29 Aug 2007

Buckbeak and Dragonbreath

posted in: personal news | 0

I haven’t posted for a while, and the reason is I’ve been cleaning my garage. Really. Well, at least partly. It all started when we bought Dragonbreath. Dragonbreath is a Honda moped we bought secondhand for my wife to ride to work—the big idea being to save money on gas and car repairs, and make the commute a little more fun. Well, she has been having fun riding it—and furthermore, I discovered I liked grabbing it for a ride when she got home.

We had no intention of buying a second moped. But when someone posted to our town email list that she had a low-mileage Tomos moped that had sat in a garage for about seven years, and now she couldn’t get it running, and a hundred bucks or best offer would take it away…well, we went to look at it. Not sure if it was a good idea. Who knows if we could get it running? I bought it. Named it Buckbeak, after the hippogryph in Harry Potter.

Much tinkering ensued. Here’s what I wrote at the time, beginning a blog post that I never finished: “I gave Buckbeak its first real road test yesterday, and experienced a couple of “soft seizes,” as they refer to it on the moped owners’ forums. Abrupt engine stoppage. Turned out the oil-injector pump wasn’t working, and I was running with basically no oil. Not good. Doesn’t seem to have hurt it too badly, as far as I can tell running it today in the driveway. (I’ve now filled it with pre-mixed gas/oil, after reading the widespread opinion that the oil injectors are junk, and best disabled or removed anyway.) However, I must wait for Allysen to come home from work with our one helmet, so I can road test again. (She’s getting me my own helmet for my birthday.)”

Yeah, I seized the engine. And got it running again, anyway. It’s running great now, and as promised, I got a helmet for my birthday. And I love taking it for rides around town, running short errands that were annoying and seemed wasteful of gas in the car. (Too soon to be sure, but I think I’m getting over 100 miles per gallon.) And those Slovenians make a pretty tough little moped, for it to have survived my resurrection blunders. (Yeah, the Tomos is made in Slovenia, the former Yugoslavia. We used to joke about wanting to own a Yugo. And now we do.)

So what’s this have to do with cleaning the garage? Well, part of the agreement to buy Buckbeak was that we had to clean the garage, because that was the only way we could possibly fit both bikes into it (along with various regular bicycles and work benches and lawn junk and, oh yeah, a camping trailer). We have never even aspired to actually fitting a car in our garage. To give you some idea of the magnitude of the job: about two years ago, we rescued some kitchen cabinets a neighbor was throwing out, thinking they would help us organize the garage. They sat piled in the middle of the garage like Richard Dreyfus’s “Devil’s Tower” in the movie Close Encounters, ever since. A year ago, we bought a hammer drill at a yard sale, thinking, this will help us put those cabinets up on the cinderblock walls of the garage. This year…we’re actually doing it! A few more weekends, and I think we’ll have it done.

So that’s why I spent my birthday weekend cleaning the garage—so that Dragonbreath and Buckbeak could have a nice place to stay.

I’ll post a picture when we get one.

“The writer’s way is rough and lonely and who would choose it while there are vacancies in more gracious professions, such as, say, cleaning ferryboats [or garages]?” —Dorothy Parker

16 Aug 2007

The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Lose

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

A few days ago, I got an email from a reader, telling me she and her family had informally named their dog Lopo Lupeko, and she thought I’d like to know. I sat there scratching my head for a little while, thinking, why did she tell me that? Did she confuse me with another writer?

Finally a tiny bell starting ringing way in the back of what passes for my mind. Something…but what…? I opened up the directory on my computer where all my book files are kept and did a search for “Lopo.” Sure enough, what popped up was my novel Down the Stream of Stars. As soon as I opened the file and found the spot, it all came back in a rush. Of course! Lopo is a dog-like creature who lives in the circ-zoo on the starship my heroine Claudi is traveling on! Lopo helped save everyone from the Throgs! How could I forget?

In my defense, I did write the novel over 15 years ago. But still, you’d think a writer would remember his own characters, wouldn’t you?

Maybe not. The next night I took a short story I’d just drafted to my writing group for vetting, and Richard says to me, regarding the main human character, “Didn’t you have a villain named Jarvis in one of your novels?” I sit scratching my head, willing to believe anything at this point. Then I remember: Jarvorus, the false-iffling in Dragon Rigger. Close enough!

I wonder if it’s time for me to reread all my own stuff, so I won’t keep redoing it.

“Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.” —Anonymous

16 Aug 2007

A Star That Sheds Like Our Cat!

posted in: quirky, science, space | 0

By now, you’ve probably seen news reports about the star Mira (pronounced my-rah), in the constellation Cetus. It’s barreling through the galactic medium at unusual speed and as a result is shedding a trail of starstuff. In the ultraviolet pictures from NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer, it looks like a comet:

The Star
Our cat

You might not have seen the cool animation NASA has online, though, along with explanation of how it is probably a bow-wave effect that’s causing the tail.

There’s supplemental material on another NASA page.

I can’t believe how much great astronomy has been coming our way in the last year or two.

“It is with words as with sunbeams—the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.” —Robert Southey

14 Aug 2007

Off to College!

posted in: personal news | 0

It finally happened, and we survived it. We took our older daughter Lexi to begin her college career. She was nervous, her mom bore up but not without traumatic pangs, her sister was quiet, and I was shell-shocked. (Well, what with one last-minute preparation thing and another, we managed to only get about an hour or so of sleep before getting up at 5:30 a.m. to hit the road. So once we were there, and she was moved in, and Allysen and I were attending presentations for the parents, a certain amount of nodding off was taking place.)

Anyway, she’s there and we’re home, and we hope all is rolling smoothly toward the beginning of a great college career. I have great faith in her, and my only concern is how we’re going to manage here without her. Here’s a picture she took of herself and me a couple of days before leaving:


“I’m scared all the time, which is always good. You have to be scared or you’re not working hard enough.” —Sue Grafton

6 Aug 2007

Sunborn Pub Date—Finally!

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

I’m happy to report that Sunborn (Chaos Chronicles #4) finally is firmly in the Tor schedule. I’m less happy to report that it’s been pushed to Fall 2008! (As I recall, I went all-out to get it finished so it could make the 2007 schedule. However, revisions and delays and various back-and-forthing has resulted in its being pulled and reslotted several times. So, Fall 2008. To those of you who have been waiting so patiently and understandingly, thank you and please stick with me just a little longer. (Now, don’t mind me while I go off in the corner here and quietly scream: “Aaaaaiiiiiiieeeeee!”)

The good news is, there’s now more lead time to solicit quotes from influential voices—not so much, as you might think, to adorn the cover, but more to generate enthusiasm within the sales and marketing halls of the publisher. Yes, expectation is everything, and if those responsible for selling it are excited about it, chances for a successful promotion go way up. (Now, that’s all assuming it gets good quotes. Let’s not put the rocket before the nosecone.)

Anyway, there you have it: Tor Books, Fall 2008.

“Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.” —Mark Twain

6 Aug 2007

Masters of Science Fiction

posted in: science fiction, writing | 0

I was probably the last on my block to hear about it, but thank heavens I did. ABC premiered a new, not-quite-series called Masters of Science Fiction last Saturday evening. Fortunately, I saw something in the paper in time to set my DVR and catch it. It’s an anthology series (or not-quite series, since ABC hasn’t committed to continuing it beyond a few episodes) featuring adaptations of short stories by noted SF writers, including Kessel, Heinlein, Ellison, and others. Each story will be intro’d, and I guess outtro’d, by the voice of physicist Stephen Hawking, ala Rod Serling.

I quite enjoyed the first episode, “A Clean Escape,” based on a short story by John Kessel. Well written and acted, and pretty powerful.

Who knows how long this will last, so watch it and support it (Saturday evenings at 10, Eastern time). Maybe if it gains an following, ABC will see that there’s an audience for more than one intelligent SF show on TV! Wouldn’t that be great?

“The mere habit of writing, of constantly keeping at it, of never giving up, ultimately teaches you how to write.” —Gabriel Fielding

29 Jul 2007

Sunshine

posted in: science fiction | 0

I went to see the movie Sunshine today with my family. Definitely a mixed bag. Lots of boneheaded science mistakes, of course (more on those below). The first half of the movie is pretty interesting psychological drama, reminiscent of Solaris. Unfortunately, it turns into dumb horror in the second half. All in all, it has some good moments and great visuals, but it would also be a good candidate for Mystery Science Theater 3000, if they ever revived it.

An article in today’s Sunday Boston Globe is fairly laudatory about the movie. I really had better things to do, but I couldn’t help myself, so I wrote the following letter to the editor:

“About the movie Sunshine, Tom Russo writes (in the Sunday movie section) that “there’s nothing as inscrutably mind-bending as 2001 here, but nothing that’s Armageddon obtuse, either.” Actually, there’s plenty of Armageddon-level obtuseness in the film, including the premise that dropping a huge bomb onto the sun would somehow jumpstart the fire if it had gone out. (Bad science! Sit! Stay!) But if you buy that for the sake of enjoying the movie (and I was willing), then Sunshine has a pretty good psycho-drama going for the first half, reminiscent of Solaris. But the cracks start showing when you notice that the spaceship has the obligatory rotating elements, presumably for artificial gravity–but it does not seem to be the living quarters that are rotating, so what’s the point? Then when fire strike the greenhouse, source of their oxygen, what do they do? Vent the air to put the fire out? No! Feed it more oxygen to make it burn hotter! (Very bad science! Go lie down!) I probably shouldn’t even mention the huge derelict spaceship full of floating sloughed-off human skin–dandruff from a crew of, what, seven people?

Quite apart from the science, the story eventually devolves into silly horror, redeemed somewhat by a nice philosophic moment at the end. It’s not that the movie has no good points, because it does–but a film that aspires to have “a very rigorous realism attached to it,” as the director is quoted as saying, really could do much better.”

Probably won’t get printed, but at least I’m trying to give NASA its money’s worth back from the astronomy workshop!

On the plus side, there were some projection glitches, and the theater gave us return visit passes on our way out. Maybe we’ll go to The Simpsons next, and see how they score on the science. 🙂

Somewhat relevant to the efforts of the filmmakers:

“I use exotic settings, but the settings are like the function of a Chinese stage. They are intended to lay bare the human mind, to throw torches over the underground lakes of the human soul, to show the chambers wherein the ageless dramas of self-respect, God, courage, sex, love, hope, envy, decency and power go on forever.” —Cordwainer Smith

27 Jul 2007

Buckaroo Banzai, Monty Python, and More

posted in: personal news, science fiction | 0

Lori White from the Launchpad group pointed out an interesting article to us: guitarist Brian May from the rock band Queen is back in school, finishing his doctorate in astrophysics! Seems he was studying astrophysics in the first place, before he dropped out to form Queen. But he couldn’t get rid of the astronomy bug, and now he’s nearly completed the studies he began back in the 1970’s. (I’ll bet he had some catching up to do.)

As Vonda McIntyre pointed out, he’s a real-life Buckaroo Banzai!

One of the quirkier memories from last week is our group singalong of The Galaxy Song, from Monty Python:

(If this worked right, you should see a little menu showing some related videos. Check out the updated version of The Galaxy Song. It has a rough beginning, but once it gets going, it’s good.)

Me, I’ve got to get back to the writing board.

“When I write, I feel like an armless legless man with a crayon in his mouth.” —Kurt Vonnegut

23 Jul 2007

And Home Again

posted in: personal news | 0

I’ve returned safe and sound from Laramie (two hours late due to our flight crew having been temporarily stranded in another city, but aside from that, a good flight). Great to be home, but I miss the group!

For more comments and other pictures, see Eugie Fosters’ blog. She’s been covering it, too, and some of her pictures are better than mine.

“I type in one place, but I write all over the house.” —Toni Morrison

22 Jul 2007

Launchpad Finale

posted in: personal news, space | 0

The final observing night looked as though it would be a washout, or rather a cloud-out. We drove some distance to get to the WIRO Observatory in the mountains that from Laramie are a part of the horizon. Cloudy, cloudy. A drive up the winding, dirt mountain road made me think I was back at Cedar Point. When we finally reached the top, the conditions looked hopeless for even opening the observatory dome. So we looked at the telescope instead:



And gathered in the control room while our enterprising grad-student operators tried to get the aging computer system to cooperate:


And even posed for a group photo (shot by Jeremiah Tolbert):


Gradually, though, the sky began to clear—just a few stars, at first. Hoping for the best, we opened the dome. By the time the system was up and running, more of the sky was clearing—and within an hour or two, we had a spectacular view of the Milky Way overhead (for those of us who wandered outside to stand in the dark). In the meantime, the telescope was starting to pull in images.

It was instructive to watch the process. Telescopes take photos in black and white, not color. To achieve color images, successive pictures are taken in red, blue, and green, and combined on the computer to produce a final image. And that is exactly what we did in the end. Most of the group had left by midnight, but the few of us remaining watched images come in of the Pelican Nebula. We left with the gray and white images on a CD. In the morning, someone who knew how to do the computer wizardry combined them to produce the photo that we have adopted as our workshop badge: the Pelican Nebula, in glorious color:


We’re done with all the sessions now, with only our closing party to look forward to. It’s been a great week, and while I look forward to getting home, I’m also sorry to see it end.

I’m going to end with this quote that seems utterly appropriate to me.

“I believe that good questions are more important than answers, and the best children’s books ask questions, and make the readers ask questions. And every new question is going to disturb someone’s universe.” —Madeleine L’Engle

1 … 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 … 150