Nerd Word of the Week: Roach motel

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Roach motel (n.) - A media consumption device, format or service with such pervasive and egregious DRM that it precludes sharing content with any other device, format, or service. More simply, any system where "your data checks in, but it doesn't check out" -- which is a reference to the old tagline for Roach Motel insect traps. A roach motel is any technology that doesn't let you move your data off it with a minimum hassle.

I bring it up because: Both the Kindle and the iPad have been described as roach motels (notably by Cory Doctorow) in the wake of the Amazon/MacMillan pricing dust-up, largely in the context of both devices wanting to "own" the digital book market and thus having no incentive to make ebook portability a priority. This, in turn, revived discussion of the larger, lingering roach motel apocalypse issue -- format obsolescence. All digital data is encoded in a specific format, and that format will eventually fall out of use, which in turn means the decoding devices will become scarce, which thus means the data will be trapped in the old format. (Raise your hand if you have old single-density floppies that your current PC can't open.) Therefore, all data formats eventually become roach motels, which is why contemporary data portability is such a pressing longterm issue.

Charles Stross took this concept to a dramatic extreme in Glasshouse, wherein the distant descendants of humanity had to reenact (inaccurately) aspects of 1950s Western culture because most of the historical records of the era were trapped in encrypted proprietary file formats. Think that's farfetched? Ask NASA how easy it is to decode digital records of the moon landing. If the world's foremost manned spaceflight agency can forget how to read its own unencrypted video tapes of events of staggering historic importance, what chance does the average consumer have of avoiding personal roach motel hell 20 years on? Maybe the Data Liberation Front are onto something after all.

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What force can bend even PR reps to his will? Cthulhu!

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As a guy who currently earns much of his living from reviewing stuff, I get blasted with a fair share of press releases most of which hold little interest to me. Thus, it makes my Monday to get a little honest PR representing rightful fear and worship of The Elder Gods, as Tor sent me today. I recount it all for your benefit below:

Hi Jay,

This December, take a break from sparkly vampires and annoying good cheer with regular stops at Tor.com, where every day we’ll be tempting the Great Old Ones to awaken for our inaugural Cthulhu-mas, a month dedicated to all things Lovecraft.

Upcoming features include posts from Weird Tales editorial director Stephen Segal, an original comic from art superteam Teetering Bulb, Cthulhu-themed gift recommendations selected by Ellen Datlow, a new short story with a Lovecraftian focus, and lots more.

If you haven’t had a chance to check out the blog this month yet, here’s some of the posts you’ve missed:

*A list of H.P. Lovecraft-related titles available for 30% off all month: http://store.tor.com/

*Very special Cthulhu-mas wishes! http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=58390

*Lovecraft monster drawings from Mike Mignola, Michael Whelan, John Jude Palencar, and Bob Eggleton: http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=58269

*The introduction of Tor.com’s exclusive line of holiday cards: http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=58384

*Patrick Nielsen Hayden on “H.P. Lovecraft, Founding Father of SF Fandom”: http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=58397

As if your sanity weren’t already pushed to the brink this December.

All best,

Ami

As I've recounted before, Tor have a strikingly good PR staff who seem to get it. Invoking Lovecraft and taking potshots at Twilight both earn points in my book, and I'm pretty much the target audience of Tor products. Plus, I just finished the milSF-Cthulhu mashup "A Colder War" from Charles Stross's Toast, so I was primed for this missive either way. Still, for those of you wondering what a targeted (and geek-friendly) press release looks like, the above is a great example. Ami, keep 'em coming!

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Nerd Word of the Week: Monomyth

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Monomyth (n.) - A term for the common structure of heroic stories, particularly in mythology. Also known as the hero's journey, the term monomyth was popularized by Joseph Campbell in his seminal comparative mythology treatise The Hero With A Thousand Faces. Campbell broke down dozens of epic tales from major mythological traditions and identified 17 common stages of any hero's story -- effectively writing the outline of seemingly every successful adventure story subsequently published.

George Lucas openly consulted with Campbell in writing the first Star Wars scripts, and thus the original Star Wars movie is held up as a paramount example of the cinematic monomyth in action. Naturally, this has led to some backlash. Novelist David Brin has cited the monomyth as a tool of despots used to justify their favored status. John Scalzi argues that Lucas's obsession with the monomyth contributed to the failure of the Star Wars prequels.

I bring it up because: Joseph Campbell killed genre fiction, or so some have argued. This is not news, as there have been several YouTube videos mocking the monomyth parallels between sci-fi franchises, but the subject got goosed last week when Ron Moore explained how Star Trek: The Next Generation writers incorporated science into their scripts. (To quote sci-fi editor John Joseph Adams's response to the interview: "Every time Ron Moore speaks about writing an angel kills itself.")

The geek blogosphere was ablaze after Moore's comments, hitting apogee when Charles Stross explained why he hates Star Trek -- because it sublimates ideas to story, effectively using the structure of the monomyth and dressing it up in technobabble drag. Thus we re-open up the can of worms as to why TV genre fiction seems so formulaic and facile when compared to prose genre fiction. Because, ultimately, we're a prisoner of the monomyth and use Joseph Campbell shorthand as the basis, rather than the framework, of the story. There are worse guides, but its hard to be taken seriously when everything looks and reads and sounds the same. Who says cloning is a future technology?

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Nerd Word of the Week: Augmented reality

Augmented reality (n.) - A hybrid of conventional and virtual reality, where computer-generated artifacts and information are overlaid upon a direct view of the real world. Sometimes referred to by the abbreviation AR. Applications can range from the simple, such as the Heads-Up Display in the F-16 fighter which overlays a computer-generated targeting crosshairs directly into the pilot's field of view, to extraordinarily complex, wherein complete virtual persons, buildings, and events are superimposed over, and interact within, a viewer's perception of the real world. In Charles Stross's novel Halting State, the Scottish police are outfitted with AR lenses that superimpose distress call data, criminal records, and jurisdictional boundaries into their field of view so as to assess and repsond to emergencies more efficiently. In the same novel, everyday citizens engage in complex alternate reality games (sometimes also called AR games or ARGs, just to confuse the issue) wherein augmented reality technology is used to "fictionalize" the environment, allowing players to pretend to be spies, zombie hunters, or fantasy heroes during the course of their everyday lives. Rainbow's End by Vernor Vinge and Spook Country by William Gibson also depict worlds heavily influenced by AR tech, and the tabletop roleplaying game Shadowrun was years ahead of its time in depicting the implications of a world where augmented reality tech is ubiquitous and unregulated (and also ruled by mythical dragons).

I bring it up because: University of Washington researcher Babak Parviz made recent headlines with his conceptual paper on how to build self-contained, fully functional AR contact lenses. Rather than the bulky AR/exocortex goggles found in Charles Stross's Accelerando or the direct Brainpal neural implants suggested in John Scalzi's Old Man's War, these AR lenses would hit the practical application sweet spot for possible AR use in the real world. And the idea that we already have the technical know-how to build them is rightfully stirring up the nerd-o-sphere. I for one welcome our new AR-imposed virtual overlords.

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Nerd Word of the Week: Spec-fic

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Spec-fic (n.) - An abbreviated slang form of speculative fiction, which is itself an umbrella term for science-fiction, fantasy, and horror fiction, as well as the various subgenres contained in, and shared by, each. It's also a very loaded term in nerd circles. Some see spec-fic as the parent category of all truly imaginative literature, encompassing any setting, plot or character that includes or involves objects, events, or effects not found in the conventional world. Thus, Hamlet -- what with its prominent inclusion of a ghost-king -- would qualify as spec-fic under this usage, which for some is the problem.

The counterpoint to the broad, almost aspirational definition of spec-fic is the what might be called the geek brand of spec-fic, wherein the term is used to classify works that don't neatly fit into one classic genre or subgenre. For example, Harry Turtledove's Guns of the South posits what would happen if time-travelers gave modern weapons to the Confederacy during the U.S. Civil War. This is quite obviously a sci-fi tale, as the time travel points out, but the novel also focuses on clear historical events and consequences, making it very much an alternate history tale. Spec-fic is a term that bridges the gap between the genre divisions that fandom (and book marketers) often use to segregate nerd-worthy literature.

I bring it up because: Today is author Cherie Priest's birthday, and her career is a fantastic example of the straddling of (false) genre divisions that fans love and expect (and drives book marketers a little nuts). Her debut novel, Four and Twenty Blackbirds, is a southern gothic, modern fantasy, and horror tale. Her most recently released novel, Fathom, is a combination historical fiction, southern gothic, mythpunk-slash-Chthulhu-slash-pirate tale. Priest's upcoming novel, Boneshaker, is set in her new Clockwork Century universe, which crosses alt-history Civil War fiction with steampunk, Weird West, horror, and maybe a little sci-fi for fun.

And if you think Priest's bibliography is a tad difficult to classify, try China Mieville on for size. I think his Perdido Street Station has about 57 genres and subgenres contained within it, and that's before you even get to the poetic, murderous, reality warping spider-god (who is a side character, mind you). You might also enjoy Charles Stross's Jennifer Morgue, which is a postcyberpunk-Chthulhu-spy-fi meta-satire. With a heroic mermaid succubus as the female lead. Lots of that doesn't show up on the cover blurb, as you might imagine.

Thus we have yet another reason I wish my local bookstore (and my new favorite online bookstore) would have multiple overlapping genre categories -- because spec-fic is too broad a term for most of what I love, and lots of the books I read fall into so many subgenres that they defy description, but certainly not enjoyment.

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Nerd Word of the Week: Unobtainium

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Unobtainium (n.) - Snarky term for either a scientifically impossible substance that makes some fantastic device or process possible, or an exotic real-world substance that is conferred with implausible or impossible properties for the sake of a story. The classic examples are Cavorite, a metal that creates antigravity fields as first imagined by H. G. Wells in The First Men in the Moon, and scrith, the impossibly strong material from which Larry Niven's Ringworld was built. A more contemporary example would be dilithium, the crystal from Star Trek that regulates matter-antimatter annihilations and makes warp drive possible.

Science fiction fans (and, more importantly, critics and editors) refer to these blatant wish-granting elements and minerals as unobtainium, as they are unobtainable in the real world. Equivalent phrases include: Unattainium, wishalloy, buzzwordium, handwavium (for technical handwaving), and element 404 (as in Not Found).

I bring it up because: 14 years ago this week, the first pure Bose-Einstein condensate was synthesized. A BEC is an extremely weird state of matter with behaviors that cannot be fully explained by current science--including a propensity to spontaneously crawl out of containment vessels. Bose-Einstein condensates are often used as contemporary stand-ins for classic fictional unobtainium in modern science fiction stories, as it "sounds" more real and the author at least has the flimsy cover of "science doesn't understand it" to explain how BECs can turn raw matter into a Jovian mooncastle using only a souped-up inkjet printer (I'm looking at you, Charles Stross's Accelerando.) Plus, Bose-Einstein condensate is just fun to type, even if it sounds vaguely like the residue from a lightspeed subwoofer.

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