To Mars and Back Again: Planetfest '21 - Behind the Scenes of Space TV

"I'm a doctor, not a nightlight."

Robert Picardo, Voyager audition

Day Two of Planetfest '21 starts later, and I only attended two of the sessions being offered, although they turned out to be two of the most interesting talks from the two-day event.

A Conversation: Behind the Scenes of Space TV is exactly what the title says it is: a wide-ranging and entertaining conversation between longtime Planetary Society supporter and member Robert Picardo, who played the Doctor* on Star Trek: Voyager for seven seasons, and Hugo-award winning writer, director and producer Brannon Braga, who began his career as an intern on Star Trek: The Next Generation and eventually became one of the show's co-producers. He continued producing and writing for Star Trek: Voyager and Enterprise, and co-wrote the scripts for Star Trek: Generations and Star Trek: First Contact.

The chat begins with the degree to which Star Trek has found its inspiration in science. Braga's goal as a writer was to avoid a formulaic approach to writing for Star Trek, leading him into an ongoing search for high concept science fiction ideas and themes for the scripts.

He cites the Tuvix episode from Voyager, in which the characters of Tuvok the Vulcan science officer and Neelix the Talaxian are fused in a transporter accident, and how it "started as a ludicrous concept and became something quite profound, and quite controversial."

Braga views Voyager as almost being an anthology show with an ongoing cast of characters: "Each story had its own rhythm - some stories were told backward, some were told in circles." He prefers this approach, and likes the idea of "one story well told" - for example, the journey of the Doctor's character throughout the seven seasons of Voyager.**

An audience member raises the question of Star Trek's future being "an unrealistic utopian dream", but both Picardo and Braga disagree with this characterization.

Braga acknowledges that the show never looks at how its vision of the future was achieved, but doesn't consider Star Trek to be utopian. "But it does depict a future without war, crime or starvation or any of the other earthbound issues that we deal with. I hope that we can vanquish those problems and get to a future where diversity is a strength, not a divisive issue."

Picardo agrees, describing Star Trek as "a positive future", which Braga echoes by calling it, "Optimistic! It’s a future that we can achieve!", and points out that there was an essential optimism to the program across all the versions of the franchise.

That hopeful view of the future may have played a part in the degree to which Star Trek has inspired people to become scientists - as with the Star Trek convention attendee who thanked Braga for her childhood, and then explained how she had been inspired by Star Trek to become a biologist, particularly by Voyager - "that was her Star Trek".

Picardo adds that, "I've had the same experience. A number of people who have gone into medicine over the years have told me that they were inspired by my character."  

Picardo was invited to join the Planetary Society in the late 90s after attending an event celebrating Ray Bradbury's 70th birthday, at which a number of actors did readings from Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles. Picardo was asked to become an advisor, and was asked to spearhead some of their educational challenges for young people. He became involved in the innovative Red Rover project, where schools exchanged rovers that they had constructed out of Lego™, which would then explore the other school's version of Mars and vice versa.

He also helped to promote NASA's 1999 Mars Millennium program, a challenge for students to create a 2030 Martian village for one hundred inhabitants, and managed to convince Rick Berman, Voyager's Executive Producer,  to allow him to do a PSA from the Voyager set. Years later, he received a thank-you letter through the Planetary Society from a PhD. at JPL who had originally become interested in space exploration because of that announcement and her subsequent work on the project, finally ending up working on the Curiousity mission. "And that makes me as proud of my relationship with Star Trek as anything else."

An audience member follows with a question as whether either of the speakers had been fans of space and science fiction before their involvement with Star Trek. 

Braga was already a science fiction reader more than a Star Trek person before he started working on Star Trek, and has been a huge science fiction reader his entire life. "I love science fiction!" 

Picardo characterizes himself as having read "quite a bit" of science fiction as a young man, but wasn't a Star Trek fan originally.  He was first asked about being a Star Trek fan before his work on Voyager at a Star Trek convention, and after a "deer in the headlights" moment, decided that "If I lie now, I'll have to lie forever."

Braga interjects, "Star Trek fans were nerds. We were the horror people, they thought we were nerds. Dungeons & Dragons players thought we were both nerds, they were the REAL nerds.

"But the thing is, once you work on Star Trek, you become a fan for life. It's in your DNA forever. It really changes you."

Picardo agrees, and mentions watching Lost in Space and having a crush on Angela Cartwright: "Star Trek, I guess the women seemed too old for me at 14.  But I missed all of Star Trek the first time around. I remember ridiculing friends of mine from Yale who'd sit down and watch Star Trek reruns in the afternoon - they got the last laugh on me."

After being cast in Voyager, Picardo was sent a package of ten Next Generation episodes to watch . "I was stunned by the quality of the storytelling, the variety in the stories, and I got really jazzed to start the job, and I felt very lucky to get it.

"The longer you work on it from the inside and you meet the people that love it, that it's influenced their lives, either as great entertainment and high ethical standards, or, it's inspired them to pursue careers in science and technology and engineering, and that's very gratifying."

Braga adds that "Science fiction and science have a symbiotic relationship," mentioning Leo Szilard, who conceived the idea of nuclear chain reaction and the concept of the atomic bomb based on an idea from The World Set Free, a novel by H. G. Wells.

Braga's most famous Star Trek episodes came from his interest in quantum physics, ideas that were new in the 90s and seemed radical at the time, that he used in episodes.  Picardo observes that, "the people that love Star Trek, and are very sciency people themselves, are very complimentary that Star Trek is based in real science and extends it to an incredible degree."

He then cites a comment by Neil deGrasse Tyson, who, when asked if he preferred the science in Star Trek or the science in Star Wars, replied, "Star Wars - what science?"

Braga explains that the shows always had a science consultant, but admits that he would always try to "tell the story first and then fit the science in, could this be plausible? But we were very studious about making sure the science was good."

The session ends with a series of audience questions.  Braga answers a question about science fiction authors by saying that he's "a huge fan of H. G. Wells, who invented time travel stories, invisibility stories, alien invasion stories, the guy invented every science fiction genre.***

"And his books are amazing, and beautifully written." 

Another attendee asks how Voyager has affected their relationship with other people.  Picardo talks about the blessing and the curse of his children being associated with such a distinctive last name, and  about introducing his Star Trek character to his children, and having to explain what acting was and why Voyager couldn't come and pick him up to go to work.  (Interestingly, both of his children have ended up in post production, one in VFX after being mentored by Voyager episode director John Bruno.)

Braga ends the session with a simple statement: "In thinking about it for the question, it just hit me that my three best friends are people I met because of my work on Star Trek."

- Sid

* Not the British one with the blue time travel box, the other Doctor, the emergency hologram one. Ironically, Picardo originally planned a medical career in real life, and attended classes at Yale - acting was just a sideline.

** You could easily make a case that there's no journey for the characters in the original Star Trek, but I think that those characters were never intended to have a journey - their strength comes from their archetypal nature. 

*** I love H. G. Wells as well, but I have to disagree with one thing - to the best of my knowledge, Wells never wrote about robots or androids.

 

To Mars and Back Again: Planetfest '21 - Beyond Mars

 

"My first wish would be for Mars to blow up so we can look at the rest of the solar system."

Joseph O'Rourke
Assistant Professor ASU School of
Earth and Space Exploration

The theme of the Planetary Society's Planetfest '21 conference is the exploration of Mars, but Beyond Mars: Exploring Other Worlds, the third session on my conference calendar, provides some balance for the event's focus on Mars by looking at other opportunities for exploration and investigation in the solar system.

Dipak Srinivasan, Engineer and Civil Space External Engagements Lead at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, opens the discussion with a simple statement:

"If there's water, there's life."

On that basis, the solar systems has multiple locations that offer the possibility of life. Europa, the fourth largest moon of Jupiter, is an ice world, and Titan, Saturn's largest moon, has ten times as much water as Earth. Srinivasan is currently involved in missions aimed at exploring both of these satellites: the Europa Clipper mission, and the Dragonfly mission to Titan.

Srinivasan explains that Clipper, scheduled for launch in 2024, will not be looking for life as such, but rather looking for conditions that would support life: water, the right chemical conditions, some form of energy, such as heat, and time - "life needs time to happen". He considers that the discovery of life on Europa would be "transformative".

He points out that there is a period of time when earth "had no biology, just chemistry" and suggests that Titan may be on the verge of same transition that Earth underwent billions of years in the past. Methane is to Titan as water is to Earth, with both clouds and lakes of methane, and Srinivasan sees the flying rotor-driven Dragonfly probe as the best option for exploring in Titan's combination of low gravity and dense atmosphere.

Interestingly, Maitrayee Bose, Arizona State University Assistant Professor at the School of Earth and Space Exploration, and Brett Denevi*, John Hopkins Planetary Geologist are looking for the same thing in two very different places: the history of our solar system.

Bose is studying small bodies like asteroids and comets, ranging in size from 10 meters to 500 kilometer - as she says, "The best things come in small packages." (Although I'm not convinced that a 500 kilometer piece of space rock counts as a small package.)

These small bodies tell us much about the history of our solar system, how planets form and why they look the way they do. They were the first objects that formed and then accreted to form the larger bodies that became planets.These ancient rocks retain a record of the conditions in the early solar system, and the processes and collisions that took place. 

Bose comments, "They're so diverse, and each one is telling us a story of its own, a key piece in the evolution of our solar system. They also help to answer the question of why Earth is so special, why does it have so much surface water compared to the other planets, how earth got its water, why it retained it, what different kinds of small bodies may have provided that water?"

Denevi is conducting her search for the history of the solar system on the Moon.  There are multiple lunar missions coming up in the near future, the first ones since 1972, with seven robotic landers currently planned between now and 2024, two of which will launch later this year.

These robotic probes will be investigating some of the questions that have been on hold over the last 50 years, and learning more about how the Earth and Moon were shaped by impact events early in their history.  Denevi explains that the Moon is a better candidate for this process for a very simple reason: "On Earth, we live on this beautiful geologically active world but the problem with that - at least it's a problem for weird planetary geologists like me - is that the Earth's surface is constantly being refreshed by plate tectonics and weathering, so we can't look back into its very earliest history, and on the Moon we don't have those annoying issues."

In Denevi's opinion, the Moon offers crucial information regarding what was happening in the solar system approximately 4 billion years in the past, the point at which life began to emerge on Earth.  The Moon shows evidence of massive impact events taking place, such as the one that created the Mare Imbrium crater, one of the largest impact craters in the solar system. Similar events on Earth's surface would have been catastrophic, vapourizing oceans and sterilizing the surface down to a hundred meters. Precise information from the Moon's craters will help to understand how those impacts would have affected the Earth.

Joe O'Rourke, Assistant Professor at the ASU School of Earth and Space Exploration, serves on the Steering Committee for NASA’s Venus EXploration and Analysis Group. He's both surprised and disappointed that Venus has been somewhat ignored in terms of missions - in his opinion, it's odd that Titan and Europa are receiving more attention. (He's not wrong, there have been multiple Russian landings on Venus, compared to a single multiprobe mission by NASA almost 45 years ago in 1978.) O'Rourke considers Venus to offer the same opportunities for exploration and research as Mars, including the possibility of surface water in its distant past.  

Future Venus missions under consideration are VERITAS, proposed for a 2026 launch date, that would undertake high definition global radar mapping of the Venusian surface, and DAVINCI, an atmospheric probe that would make a surface landing as well.**

The group had a full wish list for future missions: Io, Triton, Ceres, the Saturn Trojan points, the planned Viper lunar missions, and, of course, Joe O'Rourke's fervent desire that Mars would just blow up and get out of the way.

- Sid

* Denevi has an asteroid named after her, which certainly gives her an edge in terms of street cred.

 

** There are obviously two very different naming conventions in play here. VERITAS stands for Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography And Spectroscopy, and DAVINCI is Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging.  Dragonfly is apparently just a cool name for a flying planetary probe.

 

To Mars and Back Again: Planetfest '21 - Mars Mind Meld

"The rovers are our proxies - their shadows on Mars are our shadows."

Bethany Ehlmann
Planetary Society president;
Professor of Planetary Science
and Associate Director, Keck Institute
for Space Studies, Caltech

Since its inception in 1980, the Planetary Society has staged ten Planetfests to commemorate significant milestones in space exploration, starting with the Voyager 2 flyby of Saturn in 1981, and then of Neptune in 1989, where Chuck Berry performed Johnny B. Goode in recognition of the song's inclusion on the gold record album attached to both of the Voyager probes.* Subsequent Planetfests have recognized events such as the unsuccessful Mars Polar landing in 1999, the Spirit rover's safe touchdown on Mars in 2004, and Curiousity's in 2012.

The most recent Planetfest, in honour of NASA's Perseverance Mars probe, took place this last weekend via Zoom. (I was a little surprised by the timing, in that if they'd waited another week, we could have been celebrating the probe's arrival on the red planet, but the organizers may well have decided that an unsuccessful landing would have put a damper on the event.)

The two-day celebration of Martian exploration featured an eclectic array of speakers, including an impressive selection of planetary scientists, engineers and NASA representatives; well-known science fiction authors Kim Stanley Robinson and Andy Weir; and Star Trek: Voyager actor and space exploration advocate Robert Picardo in conversation with producer, director and writer Brannon Braga, best known for his work on three television series and two movies in the Star Trek franchise.

This varied group of speakers, united by their shared passion and commitment to both the present and the future of space exploration, covered a wide range of fascinating, informative and insightful topics over the two days of the event.

After an introduction by Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye, Planetary Society president Bethany Ehlmann delivers the keynote speech for the weekend - Mars Mind Meld: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Mars. Her presentation provides a broad overview of Martian exploration, and looks at the questions that probes such as Perseverance will help to answer.

For Ehlmann, the most important question is: what happened to Mars that eliminated water and possibly life? Although there are only a few weeks of the Martian year when the environment allows liquid water to exist, Mars is covered with evidence of water - as Ehlmann points out, "the plumbing of Mars is exposed" - there is visible erosion of the surface by water, clay substrates, formations like those found around geothermal springs on Earth, and so on, all pointing to a time in the past when Mars may well have been more habitable than it is now. 

Provided all goes well on the 18th, Perseverance's extended mission on the surface of Mars will take it up the Midway delta that feeds into the Jezero Crater landing site**, allowing it to explore successive layers of Martian history as it proceeds up out of crater and moves a billion years further back in time.

In addition, the probe is not only an explorer, but a cacher, with the ability to store drilled samples from the various exposed strata for eventual return to Earth. It's hoped that these samples, each about the size of a piece of chalk, will allow scientists on Earth to answer questions about Martian climate, Martian change, and Martian life.  They're playing the long game on the process:  the current strategy for sample return involves a three year wait.

The eventual exploration of Mars by humans will immeasurably accelerate the process of scientific investigation, but until then, the robotic rovers act as proxies in our place - as Ehlmann eloquently puts it, "their shadows are our shadows".

- Sid

* It also included a needle, cartridge, and symbolic instructions on how to play the record - which, at this point in time, a lot of people on Earth would also need.

** I was charmed to see that she had a Post-It™ tab on the Martian globe in her office to indicate the Perseverance landing site.

 

Virtual Dreams III: Thanks anyway.

The Oculus Quest 2 operating system allows users to select from several virtual environments that acts as a backdrop for the headset's operating system and menu screens - not surprisingly, I've chosen the space station setting.

To my amusement, I recently learned that it’s possible to walk around in this virtual environment and explore the different rooms - provided that you do it in the middle of an empty football field or something similar, there doesn't seem to be any way to teleport from place to place.  My congratulations to Oculus on creating an explorable virtual environment that virtually no one can explore. 

- Sid

 

Virtual Dreams II: Living the Dream

My Oculus Quest 2 VR headset arrived today, and, as my wife would say, I kind of love it.

It's not perfect - I'm still fiddling with the Interpupilary Distance Settings on the eyepieces, I've been spoiled by 5K resolution on my iMac, and motion sickness is more of an immediate issue than I thought it would be, but for the most part, it does everything that I wanted - and expected - it to do beautifully.   

The packaging has the sort of clean molded look that Apple uses, and it's unexpected solid, which turns out to have a practical application in this case: after all, you have to keep the headset and controllers somewhere when they're not in use.  Oculus recommends that you charge the headset before your first use, but once you're charged and ready to go, setup is simple - the unit started up with no problems, the controllers paired up easily,  and I was able to seamlessly connect to our wireless router. 

There's one setup feature that reviewers cite as a possible deal breaker for the Quest 2:  you need to have a Facebook™ account.  I haven't used Facebook on a social basis for perhaps a decade, but I had to create a placeholder account at work to access our corporate page, so I was fine.  Users with more active accounts may want to adjust the privacy settings once they have the headset running.

The unit has a number of features intended to minimize the environmental hazards of VR, such as mapping your surroundings on the headset’s external cameras so that you don't break your favourite lamp - or your 60 inch TV set - while engaged in furious virtual lightsaber combat, and a highly useful option where double-tapping on the headset frame switches your view to the external camera sensors, which allows you to re-orient yourself in your space - not to mention find your controllers when starting up.

The gaming library isn’t huge, but it’s surprisingly affordable. PC games generally weigh in at $50-60 and up, whereas the Oculus games seem to uniformly fall into the $20-30 CAD range. There are also some free downloads and demos, which happily includes the ISS experience that captured my imagination in New York, and the Space Pirate Trainer demo, a short introduction to a simple futuristic two-gun arcade shooter that was unexpectedly fun, and went right onto the shopping list. 

Along with the full version of Space Pirate Trainer, the store features a Walking Dead first person shooter/survival game set in New Orleans, the well-reviewed Red Matter puzzle solving game, and Star Wars games such as a three-part Darth Vader series, Vader Immortal, and Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge, a semi-open world game set in the world of Galaxy’s Edge at Disney World and Disneyland. I chose Tales from the Galaxy's Edge as my inaugural purchase, and the process was simple and the download wait was negligible. 

Tales wisely doesn't attempt to provide photorealistic resolution, but the 3D illusion is astonishing, especially in the views from the orbiting cargo hauler.  The controllers show as gauntlets equipped with different control options, and when you look down, you discover that you're wearing an vest/tool belt combination, with holsters and loops for tools, weapons and drones, along with a storage pouch.  I'm amused to discover that the bar which acts as a sort of home base on Batuu overlooks the central plaza in Black Spire Outpost. (Been there, done that, and I have the T-shirt - actually, two t-shirts, come to think of it.)

In the interests of fair franchise representation, there’s also a Star Trek Bridge Crew game, but it doesn’t seem to have the same range of play and action as the Star Wars games.  On the other hand, given that motion sickness due to perceived movement is something of an issue, maybe buying a game where you sit still in a nice chair on the bridge of the USS Enterprise is a smarter idea than I think it is.

- Sid

 

* The original sold for $399 USD, so that Canadian price is an estimate.  The current price is surprisingly reasonable, given that high end models like the Valve Index top out at almost two grand.

 

Virtual Dreams I: Quest

I'm pleased to announce that I've recently received a promotion at work.  Sadly, as is so often the case, my new responsibilities were added onto my old ones rather than replacing them, but at least it came with a notable raise. I generally find it hard to spend money on myself, but I decided that in this case, it was probably acceptable to reward myself for getting ahead.

But what to buy?

I looked at Star Wars Rebellion and Resistance fighter pilot helmets, I looked at Major Matt Mason crawlers on eBay, I looked at original comic book art on the Heritage Auctions web site,  I looked at Alienware gaming systems, but nothing really rang the bell in terms of both price point and geek appeal. 

Finally, after much thought, and much research, I decided that a virtual reality headset would be the ideal SF/geek gift to celebrate my new job description (and paycheque): the culmination of a long-standing interest in virtual reality experiences.

My first experience with VR was in 1994, at a SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group Graphics) conference in Florida. There were lineups for the two VR demos that were running on the show floor. One was a basic VR port of the original Doom, in all its pixelated 8-bit glory. The other was a simplified version of the speeder bike from The Return of the Jedi, which featured a recumbent bike like the ones in the movie, and a VR landscape populated with simple geometric shapes. Unlike the POV Doom demo, the speeder bike program was a full VR environment, where the headmount allowed a fully tracked 360 view as the bike flashed through the landscape. 

I was fascinated by both of the demos, but sadly neither one was intended for any kind of commercial release, they were just experimental proof-of-concept experiences.

Over the years since then, I’ve had a variety of VR and near-VR experiences – near-VR being defined as things like the Dome-G video presentation at Gundam Front in Tokyo, the Smuggler’s Run ride at Galaxy’s Edge in Disneyland, or flyover rides like the ones in Vancouver and Disneyland’s California Adventure. 

My most recent full-VR experience was the Mission ISS VR program in 2019, featured at the Intrepid Space Shuttle Pavilion on the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York. I loved that brief VR session on - and outside - the International Space Station, to the point where I actually did some research on VR headsets at the time, but finally decided that the cost of a compatible headset and a suitably powerful graphics card was prohibitive.

I may not have done enough research, or, in retrospect, I may have just made the right decision by not buying at that point in time. The Oculus Quest 2 headset that I’ve just ordered from Amazon is the successor to the original Quest, which was released in May of 2019 and would have been available when I was originally looking around.

That first model received mixed reviews, but the Quest 2, which only recently entered the marketplace in October of 2020, seems to be universally viewed as having solved the problems of the original version, reducing weight and increasing the resolution, while managing to bring down its original price point of over $500 CAD to a modest $399.

The upgraded Quest 2 is a stand-alone VR headset, with onboard storage for your game library and the option of using a USB link cable for access to PC games. It comes in 64 GB and 128 GB onboard storage options, but critics agree that the less expensive 64 GB model that I’ve purchased is more than adequate. The headset links with a pair of controllers that act as pointers, hands, guns, and tools in virtual space.

And, a strong vote for the Quest 2, it will run the ISS VR program that I enjoyed in New York, which is available as a free download.

Now that I've placed my order with Amazon, I'm sure that I've made a good choice. After all, VR seems like such an obvious option in the pandemic lockdown environment – what better time to be able to soar in space?

- Sid

 

* I’m also not sure that the original Quest would have run the ISS program, another indicator that a deferred purchase was a prudent decision.

"Take me out to the ball game..."

As I've established in previous postings, every now and then I have a mild attack of math when I'm watching a movie or reading a book, and end up either going down the rabbit hole or through the looking glass, depending on your preference for Alice novels. Most recently, this happened when I watched the first sneak peak from the upcoming Invincible animated series, scheduled for a March 26th debut on Amazon Prime™ Video.

The clip shows a pair of enhanced beings, father and son, hovering in midair as they throw a baseball back and forth while discussing the challenges of being a superhero.  Because they're superheroes, they're doing it the hard way:  they're throwing the ball AWAY from the other person so that it circumnavigates the planet before being caught.

It's a charming bonding moment, but there's so much extreme physics involved that I couldn't help myself from taking a closer look at what was actually going on.

It takes the baseball approximately 18 seconds to reach the son's glove after the father throws it. (I timed it at 17.98, but let's keep the math simple.)  Given that the Earth's circumference is 40,075 kilometers, distance divided by time gives the baseball a speed of 2226.389 km/s, or 8,014,999 km/hr. (speed per second x60 x60.)  The escape velocity for Earth is a piddly 11.2 km/s, so that baseball is GONE, headed in a straight line for distant horizons: the Moon, Saturn, Alpha Centauri, whatever the first solid object that gets in the way happens to be*.

But, hey, Dad is a superhero, maybe he can put a LOT of spin on the ball or something like that, so we'll generously assume that the baseball doesn't leave the planet.  Regardless, the ball is travelling at 6,542 times the speed of sound, so when Dad asks his son if he hears the ball coming, the son's answer of yes seems impossible, the ball is well out in front of any noise it might be making**.  Superhearing is all well and good, but the sound just can't have arrived yet.

But, once again, superheroes: in the interest of fairness, I freely confess that there may be aspects of superhearing that make this possible, although Clark Kent hasn't answered any of my texts on the topic.

However, at that sort of speed, the adiabatic compression of air in front of the ball is going to severely raise its temperature.  (If you thought that it was the friction of air that caused heating under these circumstances, welcome to the club, it took me a lot of misdirected searching on Google™ to realize my mistake.)  At this point, the math gets complicated, but we can take a lateral approach. 

Spacecraft re-entering the Earth's atmosphere are travelling at approximately 25 times the speed of sound (the compression effect doesn't really kick in until you're over the speed of sound, just as a side note for the interested student).  This produces temperatures of about 1480 degrees C.  The baseball has a much smaller surface area, but it's also travelling at 262 times that speed, and since leather starts to burn at 212 degrees C., it's unlikely that it survives very long on its trip around the world.

Not only that, but that's gotta be a pretty sturdy baseball glove, too.  And there's your homework, class: how much energy is released by a baseball travelling at 6,432 times the speed of sound when it hits a solid object? Just to get things started, a standard Major League baseball must weight between 5 and 5 1⁄4 ounces, or 142 and 149 grams.  And, as always, please show your work.

- Sid

 

* Less dramatic if it hits a bird, although I suppose it would be very dramatic from the bird's perspective, albeit for an extremely short period of time.

** Such as a really epic sonic boom, perhaps.

 

Na na na na na na na na na na na na na.

Yep...$1,297,500.  First appearance of the Batman, if you're wondering about the significance.  

You have to wonder what the story is for this single selection from that long-passed 1939 print run  - whether it was originally purchased by a child or an adult, how many owners it's had since then, why it's up for sale now, and when the last time was that someone just opened the pages and read the story inside.

- Sid

 

In the Ocean of the Night.

As long-time readers will be aware, I have had an ongoing issue with the Space channel showing non-genre content, like Jaws, for example - an excellent movie, well acted, certainly deserving of its 1976 People's Choice Award, but really, not a science fiction film by any stretch of the imagination. 

Sadly, new management hasn't brought change in this particular area: tonight, CTV's Sci-Fi Channel, the heir to Space, is showing a double feature: Ocean's 11 and Ocean's 12. 

I'm sorry, did I miss something in the plot breakdowns for these two movies? Does George Clooney perform one or both of the heists by telekinesis, or by walking through a wall?  (No, wait, that's The Men Who Stare At Goats, which might at least marginally qualify for the Sci-Fi channel, at least compared to the Ocean franchise.) 

The joke, if there is one, is that it would have been quite easy to do a triple feature of science fiction films featuring the principals: leaving goats out of it, we could have watched Mr. Clooney in Solaris or Gravity, Brad Pitt in Ad Astra or his brilliant Golden Globe-winning performance in 12 Monkeys, and Matt Damon in The Martian or Elysium.*   

Sigh ... okay, CTV?  I give up - if we absolutely have to do this, you know, I may actually prefer sharks.

- Sid

 

* Oh, heck, let's make a day out of it:  Julia Roberts in Flatliners - had to dig deep for that one; Casey Affleck in Light of My Life or Interstellar; Don Cheadle in Mission to Mars, Iron Man 2 or 3, or Captain America: Civil War; Elliot Gould in Capricorn 1- sorry, drawing a blank on Carl Reiner, but it's still a full schedule.

 

Gnomic Statement XVIII.

 I bow to the master:

- Sid

Resolved.

I think that we're all happy to bid a heartfelt farewell to 2020 - it's not a common sentiment for January 1st, but thank god THAT'S over with.  A new year and a fresh start is now upon us, and with it, the traditional time for resolutions intended to address flaws, perceived or actual, and thereby improve one's person and personality.

However, let's start the process with the equally traditional confession of failure regarding past resolutions. I have to admit that I didn't fully complete last year's resolution to catalogue my book collection (with the concomitant task of replacing the more battered selections). 

As always when someone doesn't follow through with their New Year's commitment, I can provide a list of half-hearted explanations and excuses:  we moved in the middle of the year, packing for which temporarily removed access to my collection and broke my flow; COVID-19 limited my access to bookstores for replacement purchases; work overload in the fourth quarter made me more likely to lie on the bed after work than type the titles of books; and, surprisingly during a pandemic, more social activity on the weekend as Karli's sister Stefanie, the non-resident single member of our bubble, started coming over for weekend dinners on a more regular basis.

All that aside, I did manage to get as far as the M section of the bookshelves, and overall, it was an incredibly valuable exercise in terms of cleaning up my library.  My only regret is that I didn't log the number of replacement books that I've purchased, although I could probably make a reasonable estimate, given that most of the books went to other people rather than the donations bin.  (In a couple of cases, the texts being replaced were in such bad shape that I recycled them*, but only a few books suffered that particular fate.)  

Not only has it been valuable in terms of maintenance, but it's surprisingly enjoyable. I know that sounds like a very geek statement, and yes, there was a certain aspect of drudgery to it, but as a lover of books, it was a wonderful opportunity to get back in touch with overlooked favourites and forgotten treasures.

As such, I've decided to let last year's resolution ride for a second year. After all, if it took 12 months to get as far as M, it makes perfect sense to take another 12 months to get to Z.  (After which I'll have to do the hardcovers, but still.)  Yep, that's the plan...and I'm sure I'll get started on that any time now...

- Sid

 

* It's very unusual to throw away a book, it somehow feels almost criminal.

 

Fa la la la la, la la la la.

Well, as I like to say, the system works.  I received almost everything from my modest seasonal wish list this year:  ALL of the books, and two of my three graphic novel asks.  My thanks to my gorgeous spouse Karli for her gifts from the list, and I greatly appreciate the contributions from Karli’s mother and stepfather – although lord knows what they thought of a Christmas gift list containing a book about someone named Murderbot, another novel inexplicably titled Nophek Gloss, and something with this on the cover:

Well, it IS the season to be jolly...merry Christmas, everyone!

- Sid 

The Rest of the Robots.

 

Karli brought the Roomba home today!  It's a well-behaved early Model 800 Series, apparently too early in the product line for wifi access, but otherwise in excellent shape.

Ah, but I felt so bad the first time we pressed the CLEAN button! I'd put the charger in a quiet corner beside the wall unit in our dining area, and the poor thing was just confused - the table was right there, and the dining chairs, and Karli's mother had warned her that it got a little confused by things like that.  

It got frightened and hid under Karli's white chair, the one with the little fabric skirt, but then it got caught on the cord for the Christmas tree lights - it was SO SAD.  So tomorrow night we're going to let it start in the hallway, where it's nice and straight...hopefully that will makes things easier.

Jaq the Cat, who suffers a bit from PTSD for whatever reason, was surprisingly calm, although a little suspicious - I don't think he's going to be one of those cats that becomes internet famous by riding around on our new robot.

As you can see from the above, it's ridiculously easy to anthropomorphize Stabby* the Roomba as it trundles around the living room in an apparently random fashion, going back and forth in something rather like the pattern that a vacuuming human would use. Karli has suggested that we should get stick-on googly eyes for it, which I think is the best plan ever.

However, as with Opportunity, the defunct exploratory Martian rover, it seems like a bad idea to give robots like Stabby artificial intelligence.  In the case of Opportunity, it was due to the danger of its task - in the case of Stabby, it's the opposite: boredom.  

Stabby doesn't need to be able to calculate rocket trajectories or write Oscar-winning movie scripts, in fact, it would seem cruel to make Stabby too smart.  Ultimately, if it were possible to give Stabby some level of AI, it would make sense to make him about as smart as Jaq, and with similar interests:  taking pleasure in long naps, and deriving much excitement and enjoyment from chasing little pieces of dust around the apartment.  But no purring - Jaq needs something to maintain his unique status, and Stabby will never be quite as cuddly as our little feline friend.

- Sid

 

* Based on a somewhat obscure science fiction internet meme about a space Roomba with a knife taped to it - to quote the 12th Doctor, "Google it."

Victorious IV: "Allons-y!"

Most annoying thing about paradoxes, besides the impending reality collapse. 

They make conversations so repetitive.

The Tenth Doctor, Defender of the Daleks

Although some of my purchases in the Doctor Who Time Lord Victorious event weren't available at the time I placed my order, Indigo was able to immediately ship the two stand-alone novels, Engines of War and Combat Magicks, along with the first of the TLV purchases, the Defender of the Daleks graphic novel.  I've booked some extra time off for the holiday season, so I was able to immediately settle down for a leisurely read.

It took me a few chapters to realize that something was bothering me about the first book.  My initial reaction was that it was reasonably well written and that the plot was engaging, with some interesting concepts that fit nicely into the Whoniverse, but it was also somehow a bit flat, a bit lacking – what was missing?

The problem is that essentially, the books are an extension of the television version, which assumes that you’re an ongoing viewer – just as they don’t have to explain who Meredith Grey is at the start of every episode of Grey's Anatomy*, if you don’t know why there’s an obsolete blue police box called a TARDIS that’s bigger on the inside, you’re on your own. 

Obviously I have all of that knowledge, but my subconscious reading mind kept looking for the kind of explanatory exposition that a stand-alone novel would have. (Although, one of the novels breaks some new ground by dealing with the legendary Time War, which has never been fully documented – probably just to give writers some room to work in situations like this.)

The flip side of this coin is that, due to that existing knowledge of the show, it’s impossible not to compare the written Doctors with their live action equivalents – just how well does the character in Defender of the Daleks match up with David Tennant’s performance, or with Jodie Whittaker and John Hurt for the two novels? 

As you might expect, the results vary – there’s a fine line between accuracy and parody when writing someone’s verbal style, and the process is an odd inversion of the usual method, with an author attempting to recreate the actor’s style rather than the actor interpreting a script. In my case, I found that I ended up mentally delivering the lines in the actor’s voice to see if they worked. For the most part, the writers succeeded, although there were a few places in the graphic novel where it didn’t quite feel like David Tennant, and a few places where it felt a bit too much like David Tennant - if that's even possible.

However, all of this is secondary to the real question: WHY DON'T THE DALEKS IN DEFENDER OF THE DALEKS REMEMBER THE GREAT TIME WAR????  It may seem like a trivial time-travel thing to the casual reader, but as a fan, that may well keep me awake tonight. Let's hope they cover that off in one of the books that I'm still waiting for, I'd hate to have to hunt through the entire event in search of the answer.

- Sid

 

* Are there stand-alone Grey's Anatomy books?  Or is that sort of thing restricted to science fiction shows?

 

I, Robot.

One of Igor’s former masters had made a tick-tock man, all levers and gearwheels and cranks and clockwork. Instead of a brain, it had a long tape punched with holes. Instead of a heart, it had a big spring. Provided everything in the kitchen was very carefully positioned, the thing could sweep the floor and make a passable cup of tea. If everything WASN’T carefully positioned, or if the ticking, clicking thing hit an unexpected bump, then it’d strip the plaster off the walls and make a furious cup of cat.

 

Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time 

I'm so excited - we're getting a robot!

Okay, it's a second hand robot, but still, it's a robot.  Karli's mother and stepfather are replacing their Roomba™, and they're letting us have their old model. 

Robots have been a mainstay of the science fiction vocabulary from the beginning, although they lacked their unique and distinctive name until 1920, when the word "Robot" entered the English language.  It's taken from the play R.U.R  (Rossum's Universal Robots) written by Czech author Karel Čapek: the word "robot" is derived from the word for "worker" in Czech, or perhaps a more accurate translation is "serf" or "slave", there's a sense of servitude to it.  

Čapek's play was a morality story dealing with the creation and oppression of an artificial race that eventually rises up and wipes out humanity.  In current science fiction terminology, I'd define Dr. Rossum's creations as androids rather than robots, they're artificial self-aware entities that resemble humans rather than programmable mechanical constructions. 

This is an important distinction: over time, the line between artificial intelligence and robots has become blurred to the point where they're considered to be synonymous, whereas in actuality, a robot is almost the opposite of artificial intelligence.  As per Terry Pratchett's tick-tock man, a robot is restricted to its programming. That programming can be very detailed and cover a wide range of eventualities, but ultimately, if something happens that isn't covered by the program, a robot can't extrapolate to a solution - and you end up with a furious cup of cat.

The company that manufactures the Roomba™ line is called iRobot, and I'm a little surprised that they haven't run into copyright issues - not from Apple, who have a pretty firm grip on the lower case "i" prefix, but from the estate of Isaac Asimov regarding his 1950 novel I, Robot.* 

If robotic science fiction has a patron saint, it's Asimov. Countless other science fiction authors have utilized robots in their stories, but Asimov is best known for having created a kind of mechanical morality for robots:  the Three Laws of Robotics, first used in his 1942 short story Runaround.

The Three Laws are as follows:

First Law
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

Second Law
A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

Third Law
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

It's an interesting attempt to create an ethical structure for machines, but in most of Asimov's robot stories, the result tends to be the digital equivalent of neurosis or insanity, as robot after robot is rendered inoperative by conflicts between the Three Laws.  (In the original story, a robot sent to get life-saving supplies from a dangerous location ends up running in circles when the Laws achieve mathematical balance in its programming.)

The Laws also have a strong feeling of  "slavery and servitude", as per Jean-Luc Picard's defense of Lieutenant Commander Data's freedom to choose in the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  Imagine being programmed so that self-preservation is only the third priority on your list!

- Sid

* To be completely accurate, it's not really a novel, it's a collection of previously published short stories combined through a loose narrative plot about the history of robots. And we're just not going to talk about the unfortunate movie version.

Victorious III: DALEKS!

When I received Colin’s gift card and suggestion regarding the Doctor Who Time Lord Victorious event, I’d already been following part of the event without knowing it - I've been watching Daleks!, a five-part animated series that started on the Doctor Who YouTube™ channel in November.

The story begins with the Daleks attacking Islos, home to the Archive of Islos, as the next victim in their ongoing objective of universal Dalek domination.  To save what is left of their civilization from the threat of Dalek destruction, the Archivians agree to surrender the Archive, but when the Daleks arrive, the Archives are empty except for the robotic Archivians and an enigmatic portal.  

 

The Chief Archivian explains that the population of the planet has been evacuated through the portal along with the contents of the Archive, leaving the Daleks with nothing.  Infuriated by this betrayal, the Daleks destroy the remaining Archivians, but the Chief Archivian reveals that the portal was provided by an ancient race that lives outside of time. In exchange for their help, the Archivians have offered them the Dalek race - at which point the Entity, a deadly energy being from another dimension, floods through the portal and attacks the Daleks.

The Daleks flee, but they are helpless against the Entity. With the Dalek fleet destroyed and their home planet of Skaro in ruins, the Dalek Emperor seeks allies to prevent the extinction of the of his species.  Aided by the war-scarred Prime Strategist of the Daleks, the Emperor finds reluctant help from the Mechanoids, who scornfully agree to assist their defeated foes.

I enjoyed the series, although I can see that it might not be to everyone's taste.  After decades of watching the Doctor struggle against the Daleks, it's hard to develop any sympathy for them, even as their species is brought to the brink of extinction.  The animation isn't elaborate, although its lack of subtle textures and softened lighting effects does lend itself to the mechanical cast - which may itself be a barrier to some viewers.  The series is notable for its complete lack of organic characters: the entire dramatis personae is composed of Daleks, the Archivians of Islos, the Mechanoid civilization, and the Entity. 

However, the series is very well executed, with an excellent range of voice talent from Doctor Who, including, of course, Nicholas Briggs, the long-time voice of the Daleks.  It's also an intriguing addition to Dalek canon, a sort of grace note to their frequent appearances as enemies of the Times Lords and the Doctor in particular. 

As with the Tom Baker Big Finish audio production, the connection to the Time Lord Victorious event is not obvious, other than a parting suggestion that a far deadlier foe awaits the Daleks - presumably the Doctor, but we'll see what revelations are still to come from my purchases from the rest of the event.

- Sid