Digital Rapture: The Haiku Contest Comes to the World Science Fiction Convention
Watch the morons march.
Heaven becomes cyberspace.
No going back now.
—James
Patrick Kelly
Look at my new brain:
Who needs a freakin' body?
Computonium!
—John Kessel
Is the Rapture of the Nerds just around the corner? Or
is the Vingean posthuman technological Singularity the biggest myth since
Y2K? You know
—and you can prove it in verse.
Post or email (tachyon@tachyonpublications.com) us a
haiku
that is either pro- (it's totally gonna happen) or con- (as if!)
Singularity.
There will be two winners,
one for each argument. Attendees at Chicon 7, the World Science Fiction
Convention, will be treated to A FREE LUNCH with James Patrick Kelly and John
Kessel, the esteemed editors of
Digital Rapture: The Singularity Anthology.
At Worldcon, the winners and the editors will meet and try to convince one
another; Jim believes (sort of) and John says no way. If you win but will
not be attending Chicon, you can designate a friend to defend your position (or
eat your lunch). Winners and top three entrants will also receive a copy
of Digital Rapture signed by the editors and several contributors and will be
immortalized (until the Singularity) on Tachyon’s Facebook page.
Remember, the future of transhumanity depends on
your seventeen syllables...
About the Singularity:
Vernor Vinge
“In thirty years [2023], we will have the technological means to
create superhuman intelligences. Shortly after, the human era will be
ended.”
James Patrick Kelly
and John Kessel (in Digital Rapture)
“If you believe in evolution (as well you should!), then it
follows that, one day, something might come along to replace you. Many of the early masters of science fiction
thought so. Isaac Asimov was certain that we wouldn’t need to worry much before
the year 30-bazillion a.d. or
so. But Asimov wrote in an era before
iPads and the Internet, an innocent time when mere humans still ruled the
worlds of chess and Jeopardy.
At the turn of the twenty-first century, Vernor Vinge warned
that we might already be inventing our successor species through technological
advances. That just maybe the advent of the post-humans wasn’t in the far
future but was, in fact, scheduled for next Thursday. He called this (possibly)
apocalyptic event the Singularity—and the future would never be the same.
When the Singularity comes, will humans be enslaved by
artificial intelligence, or will there be an ecstatic Rapture of the Nerds?”
Wikipedia
“The technological singularity is the hypothetical future
emergence of greater-than-human
superintelligence through technological means.
Since the capabilities of such intelligence would be difficult for an
unaided human mind to comprehend, the occurrence of a technological singularity
is seen as an intellectual
event horizon, beyond which events
cannot be predicted or understood. Proponents of the singularity
typically state that an "intelligence explosion", where
superintelligences design successive generations of increasingly powerful
minds, might occur very quickly and might not stop until the agent's cognitive
abilities greatly surpass that of any human.”
Digital Rapture: The Singularity Anthology is on shelves now and is "full of compelling and controversial stories" (Publishers Weekly, read the full review here) to prepare you for the upcoming technopocalypse.
And this October you will finally be able to get your hands on Patricia A. McKillip's new collection, Wonders of the Invisible World. Publishers Weekly gives this book a starred review, because it's just that fantastic:
"Endlessly astonishing and impressive fantasist McKillip (The Bards of Bone Plain) travels the shadowy twilight realm between worlds and returns with the raw stuff of dreams." (read the full review here)
