Why Giant Mecha Robots Are Totally Awesome
Filed Under: Speculative Fiction, Top Post
Sci-fi rant: Why giant mecha robots are stupid | Geekend | TechRepublic.com
Jay Garmon has written a very well thought-out article on why giant mecha robots are stupid and will never work. I am afraid I must provide a counter to this article. Giant mecha robots are also totally awesome, and I think he’s wrong. Here’s why:
1. Collateral damage.
Okay, so yeah, it’s hard to make robots that can walk bipedally. They fall over a lot. That’s part of the charm! Who wants a giant robot that doesn’t smash everything in it’s path? Tanks can roll over cars and stuff, but can they shove other tanks so that they go flying through the air, crashing into skyscrapers and causing massive gasline explosions everywhere? No? Tanks are stupid.
2. Giant energy swords are awesome.
Robot hands exist on giant mecha so that they can wield giant energy swords. Do you think lightsabers are cool? Of course you do. A four story energy sword is like, 400 times more awesome than a lightsaber. That alone is enough reason for me to have giant mecha hands. However, there is one other thing that Jay Garmon has overlooked here. If giant mecha robots did not have all-purpose hands, they could not rescue kittens from trees. You are not going to build a special kitten-rescuing attachment for a mecha. That would just be silly.
3. Giant Mecha Robots make cool sounds.
If I could fill my iPod with just the sounds of giant mecha robots walking around and shooting up shit, that is all I would ever listen to. And millions of people just like me would do the same. The music industry would collapse. Thanks to giant mecha robots. Bonus!
4. Giant Mecha robots are our only defense against the Daikaiju threat.
What else are we going to build to protect us from giant monsters? As the recent Daikaiju documentary Cloverfield demonstrates, conventional military weaponry is not sufficient to defend our citizens against the menace of giant monsters that rise up from the sea. As to the cost? $725 million is a small price to pay to prevent some damage to New York City. I say some damage of course, because it is inevitable that in fending off the beast, the giant mecha robots will do considerable damage itself. But sometimes you have to burn the village to save it.
5. Giant Mecha battles will be cooler than any other sport ever made.
Giant mecha wars will be televised. All the violence of Ultimate Fighting combined with the metal-on-metal crunching of demolition derby. Sports bars will turn to the Giant Mecha Battles channel and throw away the remote. All other sports will fall before the juggernaut of Giant Mecha Robot Wars!
6. Giant Mecha Robots when damaged explode.
Some giant robots will undoubtedly be powered by nuclear reactors. I think you know what that means. Explosions are totally awesome. If you cannot agree to this, you should stop reading my blog.So there it is. Six very good reasons why, despite the cost and technical difficulties, we will build mecha robots. Because they’re totally awesome should be the only reason we make anything at all.
This post brought to you by the Infernocrusher Movement.
A CC-Licensed Story: “Babe, I’m Going to Leave You”
Filed Under: My Writing, Speculative Fiction, Top Post
A CC-Licensed Story: “Babe, I’m Going to Leave You”
I slept very badly last night, and had a migraine to end all migraines. I’m slowly recovering this morning. I recently woke up and, along with this lingering headache, I found I have an overwhelming desire to give something away.
I’ve posted a story online under a Creative Commons license. It’s about death, Led Zeppelin, and how families cope. A lot of it really happened. Some of it did not. It’s so intensely personal that I can’t bear to receive another rejection calling it “slight” or anything else, so here it is, posted for anyone to read and call “slight” or anything else they want to call it. What is important to me is that maybe someone reads it who is going through something similar and feels a little less alone. Writing it sure helped me. But your milage may vary.
With that said, here’s the link to the story. Share it as you see fit.
Babe, I’m Going to Leave You
An Interview Regarding Dr. Roundbottom
Filed Under: My Writing, Photography, Top Post, Writing Process
K. Tempest Bradford has interviewed me for Fantasy magazine about my Dr. Roundbottom project. The interview is now live here.
K. Tempest Bradford: Did the initial inspiration for Dr. Roundbottom start with the photography or with the story?
Jeremiah Tolbert: The work started specifically in photography. I had an opportunity after a week of rain to go out and take some pictures of mushrooms. I started playing with some of the images in post, and ended up creating my most popular photograph, the eyeball mushroom. From there, I started writing flash fiction around the photography, and Dr. Roundbottom was born.
K. Tempest Bradford: Did the initial inspiration for Dr. Roundbottom start with the photography or with the story?
Jeremiah Tolbert: The work started specifically in photography. I had an opportunity after a week of rain to go out and take some pictures of mushrooms. I started playing with some of the images in post, and ended up creating my most popular photograph, the eyeball mushroom. From there, I started writing flash fiction around the photography, and Dr. Roundbottom was born.
Tempest: How does a typical Roundbottom image come about?
Jeremiah: I’m pretty strongly limited by my own surroundings and what I have the capacity to photograph myself. Some of them come from experiments in photographic techniques that I want to try out, and some of them come from specific images that I conceive and then try and photograph. Then some just come about as happy discoveries of odd things as I explore my surroundings with camera in hand.
For instance, there are not a lot of people in the Roundbottom photographs at this point because of my limited budget and access to period costumes. Luckily, I have leads on some costuming resources, so that will change with time as I do more storylines for the project. Also, my wife is hard at work sewing a more formal Roundbottom costume for myself, and a costume for a female character that’s part of the narrative.
Whale Fall
Filed Under: My Writing, Science, Top Post
When a whale dies, an entire ecosystem blossoms in its corpse. Species of clams, worms, and other invertebrates can be found on the bones of a dead whale that cannot be found anywhere else. The “seeds” of these ecosystems seem to lay dormant in the benthos of the deep oceans, waiting for that one-in-a-million chance that a whale, it’s last breath escaping for the surface, will fall to the muck and mud. Imagine being stranded in the desert, your only hope for flourishing in the form of a giant falling from the sky. Tons and tons of meat and bone, providing nourishment and succor. Later, sulfur-loving bacteria pick over the bones and release hydrogen sulfide, launching an entirely new ecosystem of chemosynthetic bacteria. And it’s here where the diversity really gets wild, with nearly 200 different species making up the community, feeding on the bacteria, feeding on the feeders of the bacteria.
I see no beauty in death. I am terrified of it, as a general rule. The loss of a human mind to the black maw of nothing is the only thing that frightens me, really. My panic attacks, at their root, are all about my fear of death. But, for some reason, I read about whale falls, and I am filled with awe and amazement. There is beauty there, for me, and I don’t know why. A great, amazing creature dies, and gives life to not just one, but several ecosystems, for years and years after its death.
I want my death, when it comes, if it comes (as I hope to catch the wave of life extension science and live for centuries–a foolish hope, but I cannot relinquish it), to be as beautiful and as generative as a whale fall. I want what I have done in my life to create as much, perhaps. And the fear of death that I have–maybe it’s because I know I haven’t done that yet. Now would be too soon. I’m not ready. That’s what the attacks are about. Not being ready.
I refuse to come to terms with the idea of my own mortality. Not yet. Not until I can die like the whales do.
