I think you are pretty much spot on here... but...
For example, Brin makes a big deal about Saruman cutting down trees after he allies himself with Sauron. In his mind that is clearly symbolic of modernization and industry. However, it can just as easily be attributed to JRR Tolkien's attention to detail. When Saruman changed allegiances he started building an army of Orcs. Arming those Orcs requires steel, and steel requires a large amount of charcoal (or coal if you can get it). It's no wonder that Saruman started cutting down trees, he was making steel weapons. His only problem was that the nearest source of lumber just happened to be a forest in which the trees could fight back.
So why could not Tolkien have chosen to give Saruman a coal mine? Or a forest without nearby Ents to fight back? Why does he not show us the forests the Rohirrim and the Gondorians cut down to make their arms? The answer is because he wants to show the destruction of nature by evil industrial technology. Middle Earth isn't real, Tolkien could easily have written this passage very differently if this wasn't his point.
The Wrights weren't "geeks with dreams", they were hard-nosed businessmen who were in it for the profit. The French in particular got all misty eyed over Wilbur as a noble Icarus or somesuch, but they were both very down-to-Earth (sic), practical men who weren't doing this because it was "cool" (or even proto-cool!), but a way to make money.
A corollary of this is that did not have a "marketing department" as such, certainly not in the sense of publicising their flights, until 1909 when the secret of powered flight threatened to escape their grasp. Until then they made one public flight in Dayton (1905? 1906?) then gave up flying, trying to sell their invention to the world's militaries, first the US, then nearly anyone who wanted it (although IIRC they were leery of selling it to the absolutist Tsarists). From 1909 on they certainly tried to promote their aeroplane in the public arena, demonstrating it at flying shows and so on, but they had been too secretive for too long and they missed their chance for fortune (if not fame).
A good ref: Wohl, Robert (1994): A Passion for Wings: Aviation and the Western Imagination, 1908-1918. New Haven (CT) and London, Yale University Press.
In fact, given the extremely harsh post-apocalyptic environment, it's probably not unrealistic for Max to have aged 25 years in (say) 10-15. He's been through a lot, after all...
Rubbish, he only tied robots and Foundation together after the fact. Well after the fact. And even if he did, you wouldn't need to film all (!) of the robot books before the Foundation ones first, any more than you'd need to film The Silmarillion and The Hobbit and all the rest before filming The Lord of the Rings. The stories stand on their on perfectly well.
Here's hoping Rendezvous with Rama gets picked up. Morgan Freeman has been pushing it for a while now, and Dave Fincher will direct it if it goes ahead...
The Asimov Fondation series is a must read, so you can read the Brin, Bear, Benford Foundation books, which are so much better.
Really? I'm a huge fan of the Killer B's but I thought in general their Foundation books sucked. Particularly Benford's... that rubbish about Voltaire and Joan of Arc was just so un-Asimovian, and unfortunately being the first of the new trilogy set the scene for the other two books. Brin's effort was decent though.
And like I said, I think all three of these guys are fantastic writers (although I don't think Benford has written anything to match the brilliance of Timescape or Great Sky River for a long time now, which is a bit sad). They just shouldn't have tampered with the classics... just stick to writing their own.
These movies also make it difficult to evangelize Varley, who is one of my favorite authors. Maybe someday someone will do Steel Beach or The Golden Globe, but with that track record...
Yeah, ditto David Brin after The Postman. The Uplift universe could be so great on film, but unless somebody is going to do it right, I'd rather they didn't bother.
I'd mostly agree, but there's an exception to every rule, and in this case it's Greg Egan. Of course, he is able to make up science because he well aware of developments at the cutting edge of mathematical physics; a cosmologist friend of mine was very impressed by the calculations of photon paths near a black hole that Egan has posted on his website, which anticipated some recent work posted to astro-ph.
Actually, my favourite fantastic universe is the "Third Imperium" setting from the roleplaying game Traveller. It starts with the definition, and the rich backstory has more than enough hooks to encourage storytelling on a grand scale.
Yes! I always loved the Traveller universe; it's so wonderfully open and interesting, and allowed a lot of latitude for different writers to add interesting new bits. I was very pleased to see the classic Traveller books being reprinted by Far Future Enterprises.
You must be thinking of Byzantium (or the Eastern Roman Empire), which is not what most people have in mind when they say "fall of the Roman Empire". That fell
from ca. 400-500 AD onwards, give or take. (A standard date is 476 AD, when Romulus Augustulus, the last Roman emperor, was deposed.)
It's not about technology, you silly person, it's about wealth, opportunity, that kind of thing. The idea is that people (and nations) without access to IT are going to get poorer and poorer, while everybody else gets richer and richer. Whether it's true or not is another question...
Oh, and you've never heard anyone talking about a divide between the kind of people who own Ferraris and swimming pools, and those who don't? Come on.
The charges which I have found to be substantially true include the charges that Irving has for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence; that for the same reasons he has portrayed Hitler in an unwarrantedly favourable light, principally in relation to his attitude towards and responsibility for the treatment of the Jews; that he is an active Holocaust denier; that he is anti-semitic and racist and that he associates with right wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism.
Pity; Irving actually did some useful history at one stage, eg he wrote the first primary source-based account of the German atom bomb project back in the 1960s.
In 1902 there was no British Empire in Australia, well not really. Australia became a federation in 1901.
Of course there was - Australia was a self-governing Dominion within the British Empire, as it was still termed. There's a useful timeline here.
Soutport is not too far from here, whatever the cable had to contribute it is barely noticable now as I live in Brisbane and have never heard of this.
Well there's a shock! A telegraph cabled laid down in 1902 is no longer being used a century later? Who could have guessed that? Silly person.
The point about colours vs. grey is that at low light levels, all colours tend to look grey. It could have been any colour in reality.
Just because it appeared to be just above a 200 ft high apartment building doesn't mean its altitude was 200 ft. All you have is an angle above the horizon - it could have been miles away, a few thousand ft high, and still appear just above the building. Dude, this is basic trig.
Without knowing how far away it was, you can't estimate its speed either. You implicitly guessed its distance based upon your estimate of its real size and hence distance, but what if you were wrong?
As somebody else said, this is not inconsistent with a distant aircraft at night.
Well, Newton invented the Newtonian reflector
telescope and the milled-edge coin, for a start...
I remember reading that Einstein collaborated on
several inventions, including a novel type of refrigerator - I don't think any of them took off though.
The only major zeppelin disaster was the Hindenburg
What utter bollocks. You've obviously never heard of the British R101. And most of the rigid airships the US ever operated were destroyed in flight along with their crew, eg Macon (OK, most of the crew survived that one), Akron, Roma, Shenandoah. The Nobile semi-rigid in the Arctic. I could go on... going back to the Echterdingen "miracle" of 1908 and beyond.
The Hindenburg was the first zeppelin disaster to occur in front of the media, including a film crew and radio commentator. That's why it helped kill zeppelins. But it didn't create a myth that airships were unsafe: they really were unsafe.
Re:Helium vs. Hydrogen, Americans vs. Germans
on
Zeppelins on Patrol?
·
· Score: 1
Sure, but my point was that the US wasn't banning helium exports to Germany because of the Nazis, but because they were banning exports (from 1927, long before the Nazis came to power) to everybody - the British, the French, the Soviets, everyone. Ie, due to isolationism, not anti-fascism, which is what was implied in your original post. After the Hindenburg disaster, Congress passed legislation allowing helium exports, but Roosevelt's administration later banned it again (I think just to Germany), in April 1938 after the Anschluss (not after the occupation of Czechoslovakia as I previously said).
Re:Helium vs. Hydrogen, Americans vs. Germans
on
Zeppelins on Patrol?
·
· Score: 1
Actally, at the time the US refused helium export to everybody, not just Germany, on the grounds of national security. (Since Germany were the only ones still in the airship game by that stage, I guess it doesn't make too much difference.) After the Hindenburg disaster, the US allowed helium to be exported for use in airships, and the Hindenburg's sister ship Graf Zeppelin II was modified for its use. But then Hitler did something nasty (occupied the remnants of Czechoslovakia, I think, March 1939) and the US banned further exports of helium.
Source: Duggan, John, and Meyer, Henry
Cord (2001): Airships in International Affairs, 1890-1940. Basingstoke,
Palgrave. Which I read just last week:)
Hitler was freely elected in Germany. A chancellor, or senator, he was. Germans, after the defeat and Trade Federations imposition at the treaty of versailles, wanted a strong leader. One who would raise an army despite the prohibitions. Hitler was that leader. He raised an army of genetically pure "clones" with rigid behavioral conformity and turned the country into an empire.
Standard historical pedantry: Hitler in fact was not elected, freely or otherwise. He ran for President in 1932 but was beaten by the incumbent, Hindenburg. The Nazis were doing extremely well in parliamentary elections (over 30%-40% of the vote, peaked at 48% in one state, I think) but there is some evidence to suggest that their vote (and their funds) was declining by the time the conservative clique who ran politics at the time installed Hitler as Chancellor in Jan 1933 as a puppet. Quite possibly the biggest underestimation in history! Later on, his rule was endorsed by several plebiscites which were free, if not fair (the massive support for Hitler was accurate enough, but all political opposition had been eliminated by this stage). But these had no constitutional validity. Hitler was installed, not elected. He had held no elected political post whatsoever before 1933.
A good question. Astronomers do actually refer to galactic south, galactic north, etc. It's basically a matter of visualisation, when you are talking about the galaxy, its structure, stellar orbits, etc, it's easier to do it in a coordinate system which is galactocentric. Since the galaxy is disk-shaped, there's an obvious "equator" and "poles" to carry over from terrestrial coordinate systems (and, incidentally, normal celestial coordinates as well).
So, anyway, when I heard that line in ep2, I was just about to snort my coke out of my nose in derision, then I thought for half a second and thought, "Oh yeah. Maybe Lucas has learnt some astrophysics since ep4..."
I have to say, I enjoyed the Yoda fight at the time, but I think as time goes by it's just going to seem sillier and sillier.
Slashdot Mirror
For example, Brin makes a big deal about Saruman cutting down trees after he allies himself with Sauron. In his mind that is clearly symbolic of modernization and industry. However, it can just as easily be attributed to JRR Tolkien's attention to detail. When Saruman changed allegiances he started building an army of Orcs. Arming those Orcs requires steel, and steel requires a large amount of charcoal (or coal if you can get it). It's no wonder that Saruman started cutting down trees, he was making steel weapons. His only problem was that the nearest source of lumber just happened to be a forest in which the trees could fight back.
So why could not Tolkien have chosen to give Saruman a coal mine? Or a forest without nearby Ents to fight back? Why does he not show us the forests the Rohirrim and the Gondorians cut down to make their arms? The answer is because he wants to show the destruction of nature by evil industrial technology. Middle Earth isn't real, Tolkien could easily have written this passage very differently if this wasn't his point.
A corollary of this is that did not have a "marketing department" as such, certainly not in the sense of publicising their flights, until 1909 when the secret of powered flight threatened to escape their grasp. Until then they made one public flight in Dayton (1905? 1906?) then gave up flying, trying to sell their invention to the world's militaries, first the US, then nearly anyone who wanted it (although IIRC they were leery of selling it to the absolutist Tsarists). From 1909 on they certainly tried to promote their aeroplane in the public arena, demonstrating it at flying shows and so on, but they had been too secretive for too long and they missed their chance for fortune (if not fame).
A good ref: Wohl, Robert (1994): A Passion for Wings: Aviation and the Western Imagination, 1908-1918. New Haven (CT) and London, Yale University Press.
In fact, given the extremely harsh post-apocalyptic environment, it's probably not unrealistic for Max to have aged 25 years in (say) 10-15. He's been through a lot, after all ...
That would be the Antikythera mechanism.
Rubbish, he only tied robots and Foundation together after the fact. Well after the fact. And even if he did, you wouldn't need to film all (!) of the robot books before the Foundation ones first, any more than you'd need to film The Silmarillion and The Hobbit and all the rest before filming The Lord of the Rings. The stories stand on their on perfectly well.
Here's hoping Rendezvous with Rama gets picked up. Morgan Freeman has been pushing it for a while now, and Dave Fincher will direct it if it goes ahead ...
Really? I'm a huge fan of the Killer B's but I thought in general their Foundation books sucked. Particularly Benford's ... that rubbish about Voltaire and Joan of Arc was just so un-Asimovian, and unfortunately being the first of the new trilogy set the scene for the other two books. Brin's effort was decent though.
And like I said, I think all three of these guys are fantastic writers (although I don't think Benford has written anything to match the brilliance of Timescape or Great Sky River for a long time now, which is a bit sad). They just shouldn't have tampered with the classics ... just stick to writing their own.
Yeah, ditto David Brin after The Postman. The Uplift universe could be so great on film, but unless somebody is going to do it right, I'd rather they didn't bother.
I'd mostly agree, but there's an exception to every rule, and in this case it's Greg Egan. Of course, he is able to make up science because he well aware of developments at the cutting edge of mathematical physics; a cosmologist friend of mine was very impressed by the calculations of photon paths near a black hole that Egan has posted on his website, which anticipated some recent work posted to astro-ph.
Yes! I always loved the Traveller universe; it's so wonderfully open and interesting, and allowed a lot of latitude for different writers to add interesting new bits. I was very pleased to see the classic Traveller books being reprinted by Far Future Enterprises.
You must be thinking of Byzantium (or the Eastern Roman Empire), which is not what most people have in mind when they say "fall of the Roman Empire". That fell from ca. 400-500 AD onwards, give or take. (A standard date is 476 AD, when Romulus Augustulus, the last Roman emperor, was deposed.)
Sorry to be pedantic, but Asimov was a biochemist by training, not an engineer.
Oh, and you've never heard anyone talking about a divide between the kind of people who own Ferraris and swimming pools, and those who don't? Come on.
The charges which I have found to be substantially true include the charges that Irving has for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence; that for the same reasons he has portrayed Hitler in an unwarrantedly favourable light, principally in relation to his attitude towards and responsibility for the treatment of the Jews; that he is an active Holocaust denier; that he is anti-semitic and racist and that he associates with right wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism.
Pity; Irving actually did some useful history at one stage, eg he wrote the first primary source-based account of the German atom bomb project back in the 1960s.
Of course, it's especially charming when you get creationism and holocaust denial in the same religion.
...
Oh, and they don't beleieve in the moon landings either
In 1902 there was no British Empire in Australia, well not really. Australia became a federation in 1901.
Of course there was - Australia was a self-governing Dominion within the British Empire, as it was still termed. There's a useful timeline here.
Soutport is not too far from here, whatever the cable had to contribute it is barely noticable now as I live in Brisbane and have never heard of this.
Well there's a shock! A telegraph cabled laid down in 1902 is no longer being used a century later? Who could have guessed that? Silly person.
Well, it's more like Mike the Headless Chicken ... by all rights it should be dead, but surprisingly enough, it actually isn't.
As somebody else said, this is not inconsistent with a distant aircraft at night.
I remember reading that Einstein collaborated on several inventions, including a novel type of refrigerator - I don't think any of them took off though.
The only major zeppelin disaster was the Hindenburg
... going back to the Echterdingen "miracle" of 1908 and beyond.
What utter bollocks. You've obviously never heard of the British R101. And most of the rigid airships the US ever operated were destroyed in flight along with their crew, eg Macon (OK, most of the crew survived that one), Akron, Roma, Shenandoah. The Nobile semi-rigid in the Arctic. I could go on
The Hindenburg was the first zeppelin disaster to occur in front of the media, including a film crew and radio commentator. That's why it helped kill zeppelins. But it didn't create a myth that airships were unsafe: they really were unsafe.
Sure, but my point was that the US wasn't banning helium exports to Germany because of the Nazis, but because they were banning exports (from 1927, long before the Nazis came to power) to everybody - the British, the French, the Soviets, everyone. Ie, due to isolationism, not anti-fascism, which is what was implied in your original post. After the Hindenburg disaster, Congress passed legislation allowing helium exports, but Roosevelt's administration later banned it again (I think just to Germany), in April 1938 after the Anschluss (not after the occupation of Czechoslovakia as I previously said).
Actally, at the time the US refused helium export to everybody, not just Germany, on the grounds of national security. (Since Germany were the only ones still in the airship game by that stage, I guess it doesn't make too much difference.) After the Hindenburg disaster, the US allowed helium to be exported for use in airships, and the Hindenburg's sister ship Graf Zeppelin II was modified for its use. But then Hitler did something nasty (occupied the remnants of Czechoslovakia, I think, March 1939) and the US banned further exports of helium.
:)
Source: Duggan, John, and Meyer, Henry Cord (2001): Airships in International Affairs, 1890-1940. Basingstoke, Palgrave. Which I read just last week
Hitler was freely elected in Germany. A chancellor, or senator, he was. Germans, after the defeat and Trade Federations imposition at the treaty of versailles, wanted a strong leader. One who would raise an army despite the prohibitions. Hitler was that leader. He raised an army of genetically pure "clones" with rigid behavioral conformity and turned the country into an empire.
Standard historical pedantry: Hitler in fact was not elected, freely or otherwise. He ran for President in 1932 but was beaten by the incumbent, Hindenburg. The Nazis were doing extremely well in parliamentary elections (over 30%-40% of the vote, peaked at 48% in one state, I think) but there is some evidence to suggest that their vote (and their funds) was declining by the time the conservative clique who ran politics at the time installed Hitler as Chancellor in Jan 1933 as a puppet. Quite possibly the biggest underestimation in history! Later on, his rule was endorsed by several plebiscites which were free, if not fair (the massive support for Hitler was accurate enough, but all political opposition had been eliminated by this stage). But these had no constitutional validity. Hitler was installed, not elected. He had held no elected political post whatsoever before 1933.
A good question. Astronomers do actually refer to galactic south, galactic north, etc. It's basically a matter of visualisation, when you are talking about the galaxy, its structure, stellar orbits, etc, it's easier to do it in a coordinate system which is galactocentric. Since the galaxy is disk-shaped, there's an obvious "equator" and "poles" to carry over from terrestrial coordinate systems (and, incidentally, normal celestial coordinates as well).
..."
So, anyway, when I heard that line in ep2, I was just about to snort my coke out of my nose in derision, then I thought for half a second and thought, "Oh yeah. Maybe Lucas has learnt some astrophysics since ep4
I have to say, I enjoyed the Yoda fight at the time, but I think as time goes by it's just going to seem sillier and sillier.
Not sure what any of that has to do with Apollo since velcro was developed by a Swiss engineer during the 1950s and Mylar was invented by Dupont in 1952.