Russell Blackford picking up the Chandler Award on behalf of Damien Broderick

Photo by Mariann McNamara.

This was at Aussiecon 4 last weekend. Once again congratulations to Damien. It's a well-deserved award.

Norma K. Hemming Award

I meant to blog about this some weeks ago and will just refer quickly to it, since so much time has passed. The late Maria Quinn has won the Norma K. Hemming Award (for which I was one of the jurors along with Sarah Endacott, Rob Gerrand, and Tess Williams) for her novel The Gene Thieves (Harper Voyager 2009) .

This was the inaugural presentation of the Norma K Hemming Award for excellence in the exploration of themes of race, gender, class and sexuality in Australian speculative fiction. I enjoyed acting as a juror, and thank my fellow members of the jury - Sarah, Rob, and Tess - who are all smart people and very pleasant to work with. As far as I experienced, things went quite smoothly; hopefully I'll be invited back next year.

Sentinels: In Honor of Arthur C. Clarke

I'm glad to see this handsome book make its appearance, complete with an essay by little ol' me.

A collection of stories and essays by some of Clarke's many colleagues and friends who were influenced by his writings and thoughts about human possibilities, and who continue as his sentinels by the doors to the future that he opened... Stories and essays by: Isaac Asimov, Stephen Baxter, Gregory Benford, Russell Blackford, Damien Broderick, Pat Cadigan, Sheila Finch, James Gunn, Robert A. Heinlein, A.A. Jackson IV, Christopher McKitterick, Charles Pellegrino, Frederik Pohl, Pamela Sargent, Joan Slonczewski, Allen Steele, Howard Waldrop, Jack Williamson, George Zebrowski.

Kudos to editors Gregory Benford and George Zebrowski, and to the publisher, Hadley Rille Books. The line-up puts me in fine company, though it's a pity that Heinlein wasn't alive to write something new (it's not a ghost-written piece, as it were) - and likewise for Asimov.

On uploading - talk on Sunday

I'll be speaking at the Singularity Summit AU this coming Sunday afternoon, on the topic "Survival Beyond the Flesh" - which relates to the prospect of "uploading" rather than to anything of a more otherworldly or spiritual kind. I'm rather sceptical about uploading - though I can't rule it out totally, no matter how advanced our technology becomes. I spent yesterday working out what I could say meaningfully in a quite short slot, given that I'd devote at least three lectures to such a topic if teaching it from scratch as part of a philosophy course on issues such as mind and personal identity. I think I managed to work out something useful in the end. This is a sufficiently slippery topic that I'll be relying quite heavily on the shortish paper that I ended up writing. Hopefully I can end up making it interesting.

Please don't ask me to publish the paper on the internet. I am, among other things, a professional writer. Although I don't see an obvious market for this paper I can't simply throw away the intellectual property in something that just might give me a sale somewhere with a bit of tweaking (the paper is nowhere near original enough or rigorous enough or adequately grounded in the existing literature to be sent to an academic journal - it's meant for popular consumption). If you'd like to buy such a paper for a magazine or a book, please contact me.

The big issue, it seems to me, is why I would want to upload myself. Presumably it's to live longer and to gain certain advantages such as being able to think more quickly and powerfully. But that means I must be confident that I can look forward to enjoying those advantages. It's no use if the advantages will simply be enjoyed by a being somewhat like me. Thus, issues about personal identity, survival, and so on are inescapable, even if our conceptions of these things are hopelessly vague. There do seem to be situations where a psychological duplicate of me could be made and it would be pretty clear that I would not enjoy whatever experiences it has, so it's not as if there's no risk of things turning out like that. But what criteria do we use and where do we draw the line?

I don't have clear and convincing answers to these questions, and I don't believe anyone else has either - Derek Parfit's answers are fairly clear but I don't find them all that convincing. Still, I might at least be able to offer my audience some tools for thinking about it. 

I'm just back from the first evening of the Singularity Summit AU

I've gotta say that Gregory Benford spoke really well tonight - I'm biased, as he's an old pal of mine - going way back now - but he was very clear and sharp. This is a fairly small event, and I'd guess there were only about 50 people in the audience, but it's the first such conference in Australia, and it's natural that it start small. The organisers will doubtless make contacts and learn a lot for next time.

I'll be speaking on Sunday afternoon. Don't ask me whether any of the "summit" will be appearing online ... because I really don't have any idea. :)

End of the worldcon

A good day for me today ... ending up the worldcon for this year. I was unhappy with some poor rescheduling by the convention that created a programming clash and forced me to pull out of a high-profile panel, but at least my formal paper for the convention's academic track went well this morning. All in all I'm happy enough, though tired.  But, yeah ...

The convention has not all gone smoothly, either from my self-interested viewpoint or more generally. I expect that there will be some public recriminations about aspects - notably hotel liaison (particularly the effects on parties and the SFWA hospitality suite) and program scheduling. One very high-profile author told me that he'd had a similar scheduling problem to mine, and I heard numerous other complaints about related issues. None of this is a good look for a convention at this level. I won't say any more, as I expect the issues to be discussed in more appropriate corners of the internet. A pity, though, that there were these glitches to spoil a great international event.

Hugo Awards tonight

Bacigalupi's book is a hot favourite for the Best Novel award ... but we shall see. My reading takes place this afternoon, so here I am selecting a passage from "Manannan's Children".

Edit: ... and we get a tie for best novel. When did that last happen?

Still at the Worldcon ... of course

This is just the start of the third day. Yesterday was a solid day for me - first I had to run around town making some purchases for the SFWA hospitality suite, I had my panel (very efficiently chaired by Paul Cornell, who seems like a lovely guy), did a signing (with China Miéville and others - China's long line of fans dwarfed everyone else's, but he, too, seemed like a lovely guy), lunched with a batch of fine people (I was sitting between the brilliant and gorgeous Alison Goodman and my old pal Gregory Benford), followed by some general hanging around and getting ready for the evening's activities, which consisted of an industry party put on by Harper Voyager, then the Australian awards where I picked up the A. Bertram Chandler Award on behalf of  Damien Broderick, who is this year's very deserving winner, and then an attempt to contact Damien over in San Antonio. Finally there was the Nightmare Ball, where I danced far more energetically than was decorous or prudent for a man of my age. Good times. Wish y'all were here.

(John Kwok, eat your fucking heart out!)

Here I am in Melbourne ...

... at the worldcon. Just had dinner with Gregory Benford and others. Have caught up with lots of other folks. Tomorrow I have my first program item for the convention - this one a panel on franchise writing, with Paul Cornell, Karen Miller, and George Ivanov.

Moderation on

I'm going to be a lot scarcer for the next couple of weeks, so it's a semi-blog break. I'm also turning moderation on so the place doesn't get clogged up with spam, crazy death threats, etc., while I'm not around so much to clean it out. Keep commenting. Sane, bona fide comments will be approved, though perhaps not immediately.