2010 January

Archive for January, 2010

Thoughts on Returning to Australia

by Aidan on Jan.26, 2010, under Thoughts

It’s been just over a year since I left Japan. It had been six years since I had lived in Japan. Since it’s Australia Day, I thought it was a good opportunity to list some of the differences I’ve noticed in returning to Australia.

Things That Have Changed in Australia:

Things are a lot more expensive. (Yes, I know that’s how inflation works). For example, the apartment I’m renting in Melbourne is smaller and a lot more expensive than the the one I was renting in Osaka.
Melbourne seems to have a preponderance of shops dedicated solely to ugg boots. I can’t remember encountering any ugg boot only stores last time I was here.
Half the population seems to be gluten intolerant now. (I hadn’t come across anyone who was gluten intolerant pre-2004).
My local supermarket now has self-service checkout lanes. They’re a pain to use. You have to scan things yourself and the machines attempt to judge the accuracy by weighing the bags. Almost every time, I’ve had to get an assistant to reset the machine because something has gone wrong.
Internet speeds and download limits are a lot better than before. (Still more than 5 years behind Japan, but a big improvement on last time I was in Australia).

Things That Haven’t Changed in Australia (But I notice because I have changed):

Melbourne’s public transport sucks.
There are still a lot of racists in Australia. (Given Australia’s history, it’s particularly galling to hear Australians complain about boat people.)
A lot of people talk on their mobile phones on their trains. (After being in Japan, I now found this particularly annoying).

Things I Miss About Japan: (Other than my friends in Japan):

All of the cool places: the shrines, temples, ninja towns, monkey hot springs.
The daily encounters with strange things.
Lots of food: 551 Horai Shumai, Chibo Okonomiyaki, Izakayas (Melbourne has some izakayas that are all right).

Things In Melbourne That Remind Me of Japan:

Within a 15-minute walk of my apartment in Melbourne there are 4 or 5 sushi restaurants and another half dozen or so Japanese restaurants.
The communal laundry in my apartment has a sign up reading: “Someone has stolen my underwear again! Beware of the pervert.”

Nebula Award Suggested Reading

by Aidan on Jan.25, 2010, under My Writing, Writing

My story Reading By Numbers is on the suggested reading list for the Nebula Awards.

It only takes one SFWA member to nominate a work to get it onto the list, but I still think it’s pretty cool to get on the list.

Nebula Award Suggested Reading: Short Stories

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Why Your Science Has to Be Better Than The Science in TV Science Fiction

by Aidan on Jan.25, 2010, under Writing, Writing Advice

British writer Paul McAuley wrote an interesting article about the depiction of science in science fiction.

He makes the point that it’s in the nature of fiction to tend towards depicting sudden revelations rather than gradual processes:

You know the kind of thing: lone geniuses who go against the grain of current thinking; oddballs who stumble upon a new paradigm, like a metal-detecting hobbyist lucking out on a hoard of Roman gold; science advanced by epiphanies that explode with the frequency of flashguns at a film premiere (and in films, often require really fast typing to defuse some last-minute knucklebiting threat involving overflux in the intertubes that would otherwise create deadly feedback in everyone’s hypothalami).

But most science is mostly a cooperative, slow, patient accretive process… And an awful lot of science isn’t about the sudden apprehension of a universal truth, but the gainsaying of alternate explanations for an observed phenomenon or fact…

Of course, this kind of science isn’t much use in the construction of stories in which heroes slice through the Gordian knot of some world-threatening problem, or make some world-changing discovery. But it’s the kind of science that serious SF should at least acknowledge – just as any kind of serious fiction should acknowledge the complexity of the happening world, and the knotty and often ambiguous moral choices real people have to make.

Discover magazine recently published a list of examples of bad science from movies. The entry onTransformers includes this:

A fundamental rule in the universe is that mass cannot be destroyed, so making something smaller doesn’t mean it will be lighter in weight! Any Transformer keeping its mass will therefore become very dense: A 100-foot-tall robot compacting down to a 10-foot car would plunge right through the road and into Earth’s crust.

That would be amusing to watch but would make endless sequels unlikely.

Some beginning writers who are only familiar with science fiction through the movies and TV shows don’t realise that written SF has much higher standards when it comes to scientific accuracy and consistency.

For example, the popular Battlestar Galactica show (the remake) has some interesting ideas about consciousness and downloading. (Many of these ideas aren’t new compared to books like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Neuromancer). But other aspects of its science are a confusing and inconsistent mess. Take the use of nuclear weapons. Sometimes ships can use nuclear weapons and instantly blow up anything they want. At other times, it can take ages for a fleet of ships to even damage other ships.

One of the show’s main characters is a TV Scientist^TM – not a real scientist. He’s conveniently an expert in whatever scientific field is biology, computer programming, networks, chemistry, astronomy, astrophysics is required for the purposes of the plot. It takes a lifetime to specialise in any of these fields. If you write a SF short story or novel, your depiction of scientists had better be more accurate than this.

Some famous SF novels that include interesting depictions of scientists at work include Timescapeand Spin.

Even in written SF your science doesn’t have to be 100% accurate (it’s debatable whether things like time travel and hyperspace travel are scientifically possible), but you should at the very least avoid obvious errors of terminology.

One of the most famous bad science clunkers comes from Star Wars where Han Solo talks about making the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs. A parsec is a measure of distance, not time.

Other terms that I’ve seen misused a lot recently are uploading and downloading. Some people simply substitute download for copy, but that’s not right.

For example:

I downloaded the data onto the Internet.
I uploaded the data onto the Internet.

WikiAnswers has a nice summary of the difference:

It’s all a matter of perspective. If you are loading something to the computer in front of you from another computer it’s called “downloading” If you’re loading something FROM the computer in front of you to another computer, it’s generally called “uploading”.

Another perspective is the SIZE and function of the computer. If you’re loading something from a server or large computer to your computer, it’s downloading. If you’re loading something TO a server or larger computer it’s called uploading.

These days it’s much easier to do research on the Internet. A good overall guide for helping to make your science more accurate is The Writer’s Guide to Creating a Science Fiction Universe by George Ochoa and Jeffrey Osier.