April 2008 – Auxiliary Memory

Slower Than Light Imagination

Science fiction has always entertained the idea that travel between the stars would be no more arduous than travel between countries around the world today. Because science fiction is basically adventure fiction, rocketing between Star A and Star B isn’t very exciting plotwise, so writers long ago imagined theoretical faster-than-light drives. Anyone who has studied physics knows that these ideas are fantasies, and they contradict the notion that science fiction is based on science. So as readers, should we accept science fiction as unscientific fun, or should we ask science fiction writers to be more scientific?

If travel between the stars was as slow as it took knowledge to evolve from Aristotle to Einstein would it still make for exciting fiction? Science fiction has hinted at the immensity of generational ship travel, but it’s hard to write a novel that contains centuries of human activities. I would think most novels would end up being about just the journey or jump to the destination and be just about the evolved world-building of starting a civilization on a new planet. Interstellar war wouldn’t make any sense storywise, and neither would commerce between planets within a galactic empire, killing off two main sub-genres of SF.

Has any science fiction writer pictured a future where there are dozens of settled worlds and communication between them take years and decades? Imagined if we had already colonized six other star systems, how would that feel to us people living on Earth? Would it really feel any different than watching stories about China in the news? Or imagine blogging with people from the six colonies – reading a steady stream of daily posts could be exciting – but commenting would be pointless.

There are hundreds of diverse countries around this globe that most people ignore in their daily life. Sure, future people might watch an occasional documentary set on another world just like we watch a National Geographic show about an exotic Pacific island now. Slower than light travel and speed of light communication will make an odd expansion of the human sphere of influence. We could stay constantly in contact with generation ships and influence each other’s language and culture. Just imagine new songs, television shows, books and movies coming from generation ships and colonies on distant planets.

A cool novel would be following two friends, one on Earth and one on a generation ship, staying in contact by a steady stream of messages where the time lag of replies grows ever longer. Heinlein hinted as the possibilities of such a story with his novel Time for the Stars, but he cheated and used instantaneous telepathy as a form of communication.

Once I started thinking about STL travel to the stars I realize that science fiction hasn’t even begun to explore the idea. Science fiction has fixated on space opera, military conflict and galactic civilizations, all from the realm of fantasy to the almost complete exclusion of how things might be. Why is this? Obviously, adventure fiction is built on conflict – where fighting nasty aliens is thrilling and the politics of interstellar empires offers far more intrigue.

It also shows a lack of imagination. Two recent literary novels using fantasy and science fiction techniques, The Life of Pi by Yann Martel and The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, absolutely kicked our genre’s ass when it came to plotting outside of the traditional genre box. Too often science fiction writers find their inspiration from science fiction tradition, like John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War, a book I had much fun reading and which felt like delicious SF nostalgia rather than Cirque du Soleil storytelling dazzle that I got out of The Life of Pi or The Time Traveler’s Wife.

I’m guessing that future SF writers of the talent of Heinlein, Asimov and Clarke won’t use golden age giants for their models, but come out of left field with stories that surprise us. And one area where I’d love to be surprised is by reading stories that make me think I might be reading real possible futures. I used to think reading history was a way to know the past, and reading science fiction was a way to imagine possible futures. I hate the idea of dying and not know the future of mankind, so I always loved science fiction as a way to speculate and sooth my existential sadness about the future, however the older I get the more I’m disappointed with the help I’m getting from science fiction. Some science fiction stories do admirably work at what I want, but too often science fiction has become recursive, like standing between two mirrors, mesmerizing but limited.

I’m not saying that generation ships are the only way to envision mankind traveling to the stars. What if travel could be speeded up to a significant fraction of the speed of light? Then it’s possible to write about people who make the whole trip from one star to the next. It is physically possible to travel such speeds but it is highly unlikely it will ever be done by humans, but I’m more than willing to explore the possibilities. I don’t think science fiction has really explored the nature of relativity all that well. There were some stellar examples like Tau Zero by Poul Anderson and The Forever War by Joe Haldeman.

One inherent barrier to what I’m talking about is SF novels are from the POV of the characters on the cutting edge of the action. The reader gets to experience reaching another world but never understands what the rest of humanity feels about such a success for our species.

Imagine a classroom of students adopting a young astronaut on the first near-light speed trip to another star. To the astronaut, the trip will be a few years to him, but a lifetime to those kids. What if Neil Armstrong’s whole trip to the Moon took our entire lifetime, and his story was one we followed avidly our whole life, sharing with friends. Can you imagine a novel about thirty 13-year-old school kids meeting a 25-year old man before his trip, and then a group of 83-year-old grown-up kids meeting him again when he returned and was only 35?

Now the kicker, whose story would be more interesting? The guy who got to go to another star, or the group that got to experience seventy years of life on Earth during a time when mankind was going to the stars? The genre writer would pick the astronaut, but the literary writer would pick the kids.

Living in space is so much different from the dreams of science fiction. It has been my theory that science and science fiction diverged back in the 1960s when space travel became a reality. It is theoretically possible for mankind to live in space despite all the harsh realities of the dangers it poses. Future space ships that travel between the stars will probably be large asteroids that are flung between the stars, to drift at speeds far below the speed of light. They would have be self-contained worlds, with energy systems that could function for centuries. The art of recycling would have to be near perfect.

Such space travel is a far cry from the adventures of Hans Solo and Captains Kirk and Picard. Do science fiction readers have the patience for such stories? Robert A. Heinlein imagined the fantastic tale of people forgetting they were the crew on such ship in Orphans of the Sky. Brian Aldiss wrote a very similar story called Non-Stop/Starship. In fact, most generation ship stories, including the more modern ones like Ship of Fools by Richard Paul Russo and The Book of the Long Son by Gene Wolfe can’t get past the idea that the inhabitants of such voyages will forgot their missions. Wolfe goes go way beyond Heinlein by imagining a vastly complex society that is far more interesting than space travel itself.

Has any science fiction writer imagined such a generation ship society that remembers their purpose and creates a society that reflects what living between the stars would be like with the full knowledge of where they are and why they are there? Like I said earlier, it’s probably easier to just skip the journey and create a new world for your characters to have their adventures. But isn’t this just a way to set Lord of the Rings on another planet?

When does science fiction turn into fantasy? Think about it. Wherever we go in the universe, humans will all face the same problems. Air, water, food and shelter. After that comes community and civilization. If we don’t forget like those characters in the Heinlein story, we’ll always have an ever-growing body of science and knowledge to work with and use. In other words, physics, chemistry, biology, geology, astronomy. It will be like on Earth, but somewhere else, but with a vastly different society and culture, but will it be that different?

Science fiction was born during a time when the knowledge about other planets could easily fit into a single volume. In the 21st Century a SF writer needs to read dozens of books to scratch the surface about what astronomy now knows about outer space. It seems when NASA probes starting sending back photos SF stopped trying to deal with space reality. I find it amazing that when NASA started succeeding, Heinlein shifted his focus from outer space science fiction, to the inner space of sexual/social science fiction. That was a brilliant career move, but unfortunately he stopped being speculative and entered a personal recursive mode, restating the same ideas over and over again in each new book. If only he had been as inventive as he had been in his 1950s space books.

What if mankind never goes to the stars, or even to Mars? That’s one area that science fiction has totally failed to explore. Science fiction has always assumed the final frontier is outer space – what if that’s a bust? What if our species is trapped on Earth for millions of years, what does that do to us psychologically? What if robots get to conquer the galaxy but we don’t?

Has science fiction become a steady-state recursive universe because of faster-than-light travel fantasies? Has science fiction become entrenched in a Ptolemaic world view and desperately in need of a Copernicus? Has our faith in FTL stories kept us from understanding what modern day Galileos are telling us?

Science fiction will always be exciting to kids because all of its great ideas are still new to them. However, as readers grow older and have several hundred stories under their belt, science fiction stops being novel. It gets harder to find truly sense-of-wonder stories. I’d like to think if science fiction tried to recapture its relationship with science it might find new realms of wonder.

Jim

Going Paperless 5

Over at Discover Magazine they have an article “How Big Is Discover’s Carbon Footprint?” that is a perfect justification for going paperless. At the end of the essay they campaign for the reader to recycle her issue of Discover Magazine, but I can’t help but wonder why they aren’t promoting electronic editions of their magazine. Sure, if you read the paper copy, do recycle it, but also consider switching to a paperless solution. Please read the article and try and imagine the impact that thousands upon thousands of magazines produced around the world has on the Earth.

Now that we have so many alternatives to paper I can’t help and wonder if the print publishing industry isn’t unethical. The linked article above does give an excellent picture of what goes into producing a magazine. I am currently a subscriber, but I plan on not renewing my subscription. Don’t get me wrong, Discover is a fantastic science magazine. I don’t want it to go out of business – in fact, I wished it was many magnitudes more successful because it provides valuable knowledge about our changing world.

Like I have pointed out, there are many ways to read a magazine other than by holding a paper copy in your hands. I discovered and read this article through an RSS feed I have for the magazine. I hope the publishers make plenty of money off the web edition because it easy and free to read. If there was a Zinio or Kindle edition I’d consider them too, or even an audio edition from Audible.com.

Zinio is an excellent way to read a magazine on your computer and have it look exactly like the paper copy. On my twenty-two inch Samsung 2253bw LCD monitor, the standard magazine requires no horizontal or vertical scrolling to view a two page spread. If I hold a paper magazine up to my monitor, it fits within the screen area, so the Zinio reader is perfect for the modern LCD screen.

What I would really like from Discover Magazine, or any other magazine for that matter, is a service rather than paper. Publishers should offer two methods of delivery: the free web based system paid for through advertising and a pay-for subscription service with extras. If I paid extra I’d want easy to read electronic editions, full access to all the back issues, freedom from online ads but get to see the original print ads, the right to email full-text articles to friends, and other imaginative marketing bells and whistles.

I have to say though, the free RSS feed is a pretty groovy way to read Discover Magazine – I just need to figure out a way to put a LCD next to the porcelain seat in the smallest room of the house and I’d really wouldn’t ever need a paper copy.

Jim

Is It Time To Remake Blade Runner?

What I’m really asking: Is it time to make another movie version of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Blade Runner was a masterpiece film adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s masterpiece novel, but it was just one interpretation of a very complex story. I first read the novel in 1968 when I discovered it on the 7-day new book shelf at the Coconut Grove Library in Miami. I can still remember reaching up to pull this very strangely titled book off the top shelf. Even the cover was bizarre, far beyond the weird science fiction standards of the time.

I have read the book and seen the movie many times, and just recently I listened to an unabridged audio edition read by Scott Brick entitled Blade Runner, even though he was actually reading the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? It’s sort of sad when the public has to be sold a classic book by using the movie title. Whenever I reread the book I’m always amazed by how well the movie got the book but also disturb by how much was changed and left out. As soon as I started listening to the novel this time I kept thinking they really need to make a movie version that’s closer to PKD’s original vision.

Blade Runner is famous, and Ridley Scott keeps trotting out tweaked versions every decade or so, keeping his film version prominent in the public eye. The Library of America just released Four Novels of the 1960s that includes Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which ups the ante on the novel’s value. Dune has had one movie version, a television miniseries version and now another film version is in the works. There have been many science fiction novels that have had two or more media productions, including The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, The Thing, and so on, so the idea of remaking Blade Runner isn’t totally crazy.

The reason to make a new version of the novel is to try and get closer to PKD’s actual story. Blade Runner used most of the major plot, but left out most of the subplots and many fascinating themes, and it reversed the polarity of the audience’s attitude towards the androids. In the PKD novel the androids are bad and the reader ends up wanting them killed. In the movie, the audience feels sympathetic to androids and wish they could live. The movie leaves out the obsession about owning live animals, Mercerism, the fake police station, the mood organ, the other bounty hunter, Rick having sex with a very different Rachael, Rachel killing the goat, kipple, and so many other fascinating ideas.

Philip K. Dick wrote Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? at a particularly significant time in U.S. history, during the peak of the sixties, facing the issues of the Vietnam War, civil rights, psychedelic drugs, and so on. PKD was obsessed with two questions: What is human? and What is real? I believe the androids in his story had nothing to do with science fictional robots and future tech – they were metaphors for what Dick hated about people and what he thought made them inhuman. Dick could not believe humans could have committed the atrocities of the holocaust and wondered how to explain the human-looking creatures that ran the ovens? Ridley Scott and crew seem to be asking: Can mankind recreate humans? This is a very different theme.

Should A New Version Be Faithful To the Novel

Would a new version of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? have to be faithful to the PDK book? A lot has happened in the world since 1966 when PKD wrote the book. Now that humanity is destroying the planet and making animal species go extinct faster than mother nature, what if there were a race of androids that were fighting humans to stop us and save the world for their reasons? In PKD’s story, humans are superior because they have empathy and love animals – well, it appears Dick was wrong because we have failed at both.

Robots in today’s society are popular and loved. I have an issue of the hobby magazine Robot sitting right beside me and it shows our drive to build androids. Commander Data is one of the most loved all all the Star Trek characters. There is something that challenges the modern mind to build an android that’s better than ourselves. If the 1982 audiences felt sympathy for the androids of Blade Runner, what would the audiences of 2008 feel? The 2004 film I, Robot got away again with evil robots, so we know audiences can accept robots in bad guy roles, but is that what people really want?

Even in the original 1966 novel, Philip K. Dick walks a tightrope by creating a race of artificial slaves that want to pass for humanity – doesn’t that beg for the reader’s empathy? Well, at the time PKD ends up saying no. In the novel, androids will kill humans, betray their own kind, but most importantly they will kill and torture animals with a total lack of feelings. They are all intellect and no emotion. Rachael has sex with Deckard, not out of love, but because she knows bounty hunters become sympathetic to androids and can’t kill them after having sex with her.

In the novel androids are incapable of feeling love. Dick wants the reader to believe there are humans that look just like us but ultimately lack that qualities that make us good. I feel that in the violent times of the 1960s PKD had specific people in mind. I assume Dick is not writing a book advocating killing off empathy lacking humans but is merely telling us we all need to kill off that portion of our psyche. Blade Runner confused the issue by suggesting that androids do deserve our sympathy. It further screws up the story by suggesting that Deckard is an android. I really hate this twist of Ridley Scott. It actually hurts his own work of art. Part of the beauty of the film is a human falls for an android and an android falls for a human. If they are both androids you lose a lot of philosophical zest.

What I’d Like to See

Ultimately, what I’d like to see is a new version that is extremely faithful to the book except that it will be ambiguous as to whether humans or androids are truly good. As long as they kill each other who can be the morally superior species? If homo robotica can develop a will to live, an empathy for life, a sense of ethics, and a desire to preserve Earth, mankind, as well as all the other species, will such an artificial life-form be bad and worthy of destroying even if it kills out of self-preservation?

The next version needs to add the philosophical aspects of religion and mass culture that Dick explored with Mercer and Buster Friendly. Also, Deckard needs his wife to contrast any possible relationship he will have with Rachael. At one point in the book Deckard comments that Rachael and her kind have more will to live than his wife, Iran.

Then there is the whole choice of casting. Harrison Ford brought an action hero aspect to the film that wasn’t in the book. From the recent audio production I pictured Deckard being a lot like a younger William H. Macy, more of an average guy with a tendency to doubt over action. Rick and Iran have a lot of marital problems that help set the philosophical stage when we ask what it is to be human. A Sean Young type actress is perfect to represent the temptation of an artificially perfect woman.

And that brings up we humans want to be as perfect as artificial beings. After PKD’s death there emerged a science fictional story line of downloading human minds into artificial bodies, which essentially combines humans and androids into a yet unnamed construct. This new being goes beyond the bionic man and woman.

I had a friend that used to argue most vehemently that if an artificial intelligence was ever created it would always turn itself off. My friend could never fathom programming the artificial will to live. I, on the other hand, never could imagine any creature, live or artificial, that was self-aware willing to turn itself off if it wasn’t suffering. I always assumed that awareness is always preferable over non-existence as long as there is no real incentive to shut down.

Any future film version of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? will need to deal with these philosophical issues of identity. In 1968 and 1982 we imagined PKD’s fictional world dark and decaying, suffering from the effects of a nuclear holocaust. Any future film version will probably use the backdrop of an ecological holocaust. The current debate over global warming centers around a very deep conflict over whether mankind is the cause of our own potential doom. In any mythic archetypal story about the lethal conflict between human versus artificial humans and the ethical considerations of which species is superior will have to deal with this ecological issue.

Like the classic SF short story, “Farewell to the Master,” which was made into the memorable science fiction film, The Day the Earth Stood Still, we have to remember the roll of the robot, Gort, who belongs to a race of robots that rule the humans to protect them from themselves.

The science fiction stories Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Blade Runner exists on the razor’s edge between the hated world of robots in the Terminator movies and the acceptance of Commander Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Any future film version of our story needs to continue being a blade runner riding the razor’s edge between those two positions.

Engineers and computer scientists are working full tilt to build robots and artificial intelligence. The question will not be if robots will shut themselves off – the question will be how they judge us, their gods. Most science fiction that gets to this point, imagine homo robotica taking the dominant position and wanting to snuff us humans out like cockroaches. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Blade Runner explores the Romeo and Juliet world of the ever feuding Capulets and Montagues, which is why it remains so fascinating.

Jim

Electric Cars and Wikipedia

I’m going to kill two birds with one stone in this post. I started out researching electric cars and quickly discovered one of the best sources of information on them is Wikipedia. Since this came just after seeing a major attack on Wikipedia the contrast of the two stories is too hard to ignore. If you have time, look at this video “The Truth According to Wikipedia.”

These people think Wikipedia is evil but my experience is just the opposite, I think Wikipedia is very positive and creative, and represents a new paradigm in thinking and transmitting knowledge. I wanted to find out about electric cars and Wikipedia provided a very comprehensive survey of what’s going on with that technology, and had links to more information and related articles. I jumped over to the Encyclopedia Britannica and found zip – well that’s due to the fact that it’s a sales site and doesn’t offer a way research electric cars without paying. I bought the deluxe DVD of the EB over a year ago and it included one year’s access to the online version of EB.

For awhile whenever I looked up something I’d check EB first and then Wikipedia and in all cases I preferred the information I got from Wikipedia, so I stopped using EB. I could check my DVD copy of EB for what it says about electric cars, but I didn’t reinstall it on my new machine and I don’t feel like hunting down the DVD right now. And it will be out of date. In other words, if Andrew Keen and company want an authoritative encyclopedia to compete with Wikipedia it needs to be on the web and free. I can understand EB wanting to make money but can’t it make money like all the other commercial Internet sites through advertising?

Even if you aren’t interested in electric cars, look at the Wikipedia entry for electric car and plug-in hybrid. I found the stub for electric cars at EB and it promises 227 words if you buy the online subscription. Wikipedia is offering thousands of words of info for free. Sure there’s a chance that some of Wikipedia’s facts might be wrong, but I think the group effort looks extremely good. I learned all I needed and wanted to know and more.

The major criticism for Wikipedia is it’s written by amateurs – but the results look very professional to me. I was quickly able to learn about the different types of electric cars, their histories, and the planned models on the drawing boards. For the plug-in hybrid, the technology I’m most interested in, Wikipedia gives continuously updated listing of press reports. Other than finding insider blogs from fanatics about electric cars, I can’t imagine needing more information than what Wikipedia is presenting.

I learned quickly from Wikipedia what kind of electric cars are for sale. The ones I can afford, I don’t want, and the ones I want, I can’t afford or they aren’t in production yet. I also learned that certain types of electric cars have restrictions to driving on roads with 35mph or less speed limits, which is another reason why I don’t want the affordable electric cars. The information was so good at Wikipedia that I don’t even feel the need to search further. Wikipedia is even supplanting the Internet.

My conclusion is I need to wait for the automobile industry to come up with a good solution. Not only that, it looks like it will be a long time before Detroit or Japan offers a $20-25k plug-in hybrid that will be practical for the average driver. It appears for the next few years the best electric cars will compete in price with the more expensive models of Mercedes.

This brings me to the second bird I wanted to kill with this stone. If global warming is the crisis that scientists are saying it is, why hasn’t our government and others around the world jumped in a created a crash program to manufacture low cost plug-in hybrid electric cars? If what scientists are saying about global warming is true it’s far more terrifying than anything Osama bin Laden plans to do, or more threatening than Iraq five years ago. Why is Muslim terrorists more scary than a threat that promises to grind civilization down world-wide?

Politicians who avoid the issue of global warming do so because they fear fighting it will hurt the economy. I would think one major solution to keep the economy stable and fight global warming at the same time would be the development of an ecological car. Plug-in hybrids appears to be the next intermediate solution – they still use gas, but much less, so they will work with the existing infrastructure of gasoline supplied energy stations. Plug-in hybrids will also benefit from people who install solar energy panels on their houses. If you create a Marshal Plan like effort to promote both technologies we could lower our oil consumption and lower our use of coal in electrical production and thus find two major ways to lower our carbon footprint.

I think our leaders are still in the authoritative mindset of people who are attacking Wikipedia, but the world’s population acts more like the human dynamics that create Wikipedia. Car makers still want to sell expensive Encyclopedia Britannica editions. What we need are leaders who can promote solutions to global warming in the same way Wikipedia succeeds.

Jim

My Perfect Routine Day

Daydreaming about retirement makes me wonder just what I would do if all my days were free from the 9 to 5 job. My biggest fear is I would become a couch potato and die soon after retiring because I’d let myself go. What I need is a good routine, a way to pace myself and maximize the use of my free time. Now this is all speculation because I’m not going to get to retire soon. If I’m lucky I could retire in another year and work part-time, but only if I’m brave enough to find a good part-time job. It would be so easy to just keep working where I do because I like it so well. Thus I want to contemplate this possible future to help make it happen.

For now, I’d like to imagine my perfect routine day. To begin with I want to get up early – I don’t want to waste any precious free time. If I had discipline, I’d get up at 5:30 and do yoga and Bowflex exercises for a half hour and then shower and dress. To be honest, I barely exercise now, beyond walking a few times a week, doing some half-ass make-up-my-own yoga to help my back when it gets stiff, and a rare bout of Bowflex when my arms feel particularly flabby.

As you can see, my perfect routine day also involves becoming a new person. I wonder if that’s possible? I’ve been meaning to change myself since I was a teenager and it hasn’t worked yet. A recent article in Wired, “Brain Scanners Can See Your Decision Before You Make Them” suggests that we lack will power or free will. I’ve read other books about the brain that cover this territory, suggesting that we have subconscious actors in our head that make the real decisions and our conscious minds go along thinking they decided and are the real bosses. Thus, I’d add to my morning schedule a bit of meditation hoping I could tune into these inner mechanisms and wrestle control.

I don’t know why, but I’m the most inspired with writing ideas during my morning shower, so I think my routine should be built around this. I’d like to start writing right after getting dressed and maybe eat breakfast at my desk. I start the day fully charged and slowly drain my mental batteries as the day progresses. I’d want to use my best time and mental energy for writing. Devoting mornings to writing and focusing on fiction is the key to optimizing my energy curve. This should take me to nine or ten o’clock.

At this point I’d like to read a single non-fiction essay that has great inspirational impact. Detailed facts are a major fuel for my mental fires, and I need something I can contemplate in my spare cognitive moments for the rest of the day.

About now, if I have to work part-time I’d like to go off for my four hours. I should snack some because I’d want to work through the lunch hour. It would be great if work was close enough to walk or bike so I could combine exercise with transportation time. I’d also listen to books on audio while commuting – thus providing triple multitasking. During this phase of my life I will be getting most of my book reading done through my ears. I’d listen to books during housework, yard work, travel and exercise.

Even if I could afford to quit work full time it might be good for me to have one or more part time jobs. Working in a library or bookstore might be rewarding. Computers are my work life now, and it would be good to get away from them and do something different, but on the other hand I could be very useful as a Old Geek Computer Fix-It man, and it might be more profitable. On the other hand it would be more of a challenge if I could start a business developing custom software. However, running a business usually means 60-80 hour workweeks, and I most definitely do not want that. I think whatever I do, my perfect daily routine would want me to work more with people and less with machines.

After work I will need a small meal and a nap. Currently I need two naps a day and I don’t expect to change. I wish I was one of those people who can sleep five hours and run like a race horse until the wee hours. I’m not. Currently I need to nap in the early evening so I can stay up late. I can’t stay in bed 8-9 hours at a stretch because of the arthritis in my hips. I get pretty stiff and hurting after 5-6 hours, and I even have to spend part of my night sleeping in a La-Z-Boy. Getting old and breaking down presents some interesting problems to deal with, and sleeping and living with a growing pain load are two of them.

I know my perfect routine days will coincide with the slow downward slide of health. I’ll be Sisyphus rolling a rock up a hill and to beat the system I’ll have to squeeze as much positive life out of the time I have.

After I get up from my nap I’d like to have some socializing time, either with my wife or friends. This will be a good time to watch TV or movies, and eat dinner together, or even play group games or share hobbies.

I’ve always loved television, but I don’t know if I want to waste too much of my freedom on the tube. I love having a good show to look forward to, like Lost or John Adams. I like watching television with other people. For each day I wouldn’t want to watch more than one show or movie, which means devoting no more than 1-2 hours to sitting in front of my HDTV. I’d want about one-third fiction to two-thirds non-fiction mix. The world of documentaries have gotten to be a fantastic genre in recent years.

Shows like The Universe, Planet Earth, Frontline, NOVA, The Miracle Planet, Independent Lens, Naked Science are amazing sources of information and entertainment. I can’t believe I know so few people who watch these shows. I’m surprised so many people as they age lock into their favorite entertainments and hide from the current world. Modern cable television with its hundreds of channels is a sixth sense that allows us to roam the globe and keep up with countless human endeavors. The Internet gets all the press about social change, but cable television is just as powerful. Its another medium that brings the people of the world together. I expect to be watching cable television when I pass on – I want to go out knowing as much as I can before I die.

Part of my perfect routine day will involve blogging. I hope as the years go by blogging becomes even more sophisticated. Probably after my social time I’ll take another nap and then get up and spend the rest of the evening blogging and working on hobbies.

I have a number of hobbies I’d like to pursue, but the one that I think would be the most fun is to recreate the experiments from the old “Amateur Scientist” column in Scientific American. I bought a CD-ROM that collected them years ago and put it away for my retirement years. Amazon doesn’t seem to sell it anymore, but v. 3 appears to be still for sale here. I think it would be a fun hobby to work out lesson plans for schools on how to do basic scientific experiments. Combine the Make impulse with Teach impulse.

I’d also like to experiment with robotics and artificial intelligence, but on a kid level, something like Lego Mindstorms kits. I guess when guys get old they want to play with toys again.

Finally, I’d like to close out my day by reading a short story. I find short stories to be intense compact communiqués from deep within the souls of other people. I’m surprised they aren’t a more popular art form. To me short stories offer the most bang for the literary buck. Short stories combine feats of imagination with encapsulated emotion – and a good story should bring tears to your eyes, whether it’s dramatic or comic. Great ones should make the top of your scull feel like it’s lifting off your head, like the rush of an intense but quick acting drug. Short stories should leave you drained like you’ve just mind-melded with another human for an hour.

I’d want to leave this fictional rush to just before bed time hoping it would affect my dreams. I’d like to get to sleep by 11:30 so I could get a good six hours sleep and be up and at it again by 5:30 the next morning. As you can see I expect to cram a lot into my retiring years. I’ve been working for decades, during the best years of my life, and this has been zapping all my energy. I’m hoping my golden years are ones I can get a lot done and make up for all those years I was too tired to do anything but veg out in front of the boob tube.

Jim