By any standard, the great thumping whack delivered by the Deep Impact probe on Comet Tempel 1 has to be considered pretty cool. I haven’t seen any video yet, but for full coverage of the mission, along with the “Top 10” still photos of the event, I suggest a side trip to http://www.space.com/deepimpact/. I can’t add anything useful to what they’ve said there, other than to wave people into the auditorium.
The impact does put me in mind, though, of John Bandicut’s (and Charlie’s!) game of cosmic billiards in the first book of my Chaos Chronicles: Neptune Crossing. In that case, they were out to demolish an errant comet that threatened Earth—and using the same nifty alien technology that got them to the comet, convert the energy from the impact into a spatial translation that zipped our friends off to Shipworld, out at the edge of the galaxy. We’re not to that point in our technology yet, alas. But maybe someone like the quarx Charlie will come along and help us out one of these days.
Go see that space.com coverage now.
tsmacro
I’m on Space.com’s e-mail list so I get their almost daily e-mail. So yeah i’ve been keeping up on this also. There are some pretty cool pics there. It is kind of cool when science fact starts catching up to science fiction. It has to be especially fun for you Jeff considering the paralells to your own book! So how before that next “Chaos” book? *L* (just kidding, I know that’s got to be one of your least favortite questions at this point!*L*) Just keep writing and i’ll keep reading!
tsmacro
Sheesh….so much for proofreading. That should read “…how long before…” not “…how before…” Oh well.
tsmacro
Talking about science, ok so this is going to be a little bit of a stretch for a segueway..*L*…but anyway….Jeff I was looking to order the Study Works! Science Deluxe 5.0 CD-ROM that has your Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy Course on it and according to amazon, it’s not available. Is there anyway you know of to get a hold of one? Thanks!
Jeffrey A. Carver
It is one of my hopes to get the SF writing course back up online sometime this summer. The SF Museum in Seattle had expressed interest, but that interest appears to be waning, so it looks like I need to fix up the html myself and put it on my own web site. It’s just a question of finding the time.
Meanwhile, I have a very limited supply of the Studyworks CDs. (I hadn’t known that Amazon was sold out; they were selling them at remainder prices for a long time.)
Email me about it, okay?
Jeff
tsmacro
Ok, you should have an e-mail waiting for you.