19 Oct 2009

Snow? On October 18?

posted in: personal news, quirky, teaching, writing | 0

Yes, indeed. I was driving to the store in the rain—and it didn’t really even feel that cold out—when I noticed that some of those raindrops were falling too slowly, and splatting too big on the windshield. By the time it was over, we had a steady fall of inch-and-a-half wide snowflakes. (Two to three centimeters, for you metric folk.)

Just a little joke the warming globe is playing on us, I guess. Or not. (This is not disproof of global climate change, by the way. One of the predictions of the warming of the Earth is that climate patterns may behave in unexpected ways.) For all I know, snow in New England in mid-October is well within the range of our crazy weather, anyway. But it sure felt weird. I was just pondering taking the air conditioners out of the windows, not an hour before.

Our Ultimate SF Workshop began tonight (okay, last night at this point), and it looks like we have a great group of aspiring writers, including people from a variety of walks of life. We almost cancelled the workshop last week because we only had three confirmed students. Today we had eleven confirmed, and one more possible late-joiner. Full house! Lots of good workshopping ahead of us.

“People tend to look at successful writers, writers who are getting their books published and maybe even doing well financially, and think that they sit down at their desks every morning feeling like a million dollars, feeling great about who they are and how much talent they have and what a great story they have to tell; that they take in a few deep breaths, push back their sleeves, roll their necks a few times to get all the cricks out, and dive in, typing fully formed passages as fast as a court reporter. But this is just the fantasy of the uninitiated. I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much. We do not think that she has a rich inner life or that God likes her or can even stand her. —Although when I mentioned this to my priest friend Tom, he said you can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” —Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

22 Sep 2009

And Now for Something Completely Different

posted in: public affairs, quirky, science, technology | 0

Okay, I haven’t posted in at least three weeks. Bad dog! I have no excuse, except for the fact that I just didn’t feel like posting, and so I didn’t. But now I repent, and to atone, I have three great videos. They might not all be new to all of you, but I just saw them for the first time. Not only do I love ’em, I didn’t have to do a thing to make them! Kudos to those who did!

Now, I’m not a huge Dr. Horrible fan in the same the way that my daughter is, but when I saw “Dr. Horrible Takes Over the Emmys,” I knew I had to post it here:

Dr. Horrible isn’t the only mad scientist around. Pay attention to these researchers from CERN, giving us the Large Hadron Rap! You’ll not only get your limbs going, you’ll learn something…

And finally, just for a little political controversy, here’s Will Ferrell, et al., for Moveon.org, explaining just why the proposed U.S. health care reform is a really bad idea!

29 Aug 2009

Eventful Week!

posted in: personal news, public affairs, quirky | 0

Here, I thought I’d gotten myself set up for a nice roll of posts, one for each book—how hard could that be. Ah well, the best-laid plans. That schedule, like summer, has slipped away from me. I’m still going to do it, but for right now, here’s a catch-up.

This last week saw us buying a new car (!), thanks to the latest breakdown of our old, much loved, Aerostar van coinciding with the U.S. government’s Cash for Clunkers program. We took the plunge on the last day of the program, sneaking in just under the wire after driving all over the greater Boston area looking for the car we wanted. It’s a Ford Fusion, and it looks just like this stock photo:

We love our new car. It’s comfortable and drives great and gets good mileage for a nonhybrid, and it’s like a spaceship cockpit on the inside. Voice-activated control over my Zune, for heaven’s sake! Thanks to the Sync feature, I can press a button on the steering wheel and say, “Play artist Dido,” and it’ll play Dido. Or “Play playlist Roadtunes,” and it’ll do that. It’s just so damn cool. (I’m also extremely grateful to those who helped make it possible for us to buy it, I should add.) By sheerest coincidence, we picked it up on my birthday. I ain’t saying how old I am, but it was a milestone birthday, and let’s leave it at that.

That very night, I heard the sad news that Senator Ted Kennedy had died. This breaks my heart. He was, I believe, one of the finest senators who ever served in the U.S. Congress. A wealthy man by birth, he devoted himself tirelessly to the cause of the poor, the disadvantaged, the underserved—and he did it right up to the end. Yes, he had personal failings, there’s no denying that. But I will be forever grateful for his public service, and his willingness to reach across the aisle even as he stuck to his guns as a died-in-the-wool liberal Democrat. I just pray that someone will step up who can fill those shoes.

Tomorrow the new car, code-named Centauri, takes its first big run. Yes, summer is over and it’s time to take Alexandra back to college. Road trip!

8 Jul 2009

Sunborn Video

posted in: personal news, quirky, religion, science fiction, space, Sunborn | 0

A while back I wrote that I’d been working on a video piece for a theatrical arts festival called Lydia Fair, sponsored by the Greater Boston Vineyard of Cambridge. Now you can see my video on YouTube!

It is what I would call a video narration, or maybe an audio visualization—or maybe one of you can suggest a more elegant name—of the prologue to Sunborn. I recorded the narration and blocked out the basic image storyboard. Then a talented fellow named Adam Guzewicz worked video and sound wizardry on it, animating parts of it from still images (which I gleaned from various NASA websites), and adapting other animation (ditto on the source). I’m lucky, I guess—that I wrote a prologue that actually could be set to astronomical images.

If you’d like to view it in a wide-screen version, go directly to the YouTube page or to my website. (Wide images on this page seem to cause problems for some viewers, so I try to keep them small.)

For best effect, set the viewer to full-screen and high-quality mode, and turn up the sound a bit. Enjoy!

1 May 2009

Those Crazy Guys and Their Flying Machines

posted in: Flying, quirky, science fiction, technology | 0

While we’re waiting for the “roadable” airplane, the Transition, to come down to our price range—not to mention fly (but they did get it off the ground, in the first short flight test!)—check out this baby: a flying motorcycle called the Switchblade:


Switchblade flying motorcycle

That’s for me! You betcha! According to the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, “Samson Motorworks has been working on a flying motorcycle, the Switchblade, for two and a half years. The three-wheel motorcycle’s design features three lifting surfaces, like the Piaggio Avanti, and side-by-side seating for two people… The wings will fold beneath the motorcycle’s body… Cameras will provide visibility to the rear, and an optional ballistic parachute will be offered.”

Oh man, I can’t wait. (It hasn’t flown yet, either, but it will. It will.) Buy a lot of those books from me, people—okay? A lot of books!

While we’re waiting, here’s a picture of the Transition in its first leap into the air.


Transition flight test

“Up in the sky, rocketing past
Higher than high, faster than fast,
Out into space, into the sun
Look at her go when we give her the gun.”
—Space Academy Cadet Corps song,
from Tom Corbett, Space Cadet
9 Apr 2009

Video for Lydia Fair

posted in: personal news, quirky, religion, science fiction, Sunborn | 0

Another little project I picked up along the way is a small video contribution to what I believe will be a very cool and probably intense and moving arts festival, coming up on April 25 at the Vineyard Church in Cambridge. It’s called Lydia Fair, and it’s bringing together artists of all stripes (painters, theater people, singers, one fiction writer that I know of—me, and heaven knows who all). The theme is Rescue, and it’s a benefit fundraiser for two organizations called Love146 and Rebuild Africa. I’m really looking forward to it; there’s tremendous artistic talent in the Vineyard community.

As for my part…I’m working on a video adaptation of the prologue to Sunborn. I’ve shortened and reworked the audio so that it sounds much better than the mp3 currently up on my website, and am using a sequence of great cosmic imagery from a variety of NASA observatories including Hubble, Chandra, SOHO, and others. A fellow named Adam, who does a lot of video work for the church, is helping me shape it into a “visualization” that we hope will evoke the story of Deeaab, as he wanders the galaxy encountering sentient suns, and wondering how he might rescue them from whatever is killing them. It’ll only be about three minutes long, but I’ve gone from thinking “Hopeless!” a week ago to thinking, “This is going to be cool.”

Afterward, my goal is to put it up online so you can all see it. In the meantime, if you live anywhere near Cambridge, Mass., you might want to check out Lydia Fair.

“We are stardust, we are golden
We are billion-year-old carbon
And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.”
—Joni Mitchell, “Woodstock”

29 Jan 2009

Brief Catch-up

posted in: blogging, ebooks, personal news, quirky, science fiction, writing | 0

Last weekend, I spent a day at Vericon, a small but cheerful convention at Harvard University, which had as its guest of honor Kim Stanley Robinson. Stan and I had met once or twice before, but many years ago, and it was good to become reacquainted. Dinner with Stan, Jim Kelly, and Paul Di Filippo was a high point of the day, though it was also good to offer some students from the teen writing workshop I ran with Craig Gardner a chance to see a con on a small scale.

Last night I completed the proofreading and minor edits on the text of The Infinity Link, and sent the RTF file off to the folks at E-reads, who will prepare it for commercial ebook release. Artist David Mattingly graciously assented to my using the original cover art from the Tor and Bluejay print editions on the ebook, so it’s going to look great. Here’s the full wraparound, shrunk way down:

The Infinity Link cover art by David B. Mattingly

I made very small changes in the text, mostly to get rid of anachronisms such as the references to the Soviet Union, and some outdated computer terminology. After all the story takes place in the year 2034, and the future simply isn’t what it once was.

Now I’ve begun similar work on my very first novel, Seas of Ernathe, originally published in 1976. It’s interesting to see how my writing evolved and grew between my first and fourth novels—and how it compares to my work now. I’ve definitely grown more skilled as a writer, but I miss the quick bursts of creativity I had when I was in my twenties.

For a good tongue-in-cheek glimpse of how books get from typewriter to bookstore, check out this video from MacMillan publishing. (With thanks to Richard Curtis in his E-reads blog for bringing it to my attention.)

9 Jan 2009

BSG Meets The Atlantic Monthly (!)

posted in: Battlestar Galactica, quirky, science fiction, writing | 0

The Atlantic is a terrific magazine, but possibly the last place I would have looked for an article on Battlestar Galactica, the edgy TV series that’s probably done more to shake up science fiction on television since the original Star Trek. Nevertheless, in the new (Jan/Feb 2009) issue, James Parker writes in The Atlantic about BSG, just as the show locks and loads for its final stretch (hitting the cablewaves next Friday night!). In Lost in Space, Parker gives a reasonable account of the origin of the reimagined show, except that he brings L. Ron Hubbard into the account—Hubbard having said that space opera was really “the stuff of deepest prehistory, somber emanations from the memory of the species.” That dovetails, admittedly, with BSG’s premise that Earth is not the cradle of humankind, but rather the latest stop on a long journey.

Parker turns a tad snarky about the direction of the show, saying that “Battlestar Galactica is presenting all the symptoms of a an extended-run high-concept TV series in its decadent phase.” Now, he may be right—certainly I’ve wondered more than once whether the show’s writers actually know themselves where they’re going with the story. I’ve wondered that ever since I wrote the official novelization of the miniseries, and had the feeling that there was a lot they weren’t telling me about the direction of the show because they weren’t sure themselves. Fair enough. Half the time I don’t know where I’m going when I’m writing a novel. Why should it be any different for the creators of a years-long TV series?

On the other hand, maybe those writers know exactly what they’re doing, and we’re just entering the twistiest part of the world’s most gut-wrenching aerobatics show. That’s my vote, an expression of white-knuckled faith. They better know what they’re doing—it’s coming back on, and looks like it could be augering in, and I, for one, want to know how they’re going to land that baby!

“You write about the thing that sank its teeth into you and wouldn’t let go.” —Paul West

19 Nov 2008

Aliens Smoking Dope Over Saturn!

posted in: quirky, science, space | 0

I’ve written before about the giant hex socket in the north pole of Saturn, set there uncounted millennia ago by aliens, for purposes unconfirmed. But now…what are those guys up to?

Rhetorical question. You can see what they’re up to. They’re blowing smoke rings over the poles!

You cannot tell me that’s tobacco smoke. Noway. And aurora? Please! Don’t think I’ve forgotten about them buzzing the Saturn neighborhood in flying saucers!


Scientists will keep trying to explain it away with fables about moons, and rocks, and erosion, and auroras, and strange turbulent attractors…

Feh! We won’t be fooled!

10 Nov 2008

Fan of John Williams Movie Scores?

posted in: quirky, science fiction | 0

Okay, I thought I was the world’s biggest fan of the music from Star Wars, Superman, Close Encounters, and all the other films John Williams has scored. But I think I must relinquish that title to this fellow here (but see note below):

Here’s a link to the video at scifiwire, in case it doesn’t display correctly for you.

[Later note]

Well…as Josh pointed out, it turns out that guy did a really clever job of lip syncing a song actually created by a group called Moosebutter. You can hear (or buy) the song here on their website. Scroll down, and you can see a video of their live performance of the number.

It would have been really nice if the fellow above had credited his source.

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