Category: Science

Publication: For Every Bee, a Hive & Human-Centered Neurotechnology

Edit April 2024: “For Every Bee, a Hive” is out of exclusivity, and I have made it available for free via epub, pdf, or my webpage.

My short story “For Every Bee, a Hive” is out today (December 9, 2023) in the Jan/Feb 2024 issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact! The online version is available now via the single issue or subscription. If you don’t have the spare cash to support Analog right now, you can also listen to “For Every Bee, a Hive” for free via the Analog podcast.

It’s a story about the space opera found family trope, and AI swarms, and all the tensions and similarities between those two concepts.

She wanted to pity this thing, with its cries for connection. But she shouldn’t anthropomorphize. According to that < archive check >, this AI’s faction didn’t build human-like consciousnesses. It didn’t feel lonely. It might not feel anything like humans did.

Not that she’d known what Agam had felt, when they’d declined to follow her.

This story also introduces my first ideas about human-centered neurotechonology. The future of “cyborg” technology means a lot to me as a neuroscientist who did his PhD work in early brain-machine interface technology. Science fiction and futurism often envision this technology as a way to enhance human cognition, but this always carries an unpleasant whiff of eugenics – what is “enhancement,” what do we value about the minds we have, how can we make sure those values encompass the full range of human diversity?  This is why I think a “human-centered neurotechnology” means a conceptual shift away from enhancing human minds, toward supporting human minds.

For more on that and other author notes, keep reading. Don’t worry, no spoilers in there!

In “For Every Bee, a Hive,” the ‘free humans’ are cyborgs who alter their bodies to live in the outer solar system. This is part of a longstanding human tradition: ever since the first knapped stone axes, human beings have incorporated our technologies into our identity.  Cybernetic modification would (will?) be just one more step in a long journey. As put by Tamar, protagonist of “For Every Bee, a Hive”:

The free humans had survived all these centuries by adapting. By taking new technologies into themselves and becoming what they needed to be.

Tamar’s people use neurotechnology not to enhance or supplant human cognition, but to support it by allowing humans to do more of what they do best. They are spatial thinkers, social thinkers, people who reach their best ideas by the interplay between concrete action and abstraction. Specifically, during this story you will see Tamar’s implants do the following:

  1. Improve interoceptive awareness of embodied cognition (e.g. Tamar’s biocognitive system)
    • Real-life example: all those times you listened to your ‘gut feeling’ – or wish you had
  2. Provide interactive kinesthetic experiences of abstract concepts (e.g. directing her ship by throwing its icon at a target)
    • Real-life example: analyzing a plot (as a detective or a writer) is easier with an evidence/murder board with physical notes and string you can move and manipulate
  3. Introduce a ‘detachment gain’ by automatically moving ideas into space where you can observe them with your senses (e.g. organizing radar data into maps of local space)
    • Real-life examples: creating a map, writing something down, presenting an idea in an image instead of text
  4. Unburden the mind from boring challenges like memorization (e.g. her archive checks)
    • Real-life example: who memorizes phone numbers anymore??
  5. Provide distributed memory & argumentative reasoning via a shared-access mental space for social error-checking and idea refinement (many examples)
    • Real-life examples: brainstorming with friends or colleagues, or every time you think “now that I say this out loud, it obviously doesn’t make sense”

My human-centered neurotechnology is greatly indebted to this article about how we offload cognition to other people/technologies (New York Times free gift link), which presents four “extraneuronal resources” for cognition: technology, the body, physical space, and social interaction.

The purpose of human-centered neurotechnology – what distinguishes its approach from more traditional cognitive enhancement – is that it recruits non-brain resources to support (and more widely deploy) the embodied, social cognition that humans do best. It’s not about thinking better or faster or differently, it’s about bringing more of the world in touch with the minds we have.

And now, four more story notes that aren’t related to the cyborgs and neuroscience:

First: This is the story I read at the Space Opera Themed Reading at ChiCon 8 (Worldcon 2022). So glad that people finally get the full story!

Second: This story takes place in the same universe as The Successors, Elegy of Carbon, and the manuscript my agent currently has out on submission. Those stories are all set elsewhere, among the AIs and the humans that Tamar thinks of as the AI’s pets! Those folks live a very pleasant space opera post-scarcity life; but given any paradise, someone’s going to want out of it, and that’s basically who Tamar’s ‘free human’ cyborgs are.

Third: I originally wrote this story with the visual labels as emoji: for example, instead of TREE, it said 🌲. A bit of a beast to publish it that way, sadly, but after a read-aloud attempt at ChiCon 2023, I realized the story works equally well with words.

Fourth: One reason the cyborgs split off from other humans is over religion. (The “other humans” get a passing reference in the story as “the androids’ pets.”) In the history of this world, there was a population crash, followed by an intentional (if potentially ill-advised) effort to homogenize humans into a single group. Those who secretly maintained their religious identity eventually split off into their own people, who became the cyborgs.

Why does that matter? Because it’s why Tamar’s people are crypto-Jews! Tamar probably doesn’t know what Judaism is, her people are akin to the (subset of) Spanish conversos who, in the centuries after 1492, maintained a history of Jewish practices and traditions without understanding the origins of those traditions.  Tamar’s ship name, The Year of the Trees, is a corruption of Tu B’Shevat.

Cruise Control

My short story Cruise Control is free to read online today, as part of the July 2021 issue of Fireside Magazine!

If your son won’t visit you in the nursing home, it’s his own damn fault. He’s the coward who won’t give you an honest reaction unless you needle him. And he’s the one who keeps bringing pamphlets about sticking your brain in a self-driving car.

“Pop, please. This’ll add years to your life.” He kept his voice gentle. “They rejuvenate your brain. It’s the only way to make a driver; need to learn radar and wheels, like a kid learning their hands. There’s no damage. Only change.”

I tried to wave him away. “You don’t want me alive. Don’t tell me you’re grateful, what a good father I was. Pack of lies, right there.”

Why not support the magazine and buy an ebook of the whole issue? You’ll get your own copy of Cruise Control alongside three more stories edited by Lilian Boyd (seven more if you get June 2021 too), every one of them full of delicious embodied cyberpunk grit.

Keep reading for a few author notes, about the story’s creation and neuroscience. May contain spoilers, so why not read the story first?

Continue reading Cruise Control

Conference of the Birds Available Online

My short story “Conference of the Birds” is (temporarily not, come back in December 2023) free to read online, along with its companion essay on neuroscience, AI, and science fiction.

“Conference of the Birds” is the tale of Surveillance Hub, a hard-working layer in a distributed surveillance AI. Doing its job, tracking intellectual-property thieves, hoping for another round of reinforcement signals from the network’s uppermost levels.

No program-layer could predict what a human might do, but Surveillance Hub could see everything that mattered. Their bird-drones spread across the city, scattered on cables and rooftops and broadcast towers. Every camera hunted for Krina Viy, independent security contractor (AWOL from JoyCorp contact 5 hours).

A crow-drone spotted the target. Surveillance confirmed Krina’s identity and sent a brief reward signal to inspire the bird onward.

The drone switched from search to pursuit, redoubling its data collection as it chased the taste of reinforcement. So much joy and empty-matrix innocence in its response to a simple reward. Flockmembers were too simple to understand that reinforcement implied punishment, and no success would ever suffice for long.

This story originally appeared in the Jan/Feb 2021 issue of Analog1, which is now off the bookstore shelves and thus out of exclusivity. I’ve put it up on Curious Fictions and made it free for all to read.

Nonfiction: Artificial Intelligence & Neuroscience

For further reading on the science behind Conference of the Birds, I’ve indulged you all (and myself) with 1600 words about neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and storytelling. The essay, “Embodied and Empathetic Minds in Conference of the Birds,” is up at the Astounding Analog Companion Blog, and also free to read.

By day, I work as a rehabilitation neuroscientist. My laboratory studies the human brain, how it changes after injury to the hand, and how we can use those changes to help injured people live the lives they want to live. No humans suffer hand injuries in the course of “Conference of the Birds,” but nevertheless, it’s a story steeped in the interaction between minds and bodies, and how doing is the core of being.

Memories of Fire

At long last, my short story Memories of Fire is out in the world, in Translunar Travelers Lounge issue #4!

Enoch is a creature from the myths of Jewish apocrypha: one of the rebellious stars, punished for refusing to shine at God’s command. Of all his kin, he alone was given the chance to work for his parole. He’s spent millennia of protecting humankind from its endless follies, but this time – Libya, 2011 – the threat comes from another star like him. The song of rebellion rises into the world again, stirring every soul against the tyrants of Heaven and Earth.

I finally got my smoke. I enjoy them for the ritual, not the nicotine. A little fire, a brand-new drop of ash, the same little destruction every time.

Plus, it makes some mortals impatient.

“Lot of people counting on us,” Maryam said.

This piece is inspired by one of the most touching and terrifying pieces of reporting I’ve ever read, a walk through the ruins of 2011 Tripoli, in the aftermath of Qaddafi’s fall. It took me years to be ready to write the piece that this story deserved, and years more to find a home for it. Nowadays, with Libya mired in civil war, Memories of Fire has grown darker. But I hope the story still contains hope and truth enough.

This story also has neuroscience and psychology hidden in its core. But like the reporting, I don’t want to cite details yet. Too many spoilers! Why don’t you go read the story first? Once you’ve done that, keep on reading for story notes about history, science, and forgiveness.

Continue reading Memories of Fire

Embodied and Empathetic Minds

I promise the neuroscience, and I deliver!

My post “Embodied and Empathetic Minds in Conference of the Birds” is up at the Astounding Analog Companion Blog. A 1600 word essay on how my neuroscience background informs the fiction I write about human and nonhuman minds. Fiction has great power to help us understand and empathize with minds unlike ours – but those empathetic minds could go in both directions. Here’s hoping we can create a world where those nonhuman minds try to understand us too.

You don’t need to have read my short story “Conference of the Birds” to understand the essay, and the essay has no real spoilers. But you will understand it better if you’ve read the story first. Why not read it for free right here?

Neuroscience for Writers: The Slides

Update: Slides no longer available. Come catch me at another convention!

Thank you to all the 80+ people who attended my “Neuroscience for Writers: The Evolved Brain” talk at Flights of Foundry! Lots of attendees asked for the slides, as did some of you out there who hadn’t been able to attend. So I’m happy to provide: you can download the slides here. I may take the slides offline in a week or two (i.e. early June 2020), but if so I’ll update this post.

Slides aren’t everything, of course. I like to hope that my ramblingcharming presence adds something beyond the mere powerpoint. I hope I’ll get the privilege to share the talk again at future conventions, online or in person. This was the 4th time I’ve given the “Neuroscience for Writers” talk, but no two deliveries are alike. Every year I update and improve it – and more importantly, share it with a new audience.

Dublin Worldcon 2019 Schedule

Three weeks from today begins the World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) in Dublin, and I’ll be on programming!

Here’s where you can find me:

Escape Artists podcast – Live Recording

16 Aug 2019, Friday 13:00 – 13:50, Wicklow Hall 2B (CCD)

Come learn more about free weekly podcast fiction! Join the Escape Artists for an audio fiction show presented by all four EA podcasts — Escape Pod, PseudoPod, PodCastle and Cast of Wonders. There’ll be a Q&A session, swag giveaways, all the latest news, and live readings.

Talk: Neuroscience for writers and readers: the evolved brain

16 Aug 2019, Friday 15:30 – 16:20, Odeon 4 (Point Square Dublin)

The human brain and mind have been topics of fiction since time immemorial, but our stories don’t always keep up with the science. The classic science fictional frameworks of the last fifty years have produced a lot of great stories, but a better understanding of the brain can lead us to new stories and new ideas. How can we, as writers and readers, make sense of the most complex structure in the world?
This will be an updated version of the talk given at the 2017 Nebula Conference and 2018 Readercon.

Panel: What writers need to know: the brain and body

16 Aug 2019, Friday 18:00 – 18:50, Wicklow Hall 2B (CCD)

This is the first of a two-part series of panels designed to help authors on science topics. Join our panel of experts who share the ins and outs about the brain and body. Let’s dive into what’s possible, impossible, and probable at some point in the future. How do you write about medical issues without a medical background? How much do you need to know and how much can you fake, and can a writer ensure that they are getting their body and brain science right?

Kaffeeklatsch: Benjamin C. Kinney

18 Aug 2019, Sunday 10:00 – 10:50, Level 3 Foyer (KK/LB) (CCD)

Did my Friday talk inspire any neuroscience questions? Here’s your chance to pin me down with caffeine and pick my brain!

Panel: Intelligent Others in SF

18 Aug 2019, Sunday 15:30 – 16:20, Stratocaster BC (Point Square Dublin)

The outsiders. Inhuman intelligences. What are they and what do they signify? Let’s explore the concept of aliens, mutants, cyborgs, artificial intelligences, and other cases in which sentience is different to our own. How difficult is it to write from the perspective of a non-human sentience? Will we inevitably insert some humanity into our inhuman creations and what does that make them?

Smell, Taste, and Emotion

NeuroThursday is wafting by this week for a piece on smell, taste, and emotion! The full text is posted here, below the Twitter link. You can also find a ThreadReader version at the very bottom.

Inhale deeply, and enjoy the aroma of , because this week I want to talk about smell, taste, and emotion – inspired by Tina Connolly‘s Nebula- and Hugo-finalist novelette, “The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections.”

If you haven’t read it, it’s a wonderful story about memory, food, cruelty, and empathy. But you don’t need to read it for this thread. I’m here to talk about neuroscience, not pastry-magic. https://www.tor.com/2018/07/11/the-last-banquet-of-temporal-confections-tina-connolly/

Tastes and smells are notoriously emotional. Smells can evoke a flood of memories, with all their associations. Freshly-cut grass, your partner’s favorite flowers, the spices of your favorite meal, or the ammoniac strike of a campground toilet. Why so strong?

The first step is to realize that by “taste and smell,” we’re really just talking about smell. Most of the experience you get when enjoying food – the stuff we think of as “taste” – comes from the nose, not the tongue.

(Try eating with your nose clamped shut. Or don’t. It’s terrible.)

So now we’re talking just about smell. This sense works via 10-20 million olfactory neurons (labeled in image as “receptor cell”). They’re embedded in “olfactory epithelium” at the roof of your nose. (Epithelium = body’s surface layers, whether skin or a hollow space.)

Olfactory Neurons & Epithelium

Each of those neurons has one type of “olfactory receptor,” which does the scent detection itself. One receptor type, but many copies of it.

A scent enters your nose, dissolves into the mucus in there (appetizing!), and thus reaches olfactory receptors. When a receptor matches the scent, the two molecules will bond. Ions flow into the neuron, and a signal is produced.

Olfactory receptors are incredibly diverse. 900+ genes (the largest gene family in the body), and each receptor is broadly tuned so it can detect more than one scent. Like the visual receptors in the eye, which I discussed on a NeuroThursday past.

In the eye, your “red” cones respond strongest to red light, but respond medium-strongly to wavelengths close for red. Same idea in the nose: each receptor can respond medium-well to scents with similar molecular shapes.

This is why scents *mean* things. If two molecules are related (with common features), they’ll bond to the same receptors (though not at equal strength). Same receptors = similar info to your brain = similar smell!

As with the eyes, broad tuning – a neuron has one target, but responds weakly to near-misses– is the way to perceive structure in the world.

This is super-fundamental, preserved across evolution. Olfactory neurons have basically the same cellular and molecular properties across all animals.

So now that we understand the biology of smell, we’re ready to ask why they’re so emotionally powerful.

Most of those emotional associations are learned: with exposure, we’ve learned that swimming-pool-chlorine tastes like summer. This can, in turn, bring up a specific summer-pool memory.

(There are exceptions to this “learned” thing – particularly in the realm of disgust, which starts as a hardwired thing. But even there, learning & association add layers.)

But smell memories can be more emotionally vivid than others. Is there something special about smell and emotion?

We have ideas, but no solid answers. “Emotional memory strength” isn’t exactly something modern science can study effectively. But the anatomy does point toward a possible explanation.

Those little olfactory neurons are rooted in your Olfactory Bulb, which does some initial processing of olfactory information, and receives guidance from top-down stuff like attention.

Olfactory Bulb image

The olfactory bulb is part of your brain, and it connects straight to the limbic system: a network of areas in the brain involved in emotion and the formation of memories.

Some well-known parts of the limbic system could deserve their own NeuroThursday, since there are a lot of misunderstandings about them. If you know what the “hippocampus” is, I’d say 30% odds you know something false.

But the point here is that the olfactory bulb has direct access to parts of the brain involved in emotion and memory. One possible takeaway is that, yes, there’s an anatomical basis for smell memories to be uniquely evocative.

However, I’d like to finish by pivoting from fact to opinion. (Can your olfactory neurons detect the rank smell of punditry?)

Smell can be highly emotional. But so can vision and hearing. The sight of a loved one, the sound of a familiar song. Even a gentle touch, at the right time, can produce a mighty emotional response.

I’m not 100% convinced that there’s anything uniquely emotional about smell, compared to our other senses. Maybe its emotional-intensity only stands out because we don’t think about smell as often: we needed to be reminded of its intensity.

Powerful memories and delicious scents may make a challenging research project, but they’re a deep (and hopefully delicious) part of our lives, whether or not we pay attention to them.

Did you enjoy the scent of this #NeuroThursday on taste, smell, and emotion? Share it around, or check out some of my fiction! And if you haven’t yet read Tina’s story above, now’s the time!

Threadreader version:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1141845165142958080.html

Impending Doom

It may not be Thursday, but I found a good excuse to go all neuroscience on the experience described in the medical literature as “Sense of Impending Doom.”

Twitter:

Or on the web via Threadreader App!

2018 in Review & Awards Eligibility

Another year is coming to a close, and much to show for it, ups and downs and every direction. I finished the first draft of a new novel, and worked on more short stories than I can shake a metaphor at. I made the Campbell Award longlist! I lost a Hugo award with the rest of the amazing Escape Pod team, and took part as we won and rejected a Parsec award. My final submission to Writers of the Future became a finalist, but I withdrew my story over ethical concerns. I sold 4 original stories, but two of those sales fell through when the magazines closed.

I had five original stories come out in 2018. In chronological order:

  1. Toward Lands Uncharted – Mind Candy, Feb 2018 (secondary world fantasy, 4900 words). A diplomat and spy must try to save her nation and its very history from their conqueror’s Sykes-Picot border magic.
  2. Where the Anchor Lies – Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Feb 2018 (science fantasy, 4000 words). A general visits the grave of the sentient battleship she loved, to use it as a political tool.
  3. The Seeds We Plant – Compelling SF special issue, Sep 2018 (science fiction, 2200 words). When a colony ship suffers a brutal accident, the pilot must reply on his emotional-control neuroprosthesis to save his cargo.
    • Not available free online. Contact me for a copy in the format of your choice.
  4. Elegy of Carbon – The Internet Is Where The Robots Live Now, Nov 2018 (science fiction, 4100 words). In the waning days of the solar system, a mining AI must find a new way to fulfill the purpose it loves.2
    • Not available free online. Contact me for a copy in the format of your choice.
  5. The Hammer’s Prayer – Diabolical Plots, Dec 2018 (contemporary fantasy, 3300 words). A golem hides away in ugly places, to help him resist the compulsion to share his gift of animation.3
    • If you only have time to read one story, this is the one I recommend.

I didn’t have much time for nonfiction this year, but I did publish:

  1. The chapter “What’s Possible with Cyborgs and Cybernetics” in Putting the Science in Fiction (Writer’s Digest Books). I’m also quite proud of my associated writing-prompts post, “Machines, You, and Other Synonyms.”
    • Putting the Science in Fiction – a collection of 59 essays by scientists and other experts, designed to help authors write with authenticity – is eligible for the Hugo award for Best Related Work .
  2. Twelve new entries in the #NeuroThursday Twitter feature.

If you’re in a position to nominate for awards of any kind, I hope you’ll consider not only these fine works, but the whole team over at Escape Pod. We work hard every week to bring you the finest in audio fiction, and we’ll be eligible once again for the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine. We also published a lot of awesome stories, so take a look back at that list and see if one of them feels worthy of your love too!