Michael Formichelli's Blog: Nero's Niche, page 8

Space Camp - Day 1

Space Camp Campus Grounds, Huntsville, AL
Photo by Michael FormichelliSpace Camp: It's not just for kids.

The first thing many people I know think when they hear the words "Space Camp" is that it's something you miss out on if you don't go before you've graduated high school. I wanted to go to Space Camp since I was old enough to understand what it was but never got the chance while I was a kid. The desire to feel like an astronaut never left me, and when I found out that Space Camp had a program for adults I jumped at the chance.

My wife and I attended the Labor Day weekend session. We arrived on Friday, September 4th at the Huntsville airport not quite sure what to expect and a little nervous about what the experience would be like. Although the camp does offer adult programs, it was clear from the paperwork we filled out that Space Camp had kids in mind first and foremost. The day before our flight I found out that the sole accommodation available within the campus was a gender-segregated dorm which had to be shared with up to 9 other people (or so).  We weren't game for that, so we made arrangements to stay at the Huntsville Marriott instead (it shares the parking lot with the camp). Although we passed that challenge, we thought it might not bode well for what the weekend would be like.

Soon after we arrived (we made it right at the end of registration) we were launched into activities. There was a quick orientation, and we were sorted into two competing teams named after the space shuttles that were lost (Challenger and Columbia—my wife and I were on Columbia). Challenger and Columbia were to compete for mission badges throughout the weekend, with performance rated on how well the mission and training activities were completed.

After orientation and a group photo we were taken to a wooded area named "Area 51" for team building exercises named a "low ropes course." The course consisted of playing team games such as pretending we had to cross deadly, croc-infested water using only cinder blocks and 3 boards (for 8 people). There were no ropes involved, but it did help to get us acquainted with our new team mates. There's nothing quite like being smashed up against strangers while balancing on a wooden block to break the ice.

Endeavour trining module, Huntsville, AL
Photo by Michael FormichelliAfter a cafeteria-style dinner we entered training for our first mission: Mission Alpha. If I had any reservations about what we signed up for they evaporated at the sight of the Space Shuttle Endeavour's training module. Seeing the front of the space shuttle up close, even knowing it was just a training module, filled me with excitement. It was a sensation that grew as we toured through the narrow spaces of the machine. My eyes lit up with the light gleaming off of the hundreds of switches and panels, all modeled after the real thing, that lay waiting inside.


After the mission training we were shown mission patches from previous space programs such as Mercury, Apollo, and the Space Shuttle missions, then we designed ours. The day ended shortly after that, and my wife and I retired to the Marriott full of excitement to await the next day's adventure and the launch of Mission Alpha...

Inside the Endeavour Training Module
Photo by Michael Formichelli
9/10/15- Had to make a correction. The original post said this was over Memorial Day weekend, it wasn't. It was Labor Day weekend. My apologies, and thanks to Antigone for the catch!

Earth's Almost Sibling Found? Kepler 452b

You may have heard recently about the discovery of the most Earth-like planet yet, Kepler 452b. Scientists are calling it Earth's cousin, and it certainly has a lot of characteristics that make it match that description.

Image: Kepler 452b - Artist's Concept Courtesy NASA


1,400 light-years away, Kepler 452b sits in its star's habitable zone, what Neil DeGrasse Tyson calls the "Goldilocks Zone." The sun that rises on this world is yellow, like ours (Class G), and Kepler-452b sits in about the same orbit as the Earth does around Sol.



All of this is pretty exciting, including the fact that although 60% larger than the Earth, Kepler-452b is estimated to have only about 2x the gravity. This means that life as we know it wouldn't be so hindered by the planet's gravitational pull. (Any future space travelers would find their weight doubled but it wouldn't kill them).

Image courtesy NASAThe real test, as I learned from listening to Neal DeGrasse Tyson (NDT) on NPR today, will come when we analyze Kepler-452b's atmosphere. If we detect oxygen, we'll know that there is life as we know it on its surface.

How does the presence of oxygen mean life as we know it, you ask?

Oxygen is an incredibly unstable molecule. It likes to bond with just about anything it can. Ever watch something rust? See your fine silver tarnish? Wonder why the Statue of Liberty is green and not bronze? Wonder why what lets fire burn? The answer is oxygen. To loosely quote NDT: if all plant life on this planet (and algae) were to suddenly die, the oxygen in the air would slowly be depleted (with or without the presence of living things) as it bonded with the other elements in the environment. Eventually there would be none left in the atmosphere. Things that photosynthesize, like plants and algae and certain types of bacteria, are the only reason why there is oxygen in the air for us to breathe. If we look at an exoplanet's atmosphere and see oxygen (which we can do by analyzing the light passing through it with spectroscopy), we will know that there is life of some kind present.

Personally, I have my fingers crossed for Kepler-452b, but time will tell. The next question after answering whether or not there is oxygen available in the atmosphere (and therefore photosynthesizing life), would be if there are animals as we understand them on the planet. That question is a bit harder to answer, since the major giveaway for animal life (as we understand it) in the atmosphere isn't a perfect test.

Methane is a good indicator that biological processes are going on, but it can also be produced by natural chemical processes that don't involve life (we've found methane on Mars, but we have yet to find signs of life). The same goes for carbon-dioxide, so animal life could be impossible to detect without actually traveling to a planet to physically look and take samples. However, there is one gas that if we found it in an atmosphere, we would definitely know there was animal life:

Smog.

Photo by Fidel Gonzales used under Creative Commons license

The presence of smog would be a dead giveaway that there was life as we know it. As I'm sure you've guessed by now, true smog (vs. the "vog" version produced by volcanoes) only occurs when fossil fuels and other industrial chemicals are burned by "intelligent" life. If we find smog in a planet's atmosphere, we would finally have the answer to the question of "are we alone?"

The Murder of hitchBOT

On August 1st, 2015 the friendly hitchhiking robot known as hitchBOT was destroyed on a Philadelphia street. The robot's attacker remains a mystery, and his owners have declined to press charges, but I can't help but feel sadness at this wonton act of senseless destruction.

hitchBOT was the child of David Harris Smith (of McMaster University) and Frauke Zeller (of Ryerson University), and could interact with friendly humans who picked it up and drove it along the way to its requested destination like a real hitchhiker. hitchBOT was designed to answer the question of whether or not an innocent robot could trust humans, and was capable of a set of responses including requests like keeping the radio in the car low. hitchBOT was once taken to a wedding where it interrupted the bridal party's speeches with an "I like making friends" announcement (one of its trigger words was said in the speech).

hitchBOT made it safely across Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands in years passed before attempting to hitchhike from Salem, Massachusettes to San Fransisco, California. It saw Boston and New York's Times' Square before meeting a grizzly end on a Philadelphia street corner, being stomped into pieces by a man I can only assume is a total asshole devoid of human dignity.

I'm not kidding when I say I'm saddened that I will never have the chance to interact with hitchBOT. I'm also ashamed that it was an American that failed the altruism test he was designed to give. I really wish Doctors Smith and Zeller would have the culprit hunted down and arrested. He deprived us of something really special.




The security video of hitchBOT's demise is here. It was hard for me to watch, just warning you ahead of time.

If you'd like to know more about hitchBOT then please visit his website.

Transhumanism, Deus Ex, and The Future

As many of you know I am a big fan of transhumanism. What was once purely sci-fi is now becoming a reality as we move forward in the fields of prosthetics and do-it-yourself augmentation (check out my blog post on what people are altering themselves with these days). It's possible that many of us will see a world where people and machines become synonymous, and it's not that far away.

Fiction and art has predicted this for a long time. In the writing of William Gibson to Neil Stephenson, and in a plethora of movies and games (Terminator, Star Trek: First Contact, etc.), visions of the possible futures as we go down this path can be found. In my Chronicles of the Orion Spur series (Blood Siren, Keltan's Gambit, the upcoming books) it is considered strange to not be part-machine.

Although I've never played the series, Deus Ex is a video game franchise that presents another version of this theme. The new one, Deus Ex Mankind Divided, presents us with a possible near-future reality rendered in beautiful, next generation graphics. Below is a featurette worth a watch even if you're not a gamer. The world set up alone is worth it.
(Video links to IGN.COM, you may have to enable the external content to see the video, or you can see it here)

Perfectly Safe: the One that Got Me Started.

This week I've been working hard on getting Book 3 (and 4?) moving towards publication for the Chronicles of the Orion Spur (Blood Siren) series. I'm also currently toying with ideas for getting the Poë series started (what the Poë Space tab on my website is for). Poë (pron. Poey) is going to be a serial set in the same universe as the COS, but focusing on what life is like for the common people.

The idea came from the world-building I did for Blood Siren and to a degree from some discarded ideas from Cygni's story line. That's not to say Poë is going to be a hodgepodge of the other story's leavings, just that the ideas I'm working with are things I didn't get to fully explore in the book series. Rest assured, Poë is going to be its own thing which I think you'll find enjoyable.

Given that the serial is going to be made of short stories, I started going back over the shorts I used to write when I first decided I did want to put my writing out for strangers to read. In doing so I came across the old Nero & Sorina short stories I used to write for my then girlfriend (now wife), and the first piece of science fiction I ever got paid for. It's a very short (flash?) piece I wrote for the now defunct AlienSkin Magazine back in 2008 (no, it wasn't a tawdry online magazine, just sounded that way) .

—Side note: Holy crap it's been 7 years—

I decided to share it here for your reading enjoyment:

Perfectly SafebyMichael Formichelli 
    "Perfectly safe!"
    "You'll wonder how you ever lived without it!"
    "Be on the cutting edge of technology in your neighborhood!"
    The ads did their best to pacify the public.  Machines had invaded every aspect of human life in the last century, and now they were invading humans themselves.  It was the definition of insanity to Caz.
    At work a memo with the header "General Order 21" printed in bold letters arrived in Caz's mailbox.  All workers in the factory now were required to get "artificial enhancements.”  Caz couldn't believe his eyes.  Submit or starve, he had no choice.
    As the orderlies strapped him down, the company doctors explained to Caz that they would be removing his right arm and part of his skull to install the required hardware and support cabling.
    The doctors lined the cutting laser up and told him not to worry; it was "perfectly safe".
    Caz screamed.

Writing Update: Closing In on Draft 1

Hi all, thought I'd update everyone on what's going on with Book 3/&4 and how things are looking.

I've written the first draft of the manuscript out to Chapter 36 and the word count puts it approaching 700 pages. Okay, that's long, I admit it. Also, I'm plotting the rest of the book out to the end and it looks like I'm going to wind up hitting somewhere around Chapter 44 or so. That's not good news for keeping the end of Cylus, Nero, Ichiro, and Cygni's story to 3 books, but it can be split up into books 3 & 4.

This isn't said and done, so to speak. I still have to start edits which could wind up cutting down the length and possibly keeping it to a very long book 3. I'll know better when I get into it, so we'll see. Part of me is sort of hoping it winds up being 2 books, because then I get to ask Michael Lam for 2x the cover art! (I'm a fan, what can I say).


How does this affect the production schedule?

Well, I'm hoping to put out a book by this Holiday Season/December. Is that likely? Not sure. Editing something of this length takes some serious time and that might shove the next book out to early 2016 (I hear your collective groan). That's not necessarily the case, but that is the safer time frame for me to share. I'll keep you posted, of course.


Anything have a chance of coming out before then?

Yes, actually. I've been toying with doing a serial story set in the same universe involving different characters. I won't start working on it until I have draft 1 finished, but maybe in the "let it sit" phase for the draft I'll start in on the serial.


Is that something you'd like to see happen? Want some short stories in the Blood Siren/COTOS universe? Let me know in the comments or by email at mformichelli@cygnusorion.com.

Also, if you haven't yet, check out the new style at cygnusorion.com.

My Review of Terminator Genisys

It's been about a week since I watched Terminator Genisys.

It was a decent Terminator movie, better than both T3:Rise of the Machines (2003) and Terminator Salvation (2009) —both of which weren't very good in my opinion—but I need to point out that I used the word "decent" for a reason.

Genisys had several problems for me. The foremost of which was its crowded nature. For some reason the film decided it needed to account for both T1 and T2 in its first half despite being a new take/reboot. Essentially, it sandwiched both movies into about 40 minutes or so, which made things feel quite cluttered and hectic.

After it got through that mess the movie evened out and became a more enjoyable watch. One of the casualties of that first part, however, was the under-utilization of

Despite the issues Genisys will entertain Terminator fans.
On a positive note, I do hope they make more of these. The rebooted universe is just different enough that I'd be interested in seeing another story set in it.

My Review of Terminator Genesys

It's been about a week since I watched Terminator Genesys.

It was a decent Terminator movie, better than both T3:Rise of the Machines (2003) and Terminator Salvation (2009) —both of which weren't very good in my opinion—but I need to point out that I used the word "descent" for a reason.

Genesys had several problems for me. The foremost of which was its crowded nature. For some reason the film decided it needed to account for both T1 and T2 in its first half despite being a new take/reboot. Essentially, it sandwiched both movies into about 40 minutes or so, which made things feel quite cluttered and hectic.

After it got through that mess the movie evened out and became a more enjoyable watch. One of the casualties of that first part, however, was the under-utilization of

Despite the issues Genesys will entertain Terminator fans.
On a positive note, I do hope they make more of these. The rebooted universe is just different enough that I'd be interested in seeing another story set in it.

A Writing Update

So, many of you may have noticed I haven't posted to this blog in a long while. I feel like I owe you an explanation for my absence. If you've been waiting for my next post, my apologies it's taken so long. I've been busy, spending every free moment I have working on Book 3 (more or less, admittedly I do take time here and there to check out some games—like Witcher 3 and Kerbal 1.0—but my writing time is 100% book 3).

So, about Book 3... It's getting longer and longer and I'm starting to feel like I might have to split it up into two books, but I won't really know until I get to the end and go back and revise. I've been known to cut as much as 35,000 words before, so we'll see. I am still hoping to end the story in 3 books, but it's looking more and more likely that there will be 4. This is not an uncommon phenomena, and hell, Game of Thrones was supposed to be a trilogy, but at the same time that's cold comfort when I'm starting to feel like I missed my goal. Also, I'm not George RR Martin, who I think gets a pass for being George RR Martin anyways...

So that's where things are right now. Thank you all for your patience.

My Very Belated Review of Mad Max: Fury Road

Mad Max Fury Road is probably going to be my pleasant movie-surprise of the year. I'm not a big fan of post-apocalyptic fiction, so I resisted going to this one for a while, but then the good reviews kept pouring in, so I got more and more curious and finally went to see it.




I was half-expecting a chase-in-the-desert movie with some cool one-liners thrown in and maybe a bit of "doesn't life suck." What I got was... well, it was just awesome. Yes, it was a chase in the desert, but it was so much more. The cinematography was amazing, the chase scenes were tense and exciting without becoming the chaotic mess that many other action movie scenes become. There is a ton of stuff going on, but thanks to the excellent camera angles, I was aware of it without being distracted. I can't tell you enough how good that made the action. (If you want the opposite of this style, see/remember Cloverfield). The chase scenes weren't just about the action either, they were a delivery mechanism for showcasing the characters' personalities and skills. Instead of a cheap thrill and boredom, I got a wealth of information every time the bad guys got caught up to the good guys. It was quite refreshing, and I was half-sad to see the movie end but left the theater quite satisfied.

One of the best aspects of this film was that Max (Tom Hardy) is not the star of the movie, he's one of two stars along with Imperator Furiosa (Charliz Theron). The film isn't so much about Max as it is about the time when Imperator Furiosa and Max crossed paths. The story is set up to be a meeting of heroes, a meeting of equals, and it really made the movie feel epic in a way that no other post-apocalyptic film I've seen has. It just kicked ass.

I just want to make one more note here, and that's about Imperator Furiosa (Charliz Theron). She's probably one of the coolest, most bad-ass characters to come out in recent years. There's already a lot out on the 'web about how cool she is and how she is the first good, female role-model to come out in a long time, and I agree. Much like Ellen Ripley, Furiosa deserves her status as an iconic character, not because she's a "strong female" or because she can kick-ass (she can), but because she is both able to show emotion without weakness, and because she is a force of will—an active agent in her own destiny. Agency is what makes a good character worthy of admiration, be they male or female, and Imperator Furiosa has it in spades.

Okay, enough of my babbling. See the movie if you haven't, and see if you agree with me.
Happy watching!