The BLAND Corporation

I have seen this year's 'Life of Pi': ' Gravity '. Go see it. Go see it twice. It's not a complicated film at all (that, incidentally, is one of its strengths), but it is so beautiful, and effective, it deserves repeat viewings. The comparison with 'Life of Pi' is not my own, alas, but it is very apt. Both films are about Man and Nature; there is no antagonist. No human one, in any case. I suppose you could point, in both films, to some action of someone offscreen that triggered the events, but that's not important. Both are stories of survival. Both are stories about the transcendent, beautiful, monstrous Great Out There, and of the little island of safety we've made for ourselves. The result, in both the case of 'Life of Pi' as well as 'Gravity', are stunning visuals and visceral stories. There is not much to put in words. They are so simple to describe, it would do them a disservice. Watch 'Gravity' once if you'...

(Part two of a series on a seminar I attended at the International Center for Mechanical Sciences; part one is here .) After the brief intro to Lie groups, we were shown applications of Lie group theoretic integrators to various problems in mechanics. It's easy to see how the theory applies to rigid bodies. The movements of a rigid body are just translations and rotations, and these are easily represented by a Lie group often referred to as SE(3) , the semidirect product of SO(3) and R(3)."Semidirect product" refers to how elements in SE(3) combine, once given combination laws for its component groups. There's some ambiguity in the literature, actually, as some people call the direct product of R(3) and SO(3) (denoted R(3)xSO(3)) by the name SE(3). The difference is, in a direct product elements from different group components do not mix. Example, suppose you have two elements in R(3)xSO(3), let them be (t1, R1) and (t2, R2). Then, the composite of the two el...

Spent a week at the International Center for Mechanical Sciences in Udine, Italy, for a seminar on Differential Geometric Methods for Multi-Body Dynamics Simulations. At five days, of course, all it can offer is a taste of the field, and this blog post is itself just a summary of a summary, but the field itself is very interesting. Indeed, that's why I went there. Ever since about 2007 or so I started bumping into papers about group theoretic methods used for system simulation. The mathematics itself is beautiful, but there were many times where I might as well have been smashing my head into the research papers for all the good reading them did. In particular, I was curious what a specific function meant, and why its inverse looked a certain way. The papers I saw it in just dropped those in like they were obvious. Taking pen to paper revealed the calculations to be far from trivial. And I found out, at the seminar, they aren't supposed to be trivial, so I feel less stupid. B...

Author note : After some binging over the last few days, I uploaded parts 8 to 11 of RwN over at the WaD website. Wooh-hoo. So anyway, after the jump, here's the text of the first draft as it appears now. Enjoy.

Author note : I've changed the text slightly from that seen at WaD because I spotted a rather embarrassing inconsistency. Oops. Oh well. That's what revisions are for. “What is it like to be a bat?” She lifts her gaze from the microscope eyepiece. “Sorry?” “It’s a philosophical conundrum,” Ballard says. “Bit of a trick question. If you can express it, then it’s not what a bat is like, because bats don’t have the capacity for language. Or so that philosopher thought.” “Yes, well. What is it like to be a self-replicating space crystal,” she says, and resumes her examination of a tissue sample from the alien sea urchin shaped creature. “I’m working towards establishing that too, Ms Evans.” He pauses, marker in hand, in front of an improvised whiteboard on the wall covered in scribbles. “Theory guides practice.” Sea urchin cells frozen- or rather vitrified- stand before her eyes, illuminated in the microscope backlight. Practice can guide itself, thank you very...

"This is of course merely a hypothesis, but ... let's observe two things. One, all of the corpses inside NECA are intact, whereas our colleague Hendrix was found in pieces. Two, despite our persistent tresspassing, the NECAns have yet to make an appearance." Ballard pauses for dramatic effect. Bit of an inappropriate time for didactic showmanship, but the pause contains a hint of the direction his idea goes in. "Unless, of course, we have met the NECAns already," he says. "The crystals." She scoffs. "Now whose ideas are fanciful." "Granted, it's a strange thought, but let's consider it. You have noticed how the crystals are rather odd in what they choose to grow on. They are at once very adaptable, but also rather discerning." "That doesn't make them intelligent." "No, just strange. NECA itself is strange. Look around, does any of this seem to have been designed with something we'd recogniz...

"Then lets begin," she says as she opens a sturdy cryogenic container with Hendrix' suit inside. A fog of frost lingers for a moment around its plastic surface. A few paces beside her, Gubarev watches intently, his sullen expression easy to make out through the visor of his hazmat gear. "Cold stops the things, you say." "You were the one guarding here," she answers. "Did you see anything suspicious?" A rhetorical question, as the  logistics module is free of any crystalline invasion. She resumes her examination of the spacesuit, folding, stretching, exposing the various areas. "Nothing appears to have stuck to the urethane-nylon." "So what are we looking for?" "To see how the crystals snuck in. They seem to favor metallic parts, and I'm going to need you to dismantle the- yes, you will dismantle this." "I ain't touching that." "You know how these things work much better than I d...

A short while after I saw Prometheus, I also saw (I think on Phil Plait's recommendation over at Bad Astronomy) a trailer for Europa Report . Brief, minimalistic, but I just knew then, that this little film would be 2013's Prometheus for me: a film I will absolutely like, despite its faults. Well, I finally got to watch Europa Report. Did my impression, based on the trailer, turn out accurate?

Well, for some value of "works". Some context: as you'd know if you follow this, I'm writing this supposedly hard SF story called "Rendezvous with NECA" for a writing course. Got some critiques, useful ones too, and this is not about them. Even the review I'll answer now I won't answer because I want to comment on their writerly points (which are useful). No, what moved me to comment is this: Btw, this is a minor point, if this whole thing is supposed to play out in the near future, I would consider replacing the fusion drive with something more conventional. It doesn’t look like fusion will be come a viable source of energy in the foreseeable future, and even if, current fusion reactor concepts are huge, heavy and simultaneously complicated and frail – not something that can easily be shot into space. And with an unholy amount of conventional boosters (bought with unholy amounts of money), it is conceivable that a manned spaceship could ...

-"This is all your fault."- "Gubarev ... shut up," she says, her voice muffled by the gas mask. Alone, in full hazmat suit, peering over a table where pieces that were once Hendrix slosh in crystalizing intestinal sludge, she doesn't need anyone else's mental excreta. Even if the suspicion there may be some truth to his words eats away at her nerves. Indeed, how did this happen? The sample she took from NECA sits safely inside a freezer. The med/bio lab, now under Dezaki's watch, shows no sign of damage. Ballard, in the physics lab where the two alien boxes are stored, also reported nothing suspicious yet. It's only here, in the communications room, that ... something ... took root. Next to Hendrix, what's left of the ship's radiotransmitter- their link to Earth- lies broken, myriad transparent spikes having torn it apart. A hole and ripped wires in the wall where the transmitter used to be, a clue of the desperate measures to contain t...

{parts 1 and 2 } The torches on their helmets waver in NECA’s night. A second later and their shine resumes upon the metal surface of the airlock. Ballard shrugs. “I’m afraid there’s still some electromagnetic leakage.” “That thing better not fry my microcomms,” Hendrix says. “They’re too small for the wavelengths in the pulse,” Ballard replies. “Indeed, I believe that they will-” he presses a button on a device the size and shape of a wristwatch “- be just fine.” Another second of uncertain torchlight as the alien keybox sends a new pulse towards NECA. The airlock opening widens a bit more, now large enough to fit two people. Good enough, they’ll only climb in one at a time anyway. She goes first, to find some spots to anchor a rope to help them climb back up again. Hendrix follows, setting a couple more devices like the one Ballard used to control the box- little communication relays to keep them in touch with the ship. There is no need for her to babysit him ...

Author note: the text, as it appears on the WaD site (but without notes). Part 1 is here . Sunlight reflects off her gold coated visor. A tether links her to the ship, balanced in pseudo-stationary orbit between the hub and torus. Seventy kilometers below, on NECA’s surface, noon gives way to dusk. It will be thirteen minutes till next midday. Away from the Sun, frozen specks of light break the monotony of vacuum, luminous dots so distant they might as well be within reach. Beyond certain scales, the mind ceases comprehension. More real to her is NECA, its net of tubing wrapped around the gently spinning torus, its swirl of pipes that revealed an entrance. Her target two kilometers above, the hub seventy below, she floats alone, in emptiness, with no support. There is no fear, only inertia and gravity, and she is their plaything. She fires the thrusters on her suit, to remind physical law she has some say in the proceedings. –”How are we doing doctor Evans?”– captain Ch...

 Author note: the text of my first submission for the writing course over at WriteAboutDragons, in all its warty glory. I got three reviews of it- they were all kinder than my own, but one did point out similar troubles of (character) description. Anyways, I'll be combing this later. Onwards with the text ... -:-:- A mechanical buzz summons her back to life. Hard to discern its source, either the timer, or blood resuming flow through long dormant veins. Aching head otherwise empty, she can’t remember any dream. Such a waste of three months of sleep, but the view outside the ship more than makes up for it. She rises on uncertain feet, muscles yet to adjust to the mock gravity of her spinning ship, sense of balance yet to be restored. Thoughts register- they’ve made it, alive- then vanish, muted by the sight of their destination. She’s one of the first, and maybe among the only, human beings to ever lay eyes on an alien craft. Enormous; even though still one hundred miles away...

First lecture is now online, the online writing course has officially started. Yay! So, what's so great about this? We'll have lectures each week, but we could have watched them on youtube. That however's not the point. Writing is not spectating. The idea is to have, each week, 1000-2000 words of a fiction piece, to submit to the other attendees for critique. Also, by the end of the course each attendee must have written a story of at least 30K words. There are about 10 course weeks. Right about now, the arithmetically minded notice a problem. 10 weeks, each with at most a 2000 word submission, translates to a 20K text. And indeed, Sanderson says, expect not to be able to show the complete story to the writing group during the course. But I'd really like to. Fortunately, one of my bad habits comes to the rescue. It appears my first drafts are very sketchy; they rush from event to event, pausing little for description, say. Reviewers are likely to pick up on th...

Ya know the saying. And it appears that I'll have to apply it, which is annoying. I didn't submit writing to the course only to jerk it in self-reviews. But it looks like the only critical eyes that story got so far are my own, so I'll log my impressions. The good- there's a lot of potential for stuff to go wrong in the characters' worlds. Are those suspended animation capsules really all that reliable? What if at least some of the crew (like Gubarev, or the obsessive-compulsive Dezaki) really are losing it? The bit about what NECA wants to do hints at some suspense, and adds more stakes to the mission. So does Hendrix' comment that really everyone is in it for their own countries, which hints that, if the aliens turn out to be all dead, it will be a scramble for each nation to get as much as it can for itself alone. So the premise, on its own, seems ok. The less-good to bad: There's a lot of jump cutting. First scene, they look at NECA, the alien ob...

So I was writing part one of RwN, aiming to send it to that online course. There are several scenes in that part, between which I jump cut (more on that later). In this one particular scene, I have my protag training on a treadmill; see, she's not an astronaut and a bit self conscious about that. Her husband comes in to be flirty, so that I establish these two characters care for each other, and I also use this chance to drop in why my protag is here at all. She's a biologist who's discovered some pretty weird, previously unknown/unrecognizable life on Earth; so, basically, she has more experience of xenobiology than anyone, and she has been to various hard to get to places like deep seas and caves; she's quite physically fit already. And also not the only non-astronaut on board the ship; the other is one doctor who worked to develop the suspended animation. Maybe I should put the text (in its partial state, which is all it got) here, but I am a bit embarrassed to d...