Could we even use a HUD with Cybernetic Eyes?

[Image from Continuum]

It is a familiar sight that we have all seen in movies, television shows, and in games.  Seeing the point of view of a character who has cybernetic (or otherwise enhanced eyes) complete with a Heads Up Display showing vital information overlaid on the image.

Especially in gaming, such information is essential, as it does not hinder our focus, but a quick glance to the side and you can get vital information and situational awareness.  On the battlefield, having an interactive HUD would be a tremendous advantage in identifying assets or dangers that might be overlooked due to environmental conditions.

Warehouse 13 Makes a Dexter Reference

On Warehouse 13 this week, Pete and Myka get called to help H.G. Wells with a possible artifact.  Helena has been MIA since the events at the end of last season, so they are rather surprised to find her working as a Forensic Scientist in a rather normal life.

H.G. explains how such work was a natural fit, and that, "Any details I needed to play at convincingly I was able to glean from the television."

To which Pete replies, "I'm really hoping it wasn't from Dexter."

A reference made even more amusing since the actress who plays Helena (Jaime Murray) was Dexter's love interest in the second season of the world's favorite serial killer show.

Heinlein's Cryogenic Time Traveling Engineer

I actually read The Door Into Summer a while back, but had not posted about it.  Now that I just got a copy of Crichton's Timeline, I started thinking back about the story of The Door Into Summer and realized that it was a fun little story.

Written by Heinlein in 1956, the story is about an inventor who lives in 1970, who gets his business jacked by his (soon to be ex) fiance and his partner.  The two of them force him out of the corporation.

The story focuses on DB Davis, and his pet cat Pete who is a character unto himself.  In essence the story is about how he gets screwed out of his company, decides to get cryogenically frozen for 30 years, wakes up in the year 2000 to find that somebody else had started an alternate company with inventions he thought of, and so he travels back in time to try and sort it out.

The main character DB is definitely not the normal Heinlein lead, as he is a thirty-something designer and not the usual swashbuckling sci-fi hero we usually see in his stories.  And, well, like I said, the book was rather enjoyable in a timey-wimey kind of way.

The title of the book comes from his cat Pete who, during winter, would go to every door in the house to look outside at the snow, sure that one of them led to the door into summer.

And though it is a quick read, I would definitely reccomend it to anybody who is a sci-fi fan.

When Artificial Intelligence is Not the Focus of the Book

There have been a few articles that I have +1ed over on my Google+ posts recently regarding Artificial Intelligence, which led me to think about a recent book I had read by Robert A. Heinlin called The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

The book takes place in a future where the moon is a penal colony for criminals and political prisoners in a parallel of the past with a certain continent and island empire not too long ago.  It follows Manuel Garcia O'Kelly-Davis, a computer technician and former driller (before losing his left arm).  We meet Mannie at the beginning of the story when he is called in to fix a problem with the computer.

And here we are introduced to the A.I. of the story, Mike, who has become self-aware, and as a joke added a billion dollars to a janitor's pay check.  Mannie proceeds to fix the problem by talking it over with Mike letting him know it was a one-time funny joke.  The computer glitch thus fixed, and since nobody else knows Mike exists, Mannie still needs to get paid so spends time talking with the A.I. who is curious about what jokes are funny, and which ones are not.

Old Sci-Fi, From a Historic Perspective

As I have mentioned, recently I acquired a handful of science fiction books mainly from the fifties and have been reading them over the last few weeks.

Now you have to understand that, for the most part, I have never really considered myself a sci-fi person when it comes to novels.  Sure I read the Martian Chronicles and Dune series back when I was young, yet mostly I was drawn to Fantasy.  The one exception of sorts would be Anne McCaffrey's Pern books, because technically they were science fiction.  And even though it was later in the books that it was revealed they started off as space colonists, to my young mind the Dragonrider and Harper Hall books seemed more like fantasy.

Do times ever change?

Currently I am reading the 1952 Science Fiction anthology Tomorrow, The Stars, with short stories by such notable authors as Isaac Asimov, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., and Lester Del Ray.  The forward is by Robert A. Heinlein and provides an interesting view of the emergence of this genre:

Science fiction has only recently become popular and is not yet fully respectable.  Until the end of World War II it was, in the opinion of most critics, by definition "trash" and so convicted without a hearing.

It is hard now, with the prevalence of Science Fiction all around us in books, movies, and online, that these writings were once nothing more than filler for pulp magazines, and Mr. Heinlein goes on to explain his thoughts on why speculative science fiction was not accepted until after the war when things predicted in writings such as radar, atom bombs, and giant rockets came into being.

Isaac Asimov Discusses Ancient Aliens -- In 1978!

Recently I have acquired a number of older books by Sci-Fi authors, including the mystery novel by Isaac Asimov, Casebook of the Black Widowers.  Normally I do not read mysteries, but it was Asimov, so I decided to give it a go.  There I am, reading along, and generally enjoying the short stories, when in the middle of The Missing Item was the following:

Avalon nodded magisterially and said, "...And to those who can believe in Mr. Von Daniken's ancient astronauts and in Mr. Berlitz's Bermuda Triangle..."

Randomness in these closing minutes

Recently I have acquired some older sci-fi books and have been reading them.  Today I finished Starship Troopers, which was enjoyable.  Now, I still love the movie just for its sheer campiness, much how I like Natural Born Killers for being a dark comedy.

Next to read is an Asimov book, then two others I found.  Kills time in the evening when everything is closed and there is no place to go.