Why SciFi?

My wife doesn't read Science Fiction. So, she asked me why I do. And why I write it.

If anyone gives you one answer and says it is the only reason, they're wrong. So, this is a non-exhaustive treatment.

The reasons for reading or writing Science Fiction include all the ones for other fiction: It's a pleasant way to pass a gray, rainy day. It provides distraction and amusement while going through unhappy circumstances. Reading is cheap entertainment. If you have straightened means, you can freely check out books from a library, or just let me know and I'll give you a copy of what I've published.

Science Fiction can be very mainstream or very genre. The lines get blurred. Action thrillers can easily include a SF gizmo with which the super-villain holds the moon for ransom. Romances may develop between dashing Civil War cavalrymen and time-travelling maidens.

I've explored elsewhere the relationship between Science Fiction and Fantasy as well as two broad themes of Science Fiction. And all that applies to this discussion of why one reads and writes SF.

Science Fiction prophesies about the Future

Ours is a technological society and the fruits of science and technology surround us. Science Fiction can cushion us against future shock. If I were to describe a typical workday to my teen-aged self of the 1970s, he would say it sounds like science fiction--because it does. I have an iPod, an iPad, an Android phone and a MacBook Air. Maybe I'll get an iPhone for my birthday. These devices are marvels of technology and I love living in the 21st Century.

But SF is a false-prophet. We haven't been back to the moon since 1973. We don't have jet packs. We don't have flying cars. Nuclear fusion power is still 30 years away. (Meanwhile I've gotten a half-dozen robo-calls today from various skeezy outfits. What fool does business with these companies? How do they stay in business?)

Despite the unexpected course of development with less progress in aeronautical or nuclear engineering, and more progress in telecommunication and electronics, we get glimpses into what the future will be like and get to play what-if with ideas like cloned replacement body parts.

Science Fiction lets us play what-if -- with things

Science Fiction is fiction because it often describes inventions that don't exist. There are no artillery pieces that will hurl a projectile from the Earth to the Moon. But if there were, what would it be like to use one? Or suppose I had a device that would transport me from anyplace to anyplace instantly?

Everybody loves unwrapping a new toy on Christmas morning and then seeing what it will do. Geeks and Engineers may also take things apart to see how they work.

Frankly, that's what I like about SF. I like inventing stuff that doesn't exist. I like coming up with a plausible-sounding explanation for why you want to fly into the sun and why the hyperspace drive works better there.

Doing real science is hard and so is making things work. But it's a lot easier when it just has to sound plausible. This may explain why Science Fiction doesn't predict the future perfectly. Flying cars are plausible, but iPods weren't plausible even when Steve Jobs announced them.

Science Fiction lets us play what-if -- with people

Are you scandalized when the old dude shows up with a trophy wife who's half his age? But what will happen when the dude is 900 years old and  the trophy wife is 450? And a girl young enough to be his daughter would be 875 years old!

Or how about the starship pilot who's been in stasis for 80 years and he's thawed out by his great-grandson who has the same apparent age? How does that family dynamic work out?

Let's suppose you can clone replacement body parts. Sure, there are people who need heart transplants, but look at how much more money is spent each year for boob jobs? There's probably a lot more money to be made in upgrades of a cosmetic nature. And there's not as much liability if the replacement breasts fail. 

Or let's suppose someone invents a device that tells when a politician is lying, and also when he won't keep a campaign promise. We might be surprised by politicians' creative responses to this challenge.

How would wars be fought if we only let robots do the fighting? Would we have more wars or fewer?

Science Fiction lets us grind axes

Star Trek was infamous for doing this. They ran into some alien whose skin coloration was ebony and ivory. And this alien was possessed of a murderous hatred toward the other alien whose skin coloration was ivory and ebony. Oh, i wonder if there was a message about racism in this episode?

Strangely, they never beamed down to the Planet of the Over-promising Santa Clauses, or Planet We-just-ran-out-of-other-people's-money. Do you think we should go on the Gold Standard? You can have enterprising spacemen from there show up to End The Fed.

But Wait! There's More

The reasons for reading and writing Science Fiction encompass more than what I've said so far. Ferinstance, I didn't say anything about giving you a good scare. So, tell me, why do you read or write Science Fiction?

Living In The Future

Just got back from the Apple store.

When I bought my MacBook Air, I knew I was spending a lot more than I would for an ultrabook computer running, say, Linux. I take a great deal of pride in my geek status and that makes the Linux alternative seductive.

I also like the total control Linux gives me.

Nevertheless, I bought my MacBook just so I could make an appointment, stroll into the Genius Bar and make pointing motions and grunting sounds whereupon a pleasant young person (when you're my age, everyone's a young person) will discern my intent and then do something marvelous like reformat the laptop's drive, wipe out all my personal data, and reinstall the operating system for the low, low cost of FREE. Which is what the guy just did. Bravo.

Granted, I could have dropped in on the Grand Rapids Linux User's Group and found a pleasant True Believer in Linux who'd do the same thing. But if I were to do that, I'd have to learn a lot more about what we were doing. And because the process has a lot more visibility into what's going on, I'd likely see something questionable to make me worry that I'd Done Something Wrong. And since we don't do this sort of thing every day, that would be much more likely. A lot more anxiety, sturm und drang!

Total control does have its disadvantages.

No. I paid a few hundred bucks more up front to get some predictable, reliable hardware, and FROM THEN ON I can visit the Apple Store, feign ignorance, (It's getting so I don't have to pretend as much nowadays.) and they make the software Just Work.

Steve Jobs set up systems that Just Work and whenever I deal with Apple, or when I use their products, I may be paying more, but when I do I'm living in the future. I like living in the future.

Cutting The Cable

You may have inferred the fact that I have recently upgraded a perfectly wonderful MacBook Air to the latest model. And you may also know that I've been geeking with the Raspberry Pi. Implicit in this is my desire to create the perfect Internet/TV lash-up. If you buy an Internet-ready TV, you'll find it has some of the apps you want, but it'll have some annoying gaps that are filled by the Apple TV. And if you buy an Apple TV set top box, you'll find it has more of the apps you want, but other annoying gaps that are filled by the Raspberry Pi. (If you think this is an unreasonable line of reasoning, I agree and I blame my friend Paul.) My days of subscribing to Cable TV are numbered.

So, I've been poking around figuring things out how to plug those gaps.

Since the weather has gotten cold, I don't like to walk outside with my wife for exercise. We have a treadmill and Nordic Trak next to one another, but took out the TV in front of them when television went HD digital a while back. So, I didn't want to be cold when I exercise. and I didn't want to be bored, either. So, this morning after breakfast, I trotted off to Best Buy and bought an open-box Samsung TV. It's not particularly large, and it was reasonably priced. So reasonably priced that I was able to throw in another Apple TV into the deal.

It took a few hours and a bit of to-and-fro with the cables, but I got both the Apple TV and the Raspberry Pi XBMC application going. If you're going to do this, I recommend a TV that implements some form of HDMI/CEC so you don't have to fuss with adding a keyboard, mouse, or other interface to the Raspberry Pi.

Because I got the television dirt cheap, it did not have HDMI/CEC. But I was able to dispense with the keyboard/mouse after I told the XBMC application to let other programs control it over the net. After I turned that on, I was able to download and configure apps for my Android phone and also for my iPad so that each can serve as a remote control That's pretty cool to pick up the cell phone or the iPad when you want to pause a video.

(I got my wife a Nest thermostat for Christmas. So, this morning I turned up the temperature without getting out of bed with my iPad. I love living in the future.)

I made mention of upgrading a perfectly good MacBook Air, because it supports this feature called "AirPlay mirroring." Thus, when I'm running the MacBook Air, I can mirror its display to the television. Anything I can see on my Mac I can also see on my TV without having to schlep a bunch of cables between things. And all the wires are tucked behind the television and its stand the way God intended them to.

In these days of HDTV, I find that I can dispense with a lot of complexity I had to sort out in the 1990s, but I get a lot of new complexity. So, it's a wash. It's amazing how much awesome technology you can get for not much money these days.

With a HDTV, Apple TV, and Raspberry Pi running XBMC, I figure I can have the almost-perfect television-viewing experience...

WHEN I SHOULD BE READING A BOOK.

My 2013 Mac

You must remember I'm as old as dirt. And I've forgotten more about computers than young whipper snappers like you will ever know... he said shaking his cane. The Macintosh computer was invented by Apple so that geezers like me can quietly pass into senility without any need of any of that useless information we've got rattling around our noggins.

The thing about a Mac is that it has a learning curve that is nice and gently sloped upwards until it terminates in a sheer ice cliff. You want to go further than that? Get your crampons and climbing gear. Beneath the friendly, happy bunny face of Mac OS X "Mountain Lion" is a snarling, feral Unix kernel and all its attendant terrors for the uninitiated.

When you buy a new MacBook Air like I did after Christmas, it has this wonderful Migration Assistant that I cannot praise highly enough. It is as smooth as silk and everything you'd ever want when migrating all your stuff from one machine to another. You just hook the two machines together, answer some prompts and wait for all the files to go over from old to new. Walla!

When I went to check how things did, the results were impressive. I couldn't find anything that hadn't been successfully migrated. Bravo Apple. I went on thinking the migration had been flawless until just a little while ago when I went to print something.

It didn't migrate my printers. OK, I can click thru dialogs and redo the printer setup. The two HP inkjet printers that I'd bought in this century were happily configured in mere moments and ready to go.

But then came my HP LaserJet 4. It dates back to when I rebuilt Unix kernels for a living. And it's hooked up to a wireless print spooler that's somewhat less than user-friendly. Set it up perfectly, and all is perfect. Do otherwise, and you are in deep kim chee.

I hadn't sold my old Mac, so I expected to just copy by hand the settings from one bunch of dialogs on the old machine to the same dialogs on the new one. Simple, right?

Well, those printer setup dialogs show all the parameters except the ones you need when you're adding a printer via IP. You need the IP address of the print spooler. You know, the set of numbers you should write down on a sticker and put on the spooler, except you didn't. And you can't see the IP address on the old Mac's dialogs. Grrrr.

The answer was to get out the ice-climbing gear and start stabbing the problem with my ice-axe.

1. First I went into terminal. 
2. Then I went into google to find the right conf file in the CUPS subsystem. It wouldn't show me /etc/cups/printers.conf. 
3. Then I remembered sudo cat /etc/cups/printers.conf | more

Joy of joys, the DeviceURI is lpd://192.168.1/101/L1

Back to my new machine, add IP printer address shown above, and the L1 queue.

That didn't work. Cycle power on printer. That didn't work. Ping 192.168.1.101. No response. That's a clue. Cycle power on spooler. Wait. Ping starts responding. Try to print again. Walla!

So, people say that Unix is not user-friendly. This is not true. It is just very selective about who its friends are.