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.

World Building.

Although The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has been available since the end of 2011, I didn't bother picking up a copy of the game until the end of last year*.  And even then, I didn't start playing it right away - after all, I'd already played Fallout 3, which was also produced by the game developers at Bethesda, and as such I assumed it would just be a fantasy version of the same game.

Which is in many ways correct, but in saying that I do an enormous injustice to Skyrim and the unique, detailed environment that it offers to its players.  Fallout 3's blasted nuclear landscape was impressive, but Skyrim is astonishing in its evocation of the real world.

Driftwood, fallen hollow trees that have started to rot and grow moss, flickering torches, stumps from cutting timber, cloudy days, skiffs of dry snow blowing off the cobbled roads, textured slabs of stone in a city square, the Northern Lights flaring against the night sky, the shadow of a circling hawk rippling over the ground below, ferns at the side of the roadway, that peculiar greyish colour that snow gets when it's been trodden down into a path, the white noise of a waterfall as you pass by, the glint of light on the rippling surface of a lake, tattered banners fluttering against stone columns, grass swaying in the wind, worn grey logs in a makeshift bridge, curtains of rain sweeping across the heather, and on and on and on.

I did over 250 screen grabs for this posting - at which point I told myself to settle down - but that number is indicative of the sheer variety of the world that the game designers have created.  The template I use for this blog doesn't support galleries or tables, so I built something in HTML that would let me post some kind of representative sample of those hundreds of images in an attempt to illustrate just how amazing and varied the environment actually is.

If you take the time to click on any of the thumbnails for the full size image, remember that these views of the Nordic province of Skyrim are all taken from within the game as I played it - this is the actual environment that the player experiences as they battle dragons and complete quests in the process of discovering their destiny as one of the Dovahkiin - the Dragonborn. My character** has walked all these paths, climbed these hills, crossed these rivers, entered these houses.

I have to admit that it's not perfect. Skyrim spans hundreds of virtual miles, and when you're filling that much territory, something has to give or else players would need the sort of computing power that the Enterprise uses for the holodeck just in order to get the game to run. A close look at the trees and stones reveals that they're actually not that detailed, and there's apparently some Nord equivalent of IKEA™ that supplies furniture in bulk to the inhabitants of Skyrim, based on the similarities of beds and tables and chairs and so on. 

But ultimately, none of that matters when you're playing the game - it's a seamless, incredible illusion.

Of course, when you have that much going on in a program, mistakes do happen, as per my discovery of the rear half of a horse sticking out of the battlements of a captured fort.  At least I hope it's a mistake - either that or the game is making a very pointed comment about my gameplay.

Steam™, the online game hosting and management system from Valve which has changed the face of desktop gaming since its introduction in 2002, informs me that so far I've spent 99 hours wandering the varied landscape of Skyrim.  When you think about it, that's an impressive endorsement of the value of the game.  Skyrim cost me $29.99, which is more or less twice the cost of a two-hour 3-D movie, and it's provided me with almost 100 hours of entertainment - and I'm not finished. That's a pretty good return on investment for thirty bucks.

- Sid

*If you want to buy a computer game at half-price, all you have to do is wait about six months.  Not only do you save money, but other people get to test it, deal with the bugs, and let you know whether or not it's actually worth buying.

** My character is named Yendis, which has about the right sound for a fantasy game, and has been a convenient go-to for my fantasy alter egos since I was about ten.

P.S. Oh, and this is Lydia.

Lydia was assigned to me as a housecarl by the Jarl of Whiterun near the start of the game, and although I've had numerous chances to change companions over the course of events, I've developed a certain affections for Lydia, or Lyds, as I call her.

On one hand, Lyds has saved my life on innumerable occasions; on the other hand, if you're looking for someone to jump in front of you at the exact moment that you fire an arrow, charge ahead and attack a giant when you've decided to take the long way round and avoid a fight, or just stand in a doorway and keep you from getting out of a tent for ten minutes while you try to figure out how to get her to move, Lyds is your girl.

Tidbits V.

Notice that I didn't say "childhood".

I would be embarrassed to admit how much of my life has been spent thinking like this.


Because, really, when I think of doing dishes or selfish financial domination...
The people who come up with merchandising tie-ins will apparently do anything for a buck, but honestly, is there no self-awareness in the process?  Apparently not - or else why would it be possible to buy Wonder Woman aprons or Doctor Who Monopoly™?

"Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station!" 

The start of 2014 saw the first intergalactic war: nobody won.  Or maybe everybody lost.

EVE Online is a massively multi-player game of interstellar intrigue and conquest set 21,000 years in the future, and a recent conflict demonstrated just how massively multi-player it really is.  Close to half a million people play EVE, approximately 4,000 of whom were involved in January's epic 14-hour fight for control of the strategic B-R5RB system.  Estimates of the real-world cost of the game vary, with some sources claiming that the battle cost a collective $500,000 loss to the combatants, with estimated costs of between $3,000 and $3,500 for each of the hundreds of Titan-class starships which were destroyed in the encounter, not to mention the countless smaller ships which fell prey to the missiles and energy beams of their opponents.

Can you imagine investing $3,500 into the creation of a virtual starship and then watching it turn into a slowly expanding cloud of pixelated parts in a battle for a star system that doesn't exist?

- Sid