Category: Leo’s Blog

Recently, many of us have waited, with a baited breath, for the results of Hugo Awards voting. In the end, none of the nominees from the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies voting slates won any awards, which is a remarkable achievement, demonstrating that there is still enough strength and self-respect in the SFF fan audience to oppose attempts to subvert a free expression of the popular opinion. The fan have shown that they want their opinion to matter. Nevertheless, I’m skeptical about the various proposals to amend the Hugo voting system in order to avoid or mitigate the effects of…

Recently, my guest blog post appeared on Vaguely Circular: Aesthetics of Technology, where I identify and compare three main aesthetics in portrayal of technology: (1) the aesthetic of strength, (2) the aesthetic of flexibility, and (3) the aesthetic of overload. You can find the entire post at the link above.

Not long ago, on my blog, I took a look at the subject of Optimism and Darkness in Science Fiction, arguing the benefits of progress from the perspective of the science of complex systems. That prompted the author Lynda Williams to pose this question to me: Can science solve all our problems?

Yes. And no.

In mid-February, I attended Boskone, a science fiction convention in Boston. I was on the “Optimism vs. Darkness in SF” panel, together with John Joseph Adams, Jennifer Pelland, Phoebe Wray, and the moderator Peter Brett. After the panel, Justine Graykin, who was in the audience, came to me and said thank you for a brief speech I gave at the beginning of the panel, saying that this was worth attending it. This was perhaps the most memorable moment at Boskone for me. Although my time was sharply limited after the convention, I always meant to go back to this subject…

I will take part in ICCS 2011, the Eight International Conference on Complex Systems, organized by New England Complex Systems Institute. Yes, there will be a special workshop on Science Fiction and Complexity, chaired by Jonathan Vos Post and featuring Ben Bova, Philip Fellman, Steve Barnes, and yours truly. It will take place on Monday, June 27, during the evening session. I’m also going to attend a number of science workshops, throughout the entire week, June 27–July 1. There are so many interesting ones, it’s really hard to choose. But my criterion is simple: what can help me in research…

Pink Noise: A Posthuman Tale is reviewed on Upsaid.com: Pink Noise, by Leonid Korogodski, is poetic and boldly visionary. Although much of the action takes place inside a comatose brain, Korogodski creates a believable and vivid world that repays the reader’s attention. For the rest of the review, go to Upsaid.com.

My Boskone (February 18–20, 2011) schedule looks like this: (1) On Friday, 7:00-8:00 pm, I’ll join Jeffrey A. Carver and Tom Easton for a panel on The Domestic Robot. (2) On Friday, 9:00-10:00 pm, I will give a presentation on Plasma Cosmology, a controversial experimental approach to doing space science. (3) On Sunday, 10:30-11:00, I’ll be reading. (4) On Sunday, 11:00-12:00, I’ll be answering the question Does Mars Need Zombies?, along with Kathryn Cramer, Walter H. Hunt, Ken Schneyer, and Allen M. Steele. (5) Autographing on Sunday, 1:00-2:00 pm, sitting next to Leah Cypess and James Patrick Kelly. (6) On…

Apex Reviews had this to say about Pink Noise: A Posthuman Tale: Utterly mind-bending, Pink Noise is nothing if not imaginative. […] you are sure to finish his spiritually-winding tale emotionally exhausted – yet strangely intrigued by the nascent enlightenment you somehow now possess. For the rest of the review, see this or this.

There is a simple solution to the Fermi Paradox. As discovered by Ilya Prigogine, open complex non-linear systems far from equilibrium statistically tend to decrease their entropy. This phenomenon is also known under other names: emergent properties, self-organizing criticality, exotropy, to name a few. This is a generalization of evolution. This is what keeps the universe from the so-called “heat death.” This is the source of complexity in the universe, from the formation of galaxies to stars in galaxies, to planets around stars, to geological processes in rocky planets, to life on at least one planet but obviously not all,…