<![CDATA[io9: ted chiang]]> http://tags.lifehacker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/io9.com.png <![CDATA[io9: ted chiang]]> http://io9.com/tag/tedchiang http://io9.com/tag/tedchiang <![CDATA[Pry Open Your Own Head, With Ted Chiang's Exhalation]]> Ted Chiang's Hugo-nominated story of robot self-examination, "Exhalation," is available as a free download in a variety of formats. Find out why the robot brains are slowing down, if you dare.

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<![CDATA[Final Hugo Awards Ballot Full Of Writing, Publishing Goodness]]> The list of Hugo Award finalists, announced yesterday, is a bit less mystifying than the Nebula finalists, which came out a while back - especially in the novel category. All five of the novel finalists are books we enjoyed, and would be delighted to see win. Meanwhile, it's good to see Charles Coleman Finlay's "The Political Prisoner" and Mary Robinette Kowal's "Evil Robot Monkey" getting recognition. (There seems to be a bit of a monkey theme with the short-story finalists.) I also loved Ted Chiang's "Exhalation." And congrats to our pals Chris Garcia and Cheryl Morgan, for the fan-writer nods. Finally, props to Tor for taking three out of five slots in the "best editor, long form" category, and congrats also to Lou Anders.

Here's the full list:

Best Novel
Anathem by Neal Stephenson (Morrow; Atlantic UK)
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins; Bloomsbury)
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (Tor)
Saturn's Children by Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit)
Zoe's Tale by John Scalzi (Tor)

Best Novella
‘‘The Erdmann Nexus'' by Nancy Kress (Asimov's Oct/Nov 2008)
‘‘The Political Prisoner'' by Charles Coleman Finlay (F&SF Aug 2008)
‘‘The Tear'' by Ian McDonald (Galactic Empires)
‘‘True Names'' by Benjamin Rosenbaum & Cory Doctorow (Fast Forward 2)
‘‘Truth'' by Robert Reed (Asimov's Oct/Nov 2008)

Best Novelette
‘‘Alastair Baffle's Emporium of Wonders'' by Mike Resnick (Asimov's Jan 2008)
‘‘The Gambler'' by Paolo Bacigalupi (Fast Forward 2)
‘‘Pride and Prometheus'' by John Kessel (F&SF Jan 2008)
‘‘The Ray-Gun: A Love Story'' by James Alan Gardner (Asimov's Feb 2008)
‘‘Shoggoths in Bloom'' by Elizabeth Bear (Asimov's Mar 2008)

Best Short Story
‘‘26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss'' by Kij Johnson (Asimov's Jul 2008)
‘‘Article of Faith'' by Mike Resnick (Baen's Universe Oct 2008)
‘‘Evil Robot Monkey'' by Mary Robinette Kowal (The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume Two)
‘‘Exhalation'' by Ted Chiang (Eclipse Two)
‘‘From Babel's Fall'n Glory We Fled'' by Michael Swanwick (Asimov's Feb 2008)

Best Related Book
Rhetorics of Fantasy
by Farah Mendlesohn (Wesleyan University Press)
Spectrum 15: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art by Cathy Fenner & Arnie Fenner, eds. (Underwood Books)
The Vorkosigan Companion: The Universe of Lois McMaster Bujold by Lillian Stewart Carl & John Helfers, eds. (Baen)
What It Is We Do When We Read Science Fiction by Paul Kincaid (Beccon Publications)
Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008 by John Scalzi (Subterranean Press)

Best Graphic Story
The Dresden Files: Welcome to the Jungle
Written by Jim Butcher, art by Ardian Syaf (Del Rey/Dabel Brothers Publishing)
Girl Genius, Volume 8: Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones Written by Kaja & Phil Foglio, art by Phil Foglio, colors by Cheyenne Wright (Airship Entertainment)
Fables: War and Pieces Written by Bill Willingham, pencilled by Mark Buckingham, art by Steve Leialoha and Andrew Pepoy, color by Lee Loughridge, letters by Todd Klein (DC/Vertigo Comics)
Schlock Mercenary: The Body Politic Story and art by Howard Tayler (The Tayler Corporation)
Serenity: Better Days Written by Joss Whedon & Brett Matthews, art by Will Conrad, color by Michelle Madsen, cover by Jo Chen (Dark Horse Comics)
Y: The Last Man, Volume 10: Whys and Wherefores Written/created by Brian K. Vaughan, pencilled/created by Pia Guerra, inked by Jose Marzan, Jr. (DC/Vertigo Comics)

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form
The Dark Knight
Christopher Nolan & David S. Goyer, story; Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan, screenplay; based on characters created by Bob Kane; Christopher Nolan, director (Warner Brothers)
Hellboy II: The Golden Army Guillermo del Toro & Mike Mignola, story; Guillermo del Toro, screenplay; based on the comic by Mike Mignola; Guillermo del Toro, director (Dark Horse, Universal)
Iron Man Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby and Art Marcum & Matt Holloway, screenplay; based on characters created by Stan Lee & Don Heck & Larry Lieber & Jack Kirby; Jon Favreau, director (Paramount, Marvel Studios)
METAtropolis edited by John Scalzi; Elizabeth Bear, Jay Lake, Tobias Buckell, John Scalzi, and Karl Schroeder, writers (Audible Inc.)
WALL-E Andrew Stanton & Pete Docter, story; Andrew Stanton & Jim Reardon, screenplay; Andrew Stanton, director (Pixar/Walt Disney)

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form
Lost
: "The Constant", Carlton Cuse & Damon Lindelof, writers; Jack Bender, director (Bad Robot, ABC studios)
Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog Joss Whedon, & Zack Whedon, & Jed Whedon, & Maurissa Tancharoen, writers; Joss Whedon, director (Mutant Enemy)
Battlestar Galactica: "Revelations", Bradley Thompson & David Weddle, writers; Michael Rymer, director (NBC Universal)
Doctor Who: "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead", Steven Moffat, writer; Euros Lyn, director (BBC Wales)
Doctor Who: "Turn Left", Russell T. Davies, writer; Graeme Harper, director (BBC Wales)

Best Editor, Short Form
Ellen Datlow
Stanley Schmidt
Jonathan Strahan
Gordon Van Gelder
Sheila Williams

Best Editor, Long Form

Lou Anders
Ginjer Buchanan
David G. Hartwell
Beth Meacham
Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Best Professional Artist
Daniel Dos Santos
Bob Eggleton
Donato Giancola
John Picacio
Shaun Tan

Best Semiprozine
Clarkesworld Magazine
edited by Neil Clarke, Nick Mamatas, & Sean Wallace
Interzone edited by Andy Cox
Locus edited by Charles N. Brown, Kirsten Gong-Wong, & Liza Groen Trombi
The New York Review of Science Fiction edited by Kathryn Cramer, Kris Dikeman, David G. Hartwell, & Kevin J. Maroney
Weird Tales edited by Ann VanderMeer & Stephen H. Segal

Best Fan Writer
Chris Garcia
John Hertz
Dave Langford
Cheryl Morgan
Steven H Silver

Best Fanzine
Argentus
edited by Steven H Silver
Banana Wings edited by Claire Brialey and Mark Plummer
Challenger edited by Guy H. Lillian III
The Drink Tank
edited by Chris Garcia
Electric Velocipede edited by John Klima
File 770 edited by Mike Glyer

Best Fan Artist
Alan F. Beck
Brad W. Foster
Sue Mason
Taral Wayne
Frank Wu

The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer
Aliette de Bodard
David Anthony Durham
Felix Gilman
Tony Pi
Gord Sellar

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<![CDATA[Science Versus Magic — Is There a Difference in the World of Fiction?]]> One of the biggest debates among people who like scifi — aside from the Star Wars vs. Star Trek thing — is where to draw the line between science and magic. Some adhere to the idea that magic is simply science that we don't yet understand, others feel that magic represents an essential mystery that can't be understood rationally. Of course the other big dividing line between magic and science has to do with genre: magic appears mostly in fantasy stories, and science (of course) in science fiction. And yet there is currently a trend in the scifi world toward creating stories that blur the line between science and magic: A lot of steampunk novels blend technology and sorcery (one of my favorite examples is in Elizabeth Bear's New Amsterdam, where one of the characters is a "forensic sorceress"). And shows like Lost and X-Files have frequently mingled the mystical and the rational. We talked to five authors whose fiction blurs the line between magic and science to find out what they thought of the difference between the two. Here's what they said.

Jeff VanderMeer, author of City of Saints and Madmen (and, with Ann VanderMeer, a columnist for io9):

The main difference is that science exists and magic doesn't. Even though everything in a novel is made up in a sense, this still matters—it creates different responsibilities. If, for example, the physical laws of a fantastical or SF world are different than our world, there has to be some explanation, no matter how off-the-cuff. And if that world contains magic, I think the writer has to be even more rigorous in thinking out how magical systems work, no matter how much of that appears in the text. This is because we are used to constraint. We are worlds of blood-and-water existing within a larger but finite network of people and settings, and all of that is constrained by the egg-yolk that is the Earth. If even something as arbitrary and recent as a sonnet suffers from constraint, then magic can be no different.

Of course, if you're a surrealist or absurdist, you often don't care about the difference between science and magic because the boundary between the two is going to be trampled and gleefully pissed on anyway. As well it should. Nothing is more annoying than allowing a little reality ruin your fun. If you have the imagination to get away with it.

Or, if you're Jack Vance, you just set your stories far enough in the future that the science seems like magic and you sit back in your golden throne, fold your arms, and cackle like either a mad scientist or a crazy sorcerer—take your pick.

One reason I have no magic in most of my fiction is that I cannot believe in it and thus cannot write about it in any convincing way. This is the same reason you do not find unicorns in my fiction. Or Smurfs. Or Republicans. I can and do, however, believe in huge intelligent squid ponderously pulling themselves through the alleys of a weird city, protecting themselves with helmets full of water. I can also believe in nefarious mushroom-based intelligent life forms living in bizarre underground caverns. However, since this is merely an audacious application of current theory on biology and biological systems it amounts to perfectly good science.

Elizabeth Bear, author of New Amsterdam and Dust:

That's a really interesting question, especially since for both SF and fantasy, I tend to lift my "rules"—whether that means the laws of physics or the laws of magic—from outside sources. Basically, in terms of writing—science fiction or fantasy—science and magic both serve (for me) to form a framework upon which I can hang the rest of the story. They're a structural element. So I try to find the coolest bits of either than I can.

Stephen Hunt, author of Court of the Air:

A fantasy author creates a monster by having a character in robes of any colour mumbling a spell, whereas the rules clearly state a science fiction writer has to put the character in white robes only, and have them mumbling something about genetic engineering and how at termination of protein synthesis, type I release factors promote hydrolysis of the peptidyl-transfer RNA connection in reaction to recognition of a stop codon. For the average reader, though, these both seem equally magic.

Ted Chiang, author of Stories of Your Life and Others:

Roughly speaking, if you can mass-produce it, it's science, and if you can't, it's magic. As an example, suppose someone says she can transform lead into gold. If we can use her technique to build factories that turn lead into gold by the ton, then she's made an incredible scientific discovery. If on the other hand it's something that only she can do, and only under special conditions, then she's a magician. And I don't mean that she's a charlatan; she might actually be able to transform lead into gold. But scientific phenomena are reproducible by other investigators; they aren't dependent on a specific person.

Electricity might have seemed magical at one time in history, but it works for everyone; you don't need to have an innate talent or be descended from someone special for a light bulb to turn on which you flip a switch. It took the work of very smart people to get us to the point that we can all use electricity, but none of them were magicians, precisely because they were able to make their discovery work for everyone.

To go on at slightly greater length, the reason magic can't be mass-produced is that it usually relies on some subjective quality of the practitioner: her intense concentration, her spiritual purity, something that can't be substituted with another person or with a machine. Magic is, in a sense, evidence that the universe knows you're a person. When people say that the scientific worldview implies a cold, impersonal universe, this is what they're talking about. Magic is when the universe responds to you in a personal way.

China Miéville, author of Perdido Street Station and Un Lun Dun:

What is the difference between science and magic? In real life, loads. In SF, I think the question's misleading, because I think that whatever SF may think and claim, and however much individual books may justly pride themselves on scientific accuracy, fundamentally the genre is not predicated on 'real' science at all. It's about apparently authoritative use of supposed scientific language, or, to put it another way, bullshitting. And that is not (necessarily) a dis.

There you have it, dear readers. What do you think?

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