Breaking News & Random Musings on Space, Technology, Sci-Fi & the View From A Writer’s Window
You guys did it again! CHAOTICA, which won the vote for Best Sci-Fi Book of 2022 (So Far) this summer, received enough nominations to reach the main voting round for best book of ALL of 2022. If you’re so inclined, go vote!
https://discoverscifi.com/the-best-sci-fi-books-of-2022-voting-round/
Originally posted on Facebook.
Wednesday was a banner day! I finished all of the following:
(1) most importantly, the deep scene-by-scene edit of Duality. YOU GUYS.
(2) Cyberpunk 2077, by taking V to space. Seriously, how cool is it that this was an option? Fun game - not life-changing, but fun.
(3) The pictured beautiful yet absolute monstrosity of a puzzle. 5,000 pieces, 5 months. 3.5 ft x 5 ft. It's been glued (puzzle glue is awesome), and #MrJennsen insists he will be able to surround it with some sort of "frame," so it can live on forever somewhere OTHER than my dining room table.
Can we take a moment to appreciate this gorgeous artwork, titled “Haegemonia” by Gergely Buttinger ("Skylow"): https://www.deviantart.com/skylow/art/Haegemonia-18016851?
Is this not Alex to a T? Specifically, Alex in Transcendence, taking a small spacewalk in the middle of a dramatic battle to break into an enemy superdreadnought and turn the tide of the battle in humanity's favor? Space is exploding around her, and she's all... "I'm coming for you. Try to stop me."
Originally posted on Facebook.
I'm excited to announce I will be a panelist at CosmoQuest-A-Con this weekend! The con will take place live on Twitch and Discord, Oct. 21-23.
Watch the Twitch panels for free here: https://www.twitch.tv/cosmoquestX , or grab a ticket and enjoy the Discord panels, backstage insider fun, a bunch of vendor halls, and contests, all while supporting CosmoQuest's science and science education activities: https://cosmoquest.org/x/cosmoquest-a-con-2022/ .
My schedule:
SATURDAY:
4:30pm EDT: You Should Be Reading These Books (Discord)
6pm EDT: Writing the Future (Twitch)
SUNDAY:
6pm EDT: So Cool and Yet So Terrible (Twitch)
(A discussion of the opportunities and harm of satellite internet megaconstellations. Are the benefits worth it?)
Webb has captured a lush, highly detailed landscape of the iconic Pillars of Creation using its near-infrared camera.
For comparison, see Hubble's visible-light view of the Pillars. Hubble's view highlights the presence and thickness of dust around the pillars, while Webb's infrared vision peers through that dust to unveil the stars and protostars within the dust.
Learn more and download here: https://esawebb.org/images/weic2216b/.
Well that was a scene and a half to edit!
On that note, if it seems a little quiet around here, with a bit less posting, that's because I'm editing. As in full-on, underwater deep-end editing. All the time. And, honestly, I'm going to be doing so for the rest of the month.
So send cookies and wine! I guess some food, too....
Originally posted on Facebook.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Europa. Thank you, JunoCam!
These and many more images from Juno's close flyby of Europa can be found (and downloaded) here: https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/processing?ob_from=&ob_to=&phases%5B%5D=PERIJOVE+45&perpage=16
I await your best 2010 memes.
Originally posted on Facebook.
NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirect Test (DART) crashed into the surface of an asteroid called Dimorphos at over 14,000 miles per hour. Researchers are hoping that the collision will change the asteroid’s orbit, speeding it up just a tiny bit (we won’t know how successful it was for a little while).
Neither Dimorphos, nor its larger companion, Didymos, pose any danger to Earth, but the experiment is designed to test whether or not a similar impact could make a difference if scientists ever discovered an asteroid that posed an imminent threat to life on Earth.”
Via https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/26/23371372/watch-nasa-dart-collision-asteroid
And everyone was watching. We’ve got visuals from the LICIACUBE cubesat that went along for the ride with DART, as well as from both Webb and Hubble!
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)
FYI, Supermassive Black Holes will be on hiatus for the next 2 weeks, as I’ll be at Dragon Con + traveling. See you in a few!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
