Peter Watts is a Canadian hard SF author. According to his website, he spent “ten years getting a bunch of degrees in the ecophysiology of marine mammals and another ten trying make a living on those qualifications without becoming a whore for special-interest groups”. He notably wrote BLINDSIGHT, a novel published in 2006 which is now considered a classic.

1. According to you and apart from the number of words, what is the main difference between a short story and a novel?

A short story is a snapshot; a single frame. A novel is a movie.

2. What's your favorite short story?

Tough one. I've loved a million of them over the years; back in the eighties, when I was first discovering William Gibson, almost every story in Burning Chrome blew me away. And I don't know if I've ever got as choked up by a story as I was by Keyes' “Flowers for Algernon”. But for present purposes, I have to settle on “The Screwfly Solution” by Alice Sheldon (aka James Tiptree Jr.).

Not that it's the most stylish story I've ever read. In fact, I found some of the prose a little clunky. But while some stories use SF tropes to explore scientific ideas, and others use those tropes as a platform for social commentary, not many knock it out of the park along both those axes. “The Screwfly Solution” is one of them: it seamlessly integrates ecological engineering, alien invasion, and institutional misogyny into one short punch in the gut. It's the distilled, concentrated essence of The Handmaid's Tale as if written by a molecular biologist. It effectively conveys the creeping, mortal dread of being Othered out of existence, while at the same time maintaining an almost clinical, anthropological perspective. And it is not the slightest bit preachy.

I wish she hadn't written it. Then there'd be maybe a one-in-a-thousand chance that I might have.

3. What's your favorite short story written by you?

That's like telling someone to decide which of their children they'd rescue from a burning building. Let me check.

Okay, I've just skimmed my c.v. And honestly, it would be easier to tell you which of my stories I like the least.

But if we're talking favorites, I'm going to go with the obvious: “The Things”, from 2010. It just has so many facets: an exploration of how Lamarckian biology might work, a fan-fic tribute to one of my favorite movies of all time—a chance to retcon a few of the admittedly dumber details of that movie—and, surprisingly, a pretty cool metaphor for colonialism and the religious impulse (that last aspect kind of snuck up on me; I didn't even realize I was going there until I was two-thirds of the way through writing the damn thing).

And it doesn't hurt that “The Things” made all those award ballots and BoY collections.

4. Regarding faith & God, do you have some doubts or not at all?

Being an empiricist means you always have to admit at least the possibility that you could be wrong about anything. So I can't rule God out completely (of course, by defining “God” as a force that transcends all physical laws and limitations, the theists conveniently immunized their invisible friends against disproof: it's hard to test for something that exists outside of known existence).

That said, though, religious beliefs do seem to be adaptive in a number of ways. Religious communities have longer lifespans than secular ones, all other things being equal; and within religious communities, those with the strictest, most unforgiving rules (Handmaid's Tales societies, if you will) seem to last longer (they think it has something to do with entry and exit costs). Belief in invisible surveillant entities effectively reduces cheating in large communities where you can't keep an eye on everyone all the time (even today, you can reduce the incidence of cheating on university exams by simply drawing a pair of eyes on the examination-room wall). And in a predator-filled environment, it makes sense to attach agency to every unexplained sound from behind or flicker from the corner of your eye, because any of those cues could signal a predator sneaking up on you (and even if it just turns out to be the wind in the grass, the cost of running away from a false alarm is way lower than the cost of ignoring a real one). So we've been programmed to see agency and intent in Nature, even when there isn't any. Belief in god(s) might just be a category error resulting from an ancient predator-avoidance response.

Bottom line, there are plenty of reasons to explain the ubiquity of religion that have everything to do with evolution and nothing to do with actual gods. And I have yet to encounter any kind of compelling philosophical argument for the existence thereof (the arguments I most frequently encounter either come down to wish fulfillment or God-of-the-Gaps—science hasn't explained this aspect of the universe yet therefore God must have done it!). There may be adaptive utility to such beliefs, but there's absolutely no explanatory power.

I gotta agree with Laplace on this one. I have no need for that hypothesis.

#watts #shortinterviews

Peter Watts' website: https://rifters.com

Random thoughts

Creative Commons

Recently, I began to immerse myself in Creative Commons literature.

In principle, I can only agree with the existence of CC licenses. Plus they are well designed and quite flexible, but then I've stumbled on tons of crappy stories.

I was about to give up when I came across the writings of Peter #Watts and Lewis #Shiner. I hope I'll discover new authors.

Short stories

The shorter the better.

Reading on a computer is fine for texts of reasonable size, but beyond that it's unpleasant.

And of course, even if the blog looks great on mobile – it's almost as nice as reading an ebook on the Kindle app or an epub app – on a phone, unless you cut the notifications and restrict the use of certain apps for a given period of time, it has become difficult to be able to read even a short article in one go...

#thoughts

Photo: A rainy day at the Biblioteca Marciana and the Procuratie nuove palace in Venice – Wolfgang Moroder (some rights reserved)

Note: by no means I endorse the author's views. But as a bad Catholic, I enjoyed the story a lot.

An act of God?

The facts of the case were straightforward. Lacey Hillcrest of Pensacola, 50 years old and a devout Pentecostal, had been diagnosed with inoperable lymphatic cancer and given six months to live. Five years later she was still alive, albeit frail. She attributed her survival to a decorative silver-plated cross received from her sister, Gracey Balfour. Witnesses attested that Mrs Hillcrest's condition improved dramatically upon acquisition of the totem, a product of the Graceland Mint alleged to contain an embedded fragment of the original Crucifix of Golgotha.

On the morning of 27 June, Mrs Hillcrest and her sister patronized the Museum of Quackery and Pseudoscience, owned and managed by one Linus C. Velikovsky. The museum contained a variety of displays concerning discredited beliefs, theories and outright hoaxes perpetrated throughout American history. Mrs Balfour entered into a heated discussion with another museum patron at the Intelligent Design exhibit, temporarily losing track of her sister; they eventually reconnected at a display concerning psychosomatic phenomena, specifically placebo effects and faith healing. Mrs Hillcrest had evidently spent some time perusing the display and was subsequently described as 'subdued and uncommunicative'. Within a month she was dead.

The charge against Mr Velikovsky was negligent homicide.

The Prosecution called Dr Andrew deTritus, a clinical psychologist with an impressive record of expert testimony on any (and sometimes conflicting) sides of a given issue. Dr deTritus testified to the uncontested reality of the placebo effect, pointing out that 'attitude' and 'outlook' — like any other epiphenomenon of the brain — were ultimately neurochemical in nature. Belief literally rewired the brain, and the existence of placebo effects showed that such changes could have a real impact on human health.

Velikovsky took the stand in his own defence, which was straightforward: all claims presented by his displays were factually accurate and supported by scientific evidence. The prosecution objected to this point on the grounds of relevance but was, after some discussion, overruled.

Far from disputing Velikovsky's claims during cross-examination, however, the Prosecution used them to bolster its own case. The defendant had deliberately set up shop in “one of our great country's most devout regions, with no thought to the welfare of the Lacey Hillcrests of the world”. By his own admission, Mr Velikovsky had chosen Florida “because of all the creation museums”, and had clearly been intent on rubbing people's noses in the alleged falsity of their beliefs. Furthermore, Mr Velikovsky was obviously well-versed in placebo effects, having built an erudite display on the subject. What did he think would happen, the Prosecution thundered, when he forced his so-called truth down the throat of someone whose motto — knitted into her favourite throw-cushion — was If ye have faith the size of a mustard seed, ye shall move mountains? In telling 'the truth' Velikovsky had knowingly and recklessly endangered the very life of another human being.

Velikovsky pointed out that he hadn't even known Lacey Hillcrest existed, adding that needlepointing something onto a pillowcase did not necessarily make it true. The Prosecution responded that the man who plants landmines in a playground doesn't know the names of his victims either, and asked if the defendant's needlepoint remark meant that he was now calling Jesus a liar. The Defence objected repeatedly throughout.

The Defence had, in fact, fought an uphill battle ever since her client's swearing-in, during which Velikovsky had asked whether swearing to tell the truth on “a book of falsehoods” might undermine the court's alleged devotion to empiricism. The jury had seemed unimpressed by that question, and did not seem to have subsequently become more sympathetic.

Perhaps, if worst came to worst, their verdict might be set aside on technical grounds. But the closest thing to a precedent the Defence could unearth was Dexter v. HerpBGone, involving a mail-order scheme in which a mixture of sugar and baking soda had been marketed as a cure for herpes at $200/treatment. Although this 'cure' had (unsurprisingly) proven ineffective, HerpBGone's council had cited Waber et al. 2008 (Waber, R. L., Shiv, B., Carmon, Z. & Ariely. D. J. Am. Med. Assoc. 299, 1016–1017 ; 2008) — which clearly showed that a placebo's efficacy increased with price — arguing that the treatment could have worked if Dexter had only paid more for it. As he had refused to do so (the same product was sold under a different name at $4,000), responsibility devolved to the plaintiff. The case had been dismissed.

It would have been a risky gambit. The parallels were far from exact. Instead, the Defence recalled Grace Balfour to the stand and asked whether she believed the Bible to be the revealed Word of God. Mrs Balfour readily conceded as much. It was her faith, she maintained, that allowed her to stay strong when that horrible man at the Creation display had mocked her with his talk of monkeymen and radioisotopes. She had seen fossils for what they truly were, the tests of faith described in Deuteronomy 13.

Asked then why her sister evidently did not share her strength of belief, Mrs Balfour allowed— somewhat reluctantly— that “that horrid little Russian” had shattered her sister's faith with his “lies and deceit”.

But did not the Bible itself arm the faithful against such wickedness? Did not Matthew warn that “false prophets shall rise, and deceive many”? Could Second Peter have been any more explicit than “There shall be false teachers among you, who shall bring in damnable heresies”?

Well, yes, Mrs Balfour allowed. Certainly, Velikovsky was a False Prophet. Sadly, as the Defence reminded her, false prophecy was not a criminal offence.

Ultimately there was no need to resort to technical exemptions. The jury, having been presented with the facts of the case, was unanimous: Lacey Hillcrest had not shown the courage for their conviction. Whose fault was it, after all, that her faith had been so much smaller than a mustard seed?

#Watts

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Photo: “Union Cemetary 2” – Rob Dupuis (CC BY-NC 2.0)

#anderson #bester #bradbury #delrey #PKDick #harrison #herbert #kuttner #lafferty #lovecraft #sheckley #smith #voltaire #simak #vance #vonnegut #yarov #wells

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#doctorow #shiner #stallman #watts

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#abbott #burnett #standre #ubg #weir

Other

#français #shortinterviews #shortmovies #thoughts

Interviews

• Patrick Abbott
• Adedapo Adeniyi
• Neal Asher
• Misha Burnett
• Travis Corcoran
• Cory Doctorow
• Lewis Shiner
• Wole Talabi
• Marie Vibbert
• Peter Watts

What you did to your uncle’s grave was unforgivable. Your mother blamed herself, as always. You didn’t know what you were doing, she said. I could accept that when you traded the shofar I gave you for that eMotiv headset, perhaps, or even when you befriended those young toughs with the shaved heads and the filthy mouths. I would never have forgiven the swastika on your game pod but you are my daughter’s son, not mine. Maybe it was only adolescent rebellion. How could you know, after all? How could any child really know, here in 2017? Genocide is far too monstrous a thing for history books and grainy old photographs to convey. You were not there; you could never understand. We told ourselves you were a good boy at heart, that it was ancient history to you, abstract and unreal. Both of us doctors, familiar with the sad stereo type of the self-loathing Jew, we talked ourselves into treating you like some kind of victim. And then the police brought you back from the cemetery and you looked at us with those dull, indifferent eyes, and I stopped making excuses. It wasn’t just your uncle’s grave. You were spitting on six million others, and you knew, and it meant nothing.

Your mother cried for hours. Hadn’t she shown you the old albums, the online archives, the family tree with so many branches hacked off mid-century? Hadn’t we both tried to tell you the stories? I tried to comfort her. An impossible task, I said, explaining Never Again to someone whose only knowledge of murder is the score he racks up playing Zombie Hunter all day …

And that was when I knew what to do.

I waited. A week, two, long enough to let you think I’d excused and forgiven as I always have. But I knew your weak spot. Nothing happens fast enough for you. These miraculous toys of yours — electrodes that read the emotions, take orders directly from the subconscious — they bore you now. You’ve seen the ads for Improved Reality™: sensation planted directly into the brain! Throw away the goggles and earphones and the gloves, throw away the keys! Feel the breezes of fantasy worlds against your skin, smell the smoke of battle, taste the blood of your toy monsters, so easily killed! Immerse all your senses in the slaughter!

You were tired of playing with cartoons, and the new model wouldn’t be out for so very long. You jumped at my third option. You know, your mother’s working on something like that. It’s medical, of course, but it works the same way. She might even have some sensory samplers loaded for testing purposes.

Maybe, if you promise not to tell, we could sneak you in …

Retired, yes, but I never gave up my privileges. Almost two decades since I closed my practice but I still spend time in your mother’s lab, lend a hand now and then. I still marvel at her passion to know how the mind works, how it keeps breaking. She got that from me. I got it from Treblinka, when I was only half your age. I, too, grew up driven to fix broken souls — but the psychiatrist’s tools were such blunt things back then. Scalpels to open flesh, words and drugs to open minds. Our techniques had all the precision of a drunkard stomping on the floor, trying to move glasses on the bar with the vibrations of his boot.

These machines your mother has, though! Transcranial superconductors,deep-focus microwave emitters, Szpindel resonators! Specific pathways targeted, rewritten, erased completely! Their very names sound like incantations!

I cannot use them as she can. I know only the basics. I can’t implant sights or sounds, can’t create actual memories.

Not declarative ones, anyway. But procedural memory? That I can do. The right frontal lobe, the hippocampus, basic fear and anxiety responses. The reptile is easily awakened. And you didn’t need the details. No need to remember my baby sister face-down like a pile of sticks in the mud. No need for the colour of the sky that day, as I stood frozen and fearful of some real monster’s notice should I go to her. You didn’t need the actual lesson.

The moral would do.

Afterwards you sat up, confused, then disappointed, then resentful. “That was nothing! It didn’t even work!” I needed no machines to see into your head then. Senile old fart, doesn’t know half as much as he thinks. And as one day went by, and another, I began to fear you were right.

But then came the retching sounds from behind the bathroom door. All those hours hidden away in your room, your game pod abandoned in the living room. And then your mother came to me, eyes brimming with worry: never seen you like this, she said. Jumping at shadows. Not sleeping at night. This morning she found you throwing clothes into your backpack — they’re coming, they’re coming, we gotta run — and when she asked who they were, you couldn’t tell her. So here we are. You huddle in the corner, your eyes black begging holes that can’t stop moving, that see horrors in every shadow. Your fists bleed, nails gouging the palms. I remember, when I was your age. I cut myself to feel alive. Sometimes I still do. It never really stops.

Some day, your mother says, her machines will exorcise my demons. Doesn’t she understand what a terrible mistake that would be? Doesn’t history, once forgotten, repeat? Didn’t even the worst president in history admit that memories belong to everyone?

I say nothing to you. We know each other now, so much deeper than words. I have made you wise, grandson. I have shown you the world.

Now I will help you to live with it.

#Watts

CC BY-NC-SA 2.5

Image: “Repeat until” – Scratch (CC BY-SA 2.5)