Yes; we’ve seen building printers before. But they’ve always been mounted on a frame; this one has a mobile base. That makes a huge difference.
While the platform represents an engineering advance, Oxman notes. “Making it faster, better, and cheaper is one thing. But the ability to design and digitally fabricate multifunctional structures in a single build embodies a shift from the machine age to the biological age — from considering the building as a machine to live in, made of standardized parts, to the building as an organism, which is computationally grown, additively manufactured, and possibly biologically augmented.”
Story fodder here, not only in the secret passages that enabled silk to be transported without damage through a city with winding, crowded streets, but in the silk workers’ rebellions. (Yes, plural.)
“Literary” fiction is a number of things: a mode, a genre, a set of tropes and story structures and expectations, a club. (In the membership sense, not the hitting-people sense, although sometimes…)
Faced with the science-fictional nature of the present, more and more “literary” writers are attempting speculative fiction, with mixed success. Of course, as the article points out, plenty of classic writers have worked with spec-fic; Huxley and Orwell get mentioned, Shakespeare and Virginia Woolfe do not.
Advisory: fixed (small) font size on this website, unfriendly to the visually impaired.
Originally shared by David Brin
Okay, so science fiction has conquered the world. It is the engine behind most of the big, money-making successes of Hollywood. It propels much of the political narrative, from dread of Big Brother to obsession with social collapse scenarios. And now, each year, ever more purportedly “literary” authors try their hand at “doing future” – resulting in romances set in space, thinly repurposed westerns and navel-contemplating angst-ridden time travelers.
On Slate, Laura Miller appraises some of the most recent forays by artistically approved authors, and finds most of them wanting. Only then, what about Chabon? Bacigalupi? Rajamieni? Sue Burke? We embrace them. Yes, in part because they give a little love back. But also because they bothered to heed some of our history, some of our had-learned craft.
Still, should we be glad, or miffed?
“First they ignore you,” Gandhi said. “Then they mock you. Then they fight you. And then they claim to have loved you, all along.” Sigh.
I’m not sure how I’d use this in a story, but it’s certainly cool. Especially the parts about making shoes quickly, cheaply, locally, and out of natural, biodegradeable materials.
