MPJ

Hmmm, I think I got that title wrong. I wanted to write something catchy but obviously language puzzles are not really my thing. In case of Star Wars storytelling backwards in time, this triple 'prequels' looks fine, but again if I put all the main Jedi characters of various ages in chronological order, i.e. something like this:  Gella > Avar > Anakin > Luke > Rey , then it does look like that I missed one more word 'prequel' in it. Or.. well.. if we consider Rey's story to be the only sequel to the first prequel's main story in this thread, which started with "A New Hope", the very first movie of the franchise that initiated it all... then I could be correct after all.. Right? Oh, darn it, let it be... So, let's explore the latest prequel in the galaxy far, far away and long time ago, minus 150 years. Minus 150 years means, 150 solar cycles of the Coruscant, capital of the Republic, an entire planet evolved into one giant city, befo...

Before the start of the Great War, the prevailing sentiment in most, if not all, European countries was that victory in any major military conflict was guaranteed only if it was fought with a large, durable, well trained and modern army. The dawn of the 20th century established the environment in which countries entered the race to mobilize the largest part of the qualified population, to create faster motorized transport for troops and logistics, to use state of the art communications and the greatest range of artillery as well as to use various new drugs in medical treatments like morphine and even a cocaine to boost the troops and fuel their fighting mood. Comparing to 19th century wars, new warfare was revolutionized and upped to the next level. By June 1914, the stage was set and only a spark was needed to fire off the conflict. But was it really inevitable? Was the military race alone enough to cause the conflict in which 20 million died and many more wounded? Or did it need a pl...

I was no more than four years old when our car got stuck on a snowy hill decades ago. Everyone but me went outside to push to get us out of frozen road. More people gathered from other cars to help each other and soon everyone was engaged in a small rescue operation. That certainly didn't mean I didn't help - as well as others pushing the car from the outside, I did the same from the inside. From the back seat, I put my hands on the front and pushed hard. In my defense, deep down I knew that what I was doing was kind of weird and useless. At the time I just didn't know why. I was just ashamed sitting alone and doing nothing. Well, like they say, with age comes the wisdom and now I know that what I did was physically impossible, just like in the case of baron Münchhausen - when he got out himself and his horse he was sitting on out of a swamp by pulling his own hair upwards. And just like in old expression about an absurd and impossible thing one can do - if I were to pull b...

I've always wondered what genre exactly "Star Wars" belongs to? I guess it is safe to say that the entire franchise is one giant space fantasy or space opera if you will, genuinely influenced by human history and religiosity wrapped into a futuristic world of (science) fiction. I sincerely admire George Lucas when he began the story fifty years ago, especially how he imagined a spiritual background without the need for the existence of religion we are all familiar with and without presence of actual deities. The main premise simply described as the Force gives to those sensitive to this spiritual energy extraordinary abilities, such as telekinesis, access to the minds of the living beings, potentiality of healing and what is especially interesting to me, the power of seeing things before they happen. Even though the visions and predicting the future seem to be the most fantastic feature of the Force, it is perhaps the only fiction understandable by the real science. T...

When it comes to the space exploration within hard science fiction, the one where science is embedded in the narrative to the point that it is impossible to tell a story without it, only rare novels stand out among all the others in the ocean of short stories and novels published online and within traditional ways. Sure, it's not really possible to be familiar with the entire vast universe of sci-fi literature of today compared to past times, especially before the internet, when it was easier not to miss a noticeable book on the public shelf.  However, even today, the true classics in the genre are easily recognizable, perhaps in all those moments during or after reading when we wonder not if the plot is possible or scientifically plausible but when we fail to distinguish the fiction part from the real science. To achieve this, authors can't rely on their writing narrative only but also to their ability to successfully entangle science and fiction, and not only for those who u...

Since time immemorial, scientific thought did not flow in a straight line. It was full of retrograde motion and ups and downs and many theories were debunked along the way. Take for instant Einstein’s static universe or theory about existence of small planet in the orbit between Mercury and the Sun. On the other hand, illusions originated in our brains were not uncommon either. For the biggest example, we are all aware that weirdly huge Moon right next to the horizon is coming strait from the trickery of our mind. But what about time? It is definitely something we are taking for granted for a vary long time. Could it be both, construct of our own brain and yet based on something more fundamental and still waiting for better understanding? The time from our daily experience, feels very much real. We are living in it's present state and it flows inevitably forward to the uncertain future and thanks to our memories and factual evidence all around us it came from the certain past....

Coincidentally, around the end of the first three "Star Wars" movies the time of my high school days begun. That meant, among other things, that the distance from my home to the new school building drastically increased, along with my everyday's commute time back and forth. If I decided to avoid the bus in the morning, it would take me about 30 minutes of leisurely walking to get there. In regards to today's story, it was half an hour of one of the kind entertainment I was enjoying on more than several occasions. Walking toward the school, I was mounting my state of the art Sony Walkman on my belt loaded with one of my favorite cassettes and listening audio recordings from "Star Wars" trilogy. I am not talking about official movie soundtrack - it was the audio cassette of the entire film only without acting and dialogues. Just two hours of background orchestra coverage created by John Williams and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. I wrote mor...

You know that feeling with reading novels when your bookmark location is in the second half of the book and you find yourself turning pages faster and faster in order to find what happens next? If your reading interests coincide with mine, the most likely case is that you are reading either science fiction, spy or fast-paced action thrillers, or good and old adventure stories filled with espionage and politics in the background. Well, that was before. Nowadays, if I wanted all that combined in a single novel, there's a new sub-genre called technothrillers, and with some of them, especially with new authors in the self-publishing realm, and on almost all occasions, I found myself turning pages even faster. Three of those great technothrillers you could find presented in this blog post. The premises are extraordinary, and all of them borrowed from science fiction: smart robotic nanoparticles enhancing human bodies, evil artificial intelligence operating Darknet, and one extraor...

I had once a parrot pet called Cheda. He was incredible. Long ago, during my university days, Cheda was my only friend throughout countless sleepless nights when I was preparing for exams. He came very young, and we spent lots of quality time together in my room. I never closed the cage gate so he was as free as possible and used the entire flat to spread his wings. He belonged to an Australian cockatiel parrot breed, or nymphicus hollandicus, what was his real scientific name. Nymphs are very popular for their ability to mimic human speech and, of course for their talent to sing beautifully. Alex the African Grey Parrot* Cheda was no different, and over time he learned a decent amount of words, but what he performed the best was a tune from the movie "The Bridge on the River Kwai" . It was not a simple melody for a parrot, and you had to see his frustration in all those moments when he missed the note - on a numerous occasions I had to pet him and tell him to take it...

There is a debate whether or not Holocene, the latest geological epoch is already finished with ultimate human impact on Earth's ecosystems, which started along with industrial and technological maturity in recent past. Many of us believe that new era, suitably named Anthropocene is what we are living in already. With technology rise, it looks like humans already changed fundamentally to the point of incompatibility with our distant ancestors. Perhaps we are indeed heading toward rapid evolutionary change, like in the latest Dan Brown's novel " Origin ", but this premise is way more suitable for another science fiction I have just watched (for the second time). I am sure that for all of you who like intelligent movies , a long anticipated sequel for "The Man from Earth" finally came and it, without a doubt, opened the Holocene-Anthropocene transition for John Oldman, a 14000 years old man, who also, like entire humanity, seemed to be going through the change...

It happened long ago, in the dark ages of CRT monitors, when I first received a short forum message with :-) at the end. I stared at the message for a long minute(s) before giving up on decoding its meaning. It came from a well-respected friend of mine so I responded with short reply: "What!?" "You have to turn your screen 90 degrees clockwise." Answer came promptly. My CRT was large and heavy, and it looked way too dangerous to tilt it that way, so after a little brainstorming the problem, I concluded there's a better way of achieving the same goal. I tilted my head 90 degrees anticlockwise. "Aaaaaah!!!" I said promptly, and after realising the picture, the big smile on my face slowly morphed into loud laughter. So I typed back: "Wow!" I didn't have to wait long for the next message: "LOL!" "What!?" I quickly copy/pasted my earlier message but realised I was too not informed about new internet fashio...

Stories and speculations about human origin are always fascinating. Ever since Darwin. " Origin of Species ", published in the middle of 19th century, was truly one of those real breakthroughs in scientific thought. However, even though it is widely accepted by the mainstream and to date no alternative theory exists, if we disregard religion, that is - theory of evolution is not complete. In it's core, Darwin's natural selection of life is 'only' describing the evolution as a process. How life adapts to changes. Trials and errors of survival of species. The entanglement of life and environment. What happens if one species collides with another. But, the origin is something else entirely. No valued theory is anywhere on the horizon. What happened at the very beginning is still a mystery. We just ... don't know. Hence.. The stories and speculations. This october my reading time has been reserved for two books about human origin. Coincidentally, they arri...

DNA is a fascinating world. That single molecule of life contains all the information about individual living being. Any bacteria, plant, insect, algae, fish, animal or human grows from that one molecule seed. Probably even some alien form still waiting to be discovered on some moon orbiting Jupiter or Saturn. In one way or another, the same could be true with all life in the universe. All of us are grown from that single instructions manual inside the single DNA set of written directions. And there are no two identical DNA in existence, even if we could mix the same two identical human egg and sperm cells several times, similar but different resulted DNA would always be the outcome. We are surely still not mastering the DNA and bio-engineering - it is still young science and even though one giant molecule of life was hinted by various scientists and scholars more than century ago, it was only in early fifties of 20th century when James Watson and Francis Crick created the first double...