Star Trek

I just saw the new Star Trek last weekend and thought it was pretty decent. I liked the special effects a good amount. I have never seen anything else Star Trek related, but wanted to know what Star Trek fans thought of the movie?

Confirmation

Just to be sure, the syllabus says our final papers are due on Friday (exam week friday). However, for some reason I have the strongest feeling that they were due exam week wednesday. So, just to be sure, are we following the syllabus for paper due date or was the date changed?

A legit post: Kubrick fans unite!

Okay, here is something I'm not confused about. While doing research for my final paper, I came across a really good Stanley Kubrick website. It's called the Kubrick Corner. All fans of Stan the Man should check it out.

Do we have posts this week?

Again, I am confused. I don't see any posts. Do we have any this week? What's going on?!

Class today?

Do we have class today? I checked the syllabus, and it said that we do. Although I thought we were just watching Dr. Who or something, and the syllabus said something different. I'm so confused.

Online evaluation form

Thanks to the five of you who already have filed an online evaluation form for our class, for a 42 percent response rate, five out of 12. (I can't see who the evaluators are, nor the evals themselves, only the response rate.)

I'd like the response rate to approach 100 percent, as I would love to encourage the university to keep doing evals this way. Online evals are more efficient and environmentally friendly, and how they work this semester in the test classes (including ours) will help determine whether the program expands in future semesters.

So when you get a chance, do that by the deadline of Friday, Dec. 4, please. I've appended the university how-to boilerplate below. I'll remind you of this when I see you in person Wednesday, Dec. 2. I look forward to it. Happy Thanksgiving.

==

PLEASE SHARE THE FOLLOWING WITH YOUR STUDENTS
This course will be using a new online system for collecting the end-of-semester Student Opinions of Instruction questionnaires instead of in-class paper forms. Your response is very important and is used to assess curricular and instructional quality, as well as to identify opportunities for improvement. Your responses are confidential; only a summary of all student responses without individual identifiers will be provided to me and college administrators.

The new online system enables you to:

complete the questionnaire anytime, anywhere, at your own pace allowing for more thoughtful and constructive responses; and

save and return later, as well as review and edit completed questionnaires prior to the end of the collection period.

Beginning November 15, 2009, most Student Opinions of Instruction questionnaires will be available. The questionnaires for Nursing courses will be available on November 22, 2009. You may access them in either of two ways:

Login to myBama then select the Student Opinions of Instruction channel on either the Academics or Student tabs. Once in the system, you will see a list of courses you are being asked to evaluate.

An email invitation and up to 2 reminders will include a link to the online system; reminders will only be sent to those who have not submitted all questionnaires.

Meow

IBM has designed a supercomputer that accurately replicates the cerebral cortex of a cat...onward to Skynet!

article here

paper topic

ehhh.. I forgot to post a new topic instead of commenting thrice

My topic concerns the thesis for The Baum Plan for Financial Independence (novel, not short story)

I don't know what the thesis of the novel is. However, I know it specifically identifies two things: the constructed nature of gender and the human desire to tap into an infinite resource.

If anyone has some ideas as to what the thesis might be, please post for discussion.

Paper Topic

I am really struggling trying to find a good topic for our paper. Right now I am leaning towards apocalypses and peoples' reaction to them

My paper topic

For my second SF paper, I want to examine the integration of renewable energy sources or devices in SF stories. I can examine the fundamental theories the authors used to come up with these new SF idea, and also what are the fallacies in the plans right now that keeps each idea as a SF idea and not viable in the real world.

Some of the SF ideas I was considering to use are the Zero Point Energy concept in River of Gods and the Faulelt Engine in Powerless. I am also considering looking at the fabrikator in Kiosk and the QSNA in The Juniper Tree.

What do y'all think? Are these SF ideas we have read about good ideas to write about? Is there any better examples out there, especially in the Lunar Quartet we read?

And now for something completely different...

Kidding, just another paper topic idea.

I was considering doing a paper on the roles of children within science fiction. It seems as if children usually fill some sort of mystical, supernatural, or super human role within science fiction stories, such as Ender in Ender's Game and the Brahmins in River of Gods, and I think it be interesting to examine different instances of this phenomenon as well as why it exists.

Thoughts? Questions? Concerns?

Potential paper topic

It's pretty simple. I think I'll just do a paper comparing and contrasting the roles technology plays in WALL-E and Stanley Kubrick's 2001. I think I mentioned this some time a while back, and I still like the idea. Any thoughts/ suggestions for things you think I should mention?

My Potential Topic

There were several topics that I kept toying with in my head, but the one that I can't seem to stray from is the exploration of how the future is imagined in science fiction. I'm thinking about looking at science fiction from the past and seeing how wrong or right they were about today's setting, as well as what perhaps motivated them in making that prediction. I would also look at today's science fiction (using the material from class) and compare/contrast its depiction with past science fiction. And finally, I might try to imagine how the genre will evolve in the years coming concerning its depiction of the future.

Thoughts? Opinions? I'm not in love with it, but I've just had a hard time wrapping my head around anything else about which I could write 2000 words.

A bunch of random stuff

Firstly, I almost forgot to post this week. Remembered at the last minute. =)

Secondly, I think I'd like to write my paper using Kessel's Stories for Men and/or Sunlight or Rock. I've got a few different ideas but most likely it'll center on Erno (just because his character fascinated me)

Thirdly, in my Anthropology class today, we talked about the third gendered( as in neither male nor female) caste group in India (known as the Hijra). Reminded me of the Nutes in River of Gods.

And Lastly, Does anyone else notice that the more advanced a group (mostly an alien group if you're watching scifi) is, the more arrogant they are? Seriously, I always find it frustrating to hear some advanced alien say "But that's impossible" You'd think they'd be advanced enough to think outside the box. Apparently it's hard to advance beyond arrogance.

Paper Topic

I think I'm going to write my paper on how the title "Pride and Prometheus" relates to the story. I'm going to focus on the story of Prometheus, how pride affected the characters and their decisions, and similarities between this story and "Pride and Prejudice". It sounds odd, I know, but they have some similar elements to them.

As far as a paper goes...

I'm heading in a direction where I believe I'd like to explore the possibility that "artificial intelligence" is the next evolutionary step of for humans and what that would mean for our suddenly obsolete species. What would happen if we really did reach the singularity? If A.I. is alive and cognizant wouldn't it act in the way any living thing would and fight tooth an nail to preserve its existence and propagate its species? I know I would....

Paper Topics

Ok, so what I am currently batting around are a couple ideas. Neither are fully furnished yet.

1) Comparison of humans vs robots vs androids and the blurry line that exists between them. Also maybe analyzing/looking at why this line exists primarily due to human fear of being bested/defeated

2) Human fear driving sci-fi. Many stories in SciFi are crafted out of the things humans fear. Supreme aliens with exceptionally better technology coming and destroying us all and/or conquering the world; the world being destroyed by some event (like an asteroid); human technology getting out of hand and thus destroying us all (robots, AI, weapons, etc).

I just woke up with this one this morning, so it is really uncrafted and unfinished.

Anyone got some comments or ideas for either of these?

Potential Paper Topic

I was thinking about writing about Kessel's three lunar stories about the Utopian/dystopian feminist colonies. I guess analyzing them from a feminist perspective, any thoughts?

Not too late to start watching Fringe

Tonight at 7 eastern time Fringe returns to Fox. Awesome SF show that is worth a viewing.

Together At Last! Dinocroc Vs. Supergator!

I thought this was too hilarious not to post Click here

Digital Cloud Could Be London's Next Monument

Thought this was pretty interesting

Digital Cloud

Paper topics...?

So, I am totally unsure of what I want to write about, anyone overflowing with ideas want to share or anyone else with me on being totally unsure about anything to write about?

Paper Topic- John Shults

Hey professor Duncan I hope you feel better. I tried to e-mail you a last weekend but maybe I sent it to the wrong e-mail address?

Anyway I was thinking about writing my paper on the messiah figures in the Yiddish Policemen's Union, The Matrix Trilogy, and the Bible. In YPU, the messiah figure gives his life to expose a zionist plot. In the Matrix Neo gives his life to save the human race and dies. Jesus gives his life for the human race and is raised to life again. What do you guys think?

Class canceled today

Folks, I have been laid low with the flu, and while I'm better than I was, I would have neither voice nor energy for our class this afternoon, so I'm canceling it. We'll finish our conversation about River of Gods here on the blog. We also can be talking here about paper topics, because next week's class meeting, Nov. 18, will be devoted to discussion of those. Thanks, all.

Names

I was looking up some of the names from River of Gods, and discovered that some of them refer to cities in India.

Ajmer Rao- Ajmer is a city in the Ajmer district of Rajasthan
Shaheen Badoor Khan- Shaheen is a middle eastern name that means peregrine falcon, Badoor is a village in the Kasaragod district of Kerala, India, and Khan is many things. It is an old, central asian title for a sovereign or military ruler. It is also a river in Namibia.

Soundtrack

Has anyone had a chance to listen to some of the soundtrack Ian McDonald gives on page 597 whilst reading River of Gods? I think I'm the newest fan of Asian Dub Foundation...

What the heck's a Boltzmon?!

SPOILERS!!!






At the end Lisa Durnau comes to the realization that the Tabernacle was actually a Boltzmon left behind from the singularity created by the Generation Three aeai at the Ray Power building (probably the most convoluted sentence I've written on this blog). Anyways, here's what the heck a Boltzmon is:

http://s23.org/wiki/Boltzmon

I'm not even gonna try the HTML encoding thing. The risk of epic fail is too high.

The year is After Colony 195

I'm not sure if we're going to talk about it in class or not, but on our syllabus it says we're suppose to read "Sanjeev and Robotwallah" in Year's Best.

This story has a lot of anime references so I was wondering if anyone else watches anime.(If not, then you should.)

I wonder if any particular anime influenced this story or if it was just anime in general. (Personally, I saw a lot of Gundam Wing in this story, but that's just me.)

Messiah Complex

Did anyone else think it was more than coincidental that the girl died in the end in order to resolve all, or at least most, of the problems in the story?

I'm not sure if it's really relevant or if it's just my imagination getting the best of me.

Baum Plan short story

Socialism will eventually become a practical reality if humans can keep capitalism from destroying itself.

The Baum Plan did not introduce this idea to me, it just presented the result: people walk in and get their own custom "look," like the way characters dress themselves in The Matrix. This got me thinking about the inflated price behind the "thousands of dollars in casual clothes" that the protagonist was wearing. The real value of those items is in the idea and the rarity; introduce 3-D printers, and designs/ideas become currency of the world as manual labor is increasingly taken over by increasingly efficient mechanical processes--i'd say taken over by machines, but that implies that a robot will cut your yard rather than a scientist engineering grass that does not need to be cut or cared for. The more inventions we have that remove the need for repeated service (who is going to figure out how to make my hair stay at the same length and remove the need for barbers?) the more people are freed to participate in the world of ideas rather than the world of services.

But, we've already seen some real problems with people trying to keep "intellectual copyrights" even on things like music, and that battle is continually being lost. Instead, musicians tour and make money by actually being musicians rather than selling an item. So, does the creation and execution of an idea become a service? Will the people behind the construction of a house (an architect, contractors, roofers, lumber suppliers, hardware suppliers, etc) eventually be removed so that the only person between a consumer and his house is an architect with a mechanism that makes his blueprint a reality?

With efficiency like that, society will put further and further emphasis on education... to what result is my question? Will it result in a world in which money's relevance drastically changes, where material goods are no longer valuable? Value will always remain, but how will it manifest if not in the form of greenbacks or goods?

If socialism is "collective ownership and regulation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange for the common benefit of all members of society," then it makes sense that society becomes much more socialistic when money is devalued.

Hemispheric Dominance

Last week in Downtown, we discussed some left brain/right brain differences and how they applied to the story. I highly recommend taking this test

http://www.wherecreativitygoestoschool.com/vancouver/left_right/rb_test.htm

it's an online test, but it gives a detailed analysis of different brain processes and which ones are controlled by which hemisphere. The randomness of jazz and the intuition required of religion are right brain processes as the test results will show you. Language and memorization are mostly in the left brain.

I'm 70% right brained with random processing as just under 70% dominant as my most dominant process, so if my comments seem nonsensical in class, it could be a result of some strange free association going on =)

V

Has anyone seen the pilot for this show. I missed it and was wondering if it was worth watching.

Between Worlds

So there is this quote in the book that I really liked. It's when Shaheen Badoor Khan observes Parvati at a dinner party and thinks "Between worlds. Neither one nor the other. That is the worst place to be."

It wasn't until I finished reading the book that I realized how this quote could also be applied to other characters in this book. Especially Aj. Except that I didn't think she had a problem being between the two worlds. I wonder if it's significant that when she is killed, she is actually fully human. Fully part of one world.

Or maybe the fact that she was killed by humans for being different is what makes it "the worst place to be".

Water Shortage

In River of Gods, one of the problems India is facing is a shortage of water. There is also a water shortage today in India, though it is not as severe. Instead of just melting glaciers, farmers in India are creating glaciers and melting them.

Anyone want a glacier? They only cost $50,000.

A previous thought recalled: Man vs. Machine

A very central theme I noticed in this book is one that I had raised previously when we were reading short stories and discussing paper 1 topics.

What separates man from machine. And not even necessarily in the way previously discussed of turning man into machine. But just the two as separate beings.

One can speak that "living" things can evolve and change over time. But robots/AI are even better. They can travel at the speed of light (since all that they are is a program which is just bits of data that travels at the speed of light all the time). they can evolve instantly, unlike "living" things that take thousands to millions of years to see any changes.

Aeai or robots or whatever your AI source could evolve instantly in two ways. One, literal, way is that it literally would rewrite its coding by downloading it to a computer and change it like humans change code, making changes, updates, fixes, etc and then upload that new code to itself. Similarly, it could build itself a new shel and jump to that shell. Instant physical evolution. By this method, robots could then have progeny, of sorts, that are mixes of its makers.

The second, more complex way, is that it could update its own coding on the go, which is somewhat more difficult since you cant change something that is in use, at least as of this time.

And so, what separates them from us as far as beings are considered?

This book made me think back on these issues and thoughts. What do you all think?

The Age of Spiritual Machines

Here's a link to the Wikipedia article on Ray Kurzweil's "The Age of Spiritual Machines". It lists some of the predictions he makes in the novel, such as when they begin to copy themselves or take/pass/fail the Turing Test... He seems like he's got a point when he says that non-biological intelligence will continue to grow exponentially whereas biological intelligence is effectively fixed.

Accelerated Age of SF

I strolled across this review of River of Gods that was pretty interesting. The article takes a look at how SF has entered into a so called "Accelerated Age" since 9/11. The article also gives a little more insight into the process that Ian McDonald goes through when writting his novels.

Everything you could ever want to know about Turing Tests

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-test/>

Hopefully I got the link right. This might be handy sometime to someone. Also, if you happen to be an aeai, you can attempt to pass one of these, and illustrate your sentience (or not, if you live in a country that enforces Hamilton Laws).

List of characters

Hey all, just thought it might be nifty to have a list of characters and a brief blurb of what it is they're doing in the novel. Luckily, wikipedia did my work for me. I don't claim any credit for this, but I'll certainly take it advantage of it. Hope it's mildly useful for everyone.

• Mr. Nandha is a Krishna Cop whose job it is to excommunicate rogue aeais. Parvati is his wife trying to cope with boredom at home and high society class dynamics.
• Vishram Ray is an aspiring stand-up comedian who finds himself controlling his father's energy giant Ray Power, after his sudden retirement into sanyas.
• Tal is a beautiful nute working as a set designer for India's most ubiquitous tivi soapi - Town & Country, watched by millions.
• Shaheen Badoor Khan is a powerful civil servant, and direct secretary to the Prime Minister Sajida Rana.
• Shiv and Yogendra are small-time hoodlums caught up in the larger flow of events.
• Najia Askarzadah is a Swedish-Afghan reporter who ambitiously jumps into the civil war brewing in the subcontinent.
• Lisa Durnau is a physicist who has been sent to an asteroid by the US government, to see what's inside the alien artifact.
• Thomas Lull is an AI genius living in exile in India, hiding away his past.
• Ajmer Rao is a mystical girl who can see into people's futures, she's looking for her biological parents.

So after writing my first paper, reading RIVER OF GODS, and reading other short stories in this class, I have pondered immensely over the possibility of advanced artificial intelligence having a strong presence in our society in the future. If someone would have asked me a few years ago how I felt about such a possibility, I probably would have been all for it. But as I have increasingly thought about it I have become unsettled with the idea of nuts and bolts having sentience while humans become seemingly obsolete.

Therefore, I think that if artificial intelligence does progress to the point at which robots may pass the Turing Test, there should be some sort of law such as the Hamilton Act. What do yall think? Are you comfortable having sentient robots running around with the same freedoms as yourselves, or would you like some measures in place to keep them in check?

River of Gods: Nutes

The nutes seem to be an interesting aspect of humanity that I guess evolved from the overpopulation issue and as humanity's solution of escaping the desires of the body. Yet Tai seems unable to resist his previous gender/ current nute attraction to Khan, and that makes me wonder whether the nutes themselves are truly sex-less or asexual or what?

River of Gods- technological and cultural dualism

The existance of ancient religions and customs along with artificial inteligence is very interesting. I can't imagine the caste system still in place in india 37 years from now. Especially with the addition of an AI caste.
I also think of our society and dualism. Countries such as China are certainly technologically dual. They have grass hut villages just outside of super advanced cities like beijing. What aspects of the U.S. are dualistic?

Downtown

Downtown is about a man that goes to a place called Downtown. He brings a talking Duck with him, who obviously gets on his nerves. While downtown he spends about 2 days making "various transactions" which involve having sex and discharging charges. In the end of the story he finds out that the Duck is actually a girl. The story does not really explain itself and leaves alot to interpretation from the reader.

Red Phone

The Read Phone is about s sex hotline with a man named Edwin Perskey. A woman on one end of the phone relays a message to a person who relays it to a rep of Edwin's, who relays it to Edwin. During this relay the reps change the messages and compete to have the better response.

I was pretty surprised by the level of detail they went into during this story.

The Last American

The Last American was an interesting look at the life of Andrew Steele and his wide ranging influence he has on the world. Kessel uses Steele's life to show a glimpse into the next century to see what life would be like. If the next century is anything like Kessel's projections than it will definitely not be boring. Multiple natural disasters, world wars, plagues that wipe out three quarters of the world, and the integration of technology into humanity. It is quite a lot to happen in the next century.

Where's the sci-fi in "Snake Girl"?

...I really couldn't find any. Does anyone have any ideas?

Space Travel at a Price

In this scifi show I'm watching, there is a species of aliens that is really advanced but doesn't have the power to travel through space. Instead, they agree to became the pilot of a ship (btw the ships are alive) in order to see the stars. As a result, they only live about a third of their normal live spans (because they die when the ship does) and have to be completely subservient to the other people on the ship. Also, I'm pretty sure they can never go back home or leave the ship at all. It's a lot to give up, but many members of the planet are willing to become pilots.

I'm not sure if I would want to give up so much for what seems like so little a gain. Maybe if I had more control, then I would do it even if it meant I would die sooner and that I could never come home. I just don't think I would want other people to have such control over me as the pilot does in the show.

So what would be an acceptable price to pay to travel amoungst the stars? What would you be willing to give up?

Downtown...???

This quite frankly is one of the most confusing stories I've yet read in my entire life. Although, after reading it a third time. I think it can have a little sense made out of it. Then again... perhaps it is just so crazy that you can make almost any point out of it, kinda like prophecies which are so vague that you can apply them to some situation that happens. I digress...

What I could get out of it is that it would appear Kessell is satirizing the internet and people's addiction to it. How everything now is based on charge which must then mean everything is electronic. For example, in today's society, people hate their jobs but love returning home to see their facebook, their tv, their video games, browse the web, youtube, etc. This is similar, but to a crazy whacked out extent.

As to the characters... I dunno, I couldnt make heads or tails (pun not intended) out of them.

Edit: Actually after reading it a fourth time (I know, it seems im obsessed, but cant help it as it is like a mystery needing to be solved). It makes me think of a video game. And the characters in it are characters in a game. I had this thought when I re-read "weekend skin". And a "skin" is a term for the physical look of something you see in a game, the picture if you will.

Anyone else have any opinions on this story?

The Red Phone

Has anyone else read the transcripts online where a guy (or girl I guess) under the username of bloodninja attempts to cyber with girls as he assumes absolutely ridiculous fantasy roles? I can't help but feel that Kessel might have been partly inspired by them while writing this story. One of the transcripts can be found here. I debated about how appropriate it would be to post it, but I figure it isn't any worse than anything we have read.

Little Brother now an impossibility

I know Little Brother was all about the meaning behind the story. But, at least now it is impossible for it to happen exactly as it did in Little Brother. With the Bay Bridge and all.

Bay Bridge Closed Indefinently

The Invisble Empire

What do you guys think Kessel was referring to with the title Invisible Empire? I've got my own thoughts, but I don't want to prematurely move the discussion in one way or the other.

Also, how do you guys (and girls, all these damn Kessel stories are making me more aware of the terminology I use) feel about what the women did in the story? Do you think they were morally justified? Was their "end" justifiable, but not the means they went about to achieve it?

Pride and Prometheus

I really enjoyed this story; it was one of my favorites. One of the interesting things about this story is the title, and how it relates to the characters. Prometheus was a titan in Greek mythology, and he gave fire to the mortals. Having fire allowed them to stay warm during the winter and cook food to eat. In a way, it gave them life, just as Victor gave life to his monster.

Both Victor and Prometheus were punished for what they did. Zeus decided Prometheus's punishment. He was tied to a huge rock while an eagle ate his liver; the next day, his liver would grow back, and the eagle would come back. Victor's punishment was determined by his creation and his own fear.

It's All True

This story contains time traveling again for a pseudo historical/movie marketing motive. The narrator Det travels back in time to try and convince Orson Welles to return to the future to complete his unfinished flicks and possibly create new ones. Of course Welles turns down his offer, and the funny thing is Welles suggests that Det remain in the past and with his knowledge of the future they could become millionaires--this kind of reminded me of "Back to the Future". and like Welles, Det declines and it makes me wonder why both men--seemingly so familiar and unfamiliar in so many aspects--would turn down the offer of rewriting history and gaining fame and fortune?

Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

This passage from "Powerless" brings to mind the logical fallacies that many of us often engage in in our wrestling with the goings on of the world around us:

"The relationship between power and knowledge, Focault tells us, is also an important one. A major source of power comes from claims of knowledge. To claim that a statement is true is to make a claim to power. Criminology, for example, can make claims that exclude the delinquent by creating theories of human behavior that place the delinquent outside of 'established norms.' From this derives a system of power relations in which the delinquent is dominated.
The other Focault, the pendulum one, who fortunately died long before the later Focault was born, and was therefore blissfully ignorant of his theories, did not believe that truth was a matter of power relationships. Truth, for him, stood outside the constructions of human minds. Focault's pendulum did not work because he had established a theoretical system that accounted for it, and that excluded systems in which it did not work. It worked because the Earth rotated, and would rotate whether or not human theoretical structures defined such rotation as 'normal.'"

The seems to be a sort of an take on the human limitations of logical reasoning. In particular it belies the glaring assumption that we even posses the ability to use reason and logic in a rational, accurate, and truthful manner. But then again, what is truth, you know? I'm no philosopher so I don't know if this fits exactly, but I am reminded of "post hoc ergo propter hoc" which according to Wikipedia is "Latin for 'after this, therefore because (on account) of this', and is a logical fallacy (of the questionable cause variety) which states, 'Since that event followed this one, that event must have been caused by this one.' It is often shortened to simply post hoc and is also sometimes referred to as false cause, coincidental correlation or correlation not causation. It is subtly different from the fallacy cum hoc ergo propter hoc, in which the chronological ordering of a correlation is insignificant."

"Post hoc is a particularly tempting error because temporal sequence appears to be integral to causality. The fallacy lies in coming to a conclusion based solely on the order of events, rather than taking into account other factors that might rule out the connection. Most familiarly, many superstitious religious beliefs and magical thinking arise from this fallacy."

So, how much of our lives is dictated by assumptions of truth? Maybe a measure of faith (not necessarily religious) is an absolute necessity in order to function in this reality...who knows. Even if you did know, Lord knows you couldn't prove it to be true, or does He?

Lunar Orgies

http://infoweb.newsbank.com/iw-search/we/Evans/?p_product=EVAN&p_theme=eai&p_nbid=M5BN50QFMTI1NjE1NDA3MS4zOTYyNToxOjE1OjEzMC4xNjAuMjIzLjI0OQ&p_action=doc&p_docnum=1&p_queryname=2&p_docref=v2:0F2B1FCB879B099B@EVAN-0F2F828ADFB2A3A8@44638-@1

That link, which I have failed to properly embed, is the account of a French Hot Air Balloon Expedition that took to Frenchmen to the moon where they encountered strange people and cultures. I thought it would be particularly relevant to the Juniper Tree reading.

Stories For Men

Out of this week's reading, this one gets the Huff award. I really enjoyed Erno's quest to discover his true sexual identity and liked his change from docile, bored manchild to becoming a kinda manly dude, smacking women in the face for questioning his philosophy (not that i promote domestic violence.)


I actually liked this story and The Juniper Tree enough to mark pages and quotes in my book, which i admit i should probably do more. I'll bring em up during class.

What is fiction for men? For women?

This was a passing question posed in Stories for Men, one which I found very interesting. What do you guys think? What constitutes fiction for men, or for women? Does such a thing really exist, and should such labels be applied?

Sex without meaning

As I read these stories, sex and love seemed to come up a fair amount. I couldnt help but think (and notice on occassion) that the lack of value or meaning to sex would cause society to turn into a dystopia of sorts.

Perhaps it is not a big enough problem to cause a collapse of society, but I certainly wouldnt want to live in a society without love. What makes love with a partner different from any other close relationship. Its the physical intimacy. If you take away that, then there is nothing special about anyone. There is no love. And without love, what is the point of doing anything? Also, without a loving household, children are statistically more likely to have problems themselves.

So, I dunno, I feel like society would be entirely hollowed out without the component of love.

Also... STD's would be rampant. And even with their nanobots, clearly retroviruses (like HIV for example) are still a problem and thus STDs would still be a problem.

Anyone else feel this way, or am I just too much of an idealist?

SF Openings

We have talked previously in class about how an effective introductory paragraph is crucial to SF short stories. I think that Kessel did a marvelous job with some of the openings to his stories. The one that particularly stood out to me was The Juniper Tree. It was the first story I read this week and it had me captivated from start to finish.

About which one was stronger Sunlight or rock

I really liked the Kessel stories. I especially love contrast between the social environment seen in "Stories for Men" and "Sunlight or Rock". With the Society of Cousins, Erno has no power or control but at least he can be recognized for his brilliance with the biotech stuff and has the basic necessities of life. When he is banished to a different colony, he is free from women's control (though he still has no control over anything) but his life sucks.

Would it have been better for him to die at the end of "Stories for Men" then have to continue on as he does in "Sunlight or Rock"? Would it have been better if he could have lived the rest of his life as a Cousin without Tyler's influence?

I really enjoyed this week's stories. I thought it was interesting to read four separate stories all set in the same world, and getting to hear different perspectives of that world.

My favorite story was The Juniper Tree. I like that it switched point-of-view during the story, so you could see how each character felt about the events in the story. It was kind of creepy for me that Eva could bring Carey back to life like that. I know why she did it, but it was weird. Was I the only one who thought Carey was going to come back wrong somehow? Like, it would still look like him, but his brain would be messed up or his personality would be different. I think I was expecting him to be zombie-like, for some reason.

Kessel's Stories

I thought the stories were good this week. I probably enjoyed "The Juniper Tree" the most, with "Stories for Men" coming in at a close second.

I was a little surprised at Roz's reaction when Eva decided to make a clone of Carey. I would not expect her to be so gung ho about the idea instantly. I also don't think I could ever replace a deceased family member or friend with a clone. A pet? Possibly. But regardless of whether or not the cloned human has the same memories and is ignorant as to what happened, it just wouldn't be the same.

Also, remember how I couldn't think of that certain literary device that started with an 'm' a few weeks ago? No? Well, it is called a MacGuffin, and you can read about it at Wikipedia here. I think I was wanting to use the term to describe the science fiction aspect in "Hellfire at Twilight."

John Kessel's Homepage

"Something further may follow of this masquerade."

Are we now post sci-fi?

I fount this article pretty interesting
Click Here

Lunar Tree

Was it just me or did anyone else get this creepy feeling of incest surrounding this story? I mean, the way that the every generation of a clan, along with their boyfriends or girlfriends, clustered together in one apartment complex and seemed to have no problem having intercourse with each other? Though on the other hand, it did kind of remind me of the type of universal, free love that Valentine advocated in "Stranger in a Strange Land".

John Kessel versus Margaret Atwood

Has anyone read The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood? The novel falls under the long tradition of alternate history near future dystopias and is kind of a product of the feminist movement of the seventies and eighties, but it deals with some of the same issues of gender and politics as Kessels "Lunar Quartet" in a very different way. On the one hand women are subjugated as handmaids in the patriarchal colony of Gilead and named depending on their husband/master (i.e. The handmaid of Fred would be Offred.) On the other hand women are masters of the lunar colony of Fowler and are carry the names of their mothers (i.e. The daughter of Inga's last name would be Ingasdaughter.) The dytopian novel and the lunar satire do some pretty heavy hitting, Entertainment Weekly called the "Lunar Quartet" a "sustained exploration of the ways gender dynamics can both empower and enslave us," but the same could be said for The Handmaid's Tale. I smell a paper topic....dibs.

I Love This Show Too Much

So, ultimately Futurama ended up in my time travel paper. I can't say that i'm surprised, but while i was writing about it, i noticed something funny. A single episode in the show, is the cause for EVERYTHING that happens in the show from the beginning to the end.

http://www.futurama-stream.com/season-4/episode-1-roswell-that-ends-well

If you're a fan of time travel stories like me, i think you'll like this, especially if you know the plot to the show. Hell, the episode got an Emmy, so you should like it anyway.

This one episode causes multiple types of paradoxes that all tie in to the plot: ontological paradoxes, grandfather paradoxes, and it explains the mysteries of Roswell at the same time.

Wall-E trivia

The imdb trivia page for Wall-E is interesting. Wall-E is apparently tied with Beauty and the Beast for the most Academy Award nominations for an animated film.

Linky: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0910970/trivia

Wall-e

Who else is pumped about seing Wall-e today.

Green

I know the while point of Wall-E is to promote recycling and raise awareness of capitalism's excessiveness. That's probably why I always feel so crappy after seeing the film and not actually going out there and planting a tree or turning off my lights in my dorm when I go to class. Does any one else feel that way?

Scifi Show

Has anyone seen/heard of Farscape? It this scifi show that began in the late nineties involving aliens and wormholes. It seems pretty cool from the little I've been able to watch. My best friend has talked me into watching it, and I was wondering if anyone else had an opinion on the series.

Reflections on Paper Writing

So, as I went about writing my paper, I at first started very very slow. I often times cursed and said "Why did I choose this topic!" and such things. However, as time went on and my paper lengthened, I began to enjoy it. And now I think it is one of my favorite papers I've ever written because of my topic on leadership, which I will mention was more complicated than my wildest dreams as it seemed pretty straight forward.

Anyone else have this kind of thing happen to them? Start off hating yourself and your choice and end up loving it?

Or maybe im just weird... *shrug*

Paper

Is the paper due when class starts, or at midnight on Wednesday?

Is WALL-E the opposite of 2001: A Space Odyssey?

Watching WALL-E I can't think about how much it is the exact opposite of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Obviously in WALL-E a machine redeems humanity, in 2001 a machine holds it back.

In WALL-E all of humanity returns to Earth, in 2001 one man leaves Earth behind forever.

I can't think of any other parallels of the top of my head, but I'm sure there's more. I just thought it was kind of interesting.

Interview with Andrew Stanton

Just thought this might be interesting, it's an old interview with Andrew Stanton, the director of WALL-E from the popular film blog slashfilm.

http://www.slashfilm.com/2008/06/27/interview-andrew-stanton/

WALL-E

Can someone clear this up for me:

Are we supposed to have watched the movie by tomorrow, and we will discuss in class? Or are we going to watch the movie in class and discuss along the way?

SF becomes a reality yet again...

I know its not carbon nano-tubes a la Kiosk, but being able to craft a specific human bone from stem cells is really exciting: Jaw Bone

Matthew's Paper Topic

So basically what I've been working with since our last class is a paper on the progression of the criticism of censorship in science fiction. In particular I chose to look at Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 and Cory Doctorow's Little Brother as sort of a point of comparison/contrast. Its provided an interesting look at how technology can at once be a captivating and liberating force in society. What impresses me is how both novels make the assertion that if we stop puling the wool over our own eyes and wake up to our reality and our capabilities, then we are essentially masters of our own future...

Time Travel

What is everyones favorite depiction of time travel in a work of science fiction?

Twilight Zone in 10 minutes

Some guy made a youtube video of 156 twighlight episodes in 10 minutes. This must have taken so long

Here

Crazy Canadians

I was doing some research for my paper about RFID readers and I ran across this story about a Canadian who implanted a chip with a RFID tag so that he can open his front door without a key and automatically log on his computer! That is so cool because it could definitely be useful, but a little scary that he just put a chip inside of him. It's like the prelude to tagging everyone for identification purposes.

Alternate Paper Topic

I've been going over it in my head over the past week, and i think i might give up on the Time Travel topic because it's just gotten too complicated and jumbled me to figure out how to write it.

I'm thinking since I really enjoyed the short story "Of Love and Other Monsters" that we read a few weeks ago, i'd like to do a paper on Psychics, Espers, Telepaths, etc. since i've always found it to be one of science fiction's coolest abilities/advancements or whatever.

I'm thinking i'd try to build off of what the short story did, and write the paper on something like how psychic-type characters are viewed by their specific worlds and how they tend to view the world and the personality quirks that arise from that (i.e. the main character of Of Love and Other Monsters' falling in love with a person regardless of their physical form)

Anyone got any input? Jeez, i already feel better about this idea after looking at what i typed.

Origins of Sci-Fi Poll

I'm doing this poll because I'm writing this paper about detection and am trying to detect the origins of science fiction. I was was just wondering what people considered the very first work of science fiction.

Steam punk images.

If anyone's a huge steampunk fan, here are some of the coolest SP gadgets I've ever seen. Wouldn't it be cool if the next Ironman movie was entirely SPed?

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/wp-content/uploads/steampunk-ironman.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/20080613/the-10-coolest-steampunk-gadgets-ever/&usg=__5gstIcWmIApUSBrgi1b7bDfLIm8=&h=546&w=377&sz=36&hl=en&start=11&sig2=BJ7tYaExlYsQ8dLrC2XWQA&um=1&tbnid=M09wy7f-YHqVAM:&tbnh=133&tbnw=92&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dsteampunk%26hl%3Den%26rlz%3D1C1RNZF_enUS326US326%26sa%3DX%26um%3D1&ei=zabLSuH7FYG4lAeV-oHKBQ

Paper Idea

Hey, has anyone ever read Philip K. Dick's works?

Steampunk Swag

In relation to our discussion about the steampunk subgenre last week, here are some quite beautiful and intricate homemade steampunk items. http://www.datamancer.net/vonslattkeyboard/vonslattkeyboard.htm

Surrogates

Did anyone else see Surrogates this week? I saw it on Friday. I thought it was really good, and left me thinking about how something like that would affect the world. For those who haven't seen it, the surrogates are robots that you can control with your thoughts. The owner sits at home hooked up to a machine and thinks about what he wants to do, and the robot does it.

I can see how useful that technology would be. If you sent them into war instead of real people, no soldier would ever die. People with disabilities would have a chance to live a normal life. It would take the danger out of everything. But would it be as fun? It's not really living if all you're doing is sitting in a chair thinking about it. Would societies still advance if everyone was using a robot to live for them?

Do we need posts this week?

I totally forgot about the blog until basically about now because this week has been pretty crazy. In any case, I came to do my posts and found that no one else has made a new post either. So I was just wondering if we need posts this week even though we haven't read anything?

Androids, Cyborgs, and Robots

After reading "Hellfire at Twilight", I got curious as to the difference between the definition of a cyborg and an android. So a cyborg, according to wikipedia, is "an organism with both artificial and natural parts" and an android is a robot that's suppose to look and act like a human.

I was wondering if the lines between these categories could ever become a bit blurry. Can the robot in "Tideline" be considered an android because of her ability to express human-like emotions even though she doesn't look like a human? Or is she just a robot with empathetic abilities? Does any combination of amounts of human or artificial parts make one a cyborg? Can a cyborg be a robot that has a human part (like the heart or brain or something) integrated into its circuitry?

Anyone have any ideas because robotics is not my specialty.

Narrative style in "The Skysailor's Tale"

My favourite aspect of this particular piece is that it is a personal story that the narrator is passing along to his son. Yes, the narrator goes on quite a fantastic voyage and sees wondrous sights, but the primary theme of the story is not the journey, but the relationship between father and son.

Hellfire at Twilight

I will leave most of this for class. However, it is a story of a time traveling business that creates cyborgs from lost/abandoned children to research, find, and conserve ancient pieces of literature.

It was an ok story, but lacked a lot of "action" so for its length was somewhat boring, but still it was not a bad story over all.

However, It also was, to some degree, confusing for me, and I would dare say confusing for a lot of others as I did not see mention of it at all on the blog (Edit: at the time of this writing, it appears I should have refreshed the page before posting).

I can see some of the issues at hand, such as cyborgs who know history through experience vs people who think they know history. And other such issues, but they were not very interesting issues in my opinion. I guess this story just isn't my thing.

In any case, this personally was not my favorite story this week. But it did appear to be more of a full story than some others we have read.

Time out of Joint

It seems like in a lot of the stories we've read, the main character has been placed in a position from which they experience time much differently than how we do in our everyday lives. I'm not necessarily talking about time travel either. For example:

In Hellfire the cyborgs assume a very detached view of history. They are so far ahead of many of the times they are investigated, everything and everyone assumes a role as some sort of primary or secondary document for investigation. It begs the question, can anyone be anything more than a "cyborg" who merely records and processes information when viewing a point in time that exists beyond their own? At what point in history does someone else's life become just "history", and our capacity to truly empathize with them become deficient?

The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate, and Against the Current offered what I found to more proscriptive than descriptive views of time. As in, how should we move on in the face of an uncertain future, or past? How should we view time in a way that we can move on past the mistakes we've made, and not become too attached to the successes we've enjoyed?

Finally, other stories like the Sledge-maker's Daughter gave me a reverse of the Hellfire story in terms of how it made me look a time. Instead of becoming a detached observer, it made me wonder to what extent are we mythicizing and aggrandizing a past or future that we are only vaguely familiar with. To what extent is this okay, and at what point do we need to take a step back and observe with a fresh outlook the historical evidence present to us.

I'm sure there are plenty of other examples, I'm just putting this out in the ether. Peace.

Very Strange Dream

Here's a dream I had that can only have come from science fiction.

One dream was about New Year's day, and how the world seemed to be coming to an end. It was apparent that this happened every year. There were thick clouds on teh ground obscuring views to the right and left and directly overhead. If you could look out ahead, and sort of 'under' the clouds above you, you could see a fast aurora borealis that looked like liquid tubes of flourescent xenon gas whipping back and forth and around and through one another. Then it was dark and clear and the sky passed overhead as though the earth were spinning very quickly. Travelling on the inside surface of the sky were bright, colorful, teaming shapes that transformed into alien ships (only once or twice in a form recognizablle to humans, i just 'knew' that they were alien ships or maybe the aliens were the ships). Sometimes there were ships and sometimes just exclusively aesthetic displays of colour and energy: red, blue, green, yellow, purple, and some in-between color mixes. The way the figures were passing overhead was as if they were telling a story of their civilization; the displays were not aliens, but a sort of light show that aliens sent to appear in our sky for each new year to tell us that they existed. Different civilizations told different stories. Apparently, this has always happened, and I had just discovered how to see it. At the end (I don't remember the specific ending) there was more light from more directions than that for which the sun could be responsible, and the air seemed to be saturated beyond capacity with light.

This is similar to The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, as well as Dave Bowman's experience in 'Beyond the Infinite' more so in the book (2001: A Space Odyssey) rather than the movie.

Any ideas about this or reactions to it?

Hellfire

Hellfire at twighlight was a very fun and captivating story. It was my favorite of this book. It had an interesting mix of futuristic cyborgs, 18th century england, and roman mythology. With an interesting mix of sexual tension maybe? That was kind of an interesting touch but i guess you have to have that if you are talking about roman mythology. I kind of wish they had a little bit more cyborg in the story than they did. It was a fun asect of the story and I wish they had more since this is a true scify. I think the premise of the story was more scify than the actual aspects in it. Very enjoyable.

"Of Love and Other Monsters"

I loved this story. I enjoyed seeing a world through a protagonist's eyes who, instead of being attracted to physical beauty, is attracted to a person's mind, thoughts, and intelligence. And while that does seem ideal, I am not sure I would prefer it that way. I wouldn't want to know what everyone was thinking at all times because the truth really can hurt. It would be very difficult to maintain a relationship.

The story also reminded me of HBO's True Blood. Sookie Stackhouse, a telepath, has a difficult time being in crowds because she can hear each individual thought. I can imagine how hard it would be to find silence and solitude living in a world like that.

However, there was one thing I would have liked further explained (or maybe I just missed it?), and that was the fact that some humans were "blanks." What makes their brainwaves so different? Maybe they are a different species of people altogether?

Live Glocally

Here is a side project that Bruce Sterling was a part of called The Viridian Design Movement. This movement was about creating a more green approach to futuristic design. This side project, which he worked on from about 1999 to 2008, looks very design oriented and probably one of his inspirations for Borislav's fabrikator in Kiosk.

"The Skysailor's Tale"

I had the final voyage of this unfortunate dirigible running through my mind pretty much the entire time I was reading "The Skysailor's Tale." The Hindenburg Disaster

Also, I was reminded of probably the most epic use of helium known to man: Joe Kittinger's magnificent leap of faith: 22 up, 22 down

I found an interview with Vandana Singh, author of "Of Love and Other Monsters". She doesn't talk about that story specifically, but she talks about what influences how and what she writes.

The interview is here: http://www.ideomancer.com/main/vol6issue4/interview/one.html.

And Now for Something Completely Different

Because I'm slightly bored with commenting on the stories we're reading (and because I still have to finish reading them for tomorrow), I wanted to start a random, though still related, topic to discus:

If there was an option, should we, people of earth, encourage contact with an (intelligent) alien races?

I imagine that trying to communicate with another race would be extremely difficult anyway. Also, a human would probably find it really easy to offend an alien (just think of all the "weird" customs we have on earth, most of which differ greatly for different cultures) without meaning to. One scifi show (Babylon 5) involved a war between humans and another race that was all started because of a misunderstanding. An alien race approached earth with their spaceship's gunports open., which to them was a sign of respect, but was considered a sign of attack to the humans who then fired first. Earth was almost wiped out by the alien race.

On the other hand, talking to another race has endless possibilities for scientific advances. Not to mention the implications of finding intelligent life (religious ramifications being just one thing that comes to mind). Also, people are just plain curious. It would be facinating to compare and contract the two races from completely different part of space.



Personally, I think it'd be cool but that might not be the smartest choice.

The Skysailor's Tale

I enjoyed reading this story. It is about a man passing on his life lessons to his son. He begins talking about going to his father's grave and then starts talking about an airship called the Empire that he worked on. We are taken from the wharfs of Philadelphia, to an airship, to the Aztec empire in Mexico. This story is an alternate-history story, taking place after the Revolutionary War.

The narrator tells the story in pieces, skipping between the timeline of his life. It was interesting to be aboard a British airship in one paragraph and the next be back at home with narrator, telling his son to keep the fire burning. The story being told boils down to one thing: love. It is a love story told in the most roundabout way.

Happy Birthday HG Wells

Today is HG Well's birthday. Apparently the alien themes that google has had for the past few weeks are to pay respects to Wells. Google Doodle Mystery Solved: Happy Birthday, H.G. Wells

Of Love and Other Monsters

It seems kind of an odd title considering the dearth of monsters--unless you count the humans who torched the aliens upon landing or the one who got away and was killing humans. Kind of reminded me of X-Files where the Syndicate, or rebel aliens, torched the "raliens" upon landing a part of an interstellar war. But overall, this is my favorite story for this week because of the new origins given to humans and the possibility that aliens could be among us but they blend in so well we can't tell--or perhaps we ourselves are part alien but don't realize it.

Mamet and Chabon

This Stuart Klawans essay on writer-director David Mamet's 1991 movie Homicide -- about a dogged Jewish police detective investigating a murder that leads to a Jewish secret society -- of course made me think of The Yiddish Policemen's Union, and made me wonder whether Michael Chabon has seen it.

2012 Trailer

The new movie about the end of the world. Hopefully we have a little more time on Earth.

http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1912472089/

The Mists of Time

I'm glad I picked this story based on it's name because it did not dissapoint me. It's basically about a man tracing his ancestral roots back to a British Navy captain responsible for battling slavetraders. But the catch is that he (and a female camerawoman) are watching the event that made his ancestor famous via a time machine for the sake of capturing the truth of the event for historians of the future to see.

I'm amazed to see a story combining 2 of my favorite things: naval combat and time travel. The clash between the slavers and the Navy was so epic that it was easy for me to forget this was a sci-fi short story in the first place. Now that I think about it, this story goes a step further than Against the Current did in terms of 'fulfilling time travel fantasies' for me. I can honestly say that i would sign up to be a Chrononaut without much hesitation.

Stray

Stray is a story about an immortal man named Ivanthat starts a new life with a woman named Muriel. While trying to live his new life he is haunted by flashbacks from his old life where he took advantage of people and eventually slauhtered them. He constantly makes refrences to his abilities that he is seeming to lose. He takes to the form of a black man in his new society and only his wife Muriel knows what he truly is. One day he encounters a white girl praying, so he takes the form of a white man to find out what she is praying about. He learns that she is a soon to be orphan. As he is talking to her his friend walks up and he is forces to go back to his black form. When he does this the girl freaks out and Ivan offers to take her in. When he brings her home, Muriel freaks out saying that people will not accept this. Eventually Ivan tells the girl she must go home and the story ends with her standing abandoned by god.

A.I.

I found this relevant to some of our AI encounters...

http://xkcd.com/632/

Time Travel

We've read two stories about time travel so far; here is a look by the folks at How Stuff Works on the subject.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/time-travel.htm

9

It appears that we are running into apocalyptic SF stories everywhere lately. I read a review about the new Tim Burton animated movie 9, now in theaters, and it looks pretty interesting. It already has 7.3 out of 10 stars on IMDB. Has anyone had a chance to go see this movie yet?

Roxie: A true story?

The whole story is about a potential looming doom which we find ourselves in the midst of in real life:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942_Apophis

99942 Apophis (pronounced /əˈpɒfɪs/, previously known by its provisional designation 2004 MN4) is a near-Earth asteroid that caused a brief period of concern in December 2004 because initial observations indicated a small probability (up to 2.7%) that it would strike the Earth in 2029. Additional observations provided improved predictions that eliminated the possibility of an impact on Earth or the Moon in 2029. However, a possibility remains that during the 2029 close encounter with Earth, Apophis would pass through a gravitational keyhole, a precise region in space no more than about 600 meters across, that would set up a future impact on April 13, 2036. This possibility kept the asteroid at Level 1 on the Torino impact hazard scale until August 2006. It broke the record for the highest level on the Torino Scale, being, for only a short time, a level 4, before it was lowered.[5]

Additional observations of the trajectory of Apophis revealed the keyhole would likely be missed and on August 5, 2006 Apophis was lowered to a Level 0 on the Torino Scale. As of April 16, 2008, the impact probability for April 13, 2036, is calculated as 1 in 45,000.

The close approach in 2029 will substantially alter the object's orbit, making predictions uncertain without more data.

...

NASA initially estimated the energy that Apophis would have released if it struck Earth as the equivalent of 1,480 megatons of TNT. A later, more refined NASA estimate was 880 megatons.[2] The impacts which created the Barringer Crater or caused the Tunguska event are estimated to be in the 3–10 megaton range[16] The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa was the equivalent of roughly 200 megatons.

Explanation of those events:
Krakatoa was a gigantic volcanic eruption, The barringer crater is a 1500m wide crater caused by a 50m rock 50000 years ago. It was at its max, 148 times weaker in energy and the rock is 7 times smaller. So, in the case that size is linear to crater size (which I doubt and expect it to be more likely exponential of some sort) we are talking about a crater 7 times bigger, or 10500m wide which is about 35000 ft, or basically 7 miles wide. Sounds like a party to me.

We see how in this story, how in a short 5 year period or so, the odds went from 1:6000 to 1:9. This is a factor of about (oh this is good, just calculated it and) 666 times greater likelihood. If we apply that to today's REAL chance. 1:45000 goes to 1:67. Would you risk ~10 million lives from initial impact + however many more from the winter that follows on a 1 in 67 chance? Thats a 1.49% chance. Sure, you may say thats low, but is it low enough to risk these kinds of things?

And the most painful thing is that you know an object 1500 ft across is hurdling towards earth and we have no idea if it will make impact until it passes under our satellites in 2029 and we see how our gravity changes it.

But as far as the story itself goes, I thought this story brilliant and creative with serious modern day links and problems. How did it end? Who knows, it doesnt say. It ends before the asteroid hit or misses. Which I personally was dissatisfied with.

"Laws of Survival"

"Laws of Survival" is probably my favorite story for this week, although it may be tied with "Roxie." I couldn't help but think of what would happen if I were put in that position, having to train dogs or be killed. I have had dogs of all sorts since I was a child and haven't succeeded in getting any of them to obey me.

Does anyone know what the grubs were? What was their purpose?

I also find it very funny that advanced life forms came to earth, and the only thing they found worthwhile to take back with them were dogs.

And on a final note: I'm not sure how well I believe that the protagonist was able to "forget" or mentally block-out her past, even having a child! I understand that she might lose touch with humanity slightly, but that seemed a little far fetched. But I guess it may just be one of things you can't understand until you're in that position.

Interesting Star Wars video

So I'm sitting here, not feeling too well (hopefully just a cold, probably shouldn't be up this late as is), and in my stupor I stumble across this funny little clip on Collegehumor:
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1920944
(Yes, I realize I didn't embed the link correctly. My bad :O)


It's a bunch of Stormtroopers looking back on the day that the Deathstar was destroyed. You'll probably find out what they're alluding to very soon upon watching this, if you haven't already. Anyways, I just thought it was a neat video in that it was using all of the sci-fi conventions of Star Wars as an allegory for an actual historical event.

This is something we haven't really touched on as much, how can one use sci-fi for humor? What sort of sci-fi tropes yield themselves as tools for satire, and what are some good examples?

Anyways, I'm off to bed, hopefully these nanomachines in my system will defeat whatever ails me.

Déjà vu

I was walking through the quad earlier today and I had a serious case of déjà vu. Obviously there is a glitch in the Matrix.

Second Set of Short Stories

So I didn't care for this set of short stories as much as I did the last set.

"Laws of Survival" was just weird. I still can't seem to grasp why aliens would travel so far and not be able to properly communicate with humans (or the dogs if that's who they wanted). It seemed completely unrealistic to me.

"Craters" was depressing,but it was interesting to see how technology can cause problems in the future rather than making solving them.

"Roxie" was kind of boring to me. It was very plausible, but I just didn't care that much for it.

"Stray" was cool but confused me a little. I still don't understand fully what Ivan was. Was he an alien, an advance human, a god ? I kind of assume alien, but I'm not sure if it actually says or even really implies that anywhere in the story.

I actually liked "The Mists of Time". It's cool to see future tech being used to visit the past. Plus, I loved the science references to things like Schrodinger's cat.

Favorite Story

What was everyone's favorite story this time? My favorite is "The Mists of Time". I enjoyed reading the different points-of-view of the event. It made the battle feel more real because there was more than one opinion of it. I also liked how it showed how subjective history is. Any 3 people can see the same event happen, and view it in 3 completely different ways.

I liked all of the main characters, except for Giva. She was annoying. But I'm pretty sure she was supposed to be irritating, because that's what Emory thought of her, and we only heard about her through his point-of-view.

Loosely Science Fiction

Another blogger suggested that Craters was "loosely science fiction." I think maybe this story was the wild card of getting into the years best science fiction. I felt that the story went no where. A sad tale of a future where a reporter is investigating the use of state required microchips in children to turn them into unwilling suicide bombs. I just felt like the story ended without accomplishing anything or going anywhere. It was like one of those "Lost" episodes somewhere in the third season that has nothing to do with the plot of the story and is just a random snapshot of life on a strange island. I appologize for such a strange analogies. I kind of feel like Dwight Schrute now. This story was just a small snapshot of the future the author created. I felt like it was a valid idea that needed just a little more meat to it.

Thoughts On Roxie

Though the idea of a major, devastating collision with a comet or asteroid is a real and disquieting possibility, I find a danger located right in our own proverbial back yard to be just as if not more fearsome: The Yellowstone Supervolcano.

Craters

Did anyone else get a chilling wind blow upon their necks as they read this story? It's scary in that it could be happening now and we have no idea it is. Yet at the same time, the heavy reliance on the current political/ideological situation makes this story seem less science-fiction oriented than the others.

Laws of Survival

This tale set in the future, pretty near in fact, after a suppsed World War III devastated the entire world and left people living in trash pits. Only a handful of cities remain, like Raleigh, and some army posts who do nothing to aid the people. Aliens descend, build domes that are mysterious and impervious. The narrator, Jill a vetern surviver, found out that the robot spheres in the dome wanted dogs in exchange for food. One day, Jill mouthed off too much and gets abducted into the dome to train the dogs--apparently, the reason the aliens came to Earth was to obtain canines who they viewed as the perfect, loyal symbiote to fuse with. Along the way, Jill remembered life before the war, her son, and embraced her humanity again--which she had shut off in order to endure--as she connected with the dogs she trained. When the army blew up a dome with nukes, the aliens leave and Jill goes along because there was nothing left for her on Earth.

I really liked this story because I liked how the narrator was such a tough survivor--how many people would have the balls to bargain for food with dogs?--even though she got mushy in the end and changed her 5th Law of Survival to "Take a chance--love everything." That seemed kind of a slip in character. I mean, sure she regained her ability to love the dogs, but was still willing to abandon Earth and any chance of finding her son again. Also, I loved the whole idea of a permanent partnership with a dog--partly because I'm such huge dog lover--but also because it highlighted the whole point of human existence: finding someone who will always be there for you. It was kind of ironic that aliens were also searching for the same thing and that it seemed to only exist on Earth.

Sea Change

Sea change is about two rich girls that get in trouble while cutting class. The school concludes that it is possible that they were not attending any of the classes they were getting credit for, so they had to re-take every class over the summer. The majority of the story focuses on a girl named Em. At summer school she learns just how fortunate she is while talking with her tutor who has to spend a very long time paying off debts from school. Em's friend Callie does not appreciate her luck, and instead makes fun of the tutor for her lack of financial success. This story did not seem to have too many elements of science fiction compared to the others I read, but I enjoyed it none the less.

Lighting Out

Lighting Out is a bizarre little story set in a future where humans have discovered how to download copies of their consciousnesses into computers, new bodies, or any other conceivable medium. In the narrative, these "partials" as they're called begin copying themselves and taking over the space station where the story primarily takes place.

While I did not care particularly for the story, It does raise several interesting philosophical questions.

For one, if we ever gain the technological abilities portrayed in Lighting Out, should the partials created have the same rights as naturally born humans? In the work, Constance alludes to philosophers (both natural human and partial) who have decided that partials should be "deleted" as soon as their functions have been served. However, I don't know that I could personally justify killing a living, thinking being, even if it is only a copy of another.

Furthermore, what if we can download and transfer our consciousnesses, but only to machines? Should these machines have rights as sentient beings, even though they're not alive?

Against The Current

Out of all of the short stories we read for this week, Against The Current caught my attention the most. Ever since I read this story, i've imagined what it would be like to go through that in my own hometown of Birmingham. I've lived in the same neighborhood all my life and would relish the chance to watch my life on rewind. After that, i'd like to see how the American Revolution played out, and from there just travel the world searching for the most interesting events of those days. Maybe go to Africa and see some old-school voodoo rituals or something after that, haha.

Anyone else got some sort of time travel fantasy or some period they would love to go back and see?

Against The Current

I really enjoyed reading this story, and it got me thinking about what I would do if I was in his situation.

Spoilers below!

How would you deal with traveling backwards in time uncontrollably? I don't think I would be as calm about it as he was, or as accepting. It would be so upsetting and depressing to know that you would never see your family and friends again, that nothing would ever be the same. I would be freaking out, not just going for a drive.

His reactions in the beginning and middle parts of the story were much more understandable. His confusion when things just don't seem right, and his fear when he realizes what is actually going on is exactly what I would feel. As is his hopelessness when he finally understands that he can't do anything to stop this backwards progression. It's the acceptance that bothers me, because I don't think I could ever just accept that I couldn't do anything. How do you just accept that your life is over, and nothing will ever be the same, and there's not a damn thing you can do to stop it?

Last Contact: Science + Fiction

I know it isn't my story to discuss in class, but Last Contact struck me as being kind of weird. I personally really liked the story as it seemed like a plausible end. However, the thing that struck me as total BS in the story was what it takes part of its name from.

All of the alien contacts we just suddenly start receiving. What was it, like 5 a day? 5 a week? I forget. But irregardless, that is a huge number, even at 5 a week. 5 entire civilizations of unknown origin and location suddenly flood in every week. Other intelligent beings exist somewhere (it is mathematically impossible that they do not).

However, they are not close enough to send us a message because other creatures are most likely just as curious as we are and would have already tried finding other's around them. Because great discovery only comes from great curiosity. So an advanced civilization must also have an advanced curiosity.

And even if they sent a dying message as their sole message. This big rip seems to shred everything. So their message (which is comprised of energy aka electrons) would have been shredded in the process as well...

Some Thoughts I'm Currently Having

I am surprised at how much I am enjoying some of these stories. I just finished reading "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate", and I was constantly trying to make everything make sense in my head. Time travel has always baffled me as I honestly don't see how it can work. I sort of got a sense of how it may occur in my philosophy class, but I personally just don't see it happening.

"Last Contact" was enjoyable but depressing. I am not a big fan of "end of the world" scenarios, but the story was told well and I took interest in the characters. I do like that the mother continued as if nothing was going to happen. I don't think that I would be that strong-willed.

"Tideline" was great. I often wonder if robotics could become so advanced that humans could interact with them on an emotional level. Of course, this raises many other questions, but I think I could see it happening as it did in the movie Bicentennial Man.

"The Sledge-Maker's Daughter" is the story I chose to discuss tomorrow, and I found it interesting. I'm not quite sure what to make of the story aspect of it, because to be honest, I'm not sure what I think of the plot or story. But I do like how the author created a world in which technology that is common to us (iron roads, flying devices, winking bridges, etc.) could be seen as mythical in a post-war or post-apocalyptic society. I guess the story just sort of left me hanging, wanting more.

I'll reserve some of my other comments for tomorrow's class. Otherwise, I may be barren of anything to say.

Last Contact

Here's an article from Newscientist that expands a little on the science behind Baxter's short story:

"Phantom menace' may rip up cosmos

• 19:00 05 March 2003 by Marcus Chown

Stand by for a nightmare end to the Universe - a runaway expansion so violent that galaxies, planets and even atomic nuclei are literally ripped apart. The scenario could play out as soon as 22 billion years from now.

"Until now we thought the Universe would either re-collapse to a big crunch or expand forever to a state of infinite dilution," says Robert Caldwell of Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. "Now we've come up with a third possibility - the 'big rip'."

Whether the big rip happens or not depends on the nature of the mysterious dark energy that is pulling the Universe apart. We know that the expansion of the Universe is speeding up, but most physicists assume the acceleration is likely to stay constant or get weaker over time.

But Caldwell takes a different view. He thinks the dark energy causing the expansion could be growing more powerful. "We call it phantom energy," he says. "It's pretty weird stuff."

Shrink to a point

Under the influence of phantom energy, the runaway expansion of the Universe would become ever more violent, stretching more and more of the Universe further and further away until the light from the stars cannot reach us.

"Every observer sees the visible Universe around them shrink ever faster, eventually down to a point," says Caldwell. For all practical purposes, the Universe will have ended.

The existence of phantom energy has always been a possibility - even if a pretty unlikely one. But astronomers have tried and failed to rule it out. In particular, detailed measurements released in February of background radiation left over from the early Universe leave the door open.

Now, in a paper submitted to Physical Review, Caldwell and his colleagues at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena have calculated how phantom energy would bring the Universe to an end. They found that as the phantom energy grows, its repulsive force becomes strong enough to rip all bound systems apart, starting with galaxy clusters and rapidly moving down the scale to galaxies, stars, planets and atoms.

Caldwell says he was surprised by the violence of the Universe's end - the received wisdom was that an ever-expanding Universe should end with a whimper. "In the last moments, even atomic nuclei will be ripped apart," he says.

Final millisecond

In the most extreme scenario, the big rip will happen 22 billion years from now, with the Milky Way destroyed 60 million years before the end and atoms torn to pieces in the final 10^-19 seconds (see graphic).

"If humanoids survive, they could observe all but the final millisecond," adds England's Astronomer Royal Martin Rees, who has also considered the possibility of phantom energy. "That's when the cosmic repulsion gets up to the tensile strength of our bodies and tears us apart. It's unlikely, but it can't be proved impossible."

Astronomers' best bet for working out which fate is in store for the Universe is the Supernova/Acceleration Probe (SNAP), a satellite proposed for launch later this decade. SNAP will make detailed measurements of thousands of supernovae, to pin down exactly how fast they are moving away from us and hopefully work out how dark energy is changing over time.

Most physicists probably will not be rooting for phantom energy. That is because if it exists, it will cause them all kinds of theoretical headaches. For example, Einstein's theory of gravity predicts the existence of minuscule wormholes - short cuts through space-time.

Normally they snap shut so fast we never notice them. But phantom energy's repulsive gravity would be powerful enough to hold wormholes open, and perhaps even push them wide enough apart for spacecraft to use them for faster-than-light travel. "This raises the spectre of time machines and all their paradoxes, which physicists find very uncomfortable," says Caldwell."

Ted Chiang Interview

After reading The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate by Ted Chiang I wanted to find out more about the author. Here is an interview with Chiang after writing this novella that won him a Hugo Award.

The Short Story > The Rest of Literature

"NOVEL, n. A short story padded. A species of composition bearing the same relation to literature that the panorama bears to art. As it is too long to be read at a sitting the impressions made by its successive parts are successively effaced, as in the panorama. Unity, totality of effect, is impossible; for besides the few pages last read all that is carried in mind is the mere plot of what has gone before. To the romance the novel is what photography is to painting. Its distinguishing principle, probability, corresponds to the literal actuality of the photograph and puts it distinctly into the category of reporting; whereas the free wing of the romancer enables him to mount to such altitudes of imagination as he may be fitted to attain; and the first three essentials of the literary art are imagination, imagination and imagination. The art of writing novels, such as it was, is long dead everywhere except in Russia, where it is new. Peace to its ashes -- some of which have a large sale." -Ambrose Bierce

Saving Tiamaat

I can see from some posts that some people are confused about this story. I am too, which is slightly concerning considering that I am supposed to lead discussion about it. I guess a good thing to ask would be, what threw you guys off in the story, what was particularly confusing about it?

I also guess that a good plot synopsis would be in order, so that we don't spend all our time in class trying to figure out what happened...
SPOILERS AHOY!!

Basically, what I understood from the story was that Debra and her friend Pele work as some sort of ambassadors for a NATO type organization based on some sort of space station called Speranza. Some time ago (I forget the exact date) the native planet of the Ki An was discovered through interspace travel that operates on some level that is faster than the speed of light.

Upon reaching this planet it was discovered that the An, although basically the same in genetic makeup to the Ki, were cannibalizing their brethren and generally just being very domineering meanies to them. In typical Western good guy fashion, the government extension for the Blue Planet (presumably Earth) supplied weapons to the Ki, helping them in leading an uprising against the An. This insurrection failed, resulting in a diaspora of the Ki, and a very big mess in general.

In present day, our good friend Debra and her friends at Speranza are holding a peace agreement between the Ki and the An to welcome them into their federation. Debra and her friend Pele are assigned to chaperon Baal, leader of the An, and Tiamaat, leader of the Ki, during their stay. Debra and Pele lead the two to some sort of sacred memorial ground, at which Baal kills and begins to eat a Ki, who was spouting some protest against the An.

This does not go over well, but does not really derail any of the proceedings, as it was generally assumed that Baal would kill and eat the Ki, as that's just what An do. Unnerved by Baal, Debra decides to go off and spend some time with Tiamaat. During their time together, Debra begins to get a better feel for Tiamaat's character, and of her ingrained suppression resulting from a lifelong struggle with the predatory An.

Debra meets back up with Baal, and decides to take him out to an asteroid on the outskirts of the Speranza space station. Here she lures Baal to some type of virtual reality space pod, in which she shows him his home planet, and promises him of its return to peace. Following this, Debra detaches Baal's pod from her own, leaving him stranded in space to die.

Debra wakes up some time later, and learns that her assassination of Baal went as planned. Most people in the Ki An delegation are pleased at Baal's demise, and any dissenters are two tied up with jumping through bureaucratic loop holes to make their voices really count. Tiamaat is appointed the sole leader of the new Ki An delegation, and during a ritualized cerremony, she cannibalizes a Ki. This illustrates to Debra that it was not necessarily the Ki An dichotomy the dictated their predator-prey relationship, but rather one of the powerful against the powerless. Debra returns to her room to relax at the behest of Pele, wondering if she has indeed done the right thing.

I hope that this is mostly correct, and is useful in clearing up the plot. As for any sort of deeper discussion, I guess we can save that for class.

Wednesday's short-story signups

Here's who's starting the conversation about what on Wednesday, assuming my notes are correct. You're also welcome to start the conversation here on the blog. Thanks, all.

MacLeod, "Lighting Out": Ian King

Jones, "Saving Tiamaat": Alan Lazer

Van Pelt, "Of Late I Dreamt of Venus": Drew Hoover

McCormack, "Sea Change": Petrina Kelly

Silverberg, "Against the Current": Jennifer Gunter

Chiang, "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate": Kenneth Mahan

Baxter, "Last Contact": Matthew Bush

Reynolds, "The Sledge-Maker's Daughter": Eric McHargue

Bear, "Tideline": Ken Geller

Venus +

Wow, it's pretty rare to see a female protagonist in a sci-fi tale who manages to remain feminine but still manage to exert as dominant a presence as a male.

Favorite Short Story (so far)

I was just wondering what other people's favorite short story was and why.

I haven't read all of them yet, but my favorite so far is "Last Contact". I like how it used current scientific knowledge (like dark matter causing the expansion in the universe) and showed what I like is a realistic view of how people would react to the world ending. Also, it was a little easier to follow than some, like "Saving Tiamaat" and "Lighting Out".

Saving Tiamaat?

What did I just read? I have no idea?

This story just went waay over my head. I think that this kind of "super sf" is just a little out of my league. I think the author used too many strange names and future universes for me to keep it all straight. I felt like I had not the slightest concept of the plot until about half way through the story when I barely picked up on the plot. Until then I felt like I was just reading a random collection of strange words in unconnecting paragraphs. Maybe thats just my undeveloped palate for Science Fiction. I think I will be working on that for a while.

After I picked up on what was going on I found the plot to be fairly typical with strange things added in to make it look a-typical. Maybe I was just too frustrated by not understanding it to give an objective review of the piece. Overall I would, with all due respect, give it half a star out of 60.

Currently listening to Alexi Murdoch "All of My Days"

SIAP Coen Brothers to direct Yiddish Policemen's Union Movie

I thought that this is pretty cool. They should do an excellent job
Movie

Non-Human Science Fiction

This is a response to an earlier thread that became its own entity, so I'm posting it as a new post. The original idea was: are humans capable of writing non-human science fiction? That is, fiction from a non-human perspective (even if it is written in a human language) about non-human things. Because that's really hard to argue for or against, I'd like to raise the following questions: Do distinctly non-human ideas occur in science fiction? Can humans conceive of an alien life form that is not heavily painted by terrestrial experience?

Here's the post:

In order for a non-human story to be told, it would need to be told from a non-human perspective (the adventures of Arthur Dent and Kilgore Trout would sometimes qualify as being about non-humans, yet they are seen through a distinctly human lens).

Writing non-human science fiction (provided your definition includes fiction that humans write about non-anthropomorphic, non-humans) isn't such a difficult goal if you assume that all life in the universe originates the same way and in the same basic forms that terrestrial life originates. I don't think this is something wise to assume. How likely is it that the Earth variety of life is the most common way that life evolves in the universe? (I happen to believe in ETs) Therefore, writing about non-human life from the perspective of a non-human becomes especially difficult in the traditional SF realm of outer space.

Explaining things without using human terms and concepts is not something at which we are good because our language is so closely associated with the way our brains and civilization evolved. I would wager, then, that no science fiction exists that is not told from a mostly human perspective, whether or not it claims otherwise.

I'm interested, though, in who comes close to describing a form of life that is justified as plausible by the observable laws of the universe alone (rather than what humans perceive as life). I think that Arthur C Clarke does a pretty good job of writing about a non-human, non-anthropomorphic life form in 2001: A Space Odyssey. He never gives any substantial details about the extra-terrestrials, except that they 1) understand physics way better than we 2) are looking for other forms of life.

David Bowman is a sort of guest of the ETs, who have constructed a sort of trap to lure in forms of life and bring those critters closer for study. He sees part of their past and their progression into pure radiation in his journey. If you treat "life" as a peculiar circumstance for matter to find itself in, then it would make sense that eventually that circumstance finds a way to transcend its material into other things like electromagnetic radiation. I don't think this is an idea that is painted by human experience, rather it is a conclusion reached after studying the laws of the universe.

What does everyone else think? Are there other instances in which a distinctly non-human idea has been created in science fiction?