Regularly Expressing

Category: science fiction

  • The Matrix Refactored

    The first two Matrix movies were quite fun — despite the rather strange and improbable premise that humans make good batteries. However the third movie was quite disappointing. In the software development world, the process of revising your software to make it better is sometimes called “refactoring.” This suggests to me the title of a new Matrix movie, “The Matrix Refactored.”

    The Matrix series raises a number of questions about the borders of reality and machine world, and introduces a number of mysterious entities. By the third movie, I expected some explanations of what was what. Alas, I got none.

    1. Consider the program called “The Merovingian.” Many people currently believe that the Merovingians are the descendents of Christ and Mary Magdalene. Whatever you think of the historical merit of such an idea (I think it is rubbish), the name of this character suggests that he is a child of the One, a program authored by Neo in a previous iteration of the Matrix. In my version of the Matrix, this idea would have been developed.
    2. When Neo confronts the Architect in the second movie, he sees recordings of previous confrontations he has had with that entity. If he always looks the same, then why can’t the Architect and the agents use that to find him? Why is there a “One” in each iteration of the Matrix? What I would suggest is that the Architect and the Oracle are two AI programs that are playing a game against each other. The Oracle decides to seed the vats with DNA, deciding where to hide the One. The Architect uses the agents to try and stop him — sort of a giant shell game. I would have had Neo discover this fact.
    3. Neo is able to use his powers to stop the squids when they are not in the machine world. This suggests that either he did not really leave the Matrix, or that there is a Matrix inside the Matrix, or that reality itself is, at some fundamental level, nothing but a program. Maybe Neo has control over machines through some radio link. I would have tried to preserve the ambiguity here, pointing to “love” as a deeper reality. But “love” becomes it’s own item in this list….
    4. One of the themes of the first two movies was that love conquers all. Both Trinity and Neo were brought back from the dead by love. In the third movie, however, we get the horrible “love is a word, and I have a relationship to it” speech — followed by the death of Trinity. I would have given this speech to the agent, or the Architect.
    5. They could discover a space station, Nirvana, was built before the machines took over, and that it is still functional. Persephone (as her name suggests) would be the one program that spends time on the station and on Earth, and she could arrange a rendezvous by which Neo, Trinity, Morpheus, etc. can escape to Nirvana and escape the cycle of the Matrix.

  • Plant Colors

    This link is a little gem that any science fiction writer should hold on to. It tells you what color the plants should be in an extra-solar system. The logic seems to be simply that plants absorb the light that is most readily abundant, and chlorophyll reflects green because there is less of it (after absorption by the atmosphere).

    The article suggests that only yellow, green, and red plants are to be expected. It did not detail why. In fact, this article from Astrobiology leads me to think purple should be in the game. In fact, another theory supposes that the earth was covered with purple vegetation.
    Astrobiology is, I think, a must-read website for science fiction authors.

    Another question I have is whether brown plants make sense. The idea is that the would actually contain melanin, the pigment that makes human skin dark. Since the article cited proves that it is possible for fungus, why wouldn’t it work for other types of plants?

    Some even believe that alien plants may be black.

  • Life in a Jovian Atmosphere?

    Astrobio.net has an article on what it calls “nano-nauts” — small partiles that can maneuver in swirling wind by simply changing their surface texture between rough and smooth. Apparently these particles can steer their way through rough winds while flying in formation (“I am a leaf on the wind…”).

    These bots can communicate using wireless, each has various ranges, allowing nearest neighbor communication.
    If humans can figure out how to do this, it seems logical to me that life could also manage it.

    I’ve often thought it would be interesting to try and build a story around creatures that live in a Jovian atmosphere, creatures that are airborne their whole lives and have to deal with turbulent winds. At first I imagined large balloon-like animals, but decided that the winds would probably be too rough. Now I’m thinking that small hard insect-like creatures might be able to do just fine. Possibly with a hive mind knitted together by radio waves.

    This line of thinking was inspired, largely, by Larry Niven’s Integral Trees. Obviously, however, it goes in a different direction.

    Update: Here is a nice little image of the Jovian atmosphere, as well as a description. Could it be that larger life forms, like the ones Clarke describes, evolve in the eye of the storm called the Great Red Spot?

    Update: http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/J/Jupiterlife.html

  • The Role of Prophecy in Sci-Fi/Fantasy

    Most stories consist of the gradual unfolding of information, the asking of questions and answering them. Each set of story ideas and characters have their own inner logic that must be first explained, then followed to a satisfying conclusion.

    Given this state of affairs, it is almost irresistable to the writer of sci-fi or fantasy to introduce the notion of prophecy at some level. A cryptic description of the future forms a template for how the story will play out and connects the beginning to the conclusion. Many successful movies and series have used this to great success: The Terminator Movies, Battlestar Galactica, The Matrix, and so on.

    The question is, is this a crutch or is it as fundamental a building block as the warp drive, magic spell, the laser canon, and the sword?

  • DNA Ark

    I recently came across the statistic that there are only 3 billion bits of information in DNA.  This is a rather shockingly small number.

    If we factor out the “junk” (viruses, non-coding regions, etc.) that leaves about 300 million bits of information or about 40 mega bytes.  This means that you can probably squeeze nearly 1000 people on a single hard disk.

    If we wanted to preserve a large variety of humans in data format we could probably concoct a compression algorythm that would be fairly effective since we probably have large sequences of data in common.  I’m guessing we could get another factor of 10.

    So that means 10,000 people per disk.  Let’s be paranoid, however, and suggest that the amount of compression we get is smaller and the amount of “junk” DNA we can really be eliminated is less.  Let’s say we can get 1,000 people on a disk.

    That’s with current technology. Things you can just walk into the store and buy.

    New technologies push this limit back on a regular basis.  A recent breakthrough on slashdot suggests that we can store 12-13 peta bytes per cubic centimeter.  This means that we could store one billion people in about 3 cubic centimeters.

    One gallon is 3785 cubic centimeters, probably enough room to store the human race (every individual living person) plus a large selection of plants and animals.  Conceivably an electronic version of Noah’s ark could be very small indeed.

  • Genetic switches

    There is the basis for an interesting sci fi story here…  Genetic switches could, perhaps, trigger some remarkable ability such as extra sensory perception.  Perhaps they could be artificially introduced to hide a trait.