Review: Avatar

I've finally seen Avatar, after getting it on DVD. Thought I'd do a quick review.

I've watched it twice so far and, surprisingly, it was actually better the second time around. I think that it was because I was able to take in a lot of the little details that passed me by the first time. The story IS cliched, as much a retread of a classic story arc as Star Wars was (the 'Stranger in a Strange Land' motif, ie, hero travels to far off land, befriends the natives, has adventures and becomes a great hero--see also Dances with Wolves, Lawrence of Arabia, Ferngully, etc, etc), but just like with Star Wars, the cliched plot path didn't prevent the story from transcending its expectations.

I did not see the movie on a movie screen in 3D, I saw it on a standard TV screen, so I was able to enjoy the story without being overwhelmed by the special effects. Not that I still couldn't appreciate them, but they weren't the main attraction for me in watching the story.

All that being said, Avatar is an important scifi milestone. Pandora easily is the most fully-realized alien world in on-screen science fiction. Kudos to Cameron and his crew for such amazing attention to detail in creating the alien biosphere of Pandora.

The technology of the Earthers was also created with an eye toward realism. The mecha looked less anime-streamlined and much more like what such a system would look like if made in the real world. I especially like the shots of the starship, complete with glowing-hot radiators on the twin nuclear engines and the translucent icy impact shield on its bow. Gave me goosebumps.

For those of you who frequent the Orbital Vector main site, you might be interested that I'd classify the Humans' technology in the movie at about Tech Level 15, maybe edging toward 16. Some anomalies, though--firearms should have been much more advanced, for example.

An interesting thing I was contemplating the second time through is that I don't think the Pandoran biosphere naturally evolved. There seems to be tantalizing hints (particularly the big floating mountains, the huge apparently invulnerable arches around the Tree of Souls, the presence of super-conducting Unobtanium, plus some other stuff) that the world may actually be built on the ruins of a much older more advanced civilization, maybe even post-Singularity. For whatever reason the inhabitants may have decided to abandon technology and bio-engineer a nature-centric utopia for themselves.

I did think Cameron was a bit too hard on humanity, but then its apparent he was trying to drive home certain points. Despite what some conservative critics may have said about the film, I don't see it as anti-American or anti-military, as some have said. Rather, like most films of its type, its meant as a cautionary tale, showing us the dangers of a what could happen if we let certain forces in our society run out of control. (Ie, no 'green' left on Earth, and humanity apparently run by out-of-control, amoral corporations.)

There are some exceptions, of course. Cameron apparently could not resist taking a few digs at past US administration, but they are few and fleeting.

I don't think every human soldier and worker on Pandora would have gone along with the destruction of Na'vi except for a few scientists and the Hot Aircraft Pilot. I think a lot more would have protested and tried to block Colonel Bad Guy and Corporate Douchebag. But I also realize the film could only get so complicated and long, so the creators had to simplify things a bit with this.

The Na'vi in a way also had to be streamlined in a certain way for the same reason. In order to work, the movie needed to portray the aliens as actual sympathetic characters. However, making them too inhuman, as realistic aliens would be, would take too much time and work that it would distract too much from the story, which was making for a long movie to begin with. Most other scifi films and TV series run into this problem. Because of limited time to tell stories, creators have to choose: should the aliens be human-like, and be characters the audience can relate to, or should they be realistically inhuman, and result in them being puzzling enigmas? Here, Cameron obviously chose the former path, and though it is kind of stretching believability that the Na'vi would look and act so human having evolved on a completely alien world, for the purpose of a two+ hour movie it works well enough.

As I said, the plot as a whole was pretty familiar. Since I myself kind of came up with something similar with part 1 of The Shattered Sky (see the sidebar for links), I can attest Cameron did NOT 'rip off' the story as some people say. Its just seems that when you have certain story elements, certain plots and characters follow naturally for drama's sake. But even if events were in the broad term predictable to anyone who's seen this type of story before, it was in the details that the story become very enjoyable, and at times even surprising.

All in all, it was well worth seeing, and definitely a science fiction movie milestone, mostly for its stunning world-building and satisfying if unsurprising story. Looking forward to the eventual sequel and seeing if I'm right about Pandora being a post-technological society.

Cold Comfort: Antarctic Research Stations

Check out THIS very cool photo article from WIRED (warning: a six-page slide show) showing detailed photos and stats of cutting-edge research bases in Antarctica.

These bases are fascinating in and of themselves, but if you're into writing science fiction or scifi RPGs, these are probably the closest in real life you're going to come to the kind of bases we may eventually establish on other worlds and moons and (maybe someday) in other star systems. A number of space agencies have been involved with the designing of antarctic bases for decades now, and view them as good real-world tests for not only technologies but in seeing how crews adapt and interact with each other over long periods of isolated deployment together. The latter could come in very useful on future long term voyages to nearby planets and asteroids.

Constellation Given A Reprieve

The Constellation program has apparently been given at least a partial reprieve by President Obama. See the full story HERE in an article from spaceref.com.

Good news indeed that the administration has decided not to let US manned space program languish entirely in the hands of private business. Not that I don't believe that a number of private firms will eventually be up to the task, but for the time being they're still a largely unproven commodity. It really is best that NASA and the US government keep pushing forward with manned space flight for the time being, and give private enterprise time to prove their worth before we shift anything major over to them.

((And sorry about lack of updates lately, life has a habit of getting in the way of such things. Hopefully soon I'll be able to contribute a lot more than I have.))

Its Coming Right For Us!

It turns out that a small red-orange star called Gliese 710, currently some 69 light years away, is on a collision course with the Solar System. But before anyone panics, it won't actually collide with the Sun or any major planets, and will in fact just clip the outer edge of the Sun's Oort Cloud. And all this won't happen for another 1.5 million years or so. Check out the the full article form NEW SCIENTIST.

The brushing of the Oort Cloud is actually pretty significant. For those who may not be up on such things, the Oort Cloud is an extremely disperse 'cloud' of cometary material left over from the formation of the Solar System. It extends roughly from the outer edge of the Kuiper Belt (where we find planet-sized iceballs such as Pluto, Sedna, and Eris) at some 50 AUs out to up to two light years away from the Sun.

Such a massive object passing so close to the cloud would disturb the orbits of a great many of the comets drifting out that way, inevitably send some veering toward the inner Solar System--and Earth. So its very possible that Gliese 710 could precipitate one or more extinction events during its cosmic flyby.

But an interesting possibility no one has mentioned yet is that even while Gliese 710 mucks up the Sun's Oort cloud, the Sun will also muck up Gliese 710's Oort Cloud in turn (assuming it has one, of course. From what we understand of star/solar system formation, it should have one, but we don't know for sure). In fact, chances are the Sun, being more massive and with a more powerful gravitational influence, would likely end up drawing off more comets from Gliese's Cloud than vice-versa.

This raises an interesting possibility. Other such near-misses must have happened in the past, and each time the Sun would have drawn off comets form other stars' Oort clouds. We tend to think of all the debris like asteroids and comets in our Solar System as left over junk from the formation of the sun and planets, but what if a significant percentage of it has actually been 'stolen' from other stars during near misses? It might give a boost to panspermia theories, which theorize that life on Earth originated from space and was seeded by ancient comet impacts.

Of course we can't know for sure until there's an extensive survey of the chemical composition of various comets, and that's at least decades away. But its something to think about.

Comet Ghosts Haunting Earth Orbit

A new type of asteroid, or at least a type that's been poorly studied before because of their difficulty to spot-- has been detected in orbits that cross Earth's own. Go HERE for the full article from New Scientist.

Basically, the scientists are guessing that these may to be the remnant cores of dead comets, having long since used up all the ice and other volatiles that made up their visible tails. They reflect less than 5%-10% of the light that strikes them. However, because they absorb so much more, they are able to be spotted much more easily in the infrared spectrum, such as in the photo above (image courtesy of NASA, btw.)

I think its a very cool discovery, considering they're like comet 'ghosts' haunting the space near Earth. As long as none of them hit us, of course.

600 Million Tons Of Lunar Ice

Recent data analysis from India's Chandrayaan-1 probe has confirmed the presence of water ice in craters near the Moon's poles. The full article can be found HERE on NASA's main website.

If their estimation techniques are correct, the scientists estimate there being at least 600 million metric tons of water ice in the lunar polar region. That is of course spectacularly good news for future bases, and further into the future, colonies, on Earth's natural satellite. That much ice, combined with careful recycling and management, could both provides water, oxygen, and rocket fuel for manned endeavors there for many decades.

And of course, ironically, this comes on the heels of the Obama administration killing off any prospect for returning to the Moon in the short term. We can now see much more clearly how feasible a long-term manned presence on the Moon can be, only to have the prospect of establishing such an outpost pushed out of our reach to at least until the mid-2020s. Its not that the other projects the new administration want to pursue aren't worth doing, but actually opening up a brand new world to humanity would seem to be the better choice of a long range goal, in my opinion.

Oh well. One thing I should suggest to NASA (not that i think anyone there will actually read this): as long as you're underwriting various private space endeavors and X-prize like contests, how about underwriting a sample-return mission for the lunar ice? We can learn definitively what's in it and probably how it was formed. plus the mission may just help to scout out a possible future manned landing site...

Review: The Dragon's Nine Sons by Chris Roberson

I've decided to start doing book reviews on here, at least those that I think the readers of OV might be interested in. These reviews won't necessarily be timely; I mostly just read books that catch my fancy, rather than going for whatever happens to be the latest release on the shelves.

I'd like to start of with a novel with one of the most original science fiction premises I've seen in quite some time: The Dragon's Nine Sons by Chris Roberson.

The story is a fairly rare breed of novel: alternate history projected into the future. In a world where the European nations never rose to global dominance, Earth is divided between two powers: Imperial China and the Aztec-populated Mexic Dominion. Now, in what another reality would be the year 2052, these two bitter rivals are fighting a war for global dominance that spills out into interplanetary space. Of particular contention is the newly-colonized red planet Fire Star, aka Mars.

The novel’s back story is, as with most alternate history tales, an odd mixture of fascinating details and jarring juxtapositions. Roberson has obviously done very extensive research into his subject matter, and has built up his alternate timeline through a number of previously published stories.

Decades before Christopher Columbus, Imperial China sends ‘treasure fleets’ around the known world, reaching India, the Middle East, and eventually Europe. This results in the establishment of the trade routes the Portuguese and Spanish would have otherwise created a century later. The main difference here is that the vast wealth created by these new global markets flows east instead of west, assuring China’s new prominence in world affairs. Later Treasure fleets even reach the Pacific coast of the Western Continent, called Vinland here, and set up a Khalifate in honor of the expedition’s Muslim captain.

The Chinese also take Leonardo Da Vinci’s advanced designs seriously, allowing them to develop some technologies much earlier than in our timeline, such as flying machines. Combined with their burgeoning trade empire, these new devices soon allow them to dominate the globe.

Oddly, a version of the USA does arise in this world, called the Commonwealth of Vinland, complete with the original 13 english colonies, a revolution in 1776, and the later annexation of Texas. But it, like most of the rest of the globe, is eventually conquered by the imperial Dragon Throne in the late nineteenth century.

To the casual reader, the Empire at first does not sound like an overly pleasant place to live. It is still primarily a feudal monarchy, with many strictures on freedom and behavior we would be find uncomfortable at best, oppressive at worst. A towering bureaucracy dominates most facets of life, especially in the armed forces.

In many ways the Empire is also a romanticized version of old Imperial China, albeit with spaceships and nuclear reactors. The author, through the characters of the novel, shows that its a place where honor and tradition still holds great sway, and many of its citizens are proud of their nation’s glorious imperial past. The children of the Dragon Throne can still give birth to heroism and idealism, even if those heroic values and ideals don’t necessarily reflect the ones we’re used to.

Whatever the Celestial Empire’s failings, however, the novel quickly makes clear that it is a cuddly wuddly panda compared to the Mexic Dominion.

The Dominion is peopled by the descendants of the Aztecs, who in this timeline were never conquered by the Spanish. Because of their position on the globe, they were also among the last powers to come under the scrutiny of the Chinese, allowing them plenty of time to develop near-equal technology and resources of their own.

The problem is that the war-like Mexica still cling very tenaciously to Aztec religion, which makes frequent human sacrifice a central tenet. It has become so incorporated into their culture, in fact, that spaceships and orbital stations cannot even operate unless a live human sacrifice is performed regularly on altars on the bridge, which are equipped with sophisticated hemoglobin sensors to make sure the victims bleed enough to please the gods. Many die in this manner in the Mexic Dominion everyday, and the Dominion’s preferred source of sacrifices are, unsurprisingly, the citizens of its Imperial rival.

In the early twentieth century, the two powers fought a vicious fifteen year long World War that resulted in a victory for the Chinese and well over a hundred years of simmering hatred and resentment for the Dominion. Now, with the colonization and terraformation of Fire Star well underway, a new war has broken out, with space as its main battlefield.

It is in this world that we find our main characters, misfits and scoundrels and criminals all, being recruited and trained for a suicidal mission to destroy a Mexic asteroid base. If they succeed in their mission, they will be pardoned for their crimes. If not, well, no one will miss them anyway.

The novel’s main story derives very obviously from similar great action tales on film such as The Dirty Dozen, The Guns Of Navarone, and even The Magnificent Seven. In lesser hands this might have been a detriment, but the plot is handled deftly, and could even be considered a decent tribute to those movies. But even so, it follows a familiar formula; a small group of misfits and ne’er-do-wells take on an impossible-seeming mission with all odds against them. They all know death likely awaits them, but perhaps a lucky few can find redemption as well.

In fact, the story’s resemblance to those films is so strong that I had a hard time not picturing Yao, the main focus of much of the story, as a Yul Brynner type. Yao is a Bannerman (the Imperial equivalent of a Marine), a commander who asked too many question about why his superiors apparently allowed the Mexica to slaughter thousands of Fire Star colonists while his unit stood helplessly by, under orders not to interfere. He was sentenced to be executed for his insubordination, but was given a reprieve to ride herd on the other misfits assigned to the mission.

Joining him in command is Captain Zhuan, who was disciplined for cowardice for failing follow a suicidal order that would have destroyed his ship and his crew. But his actual reasons were far from noble; he simply was afraid to die. Now, facing a similar choice on this new mission, he wonders if he can find the courage to follow through and regain some semblance of honor.

The rest of the characters fall into various war movie cliches. There’s the immensely strong but dimwitted ‘man mountain,’ the cocky gunfighter, the shifty sneak thief, the practical joker, the lazy slacker, and the pugnacious hothead, all apparently right from the Celestial Empire’s version of Hollywood central casting. Some of them come across as entertaining; others seem a clunky fit for the story. The one breath of fresh air here was Syuxtun, a Muslim whose deep moral convictions had forced him to commit a surprising act of sabotage against his superiors.

Even the more awkward stock characters in and of themselves might not have been such a bad thing if they had not ended up revealing their back stories in such annoying ways. Too many times, the author depends on long, unbroken monologues to tell their stories, often at very in appropriate times dramatically. At one point the ship they’ve stolen from the Mexic is about to have its nuclear core melt-down and one of the crew may have to bleed on the altar to save everybody; so, of course, it’s a perfect time for a five-page segue as a minor character yabbers on about his life story.

Their mission is also complicated by the fact that once they reach the Mexic asteroid base, they find dozens of Imperial citizens held captive, waiting to be sacrificed. Their mission of sabotage suddenly becomes an even more impossible rescue mission, as they try to accomplish one last decent act among all their misdeeds.

Can these nine expendable criminals become the saviors for dozens of trapped innocents? Can they destroy the asteroid base as planned and stop the Dominion attacks on Fire Star? At what cost?

If you’ve seen any of the aforementioned material which was the obvious inspiration for The Dragon’s Nine Sons, you already have a good idea on how things will generally turn out. But novels like these are like amusement park rides; just because you know how its going to end doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the twists and turns along the way. The author’s shortcomings with character exposition are minor compared to how he handles both the action and the often very fascinating details of his alternate world. All in all, an admirable effort and a good read for fans of science fiction and alternate history alike.