Filed under: A.P.O.D., Astronomy, movies, NASA, Ridley Scott, Science, Science Fiction, Space | Tags: jim downey, movies, NASA, photography, Prometheus, reviews, Ridley Scott, Science Fiction, space, technology, video
We all have our little phantasies. One of mine (mentioned previously) is to see a screen treatment of Communion of Dreams.
But in reading about what kind of SF clusterphuck Prometheus has turned out to be, I’m almost afraid to contemplate it any further in case it might come true . . . in the worst way possible.
Jim Downey
(Yes, I intentionally misspelled those words. Here – go watch this stunning transit of Venus and stop bothering me.)
Filed under: Ad Astra, Astronomy, Brave New World, Connections, Government, Man Conquers Space, NASA, Paleo-Future, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Space, tech, UFO, Writing stuff | Tags: astronomy, HST, Hubble, Israel, jim downey, Moon, NASA, Newton, predictions, science, Science Fiction, space, technology, Transit, travel, Venus, Wfirst, writing
* * * * * * *
From Chapter 1:
Jon spoke. “That’s typical. Sidwell is a bit of an old coot. He’s about 80, close as anyone can get him to admit. He has been at the forefront of exploration all along, having started with the Israeli colonies on the Moon, and was one of the first prospectors to establish himself on Titan.”
* * * * * * *
NASA gets two military spy telescopes for astronomy
The secretive government agency that flies spy satellites has made a stunning gift to NASA: two exquisite telescopes as big and powerful as the Hubble Space Telescope. They’ve never left the ground and are in storage in Rochester, N.Y.
* * *
The telescopes were built by private contractors for the National Reconnaissance Office, one of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies. The telescopes have 2.4-meter (7.9-foot) mirrors, just like the Hubble, but they have 100 times the field of view. Their structure is shorter and squatter.
* * *
The announcement Monday raised the obvious question of why the intelligence agency would no longer want, or need, two Hubble-class telescopes. A spokeswoman, Loretta DeSio, provided information sparingly.
“They no longer possessed intelligence-collection uses,” she said of the telescopes.
* * * * * * *
“The Israeli colonies on the Moon?” When did that happen?
Now.
One of the plot points for St. Cybi’s Well all along has been that Darnell Sidwell had been a shuttle pilot for a secret operation by Israel (with the tacit support of most of the governments of the major world powers) to establish permanent colonies on the far side of the Moon. That effort was well along by 2012, which is when the novel is set.
Remember, the timeline for Communion of Dreams isn’t exactly our timeline. It is very, very similar to ours, but there are some divergences.
The biggest worry I have had for some time was how to say that such a space program could exist without people knowing about it. In fact, earlier work on St. Cybi’s Well revolved around this very point as an espionage/counter-espionage sub-plot. I was concerned that it might be *too* outlandish an idea for readers to be able to suspend their disbelief.
So much for that concern; we’ve just found out that what we thought was at the limits of our technology is so obsolete that it can be handed off as so much surplus junk. And the implication is that while NASA is currently without the means to launch and service something like Hubble, that there are plenty other agencies within our government which are not so inconvenienced.
* * * * * * *
Ex-Spy Telescope May Get New Identity as a Space Investigator
The phone call came like a bolt out of the blue, so to speak, in January 2011. On the other end of the line was someone from the National Reconnaissance Office, which operates the nation’s fleet of spy satellites. They had some spare, unused “hardware” to get rid of. Was NASA interested?
* * *
The telescope’s short length means its camera could have the wide field of view necessary to inspect large areas of the sky for supernovae.
Even bigger advantages come, astronomers say, from the fact that the telescope’s diameter, 94 inches, is twice as big as that contemplated for Wfirst, giving it four times the light-gathering power, from which a whole host of savings cascade.
* * * * * * *
From Sir Isaac Newton’s translation of the Emerald Tablet:
Tis true without lying, certain most true.
That which is below is like that which is above that which is above is like that which is below to do the miracles of one only thing.
And as all things have been arose from one by the mediation of one: so all things have their birth from this one thing by adaptation.
The Sun is its father, the moon its mother, the wind hath carried it in its belly, the earth its nurse.
The father of all perfection in the whole world is here.
Its force or power is entire if it be converted into earth.
– Separate thou the earth from the fire, the subtle from the gross sweetly with great industry.It ascends from the earth to the heaven again it descends to the earth and receives the force of things superior and inferior.
And yes, that is a hint about another part of what’s to come in St. Cybi’s Well.
* * * * * * *
Enjoy today’s Transit. As above, so below.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, BoingBoing, Connections, Failure, General Musings, Genetic Testing, Health, Hospice, Marketing, Music, Promotion, Publishing, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, tech, Violence, Writing stuff, YouTube | Tags: Alzheimer's, Amazon, blogging, BoingBoing, care-giving, direct publishing, free, genetics, health, hospice, jim downey, John Bourke, Kindle, literature, memoir, music, predictions, Queen, science, Science Fiction, technology, writing, www youtube
From BoingBoing here’s an embedded video of a long (90 minutes) but *really* fascinating discussion on the topic of why homo sapiens is the sole surviving member of our genus, and what that might tell us about ourselves. What I very much enjoyed was the way the different disciplines brought their own perspective to the question, and how each different perspective tends to reinforce the science of the others.
Today, we’re the only living member of the genus Homo and the only living member of the subtribe Hominina. Along with chimpanzees and bonobos, we’re all that remains of the tribe Hominini.
But the fossil record tells us that wasn’t always the case. There were, for instance, at least eight other species of Homo running around this planet at one time. So what happened to them? What makes us so special that we’re still here?
* * * * * * *
From Chapter 5:
Navarr turned and looked at Jon. “Any indication from the medical report what the genetic changes mean functionally?”
“No, not yet. The way that the genetic manipulation will play out is very difficult to predict, since that is a subtle and complex dance over time. They have simulations running now, and we may have an idea in a few days.”
* * * * * * *
I don’t want to give away too much, but there are other intimations in Communion of Dreams on this topic, since it is one which has long intrigued me. And while I am nowhere near knowledgeable enough to get too far into the molecular genetics, the current state of the science is such that there is room for plausible speculation.
And again, without giving too much away, I can say that this is something which will be one of the themes in St. Cybi’s Well.
* * * * * * *
Speaking of giving things away: next Saturday, June 9th, will be a Kindle promotional day for both Communion of Dreams and Her Final Year. As previously, the Kindle edition of each book will be available for free download all day, and you don’t even need to own a Kindle to get & read your free copy, as there is a free emulator app for just about every computer/tablet/mobile device out there.
In addition, I will be offering a signed paperback copy of each book as a prize — details to be announced in a couple of days!
Jim Downey
*of course.
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Brave New World, Humor, movies, Predictions, Privacy, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, tech, YouTube | Tags: augmented reality, humor, jim downey, predictions, Science Fiction, technology
Communion of Dreams is set in 2052, and I have a pretty specific vision of what the world will be like as a premise for the book.
For an alternative, hilarious and horrifying look at what is waiting for us in 2052, I direct you to Tom Scott:
A science fiction story about what you see when you die. Or: the Singularity, ruined by lawyers.
Brilliant.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Brave New World, Emergency, Failure, Heinlein, ISS, NASA, National Geographic, Preparedness, Robert A. Heinlein, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Space, Space X, Survival, tech, Weather | Tags: blogging, Diane Rehm, Everest, health, Heinlein, ISS, jim downey, NASA, predictions, science, Science Fiction, space, SpaceX, stupidity, survival, technology
Following up from Sunday…
“Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can’t help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime: the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.”
Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough For Love
* * * * * * *
There was a very interesting discussion on the Diane Rehm show the other day with Stuart Firestein, who is the chairman of the Department of Biology at Columbia University as well as a professor of neuroscience. The whole thing is worth a listen, but in particular there were a couple of particular bits I wanted to share. Here’s the first:
So in your brain cells, one of the ways your brain cells communicate with each other is using a kind of electricity, bioelectricity or voltages. And we’re very good at recording electrical signals. I mean, your brain is also a chemical. Like the rest of your body it’s a kind of chemical plant. But part of the chemistry produces electrical responses.
And because our technology is very good at recording electrical responses we’ve spent the last 70 or 80 years looking at the electrical side of the brain and we’ve learned a lot but it steered us in very distinct directions, much — and we wound up ignoring much of the biochemical side of the brain as a result of it. And as it now turns out, seems to be a huge mistake in some of our ideas about learning and memory and how it works.
* * * * * * *
I stared at the body, blinking in disbelief. We were in the shadow of the First Step, so the light was dull. The body lay about 10 metres from where I stood and was angled away from me. It jerked – a horrible movement, like a puppet being pulled savagely by its strings.
We had been on a well-organised and, so far, successful trail towards the summit of Everest, worrying only about ourselves. Now a stranger lay across our path, moaning. Lhakpa shouted down at me and waved me to move on, to follow him up onto the Step. I looked back at the raggedly jerking figure.
* * * * * * *
From about halfway through Chapter 6 in Communion of Dreams:
“But smart how?”
Jon looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“Well, there are lots of kinds of intelligence, and I’m not just talking about the reasoning/emotional/spatial/mechanical sorts of distinctions that we sometimes make. More fundamentally, how are they smart? Are they super-geniuses, able to easily figure out problems that stump us? Or maybe they’re very slow, but have been at this a very long time. Perhaps some sort of collective or racial intelligence, while each individual member of their species can barely put two and two together. There are a lot of different ways they can be intelligent.”
* * * * * * *
(Warning – the page from which the following comes contains gruesome images and text.)
Above a certain altitude, no human can ever acclimatize. Known as the Death Zone, only on 14 mountains worldwide can one step beyond the 8000 meter mark and know that no amount of training or conditioning will ever allow you to spend more than 48 hours there. The oxygen level in the Death Zone is only one third of the sea level value, which in simple terms means the body will use up its store of oxygen faster than breathing can replenish it.
In such conditions, odd things happen to human physical and mental states. A National Geographic climber originally on Everest to document Brian Blessed’s (ultimately botched) attempt at summiting, described the unsettling hallucinogenic effects of running out of oxygen in the Death Zone. The insides of his tent seemed to rise above him, taking on cathedral-like dimensions, robbing him of all strength, clouding his judgement. Any stay in the Death Zone without supplementary oxygen is like being slowly choked, all the while having to perform one of the hardest physical feats imaginable.
It makes you stupid.
* * * * * * *
Again, Stuart Firestein:
And in neuroscience, I can give you an example in the mid-1800s, phrenology. This idea that the bumps on your head, everybody has slightly different bumps on their head due to the shape of their skull. And you could tell something about a person’s personality by the bumps on their head. Now, we joke about it now. You can buy these phrenology busts in stores that show you where love is and where compassion is and where violence is and all that. It’s absolutely silly, but for 50 years it existed as a real science. And there are papers from learned scientists on it in the literature.
* * * * * * *
Update at 12:10 p.m. ET. Dragon Has Docked:
Dragon has finished docking with the International Space Station. That makes SpaceX the first private company to dock a cargo spacecraft to the space station.
That happened at exactly 12:02 p.m. ET, according to NASA.
* * * * * * *
“Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can’t help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime: the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.”
Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough For Love
Last weekend four more people died attempting to summit Everest. Partly, this seems to have been due to the traffic on the mountain. Yeah, so many people are now attempting to climb the mountain that there are bottlenecks which occur, which can throw off calculations about how long a climb will take, how much supplemental oxygen is necessary, and whether weather will move in before climbers can reach safety.
In theory, everyone who attempts such a climb should know the odds. One in ten people who attempted the summit have died.
But we live in an age of accepted wonders. We think we’re smart enough to beat the odds.
Jim Downey
(PS: I hope to wrap up the third & final part of this set, get it posted this weekend.)
Filed under: Apollo program, Buzz Aldrin, Charlie Stross, Failure, Government, Man Conquers Space, NASA, Neil Armstrong, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Space, Survival, tech, Travel | Tags: Apollo, Buzz Aldrin, jim downey, Michael Collins, Moon, NASA, Neil Armstrong, predictions, science, Science Fiction, technology, travel, xkcd
As something of a follow-up to yesterday’s post, first a quote:
The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there’s no good reason to go into space — each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision.
That’s the “roll over” text of this xkcd cartoon:
Can you name the nine who are left?*
And related to that, here is an excellent hour-long item you really should check out when you get a chance:
An Audience with Neil Armstrong
It’s in four parts, so you can watch them in chunks. And it really is very good. Armstrong has given very few interviews over the years, and has always been remarkably self-effacing. This is an informal discussion with the man, and it provides some wonderful insight into the whole NASA program in addition to the mindset which led to the Apollo 11 mission.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Charlie Stross, Failure, Feedback, General Musings, New Horizons, Predictions, Publishing, Science Fiction, Singularity, Society, Steampunk, Survival, tech, Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, Charlie Stross, jim downey, literature, predictions, reviews, Science Fiction, space, technology, writing
I’ve mentioned Charlie Stross several times here. As I’ve said previously: smart guy, good writer. I disagree with his belief in mundane science fiction, because I think that it is too limited in imagination. Which leads almost inevitably to this formulation on his blog today (and yes, you should go read the whole thing):
We people of the SF-reading ghetto have stumbled blinking into the future, and our dirty little secret is that we don’t much like it. And so we retreat into the comfort zones of brass goggles and zeppelins (hey, weren’t airships big in the 1910s-1930s? Why, then, are they such a powerful signifier for Victorian-era alternate fictions?), of sexy vampire-run nightclubs and starship-riding knights-errant. Opening the pages of a modern near-future SF novel now invites a neck-chillingly cold draft of wind from the world we’re trying to escape, rather than a warm narcotic vision of a better place and time.
And so I conclude: we will not inspire anyone with grand visions of a viable future through the medium of escapism. If we want to write inspirational literature with grand visions we need to dive into to the literary mainstream (which is finally rediscovering fabulism) and, adding a light admixture of Enlightenment ideology along the way, start writing the equivalent of those earnest and plausible hyper-realistic tales of Progress through cotton-planting on the shores of the Aral sea.
But do you really want us to do that? I don’t think so. In fact, the traditional response of traditional-minded SF readers to the rigorous exercise of extrapolative vision tends to be denial, disorientation, and distaste. So let me pose for you a different question, which has been exercising me for some time: If SF’s core message (to the extent that it ever had one) is obsolete, what do we do next?
Well, I dunno about Charlie, but I plan on writing a couple of prequels to Communion of Dreams, which I understand have touched something of a nerve in people precisely *because* it is hopeful in the face of a harsh reality.
Jim Downey
(PS: sometime today we should break through the level of 500 total sales/loans of CoD so far this month. Which is almost twice the previous month’s tally. Thanks for affirming my vision, folks!)
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Guns, Humor, movies, Reproduction, Science Fiction, tech, YouTube | Tags: Adam Savage, firearms, guns, Guns.com, humor, movies, Science Fiction, technology, The Fifth Element, video, www youtube, ZF-1
Some of my readers here may not know it, but there’s another aspect of my writing life: I’m a regular contributor to Guns.com. And because of that I tend to keep an eye on what pops up on the site.
That scrutiny paid off with this delightful little item:
The Adam Savage Amazing ZF-1 Replica from “The Fifth Element” (VIDEO)
Adam Savage of Mythbusters is working on a perfect replica of the gun from the science fiction movie “The Fifth Element,” which stars Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich, Gary Oldman and little known actor by the name of Luke Perry.
For those of you who haven’t seen the movie, the Zorg ZF-1 is the end-all, beat-all king of weapons. It’s an assault rifle complete with homing bullets, a rocket launcher, arrow shooters (with explosive and poisonous tips), a net launcher, a flame thrower and the “ice cube system” (freeze gas). To top it all off, it’s ambidextrous. Who wouldn’t want a toy like that?
There’s more, but the real treat is this video:
Have I mentioned recently that I love The Fifth Element? Serious geekin’ here.
Working on a second part to Sunday’s post. Probably have that tomorrow.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 