{"id":6129,"date":"2015-08-03T13:12:21","date_gmt":"2015-08-03T21:12:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=6129"},"modified":"2015-08-26T13:06:47","modified_gmt":"2015-08-26T21:06:47","slug":"a-young-squids-illustrated-primer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=6129","title":{"rendered":"A Young Squid’s Illustrated Primer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part the First: Liminal<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Apparently,<\/a>

Apparently, this is how Jasun Horsley sees me. I presume I’m the one on the right. (non-Old-One elements by Maria Nyg\u00e5rd).<\/p><\/div>\n

I recently did a kind of free-form interview<\/a> with fellow US-border-guard-detainee Jasun Horsley, for his Liminalist podcast. It went okay, if you discount the fact that the Skype connection seemed to go dead without warning every couple of minutes. I certainly hope<\/em> that we repeated our respective Qs and As often enough to redundify those gaps\u2014 I note that, while we spoke for over two hours, the podcast itself weighs in at only one (including some nifty little musical interludes). Given the number of dropouts, that seems about right.<\/p>\n

I’m listening to the final result even as I type, and so far my giddy enthusiasm isn’t quite loud enough to distract from the random boluses of dead air that shut me up every now and then. I do not envy Jasun the editing job it took to beat the raw recording into shape.<\/p>\n

He also wrote a companion essay, “Neuro-Deviance and the Evolutionary Function of Depression<\/a>“, from the perspective of someone halfway through Starfish<\/em>. I think the Neuro-Deviant is supposed to be me.<\/p>\n

Anyway, the on-site blurb describes our interaction as<\/p>\n

…a roving and rifting conversation with Jasun about killing Jake (the One) and integrative therapy courtship, Lonesome Bob\u2019s death ballad, Peter\u2019s marine biology years, the initial impetus, Peter\u2019s childhood \u201cEveryone can have their own aquarium!\u201d epiphany, astronaut dreams, getting off the planet, Jasun\u2019s views on space travel (again), a bleak ET future for mankind, the ultimate displacement activity, Interstellar\u2019s message, space travel benefits, the military agenda, 2001: A Space Odyssey opposing views, the hope for higher intelligence, determinism vs. transcendence, rejecting the duality of spiritual-material, how neurons are purely reactive, fizzy meat, the psychology of determinism, response vs. reaction, selective perception, truth and survival, depression\u2019s correlation (or equivalence) with reality-perception, God and the anti-predator response, three men in a jungle, how natural selection shapes us to be paranoid, how anxiety allows us to see patterns, the many doings of paranoia, shaping the outside to match the inside (the devil made me do it), seeking the perks of depression, how depression fuels creativity, a thought experiment, is removing the lows desirable, depression as a new stage in human development, the difference between biology and psychology, the psyche and Behemoth, the pointlessness of survival, he who dies with most kid wins, what science is missing, the hard problem of consciousness, the difference between intelligence and consciousness, nipples on men, the best kind of mystery, the language variable, what if consciousness is mal-adaptive?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think I remember most of that stuff.<\/p>\n

(I would like to apologize, by the way, for repeating to Jasun the oversimplification that neurons only fire when externally provoked; I’ve been recently informed that neurons sometimes do<\/em> fire spontaneously, as a result of changes to their internal state. Ultimately, of course, those internal states have to reflect some kind of historical cell-environment interaction, but I should probably start using a more nuanced bumper-sticker anyway.)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0*<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Part the Second: Scramblers<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0Last week’s ego-surf turned up this great little illustration from Deviant Artist “Alienietzsche<\/a>“\u2014 whose vision of Blindsight<\/em>‘s scramblers is perhaps the closest I’ve seen to the images that were floating around in my own head while I was writing about those crawly little guys. This is going straight into the Gallery, with thanks and with ol ‘Nietzsche’s blessing.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

\u00a0*<\/p>\n

Part the Third: Lemmings<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"If<\/a>

If you look closely (you may have to click to embiggen), you’ll see that the plankton sliding into the astronauts bootprints look kind of like neurons.Yeah, well, I was only thirteen.<\/p>\n

<\/p><\/div>\n

I recently told the Polish website Kawerna<\/a> about a few of the novels that had had the greatest influence on me (they asked, in case you’re wondering; it’s not like I called them up in the middle of the night and forced my unsolicited opinions down their throat or anything). You won’t be surprised to learn that one of those titles was Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris<\/em>. You may, however, be unaware of the profound resentment that book instilled within me when I first discovered it:<\/p>\n

I spent most of my thirteenth summer trapped in a basement apartment in some Oregonian hick town, with little to do but read while my dad attended summer classes at the local university. I beach-combed on weekends, though\u2014 and while wandering Oregon’s coast that summer, my adolescent brain cooked up the idea of an intelligent ocean<\/em>\u2014 a kind of diffuse neural network in which the plankton acted as neurons. I was going to write a story about it, even penciled a couple of sketches based on the idea.<\/p>\n

Two weeks later I discovered Solaris<\/em> in the local library. I’ve kind of resented Lem ever since…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Kawerna assignment inspired me to dig back through the archives to see if I could find any of those sketches\u2014 and I did<\/em> find a few, yellowed, moldy, nibbled by silverfish in their cheap plastic frames. I present one here, as evidence that while I may not have come up with the idea for Solaris<\/em> before Lem did, I at least came up with it before I knew that Lem had. Which wasn’t bad, for a thirteen-year-old stuck in a basement while his Dad took post-graduate Bible-Study classes.<\/p>\n

\u00a0*<\/p>\n

Part the Last: Reprint Roll<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"dsc_00012\"<\/a>Specialty micropress “Spacecraft Press<\/a>” has released an extremely-limited-edition reprint of “The Things” as a chapbook, printed on a kind of translucent plasticy paper and inventively formatted in a manner more reminiscent of free verse than of prose. And I’m not kidding when I say “extremely-limited”: the total print run was only 21, which\u2014 when it comes to my work at least\u2014 is significantly fewer copies than even Tor usually loads into a print run. And only ten of those are available for sale (or would be, if they hadn’t already sold out). I guess this explains the eleven copies of “The Things” that appeared in my mailbox the other day.<\/p>\n

\"If<\/a>

You’ll note that the Introduction is written by someone who does not write Science Fiction at all.<\/p><\/div>\n

Last, and probably least\u2014 not because of lesser importance, but because the news is a week old by now, and has already been trumpeted on every social medium from HoloBook to carrier pigeon\u2014 legendary Canadian publisher ChiZine has announced the contents<\/a> of this year’s Imaginarium 4: The Best Canadian Speculative Fiction.<\/em> “Giants” is in there, but it almost wasn’t. It was supposed to be “Collateral” until a few weeks ago\u2014 and before that, it was supposed to be “The Colonel”. I’m actually kind of pleased things finally fell out the way they did; I’ve always had a soft spot for “Giants”, even if it hasn’t got the love that “Collateral” and “the Colonel” have in terms of year-end collections. Still, I can’t help but notice that “Giants” is also the shortest of the three, word-count-wise\u2014 which makes me wonder if a more appropriate subtitle might be The Best Canadian Speculative Fiction that fits into 300 pages or less.<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s all good, though.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Epilog:<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have come to the end of Jasun’s podcast at almost the same time I’ve come to the end of this post; turns out it’s only part one of a two-parter, to be continued this Wednesday. Which is odd, because\u2014 while I recognize all the bits I’ve just heard coming through my laptop speakers\u2014 I don’t remember anything missing from that dialog.<\/p>\n

Now I’m going to lie awake all night, wondering what else we talked about.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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