Reading Material

From doktorsleepless

Reading Material?

Posted by David BedardHey

boys and gals!

I'm really enjoying Dok so far, but I find myself lacking education in certain areas, mostly regarding Elder Gods and Tesla tech. And I don't understand spimes very well.

I already got a Lovecraft anthology (Tales of HP Lovecraft, edited by Joyce Carol Oates, with a Mignola cover to boot!), which should clarify things up for the Elder Gods part.

Does anyone have a good Tesla bio to recommend? There are so many and I feel that some are too shallow, or don't explain the tech itself in great detail. And please, no Wikipedia. That thing is drier than my grandmother's vagina. The Dok wiki entry is also a wee bit too short for my liking, I like to go in depth on things.

Also, any suggestions regarding further reading material that might help me comprehend the series more would be appreciated!

Thanks in advance

Reply by Matt Murphy on November 4, 2007 at 7:58pm

My understanding of the spime is also limited, but here's what I know (gleaned from various web sources):

Using technology such as holographic projection, nuerostimulators, and GPS satellites, it is theoretically possible to create a "virtual" object--i.e. one that doesn't actually exist in our reality per se yet is recognized as if it is due to computer and mind hacking. It could even be given a theoretical weight using various magnetic field manipulators. The only giveaway for said virtual object would probably be that it would generate no gravity as it has no physical mass.

Now if you add artificial intelligence into the equation, you could even create a virtual person, which of course leads us back to the good Doktor.

And if people believe that something is real, doesn't it make that thing real to them? If enough people believe in the spime, could it cross the bridge into reality like a tulpa? For an example of this (though he's not actually a spime object), see Li'l Slugger in the anime Paranoia Agent. As far as I can tell, this particular phenomenon has no name so I've just referred to it as a "groupthink tulpa".

So that was a bit rambley, but I hope it helps. It might be complete nonsense, but I'm very tired and can't really tell anymore.

Matt Bevilacqua I have that same anthology. Everything you really need to know about the Mythos, as Lovecraft intended it, is in there, I think. My personal two favorite Mythos stories are in there, "The Call of Cthulhu" and "The Dunwich Horror." Not exactly obscure picks, but hey. The interesting thing about the Elder Gods is that they were really codified into a consistent hierarchy AFTER Lovecraft died, by people like August Derleth and others. I personally don't like much of that stuff. I think they work better when they are agents of chaos, above human morality, treating us like microbes, rather than the newer material which has them in a Good Vs Evil battle with each other (The "Old Ones" versus the "Elder Gods," I think.) I prefer to think of them as extraterrestrial forces of nature rather than, well, the Devil with tentacles.

Additionally, if you are interested in more Lovecraft stuff, may I recommend the recent film adaptation of "The Call of Cthulhu?" It was done in the style of the silent films of the twenties (when the story was written) and is extremely faithful. I really like it.

Yeah, I'm into Lovecraft a little.

Reply by ifthe21stcentury on December 12, 2007 at 2:12am

Future Shock by Alvin Toffer.

Reply by CJ Tremlett on December 13, 2007 at 2:48am

There's a decent film adaption of Cool Air out there somewhere. Or read the story, which is a favorite. Lovecraft and the circle of writers he overlapped with and his successors take some getting used to. Don't miss Mountains of Madness.

I can't recommend a Tesla bio 'cause I haven't read one I liked.

Reply by Brian Walshe on December 13, 2007 at 5:20pm

Spime is a term coined by Bruce Sterling, in a speech he gave at SIGGRAPH in 2004. I've only skimmed the speech, so chances are I'm missing the point, but it seems to be about ubiquitous computing and semantic web type stuff, only he uses new and interesting words. It's worth bearing in mind that he's a sci-fi author, and he was addressing an audience of computer graphics engineers, not archivists or ubiquitous computing guys'n'girls.

So anyway, the spime is an object, and we can collect information about it with this information falling into two broad categories, data and meta-data. Data is the stuff we're actually interested in eg. its width, height, where it's been etc, and the meta-data is all the extra information needed to be able to understand the data.

Now, this object may refer to a real life thing, or it might just be something that only exists as information, it doesn't really matter, as far as the framework is concerned. (My credit card is a piece of plastic - but really it's also just a number in my bank's records.) A real life object can be turned into information, by recording it's physical properties, and implanting an RFID in it to record it's position. I guess a virtual object can be made real by building it.

It's all quite dry stuff, really. If you're feeling nerdy, you could check out ubiquitous computing, and the semantic web, and if you're a masochist, you could even check out the w3c RDF spec.

Reply by David Bedard on December 13, 2007 at 8:49pm

I'll pass, but thanks for the enlightenment! You make it tons of times better than the wikpedia entry (you don't even want to look at it..)

Thanks to everyone else for the help too!

Reply by Brian Walshe on December 14, 2007 at 10:56am

Emm, any supplied enlightenment should be taken with a pinch of salt. I only skimmed his speech, and I've never heard the term spime actually used to describe the things I was talking about, so I could have gotten it completely wrong. In fact, after a bit of further reading, I'm beginning to think I have.

He put out a pamphlet, Shaping Things, which might be worth checking out. I'm going to pick it up from the library when I get a chance.

Reply by Mark Crabtree on January 13, 2008 at 10:57am

Good to get my fix of the Dok. Each issue is certainly raising more questions than it answers, which is good. Obviously the angel and the murder are interesting, but I'm most intrigued by the disappearance of the grinder tattoo on his back. Is it a different time frame to the naked monologue? Or maybe an intelligent tattoo? Or maybe we have another John on our hands?

Can't wait for #5!

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