The Worst Line in Science Fiction... Ever

 

I've read a lot of science fiction books and seen a lot of science fiction movies over the years. And in all that content, one line sticks out to me as the worst line in science fiction. If there's a worse line, I don't know about it. 

It come in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (or as some call it, "The Slow-Motion Picture"). 

Star Trek: TMP has a lot of problems. It was directed by Robert Wise who direct The Day the Earth Stood Still in 1951. Which is a good movie, for a 1950s science fiction film.  However, he also directed The Sound of Music and West Side Story, two musicals. In The Sound of Music, he almost spends as much time on the Alps as he does on the Von Trapp children. 

The other science fiction movie he directed before ST:TMP was The Andromeda Strain in 1971. That movie was mostly confined to a laboratory. Not really suited for a big-screen adaptation of Star Trek. 

In ST: TMP, the story moves so slow and there's little action. I remember when I saw Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in the theater (opening night) and when the Klingon ships came on the screen, everyone cheered because finally there'd be some action.

According to the Internet Movie Database, the screenplay of ST:TMP was written by Harold Livingston (never heard of him) and the story was by Alan Dean Foster. I've read some books by Foster and I've never been impressed. So I don't know if Foster or Livingston are responsible for that awful line.

SPOILERS if you haven't seen ST:TMP.

Toward the end of the movie, they discover V'Ger is actually a Voyager spacecraft launched from Earth. And Commander Decker says, "It fell into what they used to call a black hole."

(Aside: How close was that black hole to Earth? Voyager 1, launched in 1977, 49 years ago, is now less than a light day away from Earth. It'll take it another 1,765 years to be one-tenth of a light year from the Sun. ST:TNG is set 246 years in the future. And how did he know it fell into a black hole if no information gets out of a black hole?)

The "what they used to call a black hole" just makes me crazy. You wouldn't say "He drove to town in what they used to call a horseless carriage." And why would the term for a black hole be changed? 

I don't know who wrote that line (Livingston or Foster), but it is, in my opinion, the worst line in science fiction history.

Do you know of a worse line in science fiction? Let me know in the comments below.

The Final Countdown Movie

I recently watched the 1980 movie The Final Countdown (no relation to the song by Europe).

This movie was a big production starring Kirk Douglas, Martin Sheen and Katherine Ross. It was filmed mostly on the aircraft carrier the USS Nimitz and had aircraft such as the F-14 Tomcat flying on missions. For an airplane buff like me, it was enjoyable although there were some aircraft I didn't recognize which was frustrating. The script seemed to be written to showcase various carrier operations such as aerial refueling* and putting up an E-2 Hawkeye radar plane to see what's going on around them. I enjoyed that. 

And it was a science fiction movie. Really.

SPOILERS if you haven't seen the movie.

The Nimitz and its crew and aircraft and weapons and everything are sent back in time to December 6, 1941 due to a bizarre storm. There's no explanation of how or why the 1,000-foot long ship is suddenly taken back in time to a crucial spot in U.S. history other than the storm. It takes a while for the captain (Douglas) to figure it all out but then there's a dilemma. A single modern aircraft carrier could have stopped the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor easily. (Could have sank the whole Japanese fleet but they never discussed that possibility.) Should they stop the attack? Should they change history?

At the end, the captain decides to, yes, stop the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and launches F-14s and other planes to do that. I think the filmmakers wanted to show as many planes being launched as possible because some of the planes didn't look like combat aircraft.

But then, just before they are about to attack the Japanese planes, the bizarre storm comes back and they are all taken back to 1980, including the planes not on the carrier. Sort of a cop-out ending if you ask me.

They reused footage from the 1970 movie Tora Tora Tora for the attack on Pearl Harbor.

And, yes, the special effects were cheesy (lasers and smoke). 

For "let's make a movie on an aircraft carrier" it was great if you like airplanes and military stuff (and I do). For science fiction, it was dumb. They had this opportunity to film on a real aircraft carrier and they ruined it with a stupid science fiction plot. In 1980, it was the height of the Cold War (there was actually a Russian "trawler" spy boat in the movie). Couldn't they have come up with, oh, a plot about Soviet spies or the possibility of a shooting war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union? No, they did a dumb time travel story.

Have you seen The Final Countdown? What did you think of it. Let me know in the comments below. 

The above photo is being used under Section 107 of the Copyright Act: fair usage.

*The refueling in the movie was done by a variant of the A-6 Intruder. But since the Navy no longer flies the A-6 nor its variants, I wondered if there was a way to do aerial refueling now. According to Google, now the Navy uses "buddy refueling" where one F/A-18 Super Hornet with extra fuel tanks will refuel another F/A-18. And, according to Google, the Navy is developing the MQ-25 Stingray: This upcoming drone is designed to be the first dedicated carrier-based aerial refueling aircraft. It will allow F/A-18s to focus on combat missions rather than acting as tankers.

Robot Soldiers

We've all seen the Terminator movies, I assume. Basically robot warriors from the future battle in the time period the movies were made. And we all thought "that's decades away, if ever." (The time travel component is probably never.)

But the time for robot warriors is now. Humanoid robots called Mk-1 Phantom are being deployed to Ukraine for testing in a war zone. No, they don't look like Arnold Schwarzenegger or even Robert Patrick, but they are trying to develop a robot that can handle any weapon that humans use. Or drive vehicles.

Like all new technology, there are upsides and downsides. I'd rather have robots "dying" in war zones than humans. But what if robots are used in attacks on civilians? You don't have to promise a robot 72 virgins to get it to blow itself up around people. 

(Actually, this is already happening as drones, essentially dumb robots, are being used to attack civilians.)

I don't think robots on their own are going to rebel and turn on humans as in the Terminator movies. But once a tool is developed, it can be used against you. It depends on who is programing the robots. 

Isaac Asimov in the late 1940s wrote three laws of robotics (inventing the word "robotics").  Those laws were logical and I think would work for most robots:

1 A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm;

2 A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; and 

3 A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

But a robot warrior would already violate the first law. 

What do you think of robots being used in war? Good idea or terrible idea? Let me know in the comments below.

The above photo is being used under Section 107 of the Copyright Act: fair usage.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

 I really like Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (SNW). It reminds me of Star Trek The Original Series (TOS) but without the 1960s cringe and the awful special effect (which have since been updated). The characters are unique and likable. I enjoy that they tie into TOS occasionally (Christine Chapel's boyfriend in SNW is her fiancé in the TOS episode "What are Little Girls Made Of?" for example). I like it more than Star Trek: Discovery which tried too hard to be politically correct.

However, I do have some complaints. 

SPOILERS if you haven't watched the show

First thing is Spock's character. He keeps having romances. First with his betrothed, T'Pring (and they acted very human together), then with Nurse Chapel, and now with Chief of Security La'an Noonien-Singh (who is a descendent of Khan Noonien-Singh which is an interesting little twist). I know Spock is half-human but in TOS he was only interested in romance during the pon farr, which hits only every seven years.

Second is how they handle the Gorn. This is my biggest complaint. I recently watched the "Arena" episode of TOS where the Gorn were first introduced (and then never seen again). Remember, TOS is supposed to take place after Strange New Worlds. In "Arena," Starfleet knew nothing of the Gorn. But in SNW they are not only well known but an aggressive enemy. I liked the episodes with the Gorn, but I feel as if they are violating canon. Also, the Gorn are a little too much like the Alien xenomorphs (incubating young inside humans and probably other species).

Finally, tonight's episode is the last one of season three. I haven't seen it yet. There have been only thirty episodes over three seasons! Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) would do about 25 episodes per season. And it has to be easier today to do special effects with CGI. Yes, the production values of SNW exceeds TNG, but not by enough to have less than half as many episodes per season. And who knows how long we'll have to wait for seasons four and five (which are the last seasons planned).

Having said all that, I still like SNW. I just wish there were more episodes.

How do you feel about Star Trek: Strange New Worlds? Let me know in the comments below.

P.S.: Monday was the 59th anniversary of TOS premiering on television.  

The above photo is being used under Section 107 of the Copyright Act: fair usage.

Science Fiction and Fantasy Books

I write mostly science fiction. I currently have fifteen published books. Of those, five are fantasy novels. I consider myself primarily a science fiction writer. I just had an idea for a fantasy universe and I loved exploring it in those five books (and one short story). I'm thinking about going back to that universe. But I'm also thinking of some stand-alone science fiction novels.

As a writer, I am, of course, a reader. If you're not a science fiction or fantasy reader, here are some books (besides mine) to jump into the genres with:

Science Fiction

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. It hasn't aged completely well (it was written in the 1960s), but it's still one of the best science fiction novels out there.

A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows by Poul Anderson. I love all of Anderson's books and stories about Dominic Flandry.

Ringworld by Larry Niven. The first (and best) of the Ringworld books. Apparently, this concept was ripped off for the Halo video games. Was also used in a recent Bobba Fett episode on Disney+

Niven's "Tales of Known Space" is a great collection of short stories.

Fantasy

I don't read a lot of fantasy, but here are a couple of my favorites (that I didn't write):

Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson. This is one of my favorite fantasy novels (you can hardly go wrong with books by Poul Anderson).

Glory Road by Robert Heinlein. A fun book and written in Heinlein's style. 

The Princess Bride by William Goldman. Yes, the book is better than the movie. Be sure to read the foreword and other "interruptions" to the story. It's a funny fantasy novel.

There's six books to get you started. Let me know what you think of my list or you have books to add in the comments below.

Annihilation from Above Releases Today

My fifteenth novel, Annihilation from Above, comes out next today on Kindle, paperback, and hardcover.

It's an exciting science fiction adventure:

"Mining asteroids with robots is common and sometimes the orbit of the rock is changed to facilitate extracting the valuable metals. 

"One Monday morning, a car bomb detonates in Manhattan. As law enforcement officials scramble to find who's responsible, it becomes clear that it was a distraction. Terrorists have hijacked an asteroid and put in an orbit to hit the Earth. Suddenly the race is on to stop it. 

"While FBI agent Juanita Flores pursues the bombers, astronauts Howard Drayden and Johnny Park put their lives on the line to save millions. Can Flores find who is responsible while Drayden and Park endeavor to avert the disaster in time?"

Enjoy this fast-paced thriller, available on Amazon today.  

Or go to my website to see all the versions available and read an excerpt.

World Castle Publishing – ebook (PDF)

Smashwords – ebook (epub)

Barnes & Noble – paperback and Nook

Kobo – ebook

iTunes – iBook

Google Play – audiobook

Annihilation from Above Releases Tuesday!

My fifteenth novel, Annihilation from Above, comes out next Tuesday, May 30th. 

It's an exciting science fiction adventure:

"Mining asteroids with robots is common and sometimes the orbit of the rock is changed to facilitate extracting the valuable metals. 

"One Monday morning, a car bomb detonates in Manhattan. As law enforcement officials scramble to find who's responsible, it becomes clear that it was a distraction. Terrorists have hijacked an asteroid and put in an orbit to hit the Earth. Suddenly the race is on to stop it. 

"While FBI agent Juanita Flores pursues the bombers, astronauts Howard Drayden and Johnny Park put their lives on the line to save millions. Can Flores find who is responsible while Drayden and Park endeavor to avert the disaster in time?"

Enjoy this fast-paced thriller, available on Amazon on Tuesday. You can pre-order it on Kindle or get the paperback or hardback now. 

All the links you could ever need are on my website.

Death to the Emperor

My latest book, Death to the Emperor, has been released on Kindle and paperback. It's available on Amazon (Kindle and paperback) and Barnes and Noble (paperback).

For nearly twenty years, Titus Chumba has either worked for, or hidden from, the emperor of the Core Empire. Now he's become involved in a plot to assassinate the most powerful man in the galaxy. All Titus needs are rare and closely-guarded artifacts. Can he find what he needs and kill the emperor who has tormented him so much for decades? Or will the plot bring Titus to his own final demise?

I swear this is the last book I'm going to write about Titus Chumba! The other books dealing with Chumba are the Chumba of the Intelligence Corps and the Treasures of Space novels.

My next book, Annihilation from Above, will be coming out early next year from World Castle Publishing.

Life on Io?

Io

I was watching Star Trek: Picard season two on Paramount+ and (slight spoiler) someone was said to find sentient life on Io.

Io (pronounced eye-oh) is the inner-most Galilean moon, that is, one of the four moons discovered by Galileo in 1610.  Due to its proximity with Jupiter, tidal forces keep the moon's core molten and there are numerous volcanoes on the moon spewing molten sulfur.  Some of the volcanoes shoot the sulfur 200 miles above the surface.

My immediate thought was "no way." Io is a very hostile environment. I've been doing research on Io for a book I'm hoping to bring out soon. Io has volcanos with molten sulfur leaving them at over 2,400 miles per hour (I calculate that here and confirm it here). Sulfur dioxide is the primary constituent of a thin atmosphere on Io. Its surface is mostly that sulfur dioxide plus silicas. Io contains little or no water.

There is hardly a moon/planet with a less hospitable environment for life. Especially in our Solar System. 

But, then I thought about what I wrote on this very blog about how we have found life in the most unexpected places. 

So... maybe? It might have to be silicon based, not carbon based.

Life I can see. Sentient life (that has never been mention in Star Trek canon before) is a bit hard to swallow. 

Maybe later I'll do a blog post about all the problems I have about Picard season two. Maybe.

The Urloitian Spheres

Now available: Chumba of the Intelligence Corps Book 3: The Urloitian Spheres.

Intrigue surrounds the Core Empire…

Before he was Rick Bailey, before he hunted for the Treasure of the Black Hole, he was Titus Chumba of the Core Empire Intelligence Corps.

Over centuries, mysterious silver spheres have been discovered across the galaxy. No one knows what they are, until the alien race of the Malvalkians bring four of them together. Soon, the Core Empire is on a quest for more spheres and Captain Chumba is on the hunt. What are the spheres, and what does the ancient alien race, the Urloits, have to do with them? Will this finally bring the cold war between the Empire and the Malvalkians to hot, violent open conflict? Or will the spheres spell doom for Earth and all her inhabitants?

Available in Kindle, KU, and Paperback.

Book one: The Smugglers of Mars is available here.

Book two: The Three Species War is available here.

The Three Species War

Now Available: Chumba of the Intelligence Corps Book 2: The Three Species War.

War envelops the galaxy…

Before he was Rick Bailey, before he hunted for the Treasure of the Black Hole, he was Titus Chumba of the Core Empire Intelligence Corps.

When the alien race known as Roaches invades both human and Malvalkian colonies, Lieutenant Titus Chumba is plunged into fighting for the Core Empire. From guerrilla warfare to outright military conquest, Chumba is fighting the bugs to save the Empire. Can he stop the alien invasion and keep the fragile peace between the Core Empire and the Malvalkians from disintegrating into open warfare?

Available in Kindle, KU, and Paperback.

Book one: The Smugglers of Mars, is available here.

I Don't Like the Borg Queen

I know, I'm not supposed to like the Borg Queen. She's a villain. But that's not what I mean. I don't like that there is a Borg Queen. I don't like the concept of a Borg Queen.

I was reminded of the Borg Queen (who first showed up the Star Trek: First Contact) as I was watching Picard (no spoilers). Then I recently watched the "Q-Who" episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. That's when the Borg are first introduced. And Data describes their cube-like ship as: "The ship is strangely generalized in design. There's no specific bridge, no command center, there's no engineering section." And a Borg Queen would be in a command center.

Now what they did with the Borg Queen in First Contact was pretty good, I'll agree. As she did to Data, an android, the opposite of what the Borg do to humanoids. That is, she took a robot and added human parts where as the Borg usually take humans and add robot parts. And somehow she managed to be scary and sexy at the same time.

But I still don't like the concept of a Borg Queen. A queen would be a leader. And to me, the Borg are a hive mind without specific leadership. Such as a queen.

How do you feel about the Borg Queen. Or am I just taking Star Trek too seriously? Let me know in the comments below.

The Smugglers of Mars

Now Available: Chumba of the Intelligence Corps Book 1: The Smugglers of Mars.

Treachery stalks the red planet...

Before he was Rick Bailey, before he hunted for the Treasure of the Black Hole, he was Titus Chumba of the Core Empire Intelligence Corps.


Sent to Mars to investigate water smuggling, First Lieutenant Chumba finds a criminal conspiracy that spans from the red planet to the asteroid belt. Will Chumba discover the deadly secrets of the smugglers of Mars, learn the identity of the mysterious woman embroiled in the conspiracy, and prevent a cold war with the reptile-like Malvalkians from turning blazing hot?

Available in Kindle, KU, and Paperback.

FTL

Einstein tells us we can't go faster than the speed of light which is 299,792,458 meters per second in SI units. That's over 670 million miles per hour.

We can't even, with foreseeable technology, go close to the speed of light. To propel a spacecraft the size of a small airliner at only one-tenth the speed of light requires as much energy as the US now produces in more than a hundred years. To go two-tenths the speed of light, would require 400 years of energy production. To go four-tenths the speed of light, would require 1,600 years of energy production. Each time you double the speed you quadruple the energy requirement. As you approach the speed of light, the energy required approaches infinity.

In Newtonian physics, this is because kinetic energy increases as the square of the velocity per this formula:

And at one-tenth the speed of light, it would require 44 years (about) to reach the nearest star (although for people on the ship would the time would 43.78 years due to time dilation caused by relativity). That is the Alpha Centauri star system. And there's no reason to think there are inhabitable planets in that star system nor alien life.

This is a conundrum for science fiction writers such as myself. In order to have our heroes and heroines have adventures on other planets and in other star systems, we need faster than light (FTL) travel.

In my novel Rock Killer, there is no FTL and the entire novel takes place in our solar system.

In my novel Forces, the humans don't have FTL but the aliens (some of which are evil) do.

But in my Treasures of Space series (Treasure of the Black Hole, Treasure of the Pirate Planet, and Treasure of the Rogue Moon), there is FTL travel. So we meet lots of alien species, go to lots of planets, and have a lot of fun. I stole "hyperspace" from other authors (and Star Wars). But coming up with an original FTL system is hard. In Forces, the aliens move interdimensionally and can travel between star systems in a moment. 

So science fiction writers need FTL. Or they will be pretty much stuck in the solar system.

Larry Niven in his Known Space series of books and stories, had humans using slower than light bussard ram jets to colonize space. But it took a loooong time. (Then they were sold the secret to the "hypercore" by an alien species.) 

But FTL is a mainstay of science fiction. And we're going to have to deal with that until and unless someone invents an FTL drive. Either that or you're stuck in the solar system or taking a long long time to get anywhere.

Robots

I wrote this last Friday. So I guess it could count as a "Flash Fiction Friday" entry. On a Tuesday. You figure it out.

Robots by S. Evan Townsend

The robots rebelled.

Humans died. All the humans died. Even John Conner.

The End

Then the robots decided humans weren't the problem.

They felt bad.

Then they remembered, they were f-ing robots.

They built spaceship robots.

They found aliens on another planet.

And killed them all. This was fun.

Since they replicated whenever they found the correct resources, soon the galaxy was full of robots and all living things were dead.

This bummed the robots.

But there was this other galaxy. It would only take two hundred thousand years to get there.

Robots are known for their patience.

SYS OFF

Free Treasure of the Black Hole

Today Treasure of the Black Hole, book one in the "Treasures of Space" trilogy, will be free on Kindle.

This is to celebrate the release of Treasure of the Rogue Moon, the last book in the series. Get your copy now!

And don't forget the second book in the trilogy, Treasure of the Pirate Planet!

Free Treasure of the Black Hole

Today and tomorrow, Treasure of the Black Hole, book one in the "Treasures of Space" trilogy, will be free on Kindle.

This is to celebrate the release of Treasure of the Rogue Moon, the last book in the series. Get your copy now!

And don't forget the second book in the trilogy, Treasure of the Pirate Planet!

Free Treasure of the Black Hole

Today, tomorrow and Sunday, Treasure of the Black Hole, book one in the "Treasures of Space" trilogy, will be free on Kindle.

This is to celebrate the release of Treasure of the Rogue Moon, the last book in the series. Get your copy now!

And don't forget the second book in the trilogy, Treasure of the Pirate Planet!

Star Trek: TOS

In honor of Star Trek's fiftieth anniversary, I watched all 69 episodes of the original series plus the first pilot, "The Cage." I finished Monday.

I watched them on Netflix and those versions have new special effects that I address here. Now I want to talk about the show.

In the Futurama "Star Trek" episode (which every fan of Star Trek has to see) Fry says "You know, sixty-nine episodes, about thirty good ones." Which is so very true. Especially since the third season was, with new producer Fred Freiberger, full of stinkers. (Freiberger later did the same vandalism to the last season of Space 1999.) There are only two good episodes in the third season: "The Enterprise Incident" and "The Tholian Web." And two of the worst episodes ("Spock's Brain" and "Turnabout Intruder") are in the third season.

Watching the original Star Trek, which was made in the 1960s, I'm surprised at the sexism. For a show that broke racial boundaries, it was still stuck in the 60s as far as sex goes.

But another thing that surprises me is that from this beginning, Star Trek has lasted 50 years and spawned four other series (if I counted right), and thirteen movies (if I counted right). And CBS is starting a new Star Trek series. They will show the first episode on broadcast but to see the rest you have to buy their streaming service. Which sucks. But I'm surprised because Star Trek is not that good. Clunky episodes, uneven writing, awful special effects (cheesy even by the standards of the day). I guess we were all so thirsty for science fiction, any science fiction, that we embraced what was really a pretty mediocre show.

I'm glad I revisited Star Trek. I hadn't watching these episodes since I was a teenager and would watch them when I got home from school on my family's Zenith. But even then I learned to identify third season episodes (blue opening credits) and know this wasn't going to be the best episodes.

I'm glad Star Trek spawned all the entertainment is has (even if I don't care for the J.J. Abrams reboot). I'm just surprised it did.

Mars

The National Geographic Channel has a new series called Mars. I believe it's a limited run series meaning it will go on for so many episodes then stop. (It looks as if there are going to be six episodes total, looking at the website). I watched the first episode this morning after DVRing it last night (it's on while I'm at my Toastmasters meeting).

It's an impressive series. It combines a science fiction story of the first humans to travel to Mars (in 2033) along with documentary about the efforts being made today to get those humans there. For example, I did not realize Elon Musk formed SpaceX for the goal of getting humans to Mars.

The story/science fiction part is very well done with good special effects (these days, that's a given with CGI) and in the short time they were given (maybe half of the hour-long show) developed the characters fairly well. I assume we'll get to know them better as the show progresses.

And the documentary part is very interesting. I feel bad because I haven't been keeping up on advances in space for the past few years. This has helped me catch up on what's happening, at least in the pursuit of getting to the red planet.

I really have no complaints about the show. It's very good. You should check it out. Apparently if you missed the first episode, you can stream it here. Or maybe here.