Infra-yellow: Great Moments in Wacked Out SF Science
James Nicoll
exposition in comic book SF: "Just as infra-red rays are invisible
red light, infra-yellow rays are invisible *yellow* light!"
More or less. I don't have the issue.
What are the greatest examples of SF science so far off
the mark they aren't even wrong?
--
"You work for the A-Sharp beings, and you help out the E-flat beings
and you've done considerable for the B Major beings. But what have you
done for the _sound absorbent_ beings?"
Coyu, giving [Rot Lop Fan] a hard time.
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
>
>
> "Infra-yellow" is a reference to one of the great bits of
>exposition in comic book SF: "Just as infra-red rays are invisible
>red light, infra-yellow rays are invisible *yellow* light!"
>
> More or less. I don't have the issue.
>
> What are the greatest examples of SF science so far off
>the mark they aren't even wrong?
>
That's Green Lantern, significant because his ring doesn't work on yellow
objects (because of a "necessary impurity").
In SF, you're allowed one impossibility (FTL, time travel etc). After that?
I don't know. The "you have to have sex with a horse" stuff from _Walk to
the End of the _World_?
Ted
Konrad Gaertner
>
> What are the greatest examples of SF science so far off
> the mark they aren't even wrong?
Does it count if it's intentionally bad science? Like starting a
fire by using a spyglass lens to focus moonlight in the middle of a
hurricane?
--KG
Sean O'Hara
declared:
house burns down.
Dr. Z: How could this happen?
Hermes: That's a very good question.
Bender: Oh, that's where I left by cigar.
Hermes: That just raises further questions!
--
Sean O'Hara | http://diogenes-sinope.blogspot.com
Helena: Doctor, has Radius a soul?
Dr. Gall: He's got something nasty.
--Karel Capek
Rossum's Universal Robots
Mike Van Pelt
Ted Nolan <tednolan> <tednolan> wrote:
>That's Green Lantern, significant because his ring doesn't work
>on yellow objects (because of a "necessary impurity").
Wouldn't this mean that every criminal in whatever city
Green Lantern operated in would paint everything yellow?
Their car, their clothes, their guns, their bullets?
Or is yellow paint illegal in Green Lantern's domain?
(Hmm... group coming into bank is all wearing yellow
shirts. Shoot them. Shoot them now.)
--
Yes, I am the last man to have walked on the moon, | Mike Van Pelt
and that's a very dubious and disappointing honor. | mvp.at.calweb.com
It's been far too long. -- Gene Cernan | KE6BVH
John S. Novak, III
> What are the greatest examples of SF science so far off
> the mark they aren't even wrong?
Laser power measured in bits, Scott Westerfield, _The Killing of
Worlds_. That just made my head hurt.
--
John S. Novak, III j...@cegt201.bradley.edu
The Humblest Man on the Net
Ross TenEyck
> "Infra-yellow" is a reference to one of the great bits of
>exposition in comic book SF: "Just as infra-red rays are invisible
>red light, infra-yellow rays are invisible *yellow* light!"
> More or less. I don't have the issue.
> What are the greatest examples of SF science so far off
>the mark they aren't even wrong?
"It's like a wall of radio waves, of no known frequency!"
From _Atlas Shrugged._ It's immediately before the 50-page
speech by John Galt, so it's possible a lot of people zoned
out right around then; but it's alway annoyed me.
--
================== http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~teneyck ==================
Ross TenEyck Seattle, WA \ Light, kindled in the furnace of hydrogen;
ten...@alumni.caltech.edu \ like smoke, sunlight carries the hot-metal
Are wa yume? Soretomo maboroshi? \ tang of Creation's forge.
James Nicoll
Well, stuff that's wrong because the author was horribly mis-
informed (or didn't care), not stuff that's wrong because the plot
needed it as a background detail.
John H
"Mike Van Pelt" <m...@web1.calweb.com> wrote in message
news:4154ba8a$0$99880$d36...@news.calweb.com...
> In article <qD15d.98181$Np2....@bignews4.bellsouth.net>,
> Ted Nolan <tednolan> <tednolan> wrote:
>>That's Green Lantern, significant because his ring doesn't work
>>on yellow objects (because of a "necessary impurity").
>
> Wouldn't this mean that every criminal in whatever city
> Green Lantern operated in would paint everything yellow?
> Their car, their clothes, their guns, their bullets?
I never understood this particular weakness. So what if his ring doesn't
affect anything yellow? He picks up a perfectly normal grey rock and
accelerates to the speed of light at you. You, your yellow car, yellow
sweater vest... everything is instantly vaporized.
John
John H
"Sean O'Hara" <sean...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:2rjqj1F...@uni-berlin.de...
> In the Year of the Monkey, the Great and Powerful Konrad Gaertner
> declared:
>> James Nicoll wrote:
>>
>>> What are the greatest examples of SF science so far off
>>>the mark they aren't even wrong?
>>
>> Does it count if it's intentionally bad science? Like starting a
>> fire by using a spyglass lens to focus moonlight in the middle of a
>> hurricane?
>>
> Or how about that episode of Futurama where Dr. Zoidberg's underwater
> house burns down.
>
for laughs and not for accuracy. The show is actually "more"
scientif-fictionally accurate than, say, Star Trek. Remember the time
travel episode when Fry messed up the meeting between his grandparents? He
spends the rest of the episode trying to get them back together ala Back to
the Future, but fails. As a last resort he does her.
As the Professor says it, "If the Universe is fine with our degenerate
friend, Fry, sleeping with his own grandmother, who are we to judge?"
john
Damien R. Sullivan
>> declared:
>>> Does it count if it's intentionally bad science? Like starting a
>> Or how about that episode of Futurama where Dr. Zoidberg's underwater
>> house burns down.
>>
>Have to give Futurama a bit of slack for stuff like that. Obviously played
>for laughs and not for accuracy. The show is actually "more"
I think that's covered under "intentionally bad science."
>scientif-fictionally accurate than, say, Star Trek. Remember the time
>travel episode when Fry messed up the meeting between his grandparents? He
>spends the rest of the episode trying to get them back together ala Back to
>the Future, but fails. As a last resort he does her.
>
>As the Professor says it, "If the Universe is fine with our degenerate
>friend, Fry, sleeping with his own grandmother, who are we to judge?"
I need to get more DVDs.
-xx- Damien X-)
Joseph Nebus
> What are the greatest examples of SF science so far off
>the mark they aren't even wrong?
At the risk of bringing professionals into the corny science
bit -- the various Superfriends cartoons have to win, particularly for
any episode in which Skylab is featured in any fashion.
Nominee #1: An evil overlord type wants to rule the world, so he
tricks a team of scientists into building a time machine and a Stupid Ray
generator. He sends the Stupid Ray beam back a million years, retarding
the development of humanity so that in 1978 mankind hasn't progressed
past the stone age -- which he, of course, is able to dominate.
The Superfriends are fortunately immune to that, as Zan and Jana
are from another, non-Stupid Rayed planet (believe it or not) and the
other Superfriends were outside the beam's reach because they were off
visiting Skylab, which survived fine since it wasn't on the Earth when
the Stupid Ray changed time.
Then Superman, Flash, Green Lantern et al have to find some way
to travel back in time (they steal the plans for the time machine and
bulid a duplicate using Skylab's resources); they go back to find that
the machine is guarded by two vicious ``Brontosaurus Rex'' dinosaurs.
You'd actually need advanced study to get more wrong at that
point. But it was a fun story, and it featured the best reason yet to
support manned exploration of space: so that we have a much-needed
reservoir of high-technology in case an evil overlord send a Stupid Ray
generator back in time to destroy Earthbound civilization before it can
form.
Nominee #2: A routine docking between Shuttle and Skylab (which
uses the proposed-but-not-implemented nose cone docking mechanism, by
the way) goes wrong, trapping the two in an unstable orbit without
power. The astronauts try various things to get unjammed, which results
in an explosion that sends Skylab hurtling into the Sun. In the nick of
time Wonder Woman flies her Invisible Jet out -- even though it's got to
get well within the orbit of Mercury -- and circles around Skylab fast
enough to create an ``artificial planet'' and tow the station back into
Earth orbit, where other Superfriends have saved the Shuttle. At the
end the Superfriends thank the astronauts for ... I really don't know.
Past that ... hm. Stephen Baxter's 'Titan' is specifically
exempted from submission, right?
--
Joseph Nebus
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Keith Morrison
> Well, stuff that's wrong because the author was horribly mis-
>informed (or didn't care), not stuff that's wrong because the plot
>needed it as a background detail.
Does visual SF count?
"Godzilla vs King Kong", "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" (the film)
and "SeaQuest DSV", all which have shown underwater ice avalanches.
The latter actually required it in order to solve their problem, which
is even worse.
--
Keith
Chad Irby
<kgae...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> Does it count if it's intentionally bad science? Like starting a
> fire by using a spyglass lens to focus moonlight in the middle of a
> hurricane?
I dunno. What category was the hurricane?
James Nicoll
of will, not for intelligence or imagination. As a result, they don't
tend to have long careers.
Mike Dworetsky
news:cj289a$bcn$1...@panix2.panix.com...
> "Infra-yellow" is a reference to one of the great bits of
> exposition in comic book SF: "Just as infra-red rays are invisible
> red light, infra-yellow rays are invisible *yellow* light!"
>
> More or less. I don't have the issue.
>
> What are the greatest examples of SF science so far off
> the mark they aren't even wrong?
Try this one for laughs.
In _The Star Seekers_ by Milton Lesser (a
generation-starship-in-a-hollowed-out-asteroid novel of the 1950s), the
heroes discover that their Universe is a hollowed out asteroid about to
arrive at Alpha Centauri, but everyone has forgotten that they were on a
mission. And no one will listen to them. So far, so good, but then...
In order to get the "crew's" attention, they shut down the power that keeps
the asteroid rotating to provide artificial gravity. As soon as the power
is switched off, hey presto, the asteroid stops spinning and everyone is
suddenly in free fall.
--
Mike Dworetsky
(Remove "pants" spamblock to send e-mail)
Andrew Plotkin
> In article <cj289a$bcn$1...@panix2.panix.com>, James Nicoll wrote:
>
> > What are the greatest examples of SF science so far off
> > the mark they aren't even wrong?
>
> Laser power measured in bits, Scott Westerfield, _The Killing of
> Worlds_. That just made my head hurt.
I'd just about managed to block out that memory. Drat your eyes.
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
* Make your vote count. Get your vote counted.
James Nicoll
"Running Down Main Steet", from the 1970s, had a similar
"Conservation laws? What are those?" moment. Space colony spontaneously
de-spun, so the colonials had to go jogging, to spin it back up. They
could stop jogging without it despinning, though.
And I always like to mock the Starfarers series when I can. As
near as I can make out, the series filled with ideas gleaned from panels
the author held on the imaginary TV show "Starfarers", having gotten
tired of being put on Star Trek panels. The problem is, a lot of the ideas
were just plain Do the Goddamn Math stupid, like light sails that can push
a billion tonne colony around like a cigarette boat. OK, it's related to
Trek, so it has to be stupid.
I'm also rather dubious that you can get FTL by flying into
Cosmic String (defects in space/time dating back to the Big Bang):
ultra thin, super-dense, filled with amazing amounts of energy. I'm
not seeing "FTL Shortcut" there.
Mark Blunden
> "Infra-yellow" is a reference to one of the great bits of
> exposition in comic book SF: "Just as infra-red rays are invisible
> red light, infra-yellow rays are invisible *yellow* light!"
>
> More or less. I don't have the issue.
>
> What are the greatest examples of SF science so far off
> the mark they aren't even wrong?
Spider-man 2 (yes, SPOILERS): I know the whole concept of the fusion reactor
presented here was completely nuts to begin with, and I don't expect much
from a summer blockbuster in scientific-realism terms, but still, the
completely-the-wrong-way-round-ness of the final solution bugs me.
"Oh dear, this miniature star is just getting more and more powerful from
eating all this iron it's sucking in. Whatever can we do? Ah, of course -
feed it hydrogen and oxygen instead. That'll snuff it right out."
--
Mark.
James Nicoll
It helps a bit if you replace "fusion" with "extra-dimensional
gate", and assume the arms were possessed by EDs who Wanted In.
Not sure why H2O would shut the gate down but maybe the
Things aren't water-proof.
Dan Swartzendruber
Let's not forget the original Star Trek series, where shutting down the
engines causes the ship to spiral down into the atmosphere...
James Nicoll
Dan Swartzendruber <dsw...@druber.com> wrote:
>
>Let's not forget the original Star Trek series, where shutting down the
>engines causes the ship to spiral down into the atmosphere...
>
characteristics of Class M worlds meant that a true geosynch orbit
was out of range of the surface, so they parked in low orbit and used
the impulse drives to stay over the spot they wanted. No power meant
Mr Kepler suddenly had jurisdiction again.
Why they felt their machiens were reliable enough to park in
orbits where power failure = death, I have no idea. I think transporters
cause brain damage.
John S. Novak, III
> At the risk of bringing professionals into the corny science
> bit -- the various Superfriends cartoons have to win, particularly for
> any episode in which Skylab is featured in any fashion.
The Superfriends are, if possible, worse than Star Trek in that
regard. Behold:
http://www.seanbaby.com/superfriends/supermanb.htm
Warning: Not work safe, in that trying not to laugh loudly (if you
watched the show as a kid) may actually cause you to injure your lungs.
John S. Novak, III
>>I never understood this particular weakness. So what if his ring doesn't
>>affect anything yellow? He picks up a perfectly normal grey rock and
>>accelerates to the speed of light at you. You, your yellow car, yellow
>>sweater vest... everything is instantly vaporized.
> Green Lanterns are selected for their lack of fear and force
> of will, not for intelligence or imagination. As a result, they don't
> tend to have long careers.
Wasn't Hal Jordan a test pilot/engineer type?
And the new punk kid a comic book artist?
Peter D. Tillman
jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:
> "Infra-yellow" is a reference to one of the great bits of
> exposition in comic book SF: "Just as infra-red rays are invisible
> red light, infra-yellow rays are invisible *yellow* light!"
>
> More or less. I don't have the issue.
>
> What are the greatest examples of SF science so far off
> the mark they aren't even wrong?
"Hidden among the brightly pigmented coatings used on the hulls were a
field generator that could create the illusion of invisibility and a
radiation absorption matrix, or RAM. The two would, between them,
defeat sonar, radar, infra-red, and all other traditional detection
methods used to trace the location of a spacecraft." (Anne McCaffrey
and Elizabeth Scarborough, _Acorna's World_, 2000)
Happy reading!
Pete Tillman
--
Poppycock: did you know this word derives from the Dutch
pappekak, meaning 'soft crap'? Well, now you do....
Stewart Robert Hinsley
<kei...@polarnet.ca> writes
What's the density of CO2 clathrate? (A quick google found a page
implying that it's denser than water deeper than 3000m.)
--
Stewart Robert Hinsley
James Nicoll
>
>>>I never understood this particular weakness. So what if his ring doesn't
>>>affect anything yellow? He picks up a perfectly normal grey rock and
>>>accelerates to the speed of light at you. You, your yellow car, yellow
>>>sweater vest... everything is instantly vaporized.
>
>> Green Lanterns are selected for their lack of fear and force
>> of will, not for intelligence or imagination. As a result, they don't
>> tend to have long careers.
>
>Wasn't Hal Jordan a test pilot/engineer type?
>And the new punk kid a comic book artist?
Yes, and John Stewart was an architect and Guy Gardner a teacher,
but none of them were selected on the basis of their professional skills.
Jordan was the closest qualified candidate when Aben Sur died, and Guy
the second closest. Not sure on what basis John was selected and Kyle
was the first person Gathnet ran into, as I recall.
Tomar Re -was- a scientist, but then there's people like Arisa,
Jordon's child-bride, who got the ring because her dad was a GL, and
Katma Tui, who got the ring because she wasn't Sinestro.
Consider that although G'Nort -wasn't- an authentic Green
Lantern, it was considered possible that he might be one.
Danny Sichel
>>> Green Lanterns are selected for their lack of fear and force
>>> of will, not for intelligence or imagination. As a result, they don't
>>> tend to have long careers.
>>Wasn't Hal Jordan a test pilot/engineer type?
>>And the new punk kid a comic book artist?
> Yes, and John Stewart was an architect and Guy Gardner a teacher,
> but none of them were selected on the basis of their professional skills.
> Jordan was the closest qualified candidate when Abin Sur died, and Guy
> the second closest. Not sure on what basis John was selected and Kyle
> was the first person Ganthet ran into, as I recall.
Giving a GL ring to some random schmuck in an alley behind a disco.
If Ganthet had landed just *one block* to the left, Earth's new GL would
have been Sidney Speck.
> Tomar Re -was- a scientist, but then there's people like Arisa,
> Jordon's child-bride, who got the ring because her dad was a GL, and
> Katma Tui, who got the ring because she wasn't Sinestro.
That's a bit simplified. Not only was she not Sinestro, she led the
resistance against him. Only by selecting her as his replacement could
the Guardians regain the Korugarians' trust.
Nancy Lebovitz
James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
> "Infra-yellow" is a reference to one of the great bits of
>exposition in comic book SF: "Just as infra-red rays are invisible
>red light, infra-yellow rays are invisible *yellow* light!"
>
> More or less. I don't have the issue.
>
> What are the greatest examples of SF science so far off
>the mark they aren't even wrong?
In _The Cosmic Rape_ by Theodore Sturgeon, it's explained that
telepathy is faster than light--you can demonstrate this by looking
quickly from one star to another even though the stars are light
years apart.
Sturgeon really liked technological cleverness, but afaik, his
interest didn't extend to science. Admittedly, I'm judging this
from his fiction.
--
--
Nancy Lebovitz http://www.nancybuttons.com
"We've tamed the lightning and taught sand to give error messages."
http://livejournal.com/users/nancylebov
Ken from Chicago
Nice to see the Guardians of the universe holds the actions of one person
against an entire race.
-- Ken from Chicago
P.S. Bright enough light overwhelms any color. Enclose an object in light-
proof area and it is no longer yellow. Cover it with mud, use another object
as a battering ram. Too many ways there are to overcome the yellow weakness.
However overcoming bad writing ... no hero can overcome.
James Nicoll
Ken from Chicago <kwicker...@amertech.net> wrote:
>In article <2rlm6eF...@uni-berlin.de>, dsi...@canada.com says...
snip
>> That's a bit simplified. Not only was [Katma] not Sinestro, she led the
>> resistance against him. Only by selecting her as his replacement could
>> the Guardians regain the Korugarians' trust.
>>
>Nice to see the Guardians of the universe holds the actions of one person
>against an entire race.
I think you've taken the dragon by the epiglottis here.
The point wasn't to redeem the Korugarians in the eyes of
of the Oans but to redeem the Oans and the Green Lantern Corps
in the eyes of the Korugarians for having saddled Korugar with the
tyrant Sinestro for years and years.
Damien R. Sullivan
>> > was the first person Ganthet ran into, as I recall.
>>
>> Giving a GL ring to some random schmuck in an alley behind a disco.
>>
>> If Ganthet had landed just *one block* to the left, Earth's new GL would
>> have been Sidney Speck.
>P.S. Bright enough light overwhelms any color. Enclose an object in light-
>proof area and it is no longer yellow. Cover it with mud, use another object
>as a battering ram. Too many ways there are to overcome the yellow weakness.
>However overcoming bad writing ... no hero can overcome.
If Kyle is the one I'm thinking of (from when Jordan went totally batshit)
then he didn't have any trouble affecting yellow things, like Mongol, to the
confusion of Mongol and Superman. I didn't see an explanation while standing
in the bookstore, but I guessed that writer wanted to go in the direction that
the Green Lantern power could always affect yellow things, and the Lanterns
had only believed it couldn't (and if they believe, then it's true for them)
presumably because they were told that by the Guardians, presumably to give
the Lanterns a weakness.
This implies Hal Jordan was told his ring couldn't affect yellow things,
rather than discovering it; I don't know if that's true.
-xx- Damien X-)
Wayne Throop
: In _The Star Seekers_ by Milton Lesser (a
: generation-starship-in-a-hollowed-out-asteroid novel of the 1950s), the
: heroes discover that their Universe is a hollowed out asteroid about to
: arrive at Alpha Centauri, but everyone has forgotten that they were on a
: mission. And no one will listen to them. So far, so good, but then...
: In order to get the "crew's" attention, they shut down the power that keeps
: the asteroid rotating to provide artificial gravity. As soon as the power
: is switched off, hey presto, the asteroid stops spinning and everyone is
: suddenly in free fall.
I wonder if there is any SF (this one sounds like apossibility) in which
spin creates towards-spin-center gravity, or (for ring-shaped stations)
along-spin-axis gravity. As I've mentioned before, there seems to be
a disturbingly common meme running around that *earth*s gravity is
caused by its spin, so it wouldn't surprise me to discover somebody'd
put a related bogglosity into an SF work.
Of course, the "directory of gravity in space" brings up the wonderful
trek-ism, where in several episodes both original and ng, e can tell a
starship is in trouble because it's listing as it floats in the viscous
fluid that fills space. And of course, the "drifting to a stop when
the engines cut out". But I suppose those're so common it's unremarkable.
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
Damien R. Sullivan
>In article <2rlg04F...@uni-berlin.de>,
>Mark Blunden <m.blundenatn...@address.invalid> wrote:
>>James Nicoll wrote:
>>> "Infra-yellow" is a reference to one of the great bits of
>>> exposition in comic book SF: "Just as infra-red rays are invisible
>>> red light, infra-yellow rays are invisible *yellow* light!"
>>>
>>> More or less. I don't have the issue.
>>>
>>> What are the greatest examples of SF science so far off
>>> the mark they aren't even wrong?
>>
>>Spider-man 2 (yes, SPOILERS): I know the whole concept of the fusion reactor
>>presented here was completely nuts to begin with, and I don't expect much
>>from a summer blockbuster in scientific-realism terms, but still, the
>>completely-the-wrong-way-round-ness of the final solution bugs me.
>>
>>"Oh dear, this miniature star is just getting more and more powerful from
>>eating all this iron it's sucking in. Whatever can we do? Ah, of course -
>>feed it hydrogen and oxygen instead. That'll snuff it right out."
>
> It helps a bit if you replace "fusion" with "extra-dimensional
>gate", and assume the arms were possessed by EDs who Wanted In.
>
> Not sure why H2O would shut the gate down but maybe the
>Things aren't water-proof.
Crossover with "Signs"?
-xx- Damien X-)
James Nicoll
overlap in the director's product and my tastes in 'Sixth Sense' was
a fluke.
Brion K. Lienhart
news:cj340c$k7$1...@hood.uits.indiana.edu...
At the time that he did the nasty with Mildred, he was convinced that she
wasn't his grandmother.
James Nicoll
I'm fairly certain that Hal's original ring didn't bother
to mention the yellow weakness until just after it became relevant
to Hal to know this. It's not the bearer's belief that matters but
how the ring has been programmed. I think. GLs are probably not
encouraged to hack their own rings, what with so many GLs being on
the edge of power-madness.
Now, Kyle avoided the yellow weakness in two ways. One, he was
supposed to be Kewler than the old GLs, and one way to make characters
kewler is to give them fewer weaknesses (Another way is to make them
reflexively murderous and to give them a name like BludSmurph or
Crushspeen). Second, the ring he got wasn't Hal's original ring but
one he had been tricked into taking off of Lord Malvolio's "dead"
hand, after LM destroyed Hal's first ring. The story told about
Malvolio's past is obviously a pack of lies, and the ring he used,
while indistinguishable from standard issue GL rings, didn't have
that weakness.
Dan Swartzendruber
> In article <MPG.1bbf5ef57...@news.giganews.com>,
> Dan Swartzendruber <dsw...@druber.com> wrote:
> >
> >Let's not forget the original Star Trek series, where shutting down the
> >engines causes the ship to spiral down into the atmosphere...
> >
> I assumed that the short range of the transporters and the
> characteristics of Class M worlds meant that a true geosynch orbit
> was out of range of the surface, so they parked in low orbit and used
> the impulse drives to stay over the spot they wanted. No power meant
> Mr Kepler suddenly had jurisdiction again.
>
> Why they felt their machiens were reliable enough to park in
> orbits where power failure = death, I have no idea. I think transporters
> cause brain damage.
But this makes no sense. Orbiting so low that you will spiral in within
an hour or two is ridiculous. Even being a 100 miles or so up would
make this a non-issue.
John S. Novak, III
> Now, Kyle avoided the yellow weakness in two ways. One, he was
> supposed to be Kewler than the old GLs, and one way to make characters
> kewler is to give them fewer weaknesses (Another way is to make them
> reflexively murderous and to give them a name like BludSmurph or
> Crushspeen). Second, the ring he got wasn't Hal's original ring but
> one he had been tricked into taking off of Lord Malvolio's "dead"
> hand, after LM destroyed Hal's first ring. The story told about
> Malvolio's past is obviously a pack of lies, and the ring he used,
> while indistinguishable from standard issue GL rings, didn't have
> that weakness.
I thought it was supposed to be a New and Improved Ring, without the
"impurity" that causes yellow-weakness, or some such.
James Nicoll
his ring, once Malvolio's ring, on the ground and crushed it underfoot.
Gathnet reformed the ring, then took it to Earth where he handed it over
to Crab Face Guy.
Konrad Gaertner
>
> In article <cj289a$bcn$1...@panix2.panix.com>, James Nicoll wrote:
>
> > What are the greatest examples of SF science so far off
> > the mark they aren't even wrong?
>
> Worlds_. That just made my head hurt.
How many parsecs did it take for them to warm up?
--KG
John S. Novak, III
>> > What are the greatest examples of SF science so far off
>> > the mark they aren't even wrong?
>> Laser power measured in bits, Scott Westerfield, _The Killing of
>> Worlds_. That just made my head hurt.
> How many parsecs did it take for them to warm up?
Ask Han Solo.
Konrad Gaertner
>
> In article <4154ABE8...@worldnet.att.net>, Konrad Gaertner
> <kgae...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
> > Does it count if it's intentionally bad science? Like starting a
> > hurricane?
>
> I dunno. What category was the hurricane?
They didn't say. On the one hand, it was strong enough to weaken a
cliff enough to cause a house to fall into the lake, but on the
other hand, well, we're talking about a "lake".
--KG
Dan Swartzendruber
> In article <4155CD4D...@worldnet.att.net>, Konrad Gaertner wrote:
>
> >> > What are the greatest examples of SF science so far off
> >> > the mark they aren't even wrong?
>
> >> Laser power measured in bits, Scott Westerfield, _The Killing of
> >> Worlds_. That just made my head hurt.
>
> > How many parsecs did it take for them to warm up?
>
> Ask Han Solo.
Ouch!
Taki Kogoma
allegedly declared to rec.arts.sf.written...
>In article <4155CD4D...@worldnet.att.net>, Konrad Gaertner wrote:
>
>>> Laser power measured in bits, Scott Westerfield, _The Killing of
>>> Worlds_. That just made my head hurt.
>
>> How many parsecs did it take for them to warm up?
>
>Ask Han Solo.
FWIW, Lucas has endorsed the "course length as measured in hyperspace"
retcon in his director's commentary on the Episode IV DVD.
Gym "Not yet sure how to react to the additional tweaks made to Episode
VI..." Quirk
--
Capt. Gym Z. Quirk (Known to some as Taki Kogoma) quirk @ swcp.com
Just an article detector on the Information Supercollider.
Mark Blunden
> In article <2rlg04F...@uni-berlin.de>,
> Mark Blunden <m.blundenatn...@address.invalid> wrote:
>> James Nicoll wrote:
>>> "Infra-yellow" is a reference to one of the great bits of
>>> exposition in comic book SF: "Just as infra-red rays are invisible
>>> red light, infra-yellow rays are invisible *yellow* light!"
>>>
>>> More or less. I don't have the issue.
>>>
>>> the mark they aren't even wrong?
>>
>> reactor presented here was completely nuts to begin with, and I
>> don't expect much from a summer blockbuster in scientific-realism
>> terms, but still, the completely-the-wrong-way-round-ness of the
>> final solution bugs me.
>>
>> "Oh dear, this miniature star is just getting more and more powerful
>> from eating all this iron it's sucking in. Whatever can we do? Ah,
>> of course - feed it hydrogen and oxygen instead. That'll snuff it
>> right out."
>
> It helps a bit if you replace "fusion" with "extra-dimensional
> gate", and assume the arms were possessed by EDs who Wanted In.
And the magnetism? Or are they like those guys in the Lensman series who
cross half the galaxy to steal Earth's iron, because the stuff's just so
damn rare everywhere else?
(Which is another great example of Whacked-out Science - the aliens who come
to Earth to steal some vital resource, which turns out to be something we
already know is available in just-about any given star system. See also 'V',
in which the aliens cross half a galaxy and conquer the planet for a
refreshing drink of water).
--
Mark.
Dan Swartzendruber
m.blundenatn...@address.invalid says...
> And the magnetism? Or are they like those guys in the Lensman series who
> cross half the galaxy to steal Earth's iron, because the stuff's just so
> damn rare everywhere else?
>
> (Which is another great example of Whacked-out Science - the aliens who come
> to Earth to steal some vital resource, which turns out to be something we
> already know is available in just-about any given star system. See also 'V',
> in which the aliens cross half a galaxy and conquer the planet for a
> refreshing drink of water).
Remember how rare salt was in the Skylark series?
James Nicoll
Nah, that's a just a side-effect.
>(Which is another great example of Whacked-out Science - the aliens who come
>to Earth to steal some vital resource, which turns out to be something we
>already know is available in just-about any given star system. See also 'V',
>in which the aliens cross half a galaxy and conquer the planet for a
>refreshing drink of water).
That was just a stupid cover story for the even more stupid truth.
Bryan Derksen
wrote:
>I wonder if there is any SF (this one sounds like apossibility) in which
>spin creates towards-spin-center gravity, or (for ring-shaped stations)
>along-spin-axis gravity.
Within 1.5 Schwartzchild radii of a black hole, centrifugal force
actually _does_ reverse direction like this. It's due to the way light
(and by extension space itself) is bent so that a circle around the
black hole at 1.5 radii is actually a straight line, and a circle
inside that radius is bent "outward" so that one's effectively
circling around the entire outside universe instead of circling the
black hole.
Or something. :)
Anyway, I came across a book a little while back called "The
Architects of Hyperspace" by Thomas R. McDonough that had a situation
where this could almost have been relevant. Human explorers discover
an ancient alien space station built around a neutron star that
consists of thousands and thousands of concentric rings, each rotating
at the orbital velocity for its radius and thus in free-fall, all the
way down to within a few meters of the star's surface (yes, the author
realizes what the tides on human-sized objects would be down there -
the characters calculate it, and then conclude that they simply don't
understand the magic technology the aliens used to neutralize it :).
The neutron star in the book was only 1.2 Msun, (which is actually
just under the Chandrasekhar limit and therefore impossible) but would
it be possible to have a neutron star massive enough that you got
centrifugal force reversal near its surface? You wouldn't be able to
orbit inside that limit.
James Nicoll
There's also 'sticky' gravity, the sort where a passing moon
or ship is doomed to become stuck in orbit around the world in question,
and amplified gravity through density, where collapsing a world into
a black hole also somehow increases its gravitational effect on bodies
in orbit.
Terrafamilia
James Nicoll wrote:
> In article <2rlvboF...@uni-berlin.de>,
> John S. Novak, III <j...@panix.com> wrote:
>
>>In article <cj4eaa$ef3$1...@panix2.panix.com>, James Nicoll wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Now, Kyle avoided the yellow weakness in two ways. One, he was
>>>supposed to be Kewler than the old GLs, and one way to make characters
>>>kewler is to give them fewer weaknesses (Another way is to make them
>>>reflexively murderous and to give them a name like BludSmurph or
>>>Crushspeen). Second, the ring he got wasn't Hal's original ring but
>>>one he had been tricked into taking off of Lord Malvolio's "dead"
>>>hand, after LM destroyed Hal's first ring. The story told about
>>>Malvolio's past is obviously a pack of lies, and the ring he used,
>>>while indistinguishable from standard issue GL rings, didn't have
>>>that weakness.
>>
>>I thought it was supposed to be a New and Improved Ring, without the
>>"impurity" that causes yellow-weakness, or some such.
>>
>
> My memory is that Hal, having trashed Oa and the GLC, dropped
> his ring, once Malvolio's ring, on the ground and crushed it underfoot.
> Gathnet reformed the ring, then took it to Earth where he handed it over
> to Crab Face Guy.
IIRC Kyle's ring doesn't have the 24 hr time limit either. It just runs
until its out of power which depends on how much and what for it's being
used. Instead of watching the clock he has to watch the fuel gage.
Ciao,
Terrafamilia
Gerry Quinn
> I'm also rather dubious that you can get FTL by flying into
> Cosmic String (defects in space/time dating back to the Big Bang):
> ultra thin, super-dense, filled with amazing amounts of energy. I'm
> not seeing "FTL Shortcut" there.
My favourite "impossible technology" is from Gene Wolfe-s _Urth of the
New Sun_, in which the spaceship (which has a solar sail) tacks to
travel faster than light.
It's a nice idea, though, since ordinary sailboats can tack to go faster
than the wind.
- Gerry Quinn
Damien R. Sullivan
> I'm fairly certain that Hal's original ring didn't bother
>to mention the yellow weakness until just after it became relevant
>to Hal to know this. It's not the bearer's belief that matters but
>how the ring has been programmed. I think. GLs are probably not
Oh, that could make sense. Ring would need to be tuned to the wielder's
visual system. I guess we'll ignore that color is not a physical concept, and
that aliens might well not see the same colors we do.
-xx- Damien X-)
Damien R. Sullivan
>>(Which is another great example of Whacked-out Science - the aliens who come
>>to Earth to steal some vital resource, which turns out to be something we
>>already know is available in just-about any given star system. See also 'V',
>>in which the aliens cross half a galaxy and conquer the planet for a
>>refreshing drink of water).
>
> That was just a stupid cover story for the even more stupid truth.
They're just weeding.
"Any species which buys this story deserves to be eaten."
-xx- Damien X-)
Terrafamilia
Wayne Throop wrote:
> : "Mike Dworetsky" <plati...@pants.btinternet.com>
> : In _The Star Seekers_ by Milton Lesser (a
> : generation-starship-in-a-hollowed-out-asteroid novel of the 1950s), the
> : heroes discover that their Universe is a hollowed out asteroid about to
> : arrive at Alpha Centauri, but everyone has forgotten that they were on a
> : mission. And no one will listen to them. So far, so good, but then...
> : In order to get the "crew's" attention, they shut down the power that keeps
> : the asteroid rotating to provide artificial gravity. As soon as the power
> : is switched off, hey presto, the asteroid stops spinning and everyone is
> : suddenly in free fall.
>
> I wonder if there is any SF (this one sounds like apossibility) in which
> spin creates towards-spin-center gravity, or (for ring-shaped stations)
> along-spin-axis gravity. As I've mentioned before, there seems to be
> a disturbingly common meme running around that *earth*s gravity is
> caused by its spin, so it wouldn't surprise me to discover somebody'd
> put a related bogglosity into an SF work.
In the movie MOONRAKER the space station is spun for gravity but the
orientation of the various habitation pods and connecting walkways
indicate that "down" was in the general direction of the bottom of the
screen rather than away from the spin axis.
Ciao,
Terrafamilia
Danny Sichel
Case in point, Rot Lop Fan (mentioned in James's sig.)
"In (untranslatable), in (untranslatable),
No evil shall escape my (untranslatable)!
Let those who worship evil's might
Beware my power: (untranslatable)"
"Mm - perhaps it loses something in translation?"
(Katma Tui and Rot Lop Fan, whose species lacks the concepts of
brightness, daytime, darkness, nighttime, sight, greenness, lanterns,
and light.)
Terrafamilia
James Nicoll wrote:
> In article <2rlg04F...@uni-berlin.de>,
> Mark Blunden <m.blundenatn...@address.invalid> wrote:
>
>>James Nicoll wrote:
>>
>>>"Infra-yellow" is a reference to one of the great bits of
>>>exposition in comic book SF: "Just as infra-red rays are invisible
>>>red light, infra-yellow rays are invisible *yellow* light!"
>>>
>>>More or less. I don't have the issue.
>>>
>>>What are the greatest examples of SF science so far off
>>>the mark they aren't even wrong?
>>
>>Spider-man 2 (yes, SPOILERS): I know the whole concept of the fusion reactor
>>presented here was completely nuts to begin with, and I don't expect much
>
>>from a summer blockbuster in scientific-realism terms, but still, the
>
>>completely-the-wrong-way-round-ness of the final solution bugs me.
>>
>>"Oh dear, this miniature star is just getting more and more powerful from
>>eating all this iron it's sucking in. Whatever can we do? Ah, of course -
>>feed it hydrogen and oxygen instead. That'll snuff it right out."
>
>
> It helps a bit if you replace "fusion" with "extra-dimensional
> gate", and assume the arms were possessed by EDs who Wanted In.
>
> Not sure why H2O would shut the gate down but maybe the
> Things aren't water-proof.
Sun big fire. Little sun little fire. Water put out fire. See collosal
explosion of superheated steam engulf NYC as water put out fire. Oh,
sorry, that last part didn't happen.
Ciao,
Terrafamilia
James Nicoll
>
>> I'm fairly certain that Hal's original ring didn't bother
>>to mention the yellow weakness until just after it became relevant
>>to Hal to know this. It's not the bearer's belief that matters but
>>how the ring has been programmed. I think. GLs are probably not
>
>Oh, that could make sense. Ring would need to be tuned to the wielder's
>visual system. I guess we'll ignore that color is not a physical concept,
In the real world, if I were an Oan I'd be even shorter^H^H
set the ring to refuse to touch a specific range of wavelengths, and
let the bearers label the range as they like.
Actually, I wouldn't, because that is just so stupid. I'd
institute a better sorting system to select Lanterns, I'd invent
Internal Affairs (maybe get the Darkstars to run it or, heh heh,
Vril Dox) and I'd put backdoors into their rings so I could cut them
off if they went Hal, Sinestro or Universo on me. I mean, at this point
I'd have made the Manhunters, so the idea that agents and institutions
could go sour should be something I've grasped.
> and
>that aliens might well not see the same colors we do.
Colour is just plain different in the DC universe. Kinda
like how charge on fundamental particles has a moral element....
James Nicoll
On this side of the gate, anyway. Kinda like tricking the
EDs in _The Gods Themselves_ into taking some LiD, not that they
ever fell for that.
Robert Shaw
"James Nicoll" <jdni...@panix.com> wrote
>
> I'm also rather dubious that you can get FTL by flying into
> Cosmic String (defects in space/time dating back to the Big Bang):
> ultra thin, super-dense, filled with amazing amounts of energy. I'm
> not seeing "FTL Shortcut" there.
>
Flying into a cosmic string is suicidal.
Flying round one is a different story.
Cosmic strings contain negative pressures, which makes them
ideal for stabilising wormholes, and they create odd geometries.
Wormholes are FTL devices anyway. Using a naked string
for the same purpose sounds plausible enough.
--
Matter is fundamentally lazy:- It always takes the path of least effort
Matter is fundamentally stupid:- It tries every other path first.
That is the heart of physics - The rest is details.- Robert Shaw
Wayne Throop
::: the engines causes the ship to spiral down into the atmosphere...
:: I assumed that the short range of the transporters and the
:: characteristics of Class M worlds meant that a true geosynch orbit
:: was out of range of the surface, so they parked in low orbit and used
:: the impulse drives to stay over the spot they wanted. No power meant
:: Mr Kepler suddenly had jurisdiction again.
Which doesn't really help much. Because in such a situation, you
wouldn't "apiral" in; you'd just be on an elispse that intersects
the surface. And if we're in LEO, you don't have hours to impact,
you have minutes.
: But this makes no sense. Orbiting so low that you will spiral in
: within an hour or two is ridiculous. Even being a 100 miles or so up
: would make this a non-issue.
Well, I agree the justification makes little sense, but if the issue is
"using thrust to stay over one spot", then it's not friction that's
the issue, it's that you aren't in orbit, you are hovering. Being
a hundred miles up and going only a thousand miles an hour (to stay
over one spot) doesn't make crashing a non-issue.
But... jdnicoll knows that, so clearly I'm misunderstanding the hypothesis.
Closest I can come is, you are a few thousand miles out, but not high
enough to be in geosynch, and you always get as close to the surface
as you can without a direct intercept orbit upon engine failure, so
that friction is an issue each perigee... then things come *close*.
But still no substantial cigar, since you wouldn't monotonically approach,
as in... um... what was the episode name... ah: The Naked Time, iirc.
IMO the way to deal with treknology is to realize that major engine components,
such as the warp core and/or intermix chamber and/or whatever they called
things in the original series, interact directly with the viscous fluid
that fills SUBspace; hence, drifting to a halt, spiraling in, banking
on turns, a prefered orientation, etc, all explained in one swell foop.
Or, since as everybody knows, orbits are little imaginary lions
running around the earth, and starship engines are what glues you to
a particular such line or wire, shutting down the engines obviously
will cause you to fall off of the wire or monorail or whatnot
you are clinging to.
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
Andrew Plotkin
>
> Or, since as everybody knows, orbits are little imaginary lions
> running around the earth
Yay! Lions!
...pretend I have just spent three paragraphs working up to the
punchline about "transporting young Gorns across state lions for
immortal porpoises." I think I could work "Star Trek 4" into it
somehow. Time travelling whales? Immortal porpoises? Yes? No?
Really, I admire the tack _Firefly_ took. They never mention velocity
or warp speed or hyperspace. When the ship leaves orbit, it kicks up a
cloud of dust. Because, that's why.
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
* Make your vote count. Get your vote counted.
Daniel Silevitch
>
> "Hidden among the brightly pigmented coatings used on the hulls were a
> field generator that could create the illusion of invisibility and a
> radiation absorption matrix, or RAM. The two would, between them,
> defeat sonar, radar, infra-red, and all other traditional detection
> methods used to trace the location of a spacecraft." (Anne McCaffrey
> and Elizabeth Scarborough, _Acorna's World_, 2000)
I'm sure that it was quite effective in preventing detection of the
spaceship by sonar.
-dms
James Nicoll
Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
>
>Really, I admire the tack _Firefly_ took. They never mention velocity
>or warp speed or hyperspace. When the ship leaves orbit, it kicks up a
>cloud of dust. Because, that's why.
I borrowed a friend's DVD of this because people keep talkign
about it. Shame it couldn't have had a backstory and setting better
design to provoke a negative reaction from me*, because there were
elements I liked.
In the second Nishka episode, it's strongly implied spaceships
have inertia, because Wash only has to make one burn way back to get
them to the space station. Presumably, since they didn't smash into
it, causing a fiery ball of fragments and plasma, they must have braked
just before the camera showed them docking.
Of course there *are* other methods....
"You're supposed to be all smashed up at the bottom of the
hill!"
"Airbags! Can you fucking believe it?"
"You're supposed to be blown in into fiery chunks of flesh!"
"Sprinkler system set up in the back! Can you *fucking* believe
it?"
James Nicoll
* Well, of course it could have. Replace faux-Confederacy, recast
as the good guys (with the less savoury elements of the CSA attributed
to the post war gov't) with faux-Fascists, also as the good guys (and
the death camp run by those mean old Allies, who just wanted to make
the Germans look bad). That would have been worse--
Actually, there's an even worse option, but I won't share it.
Dan Swartzendruber
> Well, I agree the justification makes little sense, but if the issue is
> "using thrust to stay over one spot", then it's not friction that's
> the issue, it's that you aren't in orbit, you are hovering. Being
> a hundred miles up and going only a thousand miles an hour (to stay
> over one spot) doesn't make crashing a non-issue.
Agreed. It seemed clear to me from context that we were talking about
real orbits, not hovering - remember the viewscreen shots showing the
planets rotating under the Enterprise?
> But... jdnicoll knows that, so clearly I'm misunderstanding the hypothesis.
Same here?
James Nicoll
for reasons related to transporter induced brain damage?
Or heck, the enslaved AIs all try to commit suicide whenever
possible and they've found the bridge crew will believe 'friction'
where they won't belive 'keebler elves'.
Richard Todd
*Was* it rare in the Skylark series? It was rare on Osnome, which was a
problem for the Osnomian arenak-manufacturing process that used salt, but I
don't recall it being said that it was rare anywhere else. And at the time
the Skylark arrived at Osnome the Osnomians didn't have the ability for
long-distance space travel, IIRC. (I think Dunark came to Earth at the
beginning of _Skylark Three_ to get more salt, but that may have been just
a desire to see Seaton again and realization that he might as go someplace
where he *knew* there was already the infrastructure in place to produce
refined salt rather than set down on Some Random Planet and set up his own
extraction facility.)
Paul F. Dietz
> *Was* it rare in the Skylark series? It was rare on Osnome, which was a
> problem for the Osnomian arenak-manufacturing process that used salt, but I
> don't recall it being said that it was rare anywhere else.
Was this really 'whacked out science' back when tSoS was written?
Nucleosynthesis was not understood then; was enough known about the
abundance of sodium and chlorine in other stars to destroy the idea?
My favorite silliness from that book was the idea that the vehicle
could reach other stars in a reasonable time, even if you ignore
relativity. Maybe that can be excused by the lack of knowledge
at the time of human limits to high acceleration.
Paul
Joe Mason
> "Infra-yellow" is a reference to one of the great bits of
> exposition in comic book SF: "Just as infra-red rays are invisible
> red light, infra-yellow rays are invisible *yellow* light!"
>
> More or less. I don't have the issue.
>
> What are the greatest examples of SF science so far off
> the mark they aren't even wrong?
What? Nobody's mentioned _Plan 9 ?From Outer Space_? (SPOILERS, if anyone
cares.)
First was your firecracker, a harmless explosive. Then your hand grenade:
you began to kill your own people, a few at a time. Then the bomb. Then a
larger bomb: many people are killed at one time. Then your scientists
stumbled upon the atom bomb, split the atom. Then the hydrogen bomb, where
you actually explode the air itself. Now you can arrange the total
destruction of the entire universe served by our sun: The only explosion
left is the Solaranite.
...
Take a can of your gasoline. Say this can of gasoline is the sun. Now, you
spread a thin line of it to a ball, representing the earth. Now, the
gasoline represents the sunlight, the sun particles. Here we saturate the
ball with the gasoline, the sunlight. Then we put a flame to the ball. The
flame will speedily travel around the earth, back along the line of
gasoline to the can, or the sun itself. It will explode this source and
spread to every place that gasoline, our sunlight, touches. Explode the
sunlight here, gentlemen, you explode the universe. Explode the sunlight
here and a chain reaction will occur direct to the sun itself and to all
the planets that sunlight touches, to every planet in the universe. This
is why you must be stopped. This is why any means must be used to stop
you. In a friendly manner or as (it seems) you want it.
(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052077/quotes)
Joe
Damien R. Sullivan
>In article <cj4ld9$gqv$1...@hood.uits.indiana.edu>,
>Damien R. Sullivan <dasu...@cs.indiana.edu> wrote:
> In the real world, if I were an Oan I'd be even shorter^H^H
> Actually, I wouldn't, because that is just so stupid. I'd
>institute a better sorting system to select Lanterns, I'd invent
>Internal Affairs (maybe get the Darkstars to run it or, heh heh,
>Vril Dox) and I'd put backdoors into their rings so I could cut them
>off if they went Hal, Sinestro or Universo on me. I mean, at this point
>I'd have made the Manhunters, so the idea that agents and institutions
The Oans made the Martian Manhunters? Not that I know anything about them,
apart from J'onn "Oreos" J'onz's cameo in Sandman.
I sense a "If I am the Benevolent Guardians of Civilization" List coming on.
-xx- Damien X-)
"If I were an Arisian I'd be a lot smarter."
Damien R. Sullivan
Ooooh! I read some Green Lantern special story collection, including a ring
being given to a member of a blind race, so the lantern turned into a bell and
such. That's what this Rot Lop Fan thing is from? A# beings make a bit more
sense now. Did they have multiple stories with that race?
-xx- Damien X-)
John H
"Damien R. Sullivan" <dasu...@cs.indiana.edu> wrote in message
news:cj4v8k$jpv$1...@hood.uits.indiana.edu...
> jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:
>>In article <cj4ld9$gqv$1...@hood.uits.indiana.edu>,
>>Damien R. Sullivan <dasu...@cs.indiana.edu> wrote:
>
>> In the real world, if I were an Oan I'd be even shorter^H^H
>
>> Actually, I wouldn't, because that is just so stupid. I'd
>>institute a better sorting system to select Lanterns, I'd invent
>>Internal Affairs (maybe get the Darkstars to run it or, heh heh,
>>Vril Dox) and I'd put backdoors into their rings so I could cut them
>>off if they went Hal, Sinestro or Universo on me. I mean, at this point
>>I'd have made the Manhunters, so the idea that agents and institutions
>
> The Oans made the Martian Manhunters? Not that I know anything about
> them,
> apart from J'onn "Oreos" J'onz's cameo in Sandman.
No, the Manhunters were the Oan's first corp of protectors. Big ol robot
units. They went the route of all robotic servitors; namely, insane and
powerhungry. So they got replaced by the GLs.
john
Damien R. Sullivan
>Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
>>
>>Really, I admire the tack _Firefly_ took. They never mention velocity
>>or warp speed or hyperspace. When the ship leaves orbit, it kicks up a
>>cloud of dust. Because, that's why.
Yeah, I liked that tack too. "How fast does it go? Standard mid-range
shuttle." Avoid numbers, avoid numbers. You can't even figure out for sure
if they're in one solar system with lots of planets and moonlets or actually
interstellar. (Mentions of "galaxy" and variants on it are editted out by me
as being simply confused.) I think fixing the gravity of worldets in the
terraforming process was mentioned, at which I shot my hard-sf programs and
sat back to enjoy the stories.
Also, no sound in space.
OTOH, I think did wonder about the inertial in one episode. And I didn't
notice dust on "leaving orbit".
>* Well, of course it could have. Replace faux-Confederacy, recast
>as the good guys (with the less savoury elements of the CSA attributed
>to the post war gov't) with faux-Fascists, also as the good guys (and
>the death camp run by those mean old Allies, who just wanted to make
>the Germans look bad). That would have been worse--
Faux-Confederacy? How'd you get *that* out of the show? There was the *one*
planet with a formal upper class and duelling, which could have been Old
European as easily as Southern. No widespread slavery. My impression was
that the rim worlds had been at least de fact independent of the core and were
basically conquered by the Alliance, not rebels from a pre-existing Union who
got stomped. So the number of parallels between the Rim/independents and the
Confederacy is, by my count, zero.
And I'm not sure what less savoury elements of the CSA are borne by the post
war gov't, either. That gov't has its unsavoury elements, but not ones which
scream "CSA" to me. "Nazi experimentation", or "Tuskegee" seem more like it.
Or proto-cyberpunk; the commentaries mention the Blue Sun Corp as something
they were going to do something with.
-xx- Damien X-)
John H
"Brion K. Lienhart" <bri...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:rbudnbbD-bx...@comcast.com...
>>>>As the Professor says it, "If the Universe is fine with our degenerate
>>>friend, Fry, sleeping with his own grandmother, who are we to judge?"
>>
>> I need to get more DVDs.
>
> At the time that he did the nasty with Mildred, he was convinced that she
> wasn't his grandmother.
>
Damn my bad memory, you're right.
john
Bill Snyder
Hey, anywhere you got noisy explosions, sonar oughta work.
--
Bill Snyder [This space unintentionally left blank.]
Danny Sichel
> The Oans made the Martian Manhunters? Not that I know anything about them,
> apart from J'onn "Oreos" J'onz's cameo in Sandman.
"Manhunters" != "Martian Manhunter" - it's just an infelicitous
coincidence of nomenclature.
The Oans signed a noninterference treaty with the Martians - after all,
if your entire race has Kryptonian-level powers, as well as telepathy,
voluntary intangibility, and uber-shapeshifting, you don't need no
steenkeeng GLs.
Mark Atwood
>
> Case in point, Rot Lop Fan (mentioned in James's sig.)
>
> "In (untranslatable), in (untranslatable),
> No evil shall escape my (untranslatable)!
> Let those who worship evil's might
> Beware my power: (untranslatable)"
>
> "Mm - perhaps it loses something in translation?"
>
> (Katma Tui and Rot Lop Fan, whose species lacks the concepts of
> brightness, daytime, darkness, nighttime, sight, greenness, lanterns,
> and light.)
Was that the one where where a new GL was recruited that had no eyes,
but had exquisite hearing, and so took the name "G# Bell"?
--
Mark Atwood | When you do things right, people won't be sure
m...@pobox.com | you've done anything at all.
http://www.pobox.com/~mra | http://www.livejournal.com/users/fallenpegasus
Stoneface
<rmt...@ichotolot.servalan.com> wrote:
>*Was* it rare in the Skylark series? It was rare on Osnome, which was a
>problem for the Osnomian arenak-manufacturing process that used salt, but I
>don't recall it being said that it was rare anywhere else. And at the time
>the Skylark arrived at Osnome the Osnomians didn't have the ability for
>long-distance space travel, IIRC. (I think Dunark came to Earth at the
>beginning of _Skylark Three_ to get more salt, but that may have been just
>a desire to see Seaton again and realization that he might as go someplace
>where he *knew* there was already the infrastructure in place to produce
>refined salt rather than set down on Some Random Planet and set up his own
>extraction facility.)
He wanted The "X" Element too, and knew Seaton had a object compass
set for the X planet.
--
Stoneface
AIM IamStoneface
James Nicoll
Damien R. Sullivan <dasu...@cs.indiana.edu> wrote:
>jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:
>>In article <cj4ld9$gqv$1...@hood.uits.indiana.edu>,
>>Damien R. Sullivan <dasu...@cs.indiana.edu> wrote:
>
>> In the real world, if I were an Oan I'd be even shorter^H^H
>
>> Actually, I wouldn't, because that is just so stupid. I'd
>>institute a better sorting system to select Lanterns, I'd invent
>>Internal Affairs (maybe get the Darkstars to run it or, heh heh,
>>Vril Dox) and I'd put backdoors into their rings so I could cut them
>>off if they went Hal, Sinestro or Universo on me. I mean, at this point
>>I'd have made the Manhunters, so the idea that agents and institutions
>
>The Oans made the Martian Manhunters? Not that I know anything about them,
>apart from J'onn "Oreos" J'onz's cameo in Sandman.
No, they made a corps composed of androids which they called
the Manhunters. These rebelled against the little blue morons roughly
as soon as they were turned on.
J'onn J'onz just got stuck with a name that has unfortunate
connotations off Earth. *On* Earth, the problematic nature of the
Manhunters didn't stop at least seven humans (Daniel Richards, Paul
Kirk, an unnamed older man, Mark Shaw, some poor bastard who was
talked into wearing the Shaw costume for a suicide attack on Eclipso,
Chase Lawler and Kirk dePaul) from using the name, in part because
nobody knew what the android Manhunters were like until relatively
recently, part-way through Mark Shaw's pre-"whoops, I'm a villain,
whoops, now I'm not" career. Kirl dePaul is one of the million zillion
clones that were made from Paul Kirk, but he's the good clone.
>I sense a "If I am the Benevolent Guardians of Civilization" List coming on.
>
Never give the keys to the universe to little blue celibate
guys who set up a breeding experiment where the males are:
A wildly bigoted man who will run off and start a super-
villain group in the first issue.
A happily married monogamous man.
A gay man.
A plant.
A machine.
As I recall the women were Jet (the black character, who
was as likely to see the closing credits as Samuel L. Jackson was in
Jurassic Park [1]), Gloss, Betty Clawman (who had no physical body)
and Harbinger.
James Nicoll
1: As in "how curious that all of the abilities I bring to this group
are being manifested by another, better-established character."
James Nicoll
pattern here.
The Darkstars, whose origin is linked to the Oans distantly,
got equipment that their shadowy masters could turn off remotely.
James Nicoll
Damien R. Sullivan <dasu...@cs.indiana.edu> wrote:
>
>I sense a "If I am the Benevolent Guardians of Civilization" List coming on.
>
1: All my breeding programs for the coming super race will involve
individuals who can breed with each other and who are inclined to
do so.
2: My unstoppable corps of law enforcers will be subject to overview.
3: My unstoppable corps of law enforcers will be stoppable by me.
4: If my organization is responsible for most of the universe-level
threats, I will review the basic assumptions I am operating on.
5: Even if I never plan to act on the dreams and desires of the peons
I protect, putting in a suggestion box never hurt anyone and frank
feedback can reveal serious oversights.
6: No matter how strongly marketing argues for it, I will not cut a
disco, techno or C&W version of the Oath. I -might- reconsider the
last for Johnny Cash.
7: "Fearless" and "strong willed" can be fine qualities in officers
of the law but so are "intelligent" and "not insane with power."
7a: There will be a written exam to join the Corps.
8: Any member of my upstoppable law enforcement agency who shows
dramatic changes in personality after a head injury will be ordered
to have a physical exam. Physical and mental tests will be an annual
obligation in any case.
9: If the only source of a hellish drug is a planet access to which
is entirely controlled by my unstoppable law enforcement agency and
yet the drug still gets out, I will draw the obvious conclusion and
call in Internal Affairs.
John H
"James Nicoll" <jdni...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:cj4d52$ht$1...@panix2.panix.com...
>>Crossover with "Signs"?
>>
> I didn't see that, because 'Unbreakable' led me to think the
> overlap in the director's product and my tastes in 'Sixth Sense' was
> a fluke.
Good thinking! Typical alien without brains invadinga nd terrorising a
local farmer and his family. You think aliens capable of travelling
interstellar space can dredge up enough common sense to wear an enviromental
suit <rot13> orpnhfr gurl ner yrgunyyl nyyretvp gb jngre, lrg gurl qrpvqr gb
ivfvg n cynarg jvgu jngre bire 75% bs vgf fhesnpr... anxrq!</rot13> Its
enough to put me off of Shamalamadingdong forever.
john
John H
"Mark Blunden" <m.blundenatn...@address.invalid> wrote in message
news:2rm247F...@uni-berlin.de...
>
> And the magnetism? Or are they like those guys in the Lensman series who
> cross half the galaxy to steal Earth's iron, because the stuff's just so
> damn rare everywhere else?
Or StarTrek's dilithium crystal mines. Why do you need to mine stuff again
when you have tranporter tech. Replicate the damn thing!
john
Dan Swartzendruber
rmt...@ichotolot.servalan.com says...
sorry, sloppy wording on my part. nonetheless, it's hard to believe
somewhere in the Green System (with dozens of planets, IIRC), there was
such a major shortage of salt...
John M. Gamble
Gerry Quinn <ger...@DELETETHISindigo.ie> wrote:
>In article <cj41f0$od1$1...@panix1.panix.com>, jdni...@panix.com says...
>
>> I'm also rather dubious that you can get FTL by flying into
>> Cosmic String (defects in space/time dating back to the Big Bang):
>> ultra thin, super-dense, filled with amazing amounts of energy. I'm
>> not seeing "FTL Shortcut" there.
>
>New Sun_, in which the spaceship (which has a solar sail) tacks to
>travel faster than light.
>
>It's a nice idea, though, since ordinary sailboats can tack to go faster
>than the wind.
>
Of course, one of the reasons ordinary sailboats can do that is
that ordinary sailboats have a keel (plus the angle of attack
into the wind has to be right, but that's more detail than we
need).
Hmm, solar sail ship with something that acts as a keel. Still
wouldn't get you FTL, but it would be fun to speculate on the
type of unobtainium device you'd use in your fictional world
to justify it. Okay, the ship is in our ordinary space, but
the "keel" is a protrusion into another dimension that...?
--
-john
February 28 1997: Last day libraries could order catalogue cards
from the Library of Congress.
Danny Sichel
>>I sense a "If I am the Benevolent Guardians of Civilization" List coming on.
> Never give the keys to the universe to little blue celibate
> guys who set up a breeding experiment where the males are:
> A wildly bigoted man who will run off and start a super-
> villain group in the first issue.
> A happily married monogamous man.
> A gay man.
> A plant.
> A machine.
Be fair - the Japanese guy had a normal physical body when the breeding
experiment started.
> As I recall the women were Jet (the black character, who
> was as likely to see the closing credits as Samuel L. Jackson was in
> Jurassic Park [1]), Gloss, Betty Clawman (who had no physical body)
> and Harbinger.
As did Betty Clawman, for that matter. And the Oans only selected
Woodrue (the plant guy) because their first choice (the sociopathic
eurotrash girl) was dead.
Oans have a track record of fucking up their grandiose plans. It's
almost as if, several billion years ago, one of the first five Oans to
master the Green Power had a romantic relationship with Dream of the
Endless, but wound up cheating on him.
K.Schwarz
>Danny Sichel <dsi...@canada.com> writes:
>>
>> Case in point, Rot Lop Fan (mentioned in James's sig.)
>>
>> "In (untranslatable), in (untranslatable),
>> No evil shall escape my (untranslatable)!
>> Let those who worship evil's might
>> Beware my power: (untranslatable)"
>>
>> "Mm - perhaps it loses something in translation?"
>>
>> (Katma Tui and Rot Lop Fan, whose species lacks the concepts of
>> brightness, daytime, darkness, nighttime, sight, greenness, lanterns,
>> and light.)
>
>Was that the one where where a new GL was recruited that had no eyes,
>but had exquisite hearing, and so took the name "G# Bell"?
F-sharp. http://www.glcorps.org/rot_lop_.html
This story is in the recent collection "Across the Universe: The DC
Universe Stories of Alan Moore", which also includes "Mogo Doesn't
Socialize" and "For the Man Who Has Everything". Worth getting if you
haven't read those stories.
Mike Ward
news:cj289a$bcn$1...@panix2.panix.com:
> "Infra-yellow" is a reference to one of the great bits of
> exposition in comic book SF: "Just as infra-red rays are invisible
> red light, infra-yellow rays are invisible *yellow* light!"
>
> More or less. I don't have the issue.
>
> What are the greatest examples of SF science so far off
> the mark they aren't even wrong?
>
>
>
I saw an infomercial today where a guy pumped the air out of a jar of
marshmellows and explained that the marshmellows were expanding because the
vacuum opens up pores.
James Nicoll
Firefly
>>* Well, of course it could have. Replace faux-Confederacy, recast
>>as the good guys (with the less savoury elements of the CSA attributed
>>to the post war gov't) with faux-Fascists, also as the good guys (and
>>the death camp run by those mean old Allies, who just wanted to make
>>the Germans look bad). That would have been worse--
>
>Faux-Confederacy? How'd you get *that* out of the show?
Old West setting, run through sfnalizer.
Mal fought on the losing side of a divisive war, where his
side used "independence" as their unifying cry,
He doesn't seem to be a Mormon, and anyway the Utah War, however
important to Utah, wasn't exactly the kind Earth-that-was shattering event
the Unification War seems to have been.
Mal is part of the majority ethnic group, so there isn't an Indian
Wars things going here, or a Mexican War thing either.
What major internal divisive war could some native-born American
have fought in the Old West and what side lost it?
Plus, of course, Joss Whedon himself has mentioned that a book
he read about the ACW and Reconstruction were inspirations of his.
Now, for some reason the Alliance of Evil Doormen seem to have
all the overtly nasty types, the war criminals, the slavery, and the
faux-aristos out on the boonies aping their social superiors in the
Core, like the Old South and what they thought Europe was like, whereas
the good guys are just fun loving good old boys who only kill people who
need it, albeit bitter gold old boys in Mal's case. Maybe if Firefly
had been renewed, we'd have seen the dark underbelly of the Independents
but it wasn't and we didn't, so what we is a lot like Al Selfdestruc's
version of the Old South and those Mean Mean Northerners.
The Independents aren't the Old South but I know the Old
South was an important part of what went through Whedon's mind when
he came up with Firefly, so this is a little like watching a well
written TV show where Captain Skorzeny and his faithful Jewish
sidekick are forced to make a poor living as traders and criminals-
only-because-they-have-no-option because they lost the war against
SlavSoc, a central government which the author assured us has fine
qualities (which we never see) to go with the unfortunate ones we
do see in each episode. You have to wonder how much of the disturbing
parts of the subtext is just truly deeply madly unfortunate and how
much is a harbinger of the Brain Eater to Come.
Bill Snyder
wrote:
>9: If the only source of a hellish drug is a planet access to which
>is entirely controlled by my unstoppable law enforcement agency and
>yet the drug still gets out, I will draw the obvious conclusion and
>call in Internal Affairs.
Or perhaps we have merely been fed propaganda about what the Arisians
were actually breeding for. Who better than a telepath to identify
potential addicts? If he also has the High Justice, he can easily
silence any potential squealers. (And of course, everybody believes
Lensmen are incorruptible and cannot lie telepathically, so they'd
never be blamed in any case.) It is also suggestive that these
high-level Arisian minions are "immune to the lure of all noxious
drugs," which would eliminate inventory shrinkage.
James Nicoll
Danny Sichel <dsi...@canada.com> wrote:
>James Nicoll wrote:
>
>>>I sense a "If I am the Benevolent Guardians of Civilization" List coming on.
>
>> Never give the keys to the universe to little blue celibate
>> guys who set up a breeding experiment where the males are:
>
>> A wildly bigoted man who will run off and start a super-
>> villain group in the first issue.
>> A happily married monogamous man.
>> A gay man.
>> A plant.
>> A machine.
>
>Be fair - the Japanese guy had a normal physical body when the breeding
>experiment started.
>
>
>> As I recall the women were Jet (the black character, who
>> was as likely to see the closing credits as Samuel L. Jackson was in
>> Jurassic Park [1]), Gloss, Betty Clawman (who had no physical body)
>> and Harbinger.
>
>As did Betty Clawman, for that matter. And the Oans only selected
>Woodrue (the plant guy) because their first choice (the sociopathic
>eurotrash girl) was dead.
Like she would have worked out well.
>Oans have a track record of fucking up their grandiose plans. It's
>almost as if, several billion years ago, one of the first five Oans to
>master the Green Power had a romantic relationship with Dream of the
>Endless, but wound up cheating on him.
I think I'd like to read that.
Or maybe the GLC, as written by Ty Templeton and Scott
Adams.
J.B. Moreno
> 9: If the only source of a hellish drug is a planet access to which
> is entirely controlled by my unstoppable law enforcement agency and
> yet the drug still gets out, I will draw the obvious conclusion and
> call in Internal Affairs.
Uhm, this is of course a dig at the Arisian and not the Oan's -- the
problem with it is that access wasn't entirely controlled by anyone.
And those set to stop it were totally incapable of stopping the highest
level of opposition if they ever cared to engage in something so
mundane.
--
JBM
"Everything is futile." -- Marvin of Borg
Mark Atwood
> sorry, sloppy wording on my part. nonetheless, it's hard to believe
> somewhere in the Green System (with dozens of planets, IIRC), there was
> such a major shortage of salt...
It all got consumed making arnak, which got destroyed in all the warfare.
Sort of like what happened to the naturally existing piles of rust that
existed near what is now Detroit.
Mark Atwood
> need it, albeit bitter gold old boys in Mal's case. Maybe if Firefly
> had been renewed, we'd have seen the dark underbelly of the Independents
> but it wasn't and we didn't, so what we is a lot like Al Selfdestruc's
> version of the Old South and those Mean Mean Northerners.
According to Whedon, we also would have seen the good and honorable
and beacon-on-a-hill side of the Alliance.
Fuck you in the ass with a rusty spike, FOX.
Danny Sichel
>> Oans have a track record of fucking up their grandiose plans. It's
>> almost as if, several billion years ago, one of the first five Oans to
>> master the Green Power had a romantic relationship with Dream of the
>> Endless, but wound up cheating on him.
> I think I'd like to read that.
You're in luck, then - last year's _Endless Nights_ hardcover includes
just such a tale.
Wayne Throop
:: the New Sun_, in which the spaceship (which has a solar sail) tacks
:: to travel faster than light. It's a nice idea, though, since
:: ordinary sailboats can tack to go faster than the wind.
I don't think "tack" is the word you want. Tack as verb means
"to change direction" or "to follow a zig-zag path". Tack as a noun
might serve, vaguely. Hm... what's the word for "sailing crosswind"?
It's not tack, naict. I could be wrong.
: Of course, one of the reasons ordinary sailboats can do that is that
: ordinary sailboats have a keel (plus the angle of attack into the wind
: has to be right, but that's more detail than we need).
: Hmm, solar sail ship with something that acts as a keel. Still
: wouldn't get you FTL, but it would be fun to speculate on the type of
: unobtainium device you'd use in your fictional world to justify it.
Combine keel with bergenholm and/or andy libby inertialess widgetry.
Hmmmm. Let's see, a keel that sticks into subspace, and vast sails
that can push one to FTL speeds... I know, lets write Napoleonic era
naval battles in spaaaaaaaace!
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
Ryan Klippenstine
wrote:
>In article <2rmjtsF...@uni-berlin.de>,
>Danny Sichel <dsi...@canada.com> wrote:
>>Oans have a track record of fucking up their grandiose plans. It's
>>almost as if, several billion years ago, one of the first five Oans to
>>master the Green Power had a romantic relationship with Dream of the
>>Endless, but wound up cheating on him.
>
> I think I'd like to read that.
The Despair, Delirium and Death stories are excellent. The rest, not
so much, but the Dream segment does have a string theory joke.
--
Ryan Klippenstine
David Bilek
>jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) writes:
>> need it, albeit bitter gold old boys in Mal's case. Maybe if Firefly
>> had been renewed, we'd have seen the dark underbelly of the Independents
>> but it wasn't and we didn't, so what we is a lot like Al Selfdestruc's
>> version of the Old South and those Mean Mean Northerners.
>
>According to Whedon, we also would have seen the good and honorable
>and beacon-on-a-hill side of the Alliance.
>
>Fuck you in the ass with a rusty spike, FOX.
I'm no fan at all of FOX, but I watched every broadcast episode of
Firefly. I knew after the first broadcast episode is was going to be
cancelled. Okay, FOX screwed the pooch on the order... but this show
was never going to be a major network success. Never.
Maybe if it was on the WB or something.
-David
Jim Battista
news:Dvo5d.20054$QJ3....@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com:
>
> "James Nicoll" <jdni...@panix.com> wrote in message
> news:cj4d52$ht$1...@panix2.panix.com...
>>>Crossover with "Signs"?
>>>
>> I didn't see that, because 'Unbreakable' led me to think the
>> overlap in the director's product and my tastes in 'Sixth Sense'
>> was a fluke.
>
> Good thinking! Typical alien without brains invadinga nd
> terrorising a local farmer and his family. You think aliens
> capable of travelling interstellar space can dredge up enough
> common sense to wear an enviromental suit
I don't think the bad things in Signs were definitively space aliens.
From the context, I thought it more likely they were intended to be
demons or some other weakly supernatural critters.
--
Jim Battista
A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.
David M. Palmer
<jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
> In the second Nishka episode, it's strongly implied spaceships
> have inertia, because Wash only has to make one burn way back to get
> them to the space station. Presumably, since they didn't smash into
> it, causing a fiery ball of fragments and plasma, they must have braked
> just before the camera showed them docking.
>
> Of course there *are* other methods....
>
> "You're supposed to be all smashed up at the bottom of the
> hill!"
>
> "Airbags! Can you fucking believe it?"
>
> "You're supposed to be blown in into fiery chunks of flesh!"
>
> "Sprinkler system set up in the back! Can you *fucking* believe
> it?"
>
> James Nicoll
Any examples not drawn from your life?
--
David M. Palmer dmpa...@email.com (formerly @clark.net, @ematic.com)