Musical skits

It's amazing how people take the mickey out of existing stories. It's almost as if those who created these worlds have opened up a new dimension in time and space, where others can go to live and play.

Here are some musical examples:

Star Trekking song.
Imagine Yoda rapping and break dancing - this is the Star Wars Gansta Rap - lego version.
Then there's Star Wars compressed into 30 seconds (animated version) or the screen clip version.

Oct 2009 Asteroid Strike Surprise

New Scientist reported a recent asteroid strike to the upper atmosphere on the 8th of October above Indonesia (with no damage to anything on the ground). Pictures of the upper air dust trail have also been reported.

The asteroid was relatively small (10m across) and resulted in a blast with the equivalence of 50 000 tonnes of TNT (that's just over 5 on the Richter scale - if it was below ground). NS describes it as "about three times more powerful than the atomic bomb that leveled Hiroshima" which sounds quite impressive.

Objects of about 30m in size can reach the ground and do damage. The interesting little detail is that there is a window of blindness for objects smaller than 100m across, which are too small to find and track. This implies that 30-100m is a size range that leaves us with a blind spot for surprise. This NS article seems to indicate that even if we were aware of an imminent impact we may still not have the time or technology to avoid the potential results.

Classifiying objects according to their threat was a good idea and resulted in the Torino Scale. 50m sized objects with a high probability of impact are classified as 8 on this scale and are red. A no. 8 Torino object is where the surprises lie. They are the Black Swan's of astronomy.

Some people are calling for a global asteroid defence agency. Maybe a virtual one would be better. This way people could work on it part-time and get scrambled together 'Hollywood style' if the threat is confirmed.

Satire - where to start?

A friend of mine is an engineer and takes life too seriously. He has asked me to tell him a little bit about the art of Satire and Humour. Instead of quoting facts and being very precise, which can be very boring for most normal people (or Penguins) - why not use humour to get the message across?

The following link claims: "Satirists (people who compose satire) often use techniques such as irony, hyperbole, understatement, allegories and parody in order to ridicule their subjects." It may take years of study to understand this stuff and miraculously it comes naturally to some gifted and lucky people.

So I've put together a little collection:

Humans are wrecking the planet.
Bogus climate solutions and last minute desperate solutions from politicians.
Would those clever animals (humans) cause climate change? No, it can't be.

And just for the fun of it here's a Simpson crash course in evolution :-)

PS Any good writer will tell you never to start a sentence with "And" or "So".

Do all stories follow 7 basic plots?

One of my writing teachers told me about an idea that there were only seven basic plots in story telling. So I did a little research on it and it turns out to be based on the book: The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories, by Christopher Booker.

Actually there are more than seven... They are summarised as follows:
1. Overcoming the monster,
2. Rags to Riches,
3. The Quest (overcoming evil in search of some form of elixir or treasure),
4. Voyage and Return,
5. Comedy (confusion reigns until things are mended),
6. Tragedy (see a later note),
7. Rebirth (a radical transformation of character or situation).
and then there are two more...
8. Rebellion (think animal farm), and
9. Mystery ("who dunnit" or what actually happened?)

I love Denis Dutton's summary of the essence of fiction: "The basic situations of fiction are a product of fundamental, hard-wired interests human beings have in love, death, adventure, family, justice, and adversity." He goes on to remind us that Aristotle explained what makes for good drama: "A conflict between strangers or natural enemies is of little concern to us. What arouses interest is a hate-filled struggle between people who ought to love each other."

Denis reminds us about Aristotle's logical permutations of tragedy: "In tragedy, for instance, either bad things will happen to a good person (unjust and repugnant) or bad things happen to a bad person (just, but boring). Or good things happen to a bad person (unjust again). Tragedy needs bad things to happen to a basically good but flawed person: Though he may not have deserved his awful fate, Oedipus was asking for it."

Taking this to heart I can now see that my first novel is a Sci-Fi Mystery with elements of Voyage and Return. What happened to the moon? Why did it vanish? Where did it go? Who was responsible?

Pi from the Sky - a crop circle

Picture credit - Telegraph.co.uk

One of last year's crop circles seems to indicate that there is Pi from the sky. This mind food from heaven has many astrophysicists and other scientists on the back foot pondering the meaning and reason for the existence of such complex patterns.

Obsidian, the multi dimensional cat from the Andromeda Galaxy, has a very good idea of what might be going on but his lips are sealed. The truth is revealed in Alex Dawson's novel, but you're going to have to be patient until they can find an agent who is willing to let you in on the secret.