Michael Gogins

Atwood proves herself a master science fiction writer in these books, the first two of a trilogy (the third has not yet been published). Spoiler alert: this review begins with plot summaries!
Oryx and Crake tells the story, in reverse via flashbacks, of how Crake, a genius with a grudge against the world, designs both [...]

I find it essential periodically to re-state my musical goal, so as to clarify just what that goal is and what steps I might follow to attain it.
My goal is to make good music, music that I want to hear and that other people will want to hear. And I want to do this by [...]

This advice assumes you already are a programmer – but that you want to be a much better one! It reflects my own personal methods, and may not work for everyone. Still, I hope you find it helpful. I know that I myself am a much better programmer now than I was when I started, [...]

The Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi) has now awarded first prize in its annual essay contest to Louis Crane for Stardrives and Spinoza. This is a follow-up to Are Black Hole Starships Possible? by Crane and Shawn Westmoreland, which I have already commented on below.
The theme of this year’s contest is “What is ultimately possible in [...]

When I was 19 I thought and wrote about the future from the standpoint of a would-be “hard” science-fiction writer.
My basic thinking was to explore the long-term consequences of the nuclear balance of terror. I did not believe that the balance was truly stable (events have since proved me correct). I thought there actually would [...]

Heidi and I saw Gerhard Richter’s “Abstract Paintings” at the Marion Goodman Gallery today. The paintings grasped me, and the room tilted this way or that depending on which painting held me in its gaze. Some of them — many of them — are quite colorful and beautiful. On the whole, the room had as [...]

Several years of experience composing in PTV space demonstrates beyond a doubt (to me, at least) that designing score generators to operate in voice-leading and chord spaces has extremely significant long-term artistic potential. I would say that the gamble of work invested has more than paid off as hoped. I would even go so far [...]

Iran appears to be acquiring nuclear weaponry. So far, or rather since Nagasaki, the leaders of the nuclear powers have been, just, rational enough not to use their weapons. If Middle Eastern nations acquire them, perhaps their leaders also will be so rational — indeed, I would expect so. But what if paramilitary forces get [...]

By a strange coincidence, only a few days after I read the proposal for a dark matter engine, I find on the arXiv another, probably even more significant proposal by Louis Crane and Shawn Westmoreland of Kansas State University: Are Black Hole Starships Possible? (http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1803).
The gist of Crane and Westmoreland’s paper is that physics appears [...]

Dark matter rockets, or rather reciprocating ramjets, are proposed by Jia Liu in http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1429. Dark matter particles annihilate on collision. The spacecraft opens its engine to sweep in dark matter, closes the opening, and compresses the dark matter until it annihilates to produce energy. This is as efficient as it gets. The other [...]