Extended Phenotype

Iron Sunrise, Stross’s sequel to Singularity Sky, was terrific, though not perhaps quite as good as the first.  Although I suspect some of this could simply be that — as a sequel — it didn’t provide the newness and thrill of discovery that one gets from reading a new author constructing a new world.  That aside, Stross manages to weave together the age-old tale of military imperialism alongside echoes of fascism coupled with biological control taken to extremes; all of this is done quite convincingly. 

The only sad thing is that I’m running out of good "serious" hard science fiction to read…I don’t bother anymore reading science fiction that doesn’t have a fairly serious look at science, technology, and their social implications; without this kind of realism, speculative fiction increasingly fails to hold my interest.  I find that I’m less and less interested in fantasy, with the exception, of course, of Tolkein.  At any rate, I enjoyed the Stross and am looking forward to Accelerando later this year.

I had a whirlwind trip to Philadelphia this week, and given non-direct flights from Seattle I managed to read a couple more books; both science fiction.  I suspect I’m taking a bit of a break on non-fiction, since I’d also taken Michael Freeden’s Liberal Languages:  Ideological Imaginations and Twentieth-Century Progressive Thought, which I cracked but only read the introduction. 

As a digression, the airports were awful this week.  Who knew that so many people traveled for Easter?  Or is it a combination of spring break and Easter?  Regardless, the airports were jammed with groups of schoolkids and families, and the security lines were brutal.  But that gave me plenty of time standing or sitting around to read. 

Book #18 was Chris Moriarity’s debut novel, Spin State.  Spin State is a combination of hard science fiction (i.e., at least pseudo-accurate physics) and a political thriller, with a dash of cyber-punk thrown in for good measure.  The mixture was hypnotic, and I read it pretty much in a straight shot (6 hours of plane flights and a fully charged iPod helped out…).  The sequel is coming out mid-2005, apparently, and given the quality of his first novel I eagerly await Moriarty’s second. 

Book #19 was Ken MacLeod’s Newton’s Wake, hastily bought at O’Hare after finishing Spin State and concluding that I was much too tired and spaced out to spend a four-and-a-half hour flight trying to focus on Liberal Languages.  Not a bad novel, another in a series of books I’ve read lately that focus on the after-effects of technological singularity.  MacLeod is a friend of Charles Stross, the author of Singularity Sky, so I thought I’d get a taste of his work.  I like Stross better, given my limited sample, but I don’t regret reading Newton’s Wake by any means. 

But what I’m really hoping on the science fiction front is to see a next novel from Greg Egan.  I still haven’t gotten over the amazement of my first reading of Diaspora.  I recommend the latter very highly, but it’s not an easy read if you’re not fascinated by artificial intelligence, software, and some reasonably heavy physics. 

On miscellaneous readings, the cover article on Justice Scalia in the current New Yorker is excellent; not much surprising about his jurisprudence but overall a very solid biographical piece and description of his legal philosophy.  And the Lukacs piece in New York Review of Books this week, reprinting his foreword to Siege of Budapest is also superb.

Rainy weekend, and I happened to stumble into the University Bookstore yesterday, and picked up Singularity Sky.

I thoroughly enjoyed it, though stylistically it was very different than the almost whimsical Atrocity Archives. In the latter, one always had the sense that the author was writing tongue-in-cheek, not quite taking himself or the story that seriously. Not quite Douglas Adams whimsical, but close to the tone of Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series, of which I’m a huge fan. Singularity Sky is quite different — a space opera combined with a political take on runaway technological evolution. I would have enjoyed more detail on the social consequences of technological singularity, and perhaps less detailed description of space battle tactics, but this is a minor point (and likely an idiosynratic preference).

And now, it’s back to more serious reading. Soros’ Open Society is boring me a fair bit, mostly because I’m finding his method of building up his economic critique from first principles long-winded and philosophically simplistic. And naturally, since I agree with his goals of fostering open societies (which requires a careful balance between regulation, social justice, and healthy capitalism), what I’m hoping is that the middle bits, where I get to read specifics on his economic thinking, will be worth the slog. And, of course, occasional dips in the Penrose pool, but I’m doing that sparingly since I lack the background to read it quickly.