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Subject:Operation Smoke Puff (or why could we go to the moon then, but not now?)
Time:12:28 pm
Looking at the wondrous wealth of knowledge I can access just by punching random shit into a Google search bar, it just seems like science was so much more heroic and cool back in the day than it is now. Consider the following:

Project Manhigh: Hey kids, it's 1957 and you want to know what cosmic rays do to folks above the safety of the ozone layer! What do you do? You stick a man in a 1000lb balloon and shoot him to the brink of space, wait a while and look him over after he parachutes down. If his radio stops working right, well shit, he'll just use morse code! He'll be aight! Badass!

Operation Smoke Puff: Hey kids, it's 1957 and you need to reliably talk to folks far away. Communications satellites are still years away and all you've got is shortwave radio. What do you do? Well kids, As You Know, shortwave radio has the interesting property of being able to bounce off the ionosphere and come down right where you want it, miles or even continents away!* Trouble is, the ionosphere is a natural phenomenon which means it's unreliable, chancy, mutable. Sun could be too bright, clouds could be too thick and who wants to deal with that?

So you stuff a rocket full of metallic potassium, blast it into the sky and voila! You've got your own ready-made radio-reflective patch of sky! Radio away like a mad bastard, my good son! Hell, if you are a scifi-inclined motherfucker(and/or Warren Ellis), feel free to shape it so the beams are good and narrow. Guide missiles! Evade jamming! Block radar! Light up your cities! Kill mofos! Badass!

-----------------

But! Just so you don't think I'm ragging on the achievements of the modern world, we are working on the stratellite which is just like a satellite, only lower**. Gives you better wifi and conceivably 5G phone) but covers less territory. Also, Cobra wants to sabotage it. Badass!


*why yes, I have read Cryptonomicon. Great book.

**albeit - as of this writing - somewhat larger than Warren Ellis' idea.
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Subject:Still on about this.
Time:10:23 pm
Aeon Natum Engel is immensely inspiring. Probably has something to do with Cthulhutech humanity being a total woobie; you just want to help them out in some way ... that or hurt them more, the poor bastards.

Which is probably why I'm pondering what Blindsight/Cthulhutech fic might look like. They're both dark settings where humanity learns just how fucked it is in the face of the larger universe. Technologies map seamlessly for the most part - barring Mythos-derived arcanotech* – imperfect but functional AI, cybernetic implants, augmented reality etc. As a bonus, the timelines work as if they were meant to The events aboard Theseus take place in 2087, Firefall itself happens in 2082. Cthulhutech is set in 2085.

There are complications of course. How does one square the Migou with the Scramblers? Dismiss the latter altogether or give the Migou yet another front in the Aeon War? And vampires; should they be an ur-human counterpart to the sidoci or should the two concepts be merged?
The latter seems like a good idea because it handily sidesteps having to explain why the New Earth Government would be crazy slash dumb enough to make enough vampires to constitute an ethnic minority. Vampiric heritage, as in canon, is buried in the human genome. Mating with Nazzadi produces children that express the vampiric traits, such as being more comfortable plotting eleven-dimensional permutations of spacetime than they are looking at right angles. Consider: the drugs Blindsight's vampires take to fend off the Crucifix Glitch** are called Anti-Euclideans. Ha ha.

The former on the other hand creates a totally sweet dichotomy where vampires are humanity's answer to the sidoci even as they fulfil one of the apparent themes of Cthulhutech and Blindsight: for emergently horrifying and/or necessary reasons, Humanity Is Being Replaced. Where sidoci tend to be born psychics of great power, vampires would be incredible sorcerers (after all, they're as comfortable visualizing quantum superposition*** of spacetime as regular folks are with 3+1)

Blindsight has combat drones that are actually held back by their human controller. They become more effective, not less if you hit that weak link. This may draw comparisons to Cthulhutech's Project Nephilim only much safer. The quantum-teleportation antimatter drive could be some kind of “ by humans for humans” response to the D-Engine.

Shit. The hard part is casting, really.



*read: sorcery, which in Cthulutech is something you can learn in college.

**intersecting right angles send them into tonic-clonic seizure

***excluding that whole right-angles-equal-seizures thing
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Subject:And Sapphire is for September.
Time:10:16 pm
I'm sure we've all heard of synaesthesia, the neurological trait where folks have one part of their brain crosswired with another. The most commonly known variant is the one where senses are plugged into each other so the synaesthete tastes sounds or perhaps hears colours. Others abound such as "grapheme-->colour" feature associational links between alphabets and numbers or "sound-->colour" where sounds trigger explosions of colour in the visual field of the synaesthete.

All good, all good but this has to be the strangest - and coolest - form yet - time-space synaesthesia! The year, perhaps even your entire past, experienced as a colour-coded ticker tape dragging behind you and floating ahead.

So what exactly does she see?
"For me it's a bit like a running track," she says.

"The track is organised around the academic year. The short ends are the summer and Christmas holidays - the summer holiday is slightly longer.

"It's as if I'm in the centre and I'm turning around slowly as the year goes by. If I think ahead to the future, my perspective will shift."
- via Peter Watts


You should check the Watts post out anyway for some fasinating extrapolations.
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Subject:Ia! Ia! Engel Fhtagn!
Time:11:45 pm
We've surpassed ourselves now, we're exploring terrain beyond the limits of merely human understanding. Sometimes its contours, even in conventional space, are just too intricate for our brains to track; other times its very axes extend into dimensions inconceivable to minds built to fuck and fight on some prehistoric grassland. So many things constrain us, from so many directions. The most altruistic and sustainable philosophies fail before the brute brain-stem imperative of self-interest. Subtle and elegant equations predict the behavior of the quantum world, but none can explain it. After four thousand years we can't even prove that reality exists beyond the mind of the first-person dreamer. We have such need of intellects greater than our own - Blindsight


In a nutshell: 14 years ago, Second Impact happened and killed half the world. Now, the "Angels" are coming and wholly intent on making a Third Impact and finishing the job. The only thing standing in their way? A paramilitary NGO known as NERV. They've built Tokyo-3, an entire weaponized city. They've found a way to lure the Angels to that location. Gendo Ikari, undisputed master of NERV, has secured the cooperation of everyone from the UN to the EU. This is where the giant cyborg mechs designed to kill Angels in single combat come in. Did I mention they can only be piloted by fourteen-year-olds?

Welcome to Neon Genesis Evangelion, one of the darkest and most fucked-up Judeo-Christian mythology-soaked animes ever produced. This can only end in tang tears.

The reason Evangelion appeals to me so strongly now is the same reason Suarez' Daemon does. Barring the Angel-derived Evangelions, the technology is hypernow rather than actual scifi: present-day1 tech with an unlimited budget. I mean, in one episode, they use a piece of SSTO reentry hull as a giant shield; this to to fend off particle beams from a hypercubic Angel. I'd kill to see a version set during World War 2 - or 1963.

Speaking of alternate versions, while I've never actually seen the show, I *have* read tons of fanfic. Sturgeon's Law holds true but, by definition, so does its inverse: 10% of everything is fantastic. Case in point: "Aeon Natum Engel" which retells the Evangelion storyline within the Cthulhutech setting.

Given that Cthulhutech is *already* a ripoff fusion of Evangelion and the Cthulhu Mythos, adding Evangelion might seem redundant. EarthScorpion however is a very smart fellow with excellent beta readers and a clear idea of where he's going with this. He is developing an incredibly dark3 tale that doubles as radically high-quality scifi. Strongly reminiscent of Peter Watts in its particularly Stygian vision of transhumanism, "AEN" depicts a humanity simultaneously stronger than it has ever been and more doomed that it can imagine, beset by enemies without and its own cognitive shortcomings within. As the Mythos tells us, the nature of the universe outside our formative conditions is inimical to human thought; the brain is not wider than the sky. We seem hemmed in at every turn, compensating as we always do with technological workarounds4 and math we can apply but not comprehend. Sidoci can easily be read as cognates for Wattsian vampires (not a ripoff at all, just parallel ideation). Hell, Blindsight pretty much *is* Lovecraftian fiction without the supernatural beasties. Cthulhutech (and by extension, AEN) simply puts them back. Lovecraft, as a writer of science fiction, thus becomes retroactively prescient, hamstrung only by his home era.

------------------------------------------

Random Thought: Someone should write "EVApunk", a fanfic setting where LCL is the drug of choice, angelflesh is ingested, injected or implanted to make folks stronger and stranger, red-eyed albino supersoldiers fight over the last samples of Rei's blood for their governmental and postnational masters and somewhere, Dread Yui lies dreaming ...

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1 - Technically, it's really late-90s tech.2

2 - Actually, it's really the late-90s take on near-future tech.

3 - Doesn't get much darker than Cthulhu Mythos.

4 - The AnimeVisionTM auto-censors that [mostly] let baseline humans safely view Mythos phenomena was a particular favourite)


5 - see [4]. Note that AIs, sidoci and the more powerful races of the Mythos do not have this problem at our level.
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Current Music:Reading "Aeon Natum Engel" which is fricking brilliant.
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Subject:Die in a fuck.
Time:12:54 am
If you find yourself sending out mass emails that refer to prominent African-Americans as 'jungle monkeys', you might ... be a racist.
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Subject:Fullmetal Feruchemist (these books should be an ultra-high budget anime)
Time:04:09 pm
Mistborn are solo ninja. Feruchemists are team players. Allomancy is optimized for victory. Feruchemy is optimized for survival. A lot like Solars and Lunars really.

These books would also make a really good videogame.
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Subject:LXG 2000! :D
Time:11:12 am
Fast-forward to the year 2100. Assume that people still exist and still produce human-comprehensible popular entertainments. Assume that they still have the same impulse that leads us to write and enjoy stories starring Irene Adler and Nikola Tesla, the pulp impulse. Which characters (and hell, colourful RL personages) from our era (let's say, 1950 to 2012) do you suppose they would write about? Who's going to be in the public domain and have the pop-cultural currency to become interesting all over again? Warren Ellis? Elaine Roberts? Spongebob? You?

You Decide!
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Current Music:Tomb Raider Movie.
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Subject:Yet Another Entry in the "I Wish I'd Thought of This." Department.
Time:09:42 pm
So, there's this city on the Eastern seaboard, call it Notham City. It's a big, brawling city with lots of industry and business, great gothic architecture, and a big crime problem.

Fortunately, the city is blessed with an abundance of crimefighters and vigilantes. There's the Clown Detective, who brings his twisted insights to every case, along with his balloon animals and squirting flower. There's Black'n'White, who can switch from thinking like an honest man to getting in the criminal's head as easily as flipping a coin. There's the Puzzlemaster, who uses his enormous knowledge of trivia and logic to unravel the most baffling crimes. And Shabazz, who came from distant lands with his beloved daughter, and now protects his adopted hometown with the ferocity of a mystical tiger.

Unfortunately, facing all these heroes and more is a huge and complex underworld of dozens of gangs and syndicates. And behind them all is the Night Mayor, the Big Bat, Dracula, the Shadowman -- he has a thousand names, but no one knows his face. Some say he's a myth or urban legend, but he's real all right, and he is the true master of Notham
- via RPG.NET


And now, studyness.
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Subject:On Miss California
Time:10:43 pm
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What fresh bullshit is this? A beauty queen posed in skimpy clothing? Bears are wearing fur coats! Oh noes! I love the hypocrisy of discriminating between bikinis and lingerie. Is this not in fact the same country where underage girls cavort around on school property, pantyflashing hundreds of screaming spectators to catchy 90s beats? Why is this an issue?

She exercised her right to free speech. She won fair and square - inasmuch as anyone can win such an incredibly subjective competition and no one has the right to take that away from her because her opinion differs from that of Perez Hilton.
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Subject:Iterating toward apocalypse.
Time:01:44 pm
They were the ones who invented rhyme and meter—the programming language for human memory in preliterary civilizations. It was a cultural checksum — a mnemonic device. You couldn't fuck with the code or the rhymes didn't work; and if the rhymes didn't work, people noticed. And so the knowledge of a people was passed down intact. It was a shamanic code. If you fucked with the code, then society lost its collective mind.
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Subject:Daemon by Daniel Suarez - Hypernow Reloaded.
Time:12:00 am
Gragg felt the tingling of the Third Eye on his stomach and back. The Third Eye was another of the miracles that Sobol had bestowed upon him. It was a form-fitting conductive shirt worn next to the skin—but it wasn't a garment. It was a haptic device that helped him use his body's largest organ—his skin—as another, all-seeing eye. An eye that never blinked, and an eye that could see around him in 360 degrees or halfway around the world, if he wished.

It worked by sending tiny electrical impulses to excite the nerve endings in his skin, much like a computer monitor projected pixels onto a screen. The microscopic electrical impulses represented data — from blips on a radar screen to full-blown visual displays. But what amazed Gragg was how the brain learned to accept input from this new source as if it were just another organ. Just another eye.

He felt the networks around him, but he could do more than just
feel them.


Before you question the farfetchedness of this tech, consider this. That's right, Navy SEAL receiving sonar input with his damn tongue. Neuroplasticity for the win.
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Subject:Only a ninja can kill a ninja. Or a mime.
Time:09:49 pm
Imagine "Mythago Wood" meets "Jarhead" as co-written by Douglas Adams and Kurt Vonnegut. Throw in a teensy-weensy little bit of Bollywood for flavour. Stir. Sprawling, hilarious, deep and dark by turns and all at once, The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway* made me laugh out loud several dozen times. Can't remember the last time I laughed so much while reading a single book. There's a serious squick moment involving a man and a dog and another man that made my testicles shrink even though it didn't involve genital annihilation of any kind. Mr. Harkaway is a big-time supernerd of epic proportions. Simultaneously, Mr. Harkaway is really into a certain domestic ideal of heterosexual romance and commitment. He is also into ninja. The big twist is a have-your-cake take on the big twist in (fucktonspoilers)Fight Club(fucktonspoilers). The book rules in ways that will take me days and weeks to fully unpack. Goddamn I love it.




*yeah, I know who his dad is and I don't care. If he doesn't want to talk about it, why should I?
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Subject:The Hypernow has legs ... and teeth.
Time:10:55 pm
Even as the time I can spare for frivolities decreases, the list of my Yearlusts continues to grow. Worse, old ones return with increased virulence. Why am I suddenly more obsessed with scifi-ish uses of commercially available technology? No doubt Burn Notice and Daniel Suarez' Daemon are to blame. And the nuke-hot rekindling of my love for self-made superpowered Machiavellian masterminds? My terrible habit of watching and rewatching Youtube cutscenes from games I simply do not have time to play i.e. Resident Evil 5 and series Chessmaster* Albert Wesker. Okay, no more time for this. Must study.



*see TVTropes for details

- posted via mobile web. Any crappy formatting can b thus be laid at the doorsteps of the Samsung Rant and Bolt Browser dev teams.
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Subject:Planet GIP.
Time:01:57 am
Took down my The Question/Heroes fusion icon and replaced with
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Ambrose Chase, dawg. Apparently, despite my thorough and abiding dismissal of the whole mess, Racefail '09 had a subconscious effect on me ... much like the White ManTM has colonized the backyards of my imagination. Haha.

Also took down Lesbians Yay!Girls Guns and Sex Minus the Guns - which has had a good long run but I no longer care - and replaced with
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the only known picture of Planetary #9's Fictionaut currently in existence. Used a combo of GIMP and MS Paint to shift the speech balloon leftward as well as darken and enlarge the lettering. Behold, for I have grown mighty. Ph3ar my awe.
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Subject:Annual Yearlust.
Time:06:08 pm
This year's Annual Yearlusts are:

- superhero universes where there is only one superhuman in all the world (Hancock, Death Note, Watchmen))
- superhero universes where there is only one kind of superhuman (Jumper, Highlander)
- well-researched fictionalized history (Ink & Steel/Hell & Earth, Gentlemen of the Road)

... tired now. Also, need to shit.
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Current Music:The Steel Remains by Richard K. Morgan
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Subject:Down these mean streets a man must go ...
Time:08:49 pm
Current Mood:[mood icon] pleased
The thing many folks seem to have failed to grasp about The Steel Remains is that it's not a fantasy subversion, it's a noir subversion. Consider who plays the role of the femme-fatale (or in this case, homme). Consider the lying ex who gets caught out in the end. Consider the pettiness of purpose, the smallness of scale to the events that herein occur.

Back when the Earth was young, back when there was still a moon
in the fucking sky, I pulled on whatever flesh was needful and I
struck terror into the hearts of the powerful and enthroned all across
this mudball world and another dozen like it. I took the spirit form
and strode across measureless ... ah,
fuck it, never mind." - thus spake Takavach. Red herring or just Moorcocking?


Hopefully the former, I should think.
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Subject:"Isn't this attractive? You can't leave."
Time:01:38 pm
Needs moar male Actives. And less shooting. Other than that, way too early to tell.

I'm optimistic though.

EDIT: Ah, isn't this interesting: a review of the original pilot script that Mr. Whedon was compelled to retool.
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Subject:Lie to Me.
Time:12:18 am
Current Mood:unexcited
People lie. Tim Roth says so. Turns out to be right. Show has no premise. Can't help thinking show would be better if written by [info]__marcelo. Would star a small team of evil manipulative geniuses with differing neuropunk talents, as well it should have.

Too bad. Tim Roth is awesome.
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Subject:The official name is State of Grace, by the way.
Time:08:40 am
Current Mood:[mood icon] jubilant
A Different Kind of Singularity


The eve of the 22nd century. A world where the dearly-departed send postcards back from Heaven, and Jainist evangelicals make scientific breakthroughs by speaking in tongues; where genetically-engineered vampires solve problems intractable to baseline Humans, and soldiers come with zombie switches that shut off their own self-awareness during combat. A world under blatant surveillance by an alien presence that refuses to show itself.

Daniel Brooks is a living fossil: an old man in a world of immortals, a field biologist in a world where all biology has long since turned computational, an unwitting catspaw used by terrorists to kill thousands. Taking refuge in the Oregon desert, he turns his back on a humanity that shatters into strange new subspecies with every heartbeat. But he isn't hiding from anything; he awakens one night to find himself at the center of a storm that's about to turn all of history inside-out.
- http://rifters.com/real/2009/01/consider-yourselves-lucky.html


What's the expression?

"Fuck Yes!"

That's the one.
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Time:11:22 pm
Dear Deepa D, I wish anyone gave enough of a shit about my culture to appropriate. I wish there was enough of its mythology extant outside the skulls of long dead great-grandparents to appropriate. I wish we had vast swathes of written tradition like the Bhagavad Gita or the Ramayana or the Upanishads for Roger Zelazny and Ian McDonald to appropriate.

Oh well, at least we'll always have Things Fall Apart, right?
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