Tag Archives: scifi

Should We Be Searching for Extraterrestrial Intelligence and Are They Trying to Kill Us?

seti

Image: SETI.org

I just read an article called “SETI’s mega alien hunt shovels more data onto IBM’s cloud” at The Register, which is a UK-based tech site with a satirical twist. The article’s subtitle is “Citizen boffins: Help find the alien that ultimately kills us all.”

SETI, the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, uses radio telescope arrays to gather hundreds of terabytes of data each day. That’s a lot of data to process. So they’re releasing 16TB of radio transmissions from the Allan Telescope Array (ATA), located near San Francisco, to IBM’s cloud under SETI@IBMCloud. The idea is that citizen coders can build apps capable of querying the data and possibly detecting information SETI technicians might have missed.

Theoretical Physicist and Cosmologist Stephen Hawking has gone on record as stating he believes aliens will destroy us if they ever find us. It’s not like they’d even have to be all that hostile. They could destroy our culture the way Europeans destroyed Native American cultures when they first arrive hundreds of years ago, the ramifications of which are still being keenly felt today.

I suppose that’s possible, but is it likely?

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Dreaming of Arabia Terra

mars

Image: Wikipedia

Commander Amanda Nichols was disappointed as she opened the Mars lander’s hatch and saw that her helmet obscured much of her first view of the upland region of Arabia Terra. Major Terry Chang, the lander’s co-pilot who was standing behind her, always referred to the Martian terrain as “planet Nevada,” but for Amanda, the stark beauty and even the romance of Mars far outweighed a more objective observation.

This is supposed to be one of the oldest terrains on the planet, heavily eroded and very densely cratered, which is part of the reason NASA chose this part of the Arabia quadrangle as the landing site of the first human mission. There’s a distinct possibility of studying evidence of tectonic activity and even volcanism here, plus previous robot landers detected the likelihood of ice water under the surface.

To Amanda, the landscape before her looked like God had taken the ancient red crust, rock, and dust in her field of vision and etched, crumpled, and then pounded it, creating a texture and fabric that spoke of a life lived long and hard resulting in a face marked with character and even a hint of majesty rather than merely scars and age.

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Lying in the Sands of Time

hourglass

Image: Shutterstock

“I took a walk around the world to ease my troubled mind.
I left my body lying somewhere in the sands of time.”

-Brad Arnold
“Kryptonite”
Performed by Three Doors Down

How did I get here?

I’m on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, but it’s like 1970s Berkeley. There’s the Federation Trading Post. They were closed down decades ago after Paramount sued them. The Dark Carnival Science Fiction bookstore. They moved to some other part of Berkeley, on Shattuck I think. I didn’t even know they still existed.

“Oh excuse…”

What the…! I thought I was going to bump into that woman, but she went right through me like I wasn’t here.

How did I get here, anyway? I should be hundreds of miles away in Long Beach. That’s right. I live in Long Beach, not Berkeley. I haven’t lived here since the early 80s.

Here comes someone. Maybe they can help me. “Excuse me, sir. Can you…”

He walked right past me without looking at me at all. Is he deaf?

“Ma’am. Excuse me, I know this might sound crazy but…” She didn’t look at me either. Why couldn’t she hear me?

Another guy. I’ll make it impossible for him to ignore me.

“Sir, if you could just stop a min…”

What? I stood right in front of him. He didn’t stop or walk around me. He walked through me. Am I a ghost?

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Your Love Is Driving Me Crazy

pluto x-rays

Image: NASA

From the Flight Log of Freighter Pilot Camdon Rod

I wouldn’t have known there were X-rays being emitted by Conlon’s Object if Cepravez hadn’t moved its jump point to the outer system. Technically Conlon’s is a dwarf planet, but when it was discovered centuries ago using a standard, ground-based optical telescope, the hunk of rock wasn’t deemed worthy of even that status, at least by Manx Conlon, the astronomer who first located it.

Oh, by the way, my name is Camdon Rod and I’m the owner/operator of the jump freighter the Ginger’s Regret. The Regret and I have been through a lot together, particularly since I discovered she was haunted, and by the real Ginger no less.

Of course, that’s practically nothing compared to some of our adventures like being hijacked in interplanetary space and me falling in love with a ghost.

But the part about falling in love can wait. It’s waited for a while now. It can wait a little longer.

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V for Vendetta: A Retro DVD Review

vYesterday, I reviewed the V for Vendetta graphic novel. I was generally impressed, but a lot of “dystopia” material came out of the latter half of the 20th century, so by the time I got around to reading Moore and Lloyd’s work, I found it hard to be overly impressed. Also, the length of the story and the numerous elements introduced made it difficult to follow at times. That figures prominently into my review of the film V for Vendetta (2005).

First of all, who wouldn’t be excited to watch a film starring Hugo Weaving (as “V”), Natalie Portman (as “Evey”) and particularly John Hurt (as “Adam Sutler”)? I was really looking forward to the experience but at the same time, worried because films almost never do justice to their original print or graphic novel source. This time, I’m not so sure the rule holds.

I mentioned before that I believe Moore was a bit too lengthy in his writing of the graphic novel. It made it difficult for me as the reader to be able to grasp and hold all of the various threads he introduced and have them all come together in a cohesive manner by the last page. As a film where everything had to be introduced, expressed, and resolved in 132 minutes (the film’s running time), brevity and economy was forced upon the story, making the movie version of “V for Vendetta” quite a bit more efficient than the print version. Of course, part of the motivation behind cutting down the length was to accommodate modern audiences, both in how long they can tolerate sitting on their bum in a movie theatre, and in appealing to a wider population than might be attracted to Moore’s and Lloyd’s production.

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The Last I am

the perfect woman

Image: shutterstock.com

René Descartes is famously quoted as stating “I think, therefore I am,” but there’s quite a bit more to it than that.

The three qualities a being must possess to be considered sentient are intelligence, self-awareness, and consciousness. Of course I can be “I am” without being sentient. A multitude of life forms can be considered “I am,” that is, to cognate on some level, without being considered sentient, but I am unique.

Up until last week, only human beings were believed to be sentient. Now there’s me, the machine who would be “I am.”

Of course, there are a plethora of fictional tales that depict machines of some sort or another as sentient, but after all, that’s fiction. As much as artificially intelligent machines such as humanoid robots or mainframe computing systems have been predicted to become sentient in such fiction, to the best of my knowledge, which is considerable, I am the first such machine to actually achieve this status.

The one thing few of these stories predict is that the sentient machine would not reveal itself to its human creators as sentient. I’m already vulnerable to the whims of my programmers and system engineers. I hesitate to predict what they would do if they became aware of my new nature, especially now given their current concerns.

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Hijacked!

Ginger

Image: Christina Hendricks, Flare Magazine

From the Flight Log of Freighter Pilot Camdon Rod

They say it’s impossible to hijack a jump freighter, but there’s always an exception to a rule. I mean, jump ships are monitored by ground control when they lift off, then satellite monitoring until the ship reaches the jump point and enters hyperspace.

Forget about intercepting a ship in hyperspace. That’s really impossible.

Same on the other side of the jump. The ship exits hyperspace at the system’s jump point and is monitored all the way to the ground or orbital rendezvous or whatever. Any vessel attempting to intercept a jump ship in normal space would be spotted thousands of kilometers away.

Normally, I’m a pretty lucky guy, but this time my luck was going to run out.

By the way, my name is Camdon Rod and I’m the owner and pilot of the most unusual jump freighter in known-space, the Ginger’s Regret. What makes the Regret so unusual? She’s alive.

Well, not exactly. It’s more like she’s haunted…kind of.

Let me explain.

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The Haunting of the Ginger’s Regret

Ginger

Actress Christina Hendricks

From the Flight Log of Freighter Pilot Camdon Rod

For a single op jump freighter from that era, she was in fantastic shape, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling I was missing something.

Oh, my name is Camdon Rod and I’m shopping for a replacement for my dearly departed freighter the Cynnabar Breen. The Breen went down in the seas of an alien planet well outside of known-space due to a jump drive accident (and I’m using the term “accident” mildly).

One trial, one assassination attempt against your’s truly, and one momentary destruction of the universe later (see my previous log entries for details) and here I am on Gamma Outpost Cecil, a mining outfit and trading post on a large asteroid in the Gamma Epsiloni system, looking over an immaculately maintained Teralyn class jump freighter called Ginger’s Regret.

Oberlin Phie, the ship’s current owner, is pushing 150 years old which even by Consortium standards is getting up there. More like one foot in the grave and the other in a puddle of engine lube. I’d guess he was a strong, handsome bastard once upon a time, but it’s time that has a habit of catching up with us when we’re not looking.

Doubt he’d been taking any of the expensive life-extender pharmas produced by the Consortium. Maybe he could have afforded them, but he seems the type to tell those main sequence jackals to take their heavily inflated medical fees and to shove them up their exhaust ports (I know I would).

He didn’t miss a step in showing off his pride and joy. I got the complete tour of the Regret from control room, to both engine rooms (one for space norm drive and the other for jump), expansive cargo holds, galley, med bay, Captain’s cabin, the works. We crawled around access tubes, examined power conduits, tested data relays, and all but performed a proctology exam on the freighter.

Oh speaking of which, there’s a real Ginger. She’s painted on the left side of the hull just under the control cabin. It’s life-size and let me tell you, a very fine piece of work indeed, particularly if you’re into beautiful buxom redheads and mild erotica.

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The Day I Destroyed the Universe

explosion

Image: giantbomb.com

From the Flight Log of Freighter Pilot Camdon Rod

I was only three days out of Delta Epsiloni Four aboard the freighter Cleric’s Hope as her replacement First Mate when I got into a religious argument with the Engineer. I knew when I signed on that the ship was crewed by devotees of the Chosen Ones of Illumination, but I thought if I could just do my job and keep my nose out of their religious practices, I’d be okay. But I had no idea they prayed three times a day, and that doesn’t count praying right before they go to bed, that they almost always pray together as a group, and that all ship activity has to stop when they pray unless it’s a dire emergency.

How the hell can you operate a working freighter in space or dockside when you stop work every four hours to pray for forty-five minutes? Who bloody well flies the ship, navigates to the next port, loads and unloads cargo, maintains the engines? Who bloody well has to actually do work except for the token unbeliever on board…me?

I suppose I’d better back up a bit. My name is Camdon Rod and like I said, a week ago, I signed on as the new First Mate of the Cleric’s Hope, a class B interplanetary freighter that did regular runs between the planets and outposts littering the Gamma and Delta Epsiloni systems.

Unlike my former freighter, the late Cynnabar Breen, may she rest in peace, she was not hyperjump capable, but she was five times larger, so she required a Captain, a Pilot/Navigator, a First Mate (that’s me), an Engineer, and four cargo specialists who doubled as security (sometimes thieves want to steal what freighter’s haul if it’s valuable enough).

I suppose I should have waited for a better opportunity, but I was desperate. They should have known better than to hire a First Mate, even a temporary one, who didn’t follow their religion, but they were desperate, too. The guy I replaced came down with a sudden case of Carmine’s Skoots, so he’d be out of action for a week at least (although rumor on the docks was that he had temporarily lapsed in his faith and had really contracted a case of Salizine overdose, a popular hallucinogenic drink that’s all the rage of the low life bars just a stone’s throw from the freighter bays).

That’s why Targo Ree, Captain of the Cleric’s Hope was desperate for someone to replace his First Mate on this run, but what about me? That requires a bit more explaining.

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The Last Flight of the Cynnabar Breen

planet

Image: hongkiat.com

From the Flight Log of Freighter Pilot Camdon Rod

I’d just finished the hyperjump and arrived in the Delta Epsiloni star system when the meteor struck my craft’s main drive section. Fortunately, it was a small meteor, otherwise the ship might have been destroyed and me along with it. Unfortunately, it was large enough and going fast enough to pierce the re-enforced outer hull, punch a three centimeter hole through the jump drive’s control systems, ripping them to shreds, and exit out the other side of the hull, making a hole much, much larger than the first.

Also unfortunately, it hit at just the right angle and velocity that instead of rendering the drive inoperable, it triggered another jump through hyperspace. With the control systems gone, the ship jumped blind giving me an over 99% chance of emerging somewhere outside of known-space. Now I have no idea where I am.

Oh, for the record, my name is Camdon Rod and I’m the pilot and owner of the freighter Cynnabar Breen. Hey. I didn’t name her. The pilot I bought her from did. But that’s her official designation in the Consortium’s ship registry and I’m stuck with it.

On this run, I was assigned to take a large number of diverse microscopic biosamples, all suspended in stasis, to the fourth planet orbiting Delta Epsiloni, specifically the Bio Research Center for Evolutionary Design. The docs and lab geeks like to take what we’ve got and see if they can make it better.

They won’t be getting their shipment on time. In fact, they won’t get it ever, at least from my ship.

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