An interesting idea about the course of history and technological creations that have taken place is that it is all a unique chain of events that relate to each other. Just as the coming of the bronze age made stone and bone tools obsolete, so did the advent of guns make rows and rows of heavily armored knights obsolete. The invention of sewing machines and tailoring factories allowed the mass production of textiles and affecting the prices of clothes and their accessibility.
But what if this rigid set of historical events happened in a different way? What if the invention of the airplane happened during the renaissance? What if steampowered tanks rolled across the known world in the name of Caesar?
Ideas such as this are what comprise the genre of Steampunk. Generally themed around the mid to late 19th century, the science fiction genre of Steampunk originated from several sources in the late 1970's. Originally about a victorian-esque 1800's world where steam powered appliances and ornate, Baroque devices often have gears or components visible. The concept of steampunk is a unique blend of victorian art, 1800's society, and scientific discovery.
But what are the odds of history having had a different course? Well, it's not like we can go back in time (yet) and change things and then zip into the future and see how things worked out differently, but what can be said definitively is that what HAS happened is a very specific chronological line of events that happened in a very specific way, and should something have happened differently then we would most likely have ended up with a very different product, and that product would be our history.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Taleweaver!
In the light of the moment I've decided to write a short science fiction story about my favorite college!
Our story takes place many years in the future in the year 201,000 in the distant star-nexus of Philo. Deep in the black void of space near a star system known only as "The Illadelph" three factions battle for control of Philo as enemies clash and alliances are formed amongst the stars.
Orienta-Un:
The nation in which our story is centered. Though now the most powerful of the colonies in The Illadelph, they hold their own and seek above all the cease violence and bring negotiations to the table, stopping the Orien-Framanian War.
Vlad Diback: The president of Orienta-Un and the main character of out story. he is attempting to stop tensions between the Framanian Baronies while assisting the Palmonians in their mission in the system.
Wico-Sama: An aged practitioner of arcane studies, he is the guru of our story and the high councellor of the Orienta-Un council. Though wise beyond measure, many of his decisions are frowned upon by the less experienced.
Gin'Dujis: A techno-scribe who is the head of the Orientan holo library. She serves to proliferate data throughout Orientan colonies and strives for excellence and purity in knowledge.
Criep: An aged nubian descendant from the Swernet Ghothut colony, his role in our tale can be summed with the phrase "Unremembered history repeats itself."
Palmo-Theologicon:
A collection of ex-monks with multi-dimensional diversity that express deep holistic understanding. They are long-standing allies of the Orientians and are seen as a peaceful people though their political power in the system is small. Lead by Walowan Cha-Sthim, the Palmonians seek to spread their beliefs throughout the system and remain a peaceful and politically neutral organization.
Framanian Baronies:
A band in interstellar mercenaries who have recently settled into The Illadelph. These tyrants coax innocent settlers of the fringe worlds into joining their glorious society, known only as "The Establishment" where their bodies are subjected to addicting chemicals, thus fueling a need to serve and get their fix. Lead by Overlord Joa'Fn, the Framians are a loosely knit series of baronies at their heart, leading out the seas of chemically addicted mind-slaves to conquer the galaxy.
Our story takes place many years in the future in the year 201,000 in the distant star-nexus of Philo. Deep in the black void of space near a star system known only as "The Illadelph" three factions battle for control of Philo as enemies clash and alliances are formed amongst the stars.
Orienta-Un:
The nation in which our story is centered. Though now the most powerful of the colonies in The Illadelph, they hold their own and seek above all the cease violence and bring negotiations to the table, stopping the Orien-Framanian War.
Vlad Diback: The president of Orienta-Un and the main character of out story. he is attempting to stop tensions between the Framanian Baronies while assisting the Palmonians in their mission in the system.
Wico-Sama: An aged practitioner of arcane studies, he is the guru of our story and the high councellor of the Orienta-Un council. Though wise beyond measure, many of his decisions are frowned upon by the less experienced.
Gin'Dujis: A techno-scribe who is the head of the Orientan holo library. She serves to proliferate data throughout Orientan colonies and strives for excellence and purity in knowledge.
Criep: An aged nubian descendant from the Swernet Ghothut colony, his role in our tale can be summed with the phrase "Unremembered history repeats itself."
Palmo-Theologicon:
A collection of ex-monks with multi-dimensional diversity that express deep holistic understanding. They are long-standing allies of the Orientians and are seen as a peaceful people though their political power in the system is small. Lead by Walowan Cha-Sthim, the Palmonians seek to spread their beliefs throughout the system and remain a peaceful and politically neutral organization.
Framanian Baronies:
A band in interstellar mercenaries who have recently settled into The Illadelph. These tyrants coax innocent settlers of the fringe worlds into joining their glorious society, known only as "The Establishment" where their bodies are subjected to addicting chemicals, thus fueling a need to serve and get their fix. Lead by Overlord Joa'Fn, the Framians are a loosely knit series of baronies at their heart, leading out the seas of chemically addicted mind-slaves to conquer the galaxy.
Apolalypse!
Stories of the wold ending are far from new in the realm of fantasy. The word Apocalypse comes from Revelation, which is probably one of the first stories that depicts the world ending. The legend of Atlantis may also be a root for tales of the apocalypse, being that it is the story of an entire continent being destroyed by Poseidon.
Apocalyptic stories are quite prevalent in modern fiction. From movies like 2012, Armageddon, Knowing, Waterworld, The Matrix and Akira, Hollywood and beyond have used the end of the world as a recurring source for audiences. Even more films such as The Terminator, or Avatar imply an apocalypse. Books as well imply a destructive end of the wold quite frequently. Obviously Revelation being the most transparent of these examples (it being the root of the word, and probably the largest source of world-ending material) but books such as Mary Shelly's "The Last Man", The War of the Worlds, and After London discuss a variety of ideas of how the world will end. In fact, with such an abundance of different earth-bane tales its hard to find a scifi story where the world isn't blown up.
Scifi typically falls into one of these categories:
Catastrophe: Earthquakes, Lava, Meteors, Global Warming at its finest!
E.T. Threats: Aliens blastin' all the humans to bits.
Technology Failure: Science has failed us!
Pandemic: Zombies want your braaaaains!
Nuclear War: Nuff said.
Though it's difficult to say *why* audiences like stories about the world ending and I dont know enough about the sociological reasoning behind it, a lot of it probably stems from a subconscious understanding people have that this world is temporary. Especially with the rise of Global Warming, more and more people hear those two words on a frequent basis and they kinda get ingrained with the concept of the world coming to a close.
So the next time your out walking your dog, doing your homework, or just talking to someone, remember. That could be your last.
Apocalyptic stories are quite prevalent in modern fiction. From movies like 2012, Armageddon, Knowing, Waterworld, The Matrix and Akira, Hollywood and beyond have used the end of the world as a recurring source for audiences. Even more films such as The Terminator, or Avatar imply an apocalypse. Books as well imply a destructive end of the wold quite frequently. Obviously Revelation being the most transparent of these examples (it being the root of the word, and probably the largest source of world-ending material) but books such as Mary Shelly's "The Last Man", The War of the Worlds, and After London discuss a variety of ideas of how the world will end. In fact, with such an abundance of different earth-bane tales its hard to find a scifi story where the world isn't blown up.
Scifi typically falls into one of these categories:
Catastrophe: Earthquakes, Lava, Meteors, Global Warming at its finest!
E.T. Threats: Aliens blastin' all the humans to bits.
Technology Failure: Science has failed us!
Pandemic: Zombies want your braaaaains!
Nuclear War: Nuff said.
Though it's difficult to say *why* audiences like stories about the world ending and I dont know enough about the sociological reasoning behind it, a lot of it probably stems from a subconscious understanding people have that this world is temporary. Especially with the rise of Global Warming, more and more people hear those two words on a frequent basis and they kinda get ingrained with the concept of the world coming to a close.
So the next time your out walking your dog, doing your homework, or just talking to someone, remember. That could be your last.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Weapons of Science Fiction
A long standing interest of our race has been the creation and use of new and futuristic weaponry. From some of the earliest science fiction books (written in as early as 1900) stories of "land ironclads" crawling across the countryside by foreign armies and annihilating their technologically inferior enemies.
Often a stunning revelation is that these strange new implements of destruction are created in writing before they are physically made in the world. An example being the atomic bomb being envisioned by H.G. Wells in 1914, 30 years before its creation and use in the second World War.
Weapons of increasing popularity with shows such as Star Trek, Star Wars, and the writings of Arthur C. Clarke are energy weaponry. Primarily envisioned as beams of light or heat that can disintegrate things, from their invention as an idea in the 1950's they rapidly became one of the most popular scifi themed weapons, particularly in the 60's and 70's. Five years later in 1965 the laser was invented, though of course nowhere near as powerful or impressive as its authors had forethought it, this fledgeling technology would have impacts in surgery, data recording, music, architecture, landscaping, and even photography.
Often a stunning revelation is that these strange new implements of destruction are created in writing before they are physically made in the world. An example being the atomic bomb being envisioned by H.G. Wells in 1914, 30 years before its creation and use in the second World War.
Weapons of increasing popularity with shows such as Star Trek, Star Wars, and the writings of Arthur C. Clarke are energy weaponry. Primarily envisioned as beams of light or heat that can disintegrate things, from their invention as an idea in the 1950's they rapidly became one of the most popular scifi themed weapons, particularly in the 60's and 70's. Five years later in 1965 the laser was invented, though of course nowhere near as powerful or impressive as its authors had forethought it, this fledgeling technology would have impacts in surgery, data recording, music, architecture, landscaping, and even photography.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
A Better Shield
Building off of the horrors of Character Shield, one recurrently common and intriguing theme in scifi are energy shields. Since the 1920's science fiction authors have been using all sorts of different shields to protect alien spacecraft, starships, trap prisoners, or just deflect stuff. Theres a lot of different names but they're all very similar in concept; glowey shield surrounds something and stuff cant go through it.
Much less spectacular than hollywoods creativity gives testimony to, natural energy shields exist in the world today. In fact our planet has one of the strongest in our solar system. A long time ago (long before there was life) the earth was just a ball of rock until a huge iron asteroid hit it. The force of the impact made a lot of heat and energy, forming our moon from pieces of the earth that were dislodged. This resulted in our planet getting an iron center and a magnetic field that goes pole to pole. In fact the poles are the + and - sides of the Earth "magnet". You can see this force field by picking up a compass. The tiny magnetized needle (made of iron) is small enough (and balanced enough) to get pulled and pushed on by the Earths energy shield and gets pulled in a direction to point north.
The biggest difficulty with making a large energy shield like we see in movies and games is mainly energy capacity. Our modern technology doesn't have the strength to make to make a shield that big or the power to hold it for any time at all. Maybe in future years someone will find a way to refine the natural shielding process and make it more realistic, but until then were stuck with hiding behind armor plating or concrete during alien invasions.
Much less spectacular than hollywoods creativity gives testimony to, natural energy shields exist in the world today. In fact our planet has one of the strongest in our solar system. A long time ago (long before there was life) the earth was just a ball of rock until a huge iron asteroid hit it. The force of the impact made a lot of heat and energy, forming our moon from pieces of the earth that were dislodged. This resulted in our planet getting an iron center and a magnetic field that goes pole to pole. In fact the poles are the + and - sides of the Earth "magnet". You can see this force field by picking up a compass. The tiny magnetized needle (made of iron) is small enough (and balanced enough) to get pulled and pushed on by the Earths energy shield and gets pulled in a direction to point north.
The biggest difficulty with making a large energy shield like we see in movies and games is mainly energy capacity. Our modern technology doesn't have the strength to make to make a shield that big or the power to hold it for any time at all. Maybe in future years someone will find a way to refine the natural shielding process and make it more realistic, but until then were stuck with hiding behind armor plating or concrete during alien invasions.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Character Shield!
Know what I hate? Character shield. Whats that? Well you've probably seem it in a movie and thought about it without knowing the fancy name but Character Shield (also known as Plot Shield) is when a writer is too clingy to let somebody in their story die and lets them miraculously survive against impossible odds.
Plot Shield has gained a lot of attention (unfortunately) in hollywood and the gaming industry recently. A great example of this is Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. Zooming around in his spaceship to destroy the deathstar ships are getting blown apart left and right but his miraculously manages to not burst into flames and crash in a fiery, screaming wreckage. A more recent example of Character Shield is in Avatar when Jake Sully survives being repeatedly torn apart by beasts, shot, blown up, crushed under undeterminably large amounts of wood, or otherwise killed in a variety of ways that stretched the entire length of the film.
The more times a character is put into a dangerous scenario and they come out unscathed, the less the audience associates that character being in actual danger. After a main character survives the velociraptors the 18th time the audience stops seeing the dinosaurs as a threat and more of a boring interlude to the next scene.
It's not a good idea to kill off characters too quickly either. Doing that gives the audience the idea that those characters are meaningless, expendable, and don't matter in the overall plot of the story. Especially in horror movies there is a cast of blatantly expendable people such as:
-Nerdy Guy with glasses
-"I'll punch the serial killer" Jock
- Unintelligent and Physically Attractive Blond Girl
-Ethnic Minority Kid
-Generic "We must study the monster!" Scientist/Doctor
-Obese ADD kid who wanders off for no apparent reason
-Whiny Girl who screams at every little thing
Though I can't vouch for every director or all of these stereotypes, much of this grief of repeat cast comes from unimaginative script writers and character designers. Yes it's fun to be able to anticipate with surgical precision who the next bloke's face to become tangent with the aliens claws will be but seriously, unnamed/minor characters being swatted down like flies gets old. Fast.
Plot Shield has gained a lot of attention (unfortunately) in hollywood and the gaming industry recently. A great example of this is Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. Zooming around in his spaceship to destroy the deathstar ships are getting blown apart left and right but his miraculously manages to not burst into flames and crash in a fiery, screaming wreckage. A more recent example of Character Shield is in Avatar when Jake Sully survives being repeatedly torn apart by beasts, shot, blown up, crushed under undeterminably large amounts of wood, or otherwise killed in a variety of ways that stretched the entire length of the film.
The more times a character is put into a dangerous scenario and they come out unscathed, the less the audience associates that character being in actual danger. After a main character survives the velociraptors the 18th time the audience stops seeing the dinosaurs as a threat and more of a boring interlude to the next scene.
It's not a good idea to kill off characters too quickly either. Doing that gives the audience the idea that those characters are meaningless, expendable, and don't matter in the overall plot of the story. Especially in horror movies there is a cast of blatantly expendable people such as:
-Nerdy Guy with glasses
-"I'll punch the serial killer" Jock
- Unintelligent and Physically Attractive Blond Girl
-Ethnic Minority Kid
-Generic "We must study the monster!" Scientist/Doctor
-Obese ADD kid who wanders off for no apparent reason
-Whiny Girl who screams at every little thing
Though I can't vouch for every director or all of these stereotypes, much of this grief of repeat cast comes from unimaginative script writers and character designers. Yes it's fun to be able to anticipate with surgical precision who the next bloke's face to become tangent with the aliens claws will be but seriously, unnamed/minor characters being swatted down like flies gets old. Fast.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
The Sky Calls to Us...
"If we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars." - Carl Sagan
Laying down in a soft, dew-filled meadow on a warm summers night one can find themselves lost in a myriad of awe looking up at the heavens. Towering above us in all imaginable dimensions is a veritable sea of stars that the naked eye can only glimpse a passing visage of. With the colossal distances between stars one sometimes develops the impression that space is a void; a black expanse of nothingness that simply filled in the nearly unending gap between a few points of light. But simply stars are not all that fill the universe. The cosmos if full beyond measure. Clouds of dust and gas larger than the collective distance every human has traveled combined, swirling oceans of metals, rock and crystals, stars of all sizes, classes, ages, and congregations, massive collections of matter in microscopic points we know as black holes, and of course other worlds permeate places that we call space.
With the knowledge of what lies beyond our diminutive homeworld it is only logical that one would want to ask the question: "How do we get there?". As a child wandering around and exploring so do we have the desire to travel from our home and wander around the backyard of our universe.
The primary difficulty of interstellar travel is the large distances between points of interest. A prime example of this is the
Alpha Centauri is an important star in human history and probably the future of our race. The Centauri star system is the Centaurus constellation and is the third brightest star in the night. Being one of the most visible stars during any given night, Alpha Centauri has been widely known for centuries around the world as a navigational reference. In actuality what we call Alpha Centauri is really three separate stars, Alpha Centauri A, Alpha Centauri B, and Proxima Centauri. Alpha Centauri A and B are main sequence stars and are both around the same age, size, and color of our own Sun. A and B are what is called a binary star system, which is two stars that are close enough that they actually orbit each other. Proxima Centauri is what is called a Red Dwarf, a light-weight star that emit mostly infrared light and sometimes release strong pulses of energy such as x-rays.
Because of the relatively short distance of the Alpha Centauri star cluster to our own world many see it as the most realistic step towards space travel beyond our own solar system. Just as it was a goal to put a man on the moon, so would it ultimately be a goal to put a man on a planet near Alpha Centauri. Unfortunately even though it is the closest, the distance between our system and the Centauri system is quite large. From our sun to there is 4.4 light years or 44,000,000,000,000 km away.
Because of the difficulty of traveling this massive distance, it is generally accepted that with our current technology it is impossible to attempt interstellar travel. With our modern propulsion systems to travel through space it would take 100 times the energy output of the entire earth to reach Alpha Centauri and the time required would be several decades if not centuries. Also other problems exist as a vessel would travel through space. The vacuum, radiation, weightlessness, and debris all pose imminent threats to the survivability of spacecraft. Anyone knows the dangers of crashing into things, especially someone who has driven a car before. Space travel however is greatly amplified from just hitting a deer at 40 mph. A shuttle for example, hitting a speck of dust only a few millimeters across at even a tenth the speed of light would be more than enough to completely obliterate the entire vessel and everyone and thing inside of it.
Still the question remains, will we bear witness to an age where people live on other worlds? Only time will tell.
Laying down in a soft, dew-filled meadow on a warm summers night one can find themselves lost in a myriad of awe looking up at the heavens. Towering above us in all imaginable dimensions is a veritable sea of stars that the naked eye can only glimpse a passing visage of. With the colossal distances between stars one sometimes develops the impression that space is a void; a black expanse of nothingness that simply filled in the nearly unending gap between a few points of light. But simply stars are not all that fill the universe. The cosmos if full beyond measure. Clouds of dust and gas larger than the collective distance every human has traveled combined, swirling oceans of metals, rock and crystals, stars of all sizes, classes, ages, and congregations, massive collections of matter in microscopic points we know as black holes, and of course other worlds permeate places that we call space.
With the knowledge of what lies beyond our diminutive homeworld it is only logical that one would want to ask the question: "How do we get there?". As a child wandering around and exploring so do we have the desire to travel from our home and wander around the backyard of our universe.
The primary difficulty of interstellar travel is the large distances between points of interest. A prime example of this is the
Alpha Centauri is an important star in human history and probably the future of our race. The Centauri star system is the Centaurus constellation and is the third brightest star in the night. Being one of the most visible stars during any given night, Alpha Centauri has been widely known for centuries around the world as a navigational reference. In actuality what we call Alpha Centauri is really three separate stars, Alpha Centauri A, Alpha Centauri B, and Proxima Centauri. Alpha Centauri A and B are main sequence stars and are both around the same age, size, and color of our own Sun. A and B are what is called a binary star system, which is two stars that are close enough that they actually orbit each other. Proxima Centauri is what is called a Red Dwarf, a light-weight star that emit mostly infrared light and sometimes release strong pulses of energy such as x-rays.
Because of the relatively short distance of the Alpha Centauri star cluster to our own world many see it as the most realistic step towards space travel beyond our own solar system. Just as it was a goal to put a man on the moon, so would it ultimately be a goal to put a man on a planet near Alpha Centauri. Unfortunately even though it is the closest, the distance between our system and the Centauri system is quite large. From our sun to there is 4.4 light years or 44,000,000,000,000 km away.
Because of the difficulty of traveling this massive distance, it is generally accepted that with our current technology it is impossible to attempt interstellar travel. With our modern propulsion systems to travel through space it would take 100 times the energy output of the entire earth to reach Alpha Centauri and the time required would be several decades if not centuries. Also other problems exist as a vessel would travel through space. The vacuum, radiation, weightlessness, and debris all pose imminent threats to the survivability of spacecraft. Anyone knows the dangers of crashing into things, especially someone who has driven a car before. Space travel however is greatly amplified from just hitting a deer at 40 mph. A shuttle for example, hitting a speck of dust only a few millimeters across at even a tenth the speed of light would be more than enough to completely obliterate the entire vessel and everyone and thing inside of it.
Still the question remains, will we bear witness to an age where people live on other worlds? Only time will tell.
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