Dragon Con Postmortem

TL;DR: It was one of the best experiences of my professional life. I banished the inner introvert for a week and met so many incredible people - authors, artists and most of all readers.

Have a bunch of pictures! In order (hopefully):

1) Ready for prime time? The books were, at least. I'm happy to report that I almost sold out of both Starshine and Exin Ex Machina.

2) Me, dressed as a pirate and imbibing some liquid courage so I could go dance on a stage in front of people, all to support the wonderful literary cosplay Page to Stage Costume Contest , organized by the utterly heroic Cisca Small. Not pictured: one eyepatch.

3) Heinlein: The Later Years. I had the incredible honor of speaking on this panel with two absolute legends of science fiction, Larry Niven and Gregory Benford. Nathan Ameye and I soaked in all the stories they told, and it was a joy to hear about the impact Heinlein had on so many in the audience.

4) The Future Is Now - Predictive SciFi. With a panel that included renowned scifi author (and terrific human being) Chuck Gannon and a repeat appearance by Gregory Benford, there was no way this wasn't going to be a stimulating, challenging and insightful hour of lively discussion and debate, and it delivered in spades.

5) Dune. We tried to get Kevin J. Anderson to simply talk for the entire hour, but the moderator insisted on the rest of us pitching in. So we talked about ornithopters in action and how they managed to fit so many, ah, 'lovely' people into the film. Also a little about that book the movie was based on....

76,703 steps were taken, or ~14.5 miles. Dozens - nay, surely hundreds - of incredible people were met. I'll never forget it!

...and I'll probably do it again next year.

Originally posted on Facebook (with more pictures)

The Light of Jupiter

Webb slays us once again by turning its infrared camera toward the giant of the solar system. We've got auroras, we've got moons, we've got rings! Most of all, we've got enough ethereal beauty to pang the heart and bring tears to the eyes.

“Webb Telescope Sees Jupiter and Its Auroras in a New Light”: https://www.universetoday.com/157261/webb-telescope-sees-jupiter-and-its-auroras-in-a-new-light/

Originally posted on Facebook.

Meeting Your Heroes

So at Dragon Con (it's almost here!), I'm doing a panel on "Heinlein's Later Years." I've reread the books falling under this rubric and taken extensive notes in prep for the panel. Today, I found out who my co-panelists will be....

Larry Niven and Gregory Benford. (Yes, this is a thing that is going to happen. Smelling salts and Valium can be directed to my email address.)

In light of this new information, I have made a few revisions to my notes for the panel.

Originally posted on Facebook.

Logarithmic Map of the Observable Universe

This is wicked cool! The image is so tall, I had to cut into 4 pieces, so follow the link and check out the full image.

"A Logarithmic Map of the Entire Observable Universe": https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/map-of-the-entire-known-universe/

Originally posted on Facebook.

Zero Draft

And that is a wrap on the Zero Draft of DUALITY!

Why a 'Zero Draft' and not a 'First Draft'? Well, because this jumble of words is not yet worthy of the label 'First Draft.' It's a chaotic mess (and not in the intentional, book title "Chaotica" way). Scenes are in the wrong order - a LOT of scenes. They're clumped together all willy-nilly. Essential scenes are definitely missing, but I won't know what they are until I get the ones that exist in the *right* order. And until I do that, the narrative thread that runs from beginning to end and makes a novel a cohesive whole isn't in place yet. There are enough brackets to build the Empire State Building with.

BUT, all the scenes in my outline have been written. And that's over 108,000 words! Wowza. If you were expecting Duality to be a bit shorter, sorry to disappoint.

And I am now so, SO excited to whip this beast into shape and share the incredible conclusion to the Riven Worlds story with you all!

Originally posted on Facebook.

Midjourney

Have you all heard of Midjourney AI? It's an AI art generation platform that is now available for everyone to try out. Twitter and Instagram are overflowing with some really incredible art it's producing (and also some very weird stuff).

The trick with it, though, is figuring out the right inputs to feed it in order to get the result you're looking for. I was, in a word, sucking at this. But my friend and fellow sci-fi writer EJ Fisch has already become an expert at it, so she was kind enough to do Alex for me. Pretty damn cool, right?

Here's a good overview of the tool: https://www.pcworld.com/.../midjourneys-ai-art-goes-live. And if you want to sign up, go here: https://www.midjourney.com/home/ (you'll need a Discord account to use it).

Originally posted on Facebook.

Happy 10th, Curiosity!

Who's the bestest little rover?

10 years ago today, a jetpack lowered NASA’s Curiosity rover onto the Red Planet, beginning the SUV-size explorer’s pursuit of evidence that, billions of years ago, Mars had the conditions needed to support microscopic life.

Since then, Curiosity has driven nearly 18 miles and ascended 2,050 feet as it explores Gale Crater and the foothills of Mount Sharp within it. The rover has analyzed 41 rock and soil samples, relying on a suite of science instruments to learn what they reveal about Earth’s rocky sibling. Curiosity’s mission was recently extended for another three years, allowing it to continue among NASA’s fleet of important astrobiological missions.

This gorgeous poster is courtesy of Justin Van Genderen, and you can download it here: https://mars.nasa.gov/.../curiosity-10-years-of-martian.../

Learn more about Curiosity's 10 years of exploration here: https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/home/

Originally posted on Facebook.

Sci-Fi Humble Bundle

I am so excited to share that the Aurora Rising Collection is part of a brand new Humble Bundle! I think it's the first sci-fi book collection they've done (but don't quote me on that). The deal runs through 8/25.

Yes, yes, you already have the AR ebook. But check out the company it's in! Frank Herbert, Brandon Sanderson, Alan Dean Foster, Robert J. Sawyer, Kevin J. Anderson, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Lindsay Buroker & more. This is a special collection.

The charity being supported by this bundle is "First Book," which is a nonprofit social enterprise that provides new books and educational resources to programs and schools serving children in need. You can learn more about them here: https://firstbook.org

If you're not familiar with the Humble Bundle organization, their mission is to support charity while providing awesome content to customers at great prices. It works like this: you pay what you want (and get more titles the more you pay), and they donate a portion of each purchase to charity.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/starsofscifisummer-books

Originally posted on Facebook.

Webb & the Cartwheel Galaxy

Well this is just ridiculous. What an incredibly cool galaxy! This image is dancing with color and verve and motion. There's a party going on in this sector of the universe.

“NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has peered into the chaos of the Cartwheel Galaxy, revealing new details about star formation and the galaxy’s central black hole. Webb’s powerful infrared gaze produced this detailed image of the Cartwheel and two smaller companion galaxies against a backdrop of many other galaxies. This image provides a new view of how the Cartwheel Galaxy has changed over billions of years.

“The Cartwheel Galaxy, located about 500 million light-years away in the Sculptor constellation, is a rare sight. Its appearance, much like that of the wheel of a wagon, is the result of an intense event – a high-speed collision between a large spiral galaxy and a smaller galaxy not visible in this image.” Learn more here: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/webb-captures-stellar-gymnastics-in-the-cartwheel-galaxy

Originally posted on Facebook.

Jupiter's Polar Vortices

“As NASA’s Juno mission completed its 43rd close flyby of Jupiter on July 5, 2022, its JunoCam instrument captured this striking view of vortices — hurricane-like spiral wind patterns — near the planet’s north pole.

“These powerful storms can be over 30 miles (50 kilometers) in height and hundreds of miles across.” Learn more here: https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/jpl/nasa-s-juno-mission-spies-vortices-near-jupiter-s-north-pole

Originally posted on Twitter.

M74 Grand Design Spiral Galaxy, Courtesy of Webb

M74 Grand Design Spiral Galaxy, 32 million light-years distant, imaged by Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument and processed to draw out *even more detail* by Judy Schmidt. You can check out her awesome Flickr page here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/geckzilla/with/52225196953/

Lots of science detail regarding what Webb is doing here: https://www.universetoday.com/.../heres-m74-like-youve.../.

I'm honestly not sure any of us were truly prepared for the images Webb is going to throw our way. How could we be?

Originally posted on Facebook.

GS Watches Sci-Fi

Yes, my insistence on a season being complete before watching it means I'm a little late to the party. Sorry, Netflix spoiled me.

Wasn't Star Trek: Strange New Worlds simply lovely? It didn't change the world (in fact, one of the plot threads is about not changing the world) of Star Trek or the nature of entertainment. But it was excellent viewing - and most of all, it was fundamentally STAR TREK, representing the best of everything the IP has stood for. I would call it "classic Star Trek with modern sensibilities." Tons of cool space wonders and dangers, with a dynamic captain full of personality and verve.

*Spoilers for the season finale follow.*

That finale was a bit of a gut punch, though, wasn't it? I confess, I initially flinched at the message it conveyed - that taking the high road of diplomacy is the wrong choice that can cost millions of lives. I'm sure they weren't trying to say that's always true, but in this case....

I found the final conversation between Pike and Kirk to be quite enlightening, though. I think Miriam would have liked to have joined them in that discussion, as those are the difficult choices she gets to make for the world.

***

Obi-Wan Kenobi! It was better than I'd been led to believe (I know opinions are wildly divided; this is mine). Solidly very good, and at times great.* Ewan McGregor was of course incredible; he always is. And Vivien Lyra Blair as Leia was somehow even better than advertised.

Where I found it most interesting was as a story of living under an oppressive, powerful empire; as a story of refugees simply trying to survive and fighters (of all kinds) refusing to give up hope. I think the smaller scope gave it an opportunity to tell this story that grand, sweeping space opera doesn't have.

Yes, it was absolutely hemmed in on all sides by canon (and violated canon a few times anyway); I feel like much of the criticism stems from people wanting a show that it simply could not be.

*One quibble. Did Episode 5 have to rip-off the final act of The Last Jedi so blatantly? I cringed.

Favorite line: "Leia, I'm not giving you a blaster - you're 10 years old. But you won't always be."

Originally posted on Facebook.

Trillions and Trillions

"Forget billions and billions. When it comes to the number of galaxies in the Universe, both theorists' and observers' estimates are too low."

- OR -

"Why the science in my books will inevitably become dated by increased knowledge with the passage of time, and there's nothing I can do about it."

Alex uses the "approximately two hundred billion galaxies" in the books, because that's been the best estimate available to us. Now we're talking about 6 trillion? TWENTY trillion???

I can imagine a lot - I'm paid to imagine a lot! - but I think we've found my limit here. What is the universe, even?

P.S.: I'm thinking I can use this number going forward, the justification being that the Kats have a better estimate than we did. But chasing the advance of science is probably a game I can't win - which is fine; I'm just glad it's advancing!

“There are more galaxies in the Universe than even Carl Sagan ever imagined”: https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/galaxies-in-universe/

(As an aside, I am amused that this article uses as its header image a “simulated galaxy catalog providing a snippet of sky that might correspond, statistically, with what James Webb expects to see.” I’d say Webb outperformed expectations by a wide margin!)

Originally posted on Facebook.

Behold the Power of This Fully Operational Webb Telescope

This first image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date. Known as Webb’s First Deep Field, this image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 is overflowing with detail. Thousands of galaxies – including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared – have appeared in Webb’s view for the first time. This slice of the vast universe covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground.

The other images released are as follows:

1. The Cosmic Cliffs of Carina (oh, you lovely, wondrous spectacle of a creation!)

2. Stephen's Quintet

3. Southern Ring Nebula

4. Wasp-96 b atmospheric composition

If I posted all their details here this post would get quite long. But, you can go here: https://www.nasa.gov/webbfirstimages to download the high-res images and more. Just click on each image, and you’ll be taken to a page full of details about the target, what the image shows and how Webb captured it. Highly recommended!

Originally posted on Facebook, (2).

Saturn's Rings

Well this is just insanely beautiful. Cassini was an absolute legend.

From Jason Major on Twitter: “Here's a view of Saturn's rings made from images captured by #Cassini on July 4, 2008. Prometheus is visible inside the F ring at the bottom, as is Atlas at left along the outer edge of the A ring. Spoke structures can be seen within the B ring. Saturn's shadow is at upper right.”

https://twitter.com/JPMajor/status/1411694496010719235

Originally posted on Twitter.

Webb Images Coming Soon, and They're Tearjerkers

Get the tissues ready on July 12, guys. NASA is ramping up the anticipation of the first real Webb images to 11, and we've still got a week to go!

“NASA scientists say images from the Webb telescope nearly brought them to tears”: https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/06/nasa-teases-extraordinary-images-captured-by-its-webb-telescope/

Originally posted on Facebook.

Hello, Mercury!

The ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission captured this beautiful view of Mercury’s rich geological landscape on June 23, 2022 as the spacecraft flew past the planet for a gravity assist maneuver. 

The image was taken by the Mercury Transfer Module’s Monitoring Camera 2, when the spacecraft was within about 920 km from the surface of Mercury. Closest approach of about 200 km took place shortly before.

Read all about the details of the image here: https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2022/06/BepiColombo_surveys_Mercury_s_rich_geology

Originally posted on Twitter.