And another intregal part of my childhood is gone.
Ray Harryhausen, the man who moved monsters for a living, and in so doing, created an entire pantheon of creatures that moved me and my generation, is dead.
Of all the creative credits that graced the silver screens of the 1940s, '50s, '60s and '70s it can truly be said that Harryhausen's was unique. Those of us who formed the half-pint cognoscenti that were aware of his name at all would silently cheer (or not so silently) when his name appeared on the screen, because we knew that, even though the stories, acting, and other production values might be be mediocre at best, the movie would be great -- and not just because there would be monsters in it.
Because they'd be Ray's monsters.
I guess the onscreen credit that was most often associated with his name was something like "Creator Of Special Effects". This would include all kinds of on location trickery (most FX were "practicals" back then, done in the camera or somehow managing to fool the lens, as opposed to "opticals," which were done post-shoot; sometimes months afterward). But the ones to which I quickly learned to react in Pavlovian response were the "Animation Effects". And even though they definitely fell into the category of "opticals," they were where the magic happened.
Let's be clear here: Ray didn't invent the concept of what came to be called "tabletop animation." That honor belongs (I think; someone correct me if I'm wrong,) to his mentor, Willis O'Brien, who was responsible for bringing to life one of the first, and without a doubt one of the best-loved and most-feared (two sides of the same coin in this case) monsters ever -- King Kong. But Ray learned at the feet of the master, and that was mighty clear water. From O'Brien he learned the styles and techniques that allowed him to shoot, with meticulous attention to detail, a great many of the most famous and instantly-recognizeable animated creature sequences in all of movie history: the Ymir in 20 Million Miles To Earth; the Rhedosaurus inThe Beast From 20,000 Fathoms; and the eponymous Mighty Joe Young, the biggest gorilla aside from Kong himself.
The great thing about Harryhausen's creations was that they weren't just big mean ugly critters that could bite your head off down to your belly button (although that was certainly part of their appeal). Many showed emotion, had that extra spark of humanity (or monstrosity) that you appreciated all the more when you realized how much extra work went into giving them some bit of business to do. It might be only a few seconds' worth, but at an animation rate of 24 frames per second, that could consume some time. And even though you were taking your chances with some of the movies (It Came From Beneath the Sea, anyone?) No matter how bad they got, we always had Jason and the Argonauts.
Ah, Jason. One of the first Harryhausens I ever saw, and still one of the best. A retelling of the story of the Golden Fleece, it had one jaw-dropping sequence after another, until after awhile you just gave up and left your lower mandible lying there in the sticky morass of Milk Duds and Good'n'Plentys. The battle with Talos, the attack of the Hydra, and best of all, the climactic battle with the Children of the Hydra's Teeth ...
Ray Harryhausen not only made animation his career; he helped animate mine as well. Thanks, Ray.
Sunday, May 12, 2013
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Atheism 101
Although I'm a full-time writer of fantastic fiction, I'm still a dyed-in-the-wool skeptic, pragmatist and atheist. These might seem contradictory positions, but they're really not. (Think of it as cognitive dissidence.) I make a decent living writing about little green men, vampires, ghosts, etc. But it's all made up. I don't believe any of it. I'm just grateful for whatever genetic quirk gave me the ability to think up stories and get paid to do it.
The wonderful thing about science is that, unlike dogmatism, it thrives on being proven wrong. We learn from doing, screwing up, doing a face-palm and trying again -- until we get it right. (Isaac Asimov once said that the most famous phrase uttered in pursuit of knowledge isn't "Eureka!"; instead it's "That's odd ...")
I have no vested interest in believing in God, but on the other hand, I have nothing against being proven wrong. If Jesus Christ staged his big comeback tonight, I'd probably think -- well, probably at first I'd think he was, as John Lennon once said, someone dressed up like Jesus, but after he'd, say, produced a few thousand loaves and fishes out of a doggie bag of Long John Silver's, I might be inclined to admit that he was working some decent mojo.
I'm not planning on losing any sanity points over it, however. In terms of sheer cosmic horror Jesus can't hold a votive candle to Cthulhu, and in terms of sheer cosmic silliness it's hard to imagine any religion that rivals Scientology in risibility, though evangelical Christianity comes about as close as any belief can. Where else but in churches deep within the Mason-Dixon singularity can one find nominal adults willing to fight for their belief that The Flintstones is a documentary? (Yes, yes, I know; but the Flying Spaghetti Monster is supposed to be silly.)
The wonderful thing about science is that, unlike dogmatism, it thrives on being proven wrong. We learn from doing, screwing up, doing a face-palm and trying again -- until we get it right. (Isaac Asimov once said that the most famous phrase uttered in pursuit of knowledge isn't "Eureka!"; instead it's "That's odd ...")
I have no vested interest in believing in God, but on the other hand, I have nothing against being proven wrong. If Jesus Christ staged his big comeback tonight, I'd probably think -- well, probably at first I'd think he was, as John Lennon once said, someone dressed up like Jesus, but after he'd, say, produced a few thousand loaves and fishes out of a doggie bag of Long John Silver's, I might be inclined to admit that he was working some decent mojo.
I'm not planning on losing any sanity points over it, however. In terms of sheer cosmic horror Jesus can't hold a votive candle to Cthulhu, and in terms of sheer cosmic silliness it's hard to imagine any religion that rivals Scientology in risibility, though evangelical Christianity comes about as close as any belief can. Where else but in churches deep within the Mason-Dixon singularity can one find nominal adults willing to fight for their belief that The Flintstones is a documentary? (Yes, yes, I know; but the Flying Spaghetti Monster is supposed to be silly.)
Monday, April 22, 2013
"Grrrrr .... argh ...."
I so do not get zombies.
Let's be clear; when I speak of vampires and zombies, in the case of the former I'm talking the classic variety -- the aristocracy of the undead, as it were. Zombies, on the other desiccated claw, are definitely the lumpenproletariat; the working-class dead. Oscar Wilde, whose brain has been dust in an empty skull for 113 years, is still capable of dryer wit.
Zombies' fashion sense is to die: quite simply. there's not much else to say about flyblown monsters whose concept of haute couture is wearing someone else's guts for garters, rather than their own. I'm by no means saying it's necessary to don white tie, opera cloak and neck award every time one leaves the coffin in search of a bite to drink, but on the whole I think dressing to kill does lend a certain gravitas to lines such as "The blood is the life." Whereas lines such as "Send more paramedics" and similiar favored bon mots of the Maggot Mafia don't exactly reek of gravitas; if anything they reek of anti-gravitas. It's hard to believe that they can both be legitimately subsumed under the subtitle of Homo moribundis.
Let's be clear; when I speak of vampires and zombies, in the case of the former I'm talking the classic variety -- the aristocracy of the undead, as it were. Zombies, on the other desiccated claw, are definitely the lumpenproletariat; the working-class dead. Oscar Wilde, whose brain has been dust in an empty skull for 113 years, is still capable of dryer wit.
Zombies' fashion sense is to die: quite simply. there's not much else to say about flyblown monsters whose concept of haute couture is wearing someone else's guts for garters, rather than their own. I'm by no means saying it's necessary to don white tie, opera cloak and neck award every time one leaves the coffin in search of a bite to drink, but on the whole I think dressing to kill does lend a certain gravitas to lines such as "The blood is the life." Whereas lines such as "Send more paramedics" and similiar favored bon mots of the Maggot Mafia don't exactly reek of gravitas; if anything they reek of anti-gravitas. It's hard to believe that they can both be legitimately subsumed under the subtitle of Homo moribundis.
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Future Imperfect
Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live forever in a cradle.
-- Konstanin Tsiolkovsky.
We're all going to die..
Even if we stop all greenhouse emissions now, the sheer inertia of the planetary weather system will cause Earth’s average surface temperature to rise dramatically, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It seems that the 21st Century is playing host to all four Horsemen, only they're wearing Armani and riding SUVs.
Maybe the increasing gradient won’t be a tipping point that’ll cause a runaway greenhouse effect ending in Earth becoming another Venus in a hundred million years or so. But it will cause rampant desertification, wholesale die-offs of sea life due to acidification, catastrophic rises in ocean levels, a supply crisis in potable water -- and that’s not in some dim and murky distant future; that’s in your lifetime, if you’re in your twenties. If you’re old enough to vote, you’re old enough to float.
(That high-pitched whine you hear is Thomas Malthus spinning in his grave -- though not fast enough, unfortunately, to provide the alternative energy we’ll need. And that dull thud was the world population hitting 7 billion as of Halloween, 2011 -- a date entirely too appropriate.)
Work with me here -- accept for a few moments that global climate change is a real, documented problem. All hope isn’t lost -- yet. But we have to profoundly change the way we look at the future, and the role that we play in it. We can no longer afford to think short-term.
We have to start thinking in terms of Deep Time.
Robert A. Heinlein once said: “Earth is too small a basket for mankind to keep all its eggs in.” Too true. Sooner or later we’re going to be pulverized by a killer asteroid, or fried by a supervolcano, or ... pick any one of a dozen potential apocalypses.
The big-rock-dropping-in-unannounced scenario is particularly unsettling, because it could happen any time from within the next 10,000 centuries to -- well, now. This isn't hyperbole. Consider, if you will, several bullet points (with the emphasis on "bullet"):
In 1990, an asteroid big enough to cause destruction comparable to Hiroshima's A-Bomb hit us. That's right. Hit. Us. It didn't make headlines because the impact was in the middle of the South Pacific, far enough from land that there was no tsunami effect. But a few hours either way would have had people talking. The ones that weren't busy ducking and covering, that is ...
The year before that, Asteroid 1989FC missed us by six hours. The rock, if it had hit in water (the most likely scenario, given that 70% of Earth is covered with ocean) would have caused a mega-tsunami; a wave at least 300 times as powerful as the 2004 Asian Tsunami. (For those of you heavily into irony, 1989FC is also known as Asclepius, the god of medicine and healing.)
But we were tracking it, right? Had it in our crosshairs? Dream on. We didn't have a clue. A bunch of techs looked at the plates later and said, "Wait, what?"
One more? Why not -- it’s not like there’s a dearth to choose from. How about 2009 DD45? Roughly the same size as the Tunguska impactor of 1908 that rendered a thousand square miles of forest flatter than a crop circle, it skimmed us closer than the tattooed swastika on a skinhead’s scalp.
Scared? You should be.
Bottom line: Earth is a big, slow target. And one thing we all learned from dodgeball is that it’s better to be small and light on your feet -- and, if you can manage it, in several places at once.
The best way to survive is to get some of us, at least, the hell out of Dodge. The problem is that leaving is far easier said than done. We’ve got two obstacles that are, by any reasonable definition, insurmountable.
The first is distance. The only world other than Earth that we’ve visited so far is the moon, and it’s the only one we’re likely to visit again anytime soon. That’s right; you might as well stuff any notions of reaching other star systems, including ones relatively "close by," back in your tinfoil-lined fedora, because even with the fastest rocket propulsion currently available, travel to the closest stars will still take millennia. Proxima Centauri, the next star over, is four and a half light years away, the interstellar equivalent of down the street and around the corner. Doesn't sound too bad -- until you remember that a light year is six trillion miles. Do the math on that one (hint: one trillion is one followed by twelve zeroes) and you'll get a vague inkling of the distances out there. Which means that some über-geek with coke-bottle glasses had better come up with warp drive in his parents’ basement soon, because there's no way we’re crossing the cosmos in first gear.
So let’s consider our satellite. While it’s close enough to make round trips semi-practical, it ain’t exactly a garden spot. Could we set up a permanent colony there? Frankly, I doubt it. We don’t have people living full-time and raising families at the South Pole, and it's Cancun compared to the moon. With temperature extremes that range over 500 degrees in a single step from sunlight to shade, an atmosphere less than one-trillionth that of Earth’s, and worst of all, an omnipresent and highly-toxic layer of pulverized meteorite dust that, once through the airlock and into your lungs, can cause pneumoconiosis faster than you can cough up blood, the moon doesn’t seem anybody’s first choice for prime extraterrestrial real estate.
But -- location, location, location, remember? The one thing we can count on is that the moon will always be about the same drive time. Which is a lot more than we can say about only other halfway habitable rock in the solar system: Mars.
That’s because while the moon is tucked away, nice and snug, in orbit around the Earth, Mars and Earth both orbit the sun -- and Mars’ orbit is a lot more eccentric. Mars can be anywhere from 36 million miles to over 250 million miles from us. In travel time that works out to anywhere from half a year to a year and a half, which makes booking rooms in advance a real bitch.
Trouble is, it’s the best alternative of all the other planets. Mercury? Like the moon, only hotter. Venus? Pretty to look at, but underneath those clouds it makes Hell seem hospitable.
Okay, how about the outer worlds -- Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune? They’re not called “gas giants” out of sophomoric frat-house humor; there’s no “there” there, no hard and fast boundary between lithosphere and atmosphere. And let’s not bother mentioning Pluto; it’s not even officially a planet any more.
Even if there were some place in the Outer Planets that was halfway habitable, the gas giants and their moons are so far away that they might as well be in another solar system. Grad students have lost cherries and gained doctorates during the decade and more it's taking the New Horizons probe to reach Pluto. And that expedition is only feasible because the onboard robot has no need for life-support. There's no way we can afford to send crewed exploratory flights on a three billion mile schlep. The amount of food and fuel alone needed makes it impossible to get a manned mission of that complexity off the ground. Not to mention water. It’s true that recycling from sources best left unnamed can maximize usage, but eventually the stores have to be replenished. While there is water on the moon, there isn’t enough to warrant establishing a full-time colony. Mars, on the other hand, has plenty of subsurface water, but again, the ratio of H2O to the energy required to land and dig for it is problematic.
So it looks like, for all its considerable drawbacks -- temperatures that only look good compared to the moon, the lack of a magnetosphere which makes a tan deadly, and a travel time about twice as long as sailing around Cape Horn (along with enough cosmic rays to give the entire population of Detroit superpowers) -- Mars is the best place.
Except ... remember I said two obstacles?
Space is big -- there’s no getting around that. But as staggeringly complex as merely getting to another world is, there’s a much greater problem once we’re there. One which makes cosmic rays, temperature extremes and lack of atmosphere look easy. We can overcome these problems, at least in theory, with terraforming techniques. It would require engineering on a cosmic scale -- playing planetary billiards with icy comets to create oceans, putting orbital mirrors up to magnify sunlight, using hydroponics to “grow” oxygen and nitrogen. Given decades of global restructuring, Mars could be tricked out with a breathable atmosphere, a decent climate -- everything except one essential thing:
Gravity. That’s the one thing we can’t increase or decrease, since it’s a function of mass. Mars is one-third the size of the earth, and has (more or less) one-third as much gravity. The moon has one-sixth. And we won’t be changing either one any time in the near future. So, unless we're lucky enough to find another world tucked away somewhere close by whose gravitational pull is within 10 to 20 percent, plus or minus, of Earth's, we're screwed.
. The problem is that, no matter how many technological advances we make, genetically we’re still just a bunch of hairless apes jabbing each other with pointed sticks on the African veldt. We evolved in a one gravity field, and when we spend prolonged periods out of it (such as a few months up in the space station), bad things happen.
How bad?
Real bad.
. Prolonged weightlessness causes, among other things, dehydration, musculoskeletal atrophy, anemia, mineral and electrolyte depletion, vertigo, and a whole host of other problems ranging from unpleasant to downright life-threatening. Back in the “Pulp Era” of science fiction, when space flight was still a testosterone-fueled dream, it was theorized that time spent in zero-gee would actually be good for the body. No stress on the joints or the heart would logically mean no wear and tear on other moving parts; ergo you might outlive Methuselah and remain as spry as Barishnakov.
Unfortunately, like so many rose-colored visions of The Future everyone had back then, pretty much the opposite holds true. Long-term weightlessness resembles, in syndrome, accelerated aging. Spend a couple of years in space (the average time of a trip to Mars), and you wind up looking -- and feeling -- like your grandfather. Sure, the process can be slowed somewhat -- by near-constant workouts. I don’t know about you, but riding an Exercycle all the way to the Red Planet and back isn’t a trip I’m particularly looking forward to.
And we haven’t even discussed the physical and psychological effects (about which, admittedly, we don’t know much yet, but the probabilities aren’t looking good) of carrying a child to term and raising him or her in a lighter gravitational field. How will nine months in a womb on Mars affect bone structure? Muscle development? Brain growth? God knows.
And on top of all that, the latest findings indicate quite strongly that combined solar and galactic high-energy cosmic rays, zapping through the inner and outer planets with a reckless abandon that would make a Bangladeshi traffic cop's jaw hit the asphalt like Wile E. Coyote's, are several orders of magnitude more dangerous than previously expected. So, in addition to the dangers already listed in our Martian Odyssey, we can add making the trip in what is essentially an enormous microwave oven.
Doesn’t look good, does it? Earth’s on a fast track to disaster, the only other worlds we have even the faintest chance of reaching aren’t even remotely pleasant, and just getting there can kill us. And there’s no other world within practical reach -- certainly not in the next century or so, which everybody with a PhD is telling us is longer than we’ve got left here.
So what can we do?.
We can make a world.
Gravity is far and away the weakest force in the universe. Hard to believe, but the electromagnetic energy contained in a refrigerator magnet weighing a quarter of an ounce is more than sufficient to overcome the gravitational energy of the entire Earth -- which weighs, in case you're interested, 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (six septillion) metric tons, give or take a few million. (Actually, the Earth doesn't technically weigh anything, since it's in a state of constant free fall around the sun, but let's face it; all those zeroes are pretty durn impressive.).
But while gravity is weak, it’s also pervasive. Although it decreases with distance, it never really fades completely. The upshot being that the gravitational forces from the sun, the moon, Earth and the other planets all interact, creating whorls and eddies in spacetime like colliding river currents in a placid lake. These result in stable spots at certain locations, called LaGrange Points: areas of space where the orbital motions of bodies balance with their gravitational forces. There are five of them in the Earth-Moon system alone, and the L-4 and L-5 points are so stable that large objects plunked down in the middle of them will stay there, without course corrections, for a long, long time.
Gravity’s not a problem either. If you’re living on the inside of a cylinder instead of on the surface of a planet, it’s easy (well, easier) to create "artificial gravity" by simply spinning the cylinder. Centrifugal Force pushes everything against the inner surface of the torus, just like in those old Tilt-A-Whirl rides at the carnival. It isn't a force in the classical sense; merely a moving body's resistance to a change in inertia. But who cares? The point is that the effect is indistinguishable from gravity. And if the cylinder’s big enough, the inner-ear effect will be diluted, so you won’t constantly feel like throwing up everything you’ve eaten since you were five. (There's also an impressive variety of antiemetic drugs available OTC to settle that queasy tummy.) .
What’s more, the LaGrange Points aren’t just confined to the Earth-Moon system -- there are points of stability everywhere that planets and moons do their complex orbital dances. Colonies built at these libration points are the only viable way of leaving Earth behind. Controlled environments, with regulated day and night cycles and normal “gravity,” free from natural disasters and presenting much smaller, faster-moving targets for giant impactors, make a helluva lot more sense than trying to hardscrabble a living on the moon or Mars. While it is possible to build "gravity wheels" -- essentially enormous underground centrifuges to take up the inertial slack on the moon and Mars, it would probably take as long, and in the case of Mars at least, cost as much or more to build them than it would to build the habitats, once you factor in the extra distance and the mining of raw materials. It's cheaper and easier to use metals and ores from near-Earth asteroids that are "low-hanging fruit" and take advantage of the much finer production quality of zero-gee metallurgy, not to mention the vastly shorter commute. Besides, the quality of life possible in a habitat is limited only by architectural imagination, whereas once you've finished construction of a base on Mars, for example, you still have to deal with problems ranging from the niggling, such as that extra forty minutes in each Martian day, to the life-threatening planetary dust storms. Not to mention It -- the Terror From Beyond Space.
I trust I've made my point...
And eventually, once we settle in all nice and comfy, we can build smaller, sleeker craft with solar sails or other passive propulsion devices that'll take our descendants to the Centauri system, or Barnard's Star, or other "local" systems. Long before then we'll have space-based telescopes powerful enough to ascertain which stars have Earth-like worlds -- although our heirs will, in all probability, think it insane to leave our comfortable climate-controlled habitats to return to the chaos of a planetary environment. After all, would you seriously consider abandoning the air-conditioned environment of your condo for a damp and dank cave?
In August of 1962, President John F. Kennedy asked rhetorically, Why choose to go to the moon? "We choose to go to the moon," he said, "in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win."
With those words, the thirty-fifth President sounded a clarion call that defined the Sixties for many as much or more than the war in Viet Nam, the music of the Doors, or the art of R. Crumb. It sparked the beginning of a decade-long, across-the-boards effort that united scientists, teachers, engineers, doctors, test pilots (the last group under the new rubric of "astronauts") and many others in a single goal -- to win the Cold War by beating the godless Commies to the moon. Because make no mistake; we needed a foe, a mysterious and implacable enemy, to rally the troops so that, on that glorious day in July 1969, we could stand proud as a nation on the dusty gray plain of Mare Tranquilatis and say to the Soviets in a voice strong and united: "Neener-neener-neener!"
Many felt that America’s military, engineering and scientific communities have never been as unified regarding anything as we were behind the space program during those ten years -- despite the generation gap, burning bras and draft cards, and a distressing tendency on the part of circuit court judges to throw beardless youths into hardcore maximum security for a few decades just for possession of a single Jamaican Red joint. (On the other hand, it was Christmas all year long for inmates named Bubba and Cletus.)
To reach the moon, we crammed fifty years of technological development into a single decade. It won’t be as easy this time. This time our foe can’t be found in the gray monolithic hallways of the Kremlin or the Forbidden City. This time, as Walt Kelly’s Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Which brings us back to Deep Time.
Instead of going for the quick fix, the (relatively) easy gratification, we’ll have to adopt a mindset that we as a species haven’t used for centuries: patience. We have to look back in order to move forward; back to the times when we routinely embarked on projects so monumental they took generations to finish. Projects like the cathedrals of Europe, the pyramids of Egypt, the aqueducts of Rome; projects of which the builders knew they would never see the completion; the trade-off was lifetime room and board (if not necessarily pay).
It was easier for people who lived back then to accept that one’s father and one’s son would be employed on the same venture, because back then the future looked much like the past. Change was slow and incremental; we hadn’t reached the steep part of the curve yet, whereas today we’ve toiled up and over the top and are now in free-fall. Think of the world a hundred years ago: the majority of the population had never even heard the sound of an internal combustion engine nor seen an airplane, much less ridden in one. Most lived and died within fifty miles of their birthplace. The world’s population was just over a billion and a half, and life expectancy for adults in America around fifty. Since then, there have been more changes -- technologically, biologically, sociologically, and in any other venue you can name -- in the 20th Century than in all of human history.
And as for the 21st Century:
"We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people."
The stakes are far higher than Kennedy knew; far, far higher than few today will admit. Because what's at stake now isn't just progress -- it's survival. If humanity is going to make it, it won't be here on planet Earth. It'll be out there: outside the atmosphere, beyond the van Allen Belts, across the frothing sea of radiation and cosmic dust.
And the diaspora will be soon. How do I know this?
Because if it isn't accomplished soon, humanity is done.
But we don't have to be. We have most of the technology we need -- in fact, we are far more equipped and prepared to create the L-5 habitats with our current level of knowledge and ability than we were capable of landing a man on the moon a decade prior to Neil Armstrong's one small step.
It's our choice. Oh, sure, we can wait for the aliens to come, arriving against a background of theremin music and a strobing light show, and just give us the tech we need. But the chances of it happening from star-folk sporting heads the size of casaba melons and Seventies-style silver lamé jumpsuits? Put it this way:
In 1950, the physicist Enrico Fermi ruined everyone's lunch by asking one of the most troublesome rhetorical questions in astrophysics: "Where is everybody?"
The Fermi Paradox, as it came to be known, is simply stated: it cites the apparent contradiction between the high probability of extraterrestrial civilizations' existence and the lack of contact with them. According to the Drake Equation, it seems probable that many extra-terrestrial civilizations are ephemeral; if they form at all, they don't last very long. And that's the problem. Despite the unimaginable distances between the stars, what isolates us isn't space so much as time. Consider: Homo sapiens has only been around for a half million years, and we've only been broadcasting our presence for a hundred or so. And, after a brief spike in the 50s and 60s, our radio wave transmissions have fallen off sharply in recent years, because everyone's gotten cable. (Yeah, that's right; the chances of E.T. phoning us have dropped drastically because you had to have HBO.) Pop quiz: given the billions of years it takes life to develop on worlds such as Earth, what are the odds of some aliens just happening to intercept a Jerry Lewis telethon on their interstellar iPhone by listening in at precisely the right cosmic moment?
Your answer counts for half your grade.
The paradox of the Great Silence has only grown more salient with the discovery in the last decade of a huge bevy of exoplanets. With literally billions of earth-like worlds estimated in our galaxy alone, the chances are overwhelming that life must have developed on a significant portion of them, and intelligent life (if we define "intelligence" as the ability to imagine and eventually search for other civilizations) on at least a few. If no more than one other civilization made it further than we have, they could have seeded the entire galaxy with robot probes in a few million years. That sounds like a long stretch, but in terms of Deep Time, it's really not. The Milky Way is over ten billion years old; almost as old as the universe itself. A million years -- a million centuries -- is nothing.
Once SETI put its collective ear to the sky back in the early Sixties, we had every expectation of hearing radio waves from Out There buzzing, humming, stridulating and otherwise vocalizing juicy galactic gossip. Instead we got the lonesome interstellar equivalent of crickets chirping.
But -- even considering the few brief sparks of civilizations guttering in the vast cosmic night, such a plenitude of Earth-like worlds postulated still begs Fermi's question: Where is everybody?
There are a few hypotheses as to where everybody's hiding -- my favorite is the Prime Directive, AKA the Zoo Hypothesis, which should be self-explanatory even to non-Trekkies. But there's also a more sinister one, known as the Great Filter. It says that the majority of civilizations reach a point at which they either run out of energy and catastrophically return to barbarism, or make it past the crisis and enter a technological utopia.
Judging from the signal-to-noise ratio out there, it would seem that utopia is seldom achieved.
But "seldom" isn't the same as "never." I think that, if we want to join the galactic Kiwanis, we'll have to take the initiative.
We have to get the hell out of Dodge.
Imagine a future a hundred years from now: a huge factory station, one of dozens set in orbit high above an uninhabited world, where robot miners feed a constant supply of raw materials via space elevators up to us, to be fabricated into whatever we desire. It's certainly a pleasant vision of the centuries to come -- far more so than endless variations of Little House On Utopia Planitia. And we'll have the luxury of time to decide if it's for us or not. Time and space, and plenty of both.
All of eternity and infinity.
Mankind has searched for a way to secure passage into Heaven (without the inconvenient proviso of having to die first), for as long as he's walked upright. Prayer hasn't proven overly efficacious -- neither has abstemiousness, sacrifices or genocide. But now, finally, we have the tools; if we have the will and the fortitude as well, we can build Heaven.
It’s that, or take our chances on an Earth that’s all too rapidly going to Hell.
(c) By Michael Reaves All Rights Reserved
-- Konstanin Tsiolkovsky.
We're all going to die..
Even if we stop all greenhouse emissions now, the sheer inertia of the planetary weather system will cause Earth’s average surface temperature to rise dramatically, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It seems that the 21st Century is playing host to all four Horsemen, only they're wearing Armani and riding SUVs.
Maybe the increasing gradient won’t be a tipping point that’ll cause a runaway greenhouse effect ending in Earth becoming another Venus in a hundred million years or so. But it will cause rampant desertification, wholesale die-offs of sea life due to acidification, catastrophic rises in ocean levels, a supply crisis in potable water -- and that’s not in some dim and murky distant future; that’s in your lifetime, if you’re in your twenties. If you’re old enough to vote, you’re old enough to float.
(That high-pitched whine you hear is Thomas Malthus spinning in his grave -- though not fast enough, unfortunately, to provide the alternative energy we’ll need. And that dull thud was the world population hitting 7 billion as of Halloween, 2011 -- a date entirely too appropriate.)
Work with me here -- accept for a few moments that global climate change is a real, documented problem. All hope isn’t lost -- yet. But we have to profoundly change the way we look at the future, and the role that we play in it. We can no longer afford to think short-term.
We have to start thinking in terms of Deep Time.
Robert A. Heinlein once said: “Earth is too small a basket for mankind to keep all its eggs in.” Too true. Sooner or later we’re going to be pulverized by a killer asteroid, or fried by a supervolcano, or ... pick any one of a dozen potential apocalypses.
The big-rock-dropping-in-unannounced scenario is particularly unsettling, because it could happen any time from within the next 10,000 centuries to -- well, now. This isn't hyperbole. Consider, if you will, several bullet points (with the emphasis on "bullet"):
In 1990, an asteroid big enough to cause destruction comparable to Hiroshima's A-Bomb hit us. That's right. Hit. Us. It didn't make headlines because the impact was in the middle of the South Pacific, far enough from land that there was no tsunami effect. But a few hours either way would have had people talking. The ones that weren't busy ducking and covering, that is ...
The year before that, Asteroid 1989FC missed us by six hours. The rock, if it had hit in water (the most likely scenario, given that 70% of Earth is covered with ocean) would have caused a mega-tsunami; a wave at least 300 times as powerful as the 2004 Asian Tsunami. (For those of you heavily into irony, 1989FC is also known as Asclepius, the god of medicine and healing.)
But we were tracking it, right? Had it in our crosshairs? Dream on. We didn't have a clue. A bunch of techs looked at the plates later and said, "Wait, what?"
One more? Why not -- it’s not like there’s a dearth to choose from. How about 2009 DD45? Roughly the same size as the Tunguska impactor of 1908 that rendered a thousand square miles of forest flatter than a crop circle, it skimmed us closer than the tattooed swastika on a skinhead’s scalp.
Scared? You should be.
Bottom line: Earth is a big, slow target. And one thing we all learned from dodgeball is that it’s better to be small and light on your feet -- and, if you can manage it, in several places at once.
The best way to survive is to get some of us, at least, the hell out of Dodge. The problem is that leaving is far easier said than done. We’ve got two obstacles that are, by any reasonable definition, insurmountable.
The first is distance. The only world other than Earth that we’ve visited so far is the moon, and it’s the only one we’re likely to visit again anytime soon. That’s right; you might as well stuff any notions of reaching other star systems, including ones relatively "close by," back in your tinfoil-lined fedora, because even with the fastest rocket propulsion currently available, travel to the closest stars will still take millennia. Proxima Centauri, the next star over, is four and a half light years away, the interstellar equivalent of down the street and around the corner. Doesn't sound too bad -- until you remember that a light year is six trillion miles. Do the math on that one (hint: one trillion is one followed by twelve zeroes) and you'll get a vague inkling of the distances out there. Which means that some über-geek with coke-bottle glasses had better come up with warp drive in his parents’ basement soon, because there's no way we’re crossing the cosmos in first gear.
So let’s consider our satellite. While it’s close enough to make round trips semi-practical, it ain’t exactly a garden spot. Could we set up a permanent colony there? Frankly, I doubt it. We don’t have people living full-time and raising families at the South Pole, and it's Cancun compared to the moon. With temperature extremes that range over 500 degrees in a single step from sunlight to shade, an atmosphere less than one-trillionth that of Earth’s, and worst of all, an omnipresent and highly-toxic layer of pulverized meteorite dust that, once through the airlock and into your lungs, can cause pneumoconiosis faster than you can cough up blood, the moon doesn’t seem anybody’s first choice for prime extraterrestrial real estate.
But -- location, location, location, remember? The one thing we can count on is that the moon will always be about the same drive time. Which is a lot more than we can say about only other halfway habitable rock in the solar system: Mars.
That’s because while the moon is tucked away, nice and snug, in orbit around the Earth, Mars and Earth both orbit the sun -- and Mars’ orbit is a lot more eccentric. Mars can be anywhere from 36 million miles to over 250 million miles from us. In travel time that works out to anywhere from half a year to a year and a half, which makes booking rooms in advance a real bitch.
Trouble is, it’s the best alternative of all the other planets. Mercury? Like the moon, only hotter. Venus? Pretty to look at, but underneath those clouds it makes Hell seem hospitable.
Okay, how about the outer worlds -- Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune? They’re not called “gas giants” out of sophomoric frat-house humor; there’s no “there” there, no hard and fast boundary between lithosphere and atmosphere. And let’s not bother mentioning Pluto; it’s not even officially a planet any more.
Even if there were some place in the Outer Planets that was halfway habitable, the gas giants and their moons are so far away that they might as well be in another solar system. Grad students have lost cherries and gained doctorates during the decade and more it's taking the New Horizons probe to reach Pluto. And that expedition is only feasible because the onboard robot has no need for life-support. There's no way we can afford to send crewed exploratory flights on a three billion mile schlep. The amount of food and fuel alone needed makes it impossible to get a manned mission of that complexity off the ground. Not to mention water. It’s true that recycling from sources best left unnamed can maximize usage, but eventually the stores have to be replenished. While there is water on the moon, there isn’t enough to warrant establishing a full-time colony. Mars, on the other hand, has plenty of subsurface water, but again, the ratio of H2O to the energy required to land and dig for it is problematic.
So it looks like, for all its considerable drawbacks -- temperatures that only look good compared to the moon, the lack of a magnetosphere which makes a tan deadly, and a travel time about twice as long as sailing around Cape Horn (along with enough cosmic rays to give the entire population of Detroit superpowers) -- Mars is the best place.
Except ... remember I said two obstacles?
Space is big -- there’s no getting around that. But as staggeringly complex as merely getting to another world is, there’s a much greater problem once we’re there. One which makes cosmic rays, temperature extremes and lack of atmosphere look easy. We can overcome these problems, at least in theory, with terraforming techniques. It would require engineering on a cosmic scale -- playing planetary billiards with icy comets to create oceans, putting orbital mirrors up to magnify sunlight, using hydroponics to “grow” oxygen and nitrogen. Given decades of global restructuring, Mars could be tricked out with a breathable atmosphere, a decent climate -- everything except one essential thing:
Gravity. That’s the one thing we can’t increase or decrease, since it’s a function of mass. Mars is one-third the size of the earth, and has (more or less) one-third as much gravity. The moon has one-sixth. And we won’t be changing either one any time in the near future. So, unless we're lucky enough to find another world tucked away somewhere close by whose gravitational pull is within 10 to 20 percent, plus or minus, of Earth's, we're screwed.
. The problem is that, no matter how many technological advances we make, genetically we’re still just a bunch of hairless apes jabbing each other with pointed sticks on the African veldt. We evolved in a one gravity field, and when we spend prolonged periods out of it (such as a few months up in the space station), bad things happen.
How bad?
Real bad.
. Prolonged weightlessness causes, among other things, dehydration, musculoskeletal atrophy, anemia, mineral and electrolyte depletion, vertigo, and a whole host of other problems ranging from unpleasant to downright life-threatening. Back in the “Pulp Era” of science fiction, when space flight was still a testosterone-fueled dream, it was theorized that time spent in zero-gee would actually be good for the body. No stress on the joints or the heart would logically mean no wear and tear on other moving parts; ergo you might outlive Methuselah and remain as spry as Barishnakov.
Unfortunately, like so many rose-colored visions of The Future everyone had back then, pretty much the opposite holds true. Long-term weightlessness resembles, in syndrome, accelerated aging. Spend a couple of years in space (the average time of a trip to Mars), and you wind up looking -- and feeling -- like your grandfather. Sure, the process can be slowed somewhat -- by near-constant workouts. I don’t know about you, but riding an Exercycle all the way to the Red Planet and back isn’t a trip I’m particularly looking forward to.
And we haven’t even discussed the physical and psychological effects (about which, admittedly, we don’t know much yet, but the probabilities aren’t looking good) of carrying a child to term and raising him or her in a lighter gravitational field. How will nine months in a womb on Mars affect bone structure? Muscle development? Brain growth? God knows.
And on top of all that, the latest findings indicate quite strongly that combined solar and galactic high-energy cosmic rays, zapping through the inner and outer planets with a reckless abandon that would make a Bangladeshi traffic cop's jaw hit the asphalt like Wile E. Coyote's, are several orders of magnitude more dangerous than previously expected. So, in addition to the dangers already listed in our Martian Odyssey, we can add making the trip in what is essentially an enormous microwave oven.
Doesn’t look good, does it? Earth’s on a fast track to disaster, the only other worlds we have even the faintest chance of reaching aren’t even remotely pleasant, and just getting there can kill us. And there’s no other world within practical reach -- certainly not in the next century or so, which everybody with a PhD is telling us is longer than we’ve got left here.
So what can we do?.
We can make a world.
Gravity is far and away the weakest force in the universe. Hard to believe, but the electromagnetic energy contained in a refrigerator magnet weighing a quarter of an ounce is more than sufficient to overcome the gravitational energy of the entire Earth -- which weighs, in case you're interested, 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (six septillion) metric tons, give or take a few million. (Actually, the Earth doesn't technically weigh anything, since it's in a state of constant free fall around the sun, but let's face it; all those zeroes are pretty durn impressive.).
But while gravity is weak, it’s also pervasive. Although it decreases with distance, it never really fades completely. The upshot being that the gravitational forces from the sun, the moon, Earth and the other planets all interact, creating whorls and eddies in spacetime like colliding river currents in a placid lake. These result in stable spots at certain locations, called LaGrange Points: areas of space where the orbital motions of bodies balance with their gravitational forces. There are five of them in the Earth-Moon system alone, and the L-4 and L-5 points are so stable that large objects plunked down in the middle of them will stay there, without course corrections, for a long, long time.
Gravity’s not a problem either. If you’re living on the inside of a cylinder instead of on the surface of a planet, it’s easy (well, easier) to create "artificial gravity" by simply spinning the cylinder. Centrifugal Force pushes everything against the inner surface of the torus, just like in those old Tilt-A-Whirl rides at the carnival. It isn't a force in the classical sense; merely a moving body's resistance to a change in inertia. But who cares? The point is that the effect is indistinguishable from gravity. And if the cylinder’s big enough, the inner-ear effect will be diluted, so you won’t constantly feel like throwing up everything you’ve eaten since you were five. (There's also an impressive variety of antiemetic drugs available OTC to settle that queasy tummy.) .
What’s more, the LaGrange Points aren’t just confined to the Earth-Moon system -- there are points of stability everywhere that planets and moons do their complex orbital dances. Colonies built at these libration points are the only viable way of leaving Earth behind. Controlled environments, with regulated day and night cycles and normal “gravity,” free from natural disasters and presenting much smaller, faster-moving targets for giant impactors, make a helluva lot more sense than trying to hardscrabble a living on the moon or Mars. While it is possible to build "gravity wheels" -- essentially enormous underground centrifuges to take up the inertial slack on the moon and Mars, it would probably take as long, and in the case of Mars at least, cost as much or more to build them than it would to build the habitats, once you factor in the extra distance and the mining of raw materials. It's cheaper and easier to use metals and ores from near-Earth asteroids that are "low-hanging fruit" and take advantage of the much finer production quality of zero-gee metallurgy, not to mention the vastly shorter commute. Besides, the quality of life possible in a habitat is limited only by architectural imagination, whereas once you've finished construction of a base on Mars, for example, you still have to deal with problems ranging from the niggling, such as that extra forty minutes in each Martian day, to the life-threatening planetary dust storms. Not to mention It -- the Terror From Beyond Space.
I trust I've made my point...
And eventually, once we settle in all nice and comfy, we can build smaller, sleeker craft with solar sails or other passive propulsion devices that'll take our descendants to the Centauri system, or Barnard's Star, or other "local" systems. Long before then we'll have space-based telescopes powerful enough to ascertain which stars have Earth-like worlds -- although our heirs will, in all probability, think it insane to leave our comfortable climate-controlled habitats to return to the chaos of a planetary environment. After all, would you seriously consider abandoning the air-conditioned environment of your condo for a damp and dank cave?
In August of 1962, President John F. Kennedy asked rhetorically, Why choose to go to the moon? "We choose to go to the moon," he said, "in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win."
With those words, the thirty-fifth President sounded a clarion call that defined the Sixties for many as much or more than the war in Viet Nam, the music of the Doors, or the art of R. Crumb. It sparked the beginning of a decade-long, across-the-boards effort that united scientists, teachers, engineers, doctors, test pilots (the last group under the new rubric of "astronauts") and many others in a single goal -- to win the Cold War by beating the godless Commies to the moon. Because make no mistake; we needed a foe, a mysterious and implacable enemy, to rally the troops so that, on that glorious day in July 1969, we could stand proud as a nation on the dusty gray plain of Mare Tranquilatis and say to the Soviets in a voice strong and united: "Neener-neener-neener!"
Many felt that America’s military, engineering and scientific communities have never been as unified regarding anything as we were behind the space program during those ten years -- despite the generation gap, burning bras and draft cards, and a distressing tendency on the part of circuit court judges to throw beardless youths into hardcore maximum security for a few decades just for possession of a single Jamaican Red joint. (On the other hand, it was Christmas all year long for inmates named Bubba and Cletus.)
To reach the moon, we crammed fifty years of technological development into a single decade. It won’t be as easy this time. This time our foe can’t be found in the gray monolithic hallways of the Kremlin or the Forbidden City. This time, as Walt Kelly’s Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Which brings us back to Deep Time.
Instead of going for the quick fix, the (relatively) easy gratification, we’ll have to adopt a mindset that we as a species haven’t used for centuries: patience. We have to look back in order to move forward; back to the times when we routinely embarked on projects so monumental they took generations to finish. Projects like the cathedrals of Europe, the pyramids of Egypt, the aqueducts of Rome; projects of which the builders knew they would never see the completion; the trade-off was lifetime room and board (if not necessarily pay).
It was easier for people who lived back then to accept that one’s father and one’s son would be employed on the same venture, because back then the future looked much like the past. Change was slow and incremental; we hadn’t reached the steep part of the curve yet, whereas today we’ve toiled up and over the top and are now in free-fall. Think of the world a hundred years ago: the majority of the population had never even heard the sound of an internal combustion engine nor seen an airplane, much less ridden in one. Most lived and died within fifty miles of their birthplace. The world’s population was just over a billion and a half, and life expectancy for adults in America around fifty. Since then, there have been more changes -- technologically, biologically, sociologically, and in any other venue you can name -- in the 20th Century than in all of human history.
And as for the 21st Century:
"We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people."
The stakes are far higher than Kennedy knew; far, far higher than few today will admit. Because what's at stake now isn't just progress -- it's survival. If humanity is going to make it, it won't be here on planet Earth. It'll be out there: outside the atmosphere, beyond the van Allen Belts, across the frothing sea of radiation and cosmic dust.
And the diaspora will be soon. How do I know this?
Because if it isn't accomplished soon, humanity is done.
But we don't have to be. We have most of the technology we need -- in fact, we are far more equipped and prepared to create the L-5 habitats with our current level of knowledge and ability than we were capable of landing a man on the moon a decade prior to Neil Armstrong's one small step.
It's our choice. Oh, sure, we can wait for the aliens to come, arriving against a background of theremin music and a strobing light show, and just give us the tech we need. But the chances of it happening from star-folk sporting heads the size of casaba melons and Seventies-style silver lamé jumpsuits? Put it this way:
In 1950, the physicist Enrico Fermi ruined everyone's lunch by asking one of the most troublesome rhetorical questions in astrophysics: "Where is everybody?"
The Fermi Paradox, as it came to be known, is simply stated: it cites the apparent contradiction between the high probability of extraterrestrial civilizations' existence and the lack of contact with them. According to the Drake Equation, it seems probable that many extra-terrestrial civilizations are ephemeral; if they form at all, they don't last very long. And that's the problem. Despite the unimaginable distances between the stars, what isolates us isn't space so much as time. Consider: Homo sapiens has only been around for a half million years, and we've only been broadcasting our presence for a hundred or so. And, after a brief spike in the 50s and 60s, our radio wave transmissions have fallen off sharply in recent years, because everyone's gotten cable. (Yeah, that's right; the chances of E.T. phoning us have dropped drastically because you had to have HBO.) Pop quiz: given the billions of years it takes life to develop on worlds such as Earth, what are the odds of some aliens just happening to intercept a Jerry Lewis telethon on their interstellar iPhone by listening in at precisely the right cosmic moment?
Your answer counts for half your grade.
The paradox of the Great Silence has only grown more salient with the discovery in the last decade of a huge bevy of exoplanets. With literally billions of earth-like worlds estimated in our galaxy alone, the chances are overwhelming that life must have developed on a significant portion of them, and intelligent life (if we define "intelligence" as the ability to imagine and eventually search for other civilizations) on at least a few. If no more than one other civilization made it further than we have, they could have seeded the entire galaxy with robot probes in a few million years. That sounds like a long stretch, but in terms of Deep Time, it's really not. The Milky Way is over ten billion years old; almost as old as the universe itself. A million years -- a million centuries -- is nothing.
Once SETI put its collective ear to the sky back in the early Sixties, we had every expectation of hearing radio waves from Out There buzzing, humming, stridulating and otherwise vocalizing juicy galactic gossip. Instead we got the lonesome interstellar equivalent of crickets chirping.
But -- even considering the few brief sparks of civilizations guttering in the vast cosmic night, such a plenitude of Earth-like worlds postulated still begs Fermi's question: Where is everybody?
There are a few hypotheses as to where everybody's hiding -- my favorite is the Prime Directive, AKA the Zoo Hypothesis, which should be self-explanatory even to non-Trekkies. But there's also a more sinister one, known as the Great Filter. It says that the majority of civilizations reach a point at which they either run out of energy and catastrophically return to barbarism, or make it past the crisis and enter a technological utopia.
Judging from the signal-to-noise ratio out there, it would seem that utopia is seldom achieved.
But "seldom" isn't the same as "never." I think that, if we want to join the galactic Kiwanis, we'll have to take the initiative.
We have to get the hell out of Dodge.
Imagine a future a hundred years from now: a huge factory station, one of dozens set in orbit high above an uninhabited world, where robot miners feed a constant supply of raw materials via space elevators up to us, to be fabricated into whatever we desire. It's certainly a pleasant vision of the centuries to come -- far more so than endless variations of Little House On Utopia Planitia. And we'll have the luxury of time to decide if it's for us or not. Time and space, and plenty of both.
All of eternity and infinity.
Mankind has searched for a way to secure passage into Heaven (without the inconvenient proviso of having to die first), for as long as he's walked upright. Prayer hasn't proven overly efficacious -- neither has abstemiousness, sacrifices or genocide. But now, finally, we have the tools; if we have the will and the fortitude as well, we can build Heaven.
It’s that, or take our chances on an Earth that’s all too rapidly going to Hell.
(c) By Michael Reaves All Rights Reserved
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Yadda yadda, incurable, yadda yadda ...
I have Parkinson's Disease. I've had it for nearly 20 years. For the first 15 or so it wasn't bad -- in fact, entire days would pass when I could almost forget I had it. But though individual days would pass unremarkably, individual weeks would not. Nor would months, or years. I was lucky enough to get in on the ground floor of a new surgical treatment: DBS (Deep Brain Stimulation). It's basically a pacemaker for the brain. It slowed the progress of the disease dramatically.
But it didn't stop it.
Because there's no cure.
That's because it's not a disease, as we currently define it; that is, it doesn't seem pathological in origin. A more suitable qualifier would be "Syndrome". But, though I'm uncertain of the terminology, I can describe what it's like. It's like being dipped in extremely slow-hardening cement. It's hard to get around much, unless I swallow a pharmacy's weight in pills every day. (Which aren't free, even with Medicare.) PD has also pretty much completely destroyed my ability to speak coherently. I can communicate sometimes, although most people aren't fluent in Village Idiot. (In fact, people are usually more fluent in Klingon.) It's become nearly impossible to type anymore. I used to be able to type over 100 wpm; now I'm lucky if I can do ten.
I've had over 400 TV scripts produced, and a half dozen movies; I've had 2 dozen novels published and a codswallop or two of comic books, graphic novels, and short stories. I've won an Emmy and been nominated for several more awards, including a Hugo and a Nebula. Yet whenever I go out in public people watch me like they expect me to start flinging my filth like a bored primate at the City Zoo.
If I had to pick one thing that I'd like to have changed about this motherfucking disease (please excuse my language; I meant to say motherfucking syndrome), it's my inability to speak. It's the result of a confluence of factors; a sub-syndrome of the larger one. As such, it can be possibly addressed symptomatically, which is a fairly arduous "two-steps-forward-one-step-back" process, or I can try to find a wholly different paradigm to address it through.
Which I may have done; theoretically, at least. I'm not prepared to say anything further at the moment -- but fingers crossed.
But it didn't stop it.
Because there's no cure.
That's because it's not a disease, as we currently define it; that is, it doesn't seem pathological in origin. A more suitable qualifier would be "Syndrome". But, though I'm uncertain of the terminology, I can describe what it's like. It's like being dipped in extremely slow-hardening cement. It's hard to get around much, unless I swallow a pharmacy's weight in pills every day. (Which aren't free, even with Medicare.) PD has also pretty much completely destroyed my ability to speak coherently. I can communicate sometimes, although most people aren't fluent in Village Idiot. (In fact, people are usually more fluent in Klingon.) It's become nearly impossible to type anymore. I used to be able to type over 100 wpm; now I'm lucky if I can do ten.
I've had over 400 TV scripts produced, and a half dozen movies; I've had 2 dozen novels published and a codswallop or two of comic books, graphic novels, and short stories. I've won an Emmy and been nominated for several more awards, including a Hugo and a Nebula. Yet whenever I go out in public people watch me like they expect me to start flinging my filth like a bored primate at the City Zoo.
If I had to pick one thing that I'd like to have changed about this motherfucking disease (please excuse my language; I meant to say motherfucking syndrome), it's my inability to speak. It's the result of a confluence of factors; a sub-syndrome of the larger one. As such, it can be possibly addressed symptomatically, which is a fairly arduous "two-steps-forward-one-step-back" process, or I can try to find a wholly different paradigm to address it through.
Which I may have done; theoretically, at least. I'm not prepared to say anything further at the moment -- but fingers crossed.
Work In Progress
I'm going to try to talk a little about BLOOD KISS. It isn't easy, because the Parkinson's is flaring up quite a bit. My fingers are tremoring and it's very hard to get up any speed. I'm going to post this as a place holder and eventually I'll have more.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Bad Ol' Puddy Tat Blues
I think cats must lead lives of perennial existential despair.
Think about it. A cat operates heavily on instinct; not surprising when you consider its frontal lobes are the size of a shelled peanut. I remember one time our cat got out and didn't stop at the stairs -- instead she kept going. I watched for a second before we opened a can of food and hauled her up short, and every line in her furry body was saying "YES!!!" It's like she realized in that moment what was missing.
Now consider the fact that a cat has a theory of mind comparable to a rhododendron bush. It doesn't wonder if other cats feel this way; it's open to question if it wonders about other cats, period. As far as it knows, it's the only cat who's ever felt this way. And we've already established that a cat's hippocampus works in nanoseconds, so I wouldn't count on it retaining long, nostalgic memories.
Given all this, we're pretty much forced to one conclusion: that when your puddy tat sprawls languorously on the couch, staring off into space, it's not relaxing; on the contrary, it's caught in the throes of an existential crisis that would make Sartre run for the nearest exit. In effect, it's thinking that there's something missing in its life, something very important, but it can't quite remember what. So it lolls about in despair, and you think it wants its belly scratched, when in reality it's wracking its poor excuse for a brain for the answer to the ultimate ontological mystery.
No wonder they're stoned on catnip most of the time.
Speaking Of ...
The biggest problem Parkinson's presents for me is my voice.
It's the result of several different things. There's standard aphonia, which is the usual problem Parkinson's patients have, and which makes me sound much softer than I think I am. But there's also dysarthria, which causes slurring (such as that from a frontal lobe infarction); this is harder to pin down because the cause of pathology is unclear. It could have been a physical insult to my speech center -- or it could be something completely different. And there's also the butcher job that an E.N.T. did on my uvula, which causes extreme hypernasality.
Plus my lungs are weak; this is caused by lateral scoliosis not leaving them enough room. P.D. exacerbates this.
In short, while an operation may solve part of the problem, it might not solve it all. I'm reluctant to have my head unzipped just to see what's going on in there. The more research I do, the less inclined I am to believe that one procedure -- or even two or three -- will provide the Hail Mary pass that's needed here. I may have to settle for a cyborg-style mechanism that'll bypass my voice completely. Because it's looking more and more like, even a combination of brain surgery and reconstructive laryngeal surgery might not provide the magic bullet.
Friday, September 14, 2012
Happy Birthday To Me
I can't resist this,especially since I came across it on my birthday. It's the table of contents for an anthology called "the Mammoth Book Of Ghost Stories", edited by Otto Penzler, and if you look real carefully you'll find I'm in sandwiched in between people who really know what they're doing,like Saki and H.P. Lovecraft and M.R. James and ... annd ...
It's like the saying goes ... I'm the only person in it I don't recognize.
Monday, September 10, 2012
CONQUEST OF SPACE
THE CONQUEST OF SPACE, a 1950s Disney(!) film, is a truly amazing movie.
You can find it on You-tube (of course). It bears watching by anyone who's an atheist.
Why? How? (SPOILERS ...) Certainly not for things like story; pedestrian at best (outside of ... well, you'll see), or acting; Ross Martin is the only non-cringeworthy thesp in the lot, and he doesn't last long. The rest are terrible, although they don't have much to work with -- they're all cultural stereotypes. (One gets the feeling that if a black crew member had been included, he'd be asking for watermelon-flavored food pills.) The vision of the future is the usual 1950's society with a couple of decades tacked on.
Nevertheless, it is truly amazing for one character's through-line only: the expedition's leader, a Bible-thumping Fundamentalist who comes to the conclusion during the voyage that leaving Earth without the permission of the Almighty is an offense unto Him, and who eventually sabotages the expedition before being killed by his own son.
Heavy stuff, for an obviously teen (at most) oriented family film. But what really had my jaw hanging was that there was no effort at all made at the end to absolve either the Captain (other than the fairly obvious conclusion that he was batshit crazy), or God. Nothing is said to the effect that it's cool with God for us to leave the cradle, nor is any attempt made to justify the Captain's actions (not among the crew, at least, although there is consensus that he'll be presented to the public as a martyr). But we get the strong sense that his faith had nothing to do with his sacrifice, or so they'll spin it. Again, hard as it is to believe, the film takes a very clear stand for atheism (or at least against organized religion), with no mealy-mouthed apologies.
Truly amazing ...
Monday, September 3, 2012
Spaceman Jones' Locker
The last post has kept me thinking about how different the solar system is from what we thought it was, even just fifty years ago. Was a time when Venus and Mars were the odds-on favorite for life.
And now?
My personal odds-on favorites for places most likely to support life in the solar system? Not what you'd think. First off, I wouldn't bother looking in the inner system. Mercury is blasted by a sun so close its apparent disc fills half the sky; even extremophiles would have to wear sunglasses. Venus? Oy. It's hell, pure and simple: victim of millions of years of rampant greenhouse effects that have turned the surface into seething lava beds and the atmosphere into a dense and boiling ocean of sulphuric acid. Mars? The best chance of all the inner worlds, but still not the way to bet. If only it were as big as Earth; but, as they said on Firefly, "if wishes were horses, we'd all be eating steak." Mars was simply too far from the sun, and too small to hang onto its core warmth, and thus its magnetosphere dissipated. With no magnetosphere to protect the planet (think of the magnetosphere as a planetary-sized deflector shield) from the sterilizing UV rays, there wasn't much chance for life to develop.
So we have to look further out. A lot further.
The two biggest planets in our solar system are Jupiter and Saturn. Together, they have over a hundred moons (hell, they probably have thousands if we count rocks from the size of baseballs on up. If you count all the rock and ice fragments making up the rings, we're into millions. This way lies madness. We're only interested in two: Europa and Enceladus.
They're very similar (despite Europa belonging to Jupiter and Enceladus to Saturn); So similar that we can generalize both of them into one. The major difference is size; Europa's about twice the size of Enceladus. Other than that you can barely tell 'em apart. They're both huge balls of ice; snowball moons. Utterly inhospitable on their surfaces, they nevertheless represent the best chances for extra-terrestrial life.
How? they're both covered with ice. Ice several miles deep, in fact.
Ah, but UNDER the ice ...
... is water. WARM water.
Wait, what? How is this possible? We're not talking colder than your Frigidiare cold, or even Antarctic cold; we're talking minus 300 odd degrees below zero cold. that's not just cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey, that's cold enough to shatter it into powder with one blow of a ball peen hammer.
But nevertheless, if you could somehow drill down through several miles of rock hard ice, you would find water. Water warm enough, and filled with enough amino acids that, given a few billion years of sloshing around, the chances of life -- complex life -- developing are almost inevitable. How do we get warm liquid water in such an inhospitable place?
One word: torsion.
Europa and Enceladus have one other thing in common: they're the inmost orbiting moons of both their primaries. their orbits are close enough for Jupiter's and Saturn's gravitational pull, working against the gravity of the other moons, to cause massive tidal forces. And what does that mean?
It means the same thing that happens to any closed volatile system when outside energy is introduced: it produces heat. A lot of heat. Enough, over the eons, to keep an entire ocean liquified.
So, with kinetic heat generated by the gravitational equivalent of a huge taffy-pull and a nice insulating cap of ice sitting on top of them, the oceans of Europa and Enceladus could be sitting there, nice and cozy, for millions of years. More than enough time for complex life to develop.
Of course, "complex" is a -- well, complex concept. It could define anything from simple multi-cellular lifeforms you need a microscope and a powerful lot of squinting to see, all the way up to critters that (given the high salinity of the water plus the lesser gravity), could make a blue whale look like a rainbow trout. Hell, why not? As Sagan was known for saying, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." True enough, but if I might humbly propose a codicil: "Extraordinary evidence demands extraordinary imagination to be recognized." Most planetary geologists, exobiologists and the like will pee up one leg and down the other if they find so much as an ice moon's equivalent of a paramecium Out There. Me, I'm voting for the marine equivalent of Argentinosaurus. Something that can pick its teeth with Nessie.
If you're going to dream, why not dream big? We used to think that the clouds of Venus hid a steaming swampy world that teemed with exoraptors. We got rogered real good on that one. But maybe, even though the inner worlds weren't exactly the stuff of which dreams -- or at least masthead novelettes for a nice, shiny nickel a word -- are made, perhaps, in the black depths of those exolunar oceans, a second chance worthy of the name Leviathan may yet lurk.
And now?
My personal odds-on favorites for places most likely to support life in the solar system? Not what you'd think. First off, I wouldn't bother looking in the inner system. Mercury is blasted by a sun so close its apparent disc fills half the sky; even extremophiles would have to wear sunglasses. Venus? Oy. It's hell, pure and simple: victim of millions of years of rampant greenhouse effects that have turned the surface into seething lava beds and the atmosphere into a dense and boiling ocean of sulphuric acid. Mars? The best chance of all the inner worlds, but still not the way to bet. If only it were as big as Earth; but, as they said on Firefly, "if wishes were horses, we'd all be eating steak." Mars was simply too far from the sun, and too small to hang onto its core warmth, and thus its magnetosphere dissipated. With no magnetosphere to protect the planet (think of the magnetosphere as a planetary-sized deflector shield) from the sterilizing UV rays, there wasn't much chance for life to develop.
So we have to look further out. A lot further.
The two biggest planets in our solar system are Jupiter and Saturn. Together, they have over a hundred moons (hell, they probably have thousands if we count rocks from the size of baseballs on up. If you count all the rock and ice fragments making up the rings, we're into millions. This way lies madness. We're only interested in two: Europa and Enceladus.
They're very similar (despite Europa belonging to Jupiter and Enceladus to Saturn); So similar that we can generalize both of them into one. The major difference is size; Europa's about twice the size of Enceladus. Other than that you can barely tell 'em apart. They're both huge balls of ice; snowball moons. Utterly inhospitable on their surfaces, they nevertheless represent the best chances for extra-terrestrial life.
How? they're both covered with ice. Ice several miles deep, in fact.
Ah, but UNDER the ice ...
... is water. WARM water.
Wait, what? How is this possible? We're not talking colder than your Frigidiare cold, or even Antarctic cold; we're talking minus 300 odd degrees below zero cold. that's not just cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey, that's cold enough to shatter it into powder with one blow of a ball peen hammer.
But nevertheless, if you could somehow drill down through several miles of rock hard ice, you would find water. Water warm enough, and filled with enough amino acids that, given a few billion years of sloshing around, the chances of life -- complex life -- developing are almost inevitable. How do we get warm liquid water in such an inhospitable place?
One word: torsion.
Europa and Enceladus have one other thing in common: they're the inmost orbiting moons of both their primaries. their orbits are close enough for Jupiter's and Saturn's gravitational pull, working against the gravity of the other moons, to cause massive tidal forces. And what does that mean?
It means the same thing that happens to any closed volatile system when outside energy is introduced: it produces heat. A lot of heat. Enough, over the eons, to keep an entire ocean liquified.
So, with kinetic heat generated by the gravitational equivalent of a huge taffy-pull and a nice insulating cap of ice sitting on top of them, the oceans of Europa and Enceladus could be sitting there, nice and cozy, for millions of years. More than enough time for complex life to develop.
Of course, "complex" is a -- well, complex concept. It could define anything from simple multi-cellular lifeforms you need a microscope and a powerful lot of squinting to see, all the way up to critters that (given the high salinity of the water plus the lesser gravity), could make a blue whale look like a rainbow trout. Hell, why not? As Sagan was known for saying, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." True enough, but if I might humbly propose a codicil: "Extraordinary evidence demands extraordinary imagination to be recognized." Most planetary geologists, exobiologists and the like will pee up one leg and down the other if they find so much as an ice moon's equivalent of a paramecium Out There. Me, I'm voting for the marine equivalent of Argentinosaurus. Something that can pick its teeth with Nessie.
If you're going to dream, why not dream big? We used to think that the clouds of Venus hid a steaming swampy world that teemed with exoraptors. We got rogered real good on that one. But maybe, even though the inner worlds weren't exactly the stuff of which dreams -- or at least masthead novelettes for a nice, shiny nickel a word -- are made, perhaps, in the black depths of those exolunar oceans, a second chance worthy of the name Leviathan may yet lurk.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Moon Man
Some years back, a friend of mine (I don't recall, which one, sorry) said that, as far as he was concerned, the best part about the first moon landing were the names of the first two men to step off the Lander.
I'm happy to say that, though I didn't get it at first, it didn't take me long because I had the proper cultural references. Think about it. The first two men who actually set foot on the moon ...? Maybe it'll help to imagine a multi-tentacular monster lurking behind the nearest rock. No? How about if they both have rayguns? Work with me!
All right, stop sulking. But you're gonna do a facepalm when I tell you --
The first man on the moon was named Neil Armstrong. Maybe you can come up with a name that sounds more quintessentially two-fisted and All American than that, but if you can my fedora's off to you, pal. Neil Armstrong isn't the name of an "astronaut" -- it's the name of a spaceman. A lean, muscular rocket jockey who knows the business end of a laser pistol, who's bronzed by alien suns, and who's on a first-name basis with the Queen of Outer Space. I mean, could it get any better?
Well, hard as it is to believe, yes it could. Because not only did the Commander (he had to have been a commander; there are some things that are just non-negotiable) have a name to strike fear into the cold, flinty hearts of space pirates everywhere, but his second in command was a feisty fella nicknamed -- wait for it -- "Buzz"! Okay, granted his last name wasn't "Lightyear", but that would've been too good. As it is, the dialogue practically writes itself:
"Smokin' rockets, Commander! Is that a Tenta-Man lurking behind that rock over there?"
"Yes it is, Cadet. Now remember what you learned back at Space Academy, Buzz; drill him right between the first pair of eyestalks ..."
"I'll try, but the real thing is sure different from the holos ...!"
They didn't get much else right, sad to say; instead of a sleek and silver rocket out of a Bonestell painting, the Lunar Landing Module looked more like a wadded-up piece of tinfoil. And even worse than that, there was no girl! This was really unbelievable. You need a girl to (a) faint and (b) be carried off to service the improbable lusts of the Tenta-Men. Otherwise how are you gonna reach that 5,000 word limit?
But the worst part of all was the ending. I will give the American public this: it took every writer, editor and critic completely by surprise. Even the really gonzo ones, like Phil Farmer and Roger Zelazny, didn't see it coming. And yet, in retrospect it worked perfectly within the confines of its reality. Which, unfortunately, was also our reality.
I never got a chance to meet Neil Armstrong, but remind me to tell you about the time Buzz Aldrin came to our house. It was a hot, still, August day, and yet somehow, I swear to God, he'd arranged for a breeze to be blowing on him, enough to rustle his hair slightly as he stood on the front porch, arms akimbo, and said, "Hi, I'm Buzz Aldrin."
I still don't know.
This was in 1984, and by this time we'd all of us, astronauts and authors alike, accepted the bitter truth; that we weren't going back to the moon anytime soon. In a way, it was almost better, because the reality of the mission was so much less. Instead of the ship from DESTINATION MOON, we had this bizarre little thing that would have looked complete only with a NIXON/FORD bumpersticker. We built a space station, which resembled the austere magnificent double wheel of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY in much the same way that a Big Daddy Roth creation resembled a Porsche 911. And it smelled like old socks. If there's one thing we can take away from all this, it's that style means nothing in space.
I don't know ... maybe if we'd paid a little less attention to getting there without any style at all, and tried getting at least one decent coffee table book out of the whole damn thing, people might have not had the one reaction to the space program that no one expected:
Maybe they wouldn't have gotten bored.
But Armstrong did his part. And, while doing it, achieved true unique-ness: now and forever the first Man On the Moon.
RIP.
I'm happy to say that, though I didn't get it at first, it didn't take me long because I had the proper cultural references. Think about it. The first two men who actually set foot on the moon ...? Maybe it'll help to imagine a multi-tentacular monster lurking behind the nearest rock. No? How about if they both have rayguns? Work with me!
All right, stop sulking. But you're gonna do a facepalm when I tell you --
The first man on the moon was named Neil Armstrong. Maybe you can come up with a name that sounds more quintessentially two-fisted and All American than that, but if you can my fedora's off to you, pal. Neil Armstrong isn't the name of an "astronaut" -- it's the name of a spaceman. A lean, muscular rocket jockey who knows the business end of a laser pistol, who's bronzed by alien suns, and who's on a first-name basis with the Queen of Outer Space. I mean, could it get any better?
Well, hard as it is to believe, yes it could. Because not only did the Commander (he had to have been a commander; there are some things that are just non-negotiable) have a name to strike fear into the cold, flinty hearts of space pirates everywhere, but his second in command was a feisty fella nicknamed -- wait for it -- "Buzz"! Okay, granted his last name wasn't "Lightyear", but that would've been too good. As it is, the dialogue practically writes itself:
"Smokin' rockets, Commander! Is that a Tenta-Man lurking behind that rock over there?"
"Yes it is, Cadet. Now remember what you learned back at Space Academy, Buzz; drill him right between the first pair of eyestalks ..."
"I'll try, but the real thing is sure different from the holos ...!"
They didn't get much else right, sad to say; instead of a sleek and silver rocket out of a Bonestell painting, the Lunar Landing Module looked more like a wadded-up piece of tinfoil. And even worse than that, there was no girl! This was really unbelievable. You need a girl to (a) faint and (b) be carried off to service the improbable lusts of the Tenta-Men. Otherwise how are you gonna reach that 5,000 word limit?
But the worst part of all was the ending. I will give the American public this: it took every writer, editor and critic completely by surprise. Even the really gonzo ones, like Phil Farmer and Roger Zelazny, didn't see it coming. And yet, in retrospect it worked perfectly within the confines of its reality. Which, unfortunately, was also our reality.
I never got a chance to meet Neil Armstrong, but remind me to tell you about the time Buzz Aldrin came to our house. It was a hot, still, August day, and yet somehow, I swear to God, he'd arranged for a breeze to be blowing on him, enough to rustle his hair slightly as he stood on the front porch, arms akimbo, and said, "Hi, I'm Buzz Aldrin."
I still don't know.
This was in 1984, and by this time we'd all of us, astronauts and authors alike, accepted the bitter truth; that we weren't going back to the moon anytime soon. In a way, it was almost better, because the reality of the mission was so much less. Instead of the ship from DESTINATION MOON, we had this bizarre little thing that would have looked complete only with a NIXON/FORD bumpersticker. We built a space station, which resembled the austere magnificent double wheel of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY in much the same way that a Big Daddy Roth creation resembled a Porsche 911. And it smelled like old socks. If there's one thing we can take away from all this, it's that style means nothing in space.
I don't know ... maybe if we'd paid a little less attention to getting there without any style at all, and tried getting at least one decent coffee table book out of the whole damn thing, people might have not had the one reaction to the space program that no one expected:
Maybe they wouldn't have gotten bored.
But Armstrong did his part. And, while doing it, achieved true unique-ness: now and forever the first Man On the Moon.
RIP.
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Rant
Every woo-woo snake charmer with two chakras to rub together has greeted the development of quantum mechanics with the same naked greed as that of a couple of starved Siberian tigers greeting the unexpected arrival, out on the frozen tundra, of a Craft Services truck. They all latch onto the same thing: quantum entanglement and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. The concept that subatomic particles are, among other things, "connected" through higher dimensions, so that one electron instantly "knows" what's been done to its twin, even though they're billions of lightyears apart, causes them unbridled ecstasy. "Consciousness is the key!" they bray. "The universe is me and I am it!"
These are the same people who believe that unicorns fart rainbows and that nice friendly spacemen dressed in the worst styles of the 70's would happily give us cosmic secrets if the nasty ol' government would just stop getting in their way. They believe that the universe is a happy, shiny and loving place that cares about us and tucks us in at night. They believe this with exactly the same fervor and intensity that led them to clap their hands as hard as they could when they were children to bring Tinkerbelle back to life, and with exactly the same dewy-eyed confidence that tells them that God answers prayers and that Jesus is real because he reincarnates periodically in a bit of cheese toast.
Well, good luck with that worldview. No doubt the dinosaurs that were swept up in the ejecta hurled skyward by the asteroid that nearly punched a hole through the world thought it was really cool to be the first sauroid saints lifted up to Heaven -- except that they probably had a hard time thinking anything at all, considering how thoroughly and completely dead they were.
My belief is that the only brittle, hard-nosed realists in all this are most likely the con artists like Chopra, who know the real score and are going Ommmm ... all the way to the bank.
Having trouble following my logic? Then riddle me this: Approximately 30 billion people have lived on this planet, and (presumably) died on it. Most of them inconsequential, to be sure, but some of them were bona fide geniuses. Think about that. Archimedes, Paracelsus, Galileo, Newton, Einstein --the one thing they have in common is death -- and, if the legends are true, revival on the other side.
So do you really believe that, with such an unbelievable brain trust working on the biggest question that has bedeviled humanity since Homo ergaster was a pup, the best communications device they've been able to put together so far is the Ouija Board?
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Ray
A bit after the fact, I know, but better late than never ....
Never bury your lead, they say, so -- Ray Bradbury's dead.
I never knew him that well; others, like Marc Zicree, knew him much better than I. I started losing my voice about the same time Marc was getting to know him, and I made no effort to ride on his coattails, because I couldn't see the point. Ray wasn't the sort of guy with whom one could spend long companionable silences with. Like Sidney Greenstreet in THE MALTESE FALCON, he liked talking to a man who liked to talk.
But I'll let others speak about that. I'll keep this memoir to what I knew about him.
What I remember most about Ray was his joy.
How exuberant, ebullient, and just plain gosh-wow over things he was. Not just things having to do with writing, but just about every damn thing in the world. Ray could rhapsodize over milk. He could get teary-eyed, not just over sunsets and kittens, but such admittedly unlikely things as the flensing of a whale. (He once wrote a poem about Ahab and Moby Dick, in which he took the relationship to ... unprecedented territories, and at one point got positively misty-eyed over, uh, a scene it's probably safe to assume Melville never envisioned. Of course, a lot of his audience was having the same reaction, though not, I think it's safe to say, for the same emotions. I've heard Ray referred to as the Proust of science fiction prose, and I can certainly see that. But if one were to call him the Wordsworth of sci-fi poetry, I don't think the comparison's completely invalid either).Nevertheless, I credit Ray with inspiring me to be a writer. He spoke at my high school once, and he so obviously loved what he did that I, who'd been waffling uneasily between being an FBI agent and a commercial jet pilot (or something equally absurd), left the assembly thoroughly and utterly convinced to do neither. I would cast my lot instead with the muse, and fuck her brains out. (Hey, don't blame me; it was Ray's line. He caught some hearty staff disapproval for it too, this being 1968, as well as a huge laugh and spontaneous applause.)
About 30 years later, when his HALLOWEEN TREE beat me out for a second Emmy, I wrote him a note to congratulate him, and also mentioned that bright storybook spring day when he had helped fix my course and steady my hand on the helm. I wish I could bring this thing to a proper conclusion by telling you about the nice reply I got. But I never heard back. Which is okay; it wasn't a callback for him. It was for me.
Adios, Ray... and thanks again.
Nevertheless, I credit Ray with inspiring me to be a writer. He spoke at my high school once, and he so obviously loved what he did that I, who'd been waffling uneasily between being an FBI agent and a commercial jet pilot (or something equally absurd), left the assembly thoroughly and utterly convinced to do neither. I would cast my lot instead with the muse, and fuck her brains out. (Hey, don't blame me; it was Ray's line. He caught some hearty staff disapproval for it too, this being 1968, as well as a huge laugh and spontaneous applause.)
About 30 years later, when his HALLOWEEN TREE beat me out for a second Emmy, I wrote him a note to congratulate him, and also mentioned that bright storybook spring day when he had helped fix my course and steady my hand on the helm. I wish I could bring this thing to a proper conclusion by telling you about the nice reply I got. But I never heard back. Which is okay; it wasn't a callback for him. It was for me.
Adios, Ray... and thanks again.
Nevertheless, I credit Ray with inspiring me to be a writer. He spoke at my high school once, and he so obviously loved what he did that I, who'd been waffling uneasily between being an FBI agent and a commercial jet pilot (or something equally absurd), left the assembly thoroughly and utterly convinced to do neither. I would cast my lot instead with the muse, and fuck her brains out. (Hey, don't blame me; it was Ray's line. He caught some hearty staff disapproval for it too, this being 1968, as well as a huge laugh and spontaneous applause.)
About 30 years later, when his HALLOWEEN TREE beat me out for a second Emmy, I wrote him a note to congratulate him, and also mentioned that bright storybook spring day when he had helped fix my course and steady my hand on the helm. I wish I could bring this thing to a proper conclusion by telling you about the nice reply I got. But I never heard back. Which is okay; it wasn't a callback for him. It was for me.
Adios, Ray... and thanks again.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Cannibalistic Humanoid Under-appreciated Ducks
Did you ever wonder why Pluto is Mickey's dog, but Goofy, who's also a dog, is on a more or less equal footing? (This what you get when I wake up with insomnia.) When I was a kid, this used to bug the hell out of me. I count it as one of the triumphs of my life that I was eventually able to learn the answer straight from the mouse's mouth, as it were. Once I was working for Disney animation I had to climb a surprisingly long way up the chain of command to find out; eventually Jeffrey Katzenberg himself told me. And, as is the case with most things Disney, there's a certain twisted logic to it.
It seems that, among the various sentient beings of the Disneyverse, (by which I mean those created by the studio, not purchased as outside properties such as Baloo the Bear or Winnie-the-Pooh -- who's also a bear, come to think [I prefer to read into this merely the fact that I'm typing this at 6 AM]), anyway, among the inhabitants of Duckburg (and before you ask, I have no fucking idea if Mickey lives in Duckburg or the neighboring hamlet of Mouseville [which I believe I just made up]. For all I know, he lives in Secaucus), so anyway, the way it works is simply thus:
It doesn't matter what kind of animal you are in a Disney cartoon; if you are bipedal, can talk and wear clothes, then PETA be damned; you can own "lower" animals and do with them as you will.
This answers a lot of questions. Goofy, for instance, is nominally a dog. But he's bipedal (albeit with horrendous posture), wears clothes (sort of; interestingly, he's one of the few inhabitants whose ensemble includes pants), and speaks a colorful patois of English. All of which evidence his canine antecedents while simultaneously showcasing his cultural and evolutionary superiority over Pluto, who's also a dog, but who goes on all fours and wears naught but a dog collar (and to all those with fingers poised gleefully over their keyboards who live in West Hollywood, the Castro District, or other places like them -- you're only muddying the waters; shut up).
As I said, this clears up a lot of questions. But it also opened -- for me, anyway -- a veritable Matryoshka of Pandora's boxes. None of which I intend to go into now, save to note that I'm still not at peace -- and most likely never will be -- with the horror I felt as a seven-year old when I opened an Uncle Scrooge comic and witnessed the entire McDuck clan -- Scrooge, Donald, Daisy, and the trifecta of nephews -- sitting down with drooling beaks, utensils firmly gripped in feathered fists, and napkins knotted around wattled necks, to a turkey dinner with all the trimmings.
It seems that, among the various sentient beings of the Disneyverse, (by which I mean those created by the studio, not purchased as outside properties such as Baloo the Bear or Winnie-the-Pooh -- who's also a bear, come to think [I prefer to read into this merely the fact that I'm typing this at 6 AM]), anyway, among the inhabitants of Duckburg (and before you ask, I have no fucking idea if Mickey lives in Duckburg or the neighboring hamlet of Mouseville [which I believe I just made up]. For all I know, he lives in Secaucus), so anyway, the way it works is simply thus:
It doesn't matter what kind of animal you are in a Disney cartoon; if you are bipedal, can talk and wear clothes, then PETA be damned; you can own "lower" animals and do with them as you will.
This answers a lot of questions. Goofy, for instance, is nominally a dog. But he's bipedal (albeit with horrendous posture), wears clothes (sort of; interestingly, he's one of the few inhabitants whose ensemble includes pants), and speaks a colorful patois of English. All of which evidence his canine antecedents while simultaneously showcasing his cultural and evolutionary superiority over Pluto, who's also a dog, but who goes on all fours and wears naught but a dog collar (and to all those with fingers poised gleefully over their keyboards who live in West Hollywood, the Castro District, or other places like them -- you're only muddying the waters; shut up).
As I said, this clears up a lot of questions. But it also opened -- for me, anyway -- a veritable Matryoshka of Pandora's boxes. None of which I intend to go into now, save to note that I'm still not at peace -- and most likely never will be -- with the horror I felt as a seven-year old when I opened an Uncle Scrooge comic and witnessed the entire McDuck clan -- Scrooge, Donald, Daisy, and the trifecta of nephews -- sitting down with drooling beaks, utensils firmly gripped in feathered fists, and napkins knotted around wattled necks, to a turkey dinner with all the trimmings.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Universal Thoughts
It has always amazed me that, considering what pale, insubstantial wraiths we are, we can still feel as intensely as we do. We are all of us, less than the faintest wisps of ephemerality; 99.99999999% of our bodies are, quite literally nothing -- nothing at all, not even air. consider the simplest of all atoms: hydrogen. the nucleus is a lone proton, orbited by a solitary electron. If that nucleus were the size of your thumbnail, the electron would orbit it a quarter mile away, making that single hydrogen atom roughly the size of a baseball stadium, and the vast majority of it -- nothing.
And yet, we feel.
We are revenants, but at least we occupy a world of comforting solidity, right? Wrong. When the Big Bang blew, it created matter and antimatter in very close to equal amounts, and thus both atoms and anti-atoms immediately and enthusiastically launched into wholesale mutual slaughter. When the dust settled, one atom out of every two billion was left whole. In other words, for every billion atoms of antimatter, the primordial explosion had created a billion and one atoms of matter. So right from the start all the cosmic matter was dramatically thinned. Now, nearly fifteen billion years later, the universe is still an anemic shadow of a far more robust initial state. Furthermore, even those pale scraps of plasma and interstellar gas make up only a tiny part of the "real" universe.
And yet, we care.
Ghosts we indeed are, living in a universe just as ghostly, a world that makes the pink, fluffy clouds of Heaven itself look like a WWII concrete pillbox. The matter we interact with (baryonic matter, it's called), comprises less than 5% of reality. The overwhelming majority consists of two other matter/energy states, called, with stunning originality, dark matter and dark energy. We can't touch, see, hear or smell the reality of the material universe, because the stuff doesn't interact with electromagnetism. it only shows up indirectly, through gravitational waves.
And yet, we love.
On top of all this, we are truly creatures of a day; our time spent in this world is no longer than a breath, a blink, a barely noticeable instant when held against the turnings of the cosmos. It seems impossible to have and hold anything, so quickly do we go from wombs of flesh to wombs of dust.
And yet we feel.
And yet we care.
And yet we love.
And yet, we feel.
We are revenants, but at least we occupy a world of comforting solidity, right? Wrong. When the Big Bang blew, it created matter and antimatter in very close to equal amounts, and thus both atoms and anti-atoms immediately and enthusiastically launched into wholesale mutual slaughter. When the dust settled, one atom out of every two billion was left whole. In other words, for every billion atoms of antimatter, the primordial explosion had created a billion and one atoms of matter. So right from the start all the cosmic matter was dramatically thinned. Now, nearly fifteen billion years later, the universe is still an anemic shadow of a far more robust initial state. Furthermore, even those pale scraps of plasma and interstellar gas make up only a tiny part of the "real" universe.
And yet, we care.
Ghosts we indeed are, living in a universe just as ghostly, a world that makes the pink, fluffy clouds of Heaven itself look like a WWII concrete pillbox. The matter we interact with (baryonic matter, it's called), comprises less than 5% of reality. The overwhelming majority consists of two other matter/energy states, called, with stunning originality, dark matter and dark energy. We can't touch, see, hear or smell the reality of the material universe, because the stuff doesn't interact with electromagnetism. it only shows up indirectly, through gravitational waves.
And yet, we love.
On top of all this, we are truly creatures of a day; our time spent in this world is no longer than a breath, a blink, a barely noticeable instant when held against the turnings of the cosmos. It seems impossible to have and hold anything, so quickly do we go from wombs of flesh to wombs of dust.
And yet we feel.
And yet we care.
And yet we love.
Friday, February 10, 2012
East Meets West
Here's the thing: I have Parkinson's Disease.
Had it for about 20 years. I've been able to slow its progress considerably by a combination of medicine and electrodes placed deep in my sub-thalamus. But I'm running out of options that western medicine can provide, and so I'm considering alternatives.
I've read numerous articles on the therapeutic effects of Tai Chi, Qi Gong and the like. Although I'm a writer of fantastic fiction (used to be mostly TV; now it's mostly movies and books), I'm a dyed-in-the-wool skeptic, pragmatist and atheist. These might seem contradictory positions, but they're really not. (Think of it as cognitive dissidence.) I make a decent living writing about little green men, vampires, ghosts, etc. But it's all make believe. I don't believe any of it. I'm just grateful for whatever genetic quirk gave me the ability to make up stories and get paid to do it.
But the wonderful thing about science is that, unlike dogmatism, it thrives on being proven wrong. We learn from doing, screwing up, doing a face-palm and trying again -- until we get it right. I have no vested interest in believing in God, but on the other hand, I have nothing against being proven wrong. If Jesus Christ staged his big comeback tonight, I'd probably think -- well, probably at first I'd think he was, as John Lennon said, someone dressed up like Jesus, but after he'd, say, produced a few thousand loaves and fishes out of a bag of Long John Silver's, I might be inclined to admit that he was working some decent mojo. And if he finished up the evening's entertainment by lobbing a few lightning bolts up the collective asses of Messrs Romney, Gingrich and Santorum, I might have to admit that I may have misjudged Son'o'God.
I'm not planning on losing any sanity points over it, however. In terms of cosmic horror Jesus can't hold a votive candle to Cthulhu, and in terms of sheer cosmic silliness it's hard to imagine any religion that rises in risability higher than Scientology, though evangelical Christianity comes about as close as any belief can. Where else but in churches deep within the Mason-Dixon singularity can one find nominal adults willing to fight for their belief that The Flintstones is a documentary?
So, as I've said, I intend to give the East a shot. There's a Tai Chi class within five minutes of my place (of course there is; this is California.) I'll let you know how it all works out.
Had it for about 20 years. I've been able to slow its progress considerably by a combination of medicine and electrodes placed deep in my sub-thalamus. But I'm running out of options that western medicine can provide, and so I'm considering alternatives.
I've read numerous articles on the therapeutic effects of Tai Chi, Qi Gong and the like. Although I'm a writer of fantastic fiction (used to be mostly TV; now it's mostly movies and books), I'm a dyed-in-the-wool skeptic, pragmatist and atheist. These might seem contradictory positions, but they're really not. (Think of it as cognitive dissidence.) I make a decent living writing about little green men, vampires, ghosts, etc. But it's all make believe. I don't believe any of it. I'm just grateful for whatever genetic quirk gave me the ability to make up stories and get paid to do it.
But the wonderful thing about science is that, unlike dogmatism, it thrives on being proven wrong. We learn from doing, screwing up, doing a face-palm and trying again -- until we get it right. I have no vested interest in believing in God, but on the other hand, I have nothing against being proven wrong. If Jesus Christ staged his big comeback tonight, I'd probably think -- well, probably at first I'd think he was, as John Lennon said, someone dressed up like Jesus, but after he'd, say, produced a few thousand loaves and fishes out of a bag of Long John Silver's, I might be inclined to admit that he was working some decent mojo. And if he finished up the evening's entertainment by lobbing a few lightning bolts up the collective asses of Messrs Romney, Gingrich and Santorum, I might have to admit that I may have misjudged Son'o'God.
I'm not planning on losing any sanity points over it, however. In terms of cosmic horror Jesus can't hold a votive candle to Cthulhu, and in terms of sheer cosmic silliness it's hard to imagine any religion that rises in risability higher than Scientology, though evangelical Christianity comes about as close as any belief can. Where else but in churches deep within the Mason-Dixon singularity can one find nominal adults willing to fight for their belief that The Flintstones is a documentary?
So, as I've said, I intend to give the East a shot. There's a Tai Chi class within five minutes of my place (of course there is; this is California.) I'll let you know how it all works out.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
#1 In A Very Occasional Series: "How To Tell If You're Really A Writer"
One huge and undeniable difference between men and women can be summed up in a single word: shopping. With only rare exceptions (which sometimes, but not always, are linked to sexual preference), women love to shop, and men hate it. Give a woman a credit card with an asymptotic limit and parachute her onto Rodeo Drive, and you might as well have dynamited the Pearly Gates for her. On the other hand, point out to a man that the seat of his jeans has been worn to gossamer transparency, or that his T-shirt has so many rips and holes in it that one can barely make out the IMPEACH NIXON slogan it sports, and insist that he come along for at least an attempt at building a new wardrobe, and chances are that he'll cling to every doorjamb and article of furniture within reach with the howling desperation of a Warner Bros. cartoon cat about to be thrown from his place on the warm hearth out into the unforgiving night.
Myself, I belong to the latter tribe. I have at least one sweater that I bought in Wales over 30 years ago that's still intermittently wearable, and two pairs of Levi's 501s with 32" waists that still fit -- as long as I don't breathe. The Southern California climate is such that I can get by with shorts and a T-shirt, and I'm perfectly happy to do so, as long as I can avoid any stores that contain primarily cotton and denim. This anathema extends to just about any product -- with the notable exception of CDs, DVDs, and other media, which I usually buy online. In short, I hate shopping for just about anything.
With one notable exception -- and that leads us back to the slugline to this piece.
Put me in Staples, Office Depot, or just about any stationery store or anyplace where they sell writing or office supplies, and I immediately become a ten-year old in a candy store. I've been known to actually drool in such places (although that's probably the Parkinson's). I've literally had palpitations standing in the various aisles. It's not a pretty sight.
But it seems to me a fairly good indication that, at least as far as physical accoutrements are concerned, I love the trappings of a writer. I even love actually venturing physically from my lair and going to such stores.
And, best of all, it's all deductible.
Myself, I belong to the latter tribe. I have at least one sweater that I bought in Wales over 30 years ago that's still intermittently wearable, and two pairs of Levi's 501s with 32" waists that still fit -- as long as I don't breathe. The Southern California climate is such that I can get by with shorts and a T-shirt, and I'm perfectly happy to do so, as long as I can avoid any stores that contain primarily cotton and denim. This anathema extends to just about any product -- with the notable exception of CDs, DVDs, and other media, which I usually buy online. In short, I hate shopping for just about anything.
With one notable exception -- and that leads us back to the slugline to this piece.
Put me in Staples, Office Depot, or just about any stationery store or anyplace where they sell writing or office supplies, and I immediately become a ten-year old in a candy store. I've been known to actually drool in such places (although that's probably the Parkinson's). I've literally had palpitations standing in the various aisles. It's not a pretty sight.
But it seems to me a fairly good indication that, at least as far as physical accoutrements are concerned, I love the trappings of a writer. I even love actually venturing physically from my lair and going to such stores.
And, best of all, it's all deductible.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Call Any Vegetable ...
(Which is pretty much how I'm feeling these days) ... Or ask any writer who's freelance about the joys of freelancery. And they'll tell you, if they're honest, about the phenomenon known as "feast or famine."
There are times when the phone doesn't ring. (Or vibrate, or squeal like a pig, or play the opening from Ravel's Bolero, or do any one of a thousand other bizarre novelty tones that are supposed to charm other people, but instead generally just ensure that you get the entire seat to yourself even during rush hour.) No one wants to talk to you, to hear you pitch those great ideas in your head, like Neville Chamberlain being trapped in the bunker with Hitler or King Arthur revived as a 21st Century superhero, or even General U.S. Grant getting a talking horse just before Shiloh, which is comic GOLD, those Philistines! (especially with Justin Timberlake as Grant, trust me, it's not like he's fending off casting agents with a pointed stick these days.)
And no one calls. And no one calls. And no one calls, day after day, until you're perfectly willing your own self to squeal like a pig if it'll guarantee you an assignment. You're at the point of desperation where you'll stand on a street corner and hold up a sign that says "Will
work for Disney."
And then the phone rings. It's not much money, and even less time, but you'll do it, if only to alleviate the boredom. And then the phone rings again. And again. And you grab all the work you can, because who knows when it stops this time it might never ring again, and finally,
when the smoke clears you realize you're standing atop a mountain of assignments like Conan, only that ain't a naked Brythunian slave girl wrapped around your leg; it's a killer deadline.
So -- guesss which state I'm in right now.
There are times when the phone doesn't ring. (Or vibrate, or squeal like a pig, or play the opening from Ravel's Bolero, or do any one of a thousand other bizarre novelty tones that are supposed to charm other people, but instead generally just ensure that you get the entire seat to yourself even during rush hour.) No one wants to talk to you, to hear you pitch those great ideas in your head, like Neville Chamberlain being trapped in the bunker with Hitler or King Arthur revived as a 21st Century superhero, or even General U.S. Grant getting a talking horse just before Shiloh, which is comic GOLD, those Philistines! (especially with Justin Timberlake as Grant, trust me, it's not like he's fending off casting agents with a pointed stick these days.)
And no one calls. And no one calls. And no one calls, day after day, until you're perfectly willing your own self to squeal like a pig if it'll guarantee you an assignment. You're at the point of desperation where you'll stand on a street corner and hold up a sign that says "Will
work for Disney."
And then the phone rings. It's not much money, and even less time, but you'll do it, if only to alleviate the boredom. And then the phone rings again. And again. And you grab all the work you can, because who knows when it stops this time it might never ring again, and finally,
when the smoke clears you realize you're standing atop a mountain of assignments like Conan, only that ain't a naked Brythunian slave girl wrapped around your leg; it's a killer deadline.
So -- guesss which state I'm in right now.
Friday, December 23, 2011
A Long, Long Receding Crawl Ago, In A Bookstore Not Terribly Far (I Hope) Away ...
The latest STAR WARS book (STAR WARS: Shadow Games), has been out for a month, and is already on the NYT Bestseller list. This, obviously, makes me happy. I just got Maya's 1st draft of The Last Jedi, which is reading great so far (about halfway through). And another book project is going quite well also.
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