Once there were three tribes. The Optimists, whose patron saints were Drake and Sagan, believed in a universe crawling with gentle intelligence---spiritual brethren vaster and more enlightened than we, a great galactic siblinghood into whose ranks we would someday ascend. Surely, said the Optimists, space travel implies enlightenment, for it requires the control of great destructive energies. Any race which can't rise above its own brutal instincts will wipe itself out long before it learns to bridge the interstellar gulf.

Across from the Optimists sat the Pessimists, who genuflected before graven images of Saint Fermi and a host of lesser lightweights. The Pessimists envisioned a lonely universe full of dead rocks and prokaryotic slime. The odds are just too low, they insisted. Too many rogues, too much radiation, too much eccentricity in too many orbits. It is a surpassing miracle that even one Earth exists; to hope for many is to abandon reason and embrace religious mania. After all, the universe is fourteen billion years old: if the galaxy were alive with intelligence, wouldn't it be here by now?

Equidistant to the other two tribes sat the Historians. They didn't have too many thoughts on the probable prevalence of intelligent, spacefaring extraterrestrials--- but if there are any, they said, they're not just going to be smart. They're going to be mean.

It might seem almost too obvious a conclusion. What is Human history, if not an ongoing succession of greater technologies grinding lesser ones beneath their boots? But the subject wasn't merely Human history, or the unfair advantage that tools gave to any given side; the oppressed snatch up advanced weaponry as readily as the oppressor, given half a chance. No, the real issue was how those tools got there in the first place. The real issue was what tools are for.

To the Historians, tools existed for only one reason: to force the universe into unnatural shapes. They treated nature as an enemy, they were by definition a rebellion against the way things were. Technology is a stunted thing in benign environments, it never thrived in any culture gripped by belief in natural harmony. Why invent fusion reactors if your climate is comfortable, if your food is abundant? Why build fortresses if you have no enemies? Why force change upon a world which poses no threat?

Human civilization had a lot of branches, not so long ago. Even into the twenty-first century, a few isolated tribes had barely developed stone tools. Some settled down with agriculture. Others weren't content until they had ended nature itself, still others until they'd built cities in space.

We all rested eventually, though. Each new technology trampled lesser ones, climbed to some complacent asymptote, and stopped.

But history never said that everyone had to stop where we did. It only suggested that those who had stopped no longer struggled for existence. There could be other, more hellish worlds where the best Human technology would crumble, where the environment was still the enemy, where the only survivors were those who fought back with sharper tools and stronger empires. The threats contained in those environments would not be simple ones. Harsh weather and natural disasters either kill you or they don't, and once conquered---or adapted to--- they lose their relevance. No, the only environmental factors that continued to matter were those that fought back, that countered new strategies with newer ones, that forced their enemies to scale ever-greater heights just to stay alive. Ultimately, the only enemy that mattered was an intelligent one.

And if the best toys do end up in the hands of those who've never forgotten that life itself is an act of war against intelligent opponents, what does that say about a race whose machines travel between the stars?

I started by reading Banks' scifi, the Culture novels. I fell in love with them, and since I've read every one of those books multiple times, I decided to make the jump into reading his mainstream fiction. I started with The Wasp Factory, and I'd be interested in what you think about that book, if you've read it. If not, go read it! It's good!

Needing a down weekend, the spouse and I settled in to watch TV, and discovered that Starz' series, Counterpart - spoiler warning, is one of the better series we've seen in quite a while, let alone among science fiction stories. Though The Expanse wins for sheer SFX pyrotechnics and breadth of technical scope, it's wonderful to sit in for a deep, thoughtful drama like Counterpart. The series focuses on character, story, world-building, plausible plotting, and avoidance of the usual alternate universe cliches. Counterpart is a genuine Cold War Noir spy thriller which happens to occur in a science-fictional setting, and the writers have managed to avoid or refresh the tropes of both genres in ways that ask interesting philosophical questions. It's quiet, slow, and meticulous in a way that most current television writing seems to have abandoned. There's tense action, but no primary colored-supersuits, no scary aliens, no gaudy laser beams, just... a split of history that leaves two distorted mirrors, reflecting each other.

J.K. Simmons' performances in the roles of Howard (Prime) and Howard (Alpha) are mesmerizing in a way that outmatches Tatiana Mazlany's Orphan Black characters. There's a slow unveiling of the respective parallel worlds' history, with continuing evolution and interplay of characters and relationships, which brings to mind the best of series like The Wire or The Americans.

To the extent that Counterpart borrows from literary canon, the most significant underlying influences are John LeCarre's find-the-mole games in the Smiley series, China Mieville's The City and the City, and Philip K. Dick (particularly, The Adjustment Team).

The really guilty pleasure, and the lightweight pressure relief from the grimdark of Peaky Blinders or Counterpart, was a spit-and-giggles Canadian production called Letterkenny. I didn't have high hopes, but the 22-minute episodes are exactly what my brain needed to get over the daily doses of blah.

The opening credits of each episode refer to the fictional rural Ontario town of Letterkenny as follows:

There are 5,000 people in Letterkenny. These are their problems.

The plots are barely coat-hangers, with most of the comic tension spent on interactions among the Hicks (farm people), Skids (creative-but-disaffected Internet subculture wannabes), hockey players and Christians - a/k/a small-town tribes recognizable anywhere in North America. The portrayals are caricaturized enough to be both humorously offensive and humorously sympathetic simultaneously. [Could be some toxic racial/gender meta, but mostly, the treatment of women and minorities is in keeping with the setting.]

The banter, and the utter Spock-like deadpan of Wayne (the toughest guy in Letterkenny)'s Hick character are the stars of the show. Some people have complained that the rapid-fire use of heavy dialect in the dialogue is impenetrable; that actually helps with comic timing. When your brain catches up to what was actually said, it's like receiving a two-by-four between the eyes of funny. I've got a bit of home-team advantage in the midwestern North American dialects area, and usually get it on the first run, but it's good enough to re-watch happily if the spouse needs a do-over. Transcripts are available, but watch the show before looking.

We now have a new battery of in-jokes and gag lines to add to our secret spousal language - "Hard no.", "That's what I appreciates about ya", "...and he was never the same after that."

There's really nothing quite like Letterkenny, and it's exactly smart/dumb enough to make fantastic comedy. Two seven-episode seasons are currently available on Hulu.

Space. Mankind’s last great mystery. Our modern day ‘Wild West’. What a privilege to be born during this golden age of space exploration, to have the chance to strike out and see a universe so full of absolutely nothing.

There is nothing out here, there’s a reason it’s often referred to as a void. Okay, yes, the more astute members of you will point out space isn’t truly empty, planets and nebulas, and even us, the humans and our crafts. But for the sake of the scale upon which we view it, its empty.

Just look at me, stuck out here, stranded, in dark space. For those of you still catching up on your terminology, that’s what we call the space in between galaxies. Yes, those galaxies, the big ones that contain untold numbers of stars. No, I don’t know how I got out here. If I did, I would have done something to reverse it.

All I can tell you is that I’m out here with a busted ship that only has enough power for life support and basic functions. Ugh, I bet you the caravan has already made it to Port Dalle, and Swiv’s drinking that blasted sludge he wouldn’t shut up about. They’re probably raising a ruckus at the bar, starting brawls and revelries alike.

And here I am, alone. Well, I have Ping. That’s what I call that eternal pinging. If you listen closely, you can hear it, every few seconds ever so faintly. Ping, ping. I can’t tell if the universe has given me company or is taunting me. My headache leans towards taunting.

Ping.

I tried turning it off, I really did. But I can’t figure out where it’s coming from. It’s almost as if the entire ship resonates with the noise. It’s not a big ship, kinda, cozy. I think that’s the word. I have to duck down to pass through the doors. The bed’s a few inches too short. But I make do, plenty of room in the storage closet if I push the tools to the side. Well, I might have jettisoned them. But, hear me out! It’s not like I’d be able to use them anyway.

‘What are you doing on that blasted ship if you can’t fix it?’ You may ask. Well, I’ll tell you. It wasn’t supposed to break. I was only supposed to be here to press the on and off buttons.

Ping.

They just didn’t include any for that blasted noise. Maybe it’s coming from behind this service panel here, it seems to be louder in the bridge, if you could call this glassed in closet a bridge.

Bang. Ow.

Note to self: pulling on random panels is a bad idea.

Ping.

Yeah yeah, keep on pinging, you stupid pinging, thing, a-lator.

Ping.

That was not a request for you to ping more frequently!

Ping.

...

What did I do to deserve this? All I ever did was try to lead a semi-normal life. As normal a life being some intergalactic space trucker, shipper, can be. I payed taxes, obeyed the law mostly, didn’t cheat. I mean, I’m not a bad person. I didn’t do anything wrong! Or did I?

I mean, there are several possibilities. Maybe one of the times a delivery was late it costed someone more then a few extra minutes of paperwork. Maybe I inadvertently stood in the wrong spot, ruining some poor tourists prized photo. Maybe I-

Ping.

Maybe I’m dead, and this is my eternal torture.

Maybe, just maybe, there isn’t such a thing as fate or karma or metaphysical legacies. Maybe, this is just some freak thing that occurred because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time? How’s that sound? Must be hard imagining not having someone to blame for all the things that go wrong, huh? Well, I’ve been stuck here for who knows how long. No one’s coming. And there’s nothing wrong with the ship except some inexplicable power loss.

Ping.

Maybe whatever’s making that noise is the cause?

Ping.

Pong.

How do you like dem apples, huh?... Well, I guess you like them. Seeing as you haven’t immediately thrown them back at me. Maybe this’ll keep me entertained for awhile, huh?

Out here, you take whatever you can get to pass the time. There is literally nothing.

I even look out at nothing. I mean, sure, I see some of the Milky Way nearby, as well as light clusters that are the other galaxies. But I’m so far off the beaten path that the ship’s computers don’t even register any gravitational pull, and they’re tuned for the center of the Milky Way to set a universal constant for direction. Uh, simple speak, the big thing at the center of our galaxy? That’s down.

There’s some velocity. So the ship will drift for millions of years, preserved in the inky cold of this wonderful frontier, until it get’s close enough to, something, so it's pulled in and crashes or burns. What? It’s not like anyone will find it anytime soon.

I suppose you can’t really see the futility of existence yet. Me? My days are numbered, and I’ve already run out of gum.

Ping.

Pong.

Where was I? Right, existence. It’s a funny thing really. Out here, with nothing to do or see, you start to question if anything was really real. Everything turns into this far off dream, the distant past of another person. Here and now, its just you, and the void. Well, that, and the flimsy metal contraption keeping you safe from said void, but even that’s debatable.

Isolation was the worst punishment we were able to come up with for criminals, after all.

Eh. I’m waiting my time. You don’t want to hear a condemned man ramble on, or maybe you do, you sicko, you. You want stories, you want to hear the high flying adventures of traveling this wasteland. Tales of explorations and intrigue. Maybe even a little romance mixed in.

There really aren’t any. Space is, well, space. Big, and-

Ping.

-empty, and boring. As for the people, well, the Captain Buck and his intrepid crew all work for the military. The only civilians that do this are either, criminals, insane, or desperate. And any combination of those.

So there it is. The reality of this grand fantasy you’ve always held in your head-

Ping.

-laid bare at your very feet. Not very palatable, huh? Makes me think of that paste you get fed out here. Chemically infused with all the calories and nutrients you need to live. Tastes like they blended cardboard and water into sludge and called it food.

That’s not even the worst example. There was this one time... one time that...

Ping.

Ah, thank you Ping. There was this one time a station had a rodent infestation. Nasty stuff. You know what they did with the buggers? (Not the Editor, Editor’s Note: Not actual bugs.) Used them for meat! You had rodent steaks, and ground rodent. Didn’t stay at that station for long.

Oh, look. A red light is blinking. Must be time to party.

Ping.

Ping agrees it’s time to party. Where’d I put the people to party with? Oh yeah. They’re all back in inhabited space. C’est la vie.

Vie la c’est? Why are you asking me?

You know? I’ve done all the talking up until now. I think it’s your turn to tell me a little abut yourselves.

Yeah?

Really?

No.

Ping.

Ping doesn’t believe it either. He’s even making this slight hissing noise. Just like a cat. Maybe Ping’s a cat that goes ping? Or a ping that cats?

Having trouble understanding that one? Do what I do. Don’t.

Stuff doesn’t have to make sense. I mean, does it make sense for some random guy to be stuck literally nowhere? No, it doesn’t. He should be back home wondering what dinner will consist of. Well, truthfully, I’d probably be stuck with the nutrient paste still.

Ping.

I agree Ping, that paste is a travesty and insult to the human palate. At least include something that gives it some flavor. Maybe lemon juice? And some water, and sugar. You know what? Take the nutrient paste out all together and give us lemon, water, and sugar. We had a name for that back home.... I can’t seem to...

Ping.

Oh, right! Lemonade. Life’s gift you didn’t ask for. Well, would you look at that? There some ice dust outside. Almost like some rock had a gas bubble inside and it leaked. There you have it folks, the lemonade for today; ice dust!

You know, I’m getting kinda sleepy and light headed. I have been up for quite some time now. Why? Well, you and Ping are such good listeners, I couldn’t just walk away. No, it was my responsibility to entertain at the expense of my own health. I hope I did a good job, I don’t like to disappoint people. Only peaches disappoint, you expect them to be all flavorful, and they tase like the fruit has been soaking in water.

Well, guess this is it for now. Nature calls, and I don’t think I’ll be awake for much longer without really going off my rocker.

Ping.

Yeah, good night Ping.

Ping.

...

Ping.

• The BBC announcement: It's about time...

• Some discussion at Radio Times about the change of day: Doctor Who to move from Saturdays to Sundays for new era

• Programming difficulties at the ABC in Australia: Doctor Who finally gets UK air date, throws ABC programming into spin

Finished this last night. It's been so long since I read any Bradbury for the first time. His style shows some age, but he's a really poetic and visionary writer.

Published in 1953, this tale is a battle between visual media and books, but taking the form of the fleeting versus the permanent, the here and now versus history, pop culture versus capital C Culture.

In a way, its datedness is a strength, because of so much of Bradbury's prophetic vision and because of the way his 1950's idea of dystopia contrasts with the more numerous recent ideas.

If there was ever an object lesson about filter bubbles, Farenheit 451 is it: recent enough to be relatable and distant enough to be outside our current filters. Readers should take note of this when relating and evaluating fiction and any work that lies outside their personal space. A valuable lesson in itself.

So often we're totally unaware of the walls we create for ourselves, our comfort zone. It's precisely because they provide comfort that we tend to stay within them.

And of course, Bradbury's whole novel is both about this issue and again a reference object for it.

Ursula K. Le Guin was my favourite SciFi & Fantasy writer. Her passing earlier in the year was a great loss.

I'm reading her scifi-fantasy book Always Coming Home (1985), a compilation of "in-universe" codices and oral traditions as seen by an anthropologist. Her works were usually put in the "soft scifi" bin, as opposed to the "harder" genre. What caught my attention was a passage from the book, as appeared in an oral narrative (p. 161):

There are records of the red brick people in the Memory of the Exchange, of course, but I don't think many people have ever looked at them. They would be hard to make sense of. The City mind [a vast autonomous network of computers] thinks that sense has been made if a writing is read, if a message is transmitted, but we don't think that way.

Here we're called to notice the information vs. meaning distinction, for which a lot has been said and will be said. It was striking to me how the definition of "sense" according to the "City mind" closely paralleled the concept of information in Claude E. Shannon's seminal paper, A Mathematical Theory of Communication (PDF link). There, "information" simply meant what was transmitted between a sender and a receiver. It gave rise to a consistent definition of the amount of information based on the Shannon entropy.

However, we implicitly feel that this concept of information isn't encompassing enough to include meaning -- a vague term, but one we feel to be important. It seems that meaning enters information only as we (or someone) interpret it. In the words of computer scientist Melanie A. Mitchell, "meaning" seems to have an evolutionary value (Complexity: a Guided Tour, 2009). I feel that we could as well say, meaning may be bonded to the bodily and messy reality where flesh and blood living is at stake.

Returning to the passage in the novel, for me it was read as a rare spark of "hard" science in Le Guin's scifi works. Was it possible that she actually read into the information theory for inspiration? I don't know. But it appears to have captured the tension in the "ever-thorny issue" of meaning vs. information. For the computers, "sense" follows the information-theory concept of information; but for the human people in the story, it "would be hard to make sense of" the information in that way.

Do you have similar "aha" moments, where you find a insightful moment of grasping an important "hard-science" idea while immersed in a "soft" scifi/fantasy work?

Or, we can talk about anything vaguely connected to this post :) Let me know.

while its not the best star wars movie, it isn't the abomination that people make it out to be. its legitimately fun to watch and comfy with all its bad CGI.

Favorite star wars movies in order: IV, V, Solo, VII, I, VIII, VI, Rogue One, III, II

Today NASA launched the Parker Solar Probe which will dive closer to the sun than any other man made object in history.

In celebration of this event I watched Sunshine, a really well cast sci fi thriller. It was pretty darn good. I would highly recommend a watch if you are into this sort of thing, I had entirely missed it somehow. Casting is great, visuals are great, story is good, pacing is excellent. Don't be put off by the age of the movie, I don't think vfx would be any better today.

50 years into the future, the Sun begins to die, and Earth is dying as a result. A team of astronauts is sent to revive the Sun - but the mission fails. Seven years later, a new team is sent to finish the mission as mankind's last hope.

It may not be on US Netflix but it is on Amazon.

Trailer

Link to Google doc: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Hc-Ti6Pff_qUZLAfzzL7WjhFNh2m_XPvMkdYBL6mLzI/edit?usp=sharing

I created this document a while back and update it every couple months. There's an Introduction tab with guidance on how to browse the spreadsheets, which I've copied below for reference:

(1) This document outlines various TV shows and is broken up into 3 tabs: Watched, Watching, and Want to Watch.

Watched: Shows I've completed through series finale or given up on. Some of these were canceled early.

Watching: Shows I'm actively watching day-to-day or shows in between seasons that will air new episodes in the future.

Want to Watch: Shows I haven't started and want to watch. Many of them are recommendations I jotted down to avoid forgetting, so this list will sometimes be unalphabetized.

(2) Certain columns of information were exported directly from IMDB, and the page for each show is linked in the rating from the IMDB column.

(3) On the Watched and Watching tabs, there are columns for Recommend? and Notes to provide background that will help decide what to watch. Don't let any of my negative comments stop you from watching a show you're interested in.

(4) The Recommended? column is divided into the following categories: Must Watch, Yes, Maybe, No. These are all based on personal opinion with extra discussion/information in the Notes column.

(5) I've shared this with most people using View Only permissions, so download the Excel file (or copy to your Drive account) to filter columns by genre, rating, and personal recommendation.

Disclaimer: not everyone will have the same tastes as me - that's okay. I welcome any disagreement about how I've rated shows and hope to get some discussion going.

• What shows have I missed that I need to watch?

• What shows did I strongly recommend that you didn't like?

• What shows did I give up on too early?

I expect to take some heat for quitting Brooklyn 99 around season 3.

• What shows haven't come out that I should keep an eye out for?

Like Jack Ryan which debuts this month.

• How can I improve the document?

I considered including a column with the show's network or where it can be legally streamed, but this is pretty tedious given the nature of broadcast rights.

Do Jedi study warfare and tactics? I know they study dueling, but do they also look at more large-scale battles? I was thinking about the Clone Wars revival today and I was kinda wondering why the Republic entrusted their military power to what were essentially warrior monks. Was it just a case of “there’s literally no one else”?

From CBS: New details, trailer from "Star Trek: Discovery" Season 2

From Gizmodo: In The First Trailer For Star Trek: Discovery Season 2, The USS Enterprise Boldly Arrives

As someone outside the USA, the videos in those articles didn't work for me, but this one from Netflix UK & Ireland does work for me: Star Trek: Discovery | Season 2 Trailer [HD]

I've read the books up until Cibola Burn, so my impression comes from comparing my experience watching the story to reading it as told in print.

Season 3 was incredibly rushed through and little of any character's motivations or thought are clarified as they still make more or less the same decisions. Two noteworthy characters (Pa, Bull) combined into one character (Drummer) whose actress only does one vocal and facial expression, which I happen to mirror every time she gets air time.

Show Ashford, an arguably much more sensible and intelligent man than Book Ashford, is unreasonably suddenly deemed necessary to reflect Book Ashford without any clear change in motivation.

So many things are done weirdly on the show that didn't need be done. Those are a few examples off the top of my head. What do you think?

Just finished watching Westworld S02 Finale, and while it creates more questions than it answers I found the whole experience exhilarating. It's been an amazing ride all the way from S01E01 and to the post-credits scene in the finale. I'm glad they left room for another season (or 2, or more who knows) because an AI story shouldn't end when all the fun is just beginning.

There are a ton of things and references to explore and I'd love to hear what all of you have to say while waiting for that Alt+Shift+X video to drop to clear everything up.