As the title above states, I have recently finished Rama II by Arthur C. Clarke, and am now on the third book of the Rama series. Although there is a fourth book, I have read it as my first book in the series and so after this book, I should have the whole story in place.
So, what’s so great about the second book? Well, I’d say it’s slightly better than the first book, as the beginning of the book immediately starts off with action (Just like most of Arthur C. Clarke’s books) in a simulation to capture a “biot” which is first named in the first book, Rendezvous with Rama which came from “biological robot” combined. The biots are basically robots which perform specific tasks, but in a much more higher technological aspect than what we would think. I was glad after reading parts of the book when I recognized Richard and Nicole, who would eventually become couples as I read the fourth book first and remembered their names, I knew immediately somehow they were gonna eventually know each other for good.
I think one of the things I love about Arthur C. Clarke’s books is the fact that he write them so well. Of course, this is kind of obvious as everyone usually says that about his/her favorite author. I love the science-fiction aspect of space involved, the action of the chase, hide, run scenes, and even the romance scenes. In most of his books, he has some romance involved to prevent the book from getting boring and making the story seem more realistic while you’re reading about fictional events.
So now I am reading Garden of Rama, the third book, and I think the “Garden” part of the title symbolizes romance, love, and mystery, since this book has had the most amount of love scenes and other interesting concepts involved in that. I think the interesting amount of Biology and Physics involved in the book have also encouraged me to keep reading, as it is something that I haven’t really been very fond of until this book with all the fun and excitement introduced some detailed concepts to it. I am about halfway through the book and will probably be done with it in a week or two. After that, I will give another detailed review with all four books, just like the Space Odyssey series.
Speaking of Biology and genetics, I have recently stumbled upon (with http://www.stumbleupon.com) something called “Gene Pool”. It is less a game and more of an experimental tool for playing with Mendellian Genetics. Of course, I wouldn’t be talking about it if it weren’t interesting, so I’ll explain it in more detail. “Gene Pool” can be downloaded at http://www.swimbots.com/ and consists of a group of “swimbots”, which are living organisms that move around based on their genetic makeup. So basically you have tons of swimbots “swimming” around looking for something to do. They are in two states, either Looking for a mate, or looking for food.
First off, they all have energy. In order to reproduce, they first need to find food, which are green pellets in this simulation. Once they have enough energy, they look for a mate. An “attractive” mate is one of similar color, although later, discussed below, you can change what makes something look attractive. So once they find a mate, they create an egg, which grows and becomes the genetic makeup of both their parents, some from mommy and some from daddy. Althought the swimbots don’t have gender, the idea is clearly visible. Sometimes both parent’s genes are expressed, sometimes there are mutations and there’s no resemblence to their parents. The showing of different genes being expressed by different creatures makes this program not only fun to play with, but also interesting.
The game shows how populations grow, evolve, and prosper. And sometimes, the least “fit” organisms will die off and leave the planet. The game has lots of aspects and variables to look at (Over 30 it looks like) and some are more efficient and physically fit to live than others. For example, some mutations where legs on both sides of the organism grow and move quickly back and forth will not cause the organism to move much. This is because the reverse motion of the current motion will cause it to move back to its previous position. If it cannot move, it is obviously a bad mutation and usually dies off. Also, groups try to fight for control of territory and food, and although they do not kill each other, them eating other’s food will cause organisms from the other tribe to die. Over time, you can see which populations survive for the longest time.
Enough talk, if you want to play it, head to http://www.swimbots.com and download it and play around with it. The interface is kind of clunky, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll try different things. I have included some screenshots of my current “Pool” and my population and food count chart. I usually just let this run while doing other things and see how life has progressed for them. You can watch as I regularly post what’s going on with my population! The graph is very useful too! It lets you see what happens when populations get overcrowded, and what happens once things settle down. It’s like a never ending pattern towards equilibrium. I just love how this game implements the very basic biological factors of life into this game! Anyways, enough chitter chatter, here’s some screenshots.
This first screenshot show my current pond as a whole, and you can barely see all the little critters. The green dots everywhere are the food pellets, and they just appear randomly. You can see there’s about 3 or 4 active tribes right now trying to fight for domination, although it looks like the red organisms are the best fit.
In the second screenshot, you can see our chart of how many creatures there are compared to food. Notice the trends of how both of them react when one or the other get really high.
So that about does it. Also, Fighter’s Field 3D is really coming through for me! The update is so big that I’m making it version 0.4, where the level cap is raised to lv49, 3 new skills per class, new quests, and areas, and a bunch more! I will be making posts on the Z-Gamers website in the near future! That is all for now, see you!
