Ventus
Ventus is a large-scale Hard SF adventure novel in the tradition of Larry Niven, Vernor Vinge, and Arthur C. Clarke. Karl Schroeder, a physicist and writer, is a winner of Canada's Aurora Award. His first novel was called the best first fantasy of the year by Science Fiction Chronicle, and now his first SF novel launches a major career in SF. Young Jordan Mason, on the terraformed planet Ventus, has visions. Kidnapped by Calandria May--a human from offworld sent to investigate the AIs (the Winds) of Ventus--Jordan is desperate to find the meaning of his visions, desperate enough to risk calling down the Winds that destroy technology to protect the created environment, who descend and wreak havoc. As a result Jordan escapes from Calandria and sets out to discover his destiny on his own. Calandria and others, both human and AI, search for Jordan, who holds the key to catastrophe or salvation. Ventus is an epic journey across a fascinating planet with a big mystery--why have the Winds fallen silent? It is one of the major, ambitious SF novels of the year and the international launch of an important new hard SF writer. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Stats for nerds
5recommend
8mentions
7people
2010–2026years
63% recommend38% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- By Karl Schroeder, who wrote Ventus[1] and Permanence[2]. (One of my favorite sci-fi authors!)
I always thought this reviewer quote on the front of Ventus was pretty funny:
> “Dramatically effective and a milestone in science fiction about nanotech and fine-grained distributed systems.” – Vernor Vinge
- OP here. Bingo! Karl Schroeder is fairly obscure unfortunately... I love Ventus and Lady of Mazes. I picked this handle mainly because it's unique everywhere I've tried to sign up.
- I also recommend 'Ventus' by Karl Schroeder. It's a fun scifi read, covers some of these concepts and can be downloaded for free: http://www.kschroeder.com/my-books/ventus/my-books/ventus/fr...
- I second Karl Schroeder as a worthwhile SF author! His novels can be challenging but his ideas are unique and worth the price of admission:
* Ventus, his first novel, is about a world that turns accidentally alive (think Gaia) via nanotechnology.
* Lady of Mazes turns around how we could use (very advanced) technology to preserve cultures instead of undermining them.
* Permanence is about a star-faring civilization so advanced it doesn't need technology, it is technology, having perfectly evolved itself to its niche.
* The Virga series is set in a wonderfully imaginative zero-gee bubble-of-gas world, heated by an artificial sun --think of it as space with air!
Besides being an SF author, Schroeder is also a professional futurist. I recommend his OSCON 2009 talk,The Rewilding: A Metaphor, as a good introduction to his thinking.
- Greg Egan writes fantastic stuff.
Another really good book is Ventus by Karl Schroeder. It's phenomenally entertaining and has some really interesting ideas in it.
- I wouldn't say that founding companies satisfies the conditions of the Singularity, the relevance there is that companies are superhuman and sociopathic, therefore the dream of superintelligences to be empathic, cooperative, and aligned with human interests doesn't seem likely.
> The version I described is the only one I've ever heard anyone else referring to.
In 2008 the IEEE magazine Spectrum did a series on the Singularity and one article [0] says "Like paradise, technological singularity comes in many versions, but most involve bionic brain boosting." Another article had this "Who's Who"[1] cheat-sheet of famous Singularity discussers for and against; one of the columns is "Kind of Singularity", and there's more than one kind. Kevin Kelly has "singularities are pervasive changes in the state of the world that are often recognizable only in retrospect. As a result, the singularity is always near". Bill Joy was a more general "computer science, biotech and nanotechnology event horizon". Marvin Minsky had mind uploading as well as machine intelligence.
Vernor Vinge named 'The Singularity' in 1983 and popularised the ida, and here are talk slides from him in 2005 after he had twenty years of thinking about it[2]:
andWhy call this transition the "Technological Singularity"? By analogy with the use of "singularity" in Math A place where some regularity property is lost Not necessarily a place where anything becomes infinite By analogy with the use of "singularity" in Physics A place where the rules profoundly change What comes beyond is intrinsically less knowable/predictable than before The apocalyptic endpoint of radical optimism :-)
A place where the rules profoundly change because of bioscience research, human/computer cyborging, or distributed systems emergent complexity, is compatible with Vingean Singularity ideas, or at least used to be before the current LLM/AGI hype cycle.Singularity futures Possible paths to the Singularity What if: AI (Artificial intelligence) research succeeds? I.J. Good, "Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine" Hannes Alfv�n, The End of Man? What if: The internet itself attains unquestioned life and intelligence? Gregory Stock, Metaman Bruce Sterling, "Maneki Neko" What if: Fine-grained distributed systems are aggressively successful? Karl Schroeder, Ventus Vernor Vinge, "Fast Times at Fairmont High" What if: IA (Intelligence Amplification) occurs As the radical endpoint of Human/computer interface research? Poul Anderson, "Kings Who Die" Vernor Vinge, "Bookworm, Run!" As the outcome of bioscience research? Vernor Vinge, "Fast Times at Fairmont High" Vernor Vinge, "Win a Nobel Prize!"The 'attractor at the end of history' is from Terence McKenna: "[he] saw the universe, in relation to novelty theory, as having a teleological attractor at the end of time, which increases interconnectedness and would eventually reach a singularity of infinite complexity. ... The universe is not being pushed from behind. The universe is being pulled from the future toward a goal ... our ever-accelerating speed through the phenomenal world of connectivity and novelty is based on the fact that we are now very, very close to the attractor."[3]
> "doesn't mean it's reasonable to say that must, or even could, have been the definition the person I was replying to was using."
Okay, but your "LLMs are not a path to AGI and tech bros are dumb" doesn't lead to anything interesting, it's just a mic-drop end of discussion.
[0] https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-consciousness-conundrum
[1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/who-is-who-in-the-singularity
[2] https://edoras.sdsu.edu/~vinge/misc/ac2005/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_McKenna#Novelty_theory...
