Christopher McKitterick's Blog, page 23

Had issues with the movie, "Prometheus"?

... or didn't grasp what in toothy hell Ridley Scott was trying to do?

Well, suffer no more! Here's an excellent blog post that examines all the symbolisms.

I stand by my prior declaration that Prometheus rocks.

Best,
Chris

"The Daily Circuit" show and SF rec's, plus another Bradury remembrance

It was a pleasure being part of Minnesota Public Radio's "The Daily Circuit" show today (EDIT: you can listen to the show there now, not that I dare) - great to see Public Radio continuing to cover SF. If you heard the show today, I hope you enjoyed, and thanks to all who called in and commented with such great recommendations! Here's what I added to the show's blog:

A great resource for finding wonderful SF is to check out the winners and finalists for the major awards. For example, here's a list of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award winners. And here's a list of recent finalists for the Award.

Here's the list of the Nebula Award novel winners.

And the Hugo Award winners, which has links to each year's finalists, as well.

So much good stuff out there! A couple of books I didn't get a chance to mention include Bradbury's R Is for Rocket which contains a story that turned me into an author: "The Rocket" (along with Heinlein's Rocketship Galileo and L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time ). Bradbury's Dandelion Wine is another, along with books like Herbert's Dune , Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy , Simak's City (a Minnesota native), SF anthologies like James Gunn's Road to Science Fiction and the DAW Annual Year's Best SF , and tons more.

My favorite Bradbury short story is pretty much everything Bradbury every wrote. His writing is moving and evocative like Simak and Sturgeon's - probably why those three made such an impression on the young-me. But if I had to pick only one that most influenced me as a writer, it would probably be "The Rocket," a beautiful story about a junk-man who has to decide between his personal dreams of space and love of his family. It was adapted into a radio show for NBC's "Short Story" series (you can listen to the MP3 audio recording here).

Enjoy!
Chris

I'll be on "The Daily Circuit" (Minnesota Public Radio) tomorrow. Also Week in Review.

I'm really excited about being on the Minnesota Public Radio show, "The Daily Circuit," tomorrow (Tuesday), with SF scholar Gary Wolfe and show host Kerri Miller. Show starts at 10:00am and runs until 11:00am, though the science fiction segment we're doing begins about 20 after. We'll be discussing Ray Bradbury (of course), but mostly we'll talk about SF reading recommendations: What work should everyone read - especially recent things - and what great stuff is coming out soon, like that. Here's a little blog intro to the show with a place to make your rec's if you wish to interact that way.


Click the image to go to Minnesota Public Radio's The Daily Circuit page.

It's a call-in show, so join me! If nothing else, I'd love to hear some of your recent and upcoming SF-reading recommendations: In your opinion, what should I make sure to mention?

Week in Review:
Prometheus rocks. It has now become one of my favorite movies. Must see again, soon. Loved it so much, in fact, that I must now re-watch the whole anthology. Started last night with the much-derided #4, Alien: Resurrection, which I have always liked (except for the last few minutes). chernobylred had the same reaction, and came up with the best ending: Monster-Baby follows Ripley back to the Betty, Ripley terrified that it's hunting her. She jumps aboard just as the ship lifts off, and we see Monster-Baby raise its arms, look sad, and cry as it watches her leave - she realizes it just wanted to be with her, not harm her, and she can have the same emotional response as they watch the military vessel crash with her baby aboard. Fixed. You are full of story-fixin' awesome, chernobylred , here and of course in helping me work through blocks in Jack and Stella.
Astro-Porn of the Day: Two Solar Eclipses, one with Ray Bradbury. Lots of photos from the Venus transit of the Sun and the solar eclipse. Also, tons of information about the Venus transit here.
Remembering Ray Bradbury. James Gunn's remembrance, and a few words from me. Plus a great letter from Bradbury to a fan.
ConQuest convention report.
Campbell Award and Sturgeon Award finalists, plus Campbell Conference update.
And of course:
Adventures of Jack and Stella progress:

This means I'm over half way to the 30,000 word sample I plan to complete in time to submit to an agent before the SF Writing Worshop begins. At at average of 1000 words/day (as it seems I've been doing lately), it'll be close but totally do-able. HOORAY!

Chris

Adventures of Jack and Stella update. Also PROMETHEUS rocks.

Okay, calling it quits on writing for the day: Almost up to 15,000 words! I hope to hit 30,000 in the next week or two so I can send it (and the complete Empire Ship) off to an agent before all my time is consumed by the SF Writing Workshop, Campbell Conference, and SF Teaching Institute.


Adventures of Jack and Stella progress:


PS: Saw Prometheus today, and it was THE GREATEST MOVIE I HAVE SEEN IN MANY YEARS. Haven't seen it yet? GET OUT THERE. I loved the original Alien movie so much - heck, it was my favorite movie for at least a decade, and it's still in my top five, but this one is even more satisfying without screwing up the original story for Alien fans. It has it all: Gorgeous space and planetary vistas, cool tech, fantastic aliens, truly horrifying cosmological terror, and great SFnal ideas. Oh, and super acting and writing all around. The only things I could complain about are nitpicks. LOVE IT.

After you go, check out the amazing Weyland Industries website. That right there is serious coolness. Speaking of which, here's my employee ID. Looks like I'll be wearing a red shirt on my first mission....

Best,
Chris

Astro-Porn of the Day: Two Solar Eclipses, one with Ray Bradbury.

Lots of photos from the two recent eclipses of the Sun. First, the most recent, when Venus did its best, blotting out less than 1% of the Sun as viewed from Earth, on June 5, 2012.

This first photo of me with my telescope was taken right at sunset. Oh, almost forgot to mention that I had to set up my 'scope for tracking by using an antique sextant! The clock-drive mechanism (counters the rotation of the Earth) requires two stars to align, unless you point precisely North and get the mount perfectly level. After I set it up the second time (batteries overheated and shut down after an hour), I got it so the Sun stayed CENTERED. Aw, yeah, old tech FTW. Lemme point out that this 'scope's drive uses GPS to sense location. Heh. GPS/sextent combo feels right somehow.

Note the T-shirt, worn in honor of Ray Bradbury, who left us the day after.

Here's how the transit looked, about two hours into the event, using my camera with no telescope, just zooming in on the Sun. You can see clouds hazing the image to the right, and just barely make out Venus in the upper-right:


And here's how it looked precariously focusing a camera through a 33mm eyepiece, mounted to my telescope. I used a 0.63 focal reducer, effectively cutting my telescope's magnification by almost 40% - the Sun is very big, and to see it all you need low power. Also used a Seymour Solar full-aperture glass filter, blocking out almost all light. Notice all the sunspots - double-feature! Very active Sun right now:


The endless line of locals wanting to see Venus cross the Sun finally began to dwindle after a few hours. Not sure what I'm gesticulating about, but what's more exciting than an event like this? See the major reflectivity of the solar filter capping my 'scope. Photo by Vijay Barve, who has a nice blog of the event here.


Here I've finally gotten away from my 'scope to check out the transit through a specialized Coronado solar telescope, which uses a Hydrogen-alpha filter: This only passes one bandwidth (the light given off by one type of hydrogen plasma) rather than passing only a fraction of all light, the way my natural-light filter (essentially a mirror) does:


Wonderful example of why I WANT A HYDROGEN-ALPHA telescope. Wow. It Taken by Mike Borman in Evansville, Indiana, with a Televue 102iis refractor, Coronado SM90 h-alpha filter with BF30, Imaging Source DMK41AU02.AS camera, and a 0.5x reducer. Look at the detail you can see, including tons of flare and prominence activity along the limbs (edges) of the Sun:


Far too soon, the Sun approached the horizon, and a haze rolled in. Still, it was a gorgeous sunset:


Okay, now let's go back in time to May 20, 2012, and the BIG solar eclipse. Here's a little gang of locals hanging out at my 'scope:


From the other side. Two school-teachers brought telescopes and busloads of kids to the event. Fun!


Vijay Barve also attended this event and made a lovely series of photos in his blog of the event here. Here's the eclipse, just at sunset, as haze and horizon cut things short:


The field just outside the Lied Center for the Performing Arts on the KU campus, right at sunset. John Hoopes took this using a smartphone with a stitching-panorama app. Cool.


Hope you enjoyed this little astro-tour of the recent eclipses! One of the reasons I so much love bringing my telescope out in public is that I know the sense of wonder that seeing something dramatic through a telescope can provide.

Dear Mr. Bradbury, thank you for all the wonder you provided us all.

Chris

Remembering Ray Bradbury

James Gunn remembers Ray Bradbury.

On a personal note, though Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles helped put me on the path toward a life in science fiction, Dandelion Wine is perhaps my favorite book of his.

He was a hero to many readers, old and young:



Goodbye, dear muse.

Chris

Transit of Venus across Sun: T-minus-2-hours

At least for my region, that is. For your region, check out the various calculators on the Web, including this one - but note that it's an hour off for my area. Just FYI.

In case you missed my chock full o' goodness post about this yesterday, here it is.

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Click the image to see the Discovery page about the transit.

Incidentally, the only way you'll see a view like the photo above is if you have an orbiting 'scope or an observatory-caliber telescope with a Hydrogen-alpha filter. It's still cool, though, even without a telescope and only using a light-blocker.

I've set up my telescope for daytime solar duty and tested it: Ready to rock! I think I'll bring a camera to see what I can capture.

Area residents: I'll be setting up at the Lied Center parking lot, on the south-west side, because it has probably the best view of the relevant part of the sky. I'm sure many others will be there, too. Have a welder's helmet or glass from one? Bring it! I'll bring my welding helmet, too.

Enjoy!
Chris

Advenures of Jack and Stella update

Calling it quits for the day so I can go wish a friend well on his new home.

Adventures of Jack and Stella progress:


Jack and Stella have now been kicked out of their home, hit the road, and had an emotional bombshell dropped on them....

Best,
Chris

Astro-Porn of the Day: Venus Transit, Solar Eclipse, Cap'n Cook's Adventures

Just in case you've been in media blackout for the past week, a heads-up: Tomorrow (in this hemisphere, Wednesday in the East) is your last chance to watch Venus pass across the surface of the Sun for 105 years. So, even granting the Singularity and its attendant eternal-life-for-all, that's a long time. So be sure to catch it if you can.

What you'll need to see it (any of the following will work), in increasing complexity and cost:
Welder's glass or welding helmet. Not magnified, but will allow you to see the black disk that is Venus passing between us and the Sun. It's a true black shadow against a raging inferno of fusion, so it'll be easy to see even at no magnifaction, as opposed to the sunspots, which are only slightly darker than the Sun and thus tough to see without a telescope. The welding helmet is nice because you don't have to hold up the glass for minutes on end.
A cheap telescope and eyepiece to cast the image of the Sun onto a piece of white paper or cardboard. I say "cheap" because magnifying the light of the Sun makes things toasty, and you might overheat the optics. Insert WARNING here: NEVER EVER NO WAY let that magnified sunshine come near anyone's eyes. Heck, it's nasty on your SKIN, so BE CAREFUL if you go this route. Image is bright white. TIP: Try sketching the image(s) onto the paper, including Venus and any visible sunspots.
Any telescope or binocular with a solar filter. Be sure the filter (which goes over the light-gathering end of the instrument, not over the eyepiece - that old-school crap only melts) has no holes, tears, etc. This will enable you to see the stuff in the articles and photos you've no doubt been bombarded with. Image is orange.
If you combine the full-aperture filter on your telescope with an enhancing solar filter for your eyepiece, you can see even more detail. I have an Oxygen-3 "solar continuum" filter that enhances solar-surface activity, and a Hydrogen-alpha filter better for solar-limb activity, but you can try other colored filters to draw out different details.
A true solar telescope that uses Hydrogen-alpha coatings and special lenses and eyepieces. Heck, if you have one of those, you don't need to read this. They're fantastic, because H-a filters enable the observer to witness solar flares, prominences, and so forth. Image is red.
Or, y'know, just watch it live online, at websites like these. These will probably provide the best images, but you'll miss the social aspects, and there's something ephemerally satisfying about doing astronomy yourself, those faraway photons bouncing around inside your own optics, hitting your own retina, instead of being manufactured by a computer screen. It's real, even if less convenient. This is why I own two telescopes and still feel such great joy whenever I point one at something like the Moon, even though I've viewed it thousands of times over the years.
Regardless of how you choose to observe, you'll have an infinitely easier time of it than early astronomers did. For example, Captain James Cook's trip to Tahiti in 1769 to observe the Venus transit (in order to measure the size of the Solar System) resulted in the death of 40% of his crew - and that was considered a low death rate! You can make the journey to your local astro-club's viewing party with a MUCH lower death rate - if you promise not to text in your car, and if you wear a helmet while traveling on two wheels.


Click the image to see NASA's story about Cook's mission.

Here's what you'll see:


Click the image to see Sky & Telescope's Viewing Guide to the Transit of Venus.

Here's what Cook saw:


Click the image to see NASA's story about Cook's mission.

Oh, and here's what such a viewing party looks like; this shot was taken by Vijay Vasant Barve during last week's solar-eclipse party in the KU Lied Center's parking lot. That's me with my telescope, wearing a solar filter over the aperture and, I think at that time, also an Oxygen-3 filter. You can't see the other 'scopes behind the folks in the foreground.


Click the image to see more of Vijay's photos from the event.

Get out there and experience astro-history - and relive human history!

Chris

Advenures of Jack and Stella update

Adventures of Jack and Stella progress:


That's all! Off to dinner & a beer with some buddies. Have a great evening!

Chris