Decipher Scifi : The Show About How And Why

Amazon Pilot Model Amazon’s practice of putting out a pile of different pilots and letting the cream rise via actual user data. London 2032 Environmental collapse. Precipitous economic drop, at least locally. Population collapse maybe? Space is big The Oasis settlement is on “the edge of the galaxy.” That’s really far! Nearest edge to Earth still thousands of lightyears. So, magic FTL. Stasis and muscle-wasting. FTL comms may be couriered by the ships. Preacher man The role of a man of God on a space station where resources are scarce and engineers are in high demand. The Oasis Settlement Not as advertised! We’re still in the early stages of building Elysium here; it’s still being settled. Gravity and weather systems and water. Tectonic activity and proximity to other bodies. Breathable atmospheres and how they get there. One-way trips Expense and complexity of designing for return trips in space travel. The nature of the magic FTL seems to still need normal rocket launches to get up the

This movie is so good! Just a warning: we really think you should watch this before listening to the episode. It’s so good! Magic as skeptical training Taking advantage of human intuition. Taking advantage of our sensory aparatus. Inoculating against credulity and being fooled. Penn & Teller Excellent showmen who have been at it forever and who are just great. They are “honest liars” and a lot of their media is great training in cognitive biases. Saving people from drowning Attempts to derive scientific guidelines for chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to save drowning victims might go back further than you’d expect. Tesla David Bowie as the perfect dandy to play the rather dandy-ish Tesla. Modern railguns might be in a similar vein to Tesla’s “Death Ray” Taming electricity The wonderment of the period. Misconceptions about the rivalry between Tesla and Edison. Dedication and obsession and sacrifice The difference between simple and easy. Going over the top to s

Future City Where is this movie taking place? Was it made explicit? We’re thinking neo-Tokyo but what’s really interesting is the lengths they went to in order to make New Zealand look like a retro-futuristic Asian city. Cyberpunk Roots in Neuromancer etc. The rising Asian power of the period (Japan) and the mixing of western and eastern aesthetics. Robots! And robot materials. Robot doctors. Metamaterials. Biorobots and cyborgs. Metal vs biomech. Blending in. Squishiness. Robot eyes Networked AR lens implants. Batou had a whole suite of EM filters! Thermal, night vision, and x-ray. X-ray! Otherwise known as “cancer mode.” How x-rays work and the danger he must posing to everyone around him. Invisibility Cloaks Harry potter and Predator. First Predator vision, now predator invisisuit! Bending different frequencies of light around objects cloaked with metamaterials. Memory and Self Memory “glitch” medication. Implanting learning. Wiping memories and adapting brains to new bodies. Man  v

A book and so many adaptations I Am Legend (the book) (1954), The Last Man on Earth (1964), The Omega Man (1971), I Am Legend (2007), I Am Omega (2007). This one (if you consider the alternative, better ending) might be the closest to getting the point of the book. Zompires Zombies vs vampires and the origin of this story in the pre-zombie era. The book inspired Night of the Living Dead! Using viruses to our advantage Viruses as workhorses to deliver medical payloads. Mutations, good and bad. Telomeres. Cancer, and the difficulties of biological immortality. Loneliness The post-apocalypse can be rough; it’s difficult for social creatures. Talking to dogs and mannequins. Videos by Zompire biology What we observe presumably as the effects of their disease: Superquick respiration UV burns them to death Hairless Translucent skin Unhinged jaws Aggression Averbal Strong bones and muscle Zompires vs Undead The twist being that Will Smith is the real monster! Depending on whic

The International Space Station Crew of six. Highly trained to do space stuff and… study aliens? Crazy crane-arms. Is this the future? Near-future? Referencing the challenger explosion. A survey of the evidence and the answer: basically this must be taking place now. World population: 8 billion! Origins of alien life Looked rather similar to life on our own planet. Common origins. Panspermia. Or is life typical in the universe, and life as we understand it is a somewhat typical example? Time in space In the movie Jake Gyllenhaal claims 473 days in space. That’s a lot! NASA Twin study. This alien Wow what a bastard this alien is. “Just trying to survive.” Pluripotency and cell specialization.  A brain made of muscles. “A giant piece of murder muscle.” A jet plane made of biceps. One cell Kill it with fire! Literal firewalls. Temperatures of incinerators. Could we burn it up by tossing it down into the atmosphere (hot!). Kill it with space! Give that alien some space. Aliens love space

On voices My guest appearance talking about this film on the podcast Voices From L5. The women! The movie mostly follows three incredible women in particular. NACA/NASA This got left out of the movie, but the history of NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics), then NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), is an important part of the story. Space Race Existential threats. Intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear submarines obviating much of the interest in basing nuclear weapons in space. Dangerous beeps and boops. Humans in Space Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space. Alan Shepard. National and global heroes. Space stuff is dangerous Flight testing is really unsafe. Redstone rockets. Space Competition National competition in the day, feels to us more healthy and global-cooperative these days. For now. Until it gets cheaper and there are resources to fight over. :( Computers, human and otherwise Human computers. Adding machines. Early programmable

Q&A #1 What: Our first Q&A episode! Wherein we answer the MOST INTERESTING QUESTIONS FROM THE INTERNET! “What would you do for immortality?” (Question from CF Villion on Twitter) Trolley problems. Types of immortality, especially “virtual” immortality. Consciousness uploading. “#SciFi #Space: what would happen if a #BlackHole showed up in our #SolarSystem?” (Question from Maxime Duprez on Twitter) Rogue black holes. Passing through the Kuiper belt. Or passing through the asteroid belt. The myriad ways in which this would totally mess up our solar system and probably kill us all. “In SciFi movies we are Earthlings but what about galaxy VS galaxy stuff. What would we be called? Cuz I’m not down with being called Milkies” (Question from Michael on Twitter) Earth-centric point-of-view. Milkies? Maybe the aliens can call us “milksopp.” Don’t forget there could be many many other intelligent species amongst the hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy, though. “What would an orbital battl

How we wound up covering this teen romance Chris was in town and at the last minute, we called together a Decipher SciFi meetup in NYC. Thanks for coming out, folks! Settling Mars Long and short term threats to humanity. Anthropocene.  Courage and adventure and inspiration. Astronaut Quarantine Frank Borman and space vomit and space diarrhea. Pre-flight and post-flight quarantine protocols. Mars mission design Rocket to orbit, dock with the larger ship/station, then on to Mars. Not entirely dissimilar to irl concepts. Finding energy on other bodies in space with lesser gravity wells. Public and private space industry partnership. Timelines and propulsion Around nine months to mars (maybe). Ion drives? Mundane solid rocket? Apparent weightlessness? Robots Remote Agent architecture. Robots prefabricating a Mars base before the humans arrive. Weightlessness Weightlessness as an environmental “stressor.” Insemination in space. Fetal and childhood physical development. Video Chat

Mismatching of Person and Myth Flawed characters in history. Remembering to recognize that the characters we imagine may not be as close as we think to the real thing. Napoleon A short dead dude, but also irl an imposing figure. And not actually short! Of totally average height - the shortness thing was actually an ex post facto error in conversion from the units of measurement of his time and place. Socrates Socrates -> Plato -> Aristotle. The Hemlock treatment vs living in the future. Socratic ignorance: “the only true wisdom is knowing that you know nothing.” Bill and Ted’s rolled high on wisdom, low on intelligence. :) Beethoven Gradual deafness. Bill & Ted picked him up in 1810, four years before he was reported to have gone completely deaf. So he may have had some limited ability to hear. Piano on the floor, stylus in the mouth, and other coping mechanisms. Beethoven’s metronome. OR MAYBE, he was actually just a crazy old smelly deaf guy and that’s why mall security had to com

Alien Reconnaissance Distress calls. Radio broadcasts and other ways to watch the best.speech.ever. Alien Arrival Wormholes. Telefragging. In-system ship speeds and an incredible ability to slow down. Human Reverse Engineering Twenty years of reverse engineering alien tech has yielded great fruit. Propulsion! Anti-gravity. Getting Stuff in Space It’s hard! Gravity wells. Magic fusion antigravity obviates the main utility of Lagrange points. Inertial Dampening Fluid sack inertial dampening.Breathable oxygenated fluids. Vectors! Data in a Coma Muscular atrophy. Twenty years without moving. Communicating with locked-in patients. City Destroyers Gratiuitous city destruction. Tactics and strategy. Are the aliens just jerks? They flew into my butthole! My only weakness, how did you know?! Harvester Ships Why do cities lift off of the ground? Earth is just a ball of rock. And metal. The creamy center is actually not creamy but rather solid iron. It’s like a Kinder Egg and a Ca

Names and Names and Names The light novel (All You Need is Kill) -> the movie (Edge of Tomorrow) -> the marketing (Live. Die. Repeat.) Tom Cruise in a Video Game Save points. Back in my day. Old-school save system where you have to go back to the beginning every time. Biological Von Neumann Probes The possibility of the cosmos awash in aggressive noodly alien murder machines. What are the odds they’d wind up at our doorstep? Mimic Morphology Spaghetti Monster tumbleweeds! Bioluminescence. Alienness. Hybrid creatures. Hierarchy. Starcraft Zerg rush! Starcraft was almost Warhammer. Exoskeletons! Reminds us of Elysium! Exosuit interfaces. Neural interface versus gestural. Safety mechanisms. Time Loop Superpowers What are thresholds of alpha blood exposure to contract timeloopism? Best method: bathing? in the butt? in the mouth? All of the above? Will the effect ever “run out?” Blood-bathing, Sookie Stackhouse style. Time Loops! Control of time loops. Like a garage door open

Cold War The 50s, the 60s, and the 80s and the climate at the time of the film. Star Wars (but not that Star Wars). Weapons to End War Gatling and the Gatling Gun, Alfred Nobel and dynamite, Tesla and his particle beams, and…. nuclear weapons? Early-80s Computing Hardware Text-To-Speech. Voder at the 1939 World’s Fair. Matthew Broderick’s computer. WarGames computer graphics and rendering radar screens. Machine Learning Teaching computers to teach themselves. The point where this movie steps into scifi territory. Dinosaurs Dinosaur extinction hypotheses at the time of the film. Falken is a psychopath. Hardcore History 59 - The Destroyer of Worlds: Hardcore History Silicon Cowboys: iTunesAmazon Support the show!

Episodes 4-6 San Junipero, Men Against Fire, Hated in the Nation San Junipero Happy endings. Consciousness uploading. Children of the 80s, idealistic recollections and the English lens. Continuity of self. Crippling fear of death. Men Against Fire How we get people to do things for us and how technology can make that even more terrible. Hacking visual input. Creepy Watson sex dreams. Hated in the Nation Covered in beeeeeees. Drone swarms. Social media hate. Support the show!

“Decipher SciFi is People” We did an interview! Since it’s not the normal format, we’re releasing this as a bonus halfway between normal episodes. We talk here with Cailin Munroe from The Expanse all about a bunch of stuff: the role of the producer, on-set work, diaper butts, ship designs, physics FX, device and environment UI, space hair, dogs barking, matte paintings, 3D animated sets, the next form of the blue goo ☠️ Support the show!

Alien attacks Alien attacks and death tolls. Independence Day and flying planes up the butt. Water in spaaaaaaace Liquid water and the Goldilocks Zone. Frozen water all over the galaxy. Water vapor too! Dying Planets Schiaparelli, Percival  Lowell and the Martian “canals.” Insectoid Aliens Anatomy surprisingly like that of our tiny earth-based insects. Tool use? Telepathy? Queens controlling drones, but directly, apparently. Alien Communication Distance and lightspeed considerations in trying to communicate with aliens who may pose an existential threat to humanity. Deciphering Speeds and Distances 28 days. Distances to other stars. Space Combat Command Action per minute. Starcraft and command delegation. Doomsday Weapons Very very expensive weapons and the meaning of a dollar. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card: iTunesAmazon Starship Stroopers on Decipher SciFi: Decipher SciFi Support the show!

Episodes 1-3 Nosedive, Playtest, and Shut Up and Dance Nosedive Slow motion train wreck.  Meow-meow beans. Chinese social credit system. Real life is this episode. Nuance and charity in judging other people. Playtest Backpacking fantasy. Christopher’s beard jealousy. Working while traveling via the internet. Hideo Kojima. Near-death experiences, dream experiences, and neurological speed. Death spike hallucinations. American Psycho Hideo Kojima. Shut Up and Dance Integrity. Liam’s butt. The worst of the worst. Anonymous. Support the show!

Ship design Segmented helix. Simulated/artificial gravity. Fusion reactors and constant acceleration. 0.5c after 30 years. Arcturus A red dwarf, 37 lightyears away from earth. Could the ship have made is to that point with the time and speed given? (no) This is the meat right here. Meaningless slingshots. Red Dwarves. Physics! Stasis Generation ships vs stasis pods. Stasis as a resource-saving measure. IRL research in “stasis” and muscle-mass conservation. Acceptable levels of brain deterioration. “Minor” brain damage. Anti-collision measures Kinda like magic. Atomizing rocks in space at 0.5c. Gravity and the ceasing thereof How simulated gravity works on a giant spinning torus (or, in this case, a segmented helix). How it ceases, and the physics necessary in order to create the effect seen in the film. Swimming out of floating water. Seveneves: iTunesAmazon "How did the Avalon (seemingly) get to Arcturus so quickly if they are only traveling at .5 of lightspeed

Labyrinth production The Dark Crystal -> Labyrinth -> Mirrormask : a spiritual trilogy. Jim Henson. Beverly Crusher’s choreography. Fantasy Rules and Dream Worlds Our difficulty with fantasy again, and further difficulty specific to dreamland stories. Nothing makes sense, cause and effect cannot be counted on, and essentially nothing is on the line. Yet Labyrinth is still delightful (because nostalgia!). Relating to adolescents Identifying with adults now more, since we are adults. Dreams Dreaming. Animal models. Rats and humans and dreaming during non-REM sleep. The Greek Myth of the Labyrinth Minotaur, reverse-minotaur. Plus, a succinct and accurate retelling of the story. #science Maze-solving and cognition Humans are okay. Rats are okay. Dogs, not so much. “Ecocentric cognitive mapping.” FMRI and navigation in virtual reality. The bog of eternal stench Irreparable putrescence. Not something that is on you, but something that infuses your very flesh to contin

Conan the Bookbarian Robert E. Howard and pulp fantasy.  His life  and death. Arnold is amazing Arnold Schwarzenegger appreciation hour. Training. Work ethic. Hustle. The American dream. Grizzled old beardy Conan the Conqueror. Arnold’s blooper with the wolves: Conan’s world and mythology “Antedeluvian” history. Chroniclers keeping record of the exploits of historical figures. Genghis Khan. Swordmaking Iron, steel, forge technology. How not to make or use a sword. Steppe peoples Horsemastery. Wind vs slave power. More Genghis Khan. Doom Cannibal cults. Human cookery. The riddle of steel Steel, flesh, swords made from the blood of one’s enemies. Our Warrior Dash video. Conan the Barbarian the Musical: YouTube Science Fiction Film Podcast - Conan the Barbarian: LSGMedia Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story: iTunesAmazon Support the show!