Tim Peake will be a changed man

Tim Peake's set to return to Earth on 18th June 2016. He's been a terrific ambassador, with frequent messages to the media and especially to schools.

When he returns it will be interesting to see how much of his changed perspective he will be able to share. It goes beyond the scientific ideas, the practical matters of living in such a stressful and noisy environment with the weight of expectation on his shoulders.

Tim Peake's spacewalk selfie

Looking back at the planet, what kind of thoughts will he be having about the world he'll be returning to? He's mentioned before how very different space looks without any light pollution.   How many people are going to be prepared to listen to his ideas, once he's seen how fragile our little shared ball of of rock is? Oh, to be a fly on the wall during those conversations.

I think that there great capacity for space to help provide some solutions towards the need to secure a clean, sustainable energy source. One example is the space solar power project (SSP). The cost so set it up would seem to be a barrier - but compared to the cost of not exploring it's potential? With the right levels of co-operation this could become a reality. The question is, who is going to take that chance and begin to work together....?

Return date listed on the esa principia mission blog here

Ursula Le Guin - my hero

Ursula Le Guin was recently awarded the National Book Foundation's  Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. I think it's safe to say that her acceptance speech has ruffled a few feathers

"I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality." 
                                          Ursula K. Le Guin, 65th National Book Awards. Nov 19, 2014.

What is the point of speculative fiction? Why bother writing for a genre still viewed with some disdain? It has long been dismissed as ray guns and ponies, After all, as with other heretics isn't it easier to label and ignore challenging ideas than to listen and engage with them? Other genres, called more "realistic" do still tell stories from a particular viewpoint after all, and speculative fiction is a reminder that this viewpoint is only one of many and can be challenged.

Speculative fictions can be used to challenge orthodoxy of thought, can challenge a narrative that makes people so fearful of their neighbours that they will consider them to be less than human. Speculative fiction can show the possible mirror or progression of that thought, a dystopian world, or an alternative vision of what could be. Given the multiplicity of speculative fiction writers specifically addressing questions of gender, race, economy and class fictions can question everything we think we know about the way our world is shaped. And then, after reading and maybe having your own views challenged, there is the possibility of meeting others who might think the same way. Ursula went on to say

"We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words".

Her words were brave, delivered in a roomful of publishers and powerful people, especially in the economy that we now inhabit. The full speech, far better to hear from Ursula herself, is available on the National Book Foundation website http://www.nationalbook.org/amerletters_2014_uleguin.html#.VHsO1zGsW1

Interstellar - out of this world?

So, Christopher Nolan's epic 3 + hour film Interstellar will be hitting a cinema near you soon. It sounds like the standard golden age science fiction with big themes (end of the world) and heavy musings on the meaning of family.

The question is, though I am sure it will be beautiful and the special effects will be grand... will the writers have been given enough to allow us to care about the characters? 

3 hours isn't enough to get to know or care about characters if the focus of the script will be on "big themes". Will the characters be allowed to show some agency, or will they be there to service the script? As much as I love 2001, for example, I have often thought that the characters were left blank in order for the big ideas to have more time. 

Have you seen a film with big ideas that had time to develop characters that are quirky, imperfect but still ones we can identify with? Or is that best left to grand space operas like Babylon 5, where the characters are given time and space to develop?

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Image source: Interstellar official website http://www.interstellar-movie.com/