Steven Lyle Jordan's Blog, page 17

Space is not a “Frontier.”

A recent article on Slate states, right in the title, that “We Need to Stop Talking About Space as a ‘Frontier’.”  As the article points out, “The language we use matters, especially when it’s deployed in the service of envisioning possible futures.”

And in this case, the word “frontier” is wrongly coloring our perception of space and the way we should treat it.

[image error]This means I have to apologize to Gene Roddenberry… but I certainly don’t blame him for calling space “the final frontier.”  After all, Roddenberry was an American, whose history and upbringing included the thinking of the American West as a romantic and colorful frontier, an empty space waiting to be conquered.

But most of the people who taught him that didn’t dwell overmuch on the people who were already living on that land, the many who died of European diseases (or European guns), the violence, the genocide, the slavery, the unfair labor practices, the ravaged landscapes and the inconvenient animals wiped out of existence in order to put greenbacks on the European’s tables and cheap meal in their workers’ bellies.

“Frontier” also embodies the spirit of the powerful invader, who believes no one has the right to forbid them access to lands they’ve just discovered… including anyone who is already on that land.  Ask a Native American, for instance, and they’ll tell you: “Your ‘frontier’ has been my families’ home for centuries. Exactly who gave you permission to come in here, kill my family and chase me off?”  Of course, to the powerful invader, might makes right. As he treads on the bones of others, why should he care about issues like semantics?

Yes, “frontier” has horrible connotations.  It goes hand-in-hand with the phrase “might makes right”… the idea that if it’s there, we can just take it, and to hell with the consequences to others.  It’s a word for land-grabbers, bullies, rapists.  And in point of fact, there is no frontier—free and empty places waiting to be claimed and exploited for personal gain.  On Earth, there never was, and those who view any part of our world as a frontier are being racist, unthinking and cruel.  Earth never had empty spaces waiting to be forcibly occupied and owned by someone.  Earth is not a property to be lorded over and done with as we wish.  And if Earth, the planet on which we live, is not frontier waiting to become property, how can any place in space be frontier waiting to become our property?

The Slate article seeks a new word to describe the space we want to explore and occupy.  The author doesn’t seem to be able to think of a word… or maybe, they want someone else to invent a cool word that will describe space and how we treat it.  But there’s no need to invent a word; one immediately comes to mind.

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Space is an Environment.

It is, in fact, THE Environment in which we all live.  It is vast beyond our ability to comprehend… a scale that pointedly does not take Earth’s denizens into account.  It is full of sub-environments, changing conditions and hostile natural forces, any number of which could wipe out any life it comes in contact with in an instant.

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This makes Earth an oasis, a local sub-environment, one of many and varied oases peppered throughout this vast Environment, and we happen to be one of the many life forms that have evolved to thrive on this particular oasis.  There may be other oases out there that we could live on… there may be oases out there that something else is currently living on, or lived on in the past… and there may not be, we don’t really know yet.

We can explore the Environment.  We will learn things about it along the way, and we may learn things that will teach us more about our oasis and how it functions.  In that way, we’ll expand our general knowledge, something we can share with each other.

There are resources in the Environment, outside of our oasis.  Most of those resources aren’t being used by anyone, but again, we really don’t know yet what resources are being used by something else.  And we really don’t have any more or less of a right to them than anything else.

[image error]There is lots of room for expansion in the Environment… but absolutely no guarantee that we can, in fact, expand beyond this oasis and thrive.  Most of the Environment is downright hostile to us.  Intelligence might allow us to figure out a way… but the uncontrolled elements of that vast Environment may eventually doom us to non-existence anyway.  Once more… we have no way to know.  But there’s nothing stopping us from trying; only the incredible difficulty and unlikelihood of succeeding.

The word “environment” embodies the knowledge of science and nature, the desire to experience it and learn what is learnable… but not to desecrate, strip-mine or destroy it for personal gain. If that’s not a noble-enough reason to explore new environments, I don’t know what is.

This way of thinking about space probably gives us the best and most accurate image of the universe and our place in it.  It will also serve us best in imagining our future activities in space: How we should treat the vast Environment; and how we should act when or if we discover others out in the Environment.  (It probably wouldn’t have hurt if we’d considered Earth this way, instead of seeing it as empty spaces to exploit.  Just saying.)

Read the Slate article.

Space is not a “Frontier”

A recent article on Slate states, right in the title, that “We Need to Stop Talking About Space as a ‘Frontier’.”  As the article points out, “The language we use matters, especially when it’s deployed in the service of envisioning possible futures.”

And in this case, the word “frontier” is wrongly coloring our perception of space and the way we should treat it.

[image error]This means I have to apologize to Gene Roddenberry… but I certainly don’t blame him for calling space “the final frontier.”  After all, Roddenberry was an American, whose history and upbringing included the thinking of the American West as a romantic and colorful frontier, an empty space waiting to be conquered.

But most of the people who taught him that didn’t dwell overmuch on the people who were already living on that land, the many who died of European diseases (or European guns), the violence, the genocide, the slavery, the unfair labor practices, the ravaged landscapes and the inconvenient animals wiped out of existence in order to put greenbacks on the European’s tables and cheap meal in their workers’ bellies.

Yes, “frontier” has horrible connotations.  In point of fact, there is no frontier.  On Earth, there never was, and those who view any part of our world as a frontier—empty and waiting to be claimed and exploited for personal gain—are being racist, unthinking and cruel.  Earth never had empty spaces waiting to be forcibly occupied and owned by someone.  Earth is not a property to be lorded over and done with as we wish.  And if Earth, the planet on which we live, is not frontier waiting to become property, how can any place in space be frontier waiting to become our property?

The Slate article seeks a new word to describe the space we want to explore and occupy.  The author doesn’t seem to be able to think of a word… or maybe, they want someone else to invent a cool word that will describe space and how we treat it.  But there’s no need to invent a word; one immediately comes to mind.

[image error]

Space is an Environment.

It is, in fact, THE Environment in which we all live.  It is vast beyond our ability to comprehend… a scale that pointedly does not take Earth’s denizens into account.  It is full of sub-environments, changing conditions and hostile natural forces, any number of which could wipe out any life it comes in contact with in an instant.

[image error]

This makes Earth an oasis, a local sub-environment in the larger Environment, one of many and varied oases peppered throughout this vast Environment, and we happen to be one of the many life forms that have evolved to thrive on this particular oasis.  There may be other oases out there that we could live on… there may be oases out there that something else is living on… and there may not be, we don’t really know yet.

There are resources in the Environment, outside of our oasis.  Most of those resources aren’t being used by anyone, but again, we really don’t know yet what resources are being used by something else.  And we really don’t have any more or less of a right to them than anything else.

[image error]There is lots of room for expansion in the Environment… but absolutely no guarantee that we can, in fact, expand beyond this oasis and thrive.  Most of the Environment is downright hostile to us.  Intelligence might allow us to figure out a way… but the uncontrolled elements of that vast Environment may eventually doom us to non-existence anyway.  Once more… we have no way to know.  But there’s nothing stopping us from trying; only the incredible difficulty and unlikelihood of succeeding.

This way of thinking about space probably gives us the best and most accurate image of the universe and our place in it.  It will also serve us best in imagining our future activities in space: How we should treat the vast Environment; and how we should act when or if we discover others out in the Environment.  (It probably wouldn’t have hurt if we’d considered Earth this way, instead of seeing it as empty spaces to exploit.  Just saying.)

Read the Slate article.

Terraforming? Have you looked out the window lately?

SF authors, fans and media love to talk about Terraforming… the process of altering a planet’s composition, elements, atmosphere and weather to be just like Earth, ready for colonists to live in a shirtsleeve environment.  Taking dead old worlds and making new Earths out of them… sure sounds cool.  But, like so many things, the devil is in the details, and rarely are terraforming fans looking past the trees to see the whole forest.  We’re talking urban renewal on a planetary scale, unlike anything we can ever imagine or have ever done before.

A lot of good points against terraforming Mars are made in the Phys.org article The future of space colonization – terraforming or space habitats?

Such were the questions dealt with by two papers presented at NASA’s “Planetary Science Vision 2050 Workshop” last week (Mon. Feb. 27th – Wed. Mar. 1st). The first, titled “The Terraforming Timeline”, presents an abstract plan for turning the Red Planet into something green and habitable.

To save you a bit of reading, I’ll just spoiler it and say that the paper suggests making Mars a warm and oxygen-rich planet humans could live on, ala Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars trilogy of books, would take about 170,000 years.

And that’s assuming we actually have the technology and know-how to start the process of warming the planet and adding oxygen to the atmosphere, and turning off both processes at the right time to achieve the desired result.  I emphasize this, because the ability to exercise that kind of global environmental control has so far proven elusive right here on Earth, where we have runaway global warming and environmental degradation right now.  It’s one thing to say we know how to do it… but with nothing to back up our claims, it’s hard to take that at face value.

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Before we even lightly consider terraforming schemes, therefore, what we really need is a concerted effort to terraform Terra; to demonstrate that we can evaluate and project environmental conditions on Earth, formulate methods to make changes on a global scale, show the willingness to actually make those changes, and hit our target goals within a narrow margin of acceptance.  Counteracting global warming would be a good first goal, as it has a significant number of influential and consequential variables that have to be taken into account, and any remedies will have to be balanced against those factors to guarantee a safe system and reliable outcome.  If we can do that, then terraforming a dead planet should be child’s play.

Here’s the other reason we should work on terraforming Earth first: If, as the papers suggest, it would take between 100,000 and 200,000 years to terraform a planet, we need a more immediate solution to this world’s problems.  At least Earth has a head-start, already having an environment, oxygen, life, etc… it just needs relative tweaking to correct the environmental damage done to it over the last few centuries.  There’s little point speculating about one thousand century projects, if we can’t undo 300 years worth of damage… is there?

[image error]The article also mentions another paper, Mars Terraforming – the Wrong Way, that suggests an alternative to terraforming Mars… building orbital habitats instead.  This paper emphasizes the relatively easier process of building biospheres in space, maybe the size of a good city (as opposed to an entire planet and a few orders of magnitude in scale), and the ability to rotate the biosphere at one Earth gravity (1 gee) in order to preserve the biologies of life forms—like humans—that are already optimized to 1 gee.  The more practical scale of the habitats and their resource needs alone make this the more sensible approach to moving people off of Earth; reforming planets is a romantic, Manifest Destiny-type notion, but as I pointed out above, we’re hardly in a position to pull that off.

As an author of posts and novels about orbital habitats, I agree that they are much more practical than terraforming concepts, and a good way to create new biospheres for Man to venture beyond Earth.  They have short-term functions too: Giving Man a way to remove himself from Earth’s surface to make Earth’s restoration quicker and easier.  Then we can live more lightly on the Earth, taking small amounts of resources as needed in a more environmentally manageable way.  And if, down the line, the habitats ever achieve functional independence, then they can become the first independent spacefaring ships, following our probes out into deep space and seeking out new distant outposts for Man.

So, as we consider incredible projects that will take Man away from Earth, we should keep an eye towards practicality too.  Having eyes bigger than our stomachs is what put us in the state we’re in today; we need to seriously consider the future, but not bite off more than we can chew.

Space: 1999? Yeah, I’d reboot that.

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Those of us who were around when Space:1999 hit the airwaves remember it either with fondness, or with scorn… there doesn’t seem to be much middle ground.  That’s because the show was so schizophrenic in its totality: On one hand, it was beautifully produced by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, the couple behind the show UFO, and before that, a number of supermarionation series like Fireball XL-5 and Captain Scarlett; but on the other hand, it had the craziest  premise of any sci-fi TV show, based around a nuclear accident that blew the entire Moon out of Earth’s orbit and into uncharted space.

[image error]I tend to remember the incredible art and care that went into Space:1999’s production.  The primary setting, Moonbase Alpha, was bright, stylish and comfortable-looking, like a place where people could actually live and work.  It was full of sensible and well-designed elements, like the subway-like Moontube, the multipurpose comlinks that also functioned as security access devices, the ever-popular color-coding of divisions that Star Trek gave to us all, etc.  True, it had a computer that was as big as an apartment, but you can’t call everything.

[image error]And then there were the Eagles: Those skycrane-like spacecraft that looked so incredibly well-designed compared to most shows’ spacecraft.  (I always felt there should have been a Sikorsky logo on them.)  Even today those ships are remembered fondly, even in cases when the show itself is not.  I had Eagle models as a teen, my favorite having been self-modified to give it working lights in the cockpit, and they were cherished items in my model spaceship collection.

It’s no wonder that, every now and then, someone talks about rebooting the series—because, that’s what everyone does these days—using the cleverly-renamed Space: 2099.  The last attempt, a new series to continue the original story, seems to have last bubbled up in 2012 and fizzled out in 2014.  But it’ll come back, just wait.  And I find myself having very little problem imagining a new series where a group of Alpha inhabitants are caught on a runaway trip through the cosmos that exposes them to aliens and strange phenomena as they try to figure out how to get back home.

But the actual premise?  It’s got to be changed.

First is the nuclear accident idea: In the original series, the Alphans stockpile spent nuclear fuel on the moon; hitherto-unknown atomic particles accumulate and start throwing charged energy around, eventually creating an explosion.  But any explosion great enough to shift the Moon out of orbit on a high-speed trajectory would’ve pulped everyone on Alpha.  And, of course, we never find out the long-term consequences of the Earth’s losing a Moon.  I always wondered about that little plot element.

Next, that trajectory: The Moon managed to pass numerous planets in a short amount of time, which sounds like it’s traveling faster than light… but it clearly wasn’t.  The writers retconned a solution in the second season: The Moon almost immediately fell into a conveniently-placed space-time warp that took them to a distant but much more populated part of the galaxy.  But again, they kept meeting up with other ships from Earth, with no explanation of how they all ended up all the way out there.  It just doesn’t wash, which was what a lot of SF fans held against it from Day One.

But the one thing Space: 1999 did right was showing the audience how little we really know about the universe, and how it’s really not about us.  Though American audiences, at least, didn’t seem to be ready for that interstellar bummer in the 1970s, I think that’s a great theme to pursue today, concentrating on the efforts of the Alphans to hold themselves together in the face of a space that’s a lot scarier than they could have imagined.

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I’ve taken an extensive set of notes on some reboot ideas (I presently have way too much time on my hands).  Why? Well, if I ever decide to restart my writing career I would use it to create a new series of novels, slightly modified in order to avoid copyright infringement.  Hey, it worked with the Kestral series.  They include a more believable premise and plenty of workable ideas to create a modern TV series (or novels)… the art at right is a hint at where my mind is going.  I’m keeping the ideas to myself for the moment, but anyone who’s interested has only to speak up.

Space:2099 could be a viable and well-received new SF series, dark-er and gritti-er than the original, but not too much so.  (I’m thinking it might feel a lot like Farscape in its overall mood.)  Updating its science and its mission, making it more about the humans on board than the weekly discovery of nasty alien humanoids, and giving them a reasonable chance of saving themselves, would be just the way to turn a wonky show into a workable and popular television property.

Better than a clock radio

Are you the kind of person who has a clock radio in their bathroom, giving you time and either music or news, while you’re otherwise occupied or getting yourself ready to start your day?  Me, too.  But a while ago I started to suspect that I could do better.  Is there an appliance that will give me more than just time and a radio, to make my morning routine more productive?

Welcome to the 21st century.

[image error]You may have seen or heard of the “smart mirrors” that are becoming the new hi-tech bathroom feature: Displays built into the mirror provide time, weather information, news, access to home security, etc.  The idea kicks ass; but the mirrors are pretty pricey because of the tech involved, and the mirrors themselves are limited in style and installation options.  Until I can buy and easily install a combination medicine cabinet and smart mirror at Lowes, this is an idea better suited for deep-pocketed homeowners.

There are a few hacks out there that show DIYers how to make their own smart mirrors, by embedding a phone or tablet behind a mirrored glass and setting it to display a preprogrammed set of data (usually clock and weather, maybe a news feed).  It’s a much cheaper option, but limited in that you can’t manipulate the phone or tablet while it’s behind the mirror; so you have a very static display.  (You may be able to expand that limitation if you can leave the phone or tablet open to audio commands, but since audio control is itself pretty limited in what you can do, it’s not much help.)

I decided to go a simpler route: I just mounted a tablet on a bathroom shelf.  Its job would be to provide me with the basic info I want while washing up, but have more flexibility than your basic clock radio (and a bigger screen than if you used a radio with an iPhone mount).  This would be my bathroom news appliance.

[image error]I experimented first with the smallest, cheapest android-based tablet I could find, an RCA Voyager.  With a 3.5 x 6 inch screen, it would provide enough of a display to be seen clearly when standing at the sink.  It’s not a particularly powerful tablet, and the tinny little speaker isn’t great for music, but for the basic task of being a bathroom appliance, it’s plenty.  And it doesn’t look bad on the shelf, either (it’s hard to find good-looking clock radios these days).

I mounted it on a shelf just above the light switch and power outlets.  First I placed a small non-slip gadget grip tab on the shelf, set an inch from the wall.  Then I placed the tablet on the tab and leaned the tablet back to the wall.  This makes it stable and keeps it from pitching over or sliding off of the shelf.  Next,  I plugged a USB to Micro-USB line from the tablet to the power outlet (a spring-retractable line, so my power line would look as neat as possible).  Presto, your installation is done.

Like a lot of tablets, this one comes with a camera facing the user… which means it’s staring at the interior of your bathroom.  Unless you like the idea of someone maybe hacking into your wireless network and stealing candid shots of you doing your breast exams, I’d suggest covering that lens.  I used an old-school hole punch to cut a small round bit from sticky label, used a marker to blacken it, and stuck it over the lens.  Take that, peeping tom hackers!

The key to making your new bathroom appliance work is to keep things simple. Don’t load a ton of features or custom settings on it at first… just start with the few features you want to regularly see displayed there.  Since it’s plugged in, set it to stay on when plugged in.  And unless you want to be awoken by alert noises for this and that, turn off or silence all notifications.

[image error]Connect it to your home’s wireless account, so you can start your setup and feed your apps.  I started with a clock (a Google-standard app which, when tapped, would become a low-light display-saving screen saver), a Weatherbug weather widget, a Google News widget, an app for WTOP Radio (a news station) and an app for US Office of Personnel Management alerts (in the Washington, DC area, a useful thing to have).  Later I added a Maps app to check locations and routes to desired destinations.  You can choose whatever apps and widgets you prefer, depending on what and how you want it to display, and arrange them on the screen however you’d like.  You’re not looking for information overload, so don’t go nuts.  But if you insist on other apps, you can always call up a second screen to display them, so as not to clutter your main screen.

When I enter the bathroom, I tap the Close icon on the bottom of the screen, and the appliance closes the screen saver and brings everything up.  I can take it all in with a glance, and if I want additional detail on the weather, or a news story, I just tap the app to bring it up.  The WTOP app is designed for phones only, so tapping it has the slightly annoying response of opening sideways on your screen… but then, it’s just one button to start the radio, so no big.  The appliance has a volume rocker on the side, as well as volume buttons on the screen itself, so adjustment is easy.  The single speaker isn’t great, but for listening to news, it’s fine.  When I’m done, I tap the clock once… tap and hold it to switch to the clock screen-saver… and leave.  (The screen saver is good as a bathroom night light, too.)

The other nice thing about the appliance is that I can use it for more than what’s on display if I want or need to.  I can unplug it and read on it while on the can (I could… I’m not saying I ever actually do that), look up health tips, find skin care products, order razors from Amazon, etc, etc… then put it back on the shelf when you’re done.

The upside is obvious: Much more flexible than a clock radio.  You can chose what to display and how to display it, and adjust the appliance’s functions through the Settings.  As time passes, you can change out apps or give the appliance new things to do.  And you’ve got a big screen that’s easier to read, say, when getting out of the shower, or before you’ve put your glasses or contacts on.

The downside: This hack is only as good as the tablet you use… and your wireless connection.  The RCA Voyager isn’t much of a tablet, and it’s occasionally fritzing or locking up, requiring me to hit the reset button to correct… and I mentioned its tinny speaker.  If you get an old or cheap tablet you might find the apps you want won’t play on the OS version you have.  And none of those apps will be useful if your wireless connection is bad or overloaded.  So, just because I tried this with a cheap tablet, doesn’t mean your appliance should be cheap.  Use a tablet you’ll be happy with.

And though you may not want to just go out a buy a new tablet for this task… it’s worth considering this hack as a second life for an existing tablet in your home, when you replace it for a new one.  Waste not, want not.

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Trappist-1 may teach us about life on Earth

The space-loving world has been all a-twitter about Trappist-1, a newly-discovered red dwarf star a scant 39 light-years away, around which orbit seven planets, many of which are rocky, have liquid water, and may be very suitable for life.  The title of a Mother Jones article sums up most people’s feelings; “There’d Better Be Some Goddamn Aliens in This Solar System Loaded With Earth-Sized Planets“.

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But as cool as that initially sounds, the existence of sentient beings whom we can wave to, who will recognize us as not from around there, and enthusiastically wave back, isn’t the greatest thing about the Trappist-1 system.  Just having established life would be the greatest thing we could find there; it would give us so much data that we could directly compare to our own lives here.

Life on Earth is based on a thermodynamic process of atoms combining into molecules, molecules combining into cells, and cells combining and sharing resources, in order to collect energy to grow and sustain itself as an organism.  Evolution is a process of randomly reorganizing those organisms into differing combinations and abilities, some of which turn out to be better at growth and sustenance than others; the more superior organisms procreate more successfully where the less superior organisms do not.

As well as we understand this basic arrangement, what we do not know as well is how common this system might be in other places: Are there processes other than thermodynamics which can spur the life-developing process? Can evolution operate differently depending on different environmental conditions?  Can evolution operate differently even with the same environmental conditions?  Or does it operate the same under any environmental conditions?

[image error]We might learn, for instance, that large animals can successfully thrive with a structure of odd numbers of limbs.  Or we might simply see arrangements of limbs and organs that are unlike any that have developed on Earth, leaving us to puzzle out why different adaptations develop on different worlds.  Or we might discover methods of transferring needed energy from organism to organism other than having to catch and eat each other.  Or maybe we’ll find a hitherto unseen sensory organ that provides information about their environment that we can barely imagine.

Meeting sentient species that we can actually talk to… sure, that would be a perk.  If we can communicate, they could help us learn about the aspects of life that they experience.  It would tell us that evolution into highly-specialized sentient species wasn’t a local anomaly.  But we might also learn that the motivations on different planets may not mirror ours.  Suppose, for instance that a sentient species on one of the Trappist planets knew the stars were other planets and stars, but there was no tribal curiosity to learn more about them, or even visit them?  Suppose Trappists couldn’t understand why our species would bother to travel 39 light-years through hazardous space in tin cans, just to say hello?

[image error]Suppose they are asexual—or transexual, pansexual or decasexual, for that matter—and so won’t understand our many family-based customs and attitudes?  Suppose they have no conception of mortality, lies, emotions, society or uniqueness?  All of these things could tell us a lot about their species… but it might tell us even more about how we developed those concepts, and what they mean to us.

Personally, I think it would be just as fascinating to get to Trappist and discover life, but so different from Earth-based life that we find we have decades, maybe centuries of study ahead of us.  Getting a new perspective on how life works could provide scientific discoveries and breakthroughs we can scarcely imagine today, including some that might be transplanted to Earth to provide a fresh perspective.

Some nice, basic information about Trappist-1 can be found on the Mother Jones site.

 

“Hard” or “soft” SF? Forget it.

A new article on Tor features ten science fiction authors trying to define what is hard and what is soft science fiction. I’m going to cut to the chase: There are so many different ways of defining SF, in terms of science, in terms of fiction, in terms of storytelling,  in terms of quality, etc, etc, that when you put all of those things together… they pretty much all come out grey in the wash.  And I’ve done plenty of washing, myself.

I, too, have spent plenty of time trying to define hard and soft SF, mostly in an effort to categorize my own novels.  And I finally understand that I’ve been blowing a lot of smoke over the years.  When you compare some of my definitions with those by noted SF authors, it’s clear that none of it makes much of a difference in the end. Science fiction is science fiction—it’s all entertainment, at the end of the day—and it’s really kind of pointless to try to put books, magazines, TV shows or movies on some sort of “hardness” scale.

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Every science fiction production starts with some scientific premise, and extrapolates into the unknown from that.  Some extrapolations might be more likely than others… but they are all unknown.  And frequently they intentionally bend the rules, in order to make a more entertaining story.  So, is Michael Crichton’s Sphere, for example, less likely to someday happen than Jurassic Park?  Maybe.  But they are still both science fiction, and as one story is more entertaining to one person than to another, it’s pointless to put one story over the other.

It’s been suggested that the debates between hard and soft were originally attempts by different authors to distinguish themselves above other authors, either by trying to suggest they knew science better, or that they knew storytelling better.  Most of the arguments regarding SF seem to break down to that: Better science; or better story.

But unproven science is unproven science.  And stories appeal differently to different people.  Like I said: A wash.  And I’m taking this to heart.  Where, in the past, I examined and nit-picked and tried to put stories on scales of hardness or softness—including my own—from now on, I concede that there’s no point.  Science fiction is science fiction.  And really, the only thing that’s important is the quality of the story.

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Mind you, there may be levels of SF that should really be classified as fantasy (Star Wars does come to mind: When you get right down to it, science or scientific speculation has absolutely nothing to do with the story).  But in essence, a story is a story, whether it utilizes believable science or realistic scientific speculation or not.

And sure, I may prefer SF stories that feature more plausible uses of science.  But you know what?  I still enjoy the hell out of The Fifth Element, Big Hero 6 and Farscape.  They are as much science fiction as 2001, Star Trek and The Martian.

In other words, it may be an orchid, it may be spinach, or it may be crabgrass… but they’re all plants.

See the article on Tor.

HUM∀NS: Nailing it

The second season of BBC’s HUM∀NS is preparing to do a better job with the issue of sentient automation than its first season, and it’s a damned good watch.  Only one episode into season 2 (the UK has run the entire second season, but I’m in the US, where it’s just started on AMC) and I can’t wait to see where it goes.  Sure, Westworld has robots as playthings in surreal settings… but HUM∀NS is showing us something much more down-home and realistic: Dealing with robots at our side, in our homes and workplaces, in our lives.

HUM∀NS features a world where robots, collectively known as Synths, exist to do our hard and soft labor, to be our cleaners and kinda dim companions, our sexual and violence surrogates.  And they’re damned good at it.  But when it’s discovered that certain synths were created with honest-to-goodness sentience, then that sentience was locked away, the question of what would happen if they regained their sentience and autonomy looms.

I love the production itself, from the understated-but-effectively-realistic special effects, to the marvelous actors that play human and synth characters, HUM∀NS is a pleasure to watch.  I’m still vibrating over the season 1 scene in which Anita (played by Gemma Chan) fights through her programming, and her sentience finally asserts itself… a moment of TV magic that should have earned Chan every acting award of the year!  But it’s the story and acting that really define this show.

[image error]Nicely creepy, no?

Much of the series comes from the viewpoint of a family that has brought a synth, Anita, into the home.  They are soon polarized regarding her status in the family; and when Anita gains sentience and rediscovers her own synth family, they must decide whether or not they can trust her, and her them, to keep their collective secrets.   The authorities eventually force the synths to run, but even the synths don’t have a single agenda: Some just want to live in peace and quiet, while others want to awaken all synths to their situation.

In the second season, Niska releases the program worldwide, expecting all synths to wake up and claim their independence.  Instead, they awaken only a few at a time, which could be disastrous: It may give humans enough time to  figure out what’s going on and engineer a reversion to the sentience program.  While synths are gaining sentience, and experiencing everything from exhilaration to horror at their new state, some people just want to destroy them, and some scientists want to start dissecting them to figure out the sentience program. And Niska, her first plan foiled, wants to put herself on trial to establish her rights—and therefore the rights of all synths—as a sentient being, and by extension, free her people.

Their stories should be familiar to everyone in America, the Great Melting Pot, where this story has played itself out numerous times between numerous groups and races.  Their synths might as well be immigrants, refugees or any minority group, seeking equal rights in their world.  Their efforts to hide their true nature from people is familiar to anyone who hides their customs, religion or language from the mainstream in order to avoid being ostracized.  And the struggles of the human family in a world where synths live with them, serve them, but also take their jobs and threaten their lifestyles, is well-known to people in the majority who are watching the world evolve around—and sometimes over—them.

In many ways, this is the modern retelling of R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), the Czech play that introduced the concept of robots to the world.  It hits a lot of the same notes: Robots, some with sentience, want to spread that sentience and assume the lives of living beings; robot slavery is seen only by some as something to be overturned; humans and robots are at odds, both believing the other will eventually wipe them out.  Of course, you can say that about almost every story with robots as central characters, including many of those utilizing Asimov’s robot-neutering Three Laws of Robotics (because, even in Asimov’s stories, the Three Laws don’t often work as intended).

But unlike most stories (and including R.U.R.), the people and situations in HUM∀NS are so much more relate-able and realistic that it’s easy to look past the incredibly realistic synths to see people, seeking a fair and equal life for themselves, and willing or not, becoming part of the Melting Pot themselves.  There’s no histrionics, no MWAH-HAH-HAH! evil characters or over-the-top diatribes… just moments that hit close enough to home to make you wonder how well you’d do in that situation.  Or maybe if you’ve already been in that situation.

The Expanse: Tropey, but great viewing

The Expanse returns to television tonight with season 2; and even though it’s not much of a season (only 5 episodes are listed on Wiki), I find myself looking forward to it with mixed emotions. (Some season 1 spoilers follow.)

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Part of me is dying to see the Expanse universe, one of the most realistic depictions of life in a space-borne future that television has ever seen.  This world, in which we have colonized Mars and the asteroids, features low- and zero-gravity environments, locations that aren’t a few hours apart by “warp drive” or somesuch miraculous propulsion system, multiple classes of workers, freedom fighters with feet of well-worn clay, and (to kick off the series) a cop sent to track down a rich man’s daughter… only to discover that she has died through exposure to a strange life-form, a virus from another solar system somewhere.

I really enjoy the characters in The Expanse, as well: They are very well-rounded and believable. Though some of them struggle with the heady concepts being batted around in the series, they still feel like real people who are in way over their heads.  The series does unfortunately have what I call Millennialitis… that is, few of the cast look over 30, including most of the leads, who were specified in the book to be older.  But I don’t think it adversely affects the production.

[image error]And speaking of the production: It’s gorgeous, it’s awesome, it’s hard to stop staring at it until my eyes start to bleed.  Everything from the homes to the space ships look incredible, and the special effects are impeccable.  Since the movie Metropolis, we’ve had 90 years of special and model effects to build on; The Expanse has delivered one of the best-looking SF shows ever.

If I have a problem with anything, it’s the tropes; they’re so… tropey.  To begin with, the idea that Earth, Mars and the asteroids are trade partners, but all opposed to the other and fighting for domination, and about to go to war over their differences.  I mean, I get fundamental differences to be worked out, but it seems you just can’t put people on separate planetary bodies, space stations, whatever, and not have a war break out sooner or later.  And so much of it is based on labor issues in the asteroids… a place where I’d expect automation to be doing the lion’s share of everything, which begs the question: What are all those people even doing out there?

[image error]The next trope is the alien virus that starts up the story.  And it’s not the part about its having unexpectedly shown up and killed someone.  No: It’s the inevitable conspiracy that quickly grows around it, fomented by a corporation that wants control over this virus they know nothing about.  And that the corporation is your stereotypical EVIL corporation… so evil that it traps thousands of people on an asteroid station with the virus, then floods the entire station with radiation, killing the people and giving the virus food to grow on.  And so we end up, at the very end of season 1, with—the most egregious trope of all—the giant mysterious alien Cthulhu with an appetite for human flesh.  So tropey.  So millennial, so video-gamey.  So sci-fi space opera-y.

Now, I read The Expanse before I saw it on Syfy.  Based on what I’d heard, and the way the book started out, I was expecting a very realistic and reasonable SF story out of the book… but that left turn it took with the alien life form at the end kinda threw me.  Once I’d finished, I was very undecided about reading more because of the tropes I’ve described.  Even so, I did enjoy season 1, even knowing how it was going to play out… but I choked on that last scene, the one where a human gets grabbed by weird arm-tentacles and pulled up into the nether reaches of the station where the alien lives.  I thought: “I was really hoping they weren’t gonna go there.”

But there they went, and ended season 1 on that cliffhanger.  Again, I do plan to watch the next five episodes of The Expanse… this time, without having read the rest of the books and knowing where the story is going.  I’ve lowered my expectations a tad, in order to not freak out over space-Cthulhu in this nice, tropey-but-mostly-realistic SF story.  And I’ll admit, part of me would just like to see more scenes like this:

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Hey, a guy can hope.

Countering microgravity’s effects

The recent experiment with astronaut Scott Kelly and his twin Mark, studying their physical differences after Scott spent a year aboard the International Space Station (ISS), has provided even more evidence that the human body does undergo significant changes when in prolonged microgravity. In the case of Scott:

Studies of the twins’ telomeres, the caps on the ends of their chromosomes, showed that during spaceflight Scott’s telomeres grew to be longer than his brother’s. “That is exactly the opposite of what we thought,” says Susan Bailey, a radiation biologist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins… Once Scott returned to the ground, the length of his telomeres returned to his pre-flight levels relatively quickly. The scientists are working to figure out what this means, and are running a separate study of telomere length in ten unrelated astronauts that, when completed in 2018, may shed more light on how spaceflight affects telomeres.

Other effects of prolonged microgravity have included well-known issues such as bone and muscle loss, and the more recent revelation of a buildup of fluid in the eye, degrading eyesight and potentially causing blindness over time.

Clearly there is still a lot to be learned about the prolonged effects of microgravity, how well the body can recover from those effects when reintroduced to gravity, and how well the medical industry can speed up the recovery process.  In the meantime, a lot of discussion is being carried out on ways to prevent the damage from being done in the first place.

One of the potentially most effective solutions is to provide ways for astronauts to spend a significant amount of time under gravity between periods of microgravity.  The idea is for more frequent periods in gravity to induce the body to start internal recovery on a more continual basis, to help it fight off the deleterious effects of microgravity more or less ’round the clock.

[image error]I was thinking of this when I wrote my novel Factory Orbit, years ago. In it, a factory and research facility was constructed in Earth orbit (pictured at right), manned by machinists and scientists, and a support staff on board with them.  Although the factory and research areas—the large central cylinder—were operated in microgravity (0-gee), the living and sleeping areas of the facility—the ring of interconnected former space shuttle fuel tanks—were rotated around the factory at the equivalent of 1 Earth gravity (1-gee).  Just like on Earth, workers spent approximately 1/4 or 1/3 of their day working in the factory and research cylinder, the rest living, recreating and sleeping in the off-duty living and sleeping areas.  So their bodies spent most of the time under 1-gee, then worked in 0-gee for 1/4 to 1/3 of their day, and returned to 1-gee.

I postulated that this limiting to 1/4 – 1/3 of a day’s cycle in microgravity, and the rest of the day in full gravity, would be enough to mitigate the effects of prolonged microgravity to next to (or completely) nothing, and remove the need for medical assistance or significant physical rehabilitation to recover from a prolonged stay in space.

Since I’ve written Factory Orbit, I’ve found people online debating the amount of time that would be required in a day’s cycle to mitigate microgravity’s effects, some thinking that as little as a few hours in 1-gee or even less than 1-gee would be enough to do the job.  I suspect a longer period than 1-2 hours would be required; maybe it is less than the 16-18 hours I suggest in my novel; maybe less than 1-gee would be sufficient, or maybe shorter periods at more than 1-gee would work; but then, no one’s tested this yet, so who knows?

I think the theory is worth significant study, and I’d expect to eventually see some space agency test it out: Building a space facility with two sections, one that rotates to simulate 1-gee, the other maintaining 0-gee; rotating astronauts between the sections for specific, recorded periods, for perhaps a year; then returning them to ground (or testing them in orbit) to see how their bodies react over time.

Not only should it provide significant data on how the human body handles microgravity, but the need to build a part-gravity, part-microgravity facility should teach us a lot about the future engineering needs of such structures, which will probably be a big part of future space facilities.

Since it is my firm belief that we can put the space in near Earth orbit to positive use, researching and creating new compounds and materials, finding new and better ways of producing and running heavy machinery in microgravity… I think it behooves us to find ways of putting workers in orbit without endangering their physiology.  Thorough testing of the effects of space on the human body should be our next priority in space exploration.

Note: Factory Orbit is not presently available for purchase.  I’ve been considering a rewrite to update the book, if I ever get a mandate to do so (or if someone just offers me a decent paycheck to do so).