Tidbits IV.

Or maybe just cheaper than showing Armageddon.

Speaking of threatening meteors, I see that Space is showing Deep Impact today, which is either an astonishing coincidence or really responsive programming.

(And possibly in slightly bad taste under the circumstances, come to think of it.)


Obviously a science fiction fan in the wait staff.

The latest from the good people at Johnnie Fox's Irish Snug who previously used quantum physics to flog Guinness.


Not only that, but it's sold out.
I admit to having made my share of genre-related purchases.  I have a souvenir Doctor Who t-shirt from London, a variety of toy robots, a couple of animé action figures, and of course my slowly growing Major Matt Mason collection, but I'd like to think that I've kept it under control.

That being said, I can understand both the desire to build a perfect replica of the HAL 9000 interface from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the urge to own one.  But honestly, five hundred bucks?* 

I think that HAL himself says it best:  "I'm sorry, I can't do that, Dave."
 

Regardless, thanks for your support.
In September of 2012, I proudly reported that The Infinite Revolution was number 23,702,450 out of all the web sites in the world, which put me very close to the top ten percent.  Astonishingly, in the subsequent five month period, I've jumped to 12,745,249 - how is this possible?  Who are all these visitors, and why do they never leave any comments?  Damn it, speak up, people!

- Sid

* However, I'm not here to tell people how to live their lives.  Should this screen grab give you the desire to shout "Shut up and take my money" at the ThinkGeek orderbot, you can obtain your very own HAL 9000 here.

And why are they throwing them at Russia?

Sooner or later, it was bound to happen. On 30 June 1908, Moscow escaped destruction by three hours and four thousand kilometres - a margin invisibly small by the standards of the universe. Again, on 12 February 1947, yet another Russian city had a still narrower escape, when the second great meteorite of the twentieth century detonated less than four hundred kilometres from Vladivostok, with an explosion rivalling that of the newly invented uranium bomb.

In those days, there was nothing that men could do to protect themselves against the last random shots in the cosmic bombardment that had once scarred the face of the Moon. The meteorites of 1908 and 1947 had struck uninhabited wilderness; but by the end of the twenty-​first century, there was no region left on Earth that could be safely used for celestial target practice. The human race had spread from pole to pole. And so, inevitably...

At 09.46 GMT on the morning of 11 September, in the exceptionally beautiful summer of the year 2077, most of the inhabitants of Europe saw a dazzling fireball appear in the eastern sky. Within seconds it was brighter than the sun, and as it moved across the heavens - at first in utter silence - it left behind it a churning column of dust and smoke.

Somewhere above Austria it began to disintegrate, producing a series of concussions so violent that more than a million people had their hearing permanently damaged. They were the lucky ones.

Moving at fifty kilometres a second, a thousand tons of rock and metal impacted on the plains of northern Italy, destroying in a few flaming moments the labour of centuries. The cities of Padua and Verona were wiped from the face of the earth; and the last glories of Venice sank for ever beneath the sea as the waters of the Adriatic came thundering landwards after the hammer-​blow from space.

Six hundred thousand people died, and the total damage was more than a trillion dollars. But the loss to art, to history, to science - to the whole human race, for the rest of time - was beyond all computation. It was as if a great war had been fought and lost in a single morning; and few could draw much pleasure from the fact that, as the dust of destruction slowly settled, for months the whole world witnessed the most splendid dawns and sunsets since Krakatoa.

After the initial shock, mankind reacted with a determination and a unity that no earlier age could have shown. Such a disaster, it was realized, might not occur again for a thousand years - but it might occur tomorrow. And the next time, the consequences could be even worse.

Very well; there would be no next time.

A hundred years earlier a much poorer world, with far feebler resources, had squandered its wealth attempting to destroy weapons launched, suicidally, by mankind against itself. The effort had never been successful, but the skills acquired then had not been forgotten. Now they could be used for a far nobler purpose, and on an infinitely vaster stage. No meteorite large enough to cause catastrophe would ever again be allowed to breach the defences of Earth.

So began Project SPACEGUARD. Fifty years later - and in a way that none of its designers could ever have anticipated - it justified its existence.

Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke

At approximately 9:20 on Friday, a meteoroid exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk.  Estimates as to the object's exact size and weight vary - NASA's estimate is 17 meters in diameter and a weight of about ten metric tonnes.  Windows shattered,  buildings were damaged, and over a thousand people were injured, over one hundred of whom required hospitalization.

Coincidentally, the Chelyabinsk explosion took place sixteen hours before asteroid DA2012, 50 meters in diameter and 190,000 metric tonnes in weight, came within 27,000 kilometers of Earth, the closest recorded passage of an object of that size.  

I don't know who's tossing these things at us, but I have to think that eventually they're going to throw a strike.

- Sid

 

"I can put you back in the saddle...stand you up tall."

This blog posting is dedicated to Ted Vincent, who convinced his mother-in-law to watch Cowboys and Aliens in spite of her avowed dislike of both groups.

I've just finished reading a couple of Joe R. Lansdale stories, Dead in the West and Deadman's Road, both of which involve zombies in the post-Civil War West. Perhaps due to his Texas roots, Lansdale has always had a strong affinity for Western settings, albeit with unexpected and fantastic plotlines, as demonstrated in his work on Jonah Hex for DC Comics in the early 90s.

The interesting thing about these two weird Western tales is that there's no context for the characters to realize the nature of the peril they're facing.  Let's face it, if the media reported an outbreak of zombies tomorrow morning, a substantial percentage of the US population would smile happily, put an oversized clip into their AR-15, and go out into the streets to git some, as they say.  But in the West of the late 1800s, there's really no cultural basis for knowledge of the walking dead, and as such the characters are horrified and astonished to a much greater extent.

The movie Cowboys and Aliens offers a comparable scenario in terms of a situation where people are faced with an enemy with absolutely no precedent in their milieu.  As things stand right now, I suspect that virtually anyone in the world, upon seeing a bright ball of light descend from the sky, land in the back yard, and expel a couple of green fellows with big heads, would say, “Aha, aliens!”  Culturally speaking we’ve been preparing for this for years – in fact, I could probably write a reasonably plausible Men In Black subplot dealing with extraterrestrial Hollywood producers who have been funding movies with the purpose of preparing the general population to accept alien visitors more easily.

Cowboy and Aliens is oddly lacking in this area - it's surprising that there's an almost complete lack of speculation as to the origin of the titular creatures (the aliens, that is).  Other than someone asking the preacher if the invaders could be demons, there's no real curiousity about the origin of the giant fanged bullfrogs that are behind the problems.

Historically speaking, it's a very near thing.  A well read latter-days cowboy might be familiar with H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds, which first saw print in 1897, and it's Wells who first introduces the idea of extraterrestrial invaders to the cultural mindset.  But other than that possibility, the whole idea of aliens would have to be a mystery to the Texes and Hopalongs of the Wild West.

Regardless of the opinion of the cowboys, there's a very basic question left unanswered.  What would the aliens think of the whole "cowboys" idea? Depending on their cultural matrix, who knows what they might think was actually going on with the riders of the purple sage?

As usual, science fiction has already address this question, so I close with the following excerpt from The Secret, a story in the Retief of the CDT series by Keith Laumer.  Jame Retief, a member of the Corps Diplomatique Terrestrienne, is about to rescue a captured alien diplomat who is being tortured with Roy Rogers and Dale Evans movies.*

"Mr. Minister, the US cavalry has arrived.  Are you ready to go?

"Heck no, Retief, we're just getting to the good part, where Roy mounts his wench and rides off into the wasteland."

"I think maybe you've got Trigger and Dale confused, D'ong."

"I confess I pay little attention to names. But how I admire the savoir fair of the cowbeomen, who, in times of strife, think first of love.  Always they and their faithful mates couple joyously as they dash off across the plains, hero and villain alike!"

Remember that quote the next time you're watching a John Wayne movie and he tells everyone to mount up...

- Sid

Recommended Reading:
If you're interested in this particular sub-genre of science fiction, I strongly recommend David Drake's trio of Roman-meets-alien books - Killer, Legions of Bronze, and Birds of Prey.  Drake does a very good job of creating convincing scenarios in which the Romans come out on top against aliens who may have superior technology, but not superior determination and bravery.

* Hey, I don't write this stuff, I just reference it.