Category: Science Fiction and Fantasy

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Resources Science Fiction and Fantasy

The Carrington Event

The Carrington Event was an awesome solar flare that is the starting point for Stuart Clark’s book The Sun Kings

In September of 1859, the entire Earth was engulfed in a gigantic cloud of seething gas, and a blood-red aurora erupted across the planet from the poles to the tropics. Around the world, telegraph systems crashed, machines burst into flames, and electric shocks rendered operators unconscious. Compasses and other sensitive instruments reeled as if struck by a massive magnetic fist. For the first time, people began to suspect that the Earth was not isolated from the rest of the universe. However, nobody knew what could have released such strange forces upon the Earth–nobody, that is, except the amateur English astronomer Richard Carrington.

Categories
Blather Oddities Science Fiction and Fantasy

Redhaired Scissorman makes Atomic Tacos

I seem to have completely stopped posting to my blog. Two reasons I can think of for that (aside from the obvious laziness): First, recent versions of WordPress have broken the “Blog This” bookmarklet which used to make it pretty convenient to grab a link and get a new blog entry window to post it in. Second, I started using my Scuttle to save interesting links, or (more rarely), the Shared Items page in Google Reader. And since most of my posts are quick links to something from someone else’s blog anyway, making new blog entries has become rather pointless, most of the time.

But sometimes the urge is not just to link, but to wave as well.

  • Is gingerism as bad as racism? (BBC). Apparently, virulent prejudice against redheads is endemic to Britain. The topic came up in a podcast I listened to, and the next day I found this article. My family includes Brits and redheads (as well as British redheads), so, interesting.
  • Bash vs. Snip: How to Win at Rock, Paper, Scissors (through John Wick’s LJ) This bit is interesting:

    The World Rock Paper Scissors Society claims rookie men tend to lead with rock. If you’re playing a spontaneous game against a male rookie, there’s an increased chance that his opening throw will be rock, so you’ll want to go with paper. Why do men start with rock? Perhaps the clenched fist evokes power and makes guys feel tough. If you’re playing a female rookie, however, keep in mind that competitive player Jason Simmons claims that women tend to start with scissors, so go with rock.

  • Robert Rodriguez’s Ten Minute Cooking School has two installments up on youtube. These were originally packaged as DVD extras. Rodruguez is as cool on film as Tarantino is creepy. Or more so.
  • Canadian king of Hard SF gloom Peter Watts (of Vampire Domestication fame) has finally converted his fascinating newscrawl page to a real blog you can subscribe to. When he’s not being pessimistic about his writing career, he can be fascinatingly pessimistic about the implications of the latest scientific research. Sometimes he combines both.
  • Also SF and also with the pessimistic implications of science (this time to space-opera style science fiction, not to human life on Earth…) is Winchell Chung’s Atomic Rockets site, which has a ton of cool info on interstellar spaceships and hard science in between a whole lot of retro art. It includes such sobering thoughts as “Jon’s Law for SF authors”, which states that “Any interesting space drive is a weapon of mass destruction” (where “Interesting is equal to ‘whatever keeps the readers from getting bored'”).
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Roleplaying Science Fiction and Fantasy

Powdered Water!

From the Wikipedia entry on William Hope Hodgeson’s 1912 far-future SF novel, The Night Land:

Powdered Water and Food Tablets
Hodgson’s hero sets out into the Night Land carrying lightweight food tablets and a sealed tube full of “water-powder.” When a small quantity of this powder is exposed to air, it absorbs water rapidly from the air, reacting rapidly and producing drinkable water. While lightweight dehydrated foods exist, water-powder is scientifically implausible (though see deliquescence), but together these serve to explain how the hero can carry enough food and drink to survive his journey in the inhospitable Night Land.

Great minds, Bo, great minds.

Categories
Blather Science Fiction and Fantasy

Pan’s Labyrinth

I saw Pan’s Labyrinth on the Saturday evening just before national Holocaust memorial day. After seeing it, I found the timing fitting.

Pan’s Labyrinth isn’t about the Holocaust, but it is set during World War 2, although in the isolation of post-civil-war Spain, the one country in Europe where the fascists actually won. And it has a lot of the imagery we associate with WW2/Shoah stories – an oppressive fascist army lead by a sadistic captain, partisans in the woods, an atmosphere of fear , hunger and the hovering shadow of death. The heroine, Ofelia, and her mother are in a very real sense refugees, moving to live in the country with the mother’s new husband, the aforementioned sadistic captain, after Ofelia’s father died in the war.

As a child protagonist, Ofelia is refreshingly mundane, and although the world of fantasy she escapes to is rendered in glossy CGI, the character and her story remain firmly grounded in the grim reality of an ordinary withdrawn and imaginative girl struggling to escape a terrifying and oppressive world. I suspect there’s a bit of sleight of hand here regarding the weaving of the fantastic and the real – the viewer’s expectations are focused on the distracting “goth muppets” and it’s only gradually that we understand how closely the fairy elements reflect and comment on the harsh state of affairs around Ofelia.

A little detail that struck me was a scene where Ofelia is tempted by a forbidden fairy feast. The temptation of food doesn’t seem like much to us, I think, not when you match it with the threat of a very real supernatural wrath; but for someone who suffers from real hunger, like a medieval peasant or a child in wartime, food is a strong lure.

Categories
Science Fiction and Fantasy

The Golden Compass movie

The Golden Compass movie web site has some concept art and a pretty flash alethiometer; got there via a steampunk blog called Brass Goggles, where you can find some alethiometer combinations that unlock hidden images on the movie site).

I see that Daniel Craig (Lord Asriel) isn’t the only actor from the last James Bond movie on the cast; Eva Green, the exotic beauty de jour is Serafina Pekkala. I don’t have much of an opinion about the rest (Ian Cocksuckers McShane as an evil CGI polar bear? Yeah, whatever). The one case of obvious casting is Lee Scoresby; I bet Sam Elliot’s deamon would also be a Hester.