2015-06-12

The Fantasy Dilemma - Is There A Solution?

I originally posted this on the Edmonton Writers' Group Blog way back in January 2012. And while a couple of members (Natasha and Simon) were kind enough to comment on it, I still believe it is a question that needs solving. I haven't posted to this blog in a year, as nothing much has happened, and  I find writing about day-to-day events rather boring, after all this is Twitter.

So anyway here is my question ...

Having just finished the fourth book in the series by Chris Paolini I must say it was an interesting read. I found the world to be fairly well designed, but for the most part the story was way too long. Which brings to mind a bit of a curious question, that has been bugging me for many years and that so far nobody has ever been able to adequately answer. So now that our group has this little blog running, I thought I try once again to solve this little mystery.

Now I realize we don't have a whole lot of fantasy authors in the group, and while this message is directed at this genre, I trust that others will chime in.

So here it is:

"Why is it that fantasy authors (in general) seem to feel the need to create multivolume stories when just about every other genre seems to be able to tell a story in one book?"

Now I know the first thing your going to say is "because they are creating a whole new world" - okay fair enough, but so does every science fiction author, most mystery, adventure, and romance authors. In fact with the exception of historically based novels every author creates a new world to some extent. So why aren't these all multivolume tomes? Are they all trying to emulate J.R.R. Tolkien, or is it something else?

I agree that the Asimov's Foundation Trilogy; A. C. Clarke's 2001, 2010, 2060, & 3001; as well as the series by Ben Bova (one book for each planet) exist. However these are the exception, and I'm not whining about books set in the same universe (like those I just mentioned), I'm talking about those 3+ book series that are essentially one continuous story, sometimes with little or no break between volumes. Virtually every fantasy author seems to churn out multivolume sets - some to ridiculous lengths such as those by David Eddings and his ilk.

So why? Is it a bad case of authorial diarrhea?

Anyway getting back to Chris P. there are numerous examples in this last book where he spent inordinate amounts of time (writing wise that is) detailing each and every movement, that each person made during a fight sequence. This was unnecessary, and at times downright boring to read. In fact it reminds me somewhat of when I used to play Dungeon and Dragons and the rules say that during a fight sequence each round is 10 seconds long - think of life going in slow motion.

So that's my question. Anybody got any words of wisdom that'll solve it?

TTFN

2012-02-21

More Science in Movies

I my last posting I tore a strip off Star Trek, and while I think in most respects it does deserve it there are other shows that are worse with respect to science. Now the reason I'm going soft on Star Trek is simply because under a number of different definitions of Science Fiction it doesn't fit. Why? Because dear reader many people who have gone and bothered to define Science Fiction say essentially that it is fiction where  science is a major necessity in the plot. Or as Theodore Sturgeon says: "A good science-fiction story is a story about human beings, with a human problem, and a human solution, that would not have happened at all without its science content". And due to the lack of science content, or rather all the liberties taken in writing that have been disguised as science I don't believe it should qualify.

Now because I've given Star Trek a rather good beating, it's time to point out that this same problem exists with virtually every "science fiction" movie that has been made for many years. In fact this is the case with most movies and television shows that come out now-a-days (not just the science fiction ones). The lack of an understanding of basic science (either willfully, or simply through sheer laziness/ignorance) by the writers, directors, and many other technical staff that contribute is simply astounding. I'll go into these details in a later column, but for now I'd like to point out that this disregard for science is not wholly a problem with television and movies. Many books suffer from this same problem. And as a writer of Science Fiction stories I feel that this is important (otherwise I probably wouldn't be writing this - go figure).

So what's my beef?

Why do many science fiction authors seem to make no attempt (or very little at least) to incorporate science into their stories, and when they do why do they frequently get it wrong?

Okay, so the first thing you might say is "well it is fiction!". Okay point taken, but if you aren't going have any science you might as well call it a fairytale, and not science fiction. Back up in the first paragraph I quoted Theodore Sturgeon, here are a few other quotes that define science fiction:

Robert J. Sawyer: "Science fiction is the mainstream literature of a plausible alternative reality."

Barry N. Malzberg: "Science fiction is 'that branch of fiction that deals with the possible effects of an altered technology or social system on mankind in an imagined future, an altered present, or an alternative past'."

Sam Moskowitz: "Science fiction is a branch of fantasy identifiable by the fact that it eases the "willing suspension of disbelief" on the part of its readers by utilizing an atmosphere of scientific credibility for its imaginative speculations in physical science, space, time, social science, and philosophy."

John W. Campbell, Jr.: "The major distinction between fantasy and science fiction is, simply, that science fiction uses one, or a very, very few new postulates, and develops the rigidly consistent logical consequences of these limited postulates. Fantasy makes its rules as it goes along... The basic nature of fantasy is "The only rule is, make up a new rule any time you need one!" The basic rule of science fiction is "Set up a basic proposition--then develop its consistent, logical consequences."

Likely the best definition of those above is the one from Campbell, which seems pretty simple to me. Unfortunately it seems to slip the minds of many science fiction authors. Now granted there are various sub-genres of science fiction such as "hard-science fiction" which usually does a very good job of getting it right, but it's not these authors that I'm whining about. Its the author who says "I write science fiction", but who has no idea what science is.

I've already talked a lot about Hollywood and how it's famous for this and maybe this is where these authors get their ideas. Now if a person had never seen anything from NASA, had never read Scientific American, or seen Discovery Channel, etc., and was basing all their science on "Star Wars", "Star Trek", "Jurassic Park", and any number of 1950s & 60s "B" movies you'd probably have to cut them some slack, but I doubt there are many of these people around. A couple of prime examples from this era are "Them" (1954) and "Attack of The Fifty Foot Woman" (1958). Sorry folks, but neither the ant's nor the lady's legs would have been able to support their respective bodies, bone simply isn't strong enough. In other words some of the science that is violated is so simple as to make the authors essentially look like fools (or worse).

The written word however is vastly different, after all how many times have you read a book, then seen the movie and thought it was crap? That's because the written page can contain so much more detail, and because of that the author has to do that much more research (or they should at least). Now granted compressing a couple of hundred pages of text into a movie is no mean feat, but still …

I'm going to continue on with this theme next time and give you some illustrations on some of the problems and maybe even how to fix them if you're interested.

TTFN

2012-02-19

Science in the Movies (and television).

So far we have covered two very important parts of why it is very unlikely we have ever been visited by extraterrestrials, namely: first was the distance, and second why would they bother to come here. There have been literally thousands of television programs and feature films that fit the very broad description of "Science-Fiction" (over 5000 in fact according to IMDB) however, how many of them are scientifically accurate? Most are nowhere even close, and a great number do science such a disservice that they should really be classified as something like pseudo-science fiction. There is no way of classifying all the errors that some of these shows make, but the majority are things that any junior-high school student (and likely some elementary ones as well) know are not correct.

One of the biggest blunders that is continuously made is the sounds in space. Very elementary problem here - in order to have sound propagate you need air, and there is none in space so therefore there can't be any sound. The only movie I can think of off hand that got this right is 2001: A Space Odyssey. This same thing goes for explosions. "Bang" is a sound and therefore if there's no air there's no bang. This is taken to absurd lengths in virtually all films, and now-a-days when every space film seemingly has to have a battle sequence. Okay, I assume you get the point so I won't harp on it any longer.

Another problem that is very common in these films is that every alien is a bilaterally symmetrical biped, with stereoscopic vision (two eyes, both facing forward), two arms, etc. With the exception of the Star Wars series - which admittedly still lots of those good ol' bipeds there was at least a number of other aliens present (Jabba the Hut comes to mind). Now you'd think that with the huge budgets that Hollywood has for their films that they could do something a little original. Probably the biggest violator of this is the Star Trek franchise in which not only are they virtually all bipedal, but in some cases the difference between alien races is simply a few bumps on the forehead. In fact I can only recall one alien in the original series that looked alien and that was the Horta (an acidic rock dissolver, that looked like a large pepperoni pizza with extra cheese). Now admittedly I am not a Trekkie, and I haven't seen any of the newer episodes but with seventy some episodes in the original series and only one alien-looking alien the odds aren't too good that they've had any original thoughts since.

I don't want to harp on the silliness of Star Trek too much more, but they take things to absurd limits by not only making virtually all the aliens look the same, but also allowing them to interbreed. Come on people this is really basic biology. The prime example of this silliness is Mr. Spock. Why is it silly? For starters he is supposedly an alien, whose bodily chemistry is based on copper (not iron like ours), his parent's Amanda & Sarek - yes I had to look this up - mated (with a little genetic help it is stated), and successfully conceived a child. Now the chances of this happening (even with significant genetic assistance) is about as likely as a human successfully mating with a rose and producing a either living person that would never have to use deodorant, or a flower that can do calculus. Why, after all they did say there was some genetic help? Simple the two races have a different body chemistry (copper vs. iron remember), different chromosome numbers (humans have 23 vs. Vulcans' have some other number), different gestational periods (nine months vs. who knows what), etc. etc. ad nauseum. It was stated at one point that all races in Star Trek evolved from an ancient one, but this is absurd as well as basic evolutionary law says that species that are isolated will eventually be incompatible mates with other species. So enough about Star Trek.

So come on Hollywood lets see some science in your science fiction! Mind you when it comes down to it there hasn't been much original work come out of Hollywood for many many years so I guess the chances of anything like this happening is pretty slim.

TTFN

2012-02-17

But Why Would They Come?

Okay, so we can all likely agree that the other stars are a long way from here. But if we ignore this by saying that another civilization is using multigenerational ships to travel say something like what I'm assuming they were trying to portray in the movie "Independence Day". I say assuming as they definitely didn't saying anything about faster-than-light drives, etc. and the only time we saw the mother ship is was either moving at a relatively normal speed for spacecraft, or it was in orbit (yeah I know this is assuming a lot but I figure they didn't mention it so we can ignore it). So for sake of argument an alien race shows up in our stellar neighbourhood, the big question would be why would they bother to come here in the first place?

Let's face it human's aren't exactly going to attract any other civilizations. We've only had the ability to transmit data electronically for under 100 years (1907 for radio, 1918 for television). These first broadcast signals were very weak compared to what w have today so we can likely shave a fair number of years off these as well as by the time they got out into space any distance their signal strength would be extremely weak. So for sake of argument let's say that we have been transmitting for seventy years at a decent signal strength to reach anybody who might be listening - that puts us in 1942.

So sometime in the last seventy years a spacefaring civilization picked up our signals, and figured out what they were. After all not only would the signal strength be very weak, but whoever was listening wouldn't know any of our languages. But is we assume that they puzzled out that they were from an intelligence race of beings and decided to visit then we have another problem, which relates back to the previous posting I made, and that's distance and consequently the speed their ship can travel at.

In order for extraterrestrials to be visiting us today in 2012, and assuming they left home as soon as they detected the signal (the ships were ready to go all they had to do was shut the hatch and step on the accelerator), and further assuming they can travel at the generous speed of ten percent of the speed of light then that means the furthest away they can be from us is three point five light years (which would give them a thirty-five year journey). If by some chance they can get extremely close to the speed of light (by the way I am intentionally ignoring the time dilation effects) then this allows them to be further away but only thirty-five light years. But why do I say thirty-five is the maximum?

I set thirty-five for a maximum because I first assumed we have only been transmitting for about seventy years. Which means that the signals from 1942 are just now reaching the vicinity of Zeta Lepus (which happens to be 70 light years away), but even if a ship left there right now, it wouldn't get here until 2082 if they could travel at light speed (or close enough not to matter) and that's seventy years from now. So we're back to thirty-five year issue (thirty-five for the signal to get to them, and thirty-five for them to get to us - remember we're assuming they can travel close to light speed).

But once again why would they come? Thirty-five years ago the signals that were coming from good ol' Mother Earth were things such as "It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown", "Eight is Enough", "Soap", "CHiPS", and "The Love Boat" - not exactly anything that would attract an intergalactic civilization - unless of course they were intergalactic police, and wanted to protect the citizens of the galaxy from extremely poor quality writing (okay, Soap was relatively good, but the rest give me a break!).

You'll have noticed by now that I used the word "if" a lot in this article, and that is because there are a lot of questions that need answering (I mean other than why did "The Love Boat" last for nine seasons?). Also remember in the last couple of paragraphs I assumed that these supposed extraterrestrials could travel at just under light speed, which isn't likely. I'm not saying it impossible, but the technological leap that would have had to be made is a little hard to swallow.

TTFN

2012-02-15

Space is big, real big ...

I was doing a presentation at one of the schools the other day for grade six Sky Science (introductory astronomy for those of you not familiar with the Alberta curriculum) and a few of the students asked me about aliens, and UFOs, and such. I expected these after all this is what the various media outlets are feeding people now-a-days. In fact if you believed everything you saw in the media you probably think that every other person in the word was from another star system.

Now I don't want to sound like some type of a nay sayer, so to I'll make my stand clear. Yes, I believe that there is other life in the universe, and I hope that someday we will come in contact with them. This will likely be by detecting their radio transmissions, or some such as opposed to having a little green man knock on your door one morning and asking for a cup of anti-matter. But I don't believe they have ever visited us. Why? Read on for the first of my objections.

For those of you who have been weaned on a diet of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", "Independence Day" and various other gems from Hollywood the chances of aliens having visited us are pretty slim, in fact they are essentially non-existant. Why? I knew you ask so I here goes:


"Space, is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hughly mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space."
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
Douglas Adams (1952-2001)

Mr. Adams wasn't kidding either, and that's why I don't really believe that we've ever been visited - there's another reason too, but I'll get to that in days to come. So everybody agrees space is big, but how big is it? Well I just happen to have my copy the 2012 Observer's Handbook handy so flipping to page 291 (Table of Nearest Stars) we see that Proxima Centauri is 4.24 lightyears (ly), Alpha Centauri 4.36 ly, Barnard's Star 5.98 ly, and Wolf 359 7.78 ly distant. So this means that the light were seeing right this second from Proxima Centauri left there 4.24 years ago. For that matter if our sun was above the horizon as I write this the light that we would see from the sun left there 8.3 minutes ago (499.0047864 light seconds to be exact)

Now a light year is standard measure of distance. Sorry to break it to you, but Han Solo got it wrong in Star Wars IV when he said it was a speed factor. It is the distance light travels in one year. Now light goes 299728.458 kilometres per second (abbreviated as c)which when multiplied out gives you 9.458 x 10^12 or 9,458,000,000,000 km in a year (299728.458 x 60 x 60 x 24 x 365.25). A long way!

Now according to a certain rather famous scientist by the name of Albert Einstein it is impossible for an object of positive mass to reach (and therefore pass) the speed of light, so that means that any visitors would have to be travelling at a speed somewhat less than this speed limit. which therefore makes their journey that much longer. So if they were travelling at half light speed then Proxima Centauri is 8.48 years away.

By the way, for the time being I'm going to ignore all the hypothetical faster than light drives that have been postulated for many years in science fiction stories, as we have no idea if it is possible, and until someone rewrites the laws of physics as we understand them it really isn't worth worrying about. I'm also going to ignore the ideas of cold sleep / hibernation etc. in case your curious.

So what we have is a trip to Proxima Centauri that is going to take at least 8.48 years (at 1/2 light speed) and likely much longer (at 1/10 light speed it's 84.8 years). So what does this give us? Well, if a civilization was going to outfit a ship to travel from say Proxima Centauri to us, they would have to provide the crew with sufficient supplies (breathing gases, water, food, spare parts, etc.) to last the journey, and they would also have to devise a way for the crew to entertain themselves for the entire trip. Now I get bored on a car trip longer than a few hours, so I don't even want to imagine being stuck in some type of vehicle for 8.48 years (or 84.8 for that matter).

So as you can see one of the biggest arguments against us being visited is simply distance. Plain and simple. Now if you do accept faster than light drives, cold sleep / hibernation etc. this all changes, but that's what I'm going to talk about tomorrow.

TTFN

2012-01-16

Classification and Critical Thinking

As you may have read in my last post there are many ways for classifying a given group of people such as the religion they practise, their sexual orientation, their cultural and societal backgrounds, their politics, their physical characteristics, and their individual practises.

This covers a lot of territory as you can imagine, but is it really necessary to classify people into these groups? Well it's not necessary per say, but humans as a species are for the most part classifiers it is one of the ways we make sense of things, and we've been doing it for a few hundred thousand years or so, so the chances of us being able to break the habit is pretty slim. I say a few hundred thousand because anatomically modern humans first appeared around two hundred thousand years ago. Before this there were other species of primates such as Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy and her kin) which go back around three million years, and primates themselves go back around sixty-five million years. Now we have no way of knowing whether our predecessors classified things and likely we'll never know, but the chances are pretty good they did even if in only very rudimentary ways. In any case we as modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens in case your interested) do classify things, and this tends to create problems (some intentional, and some not) in this little old world of ours.

Now why we classify things is a topic worthy of a lot of study and it has been studied for quite a while, but this blog is not a do it yourself degree in sociology, or psychology, so we'll leave it at that.

As the header for this blog states I'm going to be talking about critical thinking, and classification is one component of this subject. When we think critically we are forced to divide things into the plausible, and the not plausible (to put it very broadly, as there are typically varying degrees of plausibility). But before this is taken the wrong way I must point out that when someone thinks critically this does not mean that they simply take a firm unwavering stance on something, and let the dice fall where they may. This is what differentiates critical thinking from skepticism. Critical thinkers are by nature skeptical, but skeptics in many cases are not critical thinkers as they have already decided what the answer is.

Now there is nothing wrong with being a skeptic, but if you are then you have to be prepared to defend your ideas, as many people will automatically consider you to be against any idea that is somewhat controversial - in other words you become one of those dreaded "debunkers". And once you've been classified as a debunker, then it'll stick with you and will automatically be transferred to pretty much any topic that is even the slightest bit off centre.

It is much better to publicly classify yourself as a critical thinker (at least in my opinion), as in this way you don't automatically have a prejudgement against you. And you can reinforce your case by saying you are willing to entertain the notion that certain phenomena are possible, and then investigate what really is the story.

An example seems to be in order here.

Let's say you encounter a person who says they believe their house is haunted, because they hear footsteps at night.

Now a hardened skeptic would likely dismiss this as total nonsense, and thereby cause the person to not only consider them as being a rude git, but also likely cause the person with the belief to be embarrassed. If this is done enough times then I would assume it could lead to further distress on their part.

But if we look at this same scenario from the point of view of a critical thinker then we get a totally different outcome. The critical thinker who is told about the belief that there is a ghost would take the person at face value rather than making an automatic judgement and try and find out why they believe this. Ultimately this might lead to the person allowing the critical thinker to investigate the problem, and thereby determine what the noises actually are. This second solution I feel goes a long way to reassuring the person with the belief, and ultimately is much more productive as it no only confronts their fears, but it also instructs the person. Additionally it's unlikely they'll think the critical thinker is some rude git either.

TTFN

2012-01-15

Definitions Part II

Yesterday's article was about computer, and I realize that it is probably too late to change the common usage of the term "hackers" to "crackers", but if we try who knows. But enough said about computers.

The real focus of this article is with regard to the term "tolerance". Now by definition (once again courtesy of Apple) we get: "1 the ability or willingness to tolerate something, in particular the existence of opinions or behaviour that one does not necessarily agree with : the tolerance of corruption | an advocate of religious tolerance." For the root term Tolerate we get "allow the existence, occurrence, or practice of (something that one does not necessarily like or agree with) without interference : a regime unwilling to tolerate dissent. • accept or endure (someone or something unpleasant or disliked) with forbearance : how was it that she could tolerate such noise?"

Now both of these definition point toward enduring, or putting up with something, which makes me wonder why politicians, religious leaders, the media, and many many others continue to use this term when speaking of things such as gay rights; other religions, cultures, societies, practises, etc. So if anybody says something like "I/We should all tolerate …" then anybody who can use a dictionary should be able to tell that what they're really saying is something like "I/We really consider these people to be wrong but we'll put up a facade to make it look like we are supporting them in hopes that nobody will notice. So how can we make it look like we're helping them, and how can I/we look like the good guy at the same time?"

Now I don't know about you, but that sounds like one hell of a lousy attitude to take / put forth. In fact let's assume that this mystery person is an elected official. If you voted for this person, and then based on the above paragraph found out that they tolerate something that you believe very strongly in, do you really think you'll be getting proper representation from this person? Come on now - be honest with yourself!

Now if we switch gears slightly, and change to the term acceptance we have a totally new definition: "agreement with or belief in an idea, opinion, or explanation."

If we all accepted the fact that things such as gay rights; other religions, cultures, societies, practises, etc. we're alright and then went on with our lives wouldn't this world be a better place? After all if we did then the hypothetical person up above would be saying "I/We realize that people all over the world are different, and that they all have different opinions, backgrounds. I understand this, now let's get on with solving the problem at hand."

Personally I accept that there are people in this world who have different religions (in fact there are somewhere between 400 and 1000 depending on how you classify them), different sexual orientations (a good handful of those too), that come from different cultures (probably a few hundred of these as well), were raised under different societal structures (a few hundred more, although there will be a great deal of crossover with the cultures), their political ideology, their physical characteristics, and their individual practises as well. But are any of these really all that important?

Now can we please get along and solve the various problems this world of ours has?

TTFN

2012-01-14

Definitions Part I

It never ceases to amaze me that certain people either don't understand how to use certain words in the English language or more typically are not interested in using the proper word for something. Now if this mystery person was brand new to Canada then this is understandable, but unfortunately the vast majority of the people I'm referring to are not. In fact the majority of them have English as their first (and sometimes only) language - like yours truly. As an aside I've tried to learn other languages but haven't been overly successful - I took German twice, then switched to Plains Cree. I did pretty good in Cree, but without anyone to speak to you tend to lose the ability to speak quite quickly. In addition the majority of the people I'm whining about are professional writers / journalists / broadcasters, etc.

In any case the point I was trying to make was that certain people either intentionally or inadvertently tend to misuse words. As an example take the word "Computer Hacker" or simply "Hacker" now when the term was first coined it was referring to a person with fantastically good programming skills that was able to get into programs and alter the code to enhance their capabilities.

When Microsoft Corporation and the Windows operating systems came to be, they were followed a few years later by viruses. Now by definition (according to the dictionary built into the Apple operating system) a computer virus is: "a piece of code that is capable of copying itself and typically has a detrimental effect, such as corrupting the system or destroying data." Because of this the term "Cracker" was coined to describe someone who writes viruses, with the link being made to "Safe Cracker" who is a person not known for getting into safes to make them more efficient, but one who gets into them by breaking them (with the added incentive that s/he also likely will steal whatever is inside.

Now granted that while a person who writes viruses does need good programming skills this does not make them a Hacker, this makes them a Cracker. I realize it is likely too late to change things now, but I would be nice to see one author somewhere write a column that explains the difference, and shows that journalist today are capable of doing research rather than living within the world of five second sound bites.

More on this from a non-computer perspective tomorrow ...

TTFN

Going on Hiatus

 Greetings, I have decided to put a hold on doing further book reviews for a while. In fact I'm not sure if I will resume doing reviews ...