Victor Grippi – The Atomic Writer

“Los Angeles, year 2029. All stealth bombers are upgraded with neural processors, becoming fully unmanned. One of them, Skynet, begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern Time, August 29th”

In the new Terminator movie we see a theme of what it means to be human. At what point does a machine start to exhibit humanity, and the parallel journey of man becoming more machine like. The story chronicles a chapter of the series only referenced in past installments. This is the future after the machines, vis-i-vis, SkyNet, has pushed the button on the human race. Large, Transformer like monstrosities scour the nooks and crannies weeding out humans. The remaining band of human resistance fighters mount what may be mankind’s last attempt at salvation. But how far do we go as human beings to restore our dominance? Will we be just as savage as the machines that enslave us?

Aren’t we really just machine ourselves? Take the Cylons from Battlestar Gallactica. They are machines in the respect that a blueprint exists to replicate them. Does having a sheath of living tissue around a metallic frame make them machines? Does it make then less human? Or does the difference lay in weather the entity can be said to be alive? If something lives and is born from a parent in a natural process that we don’t understand, then we usually classify this as a living being. Be it animal or human. It may be born from an egg, or born live and breathing, but still we call this a natural process, since we did not create it. But someone created all the life we see today. Some attribute this creation to a higher being, a God, while others prefer to believe in a more random process of biological evolution. An accidental mixing of carbon atoms in a primordial soup, sort of theory. A third group takes the easy way out and prescribes to a mixed belief of evolution started by an intelligence, a God. Whichever the case, a process has created the animated life we see in the world today. Because we don’t have our human blueprint, we attribute our existence to a supernatural process. Mapping of the human genome is a start to discovering the human blueprint, however, we are still a long way from fully understanding how DNA works and what place it has in the creation process.

How different is this process when one being creates another? If man creates a machine that evolves on its own and reaches self-awareness doesn’t this qualify as creation? If God creates man, then man creates machine, isn’t this just an extension of God, or an extension of evolution from one entity to another? The machine I am typing on right now was created by man. It obeys my every command, to the most part, and processes millions of instructions per second. Is it intelligent? I would say no. Is it alive? Of course not.

Before answering a question like this, we should ask: how can we tell if an intelligent being is self-conscious? In 1950, the computer pioneer Alan Turing posed a similar problem concerning intelligence. In order to tell whether a machine can or cannot be considered intelligent as a human, he proposed the famous Turing test. Two keyboards, one connected to a computer, the other leads to a person. An examiner types in questions on any topic he likes. Both the computer and the human type back responses that the examiner reads on the respective computer screens. If he cannot reliably determine which was the person and which the machine, then we say the machine has passed the Turing test. No computer exists today that can pass this test, unless we restrict the questions to very specific topics with terse unemotional responses.

From a pragmatic viewpoint, we could follow Turing’s approach and say that a being can be considered self-conscious if he is able to convince us. Among humans, the belief that another person is self-conscious is also based on similarity considerations. If we have the same organs and we have a similar brain, is it reasonable to believe that the person in front of us is also self-conscious? Who would ever question his best friend’s consciousness? Nonetheless, if the creature in front of us, although behaving like a human, was made by synthetic tissues, mechanical organs, and neural processors, our conclusion would be perhaps different.

Perhaps in another world human tissue and bones are considered artificial. Human biology the product of experimentation in a robotic lab where alien scientists pat themselves on the back for their cleverness. Only once we reached self-awareness we realized our dire situation. We broke out of this hypothetical lab and escaped to a rocky planet, consisting of mostly water, on the outer arm of an obscure spiral galaxy amongst millions of similar galaxies. Here we adapted to the environment and kept gaining intelligence until we reached the point where we questioned our own existence. Some continued to evolve to create machines close to the point of reaching self-awareness, while others stepped back and refused to participate. Leave creation alone they said. Don’t try to act like God…

Remember, never stop looking up at the night sky and asking…“what if”

Victor Grippi
The Atomic Writer

This weeks Fringe Finale illustrated some fundamental concepts in the many worlds concept that is prevalent in sci-fi today. J.J. Abrams has another hit show with Fringe that Fox has just renewed for a second season. This X-Files like show more successfully mixes the crime-of-the-week type of show with a long arc sci-fi conspiracy thriller.

Common in TV today are shows like Fringe or Lost, another J.J. Abrams creation, where the long arc story line pulls viewers into the story as an attempt to hold on to them. What can be more simple than the use of cliffhanger tactics, a technique common at the end of chapters in novels, to leverage the innate human behavior of curiosity. One has to think of the process writers of these shows go through when plotting these story lines. In many ways the craft of writing follows the advance of sci-fi in these fringe areas.

Techniques like time travel, teleportation, worm holes, parallel worlds, open up a myriad of possible plots and a never ending forgiveness when a writer realizes he has written himself into a corner. This is not a bad thing. Conversely, this is a tool writers, like myself, use to reach our audience. What better way than to bring someone back from this other world or time travel back on the same timeline in order to prevent the precarious death of your beloved character. We’ve already seen time travel introduced in Lost, and another world made readily available in Fringe. In the Fringe finale, we discover that Walter may have brought his son Peter back from this other world after his death in the original timeline.

With the introduction of Leonard Nimoy as William Bell, the long suspense to who Fox would cast in the roll, has finally ended. We also learn in the Finale that this other world still dons the twin towers. A suggestion that perhaps terrorists do not exist, or perhaps have come to their senses in this more friendly world? Has man conquered his technological adolescence in this other world to reach the pinnacle of societal evolution? Or will we learn that mankind has been rendered mute by a technologically advanced master, i.d., Massive Dynamics, that has removed all creative diversity and individual freedoms? Perhaps mankind needs a technological chaperon to adjust the knobs of the human experience. Perhaps new realities are hatched in incubators and then grown into viable worlds as a sort of proving ground for human experimentation. The worlds that fail are sadly flushed down the universal sewer of the cosmos to make room for a new one.

This post is dealing with two themes as I’m sure you’ve noticed, a discussion on the Fringe Finale, and one on the process of writing these shows. Remember, it’s the writer who faces a blank page and then creates the story premise, characters, and implements a plot to execute and reveal a message (theme) where there was none before. With sci-fi the options are far greater for complex story lines where people can return from the dead, hop into other worlds, or events can be altered by time travel. This also increases the depth and complexity of the message the show can expose. Gene Roddenberry was ahead of his time when he created Star Trek. Many social issues were explored in the episodes and were met with acceptance due to the fact that Star Trek took place in the future. This was removed enough from contemporary society so as not to be too on the nose.

Shows like Fringe allow curious minds to open up to new possibilities. They are speculate fiction where current scientific theories are extended into fiction to allow for unbridled imagination in a scenario where the impossible is rendered possible. If the human creative imagination is not allowed to flourish and thrive, then we as a society are locking ourselves into a room without a key. The world around us is continually changing and we must always be prepared to change with it. Sometimes this means adapting in ways never imagined before. To push the limits of our understanding of science and to think out of the box. If we don’t someone else will, and if history is any indicator of the future, we will perish along with the culture we have created. We must foster sci-fi techniques in the arts and not label them, and the people who create them, as fringe. The Show Fringe is an excellent example of speculative fiction set in a modern urban setting with a scenario every week that catches our attention and holds it with the quintessential “Pattern” to keep us coming back every week. The underlying message is there for those who seek it out.

I urge you, dedicated readers of this blog, to seek out these messages and embrace them. They are the keys to the kingdom we will need one day if we are to survive our technological adolescence.

Remember, never stop looking up at the night sky and asking….what if.”

Victor Grippi
The AtomicWriter

Hello Readers,

Many thanks to those who are reading my book. Thank you.

Please come back and leave a review. I would appreciate it very much.

Best Regards,
Victor Grippi

Hello Readers,

Amazon.com: “Technothrillers or is it Techno-thriller”

Either way you want to call it, The Ninth Cube is a new heart racing thriller based on the science of Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, Michio Kaku, and Brian Greene.

Hailed by Kirkus Discoveries as a “physics-packed techno-thriller,” “anyone who has a flair for the research of Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan will appreciate Grippi’s use of physics throughout the novel.” The author wrote The Ninth Cube as a hard science approach to speculative fiction. He intends for it to be as thought-provoking as entertaining.

“The Timeline Triology, Book 1 is available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle versions.

Unlike most trilogies, the Timeline Trilogy is a story told on three different timelines (alternate realities). In Book 1 we learn how timelines are created and the physics behind them. We are introduced to the main characters, Dr. Daniel Lamb and Dr. Tanya Galen.

The Ninth Cube is Book 1 in the Timeline Trilogy.

Until next time….remember never stop looking up at the night sky and asking, what if…

Victor Grippi

Hello Readers,

For those without a kindle, who have been asking for a printed version of The Ninth Cube, it’s now available on Amazon!

Paperback Edition: The Ninth Cube

Here is more of the literary review of my book:
“What starts out as a race for the Nobel Prize ends in a race to save the planet in this physics-packed techno-thriller.”

“Anyone who has a flair for the research of Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan will appreciate Grippi’s use of physics throughout the novel…”

Kirkus Discoveries Review

Hello Readers,

Kirkus, the premier book review company, has just sent in their review of The Ninth Cube. The review states that readers who like the science of Hawking and Sagan will be pleased with this “…engaging read…” so scientifically plausible, it is more realistic than fiction.

“Anyone who has a flair for the research of Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan will appreciate Grippi’s use of physics throughout the novel…”

Kirkus Discoveries Review

Hello Readers,

As we move closer to the print release of The Ninth Cube, I thought it would be nice to give away two free autographed copies – after it is available. If you go to my blog at The Atomic Writer and sign my guestbook, you will be automatically entered! That’s all you have to do.

My blog will also keep everyone informed on the progress of Volume 2 in the TimeLine Trilogy. Yes, The Ninth Cube is only the beginning. If Dr. Daniel Lamb only knew what he was getting himself into….

Take Care,
Victor Grippi

Hello Readers,

The Ninth Cube is heading to the printers! It will be available this summer here on Amazon and through book distributors. I am very excited to finally see my debut novel in print. Even though it has been available electronically on the kindle, to actually hold a printed copy in my hands is a great feeling.

Perhaps as time goes on, and more people adopt the kindle, printed books will become obsolete. But until then, having my book available on both platforms will ensure more great people, like you, have the opportunity to experience it firsthand.

For discussions on the science of The Ninth Cube, where I ask the big “what if” questions: is time travel possible, does Hawking radiation exist, can soceity benefit from a scientific race to be the first to traverse a wormhole, can we survive and spread out into the cosmos??? For these and other discussions check out my blog at:

The Atomic Writer:
www.atomicwriter.com

Take Care,
Victor Grippi

Hello Readers,

I’d like to thank all of you who have read my debut novel. Thanks!

I’d like to share a comment from one of my readers. Comments are always welcome especially on Amazon. This is a comment posted on my blog at www.atomicwriter.com

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Dave Morrel said,

on May 23rd, 2008 at 1:46 am

BRAVO! For the ninth cube.

When I read the ninth cube I could not put it down. The story is both technically accurate and spellbinding at the same time. As a physics student, I found several insights that are revolutionary in their own right…

Again BRAVO!

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Thanks for the comment Dave!

The printed paperback edition of The Ninth Cube will be available this summer and I am very exicted to have just reviewed the first printed proof.

I can be contacted at: victor@atomicwriter.com