MachineMachine /stream - tagged with sci-fi http://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sweetcron text@machinemachine.net The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick http://www.nytimes.com//the-new-york-times-breaking-news-world-news-amp-multimedia RT @nytimes: The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick — Edited by Pamela Jackson, Jonathan Lethem and Erik Davis — Book Review http://t.co/yrrheIoS ]]> Sun, 18 Dec 2011 03:20:23 -0700 http://www.nytimes.com//the-new-york-times-breaking-news-world-news-amp-multimedia Never go with a cultist to a second location http://www.metafilter.com/110638/Never-go-with-a-cultist-to-a-second-location?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter/never-go-with-a-cultist-to-a-second-location-metafilter Alan Moore talks about HP Lovecraft, The Courtyard and Neonomicon (audio) http://t.co/IZyHeXiW ]]> Sun, 18 Dec 2011 03:05:45 -0700 http://www.metafilter.com/110638/Never-go-with-a-cultist-to-a-second-location?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter/never-go-with-a-cultist-to-a-second-location-metafilter Out of Imagination Came a New Online World http://www.nytimes.com//the-new-york-times-breaking-news-world-news-amp-multimedia Out of Imagination Came a New Online World: http://t.co/n5mJpqB6 / '#NealStephenson doesn’t like talking about how he predicted the future.' ]]> Wed, 07 Dec 2011 06:06:07 -0700 http://www.nytimes.com//the-new-york-times-breaking-news-world-news-amp-multimedia Innovation Starvation http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/fall2011/innovation-starvation SF has changed over the span of time I am talking about—from the 1950s (the era of the development of nuclear power, jet airplanes, the space race, and the computer) to now. Speaking broadly, the techno-optimism of the Golden Age of SF has given way to fiction written in a generally darker, more skeptical and ambiguous tone. I myself have tended to write a lot about hackers—trickster archetypes who exploit the arcane capabilities of complex systems devised by faceless others. ]]> Sun, 02 Oct 2011 04:47:54 -0700 http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/fall2011/innovation-starvation Brundlefly http://tumblr.machinemachine.net/post/10397814620

Brundlefly

]]> Mon, 19 Sep 2011 01:25:49 -0700 http://tumblr.machinemachine.net/post/10397814620 How to Read Lacan - Troubles with the Real: Lacan as a Viewer of Alien http://www.lacan.com/zizalien.htm/slavoj-zizek-how-to-read-lacan-troubles-with-the-real-lacan-as-a-viewer-of-alien Slavoj Zizek on how to read Lacan (hint: watch #Alien and #TheThing) : http://t.co/m8CjaBV #horror #SciFi #theory #cinema #x ]]> Mon, 05 Sep 2011 00:41:21 -0700 http://www.lacan.com/zizalien.htm/slavoj-zizek-how-to-read-lacan-troubles-with-the-real-lacan-as-a-viewer-of-alien Novelists Predict Future With Eerie Accuracy http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/sunday-review/novelists-predict-future-with-eerie-accuracy.html/novelists-predict-future-with-eerie-accuracy-nytimescom "The dirty little secret of speculative fiction is that it’s hard to go wrong predicting things will get worse" : http://t.co/Qxb6kZh #x ]]> Sun, 04 Sep 2011 18:12:49 -0700 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/sunday-review/novelists-predict-future-with-eerie-accuracy.html/novelists-predict-future-with-eerie-accuracy-nytimescom Kipple and Things: How to Hoard and Why Not To Mean http://machinemachine.net/text/ideas/kipple-and-things

This is paper (more of an essay, really) was originally delivered at the Birkbeck/London Consortium ‘Rubbish Symposium‘, 30th July 2011

Living at the very limit of his means, Philip K. Dick, a two-bit, pulp sci-fi author, was having a hard time maintaining his livelihood. It was the 1950s and Dick was living with his second wife, Kleo, in a run-down apartment in Berkley, California, surrounded by library books Dick later claimed, “They could not afford to pay the fines on.”

In 1956, Dick had a short story published in a brand new pulp magazine: Satellite Science Fiction. Entitled, ]]> Sun, 31 Jul 2011 10:28:32 -0700 http://machinemachine.net/text/ideas/kipple-and-things Ubik: Philip K. Dick http://tumblr.machinemachine.net/post/7527941832

Ubik

book-aesthete:

Philip K. Dick. Garden City: Doubleday, 1969 

First edition, first printing of this scarce title.

]]> Tue, 12 Jul 2011 01:39:11 -0700 http://tumblr.machinemachine.net/post/7527941832 Win Sector http://tumblr.machinemachine.net/post/7304255033

Win Sector

]]> Wed, 06 Jul 2011 08:40:35 -0700 http://tumblr.machinemachine.net/post/7304255033 Another kind of logic http://tumblr.machinemachine.net/post/7229748980

Another kind of logic

(hat tip to (((1/f))))

]]> Mon, 04 Jul 2011 08:51:00 -0700 http://tumblr.machinemachine.net/post/7229748980 On Location with John Carpenter’s THE THING http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/?p=24553 From the July 1982 issue of Omni. As with all the other commissioned pieces I wrote for the Arts section of that magazine, this originally ran without a title; I’ve also done a light edit on this version. Another version of this article appeared in Cahiers du Cinema, with a different title (if memory serves, this was “Beware of Imitations”).

While I was living in Europe in the 70s, I managed to watch portions of the shooting of films by Robert Bresson (Four Nights of a Dreamer), Alain Resnais (Stavisky…), and Jacques Rivette (Duelle and Noroit), but… ]]> Mon, 20 Jun 2011 05:20:30 -0700 http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/?p=24553 The Things, by Peter Watts http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/ I am being Blair. I escape out the back as the world comes in through the front.

I am being Copper. I am rising from the dead.

I am being Childs. I am guarding the main entrance.

The names don't matter. They are placeholders, nothing more; all biomass is interchangeable. What matters is that these are all that is left of me. The world has burned everything else.

I see myself through the window, loping through the storm, wearing Blair. MacReady has told me to burn Blair if… ]]> Mon, 20 Jun 2011 05:13:19 -0700 http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/ New 'Solaris' translation locked in Limbo http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/104691 Solaris, Stanislaw Lem's 1961 masterpiece, has finally been translated directly into English. The current print version, in circulation for over 4 decades, was the result of a double-translation. Firstly from Polish to French, in 1966, by Jean-Michel Jasiensko. This version was then taken up by Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox who hacked together an English version in 1970. Lem, himself a fluent English speaker, was always scathing of the double translation. Something he believed added to the universal misunderstanding of his greatest work. After the relsease of two film versions of the… ]]> Sun, 19 Jun 2011 05:29:33 -0700 http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/104691 First ever direct English translation of Solaris published http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jun/15/first-direct-translation-solaris The first ever direct translation into English of the Polish science fiction author Stanislaw Lem's most famous novel, Solaris, has just been published, removing a raft of unnecessary changes and restoring the text much closer to its original state.

Telling of humanity's encounter with an alien intelligence on the planet Solaris, the 1961 novel is a cult classic, exploring the ultimate futility of attempting to communicate with extra-terrestrial life. The only English edition to date is Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox's 1970 version, which was translated from a French version which Lem himself described as poor.
… ]]> Thu, 16 Jun 2011 15:07:40 -0700 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jun/15/first-direct-translation-solaris A Bite of Stars, a Slug of Time, and Thou: “Who Goes There” http://freakytrigger.co.uk/slugoftime-podcast/2008/04/a-bite-of-stars-a-slug-of-time-and-thou-episode-1//a-bite-of-stars-a-slug-of-time-and-thou-episode-1

Discussion of John W. Campbell’s “Who Goes There” (A Slug of Time podcast) #TheThing #SciFi #podcast

]]> Thu, 02 Jun 2011 04:09:24 -0700 http://freakytrigger.co.uk/slugoftime-podcast/2008/04/a-bite-of-stars-a-slug-of-time-and-thou-episode-1/ We by Evgeny Zamyatin: Images from Other Worlds http://tumblr.machinemachine.net/post/5540919346

We by Evgeny Zamyatin

Images from Other Worlds: A new exhibition at the British Library presents the rich history of SF down the ages, from Lucian of Samosata in the 2nd century to the Russian novel that inspired 1984.

]]> Mon, 16 May 2011 03:02:00 -0700 http://tumblr.machinemachine.net/post/5540919346 Loving the Ghost in the Machine: Aesthetics of Interruption http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=312 In science fiction, ghosts in machines always appear as malfunctions, glitches, interruptions in the normal flow of things. Something unexpected appears seemingly out of nothing and from nowhere. Through a malfunction, a glitch, we get a fleeting glimpse of an alien intelligence at work. As electricity has become the basic element of the world we live in, the steady hum of power grids and their flowing immaterial essences slowly replacing the cogs and cranks of everyday machinery, the ghostly rapport has also relocated into the domain of current fluctuations, radio interference and misread data.

Early telegraph experimenters… ]]> Sat, 09 Apr 2011 02:17:47 -0700 http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=312 The Temporary Autonomous Zone http://hermetic.com/bey/taz3.html I believe that by extrapolating from past and future stories about "islands in the net" we may collect evidence to suggest that a certain kind of "free enclave" is not only possible in our time but also existent. All my research and speculation has crystallized around the concept of the TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONE (hereafter abbreviated TAZ). Despite its synthesizing force for my own thinking, however, I don't intend the TAZ to be taken as more than an essay ("attempt"), a suggestion, almost a poetic fancy. Despite the occasional Ranterish enthusiasm of my language I am not trying to construct political… ]]> Sat, 22 Jan 2011 06:43:13 -0700 http://hermetic.com/bey/taz3.html All the greatest scenes where someone talks a computer into self-destructing http://m.io9.com/5715101/all-the-greatest-scenes-where-someone-talks-a-computer-into-self+destructing Want to learn how to make a computer go foom just by talking to it? Here's a step-by-step tutorial from the master himself, Captain Kirk. And below, we've got every scene where someone destroys a computer with carefully chosen words. ]]> Wed, 22 Dec 2010 15:16:00 -0700 http://m.io9.com/5715101/all-the-greatest-scenes-where-someone-talks-a-computer-into-self+destructing