GEORGE ANTHON KIBBIE

A Big Thank You and A Shameless Plug

Good People:

I am overwhelmed by the response to my website.  Everyone was very complimentary save a few at the other end of the spectrum.   I was particularly tickled by a couple of negative comments from two contributors in particular-  a used car salesman in Canada and a voice teacher in Australia. What more needs to be said?

The rest of you are calling out for more stuff.   Well, all righty then!  I will make every effort to keep putting up interesting topics on the site.  Some will probably be very controversial, but then that is what makes things fun and brings out the self-proclaimed experts to nay-say.   And brings smiles to my face in the process.  But to make things go more smoothly I ask one thing of you good folk-  please buy my latest book,  The Gravity Brokers. It is available as an eBook at a very reasonable price from LuLu.com.  I know you will enjoy it.

The Great FTL Debate

There is a testy and ongoing debate in the science fiction community with regard to Faster-Than-Light travel (FTL).  The division is largely between two camps-

• The purists who demand that all Sci-fi tech be accurate.  Their cry is that Einstein proved conclusively that FTL is a physical impossibility through his famous equation E=mc2.  Something about mass reaching infinity at light speed, thus requiring an infinite amount of energy to push it through the barrier  .“And Einstein knew what he was talking about.”
• The dreamer camp that waves the BS flag with vigor while stating, ”so what?  We are talking about Science fiction, for crying out loud.  It is not real.  We can do anything in fiction.  Why not go FTL?”

I hold with Camp #2 for several reasons, the most stolid being the very definition of our craft.  We write fiction in the Science genre’. Science fiction- not true, fake, of the imagination, etc.  The whole point of science fiction, as I see it, is to delve into the preposterous and outlandish to see how deep the rabbit hole goes.  To push the boundaries.  Fantasy writers have been doing it for decades, but  the purists do not seem to be able to get past righty-tighty, lefty-loosy.  Everything must follow convention.  Ironically, I have noticed that some of these same folk  fill their pages with weird monsters and other strange stuff, all of which pushes the very boundaries that I am talking about.  I will not name names, but you know who you are!

At one time the great minds of the age (and a few who thought themselves such) claimed that the world was flat.  Later on the same sorts of minds claimed that man could not exist at speeds above 60 miles an hour.  Even later they said man could not fly faster than the speed of sound.  What happened to the claims of those moldy pundits?  Did mankind sit back and say, “ They are smarter than me, so they must be right.  I better not try.”?  Heck no.  Man did the impossible and the great windbags were never heard from again.

Don’t get me wrong.  I am not bad-mouthing Einstein or any of the other theoretical physicists of today, but they are just men and women with opinions and massive and impressive equations.  Interestingly, even they do not fully agree with each other on many fronts.  And as they argue and number-crunch, they are finding more and more loopholes in current thinking.  Lord have mercy, they are even questioning Stephen Hawking’s Black Holes and Baby Universes theories.

Did I say theories?  Educated guesses based on incomplete information? I did.  After all, FTL is really just a theory, anyway.  Which brings us back to Einstein’s equation.  That man cannot go FTL is a deduction based on an equation, which is based in part on theories about how the atom is constructed.  And here is where it starts to break down.  We just do not know what goes on at the sub-atomic level.  We have theories, of course, theories that speak to those voids of knowledge, theories that are all-too-often taken as Gospel.  Things like super string theory, multi-dimension theory, parallel universes, quarks, gluons, leptons, photons, gravitons and so forth.  And let us not leave out the grand-daddy theory of them all, the GUT or Grand Unified Theory (bless your little heart, Albert).  It seems that at every juncture of thought that pesky word pops up again- theory.

So… is FTL possible?  Sure. Why not?  Just because Einstein said no doesn’t mean it is not.  As brilliant as he was, he was still a fallible man operating within the confines of his knowledge base.  Mankind, however, has proven over and over throughout history that the seeming boundaries set by the sciences of the day are neither sacred nor inviolate.  Eventually, walls fall, as will those surrounding the impossibility of FTL.   Until then, allow me to dream, and do not stare at me across your half-specs while disdainfully clucking your tongue.

To the Sci-fi purists and clean-tech junkies (and you know who you are), I say take a deep breath and let yourselves go.  Dream a little and go FTL in your heads.  Dare even to put it to paper.  It is great fun.  However, if you refuse or it hurts too much give the Flat Earth Society a call.  I hear they are taking membership applications.

Just remember- It’s fiction.

New Release- The Gravity Brokers

I am launching into the eBook market with my newest book, The Gravity Brokers.

LN2217 is a mindless clone bred to do one thing- control gravity for an extortion ring of galactic proportions-  The Gravity Brokers. On a fateful mission one of LN2217’s critical support systems fails and he begins to stir.

Len, as he is commonly known, is an anomaly, the oldest living gravity bender on record. Because of this, the Brokers choose not to terminate him, but pull him from his gravity pod to find out what kept him alive for so long. It proves to be a decision of far-reaching consequences.

Len is thrown into the middle of a revolution as he struggles to find out who and, more importantly, what he is. His quest leads him to those who have sworn to stop the Brokers. In a whirlwind of events he is jerked from nothingness to manhood to love and galactic leadership, only to become a potentially worse problem than the Brokers.

The book is available through LuLu.com.

Books and Authors That Have Set The Tone For Science Fiction

There has been a lot of talk on the Science Fiction LinkedIn Group about what one considers the vital lexicon of Science Fiction or a singular pivotal work. To me it totally depends on the author. That said, here is how I see it.  Understand that this is just my opinion and only a partial list-

• Isaac Asimov- The Robot Novels.
• Poul Anderson- Harvest of Stars,
• Arthur C. Clark- of course, 2001 Space Odyssey.
• Jack Vance-  Throy.
• Robert E. Heinlein- Stranger In a Strange Land.
• E.E.Doc Smith- The First Lensmen
• Ray Bradbury- The Martian Chronicles
• Cyril M. Kornbut- The Marching Morons (A short Story)
• Frank Herbert- what else? Dune.

Most of these ‘Giants’ have passed on into the Cosmos and are currently finding out if their predictions were correct.

I also have favorite  current authors who are still shaping the genre’ .

• Greg Bear and Terry Brooks generally because of the vastness of their concepts. (Read Bear’s Moving Mars (1993) and note his reference to ‘slates’, and then think about the iPad.)
• Ben Bova for scientific accuracy.
• Tom Clancy for his unsettling near-future stuff like Net Force (which we are seeing come into existence as we speak).

All have unique qualities that differ from each other, yet bolster the whole. But to pick the one book or author who is the quintessential representative of our craft I would have to say it would be Jules Verne who started the whole thing.  Books like Journey to the Center of the Earth, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, From The Earth to The Moon and Around the World in 80 Days created a whole new genus of writing that started a revolution on how we perceive the world in that we are not bound to its surface, but can and should go “where no man had gone before”, to quote Bradbury.

For variety, I read Jim Butcher for complete off-the-wall modern-day witchcraft that has me laughing and ‘creeping out’ at the same time. Love that man’s writing!

Drop me a line and tell me who your favorite authors or books are and why.

Thanks for reading…

A New World Awaits. Go Get It!