Looking at what anything (a house, a car, a lifestyle…) I actually like costs, it’s just horrifying. I’m in that frustrating financial bracket where I’ve got enough wealth to make working a normal job I dislike not worthwhile, but not enough to provide anything more … Continue readingAll My Little Dreamlets
I’ve mentioned some aspects of physics in my science-fiction setting before, but now I feel like taking the opportunity to add some more thoughts. The most characteristic extension of our real-life understanding of physics in my space-opera setting is an infinity of naturally-occurring wormholes at … Continue readingSome Physics of My Space Opera Universe
Many more women who earn enough on their own to provide well for a child should become “single mothers by choice”. To most people that sounds crazy at best, morally outrageous at worst. Yes, ideally every child would be raised by both a loving father … Continue readingOf Single Mothers by Choice
What is this book, my “One Day and Two Nights”? I’ll let the blurb speak for itself: Over a thousand years in the future, mankind has scattered across the stars and unlocked the secrets of space and time. In a world where the cosmos is … Continue readingOne Day and Two Nights: New Sci-Fi Short Story Out!
What if the universe had expanded much more slowly, so that Big Bang Nucleosynthesis lasted not a mere 20 minutes but rather, say, a trillion years? The age of stars would begin far later and start with a lot more heavy elements, completely reshaping the … Continue readingWorldbuilding an Expanding Universe
Making daylight saving time permanent, i.e. the “Sunshine Protection Act”? Blech. What we really need is to make standard time permanent; in the spirit of the rather propagandistic moniker springing forward for good goes by these days, I’ll call my solution of falling back for … Continue readingFor a Darkness Protection Act
It’s curious how Americans seem to find it normal and acceptable that not just particular neighborhoods but whole regions of the country are off-limits for you to live in unless you make more money than most people. This economic situation is of recent provenance, and … Continue readingNo Escape for the Cheap
I know just last week I posted about taking my space opera into the really far future, millions of years from now, but since then I’ve been thinking about going all the way, to orders of magnitude longer time scales. Many orders of magnitude. As … Continue readingTaking My Space Opera into the Extremely Far Future
Last year I spent a lot of time worldbuilding the far future of my space opera setting, a time over a thousand years from today when the technology for opening up wormholes to anywhere in the cosmos is invented, unleashing a revolutionary surge in exploration … Continue readingTaking my Space Opera into the Really Far Future
“What?” you might ask: “Third Rome? Viking Tsars? Russian Turan?” I’m talking, of course, about what happens in the Russian sphere of influence in my alternate timeline, the history all of my science-fiction and space opera stories, from the 20th century to over a thousand … Continue readingThird Rome, Viking Tsars, Russian Turan, and Beyond