{"id":4591,"date":"2013-03-11T10:08:33","date_gmt":"2013-03-11T18:08:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/?p=4591"},"modified":"2013-06-18T12:58:04","modified_gmt":"2013-06-18T20:58:04","slug":"the-two-gods-4d-networked-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2013\/03\/11\/the-two-gods-4d-networked-matter\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;The Two Gods,&#8221; 4D, Networked Matter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve been writing a lot lately, working on my novel <em>The Big Aha<\/em>, and on a short story called \u201cApricot Lane.\u201d\u009d  I also gave a guest lecture at UC Berkeley and participated in a workshop at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto.  In today\u2019s post, I\u2019ll catch up on some of this.<\/p>\n<p>In <em>The Big Aha<\/em> I have these two mysterious spheres kicking around, about the size of softballs.  They\u2019re called the oddball and the dollshead, although their actual names might be Alef and Zeee. <\/p>\n<p>They\u2019re otherworldly beings of some kind, and in the books\u2019 final chapters they\u2019ll transfer one or two of my characters to a higher world for some extra adventures.  This is a standard move from the  <a target=\"blank\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Monomyth\">Monomyth <\/a> or Hero\u2019s Journey pattern, which was famously described in Joseph Campbell\u2019s <em>The Hero With A Thousand Faces<\/em>.  (Note that, with a few tweaks, you can get a variation on the pattern that works for a Heroine\u2019s Journey as well.)<\/p>\n<p>As I sometimes do when I\u2019m stalled or unsure in a novel, I did a painting of these two beings, and I call it <em>The Two Gods<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images4\/95_thetwogods.jpg\"><br \/>\n<em> \u201cThe Two Gods,\u201d\u009d oil on canvas, March, 2013, 24\u201d\u009d x 324\u201d\u009d.  <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images4\/95_thetwogods1200.jpg\"> Click for a larger version of the image.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p>They\u2019re like lizards, a little bit, with long tails going off into the beyond.  I posted a little about my plans for the oddball before on February 5, 2013, in \u201c<a target=\"blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2013\/02\/05\/the-bogosity-generator-tool-in-science-fiction\/\">The Bogosity Generator Tool in Science Fiction,\u201d\u009d <\/a>and when I wrote that post I was thinking about trying to basing my painting \u201cThe Two Gods,\u201d\u009d on the start sequence seen in Warner Brothers cartoons of the Merrie Melodies or Loony Toons ilk.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images4\/merriemelodies.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>On the art front, my show is still hanging at Borderlands Caf\u00c3\u00a9 on Valencia Street in San Francisco.  It\u2019ll be up until March 27, 2013, and I have a video of the show below.  I marked the prices of my paintings way down for the show, and I\u2019ve sold four in the last month.  More info on my <a target=\"blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/paintings\">Paintings Page<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p> <iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/onpol4th5yc?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Rolling back to earlier this month, as I mentioned, I gave a talk on the fourth dimension at Alan Weinstein\u2019s math class at UC Berkeley.  The class is using my very first book as their text,  <em><a target=\"blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0486234002\/tag=rusbl0f-20\">Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension <\/a><\/em>(Dover Publications, 1977).  Incredibly this little book is in its seventeenth printing, with over a hundred thousand copies sold.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images4\/geometryreland4d.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>Above is a scan of one of my older copies.  For the class I got into some illos from my novel on the fourth dimension, that is, <em><a target=\"blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/spaceland\/\">Spaceland<\/a><\/em>, which was inspired by Edwin Abbott\u2019s 1884 novel <em><a target=\"blank\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Flatland\">Flatland <\/a><\/em>.  <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images4\/05_asquare.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p><em>Flatland <\/em>describes higher dimensions in terms of a two dimensional square being, A Square, shown above in my painting of the square and his wife, who is a line segment.  In the novel <em>Flatland<\/em>, A Square is lifted into the third dimension, and gets a view of our world as seen from a higher dimension.  There\u2019s a few issues that come up here.  If you tug A Square up into 3D space, do his innards spill out?  And how can his flat eye with its 1D retina see much of anything in 3D?<\/p>\n<p>I got into these issues in my novel <em>Spaceland<\/em>.  My solution was that, before a 4D being tugs my hero Joe Cube up into 4D space, Joe is &#8220;augmented,&#8221; that is, he&#8217;s given a bit of a 4D hyperthickness, his upper \u201cside\u201d\u009d is sealed off with new skin, and he grows himself a hyperdimensional extra eye that projects out into hyperspace from the center of his brain.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images4\/spaceland3deye.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>The rather complex image shown above depicts these moves in terms of A Square, up in the higher (3D) space looking down at his father, who is a triangle.  If the Square tries to use his normal eye, he only sees a 1D cross section of his father.  He needs that higher-D eye to get full 2D images on his retina so he can form mental images of 3D objects.<\/p>\n<p>In the same sense, if you try and use your normal eye to see in 4D space, you\u2019ll only see 2D cross sections of things.  And what you want is to have a 4D eye with a 3D retina, so you can look at, like a person, and see all of their inner organs at once.  Like the way you see your house in your mind, with every closet and drawer open to your inspection.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images4\/spaceladdadseye.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>A little more fun with the higher-dimensional eye.  Suppose that the Flatland creatures aren\u2019t simple squares, but are more like organisms with bones and a stomach.  Suppose that \u201cDad\u201d\u009d here has been augmented with some thickness and with a higher dimensional eye.  So he can see that flat \u201cMom\u201d\u009d is hiding a knife behind her back.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images4\/spadelanddadducks.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>Mom makes her move, but Dad bulges his belly out into a higher dimension!<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images4\/berkdrugzone.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>I always go check out Telegraph Avenue when I\u2019m in Berzerkistan.  Been doing that for forty years.  These days the Ave is at a bit of a low ebb.  The epic Cody\u2019s bookstore is gone, indeed all four corners of that block are deserted, and, at least on the day I visited, the street denizens seemed to have arranged a pair of trucks so as wall off access to People\u2019s Park.  Note the edited street sign.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images4\/berkamoeba.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>At least Rasputin\u2019s and Amoeba record stores are still there, not that they\u2019re very flush.  All kinds of media stores are fading away\u2026books, CDs, DVDs\u2026all dissolved in the digital torrent.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images4\/berkpigchef.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m a bit of a connoisseur of images of the Pig Chef\u2014that traitorous being who delights in slaughtering, cooking and devouring his peers\u2014and I saw this well-executed Pig Chef on a truck by People\u2019s Park.  If you\u2019ve never read it, do check out my Pig Chef story, \u201cThe Men in the Back Room at the Country Club\u201d\u009d in my online <a target=\"blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/transrealbooks\/completestories\/#_Toc46\"><em>Complete Stories<\/em><\/a>.  Not to give too much away, in my tale, the Pig Chef is a Sta-Hi-type character who ends up BBQ-ing people and feeding them to alien preying mantises\u2026<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images4\/berkwall.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>Another thing I did recently was to attend Institute For The Future workshop on the theme of objects joining the internet.  See the IFTF post on \u201c<a target=\"blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.iftf.org\/future-now\/article-detail\/the-coming-age-of-networked-matter\/\">The Coming Age of Networked Matter<\/a>.\u201d\u009d  My host was David Pescovitz, who also does some work at IFTF.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images4\/rudypescovitziff.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>IFTF has commissioned me to write a short SF story on networked matter, the story to appear for free on Boing Boing and in other spots\u2014it\u2019ll be Creative Commons licensed.  Madeline Ashby, Cory Doctorow, Warren Ellis will be writing stories as well.  For now I\u2019m calling my story \u201cApricot Lane,\u201d\u009d and that\u2019s what I\u2019m working on right now. <\/p>\n<p>I wrote about a rather enjoyable world with tagged and even \u201cliving\u201d\u009d objects in my novels <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/postsingular\" target=\"_blank\">Postsingular <\/a><\/em>and its sequel <em>Hylozoic<\/em>.  And note that a free CC version of <em>Postsingular <\/em>exists.<\/p>\n<p>But this time around, for the purposes of \u201cApricot Lane,\u201d\u009d I\u2019m thinking that it wouldn\u2019t necessarily be pleasant if the objects around you could talk to you or exchange information with you.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images4\/droopwire.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>Thinking along these lines, I remembered the \u201cdogsh*t day\u201d\u009d scene in Phil Dick\u2019s novel <em>A Scanner Darkly<\/em>.  Bob Arctor\u2019s car has malfunctioned.  He\u2019s pulled over at the side of  a freeway with his freaky and possibly evil friend Barris.  He\u2019s hallucinating that his engine block is smeared with dog crap, and Barris somehow knows this and is teasing Arctor, smiling at him from behind his mirrorshades.  And then Arctor starts to hear the parts of the engine talking to him and he throws up.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>He felt, in his head, loud voices singing: terrible, as if the reality around him had gone sour.  &#8230;  The smell of Barris still smiling overpowered Bob Arctor, and he heaved onto the dashboard of his own car.  A thousand little voices tinkled up at him, shining at him, and the smell receded finally.  A thousand little voices crying out their strangeness; he did not understand them, but at least he could see, and the smell was going away.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Good old Phil.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve been writing a lot lately, working on my novel The Big Aha, and on a short story called \u201cApricot Lane.\u201d\u009d I also gave a guest lecture at UC Berkeley and participated in a workshop at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto. In today\u2019s post, I\u2019ll catch up on some of this. In [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-the-big-aha"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4591"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4735,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4591\/revisions\/4735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}