Um… Is this on? Am I on? Yes? Okay, good. Hello there, fellow Trantorians. My name is Kag. As a very few of you may know, I am the Secretary of Advance Scouting Research.Our Supreme Ruling Council have asked me to share with you, in broad strokes, the results of our scouting probes to our…
Author: John
The Bad News About Aliens
“Do you believe we are being visited by Aliens?” Nope. The End. See you next week. Okay, let me elaborate. One of the things that has repeatedly flummoxed me over the years,is the way many alien visitation proponents,upon hearing that you don’t believe aliens are visiting Earth,immediately launch into a fairly short but well-rehearsed speech,about…
Travels: Arborius
Sometimes, when one wishes to “get away from it all,” nowhere on earth will quite do.So I recently took a little mental vacation to a little Earth-like world I’m calling Arborius. Arborius, like Earth, is orbiting a yellow dwarf star, Lumius, which is slightly smaller than Sol. But Arborius is a little closer to Lumius,…
Flying Cars
How many times have you heard some older person ask “Where’s My Flying Car?”It’s true: Science fiction stories, and magazines like Popular Science and Popular Mechanics, did instill in many of us, the idea that one of the defining characteristics of “The Future” was going to be flying cars. I have always loved flying cars…
Geometric Art
I just thought I would share a little of my art.These are some recent experiments with abstract geometry.I use Blender to generate the shapes, then move to Krita for texture, color (if any) and finishing.Sometimes, I stay with black and white. The geometry itself is my primary interest on these. If you look closely, you…
Planetary Excursion: Chilth
Being a fantasy prone personality, I fantasize.Many of these fantasies take the form of excursions to other worlds. Sometimes these other worlds are fantasy places where reality itself operates under different rules, like, for instance, a place where you can swim in the air, then just drift back to ground, as if your buoyancy were…
Occupation
A completely fictional conversation between a Bajoran and a Cardassian,having nothing to do with anything going on in the real world. So, let me make sure I’m understanding this…You’re saying that your people have a right to Bajor,and to kill everyone who’s here now… If necessary… if, “necessary”…because your holy book says that your ancestors…
The Time Machine
This will probably often be the case in my posts:I recommend both the movie and the novel. And in the case of H G Wells’ The Time Machine, I especially recommend the novel, because it’s core message has yet to survive the movie adaptation process. I’ll come back to this. If Wells had never written…
The Foghorn and The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms
The Foghorn is a (very) short story, written by by Ray Bradbury, and published in 1951, about two men crewing a lighthouse, and encountering… well… I think it’s fair to say that they find themselves confronted with the humbling magnitude and overwhelming loneliness of deep time, and their own mortality and insignifigance. To say that…
THEY LIVE
So, if you’ve read my “About” page, you know that I have an agenda about turning our attention in a more optimistic direction, and specifically imagining a better future, rather than sinking into a dystopic depression. That said, cautionary tales and satirical observations still have an important role to play in our collective psyche. The…