March 14, 2024
Thanks to all who asked for a copy of Bringer of Light in the recent Goodreads giveaway!
Congratulations if you were a winner, and if you were not chosen by the system, take heart: there will be another giveaway in the near future. Thank you for your interest in my science fiction! I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it!
February 15, 2024
The moment we’ve all been waiting for is nearly here!
Bringer of Light is finally set to be released on March 15, 2024! (Click the link to see a book synopsis and two brief excerpts; Smashwords also has an excerpt from the beginning chapters.)
Stop by Draft2Digital to see links to your favorite bookstore online!
UPDATE: I have some difficulty convincing D2D to distribute to Amazon. Therefore, I have decided to publish Bringer of Light directly on Amazon. Stop by here to order for Kindle (released March 15th). Paperback and hard cover are also in the works.
January 26, 2024
Now that I’ve got the manuscript completed, it’s time to search for typos!
Yup. Found some already. Oops.
I figure to rearrange and combine some of the later chapters as well. Look for a publication online in late March!
It’s taken nearly 9 years. Hm. Only 11 years fewer than Adam’s Stepsons.
Fortunately, I have outlined book two and started writing the opening chapters already. Hopefully it won’t take another 9 years to see the continuation of the Bringer of Light story!
September 6, 2023
When we give AI a humanoid form, we typically choose the robot to have feminine characteristics. Are we playing on stereotypes?
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230804-is-there-a-sinister-side-to-the-rise-of-female-robots
Isn’t it blindingly obvious?
All artificial intelligence, all robots and Chatbots and everything else electronically-programmed by a human being, will inevitably have human bias.
Even women prefer women’s voices to men’s when it comes to customer service.
On the other hand, women are also historically relegated to work with lower pay, lower status, kept out of positions of power — subject to the “male gaze.”
Now, we have AI that can be treated as sex objects. Even “married.”
So it is all “sinister,” as BBC asks?
Creepy, maybe. Sad, perhaps. Entirely predictable, definitely.
As we continue to lead more and more isolated individual lives, cut off from human contact and left unable to socialize, the rise of the “AI companion” seems inevitable…
February 27, 2023
“I’m less frightened by a Sydney that’s playing into my desire to cosplay a sci-fi story than a Bing that has access to reams of my personal data and is coolly trying to manipulate me on behalf of whichever advertiser has paid the parent company the most money.
“Nor is it just advertising worth worrying about. What about when these systems are deployed on behalf of the scams that have always populated the internet? How about on behalf of political campaigns? Foreign governments? “I think we wind up very fast in a world where we just don’t know what to trust anymore,” Gary Marcus, the A.I. researcher and critic, told me. “I think that’s already been a problem for society over the last, let’s say, decade. And I think it’s just going to get worse and worse.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/26/opinion/microsoft-bing-sydney-artificial-intelligence.html
November 21, 2022
If you’ve been reading this blog, you probably noticed the “has over 1,200 followers” tag suddenly dropped to just over 200.
That’s because I deactivated my Twitter account.
I debated for a couple of weeks.
And then saw how its Chief Twit (seriously, this is how this psychopath called himself) treated his workers.
100+ hour work weeks? Haphazardly firing pregnant single moms? Reinstating Der DrumpfenFührer?
Enough.
Twitter is run by a narcissistic, megalomaniacal bully with delusions of grandeur, and I will have nothing to do with any company that supports him or is run by him.
“But…” the plaintiff cry “where will we get our news??”
Um.
Try an actual news organization.
An aggregator works just fine.
Here’s a primer:
https://www.lifewire.com/best-news-aggregators-4584410
(FWIW, Flipboard is my current fav, but my friends often rely on Google News and Apple News (if you have Apple devices, of course. And for the standard no-nonsense and no-frills approach, AP).
Anyway, I’m happy to be followed by 200+ WordPress fans.
Don’t worry. Science is still science. And naturally there is science fiction on the way.
I just need time to write it!
December 27, 2021
In case you didn’t know, the entire film of Akira has been available on YouTube since 12/23…in Japanese.
Kanedaaaaaaaaaaa!
Still, it’s free. I first watched it (in badly translated dubbed English) on the big screen in a cheap arts cinema in 1991.
Glorious.
Bought the original Japanese comics (MUCH better than the movie, which barely covers the first volume) and then the English translated comics. Then got the collector’s edition movie with a new English translation (both subtitles and dubbed).
Tetsuooooooo!
It’s online for free until 12/28, so if you’re sick of Santa movies go check it out!
Kanedaaaaaaaaa! Help me…..!
(It’s meant to advertise the upcoming Katsuhiro Otomo Complete Works manga collection, available at the end of January.)
Tetsuooooooooooooo!
December 11, 2021
Well, the writing was already on the virtual wall from the beginning. The anime had only one season.
White fanboys got butthurt by the use of diverse actors – anime is anime, but live action is real actors in the real world where “race” and ethnicity are still issues and women don’t actually look like hourglasses.
Ratings plummeted after the initial hype. Netflix always panders to the masses, so this is not surprising.
Adios, amigos. See you, space cowboy.
— Read on soranews24.com/2021/12/10/there-will-not-be-a-season-2-for-netflixs-live-action-cowboy-bebop/
September 1, 2020
I get the attraction of people like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. They have big ideas. They’re enthusiastic, ecstatic, even. They’re great at simplifying difficult concepts and promoting tech to the lay person.
But they’re not creators. They’re “visionaries.”
I.e., salespersons.
Is that a bad thing? Of course not. I was in computer sales once. It was hard. Only the charismatic are good at it. But I didn’t have the knowledge and ability to make the products I was selling, let alone the power to innovate.
Sticking a chip in a person’s brain and sending thousands to the Moon or Mars sound cool. Possible, even.
But science isn’t sales. Someone might die.
Small difference.
We need visionaries, but scientists are more important. Maybe if they talked to each other…
August 4, 2020
Of course, they’re already sold out…
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