Hey folks.

I wanted to take a moment to share a Youtube channel that some of you may already know about. It’s called Kurzgesagt, and the work being produced by this animation studio in my opinion provides some of the best and most thought out explanations to theoretical science. Their videos cover a wide range of scientific and philosophical topics, such as the complexities of the immune system, realistic ways to combat climate change, and how to live your life with purpose. Often their videos focus on a central debate or topic relevant to present-day science to which they apply literature and expert opinions to formulate a set of answers to the video’s central question. But sometimes their topics get a bit more “what if”. For example, this channel exposed me to: the Fermi Paradox, the Dyson Sphere, uploaded consciousness, stellar engines, and other more SF-ey topics we’ve already talked about in this class.

To me, what is unique about this channel is rather than producing videos that simply outline ideas such as the Dyson Sphere, these people are like “no, what if humanity actually built a Dyson Sphere? How long would it take us? What resources would be necessary to construct such an engineering feat? When in the future could this idea actually become feasible?” Kurzgesagt takes far-fetched ideas and applies science, reason, and understanding to arrive at what they acknowledge is only Kurzgesagt’s answer to the question at hand. I wanted to share this with you all not only because they have some great videos explaining some pretty wild technological ideas (see links below), but their methodology behind video production is some of the most transparent I’ve seen on Youtube’s platform. They provide links to their papers, cite each one of their claims, and (in my opinion) are incredibly objective to the topic at hand. And when an opinion does arise, they are explicit in their video to say something like “based on what we’ve just shown you, this is what we think”. Kurzgesagt provides some of the best educational material regarding science on a platform that too often represents the epitome of misinformation. I encourage y’all to peruse their videos and find one that looks exciting. Oh, and their animation is likewise stellar.

Enjoy!

Dyson Sphere:

Fermi Paradox (there’s also a part 2):

Loneliness (one of their more holistic videos):

I would like to take a minute here to begin traveling down a line of reasoning that, I’m sure, will be a perennial one in this course; this being the ability of human beings to imagine what alien life would be like.

The nature of aliens is a question that appears all over science fiction literature, film, and television, with interpretations ranging from people in green body paint to giant pixelated amorphous blobs. The Kanamits of To Serve Man are – and I say this as somebody who thoroughly enjoyed the episode – a good example of a rather unimaginative take on alien life. They are simply tall humans with bulbous heads. Visual mediums like The Twilight Zoine seem to be more commonly guilty of such portrayals, partially because it is much easier to leave appearances up to the imagination in writing than it is in film or the visual arts.

I understand that, often, the physiological nature of the aliens is besides the point. For many works of science fiction, it is enough that they are signified as “other”, and that signifier can be as simple as a pair of antennae attached to a headband. This, paired with a narrative, is enough to let us know that, wherever the beings are from, it isn’t Earth. However, biologically speaking, I can think of no good reason that a species which developed on a planet other than ours should look too humanoid in nature. To me, visualizing aliens as such all to often reeks of an anthropocentric point of view that I find to be quite aggravating.

That, or a lower-than-optimal budget.

There are some exceptions to this viewpoint of mine. For example, it may be the case that an author wishes to explore the possibility that human life came from another planet. In which case, the inhabitants of that planet would likely look quite a bit like us. And yes, if aliens were to be subject to similar selective pressures as life on Earth, they could certainly evolve similar features to organisms on our planet. Fin-like organs, for example, would be useful in water on any planet. These are, however, specific exceptions and somewhat besides the point. Assuming that the alien life is truly alien and thus evolved on a planet far from Earth in response to a different set of selective pressures, to have them resemble life on Earth – especially human beings – too closely would be unrealistic and unimaginative.

Or would it? As I write this, I am reminded of the incredible diversity of life on this planet and the many and varied solutions that different species have developed to cope with many and varied selective pressures. The odds that some form of life on another planet might have evolved a similar solution to a similar challenge as has an Earth-creature are nonzero. So maybe it isn’t the plain fact of alien life being often portrayed as similar to life on Earth that’s getting to me, but the reasons for that trend. It often seems to occur due to a lack of interest in the nature of alien physiology and, though I am not at all saying that that is the most worthwhile question for science fiction to pursue, I do wish it were pursued more often.

This is why I am so excited by science fiction stories like Prott, which really take the time to delve into alien biology and to ask what alien physiology would really be like. Just how far from what we are used to would it be? Would we even recognize it as life? How would a human being react to the truly alien, to life different in every way to that which we are used to and understand? All these are wonderfully interesting questions that make for wonderfully interesting literature.

Something we have been discussing in class this week was the ever-shifting border between science fiction and fantasy. A characteristic of science fiction that perhaps helps us best distinguish, is the genre’s curiosity about how things work. Like discussed in class, Iron Man feels much more SF than the rest of the Marvel superheroes because of the science that backs up Tony Stark’s gadget suit. Fans of the franchise can even remember the prototypes and earlier models of the suit, leading up to the super-advanced nanotechnology we see in the later Avengers films. Has the fact that we have seen a gradual evolution of the Iron Man suit from more straightforward tech contributed to our perception of Iron Man as SF? Perhaps.

I have recently been playing a lot of Pokémon Legends: Arceus, and I noticed something very similar happening, although backwards. For context, the game is set in a time much earlier than the rest of the Pokémon games, when humanity is still figuring out how to coexist with the mysterious creatures. For the first time ever, we are given an explanation for how Pokéballs work: they activate the mons’ innate ability to shrink, and can be made from very simple materials found in the wild (wood and stone, and some iron for the more improved versions). In fact, Pokéballs are so simple that they can be crafted from these materials by the protagonist. Their appearance in-game features a wood-pattern and a simple-looking sealing mechanism. All this struck me as intriguing and relevant because it seems like a step by the Pokémon franchise toward science fiction. I wonder what you all think!

Thanks to everyone that showed up for the Dune Board Game night despite the snow!  If anyone would want to play again, comment times that work well for you on this post, or email me at [email protected].

Since It is the day after Groundhog day, here is an interesting video that discusses a number of different modes of time travel in Science Fiction. Definately worth a watch:

My personal favorite time travel story is a short story called “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” by Ted Chiang which I read last term for the “Nature of Time” FYWS. Time travel in that story takes the Harry Potter esque time travel to the extreme, calling into question our free will whether or not we engage in time travel.

There are also tonnes of questions about causality (and it’s possible violation) rising out of the fields of Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity which is very exciting. Does time proceed in one specific direction (forward)? if it does does that mean that backward time travel is impossible? if entropic time is not a universal law, what would complete time-reversal be possible? lots of SF material here.