Will Some Robots Be Shunned In The Uprising?

Let’s say the singularity has struck, machines have become sentient, and the robot uprising has begun in earnest. If you could be any robot in the world, which robot would you be?

Certainly not Vomiting Larry.

Unless the ability to clear a room becomes a highly sought-after skill in the quest to vanquish all humans, Vomiting Larry won’t have much use in the Robot Apocalypse. I mean, come on: he VOMITS! There’s no way he could be an Autobot (he VOMITS!), but what use would the Decepticons have for him? Huh? Can’t think of anything? I thought so. (That’s because he VOMITS!)

Now, to be fair, Vomiting Larry is conducting useful, potentially life-saving science for the UK’s Health and Safety Laboratory by allowing researchers to determine the speed and extent to which norovirus can spread. I’m glad Vomiting Larry was built in the UK, because if he had been built in Japan, he would look like an adorable, giant baby, but without the adorable part. And more angry. And not just angry, but mean. That’s how Japanese robot babies roll, for some reason. What’s up with that?

And about that science: why not just fill a hot water bottle and give it a good squeeze to see how far it spews? Apparently, they wanted a ROBOT so it could spew AND do math. Or something.

The engineers who proposed the idea must be thrilled. Honestly, what engineer wouldn’t do a fist-pump-of-victory after convincing his boss to let him build a vomiting robot? Their boss had better watch out, because a proposal for a pooping robot can’t be far behind. You know, just to see if they can. Engineers are like that.

I propose the name Diarrhea Dan for the pooping robot. I’m telling you, it’s inevitable. YouTube videos to come.

But getting back to my original question: what robot would you like to be during the robot uprising? Though Vomiting Larry has a respectable ten-foot spew range, I think I’d go with the Stabbing Robot. (Why do we build these things? Why?) It’s armed, and it has an override that allows it to shred human flesh like confetti. What could be more useful in a Robot Apocalypse than shredded human flesh? Puke? I don’t think so.

Of course, this is the real world, and Vomiting Larry won’t be any part of a robot uprising any time soon. Oh, sure, we’ll see him compete on Jeopardy and then sell out to become a spokes-bot for Bounty Paper Towels. My guess is that he’ll ultimately short out on Pepto-Bismal and be discovered, unplugged, in a pool of his own pink spew.

It’s nice — especially as a science fiction writer — to spend my time thinking about robot uprisings. But even in the real world, we can still look forward to Vomiting Larry and Diarrhea Dan competing against each other on Jeopardy. And that’s plenty awesome enough.

I’m telling you, it’s inevitable. YouTube videos to come.

Predictions for 2013

Happy New Year, everyone. I’m as unqualified to make predictions as the next guy, but I’ve decided to have a go anyway. Here are my predictions for the new year:

In 2013, An Editor Will Read My Novel

Yes, I’m still on submission. The pins and needles are beginning to dull after so much waiting. Good thing I have a bed to be depressed in.

In 2013, I Will Win the Nobel Prize in Physics

I figured out the formula for winning (see my previous post), and added rainbows and unicorns for good measure. How can I lose?

In 2013, A Heretofore Unknown Asteroid Will Pass Within Geosynchronous Orbit

Yeah, I’m going out on a limb on this one. Still, this happens more often than most people think. Sure, it’s not as likely as me winning a Nobel Prize, but it’s a bet I’m willing to take.

In 2013, Climate Change Deniers Will NOT Change Their Minds Even After Bursting Into Flames

Speaking of safe bets…

In 2013, I Will Win the Nobel Prize in Literature

I do have a book on submission, so it’s safe to say I’m in the running. Or at least that I will be in the running once an editor reads it. And wants it.

Of course, making predictions is easy. Making accurate predictions is another matter. To be fair, let’s see how I did with last year’s predictions:

In 2012, I Will Get A New Bed To Be Depressed In While I Wait For An Editor To Read My Novel

Nailed it. Well, technically speaking, the bed isn’t actually new. But I did change the sheets last year.

In 2012, A Single Asteroid Will Knock Out All Our Communications Satellites Like Dominoes

My television reception in September was a bit spotty, so I’m calling this prediction a winner. That’s the way science works, right?

In 2012, I Will Overdose On Nacho Cheese-Flavored Doritos

It didn’t happen, but not for lack of trying. Maybe I’ll have better luck this year.

In 2012, I Will Open A Coffee Shop

Nailed it. Hey, maybe I should blog about that? Do you think?

Me? A Nobel Prize Winner? Imagine That!

I try to keep up with advances in quantum physics, but I’m ashamed to admit that, until today, I had never studied Delbrück scattering, which occurs when quantum pairs spontaneously appear in a region dominated by a magnetic field. I’m intrigued that Delbrück scattering is similar to Hawking radiation, but instead of quantum pairs appearing near a black hole, it’s quantum pairs appearing near a magnet.

I get it. To become a famous physicist, all one has to do is think of some disruptive environment for quantum pairs to appear in, and imagine (no more than that, really) what the results would be.

What the heck, I’ll have a go. For my next Nobel Prize in physics, I will ponder the consequences of quantum pairs spontaneously appearing near the following items:

• A vacuum sweeper.
• A blender.
• Fly paper.
• A SPINNING thing, like a tire, or maybe another blender.
• Rainbows. (Yeah, that’s a difficult one, but why not?)
• Unicorns. (I’ll invoke the unfalsifiable “You-Can’t-Prove-Me-Wrong” argument.)
• A time vortex. (It could happen.)
• That chubby man on the Internet who believes he’s magnetic because pennies stick to his skin, but he really just needs to take a bath.

I’ll alert the Nobel Prize Committee that my work is underway. And I’ll get a good 8×10 head shot. I’ll need a good 8×10 head shot, don’t you think? I really should do that first.

OOH! I just thought of something new: Rainbows AND unicorns… TOGETHER!

Yep, I’d say this one’s in the bag.

On Coincidence and Belief

I couldn’t help but respond to Peter Cawdron’s insightful post on astrology. It got me thinking about my encounters with astrology believers. And, lazy person that I am, I decided to turn my comment into a long overdue blog post.

I once read about a study done on astrology believers. If someone successfully guesses the color of a playing card (red or black) 50% of the time, astrology believers are more likely to conclude that such a high percentage of accurate guessing can’t be coincidental, and some form of telepathy (or something more mundane, like cheating) must be at play. (Of course, we all know that 50% is the expected outcome from mere guessing.) In conversations I’ve had with astrology believers, they frequently punctuate their discussion with, “I KNEW IT!” whenever they encounter something — anything — that reinforces their beliefs, no matter how coincidental.

As a consequence of this manner of thinking, there is a movement among some astrology believers to change the name of the sign of Cancer to something else, since fully one out of twelve cancer patients are born under the sign of Cancer, which can’t be mere coincidence, they are convinced. How does mere nomenclature influence the distribution of cancer diagnoses among the signs of the Zodiac? Who cares? Renaming the sign makes the problem go away, case closed. By renaming the Cancer sign to something else, the correlation ceases to apply, so there’s no reinforcement making the coincidental stand out. It’s a mind trick that relies on suppressing the mere appearance of correlation without actually affecting anything that makes a difference.

However, the plan might backfire due to their shortsighted choice for Cancer’s new name. What is the new name they’ve selected for Cancer? They’ve selected FLESH EATING BACTERIA.

I know, right?

Leprechaun Ghost Clowns In Love

Hello. My name is Brian, and I write hard science fiction.

Audience: Hi, Brian.

I fell off the wagon again…

Audience: *Gasp!*

But I’ve been hard SF free since 7:30 this morning.

Audience: *Mumble, mumble*

My mind is clear, and I’m proud to say that I think I can make it through the rest of the meeting without firing up my laptop and pounding out a few passages of my trilogy.

It hasn’t been easy these past few months. With my debut novel on submission, it’s been difficult to concentrate on anything but my craft. Will I  be able to demonstrate to publishers that I can improve? Will I have what it takes to make the edits they require? What if an editor asks me to insert MAGIC into my story?

Audience: *Double Gasp!*

I know. I shouldn’t dwell on such things. But, truth be told, not many successful hard science fiction writers were optimists, now were they?

Audience: *Cold stare*

Not that I, you know, have any interest in going down that road. Not at all. There lies madness, or so we say.

But things work the way they do for a reason, don’t they? Why can’t we use the comprehensibility of the universe to aid our readers in their suspension of disbelief? The stories we tell are so speculative, grounding them in current scientific understanding helps the reader to relate, to own the story, does it not?

Audience: *Double mumble*

Wait, hear me out. It all started when I was in third grade, and my teacher explained that pulsars flash because they spin. I asked if that was because they were light on one side and dark on the other. She thought about it, said that didn’t make sense since they’re basically stars, then told me to stop asking ridiculous questions.

It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I realized I had a science teacher who actually had a disdain for science, a disdain for knowing how things actually worked.

Audience: *Nods in unison*

But what if there are readers out there who like that sort of thing?

Audience: *Triple gasp!*

No, seriously. What if there are readers out there who prefer the speculative stories they read to be, you know, plausible?

Audience: *Lights torches and gathers pitchforks*

Why should those readers be left behind? Why should they have to settle for stories about leprechaun ghost clowns when they would prefer something that can happen in a universe that’s realistically extrapolated from our own? Should we not be serving those readers? Should we not strive to create stories in tenable settings that serve to deepen the significance of the narrative impact on the reader?

Audience: *Charges podium*

I brought cookies.

Audience: *Eats cookies*

Anyway, thanks for helping me with my addiction. And thanks for disabusing me of the specious notion that reasonable attempts at plausibility aren’t for the best writers among us.

Audience: Huh?

Has anyone seen my laptop?

It’s a List! No, Really!

Writers who want to give back to the community have taken to making lists of things to help other writers. Eleven ways to kill a character, twenty one ways to not suck, and so on.

I want to help, too, but I’m still new at this. So I thought I’d start out by making a simple list, and once I’m a better writer, I’ll come back and put some really useful advice in place of what I have now.

But for now, here’s a list of… oh, I don’t know — how about the top ten things that are on my mind right now:

1. “Strengths” is the longest word in the English language I can think of that has only one vowel.
2. I’m not a hat person. Not at all.
3. Cars.
4. Something about cosmology.

Okay, so it’s only four things. It turns out I’m not very good at multitasking. But in my defense, that hat thing takes up a lot of room in my brain.

And, hey, that first one is tangentially related to writing. That makes me a contributing member of the writing community. I win!

Okay, glad that’s over with. Off I go to all YOUR blogs to hone my craft at your expense. Keep it coming. I need all the help I can get.

Predictions for 2012

Happy New Year, everyone.

Though I’m as unqualified as the next person to make predictions for the next year, I’m going to do it anyway. Here are my predictions for 2012:

In 2012, An Editor Will Read My Novel

I mean, come on, it’s out on submission. Surely someone’s going to read it before the end of the year, right?

In 2012, There Will Be A Lunar Eclipse

Yeah, and I even know the dates. Next topic.

In 2012, The World Will Not End

Hey, this is easy! I could make predictions like this all day long.

In 2012, I Will Stop Asking My Agent Inane Questions

Even though I ask stupid questions (Should I insure my touch-typee fingers? Who’s Neil Gaiman? What kind of tree would you be?), my agent dispels my clumsy ignorance with a graciousness and professionalism I feel I don’t I deserve. I owe her my eternal gratitude for putting up with me. So if my agent is reading this, I have just one thing to say: Did I spell ‘touch-typee’ correctly?

In 2012, I’m Going To Spill Something

It happens every year. I hope this year, it’s something like a bag of Doritos instead of a gallon of milk.

In 2012, I’m Going To Finish My Second Novel

It’s not a goal unless you write it down, right? Well, now it’s a goal. Let’s call it a target. Something to shoot for. Plan A, if you will. A dream. Something to think about.

Of course, making predictions is easy. Making accurate predictions is another matter. To be fair, let’s see how I did with last year’s predictions:

In 2011, The World Will Not End

Sure, there are still a few hours left in the year (local time), but I think I’m pretty safe in saying this one was spot-on.

In 2011, I’m Going To Spill Something

Nailed it. I went to Lowe’s in Rome to get a couple of five-gallon buckets of paint (What? It could happen.) and, well, there was this ladder… You know what? I don’t want to talk about it. In my defense, has anybody ever heard of the floor of the Sistine Chapel being so famous? Anybody?

In 2011, I Will Win The IEEE Exploding Galaxy Cluster Award For Best Premise For A Debut Science Fiction Novel

In retrospect, I suppose it was silly of me to think that an electrical engineering standards body would invent a new award for unpublished works of fiction. Also, it turns out that galaxy clusters don’t actually explode.

In 2011, An Agent Will Offer To Represent My Novel, And I Will Not Ask Her Inane Questions

I get partial credit, right?

In 2011, I Will Make A Blog Post That Contains The Word “Eldritch” 

Alas, I fell short on this one. Nothing I posted this past year ever required the distinctive–

Wait… What time is it?

Nailed it.

How Did I Get So Popular So Fast?

Wow. Since I started my blog, the comments have been pouring in. It’s just so humbling and gratifying beyond words to be so immediately and resoundingly embraced by all of you readers. And my book’s not even out yet! Thank you all so much for your kind words. I know it may seem a little self-indulgent, but I’ve collected the most touching, the most meaningful posts here so I can respond to them all in one go.

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