Spiked Lucidity
February 28
Man, Graham Joyce rules. Read his new Lately. Great stuff. And we're gonna be TOC mates in the Year's Best F & H, which also rules. I'm going to be in such embarrassingly good company. I hope no one notices that I don't belong there...
I didn't write an entry (or anything else) last night because of my goddamn finger. My hands were a bit achy from being at the computer and doing other, more annoying hands-based tasks at work, but that got mostly better with some stretching. My right index finger kept hurting, though, so every time I hit a "y" or "j" or "n" or "m" (well, and so on), I hurt. Moreover, I bit the nail on my middle finger down too far (that's a hazard when you're a champion nail-biter like me), thus exposing sensitive ouchy underskin, so every time I hit "i" it hurt. Which did show me that my index finger does rather a lot more of the typing than my middle finger. Which wasn't nearly interesting enough a discovery to make up for the pain.
Heather massaged my hands a bit last night, and it felt good while she was doing it, but the effect didn't last. Anyway, this morning my finger still hurt, much to my annoyance. So at work I reconfigured the mouse to think I was left-handed and spent the morning merrily right-clicking my way through everything (which didn't hurt the middle finger since I hit mouse buttons with the pads of my fingers, not the tips). And I took painkiller, because the finger was aching. But the painkiller's surely worn off by now, and no pain, so here I am, la.
Um. Backtracking. Yesterday I bought The Wooden Sea by Carroll, and MacLeod's Cosmonaut Keep because it's supposed to be good and I want to read more science fiction, and Broderick's The Spike (his term for what Vinge termed "the technological Singularity"; basically, the point at which technological developments alter the world so significantly that we literally can't imagine what the world will be like from that point on; predictions are pointless). The book's neat, a survey of the thinking on the subject along with some of Broderick's own ideas... fascinating stuff, nanotech, mind-uploads, true VR, biotech, life extension... heady, scary, cool things. I want to be immortal (and yes, I do, really, I've thought it through quite a lot and heard all the objections and considered them and I still want to live forever, if I can be healthy in mind & body (or whatever analogue to mind & body we're talking about)), but I want immortality because I want to hang out in coffee shops and read and write and shoot the breeze forever, and the future world might be so different that such things are silly or pointless or whatever. But I've got another thirty years or so before the Spike looms into view, assuming it ever does, so I won't worry about it too much yet.
Another random point (as this is a random-bouncy kind of entry): if death is eradicated (and don't laugh too hard; even many conservative thinkers are saying that's not such a far-out notion), what does that do to literature? Especially fantasy, which so often deals with death? I mean, my descendents (even maybe my children) could be utterly baffled by all this stuff about death and dying. Which on one hand is pretty cool. On the other hand... man. It boggles the mind. Such literature will only function as death in the Tarot does, as a metaphor for change...
Of course, it's likely that beyond the Singularity, literature will have no more relevance to most people than, say, cave painting or whale-oil lamps do now.
But there might be even cooler stuff...
Heather and I talked talked talked about this stuff last night; she got a bit annoyed with me. I'm optimistic about the future, because, hell, why not be optimistic? Doomsday scenarios are easy and depressing; Interesting semi-Utopias are more fun for daydreaming anyway.
The Spike is good (I'm about halfway through it). I recommend it for an overview of the subject of the really rapidly approaching future. It's smart and well-written and fairly balanced, though Broderick is personally one of the wild-eyed optimists, I think. Which I am, too, as far as that goes.
Hmm. We worked out last night. Had some yummy burger kind of dinner. Frolicked. Had a nice time. Today I got a 2-month rejection from Chizine. Ah, well; it may be time to retire that little horror story...
Very busy but basically uninteresting day at work today. I put in columns, I did a little job-related writing, I drove to distant post offices. That's all. There was one beautiful moment, though, when I was out on the deck (lugging a heavy box) and the wind picked up and scattered white flower petals in the air, and it was a wonderful lightly perfumed snowstorm. Nice. Made me smile for a bit.
Ah, last night I also had my first lucid dream... pretty fascinating. It was only briefly lucid, but I remember clearly that moment of realizing that I was dreaming, that I could choose to do a simple thing (like look at my hands, as Graham Joyce's lucid-dreamer characters learn to do in Dreamside). Once I looked at my hands, the sucking inertia of the dream fell away, the gravity that was pulling me along, and I backtracked, I went back the way I'd come in the dream, conscious. It was hard, and weird, and vague, and I kept losing track of what I was trying to do, but it was happening, it was cool. Mmm. Very neat.
This evening I called Meg, and packed to go to Jenn's wedding! Hooray! We'll be gone until sometime Sunday, so don't expect an update until next week. I'll catch you up on any fun cool stuff then, though. Ta.
February Solitary Short-Story Dare (now with bonus poetry & reviews!)
Total words written: 21,250
Words written today: El Zilcho.
Stories written this month: "Henchman Blues"
"On the Underworld Line"
"Melancholy Shore"
"In the Seventh Circle"
Poems written this month: "Dreaming Apep"
"Poor Bahumut"
"Laughing Blood"
"Future History"
Reviews written this month: Your breath in a bottle.
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