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The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is going on on-line and will produce the most energetic man-made collisions ever created. There have been concerns that this will produce various doomsday scenarios, but as Dennis Overbye writes in the New York Times citing a recent safety report, the particle accelerator isn’t going to create a runaway black hole that could eat the Earth.
The proof is pretty trivial to high-energy particle physicists.
Cosmic rays from space already hit our atmosphere with far greater energies than the LHC can produce, and we study these air shower events with facilities like the Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory. If collisions like the ones that will take place in the LHC produced black holes that had planet-eating capabilities, all the planets and stars would have been destroyed long ago.
Miss Alabama in the 1994 Miss USA contest responded to the question “If you could live forever, would you and why?” with ‘I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever.’
My version for the LHC threat: Collisions made by the LHC will not destroy us, because we should not be destroyed, because if we were supposed to be destroyed, we would have already been destroyed, but we haven’t been destroyed, which is why the collisions won’t destroy us.
Originally published at Mike Brotherton: SF Writer. You can comment here or there. Tags: science, science fiction
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First, I am providing my own personal list in response to yesterday’s American Film Institute list. I’m going to overlook some questionable science in a few movies, and not overweight the science. I am going to leave out fantasy, including superhero movies and Star Wars – mitochlorians or whatever they were called does not make Star Wars science fiction. Unless I specify otherwise, I’m talking about director’s cuts, which makes a substantial difference for a couple of movies on my list.
1. Blade Runner
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey
3. Contact
4. Aliens
5. Alien
6. A Clockwork Orange
7. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
8. Terminator
9. The Abyss
10. Gattaca
Guess I like films by quality directors, with four of these by James Cameron, two by Ridley Scott, and two by Stanley Kubrick. I think the sequels are worthy, too, as both Aliens and T2 moved beyond the originals and broke new ground.
Other top science fiction movie lists
AFI:
1. 2001
2. Star Wars
3. E. T.
4. A Clockwork Orange
5. The Day the Earth Stood Still
6. Blade Runner
7. Alien
8. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
9. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
10. Back to the Future
Rotten Tomatoes:
1. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
3. Metropolis
4. Alien
5. Minority Report
6. The Empire Strikes Back
7. Children of Men
8. The Host
9. Star Wars
10. Aliens
IMBD:
1. The Empire Strikes Back
2. Star Wars
3. The Matrix
4. Alien
5. Ivan Vasilevich menyaet professiyu (1973)
6. Metropolis
7. Aliens
8. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
9. 2001: A Space Odyssey
10. The Prestige
The Online Film Critics Society:
1 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
2 Blade Runner (1982)
3 Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)
4 Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
5 E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial (1982)
6 Metropolis (1927)
7 Brazil (1985)
8 Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
9 Clockwork Orange, A (1971)
10 Alien (1979)
The Guardian, cheating a little bit by combining some originals and sequels:
1. Blade Runner
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey
3. Star Wars/Empire Strikes Back
4. Alien
5. Solaris (1972)
6. Terminator/Terminator 2
7. The Day the Earth Stood Still
8. War of the Worlds (1953)
9. The Matrix
10. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
An online internet-voting based list: http://home.austarnet.com.au/petersykes/topscifi/lists_film.html
1. Blade Runner
2. Star Wars Trilogy (IV-VI)
3. The Matrix
4. Alien
5. 2001: A Space Odyssey
6. Aliens
7. Terminator
8. The Fifth Element
9. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
10. The Day the Earth Stood Still
Wired.com:
1. Blade Runner
2. Gattaca
3. The Matrix
4. 2001: A Space Odyssey
5. Brazil
6. A Clockwork Orange
7. Alien
8. The Boys from Brazil
9. Jurassic Park
10. Star Wars
The Best?
Blade Runner tops four of the lists, but doesn’t appear on two of them. 2001 tops two of the lists, but doesn’t make the top 10 at all on one. I think that the strengths of these movies also make them turn off some audiences, unfortunately, as they also top my list.
It’s interesting to note that the only movie that makes all the lists, the highest, including mine, is Alien. By some form of meta-analysis, that would make this the top science fiction movie of all time. I’m the only one who left off Star Wars (the internet voting list technically lumps together the first trilogy and the Guardian combines it with Empire, leaving out the Ewoks), but come on, it isn’t science fiction, it’s a fantasy getting too much credit for having robots, spaceships, and rayguns. It’s my blog and Star Wars doesn’t get to be the top science fiction film here.
So, in space no one can hear you scream, but on Earth we all did and loved Alien.
Originally published at Mike Brotherton: SF Writer. You can comment here or there. Tags: popular events, science, science fiction
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There’s a TV special on tonight with AFI’s 10 Top 10 films, covering ten genres. I’ll skip ahead to give and discuss just the science fiction:
OK, I’ve seen them all, and agree with a lot of the choices. Even most of the ones that I disagree with, I have to admit that there’s a case to be made.
I’d toss Back to the Future, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and replace Star Wars with The Empire Strikes Back. I’d add Aliens and Contact, and do some reordering, potentially moving a few more onto the list. Maybe Gattaca, the Terminator, the Matrix…
You know something sad, though? With the exceptions of 2001, A Clockwork Orange, and perhaps Blade Runner, I don’t know that I can say these movies compete with most of the others on the other top 10 lists (except for the animation category, which also seems weak). Now, Alien and T2 are fine movies, but they’re not moving or classics at quite the level of so many other categories. I mean, here are the number 10 movies in the other categories: Finding Nemo, Big, Jerry McGuire, Cat Ballou, Scarface, The Usual Suspects, Sleepless in Seattle, Judgment at Nuremburg, and the Ten Commandments. Compare those with Back to the Future with its theme park rides, Huey Lewis soundtrack, and Michael J. Fox’s less than Oscar-winning performance.
I guess I’m griping that there aren’t more great science fiction films. So many seem so small, so focused on the special effects, on a snappy plot over deeper meaning. I suspect that many movie makers just try to make a “sci-fi flick” rather a great movie.
Well, suppose I’m just griping. I love science fiction. I love movies. Too few science fiction movies seem to hit the mark of greatness. I mean, really, Back to the Future is a fun movie but is it really one of the ten best of the genre ever made?! If it is, there’s been a massive cultural failure.
Looking at AFI’s top 100 list issued in 1998, we have Star Wars at 15, 2001 at 22, ET at 25, Dr. Strangelove at 26, A Clockwork Orange at 46, Close Encounters of the Third Kind at 64, and Frankenstein at 87. There are a number of fantasy films I haven’t listed, but I wouldn’t call Star Wars at 15 a top showing.
Now, lists like these are subjective by nature, but there’s been nothing close to The Godfather of science fiction, and I don’t see any reason why there couldn’t be except that perhaps no one is even trying.
Originally published at Mike Brotherton: SF Writer. You can comment here or there. Tags: popular events, science fiction
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Between having a leaky water heater replaced yesterday, costing me a lot of sleep and money, and running a two-hour “Writing Science Fiction” session for middle school kids attending our Wyoming Astrocamp, it’s been pretty busy for being summertime without travel. As usual when this happens, I still get in some surfing time and friends forward links of interest. I think I’ll start posting these under the heading of “Starlinks” the way Jay Lake does his “link salad” posts. I’ll make some comments, but usually won’t do an extended response.
So what’s been going on in the world and heavens above?
Science
Cracked lists five superpowers you can have in this lifetime. Either great minds think alike, or it’s a ripoff of my list of ten superpowers you can have now. Well, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
A solar system is discovered with “a trio of super-Earths.” Krypton? Nah…
Nucleobases confirmed from space.
We have the summer solstice coming up next week, and a full moon tomorrow, which will make for an exceptionally good optical moon illusion Wednesday evening at dusk.
A thoughtful Atlantic article with the provocative title asking “Is Google making us stupid?” discussing how the internet is changing our reading habits, turning people into shallow skimmers, and changing the way we think.
An idea to build an evolution museum across from the Creationist museum. I’m of a mixed opinion about the wisdom of this. Isn’t every Natural History museum already an “evolution museum?”
Stephen Hawking speaks out against Britain cutting science budgets. Also, for what it’s worth, it’s revealed that Hawking has turned down a knighthood because he “doesn’t like titles.”
Science Fiction
Should the Hulk be the villian in the upcoming Avengers movie?
Entertainment Weekly writer defends himself after calling Blade Runner and Jurrasic Park “Sci-fi misfires.”
An 1881 science fiction novel rediscovered that anticipates space travel, space suits, and more.
Some image lists of Old School Toys and Bad Movies. Some nostalgia there. I’m miffed that the second list starts with Barbarella, however, which is marvelous for what it is and has perfect 1960s charm. Several science fiction movies on the list, some of which (e.g., Ed Wood’s Robot Monster with its “Billion Bubble Machine”) are much better choices than Barbarella. I’m a little offended that Soylent Green is on the list at all though.
Originally published at Mike Brotherton: SF Writer. You can comment here or there. Tags: education, personal, popular events, science, science fiction
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Nancy Kress is one of the best writers in science fiction today, and one of our best teachers as well (she was one of my instructors at Clarion West back in 1994). She has a new book coming out, and I’m quite pleased to be interviewing her today.
About Dogs:
An unknown virus has turned up in dogs in Tyler, a small town on the Maryland-West Virginia border. Like rabies, the virus crosses the blood-brain barrier, turning formerly calm pets into aggressive killers. The government throws a quarantine around Tyler and brings in the CDC. Law enforcement begins rounding up dogs, including those that may have been infected but aren’t yet showing signs of the disease.
It’s one thing to kill a billion chickens in Asia to try to contain avian flu; it’s another to ask Americans to surrender pets. Many people in Tyler want their dogs left alone. Many people want the dogs all euthanized. Many on both sides are armed.
The action in Dogs is seen from varied viewpoints: the local Animal Control Offcer. A boy trying to hide his pet. A widowed ex-FBI agent who becomes more involved than she ever thought she would be. And a man who knows what’s really going on.
Publisher’s Weekly gave Dogs a glowing review, calling it “spine-chilling….Kress brings her thorough knowledge of genetics and biology to bear in this nicely creepy thriller.”
1) What was your inspiration for writing DOGS?
I’m fascinated by the way viruses and bacteria, including pathogens, can both mutate naturally and be genetically engineered. I’ve read everything I can find, for instance, on the outbreaks of Ebola in Congo and Sudan. Genetically engineered pathogens turn up in my books OATHS AND MIRACLES and STINGER. In fiction, the pathogens are usually transmitted by humans. But, I mused, it doesn’t have to be that way …and just about that time I happened to get a dog.
2) What attracts you to science fiction?
It’s a canvas large enough to paint just about anything on it. You can use the past, the present, the future — or all of them at once. You can deliberately distort some aspect of humanity — as, for instance, LeGuin does with gender in The Left Hand of Darkness — to examine it more closely. You can invent whatever you need to tell your story. Much of mainstream fiction has shrunk itself down to the examination of a few people in a very constrained situation, such as (for example) a family disintegrating. That’s interesting, but so is the larger-scale take on society that very few mainstream writers do any more.
3) What sort of research did you do to write this book?
I researched both dog breeds and government agencies. Since I’d already written two previous books with FBI protagonists, I’d read a lot of books on the FBI, but now I read more. This isn’t hard since it seems that every other retired agent wrote a book. The science in DOGS is not as detailed as in, say, STINGER, where a point-of-view character was a CDC epidemiologist, so I didn’t need to do as much research on that aspect.
4) Do you feel it’s important to get the science right in your work?
Yes. Whether it’s detailed or merely sketched in, I try hard to get the science right. This isn’t always easy for me, since I have no scientific training. One of my proudest moments was a call from the Whitehead Institute for Biological Research in Boston. The scientists there had been passing around OATHS AND MIRACLES, part of which is set at Whitehead, and they wanted to know whom I knew up there that was working on envelope proteins.
5) Does this book have a theme or message you’re trying to impart? How does that interact with events in the world at large today?
If there’s a theme, it’s both simple and important: Watch out. Pathogens as weapons could easily happen.
6) Who are your favorite authors and books now and when you were growing up?
Growing up, I read everything I could find: good books, bad books, the backs of catsup bottles, the confession magazines my mother his in the linen closet. I had no discrimination whatsoever. I liked Zane Grey, Little Women, Gone With the Wind. At 14 I discovered SF, and immediately liked that. Now, I still read a wide variety of fiction and non-fiction. A favorite is Ursula LeGuin.
7) What are you writing now?
Another novella. That’s my favorite length. It’s long enough to create a world, but short enough that the plot can shoot along like a bullet, without subplots to slow it down. Three of my four Nebulas have been for novellas or novelettes.
8 ) Did you always want to write? Or did you stumble into it? How did you get where you are now?
Nothing was planned. I started writing when I was pregnant with my second child, stuck out in the country without a car, and going nuts. I didn’t take writing very seriously for a long time. I had been a fourth-grade teacher, and I thought that would be my career.
9) What does a typical writing day look like for you? How long do you write, that sort of thing?
I’m a morning person. I wake up early, and usually spend the morning writing. If it doesn’t get written by 1:00 p.m. or so, it doesn’t get written. This means that I go to bed fairly early, which makes me a dud at parties.
10) Is there anything you especially like to work on in a book? Anything you hate?
I like rewriting better than writing. The first draft is more anxiety-producing because I can’t outline and never know the ending until I get there, so every story risks having no ending. Some of them just peter out. But once I have a first draft, there’s something concrete to work with, and I can relax a little. My least favorite thing is interrupting work on something to go over the copy-edited ms. or galleys of a book I finished with a year earlier. Once it’s out of my mind, it’s out. On to the next challenge!
Dogs is available directly from Tachyon Publications, amazon, and the other usual outlets. There’s a photo contest you can enter there, too, to win a free book.
Originally published at Mike Brotherton: SF Writer. You can comment here or there. Tags: popular events, science fiction
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So I finally got to see the Hulk tonight. I’m an old-time Marvel Comics geek, and I have to say that the movie was okay. It wasn’t the best Marvel adaptation, but it was better than the Ang Lee HULK, and it was better than the Fantastic Four movies and a whole bunch of other garbage. It wasn’t quite up to Spider-Man 2 or X-Men 2 levels, but I was pretty pleased with it overall, and they’re setting up an Avengers movie.
And I was pleased that I understood most of the Portuguese. I’ve been to Rocina, and yes, it looks like that. Didn’t see anyone dropping cocaine in the movie like when I was there, however.
One of the original strengths of Marvel Comics originally was in having a cohesive, self-consistent universe in which cross-overs happened and there was one world that interacted. They’re bringing that to movies now, and it’s welcome. Tony Stark has a cameo in the new movie, and I understand that Captain America was in the film originally but hit the cutting room floor.
They tried some of the cross-over stuff in the original Hulk TV series. See Thor and Daredevil on Youtube.
Originally published at Mike Brotherton: SF Writer. You can comment here or there. Tags: popular events, science fiction
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I missed my day to blog at www.sfnovelists.com yesterday, but did jump in today with “Getting Things Write.” I’m reproducing it here below. If you’d like to comment, I suggest doing it over there.
I’m primarily a writer of what’s referred to “hard sf,” which of course means what I write is really difficult science fiction.
That’s baloney. Ok, something a little harder than baloney. Salami, or a nice summer sausage.
What I write is science fiction with plausible science. I try to get all the science right, and while I certainly speculate plenty in my work, I won’t put something in that violates science as we understand it. We’ll certainly learn more in the future, but everything that happens shouldn’t violate the laws we know already. Einstein, when developing relativity, made sure it agreed with Newton in cases where Newton was known to apply.
I have bachelor’s degrees in physics, electrical engineering, and a doctorate in astronomy. That makes it easier for me, at least when it comes to getting the physical science right, but I include a lot of other science in my work and I have to get that right, too. I have more than a few bookshelves for the writing hard sf.
Now, not everyone agrees with me on the topic of getting the science right. Over at sfsignal.com, there was a recent discussion about this, which I have previously responded to. Now, I agree with the dissenters in this sense: a writer should know what’s right and what’s wrong in their work. There are entire branches of fiction about intentionally getting things wrong to great purpose, e.g., fantasy, alternate history, etc. Still, I’ll make these admonitions. If you’re writing science fiction, get the science right. If you’re writing historical fiction, get the history right. If you’re writing crime drama, get the police procedurals right. Get everything right you possibly can, from the spelling to the quantum physics, because the writer is the only one responsible in the end.
If you don’t, you risk the greatest threat to fiction writers, a threat greater than poor characterization or limp prose or anything else. You risk losing the suspension of disbelief. The suspension of disbelief is critical to the entire enterprise of fiction, and when it’s gone, you’ve lost the reader, perhaps forever. Bad writing or weak characters risk this too, of course, but having a reader stop and think, with regard to an important plot point, “I thought penguins were at the south pole, not the north,” and then wait for a payoff that never comes…well, that’s a crime against readers.
I have a couple of authors I won’t read again because of errors not much more subtle than this. Now, it doesn’t have to be a crisis. Larry Niven got to write entire sequels to books based on subtle problems with the original (see Ringworld and the Ringworld Engineers). Still, my guess is that he would have preferred to have gotten things right the first time.
You have to have authority in the reader’s mind, based on the words on the page, in order to keep that disbelief in suspension. The best and easiest way to get that authority, much easier than writing sterling power-infused prose, is to be an authority. Know your world and know how things work in it. Do the research.
Research can be fun, and it doesn’t have to come from books (although most writers I know love any excuse to read an interesting book). If you’re writing a story set an observatory, go visit the place and set up interviews with real astronomers who work there. The internet and email makes this sort of research incredibly easy today, and websites like google make it trivial to get maps or see what an area looks like. I’ve met few astronomers who minded taking a little time from their day to answer questions. Likewise for world-experts in all sorts of fields who rarely have the audiences they (think they) deserve.
For one of Michael Swanwick’s award-winning stories (I think it was “Radio Waves”), he researched what it was like to die in a parking lot. He went out and laid down and took note of the things around him. In two minutes he got details he wouldn’t have imagined given hours to think about it.
That’s a bit subtle. Not so subtle is a reading exercise I developed while I was really working on the craft and realizing the importance of this issue of research. I started reading books of the type that I wanted to write, and as I read each page I asked myself if I could have written that page without doing any research. Sometimes I could, when it was a passage involving the characters and internal monologues, but more often I realized that I’d need to look at a map, or a website that provided annual temperatures or local wildlife, or pull out a calculator to get an orbital velocity right.
Nobody knows close to everything about everything. All you really have to know is when you’re not sure about something, and go check it.
For Spider Star, I went hang gliding, even though I didn’t really want to. I really wasn’t as relaxed as I looked. I didn’t wind up changing much if anything in the book as a result of the experience, but I also knew for sure I hadn’t made any major mistakes. I could have gotten someone else who had hang glided to read what I’d written, but the first-hand experience is sometimes critical.
One of the best one-sentence pieces of advice about writing professionalism I got from Octavia Butler. She said that you shouldn’t ever send something out that had mistakes in it that you knew of. You were ultimately responsible and a professional didn’t send out something with errors.
Perhaps your editor will forgive you, and your audience too, if the error makes it into print. But perhaps not, and that may be the only chance you ever get with them.
If you’re going to be a serious writer, you need to get things write. I mean right. You know what I mean, but a writer shouldn’t count on it.
Originally published at Mike Brotherton: SF Writer. You can comment here or there. Tags: personal, science, science fiction
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Fun compilation by Kenneth Johnson, a real American Hero, listing every reason David Banner turned into the Hulk on the old TV show. My favorites:
20. Dealing with a pesky operator in a phone booth (”I DON’T HAVE TWENTY-FIVE CENTS!!!”)
24. Being tied up and fed soup by an elderly Japanese woman who doesn’t understand words like “You’ve GOT to cut me loose!”
47. Being stuck in a cab in New York rush hour traffic - “You don’t understand, I have to be there by 4:00!” - “Hey, mac, it’s rush hour, we ain’t gettin’ there til five, so relax.” - “BUT I HAVE TO BE THERE BY FOUR!!!”
77. Being horsewhipped by same crazed man who is understandably upset that David will not accomodate his polite requests to “turn back into that thing”
95. Falling out of a plane without a parachute, then being given a parachute (which causes the person who pushed him to be told “That guy has nine lives”, to which the mean person responds by pulling out a rifle and saying “Yeah, but I got ten rounds”), and then having the straps to his parachute shot off when he is still 30 feet above an empty house so that he falls through the roof and hurts himself
106. Being fed poisoned sushi
115. Trying to help his friend for the episode, the midget wrestler known as “Half Nelson”, by climbing into the ring for him, only to be clobbered by a large, beefy wrestler who practices numerous combination moves on David, in spite of David (and Jack McGee)’s numerous cries of “Stop! You don’t know what you’re doing! You’re making me ANGRY!”
118. While working as a cabbie for the episode, trying to get the pregnant woman whose water has broken to the hospital, only to find that his cab is out of gas, and then having every gas station in town refuse to give him any gas, having a really mean gas station attendant yell back at him “I heard that one already!”, and then having same mean attendant slam the door on his fingers (As an interesting touch, after the Hulk trashes the place, he ambles over to the taxi to find out that the woman HAS DELIVERED HER OWN BABY and is now happily smiling at the Hulk with the baby!)
126. Unknowingly having one of the other guys in the rock band crew helpfully add some “orange sunshine” LSD to David’s orange juice, so that David has a really bad trip
Originally published at Mike Brotherton: SF Writer. You can comment here or there. Tags: popular events, science fiction
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Apparently the Hulk move is “an action-packed pleasure” according to CNN.com. That’s good, because we wouldn’t want to make anyone angry with a bad review, would we? I’m afraid of spoilers so I’m not reading reviews closely, but the reviews seem to be good.
John Scalzi, on the other hand, slams the original Godzilla movie and other sci-fi classics. His main point is that a lot of these older movies are awful (a debatable point in some cases, very true in others — I have to concede), but that the ideas are valued more than the delivery system.
William Gibson, however, is a fan of Godzilla. It isn’t clear if he’s more of a fan of the idea of Godzilla or the movies themselves.
The Hulk is big, Godzilla is bigger, but both would get wiped out by an asteroid impact. Calculate your own here. [Thanks, badastronomy.com.] This looks really, really handy for science fiction writers, by the way.
Finally, what’s bigger than the universe? And now it can be yours for vacation. An “Astro Retreat” will be opening in Switzerland soon, a place with a suite and your own personal observatory to play with.
Originally published at Mike Brotherton: SF Writer. You can comment here or there. Tags: general, popular events, science, science fiction
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