Well, I'm going with an easy one for "Z." Really, "Z" just proved to be the hardest letter to find something for. I even had "Q" and "X" from the very beginning, but "Y" and "Z"? Hours of digging... hours! And I never found any one satisfactory item for this last letter... but I'm going to give you zombies, so lay off.
No, not zombies in space; although, that could be interesting. They wouldn't need to worry about decompression, you know, being already dead and sort of decompressed already, so that could make things interesting. Okay, someone go write that book, because I'm not going to do it.
Anyway...
We're heading back to Jules Verne land. As a complete aside, I'm astounded at how often the same few names come up over and over again in this series: Verne, Wells, Asimov, even Gibson. I didn't plan it that way, but you end up back at the same visionary minds time and again. Heck, da Vinci even pops up several times, and he didn't write! Not that he didn't write... oh, never mind!
So! Jules Verne... He really kick started this whole zero gravity thing by making space weightless. I bet you didn't know that, did you? Before Verne, space was not weightless. All planets and moons had the same gravity as Earth and everything. But Verne made space weightless and all of that changed. You do know I'm kidding, right? Some of you people are just SO literal!
There was Verne and, then, there was Wells, and they both had these trips to the moon and space having no gravity, and we found out that it was true! And, then, all space sci-fi had weightlessness, of course, and that presented issues... like, how do you drink from a cup when there's no gravity to hold the liquid in? And, over time, sci-fi authors identified many of these things that would be issues and addressed them in various novels and short stories, and some of these things have worked their way into reality. And, no, I'm not going to do any kind of exhaustive list or anything. Sorry. It's the last day, and I'm just not doing it.
However, I am going to point out one of the things I find interesting. Moving from place to place in a space ship or space station presents some problems. At the moment, they're not huge problems, because our vehicles and things are still fairly small, but, still, NASA wanted a way for astronauts to be able to walk around, and one of the first things they experimented with was magnetism. Why magnetism? I'm gonna just say that it's a safe bet that that came to mind as early as it did because that's the method so many sci-fi authors used to enable people to walk around in space ships: magnetic boots. But NASA found they didn't really work. Sure, they kept you from floating around, but, if they made the magnets strong enough to hold you in place, that's exactly what they did; they held you in place. Forget about walking.
Looking through references to older science fiction literature, I found a lot about magnets. Magnetic tables, magnetic cups, magnetic everything... Of course, all of this was written before electronics, especially computers, were really a thing. At this point, magnetic anything is entirely out of the question. Oops! Set that magnetic cup down too close to the computer and erased the landing instructions! Darn! Hate when that happens! Still... it's all a very interesting progression, especially when you look to see how sci-fi changed to accommodate reality afterwards and how those changes affected future developments in the space program. And, hey, they're still working on that artificial gravity stuff, so, if that ever actually works, that's entirely from sci-fi. No matter how it happens, I think. And all of that may also lead to anti-gravity...
At any rate, if we ever do decide to get off of our butts and really explore the solar system, it will be interesting to see what other ways sci-fi informs reality. It's about time we had miners out there in the asteroid belt! Speaking of miners... I just saw an article about how James Cameron and a bunch of other billionaires have founded a company to explore the possibilities of mining the asteroid belt. Yeah, they are doing that now. Not the mining part, but they expect to be within the next 20 years. So... yeah...
And now... zombies...
And, man, I just really don't want to do this. I have a philosophical difference with zombies, but I've talked about that before, and I've talked about talking about that before, so I'm really not going to get into it. Let's just say that "I don't believe in zombies" and leave it at that. But I did the whole cyborg menace, so, I guess, I'm being fair. Even though cyborgs are actually real and zombies are not, more people believe in zombies, which gives them the same kind of realism as learning to speak Klingon, and we all know about that, now, don't we?
The very first (recorded) zombie walk was all the way back in 2001. In California. It was successful enough that they had one again the next year, and it is now an annual event in Sacramento. So, yeah, not just in CA, but in the capitol of CA. The idea caught on fairly rapidly, kind of like a zombie disease, and these things happen all over the world now. Guinness has a place in its records, now, for Zombie Walks. The largest one record was in Mexico in November of 2011 with nearly 10,000 zombies in attendance. Amazing!
Movies and TV and books... zombies are everywhere. I do appreciate Shaun of the Dead, though, and think Simon Pegg is brilliant. Like I said, I don't believe in zombies despite the fact that they do seem to be all over the place and people have actual survival plans in the event of the coming zombie apocalypse, but, maybe, it will be a shame if that apocalypse never happens. Well... at least, they'll be ready for the cyborgs!
Showing posts with label H G Wells. Show all posts
Showing posts with label H G Wells. Show all posts
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Monday, April 23, 2012
The A to Z of Fiction to Reality: Ultraphone Ear-Disc
Here is something I didn't know: Buck Rogers first appeared as the character Anthony Rogers in the 1928 novella Armageddon 2419 A.D. by Philip Francis Nowlan. Anthony Rogers is a veteran soldier of The Great War (World War I) who ends up in a state of suspended animation for nearly 500 years. And suspended animation is probably a topic I could have covered; it has been around in fiction for a while (there's Rip Van Winkle, and I mentioned HG Wells Sleeper, and, oh, well, so many more), but we don't really have that worked out in a way where we can do it on purpose, yet, so I left it out. I say on purpose, because there have been a few times where people have ended up in accidental cases of suspended animation (like falling into a freezing lake) where we've been able to bring them back, but it's not something anyone can depend on.
Anyway...
The topic for the day is the ultraphone ear-disc. You may know it better as
or
Yeah, your bluetooth started out as military technology so that soldiers could have their hands free for weapons instead of needing to use a handheld radio. And that started out in Nowlan's story about a war 500 years in the future. So we have a guy writing just after World War I who already was seeing the need for soldiers to have "hands free" phones. heh Just to make this clear, wireless devices, specifically, the radio, had only just been invented. And radios were HUGE (I mean physically huge. There was an old radio down at the farm when I was a kid, and it was bigger than me). When Nowlan was writing his story, there was no idea, yet, of using radio for personal communication.
Some of the other things that Armageddon 2419 introduced (there are more):
1. remotely piloted drones (more radio)
2. telecommuting
3. e-purchasing
4. paratroopers
Armageddon was adapted into the Buck Rogers comic strip just a year later, and it mostly delves into space exploration after that, but that initial novella was quite visionary.
Bonus U (breaking news)
Ultrasound:
One of the shows I loved growing up, and, when I say loved, I mean loved, as in it was not negotiable as to whether or not I was going to get to watch it or not, and my family knew it, was Doctor Who. Other than the TARDIS, the Doctor had two things that were really cool: K-9 and his sonic screwdriver. The sonic screwdriver is kind of what it sounds like. Okay, well, it's not a screwdriver at all, at least, not in appearance, but it does use sound as a sort of a screwdriver, and, other than a lightsaber, it's one of the things I grew up wanting to have.
There has been ongoing research into sound over the years, specifically ultrasound. That is, after all, how we got the ultrasound machine. There are even ultrasound techniques for non-invasive surgery. Yes, they don't have to cut you open, just use a beam of sound to take care of what ails you. The new development, though, is that some physicists at the University of Dundee got together and developed a way to lift and manipulate objects with sound alone. It's a pretty amazing achievement that could lead all sorts of places. One problem: I don't think it's something anyone's going to be carrying around in their pocket anytime soon.
Anyway...
The topic for the day is the ultraphone ear-disc. You may know it better as
Some of the other things that Armageddon 2419 introduced (there are more):
1. remotely piloted drones (more radio)
2. telecommuting
3. e-purchasing
4. paratroopers
Armageddon was adapted into the Buck Rogers comic strip just a year later, and it mostly delves into space exploration after that, but that initial novella was quite visionary.
Bonus U (breaking news)
Ultrasound:
One of the shows I loved growing up, and, when I say loved, I mean loved, as in it was not negotiable as to whether or not I was going to get to watch it or not, and my family knew it, was Doctor Who. Other than the TARDIS, the Doctor had two things that were really cool: K-9 and his sonic screwdriver. The sonic screwdriver is kind of what it sounds like. Okay, well, it's not a screwdriver at all, at least, not in appearance, but it does use sound as a sort of a screwdriver, and, other than a lightsaber, it's one of the things I grew up wanting to have.
the latest Doctor with his screwdriver
There has been ongoing research into sound over the years, specifically ultrasound. That is, after all, how we got the ultrasound machine. There are even ultrasound techniques for non-invasive surgery. Yes, they don't have to cut you open, just use a beam of sound to take care of what ails you. The new development, though, is that some physicists at the University of Dundee got together and developed a way to lift and manipulate objects with sound alone. It's a pretty amazing achievement that could lead all sorts of places. One problem: I don't think it's something anyone's going to be carrying around in their pocket anytime soon.
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
The A to Z of Fiction to Reality: Platforms
Okay, all you writer people out there, no, that's not the kind of platform I'm talking about! Geez, can't you people think of anything else?
No, what I'm talking about are moving platforms.
In my head, this all starts about 20 years ago when I read The Caves of Steel (1954). If you haven't read Caves, you should. That's just all there is to it. It's probably my favorite of Asimov's books; although, I can't say it's the best. It is the one that has stuck with me longest, though, in that I have a clearer memory of this book, even after 20 years, than I have of any of his others, all of which I read after Caves.
Anyway, in Caves, the Earth is just one big city (sound familiar, anyone?), and the general method of transportation is via these moving walkways that run all through the (world) city. They are set parallel to each other, and each one gets faster as you move inward along the system. Of course, the faster ones take you to farther places, and the slower ones are for shorter trips, but the speed variation is to allow the user to hop from walkway to walkway without sudden, vast changes in speed. Sounds pretty fun, doesn't it?
As I've come to find out, Asimov wasn't the first to use this concept. No, Heinlein used it more than a decade before Asimov in his 1940 short story "The Roads Must Roll." Oh, but we go back even farther, because, guess who! No, really guess. H.G. Wells used this same concept all the way back in 1897 in "A Story of the Days to Come" and, again, in 1899 in When the Sleeper Wakes (later rewritten as The Sleeper Awakes).
But back to Asimov, there's this great chase scene in the book where they're running and jumping between these moving walkways, and I've always thought that sounded like so much fun.
Oh, you say, but moving walkways aren't new. Okay, you're right. They're not. The very first conveyor belt of people (okay, so I don't know if it was actually a conveyor belt, but it sounds cool) debuted in 1893 in Chicago, but it wasn't, in concept, a device of mass transit. That didn't happen until 1954 when one was built inside a railroad terminal in New Jersey. It was removed a few years later due to non-use. Moving walkways are common in limited usages, today, the most common being the escalator.
All of that may be about to change.
Not that I think that coveyor belts of people are going to become a common mass transit device. At least, not until cities do actually begin to grow together (kind of like Dallas/Ft. Worth, which is, in all respects, just one city at this point, I don't care what they say (I know, I've been there)). However, there is a push for more efficient mass transit, especially in Europe, and moving platforms is one of the new ideas that is getting a lot of attention.
The problem, it seems, is that high speed railways are just too inefficient. People have to spend too long waiting for trains, too much energy is required to accelerate the trains, and too much to stop the trains. Basically, it would just be more efficient if there were a continuous trains that never stopped. Really, it saves energy. But if it was a high speed thing, how would people get on and off? Well...
Basically, you'd have the high speed train, and you'd have these little docking trains with small docking stations. People board the docking trains which then speed up and dock with the high speed train via an airlock,
and, then, the docking train would return to its station to pick up more people. The main train would never stop, get people where they need to go faster, and there would be no huge train stations, just these docking ports. Of course, the thrust of this plan is to give people a viable alternative to cars. If mass transit was both cheap and fast, people would be more inclined to use it. In Europe, at any rate, it seems that the main reason people use cars over mass transit is that they can get to where they want to go before they're even on the train to get there due to the long waits at stations, and this plan for moving platforms is a way to get past that.
Personally, I'm all for anything that gets cars off the roads. They're noisy, messy, and waste fuel. I was just reading the other day that we in the USA waste something like 400 billion (BILLION) gallons of gas every year sitting at traffic lights. That's why you should all buy Priuses. Priusi. You should each get one. Or switch to cars that drive themselves. I'm all for those, too. At any rate, I think this is a first step to the kind of mass transit that we see in the stories that I mentioned. If walking on a moving sidewalk got you there faster than driving your car, would you take it?
No, what I'm talking about are moving platforms.
In my head, this all starts about 20 years ago when I read The Caves of Steel (1954). If you haven't read Caves, you should. That's just all there is to it. It's probably my favorite of Asimov's books; although, I can't say it's the best. It is the one that has stuck with me longest, though, in that I have a clearer memory of this book, even after 20 years, than I have of any of his others, all of which I read after Caves.
Anyway, in Caves, the Earth is just one big city (sound familiar, anyone?), and the general method of transportation is via these moving walkways that run all through the (world) city. They are set parallel to each other, and each one gets faster as you move inward along the system. Of course, the faster ones take you to farther places, and the slower ones are for shorter trips, but the speed variation is to allow the user to hop from walkway to walkway without sudden, vast changes in speed. Sounds pretty fun, doesn't it?
As I've come to find out, Asimov wasn't the first to use this concept. No, Heinlein used it more than a decade before Asimov in his 1940 short story "The Roads Must Roll." Oh, but we go back even farther, because, guess who! No, really guess. H.G. Wells used this same concept all the way back in 1897 in "A Story of the Days to Come" and, again, in 1899 in When the Sleeper Wakes (later rewritten as The Sleeper Awakes).
But back to Asimov, there's this great chase scene in the book where they're running and jumping between these moving walkways, and I've always thought that sounded like so much fun.
Oh, you say, but moving walkways aren't new. Okay, you're right. They're not. The very first conveyor belt of people (okay, so I don't know if it was actually a conveyor belt, but it sounds cool) debuted in 1893 in Chicago, but it wasn't, in concept, a device of mass transit. That didn't happen until 1954 when one was built inside a railroad terminal in New Jersey. It was removed a few years later due to non-use. Moving walkways are common in limited usages, today, the most common being the escalator.
All of that may be about to change.
Not that I think that coveyor belts of people are going to become a common mass transit device. At least, not until cities do actually begin to grow together (kind of like Dallas/Ft. Worth, which is, in all respects, just one city at this point, I don't care what they say (I know, I've been there)). However, there is a push for more efficient mass transit, especially in Europe, and moving platforms is one of the new ideas that is getting a lot of attention.
The problem, it seems, is that high speed railways are just too inefficient. People have to spend too long waiting for trains, too much energy is required to accelerate the trains, and too much to stop the trains. Basically, it would just be more efficient if there were a continuous trains that never stopped. Really, it saves energy. But if it was a high speed thing, how would people get on and off? Well...
Personally, I'm all for anything that gets cars off the roads. They're noisy, messy, and waste fuel. I was just reading the other day that we in the USA waste something like 400 billion (BILLION) gallons of gas every year sitting at traffic lights. That's why you should all buy Priuses. Priusi. You should each get one. Or switch to cars that drive themselves. I'm all for those, too. At any rate, I think this is a first step to the kind of mass transit that we see in the stories that I mentioned. If walking on a moving sidewalk got you there faster than driving your car, would you take it?
Monday, April 16, 2012
The A to Z of Fiction to Reality: the Opton
Yeah, yeah, I know... you've never heard of an opton. I bet most of you own one, though. I don't, but that's not because I don't necessarily want to own one; I just don't feel like paying for one. At least, not right now. I'm sure I'll get to it at some point.
The novel Return from the Stars by Stanislaw Lem came out in 1961 (it wasn't translated into English until 1980). It's about an astronaut that goes away on a mission. A mission that last 10 years... for him. However, 127 years pass on Earth while he's gone (time dilation (don't ask; this post isn't about that)). As you can imagine, many things have changed... including the fact that there are no more books. Not that there are no more books, but they're all electronic. Imagine that! An electronic book that you read with a little device called an opton. The description is rather like a Kindle.
Imagine that...
Lem's work is the earliest description of electronic reading devices or, more specifically, the electronic paper display. I didn't know this, but electronic paper was actually invented all the way back in the '70s. I want to be clear about what Lem was doing here: on his Earth, books were all stored electronically. Physical books only existed as a template. One would be printed and stored and people could access the book through their optons. This was before computers. Not, of course, before computers existed, but before computers were a thing. Some countries didn't even have computers in 1961. Probably, most countries didn't have computers in 1961. I sort of bet Poland didn't, and that's where Lem was from.
Let's take a step forward:
So Lem has predicted the electronic book, but he also predicted the absence of the physical book, something that the astronaut regretted. Will we look back in 100 years at Lem's work and say "wow, he was right"? I think so. All the signs of the passing of the paper book from society are here, even if we don't want to admit it.
1. Paper books are becoming prohibitively priced. When I was a kid, a paperback was a couple of bucks. When I was a teenager, they were $4-5. Standard price for a paperback is now $10. Hardbacks... well, I don't really even think much about them unless Amazon has them on sale or it's a book I just can't wait on for the softcover. As paper prices continue to rise, and they are rising, the cost of physical books will continue to rise as well. At some point, physical books will become a status item that only the wealthy can afford.
2. Electronic books are cheaper and better for the environment. This will be even more true once Apple and the rest of the big publishers finish getting slapped for price-fixing on e-books to force Amazon to not undercut the profits of the big publishers by pricing the e-books lower.
3. E-books are more convenient to store.
4. Physical book sales are in a decline while e-book sales are in a sharp rise.
Look, I don't even own an e-reader, but I see the day coming when physical books just aren't a "thing" anymore. The publishing industry is one of the most wasteful industries on the planet. They destroy hundreds of thousands of unsold books every year. It's just bad for the planet. As we (slowly) become more aware of the steps we need to take to ensure the viability of the planet, physical books are just going to pass away. I do believe we're in the early stages of that, right now, and I do believe that Lem was right.
I just hope he wasn't right about the rest of the stuff in that book.
Extra fun facts about Stanislaw Lem:
1. At one point, he was the most read sci-fi author in the world. Just not in the US, since he mostly wasn't being published here at the time. Like I said, he was from Poland. However, he is rarely read, now, anywhere else in the world except the US where he is often considered on the same level as H.G. Wells.
2. He held American sci-fi authors in disdain. He felt like they were more interested in money than in the science fiction. This lead to a situation between him and the Science Fiction Writers of America that lasted for something like 30 years.
3. Philip K. Dick was his only exception, and he praised Dick's work. PKD, however, wasn't convinced that Lem was even a real person. Dick felt that Lem was a composite personality formed by a committee operating under orders from the Communist party to sway public opinion. He even wrote a letter to the FBI saying as much.
The novel Return from the Stars by Stanislaw Lem came out in 1961 (it wasn't translated into English until 1980). It's about an astronaut that goes away on a mission. A mission that last 10 years... for him. However, 127 years pass on Earth while he's gone (time dilation (don't ask; this post isn't about that)). As you can imagine, many things have changed... including the fact that there are no more books. Not that there are no more books, but they're all electronic. Imagine that! An electronic book that you read with a little device called an opton. The description is rather like a Kindle.
Imagine that...
Lem's work is the earliest description of electronic reading devices or, more specifically, the electronic paper display. I didn't know this, but electronic paper was actually invented all the way back in the '70s. I want to be clear about what Lem was doing here: on his Earth, books were all stored electronically. Physical books only existed as a template. One would be printed and stored and people could access the book through their optons. This was before computers. Not, of course, before computers existed, but before computers were a thing. Some countries didn't even have computers in 1961. Probably, most countries didn't have computers in 1961. I sort of bet Poland didn't, and that's where Lem was from.
Let's take a step forward:
So Lem has predicted the electronic book, but he also predicted the absence of the physical book, something that the astronaut regretted. Will we look back in 100 years at Lem's work and say "wow, he was right"? I think so. All the signs of the passing of the paper book from society are here, even if we don't want to admit it.
1. Paper books are becoming prohibitively priced. When I was a kid, a paperback was a couple of bucks. When I was a teenager, they were $4-5. Standard price for a paperback is now $10. Hardbacks... well, I don't really even think much about them unless Amazon has them on sale or it's a book I just can't wait on for the softcover. As paper prices continue to rise, and they are rising, the cost of physical books will continue to rise as well. At some point, physical books will become a status item that only the wealthy can afford.
2. Electronic books are cheaper and better for the environment. This will be even more true once Apple and the rest of the big publishers finish getting slapped for price-fixing on e-books to force Amazon to not undercut the profits of the big publishers by pricing the e-books lower.
3. E-books are more convenient to store.
4. Physical book sales are in a decline while e-book sales are in a sharp rise.
Look, I don't even own an e-reader, but I see the day coming when physical books just aren't a "thing" anymore. The publishing industry is one of the most wasteful industries on the planet. They destroy hundreds of thousands of unsold books every year. It's just bad for the planet. As we (slowly) become more aware of the steps we need to take to ensure the viability of the planet, physical books are just going to pass away. I do believe we're in the early stages of that, right now, and I do believe that Lem was right.
I just hope he wasn't right about the rest of the stuff in that book.
Extra fun facts about Stanislaw Lem:
1. At one point, he was the most read sci-fi author in the world. Just not in the US, since he mostly wasn't being published here at the time. Like I said, he was from Poland. However, he is rarely read, now, anywhere else in the world except the US where he is often considered on the same level as H.G. Wells.
2. He held American sci-fi authors in disdain. He felt like they were more interested in money than in the science fiction. This lead to a situation between him and the Science Fiction Writers of America that lasted for something like 30 years.
3. Philip K. Dick was his only exception, and he praised Dick's work. PKD, however, wasn't convinced that Lem was even a real person. Dick felt that Lem was a composite personality formed by a committee operating under orders from the Communist party to sway public opinion. He even wrote a letter to the FBI saying as much.
Friday, April 13, 2012
The A to Z of Fiction to Reality: Moon Landing
Flight has long been a great dream of mankind. From Greek mythology to Leonardo da Vinci to the Wright Brothers, but it may have been Jules Verne that first dreamed us onto the moon. One of Verne's earliest works was From the Earth to the Moon (1865), and what he described within those pages was amazingly accurate considering the amount of data available to him. Of course, he did do plenty of research and calculations to make his story as accurate as possible. He even made space weightless, which we, um, didn't really know at the time.
Let's make something abundantly clear, here, flight did not yet exist when Verne wrote his story. The Wright brothers were only just beginning their experiments at Kitty Hawk when H. G. Wells released The First Men in the Moon in 1901, and that was 35 years after Verne! Wells also included weightlessness in space. Just to give some continuity, Wells was a huge influence on C. S. Lewis and his later Space Trilogy which involves trips to Mars and Venus.
But let's go back...
Verne's book came out in 1865. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was born in 1857 and grew up reading Verne's work. And was inspired by it. He came to believe that space was the future of mankind and that lead him into rocketry research. He became the first of the three founding fathers of rocketry and astronautics and developed his first theories of space flight in reaction to the figures that Verne used in his novel. He even worked out the formula to figure out escape velocity. Although, he showed that Verne's figures were wrong, he acknowledged Verne's influence on his work. As the cause for his work.
The second founding father of modern rocketry is Robert Goddard. He grew up reading H. G. Wells and, between The First Men in the Moon and War of the Worlds and a trip up a cherry tree, became fixated on building rockets to Mars. Much of Goddard's work was instrumental in the development of spaceflight. As in, without Goddard, spaceflight may not have existed.
The third of these founding fathers was born in Germany in 1894. Hermann Oberth, also, grew up reading Jules Verne. In fact, he read Verne, especially From the Earth to the Moon to the point of memorization. He built his first model rocket at age 14.
All three of these men were discounted as crazy or pursuing fantasies. Everyone knew that space flight wasn't possible and that going to other planets, even the moon, was ludicrous. In fact, Goddard's work wasn't even recognized until after his death. He spent years being ridiculed by the press until he became a virtual recluse. Only Oberth received any recognition within his lifetime as he was actually still alive and contributing to research during the space race. The space race which began almost 100 years after Verne first published From the Earth to the Moon.
Now, I want to make something else abundantly clear: the entire reason we, as a race, have gone out into space at all is because three men were inspired to make something they read into a reality. If Jules Verne (because, honestly, Wells inspiration for his story was, in all likelihood, also, Verne) had never written his story about going to the moon, who can say if that would have ever happened? Or, at the very least, happened when it did. Maybe someone else would have come along later and written the same kind of story, maybe it would even have been Wells, but so much of the work that made everything else possible was done by Tsiolkovsky that we might still be completely planet-bound.
And just to make all of this even more clear, here are some inventions that have come out of NASA, and NASA wouldn't exist if we hadn't been trying to go to the moon:
1. translucent polycrystalline alumina -- Yeah, I know. What? That's the stuff from which they make invisible braces for teeth.
2. scratch resistant lenses for glasses
3. memory foam -- this stuff has all kinds of uses, but let's just say that it helps a lot of people sleep better at night
4. ear thermometers
5. shoe insoles -- especially athletic shoes... modeled after the boots Armstrong wore when he walked on the Moon (see, when he walked on the Moon (because Verne wrote about it))
6. your ability to communicate wirelessly -- Yes, that's thanks to NASA. So, um, not only would we not be in space, but you wouldn't have all those nifty cell phones and iDoohickies.
To grind the point home even more, here are some of the specific things that Verne included in his book that turned out to be accurate:
1. weightlessness
2. retro-rockets (those things that fire in opposition to the direction a space craft is going in order to slow it down)
3. a launch facility (and the place Verne chose is only a few miles from Cape Canaveral
4. splashdown (returning to Earth by landing in the ocean)
I think this post shows, perhaps, more than any of the others I've made so far just how much of an effect that writers can have. It shows the importance of literature. It shows the importance of... imagination. Verne had a huge imagination, and I hate to imagine what things would be like today if he hadn't spun the stories he did.
[And not that this is exactly related, but imagination is something that I've long believed is vitally important to kids and to society. This post, in particular, has just made me realize it even more. However, my belief in the importance of imagination is why it plays such a huge role in my book, The House on the Corner.]
Let's make something abundantly clear, here, flight did not yet exist when Verne wrote his story. The Wright brothers were only just beginning their experiments at Kitty Hawk when H. G. Wells released The First Men in the Moon in 1901, and that was 35 years after Verne! Wells also included weightlessness in space. Just to give some continuity, Wells was a huge influence on C. S. Lewis and his later Space Trilogy which involves trips to Mars and Venus.
But let's go back...
Verne's book came out in 1865. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was born in 1857 and grew up reading Verne's work. And was inspired by it. He came to believe that space was the future of mankind and that lead him into rocketry research. He became the first of the three founding fathers of rocketry and astronautics and developed his first theories of space flight in reaction to the figures that Verne used in his novel. He even worked out the formula to figure out escape velocity. Although, he showed that Verne's figures were wrong, he acknowledged Verne's influence on his work. As the cause for his work.
The second founding father of modern rocketry is Robert Goddard. He grew up reading H. G. Wells and, between The First Men in the Moon and War of the Worlds and a trip up a cherry tree, became fixated on building rockets to Mars. Much of Goddard's work was instrumental in the development of spaceflight. As in, without Goddard, spaceflight may not have existed.
The third of these founding fathers was born in Germany in 1894. Hermann Oberth, also, grew up reading Jules Verne. In fact, he read Verne, especially From the Earth to the Moon to the point of memorization. He built his first model rocket at age 14.
All three of these men were discounted as crazy or pursuing fantasies. Everyone knew that space flight wasn't possible and that going to other planets, even the moon, was ludicrous. In fact, Goddard's work wasn't even recognized until after his death. He spent years being ridiculed by the press until he became a virtual recluse. Only Oberth received any recognition within his lifetime as he was actually still alive and contributing to research during the space race. The space race which began almost 100 years after Verne first published From the Earth to the Moon.
Now, I want to make something else abundantly clear: the entire reason we, as a race, have gone out into space at all is because three men were inspired to make something they read into a reality. If Jules Verne (because, honestly, Wells inspiration for his story was, in all likelihood, also, Verne) had never written his story about going to the moon, who can say if that would have ever happened? Or, at the very least, happened when it did. Maybe someone else would have come along later and written the same kind of story, maybe it would even have been Wells, but so much of the work that made everything else possible was done by Tsiolkovsky that we might still be completely planet-bound.
And just to make all of this even more clear, here are some inventions that have come out of NASA, and NASA wouldn't exist if we hadn't been trying to go to the moon:
1. translucent polycrystalline alumina -- Yeah, I know. What? That's the stuff from which they make invisible braces for teeth.
2. scratch resistant lenses for glasses
3. memory foam -- this stuff has all kinds of uses, but let's just say that it helps a lot of people sleep better at night
5. shoe insoles -- especially athletic shoes... modeled after the boots Armstrong wore when he walked on the Moon (see, when he walked on the Moon (because Verne wrote about it))
6. your ability to communicate wirelessly -- Yes, that's thanks to NASA. So, um, not only would we not be in space, but you wouldn't have all those nifty cell phones and iDoohickies.
To grind the point home even more, here are some of the specific things that Verne included in his book that turned out to be accurate:
1. weightlessness
2. retro-rockets (those things that fire in opposition to the direction a space craft is going in order to slow it down)
3. a launch facility (and the place Verne chose is only a few miles from Cape Canaveral
4. splashdown (returning to Earth by landing in the ocean)
I think this post shows, perhaps, more than any of the others I've made so far just how much of an effect that writers can have. It shows the importance of literature. It shows the importance of... imagination. Verne had a huge imagination, and I hate to imagine what things would be like today if he hadn't spun the stories he did.
[And not that this is exactly related, but imagination is something that I've long believed is vitally important to kids and to society. This post, in particular, has just made me realize it even more. However, my belief in the importance of imagination is why it plays such a huge role in my book, The House on the Corner.]
Thursday, April 12, 2012
The A to Z of Fiction to Reality: Lasers
It's quite possible that I should have put this post under "E" for "energy weapons," but, see, I really love the idea of the exo-suit, so I couldn't leave that out, and it's lasers that most people associate with energy weapons, so I figured I may as well stick with it. This one is going to be a bit more convoluted than the others, though, so try to keep up. This way, please...
Let's first step back to 1898. Martians were invading the Earth. Well, at least, they were in H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. The Martian's tripods were equipped with heat rays that they used to destroy, well, everything. This is the most significant early example of the raygun. It may not have been the first (I don't actually know, but I couldn't find anything earlier), but anything that was earlier has been mostly forgotten.
Rayguns in fiction became increasingly popular through the early 20th century. In fact, they sort of became standard fare in pulp science fiction including Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and others. They also became pretty standard in comic books.
What we have here is, basically, the realized form of Wells' heat ray. It works by directing microwave energy at the victim causing the skin to attain a burning sensation. Most test subjects reach their pain threshold within 3 seconds, and no one has gone beyond 5 seconds. At the moment, it's being used as a non-lethal weapon, but there's nothing to keep it from being used in more lethal ways if the government wanted the development to go in those directions. The one mounted on the humvee above is for crowd control, but they are working on portable devices.
Let's first step back to 1898. Martians were invading the Earth. Well, at least, they were in H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. The Martian's tripods were equipped with heat rays that they used to destroy, well, everything. This is the most significant early example of the raygun. It may not have been the first (I don't actually know, but I couldn't find anything earlier), but anything that was earlier has been mostly forgotten.
Rayguns in fiction became increasingly popular through the early 20th century. In fact, they sort of became standard fare in pulp science fiction including Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and others. They also became pretty standard in comic books.
1930s edition Buck Rogers raygun
Then, Einstein happened...
Well, let's re-examine that. In 1917, Einstein put forth the Quantum Theory of Radiation which established the theoretic foundation for irradiating light waves. It's this theory that would later lead to lasers. But, in the meantime, rayguns flourished in fiction.
And, now, we're to the part where, maybe, this entry should have been placed under the letter R. Prior to World War II, there was research going on to develop rayguns (in the United States, at any rate, and, possibly, in Germany (actually, probably, everywhere, but I don't have that information)). That research coupled with some of Tesla's ideas (also from 1917) lead to the development of radar.
But we still didn't have any rayguns.
Finally, in the '50s, the first significant breakthroughs in laser technology began to happen, and, in 1959, Gordon Gould published the term L.A.S.E.R. (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation). The first operating laser followed in 1960. Science fiction went crazy, dropping rayguns for laser guns. But only for a moment...
One interesting factoid about that:
The original Star Trek had two pilot episodes. I bet some of you even knew that. The first pilot episode, "The Cage," was produced in 1964 (and remained unreleased until 1988) and included lasers. The first pilot didn't convince the studio that the concept would work, but they were still intrigued by the idea, so they made the odd request for a second pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before." The interesting bit? It had already become apparent by the time of the 1966 production of the new pilot that lasers were not going to be practical as guns or weapons, so they changed the name of the devices in Star Trek to "phasers."
But the military really wanted laser weapons, and science fiction continued to be full of laser type weapons even if they didn't call them lasers. Star Wars got blasters, Doctor Who had stasers and all sorts of other things, and Starblazers got a wave motion gun just to name a few. And the military... well, they made this big laser and mounted it on the top of an airplane and sent it up to shoot down drones or something. But it was a cloudy day, and the clouds totally dissipated the lasers, and the project was mostly dropped (and, no, I can't tell you where I got that information (yes, if I did, I would have to kill you)).
This, of course, did not stop Reagan from creating the Star Wars program in the '80s. That almost did work; they just couldn't get enough range out of the lasers for them to actually be effective. But it did lead to one of my favorite movies of all time
Real Genius!
So... here we are in 2012, and we still don't have laser guns or flying cars. Or laser guns on flying cars. I do expect the flying cars soon, but it looks like the closest we're going to have to laser guns for a while is laser sighting. Sure, you can put someone's eye out with it if they agree not to look away, and we can cut things with really big lasers, but they're not really portable at that level and need huge amounts of energy.
But let's go back to rayguns... actually, let's go back to that very first one: H.G. Wells' heat ray. The military rolled out the first example of the non-lethal Active Denial System in 2010.
There you have your fiction to reality, just not with lasers. But lasers still power the imagination, and militaries around the world are still working on laser-based weapons. There have been claims of ground-based lasers that are capable of taking down aircraft, but they require enormous power sources. Interestingly enough, other uses of lasers have stayed pretty confined to science, not science fiction; however, if we ever do make it out into space, I would expect the weaponized use of lasers to reach science fiction proportions almost immediately since there are no atmospheric conditions to deal with.
Monday, April 9, 2012
The A to Z of Fiction to Reality: the Internet and the Invisibility Cloak
Today, you get a double dose of incredible science that has come from fiction. Why? Because I just couldn't make up my mind between the two. Not the things themselves necessarily, but they stories behind them.
First, the Internet:
Not to get too detailed, but Internet research goes back into the 1960s. However, it wasn't until the '80s that it really began to develop. Before people really knew about it, it was already becoming a huge Idea in science fiction. William Gibson latched onto it so early that his ideas about what the Internet would or could become in such works as "Johnny Mnemonic" and Neuromancer are completely indistinguishable from the development of the actual technology to such an extent that he's often credited with the actual Idea for the Internet. It's impossible to distinguish how much of an impact his early writings may have had on the development of something that was barely even begun, so there may be truth in that. We also have to acknowledge the movie WarGames (1983) which is the first movie to really put the Internet in our faces (as well as AI (see this post)).
That movie gave my mother nightmares for weeks.
But let's take a step back... back to the end of the 19th century and a man by the name of Samuel Clemens. Clemens was fascinated with science and technology. He even wrote a novel about time travelling and was great friends with Nikola Tesla. The two spent great amounts of time together in Tesla's lab. Of course, Clemens is better known to us as Mark Twain.
In 1898, Twain wrote a story called "From the 'London Times' of 1904" in which he has a device called the telelectroscope. The device is based on the telephone, which was still a new thing and fairly rare, and allowed the user to view and interact with people all over the world. The Internet. In fact, the telelectroscope made the daily doings of the globe "visible to everybody, and audibly discussable, too, by witnesses separated by [any amount of distance]." That sounds a lot like facebook and skype and... well, any number of other things.
So... yeah... Mark Twain dreamed up the Internet and social media. And he hung out with Tesla. We really don't know what all Tesla was into, but Twain wrote a story about time travel. It makes you wonder how he might have had an idea about the Internet. Just sayin'.
And, now, the invisibility cloak:
After flight, invisibility may be man's longest running fascination. To be unseen. From a literary standpoint, we can look (again) to H. G. Wells. The Invisible Man (1897) takes a remarkably scientific stance in its approach to making a man invisible. There is no "magic potion" here, just optics research that results in a man being made to be invisible. With disastrous results. The end of the 19th century seems to be full of warnings about messing with science that isn't really understood. [Except for Twain's Internet story. In that one, technology is used to solve a murder.]
Invisibility and the quest for invisibility was a familiar theme throughout the 20th century in both literature and science. It includes, but is not limited to, the One Ring in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, any number of super hero stories and movies, and, recently, Harry Potter. In the Harry Potter, invisibility takes the form of an invisibility cloak.
And how cool is that? Because, unlike flight, anyone can use an invisibility cloak. No skill involved.
So... science has been looking at ways to make things invisible for a while now. Since World War II, at least. We can make objects (like airplanes) mostly invisible to radar and other light waves not in the visible spectrum, but who cares if a plane doesn't show up on radar if I can still see it with my eyes, right? There have been attempts at things that are like invisibility, but most of these are just fancy ways of camouflaging things.
Like the one they are really excited about right now:
It involves using crystals. Two crystals working together can cause the light to split and... well, it's not important. Here's what they can do with it, right now: the can make an ant or a grain of sand invisible. Basically, with this technique, the thing being made invisible is only limited to the size of the crystals being worked with. And they think they can make bigger crystals. The problem? You can see the crystals! What's the point of that, I, again, ask. What good does it do to conceal something if you know there's something concealed? You may as well throw a blanket over it.
Speaking of which...
There is another method being worked on, and, supposedly, the Idea for this one was inspired directly from Harry Potter (I couldn't find the original article I read about it, though, so I can't confirm that). Basically, someone said, "Why not make it like a cloak?" And they started trying to figure out a way to do that.
What they came up with is carbon nanotubes. These are strands of carbon tubing about the width of a hair. The thing about carbon is that it cools very rapidly but also conducts heat extraordinarily well. The tiles on the bottom of the space shuttles were made of something similar to this, and I've personally witnessed one being heated until it was glowing red and been invited to touch it as soon as the heat source was removed. Cool (yes, it was cool, but the tile was also cool to the touch just moments after being heated by a blow torch). Anyway, they have these carbon nanotubes that are very similar to thread. When heat is passed through them, they undergo something similar to heat waves rising off of hot sand in the desert and become invisible. Like this:
They can't sustain it for more than a few moments, at present, but it's a step. And it's a pretty cool step if you ask me.
First, the Internet:
Not to get too detailed, but Internet research goes back into the 1960s. However, it wasn't until the '80s that it really began to develop. Before people really knew about it, it was already becoming a huge Idea in science fiction. William Gibson latched onto it so early that his ideas about what the Internet would or could become in such works as "Johnny Mnemonic" and Neuromancer are completely indistinguishable from the development of the actual technology to such an extent that he's often credited with the actual Idea for the Internet. It's impossible to distinguish how much of an impact his early writings may have had on the development of something that was barely even begun, so there may be truth in that. We also have to acknowledge the movie WarGames (1983) which is the first movie to really put the Internet in our faces (as well as AI (see this post)).
But let's take a step back... back to the end of the 19th century and a man by the name of Samuel Clemens. Clemens was fascinated with science and technology. He even wrote a novel about time travelling and was great friends with Nikola Tesla. The two spent great amounts of time together in Tesla's lab. Of course, Clemens is better known to us as Mark Twain.
In 1898, Twain wrote a story called "From the 'London Times' of 1904" in which he has a device called the telelectroscope. The device is based on the telephone, which was still a new thing and fairly rare, and allowed the user to view and interact with people all over the world. The Internet. In fact, the telelectroscope made the daily doings of the globe "visible to everybody, and audibly discussable, too, by witnesses separated by [any amount of distance]." That sounds a lot like facebook and skype and... well, any number of other things.
So... yeah... Mark Twain dreamed up the Internet and social media. And he hung out with Tesla. We really don't know what all Tesla was into, but Twain wrote a story about time travel. It makes you wonder how he might have had an idea about the Internet. Just sayin'.
And, now, the invisibility cloak:
After flight, invisibility may be man's longest running fascination. To be unseen. From a literary standpoint, we can look (again) to H. G. Wells. The Invisible Man (1897) takes a remarkably scientific stance in its approach to making a man invisible. There is no "magic potion" here, just optics research that results in a man being made to be invisible. With disastrous results. The end of the 19th century seems to be full of warnings about messing with science that isn't really understood. [Except for Twain's Internet story. In that one, technology is used to solve a murder.]
Invisibility and the quest for invisibility was a familiar theme throughout the 20th century in both literature and science. It includes, but is not limited to, the One Ring in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, any number of super hero stories and movies, and, recently, Harry Potter. In the Harry Potter, invisibility takes the form of an invisibility cloak.
And how cool is that? Because, unlike flight, anyone can use an invisibility cloak. No skill involved.
So... science has been looking at ways to make things invisible for a while now. Since World War II, at least. We can make objects (like airplanes) mostly invisible to radar and other light waves not in the visible spectrum, but who cares if a plane doesn't show up on radar if I can still see it with my eyes, right? There have been attempts at things that are like invisibility, but most of these are just fancy ways of camouflaging things.
Like the one they are really excited about right now:
It involves using crystals. Two crystals working together can cause the light to split and... well, it's not important. Here's what they can do with it, right now: the can make an ant or a grain of sand invisible. Basically, with this technique, the thing being made invisible is only limited to the size of the crystals being worked with. And they think they can make bigger crystals. The problem? You can see the crystals! What's the point of that, I, again, ask. What good does it do to conceal something if you know there's something concealed? You may as well throw a blanket over it.
Speaking of which...
There is another method being worked on, and, supposedly, the Idea for this one was inspired directly from Harry Potter (I couldn't find the original article I read about it, though, so I can't confirm that). Basically, someone said, "Why not make it like a cloak?" And they started trying to figure out a way to do that.
What they came up with is carbon nanotubes. These are strands of carbon tubing about the width of a hair. The thing about carbon is that it cools very rapidly but also conducts heat extraordinarily well. The tiles on the bottom of the space shuttles were made of something similar to this, and I've personally witnessed one being heated until it was glowing red and been invited to touch it as soon as the heat source was removed. Cool (yes, it was cool, but the tile was also cool to the touch just moments after being heated by a blow torch). Anyway, they have these carbon nanotubes that are very similar to thread. When heat is passed through them, they undergo something similar to heat waves rising off of hot sand in the desert and become invisible. Like this:
They can't sustain it for more than a few moments, at present, but it's a step. And it's a pretty cool step if you ask me.
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