Midweek: Will the "sane wing" Republicans step up? -- And my selection of best SMBCs!

I'll pause this time - midweek - to blurt a couple of mini rants about the monsters who will soon unleash something hellish, in order to distract us. But hang around to the end, where I'll recommend some of the best recent comix from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal!

This weekend, I'll get back to part 8 of my ongoing series of tactics that might help fix this mess we are in.

== Do not be fooled when Republicans 'stand up to Trump' ==

Parse it carefully. There are defection/revolts by a few in the Party of Lincoln vs. Trumpism. Some rare GOPpers who happen to be decent/principled and not very blackmailed are standing up. (Tho all GOP senators are complicit with DT's cabinet of monsters, that includes several KGB agents.) 

But this vote re Obamacare is not such a revolt! It is a tactic to get the GOP out of a jam, backing away from their cruel act that risks enraging tens of millions, if Obamacare subsidies expire, then giving them excuse to blame dems for resulting deficits.

Likewise, the Roberts "Court" will rule against Trump on some symbolic matters, in order to maintain an illusion of 'balance'...

...though never re: any matter that affects POWER. 

So, expect a curb or two on ICE raids, because that shit is mostly sadistic theater for diehard racist MAGAs. But Roger Taney Jr. - I mean John Roberts - will okay DT's power to fire IGs and JAGs and wreck whole agencies. And cheat elections and send troops into cities. And send ICE toward citizens. And bully the military officer corps. 

That last matter - DEFENDING OUR DEFENDERS - is the core topic of my current posting. (Before this one.) 

We need to make clear to our loyal military men and women that they aren't forgotten. And help is on the way!

But stay focused. Power is the criterion to watch.


== Are there any signs of movement by Principled Republicans? ==

Good question. Sure there are Kinzingers and Liz Cheney (gulp). But aside some such anecdotes, are there signs of actual, organized revolt by decent or at least slightly patriotic Republicans? Perhaps leading to a split-off Sane Conservative Party? (We need one.) 

I'm likely clutching straws. Even if Paul Ryan, Romney, George F. Will and others do step up, Trump will only signal Putin to unleash the planned super-9/11 attack, now that he and Gabbard and Noem have re-assigned or fired or neutered many counter-terrorism agents and staff. Thus hoping to get us to rally around the leader. (It worked for Bush.) Whereupon... they hope to send well-drilled ICE prison-parolees after new targets to round up. Cancel elections...

... and release blackmail kompromat on any GOPper pol who dares to lift his head. (Or, in the case of Collins/Murkowski, whatever male relatives they are protecting, by submitting to Putin.)

So, standing up will take a lot more guts than Olde Republicans ever had. Or ever will. 

There will be no more Ike/Dirksen/Goldwater/McCains. So, it's likely we must take this phase all the way to Appomattox. And do it all ourselves. Alack.

== Some fun (and philosophically brilliant) one pagers from SMBC! ==

I'm a sucker for this online strip. But I only come back every 6 months to binge it...

... which allows me to make a favorites list, just for you!

For example: This one is much like my story “The Giving Plague,” where circumstances force a bad man into being (repeatedly) a world-beloved hero.

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/branch-2

And do poke at these selected ones!

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/frenchmen

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/life-7

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/steve

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/xx

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/princess-3

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/happiness-5

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/firstborn

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/number-one

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/sex

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/attention-span

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/addiction

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/lesson

And finally this one that SO came true!

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/slam

 

And one that oughta:

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/sad-5

Science Fiction round-up: from humorous to inspiring to uplifting

What the heck has happened to The Atlantic? All my life it was central HQ of the intelligencia's relentless campaign to discredit science fiction and future-curious literature.  The Atlantic's editorial staff even commissioned a hit piece, in 1990, hiring one of our own, Thomas Disch, to savage the field, then they cut and hacked his essay to leave out all mention of SF tales he respected. Now? There have been at least three SF friendly articles in the last year and this new one absolutely fizzes with can-do optimism about how Science Fiction can help bring wisdom to the process of creating new technologies. 

In "Why Today's Inventors Need to Read More Science Fiction" - MIT Media Lab researchers Dan Novy and Sophia Brueckner argue that the mind-bending worlds of authors such as Philip K. Dick and Arthur C. Clarke can help us not just come up with ideas for novel gadgets, but also can help us envision and anticipate their consequences and ramifications -- ideas which Brueckner and Novy use in their course, Science Fiction to Science Fabrication, or Pulp to Prototype.

Is String Theory right? Is it just fantasy? A nifty Bohemian Gravity parody, by A Capella Science. Delightful evidence that the brightest human beings are win-win polymaths, who are brilliant at a wide range of things.  All of the great scientists I've known also had artistic avocations that they often performed at a professional level. (My father took he to watch Einstein play the violin, when I was four... or so he told me.) And now; this young feller, Tim Blais, is clearly part of that tradition, creating singlehandedly a capella mixes that are skilled, hilariously amusing and awesomely cool.  I just wish he would give us two seconds of blank screen for applause and cool-down before launching into his self-adverts at the end.  Just two seconds of grace-note chill, hm? Make it three. You'll go far.

Four Reasons Why Remakes of Sci-Fi Movies Are Doomed to Suck… amen and this proves why cocaine should remain illegal, given what it has done to a generation of Hollywood moguls and directors, going "Ooooh, how's THIS for an original idea! How about we remake…." Don't do drugs.

== More cool scifi stuff ==

Paul Rubens returns in a serious (if short and low budget, but not peewee) science fiction film. The Final Moments of Karl Brant is a 15-minute short film that explores mind uploading. The movie follows a scientist who is researching whole brain emulation technology; he gets murdered immediately after downloading his entire memory onto a hard drive. The film follows two police detectives who revive Karl Brant’s mind-upload to find his killer. Reubens is good.

The Hidden Message in Pixar’s Films, by Kyle Munkittrick, explores in a moving and I think accurate way the "otherness" theme that guides nearly all films by the great animation house.  Otherness, indeed.

Okay... gotta watch this totally way-cool fun video plus music in a full-boil love paean to starships.  The very heart and soul of science fiction!

100 Wonderful and Terrible Movies That Never Existed. For every movie that makes it to your local cineplex, there are dozens that never come into existence. In another universe, Mel Gibson directed Fahrenheit 451, Terry Gilliam directed Watchmen, and Batman fought Godzilla. The history of movies is crammed full of weird almost-weres and could-have-beens.  A terrific list on io9.

...and now...

== Brinstuff ==

Utopia in Exile: Here is the videoed interview with me that Adam Ford did at LosCon39 back when Existence first came out. Not my very best, but still filled with mind-stretching exercises! (Though he lost the first few seconds of footage). It's gotten way more buzz than I thought it merited. But go figure.

The French site ActuSF has run an interview with me in both French and English.

The Uplift Universe is number three on this list: Twelve Book Series that are the Sci Fi equivalent of Game of Thrones ... along with Asimov's Foundation series, Banks's Culture series, Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy, McCaffrey's Dragonriders and others.

A glimpse of my visit with the ALEF science fiction club of Athens, Greece, in August.

Live long in this world, especially as a male, and folks have a range of opinions about you. Karma builds. The more so if you become even a little "famous."  I know I can be overbearing and … opinionated… tho I try to be ornery in all directions. Anyway, I try to make up for that and other faults by almost never engaging in personal gossip, and with good deeds.  Okay, Maimonedes said you're not supposed to brag about the latter.  But… well… I'd rather at least some of these things were known.  Gave a little help to this bright young author who writes action even better than Zelazny or Moorcock. So take a look at John Koetsier's action-packed novel, No Other Gods. And John, you're welcome.

== Serious Asides ==

Shall we give up on reason?  Will we genetic-cavemen ever become the logical beings we flatter ourselves into believing we are? Or that Science Fiction says we might become?  Recent research suggests that we have a long slog ahead of us… and yes, even the smartest best-educated folks allow their pre-set beliefs and passions to interfere with basic mental processes, if their close-held biases might be under threat. Indeed we have all seen this tenacity in online arguments, in which cogent - even devastating and fact-rich -- rebuttals don't sway the other guy even an iota. See: Scientists' depressing new discovery about the brain.

We already knew this. The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their mistakes. Clearly this is what goes on as know-nothings rage against scientists and other professionals.

== SF prescience and fun…. ==

Prescience from the 1960s: Arthur Clarke wrote, "We could be in instant contact with each other, wherever we may be, where we can contact our friends anywhere on earth, even if we don’t know their actual physical location. It will be possible in that age, perhaps only 50 years from now, for a man to conduct his business from Tahiti or Bali just as well as he could from London…"

In 1964, Isaac Asimov on the year 2014 --  “Communications will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear the person you telephone. The screen can be used not only to see the people you call but also for studying documents and photographs and reading passages from books. Synchronous satellites, hovering in space will make it possible for you to direct-dial any spot on earth, including the weather stations in Antarctica.”

and “Robots will neither be common nor very good in 2014, but they will be in existence.”

On the other hand… there were some howlers from Asimov:  “The appliances of 2014 will have no electric cords, of course, for they will be powered by long- lived batteries running on radioisotopes.”

And our final category today is "Not yet… but increasingly likely!"

“[V]ehicles with ‘Robot-brains’ … can be set for particular destinations … that will then proceed there without interference by the slow reflexes of a human driver.”

and "Processed yeast and algae products will be available in a variety of flavors.”  Coming soon!

==New Collections Released==

"Twelve Tomorrows" is the latest special science fiction issue of the MIT Technology Review, with vivid tales by Greg Egan, Nancy Kress, Allen Steele, Brian Aldiss, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Peter Watts, Nancy Fulda, and myself… along with other fine writers, all aimed at dealing with near-future possible trends or shocks in technology and its impact on human lives. My story, Insistence of Vision, leads off this terrific collectors' volume.  It deals with a near future option offered by "specs" or googlasses, to replace prison as a punishment with something else. Something that is both better and more chilling.

Just out: Shadows of the New Sun: Stories in honor of Gene Wolfe, with contributions from Neil  Gaiman, Joe Haldeman, Nancy Kress, Jack Dann, Michael Swanwick, Timothy Zahn, Michael Stackpole, Mike Resnick, and Todd McCaffrey… oh, and me too, with one of my best stories yet! All in the spirit of honoring one of the all-time greats of Science Fiction. See the book review on the Tor site. 

If you're not familiar with Gene Wolfe, sample some of his best, with his excellent short story collection: The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories.

== Final SF'nal Miscellany ==

Hugo-nominated author Jim Hines has a new novel, Libriomancer, in which the urban mage can pull items or characters from any book.  Clever idea!  Read an interview on Wired about why he decided not to pull a black hole out of EARTH.  Interesting fellow!

And ...here's a wonderfully funny riff on how dangerous humans might seem to aliens. For example:

REMOVING A LIMB MAY NOT FATALLY INCAPACITATE HUMANS: ALWAYS DESTROY THE HEAD….

and…

WARNING: HUMANS CAN DETECT YOU EVEN AT NIGHT BY TRACKING VIBRATIONS THROUGH THE ATMOSPHERE.

and my own contributions…

HUMANS CAN SEE ALL THE WAY INTO THE "BLUE"!

and…

HUMANS CAN COOPERATE LIKE HIVE BEINGS AND THEN OPERATE SOLO LIKE MANTISES! THEY CAN RUN IN THE NOONDAY SUN AND STAY COOL. THEY CAN PICK UP SMALL OBJECTS AND "THROW" THEM AT AMAZING DISTANCES AND SPEEDS.  

WORST OF ALL, THEY ARE CAPABLE OF EMPATHIZING WITH YOUR OFFSPRING, RAISING THEM AS THEIR OWN AND TURNING THEM AGAINST YOU!

Finally... MechaWhales.  Seriously man?  MechaWhales?  Aw geez… and I don't get a piece of this?  Even an action figure?  Mechawhales.  Fun. And I'll hold back till they're raking it in….

My Top Choices in Science-Oriented WebComics

Looking for distraction? We all need a break from time to time.

Where can you turn for a bit of lighter side of science online?

It's elemental: Here's a look at some of the best, totally nerdy, science-oriented online comics.

Listed in no particular order, this is only a sampling of the phenomenal  and insightful work being posted online by a new generation of talented web artists.

Enjoy!

Xkcd: A Webcomic of Romance, Sarcasm, Math and Language by Randall Munroe, is probably the most widely known. A cast of stick figures addresses topics ranging from science research to philosophy to relationships and the absurdity of daily life. The illustration to the left mocks Frank Drake's infamous Drake Equation, which attempts to calculate the number of 'intelligent' extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy. I've spent quite a bit of time dissecting Drake equation... but that's another topic.

phd Comics: Piled Higher and Deeper: an ongoing chronicle of the life (or lack thereof) in Academia. This comic focuses on the complications of modern scientific research, and the difficulties of graduate school. Written and drawn by Jorge Cham. The selected comic shown charts the perennial ups and downs of graduate student motivation. I recall spending a lot of time on the down side of that graph...

Strange Quark Comics by Dalin S. Durfee, featuring Dr. Ingenio, his nerdly son and assorted nerdy grad students. An insightful look at the everyday quandaries of life in the laboratory, from someone who's obviously been there.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal by Zach Weiner Sometimes about science and research, but more generally about God, superheroes, dating, the meaning of life…and much more. The cartoon to the left questions how nuggets of scientific research are translated into the media frenzy of the real world. I've gotten many a laugh out of the unexpected punch lines and spot-on insight from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

Lab Bratz This cartoon offers geeky science humor focusing on laboratory mishaps and disasters waiting to happen, with a cast of hapless professors, frazzled lab managers and sleep-deprived graduate students. Written by Ed Dunphy. Drawn by Helber Soares.

Tree Lobsters! You can’t prove they don’t exist! by Steve DeGroof.   The illustrations are consistently and incongruously of (guess what?) red lobsters sitting in trees. The humor is in the captions and conversation - of the inexplicably wise tree lobsters. One comic read: 'For a good time call 6.02 x 10 23 Ask for Avogadro.' Tree Lobsters takes on big topics such as Creationism: one lobster asks, “So you think the universe was created by this invisible space pickle? “ A second lobster answers, “Our intelligent pickle theory is just as valid as your ‘scientific theories’” To which the first responds, “Well, if the pickle created everything, what created the pickle?”

Abstruse Goose: a cartoon about math, science and geek culture. One of my favorites is: How Scientists see the world, shown to the left. Does an understanding of the equations underlying light make a sunset less beautiful? Or, did Newton "unweave the rainbow" by reducing it to a prism, as Keats contended? The tools of science, from the first microscope to the Hubble and Spitzer telescopes have so vastly expanded our ability to perceive the universe in all its breathtaking beauty. Nostalgic simplicity junkies preach that esthetics should be devoid of either curiosity or understanding. Might as well say that it isn't for human beings.

Girl Genius, offers the marvels of gorgeously detailed steampunk technology, set in an alternate-history where mad scientists rule the world. It follows the adventures of the flamboyant and brilliant girl genius, Agatha Heterodyne, in the city of Mechanicsburg. This beautifully drawn comic, by Phil and Kajo Foglio, has twice won the Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story.

Schlock Mercenary, The Comic Space Opera, by Howard Taylor This science fiction strip, nominated twice for a Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story, is set in a distant future that has achieved faster-than-light travel and artificial intelligence, and made contact with aliens. It follows a band of space-faring mercenaries as they travel through wormgates, loosely following a handbook of rules, "The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries." A vivid exploration of far-out futuristic technologies and their implications for humanity -- and lots of fun!

Scenes from a Multiverse: A colorful (in more ways than one) comic about life in an ordinary Multiverse, by Jonathan Rosenberg. One recent strip, set in the "Psychcloaked debris belt of the Third Foundation," depicts an alien who claims, “Using my brand-new science of neurofuturism, I can predict overall historical trends of the multiverse for the next ten thousand years!” He describes a series of disasters, finishing with, “After that it’s mostly apocalypses and bank holidays. Not very interesting.” Har!

Electric Sheep & Apocamon: The Final Judgement, by my friend, the talented Patrick Farley. Apocamon is an insightful and hilarious look at the Book of Revelation. (It also makes clear just what it is that some on the far right pray to see happen.)

But this is only the tip of Farley's iceberg. He is an amazing artist and the one taking on the deepest issues. His "Spiders" online graphic novel has been seriously studied at the Pentagon, to try and understand how citizens might get involved in defense, if we enter a transparent society.

Sci-ənce! is a wonderful new webcomic (with insightful commentary) that addresses the difference between science and pseudoscience, with a constant reminder to bring a sense of skepticism to our search for knowledge, The sample shown here mocks the between the build-up and the reality of the big NASA press conference about “microbial extraterrestrial” life. By Maki Naro and Nadir Balan. (Note: This has moved to BoxPlot on the Popular Science website.)

Calamities of Nature, by Tony Piro, provides piercing insight into the scientific mindset, and how science research trickles down to influence the general public. The sample strip pokes fun at scientists for their questionable imagination in naming the wonders of the universe: supernovae, superconductors, supersymmetry...

And Dresden Codak is an award-winning science fictional webcomic written and illustrated by Aaron Diaz, who describes it as a “celebration of science, death and human folly.” Its highly intellectual humor, not for the faint of heart, ranges from physics to philosophy. A beautifully imagined vision that deals with the results of a technological singularity and humanity's role in the cosmos.

So, which of these (or others) do you like best?

Have a laugh or two, or many — and follow some of these talented (and under-appreciated) artists. Support your favorite webartists on the crowd-funded site, Patreon.

Here are a few more suggestions for sci-fi comics:

Space Trawler Pictured to left
Freefall
Quantum Vibe
Drive
We The Robots
The FlowField Unity
The Abominable Charles Christopher
Poisoned Minds S.S.D.D.
People in White Coats
Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures

And finally, a few Math Comics:

Spiked Math Comics
The Twisted Pencil
Brown Sharpie
Oh, You Math!


Continue to Part 2: A Look at Science Fiction Webcomics

or: Part 3: More Science Fiction webcomics