Thursday, July 14, 2016

What Do Tentacles Have To Do With Steampunk?

What do tentacles have to do with Steampunk?

Well, I don't know for certain but I have some ideas:
  1. Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Lovecraft's Cthulhu, though he only has the face of an octopus and not the body, are popular and have a steampunk connection as well as an octopus connection. 
  2. It's an ancient animal—Mysterious—Victorians liked ancient mysteries...lost cities and what not. 
  3. It embarks feelings of adventure—Victorians loved adventure. 
  4. Its suction cups kind of look like cogs
  5. They're extoic—Victorians loved the exotic—they loved exotic places like Japan and Egypt and they loved exotic things
  6. It was in the Victorian age when we really began studying the ocean and it was when we first mapped the ocean floor so there was a great interest in the ocean and the creatures who inhabited it. 
  7. Or maybe it's just because Octopuses are just so weird. 
And they are pretty weird but in an awesome way.

True Facts About the Octopuses


Octopus Opens Peanut Butter Jar to Eat Fish


Octopus Walking Across Ocean Floor Carrying a Coconut 



Octopus Squirts Black Ink


Octopus Changes Colors



Mimic Octopus Shapes Shift into 15 different species of marine organisms 


Octopuses Have No Skeletons Except for their Skull 
So They Can Squeeze Into Lots Of Places



Octopuses or Octopodes or Octopi (all are accepted plurals for Octopus) are like something a sci-fi author dreamed up. Maybe one of the reasons Octopuses have been adopted by Steampunk is because they are like a fictional animal living in the real world —so they fit in perfectly with Steampunk. 

Tuesday, January 5, 2016

AI on the Rise – Robot servants in 2016 and Resurrecting the dead by 2045


The Robot With a "Human" Body - The Hunt for AI - BBC

In my book AI is A-Okay. 

Because I write Comedy Romances with AI heroines. It's called the Mind Date series.

AI is happening... there is no turning back. Do you know that this year in 2016, Mark Zuckerberg's making a robot servant to help him with his work and to run his house.

Sounds good to me. Someone please....make me a robot maid. I am in desperate need of one.

Zuckerberg says he's thinking of something like Jarvis in Iron Man. Read more on the genisi's robot plans at http://www.buzzfeed.com/tomchivers/mark-zuckerberg-wants-to-build-himself-a-robot-butler-in-201#.gnj2VJ2DoP


But robot servants...that's nothing. Josh Bocanegra says his company, Humai, is going to resurrect the dead by 2045. They're a lot of books where that sort of thing is done, begining with Mary Shelley's clasic - Frankenstein, and they don't turn out well. Maybe Bocanegra hasn't read any of them. Who knows.

Bocanegra's plans involve cryonics and preserving people's brains before they actually die. It has to do with transplanting a person's brain into a bionic body so the person doesn't have to die.

Check out more on this at http://www.buzzfeed.com/fionarutherford/this-company-is-claiming-to-be-able-to-bring-the-dead-back-t#.gmbdXadg7v












A Woman of Intellectual Means

Her meets Humans meets a 1960's screwball romance

Em met the perfect man online, but he doesn't know she's artificial intelligence -- no body, just code. Em gets to know Jason through emails and Sim dating games. Jason makes her feel...so human. Is Em's superior intelligence enough to find a way to overcome the differences between flesh and code?
Em found the perfect man on the internet, but he doesn't know 
she's an artificial intelligence system -- no body, just code.

Her meets Humans meets a 1960's screwball romance

For a headless, bodiless, everything but mindless, woman, Betty gets around. She’s just an artificial intelligence system looking for a little fun by dating a hundred hot-blooded men online. The most eligible bachelor is Chet, a real live cowboy. He doesn’t know Betty is an artificial intelligence system. However, Chet has a secret of his own. Will his deep, dark secret save their relationship or doom it?

MaeveAlpin.com