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

Yes, the planets really are lining up....

If you like in the northern hemisphere, you're in for a treat (if you get up early enough)

Five of our local planets will be visible to the naked sky and will align (zig zaggy) across the dawn sky. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter will be simultaneously visible to the naked eye for the first time since 2004. Details here

The planets will be visible between 20 January 2016 - 20 February 2016, though word is the best view is likely to be in the early morning of February 5

View of Venus from the orbit of Saturn, picture credit: NASA

The picture, courtesy of NASA, was taken as part of the Cassini mission to investigate Saturn in-depth. The gallery of Venus pictures is available here.

And because writers love a good planetary alignment why not check out the Sci-Fi tropes page here for a good list of all the awful things that happen in stories when the planets align. If you dare...!

Bon Voyage Tim Peake

The charming Tim Peake, ex army and general good guy is joining the small community of Brits who have made it to outer space. I'm excited in a way that I haven't been since Helen Sharman became the first British person in space. I'm excited because we're going out to space, and that we are going to do some science. Or something - the details don't matter much do they? Tim's going to run the London marathon from space. Yay. That's enough for us, isn't it? Well, isn't it?

I identified with Helen back in 1991 as she was an ordinary person working as a chemist and she was from Sheffield. As someone who had dreams of space travel (don't laugh) it made the whole possibility a lot more immediate. She's working for Imperial College now, and while she's been working to engage the public with science she's also had the chance to return to some Chemistry too. A nice article from the Imperial College here. She was the first, yes, and its important to mark that but other visits need to have more substance.

Helen was in space for 7 days, working scientific experiments for Russia as the private funding from the UK didn't work out. This time Tim goes to do science on the International space station with the financial backing of the UK, all £80 million of it. According to the UK Gov website,  Minister for Universities and Science Jo Johnson said:

"Our £80 million investment in the International Space Station programme supports pioneering research and will inspire Britain’s next generation of scientists and engineers to push the boundaries of science here on Earth."

While I'm excited because of the personal connection, and with the pleasure that comes from knowing that Tim works with children to encourage love of science, I have to ask this. What science exactly is he doing? Are we going to see any glimpses of this, conveyed in a meaningful way for adults and children to engage with? Or are we going to be deluged with more rah rah  he's running a marathon in space? Also, he's doing science? Please stop insulting my intelligence by diluting the science.

There may be good reasons why the full extent of the experiments can't be revealed - I don't know copyright? The need to shield it from competitors? Or are the science agencies working on the assumption that the general public are ignorant of or uninterested in the finer details of science? Must we be spoon fed details of an immediate benefit to everyday life like the use of satnavs? I think not. For there to be a meaningful engagement, long-term with this project, there must be a little more detail apart from "he's measuring stuff". This is part of the problem - going to schools individually isn't going to be enough. To engage with the public it has to be done whole-scale for all ages.

So come on ESA - a bit more detail about the science please. You won't frighten the horses.

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Picture courtesy of the NASA Royalty-free picture archive here

The transformative power of Fanfiction

Why write fanfiction? What is the purpose, and what does it do? In my opinion, fanfiction has the power to transform society.

One thing that it's understood you don't write fanfiction for, is money. The sole purpose of fanfiction is to tell a story to the best of your ability. There is no need to write for a specific market, to worry about revenue streams (there are none, no I'm not counting Amazon or Wattpad. No, really.)

Fanfiction writers are usually respectful of the source material, which is not the same thing as accepting it without challenge. Henry Jenkins' work on Textual Poachers is something to give a try, if this is something you'd like to explore more of.

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SwRI/R.Gladstone et al.; Optical: NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage (AURA/STScI)

As I've found out in discussions with other fans, and by lurking online, the writing and sharing of fanfiction also serves an important transformative purpose. This comes from the chance to indulge in self exploration in a safe and supportive environment. Browsing through online forums such as AO3, I've come across ideas and concepts that are new to me, and must be just as new to some of the writers. It's difficult sometimes to come to terms with parts of your identity, either through not being able to "come out" to your friends or community, or sometimes not even understanding what it is you feel. By writing and exploring these ideas, its possible to explore parts of your identity, desire, feeling. This transforms lives, promotes understanding and acceptance. If you let it - it's a challenging experience at times.

I was concerned that parents wouldn’t want me working with their children if they knew that I’m the kind of person who engages in complicated debates about Omega reproductive organs and reblogs drawings of Sherlock Holmes tied up and getting rimmed by Dr. Watson.
The use of pen names to protect the identities of writers may seem pretentious, until you remember the impact the introduction of legislation such as Clause 28 in the UK, banning the "promotion" of homosexuality as a "normal family relationship", has on free speech elsewhere. This specific legislation may have been repealed, but there are plenty others that are similarly harmful still in place. Here's a piece from the perspective of someone who felt the need to remove evidence of their fanfiction online once they started working with special needs children.

Another aspect of the transformational nature of fanfiction is related to visibility. Though you might enjoy a work, it can't help but reflect the worldview of the creators. This won't always be as inclusive as it could be. Fanfiction offers the place and opportunity for the exploration of stories and characters marginalised for whatever reason in the source material.

There are some issues though. The platform for fanfiction appears to have moved from paper printed zines to online, though most are OK, this has led to some heated exchanges. The Mary Sue has an interesting article in Defence of So-Called Bad Fanfiction. How did people abuse each other before the Internet?

You think you haven't read fanfiction? Some of the finest writing has come in response to other works, reworking the material. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys throws a different interpretation of Jane Eyre through the simple device of telling the story through Rochester's first wife Antoinette Cosway. Or how about the Good Man Jesus and The Scoundral Christ? Other examples are listed here.

Fancy giving fanfiction a go, but don't know how? TV Tropes has a terrific page showing you where to start. There's another good article on the Mary Sue called How to Offend Everyone and Make Yourself Cry: Writing Diversity in Fanfiction

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Picture courtesy of NASA, their royalty free resources are available online 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/

London lability - Loncon3

I have been astonished at Loncon3 by the number of transformational talks and events included in the programme. They question the assumptions made about cultural identity and (for me) norms as identified by my family and culturally milieu

Image by SM Jenkin
London by night, near East India DLR 

To be honest it has involved a lot of thought to question a number of these, but environments such as loncon3 have given me a chance to question this safely,  without hurting others or making myself an object of ridicule. 

London has always (has it?) been on the forefront of these dialogues, chosen or forced. This is merely part of a continuing dialogue started (who knows when). But the point I an trying to explore is this...

Attitudes in London adapts and change. Is this part of the traditional British gentleness regarding identity or part of the international absorption of cities to form a cultural melange..  a global village. What do you think? Does this reflect your experience?

The PEN of HG wells

Audrey Niffenegger spoke at Loncon3, for the inaugural PEN /  HG Wells lecture. PEN is an international association of writers, and it works to promote friendship and cooperation,  as well as freedom of expression. Their HG Wells lecture will showcase visionary and independent thinking in the tradition of Well's own work.

Pen

Ms Niffenegger chose as her inspiration the short story The Door in the wall to explore the tensions between (freedom of) thought, solitude and action/public life and activity. It is hoped that a transcript will be available soon, either from a national newspaper or the PEN website.

One specific idea of note was that:
Science fiction  can predict, but it is most powerful when it tells the truth

This has been reflected in a number of the discussions at Loncon3,  positing the idea of science/speculative fiction as transformational/ having the capacity to challenge the status quo. It has been a thought provoking and full programme so far.

Does this potential for transformation in science and.speculative fiction reflect your experience of it, as writer or reader, or does the need to make a living wage diminish this potential?

Image sourced from morguefile

Utopia - morally righteous TV (SPOILERS)

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
Edmund Burke

Have you been watching Utopia? The bold, if concise TV series showing late-night on Channel 4. You may have read the outrage in some newspapers about the violence in the programme - shown at 10pm well past the watershed- or the complaints about its alleged immorality. I would argue that Utopia is the most morally righteous programme on TV right now. Why? Because it deals with consequences. It deals with the consequences of choices that people make, or refuse to make.

The violence in the programme has a cost. When characters die, they are characters that we have come to know, even if briefly. They have names, motivations, back stories. We see the consequences not just on the survivors but on those who pull the trigger, and how this changes them.

However, the story has a bigger canvas than this. The catalyst for the story was a group of people on the hunt for a fabled graphic novel called The Utopia Experiments. Their search throws them in the way of an organisation called the Network. But this is where the simple us vs them dynamic hits a roadblock, and where the heart of the series resides. The network was set up as a direct result of one attempted  genocide, to try and prevent another. Philip Carvel, genius scientist and holocaust survivor sees all too clearly what people are capable of when resources are short and society breaks down. Combined with the threat of over-population, representatives of the network pose the question: what happens when the worlds resources start to run out? How will the resources be divvied up? How will people react? When even governments are failing to deal with the issue of over-population and dwindling resources isn't it better to act now? Because to willfully ignore the problem will lead to chaos and murder. Isn't it better to simply reduce the population to give the next generation a fair chance?

In this context the extreme nature of their actions can be understood, but can they be condoned? Their solution involves sterilising, even killing, large swathes of the world population. How far do you go to protect the human race, and how can murder be used to justify the prevention of murder? And isn't mass sterilisation going to cause social breakdown anyway?

So what prevents this from becoming a cut-price Bond movie? For me it is the very mundane nature of everyone involved, I can relate to it. Even members of the network are shown to be just as flawed as the original protagonists, just as vulnerable. The series shows ordinary people caught up in this debate, making choices both wise and rash. And always there is the question of what to do, what can be done? And who, if anyone, is supposed to make those decisions? The dynamic of the show keeps on changing and I find it a challenge  to keep up.

What would you choose to do?

Captain America and Agents of Shield

So I'm going to share my thoughts on Captain America 2, the Winter Soldier. I'm not gonna post specific spoilers, but I'm going to hint heavily.

So - I liked it, and I liked it because it didn't go over the top. It was a solid, political thriller asking the right kind of questions without being bogged down by them. How far do you go to defend your citizens? Who defines what a threat is? When you have been fighting an enemy for long enough, can you really say that you or your tactics are very different after all?

Imagecredit: wintersixfour

The film dealt with the question of the "enemy within" quite well - without the need for gimmicks. Sure there were a few expensive explosions but that wasn't where the heart of the story was. The heart of the story, for me, was when Steve Rogers questions the need for... well if you haven't seen it I won't spoil it. It made me appreciate the character a bit more too, gave him more depth.

Seeing this film, it made me more aware of the shortcomings of Agents of Shield. It's a programme I've been rooting for ever since it aired on Channel 4, and I've liked it as much for its potential as for its payoff. I've thought of it as a glammed up Torchwood, and hoped that it would put its act together in much the same way. There was a real danger, real consequences for the characters on Torchwood. Some of the situations were ludicrous, but they were real and had flaws. I could relate, and I cared.

Agents of Shield isn't there. Yet. I'm hoping that the film will shake things up for the series, send the characters a little further along. It's all been very comfortable so far and I'm missing the spark that we had in Torchwood. I'm still waiting...

Star Trek - into Darkness

Space, the final frontier...?

I'm aware that not everyone has seen the new Star Trek, so I'll keep spoilers to a minimum.

But after seeing the new film, I have to ask. Do you really think that the writers are capable of creating a new universe, and to make us care about them in 2 hours, and to deliver all the whizz bang pyrotechnics at the same time?

For me, the answer is no. It was a good enough popcorn movie, but neither it nor the characters in it were smart. Who was able to think their way out of a situation, instead of punching through? The unique thing about Trek, or was at the time the series were released, was that the characters outsmarted their opponents. There was the thrill of the new, new races, new situations. This film played it safe, and it bored me.

I knew exactly what was going to happen. It didn't help that I saw a massive spoiler about who the main antagonist was. But the one thing that really irked me was how retrograde the whole thing was. Yes, Uhura got more to do. As the "girlfriend". Yes, she ran around with a gun, for a bit. But ask yourself this - whose story were we being told?

Does Uhura's empowerment negate sexism in Star Trek? An interesting, if spoilerific article is available to read here Another article (again spoilers) asks where are the women? Star Trek the next generation and star trek deep space nine tackled this so well, I am disappointed that the NuTrek is taking such a retrograde step.

To wipe the taste out of your mouth, I recommend you try Screamlet's AU fanfic, exploring what would happen if Amanda Grayson survived the first film and not her husband. It's called An upbeat sort of dirge, and it has a good selection of characters.

Peter Cushing - happy 100th Birthday!

I spent a splendid time in Whitstable making a dalek with my friends EMMa and Steve. We did it to celebrate Peter Cushing's 100th birthday.By all accounts, he was a talented and nice man.

Here are the fruits of our labours - enjoy!

Budget cuts at the BBC
Image credit: SM Jenkin

And if that isn't too much fun for you, how about a little a little ditty from the Jellybots?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deTGYinacYg The pub is the Old Neptune

Redemption convention 2013

One for the Blake's 7 fans
Image credit: SM Jenkin

 So, it's been and gone in a blur of costumes, conversations and chaos. What am I talking about? The Redemption convention, of course!

This is one of the things I love most about fandom, the ability to meet up and have fun. Oh yeah, I could wax lyrical about how clever we all are, writing critiques of varius sci-fi ideas and shows; the science talks; the clever costuming. I could brag about how inclusive the event is, family friendly and open to all lifestyles.

But ya know what? I went to a few parties, played air guitar and took my bribe for Servalan to win ruler of the universe as well.

You want to get involved? Volunteer. Oh, and the convention raised £800 each for Asthma UK, the PDSA and the Woodland Trust.