Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

More fine Gothic audio from the Zombie Astronaut

The Zombie Astronaut is at it again, with another fine haul of audio Gothic goodness.  I haven't heard the whole thing, but am very fond of three.

Susanna Clarke's "The Dweller In High Places" is charming and funny, taking place in a universe much like Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.

Nick Moulton's "The Quick And The Dead" is surreal and lovely, haunting and sad.  Same for Fiona McFarlane's "Elegy Underground".

Hoaxing the political spin cycle

A fake political analysis group has gotten into the news cycle several times this year, according to the New York Times.  It's the "Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy", which is apparently a hoax run by some independent filmmakers.  They have serious-looking content on the Web, in fine ARG fashion: a website,  and a YouTube channel.  Which helps them get taken seriously, from time to time, by mainstream news media:

[I]t was Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, who has come forward today to identify himself as the source of the leaks,” Mr. Shuster said.

Trouble is, Martin Eisenstadt doesn’t exist. His blog does, but it’s a put-on. The think tank where he is a senior fellow — the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy — is just a Web site. The TV clips of him on YouTube are fakes.

And the claim of credit for the Africa anecdote is just the latest ruse by Eisenstadt, who turns out to be a very elaborate hoax that has been going on for months. MSNBC, which quickly corrected the mistake, has plenty of company in being taken in by an Eisenstadt hoax, including The New Republic and The Los Angeles Times.

Note that "time to time" aspect.  The Harding institute has been outed several times, and yet somehow goes on to win citation.

Eisenstadt's "work" had been quoted and debunked before. The Huffington Post said it had cited Eisenstadt in July on a story regarding the Hilton family and McCain.

Among the other victims were political blogs for the Los Angeles Times and The New Republic, each of which referenced false material from Eisenstadt's blog.

And in July, Jonathan Stein of Mother Jones magazine blogged an item about Eisenstadt speaking on Iraqi television about a casino in Baghdad's "Green Zone."

Stein later realized he'd been had.

Putting the future behind us: Geoff Ryman and mundane sf

This is a very interesting interview about emergent sf, where Geoff Ryman describes "mundane sf" and wonders about the field's dwindling.  It's a cliche (and sometimes a troll) to declare a living thing dead, but Ryman's doing something different. 

First, Ryman observes that the publishing category of "sf" has increasingly become "mostly fantasy":

Something has happened to both our reading and writing habits.  Go the SF shelves in Barnes and Noble and you will find mostly fantasy or horror...
In the 2004 Clarion West not much SF was being written.  Lots and lots of vampires and zombies in post-genre fiction –- fiction in which the weird happens but actually is not the whole focus of the story.  We didn’t get many SF stories.  This year’s Clarion even more so.

That seems about right to me.  Note that he's not objecting to either f or horror.

Then Ryman explores what's changed in the world.  His major argument is chilling:

Finally, our relationship to the future has been disrupted.  The future is not a place we want to live in.  We’ve got a bad few years ahead of us, and at the end of it our lives may involve less travel, less energy use, fewer toys, more work.  Maybe we just can’t face, as Elisabeth Vonarburg once said, ‘writing over that pile of corpses.’ Maybe we just no longer believe the SF dream.

My first thought was of James Kunstler's World Made By Hand (2008), about a post-peak oil society.  Grim stuff for much of it (and my review is coming).  My wife (Infocultwife!) says this makes her think of Octavia Butler's powerful Parable of the Sower (1993) and sequel, concerning contemporary American society in disintegration.  Which brought to mind Kim Stanley Robinson's "Down and Out in the Year 2000" (1992), that fine smack-down of cyberpunk's disconnection from social realities.  And Jack Womack's stunning Random Acts of Senseless Violence (1995), also following social disintegration, but in New York City.  These are all stories predicated on emerging or present societies in contraction.  Not dystopias about the present only, but arguments in this sense about the future.

The contrast with Star Wars, or Star Trek, or steampunk, is large.

Still thinking about Ryman's argument.

(via MetaFilter)

Monstrous eye revealed in deep space

Planets around Formalhaut were imaged from Earth this week.  But the results are staggeringly sinister:

Caption this: "The Eye of Sauron Gazes Upon You," or "Azathoth awakes; tremble in fear!"

These two, also spotted recently around HR 8799, look benign in comparison.

Severed foot #7 washes onto the Canadian shore

2008 is the great year for Canadian Gothic: yet another severed foot has drifted onto Canada's western shore.

A New Balance runner for a woman's left foot apparently containing human remains was found in Finn Slough in the south arm of the Fraser, near the end of Garden City Road, Const. Annie Linteau told CBC News.

It's been a long time since the last one.  Is the punctuation an artistic statement?  Or was the villain distracted by another scheme?

(thanks to Duncan McHugh)

"a dark side of social networking": fearing mind control Web sites

Psychologists are increasingly concerned about a form of social networking.  According to the New York Times, virtual communities are growing for people who consider themselves victims of mind control.  Their alleged tormenters are shadowy groups, sometimes government agents, often using advanced technologies.

What worries the mental health professionals is the possibility that these delusional people will find their beliefs strengthened by associations with others of the same persuasion.  So, as with Web sites advocating self-mutilation, anorexia, or suicide (previous posts here and here), these anti-mind-control support groups encourage deviant behavior.

The strength of these communities may even alter participants' diagnoses.  Consider this problem of psychosis:

The extent of the community, Dr. Bell said, poses a paradox to the traditional way delusion is defined under the diagnostic guidelines of the American Psychiatric Association, which says that if a belief is held by a person’s “culture or subculture,” it is not a delusion. The exception accounts for rituals of religious faith, for example.

There's an interesting model for understanding the rise of religions...

(thanks to Nick Doty!)

Robotic facial expressions from the uncanny valley

Today's uncannily human-like robot is a head, with fascinating facial expressions:

Keep watching for the rampage against humanity speech.

Presidential transition Gothic

Another take on presidential post-campaign Gothic:

Is this going to be a major theme in Obama humor?  It's a rich approach, drawing on Obama's body type, American fears concerning the economic crisis, and the man's serious style.

The Onion took a first whack at presidential transition Gothic here.

Previous Obama Gothic posts: here, here, here.

(thanks to Ed Webb via Twitter)

Unseen structures pull at spacetime: National Geographic suspects Azathoth

Dark matter brings out Gothic nightmare visions in people.  For example, this National Geographic headline:

Unknown "Structures" Tugging at Universe

It's more "dark flow", this argument that an awful lot of dark matter is in identifiable motion.

We at Infocult have been all over dark matter Gothic.

(thanks to everyone who pointed this out to me; Ia!, ya'll)

Canadian Gothic: horror film goes for cinéma vérité

Yet another Canadian Gothic tale is emerging, with authorities prosecuting a filmmaker who seems to have made his horror film project a tad too realistic.

Edmonton filmmaker Mark Twitchell, 29, has been charged with first-degree murder in Altinger's disappearance, in a case that shares similarities to a movie he was making...

This is really splendid for the "real life imitates Gothic" theme.   There's the luring an innocent victim with sex angle:

Police allege Altinger was lured to a southside detached residential double garage through a dating website with the promise of meeting a beautiful woman. Instead, police said, Altinger was killed.

Then the classic horror movie turn:

Edmonton police said the second man was apparently confronted by someone wearing a hockey mask when he showed up at the garage a week before Altinger went missing.

And the scheme undone by a hero's escape:

"The male was able to break free and run into the lane, being chased by the male in the mask. At this time a couple was walking by and saw the altercation," said Det. Mark Anstey of the Edmonton Police Service on the weekend.

Bonus points for a mix of Web 2.0 and fearsome media:

On his Facebook page, Twitchell is revealed to be a huge fan of the Showtime program Dexter, which follows the exploits of Dexter Morgan, a blood-spatter expert for the Miami police who also leads a secret life as a serial killer.

"We have a lot of information to suggest he definitely idolizes Dexter," Anstey said.

Anstey also alleged the police have evidence that Twitchell tried to emulate the character.

Already the National Post is worrying about "pop culture violence."  Other media outlets worry that he was good at video games (gasp).

Not to mention the weird spin involving Star Wars fandom.  Yes, he was making a fan movie, and we can read this comment with all sorts of double meanings (assume Dexter):

"I get to be able to put the film out and do my fan thing, while at the same time generating a career for myself and everyone else who's involved," he said.

Twitch is in the judicial system now.  HubDub currently gives a 62% chance of conviction.

What's going on in Canada this year?  Severed feet, bus passenger decapitations, mystery boom sounds...

(thanks to the excellent Duncan McHugh)