Turkey City party and Ted Chiang
Turkey City is a science fiction writing workshop where people gather and critique each others' stories (which they have read in advance). Traditionally it's followed by a party in the evening, where the writers, according to Bruce Sterling, try to repair their damaged relationships with booze. The workshop and the party used to be at Bruce Sterling's house before Sterling left for California last year, and since then Lawrence continues the tradition. The last Turkey City workshop was July 23rd. The party is open to not just the workshop participants but also Lawrence's diverse friends and acquaintances. So I was there too.
The star guest was a writer named Ted Chiang. Chiang, who describes himself as "occasional writer", has only one book out, a story collection "Stories Of Your Life And Others" -- but wow, what stories! They have won two Nebulas and one Hugo, and no wonder. The stories are truly awesome. I would say his writing is a lot like Greg Egan, only more accessible and with better, more multidimensional, human characters. The comparison with Greg Egan comes from the rigor with which he examines every aspect of the idea he's writing about. He looks at it from many unexpected angles and pursues its ramifications to a logical, but surprising, conclusion. But his stories aren't so much about physics, like Greg Egan's, as they are about philosophy, so they don't require advance knowledge of science to understand.
Interestingly, several of Chiang's stories are set in what can only be described as a fantasy universe, because its laws contradict our own. In one story the sky is literally a stone vault that contains reservoirs of water, and rain is the result of Yahweh opening those reservoirs. In another story, sperm cells are actually tiny fetuses, and every man already carries in himself the fetuses of all his possible children (though they still need to meet an egg in order to start growing and be born). But these fantasy ideas are developed with the rigor typically seen in hard science fiction, and this Wiki entry suggests his stories could be categorized as "hard fantasy".
I would be tempted to say that his stories sometimes give an impression that Ted Chiang wrote them while plowing through Hoffstadter's "Godel, Escher, Bach" to illustrate the main concepts in that book. :-) But that would be a huge oversimplification. It is amazing how he takes concepts from several different areas of science and intertwines them in unexpected but very elegant ways. In one of them, wonderful, unexpected properties of mathematics and linguistics have a philosophical effect of helping the protagonist come to terms with her child's death. Another story, the one where sperm cells are miniature fetuses, applies the concept of the fixed point, a program that writes out its own code, to biology, in order to prevent extinction of the human race. As a result, the reproduction in the world of the story starts working very much the way it works in our world. (The story does not use computer science terminology at all, by the way. CS concepts are cloaked in kabbalistic terms.) I may find some fault with this story for being too clever, to the point of being a little contrived. It's as if the plot and the characters serve the only purpose of illustrating the concept. But it is still an incredibly elegant story. What can I say, Ted Chiang's works are truly brilliant.
In the picture: Turkey City workshop participants. Ted Chiang is first row, second from the right. Some of the other people I know: second row, leftmost: Mikal Trimm; middle: Lawrence Person; to his right, Stina Leicht. First row, leftmost: Chris Nakashima-Brown.
At the Turkey City Party I hoped to if not talk to Ted Chiang, then at least to eavesdrop to some conversations in which he participated. In fact I hoped more for the latter than the former, since I would have learned more interesting things that way. However, he seemed to be a quiet, introverted person who doesn't speak much. Mostly, he let others do the speaking. (A useful quality for a writer to have.) I am the same way too, and as a result, my attempt to make conversation with Ted Chiang was a little awkward. The reason why I attempted it at all was I had quite a bit to drink; too much, judging from next day's hangover.
I asked him if he would be interested to have some of his stories published in our Lithuanian science fiction/fantasy fanzine -- for free, of course: as a fanzine, we barely break even, so we can't pay the authors. He said he would have to ask his agent about it, since he did such a thing once in the past, and the agent didn't like it. Then we chatted a little about our favorite SF authors. One of his favorite authors, and mine, is Greg Egan. Chiang also asked me what I thought about Bruce Sterling, and I said I only read his "Holy Fire", and wasn't too impressed. It seemed to me more about pop culture than about science fiction. Chiang said that while Bruce Sterling does not delve into deep philosophical questions like, let's say, Egan, Sterling thinks harder than anybody else about the impact that technology has in our lives. And for that Chiang respects Sterling.
Then we talked a little about Charles Stross, and I said I found it strange and somewhat disappointing that Charles Stross books, while ostensibly set in the far future, reads like it's actually set in the last 5 minutes of our past, or is directed at readers who are interested in the last 5 minutes of popular culture. People in them use blogs and email, although they access it in their retinas. Chiang then said that John Clute even has a name for this phenomenon. He calls it a story's actual time. That's the actual time in which the story is taking place, as reflected by the culture portrayed in the book, even though the story may be ostensibly set in the future. (This is how I understood the "actual time of the story". It is by no means an exact quotation, or even an accurate interpretation of what Ted Chiang said, much less of what John Clute said.) So, Chiang agreed that Charles Stross's and Cory Doctorow's works, despite their futuristic trappings, are actually set in the dot-com era, with its exuberant optimism, its wild enthusiasm about technology.
Most people at the Turkey City party were there because they attended the Turkey City writing workshop, and some conversation revolved about that. Somebody asked me if I have heard about the famous Turkey City lexicon. I said I have, and I even wondered why a very prominent science fiction cliche has not been mentioned in the Turkey City lexicon. I wrote about it once in this LiveJournal entry. A protagonist who lives in the distant future, yet makes frequent references to the 20th or 21th century culture and world events. It turns out there is a related phenomenon that some people have a name for; they call it spiderism, after a writer Spider Robinson, whose book characters always listen to Spider Robinson's favorite music. There is at least one author, they said -- Rudy Rucker -- who claims that a writer should only write characters that are like himself / herself, otherwise they will never be convincing. Hence, Rudy Rucker's characters are all former stoners. Or so it was said in that conversation. I haven't read any fiction by Rudy Rucker, though I liked his nonfiction "Infinity and the Mind".
Ted Chiang, too, pointed out a category of a cliche that should be in the Turkey City Lexicon, but isn't. Unfortunately I didn't catch it because the room was loud and I was already drunk. It had something to do with the fact that in the movies the characters always communicate with aliens in English, even when the characters are non-English speakers. Or something like that.
We chatted like this for a while, and then I reached a point that typically comes in most conversations with strangers, where I no longer know if the other person is hanging around because he or she is interested in continuing the conversation, or if he or she is is doing it just out of politeness, while looking for a chance to escape. I always err on the side of caution in those circumstances. So I took what passes for me for a graceful exit, and asked Ted Chiang for his email address so that I could email him later when he presumably will have asked his agent's permission to give me a story for publishing in our fanzine. He scribbled the email adress on a piece of paper, I thanked him and took off.
This party made me notice that alcohol doesn't work on me the way it used to. I no longer get a feeling of a mild euphoria when I drink. I still get drunk, though, it's just not as pleasant. It loosens my inhibitions somewhat, for example, to the point where I could tell Ted Chiang how much I liked his stories. It is normally very hard for me to shower someone with effusive praise. I feel incredibly self-conscious doing that. So it's quite out of character for me. So, alcohol still provides a certain amount of social lubrication for me, but without that rosy glow that I used to feel after having a drink or two. In other words, it's not so much fun anymore. Maybe it will push me to the point where I'll start to socialize without alcohol! It's a blasphemy, I know, but stranger things have happened.
Ted Chiang
The star guest was a writer named Ted Chiang. Chiang, who describes himself as "occasional writer", has only one book out, a story collection "Stories Of Your Life And Others" -- but wow, what stories! They have won two Nebulas and one Hugo, and no wonder. The stories are truly awesome. I would say his writing is a lot like Greg Egan, only more accessible and with better, more multidimensional, human characters. The comparison with Greg Egan comes from the rigor with which he examines every aspect of the idea he's writing about. He looks at it from many unexpected angles and pursues its ramifications to a logical, but surprising, conclusion. But his stories aren't so much about physics, like Greg Egan's, as they are about philosophy, so they don't require advance knowledge of science to understand.
Interestingly, several of Chiang's stories are set in what can only be described as a fantasy universe, because its laws contradict our own. In one story the sky is literally a stone vault that contains reservoirs of water, and rain is the result of Yahweh opening those reservoirs. In another story, sperm cells are actually tiny fetuses, and every man already carries in himself the fetuses of all his possible children (though they still need to meet an egg in order to start growing and be born). But these fantasy ideas are developed with the rigor typically seen in hard science fiction, and this Wiki entry suggests his stories could be categorized as "hard fantasy".
I would be tempted to say that his stories sometimes give an impression that Ted Chiang wrote them while plowing through Hoffstadter's "Godel, Escher, Bach" to illustrate the main concepts in that book. :-) But that would be a huge oversimplification. It is amazing how he takes concepts from several different areas of science and intertwines them in unexpected but very elegant ways. In one of them, wonderful, unexpected properties of mathematics and linguistics have a philosophical effect of helping the protagonist come to terms with her child's death. Another story, the one where sperm cells are miniature fetuses, applies the concept of the fixed point, a program that writes out its own code, to biology, in order to prevent extinction of the human race. As a result, the reproduction in the world of the story starts working very much the way it works in our world. (The story does not use computer science terminology at all, by the way. CS concepts are cloaked in kabbalistic terms.) I may find some fault with this story for being too clever, to the point of being a little contrived. It's as if the plot and the characters serve the only purpose of illustrating the concept. But it is still an incredibly elegant story. What can I say, Ted Chiang's works are truly brilliant.
In the picture: Turkey City workshop participants. Ted Chiang is first row, second from the right. Some of the other people I know: second row, leftmost: Mikal Trimm; middle: Lawrence Person; to his right, Stina Leicht. First row, leftmost: Chris Nakashima-Brown.
At the Turkey City Party I hoped to if not talk to Ted Chiang, then at least to eavesdrop to some conversations in which he participated. In fact I hoped more for the latter than the former, since I would have learned more interesting things that way. However, he seemed to be a quiet, introverted person who doesn't speak much. Mostly, he let others do the speaking. (A useful quality for a writer to have.) I am the same way too, and as a result, my attempt to make conversation with Ted Chiang was a little awkward. The reason why I attempted it at all was I had quite a bit to drink; too much, judging from next day's hangover.
I asked him if he would be interested to have some of his stories published in our Lithuanian science fiction/fantasy fanzine -- for free, of course: as a fanzine, we barely break even, so we can't pay the authors. He said he would have to ask his agent about it, since he did such a thing once in the past, and the agent didn't like it. Then we chatted a little about our favorite SF authors. One of his favorite authors, and mine, is Greg Egan. Chiang also asked me what I thought about Bruce Sterling, and I said I only read his "Holy Fire", and wasn't too impressed. It seemed to me more about pop culture than about science fiction. Chiang said that while Bruce Sterling does not delve into deep philosophical questions like, let's say, Egan, Sterling thinks harder than anybody else about the impact that technology has in our lives. And for that Chiang respects Sterling.
Then we talked a little about Charles Stross, and I said I found it strange and somewhat disappointing that Charles Stross books, while ostensibly set in the far future, reads like it's actually set in the last 5 minutes of our past, or is directed at readers who are interested in the last 5 minutes of popular culture. People in them use blogs and email, although they access it in their retinas. Chiang then said that John Clute even has a name for this phenomenon. He calls it a story's actual time. That's the actual time in which the story is taking place, as reflected by the culture portrayed in the book, even though the story may be ostensibly set in the future. (This is how I understood the "actual time of the story". It is by no means an exact quotation, or even an accurate interpretation of what Ted Chiang said, much less of what John Clute said.) So, Chiang agreed that Charles Stross's and Cory Doctorow's works, despite their futuristic trappings, are actually set in the dot-com era, with its exuberant optimism, its wild enthusiasm about technology.
Most people at the Turkey City party were there because they attended the Turkey City writing workshop, and some conversation revolved about that. Somebody asked me if I have heard about the famous Turkey City lexicon. I said I have, and I even wondered why a very prominent science fiction cliche has not been mentioned in the Turkey City lexicon. I wrote about it once in this LiveJournal entry. A protagonist who lives in the distant future, yet makes frequent references to the 20th or 21th century culture and world events. It turns out there is a related phenomenon that some people have a name for; they call it spiderism, after a writer Spider Robinson, whose book characters always listen to Spider Robinson's favorite music. There is at least one author, they said -- Rudy Rucker -- who claims that a writer should only write characters that are like himself / herself, otherwise they will never be convincing. Hence, Rudy Rucker's characters are all former stoners. Or so it was said in that conversation. I haven't read any fiction by Rudy Rucker, though I liked his nonfiction "Infinity and the Mind".
Ted Chiang, too, pointed out a category of a cliche that should be in the Turkey City Lexicon, but isn't. Unfortunately I didn't catch it because the room was loud and I was already drunk. It had something to do with the fact that in the movies the characters always communicate with aliens in English, even when the characters are non-English speakers. Or something like that.
We chatted like this for a while, and then I reached a point that typically comes in most conversations with strangers, where I no longer know if the other person is hanging around because he or she is interested in continuing the conversation, or if he or she is is doing it just out of politeness, while looking for a chance to escape. I always err on the side of caution in those circumstances. So I took what passes for me for a graceful exit, and asked Ted Chiang for his email address so that I could email him later when he presumably will have asked his agent's permission to give me a story for publishing in our fanzine. He scribbled the email adress on a piece of paper, I thanked him and took off.
This party made me notice that alcohol doesn't work on me the way it used to. I no longer get a feeling of a mild euphoria when I drink. I still get drunk, though, it's just not as pleasant. It loosens my inhibitions somewhat, for example, to the point where I could tell Ted Chiang how much I liked his stories. It is normally very hard for me to shower someone with effusive praise. I feel incredibly self-conscious doing that. So it's quite out of character for me. So, alcohol still provides a certain amount of social lubrication for me, but without that rosy glow that I used to feel after having a drink or two. In other words, it's not so much fun anymore. Maybe it will push me to the point where I'll start to socialize without alcohol! It's a blasphemy, I know, but stranger things have happened.
Ted Chiang