Professor Gunn

alien female: see this page

Listening in the Ekcolir Reality

 It was a professor of English who first introduced me to my favorite author (Jack Vance) so you might think I would be more appreciative of James E. Gunn (1923-2020). However, I often struggle to appreciate science fantasy stories that are written by authors who never learned much science. Using that as my excuse, I've pretty much avoided the writings of Gunn. However, since he was born 100 years ago, I decided that I should investigate some examples of Grand Master Gunn's Sci Fi story telling.

Searching for Space Aliens. One of my favorite science fiction movies is Contact. A great concept: humans develop a technology that allows us to detect signals from other creatures who exist on distant exoplanets. In the September 1968 issue of Galaxy magazine was "The Listeners" by Gunn. Astronomer Carl Sagan is cited as a SETI authority on page two of Gunn's story. Gunn set his story 60 (counting from 1968) years in his future, 60 years into a series of failed attempts to make contact with intelligent space aliens.  

Stepford Kansas (Figure 1)

 Failure. And here we are, 55 years later and still no alien contact. "The Listeners" is more of a soap opera than a science fiction story. Rather than provide readers with an imagined tale of first contact, we get the suicide attempt of the wife of a SETI scientist. 😞 I suppose Gunn might have imagined that there is very little chance of picking up alien signals. If so, then the most interesting thing that can come out of SETI might be an answer to this question: how long will people persist in listening for aliens if no message is ever received? What keeps scientists at work on long-duration projects is their ability to imagine interesting outcomes for their efforts. Thus, Sagan, a scientist, wrote into his SETI story a scenario of first contact. 

After "The Listeners" was first published in 1968, Gunn expanded the story. I have only read the last two pages of the full novel version of The Listeners from 1972 in which Gunn did imagine receiving an alien message from a dead (😖) extraterrestrial species.

Future Imperfect (see also)
In the Ekcolir Reality

 Neosho's Choicest. In the June 1958 issue of Fantastic was an alien invasion story by Gunn. I guess Gunn's preferred title for this story was "The Girls Who Were Really Built". Gunn imagined aliens who could construct artificial women and provide each man on Earth with a cute lover. Figure 1 shows the interior art for "Neosho's Choicest". Those artificial women did not ever have any children. The alien plan for taking control of Earth: end human reproduction and allow the human species to quietly die off. 

No Spoilers. You'll have to read  "Neosho's Choicest" to find out if the aliens are successful. Maybe in an alternate Reality, Gunn's story could have become long-running 1960's television series, with each weekly episode featuring a new alien-designed artificial woman arriving in the small town of Neosho Kansas.

Figure 2. Can the Babe score?

 Little Orphan Android. Last year I blogged about old Sci Fi stories featuring baseball as a plot element. In the September 1955 issue of Galaxy the lead story was "Little Orphan Android" by James E. Gunn which starts with the paragraph shown in Figure 2. Yes, this is Gunn's imagined version of Earth where androids golf, box and play baseball, simply to provide entertainment for humans. 

I'm a sucker for stories about robots, so how did Gunn deploy an army of robots on Earth?

Figure 3. Boyd is entertained by androids.

In Gunn's imagined future, robots can do everything better than humans can, so humans have grown lazy; they sit around all day watching television, drinking and taking drugs (Figure 3). In writing "Little Orphan Android", Gunn essentially created a follow-on story for "With Folded Hands", a Jack Williamson story from 1947. Gunn explicitly acknowledge the link between "Little Orphan Android" and "With Folded Hands".

Lucy

 Supply and Demand. Gunn set his story in 1947 and depicted a world where robots have a problem with lazy humans. The problem: humans are not reliable consumers. So now the robots have begun making a new model of android that will more reliably consume waste resources than human do. The 13th of this new consumer model of androids is the titular "orphan android" who arrives in Boyd's life and immediately starts breaking everything in Boyd's apartment and eating vast amounts of food. Is this the end of Humanity? The plot of the story: will humans now be completely replaced by androids?

 Not if Lucy can help it. Near the start of "Little Orphan Android", Gunn introduces readers to Lucy. Lucy is the shapely redhead who lives next door to Boyd. However, Boyd has no memory of having ever seen Lucy before. Lucy is a psychologist who has the ability to hypnotize people and scramble their memories. Lucy is on a mission to defeat the robots and put humans back in charge of the planet.

"Little Orphan Android" attempts to depict a way for Humanity to be liberated from their well-meaning but misguided robots. 

SOE what?

 SOE What? Rather than have robopsychologist Susan Calvin fix what is wrong with a wayward positronic robot, Gunn depicts Lucy as a psychologist who has to save Humanity by manipulating the minds and behavior of people like Boyd.

Gunn even "borrowed" Asimov's idea that robots are programmed with three laws that govern their behavior. Gunn's three laws are that robots must provide Service, Obedience and Efficiency (S.O.E.).

Odd Ending. Sadly, it seems like part of "Little Orphan Android" got cut by the magazine editor. There is a mysterious character in the story named Greer who seems to show up at the end of this story in a way that makes no sense and the thread of the plot just sort of falls apart and readers are left to ask, "SOE what?" Maybe Gunn wrote a sequel depicting the fates of Lucy and Boyd.

In the Ekcolir Reality.
cover art by François Allot

Here is what TPI had to say about "Little Orphan Android": "It's a pretty stupid story with some pretty contrived plot points... overlong..."

 Lucy and Greer and apparently other humans are now working to get back into a position where they can gain control over the robots who are running Earth. Boyd is their latest recruit and he is wanted by the rebels because he is creative. Before the robot police caught him, he had modified some androids so that they would work for him, making hand-crafted items that could be sold for ca$h.

I'm not quite as dismissive of "Little Orphan Android" as is TPI, however I have to wonder if the story was repeatedly rejected by other magazines before finally being accepted for publication in Galaxy. I imagine that shortly after Gunn read "With Folded Hands", and unwilling to let the robots win, he sat down and pounded out "Little Orphan Android". This "humans vs robot" story did not turn out great, but it is not as bad as TPI suggests. 

the science of writing

Here is a great quote from Jack Vance: "the dissection of a butterfly, a spectroscope turned to the sunset, the psychoanalysis of a laughing girl". This is in the context of other such statements from Vance including, "when erudition comes in, poetry departs". Look at this tribute page praising Gunn as a professor of science fiction. Somehow, Gunn's science fiction stories seem to me like a spectroscope turned to the sunset or a misguided academic dissection of common science fiction themes.

 Really. Gunn wrote a book called The Science of Science-Fiction Writing which I have not read. The idea's provoked by that title make me think of an analytic process that would threaten to take all the fun out of science fiction. I have read Gunn's book Isaac Asimov which is part of a series called The Foundations of Science Fiction in which Gunn turns his spectroscope of literary analysis on Asimov's fiction, including the Foundation Trilogy and Asimov's robot stories.

cover art by Alex Schomburg

 Too Long, Did Not Read. Gunn provided a useful service to Asimov fans by reading and summarizing the vast amount of autobiographical information that Asimov published about himself, saving lazy people like me from having to read it all. 

In his analysis the Foundation Trilogy, Gunn seeks to explain its popularity with science fiction fans. Gunn first provides a plot summary of the Foundation Trilogy then discusses the fictional science of Psychohistory which is the science fictional "glue" holding the Trilogy together.

Gunn quotes from John Campbell's 1947 essay "The Science of Science Fiction Writing" in which Campbell stated the general idea that interesting science fiction stories can be crafted by imagining ways that disciplines such as sociology, psychology and parapsychology might develop into branches of science.

image source

 Cross-Over. Asimov transferred concepts from the statistical mechanics of chemistry to the imaginary science of Psychohistory. Asimov was probably the only science fiction writer of the 1940 who had ever studied physical chemistry, so nobody else could have even begun to do what Asimov did in his Foundation Trilogy. In his analysis of what makes the Foundation Trilogy so popular, Gunn seems to miss this key point. Instead, Gunn proceeds to offer a pop-psychology analysis of Asimov as a means of constructing his literary analysis of Asimov's writing, an approach which I find both fanciful and distasteful. 👅

With his background as a science student, Asimov was able to invent an imaginary science (Psychohistory) which entertained millions of science fiction fans. Gunn was inspired to try to elucidate a "science of science fiction" story telling, but given his lack of understanding of science, how could he do more than provide a literary critique of the science fiction genre?

das robots (the movie)

 The Robots. In chapter 3 of his book about Asimov, Gunn turned to analysis of Asimov's many robot stories. Unfortunately for Gunn, his book was written without knowledge of the additional Foundation and robot novels that Asimov was yet to publish (in the 1980s and 1990s). Gunn refers to the 1976 story "The Bicentennial Man" as the "fitting conclusion" to Asimov's then existing corpus of about 30 robot stories. Gunn's analysis of Asimov's positronic robot stories is centered on the three robot story collections The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories, I, Robot  and The Rest of the Robots.

Gunn states that despite the title I, Robot (which was imposed on Asimov by an editor), Asimov never wrote a first-person robot story (written from the perspective of a robot). Asimov may have taken that observation as a challenge. Asimov's last robot story was "Cal", which was written from the perspective of an unusual robot who wanted to be a story writer.

from Gunn's book, Isaac Asimov

In discussing the stories in I, Robot, Gunn also mentions "With Folded Hands" (see above, on this page, Gunn's robot story "Little Orphan Android"). Gunn suggests that "The Evitable Conflict" was written as Asimov's reaction to "With Folded Hands".

a (Wo)Man vs a naked Machine

 Clueless. In his critique of Asimov's literary style, Gunn apparently fails to realize that clear and unadorned writing is the standard style used in scientific publications. Asimov, as a trained scientist, often wrote in the way that he was trained to write as a scientist. Many science fiction fans don't need the literary frills that animate otherwise meaningless conventional fiction stories. The puzzle stories that Asimov wrote about malfunctioning robots (and the solutions to those puzzles) are enough for science fiction fans even if Asimov's characters are "cardboard" and Asimov does not bother to paint much of the surrounding scenery (Asimov used "a bare stage"). 

clothes make the man robot

While seeking to explain the popularity of Asimov's stories, Gunn, wearing his literary criticism hat, criticizes Asimov's stories from the perspective of people who think that conventional fiction is superior to science fiction. I find this approach to Asimov's fiction both misguided and silly. If someone like Gunn truly wants to explain why science fiction fans enjoy Asimov's stories then Gunn must understand science fiction fans, not repeat the complaints that always come from non-science fiction readers who don't "get science fiction". Asimov's popularity among science fiction fans seems to remain a mystery to Gunn even after his extensive analysis of the situation. I'm not impressed by the resolving power of Gunn's literary spectroscope. 🤷

image source

 Stories Collected By The Master. Back in the 1970s when I was in my personal golden age of discovering science fiction, the first story written by Gunn that I read was "The Cave of Night". That story was originally published in the February 1955 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction, but I read it as collected in the anthology "Where Do We Go from Here?" 

 Fake News. In Gunn's story, the first man sent into outer space by rocketry becomes lost in space, unable to return home. The entire world rallies together in an effort to rescue the stranded astronaut. The only problem is, the entire "man lost in space" story is faked. It is only now, 50 years later, that I just learned "The Cave of Night" was the first of a series of stories in what the ISFDB calls "Station in Space Universe". Reading "The Cave of Night" again after 50 years, I can report that I could still remember reading some of the lines from the story as a boy.

cover art by Ed Emshwiller

"The Cave of Night" is fantasy from the pre-Space Age. In reality, space flight was made possible through well-funded government projects. However, many pre-Space Age science fiction story writers either depicted space pioneers as building space ships in their garage or devising some low-budget scam that was designed to attract the needed fund$ for $paceflight. 💰 None of those old stories ever resonated with me, since I read them after having lived through the reality of NASA and the Apollo program.

alien abduction

 Telepathy, too. Before departing from my investigation of Gunn, I'll mention one of his first published science fiction stories, "Paradox" which was published in the October 1949 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories. According to Gunn, when that story was accepted for publication, it changed his life. The story is highly contrived but it contains the idea that telepathic aliens might be driven insane by contact with humans. Why so? Because humans can believe two contradictory things at the same time. I don't find the story convincing and its depiction of a burglar walking into a spaceship launch facility and taking off with the rocket to go visit aliens is absurd, not to mention the ending of the story where a thief who stole a spaceship, upon returning to Earth, is treated like a hero by government officials.

Related Social Media: #VintageSciFiMonth 

Related Reading: "A Matter of Ethics" by R. R. Winterbotham (1955)

Next: Echo of Cynym

New science fiction in 2023: Echo of Cynym.
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Find Your Way Home

Episode 6 of the Contact television series brings Carl Sagan into the story, but then he wanders off stage again until episode 12. In episode 7 the story returns to Ellie, who was last seen at the end of Episode 5 returning to her research team at the VLA in New Mexico. Now it is Ellie's turn to "wander off stage".....and by the end of Episode 7 she has left Earth, never to return.

The SETI team in New Mexico has been trying to detect hierion-based communications signals originating from worlds beyond the Solar System. Nobody can understand why it is that hierion signals are only detected coming from Earth and the Moon unless hierion-based communication is simply a secret invention of Hadden Industries.

At this time, Ellie is not feeling good. There are Interventionist and Overseer nanites in her brain that are trying to execute conflicting instructions.

Palmer and Ellie are frequently in contact by telephone. Palmer finally convinces Ellie that she should take a vacation. They go hiking and enjoy a cabin in the mountains. The cabin has only one room, but a stunning view of a wild valley. After a week together in the wilderness they decide that they need to find a way to stay together.

When they get back to civilization Palmer is wanted at the White House and Ellie has been invited to join the crew of Atlantis on the follow-up mission to the Moon. Ellie agrees to move to Washington until the President's term is complete. Palmer repeats his request: "You find your way home."

On the Moon, the crew of Atlantis is able to enter the now-abandoned Observer Base. Mysteriously, the airlock door, previously sealed shut, is now open. The inside of the base has been seen previously: when Sagan was on the Moon there were still some Observers living at the base, but now it looks stripped down and barren. Concerned about the possible presence of alien life forms, the crew of Atlantis performs tests, but they can't even find a single microbe in the large underground base. The base has a great supply of water, energy and air, all provided by technology that is similar to what was in the "message from Vega" and used to build the Machine.

It is estimated that about 20,000 people could live and work inside Moon Base Alpha, except for the problem of keeping them fed. Most of the homes do not have kitchens or dining rooms.

Ellie is particularly fascinated by one of the residential complexes. It is a large area under a dome roof with soil. The soil has a high level of small organic molecules, but no macromolecules and nothing alive. The dome's environmental control system simulates a 24 hour day-night cycle. While exploring the dome Ellie is astounded to find that one of the houses looks exactly like the house that she grew up in. Inside, she finds all the correct furnishing, including her ham radio and her telescope.

The oldest part of the underground city is a distinctly different complex. This is the part of the base seen previously when Dr. Zelter came to the Moon to meet with the other Overseers. However, now it is just an empty shell. The environmental controls do not allow the lights to be shut off and the lighting is a strange pink color. The residences here do not even have bed rooms. Ellie is amazed to find a residence that is identical to the cabin that she and Palmer stayed in during their recent vacation. This version of the cabin has a window that provides a view of the surface of the Moon.

Ellie spends the night in her room in the copy of her childhood home and she is visited by Hadden who uses special nanites from Dr. Wye to clear the Overseer nanites from Ellie's brain. She dreams of her father: "This is just one step. In time you'll take another."

She wakes up and sees Hadden (confused): "Mr. Hadden? Where am I?"
Hadden sits by the window, looking at the display of stars on the dome/roof outside: "Your little room has one hell of a view. Let me show you something."

Hadden shows Ellie the Overseer nanites that were taken out of her body and inactivated...now just a small pile of dust. With the Overseer nanites removed from her brain, Ellie can now remember her attempts on Earth to find a way to remove the nanites from her body.

Hadden: "I've freed you from these nanites, so now you can remember, but if you go back to Earth then Dr. Zelter will simply take control of your mind again. You can keep this base free of Overseer nanites."
Ellie: How?
Hadden (places his hand on the telescope): "I'll give you a hint. Use this on every ship that comes up from Earth. This Base is yours now, use it well."
Ellie: "You are suggesting that I stay here?"
Hadden: "You will."
Hadden dissolves.

Ellie wonders if she is dreaming. She hears sounds coming from the ham radio. She sits down at the radio and it morphs into a fancy version of the hierion communications equipment that they have been using previously. The holographic interface engulfs her and now she realizes that she can select additional "bands" and she can finally detect other sources of hierion signals besides just the Earth and the Moon. Suddenly she is in contact with Dr. Wye.
Wye: "These are my gifts to you, Dr. Arroway. Use them wisely."
Ellie: "What are all these signals?"
Wye: "You're the astronomer, you'll figure it out."
Ellie: "This haze, it looks like the milky way."
Wye (gestures to one source in a cluster of signals): "Yes. Here in the galactic core is my home world."
Ellie: "You're an alien?"
Wye: "Yes, but I'm not allowed to tell you that. And you won't be allowed to tell anyone else."
Ellie: "But others need to know-"
Wye: "This is just one step. In time you'll take another."
The communication from Wye ends.

The crew of Atlantis cannot find the source of hierions at the Base. It seems to be a transmitter that is built into the wall/roof of the Base with no human access.

When Atlantis departs, Ellie refuses to go back to Earth. She establishes an observatory at Moon Base Alpha. She works aligning the signals from the new hierion detector with known astronomical data. Some of the signals seem to come from our galaxy, but most of the signals come from other galaxies. She starts trying to decode the signals.

After a period of time during which Ellie is alone on the Moon, the Inspiration arrives, newly fitted out with a V3 antimatter propulsion system. The mini rotating rings system now supplies hierion fuel that can be used as propulsion mass, being generated as needed by the rings and heated by a stored supply of antimatter. The old shuttle fuel tanks are no longer needed and have been replaced. Inspiration arrives carrying a large amount of dehydrated food and seeds.

Ellie and Palmer on the Moon
Palmer also arrives on board the Inspiration. He explains to Ellie that the President wanted a member of his advising staff on the Moon. Ellie shows him the "cabin".
Palmer says: "You found your way home."

Ellie's telescope contains Dr. Wye's magnetic pulse generator for inactivating nanites. She uses it on everything and everyone that comes into Moon Base Alpha. When the nanites inside Palmer are inactivated, he can also remember Ellie's previous attempts to remove nanites from her body. They find that they can discuss nanites together, but cannot tell other people about nanites. They suspect (correctly) that they might still be infected by additional nanites that cannot be inactivated by a powerful magnetic field.

Ellie tries to contact Dr. Wye, but Hadden appears. He explains that for now Ellie and Palmer need to take advantage of the fact that they have been liberated from Overseer nanites, but there would be negative repercussions if they tried to share what they know with others. Hadden calls Ellie and Palmer "Genesaunts".

By the end of Episode 7, Ellie and Palmer are living happily on the Moon, now free of Overseer nanites. Ellie still needs to find objective evidence to support her belief that she has made contact with aliens.



Contact television series: Pilot Episode
Contact Episode 1: Pull the Plug
Contact Episode 2: Good to Go
Contact Episode 3: Voice from the Sky
Contact Episode 4: Hail to Vega
Contact Episode 5: Look Closer
Contact Episode 6: For Carl

The video. The video in this blog post was made possible by the fact that the entire Contact movie is available on YouTube. My video has some images that were captured as screen shots from existing YouTube videos and remixed with new audio. I think the video falls into the domain of "fair use". The video explores the question: What if Ellie's journey to the center of the galaxy, in fact, never happened?

The first time I ever tried re-using content from YouTube was for this video. I found the music on YouTube and I tried to find out if the owners of the song cared about people using it as a sound track for additional videos. My inquires went unanswered so I went ahead and posted the video and this one, too.

For the video on this page, I made a MIDI audio track that was inspired by a famous song using Apple's GarageBand software. The "famous song" is present in multiple copies on YouTube so my guess was that the owners of the song are open to having people mix it into YouTube videos. However, after I uploaded my video (and credited the artist who wrote the song), YouTube said that since the song is owned by a company, YouTube would be running ads on the video.

Since my SciFi videos tend to average a few dozen views it is hard to see how YouTube would harvest much $$$$ from those ads. However, since my MIDI version of the "famous song" seemed to offend the copyright gods, I used YouTube's audio swap system and changed the audio track of my video to one of YouTube's available-for-swap songs. YouTube kept running ads on the video. After seeing the ads that were plastered across the video, I'm tempted to write a pest control company into the Contact television series. Maybe that is how Dr. Wye and Ellie are keeping Overseer nanites out of Moon Base Alpha!

In 2007 I made a video that I posted to YouTube as "Embryos from Earth". I made the audio track using Apple's GarageBand. By using the various GarageBand voice filters I was even able to make the female voices in the video. The main purpose of the video was to give me a chance to play around with some rendering software. This (the original "Embryos from Earth") was one of several videos that had its audio destroyed after a period of time on YouTube, leaving only noise.

Recently I saw that the YouTube audio swap system has an option for reverting a video's sound track to the original audio. I was able to first apply one of YouTube's audio tracks to several of my old videos (with garbled sound tracks) and then revert to the original sound track and restore it. In the case of "Embryos from Earth", I randomly selected one of YouTube's audio tracks, after which YouTube sent me a copyright notice saying that "rumblefish" owns the audio. Apparently YouTube has songs such as "Por Una Cabeza" in its audio swap system that will trigger a copyright claim from "rumblefish". When I tried to revert to the original audio of my video, I got an error from YouTube. I finally gave up and deleted the original "Embryos from Earth" video from YouTube. The newer version of the video that I put on YouTube (after the first version had its audio destroyed) is still there. I've never understood why the audio tracks of some of my videos on YouTube were destroyed. I've seen some music videos on YouTube where the video has been scrambled. I'm left wondering if "rumblefish" or some other company makes copyright claims for YouTube videos that make use of GarageBand sound effects.

When a company like "rumblefish" claims that it owns the audio of your YouTube video, you get a link: "I believe this copyright claim is not valid." that gives the following options:

Where is the option that says: "Dear rumblefish, the audio on my video was supplied by YouTube"?

A scan of my copy of Poundstone's book
These YouTube adventures remind me of a funny part of William Poundstone's biography of Sagan called "Sagan Versus Apple Computer". As Poundstone tells the story, during development of the Macintosh 7100, Apple computer used "Carl Sagan" as the internal code name for the product. Sagan asked Apple to not use his name. Why did Sagan care? Poundstone points to page 208 of Sagan's book "The Demon-Haunted World" where Sagan denounces the idea that people might be persuaded to buy a product just because a scientist had endorsed the product. The folks at Apple complied with Sagan's request and changed the code designation to BHA, short for "butt-head astronomer". At that point Sagan initiated a libel suit (the law suit was eventually dismissed). According to Poundstone, Sagan initiated another lawsuit against Apple's use of "Carl Sagan" as their internal code name for the 7100. That second lawsuit was dismissed and the dismissal was appealed. Poundstone says that Apple eventually settled the case out of court and issued a public apology to Sagan. I wonder what would have happened if, when Sagan learned that a computer's internal code name was "Carl Sagan", he had simply chuckled and moved on with his life. According to Poundstone, at the time when the Mac 7100 was called "Carl Sagan" there were two other Macintosh models under development, code named "Piltdown Man" and "Cold Fusion". It would be interesting to know the inside story of how workers at Apple Computer decided it would be a "good idea" to use Sagan's name in that context. I suppose any public figure, and particularly one with Sagan's cultural background, religious leanings and who was adept at pushing the boundaries of scientific conventionality, is likely to generate "enemies" in the form of people who want to take the "wonder boy" down a notch. Still, it is hard to imagine a group of engineers at a computer company trying to find a way to zing an astronomer. Yet more evidence that truth is stranger than fiction.

Jack Vance included this aphorism in one of his stories: “Law cannot reach where enforcement will not follow.” Copyright law allows people to protect the value of their books and movies, but there is a wide range of responses to derivative works created by fans. Some authors have given their blessing to "fan fiction" that makes use of fictional characters that are protected under copyright law. I can see how someone like J. K. Rowling (who has probably made more money than she will ever be able to spend) can afford to be generous and luxuriate in the admiration of her fans, allowing them to write and share on the internet fan fiction stories featuring the characters that she created. Of course, each copyright holder gets to decide if they will allow use of their copyrighted materials. It is interesting to watch companies like Google/YouTube trying to function in the "gray area" where enforcement of copyright protections is spotty. As a fan of authors like Sagan, Vance and Asimov and movies like Contact and television shows like Star Trek and The X-files I'm thankful for the fact that there is room on the internet for fans to discuss the stories, characters and ideas of people like Carl Sagan.

Related reading (Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video)

Pull the Plug

In my last blog post I described some ideas for a television series that would continue the story of Eleanor Arroway from the end of the movie Contact.

In the movie there is a scene where Ellie no longer has funding from the NSF to support her SETI work in Puerto Rico. The NSF director "pulls the plug" on her project, calling it a sure path to professional suicide for Ellie.


At the end of the movie we last see Ellie at the VLA continuing her SETI work, once again with government support, but I imagine that the first episode of the Contact television series will be called "Pull the Plug" and will put an end to her attempts to make further radio contact with alien civilizations. (of course, there can be other ways to achieve communication besides the types of primitive technological tools available to Earthly primates in the year 2000)

I'm picturing a funny scene that would contine right where the movie ended. Ellie falls asleep under the stars and dreams of S. R. Hadden. The dream is guided by the nanites in her brain.

Backstory: Hadden was actually another host for nanites (as Ellie now is). He lived a very long life on Earth (many hundreds of years) and was a tool by which Interventionists provided technological advances to Earth. When Hadden gave the secret of the "primer" to Ellie, the Observers realized that he was a tool of Interventionists and they extracted the nanites from his body. For centuries the nanites had been repairing Hadden's body. Without the nanites he soon dies (on the Mir space station, as shown in the movie). Through their long integration in Hadden's brain, the extracted nanites (or other collections of nanites that have been in communication with the nanites inside Hadden's brain) are able to carry a fairly good "copy" of Hadden's mind and those "Hadden nanites" continue to function within the Genesaunt civilization that exists at a collection of space stations in outer space and extends outward to many nearby star systems.

Using the nanites that are now in Ellie's brain as a receiver, the "Hadden nanites" make contact with Ellie and warn her that she is in danger of sharing Hadden's fate. He tells her that continuing to work with radio telescopes is a waste of time and that only primitives like Earthlings try to use radio waves for interstellar communication.

Dr. Zelter.
Ellie experiences the contact with "Hadden" in much the same way that she had the experience of meeting her dead father in the movie. When she wakes up from her "dream of Hadden", Ellie goes to see her doctor (Karen Zelter). She is undergoing long-term treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder and has been having frequent "flashbacks" of her "trip to the center of the galaxy". This most recent dream-like "contact" with Hadden is something new, quite different from the previous flashbacks. Ellie suggests that more tests need to be done to find out if there was damage to her brain when she was inside the Machine. Dr. Zelter agrees to look into new fMRI techniques for checking on the health of Ellie's brain.

Ellie abandons her research team the VLA and tries to find a way to make new contact with aliens. She tells Palmer that she is returning to Japan in order to try to understand exactly what happened to her when she was inside the Machine. Palmer joins Ellie in Japan and they set up a new test run of the machine that is designed to explore Ellie's claim that the super strong material of the transport pod can become translucent when the machine is powered up. They look at the video recording she made when she was previously in the machine, but each time she tried to point the camera at the translucent walls of the pod, only static was recorded.

Palmer Joss
During the new test of the Machine, Palmer joins Ellie inside the pod, but they do not see the translucent effect that Ellie remembers having seen previously. Ellie realizes that the "signal from Vega" is no longer being received, and that gives her the idea that when the alien signal was being transmitted the Machine and the transport pod behaved differently; in particular, the powered Machine no longer generates an antigravity effect. Ellie and Plamer start to think of the Machine as being a receiver for alien signals.

Ellie remembers part of the instructions for the Machine that nobody had been able to understand. She assumes that those instructions concerned communications equipment that was built into the transport pod.

Palmer tells Ellie about a secret project inside Area 51 that aims to develop new applications for the Machine's technology. After getting the required security clearance for Ellie, Palmer and Ellie visit Area 51. They see a modified space shuttle (named Inspiration) that has been equipped with a small version of the Machine's rotating ring system which functions as an energy source to power the shuttle's engines. The new engines are called "FL engines", meaning "free lunch engines". The rotating ring system can be powered by a hydrogen/oxygen fuel cell and produces antimatter that can then be reacted with a small amount of hydrogen to produce vast amounts of energy for heating some hydrogen and generating engine thrust. Nobody understands how the antimatter is produced so efficiently by the rotating rings, but by making use of the ring system, the fuel supply of Inspiration is expected to allow for a one month round trip journey to Mars.

Area 51.
Another research project at Area 51 is centered on the enigmatic Machine instructions that Ellie suspects might describe how to make advanced communications equipment. The Area 51 team that has been working on this project is unable to make any progress. What Ellie suspects is communications circuitry seems to do absolutely nothing. Ellie is again contacted by the "Hadden nanites" and she is given a hint about the importance of gravity. She realizes that when the Machine was running and producing an artificial gravity field, the suspected communications circuitry in the transport pod was no longer being exposed to normal Earth gravity.

Inspiration
Ellie argues that the mysterious circuitry should be installed in the Inspiration shuttle and tested in outer space under microgravity conditions. The President asks Palmer to go along with Ellie on the shuttle flight. The Inspiration is flown to the Vandenberg AFB Shuttle Launch facility and then the crew, including Ellie and Palmer, is launched into space.

The captain of the Inspiration takes the shuttle on a quick trip around the Moon. In microgravity and powered by electricity from the fuel cells, the mysterious communications system activates and starts detecting a blizzard of messages (mostly reflecting information being collect by Observers on Earth and sent to the Observer Base on the Moon). The messages are all coded, but the communications equipment can pinpoint the origins of the mysterious signals (not electromagnetic waves). Ellie and Palmer come to the conclusion that aliens are much closer to home than Vega.

"Hadden" again contacts Ellie and explains to her how she can use the new communications system to contact him so that he no longer needs to make use of the nanites in her head. For the first time she becomes aware of the fact that she has "alien" nanites in her brain. Ellie tells Palmer about the nanites, but suddenly she seems to have a seizure and loses consciousness. Episode 1 of the Contact television series ends with the Inspiration returning to Earth and Palmer making plans to remove the nanites from Ellie's brain.

Episode 2: Good to Go

Images. Top; Ellie Arroway searching for little green men...and all she got was Matthew McConaughey. The 4th image is "Thirteen" from "House". It would be fun to have Olivia Wilde as Dr. Zelter in the Contact television series.

Collaborative fiction. If you would like to help write the scipts for some episodes of the Contact television series, let me know!