Something was bothering her for days. She didn't actually know what it was. It was not the food. She knew that well and her belly was not itching her. Not a single bit. Mom was giving her delicious portions every day and she was feeling healthier and stronger every morning. It was not the air or water either. The forest and all three plains outside were.. Like the usual.. Beautiful and green with lots of life emerging from the trees and rocks. Even the ocean was calm and perfect the other day when she foolishly followed her older brother and his two peers to the cliff. They mocked her all the way down the stream and even took all her snacks she had and found on the way. No. What she started to experience just the other day after the trip to the cliffs was some sort of discomfort she never experienced before. Nobody could harm her in the forest. It was not that. Not even on the plains. She was always following her mother and brother during all their travels and never got into an
Something was bothering her for days.
She didn't actually know what it was. It was not the food. She knew that well and her belly was not itching her. Not a single bit. Mom was giving her delicious portions every day and she was feeling healthier and stronger every morning. It was not the air or water either. The forest and all three plains outside were.. Like the usual.. Beautiful and green with lots of life emerging from the trees and rocks. Even the ocean was calm and perfect the other day when she foolishly followed her older brother and his two peers to the cliff. They mocked her all the way down the stream and even took all her snacks she had and found on the way.
No. What she started to experience just the other day after the trip to the cliffs was some sort of discomfort she never experienced before. Nobody could harm her in the forest. It was not that. Not even on the plains. She was always following her mother and brother during all their travels and never got into any trouble. It was something in mom's eyes ever since the northern plain got into flames after those fireballs fell from the sky. They were almost like thunder only slower and different in noise they made. And they came from clear sky. It was nothing serious really and even looked beautiful when one ball hit the ground and the other exploded above the forest into thousands of chunks and fire showers in the same time.
Everything calmed now. They made little damage and all the fires were now gone but still ever since then everything started to seem different. Fireworks from the skies didn't stop really but there were no explosions like the other day. It looked like all the fireballs couldn't reach the ground and instead made red and orange patterns high above the forest. It was beautiful. And spooky in the same time. She started to feel it as well. She couldn't hear all those loud noises from birds and small animals for two days. Even the waterfall just next to their playground sounded quiet and eerie. And the most of all unusual things happened was her father. He returned last night. She saw him only twice last season and all the timidness she emotioned last couple of days, ever since the sky fire, with him around, started to grow into real fear.
The very next day they moved out. Just before the dawn, she and her brother started following their parents. They never ran that fast. They never ran in the group at all before. Even others joined. The other species and relatives. Some, she recognized from.. well.. mom's breakfast portions. But she wasn't hungry that morning at all and only tried to keep fast pace with her family toward the hills. It seemed that their father were taking them to the high ground and all those peaks she dreamed to visit someday.
And then it started. She heard something so loud she thought there was no such thing in existence. And she knew the bolts and thunders well. The ground started to move. In all directions. The rocks and boulders started to fall from the peaks. And in that very moment she did something she thought she would never do. The fear was gone in an instant and only pure curiosity emerged her tick skin. She took tree long jumps and climbed the sharp edge toward the only place on the cliff with clear view toward the ocean. She even used her tiny arms to balance her inproportional body.
On the horizon there was a stream of rocks coming from the sky. Just like the one that, the other day, exploded above the northern plain and lighted a forest fire. Only bigger. Much bigger. They were hitting the ocean one after another and making water to glow. All the sudden it stopped being beautiful and colorful. Only frightening and terrorful. And then she saw their father. Enormous rock. No. Gigantic boulder. No. The mountain. Yes. Just like the one they were climbing at right now.
At the end of the trail.
When it hit the water, all the fire and all the glow, all the thunder and roar, everything what she just saw and heard for the first time in her life faded out into one pure and ultimate silence. All the sentiment and fear accumulating last week disappeared instantly and merged into one single emotion.
Something new and pure. Something behind the nature. Something raw.
"At some point, the gluons will no longer be able to hold the quarks together, and the hadrons will decay. Which will mean the end of matter in this universe." - Albert Einstein 1 As it seems, in our universe, nothing is made to last. Eventually, everything gets old and dies or changes or decays into something else and I am not refereeing to the life forms only but all matter in the cosmos. For all we know this might not be true within our own macro world alone but also deep below the same goes for particles in the quantum realm as well. The fact is that everything in the universe have a tendency to achieve the lowest energy state and to finally rest within a stable system even if that means going through various changes or decays. In the quantum world, this could be true for the Higgs field as well. According to Hawking, if it becomes meta-stable, the vacuum decay bubble will emerge and consume everything in order to eventually reach the lowest energy state possible. For
"At some point, the gluons will no longer be able to hold the quarks together, and the hadrons will decay. Which will mean the end of matter in this universe." - Albert Einstein 1
As it seems, in our universe, nothing is made to last. Eventually, everything gets old and dies or changes or decays into something else and I am not refereeing to the life forms only but all matter in the cosmos. For all we know this might not be true within our own macro world alone but also deep below the same goes for particles in the quantum realm as well. The fact is that everything in the universe have a tendency to achieve the lowest energy state and to finally rest within a stable system even if that means going through various changes or decays. In the quantum world, this could be true for the Higgs field as well. According to Hawking, if it becomes meta-stable, the vacuum decay bubble will emerge and consume everything in order to eventually reach the lowest energy state possible. For Higgs field being everywhere in the universe this would mean instantaneous collapse of the whole universe and it's own ultimate change into new and ultimately alien environment with completely new set of laws of physic in the aftermath that could not be as friendly to the living beings as they are today.
But relax, this is just a theory - it might be wrong, nothing like it happened in previous 13,8 billion years (or did it?) and the quote from the beginning is not really formulated by the famous physicist. Well, fictitious Einstein did say it in the Phillip P. Peterson's 'Paradox', remarkable piece of science fiction driven by this scientific premise, but still, it might be something he would say if he was still alive today.
'Paradox' is relatively new novel series so I am not going to spoil the content but to really understand how vacuum decay relates to the well known Fermi's paradox or to better understand aliens' actions towards Earth and other star systems throughout universe I'd warmly recommend the read. As a science fiction fan for years and decades I could only say that I didn't stumble to the better science fiction in relation to concepts such as Dyson spheres, quantum mechanics, fusion engine, antimatter propulsion, warp drives, creation of Big Bang and inflationary space, virtual reality of enormous proportions, wormholes travel and communication... The list is going on and I can only speculate what is inside the third book that has just released (unfortunately, due to my illiteracy in German language I'll have to wait for the summer and it's scheduled translation in English). Anyway, this was one of rare book series with sequel even more interesting than the first book with perfect connected endings in both of them.
The idea of vacuum decay behind Peterson novels for the solution of Fermi's paradox is indeed new in scientific background but surely there is more logic we can think of and apply to the absence of aliens and the idea more than half an century old in recent years is getting renewed attention. What I am referring to is the simulation theory and/or holographic principle. It is triggered by the very research of black holes and information paradox, which states that physical information can be lost and swallowed by black holes despite quantum mechanics postulate that nothing, including information, can ever be lost, only transferred from one form to another. One of the solution for the paradox I discussed while ago with question in post title 'Are We Holograms?' and it answered the Fermi's paradox perfectly.
However and to get back to science fiction, on several occasion in the past, I mentioned "The Thirteenth Floor", the movie that portrays so far the best story about simulation of everything in existence. I don't know why, but I never read the backstory about this great film and especially for this post I went to check where the script came from in the first place and discovered that it was loosely based on the book called "Simulacron-3" written by Daniel F. Galouye way back in 1964. Needless to say, I downloaded the copy and liked it very, very much. Considering the year and the fact that it was written in the dawn of digital computers, the details and sophistication of the story was amazing. In relation to the Fermi's paradox, if we are indeed living in a simulated world created by aliens themselves and we all are nothing more than just a bunch of artificial intelligence characters in the game then the absence of other intelligent forms becomes clear. Or we will meet them when they become programmed and inserted in the simulation. Anytime now.
Next in line of the fictitious solution for the Fermi's paradox on the first glance is not something that much unthinkable. But if we reason about communications over long distances in space, calling the ET and/or receiving a message from aliens from deep space is not as easy as we might think. By using our current technology, that is. The most obvious is SETI project that was founded half a century ago based on only monitoring electromagnetic radiation in search for ET broadcast that after that many years of looking for the signal from the above failed to find anything so far.
The most interesting and one of the first science fiction in the this realm was Carl Sagan's 'Contact' with aliens managed to receive the Earth's earliest TV broadcast 25 light years away, decoded it and sent it back into SETI's antennas. Unfortunately, even though this looks much more plausible than vacuum decay or giant simulation it is really not. Engineering ans science behind are cruel. To broadcast anything at all in electromagnetic spectrum, signal must be focused and powerful enough to reach the destination without dissipation of the signal or to avoid for the data to be embedded in too much noise on the way or to experience path loss during spreading out over long distances. Our EM broadcasts from Earth are meant for Earth only (or to the Moon on occasion or two in the past) and they are not powerful enough to reach even closest stars without serious signal lost. To get weak transmissions like that, aliens around Vega might need solar system wide antennas to detect UHF broadcasts from us. The same goes for SETI on Earth, it is unlikely we will ever get anything that is not narrow, focused and aimed directly toward us. Nevertheless, ''Contact' will always stay on my physical and digital shelves for being one of the best science fiction in the history of the genre.
At least for this post, the last and final obstacle with life forms swarming the vast space throughout universe(s) is ... the life itself and it's potential limitations. Organic life based on carbon or something else exotic to us could be fragile and short in general. One small asteroid strike on the planet in Goldilocks zone and poof ... Everything dies and resets. Billions of years of evolution goes into oblivion in cosmic second. Even if major extinction events miraculously avoid the intelligent species they might be destined to destroy themselves at the end of the path. Even more unthinkable scenarios we are still not aware of yet can pop to the equation. One of the obstacles could be that life could exist only in networked scenarios or to be precise it could only work and evolve, more or less, in a form of a giant hive mind in relation to the mother planet. If that's true there could be a limit in distance for a small number of individuals to leave their world where they would ultimately loose connection to the hive and die. We never sent anyone or anything live behind moon orbit so if this is true, the border of life could be anywhere beyond that.
I am not sure that Arthur C. Clarke had this in mind when he wrote 'Rendezvous with Rama' back then in 1973. Probably not. However, it was not far from common sense that in this unthinkable scenario, in order to sail toward the stars the only way could be done is to build enormous space ships and giant cities that could carry everybody to the one way journey. There are countless hazards for that kind of travel and something along the way might happen to the people who originally populated Rama in the beginning. If we add to the story ultimate laws of physics and issues with limited speed of travel, vast distances between stars and sparse sources when it comes to little things like food and fuel, 'the hive mind' problem could be another perfect solution to the paradox to consider.
But let's stop here with imagining all potential reasons why we still haven't met ET. If I would like only to spice it up with more unthinkable reasons it would not be that hard. Just think about "Zoo Hypothesis" in which we are created and observed by aliens in their science fair experiment or the theory that we are first intelligent civilization to emerge so far or there is 'The Great Filter' that limits intelligent life species to reach the potential to dive into stars.
In the end, we could be all wrong. Evolution of species throughout universe might not be headed toward stars at all. Perhaps we have to reset our minds and look elsewhere, no matter how strange it sounds.
You know that feeling with reading novels when your bookmark location is in the second half of the book and you find yourself turning pages faster and faster in order to find what happens next? If your reading interests coincide with mine, the most likely case is that you are reading either science fiction, spy or fast pace action thrillers or good and old adventure stories filled with espionage and politics in the background. Well, that was before.. Nowadays, if I wanted all that combined in a single novel, there's a new sub-genre called technothrillers and with some of them, especially with new authors in the self-publishing realm and in almost all occasions I found myself turning pages even faster. Three of those great technothrillers you could find presented in this blog post. The premises are extraordinary and all of them borrowed from science fiction: smart robotic nano particles enhancing human bodies, evil artificial intelligence operating Darknet and one extraordinar
You know that feeling with reading novels when your bookmark location is in the second half of the book and you find yourself turning pages faster and faster in order to find what happens next? If your reading interests coincide with mine, the most likely case is that you are reading either science fiction, spy or fast pace action thrillers or good and old adventure stories filled with espionage and politics in the background.
Well, that was before.. Nowadays, if I wanted all that combined in a single novel, there's a new sub-genre called technothrillers and with some of them, especially with new authors in the self-publishing realm and in almost all occasions I found myself turning pages even faster. Three of those great technothrillers you could find presented in this blog post. The premises are extraordinary and all of them borrowed from science fiction: smart robotic nano particles enhancing human bodies, evil artificial intelligence operating Darknet and one extraordinary idea of a teleportation based on the time travel.
Let's start with nano-scaled interface between human brain and computers. It was always a holly grail to make this efficient ever since the invention of the first computer. Even now to create this post I am using the old fashion keyboard to type the letters, checking for typos, taking care of the grammar and rolling the mouse around the table for lots of other commanding purposes. "Interface" by Tony Batton is giving us all potential outcomes of the system without all those helping gadgets only by using nano particles with remote access to everything with CPU and with the thriller plot that is in one word - outstanding. I will only add that I touched the icon for the sequel purchase just couple of moments after I finish the book.
For the next technothriller in line these three reasons were enough for me to hit the download button: Dark Web&Net layers of the internet, villain AI and automated corporations. It was amazing how all this, not so hard to imagine, near future inspired Matthew Mather to create this astonishing novel named "Darknet". Simply put, I felt that all what's happening in this techno adventure was as real as in any ordinary thrillers. This reality in one way or another is really knocking our doors, especially the part with automated corporations with no need for humans in roles of CEOs, CMOs, CTOs and all the other C?Os. The scary part is that we even don't need supreme AI to take over, just advanced automation. Thriller part of the book is as perfect as the premise itself. Enough said.
Last, but not least, comes the boldest Scifi premise in Douglas E. Richards' "Split Second". While at first it is not immediately comprehensible how time travel can be used for teleportation and then for entire thriller story, it is quite simple really. I don't really like to spoil the book here, especially since the author kept the details from the reader for a big portion of pages but I have to say that it is ingenious idea. I will just give you a hint to think about it - we are living in a universe with four dimensions by its nature, three spatial ones and time as the fourth. If we move along one dimension, i.e. up and down, we are not really moving left or right or forward or backward. We would be only using one spatial dimension and travel forward in time. The other two spatial coordinates would stay the same. Similarly, the question from the book was, what if we would be able to use only time dimension and move just a fraction of the second forward or backward in time and NOT using spatial dimensions by doing so? Where exactly would our spatial coordinates be AFTER the time travel? Where everything else would be after our arrival? If you are intrigued, this book is definitely for you.
To summarize this spoil-less review and even though I liked and enjoyed all the stories the same, the plausibility of the background science fiction is always important to me and with these three, "Darknet" is maybe something we could witness within our lifespans and just for that fact if I had to rate these three technothrillers, it would be my first choice of recommendation. As much as I would love to see something similar to the nano-sized robots floating our bloodstreams, "Interface" premise is still going to wait for better understanding our own intelligence and brain activity. The wait must also include significant nano-scaling of the CPUs as well. As for the time travel, if you ask me, this might stay in the fiction only for a very long time, perhaps even to stay in the realm of the impossible, but who knows, we might witness one day time travel of the information data somehow if sending any mass back in time proves to be unfeasible.
Nevertheless, I truly enjoyed all the twists in stories, all the characters and their interactions and development, writing styles and how everything unfolded at the end of all three novels. Warm recommendation goes without saying.
Game of Life is an old news, yes, but last Friday I stumbled to something special that forced me to relive the film once more. It was an extraordinary comic book creator called "Comic Life", made by plasq development company which gave me genuine pleasure last entire weekend. I was looking for a comic book related application before and even tried couple of them but they were all way below Comic Life and all the features it offers. I was immediately hooked by its nativity and simplicity and instantly thought about our short film. After very little hesitation I decided to give it a try and the result is sort of "Game of Life" made by "Comic (of) Life". After all, I had everything, the script, the video file and the free time last weekend and to create a comic book out of it was pretty straightforward. What I did was to open Game of Life in VLC player and to take couple of screenshots in order to import them into "Comic Life" and the rest is in
Game of Life is an old news, yes, but last Friday I stumbled to something special that forced me to relive the film once more. It was an extraordinary comic book creator called "Comic Life", made by plasq development company which gave me genuine pleasure last entire weekend. I was looking for a comic book related application before and even tried couple of them but they were all way below Comic Life and all the features it offers. I was immediately hooked by its nativity and simplicity and instantly thought about our short film. After very little hesitation I decided to give it a try and the result is sort of "Game of Life" made by "Comic (of) Life".
After all, I had everything, the script, the video file and the free time last weekend and to create a comic book out of it was pretty straightforward. What I did was to open Game of Life in VLC player and to take couple of screenshots in order to import them into "Comic Life" and the rest is in this post. Well, soon after, couple of screenshots turned into dozens and dozens into exactly 195 images but it all was worth the effort. Actually it wasn't without little post processing but I enjoyed it all the way. Last night we went to laser print the first copy and here it is below in Viktor's hands and in following preview (it needs some time to load).
If you have seen the film and liked it, and if you are a comic book fan like me, I am sure you will find it entertaining and visually, well I wouldn't say perfect, or even good, but for a first-timer effort pretty well. You can click on the preview to open a Game of Life PDF file in another tab and see it full screen or if you a perfectionist, below is a full resolution file with images in 300dpi you can download.
I am surely still thrilled of how good it went out and especially for entire entertainment I had during making it, so for a moment I thought it was even better then the video itself. But today, like they say, the breakfast is always smarter then last day dinner, I am not so sure. They are two different media and not comparable per se. While the motion pictures contain that magical aspect of living the story and especially in this case hearing the glitch and effects, it lacks the narrative which is the main feature of one graphic novel. Nevertheless, following is the embedded film as well so if you have some comments, feedback or anything to say I would love to hear it. Or better to read it.
The film script and now graphic novel(la), tells a story about a young boy who's following a glitch in the system, presented in real life as a firefly, through numerous portals to the place where he meets a man with the final orb, the artifact that seems to be a way in for full understanding of the life itself, its origin and the rules it is built on.
Game of Life is only a first episode in the series and I called it "Flares and Fireflies" and perhaps just an introduction in the larger plot, which we hope we will continue making in the future. Finally, if you missed the story of how we made it, the script and all the funny moments, they are all in post Game of Life and Cyclops of Peloponnese and of course what inspired me to make the story is in simple question: Is Life a Zero-Player Game? and John Conway's original zero player game.
I had once a parrot pet called Cheda. He was incredible - long ago during my university days Cheda was my only friend throughout countless sleepless nights when I was preparing for exams. He came very young and we spent lots of quality time together in my room. I never closed the cage gate so he was as free as possible and used entire flat to spread his wings. He belonged to a Australian cockatiel parrot breed or nymphicus hollandicus, how was his real scientific name. Nymphs are very popular for their ability to mimic human speech and of course for their talent to sing beautifully. Alex the African Grey Parrot* Cheda was no different and over time he learned a decent amount of words but what he performed the best was a tune from the movie " The Bridge on the River Kwai ". It was not a simple melody for a parrot and you had to see his frustration in all those moments when he missed the note - on a numerous occasions I had to pet him and telling him to take it easy - b
I had once a parrot pet called Cheda. He was incredible - long ago during my university days Cheda was my only friend throughout countless sleepless nights when I was preparing for exams. He came very young and we spent lots of quality time together in my room. I never closed the cage gate so he was as free as possible and used entire flat to spread his wings. He belonged to a Australian cockatiel parrot breed or nymphicus hollandicus, how was his real scientific name. Nymphs are very popular for their ability to mimic human speech and of course for their talent to sing beautifully.
Alex the African Grey Parrot*
Cheda was no different and over time he learned a decent amount of words but what he performed the best was a tune from the movie "The Bridge on the River Kwai". It was not a simple melody for a parrot and you had to see his frustration in all those moments when he missed the note - on a numerous occasions I had to pet him and telling him to take it easy - but eventually he perfected it to the level of supremacy and in fact, if there was a parrot singing contest back then, he would easily took the throne. Without a doubt, "the Kwai" song staid way too long in Cheda's repertoire and soon enough on one occasion I literally begged him to try and learn something else.
I had no idea if Cheda's native parrot language was any good, after all he was born in captivity and spent his entire life seeing other parrots only on TV. To give a little more thought on the matter, even in those custom captivities with multiple animals of the same species sharing the same cage, so to speak, I doubt that they are able to use their 'native language' so well, or at all. Think about this - if a human baby is isolated from any social activity from the moment of birth, how would he or she be different from other animal species? With nobody around to teach him/her the human language, the baby would grow up and communicate only with different sounds and gestures. The same as what appears to be the animal language. But do animals have a language similar to what we humans developed over the eons? To articulate sounds into words and sentences? To actually speak to each other? At least with those species considered to be more intelligent than others? Perhaps among not so many scientists out there who are endlessly researching animal verbal abilities, the best answers we can hope to get is from Denise Herzing, who are contentiously studying wild Atlantic spotted dolphins off the coast of the Bahamas for 28 years.
With technology maturing enough and with computers powerful to help analyzing dolphin language in real time, Denise and her team developed a wearable human-to-dolphin communication device called Cetacean Hearing and Telemetry (CHAT). With use of CHAT and tools like hydrophones (underwater microphone and speakers) we are now one step closer to the ultimate goal - understanding and talking to another species and in this case dolphins. Surely, understanding animal languages is not just about sounds in audio spectrum we evolved to use - it is proven fact that dolphins can hear up to 150kHz in the ultrasound spectrum and if we add non-verbal add-ons to the spoken language such as body gestures, it is more than obvious that Denise and other researches only scratched the surface of the ultimate goal toward the computer-based translators as we know them from scifi, especially the one described in the Star Trek universe.
Computers are surely already as fast as they are and digital data retrieved and converted from audio and visual inputs are already processable in real time. However, they are just tools - to make it really work we need to do all the programming and that requires understanding of what we are receiving in the data. To do that a breakthrough in understanding foreign languages without aids such as Rosetta stone is very much expected. The algorithm that would succeed to understand any language only by observation and monitoring. Perhaps the good idea would be to learn more from animals in that realm as well. There was one documented story of a dolphin called Moko appeared to "talk" to two stranded whales before leading them to safety. Two pygmy sperm whales got stuck at Mahia beach on the east coast of New Zealand's North Island and their desperate mood changed only when Moko arrived and as it seemed verbally advised them how to get to safety.
Denise Herzing & Wild Dolphin Project**
The ultimate goal is surely the supreme translator that will fit inside future smartphone with access to the database of all the languages in existence and not just those spoken by humans. Until that many more research is needed followed by at least one breakthrough in understanding interspecies communication of those based on Earth and probably beyond. I am more than positive that it will happen sooner than later, perhaps just like in the fiction stories such as "Breakthrough" novel series written by Michael C. Grumley.
I am finishing the fourth book in connected thriller story and all I can say is that "Breakthrough" is one amazing series fully based on the current interspecies communication research with addition of AI software capable of analyzing dolphin's and gorilla's verbal communications in real time and instant translations in both directions. I am surely not going to spoil the content but if you add decent science fiction twists neatly embedded into one great thriller, what Michael C. Grumley created is one of the best adventures I have read in a while.
Breakthrough novel series by Michael C. Grumley***
It goes without saying that I recommend warmly embedded Denise Herzing TED presentation of her current research within Wild Dolphin Project in Bahamas and Michael C. Grumley's novels. I learned a lot from both sources and definitely earned myself one more topic for the future reading habit. I could only imagine what it might mean if we could really talk to animals and I'd not be surprised if that would be really possible for more than several species and not only those considered with higher intelligence.
In almost all Cyberpunk masterpieces in literature, comics, movies, games or whatever media exposure we think of when it comes to this genre, the settings is familiar. Dark atmosphere in both social and technological aspect of the story with dystopian surroundings and thin distinguished line between all characters within, no matter whether they are good or bad. I can't tell exactly why, but despite all the prosaic backgrounds and used stereotypes, I actually like this literary movement, perhaps because of the fact that people can't be really divided into good and bad per se. We all are combination of all possible adjectives out there and their summary is what makes us what we are. Actually, this is more accurate and closer to the truth compared to the "normal" or "usual" fiction with its ordinary hero-villain relations and idealized characters. Of course, like in any other genre, there are many poor and unmentionable works but also couple of those masterpiec
In almost all Cyberpunk masterpieces in literature, comics, movies, games or whatever media exposure we think of when it comes to this genre, the settings is familiar. Dark atmosphere in both social and technological aspect of the story with dystopian surroundings and thin distinguished line between all characters within, no matter whether they are good or bad. I can't tell exactly why, but despite all the prosaic backgrounds and used stereotypes, I actually like this literary movement, perhaps because of the fact that people can't be really divided into good and bad per se. We all are combination of all possible adjectives out there and their summary is what makes us what we are. Actually, this is more accurate and closer to the truth compared to the "normal" or "usual" fiction with its ordinary hero-villain relations and idealized characters. Of course, like in any other genre, there are many poor and unmentionable works but also couple of those masterpieces, like in the world of movies, the famous Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner" or "Neuromancer" by William Gibson, in the world of science fiction novels.
Surely, the mantra of almost all Cyberpunk science fiction is advanced technology, placed in not so far future, exploiting the ultimate fate of humans along with major role of corporations that are developing and deploying it to the people. Actually one of existing nature of nowadays corporation-technology pair inspired me to start writing this post in the first place and perhaps some of you already guessed, it is current stage of social networks and the world they became after promising couple of years after their invention. In my case, the beginning of socializing the internet was inspired by establishing and experiencing new virtual friendships and new ways of spreading ideas along with simple feeling of participation in something futuristic and big. However, after years of maturing, it all went in very different direction. The endless stream of news feeds without quality conversations replaced the great main idea along with commercializing the entire thing. Today, with some of the networks, you can even buy likes or force people to read your piece not by its quality but instead by buying appropriate keywords. In past couple of years I found myself too many times in front of the screen rhetorically asking one simple question "Why, on Earth, am I reading this?" and often wondering what happened with my own interests and why I stopped searching them directly and instead waiting for them to appear on my customized social network feeds?
Further trouble with social networks, once joined, is that it is very hard or even impossible to leave. With some networks, deleting is not the option at all, only "deactivating" your presence and leave it intact on the company's servers for who knows what reasons. With others, you can't even deactivate your account without deleting other useful services that are too heavily connected. With all of those with actual "delete" button, you have no proof that your virtual past is really deleted and not just hidden behind the (fire)wall of corresponding corporation data center. In the aftermath, you have to ask yourself whether or not this behavior is the dawn of the Cyberpunk future we read in novels or just a curved present that is going to eventually fade out and be replaced by something new.
That's how I see the present day but to continue with the main topic, let's see how Cyberpunk authors deal with future evolution of the almighty internet and computers of the tomorrow. If we just glimpse to the technology behind the scenes of the Cyberpunk world, coated in heavy noirish detective story with a little or heavy emotional connection between main characters and with lots of not-necessarily futuristic weapons and tough fights, we can see one possible (or plausible if you will) vision of the near future where humans can easily become nothing more than just a slaves of advanced technology and mediocre lives within the system that can't be possible to escape from. Just take for instance Gibson's prediction of futuristic internet that will continue to "offer opportunity to waste time, to allow us to wander aimlessly, to daydream about the countless other lives, the other people, on the far sides of however many monitors in that post geographical meta-country we increasingly call home".
In the cyberpunk fictitious world, worldwide network would also be responsible for the very existence of the artificial intelligence, matrix like cyberspace with vivid virtual reality, robots and various machines that will be doing boring things for us, cyborgs with applicable neural interface with host computer augmented by nanotechnology and like in "Altered Carbon" by Richard Morgan, potential ability to digitize full personality or entire consciousness and store it for eternity into home computers or even other bodies. "Altered Carbon" came this year on Netflix in its amazing motion pictures version and it was extremely good. Imagining cyberpunk future by reading only is very hard, even for us technology geeks and TV shows or movies are always welcome, especially if they are made in such amazing production like the one behind Takeshi Kovacs adventures on futuristic Earth.
Now, interesting question is should we consider cyberpunk as a pure entertainment or we could safely put it in the same basket with original and genuine Science Fiction as it was in Jules Verne's or Arthur Clarke's time with expectation of some of its predictions to become true? Well, if you ask me, even though we are facing here with dark predictions rather than something good and promising for future generations, we simply can't rule it out. We are already taking technology for granted and if this trend continues I can't see how can we avoid all the dark sides that comes within. Invention of AI and nanotechnology along with super fast (quantum) computers will bring us inevitable breakthrough foundation for the society with humans not being the ultimate player anymore. However, I don't think we should be afraid from upcoming and remarkable inventions in science and technology. It will change our lives yes, but surely it doesn't have to be overnight or all bad. Actually, I think it will bring more benefits to us than side effects. So, no, I truly want to believe that dark settings from cyberpunk worlds will not become true. Not on a great scale, I don't think so. We will wait and see. Well, maybe not you and me, but some future generations for sure.
However, what I am more afraid of are humans themselves. The corporate part of the story. Many villains in cyberpunk stories are hidden behind the corporations and their agendas and the natural question pops to mind - is there any real danger of transferring the power from political system of nowadays democracies toward corporations and their pure financial interests? Or to put it in simple words, is it possible that in any futuristic world scenario, future companies compared to today's Google, Microsoft, Apple, Gazprom, Wal-Mart, China National Petroleum, Leading German Car Manufacturers, AT&T, or any other industry lords you can find in below reference page, can be strong enough to take over the power and completely restructure the world as we know it? I am sure this is very hard to imagine from current point of view, but I am still having goosebumps every time I give I thought toward the possible world in the future where current political system weakens enough to the point that it could becomes vulnerable to the ultimate collapse with all the corporations waiting with their jaws open and ready. If you browsed my blog before you probably already know that I blame politicians and politics in general for all the dark times in the history of mankind, but if I could think of anything even dangerous than that, then it would definitely be bunch of wealthy people behind the catchy corporate names with only profit in their minds and the only goal to grow even bigger and wealthier than all the competition.
There is a debate whether or not Holocene, the latest geological epoch is already finished with ultimate human impact on Earth's ecosystems, which started along with industrial and technological maturity in recent past. Many of us believe that new era, suitably named Anthropocene is what we are living in already. With technology rise, it looks like humans already changed fundamentally to the point of incompatibility with our distant ancestors. Perhaps we are indeed heading toward rapid evolutionary change, like in the latest Dan Brown's novel " Origin ", but this premise is way more suitable for another science fiction I have just watched (for the second time). I am sure that for all of you who like intelligent movies , a long anticipated sequel for "The Man from Earth" finally came and it, without a doubt, opened the Holocene-Anthropocene transition for John Oldman, a 14000 years old man, who also, like entire humanity, seemed to be going through the change
There is a debate whether or not Holocene, the latest geological epoch is already finished with ultimate human impact on Earth's ecosystems, which started along with industrial and technological maturity in recent past. Many of us believe that new era, suitably named Anthropocene is what we are living in already. With technology rise, it looks like humans already changed fundamentally to the point of incompatibility with our distant ancestors. Perhaps we are indeed heading toward rapid evolutionary change, like in the latest Dan Brown's novel "Origin", but this premise is way more suitable for another science fiction I have just watched (for the second time). I am sure that for all of you who like intelligent movies, a long anticipated sequel for "The Man from Earth" finally came and it, without a doubt, opened the Holocene-Anthropocene transition for John Oldman, a 14000 years old man, who also, like entire humanity, seemed to be going through the change of his own.
The movie distribution has just started and I am not going to spoil the content but I will tell you that after I watched it for the first time my initial thought was that there was many "I didn't see this coming" moments, looking from the point of view of the first film. After watching a movie for the second time, and I really needed to do it to clarify the image, my impressions didn't change a bit and I truly hope Richard Schenkman's wishes for the sequel TV show will come to life. I would definitely like to see what happens next. Perhaps little more science than religion could spice the script with additional direction. After all, Anthropocene epoch is a scientific achievement, which is maybe faster in development than what human society can handle at the same pace.
"The Man from Earth: Holocene" comes with one more twist when it comes to distribution of films in general. It uses donationware, a licensing model originates from the software publication but with one more add-on, to stay with the IT vocabulary. If you don't like it, you get full or partial refund of the small amount of money taken from your card. This is exactly what I speculated once before on the blog, back in 2012 when some sort of political attack was launched after Wikipedia. The story went toward anti-piracy war and distribution of movies and I complained that my time was not free to be wasted and after watching some movies I felt like I would like having some system that would provide some sort of refund for both of my lost time and money.
"The Man from Earth" and "The Man from Earth: Holocene" are now part of this donationware-like system and the distribution of both films is made by a fairly new website called MovieSaints and in their words, this is the place "where people can discover and watch compelling independent films from around the world. Viewers can support the filmmaker/creators if they like a film and get a refund if they don't like it." I would really like to see the success of this for the future and not just for small independent projects but also for the major franchises as well. After all, internet is also one of those scientific achievements that are forcing full closure of the Holocene epoch and this donation-refund system, if succeeded, could have power to dramatically reduce intermediaries and pirates.
Ever since the internet arrived and spread everywhere as the ultimate carrier of the intellectual property of various kind, along with came the business, politics and all the other side-effects and struggles intended for squeezing pennies or votes out from the little man behind the screen. Of course, when it all started, the stage was academic and most of the suits, whether they were hiding behind various business acronyms or political parties, stayed outside. The internet was small back then and not important from their point of view. It was also more honest in the nineties before the new millennium. Well... Almost. The web pirates were there from the beginning.
I remember I wanted to contribute with what I did best at the time and created several desktop applications for home users and small companies. It was nothing special, just couple of ActiveX libraries to help Internet Explorer to use email functionalities and sharing files more easily or, for example, a very nice application for FM radio stations - the producers' tool for organizing "on the air" time with custom lists of MP3 songs and commercials scheduled to be aired automatically without host or technician. For small applications like those, it was popular choice to go with "Shareware" distribution. It basically meant the applications were free but slightly limited in functionality and if small fee was paid, I was creating the unlock code that provided restrictions to go away. Even without that, all apps were useful enough so the end users with paying for the code were actually more sending the note that they are really satisfied with functionality. The unlock code was pretty simple - just small math equations that verified that serious of numbers corresponds with the math result. Imagine my surprise when almost day after I posted applications online, the pirate sites included license keys for all of them.
At the time, the internet market was restricted to IT only, but today, it became fast and almost everything could be stored and streamed, without obstacles from technical point of view. The obstacle now is the fact that businessmen and politicians joined the pirates. Today, if you wrote the book, composed the music, created the software, had a breakthrough in science, made a movie or contributed with any kind of intellectual property and you want to earn little money from the effort, you can't do it alone. Your significant share is taken by businessmen or stolen by pirates or taxed and/or forbidden by illogical laws that favor others. Not to mention lawyers and bankers that also parasitically live within the system and take the share with any transactions or legal processes.
In conclusion and to put everything in perspective, what people behind MovieSaints are trying to do, at least with small independent movies, and what was the main idea decade or two with shareware concept, now with addition of refund policy, is taking one step further. It does require a little bit of honesty to work. Something that is not the prime feature for the average human being but I am sure that, deep down, everybody possess it. Moreover, along with honesty for this system to work, it does require other distribution companies to follow but to see it running on the bigger scale at least one big player in the vast internet arena must join.
Rarely I've got a chance and real opportunity to revive an old article from the past and to update it to fit better in the present day. Actually, the quantum weirdness is still where it was four years ago - science is not something that changes over night especially with quantum mechanics, so I am not going to update the post with any new physics or breakthroughs. Instead, what 's new and what pushed me to repost today is one extraordinary novel in the field. The book that kept me from sleeping last weekend was "Quantum Space" by Douglas Phillips and in short it is by far, one of the best titles I read this year. It is one of those true sci-fi stories that follows the real science and in this case the weirdness of the quantum world I wrote about in this post and I would add one of those articles I enjoyed the most writing in the history of the blog. But, before couple of my glimpses to the book itself, followed by my warm recommendation and especially if you want to r
Rarely I've got a chance and real opportunity to revive an old article from the past and to update it to fit better in the present day. Actually, the quantum weirdness is still where it was four years ago - science is not something that changes over night especially with quantum mechanics, so I am not going to update the post with any new physics or breakthroughs. Instead, what 's new and what pushed me to repost today is one extraordinary novel in the field. The book that kept me from sleeping last weekend was "Quantum Space" by Douglas Phillips and in short it is by far, one of the best titles I read this year. It is one of those true sci-fi stories that follows the real science and in this case the weirdness of the quantum world I wrote about in this post and I would add one of those articles I enjoyed the most writing in the history of the blog. But, before couple of my glimpses to the book itself, followed by my warm recommendation and especially if you want to read it yourself, please continue reading about physics itself. This one definitely requires some knowledge to understand it fully, so let's start with some weirdness of our own macro physics first.
It's very well known that the world we live in are driven by two sets of rules or physic laws. The one for big and the one for small. We don't need to be rocket scientists in order to observe our big world surrounding us and to notice all the laws we obey to. For example if we drop a book and a feather and let them both hit the floor separately, it is obvious that book touches the floor first. However if we put feather ON the book and let them fall together, they will hit the carpet in the same time. Well, the book will still hit the carpet first, but if you try the experiment you will know what I mean. This simple experiment was itching Galileo's mind centuries ago when he discovered one of the fundamental physics law stating simply that mass of the object has no influence to the speed of free falling. But, we can ask ourselves next, why the feather traveled slower toward the floor if dropped alone? Because of the things we cannot see. The air is blocking it. To learn what is happening with the feather during the fall we have to go beyond our eyes. We need science and experiments to discover why small molecules of the air would rather play with feather than with heavy book.
Was the book/feather experiment weird to you? I am sure it was at least little weird if you are seeing it for the first time. We simply accept things for granted. What we cannot see, like the air and its little ingredients in above experiment, we tend to exclude from our perception. If this was little strange and intriguing, lets go further to the world of even smaller and compare it to the world of the big. For example, in a mind experiment, we have a 9mm gun and shoot toward the wall with two holes in it, both with diameter of 9mm or little bigger. If you are Olympic champion in shooting you will, of course, need only two bullets, one for each whole. In the world of little if we use a gun that shoots electrons toward a wall with two adequate holes in it, you would probably think that we would need two electrons to hit both holes, right? Nope, we need only one. Believe it or not, one electron goes through both holes and we even don't need to aim too perfectly. No, it doesn't split up in two and use each half to pass the holes. It goes through both holes in the same time. In fact, if we had three or more holes on the wall, one single electron would go through each one and in same time use all possible paths toward the destination. Perhaps the best illustration what happens in this experiment is presented by "Stephen Hawking's Grand Design" documentary made by Discovery Channel.
And you thought feather on the book was weird...
However, this is just another interpretation of the famous double slit experiment, and even though first theories about duality of particles/waves originated way back to Thomas Young and the year of 1799 with his scientific paper about properties of light, perhaps the best known theory was proposed by Richard Feynman during forties of 20th century. Beginning of the last century will be remembered by the birth of quantum mechanics, part of the physics trying to describe all the laws responsible for what is happening in the inner world or the world where the very fabric of our universe is located. Feynman confirmed Young's light theory that subatomic particles (how we call them today) and energy waves are more or less the same. Electrons are among them. In simple words, they are capable to travel as particles (and acts as bullets in our giant world by traveling within the straight line from point A to point B) or to avoid obstacles by transforming into waves and vice versa. However, after all these years, due to the fact that we are way too big to monitor quantum world directly, we still have no clues why and how subatomic particles choose to travel either as a wave or as a particle of material world. For example, in previous double slit experiment, if we tried to add source of photons, and "light" the holes where electrons are "passing through", trying to find out what happens on the surface of the wall and how they "choose" to be either particles or waves, we only added disturbance in the system and electrons simply stopped to transform into waves and started going through the holes like simple bullets with many of them crashing into wall in case of missing the holes. It's almost like they know that somebody is watching them and that they don't like to expose their secret of how they vanish into tin air forming waves and materializing back after the wall. That skill would be something special in every magician performance.
Feather experiment on the Moon, by Apollo 15's commander David Scott
As you probably noticed, this post is part of the "Beth's Q&A" thread and even though quantum mechanics is not directly mentioned in Beth's and my chats, it is simply not possible anymore to stay with standard or particle model of the mainstream physics and to look to the inner world only by researching its particle type of properties. Like with me and possibly with many scientists out here (and to be fairly added, I am not the scientist, just modest observer), set of laws responsible for entire microscopic world seems to be "under construction" today more than ever. The idea for this post came to me couple of months ago, when Beth asked me exactly this: "Somewhere, sometime, someone figured out the inside of the atom. Quarks they call them. What we used to call the proton and nucleus of the atom. Why can't we still call them as before. Why did a new name come into play? Who discovered quarks, and how. Did they use the electron microscope? Did they use math? Tell me what you know of quarks. How did that come about? I am interested in the electron microscope and quarks or anything else hiding in an atom. The item that was never to be broken down as it was taught to me".
Quarked! - How did the quarks get their names?**
Before we dive into more weirdness of the quantum world, lets check a little current terminology regarding atoms with all its parts including quarks as the smallest items within. The word "átomos" originates from the Greek word ἄτομος and it was made by Democritus, Ancient Greek philosopher who, around the year of 450BCE, formulated first atomic theory or the nature of matter we are made off. Translated from Greek, "atom" means something basic and uncuttable to smaller pieces. Almost two millenniums passed since Democritus and finally in the year of 1911 it was discovered that atom, after all, is made of even smaller particles. Ever since then, we know that atom is now made of nucleus, with positive electric charge surrounded by the cloud of negatively charged electrons orbiting the nucleus. The smallest atom is the simplest isotope of Hydrogen-1 with nucleus of just one proton orbiting by one electron. The most heaviest atom made by nature found on Earth is Plutonium-244, the most stable isotope of Plutonium with 94 protons and 150 neutrons in its nucleus and with cloud of 94 electrons in the orbit. For 50 years protons, neutrons and electrons were the tiniest particles known to world. Then in the year of 1968, the very year when I was born, experimental physicists at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center confirmed existence of 6 different type of quarks. Much like electrons, they have various intrinsic properties, including electric charge, color charge, mass, and spin. Two of them with the lowest mass are the most stable and they are simply called Up and Down. Scientists are not very intuitive when it comes to naming stuff - other four quarks are called Strange, Charm, Bottom, and Top. I wonder how exactly behaved one of them in accelerator's results in order to get the name 'Charm'. On the other end, I like this much more than naming scientific stuff with only Greek letters. Anyway, within the standard model of particle physics quarks are building blocks in the universe and many particles are made out of quarks. Quarks can't live in solitude, only in combination with other quarks and they are tied up with strong nuclear force which is extremely hard to break. Proton is made of two Ups and one Down quark, while neutron is combination of two Downs and one Up quark. They orbit around each other and form an entity we call particle. Bottom line now is that, as far as we know, quarks and electrons are fundamental particles and we don't have any proof that they are made out of even smaller internal structure.
However, we have pretty good idea what's inside. Strings. Now comes the part of real weirdness. Are you ready to dive into rabbit hole? It will not lead you in the Wonderland, but it is certainly one of scientific biggest adventures.
Stephen Hawking, Grand Design***
Actually, it's not easy to describe what strings are in scientifically popular terms, but I will try anyway. In standard model besides six quarks and electron there are more fundamental particles. There are two more particles with negative charge similar to electron called 'muon' and 'tauon'. Comparing to electrons they are much heavier in size (if we can speak about size when it comes to fundamental particles). Finally, there are three types of neutrinos or particles that are neutral in electric charge. So far we encountered 12 fundamental particles. But there are more. As far as we know today, there are four fundamental forces as well (gravity, electromagnetism, and the weak and strong nuclear forces) and each force is produced by fundamental particles that act as carriers of the force. Photon is for example carrier for electromagnetism, the strong force is carried by eight particles known as 'gluons', weak force is using three particles, the W+, the W- , and the Z and finally gravity suppose to be taken care by the fundamental particle called 'graviton'. Standard model predicted existence of all these fundamental particles, including Higgs boson we talked about last year in post Beth's Q&A - The God Particle. Each one except for graviton. All efforts to include gravity in the theory so far failed due to difficulties to describe it on a great scale within quantum mechanics. Step by step, over the years, new theories arrived tending to fill the blank or to replace standard model entirely. There are several string theories that are 'under development' with the best candidate called 'M-theory' formulated in the last decade of the last century. In short, strings are single-dimensional objects we find within fundamental particles or to be precise, particles are nothing more than just different manifestations of the string. String can move and oscillate in different ways. If it oscillates a certain way then it's name is electron. If it oscillates some other way, we call it a photon, or a quark, or a neutrino or ... graviton. In the nutshell, if string theory is correct, the entire universe is made of strings! However, mathematical model of a string theory, such as M-theory is far more complex we can possibly imagine. Even though string theory can be seen as an extension to the standard model, it's background is far more different than with the universe described by particle model. Comparing to the space-time continuum we live in as four dimensional universe described by standard model, in M-theory there are 7 dimensions more. Those dimensions are tiny and undetectable by big objects like us living in large three spacial dimensions, but within quantum world there are objects capable to spread its existence and occupy up to 9 dimensions. Furthermore, the theory predicts that additional tiny dimensions can be curved with large number of ways and even a slightly different position or curvature of at least one dimension would lead to dramatic changes of the whole system or entire universe. For example if somehow we forced one dimension to curve little bit more, the effect could for instance be different osculations of strings which would result in slightly different properties of fundamental particles and electrons could start behaving differently and start having different electric charge. This example is highly speculative, but the point is that with different shape of dimensional system, set of physical laws in the system would be completely different.
To put it simply, if laws of the universe can be changed by, for example, God and if string theory in form of M-theory is correct, he would do that by some almighty computer capable of curving dimensions. Combination of changes in curvature of miniature 7 dimensions could be able to change for example value of pi and instead of being 3.14159265359... it could be different number. It is unknown what would that mean further but in the universe where pi is for example 5, the circle would be something entirely different and the pupils in schools learning about it would probably looking very differently than in our universe. However, there is still no direct experimental evidence that string theory itself is the correct description of nature and truly theory of everything most scientists dream of.
Completing superstring theory
But if laws of the universe after creation are unchangeable (not even by the gods) and if M-theory is true, is it possible that some natural phenomenon exists out there capable of giving birth to different universes by randomly producing shape of their inner cosmos? Yep, there is one. Appropriately called "The Big Bang". The moment of creation of everything we are familiar with, including time. First couple of moments, when the process was very young, we can safely say that it all worked completely under the quantum mechanics and laws of the microcosmos and it is not far from common sense to expect that, like in double slit experiment, all particles during first moments of their existence used all possible paths in their travel toward the final destination. Within M-theory this might mean that all possible versions of universes emerged as the result and the one we exist in is just one of many. Furthermore, theory also predicts that within one universe all positive energy (planets, stars, life, matter and anti-matter in general) is balanced by the negative energy stored in the gravitational attraction that exists between all the positive-energy particles. If this is correct then total energy within one universe might be zero and therefore possible to be created out of nothing only by quantum fluctuations of the primordial singularity. Quantum fluctuations are very well known phenomenon which is experimentally confirmed in form of virtual particles that arise from vacuum (particle - antiparticle pairs) and cancels each other almost immediately (unless this happens on the event horizon of a black hole where one of the particles was immediately captured by the black hole leaving the other alive in form of Hawking radiation).
I am sure that 'M-theory' will stay just a theory for many more years to come as proving existence of strings, multi-dimensions, multi-universes, supersymmetry, etc. must be very hard with our current technology but theories improve over time as well as technology and perhaps we will have our answer relatively soon. However, the quantum world with all its weirdness is very much real and many predictions no matter how strange are already proven. For example, quantum entanglement on top of it. This is ability of two particles (or more), that usually originates from same source, to have the same properties like momentum, spin, polarization, etc. so that even after they are separated in space, when an action is performed on one particle, the other particle responds immediately. This was experimentally confirmed with two photons separated by 143 kilometers, across two Canary islands and soon should be used in experiment between ISS and Earth in a form of first wireless Quantum Communications Network and for the first time perform the connection between two points separated by more than 400km.
D-Wave quantum computer
Finally, let's just mention one potential application of quantum superposition (ability of a particle to exists partly in all its particular theoretically possible states simultaneously). Comparing to digital computer where one bit can hold information in form of either 0 or 1, one qubit (quantum computer alternative) can hold either 0, 1 or anything in between and in same time. The idea is to use this property and build a quantum computer capable of performing millions of operations in the same time. Still being in early years of development and far before commercial use, quantum computers with up to 512-qubits developed in D-Wave, one of the leading company dedicated for future quantum computers market, are made based on chip specially manufactured for quantum computation. Maybe it is still too early to say but I have a feeling that quantum mechanics is matured enough and ready for practical applications, especially in the field of communications and IT. Along with nano-technology, this would someday in near future be one of those truly breakthrough discoveries capable of changing the world entirely.
At the very end, let me continue the story with a few short notices about the "Quantum Space", amazing science fiction by Douglas Phillips and his first novel in the series. If you read entire post and didn't have much knowledge about the science itself, I am sure by now you are better prepared to read the book and enjoy it much more. Of course, Douglas did pretty good job with his characters explaining the science as well, perhaps on a much better level than I did so there's no worries about understanding the quantum mechanics to follow the book. Much of it is still the unproven theory so it's harder to distinguish science from fiction anyways. Nevertheless, for the fiction as far-fetched as it is, and even though for the theory that is weird by its nature, I found to be, well believable is maybe not the right word, but definitely intriguing. I loved the idea of expanding the micro dimension and the way of solving the Fermi paradox within the storyline. The characters and the writing are also great so in all the effort to write spoilerless review all I can say it that I will eagerly wait next year for the sequels.
It happened long ago, in the dark ages of CRT monitors, when I first received a short forum message with :-) at the end. I stared at the message for a long minute(s) before giving up of decoding its meaning. It came from a well respected friend of mine so I responded with short reply: "What!?" "You have to turn your screen 90 degrees clockwise." Answer came promptly. My CRT was large and heavy and it looked way too dangerous to tilt it that way so after little brainstorming the problem, I concluded there's a better way of achieving the same goal. I tilted my head 90 degrees anticlockwise. "Aaaaaah!!!" I said promptly and after realising the picture, big smile on my face slowly morphed into loud laughter. So I typed back: "Wow!" I didn't have to wait long for the next message: "LOL!" "What!?" - I quickly copy/pasted my earlier message but realised I was too not informed about new internet fashion so I
It happened long ago, in the dark ages of CRT monitors, when I first received a short forum message with :-) at the end. I stared at the message for a long minute(s) before giving up of decoding its meaning. It came from a well respected friend of mine so I responded with short reply:
"What!?"
"You have to turn your screen 90 degrees clockwise." Answer came promptly.
My CRT was large and heavy and it looked way too dangerous to tilt it that way so after little brainstorming the problem, I concluded there's a better way of achieving the same goal.
I tilted my head 90 degrees anticlockwise.
"Aaaaaah!!!" I said promptly and after realising the picture, big smile on my face slowly morphed into loud laughter. So I typed back:
"Wow!"
I didn't have to wait long for the next message:
"LOL!"
"What!?" - I quickly copy/pasted my earlier message but realised I was too not informed about new internet fashion so I canceled the message and opened new Netscape window instead, called www.altavista.com and 'googled' new internet words. Ever since then LOL is on the top of my list of favorite acronyms. Along with all those cute ASCII faces. ;-)
In my case, and probably with many people as well, laughter is one of those most powerful cure for everything. The all mighty vaccine for all diseases. Especially boredom and poor moodiness. LOL moments, somehow come naturally with live social occasions and in movies but in books they have one extra dimension. I really can't explain why is that. Perhaps funny moments in written world often come unexpected and more genuine. Take for instance Andy Weir's "The Martian" - the hilarious parts in the book were genuinely funnier than in the film. At least with me... Well, nevermind that, so to get to the chase, last month I read three extraordinary funny books in the realm of science fiction and space exploration. So here they are in this short review, sorted by the count of LOL moments I had during reading. In descending order of course.
The first one was "Where the Hell is Tesla?" by Rob Dircks. I stumbled to this one by accident and boy I am glad I did. Nikola Tesla is one of my favorite men in the history of people, science and engineering and here in Serbia, especially during my childhood, Tesla was idealised and always portrayed in too serious manner. Anyhow, when I saw the title with Tesla playing the major role in the comedy story I couldn't resist and I didn't regret a single penny. It was by far the funniest book I read in a while. It had it all, decent science fiction based on cutting edge scientific theories of the multiverse, the romance and friendship within different storylines, cute aliens, sci-fi battles of enormous proportions, great style of writing, Nikola Tesla in the most entertaining meaning of the word and of course ... Chip. I am not going to spoil the reading for you but I will tell you this. On one occasion, I almost dropped my Kindle on the hard floor caused by one of the strongest LOL moments. Enough said.
The second is "Jazz of Artemis". In context of today's post, this is how I would name the book if I was Andy Weir. Of course, his new book is not a comedy per se. But it is not "The Martian" as well. However, in the realm of the funny moments it is a decent sequel. Way better and much funnier. Jazz is ... let me find the right word ... extraordinary girl on the multiple levels. I enjoyed her adventures fully and I do hope for the real sequel this time. I mean with Jazz around, what can go wrong on the Moon? I really hope there will be the movie after this one as well but not solely because of the entertainment part and all the LOL moments, especially with that Svoboda guy and his ability to manufacture various devices that do or do not belong to ESA blueprints and worksheets.
But seriously, what Andy Weir did with creating a fully functional city on the moon with both working technology and society organisation is amazing and also extraordinary. It definitely deserves the motion pictures and I am sure filming the movie that takes entire story and action on the moon is another challenge. I am sure Ridley Scott is buzzing his mind with this as we speak.
Finally and to use the cliché, the last but not the least comes the good old British humor. Something I grew up with all the great TV shows like "Monty Python" and "Only Fools and Horses" or short comedy sketches and skits by Dave Allen, Benny Hill, Rowan Atkinson and others. But in the flashlight of the parody novels the throne is still with Douglas Adams and his "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". This was the first book I experienced LOL moments with, way before LOL acronym was ever invented. "The Worst Man on Mars" by Mark Roman and Corben Duke was probably the most similar novel I read in a long while.
This is also a parody, but not really as much as the famous predecessor. This book follows the plausible science fiction and doesn't go into wild imagination, like the restaurant at the end of the universe or "42". I really did like many technological backgrounds inside, like artificial intelligence or space elevator for example. But the humor with this one comes first and the robots in their sitcom on Mars are something I do recommend warmly.
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