Good Morning from Manhattan Beach, 1970. Chap. 16, the IV of IV

[Robin Landseadel]

On Nov 29, 2009, at 3:26 PM, John Bailey wrote:

> "Like spacemen in a space ship, they were pressed violently into the
> seat backs as Tito engaged some classified performance feature, and
> outside the windows city neon began to lengthen in long spectral
> blurs, to shift toward blue ahead while in the black distances framed
> by Tito's mirror each point of light grew reddish, receded,
> converged."
>
> This is classic Pynchon - physics-related talk centring on the light
> spectrum and velocity and cars and, perhaps, time travel, but framing
> it in something from a trashy SF movie/tv show. The image of the
> points of light becoming lines reminds me mostly of Star Wars, but are
> there any more relevant references to older tv shows which created
> that image of hyperspeed or whatever through the same technique? I
> have a vague memory of it but I aint that much of a SF buff.

Let's reverse-engineer an intruder from the future—À la "Back To The  
Future" or "Against the Day"—with a classified performance feature  
right out of "Vineland"'s radar-proof paint job. Note that the passage  
is from chapter 14 and that when Tito drops off Doc at the beach in  
chapter 15, Doc's good & disoriented, thinks that Gordita Beach has  
been substituted for Manhattan Beach or some equally probable/ 
improbable alternate beach town.

Of course, that whole blue shift/red shift thing was played to death  
in Star Trek, one of Doc's favorite shows:

	Agent Borderline had taken out a folder and begun to look
	through it.

	"Hey, what's 'at you got there—" Doc angling his head amiably,
	Ronald Reagan style, to peer at it. "A federal file? on me? Wow,
	man! The big time!" Agent Borderline closed the folder abruptly
	and slid it into a pile of others on a credenza, but not before Doc
	saw a blurred telephoto shot of himself out in a parking lot,
	probably Tommy's, sitting on the hood of his car holding a
	gigantic cheezburger and peering into it quizzically, actually
	poking through the layers of pickles, oversize tomato slices,
	lettuce, chili, onions, cheese, and so forth, not to mention the
	ground-beef part of it which was almost an afterthought—an
	obvious giveaway to those who knew about Krishna the fry
	cook's practice of including somewhere in this, for fifty cents
	extra, a joint wrapped in waxed paper. Actually, the tradition
	had begun in Compton years ago and found its way to Tommy's
	at least by the summer of '68, when Doc, in the famished
	aftermath of a demonstration against NBC's plans to cancel Star
	Trek, had joined a convoy of irate fans in pointed rubber ears
	and Starfleet uniforms to plunge (it seemed) down Beverly
	Boulevard into deep L.A., around a dogleg and on into a patch
	of town tucked in between the Hollywood and Harbor
	Freeways, which is where he first beheld, at the corner of
	Beverly and Coronado, the burger navel of the universe....

	"What's that? I was lost in thought."

	"You were drooling on the desk. And you weren't supposed to
	see that file."
	
	IV, page 73

	Warp drive is a technology that allows space travel at faster-
	than-light speeds. This is accomplished by generating warp
	fields to form a subspace bubble that envelops the starship,
	distorting the local spacetime continuum and moving the
	starship at velocities that exceed the speed of light. These
	velocities are referred to as warp factors. Warp drive is the most
	common form of interstellar propulsion used in the Milky Way
	Galaxy, making interstellar exploration, commerce and warfare
	possible.

	24th century Federation warp engines are fueled by the
	reaction of matter (deuterium) andantimatter (antideuterium),
	mediated through an assembly of dilithium crystals, which are
	nonreactive with antimatter when subjected to high-frequency
	electromagnetic fields. This reaction produces a highly
	energetic plasma, called electro-plasma or warp plasma, which
	is channeled by plasma conduits through the electro-plasma
	system (EPS). The electro-plasma is funneled by plasma
	injectors into a series of warp field coils, usually located in
	remote warp nacelles. These coils are composed of verterium
	cortenide and generate the warp field.

	Other civilizations use different power sources, such as the
	Romulans' use of artificial quantum singularities to power their
	warp drives, but the basic process is similar. . .
	
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Warp_drive

	Temporal mechanics is the study of the workings of time and its
	effects on the space-time continuum, and is particularly relevant
	when dealing with time travel. As late as 2154, time travel was
	deemed impossible by the Vulcan Science Directorate. (ENT:
	"Awakening") The United Federation of Planets has had some
	form of time travel ability since at least 2268. It is possible that at
	least some of the current and future regulations regarding time
	travel can trace their origins back to this date. However,
	capability at this point was most likely inaccurate, making any
	attempt at time travel experimental and dangerous. Temporal
	mechanics is taught at Starfleet Academy. Julian Bashir took
	the class, where he learned about predestination paradoxes, as
	did Miles O'Brien. (DS9: "Trials and Tribble-ations") Both
	Kathryn Janeway and B'Elanna Torres knew the 'finer points' of
	temporal mechanics. (VOY: "Parallax")

	A historical research in 2268 suggests the Federation was
	capable of controlled time travel and used this ability at the very
	least for research purposes. (TOS: "Assignment: Earth")

	As of 2378, at least 40 different instances of some form of time
	travel had been noted in Federation records. Technologically
	speaking, the Federation's capabilities concerning time travel
	have for the most part remained unclear. . .

	http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Time_travel

On Nov 29, 2009, at 4:09 PM, Mark Kohut wrote:

> It is also classic for his poetic associations: "city  
> neon"...."spectral"
> ....'blue', that sad color that pervades Vineland....the 'black  
> distances'...and those points of light in the mirror......hints of  
> Brenschluss?.....

On Nov 29, 2009, at 4:15 PM, John Bailey wrote:

> True. And thinking about it, from my sunfaded memories of photography
> I recall that daylight is at the blue end of the spectrum whereas
> artificial light is more red - Doc and Tito are flying *towards* the
> day (though likely not grace).

 From in to out. From the permanent neon glare of Vegas Baby! to  
somewhere weird and too bright out in middle of the the desert—Area  
51? The nuclear test site range? That section east of San Berdoo'  
where Ben Hunter promised us vacation paradise in bright pink houses  
with year-long water-skiing?—From the safety of enclosure to the risk  
of wilderness. From "Inside" to "Outside." Perhaps "Towards Grace."