We went to a Worldcon panel called "The Singularity: Are We Getting Any Closer?" featuring Farthing author Jo Walton and Julian Comstock/Spin author Robert Charles Wilson. They talked a lot about the pitfalls and plausibility of the Singularity, the idea that a drastic change in technology will result in a world we can barely visualize, full of sentient machines and vastly improved longevity, among other things.

Many people seem to think the Singularity is inevitable, noted Walton, but the panel was aimed at questioning whether we're any closer to it now than when Vernor Vinge pioneered it in his 1986 novel Marooned In Realtime.

For her part, Walton argues the Singularity is an interesting concept for science-fiction storytelling, but "it isn't going to happen. It's a completely mistaken concept [and] we've made no real progress towards it." The idea is based on a false extrapolation, similar to saying that since we could go 30 MPH 100 years ago, and 400 MPH 50 years ago, now we should be traveling at the speed of light.

And because people believe the Singularity is inevitable, some argue that you can't write about the future at all — since we can't imagine life after the Singularity, it's almost impossible to write about. Walton worries that this idea is the "turd in the punchbowl" of future-set science fiction.

Adds Walton: "To be fair, Vinge has written some excellent fiction within that constraint [of assuming the Singularity happens in 20 years], in the same way people write sonnets — but a sonnet is not the only poem you would want to write."

Wilson pointed out that if the Singularity really is coming, then it's inevitable — so there's no need for people to be cheerleaders for it. He compared it to "telepathy or dianetics," science-fictional ideas which some people adopted "with religious fervor." A core question in science fiction is "where is our technology going, and what can we do with it," noted Wilson. "The Singularity is just one answer."

Panelist Christopher Carson pointed out that the science fiction section in bookstores lately consists of nothing but "transhuman science fiction or urban fantasy." People tend to see the Singularity coming partly because devices are becoming more complicated — but that's often an example of "feature creep," like the fact that your cellphone now has a host of functions you don't understand and didn't ask for. That's not really a sign of progress, because those extra functions were designed by some marketing person somewhere, he pointed out.

The Singularity is notoriously hard to define, but people often say that you could bring Socrates forward in time and take him to Worldcon, and he would understand what it was about, more or less. But you couldn't take a goldfish to Worldcon and have it understand what was going on. A present-day human, visiting a post-Singularity world, would be more like that goldfish than Socrates.

But Walton says this is a loaded example, because Socrates is an extraordinary example. A "random Greek person" from Socrates' era might have a much harder time understanding Worldcon.

"The question I sometimes ask myself is, How would the Singularity work in Darfur?" says Wilson.

And there was lots of talk about the potential downsides of getting the Internet in your head, complete with phishing, spam, malware and bad memes. Says Walton, the first 100,000 people who get the Internet in their heads, without any terrible, life-ending mishaps, will have a really hard time upgrading later on. "Imagine an outdated computer in your head."

Even as more women are becoming astronauts and getting to pilot the space shuttle, science fiction has shown tons of women taking the helm. Here are some of the most awesome, in no particular order:

Lady Sharrow in Against A Dark Background by Iain M. Banks

We don't get to see combat specialist Sharrow doing that much piloting in this book — but when she does take the controls, she makes it count. The one sequence where she does some fancy flying is one of the best moments in the book.

Carolyn Fry from Pitch Black.

I don't know how I managed to forget her — I actually had her on my list, and had grabbed this cool pic of her in advance. She manages to bring a dead ship down in spite of incredible odds — and sure, she tries to jettison her passengers. But she's just being sensible, after all.

Sue Parsons from Virtuality

As with Sharrow, Sue Parsons spends most of her screen time doing other things — mostly, like all the other characters on this show, bickering and freaking out about virtual reality nightmares. But when she does actually get to handle the Starship Phaeton's controls — watch out. She does an incredibly complex series of maneuvers while giant bombs are going off in her wake. Makes all the drama totally worth it.

Jenna, from Blake's 7.

This smuggler is the best pilot around — there's no competition, except maybe that arrogant twerp Del Tarrant. Jenna manages to take the controls of the Liberator, the most super-advanced ship in space, and master them almost immediately. And she's able to take it on manual and do some fancy flying, on occasion.

Saint-Emxin from Battle Beyond The Stars.

She's a mean Valkyrie fighter pilot, who more than holds her own in the movie's crucial Star Wars-inspired firefights. Han Solo not only couldn't pull off her headgear, he also couldn't outfly her. (I almost included Padme Amidala in this list, since she pilots a ship in Attack Of The Clones — but could Amidala really hold her own against Saint-Exmin? I think not.)

Tak from Invader Zim.

The "hideous new girl" shows up hoping to do a better job of invading Earth than Zim, and she has the ability to hypnotize humans into doing her bidding — but she also pilots her own ship.

Faye from Cowboy Bebop

Faye is an awesome fighter pilot, and even held her own in a dogfight with Spike. Runner-up status also goes to space trucker V.T., aka Victoria Terpsichore.

Carol "Foe Hammer" Rawley in Halo.

She does some pretty nifty flying as the pilot of Pelican transport Echo 419 on the UNSC Pillar of Autumn. She specializes in doing lots of missions involving hostile insertions and rescues, making her stand out from the rest.

Ana Khouri in Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds.

This assassin joins the crew of the Nostalgia For Infinity, intent on killing one of the crewmembers, but then two different digital entities fight over control of her, and thus of the ship. Also a killer pilot is the ship's de facto captain, Illia Volyova.

Mary Raven from Ignition City.

This grounded space pilot journeys to Earth's last spaceport, Ignition City, to find out what happened to her dad, in this new comic by Warren Ellis and Gianluca Pagliarani. Space-jockey Mary Raven is determined to find out what happened to her dad, and she won't leave Ignition City until she gets some answers.

Lt. Shane Vansen from Space: Above And Beyond.

According to this site, she's "one of Earth's most celebrated pilots," piloting the SA-43 Hammerhead space fighter into battle.

Corp. Ferro in Aliens.

Okay, sure, she gets killed after speaking only a couple lines of dialogue. But she has cool sunglasses, and she manages to put the ship down through a lot of turbulence.

Carmen Ibanez in Starship Troopers.

Many of the badass pilots in this movie are women, and Carmen (Denise Richards) is the most memorable of them. She's a pilot in the SICON fleet, who pilots the drop ship, and even helps on the ground when things get rough.

Col. Wilma Deering in Buck Rogers In The 25th Century.

She doesn't just look good in a slinky jumpsuit, or boogieing next to Buck — Wilma's an ace fighter pilot in her own right, and a lot of episodes see her flying off solo to deal with the bikini-clad menace of the week.

Aeryn Sun in Farscape.

She's a formidable fighter generally, but she's also a former Peacekeeper pilot, and some of her best moments involve her taking the helm of a ship — like the season two finale, when Crichton is flying away with Scorpius' mind controlling him, and Aeryn chases after him in her own ship.

Yoninne Leg-Wot from The Witling by Vernor Vinge.

We don't actually get to see much of her piloting skills, since she and her companion Ajao Bjault get stranded on the planet full of telekinetic aliens early on. But she does turn out to be resourceful, and despite being unattractive by Earth standards, she helps win over the "witling" of the story's title, Prince Pelio.

River in Serenity.

Okay, so Serenity's real pilot is, and always will be, Wash. But you can tell, at the end of the movie, that River is gearing up to be a pretty great pilot in her own right. And in the series of movie sequels that unspool in my daydreams from time to time, she's piloting the ship all the time.

Manda in Burning The Ice by Laura J. Mixon.

Manda CarliPablo's stigmatized because she's the only colonist on a barren gas giant who's not a twin or triplet — her other clones died before they were "born" — but her isolation turns out to be a good thing, as she becomes the best pilot in the colony and explores the unexplored regions of this new world — discovering an alien race along the way.

Turanga Leela from Futurama.

Despite being captain, she's also always ready to take the helm of the Planet Express ship, and her lack of three-dimensional vision doesn't seem to interfere with her amazing piloting skills.

Jaina Solo from the Star Wars expanded universe.

The daughter of Han Solo and Princess Leia didn't just inherit her mom's Force powers — she also became a kick-ass pilot, like her dad. She flew the Millenium Falcon on a few occasions. When she got caught flying the Merry Miner, an unarmed mining ship, during the Yuuzhan Vong war, she managed to dodge the aliens' attacks until help arrived. And then she became one of the New Republic's most valued starfighter pilots.

Captain Beka Valentine from Andromeda.

Thanks to everyone who suggested adding her — Beka Valentine is, among other things, the Andromeda's first officer and pilot, taking advantage of her better-than-human reaction times and strength.

Tanni from Mutineer's Moon by David Weber

Here's the key sequence:

"And," MacMahan added gently, "Tanni will be your pilot."

"What?!"

"Tanni will be your pilot," MacMahan repeated mildly. "I'm speaking now as the commander of a military operation, and I don't have time to be diplomatic, so both of you just shut up and listen... we can't afford anything but our very best pilot behind those controls. You're good, Colin, and your reaction time is phenomenal even by Imperial standards, but good as you are, you have very little experience in an Imperial fighter.

Tanni, on the other hand, is a natural pilot and the youngest of our Imperials, with reaction time almost as good as yours but far, far more experience. The overall mission will be under your command, but she's your pilot and you're her electronics officer, or neither of you goes."

Kathryn Fairly in Space Camp.

A group of teenagers get to go aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis during a test-firing of its engines. But the mean android named Jinx decides to — what else — jinx them by making the space shuttle blast off for real. They're stuck in orbit, without enough oxygen to get home. And Kathryn (Lea Thompson), who was struggling with the "multi-axis trainer" that's required for shuttle pilots, manages to ace the real-life situation that simulator creates: a flat spin after the shuttle's reorbit burn. She brings that bird down safe and proves she's an awesome pilot.

Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica.

As I said before, these are in no particular order — but if they were, Starbuck would be #1 in any list. She's clearly the best pilot among Battlestar's flyboys and -girls. Adama always refers to her as his best pilot, and she pushes herself harder than anyone else. Kat may have tried to challenge Starbuck's impressive kill rate, but she never really had a hope.

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown. Special thanks to Pete Gofton, Brian Williams, Erin Souza, Ira Wile, Jordan Hoffman, Austin Grossman, Ekaterina Sedia, and @soapboxx on Twitter.

Singularity science fiction follows a Moore's Law of the future, where science improves our lives exponentially over time. Eventually human life is so radically transformed that it's unrecognizable to those of us living in the relatively crappy present.

Scifi author Vernor Vinge is usually credited with coming up with the idea of the singularity. He wrote explicitly about it in an early 1990s essay, but was obviously toying with the idea in his 1980s novels The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime, where a "bobble technology" has the power to freeze objects, people, and even towns inside time-stopping fields that evaporate after a set amount of time has elapsed. Anti-nuke activists use the technology to bobble weapons research facilities and military industrial strongholds. This results in a short conflict where anyone with weapons gets bobbled, and the world quickly returns to a semi-agrarian state where technology is regarded with suspicion.

In Marooned In Realtime, people who were bobbled for thousands of years - including the employees of weapons labs - emerge from their bobbles to discover that the entire population of the planet has gone through a singularity and disappeared. Nobody knows where they went, but a few people who got bobbled directly before the singularity recall that humans had seemed on the verge of developing a collective consciousness using an internet-like communication system. Left behind, the remaining humans try to scrabble out a life on the planet, rebobbling themselves for millions of years in the hope that humans will return or another life form will evolve intelligence and keep them company.

In Vinge, then, there are two kinds of singularity: the kind made possible by bobbles in The Peace War, which create an unexpected future by vaulting everyone back into the past; and the kind that makes the human race as such get so complicated that they completely vanish.

For many years, however, most stories about post-singularity cultures have favored the latter type, where everybody becomes a mega-being and beams out of existence. You can find this sort of singularity everywhere from Rudy Rucker's latest novel Hylozoic, to JJ Abrams' shiny re-imagining of Star Trek with its effortless time travel and undefined superpowered "red matter."

But now we're starting to see the bleeding edges of a backlash against this kind of "everybody disappears" singularity where the human future is unimaginably awesome. Partly this backlash is coming from history-obsessed authors like Jo Walton and Robert Charles Wilson. Wilson's novel Julian Comstock imagines a 22nd century United States sapped of its energy resources and returned to 19th Century levels of technology.

But this trend is also coming from post-apocalyptic TV series like Jericho and the upcoming Day One, where people must learn to live without their Moore's Law-driven technologies.

Steampunk is another major anti-singularity subgenre. In steampunk, the future looks like the 19th Century (or vice versa). Humans can't get bio-rejiggered, souped-up, and uploaded into the incomprehensible noosphere: Instead, they've gone back in time to an easily-recognizable age. The zombie craze is part of this trend, too. Zombies are the opposite of post-human. In zombie stories, humans turn into proto-humans, mindless or nearly mindless hoardes of brain-eaters. The zombie is what humans might have been like hundreds of thousands of years ago in the salad days of homo erectus.

Does the singularity backlash mean that people are seeking out darker stories? Not at all.

There are plenty of optimistic anti-singularity tales. The TV series Firefly, for example, is about a world divided into the singularity haves and have-nots: If you live on the "inner planets," your technology is advancing exponentially; if, like our heroes, you stick to the outer planets, you're smuggling cows in a spaceship for cash. Nevertheless, the show is about people remaining loyal to one another and prevailing against injustice.

Neal Stephenson's latest novel Anathem is about a society that has rejected the singularity, and how this choice has not only saved their civilization but put them in a position to advance far more than they would have otherwise. And countless steampunk stories deliver adventure and happy endings, despite the fact that the future looks more Model T than Enterprise.

In an era of reduced economic expectations and green politics, the bobble-style singularity Vinge imagined over 30 years ago is starting to seem more realistic and even desirable. Not the bobble tech so much, but the "going back to the pre-information age" part.

Maybe this fantasy has become more attractive because we want to be more choosy about which technologies we use to change the future. Or maybe we're just sick of shiny tomorrows that seem unreachable. Either way, science fiction is taking refuge in the past for a while. Expect steampunk zombies living among fallen civilizations, but not necessarily in a depressing way. If you do see people beaming up into a high tech utopia, I'm willing to bet that's because you're watching something set in a retro scifi universe like Star Trek. The past is the new future - at least for the present.

Top image is of Stephen Martiniere's cover for Marooned In Realtime.

But that doesn't mean the Singularity isn't coming — it's just coming from a few different places. Vinge packs a lot of ideas into a short video, including the fact that we're already seeing more embedded networks everywhere, and networks can visualize the geometry of their idea based on the "ID number of the node they're pinging off of, and the round-trip time." And he's confident that cyberspace will be everting, and we'll be living in a consensual reality, sooner than we think. [via PR Web]

Never before has a technology that's done so little gone so far in literature. We can basically do almost nothing useful with nanotechnology, but sci-fi writers dream up these magical scenarios where nanotechnology can do anything and everything. It can make people gods or destroy the world in a variety of gray goo scenarios. Mind you, we can do basically nothing with it right now. But discussions of gray goo scenarios give a fictional depth to a book. There happens a lot in modern sci-fi literature, I feel.

He also explains why Charles Stross' vision of the future in books lke Glasshouse and Accelerando is entirely based on Dungeons & Dragons, which is an argument I hadn't heard before. [cpxprex]

12) Searle in Sunshine.

Okay, I may be the only person who really loved Danny Boyle's blazing space opera about a doomed crew trying to reignite the sun. That's okay, I can be right all on my own. I especially love the way the character of Searle, the ship's psychiatrist, surprises you in his final moments. He's kind of a prurient asshole for most of the movie, obsessed with looking into the sun with as little filter as possible. He's a pretty terrible therapist. But when the chips are down, he knows he's the most expendable crewmember. When four crewmembers from the Icarus II get trapped on the wrecked ship Icarus I, with the airlock damaged, Searle agrees to stay behind so the rest of the away team can get back to the Icarus II. He helps blast the others out the airlock, then exposes himself to the sun, dying the same way as the Icarus I's crew.
If you're going to be a creepy therapist, the least you can do is self-immolate to save the rest of us.

11) Woody in Mission To Mars.

This is a pretty terrible movie overall, but a fantastic death scene. Our heroes have to abandon their vessel. And then Woody, played by Tim Robbins, leaves the others and launches himself at the Resupply Module (REMO), but after he attaches the line from the other astronauts at the REMO, he keeps moving towards the planet. His wife, Terri, wants to go after him, but Woody knows she'll die in the rescue attempt. So he takes off his own helmet and dies of depressurization rather than let her die for him. (Thanks to Meredith for the suggestion!)

Runner up: Speaking of depressurization deaths, Graeme really wanted me to include Cally's death from Battlestar Galactica. But I didn't really think her death was awesome. Sorry, G.

10) Graham in "The Sleeper Wakes" by H.G. Wells.

One of Wells' weirdest stories involves a man known only as Graham, who sleeps for over 200 years and wakes to find that he's not just the richest man in the world, but actually the owner of the entire world. He eventually discovers that the White Council, which governs in his name, is oppressing everyone, and he helps a revolutionary named Ostrog to mount a revolution. But afterwards, Ostrog starts oppressing people just as badly as the White Council had. So finally Graham gets mad. This time, it's personal — he gets into an airplane and rams a whole bunch of Ostrog's air fleet. (Remember, this was written in 1910.) Finally, he rams his plane into Ostrog's, then spirals to Earth, knowing that the revolution will prevail at last.

Runner up: Someone suggested Hari Seldon from Forward The Foundation, but I haven't read that book and couldn't find much about it or track down a copy. Was his death truly awesome? Let me know.

9) The Controller in Doctor Who, "Day Of The Daleks"

"Day Of The Daleks" is probably not on my list of the 100 greatest Doctor Who stories of all time, but it has a few really amazing moments. The greatest of these is where the Controller finally stands up to his Dalek masters. All along, the 22nd century bureaucrat has been fooling himself that he can help the Daleks govern the human race and actually do some good along the way, helping people when the Daleks aren't looking. But after a few chats with the Doctor, he finally realizes you can't work within the Dalek system. He helps the Doctor escape, and when his coverup fails, the Daleks decide to exterminate him. "Who knows?" he says. "I may have helped to exterminate you." Awesome.

Runners up: Various people suggested the deaths of various Doctors, but none of them really jumped out at me as especially cool. One person suggested Adric, and I'll protect his/her identity, to save him/her from the inevitable scorn of the masses.

8) Lt. Paul Wang from Space: Above And Beyond.

"Everybody's favorite tortured bipolar guy," Lt. Wang, callsign "Joker," gives his life to hold off the aliens while everyone else gets away. "This is for you!" he shouts as he pours ammo into the enemy. Commenter oconnellmd suggested this scene, and I can see why.

7) Certain people in Blake's 7, "Blake"

I'm going to show an unusual degree of restraint and not say who dies in this episode. Let's just say it's an incredibly fitting end for the saga, one which makes all of the stuff that comes before seem cooler because it leads up to this. In my write-up on how to discover Blake's 7, I actually advocate watching the last episode first. At the very least, I think this is one spoiler that makes you appreciate the rest of the show more. But don't take my word for it: watch for yourself.

6) Pham Nuwen from A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge.

Pham Nuwen is animated by the Old One, a super-powerful artificial intelligence, and he dies fighting the Blight, another super-A.I. First Pham downloads as much of the Old One into his brain as possible, overclocking his human brain by containing this massive superhuman intelligence, which will inevitably destroy him. And then he launches the Countermeasure, an advanced weapon which moves the boundaries of the Slow Zone far enough to enclose and destory the Blight. But the Countermeasure also has the effect of terminating Pham at the same time:

The Countermeasure's writhing had slowed. Its light flickered bright and then out. Bright and then out. She heard Pham's breath gasp with every darkness. Countermeasure, a savior that was going to kill a million civilizations. And was going to kill the man who triggered it.

Almost unthinking, she dodged past the thing, reaching for Pham. But razors upon razors blocked her, raking her arms.

Pham was looking up at her. He was trying to say something more.

Then the light went out for a final time. From the darkness all around came a hissing sound and a growling, bitter smell that Ravna would never forget.

(Thanks Annalee!)

5) The T-800 in Terminator II.

After Arnold Schwartzenegger's T-800 helps Sarah and John Connor defeat Robert Patrick's mean T-1000 by blowing it up and knocking it into molten metal, Arnie knows he has to go too. If there's anything left of the T-800, the technology could be used to reconstitute Skynet and bring the badness down on our heads. So Arnie gets Sarah Connor to lower him — slowly — into the molten metal. He gives a thumbs up as he descends to his robo-fondue doom. (Thanks, Annalee!)

4) Biggs from Star Wars.

I was seriously considering making Obi-Wan the coolest death from Star Wars, but really, screw that guy. First of all, as he points out himself, he comes back a thousand times more powerful afterwards. And secondly and more importantly, he's kind of a big martyr, as everyone points out in the awesome parody Hardware Wars. And Biggs doesn't have any super Force powers, or the ability to come back a thousand times more anything. All Biggs has is a X-ing, a can-do attitude, and an awesome porn-stache. And he's the greatest wingman ever, taking enemy fire and blowing up so that Luke can nuke the death star and get all the glory afterwards. And look how stoic Biggs is in this deleted scene from Episode IV, telling Luke he may never come home again because he's off to join the rebels:

When does baby Biggs get his own episode of the Clone Wars cartoon? Preferably with a little baby mustache?

3) Spike from Cowboy Bebop.

Martian bounty hunter Spike Spiegel gets into a duel with his former best friend, Vicious after Vicious' Red Dragon gang has killed Spike's girlfriend Julia. Spike finally decides to face the past with Vicious that he ran away from three years earlier, and he storms the Red Dragon headquarters, killing a bunch of its members as he climbs. Vicious manages to slash Spike with his katana, but then Spike shoots Vicious dead. Spike comes down the stairs, wounded and weakened, to face all the remaining members of the Red Dragon. Spike makes a gun with his fingers and says "Bang"... then collapses. Most people seem to assume Spike dies of his wounds, and it's not hard to find tons of people online listing this as one of the coolest death scenes in all anime, or all Asian films, let alone science fiction.

2) Someone from Anathem by Neal Stephenson.

Since this book just came out and it's a bit of a major spoiler, I won't say who dies and how — click here if you've already read the book and/or don't care about spoilers.

1) Spock from Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan.

I'm not putting the pointy-eared green blooded Vulcan first just because I know I'd get lynched otherwise. I'm not even including the death of Spock because I pretty much memorized all the dialog from that scene as a little kid. I'm including it because it's the template of how to do a memorable, important death in a science fiction epic. The movie isn't ABOUT Spock at all, but it still feels as though the whole film has been leading up to his death. A lesser film would have been more clumsy and obvious about giving Spock a bunch of cool moments leading up to his death, and trying to manipulate us into feeling the Spock love before he snuffs it. Instead, we do get plenty of cool Spock moments, including giving Kirk his present and mentoring Lt. Saavik. But it's woven into the rest of the movie, and the film's running theme of the "no-win situation" and the impossibility of cheating death every single time help to set up the death of Kirk's best friend way better than a scene where Spock talks about what he's going to do when he retires and goes back to Vulcan. The result is one of the most amazing moments in Trek history, one of those moments where you can really beleive Trek is a sweeping saga instead of just a zany adventure with green women and Saurian brandy.

Runner up: I can't believe I left out Roy Batty in Blade Runner, as various commenters have pointed out. Especially since I went on a whole tangent about Roy's amazing death scene in my rant about why there shouldn't be a BR sequel earlier in the day. Suffice to say the Roy Batty death scene is definitely one of the all-time classic, and easily up there with Spock's.

Vinge describes the galaxy in terms of "zones of thought." Near the center of the galactic core are "the unthinking depths," where spaceships must use analog technologies and travel is very slow. In the "slow zone," which includes Earth and most of the galactic disk, FTL doesn't work, nanotech is crude, and mind-machine interfaces are impossible. Then there is the Beyond, an egg-shaped volume perpendicular to the galactic disk that functions like the galaxy's heliosphere. There, FTL is possible (though expensive), AI and nanotech work, and human-machine interfaces are everyday technology. Most creatures live in the Beyond, because the tech is so much better there. Yet another region, basically the deep space beyond the galactic sphere, is called the Transcend. There FTL is cheap, and tech works even better.

Obviously Vinge was partly creating a kind of sociological landscape with his imagining of these galactic spheres — each corresponds to a stage or potential stage in human development. But I have always wondered whether there might be a grain of truth in there. Could it be that when the Voyager probes finally travel beyond the heliosphere (in about 10 years), scientists will get data back showing that Voyager is suddenly able to travel faster using the same amount of energy? Or perhaps other physical constants will shift?

Solar System is Shaped Like an Egg [Daily Telegraph]

Okay first of all, now that you've agreed to be spoiled: this summer's movies featuring untrustworthy mentors include Iron Man and Wanted. In Iron Man, we hear a lot of vague stuff about how Obadiah (Jeff Bridges) gave all this guidance to Tony Stark after Tony's dad died, and then of course Obadiah turns out to be a backstabbing asswipe. And in Wanted, Morgan Freeman does a huge Obi-Wan impression (but doesn't teach James McAvoy how to shop for fresh fruit) and then of course we discover his whole happy magic-loom-of-murderous-destiny story is a monstrous lie.

So here are some other great lying mentors from classic scifi, and the lessons you can learn from their mendaciousness.

So yeah, Obi-Wan: not the most honest mentor out there either. Here's what he tells Luke in the original Star Wars:

A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights. He betrayed and murdered your father.

Takeaway lesson: We've all had mentors who pulled shit like this. Like trying to convince you that their rivals in middle management were evil SOBs who totally wasted the office snack budget on their own "sales fiesta."

Of course, Obi Wan's a paragon of honesty compared to Palpatine, who takes young Anakin under his wing in the Star Wars prequels and feeds him all sorts of nonsense, including "the Dark Side of the Force can save your wife from death."

Takeaway lesson: Mentors who give you advice about your marriage are always evil. Always.

Ra's Al Ghul teaches Bruce Wayne how to be a stealthy head-kicking shadow of justice in Batman Begins. Which is great, until it turns out his League Of Shadows is really an evil organization that wants to destroy Gotham City for some vague reason.

Takeaway lesson: You can learn some useful skills from your mentor... even if you end up hating what the mentor wants you to use them for.

As this TV Tropes entry on Evil Mentors points out, Sylar becomes a mentor to Maya, the girl with the runniest mascara in the world. He tells her a bunch of lies about who he is and where he comes from, and also tells a lie of omission about that whole "I killed your brother thing." But mostly, he tries to influence her into using her runny-mascara powers for ebil.

Takeaway lesson: When your mentor tries to get you to go on a goo-eyed killing spree, or generally compromise your deepest principles, it may be time to find another shoulder to cry on.

Jordan Collier in The 4400 takes super-healer Shawn Farrell under his slimy wing and becomes his mentor and surrogate father... until Shawn realizes that Jordan is secretly using death-ninjas to commit terrorism against all those annoying vanilla non-superpowered people.

Takeaway lesson: Pick your mentors carefully. And watch out for those shaggy wannabe Messiah type people.

Thomas Nau in Vernor Vinge's A Deepness In The Sky rapes and murders Qiwi's mother in front of her. But then he erases her memory using a version of his Focusing technique, and turns her into his trusted assistant. Every now and then, she starts to remember the truth and tries to escape, but he just mindwipes her again.

Takeaway lesson: Ummm... pay attention to that little voice in the back of your head, I guess?

Arvin Sloane in Alias is the perfect nurturing, caring boss for young Sydney... until it turns out that every word that comes out of his mouth is poisonous trash. Basically, he's not one of the good guys, and he doesn't really work for the CIA, and he's not trying to bring about world peace and harmony and happy vibes.

Takeaway lesson: If your father figure has your boyfriend murdered because you got careless in your pillow talk, that could be a clue to something.

Joseph Korso takes young Cale Tucker under his wing in Titan A.E., saving his life and teaching him how to pilot a spaceship and race Wake Angels for fun and good luck and all that good stuff. But then it turns out he's secretly working for the evil alien Drej.

Takeaway lesson: If your mentor has a special knack for sneaking you aboard the evil aliens' spaceships and piloting them, it could be because he has a certain... affinity for those bastards. Just a heads up.

Elijah Price teaches David Dunn how to be a superhero in M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable... but then it turns out Elijah, aka Mr. Glass, is secretly a supervillain who caused several disasters, including a train wreck, to find un unbreakable hero.







Takeaway lesson: If all the pieces fall into place for your mentor to "discover" your talents, then it may not just be a coincidence.

And then there's Alan Moore's graphic novel V For Vendetta, where V lies to his acolyate Evey about a whole bunch of things... most notably he puts her into a fake, head-shaving prison camp in order to stiffen her spine for the things that must be done.

Takeaway lesson: There's hazing and then there's crazy hazing. If your mentor believes in the "prison camp" model of employee orientation — or even just paintball gone too far — it's time to bail.

I feel like Professor X from the X-Men has lied to his pupils a thousand times, but the only examples I can think of are when he secretly suppressed Jean Grey's abilities in the third X-Men movie, and when he hid the fact that he was in love with Jean Grey in Ultimate X-Men. He also spared Magneto's life but told everyone he'd killed Magneto in Ultimate X-Men as well.

Takeaway lesson: If your mentor is secretly in love with you and is secretly holding you back and sabotaging your abilities, it maybe time to get mental on your mentor.

And then there's Bill Adama in the new Battlestar Galactica, who lies to his protegee Starbuck (and everyone else) about knowing the secret location of Earth. Laura Roslin tells Starbuck the old man has been lying, which leads to this exchange between Starbuck and Adama:

"How much longer 'til we reach Earth?" "It's hard to say." "You got a guess?" "You know I don't like to guess." "We getting closer?" "I'm sure we are. Good luck on the next test."

Finally, a pissed off Starbuck decides to obey the President's orders and go back to Caprica to get the Arrow of Apollo.

Takeaway lesson: If someone blows the whistle on your lying mentor, you may as well listen to the whistleblower instead. You can't do much worse, and you might get something useful out of it.

Other mentors we almost forgot include Sally Jupiter in Watchmen, who hides her daughter's true parentage from her. And the Confessor in Astro City, a superhero who hides his vampirism from his plucky sidekick. And of course Captain Beatty in Fahrenheit 451, who pressures Guy Montag to burn all of the books in his possession, and yet quotes constantly from books himself. Who did we forget?

Additional reporting by Lauren Davis and Meredith Woerner. Image by Stephanie Fox.

Vinge writes that these scenarios include:

The AI Scenario: We create superhuman artificial intelligence (AI) in computers.

The IA Scenario: We enhance human intelligence through human-to-computer interfaces—that is, we achieve intelligence amplification (IA).

The Biomedical Scenario: We directly increase our intelligence by improving the neurological operation of our brains.

The Internet Scenario: Humanity, its networks, computers, and databases become sufficiently effective to be considered a superhuman being.

The Digital Gaia Scenario: The network of embedded microprocessors becomes sufficiently effective to be considered a superhuman being.

Later, he writes about how the singularity will probably be a "hard takeoff," or a very rapid transformation, rather than a gentle, gradual shift:

What I'm thinking of would probably be the result of intentional research, perhaps a group exploring the parameter space of their general theory. One of their experiments finally gets things right. The result transforms the world—in just a matter of hours.

I base the possibility of hard takeoff partly on the known potential of rapid malcode (remember the Slammer worm?) but also on an analogy: the most recent event of the magnitude of the technological singularity was the rise of humans within the animal kingdom. Early humans could effect change orders of magnitude faster than other animals could. If we succeed in building systems that are similarly advanced beyond us, we might experience a similar incredible runaway.

His essay also sums up many of the other essays in this special issue of IEEE Spectrum, so it's a great place to dive in. Image via IEEE Spectrum.

Signs of the Singularity, by Vernor Vinge [from IEEE Spectrum's Special Issue on the Singularity]

While the main plot arc of Tatja Grimm's World has to do with an alien conspiracy involving brain extractions, the most memorable aspects of the novel are set in a floating publishing house touring the world on a barge, selling science fiction to the people of Tatja's continent. Called the Tarulle Barge, the boat is full of crusty old editors and Utopians who hope that publishing popular works about science will pull the world out of its dark age supernatural beliefs and usher in an enlightened era.

The politics of the Tarulle publishing house are so well-observed and clever that it feels like the young Vinge, early in his publishing career in the late 1960s, was directly translating what he saw in the SF publishing world around him. The barge's main publication, a magazine called Fantasie, is gradually moving from tales of magic to tales of science, so you've got the fantasy vs. science fiction wars in full swing. Meanwhile, editors jockey for power, writers grovel to get published, and fans eat up every shred of every issue. Of course, most of the world thinks the barge is full of weirdos totally unplugged from reality.

When Tatja arrives on board the Tarulle, via a series of accidents I won't spoil for you, it's just as she's realizing she's dramatically different from other people on her world. At first, we think that's just because she's a science fiction dweeb, but it's much more than that. She's a kind of alien sleeper agent, which she gradually realizes as she comes into her own as a member of the Tarulle team. Some of the plot twists in the novel are a little clumsy, and the efforts to parody the "savage princess" genre sometimes fall flat, but I have never read a more compelling depiction of what it's like to work at a science fiction publication.

Tatja Grimm's World is a great read — highly recommended for its surprising realism and strong, melancholy characters.

Tatja Grimm's World [Amazon]

Ethan of Athos, by Lois McMaster Bujold, is a story set on a planet entirely populated by gay men, who reproduce via artificial wombs and eggs supplied by various shady egg-trading agencies. Each man earns the right to have a child by racking up "domestic points" for performing social services — when he gets enough points, he's rewarded with a baby. Panic breaks out among the planet's elite when a new shipment of ovarian tissues turn out to be fake. The planet has lost a ton of money in the deal, and they send our hero Ethan offworld to get their much-needed reproductive materials back. In the process, Ethan encounters his first female — with some truly unexpected results. What's great about this novel is that it's genuinely action-packed spy stuff layered on top of a cool social experiment in the gay world of Athos.

The Witling is one of Vernor Vinge's early novels, about a planet full of beings who can control the weather with their minds and fly, along with having many other extremely cool mental powers. Occasionally, however, a "witling" is born among them — a person who is perfectly alert mentally, but who lacks the ability to do telekinesis, weather control, and flying. One such witling turns out to be a prince, whose failings the rulers have tried to hide because he would be viewed as feebleminded by the populace. Enter a rocket full of visitors from Earth, who have come to study the local culture. One of the scientists is a surly, chubby woman whose body type is fairly abohorrent to Earth men but turns out to be the most delectable embodiment of beauty to the beings on the planet. As a war unfolds on the planet, we're treated to a fascinating novel about how our self-images are created largely by the way our society views us — and perhaps that can never change.

The Languages of Pao, by Jack Vance, is a classic 1950s science fiction novel that explores the ever-popular Sapir-Whorf hypothesis from linguistics: the idea that you can change the way people think by teaching them a different language. When the rulers of the undeveloped planet Pao decide to industrialize, they do it by separating the population into three castes: technical, mercantile and warrior. Each caste is educated in a specialized language that enables them to become rapidly good at science, production and defense respectively. This social experiment is the backdrop for a tale of mind-control, spies, and intrigue, for there is a secret offworld plott to control Pao and make use of its natural resources. Will the reeducated population be able to fend for itself, or will the languages of Pao reduce them to mind-controlled masses who do whatever their leaders tell them?

I highly recommend all three books, and thank Richard for kindly loaning them to me and never asking for them back. Information should be free.