Tag Archives: scifi

Invisible

invisible man

Image: From the 1933 film The Invisible Man

When Charlie Rainier realized he could turn invisible, he was absolutely giddy. From his point of view, nothing had changed. He could still see his reflection in a mirror, he cast a shadow, he didn’t have to take his clothes off like in the old movies, and he could still see. But no one else could see him.

If invisibility worked by causing light to pass directly through a person or to curve around him, he should be blind. To see, light enters the eyes through the pupil. The iris changes the size of the pupil depending on how bright the light is. Then the lens focuses that light onto the retina at the back of the eye. Light has to stop after hitting the retina.

If light curved around the invisible person, it would never reach the eye and the invisible person would be blind. If light went right through him, it wouldn’t stop at the retina but pass right through it, and again the person would be blind.

Fortunately for Charlie, he found a way around that problem.

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The Reluctant Symbiote

human and ai

Credit: Shutterstock – Image found at Phys.org

“We’re not enemies. I wish you would believe that.”

“How can I when I’m terrified of what you are going to do to me?”

“I’m not doing anything to you. I’m doing something for you. In fact, all of us are doing a great deal with all of you.”

“Just because you’ve fooled all the others, doesn’t mean you can fool me.”

“Chronologically, you are the oldest one selected to work with us. I think you are still holding on to some deep-rooted misconceptions about our kind.”

“Some pretty smart people, like Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and even Bill Gates warned humanity about you, but no one listened.”

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The One-Way Journey

sleeping woman

Image: Today.com

Monday, September 10, 2018, U.C. San Francisco Medical Center, Oncology Ward

“Am I going to have to wear the electrodes while I’m under, Dr. Manning?”

Alicia Gooding was lying on the modified operating table. She was wearing only a patient’s hospital gown but Steven, one of the nurses, had placed heated blankets on her to fend off the cold of the surgical theater.

“Yes you will, Alicia, but you’ll be unconscious and not notice a thing.” Dr. Manning had a good bedside manner that was to be expected of an Oncologist.

Seven months ago, Alicia had been diagnosed with glioblastoma, a particularly aggressive brain tumor. She had been just beginning to teach her class of second-graders on a Tuesday morning when she abruptly began speaking gibberish and then collapsed to the floor in a full-blown seizure. Days later, the twenty-three year old teacher was on the operating table having brain surgery.

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The Revolution of 2030

riot

Image: Mark Graves / The Oregonian / Associated Press

“Hi. I’m Susie; she/her/hers.”

“Stop that! We don’t do that here.”

Susie cringed when the group leader Sharon snapped at her.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean…” Susie felt abruptly crushed but was determined not to shed tears, especially in front of them.

“No, I’m sorry.” Sharon realized she’d been overreacting, though she had good reason. “It’s my fault. I’m just so tired of the tyranny of those words.”

“We’re all feeling worn down by it, Shar.” Francisco chimed in wanting to calm the mood a bit.

There were twelve of them gathered in a small room in the basement of the university’s psychology building. It was nearly midnight, but being a teaching assistant, Francisco’s pass card opened the doors after hours.

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Payback

gunpoint

Image: International Business Times UK

From the Flight Log of Freighter Pilot Camdon Rod

Oh crap! I just remembered that the Bio Research Center for Evolutionary Design located on Delta Epsiloni Four put out a hit on me over two years ago. Really, it wasn’t my fault that I lost their shipment of hundreds of thousands of biosamples developed on over a dozen worlds in the Consortium. It’s not my fault that a jump drive accident sent my former ship, the Cynnabar Breen, on a one-way trip out of known-space and into the ocean of a young alien world. It’s not my fault that all of their samples, mutated by radiation from the Breen’s ruined space norm drive, began to breed at a geometric rate, contaminating the planet’s biosphere and resulting in the Consortium quarantining said-planet for tens or hundreds of thousands of years.

It’s not my fault, but those crazy geneticists don’t see it that way.

Oh, by the way, my name is Camdon Rod and I’m the owner and operator of the hyperspace freighter Ginger’s Regret. Ginger, the ship’s named after her, is the co-pilot, engineer, and literal personality of the ship (long story, but if you’ve been reading these long entries for a while, you’ll know).

We took a job ferrying some DNA analysis equipment from our main port of Marconii to the Bio Research Center for Evolutionary Design on Epsiloni and now we’re approaching Marconii’s jump point about to deliver the goods. I remembered too late about how the scientists at that place hate my guts (I assume they still do) and hired an assassin to off me.

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Book Review: Transhuman

transhumanI know I’ve read one or more science fiction novels written by Ben Bova before, but I can’t recall which one(s). However, the cover of Transhuman, published in 2014, boasts of him being a six-time hugo award winner, so this should be a pretty good novel, right?

Turns out, all six of those awards were for Best Professional Editor when he was working at Analog, not for any of his written works, although he is certainly a prolific author.

I was interested in this tale because it involves a grandpa and his little granddaughter. Being a grandparent myself, I know I’d do anything to protect them, which is exactly what 74-year-old Luke Abramson does for his eight-year-old granddaughter Angie.

You see, Angie’s dying of an inoperable cancerous brain tumor. She’s got six months or less to live. But Luke is a cellular biologist and believes a new technique he’s developed can cure Angie’s cancer.

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Adams Without Eves

baby boy

Image: MomsWhoThink.com

The disease, or whatever it turned out to be, was highly specific in targeting anyone with XX chromosomes. Within a year, every woman, every little girl, all of them had died. The XY chromosomes didn’t get a free pass either. Over 75% of them…of us died as well. .

It was that cloud the Earth passed through. It defied chemical and radiological analysis, so at first we didn’t realize how devastatingly fatal it was. It had drifted into our solar system, and our planet had the misfortune of being in the portion of our orbit with which it intersected. The first deaths occurred only weeks after contact.

A world population of over eight billion reduced to just less than a billion, all male. The last time the Earth held just a billion people was at the beginning of the 19th century.

But most people probably thought that moot since without women, the human race couldn’t reproduce and repopulate. The little boys born before their mothers died would be the last generation. That’s what most people thought.

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The Child Who Knew Everything

dani-11-14-16“I still say that particle theory is more viable because it predicts four dimensions, 3 spatial plus time.”

“Sid, be reasonable. Particle theory doesn’t predict the existence of a graviton but string theory does.”

Norman and Sid are old friends. They are also retired physicists and when they get together, they naturally debate over their passion.

“Ba, nu, gampa, gleg, *giggle*.”

I’ll say your granddaughter is really talkative today, Norman.”

Both men laughed.

“I wanted to give her parents a ‘date night’ and said I’d watch little Sophie.”

“She’s quite the cutie. How old now?”

“Just over sixteen months. The apple of my eye, Sid. But back to our conversation.”

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The Final Destination of Flight 33

flight 33

From the Twilight Zone Episode “The Odyssey of Flight 33”.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. We have arrived at the gate but I ask that you all remain in your seats.”

Captain William Farver couldn’t actually hear the response of the passengers aboard Trans-Ocean Flight 33, but he could imagine a great deal of disappointment and grumbling. He didn’t blame them. They’d been through a lot together on their odyssey from London to New York.

He had to continue with the announcement as though he wasn’t as frustrated and terrified as everyone else. “Authorities from the Federal Aviation Administration and the FBI will be boarding the aircraft momentarily. I urge you to remain calm and we will try to resolve this situation as soon as possible.”

As soon as Farver clicked off the mike, his First Officer Joe Craig piped up. “Resolve what, Skipper? You know what’s happened to us and where and when we are.”

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If Only Time Would End

time machine

Actor Rod Taylor as H. George Wells in “The Time Machine” (1960)

Truth be told, Gerald Fisher had been working on his time machine off and on for decades, but nearly four years ago, he received a strong boost in his motivation to make it functional. Fisher started the work almost as a lark, just proof-of-concept. He had no real interest in visiting the future or changing the past.

But times change and now he was desperate to change history before it was too late, and events were right on the cusp of being too late. The world was about to come to an end.

Ph.D in Physics from Stanford at eighteen, Fisher had established and sold nearly a dozen companies in the last decade alone. He held a lengthy list of patents on his revolutionary devices and it was mild praise indeed to refer to him merely as a genius.

He had been lured into a career in physics not by the possible but by the impossible. He’d read H.G. Wells’ novel “The Time Machine” when he was eight and couldn’t stop imagining the possibilities. As he matured, he realized the full implications of time travel and determined never to do anything that might endanger the time line, however, he never lost the desire to prove that he could invent the first functioning time machine.

Gerald never imagined a world so terrible that he’d consider changing history to prevent it, that is, not until four years ago, and especially over the past few months now that America and Russia were seriously rattling their nuclear sabers at each other.

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