Monday's Ear Vu story - characters

Monday next week will see the release here of my story, "Ear Vu".

I thought perhaps you might like a little non invasive back story on a few of the main characters. There are three scientists working in the lab together at the Sonni Facility. Dr. Michaelson, the protagonist and narrator, Dr. Verne Garrison, the lead Scientist and inventor of "Ear Vu" technology, and Dr. Johnson, their final teammember and fellow scientist.

Michaelson has had a diverse background in physics and quantum mechanics. He worked at NASA, and then JPL where he was loaned out to the CIA for a while. He then went to Bell Labs working on charge-coupled device (CCD) semiconductor imaging sensors. Then he worked at Great Britain's National Physical Laboratory and most recently came to the "Ear Vu" project directly from a Quantum Information Visiting Fellowship at the University of Queensland. Since he has been outside of the US for so long, neither Garrison or Johnson have met him. But they had heard of him and he is highly qualified. Personally, he has had multiple and somewhat disastrous relationships partly because he has moved around so much and partly because he simply can't settle down.

Leader of the team, Verne Garrison, taught for a short time at MIT and then worked at Sandia labs and then, CERN. Having done well in the stock market in the dotcom boom of the late 1990s, at that point he simply built his own private lab at his home which is situated on some beautiful and remote acreage. He finally hit a point where he needed access to equipment that he could never afford, so he shopped around and found a home with the immensely powerful Sonni Corporation. Personally, he had once been married and had a family with three children. Though he hasn't seen them in years, he stays in touch with his adult children, all of whom have prestigious positions in the sciences.

Finally, Johnson has a solid background in astrophysics, magnetic and string theory. He knew Garrison before their current work together and had studied under him at MIT. Personally, he has no relationship outside of his work. He is your basic nerd/geek type who finds all the emotional needs in his life supplied by his science and his work. What no one knows is that he put himself through college by making drugs, though he never himself used them. The fact that he compartmentalized well enough that he never got caught and never had a file built with the police, is a sign of his ability to remain calm and manage highly stressful situations.

This is the team that Garrison put together. He has always been absolutely sure of his ability to look into someone to see if they would be trustworthy and dedicated and, up to this point he's never been wrong. He fully believed he had put together the exact team he needed to complete their work. Loyal to one another,  tight lipped, nothing they were working on would be getting out. Security was supplied by the Sonni corporation in a secure building and so, all they needed to do now, was finish their work.

At this point Garrison was quite sure there will be nothing ahead but the joy of working out puzzles in quantum mechanics and building the electronics to play out the puzzles they would all solve together.

His planning had been impeccable. There would be nothing going forward, he was quite sure, but smooth sailing....

Next Monday - More on Ear Vu story

A little on my "Ear Vu" story series being posted starting next Monday.

In the story there is a company called the Sonni Corporation. This is not supposed to be the Sony Corporation. It is an invented company for the story and is not a hidden statement about Sony, but a conglomerate company reminiscent of some other real companies. They are diverse in high end electronics and other subsidiaries intimately tied into the military industrial complex.

by Marvin Hayes

Dr. Michaelson, the protagonist/narrator and one of the scientists, did not choose them as their benefactors, that was the choice of the inventor of the Ear Vu technology, Dr. Verne Garrison. Whether that was a wise decision or not, is up to the reader. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. You be the judge.

Find out next week. Maybe....

Tomorrow, I'll give a little more on the main characters.

Just what is Ear Vu technology?

I just wanted to mention that when I release my new short story, "Ear Vu", here next Monday, it is being released in pieces,  in ten installments, twice a day for five days. It is free and it will hopefully, be intriguing and fun to watch over the week. Of course you can simply jump on here on Friday after 9AM Pacific time and read it all at once, but I think it might be a lot more interesting to check in on it through the week.

Check it out, you might find it entertaining.

Who is this guy in the story, what is going on, where is every body and why is this happening? And what is this "Ear Vu" technology?

Tune in next week to find out....

Watch here next Monday for my newest H/SF story: EarVu

Many years ago, many, many years ago, I came up with an idea for a short story. I wrote down only some journal entries by a scientist. The story was about a guy who came up with a new, revolutionary technology that was so astounding, mind-boglingly disturbing that once word slipped out that it even existed, his life was pretty much forfeit. And he knew it.

Once word of it got out, industries, scientists, governments the world over wanted it. And at any expense. Not many heard of it, but enough, and of those were the powerful and dangerous so that he immediately realized he really had only one choice: sell it, and to sell it quick.

Originally the story was basically just about industrial espionage where he tries to sell it and doesn't get to finalize a meet he sets up where he would exchange the technology for money and be done with it. And he's right because there are already several other groups after him on his way to the meeting.

Anyway, jump to 2012. There used to be a Sci Fi magazine called Perihelion that had ceased publication back in the 80s. It has now been revamped and it relaunched this past weekend. The editor 

Sam Bellotto Jr. had put out a call for short stories under 7,000 words. So I looked through all my saved and unpublished writings and ideas and finally decided that this story that I've indicated, would be a good choice. Perhaps its time had finally come to make use of it. There were other idea and stories I could have used but I'd always wanted to make use this idea. So I opened the file and took a look.

What I found surprised me. I remember having written more about it than what I found in the file on my hard drive. I'm sure there is a file around somewhere detailing the scientist's concern and his trip to the meet to sell his technology and how it all went so very wrong. But I couldn't find that file. I had started to put it into a novel format, so it may be laying around somewhere in that pile. All I could find was the file with the journal articles in it.

Which was strange because I didn't remember writing it that way. But that is part of the fun of dredging up these old ideas and story pieces. I actually have several folders labeled "Ideas" under my short story, novel and screenplay folders and it's always entertaining going back over them when I'm looking for a new idea (or, an old idea no one else has thought of).

So decided, I got the story out and read it. Then I started rewriting it and in no time I was pushing the two pages of under 1,000 words up to 7,000 words. And so it evolved into something new. It went from it being one scientist to being several. It went from an inventor working in his garage to several scientists working in a state of the art corporate facility with a slightly different orientation on who the bad guys were and what the bad elements would be. It quickly fleshed out and became no longer a Sci Fi/industrial or government espionage story, and morphed into a Horror Sci Fi story (you see, I've been writing so much Horror lately that those elements just crept in).

So I finished it, had it read, made some updates and finally sent it off to the Sam at Perihelion. But, regretfully Sam turned it down because he thought it was too heavy on the Horror for what he wanted to be a "Hard Science Fiction" publication. Which was a judgement call on his side that I respect and after all, I knew that might happen. I had been hoping that having leaned so heavily on the technical, scientific side of things that it would balance out the Horror elements. But as I got turned down, obviously it hadn't. He did comment that he liked it a lot and offered for me to try again (and even offered me to write a Sci Fi movie review (I almost got to review, "Looper" but it fell through) and maybe I will get something in the second issue as he already had the first issue wrapped up by that time. And maybe I will write another Sci Fi story. After all, I started in Science Fiction way back in my youth.

I grew up on Horror and Science Fiction in films and on TV and later reading those genres. My first novels were of Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and other venerable first generation Science Fiction writers. Anyway, the story isn't getting published in Perihelionsf.com. I do recommend visiting the site, if you like Science Fiction. Give them a look. I'm all for supporting ANY Science Fiction anywhere in any format, as long as it is good. I really believe that we need Science Fiction. Human kind needs it.

The number of modern astronauts and scientists who were affected by shows and films like Star Trek and Star Wars years ago in their youth, is amazing. Science and Speculative Fiction give us respite from our lives and allows us to project possibilities into the future, offering a path, change, evolution, ways to better the lives of all people everywhere.

Okay, getting back to my story. I had put work into finishing it so then I thought, "Well, I have this nice little story and the few who have read it really liked it, including the editor of the Sci Fi magazine (and how many can say that?). So I might as well send it off elsewhere. I had already put it into my Anthology of Evil II that I am putting together as a follow up to my previously published, "Anthology of Evil" (I).

And then I had an idea. I'd heard other writers do this and the journal article aspect of the story could lend itself nicely to this idea; why don't I just release it here, on my blog, in piecemeal fashion over a period of a few days or a week?

And so, that is what I have decided to do. Starting next Monday, I'm going to publish my story, "EarVu" here on my Blog. Just be patient, the title will make sense. I will publish the first part next Monday at 4:20AM at my normal Blog publish time. Then I will published sections at Noon, each day next week until it is fully published.

I hope you enjoy it.

Romney for Nuclear War?

Consider This Scenario, think ahead, speculate a bit:

Romney gets in as president. Eventually they manufacture a war.

Couldn't happen? Really? Remember "W" Bush? Remember Iraq? Remember what never existed? Remember the, WMDs?.

So Romney gets a second term (again, remember Bush?).

Then they manufacture a second incident allowing Ryan to become President. A new and far worse situation evolves from the manufactured incidents over the previous eight years so that it is obvious to everyone what the next step has to be. Almost the entire world agrees. Then it suddenly becomes "necessary" to launch a nuke against a middle eastern country (or North Korea, or someone new).

Pre-emptive nuclear war will then become the new policy.

It will be a "New World Order" that the right wingers were so afraid of. Funny how that New World Order would come from those you least expect it from: those who were most afraid of it (afraid that is, only if it isn't them).

Obama won't seem to have been so bad, then. But by then it will be too late.

So, be very careful who you vote for in the next election. You could end up doing the wrong thing thinking you can't be wrong, and never have a chance to do anything to fix it.

Just remember, if that happens, you were warned.

NPR article, read between the lines, project into the future, use, your imagincation: 
Debate Preview: Romney Aide On How GOP Nominee Would Confront Iran

Film or digital?

Technology changes. It advances. But not all change, not all advances are good; are they?

When electronic drums came to be years ago, many purists, especially old time drummers (which isn't to say, old people who drummed, but professional drummers who were "old school") as well as audiophiles said that to make the drum sound electronic was to literally take the heartbeat out of the production of music. When you run an electronic drum in a song, you code for it, you adjust settings, it's rhythmic, it's "perfect" in a way. But when a drummer drums on a drum kit, you have a human drumming, you have a, heartbeat. That random element that is produced from the organic being, the emotion, the musician; something you cannot code for.

Because of that human musician, that organic element manipulating the sounds, the music produced is based upon the strikes of the drumsticks on drum head, cymbals, and yes, any "cow bell" or whatever else may be in the mix, like chimes, etc. Behind that drum stick is a hand, a wrist, an arm, muscles, tendons, and a heartbeat, a brain, whereupon sits the musician's mind with its history and emotions. All these things add up to that performed drum beat. It's something that you can feel it when you listen to it. The musician is communicating a real "feeling", an emotion, they are conveying a message from that performer's life to the listening (and feeling) ear of the audience. The musician emotes a very primal, base communication to the listener.

When you take that human element out of the mix, you lose something. There is a complexity that is missing. An electronic drum set built of electronics and coding is not as sophisticated, as complex. For that you would need to have Artificial Intelligence and even then, you would be missing something; you would be mimicking a human element in the sound production and you wouldn't actually have a human being behind it.

We have a similar situation now with film and HD video. It's not quite as direct as the music paradigm, but there is a loss of complexity, of traditional filmic history, of an obverse concept that further breaks down the fourth wall between the audience and the filmmaker. There is, and you can easily see it in viewing the difference between celluloid film and digital HD video, a feeling of watching something "real". Many people are noticing that it is almost, "too real", too immediate and at least for now in the beginning of this format it is breaking the element of "suspended belief" for the audience that is so necessary to filmic storytelling. It is like you are sitting on the set of the production watching the story play out. Which, is kind of cool in its own way. But you are also losing something. The "texture"of the film is now gone.

As with the digital drum kit, you can add artificiality to it, to the video experience. You can give it that "texture" with a digital "grain", you can "slow" down the image within the frame, to make it have that "Hollywood" look and feel. But it's not real. It's still a simulation. Anyone younger may come to believe it is real, but it's not.

There is a great difference between the digital drum kit and the real drum kit played by a human; and there is a between real and simulated film; though it's not even simulated, it's just outright HD digital video. I'm not trying here to draw a direct connection between the situation of drumming and HD video, I'm just trying to point out the kind of loss involved. It's a qualitative kind of loss. Almost to some anyway, like real milk or powered milk. It may seem real to some but it's not, there is a lack of quality involved. And at least some of of know it.

There is a certain loss of "materiality" as Keanu Reeves recently put it in saying that we are losing many things in life now a days, losing a certain "haptic" quality of contact. Keanu has produced a new video called, "Side by Side". From the web site: "Movies were shot, edited and projected using photochemical film. But over the last two decades a digital process has emerged to challenge photochemical filmmaking. SIDE BY SIDE, a new documentary produced by Keanu Reeves, takes an in-depth look at this revolution."

I've had a 42" Sceptre HDTV for some years now, but recently my TV went out. So I bought a newer technology LG HDTV and it's lighter, has a smaller footprint, and a far better image. I am now seeing for the first time, real HDTV. Painfully clear images with colors that will "make your eyes bleed". Okay, not really, but it has an immediacy, a clarity that is almost too much. I hated it at first. I watched some of my old shows like "Firefly" and they were clear in a way I had never seen them before. It was, disconcerting.

I even bought a new set of Firefly disks and it was so very different to watch. It lacked that certain quality that it used to have. It put the actors right there in your face, or, it was more like you were right there on the set watching them act. Where was that distance between the set and audience? That Hollywood feel? I wanted to feel like I was watching a dream, not actors on a set, a fantasy that too me out of my reality and into that fun, produced world. I did fine that by turning down the power levels on  my new TV screen, that I could return to how it used to look, though it was still clearer than before, which is cool. I thought it was interesting that the "power level" was somehow what was giving me that super clarity that was taking me out of the fantasy and too much, perhaps, into the reality of the production.

I started to realize that this is a new technology (for me) and that I would have to adjust. I realized that younger people would come to see it as normal; maybe even not liking that old "Hollywood feel" that I love so much. I remember years ago when you would see a TV show shot in video, it was obviously different, harsh looking. It had a cheaper look and feel to it. Sometimes, depending on the show it was cool, and sometimes it detracted from quality of the show. Sometimes it pointed out how little money they had to produce the show.

But this is something new. Yes, it is cheaper than film, but in some cases they are shooting in digital HD video and transferring it onto film anyway. Which is a huge money saver since you don't waste miles of footage of expensive film media and the ensuing film processing and only use in the end what you really need to.

So are we losing something special? I don't know. Perhaps as in many things we are seeing now a days, we are merely gaining a technology and not losing one. But in the way that corporations and studios are always trying to save a buck, we could be losing something here, and never realize it. Corporations love to do that, to make the cereal box the same size with less weight within it, the candy bar smaller but the price remaining the same. Is this just another example of the consumer being fooled? Maybe. Maybe not. The audiences still do set the pace and if audiences find it displeasing, sales will drop off and we may go back to using film. But at this point, I just don't see that happening. I fear they will fall complacent and accept the digital tricks to make it look like film and eventually, no one will really be the wiser.

It also makes me think of the current book revolution. Do you read books on a Kindle, Nook or some other eReader device, or do you read a book in paper form? Should we continue to kill trees for paper? There is something very pleasing about holding a book in hand, turning real paper pages, with that special paper and printing smell I have such a history with and which many younger people will not. Now that I own my own Kindle (I felt that if people are buying my works in digital format I had best learn it myself), I find that I enjoy both now, the ease and volume of content that I can carry with me in my Kindle, and the weight and feel and smell of a real paper based book. Though I mostly only read books now at home and my Kindle is my go to device for carry and read, out and about in the world.

Either way, society and life march on whether we wish to keep up or not.

When asked what Keanu shot his documentary on, he had to smile off to the side and answer honestly saying, "Digital," and then made it clear that he really wasn't against digital, he just saw that there were two different things to consider here (as I have been trying to point out here) and that he hoped as I do, that digital will be an adjunct in "film"(?) production that will enhance our movies and not simply kill film, completely.

But then again, didn't video kill the Radio Star?

Vote Republican?

Vote Republican. Why? It's the masochistic thing to do, of course. But I kid the Republicans. Consider the party promise of the 1928 elections: "a chicken in every pot...."

But it wasn't just chicken that was promised. During the presidential campaign of 1928, a circular published by the Republican Party claimed that if Herbert Hoover won there would be “a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.”

Why this hadn't happened in the previous administration is beyond me. Why hasn't this been the party line. Why don't the Republicans continue with this line of thought?

Despite a landslide victory over Alfred Smith, the first Roman Catholic to run for president, the Republican Party's promise of prosperity was derailed seven months after Hoover took the oath of office. The stock market crash of 1929 plunged the country into the Great Depression and people eventually lost confidence in Hoover.

Following the current GOP logic track in their commentary on President Obama, in this case it took the Republican party a mere seven months to bring about the stock market crash. By the way, Republican Calvin Coolidge was president before Hoover.

So maybe don't vote Republican after all?