{"id":6673,"date":"2015-09-13T17:42:25","date_gmt":"2015-09-14T00:42:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/?p=6673"},"modified":"2015-09-29T09:17:44","modified_gmt":"2015-09-29T16:17:44","slug":"saucerpeople-and-smeely-waves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2015\/09\/13\/saucerpeople-and-smeely-waves\/","title":{"rendered":"Saucerpeople and Smeely Waves"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m working a lot on my novel <em>Million Mile Road Trip <\/em>these days.  It\u2019s about half done, and I started last January, eight months ago, so I might finish it June, 2016.<\/p>\n<p>I did revisions for most of August, making the plot much clearer and more focused. And now I have an elevator pitch. <\/p>\n<p><em>Three teens on a million mile road trip across a landscape of alien civilizations.  Goal? Stop the flying saucers from invading Earth. And learn about life and love.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images5\/125_saucerpeople.jpg\" \/><br \/>\n<em> \u201cSaucerpeople\u201d\u009d oil on canvas, Sept, 2015, 24\u201d\u009d x 18\u201d\u009d.  <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images5\/125_saucerpeople _1200.jpg\"> Click for a larger version of the painting.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p>The saucers in my novel are living organisms, meaty flying things.  And *eeeek* it is in principle for a female saucer to fertilize her seeds with human DNA.  They can get the DNA just by kissing a boy\u2014I\u2019m holding back from full-on sex between men and saucers.<\/p>\n<p>So a saucer gets pregnant from a man or boy, lays some fertilized eggs, hatches them&#8230;and you get saucerpeople, as shown above!  The have saucer-like rims around their waists, and they can fly.  <\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m looking forward to writing some scenes with these guys.  My plan had been to postpone them till later in the book but\u2014why hoard the treats?  Maybe I can work a saucerperson into the chapter I\u2019m working on right now, \u201cSurf World.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n<p>The Surf World basin is edged with high, crumbly cliffs and a wide beach.  And from there on out, it\u2019s nothing but ocean. With insane, unnatural surf.  Huge glassy combers, lively little pup tents scooting off at angles, and\u2014weirdly enough\u2014giant staircases and glassy pyramids.  All made of water.  Way out to sea are some waves like mile-high walls, thin and wobbly, steaming along like express trains.  Most of the waves are heading <em>away <\/em>from the shore, and out to sea\u2014which is kind of scary and strange. Catch one of those suckers, and you\u2019re not coming back.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images5\/kitenight.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve written several SF stories about surfing with Marc Laidlaw.  And recently I was inspired by a big wave on the so-called \u201cMiller\u2019s world\u201d\u009d in the movie <em>Interstellar<\/em>.  Generally I feel that you shouldn\u2019t model your novel\u2019s kicks on things you saw at the movies. But that Miller\u2019s world wave made a big impression on me.  Terrified me, sitting in the movie theater.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mgFTKfZwo5c?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I looked <a href=\" http:\/\/physics.stackexchange.com\/questions\/161004\/surface-waves-on-dr-millers-planet\">online <\/a>and found the movie\u2019s consulting physicist Kip Thorne\u2019s ideas about the wave, lifted from his interesting book, <em>The Physics of Interstellar<\/em>.  His explanation is <em>way <\/em>more complicated than I expected. No surprise, as Thorne is a brilliant physicist\u2014I first encountered his work in the 1973 nonfiction tome <em>Gravitation<\/em>, by Kip Thorne, John Wheeler, and Charles Misner, a book that was heavy in every sense of the world\u2014and which had a big influence on my SF and science writing.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images5\/norfolkbuild.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Thorne\u2019s line is that Miller\u2019s world is \u201ctidally locked\u201d\u009d to a supermassive black hole that it\u2019s orbiting\u2014locked means that it rotates in synch with the orbit so that the same side is always facing the central black hole.  (Our moon is tidally locked to Earth, and thus we always see the same face of the moon.)<\/p>\n<p>Using \u201ctidal\u201d\u009d in a different sense, note that the tides on a planet are in fact bulges that are taffy-pulled up by the gravity of the sun (or black hole) that they orbit.  And there\u2019s one tidal bulge on each side of the planet.   And (handwaving a bit) given that the black hole\u2019s gravity is so extreme, the tidal bulges might be a mile high and only a hundred meters thick. But if the planet is tidally locked (tidal in the other sense now), then that tidal bulge won\u2019t be moving relative to the planet\u2019s surface.  It\u2019s static.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images5\/whitufo.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>So now Thorne adds the assumption that Miller\u2019s world is <em>nearly <\/em>locked into position, but it <em>does <\/em>wobble a bit back and forth, like maybe an hour per wobble.  And as it wobbles, the giant wave-wall sweeps back and forth like a windshield wiper. The ocean sloshes, you might say. And this would explain how one of those waves might rush in either direction&#8230;including away from the shore.<\/p>\n<p>But&#8230;I don\u2019t want to get into explanations like this.  Too classroom. I always hated doing Physics homework in college and, truth be told, I wasn\u2019t good at it. No, I don\u2019t want <em>my <\/em>rubber science to be off-the-shelf physics-homework science.  I want insane bullshit that nobody\u2019s ever heard of.  Also it\u2019s my sense that biotech, hylozoism, and the philosophy of computation are more interesting these days than old school general relativity.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images5\/maxcloud.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>So, okay, in <em>Million Mile Road Trip<\/em>, I have this stuff that I call <em>smeel<\/em>.  It\u2019s like an aethereal fluid that \u201cis\u201d\u009d consciousness. Smeel is the numeniferous aether, if you will\u2014given that \u201cnumen\u201d\u009d is Latin for \u201cdivine essence\u201d\u009d or \u201cmagical power\u201d\u009d or even \u201csoul.\u201d\u009d <\/p>\n<p> As it happens, flying saucers like to vampirically leech smeel from us. They drink your smeel, and then you\u2019re like a like a zombie.  Note,  by the way, that those sacuerpeople I talked about earlier are not necessarily down with the evil smeel-leeching of the mainstream saucers.  Indeed some of the saucerpeople are going to serve as double agents to help my teen heroes avert the impending Invasion of the Saucers!<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images5\/attcrowd.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Anyway, it occurred to me that I can pep up the waves in my planet-sized Surf World sea by saying that the sea happens to be ten percent smeel.  Not just water.  And because of all this smeel, the waves are conscious and alive.<\/p>\n<p>The smeel makes the waves playful.  They race each other across the ocean.  They pile way up on the far side, and then they race back.  They take on shapes like staircases.  It\u2019s a totally surreal Mandelbrotian landscape.  My character Villy gets lost and a friendly saucerperson shows up and guides him to his girlfriend Zoe and the rest of his gang.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images5\/alctz_boat.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In using smeel to animate the waves, I\u2019m reprising an idea that Marc Laidlaw and I used in our latest surfing SF story, \u201cWater Girl\u201d\u009d  \u2014 which appeared in <em>Asimov\u2019s <\/em>in August, 2014, featuring, as usual, our characters Zep and Del.<\/p>\n<p>Like why should I copy a Hollywood movie?  Better to copy a story by Rucker and Laidlaw!<\/p>\n<p> In \u201cWater Girl,\u201d\u009d it\u2019s a substance called quantum aether that gives the waves consciousness.  And the waves are alive, running their mental processes off quantum computations. The mad scientist in our story wrote a paper called \u201cThe Quantum-Aethereal Animation of Physical Fluids.\u201d\u009d Here\u2019s an  extract from that story that I plan to draw on.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images5\/davcliffs.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<blockquote><p> Stink Bay was teeming with small, erratic waves, three to five-footers &#8230; astir with frolicking shapes, powerful energetic forms that cut through the water like\u2014well, like other water. Waves peaked from the flat surface, curled and gathered a bit of foam at their crests while cupping blue-green darkness at their long tubular hearts. The waves travelled without breaking, moving straight toward the shore then peeling away at clever angles, gouging divots out of the mud and sand. Small forms glided alongside the larger ones, and the \u201ccalves\u201d\u009d word clicked for Del. The little waves reminded him of whale calves at play near a mother whale&#8230;The anomalous hump in the water began gliding towards the Pipeline, a shape like you\u2019d see if something were swimming below the surface. The calf waves were herding&#8230;Zep and Del in the thing\u2019s wake, pushing them out towards the unquiet open sea. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images5\/rbtwmssquid.jpg\" \/><br \/>\n<em>Squiddy detail of a painting by Robert &#8220;El Rey Magnifico&#8221; Williams.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Changing the subject again, shown below is a painful painting I did in August.  I won\u2019t go into great detail, but suffice it to say that I may need to get a \u201crevision\u201d\u009d operation on an artificial hip implant.  It\u2019s situationally depressing. In doing the painting below, I was doing kind of a Frida Kahlo routine\u2014she used to do paintings of herself getting operations.  If you do a painting like that it makes you feel better.  And at least you\u2019re getting some art out of your bad experience.  <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images5\/124_hipimplant.jpg\" \/><br \/>\n<em> \u201cX-Ray of Failed Hip Implant\u201d\u009d oil on canvas, Aug, 2015, 18\u201d\u009d x 24\u201d\u009d.  <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images5\/124_hipimplant_1200.jpg\"> Click for a larger version of the painting.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Flickering flames of pain. I\u2019m glad to be able to paint about it, and I&#8217;m glad I have a novel to work on.  Writing takes my mind of any worries and cheers me up. It&#8217;s soothing to retreat into my own little worlds.  Away from so-called reality. &#8220;No news is good news.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m working a lot on my novel Million Mile Road Trip these days. It\u2019s about half done, and I started last January, eight months ago, so I might finish it June, 2016. I did revisions for most of August, making the plot much clearer and more focused. And now I have an elevator pitch. Three [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-million-mile-road-trip","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6673"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6673\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6682,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6673\/revisions\/6682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}