Step by tentative step, Lothar Brandt descended the ladder, his comrade Vera Petrenka following right behind; their visages in crisp living color, their voices coming through as clearly as if they were on the other side of the room from all the billions of people … Continue readingWings of Fire
I’ve been thinking recently again about how I’m going to take my space-opera setting into the extremely far future, from millions of years from now to the end of the universe. In particular: the blaze of glory I have in mind for the end of … Continue readingWhen Worlds Collide
Having perused the first three episodes of the new “Obi-Wan Kenobi” show, I honestly think it’s awful. It’s bereft of a good understanding of the Obi-Wan character, bereft of a good understanding of Star Wars lore, and is in tension or even contradiction to many … Continue readingThe “Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi” I Would Have Made
Hot off a very enjoyable write-up of my story of my universe’s first lunar mission (1949, not 1969), and a more tentative write-up of my Rapunzel Reinhardt story (I was thinking of releasing the latter in June, the former in July, but I think now … Continue readingA Date in the Rusty Desert
You might have heard of the Aral Sea and its “ships of the desert”. Where there once was seafloor, now there’s only dust; where there once was thriving fish and birds, now there’s only toxic clouds. All the casualty of diversion for agriculture, a plague … Continue readingThe Inland Seas in my Sci-Fi Setting
For a while I’ve posited that the most cost-effective method of traveling on Mars, after you have some people there and some outposts going, is the “road train”, large motor vehicles hooked up in tandem, much like what we see in the Australian Outback, which, … Continue readingMonowheels of Mars?
Fundamentally there are three schools of thought for spacecraft that enter and exit planetary atmospheres (spacecraft that stay in space have their own design considerations, and in any case can get much wilder): capsules, spaceplanes, and lifting bodies. Anybody who’s even passingly familiar with spaceflight … Continue readingCatching a Lift
Lately I’ve been giving a lot of thought to what’s almost a blank page in my universe: what the first spaceflights, which in my alternate timeline take place in the 1940s, were like. The first moon landing takes place in 1949, but in the interests … Continue readingWorldbuilding the First Moon Landing
In my alternate-history science-fiction space opera setting, it’s well-established that first contact with alien intelligence was made by Ilmatar of Thalassa on, well, Thalassa (a planet of Proxima Centauri) around the year 2060. What’s not so well-established is that the Thalassans aren’t the closest alien … Continue readingAfter Thalassa: Squid Brains of Enceladus?
Well, I know I laid out so many ambitious plans in my previous post, “Ready to Write Something Different”, but when the time came to actually try out all that stuff it just made me feel sick, overwrought, overworked, and inadequate: it was not enjoyable, … Continue readingReady for Writing Something Not So Different