Fans can turn on you

If there ever was a Kickstarter that resulted in a second season of Firefly, what do you want to bet that fans would watch it and say, “The old stuff was better”?

Seen this happen many times. Genre fans are fickle.

There are an advantages to having one short, beautiful run of a series. Seal it away and be done with it.

Private space flight, circa 1979

In memory of Andy Griffith, who died today, my favourite show of his, by a long ways.



I always loved hoe the narrator in the opening hit, “...and they went to the moon.” It hit just the right note of admiration and awe about the achivement.

I liked this show a lot when I was a kid; had a poster of the spaceship up on my wall, from this:

It’s interesting to look back at the show now that we are just starting to see private space flight.

The biology of Prometheus

The debut of Prometheus spawned a surprisingly large amount of attention in my scientific social network this weekend. This proves that scientists are not attracted by circus afros, I guess.

I’ve reviewed the film on its artistic merits on Sunday Matinee, my movie review blog.But I thought it would be fun to talk about some of the biology in the film. I’ll leave the astronomy (which I have my suspicions about) to others.

Spoilers ahead, so discussion continues below the fold:

A moment of Bradbury

Of course I read Ray Bradbury.

I read some because I had to (they were assigned in school), but somehow that that didn’t reduce my enjoyment of them.

I distinctly remember a drawing I made in school of a long-necked plesiosaur in the ocean next to a lighthouse. I remember the plesiosaur on the left, and the lighthouse on the right, and I think the plesiosaur was grey. I pictured most ancient reptiles and dinosaurs as having leathery grey hides then. I liked plesiosaurs, because they were so often invoked as explanations for sea and lake monsters, like Nessie. It was the scene from Bradbury’s story “The Fog Horn”.  

The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms depicted the same scene. Ray Harryhausen’s Rhedosaurus was rather different than my long-necked, flippered sea reptile, though. Being able to walk around on land certainly made for a much more entertaining movie.

The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms was one of the direct inspirations for the first Godzilla movie. This makes Ray Bradbury Godzilla’s godfather. And those movies inspired the main video for my recent #SciFund, “Beach of the Goliath Crabs.”

Ray Bradbury, 1920-2012.

Go Barsoom!

I am excited that Edgar Rice Burroughs’s John Carter of Mars is coming to the movie theatres*,  just in time for its hundredth anniversary.

While the story has a lot of trappings that we’ve come to associate with high fantasy (swords, princesses, and the like), I want to make the case that A Princess of Mars is truly science fiction. And despite that it’s early science fiction, and that scientific knowledge has moved on in the last century, Burroughs got something right. Indeed, it’s something that later, ostensibly more sophisticated science fiction tends to gloss over, particularly in film and television.

Gravity.

Mars, Burroughs reminds us, has lighter gravity than Earth. Lower gravity means that John Carter, a Virginia everyman, becomes stronger than he ever would be on Earth. (Later, Superman’s would repeat the twist, with Krypton and Earth substituting for Earth and Mars.) The scientific fact about this basic force of nature is woven into the warp and weft of the books, and is never forgotten.

In contrast, gravity is ignored in most popular science fiction. People walk around on spaceships in the middle of interstellar travel as though they were on a building, not in weightlessness.

Occasionally, you’ll hear some one-liner tossed off about “artificial gravity generators” or some such to explain this. This is a good time to remember that of the four fundamental forces we know in this universe – gravity, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force, and electromagnetism – we can only manipulate the last of those. Physicists are still betting on whether the Large Hadron Collider will finally reveal why things have mass.

I sympathize with filmmakers. Trying to simulate weightlessness is tricky, and requires complicates special effects. But I do wish that they would address it more often. And judging from the previews, I’m happy that the makers of John Carter have chosen to embrace this aspect of the story, and that it is given due credit as the science fiction pioneer that it is.

* This is despite Disney giving the film the most boring and nonevocative logo in memory. Akzidenz-Grotesk? This does not convey any of the familiarity of the turn of the Victoria era or the alien nature of the Martian landscape. And the title isn’t much better. Just John Carter? Not even John Carter of Mars?


Book cover from here, a great site that contains lots of information and artwork from many printings of the story. For me, Frank Frazetta’s interpretation of Barsoom is definitive.

My favourite spaceship

A while ago, I shared a little video about my GeekQuest to see the original Enterprise model. But I have a confession to make. The Enterprise isn’t my favourite spaceship.

Regular readers might know my massive love for Doctor Who, and think, “Ah!, I’ll bet it’s the TARDIS.” Nope.

It’s the Eagles from Space: 1999.

The reason is simple. The Eagles looked real to me: practical, achievable machines. The Eagles looked like a reasonably logical progression from the real spaceships of the day; you could see design elements from the Apollo lunar excursion modules. They were clearly meant to run on liquid fuel, rather than some imaginary power source. I particularly loved the small steering rockets on the sides of the landing pads, which would be necessary to adjust the position of a spaceship in airless space. (Sadly, the Eagles were usually filmed swooping through space like airplanes. More realistic depictions of maneuvering would have to wait for Babylon 5.)

My quest to see the Enterprise, the restoration of the Eagle, and the excitement over the discovery of a Serenity model makes me a bit sad for the nearly complete transition of special effects from model making to computer generated imagery. With computer images, there’s no actual object that a fan can ever go see. That makes me just a bit sad.

Shame such a great design was stuck in a usually sub par show.

Additional: The Bad Astronomer, Phil Plait, has a great article on why Victor Bergman from Space: 1999 is his favourite depiction of a scientist on television.

Links

Restoring the original 44" Eagle 1 studio SFX model
The 44" Eagle 1 studio model today

GeekQuest

As we near the end of the year, I wish you all have the chance to complete one long-standing quest in the coming year.

This was one of mine.



Depending on your point of view, I'm either about a month and a half late with this (since I filmed it during Neuroscience in November), or I’m one day late with this.

Do you fear the device you are reading this on?

Natasha Mitchell, host of ABC Radio National’s sublime radio show All in the Mind, recently wrote:

Whole airport terminal of commuters glancing at mobile phones, flicking & swiping away. Few books & newspapers. The world has changed.

This morning, I thought about something Isaac Asimov is reputed to have said:

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.

And it struck me: We used to be scared of computers.

Let me say that again:

We used to be scared of computers.

Look at the science fiction of the 1960s or so. Writers write about what worries them, as Margaret Atwood says. Asimov’s embracing of computers was unusual. More common to find books and films and television series that warned of the threat posted by computers, and that we had better keep them on a tight leash.

Today, about the only touchstone for computer paranoia remaining in popular culture is Skynet, from The Terminator movies. It’s important even there to remember that the first Terminator movie was made in 1984. Email barely even existed them. (And the plot of The Terminator was largely lifted from some of Harlan Ellison’s old episodes from The Outer Limits in the 1960s.)

And it sometimes is worth thinking how far we’ve come, culturally, that there is almost nobody who does not use computers in some form. Sure, there are occasionally individuals who won’t set up a Facebook account, but many of them will own a smartphone with more computing power than entire universities used to have.

If Isaac Asimov were alive today, he would so have an iPhone.

Today, I’m scheduled to moderate a panel discussion at the PACE biomedical ethics conference titled, “Robotic Surgeons and other challenges with emerging technology in healthcare.” Interesting that robotic surgery is being posed as “challenges,” not “opportunities.”

What are we worried about today that will become pervasive tomorrow?

Asimov photo from here; film poster from here.

Tuesday Crustie: Kaiju

Continuing with the theme of oversized pop culture crustaceans, here’s a favourite giant monster from Toho Studios:

Ebirah was introduced in Godzilla Vs. The Sea Monster, where the two participated in some slightly surreal soccer action with boulders.

“Ebi,” if I’m not mistaken, means shrimp in Japanese, so the name means something like monster shrimp.

I preferred Ebirah’s brief but tightly choreographed, energetic action scene in Godzilla: Final Wars. (even if Ebirah didn’t get a rematch with Big G). Here’s some conceptual art:

And here’s the final version in the film:

 
You can watch both movies on Crackle.

Why science writing differs from every other form of writing

A bane of many professional writers is people asking, “Will you read my...?”

If the pro has one whit, one iota, one remaining pair of neurons to fire together, the answer will be no.

And probably not a polite “No,” either.

Robert J. Sawyer is one of the more polite authors on this score. But most of the time, the response is much more likely to be something like Josh Olson’s essay, “I will not read your fucking script.” David Gerrold’s response may not be blunt as Olson’s but  is much more... thorough:

The only proper response when an amateur attempts to hand you his manuscript... is to take an axe to his laptop, follow him home, burn down his house, and salt the ground.

But even more fun is Harlan Ellison reading a poem about why he will not read your fucking script. (In fact, this post is an elaborate contrivance to link to Ellison reading this poem.)

Scientists get far fewer amateurs asking them read things; I suppose that occasionally mathematicians have to put up with people claiming to be able to trisect an angle (i.e., cranks). But scientists are not only asked to read their colleagues’ work (sometimes by strangers), but they tend not to pull out the torches and pitchforks when they are asked. I'm not just talking about peer review; I'm talking about pre-submission work. I think the difference is that scientists are not paid directly for their writing, but only indirectly through "prestige," which may later generate grants and such.

Only a matter of time before this showed up

Your results:
You are Jean-Luc Picard

Jean-Luc Picard 70% James T. Kirk (Captain) 65% Will Riker 60% Uhura 60% Data 58% Spock 57% Geordi LaForge 55% An Expendable Character (Redshirt) 50% Deanna Troi 50% Mr. Sulu 50% Leonard McCoy (Bones) 40% Beverly Crusher 35% Chekov 35% Worf 30% Mr. Scott 30%

A lover of Shakespeare and other fine literature. You have a decisive mind and a firm hand in dealing with others.

Click here to take the "Which Star Trek character are you?" quiz...

Tuesday Crustie: Hypertrophy

Species unknown, but apparently some sort of Brachyura.

From Attack of the Crab Monsters. Roger Corman, we love you!

V for victory... and five... and an old 80s SF series...

I’m the grad program coordinator for my department. I spend a lot of time trying to improve our grad program.

That task might have gotten a bit easier this week.

My university has received a big, chunky Department of Education grant to create graduate opportunities for Hispanic students. It’s a Title V grant (hence the post title). I will probably have my fingers fairly deep for that program for the next few years, I think.

The picture? Just amazed that people thought V was worth redoing. I doubt anyone will be able to match Diana’s fantastic bitchiness (wonderfully played by Jane Badler, R).

Rob Sawyer, we ♥ you!

Rob understands scientists are smokin’ hawt.

Previous posts on passion in science here and here.

Quote of the moment, July 2009 edition

After spending most of the weekend chucking paper from my office and still having a long way to go before I hit anything approaching “clean,” this quote from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine felt appropriate:

Humans have a compulsion to keep records and files — so many, in fact, that they have to invent new ways to store them microscopically. Otherwise their records would overrun all known civilization.

(For the sticklers, that’s Constable Odo in the episode “Necessary Evil.”)

Nerdcore

Star Trek.

Are there any other words that carry such connotations of complete and utter nerdiness? Dungeons and Dragons might come close.

As it happens, I am just a few months older than Star Trek. Unlike many others, I didn’t grow up watching Star Trek. I lived in the country with two channels, and there was virtually no science fiction on either one. Being able to catch an episode of Trek when I went on vacation was a big deal.

I grew up reading Star Trek. In particular, I loved Alan Dean Foster’s adaptations of the animated series. The later ones were particularly fun, where Foster only used the episode as a jumping off point for a longer story.

And there was a magazine with an unlikely and impossibly long title, All About Star Trek Fan Clubs. The first issue had a short episode guide and laid out the sort of basic information that now you’d pick up from Wikipedia. But of course, there was no Wikipedia then.

While the Trek captains have received a lot of discussion, make no mistake: my favourite character was the science officer.

There was something cool about Spock. Of course, I wasn’t alone; Mr. Spock was the most popular character for a long time (often to the detriment of stories – Spock ended up solving plots far too often).

In retrospect, I think a large part of the attraction was that Spock was a highly intelligent character. At the time, there weren’t a lot of those to go around in pop culture. Around the early 1970s, how many characters can you name who were really, really smart besides Spock? Sherlock Holmes. I’m missing others, but it certainly wasn’t like now, where the success of CSI and all its procedural crime drama offspring has put a lot of very smart characters as main characters in drama. Spock was pretty appealing to all those people who got tagged “the smart kid” in school.

If there had been no Trek, I would probably still be a scientist. But I cannot guess how much of my mental architecture has been shaped by science fiction generally and that show especially.

I lost touch with Trek somewhere between the third and fifth television series, when it seemed they just ran out of stories worth telling. Russell T Davies said much the same thing about Doctor Who before he pulled off a completely glorious revival of that show.

Today, a new Star Trek movie opens. I am hoping that writer and director J. J. Abrams will pull off for Trek what Davies did for Doctor Who: take everything we loved about the old series and stick a great big swodge of 2009 in it. The advance reviews are uniformly enthusiastic, and, for the first time in a long time, I’m genuinely excited about the prospect of watching Star Trek.

Because what’s better than a brand new hero?

An old hero who hasn’t lost it.

Hero worship

I have many heroes who don't exist. Such is the power of art.

Patrick McGoohan died today. He created a television series that is amazing in how completely, unabashedly it declares itself as a piece of art. A television series that is amazing because, in a medium where realism rules, it makes no sense. (Taking the series as a whole -- individual episodes often make perfect sense.)

That series was The Prisoner. CBC ran it a couple of times late at night in the 1980s, where I caught it by chance one night after I came home from working at the movie theatre, if I remember correctly. I was instantly hooked. I was a member of The Prisoner Appreciation Society for a while.

I loved the design, the font, the strange but somehow plausible game of kosho, the human chess game, the music, the top notch actors who rotated through playing Number Two, the Lotus car that McGoohan drove in the opening credits, the clever traps in "The Girl Who Was Death," and above all, the uncompromising commitment of the lead character, Number Six, played by McGoohan, to independence and individualism.

Number Six is one of my heroes. Thank you, Patrick McGoohan, for your art and craft and intellect.

A new version of The Prisoner series is in production. I hope it will be good. One of the nice bonuses of that is that you can watch the original episodes online here.

Michael Rennie was ill...

The Day the Earth Stood Still – the original – was made at a critical point in Earth’s history.

Humans had split the atom, but hadn’t gone into space.

What a wonderful combination of terror and optimism. We saw the potential for complete destruction, yet I think there was really a sense of incredible potential then. People could almost taste space travel. And really, isn’t there a hint of pride that other civilizations could actually perceive us as a threat?

Today, I think we feel the threat, but not the sort of hope the early 1950s had. I don’t think we think of ourselves going into space, expanding ever out, they way we did then. Space travel has proved difficult.

It’ll be very interesting to see what zeitgeist the remake opening today tries to tap into.

Farewell, Forry

Forrest ("Forry") J. Ackerman has died at 92 (reported many places, including here and here).

If you knew Forry Ackerman, you were one degree of separation from everything connected to science fiction and fantasy in the 20^th century. He was an architect of today's society. George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and thousands more like them learned about movies through Forry's Famous Monsters of Filmland, for decades the only SF magazine about film and TV until Starlog came on the scene.

I can't say I knew him, but had the honor of seeing and meeting him a couple of times.

The first, at Norwescon, he brought the voice of H.G. Wells to the fans. Ackerman had seen a talk by Wells when he was young, and decided that he would try to memorize the way Wells spoke and some of his words. he had been inspired by one child who was so moved by Lincoln's Gettysburg address that he memorized it and would recite it in Lincoln's style to preserve it. Ackerman relayed his surprise that Wells had a thin, high voice, almost like one of old ladies in Monty Python skits. And the phrase was something like, "I am going to talk to you about the war. [Not certain if it was "war," actually.] East is east. West is west. And the two are coming together with a bang."

Additional: A better recounting of Ackerman's anecdote is here.

RYAN: MR. ACKERMAN, YOU HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO HEAR [AUTHOR H.G. WELLS) SPEAK. WHAT DO REMEMBER ABOUT THAT?

Ackerman: It was 1938. It was predicted that 100 years into the future that on top of Mt. Everest, a statue would be erected in his memory, 'First of Civilized Men.' When he spoke, because he had given us WAR OF THE WORLDS and TIME MACHINE and so on, I thought he'd have this deep, sonorous, Orson Welles personality. I was very surprised to hear he had this squeaky little voice. He had this small rolly-polly, bloody complexion and said [in a high accented voice], 'I am going to talk to you for about an hour. Today, East is West, and West is East, and they're coming together with a bang.' He was very prophetic, because unfortunately we went to war with Japan.

The second time, at Con*Cept, I had more opportunity to hear him. He was in Montréal tracking down a rare edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. He gave an hour long panel talking about some of his many experiences. He talked about his love of Esperanto, and complimenting a beautiful woman in the audience in Esperanto. He expressed how disappointed he was with Tim Burton's movie Ed Wood, a depiction Forry said was terrible. (Forry had been Wood's agent.)

I asked him if, in building his renowned collection of sci-fi memorabilia, there were any pieces that he had tried to get for his collection that "got away," as I phrased it. His reply was not what I had expected, and he talk about items that had literally got away because someone had stolen them from his house.

At the end of his panel, I was able to get an autograph from him on -- of all things -- a Vampirella trading card. (Vampirella was a character Ackerman named that was undergoing a resurgence of popularity at the time.)

Robert J. Sawyer's post on meeting Forry gives a good sense of the well known generosity of the man.

I have to disagree with the reports that say he died from heart failure. A heart like his would never fail -- only stop.

Hope springs eternal

Metropolis is a classic science fiction film. "Masterpiece" is usually in the same sentence as its name. It is to science fiction what Charlie Chaplin is to comedy.

The original, uncut version has been found (also here and elsewhere).

If you can find something like this after 80 years, who know what other things thought lost might be retrieved?