"My father's car was science fiction."

Yesterday I attended an entertaining and illuminating evening with science fiction author William Gibson, arranged by the Vancouver Public Library as part of Gibson's promotional tour for his new collection of non-fiction work, Distrust That Particular Flavor.  Gibson's articles and commentaries are a fascinating present-day application of the same brilliant methodology and unique style that he more often uses to create the future.

The event was standing room only, or would have been if the organizers hadn't started setting up more chairs.  I had the good fortune to be Number 24 through the door*, which continues to support my philosophy that if you show up early, you get good seats.

The demographic was an interesting mix that ranged from twenty-year-olds to people who looked to have a decade or two over and above my fifty, suggesting that Gibson's popularity as a writer has maintained itself well over the intervening years since the 1984 publication of his landmark cyberpunk novel Neuromancer. 

Gibson is a little more lined, a little more lean, and what used to be almost trademark unruly mid-length hair has changed to a receding crewcut, but the round wire-framed glasses remain the same as in the pictures of Gibson from the 80s.  He retains a kind of laconic southern drawl from his youth in Virginia which combines well with his flat delivery, although that deadpan sense of humour can make it hard to realize that he's made a joke.

Over the course of the evening, Gibson covered a wide range of topics.  He discussed his early interest in science fiction as almost a given for someone growing up in the United States in the 50s, when everything had a sort of post-war futurism in its design. To illustrate, he pointed out that:

My father's car was science fiction. It was far-out science fiction, it had rocket fins and chrome plates on it.

He went on to discuss the question of science fiction as a predictive medium as he approaches it in his work:

People can and do attempt to predict the future in works of science fiction. Someone like Arthur C. Clarke does today look rather prescient - unusually so by the standards of science fiction. When I began to write science fiction, I convinced myself through my own reading of science fiction and whatever cursory study of comparative  literary critical methodology I was able to apply, it seemed to me that the science fiction fiction of the past could most meaningfully be read as a product of the moment in which it was created. 

When I was a kid, there was a lot of 1940s science fiction around, which I was reading in the late 50's and early 60's, and I actually had to reverse engineer the history of the world as i read it in order to figure out why some things were so wrong.  Because when you finish writing a piece of fiction imagining the future, when you dot the last "i" and put the last period on it, it begins to obsolesce - it begins to acquire a patina of quaintness which ultimately will probably be its greatest charm for readers of the future, in the way that when we read 19th century science fiction today, what we find charming is what they got wrong.  So that always happens.  Nothing dates more quickly than an imagined future.

I tried...knowing that I did my best, when I was starting to write, to try to produce work that would resist that and have some longevity, simply because that was more of a challenge. So I was careful never to have year dates in my early work. 

In fact what happens is that even though people do read it, it's all still in print, people do read that stuff, when they read it now, they think, okay, I know that the central mystery of this book is going to be what happened to all the cell phones.  You may be able to anticipate or at least name cyberspace, but it doesn't mean you can anticipate the advent of ubiquitous cellular telephony, and indeed if anyone had been able to anticipate that in a SF novel of the early 1980s,  what a weird book that would have been!  Imagine a world in which no one is ever truly alone. 

Gibson is resigned to the inevitability of piracy in the digital age.  When asked about his position regarding this problem during the question and answer period, he replied with the following philosophical position:

Everything I've ever written is available as a single BitTorrent download that you can find on hundreds of sites around the world...if that weren't true, you'd have to consider me a failure.

All in all, a good evening.  And it was free, which is an awfully good recommendation for something like this.  

I declined the opportunity to stand in line and obtain Gibson's signature on a newly purchased copy of Distrust That Particular Flavor, although, when you think about it, that's going to be one of the most difficult things to adapt to e-books - and a pretty good justification for not downloading the pirate version of Gibson's collected works. 

- Sid

*  No, my OCD hasn't reached the point where I've started counting people in front of me in event lineups, the organizers were good enough to provide me with a non-winning door prize ticket.

Form Follows Function.

"No flames, no fins, no rockets."

Instructions from Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry
to U.S.S. Enterprise designer Matt Jefferies

It's funny how fast a science fiction movie can lose me.  The Space Channel is showing Pandorum right now (a movie which lost a lot of people) which opens with a travelling shot down the length of a spaceship.  My first thought upon seeing this majestic craft travelling through the void was "What the hell are those three spikes for?  And why wouldn't those rings be continuous?  What possible reason would they have for not finishing the arc?  What is all this crap on the outside of the hull?"

Science fiction television and cinema is full of interesting and intriguing spaceships designed to fit into a specific milieu, such as the dictatorial wedges of Imperial Star Destroyers, the blunt military practicality of the battlestar Galactica, or the sensuous curves of Farscape's sentient organic starship Moya.

But out of all the spaceships and starships out there, I have a particular affection for the various iterations of the U.S.S. Enterprise from the Star Trek franchise, simply because of the logic behind the unique perspective that Matt Jefferies, the original designer, brought to the question of starship design.

Jefferies' Enterprise was based on his long experience as a designer and flight test engineer:

I decided that whatever we came up with had to be instantly recognisable, and to sell the speed it would probably have to start in the distance as a tiny speck of light, and enlarge and come right by your head or go the other way. In that couple of seconds you had to be able to recognise it.

The habitat part I felt ideally should be a ball, but it got too awkward to play with. It just didn’t look like it would get out of first gear, much less the speeds he (Roddenberry) was talking about. So it gradually got flattened. I was trying to stay away from a saucer because the UFOs or flying saucer were old hat but it did gradually turn it into a saucer.

I felt that if he was going to get this sort of fantastic performance out of the thing, there would have to be very powerful engines of some kind or other, even to the point they might be dangerous to be around. I said, "Well, we better get ’em away from the main hull." The other thing is what we called during war a Quick Change Unit. By having the engines out there, if anything is wrong, you can just quickly unhook it and put another in its place.

Similarly, the smooth outside finish of the ship was also based on logic and experience:

Basically I wanted to keep it as plain as I could. To be able to play light on it. I didn’t want to load the exterior up with what looked like equipment of some kind. We used to talk about Murphy’s Law, that whatever man makes will break at the most inopportune time. So why have equipment on the outside in the worst possible environment to put a crewman out to work on it, if you can keep it on the inside?

For myself, I've always assumed that the designs of the various Starfleet ships represented a response to the physics behind faster-than-light travel, as with the distinctive hulls of sailing ships and the carefully crafted curves of airplane wings.  I can't make any sort of similar connection for Pandorum's Elysium, which to my experienced eye just looks like a long stack of what the Star Wars set designers used to call "greebly dressing" rather than a reasoned design for a NAFAL* colony ship.  In fact, I have to wonder if the script said:  CAMERA PANS DOWN SHIP FOR 30 SECONDS, and they just kept adding bits to the model until it was long enough to fill that half-minute of the movie.

- Sid

* Not As Fast As Light - this useful but underused acronym comes to us courtesy of science fiction author Ursula K. LeGuin.

Actually not the kind of apogee manager that my spaceship needs.

Did anyone else notice recently that Google™ is willing to install Google Apps™ on your spaceship?  Intrigued by the idea of watching someone fire up Gmail™ on the main viewscreen of the Enterprise, I obtained the following information from a Google™ representative:

Provided your spaceship has Internet access and a current browser, we can install and configure Google Apps for you.  Most new craft are equipped with space broadband wireless access (SiFi).  Please make sure your salesperson knows that you want 4G and not "4g", as the latter will make it more difficult to reach orbit.

As you represent a new market segment for us, we will also be launching (pun intended) Google Apps for Space Travelers (GAST).  GAST is a bundled package, centered on Google Apps, that includes additional services and features important to space travelers.  GAST includes: Message Archive & Discovery services so that you can maintain an auditable copy of your email communications; Backupify to ensure that documents are protected should sun spots interfere with your link; and Appogee Domain Managment Studio for sharing contacts and managing security.    We will also include OffiSync and Syncdocs, so that you have offline access to all of your Google Docs.

And, of course, we offer a full range of deployment and support services.  Our support is available by email, web, sat phone, and HAM radio (coming soon).

Please let me know if you are interested in pricing and financing options.

Regards,
Allen

Well, as much as I'd like to consider this a forward-looking initiative on the part of Google™, frankly I'm willing to bet that if my refrigerator had a current browser and Internet access, they would be just as eager to slap Google Apps™ onto it.

- Sid

Sic itur ad astra.

Our goal is to provide you with the most incredible experience of your life.

-Virgin Galactic brochure.

"Now that's cool!"

Glen Williams

Recently one of my co-workers came up to me and said that although he didn't blog himself*, if he did blog, he'd want to write about being able to get into space for $200,000.

I don't normally take requests (although I'm happy to take submissions) but I was intrigued enough by Glen's obvious enthusiasm and interest that I decided to do a little research and find out about what we'll charitably call "affordable" space travel.

* * *

Imagine for a moment a hot summer day in New Mexico.  The only sound is that of sand being sifted onto baking hot tarmac by a dry desert wind.

Then ... a glint of sunlight on metal, far, far away in the azure sky ... a low droning hum that builds into a roar as a vee-winged bullet blasts down from the sky to scream along the runway before coming to a reluctant halt.

Welcome to space travel, Virgin Galactic style.

Or, at least, welcome to the idea of space travel.  So far millionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson hasn't announced a specific date for the first commercial flight out of his newly christened Spaceport America in New Mexico.  However, he's confident that he and his two children will be able to participate in the maiden voyage of VG's new SpaceShipTwo (appropriately named the VSS Enterprise) before the end of 2012.

Over 475 people are equally confident, to the point of having paid the required $20,000 deposit, or in many cases the full $200,000 ticket price, to experience three days of astronaut training, a two-and-a-half hour trip to the fringes of space, and five minutes of free fall. 

To be honest, my initial response to all of this was to be offended.  Being able to buy a ticket to space somehow trivialized the Holy Grail of space flight for me, like selling pieces of the True Cross.  But after some thought, I've decided that this is very likely the best thing that could have happened to our moribund** exploration of space.

After all, this post isn't really about being able to travel into space, it's about the fact that someone thought it was cool.  I think it's been a long time since the man on the street really felt that way about space travel, and it's gratifying to discover that almost 500 people think it's cool enough to drop close to a quarter of a million dollars for the opportunity to free themselves from gravity for five minutes.

Logic says that this is how it will start. We live in a society where people pay to travel, and stay in hotels, and eat meals, and so on, and other people compete to offer those things as services.  Right now two other companies are working on developing similar strategies for space tourism, and if interest and demand continues to grow, we'll start to see another space race developing, but this time the goal will be to offer people "the most incredible experience of their life".  Virgin Galactic is just offering a suborbital experience - next it will be orbital, then to the Moon, then Mars...

So, everyone, here's an idea.  There must be some way to set up a lottery legally, and right now I'm getting about the right number of hits a month for 2,000 tickets at a hundred dollars a shot.  Hey, Glen - interested in paying a hundred bucks for a one-in-two-thousand chance at space?  Get lucky, and you could find yourself sitting on a runway with five other people, ready to lift off from Planet Earth.

Now that would be cool.

- Sid

* You may wish to imagine this as somewhat in the style of the Most Interesting Man in the World commercials:  "I don't blog, but when I do, I get Sid to do it for me."

** http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/moribund - I'm sorry, but it's the right word to use!!

Is there anybody out there?

"I don't know," he said, "it's practice, partly. I don't know. We're each of us alone, to be sure. What else can you do other than hold your hand out in the dark?"

Ursula K. LeGuin, Nine Lives

I don't do anything to promote this blog, and yet for whatever reason over the last year I've seen a steady rise in page views every month.

I used to think that all those hits were Eastern European bots looking for places to promote performance-related products for males, but evidence indicates that this isn't the case. First, there's a definite bias toward specific postings.  Second, I checked with my friend Laurie, who posts about three times as frequently on her blog as I do on mine, and she only gets about a quarter of the hits, so there's got to be something else going on.

There are four people that I know socially who follow this blog. People at my workplace sometimes mention that they've had a look at my blog (and I solemnly inform them that I'm not one of the people there that they need to suck up to), but only about 14 of the people I work with know about The Infinite Revolution.  None of this is adding up to the 2,470 page views that the stats show for December.

So I have a favour to ask of you, whoever you are.  If you didn't check in just to find out about Wonder Woman's bondage roots (the most popular post) and you happen to read this, I'd appreciate it if you'd say hello in the Comments, either here or in the posting that brought you here. You don't need to say anything else if you don't want to - just hello.  Don't be shy - if it helps, imagine it as being like making first contact with an alien life form. 

And if you are a Russian spambot, just give up. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but Blogger automatically diverts all those penis enlargement comments into a holdfile.

- Sid