Schneibster

Starting John Shirley's "A Song Called Youth," first novel Eclipse. This is the Babbage Press quarto paperback edition from 1999, not the original 1985 octavo paperback edition which I also own. I'm looking forward to Rickenharp jamming on top of the Arc de Triomphe with a battery-powered Marshall as the giant nuclear powered swastika war machines advance to demolish it. Iconic stuff.

I learn something new every day. Thank you. However, I'll also point out that there is still a horizon. Also, its worth saying that another explanation for greater-than-c-spacetime-expansion is that it is empty space being created everywhere between, somewhat offset by other geometric effects. This is clear from the Einstein Equation, which is the master equation from which the ten equations of the gravity field are derived: Guv + Λguv = 8πG/c4 xTuv Lambda, then, Λ, is pushing space apart, except where it is opposed by guv, the metric tensor.

There is no requirement to create spacetime from anything. Since it's empty, i.e. nothing, it can be created from nothing. It's more correct to ask "what creates it," and the answer is the Casimir effect/cosmological constant/dark energy. Just as it pushes two plates together in the laboratory, it pushes space apart. And in answer to the OP, since spacetime is nothing, it's massless and can exceed the speed of light. Also there is an error in your question: we cannot see anything going faster than light. The point beyond which galaxies are receding faster than light is called the "horizon" and we can see nothing beyond it.

LOL, freedom from possessions is one way to go. Personally I'm a packrat.

I have never had a book disaster, so I still have stuff from my adolescence. I am knocking on all wood within reach. As for the 20th Anniv. GEB, there are fixed typos, updated examples that eliminated superseded physics, and some editorial changes, mostly at the beginnings or endings of chapters where he felt he could have been clearer. Certainly it wasn't a major rewrite. It's not going to teach you something so new it's worth reading if your original edition copy is in good shape, but it's worth the re-read if you've read it before. I enjoyed it. Douglas even fixed some of the Achilles/Tortoise stories, particularly ones with djinn!! My book collection currently comprises two eight-by-five adjustable shelf cases, containing most of my hardbound books, some 300 or so, and another three six-by-five cases adjusted entirely for paperbacks, of which I estimate I have about a thousand. In addition to all of this, my wife and I each have another of the six-by-five cases in our offices, each of which is filled with technical manuals and software and hardware specification and reference books; many of the well-known O'Reilly titles fill my shelves, whereas my wife tends toward the Microsoft Press titles of equal renown. We read freely from one anothers' libraries, unless there are intellectual property issues.

I'm in a fiction phase now. I have not yet read the last book of "The Wheel of Time," A Memory of Light. There are at least two Varley "Thunder" books I do not own, and one I have that is out of order and I cannot read until I get its predecessor. Iain M. Banks has at least two books out I have not read; one or both is a "Culture" novel. I think there are probablyone or two C. J. Cherryh "Foreigner" novels out I have not even heard of. I haven't even investigated what Gene Wolfe, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Neal Stephenson have been doing and have yet to finish Galileo's Dream. So it's definitely going to be fiction for me for a while. I'm contemplating whether it might actually be easier to catalog my books, then buy electronic copies, and a Kindle or whatever, than to put them away. I have at least four piles of books which I have read in the last year and was too dang lazy to put away. (We moved, so they were completely disordered anyway. It's not like I made a new mess. Shrug.) Have you read the 20th Anniversary edition of GEB:EGB? I bought it, read the old edition once more for old times' sake, and gave it away to a deserving young man and have read the 20th Anniversary edition twice since. He has not completed it yet once, but has begun asking questions about recursion that indicate it's beginning to have an impact.

I'm reading Sterling's Schismatirix Plus and looking at the three-volume updated John Shirley trilogy, Eclipse with some anticipation. It's time to remember the heady days of cyberpunk, when I was a godlike programmer and we were gonna run the frickin' world and duel with the rich and greedy forces of evil for control of the 'Net. I'll probably read William Gibson's Neuromancer books next.

"Schneib," actually, is the most common abbreviation. Note that it violates the English rule about is and es. Correct pronunciation is "shnaibster," or "shnibe." Thank you for the welcome.

Hello. I like this place.