[Note from Steve: Not exactly a movie review…or is it a review of two?]

While I reviewed Andy Weir’s book (Oct. 16, 2015), I don’t think I reviewed the movie with Matt Damon, which I saw (readers can confirm that by perusing the movie review archive—I couldn’t find one). I’m sure I won’t see First Man. Ryan Gosling can’t compare to everyman Matt Damon, but that’s not the main point of this article. My intention is to compare the focus of these two movies.

Although The Martian is clearly fiction, both movies are fictional, the second being historical fiction, of course. They’re both about space exploration, the first about exploring Mars and the second about exploring Luna. That’s where the similarities end.

First Man focuses on the past, namely astronaut Neil Armstrong. It’s a screen biopic. Nothing against Armstrong, who has been made into a folk hero, but it’s the focus on the past that bothers me. The U.S. government has all but destroyed NASA. They shut down the shuttle program and didn’t replace it. We’ve been forced to pay Russia to haul our astronauts to the ISS. Now that Russia’s rockets are having problems (the last one failed and came close to killing a cosmonaut and astronaut), we are basically excluded from manned spaceflight for the present. All of this is due to ill-advised budget cutting by various administrations, and public opinion seems to have gone along with it, saying we can no longer afford space exploration. Many of us have shed a few tears—space is the last frontier, and our pioneering spirit is dead!

A similar thing happened to the SSC (“Superconducting Super Collider”), cancelled by Congress. We have ceded our lead in space exploration to the Europeans and Russia; we have ceded our lead in particle physics to the Europeans (CERN). Per capita, other countries are spending far more on non-military R&D than the U.S. Worse, that parallels huge U.S. increases in military R&D.

All that looks backward at an ignoble past where past glories are forgotten as scientific research takes a back seat. Sure, it was great to step on the moon in 1969, but can we swallow the bitter pill of knowing we couldn’t reproduce that feat now, even if there was a desire to do so?

The Martian has a more positive outlook. Forget about the moon. Let’s look to Mars and beyond. While the book and the movie still tells the tale of budget-cutting bureaucrats fighting those who want scientific progress, it shows that a few plucky heroes can still get it done! The Martian is positive and First Man is negative exactly for those reasons.

Of course, Weir’s story suffers the same failings as Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea. The latter has pages and pages of narrative about undersea flora and fauna. Excess narrative is characteristic of many 19^th century novels, from Moby Dick to Pride and Prejudice, and it’s damn boring. Weir’s narrative is too—worse than a manual for turning whale blubber into lamp oil (Moby Dick), it’s a manual for growing potatoes in human excrement.

But The Martian looks forward in a positive way that First Man can never do. That makes a big difference. Both movies are sad. First Man looks sadly back at NASA’s glory days. The Martian sadly reminds us of what might have been if our leaders weren’t so stupid. Yet looking forward is always better than looking backward. We can’t change the past, but maybe we can change the future? You don’t have to see either movie to make a choice here.

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Comments are always welcome!

More than Human: The Mensa Contagion. One reviewer compared this novel to Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars series. The first part is about how an ET virus creates homo sapiens version 2.0 on Earth, though. The second is about how these new humans colonize Mars and discover a starship of ETs who sent the virus to Earth. The ebook is available on Amazon and Smashwords and all its affiliates.

In libris libertas!

We all know how Facebook contributed, unknowingly or otherwise, to elect Trump and support BREXIT. If not intentionally, then their business model needs serious fixing; if intentionally, someone needs to go to jail! Other social media sites, email services, and web browsers are also guilty of sharing our personal information with anyone who will pay them money.

How does this affect authors? Why should we be concerned? Because nowadays social media and email are valuable tools in many ways, we would like to know that it can be trusted to keep our readers’ information safe. It’s now obvious we can’t do that.

Verizon owns both AOL and Yahoo now. Google’s Gmail is required by many cellphone providers. All three, like Facebook and Twitter, have privacy policies that allow them to steal information from those emails and sell it. The big boys are up to their necks in data mining. It’s not just the data-mining firms anymore.

Microsoft hasn’t done anything particularly wrong (I don’t know about Bing if it still exists, or their mail packages), but they are terribly annoying. It used to be that I could pick and choose what updates I wanted in Win 8.1 or Win 10. Now I can’t. Even worse, Microsoft now takes over my computer, downloads, and installs crap that I never use.  My choices are “Update and Shutdown” or “Update and Restart”—when that takes valuable time away from my writing, you can imagine how I curse Bill Gates and his band of thieves. I should also mention that they’ve decided not to support certain versions of Office so they can charge me for a new one. That’s not just abuse—it’s highway robbery!

Add to all that the Dark Web where I’ve seen pirated versions of ebooks, including my own, offered for free, and one has to wonder if the internet is an author’s friend. But it doesn’t stop there. Net neutrality is dead. Congress killed it. Authors’ businesses are small potatoes compared to mega-corporations. Don’t you think that internet service providers will coddle the users who will pay more? I already experience daily several periods of slowdowns or drop-outs as Comcast panders to their big money clients. They’d rather have gamers and streaming video watchers hogging the bandwidth than tend to an author’s needs. Nobody reads anymore, right? Literacy and reading be damned.

The only thing an author can do is to speak out against this abuse from tech companies. They’ll probably try to make sure the word won’t get out, of course, but the word is already out. And we can always attack them in our fiction. In libris libertas…and let’s have a saner and safer internet!

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Did you miss The Secret Lab? This sci-fi mystery for young adults features four tweens in the future living on the International Space Station who try to discover the origins of a mathematical mutant cat. Available in ebook format on Amazon and Smashwords and all their affiliated ebook retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo etc) and in a print version on Amazon.  And don’t miss the next A. B. Carolan YA sci-fi mystery The Secret of the Urns—coming soon!

In libris libertas!

I used to participate in discussions on Goodreads and LinkedIn. I no longer do so. The reasons are many. Here’s one: both have gone downhill since Amazon and Microsoft bought them, respectively. That might explain why there seem to be some moderators who are little tyrants; I’m open to discussions, but they aren’t. Same for members of their discussion groups.

In Goodreads, these few moderators assume their group is their little fiefdom; in LinkedIn, they’re often against indie authors and small presses and favor big publishing conglomerates and their associates. Sour grapes? No. These moderators are rare, but there’s no regulation from either Amazon or Microsoft who give the despots free rein to cancel anyone they please. They offer some “Terms of Service” discussion group members must follow, but the latter often ignore them. (And you thought it was just Facebook and Twitter?)

I’ve already cancelled ALL my memberships in Goodreads discussion groups (it was cathartic to do so from my Kindle, because Amazon bears most of the blame for not cleaning up Goodreads’ act.) I just don’t have the time to discover the bad apples hiding in the barrel among the many good ones. I will avoid any discussion on these sites. Same goes for many reading forums where you’ll find this us v. them mentality (us = readers and/or some publishing professionals, and them = certain authors they like to bully). I’m first and foremost an avid reader—always have been—so that turns me off, to put it mildly.

To be fair, some authors abuse their privileges on these sites. I never have, except for giving “discussion group” its literal meaning “discussions invited.” When thin skins, agendas, and pride get in the way of intelligent discussion, I bail. I’ve also been bullied, lied to, and even threatened by other group members. (Perhaps I should name names, but I’m not that kind of guy.) From what I’ve seen, I’m not unique in having these experiences. It’s sad that we have come to this!

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[Note: It has come to my attention that my settings for comments to these blog posts were incorrect…probably since the last WordPress upgrade. They are now correct, so feel free to comment. I apologize for any inconvenience this might have caused.  Also, as an FYI, your comment has to be approved by me to avoid trolls who rant and use foul language, but I get an email for each potential comment, so that approval is usually quick. I check my WP spam folder on a regular basis too. I don’t mind differing opinions—it’s good to have discussions. I do mind strong and insulting language.]

Water is rarely mentioned in fiction unless it’s almost a main character (thirsty party lost in the desert, villain poisoning a water supply, lack of water on the moon, etc—writers, are you jotting down these ideas?). In Niven and Pournelle’s Fallen Angel, it is a main character, in the form of snow—lots of it produced by extreme weather. In London’s “To Build a Fire,” it’s the snow again. (Anyone suffering through recent blizzards in the high Sierras, Midwest, or Boston area will probably agree that snow can become a villain.)

I’m surprised there aren’t more apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic novels about extreme weather. Maybe The Wizard of Oz was the last one to be really famous, but that tornado in Kansas only had a cameo role. Tornados are spawned by thunderstorms—lots of water. I once saw a tornado in Kansas—it was impressive but far away on the horizon, so it seemed not to be such a villainous character. But it was soon raining like hell!

Drought has more than a cameo role in my new post-apocalyptic thriller, The Last Humans (scheduled for publishing in 2019), but it more enables the prose rather than being a main character. My protagonist, Penny Castro, is preoccupied with water.

First, she’s an ex-USN search and rescue diver who ends up recovering corpses for the LA County Sheriff’s Department—ponds, rivers, and the ocean are where she works as a CSI. Second, after the apocalypse (a bio-engineered contagion delivered by missiles), she spends a lot of her time searching for and collecting water just to survive, or to help others survive. Third, she wants to grow things—understandable when she can’t find much to eat except dog and cat food—so she needs more of it. And fourth, she hates water because her brother almost drowned her as a kid, but she met her fear head-on to become a champion high school swimmer and Navy diver.

California, even before the apocalypse, worried about having enough water. Desalination platforms dot the coast and pump fresh water to thirsty Californians. Survivors of the apocalypse become even thirstier when the platforms stop pumping and mountain snow packs diminish. Drought seems like a villain.

Fresh, potable water is, of course, a big deal. Life on Earth couldn’t exist without it. Lack of fresh, potable water is already a problem in many areas of the world—emphasis on “clean, potable.” Lack of water will become even a bigger problem over time. As often happens when a problem is big and no one can think of a solution, people ignore the problem.

In my novel, Penny Castro can’t ignore it. Even with not many people left in the world, those last humans still need water to survive. That’s a theme in the novel. The jury’s out on whether we can solve this problem in real life. Stay tuned.

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The Secret Lab (2^nd Ed). Four students on the International Space Station discover the origins of a mutant cat and uncover a conspiracy in a sci-fi mystery that’s sure to entertain young adults and adults who are young at heart. In a new second edition completely rewritten and reedited by Steven M. Moore’s collaborator A. B. Carolan. Now available in a print version (Create Space) as well as all ebook formats (Amazon and Smashwords).

From a review of the first edtion: “I will disclose this: I picked up The Secret Lab because of Mr. Paws, the intelligent cat. Yes, I could not resist the temptation to read the adventure of a sentient, mathematics inclined cat, told by Steven M. Moore. It exceeded my expectations. Mr. Paws is the result of a genetics experiment aboard a facility orbiting Earth in 2147. The cat and his newly found friends, a group of four smart teenagers, find themselves in an intrigue with corporate agendas, young curiosity, dangerous and ethically problematic research, relationships and their difficulties when coming of age. The complexity is enthralling, but the author also makes it easy to follow, using a light, natural style to tell us their story.”–Alfaniel Aldavan, in a Smashwords’ 5-star review

In libris libertas!

Those who are accustomed to my blog posts—minimally, an op-ed comment on current events on Tuesdays and something on reading, writing, or the publishing business on Thursdays—might find it strange that I’m placing this post here on a Tuesday. There’s a simple explanation: reading and understanding what we read are building blocks in the democratic foundation of our country.

A dear friend and I were talking over the holiday about reading “popular science” articles. These are supposedly designed so that an “intelligent layperson” can develop some understanding about an esoteric bit of science or technology. I complained about Scientific American’s overly detailed articles in fields I’d like to learn more about for my sci-fi writing. “Don’t worry about it,” said my friend. “They’ve dumbed down the articles now.”

Some translations are in order. First, there’s no such thing as “popular science” anymore. Science isn’t popular, from outright attacks on it by religious fanatics and politicians who are sycophants for Corporate America, unwilling or otherwise, to teachers telling students that they should study something else because science is too hard (especially egregious when a male teacher adds “…for girls”). In all age groups, many consider science and technology to be the root of all the problems society faces, and there are many others who encourage such an opinion.

Second, “intelligent layperson” is all too often another oxymoron nowadays. I’m not speaking to the obvious cases where someone believes dinosaurs and human beings coexisted and the world with all its wonderful diversity of flora and fauna was all created six thousand years ago. I’m talking about the average Joan or Joe who reads something but can’t understand what they’ve just read. Call it what you will, it’s an indictment against popular culture. At the critical lower levels in our educational systems, teachers over-emphasize getting through the words—understanding is secondary. Certain content is emphasized; there’s not much practice analyzing and digesting new content. Too many people read something that’s devoid of facts but don’t have the background or even common sense to know better.

Third, “dumbed down” is a nice way of saying that essay and book writers know all about the problems mentioned above and bend over backwards to compensate in order to get their message across. The latter is a struggle that’s becoming increasingly difficult, even for fiction writers, where “dumbed down” has destroyed serious literature.

Even if we get people to read with all the other distractions they have—streaming video, social media, video games, and so forth—getting them to understand what they are reading is a high hurdle to jump over. I’ve often read a review of a “popular science” book and asked myself, “Did the reviewer read the same book I did?” That would probably happen with fiction too, but I don’t bother to read those reviews unless I’m making excerpts for the PR and marketing of my own books.

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I loved those original Star Trek episodes because the best were based on sci-fi stories written by seasoned sci-fi writers, ones like Theodore Sturgeon and Harlan Ellison. They were often morality plays too, that is, good stories with some important themes mixed in. (Who could forget the message that racial prejudice is just plain stupid in the classic episode about the two black-and-white guys fighting on and on, one black on the left and white on the right, the other just the opposite?) These episodes often contained some sound scientific extrapolation too—your smart phone is a version of the Starfleet’s communicator, for example.

Episodes in the spinoff series, often written by screenwriters who had little training in science and often promoted pseudo-science, were much less entertaining if not downright distasteful. They were also just bad writers of sci-fi, starting a tradition that continues today. Generally speaking, of course, Hollywood fails at putting believable science into sci-fi and often creates pseudo-science in its screenplays. While maybe everyone knows Wiley Coyote can’t go over the cliff in an inverse-L-shaped path and finds it hilarious when he does so, is that any different than the Enterprise coming to a full-stop, thus violating Newton’s First Law? (What maybe that ether drag, created in theory by Maxwell and disproven by Einstein, suddenly reappears?) And Next Generation’s Counselor Cleavage reading minds is pretty farfetched and bordering on fantasy too. Of course, the Star Wars tales are also just fantasy episodes—they even have princes, princesses, and knights who fight with sabers (making them neon-colored with sizzles doesn’t make them more sci-fi-like—it just makes them silly).

So let’s forget about Hollywood and move on to literature.  As a continuation of a previous article, “Does Fiction Have to Seem Real?” let me ask, “Does the science in sci-fi have to seem real?” I’m talking about hard sci-fi. That’s still a broad sub-genre. But consider the sub-sub-genres of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic. While I enjoyed Christopher’s No Blade of Grass, Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, and Howey’s Wool, my kneejerk reaction to these books was that there was no real explanation of cause, only the effect. I’ve changed my mind a bit, though. The story in these books is found in the effect—hence the post in post-apocalyptic. My own post-apocalyptic efforts—Survivors of the Chaos and Full Medical are examples—discussed the causes much more than the three books named, but that was a personal choice because I put as much emphasis on the causes as the effects. In my upcoming The Last Humans (see the last pre-publication excerpt in my blog archive), I also focus on the effect, although the cause is mentioned, and I’m satisfied with the result.

Other hard sci-fi genres need a more detailed extrapolation of current science. Of course, the farther the extrapolation goes into the future, the more chance for error. Any scientist knows that extrapolation beyond real data is a dangerous game. Some things like interstellar drives and faster-than-light (FTL) starships or communication systems are far in the future, if they’re even possible. When that happens, the best solution is to get beyond the science and go on with the story. But human variants like the clones and mutants in my “Clones and Mutants Series,” the MECHs in the “Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries,” or Humans 2.0 produced by an ET virus in More than Human: The Mensa Contagion, have to be more plausible if only because they’re easier extrapolations of current science to events in the near future.

That’s why a scientist might feel more comfortable reading speculative fiction that doesn’t go far beyond current science and technology. For example, s/he might prefer Hogan’s Code of the Lifemaker to his Giants series, although the first book in that series sticks pretty close to current science and technology. Your opinion on how believable the futuristic science is might depend on your background too. When I read Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep, I felt insulted that a sci-fi writer violated current physics (his solution to FTL was a varying speed of light, slower the farther away you are from galactic center, as if those central black holes did a lot more than expected). Obviously not enough sci-fi readers cared about that—he received a Hugo—but I think there’s a warning there: some readers will not tolerate a violation of known laws of physics, chemistry, or biology. But they might not have a problem with the unknown.

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Maybe I’m just getting old, but every day it seems to be more difficult to process the information I look for and find. I seem to be drowning in it. I try to be selective, but the selection takes time too. Some days the selection process takes more time than processing the information I’ve received.

Information is now mined by corporations who sell what they’ve mined to other corporations. The latter are probably in the same boat I’m in. Will Corporate America come to a grinding halt when it has so much information that it can’t process it? Will I?

Some computer gurus discuss a tipping point when computer networks become sentient and human beings become superfluous. (The Terminator movies are built on this premise.) I don’t think that will happen. When information overload maxes out, computers will be turned off, AIs, robots, and androids will crazy, and civilization will end. We’ll probably return to a hunter-gather society. The only information we’ll need then is what to hunt and what to gather.

We’re already networking computers to solve problems of great complexity. But will we reach the point that the solutions to these problems are just as complex and human beings can’t begin to understand them? I can imagine a worldwide network going crazy because it has solved a complex and important problem but the solution is so complex that only another worldwide network can understand it!

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I’m expecting a bloodbath in the EPA, NASA, NOAA and possibly other agencies as Mr. Trump wages war on the environment. Many employees there are civil service, but that might not stop Il Duce AKA Narcissus le Grand—he’ll just close down the agencies if he wants to get rid of them. The EPA, NASA, and NOAA are where many of those “bad scientists” can be found who disagree with the GOP claim that climate control and taking care of the environment have low priority. Narcissus le Grand even believes global warming is a hoax.

What’s driving all this is Trump’s desire to end all environmental regulations so that companies, his included, can pollute and destroy the environment as much as they want, a particularly virulent and dangerous example of capitalism without controls. Even now, they ship high-tech toxic waste and other crap to places like Bangladesh. Il Duce and his minions probably think it would be cheaper just to dump it somewhere in the U.S. How ‘bout not doing it at all?!

Disasters like that BP oil well in the Gulf, destruction of the Great Barrier Reef, poisoning wells and water supplies—those kinds of things are just part of doing business, according to Trump and his cronies. He names Pruitt to head the EPA and one of the gnome’s first public acts is to deny the role of CO2 in global warming. C’mon!

Many scientists are worried. A week before Il Duce’s inauguration, more than 250 volunteers met at UPenn for a two-day binge of downloading climate data and storing it on independent servers. “If you don’t want to do anything about climate change,” said Texas A&M atmospheric scientist Andrew Dessler, “you are in a stronger position if you get rid of the data.” Gretchen Goldman, research director for the Center of Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists said, “With a president who doesn’t respect scientific information, one abuse could be data mysteriously disappearing from websites, or government scientific websites may suddenly have misinformation.” Most of the data that was saved was from NOAA, EPA, DoE, and NASA.

One of those infamous executive orders from Narcissus le Grand could restrict data access from outside the U.S. Trump’s evil minions are already talking about clamping down on the internet and allowing service providers to have multi-tier systems—that’s been on the GOP hit list for some time. And shortly after the inauguration, Trump ordered the EPA to delete climate change pages from the EPA’s website, but he then backtracked on that order when the roars of protest became deafening. The order for EPA scientists and other agencies’ scientists not to post on social media or communicate with reporters still stands, though. Inside the agencies that do climate-related research, Goldman says “morale is low. People are scared.” Scared for their jobs, because Il Duce likes to fire people who disagree with him!

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In my forthcoming novel, Gaia and the Goliaths, #7 in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series,” Detective Castilblanco considers some of the pros and cons about nuclear power. The novel’s main theme involves climate and environmental issues, pro-environmental activism, and attacks on the environment waged by corporations and their political sycophants.  Russia, known for its lack of concern about the environment and the Chernobyl disaster, plays an important role too. These issues are current ones now, considering the new U.S. administration that will invade Washington D.C.

Mr. Trump and his cabinet choices will probably set back any progress we’ve made on environmental issues, except for states like California that are far more progressive than Washington, and there are plenty of willing accomplices for Trump’s team in the GOP-dominated Congress. The new president thinks global warming is a hoax and climate control isn’t necessary. But questionable actions have been taken by Dems too. There is a general consensus among politicians that nuclear power is bad, so let’s get rid of it.

For example, Governor Cuomo of New York has championed the closing of the Indian Head power plant on the Hudson, mentioned in my novel, without having any viable alternative for replacing the power the plant generates. Many European countries depend on nuclear power, as does Japan. Is it dirty energy? Are nuclear power plants accidents waiting to happen? Have politicians created a Frankenstein monster in order to win votes from environmental activists?

First, let’s state for the record what affects global warming and is bad for the climate, namely fossil fuels. Presumably Cuomo, who has no technical background and is apparently channeling Van Helsing in his pursuit of nuclear energy as an evil vampire, will replace Indian Head’s power output with coal-burning or natural gas power plants. Those are worse for the environment. We need to reduce the carbon footprint, not augment it. Any environmental campaign must be anti-fossil fuels because there is no way to use them that won’t damage the environment. Period.

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Some excitement was caused recently by the announcement of an E-type exoplanet, Proxima b, a planet orbiting the red dwarf Proxima Centauri in the Alpha Centauri triple-star system (Alpha A is a G-type star like the sun, while B is a K-type star, but both are much brighter than Proxima). That system is about 4.3 light-years from Earth, or 40.14 trillion kilometers. (Conversion lesson: convert to statute miles.) The size of the Milky Way is about 100, 000 light-years, so Proxima is right around the corner. Right? Wrong! Even distances in our galaxy are “huuuuge,” to borrow a word abused by two recent presidential candidates and the SNL comics.

More excitement was caused by the report from scientists at the RATAN-600 radio telescope at Zelenchukskaya in Russia. They detected a strong signal apparently originating in the direction of the G-type star HD 1611595, known to have one warm Neptune-like planet (40-day orbit). This star is 94 light-years away. The Russian report to the SETI committee was made without many details.  The star might have rocky E-type planets too, so many UFO-ET enthusiasts and sci-fi addicts are in a frenzy, spurred on by the meaning of the acronym—“Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence.” While some other Russian scientists wrote the whole thing off as terrestrial interference (covering their butts?), the scientific jury is still out (comments updating this are welcome).  95 light-years is many times 4, of course, but still small in comparison relative to galactic distance markers—4 is a walk to your neighborhood convenience store; 95 is a short car ride to the nearby Dunkin’ Donuts.

Let’s counter some knee-jerk reactions to these reports first. Coincidentally, SETI has a new focus on red dwarf stars. They can live billions of years longer than G-type stars, where SETI’s emphasis has traditionally been, because we know at least one G-type star, ours, has an intelligent civilization (although “intelligent” might be a questionable word to use sometimes). That extra stellar lifespan might allow a red dwarf like Proxima Centauri to be home to an ancient civilization far advanced beyond ours (and actually be intelligent?). The hurdles are enormous, though, for any kind of life in such a system, because livable E-type planets would have to orbit the parent star so closely that they would be tidally locked, one face always turned toward the star. That means life as we know it could only exist in that transition zone between eternal day and eternal night.

The second report is a bit more difficult to put down in this way: an E-type planet could exist farther out from HD 1611595 and have life. Without knowing the details of the signal (I only know it’s strong), one can’t use it to mark the source as being intelligent. If it were narrowband, seemingly coded, and beamed directly at us (how could they know to do that when radio had just been invented on Earth 90 years ago?), you might have something. But consider this: one scientist estimates that ten-to-the-thirtieth (one followed by thirty zeroes) watts would be needed to broadcast this signal if omnidirectional (i.e. not specifically aimed at us), and ten-to-the-fifteenth watts if beamed directly. The first corresponds to a Kardashev Type II civilization, one that harnesses all energy emitted by its sun (Dyson sphere?—that’s physicist Freeman Dyson, not my author-friend Scott Dyson); the second to Type I, a civilization that “only” harnesses all the energy falling on its planet.

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