Space Time Stories » science-fiction

We live in one big hologram

Sean — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 13:46:51 +0000

Scientists have analyzed noise in the GEO600 gravitational wave detection system and concluded it is holographic in nature.

This leads them to propose that this entire universe is a holographic projection.

That is one serious projector. The computational power required to process the signals and send them to the projector probably outpaces an entire galaxy of Matrioshka brains.

Jesus in Science Fiction

Sean — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 03:18:00 +0000

io9 asks “Can Jesus Become Your New SF Hero?”

Readers of this blog already know the answer: YES !

If any of you are allowed to post comments on io9 I would appreciate a plug. io9 will not even respond to my requests to be given permission to add comments.

The io9 post is about a SciFi session at the Independent Christian Film Festival.

The Jeffries Tube

Sean — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 17:38:07 +0000

For several years now I have been greeted at church by a pleasant older usher, never dreaming that his brother was a science fiction giant: Matt Jeffries !! Richard Jeffries has written a book about his famous brother.

http://www.mattjefferies.com/wmjb.html

The book is “Beyond the Clouds”

Matt flew a “secret reconnaissance bomber” during WWII, build airplanes, designed the Enterprise (THE Enterprise), worked on many TV shows and a few movies.

I haven’t read the book yet but it sounds excellent.

io9 – What’s the deal?

Sean — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 03:10:09 +0000

io9 is a science fiction blog run by Gawker media. They appear to want lots of input, but they also lock people out of adding comments. Why don’t they want comments? Perhaps it’s just me, has anybody been quickly given authority to comment?

Thirteen

Sean — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 03:20:12 +0000

I just finished listening to Richard Morgan’s Thirteen from Audible. This new novel is an involving story about a genetically engineered mutant, such people carry the nickname Thirteen. Reminds me of Rome. The 13th Legion warriors were aggressive and invincible. So are the mutants. They are fierce male warriors recruited for dirty work such as military ops, assassinations, and tracking down people who don’t want to be found.

I would disagree with anyone who claimed this book is not science fiction. However I would understand their claim. This book starts with the crash of a spaceship from Mars, the sole survivor is a mutant human, another Thirteen is recruited to hunt him down, this hunter was on Mars, and returned to Earth enhanced with military implants.

But this is another of Morgan’s detective story with cops and guns and government agents and conspiracies, and murder scenes and drug dealers.

I’m glad I read it and would recommend it to anyone interested in scifi, but I was disappointed that the science fiction elements played such a minor role. This story would be essentially identical if it had been written without any of them. The Kovacs trilogy was a lot more dependent on the scifi devices.

Time Travel Websites

Sean — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 01:13:35 +0000

There are a lot of other websites out there which offer a great sample of scifi. The most popular according to Google are SF Site, Scifi.com. An useful one is at www.magicdragon.com with the Ultimate Science Fiction Web Guide. The interesting thing is that this site has not been updated in 4 years yet it’s still #9 on a Google search for “science fiction”.

Gawker Media has the 800 pound gorilla with io9. The sheer quantity of searches and material on this site is overwhelming. Yet I must wonder why they won’t let me post a comment.

For help with writing Science Fiction try Jeffrey Carver at www.starrigger.net or try his blog.

I’m most interested in time travel at sites like crystalinks, or time-travel.com, and there’s even a site for time-travelling investors!

Review of Vinge’s ‘Rainbows End’

Sean — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 01:27:17 +0000

I just finished listening to Verner Vinge‘s book “Rainbows End“. There were some things about this book which were very difficult to follow in audio, perhaps reading it would be easier. Overall it was an interesting portrayal of life in the near future when personal technology has become as useful as shoes and eyeglasses.

But I have to say the ending of this book was a tremendous disappointment. It’s not a spoiler to say that The Rabbit is one of the most intriguing and important characters of any book I’ve recently read. Vinge showed his genius in creating Rabbit as one of the heroes, or was it an anti-hero? It’s hard to classify.

So why after all this effort and success would Vinge leave the character unresolved at the end of the book? We learn nothing about Rabbit. He is simply not there. We don’t know if he is dead or alive, a winner or a loser. Vinge may intend on writing a sequel, but he still should give some hints. In the end we are left to guess as to the core of Rabbit’s essence. Saying more would perhaps give away a spoiler.

Vinge’s vision of a technological life is encouraging. HIs vision of secret personal messaging is excellent and shows that the next evolutionary step after IM is still just a conversation. And his ideas of what would happen to old people whose diseases were suddently cured is inspiring.

But I can’t get past the question “What happened to the Rabbit ??”

Interesting note, SF Reviews did not even mention the Rabbit.

Word Usage in SciFi Stories

Sean — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 21:24:31 +0000

As a professional programmer I sort text files and analyze their content. Everytime I look at my own writing I have the habit of analyzing it the same way. Yesterday I realized the value to running a purely statistical analysis of my word usage.

I have been listening to Richard Morgan’s trilogy Altered Carbon, Broken Angels, and Woken Furies. I noticed that Morgan really likes the word “shrugged”. Kovacs and others use this word 30+ times per book. It’s annoying, probably an indicator that he rushed the books past an overworked editor. It also might be an indication that words can be overused in audiobooks even though the work is great on paper.

I assumed that I had a few overused words and I wondered how to find them. Word doesn’t offer a word count histogram, so I wrote one in perl. If you are lucky enough to use a Mac you are only about 3 minutes away from running your own word count on any document you like. If you are on a PC you probably will have to download ActiveState Perl and get it running. This might take awhile. I’ll look into building an exe file if there is sufficient interest.

On a Mac you have to do 4 things:

1) open the Terminal and go to your target directory

2) save this perl code in your target directory as an executable text file named wordcount.pl

3) save your document as a text file in the same directory, let’s say you name it doc.txt. This program will not read Word files or other formats, just text.

4) type ./wordcount.pl doc.txt

The lightning fast result is a histogram analysis of your word usage. A 53,000 word document on a MacBook Pro runs in about 2 seconds. If you want to save the output for future review type ./wordcount.pl doc.txt > results.txt then open results.ext in your word processor.

Each line of output starts with the number of times the word is used, followed by the word, like this:
1176 of
1255 and
1268 a
1441 to
2502 the

At the end is a summary: Total of 53955 words, 10352 distinct words used. My word count agreed exactly with Microsoft Word!! I would have bet money they would not be exactly the same. But at least it gives me confidence in my code.

Your most heavily used words will be of course: the, to, a, and….etc. You will have to dig through the list to find the first word which is not common.

My first word to study is Phillip, the name of my protagonist which I have used 122 times. This might be an indication I’m overusing his name, although it will take a careful reading of the book to decided when to drop the name.

Suppose you only want to see the dreaded adverb. It’s trivial to look for words containing in “ly”. You can modify my script by deleting the first # sign around line 21 => unless ($word =~ /ly/) {next;} # remove the first # sign if you want to look for adverbs

I learned that my novel contains 261 distinct words ending in ly, and I use them 800 times. I used “only” 98 times, “nearly” 53 times, and “really” 30 times. Awful, just awful. Instead of slowly reading each paragraph I can now target specific words in much faster editing sessions.

Editors look for overusage of adverbs and specific words. Statistical analysis of your work is a tool you can use to get past these roadblocks. I look forward to your feedback.

Why are scifi authors so pessimistic about the future?

Sean — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 01:56:17 +0000

A common theme in many of today’s scifi stories is one of desolation, typically a planet ruined by human activity, or a population which cannot be properly fed or sustained.

Where is the creative thinking which gave birth to our precious genre? Where are the hero scientists who learn to feed a million people per square meter of farmland ? Where are the solar power plants which operate at 100% efficiency, or the nanotech waste recyclers which generate a nearly lossless society?

It appears most science fiction writers have been brainwashed by the “common wisdom” of today’s society, they are no longer capable of imagining a greater good. Will there be any more big thinkers writing scifi for us all?

Perhaps I’m one of the last real science fiction writers, someone who imagines that today’s “terrible” problems will be so easily solved that one day we will laugh at how serious we were. I can hear my grandchildren’s voices echoing down from a distant future where they ask me in all seriousness “Grandpa, did people once really believe that Earth would get so warm the ice caps would melt? Didn’t you have any scientists back then?”

The truth is that soon we will be able to feed 100 billion people without any significant change in the amount of farmland, we will have clean drinking water for them all from desalination and nanotech recycling, global warming will be a distant joke even if the sunspots do return. Resistant bacteria will be easily killed with phages, avian flu will be erased by targeted anti-viral agents, and cancer will be in the same category as today’s tooth decay (which will have been eradicated). I see a day where rain forests can be created in a few years using ultra-fast growing bioengineered plants. Old growth forests will be established in time capsules orbiting the moon, then transplanted where ever we want to see one. Abortion will become transplant surgery where a 1-day old fetus can be safely transplanted into the womb of a woman who will love and care for her.

Are any big thinkers out there? Please contact me and we’ll try to move science fiction to a more optimistic footing.

Free Science Fiction from Tor

Sean — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 18:41:07 +0000

Tor Books offers free science fiction downloads every week just for signing up. Not sure if they ever have science fiction short stories.

This week’s book is In the Midnight Hour by Patti O’Shea. The next book will be Battlestar Galactica by Jeffrey Carver.

They don’t appear to have a science fiction blog.

Space Time Stories » science-fiction

We live in one big hologram

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