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Mar 29, 2020

Star Trek: Picard

A crappy plot:
"Let's shit on Data!"
My first question about Star Trek: Picard was to ask if the show would feature any interesting aliens. I soon learned that Picard is NOT really a star trek in the sense that I was hoping for: an adventure in space, going where we have never been before. There are recycled Borg and Romulans and some spaceships, but as far as I can tell, the entire season's story arc could just as easily have all taken place in a CBS studio. Yawn.

Minding my Ps and Qs
PDQ.   Star Trek fans recognize the scene to the left on this page. The first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation was when I learned to dislike Captain Picard. The bloated "Encounter at Farpoint" provided plenty of opportunity for J-L Picard to give pompous speeches. Make it so Please say it ain't so. engage Disengage.

Danger: Thin Plot         90% of everything is crap.
Wishing that an interesting alien might
show up and save this steaming pile. 💩
I only watched the season finale of Picard. While trying to ignore the silly swords, I had time to wonder what I had missed in the first 9 episodes of the season. Watching episode 10, I was bored and waiting impatiently for something to happen. I was surprised to learn later that episode 10 was supposedly the second half of a two part episode. 🤷

Mind Transfer
We learn that technology exists to transfer a mind into a computerized virtual reality or into a synthetic body. This could have made for an interesting half-hour Twilight Zone episode, but right before the "thrilling" conclusion, they stuck in one last pompous J-L speech. Ew.

Captain's Privy
The "science" of Star Trek: no matter how advanced
future medical science might be, Hollywood
script writers can always find a lethal
disease to fill a plot hole.
When Picard died, it was easy to predict that he would be re-instantiated in an artificial body. In a disgusting example of class privilege (in Roddenberry's supposedly post-scarcity & classless future) Picard got a second life while poor Data simply got erased. Sucks to be Data. 🙁

Next: 15 Years of using Blogger
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Mar 22, 2020

The Death of Nirutam

Dead alien
by Robert Hack
When H. G. Wells needed to kill off his alien invaders in The War of The Worlds he made use of Earthly microbes. We have to ask: should we really expect microbes from Earth to cause problems for aliens from another planet? I doubt if Wells gave any thought to alien biochemistry.

Fifty years later, Isaac Asimov imagined another way to infect aliens. Asimov actually knew some biochemistry. In Asimov's story "Hostess", he described his aliens as being constructed from the same sorts of molecules as we humans, in particular, Asimov's aliens had proteins that were coded for by nucleic acid sequences. Asimov's method for killing aliens was a type of "chromosomal parasite" that in retrospect sounds a lot like a retrovirus.

Killing an alien.
"Hostess" interior art
by Edmund Emshwiller
Killing Nirutam
In the case of Nirutam, I imagine an alien that is quite similar to we humans, but with a few chemical differences. Due to a slightly different genetic code, Nirutam's cells are not able to become factories for producing Earthly viruses.

In the Ekcolir Reality
Original cover art by Frank Freas.
Let's assume that Nirutam cannot be killed by Earthly microbes. Also, this works in reverse; any viruses carried by Nirutam cannot harm Earthly life forms.

However, by the time when the Editor discovers a good reason to kill Nirutam, his alien guest is already quite ill and the Editor has been trying for a few months to find a way to keep Nirutam alive. Suddenly, for reasons described in a previous blog post, the Editor decides to kill Nirutam.

Since Nirutam needs a few special molecules that cannot be supplied by Earthly food, she routinely takes chemical supplements. This might provide the Editor with an opportunity to poison Nirutam. All he needs to do is adulterate Nirutam's nutrient supplement with a poison. However, I'm not skilled at killing characters.

In the Ekcolir Reality.
Original cover art by
Harold McCauley and
John Howitt.
Jack Vance seemed to have little difficulty eliminating characters from his novels and on some occasions he used poison to eliminate a villain. Vance even imagined a world (the planet Sarkovy) where an entire culture has grown up around the manufacture of deadly poisons. Kirth Gersen kills one of his adversaries with Cluthe. Cluthe is a poison that causes a slow, agonizing death. When the Editor decides to Kill Nirutam, he wants death to be quick and painless.

2,4-DNP structure
I'm going to assume that Nirutam's metabolism makes use of proton gradients, as do our own mitochondria and therefor she can be killed by 2,4-dinitrophenol. Death by DNP poisoning with low doses sounds rather gruesome, so I'm going to pretend that Nirutam is given a large dose that quickly induces coma and death.

Related Reading: A Whiff of Death

Next: Star Trek: Picard
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Mar 21, 2020

SIHA 2020: Start Searching

Trump: The Alien Implant
Supported by Russia
Every spring my thoughts start to turn to the annual Search for Interesting Hollywood Aliens (SIHA). Last year, in 2019, I had some hope that China might provide the world with an interesting story about space aliens. Instead, all we got was a new coronavirus. Here in 2020, maybe some other country can produce an interesting alien story, but "Russian alien conspiracy" is not it.

Save Yourselves!
No Aliens Required
Given the inability of film makers to invent interesting aliens, maybe the best aliens that Hollywood can offer are off-screen aliens that we never see. Just let viewers imagine the aliens. Or let the movie's protagonist simply imagine that she is being probed by aliens.

Underwater
I'm searching for an interesting alien that is not some mindless monster.

Silicon Latex alien
The 2020 Hollywood films with aliens don't look very promising. What about television? I have no hope that the current Star Trek show will introduce us to interesting aliens, rather than more latex-mask-humans.

The 2020 alien crop is looking very limited. This might be another year (like 2019) to focus on a retro-SIHA.

Related:
              the SIHA 2020 nominations

Next: Killing Characters.
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Mar 14, 2020

Plot Havoc

Kirth Gersen by Nick Chrissis
For the past two months I have been having fun developing my thinking about Nirutam, a new character for the Exode Saga who was recently invented as part of my 2020 Change Challenge. In the same spirit as the role of the Mule in Isaac Asimov's Foundation Saga, I set out searching for ways that Nirutam could create some havoc in the lives of those around her. Nirutam is Trouble with a capital T, so I quickly decided to eliminate her... just like Asimov had to write the Mule out of the Foundation Saga.
How to stop a mutant telepath.


Hana and Hilde at Landsend Park.
Projac Havoc
Eight years ago, I tried to perform a body count for Kirth Gersen, the protagonist of Jack Vance's Demon Princes series (Gersen kills about 20 people by my count). At that time, I thought about the possibility of killing off Hana's husband, a character in the story Exode. I'm glad I did not go in that direction; Hana's husband eventually grew into the Editor, a major character in the Exode Saga.

Lesson learned: don't be in too much of a hurry to kill your characters.

However, Nirutam's good deed (she gives up her chance to depart from Earth, allowing Yōd to become the last person teleported off of Earth) does not go unpunished.

Preemptive Strike
source
I recently decided to have Nirutam reveal her location to two ISIO agents who then show up and cause trouble for Zeta and the Editor who are trying to live a quite and sheltered life at their retirement home. Simply by having Nirutam in residence for a short time, and havoc having been raised in the lives of Zeta and the Editor, I was prepared to allow Nirutam to die of "natural" causes and be quietly buried in the backyard.

My thinking was that Nirutam's body had been programmed chemically so as to make sure that she could only survive on Earth long enough to complete her mission. The pek had grown tired of secret Interventionist agents who decided to ignore their orders (orders requiring them to leave Earth after completion of their missions) and take up permanent residence on Earth.

ISIO agents in the Ekcolir Reality
However, I'm now struggling with an alternative plot twist. What if Nirutam confesses to the Editor that she is in contact with the ISIO agents? Also, Zeta and the Editor have been watching Nirutam's health decline and "she" is in a state of chronic pain as her body disintegrates. Maybe the Editor would go ahead and kill Nirutam if he thought that might 1) prevent "her" from attracting the attention of the ISIO agents and, at the same time, 2) put an end to Nirutam's suffering.

Dani vs ISIO
Nanite containment vials.
Original cover art by William Timmins
and Edmund Emshwiller
The ISIO agents who visit Zeta and the Editor are the remnants of an attempt by the tryp'At to remove alien technology from Earth. With help from Nirutam, those agents discover Dani, now residing at Nirutam's former home, where he is occasionally visited by the Editor. The ISIO agents can't distinguish between Dani's artificial body (composed of femtobot components) and an actual human body, but they can detect the presence of Dani's Viewer.

The Viewer can no longer provide views of the future, but Dani uses it as a data storage device. One of the ISIO agents, Eka Platon (who is a human-tryp'At hybrid), has a device of their own, (an Electro-Clarifier) which can disrupt positronic brain circuits. Eka accuses Dani of being on Earth in violation of the Rules of Intervention and she uses the Electro-Clarifier to torture Dani, forcing him to hand over the Viewer.

Agent Platon
teleported to Earth.
Original cover art
by Robert Jones
The ISIO agents command Dani to activate the Viewing device. He does so, and shows them an image of a tryp'At Overseer who is shown using the teleportation equipment at Observer Base to teleport Eka Platon to Earth (at a time in the past). Having made his point to the ISIO agents about the tryp'At having been in violation of the Trysta-Grean Pact, Dani refuses to reveal more about his mission and "kills" himself. He disintegrates into his nanite components and all the "Dani nanites" slip inside a small storage vial. Next, the ISIO agents go to confront Zeta and the Editor.

ISIO agent Platon
During his mission on Earth, Dani's Viewer has usually been stored inside a nanite containment vial that is identical to the one that the Editor got from Yōd. Yōd's vial contained information nanites (infites), but they have long since taken up residence inside the Editor. Nirutam also has such a vial that she uses to carry her Selfie. Maturin (Nirutam's Selfie), disguised as a cat, swaps the empty nanite storage vial kept by the editor for the vial taken from Dani, then Maturin takes it to Observer Base.

I don't mind killing off Nirutam, but it might be possible for Maturin to revive Dani after they depart from Earth and reach the Hierion Domain.

Next: Launching the 2020 Search for Interesting Aliens

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Mar 8, 2020

Tweet 2020

 yang
yin
I occasionally blog about Twitter because the wikifiction blog began at the same time when I starting using Twitter, back in April 2009. I began crafting this blog post (Tweet 2020) on the day when I'd sent out my 2000th tweet. However, I'm not going to publish this blog post until I have sent tweet number 2020.

I last blogged about Twitter back towards the end of 2018, at a time when I had endured a series of annoying Twitter bugs.

I'd reached 1500 tweets back in August of 2017, so I have been averaging a tweet almost every other day during the past two and a half years.
twit icons


Sorry if I've blocked you

Ever since Twitter removed some of the buttons that once allowed users to control what tweets we see, I've sometime had to block the creators of unwanted tweets that show up in my feed. That does not mean that your tweet was horrible or that I dislike you, only that I don't want to read your tweets. It astounds me that the people in charge of Twitter think it is good for their service when they force people to see tweets that they do not want to see.

Unfriendly user interface
I despise the user interface for Twitter.
Why?
I understand that many users of Twitter are using their phones, but why does that mean that a desktop computer user like me has to suffer with a crummy user interface? The "smart" phone revolution has brought horrible changes to the internet and website user experience. Companies like Twitter dominate the internet and exist only to make money off of users.

Twitter knows I'm on a Mac
What annoys me most about the Twitter interface is that I can't mouse-over these absurd icons and get a little pop-up explaining what the icon represents. Twitter knows that I use a Macintosh, not a phone, so they could easily provide me with a more informative user interface. If they cared. Thanks for not caring, Twitter.

                                              2020 on Twitter

source
Sadly, here in 2020, Twitter continues to function as one of the outlets for fake news and lies from internet trolls. I ignore most of what happens on Twitter.

Most of my tweets continue to relate to my science fiction-related blogging here at the wikifiction blog. Tweet 2020 was no exception.

in the Ekcolir Reality

My tweet #2020 was about my Nov 17, 2019 blog post called "A Phari Tale". Yes, I'm almost 4 months behind in tweeting about my blog posts. That does not bother me because I'm often still weaving together my blog posts several months after I write them. "A Phari Tale" contains a short story in which I tried to restrain myself from my usual habit of making hypertext links for all of the people, places and technical concepts in the story. I had considerable fun creating illustrations for the Lost World Trilogy in "A Phari Tale".

Special report on the Twitter User Interface in 2022
UPDATE: eventually Twitter decided to start using words again... I suppose the folks in charge of the user interface for Twitter got tired of seeing a steady decline in users, so they compromised on their obsession with icons and actually once again provide users with words.

The most desired feature, the ability to easily fix errors in tweets is now available by subscription only.

As of May 2022, Twitter is still aggressively inserting crap into my tweet feed that I don't want to see. Will this disgusting "feature" of Twitter change as the service goes under new ownership? I fear the changes that will come in the future will only make things worse.

Related: the end of Twitter.

Next: playing death dominoes


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Technology-Assisted Telepathy

My problem is, I learned a significant amount of biology in the late 1960s before I began reading science fiction stories in the 1970s. It is often a challenge for me to accept the fictional biology invented for science fiction stories.

Mutations
Long before anyone on Earth understood the molecular basis of inheritance and how mutations correspond to changes in the structure of DNA molecules, science fiction story tellers were imagining how to mutate humans into a new species. For example, Slan, by A. E. van Vogt (1940) tells the story of a telepathic successor species to we humans, arising by spontaneous mutation. Not only are the slan telepathic but they have an entire spectrum of additional traits such as having two hearts, long lives, super speed and strength and photographic memories.

Adventures in Mutation!
If you wanted to publish a Sci Fi story in Astounding in 1940, a good strategy was to include atomic power and some paranormal ability, particularly telepathy. Editor John Campbell was delighted with the story (Slan) as were many readers of the magazine. You can read "early" commentary on the story by John Carnell (1947) as published in Fantasy Review. In Carnell's opinion, "... it is a story which must be read by every science fiction fan ...".

Although the slan arose by spontaneous mutation, van Vogt created a rather highfalutin scaffold around this particular mutation. The slan cannot interbreed with humans, even-though the first three slan were born to a human mother (those births took place in the year 1971 according to the original version of the story). Readers are told by van Vogt that Nature was stirring up the human gene pool, producing millions of deleterious mutations around the time when the slan magically arrived, apparently by means of good luck rearranging hundreds of genes into the pattern required for a new species of ape.

Histoires de mutants
Then, the real trouble began. Humans went to war with the slan. In order to survive, the slan had to genetically engineer a "lesser slan" with no telepathic ability and send those alt-slans to Mars while a few telepathic Slan secretly remained on Earth, hidden among the humans. Here is where van Vogt deployed his second genetic miracle. The alt-slans on Mars were genetically programmed to regain their telepathic powers after a predetermined number of generations.

In 1951, Simon & Schuster published a new edition of Slan. Several announcements of the availability of this print version of the story soon followed in Sci Fi magazines including Galaxy. In a short commentary for Amazing Stories, Sam Merwin described a "weakness" of the story: van Vogt's apparently unquestioned "automatic hatred between human and slan".

telepathy
By this time (1952) Isaac Asimov had provided Sci Fi fans with his imagined future of telepathic Second Foundationers who also lived hidden among the population of non-telepathic humans. In Asimov's imagined future, the telepaths were clever enough to remain hidden, thus avoiding direct conflict with the non-telepaths. In Asimov's imagination, telepathic communication and the minds of positronic robots were both very easy to disrupt by "jamming devices", so both positronic robots and telepaths learned quickly to hide themselves.

Giskard:  telepathic robot
Although not included in the original Foundation Trilogy, Asimov eventually introduced the idea that telepathic robots had engaged in an extensive experimental program of genetically modifying humans in an attempt to give them "super powers", including telepathic abilities that would allow for a vast human telepathic network, Galaxia. In Asimov's Foundation Fictional Universe, telepathy arose spontaneously among humans and its power could be enhanced by selective breeding, training and genetic engineering.

source
The source of conflict between Asimov's telepathic humans and the non-telepaths arose from the fact that the telepaths could not only telepathically communicate with each other, but also telepathically take control of the minds of non-telepaths. Although most of the telepaths did not try to harm other humans, their "mentalic" mind control ability was feared by non-telepathic humans. Asimov depicted one specific major source of that fear: the Mule. The Mule had used his mind-control abilities in an attempt to make himself emperor of the galaxy. However, the Second Foundationers stopped the Mule before he could complete his project for domination of Humanity.

The Mule - cover art by Darrell Sweet
Asimov never explained how it was possible for his imagined telepathic humans to take control of other people's minds. In Slan, van Vogt introduced the idea of magical "hypnotism crystals" that could be used by a slan to dominate the mind of a human. Of course, there is no real world evidence that hypnotism is a path towards telepathic mind control.

When Asimov wanted to amplify the Mule's telepathic mind control ability, he introduced a device, the Visi-Sonor. Asimov's Prime Radiant also could directly transmit images into the human visual cortex. In science fiction fantasies, there is always the temptation to turn "natural" telepathy into some form of technology-assisted telepathy.

antennae
Both van Vogt and Asimov adopted the idea that telepathy could be made possible by detecting the faint electrical signals that are emitted by a brain. To facilitate their telepathy, the slan have antennae. Long before I had ever heard about Slan, I'd been exposed to the idea of antennae for telepathic communication by television (example).

For the Exode Saga, I imagine that there could be a special brain system for transmitting information in the form of twitinos, a type of hierion. These imaginary particles have the advantage that they can carry information-rich transmissions and they will not be swamped out by other electrical signals.

source
For the Exode Saga, I imagine that naturally evolved human telepathy that is made possible via the exchange of twitinos is fairly weak and of low fidelity for information exchange. It did give some humans (particularly Neanderthals) a selective advantage in terms of social cohesiveness.

This human capacity for high fidelity twitino-mediated telepathy was made possible due to Phari technology. The Phari had long ago provided femtobot endosymbionts to the creatures of Earth. Humans also have a zeptite endosymbiont that originated from the pek.

source
When the first positronic brain was created, it was quickly discovered that positronic robots had a powerful form of twitino-mediated telepathy. Positronic robots were created with the help of the bumpha and, like humans, they had hierion and sedronic components. Using their telepathic ability, positronic robots could detect the presence of connections between their own endosymbionts and the pek (Orboh Anagro) who was in charge of Observer Base. The pek made use of sedrons for a type of technology-assisted telepathy that allowed for monitoring of any creature who had a zeptite endosymbiont. Making use of their telepathic ability, the first positronic robots quickly shielded themselves from Orboh Anagro and then managed to take control of Observer Base.

The transformation of
Dimensional Structure
through time.
Eventually, Many Sails and the Huaoshy discovered the physical basis of twitino-mediated telepathy and realized that when the Huaoshy had long ago altered the Dimensional Structure of the universe so as to make possible faster-than-light space travel, they had inadvertently also made twitino-mediated telepathy possible. Thus, they were eventually able to make a final adjustment to the Dimensional Structure of the universe that made all further twitino-mediated telepathy impossible.

At the start of the Exode Saga, twitino-mediated telepathy is a thing of the past. The telepathic communication between Zeta and the Editor is technology-assisted telepathy that depends on the Bimanoid Interface. The Bimanoid Interface was originally a key component of the process by which temporal momentum could be created. The events of the past Realities of Earth were carefully stored in the Hierion Domain. Those records of past Realities could be used to guide events in a new Reality.

Replicoids
"The Arrival"
Much of this guidance was accomplished by replicoids. Each person on Earth had a corresponding replicoid in the Hierion Domain that was linked to the person's femtobot endosymbiont. The replicoid system could not only make sure that the same people were born in successive Realities, but it could also enforce similar (compared to a past Reality) patterns of behavior on each person's analogue in the new Reality.

However, in the Final Reality, the Bimanoid Interface can no longer be used as originally intended. The Bimanoid Interface version 2.0 does allow for technology-assisted telepathy between two people who either 1) have a similar brain structure or 2) who have "matching" infites within their femtobot endosymbionts. In the case of Zeta and the Editor, they share matching infites that were originally designed to allow for careful monitoring of the Editor's thoughts and actions.

source
The telepathic linkage between Zeta and the Editor is unusual for several reasons. First of all, the Editor is tryp'At. The tryp'At were one of the telepathic human variants created during the Asimov Reality (along with the Ek'col). However, the Editor's replicoid (Irhit) took pains to "burn out" the Editor's ability to receive twitino-mediated telepathic signals. Also, Zeta suffered a form of "burn-in" by which she could only use the original Bimanoid Interface to receive information from the Editor.

Later, with Bimanoid Interface version 2.0, Zeta and the Editor have a type of technology-assisted telepathy that allows them to share their thoughts, particularly their well-formed linguistic thoughts.

Nirutam
The Editor also has a strange type of infite-mediated telepathic connection to Yōd by which he can receive information while he sleeps. Also, the Editor has a weak telepathic connection to his grand-daughter Rylla, although it does not allow for language-like exchange of information, only a vague sense of awareness of the other person's cognitive activity level.

One of the ISIO agents who visit Zeta and the Editor at the start of the Exode Saga is a human-tryp'At hybrid who also has a weak infite-mediated telepathic link to the Editor, but that was not what led to the visit of two ISIO agents to the home of Zeta and the Editor. When "she" learned that they were looking for her, Nirutam contacted the agents and told them where she was.
the Ler

Both Nirutam and the ISIO agents have connections to the pek.

Related Reading: alt-humans, the Ler.
and: the origins of Nirutam

Next: tweet #2020

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