Continuing my review of classic invisibility science fiction stories leading up to the release of my book Invisibility on April 11th! Here is a post I originally did back in June of 2021.
Writing a book about the history and science of invisibility has led me to read things that I would otherwise never have encountered, including a whole slew of science fiction tales about invisibility and invisible creatures. I thought I would blog about a few of them, especially considering not all of them will be commented on in my final book!
The first one I want to share is Sinister Barrier, published in 1943 and written by British author Eric Frank Russell. I read the 1985 edition, shown below.
The “sinister barrier” of the title is the boundary between those frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum that we can see, that we call visible light, and those frequencies beyond, where who knows what may be lurking? (Technically, we can image in all those frequencies in modern times, but in 1943 this was a reasonable premise.)
Okay, we’re only about two weeks away until the release of my latest popular science book, Invisibility: The history and science of How Not to Be Seen! In the run-up, I thought I’d reblog my old series of posts on invisibility stories in sci-fi, and include some new stories that I haven’t blogged about yet! This is the first of those new posts, about a little-known story by a classic sci-fi author.
I freely admit that I am not as familiar with science fiction as I should be, considering how much I love any sort of fiction that steps outside of our familiar reality, be it science fiction, fantasy, or horror. One author whose work I discovered only relatively recently is Algis Budrys (1931-2008). I think Budrys is most known for his 1960 novel Rogue Moon, which I read a couple of years ago and completely forgot to blog about! The novel tells the story of a mysterious alien artifact discovered on the moon, which can be entered but is a massive deathtrap that kills anyone who makes a misstep inside of it. But the United States has invented a technology to create quantum doppelgängers of people on the moon that will pass their memory to the originals and can in principle explore the interior and “safely” die. But most humans cannot mentally handle the strain of experiencing death, so it falls upon the research team to find a person stubborn enough to survive dying again and again…
It’s a really cool idea, and I enjoyed the novel, so when I came across an invisibility story by Budrys, “For Love,” I was immediately intrigued.
As you can see, “For Love” appeared in the June 1962 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction, and it is particularly noteworthy to me for coming about as close as I’ve seen in imagining how modern real invisibility devices are supposed to work!
I just wanted to post a short note to say that I’ve received the first copy of my book on the history and science of invisibility, and it looks great!
I’m very excited for people to get a chance to read this, and I’m very happy with how it turned out! It can be pre-ordered through pretty much any bookstore, and the Yale University Press site has links to all the major sellers.
I’m going to be doing a book blitz on this site over the next month, as the book comes out April 11th! I am planning to repost my long series of articles on various science fiction invisibility stories, and include some new ones along the way!
I’m very late to the game on this, but I just recently read Junji Ito’s Uzumaki (1999) and Gyo (2002), and was so enthralled by Ito’s horrific visions I thought I’d share a few thoughts!
For those unfamiliar, Junji Ito is a Japanese horror manga artist. His work has earned international renown for its powerful images and macabre creativity.
Time to get back into a little combination book blogging/science blogging! Let’s talk a little bit about Existential Physics by Sabine Hossenfelder, published in 2022.
I read this book recently due to somewhat curious circumstances. My friend Mark at my university that I’ve known since I became a professor some 15 years ago has been running a book club with colleagues from a number of departments. They settled on reading Hossenfelder’s Existential Physics as their next book, and since they didn’t have a physicist in the group, Mark asked if I was interested in joining them? I was, because the book club sounded fun, and I’m also Twitter friends with Sabine and was quite confident that the book would be an interesting read! So in discussing the book, I can not only talk about my reactions as a physicist, but also the reactions of colleagues in theater, linguistics, software and information systems.
Hi folks, I’ve been a little busy with work lately and unable to do much blogging, but I thought I’d remind y’all that I also have started up my Science Chamber of Horrors Tumblr, where I share creepy tidbits I come across about science and nature!
Be back to some book and science blogging here soon…
Still catching up on all the reading I’ve not been able to focus on for ages, and I finally got to read a book by one of my Twitter friends, Premee Mohamed, Beneath the Rising (2020)!
Part thriller, part horror, part adventure, Beneath the Rising follows a girl genius and her best friend as they rush to prevent an eldritch apocalypse!
I’ve talked about Barron’s work quite often on this blog, and have been Twitter friends with him for a number of years — he is a great person and an amazing writer. His story The Redfield Girls, set in the real-life creepy setting of Lake Crescent, inspired me to blog about that lake’s history some years ago.
As someone who supports himself entirely through his writing and living in the United States, he is without health insurance and will therefore have to cover his medical expenses out of pocket.
The horror community has already rallied and contributed an impressive amount to his medical expenses, but more is needed, so if you’re able, please consider supporting the fundraiser for him.
I’ve been rather quiet the past week as I’ve been enjoying — and enduring — the holidays with my family. But the end of the year is approaching, and I thought I should do some sort of year-end wrap up. Why not, I thought, talk about some of the fun and quirky videogames I’ve played over the past year? Lots of unusual games have been coming out with unconventional art, game mechanics, and themes, a nice complement to the impressive but familiar AAA games that we see every year. So here’s a rundown on some of the games that caught my attention in 2022. Images are taken from the Steam pages of the games.
Immortality. This has been one of the highest-rated games of the entire year, and with good reason. It was developed by Sam Barlow, building on the design concepts of his earlier interactive film video game, Her Story (2015).
The starting premise is simple enough. An actress, Marissa Marcel, starred in three movies, made in 1968, 1970, and 1999, none of which were ever released, and Marcel’s fate is also unknown. Your task is to figure out what happened to Marcel and why her movies were never released. You have what amounts to a film spooler, and starting with just one movie clip, which you can move through forward and backward at will, you click on interesting objects in a scene, which unlocks new scenes that have some sort of symbolic connection. In this way, you can slowly piece together the tangled story.
At some point very soon in beginning the game, however, something very unexpected happens, and I was totally blown away when it did. Suddenly you find that there is a lot more to the story than you could possibly imagine, and that you, the viewer, may also be becoming part of the story.
The film clips are incredibly well-acted and filmed, and include scenes from the 3 fictional movies themselves as well as behind the scenes shots, screen tests, and more. As the game unfolds, you find that you are unraveling multiple stories layered on top of each other: the plots of the 3 movies, the story of Marissa Marcel, and a deeper, more sinister story that underlies it all.
The two leads Manon Gage and Charlotta Mohlin give excellent performances. The different scenes discovered range from unsettling, or even frightening, to deeply and profoundly moving.
Immortality has an “end game,” but it is likely that you won’t have exposed the full story by the time you reach it. Fortunately, you can keep searching, looking for that hidden clip that will make everything come together. I played 11 hours total.
Let’s recap four more old school Dungeons & Dragons threads that I’ve been posting to Twitter and Mastodon! No time to waste:
Death’s Ride (1984), by Garry Spiegle. This is one of those books that I have owned since I was a teen but curiously never really read in detail before!
Death’s Ride is the second in the CM series of modules, designed for the Companion Rules for D&D. The original Basic Set covered levels 1-3, Expert Set levels 4-14; The Companion Set covered levels 15-25.
The author of Skulls in the Stars is a professor of physics, specializing in optical science, at UNC Charlotte. The blog covers topics in physics and optics, the history of science, classic pulp fantasy and horror fiction, and the surprising intersections between these areas.
Skulls in the Stars 