Popular Science, Stross, Doctorow, and The Singularity

I was Googling the Interwebs and found this 3-page article in Popular Science. It's a couple of years old, but I found it both interesting and helpful. It discusses the Singularity, science fiction, and the future of science fiction, and the writer talks with Charles Stross and Cory Doctorow. I'm thinking I need to read more Stross.

Is Science Fiction About to Go Blind?

This new brand of science fiction, I realize, like all the best SF before it, is not just about predicting the future or pushing an agenda or even plain old entertaining techno-fun. It is all that, but it’s also about expanding the boundaries of the possible, building far-out worlds and then populating them with characters who bring the big ideas down to Earth. “That’s what you’re supposed to do in science fiction,” Abarbanel tells me. “You make a leap that’s 10 orders of magnitude beyond what we can actually do. If they don’t do that, then we don’t get there.”

Lately I've felt like science fiction had been moving on without me, while I was reading fantasy, space opera, and slightly older sf/f. And I think it was hindering me from fully appreciating (and even actually enjoying) the fiction being published in magazines like Fantasy & Science Fiction.

You know how most science fiction requires that you know how to read science fiction to really get into it? I think I hadn't kept up and was reading with the science fiction reading level of a junior high school student. Which means some of the recent stuff was perfectly accessible to me, but some had aspects that were going over my head. I wasn't getting it, without quite knowing why I wasn't getting it.

But I'm catching up.

Oh, So That's Steampunk

nojojojo points us to a New York Times article in the Fashion section that discusses steampunk. She noticed that in the included photos, there's a better than average proportion of people of color and women.

Firstly, I had to look up what steampunk was. I'd heard the term, but was a lazybutt and never did try to figure out what it was referring to. Wikipedia enlightened me. Obviously I'd been watching and even reading steampunk without realizing that's what it was! The word 'steampunk' had turned me off. It just didn't sound interesting.

Looking at the full slideshow of photos, I can get into that fashion. I'm not so sure about it as a home decorating style, though. And I don't know about the goggles, the coolness of Miyazaki and Amelia Earhart notwithstanding.

I wonder if the presence of the black men in particular can be credited, at least partially, to Will Smith in Wild, Wild West. Will Smith can make any outfit look good. And I like that the women aren't limited to dresses and skirts.