sojournerdeep | [Voice & Text] - Seeking Volunteers

John? He's a good man. He used to be in the Army; today we work together at a non-profit.

Oh, I like PKD. As a boy I devoured the obligatories-- Clarke, Heinlein, etc., obviously, but these days I prefer Le Guin or Kim Stanley Robinson.

Making the world a better place through bigger tomatoes and free public education, that sort of thing?

~~My friend~~ ~~My dad~~ I've a friend who is into all that sort of thing as well. Very keen on improving society. The invisible guiding hand and so forth.

Kim Stanley Robinson wrote all those Mars books, yeh?

You can't go wrong with the great oldies, either- Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, or Arthur C. Clarke, for that matter.

We're havin' our own space odyssey! Hopefully Siri won't go off her rocker, though.

You could bring your mate round for a drink sometime if you like.

Yes, along those lines-- the non-profit does a lot of angel investing into researchers or businesses that may benefit the public, and generally seeking out people who could use a hand up, that sort of thing. I don't know if I'd go so far as to say that it's guiding society, but at least trying to save a few people from falling through the cracks.

That's right, the Mars trilogy, and others with a nearer-SF timeline. But yes, I still like the classics too.

Well, that's kind of you to offer, maybe once this mess with the gravity gets fixed.

I reckon that must be a hot topic amongst the members of the Think Tank- social engineering and so forth.

Those old timers predicted a load of technology we're using today, didn't they? Sci-Fi gets a rap for being a bit rubbish, like cheap genre stuff, but there's a lot of points about society in it.

How're you coping with the gravity? I read once that astronauts use magnetic floors and shoes, and some sort of stuff like velcro. I was thinking bungee mightn't be such a bad idea. Oh, and duct tape of course.

Edited 2016-11-06 18:57 (UTC)

Well, there are a lot of theories about how to make the world better for everyone, of course.

It's true. It's fascinating to see the things they were reasonably accurate about, and yet how off they were in others-- nobody really saw the Internet as it's developed, for instance.

I've been experimenting with magnets, actually, but so many things here aren't ferrous. Generally I've been trying to stick close to home. The shifts into heavy gravity aren't exactly kind to my spine. Though the lighter gravity I could actually see myself getting used to, but I suppose I shouldn't.

It's a great thing, thinking how to make the world better for everybody. The trouble comes from when people start deciding for other people how to improve their lot for them.

Mark Twain wrote a story that was sort of predicting the internet! From the ‘London Times’ of 1904. It's a sci-fi crime story, and the suspect gets cleared cos of livestreaming, essentially. You ever read it?

Where'd you get the magnets-- a dispenser?

There's no reason to assume we're even dealing with metals that we've ever encountered before, is there?

Blimey, I suppose it must do a number on your back when the gravity goes heavy, yeh. I think it's best not to get too used to light gravity, yeh-- then when you get back home you'll miss it.

I have read it, yes. I found it sort of unsatisfying-- but yes, he had a remarkable grasp of technology's capacity. You're rather widely read, aren't you-- that's a bit of an obscure Twain gem.

Yes, they gave me a little trouble initially and they're not terribly strong, but they are magnets, at least.

Well.... yes and no. There's only so many possible configurations that exist for elements, and iron, as a for-instance, is common on asteroids in our system, and logically should be common on asteroids out of our system too. 'There's only so many ways to make rock,' I suppose I should say. New alloys and compounds are quite likely, but I'd be surprised to find too many actual completely unknown elements here.... Still, anything is possible. But our hosts seemed to favor non-metallic construction materials. I think.

Mmm, yes, it's a little like hydrotherapy when it's light. Alas.

Sometimes back in those days, writers would let a plot point drop in favour of the overall effect. I think Twain got so enamoured with his "French justice" plot twist that he didn't necessarily stop to consider explaining how there came to be that extra spare body lying about to begin with.

Yeh, I guess I've read some stuff that might be a bit out there. I like to keep busy.

I have read some theoretical science stuff in a basic pop-science way, but I'm not any sort of expert on it. Whoever built this ship fancied the non-metallic metals, definitely.

You're pretty good at explaining the science to a lay person.

You said you work in computers, yeh?

Well, there's certainly worse hobbies than reading.

Thank you, though I'm not sure I'm much beyond the pop-science either, at least when it comes to geology. It's not something I've really studied.

That's right. I'm more into silicon, copper, and gold when they're on circuit boards.

I probably do some of those as well!

Fossils, that's the geology I know. You ever heard of the Jurassic Coast?

I suppose you've built your own computer from the ground up?

I suppose you might at that.

In England, yes? Into dinosaurs, then?

Well. Yes, but more when I was a young man.

But no need to worry about me, Mr Finch. Only joking. Besides, there's so much to do, there's no time to have bad habits.

Idle hands, that's what gets people into trouble, so I'm told.

Fortunately I am never idle.

That's right. A bunch of villages on the West coast-- Lyme Regis is the one you might've heard of. Dunno if you read anything that's not typical sci-fi, but Jane Austen wrote about the place, and John Fowler as well, in The French Lieutenant's Woman (which if you've not read, you ought to-- don't be put off by the title, it's about time travel and it's smashing).

Anyway, there was this lady, Mary Anning, back in the 1800's, she's one of the greats in paleontology. Discovered the first complete ichthyosaur skeleton, and made loads of other fossil discoveries as well. She was the one who worked out what coprolites were! They used to think they were bezoars. Never got the credit she deserved in her day, died broke, you know the drill when it comes to women in science back then, I reckon.

But here I'm rabbiting on. Anyway, yeh, I like dinosaurs all right.

How d'you fancy the computers here? Made any earth-shattering discoveries?

That one I haven't read. I'll keep my eyes open should a library appear. Thank you for the recommendation.

I liked dinosaurs to a reasonable degree, I suppose, but I was always more pointed upward than downward-- space travel, satellites, all that.

They're very... interesting. They're-- well, they're-- different. But trying not to be. Erm. I suppose that's not very clear.

Don't thank me just yet-- you might hate it!

The thing I like about the old writers like H.G.Wells or Jules Verne is they were considering things that real science got into over the course of the 20th century and even now. Think about how much stuff used to be considered fantastic and now is just thought of as garden-variety science knowledge.

Even flying in an aeroplane, for example, or having modern appliances-- let alone a device like this or an AI system like our girl, here.

Did you ever want to be an astronaut when you were a kid?

What do you mean when you say 'they're not trying to be different'?

Well, that's always been the province of progress, hasn't it: the gradual mundanization of what was formerly miraculous.

No, not with any degree of seriousness. I had rotten eyesight even as a boy.

Emphasis on "they are trying not to be" different. Slightly different implication. They're doing their very best to present to each of us at the level with which we may be personally assumed to be technologically competent. They're trying not to spook us.

[Voice & Text] - Seeking Volunteers

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