Astrobiology don't you know… sort of
A lot of people don’t like the 2009 Star Trek re-boot directed by J.J. Abrams. A lot of these people are Star Trek fans.
I think they’re insane though. It’s a great film and a great way to revitalise a frankly tired franchise.
There’s a lot to like about Star Trek, but Abrams realised what its best asset was, and consequently hit the nail square on the head when he made his film…
I’m planning on writing a series of posts on different scenarios for first contact with intelligent alien life. I’ve been inspired by some insightful comments from this post and have taken lots of my ideas from those who commented there. Thanks everyone who commented.
It’s feels as though this topic has been treated as a fanciful distraction by much of the serious scientific community until quite recently, and has very much been delegated to science fiction authors, fringe scientists and assorted lunatics. But as of late some big-name scientists have joined in the fun, and this topic is gaining an air of credibility. This isn’t to say that science fiction hasn’t made contributions to this field; I think Sci-Fi has provided some intelligent and very creative first contact scenarios and much of what I’ll be writing has been inspired or explored by Sci-Fi.
So lets assume that intelligent alien life exists, that its discovered humanity, and that it has the technology to communicate with us, either face-to-face or using an alternative method.
The first of my proposed scenarios is that the aliens will be totally indifferent.
In this series of posts I’ve looked at planetary bodies in our Solar System that could support life, from the moons of Saturn and Jupiter, to the cloud layers of Jupiter itself, to the ephemeral-once-jungles of Venus, I’ve even looked at Earth itself.
Now one of my favourites, Mars, the Red Planet.
This is a piece I’ve written for SciFi Now, a brilliant British magazine dedicated to, you guessed it, SciFi. But also horror, fantasy, games and stuff. Go to their website right now.
They’ve asked for people to submit their own stories about their Star Wars memories and love of the franchise. Mine’s about my earliest experience with Star Wars and it’s deep Christmas meaning. I’m not sure if they’ll use it, but fingers crossed.
In previous posts I’ve looked at the possibility that alien life could be found in our solar system, on three of Jupiter’s moons, in Jupiter itself, and on two of Saturn’s moons.
This time we’re moving nearer to home, to the planet closest to our own, Venus, the second rock from the Sun.
I’ve not written a post for aaggeeessss! So I thought I’d write a quick one reviewing some of the best collections of science fiction short stories I’ve read.
If you’ve never read any science fiction, or even if you’re a long-time reader, short stories are a great place to start, as they can help you find new interesting authors and sub-genres, and can open whole new worlds of sci-fi for you to explore.
Continue reading ‘Review – My favourite collections of sci-fi short stories’
One of my favourite tropes in science fiction is the one where mankind creates artificial intelligence only to see it rebel against its maker, and usually either enslave or destroys us. Probably because its both a fantastic but also quite realistic idea, at least in my humble opinion.
It’s been done a hundred times or more, in a huge variety of settings, but one of my favourite is the film Colossus: The Forbin Project.
Panspermia is the idea that life could travel between stars seeding habitable planets as it passed, a bit like a galactic infection.
In previous posts I looked at the traditional bacterial view of panspermia, then some more extreme views, such as aliens deliberately seeding the Earth with life, and I looked at a recent claim from a NASA scientist that he had found evidence for panspermia, in the form of fossilized bacteria in three meteorites.
In the final post of this series I’ll take a more light-hearted approach, and look at some of the best panspermia ideas in films, TV and books.
Continue reading ‘Panspermia: did life on Earth come from space? – Part 4, in films, TV & books’
I’ve been let down by robots.
When I was young (the 1980s), future robot predictions were all the rage. I was promised robot servants that would clean and cook and generally take care of business, whilst I flew around in my hover car. I grew up on a diet of Transformers, Robo Jox and dodgy dubs of Japanese mecha anime… and then I saw Robocop.
But robots totally failed to live up to their promise. Sure they can build cars and play chess, but weren’t robots supposed to be exploring space, fighting wars and cooking us meals by now?
Well it turns out they’re starting too. Maybe not the cooking bit.
Continue reading ‘Remember when robots were a bit crap? Not any more’
I’m a geek. I like science, sci-fi, and pretty much anything to do with space. I like TV. I don’t however like Star Trek all that much, surely I should? I tick all the relevant boxes. I’ve made a concerted effort on a couple of occasions to try and get into it. I’ve watched the films, I’ve watched the original series, I’ve watched The Next Generation, Deep Space 9 and Voyager. Not Enterprise though, if heard even Trekkies think its pony. It’s not that I hate Star Trek, it just doesn’t grip me, and I quickly get bored. Here’s why I think that’s the case:
Continue reading ‘What’s wrong with Star Trek? The Spock problem’
Astrobioloblog 
