The human colony on the planet Argo has long explored and exploited the technology left behind by an extinct alien race. But then an archaeology team accidentally activates a terrible weapon... Read More.
Praise for Star Dragon
"Seldom does a storytelling talent come along as potent and fully mature as Mike Brotherton. His complex characters take you on a voyage that is both fiercely credible and astonishingly imaginative. This is Science Fiction."
-- David Brin
"Star Dragon is terrific fare, offering readers a fusion of hard science and grand adventure."
-- Locus Magazine
"Star Dragon is steeped in cosmology, the physics of interstellar travel, exobiology, artificial intelligence, bioscience. Brotherton, author of many scientific articles in refereed journals, has written a dramatic, provocative, utterly convincing hard science sf novel that includes an ironic twist that fans will love."
-- Booklist starred review
"Readers hungry for the thought-provoking extrapolation and rigorous technical detail of old-fashioned hard SF are sure to enjoy astronomer Brotherton's first novel."
-- Publishers Weekly
"Mike Brotherton, himself a trained astrophysicist, combines the technical acuity and ingenuity of Robert Forward with the ironic, postmodern stance and style of M. John Harrison. In this, his debut novel, those twin talents unite to produce a work that is involving on any number of levels. It's just about all you could ask for in a hardcore SF adventure."
-- Paul di Fillippo, SCI-FI.COM
There seems to be a little, but not very much. I mean, if we go way back, we have the word robot:
“The acclaimed Czech playwright Karel Capek (1890-1938) made the first use of the word ‘robot’, from the Czech word for forced labor or serf. Capek was reportedly several times a candidate for the Nobel prize for his works and very influential and prolific as a writer and playwright.”
From Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, the word “grok” sort of made it. I remember a head shop in St. Louis where I grew up called “The Hidden Grok.” I’ve occasionally seen the word used in articles and things, but very rarely in conversation (outside of sf fans).
Frak, from Battlestar Galactica, seems to have a chance to break in, but with the new series over, I’m not sure it’s going to stick.
A word that has seeped in pretty deeply and successfully is cyberspace, coined by sf author William Gibson.
There are a lot of other words, and more words, but they don’t seem to have originated in science fiction exactly, or don’t seem to have made much headway in the public discourse. I found a webpage (cached version) that seems very slow to load that gives a list of nine:
1. Robotics. This is probably the most well-known of these, since Isaac Asimov is famous for (among many other things) his three laws of robotics. Even so, I include it because it is one of the only actual sciences to have been first named in a sciencefiction story (â€Liar!â€, 1941). Asimov also named the related occupation (roboticist) and the adjective robotic.
2. Genetic engineering. The other science that received its name from a sciencefiction story, in this case Jack Williamson’s novel Dragon’s Island, which was coincidentally published in the same year as “Liar!†The occupation of genetic engineer took a few more years to be named, this time by Poul Anderson.
3. Zero-gravity/zero-g. A defining feature of life in outer space (sans artificial gravity, of course). The first known use of “zero-gravity†is from Jack Binder (better known for his work as an artist) in 1938, and actually refers to the gravityless state of the center of the Earth’s core. Arthur C. Clarke gave us “zero-g†in his 1952 novel Islands in the Sky.
4. Deep space. One of the other defining features of outer space is its essential emptiness. In sciencefiction, this phrase most commonly refers to a region of empty space between stars or that is remote from the home world. E. E. “Doc†Smith seems to have coined this phrase in 1934. The more common use in the sciences refers to the region of space outside of the Earth’s atmosphere.
5. Ion drive. An ion drive is a type of spaceship engine that creates propulsion by emitting charged particles in the direction opposite of the one you want to travel. The earliest citation in Brave New Words is again from Jack Williamson (â€The Equalizerâ€, 1947). A number of spacecraft have used this technology, beginning in the 1970s.
6. Pressure suit. A suit that maintains a stable pressure around its occupant; useful in both space exploration and high-altitude flights. This is another one from the fertile mind of E. E. Smith. Curiously, his pressure suits were furred, an innovation not, alas, replicated by NASA.
7. Virus. Computer virus, that is. Dave Gerrold (of “The Trouble With Tribbles†fame) was apparently the first to make the verbal analogy between biological viruses and self-replicating computer programs, in his 1972 story “When Harlie Was One.â€
8. Worm. Another type of self-replicating computer program. So named by John Brunner in his 1975 novel Shockwave Rider.
9. Gas giant. A large planet, like Jupiter or Neptune, that is composed largely of gaseous material. The first known use of this term is from a story (â€Solar Plexusâ€) by James Blish; the odd thing about it is that it was first used in a reprint of the story, eleven years after the story was first published. Whether this is because Blish conceived of the term in the intervening years or read it somewhere else, or whether it was in the original manuscript and got edited out is impossible to say at this point.
Better than my list, I think, although some of the terms are not commonly used in the mainstream.
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
â€
Well, why would people actually implement these!?
I mean, we do have lawyers doing things like this to cover people’s asses, and harm from robots is one of these things that needs covering. Potentially. But wouldn’t a military robot have a law that says something like:
“4. If there is any uncertainty, kill them all and let god sort them out. I’m just a fucking robot, all right?”
What do you think? Are we actually going to have any control over our creations, or will people operating inside or outside the law going to circumvent anything at all resembling Asimov’s very reasonable and rational vision?
I admit it. Sometimes I find science fiction challenging to read, and I pass on it and pick up a light fantasy or a horror novel, which I prefer for escapism. If I do this, I don’t have to wonder why science fiction has so much trouble penetrating into the general public.
I took an advanced upper-level creative writing class in college at Rice Univeristy. We had a visiting professor that semester, Robert Cohen, a literary novelist among other things. He was a good writer and I learned things from him. As is often the case, I may have learned more from my fellow students.
One of the other students critiqued one of my stories in class. It was a story titled “Behave Like a Grandmaster” about aliens coming to Earth to compete in chess, and needing to apply psychology to really learn how to play the game the right way. Well, this other student, she couldn’t even critique the story. She could only go on about how every paragraph was a total surprise to her and just made her head explode.
I didn’t suck as a writer then, but I wasn’t writing at a professional level. Science fiction in its basics is harder to writer than most other genres. The opening of a story, as in a news article, needs to establish or imply most of the “five Ws”: who, what, where, when, why, and how. In mainstream stories, you can often assume human protagonists in the present, with our world today, and there are short cuts available in the writing. In science fiction, all of these opening questions are potentially uncertain and need to be established, and it’s often hard to do the stranger the answers are. Doing this well is the mark of a pro writer.
One of my Clarion classmates did a critique of a story where the opening was problematic this way. “My shelf got full,” he explained. He proposed a metaphor in which each new idea in a story goes onto a shelf, until it fills up. When the ideas keep coming, other ideas get pushed off the shelf. And, here’s the real issue, everyone’s shelf is a different length. (Try RAM for a computer metaphor.)
This is one reason why series are popular, and science fiction has a mess of them. Star Trek, and its spin offs, for instance. The who, where, when, why, and how are fixed or similar. Only the what typically changes. Series leave more space on the shelf (as some things have been stored in the ROM).
Still, in science fiction there is a tradition of celebrating new ideas and originality. Some writers get praised for how many ideas they can pack into every page, or even every line. And they tend not to acquire large audiences. Not many people have long shelves, but getting to use the full length of the shelf can be pleasing when you don’t get a lot of opportunities to do it.
Now, fantasy and horror can be challenging in the same way as science fiction, too, but they seem to rely on the contemporary world or certain tropes a lot more than science fiction as a general rule and are thus more accessible. There are variations of dragons and vampires, but they’re recognizable as such. Alien, Predator, the Terminator, these are unique creations. Sure, there are generic sf rip-offs, but few of them become popular. Rip-offs of Lord of the Rings (*cough* Shanara*) or other generic fantasy (*cough* Eragon* cough*) have certainly become very popular.
I do get bored with the light fantasy after a while and do want the intellectual challenge of idea-packed science fiction. Sometimes my shelf gets dusty and it’s good to use it.
The Top 10 Space-Based Science Fiction Series ever on TV (with Poll)
September 19th, 2009
There are a bunch of good lists concerning science fiction tv over on wiki. I tend to post a lot about movies, but this time I want to post about space-based science fiction series on tv. It always seems like there’s at least one decent one, and sometimes more than one. I’m going to take my own biased look and rank them — there aren’t that many, unfortunately. And I might skip over a few deserving contenders. I find it hard to compare things like Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica with Red Dwarf, which is its own unique, cool thing and something different than a traditional space action show. I’m also ignoring Earth-based stories with aliens (e.g. Alien Nation, V) and those that don’t focus on ships in space (e.g., Stargate).
And I can’t put a great deal of emphasis on the science, as I usually do. Why not? Because essentially every tv series I’ve ever seen has pretty questionable science, although I will give bonus points to those that tend to do things right a little more often (e.g., the new Battlestar Galactica).
10. Star Trek: Enterprise. I’d really hoped this would be an attempt to reboot to a feel closer to the original series, with some swashbuckling and more aggressive attitudes characteristic of Kirk’s time, but no. It was really a revision of Rodenberry into the late Trek feel, that touchy-feely thing. Good at times, but inherently flawed I thought. I still think the intro song has the wrong feel.
9. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The Cisco and various alien things masquerading as religion, the Middle East allegory, were both strong and weak points. I did enjoy the series more toward the end with the storyline involving the Dominion.
8. Star Trek: Voyager. First season really sucked, but the show hit its stride with the Borg and that super species. Oh, and 7 of 9 was the hot, wasn’t she?
7. Farscape. Very interesting visuals and aliens, as well as trying some innovative things (remember that cartoon episode?). I liked it.
6. Firefly. The weird world-building and its inconsistency (both in terms of the science and culture) make this rank as low as it is here. Joss Whedon does interesting ensemble casts and character interaction, which makes this a winning series. Not wild about the intro song here, either, as for Star Trek, but the feel does fit Firefly a lot better than Enterprise.
5. Blake’s 7. Now, I haven’t watched this since college, but I remember loving it sooooo much! Cheesy special effects, but interesting long-term character development.
4. Babylon 5. Like Trek, the first season sucked in my opinion. I had to be won back, but I was, mostly, for some very interesting science fiction. I think this series was special for handling long story arcs and developing them coherently, and it was a new way of watching episodic science fiction.
3. Star Trek: The Next Generation. The first season or two, like most Trek, kind of sucked. In the end, however, TNG crew became almost as iconic as the originals. The Borg episodes are classics. This series commercial from the first season is kind of weird to watch.
2. Battlestar Galactica (reboot). The series made what I thought were missteps, but there was a level of gritty realism and really cool stuff that I have to rank it close to the top. It was just way cool too much of the time, and interesting and complex, both in terms of story and moral ambiguity.
1. Star Trek (The Original Series). Too iconic, ground-breaking, inspiring to a generation of geeks and scientists (like me!), not to top the list.
Honorable Mentions: Space Above and Beyond, Battlestar Galactica (original), Andromeda, Space 1999, Lost in Space
Which series do you think was the best? I guess we don’t really have a current one. You see my number 1 pick. What’s yours?
I’m not really sure how to categorize these films except as “silly,” but they’re all very good and quite fun. Some are comedies, but others are action films. The science is usually wrong or non-existent, but it’s clear from context that this is not an important point and that’s fine, even by me! I really love many of these very much. Armageddon could arguably slip into this category, but I can’t put that film on any top ten list of any kind…
So, in no particular order:
1. Galaxy Quest. This movie is just a lot of fun, fantasy wish fulfillment.
2. Back to the Future. This is a fine, fun film. The science makes no sense whatsoever, but it’s perfect for what it is. And Marty McFly knows little about physics…
3. Flash Gordon. Goofy, over-the-top fun, from the football fight to the bore worms.
4. The Fifth Element. Chris Tucker’s bit here is as memorably silly as Lelu is cute.
5. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai. Laugh it up, Monkey-Boy!
6. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Whoa!
7. Men in Black. Old and busted? Not in my book.
8. Earth Girls Are Easy. Jim Carrey’s tongue and the “love touch” make this one goofy indeed.
9. Star Trek (the reboot). Kirk’s inflated body, hiding under the bed, Scotty being beamed into a water tube…there was a lot of silliness in this version you’d never have seen on the original series. And not very good science. Enough silliness to make the list! And here’s the Superbowl commercial…this is our Star Trek?
10. Weird Science. A classic of this type of movie.
Honorable Mentions: Star Wars (although a bit too serious), The Running Man, Total Recall, Chronicles of Riddick, Starship Troopers, and Repo Man.
First, it makes the mission simpler and cheaper, at least when it comes to some hard physical constraints involving radiation shielding and fuel. We can gamble against the sun on a short trip to the moon, but a longer trip to Mars is a bad bet.
Second, the manned space program is sold, at least philosophically and long-term, as a step to colonizing other worlds and getting our eggs out of only one basket (Earth). So, why not start having people try to live on other planets? The Apollo-style program of visit, leave, and stop returning is in some ways worse than not going at all, at least for this long-term goal.
Krauss worries that the public may not have enthusiasm for a manned Mars program if the astronauts are not expected to return. Whether or not they successfully live any length of time on Mars, it may feel like a death sentence and be bittersweet rather than triumphant. I agree that this is a worry.
I’ve given some thought to applying for astronaut in the past, and one of my college professors actually did become an astronaut, so these issues are not too unfamiliar to me. My first novel Star Dragon featured a space voyage so long it was in some respects a one-way ticket into the future, with little expectation of the ship’s crew returning to a familiar world ever again.
Personally, I think I’d need something extra like Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse Five, when the aliens who kidnap him let him pick the woman of his dreams (Valerie Perine, in the movie version) to share his exile from Earth.
The Ten Scariest Science Fiction Movies (Including Poll)
September 3rd, 2009
I’ve always been a fan of horror. I loved monster movies — the old Universal movie classics — as far back as Star Trek at least. Maybe longer. A lot of my early science fiction sales were stories with horror elements. Even today I like horror movies and my favorites tend to be science fiction with strong horror elements. I mean, I’m tired of the supernatural body that always gets up no matter what you do to it. It’s old and cliched. But a robot or alien, with some physical limitations, albeit limitations far beyond those of humans, that’s still scary without the “Oh come on!” factor.
So here’s my list of ten favorites. I hope you have some others to suggest because I’ve surely missed some.
1. Alien. The all-time greatest science fiction horror movie, as far as I’m concerned.
2. Event Horizon. Sort of dumb sometimes, but it builds a spooky mood and is downright awful at times. Sam Neill with no eyes creeps me out.
3. The Cell. Beautiful and scary at the same time, like a dream, with the same terrifying power dreams can have.
4. The Thing. Maybe this one should be higher. A total classic. A friend of mine is going on a scientific mission to Antarctica in a few months and I’m urging him to see it.
5. The Terminator. I’d take the Terminator over Jason any day. Relentless and scary.
6. Predator. I’ve seen this one enough times it isn’t scary any more, but I remember the first time I saw it, the jungle coming to life, the instant death, the flayed bodies…
7. Cloverfield. The reality element to this, and some of the real-life sorts of injuries that happen amidst all the speculative elements, gave me that feeling in my stomach for hours.
8. Pitch Black. Aliens in the dark.
9. Signs. OK, it’s dumb, but watching that video on TV with the alien at the birthday party, the hands under the doors…it WAS scary! Until the end anyway.
10. Hardware. A little film, but I remember being scared as this was a robot that was harder to kill than the Terminator. Worth checking out.
Honorable Mentions: Species, Resident Evil, Donnie Darko, Dark City
OK, I’m not crazy about this topic because I’m a realist and deal with reality, and calling Pluto a planet or not is semantics. The astronomical and cultural classification is not important to reality and doesn’t have any physical effect on Pluto whatsoever.
In general, I’m happy with the IAU’s definition of a planet and the reclassification of Pluto. I don’t think the definition is perfect, however. It is somewhat consistent in equating Ceres and Pluto as non-planets, and keeping things simple with all the other Pluto-type worlds being found in the Kuiper Belt.
But I’ve been thinking about it some more. Apparently a handful of folks, particularly Americans — who I think simply don’t like international bodies to tell them how to think about anything — are still annoyed. I’m fine with folks being annoyed, because, to be frank, no matter what you do there will be a handful of people annoyed. That doesn’t mean you didn’t do the right thing. It just means that some people are obnoxious loudmouths.
I saw it suggested that Americans in particular are upset because Pluto was discovered by American Clyde Tombaugh and the Disney character Pluto was also created at the same time. (And I love that bit in the movie Stand by Me: “If Pluto is a dog, what the hell is Goofy?” But that’s a different problem of classification.)
Sometimes the loudmouths are right, however. I don’t think this is the case here. I mean, let’s face it. The designation of “planet” is pretty arbitrary. We really only need some consistency for science to be happy. Semantics are rarely something where there is an absolute right answer.
The more logical way to classify planets is the geophysical definition, which simply states that planets are round objects that orbit the sun, Sykes argues. The objects must still be big enough so that gravity crushes them into a ball.
“The problem with the geophysical definition is we might have a couple of dozen planets in the solar system as more are discovered in the distant reaches,” Sykes said.
He believes the International Astronomical Union’s definition won’t stick around after NASA spacecraft reach Pluto and Ceres, a Texas-size asteroid in an orbit between Mars and Jupiter that is now also classified as a dwarf planet.
“I think [the IAU’s definition] is going to collapse by 2015 when the Dawn mission gets to Ceres and the New Horizons mission gets to Pluto because we’re not going to see irregular-shaped, impact crater-filled, boring surfaces. We’re going to see dynamic worlds,” Sykes said.
I personally like the simpler definition of solely whether or not something has enough self-gravity to pull itself round, and the part of the IAU definition of “clearing its orbit” does seem less compelling. The IAU definition has the advantage of keeping things simple and more or less consistent. If we wanted to be more serious, we’d have three definitions anyway, as we already break up the eight planets into gas giants and terrestrial planets, and the Kuiper Belt Objects would be a different sort altogether.
But if we’re going to have one definition, one word “planet,” I can see some merit to opening up the solar system.
As a kid I longed for astronomers to find “planet X.” I remember eagerly updating my memory about how many moons every planet had (Jupiter and Saturn have been particularly dynamic this way). It was sort of exciting.
What’s wrong with adding Ceres as a planet? And then Pluto? And getting excited every time a new Kuiper Belt Object is found that is big and round? Having dozens more planets in the solar system? That would be of huge public interest and make astronomy look like the exciting and dynamic science that it is.
I’m fine with the status quo and the IAU definition, but I’m starting to lean toward a more inclusive definition that would be good and exciting PR for astronomy. If people can learn all the baseball teams in the major leagues, they can learn several dozen planets.
It would be fun. And maybe we could even name one of the new planets “Goofy.”
MIND MELD: The Most Intelligent Films of Science Fiction
Much of the general populace believes that SciFi films are nothing more than dumb fun, but genre fans know better. Science fiction offers filmmakers a unique opportunity to be thought-provoking and meaningful, or at least something more cerebral than, say, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.
We asked this week’s panelists the following:
Q: Which films do you think are good examples of Intelligent SciFi?
Here’s my response, among the others:
Mike Brotherton
Mike Brotherton is the author of the hard science fiction novels Spider Star (2008) and Star Dragon (2003), the latter being a finalist for the Campbell award. He’s also a professor of astronomy at the University of Wyoming, Clarion West graduate, and founder of the Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop for Writers (www.launchpadworkshop.org). He blogs at www.mikebrotherton.com.
Intelligent science fiction film? There’s not a lot of it, but it is out there. Here’s my list:
Contact
2001: A Space Odyssey
Primer
Gattaca
Blade Runner
Minority Report
A Clockwork Orange
The Abyss
Aliens
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn
I could spend a lot of words justifying the strengths and downplaying the weaknesses of each of these, but there’s plenty of meat in them to think about after the credits roll (and before!). None are prerfect, but they’re all intelligent.
Every one is a little different, similar to the way that every science fiction convention is a little different, but there are a lot of standard things that everyone comes to expect, at least at a big meeting.
Big meetings like the IAU General Assembly (2000 people attending) have multiple smaller meetings as a part of them, and are often held in convention centers or large hotels. Programming tracks, if you will. There are scheduled talks that are generally given in association with a powerpoint presentation, very tight time control, and a short Q&A period. These are usually in packed rooms, and people tend to be pretty formal. There are rarely if ever anything like panels you might see at a science fiction convention — everyone attending has some expertise, wants to learn some things, and wants information presented rather than discussed. Sometimes discussions are planned, and they’re good when they work, but having 100+ people have a single discussions never works anywhere very well.
When you have so many people attending a meeting, there is never enough time for everyone to speak. Usually there is a committee of experts that decides who to invite to give longer review talks, recognized experts in various subfields, and then sifts through the other requests to speak to choose contributed talks, often given shorter timeslots.
Everyone is usually allowed to present. Since astronomers usually spend grant money to attend meetings, it’s always good to be able to claim a presentation to justify the travel expense. The overflow is handled by “poster sessions,” or what I think of as science fair for adults.
Basically there’s a large space, the main exhibition hall of the convention center often times, in which everyone gets to hang up their posters on display boards. These days these are often 3×4 feet full color jobs done up at Kinko’s or someplace similar. In the old days, they were sometimes handmade (as were the transparencies used for talks, AKA “oral contributions”). The posters stay up during the meeting and there is often time set aside just for them, often in conjunction with a coffee break.
In practice, everyone eats snacks, drinks coffee, and chats a lot. You usually have to find opportunities to drag people over to your poster. There are a lot of websites out there that give guidelines for how to make a good poster. I have my own ideas, and try to do a bit of advertising rather than complete an entire paper that no one is going to read in detail at a coffee break. If you’re interested, you can see the poster I did for an American Astronomical Society meeting in St. Louis last summer, which I made with powerpoint. Sorry, just that one file format for now.
Like many conventions, the real meat of the meeting is seeing old friends and collaborators, and talking science at bars or restaurants. Real collaborations do develop at these meetings, and people job hunting use them to network and find leads, and it does work. It’s not the most efficient way to transfer information, but it’s a fun way and a lot of good things happen that would never happen without putting everyone together face to face. Even in the internet age, it’s still a good thing to have, these live face-to-face meetings.
Also like conventions, things change a lot depending on your professional experience. You start off young, not knowing anyone, and are usually excited to see and meet people you know only by reputation. You end up comfortable and experiences, with lots of friends (I hope for everyone’s sakes!), and interacting with your collaborators or other individual scientists becomes more important than seeing every single talk and taking notes.
There are also usually exhibitor booths (similar to a dealer’s room at a convention). Sometimes these are book sellers, but more often any company or institution important in the astronomical community that wants to make their presence known. Observatories, informational websites, journals, and others have people available to talk to about what they do. It’s not always for profit. Sometimes it’s just about community building and providing services, which helps them justify their funding and be appreciated by astronomers.
So, an astronomy meeting has a lot of things in common with a science fiction convention in broad strokes, but quite a lot of things are very different in detail.
I’ve never been a big fan of being graded or grading others. Ideally we should all learn for the sake of learning, but I have to admit that grading, from a number to a letter to a gold star can be a stupid but effect motivator. Moreover, the grades are used by admissions committees for college, grad school, and taken into consideration by employers.
First of all, I think some subjects shouldn’t be graded except as pass/fail, as these subjects are very subjective. Art, for instance. I took drawing in college, and took it pass/fail, as I thought that was fair. I would have gotten an A (I was pretty good in the day) but it wasn’t important. Same thing with creative writing — I would have gotten an A, but took it pass/fail. All I needed was a dick prof who didn’t care for science fiction who decided it was his duty to help his students see the light, so to speak.
Any course where the so-called “BS” works should also be pass/fail. I had a college roommate, a smart guy, who was nearly a straight-A student and took lots of humanities courses. He had a system. He wrote his own thoughts and opinions on his first paper, and if he got anything less than an A he would change tactics and regurgitate the attitudes and opinions of the prof. Worked every time. I just shuddered when he told me stories about this.
I believe that those big intro courses, often featuring basic information and multiple-choice tests, should not be graded based on a curve. They should be easy enough that most students working hard can get an A or B, and only the real slackers scoring less. Often these courses, however, by virtue of their sheer size, are the ones that most likely end up with normal distributions of grades. When I taught intro astronomy, mine was a curve skewed to higher grades.
Upper-division major courses, and grad courses, ought to just have grades of A, B, and C, ideally. Everyone at that level should love their subject and not be too bad at it, although disasters sometimes happen at every level. Grades of C are pretty much regarded as failing at the grad level, and sometimes those courses must be retaken.
I think grading is easier and fairer for quantitative disciplines, like math, science, and engineering. Everyone can see the numbers, and the scales can be defined at the start of the course. There should be little to no confusion. When I started teaching grad courses, I initially gave lots of research-type problems that did not lend themselves well to simple numeric scoring. I have kept these, but added problem sets and exams that are of the same type we use for our qualifying exams which every grad student must pass to move on to PhD Candidacy.
[Added later in response to a good point. Professors do screw up either covering material, conveying expectations of material on exams, or just plain write stupid hard exams from time to time. Curved grading is an appropriate response to these events, and I put this exception down in my syllabus, explicitly stating that it is there to work in a student’s favor and protect them. Ideally an experienced professor writes fair tests, but the world is not ideal, unfortunately.]
Students should be aware that professor’s grade distributions are evaluated regularly and suggestions are made if they’re higher than average, so even profs get graded. Our dean likes to see low grades and high student satisfaction, as he regards that as being the signature of good teaching. Sometimes easy grading leads to inflated teaching evaluations by the students, although I’ve seen research indicating the strongest correlation is with the student’s expectation of their grade going into the final (evaluations are done before final grades are given).
I’ve had a year off from teaching, and will resume my duties later this month with graduate cosmology. That course I’ve taught before, but will have a new one to teach in the spring for freshman/sophomore astronomy majors and am giving that one some thought already. There’s a lab component, so that gets factored in, too.
Anyway, it’s a necessary evil, grading, and super important to the bean counters who must know how things are going. It’s a strange thing, though, that in real life and even real academic life (e.g., publishing in professional journals) we stop getting grades. Somehow everything works anyway, and people strive to do a good job. Why can’t that be the case in school? At least with major courses?
The other day someone emailed me with a question about a passage in my novel Star Dragon that bothered them. They were right to be bothered and I’m going to just say that we all goof from time to time, even over things we know pretty well, and in the spirit of Obama I’m going to take this opportunity and treat it as a teachable moment. Anyway, here’s the email:
I am three-quarters through Star Dragon, which is excellent so far, and I would like to applaud you for some really interesting concepts. I did have one concern, however, in that I did not understand what was going on between pages 135 and 136, when “The rotation rate was set to provide one earth gravity for the radius of the fore bulb, but accelerative force was inversely proportional to the radius. The taper made things spin fast, made things heavier.” Now, granting that this is a minor point in the grand scheme of the book, it left me confused and sure that I had misunderstood your explanation of the ships structure. It seemed that Dr. Fisher was climbing “uphill” and thus to a section of the ship with a smaller radius, relative to the central axis of rotation. Shouldn’t then, the centripetal acceleration have been less, thereby providing less artificial gravity? I was imagining a cone, spinning along an axis running from its point to the center of its base. Similarly to two points on a record, the point on the outside that must travel a longer circumference in the same rotational period as a point near the center travelling a smaller circumference must travel at greater speed, thereby increasing the centripetal acceleration at the edge. Thus, the “accelerative force” would be directly proportional to the radius, wouldn’t it? The larger the radius, the further a person standing on the deck would travel in the same amount of time, thus more acceleration. So I thought that I must have misunderstood ship’s structure and its orientation to the axis of rotation. This confusion distracted me from the story, and damaged my suspension of disbelief (or weakened my ability to immediately accept your science), so I was simply looking for some sort of clarification to put my mind at ease. Again, I am enjoying the book, and I look forward to picking up a copy of Spider Star at some point. Thank you for your time, and for the excellent story.
Well, he’s totally right. I just blew it. Here’s the exact passage:
He made the tube between rings and followed it, ever so slowly, past all the fore rings, toward the tapered rear of the ship. The missiles were kept there, in one of the holds, away from the inhabited portions of the ship.
Because of the taper down to the smaller rear bulb, the effective gravity increased as he climbed the slope. Because they had cut the wormdrive and their deceleration to arrive early, they rotated the ship around its central axis so that centrifugal forces now defined “down.” Although portions of the ship could twist to accommodate the shift in the gravity vector, the ship rotated as a solid body. The rotation rate was set to provide one Earth gravity for the radius of the fore bulb, but accelerative force was inversely proportional to the radius. The taper made things spin fast, made them heavier.
He climbed up the white hill, his body spiraling as he went. One point one gravities, one point two, one point three gravities. A steep climb indeed. How would the extra weight slow a fish?
So there’s a context here, with Sam Fisher trying to move through the starship undetected, using software to cover his tracks from the monitoring AI, but needing not to make anomalies too large to hide.
But as he climbs the hill, he should get lighter, not heavier. Just as in Armageddon, the crews meeting at the center of the rotating space station should be weightless (instead they seem to be at an Earth gravity and being pulled in a stupid direction). With solid body rotation like this, the velocity gets smaller as you approach the spin axis. The gravity is proportional to the radius, not inversely proportional.
All I can do is apologize for the error and suggest that I was getting angular momentum conservation mixed in with what I know about artificial gravity. I think I had some stupid idea about a skater pulling in her arms and spinning faster. This is a related, but very different, concept. I must have read that passage a half dozen times or more, and I know a bunch of physicists and astronomers read it, and no one ever mentioned it before. Maybe a few noticed and moved on, but I feel bad about it.
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