Pushing a Snake Up a Hill

Bread Loaf Conference

2008-05-20T18:51:00.002-04:00

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

Sunborn Available for Preorder

2008-05-08T01:53:00.006-04:00

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.

Preorder now!

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

Spring Is Here!

2008-04-24T23:11:00.009-04:00

Spring has sprung here in Massachusetts! And most welcome it is! I don't know why, but this last winter felt like the longest I've ever known. I've been counting the interesting species of wildlife I've been seeing right around our house here in the Boston 'burbs: cardinals, bluejays, black-capped chickadee (I think), mockingbirds, crows (making a comeback after nearly being decimated by the Nile virus), a cute little rabbit, a toad, and—just a few days ago—a wild turkey. (It practically cut me off as I was coming up on my moped; it was flying up the street at an altitude of about six feet, then landed in a neighbor's driveway.) Oh and, yeah—termites.

Blasted termites ate a piece of wood paneling in our downstairs rental apartment. So now I've got to hire a Terminator. Jeez, that's an expensive proposition! And it's not just a matter of getting estimates and picking a terminator; I have to decide which approach I want to take—pesticide injection into the ground (the tried and true method), or bait trapping (much less pesticide, but newer, less tested, and more expensive).

Which reminds me that my wife and I have become big fans of the new show, Sarah Connor Chronicles. I just read that it's been renewed for next season. Yesss! And BSG has started up again. We've only watched one episode so far, but clearly they're going to be messing with our minds for the rest of the series. And I mean that in a good way, of course.

I haven't had as much time to pursue my Roomba hobby as I'd hoped, but I did bring an ailing Scooba back to life! Turned out have some defective soldering inside. I never would have found it if someone on Roombareview.com hadn't suggested that I solder a couple of leads for a voltmeter in there, so that I could see what was happening. Lo and behold, the act of doing that solved the problem. And I just got a very nice note from someone in Italy, telling me that my method worked for him, too! (No, he didn't put leads in, but he did remelt the solder on the crucial connection—and that fixed his Scooba, too.)

In keeping with the theme of BSG and Roombas, I present here a couple of funny videos I stumbled across on youtube. The links will open new windows in your browser.

Cylon Roombas!

And I, Roomba, a Roomba love story, of sorts (a little long, but cute):

I, Roomba

(I tried embedding the videos, but they played erratically for some reason.)

"Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book." —Cicero

Sunborn Copyedit Finished

2008-04-02T03:06:00.000-04:00

For the last seven or eight days, I have been up to my ears in Sunborn again. The copyedited manuscript arrived for my review, and as usual, they wanted it done yesterday. In case you're not familiar with the process, when a book manuscript goes into production, after it's left the editor's hands, it goes to a copy editor. This person does all the fine marking up for typesetting, plus proofing of all the fiddly little details, querying the author if something seems wrong or unclear, and checking spelling, hyphenations, commas, all the little stuff that can drive you crazy—and make the book look unprofessional if it's missed or done wrong. Copy editors are absolutely essential to the bookmaking process, and a good copy editor is priceless to an author.

The problem is that the author then has to go over everything, approving or not approving of changes, and reconsidering every little comma and word choice, pulling his or her hair out over things that he thought (ha ha) had already been settled. It's also a chance to make last-minute revisions if a passage doesn't seem right. It's my least favorite stage of writing a book, it's excruciating, and it's necessary to do it with great care. Usually by the time you get to this point, you're sick to death of the book and the last thing you want to do is read it one more time. But you do. For one thing, even the best copy editor will make some changes you don't like, and this is where you catch them and fix them.

Anyway, I did all that, and have just shipped it off to my editor. Now it goes back to the production department and off to typesetting. I'll have to do it all one more time—when the page proofs come for checking. But for now, I can rest. Sleeeeeeep!

"You don't know what it is to stay a whole day with your head in your hands trying to squeeze your unfortunate brain so as to find a word." —Gustave Flaubert

Arthur C. Clarke (1917 – 2008)

2008-03-19T01:29:00.004-04:00

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

Taxes, Life, and Consultancy

2008-03-14T02:52:00.003-04:00

The last few weeks have been jammed, with one thing after another, some better than others. Doing taxes (mostly, getting a year's financial records caught up so that I could do our taxes) took a big slug of time. In my new model for life, it had to be done not by an April 15th deadline, but by the deadline of submitting all the application materials for my daughter's college financial aid. Ironically, in the midst of this, I needed to bring said daughter home for a week of enforced rest. She bonked her head real good on a lighting fixture at the theater where she works, and got a concussion. Being a college kid, she of course wasn't resting as needed for recovery. So home she came.

The day we drove her back to school (a 3 1/2 hour drive each way) was the day we had torrential downpours throughout the northeast—so we got on our way for the return trip home just in time to avoid flooding roads, and then drove for 3 1/2 hours through the hardest pounding rain I've seen in a long time. Made it okay, though.

That segued right into preparing for one of my most unusual trips (from which I've just returned). I flew to D.C. and joined a handful of other SF writers for a 2-day meeting with people from the defense department, or technically the Joint Services Small Arms Program (JSSAP), brainstorming futuristic notions of how we might better prepare our soldiers for future combat. Now, I am not a military type at all, and there I was with a group consisting of military thinktank guys, ex-servicemen, and a few representatives of actual arms manufacturers. It was extremely interesting and educational, and I hope I contributed some useful ideas. Mostly I focused on nonlethal weapons and information systems and nanotech possibilities, because I think our people in the field ought to have more choices than doing nothing, or pulling a trigger and killing someone. (That's greatly simplifying, of course, but the fundamental image is a 19-year-old kid with an M16, kicking down a door and making a split-second decision about whether the person on the other side is a threat or not.) We had some very interesting discussions (although the bureaucratic mode kicked in once in a while, such as when we "affinitized" our ideas, then went for—what was it?—a "Plenary Consensus on Affinity Grouping of Concepts").

Following that meeting, most of us SF writers went on to meet with people from the Department of Homeland Security, who were eager to solicit our thoughts on how to anticipate threats in the future, and how to avoid them and/or adapt to them. That again was extremely educational, and I hope we got a start at useful brainstorming with them. They're a lot smarter than most of the public probably thinks they are. And they're interested in continuing to work with us.

And so I came home, where younger daughter was there to greet me, but wife was not. No, nothing bad had happened; we just missed each other, as she'd flown to London this morning to help her mom deal with some family business. You do what you have to, to get affordable air fares, right?

Anyway, I came back encouraged as much as anything else by the fact that there are some decision-makers in Washington who actually think science fiction writers have some useful thoughts to contribute. That alone was worth the trip.

"Whenever I have endured or accomplished some difficult task -- such as watching television, going out socially or sleeping -- I always look forward to rewarding myself with the small pleasure of getting back to my typewriter and writing something." —Isaac Asimov

Sunborn in October 2008

2008-02-21T02:46:00.002-05:00

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

If This is Tuesday, It Must Be...No, No, That Can't Be Right

2008-02-21T02:29:00.002-05:00

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

Chameleons of the Deep

2008-02-05T00:45:00.000-05:00

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

Virgin Galactic's Spaceliner Design Unveiled

2008-01-25T17:46:00.000-05:00

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

Still Here, Still Tickin' in the New Year

2008-01-24T17:29:00.000-05:00

Good Lord, I haven't posted in over a month! Yiiiee. Last time I checked in, I was about to head off with my family for extended holidays in London—and indeed, we had a great time there. We saw all of the usual famous buildings, the British Museum, the National (art) Galleries, the Tate Modern, the Greenwich Observatory, the London Tower, the Thames from a boat, and the insides of a good number of pubs. We also visited the famous Forbidden Planet bookstore, and saw some plays: Boeing, Boeing and Wicked. And my daughters saw Ian McKellan in King Lear! (We would all have gone, but tickets were sold out. Only by standing in line for people selling off unneeded tickets did we get two individual seats for the girls.) McKellan, they reported, was awesome as Lear. And Wicked was a stunning stage production. Oh, we also took a train to visit family friends in a real English village somewhere north of London.

Here are a few pix of us from London:

Here we are, straddling the Prime Meridian!

Julia, Lexi, and Allysen overlooking Greenwich and the Thames River.

Me, apparently looking very very serious,
in the darkness of a pub.

Immediately after our return, my brother and his girlfriend arrived for a 5-day visit. We tried turducken for the first time, as we had a belated Christmas dinner. An interesting experiment, but I think we'll go back to regular turkey next time.

It was all great. But by the time we'd gotten back to normal and recovered from jet lag, our total "out of real life" experience was close to a month. Where did the time go?

I am now back at work on The Reefs of Time—struggling with the transition from where I thought the story was heading before to where I think it's heading now. At the same time, I'm also looking for outside consulting work as a developmental editor. (That's probably worth a post of its own: coming soon.) The reason, of course, is obvious: most of us can't make a living from writing fiction alone, and sooner or later, we have to seek out gainful employment. One of those facts about writing that we wish were different.

But hey—I just resuscitated a dead Roomba! And I fixed our crippled Calypso washing machine without calling a technician! (I knew that voltmeter would come in handy one day.) And I replaced the battery in the iPod Mini I just inherited from my daughter! So I'm on a high!

"I have written a great many stories and I still don't know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances." —John Steinbeck

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and All That

2007-12-23T02:44:00.000-05:00

It's been a busy time here, as I'm sure it has been for many of you. This will probably be my last entry for 2007, because my family and I are in the throes of getting ready not just for the holidays, but for a two-week trip to London! It's been about twenty years since I was last in England, and it'll be very interesting to go back. It's in some ways a crazy time to go—the exchange rate and costs are insane, and we're all absurdly busy—but we have a place to stay with family, and that really is what's making it possible. Plus, as my wife points out, chances to take this kind of trip as a family are rapidly vanishing: one daughter in college and the other headed that way soon enough. I'm sure it'll be a fine and memorable time. (But there's no internet access where we're staying, so chances are I won't be posting during the trip.)

Writing update: For the last couple of months I've been wrestling with the storyline I'm trying to unfold in The Reefs of Time. My old outline didn't really hold up, and I've been rethinking the direction of my story following the end of Sunborn (which of course you haven't read, because it hasn't been published yet). Looks like the plot is taking some unexpected turns—unexpected to me, that is. Figuring out what it means is taking some time. Still, I like the new direction, and it's sparked a new interest in the story on my part. While that's been going on, I just wrapped up the SF writing workshop I taught with Craig Gardner. We both thought we had a terrific group again, and were excited to see so much promise in their work.

As always, there are many things I've been intending to write about but haven't gotten to. So I'm going to sign off with just this news item:

Young chimps beat college students in memory tests! How can you not love this story? In short-term memory tests on a computer, some young chimpanzees bested their young adult human competition. Go monkeys! You read it here first. (Actually, you probably didn't. But if I'd written this sooner, you might have.)

"We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true." —Robert Wilensky

Flying Saucers in Saturnian Orbit!

2007-12-07T01:59:00.000-05:00

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

Autographed Books Make Great Gifts!

2007-12-06T16:56:00.000-05:00

Late as usual, as one of my high school teachers liked to say to me. Still, I hope, better late than never.

This is my not-quite-annual reminder that if you're searching for an excellent gift for that special someone, there's nothing quite like a personalized, autographed book direct from the author. (That would be me.) Clearly I'm way behind the curve on Hanukkah. (But while I'm on the subject, Happy Hanukkah, everyone!) But for Christmas shoppers, it's not too late.

If you'd like to peruse the books that I have available for sale, go to my web site: http://www.starrigger.net and click on book covers for information about the books themselves. Click Bookstore, and then Price List to check on availability of various titles. You can order by email, if you use Paypal. Or to order by snailmail, print out the order blank and send it with a check.

I hope you are all having a great December. I got our blue LED lights strung up on the big pine tree in front of our house yesterday, so I'm finally, sorta-kinda getting into the mood myself!

It's surprisingly hard to take a picture of an outdoor Christmas tree,
especially when you're hopping around
because you didn't take time to put a coat on!

"The two most engaging powers in an author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new." —William Makepeace Thackeray

Update on the Weirdness

2007-11-29T01:02:00.000-05:00

Well, first I'll update on the copyright infringement weirdness, just by repeating what I already said in the comments section to the last post: The guy never answered my email, forwarded through his domain-name service, but he did take my story down. And not just my story; he took the whole blog down! And recreated it, under a new name (but same URL). Odd. But life is odd.

And speaking of odd, it's time for another roundup of links to the stupid, the strange, the weird and fun:

New Scientist has a couple of interesting columns, starting with a roundup of strange products. The first comes under the heading of, as they put it, fruitloopiness: bottled water that has had music played to it, so that it might better calm your inner feng shui. That would be H2Om, the world's first "vibrationally charged, interactive water." You gotta see it to believe it.

On a more down-to-earth note, also from New Scientist: Do fish get thirsty? Maybe...maybe not... It all depends on the kind of fish.

Now, I'm not a Mac lover and I'm not a Mac hater. I simply note that the Mac user in the family seems to gripe about poor performance and annoying quirks from her machine at about the same rate as the PC users. I personally find the Mac incomprehensible. But I intend no political or religious statement with the link to this video; it's just too funny not to point to: Why Macs suck.

If you have friends, and lots of them, and you like to bike together, you gotta have a Conference bike. Don't worry, it's only a little over $12,000! Isn't that worth it for a tricycle made for seven? They even have a video, if you're interested. (Turn the sound down, though, unless you want the music to drive you mad.)

But seriously now, the gift-giving season is nearly upon us. And you should not go into it without being armed with Dave Barry's Holiday Gift Guide. I'm eyeing the Flying Alarm Clock, myself.

And saving the best for last. Be Rocky the Flying Squirrel! (But wait until your kids are grown up and able to support themselves, in case you, er...well, you know.) This looks like so much fun, I have to do it someday. Fly like a bird! Or at least like a flying squirrel.

My writing quote of the day definitely applies to me:

"Very few writers really know what they are doing until they've done it." —Anne Lamott

Copyright Infringement Strikes Close to Home

2007-11-19T02:15:00.000-05:00

Before I start: One reason I haven't posted for a while is that I've actually been focusing on working out some things about the storyline of the new book—not Sunborn, but the following book, The Reefs of Time (working title). It's been sending out shoots in some unexpected directions, which I guess is consistent with the theme of The Chaos Chronicles—but disconcerting.

There are a number of things I've been meaning to write about here, but what actually kicked me into gear is a just-discovered case of copyright infringement involving one of my short stories. I have several stories up for free on my web site, and each of them has at the top a copyright notice, along with a plain language statement that it is not permissible to reproduce them elsewhere on the web. Nevertheless, someone named "Jim" has chosen to do just that.

The story in question, "Shapeshifter Finals," was published in 1995 in the anthology, Warriors of Blood and Dream, edited by Roger Zelazny. I've had it up for readers to enjoy for quite a few years. Earlier today, I did something I've done from time to time but not lately, which is to take a line at random from my online works and run a search to see if anyone has stolen the source. To my astonishment, I came up positive with this story. It's been posted online, in its entirety, on a blog called Tales and Tributes. The blog owner apparently lifted it directly from my website, and gave me credit as the author but neglected to ask for permission, or to reproduce the copyright notice—thus giving the false impression that the work is in the public domain. The work is not in the public domain; it is copyright © 1995 by Jeffrey A. Carver.

I would contact the blog owner, but the thing is, "Jim" has no contact information on his blog. Apparently he doesn't want to be contacted. Another thing is, according to a Whois.com lookup, the domain name, jimblogs.net, was created on the very same day my story was posted. How odd is that?

I have contacted the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) to see if they can assist me in dealing with this, and I'm sure we'll get to the bottom of it eventually. But in the meantime, if any of you out there in blogland know anything about jimblogs.net or "Jim," I would appreciate hearing from you.

"The problem is when you're not writing you don't know if you're lying fallow or if you'll never write again." —Norman Mailer

Three Thoughts for Halloween

2007-10-31T22:14:00.000-04:00

No, not spooky thoughts, or even deep thoughts. Just...weird, funny, unexpected.

I'm sure you all know what CAPTCHAs are. No? I didn't, either, until I read the article I'm about to refer you to. But you've dealt with them. CAPTCHAs are those little boxes where you have to decipher squiggly or morphed letters of the alphabet and type them into another box before you can proceed (for example, to add a comment to this blog). Their purpose is to ensure that a real human, and not a robot, is leaving a post or opening an email account.

The evil spammers have come up with a new way around these: a sexy picture of a scantily clad blonde, and an invitation to entice her to take off her clothes by...yes, deciphering a CAPTCHA and entering the code. But when you do this, you're performing a service for the spammers: enabling them to get past these protective devices. Read about it on the Washington Post Security Fix column, where I saw it.

To veer wildly in the direction of the physics of life, ponder the possibility that life may evolve in the form of plasma or ionized dust creatures (in space). Invasion of the Plasmozoids! Or whatever you might like to call them. The New Scientist magazine has asked for ideas of what to call these hypothetical beings.

And for one final twist into oddity, watch this brief video of a train in Bangkok. Be sure to watch all the way to the end.

Happy Halloween!

"We tend to think things are new because we've just discovered them." —Madeleine L'Engle

Firefox on the Mac and My Blog

2007-10-25T00:53:00.000-04:00

I spent a couple of hours tonight trying to isolate the problem (which is more widespread than I had realized) of my blog causing Firefox on the Mac to freeze. It wasn't the most recent entry that was at fault at all. It seemed I was offending Firefox/Mac in several ways. As nearly as I can tell, Firefox/Mac:

Doesn't like it when I have italics in the title of a post
Doesn't like it (sometimes) when I have an Amazon ad for a book in a post
Doesn't like it (sometimes) when I use blockquote in text

It took a while to root all of those out, or at least those going back a little over a year. None of them caused trouble in Firefox/Windows or Safari/Mac (that I know of). Anyway, this blog no longer freezes my wife's Mac, which is a hopeful sign.

I'd appreciate hearing from anyone who has had trouble viewing my blog in the past. If you could leave a comment letting me know if you can view it now, that would be very helpful.

Thanks!

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

2007-10-24T19:40:00.000-04:00

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

Dragonbreath and Buckbeak

2007-10-08T16:20:00.001-04:00

I said earlier that I'd post some pix of us on our cool mopeds when I had some. Well, here they are!

Allysen's Dragonbreath (a.k.a Dracos, a.k.a. Buglet) is definitely the Town Car of mopeds. My Buckbeak (a.k.a. the Growler) is clearly the Jeep. Hers was made by Honda, mine by Tomos (in Slovenia, probably in an old Yugo factory). We love 'em both.

Dragonbreath, Buckbeak

Tough hombre biker

We ride, we ride!

"It's true that writing is a solitary occupation, but you would be surprised at how much companionship a group of imaginary characters can offer once you get to know them." —Anne Tyler

X-wing Fighter Flies! (briefly)

2007-10-08T16:12:00.001-04:00

Some people talk, and some people do. Here's a group of people who decided to build their own X-wing fighter model (you know, the craft Luke Skywalker flew in Star Wars), and make it fly! We're not talking a little bitty model, but a model 21 feet long! That's ambition. Before you look at the video, take a look at their beautiful project.

Now you can watch it fly in two different video views (scroll down for second). Well, U.S. rockets used to blow up all the time, too. But they got better.

Here's a longer video, showing the setup, etc.

"A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." —Thomas Mann

Sputnik, Half a Century Later

2007-10-05T02:12:00.000-04:00

Can it really be fifty years since Sputnik beep-beeped its way around the globe, ushering in the space age and scaring Americans half to death? (The Commies are going to bomb us! Their rockets work, but ours always blow up!) I guess it has been. (By the time I get this up, it's going to be October 5, but let's just pretend it's still October 4, okay? I mean, somewhere in the U.S., it still is.)

Lots has been written in newspapers and elsewhere about the anniversary, but I thought I'd note a few reflections about what Sputnik meant to me, an 8-year-old kid in Huron, Ohio. I remember fear, because the Russkies were ahead of us. But I also remember great excitement, because we were finally in space! (In this part of the brain, it was okay to think of them as being part of us, which was really how I preferred to think of things anyway.) In the long run, the excitement way outweighed the fear. The Space Race was on!

I can still taste the thrill of watching our early rockets lift off, of following every single space mission with intense interest—and I don't just mean manned space missions. I mean everything. The Echo satellite, a big Mylar balloon that reflected radio waves. Telstar, the first active communications satellite. Ranger and Surveyor to the moon. Mariner to Mars and Venus. I knew all the rockets by shape and size: Delta, Atlas, Titan, Atlas Agena, Atlas Centaur, Saturn. I knew what rockets were coming down the pike. (I'm still waiting for the Nova, which would have dwarfed the Saturn V.) I idolized Werner von Braun. (We didn't know about the Nazi part then.)

And then, of course, there were the manned missions. I remember our classes at school (6th or 7th grade) being pulled out to go to the room where there was a TV to watch both the scrubbed attempts and finally the launch of Alan Shepherd into space. "Why don't you fix your little problem and light this candle?" I think I was at home for Gus Grissom's flight. In school for John Glenn's. It was a wondrous time. So full of passion and innocence. But I also remember the devastating news of the Apollo 1 fire, which put an end to the innocence. And finally on up to the landing of the Eagle. "Tranquility Base here..." I still get shivers when I watch video footage of Apollo 11's launch.

Besides engrossing me, one pronounced effect of this ferment of space activity was my passion for reading science fiction. I'm pretty sure the two were linked. As I watched the real space travelers, I had no doubt—one iota of doubt— that our future as a species was in space. I lived that future through the exploits of Tom Swift, Jr. and Tom Corbett, Space Cadet—and of course through the stories of Heinlein and Asimov and Clarke and Leinster and Del Rey and Lesser and Nourse and Norton and White and a hundred others. I never felt that there was anything unreal about these visions of our future in the stars. On those periodic occasions when someone asked me why I didn't read about real things, I simply didn't know how to answer; the question made no sense to me.

In a way, it still makes no sense to me. That was the beginning but not the end of my love affair with science fiction, and I have always felt that it was the most real of all kinds of fiction.

Hey, Sputnik—thanks for getting the ball rolling.

"Writing itself is an act of faith, and nothing else." —E. B. White

Uncle Jay Explains the News

2007-10-02T23:43:00.000-04:00

Thanks go to my sister Nancy, who forwarded a link to an Uncle Jay Explains the News video—explaining the system by which Congress takes well-earned recesses. Uncle Jay was news to me, but he's hilarious—very smart, and an equal-opportunity acid-wit. I immediately started watching a bunch more. One of the best is his shtick on, er, blogs.

If you don't know Uncle Jay, take a few minutes and go watch.

Oh, and when you've watched some of those, take in a few of Walt Handelsman's animated editorial cartoons.

"An eerie type of chaos can lurk just behind a façade of order—and yet, deep inside the chaos lurks an even eerier type of order." —Douglas Hofstadter

Book Signing and Reunion in Ohio

2007-10-02T18:44:00.000-04:00

I spent last weekend in Sandusky, Ohio, where I spent a fair number of hours at the Kalahari Waterpark Resort, signing books—and also enjoyed a reunion with a lot of high school classmates, many of whom I had not seen in forty years. Everyone looked just the same (yeah, just like I do). I sort of, almost recognized a lot of people—especially after we all put name badges on. Everyone greeted me warmly, a little bit like a homecoming celebrity (strange, but nice, I thought); and I finally found out why everyone recognized me so easily. Turns out, a new hometown newspaper whose existence I hadn't even been aware of had run a nice front-page spread on me that week! I had no idea what people were talking about when they referred to the newspaper article—but finally, just as I was packing up to leave, I was given a copy. Nice!

My wife wasn't there, so the mice got to play: during the music and dance part of the reunion, I finally danced with all those girls I was too shy to ask to dance with me when I was in high school! (Danced with them all at once, more or less.) The book signing went very well; a few people (not classmates) had even come looking for me, because I'd posted info on my web site. That's not something that happens every day. I even sold enough books to cover my airfare!

Plus, I brought back five 12-packs of Vernors ginger ale. (Yay!) I had it neatly and securely duct-taped together, but the airline made me buy a box from them to put it in. (Boo!) Hey, Vernors—you make great ginger ale, so how about selling it in New England, so I don't have to keep doing this, eh?

The following pretty well expresses how progress on my followup book to Sunborn is coming:

"Writing is easy; all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead." —Gene Fowler

Incredibly Stupid Engineering by Whirlpool

2007-09-26T02:03:00.000-04:00

We have a Whirlpool dishwasher that's about two years old. It was a gift to us, and we like it very much. But last night it developed its first problem. I found it partway through the wash cycle, not running, with the Clean light blinking. It would respond to nothing I did, including pressing the Cancel button.

Well, my first approach to fixing anything I don't understand is to google it. That I did, and I found lots of pages on the problem, including one that linked to a tech video showing all of the many things that might be behind it. Fortunately, near the end of that video, they gave the secret code you need to bring your appliance out of its coma. (Press Heated Dry, then Normal, then Heated Dry, then Normal. Voila! Machine back to life.) But that's not the stupid part.

Here’s the stupid part: The Whirlpool engineers included a test routine in the software that runs the dishwasher. About 8 minutes into the wash cycle, it tests the water temperature to verify that the heating coil is heating the water properly. If it's not, the dishwasher....well, before I tell you, what do you think it does? Do you think it flashes an alert and completes the cycle making the best of the hot water as it is?

Too logical? Do you think it comes to a complete stop—right in the middle of the wash cycle—and freezes its controls so that nothing works? You win! There you are, with partially washed, detergent-covered dishes, and a machine that has locked itself up until a repairman arrives (or until you google the problem and learn the secret code, whichever comes first). This is by design! In fact, the first tech page I found said, in no uncertain terms, The consumer will not be able to restore operation. And the reason for this intentional lockup (one more time)? The water isn't heating properly.

The moronicity of this is mind-boggling, and is only highlighted by a note at the end of the video: in later models, in order to reduce the number of nuisance lockups, they changed the software so that it only freezes the machine if the problem occurs three times in a row. So it's three strikes and you're out—but we're not going to tell you about the first two strikes! Oops—your bad! Call a repairman!

Now, call me naïve, call me an optimist, but if it were me designing the software, I'd have it finish washing the fracking dishes, you idiot! And then it could inform us of the problem. (Sir or Madame, our sensors indicate your wash water might not have reached an optimum temperature. We suggest you have this condition looked at.)

Sometimes I am just amazed at the stupidity of the engineering in American-made appliances. How did we ever make it to the Moon? Honestly. (And don't even get me started about the half-cent gasket in our Calypso—by Whirlpool!—clothes washer that caused flooding twice on our new laundry-room floor.)

Really. Don't get me started.

"There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are." —W. Somerset Maugham