For the curious reader of science fiction (scifi) and fantasy
I came across this blog called Hyperbole and a Half yesterday, and had to share it. No one who has ever owned or lived with a dog could fail to appreciate this: Dogs Don’t Understand Basic Concepts Like Moving
If you like that one, try: This Is Why I’ll Never Be an Adult
While going through some old photos recently, I came across this snapshot dated twelve years ago.
That’s me and my family, standing proudly behind our wheat field. Yes, that’s wheat you see, and that’s the whole field. We still have the harvest in a jar, because we never got around to grinding the kernels to make the muffin we planned. Best laid plans, etc. When my Uncle John (a farmer) was still with us, we gave him a good laugh and a brain teaser by asking him to calculate how much wheat we needed to plant for a loaf of bread. I don’t remember what the answer was, but I’m pretty sure this wasn’t enough.
Those two poor waifs are now a senior in high school and a senior in college. And that’s Allysen, my sturdy farmer wife.
In a rare outbreak of forward-thinking in the federal government, John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, has called for defensive planning against the possibility of an asteroid hitting the Earth. In letters to both the House and the Senate, the White House adviser has called for the development of plans for emergency response, and for coordination with other nations, in the event the need arises to deflect an incoming asteroid.
While hardly a new idea—science fiction, astronomy, and space technology types have been calling for this for years—what is new, I suspect, is the idea reaching the point of being taken seriously at the White House level.
(A tip of the hat to Mike Flynn, fellow member of Sigma SF, for pointing out this story.)
I was away a little longer than I expected. But I’m back.
More news on the growing effort by writers like me to adapt to the changing world of books and publishing. The fledgling group I joined not too long ago, Backlist Ebooks, has taken another step toward making it easier for you to buy low-cost ebook editions of its members’ out-of-print books. The group is a loose collection of authors who have taken matters into their own hands regarding their previously published, out of print books—and are reissuing them through avenues such as Amazon Kindle’s self-publishing shop and Smashwords. Those of you who buy ebooks for the Kindle platform might want to check out the Backlist Ebooks store, for links to authors in a variety of genres and their low-cost ebooks (mostly around $2.99 a book).
My father-in-law Phillip Palmer died Sunday evening, in Ponce, Puerto Rico. He was 87. Allysen was down there at the time, and had visited him in the nursing-care home just hours before he died. She’s there with her mom now, and with her brother Andrew, who’s just flown in.
Phil was a wonderful guy, a lover of travel and good food and wine, who in his working life was an electrical engineer in international sales. It was thanks to that work that he and his wife Fay settled in Puerto Rico, a place they loved in their bones. Phil had a hard last few years—especially this final one, with several heart-attack trips to the hospital, and a rapidly declining ability to get around or to do the things he loved to do (home renovation projects, mostly). It’s not that many years ago that he masterminded the lovely deck that’s now on the back of our house here in Boston. He loved building things, and especially loved changing things.
I’ll write more later. For now I need to focus on helping Allysen from a distance, and on getting the rest of us ready to go down there to join her for the memorial.
Don’t forget! Through October 31, you can get the first three Chaos books for 25% off at Smashwords, in multiple formats–complete with all new Afterwords on their writing. Just use these coupon codes:
For other participating authors and coupon codes, head over to http://www.facebook.com/BacklistEbooks and click on Sale at the top.
In what surely must be a legal first, the Texas Supreme Court has cited an alien off-worlder in a recent judgment, a fictional alien at that. In Robinson v. Crown Cork and Seal, the Texas court cited Star Trek’s Mr. Spock, from the movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. You will recall that, in one of the finest scenes in the film, Mr. Spock dies heroically saving the Enterprise and her crew. Just before dying, he says to Kirk, “Don’t grieve, Admiral. It is logical…” And he reminds Kirk that “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few…or the one.”
In the following movie, The Search for Spock, Kirk turns this dictum on its head by telling Spock that the reason they came for him was because the needs of the one outweighed the needs of the many.
“Appropriately weighty principles guide our course. First, we recognize that police power draws from the credo that “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” Second, while this maxim rings utilitarian and Dickensian (not to mention Vulcan21), it is cabined by something contrarian and Texan: distrust of intrusive government and a belief that police power is justified only by urgency, not expediency.”
Footnote 21 reads:
See STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN (Paramount Pictures 1982). The film references several works of classic literature, none more prominently than A Tale of Two Cities. Spock gives Admiral Kirk an antique copy as a birthday present, and the film itself is bookended with the book’s opening and closing passages. Most memorable, of course, is Spock’s famous line from his moment of sacrifice: “Don’t grieve, Admiral. It is logical. The needs of the many outweigh . . .” to which Kirk replies, “the needs of the few.”
Some have pointed to earlier quotations for this thought, including Aristotle, and the Gospel of John 11:49-50 in the Bible (which quotes Caiaphas, the High Priest, expressing a similar thought). But really, I think Spock said it the most succinctly.
I’ve just finished incorporating all-new Afterwords in the ebook versions of Neptune Crossing, Strange Attractors, and The Infinite Sea. I set down some reflections on the Chaos series as a whole, what it was like to write those first three books, and some of the thought processes and creative impulses that went into shaping each of the stories.
The new Afterwords are exclusive to my new ebook editions, available in the Kindle store and from Smashwords, and slowly migrating into other ebookstores. (If you’re a new visitor here, the original print versions of these books were from Tor Books; these new ebook releases are from my own Starstream Publications. That’s just me, but I thought new editions ought to come from an imprint, not just some guy.)
These three books were free on my website for two years. There are still free editions out there—but the Afterwords are an extra value for folks who buy the books in the stores. (Just $2.99 each!)
Edit: The new Kindle versions are live now. If you bought the Kindle books before the Afterwords were added, contact me via my website, and I’ll see that you get the updated versions. (Amazon apparently has no provision for redownloading updated editions of books.) I’m not sure how it works with editions from Barnes & Noble, Apple, etc. via the Smashwords distributions. If you have trouble, let me know.
A bunch of authors, yours truly included, are offering books from their backlists for 25% off at Smashwords, as part of the October sale at Backlist Ebooks. To see the list of participating authors and get the coupon codes you’ll need, head over to http://www.facebook.com/BacklistEbooks and click on Sale at the top. (Or, if you prefer not to go to Facebook, you can go to http://backlistebooks.com/.) Take a look! There’s mystery, SF and fantasy, romance, and I don’t know what all. The sale runs through Halloween.
I’ve just released a new ebook edition of The Infinite Sea, the third book of The Chaos Chronicles, to the Amazon Kindle store—and to Smashwords (from which it will migrate to Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobobooks, and the Apple store). With this release, all of the Chaos Chronicles are now available for instant download in the Kindle store. Come to think of it, with this release, all of my novels are available in the Kindle store. Most of them are available in other ebook stores as well. For a complete list, see: http://www.starrigger.net/ebooks.htm.
I’ve been fiddling with the covers to make them display better at thumbnail size. (I may revisit them later, but for the moment, I think I’m done fiddling.) Here’s The Infinite Sea:
Halloween Special!
From now through October 31, you can get the first three Chaos books for 25% off at Smashwords, in your choice of formats. Just use these coupon codes: