Science Fiction and the Imagination

for Al Attanasio

 

   Who are we?  We are Thou and each other, even as Thou are we. (Despite the word 'thou' being just an archaic version of 'you', I like capitalizing it to refer to that place-holder we've also utilized to our benefit and detriment with the word 'God.')  I have to think long and hard about what science says about the author of science.  That's a good question.  It seems science, on the whole, may be too busy chasing after its own tail to bother; I don't know.  In my experience of our penchant for asking the wrong questions, perhaps were science to ponder over the authorship, it would consider the possibility of their being no author.  Which doesn't mean there's no authority to being, of course.  Generative powers within our psyche do appear to remain in collusion to create each one of us individually.  That is to say, our individuality itself may be the real illusion; for are we not comprised, as Thich Nhat Hanh has pointed out, of non-human elements?
   I love the idea that we live in a world not of science, but of science fiction.  And that's because I've believed for a long time now that imagination remains at the center of creation. And magic lies within the heart of imagination. Because the word 'impossible' does not mean what we think it means. The prefix "im-" means "before," so the real definition of the word impossible should be "before possible," which precisely explains how such miraculous things as airplanes achieving flight, and streets of asphalt and concrete skyscrapers, were formerly impossible, until someone (such as the Wright brothers, for example) dreamed those things into concrete reality, and made them possible via their imaginations.   How else could we have arrived here, if not due to an understanding that 'we' may not have 'arrived' at all, but rather, have been 'here' all along as an ever-evolving manifestation of what science has yet to define as the 'author' of our existence; that is, our authentic being.

Sitting On The Edge of the Galaxy with A. A. Attanasio

A. A. Attanasio's website entry, "Sitting On the Edge of the Galaxy with You," (posted December 29, 2016) is right here for your perusal and contemplation.  (Look in the left margin under "Previous Dreadful Joy", and you'll see the hyperlink "Sitting on the Edge of the Galaxy with You." Click it.)

Just now I dashed out my own reply, nearly two years later.  While awaiting Al's website moderator to approve my comment, I will share it here with you, for our mutual consideration: 


A few years ago I discovered a trick that helps improve my own perspective of our place in this so-called expanding universe. I refer to this trick as the 'Law of Inversion.' In its most simple form, it involves merely considering the truth to be the opposite of what you think it is. (Of course it's not as simple as that--but that's the essential foundation upon which my philosophy of inversion operates.)  So for example, when we point to the stars out there, it helps to apply my law of inversion, and consider for a moment:  that the stars may be IN there, instead.

That is how I've come to personally understand this so-called expanding universe better. Because today, I do not think of the stars and all those trillions of galaxies as being "out there" at all,  no.  To me they are the very inner core of our creation, buried deeper than our own hearts beating inside our ribcages.  You are pointing INWARDS when you point at the stars.

Now take time and space, for another example.  We already know they are one thing--the spacetime continuum.  But to better understand their relation to one another, simply switch them in your mind.  Consider what you've always thought to be "space"--as actually "time"; and likewise, consider what we've always thought to be "time"--as actually space.  If you dwell upon this long enough, you will begin to see what I mean.  Because it's our planet's daily spin--as well as its annual rotation about our Sun--which accounts for the twenty-four hours in our days, as well as our years, as they "roll on by."  i.e, the physical motion of our actual planet is what comprises time. And as for space itself--that one's pretty tricky, but we can easily invert our default understanding of it to realize that what we formerly thought of as "solid matter"--that is, our own planet and Sun, for instance--as being really too crude of an assessment, when we could just as easily realize that those things--Earth and our Sun--represent time itself, really.

Time may be all we have during our short life spans, here.  So now, given time to dwell on my law of inversion, I've used it to make enormous quantum leaps of intuition.  For example, we normally consider that the farthest point in our universe to be way out there past the farthest stars (back in time towards the  big bang, presumably) when by applying my inversion tactic, I've come to realize with a profound sense of reassurance, that the truth is quite the opposite from that.

The farthest point in the universe is precisely where we are currently at.  In other words--the absolute farthest away we can get in our universe is pressed up against our very faces right now.

WE ARE, by definition, the farthest point in this expanding universe, and that's because it appears to be continually out-growing membranes, within which our micro-lives are born, lived out, and expired within.  Taking the law of inversion farther  (I've found there are no limits to its application) we can all easily be led to see that life itself develops along the microverse--of which we are living in a skein of--and that is precisely why, imo, SETI has their focus on looking for so-called extraterrestrials in quite the opposite direction.  We must look not to the past, but the future--and we must peer into the micro-world if our aim were to study deeper into this expanding universe. 

Thank you Al for perpetually keeping me on my toes and helping me to ever refine my own expanding viewpoint of this curious multiverse we've all been somehow borne into.

This Blinking Being

  

for Al Attanasio

So we are carried here from the light by darkness, I see. Viewed from within the tinted orb of our eyes, we can visualize how the interaction of darkness and light produces the illusion that is the motion picture of our lives. Darkness itself was ushered into existence by the light. Phil Dick once alluded to the idea that their woven interaction helps generate time (in his Tractates Cryptica Scriptura). The universe has been considered as an unblinking eye before. I think I read that in a book about the equilibrium of balance. I prefer to think of the cosmos as an eye continually blinking in sporadic intervals. Stepping the mind back for a wider view reveals that neither light nor darkness can be ascribed with having begun creation as we experience it, but rather reveals this unknowable essence perhaps better referred to as a sort of blurred, gray combination of the two elements. Left to ourselves as its ultimate progeny, we must wonder which of the two be the majority—or are the light and dark evenly balanced? The answer may surprise us. I suspect it has something to do with dark energy having inked the light to a degree that may appear to us on the surface as if comprising ninety-five percent of the whole—an overcast pitch darkness dominating the universe—as far as our rational mind's eye remains concerned; when possibly, that which appears to be the much lesser component (the light itself, at less than five percent of the ratio, apparently) could actually remain the primary component, the luminous beast at the heart of the matter far outweighing the density of a billion neutron stars. I have been led to this conjecture by the monocle of inversion which mirrors the truth with the lens of paradox. Such are the interactions at the quantum level, a portion of our realm that ever remains counterintuitive to us way out here on the outer-most membrane of the constant fruition of our present formation. 

Red Car for the Red Planet

[Okay, on sudden impulse. A Contest for the best very short Sci Fi story about how aliens or future folk might find and misinterpret Elon's Starman Tesla? Fun? Maximum 100 words! I will (maybe) pass some of them on to you-know-who.] ~D. Brin (Feb 7, 2016) -- 24 hour deadline self-imposed.





What's likely to survive longest will be the Roadster's inorganic components, like the aluminum chassis, the lithium-ion battery pack and any glass that doesn't get shattered by meteors.

*Made on Earth by humans*      [printed on the circuit board]


Musk saw fit to include several fun novelties in the Roadster, including a circuit board bearing the phrase "Made on Earth by humans," a toy Roadster mounted to the dashboard, and the phrase "Don't Panic!" on the center screen. That's a reference to the 1979 novel "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams about an accidental space traveler named Arthur Dent. Musk is known for his love of science fiction and even acknowledged naming the SpaceX Falcon series of rockets after the Millennium Falcon of Star Wars fame.


no *music* is involved as there is no sound in a vacuum? Or, for super nit pickers, the mean free path of the solar wind precludes audible sonic frequencies from the Roadster's speakers... ~Jim Horn


You are familiar with the ratio of fatal human doses of radiation to material degradation of such masses as the Roadster has? That the Solar Observatory that orbits the sun closer than the Earth does has been blasted by your mentioned radiation for many years and works just fine, microelectronics and all? That without a major gravity well such as the Earth nearby, the micrometeor flux rate is drastically reduced? That even amateur radio satellites have worked for over 30 years in orbit and continue to do so? Yes, the paint will fade and the plastics will depolymerize from UV while the embedded plasticizers will evaporate away, but the overall integrity of the Roadster should be fine for a very long time. ~ Jim Horn


factoid: It's 'Elon's Lotus roadster with the tesla logo and motor' /check


"“Payload will be my midnight cherry Tesla Roadster playing Space Oddity,” Musk’s tweet read. “Destination is Mars orbit. Will be in deep space for a billion years or so if it doesn’t blow up on ascent.”"    ~  E. Musk  tweet


"“A Red Car for the Red Planet

“Test flights of new rockets usually contain mass simulators in the form of concrete or steel blocks. That seemed extremely boring. Of course, anything boring is terrible, especially companies, so we decided to send something unusual, something that made us feel. The payload will be an original Tesla Roadster, playing Space Oddity, on a billion year elliptic Mars orbit.”"     -  E. Musk  Instragram 

final note:

"A few weeks later, the car rolled into a SpaceX workshop to be prepped for spaceflight, and the real work began. Things launched into space first must survive the launch, which as you can imagine is both loud and violent. Like all payloads, the Roadster needed to undergo sonic, vibration, vacuum, and other standard testing to make sure that it wouldn’t come apart during the launch and ascent and damage the rocket and that it would survive in space.

It was quickly determined the car needed to be stripped. After all, the only launch it was designed for was a stoplight drag. All the glass had to go, as did the battery. With the battery out, there was no need to keep the drivetrain in, either, so that went, too. Musk himself has been very open about prototype rockets tending to explode, and no one wants to scatter 1,000 pounds of lithium across the upper atmosphere. Other than the obvious weak points like glass, SpaceX engineers were impressed with the rigidity and durability of the Lotus-based Roadster in their tests.

The car was still in the test lab when Musk’s first tweet went out. It took the team by surprise, as the whole thing had been a big secret up until that point and was supposed to remain so until the launch. The tweet, followed by the photo confirmation on Instagram a few weeks later, unleashed a torrent of regulatory inquiries from regulators, including the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)."

My entry in the Brin contest:  

"Amid the debris we discovered an unusual device which stood apart from the vein of particles found in the asteroid belt," Professor Rutledge informed his students.

He activated the modular unit which processed the digital information stored within the anomalous relic.  Speakers emitted tinny, crackling sounds amid which the oddly intoned words could just be made out by the eager students.  

"...Ground Control to Major Tom, take your protein pills and put your helmet on..."  

"We wouldn't even be able to hear this sacred message if it weren't for our atmosphere here on the Red Planet. Praise be to Blackstar!"