I’ve long been a great lover of science fiction (and fantasy), and I was pleased to see MIT’s Technology Review including a really interesting looking short story called “Osama Phone Home” that asks the question, “What happens when an ideological, technologically adept, highly determined group of conspirators are American?” I’ve read the first few pages, and it looks great!

I’ve written before about Bruce Sterling’s speech at Space in London. Finally, MAzine has put up a link to download the full speech. Worth listening to!

One day a girl college student in Canada asked me to define reality for her, for a paper she was writing for her philosophy class. She wanted a one-sentence answer. I thought about it and finally said, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” That’s all I could come up with. That was back in 1972. Since then I haven’t been able to define reality any more lucidly.

But the problem is a real one, not a mere intellectual game. Because today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups�??and the electronic hardware exists by which to deliver these pseudo-worlds right into the heads of the reader, the viewer, the listener. Sometimes when I watch my eleven-year-old daughter watch TV, I wonder what she is being taught. The problem of miscuing; consider that. A TV program produced for adults is viewed by a small child. Half of what is said and done in the TV drama is probably misunderstood by the child. Maybe it’s all misunderstood. And the thing is, Just how authentic is the information anyhow, even if the child correctly understood it? What is the relationship between the average TV situation comedy to reality? What about the cop shows? Cars are continually swerving out of control, crashing, and catching fire. The police are always good and they always win. Do not ignore that point: The police always win. What a lesson that is. You should not fight authority, and even if you do, you will lose. The message here is, Be passive. And�??cooperate. If Officer Baretta asks you for information, give it to him, because Officer Beratta is a good man and to be trusted. He loves you, and you should love him.

So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing. It is my job to create universes, as the basis of one novel after another.

From Philip K. Dick’s work, How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later, 1978

DVD Review: Avalon
Studio: Bluelight
Run Time: 102 min
Director: Mamoru Oshii
Starring: Malgorzata Foremniak, Jerzy Gudejko
Webpage (UK Release): http://www.avalonthemovie.com/

Mamoru Oshii from Ghost In The Shell fame turned to real live acting in this amazing, thought provoking sci-fi flick. It took him ten years to fully realise his project, wanting to fuse reality and illusions to make a �??real picture movie�?� that more resembled animation.

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Polish author Stanislaw Lem, who died recently, held all of American science fiction in the greatest of contempt, except for one person: Philip K. Dick. It’s easy to see why today. Although it took a very long time for Dick to achieve widespread fame and recognition for his work, he is now considered a giant among giants in science fiction writing: around fourteen of his works are presented in the Gollancz SF Masterworks Series, and several of his books have been turned into popular blockbusters, such as Minority Report (from the book of the same name), Bladerunner (based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep) and Total Recall (from We Can Remember It For You Wholesale).

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