A Most Sci-Fi of Problems

We don’t have enough rockets! As detailed by Ars Technica, the world faces a significant shortage of rockets over the next five years. Between now and 2030, there will be a shortfall of about 150 launches compared to demand from satellite operators and civil space agencies.

Demand for rockets outstripping supply may be the most sci-fi problem we've ever had. I realize it's a genuine problem that needs solving, but I love it! This is the future I signed up for. I'd say someone needs to write a sci-fi story about a scrappy, upstart group of engineers who launch an impossible project to build powerful, cheap rockets at scale...but by the time the story gets written, it likely will have already happened.

SpaceX showed the way. Writing near-future sci-fi has become an impossible task. And frankly, I love that, too.

Article: https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/10/analysts-find-looming-launch-crisis-is-more-severe-than-anticipated/

Image credit: SpaceX

A character-drive saga

One of the things I'm most proud of is how in my books, the story is driven above all by the characters. They don't just have agency - they use their agency to manhandle the universe into compliance. The plot arcs aren't about events "happening", they're about the characters manifesting those events.

...yes, Naked Singularity has a lot going on.

The State of Traditional Publishing

Upon seeing the article screencapped below, I went on a bit of a rant on X this week….

“Independent/self publishing has been the best choice for most authors for at least a decade. But now?

When the editing and marketing staffs and budgets of the traditional publishers have been gutted?

When, unless you're a million-dollar unicorn, you're lucky to get a contact at the publisher you can email?

When your best roulette spin at brick-and-mortar fame is two weeks with your book's spine jammed between all the rest before it's chucked into a black hole, and the contract to finish the series you pitched never arrives?

When the publishers have handed the very work their reputation for "expertise" is built on over to AI, and it's inventing hallucinated quotes from your own book (and your 2nd-grader can prompt better)?

To aspiring authors, I say this as gently as possible: let go of a romantic dream that hasn't existed in the real world for a long time, if it ever did. If you truly want to share your stories with the world, embrace independent publishing.” https://x.com/GSJennsen/status/2115602183098122556

To wax philosophical a bit more here: I’m a techie. While many legitimate concerns exist that need to be wrangled, I think AI has tremendous potential to transform our lives for the better. But one of the things AI does is put the power in an individual’s hands. It weakens the case for turning over your book and publishing journey to a huge, faceless corporation in Manhattan and strengthens the case for taking control of your career for yourself.

Screencaps courtesy of Zito.

Rest in Peace, Sir Stewart

Patrick Stewart was a consummate gentleman and a tremendous actor. I’m so grateful that he brought these wonderful characters to life for us. Rest in peace, good Sir.

The End of Bioware

It's a sad day over here in this house, as news breaks that Electronic Arts is shutting down Bioware. Yes, us Bioware fangirls and boys have been worried about the future of Mass Effect and of Bioware for a while now, so I can't say it's a surprise, as such. But it's a tragedy all the same.

Had Bioware become a shadow of the studio it once was? Unfortunately. But we all hoped they'd find their way back to their former greatness. KOTOR, NWN, DA:O and DA:I were all revolutionary games that transformed their genres. But more importantly, they crafted stories and characters that have remained with us many years after we met them.

And Mass Effect? Well, Mass Effect changed my life. Its mind-blowing world showed me the possibilities of science fiction storytelling; its characters leapt off the screen and straight into my heart. It provided me thousands (yes) of hours of immersive, exciting and heartfelt gameplay. It gave me a protagonist in Shepard like none I'd ever met before, or since.

But most of all, it made me a writer. The story, characters and world were so damn compelling, I had to extend their adventures beyond what the games gave me. And we all know what that led to....

So I owe Bioware a great deal indeed. Yes, in recent years CDPR and Larian have stepped up to follow in their enormous footsteps, and do it well, and I'm very grateful we have them to continue telling the kinds of meaningful stories I love.

But there will never be another Bioware.

P.S.: The day after the announcement, a (bitter?) Bioware dev linked an internal trailer for the in-progress next Mass Effect game, so we can all know what we’ll never have :( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dkyS6XhlJs

Steam Wishlist

My Steam Wishlist is just an eternal stream of games that looked really interesting when I encountered them, only for me to realize I lack time to play them even as sale after sale comes & goes, & they inevitably exit the list once I still don't buy them when they drop to $5.

Happy Birthday, Alex

October 17th was our acerbic, sharp-witted, slightly recalcitrant heroine’s birthday. So Happy -260th Birthday to Alexis Mallory Solovy Marano, daughter of Commandant and Commander Solovy, first Prevo and savior of humanity four times over. Think she can make it five?

A Powderkeg of Personalities

A few days ago, I had reasons to revisit this scene from near the end of Continuum, and it made me smile. Three powerful personalities thrown together to clash against one another at a moment of intense crisis.

And it hits a bit different once you know what you know....

Halloween S-XPO

I had a great time at the Halloween S-XPO in Spokane this weekend. Ghosts, goblins - and books! I brandished a minimally compliant Halloween costume - I was a Celestial, can't you tell? I had a stellar tiara and everything….

Library App

Whelp, I'm officially a vibe coder (whether late to the party or fashionably early, I'm not sure). I took pictures of our home library and gave them to my Hermes agent. It built a SQLite db of all the books shown. We then used the db to build a local web app to view and interact with the library. And it's rather awesome.

It displays a selection from the library or selected genres or authors on 3 shelves. Book detail pages show the cover, title, author, format (trade pb, mm pb, hardback, special edition), publication year, links to the book's Goodreads and Wikipedia (if it exists) pages, where it's located in our library (based on the photos I took), whatever additional notes we want to add, plus what other copies of the book we have and other books by the author that we own.

Now, let the feature creep begin! A lot of the work still to be done involves improving the cover art. The agent largely pulled stock/common cover art that often doesn't match the specific edition on the shelf, so multiple copies mean repetitive covers. But it's super-easy for us to update a cover from within the app, via multiple methods. I also want to drill down on the genres a bit (for instance, I threw all non-fiction together, and I definitely want a "Science" category). I'm debating pulling in the book description from Goodreads, but I don't want to make the book detail page too cluttered.

Take a look and shout if you have an idea for an improvement or feature I should add!

Spellbound Spokane

Did my first ever outdoor event on Saturday. The weather Friday was terrible, so I was worried, but yay for sunshine.

P.S.: Is the Naked Singularity cover marked out? Yes, yes it is. Guys, this cover is SO AMAZING - it’s my favorite of all 25. When you see it for the first time, I want it to be in high-res, stunning color, not some tiny thumbnail.

Vintage Foundation

Mr. Jennsen scored these lovely vintage Foundation paperbacks for me this weekend. I'd never seen this particular cover art before!

Starship Test Flight 14

Starship has gone full orbital for the first time! Test Flight 14 successfully inserted Ship into orbit (to be distinguished from the sub-orbital flights up until now), where it deployed 26 fully function V3 Starlink satellites (these things are monsters) then orbited the Earth several times before performing a controlled re-entry and soft splashdown. The booster also executed a successful soft splashdown.

The Starlink deployment means this is the first money-making flight for Starship; the first of a great many. Tower catch attempt of the booster, the Ship, or both next flight? Maybe/probably?

It was a stunningly beautiful morning for a rocket launch.

Minor issues: one Raptor engine shut off early on each of the booster and Ship. The craft are designed to compensation for losing an engine, and the failures ultimately didn't impact their ability to achieve the test objectives.

Image credits:

Image 1: Analis Beckerman, https://x.com/gatewaytomarz/status/2104599714993988006

Image 2: Max Evans, https://x.com/_MaxQ_/status/2104556154831745029

Images 3 and 4: SpaceX

We Are Stardust

A beautiful sentiment from Carl Sagan, but also literally true.

How much energy?

Alex side-eying Type V like it owes her money.

#nocontext #NakedSingularity

The Notebook

Road trip means it's time to bring out THE notebook. The one in which, way back in 2015, I brainstormed Aurora Renegades and Resonant. Then, on the next road trip, Asterion Noir. About 2 years ago, Shadows & Light (sorry not sorry for that final scene tease ).

And now, the next saga.

Vacation Report

What an incredible vacation our trip to Seattle for PAX West was! Allow me to spam you with 154 - I mean 8 - photos.

Seattle brought its A-game, and the weather was absolutely gorgeous. I *know* it's usually overcast and drizzly, but 3/4 of our visits, the weather's been great. Makes it difficult not to move there...but I know better, dammit.

Despite the fact that PAX has grown into a juggernaut of a worldwide gaming convention empire, it honestly felt exactly the same as it did when we attended 14 years ago. A heavy emphasis on small, independent PC gaming studios, tabletop gaming and TCGs. Tons of playable demos, tournaments and freeplay for fun.

There weren't many AAA game studios there, but we did go to a jaw-dropping The Witcher 3 panel, where we saw half an hour of gameplay from the upcoming Songs of the Past expansion. And Mr. Jennsen got to immerse himself in the nostalgia of his beloved '80s adventure games at a panel with Sierra Online alumns, including Jane Jensen (no relation, lol, but I did write about her Gabriel Knight series just a few weeks ago), and the FMV gaming retrospective museum.

Somehow, despite visiting Seattle at least 5 previous times over the years, we had never gone to Pike Place Market. Why didn't anyone tell us how cool it is? Fresh fish and flower stands, hidden alleys with quirky stores full of genuinely unique items, endless levels that wind down to the waterfront.

10/10, do recommend. Good show PAX. Good show, Seattle.

Pictures:

1) How much fun did I have? This much fun.

2) and 3) Seattle was seriously showing off all weekend.

4) Then and Now: me playing game demos at PAX in 2012 and 2026. Not much has changed, lol.

5) Do I have a weakness for giant robots shooting lasers in space? YES I DO.

6) I somehow did not know that this game released earlier this year. It's a survival/strategy/base builder game, and you get to play as Janeway. YOU GET TO PLAY AS JANEWAY.

7) Golden Age Collectibles at Pike Place Market. This is one of the coolest stores I have ever had the pleasure of entering. At first glance, you think they have the standard geeky memoriabilia and trinkets you find at every geek store or convention. But no; 80% of the items, I had never seen anywhere before. We made out like bandits.

8) BLMF Literary Saloon (also at Pike Place Market). When you walk in, it looks like just another hole-in-the-wall used bookstore. It is not. You wouldn't believe the SF gems hiding in this chaos. Interesting astronomy/physics books, too! And I assume all the other genres. The owner was delightful & displayed ready knowledge of any book we mentioned (including its location in the store if he had it). He and Mr. Jennsen geeked out over Neuromancer - then he and I geeked out over Foundation. What a wonderful store!

So there you go. Now to finish the first draft of Naked Singularity!

The Next Great Telescope Is Up and Away

The Nancy Grace Roman space telescope successfully launched this week on a Falcon Heavy rocket. Deployment went smoothly, and the craft is operating nominally and talking to NASA.

Roman will travel to the Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2, where it will use two instruments — the Wide Field Instrument and the Coronagraph Instrument — to search for exoplanets, dark energy, and other astrophysical phenomena. The WFI will capture images with the same resolution and clarity as Hubble, but has a * 100x * larger field of view, and the Coronagraph will allow the telescope to detect and see exoplanets better than any telescope in operation.

When it arrives at its L2 orbit, testing and calibration will begin. Expect the first real images in early 2027.

The telescope is amed for Nancy Grace Roman, an astronomer and NASA’s very first Chief of Astronomy in the 60s and 70s. Among many other achievements, she is responsible for getting Hubble off the ground-- not literally off the ground and into space, of course, but championing the project and driving the early planning of it.

Launch image credit: Andrew McCarthy (https://x.com/AJamesMcCarthy/status/2094042714580951147). Other images credit: NASA.

The Not So Small Starship That Could...Float

A month ago, I posted about Starship’s successful Test Flight 13, including how the ship most improbably survived its soft landing and belly flop into the ocean. Well, after weeks of nail-biting drama as recovery vessels rushed to the scene then tugged the mammoth vessel through rough seas, it has arrived in calm, sheltered waters off Christmas Island (Australian territory in the Indian Ocean). SpaceX engineers have conducted exhaustive on-scene analysis of the ship (you know how SpaceX loves data on what went right and wrong, so they can do it better next time).

And now a 48,000-ton semi-submersible named FORTE has arrived, and the ship is being loaded onto it. When it’s secure, they will begin another mult-week journey back to Starbase, Texas. Once there, you can believe engineers will pore over every square centimeter with an electron microscope (more or less).

What an incredible story - and incredible images! I can’t believe that such a massive vessel floats so well, and so high in the water.

Gabriel Knight

I've talked often about how important the Mass Effect video games were to my becoming a writer. But long before there was Mass Effect, there was Gabriel Knight. Gabriel Knight 3, to be precise.

My husband was a lifelong PC gamer and Sierra Online fanatic, and GK1 and 2 had already won multiple Game of the Year awards and much critical acclaim. But me? I was an attorney, a former bookworm who no longer had much desire to read, write, or generally have any fun whatsoever. Well, GK3 came along, and he saw his chance. He wooed me in with teasers of a fabulous mystery, vampires, the Holy Grail, and a female computer nerd as a playable secondary main character. So I gave it a try.

I was enraptured! I devoured the game, twice in a row - the first video game I'd played since Super Mario Bros on the NES. Enraptured enough to then go back and play GK1 and 2, both equally incredible stories. So why were they incredible? A couple of reasons, but above all, due to creater and writer Jane Jensen. She envisioned telling complex, nuanced, novel-worthy stories within the medium of video games - then figured out how to do it.

Right person, right idea, right time. The Gabriel Knight trilogy spans several leaps in the technological capabilities of video games, from the 2D point-and-click adventure style of GK1, to the industry's brief (and weird to our modern eyes) experiment with full-motion video in GK2, to the arrival of 3D graphics and a free camera in GK3. Each leap forward gave Jensen more tools with which to tell a deeper story, and she took full advantage of them all. The gameplay of each installment can be clunky to modern gamers (each one in its own particular way), but the stories are as rich and compelling as anything we have today.

I didn't rush off to embrace my inner writer immediately upon completing my Gabriel Knight binge. But I DID become an avid video gamer because of it, and the first spark of creativity, that in time burnt away the lawyerly outer shell, was lit. And when Mass Effect crashed into my life 8 years later, I was ready for what happened next.

Why do I post this today? Because journalist Elías Casella has published an excellent deep dive into the making of these games and how their development interwove with Jane Jensen's journey, the rise and fall of Sierra Online, and the technological leaps that transformed PC gaming in the 1990s. If you are at all interested in this topic, give it a read: https://www.421.news/en/gabriel-knight-sierra-games-en/