Filed under: Babylon 5, Hugo Award, J. Michael Straczynski, JMS, movies, Science Fiction, Space, Writing stuff | Tags: Babylon 5, blogging, Commander Sinclair, J. Michael Straczynski, jim downey, Michael O'Hare, Science Fiction, space, technology, www youtube
I didn’t watch it when it was originally broadcast, but I came to really enjoy and respect the science fiction series Babylon 5. It was intelligently written, well produced, and generally well acted. It’s now my ‘default’ evening viewing — we’ll watch an episode or two with dinner whenever we’re not in the middle of watching something else. As a result, I’ve watched the entire series through (as well as all the various movies and the short-lived spin-off ‘Crusade’) probably a score of times. And I still find things to appreciate which I hadn’t caught on previous viewing — there’s a reason it won two Hugo Awards while it ran.
One of those things is an increased appreciation of the performance of Michael O’Hare as Commander Sinclair. He was mostly involved with the series in the first season, but played an important part later as well. And of all of the episodes he was in, this little bit is probably my favorite:
Michael O’Hare passed away last night. He will be missed.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Brave New World, Connections, Diane Rehm, Expert systems, Failure, Google, Government, Harry Potter, J. K. Rowling, Kindle, Music, NPR, Predictions, Preparedness, Publishing, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Writing stuff, YouTube | Tags: Amazon, augmented reality, blogging, Blood Sweat & Tears, cars, Communion of Dreams, Diane Rehm, direct publishing, failure, Google, Harry Potter, jim downey, JK Rowling, Kickstarter, Kindle, literature, music, NPR, predictions, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, status, success, technology, video, writing, www youtube
“Could you take care of this for me?” I said. “I find myself surprisingly … attached.”
* * * * * * *
Just a couple pages into Communion of Dreams, there’s this passage:
He picked up a meal at the airport and ate in the car on the way over to his office, relaxing and watching the city roll by around him.
Early in the second chapter there’s this one:
The car he was in threaded through the old suburban streets, past still vacant houses and the occasional empty lot. Following the great death of the fire-flu, many homes had simply been abandoned.
The opening paragraph of Chapter 3:
‘What was it?’ he wondered as the car wound through the streets, stopping before the USSA building. He got out, standing there in the plaza, looking up at the golden plasteel supports and the draping glass fabric.
As a writer, particularly of science fiction, you have to know what to explain and what to just assume. By this I mean you have to explain certain things to the reader, enough to give them a grasp on important story elements, but that you can assume they will fill in the background with other less important elements on their own.
Nowhere in Communion of Dreams do I state that cars are largely self-driving. There’s really no need to. Most readers are used enough to the tropes of science fiction that they can read the above passages, and fill in that detail on their own. It’s a little trick which helps anchor the reality of the book in the mind of the reader quickly.
* * * * * * *
And, honestly, the notion of a self-driving car is only barely science fiction at this point. I mean, one of the primary issues right now is having our legal system play catch-up with the technological changes in this field. From a discussion on the Diane Rehm Show yesterday:
GJELTEN: So the — I guess what — driverless cars have been in development for many years. But the big news this week is this law that passed in California allowing some driving of self-driving cars. Tell us what’s in this law exactly.
LEVANDOWSKI: Well, this law is called SB 1298, and it sets forth the framework for the DMV to set up the guidelines that vehicles will need to adhere to in order to, in the future, be able to drive themselves with or without people inside them. It outlines the type of technical standards, the types of insurance requirements. Everything that you would expect a person to go through when they get their driver’s license, you would expect a vehicle that doesn’t have a driver in it to be able to have.
* * * * * * *
“I do feel that I’m a very lucky, lucky person, in all sorts of ways. And one of the ways in which I’m fortunate is Harry Potter set me free to write whatever I want to write. I don’t — you know, we’re not living hand-to-mouth — I, clearly I can afford to pay all of my bills and now my writing life is a great experience. I can really do whatever I want to do. So I’m a fortunate person — I’m a fortunate writer.”
From JK Rowling’s interview on “Morning Edition” today.
* * * * * * *
“Could you take care of this for me?” I said. “I find myself surprisingly … attached.”
“Sure,” said my wife.
Attached?
Yeah, to my car.
Which is a surprise. Because I don’t usually become attached to things. Oh, I keep some things for sentimental value, because they are somehow connected to an important person or event in my life. But otherwise I tend to be very pragmatic about material things.
I got the car new 20 years ago. A Subaru wagon, which served me well. The last five or six years when it needed work I would weigh the pros and cons of getting the work done — was it worth it? Could I afford it? Could I afford not to?
See, I don’t *really* need a car. I work at home. For a while now when I needed to drive any distance, I took my wife’s car anyway, since it is a few years newer and in substantially better shape.
This past spring it developed some exhaust problems. The work it needed was more than the car was worth. I decided the time had come to just sell it and be done. Consolidating down to one car for the household would be a minor annoyance, but made the most sense.
Well, I made the intellectual decision. The emotional one, I found, wasn’t quite as easy.
Why?
I owned, and drove, that car for more than half the time I’ve had a driver’s license. There was simple ‘time in harness’ associated with it.
But there was more. Specifically, status.
I don’t worry a lot about status. As in, conventional measures of “success” in our society. When you don’t make a lot of money, you learn to not put so much store in such things, or it’ll drive you completely nuts. And as I noted earlier this year, I don’t make a lot of money.
But confronting the hard truth that I can not afford to buy a new car was a bit more than I really wanted to face. And selling my car meant exactly that. Because in our society, if you sell your car, you’re supposed to get another one. Preferably a new one. At the very least, a newer one. To not do so means you’re not successful.
And you should never, ever, under no circumstances, admit that you’re not successful.
So, yeah, the emotional truth was harder to come to terms with. Which would mean that I would be piss-poor at selling my car — at advertising it, at negotiating a sale, all that stuff.
But I’ve come to realize that there are other approaches to defining success, other strategies which can change how you accomplish things. My Kickstarter project is one such, stepping in to crowd-fund what a conventional publishing contract would previously do.
So I asked my wife to take care of it. She didn’t have the same emotional baggage to contend with. And she took care of it in her usual competent & efficient manner: last night the car drove away from our driveway for the last time.
Who knows? Maybe next year, after St. Cybi’s Well is done and available, it’ll be enough of a hit that I’ll be able to afford a new car. One which can partially drive itself. Stranger things have happened. Just ask JK Rowling.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Astronomy, Bad Astronomy, Ballistics, Connections, Failure, Feedback, General Musings, Humor, Light pollution, Predictions, Promotion, Science, Science Fiction, Space, tech, Writing stuff | Tags: art, blogging, Communion of Dreams, humor, jim downey, literature, Moon, Paint the Moon, predictions, Randall Munroe, science, Science Fiction, space, technology, Wikipedia, xkcd
Didn’t I just say that Randall Monroe is brilliant? Of course I did. That was writing about his artwork. And this morning he proved (once again) that his science is solid, as well:
Er, let me explain…
Monroe does the popular webcomic xkcd. If you don’t read it regularly, you should. Anyway, this summer he added in another feature called “What If?” which he explains with this subtitle: “Answering your hypothetical questions with physics, every Tuesday.”
And for whatever reason, today’s entry is in response to this question: “If every person on Earth aimed a laser pointer at the Moon at the same time, would it change color?”
Gee … where have I heard that question before? Hmm … perhaps in Chapter 9 of Communion of Dreams?
“You know, I could design a program that would enhance the image. Everyone who looked up at that would see our Moon,instead. Wouldn’t take much. I could even paint it red.”
“Paint it red? You mean the Moon?
“Yeah, old joke. There was this artist back at the turn of the century who had this project called ‘Paint the Moon’. He wanted to get everyone in the Western Hemisphere to focus these popular little hand-held laser pointers on the Moon all at once, with the idea that enough of the laser light would cause a red spot to appear. Had it all figured: what phase of the Moon was best to do it, how people could aim their lasers, the whole bit.”
“Crazy,” said Jon. Then, after a pause, “It didn’t work, did it?”
“Nah. But that wasn’t the point. He always described the project as a ‘shared lyrical fantasy’, designed to bring people together for a single moment, all doing the same thing. The first attempt got quite a lot of attention world-wide from the media. Millions heard about it, and maybe tens of thousands participated. It is still considered a seminal art event – we studied it in school.”
“But . . . what’s the point?”
“Oh, I just always liked that grandiose sense of whimsy. There were a number of crazy things like that back then, before everything went to hell.”
Unsurprisingly, Monroe concludes that the laser pointers wouldn’t accomplish the task. But then he uses that as a jumping-off point to explore what it *would* take to accomplish the task. And then some. It’s a fun piece, and likely the image of his I posted above has just become another instant classic, not unlike this one (which is the not-xkcd-approved Official T-shirt of BBTI).
Jim Downey
PS: Thanks to the people who sent me a link to the xkcd What If? entry this morning — very much appreciated. Now, if anyone would like to pop by the xkcd forums and mention this connection, I’d greatly appreciate it. Cheers!
Filed under: Art, Brave New World, Connections, movies, Predictions, Quantum mechanics, Science, Science Fiction, tech, YouTube | Tags: Alwyn, art, blogging, Communion of Dreams, Diva, Gorodish, jim downey, movies, predictions, science, Science Fiction, technology, video, www youtube
“I think he actually plans that ahead.”
* * * * * * *
Interesting news item:
Study broadens understanding of quantum mechanics
(Phys.org)—Former and current USC Dornsife physicists have led a study that represents the first, quantitative account of the universal features of disordered bosons—or quantum particles—in magnetic materials.
The study published in the Sept. 20 edition of Nature magazine broadens our understanding of quantum mechanics and challenges the accepted predication in quantum theory.
“It’s remarkable to find such universality in disordered quantum systems,” said co-author Stephan Haas, professor of physics and astronomy and vice dean for research in USC Dornsife. “And it’s even more amazing that we may have finally identified a real-life example for one of the most elusive quantum glasses in nature.”
Yeah, OK, so? What’s that actually mean?
Potentially, a lot. Quantum particles are thought of as wave-forms, operating in a range of space/states (this is known as quantum superposition). This characterization leads to such particles being ‘trapped’ — unable to escape a given space/state due to interference — what is termed ‘localization.’ Having a way to control localization is the key to much finer control over quantum effects, and helps to turn it from a theoretical physical problem almost to an engineering one. From the above article:
Quantum magnets and other occurrences in quantum mechanics could set the stage for the next big breakthroughs in computing, alternative energy and transportation technologies such as magnetic levitating trains.
* * * * * * * *
“He dreams of stopping the wave.”
Who? Gorodish:
Gods, I love that movie.
* * * * * * *
“Alwyn, wait up, bud,” said my wife, as our dog trotted past us on our morning walk.
He went a couple more paces, but stopped before he got to the entrance of a care facility. That entrance comes off a busy street, and we only want him to cross it with us so as to keep him safe.
“I think he actually plans that ahead,” I said. “He trots ahead here so that he can sniff that bush for messages.”
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Brave New World, Fermi's Paradox, General Musings, Humor, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, SETI, Society, Space, tech, Writing stuff | Tags: augmented reality, blogging, Communion of Dreams, Fermi's Paradox, humor, jim downey, Kickstarter, predictions, Rich Terrile, science, Science Fiction, simulation, space, technology, writing
Interesting article, all in all. But I particularly had a chuckle over this bit:
Beings with whom you could interact?
Maybe, or maybe I’d just let them go. They’d be living out their lives in an incredibly short amount of time. Maybe I could change the physical laws. I could make them live in places both hospitable and inhospitable. I could make it so that they’re completely alone—perhaps that’s a boundary condition for us, and explains why there are no aliens.
Hehehehehehe. Yeah, maybe it does. Maybe it does.
Kickstarter is almost ready. Watch for an announcement soon.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Connections, Faith healing, Feedback, Flu, Kindle, Marketing, Pandemic, Predictions, Preparedness, Promotion, Publishing, Religion, Saturn, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, tech, Titan, Travel, Writing stuff | Tags: Amazon, blogging, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, fire-flu, flu, Israel, jim downey, Kickstarter, Kindle, literature, Moon, murder, predictions, Saturn, Science Fiction, space, St. Cybi's Well, technology, Titan, travel, Wales, writing
The description of Communion of Dreams on both the back of the book and on the website/Amazon is this:
The year is 2052, and the human race is still struggling to recover from a massive pandemic flu some 40 years previously. When an independent prospector on Saturn’s moon Titan discovers an alien artifact, assumptions that we are alone in the universe are called into question. Knowing that news of such a discovery could prompt chaos on Earth, a small team is sent to investigate and hopefully manage the situation. What they find is that there’s more to human history, and human abilities, than any of them ever imagined. And that they will need all those insights, and all those abilities, to face the greatest threat yet to human survival.
It was pretty easy to come up with that. It was written well after the fact, after all. The book had been done for years, worked over and tweaked endlessly.
Well, as I am getting things set to do the Kickstarter project to allow me to concentrate on writing St. Cybi’s Well, one of the components we have to get into place is setting up a website for it. To do that I needed to have the same sort of short description of that book as the one above for Communion of Dreams. But St. Cybi’s Well *isn’t* done yet. Far from it. I have a lot of ideas/thoughts/scenes for it, accumulated over the last nine years. I basically know what the book is going to be, but the story and the characters will evolve as I write. Nonetheless, I had to come up with a description.
This is what I came up with. See what you think:
Darnell Sidwell had a problem. Well, two, actually. One was the onset of an eye disease which threatened to end his career as a shuttle pilot for the Israeli Lunar Transfer, to the so-called New Ma’abarot colonies. That brought him to Wales, where his sister operated a spiritual healing center – a last, absurd hope for a man who didn’t believe in miracles.
The other problem was a small matter of a murder. His. But he didn’t know about that yet. Just as he didn’t know that the whole world was about to be plunged into the fire-flu.
It’s a start.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Astronomy, BoingBoing, Fermi's Paradox, NASA, Predictions, Publishing, Science, Science Fiction, SETI, Space, Survival, tech, Weather, Writing stuff | Tags: Aliens, BBC, BoingBoing, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, Drake Equation, Isaac, jim downey, Kickstarter, NASA, predictions, science, Science Fiction, space, St. Cybi's Well, technology, Wired, writing
They say Isaac will be paying us a visit.
* * * * * * *
I’ve previously talked about the Drake Equation, and how new information from a host of sources is changing the calculus of expectation — expectation of what is waiting for us out in the universe.
Well, via Wired and BoingBoing, there’s a new fun graphical tool now available to explore the Drake Equation. Check it out:
* * * * * * *
From Chapter 4 of Communion of Dreams:
“But in any event, as Arthur Bailey said this morning ‘where are they?’ Where are the aliens? That’s what’s bothering me.”
* * * * * * *
They say Isaac will be paying us a visit.
I’m in a somewhat weird headspace right now. Maybe that’s the reason for it. We’re suffering such a drought that it seems almost surreal that there may be rain this weekend. And not just a little rain: current forecast models say between two and six inches, most of it in about a 24 hour period. That won’t break the drought, but it would cause flash floods.
Like I said, surreal.
Similarly, I’ve been thinking — and thinking hard — about the Kickstarter for St. Cybi’s Well. But all my thoughts seem to be random, chaotic. Nothing will quite ‘gel’, to use another reference from Communion of Dreams.
But when it does, I think there will be a flood.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Brave New World, Failure, Feedback, Kindle, Marketing, NYT, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Writing stuff | Tags: advertising, Amazon, blogging, Communion of Dreams, David Streitfeld, direct publishing, free, jim downey, John Bourke, Kickstarter, Kindle, literature, money, promotion, reviews, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, technology, writing
That’s the title of a NYT article a friend sent me. It’s long, more than a bit depressing, and probably something that every aspiring author should read. More than that, it’s probably something that every book consumer should read. Because if you’re going by book reviews listed online, well, you might be reading nothing more than “artificially embellished reviews” in the words of one former business owner who brokered such reviews for authors.
Why do people do this? Money. From the article:
In the fall of 2010, Mr. Rutherford started a Web site, GettingBookReviews.com. At first, he advertised that he would review a book for $99. But some clients wanted a chorus proclaiming their excellence. So, for $499, Mr. Rutherford would do 20 online reviews. A few people needed a whole orchestra. For $999, he would do 50.
There were immediate complaints in online forums that the service was violating the sacred arm’s-length relationship between reviewer and author. But there were also orders, a lot of them. Before he knew it, he was taking in $28,000 a month.
And why do authors seek such services? Same reason. Gaming the system to have a bunch of fake reviews posted helps to boost sales, building the dynamic which leads to a self-supporting “best seller.” People love the idea of being part of something successful. This is why marketers of all sorts seek to create “buzz” — that kind of attention is the Holy Grail of selling anything. Again, from the article:
One of Mr. Rutherford’s clients, who confidently commissioned hundreds of reviews and didn’t even require them to be favorable, subsequently became a best seller. This is proof, Mr. Rutherford said, that his notion was correct. Attention, despite being contrived, draws more attention.
So, what to do about it?
There’s no easy answer, for either a writer or a reader. Ideally, you should be able to read a review and tell whether the person actually read the book or not. But you can’t trust that. Believe me — I wrote advertising copy for several years after college and before grad school, and I got to the point where I could convince almost anyone that whatever product I was writing about was *FANTASTIC* whether or not I had ever even tried the product, let alone whether I liked it. Any competent writer could churn out ‘reviews’ for books they’ve never read by the dozens.
So, what then? Because reviews really do make a difference — having a solid body of honest reviews has helped others decide to give my books a try. That’s why I keep asking people to do them: it helps. A lot.
But what I think helps even more is word-of-mouth. Well, the internet equivalent of it, anyway. Which is people — real people — posting their thoughts/recommendations about a book on their favorite forum/blog/twitter/Facebook wall. I haven’t hit this mechanism nearly as much as I probably should since the initial launch of both Her Final Year and Communion of Dreams, but that’s because I hate bugging people.
But I’m going to swallow my pride and ask when it comes time to kick off the Kickstarter Project for St. Cybi’s Well that I keep mentioning. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee that the Kickstarter will either succeed or fail according to how much promotional support it gets from people who have read Communion of Dreams.
So if you read that book, and enjoyed it, and would like to read another component in my over-arching story — be ready to help spread the word.
Thanks. In advance. There will be more tangible expressions of my appreciation coming soon.
Jim Downey
PS: Editing (Sept. 3) to add another link addressing this problem: RJ Ellory’s secret Amazon reviews anger rivals
Filed under: Emergency, Health, Science, Science Fiction, Survival, tech | Tags: blogging, Communion of Dreams, emergency, health, hypoxemia, jim downey, liposomes, medicine, oxygen, research, science, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, technology
There are a lot of ways we die. Massive trauma. Heart failure. Diseases of the organs which cause other body systems to shut down. But one of the more common mechanisms of death is lack of oxygen in the blood, what is called hypoxemia in the medical community. Without adequate oxygen in your blood, your brain and other organs start to die at the cellular level within minutes (in most conditions).
Hypoxemia can be caused by many different things, including a wide range of diseases and a variety of trauma. But if you can keep the blood oxygenated, you can buy time to treat the underlying cause. In the case of someone who has drowned, for example, this can be as simple as CPR. In other cases a heart-lung machine can keep someone alive while awaiting a transplant.
The problem is that sometimes it is impossible to buy that time. Maybe CPR isn’t viable. Maybe you’re too far from a hospital for other immediate treatments. Maybe it’d just take too long to get someone stable. In which case, this might work:
n a new study, published online today in ScienceTranslational Medicine, he and colleagues report the development of microparticles filled with oxygen gas that can be injected directly into the bloodstream. The particles quickly dissolve, releasing the gas and keeping organs, such as the brain, from suffocating.
* * *
The microparticles are tiny bubbles whose surfaces are membranes already used clinically to administer chemotherapy drugs and ultrasound dyes. But while those microparticles release their contents slowly, Kheir and his collaborators designed oxygen-containing particles that would dissolve as soon as they hit the bloodstream. They then tested the microparticles in rabbits breathing air low in oxygen. Within seconds of receiving the microbubbles, the levels of oxygen in the rabbits’ blood rose from a dangerously low 70% to nearly 100% saturation, the ideal level.
Promising. Very promising. From the abstract of the paper:
We have developed an injectable foam suspension containing self-assembling, lipid-based microparticles encapsulating a core of pure oxygen gas for intravenous injection. Prototype suspensions were manufactured to contain between 50 and 90 ml of oxygen gas per deciliter of suspension. Particle size was polydisperse, with a mean particle diameter between 2 and 4 μm. When mixed with human blood ex vivo, oxygen transfer from 70 volume % microparticles was complete within 4 s.
As noted, this is based on very proven technology: liposomes. These lipid-bilayer artificial “cells” are commonly used to deliver drugs in the bloodstream, and they are very well understood. This new application changes the liposome construction so that it dissolves much more quickly, allowing the oxygen to infuse the bloodstream almost instantly.
It is currently in animal trials. But based on how well the technology is understood, and the potential benefit it offers for a wide variety of life-saving applications, we could easily see this approved for human trials in the near term, and available for deployment within a few years.
And I just may need to find a way to work it into the next book…
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 