"Would you ever sign up for a trip to Mars?"

The arching sky is calling

Spacemen back to their trade.

All hands! Stand by! Free falling!

And the lights below us fade.

Out ride the sons of Terra,

Far drives the thundering jet,

Up leaps the race of Earthmen,

Out, far, and onward yet--

We pray for one last landing

On the globe that gave us birth;

Let us rest our eyes on fleecy skies

And the cool, green hills of Earth.

Robert A. Heinlein, The Green Hills of Earth 

It used to be that I depended on television for weather reports, but thanks to the Internet I just check online with The Weather Network whenever I need information more explicit than what I can determine by looking out the window. The Weather Network website does its best to be more than just a list of temperatures and weather predictions by adding in things like trivia, photos from users, videos of extreme weather, and surveys – which often have nothing to do with weather. As an example, a recent survey asked visitors to the site if they would be willing to “Sign up for a trip to Mars” with four possible answers.

I was pleased to see that 31% of the respondents would be willing to go into space, but a little surprised to see that 3% would sign up exclusively for a one-way trip. (Just for the record, I fall into the “Sure!” group, and I honestly can’t say that I thought about it in terms of whether it would be impossible to return.) I realize that this small percentage probably viewed the Martian odyssey as a chance to leave behind the petty concerns of earthbound existence for a life on the frontier, without ever looking back.  That aside, would Martian colonists have to accept that it was a one-way ride with no chance to return to Mother Terra?

Depending on the relative orbital positions of Earth and Mars, and how much fuel you’re willing to burn on the trip, going to Mars could take as little as 130 days or as long as 300. Let’s pick a median and say 210 days, or about seven months. That doesn’t sound like a one-way trip to me. It’s a long haul, admittedly, and 130 days sounds a lot better, but provided that there’s adequate living space, entertainment, and perhaps even work of some sort to fill the time, not a deal-breaker in terms of a round trip.

However, this is the sort of schedule that NASA has used for pieces of technology not bothered by boredom, claustrophobia or lack of gravity. If we do a one-G burn to midpoint and then decelerate at the same rate for the second half of the trip, apparently the trip could come in at less than a week. (With some variance in the exact times - see above re: relative orbital positions.) You need a lot of fuel to pull this off, but I’m willing to bet that there’s some kind of compromise between the two extremes of zero and one gravity* that would make this practical in terms of both time and fuel.

This solves two problems - keeping the trip time to a minimum, and reducing the effects of extended exposure to zero gravity.  Given the various health issues suffered by astronauts returning to Earth after 146 days in the zero-G environment of the International Space Station, anything that either reduces the time line or creates the illusion of gravity through acceleration is a good thing.

In the short term, astronauts get their “earth legs” back fairly quickly, but the long term effects will not be known until, well, the long term – retired Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield will probably be the subject of regular medical scrutiny for the rest of his life in order to determine whether or not his natural span was reduced by his extended exposure to lack of gravity.

As it turns out, we may have already begun the process of colonizing Mars in some small way, albeit accidentally. A recent study conducted by the American Society for Microbiology revealed that there are 377 strains of bacteria that can make it through the sterilization process used on the Curiousity Mars rover before its departure.** This is probably a non-issue: between exposure to vacuum and high UV levels on the Martian surface, it would be a very determined organism that survived the entire process. On the other hand, there are bacteria that thrive in a wide range of environmental conditions, so it wouldn’t take a lot of shelter for a bacteria to make it to Mars alive.

Hmmm…do bacteria mutate? Anybody remember The Andromeda Strain?  Now that I think about it, maybe it is a good idea after all if no one comes back from Mars - just in case.

- Sid

*And if you do a 2-G trip, I bet you can bring it down to a day or two, but first, that would be really fuel intensive, and second, it may not be a great idea to subject the human anatomy to two gravities for that long.

** There is actually a mandate in the UN Space Treaty that stipulates that space missions "shall avoid harmful contamination of space and celestial bodies.”

The bad news is that it's a non-speaking part.

One of the best things to come out of the Internet is the concept of crowdfunding.  Looking for working capital for that new indie game that you want to develop?  Trying to put together enough money to record your first album?  Need some money to shoot a new season of your YouTube series?  Pick a platform like Kickstarter or Indiegogo, assemble your sales pitch, create some incentives for contributors, and away you go.

But when it comes to incentives, it's hard to beat the one that director J. J. Abrams - or perhaps more accurately Disney Inc. - is offering to supporters of its new Force For Change UNICEF charity:

Yes - a chance to be in the next Star Wars movie, currently in production.

Seriously, how cool is this?  The joke is that on paper, it's actually pretty cheap as prizes go - two round trip tickets to London and a hotel room for two nights. But in reality, it's spectacular if you're even slightly a fan of the Star Wars universe.  You and your guest get to go backstage for filming at Pinewood Studios and meet the cast members, and the winner will appear as an extra in a scene for the movie.*

The system is very simple.  Contribute ten bucks, get one entry in the contest and the title of Star Wars: Force for Change Founding Member.  Contribute $50,000, get 5000 entries and an advanced private screening of Episode VII for you and 20 guests.**  Obviously there are some levels in between these two extremes.  You probably won't be surprised to hear that I've made a contribution at the hundred dollar/ten entry Advocate level, which is the most popular category for contributors (most likely because you get a t-shirt).

So, if you're at all a fan, or just want to help a good cause, you can enter here. In fact, you don't even need to contribute - A Force For Change is happy to accept entries from non-contributors via snail mail.  But let's face it, ten dollars isn't a lot, and hey, it only takes one entry to win. The campaign is running until July 18th, 2014.

And may the Force be with you.

- Sid

*  There's a small print disclaimer that acknowledges the unfortunate fact that not every scene filmed makes it into the final cut of a film, but which also says that "the Star Wars Team is taking every measure possible to ensure that your scene makes it into the movie!"

** This is not as crazy as it sounds.  I can easily imagine 20 hardcore fans chipping in $2500 each for an advanced screening.

Ordinary effects?

So far I've seen two of the big summer comic book movies:  Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and The Amazing Spider-Man 2, with Guardians of the Galaxy and X-Men: Days of Future Past still to come.  (To be honest, I'll probably skip Guardians of the Galaxy simply because they're not "my" Guardians - when I think of this particular Marvel team, it's the version from the 60s and 70s that was led by Major Vance Astro, who coincidentally ends up wielding Captain America's shield in the team's intergalactic encounters.)

But I digress.  I really enjoyed The Winter Soldier - Chris Evans repeats his perfect performance as Steve Rogers from the first film, and this time they really showcase Captain America's physical prowess and fighting ability, while cleverly dealing with his position as a man displaced from his own time. The script does a great job of showing the slippery slope of surveillance as a tool of freedom, complete with Robert Redford as an advocate of the new world order of pre-emptive strikes and "getting the job done".  Previous knowledge of the Winter Soldier plotline from the comics meant that one of the film's big revelations wasn't much of a surprise for me, and the dénouement isn't as good as Cap's Times Square revival scene from the first movie, but overall I found it to be an entertaining and eminently watchable movie.

After having such a positive reaction to Captain America, I was primed for an equally impressive second film in the Spider-Man series, but to my disappointment, it almost completely failed to capture my interest.  I didn't quite start yawning during the show, but it was a damn near thing.

But why I didn't enjoy Spider-Man more?  There's some good acting:  I'm a fan of Tobey Maguire's portrayal of Peter Parker, but Andrew Garfield's version of the character is starting to grow on me.  Sally Field is quite good, Emma Stone is suitably plucky, and I liked what Dane DeHaan did with the role of Harry Osborn.  There's some very good bits of Spider-Man dialogue that, for the first time in any of the movies, really evoked the wise-cracking webslinger from the comics, and Aunt May gets to show herself as a person rather than a cardboard cutout that says, "Oh, Peter" every few minutes.

Admittedly, there are some unfortunate script problems*, but they shouldn't have been deal-breakers.  Why didn't I care when Gwen Stacy's life was literally dangling by a thread - or more accurately, a web?  Why was I more emotionally invested in the short scene where a ten-year-old in a home-made Spider-Man costume decides to confront the Rhino than I was in the entire climactic scene of the film?  How did that happen?

I think the problem is that the special effects are more special than effective.  An awful lot of the action in Spider-Man 2 looked like the trailer for a really really impressive video game. I KNEW that they were special effects, albeit really good special effects, but still effects, still "fake" rather than real.  When it comes right down to it, I watched a big fight scene between two sets of computer code.  Why would I have an emotional reaction to that?

Intellectually, I know that there must have been a lot of digital effects in The Winter Soldier.  However, the skill with which they're blended with the live action, and the degree to which Chris Evans does his own stunt work, made me believe completely that I was watching Steve Rogers take out a SHIELD gunship with nothing but a tin shield** and his bare hands, or steel himself for a 150 foot fall after fighting an elevator full of HYDRA agents. 

Maybe this explains why Tobey Maguire kept losing his mask in the other Spider-Man 2:  it gave the audience an opportunity to see him as a person rather than a collection of well-rendered and shaded pixels.

- Sid

* I really hate to say this, but I thought that Jamie Foxx's character was right out of Batman Forever in terms of being a sort of over-the-top camp cypher, and the writers had Spider-Man manage to stop two airline flights from colliding at the last minute - which would be impressive if he'd actually known that the clock was ticking.  As it is, it came across as a weird coincidence rather than a win.

** Yes, I know, it's vibranium, but work with me here, I'm trying to make a point.

Old school.

Right now, I'm attempting to set up a date to see Captain America: The Winter Soldier.  My prospective companion is a geek, but not, I think, a comic book geek - which no longer really matters when attending any of the recent wave of comic book movies. I think that writers and directors have adequately filled the gap in terms of continuity and backstory to the point where anyone can attend one of the films and know who's who and what's what.

This has been accomplished by recapitulating the evolution of the comic book universes created by Marvel and DC, particularly in the case of the Marvel universe.  We've seen the origins of Iron Man and the Hulk; watched Captain America descend into frigid arctic waters, only to be rediscovered decades later; witnessed Thor's arrival on Midgard; and winced not once but twice as both versions of Peter Parker have encountered radioactive spiders.

And that's a bit of a problem for me.  I started reading comic books in the late 1960s, when Marvel Comics was in the early days of developing the complex layers of character, plot, continuity and retro-continuity that form the current Marvel milieu. As a result, I knew perfectly well that Peter Parker would get bitten by an irradiated arachnid - he has to get bitten, that's what happens, I know that. Similarly, the effects of gamma rays on mild-mannered scientists is a given. I'm aware of Tony Stark's problems with alcohol, there's a Donald Blake joke in the first Thor movie that non-fans would miss completely; and it's a little extra funny to me when the Hulk dismisses Loki as a "puny god". 

As a result, when I go to a comic book movie, I have a pretty good idea of how things are going to go. In the case of the new Captain America film, I already know perfectly well who the Winter Soldier is, I'm keeping an eye out for Agent 13, and I find it a bit amusing to compare the original Black Falcon with the current version - who, in these enlightened times, is probably just "The Falcon".

But, don't get me wrong, I'm not really complaining. In fact, that's why I enjoy these movies, I appreciate the manner in which they are faithful to their origins while updating the look and feel from the world of four-colour press, and rewarding the old school types in the audience with in-jokes and references to the original comics.

As an example, I laughed a bit when I saw someone named Batroc in the opening sequence from The Winter Soldier which has been on YouTube™ for some time.  There is no sign as to whether or not he will leap:  if you got that joke without looking it up, then you know exactly what I've been talking about.  If not - well, enjoy the movie!

 - Sid

P.S. Just for the record, the outfit worn by the comic book Falcon in the picture above is not his original costume, but it is the one in which he was able to fly.

"The Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator"

 

I'm pleased to say that my Buck Rogers XZ-38 Disintegrator pistol arrived in the mail today, more or less on schedule.

I somehow had in my head that it was nine inches long, and I was right - well, nine and a quarter, actually. Regardless of the actual size, it's a bit smaller than I had pictured it, but it fits comfortably in my hand, which is a little surprising given that I'm six feet tall and have average-sized hands.  It must have felt like a serious piece of weaponry in the grip of a ten-year-old in 1935.  To my eye, it doesn't look hokey or funny, it's a well-designed device with an Art Deco feel to it.

As I expected from the pictures, there's some corrosion on the tri-thermal convergence unit* at the end of the barrel, and a slightly wide gap on the back of the grip compared to the rest of the body. A couple of the sub-atomic condenser flanges* are a bit dented, and there's some rust inside the bell itself.

If someone told me that the convergence unit had fallen off at some point in the pistol's life and been soldered back on by some sympathetic handyman, I'd believe them:  the join between the end of the beam definer tube* and the unit looks tinned, the same way that copper water pipes look near a join.

The spring mechanism for the energy release lever* is completely missing in action.  The hinge mechanism is still sound, but when I pull on the trigger it doesn't return to position, and I have to tug it back out of the frame. Whatever sort of noise or spark was supposed to be produced is lost to the vagaries of time.

The finish is in acceptable shape, not perfect but what you'd expect under the circumstances, the joins between halves of the body are good, and it actually feels quite solid when I hold it, well balanced and comfortable. The various Pat. Pending documentation and the Buck Rogers Registered Trademark information is sharp and clear on the side of the body.

Overall, I'd have to say that I'm pleased with my unexpected purchase, regardless of its various signs of age.  All it needs is a fresh impulse generator cell*, perhaps an adjustment of the beam collimation coils* in the convergence unit, and it would be ready once again for use against the enemies of Earth.

 - Sid

* All of these except one are the actual names for the parts of the disintegrator as per the original Daisy box - the other one I just made up based on my extensive background in focused energy weapons.

Travel snapshots.

Photocomp by Jason Major

I love that we're now able to get regular photos from Mars. This particular shot is from the Curiousity rover, who took a break en route to Mount Sharp to bang the dust off some sampling tools and take a few pictures.  As with the Opportunity rover, it's difficult to avoid imagining something like Wall-E, repeatedly thwacking its sieve against a rock, scrutinizing it briefly but intensely, then rapidly banging it again before rolling off with a general air of satisfaction at a job well done.

On the other hand, I'm a little surprised that NASA doesn't have a more sophisticated solution to dust buildup on geological sampling devices than "thwacking".

 - Sid

And it's not just because Todd let me keep the quantum sphere.

In the wake of the whole Continuum-time-machine thing, I have to admit that I'm probably going to re-visit the show.  I saw part of a Season Three episode today in which an 18-year-old character comes to the realization that the forty-ish man he's talking to is actually his son, while a future version of the same 18-year-old sneaks out the door behind his own back in order to save the girl he loves from dying in a couple of days.  And as far as I can tell, these are just the subplots - obviously there are some interesting things going on.

 - Sid

Time After Time.

 

After finding the quantum sphere from Continuum at lunch a couple of weeks ago, I dutifully sent the requested location selfie with time machine off to Todd Ireland, the show's Social Media Coordinator, with the following comment:

Obviously the coolest thing I’ve ever found at lunch. 

A long echoing silence followed. Which, to be honest, didn't bother me too much, since I was a little concerned that Mr. Ireland would either ask for his sphere back, or request that I find a new spot for it someplace else in the Greater Vancouver Region.

To my mild surprise, the following e-mail appeared in my In box on Friday:

From: Todd Ireland
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2014 10:58:14
To:  The Infinite Revolution
Subject: Re: Quantum sphere, as requested.

Wow! I have no idea how I missed this email in my inbox!!!!

I just happened to be going through my emails to see if I missed anything in the last few weeks and found this.

So happy that you found it!

Can you tell us a little bit about how you found it...

Do you watch the show?

May I use your name and photo in our Twitter feed and Facebook page?

Awesome and congrats!

Hold on to that sucker cause it's rare!

Todd Ireland
Script coordinator
Social Media Coordinator
Continuum Season 3

The good news is that Todd doesn't need me to put the quantum sphere back into circulation, which is a huge bonus - it's obviously an incredibly cool thing for a science fiction fan to have.  Thanks very much, Todd!

 - Sid

P.S. The photocomp image at the start just isn't quite making it for me, so, in violation of ongoing policy, there's a good chance I'll change that in the near future - time machine pun not intended.

"Congratulations, it's all yours!"

 Hi sid_plested,

We hope you enjoy your BUCK ROGERS XZ-38 DAISY DISINTEGRATOR RAY GUN 1935 COPPER ORIGINAL. Pay now to get your item as quickly as possible.

eBay.ca

Welp...I just bought a used ray gun on eBay.

(Come to think of it, last week I found a time machine, this week I bought a ray gun:  is ANYONE ELSE'S March going a bit oddly?  Or is it just me?) 

I can't really say I did it by accident.  As per my previous post on Buck Rogers weaponry, the idea of spending over $150 on an antique Buck Rogers disintegrator pistol activates some kind of mental governor that just stops the whole process.  Unfortunately, the eBay seller in question must have read that posting, since the opening bid that they requested on their item was, you guessed it, $149.99.

In my defense, I honestly didn't think that I would be the only bidder.*  In fact, the lack of other interested geeks makes me wonder if I've paid more than I should have (with no offense to the buyer, I refer solely to lack of discriminating knowledge on my part that, based on the photos or description, should have stopped me from placing my bid).

The pictures on the listing look about the same as all the other pictures of 80-year-old Daisy pistols that I've seen on eBay - you can see that the finish is a bit worn, there's some rust on the emitter bell, and a bit of verdigris on the barrel, but again, they all look like this to a greater or lesser extent.  I've actually seen XZ-38s for sale at about the same price that looked like they'd been literally buried in someone's basement since 1935, so this one is not too bad.

However, it's a bit late for second thoughts - I bid on it, I won the auction, it's mine, and, honestly, I will not miss any meals because of the $150 that I spent on an antique toy.  The XZ-38 will be here in about nine days, at which point I'll be able to inspect it to my heart's content.  And then - release Wilma Deering or beware my wrath, evil hordes of Han! 

 - Sid

* I know, this sounds a lot like my defense for purchasing a Major Matt Mason figure.  Obviously I'm a little self-conscious about this sort of thing.

Things To Do With A Time Machine (Other Than Kill Hitler).

"Oh, about sixty C's up the Road I'm an archaeologist.  Every now and then I come back to bury a few things. Then I go forward and dig them up again. I've already written the paper on this batch. Actually, it's a pretty interesting piece on cultural diffusion. I've got some really nice artifacts from Mohenjo-Daro this time around."

Roger Zelazny, Roadmarks

"If I miss a program I just pop back in time and watch it.  I'm hopeless fiddling with all those buttons."
"You have a time machine and you use it for watching television?"
"Well, I wouldn't use it at all if I could get the hang of the video recorder."

Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

"Ten minutes to you, L.M.," Barney said, "but it's been hours for us. The machine is okay, so we're over the first and biggest hurdle. We know now that Professor Hewett's vremeatron works even better than we had hoped.  The way is open to take a company back in time and film an accurate, full-length, wide-screen, realistic, low-budget, high-quality historical."

Harry Harrison, The Technicolor Time Machine

"But you must understand, it's mostly criminals who seek their refuge in time machines."

"I can't blame them...  What's the price of such a thing?"

"How far do you want to go?"

"Well...uh...my intention is to write the history of the Jewish people."

Paul van Herck, Where Were You Last Pluterday?

 - Sid

The Coming of the Martians.

 It is the year 1895.

There is no television, and Auguste and Louis Lumière have only just shown their first moving picture in Paris.   Science fiction does not exist - it does not even have a name. Jules Verne has published his Voyages Extraordinaires, but ultimately they are just that, extraordinary travels, and he bristles at the suggestion that his tales are based on anything but the facts of science.

And yet, a young English writer named Herbert George Wells was able to sit in his study in the town of Woking and create the following astonishing passage about an alien war machine, part of an invasion from Mars:

And this Thing I saw! How can I describe it?  A monstrous tripod, higher than many houses, striding over the young pine trees, and smashing them aside in its career; a walking engine of glittering metal, striding now across the heather; articulated ropes of steel dangling from it, and the clattering tumult of its passage mingling with the riot of the thunder. A flash, and it came out vividly, heeling over one way with two feet in the air, to vanish and reappear almost instantly as it seemed, with the next flash, a hundred yards nearer. Can you imagine a milking stool tilted and bowled violently along the ground? That was the impression those instant flashes gave. But instead of a milking stool imagine it a great body of machinery on a tripod stand.

Seen nearer, the Thing was incredibly strange, for it was no mere insensate machine driving on its way. Machine it was, with a ringing metallic pace, and long, flexible, glittering tentacles (one of which gripped a young pine tree) swinging and rattling about its strange body. It picked its road as it went striding along, and the brazen hood that surmounted it moved to and fro with the inevitable suggestion of a head looking about. Behind the main body was a huge mass of white metal like a gigantic fisherman’s basket, and puffs of green smoke squirted out from the joints of the limbs as the monster swept by me. And in an instant it was gone.

The modern reader has a wide range of sources to draw upon in their interpretation of the Martian tripods:  Transformers movies and cartoons, Japanese animation, the various Imperial Walkers from Star Wars, and so on - a plethora of giant machines, metallically marching to battle. The creative leap performed by H.G. Wells in The War of the Worlds is unaided by any of those influences, and is all the more amazing because of that, especially when you consider that his audience could only be reached by comparing the Martian tripod to a milking stool.

 - Sid

A Practical Guide to Changing History With A Time Machine - Or Not.

 Amy: In a world where rhinoceroses are domesticated pets, who win the Second World War?

Sheldon: Uganda.

Amy: Defend.

Sheldon:  Kenya rises to power on the export of rhinoceroses.  A Central African power block is formed, colonizing North Africa and Europe. When war breaks out, no one can afford the luxury of a rhino. Kenya withers, Uganda triumphs.

Amy:  Correct. My turn.

The Zazzy Substitution, The Big Bang Theory.

Yesterday I received an e-mail from my friend Donovan, who is also The Infinite Revolution's Science Correspondent*, congratulating me on my discovery of a time machine and asking the following question:

"What are you going to change first?"

This is a very serious question, and one which requires a lot of forethought before rushing into anything.

I think that you would want to be cautious making big changes to history.  It's all very well and good to decide to go back in time and kill Hitler, but what are the practical aspects of attempting to alter the course of events in such a fashion?

First, what I have here is a time machine, not a space machine**. Whereas Vancouver is a great place to live, not a lot of the pivotal events that have defined our world have taken place here.  So, step one, relocate to central Berlin. Obviously a little research is required here in order to determine the exact location.

Actually, a lot of research is required here. I probably want to kill Hitler before his rise to power - killing Hitler after, say, the Battle of Dunkirk in 1940 might well be too late in the historical process to achieve sufficient change.  In fact, that might be a horrible mistake. For all I know, killing Hitler in 1940 would lead to Germany winning the war in Europe, as Goering or Himmler took the reins of power and decided not to invade Russia. 

So, we'll be going to Germany to kill Hitler when he's...20?  At that point in time, the young Adolf was an unemployed painter living in a homeless shelter in Vienna. No guards, no soldiers, no security, perfect, done.  All I have to do is sneak a functioning time machine through the various airport security and customs inspections, fly to Vienna, find the correct address, and hit the button.

Then, with no grasp of the German language outside of "yes", "no", "hello", and "one big beer, please" ***, I locate Hitler, find a weapon of some sort, and kill him.  And then I press the RETURN button pretty damn fast, because there's a very good chance that any witnesses to my crime will attempt to detain me for the authorities - after all, I've just killed a homeless young artist for no apparent reason. If I don't get away, well, it may be worth the sacrifice of my life in order to end Hitler's, thereby preventing World War II and the Holocaust, and saving millions and millions of lives.

Or at least that's what I hope is going to happen. Science fiction is full of examples of people trying to change one part of history in order to achieve a specific goal and not succeeding:  killing Hitler, giving the Spartans M-16s at the battle of Thermopylae, sinking Christopher Columbus' ships before they return to Europe, and so on. The joke in the opening quotation from The Big Bang Theory is that it would be impossible to predict the effects of such a massive change.

And that's really why I want to get away and return to the present:  to confirm that I've created a better world by my actions. There's a sobering moment in the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Episode where the War Doctor speculates that the complete destruction of his home world and its people may be necessary in order to produce the Doctor that he sees before him, the Doctor who has saved countless other worlds to atone for his actions.  Perhaps our world needed to experience the horrors of World War II to produce a more compassionate and concerned society - but how terrible to think that all of those deaths were somehow a requirement in order to be where we are today! 

Ultimately, this seems far too great a responsibility for a bald 52 year old Canadian science fiction fan.  So, I'm very sorry, Donovan, but I'm going to to stick with the original plan for just jumping back two weeks with the winning Lotto 649 numbers - that, and maybe seeing the Beatles' live performance in Vancouver in 1964.

 - Sid

* By the way, Donovan, it's been a while since we've gotten a science update.  Don't worry about it, I know it's a busy time for you right now.

** Please note that the Doctor's time travel device, the TARDIS, travels through Time And Relative Dimension In Space.  Obviously the BBC put some thought into this fifty years ago.

*** Jawohl, nein, guten tag, and ein gross Bier, bitte.  I have other bits and pieces, but that's the bulk of it. I know that danke is thank you, now that I think about it.

Well, that was a little naïve of me.

No, seriously, when I clicked on the link that said "Anne Hathaway Flash" I honestly thought that Catwoman was going to make a cameo appearance in the new CW series starring DC Comics' scarlet speedster.

 - Sid

P.S.  Or perhaps a ca-meow appearance....okay, I'm sorry, it's been a long week...

Cities of the Dead.

How sad that we have chosen such a fragile thing as stone for our memorials.

And now, a bit of shameless cross-promotion.

My friend Colin (AKA Cloin, the Campbell Brother) and I have started a shared blog called The Cities of the Dead, where we're posting our pictures of cemeteries and tombstones.  It's very much a collection of art photography, not intended to be morbid or gruesome.  If you're interested, you can pay the site a visit at http://cities-of-the-dead.blogspot.ca/

 - Sid

The Time Machine.

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy

So - I found a time machine at lunch today.

And the great thing is that everyone at work agreed that if someone was going to find a time machine at lunch, it really should be me, which was certainly one of the more pleasantly empowering moments in my career as a science fiction geek.

To explain...

When weather and schedule permit, I go for walks at lunch with my colleague Bill, who I've mentioned here previously.  Today it looked a bit cloudy, but with blue skies to the west, so we decided that it would probably be fine by the time we finished our loop from the office up through Gastown to Canada Place and back along the waterfront.

As we entered Portside Park on our way back, I saw a Ziploc™ bag on the ground beside the path, with an unusual round object in it, about the size of a baseball.  I glanced down and said to Bill, "Ha - that looked like the time machine from Continuum."

Bill, who I am sure found this to be a somewhat odd (and not necessarily comprehensible) statement, made a sort of polite noncommittal sound of acknowledgement.  We walked on a bit further, and I said, "You know, that looked a LOT like the time machine from Continuum.  Hang on, I'm just going to trot back and grab that bag."

Bill, patient man that he is, waited for me to run back to the park entrance and grab the bag and its enigmatic contents.  We completed our walk, me with my prize held gingerly between finger and thumb* and returned to our office, at which point I opened the bag to find one (1) Continuum time machine - or, to be accurate, one quantum sphere from the year 2077 - and the following somewhat crumpled note:

For those of you who, like poor Bill, have been reading this with a moderate lack of comprehension, Continuum is a time-travel science fiction series that's just started its third season on Showcase.  I've mentioned it here a couple of times in the past - first for its innovative use of Vancouver to represent the city of Vancouver, and second for its less innovative use of Herbert George as a pseudonym in a time travel series.  To be honest, I didn't watch the second season at all, although I did quite by accident end up watching the premiere of the third season on Sunday afternoon, just in time to prime my peripheral vision for time machine recognition.

It appears to be legitimate.  I did a search for the Todd Ireland whose e-mail appears on the note, and it shows him as the Social Media Content Creator and Script Coordinator for Continuum Season 3, and the sphere itself really couldn't be anything else.

So, as instructed, I returned to the park for a selfie which I will shortly be e-mailing to Mr. Ireland.  Sadly, I also have to ask if Mr. Ireland is going to break my heart by requesting that I return the sphere to the park, so that other people can experience the unique thrill of finding a time machine at lunch.

 - Sid

* Just for the record, my workplace is close enough to the Downtown East Side that picking up mysterious plastic bags is at best ill-advised and at worst downright foolish.

Beautiful lies.

Jason Nesmith: Mathesar, there's no such person as Captain Taggart. My name is Jason Nesmith. I'm an actor. We're all actors.

Sarris: He doesn't understand. Explain as you would a child.

Jason Nesmith: We, uh, we pretended.

[On Mathesar's blank look]

Jason Nesmith:  We lied.

GalaxyQuest

I was watching a couple of episodes of Doctor Who with my friend Annie the fantasy author after dinner on Saturday night* - Annie has just discovered the Doctor, but so far has only watched the episodes from the first season of the 2005 reboot.

To my mild surprise, I found myself constantly being requested to pause the playback in order to deal with questions about what was going on. In some questions, the plot point in question was about to be dealt with anyway, and in others, the issue was more one of terminology - does it matter what artron energy really is?

In the first case, it was interesting to have someone verbalize the process that we all go through during any sort of narrative more complex than the story of Jack and Jill, although I was surprised that Annie was so unwilling to give the writers a little more slack in terms of providing an immediate explanation of things like why someone's mind and soul were being expelled from their body.

The second part is related to something that I dealt with in one of my very first postings:  the process of world creation in science fiction and fantasy, the range of great and small details that illuminate an author's vision of "the fields beyond our own", as early 20th century fantasy writer Lord Dunsany put it.

It may be because I started reading science fiction and fantasy when I was so young, but I have never suffered from the same issues that seemed to be bothering Annie during our  Doctor Who mini-fest. Suspension of disbelief is the standard cliché when it comes to this sort of discussion, but I actually think that it's an inappropriate term. There should be a term which is more positive - acceptance of belief, perhaps, although that's a clumsy antonym.

And ultimately, it's not really a question of belief. I don't think that I believe or disbelieve that it's possible to walk into a wardrobe and come out in Narnia, or to ask Scotty to beam up the landing party - the process involved is more subtle than belief, and after all, it's not like you're being lied to.

Or are you?

What is the storytelling process, really?

At some point in our cultural development, we invented the idea of storytelling - of lying with style, to misquote Woody from Toy Story.  It's fascinating to think back to that first primitive storyteller in our past, the person who somehow made the mental leap to say, "Listen, everyone - I will tell you a thing which is not true, a thing which I have invented, a thing which did not happen, a thing which is better than the truth."

Whatever the reason for their odd decision, it has proven popular over time - that original audience must have listened in awe and astonishment, and then demanded more.  Has there ever been a society on Earth which lacked a tradition of storytelling?  Look at how much of our cultural identity as a species has been dedicated to fiction in some form or another  - plays, novels, comic books, movies, television programs - and we still tell stories from hundreds and thousands of years in our past:  the Sumerian battles of Gilgamesh; the Odyssey and the Iliad; the bravery of Beowulf, and the tragedy of King Arthur.

For an outside look at how closely storytelling is connected to our identity as a species, I recommend China Miéville's 2011 novel Embassytown.  Human colonists maintain an outpost on the homeworld of the alien Ariekei, who cannot speak anything but facts, and as such grapple unsuccessfully with the idea of metaphor and simile in their dialogue with humanity.   Metaphor is a lie, after all - when a science fiction author says that a spaceship ascended on a pillar of flame, they're lying, obviously you can't build a column out of fire.  How can a rational species say things that are not true?

Ironically, I found Embassytown difficult to read - it took me three tries before I was able to sufficiently engage myself in the story and continue to the end.  Embassytown is almost two stories, initially a somewhat dull tale of the narrator's early life, followed by the real story, the story of communication, of sentience, of language, of thought. The process by which the Ariekei make the leap to the world of lies is a fascinating one, but neither easy nor pleasant for the aliens.  However, it seems to be worth it to them, it seems to expand their view of the world.

And the funny thing?  When I take a step back, I wonder why it matters to me at all:  a story told by an imaginary woman about aliens that don't exist on a planet that isn't real?  After all, it's just a lie - although, at least it is a beautiful one.

 - Sid

* Sigh...I had a dinner date with woman who is writing a fantasy series, who constantly thanks me for introducing her to so many fantastic science fiction and fantasy books, who respects, envies and appreciates my knowledge of the genre, and who has just discovered (and loves) Doctor Who. How sad that she's also a woman who just moved in with her boyfriend...

** Come to think of it, when I read the first draft of Annie's fantasy novel, we had a discussion about foreshadowing and things like Chekov's Gun, which refers to Russian playwright Anton Chekov's comment that "If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there." I'll have to re-read the manuscript to see if Annie experiences overt fail in the area of foreshadowing.

"You're just too magnificent."

And now, the Spam Comment of the Month! (I have preserved the original typos intact.)

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I was quite flattered by this, and although I wouldn't normally be all that interested in thrombosed hemorrhoids, I thought it only fair to visit their blog to see what they had to say.  Sadly, the domain was invalid, but regardless, thanks for your support, Anonymous!

 - Sid

P.S.  Normally I like to use a suitable image to add visual interest to a posting - this time, not so much.  You do NOT want to do a Google Image search for thrombosed hemorrhoids, trust me on this.

Deep in enemy territory.

I... hate this place, this zoo, this prison, this reality, whatever you want to call it. I can't stand it any longer. It's the smell, if there is such a thing.

Agent Smith, The Matrix

Here I am, back home after another Sunday afternoon visit to Fitness World. I've been going the gym two or three times a week* for the last eight years, and I have to confess that my lack of enjoyment is complete. I'm not going to stop - I realize that the alternative is to become one of those guys in their fifties who walk around preceded by an attractively rounded gut - but you know, it's just not a pleasant experience for me.  I think there's just something in geek DNA that says that any place that smells like sweat is the wrong place to be.

- Sid

*It should be three, but work - or just life - seems to get in the way a couple of times a month.

"A rose-red city half as old as time."

It wouldn’t be right, the first night on Mars, to make a loud noise, to introduce a strange, silly bright thing like a stove. It would be a kind of imported blasphemy. There’d be time for that later; time to throw condensed-​milk cans in the proud Martian canals; time for copies of the New York Times to blow and caper and rustle across the lone gray Martian sea bottoms; time for banana peels and picnic papers in the fluted, delicate ruins of the old Martian valley towns. Plenty of time for that. And he gave a small inward shiver at the thought.

Ray Bradbury, And The Moon Be Still As Bright

Hey, let’s terraform Mars.

Yes, I know, all we’ve done is look around via remote, we really haven’t seen the property in person yet, but what the heck, let’s assume that we’ll like it and that we’ll want to take it.  (And after all, I think we all take into account that the realtor’s photos are going to exaggerate things a little bit, make the yard look larger than it really is, that sort of thing.)

We start with a quick trip out to the Oort Cloud* – okay, not THAT quick, it’s about a light year – where we can start grabbing water ice planetoids and throwing them at Mars.  Given that we’re talking about an extended program of what is essentially bombing Mars with meteors, we really want to get this out of the way before we establish any bases on the planet.  Think of it as painting the new house before you move in, it’s just so much more convenient without any furniture.

Bombarding the planet with ice starts to help with the two major shortcomings of Mars:  liquid water and oxygen.  Mars does have a certain amount of water, but it’s mostly tied up in the polar ice caps (the southern ice cap is made up of frozen carbon dioxide – more commonly known as dry ice – but it’s generally accepted that the CO2 covers large deposits of water ice.)  Dropping big ice cubes from orbit starts to fill Mars’ minimal atmosphere with water vapour as well as throwing up a lot of dust, with the goal of jumpstarting the greenhouse effect:  the water vapour and dust create a barrier of clouds that should stop the heat created by the impacts from dissipating into space.

And the other thing you get from clouds?  Rain...

Or will it snow?  After all, the current weather report from the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) forecasts a high of -29 C and a low of -114 C, which sounds to me more like snow weather.  On the other hand, the greenhouse effect may raise the temperature enough for water to remain water.

Let's assume that we're going to get rain - and as a result, mud.  There are a few odd components in Martian soil (there's been a lot of discussion about the discovery of perchlorates in some samples) and, unlike terrestrial dirt, there's no real organic component.  Regardless, the presence of nutrients such as sodium, potassium and chloride would suggest that it will be possible to grow plants on Mars.

Water, as always, will seek its own level, even in the reduced gravity of Mars, and the misnamed Martian canals will become rivers that will ultimately create ponds, lakes and oceans.  Depending on the manner in which the components of the Martian soil leach into the water, it may or may not be possible to import sea life as part of the biosphere.

It will undoubtedly be necessary to introduce simple elements such as primitive mosses and lichens which will be able to survive on their own before moving up the evolutionary ladder to grasses, insects and so on.  As more plant life is introduced, we will see the oxygen level increase, but it will be a slow process. Electrolyzing asteroid water into hydrogen and oxygen will help speed things up, although that would require a substantial industrial footprint in order to be effective - all of which would need to come from Earth.

This is all very glib, but there’s an unasked question in all of this:  is this something we should do?  Rorschach images of giant faces aside, there’s no evidence of any sort of advanced life on Mars.  There may or may not be some kind of life at the bacterial level, but there’s certainly been absolutely no sign of anything advanced enough for colonists to take home as pets.  But does that make Mars a blank slate for us to write on?  Or, more accurately, a palimpsest, where we’re writing over the faded words already in place?

Whatever unique lessons we may be able to learn from Mars, we will not be able to learn them by turning the Red Planet into a clone of our own.  There may come a day where it's necessary for whatever reason to undertake the process that I've described above, but as with processes such as strip mining and hydraulic frakking, we will need to take the time to consider all the possible consequences before taking action.  After all, it's not like we'll be able to put everything back to the way it was if we make a mistake.

- Sid

* If you had to Google™ "Oort Cloud", hand in your geek card.

Or maybe it's because I used to watch the Leafs.

Really, this is another one of those "you know you're a geek when" postings.  It's the last day of the Sochi Winter Olympics, and I'm watching the Men's Hockey finals*.  Canada is up two points over Sweden, ten minutes to go, and I find myself thinking, "Great, kid - don't get cocky!"

- Sid

 * Anyone who knows me well read that and said, "You're doing what?" Okay, I slept poorly, woke up early, and hey, everyone else in the country is watching it...

UPDATED:  Final 3-0, Team Canada.