Musings of a Babylon Lurker

Thoughts on "The 4400" TV series.

Thursday, July 24th, 2008 | film and tv, scifi, technology | 1 Comment

I have been watching 4th and final season og “The 4400″ – here are a few thoughts on the series.

The concept of the series :

Over a period of about 60 years 4400 people have mysteriously disappeared. Suddenly, all reappear brought back in a giant ball of light.

The scene does, to a certain extent, remind me of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, but “The 4400″ continues where, “Close encounters” end with a lot of people coming back.

As some of the returnees show unusual abilities, fear and suspicion arises.

What I particularly like in this series is a continued story through the series, each season always ending with a completely new – and often surprising – situation.

Characters are believable, most episodes feel well written, produced and acted.

Some people seem to complain about short (in this case 13 episode) seasons, but I think a lot of series may benefit from the shorter seasons, giving writers – and the whole team – the possibility of giving their best without running out of steam.

Fantasticon2008, Copenhagen, 26 – 27 April

Tuesday, April 29th, 2008 | authors, cons, events, science, scifi, space, technology | No Comments

This is a small Danish convention with a few hundred people attending. Only foreign Guest was Norman Spinrad. The con was held in the “Vanloese Kulturhus” (cultural house) in nice large rooms and a terrace. Even the weather cooperated and we could sit outside chatting along between the programmed events. I arrived there after a long (12 hour) drive and a few hours of sleep.

On Saturday I went to the interview with Niels Brunse who has translated a large amount of English language books into Danish, and also written stories of his own. He was, among other subjects, talking about the difficulty of making a good translation, something I can relate to in a limited capacity, having attempted translation in both directions between Danish and English. Some elegant words or phrases in one language translate *very* poorly into the other.

Sunday had a surprise guest speaker, the Danish physicist Holger Bech Nielsen, giving a presentation of his version of the “theory of everything” : “Random Dynamics”. He is a *very* lively lecturer, and it is always fun to see him, his enthusiasm for the subject is just radiating from him. This was the first time I saw him “live”, the other times were just on television.

Arthur C. Clarke :

For me the best part of the programme on Sunday was the panel discussion about Arthur C. Clarke, the panel consisting of 3 Danish fans and the guest speaker Norman Spinrad. Spinrad had sopme cooperation with Clarke in the 1960′s and could tell us that the final scene of the movie “2001 – A Space Odyssey” was in fact not the one we saw in the movie. Clarke had envisioned a scene with very beautiful aliens, but it was not technically possible to do to his satisfaction – meaning the scene had to be rewritten.

Clarke’s relatively optimistic view of the future has by some been regarded as naive, but it most probably is an expression of his dream about the future.

Finally there was a discussion of Clarke’s unusual combination of hard science fiction and the “mystical” (for lack of a better word), something very prominent in “2001″, but it is in much of his other work.

Of course, you cannot mention Arthur C. Clarke without talking about his strong influence on science and technology (as well as science fiction), interesting to see how many of his early thoughts have come true already.

All in all a very nice week end , I will try to make it again next year.

More real life space communications (2)

Thursday, April 10th, 2008 | science, space, technology | No Comments

The Soyuz spacecraft has successfully docked to the ISS today.

Yesterday I listened for radio communications from the Soyuz, and was rewarded with hearing a few exchanges in Russian. They were likely talking to the ground station in Moscow. The frequency for Soyuz is 121.750 MHz, if any of you should have a scanner receiver. The signal was quite strong, even with a wrong sized antenna, so it should not be too difficult to hear.

Good hunting if you try – They will probably be radio-active for a day or two when they leave the ISS and return to Earth.

In the meantime , if you are in Europe, you can listen for the ISS , in the rare cases when they talk back to Moscow, on the frequency 143.625 MHz.

Jules Verne has arrived at the International Space Station

Monday, April 7th, 2008 | scifi, space, technology | No Comments

Yes – it is true …

The first ATV – Automatic Transfer Vehicle – has arrived and doced with the ISS. The name given to this ATV is “Jules Verne” , honouring the famous author (1828 – 1905) of old Science fiction classics like “Around the World in 80 Days”, “Journey to the Centre of the Earth”, “From the Earth to the Moon” and “20.000 Leagues Under the Sea”.

The ATV is a European contribution to the ISS, along with the Columbus module – launched with the Space Shuttle and added to the ISS in February. The spacecraft pioneers the use of automatic docking, absolutely no human intervention. Only option would be to break off the docking procedure with a “go away” order. The ATV is designed to transport supplies to the station , and – as its final act – be filled with the garbage from the station and sent back into the Earth’s atmosphere. We could call it a cargo ship and an advanced garbage truck – combined with an incinerator.

Another function of the ATV is as a booster for increasinf the orbital altitude of the ISS, since the station is slowly being dragged towards a lower orbit due to that fact that there is still a *tiny* amount of atmosphere up there.

Read more about the ATV here

Last year I went with a friend to visit ESTEC’s space exhibition in The Netherlands. During a tour of the Estec facilities we got to see the Columbus module and the ATV, as they were being tested at the time. Nice to have seen real life spacecraft – knowing that both the station module and the ATV are safely orbiting the Earth.

More info at ESA’s website

More real life space communications

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 | science, space, technology | No Comments

When STS122 had just been launched, I went out to see if I could spot it and the ISS. The ISS arrived right on time and was *very* bright and easy to see (I missed the Shuttle, though). I had also brought my scanner radio receiver with me, and just before the ISS went into the Earth’s shadow , I heard a carrier wave for a few seconds , followed by [chorosho] (Russian for “good”) and a few more words in Russian, since they were communicating with a ground station in Russia.

In the first few orbits after launch of the space shuttle(s) and the last few orbits before the re-entry (landing) the shuttle uses the frequency 259.700 MHz (AM) for clear voice communications.

A few weeks later, when the STS-123 was launched, I joined a group listening for the Shuttle “Endeavour”. but since the high power (10 Watts) transmitter of the spacecraft was out, they were only transmitting with the low power (0.25 watts) transmitter. with my simple antenna and a long cable in to the receiver the signal was lost here, but a few other people around in Europe did hear them.

Since then I have had a preamplifier mounted at the antenna , so the loss in the cable has been compensated.

In the last few orbits before re-entry I listened for Endavour again – and even with their low power transmitter it was audible here. Signals were weak and noisy, but a few sentences were clearly heard here. Next time I will have to do some recordings.

Arthur C. Clarke died at 90

Saturday, March 29th, 2008 | authors, books, science, scifi, space, technology | No Comments

I know this happened last week, but the preparations for going to the Eastercon/Orbital2008 have overshadowed most other things. See also previous post.

I first became aware of Atrhur C. Clarke through the movie/novel “2001 – A Space Oddyssey” which made a considreable impression on my young self.

One of my favorite longer stories by Clarke is “Rendezvous With Rama”.

I have on my shelf a brick of a book with about 100 short stories by Clarke , I think I will slowly work my way through those.

At the convention I found a signed copy of “Tales From the White Hart”, and despite the (understandably rather high) price I just had to get it. Should read the short stories in that one, too.

I see Arthur C. Clark as one of the giants in science fiction, and a very influential science writer – one of the few science fiction writers with a scientific writer’s background.

It was good to see a last minute addition to the Eastercon programme of a panel discussion about Clarke’s influence in science as well as science fiction. On top of that, one of the panelists had been the secretary for Arthur C. Clarke for about a year, and he could bring light on theless public sides of the author. Nicely done.

He will be missed in the scifi community.

50 years of the Space Age

Monday, October 15th, 2007 | anniversary, science, space, technology | 2 Comments

October 4th, 1957 saw the first successful launch of a satellite into space.

The (then) USSR lauched “Sputnik 1″ becoming the first country entering the Space Age. Its characteristic “beep-beep” sound was heard by radio enthusiasts all over the world on approx. 20 MHz and 40 MHz. MOre information and a recording of the beeps can be found at the Wikipedia page concerning Sputnik 1 . (link at the bottom of the page)

One month later, on November 3rd, a second launch of Sputnik 2 with the first living being put in orbit. The dog Laika, unfortunately, had no way of returning alive to earth.

The first satellite launched by the US was Explorer 1 , on January 31st, 1958.

This marks the beginning of the “Space Race”, which continued through the 1960′s and 70′s.

The Space Age has had a lot of “ups and downs” , and I will come up with some highlights in later posts.