Category: Science Fiction

Book Review: Bowl of Heaven by Gregory Benford and Larry Niven.

A lot of Science Fiction is about future technology. Imagining structures, vehicles and devices beyond what we are capable of building today. Some novels are set in the far future with starships and colonies on other planets. Others may describe the world of tomorrow with AI networks controlling robots who have eliminated boring, repetitive manual labour so that people no longer have to (can?) work for a living.

What will our future habitats on other worlds look like? Is today’s Science Fiction tomorrow’s reality? (Credit: Space.com)

If that’s the kind of SF that you enjoy, if you’re interested in reading about a really big, really futuristic, ultimate high tech piece of engineering then I think you’ll like “The Bowl of Heaven” by Gregory Benford and Larry Niven. The story begins with a human starship on route from Earth to another solar system. The ship is named ‘The Sunseeker’ and it’s a sleeper ship taking centuries to cross interstellar space while the vast majority of its passengers and crew are hibernating. Once at their new world the sleepers will be awakened and begin their task of terra-forming a new home for the human race. As I began to read ‘the Bowl of Heaven’ the setup kinda reminded me of the movie ‘Passengers’ that I reviewed in my post of 28December2016.

The starship from the movie “Passengers” was a

And like in ‘Passengers’ the Sunseeker has something happen to it in mid-voyage that’s changes everything. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere a star appears not very far away from the ship. Now stars don’t just pop into existence so the only two non-sleeping persons on board the Sunseeker, a couple of engineers whose training is in monitoring ship’s performance not astronomy, decide to wake a scientist in order to make some observations of this strange phenomenon. Those observations result in more people being woken up and before long a couple of dozen people, including the ship’s captain, are awake trying to figure out what they should do.

The cover of ‘Bowl of Heaven’ by Gregory Benford (l) and Larry Niven (r). (Credit: Tor.com)

What they found was that the star had been hiding inside an incomplete Dyson sphere. What’s a Dyson sphere? Well the noted physicist Freeman Dyson once suggested that the ultimate energy source would be to completely enclose a star inside a sphere. Solar collectors would then gather the entire energy output of that star. Obviously only a highly intelligent, very technologically sophisticated race could even begin to build such a thing.

Physicist Freeman Dyson originated the notion of surrounding a star with a sphere in order to capture its entire energy output. (Credit: LabRoots)

Now in ‘The Bowl of Heaven’ the star isn’t inside a complete Dyson Sphere, it’s more like a bowl covering most of the star, hence the novel’s title. It’s when the Sunseeker moves to a certain angle that the star inside becomes visible through the top of the bowl. This accounts for the star seeming to appear from nowhere.

And if encapsulating an entire star doesn’t impress you how about this, mounted around the rim of the bowl are enormous magnetic field projectors that focus the star’s solar wind into a propulsive jet. This jet is propelling the star and it’s bowl across the galaxy. Not a starship but rather a shipstar, a star turned into a ship!

Turning a star into a ship! Now that’s imagination! (Credit: Gregory Benford)

This concept is in fact an expansion of the main idea in author Larry Niven’s earlier novel ‘Ringworld’ where a ring is constructed completely around a star, again capturing an enormous amount of energy. In ‘Ringworld’ the ring rotates around the star not only producing centripetal force to act as gravity for the inhabitants but also reducing the structural stress on the ring. The basic idea of ‘The Bowl of Heaven’ is an extension of ‘Ringworld’ turning an entire solar system into a vehicle for exploring the galaxy.

The cover of Larry Niven’s earlier novel ‘Ringworld’. The technology of ‘The Bowl f Heaven’ is an extension of that in Ringworld. (Credit:The Atlantic)

Attempting to make contact with the intelligences controlling the shipstar the crew of Sunseeker go inside the bowl and send a landing party to the surface. Well it turns out that the aliens are rather haughty and treat other species as nothing more than intelligent animals, quite a few of whom they’ve genetically modified to serve them on the shipstar. The human landing party escapes however and what follows is a series of adventures on the surface of the bowl.

Living on the inside of the Bowl you’d never see nighttime or any change of seasons! (Credit: Tor/Forge Blog)

 And that’s my problem with ‘The Bowl of Heaven’ because while those adventures are interesting they are really beside the plot and they certainly go on for too long! After several hundred pages of the landing party roving around the bowl meeting different kinds of aliens and learning how to survive in such a strange environment you want to say. “Get on with it!”

But authors Niven and Benford don’t, because you see ‘The Bowl of Heaven’ is just the first installment of yet another series of novels. The story of the crew of Sunseeker in fact continues in the novel ‘Shipstar’. The problem with ‘The Bowl of Heaven’ is the problem with these series in general, too much filler so that the author or authors can turn one good idea into several books!

I have to admit that I’m getting a bit tied of all these trilogies or longer. I’d love to read another novel like ‘The Martian’ where the story actually ends when the book does.

The use of subplots to stretch out a story is very common and becoming more so in modern SF because of the large number of multi-novel series being written. The fact that they are so common doesn’t mean that they’re any good! (Credit: Gideon’s Screenwriting Tips)

Still, ‘The Bowl of Heaven’ was fun to read, and you can bet that I’ll be reading, and reviewing ‘Shipstar’ before very long. I do recommend it, but be aware that you’re going to have to read at least one more book in order to find out what happens in the end.

TV Review: ‘Lovecraft Country’ and a few remarks about the works of H. P. Lovecraft, and his racism.

“Lovecraft Country’ is a new series on HBO from executive producers Misha Green and J. J. Abrams. Based on a novel by Matt Ruff ‘Lovecraft Country’ is a chronicle of the adventures of a young black couple Atticus Freeman, played by actor Jonathan Majors, and Leticia Lewis, played by Jurnee Smollet-Bell. Taking place in the 1950s in ‘Lovecraft Country’ Atticus and Leticia, along with their relatives and friends must not only endure the prevalent racism of the time but also survive the machinations of a secret occult society of rich white people.

Official HBO poster for Lovecraft Country starring Jonathan Majors and Jurnee Smollet-Bell.(Credit: HBO)

Now let’s be honest right from the start. As an old, college educated white man I have had little personal experience of what it’s like to be discriminated against. (And by little in the instance I mean none!) I have, in my life and career known a wide diversity of different people and I hope that I have treated them based upon what kind of person they are rather than the group to which they belong. I had thought, just a few years ago that as a society we were making progress toward racial equality but lately it has become painfully obvious that bigotry runs deep in this country, and will take many more years to eliminate, if indeed we ever do.

And that’s one of the interesting aspects of ‘Lovecraft Country’. By illustrating some of the mechanics of historic Jim Crow racism such as ‘Sundown Towns’ (no blacks allowed after sundown) and tour guides for blacks (listing restaurants, motels and other establishments in cities and towns that serve blacks and are ‘safe’ to go to) you can acquire some feeling for what it was like to be black in a segregated America.

Atticus (l) with his Uncle George who publishes a ‘Travel Guide for Negros. There really were such guides back in Jim Crow America. (Credit: Insider)

But of course ‘Lovecraft Country’ is a supernatural horror show and quite a good one, with some familiar monsters such as ghosts and vampires being used in very unusual ways as well as some completely new otherworldly creatures. Despite the title ‘Lovecraft Country’ makes no use of H. P. Lovecraft’s ‘Olde Ones’ such as Yog-Sothoth or Nyarlathotep although Cthulhu does make a very brief appearance in a dream sequence right at the very beginning of episode one. Incidentally Cthulhu gets beaten up by Jackie Robinson with a baseball bat, something I admit I could never have imagined.

Jackie Robinson about to beat on Cthulhu in a dream at the beginning of ‘Lovecraft Country’. (Credit: HBO)

The important difference however is that in a Lovecraft story the humans in contact with or worshipping the daemons and monsters are ‘men of a very low, mixed blooded, and mentally aberrant type’. The quote is from Lovecraft’s story the ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ and is just one example of the way that Lovecraft usually described minorities.

Waiting ever in the shadows, Cthulhu is a symbol of our fear of the unknown. (Credit: Mod DB)

In ‘Lovecraft Country’ on the other hand most of the wizards are rich white people. This is in fact a deliberate twisting of the racism in Lovecraft’s own works and when combined with the normal, mundane bigotry of the 1950s does succeed in making young, attractive, well dressed, rich white people seem like monsters. And remember this is an old white guy talking!

In Lovecraft Country a secret cabal of rich white men are wizards pursuing Atticus because, despite being black he is the last direct descendant of their founder! (Credit: HBO Watch)

Another difference between Lovecraft’s stories and ‘Lovecraft Country’ is sex. There’s quite a bit of hanky panky going on in ‘Lovecraft Country’, most of it pertinent to the storyline. On the other hand it would be hard to have less sex than there is in Lovecraft’s works.

Technically “Lovecraft Country’ is very well made, the special effects are quite good, at times even chilling. The performances of the actors are also engaging, especially that of Majors and Smollet-Bell. Several of the ‘minor characters’ have also been given storylines of their own in addition to their parts in the main story of Atticus and Leticia.

One of the monsters in ‘Lovecraft Country’ is the Shoggoth. Although different from Lovecraft’s Shoggoths it is still a fearsome creature. (Credit: The New York Times)

I’ve just finished watching episode seven of ‘Lovecraft Country’ out of a total of ten so there are three episodes left to the series. If you haven’t started watching it yet don’t worry, this is HBO so I’m certain that they’ll be rebroadcasting the entire series before long. If you’re the type who enjoys a good supernatural horror story you should certainly check it out.

But before I go I would like to take a few minutes to discuss what kind of writer H.P. Lovecraft was. Did he write Science Fiction or Fantasy or Horror or what? Of course you could just say that Lovecraft, like most storytellers wrote whatever he felt like, mixing all three categories as necessary in order to tell his tale.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft. He looks more like an accountant than the genius who imagined countless worlds beyond our own! (Credit: Reddit)

That’s a bit of a cop out however. I think the best way to understand Lovecraft writings are to recognize that they all deal with the strange, the unfamiliar, the alien. Lovecraft never could have written the kind of stories and novels that a Jane Austin or Ernst Hemingway or others like them wrote. Writing stories about a couple who fall in love or a man who faces up to his fears…how boring, how pedestrian, give me a tentacled monstrosity from beyond the stars!

Another member of ‘ye Great Old Ones’ is Yog Sothoth, a formless mass of malevolence. (Credit: StarfinderWiki)

And Lovecraft’s fixation on that which is different is almost certainly connected with his streak of racism, literally treating someone, or something unfairly and unjustly because you perceive them as alien. Throughout his works Lovecraft often uses the same negative, pejorative adjectives to describe his extraterrestrial god-daemons as he does to describe non-white humans. Psychologically it is called xenophobia, a neurotic fear of anything that is different.

Living in what was a pretty racist period in history Lovecraft’s xenophobia paradoxically not only fueled his vivid imagination but also twisted it into something that at times became morbid and sub-human. I freely admit that I love the way Lovecraft could describe a Universe that is both larger and more diverse than most writers, most people could ever imagine. However I also recognize that Lovecraft used the immenseness of the Universe as a source of fear and loathing, not the place of wonder and beauty that I see in all of its diversity.

But if we are to call ourselves rational creatures shouldn’t we be able to control our fears and learn to appreciate everything the Universe has to offer? (Credit: Notable Quotes)

‘Lovecraft Country’ has something of that same attitude; basically just that the Universe is a big scary place and we human beings should be afraid of it. Personally I may enjoy stories built on that sort of framework, as I enjoy ‘Lovecraft Country’. In the long run however, I do prefer those Science Fiction stories that have a more hopeful view of the Universe and our future in it.  

So what should we do with H. P. Lovecraft? Should we follow the advice of Shakespeare’s Mark Anthony when he says “The evil that men do live after them, the good it oft interred with their bones, so let it be with Lovecraft?” Remember Shakespeare himself said quite a few racist things. Do we throw away everything Lovecraft ever did? Do we censor the past in a vain effort to clean it up so that it cannot offend our modern sensibilities?

Intended to be anti-racist, ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ are now considered to be rather embarrassing! How far should we go in trying to ‘correct’ the mistakes of the past? (Credit: Medium)

Perhaps we should do what ‘Lovecraft Country’ does, turn racism around on itself and thereby demonstrate that it is really the racists, and racism itself that is truly ‘vile, loathsome and sub-human”!!

Book Review: ‘The Powers of the Earth’, by Travis J. Corcoran.

President Oprah declares war on an unauthorized Moon colony built by freedom loving CEOs. Yes it’s really almost that bad. In fact ‘The Powers of the Earth’ is only about 10% Science Fiction, another 30% starts off as a spy novel that evolves into a war novel. The remainder is more a political pamphlet than anything else and a rather cartoon version of one.

Cover of ‘The Powers of the Earth’ by Travis J. Corcoran. (Credit: Amazon)

In the short author’s bio at the back of the book, Travis J. Corcoran proudly proclaims himself to be a ‘Catholic Anarcho-Capitalist’ three ideologies that to my mind don’t really fit together all that well. Still Mr. Corcoran has every right to his opinions, his political views. The question is whether or not they serve to enhance a good science fiction novel.

Author Travis J Corcoran. (Credit: Libertarian Futurist Society)

In fact science fiction has long served as a vehicle for social criticism. H. G. Wells for example often brought his socialist ideas into his novels. The Morlocks in ‘The Time Machine’, the Martians in ‘War of the Worlds’ and the Selenites in ‘The First Men in the Moon’ are all described in socio-economic terms, but briefly, the politics don’t get in the way of the story. In some of his later novels, ‘In the Days of the Comet’ or ‘Shape of Things to Come’ Wells does become rather preachy, which is why those novels are not as popular as his earlier work.

In Well’s ‘The Time Machine’ laissez faire economics have forced the proletarian masses underground where they evolve into Morlocks. That description in the novel lasts 2-3 pages and doesn’t get in the way of the story. (Credit: YouTube)

In ‘The Powers of the Earth’ on the other hand, long rhetorical speeches are on nearly every page. And there’s no attempt at evenhandedness, whenever an argument in favour of some form of organized government is presented it is done so only to make it a target for attack. The characters back on Earth are all either idiots or self serving hypocrites, cartoon villains in other words. The inhabitants of the Moon, fully half of whom are CEOs of some company or other, aren’t presented in much better terms. Quarrelsome and unwilling to work together even when they agree if they are Mr. Corcoran’s view of an Anarcho-Capitalist utopia he can keep it!

However the real problem is that the politics just keeps getting in the way of the science fiction. For example, the Lunar colony at Aristillus crater is only possible because of the invention of an anti-gravity drive that the CEOs on the Moon have and the Earth governments don’t. But we’re never told anything about that drive, nothing at all about how it works. At the same time building a colony on the Moon appears to be simply a matter of drilling out enough big tunnels. No mention is ever made about where the air comes from, or the water.

Aristillus Crater on the Moon, the location of the Anarcho-Capitalist colony in ‘The Powers of the Earth) . (Credit: Alcheton)

When I began reading “The Powers of the Earth’ I first thought that Aristillus must be one of the craters near the South Pole where NASA has found evidence of ice. That would at least have served as a source for both the colony’s water and air but the crater isn’t near the South Pole, it’s right in Mare Imbrium, an area that is dry as a bone. There’s no particular reason for Mr. Corcoran to put his colony there that I can think of.

Even when Mr. Corcoran has an interesting idea he doesn’t develop it very well. As a part of the story there are five characters who are literally hiking around the Lunar farside. The hiking party is made up of one human and four genetically enhanced super-intelligent dogs. Now my ears perked up at the idea of super intelligent dogs, I wanted some details about the anatomic changes that allowed a dog to have a bigger brain, the changes to the vocal chords so that the dogs could speak (actually those dogs have some of the longest political arguments in the entire book) plus the changes to their paws so that they can type on their computers. (The dogs are all software whizzes by the way).

   But there’s nothing, no mention is ever made of anything about the dogs other than they can think and talk just like a human. Oh, and there are numerous times where the dogs have to take off or put on their spacesuits? How, with their paws?

IN ‘The Powers of the Earth’ genetically enhanced dogs get into and out of spacesuits on a regular basis. How is never described. (Credit: Ripley’s Believe it or Not)

During the course of ‘The Powers of the Earth’ several of the characters mention the old Robert Heinlein novel ‘The Moon is a Harsh Mistress’ and I have an idea that Mr. Corcoran wrote ‘The Powers of the Earth’ intending it to be a re-boot of that novel. Now it’s been nearly fifty years since I read, “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress’ but I don’t recall Heinlein as being so cavalier with the science, neither were his characters so poorly drawn.

Robert A. Heinlein’s ‘The Moon is a Harsh Mistress’ has been used several times as a starting point for ideas about revolution in Space. (Credit: Casey Handmer’s Blog)
‘Causes of Separation’ is the second novel in Travis J Corcoran’s series about anarchists on the Moon. (Credit: Amazon)

I do remember that Heinlein, like Wells, used science fiction as a way to describe different possible ways to build a society. Each different novel described a different aspect, a different kind of society. But on the other hand ‘The Moon is a Harsh Mistress’ was never intended recipe for a political movement, at least I didn’t get that impression.

But most of all I do remember a Heinlein novel as being worth reading, which I just can’t say about “The Powers of the Earth”. By the end of the story I wasn’t even interested in the dogs.

Book Review: First Encounter (Ascension Wars Book 1) by Jasper T. Scott.

At the beginning of ‘First Encounter’ by Jasper T Scott we meet the starship Forerunner as it is approaching its destination, the Trappist star system. It’s the year 2150 AD and humanity has begun the exploration and settlement of other star systems. Forerunner is in fact a colony ship with over a thousand would be pioneers ready to begin the work of building a new world on Trappist-E, one of the planets within the habitable zone of the star Trappist.

Cover of ‘First Encounter’ by Jasper T. Scott. (Credit: Amazon.com)

Forerunner is a sleeper ship; its passengers and most of its crew have been in hibernation for most of the ninety-year long journey from Earth. Now that their goal is in sight the entire crew has been awakened, including the ship’s captain Clayton Cross and are preparing for their first landing.

Jasper T. Scott author of ‘First Encounter’. (Credit: Book Bub)

Once the ship enters orbit around Trappist-E Captain Cross organizes a landing party that quickly descends to the planet’s surface. Aware of the possibility of encountering alien life, perhaps even intelligent life the landing party also includes an ambassador Richard Morgan who will take charge of any interactions with intelligent aliens.

In fact almost as soon as the landing party has left their shuttle they encounter a species of primitive aliens who immediately attack them. The landing party, not wishing to turn this first encounter into a battle retreat back to the shuttle but are forced to kill several of the aliens along the way.

But what the Forerunner crew are not aware of is that they are also under attack by a second species of aliens, a species with a superior technology. The landing party is barely able to return to their ship before the Forerunner must flee the entire Trappist star system to avoid a battle against an alien fleet.

At a distance of 40 light years and having seven known planets, three is the habitable zone, the Trappist star system is a logical choice for the location of humanity’s first encounter with alien intelligence. (Credit: Space.com)

That’s just the first quarter of the book, the middle half of ‘First Encounter’ consists of variations on the movies ‘Alien’ and ‘Predator’ with a bit of the original ‘Star Wars’ or perhaps ‘Battlestar Galactica’ thrown in at the end. And remember this is only Book 1 of Ascension Wars. It’s all just a bit too much of a roller coaster ride, too much action without a great deal of reason behind the action.

Don’t get me wrong, ‘First Encounter’ will keep your attention and it’s certainly a quick read, I finished it in less than two days. However one of the reasons it’s such an easy read is that there’s not a lot to think about, you’re too busy going from one slam, bam episode to another. In fact ‘First Encounter’ is rather a lot like several episodes of an old SF serial like Buck Rodgers.

The old Buck Rodgers serials had slam, bam action galore, and they were certainly entertaining. (Credit: Bleeding Cool)

And like Buck Rogers you soon find yourself trying to guess what’s going to happen next, and too often getting it right. And like Buck Rodgers there are a few plot problems getting in the way. For example, the superior aliens have faster than light travel, their ships can travel one light year in two hours, but they don’t come to Earth. Instead they wait for Forerunner to take ninety years to reach the Trappist system before starting their war with humanity!

“Occupied Earth’ is the second book in the series begun with ‘First Encounter’. I think the title pretty much says it all. (Credit: Amazon.com)

So if you’re looking for a ‘Space Opera’ with a lot of shoot’em up action then you’ll probably like ‘First Encounter’ by Jasper T. Scott. However I like my SF a little more thoughtful, a little more awe inspiring than heart pounding.

Medical researchers are making great strides in the development of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPS Cells). Will they soon be able to use them to repair or even replace diseased organs in our bodies?

 Every human being, indeed every animal begins its life as a fertilized egg cell that begins to divide and grow into many cells. As more and more cells are generated they begin to grow into certain types of cells, heart cells, stomach cells, muscle cells, brain cells, over 200 kinds of specialized cells making up every organ in the body. Those early cells, the cells generated before specialization into organ cells sets in are given the name embryonic stem cells or sometimes just stem cells.

Male sperm cells surround a female egg cell trying to get inside. Once one of them succeeds the egg will be fertilized and will develop into a fetus. (Credit: Pinterest)
After fertilization the egg cell begins to divide to form a blastocyst. At this stage the cells are all embryonic stem cells. (Credit: Assisted Fertility Program)

Research into the properties of these undifferentiated stem cells began back in the 1960s at the University of Toronto by biologists Ernest McCulloch and James Till. However it wasn’t until 1981 that British biologists Martin Evans and Matthew Kaufman succeeded in isolating and culturing embryonic stem cells from mice. This advance enabled researchers to begin experimenting with stem cells, to alter or delete some of the genes in the cells in order to investigate the processes that turned them into the specialized cells.

Stem cell pioneers Ernst McCulloch (l) and James Till (r). (Credit: University of Toronto Magazine)

Since stem cells are capable of becoming any type of cell in the body, a property technically referred to as pluripotent, the possibility that they could be used to help repair, perhaps even replace damaged organs has been the driving force in stem cell research. The adult body has few stem cells remaining however, only in the bone marrow or gonads, and those stem cells are only capable of turning into a few types of cells, either blood cells or sex cells.

This is the reason why stem cell researchers were so anxious to obtain embryonic stem cells in order to understand the processes that changed a stem cell into a particular type of body cell. From the 1980s through the early 2000s many biologists conducted an enormous amount of work using embryonic stem cells obtained from animal, primarily mouse fetuses. Unfortunately the only supply of human embryonic stem cells was from the fetuses of women who had undergone surgical abortions, a source that brought with it a tremendous amount of controversy. Because of stem cell research’s association with the practice of abortion even scientists who worked with animal stem cells had difficulties in obtaining funding and the entire field of stem cell research in the U.S. suffered as a result.

A human embryo at four weeks after fertilization, a time when many abortions are performed. At this stage there are millions of embryonic stem cells remaining. (Credit: Abort73.com)

At the same time the researchers all knew that in order to really fulfill the promise of stem cells it was going to be necessary for them to find a method to reverse the process, to take differentiated body cells, say blood cells or muscle cells, and turn them back into embryonic stem cells. After all, think about it, if you had a heart problem and doctors tried to use the stem cells from an aborted fetus to repair your heart wouldn’t your immune system reject those stem cells just as it would try to reject a heart transplant. But if your own adult cells could be turned back into stem cells and then those stem cells used to repair diseased heart tissue there would be no problem of rejection.

  The breakthrough came in 2006 when a Japanese team led by Shinya Yamanaka succeeded in converting adult fibroblast cells into pluripotent stem cells by modifying only four genes. These converted cells were given the name Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells or iPS Cells and Shinya Yamanaka was awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in medicine for his achievement.

Discoverer of iPS cells Shinya Yamanaka at work in his Labouratory. (Credit: UCSF)

With the development of iPS cells biologists could now take the adult cells of any individual, convert them into stem cells and culture them into as many stem cells as needed. The focus of stem cell research now shifted from the study of stem cells themselves to learning how to use stem cells to help patients with damaged or diseased organs, a field of research that has become known as ‘regenerative medicine’.

Converting adult Fibroblast cells back into stem cells (iPS Cells) allows many different kinds of cells to be regenerated in the lab. (Credit: R&D Systems)

At present there are several distinct lines of ongoing research. The ‘Holy Grail’ of regenerative medicine would be the ‘manufacture’ of entire organs that could replace damaged ones. For example, for a patient suffering from a diseased kidney, instead of getting a kidney transplant from a donor, which would carry with it the problem of organ rejection, cells from the patient’s own body would be converted into iPS cells. Those iPS cells would then be induced to generate a brand new kidney, that patient’s kidney since their cells were used. That new kidney could then be transplanted into the patient’s body without any fear of rejection.

The promise of Regenerative Medicine, using stem cells to grow brand new organs to replace damaged or worn out ones! (Credit: DL3 Spa Services)

Working towards that long range goal the biologists have been moving forward with the idea of repairing rather than replacing damaged organs. In an ongoing study being conducted at Osaka University in Japan by Professor Yoshiki Sawa blood cells were taken from test animals and converted into iPS cells. The iPS cells were then induced into becoming heart muscle cells that were then grown into a sheet of heart muscle tissue that beated, just like a normal heart. The sheet of heart muscle was then surgically placed onto the test animal’s heart, strengthening it and increasing heart function.

Sheet of heart muscle tissue manufactured from iPS Cells. (Credit: NHK)

Over a hundred such experimental surgeries were performed first on animals in order to refine the technique and make certain that everything possible was done to maintain safety before any human trials were attempted. It wasn’t until the 27th of January of 2020 that the first surgery was performed to insert a 4cm circular section of manufactured heart tissue on to a damaged area of a human patient’s heart. That patient is recovering and being constantly monitored to determine how much improvement in heart function the new heart tissue is providing, and for how long. Nevertheless this clinical trial gives a little glimpse into the potential of iPS Cells.

Heart surgery performed for first time on 27 January 2020. Sheet of heart muscle tissue employed to strengthen patient’s weakened heart. (Credit: www.asahi.com)

Another possible use of iPS cells would be to greatly increase the blood available for operations and other medical practices. Blood banks are chronically short on precious blood plasma so the possibility that that iPS cells could be grown in large quantities and then turned into blood cells is very attractive.

The use of iPS stem cells is not without its problems however. First of all at present the efficiency of converting adult cells into iPS cells is less than 1% making the process both slow and expensive. Another major difficulty is the tendency of iPS cells to form cancerous tumors, a danger that has severely limited the number of human experiments using iPS cells.

One serious problem with iPS Cells is that they can lead to the formation of cancerous tumors. (Credit: Irish Times)

 Despite these difficulties advances in the use of iPS cells in the field of regenerative medicine is accelerating. Who knows what new medical procedures will be developed in the next 10 to 20 years using iPS cells.

Book Review: ‘The Io Encounter’ by Brandon Q. Morris

The ‘Io Encounter’ is the third in a series of novels by science fiction author Brandon Q. Morris concerning the voyage of the spaceship ‘International Life Search Expedition’ or ILSE. In ‘The Enceladus Mission’ (Reviewed in my post of 16 October 2019) a robotic space probe on Enceladus sends back data confirming the existence of life on that distant moon of Saturn. In response the world’s space agencies organize the ILSE mission to discover what kind of life inhabits that icy world. In ‘The Enceladus Mission’ the mission is successful but not without loss to the crew of ILSE.

Cover of ‘The Io Encounter’ by Brandon Q. Morris. (Credit: Amazon)
Author Brandon Q. Morris. (Credit: Facebook)

‘The Titan Probe’, the second book in the series (Also reviewed in my post of 16 October 2019) begins while ILSE is still in orbit around Enceladus. Another probe on the surface of Saturn’s larger moon Titan is also sending back data indicating that something is going on there so ILSE is ordered to go and investigate. Again the mission is successful thanks to the ingenuity of the ILSE crew.

Covers of ‘The Enceladus Mission’ and ‘The Titan Probe’ by Brandon Q. Morris (Credit: Amazon)

I liked both ‘The Enceladus Mission’ and ‘The Titan Probe’; both are hard science fiction based on well established science. In both novels the crew use their training and knowledge to overcome the obstacles that author Morris throws at them. I also liked the extraterrestrials in both books, they were really alien while at the same time being understandable.

Which only makes ‘The Io Encounter’ that much more of a letdown. The novel starts with ILSE having left Saturn and on its way back to Earth. On the return trip the ship will make a flyby of Jupiter in order to get a boost from the giant planet’s gravity.

As they are approaching Jupiter however the crew discover that something is happening on the moon Io so they decide to stop and take a look! After all how hard can that be!

The Pimply face of Jupiter’s Moon Io. Io is the most volcanic place in the Solar System. Bombarded with radiation from Jupiter’s version of the van Allen belts Io is hardly the sort of place you just stop at while you’re passing by! (Credit: Space.com)

Well space missions are usually designed with very little margin for detours of any kind. That side trip to Titan when the crew where at Enceladus would have required a delta vee of no more than about 3 kilometers per second. A space journey to Saturn would probably have that kind of spare fuel so in ‘The Titan Probe’ I was more than willing to go along for the sake of the story.

Going from a Jupiter flyby to orbit around Io however would require a delta vee of at least 7 km/sec, about as much as getting into Earth orbit. And then you would need another 7 km/sec when you leave Io to continue on to Earth. But it gets worse because, without giving away any of the plot elements, midway through the novel the ILSE turns around and starts back to Saturn! And then later on the ship stops midway between the two giant planets to once again head back to Io. After being so detailed and logical about how everything works in the first two novels Mr. Morris seems to have just given up on reality and simply has the ship do whatever he wants in order to keep the plot moving.

Remember in the Movie ‘Apollo 13’ where the engineers at Mission Control have to figure out how the Lunar Module can use an air filter designed for the Command Module. Space missions are VERY HARD to redesign in progress!!! (Credit: MSN.com)

Not that the plot of ‘The Io Encounter’ is really worth it. Morris simply brings out the tired old cliché of ‘military elements’ in the US and Chinese governments who want to kill the creature that the ILSE crew discovered back on Enceladus. All in all it’s not a good finish for what had been an interesting series of stories.

Back in the 1950s any alien that landed on Earth was immediately attacked by our Military (Credit: IMDB)

Reading ‘The Io Encounter’ I couldn’t help but wonder if Brandon Q. Morris hadn’t been rushed to complete the novel. It seems to me that a lot of times an author will take 2, 3 or even more years to complete a first novel that turns out to be popular. Then their publisher hounds them to finish another story while they’re hot with the result that the follow up is nowhere near as good as the first story where they took their time to do it right.

I guess what I’m saying is that ‘The Io Encounter’ isn’t a bad story, it just seems like a really rushed story.

Movie review: ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ (Episode 9).

Warning: Today’s post will contain several spoilers so if you haven’t seen ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ yet, well you’ve been warned!

Marque poster for ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ distributed by Disney. (Credit: StarWars.com)

Emperor Palpatine is alive. You may have thought that he was killed by Darth Vader at the end of ‘Star Wars: Return of the Jedi’ (Episode 6) but he’s alive. Whether he somehow survived the destruction of the second ‘Death Star’ or has somehow been reborn is never explained but then the Star Wars saga has never really put that much effort in filling in the holes in its plots. Certainly ‘The Rise of Skywalker’ has more than it share of “Oh, c’mon” moments.

Emperor Palpatine is alive again. How is anybody’s guess! (Credit: Screen Rant)

Of course you could argue that any series of stories that were created over a period of more than 40 years by a large team of creators is going to have a few contradictions pop up in it. Look at Doctor Who! Or you could argue, as George Lukas has often done himself, that ‘Star Wars’ is a children’s story and the adults who expect all of the pieces to fit together precisely are taking it too seriously.

I don’t think that those arguments work for several reasons. First of all if you have 40 years in which to write the scripts for nine movies you certainly have the time to eliminate at least some of the plot holes. And as for ‘Star Wars’ being a children’s story, well the Hobbit was a children’s story and J. R. R. Tolkein managed to make it all fit together.

J. R. R. Tolkien wrote children’s fables that still appeal to adults because he cared about making his tales fit together properly. (Credit: Amazon.com)

I’d like to discuss two parts of ‘The Rise of Skywalker’ in particular. The first deals with the efforts made by the new Jedi knight Rey and her companions to discover the location of Moraband, the ‘lost planet of the Sith’. The good guys spend about half of the movie in this search. Risking their lives in order to follow vague clues. In fact we learn that Luke Skywalker also spent several years looking for Moraband during the period between episodes 6 and 7. So Moraband must be a real hard place to find.

The planet of the Sith Moraband, ancient Korriband is lost at the start of ‘Rise of Skywalker. How does a planet get lost? (Credit: Ultrasabers)

Except once they get to  Moraband the good guys discover that Palpatine, or to use his Sith name Darth Sidious, has constructed a huge fleet of a thousand star destroyers, all fully manned. Now did Palpatine build those ships all by himself, using only the resources on Moraband? In any case he didn’t build the crews of those ships. For a planet that’s so hard to find there must have been a lot of traffic going back and forth between Moraband and the rest of the Galaxy. Such inconsistencies are the result of nothing but laziness and sloppiness and really detract from the movie. Also, think back for a second, wasn’t the whole plot of episode 7 the search for Luke who had exiled himself on the ‘lost planet of the Jedi’, how many times can they use the same idea?

Ahch-To was the site of the original temple of the Jedi and Luke’s hiding place in episode 7. How does a planet get lost? (Credit: YouTube)

My second example is more a criticism of Hollywood in general than just the ‘Star Wars’ saga. Often in movies you will find a character who starts the story as a bad guy but for one reason or another turns back toward the light and redeems himself in the climatic final battle. In a western for example a gunslinger might meet and fall in love with the local schoolmarm. Then in the final gunfight he betrays his bad guy boss the cattle rustler and instead protects the town Sheriff, who also loves the schoolmarm and is therefore the gunslinger’s rival. Well the good guys win of course and the gunslinger dies a noble and heroic death, but he dies, he always has to die.

Of course Darth Vader himself is one of the best-known examples of this cliché. For almost three entire movies, episodes 4, 5, and 6, he is the epitome of evil, but just as Palpatine is about to kill his son Luke he turns on Palpatine and kills him, dying himself in the process.

In Episode 6 Darth Vader dies after saving Luke and Killing Palpatine. That’s a rule in Hollywood more powerful than the Force. (Credit: Daily Express)

The same hackneyed character arc is played out in episodes 7, 8 and 9 with Ben Solo playing the bad guy as Kylo Ren. However Kylo / Ben never seems really happy as a bad guy and its obvious from the first that he loves Rey and wants her approval. Ben’s redemption is therefore actually more convincing than Vader’s was and takes place a good bit earlier in ‘The Rise of Skywalker’ allowing him and Rey to get to fight together. Then there was a moment, just a moment when I thought the scriptwriters were going to let Ben live but no, he dies. It’s a noble and heroic death but he dies. In the end I guess it wasn’t the Jedi or the Sith who won, it was Hollywood.

At the climax of Episode 9 Kylo Ren dies after saving Rey. Hollywood killed him! (Credit: YouTube)

Right now I bet anyone who’s been reading this post thinks I must really hate ‘Star Wars’. If that were true however I simply never would have gone to see all nine movies! In fact I know very well that George Lukas tapped into a deep well in the human psyche when he envisioned ‘Star Wars’ and there are many scenes within the saga that are truly mythological in stature.

It isn’t without reason that Lukas gave a lot of credit for the inspiration of ‘Star Wars’ to the mythologist Joseph Campbell. Luke, Leia, Obi Wan and Darth Vader are all characters that have actually existed for thousands of years in hundreds of different stories. They are archetypes of human behavior which is why they can so easily become Rey as Luke, Fin as Leia, Luke as Obi Wan and Kylo Ren as Darth Vader. Just a few cosmetic changes and we’re willing to watch the same story all over again.

Is that a picture of Luke and Darth Vader? Joseph Campbell’s ‘The Hero with a Thousand Faces’ was a great influence on the ‘Star Wars’ saga. I heartily recommend it! (Credit: PJL Books)

There are many great things about ‘Star Wars’ which only makes the laziness, the sloppiness, the heavy dependence on CGI to create visual roller coasters, and above all the commercialization that makes the faults in the movies all the more tragic.

‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ is supposed to be the end of the Skywalker saga. If that is true it will be both sad, and something of a relief.

Book Review: ‘Ball Lightning’ by Cixin Liu.

I was quite young when I first heard about the mysterious phenomenon known as ‘Ball Lightning’ and I remember thinking that was the craziest idea I’d ever heard of. After all everybody knew that similar electrical charges repel each other, and when you get a build up of positive or negative charges the force pushing them apart is so great that it causes the burst of energy we call lightning. The notion of a stable build up of charges that could last for several minutes in a small volume of space just made no sense.

A rare sight to see, ball lightning is usually observed during a strong normal lightning storm (Credit: Nautilus / Science Connected)

Since that time I’ve learned a lot more about electro-magnetism, about resonate cavities, about plasmas, about the weird world of Quantum Electro-Dynamics (QED) and I still think ball lightning is hard to accept. Most scientists seem to agree with me because there are dozens of very different theories about the nature of ball lightning. Everyone of these hypotheses have some problems explaining all the observations of ball lightning and none of them have gained anything like a consensus of support.

Phenomenon similar to Ball Lightning have been created in a labouratory but are they the exact same thing? (Credit: CNET.com)

For those who aren’t familiar with the rare and unpredictable sightings of ball lightning the phenomenon is usually, but not always observed during a fierce lightning storm. The ball itself can vary from a few centimeters to a few meters in diameter, the shape is normally spherical or pear shaped, hence the name, but a few observations of a ring like structure have been made. The ball glows fairly brightly like a household electric lamp with any colour in the spectrum but red and yellow predominate.

The movements of ball lightning tend to be horizontal at a steady velocity around 10 meters per second although some have been seen to remain motionless. Very strangely ball lightning has occasionally been observed in the interior of aircraft that are moving at hundreds of kilometers per hour. Despite the plane’s speed however the ball moves through the cabin at a relative speed consistent with observations made on the ground! Finally ball lightning can either dissipate quietly or explosively, it has even been the cause of several deaths.

A 19th Century Newspaper illustration of an observation of ball lightning. (Credit: National Geographic)

So I suppose it’s about time some science fiction writer got around to using ball lightning as the focus for an SF novel. Chinese science fiction author Cixin Liu has done so and his novel ‘Ball Lightning’ is a daring and imaginative story that starts as a scientific study about the nature of ball lighting and leads to the development of ball lightning weapons. Readers of this blog might recognize Cixin Liu as the author of the ‘Three Body Problem’ trilogy and ‘Ball Lightning’ is a similar wild ride.

Cover of ‘Ball Lightning’ by Cixin Lui. (Credit: Amazon.com)

Liu assumes one of the more outlandish theories about the nature of ball lightning as his starting point and takes off from there. Before long Liu is describing quantum phenomenon that are observable in the macroscopic world, even using the thought experiment of Schrödinger’s cat to question whether or not someone who is killed by ball lightning is alive or dead, or in an indeterminate quantum state.

Cixin Liu is also the Author of the ‘Three Body Problem’ trilogy. (Credit: Tor.com)

I do have a slight criticism, in the novel China goes to war but their adversary in the war is never named. However the USS Stennis, an American Guided Missile Destroyer, is explicitly named as one of the ships attacking the Chinese fleet. Now if you’re going to name your enemy’s warships you may just as well go ahead and name your enemy. In fact Liu’s descriptions of battle in general could use a little more blood and thunder. I have the feeling Liu is a pacifist who would rather not talk about fighting at all. Wouldn’t it be nice if he didn’t have to?

‘Ball Lightning’ is now the fourth novel by Cixin Liu that I have reviewed, all of them thought provoking and wildly creative. I’m certainly looking forward to reading his next novel ‘Supernova Era’ and when I do you can be certain to read about it here at Science and Science Fiction. 

‘Supernova Era’ is the latest novel by Cixin Liu. (Credit: Amazon.com)

Book Review “The Enceladus Mission’ and ‘The Titan Probe’ by Brandon Q. Morris.

It seems more and more as if Science Fiction is becoming dominated by the writing and publishing of series, trilogies in particular, as opposed to stand-alone novels. One of the latest of these series is by new author Brandon Q. Morris and concerns an expedition to the planet Saturn in order to investigate the possibility of life on its moon Enceladus.

Saturn’s Icy Moon Enceladus has jets of water streaming out of its south polar region. This means there must be some large body of liquid water beneath the ice covering. Could that liquid water support life??? (Credit: Spaceflight Insider)

One problem that arises with these series is that it can be quite easy to pick up the second or third story in the series and start reading without realizing that you’re starting in the middle of the story. I did that when I bought ‘The Titan Probe’. Two pages in and I recognized my error, put the book down and ordered ‘The Enceladus Mission’. Because of that mistake on my part however this book review will be a two for one, reviewing both “The Enceladus Mission’ and ‘The Titan Probe’.

Cover of ‘The Enceladus Mission’ by Brandon Q. Morris (Credit: Amazon.com)
Cover of ‘The Titan Probe’ by Brandon Q. Morris (Credit: Amazon.com)

‘The Enceladus Probe’ begins as the unmanned space probe ELF discovers clear evidence not just of organic compounds around Saturn’s moon but “the digestive byproducts of your space rat.” In other words the probe has found unmistakable evidence of life. The acronym ELF by the way stands for Enceladus Life Finder and is an actual proposed NASA mission to that moon of Saturn.

Brandon Morris uses a lot of acronyms in both ‘The Enceladus Mission’ and ‘The Titan Probe’ and for the most part I think that’s a good thing. This style of hard sci-fi has benefited from the success of Andy Weir’s ‘The Martian’ and appears to be growing more popular, witness the current movie ‘Ad Astra’.

Saturn’s moon Titan possesses a thicker atmosphere than Earth’s but if there is life on Titan it would be very different than life on Earth. (Credit: NASA)

In hard sci-fi novels hardware that already exists, is currently under development or at least is based on known science is employed as much as possible in illustrating the story. Personally I hope this trend toward hard sci-fi will continue. Of course it is possible to overdo the techno jargon, I mean is it really better to talk about an EMU, which means Extravehicular Mobility Unit, instead of just saying spacesuit!

Getting back to the story, now that there is clear evidence of life on Enceladus the nations of the world combine their resources to put together a manned mission to “catch the little critter itself.” So begins the voyage of the ILSE spacecraft, ILSE standing for International Life Search Expedition no less.

The idea of the world’s space nations getting together is another common theme of hard sci-fi novels. In ‘The Martian’ for example a Chinese rocket is needed to resupply the Hermes spaceship as it goes to rescue Mark Watney who’s stranded on Mars. I guess the authors of these stories like to imagine how much more we could achieve in space if only we worked together.

The moral of the original ‘Star Trek’ Series was that by working together humanity could go on to explore the Universe! (Credit: Paramount)

Also like ‘The Martian’ in both ‘The Enceladus Mission’ and “The Titan Probe’ the crew of the ILSE face several technical problems with equipment during their mission that require all of their ingenuity and determination to overcome. Once again this is a plot device that can be overused but Brandon Morris does a good job of making each predicament seem different from the others.

One plot device that was lacking in ‘The Martian’ but which Morris includes in both ‘The Enceladus Mission’ and ‘The Titan Probe’ is intelligent aliens. Now back in the ‘golden age’ of sci-fi, the days of H. G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Ray Bradbury, Martians and Venusians were more common than interstellar aliens. But when the early space probes of the 1960s found Mars to be a cold desert and Venus to be an acidic furnace the aliens in sci-fi stories became exclusively interstellar. I have to say that it was nice to see a story with intelligent aliens who are native to our solar system for a change.

Back before we knew that Mars was a cold dry desert even Bugs Bunny got to meet a Martian! (Credit: Warner Brothers)

So there you have a good idea of the sort of story you’ll find in both ‘The Enceladus Mission’ and ‘The Titan Probe’. If you’re a fan of hard sci-fi, if you liked ‘The Martian’ I think that you’ll enjoy both novels. By the way there is a third installment in the voyage of the ILSE, ‘The Io Encounter’ which I just received. I’ll tell you about it later.

Movie Review: ‘Ad Astra’

In his first interview with the press promoting his new movie ‘Ad Astra’ director James Grey described it as a combination of ‘Apocalypse Now’ and ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’.  I’m quite certain that’s exactly how he sold his concept to the studio heads that funded ‘Ad Astra’. Not a bad idea when you consider that both movies are considered to be classics. The problem is that in that in ‘Ad Astra’ the combining is clumsily executed and quite frankly, unimaginative.

Poster for the Film ‘Ad Astra’ (Credit: Connect Savanna)

Let’s begin with ‘Apocalypse Now’ which was itself a adaptation of the Joseph Conrad novella ‘Heart of Darkness’ to fit the War in Vietnam. In ‘Apocalypse Now’ a U.S. Army Captain named Willard is sent into the deep jungle along the Vietnam / Cambodian border to make contact with a Colonel Kurtz. According to the Army Kurtz has gone rogue, fighting the Vietnamese Communists with native troops his own way, in other words just slaughtering them without regard for the rules of war.

In Apocalypse Now Marlon Brando played an eerie Colonel Kurtz, a man driven mad by the horrors of war. (Credit: Electric Palace)

Once Captain Willard finds Kurtz his orders are to terminate Kurtz’s command, ‘Terminate with extreme prejudice’, in other words the Captain has been ordered to assassinate the Colonel. The majority of the movie however concerns Willard’s journey to Kurtz’s location and is composed of a series of scenes depicting the insanity of war but which have no real connection to the actual plot.

The plot of ‘Ad Astra’ is quite similar. At the beginning we learn about an astronaut named Clifford McBride (Played by actor Tommy Lee Jones). McBride is the commander of the Leto Mission to the outer Solar System in a search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The Leto mission we are told was assumed lost some 12 years ago. 

In Ad Astra Tommy Lee Jones plays Clifford McBride who has been driven mad by Space. (Credit: USA Today)

We also learn that McBride murdered the other members of the Leto’s crew and is actually still alive around the planet Neptune where he is now using his spaceship’s anti-matter to cause power surges that are threatening all life in the solar system. I suppose by now you’ve guessed that McBride is the Kurtz character.

The Captain Willard character in ‘Ad Astra’ is named Roy McBride (Played by Brad Pitt). Now if you happened to notice that the two main characters have the same last name you’re right, they’re father and son which adds a lot of psycho-drama to the movie without making it any more interesting. As in ‘Apocalypse Now’ Roy McBride’s journey to his father is punctuated with such meaningless scenes as an attack by Moon pirates and a Mayday from another spaceship. So much for the resemblance to ‘Apocalypse Now’.

Brad Pitt plays Roy McBride who is journeying through the solar system to stop his father from destroying all life. (Credit: Polygon)

As far as I’m concerned the resemblance to ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ consists mainly in the production values, that is the sets and special effects which look pretty good. Not as good as 2001’s or The Martian’s, but pretty good. It’s apparent that someone has paid a lot of attention to such things as the spacesuits, the look of the spaceship’s and the scenery such as the Moon, Mars and finally Neptune.

While the production values of Ad Astra are good they can’t make up for an awkward script. (Credit: Fox News)

The problem is that the attention to detail only extends as far as the look of the movie. You remember I mentioned that the senior McBride is doing something with anti-matter around Neptune that is causing ‘power surges’ back here on Earth. Well that’s about all you ever learn about those surges, you never even get to find out if the older McBride is causing them deliberatly or not.

There are in fact a large number of physically unrealistic events in ‘Ad Astra’ the most egregious of which is when the younger McBride uses a special laser on Mars to send a message to his father around Neptune. Now Neptune at its closest is more than four light hours from Mars so a round trip message has to take nearly nine hours minimum. Well that Martian laser must be real special because the reply comes back in about two minutes. Such a cavalier attitude toward the laws of physics and science in general is not a good thing for a movie that is trying to promote itself as hard Sci-fi.

2001: A Space Odyssey still holds place of honour as the best hard sci-fi movie! (Credit: MGM)

In the end the two McBride’s finally meet and we discover that the search for alien intelligence has driven the old man mad. He’s lost all of his humanity in the emptiness of space.

The real plot of Ad Astra is simply mankind becoming lost in the vastness of space. (Credit: IMDb)

I think that’s the moral the creators of ‘Ad Astra’ were trying to portray. If you want to find intelligence you should look right here on good old Earth.

Just don’t look for it in the movie ‘Ad Astra’!