Movie Review: Interstellar

Let's get the bad news out of the way for those of you who don't have the patience to read an entire review: I really wanted to like Interstellar, but it just didn't move, entrance, or excite me like I thought it would. I give it three stars. Those of you with short attention spans may now move along to other parts of the internet. If you'd like to know why I gave the film this rating, feel free to keep reading.

Obviously I wanted to like Interstellar because I'm a space geek and because it's been quite a while since I saw an upbeat vision of space exploration depicted on film. And let me be fair here: that is what Interstellar provides. And the stakes are high: astronauts heading off to the far reaches of space--via a black hole, no less--to save the Earth. So you've got the broad tapestry we expect from space operas, as depicted by SF Grand Master Brian Aldiss:

Ideally, the Earth must be in peril, there must be a quest and a man to match the mighty hour. That man must confront aliens and exotic creatures. Space must flow past the ports like wine from a pitcher. Blood must run down the palace steps, and Ships launch out into the louring dark. There must be a woman fairer than the skies and a villain darker than the Black Hole. And all must come right in the end.

Without giving too much away, I would say, again, that Interstellar includes most of these ingredients. Plus, as an extra bonus, the director got scientific input from an actual astrophysicist. Also on the positive side, the visuals of entering the black hole are amazing and worth seeing on the big screen. The space hardware, too, is believable. In fact, the spacecraft look very much like NASA hardware (which, in fact, they're depicted to be). Though truth be told, my favorite bits of screen eye candy are the closeups of the planet Saturn. And on the human interest side of things, we have people who are stock characters to serious SF fans: we have our plucky astronauts doing what they can for their own disparate reasons--the hot pilot (Matthew McConnaughey) flying off to live his dream and save his family; the scientist's daughter, out for reasons of her own and following in her father's footsteps; the robot with a sense of humor; and a range of characters who are either worth knowing or easily disposable.

So why does this film disappoint?

Let's start with the exposition--the "world building," as SF writers call it. We've got a future Earth that is dying from some sort of blight that is killing crops, eroding the oxygen in the atmosphere, and shrinking the world's population. The most obvious signs of this negative future are massive dust storms, which call to mind the nuclear winter parts of The Day After. In fact, a few aspects of Interstellar reminded me of The Day After, including the corn-country setting, the blowing dust, the air of despair, and the presence of John Lithgow, who in this film portrays a crusty grandfather instead of the scientific genius (that role is played by Michael Caine, who does much less crying in this film than the last Christopher Nolan Batman film). But the last thing that reminded me of that "epic" made-for-TV movie was the bad acting. Honestly, I can't recall the last movie I saw where I felt the actors just phoned it in, but this film had an abundance of it, including bad acting by a couple of famous actors whom I figured would know better. The best explanation I have for this bad acting is an unfamiliarity with science fiction and its unavoidable technobabble.

Next thing? The buildup. Interstellar suffers from pacing problems and is therefore too long, by about 40 minutes. There would be no shame in curtailing the exposition to get McConnaughey's pilot into space, but Christopher Nolan felt otherwise.

I was going to say nice things about the soundtrack, which has touches of classical Earth themes that will definitely remind audiences of 2001: A Space Odyssey. That is good and bad. 2001 definitely has grandeur, and the Interstellar soundtrack manages to evoke that grandeur in some cases. However, there are a couple places in the film where the soundtrack overwhelms the actors' voices. At the time, I was frustrated because I couldn't understand what the actors were saying. Only later, like this morning, did I realize that the sound problems had been on purpose, which somehow made it worse. A little reminder to Hollywood directors: don't make your game-playing so obvious. As with good written material, you don't want to disrupt the audience's willing suspension of disbelief. If the reader or movie-going audience is made aware of the artifice of what's going on, they are no longer paying attention to the story but are instead paying attention to the storytelling.

Lastly, there is the plot, which is convoluted in places, messy in others, and in some places outright unbelievable. It takes too many steps to get from Earth to the heart of the plot (the "MacGuffin," which was also the name of the bar where I bought a bourbon before entering the theater). And when I got to the MacGuffin, I found that...well, I just didn't buy it. It was like a "high concept" for a science fiction film written by someone who doesn't read a lot of SF but thinks, "Hey, if we do this, it'll be really cool and deep," but it's not.

Which brings me back to my original three-star rating. I applaud Christopher Nolan for making a space opera with a positive view of science, technology, and the human future. And he delivers that...BUT: I didn't care about the characters. The story is too long. The central "high concepts" that resolve the plot make no sense or are muddled. So Interstellar gets three stars from me. Your mileage could vary.

Book Review: Escapement

Full Disclosure: Ciara Knight is a friend from a previous career life. When a friend tells me she's writing a steampunk series and is looking for feedback, it seems rather difficult to do. I guess I'll find out with this review won't I? And by the way, I did not receive a free copy--as a writer's courtesy, I paid full fare for the download--it's a good practice and keeps you a tad more honest.

What we have here is a steampunk romance. Actually, let me add another layer to that. What we have is a steampunk superhero romance. Ciara is trying something very ambitious here, and where it will go is anybody's guess--except hers.

I'll get my confessions/negative feedback out of the way first so I can get on to the fun stuff (though, like any author, she'll probably zoom in on the constructive criticism). My primary confession is that it took me a while to finish this book. I don't consider this a reflection on Ciara so much as my taste in books. I am not a romance reader, nor a particular fan of the steampunk subgenre, though I am a fan of The Peshawar Lancers, to name one. Romances thrive on emotional and sexual tension--of which this story has plenty--but that's not the sort of fiction I read for fun. That has probably colored this review more than it should, but then I am not Ciara's target market.




I had some difficulty "visualizing" this world in my head. The steampunk aesthetic, because it is so specific, requires a bit more attention to the reader's "eye." What are people wearing? What does the technology look like? What sort of vehicles do they use? How are interior spaces decorated--is it actually Victorian, or technology from our own time repurposed as such? Where are the characters in relationship to each other? Escapement has places where this is done well and other places where I would have preferred the extra one- to two-sentence scenic detour to help me situate myself. There are some interesting pieces of technology in this book that would bear a moment's consideration. Consider my favorites, the steampunk-flavored Borg  implants that Escapement's ruling class wear: eyepieces, heart replacements, leg replacements, primitive circuit boards. What color are they? How are they powered?

One last issue I have is understanding how old this civilization is. One learns over the course of this first (of several) stories that the primary villain, an implant-laden queen, played a key role in forming this society, which exists sometime after the "great war" of 2185. At times it seems that the war happened long ago, and others like it occurred during the childhood of the protagonist, Princess Semara. Are we dealing with a post-nuclear war world? We get hints, but not (yet enough) to fill in all the pieces. There are giant creatures in certain parts of this ruined America called "sermechtapedes," which were either mutated or fabricated into existence. How? When? We have references to the prewar world--cultural or political artifacts I won't spoil for you--but again it was difficult to situate myself in place and time.

*

So I've been poking at my friend pretty hard with the iron fist here. Time to apply the velvet glove. Ciara's got an ambitious story going on here with a lot of things going on at once: a romance, a political drama of sorts, and a culture war, with machine people (called Kantians) on one side, supernatural rebels (called Neumarians) with X-Men types of powers on the other, and a variety of plain old humans in the middle struggling to live their lives as slaves or victims or escapees.

Ciara actually introduced this story through a prequel novella titled Weighted, which tells the story from the perspective of Raeth, a Neumarian who has been captured and tortured by the machine people. Escapement continues the story from Semara's point of view.




In Weighted, we learn that the machine people have made it their mission in life to kill the Neumarians, which they view as "parasites." In Weighted, a younger Princess Semara must face a choice about what to do when it's her turn to kill a Neumarian. Escapement shows 16(?)-year-old Semara living with the consequences of that choice. Without giving away too much, suffice to say that Semara has been having second thoughts about the things she's been forced to do and decides to take action to escape that life. This puts her into the company of the hated Neumarians and on an inevitable collision course with her mother, the queen.

What I like with this story is how Ciara manages to advance the personal relationships between Semara and the other characters around her. She grows as a person and the friendships around her deepen as the narrative goes forward. That is not an easy thing to convey or do well. Another thing I like is that her Neumarian characters' "powers" have limitations or costs. They are not infinite, they require specific resources, and they take a toll on the user or others when used. Lastly, the story keeps moving through continually new conflicts or challenges. There might be too many challenges, perhaps--the reader and the characters barely have an opportunity to catch their breath before the next  big thing hits. The narrator's voice never eases up: there is always something new to worry about. Is that a function of Ciara's style or this genre or this character? I don't know, but there were a couple of times I wanted to give the narrator a hug and ask her to relax, if only for a moment. :-)

So while I have my misgivings about this type of story, I am tempted to keep reading, if only to see where Ciara takes her characters. I give her a lot of credit: she wanted very badly to write fiction when we were working together, and she's gone out and done it. And she's taking risks to grow and improve her craft. I wish I were that passionate about story telling, though I favor nonfiction. Regardless, I believe that if you are of a mind to read a steampunk-themed romance, then Escapement and the rest of the Neumarian Chronicles will probably work for you. Give it a try.

Movie Review: Yesterday Was a Lie

This is a review of the DVD. Much of the following material was first written at OmegaCon, a one-time event I attended in Birmingham, AL.

And so, having promised myself (and the lady herself) that I would do so, I headed for the screening of Yesterday Was a Lie, starring Chase Masterson. One of the reasons I gave this movie a shot, aside from its concept (altered states of reality, SF-film noir) was that James Kerwin, the writer/director, was an astronomy minor, and so knew what he was talking about, at least in theory. Brother, did he ever!

This was a seriously amazing movie. Way too smart for Hollywood, which is probably why it's had a hard time getting into some film festivals. Try this for a multi-layered movie: you've got a black-and-white film noir with dark, brooding cinematography to match the quality of anything made "back in the day." You've got a troubled, hard-bitten, hard-drinking female detective who's having seriously bad cases of deja vu or disjointed experiences that come out of nowhere. You've got a mysterious man who appears to hold the secrets to all of this. You've got Peter Mayhew as an equally mysterious, dangerous figure. Somewhere in the mix, you've got a love story. And yes, you've got Chase Masterson starring as a lounge singer with many other roles to either help explain things or make them muddier, depending on how you interpret the dialogue.

I should stress that this story is set in the present day, but it still has a lot of '40s technological artifacts, like analog telephones, old cars, and snap-brim hats. However, items like computers bring us back to the present. Thus it is what it is: a purposeful homage to film-noir set in the present day. The tone and style might evoke Raymond Chandler or The Third Man, but the story structure is more like something by Alfred Bester. As a piece of science fiction filmmaking, Yesterday Was a Lie is superb.

However, being a relentless critic, there are a couple of things that I didn't like, but they are minor, and one of them eventually corrected themselves. It took awhile to warm up to the lead character actress, Kipleigh Brown, who plays the grumpy, and at times frumpy detective, Hoyle. The '40s fedora and baggy suits don't (shall we say) suit her, but that costume isn't seen after the early part of the film. The whiskey-drinking, cigarette-smoking tough-gal act struck me as a tad ridiculous, but this, too, seems to be shed as the story develops. I asked the director afterward which scenes were shot first, because it seemed as if Brown gradually became more comfortable with the role.

The other challenge of the film is that it is, as I told the director, simply too smart for Hollywood. As a science fiction fan and occasional fan of old movies, I got it. Hell, I loved the concept! However, I might be a very niche audience. You have to be comfortable with nonlinear SF stories. And the concept is very high, the sort of thing that SF fans read SF for: to expand our minds and horizons. As such, it is entertainment of a specific type for a very specific audience. You either dig it or you don't. (I recall Ms. Masterson saying, "I love you guys!" as the audience debriefed afterward and was getting the whole concept. Apparently a few people had told her or the director, "I don't get it.")

I was pleased that the film made it to DVD production, if not general theatrical release. The director is smart and clearly has a passion for stylistics. Kipleigh Brown got more interesting in the role as the film went on and is every bit as sexy as the luminous (yeah, I said luminous--watch the film) Ms. Masterson, who is mostly known to science fiction fans for the character Leeta in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine  as well as others. I hope all of the people involved in this project get to work on equally meaty films in the future. It'd do Hollywood and its audiences a lot of good.

Follow-up, 9/2/12
I posted this article via my Twitter feed and copied James Kerwin and Chase Masterson in the process. Mr. Kerwin was quick to respond (the magic of the internet!), thanking me for my comments and letting me know that Yesterday Was A Lie actually did enjoy limited release in theaters. I stand corrected. He also suggested I watch the movie with the audio commentary, which I will plan to do this weekend. The discussions during OmegaCon were quite illuminating. Anyhow, just thought I'd share.

Book Review: Going Interstellar

It's a tough market for trying to "sell space" right now. Budgets are tight for space agencies worldwide, and there's no telling how long it will take for some of our more ambitious missions to the moon, Mars, or an asteroid to come to pass. So it might seem a little outlandish to be talking about missions out of the solar system--to other stars, no less!--but that is the exact point of Going Interstellar, a new anthology of articles and short stories about interstellar travel using current technologies.



The editors (Les Johnson and Jack McDevitt) and writers of this book have decided to throw caution to the wind, daring to talk about how human missions beyond our solar system might unfold. The technical articles in the book are brisk and light on equations or technobabble. In addition to Johnson, who's written extensively about solar sails and other high-tech propulsion systems, Dr. Greg Matloff has added articles on fusion and antimatter starships. They make it clear that the systems needed to span the incredible distances between stars are all technologically feasible, and none of them require "warp drive" or violations of known physics. Of course it should be pointed out that "feasible" is a long way from "doable right now." For instance, the ability to generate every Star Trek fan's favorite, antimatter, would take years. The energy output would be akin to half the world's total current production and would require special facilities out near Mercury's orbit. Hydrogen fusion, another favorite of science fiction writers, is also elusive, but we're at least working on it. "The rest," as physicists might say, "is just engineering."

The stories in this book are quite engaging. In fact, I finished this book over the course of three days. With stories by Ben Bova, Jack McDevitt, Louise Marley, Michael Bishop, Sarah A. Hoyt, and Mike Resnick, Going Interstellar looks at adventures beyond the solar system from a variety of unique perspectives, including an aging astrophysicist, a technologist in an interstellar feudal society, an artificial intelligence program, a teenager, and the next Dalai Lama. Interstellar travel is a bit like other frontiers for writers where there is little known about the place or the experience of getting there. It allows them to impose their own dreams and obsessions on a blank slate, much like Sir Thomas More place his Utopia in America. Intelligent machines? A reborn Tibetan culture? Why not?

What I liked about this book, beyond the brisk pace of the writing by multiple authors, was its willingness to touch on something that sometimes is sorely lacking: technological optimism without "magic." As I noted above, there is no faster-than-light-speed travel, no instantaneous travel between stars. This is a look at what really ambitious human spaceflight could look like using tools and machines accessible to us today, and the stories are informed by emotion, imagination, and technical know-how. In short, it's everything you'd like hard science fiction to be, and it's a pleasure to read.

Course Review: Masterpieces of the Imaginative Mind

It's been awhile since I bought a course from The Great Courses (a.k.a. The Teaching Company), but this one has been on my "wish list" for a couple years. It was worth the wait (and the price--around $40 with my long-term-customer discount). Masterpieces of the Imaginative Mind: Literature's Most Fantastic Works covers the long origins of science fiction (hereafter SF), its themes, and its best practitioners. I got several ideas of different things I'd like to write about on my own.

The course is from the Literature section of the site and is taught by Eric Rabkin, a lit professor from the University of Michigan. In a way, he and I approach the topic of SF in a similar manner, in that Rabkin focuses on the meaning of SF, how it functions, and what it means for the reader.

The first dozen 30-minute courses cover the field of fantasy or "fantastic" literature, which takes in works by authors such as Lewis Carroll, the Grimm Brothers, Edgar Allen Poe, Franz Kafka, and J.R.R. Tolkien. The fantasy section deals mostly with "states of mind," the psychology of fantasy stories, as well as the historical bases of these types of stories, starting with fairy tales. A lot of fantasy is allegory, not too surprisingly. The fantastic elements provide the reader with magical or unreal elements that keep the reader engaged but also serve as symbols. Most of these symbols are familiar to many students of literature: water for redemption or cleansing, forest or garden imagery for the Garden of Eden or a return to innocence, etc.

The second half of the class deals with science fiction. This genre, while it might have predecessors in fantastic works like the writings of Cyrano de Bergerac or even Greek mythology, really has its beginnings with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which includes many of the features and themes of SF as we understand it today, including fundamental limits to knowledge ("there are some things man was not meant to know"), unintended consequences of pursuing those limits, and the central position of a science-minded person who is tempted to "play God." Authors covered in this set of lectures included Edgar Allen Poe, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Harlan Ellison, Ursula K. LeGuin, and William Gibson.

If I have one issue with Rabkin, it is his casual dismissal of the difference between fantasy and science fiction. Yes, they are similar forms of literature with similar origins. Yes, they show up on the same bookshelves at Barnes & Noble. Yes, they are both dealing with "the fantastic" or unusual situations, thoughts, states of mind, or states of being. However, science fiction, however "fantastic," makes some effort to ground itself in science, even if it's made up (warp drive, time travel, immortality, etc.), and science has certain attributes that are consistent. Science is consistent, regular, more or less orderly. We have scientific laws and theories that describe the regular ways in which the world/universe works, and those laws apply to everybody.

Fantasy, by contrast, often has no limits. It is "magical," often without explanation or origin. It is personalized--i.e., only the gifted can access the "mysteries." Think about Gandalf the Grey or Luke Skywalker. By virtue of a wand or a natural affinity, they can access mysterious powers or "the force," which ordinary mortals cannot. Fantasies play fast and loose with actual physical laws much more often. Star Wars, much as I love it, is a fantasy using the trappings of a space adventure, but it is not science fiction. Star Trek, while still on the fantastic side, is closer to science fiction. It tries to be consistent with known science or the sciences it makes up. Magic or fantasy are unlimited: anything can happen. Magical realism is a sub-genre of fantasy because random, fantastic things occur more for dramatic effect than for anything related to the way the universe works or could work.

This is not a particular fault of the course, but my time with NASA (and some science education courtesy of The Teaching Company) has given me a better understanding of how science and engineering work, and I respect their discipline. Fantasy stories are not looking for realism. And even if SF writers/teachers like Orson Scott Card have recommended that fantasies engage in some rules so that they function like technology ("Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." --Arthur C. Clarke), the technology of magic is not the primary purpose of fantasy works. They are telling different stories from SF writers, who are dealing specifically with how human beings interact with particular technologies, social trends, or other science-based circumstances.

All this said, I enjoyed these classes and learned quite a bit that I hadn't heard before. If such a topic interests you, I recommend buying the class. Another excellent text on the history of SF is Brian Aldiss' Trillion Year Spree. Regardless of how you get your information about SF, it's a subject worth investigating because it's my belief that SF is the most important literature we have for understanding and communicating about the impacts of science and technology upon our society.

Book Review: The Shield of Time

Poul Anderson's books are always a treat for me, and The Shield of Time was no exception. A novel-length set of three related stories about Anderson's Time Patrol, Shield covers the further adventures of Manse Everard, a "time cop" responsible for maintaining Earth's history in such a way that it is kept intact for the Danellians, super-beings from Earth's distant future. 

The Time Patrol stories are a thinking person's action stories, combining occasional hand-to-hand combat scenes with time travel puzzles. The stories are puzzles because often what happens is that the Patrol learns of some sort of anomaly in the timeline--say, one of their team members discovers a group of people in a place and time they aren't "supposed" to be according to the Danellians' prescribed history. The way Everard and his fellow agents solve their problems is by learning and applying lessons in cultural history and mores.

In the case of The Shield of Time, the Patrol encounters a series of anomalies that cause everything "uptime" of the 12th century to disappear. Agents who arrive in the altered future find a world vastly changed from their own--changed buildings, languages and dialects altered, politics and societies shifted, and so forth. Everard, an American Midwesterner recruited by the Patrol in 1954, is an "Unattached" Agent, allowed to work in multiple historical places and times. He and an American woman recruited out of 1987 Southern California lead the effort to restore the normal flow of time. This requires some detective work to understand how history went "wrong," as well as several back-and-forth missions and a bit of derring-do, which move along briskly.

The appeals of Anderson's writing are his ways with describing working technology, his lively portrayals of lifeways in various places and times, and his attitudes of people living a life of free thought and adventurous action. I myself would not qualify for Anderson's "patrol," lacking military experience or a love for the outdoors. Of course the Patrol has technologies that allow its agents to survive some of the dangers of ancient times, including food-borne illnesses and sexual-transmitted diseases, as well as memory-imprinting of languages and maps of ancient cities. In such ways, people from the future can move through history with some reasonable authority or realism.

The Shield of Time's three novellas are not the best of the Time Patrol stories--I highly recommend the set of stories collected as The Time Patrol--but both books are entertaining.

And since I'm here, if you're interested in buying any of the books I've reviewed (do a search for "book review"), please click on one of the boxes and purchase them from Amazon. Theoretically, I'd get a piece of the action. Just an ask, not a demand. Trust me, I don't depend on these reviews to pay my grocery bills...but the purchases are appreciated.

Book Reviews: Semper Mars, Luna Marine, Europa Strike

For a few years now some space entrepreneur friends have been trying to get me to read the Heritage Trilogy by Ian Douglas, as they see the story as their in-house vision of what they'd like the future to be. Semper Mars, Luna Marine, and Europa Strike are adventure stories that show gradually escalating and challenging U.S. Marine combat scenarios on other worlds, paralleling with equally challenging space-alien archaeology puzzles.







What I liked about these books is that they took the unique environments of Mars, the Moon, and the Jupiter satellite Europa seriously--from the thin air and unique soil chemistry of Mars to the low gravity of Luna to the high radiation and (presumed) glacial environment of Europa. While I'm not a rocket scientist or astronomer by any wild stretch, I appreciated that the author at least takes some time to do some calculations and put actual numbers into his work. This is particularly evident when he describes the trajectories of spacecraft or capabilities of various space-based weapons. The details aren't intrusive, however, and don't slow down the story.

I do not know if the author was ever in combat (neither was I), but the battle sequences move along convincingly and briskly without some of the technobabble that can slow down Tom Clancy novels. While not a Marine, his HarperCollins bio notes that he's a former Navy corpsman with obvious respect for the breed.

These being action/combat-oriented vehicles, the Heritage trilogy stories don't expend a great deal of page space on characterization; but they throw in enough that you find yourself caring about the main characters' fates. Douglas also takes time to show the "bad guys" (often U.N. or other U.S. political adversaries projected 50 years into the future), though puts his thumb on the scale enough to let you know who the good guys are. And I must say that compared to the last space combat story I read (The Machinery of Light), Douglas's books were infinitely more readable and his lead characters more likeable.



One thing I should point out about this trilogy is that it was written in the late '90s/early '00, when we didn't have the same high-definition images of the Cydonia "Face on Mars" mesa that we do today. This becomes important to the reading, as that Face turns out to be an actual artifact with serious implications for human history (and, presumably, our future as there is another trilogy after this one set in the same universe). If you can get past that bit of "alien astronauts" mythology, the rest of the xenoarchaeology picture is put together pretty convincingly. Douglas mixes ancient astronaut theories with mythology to put together an intriguing "what if" alternate past of Homo sapiens.

The places where Douglas's trilogy stumbles most often is back on Earth. Somewhere around chapter three of all three books there's a gratuitous and wince-inducing sex scene, none of which are rendered well. Fortunately those scenes appear once, and are soon replaced with good old fashioned war stories.

I believe the reasons my space entrepreneur buddies like these stories is because they depict a multi-layer technological world, where everything from personal electronics to commercial aircraft (air-breathing hypersonic craft, more to the point) to spacecraft and weapons all show parallel development. Marine weaponry ranges from lasers to hypervelocity kinetic weapons. Personal electronics move from stuff slightly ahead of what we have today up to artificial intelligence programs. Spacecraft advance from fission to fusion to anti-matter-powered continuous-thrust vehicles. And while I'm not sure I buy the realism of most of it, political alignments shift over the course of the three books as the Marines win battles and archaeologists learn more secrets and technologies from long-ago visitors to our solar system.

One last aspect of these books that cannot be overlooked is their reverence for the U.S. Marine Corps. If the reader has any doubts on that score, the characters will set them straight every few pages on the courage, dedication, and fabled tough history of the Corps. Douglas seasons the books with several battles or anecdotes from USMC history to help the reader see connections between all this space stuff and the Marines of today. The message from the author is clear: The Marines are a good, important thing to have now, and they will be in the future! I won't argue the point, as I happen to agree with the author. However much like John Scalzi on Atlas Shrugged, the Heritage Trilogy is a pulpy, fun read, but not very good as a foundational document for a philosophy of life.

Movie Review: Inception

It's been awhile since I went to the movies, but the raves I heard about this film from a couple of fellow science fiction geeks seemed to make this film a must-see. I'm glad I listened. Inception is an inspired movie.

The trick with reviewing or recommending a seriously gimmicky SF movie is knowing how much you can or have to explain without blowing the whole thing. I'll make this simple: if you're not a fan of science fiction or movies with multiple timelines going on, you might want to pass. Imagine, if you will, technology (mysterious portable boxes and "compounds") that enable specially trained individuals to enter other people's dreams and then steal secrets out of their minds. That's the MacGuffin for this film. The visual effects involved in entering people's dreams are likewise mind-bending and worth seeing on the big screen.

But what makes this movie inspired is what writer-director Christopher Nolan does with it. He manages to incorporate dreams within dreams (and then some!). He plays with memories, with long-lost emotions, with the psychology and implications of manipulating others' minds. I was hooked.

The acting in this film, too, deserves special notice. Leonardo di Caprio, never a favorite of mine, has finally starred in a film that a) I wanted to see, but more importantly b) one in which he didn't just act like a Good Looking Movie Star. He manages to convey some serious acting chops as he deals with his rather shady line of business and complicated emotions related to his wife. His sidekicks are an interesting bunch of polished rogues who manage to come across as wholly developed personalities. Convincing acting matters in a complicated plot like this.

Another thing I enjoyed about Inception is the overall pace and tone of the story. The technologies (MacGuffin) are taken as givens in this "world." Aside from throwing in exposition to help the uninitiated get their bearings, the characters take the machinery for granted and focus more on doing their jobs. This is what some of the best SF does. Inception had the feel of a thriller/adventure written by Robert A. Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon, or Alfred Bester. It's set in our own world and time, more or less, but they're able to do these crazy things with dreams, and the audience is taken along for the ride to see what happens.

I envy Christopher Nolan's talent. That he's a year younger than me chafes only a wee bit. :-) My buddy Doc informs me that Nolan wrote this script as well as the scripts to both of his Batman films and Memento, which I have not seen but also dealt with a lot of scene/time-shifting. Nolan's two Batman movies are like Inception in that they concentrate on characters in extraordinary circumstances rather than on the machinery or externals that make the circumstances unusual (dream invasion, costumed superheroes). In this way he is able to tell better and more subtle stories than, say, James Cameron's heavy-handed Avatar, which is akin to a technophilic "message movie," which can get tiresome.

I look forward to seeing whatever Nolan comes up with next. He has made me a dedicated fan.

Potpourri CXLIV

The fun continues...

Culture

From Phil: Let's just call this "stuff" kids have ruined.

From Kate Down Under: European spacecraft approaching an asteroid.

Here's an interesting idea: a fundraiser to create a science fiction novella market.

No WAY! Viggo Mortensen starring in a movie about Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung? Way.

From Tracy: An online program for history writers.

Multi-media visions of life at a lunar settlement.

Evolution as depicted in graffiti.

Star Wars-themed cereals. No, really.

Wonder Woman is getting a remake of her costume/uniform. There were a few alternate suggestions...

For Anika: the Octopus has spoken on the World Cup. Also, be on the lookout for unicorn crossings!

That cat's gonna eat your eyes when you die alone!

Okay, you've got to be a serious geek to appreciate this. I am, so I do. ThinkGeek.com sells t-shirts with logos from fictional companies that are depicted in science fiction stories. For example, Cosa Nostra Pizza is a mafia-run pizza chain in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. If someone gets the inside joke, you know they're probably someone worth talking to...or so geek social theory goes. 

I'll just tee this up without comment.

Lindsey Lohan going to jail for 90 days. Yawn.

The world’s ugliest footballer (soccer player) http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.7a45d8e08d846949099d5b95a1fa7ea4.871&show_article=1

“Wine product” is to wine what “processed cheese food” is to cheese, apparently. http://eatocracy.cnn.com/2010/07/06/you-have-now-been-warned-about-wine-product/?hpt=Sbin

Someone has made a satire on domestic terrorism. No, really. 


Oh, cool! Someone has archived Omni Magazine online! I was a fan and subscriber.

Just watch this trailer. I don't usually go in for French films, but this sounds fun!

Education

Kids in the Orlando area are skipping college for other options, including the military and trade schools. I don't think this is a bad thing. College isn't for everyone (or am I not allowed to say that?).

U.S. Politics

From Jerry Pournelle: Arthur Laffer on how to fix the economy. His recommendations, of course, will never be implemented.

After a long battle in Congress, EADS (the parent company of Airbus Industrie) is once again making a bid on the U.S. Air Force tanker contract. Here's another article on that whole fiasco.

Want to irritate the Transportation Security Administration on your next airplane trip? Consider wearing one of these t-shirts.

Cory Doctorow has an interesting piece on the "jobless recovery." With 9+ percent unemployment, how do you even CALL that a recovery?


A reminder on monopsony and that Uncle Sam is currently the largest and most viable customer for the space business. 


What happened to the "Republican attack machine?" Democrats are digging hard for dirt on GOP candidates in the 2010 elections.

Job killing? Nonsense! The administration is pro-business. Didn't you know?

Indiana is one of four states (I believe) that is running in the black. How? Check this out




Science, Technology, and Space
 
From Dar: What the oil spill would look like on Day 360 if it's not stopped by then.
 
No, the government is not developing an internet "kill switch." Here's what they are doing: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704545004575352983850463108.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLETopStories Doc's comment: Fascinating. Makes a ton more sense than the earlier article about the government having an Internet "kill switch." Monitor infrastructure networks for signs of intrusion, use crazy-good NSA countermeasures to foil those attempts to shut down power grids, etc. The areas mentioned in the article (utilities, public transit, air traffic control) are already beholden to various government regulatory agencies, so I'm not seeing the "Big Brother" threat here, honestly.

Robots making driving safer? Hm...
 
Work is now progressing on a solar-powered aircraft. They were going for a 24-hour test flight. Still, what do you do if you're based in Seattle or Alaska or a very high load factor? I'd say that we're awhile away from making this standard operating equipment at O'Hare International Airport.

A variety of techno-links:

• Dark skies or church visibility? http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/northnorthwest/ct-x-n-dark-skies-0707-20100707,0,1089791.story
• Want a really, REALLY fast car? http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/07/bugatti-veyron-super-sport-268-mph/
• Hard to believe, but Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has been orbiting the Moon for a year now. http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/new-moon-revealed-lunar-reconnaissance-orbiter-100707.html
• A high-end watch…and more. http://gizmodo.com/5581180/this-is-a-watch-believe-it-or-not
• Nice house… http://gizmodo.com/5580961/who-doesnt-want-to-live-in-this-dream-house
• Slow production rates for the GM/Chevy Volt expected: http://money.cnn.com/2010/07/07/autos/volt_production/index.htm?hpt=T2
• A site dedicated to preserving the S.S. United States, once the fastest cruise liner on the seas (back when people cared about such things): http://ssunitedstatesconservancy.org/SSUS/blog/
• A couple off-kilter views on nuclear war: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/07/03/yackety-sax-global-t.html and my favorite: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TWJt8yUpQw&feature=related
• Oh, speaking of nukes, there has been another suggestion about nuking the oil spill off the Gulf Coast to plug the leak. Right, because THAT won't cause any more environmental damage.

From Lin: an experimental lunar lander being worked on at JSC.


This is weird: apparently food in a virtual environment can trigger stress in people with eating disorders.

Wayhomer Reviews

Howdy, folks!

If you find yourself holed up at home on a long weekend, have geek-minded sensibilities, and also happen to be a fan of big, dumb action movies, you might give NeedCoffee.com's "Wayhomer" movie reviews a try. The concept here being, Widgett (Widge) Walls, a blogger for Need Coffee, holds forth on whatever movie he's just seen, doing so on a camera in his car on his way home from the theater.

I know of Widge through my buddy Doc at work. I've never actually met him, but Doc describes him as "an extroverted Doc," and I'd say that's about right. Like Doc, Widge has a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of movie genres, tropes, styles, and conventions, not to mention comic books and sci-fi. Both Widge and Doc favor black jeans and black t-shirts with some strange imagery on them, and they both have the ability to spout off rapid-fire snarky remarks from the top of their minds, much as I do. Doc has more of an English major-geek bent to his "geek-fu," Widge has a beard. That seems to be it as far as differences go. I guess the fact that I consider all this cool goes a long way toward explaining my friendships.

Anyhow, I was curious about Widge's thoughts on The Last Airbender, the latest M. Night Shyamalan fantasy, as the film looked interesting to me. This was the first review of Widge's I'd watched in the Wayhomer format--I'd read quite a few on Need Coffee--and I was hooked. In 10 minutes, 41 seconds, Widge delivers one of the most hilarious verbal demolitions of a film I have watched since Siskel and Ebert took on Smokey and the Bandit 2. So after this review, I decided to watch all 24 (now 25 at this writing) of Widge's Wayhomer reviews for sheer amusement's sake. On the whole, I was not disappointed. My second-favorite review is Widge's take on Sex and the City 2, because he watched it on a dare by his readers and apparently hated it so badly that he became disoriented walking back to the car.

So what makes the Wayhomers so much more entertaining than, say, Leonard Maltin or Gene Siskel (minus Roger Ebert)? Well, Widge talks like a lot of my friends, which is to say, a comic/action/sci-fi movie geek. He knows the genres, knows what works and what doesn't, and is able to identify when films do well at what they're supposed to do. He isn't as animated when going outside those genres (Sex and the City aside) because that isn't his element. However, put him onto something like Avatar or The A Team, and he can give you a convincing explanation for why you should or should not see the movie, and under what conditions (pay for the 3D big screen vs. rent it via Netflix). In short, Widge is an excellent critic because he can tell you why something sucks (or doesn't) without spoiling the plot for his audience.

There are a couple of conventions in Widge's Wayhomers that have also become standards of their own, so much so that you can't help catching them once you've seen them a couple times (or, in my case, a couple dozen times). He seems to have had his format in mind from the beginning, and has stuck to it religiously since then. Every entry begins with Widge coming to the car, leaning his head over the top of the door, and saying, "Howdy, folks." You expect to see Widge in black jeans and a black t-shirt (and sunglasses if it's sunny). You expect him to gripe about the weather in Atlanta, regardless of what it is. You expect him to get an actor's name wrong at some point. If he's on the expressway, he'll just vaguely wave before saying "'Bye." He will often rate the film based on "cups" (of coffee) vs. stars, in honor of the Need Coffee web site. Just before the end, you see who the "camera wrangler" is for the episode. And yes, in less than 11 minutes, you can expect Widge to provide a decent, entertaining and shoot-from-the-hip lecture on why you should or should not see a particular movie. You don't have to watch them all at once like I did, but the Wayhomers are still worth watching. However, you might not appreciate Widge's approach if, perchance, you like movies like Sex and the City 2. Just sayin'. 'Bye!

Book Review: The Godmakers





Frank Herbert, author of the Dune saga, is known for mind-expanding fiction, as he addresses philosophical, political, environmental, cultural, and technological themes in a very cerebral, serious style. The Godmakers, a collection of short stories written in the author's pre-Dune career, was assembled into a novel in the early 1970s in an effort to capitalize on Herbert's fame. It covers many themes familiar to Dune fans, including the effects of fantastic powers on the individual, the risks of worshipping human beings as heroes and "gods," and manipulation of others via religion.

The story (or stories) themselves follow the adventures of one Lewis Orne, a member of the Rediscovery and Reeducation (R&R) corps, a shadowy organization that is responsible for "rediscovering" lost human planets after a galaxy-wide "Rim War." R&R agents are sent to these worlds to determine if the locals are peaceful; if they are not, a military team is sent in to pacify the population. Orne is subsequently recruited into a parallel organization called Investigation-Adjustment (I-A), which has oversight over R&R.

Orne's adventures start out as a series of intellectual exercises in cultural observation, each of which he overcomes in increasingly challenging fashion. Herbert puts together his puzzles as exercises in cultural history and psychology. Orne is a typical Herbert character--cerebral, serious, insightful, and sensitive to nuances of behavior and politics.

The primary conflict of The Godmakers centers around a world where all of the galaxy's religions have congregated onto a single planet, united in a treaty and dedicated to developing superior mental and "Psi" abilities. Orne is, again, challenged to uncover some sort of conspiracy on this world using his personal insights and increasing abilities.

This work lacks the finesse and long-term unity of the Dune series, and it appears to have been assembled hastily, as there are clearly parts where character histories are repeated unnecessarily--giving the reader a clue that this was originally a series of very different stories. The characters in the story also lack a great deal of the depth and sympathy that Herbert's greatest creation enjoy. Again, it is a series of shorter stories put together as a novel (much like Asimov's Foundation Trilogy), and the hand of a writer looking to make a buck comes across.

Still, one can find Herbert's heavy, psychological style beginning to come to life here. His characters' tendencies to speak in aphorisms and his habit of opening chapters with quotations from fictitious books can be found here. Herbert remains one of the masters of philosophical science fiction. As such, his work cannot be ignored, regardless of its form.

Potpourri CXXXVI

Busy world out there...here's the small segment of it I could give my attention to today.

Not sure what you’d call this…maybe a clearing house for the most common/popular NASA Twitter feeds?

From Hu (I'll have more on this in a bit): NASA and Congress slog toward a compromise on the 2011 budget.

Are scramjets the future of spaceflight?


Will the X-37 to be used for spying?

A Japanese solar sail mission will be launched this week. Cool!

Just because the U.S. President doesn’t want to go to the moon doesn’t mean India doesn’t. Boeing is in talks with the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) to help them with a lunar mission. Sigh. Maybe I'd like it in Bangalore. At least there's not much chance of snow and I know they're serious about going to the moon there.

Senator Shelby (R-AL) has inserted language into an Afghanistan emergency spending bill that would prevent changes or cancellations to the Constellation Program. I appreciate the notion, but I still don’t understand why that wouldn’t or shouldn’t be done on a bill dealing with NASA, not the Defense Department. One thing at a time, ya know?

NASA has converted Space Shuttle flight simulator hardware into an educational tool for students.

Well, now I know where my friend George Whitesides went: he's now CEO of Virgin Galactic. Far out.
My buddy Gwen was at Arlington National Cemetary to visit the grave of her father and found the grave of a Medal of Honor recipient who shared the same last name as her husband. While I don't believe he's directly related to Tim, here's the citation for the gentleman of the grave Gwen observed.
 
This year's Nebula Award winners have been announced. Congrats. Wish to heck I could write that well.
 
Here's a short study in cognitive biases because sometimes such things interest me.
 
There was a Star Wars concert in Orlando last week--good timing for the Shuttle launch.
 
An extended set of TED talks from D2 on cancer prevention:
 

I found this TED TALK by Dr. William Li (http://www.angio.org/) very insightful and helpful. It will only take about 20:00 of your time. http://www.ted.com/talks/william_li.html

The cancer &/or obesity you prevent may be your own - or that of someone you love.

Also, the attached tiff file is a screenshot of the list of AA foods he discusses broadly. It can also be found at: blog.ted.com/2010/02/dr_william_lis.php

Please feel free to share this info with people you know who might be interested. Don't assume I sent it to them. If they already received it, they can delete it. If they receive it several times, maybe there's a message there...

If you haven't yet discovered TED TALKS, you are missing some pretty mind-blowing and mind-expanding experiences!

D2

PS - I discovered some research re: Low Dose Naltrexone as a cancer-preventative, as well as some interesting drug trials in the management of certain inflammatory and immune-system diseases. This opiod-blocker drug is usually Rx'd for managing addictions, of alcohol or certain other opiods, but has show efficacy in LD regimens with cancer, pre-cancerous conditions, HIV, etc. It might be something to talk with your Doc about.

See: www.lowdosenaltrexone.org

Sarah from Across the Pond asked me what was going on with my job. And since I can't explain the status of my job these days without explaining the budgeting process of the U.S. federal government, I thought I'd just repeat what I wrote here:

It's not so much that the President hasn't come to a decision. I don't know how the budget/parliamentary process works in the UK, but here the Pres. submits a proposal for the overall federal budget, then it goes through what's called a "pass-back," where some other part of the government reviews the proposal and kicks it back to the President's people to redo it (usually with guidance on what to cut). And after that, the budget is reviewed by the House of Representatives and the Senate. Both houses must write a budget law, and those laws have to match. If they don't, they have to go into a conference committee to sort out the differences. Once that happens, the finalized budgets are voted on and sent to the President for a signature.


So far, we're still in the pass-back and Congressional review portion of the process. The Congress hasn't passed a budget on time (October 1, the beginning of the fiscal year) in a few years, so they'll most likely pass what's called a "continuing resolution (CR)," where they pass a budget for part of the year to keep basic services going and civil servants paid until a final budget can be passed. A CR is usually passed at the same spending level as the previous year, and the agencies receiving a CR are told to continue "business as usual" (no new program directions) until a new budget is passed. Sometimes a CR will last for a whole year. That would be fine by me, because that would mean the Constellation Program gets a reprieve for another year. But the Obama administration is still intent on killing Constellation and redirecting the money to other NASA activities, like environmental monitoring or encouraging U.S. private sector companies to build rockets to launch crew and cargo to the International Space Station. I'm not particularly worried about where I'll end up--NASA always needs good tech writers--but for right now the only thing I know for sure is that I'm good through the end of the fiscal year or whenever Congress finally passes the 2011 budget, which would be anywhere from September 30 to February 1. After that, well, I might be writing for something or someone very different. Stay tuned.

And speaking of folks Across the Pond, I got this YouTube video link from Father Dan: a dear 80-year-old Scottish great-grandmother who just belted out "No Regrets" to the delight of Simon Cowell and the rest of the "Britain's Got Talent" audience. Just marvelous.

Woody Allen thinks Obama should be made dictator for awhile and Republicans should “get out of his way.” Yikes. And FWIW, dude: Republicans cannot stop anything Obama does. They don’t have the votes.


Doubleplusungood: Tar balls have been found off the coast of Key West.

Convinced the end is near? You can always buy a spot in a bunker somewhere.

A female lawyer in France got offended at another woman wearing a burqa and tore it off.

A review is questioning the effectiveness of missile defense.

This amused me: the President signed the Press Freedom Act and then refused to take questions from the press. Just because you have the freedom to ask questions doesn’t mean I have to answer them, pal.

A Democratic candidate for Senator in Connecticut has lied about serving in Vietnam. Dude: if you’re gonna lie about something, try not lying about something that is easily checked: you know, like Bush’s National Guard record or Obama’s place of birth (I kid).

For that seriously geeky wedding party: an AT-AT wedding cake.

But what denomination is it? A humanoid robot presided over a Japanese wedding.

I have this app, but have never used it: Shazam has been voted Gizmodo’s favorite iPhone app. My problem with it? I usually want to know the name of a song while I’m driving!

You can get the Joker added to your iPad. You know: if you really want to.

The Euro has fallen to a new low.

Mark Cuban on making money on the internet and why print is not dead.

Social networking and shopping are converging? Yes.

Hotmail is making some improvements to keep up with other web mail services. About bloody time! I’ve been using Hotmail since 1997. I’m due for an upgrade!

I just found this article title amusing: Facebook and Shutterfly are Now In a Relationship.
 
Kids are teaching about time travel on YouTube. They're learning about this via a service called Ignition Tutoring.

From Doc: the U.S. Air Force is doing serious work in testing "fly-back" rocket boosters. About time someone did it. Fly-back units were originally considered for the Space Shuttle, back when they wanted it to be a fully reusable system.

I'm shocked, shocked...too much TV leads to poor school performance. Jeez, they knew this when I was a kid! Have they heard that the Pope is Catholic? That bears...never mind.

The Obama policy presents a conundrum for conservatives according to Jeff Foust and an op-ed in the Orange County Register. The conundrum being that conservatives generally oppose President Obama's spending policies, often going so far as to call them socialist, but here is one situation where he is trying to reduce the government role (Constellation) and actually trying to privatize (by spending more money on commercial launches to the International Space Station)--a standard plank in the GOP platform. However, I don't see this as a problem for conservatives. If space exploration is looked at as an extension of a strong national defense (a standard part of the conservative platforms of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Regan), which it is, then it is fine as a government expenditure. Paradoxically, an increase in government spending on space--Constellation and COTS--would increase the number of U.S. commercial providers of launch services and keep NASA and U.S. space technologies on the cutting edge by continuing the nation's commitment to exploration of other worlds. Crazy as this sounds, if Obama's policy was passed as is but added Constellation, I'd have no problem with it whatsoever. So sayeth this paleocon and "space moderate."

What would make NASA "cool again?" Consider this blog by my fellow space blogger Nick Skytland.

With the recent news of five soldiers getting killed in Afghanistan, this video from Father Dan of joyous family members greeting returning veterans warms the heart.

From Berin: an event called "Can Government Save the Press?" Reminds me of a quip by Ronald Reagan regarding government thinking: "If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it."

And I think that'll about do for this evening. Stay tuned, sports fans. It's an interesting world out there. You never know what we're going to hear next.

Potpourri CXV

Nick Skytland posted this link, and I rather liked it. It's about communicating your passion--why you do what you do--and how you communicate that to others. It works for space advocates or anyone else, I believe. I passed it along to the amazing Dr. OZMG. I'll be interested to see what she makes of it.

And from the damned-if-we-do-damned-if-we-don't files, the Down Under Defense Expert (DUDE) forwards this story from the UK Telegraph reporting that France is accusing the U.S. of "occupying" Haiti as part of our efforts to feed and stabilize the country. Gad.

*

Otherwise, this evening I'm trying to sort out my morning notes for the novel I've been writing at 0545 most mornings. I skipped this weekend because I needed a break. I figure as long as I devote time to getting work done, I can safely say I'm writing.

I don't know if it's smart or giving it away or whatever to talk about what I'm writing about, but it's a new era, and the internet has done strange things to the act of constructing communication products. We'll see how I do. I'm not going to give away plot details, but I will share what sorts of things I'm investigating and what progress I'm making. Someone else could take the same elements and create something completely different. That's why multiple people can make money writing the same type of fiction.

I'm looking at a story of the near future (25-50 years from now), focused primarily on the planet Mars, though other locations could be brought into the mix as well. I can draw upon the knowledge I've gained writing public papers, presentations, and pronouncements for Ares, but also extrapolate from the action going on in the private sector. I like to have at least a fiction writer's knowledge of what I'm talking about, so I've got some research to do on a variety of topics, even if it's just for that "telling detail" that lets SF fans know that I've done my homework. These topics include:

• Mars chemistry/dust
• Lunar chemistry/dust
• Mars geography
• Astronaut psychology
• Mars exploration and landing vehicles, as well as outpost habitats and other structures
• Spacesuits
• Space physiology
• Web 2.0/3.0
• Mission control operations

So those are just some of the topics I've got to be smart on, never mind all the other little fiddly bits that will flesh out my characters and my "world." There are other things I want to investigate over the course of this story:

• Changing/overcoming the typical NASA model of crew makeup from the "two engineers and two scientists in a tin can."
• I'm interested in electronic media and how it affects how people socialize. I've noticed behaviors and changes in myself that have come about only through electronic media, and others that have been improved or made worse through text/data alone. How would such media affect astronauts 45 million miles from home?
• In addition to the concepts I mentioned in my first entry, I am curious about the philosophical, cultural, and even spiritual aspects of human beings living on other worlds. How would the world's leading civilizations react to its citizens being "out there?" I'm actually writing about Americans, but I can at least touch on some of the international aspects of things.

I know, it's a lot to cover. I might end up doing this as a series of short stories. Fun to experiment, anyway.

Novel Writing

To refresh my creativity and fulfill one of the items on my "bucket list," I've started work on a science fiction novel. To date, I've written one novel-length work and one book-length nonfiction book, both unpublishable for matters dealing with trademark violations or employment agreements rather than quality (I'd like to think). In any case, my primary fiction outlet has been short science fiction, with "short" getting up to as high as 60,000 words, but a novel is something else. That's usually 120,000 words or longer these days.

A science fiction novel requires a lot more work. As I noted in my previous entry, the SF author must be technically accurate (but innovative) as well as interesting and readable. Oh yeah, and entertaining. And all this technical background must feed into believable characters that the reader cares about, solving realistic problems or engaging in plausible relationships...at least that's what the good stuff does. I have set myself quite a task.

My ESL tutoring student wanted to know how I was approaching this work, since novel writing is quite a bit different from short story writing. In truth, I've never written a novel before, so this is new to me. I have different things that need to be done to make this story work.

Characters and plotlines I can work out without a lot of research. There are characters I have in mind, experiences I want them to have, and outcomes I want them to achieve. That means sitting down before the keyboard or wandering the street or staring into the void while I imagine the details of these imaginary people's lives and how they will unfold.

The science and technology will take more research. I am now blessed to work at NASA and to be more familiar with space technologies and how they work. Which ones do I use? Which ones seem most plausible? How will my characters interact with them? Another blessing in my current line of work is that I'm surrounded by smart people who know the hardware and can correct me if my descriptions or speculations go off the reservation.

Additional research will be needed to consider future history. What's going on today? What do I think is likely to happen with politics, culture, and behavior in the next 25 years? Do I project my preferred vision for the future or just what I think is most likely? What lessons do I teach (without beating people over the head)? What warnings do I give? What trends do I think are important?

This is all part of what SF writers call "world building." As with historical fiction, detective stories, or any other type of fiction, your characters need to behave realistically within the constraints--philosophical, technical, cultural--imposed by the genre and milieu you're creating. If I've done my job right, at the end, my readers will have some feeling for that other world, its people, and the lessons to be learned from both.

So what kind of story do I want to tell? Without getting into specifics, I'll try this: I am interested in the psychological and social effects of human beings living on other worlds. The "new frontier" and other analogies are used to sell space to the public, but the reality is quite different. It's not just the environment that must be contended with, but the personalities of the people in the tuna cans, the mission they must perform, the conditions inside those tuna cans, and the time the crew has been given to achieve the mission. And as Kim Stanley Robinson demonstrated so ably in Red Mars and its sequels, there is two-way feedback to consider between the explorers and the people back home. So I want to understand what it will mean for people in the 21st century to live and work in space.

On the character level, there are several stories I want to tell, most of which revolve around the theme of learning to get along with the people around you. It's a paradox that happy people don't want or need to explore. Dissatisfied, restless people are the ones who feel the wild urge to explore other worlds far disconnected from most others. And yet if you fill a spacecraft or space colony with restless, cranky individualists, what sort of social dynamic does that set up? Ten years of working in and observing the space advocacy community has convinced me that achieving peace and cohesiveness would be neither easy nor necessarily achievable. And then you throw on top of that the high-powered drive required to be accomplished enough to be a NASA astronaut, and you can see why it's surprising that the Lisa Nowak situation wasn't the first.

And then there's this: nearly 15 years ago, when I was feeling useless and put-upon by my career, I said, "Hold on, pal. Quit your b!tch!ng. If this isn't the life you want, what the heck DO you want?" And I answered myself, "I wanna go into space." The answer to that question probably marked my transition to adulthood because nearly every professional development action I took after that fed that particular goal in one way or another. After a lot of hard work, shazaam! I finally got the space job I wanted. Not going into space, obviously, but working for the space business, anyway, so that much was right with the world.

But the more I've read and watched this business, the more I understand what's involved in being an astronaut or even a space tourist, the more I realize that I don't think I want to go into space. Falling sensations, confined spaces, isolation from others...really? You wanna do that forever? Now I'm not so sure. So there are practical considerations here. Since I first decided I wanted to go into space, my life has made a quantum leap in improvement. I am not that same restless, cranky 25-year-old who wanted to get the heck away from people and explore for the sake of exploring on my own. I have more connections here on Earth now, more happiness, less angst. And then there are all the psychological issues listed above. Plus the simple physical risks that one must endure: acceleration, low to no gravity, radiation, little to no atmosphere, dust and finer particles that create havoc with one's breathing, or just flat-out poisons in the atmosphere that we don't know about yet.

Am I saying that no one could or should try to live in space? No. I'm just not sure I should be the one to go. But you never know. Until the story is finished, I'm not sure where I'll end up. So there are lots of things to consider in this exercise. It's work, but it's fun work, because I'm daydreaming on paper and sharing my ideas on paper. I just need to do a little writing every day. No sweat.