tags: science fiction
2006
February
- 2006 Feb 27
- octavia butler - rest in peace
I discovered that one of my favorite science fiction writers Octavia Butler has died.
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April
- 2006 Apr 1
- over and over
Days like this I feel like I am trapped in some kind of existential loop, a la “Groundhog Day,” forced to live and relive excruciatingly painful parts of my life. I suppose it is simply the fact that I really haven’t learned any of the lessons I was supposed to have learned, so I haven’t really learned to avoid these situations that make me want to weep, and maybe even sometimes writhe in agony.
· Read more… - 2006 Apr 28
- words continued
I find it amusing and disturbing that China Miéville repeatedly uses the words “judder,” “nacre,” and “moil,” to name a few.
· Read more… - 2006 Apr 28
- crisis energy and the continued expansion of the universe
One of the concepts in Perdido Street Station is “crisis energy.” From what I understand, it is a magical energy created from crisis situations that ends up acting in opposition to what seems inevitable. For example, one of the possible applications discussed in the book is the act of flying. Let’s say you cast yourself aloft by throwing yourself off a balcony. If you have a crisis energy engine, the impending catastrophe of splattering on the street below ends up propelling you upward instead. The higher you go, the more catastrophic your plunge downward would be, the more crisis energy is generated.
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May
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- 2006 May 23
- time travel
The possibility of time travel is actually still an open question. There is nothing in Einstein’s theory of Relativity that prevents it from happening, although the conditions that would be required to allow it to happen seem pretty insurmountable. (For example, you would need a rotating universe, or a nearby cosmic string, or some exotic material that exerts anti-gravity which could keep a wormhole conduit stable and open, none of which are within the technological abilities of humanity at this time.) Still, I am hopeful.
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July
- 2006 Jul 1
- dc universe
Just watched “Superman Returns” with my brother and my dad yesterday and I find it bizarre that the city of Metropolis is New York City (while Gotham City is depicted as Chicago.) I found the Messianic allusions a little disturbing (although more sincere than most of the insanity spouted off by Christian fundamentalists) <rant style="post-modernist post-colonialist" method="deconstruction" tone="hyperbolic ironic">What person-of-color would feel comfortable with their savior depicted as a square-jawed, blue-eyed, tall, and muscular specimen of the Aryan race, who is omnipotent and all-seeing? (At least the bad guys aren’t homogenously depicted as blacks and Chicano/Latino.)</rant>
· Read more… - 2006 Jul 21
- the conservation of mass and energy (a counterpoint to “donnie darko”)
Excerpt from Encyclopedia Mechanica Temporis (18th edition):
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October
- 2006 Oct 7
- alpha centauri and final fantasy 7
These games came out almost 10 years ago, but I spent way too much time playing them both. Final Fantasy 7 defined my senior year in college, and Alpha Centauri was how I spent my year in existential limbo.
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2007
March
- 2007 Mar 31
- ground zero: the death star
The problem with conspiracy theories is that you can pretty much twist any piece of data to support your claim, and anyone who disagrees with you clearly is part of the conspiracy as well.
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April
- 2007 Apr 13
- time machine for sale
(From my cousin <a href=http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=168884724&blogID=252744646&Mytoken=81CA045D-AC19-40AE-9094629B0A9D31E23647227" title="myspace">J™)
· Read more… - 2007 Apr 13
- the trap of world building
Despite the fact that I’ve been trapped in a world-building exercise for the past 18 years, I completely agree with M John Harrison’s assessment that world-building is unnecessary in order to tell a good story, and that world-building is the pinnacle of uselessness: you are creating a literal description of a world that doesn’t even exist.
· Read more… - 2007 Apr 30
- he ruined it with midichlorians
Courtesy of my cousin J™
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August
- 2007 Aug 6
- andromeda
The Sci-Fi Channel had like six back-to-back episodes of the show “Andromeda”, whose concept was originally conceived by Gene Roddenberry (the creator of the original “Star Trek.”) What made me stop was that Nia Peeples[wikipedia][myspace] was a guest character on a particular episode. It turns out that Lexa Doig[wikipedia][IMDb] is a main character (in fact, the title character.) Why am I not aware of these things?
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September
- 2007 Sep 3
- hot
Damn it, the heat is practically melting my brain. It’s been near 100 degrees all weekend, and as humid as a tropical rainforest. Which means that by the time I get home it’s like 120 degrees inside my apartment and disgustingly moist.
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2008
April
- 2008 Apr 7
- it's made out of people!
I could say something snarky about the passing of the legendary Charlton Heston. (On Twitter, I saw someone ask if we could finally take his guns.) I still find myself highly amused by his lines from "Ben-Hur" about being peace-loving and some such.
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2009
March
- 2009 Mar 20
- the city and the stars
Sir Arthur C Clarke wrote The City and the Stars in 1956. It is basically a rewrite of his earlier novel Against the Fall of Night, updated to take into account the then-nascent Information Revolution.
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2011
March
- 2011 Mar 4
- how do you know we're not in a simulation?
I just came back from watching "The Adjustment Bureau" and was sufficiently entertained. It did have its slow parts, and the trailers did set me up to expect something subtly different, but I still liked it.
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2015
November
- 2015 Nov 13
- World Building Fails
As someone who has long aspired to write science fiction and fantasy short-stories and novels but who has instead spent hours upon hours on end inventing imaginary landscapes, countries, histories, and languages instead, I am wholly sympathetic with any advice that warns about the pitfalls of world-building.
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December
- 2015 Dec 17
- Star Wars and Dune
I never noticed until people started posting about "Star Wars" non-stop that Owen Lars claimed that Anakin Skywalker was a "spice freighter navigator".
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2016
January
- 2016 Jan 15
- Faster Than Light
I always liked the SDF-1's Space Fold Tech because it was such an important plot point in the Robotech Saga and I've always thought it was more plausible than Han Solo's space-contracting hyperdrive that somehow shrank the Kessel Run to 12 parsecs and with a better explicated mechanism than the Enterprise's warp drive with arbitrary warp factor settings.
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July
- 2016 Jul 8
- The Continual Whitewashing of Science Fiction
Whitewash all the things.
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