Oct 122022
 

The Unwanted Blog at Up-Ship.com is now the backup blog. The new *official* Unwanted Blog is here:   https://unwantedblog.com

The rate of failures at the server has just become freakin’ untenable. Further backup communications at   twitter.com/UnwantedBlog

New posts will continue to appear here… for as long as they can. Posts will appear at the new blog first, then here delayed a bit.

 Posted by at 11:50 am
Mar 262024
 

Hansen’s “US Nuclear Weapons: The Secret History” is particularly nice. Contact with ridiculously generous bribes if you’re prefer not to wait:

 

 

 Posted by at 3:47 pm
Mar 242024
 

A few days ago someone on twitter repeated some nonsense that getting irritated about canon violations in, say, Star Trek was a sign that you’re kinda dumb, because canon is an impediment to writers who want to tell stories. Well, guess what: established canon is an impediment to only one kind of writer: the lazy kind.

 

Establishing canon can sometimes take a while. Take Star Trek: if you look at the early years, canon was quite mutable. Who did the crew of the Enterprise work for? It seemed to change from time to time. Starfleet, of course… but then also the United Earth Space Probe Agency and later the United Federation of Planets. Klingons went from shiny dark humans with a vaguely Soviet-style totalitarian dictatorship, to bumpy-headed high-tech barbarians with a focus on fun, honor and bloodshed. But these things are *now* well established, and have been literally for generations. Changing them is changing the established rules.

 

And the thing is, established rules are a *good* thing for storytellers. Yes, they constrain storytelling possibilities, but they force the storyteller to be cleverer than if the rules didn’t exist. And the *vast* majority of the time storytellers accept that rules are there and are good. Imagine what nonsense you’d get in a medical show where medicine had no relation to reality. Aspirin cures cancer. Broken bones are set with a smoldering look from Doctor Hearthrob. AIDS is cured by popping the infected into a microwave oven for three minutes on high. Two seasons back, Doctor Heartthrob won a Nobel Prize for curing Type 1 diabetes with a combination of oatmeal and Tea, Earl Gray, Hot. But now, Type 1 diabetes is wholly incurable and causes the sufferers to spontaneously combust with no reference to the prior treatments. This would be bafflingly stupid unless set as some sort of “Naked Gun” style absurdist comedy.

Imagine a legal/lawyer show where the law had no relation to real-world law. A cop show where cops could simply walk through walls, or where once confronted criminals instantly changed their ways. A western set in 1872 New Mexico with Nazis and an invasion of blimp-borne Samurai played straight, or where the cowboys dealt not only with cattle but an infestation of kangaroos and velociraptors. Come on, cowboys vs dinosaurs sounds fun, right? But if the show isn’t sci-fi or fantasy, having the cowboys, who pack Glocks and drink Bud Light from aluminum cans and ride carbon fiber racing bicycles, just wouldn’t make sense. A sitcom set in a penthouse apartment established as 60+ stories high overlooking Central Park, but the apartment door sometimes opens into the hallway, sometimes the elevator, sometimes the roof, sometimes right onto the street…and sometimes that street is in San Francisco or London. It’s either absurdist… or it’s lazy and stupid.

 

If you want to change the rules you’d best have a good reason. It can be done. Hell, “Young Sheldon” recently changed years of established “Big Bang Theory” canon in a smart way that made things not only make more sense, but made people happy. It was long ago established that as a child Sheldon Cooper had walked in on his dad cheating on his mom with another woman. The sight disturbed, upset and changed Sheldon, and ruined his view of his dad. In the “Young Sheldon” show, the dad has been portrayed as a great guy who was not the cheating type, though tempted from time to time. And they finally got to the moment: Sheldon walked in on Dad and Other Woman. But it turns out Other Woman was actually Mom, who was dressed up in a sort of cosplay. Sheldon simply didn’t recognize her. He misinterpreted. Canon has been changed without actually changing canon.

But the current crop of writers for Star trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who, Rings of Power, etc. do not seem to be either willing or able to navigate their way through established canon. And rather than write compelling, clever stories within the rules… they simply steamroll the rules, often for ideological reasons.

In Star Trek, it’s long established that 23rd century medicine is damn near magical in it’s ability to fix both physical and mental damage. So wouldn’t *have* characters who were delusional to the point of insanity, or trundling around the decks in a wheelchair. But in the name of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, the fact of 23rd Century medicine is simply ignored in favor of The Message.

So you end up with this nonsense:

on

It adds nothing to the story to have Wheelchair Guy. It doesn’t make sense. It yeets the viewer right out of it if they consciously recognize that it’s wrong; if they don’t consciously recognize it, there is still the subtle, unconscious Uncanny Valley-esque sense of something being not right.

Canon isn’t a problem. Canon is *good.* If you don’t like the canon, if the canon gets in the way of the story you want to tell, there are good ways to deal with it:

1) Write a different story.

2) Change your canon-busting story to fit a different property. That apartment with the wacky door? Change it from straight sitcom to a Doctor Who offshoot.

3) Come up with a *clever* way to change the canon. You have a propulsion system vastly better than warp drive for your Star Trek ships? Great. Set it in the *future* of established Trek, not the past.

 Posted by at 2:24 pm
Mar 212024
 

Well, hell. Vernor Vinge has died.

Some years back he read some of my sci-fi stories (specifically my first novel) and suggested that I could/should get published. Turns out he was wrong on that score (couldn’t get any agent to actually read the damn thing), but for a brief moment a pro gave me hope.

 

Vernor Vinge, science fiction writer and creator of the concept of the technological singularity, has died at the age of 79.

 Posted by at 7:38 pm
Mar 172024
 

Giggity:

And…

 

Said it before: this is some sci-fi stuff right here.

 

From one perspective, this was another failure. The booster failed at the end… it had difficulty with engine restart for the final landing burn and either kerploded just before hitting the water, or smacked into the water going *real* fast. Starship itself broke apart during entry. So both recoverable stages failed to demonstrate recoverability. But it *did* achieve the low orbit that was intended. It demonstrated the ability to serve as an expendable launch vehicle. An incredibly capable expendable launch vehicle, much more powerful than even the Saturn V. It could start throwing massive payloads into orbit even while attempting to perfect recovery. Large numbers of Starlinks, of course… but also large numbers of, say, Brilliant Pebbles, or tanks of water, or rolls of sheet aluminum and beam builders and PV arrays.

 

 Posted by at 5:08 pm
Mar 152024
 

Some items I currently have on ebay. Come get some!

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/256440373208

Moebius Painted & Assembled 1/4105 Battlestar Galactica, unopened, great shape

 

 


 

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/256444007689

Back to The Future Time Machine 1 /15th Scale Diamond Select in box

 


 

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/256444023152

ULTIMATE SOLDIER 1/18 M41 WALKER BULLDOG TANK VIETNAM SERIES #10125 NEW

 


 

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/256444104174

 

Space Shuttle: Developing an Icon 1972-2013 by Dennis Jenkins, mint condition

 

by Dennis R. Jenkins, 2017. The definitive and *massive* description of the Space Shuttle program in three hardcover volumes in a slipcase, still wrapped in the original plastic. Mint condition. Now out of print; my understanding is that when Specialty Press went out of business the remaining stock of these books was destroyed.

These three volumes include more than 1,500 pages. It is a massive brick of narrative, photos (B&W and full color), diagrams, art and data; anyone with interest in the Space Transportation System should have a copy.

 Posted by at 8:47 pm
Mar 072024
 

Published in a magazine in 1983, this artist depiction shows a concept for a 1982 space station by Rockwell. Clearly of the same *kind* of station as the eventual ISS, this is a simpler, smaller construct. However, it also includes a “cargo bay” modeled aft that of the Space Shuttle, allowing payloads (what appear to be temporary science modules) to be readily transferred back and forth.

 

 Posted by at 4:32 pm
Mar 062024
 

But not on ebay yet. If any of these are of interest, let me know.

 

 

 Posted by at 12:26 pm
Mar 052024
 

I’ve just uploaded a 1986 article on the “Midgetman” road-mobile Small ICBM developed but not deployed by the US at the end of the Cold War to Dropbox for above-$10 APR Patrons/Subscribers.

 

 

This is of course on top of the monthly rewards packages and the “Extras” posted rather irregularly. If you’d be interested, consider subscribing:

https://www.aerospaceprojectsreview.com/monthly.htm

 Posted by at 7:19 am
Feb 262024
 

Slightly over 4 years ago I yammered a bit about a game company called “Evil Hat” that was putting out a Lovecraftian game while not only hating Lovecraft but also *intentionally* not understanding the idea:

 

“I want your business”

Making a *huge* point about bashing the creator of the IP you’re squatting on, while misinterpreting the importance of some of the most basic elements, points out that you’re just wearing the fandom as a skinsuit, a way to squeeze some of that filthy lucre from the nerds. Something we’ve seen far too often from the likes of those running Star Trek, Star Wars, Dr. Who into the ground.

Anyway, the producers of that Cthulhu game are back with another IP-cash-grab, this time in the “Tomb raider” franchise. I’ve never played any of the games; this franchise is not my thing. But for those of you who care about it… let me know if they got it right.

Someone did some digging around and found out some stuff about some of the people behind the game…

Tumblr art, self-insert deviant weirdos. Sounds about right.

 Posted by at 6:29 pm
Feb 242024
 

Fortunate is the man who has this coffee table. Fabulously wealthy is he if he has a woman who looks at that table and thinks “that’s awesome, I picked the right guy.”

 

It’s a spectacular piece, and I kinda really want one. However… before I’d plunk down money I don’t have for this sort of thing, I’d demand some improvements. From a distance it looks great, but in the closeup shots you can see the pretty strong layer lines. This appears to have been filament-printed, and little effort seems to have been made to smooth out a lot of it. But as a prototype, it’s fantastic.

 

It’s also interesting to point out that with 6 years worth of Star Trek to choose from, the stuff people *really* seem to like, to the point they’ll spend time, money and effort on, is the TOS and TNG stuff. A similar coffee table using the 1701D bridge? I can definitely see it. Ops from DS9? Meh. Bridges of NX-01 or Voyager? *Maaaaybe.* Kelvinverse Enterprise bridge? Unlikely. STD or SNW bridges? Literally no.

A lot of that is because the TOS and TNG designs were brilliant, while the later ones have been kinda bleh. But also, TOS and TNG are beloved. The shows themselves inspire interest in the designs. nuTrek inspire little more than dismay and fatigue.

I’d be interested to see a kickstarter for a production run of these, with the layer issues dealt with. Pretty sure it’d be far beyond my means, but I’d wish ’em well.

 Posted by at 4:33 pm