Yesterday I came across a Sky News reports about what Stephen Hawking had said regarding alien contact.  As I have a strong interest in science fiction as soon as I saw the title of the article I was hooked.  It isn’t everyday the eminent scientist comments on the subject of alien life publicly and it certainly isn’t common for them to comment on the activities of mankind in preparation for this contact.

Those with strong fundamentalist religious belief may wish to look away now.

Alien Contact – Are We Right to Fear it?

Ever since science suggested that space is infinite there has been a related implication that there may well be other planets capable of supporting life.  After all, in a truly infinite universe the chances of such a planet existing have a probability of one, that is to say this is a certainty.  Of course some would argue that the planet capable of supporting life is Earth and we already live here!

As a teenager I remember watching a television programme featuring Carl Sagan.  In this program he systematically calculated the chances of life existing on other planets elsewhere in the galaxy.  I do not remember the exact details of how we arrived at the final figure, I do remember that the final figure was very large, in the order of tens of thousands of planets capable of supporting extraterrestrial  life.

Carl Sagan’s calculations were performed decades ago and science has moved on.  What I find interesting about his calculations however is that when compared with modern science today they were actually quite conservative.  Modern imaging techniques have proven that there may well be many, many, more planets in the universe than we originally anticipated.

Something I do not remember Carl Sagan discussing however is the relative age of our solar system compared to the universe at large.  The solar system, of which our Earth is a part, is very young in galactic terms.  Science currently tells us that life originated on Earth as primitive organisms approximately 3.8 billion years ago.  That same scientific theory also tells us that the universe is approximately 13.75 billion years old.  If life evolved on Earth by chance that it is also highly likely to have evolved by chance elsewhere in the universe.  As many of the solar system’s containing planets are much older than our own it stands to reason that if life evolved their it will be much more advanced than our own.

This type of reasoning is the basis of Stephen Hawking’s comments and I read them with interest.

I write science fiction and when I do so I often take what is known to be true and extrapolate it into what is merely possible.

So what was Stephen Hawking’s advice to humanity?

At its most succinct it could be described as “hide, be quiet and hope they don’t notice us”.

The reason he gives such cautionary advice is based upon a couple of premises.  The first is that aliens may well have used up all resources on their home planet and this fact is what has caused them to become expeditionary nomads in outer space.  His view is that aliens arriving at another planet will look at it merely for the resources it possesses.  Secondly, he compares the situation of humanity to that of the American Indians at the time of the arrival of Columbus.  He points out that the technological gap between Columbus and his men and the native Indians meant that things went badly for the Indians.

While I can see the wisdom in Stephen Hawking’s viewpoints, I do not share them.

Any alien life that has propulsion technology sufficiently advanced to arrive here is also pretty likely to have solved the problems of scarcity of resources.

Energy, in various forms, is much more common in the universe that many people suppose.  For example, the whole of life on Earth is supported by the energy this planet receives from the sun and yet this planet harnesses only a microscopic fraction of the energy output of that star.  If we could make use of even 0.1% of the energy output of the sun we would have more than enough energy for everyone on Earth to live with the North American lifestyle.

There is a similar situation when we look at rare minerals and the various elements that we commonly use on Earth.  We assume that certain elements are rare, because on Earth they are, but when we look across our solar system we see that in other areas they are plentiful.  Given sufficient time to develop appropriate space propulsion technology humans will no doubt be mining in the asteroid belt.  By the time humanity manages to reach this level it is very likely that we will have solved our energy problems as well.

These ideas are not just my own either.  There have been a number of books released over the years by top scientists that show that it is not just possible, but necessary that humanity develops a space faring culture and goes to the stars.

Why Stephen Hawkings Advice on Alien Contact is Wrong

Stephen Hawkings concerns about alien contact may be well reasoned, but they seem to miss one important point.  If, when we made contact with an alien race, we were also a spacefaring culture there would be little to fear.  The reason for this is because, although a hostile alien life form might destroy individual colonies or spacecraft, the chances of them being able to destroy the whole of humanity, if humanity was widely spread across the stars, is much reduced.  Efforts to secure the future of humanity are therefore best met by being bold explorers of space and not by huddling quietly in the corner and hoping no alien life notices us.  The sooner we get into space and establish meaningful colonies there, the better.

So, thank you Stephen Hawking for your well meant advice, but when humanity makes alien contact for the first time I hope that we do it as space faring equals and not like scared schoolchildren.

Click here for more about Alien Contact

No space opera is complete without some gun play, just look at Star Wars…

Anyway, while looking for photo stock recently I came across a few good gun pictures that are relevant to the science fiction genre.  Normally sci-fi likes to present itself as using cutting edge technology or show what is only possible in the far future.  Sometimes that technology is anything but “modern”, whatever that means.

Cyberpunk Gun Cam’s

In a number of cyberpunk works crimes are solved by retrieving images from gun cameras and enhancing them on a computer etc.  This is kind of a yawn plot device as if someone used the gun and knew it had a camera in it when they committed a crime, then the destruction of the gun and camera would be a priority, but I digress.

Cyberpunk readers’ demand that technology be used extensively in stories and so what if the use is an unlikely one?  I mean it is all SF isn’t it?  Well, unfortunately the “modern” technology of gun cameras is anything but, as this photo proves.

In case you are wondering, the photo dates from 1938.

The Lesson for a Writer

There is a lesson here for any aspiring author and that is to truly do your research.

If you want to be a professional writer then you had better believe that people will pull you up on the smallest and normally irrelevant details.  This is what a good editor is there for, annoying as it sometimes can be.   If the person that catches you out is an influential critic rather than your editor then wave bye bye to your book sales.  Better by far to have corrections made before the work is published

If you wax lyrical about the “new technology” of gun camera’s in your stories then please make sure that it actually is new.  If you aren’t sure or cannot find accurate information then at least talk about the “recently widely adopted technology of ‘X’ “, or similar phrases and then no matter how old it is no one will care.

Lack of research and credibility is one thing that hampers science fiction as a genre.  Make sure it doesn’t hamper you.

Dave Felton

The original aim of this blog was to show the process by which I changed from being an aspiring writer to the point where I became a professional author.   The idea behind this is simple: There are many aspiring authors out there.  By sharing, I hope to help and encourage others who are involved in the same activity.

Over time my personal goals have remained the same, but the methods of achieving them have changed.  For instance, most of my writing these days is freelance and this is an unexpected direction for me to have taken.  While I will always consider myself a “wannabe” author until my first book is published I can no longer say that I am inexperienced as a writer.  So, progress has been made, but is it in the right direction?

Freelance Activities

Most of my recent activities have involved either writing “copy” for others, or developing websites – which is really also copywriting, but with me as the client.  Writing copy as a freelance is actually more dependable than any other form of writing I have tried so far.  Even though I feel my standard of English and grammar usage is still lacking, it is possible to make some money.  The income is small, but at least it is there.  It will no doubt grow over time.

I still want to be a science fiction author, but I really have no control over when this will occur.  It depends on when an editor thinks my work is worthy of publishing.  So, unless I want to write a blog about rejection letters received from publishers, there needs to be content produced on other subjects.

This is a Science Fiction Writing Blog, or is it?

Regular readers of this blog will know that I recently changed a number of things in order to speed up page load times and make the blog more user-friendly generally.   While I was carrying this out I had a look at the blog using Google webmaster tools.  This tool gives you an idea how Google sees your blog and thereby how likely it is that folks interested in the activities of an aspiring science fiction writer will find your site.

What I found out shocked me.

This site ranks best in Google for…chess clothing!  OMG!

(I don’t normally use net abbreviations while writing this blog, but here it is probably for the best.  What I actually said is unprintable.)

How Can Science Fiction and Chess be Confused?

So how can a science fiction writer’s blog rank best for chess clothing?  Well, quite easily apparently.

I allowed myself to go off topic in two areas:  I posted about the subject of chess clothing a few times and secondly I have more chess links on the site than writing links.  [Note: Shortly after this post goes live I will be removing the offending links.]  The reason I included them at all (before I knew better) was that I wanted to show other aspects of who I am.  A pure writing blog seemed a bit one dimensional.  I now realise that writing about wider areas has a strange effect on Google’s search bot.  Alas, although the search algorithms in use by Google are designed by highly intelligent people, there is still no AI – it remains science fiction!

New Computer Chess Blog – Coming soon!

During recent weeks I have opened a number of new websites and so the process has become increasingly easy and straightforward.  When I realised that my interest in chess was taking the site “off message”, as the politicians are fond of saying, I decided to correct it by opening a new blog site about computer chess.  The cost of doing so is merely the price of a domain registration as I already pay for hosting.

This new site should mean that I can still say the things I want to on the subject of computer chess, but this blog will be better focussed on what it was originally set up to do:  Detail the process of growing from a science fiction “wannabe” into a full-time, professional writer.

Of course, right now the site is merely a few lines of blue text, but then this page started life like that too.

Wish me luck.

Dave Felton

Perhaps starting a science fiction classics series about a work as troubled as Bladerunner may seem a strange choice to some, but it contains some clever ideas and what is science fiction if not a world of ideas?

Bladerunner the Movie

Bladerunner performed poorly at the box office at time of release, despite being radically altered “to improve sales” from the director’s (Ridley Scott) initial intentions.  In fact Ridley Scott initially declined to direct the movie preferring to work on Dune instead.  It was only after his brother’s death and work on Dune coming to a halt that he agreed to work on a revised script for Bladerunner.  I am glad he did eventually agree to direct though, his work is excellent.

The studio alteration of the movie is what has given rise to the many “Directors Cut” type releases.

The movie was nominated for two Oscars and fifteen other awards, winning nine; including a Hugo and a BAFTA.  So why did it do so badly at the box office?  Well, it certainly wasn’t because of the cast which included Rutger Hauer (Roy Batty), Daryl Hannah (Pris) and Harrison Ford in the lead role as Deckard – The Bladerunner.

Perhaps the pictures problems were caused by a gap between audience expectation and the actual content of the film.  Movie sci-fi in the early 80’s was all about lasers and showy special effects, probably due to the after effects of the massive success of movies such as Star Wars (1977) and The Empire Strikes Back (1980).

Bladerunner is by contrast a careful, emotional movie about the value of life, both human and machine.  Most of the action takes place in moody, dark scenes in which rain seems to be a constant factor.  For all that, the movie is not depressing as might be assumed.

Bladerunner asks a simple question:  If robots were so advanced that you could not tell them from humans; whose life would be considered more important?  Perhaps this was too much for an audience expecting a space opera?

If you haven’t seen the movie yet, do so.  It can be bought these days for the price of a beer (basic edition).

Bladerunner the Book (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?)

Bladerunner is based upon the novel by Phillip K. Dick, “Do androids dream of electric sheep?”

The book has a different feel to the various different editions of the movie and I can see why it was altered for the mass market.  It is not that it is a bad book, far from it, but I feel that the direction and feel of Dick’s book is different from the film.  Apparently, shortly before his death, Dick said that “It was my own interior world. They caught it perfectly.”, so what do I know?

Bladerunner Quotes

Holden: Describe in single words only the good things that come into your mind about… your mother.
Leon: My mother?
Holden: Yeah.
Leon: Let me tell you about my mother.
[Leon shoots Holden with a gun he was holding under the table]

My personal favourite quote (movie)

Roy: I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time… like tears in rain… Time to die.

That quote is, for me, the essence of the movie.  If you haven’t seen it I won’t spoil things and tell you why…

Dave Felton

Spring is here and with the changing of the season comes a changing of my blogs central theme.

I want to be a science fiction writer, no doubt about it.  The problem is that right now that goal is not paying the bills.  This situation forces me to be a hard-headed realist.  My dream job is to be a writer, in the field of science fiction.  If the latter is out of my control, then certainly the first part isn’t.

Making Money on the Internet

There are many ways to make money from writing on the net, for example: copy writing and article submission to sites such as Constant Content.  While writing copy for others to use isn’t very exciting, it does pay the bills.  Similarly, writing articles for Google Adsense related websites is another means to make money writing for the web.

My only reservation is that I am just not sure how many times I can work a keyword into an article, over and over again and not sound like a robot.  Maybe the fun will be in achieving this without going totally bonkers.

From the sheer number of “scraper” sites on the web, someone, somewhere, must be making money with sites like this though.  Here is hoping that that someone can be me and not just Google.  At least when I make an Adsense site, it will be with my own content!

Anyway, for better or worse I have decided to give being an “internet marketer” a trial for a month and see what happens.  Accordingly I bought six domains this morning and will be developing them over the coming month.  The plan is to publish a frank report on the success or failure of the activity in this blog on the 31^st of March.  To get a fuller picture this deadline might have to be extended, but right now I can’t make a prediction.

If I can make even a small amount of regular cash from these activities it takes some pressure off and allows me to write stuff I am personally interested in with a clean conscience.  That is the plan anyway…

The Future for this Blog

Developing so many websites will necessarily cut down on my activity on this blog, but I still plan to post here two or three times a week.  In a strange way it might actually improve the content here as I plan to write a weekly post about the science in science fiction, as well as a personal post and maybe a creative writing based post too.

Becoming a science fiction writer is temporarily on hold…at least for a month.

Dave Felton.