Catch-22s of our Economic System

Sometimes when I read some of the silly statements that are written about economics, even by so-called experts, I have to wonder. Mostly, I feel that very few look at the big picture. For one thing, they write about such things as "labor" or "business" or "consumers" and so forth as though these things did not consist of human beings and were somehow not related to each other.

Basically economics consist of supply and demand. If you are selling a product or service, the price you will get for it depends upon whether prospective buyers want or need the product; that is the demand. The other factor is the amount of the product or service available. The price goes up when demand is high and supply is low. It goes down when demand is low or supply is high. A good example of this is in my field, writing. The demand for written material is fairly high, but sadly too many authors are producing more than can be sold. So, for most authors, prices for their books and e-books are low compared to the effort put into their production.

The other basic tenet of economics is that profits are based on the monetary value of the quantity of items sold minus the cost of producing the items. For example, if I sell ten widgets that sell for a dollar a piece and the cost of making those widgets including overhead expenses and advertising is ninety cents, my profit is one dollar.

This brings me to the first catch-22 of the free market economy. One of the largest expenses for most manufacturers and retailers is labor costs. As a result, many businesses will cut costs by laying off people and moving their base of operations to a country where laboris cheaper. The catch-22 here is that employees are also consumers. With no salary they cannot afford to buy stuff. If many businesses cut costs in this manner, former employees (consumers) can no longer afford to buy what is offered, and you have a recession. That is why the "trickle down" theory of economics does not work. You may reduce taxes for corporations, but what good does the extra money do if nobody is buying their products?

There is a truth that says, "money goes to money." Supposedly, in our economic system everyone has an equal chance to become wealthy. This is ridiculous. People who have money to begin with have a thousand times better chance of becoming wealthier or at least staying rich than a poor person has of even becoming mildly well off. The poor have less access to education, don't have connections to people who can smooth their way through life, and are less likely to even get employment since many are minorities who are discriminated against. Also, they are usually unable to present themselves to a prospective employer in a manner that a middleclass or rich person can.

Many conservatives advocate taxing the wealthy less and giving less to poor people. This is a recipe for economic disaster. Very wealthy people must make a real effort to spend their money; usually they save most of it to pass on to their heirs or use it to gain power. Poor people and many middle-class people, on the other hand, spend every penny they can lay their hands on and usually go into debt. Spending is what drives the economy, not saving.

Even those who advocate a free laissez faire economy don't believe their own propaganda. When a large bank or corporation is on the brink of failure due to bad policies by the people who run them, they are the first ones to cry to the federal government to bail them out, with the claim that such-and-such company is too big to fail.

Another catch-22 of the corporate economic system is that the people who run large corporations are out for their own profit even if the stockholders suffer in the long run. They cook the books and use various schemes to make the company seem as though it is making money even when it is really losing it or making bad investments. Thus their huge bonuses and golden parachutes are ensured. Most of these people came up the corporate ladder not by their ability to manage but by their ability to play office politics.

The final and most important catch-22 is the monopoly power of large banks and corporations. They and their lobbyists have the ears of the people in government, Democrats as well as Republicans. In a sense, they are the government. Politicians need their money to get reelected. Large corporations own the media. They hire the best propagandists in the world, the Madison Avenue advertising firms.

We should listen to the words of Thomas Jefferson, the greatest of our founding fathers:

"Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor."

"Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny."

"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

Why Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics Won't Work

In Science Fiction, the Three Laws of Robotics are a set of three rules written by Isaac Asimov, which most robots that appear in his fiction must obey. Introduced in his 1942 short story "Runaround," the Laws state the following:

A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

If we could actually build robots who are intelligent enough to be self-aware, would these laws actually make sense. I propose not. Take the first law. In the first place, how could the robot tell a human being from another robot that looked like a human being or from a hologram of a human being. You might say, so what. As long as the robot cannot harm a human being or anything that resembles a human being, that is all to the good. But what if a humanoid robot or hologram and a real human being are both in danger. How would the robot know which one to save? As far as that goes, if two human beings are in danger at the same time, how does a robot know which one to save. (Note: this exact situation is shown in the movie I, Robot. In the movie the robot made the wrong choice.)

For certain uses, a manufacturer would not want to apply the Laws in that order. For example, suppose the robots are to be used for military purposes. In this case, the Laws built into the robot might go something like this:

A robot must obey the orders given to it by his superior officer.

A robot must protect its own existence, and those of other soldier robot, except where such orders conflict with the First Law.

A robot may only harm those human beings or robots designated as "The Enemy," by its superior officer and only if not under a flag of truce, surrendering or designated as "Prisoners of War."

In my novel, The Isaac Project, the situation of the military wanting to change the Three Laws provides part of the conflict in the book.

One error that Isaac Asimov made was that he assumed that the intelligence of the robot would somehow be in its electronic circuitry. Actually, we know now that the intelligence of a robot would more likely be in its software. This changes the situation quite a bit, since software can have errors in it that are not always detected during testing. Also, it can be modified. Depending upon how the software is installed, it might be subjected to viruses, worms, and other sorts of malicious software tricks by unscrupulous hackers, such as our computers are now.

What is Gravity?

One of the most familiar forces is also the most mysterious, and that is gravity. In general, gravity is the force that pulls together all matter (which is anything you can physically touch). The more matter, the more gravity, so things that have a lot of matter such as planets and moons and stars pull more strongly.

The amount of matter in something is called its mass. The more massive something is, the more of a gravitational pull it exerts. As we walk on the surface of the Earth, it pulls on us, and we pull back. But since the Earth is so much more massive than we are, the pull from us is not strong enough to move the Earth, while the pull from the Earth can make us fall flat on our faces.

In addition to depending on the amount of mass, gravity also depends on how far you are from something. This is why we are stuck to the surface of the Earth instead of being pulled off into the Sun, which has many more times the gravity of the Earth.

Most of us know the effects of the mysterious force called gravity. However, the question 'what is gravity' is not easy to answer, because we don't really understand what this force actually is (if it is a force at all).

What we do know about gravity is mostly due to the work of three men, Johannes Kepler, Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. Kepler worked out the details of how the orbits of the moon and planets can be described mathematically. This is known as the Kepler laws of planetary motion, but it does not answer the question 'what is gravity'.

Newton, reportedly while observing an apple falling from a tree, got an inspiration that allowed him to work out how the force of gravity can be described mathematically. It later became apparent that there are some scenarios where Newton's mathematical description does not quite hold, but it still the simplest way of describing gravity. It does however also not answer the 'what is' question. Newton was uncomfortable with his own theory of gravity. He said that his theory never "assigned the cause of this power." He was unable to experimentally identify what produces the force of gravity and he refused to even offer a hypothesis as to the cause of this force on grounds that to do so was not sound science.

Einstein later worked out how the force of gravity is not quite a force, but rather an artifact of the natural movement of objects through curved four-dimensional space-time. Einstein reportedly got the inspiration for this imaginative leap in understanding of gravity by contemplating a man falling off a building. Such a falling man would not experience any force while he is falling, at least not before hitting the ground and suffering severe forces.

In his monumental 1916 work 'The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity', Albert Einstein unified his own Special Relativity, Newton's law of universal gravitation, and the crucial insight that the effects of gravity can be described by the curvature of space and time, usually called 'space-time' curvature. The radius of curvature is modified by relativistic factors, by a gravitational time dilation and by a velocity time dilation. This causes the acceleration of a falling object, as experienced by the free falling object to be larger than what Newton predicted.

So, what is gravity? The truth is that at the most fundamental level, no one really knows. This blog only summarizes the basics of Newton's and Einstein's gravity in terms of the gravitational acceleration caused by curved space-time and velocity.

We may have to wait for a theory of 'quantum gravity' to be completed for a better answer to 'what is gravity?' Quantum gravity (QG) is the field of theoretical physics attempting to unify quantum mechanics with general relativity in a self-consistent manner, or more precisely, to formulate a self-consistent theory which reduces to ordinary quantum mechanics in the limit of weak gravity (potentials much less than the speed of light squared) and which limits Einstein's general relativity to large actions (action much larger than Planck's constant). The theory must be able to predict the outcome of situations where both quantum effects and strong-field gravity are important (at the Planck scale, unless large extra dimension conjectures are correct). Although some quantum gravity theories such as string theory and other so-called theories of everything attempt to unify gravity with the other fundamental forces, others such as loop quantum gravity make no such attempt; they simply quantize the gravitational field while keeping it separate from the other forces.

So far, cosmologists, physicists and mathematicians have not arrived at a consistent theory of gravity that melds quantum mechanics with the theory of relativity.

My Top Ten Mysteries of the Universe

I'm one of those people who thinks too much. I don't just take things for granted. I'm always wondering about things that other people don't think about all. It seems to me that there are many unsolved mysteries in the universe we live in, and that the greatest mysteries concern important stuff. Science gives us partial answers and may someday give a definitive answer to some of the question I pose here. Others, obviously, will never be answered. Different religions, poets and philosophers have given various conflicting answers. You, yourself, may have an opinion concerning what the answers are which may be different from mine. Even your list may be different. That these are really the top mysteries in the universe is only my opinion.

Mystery Number 10. Is Reality All in Our Head. Each of us locked in our own head and look at the universe from our own point of view. What we personally believe is true is true -- as far as we are concerned. That is why it is usually useless for two people with opposing viewpoints to debate some fundamental issue such as the existence of God.

All of science is based on the assumption that there is an objective universe that is the same for all of us. But what proof is there that is true? Philosophers have argued this very point throughout the ages. The greatest of these in my opinion was the eighteenth century philosopher David Hume. He showed in his Treatise on Human Nature that it is impossible for us to determine this in any conclusive manner. He has had his critics, but so far, no one has been able to successfully punch holes in his conclusions.

Mystery Number 9. What is Outside the Universe? Have you ever thought about infinity? Or read what modern cosmologists have to say about the universe? Back a few centuries, people who thought about such things figured that the universe consisted of the earth which was surround by crystal spheres. Astronomers (actually astrologers) of those days never wrote about what was outside the outermost crystal sphere. Then came along Copernicus, Galileo and Newton and the universe expanded somewhat to the size of the solar system and the fixed stars out there somewhere; nobody knew how far. When astronomers gazed through more powerful telescopes and other sophisticated gear, suddenly the universe expanded to billions of light years in size.

But how far did it go? Does it stretch on forever? In the early part of the twentieth century, Albert Einstein proposed his Theory of Relativity. This and other discoveries changed everything. Cosmologists began to think of the universe as a great expanding ball (or some other shape) that had a definite limit.

Okay, that is the current view of our universe. But if our universe is a great ball (or some other shape) curved in the fourth dimension, what lies outside of it? Recent articles I have read about what modern cosmologists and physicist think about the universe speak of "multiverses." I wonder what they are like.

Mystery Number 8. Is Time Travel Possible. Before we went to the moon, space travel was considered impossible, so were speeds higher than the speed of sound, and years ago people would have scoffed that machines could do what our modern computers can or that pictures and sound could be sent through the air. Up until very recently, one thing that scientists and other thinkers were absolutely sure was impossible was travel through time, that is to go to the past or the far future and return. Recently, I've read articles in Scientific American that it may be possible after all, but energy and cost prohibitive. When the Wright brothers made their historic flight at Kitty Hawk, no one could imagine the commercial airlines of today.

Of course, those who say that we will never achieve time travel point out the paradoxes involved with travel to the past. Science-fiction time travel stories have illustrated these, and other hazards of time travel, over and over again.

Mystery Number 7. What Happens to You When You Die? Most people of the Jewish, Christian or Muslim religions would say that you go to Heaven or Hell. In some other religions, it is said that you are reborn in some other form, as an animal or another human being with most of the memories of your past lives obliterated. An atheist may say that you simply cease to exist. Somehow I can't get my mind around nonexistence. None of these possibilities have ever been proven one way or the other in a totally satisfactory manner.

In the first place, it is not clear what "you" are within your physical body. Are you simply a bunch of electrical-chemical reactions centered in your brain, like a program running in a computer? Or are "the you" that thinks about such things a sort of incorporeal vapid thing that people have given such names as "the soul," "the aura," or "the spirit?" If the latter, what happens to this invisible being at death?

Some psychics and others have claimed that they can speak to the dead. Other people have sworn that they have encountered ghosts, which may be what the spirit becomes after the body dies. Are these encounters real or simply a combination of fraud and delusion?

My hope is that my spirit is awakened on an alien planet in the far future such as in Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld series.

Mystery Number 6. Is Anyone Out There? The universe is vast. There are billions of stars in our own galaxy itself and billions of galaxies. Somewhere there has to be another species as intelligent and technologically inclined as us. So why haven't we heard from them? Of course, the UFO believers claim that we've been actually been visited by alien beings. The problem is that their proofs of this are not credible in a scientific sense.

Right now there are people who are listening to radio signals from all over the universe in an attempt to hear any that may be coming from an intelligent source. This effort is called SETI, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and consists of listening to radio waves at various frequencies all over the sky. My personal opinion is that SETI is doomed to failure, not because intelligent aliens do not exist, but because of the vastness of space. Unless the aliens were located within a hundred light years or less from us, they would have to have extremely powerful transmitters beamed right us before we would detect their signals,

Mystery Number 5. How Does Intelligence Work? One of the most mysterious organs in our body is the brain. Medical specialists tell us that it operates by electrical currents, which arrive on dendrites, transmits the resulting electrical currents to other connected neurons using its axon. Different types of brain activity relate to different patterns of firing. In addition, such chemicals such as dopamine, seratonin and endomorphines are involved. Beyond that, all that is said about brain function is quite vague. For example, which signals and chemicals are involved as I write this article? No neurologist can tell me the exact the details of this. For example, which neuron fired when I thought the word "neurologist."

For several years now, software engineers and scientists have been trying to make computers intelligent. Their successes have been limited, probably because we don't really know how the brain does what it does.

One thing that always intrigued me is how intelligent animals are, even animals with much smaller brains than ours. For example, an insect can hardly be said to have a brain at all, merely a tiny nervous system. Nonetheless, if I'm sitting at my desk and a fly is buzzing around my head, I can swat at it and wave my hands around, and it persists its pestiness. As soon as I go get a fly swatter, it hides. How does it know that I can kill it with a fly swatter, but that my hands are relatively useless in harming it?

Mystery Number 4. What is Life? Scientists may be closing in on the answer to this one. A definition of life that I lifted from Wikepedia follows: "Life is a condition that distinguishes, organisms from inorganic objects, i.e. non-life objects or dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally. In terms, life is an organism that feeds on negative entropy." The problem here is that some inorganic objects have one or more of these attributes, yet are not living. For example, some chemicals such as sugar can grow crystals under certain conditions. Fire can be said to consume materials and grow thereby. Also, certain primitive organisms, such as viruses, are close to being nothing more than a collection of chemicals.

The thing is, although scientists have concluded that living organisms are simply complicated constructs of chemicals, no one yet has produced an actual living organism artificially. Frankenstein, where are you that we need you?

Mystery Number 3. What is Gravity? Although we are all familiar with gravity since it is what keeps us from flying off this earth in space, what makes it work is still a mystery. Isaac Newton first figured out the laws that govern gravitational effects back in the sixteen hundreds. Since then, no one has come up with a definitive explanation of how gravity does what it does. For one thing, gravity works at a distance although the gravitational attraction between two bodies weakens quite rapidly with distance. Nonetheless, the furthermost galaxy in the universe has some gravitational effect on earth, although quite negligible.

Albert Einstein proposed that a mass produced a kind of dent in space, the larger the mass, the greater the dent. But space is mostly nothing. How can nothing have a dent in it? Other scientists have proposed such explanations as some sort of particle called a graviton. But they have failed to detect such a particle. Hence, concrete evidence for either of these theories is still lacking verifiability.

Mystery Number 2. What is Everything Made of? Back in the ancient times, alchemists believed that matter consisted of four elements: fire, water, earth, and air. The amount of each element in the substance gave it its fundamental characteristics. But later investigators discovered that the so-called basic elements were actually combinations of more elementary chemicals. For example, water consisted of two gases, hydrogen and oxygen. As for fire, it was really a process, not a substance at all. Finally, theorists, such as Isaac Newton, thought that substances that were really elementary, such as hydrogen and oxygen, when divided into their smallest components were composed of hard indivisible bits called atoms. This atomic theory lasted until the twentieth century, when it was discovered that atoms themselves were composed of smaller parts called protons, neutrons and electrons.

But scientists are never satisfied. They found that these elementary particles could be split further into even more elementary particles. And so was born our present quantum theories. The latest thinking on the composition of matter and energy is that everything is composed of some kind of multidimensional loops called "strings." I've read several articles about quantum theory and string theory, but it's so complicated with strange concepts that I wonder whether even the physicists who propose these theories really understand them. Also, from what the articles seem to be saying is that none of these theories are cast in concrete yet. They all seem to have certain holes and inconsistencies in them.

All of which had left me baffled.

Mystery Number 1. Where Did Everything Come From? Now for the big one. Where did the universe come from? According to current scientific thought, the universe began with "The Big Bang" about ten or twenty billion years ago. Fine. I'll buy that. But what caused "The Big Bang?" Some cosmologists think that the universe may reach a certain point in its expansion and then collapse on itself, causing another "Big Bang." Hence the universe keeps oscillating between expansion and collapse. But this still begs the question of where all the stuff came from originally.

Now, I know that a lot of religious folk will say that God created the universe, either as the Big Bang or as a whole a few thousand years ago, depending upon their particular faith. Nonetheless, this still begs the question. For now we must ask, Where did God come from?"

Perhaps the answer lies in Mystery Number 10. It may all be in my head.

Afterward. Some of what I've said about the big ten questions may be inaccurate or said with tongue-in-cheek. If you wish to know what scientific theories are current and what scientists and others really have to say about these questions, tons of information are on the Internet. I also highly recommend Carl Sagan's TV series and accompanying book, Cosmos, as an introduction to these concepts. Although it is a little out of date, it is a good place to start learning about the science of cosmology. A little reading about philosophy would be good too, especially the seventeenth and eighteenth century philosophers, Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Kant. Also, there are many histories of science available.

In the future, if I get the urge, I may discuss each of these questions in more detail.

Is It All In Your Head?

Philosophers throughout the ages have pondered the nature of reality. There is a duality to reality that to this day remains unresolved. There is subjective reality, which is the universe as each individual perceives it in his or her own mind. There is objective reality, which is the universe as it really is outside any perception by an individual. The problem is, no matter how hard we try to get out of our own heads, we cannot. We all see things from our own perspective. That is the reason that on certain subjects, such as the existence of God, people will never agree. For an atheist, such as myself, the idea of God seems simply absurd; the faithful, however, see a universe which cannot exist without a diety. For the same reason conservatives and liberals disagree so strongly. Their world views are "worlds" apart.

For most of us in our every day life, subjective and objective reality are essentially the same thing. We automatically assume what we ourselves view is what is real. We only run into trouble when we come in contact with someone who views reality differently from ourselves. But how do we know what we think is real, is what is actually out there? For example, some people have hallucinations and delusions. But from their point of view, the universe they inhabit is as real as the one we "sane" people inhabit.

There is also the case of dreams. While we are dreaming, our dreams, no matter how absurd, seem real. It is only after we are awake that we realize they are fantasies. But are they? Is it possible that the waking world is the fantasy and our dreams the reality?

That an objective universe exists is one of the basic assumptions of both science and religion. Nonetheless, it remains simply an assumption. There is not or ever can be any positive proof of this. For more definitive discussion of these concepts, read the writings of the eighteenth century philosophers David Hume and Bishop Berkley.

The ideas I've put forth are sometimes used by science fiction and fantasy authors. Two novels that I've enjoyed much which have a premise of the unreality of the objective universe are Ubik by Philip Dick and The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula LeGuin. In Ubik strange events occur to the protagonist until he finally realizes that he is really dead and his dying brain are giving him illusions. In The Lathe of Heaven, the protagonists dreams become reality.

The House of Frankenstein

One of my all-time favorite movies is The House of Frankenstein, released in 1944. It was the fifth of a series of movies about Frankenstein's monster and friends. The first was released in the 1930s. It was loosely based (and I mean loosely, they didn't even get the scientist's first name right) on Mary Shelley's novel. The Bride of Frankenstein was a direct sequel. It started where the first movie left off and described the events that occurred when the monster wants a bride. It deviates even more from the novel. In the third movie, Son of Frankenstein, Frankenstein's son returns to the castle to take over. (The son is English. No explanation is given as to why he was raised in Britain. Ah, Hollywood.) In Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, the wolfman searches for Frankenstein's notes in order to cure himself of werewolfism. Finally in House of Frankenstein, everybody's favorite monsters (of that time), the monster, a mad doctor, a hunchback and Dracula, are all together for the first time. The final movie in the series was House of Dracula, whose plot was similar to Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, only it is Dracula who wants to be cured of vampirism.

All of these movies are worth seeing and entertaining. The reason I liked House of Frankenstein best was the acting and the subplots. Note: if you intend to watch the movie, the next three paragraphs contain spoilers.

The film focuses on the exploits of the vengeful Dr. Gustav Niemann, who escapes from prison with his cellmate, the hunchback Daniel, to which he promises to create a new, beautiful body. The two murder a traveling showman and take over his horror exhibit. To exact revenge on Hussmann, who had once caused his imprisonment, Niemann revives Count Dracula. Dracula seduces Hussmann's granddaughter-in-law and kills Hussmann himself, but in a subsequent chase, Niemann disposes of Dracula's coffin, causing the vampire to perish in sunlight. Niemann and Daniel move on to the flooded ruins of Castle Frankenstein, where they find the bodies of the Frankenstein Monster and Lawrence Talbot, the Wolfman, preserved in the frozen waters. Nieman thaws out the two and promises Talbot to cure him from werewolfism. However, in fact he is more interested in reviving the Frankenstein monster and exacting revenge on two former associates than in his promises to Daniel or Talbot. Talbot transforms into a werewolf and kills a man, arousing the villagers.

Talbot is also envied by the hunchback Daniel as both love Ilonka, a gypsy girl. She has fallen in love with Talbot but is the object of Daniel's affection. Daniel reveals Talbot's curse to Ilonka but she is not deterred and promises to help him in fighting the curse.

Things enter a critical stage at night, as Niemann revives the Frankenstein monster and Talbot again turns into a werewolf. Talbot is shot by Ilonka with a silver bullet, thereby releasing him, but Ilonka is killed in the process. Daniel blames her death on Niemann and begins to choke him. The Frankenstein monster intervenes, throws Daniel out of the window, and carries the half-conscious Niemann outside, where the villagers begin to chase them and drive them into the marshes. There, both the monster and Niemann drown in quicksand.

The movie had a superb cast as follows:

• Boris Karloff as Dr. Gustav Niemann
• Lon Chaney, Jr. as Lawrence Talbot/The Wolfman
• J. Carrol Naish as Daniel
• Elena Verdugo as Ilonka
• John Carradine as Dracula a. k. a. Baron Latos
• Glenn Strange as the Monster
• Anne Gwynne as Rita Hussman
• Peter Coe as Karl Hussman
• Lionel Atwill as Inspector Arnz
• George Zucco as Bruno Lampini
• Sig Ruman as Bürgermeister Hussman
• William Edmunds as Fejos
• Charles F. Miller as Tobermann
• Philip Van Zandt as Müller
• Julius Tannen as Hertz
• Hans Herbert as Meier
• Dick Dickinson as Born

J. Carrol Naish performance is especially good as the lovesick hunchback in love with a gypsy girl, also well played by Elena Verdugo. Karloff and Carradine are also superb. And of course, Lon Chaney, as always, plays the werewolf with sympathy and pathos. Excellent acting by everyone in the cast. They deserved, but never received, Oscars. In fact the movie was panned by most critics. That's why I never listen to critics.

The Alien Movies

My absolute favorite movies were the Alien series of film. Everything about them was great. Sigourney Weaver was astounding as the tough, brave Officer Ripley. In the first movie, The Alien, the starship sets were as so realistic while watching the movies you felt that you were aboard a real starship. Artist H.R.Giger's design of the alien spaceship and the alien creature itself was superb. The suspense and terror rocked me to the very core. The sequel, Aliens, was as great and in some ways as the original Alien. Although not quite up to par with the first two, the third and fourth films, Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection, in the series were also quite good. The only disappointment was the fifth in the series, Alien vs Preditor, which was a complete bomb. This is the only one that Sigourney Weaver was not in.

Alien garnered both critical acclaim and box office success, receiving an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, Saturn Awards for Best Science Fiction Film, Best Direction for Scott, and Best Supporting Actress for Cartwright, and a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, along with numerous other award nominations. It has remained highly praised in subsequent decades, being inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 2002 for historical preservation as a film which is "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and being ranked by the American Film Institute in 2008 as the seventh-best film in the science fiction genre.

Here is a summery of the plot of Alien. It contains spoilers. So, if you haven't seen the film and intend watching it, skip this part of my post. The commercial towing spaceship Nostromo is on a return trip from Thedus to Earth carrying its seven-member crew in hypersleep. Upon receiving a transmission of unknown origin from a nearby planetoid, the ship's computer awakens the crew. Acting on orders from their corporate employers, the crew lands on the planetoid, resulting in some damage to the ship. Captain Dallas, Executive Officer Kane, and Navigator Lambert set out to investigate the signal's source while Warrant Officer Ripley, Science Officer Ash, and Engineers Brett and Parker stay behind to monitor their progress and make repairs. The signal is coming from a derelict alien spacecraft. Inside they find the remains of a large alien creature whose ribs appear to have been exploded outward from the inside. Ripley determines that the signal transmission is some type of warning. Kane discovers a vast chamber containing numerous eggs, one of which releases a creature that attaches itself to his face. Dallas and Lambert carry the unconscious Kane back to the Nostromo, where Ash allows them inside against Ripley's orders to follow the ship's quarantine protocol. They unsuccessfully attempt to remove the creature from Kane's face, discovering that its blood is an extremely corrosive acid. Eventually the creature detaches on its own and is found dead. With the ship repaired, the crew resume their trip back to Earth.

Kane awakens seemingly unharmed, but during a meal before re-entering stasis he begins to choke and convulse until an alien creature bursts from his chest, killing him and escaping into the ship. Lacking conventional weapons, the crew attempt to locate and capture the creature by fashioning motion trackers, electric prods, and flamethrowers. Brett follows the crew's cat into a large room where the now-fully-grown Alien attacks him and disappears with his body into the ship's air shafts. Dallas enters the shafts intending to force the Alien into an airlock where it can be expelled into space, but it ambushes him. Lambert implores the remaining crew members to escape in the ship's shuttle, but Ripley, now in command, explains that the shuttle will not support four people.

Accessing the ship's computer, Ripley discovers that Ash has been ordered to return the Alien to the Nostromo's corporate employers even at the expense of the crew. Ash attacks her, but Parker intervenes and decapitates him with a blow from a fire extinguisher, revealing Ash to be an android. Before Parker incinerates him, Ash predicts that the other crew members will not survive. The remaining three crew members plan to arm the Nostromo's self-destruct mechanism and escape in the shuttle, but Parker and Lambert are killed by the Alien while gathering the necessary supplies. Ripley initiates the self-destruct sequence and heads for the shuttle with the cat, but finds the Alien blocking her way. She unsuccessfully attempts to abort the self-destruct, then returns to find the Alien gone and narrowly escapes in the shuttle as the Nostromo explodes.

As she prepares to enter stasis, Ripley discovers that the Alien is aboard the shuttle. She puts on a space suit and opens the hatch, causing explosive decompression which forces the Alien to the open doorway. She shoots it with a grappling gun which propels it out, but the gun is caught in the closing door, tethering the Alien to the shuttle. It attempts to crawl into one of the engines, but Ripley activates them and blasts the Alien into space. Ripley puts herself and the cat into stasis for the return trip to Earth.

If you haven't seen these movies, you've missed a great treat. Be sure to watch them on the largest screen you can find. I can't imagine what they would be like on IMAX in 3D.