MPJ

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.

Original post: July 2014, Update: March 2018.

Image refs:
https://www.netflix.com/rs/title/80097140
http://www.mymbuzz.com/2017/12/08/netflix-altered-carbon-new-teaser/

Story refs:
https://www.neondystopia.com/what-is-cyberpunk/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cyberpunk_works
http://www.cyberpunkreview.com/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083658/
http://project.cyberpunk.ru/idb/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by_revenue
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_Carbon

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.

Refs:
https://www.moviesaints.com/#!/movie/man-from-earth-holocene
https://www.comparehare.co.uk/net-neutrality-what-you-need-to-know-now/
https://www.freepress.net/.../net-neutrality-what-you-need-know-now
https://www.techopedia.com/definition/29170/donationware
https://www.populationmatters.org/.../welcome-to-the-anthropocene/
http://manfromearth.com/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/.../what-is-the-anthropocene

DNA is a fascinating world. That single molecule of life contains all the information about individual living being. Any bacteria, plant, insect, algae, fish, animal or human grows from that one molecule seed. Probably even some alien form still waiting to be discovered on some moon orbiting Jupiter or Saturn. In one way or another, the same could be true with all life in the universe. All of us are grown from that single instructions manual inside the single DNA set of written directions. And there are no two identical DNA in existence, even if we could mix the same two identical human egg and sperm cells several times, similar but different resulted DNA would always be the outcome. We are surely still not mastering the DNA and bio-engineering - it is still young science and even though one giant molecule of life was hinted by various scientists and scholars more than century ago, it was only in early fifties of 20th century when James Watson and Francis Crick created the first double-helix model of DNA structure. Discovery and sequencing of the genome codes responsible for various features and properties of a living beings started almost immediately afterwards. Of course, morality and potential hazards of cracking the code followed and by today we have lots of different opinions of what future of DNA research should look like and what kind of practical applications and engineering would be made out of it for our own species.


Surely, curing genetic diseases comes first in mind and there is no doubt this will be something extraordinary for the future edits of human embryos. The only 'problem' is what the definition of 'disease' is. If you ask different people and scientists you will get different answers and the most interesting one comes from the very co-founder of the double-helix, James Watson, who once said that stupidity is sort of genetic disease and if we can cure it in the future we should do it. The same goes with not appealing physical appearances, he joked that having all girls genetically altered to be pretty would not be that bad either.

But even before getting into genetically modifying of the genome sequences of embryos, morality is knocking on our future doors already - consider this - way before going into pregnancy, future couple might be able to have a glimpse of their potential children just by interpreting DNA sequences of embryos and to project the 3D image of offsprings live on screen. They would be able to know not just the physical appearance of their potential sons and daughters but also other features, such as estimates of their IQ or medical hazards in their adult age. Scary or not, future couples might be able to choose their children from the bag of their frozen embryos that can be produced in vast numbers and easily. I don't know about you but having a picture of, say my potential daughter and choosing for her not to be born is a huge moral decision. I don't think I could do it. Not without serious consequences.


But before giving a thought or two about more serious genetic engineering and genome modification in spirit of the new Daniel Suarez novel called 'Changed Agent' let me start the review with one old and epic cyberpunk movie from the eighties. Blade Runner. I did mention this great film back in the day within the post 'Cuberpunked Future' but now in light of 35 years of genetic research after the movie was filmed, after all the GMO controversies, after Dolly, the cloned sheep and many more fictitious books and movies with the genetic engineering in the background, I think Blade Runner does not really belong to cyberpunk genre anymore. Genetic modification is not something what we expect to happen in distant future and it is not walking on the edge between the reality and fiction anymore. It is happening now and I believe it will not take long to gain more knowledge and understanding of DNA code in order to achieve the holy grail from described prediction - to create a detailed image of a living being just by looking into DNA molecule of a single piece of hair or tiny drop of the blood. I will leave it to you to conclude what we might do with this futuristic device, but one particular study comes to my mind first with relation to ancient DNA or persisted samples of i.e. neanderthals which stuck to minerals or in the layers of sediment. One day we might literally create a photographs of ancient people and extinct species.

Anyhow, later this year new sequel of Blade Runner is announced and if it is going to be only half as good as the first movie, it would be another epic masterpiece in science fiction genre. Furthermore, after 35 years, new filming CGI allows now further explanation of the creation of replicants and genetic modifications themselves and according to the trailer (embedded above) it all looks more than promising.


Finally in conclusion of this short glimpse into genetic modifications of humans, thanks to the new Daniel Suarez novel 'Change Agent', what I have learned before while reading about GMO in realm of microbiological life, plants, animals and food in general is now widely expanded to the level of potential future of the dark side of human DNA edits. Like anything else that comes with prefix of being breakthrough discovery in history of mankind, genetic editing comes in wide variety of great possibilities with curing genetic diseases and enhancing human body to fight more easily with 'ordinary' infections and diseases, including cancer. But also it provides ways of destructive and to say the least, non-ethical features and procedures that might reshape human evolution to the edge of self-destruction. 'Change Agent' is dealing with this dark side of genetics in the near future that could come very soon after we reach fully understanding of DNA and possible alterations of genomes.

Daniel's new book is not just a pure Sci-fi prediction of the future, but also one great thriller and adventure novel centered on the outcome of one additional prediction of what might happen if editing of a single human being would be possible during the adulthood (editing more than 30 trillion cells in human body in the same time). Now, if you ask me this is walking side by side to the impossible or at least resembles more to the far-stretched cyberpunk prediction, but who knows, I am sure that average reader of Jules Verne's 'From the Earth to the Moon' in the 19th century could have felt the same reading about men sitting in the most powerful cannon launching them into space and toward moon. I am sure, at the time, many were convinced that would never happen.


Still and for the time being, genetic editing of the embryos in their early stages are something more plausible, expected and somewhat tested with GMO research with growing food. However, regarding the plot and twists in the book I will stay with my initial decision not to spoil the stories of the novels and movies I was writing about on the blog and this book will be no exception so I will finish this post now with my full recommendation and for the very end I will only quote Bryan Frey, one of the main characters stating one of the obvious potential outcome if the dark side of the genetic engineering of humans prevails and people start enhancing their children before they are born:

"I don’t imagine we are going to remain a single species for much longer."

Image refs:
https://twit.tv/shows/triangulation/episodes/297
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083658/
https://www.statnews.com/2016/04/20/clever-crispr-advance-unveiled/

Refs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/04/ancient-dna/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_DNA

Thrillers. Books perfect for the summertime. Even though they were not exclusively tied to the beach, in my case, of all occasions, somehow sand and Kindle went along hand by hand the best. Every time. As with default definition, thriller stories and novels engage all your senses and trigger right level of entertainment and all kind of emotions during those couple of days of intense reading. Also, they alway successfully keep away your thoughts from your job, your daily issues and raw reality from your mind. In previous couple of years (mostly summers), my stock of thrillers piled up significantly, so I decided to create a recommendation and small glimpse into stories of five different styles of writing and with that many main characters stored in the similar background of political or fictitious conspiracies. And all that in familiar form of classic 'villains vs heroes' storytelling with the hero winning the girl every time. Cliché, I know, but I love it and enjoy it all the same. Furthermore, in all the novels, if chosen carefully, there are always tons of new stuff to learn about.


I decided to write this post in fashion of the 'first names' thread I started before and with thriller novels that comes in sequel. With five book series, five novelist and five main characters. Perhaps the best description of the first character is to introduce a public square in the heart of Copenhagen. Højbro Plads. The place where no tourist misses to visit and the place where Cotton Malone, the hero from the Steve Berry's stories lives and owns a bookshop. This is, sort of, his base of operations and the place that provided great action and suspense in couple of novels. Needless to say, several years ago, when we visited Copenhagen, I definitely wanted to see the place myself and to experience the feeling from the books. I surely have nothing to add to the Steve's choosing of the Cotton's home, except to recommend a visit during the Christmas time. Because of festivity and ... sausages. Perhaps, if you ask many people about Danish national cuisine and their prime dish, first thing that will come to their minds are pastry and cookies. Not me. When I go to Denmark, one of the reasons are their sausages. And the best ones can be found on the street, like those in above image. The only problem with Danish sausages is that they come in wide variety of flavour, sizes and aromas. You cannot try them all with just one visit of Højbro Plads or other places. So if you like them like I do, prepare to be frequent visitor of Danish capital especially on holidays.


But and to get back to Steve Berry and his series of twelve books of Cotton's adventures (so far), I have to admit that I didn't read them all. I learned about the series late - perhaps in the time when I switched reading from paper to Kindle and in the process skipped several from the middle. I read them enough though to state the obvious - the writing and the storytelling are gradually improved and getting better and better with every new book. The stories are of course not linked, they are stand alone novels, but the characters are more than connected and intersected in many ways and this can only be understood with reading entire sequel. The research of the background is thorough and I love Steve's final chapter with "separating facts from fiction" and if you add plots and twists from both history and present time of many global nations, these books definitely offers more than just entertainment. Events are described to the level that there is almost no need for later googling and further research and that's what I like the most with this series. I remember I learned a lot about history of Antarctica, China, Korea, Alexandria, US and countries throughout Europe including Russia. I have just finished reading the last novel "The Lost Order" and needless to say that my knowledge about America and their Civil War expanded a lot. If you asked me yesterday about the cause of it, I would promptly say 'slavery', but today after this book (and others before, especially the one with plot knitted around Mormons in Utah and the previous one related to cold war) I definitely learned a lot more about true complexity of the 18th and 19th century as well as all the political relations in present days between countries and intelligence services throughout the world. Conclusion for this series would be simple - if you like political thriller search no more. Enough said.


Next in line, after Cotton Malone and his 12 novels is Alex Cross, another great character introduced in book "Along Came a Spider", the classic thriller from 1993 written by James Patterson. The writing is amazing. Chapters are short and always force you to start reading another one in search for more information and it goes effectively well from true punk-ish style narrated by the main character, toward the well described other chapters when action goes from leading investigation to the villains or other characters. The main impression with this book (and others I read so far) is that it gives you strong feeling of plausibility of the full story. Not just the crime story but also the credibility of how the system works. Even though Cross is, in a way, the leader in the large police chase, there are no moments of epiphany in this book, like we used to in so many novels and movies where one brilliant character does all the work and in true hero style saves the lives of all the others. No, in here, you will find the real team work and true relations between several agencies and law in action. I did read several more books from the Alex Cross series (shown in the image above) but I have to admit it was all in the paperback time. There are twice as many novels in this sequel comparing to Steve Berry's but to tell the truth, pure and raw crime stories like these are not high in my priority list. But I do love action and crime solving and I am sure more Alex Cross stories will be loaded into my Kindle's memory. One already has - "I, Alex Cross" is the very next book I intend to read in the future as it seems that is probably the best so far according to other reviews.


Surely, thriller as a genre cannot survive on it's own. It requires a background story as a bottom layer and in previous two series, reality is dominant and conspiracies are believable. The world around us is filled with political agenda and criminal behaviour and to base stories upon that is not a big brainer. On the other end, "Library of The Dead" by Glenn Cooper and it's sequel novels "Book of Souls" and "The Librarians" are something entirely else. The stories behind Will Piper adventures are much, much suitable for the hot sand and lazy days of one summertime or any leisure time no matter when. It has it all, great mystery that remains mystery to the very end with lots of action, guns and villains all over the place with one dedicated hero portrayed with all his good and bad sides and all that filled with tiny dose of humor. Pure entertainment. If you go for this, and I couldn't recommend it more, prepare to swallow the trilogy in a record time. It really occupies you from dusk till dawn and writing is very well done with all it's chapters jumping from one timeline to another. What I also liked very much in Glenn Cooper's trilogy is how nicely he used "the library" story to explain many historical and modern puzzles, like possible explanation of evolution in christian religion, existence of prophets and psychics, background of nowadays governmental conspiracies and with usage of well known people in history of mankind he managed to give good credits to the whole thing and to mask the fiction into great thriller. As for the mystery theme in all three novels and the divine (or whatever it is) connection related to our already written destiny on this world, even though it is walking on the very thin wire it serves the purpose as the backbone of the story and never goes on the front light. Yes, it triggers, at least with me, couple of thoughts of good and old dilemmas of what life along with soul really is and whether or not we are just bunch of dummies in the hands of one master puppeteer, but still, in the end, this is there just in form of one great entertainment and nothing more.


However, and if we stay in the world of entertainment, government conspiracies are very high in my reading and watching list. It's hard to explain why. I simply love the mystery and possibility that there is something out there, something extraordinary and new. Something that only lives in fiction. And for today's glimpse into this world I chose to show you one extraordinary novel series, written by Patrick Lee and called "The Breach". After I have read all three books with Travis Chase in lead role I can tell you that if you enjoy 'conspiracies' genre this is standing shoulder to shoulder with Fox Mulder. And not just conspiracies. Sci-Fi part, all the twists and storytelling is something I was never encountering often with other authors so far. Everything was perfectly wrapped and almost unpredictable to the very end. Something I am secretly hoping with any book I start to read. I admire both authors, Patrick Lee and A.G.Riddle, the author of the next trilogy I am about to recommend, for the imagination they have and willing to transform into letters. I can't thank them enough for entertainment I had for weeks.


As for the last main character and the final recommendation, if I would have to say anything about expectations, when I loaded The Origin Mystery, with David Vale in the hero role, written by A.G.Riddle, two summers ago I expected a lot and this is exactly what I got! You have to be brave to make yet another novel about Atlanteans and the author wrapped it just right. He managed to connect several Sci Fi genres into one successful story. For my taste all the sciences are there and connected perfectly. Biology, virology and genetic research including junk-DNA involvement, physics and space travels, quantum entanglement, Antarctica, known history and use of connection and conspiracy theories like Nazi bell (Die Glocke) or Roswell UFO sighting. Script play with time dilatation and hibernation. Space battles of enormous proportion. Explanation of Gods and ancient astronauts. If you add usual 'Indiana Jones' type of adventures and romance there was no better choice for me entire summer. Perhaps, using so many connected sciences in the plot is too risky as the author faces with challenges of choosing what is more important and deserves to be explained better at the expense of other technologies or speculations but I don't mind. All in all, Riddle's Atlanteans are perhaps the best version I read in a long while and I warmly recommend it.

Everybody love heroes, great happy endings and eternal fight between good and evil. Thrillers are about that. No matter if they are following reality or fiction or any mixture between those two, these books will always be there and always number one entertainment. And not just for the summers.

Cotton Malone
http://steveberry.org/books/cotton-malone-series/
https://www.goodreads.com/series/44279-cotton-malone

Alex Cross
http://www.bookseriesinorder.com/alex-cross/
http://www.jamespatterson.com/alex-cross

Will Piper
https://www.librarything.com/series/Will+Piper
http://www.glenncooperbooks.com/

Travis Chase
http://www.patrickleefiction.com/
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/TravisChaseSeries

David Vale
http://www.agriddle.com/books
https://www.goodreads.com/series/104994-the-origin-mystery

Let me ask you a hypothetical question. What would you first type into time machine if you had one? Would it be some date in the past or in distant future? Would you go to meet neanderthals or perhaps to take a photo of a T-Rex family from the distance? Or perhaps you'd go to see some historically relevant times to meet famous people from the past? Well, there is no doubt for me - one of my first time travels would definitely be 33AD, April 1st. The time of Christ and his last days, the time of the last supper, his death and resurrection. I have no idea how would I be able to hide my Nikon and smartphone but I am sure I would find a way. Every tourist trip requires a camera, doesn't it? However there would be other challenges, and in this case, even if I would try to dress accordingly and mingled into crowd, understanding old Aramaic which was spoken by most of Jesus followers or old Hebrew, Latin or Greek used officially among Jewish people or within Roman administration and army would be pretty hard. But it would not be really impossible to understand what really happened with Jesus Christ in those couple of days even without knowledge of old languages.



Indeed, it would be one amazing trip, but in reality, building such time machine is pretty much impossible according to all we know about how our universe works. On the other hand we have one equally powerful tool we can use to explain different events and not just those placed in old history. The name of the tool is Occam's razor and basically it is one great principle in philosophy and science stating that the most simplest explanation of some event is usually the right one. Sure, it's not the real tool per se, but in many occasions and events it's the only one we got. Let's try it with 'Last Supper' - which table order is more simplest and more probable - the one coined by Leonardo da Vinci with Christ and all apostles sitting by just one side of the long table in a large chamber, almost like they were posing for some time tourist photo, or the more modest one in more modest room with all of them occupying entire smaller table, like in above Fritz von Uhde painting? There is no doubt that Occam's razor is winning this one big time and that Fritz is way more accurate with portraying this event. Simply put, Leonardo made it too complex to the point of being truly not real.

Should I dare to try Occam's razor with the resurrection as well? I guess it might go beyond pristine politeness, considering that one of the major worldwide religion was hugely based on that single event but still, if we test it on crucifixion and events after it, especially during Sabbath and within the tomb, bribing Roman guards, if there were any, and stealing the body looks like the most simplest explanation of the entire event. Adding divine element along with the fact that genuine Jewish beliefs went without single disturbance by entire occurrence is what seems to be way too complex explanation.


But to be completely fair, Occam's razor allows complex explanation to be the right one too, but only when it's describing the event and all of its aspects better than the simple one. I am not sure if this is the case here but if you think that divine explanation is the only complex one for the resurrection of Jesus, you will be very wrong. Yesterday I finished a novel called "The Resurrection Maker" by Glenn Cooper and believe it or not he pretty successfully tried to merge the divine with exotic science and the most mysterious property of the universe we know as dark matter. If you add to the plot an extraordinary history thriller with characters as big as King Arthur and Antoni Gaudi themselves then this is one bit of fictitious work that deserves not to be missed.

Basically, I intended for this post to be a book review of the sort but I also want to keep my reviews relatively free of spoilers and I found that if I continue with this one by entering into plot and twists it would be not entirely possible without thorough dive into dark matter and dark energy physics along with details from the novel, so ultimately I decided to write about it later this year, maybe in my next post. Regarding the book and especially because it is already presented by Glenn Cooper in his prologue and also relieved by the book's title and cover, I can tell you this much - the basic motive behind the story is about the idea that holy grail, or to be precise holy chalice, used by Jesus and his disciples during last supper, was made out of the exotic alloy, created in early stage of the universe out of ordinary and dark matter combined. The author speculates with superstring theories and one of its properties of multidimensionality and multiverse and with fictitious possibility to use this alloy in order to create a breach between our universe and the next one floating close to ours, within vast and probably infinite multiverse void. At this point of understanding the physics of dark matter or to better say of not understanding what it really is, the void in the knowledge is providing novelists this kind of freedom to use it to describe legends, myths and stories from ancient history and Glenn Cooper did the great job with this book. Not perfect I dare to say, especially in the realm of predictivity of the story and how the novel ends, but I fully get him why he created the ending like he did. If he dared to try to explain even more about how one resurrection maker really works it would take him into even more speculative writing and this could be too much for one science fiction thriller what this book in the end represents.


One thing is for sure, if I get to the Occam's razor again and looked the resurrection explanation in this book, it is indeed one hack of the complex solution for this historical event. Honestly, if I would have to create alternative ending for "The Resurrection Maker", I think I would definitely change how the portal works and perhaps create better explanation for why Jesus staid forty days on Earth after resurrection and before his final ascension to the heaven, or in this case another universe on the other side of the portal. Nevertheless and regardless of what I think of, it looks like there is no way to simplify the story to the point of being acceptable for the Occam's razor and it is definitely way too complex and walks on the edge of impossibility, to say the least. Which is completely opposite if we are talking about entertainment and educational aspect of the book and for both of them it deserves full five stars.

However and at the very end, I have to admit that even though the divine explanation as described in the Bible and all the gospels looks way too simpler than the one in the book, this might be only because we simply don't possess all the knowledge about our universe and maybe in the future when we learn more about the physics of the dark matter within the realm of multiverse and extra dimensions, what is simple and what is complex could be turned upside down and not just in this case.

Image attribution:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Golgotha_cross-section.svg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Yupi666

Image ref:
http://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/detail.php?ID=183850

Refs:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23443255-the-resurrection-maker
http://www.jerusalemperspective.com/2551/
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor

"It is unwise from some interstellar species to give us technology to leave the Earth - chances that we would use it for star wars are bigger than we would go the next level and use it for peaceful exploration of solar system and beyond." - What is Intelligent Life?

As promised in my last post story about one grim political view of the last forgettable year, please behold another glimpse to the humanity from another angle. Let's move today from raw reality to the reality-inspired fiction and make a little peek into three science-fiction masterpieces. Two of them, product of current almost expired year, that if you ask me, are making this forgettable year, well, little less forgettable. But before Daniel Abraham's and Ty Franck's "Babylon's Ashes", sixth book of The Expanse and "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story", Star Wars sequel, I think this is a perfect moment for me to start the review with another classic, in the most genuine meaning of the word - Arthur C. Clarke's "Childhood's End" that also deals with the same topic - humanity, all his weakness and soundness and the potential future based on our current conditions. And about the war that is, as it seems, inwrought in our core to the bone. So deep, that we still can't imagine a life or our own evolution without it.


In "Childhood's End", Arthur C. Clarke answered the question of what would happen if everybody on Earth disarmed and dismantled all their weaponry. In his novel, alien race forced people to do just that and the result of hypothetical 21st century without militaries and conflict and with just one world-state is described with these words: "The abolition of armed forces had at once almost doubled the world’s effective wealth, and increased production had done the rest. As a result, it was difficult to compare the standard of living of twenty-first-century man with that of any of his predecessors. Everything was so cheap that the necessities of life were free, provided as a public service by the community, as roads, water, street lighting, and drainage had once been".

But we are humans and evolutionary speaking only half a step ahead of the most advanced living creature on Earth in the realm of entire animal world. Therefore, for many years or decades and maybe even centuries in the future, world without armies, animosities and all kinds of hatred will only stay in fantasy stories like this one. On the other end, this is what I admire the most about Arthur C. Clarke. In most of his novels and stories, if not them all, this pacifist note is always present, including two other of his masterpieces "Rendezvous with Rama" and "Space Odyssey" series. Maybe this fact and the one that there are no real heroes in his imagination from the ordinary 'Hollywood' point of view, is what his books will always be considered as classics. "Childhood's End" is no different and the portrayed possible human evolution with total ascension of human collective mind is something that will give you lots to think about days after last page in the book is read. There is also a TV miniseries created last year based on the novel but I warmly recommend a book. They are not comparable after all, even though the script is not too much diverted from the original.


However, to make sure this post is true sequel to the previous one with reflection of this year political affairs or hatred if you will, let's get back to the old good war. The cliche, that if told or filmed right is guaranteed to bring you back success, glory and not the least, money. Please don't get me wrong here, I do like this kind of stories with lots of battles, heroes, villains, happy ends and well known fight between good and evil. After all, worldwide authors are not the ones who created the mess - they are only inspired with current political, religious and other types of conflicts in nowadays Earth and her history. This is the exact truth with "The Expanse", the novel series and last two books in sequel. What we had in first four was largely driven by science fiction and existence of alien protomolecule and the gates system. Last two are all about war and expanding conflict between people living on different planets, moons, stations and asteroids. Even though, concluding the conflict in the end of the "Babylon's Ashes" is anticipated from the beginning and with good guys winning as expected, the story is written pretty well and one year of waiting for conclusion, for me was worthwhile and with reading ended with great dose of entertainment. However, while "Childhood's End" is leaving you with many thoughts with its imaginative ending, "Babylon's Ashes" left only with bitter impression that humanity in its core didn't changed in the span of 200 years and all the hatred survived with only different background. All the racial, class, religious and all kind of known animosities survived just the same and spread across Solar system creating another series of wars, only this time with railguns.

On the other end, and also contrary to "Childhood's End", SyFy TV show of "The Expanse" is really extraordinary and exceptional. It is advertized as the best science fiction show after Battlestar Galactica and I agree fully. First season was simply great and visual effects are only adding another value to the equally exceptional novels. When I first wrote about "The Expanse" in posts Martian vs Expanse and Science of Life in Solar System, I expresed all the hope that all the characters, places, events and scientific tools as well as gravity and its changes, would be portrayed in the series just as it was in the books and after first season I can only confirm that they didn't divert at all and with all the filming technologies and effects managed to provide the same experience as the one from the reading. On some occasions even better, as one space opera, or franchise, is perhaps more suitable for the screen than for just the words. I do recommend both especially because the books are way ahead from the TV show keeping in mind that filming only started last year.


And finally, at the end, the series that doesn't even hide the word "wars", even from its title. Sadly, since first three movies was filmed long ago in the era of the old FX 'analogue' special effects, "the war" in the galaxy far, far away didn't really look too great. Don't get me wrong again now, it was awesome for the time being, but indeed warfare was not the prime theme in the first movies, perhaps with little exception in "The Empire Strikes Back". But even that one only a little. Next three movies came later to fill the gap but, even with decent effects and storyline, with me they left only a feeling for "Star Wars" being more a fairytale for children than one serious franchise. Somebody says Jar Jar Binks? The effect was little improved with last year "The Force Awakens" but I have to admit that I had more hopes in that one. It was good alright, but still the feeling was not really perfect. Maybe over the years we all ended with too much high expectation?

And then just a week ago came "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story". Finally, the 'Star Wars' movie that really, well ... is about the 'war'. The real and raging war. Believable one. With tremendous action and fabulous end. With good guys dying just as the bad ones. With only a hint of the force and fairytales. And with believable death star and exciting space battles. If they removed the sound of spacecrafts in the void of space I would definitely be the happiest person in the theater as this was the only thing I noticed bad in the movie. Maybe for the good feeling, I should credit low expectation I fixed for the projection this time or maybe it was the festivity of the second half of the December or even the fact that Cineplexx opened brand new theater in our neighborhood but nevertheless, like in the end of the movie, I think Star Wars with this one earned new hope for the future.


Well, that would be my glimpse to the world of science fiction for this year. There were more novels and movie sequels I can remember I read or watched during the year (Star Trek Beyond, Patrick Lee's The Breach Series, Matthew Mather's Nomad series, our Game of Life adventure, "The X-Files" season 10 and even decent "10 Cloverfield Lane" and "Spectral") and overall I dare to say that this year and especially this december improved the impression a little for one forgettable year I described in my last post. Let's see what the next one will be in both reality and fiction. Anyways, happy 2017th!

Image refs:
http://gmonster320.blogspot.com/2015/12/childhoods-end-episodes-1-3-reviews.html
http://www.space.ca/the-expanse-season-2-first-look/
http://www.slashfilm.com/star-wars-rogue-one-concept-art/
http://www.wallpaperbetter.com/rogue-one-a-star-wars-story

The Expanse, Expanded (Adam Savage):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8vR2FB1PGM

Sometimes I think we are just like ants. Too small and with lifespan too short to make a valuable difference. Our civilization I mean. After reading another book or watching another movie or documentary it's difficult not to notice that there are far too many 'apocalyptic scenarios' capable to put 'the end' sign in the thin air. Far too many boots to step on our little fragile anthill. This november thanks to Matthew Mather, one of the definitely greatest stars of the Earth's science fiction realm, I am 'proud' to announce two more ways of how to kill the Earth. Two more latest addition to this blog Post-Apocalyptic thread.


I know you are now wondering about this above image and already expressed couple of frowns and disbelief looks, but before diving into rogue black holes, let's first glimpse the first scenario from the title. If nothing else, then just to ease things a little bit and to meet one apocalyptic way of destruction that is still not something we should fear too much today. While Matt's novel "Cyberstorm" is still very frightening from certain point of view, the very technological background that was causing it is still not believable to the point of becoming apocalyptic threat, capable of triggering something big and worldwide. In the past I already wrote a little about Internet of Things in post Daemon of WarGames, speculating about the near future possibility that everything might go online, including your chandelier or your water valve in your bathtub. While, even today, the most important communal systems, like power plants or water supplies are pretty much automatized, they are far away from not having back doors or manual overrides. I am sure that there is no city on Earth that has fully and only internet-controllable communal system and they are most certainly all manufactured in a way to easily go back with manual functionality in case of any disasters, human made or inevitable. Same goes for all those military facilities with nuclear or heavy-duty armory - I think the probability of launching a nuclear missile or any other for that matter just by hacking some computerized network is very much zero and within all the armies worldwide.

Nevertheless, "Cyberstorm" is one of the kind novel and I enjoyed it very much. All the gadgets and technology used are from today and yet, it perfectly portrays that even the small(ish) cyber attack(s) triggered against couple of communication dataflows, in addition to real nature hazards, can cause a devastated miniature apocalypse. It also demonstrates how deeply we are dependable on digital communications in this stage of our civilization and how easily our own animosities can deceive us unbelievably. That's all I will say. I truly hope the upcoming movie will be able to spread the same message the book does.


However, Matthew's latest novel trilogy is what inspired me for this post and this weekend activity. His Nomad series is perhaps one of those science fiction works that already scored one prediction right. "Nomad" is actually a binary system containing two primordial black holes gravitational bonded to each other, that was created at the beginning of the universe as we know it in the process of hyperinflation just after the Big bang. Combined they have mass of around 40 Solar masses entering Solar system with speed of about 8000 km per second*. The path, velocity and mass of the Nomad are inevitably changing the shape of Solar system, the orbits of planets and most importantly triggering violent apocalyptic events on all planets affected by encounter. As with policy not to spoil the content of the books all I can say is that the plot is strictly following the science of the encounter and for me that is the best part of the story.

The prediction I mentioned was with author using LIGO (The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) data in the book to detect upcoming Nomad, that in real life, just a year after the Nomad was published, detected gravitational waves, from two ~30 solar mass black holes merging about 1.3 billion light-years from Earth. That's amazing, along with super intense and great story. I am definitely looking forward for the third book in series that is around the corner.


Not many novels and movies was that inspirational and beyond entertainment like Matthew's "Nomad". For me this is because of this blog and one of its thread where I am sorting out all the posts with apocalypse and doomsdays. But not just that - in the novel, the main character was using a piece of simulation software that actually exists and available for download. It's called "Universe Sandbox" which I recommend highly along with Matt's books. This amazing application took away from me entire last weekend providing endless entertainment and fun. Well, if by "entertainment and fun" can be called numerous simulations I played with in order to see how Solar system reacts and often being destroyed by immediate threats and rogue objects bulleting right into it's inner ring.

It was surely educational, to say the least, to monitor what happens with planets colliding with other planets, asteroids and comets but simulating 'Nomad like' intruders gave me couple of stomachaches with brutal awareness of how fragile our neighborhood actually is. For example, in above video I created three different trajectories, for a small black hole with mass of exactly one Solar mass, and projecting one through the Solar system (crossing the ecliptic plane in between Mars and Jupiter orbits), second passing just above the Solar system directly above the Sun and third one on collision course with our mother star with Earth with close encounter with upcoming black hole. "Luckily", the Earth staid in first two cases in the habitable zones and in stable orbit around the Sun, but third scenario ejected the Earth out of the Solar system that eventually became a binary system of the Sun and black hole. The introduction image above is a snapshot of one of such simulations.


Well, even though Nomad was way massive than the black holes in my simulations, it came with super speed and its trajectory and position of the Earth at the closest encounter produced more or less happy ending for the book's plot, but I can't get rid of the feeling that this kind of fictitious apocalyptic scenarios are not far from being the real danger. In the past there were five of mass extinctions I already wrote about in post The Sixth Great Dying and while it is difficult to understand what really caused them in the first place, it is not far from logic that at least one (if not all) was triggered by some large object transpassing Earth orbit or entire inner system of rocky planets.

Yesterday, I couldn't hesitate not to make one more simulation that originated from one of my older posts as well. Couple of years ago when I was writing Aliens & UFOs, I recalled the story from some online challenge, with a question of what would happen if the Sun was replaced with 37 Geminorum - the Sun's twin from Gemini constellation. 37 Gem, actually is not part of the Universe Sandbox's default library so, to test it out, I just enhanced the Sun's mass to match 37 Gem's, which is estimated to be 1,1 Solar mass. In the simulation result, within hours and days, the Earth's orbit changed and the Goldilocks zone expanded producing the average temperature to jump from cozy fifteen degrees to more than fifty. I am not sure that there is a physics process in existence to create something like this, but this fragileness gave me another stomach twitching nevertheless.


Well, and in conclusion, I warmly recommend Matt's books and Universe Sandbox application. Both works are still in progress - Nomad series is getting more sequels and the application is constantly updating with more and more features and fixes. More importantly - you don't have to be science geek to follow both. With extraordinary thriller background and family based story I am more than sure Nomad will not disappoint even the most demanding readers and Universe Sandbox is simply the application your Steam library would greatly miss if not installed. Both worth every penny.

Image refs:
http://www.conversacult.com.br/2015/11/resenha-cyberstorm-de-matthew-mather.html

Refs:
* https://youtu.be/X11yMkLUzCY
https://www.facebook.com/Author.Matthew.Mather/
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2011/06/millions-of-rogue-black-holes
http://deskbg.com/view/9946/
** http://universesandbox.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIGO
***http://matthewmather.com/
https://www.amazon.com/Nomad-Matthew-Mather-ebook/dp/B013TOAL3E
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primordial_black_hole

Last night I had a vividly strange science fiction dream. Like with most of my dreams, and dreams in general I guess, it was hard to recall all the details in the morning and this one was no exception, but in the nutshell the scene started with me in some science lab, describing the idea of how to effectively make a tiny hole in the universe. It was pretty simple - I was using four Tesla coils, perfectly positioned in the corners of the large square with edges of abut couple of meters long and with a small, battery sized, two metal plates positioned in its center of the square. The experiment was that at the precise moment, Tesla coils fired four filaments of thunder, reaching the center point exactly between two metal plates in the same time, initiating a process that in the end created a tiny breach in the universe that I was describing in the dream as a brane between dimensions and within the void between multiverses. Anyway, in the process, one plate goes from metallic through dark and eventually invisible while the other started immediately to glow and emit light and other sorts of radiation.


I was explaining in my dream that the breach positioned one plate just outside of our universe while the other staid here. Most of the pairs of virtual particles that was popping between two plates all the time out of vacuum are torn apart by the invisible plate making them real particles from that point and attracted one toward itself, while the second particle is always attracted by the other plate creating radiation and the glow in the process. Very similar to the Hawking radiation emitting from the event horizon of the black hole. Even though those two plates were positioned very near to each other, after the Tesla coils did the job by breaching the universe, they staid in different realms from that point, keeping relatively close distance between them and finding new equilibrium even when coils were shut down.

Our plate was then taken out of the square center, wrapped in the bigger case and used as a battery that never drains. Or to be precise not until the invisible plate in the system that is always outside of our universe depletes itself by doing its job of separating the particles, but it was explained in the dream to be extremely slow process that takes centuries, even if the battery is used to generate lots of power, like empowering entire city blocks.


I know, having a geeky or nerdy dreams can be weird for most people, but it's not that we can choose what to dream, can't we.. It is surely product of my daydreams, so to speak, and definitely outcome from my daily interests in astrophysics by watching various documentaries and reading articles online. The novel-like storyline was definitely the consequence of all of my science fiction fascination in both movies and books I am enjoying from time to time as well. In this very case the background of the entire story from the last night and today post is all about the most intriguing feature of the universe. The one that might change everything one day. Virtual particles. They are one of those scientific theories that has extraordinary potential for the future. If we find a way to capture and control them. Hopefully not by poking our universe with bolts of lightning. :-)

But seriously and Sci-fi aside, let's see why virtual particles are one of those quantum properties I think we still wait to understand fully. First of all, they are not really virtual per se, they differ from real particles only by their short existence in time. Aside from that, they can have some or even all properties of the real particles, including mass, but so far it is not really possible to observe virtual particles due to their short life. However, in sub-atomic world, virtual particles are often found in diagrams invented by Richard Feynman that revolutionized theoretical physics by their simplicity to explain what was really happening during the quantum events.


For example, take the Feynman diagram above. It shows how two electrons collide. The internal line is a virtual photon - which is in this case a representation of the excitation of the electromagnetic field caused by electrons and their interaction. We can observe both electrons, their velocity and paths but we are helpless to spot the virtual particle. In this very case, whether this virtual photon is really a particle, lasting only tiny fraction of time during collision, which would give it a title of an actual mediator of the force, just like what its counterpart - real photon is, or it is used just as a calculation aid, it is not really certain, but in the end any particle, real or virtual is only a representation of the excitations of the underlying quantum fields. However, even though called "virtual" because of their unobservability and even though we can't see how they 'look' and 'act', in one experiment we are definitely able to observe what they do. Experiment proposed by Hendrick Casimir in 1948 and confirmed by Steven Lamoreaux in 1996. The experiment that is probably responsible for my dream in the first place. The Casimir effect of the virtual particles powered machine just by using two metal plates positioned very near to each other. But to understand Casimir effect we need to understand one simple thing. Timespace itself. I am not kidding. This is mandatory and requirement for further reading. Easy. ;-)

Well, I am not pretending that I understand what really happens in the universe, but mainstream science of the current date says, and I am trying to paraphrase it, that all that is around us and within us and at any point in time is just one soup of various fields. Like the Higgs field I talked about once earlier on the blog. Or gravitational field. Or in this post story and this particular case electromagnetic field. Any field, by definition is a region in space (and time?) that is affected by some force. At any point in the field. It also means that field is a region in space that contains energy. Now, electromagnetic field is not something that can occupy certain part of the space. It is literally everywhere. It is fundamental field that is actually in the background of the entire universe and not just in places with matter. Everywhere. Even in the vacuum where nothing tangible exists. Some places contain more energy than another with vacuum being a place with the electromagnetic field in its lowest energy state. Not zero. Now, keep with me, it gets interesting - let's compare this field with actual soup that is always boiling.


If you are looking the surface of the boiling soup you will see bubbles and fluid filaments all over the surface but at some places are heavier and more powerful and at the other places calmer and more peaceful, but always boiling and moving. If we were able to glimpse a closer look and magnify the surface to see it on even smaller scale, we would see that entire surface is in chaotic state of constant wibbling, wabbling, wobbling, blooping and bubbling*. The same is with electromagnetic field. The stronger wabbles are what we identify as electromagnetic radiation that propagates forward (and in case of our soup outside the pot to the kitchen floor) while the tiny wibbling are just a short lived emission of photons or failed radiation if you will.

That tiny failed radiation is possible thanks to quantum mechanics that allows temporary violations of conservation of energy, so one smaller particle can become a pair of heavier particles and in case of photon - it goes from changes of being a wave, a mediator particle with no mass or a pair of heavier particles - couple of electron and positron (or pair of quark and antiquark with radiation of one gluon). What exactly and when it happens is dependable of the ongoing process and energy levels of the system but in the case of the lowest energy state of vacuum we know that heavier particles are popping all the time and due to the uncertainty principle, those virtual particles always appear in pairs. They are borrowing the energy from the vacuum and immediately collide and annihilate themselves, repaying the energy in order not to violate the laws of thermodynamics. These stream of virtual particles "coming out of vacuum and diving back" is well known quantum feature known as quantum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field.


Now, those virtual particles popping out into short existence are coming pretty randomly - and in all possible wavelengths which bring to "the surface" a vast amount of energy, due to their short life normally invisible to us. If we position two uncharged metal plates very near to each other (less than micrometer), only those virtual particles whose wavelengths fit a whole number of times into the gap emerge between the plates, while outside, without limitations, all of possible wavelengths are accounted for. The result is that energy density between the plates is way less than energy density of the surrounding space and immediately a tiny force appears and starts pulling the plates toward each other. This force is named "Casimir force" and entire system "Casimir effect". On the first glance, it doesn't look strange - the same effect can be made with two plates in water that with small waves created by sonic generator** are pulling toward each other as well - but keep in mind that actual Casimir experiment is performed in vacuum - with no single atom of matter between or outside the monitoring system and plates are uncharged. So the "only effort" we need to do is to put it very near to each other and they will start moving. The force is tiny though - for example for the one square meter plates apart by just one micron the force is 1.3 mN*** (weight of 1kg is about 10N). The force is stronger for bigger plates and with shorter distance in between.

However, one potential propulsion engine, built on the principles of the Casimir effect with even a tiny but constant push like this one, is comparable with ion engines that creates thrust by accelerating ions with electricity. For example, "Dawn", the spacecraft that recently arrived in the asteroid belt was propelled by three xenon ion thrusters, each with the force of only 90mN. Eventually after more than 8 years of travel it accumulated acceleration over the mission to more than 10 km/s (41,260 km/h) which is pretty fast for a tiny push (even though it used other means of acceleration like gravity boost while transiting Mars). It carried almost 400kg of xenon for the ion trust engine but potential Casimir engine of the future would need none of such payload. Its propellant would be the very vacuum of spacetime and its pairs of virtual particles.


Of course, the real application would come with separating virtual particles like in my dream or what black holes seems to do**** on daily basis. If there is a way to make virtual particles real, the millinewtons will instantly loose that 'milli' prefix and be equipped with the one more powerful (perhaps 'kilo' or 'mega') and that will be something extraordinary. Something that in science fiction has a cool acronym. ZPE. Zero Point Energy. Surely, we must find other means to deal with this than by creating tiny black holes to do the job for us, but thankfully quantum world is always full of surprises and perhaps one day we will build a machine that is capable to take the energy out of vacuum safely and small in size, relatively speaking. Perhaps another quantum effect will be helpful for this job, the one that use interactions between hydrogen electron and virtual particles called Lamb shift. But that is a story for another time.

Image refs:
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/main/index.html
http://www.livescience.com/50119-superconductors-physicists-gravity-particles.html
http://pics-about-space.com/black-hole-hawking-radiation-diagram?p=3

Refs:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Quantum/virtual_particles.html
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn5PMa5xRq4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-energy_universe
https://briankoberlein.com/2015/03/06/nothing-but-net/
** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PS8Lbq2VYIk
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-virtual-particles-rea/
http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/147096/are-virtual-particles-tool
***http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Quantum/casimir.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_particle
****https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation

People are asking me these days what is "Game of Life" we are dealing with this whole summer? The only honest answer I can give is that I don't really know. I guess I lost myself into entire story of our pioneer film making project. It started like any other father-son benign tech play - it was sometime back in the middle of April when I was categorizing our pile of ordinary family video files and our 'cooking series' so in a moment of 'light bulb floating above my head' I asked myself why we don't move one step further and create a little longer short film of some sort. So I asked Viktor and he seemed thrilled about it, especially when I told him that he would play the major role and from there our "Game of Life" project became reality and started growing and morphing into real short movie and after little while began being more and more enjoyable and serious.

In short, after four months of all of our 'Hollywood' efforts, Viktor and I proudly present a science fiction short film based on "Game of Life", a cellular automaton game invented by John Horton Conway in 1970. Actually, this is the first episode in potential series we called "Flares and Fireflies". We hope you will enjoy watching at least as much we enjoyed making it and - this is important - please keep in mind that we are not really educated film-makers or talented actors and that this is pretty much maximum what we could do with all of our knowledge and modest technology we used, to say the least. If you like it, after the movie, later in the post, is the story of how and where we made it, entire script, some blooper stories and behind the scenes photos.


First of all, I hope you like our film and for further understanding what I would say about the core of its script is that it 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. Just like in Conway's simple two-dimensional game, the life itself could be the same - just a set of rules in some artificial zero-player game that on quantum or molecular level provides results of interactions of main ingredients.

That was about "Sci" part of the "Sci-Fi" genre. Fiction that follows the story is in the fact that the life might be fully artificial in origin. In other words, the film explores the rules of evolution that are not intended to be seen or understood by everyone. Even those chosen to dive into game by random case or by complex rules outcome are not able to understand the principles at once. If you are asking now how the game of life really looks from the inside and behind white-green wireframes, well, you will have to wait for another episode. But, is there going to be another episode? The honest answer is that I don't know. I really don't. So far we only have ideas and from there to the final file is a long way. We'll see.


This long way with the first episode started with the script. Believe it or not, first draft and the final scenario was not too different. It slightly changed but only because of technological restrictions and improvisations. Ever wonder how script looks like for short films like this one? Here it is in full:


In the end, "Game of Life" is composed out from 50 scenes filmed on four major locations. Two of them are Viktor's room and our living room decorated with green screen for the occasion. The adventure starts and ends in main character's room and the only dialog is filmed in front of green background and merged with coastal background we took in Greece. Unfortunately, technologically speaking, this is the weakest chain in the movie and not only because of our lack of efforts. "Chroma key" software within Adobe's "After Effects" didn't cope too well with modest laptop I have used to run it through. It failed and crashed too often during rendering and it got out the last nerves out of me. If you add to all the struggles that consumer dSLR (Nikon D5200) we used to film it is not perfect for audio capture without external microphone, and the fact that we had to record audio separately, I have to say that I am not really satisfied with dialog scene but in the end I'd like to think that this is the best I could do with editing that part of the film.


However, this film would not be possible without a lighthouse as it plays major role in the story and we found it just 20 kilometers from our hotel during our summer's vacation. It was located some 30 kilometers away from famous Greek city of Corinth built on a rock at the end of a small headland with tremendous view to the entire Corinthian gulf. We spent three days on the site and nearby beach and finished all the 'Greek' scenes and enjoyed amazing time on local beaches and restaurants. In above photo, Viktor, with our 'nerf' portal stone preps, is posing in front of 'Faros Melagavi' not far away from the 'Vouliagmenis' lake where we filmed last portal scene and also just next to ancient archaeological site of 'Heraion of Perachora' - a sanctuary occupied by real oracle, just like the one in Delphi, dedicated to the goddess Hera and built in 9th century BC by some Corinthian ancient cult. Here, just next to the old ruins of the temple of Hera I found a stone perfect for the background of the green screen dialog scene. Before we went to Greece, I 'scouted' the entire site with Google Maps and photos people took and posted in the Google's gallery and all I have to say is that it looked perfect for filming just like I hoped for. Very little improvisations were needed for 'running' and 'firefly' scenes. The same was with filming 'portal' scene on the beautiful sandy beach of Vouliagmenis lake, which is actually a lagoon connected to the Corinthian gulf and Ionian sea with a narrow strait.

Finally, the fourth location we used to film intermediate portal scenes belongs to our special place - a village in eastern Serbia where we spent many vacations and weekends in the past. The name of the village is Guševac and I mentioned it before on the blog on numerous occasions. With its intact mountain spirit it was our first choice. The very first scene was actually filmed here in the abandoned barn. I intended to use nearby forests for additional scenes for second portal but due to the complexity I gave up of that idea. It would be visually great but it is not really that connected to the main story.


If you ask me what I liked the most behind and before the scenes of "Game of Life", without a doubt I say it is the entire adventure of making it. It started as a father-son summer play and in the end, this is what it really is - endless fun of filming scenes, creating script, directing the plot, improvising the story and scenes, enjoying all the bloopers and laughter on all 'sets', especially in Greece. I really can't say what was funnier to do. Even the editing was special time with learning all new stuff and knowledge and in a way I am now looking on movies and TV shows with different eyes and capturing all the perfect and imperfect flow of scenes with my new 'director' habit. Small regret and disappointment was the equipment. I know I am not perfect director and cameraman but I am more than positive that with at least little better technology, including software and rendering computer, the final movie would be much better. At least it would mask or hide most of our imperfection and flaws.

One thing is for sure though - if you are thinking of filming your own short movie with modest consumer camera and not so obeying tripod - don't think twice - go for it and however the result is non-ideal in the end, I guarantee you that the feeling will be just perfect.

Revelation of Life (Game of Life sequel):
https://www.mpj.one/2020/10/revelation-of-life-part-one.html

Game of Life graphic novel:
https://www.milanzivic.com/2017/03/gol-graphic-novel.html

Refs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway_Game_of_Life
http://www.milanzivic.com/2015/12/is-life-zero-player-game.html
http://www.milanzivic.com/2016/08/cyclops-of-peloponnese.html