SolarPlexus

Sir Arthur C Clarke died today, at the age of 90 at his home in Sri Lanka. No doubt the internet will be loaded with many tributes for him by now, so I’ll not try to re-invent the wheel. You can read more by starting here.

I’d simply like to say a big “thanks” to the man for introducing me to the world of science fiction writing, when I was aged 10. Granted, by that age I’d already bled dry the local library of its collection of juvenile space fiction - notably all of the works of Hugh Walters (here, here and here) - which I guess was fuelled by being alive while NASA was busy shooting men at the moon.

But, in 1977 while staying with my gran in Brum, at what was Preedy’s newsagent shop in Acocks Green, I convinced my mum that I should buy The Best of Arthur C Clarke 1937-1955 for the princely sum of 65 new pence. At the same time I bought EE ‘Doc’ Smith’s Triplanetary, but at the time I found the book interminably dull compared to the snappy, quick-fire work presented in the Clarke anthology. Anyway, I bought both books purely and simply on the strengths of the cover artwork, both painted by Chris Foss - and I doubt I even read the sleeve notes.

Clarke’s book is a collection of his early work, and covers around a dozen short stories - ideal fodder for the attention span of a ten-year old. At the time I remember being enthralled and amazed by some of the concepts covered: time travel, suspended animation, the end of the world, alien civilisations - everything aside from the yet-to-be-coined term ‘cyberspace’ ;)

At a stroke I had discovered a world of stories that I knew I couldn’t discuss with anyone around me: school friends were mainly into football and Action Man, and even though members of my family would’ve entertained my enthusiasm for the book, at that age I’d've found it incredibly difficult to articulate the sense of wonder I felt. I can’t really do it now!

While reading The Best of Arthur C Clarke 1937-1955 I could literally feel the connections in my brain responsible for imagination consolidating as I read and re-read this book. It’s worth noting that at this time I’d just started to collect (note ‘collect’ there, not just ‘read’) the comic 2000ad, a double-whammy of thrill power in the same year!

So, therein lies the reason why every second and third novel I read to this day is a science fiction novel, and why I have trouble switching my brain off at night!

Thank you Sir Arthur for opening my mind, and no, I won’t hold you responsible for mild insomnia.

I managed to watch Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer last night.

I’m not terribly impressed by superhero movies. Oh, I can appreciate the yarncraft of something like Superman (the Donner version) but I’m always a little uncomfortable with blokes in tights running around on screen - even if the tights are clad in leather armour (X-Men). Without wanting to (or being able to!) analyse it too much it seems to me that the stories and situations sit better at another layer removed - ie. on the comic page, in a boxed panel. Sticking them on screen brings it all uncomfortably close to real-life, and too close to the novelty Spiderman who opens village festivals. But perhaps that’s the nerd in me squirming - I mean, there may be folk in the audience who laugh at superhero comics, oh the shame.

Back to FF: ROTSS - on my scale of 1 to 10 for superhero movies, where 10 denotes Blade, and 1 denotes the mooted Antman movie (I mean, Antman? That’s got to be crap from the outset.), I’d pitch the FF sequel at a very average 5. It’s enjoyable enough to maintain interest for 90 minutes but I can’t help but view it with the lens of insider knowledge, and that, unfortunately, means I hated their vision of the world-eating Galactus…

Forgive me if this topic has already been done to death, but as the movie is still fresh in my mind I’ve got to let off some steam.

If you buy into the charm of the comic FF, you must be using the original Stan Lee / Jack Kirby stories as your guide. There was an inherent wackiness to their adventures, driven from the oddball team itself and their oddball adversaries. To NOT have Galactus as a 100-metre tall, purple-clad humanoid with square irises just flies in the face of the Lee / Kirby vision. Moreover, not having the guts to use this version, and instead opting for an interstellar cloud of fog smacks of a cop-out.

We could explain this away as the cloud being the carrier for our planet-smashing Galactus - in other words, he’s cloaked in a shroud of debris surrounding his vessel, and by removing him as a sentient character we simplify the story. But that’s as boring as this blog.

I note that several reviewers offer the phrase, “…using the comic Galactus would never have worked on film…”, and they singularly miss the point. Have they not seen Transformers yet?

An opportunity, missed.

Jez gave me a copy of A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge recently. He commented that it contained the best description of a group-mind he had read. Initially I misunderstood and thought he was referring to something like a hive-mind (see the Borg from Star Trek, or the Primes by Peter F Hamilton). But no, what we have here is a well-thought out story describing the lives and culture of pack animals, a bit like dogs, that have only animal intelligence when isolated, but link telepathically when in close proximity. Under special circumstances these ‘Tines’ then operate as humans would, with qualifications.

The novel itself is a fairly straightforward space opera: the grand backdrop for a classic race-against-time mission is a galaxy split into zones with difficult physical laws, zones that ultimately give rise to godlike beings that can infiltrate intelligent systems in subtle and cosmos-spanning ways.

At the outset I struggled a little with the style, the explanation of galactic zones and transcendental beings unfolds using its own jargon, this requiring the reader to hold onto half-formed concepts for a few pages longer than the norm (for a space opera!) in order to piece together the inferences. That said, I remember feeling the same way upon reading the first few pages of EE ‘Doc’ Smith’s Triplanetary, and you can’t get more simple action SF than the Lensman sequence! I think the fact that I was ten years old at the time didn’t help. My excuse now? Easy: I’m an addled middle-ager with apple molecules for brain cells.

Anyway, back to Vernor’s Vinge. I note that A Fire Upon The Deep dates back to around 1988, and this hints at why one facet of the story technique fails for me. Vernor uses the analogy of internet newsgroups as the vehicle for cosmic communications. In The Beyond (the zone of our galaxy where FTL is possible, and by far the most populous area) the so-called Ultrawave is used to beam information much faster than light: so fast that often real time communication is possible. The galaxy is networked via message groups that are text-based. It’s not clear that this is possibly some sort of metaphor for some other, impossible-to-illustrate methodology, but since messages seem to be confined to a few Kb in size, and galactic bandwidth hopelessly small, then I think we can assume these are described literally.

And that’s where the novel becomes a product of its time. The data bandwidths allowed by Ultrawave as described by Vernor are measured in units that wouldn’t embarrass a dial-up connection of ten years ago. And there’s no implication that this is a technical limit imposed by FTL comms, rather it smacks of the author just not reading his tea-leaves well enough.

Moreover, the very concept of newsgroups being used as the main means of communication is strange, especially so when even today newsgroup usage is on the wain, and we seem to be in the process of turning blogs into micronodes for all kinds of web-based content, cross-linked in an ever bewildering way.

The point being: if we expect content-rich comms now, and we allow for physical laws that transcend our own is it not more realistic to envisage an Ultrawave system that encompasses at least the information richness we currently employ?

In my opinion a far more successful futureview of comms traffic is provided by Peter F Hamilton in most of his recent novels - but notably Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained. In particular his descriptions of hard-wired brain-friendly network front-ends are a joy to behold, and his grasp of the complexity of interrelated information would seem to be total. But, perhaps in 15 years’ time I will be critical of this too!

All that said, A Fire Upon The Deep is an enjoyable read, and my qualms about the cosmic infospace do not hinder that enjoyment. In other respects his concepts of hard science are well-formed. For instance, his description of the Ultradrive mechanism is ingenious - a system that employs tens of microjumps a second that imperceptibly give the impression of FTL travel. A system where the looser physical laws of The Beyond allow more computational power, thereby allowing clear space to be jumped to. Presumably the limiting factor is ‘how far can we scan, and how quickly can we compute the route?’ - and this varies depending on the physics of the zone around the ship. I am grateful too that Vernor acknowledges the huge problems presented to interstellar travellers when attempting to match delta vee between planets. He doesn’t just brush them this aside like EE Smith’s ‘going free’ inertia cancellation system (one wonders where the energy goes). Vernor’s jumping and flickering ships retain their starting velocity, which may or may not be useful when attempting to orbit a body 30,000 light years away, and have to fight like devils to make planetfall.

But what of the story? There are two distinct plot threads to enjoy: a manic plunge to find a secret weapon to save a ravaged galaxy; and a Robinson Crusoe-esque kids’ adventure in a strange land. The former features a character who is an adventurer of the swashbuckling variety, and though his role is integral to saving the universe, his position is oddly passive despite occasional passages of Han Solo blaster-wielding. The latter plot thread is far more engaging, depicting the predicament of two human children who are abandoned to the whims of the Tines, but in opposing power camps.

Overall, it is Mr Vinge’s realisation of the Tines’ world and culture that excels. ‘Pack’ combination has to be achieved in very controlled ways, else the result is loss of personality, degraded thought processes, confusion or just plain imbecility. The concept of distance is of paramount importance, and forms the backbone for all that the Tines do.

It’s a book about how distance is the ultimate limiting factor regardless of scale. Not only is A Fire Upon The Deep about the “awesome vistas of time and space” (according to the jacket notes) but also about the space between people.

This may not be classic SF, but it’s good enough to read and pass on. Thanks Jez.

A gallery of sci fi pulp covers painted by british illustrator and comics artist Ron Turner for british pulp magazines in the 1950s.

Also includes artwork from the Into Space with Ace Brave pop-up book (1953), a double page spread from Lauries Space Annual (1953) and a series of painted covers for Practical Mechanics Magazine (1953-1962).

Now we’re talking! MIT’s Professor Dava Newman has re-engineered the spacesuit, making for a form that will be more comfortable, lighter, more flexible and - darn it - sexier!

This is achieved by stopping the body exploding in a near-vacuum by structural reinforcement, rather than pressurisation. Makes for an easier, safer repair too - punctures can be fixed with a simple bandage affair, unlike regular suits where depressurisation will occur if the hapless astronaut can’t make it back inside pronto.
Whatever the technology, it looks like we’ve finally got the spacesuit of our science fiction dreams! Can someone ask Dava to make a transparent one please?

After scrambling around for some new viewing fodder for MiniDoc, I had a notion to drag out my Thunderbirds DVDs (the original Gerry Anderson series, not the flawed Hollywood remake). With a viewing time of just under an hour I reckoned this might try the attention span of a little person between the ages of 2 and 3! Perhaps Stingray? I always felt that this show was a tad boring compared to its stable mates. Joe90 then sprung into my sights. Quicker than I could ask, “Do you want to watch Joe90?”, MiniDoc had planted himself on the middle of the sofa and demanded that the Big Picture be switched on - the Big Picture is our toddler-friendly way of describing the modest video projector set-up we have.

To cut a long story short, MiniDoc relished the show, and asked for “one more” at the end. I was pleased with this result, and MiniDoc’s ability to remember key parts of the show - Joe plane, Joe’s daddy angry, Joe drive car, etc. etc. - proved that it had left an impression.

To discover more about Joe90 visit the BIGRAT website.

There are some questions to be asked before I wholeheartedly recommend Joe90 to the parentverse at large. Before screening I weighed up the effect of seeing a few explosions and gunshots would have on the littl’un - and reckoned the benefits of watching some classic TV fantasy would outweigh anything else. After all, watching this kind of stuff had never did me any harm ;)

However, while I maintain that Joe90 is a good option to introduce small kids to cult TV (there’s no blood, a lot of violence is implied, and any moral issues present are only discernible with an adult perspective), nevertheless I found myself analysing it through the lens of 21st Century political-correctness and then finding the programme wanting. I mean, what kind of modern show (whether for kids, teens or adults) would depict the nine-year old hero…

1. Calmly placing the lives of innocent civilians on a passenger plane in jeopardy by flying said plane at low level at a submarine gunboat?
2. Stealing a Soviet spyplane, and turning to destroy 3 chase planes with pilots, and an airbase with personnel, in order to get away scot-free? (Decades before Craig Thomas’s Firefox, but I digress).
3. Carrying a pistol in his schoolbag that can fire 200 rounds without reloading?

…not many. The creators of current telly would have to hold several moral debates each episode, and then have to rewrite the show. And yet, here we are - correctly concerned about children playing with toy guns - but forgetting that a lot of us are of the generation that ran around school playing “Japs and Commandos” and cutting down our classmates with imaginary sten guns.

Politically-incorrect telly may be a concern, but far, far worse is not providing a moral thermometer for your kids to measure what they are exposed to. Teaching our children that guns and junk food are bad lets them watch guns and junk food with that value in mind. Neglecting the lesson is surely the equivalent of placing them into a telly room from birth, with no further input from the outside world. You may as well chuck in a bottle of vodka and a packet of woodbines to boot.

“Oh bother!”, said the Borg. “We’ve assimilated Pooh!”