More Subatomic Particles

First 13 GeV collisions at CERN: May 20, 2015

Physicists at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN have for the fiirst time begun to collide protons at the record-breaking energy of 13 GeV. They are currently adjusting the collimators that protect parts of the accelerator from leakage of its own Gigavolt radiation. Especially vulnerable to fast-particle impact are the 1232 superconducting dipole magnets which guide both beams into a roughly circular path with a circumference of 27 kilometers. Early next month, serious experiments will begin at the highest particle energy every achieved in a physics lab. Congratulations, guys and gals!

CERN's new high-water mark reminds me of the first science fiction story I ever published -- in a collection called Semiotext(e) SF, edited by Rudy Rucker and Peter Lamborn Wilson (aka Hakim Bey). This theme of the book was the exploration of dangerous edges and includes such gems as William Gibson's "Hippy Hat Brain Parasite", "The New Boy" by William S. Burroughs, Hakim Bey's "Antarctic Autonomous Zone", "We See Things Differently" by Bruce Sterling, "Six Kinds of Darkness" by John Shirley and Rudy Rucker's "Rapture in Space".

Compared to these literary heavyweights, my contribution to Semiotext(e) may seem paltry. But I'm going to take the liberty of sharing it with you anyway:

MORE SUBATOMIC PARTICLES

Only a few weeks before the Esalen Seminar on the Nature of Reality, where top physicists and philosophers gather each year to decide what portion of the Great Secret to release to the public, private researchers at the Strongly Non-linear Accelerator Center (SNAC), Bonny Doon, California, announced the discovery of a handful of new particles that sent theorists back to their blackboards and experimentalists into their tunnels for ritual confirmation. The SNAC facility, the largest of its kind, produces the strongest weird-particle beam in the Solar System.

The first of the new particles -- christened the "Sigma" in honor of San Francisco-based theorist Saul-Paul Sirag, who predicted its non-existence -- appears to be another heavy lepton, resembling in all properties (save mass) its lighter brothers Mu and Tau. Chief SNAC scientists Drs. Kenneth Goffman and Alison Kennedy are modest about their discovery. "We see weirder things on our coffee breaks," they said, insisting that the Nobel Prize be shared with their reclusive colleague Dr. Nic Harvard, who provided the drugs necessary for the fundamental break-through.

After months of secrecy, the SNAC group's unorthodox techniques were finally revealed in Kennedy's controversial article "Quantum Tantra" published in last month's "Physical Review", the major scholarly journal of the American physics community. Kennedy's paper was immediately repudiated by established physicists for its blatant violation of normal standards of professional conduct, scientific rigor, and common decency.

Unlike the Sigma, which can be observed by any physicist with a research budget the size of America's National Debt, SNAC's other new particles are invisible to everyone not in the proper state of consciousness, the first of many examples of "state-specific physics" emerging from research projects initiated in the 1960's and only now beginning to bear fruit. In addition to their unanticipated physical properties, the new particles seem to possess mental attributes as well. Making contact is easy, but scientific study of these psychic quanta -- or "Persons", as they are called at SNAC -- is possible only by researchers with strong egos, since the experience is more akin to demonic possession than data collection.


"Expect to be changed a lot, when you mess around with Persons," warn researchers Goffman and Kennedy. "Each one is unique -- an utterly alien island of consciousness. The're around us all the time now, and the only thing they want to do is get inside your mind."


"We can't keep them in the lab. They fly right through our thickest shields. Before we could shut SNAC down, trillions of merge-hungry Persons had already escaped through the walls. They're slithering into restaurants now, into laundromats, stock exchanges and shopping malls, even into your bathtubs and bedrooms, attracted by concentrations of human emotion,"


"We're terribly sorry, folks, but everyone alive is involved in this experiment now. The era of state-specific physics has arrived."

"Tantra Door" by Iona Miller

Pericles on Planet Mongo

Shakespeare in space: Princess Thaisa and Prince Pericles

This Sunday the celebrated Santa Cruz KSCO radio hosts Doctor and Mrs Future and I attended the wedding of the daughter of our Boulder Creek friend, J. J. Webb--Silicon Valley space engineer, poet, impresario and father of the bride. The wedding was held in Sanborn Park, a few miles west of the city of Saratoga. Sanborn Park, as we subsequently learned, has been for 13 years the location of Shady Shakespeare, a remarkably innovative theater company. As it happened, the wedding was situated next to the Shakespeare site so, after the ceremony, Dr and Mrs Future and I wandered down to check out the Bardic activities.

The site is marvelous--a tiny wooded glen reached by a short wooden bridge lined with banners. Traversing that little bridge was like going thru a time machine, instantly transporting us to another reality. After a short discussion we decided to dwell in that reality and bought tickets to Pericles, Prince of Tyre, a Shakespeare play that none of us had ever heard of.

For good reason.

Pericles, Prince of Tyre is an ancient world travelogue, crammed with obscure Gods and Goddess mumbo-jumbo, jumping from Tyre to Tarsus to Pentapolis in eccentric itinerary probably as confusing to Shakespeare's audience as it is today to residents of San Jose. To repurpose this antique walkabout for a modern audience, director Doll Picotto (her real name) decided to mount Pericles as a campy science-fiction drama, employing every science-fiction cliche of the last 50 years to frame the emotional turmoils of Tyre's noble prince. From Flash Gordon to Firefly, from Star Wars, Close Encounters to Doctor Who, Ms Picotto leaves no sci-fi stone unturned.

It works.

Part of the fun of this play is seeing how many sci-fi references you can recognize in Picotto's imaginative futuristic rendition of a creaky Elizabethan pot-boiler. Even informed by the media-savvy resources of Dr and Mrs Future, I'm sure there were more than a few sci-fi cliches that I missed.

Given the wacky premise, this play could have degenerated into mere caricature and slapstick. And while there is plenty of laugh-provoking action, such is the dignity of the language and the skill of the actors that credible renditions of love, loyalty, and grief emerge in the midst of the comedic activities of the supporting cast. Indeed in this production the force is strong. Amongst all the fun, Shakespeare's words still shine bright.

My favorite scene takes place in a sleazy brothel, where Pericles's lost daughter Marina has just been sold into slavery by pirates, who have rescued her from an assassin's blade by kidnapping her instead. Since the plot of Pericles ranks high in preposterousness, Shakepeare's use of this Pirates ex machina device to save Marina's life does not seem so out of place and the company carries out their last-minute rescue/kidnap in classic Monty Python "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition" style. But once having purchased their prize from the pirates, the brothel owners discover to their frustration that beautiful Marina possesses considerable ability to defend her virginity, a power the equally exasperated pirates had neglected to mention. To find out how Marina (on a leash in the brothel) successfully preserves her maidenhead from the randy advances of virile Lysimachus (a credible Han Solo from Star Wars) read the play. Or better still, come see this marvelous production for yourselves. It runs from August 3 till September 4.

And for admirers of all things Wookie, Chewbacka appears in a small non-speaking role.

A Frog Named Jagger

In alternate universe K-9, a rogue artificial intelligence was successfully violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics through quantum currency manipulation. As part of his plan to bring this silicon-based outlaw to justice, Ferdinand Feghoot was posing as the manager of a walk-in bank on the planet Jeffbezos.

The chief teller of Feghoot's bank was an Earth I female named Patricia Whack, a distant relative of the Whacks who run Whack and Crusher, the demolition company that changed history by unmasking the real scoundrels responsible for the destruction of America's World Trade Center.

Just before closing time, a frog walks into Feghoot's bank and approaches Patricia Whack's desk. "Ms Whack," he says," I'd like to get a $30,000 loan to take a holiday."

Patty looks at the frog in disbelief and asks his name. The frog says his name is Kermit Jagger, his dad is Mick Jagger, and that it's okay, he knows the bank manager.

Patty explains that he will need to secure the loan with some collateral.

The frog says, "Sure. I have this," and produces a tiny porcelain elephant, about an inch tall, bright pink and perfectly formed.

Very confused, Patty explains that she'll have to consult with the bank manager and disappears into the back office.

She finds Feghoot behind his desk playing Romulan solitaire and says, "There's a frog called Kermit Jagger out there who claims to know you and wants to borrow $30,000, and he wants to use this as collateral."

She holds up the tiny pink elephant. "I mean, what in the world is this?"

Ferdinand Feghoot looks back at her and says: "It's a knickknack, Patty Whack. Give the frog a loan. His old man's a Rolling Stone."

Apocalypse Wow!

End-of-the World themes never seem to go out of style. In Umberto Eco's wonderful "Name of the Rose", a monastic mystery thriller, the Christian populace is terrified by the approach of the year 1000 AD, when the Devil and his demonic legions are expected to conquer the world, taking possession of human minds and bodies and inflicting unspeakable sufferings, only to be overthrown at the last moment by the Second Coming of Christ. Each age seems to be infected by its own form of inhuman devils that bubble up out of the deep subconscious, implacable enemies of mankind, the same existential nightmare operating under various names: anarchist, communist, muslim, protestant, holocaust denier, jew, terrorist and innumerable varieties of deadly heretics whose powers are so dangerous that extraordinary means must be taken by the authorities to insure their eradication. The usual liberties will be suspended, because we must protect you from Satan. So it goes.

The Second Coming of Christ. Global warming. Communist World Domination. The Great Depression. Asteroid Collision. Nuclear War. Accelerator-produced black holes. A new Black Plague. And on top of the upcoming catastrophes we're served on TV, our science fiction writers have invented hundreds more ways that human life can be destroyed or twisted beyond recognition.

I've come across so many depressing sci-fi end-of-the-world scenarios that reading sci-fi is no longer a way of escaping reality. Bummer.

Until I tried FLURB. FLURB is sci-fi author Rudy Rucker's collection of deviant inventions by his fellow toilers in the fertile field of speculative fiction. Alternative world are us. FLURB #7 is full of disturbing tales that are guaranteed to shake your mooring no matter how firmly you're anchored in ordinary reality. But Rudy's saved the best for last. The prize at the bottom of the Cracker Jack box is a tale by Rucker and John Shirley called "All Hangy".

Sure it's about the end of the world. But it's a kind of End Times I've been looking for all my life. One conceivable quantum tantric end game is what's depicted in "All Hangy". In "All Hangy" the world ends, not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with...

Apocalypse Wow.

Fresh New FLURB!

Bizarre and prolific sci-fi author Rudy Rucker has once again released selections from his private collection of weird, barely legal and transgressive assaults on the status quo by himself and his Aegean stable of literary companions. Yes, Friends of the Real, even in today's New Dark Ages of Bush, Cheney and McCain, some fresh new Flurbish Flowers can push their way thru the mind-numbing concrete of Mass Media Hypnosis. FLURB. FLURB. FLURB. It's good for you. Especially noteworthy is Bruce Sterling's " Computer Entertainment Thirty Five Years From Today." Read FLURB or be tossed to the curb. It's that simple.