I wasn’t intending to post anything else this morning, but a headline over on BoingBoing caught my eye in a big way:
Ridley Scott to adapt Haldeman’s Forever War
Wow.
Just. Wow.
If you’re not familiar with this 1970s classic of science fiction, do yourself a favor and get a copy of the book and read it. The story is excellent, the message better, and the writing superb.
The Forever War – as envisioned by my favorite director? Wow.
From the Variety news item:
“I first pursued Forever War 25 years ago, and the book has only grown more timely and relevant since,” Scott told Daily Variety. “It’s a science-fiction epic, a bit of The Odyssey by way of Blade Runner, built upon a brilliant, disorienting premise.”
Book revolves around a soldier who battles an enemy in deep space for only a few months, only to return home to a planet he doesn’t recognize some 20 years later, Scott said.
The Forever War rights were acquired right after publication by f/x titan Richard Edlund, who spent $400,000 of his own money and intended to make the book his directorial debut. The book became an iconic sci-fi title but Edlund, who won two Oscars – including one for visual effects on “Raiders of the Lost Ark” – never got The Forever War off the ground. After a Sci Fi Channel miniseries stalled, Scott became interested again and Edlund was ready to make a deal. It took six months to secure all the rights.
A small bit of personal history -I had made the acquaintance of a president emeritus of my college after I had graduated in 1980, through a mutual friend. As we got to know one another, he started reading some of my early efforts at writing and was very encouraging. At one point he suggested that what I needed to do was to go to the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. “I’ll set it up with the Director,” he said. “He’s an old graduate school friend of mine. I’ll send him some of your stuff, then you go talk with him.”
I did. After pleasantries the Director looked at me and asked “why are you here?”
A bit of panic. “Well, I’d like to learn how to be a better writer.”
He picked up the file with the samples President Leggett had sent him. “But this is . . . science fiction.”
There was an unmistakeable taint to those last two words in his voice, though it was clear that he was attempting to mask his feelings, probably because of his relationship with his old friend.
“Well, yes.”
“I’m sorry. We don’t do science fiction.”
“But what about Kurt Vonnegut? Joe Haldeman?”
“Ah. Well, things didn’t work out that well with Joe.”
And like that, the interview was over. Oh, we chatted a bit more, and he made some additional pleasant noises, but the meeting was through. It would be a couple of years before I again thought about grad school and writing, and when I did so I did it coming from a slightly different direction – while working on a MA in English Literature, taking classes in the Workshop as I could. That was when I got some of the background: seems that Haldeman’s success with The Forever War had ruffled some feathers of those who considered science fiction to be sub-literary. Haldeman himself has had things to say about that. I had walked into a mine field, without knowing that it was there.
Ah well. And with that, I have to leave.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Blade Runner, Connections, General Musings, Health, movies, Philip K. Dick, Ridley Scott, Science Fiction, Survival, Writing stuff
As I mentioned the other day, I’ve been very busy getting ready for our trip to Patagonia, including some long hours to wrap up work for clients before I leave.
But I took some time out for a follow-up visit to my doctor. A good thing that I did.
* * * * * * *
As I sat waiting in the exam room for my doctor to come in, I looked around. All the usual stuff. But high up on top of a cabinet, only barely visible from where I sat on the exam table, was a wooden box. Some light-colored wood, perhaps pine or a light oak. It was a bit battered, but in decent shape, about the size of loaf of bread. Not one of those long loafs of sandwich bread – a short loaf, of something like rye or pumpernickel.
One the end of the box bore a large seal, the sort of thing which was popular in the late 19th century. Big outer ring, inner motif of a six-pointed star, cross-hatched on half of each star arm to indicate motion or something. Center of the star had three initials: JBL. Around the ring was more information: “TYRELLS HYGIENIC INST. NEW YORK CITY U.S.A. PATENT JANUARY, 1894 AUGUST, 1897 JUNE 1903.” Outside the ring, one in each upper corner, and one below in the center were three words: “JOY. BEAUTY. LIFE.”
You can get some idea of what this looked like from this image. So far, I have been unable to find an image online of the box I saw.
* * * * * * *
I’d gone in first part of the week to have blood drawn, for tests my doctor wanted to run. I still have the bruise where the aide who drew the blood went a bit too deep and punctured the back of my vein.
My doctor looked over the lab results, looked up at me. “Not too bad. LDL is a bit high, so is your HDL, which helps. Fasting blood sugar also a bit high, but not bad. I think we should give both of those a chance to settle out some more, as you continue to get diet and exercise back completely under your control. The rest all looks pretty good – liver & kidney function, et cetera. Nothing to be too worried about.”
She handed over the sheaf of papers to me. “But I want to do something more about your blood pressure. It is still dangerously high, though you seem to have made some real progress with the beta blocker.”
Yeah, I had – I’d been testing it. And it was down 50 points systolic, 20 points diastolic. About halfway to where it should be.
“Would you be willing to try something else? Another drug?”
Echo of the first conversation we had on the topic. “What did you have in mind?”
“Calcium channel blocker,” she said. “We could still increase the dosage of the beta blocker you’re taking, because you’re on the low end of that. But I would like to see how your system responds to this additional drug, also at a minimal dosage. Then we can tweak dosage levels, if we need to.”
Another good call. “Sure, let’s try it.”
* * * * * * *
My doctor returned with my prescriptions. “Do you have any other questions?”
I pointed at the box up on top of the cabinet. “What’s the story behind that?”
Caught off-guard, she looked at the box, confused.
“I mean, what was in there? Is there a particular reason you have it?”
“No, not really. Nothing’s in there. I just came across it at an antique shop some years ago.” She looked at me. “Why?”
“There was an author in the 60s & 70s who wrote a lot of stuff I like. Philip K. Dick. He had a lot of health issues, and I can imagine him sitting in a room not unlike this one, looking at some variation of a box like that.” I got down off the exam table. “One of his most important books was made into the movie Blade Runner in the early 1980s. In that movie one of the major characters goes by the name Tyrell, and he has a connection to . . . um, the medical industry. I just thought it an interesting coincidence.”
“Oh.” She was completely lost. I’ve worked with doctors enough to know that they do not like this feeling. “Well, we’ll see you after your trip, check out how the new meds are working, OK?”
“Sure.”
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Astronomy, Bad Astronomy, Google, Heinlein, Heinlein Centennial, Jeff Greason, movies, Paleo-Future, Peter Diamandis, Phil Plait, Predictions, Robert A. Heinlein, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Space, Space X, tech, TGV Rockets, XCOR
Last night I watched a movie made before I was born. By coincidence, the timing was perfectly in sync with the news yesterday.
* * * * * * *
Over a year ago, I wrote this, about Jeff Greason of XCOR Aerospace (one of the speakers at the Heinlein Centennial):
Yes, dependable reusable rockets is a critical first-step technology for getting into space. But as Greason says, he didn’t get interested in space because of chemical rockets – he got interested in chemical rockets because they could get him into space. For him, that has always been the goal, from the first time he read Rocket Ship Galileo by Robert Heinlein when he was about 10. It is somewhat interesting to note that similar to the setting and plot of the book, XCOR Aerospace is based on the edge of a military test range, using leased government buildings…
Anyway. Greason looked at the different possible technologies which might hold promise for getting us off this rock, and held a fascinating session at the Centennial discussing those exotic technologies. Simply, he came to the same conclusion many other very intelligent people have come to: that conventional chemical rockets are the best first stage tech. Sure, many other possible options are there, once the demand is in place to make it financially viable to exploit space on a large enough scale. But before you build an ‘interstate highway’, you need to have enough traffic to warrant it. As he said several times in the course of the weekend, “you don’t build a bridge to only meet the needs of those who are swimming the river…but you don’t build a bridge where no one is swimming the river, either.”
And this, in a piece about Pat Bahn of TGV Rockets:
And there was a lot of thought early in the development of rocketry that such capability could be used for postal delivery. It doesn’t sound economically feasible at this point, but there’s nothing to say that it might not become an attractive transportation option for such firms as UPS or FedEx if dependable services were provided by a TGV Rockets or some other company. In his juvenile novel Rocket Ship Galileo, Robert A. Heinlein had his characters adapt a retired “mail rocket” for their own spacecraft, used to fly to the Moon.
I find this notion of private development of spaceflight more than a little exciting. When I wrote Communion of Dreams, I was operating under the old model – that the enterprise of getting into space in a big way was going to mandate large governmental involvement and coordination. I’m not going to rewrite the novel, but I am reworking my own thoughts and expectations – this is probably the single largest change for me from attending the Centennial.
Well, yesterday a Falcon 1 rocket from the Space X corporation made it to orbit. From Phil Plait:
Congratulations to the team at Space X! At 16:26 Pacific time today (Sunday, September 28, 2008), their Falcon 1 rocket achieved orbit around the Earth, the first time a privately funded company has done such a feat with a liquid fuel rocket.
* * * * * * *
As coincidence would have it, about the time the Space X rocket reached orbit I was watching Destination Moon, a movie I had added to my NetFlix queue after the Heinlein Centennial, and which just now had floated to the top.
What’s the big deal? Well, Destination Moon was about the first successful private corporation launch, not to orbit, but as a manned mission to the Moon.
It’s not a great movie. But it was fascinating to watch, an insight into those heady post-war years, into what people thought about space, and into the mind of Robert Heinlein, who was one of the writers and technical advisors on the film (with connections to two of his novels: Rocket Ship Galileo and The Man Who Sold the Moon). Interesting to see the trouble they went to in order to explain what things would be like in space (no gravity, vacuum, how rockets would work, et cetera) because this was a full 8 years prior to the launch of Sputnik. We’ve grown up with spaceflight as a fact, with knowing how things move and function – but all of this was unknown to the average viewer when the movie was made and released. They did a surprisingly good job. And the images provided Chesley Bonestell are still breath taking, after all these years.
* * * * * * *
It may yet be a while before any private corporation wins the Google Lunar X Prize, let alone sends a team of astronauts there and gets them back, as was done in Destination Moon. But it’ll happen. When it looks like it will, I may need to schedule another viewing of the movie, and not just trust to coincidence.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Blade Runner, BoingBoing, Bruce Schneier, Civil Rights, Constitution, Cory Doctorow, Emergency, Expert systems, General Musings, Government, Guns, movies, Philip K. Dick, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, Privacy, Ridley Scott, Science, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Terrorism, Violence
So, according to FOX News, our friends at the Department of Homeland Security will soon have a new trick up their sleeve: MALINTENT.
Homeland Security Detects Terrorist Threats by Reading Your Mind
Baggage searches are SOOOOOO early-21st century. Homeland Security is now testing the next generation of security screening — a body scanner that can read your mind.Most preventive screening looks for explosives or metals that pose a threat. But a new system called MALINTENT turns the old school approach on its head. This Orwellian-sounding machine detects the person — not the device — set to wreak havoc and terror.
MALINTENT, the brainchild of the cutting-edge Human Factors division in Homeland Security’s directorate for Science and Technology, searches your body for non-verbal cues that predict whether you mean harm to your fellow passengers.
I’m . . . sceptical. Let me put it like this: if this thing actually, dependably, reliably works the way they tout it in the article (go read the whole thing, even if it is from FOX), then the TSA would be perfectly fine with allowing me to carry a gun onto a plane. After all, I have a legitimate CCW permit, have been vetted by a background check and accuracy test, have had the permit for three years, and have never demonstrated the slightest inclination to use my weapon inappropriately. If I could pass their MALINTENT scanners as well, they should be completely willing to let me (and anyone else who had a similar background and permit) carry a weapon on board.
Just how likely do you think that is?
Right. Because this sort of technology does not, will not, demonstrate reliability to the degree they claim. There will be far too many “false positives”, as there always are with any kind of lie detector. That’s why multiple questions are asked when a lie detector is used, and even then many jurisdictions do not allow the results of a lie detector to be admitted into courts of law.
Furthermore, the risk of a “false negative” would be far too high. Someone who was trained/drugged/unaware/elated with being a terrorist and slipped by the scanners would still be a threat. As Bruce Schneier just posted about Two Classes of Airport Contraband:
This is why articles about how screeners don’t catch every — or even a majority — of guns and bombs that go through the checkpoints don’t bother me. The screeners don’t have to be perfect; they just have to be good enough. No terrorist is going to base his plot on getting a gun through airport security if there’s decent chance of getting caught, because the consequences of getting caught are too great.
Contrast that with a terrorist plot that requires a 12-ounce bottle of liquid. There’s no evidence that the London liquid bombers actually had a workable plot, but assume for the moment they did. If some copycat terrorists try to bring their liquid bomb through airport security and the screeners catch them — like they caught me with my bottle of pasta sauce — the terrorists can simply try again. They can try again and again. They can keep trying until they succeed. Because there are no consequences to trying and failing, the screeners have to be 100 percent effective. Even if they slip up one in a hundred times, the plot can succeed.
OK, so then why do it? Why introduce these scanners at all? Why intrude on the privacy of people wanting to get on an airplane?
Control. As I noted earlier this year, about the news that the US military was deploying hand-held ‘lie detectors’ for use in Iraq:
The device is being tested by the military. They just don’t know it. And once it is in use, some version of the technology will be adapted for more generalized police use. Just consider how it will be promoted to the law enforcement community: as a way of screening suspects. Then, as a way of finding suspects. Then, as a way of checking anyone who wants access to some critical facility. Then, as a way of checking anyone who wants access to an airplane, train, or bus.
Just how long do you think it will be before you have to pass a test by one of these types of devices in your day-to-day life? I give it maybe ten years. But I worry that I am an optimist.
An optimist, indeed. Because here’s another bit from the FOXNews article:
And because FAST is a mobile screening laboratory, it could be set up at entrances to stadiums, malls and in airports, making it ever more difficult for terrorists to live and work among us.
This is about scanning the public, making people *afraid*. Afraid not just of being a terrorist, but of being thought to be a terrorist by others, of being an outsider. Of being a critic of the government in power. The first step is to get you afraid of terrorists, because then they could use that fear, and build on it, to slowly, methodically, destroy your privacy. Sure, the DHS claims that they will not keep the information gathered from such scanners. And you’re a fool if you think you can trust that.
Jim Downey
Via BoingBoing. Cross posted to UTI.
Filed under: Art, Artificial Intelligence, BoingBoing, Book Conservation, General Musings, movies, Science, tech
An earlier version of Communion of Dreams had one of the minor characters with an interesting hobby: building his own computer entirely by hand, from making the integrated circuits on up. The point for him wasn’t to get a more powerful computer (remember, by the time of the novel, there is functional AI using tech which is several generations ahead of our current level). Rather, he just wanted to see whether it was possible to build a 1990’s-era desktop computer on his own. I cut that bit out in the final editing, since it was a bit of a distraction and did nothing to advance the story. But I did so reluctantly.
Well, this is something along those lines: video of a French artisan who makes his own vacuum tubes (triodes) for his amateur radio habit:
It’s a full 17 minutes long, and worth watching from start to finish. Being a craftsman myself, I love watching other people work with their hands performing complex operations with skill and grace. I have no need or real desire to make my own vacuum tubes, but this video almost makes me want to try. Wow.
Jim Downey
(Via BoingBoing.)
You know how it is. Sometimes you don’t know how bad things were until you’re past them and get a little perspective. It seems like this is what I’ve been going through with the respiratory infection I mentioned the other day. After a week’s worth of horse-pill sized antibiotics (that image is almost actual size – I swear!) it seems like I am resolving several low-grade stubborn infections I’ve been fighting on my own for weeks if not months. As I told a friend earlier:
Do feel better this morning, though a bit of a sore throat. I think what is happening is as each layer of the infection is dealt with (to some extent), the next deeper layer emerges. What I have been thinking was allergies may have been nothing more than low-grade, entrenched infections for the last several months.
So that’s how it’s been. I am feeling better, though I still am worn ragged by the end of the day. I would like to have something like my old energy levels back – I have a lot of stuff I’d like to do. I suppose that alone is a good sign.
Jim Downey
*Certainly you recognize the quote, right?
Here’s a fun little thing I thought I would pass along: the visual recreation of Washington, D.C. in the spring of 1814. Using a combination of historical documents, paintings, maps, geological surveys, mixed with state-of-the-art imaging technology, they’ve created a short digital reconstruction. Nice use of technology and solid scholarship.
Jim Downey
Got two hours to spare? It could open up a whole new dimension in your life.
No, this is not some Amway scam, new-age Woo, or political revival. It’s a series of brilliant videos (along with explanatory text) put together by a French mathematician which explore the existence of a fourth spatial dimension. And it is *very* cool. From ScienceNews:
So can any of these techniques help us visualize Schläfli’s 600-sided, four-dimensional shape? Using a computer, Ghys first passes Schläfli’s regular, four-dimensional shapes through three-dimensional space and looks at the three-dimensional “slices” created. This helps a bit, but just as in two dimensions, it’s not easy to assemble an image of the higher-dimensional shape this way.
Next, he draws the three-dimensional “shadows” of the four-dimensional objects. This turns out to be much better: Rotating the objects around to see different facets of them can give a pretty good feeling for their shapes.
Finally, he uses stereographic projection. The idea is the same as projecting from three to two: You blow the four-dimensional shape up into a ball, and then you place a light at the “north pole” and project the image down into three dimensions. That process is all-but-impossible for us to visualize, just as the process of projecting a three-dimensional ball would be impossible for the lizards to imagine. The results, though, are gloriously easy to make sense of.
OK, for this old dog it is still a bit tough – my imagination is not as supple as it once was. But even I could start to get glimpses, on the first viewing. I plan on taking the time to make at least one more pass at the series. For someone such as myself who lacks the mathematics background to really understand what is going on, this is a very helpful tool. Seriously – give it a try. It could open up a whole new dimension for you.
Jim Downey
(Via MeFi. Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Comics, General Musings, movies, NYT, Paleo-Future, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, tech, Travel
. . . but the announcement that there is a functional personal flying device to be revealed today is still pretty cool.
Why do I call it a ‘personal flying device’? Because it isn’t really a classic ‘jetpack‘ as we’ve seen in plenty of cartoons and movies. It is a large beast, weighing about 250 pounds, with twin fans each the size of a garbage can cut about in half. And for safety purposes, there is a support frame which allows the pilot to climb under the thing and strap himself to it. Hardly the ‘engine’ of The Rocketeer. But all in all, not a bad start – this is functional, will fly for about 30 minutes (the longest classic jetpack such as James Bond flew could go for about 30 seconds), and is fairly stable. From here significant improvements will be made. And Glenn Martin, the inventor of the device, understands this:
Only 12 people have flown the jetpack, and no one has gained more than three hours of experience in the air. Mr. Martin plans to take it up to 500 feet within six months. This time, he said with a smile, he will be the first.
Mr. Martin said he had no idea how his invention might ultimately be used, but he is not a man of small hopes. He repeated the story of Benjamin Franklin, on first seeing a hot-air balloon, being asked, “What good is it?” He answered, “What good is a newborn baby?”
Exactly.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 