Science Fiction – Page 4 – Scienceandsf -A Blog Published by Robert A. Lawler

TV Show Review: Mars, Season 2 on the National Geographic Channel.

Last night, 12 November 2018, the second season of the series ‘Mars’ premiered on the National Geographic Channel. Produced by the Academy Award winning team of Ron Howard and Brian Grazer ‘Mars’ is a combination fictional story of the initial colonization of Mars interspersed with comments by real life experts, it is a docudrama in the terminology of Hollywood.

Mars Season Two on the National Geographic Channel (Credit: National Geographic)

The experts range from scientists such as Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson to space age industrialists like Elon Musk to science fiction writers like Kim Stanley Robinson. The comments from these experts serve to illustrate aspects of the story, in other words provide a little technical background to the action in the story.

In season one of Mars (See my posts of 15 Nov 2016 and 20 Dec 2016) the crew of the spaceship Daedalus succeed in making mankind’s first landing on the planet, although not without the loss of the spaceship’s commander. The voyage and first attempt at colonization is funded and supported by the ‘International Mars Science Foundation’ or IMSF. Despite several setbacks the crew of the Daedalus establish a base and other colonists join them on the red planet. A disaster that kills several of the astronauts almost causes the end of the mission but the discovery of life on Mars convinces the IMSF leadership to keep the colony going.

The Daedalus Spacecraft from Season One of ‘Mars’ (Credit: GeekWire)

Season two begins five years later, when the base / colony, now named Olympus Town has grown in size to a population of over two hundred. In the opening an entirely new group of colonists arrive seemingly without warning. The new colonists are not scientists or explorers like the astronauts sent by the IMSF. Instead they are mining engineers and workers sent by a private corporation called Lukrum. The two groups get off to a rocky start even before the Lukrum spaceship lands as debris from its heat shield nearly lands on Olympus town.

Olympus Town’s Spaceport (Credit: National Geographic)

Things quickly escalate when the manager of the mining group, Kurt Hurrelle played by actor Jeff Hephner, informs the commander of Olympus Town, Hana Seung played by actress Jihea, that since his mission did not include the equipment needed to produce water and electrical power her people are going to have to provide these supplies to his people. The big wigs back on Earth eventually work out a compromise where the Lukrum team will provide Olympus Town with the minerals it needs for its terraforming mission in exchange for water and power. Nevertheless it’s pretty obvious that conflicts between the scientists and miners are going to be a major theme in this second season.

Olympus Town Commander Hana Seung (second from right) Goes to meet the new Neighbors. (Credit: National Geographic)

To be honest ‘Mars’ really isn’t a great science fiction story. That’s because the need to tie the drama to each of the difficulties in colonizing Mars, as explained by the panel of experts, makes each episode little more than a moral lesson. (The Grasshopper and the Ant anyone!) In particular, in the first episode the private enterprise astronauts are such jerks that their helmets ought to be painted black like the hats of the bad guys in an old western.

The Lukrum Team led by Kurt Hurrelle (The one in the center scratching his chin)(Credit: National Geographic)

Still, ‘Mars’ is thoughtful science fiction and in a world of super heroes and Jedi knights that’s a rare treat. So I’ll keep watching ‘Mars’, and I’ll keep hoping that mature, thought provoking science fiction will become a more common phenomenon in our culture.

Book Review: “The Fall of Gondolin” by J. R. R. Tolkien

Now I know what you’re thinking. One of J. R. R. Tolkien’s stories from his imaginary mythology cannot by any stretch be considered Science Fiction. I also know that throughout the two plus years that I’ve been writing this blog I’ve been very strict about not letting the fantasy genre creep in to my reviews.

I’m making an exception for ‘The Fall of Gondolin’ however because this story is almost certainly going to be the last book that will ever be published with J. R. R. Tolkien listed as author. After all Tolkien died over 40 years ago in 1975 and although his son Christopher has been going through all of his father’s notes, editing and publishing several books from those notes, there aren’t many notes left and Christopher himself is now 94 years old. So ‘The Fall of Gondolin’ will undoubtedly be our last journey to that fabled land of Elves and Men called Middle-Earth.

J. R. R. Tolkien with his Pipe (Credit: Crisis Magazine)

It’s appropriate that ‘The Fall of Gondolin’ should be Tolkien’s last book because, as best Christopher can determine from his father’s notes, it was actually the first of the stories of the elder days that J. R. R. ever began. The basic idea of the hidden city of Gondolin was first set down while Tolkien was recuperating in a hospital from the injuries he had received at the battle of the Somme in 1916. Think about that, not too many stories can be said to have taken more than a hundred years to go from initial conception to actual publication.

The Fall of Gondolin Book Cover (Credit: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

And what you get in the ‘Fall of Gondolin’ isn’t a completed story anyway. Instead there are two lengthy sketches, the first sketch (completed in 1924) is an early complete story that has not been thoroughly fleshed out while the second (started in 1952), is a perhaps more fleshed out than necessary version of the first third of the complete story. Along with the sketches are Christopher Tolkien’s comments on his father’s notes.

For those who aren’t familiar with Tolkien’s mythology let’s just say that in the elder days the elves are fighting against the evil power of a devil named Melko or Melkor but called by the elves Morgoth (this is a problem I’ll discuss in a bit). After a battle one of the elves’ leaders Turgon decides to take his people into the mountains where he finds a valley and founds the ‘hidden city of stone’ or Gondolin in the elfish language.

Map of Tolkien’s Mythical Beleriand including Gondolin (Credit: Tor.com)

By the way humans (always referred to as Men) are just coming into existence during this war. One man, Tuor, the son of either Peleg or Huor, is given a mission by the sea god Ulmo, or Ylmir to find Gondolin and warn the city that they can’t hide from the bad guys forever.

I think you just got a taste of Tolkien’s problem here. He couldn’t stop tinkering, he couldn’t just finish a story and he loved coming up with names! Between the 1924 complete sketch and the 1954 first third more than a dozen new names or places that link to other stories have been added while a half dozen names have been completely changed.

In one sense it was this continuous reworking that made Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’ the intricate tapestry that is was, but it also meant that he hardly ever finished anything!!! His poor son has spent forty years shifting through his father’s notes trying to satisfy the lovers of his father’s works who want the whole story, but there just isn’t one!

I’d like to quote Leonardo da Vinci if I may. “No work of art is ever completed, it is merely abandoned”. That is true whether you are painting a portrait or composing a symphony or writing the mythology of Middle-Earth. Yes you have to edit and revise, usually several times but eventually you have to put your pen down and send your glorious work off to the publisher or no one else will ever get the chance to see how wonderful it is!

For example I have forced myself to write two posts every week for this blog. I know that I have to publish two posts and of course I try to do my best to have everything make sense, as well as making it interesting. Yes I do revise and edit every post several times but eventually I have to just finish them and publish them so that you can read them.

A Scene from ‘The Fall of Gondolin. The Elf Ecthelion fights the Balrog Gothmog (credit: Don’t Hate the Geek)

Tolkien’s final word on Middle-Earth, ‘The Fall of Gondolin’ isn’t for everyone simply because, despite Christopher Tolkien’s best efforts, it isn’t a complete anything. I do recommend it for true lovers of fantasy however, especially fans of Tolkien. Such readers will not just enjoy it they will have to have it. I would also recommend ‘The Fall of Gondolin’ to would be writers because from it you can learn a fair bit about the writing of intricate stories like Tolkien’s, as well as a warning about some of the pitfalls.

A New Season of Doctor Who, and a Very New Doctor

Did you see it? Did you catch the season premier of Doctor Who? The first episode of the 2018-2019 season was simultaneously broadcast by the BBC around the world on Sunday October 7th at 1845 Hrs UTC time, that’s 1:45PM Eastern Daylight Time for me.

Now every Doctor Who fan knows that the character of the Doctor is an alien scientist who travels throughout time and space in his Tardis (which stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space). The Tardis is a Time / Space machine that looks like a policeman’s box and is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside!

Being an alien whenever the Doctor is badly wounded he doesn’t die but rather he regenerates. This regeneration has allowed the show to use twelve different actors in the role, and allowed Doctor Who to be the only scripted, dramatic show to last now for 55 years.

The first episode was broadcast way back on November 23, 1963! The original Doctor was portrayed by William Hartnell as an eccentric old man but over the years the Doctor has become younger and more athletic in order to better fit into his role as a heroic protagonist (and wouldn’t we all like to be able to do that).

The First Twelve Doctors (Credit: PPC Wiki)

This year’s season premier also brought a new Doctor, and the big news is that lucky number 13 is a woman, the actress Jodie Whittaker. Judging by the first episode she’s gonna be a good one, she seemed to fit right into the essential personality of the Doctor while already showing something of where she wants to take the role.

Jodie Whittaker as Doctor Number 13 (Credit: RTE)

You see, like every fictional hero The Doctor fights for justice and equality while defending the weak. Unlike most good guys however, The Doctor fights exclusively with his, and now her brains. This is the essential Doctor, the inner core values they all share. Around that core each actor playing the Doctor must fashion their own character, and in that way the show reincarnates itself with every new incarnation of The Doctor.

As you can probably tell, Doctor Who is the hero of the nerds of the world, their Superman or Rambo, or I suppose I should say our Superman or Rambo. Like Odysseus or Sherlock Holmes or Mister Spock the Doctor wins by brains not brawn, and in my opinion at least that is our best, our only hope.

This season’s premier also saw the introduction of a new species of enemy for the Doctor. I don’t want to give away too much of the plot but while the creature was sufficiently menacing it seemed a little bit too much of a takeoff on the alien from the ‘Predator’ series of movies. We only get to see a single bad alien however so maybe if the producers decide to use the species again they’ll flesh them out a bit.

Anyway, we have a new season of Doctor Who to look forward to, and a brand new Doctor. Man or Woman it really makes no difference, and maybe shows like Doctor Who are what we all need in order to make us realize that the differences between us are insignificant compared to all of the things we share.

Book Review: 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson.

Cover of 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson (Credit: Audiobooks)

Kim Stanley Robinson is an American science fiction author best known for his Mars trilogy (Mars Red, Mars Green and Mars Blue) about the colonization of and terraforming of Mars. “2312” is a recent novel but Robinson is such a prolific writer that he already has a new novel “Aurora” just coming out so you’ll have to forgive me for being a bit behind.

Kim Stanley Robinson (Credit: Davis Enterprise)

As you can guess “2312” takes place three hundred years from now when the human race is well on its way to the complete colonization of the Solar System. Mars has been terraformed and the terraforming of Venus is underway. Meanwhile Mercury and Earth’s Moon along with three of Jupiter’s and two of Saturn’s moons all have substantial population. Not only that but numerous asteroids have been hollowed out and turned into small worldlets, each with its own particular ecosystem. The image below is an artists impression of the interior of such an asteroid.

The Interior of an Asteroid / Worldlet (Credit: Reddit.com)

Swan Er Hong is a citizen of Mercury, an artist and designer of some of the asteroid / worldlets whose grandmother Alex has recently died. In her grandmother’s will Swan is tasked with taking some vital information to several of Alex’s confidants out at Saturn. The information is very sensitive in nature and cannot be trusted to transmission by radio. In carrying out this task Swan becomes involved in a secret organization trying to defend humanity against a conspiracy that threatens the lives of millions.

It’s the actual fight against this conspiracy that is the weakest part of “2312”. Aside from an attack on Mercury’s only city, most of the population manages to escape; the bad guys don’t really do much. In fact it isn’t until you’re 7/8ths of the way through the novel that you can point at someone and say, he’s a bad guy. There’s a lot of theorizing about who the bad guys could be and what their motives are but nothing concrete until near the very end. In fact the motives of the bad guys are never made really clear. And the final defeat of the bad guys itself is rather anti-climatic, the interplanetary police just round them all up in about two pages.

The reason for reading “2312” is all of the descriptions, they are wondrous. In “2312” you get to visit every planet, yes even Pluto, and every one of them is a unique world unto itself. Between Sunwalking on Mercury or surfing the “F” ring of Saturn you’ll read about things you never imagined.

In fact some of the most interesting things are the asteroid / worldlets that I should also mention have been given engines so traveling from one planet to another usually involves jumping on an asteroid that’s going your way. Many of these asteroid / worldlets have ecologies that preserve one of Earth’s damaged ecosystems (Earth is in kinda bad shape). There are other, more interesting worldlets as well however, let’s just say Jurassic Asteroid! The image below shows what such an asteroid could look like from the outside.

An Asteroid Spaceship in 2312 (Credit: Regina Flores Mir)

The people of the early 24th century are also very different as humanity adapts to life in space. Although it’s not mentioned explicitly there must be some kind of gene editing going on. There certainly is with the dinosaurs and woolly mammoths.

Kim Stanley Robinson is a writer best known for his interests in ecology, culture and politics and that’s certainly what you get in “2312”. O’k the plot may be a little thin but think of “2312” as a roller coaster ride, you have a lot of fun so does it really matter if you don’t get very far?

“2312” is like a visit to the early 24th century, that’s something that it does very well.

Book Review: Death’s End by Cixin Liu, the final book in the Three Body Trilogy.

In my posts of 30Aug2017 and 2May2018 I reviewed the first two installments of Chinese Author Cixin Liu’s trilogy. Part one was ‘The Three Body Problem’ where astrophysicist Ye Wenjie, a victim of Chairman Mao’s cultural revolution who has come to hate humanity, invites an alien race inhabiting the Alpha Centauri system to come and conquer Earth. The aliens are called Trisolarans and since their ship’s are only capable of one percent of the speed of light it will take over 400 years to reach our solar system.

Author Cixin Liu (Credit: Los Angeles Times)

Cover Art for ‘The Three Body Problem’ (Credit: Goodreads)

In the second book of the trilogy ‘The Dark Forest’, astronomer Luo Ji realizes that the Universe is an eternal battleground where intelligent species hide as best they can to escape being destroyed by some other intelligence, hence the ‘Dark Forest’. Luo Ji uses this knowledge to force the Trisolarans into a Mexican standoff, ‘If you try to invade us we’ll announce your coordinates to the entire Galaxy and someone out there will destroy you pretty quickly’. The novel ends with the Trisolarans agreeing to a truce.

Cover Art for ‘The dark Forest’ (Credit: China Underground)

The third novel, ‘Death’s End’ actually begins in the year 1453 C.E. with the Turkish army about to conquer Constantinople. A witch tells Byzantine Emperor Constantine IX that she can kill the Sultan with her magic. To test her the Emperor commands her to kill a condemned prisoner even while he is under constant guard. When the prisoner magically falls down dead in front of the guards and the witch brings the Emperor the man’s brain even though his head is completely untouched she is ordered to assassinate the Turkish Sultan. Two days later she announces that her magic has failed and she no longer has any power so she is executed even as the Turkish army breaks into the city.

I when into some detail on this initial section of ‘Death’s End’ because I succeeded in figuring out what the witch’s power was and I had a good idea how it was going to effect the rest of the novel. See if you can figure it out as well!

The main character in ‘Death’s End’ is aerospace engineer Cheng Xin. Cheng is the person who has been selected to replace Luo Ji as the ‘Swordholder’, the person holding the switch that if pressed will broadcast the position of the Trisolarans to the dark forest. Since making such an announcement would not only give away the position of the Trisolarans but of Humanity as well it would lead to the mutual destruction of both civilizations.

Cover Art for ‘Death’s End’ (Credit :Amazon)

It’s during the hand-off that the Trisolarans attempt to break the deadlock but I think I’ll forego any more spoilers. Let’s just say that some members of both species do survive to build new civilizations.

If the first two novels of the trilogy were inventive and imaginative ‘Death’s end’ squares the breathtaking vision of a Universe beyond the imagination. That’s not quite a good thing however, for in his rush to include ideas like mini-Universes, weaponized dimensions and space curvature as a way to both achieve lightspeed and alter the speed of light Cixin Liu leaves a lot of loose threads behind in his story. Now every novel has a few question left unanswered at the end but “Death’s End’ just has too many. At the end I was left asking a lot of, ‘well what about?’ and ‘what happened to?’

Also, if Cixin Liu wanted to show off his imagination he could have tried actually describing what the Trisolarans looked like! The three novels are more than a combined 1500 pages but we never get to see the bad guys! Now I know how difficult it can be to describe really alien creatures, in fact I’m halfway through a novel with very alien intelligences in it and I’m nowhere near satisfied with my descriptions so far. I can see the aliens in my head but getting that image onto paper is really tough!

Most Aliens are portrayed in fiction as nothing more than weird looking Humans. (Credit: Futurism)

Nevertheless Cixin Liu needed to try. At the end of ‘The Three Body Problem’ I accepted that we hadn’t seen the Trisolarans yet, there fleet is still 400 years away after all. Nevertheless I expected to see them in ‘The Dark Forest’. I have to admit by the end of ‘Death’s End’ I kinda felt cheated.

Nevertheless, ‘Death’s End’ was a real eye opener, a wild ride through a fantastic Universe that will stick in your mind and leave you thinking and wondering for days. In all the ‘Three Body Trilogy’ was some of the best science fiction I’ve read in quite a few years and I hope to soon read some more of Cixin Liu’s work.

Movie Review: Jurassic World, Fallen Kingdom

Anyone who is even an occasional reader of this blog knows that I love Dinosaurs, always have. I’ve also always loved monster movies, probably because many of them (Godzilla, Gorgo) were take offs on dinosaurs. I freely admit that when I was a kid I dragged my dad to more than a few lousy movies because they had dinosaurs or something that resembled a dinosaur in them.

So as you might imagine I had to go see the latest edition of the Jurassic Park franchise Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom starring Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard. I’ve seen all of the Jurassic Park movies and even if the plots are convoluted, the characters rather one-dimensional and the endings really just a setup for the next movie in the franchise, they’ve got dinosaurs!!

Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom (Credit: Amblin Entertainment)

So let me start by discussing the parts of Fallen Kingdom that I liked. First of all I’ve always like the way the Jurassic Park series has included some animatronic dinosaurs rather then just relying on CGI. In the dinosaur movies I saw as a kid the actors could never actually interact with the dinosaurs because they were actually guys in rubber suits like Godzilla, or small claymation figures like in ‘King Kong’ or they were blown up film of real life small lizards as in ‘The Lost World’. Either way it looked hokey to even a dinosaur loving kid like me.

Another good part of fallen Kingdom is the two stars, Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, both of whom are easy to like and who seem to like each other, which is good because half of the movie is them interacting. In fact my favourite scene in Fallen Kingdom is when Pratt and Howard are trapped inside a shipping container with a sedated T-rex who starts to wake up. Here we have the two principals acting together and with something that, even if it isn’t really alive, still looks like a dinosaur, one they can touch and which can touch them back! Pratt and Howard are acting to a real thing, not just acting to a green screen on to which the computer guys will add a dinosaur.

Bryce Dallas Howard (Left) and Chris Pratt (Right) posing with T-rex (Credit: Daily Wire)

Now if you think that sounds like I’m not a fan of CGI, you’re mostly right. I think that too much CGI starts to look more like a cartoon than anything else. Now I know that sometimes the producers have no choice, the things that they want to show simply don’t exist. Still, the less CGI, the more special effects consist of real objects, the better as far as I’m concerned. And that’s the way Amblin Entertainment, the studio that produces the Jurassic Park franchise, does things!

Sedated T-rex (Credit: Amblin Entertainment)

Now just a few criticisms. The movie is really two stories combined, and not too well. In the first story a volcano on the island where the dinos are is about to erupt, killing them all. So a rescue is setup. The second story concerns that fact that the people who rescued the dinos are badies! Ho hum!

Also, in Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom James Cromwell plays Benjamin Lockwood, a partner to Richard Attenborough’s John Hammond from the original Jurassic Park. Obviously they wanted Attenborough’s original character but Attenborough had died since Jurassic Park so they created a new, virtually identical character out of nowhere who doesn’t really do much anyway. They really should have gone with a completely different character.

Still, Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom is an entertaining thrill ride, which is what any summer blockbuster is supposed to be. But best of all, it’s got Dinosaurs!!!

TV Movie Review: Fahrenheit 451.

Fahrenheit 451 (Credit: Ballantine Books)

Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature at which books burn and of course it is also the title of the classic novel by Ray Bradbury about a future society where books are burned as a way to keep the populace happy, and dumb, and controlled. Now HBO productions has released an new, updated version of Bradbury’s tale for our divided and angry age.

For the most part the HBO version sticks to the original. Guy Montag is a fireman who doesn’t put out fires, he starts them in order to burn books but in keeping with our modern age he also burns VHS tapes, DVDs and even computers with literature on them. Legally allowed entertainment in this age consists of lame, interactive videos and games, a lot like what we do have.

One mistake HBO makes right from the start is eliminating Montag’s wife who Bradbury used to good purpose in illustrating the vapid, lifeless. anti-intellectual life in the society of Fahrenheit 451. Indeed the only characters we meet in the new version are either book burning firemen or book reading criminals. We never get any feel for the vast majority of the people in this society.

The HBO version also tries to make itself more exciting by adding a healthy dose of violence. Right at the beginning we see a boxing match between Montag and his fire chief, a couple minutes of action that has nothing to do with the plot. Cutting out a few scenes of firemen hitting book readers could have freed up some time to show how censorship is used to control people.

Montag, with flame thrower, and his Chief (Credit: HBO)

Going by the sets and visuals either the producer or director, probably both, are big fans of Blade Runner because there are a lot of shots of tall skyscrapers with videos being shown on their sides. Also everything is very poorly lighted and has a high-tech but still grimy feel to it.

A couple of the most memorable scenes from the novel are shown pretty much as Bradbury wrote them. Probably the best known scene is when the fireman burst into a house with huge library of books, maybe even more than in my house. After the firemen have doused all of the books with kerosene the little old lady whose books they are refuses to leave. Instead she sets the books, and herself alight with a match.

Scenes like that are powerful, they are the reason why Fahrenheit 451 is still such a good read after 65 years. However instead of just sticking to their source material the script writers decided to ‘improve’ Fahrenheit 451 by adding Omnis. What’s Omnis you ask? Well I don’t like to give away too much so let’s just say that Omnis has something to do with the recent discovery that you can store data, even a book, on DNA.

With the addition of Omnis the writers are then able to drop Bradbury’s quiet, yet very profound ending and replace it with five minutes of pyrotechnics. It’s an ending that disappoints at best.

While HBO’s version of Fahrenheit 451 isn’t great, it isn’t bad either. The cast and crew obviously realize that Bradbury had something important to say not just for the McCarthy era when he wrote the novel, but something that applies to today’s world as well.

Movie Review: Avengers, Infinity War.

Poster: Avengers Infinity War (Marvel / Disney)

How many superheroes can you cram into a single movie before it becomes an unwieldy mess? That was my fear before I went to see the new Avengers movie from Marvel / Disney Productions.

I’m happy to report that my worries were groundless. Even with by my count twenty-one superheroes, Avengers Infinity War is both a very exciting and actually very well constructed story. Not only did the writers and production crew manage to give all the big named stars at least a few scenes where they get to say some important lines. They also succeeded in keeping the story flowing along without making it look like they were giving all the big named stars etc. etc.

Part of the secret is just following the old formula KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). The plot is really simple. The bad guy Thanos is on a mission to acquire (i.e. steal) the six Infinity Stones that will give him infinite power. Can’t get much simpler than that.

Thanos The Bad Gut (Credit: Marvel / Disney)

Another trick is to break your twenty-one superheroes into separate groups. Thor meets up with The Guardians of the Galaxy, the God of Thunder and Rocket the raccoon actually work really well together. Then Iron Man, Doctor Strange and Spiderman are on a spaceship toward the Bad Guy’s home planet while Captain America is back on Earth getting everybody else organized for the big battle at the end. It’s important that the writer’s keep the scenes moving back and forth seamlessly between these groups but if they can do so it can actually keep the audience from getting confused, or bored.

Thor with Rocket and Groot (Credit: Marvel / Disney)

Iron Man with Spiderman and Doctor Strange (Credit: Marvel Disney)

Captain America Takes Command (Credit: Marvel / Disney)

One thing you can’t make simple is the characterizations and that’s one of the advantages of a series of movies like the Marvel Universe. With one exception all of these actors have already played their character several times and hence knows how to play the character and how the public expects their character to behave.

The one exception is the bad guy Thanos; he may have made a couple of brief appearances in earlier Marvel Movies but this is the first time he’s a major character so it’s important that Thanos doesn’t become just a cardboard villain. Once again the writers have done their job by making Thanos crazy, psychopathic and absolutely certain that he’s the good guy!

Now I’m not going to give away too much of what happens in Avengers Infinity War but I will say that the ending was quite unexpected. I will give away one little secret however. Marvel movies often have a short scene either during or at the very end of the credits. This scene gives a clue to what’s to what’s going to happen in a future movie. Well in Avengers Infinity War you have to wait until the very end of the credits if you want to see it!

Avengers Infinity War was undoubtedly a difficult movie to make, there really is just a lot going on. However, it is definitely a success both as a story and as a spectacle. If the writer’s, producers and production teams at Marvel / Disney keep up the quality it seems to me as if the Marvel Universe will be turning out the blockbusters for quite a few more years to come.

Book Review: The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu.

‘The Dark Forest’ is the second novel in the science fiction trilogy by China’s best-known SF writer, the Hugo aware winning Cixin Liu. Starting with ‘The Three Body Problem’, which I reviewed in my post of 30Aug17, the series will conclude with ‘Death’s End’. For the sake of those who haven’t read ‘The Three Body Problem’ let me give a brief summary of it before I go on to ‘The Dark Forest’. (Although you could just read my review, hint, hint). The image below shows Cixin Liu.

In the ‘Three Body Problem’ a Chinese astrophysicist named Ye Zhetai has seen her father murdered and was herself tortured during her country’s cultural revolution of the 1960s. Forced to work for a super secret military program Madam Ye makes contact with an alien civilization called the Trisolarians, living on a planet orbiting the three stars in the Alpha Centauri system. Hating her own species for the things that were done to her Madam Ye gives the Trisolarians the information they need to launch an invasion fleet against Earth. The Trisolarian fleet is traveling at one percent of the speed of light so it will take more than 400 years for the aliens to arrive in our solar system. ‘The Three Body Problem’ ends with the governments of the world becoming aware of the alien threat.

In ‘The Dark Forest’ humanity is now faced with the task of trying to work together to develop a defense against the technologically superior Trisolarian invasion fleet, even if it’s not going to reach Earth for 400 years. To make matters worse the Trisolarians have succeeded in sending sub-atomic probes called sophons to Earth that are not only keeping mankind under constant surveillance but are even able to interfere with the results of experiments probing the fundamental laws of the Universe, CERN, LIGO, etc. Because of the sophons humanity cannot advance in new knowledge but only improve the technology we have that is based on already established physics, which leaves us in a perpetual technical disadvantage relative to the Trisolarians.

Faced with this continuous surveillance and the blocking of our scientific advance the UN Security Council responds with the Wallfacer program. Four men are selected to develop strategies to defeat the Trisolarians, strategies that they will keep entirely to themselves, telling no one at all in an effort to keep the sophons from figuring it out.

The Wallfacers are given total control over the entire resources of mankind; they get whatever they need to carry out their plans. Three of the Wallfacers are men of achievement and renown, men with military, political and scientific credentials. The fourth is Luo Ji, an irresponsible, self-centered, perpetual student but he’s also the only man that the Trisolarians want dead.

Luo Ji’s importance stems from a conversation he had with Ye Zhetai that is in fact the first scene of the novel so pay attention as you read it. Much of ‘The Dark Forest’ is concerned with Luo Ji’s trying to figure out why the Trisolarians are so afraid of what he and Madam Ye talked about.

While Luo Ji is the main focus of the novel there are subplots and complications galore. With the other three Wallfacers along with people who feel that humanity’s only hope is to escape into intergalactic space before the Trisolarians get here, the story has more than enough twists and turns to keep you guessing as to what’s gonna happen next!

I don’t want to give away too much but I do want to admit to having made an incorrect guess in the first novel. In the ‘The Three Body Problem’ Madam’s Ye’s daughter Yang Dong has committed suicide before the story even starts and I predicted that she wasn’t really dead yet. Well as it turned out she didn’t show up in ‘The Dark Forrest’ so I suppose I was wrong. Of course there is still ‘Death’s End’, which I plan on reading quite soon.

Book Review: ‘Apes and Angels’ by Ben Bova

‘Apes and Angels’ is the third novel in a series by the well known Science Fiction author Ben Bova. Beginning with ‘New Earth’ the saga continued with ‘Death Wave’ (Which I reviewed in my post of 31May2017) and will continue after ‘Apes and Angels’ with a fourth novel ‘Survival’.

Apes and Angels Cover (Credit: Goodreads)

Let me give you a bit of the background leading up to ‘Apes and Angels’. In ‘New Earth’ a starship voyages to the star Sirius where the crew discovers a planet inhabited by both super-Intelligent machines called Predecessors and human beings whom the machines had brought to Sirius. The machines inform the crew that the black hole at the center of our galaxy has erupted in a powerful burst of gamma rays that will kill all unprotected life in the galaxy. The machines give the starship’s crew the technology necessary to protect Earth in exchange for a promise that humanity will travel to other star systems in our section of the galaxy in order to protect the more primitive civilizations inhabiting those stars.

In “Death Wave’ the starship crew has returned to Earth and informed the government of the approaching gamma radiation. However, since the deadly radiation won’t reach our solar system for another two thousand years the politicians ruling Earth are in no hurry to protect the planet and as far as saving alien cultures is concerned, well let’s just say they’re not interested at all. The spacefarers have to directly convince the people of Earth in order to force the politicians to begin the massive effort to build starships to journey to the other stars threatened by the gamma radiation.

‘Apes and Angels’ then begins with the starship Odysseus arriving at the star Mithra, named for the ancient Persian man-god. Mithra possesses two planets that contain life. Mithra-alpha, closest to the star, has octopus like creatures that make noises to each other and who may be intelligent. Planet gamma has two-armed, two-legged creatures that live in primitive villages who definitely are intelligent.

The expedition to Mithra is led by Adrian Kosoff, a scientist turned bureaucrat who wants to run the mission like a military unit, everybody knowing and doing their job and following, if not orders at least instructions. Kosoff is ambitious and by being the man in charge hopes to get credit for the mission’s success and discoveries.

Kosoff’s nemesis is Brad MacDaniels, a young anthropologist who follows his intuition and likes to break the rules. Much of the plot of ‘Apes and Angels’ revolves around the conflict; non-violent I hasten to add, between these two men.

Of course this is a setup of the usual conflict between generations, between the methodical plodder and the hunch taker, between the tried and true and the new and novel. In my opinion Ben Bova leans a little to heavy on the side of MacDaniels. The younger man’s intuition is always right and he always gets the better of Kosoff.

Better handled is the mystery of the Mithra solar system. As soon as the Odysseus arrives it is quickly realized that the alignment of the planets is not stable. The planet alpha is so close to its sun that it is boiling away while gamma comes so close to beta every 60 years that they will collide within the next million years. The astrophysicists in the Odysseus’ crew determine that something, or someone has disrupted this solar system within the last 100,000 years.

I don’t want to give away too much of the plot details so I think I’ll leave it there. The story will continue in the next installment, ‘Survival’ so don’t expect all of the answers. Like all of Ben Bova’s novels ‘Apes and Angles’ was both enjoyable and a quick read but it is just an installment in a larger work. When I finish reading ‘Survival’ I’ll let you know how everything works out.