Charlie's Diary

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Mon, 06 Jun 2005

Ego meltdown warning

This year I've got two novels coming out. For no obvious reason, one of 'em came out officially last week, and the next one comes out almost exactly a month later. Whatever, I'm happy enough -- it beats them not coming out, so to speak.

Anyway, last week's book is The Hidden Family, the second half of the story that began in The Family Trade. (They were originally written as one book.) And the first reviews are coming out. Notably, Andrew Leonard writing in Salon.com seems to rather like it:

Send an investigative reporter to an alternate reality, and you're asking for trouble. Miriam is a terrific character, turning the tables on all who would attempt to manipulate her, and setting in motion events that promise to transform the evolution of no less than three separate worlds. For those of us who actually are journalists working on deadline, Stross gives us an escape fantasy that is most seductive, indeed.

Meanwhile, The Sunday Times ran a half-page interview with me in their Ecosse supplement (Scottish edition only): read it here:

Andrew Wilson, the editor of Nova Scotia: New Scottish Speculative Fiction (an anthology of new Scottish sci-fi to which Stross has contributed an original twist on the Faustian pact), sees Stross as being in the vanguard of a new wave of Scottish science fiction writing "It used to be that if you spoke about a Scottish spacecraft, people just laughed. But now we are the country that produced Dolly the sheep, the country that develops artificial intelligence," says Wilson. "You don't need to pretend to be American to write science fiction. Charlie is clearly a massive talent. Rather like taking a broken down old car and sticking a fusion engine in it, he has the capacity to transform material that was looking old and give it new life.

"I think Accelerando is a crowning achievement. And this will be his year."

(Now please excuse me while I go and jump in a cold shower, before my ego melts down and spews a fallout plume of radioactive ideas all over the place ...)

[Link] [Link] [Discuss writing]



posted at: 14:05 | path: /promo | permanent link to this entry

The future arrives!

Forget food pills or flying cars, researchers at IBM have announced their intention of building a gigantic robot brain! The temptation to take the piss is unavoidable: "I, for one, welcome our new IBM-branded robotic brain overlords." But on reading the article in New Scientist one comes down to earth with a bump:

The Blue Brain project, a collaboration between IBM and a Swiss university team, will involve building a custom-made supercomputer based on IBM's Blue Gene design.

It will be the first time humans will be able to observe the electrical code our brains use to represent the world, and to do so in real time, says Henry Markram, director of Brain and Mind Institute at the Ecole Polytecnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland.

It may also help in understanding how certain malfunctions of the brain's microcircuits could cause psychiatric disorders such as autism, schizophrenia and depression, he says.

For over a decade Markram and his colleagues have been building a database of the neural architecture of the neocortex, the largest and most complex part of mammalian brains.

Using pioneering techniques, they have studied precisely how individual neurons behave electrically and built up a set of rules for how different types of neurons connect to one another.

Very thin slices of mouse brain were kept alive under a microscope and probed electrically before being stained to reveal the synaptic, or nerve, connections. "We have the largest database in the world of single neurons that have been recorded and stained," says Markram.

Using this database the initial phase of Blue Brain will model the electrical structure of neocortical columns - neural circuits that are repeated throughout the brain.

"These are the network units of the brain," says Markram. Measuring just 0.5 millimetres by 2 mm, these units contain between 10 and 70,000 neurons, depending upon the species.

Once this is complete, the behaviour of columns can be mapped and modelled before moving into the second phase of the project.

Two new models will be built, one a molecular model of the neurons involved. The other will clone the behavioural model of columns thousands of times to produce a complete neocortex, and eventually the rest of the brain.

The end product, which will take at least a decade to achieve, can then be stimulated and observed to see how different parts of the brain behave. For example, visual information can be inputted to the visual cortex, while Blue Brain's response is observed.

No, actually, this isn't very piss-worthy at all. If anything, it's a sign of just how bloody fast computational neurology is coming along. If it succeeds, look for the next logical step: the development of brain implants containing emulators for chunks of the neocortex and microelectrodes to connect to areas of the recipient's brain, as prostheses to replace damaged or malfunctioning components. They're approaching the mind-uploading problem from the opposite direction.

[link] [Discuss singularity]



posted at: 12:14 | path: /sing | permanent link to this entry

specials:

Is SF About to Go Blind? -- Popular Science article by Greg Mone
Unwirer -- an experiment in weblog mediated collaborative fiction
Inside the MIT Media Lab -- what it's like to spend a a day wandering around the Media Lab
"Nothing like this will be built again" -- inside a nuclear reactor complex


Quick links:

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Buy my books: (FAQ)

Missile Gap
Via Subterranean Press (US HC -- due Jan, 2007)

The Jennifer Morgue
Via Golden Gryphon (US HC -- due Nov, 2006)

Glasshouse
Via Amazon.com (US HC -- due June 30, 2006)

The Clan Corporate
Via Amazon.com (US HC -- out now)

Accelerando
Via Amazon.com (US HC)
Via Amazon.com (US PB -- due June 27, 2006)
Via Amazon.co.uk (UK HC)
Via Amazon.co.uk (UK PB)
Free download

The Hidden Family
Via Amazon.com (US HC)
Via Amazon.com (US PB)

The Family Trade
Via Amazon.com (US HC)
Via Amazon.com (US PB)

Iron Sunrise
Via Amazon.com (US HC)
Via Amazon.com (US PB)
Via Amazon.co.uk (UK HC)
Via Amazon.co.uk (UK PB)

The Atrocity Archives
Via Amazon.com (Trade PB)
Via Amazon.co.uk (Trade PB)
Via Golden Gryphon (HC)
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Via Amazon.co.uk (HC)

Singularity Sky
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Via Amazon.com (US ebook)
Via Amazon.co.uk (UK HC)
Via Amazon.co.uk (UK PB)

Toast
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Some webby stuff I'm reading:


Engadget ]
Gizmodo ]
The Memory Hole ]
Boing!Boing! ]
Futurismic ]
Walter Jon Williams ]
Making Light (TNH) ]
Crooked Timber ]
Junius (Chris Bertram) ]
Baghdad Burning (Riverbend) ]
Bruce Sterling ]
Ian McDonald ]
Amygdala (Gary Farber) ]
Cyborg Democracy ]
Body and Soul (Jeanne d'Arc)  ]
Atrios ]
The Sideshow (Avedon Carol) ]
This Modern World (Tom Tomorrow) ]
Jesus's General ]
Mick Farren ]
Early days of a Better Nation (Ken MacLeod) ]
Respectful of Otters (Rivka) ]
Tangent Online ]
Grouse Today ]
Hacktivismo ]
Terra Nova ]
Whatever (John Scalzi) ]
GNXP ]
Justine Larbalestier ]
Yankee Fog ]
The Law west of Ealing Broadway ]
Cough the Lot ]
The Yorkshire Ranter ]
Newshog ]
Kung Fu Monkey ]
S1ngularity ]
Pagan Prattle ]
Gwyneth Jones ]
Calpundit ]
Lenin's Tomb ]
Progressive Gold ]
Kathryn Cramer ]
Halfway down the Danube ]
Fistful of Euros ]
Orcinus ]
Shrillblog ]
Steve Gilliard ]
Frankenstein Journal (Chris Lawson) ]
The Panda's Thumb ]
Martin Wisse ]
Kuro5hin ]
Advogato ]
Talking Points Memo ]
The Register ]
Cryptome ]
Juan Cole: Informed comment ]
Global Guerillas (John Robb) ]
Shadow of the Hegemon (Demosthenes) ]
Simon Bisson's Journal ]
Max Sawicky's weblog ]
Guy Kewney's mobile campaign ]
Hitherby Dragons ]
Counterspin Central ]
MetaFilter ]
NTKnow ]
Encyclopaedia Astronautica ]
Fafblog ]
BBC News (Scotland) ]
Pravda ]
Meerkat open wire service ]
Warren Ellis ]
Brad DeLong ]
Hullabaloo (Digby) ]
Jeff Vail ]
The Whiskey Bar (Billmon) ]
Groupthink Central (Yuval Rubinstein) ]
Unmedia (Aziz Poonawalla) ]
Rebecca's Pocket (Rebecca Blood) ]


Older stuff:

June 2006
May 2006
April 2006
March 2006
February 2006
January 2006
December 2005
November 2005
October 2005
September 2005
August 2005
July 2005
June 2005
May 2005
April 2005
March 2005
February 2005
January 2005
December 2004
November 2004
October 2004
September 2004
August 2004
July 2004
June 2004
May 2004
April 2004
March 2004
February 2004
January 2004
December 2003
November 2003
October 2003
September 2003
August 2003
July 2003
June 2003
May 2003
April 2003
March 2003
February 2003
January 2003
December 2002
November 2002
October 2002
September 2002
August 2002
July 2002
June 2002
May 2002
April 2002
March 2002
(I screwed the pooch in respect of the blosxom entry datestamps on March 28th, 2002, so everything before then shows up as being from the same time)



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