Books Front Lines and Frontiers Further Adventures in Free Fall: The Smoke Ring by Larry Niven We return to a fascinating SF setting for a deeper look, capers, and character growth. By Alan Brown | Published on December 10, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share In this bi-weekly series reviewing classic science fiction and fantasy books, Alan Brown looks at the front lines and frontiers of the field; books about soldiers and spacers, scientists and engineers, explorers and adventurers. Stories full of what Shakespeare used to refer to as “alarums and excursions”: battles, chases, clashes, and the stuff of excitement. Recently, I reviewed Larry Niven’s book The Integral Trees, which featured a captivating setting within a habitable gas torus around a neutron star. And while the characters were somewhat forgettable, I couldn’t help but wonder what happened next, wanting to see more of their world, and so I continued on to the next book in this series, The Smoke Ring. I was rewarded with a story even more compelling than that of the first book. This new adventure reveals a large colony previously unknown to the characters, the Admiralty, who live within a large collection of soil and vegetation known as the Clump. And it features a larger role for Kendy, the artificial intelligence that controls Discipline, the ship that first delivered humans to this strange environment, and who still wishes to control their destiny in service of the totalitarian State. I’ll not repeat a description of the Smoke Ring, but those who want to learn more about the setting can consult my review of the first book. Like The Integral Trees, The Smoke Ring was published by Del Rey, this new book in 1987. I obtained my copy from the Science Fiction Book Club, and like the first book, this one featured a beautiful and evocative cover by Michael Whelan, with a flying predator threatening a pair of people emerging from a globular cluster of vegetation. Having built the fascinating setting of the Smoke Ring for the first book, it is not surprising that Niven decided to return to it once again. Worldbuilding is a difficult and challenging endeavor, and once a world is created, it is hard to resist the temptation to use it again. Niven is far from the first science fiction author to write a standalone book and then find that they’d like to return for further adventures. About the Author Larry Niven (born 1938) is a prolific and prominent American science fiction author. I have reviewed his work in this column before, looking at the seminal book Ringworld, the books A Mote in God’s Eye and The Gripping Hand, which he wrote in collaboration with Jerry Pournelle, his short story collection, Neutron Star, and his novel The Integral Trees. Those articles contain more biographical information about Niven. Commies in Space Well before the science fiction genre had its name, authors were using fictional worlds to comment on real-world politics. Works like Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Thomas More’s Utopia satirized the current social systems, and speculated on what might be done differently. Later, books like George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World warned of the dangers of totalitarian governments. And as the 20th century progressed, and the world fractured between capitalist and communist societies, the Cold War struggle between the two competing ideologies came to dominate fictional narratives, with stories set in the future speculating that such political divisions might persist for centuries. If you want to read more on the impact of politics on science fiction, this article in the online Encyclopedia of Science Fiction will be of interest. The triumph of dictators and states that strive to crush individual freedoms make for fertile ground for storytelling, as it creates a pervasive air of jeopardy to propel narratives. The universe where Larry Niven sets his Smoke Ring stories is rooted in the existence of a single, ruthless totalitarian State. Niven’s tales of the State began with a series of stories, combined into a single novel, A World Out of Time, which followed the adventures of a man whose consciousness was embedded into the operating system of a slower-than-light ramscoop, and who returns to find Earth unrecognizable after millennia of travel at relativistic speeds. Niven used the same setting for The Integral Trees and The Smoke Ring, and then returned one last time for a short work, “The Kiteman,” published in his collection N-Space. The State aspired to create a government that ruled star systems, but with the speed of light as a limit for communications and interstellar travel, were doomed from the start to fail in that effort, as no central state can control an empire where it takes decades to send and receive messages. That State gave the Smoke Ring stories an outstanding antagonist, Kendy, the human consciousness that controls the ship Discipline. Kendy is a Checker, a role modeled on the old political officers that served in army units and sailed aboard naval vessels that flew the flag of the old Soviet Union. Called “zampolit” in Russian, these officers were assigned to ensure the loyalty of both captains and crew. The State’s practice of building that role into the ship itself created a being with total power over the survival of the crew, a clear analogy for the threatening nature of dictatorial powers. But by using a human personality as a basis for their artificial intelligence, they also left room for their Checker to grow and change. The Smoke Ring The survivors of the destruction of the Quinn-Dalton integral tree, their clash with the Carther State, and their subsequent battle with London Tree, have fled to another tree they name Citizen’s Tree. With them they have the small utility spaceship called a CARM, and a spacesuit that a dwarf can wear, turning them into a Silver Man, with propulsion and weapon systems that can dominate opponents. They have been on the tree for the equivalent of 20 Earth years, long enough to raise seven children, some of whom are now young adults. They see a nearby integral tree on fire, and use the CARM to investigate. There are survivors, led by Booce from the Serjent clan. The survivors explain that they are loggers, and the fire is the result of a misfiring rocket, which they were using to move the tree to a settlement known as the Clump in order to cut it up and sell the wood. Having grown up in an almost symbiotic relationship with their own tree, the Citizen’s Tree inhabitants initially greet the idea of logging with horror. One of their scientists, Jeffers, who is in charge of the CARM, has secretly been in touch with the Checker Kendy, who uses his powers of persuasion to recommend an expedition in the CARM to explore the Clump. Kendy is looking for opportunities to bring all the inhabitants of the Smoke Ring into a society that can serve the State. And there is a CARM inside the Clump which might contain his original memories. He has had to prune his memories over the years due to storage limitations, and is obsessed by the idea that there is vital information he has forgotten (computer storage limitations were often mentioned in science fiction of the last century, but have fallen by the wayside as storage capabilities have increased almost exponentially). The people of Citizen’s Tree are torn. Helping the loggers bring another tree to the Clump would be an opportunity to explore. But their time on Citizen’s Tree has been a time of contentment, and some—especially those who escaped slavery on London Tree—fear contact with the Clump might jeopardize their safety. When a vote to explore goes against them, Jeffers and some others plot to hijack the CARM and go to the Clump without permission. But Chairman Clave discovers their plot and takes charge of the expedition. One of their young adult children, Rather, a dwarf who can use the Silver Man, also joins the expedition, along with a woman named Debby from the tree, and logger Carlot Serjent. Kendy uses his sensors to help them find a tree which contains a large deposit of metal, which will make Booce, his family, and the explorers from Citizen’s Tree very rich. The process of moving a tree is quite complex, and Niven describes it in great detail, obviously having enjoyed the process of figuring out how it might be accomplished with the primitive technology available to the Smoke Ring inhabitants. They encounter pirates from the “happyfeet” tribe, but Kendy helps destroy the attackers by burning them with the CARM’s engine exhaust. This action alienates Kendy from the others, who feel he is too eager to kill to get what he wants. Leaving Jeffers and the CARM hidden in nearby vegetation, they bring the tree to the Clump. The middle of the book is a travelogue which explores the society of the Clump, ruled by the Admiralty, a naval organization that has a fleet of steam rockets, collects taxes, and has an old, wrecked CARM they use as a library, giving them access to ancient knowledge they are using to build an expanding society. Their navy is exploring further into other parts of the Smoke Ring. There are over a thousand people living in the Clump, and they have banks, stores, restaurants, and other conveniences which amaze the members of the tiny Citizen’s Tree tribe. Seeing the new society through the eyes of the inexperienced Citizen’s Tree members gives Niven a chance to explain how things work. Young Rather is courted as a recruit by the Admiralty, as they are always looking for more dwarves who can use their supply of Silver Man suits, but he is not eager to submit to being a part of such a strict organization. The story also focuses on Rather’s coming of age, as he experiences his first romantic encounters. As the book nears its conclusion, there are a lot of plot threads to wrap up, but Niven does so in a brisk manner. The final section turns into a crime story, a caper where the Citizen’s Tree inhabitants work to infiltrate the Admiralty and copy the data from their CARM for use by Kendy and themselves. Kendy’s manipulative nature and persuasive skills are on full display here, as he convinces the explorers to take risks that will benefit him a lot more than they themselves. Young Rather and his Silver Suit play a large role, as he impersonates an officer in the Admiralty to get the data. And what they find not only sets the Citizen’s Tree on a path toward growth and prosperity, but also transforms Kendy’s attitude toward the society of the Smoke Ring. The book ends with an uplifting and hopeful conclusion that feels quite satisfying. Final Thoughts While The Integral Trees could have stood on its own without a sequel, The Smoke Ring is a worthwhile addition to the story. It expands the world of the Smoke Ring beyond the tiny tribes portrayed in the first book, features a larger role for the highly interesting character of Kendy, and provides an exciting ending. And now, I look forward to hearing from you: Did you, like me, find The Smoke Ring a welcome addition to Niven’s bibliography, or would you have been satisfied without a sequel? I myself ended up finding the most compelling character in the books was Kendy, the one that was no longer human, and I wonder if there are any readers out there who felt the same way.[end-mark] The post Further Adventures in Free Fall: <i>The Smoke Ring</i> by Larry Niven appeared first on Reactor.

The key to what a new Trump administration can do to enhance the security of the election process is not to nationalize election operations, something the radical Left has tried to do for years. What the Trump administration can and should do is assist states’ efforts to improve the integrity of elections. This includes removing roadblocks placed in their way by the Obama and Biden administrations and properly enforcing federal laws affecting the voting process instead of abusing those laws and selectively enforcing them. The Constitution places the primary responsibility of administering elections on the states. To be sure, federal laws bar discrimination and affect the voting process, but those laws are an overlay to the responsibility of state governments. So, what steps should the second Trump administration take after taking over Jan. 20? First, it should remove the roadblocks. For years, the Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, has made it difficult, if not impossible, for state election officials to access DHS databases that contain information on aliens who are in this country both legally and illegally. State election officials need access to these databases to verify the citizenship status of registered voters. The federal government is required to provide this information to the states by two separate statutes, 8 U.S.C. §§ 1373 and 1644, yet DHS has delayed, prevented, and hindered access.  Florida, Ohio, and Texas have sued the Biden administration over its refusal to abide by those provisions. The Trump White House and Homeland Security Secretary-designate Kristi Noem need to stop that obfuscation immediately once Noem, currently governor of South Dakota, is confirmed by the Senate. They must drain the DHS swamp of every employee involved in violating federal law and refusing to verify citizenship for state election officials. Moreover, DHS’ “Application for Naturalization” form (Form N-400, Part 9) asks aliens whether they have “EVER registered to vote or voted in any Federal, State, or local election in the United States?”  When aliens answer “yes,” however, DHS currently just sits on this information.  The Department of Homeland Security should be required to forward that information to election officials in the state in which the alien registered or voted, so those officials can take appropriate action. DHS also should forward it to the Justice Department so the aliens can, if appropriate, be prosecuted under federal criminal laws that bar aliens from registering and voting. Additionally, the Justice Department should instruct U.S. attorneys across the nation—all of whom will be selected by the returning president and confirmed by the Senate—to take advantage of federal jury information.  Federal district courts obtain lists of potential jurors from state election officials via voter registration rolls. When individuals called for jury duty in a federal case are excused because they’ve moved out of state or aren’t citizens, U.S. attorneys should be required to forward that information to state election officials. U.S. attorneys already are obligated to do that under the National Voter Registration Act for individuals convicted of felonies in federal court.  Additionally, those aliens excused from jury duty whose names were obtained from a voter registration list should be investigated and, if appropriate, prosecuted by that same U.S. attorney for illegally registering and potentially voting. None of this is being done currently. Jury rolls are another source of information that is completely ignored by the Justice Department. And speaking of the weaponized, politicized Justice Department: Attorney General-designate Pam Bondi, once confirmed, needs to dismiss all of the abusive, meritless lawsuits filed by DOJ’s out-of-control Civil Rights Division. Georgia is still fighting a lawsuit filed by DOJ that claims commonsense election reforms passed by the state in 2021 were discriminatory. That’s a particularly absurd claim given that with all of these reforms in place, Georgia has seen record registration and turnout. Similarly, lawsuits filed by the Justice Department against the states of Virginia and Alabama for removing aliens from voter rolls should be immediately dismissed with prejudice. DOJ’s claim that such action is barred by the National Voter Registration Act is wrong and a misinterpretation of the law.  And its Criminal Division should ask those states for the files on those aliens for investigation and possible prosecution. While abusing the Voting Rights Act and portions of the National Voter Registration Act by attacking states’ efforts to improve election integrity, the Justice Department has refused to enforce a key requirement of the NVRA and the Help America Vote Act. The NVRA (at 52 U.S.C. § 20507(4)) requires states to maintain their voter rolls by making a “reasonable effort” to remove registered voters who have died or moved away. A similar provision in the Help America Vote Act (at 52 U.S.C. § 21083) includes additional requirements such as directing election officials to match voter registration information with state driver’s license records. A new Justice Department needs to go after the worst states in the country, places such as California and Nevada, that have some of the most inaccurate, error-ridden voter registration lists. And DOJ could start by appearing in a 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals case filed by the Public Interest Legal Foundation in which Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, is trying to gut this provision of the National Voter Registration Act. Just enforcing these federal requirements for clean voter rolls would do a lot to improve the integrity of elections by helping ensure that invalid or fraudulent ballots aren’t being cast due to errors, mistakes, duplications, and numerous other problems with bad voter lists. And aren’t you tired of the delays, chaos, and opportunities to cheat caused by states implementing laws that allow absentee and mail-in ballots to continue to come in after Election Day?  This is one area where the Constitution gives the federal government authority over states in federal elections. Congress has the power to set the date for choosing electors for president (Article 2, Section 1, Clause 4), as well as the date for congressional elections (Article 1, Section 4, Clause 1). Acting under those constitutional provisions, Congress set the date by federal law for presidential and congressional elections on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.  The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held recently in Republican National Committee v. Wetzel that the federal law preempts Mississippi law allowing absentee ballots to be received (and counted) for up to five days after Election Day. The Justice Department should join the plaintiffs who filed that lawsuit and file similar lawsuits against any state that doesn’t require absentee ballots to be in the hands of election officials by Election Day.  This issue may end up at the U.S. Supreme Court, but it is an effort that needs to be made to bring back the “uniform time” for voting that was the purpose behind federal laws setting a national Election Day. Finally, Trump should immediately rescind President Joe Biden’s executive order in 2021 unlawfully directing federal agencies and their staffs to become involved in voter registration and related activities.  Biden had no constitutional or statutory authority to promulgate this attempt by the federal government to interfere in our elections, and Congress didn’t appropriate funds for that purpose. Various states have filed lawsuits over this order against the Biden administration, which has tried to hide its nefarious activities behind meritless claims of executive privilege, violating the federal Freedom of Information Act. In addition to rescinding Biden’s order, the Justice Department should agree immediately to settle all related lawsuits and disclose the information and documentation being sought. These are just a few of the things the federal government can and should do to assist the states and help achieve a goal that should be shared by all Americans regardless of political affiliation: conducting fair, secure, and honest elections in which only eligible citizens vote and ballots are properly counted without mistakes, errors, or fraud. The post Achieving Election Integrity With a New Trump Administration appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Debunking the Left's Narratives: American Debunk

'Total Vacuum': Dems Admit Sede Vacante in Oval Office

Endoliths are a good reminder that life, uh, finds a way.

"Upon leaving the hospital she had an uncontrollable urge to go to a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant."

The universe is constantly expanding, but how do scientists think about what it's expanding into?

Humans and other animals must have really wanted to make it to the Americas.

A recent experiment has confirmed an interesting aspect of quantum physics: the dual nature of light particles, known as photons, cannot be fully observed as both a wave and a particle at the same time. This limitation arises from a principle called entropic uncertainty. In the early 20th century, physicist Niels Bohr introduced the idea of wave-particle duality, which suggests that photons can behave as waves (like ripples on a pond) or particles (like tiny billiard balls), depending on how they are observed. However, Bohr also proposed the complementarity principle: it’s impossible to observe both behaviors simultaneously. It’s like trying to focus on both the forest and a single tree at the same time—you’ll always lose some detail. Physicists later connected this idea to entropic uncertainty. This principle states that certain aspects of a quantum system—like whether a photon behaves more like a wave or a particle—will always remain partly unknown. Think of it as a magician who reveals only part of their trick while keeping the rest a mystery. To test this, physicists designed an experiment using photons and an interferometer, a device that splits a beam of light into two paths and then recombines them. Here’s a simple analogy: imagine you’re splitting a stream of water into two hoses and then directing both streams to a single point. Depending on how the hoses are adjusted, you can observe different effects when the water meets. In the experiment: Photons were sent through a crystal, acting as the first splitter. The split beams were reflected and crossed paths at a second splitter. Depending on the settings of this second splitter, the photons could be measured as waves (showing interference patterns like overlapping ripples) or particles (behaving like individual droplets). The twist? The researchers adjusted the second splitter to measure both the wave and particle nature simultaneously. However, they found that the clearer the wave behavior became, the blurrier the particle behavior appeared—and vice versa. This experiment confirmed that it is impossible to fully observe both aspects of a photon’s nature at the same time. The limitations arise because of entropic uncertainty: no matter how sophisticated the measurement tools, some information about a quantum system will always remain hidden. The findings go beyond just photons. They reveal a deep connection between quantum physics and information theory, a branch of science that deals with how information is stored, processed, and transmitted. By showing that quantum systems inherently keep some secrets, the research may help physicists develop better methods for quantum computing—a technology that uses the unique properties of quantum systems to revolutionize data processing and storage. The study is published in the journal Science Advances. The post Photons Can’t Be Fully Seen as Both Waves and Particles appeared first on Anomalien.com.

Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth correctly called the media out on Monday for lying about his past comments about women not serving in combat in order to suggest he looks down upon women serving, belittles their service, or that he even opposes their inclusion in the military. However, CNN Newsroom host Jim Acosta welcomed Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed to his Tuesday show, where they both falsely suggested Hegseth was merely flip-flopping to get confirmed. To make his point, Acosta introduced two clips of Hegseth, “Pete Hegseth is trying to walk back some of these comments he has previously made about women in the military, saying they have been, quote, ‘misconstrued.’ But let's listen to what he said in November and compare it to what he said last night on Fox.”     In the first clip, Acosta took a nearly two-and-a-half-hour interview and boiled it down to one sentence, “I'm straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn't made us more effective, hasn't made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated.” That was a clip of Hegseth’s November 7 appearance on The Shawn Ryan Show, but here’s a highly relevant portion Acosta omitted: And so you had women truck drivers or fuel or mechanics on these convoys in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then they'd be ambushed or hit by IEDs and suddenly now you have women in combat. That's maybe a modern reality in a 360 battlefield. That's different than intentionally saying we're going to put women into combat roles so they will do the combat jobs of men knowing that we've changed the standards in putting them there, which means you've changed the capability of that unit. And if you say you haven't, you're a liar. Because everybody knows between bone density and lung capacity and muscle strength, men and women are just different. And so if you want to, I'm okay with the idea that you maintain the standards where they are for everybody. And if there's some, you know, hard-charging female that meets that standard, great, cool, join the infantry battalion. But that is not what's happened.  Hegseth later added, “I'm not even talking about pilots. I'm not talking about pilots. I'm not talking about the ability to do. I'm talking about physical labor-type, labor-intensive-type jobs.”       Viewers didn’t get that context, and it is fair to ask why, because it certainly would’ve put Hegseth’s Monday statement in context where he said: I also want an opportunity here to clarify comments that have been misconstrued that I somehow don't support women in the military. Some of our greatest warriors, our best warriors out there are women who served, raised their right hand to defend this country and love our nation, want to defend that flag. And they do it every single day around the globe. So, I'm not presuming anything, but after President Trump asked me to be his Secretary of Defense, should I get the opportunity to do that, I look forward to being a secretary for all our warriors, men and women, for the amazing contributions they make in our military. Acosta followed by asking, “Mr. Chairman, what do you make of that?” Partly because he is a Democrat partisan and partly because Acosta didn’t put Hegseth’s November 7 clip in its proper context, Reid replied, “It sounds like a pre-confirmation conversion. He was pretty blatant. He's not only been blatant in his comments, he's blatant in his writings that women should not be in combat. And then now, suddenly to disown those comments, it seems more calculated to get votes for a confirmation than it is his real policy, which he'll carry out.” Hegseth did not disown his comments, Acosta just committed an act of journalistic malpractice. Will Daniel Dale fact-check his own colleagues? Probably not, but he should.