The Big Idea

I just finished reading Tosca Lee’s Demon: A Memoir . Regular readers of my blog know I’m keenly interested in a variety of science fiction and fantasy topics and as Christian writer I’ve taken a particular interest in some aspects of the supernatural. Specifically, I’ve written numerous posts that relate to the topic of angels (my last was  Angels and Aliens ). So I was keenly interested in how Demon would portray fallen angles, a.k.a. demons. By the way, in talking about this book, I’m naturally going to commit some spoilers… Overall, in spite of a few ticks that are other than human, such as the demon in the story being fascinated with watching people eat and drink, this work does quite a lot to humanize the demonic, though I don’t think that was the author’s intent. In fact, I’d say the demon Lucian is really every bit as much an empathetic figure as the narrating protagonist, Clay. Again, I don’t believe Tosca Lee intended that, but I think that’s the case. I f...

A “Boltzmann brain” is the name for an intelligence that would randomly generate itself out of nothing. In some cosmological theories, believe it or not, the number of Boltzmann brains are thought to outnumber every human being who has ever lived or will ever live. By a long shot. Please allow me to explain this odd concept I just learned about a few days ago. Boltzmann  was an Austrian physicist, best known for the development of statistical mechanics, who proposed that the entire universe could have randomly generated itself out of nothing, even though that would be a highly improbable occurrence (to say the least). However, if the universe is thought to have existed forever, sooner or later it would have happened, was his reasoning--because even if the odds against something happening are one in one trillion or lower, given infinite time, even something unbelievably unlikely will eventually happen. Eventually--as in a trillion trillion trillion trillion years perhaps. This...

Imagine a set of gag monsters, that could be included in stories for outright slapstick, or which in slightly altered versions of what I propose could provide some needed comic relief. Such as a vampire who has the standard hollow fangs—but uses them to impale rinds and drink from citrus…and who turns into a fruit bat instead of a vampire bat. Perhaps this sort of vampire could be blonde and always have a deep rich tan (from sleeping in a tanning booth, of course). Naturally, such a creature would tend to wear white—or maybe really bright colors, like yellow or orange…and would drive a lime-colored VW beetle or something. And work out a lot…and wear spandex…(or perhaps earth tones? Live in a cabin? And recycle everything?) Imagine a less-than-successful supervillain trying to create a zombie virus and discovering in clinical trials (‘cause you’d have to try it out first, right?) that nearly everything about the virus works as planned…it does turn people into shuffling idiots, ...

The “transporter” is a widely-known piece of Star Trek technology. For the uninitiated, essentially the device grabs hold of you (stepping on the transporter deck is optional but is somehow helpful, perhaps in reducing the amount of energy required) and converts you into a beam of energy. The beam of energy goes a certain distance (the distance is limited to tens of thousands of kilometers) and spontaneously reassembles the person that underwent the process into his or her original state. Maybe for another post I’ll talk about how teleportation could perhaps conceivably work…but for now, let’s just assume the system really does work as the shows and movies portray it working…I gotta say though that I would under no circumstances be comfortable with my body being converted into a beam of energy and being reassembled elsewhere…what about signal interference? I don’t know how the beam moves or what form of energy it consists of (Star Trek isn’t clear about that), but whatever it uses...

The term "dark matter" refers to a number of hypothetical substances proposed to provide the mass that galaxies and galaxy clusters need to have to spin as rapidly as they spin and to stay in cluster formations with one another--mass which the observable parts of galaxies contain only a tiny fraction of and which by best calculations is too evenly distributed to be hidden in massive objects at given points like black holes. There currently exists no universally acceptable explanation of dark matter--in fact, some physicists claim instead the nature of gravity is something other than expected at large scales, Tensor-vector-scalar gravity and Modified Newtonian dynamics  being two such attempts to explain how observed evidence of galactic astronomy coincides with known laws of physics without evoking matter that has never been observed. In general, physicists have preferred imagining unobserved matter over changing already-known gravity to solve this problem, inventing...

Magical devices are extremely common in fantasy stories of all stripes. Cloaks of invisibility, magic wands, and crystal ball variations abound (and much more). Steampunk stories at times blend the magical with a Victorian feel...or make technology that might be imagined to work in the 19th century (but which can't really), actually work , producing an effect that is almost magical. I mean things like airships shaped like sailing ships with levitating balloons that are in fact far too small for the weight lifted, or mechanical men who act in ways more complex than current robotic technology can deliver--but powered by mechanical clockworks. But I think it would be interesting to feature stories in which devices are built--that is, technology exists--that are based on mechanical devices with magic essentially taking the role that electricity and electrical-powered devices perform in our world. So you'd build an elevator, for example, much like we do in our technological age-...

Caveat--I address this topic as an Evangelical Christian writer who has included aliens in science fiction stories and feel justified in doing so. The objections (and answers) below were written by me, but based on things I've encountered elsewhere: O1. No aliens (or alien planets) are mentioned anywhere in the Bible, so there must not be any. A1. A counter-argument could be made based on the fact that the Bible certainly does mention non-human intelligences. The difference between supernatural intelligences and aliens is something I've discussed in previous posts (such as Angels and Aliens ), but nonetheless, the point could be made that the Bible clearly envisions intelligences other than that of mankind...However, the best answer to this question would be to point out that the Bible didn't mention the Americas either--yet they existed and furthermore were inhabited by intelligent beings--humans of course, but to people during the Age of Exploration it was a mys...