As one who pays attention to these things, there are always topics and trends that crop up in science fiction that capture imaginations and remain hot for years.
For starters, let’s say anything to do with computers – a perennial favorite.
It seems the moment someone figured out how to put information into a machine and expected a result from doing so launched an endless parade of stories. You got hacking films (take, for example, “Sneakers” to “Blackhat”), unfortunate, misleading games turning out to anything but innocent fun for kids with big ideas and little life experience (“War Games,” “Enders Game”), and even computer-generated lives influencing mortal ones (how can anyone forget “Max Headroom”?).
I’m guessing computers/computing kind of puts you in charge of the story, in a way. As a writer, all one has to do is invent a directive without actually writing one for real. So of course your story can have the main character develop a fantastic method of convincing every single stock broker in America to hand over 25% of profits and deposit the money in a Geneva bank, without question, just by writing a simple, foolproof code. Then the main character goes off and gives all the money to charity instead of living high of the hog. Now that, folks, would be real science fiction, because nothing like that ever happens in real life!
Other perennial favorites sci-fi topics (but not limited to) include:
Aliens attacking the Earth
Attractive aliens seducing Earthlings and making them do things (good and bad)
Human-looking people cavorting with otherworldly beings (and what category do they fit in?)
Nuclear accidents and other holocausts
Earth going bye-bye
Interplanetary hijinks and death battles
Every sort of space station on every kind of planet, moon and subspecies of galactic existence having issues of some sort
Weather (Earth and elsewhere) having a mind of its own
Time/space travel and its consequences (good and bad)
Beings simply not getting along and the often unfortunate circumstances that arise from said conflict
Brains – you name it
The mind has a reputation for possessing a fertile imagination. I’d like to think I’m pretty good at dreaming up stuff. I’ve had this blog for nearly a year and I kind of pinch myself when I notice how much I’ve managed to spew out. And yeah, some of you might notice I started two chapters of a book on this site and left it alone for ages – sorry, had other things going on – but I’m not done there, so don’t worry. So I’m putting together a list of topics I really haven’t seen any serious sci-fi author tackle yet. Yes, I might be mistaken, and maybe I haven’t read the right books yet (and there is an endless supply of those, too), but here’s kind of a wish list for topics I’d like to either read or write about someday:
Brussel Sprouts and Liver – Moms terrorize children the planet over, forcing them to eat food they hate (vegan/vegetarian options welcome)
The Anti-Text – A 17-year-old girl has to live a full hour without her cell phone…and survive
Game Over – Professional gamers have to make do with “Pong”
XT/AT – Present-day programmers scramble to get work done with only 10/20K of memory and have to use Sideways to print their spreadsheets
Ink Link – Tats jump off of everyone who has one and take over the world, with both disastrous and comical results
We Get It – Men and women understand each other perfectly and respond to each other’s needs and wishes without fighting over who’s right or needier
Nice Day – The confusing, unfortunate results of continued pleasant weather, good-mannered people, well-paying jobs and general happiness
Netscape – People discover this is the only browser available and have only the “Surprise” button to use, and so experience wacky, madcap misadventures
Wait for No One – Serving staff goes on strike, coffee ceases to exist, coffee isn’t served anymore and the populace winds up jittery, angry and bitter
Misidentified Fruit – People mistakenly ingest innocent-looking but suspicious-behaving fruit and wind up encased in rock-heavy cakes everyone rejects when served up during the holidays
I’m not going to lie. This has been an awful year for me. Annus horribilus. I’m not sorry to see 2014 go; in fact, I’ll be personally booting it out the door come 11:59:59 on 12/31/14. I can’t wait.
That doesn’t mean I’m going to go all Bah Humbug during the holidays, however. In fact, as a result of this terrible year, I’m determined to finish it on a positive note, or even a humorous one.
Sometimes when the self-spirit’s lacking, one has to dig deep to find the certain stuff to pull it up and out. Get that old smile back on the face. Muster up some cheer. To that end, I started with lights. Dug out the old LED outdoor string and got to work putting them on the gutters for all to see. Have a few strands of solar lights and stuck them on the bushes on the front lawn, since there’s no outlets there. Already, the house looked much better.
We did notice a couple of our older strings weren’t working, so Andrew and I went over to Lowe’s and bought replacements. Hanging in the aisle was this:
It’s a Chewbacca stocking. Andrew walks over to it and says, “I don’t care how much it costs” and throws it into our basket, along with our new color icicle lights.
The next day, I’m in Target, wandering the aisles for a few last-minute gifts and holiday supplies. I’m looking for Archer Farms Caramel Chocolate Popcorn mix when I happen upon this:
I say to myself, “I don’t care how much it costs” and toss it into the basket. It’s truly horrible, but I don’t care.
We’re the sort of family that gets its tree a few days before Christmas, so that the holiday actually has some kind of special anticipation (as opposed to those who put theirs up right after Thanksgiving, a month before). I went to the local farmers market. They always have great trees at good prices. Of course, they also have all sorts of other things that go along with holiday decorating too, so I saw this:
Oh boy. This was hard. Oh, these would look soooooooooo fantastic on the lawn, now, wouldn’t they? A storm trooper with a candy cane? R2D2 with a Santa cap? I already had a holiday Yoda, but he looked kinda cute, almost determined to celebrate Christmas with great force. One look at the price, though, and I wasn’t about to shell out $59.95 when the tree cost half that. Sensibly, I moved on.
So the other day, my son wanted to go Christmas shopping. Again, we’re back at Target and he spots these:
Oh, heck, they were only $10.00. On clearance. Such a bargain! What better way to drink egg nog? Of course, the bottom of the glass had the expected caveat:
NOT A TOY. Well, it’s not like we go tossing these things around. Who’d even think a glass is?
So here we are, putting nice things on tree. It’s all sparkle and light.
Yoda fits in so well with all the other sparkly bits and such. He’s so serene, stuck in the branches:
It’s as if he’s the keeper of the holiday spirit, beckoning joy and light, and be of good cheer.
So I will.
So should you.
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Festive Festivus, Sassy Saturnalia, Kickin’ Kwanza, Happy New Year and all of that, to all of you.
This picture showed up on my Facebook page. It’s a riot. I’d love to have that under my tree! Or maybe even Christmas card?
So I got to thinking: what else is there out there? I mean, to properly inspire me for the holidays? Here’s a few for you to pass around and enjoy. I got them all of the web in many different locations, so I can’t rightly say where, exactly, these belong, except in your consciousness during this lovely holiday season.
Santa passes by his alien counterpart
Robot Elf
Even little aliens deserve a little treat from Santa, who seems a little off…
Yes, I’ll admit I’m a geek. I married one, too. So of course we felt it necessary to see “Interstellar.” We read up on it, exchanged speculations on the theories behind it, compared different viewpoints, opinions, reviews, all of that. After all of this effort, a sensible decision was cast to go and see it, already.
So last night, after first ducking into Target to purchase some chocolates to stick into our pockets so we wouldn’t have to pay the ridiculous price of $4.oo for a $1.oo candy bar, we went. It was great to go into a theatre filled with our kinds of people, equally geeky and completely silent during the showing, with only the rare murmur of approval over a spectacular scene.
Naturally, we weren’t disappointed. Both of us loved it and spent the ride home discussing it. And I could go on about this, that or the other thing regarding the vagaries of space-time travel and the physics behind it.
Why would I? You know all that anyway.
What got me were the small touches, the little hints of things to come and viewpoints either behind the characters or the writers who invented them. First on my list were the books on the shelves in Murph’s bedroom. How many of you took a good look at them? Here’s two that caught my immediate attention: “The Stand” and “Outlander.”
“Outlander” caught my eye because Diana Gabaldon wrote this book regarding a portal that transports a woman through time, and Stephen King’s “The Stand” because the human race is nearly killed off in that one. Both of those elements were the story in “Interstellar.”
Actually, books do figure prominently in the movie. Take, for example, the school district’s reliance on “corrected versions” of history. The moonwalk was all propaganda to economically bankrupt the Soviet Union. After all, the Soviets never made it to the moon, so that propaganda campaign must have worked. Yet Murph refuses to believe it all and listens to her father, who reinforces the truth.
All that talk about chemical compositions and how it affects environments and circumstances also gave me the goosies. The way how too much nitrogen in an atmosphere isn’t ideal or any atmosphere’s makeup is so sensitive to various forms of life made me smile.
But really, when you get right down to it, the use of time as a resource and element defined the film. Everything from the father Cooper as a younger man visiting his daughter Cooper as she lay dying, much older than he (all right, how many of you also knew that was Ellen Burstyn?), to the astronaut left behind for 23 years when Brand and Cooper seemed to be gone only minutes? Or the gradual shift of Earth from viable to slowly dying, which seemed to take both an interminable and finite amount of time?
I could go on about many, many more things about why we enjoyed “Interstellar” so much, but that would take time, so if you haven’t seen it, take the time and go!
It’s November here in the United States, specifically in New York State. Nothing’s weirder here than the weather this time of year. I’d like to illustrate this point with the following picture:
This was my house last Friday. On first glance, it would appear to be a pleasant scene, just a hint of snow to make things pretty. Upon further inspection, however, the Japanese maple wasn’t through with its leaves. Sure, there’s a neat circle of leaves on top of the snow, creating an artistic touch, but honestly, if the tree had its way, it’d rather let this season pass without having to worry about the next one butting in. “Say, wait,” the Japanese maple thinks, “this is my season – fall – and I’m not finished dumping my leaves just yet. Winter, BACK OFF!”
Yesterday, I arrived at work. My place of employment is next to a river that cuts through a mountain ridge. It’s my practice to check out the river after I park my car. It’s pretty, so it gives me a positive note upon which to begin my day. This is what I saw:
At first glance, I’m thinking this is kind of weird. Is this an alien message? Not quite a corn crop circle, but indeed some sort of symbol. Check it out: it’s a clearly-defined crescent, or even a “C”. Could it even be some sort of map? Within the shape, there’s a few distinct islands floating. Maybe this is a harbor or a bay, and those little shapes floating within could depict landing places, or locals/islands where pickup/dropoffs are designated. Or perhaps someone/thing with a name beginning with “C” is supposed to do a task? Could this be a sign from up and out there, calling for immediate response?
Sure, the rational part of me’s thinking it’s just an eddy and that’s how the water’s flowing as it slowly freezes. But one never knows the messages lying beneath the forces of nature…
You’re sitting in your favorite chair, reclining and relaxing to that iconic sci-fi morality tale trilogy, Star Wars. You’re petting the cat, eating popcorn as you watch planets blow up, walkers trip and burn, even the Death Star going ka-blammo! It’s all good fun, and you even find yourself cheering.
But did you even consider the toll? I hesitate to say “human” toll…many species lives were lost. And it’s kind of sad, don’t you think? But then again, it’s all in the name of a heroic cause, and now, if you click on the above link, you’ll have your opportunity to cheer on the death and destruction, as Digg has tallied all 2,005,645,868 deaths in the original Star Wars trilogy.
Quite a feat, I’m sure, but worthwhile, just in case you wondered…and admit it…you have…
Gretchen Weerheim and sister Gwen Jones with some familiar friends made entirely of Legos
Lord, it’s been hard to keep up with this blog when I’ve had so much going on in my personal life.
Summers, on the whole, are meant for enjoyment. Mine, however, consists of closing chapters and starting new ones. On the brink of Summer 2014, my mother passed away. My father, who has Alzheimer’s, deeply grieves her loss. After 60 years of marriage, that’s not hard to grasp. He refuses to leave his bed, and when he does, it’s for brief spells only. My sister and I have been taking care of him in a tag-team fashion. We’ve had to face some ugly realities, such as selling his house and placing him in smaller quarters. We refuse to place him in organized, institutional housing and evaluating alternatives comes at a cost – financially and otherwise.
All this stress really shut down my creative mind to the point where even pondering what to put down in both a novel I’m working on plus this blog made me feel guilty. I’d sit down, armed with coffee and good intentions, only to stare at the screen and wind up reading anything from The New York Times to The Comics Curmudgeon.
Last week, after a long day tending to my father and his house, I sat down at my desk and once again, grew despondent. Nothing. The sound of crickets outside reflected the activity in my brain. Seeking inspiration, I read through my older blogs, trolling for ideas, thoughts, encouragement.
I found it – from two fellow bloggers who comment regularly on what I manage to write.
Among my archives I reread “The Plot Thickens,” in which I describe an exoplanet first thought to exist and then suddenly, it vanished. D.R. Sylvester positively commented on a description I gave regarding an astrophysicist (“red-headed ball of fire”). Then Hugh Roberts of Hugh’s News and Views commented on how another brief posting of mine, “A Gorgeous View of the Universe” inspired him. Feeling somewhat more encouraged, my mind took a right turn back into my family and how they shaped me into the writer I’ve become.
An earlier blog, “Mom, Up With The Stars”, described my mother’s influence on my love for sci-fi. My father, the middle child out of eleven, born shortly before the stock market crash of 1929 and whose family fell victim to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, had inspirations for writing. Dad had a way with words and loved good stories, especially history. Both parents encouraged my sister and I to express our artistic ways, no matter what form they took. Gwen Jones, a best-selling author whose titles appear on the Woman’s Fiction and Romance listings, encouraged me to move my writing talents from technical/educational to science fiction. Thanks to her, I belong to Liberty States Fiction Writers Group, a highly-regarded group consisting of many best-selling published writers in all genres, plus those who are well on their way. Andrew, my husband, is probably the biggest fanboy ever. His multitudes of sci-fi novels fill many of our shelves and I deeply value his input and opinions. He’s a great plotter, too.
With this basket of goodies at my table, I chose to take another approach to writing. With one novel finished and another underway, I’d thought I’d create a side project, if you will. You might notice it listed at the top of my blog – a new page called “Incurable Mistakes – A Serial Story.” Using D.R. Sylvester’s suggestion that the red-headed ball of fire astrophysicist plot line might actually work, I bore that in mind as I sat in my father’s home and began telling a tale. I invite anyone out there to come and join me. Read along and if you have a great suggestion, send it on and I’ll work it in. Call it a group novel. The only thing I haven’t figured out (haven’t tried, actually) is how to make subpages for new chapters, although I’m sure it’s easy.
I’m not making promises, but I will try to slap together 500-1000 words a week. Anything readers of this blog can add to the pot might make this stew tastier!
The New York Times had an excellent article on the possibilities of life Out There. You know, all that space that the universe occupies. According to Carl Sagan, there was no reason not to expect life that was comparable to humans. But if you asked the competition, evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr, we were it. Sure, it was reasonable to expect primordial soup in other locales, with perhaps a few vegetables thrown in for variety, but Mayr was steadfast in his beliefs that the chances for humanlike life anywhere but here was slim to nil.
Naturally, there’s also that school of belief that attests to aliens living among us, including the abductees who’ve been tested and probed. Those unexplained sightings of strange ships hovering over dark highways in remote locations – that can’t be fake, eh? There has to be something real under Area 51, right? After all, why do they protect it so fiercely?
If you ask me, I’d bet the rent on life existing outside our little blue dot. Compare it to the lottery. The higher the stakes, the more players become involved. Eventually, a number’s picked and a winner is paraded before cameras as the newest bazillionaire. On occasion, though, there’s more than one winner, and regularly three or four. I’m no mathematician, but what are the chances that several people will bounce into the local gas station, drop $20.00 on gas and another $3.00 bucks for a few Powerball tickets and all come out winners? It happens. So why not expect life on other planets?
Carl Sagan maintained that sound waves generated from TV and radio drifted out among the stars would signal to intrepid space voyagers our existence. That was detailed in Contact. Those sound waves possess properties that cause them to stretch and grow as they wander further from their source. By the time those waves are detected, what discernible information remains attached to these signals would be challenging to interpret. But then again, the right exoplanetary scientist might find them an intriguing prospect: thin signals meaning what? A project to research, to turn heads into another direction to discover their source? Our planet, uncovered at last?
What’s to say there isn’t a planet with inhabitants who share the dreams of finding others, only to be told the possibilities are so incredibly remote it isn’t worth a bother?
Here’s how I see it: out there, far from Earth, a soul ponders what bioforms rose and prospered elsewhere in the abyss of space. Technologically advanced to send out space probes, this soul launches a machine capable of seeking clues, if not evidence. Time passes, the soul dies, but other scientists take this soul’s place and keep on with the vigil. Eventually, the machine wanders so far away from its home planet that even its trail of crumbs grows cold. After a great deal of time, the machine is lost to memory and passes into legend, but the language on the foreign planet evolves to the point where even the legend transforms into a mystery and eventually forgotten. Meanwhile, life on that planet succumbs to its own evolution as its inhabitants face other issues that seem more pressing or trivial, but interest in further explorations has shriveled as it’s become necessary to focus on the lack of rain, food, or a dwindling resource that is elemental to the stability of life on said planet. Or, life for the other planet’s inhabitants is fulfilling, and therefore interest plummets because all needs are met and exceeded. Curiosity fades as the inhabitants indulge in The Good Life and place high importance cultivating perpetual happiness.
On a peaceful September morning, blue skies except for drifting patches of cumulus clouds, a flash streaks across the sky. Whatever caused it crashes into a suburb of a medium-sized city, resulting in a fair amount of damage to both the landscape and the object. Upon cautious examination, its solid core leads Earth scientists to believe it’s not merely silicon. Placed in the hands of a particularly observant scientist, a barely imperceptible vibration reveals a secret only a sensitive hand would notice. “Hey,” says the Earth scientist, “I think we got something here…”
No alien spaceships, no apocalyptical force, only a simple device, badly damaged and time-worn, offers a clue to a glorious civilization similar to our own, whose own culture is seemingly lost to the wastelands of space and disbelieving souls.
Clearly, we’ve grown bored with the Earth. It’s that lover one always strives to please, yet somehow no matter what one does, it’s never right. In the end, one gives up and goes elsewhere to find love and acceptance. Its inhabitants have, in equal parts, loved and abused it, ignored its warnings and acted surprised when it fought back. In the end, we all know it’ll get its way and beat us, but no one who borrows time trodding on its grassy plains and thick muddy fields ever thinks about that prospect.
Instead, our eyes shift upward, looking elsewhere for a better situation and a second chance.
Ever since the discovery of exoplanets, or those outside of our own solar system, space explorers have been determining which of those planets will host life and, optimistically, life that we can identify, and, how we’re going to to meet up one day. Average citizens, whose off-world opportunities are rather limited, have to rely on imagination and conjecture to supply possibilities. After all, those alien spaceships have to come from somewhere, right? They can’t all be bad. Those Antarians from the movie “Cocoon” did benefit the forgotten population of greying Floridians, even supplying a ride back to Antarea to seniors deserving of a new life.
Closer to home, it’s simpler to take advantage of our backyard planets and subsequent moons. Once humans figured out what planets actually were, they’ve also contemplated living upon them.
Take, for instance, the moon. Relatively ancient technology got us there and back for a short visit way back when. Nowadays, it’s entirely feasible to build a craft to ship us there enmasse to create a colony there, given its relative nearness. We already know there’s a supply of water and rare earth elements just hankering to be mined. Nearly every genre of science is hankering to conduct experiments there, driven by desire, curiosity and the uniqueness of the lunar environment. Americans, Russians, as well as private interests all have plans in the works to get up there by the 2020s and make a homestead claim.
Humans attach great meaning to the color red. Anger, temptation, danger and naughtiness are all meanings associated with it – just about everything we’re not supposed to have and desperately crave. I’m assuming that’s the subliminal reason why Mars is so magnetic. After all, this red planet practically begs someone to come hither. Probes coyly hint at the richness of Mars’ treasures. Water’s there, too, although not behaving the way we’d like it to be, adding more to its mystique. And like a forbidden love, the more determined we are to have it, the more money it costs to secure it. I’ve no doubt there’ll be a batch of humans trying to tame the Wild Red Planet’s surface, but it’ll come at a price, no one will be happy, but we’ll be never be satisfied until we at least have a first date. Then we’ll see.
Until then, I’m going to bide my time and see what openings Virgin Galactic has in the near future. I might want to book a ride.
With the impending arrival of “Star Wars: Episode Seven”, there’s all kinds of stuff being posted on YouTube. My husband sent me one link today and after viewing it, I drooled. If you hadn’t seen this one already, go ahead, take a glimpse:
Note the exquisite detail. Whoever did this is a dedicated geek worthy of award status.
Of course, if you have that, you’re also going to have to look at the leaked TMZ photos of Episode 7, too. Since these have been out for a while and no doubt everyone’s had a look already, I’m including these as a matter of convenience. You know, so you can geek out all in one space.
Moon, Stars and Beyond 