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Escape Pod => Episode Comments => Topic started by: Russell Nash on January 18, 2008, 11:21:57 AM

Title: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: Russell Nash on January 18, 2008, 11:21:57 AM
EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus (http://escapepod.org/2008/01/18/ep141-the-color-of-a-brontosaurus/)

By Paul E. Martens (http://www.sfwa.org/members/Martens/).
Read by Stephen Eley.
Closing Music: “Better” by Jonathan Coulton (http://www.jonathancoulton.com/).
First appeared in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine (http://www.andromedaspaceways.com/), Issue #29.

There was no doubt that the femur was that of a modern human. Not a proto-human, or some previously unknown dinosaur. Joel and Renee had arrived at the same answer. It was demonstrable, provable. When they finally did release news of the discovery, people might argue about it, but they’d be unable to refute it.

But how did they answer the next question? How did the bone come to be embedded in solid rock millions and millions of years before such a bone could have existed?

It had to be a time traveler. There was no other answer. Or was that just what he wanted to believe?


Rated PG. Contains some profanity and scientific politics.


(http://escapepod.org/wp-images/podcast-mini4.gif)
Listen to this week’s Escape Pod! (http://media.libsyn.com/media/escapepod/EP141_TheColorOfABrontosaurus.mp3)
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: Darwinist on January 18, 2008, 04:08:48 PM
I thought this story was good.  It didn't blow me away but I felt good about it.  I didn't know where it was headed for the most part and I didn't see any of the twists coming.....but I hardly ever do.   I cringed a bit when the creationist charachter was introduced because I thought the story might take an evolution v. creationism turn but it didn't.  I'm a big fan of time travel stories and this was an interesting one.   Another good one by Martens.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: eytanz on January 18, 2008, 04:42:21 PM
I agree with the sentiment of "good but not great". My main problem was with the debates between the three researchers - it was like the story was trying to represent an argument without actually engaging in one, with the result that the three characters became one-issue, platitude-spewing mouthpieces for the views they took. They were not acting as scientists, they were acting like politicians in a televised debate, throwing soundbites at each other rather than actually arguing.

Besides, I don't see where the idea that scientists need to be able to explain their findings in order for the findings to be valid. On the contrary - if you're sitting on a startling piece of emipirical data and you want to get grants, you publish it *before* you know what it means. Grants are given for ongoing research, not completed research.

This was not a major flaw in the story - the interesting bit was really the second half of the story and the relationship between the protagonist and his wife. But Steve presented this as a story about scientists, when it really doesn't get any closer to real scientists than TV shows where the only way you can tell apart the scientists from the non-scientists by the fact that they wear labcoats and glasses.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: bolddeceiver on January 18, 2008, 06:31:11 PM
This is pedantic, but it bothered me each time it came up, and I can't imagine I'm the only one.  Given that this story was published in ASIM, I'm assuming it is from 2002 or later.  As any reasonably geeky second grader could tell you, the term "brontosaurus" was deprecated in the scientific community as early as 1903.  And while it has lingered in the public mind, I can't quite bring myself to believe that a modern paleontologist would be caught dead saying it as often as Stu did, let alone that his colleagues wouldn't call him on it.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: eytanz on January 18, 2008, 06:38:23 PM
This is pedantic, but it bothered me each time it came up, and I can't imagine I'm the only one.  Given that this story was published in ASIM, I'm assuming it is from 2002 or later.  As any reasonably geeky second grader could tell you, the term "brontosaurus" was deprecated in the scientific community as early as 1903.  And while it has lingered in the public mind, I can't quite bring myself to believe that a paleontologist would be caught dead saying it as often as Stu did, let alone that his colleagues wouldn't call him on it.

Well, in general the Paleontologists in this story seemed to know about as much about dinosaurs as I did when I was 11 and fascinated by them. I didn't mention it, but that's another part of the same problem I had with their depiction.

Actually, with the oversimplified politics, oversimplified science, and pg-rated romance, I'm wondering if this story doesn't really have 11 year old boys as its target demographic. I probably would have found it extremely cool back then...
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: bolddeceiver on January 18, 2008, 06:49:16 PM
And now, having finished the story (yeah, OK, I did pause it halfway through to post my earlier complaint), I give it an emphatically unemphatic yawn.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: DarkKnightJRK on January 19, 2008, 07:14:04 AM
The "politics" of it did feel kinda tacked-on and one-demensional, but the rest I liked. I had a feeling that Stu would be the decomposed bone he finds in the present, but not exactly in that way.

Not bad--heard better, heard worse. Above average.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: Czhorat on January 19, 2008, 03:39:40 PM
Not one of my favorites, for a few reasons. Stu seemed to be the closest thing to a fully realized character in the story, and even he kept fading into a single-dimensioned megalomania as the story moved on. A few problems.

First, the initial set-up. From the instant we saw the femur everybody reading it knew it would be Stu's. The bones always belong to the person who found them in the present.

Second, more damningly, the debate between the scientists. It annoys me when a scientist in a story argues against creationism with a simple, "No, that's not true. It violates the laws of evolution". This is the kind of thinking creationists use, starting with the conclusion and massaging the evidence to fit. A better retort to the young scientist would be that using Creation as an explanation ignores mountains of evidence to the contrary which is still yet to be refuted. A time traveller actually fits the evidence better because that explanation would more likely account for only one human femur being found from that period. Ever. That it was just something that looked like a human femur but really wasn't is an even better possiblity that nobody seemed to consider. As written, the story has no character who embraces the scientific method and looks at it as a scientist would.

If time travel is available when Stu's wife is from, wouldn't someone already have gone back to check out the dinosaurs? She could have learned in grade school that Brontosauruses are pink with green spots.

I liked that Stu only got back to the past posthumously, but on reflection the gesture seemed a bit empty and sentimental. If his son actually does invent a time machine, what's to stop him from going back a few years before his Dad died and letting him play with it?

All in all, I felt that it was a little bit sentimental and a little bit sloppy in the plotting to be truly engaging. On the positive side, I do love the title.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: eytanz on January 19, 2008, 04:51:13 PM
Not one of my favorites, for a few reasons. Stu seemed to be the closest thing to a fully realized character in the story, and even he kept fading into a single-dimensioned megalomania as the story moved on. A few problems.

First, the initial set-up. From the instant we saw the femur everybody reading it knew it would be Stu's. The bones always belong to the person who found them in the present.


You know, that brings up another nitpick I have with this story. Not every 60-million year old bone becomes a fossil. Far from it, or we would be finding fossils all over the place. Fossils are created in very specific and rare circumstances. A living time traveller could conceivably arrange to commit suicide or murder under circumstances which make it possible to create a fossil. Sending a corpse back to the past is so big a crapshoot - especially since it was already established it's impossible to control the time travel exactly - that it is unlikely to result in anything but introduce a few new bacteria to the ecosystem. Not to mention that unless it's also a space travel machine, or Stu's funeral was held in the site of his dig, there's also the problem of how it got to the right place to begin with (ignoring the fact that the entire solar system is going to be pretty far away 60 million years in the past).
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: Czhorat on January 19, 2008, 04:58:33 PM
Not one of my favorites, for a few reasons. Stu seemed to be the closest thing to a fully realized character in the story, and even he kept fading into a single-dimensioned megalomania as the story moved on. A few problems.

First, the initial set-up. From the instant we saw the femur everybody reading it knew it would be Stu's. The bones always belong to the person who found them in the present.


You know, that brings up another nitpick I have with this story. Not every 60-million year old bone becomes a fossil. Far from it, or we would be finding fossils all over the place. Fossils are created in very specific and rare circumstances. A living time traveller could conceivably arrange to commit suicide or murder under circumstances which make it possible to create a fossil. Sending a corpse back to the past is so big a crapshoot - especially since it was already established it's impossible to control the time travel exactly - that it is unlikely to result in anything but introduce a few new bacteria to the ecosystem. Not to mention that unless it's also a space travel machine, or Stu's funeral was held in the site of his dig, there's also the problem of how it got to the right place to begin with (ignoring the fact that the entire solar system is going to be pretty far away 60 million years in the past).

Good points. I just ignored the idea of space travel the way I do in all time travel stories; I just assume that the time machine has some way of finding some roughly analogous spot on the Earth as part of its workings. I think Spider Robinson mentioned that problem in one of his Callahan's Bar stories.

Did anyone else wonder what Stu was trying to accomplish by looking through the photos of the dig? If a time traveller really had come back to see the dig, woudln't he have likely returned to his own time by now? I can just imagine it.

"That must be him. Nobody saw him before , he was staring at the discovery as if he knew what he was looking for."

"OK. Now what?"

"..."

As I said, the more you pick at the one the more it unravels.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: Darwinist on January 19, 2008, 06:47:50 PM

Second, more damningly, the debate between the scientists. It annoys me when a scientist in a story argues against creationism with a simple, "No, that's not true. It violates the laws of evolution". This is the kind of thinking creationists use, starting with the conclusion and massaging the evidence to fit. A better retort to the young scientist would be that using Creation as an explanation ignores mountains of evidence to the contrary which is still yet to be refuted. A time traveller actually fits the evidence better because that explanation would more likely account for only one human femur being found from that period. Ever. That it was just something that looked like a human femur but really wasn't is an even better possiblity that nobody seemed to consider. As written, the story has no character who embraces the scientific method and looks at it as a scientist would.


Yeah, that drove me nuts, too.  There is a ton of evidence and scientific information available to properly argue against creationists but the charachters just let it slide. 

Czhorat and eytanz brought up some great nitpicks.  That's why I like reading the story comments.  I usually listen to the stories while driving to work and I don't think that hard about them while fuming at the ineptitude of my fellow drivers. 
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: ajames on January 20, 2008, 02:55:58 PM
This was a good story, but not good enough to make me overlook its many flaws.

I too found the debate between the scientists totally implausible.  What scientist wouldn't put a finding like that out to the rest of the world as soon as possible and simply say, "I don't know what this means, but damn if it isn't interesting!"  They would be free to discuss possible implications without jeopardizing their careers, even if it was a hoax - as long as they stray from the facts and made it clear that one of the possible explanations was indeed an elaborate hoax of some kind. 

The debate was so implausible that I for a little while I believed the scientist convinced it was a hoax was indeed a time traveler, and it was his mission to ensure that the secret of time travel did not get out to the public.

The best part of this story was the love story within it, and I recall one of Steve's earlier intro's about there not being enough love stories in science fiction being more relevant to this story than his intro about scientists.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: swdragoon on January 20, 2008, 04:20:59 PM
What I love about sci fi is that no mater the problem the over use of the planet or evil aliens the solution is alwas a human being. A fragle flawed scared human being. That hope is what I love about sci fi.
Oh and why are all scientist named stu?
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: High 5 on January 20, 2008, 10:08:21 PM
This story was chewing gum for the mind.
It was a keeps-you-busy-but-don't-expect-a-full-stomach kind of story.

While listening to it I couldn't help but slipping into the wonderfull feeling that the old pulp stories from the fifties used to give me.
Sure, it was not all that scientifically correct, the characters were about as flat as the Netherlands and some parts were very illogical but I don't have pointy ears or come from Vulcan so screw logic!
Not every story has a message, some are just entertainment.

This one had a nice minty flavour and it kept my teeth clean, what more can you ask from chewing gum?
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: swdragoon on January 21, 2008, 12:51:23 AM
I don't rember the store saying it was stu's bone. And I don't know what scientst you know but the ones I know (mostly MD and phisics) argue very sumlee to that
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: Windup on January 21, 2008, 01:21:17 AM
This one misfired for me on all levels.

The story failed to confront any of the potential time travel issues it raised.  I'm supposed to buy the idea that his wife comes from the future, gets pregnant in the past and raises a child and there are no repricussions to any of this?  At the very time that momentus events are re-shaping global society, no less.  Give me a break.  And we'll just ignore the implications of dumping a clutch of 21st-Centrury microbes, fauna, clothing, etc. into the mid-Jurassic as well. At a minimum, there's got to be some sort of explanation offered -- conservation of history, peeling off of "alternate histories,"  something. I'm not saying it can't be handled, I'm saying that the story just ignored all those problems, and I couldn't.

I agree with everyone who found the debate between the scientists hokey as well.  In addition to the solid one-dimensioness of the characters, I agree that with that kind of anamolous finding, your first impulse would be to publish as quickly as possible.  Stuff gets published all the time without interpretation -- and figuring out what it meant would furnish a gusher of grants.

Even the "love story" didn't do that much for me -- characters were too undeveloped. 

Even high-quality outlets throw the occasional clunker -- this was one of Escape Pod's.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: sirana on January 21, 2008, 11:56:14 AM
Ok, I seem to be the only one who really loved the story. Most of the criticisms that have been brought up are certainly valid, but they didn't bother me a bit. I like time travel stories and I rarely read one that feels right to me. This was one of them.
I liked the quiet telling, I liked the breaking of the group of scientists over something they couldn't explain, I loved Stu's reaction when his wife tells him she is pregnant.
The story made me happy in some parts and sad in others, but overall it made me feel really good.
I don't really know why. Normally I am not so lenient when a story has logical issues or stock characters. But in this case the emotion it evoked trumped everything else.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: Simon on January 21, 2008, 02:59:41 PM
Not one of my favorites, for a few reasons. Stu seemed to be the closest thing to a fully realized character in the story, and even he kept fading into a single-dimensioned megalomania as the story moved on. A few problems.

First, the initial set-up. From the instant we saw the femur everybody reading it knew it would be Stu's. The bones always belong to the person who found them in the present.


You know, that brings up another nitpick I have with this story. Not every 60-million year old bone becomes a fossil. Far from it, or we would be finding fossils all over the place. Fossils are created in very specific and rare circumstances. A living time traveller could conceivably arrange to commit suicide or murder under circumstances which make it possible to create a fossil. Sending a corpse back to the past is so big a crapshoot - especially since it was already established it's impossible to control the time travel exactly - that it is unlikely to result in anything but introduce a few new bacteria to the ecosystem. Not to mention that unless it's also a space travel machine, or Stu's funeral was held in the site of his dig, there's also the problem of how it got to the right place to begin with (ignoring the fact that the entire solar system is going to be pretty far away 60 million years in the past).

On one of my last undergraduate geology fieldtrips (I was always a good sample-hunter), amongst Silurian mudstones (approx 420 million years old) in the North of England I came upon a slab of mudstone with what appeared to be a perfect trace fossil of a Hominid...  Heel, toe-prints, ball of a foot, padshapes at the front.  Almost exactly what you see when you come out of the shower and look at your footprints...

These marks were preserved in a courser, sandier medium than the surrounding mud...  So, like any sensible geologist I cracked off the sample, stuck it in my bag, and took it to a couple of my professors...  I got some enthusiastic responses at first, but when I told them it was British the winds changed as you would expect.  And when we finally analysed the damn thing the apparent coarser material turned out to be mud-flaking, a well documented erosional process and in no way a footprint.

I started listening to this story, and the understanding of Geology and Geologists was just a little too unlikely, so I have given up so far.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: Rain on January 21, 2008, 04:29:12 PM
I liked this story, it was nice and fun
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: FNH on January 21, 2008, 09:17:32 PM
This  was a good well written story.  The man character slipping into monomania was well handled. I felt the relationship between him and his wife was well done.  The stress/angst he felt when she asked why it would be "differn't for him" to leave, as opposed to herself was inspiring.  He thought about it but couldn't let go of his obsesssion. 

Outstanding peice of work.

Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: Czhorat on January 21, 2008, 10:20:48 PM
This  was a good well written story.  The man character slipping into monomania was well handled. I felt the relationship between him and his wife was well done.  The stress/angst he felt when she asked why it would be "differn't for him" to leave, as opposed to herself was inspiring.  He thought about it but couldn't let go of his obsesssion. 

Outstanding peice of work.



Do any of the logical flaws that have been pointed out bother you at all? What about the scientists all behaving in a very non-scientific way to create a debate that felt nothing at all like real science? I found it especially telling, for instance, that the scientist who decides to believe in creationism talks about the credentials of people from the Creationist Institute rather than the merits of their ideas. I just think a story about scientists should geel more scientific.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: Mr. Tweedy on January 21, 2008, 10:39:48 PM
Actually, I was going to comment that my favorite thing about the story was the portrayal of the scientists.  It's a prevalent and dangerous fallacy in Western culture that anyone with "Doctor" in front of their name is perfectly objective, unbiased and knowledgeable about whatever they happen to be talking about at the moment.  In this way scientists are often treated like shamans or priests who have all the answers and don't need to say how they got them.  This story portrayed scientists as people with the same sort of concerns and biases that everyone else has.

The one insists on a hoax because admitting that Creationism could be right will make him a laughingstock.  The other will not accept the possibility of a hoax because (presumably) she secretly wants Creationism to be proved.  The third scientist will not accept either option because the idea of time travel so appeals to his imagination.  Cartoonish?  Maybe, but I find it absolutely refreshing after seeing unnamed "scientists" and "experts" quoted as absolute authorities on everything every day in the Associated Press.

The only thing that bugged me was that one of the three turned out to be right when his explanation wasn't really any more scientific or plausible than that of his colleagues.  He should have had to earn his right answer, not just stumble across it by luck.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: qwints on January 22, 2008, 12:07:09 AM
I just plain didn't buy the story.

First half:
"The bone must be x because I say it is."
"That's crazy, it must be y"
"You're both insane, it is clearly z"
HULK SMASH

Second half:
"I love you"
"But I love dinosaurs"
"I'm pregnant"
And they lived happily ever after.

Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: Listener on January 22, 2008, 02:08:38 PM
I didn't care for this story.  I kept waiting for it to get good, but between Renee's pro-creationism, Joel's arrogance, and Stu's mania, and then the mention of the trip to New York?  I kept feeling like this was going to be a story where one or both of them sees 9/11 happen.

I also figured out pretty early that Marcy was the time traveler.

Steve played Marcy very well, but I didn't like the voice he chose for Stu.  Usually the main character in a Steve reading gets Steve's normal voice, but in this one, he used the "deep" voice.  It distracted me because -- owing to my experience listening to Steve readings -- I kept waiting for a main character to show up.

I just plain didn't buy the story.

First half:
"The bone must be x because I say it is."
"That's crazy, it must be y"
"You're both insane, it is clearly z"
HULK SMASH

Second half:
"I love you"
"But I love dinosaurs"
"I'm pregnant"
And they lived happily ever after.



That's so very accurate.  And it's why I didn't like the story.  It took a crazy turn in the middle, and the epilogue felt uselessly tacked-on.

IMO, not one of the best EPs.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: Jhite on January 22, 2008, 03:36:04 PM
I liked this one.  It was pretty good.  I liked the idea that someone that could do so much potential damage to the time line could only be allowed to time travel once they were dead.  What I didn't get was how he figured out it was his wife.  I guess sheer deduction.

It was a good story but despite my love of a good time travel story, this one I just could not really get into all that much probably was the title.  It kept distracting me.  Does anyone remember the papers that came out a few years ago saying that the Brontosaurus was actually two or thee dinos put together?  A hoax to get a paper published.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: gelee on January 22, 2008, 08:50:44 PM
I enjoyed the story, but the use of the term "brontosaurus" aged it a bit.
Beyond that, I really don't want to pick on the writer for not knowing more than me about the subject.  Realy, isn't that all it would take?  If somebody started babbling gobledy-gook about particle physics at me, I'd just have to shrug and take him at his word.  If good science were a requirement for good fiction, there would be no James T. Kirk, and that would be a damned shame.
As to the actions of the scientists, I didn't have any trouble with the way they reacted.  Scientists are human.
Strictly speaking, they each failed to uphold the ideals of rationality and objectivism that the scientific method demands.  To mangle a phrase, to fail is human.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: Jhite on January 22, 2008, 09:03:19 PM
If good science were a requirement for good fiction, there would be no James T. Kirk, and that would be a damned shame.



Thanks.
James T. Kirk :) LOL
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: ajames on January 24, 2008, 12:03:51 PM
I liked this one.  It was pretty good.  I liked the idea that someone that could do so much potential damage to the time line could only be allowed to time travel once they were dead.  What I didn't get was how he figured out it was his wife.  I guess sheer deduction. .

The clue that Stu finally realized was that there were all of those pictures of the discovery spot [before the discovery], without any particular reason for them -- remember that he said he knew no-one was hanging around the spot before the discovery because of all the pictures of the spot.  So the person taking the pictures must have known something no-one else did about the spot.  And that person was his wife.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: gelee on January 24, 2008, 12:55:09 PM
If good science were a requirement for good fiction, there would be no James T. Kirk, and that would be a damned shame.



Thanks.
James T. Kirk :) LOL
Hey, Jim Kirk is/was the effing man, and my personal hero.  He was like King Arthur, James Bond, and George Washington rolled into one body.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: Roney on January 24, 2008, 11:00:54 PM
I was hooked by the start of this one.  The setup of the impossible discovery was intriguing: what would the explanation turn out to be if we really found a fossil human bone?  Then, step-by-step, the story threw all that goodwill away, for reasons already well covered by other posters to this thread.

The only other highlight was the depiction of Stu's selfishness.  His instinctive belief that his reasons for wanting to abandon the marriage to go time travelling were superior to his wife's sounded very human.

The rest was, at best, mediocre.  The underlying problem seemed to be an attempt to cram far too much into one very short story.  (It reminded me most of John Crace's column "The Digested Read" in The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/): here's his distillation of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (http://books.guardian.co.uk/digestedread/story/0,,2133299,00.html) and The Children of Hurin (http://books.guardian.co.uk/digestedread/story/0,,2064264,00.html) for a flavour.)  If the focus really was meant to be the love story, I'd rather have seen more words given to it at the expense of the unconvincing arguments between the scientists.  That could easily have been left off-screen.  How's this?

Quote
Stu dropped onto the couch.  "We got nothing at all done today," he said, as much to himself as to his wife.  "Again.  Joel's convinced that we're the victims of a hoax and Renee's taking the bone as proof of creationism, of all things.  All they do is argue about it, making the same tired points over and over until they've entirely drained my will to live."

At least the reader might mentally fill in the blanks with some dialogue that sounds more like real scientists.

One other clunker that hasn't been mentioned so far is the whole point of Marcy's trip to the past.  Like Listener, I was concerned that the story was building to a clumsy handling of 9/11, but that would almost have been preferable to what we got.  A speech that somehow ushers in a new era of peace, love and understanding for all humanity?  Right.

But yay! Jonathan Coulton again.  And I think the song did have some relevance to the story.  They both addressed the dangers of letting the pursuit of a dream get in the way of making the most of what you already have.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: contra on January 24, 2008, 11:13:41 PM
I don't think I liked this story. 

No.  Thats wrong.  It didn't make an impression and I have no idea why.  I love time travel stories; especially people working out things about it.  This just missed for me...

Odd.  Hmmm.  I can't pick up on anything specific that I didn't like.  Maybe its all just what has been said so far.

At any rate it reminded me of Chronoclasm by John Wyndham....
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: DKT on January 24, 2008, 11:43:55 PM
This story amused me more than I thought it would.  I found the previous discussion about the scientists interesting.  I do think they were painted as caricatures, for the most part, and that was the author's intention.  The creationist-bent one had purlple hair and a nose ring.  The guy who destroyed the fossil had a goatee.  They definitely felt like caricatures.  It didn't bother me like it did some others.  That said, eytanz (I think) brought up a good point point about scientists not waiting to figure out what does this mean, but would just publish the thing.

The real stumbling point for me was that I knew knew knew as soon as the story started that Stu was going to end up being the guy in the fossil.  That's like a rule for these kind of stories.  (There was also a story with a similar twist rule on Drabblecast recently, I believe.)  I thought the way he got there was clever, but I still knew that somehow, someway Stu was going to go back in time and end up in the belly of a dinosaur.

So all in all, I thought it was an amusing story while I was listening to it, but not one of my favorites here.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: CammoBlammo on January 25, 2008, 02:00:37 AM
I liked this one.  It was pretty good.  I liked the idea that someone that could do so much potential damage to the time line could only be allowed to time travel once they were dead.  What I didn't get was how he figured out it was his wife.  I guess sheer deduction. .

The clue that Stu finally realized was that there were all of those pictures of the discovery spot [before the discovery], without any particular reason for them -- remember that he said he knew no-one was hanging around the spot before the discovery because of all the pictures of the spot.  So the person taking the pictures must have known something no-one else did about the spot.  And that person was his wife.

That's obviously correct, but it leaves us asking how Marcy knew the femur was going to be discovered. The scientists kept the discovery quiet and the evidence was destroyed before it could be made public, so there would have been little record of the discovery for the future. Even if there was, Marcy's brief was to gather information about the speech in NYC, which was sidetracked by her longer than expected stay in C21 and her falling in love with Stu. Why was she so obsessed with the dig?

The only explanation I can see is that her C21 self communicated with her younger, future self. She would have had told her to hook up with Stu, get him obsessed with time travel and bear a son to invent it. If that were the case, there were no accidents---she planned it all (and made some pretty big sacrifices) in order to make it happen.

Or have I missed something?

(For the record, I enjoyed this story, but I did notice a few of the problems others did. I hate it when I come to the forums and realise the story wasn't as good as I thought!)
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: eytanz on January 25, 2008, 08:04:26 AM
Well, if her son was really the inventor of time travel, he could have been pretty famous. Maybe he wrote an autobiography (or said in multiple interviews) that the reason he invented time travel is because he knew it was possible, and give his father's discovery as evidence (and though the bone itself was destroyed, not all photos and such were - it may not be useful to prove people of Stu's time it wasn't a hoax, but it would be possible to convince people who already knew time travel existed). He might also have left out the details about his mother being a time traveller, for various reasons. So, she might be going back to witness the famous event that led indirectly to the discovery of time travel without knowing what her role in the events was.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: Russell Nash on January 25, 2008, 11:39:08 PM
Sorry i got to this one kind of late guys.  I hope the off-topic arguement didn't keep down the discussion of the story itself.  I moved the disection of scientists here (http://forum.escapeartists.info/index.php?topic=1319.0).
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: Russell Nash on January 25, 2008, 11:49:16 PM
It was like watching a Jerry Bruckheimer film except not as stupid.

Total bubblegum.  I wasn't in the mood for a hard piece and I choose to listen to this because of the title.  It was what I wanted at that moment.  I enjoyed it for the time I was listening to it and then I spit it out.  I mean, I deleted it.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: CammoBlammo on January 26, 2008, 07:38:29 AM
Well, if her son was really the inventor of time travel, he could have been pretty famous. Maybe he wrote an autobiography (or said in multiple interviews) that the reason he invented time travel is because he knew it was possible, and give his father's discovery as evidence (and though the bone itself was destroyed, not all photos and such were - it may not be useful to prove people of Stu's time it wasn't a hoax, but it would be possible to convince people who already knew time travel existed). He might also have left out the details about his mother being a time traveller, for various reasons. So, she might be going back to witness the famous event that led indirectly to the discovery of time travel without knowing what her role in the events was.

I get that, and historical transmission is one of the ways the future Marcy could have received information from her earlier-but-older self. We're still left with a puzzle though. There are three ways things could have played out.


This third possibility (or range of possibilities) is probably the best way to read around the problems in the text, but it also raises sticky (but not problematic) causality issues. She must have been aware that she played an important part in these events and in the very invention of the technology that got her there in the first place. How did the pictures she took affect the future, ensuring the invention of time travel and thus her presence in C21 and the femur? Did she aid more in the invention of time travel than bearing and raising the inventor? Or did she slip him a look at the machine and a few technical details to get him started? And if that were the case, who invented time travel? Why didn't she stop the destruction of the femur? Or was she aware of alternate endings to the story that weren't as good? Or was she using her knowledge of the situation as little as possible, just letting be where she could? All of those paradoxes that beset time travel stories seem to raise their heads, detracting from a good premise.

Getting off the topic, I like well written time travel stories. Can anyone suggest any that manage to escape these sorts of problems? I remember the writers of Stargate Atlantis managed an interesting attempt involving Elizabeth Weir. Others?

edit: Fix formatting of bullet points.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: qwints on January 26, 2008, 08:56:10 AM
It was like watching a Jerry Bruckheimer film except not as stupid
I didn't like the story, but it was nowhere near Jerry Bruckheimer.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: Russell Nash on January 26, 2008, 12:10:41 PM
It was like watching a Jerry Bruckheimer film except not as stupid
I didn't like the story, but it was nowhere near Jerry Bruckheimer.

I was kind of tongue in cheek comparing it to the way Bruckheimer uses magic technology and has no concept of science.  I submit Armageddon into evidence.

Help me out here.  Didn't the son say he wasn't able to make time travel possible.  I kind of read the ending to mean someone else would do it in the future.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: eytanz on January 26, 2008, 02:33:23 PM
Help me out here.  Didn't the son say he wasn't able to make time travel possible.  I kind of read the ending to mean someone else would do it in the future.

I may be misremembering, but I think the son just said he didn't get it finished before Stu died, implying that he's do it eventually.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: Talia on January 26, 2008, 06:48:39 PM
Not a fan.

There wasn't a single well-drawn character in the entire story. None of the dialogue between characters was (to my mind) at all believable; it seemed just thrown out there as a way to perpetuate the plot with no thought given to how people actually interact. The emotional aspect of things just didn't affect me at all, because I just couldn't come to care about Stu in the least. He came off as a delusional nutcase, just as much a caricature as the other two irritatingly unbelievable pseudo-scientists. I'm not sure if his relationship with Marcy was meant to be a cornerstone of the story, but if so, he should have developed it more. One little cheesy anecdote about how they met and them repeatedly gushing over eachother does not paint much of a portrait of a relationship.

So yeah. The concept of the story and general plot points were interesting enough, but the delivery just didn't do it for me.





Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: Loz on January 29, 2008, 10:32:36 AM
I did enjoy this story although by no means is it the best story ever or anything like that. In many ways it felt like a journey done many times before or listening to an old album, you don't get anything new out of the experience but there's pleasure in following a well worn path. Definitely a point in it's favour is it's an Escape Pod story rather than a Pseudo Pod one, if it had been written for the latter then the point where Stu confronts his wife about being a time traveller would have been followed with him messily butchering her with a kitchen knife and then spending the rest of the story living in his attic with insufficient gusset support.

But having said that, I had a problem with a number of the characters. I think we needed more of a development of Marcie's character before she reveals she is a time traveller. After all, Stu is basing his accusation on the fact that she went to New York and, shock, something happened. I never knew New York was such a dull town. It's not really up there with discovering who Keyzer Soze was is it? And Renee's sudden conversion to Creationism is a story idea that suddenly disappears so abruptly I wondered why it was introduced in the first place, while Joel is given the shortest shrift in the story for being the voice of reason. The facts as presented do not support either a hypothesis of time travellers or man coexisting with dinosaurs and no effort is made to give enough depth to the characters to make their jumping to conclusions understandable, even if it's bad scientific method. Perhaps if they were all enthusiastic amateurs rather than, apparently, accredited scientists?

I also can't help but feel that, considering how obsessed Stu is about finding a way to the past, it can't have been too pleasant for Chris to grow up as his son, surely Stu would have tried to guide him towards more scientific fields of study, always checking up on him to see if that day was the day he invented a time machine. It doesn't seem to be of a piece with what Chris says at the end about him. And I'm hoping that someone sometime writes a time-travel story where the mystery isn't due to the central character going back in time a la La Jetee or Twelve Monkeys.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: robertmarkbram on January 29, 2008, 12:21:05 PM
I found this story highly entertaining and humorous story. Five minutes into piece and my step daughter says "Wouldn't it be ironic if the bones were his?" It was clear from the start of the story that it was written with a tongue deftly in cheek - creation, hoax or time travel!
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: Monty Grue on January 29, 2008, 05:42:51 PM
Every now and then parts of a story make me gag.  The declarations of love between Stu and Marcie could have been lifted out of a dime o'dozen romance paperback.  Arrrghhhorra!  I'm certain my wife would look at me like I was an idiot if I ever talked like that.

Other criticisms mentioned before are valid. 

I know from the beginning the femur was Stu's, but at least there was an interesting twist to how it got there.  Overall, give it a Meh - .
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: Roney on January 29, 2008, 11:07:53 PM
This third possibility (or range of possibilities) is probably the best way to read around the problems in the text, but it also raises sticky (but not problematic) causality issues.

Oh dear.  You've awakened the terrible time travel pedant in me.  (I've been trying to keep him asleep.  You wouldn't like him when he's argumentative.)

I was trying to treat this as a ST:TNG-level time travel story: it's nominally about some magic called "time travel", but it doesn't ask for nor deserve any kind of scrutiny of the internal logic.  I stick my fingers in my ears and pretend that time travel was never mentioned.  CammoBlammo's unanswered questions reveal that it's exactly this kind of story. :(

Actually, I had wondered whether the use of "Brontosaurus" was a deliberate indication that the story takes place in a counterfactual timeline.  In which case we could probably explain away some of the time travel paradoxes by saying that the future that Marcie came from was on a different branch from the future she ended up in.

(My inner time travel pedant's starter for ten: why is multiple universe / branching timeline time travel incompatible with narrative drama?  Your first bonus question: given the answer to the starter question, why do authors keep on using it?  Sorry.  Like I said, he's argumentative.)
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: Tango Alpha Delta on February 02, 2008, 05:30:38 AM
Two comments, one quibble:

1) All sins of character, errors in science, awkward lurve dialogue, and logical weaknesses were absolved by the line "she looked as though she had added two plus two, and gotten... a green plastic fish".  (feel free to fix that if you have the quote handy)


2) All of that imagination, and the color of a brontosaurus is "green"?  He's pushing a time travel theory... he could at least see them in electric chartreuse, or paisley.


Q) I don't think it was spelled out, but they established that the femur was modern human through... DNA testing?  If it was a modern human, there would be a lot one could tell from the results, without necessarily having to "match" the bone to a known individual.  Of course, if you felt, as I did, that Stu thought the bone was his, anyway, couldn't he have done a quick test to see?  Or did Stu not take any DNA to the office that day?
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: bolddeceiver on February 02, 2008, 06:10:33 AM
Generally, lithified fossil material contains either no DNA, or very occasionally highly fragmented bits.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: Thaurismunths on February 02, 2008, 04:50:16 PM
Q) I don't think it was spelled out, but they established that the femur was modern human through... DNA testing?  If it was a modern human, there would be a lot one could tell from the results, without necessarily having to "match" the bone to a known individual.  Of course, if you felt, as I did, that Stu thought the bone was his, anyway, couldn't he have done a quick test to see?  Or did Stu not take any DNA to the office that day?
I don't think he suspected the bone was his, I think "modern human" was only speaking anthropologically.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: Tango Alpha Delta on February 02, 2008, 05:46:42 PM
Thanks, bolddeciever... that's what happens when I base a scientific question on my mis-remembered reading of Jurassic Park!  (On a side note, why does every person who tries to convince me that "the science behind global warming is faulty" point to Crichton's fictional screed about global warming, and never to an actual scientist?)


Q) I don't think it was spelled out, but they established that the femur was modern human through... DNA testing?  If it was a modern human, there would be a lot one could tell from the results, without necessarily having to "match" the bone to a known individual.  Of course, if you felt, as I did, that Stu thought the bone was his, anyway, couldn't he have done a quick test to see?  Or did Stu not take any DNA to the office that day?
I don't think he suspected the bone was his, I think "modern human" was only speaking anthropologically.

Okay, if you say so; I thought there was a scene after Renee and Joel (or whomever) stomped out where Stu looked down at the bone and grew convinced that it was literally his.  I wasn't sure if he really suspected that it was, or was just running with his delusions.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: Thaurismunths on February 03, 2008, 01:13:08 AM
Thanks, bolddeciever... that's what happens when I base a scientific question on my mis-remembered reading of Jurassic Park!  (On a side note, why does every person who tries to convince me that "the science behind global warming is faulty" point to Crichton's fictional screed about global warming, and never to an actual scientist?)


Q) I don't think it was spelled out, but they established that the femur was modern human through... DNA testing?  If it was a modern human, there would be a lot one could tell from the results, without necessarily having to "match" the bone to a known individual.  Of course, if you felt, as I did, that Stu thought the bone was his, anyway, couldn't he have done a quick test to see?  Or did Stu not take any DNA to the office that day?
I don't think he suspected the bone was his, I think "modern human" was only speaking anthropologically.

Okay, if you say so; I thought there was a scene after Renee and Joel (or whomever) stomped out where Stu looked down at the bone and grew convinced that it was literally his.  I wasn't sure if he really suspected that it was, or was just running with his delusions.
Hmmm... I might be wrong. I'll have to go back and check it out.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: Russell Nash on February 05, 2008, 01:13:13 PM
Thanks, bolddeciever... that's what happens when I base a scientific question on my mis-remembered reading of Jurassic Park!  (On a side note, why does every person who tries to convince me that "the science behind global warming is faulty" point to Crichton's fictional screed about global warming, and never to an actual scientist?)


Q) I don't think it was spelled out, but they established that the femur was modern human through... DNA testing?  If it was a modern human, there would be a lot one could tell from the results, without necessarily having to "match" the bone to a known individual.  Of course, if you felt, as I did, that Stu thought the bone was his, anyway, couldn't he have done a quick test to see?  Or did Stu not take any DNA to the office that day?
I don't think he suspected the bone was his, I think "modern human" was only speaking anthropologically.

Okay, if you say so; I thought there was a scene after Renee and Joel (or whomever) stomped out where Stu looked down at the bone and grew convinced that it was literally his.  I wasn't sure if he really suspected that it was, or was just running with his delusions.
Hmmm... I might be wrong. I'll have to go back and check it out.

They could tell just by looking at the bone it was modern.  There are physical charactoristics that seperate modern femurs from earlier ones. 

I think he just started getting a gut feeling that it might be his.  I also think that  he created this feeling in himself out of his desire to see the dinosaurs.  If the bone was his, he gets to see dinosaurs.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: wakela on February 06, 2008, 02:08:16 AM
This is one of the rare examples of me liking a story more before reading the discussion.

I missed when the story established that the bone was Stu's.  In fact I remember them dismissing the possibility early in the story.  I forgot how, but I remember, "Well, that alleviates one overused science fiction cliche." Or something like that.  I chuckled because I had just heard the Drabblecast story that did not alleviate the cliche.

The problem I had with the story was that it seemed like too much of a coincence that Marcy comes back in time to see the speech in New York City, and accidentally meets and marries the one guy who finds proof of time travel ... or am I missing something. 

Oh, and I hate it when people deliberately wait until someone is dead to honor their request.  "He would have wanted it this way."  Screw that.  He would have wanted this ten years ago! ... and I thought the time travel device was tuned to her body chemistry, anyway.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: Tango Alpha Delta on February 06, 2008, 03:53:05 AM
... and I thought the time travel device was tuned to her body chemistry, anyway.


Ah!  A point I wasn't confused about!  I forget the exact wording, but I'm pretty sure she explained that she couldn't send "living organic" matter.

(Now I say that, and I am wondering whether the exact wording made sense...)
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: Czhorat on February 06, 2008, 11:45:45 AM
The problem I had with the story was that it seemed like too much of a coincence that Marcy comes back in time to see the speech in New York City, and accidentally meets and marries the one guy who finds proof of time travel ... or am I missing something.

You could make this work.

Because he met a woman from the future, it was possible for his bones to go back in time.
Because his corpse went back in time, his femur ended up as a fossil.
Because his femur ended up as a fossil, he became interested in time travel.
Because he became interested in time travel, he figured out that his wife was a time traveller.
Because he figured out his wife was a time traveller, his corpse went back in time.

They key, as in most time travel paradoxes, is that cause does not have to precede effect.

The story still didn't work for me.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: DDog on February 11, 2008, 04:43:31 AM
I liked this story while I was listening to it, and although I accept many of previous commenters' concerns, I still like it. I had a post planned in my head but I've forgotten it since listening to the episode last week. It was a little distracting at first to have another character named Stu (hearkening back to "Stu" on an earlier episode).

The story had some subtle details that I enjoyed very much. I liked the language a la "green plastic fish"--a great twist on the traditional "2+2=5" and worthy of Discordian adoption. I also thought that Marcy's rebuttal to Stu's feelings of betrayal about her being a time traveler was excellent and very real.

I think there was more depth in the side characters than it seems at a surface listening. I thought it was interesting that Renee's purple hair and (eyebrow? nose?) ring disappeared as soon as she decided to spin the bone as evidence of creationism—somehow she was taken seriously as a (female!) conventional scientist with an idiosyncratic appearance, but decided she would not have the same luxuries as a creation scientist. Joel sounds like an idiot to many of us for saying Renee can't be right because it contradicts evolution, but there are scientists that do see the world that way and have somehow forgotten the lessons in the scientific method from high school biology.

Steve's comments on "Flaming Marshmallows and Other Deaths" about the attraction and importance of science fiction to young readers I think is very well served by this story. The guy with the seemingly sci-fi ideals turns out to be right. He doesn't get exactly what he wants, but a potential is created in the world for his dreams, just because someone thought them. Doesn't that happen all the time? And it's only more likely as information and dreams and ideas are disseminated more widely. Somewhere, somewhen, there is someone who can make your sci-fi dreams come true; even if you can't do it yourself, you can put the idea out there and eventually someone will get your sci-fi earworm and make it happen. It may not be wrapped up as nice and neat as needing a time traveler and PRESTO your wife is one, but it happens.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: eytanz on February 11, 2008, 08:15:45 AM
I think there was more depth in the side characters than it seems at a surface listening. I thought it was interesting that Renee's purple hair and (eyebrow? nose?) ring disappeared as soon as she decided to spin the bone as evidence of creationism—somehow she was taken seriously as a (female!) conventional scientist with an idiosyncratic appearance, but decided she would not have the same luxuries as a creation scientist.

I interpreted that a bit differently - I thought that the reason her appearance became more conventional was because she had switched to a more conservative outlook and thus no longer found her own earlier appearance acceptable.
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: Planish on February 21, 2008, 10:36:13 AM
I too found the debate between the scientists totally implausible.  What scientist wouldn't put a finding like that out to the rest of the world as soon as possible and simply say, "I don't know what this means, but damn if it isn't interesting!"

I guess they didn't pay enough attention to Asimov:
Quote from: Asimov
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!', but 'That's funny ...'
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: jodymonster on February 21, 2008, 08:28:47 PM
Quote from: Asimov
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!', but 'That's funny ...'

Great quote! Thanks for putting that one out there.
I know these points have been made before about this story, but still;
I think I would have enjoyed this story more if I hadn't heard the very similar Drabblecast story right before.  Even without hearing the Drabblecast, it was still a predictable ending.  And I wish they had used any dinosaur name other than Brontosaurus. For me, the use of this misnomer kinda ruined the whole thing.  I couldn't take the science of the story seriously, and without that there wasn't much of a story left.  One word can mean so much. 
Title: Re: EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Post by: Unblinking on September 14, 2010, 04:47:11 PM
I didn't care much for this one

1.  Any time a bone is found in a time travel related story, my first assumption is that it is that own person's bone.  This is probably due to some heavy Philip K. Dick reading, such as his short story The Skull. 

2.  The scientists didn't sound like real scientists as others have pointed out.  Great, all three of you have different theories, but none of you have solid evidence of it.  So, instead of arguing and sabotaging your own data, maybe you should LOOK FOR MORE EVIDENCE.  And the first step to doing that, as others have again pointed out, is to publish in order to GET FUNDING.  Admit the possibility that it might be a hoax or a mistake, but it's still a big enough thing that someone with money is likely to be interested.

3.  I just didn't really care what happened to anyone.  All of the characters were about 1/2 dimensional, and none of them ever felt like real people.