Another month gone, and we enter the final full month of summer, and I can’t help but wonder where my peace and clarity has gone. A month ago, you would not find me in this state, longing for things that cannot possibly be, pining and hopeless.

I had imagined that I had changed, that I could just go with the flow, let the good come with the bad, that things wouldn’t hit me so hard, send me spinning off to the side of the road, wondering what the hell just happened.

Oh, yes, I am going to remain meaninglessly cryptic about this turmoil that wakes me up at 3 am on a Tuesday morning (of course, a Tuesday)

What B^s might observe is that I am once again sitting on my hands, simply watching opportunity dissolve into the ether, without doing a goddamned thing about it. And my retort would be: what opportunity?

Maybe I am simply going crazy.

I am singular in this effervescing madness of destiny swirling, quantum foam roiling madness seeking I am dreaming again facing the finality of these decisions made smeared across time, indistinct and indefinable

She is…Dreams how is it going to turn out still grasping desperately at loose straws unhope burning away at my guts death is the easy path

Why can I not set my heart on a possible thing? My soul catches fire with the mention of her name chasing her up the steps to Golgotha, through Cavalry past the tomb and the garden…

and how can I ask for this boon you are the one who will heal me my destiny in your hands I am a helpless babe floating in a basket upon the uncaring river

Save me, mahal but Fate will go where it will.

dreaming wheel of fire blue green white the twisting paths of sunlight beams of starlight glinting across the warp and weave of cosmic strings and singularities mathematical catastrophes eternal darkness

I am sighing, longing to sing lips dry, cracked throat parched voice weak

thinking of the brightness of her eyes arresting my gaze overwhelming me with her beauty (the waves crest, the current pulls me in) the sound of her voice sending tremors through my heart crumbling from inside out defenses untouched walls unbreeched ramparts unscaled towers still standing every arrow still nocked and already I am defeated already the white flag raised in surrender

inadvertant victim of kindness and camaraderie and hope drives mad ideas into the core of my brain like invading parasites wriggling and squirming

I dance with madness unsleeping but weary not eating but hungry

And I reminisce of the times I’ve raced along this worn track veering and skidding across the deep ruts and grooves banking against imminent disaster and always missing that turn spinning, twirling the crumple and twist of frail metal the shatter of glass and fire and smoke and the darkness of two-thousand days running into each other sucking the substance from my soul and even to draw breath is a struggle

I am always falling the walls closing in too dark to see with not handholds to clasp the neverending scream of the wind enveloping me stealing my inner fire wearing away at my bones blood churning sluggishly through my veins turmoil wracking my body

My soul erodes snagging and smearing memories against the ragged terrain and all flavor and form exsanguinated and hope becomes ash, dreams become dirt leaving this formless nothingness where time does not pass

I gaze deep into the abyss knowing the long, hard road and smooth, sheer cliffs back up into the sunlight and still I stagger, and still it draws me and my heart is a millstone dragging me down

My fate is written on my hands branded onto the tip of my tongue knowing this road that goes nowhere except ever-spinning circles down to the bottom of a vortex where no man dares hope to escape

The problem with me is that as soon as the going gets tough, I start having serious self-doubt. Now, granted, there are a lot of things in life that I am bad at (normal human socialization being one of them), but for the most part, I hold up the illusion of being a functional member of society pretty well. Sure, as soon as the shit hits the fan, I typically want to hide under my bed and cry, but luckily I’m a masochist, and tend to take fallout head-on, right in the kisser.

Long story short, I have gotten the hang of coping with failure.

Needless to say, this leads to a lot of frustration. Not only in myself, but in a lot of people around me.

I sometimes wonder what would’ve had to be different in my life that would have made me someone who was more confident, someone who was more sure of my abilities. Because I can’t deny the fact that I’ve been given some gifts, and this constant anxiety about possibly fucking things up seriously limits my chances of making this world a better place.

I can’t help but feel that most people deal with adversity in a much healthier way than I do.

I, on the other hand, would like nothing more than the permission to just fall apart and go to pieces. I just want to run out of situations insane and screaming, freaking out about the sky falling.

I am not the pillar of stability that I wish I were. I do not possess enough self-assurance to be able to figure out what to do next. In times of crisis, all my actions become tentative, with the expectation of making everything probably worse, if not outright disastrous. I do not have the knack for gambling. I don’t get a thrill from taking risks, when everyone knows that life is all about risks. Without risk, frankly, there is no hope. If everything were certain, why worry?

Why is it that life always tends to hit me hard like this? In the almost 30 years that I’ve been on this planet, why have I not learned a single goddamned thing?

I think back upon this past spring, when my world contracted upon itself, and I couldn’t keep the darkness back, and how all I could do was hang on and hide in my cocoon.

And I think of how my sojourn in S.D. started off 2 years ago, bright and full of hope, thinking that things were bound to change.

I’m not sure how much things have really changed. I’m trying to keep a positive attitude, and I’m trying to hold on to the realization that things will be different. Not that things I hope for will necessarily materialize, just that whatever happens will be unforeseen and surprising, possibly in a good way, but maybe not.

I think I’m growing weary of solitude, but I’m rather unsure of how to change this situation. I keep thinking of being resigned to thousands of days by myself, lurking in the shadows, consigned to watching other people live their lives. I will be a ghost, maybe just evaporating into nothingness.

Whatever will be, will be, I guess.

spun like fine threads of fraying axons clasping like hands upon curled, crackly dendrites like a mad forest of electrical wiring exploding in a kind of chemical glee

in those interstitial spaces and maybe happiness drifts like jetsam in the briny effluvium clear and pure trickling drops of condensed thought glistening upon the side of the test tube nepenthe, crystalline and cool like water from the river Lethe itself

I forget the way out to the light wandering in the cavernous darkness delving into the deep spaces better left undisturbed digging into ancient graves awakening ancient horrors I become what I hunt senseless and numb and fear is all I feed on so fear is all I feel

and this cracked and shattered slab of concrete like a skull dashed against granite fine threaded lines where the bone splits asunder all thoughts shear and spin, leaving tiny spots of blood broken and motionless, undone

I only know the breaking the savage rending by ravenous, rabid beasts gleaming teeth like daggers and grindstones not so much the piercing that makes me scream but the protracted disintegration pulverized into bits and pieces the centrifugal forces that bend and tear the aching tightness in my chest as the world spins and all that I love flies before me the nerves shorn from the roots leaving only the wrack and jolt of electricity running up and down my spine

I only know this brittle uncertainty crumbling like untended sandcastles pulled apart by the ravening sea spun, turned around, know the way backwards although Home lies across the endless waves unreceding

I can only retreat gazing upon the desperate and doomed carcasses of my past failures, my indecision, my Sisyphian, Atlantian misery behind the corpses lie the track of the final struggles futile and gasping for air the sunlight stings my eyes burns my skin

Knowing those final gasps before the inevitable surrender.

In those moments before the darkness, I know peace.

I recall a quote from F Scott Fitzgerald: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” There is coda to this quote that is often ignored, but unfortunately I’m too lazy to look it up. I’m fairly certain that it has something to do with brain-damage, though.

The trick here, I suppose, is to want something very badly, and yet not be disappointed when it doesn’t come to fruition. Intellectually, it seems easy enough, but in practice, I’m having one hell of a time.

I’m also trying not to let my depressive attitude infect this whole process. Normally, I would be deeply mired in self-pity at this point in time. I would just let it fall apart at the seams without giving it an honest attempt, let it dissipate to the wind. This, my friends, is a definitive recipe for failure, and I’m not willing to go through the paces yet another time, at least not without a fight.

Still, a part of me longs to just give in to entropy, to succumb to failure and disappointment one more time, to add to the list of a growing number of defeats. I am reminded of Homer Simpson: “Trying is the first step to failure.”

But, like all living things, I really don’t want to fade out into oblivion, which is the endpoint of letting entropy make my decisions. Worse than death, it is the transformation of my soul into empty nothingness. An annihilation of my self. I know that many Eastern philosophies foster this idea and in fact see it as the path to Enlightenment, but unfortunately, I was reared on the philosophies of the West, and I am too individualistic to live easily with this idea at this time. Maybe when I gain more wisdom, but not now. It would be a false path, a murky shadow of the True Way, following the form, but not the spirit.

So I will try. I am ever fearful. I dread the idea that this is going to turn out exactly how it always turns out, and yet there is a part of me that is screaming, “No it’s not!” Not because I think that I can actually work it out this time, but because whichever way I go, even if does end in complete disaster, at least it will be different. Better than nothing, I suppose.

Damn me for a fool.

This particular existential crisis all began over dinner at Tantra in Silver Lake. (Tantra is this hip quasi-Indian restaurant with excellent hipster ambience, which I enjoy in this snide, ironic, too-cool-for-this sort of way.) J^dG was in town very briefly—I hadn’t seen her since my (naturally) ill-planned trip to the Big Apple some nine months ago. J^dG was the de facto leader of our little clique back in college, and we all had some interesting adventures way back when. C^m, another of my friends from college who is actually the one that I’ve known the longest, came out as well. I haven’t seen her since December. (I am a terrible friend.) She had recently hooked up with a guy, and somehow, the talk turned to my social life (or the lack thereof.)

All I can say is that I am in the process of learning to like living in my own skin.

But the gist of their advice: get a life.

Carpe diem, and all that jazz.

Interestingly, this advice was echoed by S, whom I met up with on Saturday.

But back to the “return of Saturn” thing, something which I really didn’t think of until now, quite randomly. The concept came up in the discussion between me, J^dG, and C^m, and at the time the idea was a little fuzzy—all I know about the god Saturn (also known as Cronos) is the adjective “foreboding.”

The return of Saturn is an astrological phenomenon that describes Saturn coming back to the position it was in when you were born. For example, on the day I was born, Saturn happened to be in Leo, and now that I approach 30, Saturn is once again in Leo. More specifically, in astronomical terms, Saturn has completed a revolution around the sun (which takes roughly 29.5 earth years) since the day I was born. Which may very well have some animistic/druidic/shamanistic significance, since Saturn was the final planet visible to the naked eye. While the physical force that the planet exerts on the earth is infinitesimal compared to the gravitational effects of the sun and the moon, and the electromagnetic effects of the sun, surely the ancients found that particular “wandering star” now known as Saturn to be particularly ominous.

Not that I truly believe in astrology (although I find this apologia for astrology quite interesting.) But the concept of the return of Saturn is a nice encapsulation of this existential dread that I’m feeling about turning 30. However, if you go by how long Saturn stays in Leo (Saturn’s position when I was born), technically this period is supposed to last between July 2005 and September 2007. By then I will have turned 31, meaning that Now™ is still somewhere in the middle of this period, and which likely means that I haven’t yet experienced all of the existential torment that is due to me. Fun times.

Still, I found myself flying down the I-5 quite happy. I really didn’t do much this weekend except hang out a little with my brother and my sister. Mostly I played with the dog and did some laundry and listened to some tunes. Oh, and I hung out with S for a bit. I found it quite disturbing that it has been around 100° F for most of the time, even when it was 8 pm, and I don’t remember California being this humid in the summer. But I feel the groove, I guess. Summertime is on. I guess it’s time to take my friends’ advice and start living.

Excerpt from Encyclopedia Mechanica Temporis (18th edition):

The continued existence of the multiverse is, in fact, precarious. As postulated by the many-branch theory of quantum mechanics, every possible existing universe (specifically, every possible combination of different values for the parameters of the standard theory of quantum mechanics) has been created, but, given that only certain combinations of different values for the parameters of the standard theory of quantum mechanics are stable and are able to continue to exist, there should only be a finite subset of existing universes.

In concordance with the colliding brane theory of the Big Bang, each existing universe interacts with adjacent universes, such that, in order to continue to exist, discrepancies in one universe tend to cancel out discrepancies in another. Specifically, while one universe, based upon its particular parameters, would be expected to collapse upon itself in a Big Crunch, whereas another universe, based upon its particular parameters, would be expected to experience Heat Death, their resultant interaction will actually preserve the integrity of each universe, preventing the dissipation of either.

As an aside, this concept (implicit within the colliding brane-theory of the Big Bang) can explain both dark matter and dark energy (see Appendix 18.5), thereby explaining the apparent acceleration of the expansion of the universe (which cannot be adequately explained by the Original Big Bang theory, and is still somewhat problematic even in the inflationary model) as well as the unexpected integrity of large structured features such as galaxies and galaxy clusters despite their apparent inadequacy of mass.

The problem lies in the fact that wormholes, like virtual particles, can form spontaneously, inadvertantly linking two (or more) different parallel universes. If any matter or energy should leak out of one universe into another, the resultant violation of a particular universes’ law of conservation of mass and energy would be enough to doom the entire multiverse, not so much because of the violation itself, but because even one lepton or quark extra would be enough to send a Heat Death type universe into a Big Crunch, and one lepton or quark lacking would do the opposite. In theory, this should balance out anyway, but, in practice, anything that travels through a wormhole loses energy (it is unclear to where) so that the imbalance would likely destroy the current equilibrium of existence.

Nonetheless, our current theories predict that the passage of any particle of matter or wave of energy through a wormhole would be enough to collapse it. Of course, this is assuming that so-called exotic matter does not pass through it (something that generates negative pressure or has negative energy)

Excerpt from The Time Traveler’s Guide to the Multiverse regarding the Campaign for the Preservation of Temporal Sequence AKA the Time Police:

As the Encyclopedia Mechanica Temporis so long-windedly explains, wormholes connecting different multiverses can put all of existence into jeopardy, pooh-poohing the idea with, frankly, lame excuses, and obviously ignoring the large-scale (colossal, stupendous, gargantuan, ginormous, I mean, just huge) projects perpetrated by the travel industry. Parallel Universe tourists (or, in common parlance, Dimension Travelers) are very lucrative to many, many sectors of the multiverse, and, as is expected from rampant capitalists, they don’t really give a damn whether or not the Time Stream gets polluted or if the Multiverse collapses upon itself.

Some would say we’ve just been lucky so far that nothing major has gotten seriously fucked up, but, in fact, someone (or some few, to be exact) has been looking out for us. It is unclear when (seeing as how Time Travelling is affordable to the average citizen of a developed galaxy) or in which universe (I was too lazy to look it up) the Campaign for the Preservation of Temporal Sequence was actually founded, but it has quickly spread to all the other habitable universes, and they are typically known by their less cumbersome name: the Time Cops, naturally, inaccurately depicting the scope of their activities, although as their name suggests, they originally attempted to prevent the pollution of the Time Stream (with mixed success) For some reason, it has been much easier to prevent unlawful immigration or emigration between parallel universes instead. They really should be called Dimension Cops, but no one ever likes my suggestions.

The funny thing is that, despite my lack of organization, despite my disdain of long-term plans and schedules, my dislike of homogenous order, my claustrophobia in the face of structure, I am, deep-down inside, a control freak.

Which, I suppose, makes some sort of sense. I like my world messy, chaotic, spontaneous, surprising, complex, amorphous, free-form, wide open. I suppose subconsciously, I always try my damndest to optimize my surroundings to these parameters.

I am also a person who likes doing things the hard way whenever possible.

Call me maladapted. Call me masochistic.

But I can’t help but wonder if this kind of lifestyle is sustainable. It’s the kind of lifestyle that a person living on his own, completely independent, can perhaps afford, but I think of all the older people I meet who can no longer take care of themselves, who have no support structure, who have no one to turn to except for maybe the emergency department, and I can’t help but worry about the future.

Not to say that I’m not attached to this life, but my hope is that I won’t be around long enough to have to deal with it, but then again, I’ve also learned that you can’t always trust to hope.

And I can’t help but wonder, feeling as I am as if I were at a momentous crossroads, what comes next? The saner part of my brain tells me “wait and see,” but the part of me that never grew up, likely frozen at the age of 4, is yelling “gimme, gimme, gimme!”

I know that the what needs to happen is that I need to grow, and then change. Adapt, if you will. The way the world works changes as fast as the earth spins on its axis, and what worked for me yesterday is not guaranteed to work tomorrow, and if you are not growing, then you are by definition dying. Rotting. The soul ferments, then putresces.

I do not want to stay trapped on my 2 kilometer diameter world, running around in circles. Stuck. Transfixed.

At the same time, I can’t help but feel that my approach to life so far needs working on. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I think it’s gotten me pretty far so far, but I can’t help but feel that I’ve relied way too much on luck and on the kindness of others. Who I am today has been the work and struggle of many people, spanning several generations, and I don’t mean just history in a depersonalized sense. I think of my parents, my brother, my sister, my uncles, my aunts, my friends, my teachers. I even think of those whom I despise, those whom I hate. They, too, have shaped me.

And so I guess I don’t understand why this moment in time feels like an impending discontinuity. Why is this so different from all that has come before? Is it because I have reached the destination that I have been seeking for all these long years, struggling for more than a decade? Do I dare reify this moment and recognize that for once I am truly free to choose, and one way or the other, with luck or without it, I will be OK, and that no matter what, I cannot undo what has already been done?

Have I reached the zenith of my existence?

(That would be sad and pathetic.)

No. I know that’s not true. There is more of the world to see, more people to meet, more experiences to live.

I do not want to think of this as the calm before the storm, that false sense of tranquility that belies an impending catastrophe. I’ve mistaken these feelings before, thinking that somehow something would turn out the way I wanted it to, only to be faced with agonizing disappointment and perhaps even cataclysmic disaster.

I think, however, that I am learning a thing or two about hope. It isn’t so much what you hope for that matters. In fact, it’s probably best if you don’t hope for anything. The important thing is to recognize that you cannot imagine all the possible outcomes, and that perhaps, just perhaps, there is a chance that something good will happen, even if it’s nothing you expected at all. That is, I think, what it means to hope.

And so I remain hopeful, despite everything that has come before.

There is a city I dream of repeatedly that I believe is supposed to be somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, either in the U.S. or in Canada. The first time I dreamt about it, I thought that it was Seattle, although most of its features don’t at all correspond to what little I know of Seattle, and it doesn’t match with Vancouver either. The dream I had last night seemed to associate it with Calgary, but this is clearly wrong since it is not on the ocean, nor is it near any other bodies of water.

So, its features: a large saline body of water to the west, immediately making me think of Puget Sound, particularly with the scattered islands and the distant peninsula further to the west. A large freshwater lake to the east. Los Angeles lies far to the south. There is a heavily traveled north-south railroad, paralleled by elevated heavy-rail public transport. The heavy-rail system is large and profuse, criss-crossing the entire city, allowing one to travel to distant parts without ever requiring a car. Far to the east is a nuclear power plant. The international airport is to the south. The city streets are mostly aligned with the cardinal directions, except for what I imagine is the oldest part of the city, tilted 45 degrees (like downtown Los Angeles) Besides the tangle of freeways that perfuse the city, there is a large east-west expressway, five lanes wide in either direction that has traffic signals, but tends to function like a freeway anyway. There is an old segment of north-south freeway that is also heavily traveled but is in the midst of conversion to a normal city street. (It reminds me of Pacific Highway in San Diego, which used to be old US-101.)

There is a movie theater in the northwest corner of the city that plays weird independent films. The theater seating actually consists of church pews. (Was this an old church before? How deliciously blasphemous.) Next door is a place that specializes in virtual reality, with various “dungeons” that one can wander around in. I think one of them was specifically based on Douglas Adams’ “Total Perspective Vortex,” which is a torture device that makes a person realize how infinitesimally insignificant they are.

In one of my older dreams, my sister had actually taken a job in this unreal city, and I had gone on a trip to visit her. She happened to live on the westernmost part of the city on a large island, and nearby is a heavy-rail terminal which starts off at groundlevel, crosses the water, and becomes one of the busy elevated rail lines that crisscross the city. This dream was largely driven by time anxiety, as I had to navigate this unfamiliar tangle of transit lines in order to make it to my flight back to San Diego. Some of the major stops actually have oasis-like mall structures and restaurants—accessible only if you enter the train system. (This reminded me of the tollway oases in Illinois.)

My dream last night was supposedly a road-trip from L.A., a revisitation. In this dream, I had visited this place before with J, B, A, and E (not unlike my actual trip in 1997—except that E did not come with us.) In this dream, A and E had actually hooked up on this 1997 trip. So in my dream last night, I walked the streets of this unknown city, reminiscing about days long gone, and opportunities long ago squandered. I had breakfast at one of the cafes along as street that may have been named Medina. I tried to watch a flick at the movie theater with the church pews but some people got uppity and interrupted the showing. I wandered around the virtual reality complex.

In this dream, A and C both figured. B was there as well. For some reason I imagine a lot my friends were also in the city on vacation like me.

There is a sequence where I have to find my car, and I end up having to traverse the large Crosstown Expressway. To the south of this expressway is a series of hills.

The end of my dream featured the city’s train system guidance computer becoming sentient and trying to turn everything organic into androids (a la “Superman III” and the lady who turns into a machine) The computer is foiled by (1) the large body of water on the western boundary and (2) the fact that I managed to transect the powerlines connecting it to the nuclear powerplant in the west, thereby disrupting its ability to remain self-aware.

Who needs drugs when you have a fervid imagination like mine?

Nothing like Radiohead to give you a sense of futility and meaninglessness.

I am immediately reminded of a particular quote from “The Simpsons” (nevermind the fact that Ptolemy was proven wrong well over a thousand years ago.)

I’m a lonely, insignificant speck on a has-been planet orbited by a cold, indifferent sun.

There is a site with mp3s from Radiohead’s live performances and I am currently listening to their show at the Greek Theater at Griffith Park in Los Angeles. I have also consumed three beers, although they are Japanese beers. I was, for some reason, thinking that they wouldn’t affect my supertentorial functions as badly as beer usually does.

The question before me is this: should I have one more, which will surely send me to the land of the unconscious, or should I just fret and worry about life in this malformed haze, slugging it out with the existential questions that torture my soul?

It’s too bad I’m too drunk and lazy to actually make it to the refrigerator.

Nobody loves me. Boo-hoo-hoo.

That was random.

The eternal question, the crux of the matter, is, what do I want out of life? The universe. Everything?

Bleh. Why is none of this even remotely simple?

I am trying to trace down the etymology of the word “consolation,” wondering if it is necessarily related to “isolation.” Alas, there are no clear answers, but are there ever?

I am reminded of the tag line to the new “A Scanner Darkly” movie starring Keanu Reeves and Winona Rider (which I am still dying to watch) As the trailer proclaims, “Everything is not going to be OK.”

A Scanner Darkly happens to be one of my favorite books by Philip K Dick, fraught with passages that reaved my heart.

The one that struck me the most was this:

But the actual touch of her lingered, inside his heart. That remained. In all the years of his life ahead, the long years without her, with never seeing her or hearing from her or knowing anything about her, if she was alive or happy or dead or what, that touch stayed locked within him, sealed in himself, and never went away. That one touch of her hand.

The sense of passing time is painfully acute these days, mostly as I approach that arbitrary milestone of turning 30, and I can’t help but wonder what doors are permanently closed. What passageways will I never be able to take, what sorts of things have I lost along the way? Are there doors to my soul that are not only locked up and barricaded, but maybe even walled in?

The idea that there is One Thing™ left remaining to me features powerfully in my mind. That the rest of my life will be to discover what this One Thing™ is, and then my only task will be to fulfill it, at the expense of everything else.

I feel like I am embarking on my final Quest, whatever that may be.

In my saner moments, I recognize that I am being unnecessarily eschatologic and apocalyptic.

Every ending becomes a beginning. I know not the appointed day nor hour, and every fleeting moment is still something new, and all I have to do is think of my memories of the sun, glittering over the endless ocean, or burning through bank of fog, and realize that the possibilities are far from being exhausted.

I believe that every person is eventually forced to tread their own path. It is not for me to decide who will come with me, if anyone will even come with me.

My destiny is my own.

Somewhere in the depths of my memory, I remember a fragmented scrap of a poem, or maybe an essay: Be consoled, although I do not say be contented.

Whatever needs to be, will be, whether I have any part in it or not.

Just watched “Superman Returns” with my brother and my dad yesterday and I find it bizarre that the city of Metropolis is New York City (while Gotham City is depicted as Chicago.) I found the Messianic allusions a little disturbing (although more sincere than most of the insanity spouted off by Christian fundamentalists) What person-of-color would feel comfortable with their savior depicted as a square-jawed, blue-eyed, tall, and muscular specimen of the Aryan race, who is omnipotent and all-seeing? (At least the bad guys aren’t homogenously depicted as blacks and Chicano/Latino.)

I am intrigued by the idea that the “planet” Krypton may in fact be a terraformed (kryptoformed?!?) black dwarf star, tamed by the ridiculously advanced nanotechnology created by the Kryptonians, and my interest is piqued by the brief allusion to the idea that Krypton is part of a vast interstellar empire.

What I found most haunting is the image of the (red?) giant star Rao turning into a singularity, in the meantime blasting Krypton into smithereens (In contrast, when Earth goes, it will merely be seared to a crisp by the rapidly expanding Sun, with everything on the surface completely evaporated, but still orbiting serenely around the cooling stellar remnant.)

The image of a blast-wave emanating from a star reminds me of Iron Sunrise by Charlie Stross, which features an interstellar terrorist act demonstrating the applications of string theory, involving plucking out the very heart of a star, wrapping it in a space-time bubble, letting this hydrogen core futilely fuse itself finally into cold iron, then dropping this iron back into the star, resulting in the supernova of an otherwise unremarkable G2-type (or similar) star. The supernova completely blasts the world of New Moscow into its constituent elementary particles, killing billions.

It also reminds me of Arthur C Clarke’s 2010 (the sequel to 2001), which was actually made into a movie (that paled in comparison to Kubrick’s “2001”.) Nonetheless, one of the most dramatic scenes, which I saw as a child, and which probably influenced me in ways unrealized, was the ignition of Jupiter by the power of the nanotechnologic monolith, turning the Solar System into a binary star system. (The monolith and the crystals from Krypton probably have a lot in common, namely, the ability to program matter to split into elementary particles and reform into whatever you wanted, a McGuffin that I wanted to steal for my own pocket universes.)

Strangely, the cities on the otherwise sterile world of Krypton remind me of Fata Morgana, complex mirages that frequently appear to be cities sitting on the horizon.

What is significantly changed, however, is that the original destruction of Krypton involved the fissile explosion of Krypton’s uranium/transuranic core, which is not what is depicted in the opening scenes of “Superman Returns” unless I have misviewed it. (Those scenes are sort of the only things I want to watch again, because of my sick fascination with stellar evolution.)

I also enjoyed the idea of piggybacking the Space Shuttle on a 747. Incidentally, this is exactly how the Space Shuttle gets transported from Edwards Air Force Base in California back to Cape Canaveral in Florida. Launching from 40,000 feet probably will not really save much fuel, since the fuel cost is spent mostly by escaping the Earth’s gravity well, which extends many times over and above 40,000 feet—the troposphere is only a small fraction of the atmosphere, and you still have to clear the atmosphere to end up in a stable orbit. But it’s an interesting idea nonetheless, and maybe I’m wrong.

I look forward to reading The Science of Superman (in the fine tradition of The Physics of Star Trek) I know most of comic book physics and biology makes no sense, but a scientist can dream about (pseudo)accuracy, can’t he?