Four Miscellaneous Points
(i) "Hell take it, thought Herries, we may be damned but why must we be fools into the bargain?
"Somewhere a brontosaur hooted, witlessly plowing through a night swamp.
"Well, I'd better - No!" (p. 46)
We recognize two Andersonianisms here. First, the witless brontosaur parallels the foolish human beings. This time, we are reflected in a swamp-dwelling animal rather than in a hooting wind. Secondly, Herries has a moment of realization. His "No!" is really a "Yes," as he suddenly realizes what he can do next.
(ii) There is an epic battle between a tyrannosaur and men in jeeps with guns and grenades. Sometimes I summarize such scenes here. Instead, I merely commend this one to other readers.
(iii) Senator Wien who works quietly behind the scenes to ensure that mankind survives in the Jurassic Period reminds us, or at least me, of Senator Bliss Wagonner in James Blish's They Shall Have Stars who works quietly behind the scenes to ensure that mankind escapes from the Solar System. Both are Cold War scenarios. Wien knows of an imminent nuclear war. Wagonner anticipates an encroaching Bureaucratic State.
(iv) We learn why the sky is hidden in the opening sentence. There are permanent layers of fog and frequent rain clouds. Subsequent generations will know of but never see sun, moon and stars.
25 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
After the JURASSIC PARK movies, I'll be interested in seeing how a scientifically educated man like Anderson handled the problem of how to fight a Tyrannosaurus rex.
Ad astra! Sean
Interesting that the spaceship on that magazine cover bears a considerable resemblance to the real ones under construction at Boca Chica...
Sometimes sf gets it right: blunderbuss effect.
Kaor, Paul!
Perhaps, more exactly, the artist who did the cover for that issue of F & SF.
Ad astra! Sean
Of course, life imitates art too: Elon Musk has mentioned that his designs are affected by the covers of SF stories he read as a child.
I hope that guy can do it but we await results.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: more and more Elon Musk reminds me of D.D. Harriman and Nicholas van Rijn! He is seeing things that most of us miss.
Paul: Absolutely! So many things can go wrong, preventing Musk from founding his colony on Mars. And I think mistakes has been made, such as what I consider the dead en of Musk's venture into the automobile industry, Tesla. And I've also thought of Anderson's warning story "Murphy's Hall."
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Maybe Anson Guthrie is a closer comparison than ban Rijn?
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
You are right, Anson Guthrie is a better analogy than Old Nick. Guthrie helped to get mankind off Earth. Van Rijn did not need to do that.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: Tesla is making a great deal of money (it's worth about the same as the next three largest auto makers put together now), which Musk then uses for a number of purposes.
He's got a knack for making his dreams self-financing, like the Starlink internet constellation, which is going to give SpaceX a license to print money, multiple billions.
Also, many Tesla vehicles can work in Martian (or Lunar) conditions with only a little modification (different wheels, a pressure cabin), and the solar energy and bulk-electricity storage systems are essential to the colonization plans.
Likewise, the "Boring Company" has made innovations in large-scale tunnel construction which are calculated to be very useful to off-planet colonies, which will need protection from solar radiation.
It's all tied together. Musk is a very clever man, and one with a holistic grasp of the various things needed for his plans.
The spaceships are the most conspicuous part, but not the only one.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I sit corrected. I had been thinking of what I've read about Tesla having troubles, difficulties, and setbacks in the making and selling of its cars. Also, I admit to have been thinking of "horseless carriages" as so NINETEENTH century.
Maybe I should invest a few thousand dollars in SpaceX and the Boring Company!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: well, if you'd bought Tesla at its low point, you'd be rich... 8-).
Yeah, they had plenty of problems initially, but that's inevitable if you're doing something new.
One of Musk's trademarks is that his companies innovate rapidly and accept failure calmly along the way -- they don't try to solve all the problems ahead of time, which is a recipe for sitting in circles talking and never getting anything done.
"Move fast and break things," as they say in tech circles -- rapid iteration. You start with the minimum viable solution, push it until it breaks, improve the next iteration, push -that- until it breaks, and so on.
Hence SpaceX has published a "blooper reel" of its early rockets blowing up and crashing. That's how you learn and improve quickly.
I think NASA got bogged down with not doing anything anything until everything was known to be safe - although, before that, they raced to the Moon in the '60s.
Paul: exactly. Defensive hypercaution never accomplishes anything worthwhile. That's why Kipling's poem about the pathfinders and explorers was titled "The Song of the Dead" -- all the heroes in it died out on the bleeding edge.
Kaor, Kr; Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: I actually emailed my investment guru at Wells Fargo and he replied that shares of Tesla currently sell at over 400 dollars each. Which is pricey I admit. But I'm still interested in buying into one of Musk's companies.
And I like the way Musk and his colleagues strive to achieve and DO things, accepting the risk of failure now in order to learn how to succeed later.
Paul: I agree, and that anxious and excessive caution of NASA is a huge reason why so many are now bitterly disillusioned with it. And I would put that down largely to it being a GOVERNMENT agency. That inevitably puts it under political pressures, which in turn breeds the kind of caution that never gets anything DONE. At least not in any big ways.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: Tesla did a 5-for-1 stock split on August 31st.
Before that, it was selling at around $2400 per share, and of course holders all received 5 of the 400-odd-dollars-per-share new stock.
On January 2nd of 2020, Tesla was selling at $84.90 per share.
So if you bought one share then, you'd have 5 shares now each worth $425.30 (as of the afternoon of Oct. 7 2020) each -- $2,126.50 for your $84.90.
Not bad!
NASA took risks and got things done in the 1960's. Then it got sclerotic. This is the general curve for organizations, especially ones that aren't periodically shaken up by competition -- war for armies, economics for companies.
But companies eventually ossify eventually. Note that Ford is not descended from a carriage-making firm, and that Tesla was started from scratch, not spun off from a legacy automaker.
Now the blog becomes a source of investment info. I like it.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: and that is classic free enterprise economics: a successful innovation inspiration competition, which in turn inspires further innovation. Something sclerotic gov't agencies or ossified companies can't do.
Both: And I'm seriously thinking of buying SOME stock in Tesa, even if only a relatively few shares.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
I did it! As per my wishes, my investment adviser at Wells/Fargo purchased ten shares of Tesla stock for me, at 427 dollars a share. Not many, and rather pricey, but at least I got my toes wet!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Maybe we will receive updates about Tesla here?
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
After so many years of conservative, cautious investing, I thought it time to try something just a bit more exciting--and Stirling's comments about Musk and Tesla encouraged me to do just that! I'll probably be mentioning my tiny stake in Tesla on the blog sometimes, and looking it up--the stock market symbol is TSLA.
Ad astra! Sean
Tesla is also beta-testing its “fully autonomous driving” version of the autopilot — Musk is using it on his own commute to work and it’s apparently fully hands-off.
They’ve used a fundamentally different approach from their competitors; instead of trying to build a full map for the autopilot, they turned all Teslas (which are in constant communication with the company) into data-collection points for a machine-learning AI.
The AI “decides” all driver actions, and then compares them to what the real-world drivers do and the results, continually “learning” to make decisions with the highest probability of optimum results. Essentially every human Tesla driver is teaching the machine what to do and not do, continuously, every time they’re behind the wheel.
Like the SpaceX process it’s iterative, but on a massive scale, 24/7.
The results started slowly, doing the easiest things first and then improving on a rising curve.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Wow! Very science fictional! I had thought it made sense to have self driving cars come with pre-programmed maps. Now I see Tesla doing something radically different! Needless to say, considering how I now have a modest personal stake in Tesla, I hope it works!
Practical self driving cars would mean even blind people could have cars.
What is next? FLYING Tesla cars like the air cars we see in Anderson's Technic stories? I first clearly noticed that in Chapter 1 of ENSIGN FLANDRY, as an air car was taking Lord and Lady Hauksberg to the Coral Palace, to a party being hosted by Crown Prince Josip for his father's birthday.
Ad astra! Sean
Another thought I had is to wonder what might happen if a Tesla self driving car loses communication with the central computer? Would it still be safe to use as a self driving car?
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Also, couldn't Tesla build cars (both self driving and not) using gasoline/petrol? Wouldn't that make its cars far less expensive? My understanding is that serious limitations on how long a charged battery can be used before it needs recharging and the length of time that takes are real drawbacks for electric cars. If you only need two or three minutes to fill up your car with petrol but it takes many HOURS to recharge an electric car, it follows most buyers will opt for the former.
Solve the battery/recharging problem (plus the cost) and Tesla cars should take off!
Ad astra! Sean
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