{"id":7229,"date":"2017-04-12T10:33:53","date_gmt":"2017-04-12T18:33:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=7229"},"modified":"2017-04-18T08:06:42","modified_gmt":"2017-04-18T16:06:42","slug":"noms-and-cons-and-metal-alms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=7229","title":{"rendered":"Noms and Cons and Metal Alms"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"font-size: 120%;\">\n<p>Stuff&#8217;s been piling up in the wings as a side-effect of my ongoing battle against ego creep\u2014 enough now, as it turns out, to warrant a whole catch-all catch-up post in its own right. And since some of the following travel plans might intersect with the occasional fan, I should probably outline where I&#8217;m going to be for the next few months. And why I&#8217;m not going to be <em>here<\/em> all that often.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Road Trips.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I already mentioned that I&#8217;m going to be at Pyrkon a couple weeks down the road. For those who will be in attendance, <del>I&#8217;ve now got a preliminary listing of my panels in hand<\/del> [update: actual times and schedules!]:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>(Fri, 28 April, 18:30, Sala Ziemi): Peter Watts &#8211; Q&amp;A<\/li>\n<li>(Fri, 28 April, 19:30, Aula 2): [Panel] How to make one&#8217;s debut?<\/li>\n<li>(Fri, 28 April, 21:00, Aula 2): [Panel] False morality<\/li>\n<li>(Sat, 29 April, 13:00, Autografy): Autograph session<\/li>\n<li>(Sat, 29 April, 17:30, Aula 2): [Panel] My life in my hands: does free will exist?<\/li>\n<li>(Sat, 29 April, 19:00, Aula 2): Worst-case Neuroscenarios from the Peanut Gallery<\/li>\n<li>(Sat, 29 April, 20:30, Aula 2): [Panel] The limits of humanity and playing God<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>All characteristically Polish in outlook, except for that second one (and even it would fit if they just swapped out &#8220;make one&#8217;s debut&#8221; for &#8220;meet one&#8217;s end&#8221;).<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Worst-case Neuroscenarios&#8221; is a solo talk. About 50 slides so far, although I can&#8217;t seem to get the <em>gom jabbar<\/em> clip from &#8220;Dune&#8221; to render properly in Irfanview. (Stupid Lenovo Thinkpad. This stuff always worked fine on the Asus, before I punched it.)<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re sneaking into Poznan after a few days in Warsaw and sneaking out again via Berlin, where <a href=\"http:\/\/caitlinsweet.com\/\">the BUG<\/a> and I will be reading at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.otherland-berlin.de\/de\/event-leser\/peter-watts-und-caitlin-sweet-zu-gast-im-otherland.html\">Otherland bookstore<\/a> on May 3rd. Not yet sure what I&#8217;ll read, although it&#8217;ll be from either the Sunflowers novella I&#8217;m currently finishing or the David-Bowie-themed piece of military SF I recently finished for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Infinity-Wars-Jonathan-Strahan\/dp\/1781084912\/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1491960396&amp;sr=1-5&amp;keywords=Infinity+Jonathan+Strahan\">latest installment<\/a> of Jonathan Strahan&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/s\/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&amp;field-keywords=Infinity+Jonathan+Strahan&amp;rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3AInfinity+Jonathan+Strahan\"><em>Fill-in-the-Blank Infinity<\/em><\/a> series. (<del>It&#8217;s coming out this fall, by the way; not seeing any cover art yet.<\/del> Cover art and contents <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jonathanstrahan.com.au\/wp\/2017\/04\/05\/infinity-wars\/\">over here<\/a>.) Pretty much all the fiblets I&#8217;ve posted this year hail from one or the other, but there&#8217;s plenty of yet-unposted stuff to choose from.<\/p>\n<p>Bulgaria in June. I&#8217;m giving a talk at the <a href=\"https:\/\/translate.google.com\/translate?hl=en&amp;sl=bg&amp;u=http:\/\/ratio.bg\/&amp;prev=search\">Ratio Symposium<\/a>, which frighteningly is not SF but straight-up pop science\u2014 usually delivered by leading lights and actual experts in their fields, not half-assed pretenders who happened to make a lucky guess ten years ago. I keep telling this to the organizers, but they seem to want me anyway.\u00a0 They&#8217;ve booked my tickets, so if this is all a cruel hoax it&#8217;s an elaborate one.<\/p>\n<p>Still trying to figure out that talk. If I wanted to focus on <em>my<\/em> own area of current expertise, I&#8217;d give one on dealing with stained pants.<\/p>\n<p>The Ukraine in September; I&#8217;ll be at the Lviv International Book Fair &amp; Literature Festival from the 13-17th, which I&#8217;m told will coincide with the release of the Ukrainian edition of <em>Blindsight<\/em>. Also Lviv is evidently the birthplace of Stanislaw Lem, and has many fine drinking establishments. (This seems to be a recurring motif; people in Warsaw, Berlin, Sofia, and Lviv have all emphasized unto me the quality of their local drinking establishments. Go figure.)<\/p>\n<p>Lviv appears to be the go-to place for various festivals, and much as I&#8217;m looking forward to the literary one I can&#8217;t help but cast a wistful eye over references to the annual &#8220;Coffee and Chocolate Feast&#8221; and the intriguing &#8220;Feast of Pampukh&#8221;, an event I would very much like to attend if for no other reason than to find out what a &#8220;pampukh&#8221; is.\u00a0 I&#8217;m thinking, maybe a gaff used by eighteenth-century whalers to hook porpoises and heft them over the gunwales.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><strong>Fish. To Mars.<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_7230\" style=\"width: 298px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/poster_test_01-ensmallened.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-7230\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7230\" class=\" wp-image-7230\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/poster_test_01-ensmallened.jpg\" alt=\"Note the cool spirally spine. Remind you of anything?\" width=\"288\" height=\"403\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/poster_test_01-ensmallened.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/poster_test_01-ensmallened-214x300.jpg 214w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 288px) 100vw, 288px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-7230\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Note the cool spirally spine. Remind you of anything?<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Those are the road trips, although there might also be a Skype appearance at the Bergen Aquarium on May 31 for, well\u2026<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">I don&#8217;t know exactly how to describe this. It&#8217;s kind of a teaser for a currently-under-development post-apocalyptic Norwegian Black Metal Science Opera about sending Marbled Lungfish to Mars. I&#8217;m told the embargo&#8217;s lifted this week so I can talk about it, but I don&#8217;t want to tread on anyone&#8217;s toes just yet so it&#8217;s probably best to keep it vague. Suffice to say the project seems to be drawing in talent from a number of different institutions, scientific and musical.\u00a0 We&#8217;ve got head-bangers. We&#8217;ve got classical librettists. We&#8217;ve got marine biologists (<em>real<\/em> ones, not Twentieth-century dropouts clinging to some shred of credibility by sticking technical references onto the end of their SF novels). I am apparently responsible for the basic storyline, and I&#8217;ve got the co-discoverer of Dark Energy checking my astrophysics. No pressure there at all. (I hope to meet the guy in person some day. I&#8217;ve got a bone to pick with him. That discovery of his is directly responsible for one of my stories going from cutting-edge when it was written, to completely obsolete when it was published.)<\/p>\n<p>In the meantime, I&#8217;m told it&#8217;s okay to share this protoype promotional art by <a href=\"http:\/\/kimholm.com\/\">Kim Holm<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Nom.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Finally this, just over the transom: B\u00e9lial\u2019s edition of <em>Beyond the Rift<\/em> (<em>Au-del<\/em><em>\u00e0 du gouffre<\/em>) has made the finals for France&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/gpi.noosfere.org\/2017.php\">Grand Prix de l\u2019Imaginaire<\/a> under the &#8220;Foreign Short Fiction&#8221; category. I&#8217;m up against some heavy hitters so I&#8217;m not getting my hopes up\u2014 but hey, any excuse to trot out <a href=\"http:\/\/bureau21.net\/13-manchu\/\">Manchu<\/a>&#8216;s awesome cover art one more time, am I right?<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_7231\" style=\"width: 607px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/FrawnshRift.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-7231\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7231\" class=\"wp-image-7231\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/FrawnshRift-1024x507.jpg\" alt=\"Especially since this is also up for a Prix in the art category...\" width=\"597\" height=\"296\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/FrawnshRift-1024x507.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/FrawnshRift-300x149.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/FrawnshRift-768x380.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/FrawnshRift.jpg 1952w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 597px) 100vw, 597px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-7231\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Especially since this is also up for a Prix in the art category&#8230;<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stuff&#8217;s been piling up in the wings as a side-effect of my ongoing battle against ego creep\u2014 enough now, as it turns out, to warrant a whole catch-all catch-up post in its own right. And since some of the following travel plans might intersect with the occasional fan, I should probably outline where I&#8217;m going [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-the-road","category-public-interface","category-writing-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7229","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=7229"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7248,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7229\/revisions\/7248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}