/a> in SF a few weeks back: the ballot for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel<\/a>. On the plus side (for me), it’s one of those jury-selected deals, so it’s not a popularity contest like the Hugos. (These days, it’s an especially big deal to not be like the Hugos.) On the minus side, well, there are 15 other finalists<\/em>, almost all of whom are more famous\/accomplished than me. So there’s that.<\/p>\n

I didn’t mention it at the time, because on its own it would have made for a pretty insubstantial blog post. Plus there was another impending nom that was embargoed until\u2014 actually, until just last night, and I figured the post might be a bit more substantive if I stacked to two of them together. So: Echopraxia <\/em>also made it onto best-novel final ballot for the Auroras<\/a>, which consists of a much-more-manageable 5 nominees but which is<\/em> kind of a popularity contest. Plus the competition is generally more famous\/accomplished than me. (Like I’m gonna beat William fucking Gibson. Right.) As chance would have it, this year’s Auroras are being presented at SFContario, where I’m supposed to be serving as both Guest of Honour and Toastmaster. I’ve never been a toastmaster before. I’m still\\not entirely sure what one even is. Assuming it’s not some kind of fetish thing revolving around baked goods, I gather it has something to do with presenting the Auroras. I should probably check with the concomm about stepping down, to avoid a conflict of interest.<\/p>\n

I am<\/em> gratified to see certain finalists in other categories, though: you could certainly do worse than vote for Sandra Kasturi’s Chiaroscuro Reading Series in the Best Fan Organizational<\/em> category, for example. And if Erik Mohr doesn’t win for Best Artist<\/em> there’s little justice in the world.<\/p>\n

Anyway. I figure my chances of winning either prize are somewhere between low and negligible\u2014 but that’s okay, because I just hit a bullseye in something else without even trying. To wit:<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople talk about the eyes,\u201d he continued after a bit. \u201cYou know, how amazing it is that something without a backbone could have eyes like ours, eyes that put ours to shame even. And the way they change color, right? The way they blend into the background. Eyes gotta figure front and center in that too, you\u2019d think.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019d think.\u201d<\/p>\n

Guo shook his head. \u201cIt\u2019s all just\u2014 reflex. I mean, maybe that little neuron doughnut has its own light on somewhere, you\u2019d think it would pretty much have to, but I guess the interface didn\u2019t access that part. Either that or it just got\u2014 drowned out\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014Me, on this very blog<\/a>, April 30, 2015.<\/p>\n

\"Octopus<\/a>

Octopus chromatophores. The Panoptopus. Skin that looks back at you.<\/p><\/div>\n

Octopuses can mimic the color and texture of a rock or a piece of coral… But before a cephalopod can take on a new disguise, it needs to perceive the background that it is going to blend into. Cephalopods have large, powerful eyes to take in their surroundings. But two new studies in The Journal Experimental Biology suggest that they have another way to perceive light: their skin. It\u2019s possible that these animals have, in effect, evolved a body-wide eye.<\/p>\n

Carl Zimmer, New York Times<\/a>, May 20, 2015<\/p>\n

Here, we present molecular evidence suggesting that cephalopod chromatophores \u2013 small dermal pigmentary organs that reflect various colors of light \u2013 are photosensitive. … This is the first evidence that cephalopod dermal tissues, and specifically chromatophores, may possess the requisite combination of molecules required to respond to light.<\/p>\n

\u2014ACN Kingston et al<\/em>, Journal of Experimental Biology<\/a>, May 15, 2015<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u2026our data suggest that a common molecular mechanism for light detection in eyes may have been co-opted for light sensing in octopus skin.<\/p>\n

\u2014Ramirez and Oakly, Journal of Experimental Biology<\/a>, May 15, 2015<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Beat them by two weeks<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Okay, so maybe not an absolute bullseye. That little fiblet I wrote went on to describe octopus sensation as involving “this vague distant sense of light I guess, if you really focus you can sort of squint down the optic nerve, but mostly it\u2019s\u2014 chemical. Taste and touch.” My focus was on the arms, those individually self-aware arms<\/em>, and I explicitly claimed that “they don’t see”. Pretty much everything was chemical and tactile. But it was still pretty close<\/em> to a bullseye\u2014in my attempts to downplay vision and outsource everything to the arms, I described the whole pattern-matching thing as a reflex which didn’t really involve the eyes at all. There was no real insight in that\u2014 it’s not as though I’ve been following the octopus literature with any kind of eagle eye\u2014 but to me, that’s what makes it cool. I threw a dart, blindfolded; just hitting the board is an accomplishment. And now that actual data are in, I can tart up the final draft with some actual verisimilitude before sending it off to Russia.<\/p>\n

I love it when the complete lack of a plan comes together.<\/p>\n

Oh, also: there’s some cool rifters fan art from “Toa-Lagara<\/a>” I stumbled across on Deviant Art. I’ll post it in the appropriate gallery once I get permission from the artist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some of you may have noticed that Echopraxia made it onto the longest short list in SF a few weeks back: the ballot for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. On the plus side (for me), it’s one of those jury-selected deals, so it’s not a popularity contest like the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,21,22,10,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-on-ink","category-biology","category-marine","category-neuro","category-writing-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5933","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=5933"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5949,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5933\/revisions\/5949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}