Considerations of Time Travel in Media

 

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To say that I’m not a fan of time travel stories is to understate the issue.

 

This is not to say that I don’t enjoy a good romp at time’s expense. Many films that use time travel can be fun. (I’m looking at you, Back to the Future.) Books, too.

 

But often time travel is essentially an excuse for lazy writing or lack of imagination. (Now, I’m looking at you, Star Trek.)

 

Science fiction has so many avenues and opportunities for literary exploration that to me time travel is usually superfluous.

 

All fiction is, in some way, about the time, place, and idiosyncrasies of the author. After all, the author has a point to make or the effort of making the work would not have been written. The point might be as crass as “I want to make a lot of money”—in which case, I suggest the author go out and become an accountant. I’ve been writing for decades and have yet to see much money. Or, the point might be “isn’t this scientific fact/theory/locale/time of interest really neat? Let’s examine it.”

 

When it comes to time travel, the point made most often has to do with using the locale to target some interesting idiosyncrasy of the present. There’s a misalignment with the states that were members of the Confederacy and the other states. Hence, what if the South had access to modern weapons during the Civil War? (The Guns of the South, Harry Turtledove.) Christian religion is on the rise. What if we could go back and witness the life and crucifixion of Jesus? (Behold the Man, Michael Moorcock.)

 

Novels like this are examinations of the underlying subject matter. Time travel is a narrative convenience, allowing modern sensibilities to be juxtaposed against the period under scrutiny.

 

However, many time travel stories involve thwarting the past or thwarting the future (The Terminator movies, Back to the Future, every Star Trek time travel story ever made.) In these stories, there is a contrived crisis that can only be solved by dealing with time traveling. While I can enjoy some of these, I don’t think much of them. It’s like eating peeps. After the first time, you might regret it or chalk it up to a learning experience. About the fifth time you’re muttering kill me to yourself.

 

These days, time travel stories have a huge barrier of entry for me.

 

That said, here are a few films and books where time travel is actually used in an interesting fashion. Part of the fun—sometimes all of the fun—of time travel fiction is the surprise the author/filmmaker gives you. Consequently, I’m not going to give much away.

 

Primer: There are basically two kinds of time travel stories: Stories where the past can be changed and stories where the past cannot be changed. Primer is of the former category—sort of. Primer’s conceit are two engineers that discover a means by which an individual in the time field goes back in time for the duration of exposure. The time machine, the “box”, is entered, the field is turned on, the user waits in the box a specified period of time and then turns off the field and exits at some point in the past. This means the past can be modified, occupied by different representations of the same person simultaneously, etc. Time can’t be broken—in the sense of the universe be destroyed or some such—but the individual lives of people can be severely damaged. Which is what this film is about.

 

Frequency: This film takes the same idea of a malleable past but locks it down. In this story, Detective John Sullivan discovers a way to talk to his dead father (Frank Sullivan) twenty years ago via a ham radio. (Just let that go.) In this kind of story, no physical objects can transit to the past. Objects can travel to the future normally. But information can be transmitted freely between present and past. John manages to tell his father how to avoid his oncoming death. Thus, he suddenly has a father again. However, there are consequences.

 

12 Monkeys: The past is not malleable in 12 Monkeys. Humans can go physically to the past but whatever things they do there are already accounted for. The “present” of 12 Monkeys is in our future where most of humanity lives underground in fear of a virus that has killed most of humanity. Scientists keep trying to determine how to cure the pandemic. Leftover messages and scraps of knowledge is all they have. Eventually, they manage to send James Cole to the past to uncover what these messages mean. But the cost to him is high.

 

Predestination: This film is based on Heinlein’s story, All You Zombies, which I think is probably the best time travel short story ever written. Essentially, this is a story about a paradox from the paradox’s point of view. I think the film is better if you read the story first, but it still stands on its own.

 

The Man Who Folded Himself: This novel runs the whole idea of time travel, malleable or otherwise, until the bolts fall off. TMWFH is a lovely book about Daniel, a not so lovely man who makes many, many mistakes with power he probably should not have had. The thing that is so downright good about this novel is that it is absolutely unflinching about consequences—even when Daniel is trying very hard to avoid those consequences. The novel was nominated for both a Hugo and Nebula. I think it should have won.

 

Announcement: A New World

 I have a new novella, A New World, coming out in June:

When Columbus discovers the New World, he finds it populated by intelligent dinosaurs.

 

The expedition does not go as expected.

 

 

 

Pre-orders are available here.

 

To see more, and to see the other works, go to www.stevenpopkes.com.

Cheese Ends, 2022-05-09

Another edition of Cheese Ends.

 

Get your bootleg provolone and swiss right here.

 

DARPA seeking nuclear thermal rocket proposals

 

DARPA, the Defense Agency that brought you the internet years ago, is asking for proposals to demonstrate a thermal rocket in space.

 

This is potentially big news.

 

Chemical rockets produce thrust by hot gases that are created via combustion. Nuclear thermal rockets do something similar in that they take a gas and run it over a nuclear pile and heat it up enormously. The expansion forces it out the back end of the rocket.  But NTRs are 2-5 times as efficient as chemical means.

 

Of course, none of them are as efficient as ion thrusters where the thrust gas is forced out via a magnetic field. Why not use them instead? The power requirements are enormous. So, until that happy time we can a fusion power plant into space, chemical and nuclear rockets are the only game in town. Of course, if we had a fusion power plant we could shoot into space, we could use a Direct Fusion Drive . DFDs probably rate their own column.

 

The US actually had an NTR program called the NERVA. It was quite successful in achieving its goals but it was cut between atomic nervousness and expense. DARPA getting into the game could be very interesting.

 

Anti-Geriatric Poop Transplants

 

A study in Microbiome describes what absolutely no one foresaw: fecal transplants from young to elderly mice reversed some age related disorders.

 

This is pretty exciting, too.

 

The researchers were trying to tease out the role of gut microbes in aging. This association has been known for a bit but until now (to my knowledge, anyway) nobody has tried this experiment.

 

If I were so inclined, the SF story almost writes itself. You could go Hunger Games on this where aging power mad tyrants scour the youth for their intestinal flora. Or, even go economic: young donor shops his product around to find the right bidder. The possibilities are endless.

 

Machine Learning used to find plastic recycling solutions

Plastic is hard to recycle. It’s hard to break down. It’s hard to reuse. Often, it’s difficult to dissolve it sufficiently to actually use it to make new plastic. Instead, the material is reshaped and used for inferior purposes—downcycling—and those products are often a dead end as well.

 

Biological systems recycle most things pretty readily using enzymes: chemicals that lower the required energy and bring within the temperature, pressure, and energy tolerances of living systems. We don’t break sugars down by heating them up and combusting them. We use enzymes to break them down at room temperature and pressure. Not having a couple of million years to figure out these new fangled plastic polymers, living organisms haven’t managed to crack them. Which is why our plastic milk cartons remain plastic in landfills instead of being eaten by bacteria.

 

The researchers in this study used a machine learning mechanism to find a set of enzymes that could quickly and efficiently take polymerized plastic and turn it back into usable raw material—what they call virgin plastic. Then, they introduced mutations into bacteria to use these hydrolases.

 

At least, that’s what I think they did. Much of the article is behind a paywall. So, I’m not sure if they induced a living organism to produce the enzyme or produced the enzyme themselves. But they were able to almost entirely degrade a PET water bottle in a week. Since these same water bottles circulate in the Pacific Ocean for years, that’s a win.

 

Cosmological Principle Failing

The article calls this “controversial” but I’m not so sure. Sabine Hossenfelder talked about this on her YouTube channel a while back. How controversial is it when a reputable scientist takes it to task on YouTube?

 

The Cosmological Principle is the presumption that on the largest scale the universe is pretty much the same on average. A corollary of this is the presumption that scientific principles and models should function the same regardless of locale. Campbell talked about this in one of his lectures when he mentioned the Apollo project. The depth of dust to be found on the Moon could not be determined without testing it. Yet, the amount of energy and thrust required was known before we got there. Differences across the universe must be explained in some way. The simplest approach is to say everywhere is the same. If everywhere is the same, then the same physical laws must apply.

 

Yet, there have been a number of observations that suggest the universe is decidedly not uniform on the largest scales. There are significant mass and energy imbalances in one direction over another.

 

There are some interesting problems that arise in the theories of the origin of the universe if the Cosmological Principle fails. Why isn’t the universe uniform? What would cause it? Theories abound.

 

The Freezing Point of Extraterrestrial Oceans

There are at least two ice moons in our solar system that are thought to have internal oceans: Enceladus and Europa. In addition, Callisto and Ganymede might have oceans but buried under rock. All four are possible candidates for life if the oceans are liquid, not too chemically salty, and stable.

 

(Lately, I’ve been seeing Titan on the list of possible moons with life but I don’t see it. Life in liquid methane seas where the temperature hovers around -179C? You can use the word extremophile until you’re blue in the face but nothing on earth remotely compares to it. Antarctica is a tropical beach by comparison. There might be life there but it’s not going to resemble earth life in the slightest.)

 

These experiments have been trying to figure out the limits to where water will remain liquid. The chemical constraints and stability are a different matter and require further research.

 

Marriage as an Economic Mechanism

This one came across my desk describing the operations of marriage forms within different economic mechanism. Unlike SF, this article used real marriage systems: the polygamous Mosuo people in China. This is not your standard one man, many women model that we’ve seen before. Instead, this is referred to as a “walking marriage” where men have no parental or economic responsibility whatsoever. Property is owned solely by the women.

 

It also described the polyandrous Jat people in Uttar Pradesh, where brothers share the same wife. This was presented as, essentially, a tax dodge. If three brothers married three women, there would be tax on three households. But of three brothers marry a single woman, there is only one household.

 

Of course, all of this denies the role of love. Love would come into this system as a disaster—much like the whole courtly love problem in the arranged marriages of the European nobility. But it comes, just the same.

 

Interesting article.

 

That’s it for now.

State of the Farm, Spring, 2022

(Almond tree from the back porch.)

It has been a long winter.

 

Not in terms of temperature. Not in terms of snow. The winter was relatively mild in both cases.

 

That said, this winter has been mired in external things: the state of the country, the fear of infection, the loss of contact with coworkers, friends and family. Over this winter, we have grappled with how to have a meaningful, fulfilling conversation, delving into matters of conviction and humor, over zoom.

 

I attended the February Boskone in person. That was—to me, at least—a nightmare. Not because seeing people wasn’t welcome or spending time with actual human beings wasn’t something I craved, but because I had to do it with all of those same issues: fear of infection, wearing a mask, limiting social distance.

 

None of that has anything to do with the farm. But it serves as a context within which or farm activities take place.

 

Let’s see.

 

We’re worried about upcoming food issues. Notably drought in the Midwest and far west and the war in Ukraine. While Ukraine’s wheat mostly supplies Africa, nothing in the modern world is unconnected. It’s not at all clear how the food production industry is going to respond. Does that mean as wheat consumers we’re now competing with Africa? Will compassionate wheat supply drive up prices here at home?

 

The percentage of allowed ethanol in fuel has now been increased—which, again, puts food and fuel in competition with one another. I have thought this was a problem since day one. Ethanol as a fuel supplement: good. Ethanol production from carbon intensive corn such that the ethanol is carbon positive: bad. Putting farmers in a position of getting more for their corn as fuel than as food: bad.

 

For a while, we’ve been trying to bring in enough calories from our meager acreage to make a difference to our bottom line. We do fairly well producing crops that don’t have a strong impact on our caloric intake: fruit from trees, greens, etc. We had a significant pollination problem last summer and didn’t get any Cornelian cherries or persimmons at all. The Marechal Foch grapes did well but the Concords caught a fungus I’m still working on. Apples have always been a problem. But we did well with bananas, peaches, and pears.

 

Calorie crops have been a more troubling matter.

 

Our main caloric successes have been corn, squash, and potatoes. We’ve done very well with corn and squash. Potatoes have been variable. We were doing quite well a few years ago but in the last two years, when we lost our outdoor cat, we’ve been overrun by rodents and bunnies. Last summer we tried to increase our bean harvest and lost it to the rabbits. The potatoes were lost to mice and and the strawberries to the chipmunks.. I could strangle Chip and Dale with a clear conscience. We did well with corn and squash, though. We’re finishing leftover squash and still have jars of dried corn.

 

So, what are we doing this year?

 

Let’s start with the fruit.

 

You may recall how we lost all of our plums a few years ago to black knot. This left one of our espaliers completely vacant. We’ve been letting it set fallow all that time, though we did plant strawberries in the space. (See my murderous plans for Chip and Dale above.)

 

I’ve been experimenting with quinces that last few years. We had a quince that came with the house and the original produced fruit regularly. But, since it is in the potential lead field of the century+ old house, we haven’t eaten any. So far, transplants haven’t wanted to reproduce. We did get some success with a pineapple quince I planted about six years ago. It produced very tasty fruit.

 

The quince is a strange fruit. Many varieties are picked hard and left to soften or are cooked. They have quite a nice taste. Best of all, they are immune to most of the diseases of apples, pears, and plums. So, this year, we committed to repopulate the espalier with four new, and reportedly tasty, quince. I planted them yesterday, bare roots and all. We will see.

 

We have four grape arbors. The Concord and Marechal Foch arbors are on the middle to north part of the property and the other two arbors are on the southern part of the property, down closer to the road. Except for the Concord fungus, the northern arbors have been rocks. The vines are thick and woody. However, I’ve had trouble with finding the right variety to fit in the southern arbors. We have two seedless varieties down there that are… okay. They are still young but not producing much. We will see.

 

I also tried Einset grapes—a seedless grape that has wine capabilities. It seemed to die back two winters ago and then came back aggressively last spring. That struck me as odd. I tasted the grapes and they tasted mysteriously like Concords—not the described Einset flavor at all. When we bought them, they were listed as zone 5. Subsequent investigation on other sites has them listed as zone 7. We are zone 4-5. My suspicion is they are a grafted grape and the winter killed the Einset part and left the graft base to grow—which, I think, is a Concord variation. I was going to pull it up—I have a Concord—but the fungus has given me pause.

 

The fourth slot on the southern arbors is vacant and we’ve ordered a Somerset to fill it. This is a grape hardy to zone 3 so we have good hopes.

 

I said we had four arbors. We had five but pulled the weak and spineless grape out from it. We’re replacing it with two vines: a Doctor Yao Climbing Yam Cinnamon Vine and the Eastern Prince Schisandra Vine. This is sheer whim. A hardy yam on one side of the arbor and a Russian sweet fruit on the other. What the hell.

 

We tried plums again on the other side of the property, far from the plum espalier we had to tear down. Both plum varieties were black knot resistant. Both of them got it so we pulled them out.  We replaced them with two jujube (Chinese date) trees. I had some jujubes in China and was quite taken with them. But we won’t be seeing any harvest for a bit.

 

Some efforts we’ve done in the past are bearing fruit. (Heh.) The new pears from a few years ago are showing flower buds. Last summer, we had a few fruit on the new peach but Chip and Dale got to them before we did. A self-fertile kiwi may be flowering this year—which is good news. Most kiwis are male/female. We planted a pair a few years ago and the female didn’t make it and the male likes to tear apart fences. So far, I haven’t been able to kill it.

 

We have a hardy passion fruit (Maypop) that is established. We have had no fruit as yet but we’re hopeful.

 

The rest of the fruit trees have blossomed or are about to blossom. The weather seems to be cooperative for pollination and we went ahead and purchased orchard bees. We’ll know in a few weeks. Last year we had paw-paws for the first time and they were fantastic. We have more flower buds this time between two of the four trees and the other two appear to be established. The paw paw fruit is fantastic.

 

We’ve planted sugar beets and peas already but nothing has come up yet. I’m a little concerned we either planted them too early or the seeds were bad. I’m going to take some sugar beet seed and plant them in peat pots and see if anything comes up.

 

The corn is growing in sets—we developed a technique for pre-growing corn a few years ago using peat-pots. The common wisdom was that you couldn’t transplant corn. But if you pre-grow it in a peat pot and plant the pot, the corn doesn’t seem to care.

 

We planted the carrots, turnip greens,  broccoli rabe this weekend.

 

We’ll be planting potatoes and corn, along with squash and beans. We’ve gotten some chicken wire with which we’re going to line the main garden and hope the bunnies will be kept at bay. We lost our beans to the bunnies last year. Bugs Bunny must die. My sympathies lie completely with Elmer Fudd.

 

We’ve purchased a very tall raised bet kit from Birdies which we saw being used on Self Sufficient Me. That is still a work in progress.

 

I tilled the garden this year and we plan to amend the soil with chips from a tree we’re dropping. We’ll be laying it out in the next week or so.

 

I’ve gone part time this year and so most of the garden burden will fall on me. Planting the quinces (and digging up the old stumps) was hard on me. I’m trying to figure out more efficient (and less taxing) ways to do things. It has been impressed on me that I’m not getting any younger.

 

That’s it for the farm report.

Disappearing Books

 

(Picture from here.)

 

One of the Boskone 2022 panels I was on was the Disappearing Books panel. These are books that were popular or at least well-known at time of publication but have since become relatively unknown.

 

This is a fairly common panel topic I’ve been on a number of times.

 

There are a number of ways books disappear. A more successful work or author overshadows those of lesser stature. (I’m looking at you, 13^th Floor vs The Matrix) Generational changes make works less palatable to the new audience. Random changes in the markets cause them to just disappear. The complete works of an author can essentially vanish.

 

That’s for good works. Bad works might persist or vanish for completely different reasons.

 

Older generations can be useful in bringing deserving past works forward. Or, they can berate the younger generation what they should be reading while that younger generation rolls their eyes.

 

This was brought home to me when I was trying to introduce my son to Heinlein via Red Planet. We were doing fine until Heinlein went out of his way to make the mother of the main character stupid. Ben saw through that immediately and has never read Heinlein again.

 

I have been tempted to edit Heinlein ever since. But that’s another story.

 

Anyway, as time goes forward, not all works stick with us. They fall behind with an ever-dwindling audience. I think some of these works should be reconsidered.

 

The good news is that some of these books have become more accessible in recent years via internet commerce and ebooks. Internet commerce have made used bookstores and their contents available to the general public. Amazon has helped here by creating a near infinite shelf space and enabling contact between consumer and storefront.

 

In addition, some of these disappearing books have been formatted into ebooks. I think there might still be issues of ownership—one of the main impediments of bringing these books to the reader—but some of these books are making a small comeback. I have included links where I found them. In addition, I put a “Discussed here” link where I’ve talked about these books before.

 

Another interesting sidenote is some of these books have been brought back into print in special editions. William F. Temple’s Shoot at the Moon were published a few years ago by the British Library Science Fiction Classics. SF Gateway brought out Colin Kapp’s The Dark Mind.

 

It’s possible the disappearing book list may, itself, disappear.

 

Here’s my list:

 

Works that have pretty much disappeared, given the above caveat

These are works that came and went. At least, whenever I talk about them, I get blank looks. They were good enough to get published but not popular enough to survive.

·         The Green Rain, Paul Tabori: the population of the world turns green. Hijinks ensue. (Discussed here.)

·         The Transfinite Man (AKA, The Dark Mind), Colin Kapp: The dark side of one man can change the world. (Discussed here.)

·         Shoot at the Moon, William F. Temple: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf goes to the moon. (Discussed here.)

·         The Revolving Boy, Gertrude Friedberg: deep, personal story of a boy marked by being born in space. (Discussed here.)

 

Works by well known authors that are themselves not as well known.

By this, I mean these authors are still known and there’s a population of people familiar with them, but these particular works theirs aren’t considered very often. Again, most of the time I get blank looks when I bring them up.

·         P. K. Dick: The Man Who Japed: religious dictatorships are held up by those who live in them. They have no sense of humor. (Wiki here.)

·         John Brunner: The Whole Man: crippled telepath searches for himself. (Discussed here.)

 

Works whose authors have fallen out of favor but are still worth reading.

The authors here have fallen out of favor often for good reasons. Their approach often clashes poorly with modern sensibility and the author doesn’t have enough of a following to be retained. Heinlein is a good example of a problematic author with enough momentum to be kept in print. These works, however, didn’t seem to matter so much. If they aren’t gone yet, they are disappearing slowly.

·         Clifford D. Simak (Discussed here.):

o   Goblin Reservation: SF treatment of mythological peoples (goblins, trolls, etc.) as lost indigenous people

o   The Werewolf Principle: search for identity by a shapeshifter

o   Time is the Simplest Thing: reach for the stars with the mind

·         T. J. Bass, The Godwhale (Discussed here.): man evolves into a totally urban being but some are left behind.

·         Robert Sheckley:

o   Immortality, Inc: The afterlife, and everything we associate with it, is true. (Discussed here.)

o   Mindswap: prefigures the idea behind Repo Man: everything that can be conceived of is true.

·         A. E. van Vogt (Discussed here.):

o   The Beast: What got human beings to civilization isn’t going to get them past civilization. (BTW: this is a recurring theme in VV’s work that I like, regardless how clumsily he pursues it.)

o   The Weapon Shops of Isher: The NRA if it worked for good rather than evil

o   Rogue Ship: another attempt at the same theme as The Beast.

Honorable Mentions

These are works that are either read outside of SF and fantasy, been tossed out for problematic material, or subsumed out of existence by bad adaptations. I’m only going to bother with two.

 

Rudyard Kipling, All The Mowgli Stories: (Discussed here.) I bring in this one because while it is often cited and made into media, it has yet to be brought in properly. Kipling’s work has been censored for the taint of white oriented, British Empire, colonialist approach—all of which are valid criticisms that apply to most 19^th century literature.

 

However, the Mowgli stories have been relentlessly mined with terrible results. The stories themselves bear almost no relationship to the media counterparts. Case in point, Kaa, the rock python, is one of Mowgli’s fast friends in the book and his dread enemy in the Disney films.

 

There is less of a relationship between the actual Mowgli stories and the movies or the public consciousness than there is, say, between Blade Runner than Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

 

<*Ahem*> Speaking of Philip K. Dick’s, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep: I have it put on this list because Androids has been almost completely subsumed under Blade Runner. The vast majority of people who have seen the film have not read the book. (Unfortunately, the case for most adaptations like Mowgli above.) Go read this book and forget Blade Runner. The two are only barely related.