Time Marches On

I guess writing is a discouraging business. I just tried to peruse a bunch of fellow writer blogs to see if they had Instagram (since I am new on there - https://www.instagram.com/srseldon/) and I found that virtually none of them are still around. One moved so the others might have also, but they left no trace. It's kind of depressing. Nearly everyone I encountered as I was forging my world and writing my first 6 novels (sorry that number 6 isn't out yet - it is written, but not edited) has not continued. I may have been on hiatus for the last few years, but I have not quit and have plans for more books, life has not been kind with time so planning, much less writing and editing, has been sparse. I look to get back in the swing of things in the near future. I hope I can get to my next project before George R.R. Martin finishes his Song of Ice and Fire series.

How many others out there have seen old compadres in writing hang it up and vanish? While being self-published has been hard, the reviews have been good and at some point I may still find a way to reach a wider audience. I think of a line from one of my favorite movies, Galaxy Quest - Never give up, never surrender. I didn't start writing to tell just a couple of stories. I started because I have far too many stories to every get written. And I'm not done with Ven yet.

So never fear, my blog and my site will stay up as long as my host exists. At some point I should buy a domain, but for now, this works.

Until next time....

Missing Things

My sporadic posts create an incomplete picture. I've skipped writing about a few things even though life has not stopped.

I completed the sixth installment of the Zaran Journals. It was such a relief to reach that point and I didn't have another project in mind that I just started coasting and once coasting, as Newtonian Physics teaches us, I just kept coasting. I have been working a bit. I feel some of my early work is a bit rough and needs some cleaning up and updating, but that is hard work. Harder than writing it in the first place. I have gotten some good feedback and have made some good progress on the first book, but nothing else has been going on. I have a few ideas for new projects, but I have been engrossed in some non writing projects that have taken what little creative energy I have. I hope to get back to writing new stuff soon.

The world has not stopped turning and movies and TV have continued to roll on and I have kept up with them, though not kept up writing about them. I did not stop watching Doctor Who or Star Wars.

In brief, here are my thoughts. Disney bought Star Wars. All well and good. They hired J.J. Abrams to do the first film. Not so good. The end results is full of Abrams worst faults. The plot is derivative and the ending is weak. He inserted his mystery box nonsense. He created some good characters and wrote some great scenes and dialog, but the story for The Force Awakens feels more like a prologue than a full story.

Then we have the animated series, Rebels. A great feast of storytelling. Great characters, great cast, great writers. For the first time we get to see badass Vader in action. Darth Maul living is resolved. It came and ended with four seasons of great stories.

Then there is Rogue One. The long mystery about the spies who stole the Death Star plans is revealed and it is marvelous. So much better than The Force Awakens on so many levels. And very different for a Star Wars film. While the story is uniquely Star Wars and doesn't feel derivative of anything, the feel of the movie is that of a hopeless mission in WWII, which has been done many times. Yet that idea in the Star Wars universe comes off as fresh and full of unexpected twists.

The Last Jedi caused controversy. Why, I still am not sure. I found it to be superior to The Force Awakens and a proper continuation from Return of the Jedi. Leia shined and finally got to use the Force and Luke had fallen back to his bad habits (as is common after a tragedy of that magnitude) and had to be pulled up again. While in some beats it is similar to The Empire Strikes Back, the story went in its own direction and grew the characters and put them on the road to complete the saga. I was totally engrossed the first time I watched it and I still have found no flaws, the first time since Return of the Jedi that I can say that about a saga film.

Solo came out too soon after The Last Jedi. At the box office it suffered from backlash, timing, competition, and a feeling that only Harrison Ford can play Solo. But when I went to the film, I found a movie that was true to the spirit of the old Expanded Universe. Brain Daley penned three Han Solo books and then later Ann C. Crispin dived even deeper. This story stays true to that character even though it goes in a different direction. Some points are repeated and some new things are added. Lando has a different droid, but has been on the same adventures that L. Neil Smith wrote about. Han is burned in love and is setup to be the person we meet in A New Hope, even if he isn't there yet. It was just the Han Solo film I have been waiting for since Brian Daley wrote his books.

So Star Wars started out rocky but has had 3 roaring successes as far as I'm concerned. I have yet to get into the new animated series, Resistance, but from the premier, it has the same potential Rebels did. But with a more Anime feel to the animation.

I have kept on top of Doctor Who. I last reported on Clara's last season. Wonderful. Capaldi's third and last season culminated with our first multiple Master story as the last two incarnations of the Master kill each other. Typical of the modern era, Capaldi lasted 4 years and 3 seasons with only a Christmas special in the skipped year. Capaldi's Doctor sends off River Song on their final encounter before she goes off to her first appearance and death. We get a superhero story. A season with Bill. A wonderful and complex character who is totally different from Clara. And Nardole. The glimpse from his first appearance wasn't enough and we get him for a whole season. A wonderful addition.

And then came the triumph of Capaldi's era - Twice Upon a Time. The First and Twelfth Doctors meet. We get two Tardis's and two Doctor, and the return of Bill. And if this outstanding story wasn't enough, the Doctor regenerated into something new. My feelings on that probably should be a post of its own, but suffice it to say that after 6 episodes of this new Doctor, she has nailed the part and is the Doctor. I'll leave a review of her first season until it is finished. But so far it has a couple of history based episodes that are among the best of the revived series.

I've already covered Star Trek and The Orville, so that about covers the things I've been thinking about.

I've also read some incredible stories. The Binti series by Nnedi Okorafor is outstanding. But the best thing I have read in years has been the new trilogy by Ann Leckie. Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword, and Ancillary Mercy form one of the best space opera trilogies I have ever read. She took a unique tack that doesn't detract from the story. She only uses the female pronoun as the society she is writing about only uses one pronoun for everyone. It creates a unique perspective on humanity. But the story is that good on top of it. Completely new and fresh and outstanding. So pick up both series and enjoy. They are my type of science fiction.

Well, that covers a lot of what I missed. I hope to keep up again and get back into gear. Time to turn my creativity to words again.

A War Among The Stars

It is sad when people claiming to be fans of a property instead tear it apart. In the last 7 months, we have had two Star Wars movies. The first, The Force Awakens, was Episode 8 in the greater Star Wars Saga. The second, Solo: A Star Wars Story, took on the origin story for Han Solo. Both have caused great controversy.

The Force Awakens was written and directed by Rian Johnson and he put pen to paper (or whatever process he uses) during the post production phase of The Force Awakens. He took the story and where each character was left at and crafted a story to carry them further and see them grow to prepare them for the final installment. Between when he wrote it and when it came out, fans went nuts with theories and ideas. Even myself. And when The Force Awakens delivered something different, some called it the worst Star Wars movie ever made. In reality it just didn't fit what they had imagined the next chapter to be. Many cited Luke as the big issue. But Rian Johnson showed genius in tapping into that whiny farm boy from A New Hope in how Luke ended up in self imposed exile on this tiny island on a remote world. The thing is, George Lucas put him there and J.J. Abrams left him there for the first movie leaving it to Rian Johnson to pick up the story. Luke wants to be the hero, but what happens when the hero becomes that greatest threat to the galaxy. That is where Luke is at when the story picks up. It takes both Rey and Yoda to wake him up.

And worse yet, some did not like the new character of Rose. While story wise she is exactly what Finn needed to get him in the right place to be the hero the finale of this saga needs, some pick on her and the actress who played her because they think she did something wrong. Some of it I'm sure is her race and gender. That has become a real problem lately. But most of it is just rude fans. The same thing happened to Jake Lloyd. Neither one is being treated fairly. Any perceived flaws in the movie are not the fault of the actors. If you truly love the Star Wars franchise, respect the actors and their work even if you don't like the character they create. Ultimately the flaws of any movie lie with the director.

For Solo, the issues are different. Han Solo has a long history of his own spin-off stories. Yet some thought this was not grand enough for him. Not exciting enough. Too full of call backs to other areas of the Star Wars universe. Yet everything smoothly tied in to craft a story that was true to the character and in keeping with the spirit of those spin-off stories. The production was troubled with the Directors fired near the end of filming. Reports are that 70% of the film was reshot. Considering what we got was vintage Han Solo, I'd say they did the right thing, but the Box Office is not what was expected and there may be fallout for that. But had the original directors had their way, they were trying for a comedy and that would have flopped big time and the fans would have rebelled at such a beloved character being treated that way.

Instead we got two beautifully crafted stories that I feel time will treat well and will become beloved pieces of the franchise. I think in time people will come to love The Last Jedi as they did The Empire Strikes Back (at the time considered the worst of the original trilogy and now considered the best). I don't think any movies in the franchise will ever compare to the original three, but what is being produced today is quality work that will stand the test of time.

So lets be civil and not treat each other or the cast badly. Let's rise above this and follow the lead of our departed princess and respect each other even if we don't agree. Let's put this war among the stars to bed and be a community.

Discovery vs. Orville - which trek to take

This television season has brought us two new series. They are very different.

I came late to Star Trek fandom, but when I arrived, I arrived big time. I would say the first inkling of my fandom came with Star Trek: The Motion Picture (the Enterprise cutaway poster hung on my wall for years), but it didn't reach full force until we moved and I had daily reruns of the original series. I also found conventions. I was always big on the tech side and the story side. My first ever completed story was Star Trek related and I lived for plans, blueprints, and technical manuals.

When they announced Star Trek: The Next Generation, I was excited. New stories in series format. I was not disappointed. The series got better and better until they split the writing team to start Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Babylon 5 also started at about the same time. It is really telling that I could ignore some of the lower production values of Babylon 5 in favor of its superior writing. Also telling were how many classic Star Trek writers who wandered over to that series. I finally gave up on Deep Space Nine and Voyager when Trials and Tibbleations aired. I found it sad that the best episode of Deep Space Nine was one that revisited a classic story. They had fallen that far. Even the movies made about that time were lacking. I liked them, but they did not sing like some of the original cast movies. And I still remember Patrick Stewart praising the series finale and being more cautious about commenting on Generations.

So we come to 2017. Star Trek is 51, The Next Generation is 30. Babylon 5 is 24. New on TV is Star Trek Discovery and The Orville. Being a fan of Star Trek for more than 35 years, and being a writer myself, I am aware of what made Star Trek great. Some give sole claim to Gene Roddenberry, but without NBC's input, his creation would not have been nearly so successful. They were right, they public wanted action. The turned down his original pilot, The Cage, and when he made the first movie, he again returned to that format and while it was a hit in its day, that film pales next to the others. Don't get me wrong, I think it is a great film and the story is far better than many in the original series or even the later series, but it fails to capture both aspects of what is Star Trek.

The good movies manage to capture both. Gene wanted a Utopian future where we had gotten past money, bigotry, petty squabbles, etc. NBC wanted action adventure. Put them together and you have success. Gene's vision alone is too cerebral. NBC's vision is just your average science fiction. When J.J. Abrams came in to do the new Star Trek movies, he got the cast right and then failed three times on the writing. All three of those movies are NBC's vision only. Nothing of Gene's vision can be found. When you look at Star Trek Discovery, that is what you find. And the worst part is they claim to have returned to the original timeline while at the same time rewriting things like they were doing a reboot. On the other hand, The Orville is a reboot that manages to capture both Gene's vision and NBC's action adventure to create the closest thing to Star Trek in years. And it manages to do it with some humor thrown in.

So if you are a fan of Star Trek as Gene Roddenberry, Gene Coon, Robert Justman, Nicholas Meyer, or Rick Berman made it, then you need to watch The Orville. If you like the J.J. Abrams films, watch Star Trek Discovery. Discovery is good science fiction and a nice reboot of Trek in an action adventure sense, but The Orville is the trek you are looking for, hitting deep issues and currently relevant questions in the way Star Trek should.

Comparative Technology

I feel the need to be nerdier than usual.

A video on YouTube has sparked a topic that I think about from time to time. Many fans wonder, seriously or in jest, how the technology of various science fiction universes compares. I thought I might delve into four of my favorites. Oh, and when it comes to who would win, the answer is always the Doctor. But technology is a different matter.

I'll tackle Star Trek first. They set out from the beginning to have a higher level of technology so you have phasers and photon torpedoes for weapons. The ships carry a variety of deflector and shield systems designed to go from avoiding space debris to protecting from weapons. This elevates the level of damage these weapons can do to a different level.

Then came Star Wars. While Lucas refers to lasers and laser swords, in universe they are rarely referred to in that way. Also, the effects do not correspond to the way lasers works leading me to have a different explanation. The weapons are called basters or turbo lasers and we can see the beam travel leading me to believe they are a plasma based weapon very similar in effect to a laser, but more powerful. We do get some description of deflectors and shields but don't really get to see much of them. There is also armor plating. What you do get is a sense that the larger ships are heavily built.

Battlestar Galactica (the original - the only one I've seen) basically copied Star Wars for the level of technology, omitting lightsabers. But basically the same effects as Star Wars and the same solid designs. Not surprising since Ralph MacQuarrie was behind the conceptual design of both. This places Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars on nearly equal footing.

Then there is Babylon 5. This gets more dicey because we aren't dealing with just one technology. There are really three levels. first you have the Earth Alliance. These are lower level weapons solidly built ships. Then you have the Centari, Narn, and Mimbari at the mid level. They are pretty equally matched in most ways and superior to the Earth Alliance. But they are inferior to the Vorlons and Shadows. They represent an entirely new level, one that has more firepower at their fingertips than anyone else.

When you start to pit these various technologies against each other you get some pretty varied results depending on who is doing it. My outlook is to take the level of damage into account and the size of the ships and the damage weapons do. Then I look for parallels. One parallel is the merchant ship at the start of Star Trek III and the Millennium Falcon. They are similar in size, both appear to land on planets. The Falcon has armor plating and deflectors. The other ship seems to have been caught with its guard down. The Klingon Bird of Prey destroys the ship with one volley of fire from its phaser-like weapons (often called disruptors but that name doesn't always seem to fit the effect). So, what would a Bird of Prey do to the Falcon? I think the results would be similar, but it would take more shots to cut through the armor plating. Now, in Star Wars we see the Falcon take a lot of hits on the deflectors and suffer no real damage (other than some overloaded systems) so if the deflectors were up, it would take the Klingon ship some work. But the Falcon's weapons are no match for the Bird of Prey's shields.

As I continue to put the pieces together, I come to realize that the Star Wars weapons are almost as powerful as the Star Trek ones. Similarly compatible to the Mimbari weapons from Babylon 5. So in terms of dealing out damage, they are all quite similar. But it is when you get to shields that things become more clear. The Star Wars ships seem to rely on ruggedness and armor rather than shields. Their shields are weaker than the Star Trek or Mimbari ones. And Battlestar Galactica doesn't seem to have any shields except around the bridge. So when it comes to damage they are almost all equal. But when it comes to the ability to sustain damage, they are not.

I would put the Earth Alliance as the weakest. They've got the spirit and tactics, but not the equipment. They need luck and skill to even hold their own with the others and a hell of a lot of both to beat them.

Then Battlestar Galactica. They have no defensive systems. Their capital ships have missiles that can blow the others away, but bringing them to bear would be difficult.

The Mimbari, Star Trek, and Star Wars all seem to be pretty equivalent. Star Trek ships have stronger shields, but they rely on those shields for most of their defense. The ships can't take much damage. the Star Wars ships are hearty and can take a pounding. The Mimbari seem to have the best technology and make use of fighters. That seems to be a key difference in Star Trek and Star Wars tactics. Star Trek lacks fighters. If those ships focus too much on the fighters they could put to much effort into the small targets and neglect he larger targets and lose the battle. All things considered, I think the Mimbari would come out on top.

But then there is something else to consider. The Death Star is an order of magnitude higher than the rest. But so are the Vorlons and Shadows. The Death Star can blow apart a planet, something the Vorlons and Shadows can't quite match. But the Death Star is easy to take out. Since the Vorlons and Shadows were loathe to act unless things became serious and really were only in the mood to fight each other, this pretty much negates any need to really consider them (they'd win if you did).

What it boils down to is what ships could take the pounding from the others and still dish it out. The Galactica took more hits than any Star Destroyer we witnessed so for capital ships, I'd vote her the winner for endurance. But Star Trek ships have pretty powerful weapons and advanced shields. Unless an enemy can take such a pounding and still dish it out, the Star Trek universe would have to win as the most powerful. It would be a tough battle between them and a fleet of Battlestars, but I think a TNG era Federation fleet would win. They are fast, maneuverable, with the firepower to do the job. The Battlestars and Baseships would have a hard time dealing out any damage, but they could take a huge amount and that might give them the time to get in shots to take down the Federation shields. After that the Federation ships wouldn't stand a chance, but I don't think it would go that far.

Black Holes Aren't All That Complicated

Seriously, they aren't. Some physicists make them out to be these incredible things, but really they are just hugely massive gravitational bodies and they act in very predictable ways. The recent detection of Gravitational Waves and what they detected just proves my point.

There is this big question among those who study black holes as to what happens when matter is sucked in. Some say it is destroyed and some say it cannot be destroyed because of the law of conservation of information. Well, both points are ridiculous and pointless. Might as well talk about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Why do I say this? Well, the mass. When matter gets sucked into a black hole, the black hole gains mass. Not all matter may get sucked in, some may get converted to energy and some may be flung away before it enters the event horizon.

One scientist was so desperate to prove that information was not lost that they resorted to measuring the surface area of the black hole, noting, much as the known increase in mass, that the size also increases and so the surface area goes up. Sometimes I think these specialists scientists get too focused on the minutiae and forget to let logic and reason in.

Okay, so what proof do I have. Well, the math. Now, I'm not going to put down how all this is calculated, or even what the precise final equations are that can be compared. For one it is hard to do in a blog. Another, either you are a physicist and can look them up or you aren't and they wouldn't make sense to you even if you saw them. Michio Kaku covered it well in his book Hyperspace. But anyway, I digress. When you calculate what a black hole should look like you get a strange result. It doesn't make a lot of sense even if you are an expert. Interestingly enough, you get a very similar result when you do the same calculations for the big bang singularity.

So what does this mean. Well, that depends all on the theory of the Big Bang you follow. I find string theory compelling. The added dimensions make a lot of sense. When you look at it that way, in the moments after the big bang, new dimensions come into being and matter is created from those dimensions. Generally it is described as the vibration of a string, which is why they call it string theory. But the crux of the idea is the the change in the dimensional nature of the universe leads to the creation of matter, first at the quantum level, then at the atomic level. From the nature of the math results, I have concluded that the process inside a black hole is so similar to the conditions during the big bang, just moving in the opposite direction, that the dimensions get crushed. This answers the conservation of information conundrum because it means that a state that started with the Big Bang is being reversed on a small scale. Yes that means matter would cease to exist, but not the dimensions and vibrations that created it in the first place. It is hardly different than the observable states of matter - gas, liquid, and solid and the change between them. It is just a more fundamental change under conditions that are hard for us to comprehend. The temperatures and pressures within a black hole are extreme.

As a result, black holes become quite easy to understand. They are just mini-reverse-big-bangs. Nothing hard to comprehend and nothing that requires a great mind to figure out. Black holes are not gateways to other places, they are just huge chunks of matter that gobble up any matter that gets too close. They convert matter back into its constituent components and grow in mass and in the diameter of their event horizon. Now, as a gravitational body off extreme size there are bound to be some interesting things going that could produce some of the interesting tales SF authors have proposed, but the only thing you'll get by crossing the event horizon is absorbed into the black hole and your matter converted into a higher state.

Is Science Fiction Dead? or Merely Asleep

Some have lamented the death of Science Fiction. The great pioneers of the 30's and 40's predicted a lot of things that are now a part of our daily lives. The visions of the future have largely come to pass, with the exception of space exploration which we now know will take longer than any of those early visionaries thought. There also seems to a trend to stick to the facts and not really push the boundaries of technology when telling a story (this has traditionally been called Hard Science Fiction).

So, is Science Fiction dead? Well, that depends on the fans and the writers. For some it may well be, but those people lack imagination. They tend to be fans of Hard Science Fiction and eschew the softer, and previously greatly popular, side of the genre. Don't get me wrong, there is a place for Hard Science Fiction, but let's face it, that is not where Science Fiction came from. It may be hard to grasp when you go back today and read the works of the Golden Age that most of that stuff was not even considered possible. Today it seems like they knew what they were talking about. Heinlein's description of zero gravity in Orphans of the Sky was frighteningly accurate and written decades before anyone had experienced it. Traveling to the moon, much less another planet, was so far fetched in the world that read the Golden Age books that it could not be considered anything but Soft Science Fiction. The Golden Age was full of dreams of the future that few thought would actually come to pass.

But today, with so many of those inventions of the imagination a reality and some of the dreams pushed further into the future, it must seem like the genre is dead. But it isn't. We have just forgotten to dream. One set of dreams came true and we need to find new ones. There are still many possibilities out there, we just need to dream them up and write about them. Science has advanced so far that some feel that we know too much and there is no room left for dreams, but we still do not have humaniform robots, we still don't have space colonies, theories concerning faster than light travel have advanced taking relativity into account, science has investigated the transporter, and then there are the many social issues that we have yet to deal with. We are not where we could be and it is up to Science Fiction to show us where we can still go. To do that, we need to dream. We can't stick to the facts of Hard Science Fiction, we have to push the boundaries and question what can and can't be done. If we don't question our understanding of things as they did in the Golden Age, it leaves no room for imagination. We are only limited by our imagination and if we reign that in, we have no place to go.

While I greatly respect the efforts of the Hard Science Fiction community, they do not represent true Science Fiction. The heart of the Genre is imagining the impossible possible and that goes against the very nature of Hard Science Fiction, but it lies at the core of all Golden Age stories. We need to dream and dream big. We need to write stories that inspire the imagination and let young readers dream big. For only by dreaming big and being inspired to discover what is possible do we get that gleaming core of scientists who take the stories they grew up with and make them reality. Science Fiction writers need to get back to dreaming big so that the inspiration of our imagination can inspire the science of a new generation. That is what Science Fiction really is. And I'd have to say that if we can't find that voice of dreams again, that the genre might be truly dead. But I don't think it is. I dream and aspire to inspire and I know others writers do as well.