[ExI] another fun story, part one of two

[spike at rainier66.com]

Since you have indulged me in telling old man stories, I have a good one for
you.

 

I mentioned a few days ago about sitting alone in the airport at San Jose,
not even reading a book, then realizing the punchline of the joke months
later, and BWAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA followed by the other passengers
crowding against the opposite wall to stay as far away from the apparent
psychopath as they could get.

 

Here's what caused that.

 

Damien Broderick published The Spike in about 1997, which was about the
singularity, but he was not satisfied with it and immediately started a
second edition with many changes, which was published in about 2001 and was
a big improvement.  As I recall the second edition sold better than the
first.  Writing books about the future is exhausting hard work, because it
is done under intense time pressure: the future is charging toward the
author, and he must publish before the material is outdated.

 

After the first edition came out, I liked it.  Had a lot of stuff he mined
off of ExI-chat.  Cool!  Damien and I became friends, I invited him to come
to the states, stay at my house, we would mess around, lots of stuff to do
around here.  He came over, but it wasn't nearly as I thought because he
worked constantly on the next edition of The Spike.

 

Damien wrote about other science futurist writers, such as Ed Regis, who
wrote the Great Mambo Chicken.  Writers good enough to make a living selling
their words study each others' work, the way rock stars listen to other rock
stars' music.  Damien wrote about a local professor by the name of Rudy
Rucker.  He had made the contact, and Rucker invited to his house for
dinner.  Damien, my bride and I went up to his house, where the man himself
grilled the best salmon with all the trimmings.  He was a master chef in
addition to his other talents, and turned out to be the nicest guy you ever
met.  

 

His bride and mine immediately hit it off, visited like they had been
friends all their lives.  After dinner, those two ladies went to the other
room so they could hear each other, leaving the three fellers to talk math
and futurism and computers, such as that, the stuff that we liked.  Damien
and Rudy are about the same age, and they had a common language, so the
Australian guy and the American guy were talking and I was listening and
learning, in awe of myself for being in the same room with these two giants.
They understood each other, and knew stuff I could only read about in the
history books, if history books contained that material.  Those two shared a
language and a world view that happened before I was born.

 

Rudy was a computer science professor at San Jose State U, nearby.  I looked
around at his lavish pad and wondered what he really did for a living,
because being a professor wouldn't explain all this.  That comment is an
introduction to the rest, but is part of the story really.

 

Rudy asked me what kind of writing I like and did I like SciFi, yes, but I
like hard SciFi, the kind with lots of math in it, or that obeys the known
principles, such as Arthur C Clarke wrote.  He asked if I like math, and
sure, of course I do, such a powerful tool kit it provides for
understanding.  I suggested there should be a subfield of SciFi, perhaps
MathFi, where it is still speculative and futuristic, but it is an extension
and extrapolation of math rather than just technology.  He asked if I had
found any good examples, which I could only say only one which really fit,
the title of which is Mathenauts.  It was a collection of short stories,
which might be described as MathFi.

 

With a straight face, Rudy Rucker asked me for details about the book, such
as my favorite story in the collection.  I related the bursting out in
maniacal laughter in the San Jose airport upon suddenly getting the joke
three or four months after finishing Mathenauts.  The story was so strange:
a man set up a mathematical research company, where researchers looking for
work would come to him, no effort on his part, no recruiting, they came on
their own.  They would come and volunteer to work for a pittance, doing
mathematical research.  The evil mad. mathematician. had discovered a way,
invented a machine of some sort, to control the emotions of his employees.
If they worked hard and found the answers which made the mad mathematician
money. he could make them happy, and if they failed to work hard enough, he
could make them sad, with his sneaky mad mathematician device.  He was
prospering, controlling the willing employees.  The story goes on to
describe one of the employees figuring out what he was doing, becoming
disillusioned, telling the others who likewise became disillusioned, then
how they managed to escape the controlling mad mathematician, who was
getting crazy rich off of their work.  After his employees broke the machine
and escaped, the mad mathematician repaired his device and soon, new
volunteer researchers came.  He resumed his mad mathematician career.  It
was a very strange story.

 

I went on to tell Rudy and Damien I was sitting quietly alone in the
airport, when I suddenly realized the whole story was an allegory or parody
of sorts, about post graduate school, where a professor would oversee PhD
research by his students, profit off of their work in some cases, and
control them thru grades, dangling the PhD on a stick, etc.  When I suddenly
realized it was an allegory about post-grad university life, everything
suddenly fit perfectly, and all of the subtle gags and veiled humor in that
weird story hit me from all directions at once, causing the explosive,
uncontrollable (and perhaps alarming to normal people) mirth on the part of
me, at the airport.  

 

I have kind of a deep voice, so even genuine amused happy laughter can sound
a bit evil and maniacal.  Can't help that really, for it just sounds a
little Boris Karloff-ey MUUWAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA like I just brought
Frankenstein's monster to life or something SciFi often treats as evil (but
for crying out loud (a DOCTOR just sewed together a few pieces from DEAD
people (and created a LIVE person, sheesh, (how does Mary Shelley figure
THAT IS EVIL?  (technology brings a few pieces of corpses together (gives
them a few more years to mess around and maybe have some fun (honestly
what's the harm in that (assuming your idiot assistant gets a HEALTHY
non-murderous brain?  (but I digress ( at multiple levels.))))))

 

This all happened in about 1998. It is part one of a two-part story.  The
second part is amusing too, if you are the kind who is amused by this sorta
thing.

 

If I get time, I will post it tomorrow, for it tells you what kind of person
Professor Rudy Rucker is, and his subtle sense of humor.

 

spike

 

 

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