Moonshots and Butter Brickle

If you asked me as a kid what I wanted to do when I grew up, I had an immediate answer. No hemming and hawing between plumber and proctologist, no sir. It had been clear since I watched the first Apollo Moon landing at 9 years old, on a black and white console TV:

I was going to be science officer on a starship.

Yes, I was aware the position didn't actually exist at the time, but we'd just landed on the moon! By the time I entered high school we'd have a city on Mars, and by the time I graduated college I'd be shipping out to explore the galaxy. I already had a blue sweatshirt with a logo on it, and a Spock haircut.

 It wasn't the same logo, but what the heck; and as long as I kept that haircut, I wouldn't have to worry about interested girls distracting me.

Which is why I gave up the haircut in middle school, but never mind.

Back then it seemed obvious our future was in space. Why? Well, the example of Europeans continuing to explore the Americas after Columbus (or the Vikings) is problematic--although if they hadn't, I wouldn't be here. Still, the Native Americans themselves once followed the path of exploration:

"What's over that next hill?"

"Food, maybe? I see there's a glacier coming up behind us, so maybe we should check it out."

By high school manned space exploration seemed a thing of the past, but I was still optimistic of humanity's future in space. I signed up for every science class my school offered, starting my freshman year with what was called General Science. I excelled, earning an A+ and a certificate of merit. I wanted to take Physical Science next, but the only opening on my sophomore schedule was Chemistry.

My science teacher cautioned me that maybe I shouldn't jump ahead so fast. I ignored him. My science teacher was very smart. I wasn't.

As a kid I had every Apollo related toy, including this one.

 

 Because, you see, going into space takes math. Lots of math. Taking Intro to Algebra in my freshman year taught me my proficiency in math was, well, not proficient. In fact, I stunk at it. But what the heck, science isn't all about math. How much math could there possibly be in chemistry?

And that's how I learned I would never be a science officer.

Science is cool, it really is. It's just that some people can do science, and some people are better off watching other people do science. Now we have Artemis returning to the Moon, several decades too late even if I was good at science. With my prostate, I'm better off not being in a place where peeing is a challenge, anyway.

(No, I'm not going to debate anyone with the idiotic idea that the Apollo missions were faked. That myth has been busted over and over, and I spend most of my time on social media trying to avoid stupid arguments.)

This, by the way, is an anime character named Artemis. My household was nuts for Sailor Moon.

 

 But should we go back to the Moon, with all the expense, with so many problems on Earth? I mean, we've been there. Once we invented chocolate ice cream, was there any point in inventing Butter Brickle?

Maybe that's a bad comparison: I hate Butter Brickle. But humanity is never going to be wiped out by a five mile wide scoop of frozen Butter Brickle, or for that matter a super volcano made of cheese, which would at least smell good for an instant before our nose hairs burned. The technology used for Butter Brickle isn't likely to bring great new inventions and products to the masses. Also, to be honest, there's no joy of discovery from exploring Butter Brickle, unless it's your first birthday party.

So I'm going to say yes, it is worth the risk and expense to explore space. Not just for the science and economic benefits, but also for the pure joy of discovering things. We could easily find the money by zapping government waste with a big Butter Brickle colored space laser.

After all, how do we know there's not some new kind of chocolate out there?

 

 

Our books don’t involve space travel—yet. But there’s bound to be something for everyone else.

 

·        Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO

·        Barnes & Noble:  https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

·        Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4898846.Mark_R_Hunter

·        Blog: https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/

·        Website: http://www.markrhunter.com/

·        Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ozma914/

·        Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter914

·        Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrhunter/

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·        Substack:  https://substack.com/@markrhunter

·        Tumblr:  https://www.tumblr.com/ozma914

·        Smashwords:  https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/ozma914

·        Audible:  https://www.audible.com/search?searchAuthor=Mark+R.+Hunter&ref_pageloadid=4C1TS2KZGoOjloaJ&pf

 

 

Remember: It was discovery that brought us the ability to print books in the first place.

 

Star Trek at Fifty

One of my earliest memories was watching the Apollo Moon missions on TV.

One of my other earliest memories was hiding behind my mother from a frightening image on TV: a giant, alien, disembodied head. No, this was before Nixon. If you don’t know how those two could possibly be connected (besides an early indication that my generation watched too much TV) … then you don’t know Star Trek. (That episode, by the way, was “The Corbomite Maneuver”.)

Could it have really been fifty years ago? A whole half century since the single most influential entertainment show in television history debuted.

Yeah, that’s a big claim, but think about it. That weird space show with the bad special effects did more than spawn a bunch of movies and spin-offs. It influenced people who became astronauts themselves, as well as scientists of every stripe. It became a cultural phenomenon, to the extent that even people who hate science fiction recognize “Live long and prosper”, and “Beam me up, Scotty”. It went all the way from there down to a little kid who was inspired to write stories about space himself, and who now defines himself as a writer above almost all else.

Just to be clear, that would be me.

Lots of electronic ink is being spilled this week over the big five oh. Why did Star Trek become so huge? The simple answer is that it held one thing that so much futurism of the time didn’t: optimism. It posited a future universe in which we not only survived nuclear weapons, racial conflict, despots and election campaigns, we triumphed. We went out beyond our world together, as one race.

Can’t we all just get along? In Star Trek, we did. That was what it was about, not the rubber alien faces and over-emoting.

On a personal level, it led me not only to write stories myself, but to have my first fictional role model. I was a shy kid, suppressing my emotions, misunderstood—alien. The character of Spock spoke to me … I even had a blue long-sleeved shirt with an insignia on it that looked a lot like his uniform shirt.

The less said about my haircut at the time, the better … although it may help explain why I wasn’t the most popular kid.

As a teen, it seemed like I was in an exclusive club, maybe too exclusive—sometimes I thought I was the only Star Trek fan in the state. In a weird way, I was upset when it went from a canceled cult show to a franchise. It was like losing ownership. But now Star Trek belongs to the world, and after fifty years it’s still going strong.

That’s a good thing—the world needs all the optimism it can get.

A Tale of Two Movies

We got to see two movies on my vacation, and both are from reboots of established franchises:

Emily and I both came in to Ghostbusters with mixed feeling, considering all the negative feedback that's been going on. Some of it was from people who had not yet seen the movie, and I automatically disregard that. Some of it was from people who thought the new movie was a feminist propaganda piece, and who knows? Maybe it was meant that way. But if I stayed away from every movie pushing a left wing agenda, I'd sure have a lot more time to read.

No, I go to movies to be entertained, and in that Ghostbusters delivered in spades. It was certainly the second best of the three movies (sorry, you just can't beat the original), and while there are logical inconsistencies here and there, hey--it's a movie about ghosts. I wasn't looking for logic.

My only real problem is that I see no reason why it had to be a reboot, instead of a sequel. While the story could have been better, and for me the fight scene at the end seemed a bit too much, the movie was saved by its actors. The four lady Ghostbusters were great, but two people stole every scene they were in: Kate McKinnon's a riot as a nuclear engineer who seems to have spent too much time in her devices energy fields, and Chris Hemsworth ... well, he plays a dumb blonde who's hired as a secretary just for his looks, and you can see how that raised some conservation. But he's so friggin' hilarious in every single scene that I just don't care.

My score: Entertainment value, 4 M&Ms out of 4. The good brown ones, that make you think they're more chocolatey than they are.
Oscar potential: 2 M&Ms out of 4. Maybe for some kind of effects or something ... the Oscars aren't kind to comedies, anyway.


Then there's Star Trek Beyond, the third Star Trek movie since the reboot in which Star Trek and Star Wars had a baby. In this edition the Enterprise is attacked by a cloud of TIE fighter and the crew is stranded on the surface of Endor ...

Actually, this time around, for the first time since the reboot, the movie makers seem to have figured something out: Even though Spock would be super-cool with a lightsaber, Star Trek is supposed to be a bit more cerebral and a bit less ... laser blasters. It's more Star Trekkie, although it would be nice if the editors would cut way down on fast cuts. Am I getting older? Yes.

 

But there are two ways to judge a Star Trek movie: as a movie, or as Star Trek. You have to remember that this started out as a TV series, and it's not so easy going from the small to the big screen. Some of the worst of the series' movies may have, with some cutting, made much better episodes. As Star Trek this was better, complete with nice character moments and shout-outs to the universe's past, but there are plenty of things for hard core fans to not like. (starships on a planetary surface, for instance.) So from a standpoint of the franchise, Beyond was good, but not great.

As a space opera movie, it was great--a slam-bam mix of speed, phaser blasts, and stuff exploding. Oh, and there's some deep thinky stuff too, which actually brings us back to it being Star Trekkie again. The acting and effects were great, and while I'd prefer at least a bit more attempt to match the established science of the original shows, hey--sometimes the original shows didn't, either.

My score: Entertainment value, 4 M&Ms out of 4. Maybe not the brown ones, but still. With Ghostbusters I went in with low expectations, while with Star Trek I'd heard nothing but great things, so that may have painted my reaction.
Oscar potential: 2 M&Ms out of 4. Oscar doesn't like SF much, either.

author interview ... with me. Hey, I'm an author!

Would you like to know some background stuff about me and my writing history?

You wouldn’t? Oh.

Well, for the rest of you, here’s a piece on Fiona Mcvie’s author interview blog:

https://authorsinterviews.wordpress.com/2016/07/04/here-is-my-interview-with-mark-r-hunter/

It’s a bit lengthy—Fiona asks a lot of questions!—but think of it as an interview novella, rather than an interview short story. She pries out of me how I came to be me, author-wise: a six year old fanfic writer, Star Trek theft, how a science fiction writer got published in the romance genre, and why my main influence is still a children’s author, among other things … all the way up to my retirement plans. Oh, and there’s a sample of Hoosier Hysterical, titled “Facts is Facts”.

Well, I thought it was interesting to write. Like therapy, only without the insurance bill.