Walking on the Moon

I only have a week to go before my critical analysis paper is due and I'm panicing a bit. I want to do a story from Sex and Violence in Zero G, but I'm not sure which one. I'm now leaning towards the first "Captain Future" story. First, let's take a look at the Near Space saga as a whole:

- Influenced by Robert A. Heinlein

The Near Space stories are a tribute to Heinlein's Future History stories. The first story in Near Space is "Walking on the Moon", a homage to Heinlein's "The Man Who Sold the Moon" an early tale in Future History. Like Future History, Near Space is told from precommercialized space travel in Walking in 2010 to "Mister Chicago" which is near the end of the timeline in 2093.

Heinlein is featured in the wall of photos at Diamond Back Jack's, with Jack Baker the proprietor of the bar at a science fiction convention when he was a kid.

- Not A Randroid Stroke Book

Heinlein's characters were often two dimensional. Harriman in "The Man Who Sold the Moon" was typical, a coiled spring of "Can Do" and all the positives of big "C" Capitalism in action. While I think an argument could be made that this was the gold standard of science fiction pulp writing at the time, you can see that Ayn Rand used this style as a model for her characters.

Steele is clearly a Heinlein fan, but takes the opposite tack. The big space companies as a group are portrayed as being obnoxious, meddlesome, clueless and occasionally sinister. Skycorp (later ConSpace), the first space company is the most directly portrayed throughout the series. Whereas Harriman himself is a focus throughout Future History, McGuiness the CEO of Skycorp never gets any screen time and is only referred to in a few stories.

Our first view of Skycorp is in "Free Beer and The William Casey Society." This story shows Skycorp (and NASA) as stodgy by enforcing a "no booze" regimen in space.

Later, in "The Return of Weird Frank" (my favorite Diamond Back Jack story, for the record) when the author describes the boredom of working in space ("People often compared the wild nightlife on Skycan to that of Deadhorse, Alaska.") and when discussing The Sex Monster. "Skycan was a small, closed environment, and the company frowned on sexual congress in space ('insurance problems' was the catch-all phrase, as was for almost everything else which was fun.)"

In "Sugar's Blues" another corporation with operations in space is portrayed as sinister. The story compares the spacers who hang out at Diamond Back Jack's with company men "They were company men. Any company; pick one, they all look alike." Attired from JC Pennys, flat top haircuts and used car dealer mustaches - that is more or less how the author describes them. Versus the workers who are in jeans, Skycorp caps and cowboy shirts.

The company, Spectrum-Mellencamp a biological firm, frames Sugar ('because everything I do comes out sweet') Saltzman and his crew for drug use after they destroy a space station module containing the company's plans for the first street legal recreational drug. After Saltzman allows the narrator (a journalist on the space beat) to publish what happened, the company gets revenge by burning down Diamond Back Jack's.

In the novel Orbital Decay, we see Skycorp collude with the National Security Agency to place a satellite in orbit that will act as a tap on every line of communication in the world. It is tested on American citizens.

- A Paen to the Working Man

Steele's Near Space stories take blue collar workers and put them in the role that test pilots and astronauts filled in Wolfe's The Right Stuff. His characters are bawdy and weird where test pilots and the early astronauts are seen as the figurehead of America.

This contrast is particularly sharp in Orbital Decay and Clarke County Space. Decay has its protagonists many of the spacers mentioned in the Diamond Back Jack stories:

- "Virgin" Bruce Neiman, a former biker on the run from the law.

- Lisa Barnhart, a shuttle pilot.

It also adds

- Popeye Hooker, a depressed former shrimper, believes he is on the run from the law.

- Jack Hamilton, a botanist who is more than he seems, and the narrator of the story.

Their antagonist is Captain H. G. Wallace, the project supervisor of Skycan, Skycorp and the National Security Agency.

Captain Wallace is a deliberate twisting of a sci-fi trope. When Hamilton first meets Wallace, he recalls seeing him in interviews. He looks like someone who just walked out of The Right Stuff. Crew cut. Rugged build. Lots of talk about man's destiny in space.

Upon meeting him, he has crazy eyes, sallow, sunken features - he seems a shadow of his former self. Note Wallace's initials H. G. W. - it is a reference to Herbert George Wells, an early science fiction author, and the first author to write a fictional account of a trip to the Moon. Wallace could easily be compared to Captain Queeg from the Caine Mutiny, or General Ripper from Doctor Strangelove. It isn't simply that all three of these characters go insane, but the way they go insane - they live in a particular reality, informed by their prejudices and enforced by their role as commander.

Wallace believes that those who settle in outer space are the next step in mankind's evolution. They must be morally and physically superior to average men. This is similar to Wolfe's The Right Stuff, in that Wolfe suggests that test pilots and astronauts are a breed apart, that they possess a special quality that most men and women do not have. His crew are mostly blue collar workers, odd ones at that, who have been driven nuts by isolation and boredom. The clear difference between what should be and what is drives Wallace around the bend.

This is apparent in a number of places in the novel, and as the story winds up Wallace begins to isolate himself from the crew. He has a Queegesque moment at the end of the novel when he claims that the crew's demands to keep the offspring of two cats brought up for research purposes is the beginning of the mutiny.

In Clarke County Space, the conflict is between the New Ark - a sort of hippie commune and Clarke County Corporation, the company which built the Clarke County Space Station. There is also a conflict between a mafia hitman (the Golem) and the Sheriff of Clarke County that intertwines with the main plot - the struggle between the farmers (New Ark) and the tourism board (3C).

This story is an homage to the Heinlein novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. In both stories we have a revolutionary struggle. In Mistress, the average Lunar citizen is a prisoner - either criminal or political. New Ark party members can be readily compared to them, Clarke County was written during the Reagan years when being referred to as a "hippy" was an insult and the political left was on the wane. In both novels, the colonists use weapons of mass destruction as a deterrent force - in Mistress the colonists actually use the weapons. In the case of Mistress, this weapons takes the form of large chunks of the regolith hurled from the lunar surface by catapult at the Earth - these catapults were formerly used to send raw materials to Earth orbit for processing. In Clarke County, the weapon is an illegal 100 megaton nuke that was secretly placed in Earth orbit. In both revolutions help is given from an unexpected quarter. In the case of Mistress it is given by the Moon's central computer which has been sentient for some time, though this is not known by society at large. In Clarke County also has a secret artificially intelligent computer who styles itself "Blind Boy Grunt" after Bob Dylan, because he wishes he was Dylan. Of the two, Blind Boy Grunt has a more developed personality and a very hackish sense of humor. Both end with the founding of the first off world nation, in Heinlein's work it is just the Moon, in Steele's it is an alliance between Clarke County, Descartes Station on the Moon and Arisia Station on Mars called the Pax Ad Astra. The actual formation of the Pax is not shown in the novels, but Steele shows us a seen from the later independence struggle in The War Memorial. The War Memorial is a stark contrast with the scenes of combat in Mistress. Death is swift, horrifying and impersonal in The War Memorial. The memorial referenced in the title is a person whose combat space suit malfunctions after a nearby artillery strike renders his suit immobile. He watches as the invading force he is a part of is slaughtered by the Pax Militia's long range guns, helpless to save his comrades or himself. He dies in his suit, which except for a piece of piping in the CPU housing of the suit (shrapnel from the artillery strike), is completely untouched by the ravages of war. When a Pax Militia patrol finds him, they leave him untouched except for a small circle of stones at his feet to remember the fallen.

Heinlein was a product of World War II, combat in Moon and all his novels is idealized as a righteous struggle. Action sequences are always a matter of good versus evil. Steele is a product of the baby boom, and Vietnam - the first televised war. In "The War Memorial," the conflict of Pax versus Earth is not shown in this way, but through the eyes of the protagonist - full of fear and the knowledge that death can strike at any moment before his suit malfunctions; afterwards is the knowledge that he will die, and very soon.

The main character of Clarke County, Jenny Schorr (later Jenny Pell) bears examination. While she is one of several protagonists, Schorr is the one who changes the most, and moves the plot forward. She cuckolds her husband with Sheriff Bigthorn whom she is in love with. Her husband Neil Schorr, is both distant and unfaithful to her - both with his female admirers and the New Ark Party itself. She pushes forward the idea of independence for Clarke County when she sees that there can be no compromise with the Clarke County Corporation and that her husband is content to fruitlessly debate with them. She declares her independence from him and 3C. While Heinlein is noted as one of the few pulp era authors who had strong female characters in the leading role, they often resembled his male characters - coiled springs of can do and resourcefulness, often unemotional or critical of emotion. They were essentially his male characters with a sex change. Schorr is convincing as a female character. While she has moments where she is confident, she is also uncertain, emotional and even self-criticizing. I am not saying these are feminine attributes, they are human attributes. Jenny Pell is more believable as a person than Heinlein's protagonists.

- The Palace Coup

This isn't directly covered in a story, but is treated as history after a certain point, we see it discussed in "Zwarte Piet's Tale." Pell's Pax Ad Astra falls to a palace coup. Pell's party attempts to rule by consensus, which is nigh impossible considering the distances involved between Clarke County, the Moon and Mars. Her former husband Neil Schorr and a number of conservative elements within the Pax form a Monarchist party, supporting a constitutional monarchy. There is a coup. Mars and the Jovian moons declare their independence from the new Pax. The constitutional part is a sham, after Queen Macedonia is crowned, the government of Pax shows an active disregard for the rights and happiness of its citizens.

This is seen in "Zwarte Piet's Tale," the Pax tells would-be defectors to Mars that the Martian government will shoot down any Pax lander in their air space.

In "Kronos," neither the crew of the Intrepid nor the Royal Rapid Response Militia sent to Titan are trusted with the particulars of their mission. The crew is felt to be untrusted because they are "superiors" (humans bred with adaptions for space travel) and many superiors sided with the Jovians when they declared independence. The Royal Militia is deemed untrustworthy because it is made up of common citizens, drafted into national service.

Later in the Captain Future saga, Pax Naval Intelligence blackmails the protagonists into a kidnap attempt on Jenny Pell. They want to bring her back to the Pax to face treason charges and to interrogate her for information regarding the Earth facility on Mercury - the only colony owned by an Earth company in the inner Solar System. This also appears to be an attempt at revenge by Neil Schorr, her former husband who is now Prime Minister of the Pax Ad Astra.

If the original Pax represented the political left, the new Pax represents the American right. While they are more efficient at accomplishing their objectives due to the authoritarian structure of the government, they are also seen to be petty, corrupt and indifferent to the needs of the citizenry. Their primary goal is the perpetuation of the monarchy and the extension of its power by any means necessary.

This part of the Near Space saga is more in agreement with Heinlein's work. Heinlein was also anti-authoritarian, though the views presented in his novels come closer to small "l" libertarianism than the traditional left. Both author's used their series to decry prejudice. This can be seen in Heinlein's work in Stranger in a Strange Land; in Steele's work it can be seen in both The Pink Triangle and in the Captain Future saga. In particular, Steele highlights that it is okay to be different, and even to be uneasy at the differences in others, but that you are ultimately responsible for your actions.

Okay, game off - I know this is talky, but I wanted to get some of this out there so I could figure out how I want to approach this. I'm still not one hundred percent sure of which Near Space tale I'd like to do, or even if I'll be allowed to do it. There really isn't anything in the literature text that excites me. Ursula K. Guinn? Yuck.

Loot Runs

I was thinking of computer role-playing games in terms of my future paper while I was playing Fallout 3 the other day. The progression curve seems backwards to me. When I talk about "progression" here, I mean it in the sense of the difficulty curve, but that affects story progression too.

Most CRPGs start the players out as level one schlubs. Rats and wild boars are a major cause of death among level one characters. As they defeat these rather modest enemies and advance the story they gain in levels; they get new equipment that adds to their stats. By end game they are a walking engine of destruction, almost invincible save for the end boss or falling asleep at the keyboard. Measuring progression by level is part of the problem.

CRPGs are the descendants of tabletop RPGs and those trace their roots back to Dungeons and Dragons. Early D&D had its own roots in tabletop wargaming. D&D used level based progression, and thus CRPGs use it today. But there are some serious mathematical issues that can come from this scheme. I recall two games of Robotech back when I used to play tabletop games regularly. One gamemaster followed the developer's advice of parcelling out experience points, which are used to determine the player's level, very sparingly. In his game it took six months to a year of regular weekly play to hit the next level. The other gamemaster handed them out like candy on Halloween. His players quickly passed the level that the designers recommended for character retirement (the player character becomes a non-player character used to introduce adventures by the GM) and on to the level cap. Characters in Robotech really weren't designed to be played at that level. A single five player party would take on whole alien armadas - by themselves. This is roughly the equivalent of five soldiers winning World War II. My Fallout 3 game on the PS3 has reached this point. There really aren't any enemies that are a threat to me anymore, and that kills a story dead.

I think there might be a better way of handling progression in computer games. Imagine if we turned this equation upside down. The player begins as a major hero - at the "level cap," they are well skilled and equipped - we can skip killing 1,000 boars for experience. The game designer uses this period of nigh invulnerability to teach the player how the game works. Over time though, the player gets progressively weaker. His stats and skills don't go down, but his equipment starts to wear out, in a modern game ammunition might become scarce. This reverse progression means that enemies don't have to scale upwards as dramatically as they have to using a more conventional progression scheme. Players have to make choices about when they want to use their equipment - they're less likely to pull out the +12 Sword of Awesome or the Man Portable Nuke Cannon against the diseased rat if they know it might not be available against a more threatening monster. I think this system allows more freedom for the writer - players out leveling content is less of a concern.

Goodbye, Research Paper. Hello Critical Analysis

My research paper is done, I have no regrets.

The class has moved on to critical analysis now. We started out looking at poetry, and how you should read it. Now, we have the option of doing a paper on either a short story or a poem.

As poetry is for the most part not my thing (my sense of rhythm is 404), I'm looking at short stories. Vonnegut's "Welcome to the Monkey House" is my current front runner, but I'm tearing through my library and the web. I've also considered doing it on the Zen story "Trading Dialogue for Lodging" which is a favorite of mine. I think the guy who wrote that should be resurrected and given a staff position on Saturday Night Live.

My Top Five - Bad Films

Sure, top five lists are cliché, consider this an homage to one of my favorite movies of all time, High Fidelity.


Number 5 - Plan 9 from Outer Space

Featuring the writing of Ed Wood, and starring Bela Lugosi (and Mr. Wood's chiropractor playing Lugosi after he died during the filming), Vampira and the massive bulk of Tor Johnson. This film was acclaimed the worst movie of all time by the book The Golden Turkey Awards. Tim Burton, made a film about the making of the movie with a star-studded cast. 

My favorite "actor" in the film is The Amazing Criswell, a talk show psychic who didn't shy away from making precise predictions. In 1968 he predicted the end of the world would occur on August 18, 1999 when all the oxygen would be sucked from the Earth by a black rainbow. Obviously this is absolutely true and all this business about 2012 is a lot of hog wash. You can also listen to May West sing about Criswell here. And you probably should. More Criswell from the intro to Plan 9:

The first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club!

Number four: The Omega Man - A Remake of The Last Man on Earth

This is a remake of the vastly superior Vincent Price classic, it's pure 70s and pure pain. Essentially a zombie movie, but the zombies aren't slow or mindless - they're an active, cunning opponent. Something that can't be said of Charleton Heston, the movie's lead.

Number Three: Space Hunter, Adventures in the Forbidden Zone

Sadly, I can't find a trailer for this one. You might be able to find quite a bit more than the trailer elsewhere. Hint. Hint. I remember seeing it as a kid, it has to be one of the worst movies of all time and features a young Molly Ringwald as the plucky sidekick. In this 3-D film Peter Strauss plays Wolff the space adventurer who must rescue a trio of shipwrecked super models from the clutches of Overdog.

Overdog, played by Michael Ironside is probably one of the most perplexing and disturbing villains ever played on screen.

Number three: Strays

As tempting as it would be to list the Vin Diesel movie, this isn't it. I'm bending the rules - this one is made-for-tv, but it still counts.

I originally saw this on Joe Bob's Drive-In Theater, and it has to be one of the silliest horror movie plots ever conceived. Written by former Hardy Boy Shaun Cassidy, this movie is the standard American family buys a dream house but there's something wrong. In this case the trouble is a pack of feral house cats. I wish I was kidding. One of the most unintentionally funny movies you'll ever see.

Number two: The Beast

Another made for TV classics, hawked endlessly by the Sci-Fi channel along with its desperately unnecessary sequel. A giant squid terrorizes a small fishing community in the Pacific Northwest. I'm sick of the squid.

And the number one bad film is . . . the envelope please . . . .

Zardoz

This movie was the impetus for this post. A friend of mine mentioned that she has seen this, and quoted the famous line:

Which isn't the sort of thing you normally hear when you're doing your shopping. But I was wrong, I could've sworn that Burt Reynolds was the lead in this movie. It seems like the sort of movie Burt Reynolds should star in. I guess I'd prefer to remember Sean Connery as 007.

Down to business, in this film Sean Connery plays an "exterminator" in the post apocalyptic future. Sworn to the god Zardoz (that'd be the giant floating head that carries on about wangs), a man who kills the underclass known as "brutals." In a way it is Teenage Cave Man meets the 1970s. In time, he discovers the shocking (read: not-all-that-shocking) truth about his civilization and his god.

Catching Up

Or at least catching my breath. I want to review my progress thus far, and talk about some things that have been on my mind lately.

This has been a pretty hectic term, that was kind of my intention going into it. I've had a pretty laid back schedule for the past two or three years in terms of work and school, I wanted to see if I could handle it. I've done pretty well, but I think I'm ready for a break next term. I'm going to take a class on javascript, and I really want to focus my attention on it.

I've learned the value of back ups the hard way this term. Overall, I responded well to my iMac (the machine I do most of my school work on) dying, I'm thankful I have this Macbook available as well. Most of the things I've been working on are located in Google Docs or in SPC's Angel system, so I didn't really lose anything. I wish I hadn't freaked out so much about it though - I lost a lot of time to that, and well, it really wasn't very productive. The video card was still just as fried, ya know? On the upside, I'll be getting it back in the next couple of days.

In terms of this class, I feel bad. Because I spent so much of the first part of the term being so slammed, I don't think I produced good work. What I turned in was often rushed, and in the case of my outline, incomplete. Whether I like outlining or not (and I don't) isn't the issue. I've got a couple of student's that I'm helping, and I don't think they got my best efforts either, though I'm sure they'll do fine in any case. It's mostly a matter of confidence.

This blog has been really enjoyable, I had intended to start blogging this year one way or another, and getting a measure of extra credit is just icing on the cake. I think I need to take more time in proofing and editing the articles I post here. I need to watch my temper, I'm far too easily outraged and am likely to go launch a rant when I'm in that state. Being passionate about something is okay, but I suspect people have a limited tolerance for ranting.

I'm looking forward to going back to school on Monday. See you there.

Seven Hundred and Fifty Words

I've been wanting to talk about this for a while, but events have overtaken me.  750words.com is a great tool for Composition students or anyone interested in writing. The premise is based on a technique popularized by The Artists' Way by Julia Cameron. While I'm not thrilled with the flash on her homepage (can flash rendered pages just die already? they are not big, nor are they clever), the exercise is sound enough. Write 750 words, about three pages every morning. The original appears to call for long hand writing, I'll take the web version, thanks. Writing long hand for any extended period is a very painful exercise for me (as I've recently had to rediscover), and frankly I end up focusing more on trying to make my print legible than anything else.  The website tracks your writing, and scores you based on how much you write (up to 750 words - it does provide an average total number of words as well), and whether you allow yourself to be distracted. The idea is to simply free write in one continuous session. You can sign into the service via your Google account (my preference), Facebook connect, or through a Yahoo account.

It also provides a wide variety of stats. How fast you completed your words versus the site average, how many distractions, how fast you typed. It also analyzes your word choices in a variety of ways. You can sign up for a "challenge" each month, and you can assign a reward for completing the challenge as well as a penalty for failure. I like the idea of the challenge, but I'm not sure how comfortable I am with rewards or penalties. I feel I'm more apt to learn when I'm just allowed to play with no consequences. Luckily, the challenge section is totally optional. I think the creator of this web app's personal page is just as interesting as the application itself, check it out.

The writing environment itself is very sparse and minimalist. It is very much as it should be. You do get options on a separate page for setting font and point size, but the default was just fine for me. I'm playing around with going to arial 12 for tomorrow and I'll see how that works out. So far, I'm having a really good time with the site and I expect it's going to help my productivity as a writer.

The toughest part of any writing project is getting started. The temptation is always to check one more source, to do another outline (if you're into that sort of thing, it's not my cup of meat really . . .), or otherwise procrastinate in delivering the paper. I think continual, deliberate practice takes the intimidation factor out of writing. I always imagine it as that moment when you're standing at the edge of a diving board, but have not yet started your jump. That moment is intimidating, it is an obstacle - it is all too easy at that moment to turn around and walk down the ladder. Maybe do a few laps, or have a soda. But if you practice overcoming that moment without fail everyday, it will cease to be a problem. I'm particularly fond of this way of doing free writing as it feels like a game, and that in itself is sufficient motivation to keep me going. I'm placed at 715th and climbing!

Really Simple Syndication, Google Reader and Students

Despite the fact that I'm roughing it tonight, I'm just going to soldier on. We need to talk about Really Simple Syndication or RSS. As a student, this is something you need to know about. RSS allows you to know when a website, like this blog has been updated with new content. It's used all over the web from Boing Boing to ZDnet. In order to take advantage of RSS you need to subscribe, either through your browser's RSS feature or through an RSS reader. To do this in a browser you click on the feed symbol.

This is what the RSS symbol looks like in Safari on Mac OS X 10.6.2.

This is the standard broadcast symbol for RSS.

Often, syndicated content will have a link in each post asking you to subscribe as well.

This is what Lifehacker's subscription page looks like when you subscribe in Safari.

This is the RSS screen in Opera 10.

I don't use a browser to read RSS though, I prefer a reader. There are a variety of local readers available for just about any operating system, but my preference is Google Reader.

This is Google Reader. I like it because it can go anywhere you do. It works on your desktop, notebook and many internet connected mobile phones. This can be a real advantage when say, your desktop dies, as mine just did. I didn't lose any of my RSS feeds and everything stays up to date. It's also integrated with Google's new social networking product Buzz - as you can see in this picture. This allows people I follow to share their favorite articles with me, and vice versa. In Reader, you just copy the address you want to view in reader, press the add a subscription button, and paste. Then you can organize it with folders like I have, and it's immediately available for reading.

You can also have persistant Google searches show up in Reader, this is a real benefit for students - you can put in a term that you're writing a research paper on, see the initial search hits and see if new ones turn up each day. It's like having a research assistant right in your browser. It also allows you to see stats, hence why I know that I have three subscribers on this blog, though it doesn't say specifically who they are (I know two of the three subscribers I have personally.) You can see how often each blog you're subscribed to updates, how much of each blog you've read and a variety of other information. If you're into that kind of thing, and I most certainly am.

In addition to using a search engine like Google, Google blogs, or Technorati to find blogs you're interested in, Reader will also suggest blogs based on what you're currently subscribed to. Again, if you're doing research this can be invaluable. Best of all, it's free. I've experimented with a few local (as in on your computer's harddrive) readers, but none has impressed me as much as Google's.

If there is an RSS reader you're using, I'd love to hear about it or maybe you have a question, please let me know in the comments.