Pixel Scroll 4/22/20 Then Curl Up On The Pile And Sleep For A While, It’s The Scrolliest Thing, It’s The Pixel Dream

(1) DRAGON CON STILL ON SCHEDULE. Dragon Con told Facebook readers today they are proceeding with plans for their Labor Day event.

Many things in the world are uncertain right now. One thing isn’t: We are planning to throw one sorely-needed, amazing celebration come Labor Day. We’re moving forward to keep #DragonCon2020 on schedule.

Currently, there are no plans to reschedule or cancel the event, however we’re keeping in touch with the experts either way, and working with our venue partners to make sure everything and everyone stays safe, happy, and healthy.

Rest assured if at any time we feel that cannot be accomplished, we will do what is needed to protect our community.

(2) POPPING OFF. Gideon Marcus used a clever theme to pull together Galactic Journey’s review of the latest issue – in 1965 – of F&SF: “[APRIL 22, 1965] CRACKER JACK ISSUE (MAY 1965 FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION)”.

I’m sure everyone’s familiar with America’s snack, as ubiquitous at ball games as beer and hotdogs.  As caramel corn goes, it’s pretty mediocre stuff, though once you start eating, you find you can’t stop.  And the real incentive is the prize waiting for you at the bottom of the box.  Will it be a ring?  A toy or a little game?  Maybe a baseball card.

This month, like most months recently, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction is kind of like a box of Cracker Jacks.  But the prize at the end of the May 1965 issue is worth the chore of getting there.

(3) PATREON’S UNLUCKY NUMBER. “Patreon lays off 13% of workforce” reports TechCrunch.

Creative platform Patreon  has laid off 30 employees, which is 13% of its workforce, TechCrunch has learned.

“It is unclear how long this economic uncertainty will last and therefore, to prepare accordingly, we have made the difficult decision to part ways with 13% of Patreon’s workforce,” a Patreon spokesperson said in a statement to TechCrunch. “This decision was not made lightly and consisted of several other factors beyond the financial ones.”

…The startup ecosystem has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, with layoffs no longer the exception, but the rule. Still, it’s peculiar timing for Patreon, given the company touted an increase in new memberships during the first three weeks of March….

(4) VISITOR FROM BEYOND. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Jeff Hecht (who’s sold sf stories everywhere from Analog, Asimov’s and Interzone to Nature and various anthologies — ) has an article in the April 21, 2020 Sky & Telescope on recent interstellar visitors: “The Origins of Interstellar Objects”.

…Comet Borisov was easy to recognize as a comet, but our first interstellar visitor, 1I/’Oumuamua, was like nothing astronomers had seen before. It was elongated, tumbling erratically, porous, moving oddly, releasing only wisps of gas — even evoking thoughts of derelict alien spaceship….

In terms of SF relevance (beyond “we also are interested in science fact stuff”), Jeff notes, regarding this article, “The only SF twist was saying they finally found a way to explain the origin of ‘Oumuamua other than as an alien spacecraft.”

(5) MOORCOCK REVEALED WHEN PAYWALL FALLS. Stacy Hollister’s “A Q&A With Michael Moorcock” is an interview with Michael Moorcock about his novel King Of The City that first appeared in the November 2002 Texas Monthly, which has lowered its paywall for the rest of the year.

texasmonthly.com: What’s your mission as a writer?

MM: I’m very moralistic. I think I bear a certain responsibility for the effect of the fiction I write. Anger at injustice, cruelty, or ignorance is what tends to fire me up. I try to show readers where we might all be wearing cultural blinders. I hate imperialism, so therefore much of my early work was an attempt to show admirers of the British Empire, say, what kind of injustice, prejudice and hypocrisy such an empire is based on. I am very uneasy with current Anglophone rhetoric about responsibilities to other parts of the world, for instance. King of the City deals with some of this, especially the destruction of African society by imperial rapacity.

(6) SMALL SHOW RECAP – BEWARE SPOILERS. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] Last night on DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, the time ship ended up in British Columbia in 2020 and ended up in a woods which ultimately led them to the set of Supernatural.  They didn’t see any members of the cast, but they did see Sam and Dean’s car and opened the trunk, which was full of monster-fighting equipment.  They then used the equipment to fight a bunch of zombie-like creatures, and learn the creatures have killed the crew shooting Supernatural.

“How will they finish season 15?” one of the legends asks.

Well, now we know why Supernatural still has seven episodes left to shoot…

(7) ENTERTAINMENT FOR SJW CREDENTIAL OWNERS. Martin Morse Wooster, our designated Financial Times reader, peeked behind the paywall and found that in the April 17 issue Sarah Hemming reviews fiction podcasts.

Nadia, star of Russian For Cats (created by Pam Cameron), has escaped from prison and is desperately seeking refuge.  She discovers it with Brian, a loser who lives in a caravan in a state of great disorder and despondency.  When Nadia arrives, he finds a confidante and she finds sanctuary.

The only thing is, Nadia is a cat:  a talking cat fluent in Russian.  Here’s a story ideally suited to lockdown :a gently absurd thriller, featuring a chatty feline, the chance to learn Russian (a short lesson follows each episode), and a sinister explanation for popularity of cat memes.  Is your cat spying on you?  Do you need to ask?

(8) MT. TSUNDOKU CALLS YOU. Steven Cooper today made the Asimov biblioraphy that was referenced in the Scroll a few days ago available to purchase as a print-on-demand book from Lulu — An Annotated Bibliography for Isaac Asimov. Thanks to Bill for the discovery.

(9) CASEY OBIT. Past President of the Philadelphia SF Society Hugh Casey died April 21 after a long illness, including a stroke. He is survived by his partner Stephanie Lucas.

In happier times Hugh made File 770 with this humorous incident from 2002:

Philadelphia SF Club President Hugh Casey almost made his show business debut in September. “I was supposed to be checking out an alternate location for meetings, but was unable to make it due to being held up in traffic. In fact I ended up driving into the middle of filming for Kevin Smith’s upcoming movie Jersey Girl – apparently disrupting a shot and getting some crew members very angry at me. I did not see either the director or the stars.”

In 2017, when Casey battled cancer, his friends rallied to raise money for his medical expenses by creating “HughCon”

…The Rotunda has donated their space, Star Trek-themed band The Roddenberries have donated their time and talent, a number of makers and vendors have donated items for our silent auction, and a lots of people have donated their time and effort 

(10) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • April 22, 1953 Invaders from Mars premiered. It directed by William Cameron Menzies and produced by Edward L. Alperson Jr. from the script written by Richard Blake with the story by John Tucker Battle.  It starred Jimmy Hunt, Helena Carter, Arthur Franz, Morris Ankrum, Leif Erickson, and Hillary Brooke. Invaders from Mars was nominated for a Retro-Hugo at Noreascon 4 but lost out to The War of The Worlds. Critics at the time liked it quite a bit, and At Rotten Tomatoes, it holds an approval rating of 82% among audience reviewers. You can watch it here.
  • April 22, 1959 The Monster Of Piedras Blancas enjoyed its premiere. It was produced by Jack Kevan who started out as a makeup artist on The Wizard of Oz as written and directed by Irvin Berwick who was associate produced later on for The Loch Ness Horror. The screenplay was by H. Haile Chace It starred Jeanne Carmen, Les Tremayne, John Harmon, Don Sullivan, Forrest Lewis, and Pete Dunn. It received universally negative criticism with most calling it amateurish with the script, dialogue, and monster design being noted s being bad. It holds a not terribly bad 33% rating among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes. You’re in for for a special treat as you can see it here.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born April 22, 1902 Philip Latham. Name used by Robert Shirley Richardson on his genre work. His novels were largely first published in Astounding starting in the Forties, With the exception of his children’s SF novels that were published in Space Science Fiction Magazine. He also wrote a few scripts for Captain Video, the predecessor of Captain Video and his Video Rangers. His Comeback novel starts this way: ‘ When Parkhurst heard the announcement that climaxed the science fiction convention, he found that he’d been right, years ago when he had faith in science-fictionists’ dreams. But, in another way, he’d been wrong . . .’ It’s available at the usual digital suspects for a buck. (Died 1981.)
  • Born April 22, 1934 Sheldon Jaffery. An editor and bibliographer of pulps whose non-fiction Work and genre anthologies are both fascinating. Among the latter are such publications as Sensuous Science Fiction From the Weird and Spicy Pulps and The Weirds: A Facsimile Selection of Fiction From the Era of the Shudder Pulps, and from the former are Future and Fantastic Worlds: Bibliography of DAW BooksThe Arkham House Companion: Fifty Years of Arkham House and Collector’s Index to Weird Tales. (Died 2003.)
  • Born April 22, 1937 Jack Nicholson, 82. I think my favorite role for him in a genre film was as Daryl Van Horne in The Witches of Eastwick. Other genre roles include Jack Torrance in The Shining, Wilbur Force in The Little Shop of Horrors, Rexford Bedlo in The Raven, Andre Duvalier in The Terror, (previous three films are all Roger Corman productions), Will Randall in Wolf, President James Dale / Art Land in Mars Attacks! and Jack Napier aka The Joker in Tim  Burton’s The Batman. I watched the last one, was not impressed.
  • Born April 22, 1944 Damien Broderick, 76. Australian writer of over seventy genre novels. It is said that The Judas Mandala novel contains the first appearance of the term “virtual reality” in SF. He’s won five Ditmar Awards, a remarkable achievement. I know I’ve read several novels by him including Godplayers and K-Machines which are quite good.
  • Born April 22, 1967 Sheryl Lee, 53. Best remembered as being cast by David Lynch as Laura Palmer and Maddy Ferguson in Twin Peaks and in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, and reprised in the later Twin Peaks. Her other interesting genre role was playing the title role in Guinevere based on Persia Woolley’s Guinevere trilogy. Finally, she was Katrina in John Carpenter’s Vampires for which she won the very cool sounding Fangoria Chainsaw Award for Best Supporting Actress.
  • Born April 22, 1977 Kate Baker, 43. Editor along with with Neil Clarke and Sean Wallace of the last two print issues Clarkesworld. She’s won the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine twice, and the World Fantasy Award (Special Award: Non Professional) in 2014, all alongside the editorial staff of Clarkesworld. She’s a writer of three short genre stories, the latest of which, “No Matter Where; Of Comfort No One Speak”, you can hear here. (Warning for subject matters abuse and suicide.)
  • Born April 22, 1978 Manu Intiraymi, 42. He played the former Borg Icheb on the television series Star Trek: Voyager. A role that he played a remarkable eleven times. And this Birthday research led me to discovering yet another video Trek fanfic, this time in guise of Star Trek: Renegades in which he reprised his role. Any Trekkies here watch this? 
  • Born April 22, 1984 Michelle Ryan, 36. She had the odd honor of being a Companion to the Tenth Doctor as Lady Christina de Souza for just one story, “Planet of the Dead”. She had a somewhat longer genre run as the rebooted Bionic Woman that lasted eight episodes, and early in her career, she appeared as the sorceress Nimueh in BBC’s Merlin. Finally I’ll note she played Helena from A Midsummer Night’s Dream in BBC’s Learning project, Off By Heart Shakespeare.

(12) COMICS SECTION.

(13) BREAKTHROUGH. In the Washington Post, Michael Cavna profiles Steenz (pseudonym of Christina Stewart) and Bianca Xunise as two African-American comic strip creators who have broken into the world of newspaper comic strips, as Steenz has taken over Heart of the City and Xunise has joined the artists producing Six Chix. “Newspaper comics hardly ever feature black women as artists. But two new voices have arrived.”

“The ‘powers that be’ — white male editors at white publications — have kept folks of color to a minimum on their pages so as not to cause a stir. That’s the case still,” says Barbara Brandon-Croft, whose trailblazing strip “Where I’m Coming From” was distributed by Universal Press Syndicate from 1991 to 2005 — making her the first black woman to achieve national mainstream syndication as a cartoonist.

“You had to go to the black newspapers — as early as the ’30s — to find black characters drawn by black hands,” she says. ”And a black woman lead — what? Jackie Ormes’s ‘Torchy Brown’ was truly groundbreaking.” (Ormes, the first African American woman to have a syndicated comic strip, was elected to the Will Eisner Comics Hall of Fame in 2018.)

(14) KEEP THEM DOGIES MOVIN’. There’s money to be made! “‘The Mandalorian’ Season 3 Already in the Works at Disney Plus”.

The October premiere date for Season 2 of “The Mandalorian” may still feel like it’s far, far away, but pre-production has already begun on a third installment of the wildly popular Disney Plus series, Variety has learned exclusively.

Sources close to the production have confirmed that creator Jon Favreau has been “writing season 3 for a while,” and that the art department, led by Lucasfilm vice president and executive creative director Doug Chiang, has been creating concepts for Season 3 “for the past few weeks.”

…The Mouse House also has two others series from a Galaxy far, far away in the works, namely an Obi-Wan Kenobi series with Ewan McGregor reprising the iconic role, and a Cassian Andor series starring Diego Luna, which recently added Stellan Skarsgard and Kyle Soller, as Variety reported exclusively.

(15) RELIEF FOR COMICS STORES. “Comic Book Publishers Unite for Fund to Help Stores”The Hollywood Reporter runs the numbers.

As the comic book industry seeks to rebuild in the wake of store closures and publication pauses caused by the coronavirus outbreak, the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (BINC) is announcing the formation of a new fund specifically aimed at assisting comics, the Comicbook United Fund.

Combining the $100,000 pledged last year to BINC from the Oni-Lion Forge Publishing Group to support comic book retailers with the $250,000 pledged earlier this month by DC, the Comicbook United Fund is intended to be the central location for any and all figures and organizations hoping to raise money for comic book retailers.

(16) EMERGENCY. The roleplaying game designer Guy McLimore (FASA’s Star Trek: The Roleplaying Game, Mekton Empire, The Fantasy Trip) says he had to break social distancing for an exceptionally good reason:

(17) STEWARDS OF THE FUTURE. Wil Wheaton penned a visionary essay to accompany his voicing of a C.L. Moore audio story — “Radio Free Burrito Presents: The Tree of Life by CL Moore”.

…I’m sure, in her incredible, gifted, magnificent imagination, she never even considered for a second that, almost 100 years into her future, someone whose parents weren’t yet born would take her work, bring it to life in a unique way, and then distribute that new work to anyone who wants it, in the world, without even getting out of my desk chair.

What amazing thing is sitting just over our horizon? What amazing thing is waiting for our grandchildren that we can’t even imagine right now? Why aren’t we doing more to protect our planet and each other, so our grandchildren don’t have to live in some apocalyptic nightmare?

(18) RELIC. “Hawking’s family donate ventilator to hospital”.

Stephen Hawking’s personal ventilator has been donated to the hospital where he was often treated to help patients diagnosed with coronavirus.

The physicist, who had motor neurone disease, died in 2018, aged 76.

His family donated the medical equipment he bought himself to the Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge.

Prof Hawking’s daughter Lucy said the hospital was “incredibly important” to her father and Dr Mike Davies said staff were “so grateful” to the family.

(19) SPEAKING IN PARSELTONGUES. “Scientists discover a new snake and name it after Salazar Slytherin”CNN has the story.

A team of researchers from India, upon discovering a new species of green pit vipers, have decided to name the snake after the one, the only Salazar Slytherin. Their findings were published this month in the journal Zoosystematics and Evolution.

For those not familiar with Harry Potter, a quick history lesson. In a nutshell, Salazar Slytherin was one of the founders of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, along with his pals Godric Gryffindor, Rowena Ravenclaw and Helga Hufflepuff.

Along with being some of the most powerful witches and wizards of their time in the Harry Potter world, they’re also the namesakes of the four Hogwarts houses.

Slytherin, partly known for his ability to talk to snakes, is linked to the animals — the snake is, after all, the symbol of the Slytherin Hogwarts house. That’s why the researchers chose the name Trimeresurus salazar.

 (20) NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH. NBC’s Dallas/Ft. Worth affiliate sent a crew to capture this scene: “Stormtrooper Patrols Richardson Neighborhood With Coronavirus-Related Messages”.

A Richardson man who has had a lifelong love of “Star Wars” and particularly stormtroopers, took to the streets to bring a smile and an important message to his neighbors.

Rob Johnson dressed up as a stormtrooper and patrolled the sidewalks near his home carrying signs reminding people “Good guys wear masks” and “move alone, move alone.”

The stormtrooper shows a sense of humor too, with one sign reading, “Have you seen my droid, TP4U?”

(21) TV TIME. Edgar Wright’s doing a thing on Twitter:

Not specifically genre related but it looks fun. Here’s some relevant replies:

[Thanks to Cath Jackel, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, John King Tarpinian, JJ, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Chip Hitchcock, rcade, Bill, Daniel Dern, N., and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]

How Laser Weapons Stopped Being Science Fiction

By Jeff Hecht. Author of Lasers, Death Rays, and the Long, Strange Quest for the Ultimate Weapon, (Prometheus Books January 2019):

Pulp science fiction invented a host of directed-energy weapons: heat rays, death rays, blasters, ray guns and disintegrator rays. Lasers joined science-fiction arsenals soon after the Pentagon placed a million-dollar bet on the new idea in 1959. The brand-new Advanced Research Projects Agency was desperate for a defense against Soviet nuclear missiles when Gordon Gould walked in the door with a physically plausible plan to make a laser. Gould’s company got a fat contract, but Gould himself couldn’t get a security clearance to work on the laser. It was Theodore Maiman who launched the laser age when he made the first one in May 1960 at Hughes Research Laboratories in California.

Maiman was dismayed when newspaper headlines heralded his invention as a “science-fiction death ray.” His real-world laser was orders of magnitude short of the power needed to blast Soviet nukes out of the sky. Classified experiments reached tens of kilowatts in the late 1960s by burning chemical fuels in a gigantic flowing-gas system that acted like a rocket engine, but it couldn’t match the power of Star Trek phasers.

In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” program spent billions trying to make orbital laser battle stations, and managed to get a megawatt out of a building-sized laser for a few seconds at a time. But they never got a big laser off the ground. After the end of the Cold War, the Air Force crammed a rocket-engine laser into a Boeing 747, which got off the ground and bagged a few targets in 2010. But it was billions over budget and many years behind schedule, and was scrapped as useless for zapping nuclear missiles fired by rogue states.

However, tests of a smaller rocket-engine laser on the ground in the late 1990s held out a different hope. A joint U.S.-Israeli project called the Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL) could shoot down terrorist rockets before they could wreak havoc. The powers were only a few hundred kilowatts, but the targets were only in the kilometer range, not the thousands of kilometers needed to stop long-range nuclear missiles. Contractors planned how to repackage the five trailers of equipment used in THEL into a mobile rocket-blaster that could be driven to trouble spots. It seemed like a done deal until field operations experts took a look at the plans around 2000.

Logistics is crucial on the battlefield. Napoleon Bonaparte famously said “an army marches on its stomach,” but modern armies also need fuel and munitions. A laser is an appealing weapon because it fires bolts of energy, not expensive missiles that can run out in mid-battle. But chemically powered lasers need two fuels, one containing hydrogen and the other containing fluorine, and they produce highly toxic hydrogen fluoride. The field ops team gave them a thumbs down, but said they would be happy to have a laser that could run on electrical power from generators powered by the diesel fuel that is the ubiquitous source of energy on the battlefield.

Solid-state lasers that ran on electricity had come a long way in the forty years since Maiman made the first one. Some were used in cutting and welding, but their power was far short of the hundred kilowatt level needed to zap insurgent rockets. Yet Congress and the Pentagon could see their benefits, and in 2000 they created the High Energy Laser Joint Technology Office (HEL-JTO) with a mandate to build bigger and more powerful electric-powered lasers.

They planned to crank up the power in two steps to a laser producing the full hundred kilowatts for five solid minutes. Right on schedule, Northrop Grumman announced success. “We’re doing our part to make gunpowder a twentieth-century technology,” said Dan Wildt, head of the company’s laser weapon program, on a March 18, 2009 press teleconference. The laser reached 105 kilowatts, a shade above the desired output power, but its efficiency was a shade below the desired 20 percent. It was an impressive achievement. However, the laser weighed seven tons and filled a shiny metal box 2 by 2 by 2.7 meters, smaller than a 747, but too hefty and fragile for use on the battlefield. It also required banks of laboratory chillers because it generated over 400 kilowatts of heat as well as the 100 kilowatts of laser beam. So JTO pushed on toward more battle-ready lasers.

Meanwhile, industrial laser companies had made a breakthrough of their own by replacing old-fashioned laser rods and slabs with thin optical fibers loaded with light-emitting atoms. Fiber laser output powers had soared from around 100 watts in 2000 to tens of kilowatts in 2009. They were so powerful that military labs started buying welding lasers, bolting them onto battlefield vehicles, and adding beam-focusing optics and a joystick-based control stick for aiming the laser. Then they started firing.

The easiest targets were improvised explosive devices (IEDs) or unexploded munitions laying on around on a battleground. The drill was simple. Park the vehicle a couple hundred meters away, far enough that the shrapnel wouldn’t hurt anybody. Then turn on the laser and point the beam onto it. The infrared laser beam was invisible to the eye, but infrared viewers revealed it on the screen so the operator could point the beam. When the target was exposed on the surface, after a matter of seconds the explosive inside the shell would detonate with a satisfying BANG, and the driver could move along to the next target. That could be useful for clearing battlefields, although it was harder to deliver enough laser energy to explode well-buried land mines and IEDs.

The next step was moving targets. The Army Space and Missile Defense Command in Huntsville installed a five-kilowatt laser atop in a tank-like Stryker in place of the usual heavy gun. It zapped over 150 drones of various sizes before Boeing replaced it with a 10-kilowatt laser. The Navy targeted small boats. A video of one early test showed a boat with a large red outboard motor bobbing quietly on shallow water. Nothing seemed to happen as an invisible infrared laser beam from elsewhere locked onto the motor, but as the beam dwelled on the motor, it began igniting wisps of gasoline fumes, and the motor eventually went up in flames.

The Navy was the first service to officially “deploy” a laser weapon, installed on the aging warship the USS Ponce in 2014 before it went on duty the Persian Gulf. They bought five 5.5-kilowatt industrial lasers from IPG Photonics, the world’s biggest maker of fiber lasers, and hooked them up to a beam-focusing telescope. The laser wasn’t used in combat, but it did zap test drones and small boats, with impressive success.

Laser weapon system aboard USS Ponce in 2014.

Tests are continuing with more powerful lasers taking on more difficult targets. The Army installed a 60-kilowatt state-of-the-art fiber laser from Lockheed Martin in the High-Energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator, a standard military battlefield truck that Boeing has equipped with laser focusing optics and a command and control systems for use by soldiers.

The Navy is buying a pair of similar Lockheed advanced fiber lasers for a new system it calls HELIOS, for High Energy Laser and Integrated Optical-dazzler with Surveillance. In addition to zapping unfriendly small boats and drones, HELIOS will use its optical system to gather intelligence on its environment. It also will include a lower-power visible laser as the equivalent of the “stun” setting on a Star Trek phaser; it will shine so brightly that enemy troops won’t be able to look at it, making it hard for them to attack. One HELIOS will be sent to the Navy by 2020 for integration with the electrical and control systems of a new destroyer. The other will undergo extensive tests at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

Artist’s rendering of Lockheed Martins HELIOS system. Credit: Lockheed Martin (PRNewsfoto/Lockheed Martin)

The Air Force wants lasers for its top-gun fighter pilots, so it’s developing a laser weapon called SHiELD (for Self-protect High-Energy Laser Demonstrator). A cutting-edge Lockheed fiber laser will be mounted in a pod attached to fighter jets to defend against ground-to-air and air-to-air weapons. Initial tests are to start by 2021.

Meanwhile, tests are continuing on a radically different laser design called HELLADS, developed by General Atomic. One big attraction is a remarkably compact and light-weight structure made possible by cooling the laser solid with a flowing liquid with optical properties that match those of the solid so well that it doesn’t disturb the laser beam at all. Another attraction is a modular structure that can double the power by adding a second module, and potentially scale to much higher powers by adding more modules.

After decades of disappointment, this time looks different. Lasers that are more compact, more efficient and more powerful are only part of the story. It’s also focusing on targets that are much closer, so the beam has to go through less air, which isn’t as clear as we think. Look across a sunny blacktop parking lot at mid-day and you can see how air currents can bend light back and forth. Another difference is that drones and short-range rockets are much more vulnerable to laser attack than ballistic missiles hardened for re-entry into the atmosphere.

Nobody’s talking ray guns or phasers yet. A hand-held laser can’t pack lethal energy, although one could burn a blind spot on your retina. Think of these lasers as defensive artillery that can pinpoint enemy rockets, shells, drones and small boats.

Don’t expect these laser weapons to be standard combat equipment next year. The new generation of tests are needed to evaluate the lasers strengths and weaknesses, and to assess their lethality on real-world targets. If lasers pass those tests, they must be ruggedized to withstand battlefield conditions, which are far more harsh than a well-run factory floor. Then they must run a bureaucratic gauntlet to gain approval to move beyond research and development and become a “program of record” that spends buckets of money to produce hardware. That’s a real-world challenge Buck Rogers never had to face.