Jackson Allen's Blog, page 32

Hello to Our New Readers

Got a lot of short story sales this week, so this is a short and sweet message: Hello to our new readers! Enjoy your Sunday, I hope it’s filled with rest and rejuvenation.

Not Locally Real: Freaky Nobel Prize Proves Tenet

Remember in Tenet where they showed bullets landing before you pulled the trigger? Last week’s freaky Nobel Prize winner demonstrated this aspect of Tenet – whether you liked it or not – was scientifically accurate: our universe isn’t ‘locally real.’

‘Locally real? What’s that? Who cares?’ Let’s discuss what that means from a nerdy scifi perspective. As Scientific American explains: ‘One of the more unsettling discoveries in the past half century is that the universe is not locally real. “Real,” meaning that objects have definite properties independent of observation—an apple can be red even when no one is looking; “local” means objects can only be influenced by their surroundings, and that any influence cannot travel faster than light. Investigations at the frontiers of quantum physics have found that these things cannot both be true. Instead, the evidence shows objects are not influenced solely by their surroundings and they may also lack definite properties prior to measurement. As Albert Einstein famously bemoaned to a friend, “Do you really believe the moon is not there when you are not looking at it?”’

Huh?

What’s that mean? The University of Vienna adds: “The phenomenon of entanglement … represents a connection between particles that is difficult to grasp with our everyday intuition. When a measurement is performed on one partner of an entangled pair, there is an instant change of the quantum state of the other partner, regardless of the distance between the particles. In addition, quantum theory considers the measured properties of the particles to be completely undefined right up to the point of the measurement itself. Given this description from quantum theory, Albert Einstein referred to the phenomenon of quantum entanglement as ‘spooky action at a distance.'”

Fun fact: a dungeon in the Vienna Hofburg Palace was used to confirm quantum entanglement.

Let’s Break That Down

‘I don’t get what any of that means and it’s making my head hurt.’ It made my head hurt, too. Fortunately, a helpful Redditor provided the answer in this ELI5 thread:

“Real” = an object and its properties continue to exist even when nothing is interacting with it. A basket of 5 apples will still have 5 apples even when no one is looking.

“Local” = in order to change an object’s properties, something needs to physically interact with it. If you throw another apple into the basket of apples, the basket will not contain 6 apples until the apple you threw reaches it. It is assumed there is a maximum speed at which that apple can travel.

“Not locally real” = it has been observed that the basket registers that it contains 6 apples the moment you throw the 6th apple rather than when the 6th apple reaches the basket. The properties of the object have changed without direct interaction.

So there you have it. The universe knows when things change and makes itself ready to experience the change, even though the change hasn’t actually happened yet. Weird, huh? The implications of this – from a scientific perspective – tend to bend your head. Christopher Nolan was onto something when he made Tenet and it’s provided some fodder for an upcoming short story. I’ll share more about that as soon as I can.

You finished this article and you enjoyed it. I knew that before you started to read.

Two Short Story Subs Today

Quick note to say I have three short stories out for consideration, total – two of those shorts went out today. Culture Shock is a 2K-word short based on that earlier writing prompt. I finished the story after ‘this is fake,’ and I’m fairly pleased with the results. The other one? Mons City Obituary – I submitted it to Flash Fiction Online, which publishes short stories under a thousand words in length. We’ll see what happens, I’ll keep you posted.

Write on!

Sci-Friday #162 – Those ‘Bullets’ in T2? Not CGI

Terminator 2 won the Best Visual Effects Oscar in 1991 for a reason. Time-tested VFX plus ground-breaking CGI created a roller-coaster ride that continues to thrill over thirty years later. What’s interesting about the movie is that it didn’t rely purely on computer graphics imaging (CGI). A large amount of the special effects in the film were created by ‘practical effects,’ simple time-tested tricks created by a century of artisans in the movie industry. Take a look at this article discussing the simplicity of the ‘bullet effects’ in Terminator 2:

As the article mentions, Winston and his team researched the correct “look” for the splash impacts by firing projectiles into mud and painstakingly working to duplicate the resulting shapes. These realistic-looking crater sculpts were then cast in some mixture of foam rubber, and given a chromed look by way of vacuum metallizing. These foam rubber splash patterns — which look like metal but aren’t — were deployed using a simple mechanical system.  To trigger a bullet impact effect, a wireless remote control pulls a cable, which pulls its attached pin, and the compressed splash pattern blossoms forth in an instant, bursting through pre-scored fabric in the process.

So yes, the bullet effects are a ‘hack,’ an art form that uses something in a way in which it was not originally intended. SFX artists are master hackers, highly creative people. Hackers bask in the glory of building it instead of buying it, repairing it rather than trashing it, and raiding their junk bins for new projects every time they can steal a few moments away and Hackaday celebrates that. Good for them!

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! 

Make Me Feel Something

Been thinking a lot about emotions lately and it made me realize that I experience art for one reason: to make me feel something. Art is healing, as they say. It’s a method of emotional communication almost uniquely limited to the human species. Humans produce art to find meaning in life. Art is a method of healing for many, including me. Are you an artist? Then your job is to make me feel something.

What am I talking about? Simple: Art helps people get in touch with and express feelings that might otherwise remain buried or ignored. If you’re healing from things like depression or PTSD, processing emotions in a non-traumatic way is an important skill to learn. You can’t regulate what you can’t understand. Langston Hughes was right: deferred dreams can explode and this boring dystopia doesn’t only use racism as a form of social inhibition. We’re introjected from a young age to know our place, accept our fate, while others born on third base walk through life like they hit a triple.

Where do you go to scrape out those unexpressed feelings like rotten meat before they ferment and explode in your refigerator? Well Sweet Pea, that’s art. Art gives us that space, whether we create it or we consume it. We’re getting the yucky stuff out of us. The best stories make you feel something, and telling stories helps you clean your own ’emotional closet.’ Any kind of art be it painting, poetry, movies, or video games – mainly you’re there to feel something. You might talk about technique and process, but you’re there to feel something. That’s what the rest of this blog post is all about.

The Best Stories Make You Feel Something

I know I’ve alluded to this in the past but it’s time to make it more explicit – stories are about emotional consistency, not logical consistency. Big ideas, well-paced stories, but in the end: emotions. You read the story, you watched the movie, you played the video game because you wanted to feel something.

Now, what do you want to feel? Well, that’s up to you. Some people love the timeless perspective, social themes, and emotional safety of classic literature so they’ll read The Hobbit, To Kill a Mockingbird or Catcher in the Rye. Others crave the transgressionary, vicarious thrill dropping out of society – they read William S. Burroughs and Henry Miller. Still others are fascinated by liminal spaces, the creepy feeling you get in a lonely office building or an abandoned mall – they make videos like the Backrooms and people on Youtube eat them up.

The point? Nothing should be more important to an author than how their story makes the audience feel. What those creators understand, what we need to learn as creatives, is that we start with the emotion first and then work backwards. I’ll talk more about that in a second. First, let’s talk about the therapeutic value of storytelling, and what it does for storytellers.

Telling Stories Cleans Your Closet

All creatives are storytellers, regardless of their medium. What I’m starting to understand now is what storytelling gives me, regardless of whether I become ‘successful,’ or not. I’m here doing my Inkican thing, because I have a lot of stuff inside that needs to get out. Sad stories, trauma, regret. I need to clean that out of me and walk the path of life without all that baggage.

With the right eyes, that baggage or garbage clutters up your mind heart: an old, overstuffed coffin-sized space filled with musty sweatsocks and stained t-shirts. In real life, a dirty closet has the tang of skin oil and farts. I can tell you what a dirty closet smells like right now – you probably can, too. Some people’s lives are just like those closets – junked-up and overstuffed with things they don’t want any more but can’t bring themselves to remove.

I learned a long time ago that telling stories helps me clean out that emotional closet in my mind and heart. ‘Cleaning up’ has introduced me to many other people who also have their own struggles and weaknesses. It’s brought me to you and other readers with their own stories to share. The real treasure was the friends we made – and the emotions we processed – along the way.

Start With Emotion – Work Backwards

So here’s how to do it – as far as I can tell. Start with the emotions you’re trying to explore in your work. Are you happy? Great – work out what’s making you happy. What does happy feel like, smell, like, taste and look like? Then, take it back one step: What *kind* of happy to you feel? What does that look like, feel like, sound like? What are different events that say ‘happy’ to you? Who are ‘happy’ people you can reference?

Now, bring it back together: How can your art convey those emotions so that other people feel your kind of happy, too? One of my favorite ‘happy’ artists is a guy named Weird Al Yankovic and along with being hysterically funny, he’s a genuine and kind person who knows how to be happy. He’s my go-to ‘happy’ artist.

Wrapping Up

Yes, your job is to make me feel something. You decide how to do that. Make me feel your brand of happy, sad, scared, or amazed. When I feel what you feel, and I realize that I feel the same way, I feel seen, I feel understood. Thank you for making me feel that way.

Make art, make me feel something. Now that I’ve finished talking about making you feel something, do you know how I feel? I feel accomplished, finished. I did it. I did what I was supposed to do, today. One step closer to being who I want to be for the rest of my life. Go find something that brings you one step closer, too.

 

New Microfiction – Dave Has a Breakdown

I’m working on a new microfiction over on Reddit in response to this /r/writingprompt thread: [WP] When humanity entered the galactic stage nobody noticed. No ceremonious greeting, no “humanity is special” in any way, shape or form. Humanity is so unremarkable that most didn’t even notice that a new species joined the community. Humanity has a hard time coping with this. People seem to enjoy it (75 points as of right now) so feel free to start here if you’d like to read it, too.

 

 

Sci-Friday #161 – Happy Meals and Murder

Ah, Burger Chef – a burger chain synonymous with ‘Happy Meals’ and murder. Did you know they did Happy Meals before McDonalds? It’s true! BC called them ‘Funmeals’ and they were the first fast food restaurant to offer Star Wars-related toys in kids meals. For today’s Sci-Friday we get to see what a Star Wars Funmeal looked like in 1978 – take a look:

But wait, there’s more! In 1972, BC introduced the Funburger, a hamburger with packaging that included puzzles and a small toy. A year later, they introduced the Funmeal, the first kid’s meal that included a burger, french fries, a drink, a cookie, and a small toy; with expanded packaging that included stories about Burger Chef and Jeff’s adventures and friends.

Why would scifi care about Funmeals or happy meals? Because they’re part of merchandising, which is one of the biggest sources of money for any scifi franchise (looking at you, Star Wars, Hunger Games, and Jurassic Park).

Sadly, Burger Chef is gone. They sold off the last store to Hardees in 1982. But the fact remains that Burger Chef actually pioneered a lot of fast food stuff. There’s also a (very mysterious) murder case involving the restaurant if you’re interested in diving down that macabre rabbit hole. 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!