Feb 17, 2018

Telepathy in 1927

In the Ekcolir Reality.
They're weird and they're wonderful. In the 1920s, some really weird stories (including a reprint of Dagon and some Cthulhu stories) were published in Weird Tales. When men such as Hugo Gernsback were inventing the science fiction literary genre, they wanted stories that were a bit less weird and that could mesh with the burgeoning enterprise of science research and technological reality.

I like to imagine that scientific advances arrived at a slightly accelerated pace in the Ekcolir Reality. Shown to the right is a patent for radio-assisted telepathy from 1927 in the Ekcolir Reality.

Sadly, in our reality, technologies such as television were just beginning in the 1920s. Reading issues of Gernsback's Amazing Stories reminds me of what it was like to read Byte magazine back in the early days of the personal computer revolution. Here is an ad from the August 1927 issue of Amazing:

global communications in 2025
In that issue, there was a strange story by E. D. Skinner about events in the year 2025. At the inspirational core of Gernsback's technological boosterism was the world of electronics, radio and the dream of television.  Skinner depicted a future in which global telecommunications networks were commonplace.

Of course, nobody writing speculative fiction in the 1920s was able to imagine technological details from the coming century such as the invention of semiconductors and integrated circuits.
image source

Biology in Sci Fi
I've always been more interested in biology than the physical sciences, so it is fun for me to look at old Sci Fi stories that emphasize speculative future biology rather imaginary advances in electronic devices. I went to the August 1927 issue of Amazing to read "The Tissue-Culture King" by Julian Huxley.
interior artwork by Frank R. Paul

Huxley and his wife
(1924) source
I find it difficult to classify this story by Huxley as being part of the science fiction genre. The story makes use of a rather standard adventure plot in which a remote corner of the Earth is discovered to be the site of an amazing scientific research project. In this case, one mad scientist has been performing biological experiments on the people and animals of a remote African kingdom.

see
While people such as Gernsback were popularizing the new age of radio and electronics, there was a similar revolution in tissue culture during the early 20th century. Tissue culture was a well known technique in biomedical research when Huxley's name appeared on an article in 1925 called "Self-Differentiation in the Grafted Limb-Bud of the Chick".

Before the 1940s and the availability of antibiotics, tissue culture work required careful sterile techniques (see the image to the right). It is not clear that Huxley ever actually performed any tissue transplantation or culture techniques himself. The work in the 1925 article was most likely performed by Murray, Huxley's co-author.

The origins of telepathy.
"The Tissue-Culture King" starts out like a sequel to The Island of Doctor Moreau. A British scientist has been living in Africa and performing bizarre cell culturing experiments designed to please the local king and mesh with the local religion. All of the king's subjects now maintain cultures of cells from the king and believe that this promotes and supports the power and vitality of their king. In his spare time, the scientist likes to dabble in other biology experiments aimed at creating altered animals such as two-headed toads, tall soldiers and fat women.

Telepathy
Eventually readers learn that the scientist is also conducting experiments on telepathy. He has discovered that by hypnotizing the natives, they can synchronize their thoughts and transmit powerful telepathic signals. Luckily, by wearing a metallic hat, the scientist can protect himself from the telepathic signals.

in the Ekcolir Reality
All of these goings on in Africa are reported by our intrepid author, who accidentally stumbled upon the Kingdom of Tissue Culture. The story narrator was able to escape from Africa and feels duty bound to report his experiences as a warning about the dangers of uncontrolled scientific advancements.

During the 1920s, Huxley was probably ill with bipolar disorder. It is easy to view his story, "The Tissue-Culture King" as an expression of a manic phase in his illness. As far as I know, Huxley did not write any other fiction.

femtobots
Soon after writing "The Tissue-Culture King", Huxley abandoned his university professorship and began writing The Science of Life.

It is fun to imagine that in the Ekcolir Reality, Huxley was contacted by a scientific collaborator who had discovered the existence of femtobots inside living cells. Those femtobots provided the basis for a type of technology-assisted telepathy.

Next: artificial intelligence jumps the shark

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Feb 10, 2018

PoCo Dreams

Dr. They: "Reggie is William's father."
I was blissfully dreaming of a rational post-conspiracy Sci Fi wind-down of The X-Files, then we got chemtrails in episode 6 of Season 11.

Previously on The X-Files... we had Chris Carter's fantasy about bees that would cause the end of civilization by spreading a virus (or alien DNA, or something).

So, Davey, what's your dad been up to?
Look Ma, No Teeth
"Kitten" could be meaningful if it is leading to an end-of-Season 11 showdown between 1) William and his ability to make people see things and 2) some dark government/Syndicate/whoknows? conspiracy to spray evil yellow gas from airplanes and make everyone see monsters/die from the Spartan Virus/whoknows? yada yada...

Hiatus
Really, officer, I lost my boss... Bald Eagle.
The Good. In preparation for the Grand Finale of The X-Files, we now have Skinner, Mulder and Scully all united and working together in their struggle to find the TRUTH™. Thankfully, we did not even have to suffer through another lame pushing match between Skinner and Mulder in episode 6.

The Bald Bad. I am so ready to be done with Chris Carter's endless conspiracy mongering. I wish episode 7 would arrive quickly (yes, I'm welcoming what looks like some absurd drone army chasing Fox and Dana, but I'll take anything just to get the disgusting flavor of episode 6 out of my mouth), but Dr. They is going to make us wait three whole weeks for the next X-Files episode.

Mitch finally learns the backstory of Skinner
The Ugly. I had a horrible thought during episode 6: what if "My Struggle IV" is not going to be about William's struggle, but rather, it turns out to be Skinner's struggle?! Eww. I hate the idea that Skinner is an essential element of the entire X-Files saga. I had no desire to learn more about Skinner's past as some sort of special operations grunt during the Vietnam War.

The Annoying. Of course, in "Kitten" nothing is explained about the idiotic chemical/biological warfare mission that Skinner and his buddy "Kitten" are given while in Vietnam. Don't ask questions, just go along for the conspiratorial fear mongering. All you need to do is set off enough explosions and kill enough extras and you have successfully satisfied the requirements for making a Hollywood television program.

The Anti-William
The vampiro monster, that can only
be killed by a bamboo cheek piercing
There's the perp, wearing a silly animal skull costume and looking into the surveillance camera that happens to be out in the middle of the forest right where it can capture the images of a murder and advance the plot of episode 6. Nothing need make sense because we are in Mud Lick, where anything can happen, such as everyone failing to care if their teeth are falling out.

Golly gee willikers, now that you mention it,
my wife and I were just discussing how everyone around
these parts has been loosing teeth.
It all started long ago when Skinner was ordered to carry an LSD-dispensing M44 generator cluster deep into the jungle of Vancouver, BC. The local Canadians objected to being used for chemical warfare experiments, so the experiments were moved to Mud Lick, Kentucky.

Project MKUltra
Apparently, vast numbers of documents related to U.S. government research and development of chemical and biological weapons were destroyed in order to hide illegal human subjects research carried out by the CIA. I would not be surprised if some research into psycho-active chemicals (such as anxiety-inducing drugs) remains classified. The murky history of such research and government use of chemical/radiological/biological warfare agents provides a good starting point for Sci Fi stories with a government conspiracy plot line.

X-Files: the next generation?
Somewhere between William and Davey is Tommy, a young boy who can put monsters into the thoughts of people and even his pet cat. I suppose Gabe Rotter was involved in writing "Scary Monsters" and he waited years for a chance to write "Kitten".

"Kitten" was a jumbled mess that excelled in the Chris Carter tradition of a plot that makes no sense. The severe sloppiness of this episode might simply arise from inexperience on the part of the writer and director, but it does not bode well if this was some sort of audition for new show runners who might bring us an X-Files the Next Generation.

Absurd and not explained.
Episode 666. This steaming pile strikes me as what you get from a producer who is too young to know anything about the Vietnam War and a writer who went to Wikipedia in an attempt to create a backstory for Skinner, and a writer who could not resist splicing into their X-File various gruesome scenes from old war movies like The Green Berets and Apocalypse Now.

What, me worry? (original)
Move Along
Mr. "Kitten" is experimented on for 40 years and then he finally gets released by his tormentors? And he then sends an ear through the mail to Skinner? Or was it Davey who sent the Ear? Never explained and it does not matter. "Never explained and it does not matter" is the motto for this kind of lame Hollywood dreck that simply rushes along from one disgusting scene to another. Skinner is pinned at the bottom of the hole by a stake through his abdomen, then he is unpinned, then he is trapped at the bottom of the hole, then he gets out, then Scully applies a band-aid and Skinner is ready to go back to his office. Davey gets shot by Scully then Davey is running around and fighting with Skinner then he falls into his own booby trap. Don't even try to make sense of it.

Next: telepathy in 1927

Season 11, Episode 7
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Feb 4, 2018

Asimovian Singularity

Astounding Science Fiction, October 1952
Current trend: technological singularity. Or should that really be Asmovian anti-singularity?

Isaac Asimov was born about January 2, 1920. That blog post was the kickoff for my 2020 celebration of Asimov's science fiction stories.

The first Asimov story that I read was The Gods Themselves. That novel, featuring weird aliens from a parallel universe, was my introduction to written science fiction (I was about 12 years old). After reading The Gods Themselves, I went in search of other science fiction books in general and more Asimov stories in particular. I soon read Asimov's Foundation trilogy, but another early discovery was The Currents of Space, a kind of prequel novel to the Galactic Empire as depicted in the Foundation Saga.

                                    Future History
The Doctor Himself
In 1955, Asimov published an outline of his imagined future in which Humanity would first explore the Solar System then spread to millions of exoplanets scattered through the galaxy and then a unified Galactic Empire would form, uniting the 25,000,000 human-colonized worlds. The Currents of Space was set in the future time when Trantor was the capitol planet of what was already the largest unified confederation of human-colonized worlds.

King Cotton, Queen Spice
"the spice"
I was inspired to re-read The Currents of Space when I recently read Frank Herbert's 1963 story "Dune World". The plot of "Dune World" concerns imaginary political machinations aimed at control of the planet Arrakis, the one planet of the entire galaxy that produces a VERY valuable spice known as "melange" 💵.

Kyrt is used to make prized clothing.
Price of kyrt in the year 34,546:
$6796 per pound.
The plot of The Currents of Space concerns imaginary political machinations aimed at control of the planet Florina, the one planet of the entire galaxy that produces a valuable substance known as "kyrt". Kyrt is just cotton, but because of the magical combination of elements in the interstellar "currents of space" around Florina, that is the one world in the galaxy that produces the MUCH more valuable form of cotton known as kyrt 💵.

Remember, Asimov grew up in New York City and had probably never set foot on a farm. He also wrote into his stories the idea that "Vegan Tobacco" was better than tobacco grown anywhere else in the galaxy. And of course, the food factories of one particular district (Mycogen) on Trantor made tastier food than anyone else. So, Florina has magical cotton and readers must not argue with the good Dr. Asimov.

cover art by Stanley Meltzoff
For this blog post, I read the version of The Currents of Space that was published in three successive issues of  Astounding magazine in 1952. Sometimes there were great illustrations included in those old Sci Fi magazines. Sadly, the drawings by Henry Richard Van Dongen for The Currents of Space were very pedestrian.

The protagonist of the story is Rik. He studies the "currents of space" and has discovered that the planet Florina is in danger. However, because of the great value of Florina, his desire to announce his discovery is ignored. Rik's memory gets wiped, but gradually, he is able to remember who he is and what line of work he is in. And I do mean "gradually". It takes the entire October 1952 installment (60 pages) of The Currents of Space to advance the story this far and readers still do not know why Rik's memory was edited.
A page 11 story from the New York Times crime beat, October 1952: Who Shot the Baker?
(just kidding) actually some interior art by Henry Richard Van Dongen for The Currents of Space.


                     Mystery
in the Ekcolir Reality
This is a detective thriller"
I can easily picture a very young Isaac Asimov listening to Detective Story Hour (featuring a mysterious narrator called "the Shadow") on the radio and seeing Detective Story Magazine being sold to customers (along with tobacco products) in his father's candy store. Right when Asimov began trying to write his own stories for publication, The Shadow became a radio show.

The Shadow
In 1952, 15 years into its run on radio, full page advertisements for The Shadow were printed at the start of each issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Asimov enjoyed mixing mystery writing with science fiction writing, which eventually led to the creation of R. Daneel Olivaw, his most famous robot, who arrived for readers in 1953.

Lady Samia.
Interior art by
H. R. Van Dongen
The best feature of serialized novels in Sci Fi magazines is that someone must write a brief summary of the part of each story that was previously published. Thus, in the November 1952 issue of Astounding Science Fiction there is a two page summary of Part 1 of The Currents of Space (which had been published in the October issue). My advice: read that 2 page summary, then read the two page Prologue at the start of Part 1 then continue reading Part 2 of the story where Asimov introduces a new character, Samia of Fife.

The Amazing Disappearing Samia
in the Ekcolir Reality
Lady Samia is from Sark, the planet that controls kyrt production on Florina. At the start of The Currents of Space, Samia is on Florina, planning to study what makes cellulose from Florina so special. Not only does kyrt make glittering fabrics, but kyrt fibers are also super strong. Of course, Florina is a small planet, so she ends up on the same spaceship as Rik on the day when he escapes from Florina. Lady Samia has spunk and she enlivens Asimov's otherwise plodding plot.

The Trilling Conclusion
In Part 3 of The Currents of Space (published in the December 1952 issue of Astounding, advancement of the limping plot hinges on the disgrace caused to Lady Samia from being kissed by a "low-born" man who is a native of Florina. 🙈

Darrell Sweet cover art
No sale. I'm sorry, but it strains credulity to imagine that people living 30,000 years in the future will have the same sort of prejudices that plagued the Confederacy.

Then we finally reach the standard scene of a mystery story in which the goofball character tries (unsuccessfully) to identify the unknown assailant who erased Rik's memory. You can read the last ten pages of the story during which Asimov reveals the identity and motivations of the person who erased Rik's memories. Rating this as a mystery story, I'd rank The Currents of Space as being at a typical level of absurd contrivance. How does it rank as science fiction?

Anti-Singularity
nova physics
At the end of The Currents of Space (at a future time which Asimov himself imagined as being about 32,000 years in our future) we learn that there has been a break-through in astrophysics which now allows for accurate prediction of which stars will suddenly go nova. Asimov assures us, that this revolutionary scientific discovery is just one small step beyond what was known to primitive Earthly science back in pre-space age days. And, of course, this astrophysics break-through suddenly accounts the mystery of why cotton on Florina has the remarkable properties of kyrt.

Psionic Escape
Bálint Botz has lamented the fact that Asimov came close to writing about "superintelligence" and a technological singularity:

"...in a 1945 short story titled “Escape!” Asimov came very close to realizing the consequences of the emergence of superintelligence."

"The intelligent supercomputer designs and proceeds to build the spaceship capable of faster than light travel with only some minor flaw all by its own — surpassing the capabilities of their human masters — a bona fide singularity event one would say. "

Daneel on the case.
I've previously blogged about the cogent reasons for excluding a technological singularity from Sci Fi stories about the future. Asimov's positronic robots were programmed to protect humans. Asimov imagined that telepathic robots became invisible protectors of Humanity. Daneel watching over Humanity became a force for preventing a technological singularity. It need surprise nobody that astrophysicists took a 30,000 year long vacation in Asimov's future history of the space age as long as you believe that Daneel was there, guiding Humanity safely into the future.

original cover art by Edmund Emshwiller
For readers new to Asimov, I suggest his short story "Cal" which mixes both Asimov's greatest literary strength (stories about positronic robots) and Asimov's interest in writing mystery stories.

For an example of Asimov's longer fiction, I recommend his time travel novel, The End of Eternity.

If you are interested in exploring Asimov's vast Foundation Saga, start here.

original cover by Graves Gladney
In 1956, Asimov did finally write a science fiction story about a technological singularity. As depicted in "The Last Question", an artificial mind, the only remnant of a long-gone Humanity, does ultimately achieve a singularity when it creates a new universe.

Related Reading: Moon cotton

Next: time travel

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Feb 1, 2018

Like Father

In the Ekcolir Reality
William the Pickup Artist
original cover art by George Rozen
The X-Files Season 11, episode 5 was a disappointment for some horror fans, but that was a good thing. Also, many X-Files romance❤ fans who have been ❤dying to meet William were disturbed to see him depicted as being romantically involved with two girlfriends at the same time. And even worse, tricking the two girls into a nearly fatal knife fight. View this through your Sci Fi-tinted glasses: William had discovered that he could make any girl fall in love with him "simply" by taking control of their mind and allowing them to see him as their ideal heart throb.

For me, this mid-season episode was an unexpected opportunity to meet William, an event I did not expect to arrive until episode 10, right at the end of Chris Carter's meandering mess of a 25-year-long Sci Fi story. We learned that William has a superpower: he can telepathically control minds and make other people either see exactly what they want to see, or, exactly what William wants them to see.

William can control minds.
I may only be seeing what I want to see, but I'm going to assume that we were not lied to about the DNA test: Scully got to meet her son. We finally know that William is now known by the name "Jackson", the first name given to him by his adoptive parents.

previous version
Questions
 Is Scully only Jackson's birth mother, or is she also his biological mother? And, does it matter? Even Mulder refers to Jackson as "our son", so maybe the CSM lied when he claimed to be William's father.

More Questions
message in a bottle
I also have to assume that Jackson knows about the remnants of the Syndicate (including the CSM) who are looking for him. Can we say that Jackson USED his two girlfriends in an attempt to create an X-File case? Was this his way to attract Mulder and Scully and get a chance to say "hi" to his mother before he drives off into hiding at the end of episode 5?

I was dead,
but I got better.
If the CSM is his father, we must ask: is Jackson a reckless user of his lady friends ("cheating garbage teen"), just like his dad (the CSM)? There are many questions that need to be wrapped up by the end of Season 11. Are the CSM and Scully and William all immortal beings? And how much telepathic ability does spooky Mulder have?

He's not dead, Dana.
Reyes
Will we ever get an explanation for why Reyes is involved with the CSM? I wish Reyes had made an appearance in episode 5. All we got was the CSM telling Skinner that Mulder is getting close and saying that Mulder will lead them to William.

But not if Mulder can help it. Mulder knows that he is being followed and he tries to hide clues about William/Jackson that are on the boy's computer (after Mulder has used his "superpower", his new-found ability to hack into computers).
Mulder destroys crime scene evidence in order to protect William/Jackson from the CSM.

William/Jackson can make anyone see the Ghouli.
I guess it is still possible that Reyes and Scully are related, so when Mulder says that there is a similarity in DNA between Jackson and Dana, it does not entirely rule out the possibility that Jackson is also related to Reyes. There may have been a long-term link between Reyes and the Syndicate, with not much more than hints to the connection being provided to viewers. Did the CSM always keep his operatives and "friends" planted close to Scully?

shared vision
Rather than get an info dump from Reyes, we got to meet Jackson's shrink who confirms that Jackson shared Scully's vision of the Spartan Virus apocalypse ("My Struggle II"). We still don't know if this shared vision is a scene from the future or if it might be a nightmare that Jackson had after he hacked into DOJ files and learned about the Spartan Virus. Stay tuned for "My Struggle IV". Knowing Chris Carter, he's already forgotten about that mysterious spaceship; after all, it was just "a dream", right?

William: master of disguises.
Going to Jackson
At the start of this episode, Jackson has been telepathically linked to Scully for some time, but apparently he does not fully understand his relationship to her until they meet. It is a strange meeting because Dana believes that he is dead. Jackson has become a "master of disguises": he can make other  people "see things". In this case, he makes Dana "see" a gunshot wound to his head. She believes that he is dead and so she conveniently gives a speech about how she is his mom. But William/Jackson is not dead, laying there on the autopsy table, he's listening to Scully's tear-jerker speech.

Visions of the Future
mercifully, Mulder does not have to have a
fist fight with the two evil dudes,
they just trade snarky verbal jibes
In episode 5, Scully has two visions of the future that take place during times when she is asleep. The nature of these visions remind me of of the film Next. If Jackson can "view the future" and select the correct course of action so as to avoid danger and threats to his life, then Scully's "dream" of being chased through a maze-like house might be a vision of the future: of the future time when Jackson is being chased through his home by the two shady characters who kill his parents (image to the left).

experiment #17, Jackson
(Miles Robbins)
The second "dream vision" experienced by Scully during this episode is more controlled. When Jackson is leaving the hospital he implants in Scully's mind a vision of where they will again meet in the near future. Are there any limits to Jackson's blooming telepathic abilities?

experiment #23, Sveta
If William was part of a series of experiments that involved mixing human and alien DNA, the result of the experiment might have been the creation of "alien-human hybrids" with strange telepathic abilities. Imagine a collection of children such as Gibson, Kyle and Jackson (+Emily?) who don't fully understand their plight, but they have an instinct for survival and can protect themselves. Members of the Syndicate tried to control those children, but failed, so they abandoned the alien-human hybrid project. Now they have noticed that Jackson is still alive, and they are trying to capture him and gain control of his amazing abilities. Or do they simply intend to kill Jackson?

source
I was worried that episode 5 (Ghouli) was only going to be a "monster of the week" episode with no relevance to William. I did not need the gratuitous dead-animal-covered-with-magots scene right when I sat down to eat dinner, but I was pleased that this episode was mostly a thoughtful Sci Fi investigation about the implications of telepathy rather than just a mindless horror show. I'm very happy with the way that the science fiction content is flowering in Season 11.

Investigating William, master of disguises.
During episode 5, Fox and Dana were working together like a well-oiled investigative team. Scully was on edge emotionally and Mulder was playing the calm/cool anchor of the duo. After leaving the FBI office at the start of the show, they had to work out of a series of coffee shops during the rest of the investigation.

in an parallel universe
In these shops the running gag was Fox using the name "Bob" so he would not have to explain the name "Fox" for the millionth time to shop workers.

Where Next?
Is William/Jackson going to hide from the evil Syndicate in order to avoid being hunted down and captured? A part of episode 5 that I did not understand was that "government documents" were found on Jackson's computer. Somehow Jackson has learned about "Project Crossroads" and his origins. Putting that together with the Malcolm X quotes, it would be more interesting if William now went on the offensive. He might finally have enough control of his telepathic abilities to attack the CSM. May the alien-DNA-derived telepathic force be with him.
Related Reading: Season 10
Next: episode 6
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Check-out time...
I think the folks at FOX have already checked out of The X-Files.
The intern who posts the Youtube videos does not even watch the show.