I know, I know, I am a broken record about this stuff. But it never ceases to amaze me (in an unhappy way) how the so-called writers of Science Fiction, seem to be in such a huge hurry to run away from the roots of the field. I’ve read and listened to all the many arguments — pro and con, from both sides — about how Campbell rescued the field from the Pulp era, but then New Wave in turn rescued the field from the Campbell era. So it might be true that we’re finally witnessing the full maturation of SF/F as a distinct arena of “serious” literature, but aren’t we taking things too far? Does anyone else think it’s a bad idea for the field to continue its fascination with cultural critique — the number of actual nutty-bolty science types, in SFWA, is dwindling, while the population of “grievance degree” lit and humanities types, in SFWA, is exploding — while the broader audience consistently demonstrates a preference for SF/F that might be termed “old fashioned” by the modern sensibilities of the mandarins of the field?
I watched the 2004 movie Primerwith barely any knowledge of it, which may be the best way to watch it. Shane Carruth wrote, directed, and stared in this detailed sci-fi story about four entrepreneurs who hope to make some kind of breakthrough on one of their garage-lab projects. When Abe discovers that a box they made does something unexpected, he tells Aaron and the two decide to pursue it. The scene below gives you a taste of the movie’s style while showing Abe and Aaron conducting their first experiment.
That’s the pace of the first quarter–realistic talk from scientific engineers who aren’t spelling anything out for the viewers at home. In this scene, I’m not sure Abe knows what’s going on yet, but he works it out and then tells Aaron everything. They’ve invented a time machine.
Since Abe draws this conclusion first, he experiments with the necessary components to make the box work, to make the box larger, and to survive within it–all before introducing it to Aaron.
That’s when the story goes from a bit tedious to mind-bending. Carruth hasn’t given us a simple lark about time-traveling engineers trying to better their lives or two ordinary guys trying to change the course of history. He’s written a story that pushes into the paradoxes bound to occur when someone breaks time’s linear progression.
For example, if someone could go back in time a day or a week in order to prevent a major crime or gain a windfall in the lottery or stock market, once he goes back to do this he removes his motive for going back. If on Saturday he decides to return to Monday in order to stop a crime and he succeeds, what happens when he returns to Saturday again? Having stopped the crime, he doesn’t have any reason to go back to Monday. So what happens? Are the first days overwritten by the second? What if he had discovered time travel during that week; would revisiting the week delay or prevent the discovery that enabled him to go back in the first place?
What if you began to see it the opposite way, as a way to avoid consequences? What if you could go back in time, punch a jerk who deserves it, and return to the same morning as if (no, because) none of it ever happened? What if you could press a reset button to undo everything you’ve done over the last several days?
Primer is a story about all of that, and while it’s easy to understand the danger presented at the movie’s conclusion, it’s difficult to follow everything occurring up to that point. What happens at the birthday party? Who is the guy following them? Where does the man who looks severely beaten come in? The story pushes into these paradoxes without full explanation, giving rise to explanatory videos like this one as well as webpages dedicated to spelling it all out.
Abe: “I’m not into the whole ‘destiny, there’s-only-one-right-way’ thing.”
Aaron: “Abe, I’m not either, but what’s worse? You know, thinking you’re being paranoid or knowing you should be?”
I enjoyed it overall, but it is dense. One reviewer said that though it’s a short movie, it feels longer due to the many details packed into every minute.
Christianity Today has released the results of their annual book awards. Many attractive titles, including this one:
Science Fiction Theology: Beauty and the Transformation of the Sublime by Alan P. R. Gregory (Baylor University Press)
“Our culture is awash in science fiction. From post-apocalyptic young-adult blockbusters to hard sci-fi novels, the genre’s star has never burned more brightly. Science Fiction Theology demonstrates a masterful understanding of what makes it all tick. While the casual fan may find the book’s density off-putting, others will find themselves deeply edified by Gregory’s rigorous tracing of the dialogue between science fiction and Christianity. The dialogue, it turns out, is very lively, even when trafficking in distortions. The chapter on Philip K. Dick, an author criminally ignored by religious readers, is itself worth the price of admission.” —David Zahl, director of Mockingbird Ministries
(via Hunter Baker, who was a judge for these awards)
Citizen scientists have been keen on a particular star since 2011 for its irregular light pattern, observed through Kepler Space Telescope. Irregular light patterns indicate object moving between us and the star, which could be planets, asteroids, tentacles of space squid, or the Borg. Any of those very realistic possibilities. The astronomers noted the star does not appear young, so debris surrounding young stars was ruled out. What could surround a mature star like this?
Jason Wright of Penn State suggested “the star’s light pattern is consistent with a ‘swarm of megastructures,'” Ross Anderson of The Atlantic reports, “perhaps stellar-light collectors, technology designed to catch energy from the star.
“When [Boyajian] showed me the data, I was fascinated by how crazy it looked. Aliens should always be the very last hypothesis you consider, but this looked like something you would expect an alien civilization to build.”
The science-side of the Interwebs has been abuzz with this news, but what can be understood from this observation? An article published in Scientific American earlier this year, which mentions Wright’s research, states nothing has been found. Writer Lee Billings explains Wright’s team’s goal.
They looked for the thermodynamic consequences of galactic-scale colonization, based on an idea put forth in 1960 by the physicist Freeman Dyson. Dyson postulated that a growing technological culture would ultimately be limited by access to energy, and that advanced, energy-hungry civilizations would be driven to harvest all the available light from their stars. To do that, they might dismantle a planet or two as feedstock for building star-enveloping swarms of solar collectors. A star’s light would fade as it was encased in such a “Dyson sphere”
Dyson himself is not discouraged by finding nothing. “Our imaginings about the ways that aliens might make themselves detectable are always like stories of black cats in a dark room,” he said. “If there are any real aliens, they are likely to behave in ways that we never imagined.”
Which means they probably aren’t hoping to eat us.
Kurt Schlichter ruminates on our current obsession with zombies. Not long ago, many mainstream stories focused on foreign threats or nuclear fallout. Today, we entertain ourselves with mysterious outbreaks that turn people into flesh-eaters.
“What does it say,” Schlichter asks, “that our collective subconscious senses less of a threat from fanatical outsiders who, in the last couple decades, have killed thousands of us via terrorism, than from each other?
. . . The foreigners are a threat, but that’s under control. What is out of control, or what seems like it is out of control, is our society itself.”
Author John C. Wright argues against the ‘It Ain’t Gunna Happen’ camp of science fiction with his own Space Princess camp. One side says we will never find intelligent life on other planets or build our own colonies there. The other side says, not only is there intelligent life out there, but the women are remarkably hot and need to be rescued by noble earthmen.
One side says, “Psionics is just magic wearing a lab coat.” The other side says, “Without psionics, there is no way to speak and understand the space princess when you first meet her. Learning a new space-language without psionic aid involves many long and boring sessions with philologists and translators and grammarians, which is all hogwash and humbug. Space Princesses can read minds just enough so that you can talk to them. That is settled.”
You can see where this is going.
Is this kind of argument having assumed your conclusions really that different from the supposedly serious argument put forward in this Canadian propoganda, which says Science is a political value we must all support?
Clyde Tombaugh had only graduated from Burdett High School in Burdett, Kansas, when we applied for a position at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. His family didn’t have the money to send him to college, so he studied on his own, assembled a portfolio, and presented himself to the observatory director, V. M. Slipher. While working there as a photographic assistant, he discovered two comets and variety of other stellar objects including Pluto.
We haven’t had a good look at the once-and-future-planet until today. NASA’s New Horizons probe is passing by Pluto, carrying Tombaugh’s ashes and sending photos back to us. Will we discover the truth of what many sci-fi authors have written about this place over the last 85 years? Gregory Benford describes some of those details.
In his first novel, World of Ptavvs, Larry Niven depicted an astronaut landing in the Plutonian atmosphere, his vessel’s hot exhaust releasing the frozen methane and oxygen and causing the entire planet to burst into flames. In a later story, Niven imagined an even odder fate. A stranded astronaut freezes, only to find that his nervous system has become superconducting and that he can still think, frozen solid. . . . My own 2006 novel, The Sunborn, has small, smart creatures thriving along the shore of Pluto’s supposed nitrogen sea.
The executive editor at Tor said that while Scalzi hasn’t had a top-of-the-list bestselling book, “One of the reactions of people reading a John Scalzi novel is that people go out and buy all the other Scalzi novels.”
“John Scalzi is interesting as someone who has built a writing career in these strange days,” Joseph Bottum explains. “He spent a few years writing movie reviews after college before landing, in 1996, a sweet gig at America Online as editor and in-house writer. Laid off in the meltdown of AOL, he took to writing guidebooks for the money and science fiction blog posts for the fame. Or, at least, the dribs of money and the drabs of fame. The blog, called “Whatever,” proved enjoyable for readers—a few years ago, he issued in book form selections entitled Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded—and it successfully established him as a voice to be reckoned with in the field.”
Scalzi’s most recent novel is called Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas. It’s a story about a red-shirted crew that discovers it’s dangerous to accompany the senior officers on landing parties.
. It’s a story about a red-shirted crew that discovers it’s dangerous to accompany the senior officers on landing parties.