Pax Orionis – Page 3 – The Unwanted Blog

Pax Orionis Readers Club: “Deadliest Catch”

blather, My Fiction, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, Pax Orionis, science fiction 23 Responses »

Jul 222015

I have finished the next Pax Orionis story (to the first draft level, at any rate).”Deadliest Catch” – which will almost certainly be re-titled, for legal reasons if nothing else – is a bit shorter than “The Cuban War,” and tells a far smaller story. One incident from the Great War of 1984. It is written in the form of a magazine article interviewing one of the participants 10 years later, and probably needs to be tightened up a *lot.* But I think it’s potentially entertaining.

As previously mentioned, I’ll send a PDF of this to the first three commenters who want to read it, with the understanding that:

The only requirements will be that the readers do *not* share it further, but *do* share via email any critiques or suggestions they have… and that they post comments on the blog giving their general impressions. “This sucks” or “this is great” are both fine, so long as they are the honest assessment. No spoilers!

So… if you’d like to read “Deadliest Catch” and give me your honest feedback, ~~leave a comment below.~~

UPDATE: Three commenters spoke up and have been emailed a copy of “Deadliest Catch.” So now we wait…

The Pax Orionis Readers Club

blather, Hmm..., My Fiction, Pax Orionis 12 Responses »

Jul 202015

After I posted the Pax Orionis yarn “The Cuban War” a little while back, I said that I was done with scribbling fiction for a while as I needed to get back to trying to make money. While that need is true and ever-present, I’ve sorta gotten sucked into continuing to scribble PO stories. I’ve another one that is *kinda* finished… it just needs a couple editing passes with a woodchipper to clean it up.

I’m still a bit uncertain as to what to do with these stories. I’d certainly *like* to get them published, though that’s a monumentally unlikely outcome. On the one hand I’m thinking it might be good to post stories online for free as I finish them. On the other hand, *not* posting, because that’s generally the sort of the prospective publishers would seem to frown on. On the gripping hand, I’m an unpracticed writer who probably needs a professional editor. Someone who knows their job and gets paid large sums to do it. I ain’t got me one of them, though. So… hmm. Here’s my latest thought.

I’m thinking that I’ll have the next yarn in some vaguely presentable state within a week or so, barring the unexpected. At that time I think I’ll post an announcement that it’s done… and that the first three commenters stating they want it will be emailed copies to read. The only requirements will be that the readers do *not* share it further, but *do* share via email any critiques or suggestions they have… and that they post comments on the blog giving their general impressions. “This sucks” or “this is great” are both fine, so long as they are the honest assessment. No spoilers!

If that works, then I’ll do it for the *next* story, but with a different three people. And so on. After a handful of stories I might have generated a small group of readers whose critiques I find particularly useful, and they’ll get all the others to read, with the same caveats.

Does this sound reasonable? If it sounds like I’m trying to finagle some free editing… yeah, that’s probably in there, somewhere, no denying it. If you think you’d like to join in, please comment. I’d like to see how many would be interested.

Pax Orionis: missile names?

history, Hmm..., My Fiction, Pax Orionis, rockets, science fiction, weapons 17 Responses »

Jul 172015

In the actual history of surface-to-air missile development in the US, we had a number of Nike missiles… Nike-Ajax, Nike-Hercules and in the end, the Nike-Zeus (which was redeveloped into the Spartan). After that, the Nike naming convention came to an end. Cities were no longer ringed with anti-aircraft missiles.

But in the Pax Orionis world, the US remains substantially paranoid about *every* form of threat, so we’d have several new types of land-based city-defending anti-aircraft missiles. But after Nike-Zeus, what might they be called? “Zeus” would seem to be the end of the Greek Deity line. So… what? Nike-Hades? Nike-Kronos? Nike-Achilles? Nike-Typhon? Nike-Hermes, perhaps?

Suggestions/discussion appreciated.

Storytime: Pax Orionis beginnings

blather, My Fiction, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, Pax Orionis, science fiction, spacecraft 18 Responses »

Jul 142015

I have a number of ideas for different tales to go into Pax Orionis, including standard third person narratives, bits of memoirs, articles, interviews, technical descriptions, etc. Some of them I’ve started poking away at. Because why not, below are the opening paragraphs of four such yarns. Some I have little more than what’s here, others are good long chunks. None are done. The titles are just placeholders for the moment,

Two decades of Nuclear Pulse Propulsion

APR, blather, history, Hmm..., Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, Pax Orionis, spacecraft, ಠ_ಠ 5 Responses »

Jul 062015

I graduated in 1995 with a degree in aerospace engineering, and promptly put that degree to good use: my first job was moving mufflers from one side of a warehouse to another. After about a week there, I got a call from a former classmate who had got himself an internship at NASA-Johnson; they wanted those of us who’d worked on a student design project for a moon probe to come and give a presentation. So I told my boss “I’m taking next week off.” When I got back they promptly fired me for ditching work… I wasn’t exactly tore up about that. When you’ve just been given a tour of the innards of a NASA facility, shuffling mufflers seems *really* depressing.

So, I buckled down and put my degree to use getting another job: moving items off one truck and onto another truck at a UPS depot. I was the one non-union, non-management guy there. It was my task to see to it that high-value packages ($5K and up) got off Truck A and onto Truck B, but due to union regs I wasn’t allowed to touch it; I had to beg a union worker to actually carry the package, which of course they did in their own time. A spectacular setup. Truly a model of efficiency.

Anyway, one day (*roughly* this time of summer, so right at 20 years ago) a result of a Freedom of Information Act Request showed up in the mail from NASA: the Summary volume of the General Atomic Project Orion report for NASA. It was a revelation! I took it to work with me one day and read through it on my lunch break (it’s not like I had to waste time socializing during lunch, since nobody would socialize with the one non-management, non-union guy), and a thought occurred to me:

“You know, I aught to take that $1.00 3D CAD program I just bought on floppy disk for my DOS computer and draw up the 10-meter Orion, and write an article describing the concept. I bet people might buy something like that.”

That was the first time it had occurred to me to take a stab at writing aerospace history in that format. I’ve been poking away at writing about Orion ever since.

So the NPP book has been in development for twenty years now. So based on that… how long do you think it’ll take to finish Pax Orionis? Hmmm…

Pax Orionis Prelude: The Cuban War

blather, books, My Fiction, new products, news, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, Pax Orionis, rockets, science fiction, spacecraft 104 Responses »

Jul 042015

Here is the first completed chunk of Pax Orionis. The irony is that I’m not sure that if I finish the work I’ll include this. What we have here is a history of the Cuban War that is the point of divergence from history as we know it to the history that results in Orion battleships fighting a massive nuclear war. The final book might not include this for the reason that it’s a big chunk of exposition that might not be needed… a book on World War II might not have a complete chapter laying out the history of World War I, but would instead just touch on bits and pieces of it. But, what the heck. I figured some of y’all might find it interesting, and some others might like to tear it apart and tell me where I’m dead wrong.

It is available in two formats… a PDF which you can DOWNLOAD RIGHT HERE, formatted for good old 8.5X11, and a Kindle epub version available at Amazon. The PDF is free; the Kindle version is the cheapest price available… 99 cents. If that seems like too much for an admittedly dry short story, don’t worry… I only get 35 cents of that.

If you read this and like it, feel free to toss a few nickles into the tip jar (notice how I haven’t put out a US Aerospace Projects since April? Yeah, pretty much this is why). And feel free to tell anybody you want that this literary masterpiece, or literary abomination, is available here. Constructive criticism – especially on factual matters, of which there are a number here I just handwaved – is appreciated.

The Cuban War.pdf

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If you don’t see the standard Amazon ad-box thing for “The Cuban War” immediately above this… it’s probably a browser issue. So, try HERE as another link.

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LEGAL NOTICE:

I have, hopefully, much more coming. It is possible, though exceedingly unlikely, that it might be publishable in some form or another. And while I have a lot of ideas and plans for what’s going to happen, story-wise, I don’t plan on just giving it all away. So feel free to comment your ideas and suggestions below, but be advised that I may well already have thought the same thing. So if you don’t want to see *your* idea show up in *my* book… well, don’t post it.

This sort of thing happened 20 or so years ago with “Babylon 5.” The creator, J Michael Straczynski, used to hang out on the B-5 Usenet groups. And that was awesome. but he eventually had to bail because people were posting speculations about things that wouldn’t be seen for another year or three, and he could get in trouble if someone had posted an idea that wound up on screen, even if the idea was created entirely independently.

The ships of Pax Orionis

blather, books, drawings, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, Pax Orionis, science fiction, spacecraft 30 Responses »

Jun 292015

I’ve been pecking away at various aspects of Pax Orionis lately. Most of my writing has been involved with various aspects of the history leading up to The War. I could have started with the war first, and backfilled the history after, but it seems to me better to start at the beginning, work through the course of events leading to the war, and then staging the war with the world that the history gives.

Since the US fights the war with Orion ships, I figure it’s a good idea to figure out how many ships the US has, of what type, and what their capabilities are. Below is a very preliminary chart of the ships of the USSF and NASA in chronological and to scale. Names and numbers will likely change; the designs are currently in flux. The double vertical line at the right indicates the war, so the two craft introduced after that are post-war designs.

Any good orbital mechanics sims?

blather, Pax Orionis, science, spacecraft 6 Responses »

Jun 242015

I’m looking for a program (preferably free, of course) that I can use to not only simulate orbits, but determine the effects on those orbits of various propulsive maneuvers. This, as might be obvious, if to support Pax Orionis, so I can get the orbital mechanics of maneuvering in Earth-Moon space correct.

Back in my college days I did this sort of thing for fun using paper pencil and calculator. Because what’s more fun than working out how the gears of the universe actually turn, using your own brain? But here I think a computer system would be better purely for the interests of efficiency.

I don’t need anything fancy, just something I can use.

Pax Orionis: 1/10 of a novel

blather, Hmm..., My Fiction, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, Pax Orionis, science fiction 3 Responses »

Jun 212015

Today I finished the first really rough draft of the “Cuba” portion of Pax Orionis. It is currently one heck of a mess… part dry laying out of facts (this city gets hit with this, that city loses so many, things happen at this time, blah, blah, blah) and part Some Guy Describing What Happened. A whole lot of editing is needed, but it currently stands at over 9,000 words. Not much… but at 300 words per novel-page, that’s about 30 pages. And that’s at least ten percent of a good-sized novel right there. So… maybe this might be doable after all.

Since I have no delusions about finding a publisher for this, what I’ll probably do when it’s all edited is just post the thing in PDF form free for the downloading. And put the tip jar next to it. And put a link to an Amazon Kindle version next to that, at the cheapest price that Amazon allows (fifty cents, I think?). And see how it goes from there.

Storytime: A bit of Pax Orionis

blather, history, Hmm..., My Fiction, nukes, Pax Orionis 25 Responses »

Jun 142015

Here is the *start* of the bit of the project I’ve been occasionally poking away at… a bit of back story. How to get from the history we know, where Project Orion was cancelled and the USSR peacefully imploded, to an alternate history where Orion progressed and WWIII broke out in 1984? There is but one major world event that could have changed the course of things… and the historical fact seems to be that if one anonymous sailor threw left rather than right, big things could have changed almost immediately.

Of course, a whole lot of the history in this section is just straight out of *our* history.

What’s below in text is about a third of this part of the history that I’ve written, and it’ll probably wind up being about one-fifth once I’m done with it. I’d appreciate input.

If by some unlikely chance you think it’s awesome and are dying to read more… I’m bribable.

Fiction Tip Jar

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Excerpt from “My Time On Fire” by Barry Wygant (weapons control officer, U.S.S. Thunderchild). Published by Radiant Fireball Press, New Houston, Texas, April 2002.

Chapter Three: Cuba

A lot of people disagree, but I’m pretty sure that the Orion program probably would have either faded away or taken much longer to come about had it not been for the Cuban War. Sure, it was a disaster for everyone involved, and for millions of people who shouldn’t have been involved, but that war gave America the solar system. Had it not been for the Orion program that rose from the ashes of Cuba, God only knows how we would have fared in the War of ’84. So a bit of history of that war is in order. Sure, it’s all pretty well known… but hey, it’s my book, I’ll tell it like I want.
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