Yesterday Pastor Mark made the comment that, “It was only by perseverance that the snails reached the ark.” I turned to my lovely bride and said, “That’s why it took 120 years for Noah to build the thing.” 😉
Okay, so it’s not that funny, but it seems as if some of those animals had to come from a long way away….
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A little progress on MARE NUBIUM, having crossed the 55,000-word threshold tonight. It’s somewhat slow going, but I’m still having fun with it. Hopefully some readers will get the chance to have fun with it, too.
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In the “This Day in Space History” file, ten years ago today the Russians launched Soyuz TM-28 to the Mir space station from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The spacecraft returned to earth the following February, but one of the cosmonauts stayed aboard Mir for a year. (The Mir station itself deorbited in 2001.*) See this page for more on the Soyuz TM-series spacecraft.
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*The main character in my story “The Rocket Seamstress,” a worker at Baikonur, considered what she thought of as the ignoble fate of Mir.
by Only saw one meteor last night, and it was so quick and faint it may have been my imagination — unlike the night we sat behind our house in Nebraska and so many fell and seemed so close I thought I might reach up and catch them. But last night I needed to sleep, since I’m driving to Asheville this morning.
On an up note, however, two rising stars of SF&F — who just happen to be two of my favorite people in the world — are featured in a hilarious interview: Alethea Kontis, author of Beauty & Dynamite (which I am enjoying reading), interviewed Edmund Schubert, editor of Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, on topics ranging from how he came to edit IGMS to his “PenguinMan” superhero persona. It’s wonderful. Click through from one of their web sites or read it here.
And take a look at the book trailer for Beauty & Dynamite. It just went up on YouTube recently, even though the book has been out for awhile. The trailer is classy and understated — unlike Lee, who is classy and exuberant — and was produced by a certain daughter of mine.
by At Worldcon this past weekend, my writing friend Mary Robinette Kowal won the Campbell Award for Best New Writer. I can’t send hearty enough congratulations — that’s too awesome for words.
So I’ll just say: Great work, Mary!
by Another “day in space history” tidbit: thirty-five years ago today, the Soviets launched Mars-7 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard a Proton rocket.
(When I was in the service, I monitored several technical exchanges between U.S. and Russian engineers getting ready to launch U.S. satellites on Proton rockets, something that would never have happened during the Cold War. And I watched the Canadian-owned [but U.S.-built] Nimiq-2 satellite get mated to a Proton rocket at Baikonur in 2002. I adapted some of what I saw during that operation into my story “The Rocket Seamstress.”)
According to www.astronautix.com, the Mars-7 probe was supposed to soft-land on Mars. As it happened,
Mars 7 reached Mars on 9 March 1974. Due to a problem in the operation of one of the onboard systems (attitude control or retro-rockets) the landing probe separated prematurely and missed the planet by 1,300 km. The early separation was probably due to a computer chip error which resulted in degradation of the systems during the trip to Mars.
Spaceflight is hard, no matter how much we’d like it to be easy.
by As I’m working on MARE NUBIUM, my near-future novel of lunar colonization, I’ve run across some interesting space history items that I thought I’d post from time to time.
Today was the 40th anniversary of the launch of CORONA mission 1968-065A, a KH-4 (“Keyhole”) satellite that launched aboard a Thor rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base. (I was stationed at Vandy from 1993-95, and toured one of the Thor launch pads while a student at Undergraduate Space & Missile Training.) According to the National Space Science Data Center, “The spacecraft had the best imagery to date on any KH-4 systems. Bicolor and color infrared experiments were conducted on this mission.”
A year later — and three weeks after Apollo 11 landed on the moon — the Russians launched the Zond-7 spacecraft from Tyuratam, i.e., the Baikonur Cosmodrome. (I spent three weeks at Baikonur in late 2002.) The mission flew by the moon on August 11th and took two sets of photographs, then returned to earth on August 14th.
by Just a friendly reminder from the Anti-Candidate, who did not release any campaign ads that prompted pretty young heiresses to release counter-ads: if you’re going to vote “None of the Above” in this InstaPundit poll, I’m available as your write-in vote.
I’m the GrayMan, and I approved this message. 😉
by This was posted on YouTube a couple of weeks ago, but I just found it today — and as one who appreciates barbeque in most all its forms, I found the rundown of different styles to be a delightful tribute to one of my favorite foods.
I particularly liked the bit about whether or not Florida is a Southern state* — down to using the outline of California.
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*To most of us who consider ourselves Southern, it isn’t.
by Do you ever have an odd science fictional reference pop into your head while doing something mundane?
The other day I was doing my usual not much and happened to rub my eye: I came away with an eyelash on the pad of my finger and carelessly flicked it away (we have to feed the vacuum cleaner something) before I thought, Wow, I’m glad we don’t have those DNA analyzer-scanners like in GATTACA.
An odd reference, I know, but I’m an odd person. As Mike Yaconelli paraphrased, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.”
So, what SF references have you encountered in daily life?
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