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Zaneverse update

 blather, books, Hmm..., My Fiction, science fiction  4 Responses »
Mar 242017
 

Fiction writing is way down on my list of priorities, but I still poke away at it from time to time. When I wrote “Going to Gimli,” the plan was that it’d be the first of three short stories that would form one overall story arc, with the insane notion that I might actually turn it into a novel. After finishing “Gimli” I wrote one complete story that *wasn’t* part of the original plan, but it’s a direct sequel to Gimli. I guess it’d be story 1.5 of the three planned. I’m now something like halfway through story 2; it’s going slowly.

“Gimli” clocks in at about 30,000 words. Story 1.5 (tentative placeholder title is “Run Spot Run”) is about 25,000 words; story 2 (tentatively “Return to Origin”) is so far about 25,500 words. All told about 80,500 words. Novels are generally about 300 words per page… so I’m already at about 270 pages. That *used* to be a respectable length for a full novel, but thanks to the likes of Stephen King and J.K. Rowling, it might be considered only a short one. Still… I was surprised to find out how much I’ve got.

I suspect that a good editor would go through my manuscript with pruning shears, a  chain saw, a flame thrower and eventually a tactical nuclear device, removing perhaps half of it. But given that I’m technically only half done, when finished it’ll actually be a full novel’s worth of stuff. Whether it’ll be *good* stuff remains to be seen.

If interested, see my first story “Mass Disappearance,” followed by “Going to Gimli,” and then two story fragments, “Launch” and “A Matter of Some Gravity.”

 Posted by at 1:36 am

The Weeping Somnambulist

 art, awesomeness, blather, humor, science fiction  15 Responses »
Mar 232017
 

A day after the fact, I finally got around to watching the latest episode of SyFy’s “The Expanse,” “The Weeping Somnambulist.” Like basically every other episode of both seasons of this series… it was a damn fine show. But there was a single moment that made me bust out laughing harder than I have in weeks.

In my view, the most entertaining character in both the books and the TV series is Chrisjen Avasarala (played by Shohreh Aghdashloo, who played the Starfleet Admiral in charge of the improbable Yorktown starbase in “Star Trek: Beyond”). She is a sharp-witted and terribly foul-mouthed old Indian lady, an executive at the United Nations. This being late-night SyFy, they get away with more profanity than you normally expect out of non-pay TV… heck, Chrisjen said something at one point that got censored basically as “fuc*.” But the best bit, the very best bit, came as Chrisjen was questioning a Martian Marine. Several episodes prior, a battle had broken out between the forced of Mars and Earth on the surface of Ganymede; the firefight on the ground then expanded into ships in orbit pounding each other, with civilian infrastructure getting trashed in the crossfire. (One of the great things about “The Expanse” is that battles here are fought in confusion, and often for mistaken reasons.) So Chrisjen is yammering away as politicians often do, going on about something seemingly irrelevant to the discussion, when one of the Martian delegates interrupts her and asks “where are you going with this?”

Chrisjen’s reply to that question was just a thing of beauty, made possible by Shohreh Aghdashloo’s masterful acting. The screenshot below was from that very Moment Of Awesome; she may look quite jolly and friendly, but, dayum, she weren’t. It shut up the other feller right now.


If you’re not watching “The Expanse,” you really should. It is set in a world where humanity is conquering the solar system using Hard Science… and they have encountered alien technology that is damn near magical in its capabilities. This may irritate some hoping for “pure” hard-SF, but there is a long, proud history of “technology so advanced dumb humans think its magic.” Lovecraft perfected it 90 years ago; Star Trek made occasionally spectacular use of it. And it’s a major feature of my own “Zaneverse” world…

UPDATE: Here’s a clip of the bit in question. Prepare for awesome… not only for Chrisjen’s response, but for her description of the economics of the future. Which are unfortunate, but I have a hard time seeing how things can really go differently.

Longer version of the same scene, includes the later oddly-semi-censored “fuc*:”

 Posted by at 9:59 pm

Tractor hacking

 AARRRGH, blather, Gah., news, ಠ_ಠ  11 Responses »
Mar 232017
 

Well, here’s an issue I never would have predicted:

Why American Farmers Are Hacking Their Tractors With Ukrainian Firmware

In short: John Deere has made it so that if your brand new tractor breaks down, the only people who can repair it are officially sanctioned dealers. The problem is, farmers are often hours or days away from repair that way, and are of course used to doing their own repairs. So, what to do? Farmers are learning to hack their tractors.

I’m kinda torn. on the one hand… you sign the license agreement when you buy new stuff. You made an agreement.

But on the other hand… these agreements are kinda forced upon you. A new tractor is something that a farmer often can’t really see as anything other than a requirement, so a farmer is being forced to sign under duress. And Ambassador G’Kar pretty much nailed the legitimacy of an agreement signed under duress.

So… the free enterprise system is taking over. Small-time repair shops are figuring out how to game the system, how to bypass security systems, override or replace software. Three cheers for entrepreneurialism.

In a way, this system reminds me of the War On Some Drugs. Without drug prohibition, there’d be far fewer people learning the ways of criminality. Without these anti-repair systems, there’d be far fewer people learning how to hack systems. So, good jorb, John Deere… you’re setting things in place to make sure there will be a thriving system in place to hack self-driving cars and drones. You’ve doomed us all.

Who would have expected that the proximate cause of the robot apocalypse would be John Deere?

 Posted by at 1:18 pm

Oh, boy, mayhem in London!

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Gah., Hmm..., news, politics  7 Responses »
Mar 222017
 

The BBC is full of chaos just now, but it appears that there was a “mow ’em down with a car” attack on Westminster Bridge in London, injuring a number of people (including, apparently, a number of French schoolchildren), followed by someone attacking people with a knife on the grounds of Parliament. The two incidents are assumed to be linked, and they’re going out on a limb and saying that this just might be some sort of terrorist attack.

Now, let the unwarranted speculatin’ begin! Given the most recent form of media fearmongering, who might the perpetrator(s) be? Trump supporters? Alt Righters? Mens rights activists? Libertarians? Anti-immigrant racists? Brexit supporters?

As I type, a report just came in that a woman has died, others have “catastrophic” injuries.

 Posted by at 10:13 am

B-70 Artwork

 aircraft, art, history, projects  10 Responses »
Mar 222017
 

Here are three pieces of art taken from North American Aviation documents from the early 60’s, part of the Spivak collection. Not the best reproduction quality, but whatryagonnado. The two with downturned wingtips depict the B-70 as actually built; the other is slightly earlier, with some differences from the final configuration. The most obvious is that the vertical fins have leading edge extensions; additionally the forward fuselage contours seem off, though that might be an artistic flub. As well, it does not appear to depict the existence of the wingtip fold hinges, which is either a mistake or artistic license for some purpose.

 

 Posted by at 2:23 am

Antidote For Nostalgia: Group Edition

 AARRRGH, Antidote For Nostalgia, Crazy, Gah., history, ಠ_ಠ  11 Responses »
Mar 222017
 

The unceasing cavalcade of bad 1960’s/70’s mens fashion ads continues with four images that will make you question your allegiance to Earth.

Questions to ask yourself, beyond the basic “why, in Gods name, why?” include such as “did these ads actually work,” and “why are so many of the models just so damned goofy looking?”

Continue reading »

 Posted by at 1:55 am

Tweeting deadly weapons

 Crazy, Gah., news, ಠ_ಠ  20 Responses »
Mar 212017
 

When I read the headline, at first I though that this was going to be another Amazingly Stupid Story:

A Grand Jury Just Called Tweeting an Animated GIF ‘Assault With a Deadly Weapon’

But in fact, the jury got it right. The animated gif in question is apparently one that flashes real fast in a way meant to cause epileptic seizures. The gif in question was sent by a stalker to a victim who he knew had epilepsy, in the hopes that it would cause a seizure. And the gif in question actually caused a seizure.

What a fascinating modern world we live in.

 Posted by at 11:24 pm

Duck and Cover

 AARRRGH, history, Hmm..., news, nukes, russian empire, ಠ_ಠ  2 Responses »
Mar 212017
 

I can well remember the justifiable fear that the Soviets were going to nuke the US into oblivion. That fear of course went away when the USSR went the way of the dodo (well, went the way of genocidal ideologically evil dodos), but the last 8 years of feckless “leadership” coupled with a couple decades of brainless idiocy regarding the US nuclear deterrent program have led to a situation where it’s becoming increasingly likely that people will have to start seriously contemplating nuclear Armageddon again. Not only do we have leaders with poor impulse control in the US and North Korea casually threatening to nuke the bejeebers out of each other, there’s  KGB-trained psychopath in charge of Russia casually steamrolling his neighbors and carpet bombing civilians for giggles. Evenwhat passes for the medis are starting to take notice of the effect, if not necessarily the full set of causes:

Where to Hide If a Nuclear Bomb Goes Off In Your Area

This article gives some advice on the sort of building to hunker down in to provide some measure of protection against fallout. Oddly, the most obvious and important piece of advice about surviving a nuclear attack – “don’t live in a major metropolitan area” – was not provided. The data for the article was horked from a scholarly article from 2014:

Determining optimal fallout shelter times following a nuclear detonation

Which is available for download as a PDF. It provides some complex math to determine when you should shelter in place, and when you should run like hell… math that the average schmoe is unlikely to do in the aftermath of a nuclear blast, but, still, potentially useful if converted into some sort of chart (perhaps one of those plastic-disk “computers” like the old nuclear bomb effect computers).

For years after the Evil Empire went kaput, the old civil defense efforts of telling people how to survive nuclear attacks – efforts that ranged from the generally ineffective to the outright laughable oftentimes – vanished. But they seem to be coming back… probably as ineffective as ever.

 

So… as long as I’m on the topic, anybody know of a good, reliable and *affordable* geiger counter or other form of radiation detector? I’ve always kinda wanted one. While it would of course be useful in the event of a nuclear attack to scan for fallout, I always thought such a thing might be nice to have in junk and antique stores as well as while hiking. Plus, there’s that well with the indescribable color coming out of it…

 Posted by at 10:01 pm
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