A speculative mind

Some months ago I talked about play writing. Time for a revisit: You don’t have to be a playwright to write plays. You don’t have to be a novelist to write stories either. You can just write for the fun of it. Play writing is like any other kind of story telling except that almost all of the story is told through dialogue. The first play I ever wrote was in junior High School. My friend and I co-wrote a play call “Revenge of the Ant-men”. It was just as good as you might expect could be produced from a couple of eighth-graders goofing off in an Art class (sorry Mrs. McKinley, wherever you are. I have no idea what it was we were supposed to be doing.) But we had a great time writing it, and laughed ourselves silly as we read it back to ourselves. You can write a play for fun, just like you can write a short story for fun. You might not ever see your play on Broadway, but you may get a chance to see it performed by a local community theater group. I encourage this. A play i...

“You reached for the secret too soon, you cried for the moon .” I know it is not what Pink Floyd was saying with this lyric from “Shine On you Crazy Diamond”, but something about it makes me think of the Apollo One disaster. America was trying to win the space race and perhaps pushed too hard and tried to do too much too soon, which resulted in three astronauts dead in their capsule. It reminded me that sometimes we push the boundaries of science too hard. It is apparently human nature to try to do something as soon as we are able. History is full of examples of someone doing something just because they can, before considering all the ramifications. The most recent example is the Chinese scientist who claims to have created the first genetically edited baby by using Crispr. We don’t know if he actually did it or not, that is yet to be proven. Even if he didn’t, it is probably only a matter of time until someone does. The problem is, we are nowhere near understanding all o...

Science fiction writers, almost by definition, love science. Yet, ironically, they don’t seem to mind violating it. This happens with time travel, which is the main theme of many a good sci-fi tale. Yet scientists tell us unanimously that time travel (at least going backwards in time) is impossible. That doesn’t stop the author who wants to send his/her character back in time to watch the signing of the Magna Carta.   Similarly, science fiction authors can’t resist sending space ships out with faster-than-light drives (FTL). This makes sense. If you don’t have a faster-than-light drive, you are pretty much confined to our own solar system. Authors don’t like to be fettered as such. But that pesky Mr. Einstein gave us the laws of relativity, and over the last hundred years, no one has been able to prove Einstein wrong. Star Wars and Star Trek would have gone nowhere (literally) without FTL. The entire series of Battlestar Galactica would have taken place on Caprica where, ...

And now for something completely different. I am a cartographer by trade. That means I make maps. Specifically I make maps for a county assessor’s office. For states that have property taxes, maps are required so that appraisers can accurately gauge the size and location and special requirements for each property. They need to know these things so they can fairly value the property. These maps are made with care from deeds, surveys, and subdivision plats, but the maps do not constitute a legal representation of the property for anything other than taxation. Despite warnings to that effect on each map, everyone uses them for every purpose under the sun. Realtors, banks, title companies, insurance companies, and others, use these maps in ways they were not necessarily intended. But the Assessor map is so conveniently available and there really is no practical alternative. I was hired as the Automated Mapping Cartographer (a rather redundant title). My job was to take all th...

This is the final installment of my list of favorite science fiction films: Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan . Some of you will be saying: Wait a minute. What about all that stuff he said against sequels? A fair point, but I would argue that even though it has a “2” in the title, this is not a proper sequel. Is it a sequel of Star Trek: The Motion Picture? I don’t think so. Star Trek: the Motion Picture was a cinematic retelling of the TV show as were all the films that followed. The first film did such a poor job with story and character that it almost doesn’t qualify as Star Trek at all. I don’t think Robert Wise, the director really got it. By contrast Nicholas Meyer, the director of the second film, did get it. The characters were recognizable. The story arc was nicely constructed and led to a satisfying and nail-biting finale. And yes the story was more important than the special effects (not that the special effects were bad).   New characters like the Marcus’s and Mr. Sa...

This is the third installment of my list of favorite Science fiction films. Again, these are in no particular order. Alien . Is it horror, or is it science fiction. Of course it is both. The first time I saw Alien it scared the willies out of me. Just so you know, I am not generally a fan of scary movies. I usually don’t watch them unless they are of the campy low budget variety that are so bad they are good. Something attracted me to go and see that film even though I knew it would be scary. It must have been the trailer. Although the marketing made it absolutely clear that this was going to be scary. But something about it caught my interest. The trailer looked so good.   I went to the theater to watch it, and it was quite a ride. The cast was excellent from Tom Skerritt and Yaphet Kotto, and Ian Holm, to a new actress I had never heard of before with the unlikely name of Sigourney Weaver. I was quite taken with Weaver’s portrayal of Ellen Ripley, second in command of...

So this is a continuation of the list of my favorite science fiction films. Here are three more for the list: The Andromeda Strain . It was based on the novel by Michael Chrichton, and was his first work to be turned into a film. Michael was very, very good to Hollywood. Besides the Andromeda Strain he penned the novels that were turned into many movies including, The Terrminal Man. Jurassic Park, Congo, Sphere, Rising Sun. He also created Westworld, Looker, and the TV show ER, among others. Andromeda Strain came out in 1971 and is set in a top secret underground facility set up to deal with biohazards. A satellite falls into a small town and some kind of organism on the satellite kills everyone in the town. We follow the scientist as they try to figure out what kind of organism it is and how to neutralize it. They approach the problem, dare I say, scientifically. They don’t just push a button on a computer and the answer pops out. They have to run tests and procedures that a...