To be fair, she's a Star Wars fan.

Fun will now commence.

Seven of Nine, Star Trek: Voyager

The cruise portion of my 50th birthday trip is now booked, and on Saturday Laurie gave me a large glossy brochure detailing the various wonders available on the ship which will be moving us about the Mediterranean for seven days.

"We'll be travelling on Voyager," she said, and then gave me a strange look after my resulting burst of laughter.  (Let's not forget that Laurie has never watched very much television, let alone any of the Star Trek: Next Generation spinoffs from a few years back.)

A little investigation reveals that the United Federation of Planet's farthest flung explorer and the Royal Caribbean Cruise Line's floating hotel are very nearly the same length, with the USS Voyager measuring in at 1020 feet, and the Voyager of the Seas coming in at 1128 feet.  It's an interesting comparison, because very often it's difficult to get a sense of scale for the various starships, battle stations and orbital platforms that one sees in science fiction movies and television shows.  To be honest, I expected to discover that USS Voyager was considerably smaller than its aquatic namesake, and the information that they're the same length considerably alters my impression of the starship based on my actual experience of cruise ships.

Someone has already attempted to sort out the various questions of scale in science fiction - take a look at Jeff Russell's Starship Dimensions site for an impressive comparison of the various ships, shuttles and suits from over the years.  (Apparently there's a noteworthy difference between the observed size of the Imperial AT-ATs in The Empire Strike Back and the height listed by Lucasfilms.)

For myself, I've now got an entirely different expectation for the cruise:  I see Captain Janeway standing resolutely on the bridge as we dock at Cannes, Neelix manning the breakfast buffet, and, of course, there's the titillating prospect of bumping into Seven of Nine in the gym.  What more could a science fiction fan want?*

- Sid

* Actually, that's not as strange as it sounds.  (Okay, it's almost that strange.)  If your dream is to spend a few days in the Caribbean with some of your favourite Star Trek actors, your dream can come true.  Visit http://www.startrekcruise.com/ for more information.

 

Happy Birthday to...us? Me? It?

Today marks the 4th birthday of The Infinite Revolution.  Gosh, how times flies...

According to the stats provided by Google™, which apparently do not include anything before May of 2010 (lord knows why), TIR has enjoyed 6,842 page views over the last ten months. I wonder what explains the meteoric rise in interest which I seem to have experienced according to the chart on the Overview page?

Regardless, if I'm getting that many page views, I'd like some of you other visitors to leave a comment now and then!  It seems unfair to put all the pressure on Chris, Colin, Dorothy, and Laurie.  Step up to the plate, world!

- Sid

P.S.  Although, I do have to express my sincere gratitude to the four people listed above for their ongoing interest.  Thanks a lot to all of you.

 

The End of the World (as we know it.)

I’ll get trip insurance in case Europe collapses before we embark on our cruise. You never know.

- Laurie Smith

I'll be turning 50 this year, and to celebrate this milestone I've decided to take a three-week trip to Europe.  For part of the journey, I'll be joined by the tanned and toned Laurie Smith, who agreed to make a guest appearance provided that we do a cruise around the Mediterranean. In spite of some initial misgivings (I've had some negative cruise experiences, as some of you know) I looked over the options for ports of call and so forth, and now I'm on board, so to speak.

Ms. Smith is taking care of cruise arrangements, and when asked if I wanted trip insurance, I refused, on the basis that if I miss this trip, there will be far larger problems in my life than the cost of a week on the Med.  Her reply is the opening quote.

At this point in time, the theme of a post-apocalyptic world has been solidly established in our cultural matrix via novels, games, movies and comics.   We all know what it would be like, whether caused by a thermonuclear exchange or lack of gasoline: governments cease to exist, society falls apart, it's every man for himself, despair prevails, and eventually it's nothing but cannibalism, filed teeth, bad tattoos, odd bits of armour made out of car tires and spikes, and everyone gets mohawks.

Would they? Really? Why? Could there be a disaster on a such a scale that it would actual overwhelm our civilization's ability to repair itself? (Or at least to provide decent haircuts.)

Maybe yes, maybe no. We've had some oddly telling incidents in recent years. For example, I visited New Orleans a year after the hurricane blew through, and there were places in the city and along the coast, as above, that had an uneasy resemblance to sets from an after-the-war science fiction movie. Even today, over five years later, they're still cleaning up derelict houses in one of the best-known cities in the United States.*

The Russian city of Chernobyl is now a ghost town, and could easily be the poster child for anyone who wants to show how a city looks 30 years after The End. Haiti a year post-earthquake? People are still living amidst, and in some cases in, piles of rubble while agencies attempt to make any sort of headway in the process of cleanup, let alone rebuilding.

I realize that all these examples are isolated one-off events rather than disaster on a planetary scale, but that makes the slow recovery time even more noteworthy. These are pins in a map, surrounded by an entire planet's worth of options in terms of technology and helping hands, and yet the process has taken place at a snail's pace, or, in the case of Chernobyl, not at all. Now imagine a global catastrophe: big meteorite, nuclear war, rogue disease vector, whatever you like, I think we all have our favourites.

Personally, I see the global pandemic option as the most plausible.  Imagine a slightly mutated version of Ebola Zaire, airborne rather than transmitted through infected blood, a slow enough killer that victims have enough time to spread the contagion around the planet before starting to bleed out.  How would the world handle a crisis of that magnitude? 

Who knows? Maybe we'd make the unfortunate discovery that civilization, like any other artificial structure, falls apart when you get rid of enough of the foundations.

- Sid

* My reaction at the time was that something must have gone horribly wrong in the United States. Can you imagine a city having to rely on volunteer labour and church groups to rebuild itself during the Eisenhower or Kennedy eras?