The September 1998 meeting opened with the announcement that Australian science fiction writer Richard Harland will be coming to speak with us for the December meeting.
The ABC has withdrawn from sale South Park "Kick the Baby" t-shirts because a lobby group against child claimed that the t-shirt would encourage child abuse, but they are still available everywhere else.
David Bofinger reported that the SAS had recently invaded his office and killed his mannequin.
David attended the Australian Science Communicator's "Science in the Pub", where Tim Flannery had spoken on his thesis of
The Future Eaters.
It was summarised as follows "African animals evolved alongside humans so that they had time enough to grow smart enough to cope, but animals in newly colonized countries such as Australia had no such luck, and so most died out when people discovered these amazingly easy to hunt animals in the new places". Humans took a long time to recognize the effects of their behaviour and modify it to stop wiping out species. This was discussed at length.
Graham Stone then fearlessly introduced Michael Guiness's theory of the Australian aboriginals that he was certain would offend everyone. "Its well known that city people are smarter than country people." There were murmurs at this statement, but he bravely pressed on with his explanation: This arises because bright people leave the country and don't come back, and those who stay behind have kids. A rural "brain drain" that causes a differential to arise. In prehistoric Australia the equivalent of the city was the coast, where the living was much easier, and all mod cons were laid on. Over 40 000 years, the same thing happened, the inland stock became less bright because the intelligent folk drifted to the coast. Then the Europeans arrived and killed them.
This charming picture was quickly demolished by other people present.
David Bofinger pointed out that the demographic heartland of aboriginals was to a large extent the Murray-Darling basin, and then continued to describe the "Science in the Pub" meeting and how Tim Flannery met a largely hostile audience. The meeting was recorded for the ABC "Science Show".
One of our members then asked if he could give a talk on his favourite topic of Ritzian anti-relativity theories at a "Science in the Pub" meeting in the future. He was encouraged to ask them, but it was pointed out that an experimental demonstration of these unorthodox theories would be more convincing.
It was reported that the Powerhouse Museum was having SETI and Space talks in the next week, but it required booking and an entry fee.
The 1998 Locus awards were announced. The best SF novel was
The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons, and the best Fantasy novel of the year was Earthquake Weather by Tim Powers. The best first novel was
Great Wheel by Ian Macleod.
"The Lord of The Rings" will be getting the full live action movie treatment. Each book will be a separate movie. Peter Jackson is directing and writing. Hobbits will be normal sized actors shrunk through digital special effects.
Greg Egan's short story "The Extra" is being filmed by a Canadian
production house "Welcome to Paradox".
Toy stores have "Barsoom" action figures as marketing from the special effects video version of
Tarzan.
New theories reported in
New Scientist on the origin of life were discussed. It's speculated that early in Earth's history, the planet was bombarded by large meteors on a regular basis. These strikes would liberate enough energy to vaporize oceans. Life established a tenuous foothold, only to be blasted away by the next violent meteor strike. This happened several times on Earth, until some life found its way deep underground where it was safe from the blasts. Possibly some life was aboard the chunks of debris that were flung from the Earth and some of it returned to re-establish life when the bombardments from space were less often, and so life finally took hold of the Earth.
New Scientist also reported on the invention of "artificial atoms". Very small holes are etched into silicon, and the trapped electrons in these holes act like flat two dimensional atoms unlike anything found in nature.These atoms are larger than natural atoms and therefore they have a huge potential for new physics and chemistry.
A British rocket enthusiast has taken liquid rocket fuel, mixed it with epoxy and foamed it with liquid oxygen. He was inspired by Aero chocolate bars and is sponsored by them.
Australian producers are investigating the possibility of doing a movie based on Robert Silverberg's
The Man in the Maze.
Channel 9 is making a series about an abducted astronaut in collaboration with the Jim Henson's creature workshop -
Farscape.
The Kenneth Starr report released on the Internet at the same time as it was released to the US government was an historic event. Its the first time people on the other side of the world had simultaneous access to a government document, before it was even printed on paper.
The new parliament house flagpole has four spines pointing down from the centre, if you take what would be the resulting pyramid, then there is a slab of granite in the Members chambers at the exact place where the sarcophagus would lie in an Egyptian pyramid. Its suggested that this is where the GST policy was found.
Brian Walls opened the topic of Jupiter in science fiction by explaining how Jupiter is mainly light elements, water and gases, as opposed to the rocky nature of the inner planets. Issac Asimov's
Buy Jupiter is about advanced aliens who wish to trade Jupiter for high technology. The aliens use Jupiter as a space highway billboard to sell a popular beverage.
Humanity's reaction is to try and sell Saturn for a higher price to the beverage's competitors. Poul Anderson has hydrogen breathing aliens buy Jupiter to settle on in his
Ensign Flandry series.
James Blish's novel
Cities in Flight has cities in force fields settled on Jupiter. A Meeting With Medusa by Arthur C. Clarke details an encounter with intelligent Jovian gasbags floating in the atmosphere of Jupiter.
The movie 2001 was on Jupiter, and the book's events were around Saturn.
2010: The Year We Make Contact followed the movie and had Jupiter ignited to form a second sun.
Clifford Simak's
City series, in which both humans and dogs are enhanced to be able to survive on the surface of Jupiter despite the pressure and gravity. Both have transcended to a higher state they don't wish to return from. Poul Anderson's "Call Me Joe" covers much the same territory, with human minds transferred to synthetic bodies on Jupiter.
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century visits a Jupiter with habitable plateau mountaintops where the pressure and gravity are low enough for terrestrial life. This is similar to Larry Niven's
Gift from Earth, where the colony of Plateau is on a very tall mountain that makes it the only habitable place on the extra-solar planet.
The TV marionette series "Space Patrol" had a character called "Jerry the Jovian". Isaac Asimov wrote
Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter in which a seeing-eye dog in a spacesuit turns out to be a robot spy.
"ZZ1 ZZ2 ZZ3" by Isaac Asimov in which Jovian aliens decide to exterminate all humans upon learning of our existence. The humans send robot ambassadors to the Jovians who assume that they are humans. They are so impressed with the robot's strength and endurance that they crack and surrender. Asimov's "Not Final" has further on the hostile Jovians, who are working on a force field that will enable them to take to space to kill humans. A remote outpost on Europa is doing parallel research and proves that a force field is so unstable that it can only last a second and therefore never be useful to Jovian astronauts. He is collected to report his triumphant news in a new spacecraft with a force-field hull that flickers on and off several thousand times a second.
E. E. 'Doc' Smith's
Spacehounds of Ipc had Jovian northerner Hexans fighting southerner Vorkurlians. "By Jove!" by Walter Rose written in 1937
has a South African backyard rocket lost on its way to Mars, ending up on Ganymede where the crew meet up with big insects who wish to join the British Empire.
And lastly, Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote a John Carpenter novel called "Skeleton Men of Jupiter", a story so bad that even Graham couldn't read it.
The Future Eaters.
It was summarised as follows "African animals evolved alongside humans so that they had time enough to grow smart enough to cope, but animals in newly colonized countries such as Australia had no such luck, and so most died out when people discovered these amazingly easy to hunt animals in the new places". Humans took a long time to recognize the effects of their behaviour and modify it to stop wiping out species. This was discussed at length.
Graham Stone then fearlessly introduced Michael Guiness's theory of the Australian aboriginals that he was certain would offend everyone. "Its well known that city people are smarter than country people." There were murmurs at this statement, but he bravely pressed on with his explanation: This arises because bright people leave the country and don't come back, and those who stay behind have kids. A rural "brain drain" that causes a differential to arise. In prehistoric Australia the equivalent of the city was the coast, where the living was much easier, and all mod cons were laid on. Over 40 000 years, the same thing happened, the inland stock became less bright because the intelligent folk drifted to the coast. Then the Europeans arrived and killed them.
This charming picture was quickly demolished by other people present.
David Bofinger pointed out that the demographic heartland of aboriginals was to a large extent the Murray-Darling basin, and then continued to describe the "Science in the Pub" meeting and how Tim Flannery met a largely hostile audience. The meeting was recorded for the ABC "Science Show".
One of our members then asked if he could give a talk on his favourite topic of Ritzian anti-relativity theories at a "Science in the Pub" meeting in the future. He was encouraged to ask them, but it was pointed out that an experimental demonstration of these unorthodox theories would be more convincing.
It was reported that the Powerhouse Museum was having SETI and Space talks in the next week, but it required booking and an entry fee.
The 1998 Locus awards were announced. The best SF novel was
The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons, and the best Fantasy novel of the year was Earthquake Weather by Tim Powers. The best first novel was
Great Wheel by Ian Macleod.
"The Lord of The Rings" will be getting the full live action movie treatment. Each book will be a separate movie. Peter Jackson is directing and writing. Hobbits will be normal sized actors shrunk through digital special effects.
Greg Egan's short story "The Extra" is being filmed by a Canadian
production house "Welcome to Paradox".
Toy stores have "Barsoom" action figures as marketing from the special effects video version of
Tarzan.
New theories reported in
New Scientist on the origin of life were discussed. It's speculated that early in Earth's history, the planet was bombarded by large meteors on a regular basis. These strikes would liberate enough energy to vaporize oceans. Life established a tenuous foothold, only to be blasted away by the next violent meteor strike. This happened several times on Earth, until some life found its way deep underground where it was safe from the blasts. Possibly some life was aboard the chunks of debris that were flung from the Earth and some of it returned to re-establish life when the bombardments from space were less often, and so life finally took hold of the Earth.
New Scientist also reported on the invention of "artificial atoms". Very small holes are etched into silicon, and the trapped electrons in these holes act like flat two dimensional atoms unlike anything found in nature.These atoms are larger than natural atoms and therefore they have a huge potential for new physics and chemistry.
A British rocket enthusiast has taken liquid rocket fuel, mixed it with epoxy and foamed it with liquid oxygen. He was inspired by Aero chocolate bars and is sponsored by them.
Australian producers are investigating the possibility of doing a movie based on Robert Silverberg's
The Man in the Maze.
Channel 9 is making a series about an abducted astronaut in collaboration with the Jim Henson's creature workshop -
Farscape.
The Kenneth Starr report released on the Internet at the same time as it was released to the US government was an historic event. Its the first time people on the other side of the world had simultaneous access to a government document, before it was even printed on paper.
The new parliament house flagpole has four spines pointing down from the centre, if you take what would be the resulting pyramid, then there is a slab of granite in the Members chambers at the exact place where the sarcophagus would lie in an Egyptian pyramid. Its suggested that this is where the GST policy was found.
Brian Walls opened the topic of Jupiter in science fiction by explaining how Jupiter is mainly light elements, water and gases, as opposed to the rocky nature of the inner planets. Issac Asimov's
Buy Jupiter is about advanced aliens who wish to trade Jupiter for high technology. The aliens use Jupiter as a space highway billboard to sell a popular beverage.
Humanity's reaction is to try and sell Saturn for a higher price to the beverage's competitors. Poul Anderson has hydrogen breathing aliens buy Jupiter to settle on in his
Ensign Flandry series.
James Blish's novel
Cities in Flight has cities in force fields settled on Jupiter. A Meeting With Medusa by Arthur C. Clarke details an encounter with intelligent Jovian gasbags floating in the atmosphere of Jupiter.
The movie 2001 was on Jupiter, and the book's events were around Saturn.
2010: The Year We Make Contact followed the movie and had Jupiter ignited to form a second sun.
Clifford Simak's
City series, in which both humans and dogs are enhanced to be able to survive on the surface of Jupiter despite the pressure and gravity. Both have transcended to a higher state they don't wish to return from. Poul Anderson's "Call Me Joe" covers much the same territory, with human minds transferred to synthetic bodies on Jupiter.
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century visits a Jupiter with habitable plateau mountaintops where the pressure and gravity are low enough for terrestrial life. This is similar to Larry Niven's
Gift from Earth, where the colony of Plateau is on a very tall mountain that makes it the only habitable place on the extra-solar planet.
The TV marionette series "Space Patrol" had a character called "Jerry the Jovian". Isaac Asimov wrote
Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter in which a seeing-eye dog in a spacesuit turns out to be a robot spy.
"ZZ1 ZZ2 ZZ3" by Isaac Asimov in which Jovian aliens decide to exterminate all humans upon learning of our existence. The humans send robot ambassadors to the Jovians who assume that they are humans. They are so impressed with the robot's strength and endurance that they crack and surrender. Asimov's "Not Final" has further on the hostile Jovians, who are working on a force field that will enable them to take to space to kill humans. A remote outpost on Europa is doing parallel research and proves that a force field is so unstable that it can only last a second and therefore never be useful to Jovian astronauts. He is collected to report his triumphant news in a new spacecraft with a force-field hull that flickers on and off several thousand times a second.
E. E. 'Doc' Smith's
Spacehounds of Ipc had Jovian northerner Hexans fighting southerner Vorkurlians. "By Jove!" by Walter Rose written in 1937
has a South African backyard rocket lost on its way to Mars, ending up on Ganymede where the crew meet up with big insects who wish to join the British Empire.
And lastly, Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote a John Carpenter novel called "Skeleton Men of Jupiter", a story so bad that even Graham couldn't read it.
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