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.