Tag: classic sci-fi

Of Clarke and his Odyssey’s

2001_Space_StationNo doubt about it, 2001: A Space Odyssey was one of the coolest, most memorable, and enduring movies I ever saw. Strange, considering there wasn’t that much dialogue in the film, and some would say that not much happened. But that’s the thing about Kubrick movies, they are very subtextual. And of course, Clarke’s involvement can not be minimized. But I’m here to talk about Clarke specifically, and the many books that came out of this screenplay that he and Kubrick created.

For starters, the books were quite different from the original movie. They contained only trace elements of the fear and intense awe that were there in the original movie. In fact, Clarke can be accused of being quite dry, in my opinion, his books somewhat technocratic and devoid of a lot of the complex emotions human beings are known to have. In fact, I was generally disappointed with the ending he wrote, how astronaut Frank Bowman was perfectly okay being whisked millions of light years away from home and transformed into the “Star Child”.

2001One would think that a person’s psyche would shatter under the strain of knowing that they were being transported across the universe, never to see home again. One would also think that a process of metamorphosis, whereby a human being was being forced to leave behind their corporeal body in favor of some higher form, would be absolutely terrifying. One would think that, but nope!

Still, Odyssey’s main strength lay in its scientific explorations of a future world as well its explorations of extra-terrestrial intelligence. The idea of an alien race that was so advanced and evolved that it had effectively left its bodies behind was groundbreaking, as was the idea of a monolith. The perfectly proportional shape, rectangles laid out in a ratio of 1:2:3; much better than bulky spaceships and little green men I must say!

Also, the story introduced the world to Hal, the AI who, thanks its exposure to human intrigue, becomes homicidal, all the while with that perfect, clinical manner of his! Frightening as he was in the movie, the book contained more depth and drew out the conflict between him and Bowman. In the end, Hal tried to decompress the ship when he realized he had lost control of the mission, which was much more effective than the rather truncated flow of events that happened in the original screenplay.

2010_cover2010: Odyssey Two, was similarly interesting. In this installment, a second mission is mounted to discern what came of the first. They discover the ship, reactive Hal, and learn that the secrecy surrounding contact with the Monolith was what drove him nuts and was the real purpose of the original mission. Ultimately, it is realized that the alien presence around Jupiter has to do with the moon of Europa, which was featured prominently in the original story because of new discoveries being made about the planet at the time.

For those who don’t know, it is widely believed that life exists beneath Europa’s outer crust, composed of ice and rock, since the oceans that lie beneath are warm from Jupiter’s intense radiation and magnetic field. As a case of art imitating life, Clarke decided that in his second book, the reason for the monolith’s presence around Europa – facilitators, if not creators, of life – was to help the natural process of life along.

2010_3By turning Jupiter into a second star – scientists have long known that the gas giant could have become a star if things had happened marginally different in our solar system – Europa’s ice crust melted, atmosphere formed, and life was able to crawl from its oceans. The book also reintroduced Bowman to the story, who is now a living entity inside the monolith around Europa.

After communicating with the crew, letting them know that “something wonderful” is about to happen and they need to leave, he disappears, only to show up near the end and invite HAL (who’s about to die when Jupiter goes Nova) to come with him. By the end of the story, Bowman and HAL, speaking from the Monolith, warn humanity never to go to Europa. The monolith’s experiment in life is to flourish freely there, they advise, without human interference.

2010_4In the movie adaptation, there’s also a saccharine bit about how the Cold War powers should live in peace, but that was thrown in there for the sake of the 80’s audiences who were still dealing with the Cold War. Much like most of the US-Soviet competition that characterized the movie, it never made it into the original book.

Then, years later, Clarke wrote Odyssey Three, his third installment in the series. Set in 2061, this book was again inspired by real events, the return to the Solar System of Comet Halley. Since it was not scheduled to return until 2061, he set the book in that year and began writing about a mission to go study it up close, during which time they will be doing a flyby of Europa. So Floyd, the main character of book II, a “celebrity guest”, goes on this mission with a new crew.

2061_odyssey3The main purpose is to investigate Halley’s comet, but the main story thread picks up when scientists on Earth and nearby Ganymede notice a new mountain that has formed on Europa (“Mount Zeus) which cannot be a volcano because of its asymmetrical nature. For reasons that are never fully-explained, the mission is hijacked and the crew become stranded on Europa.

During a rescue attempt, Floyd’s son, Bowman’s grandson, and the Afrikaaner character see the monolith on Europa and a wreck of a Chinese ship that tried to investigate earlier, in defiance of the monolith’s warnings. They see the monolith and the mountain confirm that it is, in fact, a giant diamond, a piece of Jupiter that broke off when it went nova and landed on the moon. All of this is consistent with scientific articles of the time that said that Pluto and Neptune had diamond cores, the result of carbon compression, and that the same was probably true of Jupiter.

In the end, the crew is rescued, Bowman makes an appearance in the dreams of a few people, and they come to realize that his consciousness now resides inside the monolith. The mountain also disappears beneath the surface of Europa’s ice. From all this, it is now clear that Europa is evolving, that Bowman and HAL are still alive in some form, and that a monolith is there, acting as guardian and watchman to the whole process.

3001Then, to finish things, Clarke wrote 3001: The Final Odyssey. This book I read when I was about twenty, at a time when my literary and critical reading skills were being honed by some seriously awesome teachers and course loads. Perhaps because of this, or because Clarke changed things up drastically in the last book, I was very disappointed.

Quick synopsis, the character of Frank Poole, the astronaut who was killed by HAL in book I, is brought back. His body floats back into the Solar System after having done a circuitous route to the outer rim, and since it’s 3001, they are able to revive him. The first half of the book is then spent showing Poole how different the future is, revising Clarke’s predictions about stuff that happened in the book 2001 but not in real life, deals with all kinds of millennial themes (since the book was written just a few years shy of 2000 and is set just after the third millennium), and asserts the rather weak conclusion that a person from 2001 would have little trouble adapting to life in 3001, as opposed to someone from 1001 adapting to 2001.

Why? Because by 2001, most things that will become a reality by 3001 would be being postulated. Now this I found weak for a few reasons. First, it assumes that what we predict will be taking in 3001 actually will. It assumes that progress is a completely linear thing, that history is devoid of repeats or regression, and is generally an example of Clarke’s technocratic mindset. It also manages to gloss over the fact that Clarke was wrong about most of his predictions for 2001.

For one, the Cold War didn’t continue into the future, commercial space travel was not invented, there were no colonies on the moon, and there were no exploratory missions to the rim of known space. These he attempted to minimize by saying that these things were at least in the planning stages. Yeah! In the same way that a trip to the Moon was in the planning stages during H.G. Wells time, but that didn’t make it close!

space_elevator_liftAnother major disappointment of the first half is the fact that the technological innovations he mentions look like they were ripped directly from Star Trek! For one, they have holodecks (or a close approximation)! They have brain caps they wear that download information directly into your brain. And (this one was my favorite!) genetically engineered dinosaurs that do manual labor! …WHAT??? Are you freaking kidding me?!

To make that worse, he throws in a bit about Poole was surprised to see this, even though he saw all the “Jurassic movies” as a kid. This, along with several other pop-culture references in the first half, made we want to gag! To be fair, its hard to write a book about the near future, especially over and over while the actual future is taking place. But these kind of revisions, penciling in the things that happened in real life, is just annoying! If anything, the real historical record should be minimized in the background.

Much like his talk of all the scientific feats that didn’t happen, it was probably something that should have been tacitly dealt with, but not talked so much about. Oh, and of course, his comments on religion. The way Clarke saw it, humanity had created a universal church in the future after the fall of Christianity. He figured that at some point in the future, the Vatican would open up its archives and it would subsequently fall in the same way the Kremlin did when it did the same. Are you kidding me?

world_religionsSure, its a neat parallel, but everyone already knows the church’s crimes, they’ve been documented endlessly. And the archives aren’t exactly sealed, they’re just not open to the general public. So what would opening them to the public really change? Furthermore, to suggest that humanity could do away with faith because technology meant it no longer needed it is both shallow and naive. It’s the same kind of dogmatic thinking that goes into fundamentalism, that asserts that humanity can’t live without religion because it would be totally lost without all its dogmatic signposts and explanations.

My own theory, humanity’s need for faith, as with everything else, is ambiguous and will not be subject to any one influence. Chances are, we will never outlive our need for spirituality, but that does not mean we can’t live without specific institutions. And we will NEVER be able to invent some bland, universal, all-inclusive faith. Not that we won’t attempt to, but chances are it will fail.

But I digress… the second half of the book deals with Poole deciding that he wants to go to Europa to see what became of HAL and his old colleague. So he goes, and unlike other ships that have tried and failed, he makes it. Then comes more disappointments, Frank and HAL are not transcendent entities as was suggested in previous books. They are merely downloads, digital copies of their original selves preserved inside the monolith – which isn’t a conscious being but is itself a computer. BORING!

2010_jul2012-a4After all that talk about intelligence and reaching the next great leap in cosmic evolution, this is what it all turned out to be? Bits and bytes in some big storage machine? And then there was the status of the Europan’s. Basically, that too, contrary to the hopes inspired by previous books, hasn’t gone so well. The Europan’s chemical and biological makeup, it is revealed, does not inspire confidence. The lifeforms are too basic, too slow and stodgy, to ever evolve into dynamic intelligent beings it seems.

So humanity won’t have counterparts then, children from the “other sun” to deal with in the future? ‘Nuther big letdown man! Well, the book wasn’t over so I went on reading. After all this slow build-up, we finally come to the climax of the story. Turns out, the monoliths are coming back to the Solar System. Why? The last transmissions they sent out were over 900 years ago, back when humanity was contemplating its own nuclear annihilation and breaking the quarantine on Europa.

Jupiter Moons MonolithThis causes the monoliths to conclude that humanity is too aggressive, an experiment gone wrong. So… humanity needs to prepare. They look at all weapons they have in their arsenal, but could possibly stop the monolith’s, a race eon’s older? They opt for a computer virus, another attempt by Clarke to pay homage to the time in which he was writing. They download the virus into the monolith on Europa in the hopes that it will transfer it to the others that are on their way.

Frank and HAL are meanwhile stored in a data crystal to preserve their identities, and before everything hits the fan, it all stops. The monolith’s get the virus, doesn’t really effect them, but they see that humanity has changed since they last saw them and decide to give them more time. Kind of a letdown. The final words, that humanity is still young and their God “still a child”, and they will be granted a reprieve until “The Last Days” were kind of chilling, but it still felt like an abortive climax.

Thus ended the Odyssey series. Some attempts have been made to keep it going by fan-fiction authors, but the less said about them, the better. Nothing worse than fan-fic’s who try to keep a series going after its creator retired it (see Dune and it’s Descendants for more on this point!). And while I was disappointed with the ending, I do think the series was very enjoyable and worthwhile overall.

268170-akira06_superSome of the concepts, transcendence, ancient species, directed cosmic evolution, were all picked up on by some of the best sci-fi minds, not the least of which were J Michael Straczynski (creator of Babylon 5) and Katsuhiro Otomo (creator of the cyberpunk anime Akira). Where he was weak was in his fundamental understanding of human beings and history; how he felt that people are mere subjects to technological evolution and would continue to progress on a linear pattern. Human beings are certainly affected by technological change, but that change is not altogether positive.

In fact, the changes it engenders are often negative and lead to backlash and rejection as a result. Far from replacing religion, technology is often seen as a substitute religion, inspiring the same kind of mindless devotion as fundamentalism, or encouraging people to revert to simple beliefs in the hope of being delivered from its cold rationality. These are the kinds of things I would hope for in any investigation of the future, the social as well as technological upheaval and how they were connected, or at least a balanced look at these kinds of issues.

But Clarke is not that type of guy, he’s a futurist so it’s naive of me to expect it from him. In the end, he got me thinking, both in tune with his thoughts and against them, so I have to be thankful. In the end, that’s what good author does, gets your mind going and your blood pumping. And he left an enduring legacy, many titles to his credit and millions of people inspired by his word, so I say kudos to him! Thanks for all the memories and inspired thoughts, Mr. Clarke. Hope you found a quiet place amongst the stars now that you’ve transcended that final barrier. Rest in peace, Star Child!

Of Dune and its Descendents

I could never create a blog about science fiction without mentioning the man who is by most standards the greatest sci-fi author of all time. Frank Herbert, author of the Dune sextet, was not only a master at creating detailed universes and realistic characters, he was also the man who literally wrote the book on hard sci-fi. In essence, he was the one who taught people how to take science fiction seriously, something rarely seen before his time. Philip K. Dick, another great of hard sci-fi claimed while writing in the 1950’s that whenever he spoke of his work, he would constantly be asked: “have you ever thought about writing something serious?” I myself have fallen into this trap many times, thinking to myself that anything I write that is set in an alternate universe or the distant future is somehow less real, less meaningful than something written about today or true life events.

It took Herbert’s Dune to snap me out of my complacency. It was after reading the first three of his novels (re-reading actually since I’d already cracked them before) that I realized that a bunch of ideas that I had been keeping bottled up in my head could actually be made into a full-length novel, maybe even a series of them. Up until that time I had been looking for something to write about, but had placed any thoughts of a sci-fi nature into a folder marked “idea for a TV series”. Yep, the best I figured I could do with any science fiction material I thought up was maybe pitch an idea for a TV show someday, you know, in case teaching and writing “serious” stuff never panned out. This was a long-shot in its own right, not to mention something I knew nothing about. Writing for TV? Not my thing, but at the time I figured that was all my ideas would be good for. At no time did I think they could be useful in helping to solve my writing dilemma. But then, after reading Dune, I felt inspired and started putting pen to paper (well, fingers to keys if you want to get technical) and the rest has been history.

But this isn’t about my work, its about Frank’s. And as every fan of Dune knows, Frank’s sextet ended on a somewhat uncertain note. His original six novels did not complete the series; for instance, we were still left with many unresolved threads in the last book, the whole “Golden Path” thing that Paul Atreides and Leto II “The Tyrant” had foreseen had yet to be explained or brought to fruition as well. After years of waiting, wondering and speculating, the Dune fan community finally caught a break when his son Brian Herbert picked up the mantle and revealed that his father had kept notes on a seventh and final Dune book in a safety deposit box that would cap off the series and answer all their unanswered questions. I was lucky enough to have finished the sixth book just in time to get in on this and was relatively excited.

And I’m sorry to say that the only thing greater than the build-up was the letdown! I sound like a prick saying this, but I honestly feel that Herbert’s legacy has fallen on hard times in the hands of his son and coauthor, the soft sci-fi writer Kevin J Anderson. After first announcing their collaboration and plans to complete the series, they started out with a pretty sensible and predictable stunt: they wrote prequels. The first was the trilogy known as the “Prelude to Dune” series. I read two of the books in this trilogy, “House Atreides” and “House Harkonnen” (but not the third and final, “House Corrino”) back in the early 2000’s and was generally unimpressed. In fact, it would be an exaggeration to say I read them, Atreides I put down two-thirds of the way through and Harkonnen I didn’t even get one hundred pages into before I got bored and dropped it.

This I blame in part on the fact that I’ve never really been a fan of prequels. For one, they have to be done right! And if the audience is already familiar with the story, the characters, and where everything is going, it’s not going to make for a very good read. It’s just filler, people reading to see how it happened, not what, where, when, and why. Anyone who sat through the Star Wars prequel trilogy ought to be able to relate. Another reason was the fact that the books seemed relatively uninspired. Not only did they suffer from that prequel sense of duty, having to explain how events the readers were already familiar with came to pass, it was almost always in a way that disappointed. When it comes to background, like most things, less in more. And these two authors really didn’t seem to be bringing anything new and original to the table, just recycling old stuff they knew the fans liked. Just seemed… I don’t know, lazy and kinda crass.

However, this did not stop me from perking up when they announced the second prequel trilogy, the “Legends of Dune” series. It seemed a bit consumerish for them to put out another set of prequels keep us fans waiting for Dune 7 like this, but what the hell right? We all wanted to know what the heck this thing called the “Bulterian Jihad” was all about. In the original Dune series, Frank had indicated that 11,000 years in the future – 10,000 years before the events in the first novel – there was a religious war that was waged by humanity against any and all thinking machines. This war altered the shape of the universe and ushered in the socio-political landscape that characterized the original novels. But beyond that, no one knew what happened. So, the son and the coauthor decided to write about it. What could go wrong?

As it turned out, a lot! Purely my opinion, but these books were an example of what never to do in writing. The first book, “The Butlerian Jihad”, I bought with some interest, and I am sad to say it was one of the worst pieces of writing I have ever seen! It was totally one-dimensional, predictable, and the plot was full of starts and stops and just seemed to fumble its way towards the conclusion. The characters were also completely superficial and really just a bunch of bad stereotypes and cookie cutter heroes and villains. But, I finished it, mainly out of curiosity and even managed to talk myself into buying book two, “The Machine Crusade”. Another suck-fest! The same exact weaknesses as the first! The good guys were too good, the bad guys too bad, and the story was ridiculous and thin as the paper it was written on. I couldn’t believe that Brian Herbert and Anderson could even think about putting the name Dune on it! Surely they had to be sick with guilt over it! But apparently not because they just kept on turning them out. To be fair, I never read book three of the series, for obvious reasons. And based on the synopses I’ve read, I think I made the right choice. While some reviewers hailed the literary duo for their ability to connect past with present, others described it using the same words that I did. Namely, contrived, superficial and not up to the originals.

And yet, I still went out and bought the Dune 7 book when it came out! I might have been a sucker for it, but after years of waiting and many dollars wasted on useless prequels that did nothing to satisfy my curiosity, I had to know how the damn thing ended! I was already writing my own novels at this time, so I felt all the more driven to see how my mentors own vision wrapped up. Sure, this latest book was only book one of two, yet another conspicuous act of opportunism by these two authors, but what did I care? I had to know how things ended and as usual, I felt that the writing style and narrative ability of the duo left something to be desired, but I was still intrigued and held on throughout, waiting for the awesome conclusion to book one of two.

Then I read it… I threw down the book in disgust and never touched another publication by them again.

“Seriously?” I said to myself. The conclusion to the whole story was that the machines were coming back? All that build-up, all that talk of humanity’s extinction and the need to alter the future, it was because those lame-ass, tinker toy, evil the cat, cardboard cutout, villainous robots were coming back to settle an old score? Needless to say, I couldn’t believe it! I couldn’t believe that Herbert’s own son and the hackish Anderson would ever stoop to ending Frank’s masterpiece with a tie-in to their own pitiful work! I refused to believe that the book was even the result of looking over the contents of a safety deposit box that Frank Herbert’s had left behind. In my mind, this ending was merely an attempt to conclude the series in a way that paid homage to their own weak interpretations of the Dune universe. Attempting to rewrite history, as it were, to suit the son and his second, not to complete the vision of the father. (Bit of a Dune-esque theme in there I’m thinking!)

Of course, I could be all wrong. It’s entirely possible the Legends of Dune prequels and Dune 7 (titled “Hunters of Dune”) were the direct result of Herbert’s own notes. But I couldn’t see how. They were nothing like his original books, and all throughout the originals, where hints were dropped as to the possible outcome of the “Golden Path”, not once was machines mentioned or any hint given that the threat to humanity came from the return of some old enemy. If anything, Herbert seemed to be suggesting that it would come from within, from humanity itself, or possibly from an alien intelligence, something humanity had yet to encounter. And while I wanted desperately to know what happened in book II of Dune 7 (“Sandworms of Dune”), I just couldn’t bring myself to waste the money. Luckily, I managed to get a hold of some reviews and synopses which told me all I needed to know. The story ends with more Deus Ex Machina plot twists, contrivances and plot holes big enough to drive a truck through. And the final message, the moral of the whole Dune saga? Humans and machines need to live together in peace! …Really? Where did they get that shit from, the Matrix playbook? Had they just watched that whole trilogy and figured ripping off another franchise was a good way to end Herbert’s legacy?

I mean really, THIS was how six books about human evolution, ecology, science, social and economic models, politics, social control, revolution, upheaval, prescience, survival, genetic engineering, eugenics, holy wars, secret societies, resource control, awareness drugs, chivalry and knife fights was to end? All that history and timeless wisdom that Herbert drew on, and the final message was that humans and machines need to learn how to live together? Dear God, I could imagine Frank Herbert turning over in his grave! But what can you say when its own son who’s putting out these things? You figure he must have the best of intentions.

But good intentions or not, the duo weren’t finished there. Shortly thereafter, they began writing stories that fell (ahem!) between the original books. Yes, as if prequels and sequels weren’t enough, now they were writing… I’m not even sure what to call those! “Paul of Dune”, “Winds of Dune”, and coming soon, “The Sisterhood of Dune”, are all stories that take place between the respective novels in the original series. Again, out of curiosity, I picked up these books to give a gander at their dust jacket and see just what the hell they were about. Again, I felt my IQ drop and promptly put them back down! Even after all the crap I had endured at the hands of these two writers! And yet, I somehow found fresh reasons for being offended by their latest attempts to cash in on Frank’s good name. One, the stories obviously do not cover anything new! Events between the first three novels are all covered in the originals themselves, and at length! Nothing more needs to be said! Second, these guys had already put out six books of pure filler, unoriginal stuff that does nothing but flesh out stuff Frank already wrote about. So it would hardly be unfair to say that the “Heroes of Dune” series, as its called, will be any different. Every time these two publish a book with the Dune name on it, it becomes an instant bestseller, purely for reasons of recognition, never for reasons of quality or originality. Profit incentive is the only reason to keep doing it!

To be fair, its hard for anyone to step into the shoes of a great author, let alone someone like Frank Herbert who left a mountainous legacy. And hey, we all gotta eat right? But in the case of Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson, I think it’s safe to say that their work and continued attempts to cash in speak for themselves. When it comes to raping the legacy of Frank Herbert and the Dune series, these two just can’t seem to get enough! Where there’s more money to be made and fans to exploit, these two will pen something else thats equally fluffy and superfluous and just sit back and let the royalties roll in. But how much longer can they keep this up? Who knows, these guys are good like that!

So out of respect for the master and original creator, I implore his son, Brian Herbert, to please stop! Its noble and brave that you’ve decided to step into your father’s shoes to finish off his masterpiece, but the direction you’re taking it in threatens to destroy every last trace of authenticity it once had! And to Kevin J Anderson, let me humbly suggest that you take this opportunity to go back to doing what you do best: writing fan fiction for Star Wars, X-Files and other generic sci-fi franchises. Hell, Star Gate has to be hiring, and Halos pretty damn popular right about now, maybe you could pen something for them. But for the love of God, stay away from Dune, it is clearly out of your league and I don’t think the fans can take much more, let alone the memory of Frank Herbert! I know its kind of late in the game to be asking this, but if there’s anything you two have demonstrated, its the ability to find new ways to squeeze blood from Frank’s corpse. So please, in the name of the master and all that is good and literary, I implore you, STOP!

Of Sci-fi and speculative fiction

I love science fiction, always have, always will.  But it’s the kind of science fiction that I love which I think is an important distinction. I’ve always subscribed to the idea that sci-fi comes in two varieties: classic and commercial.  The classical kind is the traditional variety that people take seriously, like H.G Wells, Frank Herbert, Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, William Gibson, Neil Stephenson, and Alastair Reynolds (These are just some of my favorites, they are by no means the only authors who were great at establishing sci-fi as a serious literary form.)

Commercial sci-fi, by contrast, is your basic stuff that owes much to the original masters but really didn’t follow in their footsteps.  Star Wars, Star Trek, Star Gate, et al (awful lot of stars in there!) are all examples of this.  This isn’t to say I didn’t like these shows, I grew up on Star Wars after all!  But to be honest, I never really found them particularly inspiring.  In all honesty, when it came to my own writing, they were more an example of what NOT to do.

Also, credit must be given to a friend of mine who once said that science fiction really isn’t a genre at all, it is a vehicle.  A vehicle who’s purpose is to deliver a message.  What that message is and how it is conveyed is what I think differentiates classic sci-fi from the commercial type.  Without a doubt, Frank Herbert’s Dune was the most inspirational work for me in that it delivered so much, and did so in a way that was both profound yet subtle.  He didn’t have muppet-style aliens who’s sole purpose was to reflect on humanity, he wasn’t preachy, his characters weren’t one-dimensional and his plots were never quick and tidy.  Characters were complex, his commentary was challenging, and his universe was rich and developed.

He was one of the greats that got me into writing sci-fi. Originally, back when I was still in school, I thought it might be cool to write a science fiction series.  I always loved drawing futuristic worlds and sci-fi stuff, but mainly I wanted to create my own universe. After reading his series, it occurred to me that I could turn my own ideas into short stories or even a full length novel.  I’ve crafted one full-length, called Legacies, and several shorts that are either set in the same universe or are completely independent. Since that time, I’ve also delved into some work that is a bit more contemporary, set in today’s world but with a sci-fi feel and spin.

The topics I like to cover are human evolution, extinction, exploration, colonization, society, technology, the cutting edge of things, and yes, even extra-terrestrials.  The longer I am here, the more I hope to post and share.  Hope y’all like what I have to offer! Enjoy!