Jackson Allen's Blog, page 31

Sci-Friday #166 – COSMOS: Now on Archive.Org

This is so cool – a watershed science and scifi-based TV series from the Eighties –  COSMOS is now on YouTube! If you want to experience some deep 80’s-nerd nostalgia, binge-watch this series while sitting on your grandma’s Montgomery Ward couch and drinking a JOLT! cola. Take a look:

Here’s more info on Cosmos: A Personal Voyage from Wikipedia: is a thirteen-part, 1980 television series written and presented by Carl Sagan. It covers a wide range of scientific subjects, including the origin of life and a perspective of our place in the universe.

Inspiration for the series sprung from disappointment, according to Entertainment Weekly: “In 1976, Sagan, then a member of the Viking Lander Imaging Team at NASA surveying Mars with robots, was dismayed by the lack of attention given to their historic, important work by the news media. At the time, the cultural narratives about space focused on the question of alien life and hospitable planets, and Team Viking couldn’t support reductive storylines about little green men or interplanetary manifest destiny. But Sagan was convinced the public was hungrier for knowledge — and more capable of appreciating complexity — than the press assumed. In the companion book to Cosmos, Sagan wrote: ‘I was positive from my own experience that an enormous global interest exists in the exploration of the planets and in many kindred scientific topics — the origin of life, the earth, and the Cosmos, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, our connection with universe. And I was certain that this interest could be excited through that most powerful communications medium, television.'”

Sagan was more right than any one else knew. The series was first broadcast by the Public Broadcasting Service in 1980, and was the most widely watched series in the history of American public television until The Civil War (1990). As of 2009, it was still the most widely watched PBS series in the world. It’s spun off a variety of sequels and reboots, and created a nascent genre of science and science fiction/fact television we still enjoy today.

The entire 13-series is available here. I hope you enjoyed this deep dive on Carl Sagan and COSMOS, now that it’s back on Archive.Org. Please feel welcomed to dive down the rabbit hole of every other Sci-Friday I’ve published in the past couple years. Have a great weekend! 

 

 

Sci-Friday #166 – COSMOS: Now on YouTube

This is so cool – a watershed science and scifi-based TV series from the Eighties –  COSMOS is now on YouTube! If you want to experience some deep 80’s-nerd nostalgia, binge-watch this series while sitting on your grandma’s Montgomery Ward couch and drinking a JOLT! cola. Take a look:

Here’s more info on Cosmos: A Personal Voyage from Wikipedia: is a thirteen-part, 1980 television series written and presented by Carl Sagan. It covers a wide range of scientific subjects, including the origin of life and a perspective of our place in the universe.

Inspiration for the series sprung from disappointment, according to Entertainment Weekly: “In 1976, Sagan, then a member of the Viking Lander Imaging Team at NASA surveying Mars with robots, was dismayed by the lack of attention given to their historic, important work by the news media. At the time, the cultural narratives about space focused on the question of alien life and hospitable planets, and Team Viking couldn’t support reductive storylines about little green men or interplanetary manifest destiny. But Sagan was convinced the public was hungrier for knowledge — and more capable of appreciating complexity — than the press assumed. In the companion book to Cosmos, Sagan wrote: ‘I was positive from my own experience that an enormous global interest exists in the exploration of the planets and in many kindred scientific topics — the origin of life, the earth, and the Cosmos, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, our connection with universe. And I was certain that this interest could be excited through that most powerful communications medium, television.'”

Sagan was more right than any one else knew. The series was first broadcast by the Public Broadcasting Service in 1980, and was the most widely watched series in the history of American public television until The Civil War (1990). As of 2009, it was still the most widely watched PBS series in the world. It’s spun off a variety of sequels and reboots, and created a nascent genre of science and science fiction/fact television we still enjoy today.

The entire 13-series is available here. I hope you enjoyed this deep dive on Carl Sagan and COSMOS, now that it’s back on YouTube. Please feel welcomed to dive down the rabbit hole of every other Sci-Friday I’ve published in the past couple years. Have a great weekend! 

 

 

Mike.Sierra.Echo – Why New Mexico?

One of the questions I’m anticipating with Mike.Sierra.Echo is “Why does Mike go to New Mexico?” After all, I live in Eugene, on the West Coast. My last book took place in San Francisco – a traditionally futuristic scifi locale – what’s the deal with putting the characters in Santa Fe?

New Mexico has a proud tradition of being a science-and-space-friendly place. You visit the Land of Enchantment to see places like the birthplace of the atomic bomb, UFOs (if you’re a believer),  and continues to change the future through energy and nanotechnology. They have 60-foot radio astronomy dishes that search for life in the universe. New Mexico is also home the site where Thomas Edison attempted a process to extract gold and a full re-creation of Robert Goddard’s workshop. You can learn more about Goddard’s contribution to space flight here.

It gets better! Spaceport America is located in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. It’s “the world’s first purpose-built commercial spaceport”, designed and constructed specifically for commercial users. Spaceport America is owned and operated by the State of New Mexico, via a state agency, the New Mexico Spaceport Authority. Just like New York and Chicago are famous for their financial centers, Hollywood is famous for its movie industry, New Mexico is betting their future on space-based companies. Mike’s father and his new space elevator company would be right at home there.

Yeah, New Mexico does attract some weirdos. That isn’t a bad thing. “Some of the finest scientific minds in the world come here to lecture and study and commune with each other, and then on the other side you have people who will balance your aura and sell you a crystal to deal with your cancer.”

Researching space and space elevators for Mike.Sierra.Echo led me to New Mexico. After learning about the historic scientific and space-based achievements, I realized that Mike should go to New Mexico, too. He doesn’t stay in New Mexico forever, but Mike.Sierra.Echo wouldn’t exist without the Land of Enchantment.

Write on!

Mike.Sierra.Echo – Our Space Elevator Future Getting Closer

Ran across an exciting video that connects directly with Mike.Sierra.Echo – our space elevator future is getting closer! Anton Petrov runs What Da Math on Youtube, and he explains science, math or other complicated topics using simulations, video games and easy to understand words. Naturally, this makes him the perfect person to explain a complex topic like space elevators to anyone you’re close to. Take a look:



What makes this video especially important is the update on the cable. Skip to here if you want to get to the discussion about the space elevator cable problem that we have to solve. There are a number of technologies that must exist if we plan to get a space elevator. Mike.Sierra.Echo discusses technologies in a world where we’ve already solved those problems. We’re not there, yet – but we can be very soon!

According to the International Space Elevator Consortium, “Space Elevators are the Green Road to Space” and “Space Elevators are the Transportation Story of the 21st Century” are the last two studies with focus on heavy cargo movement to GEO and the planets, in a green manner. I’ve mined their data extensively for MSE and it’s wonderful to see how beautiful a space elevator-enabled future will be for mankind in general. When you get to the second half of the book and we start talking about Galactic Harbors, you’ll see some cool information referenced that comes directly from the ISEC.

I’m jazzed to see this happening in real time – I hope you are, too! Let’s see how the Space Elevator develops – maybe we’ll be riding on one together very soon!

PS – do you like the picture at the top of this article? I made it in Midjourney – you can download it as a wallpaper if you need a new one.

 

 

Sci-Friday #165 – The Original Star Tours Ride

For this Sci-Friday, enjoy a remastered 70mm version of the Original Star Tours ride. Take a look:

According to Wikipedia, the Star Tours ride was originally considered to be for The Black Hole but the expense and lack of popularity caused the project to be shelved. Meanwhile, Lucas and his team of special effects technicians at Industrial Light & Magic produced the first-person perspective film that would be projected inside the simulators. Star Tours utilized hydraulic motion base cabins featuring six degrees of freedom, including the ability to move 35 degrees in the X-Y-Z plane.

It was not all smooth sailing, however. The original script of the ride ran for 20 minutes, and went through several drafts before ending up with the final 4:30 version. Further, Imagineers were working with a new ride technology that was both complicated and finicky, and the team responsible for programming the motion of the vehicles found it nearly impossible to synchronize the movement to the audio track of the film. This resulted in the custom development of a joystick-based programming system that allowed programmers to design movements in real-time with the film playing on the monitor. Last-minute structural changes were needed to accommodate the full-motion simulators. Everything worked out, and Disneyland stayed open for a marathon 60-hour to celebrate the new ride’s opening. Star Tours ran for twenty three years, from 1987 to 2010, before being shut down to be re-imagined into its current incarnation.

But we can still appreciate the original Star Tours for what it was. Fun fact – the Captain RX-24 droid was played by none other than Paul “Pee Wee Herman” Reubens himself. One more fun fact – the life-size AT-AT walker outside the Star Tours entrance used to periodically shoot “lasers” in the form of water.

I hope you enjoyed this deep dive on a Star Tours. Please feel welcomed to dive down the rabbit hole of every other Sci-Friday I’ve published in the past couple years. Have a great weekend! 

Writing Dialogue – No Wrong Answers

I don’t know about you but my life has been filled with ‘writing rules’ – turns out that there are no wrong answers when it comes to writing dialogue. Want to know why? Check out this Redditor’s explanation as to why there is no good way to follow “the rules” for writing dialogue:

“The problem,” he said, “is there really isn’t a way to do dialogue that isn’t considered wrong.”

“Just using said”, she said, “is boring and repetitive.”

“I know,” he said.

“But,” she said, “so are the alternatives.”

“Replacing ‘said’ with something else seems to fix that,” he stated.

“Except,” she replied, “it doesn’t it just makes it repetitive and boring in a different way.”

“Because,” he remarked, “it feels like someone has just looked up ‘said’ in the Thesaurus.”

“Sometimes it annoys me more,” she opined.

“Adding adverbs doesn’t solve the problem,” he said, authoritively.

“Beyond just the ‘don’t use adverbs’ ‘rule’,” she said, happily, “it falls into the same problem of over-using said, with the annoyance of the feeling like someone’s showing off their vocab,”

“And the form can seem just as lazy and repetitive,” he said, approvingly.

“It takes the natural flow of good dialogue and,” she said, sadly, “makes it feel stitled.

​”Of course,” he said, smiling, “It’s breaks the ‘show, don’t tell’ ‘rule.'”

“Yes,” she said, nodding, “But that has many of the same problems.”

“I know, I know,” he said, looking at his feet, “It’s like nothing can me done.”

​”You can, once the speakers are established drop the indicators altogether.”

“True, but that can get confusing. I often wonder, ‘Who is talking now?’ and have to go back to check.”

“And that ruins the flow.”

“Plus, it doesn’t work when there’s more than two in the conversation.”

“And turns the page into a wall of dialogue, it may as well be a script.”

​”Inserting prose doesn’t work,” he was firm on this point. She knew by his stance, his tone. They’d known each other for so long she got as much from his body language as she did from his words.

She continued his point, “The conversation can get lost in the descriptions,” she said, remembering every books she’d read that made the same mistake. And she’d read a lot of books. There’s nothing she loved more than a comfortable chair, a glass of wine and a good book. Reading made her feel safe, like she was back in the womb and the cares of the world no longer mattered.

He saw her point, “Although, sometimes the description is what’s important,” he looked at her, wondering how long they’d known each other, ten years? Was it closer to twenty already? And yet no matter how much they agreed with each other, how much they had in common, they’d never gotten together romantically. With that amount of time and that connection it wouldn’t be a tacked on love story like in bad writing, it would the natural organic outcome. He sighed.

​She spoke about removing quotes altogether and describing the conversation rather than using dialogue. He agreed that it was an option, and that it had a place but that it removed the reader from being part of the converations. She said he’d hit the nail on the head.

​”The thing about the ‘rules’ is,” he said, excitedly, “that they aren’t about never doing something. ‘Never, ever use an adverb” isn’t the rule.”

“Isn’t in more about being able to identify flaws in your writing and things you over do?” she asked.

He nodded in agreement, “And being able to choose from all the options available.”

“Exactly.”

So there you have it, folks – there are no wrong answers when it comes to writing dialogue. I hope you’ll find this useful in your own work, or in defending your work. This goes into the Free Author Tools file. Normalize people not telling you how to write. Unless they’re a walking, talking copy of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, they don’t know any more than you do.

Write on!

Inkican in a Post-Twitter Universe

Sorry about the lack of content this week – I’ve been doing a lot of thinking in preparation for Inkican in a post-Twitter universe. I had to do some real soul-searching about what I wanted to do, and now that my mind’s made up I think it’s fair to tell you what my reasoning is and prepare for some post-Elon-Musk-bought-Twitter scenarios.

You’ve heard enough screeching about Twitter and Musk, and I won’t add to it. This is something bigger, and it crosses the line between ‘professional social media management’ and ‘personal sense of integrity.’ We’re in the crows nest of the Titanic and the iceberg is right ahead – do we try to steer out of the way or do we way ‘nah, this won’t hurt?’

Take a step back, first.  This moment started back in April when Elon Musk announced his intention to buy Twitter. You know the rest of the story. When I first learned of Twitter’s potential sale, something occurred to me and the last few months of ‘Will Musk buy Twitter or won’t he?’ hasn’t changed that thought: Elon Musk purchasing Twitter means the death of the platform. With the exit of Twitter’s top execs and Musk’s stated intention to reduce Twitter’s headcount by 75%, my fear and his intentions seem to be the same thing. This purchase will kill the platform.

Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter will kill the platform

Of course I’m not a social media expert, I’m just a guy who writes scifi. I’ve spent a lot of time and treasure investing in my Twitter presence and I’ve written some ‘best practice’ articles about it, too. My vision when it comes from audience building comes from a lot of bad examples. One thing I’ve learned along the way is ‘your platform matters.’ Facebook, for example, is a terrible platform for authors. Each social media platform has a distinct personality that mirrors the way your customers want to be spoken to. Musk’s purchase of Twitter and his stated intentions with Twitter indicate that it will soon have a new distinct personality. Between buzzwords like warm and welcoming to all live a lot of room for interpretation. What Elon Musk’s track record when it comes to words and actions?

There’s the myth about Musk being a visionary founder of amazing tech companies which has been repeatedly debunkedMusk has made it clear his feelings on the coronavirus, defying orders by reopening Tesla’s Fremont Factory in Alameda County, California, despite a statewide lockdown during the pandemicThat Thai Cave Rescue-linked Defamation Lawsuit (Musk eventually won, but like, not a good look for him …)The time the SEC sued Elon Musk for Tweets about taking Tesla private

I could go on but I think you get the picture. Although I want to believe that Elon Musk is capable of doing good things, I can’t ignore the fact that, as another person clearly stated: ““It gets harder to see [Musk] as somebody that I can look up to.” If Elon Musk’s skills and experience give him valuable insight when it comes to inventing the future, why should it surprise him to learn that we’ve gained insight about Musk that makes it difficult, if not impossible, to trust his intentions?

Who is more important to me – Twitter or my readers?

I always felt like Twitter, despite the risk, was a relatively neutral place for my readers. Like Usenet of old, it’s a perfectly safe place provided you stay out of the bad areas. Not any more. Two days into it and the bad actors are coming out of the woodwork. Do you realize what that means? It means all of my readers – the different, the othered, the weird, the beautiful people you are – are at risk. Who’s more important to me, Twitter or my readers? I think you know the answer.

So no, I don’t trust that Twitter will be a safe, smart place for me to talk with readers. Could I justify staying on Twitter if it turns into Parler? Also no. Your platform choice says a lot about you, in the same way a @hotmail.com address says something about you. There’s a reason I stay off of social platforms like TikTok or Parler.  On Parler, different or othered people are threatened and abused. TikTok is a data collection service that is thinly-veiled as a social network. I stay off those platforms because my readers aren’t taken care of, there.

You can see it coming. A Kanye-style meltdown of tech’s biggest demagogue? A takeover by bad actors previously throttled by content policies and moderation? A data breach from poor infrastructure as the result of canning 75% of the staff? Who knows. Point is, everything that’s happening with Twitter is outside of my personal social media risk-tolerance policy. I’m not the only one with concerns – GM has ‘paused’ their Twitter advertising while they ‘evaluate Twitter’s new direction.’ Maybe this will be the end of Twitter, or maybe this will be the end of Elon Musk’s arbitrary and ego-driven behavior. We’ll have to wait and see.

Twitter has every chance to prove to us that it can be a safe, responsible place for us to interact with our readers if they want to. In the meantime, it’s getting too weird around here. I’m mustering at the life boat station now, in case we must abandon ship. My readers are important to me, and if it ever comes down to choosing my readers over my platform, I’ll pick my readers 100% of the time.

I don’t have all the answers, and I want to practice mindful care when it comes to anything I do. If anyone has a better idea on how to handle this, I’m all ears – Mastodon account is already up and running.

 

 

Sci-Friday #164 – How Do You Work Out in Space?

Staying healthy in null-G is easier said than done – How *do* you work out in space? This isn’t just about maintaining your six-pack. Lesser symptoms include loss of body mass, nasal congestion, sleep disturbance, excess flatulence, and puffiness of the face. These effects can be minimized through a regimen of exercise.  NASA came up with an answer to this question. For this Sci-Friday, take a look at the ISS treadmill, AKA COLBERT in this quick three-minute-ish video:



Fun fact: The ISS treadmill is named ‘COLBERT,’ and NASA explains why: ‘That’s why a treadmill engineers had called simply T-2 for more than two years is suddenly famous as the Combined Operational Load-Bearing External Resistance Treadmill, or COLBERT. NASA selected the treadmill’s name after comedian and host Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report” took interest during the Node 3 naming census and urged his followers to post the name “Colbert,” which received the most entries.’

I hope you enjoyed this deep dive on a scifi topic. Please feel welcomed to dive down the rabbit hole of every other Sci-Friday I’ve published in the past couple years. Have a great weekend! 

Sci-Friday #163 – When African Kids Saw the UFO

For this Sci-Friday, let’s chase down a science fiction-related historical event: When African kids saw the UFO. On September 16, 1994, students in Ruwa, Zimbabwe claimed that they saw one or more silver craft descend from the sky and land on a field near their school. (Here’s an Imgur album of pictures and information) One or more creatures dressed in black approached the children, telepathically communicating a message about protecting the environment.

Some call the incident the “most remarkable close encounter of the third kind of the 1990s”. Skeptics describe the incident as ‘mass hysteria,’ but several of those kids maintain that their account of the incident is true. Take a look at this video – their sincerity is goosebump-inducing:



John Mack reported that the event was genuine, the children were telling the truth, and aliens actually came to Zimbabwe. But here’s the thing – did the Ariel School UFO incident really happen that way? Skeptics, as much as I love to disagree with them, present compelling reasons to say ‘no.’

Skeptoid did a whole run down of the case against the Ariel School incident being proof of alien existence. You can read the whole thing but here are the highlights:

The interviewer, John Mack, arrived in Harare two months after the incident. It’s worth mentioning, Mack, who died in a 2004 car crash, ‘attracted controversy at Harvard University for his work with purported UFO abduction reportees like Nickerson.’ When multiple witnesses are involved in something, they should be interviewed as soon as possible and separately, to avoid any cross contamination between their stories. Mack did the opposite: giving the students two months to converse among themselves.UFO writer Cynthia Hind’s own interviews were even worse. She interviewed the children in groups of two to six, while other children were allowed to watch and listen to each group. Every single child’s story was necessarily cross contaminated with the others. There is little wonder that she always reported that all the students told exactly the same story.When comparing Mack’s interviews to those obtained by Cynthia Hind, we see another important point: the whole theme of a telepathic message to protect planet Earth was not found in the stories collected by Hind at all. In fact, this part of the story did not exist at all until Mack’s interviews. Skeptoid goes as far as saying Mack prompted and suggested it, according to his existing beliefs; in addition to being an alien visitation advocate, Mack was an anti-nuclear and environmental activist. (Hind ultimately did report this angle extensively, but only after Mack’s interviews.

And when you think about it, the entire story has a Close Encounters of the Third Kind vibe. Researchers arrive in an obscure corner of the world to find local population reeling at the extraterrestrial experience they just had. I’m not saying that there’s a connection, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was.

So there you have it, an interesting and potentially real experience. Or maybe not. We’ll have to see. My personal take on extraterrestrials remains pretty simple: If they exist, let them come down here and tell us.

I hope you enjoyed this deep dive on a scifi topic. Please feel welcomed to dive down the rabbit hole of every other Sci-Friday I’ve published in the past couple years. Have a great weekend! 

Toxic Fans: Congratulations, You Played Yourself

I had another ‘Congratulations toxic fans: You played yourself’ moment this month. Whenever you see ‘Star Wars’ trending or a heated argument about Star Trek just ahead of a movie release, know that you’re seeing a marketing firm engaging in something called ‘fan-baiting.’

Now look: There was a  I know that ‘toxic fans’ discussion isn’t very popular. Nonetheless, I’m still passionate about making science fiction a community that’s inoculated from cheap manipulation and emotional card tricks. I feel obligated to point out where the community is its own worst enemy when it comes to protecting itself from bad actors.

To that end, read through this Reddit post about ‘fan-baiting’ and see for yourself if you want to be a part of someone’s artificial controversy, publicity, and marketing strategy:

“Fan-baiting” is a form of marketing used by producers, film studios and actors, with the intent of exciting artificial controversy, garnering publicity and explaining away the negative reviews of a new and often highly anticipated Production.

Fan-baiting emerged as a marketing strategy in 2016/17, after fans of beloved franchises such as Ghostbusters and Star Wars objected to what they saw as poor writing choices, sloppy scripts and cheap alterations to plot lines and characters for the sake of shock value.

Alongside these critics, there was a small group of bigoted but vociferous commentators who objected to the inclusion of black and female actors in roles traditionally help by white male actors. Some of these individuals began publicly harassing actors.

Bigots have always attacked diversity on screen, but in a highly polarized political climate, instances of harassment garnered disproportionately massive media coverage, which provided studios with both free publicity and a new defense against actual critics.

Studios seized the opportunity to discredit criticism of poor writing & acting, insinuating that these too were motivated by bigotry. What used to be accepted as standard critiques were increasingly dismissed as part of the ignorant commentary of a ‘toxic fandom’.

Soon, it became standard practice before release to issue announcements specifying diverse casting choices, coupled with pre-emptive declarations of solidarity with the cast whom they now count on to receive disparaging and harassing comments.

Actors who are women and/or BIPOC became props and shields for craven corporate laziness and opportunism. The studios save money both by avoiding expensive talented veteran writers as well as by offloading publicity to news outlets and social media covering the artificial controversy.

‘Fan-baiting’ works. It brings in a new sympathetic audience whose endorsement is more about taking a public stance against prejudice than any real interest in the art. ‘Fan-baiting also permits studios to cultivate public skepticism over the legitimacy of poor reviews.

‘Fan-baiting’ also compels reviewers to temper their criticism, for fear of being associated with the ‘toxic fandom’ and losing their professional credibility, resulting in telling discrepancies between critic and audience review scores.

The true nature of ‘fan-baiting is most clear when a script is well-crafted and audience reviews are accordingly positive, exposing the announcements of solidarity & grooming of skepticism for what they really are: cynical corporate marketing tactics.

(Taken from tweets by Dr. Thala Siren)

TL;DR media corporations have found a way to monetize the racism that they set their actors up to recieve.

There would have been a tiny majority that complained about the batmans race-swap. but the studio did what they should do and ignore it because they aren’t Disney.

I read this post and my hot take was “Dang it, there it is.” I know what it’s like, growing up in dysfunctional families where you can feel the manipulation but you don’t know what it is or why it’s happening. Then someone pulls the curtain back, like Toto in the Wizard of Oz, and you’re left knowing that you played yourself. Not gonna lie, it sucks, and you can’t help feeling dirty and ashamed for letting someone use your emotions against you.

The first step toward transformation is information. I want you to know that your feelings matter, and that you deserve to be treated with transparency and respect. That’s why I post articles like these and I’m open to any discussion on balancing the needs of sci-fi in a holistic, sustainable way.

Like more toxic fan resources? Check out the Toxic Fan Resource page. In the meantime, remember that fighting and conflict come from a lack of respect.

 



Show respect for yourself, and for your scifi neighbors. Refuse to get sucked into arguments about what scifi is or what it should be. You’re too good for that. We all need mature scifi people who see the big picture.