Tag: Guest Contributors

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 11DEC2025 – Great Science Fiction Redux

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I think the only way to answer this is to look at some stories that have held my attention. I’m going to look at each in 4 particulars Plot, Characters, and Science, why it holds my attention. These are of course my own (potentially assinine opinions) and I apologize in advance if you find your ox has been gored

I Robot by Isaac Asimov
Plot: This doesn’t really have an overall plot per se, but one in each story. This is unsurprising as it a bunch of shorts tied together. Each story is itself is essentially a mystery and I find their resolutions in general quite Satisfactory (but the final story that I have never enjoyed)
Character: Honestly the human characters are cardboard. Susan Calvin feels like a classic scientist character in drag. Donovan and Powell who show up in several are more foils for the story line. The real characters here are the robots like Robbie and figuring them out is the whole point of each story.
Science: The Robot positronic brains are sheer handwavium. Some of the resolutions do involve some actual science. That said the positronic brains are VERY self consistent and that adds to a feeling of reality.
Why I Like It: the pleasure of it really comes from how the puzzles are solved. These are almost more Mystery than SciFi at some level

A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter L Miller
Plot: There are essentially 3 sections spread out over a period of several thousand years. Each section has an internal plot. All three sections ultimately lead to the final resolution of the plot
Character: Each section has one main character. These are well rounded (though ALL male as they are Monks or abbots of the Monastery for St. Liebowitz). Given their time scale they exist ONLY in their section, although their actions (and to some degree personalities) affect the later sections of the story
Science: This is a post nuclear war book. The effects of the radiation are wrong, though they would not necessarily have been thought unreasonable when these stories were written in the 1950s. Other science (as society recovers) makes sense though is not directly influencing the plot
Why I Like It: The story arcs are fascinating with the overall arch being rather disturbing. Mr. Millers prose is downright luminous in places and his plotting and bits of humor (winking at everyday things we understand but the characters don’t) helps offset the sombre tone of the overall arch of the story. Even though this is three separate stories the work to tie them together is elegant. This well deserved the 1961 Hugo when the Hugo meant something

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
Plot: This is a time travel story where an apparent time paradox must be resolved or history as we know it may just disappear. It is also a closed room Mystery AND a bit of a romance all at once with most of the action occurring in the late Victorian Age. And it successfully wraps up ALL these pieces and (mostly) sets the time stream back to its proper state. This is a tour de force of plotting
Character: Our two main characters (Ned Henry and Verity Kindle) are very well fleshed out. The secondary players also have decent motivations though are though sometimes intentional stereotypes (e.g. a totally distractible Oxford Don)
Science: It has time travel, which in all honesty, appears to be more in the realm of fantasy than SciFI (even though it has been a staple since H.G. Wells The Time Machine). That said the rest of its science mostly makes sense, and other than one critical biology issuethe science is not critical to the plot. The time travel is self consistent (although we are in the process of learning about it in detail) but we don’t get David Weber like info dumps but learn the about the Time travel as we go along.
Why I Like It: This is just an absolute romp. You are swept along by the mystery and by trying to resolve the change in the time stream that is introduced. As I said the plotting is genius level, the mystery is very like a good Poirot story. There are little details you may miss in the first reading that on second reading you wonder how you missed it. Again a worthy Hugo award winner

That’s probably more than anyone wants to read. Looking at it (and other stories I return to time and again) I am mostly attracted by good plotting. I admire additional character work and language. I am willing to suspend disbelief if the “science” is self consistent. I will tolerate massive violations of reality such as time travel, matter transports (looking at YOU Star Trek) and other massive violations of basic science. I’d love to see other people look at their favorites in a similar light

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 10DEC2025 – Ray Bradbury

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Bradbury is nearly sui generis amongst the 40’s/50’s/early 60’s SciFi Writers. His stuff often feels more like Lovecraft or Clark Aston Smith. My first “adult” scifi (not juvies like Tom Swift Jr. or young children scifi like Spaceship in the Apple Tree) were two of his collections. They were R is for Rocket and S is for Space that my 5th grade reading teacher found for me in the school library. I recently got a new audible version of his Martian Chronicles and although the technology doesn’t really make sense (maybe not even then) the stories themselves are beautiful and elegant in a fashion that the Asimov/Clark/Heinlein stories usually didn’t try for. Bradbury makes a lovely palette cleanser among other SciFi. Some moderns try at his style but honestly most of them are pale imitations like art students copying a Rembrandt or one of the pre Raphaelites.

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 17NOV2025 – Handicapping a Civil War

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The thought of a civil war is VERY messy. My (limited) familiarity is that I’d say 80% of the enlisted tend to be from the poorer (bottom 3-4) deciles of the population. The upper enlisted officers tend to come from families that have been in the services for a long time. They are more from the red/purple areas than deep blue. Officer Corp is more split(again from my very limited experience), Flag officers are VERY political and Obama’s purge of the flag ranks (as well as Col. ready to promote) means there is a very blue tinge at the top. Lower rank officers likely come from families that have traditions of service and come from more traditionally conservative backgrounds as the militery calling is pooh poohed by the Left. Pretty sure neither red nor blue troops would kill civilians without severe provocation. Most would also not participate in massive disarmament of citizens. I think the latter ends up with mutinies and fragging of officers, with enlisted disappearing off into the bush. That said, the Left has its own shock troops in the armed bits and bobs of Antifa/Pantifa and other similar groups. They are far less morally bound than the members of the armed services. Would the National Guard and LEO stand back and let them go at it? Beats me, I’m not eager to find out.

As for strategic resources, the blue states have an issue. I think all the missile bases, plus Whitman AFB (B2, soon B21) are in red states). The Atlantic Boomer base is in a red state (no boomers run out of Groton CT any more), Pacific Boomer base is at Bremerton WA but would that matter? Boomers are odd they really try hard to stay at sea for long periods before switching crews. In a Red/Blue divorce, the Reds end up with most of the fixed ( Missile assets). I doubt the Red would disarm, given the Ukraine precedent.

Honestly any scenario I see tends to be rife with insurgencies. Blue in the more rural parts of Red would have massive hit and run attacks on them by light arms. Red going into citified areas will have Viet Cong like insurgents blending into the populous (with either the populous supporting them or by threatening the populous.

I just can’t create an Arisian like vision of the cosmic all on this one. If I were using the old magic 8 ball I’d be getting “Better ask again” or “Reply Hazy, try again”. The only thing I can say is I deeply doubt your model of a looser coalition, it seems very doubtful. Much of the Blue side views this as almost a theological/eschatological vision. There are as likely to live and let live as the 16th-century Spanish Inquisition. Certainly, there are parts of them that don’t believe (all) their nonsense. But those parts know that if they divert from the path, they are likely to find an ice pick in their forehead like a good menshivik.

Guest Contributor – Ed Brault – 17NOV2025 – RAH on “Bread and Circuses”

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“The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a ‘warm body’ democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens… which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it… which for the majority translates as ‘Bread and Circuses.’
‘Bread and Circuses’ is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome.”― Robert A. Heinlein

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 12NOV2025 – Selective Breeding

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Nature seems far more experimental at some level than we are used to. Consider for example Felis Catus (nee Felis Domesticus). They have only been hanging out with humans for ~10K years when they apparently self domesticated from Felis Libyca/Felis Sylvestris (it’s all about the mousies). There are SOME early traditional breeds of Asian cat e.g. Siamese cats (first mentioned 14th Century) and Japanese Bobtail (6th century prints) that have been around long times. Specific breeding other than perhaps for mousing ability, really only starts with cat shows the first in England being 1871. So 150 years of specific cat breeding. Currently TICA (one of several Cat fancy organizations) lists 73 breeds ( https://tica.org/ticas-breeds/browse-all-breeds/ ). The variance is not as great as say canines (that we’ve been hanging out with for 50K years and breeding selectively for over 15K years), but its starting to get some of the oddball shapes (e.g. Pixies or Munchkins) that resemble some of the dog breeds (Corgi/Dachshund) we are familiar with in their particulars. I suspect the evolutionary forces on our ancestors and their “kissing” (well this is a family blog so we’ll leave it at that 🙂 ) cousins were far greater than what we impose on show cats. I suspect that another factor that has significantly changed Anthropology (and the study of any set of animal clades) is the ability to map and recognize genes. This let us realize that H. Neanderthalis was the likely source of the M1CR gene that defines human redheads. Not sure if there is any trait that we directly trace to H. denisoviensis but maybe those genes are not quite so showy

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 07NOV2025 – FTL Drives

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Well at least there is a theoretical model for an FTL drive the Alcubierre drive( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive ) proposed in 1994. At present it has so many reasons we can’t do it (several different flavors of unobtainium, VERY large energies that even Antimatter would struggle to provide, and a likelihood that you can’t really steer the darned thing once you start it) that it is practically unachievable. Depending how all this dark matter/dark energy stuff falls out (and that is beginning to look pretty dodgy) things may get far better or far worse.

That said an antimatter drive (even a pulse antimatter drive, essentially an Orion drive using small matter antimatter/matter explosions) would be a godsend for reaching Mars the Asteroids or any other celestial body outside the Earth/Moon pair. Currently a Hohmann Orbit (minimum energy) to Mars runs 8-9 months of time and the window is only open every two years (26 months I think). At .01 G (a centi-G engine) this takes 64-112 days i.e. 2-4 months and position only affects time. At .1g (a deci-G engine) this drops to 36-76 HOURS (i.e. 1-3 days). The first matches early trips from Europe to the New World (e.g. the Mayflower took 70 days) which were ultimately commercially viable and establishing colonies was possible. The second is like rail trips across the US at rail’s peak in the 40’s and 50’s. That totally changes the relationship between Earth and the colonies.

Ad Astra per Aspera!!!

Guest Contributor – Ed Brault – 01NOV2025 – Goin’ South

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We moved from Burlington, VT, to Charleston, SC, 13 years ago, and never looked back. It took about six months to realize we were spending $1000 LESS per month . House payment (a real HOUSE, not a condo), gas, electricity (we bought an all-electric house and I feared the worst, and was VERY pleasantly surprised). I did a little research and found SC power is around 12.9 cents/kWh, while Vermont is 21.5 Mapped: The Average Cost of Electricity by U.S. State

Groceries, pet supplies, home repairs, etc. were all lower. the Charleston cultural life is as vivid and varied as Boston or NY. And perhaps more culturally balanced. Museums, sport arenas, the Galliard Playhouse, North Charleston Performing Arts Center, are always booked with everything from rock concerts to Broadway plays, The Sound of Music just opened for an 8-day run, and Jeff Dunham will be turning Walter and Achmed loose just before Thanksgiving. The SC Aquarium will be kicking off its annual Christmas program with light shows, music, and yours truly —among others —as SCUBA Santa!
And not a bottle of hot sauce in sight!
We’ve had snow twice since we moved down here, the first time literally a year to the day we moved in. We played it smart and stayed home until it melted off. The way you drive in snow in Carolina is YOU DON’T! We Damnyankees may know how, but the locals have not got a clue!

Overall, I will take Southern Living over Vermont. We don’t get Leaf Peeper Season here on the coast, but a short drive up towards Clemson gets you into some nice color. And I definitely do not miss having to dig my car out of a snowdrift at 5AM in double-digit-below-zero temperatures. I saw it as a sure sign of civilization when I drove past Lowes and Home Depot in November, and there was not a single snow-blower or even shovel on display!

Stay warm, my friend!

 

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 16OCT2025 – Something for the Pot

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May I offer up this the 1985 SciFi Enemy Mine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemy_Mine_(film) )? It is an excellent adaptation of Barry B. Longyear’s novella of the same name, Directed by Wolfgang Petersen (of Das Boot fame). It had a low budget (40 Million) and its special effects are well, dated even for 1985. Excellent acting by Dennis Quaid and Louis Gosset as the principals. Bombed at the box office as it was Neither Star Wars, Dune, nor Wrath of Khan.

I would also like to add in the war film department the 1969 film Battle Of Britain . To say the storyline is weak is an understatement (although it is briefly redeemed by Susannah York prancing about in her knickers). The killer here is the aerial fight scenes. These involve LARGE numbers of actual Spitfires, Me109 and Heinkel 111 aircraft (Me109 and Heinkels being part of the Spanish Air Force). They are well scripted and had input from Douglass Baeder and Air Marshall Dowding. It has a G rating but some scenes are almost too realistic and freaked out the 8-year-old me, who dunned my dad into taking me to the movie.

 

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 10OCT2025 – SF Longevity

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There have been several SciFi takes on this. Three stick out to me beyond Heinlein’s tales of Lazarus Long. These are Niven’s Boosterspice in Known Space, Blish’s antiagathics in the Cities In Flight, and Weber’s Prolong in the Honorverse.

My memory on Cities In Flight is poor, but I think the antiagathics were rare and kept only to the upper class so it has limited effect on it’s society other than envy of the upper classes.

In both Known Space and the Honorverse there is a tendency for careers to be MUCH longer. What would have been generational wealth tends to be personal wealth over time. Prolong gets you 200-300 years in very good shape.

Boosterspice is unlimited, Louis Wu is celebrating his 200th birthday at the start of Ringworld and hangs around MUCH longer(potential spoiler for a 30-50 year old series 🙂 ). There is a hint in a later Known Space story that, over time, Boosterspice also makes Humans VERY risk averse (though not quite Puppeteer risk averse).

In the Honorverse Prolong also seems to extend the period of fertility so 100+ year old couples can be seen having children much later in life. I do not know about boosterspice.

At the time of Ringworld, Earth is still run by the UN and the birthrights system, but little is said otherwise. That said Teela Brown had not yet had boosterspice when she (presumably 20 something) heads off to the Ringworld(again potential spoiler). This might suggest that although extending life the effect on fertility is either negative or irrelevant so reproduction is limited by the normal span of ~ 40 years.