Mundane SF movement
Cisco Ducks
Fiction Movement"? The MSF manifesto is at this URL:
http://mundanesf.com/default.asp?id=2&mnu=2
There's an overview of the debate, with some comments, at this URL:
Dan Goodman
> So, has anyone heard of or have any thoughts on the "Mundane Science
> Fiction Movement"?
Movements are for third-rate writers.
To be fair: Some second-rate and even first-rate writers have been
known to succumb to the Braineater long enough to proclaim loyalty to
literary movements.
Dealing specifically with science fiction: Some writers believe that
any story set in the future is really about the present. Others believe
that it's possible to predict the future with great precision. I can
enjoyably read fiction produced by either kind of writer -- even though
I consider both views to be batcrap.
Some writers want to write (and read) only about future science and
future technology which is possible. These writers have severe
disagreements about what lies within those limits. Those who hold to
one set of views include the proclaimer and members of The Mundane
Science Fiction Movement.
I have some sympathy with those who want to forget all this "out into
space" stuff and concentrate on such Earthly things as improved weather
satellites. I also have some sympathy with those who want to solve
humanity's problems by, for example, reducing Earth's population via the
emigration of several thousand people a year. But I don't see why the
former need a movement. And I don't see why the latter need a
counter-movement.
--
Dan Goodman
Journal http://www.livejournal.com/users/dsgood/
Clutterers Anonymous unofficial community
http://www.livejournal.com/community/clutterers_anon/
Decluttering http://decluttering.blogspot.com
Predictions and Politics http://dsgood.blogspot.com
All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.
John Arbuthnot (1667-1735), Scottish writer, physician.
Jim Campbell
sdfoadATyahooNOSPAMdotcom wrote on 30/5/05 9:59 pm:
<deja vu>
> So, has anyone heard of or have any thoughts on the "Mundane Science
> Fiction Movement"? The MSF manifesto is at this URL:
</deja vu>
Cheers
Jim
Patricia C. Wrede
news:kevm9111f81t1b83j...@4ax.com...
> So, has anyone heard of or have any thoughts on the "Mundane Science
> Fiction Movement"?
Various people on rasfc have already been discussing it for a couple of days
in another thread.
I will take it seriously if and when several (that's More Than One) editors
from different publishing houses, all of whom are wearing their Official
Editor Hats (as opposed to shooting the breeze in their off time), allow as
how it's a fine idea and that's how they'll be making their editorial
decisions from now on. I expect that to happen roughly around the time Hell
puts in a bid for the winter Olympics...
Patricia C. Wrede
rja.ca...@excite.com
Dogme for SF! Great!
Their actual prohibitions are perhaps more strict than strict realism
demands, on several points, but it's unlikely that the tropes they
eschew will not be exercised by others, or even by Mundanes at
weekends. I prefer SF that speaks to me about the present and future
world that I live in / will live in / will be
remembered/uploaded/cloned in, rther than fairyland stuff - warp drive
being fairyland. At least, I think I do. Incidentally, it was very
recently reported that we can whistle for wormholes, too - by which I
mean we can't have them.
Sea Wasp
I mock them. Ha! Ha!
I call for a return to feel-good pulp stories that Doc Smith would
have penned, for exuberant steampunk-magic adventures, for SF that
sneers at both the mundane, for failing to believe, and at the
fantasists who believe that fiction gives them license to fail to make
sense. I call for high adventure, where one man or woman (or toad) can
make a difference in the universe. I call for warp drives galore, and
a thousand million alien worlds, a publishing universe in which
Schlock Mercenary is held up as one of the high ideals! BLAM! Lots of
BLAM!
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/seawasp/
S. Palmer
> I call for a return to feel-good pulp stories that Doc Smith would
> have penned, for exuberant steampunk-magic adventures, for SF that
> sneers at both the mundane, for failing to believe, and at the
> fantasists who believe that fiction gives them license to fail to make
> sense. I call for high adventure, where one man or woman (or toad) can
> make a difference in the universe.
oooh, hey, that's what I'm writing! Except without the toad. Maybe in
the next WIP I'll stick a toad in, just for you. (-:
-Suzanne
David Johnston
<sdfoadATyahooNOSPAMdotcom> wrote:
>So, has anyone heard of or have any thoughts on the "Mundane Science
>Fiction Movement"? The MSF manifesto is at this URL:
They sound like a big turn into a dead end.
Konrad Gaertner
>
> I call for a return to feel-good pulp stories that Doc Smith would
> have penned, for exuberant steampunk-magic adventures,
Have you ever tried Girl Genius?
> for SF that sneers at both the mundane, for failing to believe, and
> at the fantasists who believe that fiction gives them license to
> fail to make sense. I call for high adventure,
Are airships high enough for you?
> where one man or woman (or toad)
No toads (yet), but it does have a talking cat (who also sings and
dances, though badly).
> can make a difference in the universe.
Oh yes. Much to her dismay.
> I call for warp drives galore, and a thousand million alien worlds,
Nope, though (in a story within the story) a couple characters go to
Mars in a rowboat.
> a publishing universe in which Schlock Mercenary is held up as one
> of the high ideals! BLAM! Lots of BLAM!
"Herr Baron! We need you! All the experiments in the labs have
either been let loose or turned ON! And everything's on FIRE!"
Unfortunately, they couldn't afford to keep publishing issues, so
they're putting the comic online instead. Here's the beginning:
http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/cgi-bin/gg101.cgi?date=20050221
--
Konrad Gaertner email: gae...@aol.com
http://www.livejournal.com/users/kgbooklog/
William December Starr
rgo...@telusplanet.net (David Johnston) said:
> They sound like a big turn into a dead end.
As far as I've been able to tell, "They" are Geoff Ryman and a bunch
of nobody-yets. Now it's true that sometimes nobody-yets grow up to
be giants, but right now is there anybody besides Ryman associated
with this who has any credentials?
(And I generally agree with David here: what they're promulgating
sounds noble and praiseworthy and boring as hell.)
--
William December Starr <wds...@panix.com>
Wayne Throop
:: I call for a return to feel-good pulp stories that Doc Smith would
:: have penned, for exuberant steampunk-magic adventures,
: Konrad Gaertner <kgae...@worldnet.att.net>
: Have you ever tried Girl Genius?
Y'know, I did try the on-line version. At that time, each page rendered
PAINfully slowly for some reason, so I didn't get far for the time I
invested. And during that time (and short span of story) it didn't
catch on with me. Some parts of it seemed nifty, but I quickly hit
eight-words issues.
: "Herr Baron! We need you! All the experiments in the labs have
: either been let loose or turned ON! And everything's on FIRE!"
"Aaaaaugh! Don't panic! Baby on fire! Baby on fire!
Good baby! Niiiiiiice baby!"
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
Logan Kearsley
news:1117493008....@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
Recently? Heck, that debate has going on for ages- ever since they were
first proposed. And it's long from settled. And, of course, the arguments
either way depend on exactly which type of wormhole you're discussing.
Personally, I'm on the "they're possible, but only for a Sufficiently
Advanced Civilization" side. For reference, "Towards possibility of
self-maintained vacuum traversible wormhole" by V. Khatsymovsky and
"Inflating Lorentzian Wormholes" by Thomas A. Roman.
-l.
------------------------------------
My inbox is a sacred shrine, none shall enter that are not worthy.
Logan Kearsley
news:d7g9cf$96d$1...@panix3.panix.com...
That may be, but, personally, I've never thought of Hell as a particularly
boring place. Unless you end up frozen in a block of ice for all eternity or
something.
James A. Donald
"rja.ca...@excite.com"
> warp drive being fairyland.
Immortals, however, will have no difficulty traveling
between the stars using near present technology..
Mortals can also manage it if we can produce antimatter
in huge quantities. Both outcomes seem likely.
Also consider an intelligent life form evolved on a
planet that experiences very severe winters. Perhaps
the planet is in highly elliptical orbit and it rains
liquid oxygen during the winter. This life form freezes
solid for winter and is woken by the warmth of spring,
as some earthly spiders are. (I visualize it as a
really big spider) Thus suspended animation is trivial
for it. Just turn up the air conditioning. Such a life
form can travel between the stars using early twenty
first century technology.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
CzZHOqmTApm4QyhGCCstDvprghiMSV279t/AjoDT
4aETSuxGPEC3c/Lm44p9WCg+ExoXTwgA+ijA3GTAk
Andrew Wheeler
I've had several, not entirely coherent, not completely serious,
reactions to this:
1) How wonderful, yet *another* excuse for metric bargeloads of dreary
near-future check-out-my-politics science fiction. I've finally washed
the slipstream out of my good jacket, and not *this* comes along. <sigh>
2) I keep hoping for the Rayguns-and-Spaceships Manifesto, but I guess I
need to wait longer. (I see, tracking further down the thread, that Sea
Wasp has anticipated me. Bully for him!)
3) I'm sure they mean well, but the last two hundred years have been one
long line of people with Manifestos who meant well. That *is* an
incredibly cheap shot, yes.
4) What I really want to see is writers who want to write real
science-fiction stories -- not warmed-over Hollywood retreads (official
or option-begging), not what-everyone-else-is-doing, not
what's-selling-this-year, not
well-it's-partially-SF-and-partially-fantasy-with-a-dollop-of-nurse-novel-and-just-a-scintilla-of-romantic-suspense.
If they want to write dreary near-future stories, well, OK, that's nice
for them, but they'd better be *damn* good writers. (And even then I
probably won't want to read them.)
5) If you want to write a particular kind of story, *do it.* But saying
that everyone else who writes anything else are misguided fools is not
only dangerous intellectual arrogance, but also the kind of hubris that
nemesis just *loves* to clobber. I am morally certain that some
signatory of this Manifesto will commit a Galactic Empire story within a
decade. I hope to be there, pointing and laughing, though it will be
much more fun if it's a *really good* Galactic Empire story.
6) I haven't seen everything on this topic by any means, but, so far, it
looks like Charlie Stross is making the most sense. As usual.
--
Andrew Wheeler
--
"Next time you die, Jazz Snob."
--Dan Wheeler, _The Last Thing I Ever Did_
http://bobopuppyhead.blogspot.com/
Sea Wasp
> Cisco Ducks wrote:
>
>>So, has anyone heard of or have any thoughts on the "Mundane Science
>>Fiction Movement"? The MSF manifesto is at this URL:
>>
>>http://mundanesf.com/default.asp?id=2&mnu=2
>>
>>There's an overview of the debate, with some comments, at this URL:
>>
>>http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/05/29/231530.php
>
>
> I've had several, not entirely coherent, not completely serious,
> reactions to this:
>
> 1) How wonderful, yet *another* excuse for metric bargeloads of dreary
> near-future check-out-my-politics science fiction. I've finally washed
> the slipstream out of my good jacket, and not *this* comes along. <sigh>
>
> 2) I keep hoping for the Rayguns-and-Spaceships Manifesto, but I guess I
> need to wait longer. (I see, tracking further down the thread, that Sea
> Wasp has anticipated me. Bully for him!)
Thank you, thank you. Let us hope Jim Baen thinks the same, because
my proposed novel hangs somewhere between Honor Harrington and Doc
Smith crossed with the GOOD George Lucas.
>
> 4) What I really want to see is writers who want to write real
> science-fiction stories
When "Boundary" comes out in February, let me know if it qualifies.
(And it's not based on trendiness -- Eric's first attempts at this one
were about five years ago or more)
how...@brazee.net
On 30-May-2005, "Logan Kearsley" <chrono...@verizon.net> wrote:
> That may be, but, personally, I've never thought of Hell as a particularly
> boring place. Unless you end up frozen in a block of ice for all eternity
> or something.
Heaven, on the other hand...
Carl Dershem
news:429BA919...@worldnet.att.net:
> Have you ever tried Girl Genius?
I've tried *a* girl genius. Still have the scars, and the fond memories.
Does that count?
cd
--
The difference between immorality and immortality is "T". I like Earl
Grey.
Aaron Davies
Dogme 95 for SF, and I imagine it'll be about as productive.
--
Aaron Davies
Opinions expressed are solely those of a random number generator.
"I don't know if it's real or not but it is a myth."
-Jami JoAnne of alt.folklore.urban, showing her grasp on reality.
Old Toby
Hmm, well, Hell appears to be only about 150 miles from Lillehammer ;-)
Seriously, I doubt it would put in its own bid, But if Trondheim should
ever get the bid, maybe they could put the hockey and curling in Hell.
Putting the kayaking there is asking for trouble.
Old Toby
Least Known Dog on the Net
Ken_from_Chicago
gain acceptance would be
EARTH-CENTRIC SF.
Stories focused on Earth (or the Sol star system) and humanity. That
seems to be the real goal and the stuff about no space travel being
overkill to get that.
However I disagree with the notion that stories that follow said
"mundane" rules would necessarily be boring--unless you consider THE
MATRIX, BLADE RUNNER, PAYCHECK, THE MINORITY REPORT, I,ROBOT anthology
of robot stories and a host of sf stories focused on Earth as boring.
-- Ken from Chicago
Mike Van Pelt
Sea Wasp <seaobvi...@sgeobviousinc.com> wrote:
>I call for warp drives galore, and a thousand million alien
>worlds, a publishing universe in which Schlock Mercenary is
>held up as one of the high ideals! BLAM! Lots of BLAM!
Yes!
And THROOOM. Lots and lots of THROOOM.
--
Infamy is like a pair of tight leather pants in | Mike Van Pelt
the Amazon. It might LOOK cool, but after just | mvp at calweb.com
a couple of hours it chafes, and that's just | KE6BVH
the start of your problems. -- Howard Tayler
Mike Van Pelt
Cisco Ducks <sdfoadATyahooNOSPAMdotcom> wrote:
>So, has anyone heard of or have any thoughts on the "Mundane Science
>Fiction Movement"? The MSF manifesto is at this URL:
>
>http://mundanesf.com/default.asp?id=2&mnu=2
An interesting approach. I would like to see some well
thought-out relatively near-future Solar System stories without
warp drives or other magic. (Not that I'm opposed to stories
with FTL, but I recognize that FTL is spectactularly unlikely
at best.)
The most important part of the manifesto is the promise
"to burn this manifesto as soon as it gets boring."
Ken_from_Chicago
-- Ken from Chicago
Sea Wasp
> And XPLOSIONS! It don't mean jack squat if it don't XPLODE real good!
>
> -- Ken from Chicago
>
Sorry, but X-splosives are the Xclusive domain of Doc Smith in the
Skylark series.
Sea Wasp
> In article <429B9AC5...@sgeobviousinc.com>,
> Sea Wasp <seaobvi...@sgeobviousinc.com> wrote:
>
>>I call for warp drives galore, and a thousand million alien
>>worlds, a publishing universe in which Schlock Mercenary is
>>held up as one of the high ideals! BLAM! Lots of BLAM!
>
>
> Yes!
>
>
> And THROOOM. Lots and lots of THROOOM.
>
>
That's THOOOM! Though I'm sure that THROOM can be used to. Not to
mention (though I will) Ommmmminous Hummmmmmm...
rja.ca...@excite.com
I had in mind "a new study by Stephen Hsu and Roman Buniy, of the
University of Oregon, US, published on the arXiv pre-print server" and
described at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4564477.stm last
Monday. I overlooked the use of arXiv, which I don't know well but
something else I was looking at recently came up "arXiv" and apparently
translated to "bullshit" - that's to say, no peer review. But it was
good enough for the BBC... mind you, I think the professional
journalists actually were on strike that day (really). I'll bring it
up with them. Anyway, the argument is that "a wormhole that combines
exotic matter with semi-classical space-time would be fundamentally
unstable", and one that doesn't would not be something that you'd want
to step into.
I meant to say before that all the wonderful space-opera,
nuts-to-Einstein science fiction in the Golden and Silver Ages and
before was, at the time, more or less credible, at least to a
readership that felt a sense of achievement in owning a working radio,
not least because you'd have to blow the vacuum tubes yourself.
Fundamental scientific law was being reinvented - relativity, quantum
mechanics - and kind'a stopped there, but at the time it can't have
seemed that anyone knew anything for sure for long. Also, more people
sincerely believed in religion; was radio scientifiction any stranger
than that? John Carter teleporting to Mars by pure concentrated
alienation passed as hard SF.
These days, we have serious space programmes in different nations, and
we now know how hard it is to do well - and not getting easier very
fast. Ditto nuclear power, scientific warfare (nukes, bioweapons,
killer robots, blind-the-enemy lasers - ugh) and we even have had
serious investment in parapsychology research. Showed up zip. The
scientific world is a lot less fun, noisy fun, than we thought.
So SF can either change accordingly, or not.
rja.ca...@excite.com
James A. Donald wrote:
> --
> "rja.ca...@excite.com"
> > warp drive being fairyland.
>
> Immortals, however, will have no difficulty traveling
> between the stars using near present technology..
> Mortals can also manage it if we can produce antimatter
> in huge quantities. Both outcomes seem likely.
>
> Also consider an intelligent life form evolved on a
> planet that experiences very severe winters. Perhaps
> the planet is in highly elliptical orbit and it rains
> liquid oxygen during the winter. This life form freezes
> solid for winter and is woken by the warmth of spring,
> as some earthly spiders are. (I visualize it as a
> really big spider) Thus suspended animation is trivial
> for it. Just turn up the air conditioning. Such a life
> form can travel between the stars using early twenty
> first century technology.
Oh, quite. A sufficiently patient being can achieve slow interstellar
travel of self or a physical payload - if it doesn't mind being
perforated by a very long dose of cosmic rays, my personal tub to
thump (and remember all those cute Silver Age stories where the
engineering crew and other aanxious persons wore lead-weave BVDs on
account of the radiation?) Indeed, a robot probe containing an
uploaded mind would be up to the job. As I see it, the Mundane SF
manifesto excludes interstellar travel not as absolute impossibility
but as a choice of emphasis.
But it does mean no aliens, since the solar system is fairly dead
except for us. I regret that choice. I regret the possibility of
leaving aliens to George Lucas's stylings. And for that matter, I do
still expect an interstellar shot to be, in due course, not "something
our entire civilisation might pull off once" but merely "very
difficult", for the time factor and other reasons. If we then consider
extra-solar aliens, they are as likely to be ahead of us on this as
behind. A "very difficult" mission /from/ aliens ought to be allowed.
But I respect the choice in the Mundane ManifeSF-to to exclude them.
And anyway, I suppose we can make them ourselves (_Man Plus_, etc).
The pastiche "Ralph IM4SF+" was not altogether ridiculous. Past
generations really would be astonished by the modern race's
achievements, and I think that makes us aliens to them, and our
children aliens to us. Beings to which The Crazy Frog makes
sense!!!... (And there's that Hypnotic Frog tv station in
_Futurama_...)
And anyway, no one has to stick to the Manifesto any longer than they
want to.
Forrest
> John Carter teleporting to Mars by pure concentrated
> alienation passed as hard SF.
Ooooh...!
I want to see Brin conclude the Uplift saga by having the Burroughs
estate go after the Episiarch for intellectual property infringement.
"This is the race that shall sue the Sevagram."
................................................................
Posted via TITANnews - Uncensored Newsgroups Access
>>>> at http://www.TitanNews.com <<<<
-=Every Newsgroup - Anonymous, UNCENSORED, BROADBAND Downloads=-
Mary K. Kuhner
rja.ca...@excite.com <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
>These days, we have serious space programmes in different nations, and
>we now know how hard it is to do well - and not getting easier very
>fast. Ditto nuclear power, scientific warfare (nukes, bioweapons,
>killer robots, blind-the-enemy lasers - ugh) and we even have had
>serious investment in parapsychology research. Showed up zip. The
>scientific world is a lot less fun, noisy fun, than we thought.
But computers! Modern computers are *so* much more fun than most
older SF computers. (Remember the scene in _Foundation and Empire_
when the protagonist is lining up star images to find out where he
is? Or the computers in _Star Trek_ which exist just to be asked
to find the last digit of pi, or resolve a paradox, and thus blow
up?)
Some pretty cool stuff in biology, too, even if we can't turn people
into half-human half-fly freaks yet.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
trike
interstellar warp drives is DOA. There's no more agreement about
emergent AI or nanotechnology than there is for wormholes or alien
civilizations.
This mundane thing is exactly like the film world's "Dogma 95" and just
as empty. By the definitions of Dogma 95, films like The Rescuers Down
Under are more nearly Dogma-ish than anything adherents to that
movement have created.
As far a science fiction is concerned, I'm of the mind that anything
that isn't disproven should be allowed into the field.
Doug
jpe...@qwest.net
near-future political tracts disguised as novels so that he'll have
less competition in the marketplace. ;-)
Seriously, there is nothing wrong with the type of fiction being
discussed, but it no more needs a manifesto to highlight its validity
than a gerbil requires a calculator for day-to-day use. To throw out
the grand canvases allowed by inter-stellar epics is to attempt to cram
the literature of the imagination into a small box for the
unimaginative.
SF always functions at its best when unrestrained by this type of
thinking.
Now, I'm afraid you'll have to excuse me, I'm working on my story for
The Cthulhuian Singularity and I need to blow up some planets... Maybe
some entire star systems...
;-)
Cheers,
Neil Barnes
slate and produced:
> In article <429B9AC5...@sgeobviousinc.com>, Sea Wasp
> <seaobvi...@sgeobviousinc.com> wrote:
>>I call for warp drives galore, and a thousand million alien worlds, a
>>publishing universe in which Schlock Mercenary is held up as one of the
>>high ideals! BLAM! Lots of BLAM!
>
> Yes!
>
>
> And THROOOM. Lots and lots of THROOOM.
Refulgence is good, too. And maybe a side order of Mighty Engines[tm].
Neil
--
The nixies toll the Neil of parting day, that on All Shallows' Eve doth walk ...
Brian M Scott
Keith Morrison
>> So, has anyone heard of or have any thoughts on the "Mundane Science
>> Fiction Movement"? The MSF manifesto is at this URL:
>>
>> http://mundanesf.com/default.asp?id=2&mnu=2
>>
>> There's an overview of the debate, with some comments, at this URL:
>>
>> http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/05/29/231530.php
>
> I mock them. Ha! Ha!
>
> I call for a return to feel-good pulp stories that Doc Smith would
> have penned, for exuberant steampunk-magic adventures, for SF that
> sneers at both the mundane, for failing to believe, and at the
> fantasists who believe that fiction gives them license to fail to make
> sense. I call for high adventure, where one man or woman (or toad) can
> make a difference in the universe. I call for warp drives galore, and a
> thousand million alien worlds, a publishing universe in which Schlock
> Mercenary is held up as one of the high ideals! BLAM! Lots of BLAM!
Sword-carrying space marines! Scantily-clad alien babes and
male supermodels to rescue (thus serving both the straight and
gay communities, male and female)! Cross-breeding with aliens
that merely requires the desire to do so and lack of a space-condom!
Space-condoms!
--
Keith
David Cowie
>
> Sword-carrying space marines! Scantily-clad alien babes and
> male supermodels to rescue (thus serving both the straight and
> gay communities, male and female)! Cross-breeding with aliens
> that merely requires the desire to do so and lack of a space-condom!
> Space-condoms!
BIG SHIP GO BOOM!
--
David Cowie
Containment Failure + 13538:05
Joann Zimmerman
says...
> On Tue, 31 May 2005 11:54:31 -0600, Keith Morrison wrote:
>
> >
> > Sword-carrying space marines! Scantily-clad alien babes and
> > male supermodels to rescue (thus serving both the straight and
> > gay communities, male and female)! Cross-breeding with aliens
> > that merely requires the desire to do so and lack of a space-condom!
> > Space-condoms!
>
> BIG SHIP GO BOOM!
Not to mention all the war horses in the starship hold ...
--
"I never understood people who don't have bookshelves."
--George Plimpton
Joann Zimmerman jz...@bellereti.com
Dan Goodman
Movies are irrelevant. We're discussing _written_ sf.
--
Dan Goodman
Journal http://www.livejournal.com/users/dsgood/
Clutterers Anonymous unofficial community
http://www.livejournal.com/community/clutterers_anon/
Decluttering http://decluttering.blogspot.com
Predictions and Politics http://dsgood.blogspot.com
All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.
John Arbuthnot (1667-1735), Scottish writer, physician.
James A. Donald
On 31 May 2005 05:52:54 -0700, "rja.ca...@excite.com"
> If we then consider extra-solar aliens, they are as
> likely to be ahead of us on this as behind. A "very
> difficult" mission /from/ aliens ought to be allowed.
One popular story is an alien which is superpowered, and
can reproduce rapidly, (perhaps by laying its eggs in
host animals including people) so that a single alien
can take over earth - and promptly attempts to do so.
That is entirely in accord with known physics and
current technology levels, yet I am pretty sure that is
not what the mundane manifesto has in mind.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
qt8hFOL37M9+KJLNe4rb1lcA4eHasDL4Xpg0lryh
4nqKR4bHbhqw3CibcLpRsMrI087lOaaQtoSMXBleq
James A. Donald
On Tue, 31 May 2005 01:11:42 GMT, "Logan Kearsley"
> Recently? Heck, that debate has going on for ages-
> ever since they were first proposed. And it's long
> from settled. And, of course, the arguments either way
> depend on exactly which type of wormhole you're
> discussing. Personally, I'm on the "they're possible,
> but only for a Sufficiently Advanced Civilization"
> side. For reference, "Towards possibility of
> self-maintained vacuum traversible wormhole" by V.
> Khatsymovsky and "Inflating Lorentzian Wormholes" by
> Thomas A. Roman.
Their wormhole is possible because quantum energy
densities are not strictly positive. Thus when they say
"macroscopic" they do not mean a wormhole you can stick
a person through - or even a grain of dust through.
You know how Hawking predicts that a blackhole with the
mass of a few thousand tons will turn into energy in an
instant, making a gigantic explosion. The core of that
explosion might well contain a "macroscopic" wormhole
for an instant.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
beWu51+Qp/+P64YEtOnyOMViB3RszDIk9Z4q7HPQ
4cMw5x5b+Y8cKyPHtB+jmnQTUor+RFIfIY1PlWexg
Bill Snyder
wrote:
>On Tue, 31 May 2005 11:54:31 -0600, Keith Morrison wrote:
>
>>
>> Sword-carrying space marines! Scantily-clad alien babes and
>> male supermodels to rescue (thus serving both the straight and
>> gay communities, male and female)! Cross-breeding with aliens
>> that merely requires the desire to do so and lack of a space-condom!
>> Space-condoms!
>
>BIG SHIP GO BOOM!
ALL SCI-FI LOVE EXPLODING SPACESHIP!!!
--
Bill Snyder [This space unintentionally left blank.]
Brian M. Scott
<rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote in
<news:1117542192.1...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>
in rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.sf.composition:
[...]
> I meant to say before that all the wonderful space-opera,
> nuts-to-Einstein science fiction in the Golden and Silver
> Ages and before was, at the time, more or less credible,
> at least to a readership that felt a sense of achievement
> in owning a working radio, not least because you'd have
> to blow the vacuum tubes yourself. Fundamental scientific
> law was being reinvented - relativity, quantum mechanics
> - and kind'a stopped there, but at the time it can't have
> seemed that anyone knew anything for sure for long.
> Also, more people sincerely believed in religion;
I doubt it.
> was radio scientifiction any stranger than that? John
> Carter teleporting to Mars by pure concentrated
> alienation passed as hard SF.
I don't think so.
There is something in what you say, but you've greatly
exaggerated it, I think.
[...]
Brian
J. F. Cornwall
> Ken_from_Chicago wrote:
>
>> T'would seem a simpler and less antagonistic and thus more likely to
>> gain acceptance would be
>>
>> EARTH-CENTRIC SF.
>>
>> Stories focused on Earth (or the Sol star system) and humanity. That
>> seems to be the real goal and the stuff about no space travel being
>> overkill to get that.
>>
>> However I disagree with the notion that stories that follow said
>> "mundane" rules would necessarily be boring--unless you consider THE
>> MATRIX, BLADE RUNNER, PAYCHECK, THE MINORITY REPORT, I,ROBOT anthology
>> of robot stories and a host of sf stories focused on Earth as boring.
>
>
> Movies are irrelevant. We're discussing _written_ sf.
>
Well, at least "I, Robot" was written long before it was sorta made into
a movie, and "Blade Runner" as well, under another title...
Jim
Jim Campbell
dsg...@iphouse.com wrote on 31/5/05 8:43 pm:
I am Author of Borg:
> Movies are irrelevant. We're discussing _written_ sf.
Cheers!
Jim
Sea Wasp
> and lo, on Tue, 31 May 2005 08:17:28 +0000, Mike Van Pelt scraped chalk on
> slate and produced:
>
>
>>In article <429B9AC5...@sgeobviousinc.com>, Sea Wasp
>><seaobvi...@sgeobviousinc.com> wrote:
>>
>>>I call for warp drives galore, and a thousand million alien worlds, a
>>>publishing universe in which Schlock Mercenary is held up as one of the
>>>high ideals! BLAM! Lots of BLAM!
>>
>>Yes!
>>
>>
>>And THROOOM. Lots and lots of THROOOM.
>
>
> Refulgence is good, too. And maybe a side order of Mighty Engines[tm].
Coruscating POLYCHROMATIC refulgence, of course.
Mike Schilling
"Sea Wasp" <seaobvi...@sgeobviousinc.com> wrote in message
news:429CD977...@sgeobviousinc.com...
> Neil Barnes wrote:
>>
>>
>> Refulgence is good, too. And maybe a side order of Mighty Engines[tm].
>
> Coruscating POLYCHROMATIC refulgence, of course.
>
Hey, watch your language. There might be kids reading this newsgroup.
Shana Rosenfeld
go into space when she grew up....
Jim Campbell
JCor...@cox.net wrote on 31/5/05 10:01 pm:
> "Blade Runner" as well, under another title...
Oh, yeah - something about Eclectic Sheep, wasn't it?
Cheers!
Jim
J. F. Cornwall
Eclectic Electric Sheep...)
Jim
J Cresswell-Jones
"J. F. Cornwall" <JCor...@cox.net> wrote in message
news:j16ne.77145$yV4.43645@okepread03...
And "The Minority Report", by the same author, Philip K. Dick -- who also
wrote "Paycheck", as well as "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale", which
was made into TOTAL RECALL. The only original screenplay mentioned in that
post was MATRIX.
Actually, Dick could've worked just fine under the Mundane Manifesto.
--
Jonathan CJ
Aaron Davies
> On Tue, 31 May 2005 01:11:42 GMT, "Logan Kearsley"
>
> > Recently? Heck, that debate has going on for ages- ever since they were
> > first proposed. And it's long from settled. And, of course, the
> > arguments either way depend on exactly which type of wormhole you're
> > discussing. Personally, I'm on the "they're possible, but only for a
> > Sufficiently Advanced Civilization" side. For reference, "Towards
> > possibility of self-maintained vacuum traversible wormhole" by V.
> > Khatsymovsky and "Inflating Lorentzian Wormholes" by Thomas A. Roman.
>
> Their wormhole is possible because quantum energy densities are not
> strictly positive. Thus when they say "macroscopic" they do not mean a
> wormhole you can stick a person through - or even a grain of dust through.
Can you get a photon through it?
--
Aaron "ansible" Davies
Opinions expressed are solely those of a random number generator.
"I don't know if it's real or not but it is a myth."
-Jami JoAnne of alt.folklore.urban, showing her grasp on reality.
Sea Wasp
Polychrome... In... SPAAAAAAACE!
I had the biggest crush on Polychrome when I was a kid.
Sea Wasp
> James A. Donald <jam...@echeque.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On Tue, 31 May 2005 01:11:42 GMT, "Logan Kearsley"
>>
>>
>>>Recently? Heck, that debate has going on for ages- ever since they were
>>>first proposed. And it's long from settled. And, of course, the
>>>arguments either way depend on exactly which type of wormhole you're
>>>discussing. Personally, I'm on the "they're possible, but only for a
>>>Sufficiently Advanced Civilization" side. For reference, "Towards
>>>possibility of self-maintained vacuum traversible wormhole" by V.
>>>Khatsymovsky and "Inflating Lorentzian Wormholes" by Thomas A. Roman.
>>
>>Their wormhole is possible because quantum energy densities are not
>>strictly positive. Thus when they say "macroscopic" they do not mean a
>>wormhole you can stick a person through - or even a grain of dust through.
>
>
> Can you get a photon through it?
Make it a STRONG photon, and it can hold the wormhole open for the
others. Then they can put up some bracing, start expanding, soon we've
got interstellar travel.
Damien Neil
> have penned, for exuberant steampunk-magic adventures, for SF that
> sneers at both the mundane, for failing to believe, and at the
> fantasists who believe that fiction gives them license to fail to make
> sense. I call for high adventure, where one man or woman (or toad) can
> Schlock Mercenary is held up as one of the high ideals! BLAM! Lots of
> BLAM!
Can I call for both?
I like space fantasy. Ray guns, ravening beams of coherent energy,
planet-destroying weapons, alien worlds, jumpgates, hyperspace...bring
it on.
But, hey, every once in a while it's nice to read something I can
believe might happen. Hyperspace drives and dragons don't really tickle
my sensawonda as much as they used to, because I don't believe in
either. They're *fun*, but not the sum total of what I like.
So show me a solar system crowded with habitats and STL transit. Tell
me why people are mining the asteroids, and who financed that research
colony off of Neptune. Ring the Earth with orbital stations and
populate them with gene-sculpted humans. If Stevenson (Robert L., that
is) could give me excitement and adventure without peer on one stinkin'
island, don't tell me the entire solar system is too small.
- Damien
Sea Wasp
> In article <429B9AC5...@sgeobviousinc.com>,
> Sea Wasp <seaobvi...@sgeobviousinc.com> wrote:
>
>> I call for a return to feel-good pulp stories that Doc Smith would
>>have penned, for exuberant steampunk-magic adventures, for SF that
>>sneers at both the mundane, for failing to believe, and at the
>>fantasists who believe that fiction gives them license to fail to make
>>sense. I call for high adventure, where one man or woman (or toad) can
>>make a difference in the universe. I call for warp drives galore, and
>>a thousand million alien worlds, a publishing universe in which
>>Schlock Mercenary is held up as one of the high ideals! BLAM! Lots of
>>BLAM!
>
>
> Can I call for both?
Sure. I'm actually trying to SUPPLY both.
Eric Jarvis
<aq6ne.8739$yG4.6...@news20.bellglobal.com>:
I think that's the point. Not all that long ago a lot of top writers were
doing so at least part of the time.
--
eric
www.ericjarvis.co.uk
"live fast, die only if strictly necessary"
David M. Palmer
<"rja.ca...@excite.com"> wrote:
> I overlooked the use of arXiv, which I don't know well but
> something else I was looking at recently came up "arXiv" and apparently
> translated to "bullshit" - that's to say, no peer review.
Some of the stuff on arXiv is bullshit. Some of it is not.
In some fields, arXiv is what you read every morning, and only then go
to the journals.
I usually put _my_ stuff on the arXiv only after it has passed peer
review. Many other people follow the same policy.
I recently read a paper on the arXiv and immediately recognized it as
bullshit, and was then asked to review it by the journal it was
submitted to. (Which meant I had to figure out where the author was
going wrong.)
--
David M. Palmer dmpa...@email.com (formerly @clark.net, @ematic.com)
Cisco Ducks
<jcresswell...@sympatico.ca>, expounded:
In fact, the manifesto cites Dick as being one of those serving as a
model for MSF.
Wayne Throop
: Make it a STRONG photon, and it can hold the wormhole open for the
: others. Then they can put up some bracing, start expanding, soon
: we've got interstellar travel.
Big Pho Ton.
With all of his strength, he gave a mighty shove
Then a miner yelled out, there's a light up above
And twenty men scrambled from a would-be grave
And now there's only one left down there to save
With jacks and timbers they started back down
Then came that rumble way down in the ground
And smoke and gas belched out of that mine
And ever'body knew it was the end of the line
Excersize for the reader to s/mine/wormhole/,
s/smoke and gas/hawking radiation/ and so forth,
and then fix the meter...
At the bottom of this singularity lies a big, big quantum.
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
Kevin J. Cheek
> Well, at least "I, Robot" was written long before it was sorta made into
> a movie, and "Blade Runner" as well, under another title...
As was "The Minority Report." OTOH I understand the movie "I, Robot" was
essentially a different story with the same title.
--
-Kevin J. Cheek
Remove corn to send e-mail.
Kevin J. Cheek
m...@web1.calweb.com says...
> And THROOOM. Lots and lots of THROOOM.
I'm a simple man. I'd settle for an Ommmminous Hummmmmm.
Brooks Moses
> These days, we have serious space programmes in different nations, and
> we now know how hard it is to do well - and not getting easier very
> fast. Ditto nuclear power, scientific warfare (nukes, bioweapons,
> killer robots, blind-the-enemy lasers - ugh) and we even have had
> serious investment in parapsychology research. Showed up zip. The
> scientific world is a lot less fun, noisy fun, than we thought.
I was at a scientific conference last week. There's one result that I'd
like to share, just to point out that there's still some sense of wonder
left in scientific engineering.
There's a problem that's been bedeviling spray engineers ever since the
invention of the diesel engine -- just how do you tell what's going on
in the middle of the spray of fuel just as it comes out of the fuel
injector? It's a very dense cloud of millions of droplets per second,
and aside from the fact that it's lots of things moving very fast, the
cloud of droplets around the outside of the spray is sufficiently foggy
that you can't see through it to see the middle.
Various tricks and techniques have been used to deal with this problem.
At this conference alone, I saw presentations on laser tagging (put
fluorescent dye in the fuel, hit the spray with a laser that excites the
dye, and then take photos of the glowing spot as it moves over the next
few microseconds) and x-ray imaging (put the fuel injector in a
cyclotron, take radiograph images), but the one I'm talking about is
ballistic imaging.
See, one of the real problems with taking pictures is this cloud of
droplets around the outside of the spray. Normally, what you'd want to
do is shine some light through the spray and create picture of the
shadow with a CCD camera. But this cloud of droplets, like any fog,
disperses light. So much light that all this scattered light overwhelms
the "straight-through" light on the CCD by an order of magnitude or so,
and you can't see much of anything at all in the images.
However, someone clever noticed a small fact of geometry. The scattered
light, because it's bouncing off a number of droplets, takes a longer
path than the light that goes straight through -- something like a
millimeter or so.
Thus the solution is obvious: shine a short pulse of laser light on the
spray, and put a shutter between the spray and the camera that is open
to let the straight-through ("ballistic", thus the name) photons
through, but closes before the scattered photons can get there, two
light-millimeters of time later. Thus, you'll get a shadow picture
without all the fogging.
Preposterous, yes?
I'll leave you with three thoughts. (1) Just how long _is_ a
light-millimeter, anyway, and how can you make a shutter that closes
that fast? (2) If you had one, how would you synchronize it? (3) The
resulting pictures were strikingly good. :)
- Brooks
--
The "bmoses-nospam" address is valid; no unmunging needed.
Wayne Throop
: Thus the solution is obvious: shine a short pulse of laser light on
: the spray, and put a shutter between the spray and the camera that is
: open to let the straight-through ("ballistic", thus the name) photons
: through, but closes before the scattered photons can get there, two
: light-millimeters of time later. Thus, you'll get a shadow picture
: without all the fogging.
: (1) Just how long _is_ a light-millimeter,
about 3e-12 seconds, unless I've slipped up.
About three trillionths of a second.
Hm, let's check that; a third of a meter is a nanosecond or so,
divide by a thousand and multiply by three...
yep, three trillionths of a second all right.
: how can you make a shutter that closes that fast?
Hm. The only setup I know of with that kind of time resolution
involved mirrors arranged in an n-agon around a spining disk,
and some tricky optics. To image nuclear processes.
There's an (Asimov, I think) ObSF here, about what happens when
you image the plasma coming off of a nuclear explosion in the
first few trillionths of a second. The actual experiment didn't
show what the story predicted, though.
Or was that film plates, not mirrors. Hm. Can't find the ref.
Foo, I can't recall how that worked; it was tres clever.
ANYhoo. I soitny don't see how to apply that here.
But presumably there's a way to do it, or something better.
Brian M. Scott
<bmoses...@cits1.stanford.edu> wrote in
<news:429D2FE8...@cits1.stanford.edu> in
rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.sf.composition:
[...]
> I'll leave you with three thoughts. (1) Just how long _is_ a
> light-millimeter, anyway,
That part's easy: everyone <g> knows that a nanosecond is
about a light-foot, and a foot is about 30 cm = 300 mm, so
in round numbers it's about 3 picoseconds.
> and how can you make a shutter that closes that fast? (2)
> If you had one, how would you synchronize it? [...]
I'm a pure mathematician: I leave those as exercises for the
reader!
Brian
Steve
that we really know what's going to be possible in the future -- which
is both offensively hubristic and pathetically dumb.
Brooks Moses
[quoting me (Brooks Moses) on the question of how to make a shutter that
closes in a couple of light-millimeters of time.]
>
> Hm. The only setup I know of with that kind of time resolution
> involved mirrors arranged in an n-agon around a spining disk,
> and some tricky optics. To image nuclear processes.
>
> There's an (Asimov, I think) ObSF here, about what happens when
> you image the plasma coming off of a nuclear explosion in the
> first few trillionths of a second. The actual experiment didn't
> show what the story predicted, though.
>
> Or was that film plates, not mirrors. Hm. Can't find the ref.
> Foo, I can't recall how that worked; it was tres clever.
>
> ANYhoo. I soitny don't see how to apply that here.
> But presumably there's a way to do it, or something better.
The trick is that, if you're trying to do it with something physical, it
can't move more than a couple of millimeters between open and shut.
Nominally, it'll have to move far less than that. The spinning-mirror
trick you describe, while a useful trick (it parlays small motions of
mirrors into large motions of images), isn't quite enough in this realm
-- and it's deucedly hard to synchronize when you want a single image,
too.
So, the trick they came up with involves a crystal that, when hit from
the side with a laser pulse, acts as a polarizer. And, when the laser
turns off, it goes back to being normally transparent within a few
femtoseconds.
Put this at a 45-degree angle, between a horizontal and a vertical
polarizing plate, and you get a laser-activated shutter. With the laser
off, all the light through the first plate is horizontally polarized,
and is completely blocked by the vertical polarizer. With the laser on,
half the light through the first plate gets through the crystal with its
polarization rotated 45 degrees, and half of that can get through the
vertical polarizer.
The final trick is to use the same laser to polarize the crystal and to
take the image, so that synchronization is a "simple" matter of
adjusting the lengths of the light-paths.
This does still require some pretty fancy equipment, particularly in the
laser (and I'm sure the crystals aren't cheap) -- the presenter said
that their next project is to work on figuring out how to make the
system more robust, so that it can be done with a much cheaper
sub-$100,000 laser, rather than what they're currently using. :)
Neil Barnes
on slate and produced:
> Mike Schilling wrote:
Well, I always wanted to sneak 'tachyglossic' into an FTL drive
description, but unless the drive in question eats ants, it seems I'll
have to work something else out.
Neil
--
The nixies toll the Neil of parting day, that on All Shallows' Eve doth walk ...
Brian M Scott
Bradford Holden
> In article <1117542192.1...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>,
> <"rja.ca...@excite.com"> wrote:
>
> > I overlooked the use of arXiv, which I don't know well but
> > something else I was looking at recently came up "arXiv" and apparently
> > translated to "bullshit" - that's to say, no peer review.
>
> Some of the stuff on arXiv is bullshit. Some of it is not.
>
> In some fields, arXiv is what you read every morning, and only then go
> to the journals.
>
> I usually put _my_ stuff on the arXiv only after it has passed peer
> review. Many other people follow the same policy.
The editor of the Astrophysical journal did a study that found something
like 80% of ApJ submissions were sent to arxiv.org/astro-ph after
acceptance. I was pretty darn impressed. Apparently many people
actually care about their reputations.
> I recently read a paper on the arXiv and immediately recognized it as
> bullshit, and was then asked to review it by the journal it was
> submitted to. (Which meant I had to figure out where the author was
> going wrong.)
AOL.
--
Bradford Holden
"You've got five minutes to explain this before I accidentally catch you on
fire." - Tycho to Gabe - Penny Arcade
Brooks Moses
> "David M. Palmer" <dmpa...@email.com> writes:
> > I usually put _my_ stuff on the arXiv only after it has passed peer
> > review. Many other people follow the same policy.
>
> The editor of the Astrophysical journal did a study that found something
> like 80% of ApJ submissions were sent to arxiv.org/astro-ph after
> acceptance. I was pretty darn impressed. Apparently many people
> actually care about their reputations.
Interesting, though that statistic is the one in the wrong direction, as
it says nothing about what fraction of the material on arXiv comes from
journal "preprints" such as those.
It would also be interesting to see whether the statistics were
different for a journal that had more typical limitations on the
author's license to distribute copies. The Astrophysical Journal
appears to be remarkably lenient in this regard; for many journals and
even some conferences, it would be a copyright violation for the author
to submit a copy to arXiv.
David Friedman
You don't have a shutter and you don't synchronise it. You take a
continuous reading of the output and record it. Then you look at the
beginning of the blip.
Of course, your tape spools have to be turning really fast.
--
Remove NOSPAM to email
Also remove .invalid
www.daviddfriedman.com
j...@gothasfuck.co.uk
> "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" (though perhaps they were
> Eclectic Electric Sheep...)
Erm ... I _did_ actually know that. What I _don't_ know is the Usenet
convention to denote facetiousness ...
Cheers!
Jim
Zeborah
> Bradford Holden wrote:
> > The editor of the Astrophysical journal did a study that found something
> > like 80% of ApJ submissions were sent to arxiv.org/astro-ph after
> > acceptance. I was pretty darn impressed. Apparently many people
> > actually care about their reputations.
>
> Interesting, though that statistic is the one in the wrong direction, as
> it says nothing about what fraction of the material on arXiv comes from
> journal "preprints" such as those.
Anecdotal, and not about arXiv specifically: I was talking to a
librarian yesterday about e-journals, and she mentioned one of the most
helpful sources for her, helping students, was articles on author's
websites. (This is in the geology and biology subject areas, mostly.)
I asked if there were a lot of preprints and she said no, most of them
were the final (post-peer-reviewed) version.
Zeborah
--
(No facts were harmed in the making of this post.)
http://www.geocities.com/zeborahnz/
Sea Wasp
> :: Can you get a photon through it?
>
> : Make it a STRONG photon, and it can hold the wormhole open for the
> : others. Then they can put up some bracing, start expanding, soon
> : we've got interstellar travel.
>
> Big Pho Ton.
Exactly what I was thinking of.
>
> With all of his strength, he gave a mighty shove
> Then a miner yelled out, there's a light up above
Minor nit: "..there's a LOT up above!"
Sea Wasp
> In article <Ig4ne.76666$yV4.20414@okepread03>, JCor...@cox.net says...
>
>>Well, at least "I, Robot" was written long before it was sorta made into
>>a movie, and "Blade Runner" as well, under another title...
>
>
> As was "The Minority Report." OTOH I understand the movie "I, Robot" was
> essentially a different story with the same title.
>
Oddly, though it WAS a completely different story, it was
surprisingly accurately Asimovian.
Sea Wasp
> See, one of the real problems with taking pictures is this cloud of
> droplets around the outside of the spray. Normally, what you'd want to
> do is shine some light through the spray and create picture of the
> shadow with a CCD camera. But this cloud of droplets, like any fog,
> disperses light. So much light that all this scattered light overwhelms
> the "straight-through" light on the CCD by an order of magnitude or so,
> and you can't see much of anything at all in the images.
An interesting problem and solution. I wonder, though, if there's a
way to attack the problem from another angle. We've made water sprays
disappear (so that we can see the surface being sprayed) using image
averaging techniques and high-speed imaging; this implies the
straight-through light does arrive and is being imaged -- in fact,
that we're getting stuff that goes through and reflects cleanly
through -- so in those individual shots I wonder if there's
recoverable data on the spray itself if you did more "close-ups".
Sea Wasp
> Anecdotal, and not about arXiv specifically: I was talking to a
> librarian yesterday about e-journals, and she mentioned one of the most
> helpful sources for her, helping students, was articles on author's
> websites. (This is in the geology and biology subject areas, mostly.)
> I asked if there were a lot of preprints and she said no, most of them
> were the final (post-peer-reviewed) version.
Yep. Paying money through IEEE to get journal articles is a PITA not
to mention potentially prohibitively expensive for a poor college
student or for a small company that does lots of research work but has
limited funds. It's always nice to see that many researchers recognize
that their articles aren't likely to be bestsellers anyway, and
therefore will garner a readership only if easily available.
Konrad Gaertner
>
> There's an (Asimov, I think) ObSF here, about what happens when
> you image the plasma coming off of a nuclear explosion in the
> first few trillionths of a second. The actual experiment didn't
> show what the story predicted, though.
Right, "Hell-Fire"
--
Konrad Gaertner email: gae...@aol.com
http://www.livejournal.com/users/kgbooklog/
Gerry Quinn
nos...@cits1.stanford.edu says...
> The final trick is to use the same laser to polarize the crystal and to
> take the image, so that synchronization is a "simple" matter of
> adjusting the lengths of the light-paths.
You could also try to time-compress the pulse, using an optically non-
linear material.
In the simplest case, something that lets light travel faster once it's
excited by light. The front of the pulse is delayed, and the back
catches up on it.
- Gerry Quinn
David Friedman
zeb...@gmail.com (Zeborah) wrote:
> Anecdotal, and not about arXiv specifically: I was talking to a
> librarian yesterday about e-journals, and she mentioned one of the most
> helpful sources for her, helping students, was articles on author's
> websites. (This is in the geology and biology subject areas, mostly.)
> I asked if there were a lot of preprints and she said no, most of them
> were the final (post-peer-reviewed) version.
>
Good.
I've been doing that for many years, and am prone to suggest to my
colleagues that it is what responsible academics ought to do routinely.
Aaron Bergman
> > Bradford Holden wrote:
> > > The editor of the Astrophysical journal did a study that found something
> > > like 80% of ApJ submissions were sent to arxiv.org/astro-ph after
> > > acceptance. I was pretty darn impressed. Apparently many people
> > > actually care about their reputations.
This varies from field to field. It has nothing to do with caring about
your reputation. The ArXiV is a preprint server; it replaces the old
practice of mailing the things physically around the country.
Everyone knows that there's crap on the ArXiV -- people in the field
usually can filter out the bad stuff, though. A journalistic imprimatur
doesn't mean all that much, really, as in most fields there are 'good
journals' and then journals that will publish pretty much anything.
We all know about science journalists checking the ArXiV every day
looking for stories, but that is far outweighed by the usefulness of it
for communication, especially for people in other countries.
Aaron
Pat Bowne
"Aaron Bergman" <aber...@physics.utexas.edu> wrote
> We all know about science journalists checking the ArXiV every day
> looking for stories, but that is far outweighed by the usefulness of it
> for communication, especially for people in other countries.
>
Is there anything similar for the biological sciences?
Pat
Wayne Throop
:: was essentially a different story with the same title.
: Sea Wasp <seaobvi...@sgeobviousinc.com>
: Oddly, though it WAS a completely different story, it was surprisingly
: accurately Asimovian.
Surprising indeed. You coulda knocked me over with a feather. But
danged if it wasn't actually... well, it was good. Maybe not great,
but good, much better than I expected. And faithful, in an odd sort of
way. I was quite stunned.
Bradford Holden
> Interesting, though that statistic is the one in the wrong direction, as
> it says nothing about what fraction of the material on arXiv comes from
> journal "preprints" such as those.
Well, you can read the original publication here.
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0411275
I misremebered the numbers. 72% are posted to astro-ph but only 61%
after acceptance. The ~80% is that 88% are posted or updated after
acceptance. Updating does not mean that it will actually match
the published version, of course.
There is a sequel, by the way, which covers a number of other
journals.
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0503519
rja.ca...@excite.com
Brooks Moses wrote:
> See, one of the real problems with taking pictures is this cloud of
> droplets around the outside of the spray. Normally, what you'd want to
> do is shine some light through the spray and create picture of the
> shadow with a CCD camera. But this cloud of droplets, like any fog,
> disperses light. So much light that all this scattered light overwhelms
> the "straight-through" light on the CCD by an order of magnitude or so,
> and you can't see much of anything at all in the images.
>
> However, someone clever noticed a small fact of geometry. The scattered
> light, because it's bouncing off a number of droplets, takes a longer
> path than the light that goes straight through -- something like a
> millimeter or so.
>
> Thus the solution is obvious: shine a short pulse of laser light on the
> spray, and put a shutter between the spray and the camera that is open
> to let the straight-through ("ballistic", thus the name) photons
> through, but closes before the scattered photons can get there, two
> light-millimeters of time later. Thus, you'll get a shadow picture
> without all the fogging.
>
> Preposterous, yes?
>
> I'll leave you with three thoughts. (1) Just how long _is_ a
> light-millimeter, anyway, and how can you make a shutter that closes
> that fast? (2) If you had one, how would you synchronize it? (3) The
> resulting pictures were strikingly good. :)
I read on. That is pretty cool. Of course Richard Seaton had
engineering that good like sixty years ago on board "Skylark
Atom-Perfect". :-) (Come to think, by the end wasn't he finding atoms
too crude to build with, and instead was building ships purely out of
ever-higher-order vibrations?)
I did guess that the first flash of light somehow closes the door
behind itself, because nothing else could get the timing right. But
you already told me the problem was solved. What else could it be?
It's kind of like (I think not the same as) Columbus's apocryphal egg.
ObSF: all those times someone doesn't know that something is
impossible, so they do it. And, in fact, a famous venerable American
doggerel which I forget.
rja.ca...@excite.com
David M. Palmer wrote:
> In article <1117542192.1...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>,
> <"rja.ca...@excite.com"> wrote:
>
> > I overlooked the use of arXiv, which I don't know well but
> > something else I was looking at recently came up "arXiv" and apparently
> > translated to "bullshit" - that's to say, no peer review.
>
> Some of the stuff on arXiv is bullshit. Some of it is not.
>
> In some fields, arXiv is what you read every morning, and only then go
> to the journals.
>
> I usually put _my_ stuff on the arXiv only after it has passed peer
> review. Many other people follow the same policy.
>
> I recently read a paper on the arXiv and immediately recognized it as
> bullshit, and was then asked to review it by the journal it was
> submitted to. (Which meant I had to figure out where the author was
> going wrong.)
For the record, the BBC guy e-mailed back to me to say the wormhole
piece has been reviewed, too.
However, the turn of the discussion makes me think someone will work
out how to make them after all, in due course. Clarke's Laws...
Brooks Moses
Responsible academics should, however, only publish copies of their
papers on their website if they haven't signed away their rights to.
For many journals (and even some conferences), the transfer-of-copyright
contract does not permit such.
For instance, I cannot legally put one of my early conference papers
online. It is not even clear whether I could post a preprint version; I
will have to talk to a lawyer about that, and I suspect the answer is
"no" (or possibly "it's not legal, but they're not going to sue you over
it."). This raises, for me, a fairly significant ethical question about
whether to participate in that conference in the future; it _is_ one of
the pre-eminent conferences in my field.
Moreover, it is not a completely obvious thing that this is what
"responsible academics" should do. Consider, for instance, a certain
journal I know of. It is by far the most cited journal in its field,
and very well-read. However, it has the misfortune of being in a field
with a very active preprint server, such that nearly everybody reads the
articles on that server before they get published. Thus, the publisher
is having a very hard time getting libraries to subscribe, because the
librarians say, "We need to spend our money on journals that we see
people actually reading; nobody reads this journal through our
subscription!" The only way that this journal can afford to continue
publication is because the publisher is subsidizing it with revenue from
other journals.
Thus, I want to argue that economically astute academics should
recognize that publication of that sort tends to create a market in
which "consumers" of articles do not expect to pay for the services of
editing and peer review, and that a likely response is that the journals
will begin to expect the authors to pay for these services.
Personally, my opinion is to agree with you that academics should
publish their papers online (when possible), but I think that they
should also, when reading papers, make a conscious effort to download
the papers from the offical journal websites whenever it's reasonably
possible, because I do not believe that pay-for-publication is good for
academia.
Keith Morrison
>>>Sword-carrying space marines! Scantily-clad alien babes and
>>>male supermodels to rescue (thus serving both the straight and
>>>gay communities, male and female)! Cross-breeding with aliens
>>>that merely requires the desire to do so and lack of a space-condom!
>>>Space-condoms!
>>
>>BIG SHIP GO BOOM!
>
> Not to mention all the war horses in the starship hold ...
No, _We Few_ is already out.
--
Keith
Suzanne A Blom
<j...@gothasfuck.co.uk> wrote in message
news:1117613166.0...@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
raymond larsson
> "J Cresswell-Jones" expounded:
> >Actually, Dick could've worked just fine under the Mundane Manifesto.
>
> In fact, the manifesto cites Dick as being one of those serving as a
> model for MSF.
Just what I want! The world needs more intelligent slime molds, cameras
that can take pictures of future events, and FTL travel to moons in the
Alpha Centauri system [Clans of the Alphane Moon].
Flow, My Tears, the Policeman Said
Ubik
The Man in the High Castle ,
yeah he could work under the MSF manifesto, but I want my roast wub.
--
rgl not only great taste, but also tastes great!
David Friedman
Brooks Moses <bmoses...@cits1.stanford.edu> wrote:
> David Friedman wrote:
> > In article <1gxhvzs.zzitgglcp41dN%zeb...@gmail.com>,
> > zeb...@gmail.com (Zeborah) wrote:
> >
> > > Anecdotal, and not about arXiv specifically: I was talking to a
> > > librarian yesterday about e-journals, and she mentioned one of the most
> > > helpful sources for her, helping students, was articles on author's
> > > websites. (This is in the geology and biology subject areas, mostly.)
> > > I asked if there were a lot of preprints and she said no, most of them
> > > were the final (post-peer-reviewed) version.
> >
> > Good.
> >
> > I've been doing that for many years, and am prone to suggest to my
> > colleagues that it is what responsible academics ought to do routinely.
>
> Responsible academics should, however, only publish copies of their
> papers on their website if they haven't signed away their rights to.
> For many journals (and even some conferences), the transfer-of-copyright
> contract does not permit such.
My experience in the past has been that most journals are willing to
give me permission, but the question hasn't come up recently.
Dan Goodman
arxiv.org includes this:
Quantitative Biology
* Quantitative Biology (q-bio new, recent, abs, find)
includes (see detailed description): Biomolecules; Cell Behavior;
Genomics; Molecular Networks; Neurons and Cognition; Other; Populations
and Evolution; Quantitative Methods; Subcellular Processes; Tissues and
Organs
--
Dan Goodman
Journal http://www.livejournal.com/users/dsgood/
Clutterers Anonymous unofficial community
http://www.livejournal.com/community/clutterers_anon/
Decluttering http://decluttering.blogspot.com
Predictions and Politics http://dsgood.blogspot.com
All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.
John Arbuthnot (1667-1735), Scottish writer, physician.
Pete McCutchen
wrote:
>T'would seem a simpler and less antagonistic and thus more likely to
>gain acceptance would be
>
>EARTH-CENTRIC SF.
>
>Stories focused on Earth (or the Sol star system) and humanity. That
>seems to be the real goal and the stuff about no space travel being
>overkill to get that.
>
>However I disagree with the notion that stories that follow said
>"mundane" rules would necessarily be boring--unless you consider THE
>MATRIX, BLADE RUNNER, PAYCHECK, THE MINORITY REPORT, I,ROBOT anthology
>of robot stories and a host of sf stories focused on Earth as boring.
Asimov published an anthology of stories under the title _Earth Is
Room Enough_.
In point of fact, I don't have any problem if somebody wants to write
stories using the constraints Ryman laid out. So long as the stories
succeed as stories, great. I do have a problem if somebody contends
that anything outside of those constraints is out-of-bounds, though.
Of course, we don't have any sf-police enforcing these limits, so this
is really just a pretentious mid-level writer and a few wannabe
acolytes spouting off.
--
Pete McCutchen
Bradford Holden
> Personally, my opinion is to agree with you that academics should
> publish their papers online (when possible), but I think that they
> should also, when reading papers, make a conscious effort to download
> the papers from the offical journal websites whenever it's reasonably
> possible, because I do not believe that pay-for-publication is good for
> academia.
In my field, pay for publication is the norm. I am curious
why you think it is bad for the field as a whole? I will note that
the publishers of our fields journals are non-for profits, so there
is no direct economic incentive for publishing everything (in point of
fact, the most recent ApJ editor has increased the rejection rate).
I can see that as an important arguement, however.
Johan Larson
"Keith Morrison" <kei...@polarnet.ca> wrote in message
news:d7i8l...@news1.newsguy.com...
> Sword-carrying space marines! Scantily-clad alien babes and
> male supermodels to rescue (thus serving both the straight and
> gay communities, male and female)! Cross-breeding with aliens
> that merely requires the desire to do so and lack of a space-condom!
> Space-condoms!
No no no! The true neo-traditional space hero doesn't shirk from wading
hip-deep in alien ichor and detonating a supernova or five, but his social
life has a quaint and blushing propriety that hasn't been seen in mainstream
entertainment since 1970 or thereabouts. Oh, he may be a real charmer, a
great dancer, and a clever flirt, but that's as far as it goes in the
Galactic Patrol.
As for this notion of miscegenation with aliens, well, that's why I want
really _alien_ aliens. Nothing more human-like than cockroaches and giant
squid, please. That should make even the hardiest of the sheep-shaggers
queasy at the very thought.
Johan Larson
Robert Hutchinson
> Erm ... I _did_ actually know that. What I _don't_ know is the Usenet
> convention to denote facetiousness ...
On Usenet, I always consider facetiousness to be the default state.
--
Robert Hutchinson | The Twenty is just so evil. The very name gloats
| over our suffering and powerlessness. It's a
| boot stomping on a human face for twenty minutes.
| -- Shaenon K. Garrity
Pat Bowne
"Johan Larson" <johan0larson8comcast0net> wrote
>
> As for this notion of miscegenation with aliens, well, that's why I want
> really _alien_ aliens. Nothing more human-like than cockroaches and giant
> squid, please. That should make even the hardiest of the sheep-shaggers
> queasy at the very thought.
>
You *really* haven't been keeping up with the Harry Potter fanfic, have you?
Pat
Sea Wasp
> "Keith Morrison" <kei...@polarnet.ca> wrote in message
> news:d7i8l...@news1.newsguy.com...
>
>>Sword-carrying space marines! Scantily-clad alien babes and
>>male supermodels to rescue (thus serving both the straight and
>>gay communities, male and female)! Cross-breeding with aliens
>>that merely requires the desire to do so and lack of a space-condom!
>>Space-condoms!
>
>
> No no no! The true neo-traditional space hero doesn't shirk from wading
> hip-deep in alien ichor and detonating a supernova or five, but his social
> life has a quaint and blushing propriety that hasn't been seen in mainstream
> entertainment since 1970 or thereabouts. Oh, he may be a real charmer, a
> great dancer, and a clever flirt, but that's as far as it goes in the
> Galactic Patrol.
>
No, it goes a lot farther. We just don't SHOW it; we draw a curtain
across these private and intimate moments which we, gentle reader,
would not wish to intrude upon.
> As for this notion of miscegenation with aliens, well, that's why I want
> really _alien_ aliens. Nothing more human-like than cockroaches and giant
> squid, please. That should make even the hardiest of the sheep-shaggers
> queasy at the very thought.
You have not watched the right anime. Or the wrong anime, depending
on preference.
Johan Larson
"Sea Wasp" <seaobvi...@sgeobviousinc.com> wrote in message
news:429E8365...@sgeobviousinc.com...
> Johan Larson wrote:
>> As for this notion of miscegenation with aliens, well, that's why I want
>> really _alien_ aliens. Nothing more human-like than cockroaches and giant
>> squid, please. That should make even the hardiest of the sheep-shaggers
>> queasy at the very thought.
>
> You have not watched the right anime. Or the wrong anime, depending on
> preference.
I am only a student of the masters, of course, but I have occasionally dared
to fancy myself not wholly ignorant in the ways of tentacles and the squeaky
little noises, too.
Johan Larson
Aaron Davies
> I read on. That is pretty cool. Of course Richard Seaton had engineering
> that good like sixty years ago on board "Skylark Atom-Perfect". :-) (Come
> to think, by the end wasn't he finding atoms too crude to build with, and
> instead was building ships purely out of ever-higher-order vibrations?)
Doc Smith knew about string theory?
--
Aaron Davies
Opinions expressed are solely those of a random number generator.
"I don't know if it's real or not but it is a myth."
-Jami JoAnne of alt.folklore.urban, showing her grasp on reality.
Aaron Davies
Same here. From the trailer, and from the reactions to it around these
parts, I was expecting something of the approximate source fidelity of
_Starship Troopers_. I was astonished about three-quarters of the way
through when it turned out to be entirely Asimov-driven, if from a
completely different book.
James Gassaway
news:eb6dnY_62YT...@comcast.com...
>
> As for this notion of miscegenation with aliens, well, that's why I want
> really _alien_ aliens. Nothing more human-like than cockroaches and giant
> squid, please. That should make even the hardiest of the sheep-shaggers
> queasy at the very thought.
>
I have to wonder if you are aware of one of the theories for how HIV/AIDS
entered the human population....
--
"I reject your reality and substitute my own."
"Now, quack, damn you!"
Multiversal Mercenaries
You name it, we kill it. Any time, any reality.