Depression, isolation and brain fog are among the health hazards traditionally associated with months-long space missions. And back in 1999, a 110-day simulated space mission in Russia reportedly sparked even more serious flare-ups, including a sexual harassment case and a bloody fistfight between crew members.
So what might happen if space travelers go on a decades-long odyssey to a far-off, habitable star system — a mission so long that the children who begin the trip have little hope of seeing its end?
That’s the premise of “Voyagers,” a movie written and directed by Neil Burger. And it shouldn’t be any surprise that sex and violence are part of the formula, as they were during the simulated space trip in 1999.
In the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast, production designer Scott Chambliss discusses how the stripped-down, closed-in environment he created for the movie’s multi-generational spaceship sets the scene for a space-based retelling of “Lord of the Flies.”
An image from NASA’s Perseverance rover shows the tread tracks left behind by its first drive on Mars on March 4. (NASA / JPL-Caltech)
Fifteen years after her death, Seattle science-fiction author Octavia E. Butler has joined an exclusive pantheon of space luminaries memorialized on Mars.
Today NASA announced that the Red Planet locale where its Perseverance rover touched down last month is called Octavia E. Butler Landing, in honor of a Black author who emphasized diversity in tales of alternate realities and far-out futures.
“Butler’s protagonists embody determination and inventiveness, making her a perfect fit for the Perseverance rover mission and its theme of overcoming challenges,” Kathryn Stack Morgan, deputy project scientist for Perseverance, said in a news release. “Butler inspired and influenced the planetary science community and many beyond, including those typically under-represented in STEM fields.”
"Machinehood" blends neo-Buddhism, AI rights and other far-out concepts. (Saga Press / Design by Richard Yoo, 3-D art by Zi Won Wang)
S.B. Divya has been thinking about the technologies of the future for so long, it’s hard for her to imagine living in the present.
Her debut novel, “Machinehood,” stars a super-soldier with body enhancements who packs it in to become a bodyguard for celebrities — but becomes enmeshed in an action-packed race to save the world.
Technologies ranging from human enhancement to do-it-yourself biohacking play supporting roles in Divya’s tale of 2095. And oh, if only some of those technologies were available in 2021…
“There are definitely days where I came out of the writing, and looked around and realized that I was back in the real world — and was occasionally sad about it, because there are really useful things in ‘Machinehood’ that I wish we had today,” Divya says in the latest episode of our Fiction Science podcast.
Gerard Butler stars in the comet-disaster movie "Greenland." (Image Courtesy of STXfilms)
If a killer asteroid or comet comes our way, don’t expect Bruce Willis or Robert Duvall to try flying to the rescue. And don’t expect doom to arrive in one big dose.
Those are two of the lessons that Hollywood has learned since 1998, when “Armageddon” and “Deep Impact” put death from the skies on the big screen. The killer-comet theme returns in “Greenland,” a big-budget movie that’s making its debut on premium video-on-demand this weekend. But the plot twists are dramatically different.
There’s a different look to the movie as well, thanks in part to the research that was done by visual effects supervisor Marc Massicotte.
“The movies of the past have had a large creative influence on the direction we wanted to take, but at the same time, we didn’t want to repeat what had been done,” he told me. “We wanted to update and also be as close [as possible] to what reality as we know it now is.”
Massicotte discussed his vision of doomsday for the Fiction Science podcast, which focuses on the intersection of science and fiction. And to even out the proportion of science to fiction, I also checked in with Danica Remy, president of the B612 Foundation. Remy’s group focuses on the threats posed by asteroids and comets, as well as strategies to head off such threats — none of which involve Bruce Willis.
“Every movie that talks about this subject is a way to educate the public and raise awareness about the issue,” Remy told me. “The science in the movies may not be correct, but certainly the discussion and the education aspect — you know, the fact that these things do happen — we think is a plus.”
How much would it take to raise a robot butler? (Shade Lite / Bigstock.com Illustration)
What rights does a robot have? If our machines become intelligent in the science-fiction way, that’s likely to become a complicated question — and the humans who nurture those robots just might take their side.
Ted Chiang, a science-fiction author of growing renown with long-lasting connections to Seattle’s tech community, doesn’t back away from such questions. They spark the thought experiments that generate award-winning novellas like “The Lifecycle of Software Objects,” and inspire Hollywood movies like “Arrival.”
Can science fiction have an impact in the real world, even at times when the world seems as if it’s in the midst of a slow-moving disaster movie? Absolutely, Chiang says.
“Art is one way to make sense of a world which, on its own, does not make sense,” he says in the latest episode of our Fiction Science podcast, which focuses on the intersection between science and fiction. “Art can impose a kind of order onto things. … It doesn’t offer a cure-all, because I don’t think there’s going to be any easy cure-all, but I think art helps us get by in these stressful times.”
An artist's conception shows a luxury airship flying over a mountain range. (Photo: Dassault Systèmes)
Spoiler alert: Kim Stanley Robinson’s latest science-fiction novel about a coming climate catastrophe, “The Ministry for the Future,” doesn’t end with the collapse of civilization.
Millions of people die. Millions more become climate refugees. And the crisis sparks terrorist acts, against those who are working for change as well as against those who are defending the status quo.
But by the end of the book, there’s hope that humanity will actually be able to keep things from spinning out of control. And that’s in line with what Robinson has come to believe in the process of writing “The Ministry for the Future.”
“We could either crash the biosphere, and thus civilization, or we could actually create a really high-functioning and prosperous permaculture, a sustainable and just civilization on the planet in the biosphere,” he says. “Both the utter disaster and the quite great, semi-utopian historical moment are available to us.”
Robinson talks about “The Ministry for the Future,” and the real-world technological initiatives on which his tale is based, in the latest episode of our Fiction Science podcast, which focuses on the intersection of science and fiction.
Queen Amidala addresses the Galactic Senate in a scene from "Star Wars." (Lucasfilm Photo)
Between the voting-machine failures, the cyberattacks and the social-media shenanigans, technology hasn’t had a great record when it comes to fostering and protecting democracy in the 21st century. But George Zarkadakis says the technology — and democracy — can be fixed.
In his new book, “Cyber Republic: Reinventing Democracy in the Age of Intelligent Machines,” the Greek-born tech expert, writer and management consultant offers a repair manual that takes advantage of innovations ranging from artificial intelligence and expert systems, to blockchain, to data trusts that are personalized and monetized.
According to Zarkadakis, one of the most important fixes will be for governments to earn back the trust of the people they govern.
“We should have a more participatory form of government, rather than the one we have now,” Zarkadakis told me from his home base in London. “A mixture, if you like, of more direct democracy and representational democracy. And that’s where this idea of citizen assemblies comes about.”
He delves into his prescription for curing liberal democracy — and the precedents that can be drawn from science fiction — in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast. Check out the entire show via your favorite podcast channel, whether that’s Anchor, Apple, Spotify, Google, Breaker, Overcast, Pocket Casts or RadioPublic.
Such stories helped ancient peoples get a grip on the workings of the natural world — and set the celestial stage for millennia of scientific advances. But ironically, those advances may be leading to the extinction of the stories, as well as the fading of the night sky.
“We understand so many wonders about the cosmos, but at the same time … we’ve never been so disconnected from the cosmos,” says Jo Marchant, the author of a new book titled “The Human Cosmos: Civilization and the Stars.”
In the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast, Marchant and I delve into how our cosmic perspective has been simultaneously sharpened and dulled. Give a listen to the Q&A via your favorite podcast channel, whether that’s Anchor, Apple, Spotify, Google, Breaker, Overcast, Pocket Casts or RadioPublic.
Kyle MacLachlan plays Thomas Edison in "Tesla." (Courtesy of IFC Films)
Can you picture Thomas Edison with a smartphone? Or poking a rival with an ice-cream cone? When you watch Kyle MacLachlan play one of America’s most famous inventors in the movie “Tesla,” you can.
And wait until you hear which 21st-century tech genius MacLachlan would love to portray next.
“The story of Elon Musk would be interesting, just because I think he’s a quirky fellow,” MacLachlan told me during an interview for the inaugural Fiction Science podcast. “That would be challenging, to understand who that his, and how he moves through the world, what he thinks, how he interacts with people.”
MacLachlan is pretty good at playing quirky roles. His best-known character is FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper, who delves into dark secrets, interdimensional weirdness and damn fine coffee in “Twin Peaks,” the classic TV series directed by David Lynch.
In a wide-ranging Q&A, MacLachlan and I talked about “Tesla” and “Twin Peaks,” as well as “Dune,” the science-fiction cult classic (or classic flop, depending on your perspective) from 1984 that marked his big-budget movie debut.
The saga had its genesis almost eight decades ago, and the action is set more than 10,000 years in the future. But the themes of the work — centering on the decline and fall of a high-tech empire, Machiavellian machinations and unintended consequences — are, if anything, more relevant than ever in the here and now.
That’s what makes the Foundation series the perfect literary work for the revival of the Cosmic Log Used Book Club.
The CLUB Club goes back to the foundation of Cosmic Log. In contrast to book clubs that promote pricey new publications, our aim is to highlight books with cosmic themes that should be available at used-book shops as well as local libraries.
Over the past 18 years, we’ve issued more than 60 CLUB Club selections — many of them suggested by Cosmic Log readers. And to celebrate the return of the CLUB Club, we’re giving you the full list at the end of this item.
We’re also presenting a book giveaway, so keep reading!
“Foundation” dates back to a series of short stories that were published in Astounding Magazine starting in 1942. In the 1950s, those stories were published as a book trilogy — and in the 1980s and 1990s, Asimov produced two sequels and two prequels.
The key concept is psychohistory, the idea that the mass behavior of billions of people can be predicted and shaped centuries in advance. The series’ foundational character, Hari Seldon, uses psychohistory to foresee the fall of a galactic empire. He also comes up with a plan to reduce the resulting dark age from 30,000 years to a mere millennium.
The latter half of the Foundation Trilogy highlights another concept: the potential for one individual with a talent for inspiring loyalty and fear to throw the course of history on a different track. That concept is as relevant today as it was in the midst of the Second World War.
To celebrate the revival of the CLUB Club, as well as the centennial year of Asimov’s birth, let’s have a trivial giveaway. This giveaway is “trivial” not only because it involves a trivia question, but also because there’s a relatively trivial sum at stake.
The prize is a $4 Amazon e-gift card that can be put toward the purchase of the Foundation Trilogy — or, frankly, any other purchase. I’ll send that amount to the first person answering the quiz question correctly in a comment below, based on submitted time stamp.
Here’s the question:
The Foundation series features a fictional reference work that has also popped up in books written by Carl Sagan and Douglas Adams. What is the two-word name of that reference work?
Update: We have a winner! Congrats to Kathy Coyle… The answer is “Encyclopedia Galactica.”
In case you’ve already gotten all the way through the Foundation series, here are 66 other CLUB Club selections you can check out using your e-gift card or your library card:
“The Sparrow” by Mary Doria Russell (June 2002 selection)
“Alice in Quantumland” by Robert Gilmore (July 2002)
“Mr. Tompkins” series by George Gamow (August 2002)
“Manifold: Time” by Stephen Baxter (September 2002)
“Dreamer” by Richard L. Miller (October 2002)
“Earth” by David Brin (November 2002)
“Roadside Picnic” by A. and B. Strugatsky (December 2002)
“Strange Matters” by Tom Siegfried (January 2003)
“Out of the Silent Planet” by C.S. Lewis (February 2003)
“Stranger in a Strange Land” by Robert A. Heinlein (March 2003)
“The Copper Crown” by Patricia Kennealy (April 2003)
“Dragon’s Egg” by Robert L. Forward (May 2003)
“The Elegant Universe” by Brian Greene (June 2003)
“Contact” by Carl Sagan (July 2003)
“A Skywatcher’s Year” by Jeff Kanipe (August 2003)
Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson (September 2003)
“Book of the New Sun” series by Gene Wolfe (September 2003)
“The Best of AIR” by Marc Abrahams (October 2003)
“Flare” by R. Zelazny and Thomas T. Thomas (November 2003)
“Mother of Storms” by John Barnes (November 2003)
“Mars: Uncovering the Secrets of the Red Planet” by Paul Raeburn (December 2003)
Tripods Trilogy by John Christopher (January 2004)
“A Princess of Mars” by Edgar Rice Burroughs (February 2004)
“Bad Astronomy” by Phil Plait (March 2004)
“The Spirit of St. Louis” by Charles Lindbergh (April 2004)
“Angels and Demons” by Dan Brown (May 2004)
“The Man Who Sold the Moon” by Robert A. Heinlein (June 2004)
“Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by P.K. Dick (July 2004)
“Idlewild” by Nick Sagan (August 2004)
“The Right Stuff” by Tom Wolfe (October 2004)
“Science and Theology” by J.C. Polkinghorne (November 2004)
“Evolution” by Stephen Baxter (December 2004)
“Krakatoa” by Simon Winchester (January 2005)
“Killing Star” by C. Pellegrino and G. Zebrowski (February 2005)
“The Forge of God” by Greg Bear (March 2005)
“Short History of Nearly Everything” by B. Bryson (April 2005)
“The Red One” by Jack London (May 2005)
“N.Y. Times Book of Science Questions and Answers” (June 2005)
“Heavy Weather” by Bruce Sterling and “Forty Signs of Rain” by Kim Stanley Robinson (August 2005)
“Chaos” by James Gleick (October 2005)
“A Brief (or Briefer) History of Time” by Stephen Hawking (and Leonard Mlodinow) (November 2005)
“A Wrinkle in Time” by Madeleine L’Engle (December 2005)
“1491” by Charles C. Mann (January 2006)
“Ender’s Game” by Orson Scott Card (February 2006)
“The Gnostic Gospels” by Elaine Pagels (March 2006)
“Prey” by Michael Crichton (April 2006)
“Hellstrom’s Hive” by Frank Herbert (May 2006)
“Inferno” by Jerry Pournelle (August 2006)
“This Place Has No Atmosphere” by Paula Danziger and “Countdown for Cindy” by Eloise Engel (September 2006)
“Orbit” by John J. Nance (October 2006)
“Time and Again” by Jack Finney (November 2006)
“God in the Equation” by Corey Powell (December 2006)
“Conversations on Consciousness” by S. Blackmore (Jan. 2007)
“Everyday Life in New Testament Times” by Bouquet (April 2007)
“Supernova” by Roger Allen and Eric Kotani (May 2007)
“The Twilight of Briareus” by Richard Cowper (June 2007)
“The Traveler” by John Twelve Hawks (July 2007)
“Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut (August 2007)
“Flatland” by Edwin A. Abbott and “The Fourth Dimension” by Rudy Rucker (December 2007)
“The Year 1000” by D. Danziger and R. Lacey (November 2009)
“Creation” by Randal Keynes (January 2010)
“In Search of Time” by Dan Falk (February 2010)
“Space” by James Michener (September 2011)
What’s your favorite cosmic reading matter? Pass your suggestion along in a comment, and it just might be featured as a future CLUB Club selection.
