An Interview With Edward Of Planet Earth Author Nicholas Eftimiades And Your Chance To Receive A Free Autographed Copy

Interview with Nick Eftimiades, author of Edward Of Planet Earth

I first learned about Edward Of Planet Earth and the author Nicholas Eftimiades by listening to an interview on the Scifi Diner Podcast.  The idea intrigued me, so I went to Amazon.com and downloaded for my Kindle and began reading.  I enjoyed the story and posted about it on this blog.

Nick was very appreciative that I would review his book on this blog and we began our on-line friendship.

A few weeks ago, I contacted Nick to see if he might be interested in an interview.  He was more than happy to accomodate me, so here it is.  We talked about Edward and his two other non-fiction books on Chinese intelligence, and on how we Americans are viewed by people in other countries.  But the discussion was not just limited to books, we also discussed the future implications of the evolution of our technology.


Those who are interested in learning more about Nicks Books can visit anywhere books are sold on-line.  He can also be found on-line on his blog.  Recently, he posted an article on his blog that outlines the intelligence implications of the Battle of Yavin in Star Wars.  This was an interesting anylitacal look at Star Wars and a fun read.  We also visited about The Federation of Galaxy Explorers, a non-profit organization intended to promote interest in space exploration in school aged children and young adults.


Well, there it is...

QaplaH!

Iron Man 3: High Expectations - Does Not Deliver

Iron Man 3 – 2013…

First of all, let me say that all of the following falls under the heading of IMHO (In My Humble Opinion), further, I do not claim to be an expert on anything as far as movie reviews are concerned other than what I like and what I don’t.  I will further state that I know that I am in the minority when I state…

Iron Man 3 was a disappointment.

While I have to say that I have not been a fan of the Iron Man franchise from the beginning, sitting in the theater yesterday with my wife, this latest installment didn’t do anything to make me want to see another Iron Man film.  I had high hopes and high expectations for this film after watching the previews.  I was really hoping that I would find something in the film that would bring back the feelings I had as a young man reading the comics.  It wasn’t there.  So where did Iron Man go wrong?

I am not even sure where to start.  The film opens by introducing a character named Aldrich Killian, a scientist that has invented something that is supposed to cure debilitating injuries.  We then learn that Tony Stark is suffering from anxiety attacks shortly after the events of the Avengers movie and thanks to a lack of sleep, builds a small army of Iron Man suits.

Now we switch to the Mandarin, a well-known nemesis of Iron Man in the comics who is threatening to kill the President.  The Mandarin’s minions attack and destroy Starks house and Tony starts a quest to find and stop Mandarin.  During this quest, Tony has to face the world and improvise getting along without the benefit of his alter-ego.  Upon finding the Mandarin, we learn that he is an actor that has been hired by Killian to throw Stark and the authorities off his trail.

The substance that Killian has invented does work, but has the unfortunate side effect of turning some that use it into human bombs.  Iron Man assisted by War Machine (ineptly renamed Iron Patriot, one of many OMG moments), Pepper, and JARVIS, the last in the form of a small army of Iron Man armor.  The President is saved, Killian is defeated, and Tony reunites with Pepper.  All of the suits are destroyed and Iron Man is out of business (perhaps mercifully so).  Tony returns to his wrecked mansion, retrieves his robotic assistant and rides off into the sunset.

Following the closing credits is the best part of the entire film as far as I am concerned.  It would appear that Tony was spilling his guts about this story to Dr. Bruce Banner, who has fallen asleep during the telling, which sums up my reaction to this film.  Zzzzzzz…

So what is the problem?  Starting with the story, well maybe not the story as much as the script.  I just didn’t get a sense of direction in the development of the story.  It seemed to me like a collection of disjointed and loosely related scenes spliced together to try to make a story.  Along with that, Stark's dialog was, as it has been throughout the franchise, an unending string of flippant wisecracks that do nothing to advance the story.  Now I don’t mind some humor in a film, but really, give the main character something that has substance. For me, this story was full of holes that one could fly a shuttle through.

Another problem I had was with the development of Stark’s main adversary, Killian.  I will forgive that they took the Mandarin and turned him into a paper tiger, even though he was one of Iron Man’s most deadly enemies in the comics.  But Killian was a character with no depth and too little back story to fully understand what his problem was.

I am wondering what the appeal of this film is.  I can only think that audiences are being dazzled by the CGI and SFX which are well done, but that is all that I found well done.

Today, I took the opportunity to poll some of the students I teach.  Many of them did indeed see Iron Man 3 and the reviews from them were mixed.  Amongst the junior high kids, it was a huge hit, however my high schoolers and true Sci-Fi aficionados and comic fans, they pretty well mirrored my feelings.

This is a high grossing film that is getting rave reviews, but I cannot see it.  By my estimation, this film does not live up to all of the hype.  I am planning to buy this film on BluRay, but only after it hits the $5 bin at Wal-Mart.

Edward of Planet Earth News…

On the way home from school today, I listened to an outstanding interview with Edward of Planet Earth author, and friend Nick Eftimiades.  It is a 20 minute spot on The Science Fiction Show podcast.  Listen to Nick talk about Edward and how it came to be, then go to Amazon.com and download the book.  Click here to read my review of this outstanding book endorsed by Bill Nye and Buzz Aldrin click HERE.

Well, there it is…

Q’aplaH!

No Room For Failure: More NASA History...

Failure Is Not An Option: Mission Control From Mercury To Apollo 13 And Beyond by Gene Kranz – 2009

Who received most of the accolades when a successful, or for that matter, an unsuccessful space mission was completed?  Well the answer to that question is obvious; of course it is the astronauts who risked their lives to explore the unknown.  But behind those heroes were thousands of people who often times were among the unsung heroes that helped to launch, fly, and land those spacecraft.  Chief among those were the flight controllers which is the subject of Gene Kranz’s Book Failure Is Not An Option.

Kranz’s book is all about the corps of flight controllers that manned Mission Control for every minute of every day that there was an American spacecraft aloft.  He traces the history of flight control from the very beginnings of the space program through the entire Apollo program.

The early years of space exploration were marked by a competition between the United States and the Soviet Union vying for dominance with the Soviet Union scoring decided victories, leaving the United States playing a game of catch-up.  While the Soviets were sending satellites and people into orbit around the planet, the United States’ rockets were having a difficult time just getting off of the launch pad.  When the U.S. Finally did begin successfully launch payloads, President John F. Kennedy declared to the world that before the end of the 1960’s, the U.S. would successfully send an American to the moon, and return them safely (according to Kranz, the plans prior to Kennedy’s speech were to actually land Americans on the moon in the mid 1970’s).

Kranz traces the history of manned space flight from the perspective of his role as a NASA flight controller.  During his thirty year tenure, he was a firsthand witness to all of the events including projects Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo.  He goes into some detail on all of the flights, and goes into even greater detail on the flights for which he was the chief controller including the first landing on the Moon of Apollo 11, and the near tragedy that was Apollo 13.  He gives an accurate picture of the missions including the problems that were encountered and solved and discusses the reasons for and the solutions to the problems that allowed Americans to take pride in our achievements in space exploration.

Kranz’s narration is sometimes difficult to read because he get quite technical at times, but this book is a must read for those of us who enjoy knowing what went on behind the scenes at NASA.  However, if you are looking for scandal, you will not find it in this book, it is not an expose, but rather a factual account of the history of manned spaceflight from the flight controller’s point of view.

Not only does Kranz revisit the past in Failure, he also speaks to the future of American space exploration by expressing his disappointment (which is felt  by many of us today as American astronauts hitch rides into space aboard Russian rockets) in the present state of affairs: “Entering the twenty-first century, we have an unimaginable array of technology and a generation of young Americans schooled in these technologies.  With our powerful economy, we can do anything we set our mind to do.  Yet we stand with our feet firmly planted on the ground when we could be exploring the universe.”

I think that Failure is a worthwhile read for students of space flight history and those who want to know what goes on behind the scenes at NASA.

In other news…

There is an ongoing debate in the science fiction genre that would seem to search for the answer to a question that has occupied my mind of late; what is science fiction and what is not.  I had the opportunity to once again be a guest on the Scifi Diner Podcast and explore this question with Scott, and Miles (podcast hosts), Raul Ybarra (sci-fi fan, blogger, and mad-scientist), and Keith DeCandido (sci-fi author).  Our conclusion?  Well you are going to have to listen to the show.  I am told that it will be released sometime this coming week and I will add the link to it when it comes available.  We visited for almost two hours on this and could actually have talked longer.

I received a very nice gift from Nick Eftimiades in the mail.  He sent me an autographed copy of Edward of Planet Earth, a work of fiction in the style of Douglas Adams.  Click HERE to read my review and recommendation for Edward.  I should also like to point out that Eftimiades is not only an author, but he is also active in many other areas including Chinese espionage, and the defense of our planet from threats from space.  I, for one, have gained more interest in possible threats due to the recent meteor incidents in Russia and on the east coast of the United States.  Recently, Nick has posted something that may sound like science fiction, but it is truly a threat and needs to be addressed.  Click on the link to read his United States Commission on Planetary Defense.

Blog posts from me have become quite infrequent of late because real life has a tendency to get in the way of leisure pursuits.  Hopefully, as the school year comes to a close, I will be able to write more frequently, but until then…

There it is.

Q’aplaH!

My Take on Two Very Strange Stories...

These past few days, I finished reading and watching two very strange and surrealistic stories.  The book I finished was Nicholas Eftimiades Edward of Planet Earth, and I finished my first complete viewing of The Prisoner starring Patrick McGoohan.  Both are amusing and often disturbing.

Edward of Planet Earth

This is the story about Edward, an extraordinarily and perfectly average person who gets into an outlandish situation of searching for the true nature of God on the behalf of artificially intelligent beings about 200 years in the future.  Edward gets caught up in this quest through no choice of his own.  He is a simple computer repairman who, while on the job, end up with the consciousness of Mega Brain, a very intelligent computer, uploaded into his brain.  This sends Edward, however involuntarily, around the globe and to the Moon on a precarious quest for the truth.  Edward is assisted by an attorney who becomes a close companion, Amanda, and by Mega Brain.

Now, one might expect that artificially intelligent beings of the future would be logical and completely in control of themselves helping humanity in the pursuit of improving themselves and their situation, right?  Sorry, this is not nearly the case in Eftimiades' vision of the future.  Being programmed by humans, the intelligences encountered by Edward and Amanda are all just reflections of humanity itself.  The artificial intelligences all have the same insecurities, hopes, misjudgements, and neuroses that their human counterparts have, but when the author embodies them in a machine, it only adds to the humorous situations.

Nicholas Eftimiades paints a view of the future based on his knowledge of current technology projected 200 years into the future.  The world hasn't been taken over by computers in the future, but many of the mundane tasks now performed by humans are relegated to artificial intelligence.  For instance, Edward is monitored constantly by Clarice, a "Motivational Model Home Management System."  Clarice's job is to monitor all aspects of Edward's life and make sure that he eats right, gets enough rest, and so on.  She does tend to get in the way of Edward's pursuit of pleasure.  In Michio Kaku's book, The Physics of the Future, Dr. Kaku also describes such a system and how it would perform, but Eftimaides' version is far more humorous than Kaku's.

This is a fun read with lots of humor, absurd situations, and unexpected turns and twists much in the same vein as Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide series.  As a matter of fact, in an interview with the Scifi Diner Podcast, Eftimiades discusses how Adams inspired his writing of Edward.  You may access that interview with the author by clicking HERE.  Not only does the author talk about this book, but he discusses other aspects of his life and work in the U.S. Government as well.  So how does the story end?  Well, I'm not going to spoil that here, I will say that I found it to be infuriatingly funny.  It is begging for a sequel, and I am anxiously awaiting the continuing story of Edward's involuntary quest for truth.

Edward of Planet Earth is available in all of the major e-reader formats and is very reasonably priced.  I got my copy from Amazon for $2.99.  Don't let the low price fool you, you'll get a quality product well worth reading.

The Prisoner

This is a 17 episode British television series that is absolutely bizarre and surreal.  The prisoner originally aired in the winter of 1967-68 in Great Britain and later in the U.S., usually very late at night and not at regular times.  I have never really had the chance to see the entire series until I bought the Blue Ray edition a few weeks ago.  The Prisoner stars Patrick McGoohan from Secret Agent fame, and this might be considered a continuation of his story.

We never learn what McGoohan's character's name is, he is only referred to as Number 6.  In the opening sequence we get the setup for what is to follow.  McGoohan charges into the office of some government official and has a rant.  Then he slams a letter of resignation down on the official's desk and charges out.  When he gets home, he is packing for a vacation, but before he can leave, he is knocked out by someone gassing him.  When he awakes, he is in a perfect duplication of his own apartment, but when he peers out of the window, he finds himself in The Village.  Here is the opening sequence and the basis of the entire story...

No. 6 is constantly trying to find ways to escape, and the leader of the government in The Village, No. 2, is tasked with getting information from No.2.  There are many ways that No.2 attempts to gain the information including psychological and physical torture, use of drugs, and extreme deception.  There are several times when No. 2 thinks he finds an ally, but he only finds out that even his most trusted allies are just part of the plot to get No. 2 to reveal his secret, mainly why he resigned from his job.  The reason for his resignation is never revealed during the series.

I think that the main message of the story is mostly allegorical.  As No. 2 says in the opening sequence, "I am not a number, I am a free man" followed by the sinister laugh by No. 2, it begs the question, are any of us truly free?