» Fringe Blog – Writing on Film, Culture, and Things on the Fringe

Singularity News, By The Way

jelewis8 — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 17:22:49 +0000

I failed to mention that my most recent novel, The Cold Goodbye, deals in part with the so-called Singularity, a somewhat loose amalgam of socio-scientific future casting that deals with the rapid increase of technology to the point at which the whole of human progress and achievement is maximized in a development of monumental proportions, changing what Ray Kurzweil calls the “fabric of human history.”
I only mention it because the Singularity has been floating about as a popular meme these days on blogs (notably Instapundit, and I figured I could take part in the revolution (rather than being shot or left by the wayside).
Doubleplus good bonus: Part of the plot involves nanotechnology for devious and illegal activities, polymer research that opens up new questions about our humanity, and secret government installations, but without all the conspiracy theory nonsense that have tripped up so many other authors. It’s got murder, suicide, and sex, not to mention an undeniably realistic, if frightening climax. Especially if you live in California.
So, if you’re a technophile into futures markets, religion, socio-ethical questions, and enjoy a good hardboiled mystery to boot, feel free to purchase The Cold Goodbye. It would really make me happy. And it would help support me as I write the thrilling second part.

I’m a Published Author (Technically)

jelewis8 — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 04:55:02 +0000

The book is done, incidentally. I spent the day editing and fixing up the file and making it ready for PDF-ifying, which is not as easy as it sounds. Because the PDF file has to be a specific size, with bleed margins and all sorts of embedded font nonsense that eventually makes you realize that maybe the reason it’s so hard to get published these days isn’t the competitive market, it’s the fixing of all those bleed margins.
There’s something very satisfying about creating your own cover art, writing a blurb for the back, and putting it all together in a neat little package, complete with shopping cart goodness for the masses to discover via a random Google search. Oh, sorry, I forgot to link it!
Please purchase The Cold Goodbye!
There’s even a one chapter preview, which should entice you and send small electrical shocks to your cerebellum if you click on the link and then decline to purchase. The second part may not work properly, but it is enticing, like a nice hunk of mutton turning on a spit over an open flame, juices spitting and popping like corkers and fireworks. Why mutton? Because it seems like it’s a Christmas-ey kind of meat, and I’m feeling very seasonal right now.
By the way, this is only the “evaluation” version of the novel. Here’s the breakdown. Readers of this version will tell me if I should write Book 2, because honestly, I don’t know if the story’s any good. I suspect it might be, but the real litmus test is unvarnished responses from interested readers. I expect honesty. Should I write Book 2? Should I condemn the whole thing to the dung heap? And if so, where would I find such a dung heap?
So, once again, please, go check out The Cold Goodbye and if you’re feeling extra charitable, drop me a line and tell me what you thought of it.

Science Vs. God

jelewis8 — Tue, 10 May 2005 18:57:19 +0000

Oh My God particles are so named ironically because science’s big accomplishment (besides the atom bomb and the vaccuum cleaner) has been the eradication of God from the scientific discourse. It’s not God per se that bothers us, it’s the idea that God could be responsible for all this nonsense that we call science and reality and being that we find utterly bothersome and eminently unbelievable. How could God create such and such particles, or these elements, or those multi-cellular organisms? If He is God, then it follows that He is infinite, omnipresent, and ipso facto a Being unlike anything that has to do with matter. God has no place in science precisely because He is God, because he is not matter, not reality, not the slab of existence we call life. Science deals with the cold hard facts, the truisms, the axioms, and laws of nature and the design of reality. God is none of these, nor does His theoretical hand belong in any of them.
God is okay when left in the spiritual realm. Let the mumbo-jumbo believers posit the unverifiable from the pulpit. Matter is the domain of science, not a being beyond the natural order of things. And matter takes precedence over non-matter, being over superbeing, this over the other.
Or so we’ve pretty much been brought up to believe.
Yet when we curse, it’s not as if a “buddhadamned” works to instill righteous indignation in the recipient’s ears. “Jesus Christ” is an epithet more often than it is the name of a historical figure who claimed to be God. One could say cursing is the essence of dirt and matter (what do you think shit is?), since it exemplifies, characterizes, and personifies the crudity and baseness, indeed the very foundation of existence. Why do we marry the crudeness of matter to the so-called scientific invalidity of God? Why do we hasten to express our disdain, disgust, and antipathy at life in terms of the divine? Is it a complex historical human psycho-dependence on the very things we have attempted to leave behind in our attempt to discover the infinite, a pseudo-Freudian spiritual wet dream that conjures distant memories of a past time where wonder hadn’t been replaced by reason? Perhaps it is reflexive, like muscle action in anticipation of a blow. Natural. Instinctive. Life affirming.
There is something divine here. Something that sits in the spaces between the elementary particles. Not empty space, not a vaccuum of reality. But something not quite of this world, either. The infinite surrounds the finite, and our very being is infused with it.
And Science can’t explain a bit of it.