2 Jun 2008

Phoenix and Me

posted in: personal news, public affairs, science, science fiction | 0

The successful landing of Phoenix on the northern polar region of Mars was a sensational event (which live coverage by the Science Channel managed to make dull; how could they do that?), being the first rocket-powered soft landing on Mars since 1976, when the Vikings landed. You’ve all seen pictures from the Mars surface, no doubt–but you might not have seen this picture, the first time any craft has ever been photographed landing on another world:

If you go to the full image at Astronomy Picture of the Day, you’ll see the magnificent crater near which Phoenix landed.

Phoenix is not just a national and international triumph; it’s a personal one, as well. I was reminded by the Planetary Society that my family and I are personally represented on Mars by this craft: it carries a DVD that bears our names, along with those of 250,000 other people who signed up for the mission. It also bears a library of science and science fiction works about Mars, to be recovered and enjoyed by future explorers. Here’s a picture, taken by Phoenix itself, of the DVD on Mars.

Now that’s a good feeling, knowing that a part of me is up there on Mars right now.

20 May 2008

Bread Loaf Conference

posted in: personal news, science fiction, Sunborn, writing | 0

As I hoped and expected, the New England Young Writers Conference at Bread Loaf was a great time, and entirely too short. My daughter Julia attended the workshops led by another fiction writer, while I worked with a talented and extraordinarily open and enthusiastic group of fourteen high school students on their fiction writing. That was just the core of it; there were also readings (from the podium where Robert Frost used to hold forth—I did one myself), additional writing sessions open to all, conversations with writers of all stripes, good food and good company, and—wonder of wonders—sunshine on the mountain. I was sad to leave. But I’ll tell you this: there are some excellent writers coming up in the years ahead! Be warned. Be heartened.

The Sunborn galleys arrived for my inspection and correction just before the conference, and I didn’t have time to so much as glance at them over the weekend. Now I’m working on them, but I’m also getting ready to leave on another trip, this time to meet with another group that wants to pick the brains of SF writers.

I hope you’re all enjoying your spring.

“I love being a writer. What I can’t stand is the paperwork.” —Peter De Vries

8 May 2008

Sunborn Available for Preorder

posted in: personal news, science fiction, Sunborn, writing | 0

For years, readers have been sending me emails saying, “When is the next Chaos Chronicles book coming out?” or, “I’m not getting any younger—will there ever be another Chaos Chronicles book?” or even, “Thanks a lot for leaving me hanging, because it’s obvious there’s never going to be another book, you jerk.”

Readers of this blog have known for years that Sunborn, the new Chaos book, was coming—or at least it’s been my word against the doubters. (Sometimes, I’ve been among the doubters.) Well, you no longer have to take my word for it! It’s up on Amazon. And you can even preorder it. Now. Today. Go ahead, click the link! It won’t hurt.

I was surprised it was up this soon (the pub date is October of this year, from Tor Books). In fact, I didn’t even know it was up until a kind reader in Germany sent me a note telling me about it. I quickly discovered that they’d misspelled my first name on the dustjacket, at least as displayed on Amazon, but a note to my editor resulted in that being fixed pretty quickly. (I hope it stays fixed. I’m sure it will. Nothing can go wrongg.)

That’s the news from here. I might not get this written up before I go, so I’ll just mention that next week I’ll be heading up again to the Bread Loaf writing center near Middlebury, Vermont, to teach at the annual New England Young Writers Conference. If you are, or are the parent or teacher of, a young writer of high school age, you really should look into this for next year. It’s a terrific program. I’ll tell all about it, after I get back.

And did I mention? You can preorder Sunborn from Amazon.

“There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.” —Red Smith

19 Mar 2008

Arthur C. Clarke (1917 – 2008)

posted in: farewells, personal news, public affairs, science, science fiction, tributes | 0

One of the last of the towering giants of our field is gone. Sir Arthur C. Clarke has died at the age of 90. I learned of it when my daughter called from college to tell me she’d seen it on the BBC news site. (There’s a much better obituary in the Washington Post, also reprinted in the Boston Globe.) I was stunned, even though I knew I shouldn’t be; his health had been frail for years. Nonetheless, I feel deeply saddened, and at the same time grateful for the wonders of the imagination that he brought us all. Like many of my generation, I grew up inspired by AsimovHeinleinClarke, as well as many of their contemporaries. With Sir Arthur’s passing, that towering triumvirate is all gone now. In this world, all that remains is their work, and memories. Which, come to think of it, is a pretty impressive monument.

Photo from AP, via Boston Globe

I never met Arthur Clarke, but we corresponded briefly when I was in college. (Correspondence is probably glorifying it, but that’s how I choose to remember it.) When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon, Arthur Clarke was there with Walter Cronkite, covering the story. Being a big fan of Clarke’s at the time (in particular, I loved his short stories and the short novel Against the Fall of Night), I wrote to him in care of CBS News, telling him how great it was to see him there on TV with Walter Cronkite. A week or so later, I got a postcard back from him, thanking me. He’d written it as he was departing for his home on Sri Lanka.

He and I shared a love of something besides science and science fiction, particularly science fiction with transcendent themes—and that was scuba diving. That’s something I’d always wished we could have talked about. It was not to be, in this world. Maybe in the next.

“All writing is a form of prayer.” —John Keats

21 Feb 2008

Sunborn in October 2008

posted in: personal news, science fiction, writing | 0

How could I forget this? I have word now that Sunborn (the continuation of the Chaos Chronicles) is firmly scheduled for October of this year, from Tor. That’s the hardcover. I don’t know yet when the paperback will be out, probably a year or so after.

Meanwhile, a reminder that you can read the beginning of the book online right now!

By the way, one of the many things I’m thinking about doing is getting some decent recording equipment and producing my own podcast or audiobook-style readings of some of my stuff. This is something that author James Patrick Kelly has been doing pretty successfully. What do you all think? Should I start with some short stories, or do Sunborn? Lemme know.

“I have written eleven books, but each time I think, ‘Uh oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out.'” —Maya Angelou

21 Feb 2008

If This is Tuesday, It Must Be…No, No, That Can’t Be Right

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

So I don’t know what day it is, anymore. What else is new? Last weekend, I was at Boskone, which is an always-enjoyable Boston SF convention. In the art show, I was startled to see the cover painting to one of my older books, The Rapture Effect! Beautiful painting by David Mattingly. Besides that, it was good to catch up with people I haven’t seen in a while, and devote yet more time to the question of how to make a living at this racket. (The writing racket.) More and more, it seems, writers have to look for other gigs to bring in income—even writers who are well established, and who you might think have it made. (There’s a good chance that they don’t, that they do something else to pay the mortgage.)

This isn’t going to pay the mortgage, but I’ve started a new business-hobby: Roomba resurrection. It started with my fixing my own Roomba when it seemed dead, then thinking, well, if I could get some people to give me their old, dead Roombas, it would be a great home school project to take them apart with my daughter and her home-school buddies. But it turned out nobody wanted to give me their old Roombas, so I started looking for some cheap on Ebay. Turns out there’s a constant stream of them being sold there, and it started to seem like a good idea to buy a few as cheaply as I could, fix them up, and see if I could resell them for a profit. I’ll let you know how that works out. (I still want to do the home-school project, though. If you have an old Roomba you want to lend to the cause….)

Interesting news notes:

From the Washington Post comes this: Scientists “have created a paper-thin material that absorbs 99.955 percent of the light that hits it, making it by far the darkest substance ever made—about 30 times as dark as the government’s current standard for blackest black. The material, made of hollow fibers, is a Roach Motel for photons—light checks in, but it never checks out.” It involves carbon nanotubes (what else?) and has got people thinking ever deeper thoughts about invisibility cloaks.

Meanwhile, U.S. plans to shoot down a defective and falling satellite have the rest of the world wondering what else those military tech-types might be thinking about. I take no position on that question—sure, they could be viewing this as a great practice opportunity, and probably are—but does that mean they shouldn’t do it if it might reduce the risk of an accident on the ground? I don’t have enough information to form an educated opinion. But I do like what space.com has offered us—a chance to consider the question: “What Cosmic Duo Would You Trust to Destroy a Wayward Spy Satellite?” Look through the list. It’ll amuse you, and bring back some fond memories!

“A man who had to be punctually at a certain place at five o’clock has the whole afternoon from one to five ruined for him already.” —Lin Yutang

5 Feb 2008

Chameleons of the Deep

posted in: quirky, science, science fiction | 0

Whatever I was planning to write about next—probably Slicing Open Golf Balls for Fun and Profit, or something equally edifying—got knocked right out of my head when I encountered the web site, Talking Squids in Outer Space. That site by itself is pretty cool; I had no idea there were that many SF stories with squids in them. But even better, I followed their link to this video, which is real footage of cephalopods doing amazing things in the ocean. Watch it; it’s worth your time. If it doesn’t display properly in this page, go to http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/206.

Tell me these critters aren’t amazing.

“Imagination is the eye of the soul.” —Joseph Joubert

25 Jan 2008

Virgin Galactic’s Spaceliner Design Unveiled

posted in: science fiction, space | 0

So you’re ready to fly into space, but you don’t have $200,000 handy to buy a ticket? Me neither. But we can dream together, can’t we? Virgin Galactic has released designs for SpaceshipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo, currently under construction at Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites air/spacecraft factory. This thing is gigacool. It’s one of the best reasons I can think of for winning the lottery (and I can think of quite a few). They’ve also got a video, with some animated depictions of a flight. New Mexico spaceport, here we come!

It’s been a few years now since I wrote my short story, “Rocket Ride! A Short Day’s Journey into Space,” about traveling in just such a machine. But you can still read it here.

“And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.”
— John Gillespie Magee, Jr

7 Dec 2007

Flying Saucers in Saturnian Orbit!

posted in: quirky, science, science fiction, space | 0

Yes! From no less a source than Space.com and NASA comes news of weirdo flying saucers in orbit around the planet Saturn! In fact, they’ve even got computer-generated pictures, which are almost as good as real ones. Here’s the one they’re calling the moon Atlas, as generated by computer, based on findings from the Cassini probe:


You can also look at a nice big blowup.

Now, those scientists are such jokers, they expect us to believe that those are natural moon formations, caused by ring material building up on the equators of the moons. But I say, fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. So, nuthin’ doin. I believed them when they said the Face of Mars wasn’t made by aliens. And what did they do? They sent those rovers, Opportunity and Spirit, out to roll back and forth over the face until they’d obliterated the image! (But here, you can look at some other cool shots.)

You all remember the hex socket on Saturn’s pole, right?

You think it’s a COINCIDENCE that this same planet has flying saucers going around it???!!! I think NOT!

Write your Congress persons and demand that they send a mission to investigate aliens in our solar system!

So say we all.

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” —Ray Bradbury

24 Oct 2007

Paradigms to the Right of Us, Paradigms to the Left of Us

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

Okay, I haven’t written an entry in over two weeks. Time to get going. One reason I’ve been away is that I’ve started to pick up some traction on the new book (working title, Reefs of Time), and didn’t want to distract myself from that. On the other hand, my last entry (or something, anyway) caused both my wife’s and my brother’s browsers to freeze when they view my blog in Firefox on a Mac, and because I have no idea what could be causing that, it sort of took the wind out of my sails, blog-wise. If any of you out there has a clue what could cause that, please let me know!

Anyway, since I last posted, a lot of notable events have occurred. Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize in Literature! Who would have thought they’d ever give the Nobel to someone who wrote science fiction?! Woo-hoo! (I haven’t actually read her books, though, so I can’t really make any comment on the appropriateness of their choosing her for the prize, instead of, oh, say, me.)

Also the Red Sox have made it to the World Series again, which is an equally drastic paradigm shift. Now, I really pay very little attention to baseball. When I flew from Cleveland to Boston recently, my seatmate asked me if I was an Indians or a Red Sox fan. I replied that I only paid attention if the Sox actually made it to the playoffs. She looked at me in amusement, tapped the newspaper, and said, “They’re in the playoffs.” So after that, I started paying attention. I even watched a couple of games! I’m even planning to watch some of the first World Series game tonight! (This is the biggest paradigm shift of the three, I think. I watched the Indians on TV, growing up, but watching professional sports on TV is something I almost never do now.)

And for one last paradigm bender: What do you think would happen if a hungry, VW-sized polar bear happened upon a leashed sled dog? Maybe not what you think. Watch this slide show: Polar Bear and Husky.

Then read about the Hippo and Tortoise.

“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.” —Groucho Marx

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