The Clarion Workshop at UCSD

The UC San Diego Center for the Future of Surgery (love that moniker) has demonstrated a first that I’m not sure I’d want to be part of:

…surgeons at UC San Diego Medical Center removed an inflamed appendix through a patient’s vagina, a first in the United States. Following the 50-minute procedure, the patient, Diana Schlamadinger, reported only minor discomfort. Removal of diseased organs through the body’s natural openings offers patients a rapid recovery, minimal pain, and no scarring. Key to these surgical clinical trials is collaboration with medical device companies to develop new minimally-invasive tools.

Not that I could be a part of that particular surgery, being a guy and all that.  But a very interesting part of the story for me is the patient’s decision to allow release of her name.  Diana’s a grad student in UC San Diego’s Molecular Biophysics Training Program, a mouthful all its own; she says that “the surgery appealed to me because the work and study I do every day relates to science research and discovery.”  Okay, that’s one very cool student.

Today’s New York Times Book Review has a wonderful piece on (in)compatability of reading tastes and its effects on love that hits home with me.  I read mostly science fiction, fantasy and, increasingly, young adult sf and fantasy; my wife can’t stand any of the above (although she’s a big Karen Joy Fowler fan). Luckily, I’ve married a woman who doesn’t rank my taste in literature; she just likes sitting on the couch next to me while we’re both reading. 

In the piece, a woman breaking up with a man tells her friend he didn’t know who Pushkin was: “Anyone who cares about books has at some point confronted the Pushkin problem: when a missed — or misguided — literary reference makes it chillingly clear that a romance is going nowhere fast.”

Let’s face it — this may be a gender issue. Brainy women are probably more sensitive to literary deal breakers than are brainy men. (Rare is the guy who’d throw a pretty girl out of bed for revealing her imperfect taste in books.) After all, women read more, especially when it comes to fiction. “It’s really great if you find a guy that reads, period,” said Beverly West, an author of “Bibliotherapy: The Girl’s Guide to Books for Every Phase of Our Lives.” Jessa Crispin, a blogger at the literary site Bookslut.com, agrees. “Most of my friends and men in my life are nonreaders,” she said, but “now that you mention it, if I went over to a man’s house and there were those books about life’s lessons learned from dogs, I would probably keep my clothes on.”

Still, to some reading men, literary taste does matter. “I’ve broken up with girls saying, ‘She doesn’t read, we had nothing to talk about,’” said Christian Lorentzen, an editor at Harper’s. Lorentzen recalls giving one girlfriend Nabokov’s “Ada” — since it’s “funny and long and very heterosexual, even though I guess incest is at its core.” The relationship didn’t last, but now, he added, “I think it’s on her Friendster profile as her favorite book.”

Maybe it’s just a New York thing, but it seems pretty silly to me.  After all, it’s not like we’re both sitting there reading aloud, right? 

 Oh, and speaking of Karen Fowler, her latest, Wit’s End, comes out this week.  Her website has her on the road for two weeks solid starting last evening, with events in Sacramento and Davis before heading cross-country. 

Today’s New York Times asks that question in an article titled in my print edition, “Asking a Federal Judge to Save the Planet, and Maybe a Bit More “, and on their website, “Asking a Judge to Save the World, and Maybe a Whole Lot More“:

None of [today’s other news] will matter a bit, though, if two men pursuing a lawsuit in federal court in Hawaii turn out to be right. They think a giant particle accelerator that will begin smashing protons together outside Geneva this summer might produce a black hole or something else that will spell the end of the Earth — and maybe the universe.

… Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho contend that scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have played down the chances that the collider could produce, among other horrors, a tiny black hole, which, they say, could eat the Earth. Or it could spit out something called a “strangelet” that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called “strange matter.”

I know I’ve read sf novels with that as the premise.  My first question, of course, is whether the New York Times thinks losing the planet is “a bit” important or a “whole lot” important, and why their headline writer could come up with anything more descriptive than those two terms.  But on the same day that lawyers won a case returning copyright rights to the heirs of Superman’s creators, taking them back from corporate giant Time-Warner, anything is possible.

 The 31st anniversary issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction has a two-fer for Clarion, one story from our founder, Kate Wilhelm, and one story from a 2007 Clarion student, Nick Wolven.  Nick’s story was workshopped in the 2007 Clarion, so the 2007 students are particularly proud of it.  As described in the latest Internet Review of Science Fiction, Nick’s is a poignant story of love and loss:

Tim is being haunted by the ghost of his lover, but the ghost is a projection of his own mind. This is a world in which

we make our own reality. With programs, with patterns, with information. We make our own bodies, too, by controlling that information. Our reality is not a ground, it’s a screen. We can project whatever we like. But those projections are still very real.

It is not a solipsistic world; reality is shared consensually, with individuals modifying the simulations to suit themselves. But Dominic’s ghost is lost and confused in a world he can not control; he does not know he is dead because Tim has never quite accepted his death.

If you don’t want to ruin the ending, run to your nearest bookstore to grab the latest copy of Asimov’s.  Congrats, Nick — keep ‘em coming!  And you too, Kate!

Pardon my riff on Pogo, but I couldn’t help thinking of my favorite possum while reading the Los Angeles Times‘ article this morning, “Reporting live from a cellphone near you …” It focuses on Bay Area start-up Qik.com, leading us to a “dystopian” future by letting “users send live video directly from their Nokia phones to the web.”

 ”The worst moment in almost everybody’s life is going to be captured on film,” [Jason Calacanis, a New York-bred, L.A-based entrepreneur and tech-world celebrity] said. “But if those bad moments can be avoided or we can learn from them, that’s going to be very powerful as well.”

Wait, hold the phone . . . optimism about constant mutual surveillance? How does that work? Well, mull it over and see if Calacanis’ view doesn’t start to make sense. The key is not to think of it in Orwellian terms, in which some unseen entity is monitoring your every move. Not that Big Brother couldn’t happen or that we shouldn’t be vigilant about its creeping up on us — but that’s a different story altogether. What I’m talking about here is Little Brother — since we’re the ones with the cameras….

Consider too that it might not be so bad, collectively, to have more of our unflattering moments out in the open. It seems to me that for a long time now, we’ve all been laboring under the Puritanical myth that to be good is to be perfect.

I’m not so sure that I agree with him on that, but certainly Little Brother seems a bigger threat than Big Brother at this point.  Especially when you think what then-rare video did in the Rodney King case, and jump to today’s New York Times piece on haggling, about the increasing ability of eBay-aware shoppers to negotiate prices downward in department, electronics and other chain stores, particularly as the recession deepens.  And it’s not just pricing information or police-brutality videos that are reshaping the power of the collective individual: at UC San Diego, we have a start-up technology in the works that will put real-time air-quality monitoring in the hands of cell phone users, allowing urbanites to track pollution levels in their neighborhoods and identify hotspots.

 The power of the ‘collective individual’: Childhood’s End, anyone? 

Masayuki Oshiai’s ‘Shutter’ is about to take the concept of  ‘director’s cut’ video releases of studio films to a whole new level.  Up to now, director’s cuts have been either the version the director would have released if only the weenies in the studio hadn’t cut the movie to shreds (Blade Runner); or the extended version desired by fanatics breathlessly seeking every moment of Christopher Lee’s Saruman performance (Lord of the Rings).

As described by Paul Brownfield in today’s LA Times , in an article on the film’s star Joshua Jackson, Ochiai’s ‘Shutter’ takes that concept one step further:

What makes it more than a popcorn movie for American audiences, says the film’s star, Joshua Jackson, is that its Japanese director, Masayuki Ochiai, simultaneously made a different cut of the film for Japanese audiences.
“The old paradigm is unraveling,” Jackson said. “That idea that you could make a movie that would have regionally specific cuts. I think that’s a really interesting idea.”

The cuts in this case include Japanese-language scenes left out of the American version, and changing the story-line to remove the evil connotations surrounding spirits that haunt the couple at the center of the film to better relate to Japanese culture’s respect for one’s ancestors.

Wikipedia lists seven different versions of Blade Runner, at least four of which seem to be available to the hungry fan willing to scrounge around eBay and Amazon.  If Ochiai’s starting a trend, how many more are we heading for?

An email has just floated in from Amazon announcing the ten finalists in its Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest — and one of them, The Prospect of My Arrival by Chicago’s Dwight Okita, is an SF novel. 

In Chicago of 2025, the experimental Pre-Born Project at the Infinity Medical Center has inserted the consciousness of a fetus into the unoccupied body of a 30-year-old man, who will visit seven Referrals before deciding whether he chooses to be born. In lesser hands, this odd premise might have veered into political diatribe or slapstick. Instead, the protagonist, called Prospect, takes the reader on an engrossing and moving journey into the meaning of life, filled with fresh observations and memorable characters. Addressing the reader with a voice that skillfully blends innocence and wisdom, this latter-day Candide discovers unexpected connections among his Referrals and lands in jeopardy that keeps the pages turning until its satisfying and touching conclusion.

Check it out, and if you like it, give it a vote.  Nice to see people taking the genre seriously.

UC San Diego Physics B.A. Philip Rosedale has decided to move up within Second Life, the virtual world his Linden Lab created, to make room for an experienced manager who can manage the world’s explosive growth:

Rosedale founded Second Life, the 3-D virtual world in which players can fly, look like rock stars and build their own palaces, as well as pursue less savory endeavors, in 1999. The fanciful role-playing game now has about 500,000 active users.

The virtual world grew rapidly over the last two years. The number of people who pay $9.95 or more for a premium membership (you can also use the site for free) nearly doubled to 93,219 in late 2007 from the year before. Corporate sponsors such as Nissan Motor Co., Dell Inc. and Best Buy Co. bought virtual land and set up shop in Second Life with the hope of marketing to its residents.

Dean Takahashi at VentureBeat has an interesting review of The Making of Second Life: Notes from the New World, the recent book by Catherine Winters.  It’s a nice take on where Second Life is, as we contemplate where it’s going.

The University of Wyoming is hosting a NASAf-funded free (yes, FREE!) writer’s workshop in Laramie, Wyoming this summer, the second such outreach effort designed to teach writers about modern science, especially astronomy, and through their subsequent work hopefully impact the broader public.  Organized around the research of Mike Brotherton and billed as “Improving Science Literacy Through Words and Media,” the Workshop seeks the following:

We hope to both educate the public and reach the next generation of scientists. Therefore selection will be based in part on audience size as demonstrated through print runs, downloads, or sales figures when available.  Secondary considerations will include the content and potential of applicant work — to what extent science in general and astronomy in particular are likely to be a significant factor in their future publications.  Applicants should address these points when they apply.  Several slots will be reserved for the strongest minority/female applicants who may have additional promise in reaching groups less represented in both the physical sciences and hard science fiction.

Based on the past attendee list from 2007, it’s a great place to spend a week just to be surrounded by interesting people.

The program runs July 30 to August 5, and the ‘free’ part comes with a slight catch, in that participants have to get there (some travel can be paid if justified and applied for) and generally buy their own dinner; that’s still one heck of a deal, though.  Rooms are free, as are snacks, coffee and lunch.  Application deadline is March 31, so get cracking! 

A Los Angeles Times article on the upcoming release of “Iron Man,” the first film out of the new Marvel Studios, highlights the changing nature of ’story’ in film thanks to the ongoing digital revolution.  While of Marvel Comics’ most exciting characters – the Fantastic Four, Spiderman, the X-Men and others – are in the hands of other studios, how to leverage the company’s lesser known figures?  And perhaps more importantly, given the economics of moviemaking, ”why go into the movie-making biz now?”

Maisel said the question is the wrong one. “We’re not in the movie business, we’re in the ‘Iron Man’ business right now. Marvel owns the intellectual property. We have an Iron Man video game coming, the toys, the comics, we have an animated television show coming, a direct-to-DVD animated Iron Man movie last year. We’re going to have an Iron Man ride at an amusement park in Dubai in a few years. We have a different perspective.” 

Now there’s an interesting topic for a Comic-Con panel…

 Meanwhile, Gore Verbinski, of “Pirates of the Caribbean 3” fame, talks to the Business section of the Times about his move into gaming with “a secret project that would let him apply his creative vision to the games business.” Again, the nature of narrative itself is at the core of Verbinski’s approach:

After working seven years straight on five movies back to back, I picked up my game controller and started playing. I just was blown away by the potential. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I feel that we are on the brink of something phenomenal. It’s a completely different form of narrative than being told a story in the traditional sense. So all the narrative rules, although I enjoy them, you have to start throwing them away and say, “Wow, look at what you can do here in this world!”