CONCEPT - The 11th Dimensional Universe Printer

This is something that does exactly what it says on the (very large) tin.

Rather than make your own personal design of mug, or copies of Richard III's skull, the 11 Dimensional printer makes Universes to your own specification.

What you need is a very very high energy environment, and a method of producing an anti (or inverse) gravitational field that leaks back into the 11th dimension from where our gravity originates, according to theory.

The printer utilises the holes punched into Dimension Number 11 by the inverse gravitational force, and washes backwards and forwards across the interface forcing exotic particles through the divide, and into their new environment, an inflationary bubble within the brane multiverses; a new universe.

Customise your universe how you want. Do you want the value of Pi to be 4, or 2, or 222? No problem, the 11th dimensional printer can handle this. Do you want gravity to work backwards, a planet the size of Jupiter to be as light as a feather, and a feather itself to crush you if you try and stand up on it? All yours. Gold shall burn like coal, and lead balloons shall float to the edge of atmosphere like the dispersing seeds of a dandelion. Superstrings the size of bass strings shall vibrate the fundamental particles of your universe. And one day life shall evolve, and what oh what form shall it take?

It all depends what bits you throw in the mixer.

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 29/04/13

CONCEPT - Sailing the interstellar wind

I was in a reflective mood the last couple of days, so I day dreamed myself out of the solar system, and set myself adrift on the winds of deep space; a silent lonely drift, but a perfectly peaceful one where you could enjoy the beautiful universe undisturbed for all eternity.

It is the case that as I write, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are in the process of crossing the Heliopause, the point at which the solar wind is overcome by the prevailing forces produced by the the stars and cosmic rays. Although arguments continue as to what degree if at all the craft have finally crossed it, this is regarded as the edge of the solar system, the beginning of deep, endless space.

And how would I like to explore it.

Of course, I cannot, but I dreamed up a vehicle that could. It would perhaps launch and journey outward like a Voyager, designed to produce high end science of whichever solar system bodies it encounters, and powered by an ion drive for long term thrust.

But as it crossed the Heliopause, marked by a change in "wind" direction and an increase in galactic cosmic rays, the nature of the craft would change. A set of gigantic, charged particle sensitive sails would emerge, thrust would be turned off, and the craft would use the gentle thrust of the prevailing radiation to sail down stream, out into interstellar space. It would feature a longer lasting nucelar power source than the Voyagers, enabling a more powerful transmitter to be used, enabling earth to remain in contact longer with the craft and perhaps the sails could be used to harness the power of cosmic rays and the solar wind to provide a little extra power.

And on and on, until the end of time, shall the interstellar ship sail upon the galactic trade winds, perhaps with my ashes upon it. Who knows?

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 28/04/13

CONCEPT - The Solar Lighthouse

I was in a mood for thinking today, and as I sat scrawling in green biro in my notebook - like Kingsley Amis' demonic LS Caton - a few interesting ideas came to me as I stared at my fruity tea bag leaking bits like a demonstration of entropy.

Question; assuming we decide that the risk of  "How to serve man" or rampaging martian tripod scenarios is low enough, how do we signal our existence to whatever lifeforms on Goldilocks zone planets there might be?

We can send space probes with cutesy drawings or gramaphone records on - bad luck if our aliens have reached the mp3 stage like we have - or we can wait for our radio and tv signals to leak out into space far enough, by which time they would be so weak as to be incomprehensible.

OR you could make our solar system into a lighthouse.

I figured, as I sat scrawling over my sievable cherry and vanilla tea, that you could costruct an enormous reflective surface, or perhaps rather a flexible array of many many mirrors, or even nano-reflectors (I'm not a scientist!). This orbits the sun in such a way that the sun is at the focus of the reflector, and thus its light can be beamed in selected directions. Perhaps a form of lensing could be added to intensify the light, I have no idea.

It would be perhaps best to site the array out above the north or south solar pole to avoid interfering with our sleeping rhythms and is out of the reach of most asteroids.

So yes, initially I thought this would be a method of sending powerful morse type signals to selected targets. You move the array around as required, and then control the signal by changing the alignment of the individual reflecting surfaces so at times they are perpendicular, essentially, to the sun's light. But then I also thought you could use it for perhaps lighting and warming selected solar system bodies, perhaps as part of a terraforming process.

Anything else? Well, it could provide impetus for a solar-sail powered craft. It could even, perhaps, deflect asteroids away from the earth by the phenomenon of radiation pressure. It cant be that much more far fetched than painting half of such an asteroid white to save humanity.

It might also be totally pointless, an impossible to construct folly borne of idle thought by a writer with a wonky cuppa. But I love thinking these things up! And (I hope) bigger cranks than me have changed the course of our existence...

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 26/04/2013

Gorf - To a child, THE FUTURE

Compared to my grown up self, that is rather blase about computer games and gaming, the child version of me was absolutely enthralled by early video games. I remember first playing on a "Pong" cabinet in the Grand Hotel, Brodick in 1978, a holiday also memorable for me being banished from the hotel dining room after throwing up a chicken maryland all over it, many happy hours on a mini golf course, and the sheer upset of Scotland's world cup demise settling over Arran.

I was thrilled by Pong, to a Blakes 7 and Star Wars loving kid, this was space brought down to planet earth. Space Invaders was even more of a step up - lasers in a box! - and soon every chip shop in England had Galaxians bleeping away in a corner.

But my stepfather disapproved of such games, claming them to be a total waste of money and the past-time of dodgy youths. If ever we were at a motorway service station, my hopeful hanging around the games as they demoed away was always met with derision, not a single 10p coin was I ever given to feed to the intergalactic Moloch by the exits.

Heartbroken, I would pretend to play the demo, fingers on the buttons in hope the machine would spring to life beneath me. It never did. When we did get a Commodore 64 a few years later, only tedious educational software like dull as ditchwater "Gortek and the Microchips" was encouraged.

However, trips to stay with my father over in Manchester led to escape from videogame exile though. My father would take me to an early video game arcade in the guts of the Arndale complex in the centre of the city, near what I think was called Shambles Square. A modern entire glass fronted paradise, this arcade was neon lit, noisy, and full of the sounds of space.

And within its glass walls, lived GORF.

Gorf was incredible! Never mind Space Invaders with its boring left-right-fire buttons and monochrome graphics tinted by coloured perspex, Gorf was a cabinet of the universe beamed down to enrapture an 8 year old with its tricks. It had a massive, space ship joy stick, real colours that sprang out of the screen, and a craft that moved in TWO WHOLE DIMENSIONS rather than one.

More than that, it talked. It actually spoke to you.

It spoke to me a lot.

"BAD MOVE, SPACE CADET" it robotically intoned at me every time I got killed. Which was, like, about every thirty seconds. Despoite my excitement at them, I was rubbish at playing video games, always was, and probably still would be now. Many 10p coins my father gave me; many times I got balsted to bits without clearing so much a single level of aliens, all accompanied by Gorf's electronic taunts.

I didn't mind. I just loved Gorf so much, my father used to talk to me in a Gorf voice a lot. Gorf was always a treat dangled at me, for a couple of times every visit, if I was good.

Then, tragedy. That little arcade disappeared, swallowed up by heaven knows what, and to my father, the new treat was a trip to The Gogglebox video shop in Hale or Altrincham to hire a pirated ET.

New toys for new times. I eventually had tabletop Scramble and Firefox F7 that I played to death. But I've never forgotten Gorf. And I've never forgotten the wonder I felt as that young, enraptured child.

Konga - British Sci Fi does Killer Gorillas

I have just been reading an excellent anthology of writing on British Sci Fi cinema from the days of "Things to Come" in the early 30s, as far as Hardware, the film in which Carl McCoy of flour covered wearing leather hat sporting goth botherers Fields of the Nephilim appeared.

In between it deals with Quatermass, invading space dominatrixes, the adaptations of John Wyndham novels and naughty (and under-rated) space vampire type movies Inseminoid and Lifeforce.

In amongst all that, was a chapter dealing with British monster movies of the 50s and 60s, in which Konga, a 1961 release from Anglo-Amalgamated featured prominently.

Obviously the film takes King Kong as its starting point, but the movie is evidently more influenced by the Toho studios Gaiju films i.e. a man in a monster suit rampages around a carboard city squashing cultural landmarks. Eventually the heroic British army reasserts control of the situation which was initially created by the usual sort of deranged scientist with an axe to grind before being exacerbated BY A MADWOMAN SCORNED. The film thus combines two of the fascinations of home grown sci fi - how science must be kept coralled and controlled lest it destroys Westminster Cathedral, and how women are an inherent bloody menace whether they are space or not. As ever, tea drinking normality is restored in the end.

I haven't seen it, but along with virtually every other film mentioned in this book, I have decided I must. It can't be much worse than Peter Jackson's version, which the carnivorous insect section apart, is overlong and overblown.

Doctor Parnassus and Lily Cole

I watched this movie again this afternoon, in a state of total enjoyment while never quite understanding what the film is about. Which is fair enough, because 1) I'm no superbright student of cinema and 2) I'm not sure Terry Gilliam knew either after Heath Ledger died.

The "Alt Ledger" sequences (Depp, Law, Farrell) do look, understandably, rather rushed. Especially Johnny Depp's sequence through the mirror

It doesn't stop the film from being a highly wonderful piece of cinema just for being there. It just is, and I'm a huge fan of movies like that. It looks amazing, sounds amazing, and is wonderfully cast.

"Wonderfully Cast"? Yes it is. Not for Heath Ledger, who actually with his floating point accent is probably the weakest thing in the movie (HERESY!!!!), but for Christopher Plummer, Andrew Garfield, Verne Troyer and Tom Waits. But especially, Lily Cole.

She can act, for sure, but most importantly she really does look like the sort of god-beautiful-given gift an immortal might spawn as the result of a pact with a particularly suave devil.

I love this film, but she makes me adore it, and if that makes me shallow, then by all means, take a paddle in me.

Alien 3 is better than Aliens

Alien 3 is better than Aliens. End of.

Better cast of decent british actual acting talent and the tall bloke from Casualty who has just had his ear bitten off. The setting is more atmospheric, the characterisation deeper, and despite Fincher's production problems, it has a sense of style way above the KY dripping big gun techno porn of Cameron's vision.

And it has Chales Dance in it. I've liked Charles Dance ever since the wonderfully daft White Mischief, where he was shot by Joss Ackland and then masturbated upon by a middle aged ukulele strumming posh woman from the Kenyan Happy Valley set.

As for the rest of the reasons, it is best if I just list them as a procession of "No" bullet points, that will definitively illustrate for you why Alien 3 is better than Aliens.

NO irritating child NO actually rubbish subtexts about motherhood et al NO silly picture of an aged Ripley daughter that looks like it was ultrasounded in the womb of a tree NO stupid trainers that go over the ankle with velcro fasteners NO suits with turned up lapels NO scary corporate Rosa Klebb lesbian NO lines of dialogue that are flagged as a radical new symbol of female empowerment that aren't NO NO NO Bill Paxton rapping NO director's cut featuring Captain Hollister from Red Dwarf in an LV426 set that looks crummy when lit NO director's cut with Sentry Guns NO "Don't be gone long Ellen" NO silly giggle names like "Spunkmeyer" NO shot of Lance Henriksen in a tube that gives me nightmares NO heterosexual bromance between a crop haired latino and a guy last seen in a recurring role in Murder She Wrote. And above all NO NO NO over-rating by male critics who want to look like they were in at the beginning of some kind of female emancipation movement in world cinema.

Have a nice, dark, set on a prison planet that was originally a monastery kind of day.

Early Thoughts on Blake's 7 Reboot

Lots of chat about possible casting in both SFX and Digital Spy for this new crew of "One Innocent and Six Criminals" the showrunners have released. Obviously mainly about Avon, who I suspect given his unavoidably English anti-hero persona will get the Damian Lewis - Andrew Lincoln - Johnny Lee Miller second-level-brit-actor-in-usa-tv-show-to-give-it-gravitas position. But they won't want him to overshadow whoever they pick to play Blake, who is going to have to a rather tougher character to justify the show being about him. The original show was "Avon's 7" very early on in the piece.

Perhaps the rest of the casting will have the BSG formula of altering race and gender, and note they also have to find an extra character from the beginning to properly make up the 7 who escape en-oute to a penal colony - they are keeping the start of the story the same evidently. Zen could appear as a Bishop style Android perhaps, or an early entrace for Tarrant or more possibly Deyna.

And there is also Servalan to consider as it is unimaginable such an iconic female character should be missing from this reboot, but Morena Baccarin has just essentially played a rather similar looking character in V, so they might have to go in a slightly different direction from Jacqueline Pearce's unforgettable creation. But I hope they don't.

Above all, the show must be kept gritty and dark, but without the seeming self importance that has always put me off BSG. Do we have to ram Post 9:11 and Iraq slash Afghanistan metaphors into everything?

Let the story tell itself, without signposting "ALLEGORY! ALLEGORY! ALLEGORY!" over every damn thing.

Playing Tennis on the Moon

I've been having the most vivid dreams as of late, often rather nightmarish, often downright strange, but last night's was pure fun for a change.

For some reason, to commemorate the London 2012 Olympics, the LOCOG people were inviting people to go to an olympics base on the moon for £20. You had to wear black tie for some reason, and of the journey itself, I remembered nothing because "the human mind could not comprehend it." The lunar base itself had no windows - perhaps it was all a Capricorn One type illusion - and was all metallic inside.

I played a game of tennis with a lunar resident, a long legged female tennis player, and despite the low gravity, the game was dead slow, with the tennis balls barely bouncing. I could barely hit the ball over the net. Recognising this disaster, I was invited to play Moon Pool, which involved a triangular table, with holes around the pointy end rather reminiscent of bar billiards. Hanging over the table was a basket ball net, under which was a netting bag filled with fruit and mushrooms. This, apparently, was for "Fruit Basketball".

Fruit Basketball!!! Shades of Zig and Zag.

This has got me wondering however. We are constantly reminded how astronauts on long missions must constantly exercise in order to maintain musculo-skeletal integrity and vascular performance; to this end they spend hours a day in space on boring looking treadmills and similar devices. I remember Skylab had a primitive sort of hand cycling device.

This is just not going to be stimulating enough in the long run - the long mission astronauts of the future will want to play more competitive sports. I figured some sort of variant of squash or handball would be a possible option - doesn't require a huge amount of space, and would probably be enhanced by playing in a weightless situation. Badminton's a non starter, so is volleyball, but no doubt it would still be a spectacular sport for the naturist astronauts of the future. Darts would be cool in zero g, but not very strenuous, and hey, watch those windows and vital systems.

Perhaps you could play ping pong, but in a sort of square tunnel with a net all the way round. That might just work!

Black Hole Space Travel

I've been thinking about this concept a lot, during the long draggy hours at work, another far out sci fi idea to throw into the maw of my imagination, to be be chewed up and spat out.

It's not the normal view of black hole space travel, which posits them as a sot of wormhole short cut from one place in space time to another. My admittedly very limited research into black holes doesn't lead me to think this is a likely conclusion. But I was wondering if they could be used as a potential gravitational slingshot mechanism, like Voyager 2 and the major planets.

You would have to get in close, because as far as I can make out the sphere of influence of a normal black hole's gravity is not as wide as you might think. But as you get in close, you have to maintain practically the speed of light to maintain a stable orbit around the event horizon. So it makes me wonder if you could use ordinary black holes to accelarate interstellar travel up to near close to light speed, and whether there are enough black holes around to make this practical.

Just throwing something out there...

STORY - The Brain Drain

It's not hard, perhaps, to see where the inspiration for this piece came from.

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 01/04/2013

The Brain Drain

As I turned on the television, I had been feeling great all day. I had been running, been cycling, had a great idea for ending world poverty, and after a cup of tea had begun to map out an organo-metallic cure for cancer. An attractive girl had phoned me up to line up a date, and my latest expressionist painting was coming along a storm.