The Expanse: A look into the future?

Museum of Science & Industry

One of my best friend's dreams is to be an astronaut. I, however, would never go to space. Well, we agree to disagree. 

My friend believes the "final frontier" will bring wonders; I think space is a lot of nothing, and some rocks, and gas giants. And, if we find someone, or some thing, up there, it might just be terrible. 

Perhaps I am traumatized by watching Alien, Aliens and (good god!) Event Horizon. But, I think we humans do best on our little blue marble called Earth. If we want to explore space, we can always send a neat robot. 

However, in spite of my fear of space, I still love science fiction. I'm currently about half-way through the second book of James S. A. Corey's "Expanse" trilogy. The Expanse book series, and well-done television show on Amazon, shows what I believe is an accurate version of a space-venturing future. Earth is over-crowded, and humans have ventured to Mars, and have even created colonies on asteroids and moons of Jupiter. In cosmological terms, this is a pretty humble task; of all the billions of planets, stars, light-years and parsecs in just the Milky Way galaxy, that's like barely leaving our own back-yard!

 

It's not Star Trek. There are no spaceships that can break the laws of physics (that we know of currently). Space, in The Expanse, is a tough and brutal place. Brave, blue collar, space workers are regularly injured on-the-job by space rocks, ice chunks and work accidents. -Think of a coal miner from West Virginia, but in a space-suit.- Not only that, but the challenges families face in this fictional series are serious; cancer is rampant due to Solar radiation, which we are protected from on Earth. Individuals who are born in space, grow up differently due to the lack of gravity; their muscles and bones are used to weightlessness. If they go to Earth they will have a terrible time coping, as it would be like having pounds of iron on their shoulders.

When it come to physics, the Expanse series truly tries to be accurate as well. On Earth, with our lovely gravity, if someone shoots a gun, the bullet shoots away and the shooter stands still. In a gravity-free environment, the shooter flies backward as fast as the bullet shoots forward. Not only that, but a projectile, like a bullet, can puncture a dome or a ship that contains the oxygen we humans need to breath. Bad news! 

When it comes to fighting wars in space, it's a crap shoot. It's basically firing stuff in every direction and hoping for the best. God forbid your spaceship is punctured, because then you're toast.     

James S. A. Corey, "The Expanse",  New York, New York: Orbit: Hachette Book Group, Inc. 2012   

Slap Shot: Secretly Feminist, pro-LGBTQ & pro-Labor?

As a young hockey player that skated with guys from both North and South of the Canadian-United States border, Slap Shot was required viewing. The 1977 film about a failing minor-league ice hockey team, directed by George Roy Hill and written by Nancy Dowd, was essentially a cult classic among hockey dudes like myself -mostly, for the fighting, and the brutal hits. 

The Charlestown Chiefs

Now, Slap Shot may not be a film suitable for a young child; and, if you're particularly sensitive, it may not be suitable for you either. The film depicts, in my view, a very accurate representation of what a hockey locker room in 1977 might have looked and sounded like. To give you a hint, there is a lot of language that would be considered beyond-the-pale today: lots of "f***s," "d***s", "c***s" and other words we'd never want to utter to someone public in these days. But, before anyone gets too worried about the message of the film, it's very much the opposite of the hyper-violent, hyper-masculine and somewhat bigoted stories of its characters. Slap Shot is actually, secretly, about women, sexual identity and labor in a capitalist society. 

The first hint that the film might be deeper than a simple montage of fighting matches between washed-up pro hockey players, is in the first act when Ned Braden (played by Michael Ontkean) tells coach Reggie Dunlop (played brilliantly by Paul Newman), that the steel mill in Charlestown (the fictional home of the team), is shuttering, and leaving tens of thousands of workers without jobs or income. The writing is on the wall, when the factory goes, the town goes... and so go the Chiefs, Charlestown's hockey team. "These people aren't going to have money to spend on hockey games," Ned says. 

From that point forward Newman's character, Dunlop, hatched scheme after scheme to try to save the team from bankruptcy by using violent antics to bring in frothing crowds of frustrated, angry, blue-collar fans who just want to see their Chiefs kick butt! If the Chiefs can fill the seats, they may just have a chance to stay in business, and the boys on Dunlop's team can continue their careers in the sport they love. Dunlop goes pretty far too; he even goads an opposing player into a fight by suggesting that his wife may prefer women to men -though don't get too mad at him, because that player was very likely abusive to his wife in the first place. If you don't watch and listen carefully, this may all sound a bit crude. However, you must consider that this was a film depicting hockey goons in the 1970's -people weren't as sophisticated back then. And, very importantly, our hero Reggie Dunlop never suggests he has any issue with homosexuality or the LGBTQ community. He just used some language we wouldn't use today. 

Lily (Lindsay Crouse) attempting to cope

One of the most important plot lines of Slap Shot is the story of the women who, despite everything, stand by and tolerate their terrible hockey playing boyfriends and husbands -and, at least one woman who broke free of her marriage and went on to create a wonderful life for herself! If you get the chance to watch this beautiful film, pay close attention to the women. They are more than half of the story. They go through hell to support their partners, showing up in the middle of the night to greet their men when they return, win or lose. One in particular, Lily (played by Lindsay Crouse) has a particularly difficult time dealing with her hockey player partner. Who could blame her?

When I watched the movie as an adult, it made so much sense that the screenplay itself was written by a woman, Nancy Dowd. She had written the script, in part, to tell the story of her own brother's trials in the brutal world of pro hockey. But, she didn't simply succeed in creating a film about hockey. She captured a very broad working class North American experience involving the beauty of the sport, as well as the violence. But, more-than-that, she captured a slice of American and Canadian life that involves the challenges every low-life, good-for-nothing, steel town faces when the big-money company pulls-up anchor and moves out, leaving the workers holding the tab. 

Roy Hill, George. Slap Shot, Universal Pictures, Universal City, California. 1977.   

StarCraft: The Craft of War

My dad once taught me to play Chess. It's a genius game that teaches you, well, the craft of war. It involves strategy. Each piece has its own properties, and they're allowed to do different things on the map. You have to carefully plan your moves, and attack sneakily so you don't lose your king and queen right away. 

If there is a modern computer game that is analogous to Chess, I believe it is StarCraft (the original). It was published in 1998 and is still available to play via Blizzard Entertainment's Battle.net application for a very low price. In fact, it's still well-supported, and many people play the game online today.  

Image from StarCraft by Blizzard Entertainment

The basic premise of the game is, well, war. You have three races (teams) in space who, for whatever reason, cannot resort to diplomacy and must do battle! They are the Terrans (humans), Zerg and Protoss. Each race has it's own unique qualities. The Zerg are terrifying bug-like creatures who can re-produce at a rapid rate, but they're an intelligent species that can attack with speed and efficiency. The Protoss, are extremely intelligent humanoid creatures that take a while to get going but create the best technology for sneak attacks. The Terrans are about a middle ground in that equation, balanced in strategy and technology. Being good at the game requires you to master all three races, and their techniques. 

The game is so difficult! I've barely beaten the computer once. And, when I play Online I get crushed even quicker by real people. Koreans are really good at this game, by the way!, so shoutout to the wonderful country of Korea. But even though I get crushed, people are generally polite. Basically, the only messages I get are something like: "Sorry, guys... have to go home now." 

A battle between Zerg and Terran flying stuff

The main technique is, first-and-foremost, speed; you have to be extraordinarily quick on the keyboard and the best players have all kinds of hotkeys (saved little codes) on their keyboard to make things happen way faster than pointing and clicking with the mouse. The second is creating FLYING THINGS, anything that can fly: planes, spaceships, horrible dragons, etc. Once you have the flying stuff you can raid your enemies quickly without giving them a hope of survival; "death from above," they say. 

The thing about getting the flying things is that you need to invest time, resources and research into having them. And, they cost A LOT. But sending in the flying stuff is a heck of a lot better than having all your great young Marines massacred by a swarm of angry Zerg.        

When I play against the computer I like to pretend I'm Dwight D. Eisenhower planning the great D-Day invasion of 1944: hundreds of ships, hundreds of planes, guys jumping out of ships, guys jumping out of planes, etc. That's kind of fun. But Online (and in real life, twenty-first century warfare), that strategy doesn't work so well. You always just get sucker-punched by a guy on another continent that's smarter and faster than you are. But, it's just a game, and we can have a good laugh afterward!

Mike Ybarra, Allen Adham et all. StarCraft. Blizzard Entertaining. 1998.  

Subnautica: Have You Ever Been Afraid of Going into the Deep-end of the Pool?

I wouldn't call my self much of a "gamer." I'm actually pretty terrible at video games. Everyone else is just too good. It took me roughly two hours of playing for five straight nights before I actually got one single kill online in Call of Duty II: Modern Warfare. Most of the time I was just being blown away, and/or stabbed... 

Lake Michigan

But I recently got a small reasonably-priced Nintendo Switch. And, I was SO happy to find that Subnautica, the classic PC game is now available on this little device. The only reason I tried it out was because it got such great reviews in the gaming community, and was said to be terrifying, like, nightmarish and frightening. (Who's up for a good thriller or horror movie, am I right?) 

Anyway, the game starts with you crash-landing, alone, on an alien world -but, get this, it's a world that is almost all oceans. Therefore, survival depends not on walking around land and picking up vegetables and bugs to eat, you have to SWIM into the DEEP. As you may imagine, there are lots of scary things down there, not the least of which is running out of air and drowning before you have time to get to the the surface. 

Believe me, there are tons of huge, horrible, creatures down there that can swallow you whole -but there's nothing more terrifying than swimming down into a reef or a cave from which you may not have enough oxygen to emerge from safely. 

The key aspect of this game that I enjoyed was that it forces you to go down rather than up. We talk so much about space and air travel, but no one mentions the secrets of the depths of the oceans. As a kid, I learned how to swim but I was desperately afraid of the deep-end of the pool. For some reason, when I went down there I panicked. Thankfully, my dad was there to fish me out! But, there are secrets down there if you look.

Photo of the Subnautica Game

Subnautica is a wonderful and beautifully crafted game. The game, published by Unknown Worlds Entertainment and created by Charlie Cleveland and countless others, is a masterpiece. Playing it is like reading a sci-fi novel on-par with Dune or The The Expanse, by "James S.A Corey". Believe me, if your kid is playing Subnautica, they're probably smarter than you are ;)

Subnautica: A video game by Charlie Cleveland, Hugh Jeremy et al. was published by Unknown Worlds Entertainment in 2018.