On scifi, science and geeky miscellany

I went to another night of the film festival, this evening. Tonight was shorts, and they varied from ok to very good indeed. They are all worth seeing once, if you get the chance, and you can check out the list over here at the Boston Scifi web site.

There were also shorts last night, which I missed because of a music rehersal and more shorts tomorrow night, which I will almost certainly miss because of my astronomy class.

It is supposed to snow for the next two days and we’re supposed to get significant accumulation, but that means nothing here in New England.

Now, back in my hometown, they’ve been shut down for a few days already because of snow. I have always been a little bitter that everyone here expects one to simply go on with life in spite of the snow. On the other hand, my mid-Atlantic friends are getting a little stir-crazy.

Since nothing gets canceled here, I will almost certainly be at my astronomy class tomorrow night. We will be learning how telescopes work, and looking at pretty pictures. Tragically, if the weather forecast comes to pass, we will not be looking at pretty pictures *through* telescopes. This makes me sad, as the opportunity to look at things through telescopes is at least 20 percent of why I wanted to take the class in the first place. Though the Hubble pictures the prof uses in his slides are very nice.

It’s just the science is more fun when you can look at the stars in person, even through a telescope in the freezing cold.

Of course, meterology is its own science. Perhaps tonight, I will consider what’s happening in the sky that I can not see that will keep me from seeing beyond the stratosphere tomorrow.

I am a great lover of things that are so bad that they are good. I’m a long-time fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000. I recently watched a notorious film called Death Bed about a bed that eats people and enjoyed every hideous, cheesy, ill-paced moment of it. One of the best dates I ever had was a fancy dinner, followed by a showing of Lost Skeleton of Cadavra during which I laughed my posterior off.

I love classic scifi and horror and I love cheesy sci fi and horror from any era. Loving spoofs, style parodies and updated twists on classic tropes always tickle me.

I say all this because, when I say that last night’s Boston Sci fi film festival showing of Mutant Swinger from Mars left me totally cold, I want you to get the full force of what I’m saying.

It seemed like it should have been calculated to hit my fandom sweet spot – a cheesy, low budget, sci fi film in the style of the classics.

Before the film, we were shown a short mocumentary about the film’s (fictional) creator Orton Z. Creswell. The mockumentary featured interviews from his (also fictional) actors, and montages and clips from his long (and fictional) catalog of films. The mocumentary did what the film failed to do – it successfully exploited the tropes of genre film and engaged you in a series of inside jokes and references to very good and humorous effect.

Unfortunately, the actual film didn’t work quite as well. It had all the elements you might expect – aliens (with large heads and bad make-up), secret government agents, a mad scientist, women in pretty dresses, and a guy in an ape suit.

It seems low budget partially because it is trying to mimic low-budget films of a bygone era – by using miniatures on strings for outdoor and outer-space shots and the previously mentioned bad alien makeup. It also seems low budget because of its more modern flaws, such as scenes in which it seems clear they weren’t able to do any re-takes, also, most of the “period” costumes in the group scenes clearly weren’t. This isn’t too big a deal – a film certainly doesn’t have to be made with a ton of money to be good. Personally, I think they took the bad makeup thing a little far, but that by itself isn’t really a big problem.

My biggest problem with the film was that it was trying to be two things at once: a faithful style parody of fifties scifi and a madcap, self-referential piece of over-the top comedy, full of references to many, many other movies. I have trouble believing that any film maker could do both of these things at once. Michael Kallio (the actual writer and director of the film) certainly fails. The self-awareness undercuts any humor that could be drawn from a successful style parody and the constant references to other media (including an over-the-top Shatner impersonation and many, many lines stolen from other films) pulled me utterly out of the film’s reality.

There were a few bits that made me chuckle and there were certainly other people in the theater that the film was working for, but I was not the only person who barely laughed.

It’s entirely possible to make an excellent and funny style parody, Cadavra is one good (and not high budget) example of this. Alien Trespass is another.

It is also possible to make a reference-full and self referential comedy that both uses and mocks genre tropes. MST3K is one example and ABC Family’s underrated show The Middleman is another.

I think that Mutant Swinger from Mars, in trying to do both fell short of either.

The other major problem I had with the film was rampant misogyny. Kallio could have used his film to update or to poke fun at the sexist tropes of fifties scifi. Instead he chose to use the idea that the film had been created in the fifties as a blank check to put in as many sexist jokes as possible. As I said earlier, I have watched a lot of the original fifties films and the sexism in this was actually worse than in most of those.

It was the sexism that started to give me the impression that the Kallio was not actually that familiar with the world of the classic b-grade scifi film. It was more like he had seen a lot of SNL sketches that made fun of these films and was basing his film’s content on those rather than on the classic scifi directly.

As a side note: This film features the first speaking film role of Jack White (of The White Stripes and The Raconteurs). He plays a friend of the film’s hero, shows up in maybe three scenes and has maybe six lines. His participation in the project was much touted at the screening I attended, and he is, in fact, pretty good in the film.

All in all, it seems to me that Kallio does have the ability to make a very funny movie. The mockumentary proved that to me enough that I would probably try another of his films if I got the opportunity. It could just be that this was among his first films (Wikipedia thinks it was filmed in 1998, IMDB thinks it was 2003) and he hadn’t hit is stride.

But alas, if you’re looking for cheesy fun, I urge you to look elsewhere, no matter how tempting the title Mutant Swinger from Mars may be to your inner b-movie lover.

Let’s not kid ourselves. Most big-budget movies that bill themselves as science fiction are actually action movies or horror movies or any other genre of movies that just happen to take place in the future or on a space ship or to have aliens in them.

Most scifi movies do not want to deal with ideas. This isn’t really surprising, since most movies in general don’t want to deal with ideas. But when you take the ideas out of science fiction, you gut the genre. It winds up being like scifi-flavored water.

Even in a post Matrix world, I find it really refreshing to get to see a scifi movie that is truly science fiction.

Briefly, the film is about Mexico in the near future. The border between Mexico and the U.S. is completely closed, but the U.S. still relies on Mexican workers; they work remotely by hooking their nervous systems into a network that allows them to control robots in the U.S. The companies that manage this network and hire the Mexican workers are known as sleep dealers.

The film is the story of one young man who made some terrible mistakes in his small home town and about the journey that leads him to work for the sleep dealers, and about the young woman who helps him on his journey, both for her own gain (she sells her memories of him, online) and because she genuinely begins to care about him.

The world building in the film is excellent – many aspects of being able to hook your nervous system directly into a computer are explored. The implications for work, play, relationships and physical health are addressed. There are many aspects of Mexico’s current state and standing that are taken to one possible logical conclusion.

The film would certainly be an uncomfortable eye-opener for anyone who is unaware how the U.S. is regarded around the world. A significant part of the plot hinges on the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico and on the U.S.’s tendency to meet any merest threat of force with extreme violence.

The relationship between the U.S. and Mexico is portrayed as extremely exploitative. It’s almost as though the U.S. is running Mexico like a company town. Everyone uses U.S. dollars in the film. The Mexican workers work for people in the U.S., then send their money home over a U.S.-owned wire system that strips taxes and fees off the top. The money then goes to pay for water from U.S.-controlled reservoirs.

It’s a slightly uncomfortable picture. I think it’s a good thought-provoking kind of uncomfortable.

I was too wrapped up in the story to think specifically about the directing, writing and acting during the film, itself. This makes me feel like they are sufficiently good not to pull me out of the story. The effects look a little low-budget, but only a little.

I have seen this film in other places characterized as a dystopia. I don’t actually think that it is one. The Merriam-Webster definition of dystopia is “an imaginary place where people lead dehumanized and often fearful lives”. I think that definition applies to dystopic worlds in many stories I’ve read, but it doesn’t apply to this one.

There is some fear and a little dehumanization, but what it really is is a story about people who have run out of options. It’s a story about people who are hectored by a larger, bullying political power. It’s about people who run out of options and are forced to live their lives on other people’s terms.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, if this film is a dystopia then there are many people in Mexico who are already living in a dystopia.

And this is the true genius of the film. It addresses everyday life. The view of the future it presents ripples back and helps elucidate our present.

It’s nearly time for the annual science fiction, 24-hour movie marathon in my town.

This year, the organizers are doing something a bit different. There is a film festival with films every night in the week leading up to the marathon, starting last night, with a film called Sleep Dealers.

I am going to be talking about some of those films pretty soon. I also plan to talk about the astronomy class i’m taking, the books I’ve been reading and the Mage game I started running a few weeks ago.

The universe is speeding up.

Some days, it really seems that way, but it is actually true. Or, at least, there’s evidence that it’s true, thanks, in part, to X-Ray astronomy.

That evidence is one of many things that has come out of the Chandra X-Ray observatory program in the ten years of its existence. I got to hear about a few of them tonight at a public lecture at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

A video of the lecture will be available here, though it is not, yet, as I write this. It’s worth taking a look at, as Andrea Prestwich, who gave the lecture, actually works in x-ray astronomy. Plus, there are some very pretty pictures of things in space.

X-ray astronomy isn’t that different from other forms of astronomy. All astronomy examines wavelengths from the heavens. For most of the history of the science, all the wavelengths being examined were in the part of the electromagnetic spectrum that humans can see. At this point, observational astronomers are working in every part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Chandra’s work in X-Ray astronomy are part of that puzzle.

The Chandra telescope is in orbit around the Earth, like the Hubble. Unlike astronomy done in the visual wavelengths, though, x-ray astronomy must be done outside the Earth’s atmosphere. The atmosphere is very good at keeping out x-rays which is good for we humans, but bad for x-ray astronomy.

Chandra is also much farther out than the Hubble – 139,000km to the Hubble’s mere 569km.

Chandra has much better resolution than any x-ray telescope that came before it. This helped solved one of the mysteries of x-ray astronomy – that of the bright x-ray background. On previous generations of telescopes, the entire sky looked bright with x-rays. Chandra’s resolution made it obvious that the bright background was the result of “unresolved point sources”. That is, there were lots of individual x-ray emitting objects — super-massive black holes, in fact — that could not be discerned in images taken by previous telescopes (such as the Röntgen Satellite), because they simply were not fine enough grained.

Chandra’s high resolution detection of x-rays has also made it possible to look at matter that is in the process of being swallowed by black holes. As the matter stretches out and is sucked into a black hole, it gives off more x-rays than usual and becomes a bright spot for Chandra.

Some of these black holes actually form a small binary system with the normal star they’re swallowing, called an x-ray binary. These binaries can also contain a different compact, massive object, such as a neutron star or white dwarf, instead of a black hole.

But I began all this by talking about the universe speeding up. This is not something that was initially detected by the folks at the Chandra observatory. It was detected first (if I am understanding and remembering the lecture correctly) by scientists looking at supernovae. I’m not going to go into the supernova stuff, here and now, but if you’re interested to know, check out this article (warning, it’s a pdf) that’s linked off the Supernova Cosmology Project at Berkeley Lab.

The upshot of the supernova research is that astronomers found something unexpected. They knew that the objects in the universe are moving away from each other. The assumption was that this movement was slowing down – that it was being counteracted by gravity. What they found was that the objects in the universe appear to be speeding up. The explanation for this is dark energy which, like dark matter, is something scientists don’t know much about, except that it exists and it has an effect on the physics that rule our universe.

The Chandra x-ray project was able to verify the findings of the supernovae folks from a different angle. Instead of looking at the speed and red-shift of objects, they looked at the formation of galactic clusters. If objects in space are really all speeding up (so my understanding goes) then galactic clusters can’t be growing at the same rate. Whatever is speeding things up is also keeping matter from sticking together and arresting the growth of galactic clusters.

Which is, indeed what the Chandra folks found. It’s independent verification that dark energy exists and has a significant effect on the universe.

I love that we learn more and more all the time but there is still more to find out. I think there always will be. And that’s not just in space. Over 40 new species were discovered in one tiny place on Earth just last month.

There’s always something left that we don’t know and it’s worth working to find it out!

I went kayaking for the first time, yesterday.

I was out on the Charles river for about an hour and a half. It definitely didn’t seem too long at the time. It was a lot of fun, in fact. Being in a kayak leaves you so close to the water. I wound up feeling as though my legs had been replaced by the boat – it felt very natural and integrated both with me and with the system of the river.

We spotted a bird that was almost certainly an oriole with a neon orange chest and black wings and head. We also spotted a large heron. It could’ve been a great blue heron, but we didn’t really get close enough to make an ID.

There was also a turtle and some of the more common waterbirds – a host of female mallards, Canada geese and an occasional seagull. Also, plenty of dragon flies and other little critters.

The Charles river, where it runs by Watertown and Cambridge (which is the part we paddled through) is very busy with various motor boats, canoes, and, of course kayaks. Both banks mostly contain public parks (and the occasional university boathouse) bounded on the outer edge by roads that are clearly visible from the water. Most of the times that we heard a motor and thought it was a boat, it turned out to be a truck on one of the roads.

My point is, there isn’t a whole lot of room for nature in the river. I was almost amazed that we saw anything interesting besides the trees on each side of the water.

My friends and I agreed that the river is prettiest from the inside. I would definitely go again.

I have to tell you, though. Next time I would stretch before and after. And possibly spend a month or so strength training first. I was in horrible pain last night. Today, I’m just deep-muscle sore.

Sunday night with the Scifi channel (or, if you insist, Syfy…bleah). Why did I just watch an hour of the movie King Arthur and why am I now watching a movie about Alexander the Great (called Alexander, no less)?

Because it’s Sunday night and I’m too lazy to go to bed. And yet, I must, for lo, it is back to work, tomorrow.

Alas.

and alack.

Iceland is a great destination for nerds and geeks.

This is, of course, in spite of Reykjavik only having one comics shop.

You should read the Eddas or some of the Sagas before you go. it will give you a sense of the places around Iceland and a grounding in the early history. You will also see why Tolkien and so many others have been inspired by the sagas. They had their birth not just in history, but in real storytelling; the kind where you have to keep the interest and attention of others. Some of them read like fantasy novels. Of course, their historical accuracy is not perfect, what with zombies and sorcerers running around, but that just makes them all the better.

Also, on the “don’t care much if it’s real or not” front, many, if not most, people in Iceland believe in “hidden people” – elves. They believe to the point of hiring mediums to negotiate with elves on construction sites, so the elves don’t interfere with the building project. You can find lots of books, tours and even a school about this phenomenon.

Of course, Iceland also has plenty of cool science. Any budding geologist or seismic hobbyists will find plenty of fodder. There is geothermal energy and geothermally heated water almost everywhere. Tour geothermal power plants. See the continental rift on the land. Marvel at the fact that Iceland is drifting apart verrry slowly. Check out the natural geothermal area by the Geysir and watch water boiling in randonm holes in the ground.

Iceland also has an interesting history that is surprisingly manageable to learn. The country was settled at a time when people were already recording their history orally and passing it down, and they started writing it down not long afterwards. It’s interesting to learn how people lived in the medieval era when Iceland can produce so little in the way of food and even of shelter. Politically, Iceland started out as a commonwealth at a time when most countries were under a king, and later went through periods of being ruled by Norway and then Denmark. Iceland voted for independence from Denmark in 1944, and adopted a constitution.

Obviously, that’s the seriously abbreviated version of Icelandic history. If history interests you, check out the sagas and the old republic or the disputes over trading under the Danish crown, or the British and American occupations of Iceland in WWII. Also of interest: disputes (and riots) over joining NATO and the speedy development of the city of Reykjavik.

Currently, the situation in Iceland would fascinate most political and economic scholars, though, like most interesting times, it is not great for the Icelandic people themselves. Demonstrations in front of the parliament house are a regular occurence.

Culturally, Iceland is impressive for the way in which it has hung on to its independent language and identity with a population of only ~310,000. They don’t have much in the way of local comics publishing, but the literary scene and the music scene are both very strong. The Reykjavik public library runs some programs aimed at tourists (IE presented in English) including a literary tour of Reykjavik, with dramatic readings at each stop. The tour is awesome in part because you get to hear some stuff that isn’t easy to find in English translation. Tourists are also welcome to hang out in the RPL and read.

The Icelandic music scene is almost notoriously awesome. If you’re into music, I probably don’t need to go into it too much. You should definitely go hang out in 12 Tonar, where they let you listen to anything in the store, and will even bring you espresso while you browse. You should also check out live music venues (most of which are bars, pubs or cafes).

In terms of games, the games you will find in Iceland are mostly the games you’ll find anywhere. We saw a lot of Ticket to Ride and Carcasonne. Most of the truly local games are word games or trivia games. Most other things, they seem to import and add instructions in Icelandic.

Speaking of Icelandic, the language is fascinating. It has a relationship to middle english (and also, to modern English), but it has remained essentially the same for a thousand years. It is pretty difficult to learn, not least because there are many fewer resources for Icelandic than for, say, French. Also, the pronunciation is pretty complicated. It’s also not necessary, at least around Reykjavik. Almost everyone there speaks very good English. English is part of the regular grade school curriculum for Icelandic students.

So, all this is just scratching the surface. Iceland is a good place for geeks. The history, mythology and science all combine in the starkly beautiful landscape to make it a fascinating place.

Of course, it’s good for non-geeks, too. There’s a lot more to do there than the average non-geek might suspect (horseback-riding, swimming, spas, shopping, concerts, plays and a budding film industry), so if you’re interested don’t let a non-geeky friend or relative discourage you!

We just made it back to Boston! I have more to say about Iceland (obviously, since I stopped posting mid-vacation), but not right now. Right now all the things I have to say are whiny and are about international flights with crying babies, customs bureaucracy, and my right ankle – which is currently giving me stabbing pains.

Therefore, most of what I have to say right now would give you the impression that I hated the trip, that I hate traveling and that I never want to leave home again. Such an impression would be false, so I will spare you, and just say that I’m really thrilled to be home.

I am actually experiencing something of a headache this morning.

Last night was more fun than I expected. We had a few glasses of wine before we left the guesthouse. Drinking before your drinking, we had read, is traditional for the runtur.

At first, as we walked up and down Laugavegur, things seemed really quiet. Then I realized we were the early nerds. It was eleven o’clock, but still, early nerdery starts late in Reykjavik.

We went to a pub-ish place called Boston, which definitely seemed to be a sort of upscale-preppy cruising spot. People were dressed quite poshly and any two of the other women in the place could have easily wintered in my hollowed-out carcass.

We had one beer there and went back out on the street, where things were starting to be a little more raucous. We went down a side street and heard some very loud music coming out of a two-story club behind a seriously large bouncer who blocked most of the doorway, even standing sideways.

The place was called the Grand Rokk. We had read positive things about it in our nerdy travel book, so we decided to go in.

The bouncer looked us over thoroughly before letting us in. We got more beer and headed upstairs, where the music was coming from. It was hard-rocking, shout-singing kind of music. The style of dress was definitely more varied, here. There was a lot of jeans & t-shirts, and plenty of plaid flannel. While I still didn’t feel like I fit in, particularly, I was much more comfortable.

We stayed through two different sets. The first one was great. Joev made a point of getting their name. It was We made god.. We didn’t get the name of the second band. They were pretty good, too. They kept inciting the crowd to mosh, up at the front.

It was during the second band that drunken natives started speaking to us in Icelandic.

We finished our drinks and went back out on the street, which was definitely a party in full-swing, by this time. I was also pretty drunk (lightweight that I am). We got hot dogs and lots of people talked to us. There were another group of tourists from Connecticut who overheard us talking about how it was finally dark out (at about 12:30) and engaged us in conversation.

There was an Icelander at the Pylsur stand who pegged us for Americans and talked about how he had travelled across the country on Amtrak several years ago.

There was a guy who came up to us and spoke in a flood of Icelandic. When Joev told him we didn’t speak the language, he told us we were all in the glasses club, and that that was good.

And there was a guy who approached us on the street as we headed home, saying something, and on being informed we didn’t speak the language just said, “Oh, S***” with a grin, and moved on.

Towards the edge of the excitement, we were passing a bar that was labled as a sports bar, but which had a band playing live music. A Cure cover had been wafting from there as we were heading out, and when we were coming home, They were just beginning Blur’s Song 2. As we passed the door, the lead singer, wearing nothing but an extra long t-shirt, barreled out the door at us with his wireless microphone, draped his arms around my shoulders and sang as he jumped up and down. I started jumping up and down with him and shouting along on the “woohoos”.

Definitely worth going out and doing all that. A much better time than I expected, and really, my headache is almost gone and we’re going to go out for breakfast.