28.02.2008

by Ian Watson

So here is the first issue of Matrix to appear in cyberspace, and immediately I must ask: why on earth did the BSFA not trademark the name 187 issues ago, long before a certain mega-budget movie came out? For then the Wachowski Brothers would have needed to pay the BSFA handsomely for use of the word! Actually, I jest. It isn’t a good idea for organisations to be able to trademark ordinary words, otherwise we’ll soon need to pay a royalty for speaking. Just imagine the problems for the Ambridge script writers. “How about a nice ® cup™ of Tea™, Clarey?”

But how ordinary a word is matrix? I turn to my trustworthy and tattered Penguin English Dictionary, Third Edition, 1979, reinforced by parcel tape, which I see cost 50p in a charity shop, and which I rely on to keep my vocabulary reasonably simple and without sesquipedalian words. (Sesqipedalian is included in the Penguin, so I can use it.)

matrix (pl matrices) [matRikz/maytRikz] n womb; cavity in which anything is formed or developed; casting mould; solid material in which larger grains, stones, gems etc are embedded.

Ah, embedding is going on… Now I know why I was asked to write this editorial!

Actually, a couple of years ago when I was possessed by the spirit and garments of H.G. Wells at Newcon3 in Northampton, and inveighing about the movie MatRikz, my daughter was sitting behind a boy of ten or so who expostulated: “Why do we have to listen to this silly old fool? He doesn’t even know how to pronounce the word.” And there was me trying to behave in character, since I’m fairly sure that HGW would have referred to MatRikz, not MaytRikz. Having started this train of thought on a collision course with reality, from now on I suppose I’ll need to refer to multiple issues of MaytRix as MaytRiseez, if I obey my Penguin I think it might be easier to say mattresses. Do not always obey penguins.

Why was HGW annoyed about the MaytRix film? Well, among other things, there’s no point in waking up the billions in pods who are dreaming their quite nice virtual reality when the real world is totally uninhabitable. What the sentient programmes are doing with the MaytRix is to preserve the human race in as much comfort and happiness as we can tolerate. Basically it’s just a fashion movie with big guns as accessories, and Neo and his chums are terrorists. Dark City, made the year before with the same basic theme, was the intelligent movie.

That’s what H.G. Wells thinks; so don’t blame me, although he did give me a lot of tips for an astringent deconstructive essay entitled “The Matrix as Simulacrum” in a book edited by Karen Haber called Exploring the Matrix published by ibooks in 2003.

As a duly qualified Matrix Explorer, I’m bound to ask: might the metamorphosis of MaytRix from paper into electrons cause pre-Singularity future shock? Might it cause stross, the obvious sfnal word for cyberstress? Consider that the BSFA was founded 50 years ago, which my abacus says was 1958, and already in 1950 Fan Dare – this is a genuine typo, honest, but I think I’ll leave it, in case it is illuminating – I repeat, Fan Dare, the Pilot of the Future, travelled to Venus to confront the Mecon, I mean the Mekon since the Treens weren’t Irish, although they were emerald-coloured, and in 1951 the Festival of Britain featured the Skylon, which was shaped like a tapering silver rocket-ship taken from the cover of a pulp magazine, and also the Dome of Discovery, looking just like one of the Treen flying saucers that landed on a cricket field in Nether Wallop. Yet it took the BSFA another 7 years to found itself! Incredible! (And that was when time proceeded much more slowly than nowadays.) 50 years from now, when our minds have been uploaded and Silicon is the only sensible name for a convention, we may look back and wonder how it took so long before MaytRix went cyber! (Talking of conventions – this is a pop-up advertisement – on October 11th the BSFA will be holding a 50th Anniversary Party at www.newcon4.com, to which I cordially invite you since I happen to be the Chairperson. People who looks at Pop-ups are surely called Popeye and eat a lot of spinach, which the Treens probably also ate to become that colour.)

So welcome to the MaytRikz Revolution!