TA Lucas

Here’s just a bit of geek trivia for you.  2010 and 2011 are binary years, meaning they have dates that can be expressed as a binary number. 2010 contains the 9 specific binary dates shown below.  Replace the year with 2011, and you get nine more.

And if you want to get even a bit more geeky, the date 10/10/10 is specifically interesting. It is the binary number (101010) for 42, which we all know is the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.  Now there’s a little Deep Thought for you…;-)

After 2011, we won’t see another set of binary dates until 2100.

• 01/01/10
• 01/10/10
• 1/11/10
• 10/01/10
• 10/10/10
• 10/11/10
• 11/01/10
• 11/10/10
• 11/11/10

The past few months have been very crazy.  As you stroll along life’s path there are times when all normalcy is thrown to the side.  Well these past two months have been that for me.  There have been some major illnesses in my family, and I’ve not been able to spend much time writing.  Things are improving though, so look for more stuff as things get back to normal.

Here’s another short I’ve been working on…..

EARTH YEAR 2333, ALPHA CENTAURI A SYSTEM, PLANET FIORA, SOUTHERN CONTINENT

Jerome Sax stood at the door to a new world. This was it! His team had been chosen to make first contact with the only other known intelligent species in the universe, and a million thoughts flooded his mind. Would they be friendly? Aggressive? Would they be able to communicate? He finished loading his pack then turned and faced the others. “You guys ready?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be.” Sam smiled as she spoke.

“Let’s do it,” Jeff said, his hand on the door switch.

They’d done their homework while in route to the planet. Fiora was just slightly larger than Earth making its gravity a little stronger. The atmosphere was similar, so no breathing device was needed. They’d spent the last week on a drug regimen designed to boost their immune systems preventing any foreign infections from starting. It was important to meet the aliens face to face; they didn’t want a space suit hindering communication. The benefits of meeting them, in their own environment, far outweighed the risks of bio contamination…at least that’s what they’d been told.

Jerome turned in time to see the door slide to the left, and a blast of air whisked past his face. The wind was warm, and carried with it the sweet smells of this new world. All three stepped out into the clearing where their ship had landed. The world looked much like the jungles found on Earth. The trees and plants were definitely different, but they were green and leafy.

There were a few simple structures about a hundred meters directly in front of the ship, and several bipedal creatures had stepped out of the buildings to investigate the commotion. The next few minutes seemed like hours, but we eventually stood face to face with the beings. They were a little larger than humans, and appeared to be a bit stronger too. The creature that stood in front made a few clicks and glottal sounds then offered us a basket filled with a yellowish food…possibly a fruit of some type.

We accepted the basket, and then offered a gift of our own in return. Some of the creatures in the distance were able to change their skin color to blend in with their backgrounds; they were hard to see until they moved. The group that had come out to meet us were brownish in color, very similar to human skin. Maybe they were matching our colors to make us feel comfortable.

The leader, however, was different. His right arm from the elbow to the tips of his fingers were green, perhaps a mark of authority. Customs in any society were important, and now was as good of time as any to introduce one of ours. I reached out to grab his hand…nothing quite like a good firm handshake to seal a friendship. At first he seemed to hesitate, but eventually responded. His grip was firm. His hands felt strange though, soft, but yet prickly.

—————————————-

Description:
Skinmoss is a plant that grows within flesh. The plant starts as a needle like seed that breaks the surface of the species skin. Once inside, the needle develops slowly, sending out a root system inches in all directions. After about a month, the plant pushes up through the skin in several places. The tops of the plants can be pulled off, but they grow back quickly, and will continue until the root system is removed. The tops are made of small green leaves about 2 millimeters in diameter, and tube-like shoots…these tubes send out seeds to others when the plant tops are brushed or bumped, so pulling them often infects other parts of the body. There are no practical purposes for the plant, and it’s usually just a minor irritant. There have been a few extreme cases where root systems have invaded vital organs and have caused death.

The plant uses photo synthesis like other plants, but retrieves its water supply from the body of its host. Darkness can slow the spread and growth of the infection, but will not remove it. Initial signs of infection are dry scaly skin, and slight thirst. Other symptoms include a burning or itching beneath the skin that doesn’t go away with scratching.

Treatment is by pill, and usually takes 2-3 weeks. One method used to keep the plant from spreading is to tightly wrap the infected areas. If left untreated, skinmoss can infect the person’s entire body. Even then, it’s not fatal….just a major irritant.

Availability:
The plant originated on a jungle planet in the Alpha Centauri A system. It was only found in that system until the 2330’s when humans discovered the Centaurians, then spread quickly to the Sol system, and it’s now fairly common within the Local Bubble.

Size & Dimensions:
Leaves are very tiny, only about 2 millimeters in diameter, and barely break the surface of the skin. Infections usually only cover part of an arm or leg, but can cover much more.

Reproduction:
The plant reproduces through needle like seeds that penetrate the flesh its victim. Once the seed enters the skin, it will germinate for about a month, then start sending roots out in all directions. The roots eventually create seed pods just below the surface of the skin.

I’ve been working on a few short stories for the rabiki.com world building forums.  It is a sci-fi writing site that I started about 2 years ago….thought I’d post one of the stories here.  If you’re interested in this type of writing, check it out at http://www.rabiki.com/forum/index.php.  The site is home to a great group of individuals who love scifi and writing.

Well here goes:

Captain Tom Bradock keyed the ships intercom, “The last transport has just docked in C15, the sub-light engines have been prepped, and we’ll make the jump to slip space in ten minutes. Please stop all non-essential ship activities, and make your way to a designated seating area. Once we’ve locked in our travel path, and reached our cruising speed, you may move freely about the ship. You are on flight 2117 Earth to Mars, and we anticipate our travel time to be about 36 hours.  Thank you for choosing the Venus.”

The bridge of the Venus was quite a bit larger than most transport ships–it had only been in service for 5 years, and still had that new ship smell, but the crew had already made it home, especially the captain.

Tom fiddled with the settings of his display–a large sheet of transparent glass in the center of the bridge viewable from either side. “Check this out”, he said as he tapped a control on the side of his chair.

The screen immediately filled with live video from the recreation lounge. One couple had just finished their dance, and were seating themselves in a large black leather couch along the side of the dining area, the drink attendant was putting away loose bottles that were left on the bar and table tops, and tidying up a bit. The jump to light speed was hardly noticeable, but it was still standard procedure for passengers to be seated during the transition.

Tom tapped the controls again and the screen displayed the entire port side of the ship. From this view the nose of the vessel was not visible, and the side of the ship seemed to go on for kilometers, before vanishing into a small point in the center of the screen.

One more tap brought up an image of the Earth below. The Venus was high enough to maintain a stable orbit for a ship of its size, but still close enough to make out the ruins of a few large cities. “It’s amazing what 20 years without people will do to a city”, Chris said as he pointed to Old Chicago on the screen.

The larger cities began the migration to Mars first, leaving only rural communities and scattered families to be transported during the last 5 years.

“Yeah! Well this is it”, Tom said with a sigh of relief. “No more trips to this godforsaken place”.

“What about those that are still here?” Chris felt his eye twitch, “Will they just be left to their own?”

This was Chris’ first assignment on a transport ship. He had just spent 5 years on the Bonappetit, a freightliner that hauled exotic foods between the Sol system and Alpha Centauri, and the promotion from tactical to first officer was a good fit for him and the Venus crew.

“We’ve been haulin people for 30 years. If they haven’t left by now, there gonna have to find their own way off this rock.”

“FIVE MINUTES AND COUNTING”, the ships A.I. spoke in a soft feminine voice over the comm system. “Please stop all non-essential ship activities and make your way to a designated seating area.”

Not sure if it was the soft sooting voice or the whole male ego thing, but most ship A.I.s were female……[more later]

Books, books, books….they’re everywhere!  So, just how do you get your news…from the local newspaper or on the internet?  With the development of the internet, we’re seeing much more content online, but I don’t think the printed word will disappear any time soon.  Nothing quite like a soft couch and a good book in your hands.

The printing press was invented in Germany in 1447 by Johannes Gutenberg, and has been thought by many as the most influential device ever.  Germany has been a leader in printing and is still known for their printing machinery. Heidelberg, both a city and a company, manufactures several multi-million dollar printing presses.

I worked for a publishing company for about 10 years, and got to know the ins and outs of the production side of publishing.  I had the opportunity to run address labelers, book binders, and printing presses….very interesting job.

One of the more common forms of printing today is offset printing.  Here’s how it works:

An image is burnt onto a photo-sensitive aluminum plate, other materials can also used, and then attached to a plate cylinder.  As the press runs, water is first applied to the plate cylinder and sticks to the non-printable areas.

Next the ink is applied…and since water and oil (ink) don’t mix, the ink only goes where there is no water–the printable areas.
As the plate continues to rotate, it comes in contact with the offset cylinder and transfers the ink as a reversed image onto it.  Then the offset cylinder continues on around until it comes in contact with the paper…the image is reversed again as it is transfered onto the paper.

The paper continues on, and is folded and cut into pieces that can be made into magazines, books, etc…

That is the process for printing one color onto a sheet or continuous web of paper…in the case of newspaper, this would most often be black.  It is however a bit more complicated to print a color image like a photo or drawing.  First a little about color.

So what are the primary colors…well that depends on the medium.  The three primary colors of light are red, green, and blue (RGB).  They are considered additive primaries–when you add a color, it adds to the final color.  You can see illustrations of this on the internet…just right click on most any website, and then click “view source”.  Most of what you see will look like gibberish, but occasionally you’ll see numbers like (#FFFFFF, #34F4C2, #111111, etc…).

I’m not going to go too in depth, but these are called HEX numbers.  The first two digits represent the red level, the second two the green, and the third two the blue.  So with our example (#34F4C2) red=32,  green=F4, and  blue=C2.  If you want to see how hex numbers work, check out the online Color Schemer, and play around a bit.  By the way….#34F4C2 is a light-blue color.  I use this website often to see which colors work well together.

The three primary colors of ink or pigment are cyan, magenta, and yellow, and they are considered subtractive primaries–when you add colors, it subtracts or absorbs the wavelengths of light you don’t see, and reflects the wavelengths of light you do see.  Check out the color chart.

SO….when printing a color image, the sheet or web of paper must pass through four different colors….(cyan, magenta, yellow, and black).  Black is added because it’s hard to make a true black by mixing the other three color pigments.

A memory conceived among many senses will not be easily forgotten.  The goal of communication is to deliver a message to a recipient in a way that it can be received and comprehended, but I think communication should go beyond that.  We should communicate to be remembered.  If it’s worth saying, it’s worth remembering….right?

Memories are more than words and concepts, they are life experiences.  Try thinking of an important event in your life, let’s say an argument you had…you probably remember it more in terms of how you felt, than the words that were said.

Have you ever gotten sick while eating a certain food?  Once when I was a teenager (about 14) I got extremely intoxicated.  I was so drunk that my mom gave me a bath, and I didn’t even know it…I still have no memory of what happened to me that night, but my point is I got really sick.  For several years after that, the smell of alcohol turned my stomach…even the smell of Nyquil would make me sick.  I remember that event so well, because it is tied to several senses…smell, taste, touch, etc.

I’ve had several opportunities throughout my life to speak before groups of people…sometimes in church settings, sometimes in community settings; sometimes to kids….one time I taught a beginner computer class to a group of seniors.  I enjoy teaching and helping others understand things.  When I speak to a group, I try to employ methods that will touch as many senses as possible.  I was speaking some years back on the topic of sharing–half-way through my speech, I had a pizza delivered.  I stopped for a moment, paid for the pizza, picked up a slice, took a few bites, and began speaking again.  Seven years later someone approached me and said…”Hey I remember that time you spoke, and gave me a slice of pizza”.  Why did they remember?  Because they heard, they saw, they touched, they tasted, and they could smell what I was communicating.

This same principle applies to us as authors…you may not be there when the reader picks up your piece, but you can trigger memories they’ve stored away.  Don’t just tell them what happened; drop your reader smack dab in the middle of a scene.  Let them experience your writing through their memories.

If you’re unfamiliar with the term “World Building” you might get a mental image of huge machines covering the surface of a dead planet carving rivers, planting forests, and pumping oxygen into the atmosphere.  Truth is—that’s not far from reality.  World building is the art of bringing to life an imagined world through descriptions, back-story, maps, drawings, and other creative means, and is one of the greatest tools a science fiction writer has for adding depth to a story.

World building is a huge topic, and there have been many books and classes discussing it, but in this article I plan to give you just a few brief thoughts on the subject.

First and foremost, let your world building be an enjoyable process…it should be fun.  Much of the writing you do will have several reads and rewrites.  The kind of stuff that you review, review, hand it to a friend to look over, and then review again, but your world building document can contain raw ideas.  You don’t have to worry about getting everything perfect; if you have some dangling modifiers, misused semicolons or run-on sentences it’s ok.  This document is yours, and nobody will ever see it, so give your eraser a break and let your ideas flow.

With that said, don’t go crazy.  You need to give your world building ideas some organization so you can find the information you need when you need it.  I like to keep my ideas in a three ring binder with tabs for subjects like: places, species, and organizations.  On some pages I have hand-drawn maps and diagrams, on others I have typed notes, and still on others I have tables full of terms and definitions.  This also allows you to shuffle your pages around, and add or remove them if needed.

Keep informed on scientific facts.  One thing that ruins science fiction quicker than anything else is incorrect or inconsistent information about the world your story takes place in.  For example, it’s probably not the best idea for your story to take place on a planet that orbits a pulsar; it would be difficult for life to exist in such a hazardous place.  Your readers will pick up on mistakes like this, and your story will lose credibility.

Make sure your facts are consistent.  If your planet orbits a yellow star at the beginning of your story, make sure that you don’t call it a brown dwarf later on.  Inconsistency will cause your story to fall apart, and the reader won’t be able to paint a coherent picture of your world.

Brainstorming often follows writing.  Sometimes as I put my ideas to paper, or the binary ones and zeroes of my computer’s storage system, I’ll have an idea for some new aspect of the world I’m writing about.  I’ll immediately jot that idea down along with all its associated facts to keep things consistent throughout the entire story.  Later on when I write of that idea again, I can review my summary and keep things straight.  It would be bad to have a species described with five legs in one place and four in another, or a character with no siblings at the start of a story, and an older brother half-way through.

Finally, be complete…think about things like culture, history, geography, languages, and why the world is the way it is.  The more content you put into the brainstorming document, the easier it will be writing the stories that happen there.  If you’re writing about a species that has three sexes, then describe the family unit.  What roles do they have?  Do all three work to support the family?  If two of the parents are allowed to work, how would that affect their income?

When creating your world-building document consider the butterfly effect.  If a butterfly flaps its wings on earth, does it cause a hurricane on Mars?  Things are deeply connected, and one tiny action may have large repercussions in other systems…so think it through completely.

If you’re interested in creating unique places and things check out rabiki.com and see worldbuilding in action.  Come be a part of a community of creative individuals and build your world.

In my previous article, I talked about how far technology had progressed in the past 100 years.  In my own lifetime, I’ve seen computer technology really explode.  My first computer was a Commodore 16, with no hard drive, and 16k of memory.  There was no graphical operating system, and I couldn’t do much more than type at a prompt.  The PC came with a monthly magazine subscription that had sample programs listed in the back, and I can remember my dad and me sitting for hours typing in code for a Space-Invaders type of program.  It never worked.  We tried entering the program three times, but it would crash after about 30 seconds—must have had a bug.

Since that time hard-drive size and processing speeds have increased exponentially—Moore’s law describes a trend in hardware manufacturing where the number of transistors that would fit on an integrated circuit doubled about every 24 months.  It also seems a new PC becomes outdated minuets after removing it from the box.  However, in spite of all these computing advancements, human language programs have lagged far behind.

Computers can process large amounts of data very quickly—billions, and even trillions of instructions per second. A computer can search an encyclopedia for a phrase like “history of computers”, and return all the results in a list in just a few seconds. There’s just no way a person could do that kind of rote processing—it would take us months or years to do the same thing.

Computers tend to do certain types of tasks efficiently, like searching through a list or adding numbers. But there are certain tasks that are tough for a computer. For example, a person can look at an image of a friend, and within seconds recognize them. Computers can’t. There are image-recognition programs, but they are slow and unreliable.

Many forums and blogs on the internet have a CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) defense built in…when you post a reply to someone’s thread or blog, it requires you to look at an image, and then type it into a verification box. This is to keep computer programs from posting advertisements and other nasties to the site. This is effective because it is difficult for a program to look at an image and determine what it is.

Another difficult task for a computer is to process language. Human languages are ambiguous—take a look at this sentence: Time flies when you’re having fun, but fruit flies like bananas.

Does fruit fly?  How does time take flight?  Is “flies” a noun or verb, an action or insect?

Also stressing a word in speech can change the meaning of the sentence. For example:

“I never said anything about you”
- Maybe someone else did, but I didn’t.

“I never said anything about you”
- I never said anything, but may have written something.

Imagine a future without the mouse or keyboard.  You get home from work, open the door, and immediately speak to your house computer, “Jake! Please turn on the TV.”  It responds in a pleasant voice and tells you it is now set to channel 23 for the evening news.  Later on that evening you’re sitting on the couch, “Jake can you email my sister, and invite her to the cookout Saturday?”  It replies a few seconds later and asks, “Would you like me to ask her to bring something?”  A program that can understand and follow a conversation would be very useful.

It could also become a very personal possession, and be passed on to your children and grand children, allowing them to ask questions about your life like  “Jake. What was my grandfathers favorite food?” or “Jake.  What was my dad’s first job?”

For now, computers that can communicate intelligently with us lies within the realm of sci-fi, but science fiction often drives scientific discovery.

I’m amazed at the progress of technology over the past 100 years. Modes of transportation have gone from wheeled carts pulled by horses to vehicles that are measured in thousands of horsepower. There have been major advances in medicine—doctors can transplant most organs of the human body, and there has even been partial success in transplanting the head of a monkey to a different body.  Or was it the body to a different head? We’ve been to the moon and Mars. We’ve split the atom. We can talk instantly with someone on the opposite side of the planet, and computers that would have filled entire rooms years ago, can now fit on your wrist or in your pocket.

So… I pose this question. When do you think we will be able to talk to our computers?

We do this somewhat now, in limited capacities, so let me rephrase the question. When do you think conversations with our computers will be as real and indistinguishable as conversations with other humans?  I’m not talking about sentience, that’s an entirely different conversation, but when will computers be able to simulate human conversation?

ELIZA was one of the first programs to attempt a conversation between man and machine, and was created by Joseph Weizenbaum in 1966.  Dr. Weizenbaum was a computer science professor at MIT, and created ELIZA to simulate an empathic psychologist.  It would take statements made by patients and rephrase them as questions.  For example, a response to “My back hurts” might be “Why do you say your back hurts?”  It’s a simple little trick that seems to mimic intelligence, but is easily dismissed as it becomes apparent that there is no reasoning behind the responses.  There are many other conversational programs available today—Jabberwacky, ALICE, PARRY, ELLA, and HAL to name a few, but they all fall short when it comes to true natural language processing (NLP).

This idea is not new to the field of artificial intelligence.  Alan Turing first proposed a test of intelligence in the 1950 edition of Computing Machinery and Intelligence.  The test goes like this: a human judge has a text-only conversation with a computer program and another human.  If he is unable to distinguish between the computer and the other human, then that program passes the test—the Turning Test.

In 1990 Hugh Loebner brought this test to life by offering $100,000 and a gold medal to the first computer program whose responses were indistinguishable from a human’s.  This grand prize is still unclaimed, and programmers still compete annually for a bronze medal and a $2000 prize.

You might think that computers are smart, but the ability to do something quickly and efficiently doesn’t indicate intelligence.  For the most part, computers just do what you tell them.  They don’t think for themselves.  They just follow instructions.  There has been significant progress in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), but the smartest machines of today still only have the intelligence of an insect.

In 2005 Ray Kurzweil wrote a book called The Singularity is Near that suggests sentience will happen not too far in the future.  Ray has been hailed by many as a modern day scientific prophet.  Bill Gates said, “Ray Kurzweil is the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence.”  His book suggests that technology is growing exponentially—by 2020 machine intelligence will equal human intelligence, and by 2040 machines will surpass the intelligence of all humanity combined.

Is sentient life possible? Ehh… I don’t know, we’ll have to wait and see, but I do think it will be possible for a computer to emulate a human—first in speech, and then in action.

My fascination with science fiction started when I was six—I’ll never forget the excitement I felt as I watched X-wings and TIE fighters scream across the screen, followed by the roar of engines and blaster bolts exploding against metal.  I wish I still had my Luke Skywalker and Momaw Nadon action figures.  They would probably be worth a lot today, but I think they gave me my money’s worth.

I’ve noticed a trend away from science fiction over the past 20 years, and a decline in quality movies for the genre.  I’ve been disappointed far too many times by poor quality stories.

On one occasion as I walked through the sci-fi isle of my local video store, a new movie cover caught my attention.  It had an image of an earth-like planet completely enveloped with jungle vines, and it was titled Savage Planet.  Sounds pretty cool huh?  I was excited.  I rented the movie, made some popcorn, put my feet up, and got ready for a nice movie.  You’ve heard it said, “You can’t judge a book by its cover.”  Well I say, you can’t judge a movie by its cover either.

This was one of the cheesiest movies I’ve ever seen.  It was about a group of people who discovered a way to transport to another earth-like planet.  When they arrived, they were all systematically hunted and killed by gigantic mutated bears.  Yes, you heard me right…bears.

I’m not sure what was worse, the horrible storyline or the cheaply filmed video.  With movies like that it’s no wonder some don’t enjoy sci-fi.

Science fiction is hard to define.  It has several sub-genres, and it covers a variety of topics like time travel, space exploration, cybernetics, alternate histories, etc.  I’ve heard it said that sci-fi is like pornography, it’s hard to describe, but you’ll know it when you see it.  My simple and broad definition of science fiction is this:  The stories built on or around undiscovered advanced technologies.  .

Good science fiction will always be based on good stories.  The Star Wars saga is not about light sabers, star destroyers, aliens, or the Death Star.  It’s a story about one man’s fall and his son’s struggle to save him.  Don’t mistake the setting as the story.  World-building is an important part of writing—create a separate document describing the world your story takes place in, and fill it with all kinds of detail.  Be specific.  I like to use a three ring binder with tabs for different topics like species, planets, history, cities, characters, etc.  This document is for you, and it’s not your story.  Use it to set the scene, but make sure the story never gets lost in the details.  Reveal only enough to make it believable, and let your story do the rest.

Another factor that makes writing sci-fi difficult is the rate of scientific discovery.  What we grok about our world has grown exponentially over the last hundred years.  There is only one constant…things will change.

Isaac Asimov, one of the twentieth century’s greatest contributors to the genre, was not exempt from this problem.  Several of the short stories in his book Robot Dreams are built around a super intelligent computer called multivac that filled an entire room, and used punch cards.  It was state of the art at one time, but who knew in 50 years a computer that powerful would fit on your wrist.  Things are changing much faster today, which makes it more difficult to predict the technologies of the future.

No…this is not the death of a genre…sci-fi will not disappear.  As long as we have children fly their imaginary rockets to the stars, as long as we have creative individuals willing to share their imaginations, and as long as we have people who can dream the impossible, science fiction will flourish. I love this genre and challenge you to be creative.  The possibilities are endless, and a canvas as broad as the night-sky awaits the aspiring galactic calligrapher.