A Mere 85 Years
That’s the shortest period of time it would take us to get to the closest star (Proxima Centauri) with current realistic technology according to this Universe Today article. And what do I have to say about it?What’s the freaking hold up? Seriously. Eight-five years is pretty good time considering it’s over four lightyears to the nearest star. Heck, I’d probably volunteer to go if my girlfriend could go with me. So, where are our Orion Project rockets and such? Where are our nuclear pulse engines to drive us at five percent the speed of light? Someone over and NASA better be paying attention. I demand you get on top of it! Somebody’s tax dollars are paying for you folks to do something good…so, there better be cool nuclear-powered engine things in our near future! On a side note: Does anyone know how long it would take, factoring in the acceleration and deceleration, to get from here to Mars with one of those pulse engines? Because, if it’s a technology we could really utilize, we might want to consider it as a quicker way of getting us there and back. Just saying. (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
Astronomer Left to Rot
I just stumbled upon this article and am a bit stunned by it. Charles Thomas Bolton is best known for discovering Cignus X-1 and ultimately irrefutable proof that black holes exist.And the University is booting him out claiming that the observatory he works in is of no use anymore due to light pollution. Really? Because someone like Mr. Bolton wouldn’t be continuing to work for you if that were the case, right? Yeah, it sounds like a load of crap to me too. To add insult to injury, the University gave him 10 days to get out. That’s right, 10 days. That’s it. They didn’t even sit down and say “hey, we’ll give you a lovely reference to a different observatory” or “we found you another job if you’d like it” or something like that, considering the guy has been working for them for decades. Is this how you treat someone who has done great things and who is obviously a competent worker?Needless to say, the whole thing smells fishy to me, because you don’t just decide overnight to get rid of an observatory and boot someone out with a ten day notice who has been working hard for a long time. Not sure what is going on behind the scenes, but whatever it is, it’s b.s. (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
Pearls of Wisdom
Forward thinking doesn’t mean that science fiction has to be 100% forward thinking. What it means is that science fiction looks ahead to the trials and tribulations of the near and distant future. Criticizing science fiction for trying to be culturally realistic about the future of U.S. Presidency is somewhat pointless. In fact, criticizing SF for failing to have a diverse cast of future U.S. Presidents is criticizing it for being realistic. The fact of the matter is, the U.S. is behind the times and may be that way for a long time. Even if Barack Obama wins the election, he will not have done anything to change the nation as far as race goes. The U.S. has issues with racism for a reason, and despite our desire to consider ourselves impartial on race, that’s far from the truth. We are a nation of different peoples and while we do share similar ideals about our nation (pursuit of happiness, justice, liberty, and those things) we are all very separate. I am not like someone from the South, just as someone from the South is not like someone from Hawaii or California or Alaska. Yes, we may all have similarities, but we all differ in how we speak and how we go about our lives.So, when I see that science fiction has not been “forward thinking” about race, I see reality being put into place. We can all hope that the future will be filled with complete equality, but that won’t happen, not unless we do become a country with equal representation of “races” or we all cease to see color/race as an issue.Unfortunately, as the clever little puppets from Avenue Q once said: Everyone’s a little bit racist, sometimes. Go ahead, tell me you’re not, because you’re lying and you know it (it’s possible you don’t even know you’re a little bit racist). By the way, this is nothing against the SF Flare folks. I do appreciate the information they provided, but I think we get a bit disillusioned by the prospect of SF being something that, in reality, it isn’t. SF can only be forward thinking so long as it is realistic. A liberal fest of social changes on top of the technological changes is asking a bit much from a genre that has to not only accurately portray the future, but also has to be realistic and believable about it. We’re no longer in the Golden Age where making everything up works 100%. SF writers have to be, well, realistic. Are black presidents in our future? Yes. Are Hispanic and female presidents? Of course. Do I think they will be a consistent regularity that one could play it off in any story, every single time? No. We don’t even see that in other nations we consider more “forward thinking” than us, so why would we expect that a fictional future United States would represent something that likely isn’t going to happen?
Browsing the Aisles: My Fatal Flaw
…or why I, for some strange reason, almost never buy fantasy titles at the bookstore (unless I’m going there specifically to do that). Going to the bookstore is one of my favorite things to do. In fact, I almost never want to go shopping unless I know I’m going to get to go to a bookstore or two in the process. Book shopping is far more entertaining that shopping for anything else and I imagine everyone but my girlfriend hates to shop for books with me because I am a purely calculated book shopper, and, as a result, I take forever to get done. Most of my friends are done after fifteen minutes, but I’ll be there for another forty-five, or maybe even an hour. But I’ve noticed something about how I shop for books: I almost always buy science fiction over anything else.Now, I know that I personally am an SF nut. I love SF in all its forms (for the most part) and eat it up like candy. But I also love fantasy. Some folks seem to think that I dislike fantasy because I tend to be heavy handed on the subject of cliches and fantasy tropes. Granted,fantasy tends to be highly unoriginal more often than not, but a good writer can make me fall in love with the characters regardless. I’ve read many books that weren’t exactly doing anything new, but that were so entertaining it didn’t matter. The problem for me, however, is that fantasy is really hard to sell to me in the book store. Every time I go I look at the covers and read the backs and see the same thing being repeated over and over. Now, of course, most of those books probably are adding new things to the genre (or at least some of them), but how the hell am I supposed to know when everything looks and, from the summary, sounds the same?SF almost never does this for me. Granted, some of the covers do look similar, but when I pick up a book and read the back there are always new and fascinating ideas being presented. The more I pick up, the more I find that I want, and sooner or later I have three or more SF titles in hand and no fantasy titles (with exception to the occasional YA title, because I love YA for some reason). I know this is not a good thing, especially since I do love fantasy and enjoy it very much, but I can’t help it. For me, it feels like SF doesn’t have to work hard, but fantasy does. SF has the ideas right there out in the open: space ships and interesting aliens, space battles, technology, etc. Certainly, these are cliches, but you can do so much with such things and present new ideas within the summary. But the fantasy stuff is either a dragon or the typical fantasy-looking guys standing someplace that looks relatively generic. Don’t get me wrong, such covers are beautiful, but when you see the same thing over and over it’s hard to really differentiate. Then the story is almost always something about some guy who is a nobody who now must become somebody to save the world from something evil that was locked up or thought destroyed from a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away…wait, okay so that last bit was wrong. Point is, the themes in the summaries all sound the same to me and if you can’t entertain me past that point, I won’t even look inside (it goes back on the shelf). Is there some magical trick to finding the good fantasy in a wall of stuff that looks the same (not considering here, of course, those few titles that try to break out of this mold)?Does anyone else have a similar problem when browsing? Setting aside authors you already read, do you find that finding new and fascinating fantasy titles is relatively easy for you?
Sometimes Nature is Stranger Than Fiction
(Stealing this from Mike Brotherton) Apparently scientists are giving added attention to a frog from Cameroon and realizing just how crazy nature really is. The frog not only grows sideburns, but also has the ability to project its bones through its hands like claws. Apparently the frogs have bones inside the tip of their phalanges, and these bones are sharp, covered by another bony nodule, and suspended inside the skin of the frog’s toe with a suspendatory sheath, and padded on the bottom of the toe with lots of tissue. The bone is connected to an extensor muscle. When the frog is stressed or caught (they don’t know what triggers it yet), the extensor muscle contracts, and the sharp bone BREAKS away from the nodule covering it, and then tears open the tissue of the frog’s toe to come out. The bony claw remains anchored via strong collagen fibers, and might be able to retract once the extensor muscle relaxes. This is the only species found so far with claws that do not have a keratinous sheath covering them. Thankfully this frog isn’t strong to kill people, but still, that’s kind of freaky. Click the link to learn more about this bizarre frog that is being called by some “the Wolverine frog”. If there is any animal out there that deserves to be named after such a famous superhero, it’s this frog. (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
Ice on Mars?
It’s been all over the net. Nature has an article about it here. I’m skeptical, only because I don’t know what to make of this. Is it possible? Yes, of course, and I really hope it’s true, but at the same time I don’t want to get my hopes up. A lot of things have been said about Mars that have put a dampener on my hopes (such as the discovery that Mars’ oceans were likely too salty for life). So, I am reluctant to jump up and down and scream, “Victory!” What do you think? (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)