SFitze issue 06 2023
-newSFplatter by ST-
Thank you for chomping down this SFitze newsletter.
If you’re interested in more SFitze issues please subscribe below, blurb or share with others. This is a newsletter about mundane, highly innocuous, absurdist SF happenstance all around. Recognized or not, unnerving or bland. Our purport is that SF is more and more spilling outside of blockbuster movies, innovation technobabble or Big Tech stunts. On the other hand, SF fan cultures and genre books have diversified and globalized SF beyond the wildest dreams of Golden Age authors. It is important to always look inside the fandom but also outside it. Keep searching for where “thought experiments” thrive. Thought experiments devised by scientists creatively dip into the unknown and express what was considered aberrant, most unlikely or counterfactual. Gedankenexperimente play with the ludicrous (think Maxwell’s or Descartes’s demon). They provided initial kicks in the ass to the Scientific Revolution attempting Piercean abductive jumps, giving rise to theoretical Cambrian explosions. This is what happened in the case of EPR paradox that stopped being just a thought experiment or a point of contention btw Einstein and Bohr (magical Faster Than Light or “spooky action at a distance”) and ended up as quantum information theory, shaping our latest explanations about how entanglement relates to the ‘arrow of time’. Be it quantum key distribution (QKD), engineering applications thrive even if it is not about FTL travel. And even if unsexy, QKD is more involved in the geopolitics of the moment than appears at first sight. We have speculations from physics (specially FTL spéculations) spilling into stock markets and especially flash trade markets. Now we have quantum entanglement making sure you always know if your competitor or ideological enemy tampered with ur data. Chinese cyberspeak is full of quantum talk and the select and far-out members of that fictional scientific club called Frontier of Science in Liu Cixin’s trilogy is just hooked on it.
Chinese SF is being bolstered by its newly found scientific and technological prowess with a potential monopoly in areas such as nanomaterials and synthetic biology as a recent study announced. Even under the CHIP industry blockade, and US encirclement, this SF with Chinese characteristics, which as Gautam Bhatia in his recent Word of Worlds substack post considers one of the most interesting traditions of SF continues to receive accolades and continues to be translated and published in EN and other languages. By the way feel free to subscribe to his Substack below:
SF becomes an important bridge, maybe an instance of "backchannel diplomacy". It keeps a vital open communication line, in spite of current saber-rattling, in spite of unsubstantiated invasion fears over Taiwan and spy balloon scares. At the same time, China continues to produce some funny and odd movies such as Moon Man adapted from a Korean webcomic by Cho Seok called Moon You (more of that below)
Lately, Wandering Earth II has hit the screens worldwide. Yes, it is maybe long-winded and full of tedious scientific explanations like any classic hard SF, but I think watching it becomes a must. Watch it in order to keep up with the new restructuring of the Sci and Tech ministry or the drive for self-reliance. How do non-linear scientific advances feed back into such blockbusters? With the MCU and DCU collapsing under their own bloated mass, we get an almost textbook way of burnout caped capitalist superheroes of the Neoliberal Age. Importantly, the US makes blockbusters (as the article by A. Răuţoiu points out below) for the outside. US earnings at home are meager in comparison. In a multipolar world everyone (including the Hollywood producers) have to dedicate some time to familiarize themselves with the national and political concerns of their outernational moviegoers. Especially since Chinese visions of coordinated planetary efforts somehow defy current geopolitical fragmentation and narrow-mindedness. In large parts of the world, the movie industry does NOT rely on superheroes for solving huge ecological problems or averting the worst of catastrophes with outrageous gestures (blowing up the moon! is not an art performance by a Bulgarian artist). Getting a grip on the technological & scientific imaginary, on governmental directives, on concurrent CGI representations, and megastructural planning one needs to circumnavigate the gravitational well of the Sinosphere.
Previous SFitze was about US frefan pressures that shaped by deregulation dreams and scammer black market mentality. Nobody is saying that US innovation has not proven its critics wrong, yet there are costs that the markets don’t price. As Yakov Feygin sez in his brilliant post about the recent SCV bank run, when the future does not happen according to your entrepreneurial dreams or risky investments, the state is immediately asked to step in and clean up the mess. “Bailouts” for the lucky means dumping the rest and insuring that massive inequalities will get cemented.
Cheap SF futuralism and SF iconography baiting is able to raise VC money yet what remains are discarded futurisms, everything turned into lies. The juicy bit below by none other than Thomas M. Disch - is a blant rebuke of all the romantic visionary SF starry eyed nerd raptures. Why is SF so popular in America? Well, because it is closely allied to how free markets and start-ups operate. And they are built on industrial policy bubbles- and industrial policy has a tendency to stimulate unaccountable investors, crypto bro acolytes and cracked-up biohackers promising longevity.
VIDEO IMPLANTS
Total Recall and Prosthetic Memory
Here another cool video by Jonas Čeika - CCK Philosophy (check his Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cuck and TW: https://twitter.com/PhilosophyCuck). He takes a critical look at Paul Verhoeven’s 1990 PKD cult adaptation. This cyberpunk video explores modernism/postmodernism faults and distinctions. I am sincerely grateful when somebody takes the time and energy to give a new spin to this cult classic or to canonize it even further, but hey, even Jonas mentions the fact that around 1995 - SF references and examples are the Vibranium needed to power up various theoretical approaches. This is another implanted memory that now feels near universal but it wasn't always so, because let us not forget, cyborg feminists came first (see Donna Haraway or Sadie Plant). Landsberg an her theory of empathy versus sympathy through all these memories that don't seem to belong to someone in particular is right there with them. Fandoms have been always contesting the IP idea in a way by their practices. They've been always picking up on references, quotes, characters even against the intention of their ‘creators’. This way they highlight maybe something that gets lost - the way remix culture highlights how SF is itself building on various older strata, even when you have novums, you also have a lot of ancient ideas floating around given a particular twist. See how simulation theory picks on gnostic ideas, but with an important caveat, it's not all matter like in the dualistic gnostic movements but all data, all information nowadays (see Erik Davis talk on Science and Magic).
SF memories (such as Total Recall) where already being turbo-charged by the convergence culture. Even Bill Gates anti-microchip conspiracy theory gets shaped by trashy SF flicks that speak in a profound way to today’s audiences. Our heads are spinning under a diet of tech dystopias (take ur pick!) and post-apocalyptic prepper influencers. We use SF tropes to understand how surveillance capitalism works or how systemic oppression operates or is coded into our algos and how we can change that. Yes, pop SF memory implants hold the global village together closer than ever, yet as Ceika makes clear, they represent the ambiguity or double aspect of commodification itself, with these memories being constantly repackaged and sold. I am glad Jonas agreed to exhibit his video in the context of our recycled New Temporealities show at Indecis artist run in Timisoara (still running!).
40 people worked at birthing Ion the robot
Although it felt like a farce, in the wake of global chatbot mayhem, the Romanian government felt impelled to launch their own version of the counselor bot. Promoted as the first Romanian AI project, the government started acting like an artificial intelligence playing wordgames. Named “ION” - not because it is the Romanian variant of John, or Wei, or Jan. But because its makers wanted a mirror inverted “NOI” (We in Romanian). So, again the 1st RO AI gets branded as the voice of the people. An embodiment of its supposed unity and we/them populism. Online, tabloid and commentariat reactions are predictably unforgiving and hilarious, starting with the fact that the incumbent president Klaus Iohannis, belonging to the German minority, has often been compared to a rusty robot. His natural stiffness (his innate Germaness?) and monotonous delivery makes him (not ION) the first presidential automaton.
Denis Villeneuve’s Neuromancer (2029, Midjourney Studios)
Damien Walter on his SF with D. Walter YT channel takes a step back after prompting Midjourney to see how AIs will adapt essential cyberpunk classics.
William Gibson’s SF masterpiece Necromancer practically launched cyberpunk by managing to tap into a tech poetics that spoke of things nobody yet understood (including himself). One can readily imagine a whole collaborative team of AI directors (ChatGPT + Midjourney in Damien’s speculative thought experiment) adapting Neuromancer for all screens, big and small, reiterating it trough the lens of all the greats - Kubrick, Villeneuve, Nolan, etc. u name it.
I cannot but recommend this series, and I completely agree with Charles Mudede in his enthusiastic endorsement of Chinese Tech giant Tencent adaptation of Liu Cixin’s hard SF trilogy Three Body Problem. Forget about The Expanse, the Mandalorian or even Andor. Folks, it has subtitles in EN, but don’t get nervous because it is over 30 episodes already and new ones continue to be released. This series has incredible tension and pace because of its scalability. It can zoom from the Plank scale to the galactic and back again like in The Powers of Ten 1977 educational movie done by the Eames. It has peculiar camera shots reminding me of martial arts movies(?) or even manhwa/manga angles and dynamics. Objects keep flying, defying physical laws and the dark cosmic sociology known as Dark Forest, Liu Cixin’s explanation of the Fermi paradox makes it weirdly actual. Also a fun fact: the reference to the inference problem in Liu Cixin vol 1 TBP with the chicken farmer example comes from Bertrand Russell apparently. The series is all free to watch on YT with EN subs (nearly 20 eps out already). Do not miss it!
#MUSTREAD (!!something for everybody!!)
A review by Steven Shaviro of The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz
The True meaning of Communism in The Last of Us by Charles Mudede
The Authority will be THE superhero movie of the streaming age or it will end it by Alin Răuţoiu
All at Once, the Multiverse Is Everywhere by David M. de León
Science Fiction about Surviving A Nuclear Holocaust pre- 1960 by James W Harris
GOSPLAN PODCASTS
The Deprogram Episode 69: GOSPLANning industrial Funko pop production (feat Tomas Härdin) Another really incredible happened, people (Marxist people that is primarily) started digging into socialist cybernetics, command economies and Soviet linear programming. This is an episode done by Yugopnik, JT and Hakim, based BreadTubbers who invited a Swedish programmer and math nerd called Tomas Härdin. This guy collected 800 page archive of various papers about planning up till 1987. He even mentions a current Russian project called OGAS 0.2 - check it out with Google trans! One of the most fucked up shit that happened during anomalous shock doctrine times is that ex Soviet OGAS (National State Automated System for Accounting and Processing Information) got used to speed up the pace of 90s privatization. Talking about capitalist subsumption! Although SF aspects are not visible at first, I consider the whole idea in tune with Elizabeth Bear’s White Space universe where a central Super Intelligence at the galactic core that organizes almost everything. It is not an egalitarian system but also much more humane and equitable than what we have.
Soviet Cybernetics and the Promise of Big Computer Socialism - a fantastic 2h discussion around the biographies and projects of Anatoly Kitov and Viktor Glushkov. What are the possibilities for computerized planning after the demise of the Soviet Union? What can be learned from the history of OGAS, and why was it never approved by the leadership of the USSR? What can be learned from the failure of the Soviet Internet and the hurdles it had to overcome? What I like is that they also discuss the legacy of a buried project. This is the story of Siberian Institutes and ecological inputs, especially as documented by a paper of Diana Kurkovsky West Cybernetics for the command economy: Foregrounding entropy in late Soviet planning (2020). I find it very salutary that socialist cybernetics is being nowadays rediscovered and explored from different angles, including big data and AI perspectives.
Books and Movies
Victor Petrov is an incredible Bulgarian historian of the Socialist Information Age, SF and robotics which I had the pleasure of meeting once in Blagoevgrad and Sofia. His just released MIT Press book (2023) is a must for everyone interested in a genuine eastbloc alternative to the Silicon Valley. We know about the Soviet Union and Allende’s Chile Cybersyn but what happened in small Balkan countries - is a big mystery to most. I am sure it will become a true classic of soc cybernetics and computing. He uncovers the whole geopolitical dimension of automation and how transnational business and professional networks became essential in order to realize the party's radical dreams of utopian automation. Bulgaria stands as a pioneer in personal computing and managed to produce half of all the Eastern Bloc’s electronics. Technocratic managers used these advantages before and immediately after 1989.
During 2020 through 2021, China surpassed North America as the biggest box office in the world, because lots of US theaters closed in 2020 and then struggled to make a comeback. At some point during one weekend, Moon Man, not DC nor Marvel, was the top grossing movie. Money aside, this is an incredibly funny take on the Last Man trope, and features a Taikonaut stranded on the moon with a kangaroo companion species (!!). While he’s not really the last human, he himself is convinced that interspecies relations will be his final lot. Imagine kangaroos making huge jumps on the moon regolith and camp kangaroo cosplays. One feels like one of the moon mission control center people watching the antics of a non-marsupial dating a marsupial. The webcomic by Cho Seok is also pretty cool, different from the movie, yet has a particular rhythm, pessimistic and full of scientific details. One can very easily relate to this lonely moon walker secretly watched by millions, a streamer in spite of himself.
/My thanks to Felix Petrescu, Alin Rautoiu, Mihai Lukacs, Julia Schulze, Robert Schilling, Irina Gheorghe, Ion Dumitrescu, Sergiu Sas, Cristian Dragan for supplying lots of links, discussions and input. Without such stellar ping pong, this newsletter would float aimlessly in outer space./