So much for affirmative action.

I think as of today I've peaked professionally - this afternoon I was called upon to create signage for porta-potties.

I asked how many units were being rented, and when I discovered that they had three on order, well, it just seemed sensible to me to be fully prepared.  Alas, it would seem that employment equity only goes so far... or perhaps more accurately, just not that far.

- Sid 

(April 13th update:  I'm sorry, if you thought this was just silly, well, obviously you've never met me in person.)

NADA.

And now, an update from our Science correspondent:

From: Donovan Hides
Sent: April-04-12 7:50 AM
To: Sid Plested
Subject: Dark Matter

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46942006/ns/technology_and_science-space/

Interesting news article and video to support….I think the message here is that NASA has spent billions of dollars…not found a damn thing…and they are excited about it.

- Donovan

I feel like I should come to NASA's defense and make a case for exclusion being an important part of the scientific process, but really, Donovan does pretty much sum it up.

- Sid

"Done well enough for the genre."

In science fiction, sometimes it seems that so long as it's science fiction at all, the fans will love it - briefly; therefore the publishers will put it in print - briefly; therefore the writer is likely to settle for doing much less than his best. The mediocre and the excellent are praised alike by afficionados, and ignored alike by outsiders.

- Ursula K. LeGuin, A Citizen of Mondath

In response to Laurie's guest posting regarding suspension of disbelief, I'd like to suggest that when she comments that The Immortals was "done well enough for the genre", she may have put her finger on the real problem without noticing.

One of the great problems that has plagued fantasy and science fiction over the years is that the desire of fans for content has often resulted in the acceptance of lower quality.  For a long time, in many ways it was a self-fulfilling prophecy - science fiction and fantasy were ghettoized by the mainstream, and as such it was taken as a given that as long as a story had enough rocket ships and aliens, or castles and elves, that was all that was necessary.  After all, it wasn't like they were legitimate stories, you know, actual stories about real life - why would they have to be well-written?

I think that things have improved over time, and that both science fiction and fantasy have matured, but sadly I suspect that it's easier to get backing for a bad special effects movie than a bad dramatic film, and there's obviously a large market for recycled assembly-line genre novels.  When Laurie asks what people expect when watching a fantasy movie, she suggests entertainment, amusement and escape - it says a lot that quality wasn't the first thing that came to mind.

- Sid

Suspension of Disbelief.

(Contributed by Laurie Smith)

Recently I saw three movies, all very different but all with an element of fantasy. (Okay, so only one might be classified as science fiction.) These movies got me wondering:  what constitutes an acceptable level of fantasy in a movie? Too little, and it is a documentary or a reality show. Too much and the audience members shake their heads and think “Whoa. What the heck was that?”

The three movies I had the dubious pleasure of watching were:

1. The Immortals. Bleak and brutal, but done well enough for the genre.

2. Sssssss. Yes, I’m serious. That was the title. It was about a mad scientist who turned his lab assistants into snakes. I didn’t even watch the whole thing it was so ridiculous, and my rating for this unfortunate blot on the cinematographic landscape is: Booo. Hisssssssss.

3. Stonehenge Apocalypse. The closest one to actual science fiction, it was also the most enjoyable (damned by faint praise).

What do people expect when watching a fantasy movie? Entertainment? Amusement? Escape? Science fiction movies that include all three of these values seem to do well. Adding some elements of truth and plausibility give the viewer something to relate to, so they can truly imagine a world where....

A few points of verisimilitude provide an anchor for the viewer. What about a movie like District 9, where there is enough day-to-day detail of an improbable situation provided where the viewer can feel almost uncomfortable with the realism? Hey, if you haven’t seen that movie yet, don’t rent it and then go out for a large dish of prawns, you may lose your appetite.

So the rhetorical question is – what is the optimal distance from reality that a movie needs for the audience to be both willing to suspend their disbelief and be entertained enough to provide a success at the box office?

- Laurie

Bazinga.

Leonard:  Once you open the box it loses its value.

Penny:  Yeah yeah, my mom gave me the same lecture about my virginity…I gotta tell you, it was a lot more fun takin' it out and playin' with it.

The Transporter Malfunction, The Big Bang Theory

In spite of my previous post, there is a show that I do watch frequently, but it's not exactly science fiction. The Big Bang Theory is a remarkably faithful representation of the ups and downs of geek life, and it's loaded with in-jokes that require a fair degree of geekdom on the part of the audience for full appreciation.

This season, they're reached for an apotheosis of geek cred by first having Leonard Nimoy provide the voice for a Spock doll in a dream sequence, and then with the upcoming appearance of physicist Stephen Hawking.  However, I'm sad to say that they've dropped a notch in their credibility level with me as a result of the Nimoy/Spock episode, The Transporter Malfunction. 

For those of you unfamiliar with the show, Leonard and Sheldon are Caltech physicist roommates who live across the hall from a would-be actress (and full time waitress) named Penny, who has an on-again/off again relationship with Leonard.*  Leonard and Sheldon, along with their friends Howard and Rajesh, represent the zenith of socially challenged action figure and comic book collecting Star Trek versus Star Wars gamer otaku geekdom - living the dream, as it were.

In The Transporter Malfunction, Sheldon complains that Penny eats too much of their take-out food without chipping in.  Penny responds by buying gifts for Sheldon and Leonard with part of a residual cheque that she has received for some commercial work.  The gifts?  To quote Sheldon:  "A vintage mint-in-box 1975 Mego Star Trek Transporter  - with real transporter action.  Hot darn!!" Well, actually, two of them, one each for Leonard and Sheldon.  

Okay, what? I'm sorry, but a vintage mint-in-the-box anything isn't cheap (trust me, I keep an eye on the Major Matt Mason market on eBay.)  How big a cheque did Penny get, anyway?
 

Just out of curiousity, I went online to see what the 1975 Mego Transporter sells for, only to discover that show creator Chuck Lorre's research department had not fully done its job.  As it turns out, what Penny purchased were not really Mego toys as such, but the United Kingdom Palitoy Star Trek Transporter Room (Cat. No 22803, if you must know), which was never released in North America. In fact, the Palitoy logo on the box is very visible in any number of shots. **

Obviously the research team needs to hire some new geeks, because this is exactly the sort of trivia that Sheldon would have on the tip of his tongue. Feel shame, people, it took me less than a minute on Google™ to get that info. And I'm only a major geek, although if you ask me, posts like this really should count toward leveling up.

Oh, and estimated price for a Star Trek Transporter Room, depending on condition, about $300+ each.  Wow, that's a lot of Chinese food.

- Sid

* Well, actually, that kind of diminishes their credibility a bit too - the only way that a Level 80 geek is likely to connect with a beautiful blonde is in the process of buying a lap dance from her.

**  Sigh - okay, I'll throw them a bone here, Mego retained copyright on the Transporter Room toy, but I bet that Desilu Productions retained copyright on the Star Trek name as well, that's not the point.

And he's workin' the Riker beard, too.

Over recent years, I've found myself watching less and less TV, and I've finally come to the conclusion that there's a very simple reason: I miss Star Trek.

I should be specific, though - it's mostly Star Trek: The Next Generation, although the other versions and spinoffs certainly had their moments. (With the rule-proving exception of Enterprise.)

I don't deny that there have been some very well done science fiction programs over the intervening years since the cancellation of The Next Generation, but I also feel that there's some level at which they were all one-trick ponies. There's a point where Buffy the Vampire Slayer could easily have been subtitled "Sleeping with the Enemy"; Battlestar Galactica seemed to turn into a sort of paranoid schizophrenic experience in which anyone could turn out to be a Cylon; The Walking Dead is a weekly one-hour dose of the end justifying the means; and who knows what Terra Nova was trying to do. Even Doctor Who, one of my favourite shows, has a tendency toward rabbit-out-of-the-hat medicus ex machina solutions to plotlines.*

The Next Generation was different. I've mentioned in previous posts that science fiction is like an collection of odd left-handed tools stored in a toolbox that, like the Doctor's TARDIS, is bigger on the inside. Using that simile, Star Trek was like a swiss army knife that offered a multitude of clever approaches to any given situation.

I don't claim that TNG was perfect - I think we all wince a little when they rerun Qpid - but no other science fiction series has managed to come up with the sort of thought-provoking brilliance that characterized the best shows in its seven-season run.

Examples? Let's see…The Measure of a Man, the episode in which Starfleet is forced to legally decide upon the status of the android, Data: is he their property?  And in so deciding, would that mean that Data, and all androids who might follow him, would be disposable people - slaves?

How about The Drumhead, a sobering examination of witch hunts and governmental paranoia, with a chilling guest appearance by Jean Simmons as Admiral Norah Satie? Darmok, a clever anthropological plot involving first contact with an alien species that uses metaphors from their culture to communicate; The Defector, which dealt with questions of loyalty and self-sacrifice; The Outcast, which took an unexpected look at gender and sexuality issues; The Inner Light, a touchingly personal episode in which Picard lives an entire virtual lifetime as an inhabitant of a doomed planet - these were all episodes that succeeded in offering a level of quality far above the standard network fare.

In spite of my respect for those episodes and others that I haven't listed, I don't think that Paramount should rush another Star Trek series into production - again, the fate of Enterprise is a useful cautionary tale. However, I have this recurring nightmare...

Someplace in California there has to be a pitch for a new television Star Trek, as follows:

It's been 18 years since the cancellation of The Next Generation, more than enough time for all the teenagers and children on the show to become adults, graduate from Star Fleet, and prepare to take up their places on the bridge of a new Enterprise. (Or, in the case of their real-world equivalents, survive their post child actor years without succumbing to drug overdoses, anorexia, shoplifting charges, suicidal depression, or all of the above.)

Here's the cast lineup for the new show:

Thirty-nine year old Wil Wheaton as Wesley Crusher; Jon Steuer, 28, as Worf's son Alexander; Naomi Wildman from Voyager, played by Scarlett Pomers, 23; Icheb, also from Voyager, played by 33 year old Manu Intiraymi; and 33 year old Cirroc Lofton reprising his role as Jake Sisko from Deep Space Nine.

The supporting cast can be filled out with Hana Hatae as Chief O'Brien's daughter Molly, the three children trapped in the turbolift with Picard in the Next Generation episode Disaster - Erika Flores, John Christian Graas, and Max Supera - and Tom and B'Elanna's daughter Mirai from Voyager, who was just a baby anyway and which allows us to actually audition someone for one of the roles.

This is a frighteningly plausible idea, one which sometimes wakes me up in a cold sweat at two in the morning. Let's just hope that Wil Wheaton isn't eager to return to the franchise, I think that his agreement to do something like this could easily become the pebble that starts the avalanche.

- Sid

* Watching Doctor Who is a little like reading Sherlock Holmes stories. You're never expected to match the deductions of the hero, only to admire them.

Hugs your figure and costs so little!

According to Our Gods Wear Spandex, an interesting and detailed examination by author Christoper Knowles of the archetypal roots of comic book characters, surveys show that half of the population of the United States was reading comic books during the 1940s.  Now, to be honest, I'm a bit sceptical - not necessarily about the statistic, but about the fact that someone had time to do surveys about comic book readership during that particular decade.  Regardless, I recently stumbled across something that demonstrates that comic book readership at that point in time was wider than I would have thought.

Here we have a copy of Batman from 1942, with a classic simple cover that puts the spotlight - literally - on Batman and the Boy Wonder.  The back cover?  What else but an equally classic ad for Daisy Air Rifles, every boy's dream toy?  "Tell Dad to hang one of these beautiful Daisys on your Christmas Tree!"  (The astute reader will note that duty is added in Canada - plus ça change...)

Now here's Issue One of Namora from 1948.  Certainly not as well known in the modern world as Batman, Namora is the cousin of Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner.  (Sorry, that probably doesn't help the non-geeks in the audience, but just go with it.)  A bit yellowed by time, but still a first issue, so probably worth some money.

And the advertising on the back cover?  Yes, that's right, just what you'd expect - an ad for the latest and greatest in 2 Way Stretch Girdles - in Glamorous Nude, I might add. (Extra crotches only forty-nine cents.)  This is either strong evidence that comics had a readership that extended at least as far as ladies looking for support garments, or a testament to some unknown member of the advertising sales department who could probably have sold ice to Eskimos.

You have to wonder, though - was there no duty on lingerie in 1948, or did they just not care about Canadian shoppers?

- Sid

And another thing.

Did Woola, John Carter's fanatically loyal calot, really need to look quite so much like the south end of a north bound dog?

- Sid

Inter Mundos.

If you are here because you Googled "WHAT DOES INTER MUNDOS MEAN?", it means "BETWEEN WORLDS", and you're very welcome.

They say that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and I suspect that John Carter is the result of a similar process.

To someone who's not familiar with the original material, John Carter may not be a bad movie, although box office results to date would seem to indicate that Disney's interpretation may not be able to stand on its own merits. However, from the perspective of a long term fan, it was almost puzzling in its broad departures from the story as written by Edgar Rice Burroughs a hundred years ago.

But I can see what happened - again, good intentions. Burroughs' original story suffers from some very fundamental problems, the first of which is exactly how it is that Captain Carter gets to Mars in the first place. In the text, it's an unarticulated, mystical process, seemingly based on the connection between a fighting man and "the god of his vocation", as Burroughs puts it.

In his defense, this sort of mystical/magical transition is fairly common in the fantastic literature of the time - it's a literary tool, like falling down a rabbit hole or going through a looking glass. E. R. Eddison does it ten years later in The Worm Ouroborous, H. P. Lovecraft uses the same approach, Lord Dunsany does it on innumerable occasions, as does Clark Ashton Smith, and so on. I attribute it quite simply to the lack of any popular concept of space travel: after all, Burroughs is writing in 1912.

The people behind John Carter are hampered by a knowledge of space programs and a century of speculative fiction. As a result, they obviously felt that the audience would require some kind of hardware, something based in science rather than fantasy. So Carter's transition becomes the result of a sort of transporter beam.

But where would such a thing come from? The writers decided that it would be an alien mechanism - but would the Martians have such a thing? So the writers create a more advanced alien race to be the creators of the transporter.

But why would there be a hidden conduit between the two planets? Aha, the more advanced aliens are plotting to take over Earth! No, wait, Earth AND Mars! No, wait, they're already taking over Mars!

And so on, and so on, and so on. The result of all this is a confusing, poorly explained mess of a plot that uses all of the names from the books, but that leaves out too many of the things that made the original story so entertaining. The sad thing is that they didn't need to do any of that. If handled properly and with some appreciation of the original material, John Carter could have been a fantastic steampunk adventure, a charming historical/futuristic adventure with a quaint lack of scientific accuracy.

The glimpses of that potential make the movie all the more disappointing. The artistic direction makes a good attempt at evoking an alien culture, the four-armed green Martians aren't too bad, and I give full marks to Lynn Collins as the incomparable Dejah Thoris - she comes very close to being the Princess of Mars that I had imagined, the woman whose love inspires a castaway from another planet to fight his way across an entire world in order to rescue her.

However, for the most part I was too distracted by all the lost opportunities.  Disney, if you wanted to make this movie, that's fine - but why couldn't you see that everything you needed was right there in the original book?

- Sid

First thoughts on Sunday morning II

We've all seen it in movies and on television: ghosts who are cursed by their inability to interact with the world around them, spirits forced to observe their loved ones but never touch them again, phantoms that wander through a world without barriers.

The exception, of course, is their feet. These ghostly remnants are always able to climb stairs, stand on floors, and walk down streets without any difficulty whatsoever.

But what if ghost feet lacked this peculiar covenant with physics?  What if these wraiths were completely unable to interact with the corporeal world?  If gravity retained even a fragment of its influence over these disembodied souls, they would find that its inexorable pull would slowly drag them down, down, down, to finally abandon them in the flaming chaos of molten rock and crushing pressure that lies at the core of the earth.

And they wouldn't be alone - if even a fraction of the total inhabitants of Earth had failed to completely depart from the physical realm after death, there would be millions of ghosts held eternal captive at the centre of the planet, trapped in lightless burning confinement, aware but unable to escape, screaming, desperate, suffering...

Goodness - I seem to have just invented Hell.

- Sid

Under the Moons of Mars.

I opened my eyes upon a strange and weird landscape. I knew that I was on Mars; not once did I question either my sanity or my wakefulness. I was not asleep, no need for pinching here; my inner consciousness told me as plainly that I was upon Mars as your conscious mind tells you that you are upon Earth. You do not question the fact; neither did I.

Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars

As I was making my way home through Gastown on Friday night, I passed a poster promoting the new Walt Disney film John Carter, which will apparently descend upon an unwitting public on March 9th. Early previews have not given me huge confidence in this swashbuckling adaptation of the Edgar Rice Burroughs books, but they do make me wonder if the general populace has the least idea of what it's all about.

In other words, who is John Carter?

Old school fans like myself recognize the name immediately, although I suspect that we all append "Of Mars" at the end. John Carter - Virginian gentleman, Civil War veteran, Indian fighter, apparently immortal warrior, and eventual Warlord of Mars* - was the creation of Edgar Rice Burroughs, who is far better known for his ape-man hero Tarzan of the Apes. John Carter's core story is laid out in the three-book series A Princess of Mars, The Gods of Mars, and The Warlord of Mars, but his Martian adventures ended up spanning 11 books (the last of which was finished by Burroughs' son and published posthumously) dealing with every possible form of derring-do on the surface of Mars, or Barsoom as its inhabitants call it.

Although John Carter is initially introduced as an immortal who has no knowledge of his long-forgotten origins, the first book places him in post-Civil War Virginia, from whence a penniless ex-Captain Carter of the Confederate Army heads West to make his fortune. After his mining partner has a fatal encounter with Apaches, Carter takes a wrong turn while trying to escape the same fate, and ends up in a mysterious cave at the top of a mountain. From there, he is transported to Mars by a means which is never fully explained, and which, frankly, is completely irrelevant once Burroughs has gotten his character to where he really wants him to be: the arid sands of Barsoom, a dying planet where every man - or Martian - is in a perpetual state of warfare for the dwindling resources that remain.

Burroughs' Barsoom is an astonishingly rich creation, if not necessarily a plausible one. Starting with the six-limbed tusked green Martians who initially discover Carter upon his arrival, Burroughs fills Barsoom with multi-legged riding thoats, the lion-like banthas, savage fanged calots that serve as watchdogs, giant white apes, flying warships, ruined cities, vast wastelands, deadly swamps, and a veritable rainbow of Martian races:  green, red, white, black and yellow. However, all of this is merely background for the romance between John Carter and the incomparable Dejah Thoris, the titular princess of the first book, daughter of the Jed (or king) of the city-state of Helium.**

There's no claim of novelistic brilliance to be made for the Mars books in terms of plot and depth. The stories are unambiguous to the point of cliché: the heroes are uniformly brave, noble, and honourable, and the villains are unreservedly evil and cowardly. That being said, Burroughs wasn't trying to write War and Peace, he wanted to write tales of thrilling adventure, and his success is complete.

That complete success in defining a Mars of excitement, adventure and romance influenced an entire generation of writers, including Leigh Brackett and Ray Bradbury, and gave birth to a genre of interplanetary adventure fiction that was best represented by the pulp magazine Planet Stories, published from 1939 to 1955. Burroughs' work has continued to be an inspiration to innumerable authors and filmmakers over the years. George Lucas acknowledges his debt to Burroughs for Star Wars, as does James Cameron in the creation of Avatar, and the list of science fiction authors who pay tribute to Barsoom in one form or another is endless.

However, the task of visual adaptation has always evaded complete success in spite of frequent attempts. The six-limbed green Martians are described as ranging from ten to fifteen feet in height, and as such there are practical issues involved in having a six foot tall human interact with characters almost three times his height, and interpretations of the characters, architecture, weaponry and clothing have met with mixed responses.

A Princess of Mars first saw publication in 1912 as a six-part series in All Story Magazine, starting in the February issue, so in a way you could consider the current Disney attempt to be a celebration of the character's centennial - a point which has gone completely unremarked upon in promo for the movie. In fact, I'm a bit worried about the manner in which this historic landmark in the genre of science fiction is being marketed. Why has the Walt Disney company removed the movie so far from its iconic origins? Logic would suggest that if you've got the rights to a series with a massive historical geek following, you'd want to chase that leverage as much as possible.

Instead, it's as if Walt Disney has made a deliberate effort to divorce the movie from its origins by choosing to just use John Carter as the title, and I have to wonder if it indicates lack of confidence in their treatment of the source material.  Would you rush out to see Heathcliff Earnshaw?  Perhaps not - but if I told you that Wuthering Heights was coming to the big screen, I'd probably have a better chance of getting your attention, purely and simply due to the reputation attached to that title. It has to be a bad sign if Disney isn't willing to use the same approach with John Carter and A Princess of Mars.

- Sid

* Well, not all of Mars, to be really honest about it, mostly the city-state of Helium and its allies, plus the Thark tribe of the green Martians - for example, I'm pretty sure that the guys in Dusar never get on board - but let's not pick nits.  After all, a hero is a bit lost without some villains to fight.

** One feels a bit for Dejah Thoris after a while - she seems to spend the entire series being kidnapped, held captive, menaced, threatened, imprisoned, chained, and otherwise abused.  It's surprising that she and John Carter find the time to raise a family.

With no offense to any of the Canadian ladies in my life.

The Doctor: Amy, this is - well - she's my TARDIS - except she's a woman. She's a woman, and she's my TARDIS.
Amy: She's the TARDIS?
The Doctor: And she's a woman. She's a woman and she's the TARDIS.
Amy: Did you wish really hard?
The Doctor: Shut up - not like that.
Idris/TARDIS: Hello…I'm…Sexy.
The Doctor: Ooooo - still shut up.

The Doctor's Wife, Doctor Who

(For those of you who don't know what a TARDIS is - yes, hello, Laurie, how are things -  please visit Wikipedia.   Actually, if you don't already know what a TARDIS is, just skip this post.)
 
Well, I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is that I've found the perfect woman. The bad news is that she lives in Germany, and I have no faith in long distance relationships.

If you'd like a more complete explanation as to why I fell in love with this chicken-loving German schoolteacher, please visit the following YouTube link:

I built a TARDIS

- Sid

"My father's car was science fiction."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Sid

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

Form Follows Function.

"No flames, no fins, no rockets."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Sid

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Regards,
Allen

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

- Sid

Sic itur ad astra.

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

-Virgin Galactic brochure.

"Now that's cool!"

Glen Williams

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

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

* * *

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

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

Welcome to space travel, Virgin Galactic style.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now that would be cool.

- Sid

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

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

Is there anybody out there?

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

Ursula K. LeGuin, Nine Lives

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

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

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

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

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

- Sid