Servusamanu.com

Just a few days ago I wrote an article on the g-speak, a computer that responds to hand motions. It seemed like a bit of science fiction come alive.

Well, here’s some more. (No that top picture isn’t real…yet). Now that we have laser weapons we’re presumably well on our way to having phasers set to stun, warp drives, and alien bartenders.

Once lasers become prevalent, what will futuristic warriors use in their world conquering adventures? Heinlein’s combat suits aren’t quite there yet and robot armies always seem to be out for revenge. Singularity and the bridge between AI and sentience is going to be an on-going drama for sure, but surely there’s room for humanity (and thus war) for at least a few more centuries. There may, perhaps, be a non-or-semi-sentient-robot-warrior niche to be filled soon. Presumably missiles would still be the most logical form of combat in actual space, but oddly enough you don’t tend to see them as often in space combat novels. And what about terraforming? Last time I saw that was Star Trek…

A month ago Engadget reported on a bit of future-come-to-the-present technology called the g-speak. For anyone who saw Minority Report (or even more topical, the MI6 computers in Quantum of Solace) it probably looks rather familiar.

It’s a cool bit of technology outright and I can almost see myself walking along virtual aisles almost-literally placing things on my shopping cart. You figure 10 years ago in a world of dial-up modems and beige computer cases something like that would be unthinkable, and yet here it is maybe only years or at most decades from production.

And that’s only looking at the small bit of time. On a wider scaller technology is progressing at an unheard of rate. Moore’s law, abstracted to ‘technology’ as a whole, predicts that technology progresses exponentially, doubling roughly every 2 years. It seems pretty true to me.

The consequences of all this technology deferred to another article, I’d like to suggest a new law. The amount of cleverness it takes to write good futuristic science-fiction increases exponentially, doubling roughly every 2 years. Between the advances coming out every day in every field, it’s hardly any surprise that steam-punk decided to take the future into the past. It’s just getting harder and harder to keep that future more than a few years out. We sure do live in exciting times, eh?

Before there was Servusamanu there was…well a lot of things, but also The Secrets!

The Secrets is both a few seasons worth of (free!) podcasts and a series of pdfs dedicated to becoming a better writer, getting published, and, perhaps most importantly, having a career as an author. Both are written and presented by Michael A. Stackpole, perhaps best known for his Star Wars novels. Personal instruction from a highly regarded and highly successful author is usually hard to come by, The Secrets is easily the single most complete resource I’ve found for all aspects of writing from designing worlds, creating characters, pacing a novel, getting it edited, finding a publisher, negotiating the world of agents, and having a…career…doing the whole process over. The podcasts do tend towards fantasy and science fiction writing (No surprise there), but I’ve found the advice invaluable even outside of so-called genre fiction.

As someone interested in the future of writing and reading, Stackpole’s opinions on trends in the industry are especially noteworthy. I intend to post in the future on using technology like facebook/craigslist/twitter/ipods-iphones-Kindles as a means of delivering writing. In the mean time I suggest listening to the fifth series of podcasts: on the future of publishing .