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by Mark Aragona

No classic science fiction video game list is complete without one of the most ambitious titles of the 90s: System Shock 2. A sequel to the 1994 hit, SS2 is a deft merging of cyberpunk and horror that also merges two seemingly disparate styles of gaming: role-playing and first-person shooter. Not only is it considered a gaming classic, it’s a precursor to an entire host of first-person shooter games and was considered way ahead of its time.

The story begins in 2114, more than 40 years since the events of the first System Shock. You play as a soldier of the United National Nominate and crewmember of the spaceship Rickenbacker. Your mission: escort the experimental FTL spaceship Von Braun on its maiden voyage. True to its RPG roots, SS2 gives you the choice of enlisting in the marines, the navy, or the psychic-powered OSA. This choice merely lets you choose your specialization, but afterwards you can mix and match your skills and abilities as you see fit.

Your mission starts out quiet and uneventful, until your ship answers a distress call from nearby Tau Ceti V. Instead of bringing back colonists, the would-be rescuers return with a nest of strange eggs—never a good idea. Before long, both the Von Braun and the Rickenbacker fall to a psionic, flesh-feeding parasitic race known as the Many.

You are woken from your cryosleep by the voice of Dr. Janice Polito, who orders you to make your way to Deck 4 on the Von Braun. On the road you encounter a host of horrifying creatures: mutated crewmembers begging to be put out of their misery, murderous security bots, escaped psychic monkeys(!), worm-like parasites, chittering alien spiders, and many other malformed monstrosities. And lest we forget, there are ghosts too.

But the game’s greatest surprise is the return of a former nemesis: SHODAN, the rogue AI from the first System Shock. SHODAN has a bone to pick with the Many, as they turn out to be her wayward creations intent on surpassing her.

System Shock 2′s villains are its story’s most valuable assets. The Many is a chilling alien adversary. True, it’s a mass of science fiction tropes: parasitic nature, mutagenic capabilities, psychic powers, etc. But the game takes things a step further by giving the Many a voice—several, actually, as the alien hive-mind speaks with a host of hypnotic voices that take turns being enticing, threatening, and downright terrifying. The game’s genius is that it makes your adversary seemingly omnipresent, either through biomass seeping the metal walls of the ship, or through invasive psychic messages and hallucinations. It’s always there, watching whatever you do.

Your only ally is also your adversary. SHODAN’s choppy synthetic voice orders you around like an electronic dominatrix, bribing you with enhancements to your cybernetic implants and threatening you with extinction if you subvert her will. And even then, you can’t help feeling that she has an ulterior motive for helping you survive at all.

The gameplay involves not just surviving each level of the ship but also improving your character’s skills. Your abilities include light and heavy weapons, melee, hacking, repair, and psychic powers. Though you may favor one build over the other, you need a good mix if you want to survive. Ammo is scarce and weapons degrade each time you use them, so you have to choose your engagements carefully. Sometimes it pays just to batter your enemy with a wrench (which never breaks) or simply run away.

SS2 isn’t perfect. The weapon degradation system will cause countless moments of panic as your gun breaks down just as you’re facing a charging monstrosity. It’s also entirely possible to abuse certain psionic powers. Nevertheless, System Shock 2 provides a solid gaming experience as you creep through the corridors of a starship, keeping one eye out for your foe’s mutated creations while keeping another on your ammo and health bar.

On one hand, an alien invasion, on the other, renegade AI. In between them is you, your guns, and your wits. System Shock 2 is not just a great mix of science fiction tropes—it’s an exhilirating and terrifying experience.

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By Mark Aragona

It seems that we don’t have to wander outside of our solar system to find planets that could possibly sustain life. A tiny Saturn moon may just be the place for it. The Cassini-Huygens mission has found that Enceladus, much like Jupiter’s Europa, may have an oceanic layer underneath its surface of ice.

Enceladus is a wonder in itself: a frozen white world, 0.0395 the size of Earth. The moon is the most reflective body in our solar system, reflecting more than 90% of the sunlight that reaches it and leaving the moon with a temperature of -330 degrees Fahrenheit (-201 degrees Celsius). Geysers on its surface shoot out ice particles in great white plumes that feed Saturn’s E ring. Scientists used this very phenomenon to find out what lies underneath the moon’s icy exterior.

In 2008, the Cassini spacecraft dove through Enceladus’s plume trail and found that it was made up of icy water. The real find came when they took a close look at the particles nearer the surface and found salt. In fact, 99% of the solids found in the plume were salt-rich material that resembled the kind found in our own seas. It’s likely that somewhere underneath all that ice, Enceladus has its very own ocean.

There’s more: the spaceship’s instruments have detected negatively charged ions in Enceladus’s icy plume. Professor Andrew Coates of the Cassini mission said: “While it’s no surprise that there is water there, these short-lived ions are extra evidence for sub-surface water, and where there’s water, carbon, and energy, some of the major ingredients for life are present.”

That means that Enceladus is one of three places in our solar system that so far have been found to have negatively-charged ions—the other two are Titan and Earth itself. Here on our own planet, negatively-charged ions are present where there is liquid water in motion, such as streams, waterfalls, and yes, oceans.

The two flybys of the Cassini spacecraft have also shown that Enceladus has an atmosphere. Because the moon is so small that it cannot hold that atmosphere down, scientists speculate that the geysers and ice volcanoes are continuously feeding gas to the surface.

NASA scientists have declared at an Encedalus Focus Group Conference that the Saturn moon “is emerging as the most habitable spot beyond Earth in the solar system for life as we know it.” Meanwhile, the Cassini mission is preparing for another close encounter with this enigmatic world. Here’s hoping that even if they don’t find life, they may at least guarantee a place for it.

2001 Nights

by Mark Aragona

Being a very visual genre, science fiction is an excellent source material for films and comic books—and this is as true in the East as it is in the West. Yukinobu Hoshino’s “2001 Nights” takes on hard science fiction from an Eastern point of view.

The title alone is a reference to two famous stories: Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the “One Thousand and One Nights”. This book is a treasure hunt of tropes and allusions for the die-hard science fiction fan, even as it delves into themes more commonly found in folk tales and fables.

The anthology chronicles Man’s first forays into space. It begins with the resolution that no series expeditions in space can be made without first achieving world unity, symbolized by an alliance between the USA and Russia. Each story then jumps a few years forward, featuring events that spur humanity on towards the stars—the discovery of fossilized extraterrestrial life, the lure and danger of asteroid mining, the development of artificial intelligence, experiments in suspended animation, and the use of frozen sperm and ova to seed and populate an alien planet.

The volume ends with Hoshino’s opus: “Lucifer Rising” (read no further if you don’t want to get spoiled).

Just outside of our solar system, explorers discover a colossal planet in retrograde orbit around the sun. Mere contact with the planet’s debris causes a terrible explosion that destroys the spacecraft. The reason for this is soon revealed: the planet is made completely of antimatter. Dubbed Lucifer, this discovery quickly divides humanity into two camps, those who want to exploit the planet’s promise of clean, unlimited energy, and the Catholic Church who claims Lucifer as the “devil’s star” and must be left alone. Tasked to investigate Lucifer, a scientist-priest must choose between the two sides and survive the planet’s chilling effects on his crew’s sanity.

Hoshino’s art style is sober and realistic, invoking the vastness of a spacecraft on a single splash page. Unlike most Japanese styles he uses no doe-eyed looks, creating realistic and believable characters. He also deftly strikes a balance between the scientific and the fantastic in his stories. Even as he focuses on hard science fiction topics such as space exploration and alien life forms, he never fails to emphasize that Man must also evolve spiritually if he wants to inherit a bright future among the stars. His stories truly are a marriage of Western science and Eastern thinking.

If you really liked this volume, the anthology continues with two more: “Journey Beyond Tomorrow” and “Children of Earth”. Two of Hoshino’s stories, “Elliptical Orbit” and “Symbiotic Planet,” have been adapted into a direct-to-video CGI movie called “TO.” But if you want the full experience of how the stories tie in and come full circle, reading the three volumes is the way to go.

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by Mark Aragona

Just when you thought there was nothing new under the sun, it turns out you were just looking in the wrong direction.

In a phenomenon not seen since the 17th century, solar activity appears to be undergoing a “quiet” period, marked by a lack of sunspots, sluggish solar flares, and slow activity around the poles. Scientists are baffled as they were expecting the opposite, a solar maximum, to occur around 2012.

Frank Hill, associate director of the Solar Synoptic Network, calls the events “highly unusual and unexpected.” Nevertheless, three different studies have approached the same conclusion after observing the sun’s atmosphere, insides and surface. Hill states that “solar cycles cause space weather which affect modern technology and may contribute to climate change.”

The first observation was that sunspots are fading away from the star’s surface. Sunspots are areas of relatively cooler temperatures which scientists have used for centuries to indicate the sun’s magnetic activity.

Observers have also noted that solar flares have been sluggish and that jetstreams that normally rush from the poles to the equator have slowed down to a crawl. All of these indicate that the sun is entering a state of “hibernation” and delayed start of the 25th solar cycle.

Questions have arisen on how this will affect our climate. Some scientists are saying this may be a second Maunder Minimum, referring to a period between 1645-1715 where Europe entered a mini-Ice Age, a time when canals regularly froze and glaciers crept across the land. Other scientists are more skeptical. They state that, firstly, the relationship between the sun and climate change is poorly understood, and secondly, that our carbon output is far higher now than way back in the medieval era.

Technology is also subject to space weather. Solar flares and other activity from the sun can throw highly-charged particles at the Earth, interfering with satellite signals, GPS, power grids, and other electronic devices. It even causes a drag on orbiting satellites. With a relatively quieter sun, we can expect better performance on all counts.

There’s still a lot to look out for. Scientists are now watching for what our star may or may not do next, particularly with regards to its magnetic field. The next few years under the sun may get very interesting indeed.

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by Mark Aragona

We’ve seen many facets of war in science fiction—from fleet-to-fleet space battles to death rays to whole-scale planetary invasions and genocide. In Joan Slonczewski’s award-winning A Door Into Ocean, we are asked—can there be war if one side refuses to fight? Moreover, can the pacifist side even win?

A Door Into Ocean follows Merwen and her all-female race of Sharers, as their planet Shora is being invaded by your typical galactic empire, the Valans. The Sharers are overrun, outnumbered, and out-classed in terms of hard technology. Thinking that the Sharers must be controlled for their own good, the Valans use every available means to subjugate the natives: guns, ships, threats, even torture. But the Sharers have their own means of resistance—they absolutely refuse to cooperate or even fight. Most times they refuse to acknowledge the Valans at all!

Slonczewski draws from her own background as a biologist and a Quaker to create the unusual society of the Sharers. Composed entirely of women, they bio-engineer their children by mingling DNA from both parents. Symbiotic microorganisms let them stay underwater for long periods of time. Sharer language captures the essence of their philosophy: it makes no distinction between subject and object, meaning that the giver is usually also the recipient. Thus, they have no concept ownership; everything on their planet Shora is shared. They also have no concept of violence, as they realize that “sharing harm” with someone else ultimately means harming themselves.

As Shora is composed entirely of ocean, the Sharers dwell on great rafts made up of floating mangroves. The great variety of life found on the rafts allows the Sharers incredible prowess in life sciences and bio-engineering. They are so far advanced that they have no need for surgery; their lifeshapers can simply program cells to cure diseases and heal injuries from within.

Door is unabashedly feminist, but Slonczewski does not beat us over our heads with it. She gets right to the action, offering fully-realized characters, a complex but comprehensible plot, and a stunning, well-articulated battle of ideas. Slonczewski sometimes drops the ball when it comes to her characters (one act of terrorism from a self-professed terrorism almost throws the story off), but even those problems are easily forgiven.

Door works as a response to a lot of classic science fiction, like Frank Herbert’s Dune. Instead of Dune’s barren desert world, we have a planet without shores. Instead of hard technology, the focus is on ecology and life sciences. And instead of war and political machinations, we have a society dedicated to nonviolence and non-cooperation.

A Door Into Ocean is a must-read. It’s more than just inspired science fiction—it’s an inspiring story about how spirituality can triumph over brute force. It recalls the many times in our own history when causes were won by nonviolent means, and reminds us that its ideas, not weapons, that change the world.

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by Mark Aragona

As the Mars rovers have shown, planetary explorers such as these encounter several tough challenges to their design. Their weight can get them bogged down in sinkholes or sand traps, as in the case of Spirit, which ended up stuck in Gustav crater. Dirt and grit can jam their wheels or treads, stranding them. And there’s always the problem of their batteries running flat when there’s not enough sun to charge them—a real problem during long, extraterrestrial winters. With all of that and the soaring cost of building and sending another rover (another $2.5B according to NASA), the question of exploring planets becomes as much economic as it is scientific—what’s the most cost-effective way to explore a planet’s surface?

The answer, as it turns out, is blowing in the wind. Scientists are turning to a possible new design which can avoid most of these problems AND scour wide areas of the planet—the tumbleweed rover. Imagine a giant beach ball-shaped robot made of lightweight metal and plastics. Instead of trundling along on treads, this 6 meter-tall ball would roll along at the speed of the wind.

Wind-powered

Because of their design, tumbleweed rovers can explore a planet’s surface with little regard to the terrain. NASA’s experiments in Greenland and Antarctica showed that the rover could cover hundreds of miles without stopping. There wouldn’t be a need to halt and recharge, and in fact the rovers could use their own kinetic energy to power the instruments they carry.

Lightweight

The tumbleweed’s simplistic design means that there won’t be joints or spaces for dirt to clog up. Sand traps won’t bog it down, and it wouldn’t get caught between rocks or crevices. NASA’s experiments in the Mojave Desert showed that a tumbleweed rover can climb over slopes of 25 degrees or more, and roll over or around rocks as high as a meter.

It may even float on water.

Cost-effective

Imagine building an entire fleet of these robotic tumblers and setting them loose on a planet’s surface. Even if one is lost or stuck, it would be an acceptable loss considering how much data it would have collected compared to its production cost. If it finds an area of interest, it gathers data on demand and moves on afterwards. Scientists are also testing if the tumbleweed can be its own parachute, so that they can be dropped straight from a satellite without having to use a lander.

Of course, there are limitations to the tumbleweed design. You can’t put heavy equipment on the rover, so each one may have to specialize for certain tasks—looking at the soil, the weather, etc. Moreover, it can’t explore areas that have no wind—caves, underground areas, or any planet without an atmosphere. But it can be used in tandem with other rover designs. Once the tumbleweeds have found areas of interest, other types of rovers may come and do the heavy-duty work, such as digging, probing, and collecting samples. Tumbleweeds can save space explorers a lot of time, effort, and certainly money.

The tumbleweed design is still in its early stages and needs more funding and miniaturized technology before it can see use, but its future is looking very bright. And while it’s not being used in real life just yet, it can certainly roam the wilderness of science fiction.

Kyt has uploaded a review of Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson and Mark has given us all some practical tips on surviving in space without a spacesuit. Have a look; and don’t forget to bring a towel.

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by Mark Aragona

If you write space-based science fiction you may have to craft scenes where an unfortunate soul gets blown out into space without benefit of a protective suit. An accident—an explosion on deck, debris punching through the hull of a ship, a micrometeorite smashing through a helmet—can suddenly fling a character into a dark, hostile vacuum. How would it feel? What happens to an unprotected human body in space, and how long can an average person survive? As you can see, it’s far different from what’s seen in the movies.

Theory: You would freeze instantly. Seen in the films “Mission to Mars” and “Sunshine,” where some characters froze or developed frostbite upon leaving the airlock.

False.  While outer space is cold (e.g. -100 degrees Celsius), and you definitely will feel it, freezing to death will be the least of your worries. In a vacuum, there is no medium to carry the heat away from your body. Assuming there aren’t any nearby heat sources (such as a star), your body will eventually cool down to the same temperature of space, but in a matter of hours, not minutes.

Theory: Holding your breath will help you stay alive. Seen in “2001: A Space Odyssey” when David Bowman enters an open airlock.

False. Due to the lack of atmospheric pressure, oxygen will be forcibly try to leave your body. You’ll feel an instant swelling in the lungs and intestines. To prevent your lungs from rupturing, you should actually blow the air out of your lungs within the first few seconds of exposure in space.

Theory: Your bodily organs, like your eyes, would inflate and explode.

Seen in “Total Recall” when Arnold Schwarzenegger’s helmet is smashed open, exposing him to the low atmospheric pressure on Mars.

False. Explosive decompression does not literally mean what it says. While you will experience bloating as the water in your body starts turning into vapor, it won’t result in a bloody mess. More likely, you will have severe bruising all over your body as capillaries break and blood spreads under your skin.

On the other hand, the reduced pressure may cause the nitrogen in your bloodstream to turn into bubbles, causing a terrible injury that divers call “the bends.”

Theory: Your blood and other bodily fluids start to boil.

Not quite true. Most of the blood in your body isn’t exposed to space, but fluids outside of your body or close to the surface (sweat, saliva, the blood in your skin’s capillaries) will start to boil away. This was experienced by a test subject in NASA’s Johnson Space Center who was accidentally exposed to near vacuum conditions during a test run and lost consciousness. Upon waking, he reported that his last coherent memory was the saliva on his tongue starting to boil.

Theory: You’ll be exposed to radiation.

True. Without an atmosphere or space suit to protect you, you’ll be exposed to all sorts of radiation: infrared, ultraviolet, cosmic, you name it. If you aren’t close to a star or a similar source, this may not pose an immediate problem. On the other hand, direct exposure to solar radiation will give you a bad case of sunburn, perhaps cancer later on.

In short, death by hypothermia or explosive decompression is unlikely; the quickest way to die in space is still asphyxiation. Here’s a timeline approximating what the effects would look like:

00:00-00:10 – Victim would still be conscious and able to act, perhaps to save himself.

00:10-00:15 – Minor injuries start to occur. Victim starts losing his ability to think. As oxygen starts to leave the body, blindness sets in and the victim’s nose and tongue start to freeze, making communication difficult.

00:15-00:20 – Victim loses consciousness from lack of oxygen.

00:30-1:00 – Saliva starts to boil due to lack of air pressure. Skin and other tissues expand as a result. Blood pressure starts to drop.

01:00-02:00 – Blood pressure continues to fall and the heart eventually stops beating. Beyond this point, the brain suffers irreparable damage.

Surviving in space without a suit can be measured in minutes, not seconds, and two minutes may be long enough to rescue and treat a victim of exposure before any permanent damage is done. After weeks of intensive care, they may even make a full recovery. Just goes to show how resilient the human body is, even when subjected to the harshest of environments.

By Mark Aragona

Forget about exoskeletons—a specially-designed electric device just may do the trick.

Rob Summers, a 25-year old native of Portland, Oregon, was the victim of a hit-and-run in 2006. While he survived, Summers was paralyzed from the chest down—crushing news for the former baseball player. After undergoing three years of intensive physical therapy with no significant improvement, there seemed little hope that Summers would ever walk again.

In 2009, doctors implanted an electrode array into the lining of Summers’s lower spine in hopes of stimulating his dormant nerve connections. Days later, Summers could stand up on his own. He surprised doctors by being able to move his hips, legs, and toes upon command. After weeks of training and with the aid of a harness, he got on a treadmill and walked into medical history.

While there have been cases where electric stimulation helped some patients with spinal cord injuries, it was never as fast or as extensive as Summers’s case.  “The moment I stood up I was in disbelief,” he says. “I was amazed, I was shocked. The doctors had anticipated in maybe five years I could stand, and standing on the third day, I blew all the doctors out of the water.”

How the spinal electrode device helps Summers regain control of his limbs is not yet fully understood. The implant, a product of Medtronic, Inc., is normally used to relieve chronic lower back pain by pulsing electric signals that mimic those sent between the human brain and the lower limbs. Doctors believe that this stimulation “wakes up” the injured nerves in Summers’s lower back, thereby allowing his brain and limbs to communicate with each other again.

There are still some limitations to this technology: Summers cannot control his legs when the device is off and doctors have limited its use to only a few hours each day. It is also important to note that Summers still retained some sensation in his legs after his accident, meaning the nerve connections were not totally severed.

Researchers agree that while the device itself does cannot cure paralysis, it could lead to greater functionality for patients with similar injuries. Current plans are to test the device on four more patients as well as create a new design specifically to help paralytics. They are also looking into drugs to further improve the communication process in spinal injuries.

The project was a joint effort of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and the University of Louisville with funding from the US National Institutes of Health and the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation.

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by Mark Aragona

Science fiction has long been a favorite topic for summer films and 2011 is no exception. But this year’s crop of movies looks to have something for everyone, having the usual exciting FX-driven fare as well as some introspective dramas and intriguing ideas.

Super 8

Director by J.J. Abrams returns to his Cloverfield motif of creatures caught on film. A group of friends capture a terrible train crash on their Super 8 camera, then later find out that something inhuman had escaped that wreck and is spreading havoc in their own hometown.

Melancholia

A science fiction psychological drama directed by Lars Von Trier, Melancholia is unique in that it starts with the end of the world: A mysterious planet appears and crashes into the Earth. The film then flashes back to the lives of two sisters, one of them (Kirsten Dunst) turning melancholic at the prospect of the coming cataclysm. Von Trier doesn’t mince words: it’s obviously going to be a bad ending. But then, too many disaster movies focus on the event itself—Melancholia gets that part out of the way and focuses on how different people react to their impending doom.

Another Earth

Another psycho drama featuring planets appearing out of nowhere, Another Earth is the brainchild of first-time director Mike Cahill. The movie focuses on Rhoda (played by Brit Marling) who, while distracted by the appearance of a second Earth in the sky, causes a deadly vehicular accident that claims that lives of an entire family, save for the father. After serving her time, she eventually seeks out and falls in love with the widower, yet never gets the courage to reveal that she was responsible for his loss. Eventually she decides to travel to the mirror Earth to find out how her other self lived her life and maybe gain some insight on how to manage her own.

Cowboys and Aliens

Starring Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, and Olivia Wilde. Amnesiac cowboy Lonergan (Craig) wakes up to find a strange glowing shackle on his hand. Even as he tries to evade the law for his supposed crimes, he and his erstwhile enemy, Col. Dolarhyde (Ford), must form a posse and turn back an impending alien invasion. Loosely based on a graphic novel of the same name.

Real Steel

Based on Richard Matheson’s short story “Steel”, the film follows a washed-out contender (Hugh Jackman) trying to survive in a world where robots have replaced human boxers. He finds his way back to the top by making an unbeatable champion out of an abandoned training robot. Here’s hoping that this movie will have something to say about how we have a tendency to abuse our own technology and not just be about machines reducing themselves into nuts and bolts.

The Thing (2011)

Not a remake at all, but a prequel to John Carpenter’s original classic horror film. Scientists led by Mary Elizabeth Winstead discover a crashed UFO in the Antarctic, as well as its seemingly deceased passenger. Thawing the creature out becomes a big mistake when it goes on a killing spree, mimicking any living creature it consumes. Fear and paranoia spread through the team as they attempt to hunt down the creature before it destroys them all. It looks like Ridley Scott’s Alien has made a lot of tracks on this film; let’s see how well it lives up to the original.