waking from hibernation

Well maybe not from hibernation, but I've been quiet on the blog for quite a long time.
I'm gearing up to have some fun with NaNoMoWri - or whatever it's called. Basically the idea is to write as much as you can in a month, hoping to get to a completed novel.

Right now I'm working on story ideas and concepts, or as it's sometimes known, wasting time on the internet. I'm having a lot of fun with things like this : article on the large hadron collider and the Higgs Boson's plot against it.
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I'm also living the text dream - recently I've moved back from gui programs to shell programs(think old school unix days), and man I'm having fun. This was started by the failure of the mouse buttons on an otherwise decent 7yr old laptop, and has now moved to a whole new computing experience for me.

Anyways that's what I'm up to currently.
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Just how did we get this wasteland?

I love a good post-apocalyptic story, living by your wits, outracing death, and searching for survival. Many stories set in these fallen worlds are focused on restoring what came before. The idea is that before the 'fall' everybody was much better off. Well is that true? Or is it a mistaken assumption by the survivors or author? What if the reality is that the world that came before is the one the precipitated the fall?

There is a fascinating article over at COSMOS Magazine entitled Civilisations: why they fail». What is interesting about the article is the examination of the role of self-deception in the failure of civilizations. The ability for a group of people to ignore an obvious problem, even one that will threaten their survival.

More Below/Beyond the Link...

Somewhere in the middle of the Pacific is a small island with big heads. It's arguably one of the most famous islands in the world but the people responsible for that fame are gone. Their civilization long since failed.

As the COSMOS Article asks:
What did Easter Islanders say as they were cutting down the last palm tree? Were they saying, "Think of our jobs as loggers, not these trees?" Were they saying, "Respect my private property rights?" Surely Easter Islanders must have realised the consequences of destroying their forest. One wonders whether people of the next century – if there are still people alive – will be equally astonished about our blindness today.

I ask, do we look back on the Easter Islanders as a great civilization, one that we would aspire to recreate? How about the Mayans? The Vikings on Iceland? *Maybe* the survivors looked back on those civilizations as something to recreate? If that was the case than they were themselves practising the same self-deception that led to their respective falls to begin with.

Are your post apocalyptic characters deceiving themselves? Do they perceive the world that came before as the paradise they must regain? Civilizations fail for reasons, those reasons don't just disappear after the fall. If your computer crashes and you reboot it, is the problem *really* fixed? Are your characters wise enough to recognize this? What does that recognition do to your story?




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Where's the Basement?

Proof that children the next generation of adults can read, write, and dream is found in the NASA Space Settlement Design Contest». Eric Yam from Northern Secondary School in Toronto, Canada, was one of the Grand Prize Winners»

Eric's winning proposal was for an Orbital Habitat that he named ASTEN (Right click here to save the 12mb PDF) one of the alternate names for the Egyptian God Thoth.

I am amazed by the breadth of thought that has been put into this document. Issues ranging from immigration through to nutrition are addressed. In the context of World Building this is a great example of what can be done if you are motivated.

Congratulations Eric Yam, the First Canadian to win the Grand Prize in this contest in the 16 years that it has been run.



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Lost in Space (well on the Moon at least)

I've had one of those days. A day where you start reading about the biology of Star Trek» and by the end are poring over transcripts of Astronauts lost on the moon». Too bad those astronauts didn't have this Google Moon Map» showing exactly where they were.

Here are some of the highlights from my trip across the web this morning.

Making Aliens: The Repercussions of Planetary Settlement»

Seven ways to control the Galaxy with self-replicating probes»

The Physics of Extraterrestrial Civilizations»

How did that trip bring me to the Moon and a couple of astronauts arguing over a map?
That's where the story idea exists.

Story ideas can be found anywhere, and often by combining different ideas. Just reading and letting your unconscious mind guide you across the web can be a great way to find inspiration.



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Ohhhhh GodHood

The Singularity» is coming. Seriously, any day now :). And Vernor Vinge is discussing it over at h+ magazine.

I've been waiting for the singularity for almost 20 years. Pretty much since the first time I was hospitalized. To some people the singularity means enhanced cognition, or free energy. Both wonderful things that will change the world, but to me it means Immortality. That's right I am not a fan of death. Nope, I don't like it at all.

When I was younger I was faced with a fairly scary disease. Death and Pain were suddenly much larger figures in my life than they should be for any child. It was in speculative fiction that I found escape from those terrors. In the stories I read science had conquered disease. Wonderful technologies like cloned organs, or medical nanobots worked miracles on a regular basis. These weren't wishes granted by a genie, or gifts from capricious gods, but the end result of steady scientific progress. This was something I could grab onto, something I could understand and relate to the reality I lived in.

We aren't growing new organs yet, though with stem cells we're close. We also don't have the medical nanobots. But there are many complex surgical procedures that are now done through an incision the size of an inch. I have one of those one inch scars. Had that surgery been done 10 years earlier the scar would have stretched all the way across my belly. In another 20 years perhaps that surgery will not even be necessary.

Over at SciFi Scanner is an article talking about some interesting experiments with Junk DNA». This is unused DNA that's in our genome, left over from the ancestors of humanity. It's similar to legacy code in a computer program that's been commented out, it's still there, just not used. Some of that legacy code when activated (uncommented) could potentially allow for things like an immunity to the HIV virus, or even other 'abilities' that lay in our evolutionary past.

The ability I'd like to see be (re)activated is regeneration. Yup the holy grail of immortality. It's in our genetic past somewhere, only at some point our primitive mammalian ancestors stopped regenerating. Instead they switched to growing scar tissue. Scars are great for mammals that have to run and hide and heal quickly, but that isn't the world humanity lives in. The evolutionary reasons for abandoning regeneration in favour of scars no longer apply to us. Yes, I dare to disagree with Mother Nature.

This is the singularity for me: The moment that we take control of our own evolution and design. When it's no longer just a random collection of genes that decides who is healthy and who is sick, that decides who lives or who dies. This is the future I still dream of.



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13 Things that Do Not Make Sense

I'm sure there's more than 13 things that do not make sense », but New Scientist had to end the article somewhere.
(I'm trying something new: the '»' symbol is a link that will open the preceding link a new window.)

The 13 things they list are:

1 The placebo effect
2 The horizon problem
3 Ultra-energetic cosmic rays
4 Belfast homeopathy results
5 Dark matter
6 Viking's methane
7 Tetraneutrons
8 The Pioneer anomaly
9 Dark energy
10 The Kuiper cliff
11 The Wow signal
12 Not-so-constant constants
13 Cold fusion


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The article gives an explanation for each item on the list, briefly explaining some of the questions that surround them. It's a pretty good look at some of the mysteries that are still unexplained by science. Personally I wouldn't advise attempting the experiment they describe to demonstrate the placebo effect. In most jurisdictions that would be considered torture and in others (cue the rim shot) marriage. Hiiyooo!!, I'm here all week folks.

No seriously now, there are legitimate questions in science and, unlike the article I reviewed yesterday, this article does a little bit better at approaching the subject. And these articles are about the same subject, bad science, fringe science, wacky science, it all is the same thing. The unexplained and unexplored.

In my readings I've encountered many of the items on the list and have my own conclusions. To preface: I'm not a scientist, nor am I accredited by any institution that would give me any credibility. (heh) However I can read and follow many arguments in physics and chemistry thanks to a decent education. Yay Canada

Most of the items on the list are acknowledged mysteries of astrophysics and particle physics. Things ranging from Dark Matter to Tetraneutrons. And Most have little impact on life. Impact or not though, the Pioneer Anomaly is pretty cool. It just feeds the imagination to wonder why the probes are moving faster than they should as they exit the solar system.

Also on the list were a couple of the items dealing with health and biology. A subject I only know really through, well, being a biological sometimes healthy being.

The first, #1 (Placebo Effect), is a psychological/physiological mystery, and fascinating to behold. How it works is still unquantified, but the fact it works is well documented and accepted.

The other, #4 (Homoeopathy), I had always thought of as bad science. I'm sure that others disagree, and this is one of those subjects I railed about yesterday as something that needs to be treated seriously. So Seriously, it may make for good medicine, but the chemistry doesn't make sense so it's bad science.

For all the Homoeopaths and their followers out there if you are healthy, or improving then ignore my opinion. I wish you all the best in health and happiness. And really the only problem I have with Homoeopathy is the dilution theory. The idea that you can start with a mixture of water and a substance (ie:nightshade, or charcoal) and dilute it enough that there is nothing left of the substance. Essentially just water is left but that water still has the healing powers of the substance diluted out of it. Crazy enough for me, and a challenge to my preconceptions is the Belfast Study. Here is a controlled scientific study that seems to indicate some basis of truth to the dilution theory.

Two final items on the list that caught my eye were #6 (Viking's Methane) and #11 (the Wow signal). Both offer little in evidence, but they inspire hope in me that there really may be life out there. This is my own little bastion of bad science. I know that there is no evidence in support, and many logical arguments against, but I still believe, even if the only aliens I meet exist in the pages of my library.





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How To: Instantly Lose a Debate

Yup,
That's right, I know how to instantly lose a debate. I used to debate competitively when I was in school. Somewhere I have a box of trophies and plaques which should back up any claim I make to competence at debating. But today I'm not going to tell you How to Win. Today I'm going to tell you How to Lose. (and eventually tie this back to science, technology or speculative fiction writing)

It's easy to lose a debate. All you have to do is bring up one of the Forbidden Cases. These are cases (or 'debate topics' if you don't get the lingo) that will instantly polarize the room in such a way that the judges will have to give you the loss. I have seen this again and again in competition.

And I'm not suggesting you stand up and vomit in your first speech - that does not guarantee an instant loss, for proof look to the year Worlds was in Ireland.

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The Forbidden Cases:
Abortion
Euthanasia
The Holocaust/Israel

Some Non-Forbidden Cases that will likely lead to a loss in competition*
Death Penalty
Creationism in Schools or elsewhere
Marijuana

(*I should mention that these latter three are great starter debates out of competition to learn debating - just keep the debate on the floor - in other words nothing personal and when it's over leave the room friends. And again, these are lousy debates in competition.)

So why do the first 3 cases give you the loss? If it isn't obvious right away, then let me lay it out. People really care about those topics. Personal beliefs that have nothing to do with logic or reason.

In a normal debate tournament the participants are there for sport, competition, but not to actually challenge or defend their deep held personal beliefs. When things become personal all perspective is lost and the debate fails. This is why any government (case presenter in a debate) will instantly lose if they start a debate on those topics.

Now to bring us back to Science, Technology and Speculative Fiction writing.

Over at Space.com is a little bit of a bait/troll article about Wacky Scientific Theories.

Essentially the author: Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer, SETI Institute, discusses some of the wacky theories that he has been sent over the years. Ideas like:

"Aliens came to Earth a long time ago to engineer a new species, and Homo sapiens is the product."

He then goes on to suggest in a pseudo serious manner that these people pursue publication of their theories. Ideally in an academic setting, however like Galileo, they can also self publish.

It's mean, what's he's done.
It may seem funny, but most Wacky Scientific Theories are like the Forbidden Cases, people actually care about these ideas. Watch the discussion thread to see people take the bait.

Calling out the Crazies Proponents of Alternative Theories with a half mocking, half serious approach is not the way to win this argument. And it is an argument. Bad Science is a serious problem that will not go away because of laughter. Educate, Educate, Educate. Science isn't mythology, you don't need to have special privileges to understand it. You just need to learn.

What Seth Shostak does is invite these people to participate in the scientific discussion without giving them a clue as to the tools, resources and knowledge that will keep them from being dismissed or marginalized in that discussion. I would have liked to have seen Seth Shostak discuss the years of study and education that he himself went through in order to acquire the status and credentials he has in the scientific community.

In fact what I would have liked to have seen even more is Seth Shostak call for greater education in the Scientific Method, in the fundamentals of Observation, Hypothesis, Experiment, Conclusion, and in how it's used in science ranging from biology to quantum mechanics. That would do more to address the problem of Bad Science than any dozen or hundreds of rejected journal submissions and self published wacky ideas. (In Shostak's defence he did state that "Data" backing the idea is valuable)

In Conclusion:
Seth Shostak brought up an important topic to many people, but he handled it badly, so I'm forced to give him the loss, even though I agree with everything he says.




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Data Visualization Ohhhhhh Pretty

Over at SF Signal there was a post that brought to mind all the cyberpunk I read as a, well, punk kid. The visuals are spectacular, works of art that are also full of information. In an odd way it brings to mind Leonardo da Vinci's drawings and technical schematics. It was impossible for him to separate the artist from the designer, the art from the information. This also occurs here to eye pleasing effect.

The videos were taken from a BBC Show called Britain From Above and on their site you can find more videos and photos. When I think of people surfing the datastreams, this is the vision I see, not some blocky digital junk that seems to be most prevalent in the film versions of those books. When it comes to putting my own characters into a cyberworld this is the standard that I'm going to reach for.


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The Future is ?

Yesterday I talked about the future of the writing industry. So today it seems appropriate to talk about the future described by the writing industry. Over at Locus Online is an interesting piece titled: Pitfalls of Prophecy: Why Science Fiction So Often Fails to Predict the Future by Gary Westfahl. It's an interesting read that looks at some of the basic fallacies often made when predicting the future. I would like to note that it's not only Science Fiction authors that fall into these traps, plenty others predict the future and get it wrong. We just seem to expect the SciFi doods to get it right, perhaps unfairly.

Seriously, Science Fiction is about story telling, and while science has a role in shaping a plausible scenario, few stories can stand alone with just science. It's in the human interactions that Science Fiction excels. In the relationships and decisions that are shaped and forced by the backdrop of the (science) fictional reality. This is why I use the term Speculative Fiction. It frees me from having to defend the science (real or imaginary) in my stories.

The reality is that most of the best science fiction ever written has zero chance of ever being plausible. Hyperdrive? Alien Warfare? Robots using Humans as Batteries? If you look at the science behind those ideas it doesn't make sense. I don't know if there are aliens out there, but it really doesn't matter because the science is pretty clear on extra solar travel. It's SLOW. Lightspeed is a great speed limit, but it's also irrelevant. The energy requirements alone to bring a manned vessel to a fraction of the speed of light (1 or 2 percent) are high enough as to render it effectively impossible. So science tells us that we aren't going anywhere, and it's unlikely we're going to meet others along the way. The human battery thing just falls because it's a dumb idea, you don't really need to understand science to get that one. But Hyperdrive and Aliens and Human Batteries all make great backdrops to compelling stories.

Here is a great Mind Meld from SF Signal that looks at the predictions from Science Fiction and what has occurred and what has not. As with all Mind Melds a lot of the value is in the discussion by the participating authors as they present their own take on the question. James Gunn, Adam Roberts, and others being some of the participants.


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Dust Devils on Mars, Diamonds in the Sky

The Spirit Rover on Mars is still going strong after 5 years. Proving that there is life on Mars, if only the robotic type. Just recently Spirit's solar cells got a much needed cleaning. It's not much but a beneficial breeze has cleared enough dust off the solar panels to give Spirit a 30 watt-hour boost in it's daily energy budget.

Those little rovers were designed for a 3 month mission, and yet they are still going strong. There are a two factors the made this so. 1. Good Design/Planning 2. Luck. So much of what we do in space requires that combination. It's a new frontier where much is still unknown. What we can't design and plan for we must trust in luck and good fortune to take us through.

On that note, just a couple of weeks ago passed the anniversaries of Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia. Yes, all three events occurred on the calender within just a few days of each other. I sincerely hope that they are the last deaths in our quest for the stars, but I doubt they will be.

Back to happy thoughts: Diamonds in the Sky, An anthology of scientifically accurate physics orientated short stories, has recently been released as a free download(coming soon, meantime read online here). These are stories from Hugo, Nebula and Campbell-award winning authors, so it should be a good read.


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Fantasy Friday? - Sober Facts of Love

There is an article on the Science of Love over at the CBC website. The Article references recent research that shows love acts in the brain much like a drug. Including withdrawal symptoms for love lost.

I like to think that this is something that any poet could tell you. The Science is interesting, but this is one area where I think Fantasy does a better job of capturing all that is love. To try and capture that emotion in something so simplistic as chemical equations is to deny the greatness that love provides us.

Some of the most memorable characters in history and fiction were driven by love. Not just love of a romantic sort, but love of country, or of comrades in arms. A drug can provide superhuman strength, or the ability to stay awake for hours. But no drug can ultimately fulfil us the way simple selfless love can. No drug brings us closer to transcendence than love.
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Happy Birthday Darwin: You haven't changed a bit

Today is the 200 year anniversary of Darwin's (and Lincoln's) Birth. There are celebrations going on all over the world, and some great collections of information on Darwin are out there.

One little known commonality between the two great men, beyond their birth, was their view on Slavery.
To Quote Darwin.
“I thank God, I shall never again visit a slave country. To this day, if I hear a distant scream, it recalls with painful vividness my feelings, when passing a house near Pernamabuco, I heard the most pitiful moans, and could not but suspect that some poor slave was being tortured, yet knew that I was as powerless as a child even to remonstrate."
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Lincoln is famous for his role in ending slavery within the US, and now the impact of the slave trade on Darwin's theories is examined in a recent book.

While Darwin hasn't changed much since his death (funny that), Evolutionary Theory certainly has grown since he first proposed it. The addition of Genetic Science has taken our understanding of Evolution to places that Darwin never suspected. On that note, here is some of the latest Science on the Evolution of Humans (Homo Sap) and the disappearance of the Neanderthals. Through reconstruction of the Neanderthal genome researchers have determined that there was little, if any interbreeding between the two species.

One thing we did have in common, however, was the same variant of the FOXP2 gene known to play a role in speech. So it's possible that we communicated, but in the end, some 30,000 years ago, they ended as a race and we remained. Intellectually it's easy to say our ancestors (Cro-Magnon) were smarter, more able hunters, and better suited to the environment than Neanderthal was. Emotionally though I have to wonder what the reality of "Survival of the Fittest" was between two species so similar that they may have shared languages or even cultures if not beds.



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The Dream Machine

So I've been out of the game for a day or two, I may have mentioned the chronic pain thing before. But today I'm back and with a look at a little bit of 1960's literature, art, science and drug free Hallucinations.

FLicKeR is a documentary film about Brion Gysin and the Dream Machine. The film explores Gysin's, and others belief, that a state of transcendence could be reached through a combination of science, art and magic.

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What is the Dream Machine?

It's a lamp on a record player covered by a cylindrical shade with a repeating cut out pattern. Or it's the key to tapping into the time space continuum. Take your pick.

Brion Gysin was an artist who experimented with many mediums, and is credited with discovering the 'cut up' method that was used by Williams S. Burroughs in the 'Naked Lunch'. He also was a pioneer in Machine Poetry. You can listen to some of Gysin's work at UbuWeb Sound. I recommend the poem "I Am".

The Film, FLicKeR, focuses principally on the Dream Machine, but through interviews with artists and former acquaintances a vision is built of a wanderer. Gysin is a man who never stayed in one place for too long, the list of countries he lived in is lengthly. Gysin spent his days in a quest of self exploration, his goal to discover new territory in art and literature, using science and the occult. The 'Occult' could also be substituted for '1950's/60's Psychology' with little change to the meaning. Heck even '50's/60's Drug Culture' would work as a substitute.

The Dream Machine can induce hallucinations in people, creating a high like experience. All you have to do is get close to it and shut your eyes, the flickering lights do the rest. Drugs are not required, and could even make the experience dangerous. The idea of a machine that can cause hallucinations through flickering light is straight out of Science Fiction (and fact!).

Musicians like Iggy Pop and Kurt Cobain have used Dream Machines; famous writers, painters, poets, the list goes on, have also used them. Many of those artists even make an appearance in the documentary (though not Kurt, RIP). Some are still espousing the virtues of the Dream Machine while others have moved on. All of them speak highly of the talent and vision of Gysin.

Brion Gysin was just one of many artists on a quest for transcendence and the tools they used were drugs, science and magic. Whether or not any of them found it isn't a judgement made by the filmmakers. What the film does show is how Gysin's and others efforts led to some of the most radical/craziest concepts of the 20th century. Surrealism, Machine Poetry, the Beat Generation, Cultural Terrorism, to name just a few.

A compelling image is created of the lives these people led, of the passions and failures that drove them. One lesson of this movie is that the limits of the mind, of imagination and creativity, are far beyond what many of us accept them to be. If you can handle the potentially seizure inducing lights and images, then there is a lot to be found in this documentary.

FLicKeR was awarded a Special Jury Prize at the 2008 Hot Docs Festival, and has wowed audiences at festivals in Canada and around the world. Currently it is showing on Bravo.



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Botox, Loss of Empathy and Darwin

There's an article about the evolution of facial expressions published in 2008 at Discover Magazine. The Article (3 decent pages) goes into detail on Darwins fascination with human and animal facial expressions. The author (Carl Zimmer) traces the early studies of Darwin in this field through to the understanding of modern science. It's fascinating stuff, especially when they start talking about the Botox.
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According to science a good part of our ability to understand facial expressions, to empathize with people, depends on our ability to mimic the expression. When we mimic someone's expression, we actually experience the emotion. As Darwin discovered even understanding the snarl of a dog is easy once you writhe your own lips and expose teeth (which makes me wonder about mimicking alien faces).

In different studies researchers paralysed or otherwise limited people's ability to smile. They found that this inhibited the test subject's ability to understand/recognize a smile in a picture. Using brain scans researchers have actually mapped a direct link between facial muscles and brain activity in the emotion centres.

Fascinating stuff. But where is the Botox? Well it so happens that not only are researchers paralysing facial muscles, but so are plastic surgeons. And the muscles they tend to paralyse the most? Frown lines.

People are unable to frown, and thus are less able to understand/empathize with the emotions that produces those frowns. Emotions like anger and sadness. It can be theorized that this is leading to a happier population. Fewer people frowning, triggering few empathetic frown responses, and the spiral goes down to zero. It may even explain why the Stars seem to have a better life than the rest of us. They do have a better life. They can't get sad or feel the pain of others as easily.

However the article finishes with this comment on our Botox Culture:
"But for all the Botox youthfulness plastic surgeons may want to think about, neuroscience raises a darker possibility. Making faces helps us understand how other people are feeling. By altering our faces we’re tampering with the ancient lines of communication between face and brain that may change our minds in ways we don’t yet understand."


Now that could be an interesting story.



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The Age of the Cyborg impacts Warranty Coverage

There's a posting at robots.net that has collected a together couple of recent news stories on Cyborgs. Sadly they aren't the death ray wielding type, but still pretty interesting stuff.

The Second of the two stories (which I'll mention first), is a pretty standard piece that fits with traditional image of a cyborg. It's about Ginny Ong, 21, a student who can hear thanks to a cochlear implant.

It isn't exactly super hearing, but it's super that she can hear. Bionic augmentation/replacement of hearing or other senses is straight out of the pages of many books. In this case though it's just a part of her life, and someday the lives of many others who have hearing problems as the technology (40,000 US$) comes down in price.

The First story however is an essay entitled The Age of the Cyborg from some local (University of British Columbia) professors. They haven't juiced up local law enforcement yet, instead they are developing materials for nanoscale medical implants. These implants can be used as support structures inside the body, releasing medicine and aiding in the regeneration of damaged tissues. An example being skin on a burn victim, another being a damaged heart valve.

This is an interesting story because it shows an extension of the definition of cyborg, taking it beyond biomechanical wonders. Here is where Science starts to surpass and redefine Fiction. The Cyborgs these professors predict are invisible, subtle, in fact in many ways elegant. No noisy hydraulics or metal exo-skeletons, just normal people with a few artificial structures supplanting and boosting their biological body.

The Cyborg of the Future isn't the Hulking Silver Dood with the resonate voice, instead it's the seventy year old with a new hip, or it's a seventeen year old girl who enjoys the sound of the birds in the morning.


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Holographic Universe

And it seems that the resolution isn't perfect.

There's an Article at New Scientist that discusses some surprising results from the GEO600 experiment. The original intent of the experiment was to detect Gravity Waves. While they haven't succeeded at that they may have detected evidence that supports a Holographic Theory of the Universe.

From the article:

For many months, the GEO600 team-members had been scratching their heads over inexplicable noise that is plaguing their giant detector. Then, out of the blue, a researcher approached them with an explanation. In fact, he had even predicted the noise before he knew they were detecting it. According to Craig Hogan, a physicist at the Fermilab particle physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time - the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into "grains", just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in. "It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time," says Hogan.

Now as a Speculative Fiction writer this opens up all sorts of possibilities, beyond the standard Matrix and 13th Floor references. It's easy to see where the fringe has taken the concept.

For me the really exciting story here is the human story. Imagine being the lone theorist who sent a package of equations to GEO600. Suggesting a wild explanation for what had till then been dismissed as random noise. The struggle to have your theories accepted and verified. Think of the moment when people realized that this wasn't noise but the very essence of the universe. That can be the end of the story as much as it can be a beginning.

As much as science fiction contains science, it's strength lies in it's ability to showcase the limits of human emotion and ability in novel environments. Science Fiction doesn't need to have spaceships and rayguns to differentiate it from contemporary fiction. Doing research on Gravity Waves in the contemporary world and discovering the fundamental structure of the universe can easily be called science fiction. We have the novel environment of the research facility, the excitement of new discoveries at the edge of human knowledge, and the vindication of our hero, the lone researcher. Very much Science Fiction to me, only today of course it's news.


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