jameswharris

My Science Fiction Thrill is Gone

Anyone who reads my blog knows I’m very into science fiction, but I have to admit that I’m having a devil of a time finding new science fiction stories to love. For the past decade I’ve been getting most of my sense of wonder thrills from rereading science fiction books I first discovered in the 1960s. I occasionally stumble across a new SF novel that rekindles the old thrill, somewhat, like Hyperion (1989), Snowcrash (1992), Red Mars (1993), Old Man’s War (2005) and Spin (2005), but life wasn’t like it was in my teens when I read several mind blowing SF books a week.

Has my sense of wonder fuse blown out?

Have I discovered all the great science fictional concepts?

I was page turning thrilled by The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003) but it was written by a literary writer, Audrey Niffenegger, and its appeal did not deal with time traveling, but a very fascinating romantic relationship. I’ve read many books and watched many movies about time travel and that far out idea is really tired.

And I’m burned out on alien invasions too. (I mean, be honest aren’t you too?) Ditto for Star Trek save-the-world space opera. And just how boring have all those after-the-collapse stories gotten? I’ve been in the mood for a great robot yarn, but the film I, Robot, although fun, wasn’t sense of wonder thrilling, and neither was WALL-E, but I loved it.

Thinking about it, the most exciting SF I’ve enjoyed in recent years has been the film Gattaca (1997) and the recent version of Battlestar Galactica (2004-2009), and neither of these sense of wonder thrillers were for traditional reasons. Vincent Freeman’s epic struggle to compete with genetically selected super humans was emotionally uplifting. And even though I’m an atheist, the idea of a race of robots, the Cylons, trying to exterminate the polytheistic human race because of the Cylon’s belief in monotheism was just too delicious not to love. However, as much as I enjoyed the series, it had little traditional sense of wonder. I was very disappointed it did so little with the psychology of the Cylons.

Am I jaded over science fiction, or have science fiction writers lost their mojo? The last science fiction novel that came up with a fantastic new H. G. Wells level concept was The Life of Pi by Yann Martel in 2001.

Now most people are going to scream at me, “WTF!”

I know, I know, most of you ladies and gents think The Life of Pi is a literary fantasy. That’s because you want to believe in Pi’s tale, which is a fantasy. We all want to believe in his fantasy, the fantasy of God, and all the other fantasies we love. When you accept the realistic ending, you accept science, and The Life of Pi becomes science fiction. A science fiction novel that kills science fiction.

And that might be why my thrill is gone. I want a new science fiction fantasy to believe in, like space travel, time travel, mind downloading, meeting far out aliens, mind travel, teleportation, immortality, and so on.

I can’t help but believe I’ve written this blog post before.

My mind is going, but the desires stay the same.

JWH – 12/16/9

Global Impact of 1 Watt of Electricity

When my computer, monitor and external hard drive are turned off they use 9 watts of electricity while still plugged in. But if I unplug the external drive to shut it off completely, my system uses 8 watts in its off state. So what’s the impact of saving 1 watt? What if every person on Earth could save 1 watt, what would that mean, because 7,000,000,000 watts is a lot of watts. That’s 7,000 MW of use. Nanticoke Generating Station in Canada, can produce 3,964 MW of power, the largest coal fired plant in North America, and according to Wikipedia supports up to 2.5 million households.

In other words, saving just 1 watt would be equal to decommissioning two extremely large coal fired generating stations, or fourteen 500 MW smaller ones. That’s nothing to sneeze at, especially when some people consider the Nanticoke plant the single largest producer of carbon emissions in Canada.

The Department of Energy reports that the average US household uses 936 kWh per month. That 936,000 watts for one hour. If I leave my external hard drive on, it will use 730 kWh, which doesn’t sound like much compared to 936,000, but every bit helps. If I leave 10 extra watts burning, that’s 7,300 kWh. I used 586 kW hours this month, so my energy saving efforts puts me about 30% below the average. But if electricity was directly proportional to carbon use, then President Obama wants us to use 83% less by 2050. That would mean bringing the average use down to 159 kWh per month, so I have a long way to go. So you see why every watt counts.

However, electricity is not directly proportional to carbon usage. It depends on whether you get your power from coal, nuclear, wind, oil, solar, natural gas, etc. If I had solar panels on my roof it wouldn’t matter how much electricity I used. Also, the global impact of 1 watt is not equal across the world. Americans may use 936 kWh monthly, whereas some people use none. Our impact on the environment is many times the global average, so the more we use the more the rest of the world suffers. Of course, most citizens of the world would love to consume like Americans, so we also set the standard of desire.

Saving every watt we can is not about saving money, it’s an ethical and moral issue. To justify our lifestyles we must either use less or generate more carbon free electricity. Ignoring the issue only makes us sinners of omission.

JWH – 12/16/9

Orphans of the Sky by Robert A. Heinlein

Orphans of the Sky is one of Robert Heinlein lesser known novels, even though it’s one of his best. It’s hard to talk about the novel without giving away its big idea, but it’s not likely I’ll convince you to read it without telling. This short novel is made up from two novelettes first published in 1941 in Astounding Science Fiction, and it might be the first fictional account of a generation ship, that is a starship that travels so slowly, that it takes generations to reach its destination.

In Orphans of the Sky, the characters do not know they are in a starship, but think of the ship as all of reality. They can’t see outside. They have forgotten most of what civilization gave them, so they are primitive, superstitious people. Heinlein uses this as a beautiful setup to attack our own superstitions. I don’t want to spoil the joys of the story by giving away the plot, but if you need to know more, read the first link to Wikipedia above. The important thing to know is Orphans of the Sky makes major contributions to the genre science fiction. It’s central speculation, made in 1941, is probably the most creative since H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine, 1895.

Stories about interstellar travel in science fiction have mostly taken the fantasy route of faster-than-light (FTL) travel. Whereas, Orphans of the Sky dwells well within humanity’s technical ability to get people to the stars. It will still be an amazing engineering challenge to build a starship miles long, that rotates to create artificial gravity, and is design to function for hundreds, if not thousands of years. A trip might have to last as long as from now back to Shakespeare, or Christ, or Aristotle. If worldly societies can change so much in those time periods, imagine what life in a starship might be like and how it could change. This is a brilliant idea, and Heinlein imagines his characters in a post-apocalyptical world inside the ship. It’s strange that Orphans of the Sky wasn’t printed in book form until 1964 since it is so innovative in a genre that loves far out ideas.

Although, the novel is only about 150 pages, Heinlein does an amazing amount of speculation. Besides the big new science fictional ideas, Heinlein imagines how society would change if it evolved backwards, for example he has women treated like they were in the Old Testament. There are scientists but no science. One of the most enchanting aspects of the story is how concepts we take for grant in our world are turned into strange superstitions in the world of Heinlein’s forgotten starship crew. Heinlein knew how thin the veneer of civilization is that covers our nations. He also plays with what we know now could be completely wrong.

Orphans of the Sky is not a literary masterpiece, but heavy duty pulp fiction from the golden age of John W. Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction. It’s all action, with little characterization, but what characterization there is is very vivid and sharp, especially the mutants. For my third reading of this story I listened to the Audible Frontiers audiobook edition that is beautifully read by Eric Michael Summerer. Audible Frontiers goal is to put great SF and fantasy into audiobook editions. If you love classic science fiction and hanker to experience it again through a dramatic reading, it’s worth joining Audible to get these audiobooks. They are also available through iTunes.

Orphans of the Sky would make a wonderful sense of wonder film, and I’m surprised it’s cinematic potential has been ignored. Movie producers often strike pay dirt with SF, but they seldom select innovate classics to explore new science fictional themes. They beat the dead horse of alien invasion over and over again. There’s so much more to science than strange invaders.

JWH – 12/13/9

Misadventures with Upgrading to Windows 7

I hate those funny I’m a PC – I’m a Mac commercials because they often give misleading information about Microsoft Windows. However, they were dead on right about the perils of upgrading to Windows 7. I figure since I had Windows Vista it would be a simple in-place upgrade, but no, I was wrong. I’m like the girl in the commercial with a boxful of stuff to move – I could, just as easily, start over with a Mac. But damn, Mr. Jobs, the minimum Mac I want is $1200, and I’m doing my upgrade on the cheap, so I’ll just stick with my old HP.

I wasn’t going to upgrade to Windows 7 until I bought a new machine, because Windows Vista was doing fine by me, and I didn’t want to spend over a hundred dollars to make my desktop look prettier. However, when I discovered I qualified for a $44.94 academic upgrade, I thought, well, why the hell not. That offer was for Windows 7 Professional, and I had Vista Home Premium, but I figured I’d take a chance knowing that Microsoft wants like versions to upgrade like versions. I hoped a more expensive version would upgrade over a less expensive version. Well, it’s not so Joe.

A few days later after the disc was delivered I popped it into my machine and ran the install. I was quickly informed I couldn’t do an in-place upgrade. Bummer. I was depressed. At the time I assumed a clean install required reformatting my boot hard drive. I really didn’t want to reformat my C: drive. I had a 500gb D: drive, so I thought about switching it with the master drive, but it had 147gb of MP3 songs on it, and even though I have two 250gb external drives I couldn’t find space on them for the songs. I agonized for a couple of hours thinking of alternative solutions.

Finally I started reading online about Windows 7 upgrades and discovered that a clean install could involve the install program renaming the old windows folder and adding the new operating system without reformatting the drive. So I went back to the install disk and ran the custom option. It was then I discovered Windows 7 was willing to install on my secondary 500gb drive, so I let it go there and when everything was said and done I had a dual boot system to Windows 7 and Windows Vista and nothing was deleted. Not exactly what I wanted, but it was a decent compromise.

The Windows 7 install instructions are scary and confusing. They should tell people right up front their choices. In place install, new install on existing drives with no deleting of files, or complete hard drive wipe and fresh install. Finally, there should be a program to nuke the old copy of Vista and stop the dual booting, but I don’t think there is.

Once I had Windows 7 on my machine I had to start reinstalling all my applications and set up all my configurations, plus reinstall print drivers, etc. This is very time consuming and still unfinished. The whole experience gave me lots of ideas for how I’d change Microsoft’s marketing of Windows.

First off, there should only be one version of Windows for all users. It doesn’t have to install all features, but dividing users into classes is just plain stupid. It adds a lot of aggravation to the user experience. M$ should find other ways of squeezing out extra bucks from their faithful users.
Microsoft charges way too much for Windows. I have a $499 HP bought 3 years ago. Paying 1/4th the price of my machine for an upgrade that doesn’t offer that much difference, makes for a disagreeable buying decision, especially when the main reason to upgrade is to fix the previous OS.
Why can’t Microsoft invent a way for people to install applications and save configurations that aren’t tied to the OS, or design a method to easily migrated customizations to each new OS version. I’ve been using personal computers since the late 1970s – so you’d think the idea that we will use our computers for the rest of our lives is the plan and OS makers would find ways to make the personal part of computers stable while undergoing OS transitions.
The positive side effect of doing a clean install is it makes the OS run faster for several months. Microsoft needs to find ways to keep registry rust from slowing down their systems. Often at work machines get so gunked up with crap that the best thing to do is to nuke them from orbit and start over. That’s annoying and dumb.
The clean install means reconfiguring my music for Rhapsody and iTunes, my media server to my SoundBridge and Blu-Ray player, my audiobook library for Audible.com, my Webshots and Picasso photo collections, and all my digital devices like MP3 players, iPods, GPS, cameras, voice recorders, etc. This makes my online music collection on Lala.com seem fantastically better than my local collections. I was able to play songs as soon as I had a browser going. Cloud computing may be the answer to all these problems. Go, Google, Go!

This all makes me think the OS should come on a piece of hardware, either an easily replaceable chip, or high speed PCIe card. The OS should be totally separated from the user programs, data, drivers and configurations.

I would think such a design would be less vulnerable to attacks by viruses and malware. It should also keep the OS from slowing down because of registry rusting. And paying over a hundred dollars for an OS upgrade would be more pleasant if it came on tangible hardware. Even my bargain $45 upgrade seemed expensive when I got a small envelope from UPS with just a single DVD in a sleeve.

The people who clutch Windows XP machines with cold dying fingers are wise not to upgrade. I’m tired of messing with computers. I just want them to work. The Windows 7 upgrade has caused computing confusion and I have to spend hours rebuilding my setup. It’s great that I’m getting rid of three years of registry rust, and I will unclutter my machine from all the programs I no longer use, but shouldn’t those features be built into the OS?

How hard would it be for Windows to ask if I wanted any program removed that I haven’t used for a year? How hard would it be for Windows to have a self-optimizing, self-repairing registry that also routinely backed itself up? I have noticed a number of nice features of Windows 7 that make me glad I did upgrade, so maybe I’ll discover such stability evolution in the OS, as I work with it.

If I live as long as my mother, I have another 33 years of life, and I don’t want to reorganize my computer system another 11 times before I die. I want any time spent organizing my digital life to last for the rest of my years, and even after I die, so my wife will have no trouble cleaning up after me. This really makes me think the OS should be completely separate from my personal digital life. Microsoft, think about that when you’re planning your next version of Windows. But wink, wink, we know the solution is cloud computing – what if nobody’s needs to get behind the 8 ball?

JWH – 12/12/9

Can You Be More Specific About That 83% By 2050 Number, Mr. President?

Since I don’t want to put things off until 2050, I thought I might get busy doing my share of green duties now, but I’m not quite sure what this 83% number means. Do I drive 83% less miles, eat 83% less food, buy 83% less clothing, watch 83% less TV? Is buying a car that gets twice the mileage and driving half as far cover my personal obligation? Or does buying that new car up my carbon footprint more than if I drove my old car for ten more years even if it only gets 19 mpg? And will there be any gasoline in 2050 to use anyway?

Yesterday, I wrote about Designing an Energy Efficient Green PC, and showed how we could buy a computer now that already uses 83% less electricity than some machines from 2005. The trouble is I don’t actually know the average energy consumption of a PC and monitor from 2005. If we’re all supposed to use 83% less by 2050, we really need to know the 2005 baseline for all the possible things we use in our daily life.

How many kilowatt hours of electricity did the average American use in 2005? How many gallons of gasoline? How many cubit feet of natural gas? How many gallons of fresh water. How many pounds of clothing? How many pounds of sugar, flour, beef, fish, vegetables, cheese, butter, etc. Do I have to worry about my share of iron, aluminum, steel, nitrogen, etc? Everything we consume creates a carbon footprint, but what is the 2005 baseline number for each item? And most important of all, what is the average carbon footprint for a 2005 citizen of America? Or what is the fair share for a world citizen of 2005?

And should poor Americans consume 83% less than what they were able to scrape by with in 2005, and will it be fair if billionaires cut their carbon footprint by the same 83 percentage but still use far more than the average person? Or should there be one carbon expenditure for each person that makes them a good citizen? And how does a rich person using a 1,000 times what a poor person uses rationalize their lifestyle? Should the targeted carbon footprint be 1/7,000,000,000th of the whole world’s safe expenditure of carbon, rather than 1/300,000,000th of the U.S.’s 2005 expenditure?

Will COP15 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen tell me these numbers I want to know? Will they tell us the ethical answers to questions about the rich buying carbon credits from the poor? And is the carbon footprint just the tip of the iceberg? Are there other elements in the environment that we’re throwing out of whack? Are the billions of humans on this planet akin to a cancer destroying all other life forms in its path? What does it mean to design a lifestyle for a sustainable ecology for planet Earth?

Whether you support climate science, or are a climate change denier, it should be obvious we’re over consuming this planet and the age of material abundance is almost over. Even atheists should recognize the spiritual crisis of our times, and even fundamentalists should recognize the mathematics of reality.

JWH – 12/7/9