Science Fiction Interpretations

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Subject: Science Fiction Interpretations

Posted by: brm50diboll
Date: Jan 02 17

I have debated with myself starting a Virtual Blog for months. I have so little free time nowadays that I may not be able to keep it up, but I think I'll at least try. This is intended to be wide-ranging, so it wouldn't fit in the Television, Movies, or Literature boards categories and I don't want to clog up General with just my observations but here I can rant if I choose and people can choose to ignore me or engage my flawed analysis if they wish.

469 replies. On page 3 of 24 pages. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Mixamatosis

I'm afraid we're all doomed in the long run, or a lot of us are. Population explosion, global warming, financial crises, pollution of the planet, anti-biotics no longer working, energy crises, risk of nuclear war or nuclear explosions and the fact that capitalism can't successfully function without growth, but growth uses up the planet's resources which are finite. However, we've had things good for so long with rising life expectancy, we can't really complain but future generations will suffer. They will have to deal with a lot of difficult issues which require vision and world co-operation to begin to tackle - not so much in evidence at the moment.

Reply #41. Feb 07 17, 5:54 AM

brm50diboll

Giving up on the younger generation is not my philosophy. They need better education, more opportunities, and yes, growth. Resources are not as limited as many people over the years have wrongly claimed. (I have previously cited Paul Ehrlich's "The Population Bomb" on this point.) Telling young people they can't have a future brighter than their parents is not only wrong, but it certainly doesn't garner their support for the older generation. The young will get the growth they need. Plant genetic modification is one of the key factors in the Green Revolution that has allowed food production to expand (and will continue to do so.) It is unstoppable now, and so pervasive in modern agriculture that, yes, it is virtually impossible to tell what has been genetically modified and what hasn't, but that distinction is meaningless. And GMO is not so proprietary that giant corporations control the food supply. Nonsense. There is more competition in agriculture than in almost any other part of the world economy, which is why food costs are at historic lows in real terms. I can buy a gallon of milk for 69¢. Is it genetically modified? Probably, I don't know, but I hope so. Mmm, mmm, good! Gimme that GMO!

Reply #42. Feb 07 17, 6:24 AM

Mixamatosis

Wealthy countries are often given priority with food because they can pay the most although it's relatively cheap for them they can pay more than poor peasants in countries that actually grow the food so a lot of food is exported rather than used to feed the population of the country growing it. O.K if it's surplus to requirements in that country but that's not always the case. Still, that's how the global market works. I'm not writing off young people, just being realistic. Our generation has to take action now to secure a good future for them and not just say that young people will work something out.

Reply #43. Feb 07 17, 9:29 AM

Mixamatosis

Personally I like to choose what foods to eat rather than having corporations foist upon me what they want to sell. If we can't distinguish genetically modified food from non-genetically modified food, we don't have a choice on that.

Reply #44. Feb 07 17, 10:08 AM

brm50diboll

The Green Revolution has greatly increased food production in poor countries, precisely because of modern technology. To the extent that starvation has occurred, it is not a food production problem, it is a food distribution problem as military gangs have seized food as a weapon against their own people, including food aid sent from Western countries. World food production, including in third world countries, is rising each year thanks to use of technology to improve pest and drought resistance of crops, often by genetic modification. People definitely have more choices than ever in what they want to buy or not, thanks to modern agriculture and world trade. No longer are foods seasonally dependent as they once were. If you want watermelons in January in Alaska, you can get them. They'll be expensive, but they'll be available, which was not the case fifty years ago. Technology in agriculture is one of the great success stories and will continue to be as food crosses borders more and more easily with time. Nobody knows what's in sausages, either, but they still eat them.

Reply #45. Feb 07 17, 11:07 AM

brm50diboll

Young people will make their own decisions, democratically, and hopefully with the help of good educations that the older generation has the moral obligation to provide. They will think for themselves. If they are foolishly denied a good education, they will still make the decisions for the world of the future, including how much financial aid to give their dependent elderly population.

Reply #46. Feb 07 17, 11:29 AM

satguru

What seems impossible today in science is often reality sooner or later. Who'd have imagined TV sets and planes in the 1500s or so, apart from Da Vinci few imagined a human could fly and certainly not transmit words and pictures. Now many other things are claimed to be impossible, but using quantum physics scientists can now teleport larger and larger molecules and objects from a to b without passing through the intervening space. Had you claimed that even a few decades ago it would have got most scientists the sack.

Therefore science is not what we know today but the total possibility of everything, which becomes gradually revealed and may mean telepathy, x-ray vision, levitation, free energy and everything else conventional science labels as nonsense, but looking at the early stages all are probably going to be just accepted one day as TV and radio are now.

Reply #47. Feb 07 17, 10:41 PM

brm50diboll

The quantum physics transport you refer to involves something called Bose-Einstein condensates, unusual forms of matter that exist at temperatures only extremely close to absolute zero. This research is indeed interesting, but it is a very long way from transport of anything actually macroscopic, as maintaining such extremely low temperatures over sizable spaces for significant periods of time not only is technologically very difficult, it also requires enormous amounts of energy. So extending this research to something like teleporting an orange one meter would require millions of dollars and the power of an entire city. 1.21 gigawatts! (My best Dr. Emmett Brown impersonation, from Back to the Future.) Not ready for prime-time, I'm afraid. But will keep watching the Bose-Einstein condensate research.

Reply #48. Feb 07 17, 10:55 PM

brm50diboll

Most of the time, including now, I operate using my cell phone rather than a desktop, which would be much preferred. It is very difficult for me to post internet links using my cell phone because it won't let me cut and paste; I have to type the URL in manually and the slightest mistake by me (or my cell phone's annoying autocorrect function which changes things I type unpredictably) causes the link to be nonfunctional. I don't normally complain, but I felt I should try occasionally to explain why I rarely post internet links.

Anyway, the quantum teleportation business is so interesting to me I am going to try to post a link, as difficult as it is for me.

Here goes:

https://www.sffchronicles.com/threads/32970/

Let's see if it works. Too bad we don't have an edit function here.

Reply #49. Feb 08 17, 12:36 AM

brm50diboll

Seems to have worked for me. I encourage anyone reading this to read through the whole article. It clearly explains why teleporting people is still an impossibility by Bose-Einstein condensate technology.

Reply #50. Feb 08 17, 12:38 AM

brm50diboll

Some will argue that what I am going to discuss next is not science fiction, and that's OK, but, even though it predates the Twilight Zone by over 50 years, the story reads like a Twilight Zone episode. I am speaking of Oscar Wilde's only novel, "The Picture of Dorian Gray". In addition to the book, several movie versions have been made. The one I enjoyed was the 1940s version with Hurd Hatfield, George Stevens, and Angela Lansbury.

Immortality as a theme in science fiction is frequently recurring. Twilight Zone episodes dealing with this include "Long Live Walter Jameson", "Escape Clause", and "Queen of the Nile", among others. Star Trek episodes on this point include "Requiem for Methuselah", "Metamorphosis", and "What are Little Girls Made Of?" among others.

But you can't beat "The Picture of Dorian Gray". The basic idea is that yearning for something impossible to obtain like immortality is inherently unnatural if not just plain evil, and anyone who seeks it is, in some way directly or not, bargaining with the devil. And the price (besides the obvious soul) is some sort of cosmic "karma", some horrific unanticipated but strangely just consequence. Dorian Gray was fascinated by the changes in his painting over the years, but also frightened by it, which is why he went to great lengths to keep anyone else from seeing it for so long, and eventually ends up murdering Basil Hallward.

So when he tries to destroy the painting.... but you know that. It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognized who it was.

Is there anything really wrong with wanting to live longer? No, I don't think so, unless the pursuit drives you to take from others that which does not belong to you, as it seems to do inevitably in these kinds of stories. Perhaps the title character's fatalism in Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" is a more realistic philosophy: Death will come when it will come.

Reply #51. Feb 13 17, 1:47 AM

Mixamatosis

I do think there's something wrong with wanting to live forever - well not the wanting, that may be natural, but firstly we wear out over time and a society mainly consisting of geriatrics would not be the most vigorous or healthy.It could be quite enfeebled perhaps. Secondly you would probably have the same generation in charge all the time or for a much longer period of time, and new ideas, progression and adaption would be more difficult for society (imagine the likes of Stalin or Hitler living forever or much much longer) but mainly unless you could stop people reproducing at the rate we do, there would be a population explosion and the pressures that are now on the environment, the animal world and natural resources would be multiplied manyfold. much though we may like to live forever we need to make way for the coming generations and that's a natural thing.

Reply #52. Feb 13 17, 4:12 AM

brm50diboll

Now for a few words about "Flowers for Algernon". Eventually. I will digress quite a bit here. First it was a short story, then expanded into a novel, then a 1960s movie version of it was made called "Charly".

First major digression: "Charly" won a Best Actor Oscar for Cliff Robertson, whose career I much admired, though he may not be well-known to many readers. The late actor appeared in two Twilight Zones: "The Dummy" (as an alcoholic ventriloquist), and "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim" (as a time-traveling pioneer). He did an interesting turn (for me, anyway) as Hugh Hefner in "Star 80" (with Mariel Hemingway and a very creepy Eric Roberts). Near the end of his career, he may be known for playing Peter Parker's Uncle Ben in the Tobey Maguire version of "Spider-Man".

But back to "Flowers for Algernon". I first encountered in in school when I read the short story version. It was so fascinating to me I read the novel version, which was the best version in my opinion, because of the change in writing style as the book unfolds. I did not see "Charly" until many years later. The movie was good, but not as good as the book, and, because of a lot of psychedelic "hippy-dippy" 60s stuff in it, I don't think it aged well, though I liked Cliff Robertson's performance, obviously.

So the idea is, increase in human intelligence through surgery which had first been tested on a mouse named Algernon. Wouldn't it be great if we could dramatically increase human intelligence? Wouldn't that solve a lot of our problems?

Wrong again.

Second major digression: In the much more recent movie "Rise of the Planet of the Apes", another of my favorite actors, John Lithgow, plays an individual with Alzheimer's disease who is "cured" by a serum which regenerates neurons and increases intelligence. This is similar to what happened in "Flowers for Algernon", except it involved a serum rather than surgery. Same difference.

In both intelligence-increasing cases, the big problem was the effect was temporary. Both end with a "crash" as the individual's intelligence drops back down again. This, to me, is the most interesting and scary aspect of "Flowers for Algernon". The sheer panic that Charles Evans experiences as he begins to notice his mental functioning declining, and knowing where it would eventually lead before it actually got there, and the total inevitabity of what was coming. Very scary to me. The thought of losing one's mental functioning ability, particularly in the early stages. Very scary.

But even if there was a way to increase human intelligence that was not so temporary, it would not be a good thing for society. As Mustafa Mond said in "Brave New World", a society of all alphas would not be stable. Those who are looking for a cure for Alzheimer's or other dementias, be careful. Breakthroughs are unpredictable and not a direct function of how much money you invest in the problem. They may come, like many other things, with unanticipated consequences.

So next time you have a "senior moment", think about it. After all, I beleev peepl are reely gud.

Reply #53. Feb 18 17, 4:23 PM

brm50diboll

Speaking of "senior moments", in addition to typos and other minor errors in my last post, I misidentified the main character in "Flowers for Algernon" as Charles Evans, when in fact the character name was Charles Gordon. Charles Evans was a character in the Star Trek episode "Charlie X" (which I may discuss on its own merits some other day and I somehow had that on my mind.)

Plees dont be mad at me, speshully not Dr Strauss and Prof Nemur.

Reply #54. Feb 19 17, 12:41 AM

brm50diboll

When I was a kid, I enjoyed reading the novels of Jules Verne (the English translations, of course, as I do not speak French - or any other language except English.) Although works that can be categorized as science fiction long predated Jules Verne; nevertheless, I think it is fair to say that Jules Verne was one of the great pioneers in developing science fiction as a separate recognized genre of literature.

In my senior English class in high school, my teacher assigned a paper which asked us to discuss the works of a writer whose language was not English. When I selected Jules Verne, I was shocked that my teacher did not know not only that he was a French writer, but was unfamiliar with him completely. (I did attend high school in rural East Texas.) I persisted, explaining who Jules Verne was, and he let me do the essay on him.

I think Jules Verne was great not because he was completely accurate in his predictions of the future, or even in his scientific understanding (Journey to the Center of the Earth is particularly unrealistic, as the Earth only gets hotter and denser the deeper you go, and, even today, we have not been able even to drill as far as the crust-mantle boundary, much less take people all the way to the center, which I consider an impossibility.) But he was able to predict future technologies at least roughly enough to be uncanny, and this is the big contributing factor to his legacy.

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is probably my favorite of his books. Even today, I think in many ways we know less about the deep oceans of our planet than we do of the moon. The idea of a mysterious submariner roaming the world's seas largely undetected is intriguing to me.

Reply #55. Feb 27 17, 7:26 PM

Mixamatosis

Reminds me of a poor teacher at my school who, we assumed, was employed because she was an "old girl" from the school. She was supposed to be teaching us French Literature for our French "A" level course. One of the pupils in the class was discussing a book we were studying and the teacher looked mystified. "Where does that happen in the book?" she said. It turned out she was reading it herself for the first time and was only one chapter ahead of the class. The keen pupil in question had read to the end of the book.

Reply #56. Feb 28 17, 1:47 AM

Mixamatosis

I only really know Jules Verne through films of his novels. He obviously loved adventure as well as science fiction. I don't read many science fiction novels but the genre is quite elastic isn't it? "1984" would have been classified as "science fiction" though some know think a lot of it is becoming "fact". I read and liked that and Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World". There was one other science fiction author whose books I discovered and enjoyed in my youth. That was Brian Aldiss. I particularly liked "Non-Stop" and "Hot House". I won't spoil the former by revealing the plot but it's set on a space ship. The latter is set on Earth at the time when the Earth will soon cease to support human life. The earth has become like a hothouse and human life as we know it has evolved. Again I won't spoil the plot but some things from the story stuck in my mind long after I'd read the book. There was some living thing called "The Morel". It was a shapeless kind of thing that plopped onto people's heads and could take over their minds. It was more intelligent than people it lived on and dominated through the force of its power and intelligence. There are trees in my road that have been cut and pollarded and some have produced funny sort of growths on their trunks where they have been cut. One tree in particular has a big growth that reminds me of "The Morel" every time I walk past it. I half expect it to plop down on my head.

Reply #57. Feb 28 17, 2:06 AM

Mixamatosis

* now not know

Reply #58. Feb 28 17, 2:07 AM

Mixamatosis

When I was young I sometimes used to daydream being followed by spies and how I would evade them if that happened. These days, in our digital and internet world, I think it would be impossible to evade any spies. So much information is collected about us in every aspect of our lives and on (almost) everything that we do. The only possible evasive action would be to steer clear of all modern technology - not an easy option.

Reply #59. Feb 28 17, 2:13 AM

brm50diboll

Social media sites have long agreements that you sign (but usually don't read) when you sign up that allows them to take information you post about yourself on their site and sell it to marketers. This is how they make their profits. You are not their customer, you are their product.

Reply #60. Feb 28 17, 12:02 PM

469 replies. On page 3 of 24 pages. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

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