Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Publishers Weekly Reviews Digital Rapture and Wonders of the Invisible World

I've got two reviews to share today: One for a book you can enjoy now, and one for a book to look forward to.

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)

Digital Rapture: Haiku-Fu!

Congratulations to the winners of the Digital Rapture: The Singularity Anthology Haiku contest!

Pro-Singularity - Richard Lack 

It's happening now
Like slowly boiling a frog
We just can't feel it

Con-Singularity - Darron Moore

The perfect copy
To the very last neuron
Still will not be you.

***

Runners-up (to receive a copy of Digital Rapture)

Pro-Singularity

-George-Antoine Kosmo

One mind to unite
As God but of wires and lights;
Kingdom of bits come

-Rebecca Adams Wright

Pays to be prepared:
Surge Protector. Power cord.
Please upload the dog.


Con-Singularity

-Kathryn Allan

Cyber-brain, hardwired.
Will we wake in techno dream?
Not bloody likely!

-James Endres Howell

Exponential growth
within a finite system
always leads to crash.

Friday, August 24, 2012

The Singularity (contest) is Nigh...ish!

The haiku contest
is almost over, so you
better send 'em in!

I don't think my haiku is a winner, but yours could be! The Singularity Haiku Contest ends Tuesday, August 28th, so get your syllables in line and go for it. Your haiku can either be pro-Singularity (it's happening, you guys!) or con (Nah-UH!) and there will be a winner from each category.

Both winners and top three finalists will get free copies of Digital Rapture: the Singularity Anthology signed by editors John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly, and the winners themselves will be treated to a FREE lunch with Kessel and Kelly at Worldcon in Chicago (lunch seat is transferable to a friend if you are not attending the convention). I've eaten with these guys, and they are some savvy sci-fi fellows, as well as a delight. Trust me, you want to win this.

Check out our Facebook page to see our favorites so far, and good luck!

Monday, August 20, 2012

Digital Rapture on Coode Street Podcast

This week Gary Wolfe and Jonathan Strahan host James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel in a discussion of Digital Rapture: The Singularity Anthology, Jim and John's anthology work generally, and whether science fiction has a mission (odds are even here in the Tachyon home office.)  Check it out on the Coode Street Podcast.

Wednesday, August 08, 2012

The Bible Repairman and Other Nominations

 
The World Fantasy Award nominations are in! Tim Powers has been nominated twice, for his Tachyon collection The Bible Repairman and Other Stories and the story "A Journey of Only Two Paces" published in The Bible Repairman.  Congratulations Tim!

You can find the full nomination list here. There's some great reading, and you have time to make a dent in it before the winners are announced in November at the 2012 World Fantasy Convention.

Thursday, August 02, 2012

Come the Singularity there WILL be such a thing as a Free Lunch!


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 knowand 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.”

Full entry here.

Wednesday, August 01, 2012

Digital Rapture, now at a node near you...

The Singularity (Anthology) is here! Digital Rapture: The Singularity Anthology is on sale now. You can buy it directly from us or from your local bookstore/internet retailer (find an indie one here).

And what IS the Singularity, you ask?  The Rapture of the Nerds or the Techno-apocalypse?  Well...

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? In this far-reaching anthology, award-winning science-fiction writers and acclaimed futurists come together to ponder the question of who—or what—comes after us. Digital Rapture traces the history of transhumanity from Charles Darwin to Charles Stross, from Frederik Pohl’s day million to Ray Kurzweil’s almost-now, from Elizabeth Bear’s fusion of woman, machine, God, and shark to Bruce Sterling’s brutal meditation on the superfluity of humanity.
As intelligence figuratively (and possibly literally) explodes, these writers have braved the leap over the edge of the event horizon.  Do you dare to join them?

Stay tuned for our exciting Digital Rapture giveaway...