"To think of ourselves as misfits in our own time and of our own making flatly contradicts what we now understand about the way evolution works—namely, that rate matters. That evolution can be fast, slow, or in-between, and understanding what makes the difference is far more enlightening, and exciting, than holding our flabby modern selves up against a vision—accurate or not—of our well-muscled and harmoniously adapted ancestors."

A new book  Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us About Sex, Diet and How We Live by Marlene Zuk, labels as "fantasy" the popular notion that we humans have been (and continue to be) better suited anatomically and behaviorally to the life style experienced by our distant ancestors. Was there ever a time when our species was superbly adapted to our environment?

I, for one, am more concerned to be what we are becoming than I am desirous of becoming more of what we have been.

Misguided Nostalgia for Our Paleo Past

"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion."
Edmund Burke

Here is a short video that purports to show the difference between what people generally believe and what is actually true regarding the economic disparity between the wealthy and the majority of Americans.

Wealth Inequality in America, Perception vs Reality

Gobekli Tepe is probably 11,500 years old. People living at that time were supposed (according to a prevailing archeological opinion) to have been hunter-gatherers who never settled in one spot for long and who certainly never erected buildings, monuments, or permanent temples. 

Göbekli Tepe is now considered to comprise the world's oldest known religious structures. Located on a hilltop, the site contains 20 round structures surrounded by large T-shaped, limestone pillars Slabs used for the pillars were sourced from bedrock pits about 100 meters away, Many of the pillars are decorated with carved reliefs of animals and other pictograms.

Somewhere around 8000 BCE someone buried the entire site in dirt and left it abandoned. So, not only does Gobekli Tepe represent a scope of building project that wasn't supposed to be happening at its time period, but it also represents an attempt at preservation, concealment, or perhaps repudiation that, to put it mildly, is difficult to explain.

Gobekli Tepe raises more questions than answers. Unfortunately, so does this article by Paul D. Burley, who has been studying the pictograms. 

"What is important here is for some unknown reason the builders of Gobekli Tepe constructed a temple apparently highlighting a time 11,600 years in their future."

 It seems that he intended to make a case based on his interpretation of the images he claims depict the location of the ecliptic intersecting the galactic plane. Maybe that location is correct only during our time, and not at the time the pictograms were made. But for those of us not thoroughly schooled in archeoastronomy this conclusion is much less than obvious.

Gobekli Tepe - Temples Communicating Ancient Cosmic Geography

A good friend recently mentioned that he had just finished the audiobook version of Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke. (Highly recommends it, by the way.)  

I find it somewhat surprising that no film version of that novel was ever made. Both Childhood's End and 2001: A Space Odyssey begin with pretty straightforward near-future Science Fiction settings and trundle headlong toward seriously mystical, eschatological stuff in their endings. I don't know why one would have been filmworthy and the other not.

Could it be because studios didn't think the idea of an invasion by benevolent aliens would sell? Or, maybe they were leery of those creepy telekinetic kids who emerge as mankind's ultimate generation. 

"Gambler's fallacy" refers to a mistake that people often make in assessing the probability of a particular outcome from a repeated random action. For example, a coin toss actually has a fifty-fifty chance of either a heads or tails outcome every time the coin is flipped. However, most of us tend to think that a greater probability of a heads would follow . . . oh, say a run of twenty tails in sequence.

Unless there is something wrong with the coin or the flipper (and the process is not truly random), the chance remains fifty-fifty even after a series of highly improbable outcomes, such as 1,000 heads in a row. Outcomes do not become any less random or any more predictable just because the process is repeated.

This piece from NPR's Shankar Vedantam suggests that current popular myths about interviewing for a job might have basis in the gambler's fallacy. Is it better to have your interview scheduled late in the day? Perhaps so--if you happen to follow a series of poorly-perceived candidates. The interviewer is likely to commit this fallacy and assume that a series of tails (bad interviews) should not persist. By following a string of unqualified wannabees you will look good if only because the interviewer is mistakenly inclined to expect a heads (favorable interview) to be more likely.   

I suspect that some interviewers think this way. But I have also (personally) observed another kind of bias among interviewers. I think of it as a failure to "zero-out" all of the registers or re-initialize all of the variables from one interview to the next. What happens, it seems to me, is that an interviewer carries impressions of what  occurred in the first interview forward into the second, third, and so on. 

For example, if the first candidate was moderately bright, outgoing and friendly, then (at least for a while) subsequent candidates seem brighter, more outgoing and friendly. Once the interviewer loads these values into his mental variables they tend to remain there, influencing perceptions until something forces a reset.

This pattern persists when candidates are generally similar; extreme cases tend to force a reset. A seriously sullen candidate will likely erase the predilection to regard candidates as friendly, and may foster a new tendency to see them as moody. 

When you have an interviewer like this, that cheerful, confident candidate who breezed through the door just in front of you may have done you a favor instead of creating an expectation that you will land as a tails.

Deciphering Hidden Biases During Interviews

Site Recommendation

I'm not a real militantly dissatisfied customer, but I play one on Youtube. (Real actors read Yelp reviews . . . beautifully.)

Gotta Kid to Feed Productions - YouTube

Originally posted 7 Jan 2013 on Google+

My copy's cover carries this blurb:

“In the tradition of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series and Frank Herbert's Dune books.”
--The New York Times

This book is in the tradition of Foundation and Dune in the same way Snow Crash is in the tradition of Beverly Cleary's "Beezus and Ramona" series, which is to say NOT. 

The Risen Empire has a couple of things going for it. It has some fast-paced high-tech tactical combat. The action is quite brutal and bloody, actually. The kind of thing that  might appeal to gamers—console first-person shooters, like Halo and Call of Duty, primarily. I suppose.

The book is also just chock-full of spiffy far-future technology ideas. It's a cornucopia of hyper-advanced weaponry, amazing vehicles, futuristic medical systems, wondrous communications devices, meta-intelligent machines, etc. The prose is so richly saturated with exposition of the author's prodigious technophilia that it sometimes gets in the way of the story.

For example, there are extended passages about a Von Neumann machine-like house that builds itself in the polar region of a planet. Written, more-or-less, from the point of view of the house's AI, this is not in itself an uninteresting idea. But it's about as welcome as a commercial interruption in the middle of a free-throw attempt where the author presents it. White-hot battle scenes, fulminating political intrigue, compelling foreshadows of mysterious secrets . . . and then BAM: “Hello snowy mountainside and happy sentient house construction.” All it lacks is a catchy jingle.

Indeed, fragmented storytelling is The Risen Empire's biggest problem. Westerfeld structures the book as a sequence of short narratives, each told from a different character's (house included) point of view. This amounts to waaaay too much viewpoint shifting. From the reader's all-important viewpoint, the story does not flow comfortably. And this uncomfortableness, sadly, is entirely intentional.

Westerfeld's narrative strategy also fails to overcome the challenge of getting the reader invested in his characters. Fully half of the first dozen characters whose viewpoints are introduced in the story are dead in the first eighty pages. Really dead, dead-and-gone--not just dead-and-back-again like numerous other characters. I have a rule: Don't invite me to care all that much about them if you're not going to keep them around. My time is important and I don't like to waste it.

I'm going to remain neutral on The Risen Empire recommendation-wise. I've shared some complaints but you might like the furious action, the political intrigue, or the splashy techno-wonderment.

As for what the New York Times reviewer saw in The Risen Empire that is “in the tradition of” Asimov and Herbert? Well, perhaps she meant that this work implies a sequel, and likely a multitude of sequels, the incrementally diminished quality of which will undermine the cumulative reputation of the work as a whole. This interpretation also puts it squarely in the tradition of Star Wars. But most certainly not that of "Beezus and Ramona."

The Risen Empire by Scott Westerfeld  (Succession #1)

Originally posted 20 Nov 2012 on Google+

Authored by Sci-Fi genre masters? Check

What's wrong here?

One: This book is the first volume of a series. It's very hard to tell that from the cover and front matter. Taken by itself, this book's ending is insipid and unsatisfying. “I paid for a book and got sold a prologue?”

Two: The editor failed this book profoundly. There is justification for professional shame here. Narrative inconsistencies, awkward redundancies, evidence of draft mismanagement . . . this book (and its audience) deserved a good solid developmental edit and obviously did not get it.

So, yeah, the angry reviews are justified, but for failings of the editor/publisher moreso than for lapses of the author(s?) I'm sure there are editorial challenges when you are dealing with drafts from two authors, but it's not as if these guys haven't successfully collaborated (major understatement) with other writers before!

So, there's the beef. Yet, despite this Kansas City strip-sized chunk, I must declare that I enjoyed the story--so far. Benford (I detect Benford more strongly in this volume than Niven) seems to be revving up a strong and stylish sci-fi vehicle. But I've already paid full price for my ticket and we haven't really covered much distance yet--and I'm looking eagerly for Niven to do some of the piloting. 

There is much to be hopeful about in this series--if future volumes get appropriate editorial treatment. I dissent on reviewer's complaints about the human characters. Ok, they're a bit generic; I say, “Give them more spacetime.” I think the aliens are actually quite interesting and show great potential.

And, I think reviewers are giving short shrift to the major theme of the work: the moral issues surrounding the capture and genetic/behavioral alteration of intelligent species with the intent of making them more amenable to servitude. There are overtures here to themes presented in Brin's Uplift novels and Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky. I'm confident that this will be a major factor in future installments in the series.

Bottom line: Recommended with caveats. Not a finished story. Not for those demanding high action or video-game pacing. Be prepared for inexcusable lapses in editing. Speaking of that, does anyone have a pitchfork to lend?

Bowl of Heaven by Larry Niven and Gregory Benford

Originally posted 26 Nov 2012 on Google+

Well-researched and credible, this 10-year-plus old novel about the first human explorers on Mars leaves the reader feeling, perhaps, less entertained than educated. This is not a gripe—just an observation. The Martian Race is not an escapist lark; it’s rock-hard science fiction, carefully grounded in scientific method, enlivened with characters who behave like scientists, and peppered with passages of scientific exposition.

If you’re jonesing for Space Opera, there’s no reason to linger here. I’m tempted to say that this is book is better suited to readers of mainstream fiction who might just have an interest in Mars exploration than it is to Sci-Fi fans inured to the conventions of the genre. Readers will encounter: some suspense, not much “action,” plenty of details on the planet’s environment, and some thoughtful insights on human nature. The ending is cleverly illuminated by speculations on how Earth’s dominant species might learn a valuable lesson from the survival strategies adopted by Martian life.

If you’re worried that this decade-old story might be too dated, in light of recent events in Mars exploration, don’t be. There has probably never been a better time to pick up this book.

The Martian Race by Gregory Benford

Originally posted 19 Nov 2012 on Google+

I finished this science fiction novel about a month ago. It ends more or less as it begins--with the protagonist (Ruskin, a superstar astrophysicist) shorn of his identity and all but annihilated. In between, there are space opera, biocybernetics, political intrigue, and a touch of romance--all framed within an interstellar espionage mystery. 

The story develops cleanly and clips along well enough. The setting seemed a bit sketchy in places, but perhaps I missed a line or two of exposition. For example, I was never sufficiently clear on the goals of the various political factions to fully appreciate their representatives' motives.

Regardless, for the most part I found the novel entertaining and clever.Its biggest difficulty, I might suggest, lies with the very thing that makes the story unique. Since from the beginning, Ruskin doesn't really know who he is--and most of this book's narrative surrounds his discovery or reformulation of his selfhood--he's just not that easy to get close to. If he doesn't know who he is . . . well, readers don't either.

There are numerous interior dialogues between Ruskin and various nanobot-derived cybernetic entities that have invaded his body and psyche. Bedeviled by these nano-commandos, Ruskin suffers about as many blackouts in the heat of the action as a Christopher Paolini fantasy hero. Some readers will likely find this awkward.

Eventually, the more helpful nano-entities begin invading other characters in order to influence or control their actions so that they can assist Ruskin. From the reader's perspective, it's difficult to understand why this whole thing doesn't devolve into a war between mind-dominating nanobot armies controlling all of the human and alien characters. If you think about it, this resolution verges on enabling the ghost in the machine to actually become the deus ex machina. 

There's also an alien ninja super-assassin out to kill Ruskin--for the second time. And they eventually find themselves trapped on a space laboratory embedded in a red giant star threatening to go supernova. Yeah. Poor Ruskin. 

In the end, I wasn't all that sorry to see the protagonist "go." You could say he had a big red target glued to his face right through from página uno. Still, his story was an interesting one.

From A Changeling Star by Jeffrey A. Carver

Originally posted 3 Feb 2013 on Google+