Arc 2.1 Exit Strategies.pdf

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2.1/
E xi t
st r a te gi e s
Simo n Bar r ac lo u gh
St u ar t C lar k
C lair e D e an
Mic h ae l Do s e r
Adr ian Ellis
Kath le e n A nn Go onan
M. Jo h n Har r is o n
Je f f No o n
Han n u Rajan ie mi
Adam Ro be r t s
Tad Williams
2 . 1 /
E x i t
Editor-in-chief
Sumit Paul-Choudhury
s t r a t e g i e s
Arc
www.arcfinity.org
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arc@arcfinity.org
Lacon House,
84 Theobald’s Road
London WC1X 8NS
Arc
is published six times a year by
Reed Business Information Ltd.
ISSN 2049-5870
© Copyright Reed Business
Information Ltd, England
Arc
was conceived
by Henry Gomm,
John MacFarlane and
Sumit Paul-Choudhury
Cover image: Niko Guido/Getty
Managing editor
Simon Ings
Art editor
Craig Mackie
Picture editor
Adam Goff
Sub-editor
Eleanor Harris
Publisher
John MacFarlane
Digital director
Neela Das
M a r ke t i n g
David Hunt
Production
Amardeep Sian
2
4
6
16
Ed i to rial
Escaping reality
Con t r ibuto rs
8
For war d
Abiding mysteries
Michael Doser
There’s a cosmic mystery
to measurement – not
least, that it works at all
14
Sca n nin g
From big bang
to heat death
Simon Bar r aclough
Fourteen micro-poems tell
the story of the universe
Pr i or a rt
The measure of dreams
Stuart C la rk
Astronomy is a
science rooted in close
observation. Happily,
no-one told Kepler.
34
S h ort s tor y
Vapours
Jeff Noon
“She’s not interested
in the outside world at
all: her desire is to
communicate with the
strange creatures who
share this space with us.”
58
I nne r sp a ce
Saturation point
C la ir e D ean
Novelist J. G. Ballard
imagined nature
disastrously transformed.
Nearly half a century later,
artists are making their
own crystal worlds.
68
Sho rt story
Sport
Kathl een A nn Goona n
“Mother is mad: she
can’t control Lucy. Not
only is Lucy Saving the
World, but it is fun.”
88
Pr e s e n t te n s e
The sanity of Iain M. Banks
Ad am Rob ert s
Iain Banks’s Culture
novels made doing
the right thing a source
of excitement and
adventure. Is this why
we ignored him?
100
Shor t stor y
Adr ian Ellis
The lost emotion
“Yesterday I stripped a
dead laptop I found in a
chest, took all the chips
out of it and stuck them to
my body with tree resin.
Nothing happened.”
112
Medi a
On crows, roads and
the future of books
Ha nnu Ra janiemi
A book that changes
your mind is one thing.
But what if it explored
your head?
120
En te r tain me n t
Changing our world
M. John Har rison
“The core technique of
Publicity of Science is
to stare into the camera
and deliver the word
‘universe’ with as many
syllables as possible.”
128
Shor t stor y
The narrow road
Tad Willia ms
“How novel it would be,
to come to an end! He
was sorry he would not
be able to appreciate the
subtleties of his own
non-existence.”
3
E d i t o r i a l
E s c a p i n g
r e a l i t y
4
a r c 2 . 1 /
P
risoner of war Colin Blythe is
pick-picking at some meticulously
faked German documents
(home-made paper, shoe-polish ink).
Fellow prisoner Roger Bartlett reckons the
finicky work has sent Blythe blind. “I can
see,” Blythe insists. “I can see perfectly.”
The Great Escape,
1963: a time when it was still
possible to believe in an outside to escape to.
Galileo and Kepler gave us worlds beyond
our own; Einstein and Hubble took them
away. It has been a century of ground lost,
inchwise. We know there’s no reaching the
Outside. We know we are stuck in here,
purblind. Ninety-six per cent of the cosmos
is ineffable; the rest is stirred by machinery
that’s hidden in plain sight.
We cannot experience the universe;
we must be content to infer it. From fiery
birth to icy death, we model, render and
visualise. Like the hapless forger, we labour
over the details, even at the cost of our
vision. Trapped in our lightcones, we yearn
for the Outside and dig, and dig, towards it.
We long for a theory of everything and
find, instead, a funhouse where every
solid thing, every flag and brick and
kerbstone, comes adrift and floats
before us: contingent, weightless, uncanny.
But so what? So what if time and space
remain unconquered? The imaginary
unlocks the prison of the real. Each of the
worlds we cannot know gives way to every
one of the worlds we can dream. We can
dream of harmonic perfection. Of aliens in
the ether and utopias in the sky. Of haikus
and wormholes. Of taking shortcuts to the
stars: or the long walk down the crow road.
Assemble the known, the simulated and
the imagined, and we can yet find our way
to the Outside, to the universe. To a sense of
fulfilment. A sense of having participated.
Of having been there.
We can see. We can see perfectly.
S i m o n I ng s
Editor
S u mi t Pa u l - C h o u d h u r y
Editor-in-Chief
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