Filed under: Ad Astra, Amazon, Apollo program, Art, Astronomy, Brave New World, Comics, Connections, Faith healing, Feedback, General Musings, Health, Humor, ISS, Kindle, Man Conquers Space, Marketing, movies, NASA, Promotion, Publishing, Religion, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Space, Survival, tech, Travel, Violence, Wales | Tags: Amazon, Annie Wilcox, art, Atlas Obscura, blogging, Brian Merchant, Charles Fishman, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, feedback, free, health, humor, jim downey, JPL, Kindle, literature, Medium, Motherboard, movies, NASA, Patrick Modiano, Pentre Ifan, promotion, reviews, science, Science Fiction, space, St. Cybi's Well, Susan M. Toy, technology, The Atlantic, The Independent, Tomas Jivanda, travel, Wales, Waylon Strickland, writing, xkcd
A mix of little things, playing catch-up for the last couple of weeks …
Why catch-up? Well, this might explain why I took a break for a while there.
And we’re off …
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First thing, thanks to all who downloaded Communion of Dreams over the weekend, or helped to spread the word about it. There were a total of 693 downloads worldwide — and that includes various European portals, as well as Canada, India, and Japan! Pretty cool.
For those who have gotten the book, once you have a chance to read it please take a few moments to review it on Amazon or elsewhere – it really does help, and as I am finishing up writing St Cybi’s Well the feedback is most welcome.
* * *
A long, but quite good, read about the value of the ISS: 5,200 Days in Space
* * *
And a fun bit of perspective from xkcd about getting there:
* * *
Some great images from one of the sites I’ve mentioned here before: Pentre Ifan
Petre Ifan is a haunting burial stack that stands in a verdant Welsh field as one of the most complete and dramatic stone dolmens still found anywhere on the planet.
* * *
Wow.
Go see the full size image and explanation of the science. Worth it.
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An excellent read by an old and dear friend: There’s an App for That: Cancer in the Modern Age
* * *
And another excellent read, all in all. But this paragraph is so painfully true:
“Writing is a strange and solitary activity. There are dispiriting times when you start working on the first few pages of a novel. Every day, you have the feeling you are on the wrong track. This creates a strong urge to go back and follow a different path. It is important not to give in to this urge, but to keep going. It is a little like driving a car at night, in winter, on ice, with zero visibility. You have no choice, you cannot go into reverse, you must keep going forward while telling yourself that all will be well when the road becomes more stable and the fog lifts.”
* * *
Any others to add? The 10 Sci-Fi Films That Defined 2014
* * *
Of course, reading is always better for you: Brain function ‘boosted for days after reading a novel’
See? I’m actually making you SMARTER! Keep that in mind when you write a review, will ya?
* * *
And that’s enough for now. I need to get back to my “strange and solitary activity”.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Humor, Kindle, Marketing, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction | Tags: blogging, Boxing Day, Christmas, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, free, humor, jim downey, Kindle, literature, promotion, Science Fiction
“Yeah. What did you get me?”
“Well …”
“You forgot, didn’t you. Admit it.”
“No, I didn’t! I just …”
“Oh, just admit it. You forgot to get me something, didn’t you?”
“No, really, I didn’t! Honest!”
“Then where is it?”
“Here.”
“Wow!”
Yup, Communion of Dreams is available for free download today through Sunday, December 28th. Please, go get it. Share it. Give it to others. Or at least let them know that you went to great trouble and expense to make sure that the book was ABSOLUTELY FREE all weekend, just for their convenience.
Happy Boxing Day!
Jim Downey
Filed under: Connections, Faith healing, Religion, Science Fiction, Wales, Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, Darnell Sidwell, excerpt, jim downey, Kirsty Hall, Science Fiction, St Anne's Well, St. Cybi's Well, The Virtuous Well, Wales, writing
Excerpt:
“This is my well. Of course I know what the well may provide.”
“Your well?”
She nodded. “My well.”
“You’re … Anne? St Anne?”
“No,” she said. “I’m Annis. This is my well. My place.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Finish the cup.”
He looked down into the mug he was holding. “I …”
“Finish the cup. It will help.” Her voice was still light and pleasant, but now there was a commanding power behind her words. “It will help.”
Darnell closed his eyes, downed the cup.
When he opened his eyes again, the woman was no where to be seen.
It’s a fun place, one I would like to visit.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, NPR, Predictions, Science Fiction, Society, Terrorism | Tags: art, blogging, Communion of Dreams, Edenists, Greenpeace, jim downey, Nazca, NPR, Peru, predictions, Sam Sanders, Science Fiction, writing
From Chapter 9 of Communion of Dreams, about the ‘Edenists’:
“Please,” asked Johan Klee, “who are these Edenists? I do not believe that we have them in Europe.”
“Homegrown American kooks,” said Gates. “Take your worst nightmare right-wing Christian fundies, breed ‘em with ecological extremists, let the mix simmer in isolation for about twenty years, and you wind up with the Edenists: eco-terrorists who think that it’s God’s Will that mankind return to a primitive, pre-industrial state.”
I hate having these things be so damned accurate:
Greenpeace Apologizes For Stunt At Peru’s Sacred Nazca Lines
Greenpeace activists stand next to massive cloth letters next to the hummingbird geoglyph at Peru’s sacred Nazca lines. The Peruvian government is pursuing criminal charges against the activists.
Greenpeace has apologized to the people of Peru after activists entered a highly restricted area to leave a message on ancient, sacred desert land.
Activists placed giant, yellow letters spelling out, “Time for change! The future is renewable. Greenpeace,” near markings in the earth known as the Nazca lines.
Fanaticism, whether religious, moral, racial, or technological, is dangerous. Once you decide that your virtuous ends justify any means you use, horror is a predictable outcome.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Arthur C. Clarke, Brave New World, Connections, Feedback, H. G. Wells, Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Mark Twain, movies, Paleo-Future, Predictions, Robert A. Heinlein, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Space, tech, Wales, Writing stuff | Tags: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Aberystwyth University, Aeon magazine, Amazon, Arthur C. Clarke, blogging, Communion of Dreams, feedback, futurism, H.G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, Iwan Rhys Morus, jim downey, Kindle, literature, movies, optimism, paleo-future, predictions, reviews, Robert A. Heinlein, science, Science Fiction, space, St. Cybi's Well, technology, Victorian, Wales, writing
A very insightful essay into the role which speculative fiction played in the Victorian era, and how it is still echoed in our fiction today: Future perfect Social progress, high-speed transport and electricity everywhere – how the Victorians invented the future
Here’s an excerpt, but the whole thing is very much worth reading:
It’s easy to pick and choose when reading this sort of future history from the privileged vantage point of now – to celebrate the predictive hits and snigger at the misses (Wells thought air travel would never catch on, for example); but what’s still striking throughout these books is Wells’s insistence that particular technologies (such as the railways) generated particular sorts of society, and that when those technologies were replaced (as railways would be by what he called the ‘motor truck’ and the ‘motor carriage’), society would need replacing also.
It makes sense to read much contemporary futurism in this way too: as a new efflorescence of this Victorian tradition. Until a few years ago, I would have said that this way of using technology to imagine the future was irrecoverably dead, since it depended on our inheritance of a Victorian optimism, expressed as faith in progress and improvement as realisable individual and collective goals. That optimism was still there in the science fiction of Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke, but it fizzled out in the 1960s and ’70s. More recently, we’ve been watching the future in the deadly Terminator franchise, rather than in hopeful film such as 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). The coupling of technological progress and social evolution that the Victorians inaugurated and took for granted no longer seemed appealing.
I think this is very much why many people find that Communion of Dreams seems to fit in so well with the style of SF from the 1950s and 60s — in spite of being set in a post-apocalyptic world, there is an … optimism … and a sense of wonder which runs through it (which was very deliberate on my part). As noted in a recent Amazon review*:
James Downey has created a novel that compares favorably with the old masters of science fiction.
Our universe would be a better place were it more like the one he has imagined and written about so eloquently.
Anyway, go read the Aeon essay by (who happens to be a professor at Aberystwyth University in Wales — no, I did not make this up).
Jim Downey
*Oh, there’s another new review up I haven’t mentioned.
Filed under: Astronomy, Bad Astronomy, Phil Plait, Science, Slate, Space | Tags: asteroid, Astronomical Unit, astronomy, Bad Astronomy, Douglas Adams, fear, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, jim downey, Light-year, Moon, Phil Plait, science, Slate, space, UR116, Wikipedia
Phil Plait has another in a long series of articles about a space rock that isn’t going to hit Earth. Seriously:
This is Part N of what is apparently an infinite series of “No, Asteroid XXX Is Not Going to Hit the Earth” posts.
I’m sure he’s right. I have no doubt that he’s right. The latest rock in question isn’t going to get any closer than about 5 million kilometers. Which, as Plait notes: “That’s a pretty wide margin, well over 10 times the distance to the Moon.”
But I think that the problem with this kind of thing is that most people just have no clue how great that distance actually is. Seriously. I remember reading that a series of studies were done where if you asked people what they thought of the relationship between the Earth and the Moon was in terms of distance, where the Earth was represented by a basketball and the Moon by a softball, they’d typically say that the distance between the two was about a foot. Some would say a yard. As in, 3 feet. Maybe they’d say a meter if they were feeling sciency.
Whereas the proportional distance would be more like 24′ in actuality. (Based on just memory, I originally said 18′. A friend who actually knows this stuff gave me the correct number – thanks, Brent!)
Space is big. Most people have no damned clue how big. So when you say that some fast-moving rock will pass by the Earth by as much as 10x the distance of the Earth to the Moon, they’ll get scared, thinking that it is going to be a hell of a lot closer than it actually is.
It’s all a matter of perspective, not science. Like most things.
Jim Downey
Edited to add: My friend Brent, who set me straight on the actual proportion above, added a comment on FB to note that if you have the distance of the Sun-Earth (one AU) set to one inch, then a full light-year would be right about a mile total distance. Which would put our nearest neighboring star at about 4.5 miles distance.
Yeah, space is BIG.
Filed under: Feedback, NPR, Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, David Greene, feedback, jim downey, Kent Haruf, Morning Edition, NPR, writing
Kent Haruf passed away over the weekend. NPR had a nice little obituary yesterday on Morning Edition, which included this clip from Haruf:
It doesn’t seem to me there’s a scarcity of talent among students who want to write. But what there is a lack of is a talent for work, that it’s so difficult to write and it takes so long to learn how to write well that most people give it up before they get good enough.
Perfect. I think that is exactly the case, and one of the reasons why any decent writing program succeeds: by making those attending it write. Then rewrite. Then write some more. And all of it for an audience.
It’s a big part of the reason I maintain this blog, and have posted more than 1700 entries. Likewise why I was happy to write for some political and culture blogs for several years. It was the reason I went through a phase of doing a couple hundred paid freelance articles. It’s a kind of apprenticeship, learning the craft and getting critical feedback.
And while I still have a hell of a lot to learn, it made me a better writer. After a couple million words, you start to get the hang of it.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Blade Runner, Humor, movies, Ridley Scott, Science Fiction, Space, Travel, YouTube | Tags: Blade Runner, blogging, humor, jim downey, Michael Shanks, movies, Ridley Scott, Science Fiction, space, Time Trap, time travel, video, www youtube
… that Ridley Scott was going to spend on making a bad sequel to Blade Runner and give it to the director of this brilliant and funny little short, and see what he comes up with. I mean, no matter what, even if he just wastes it all on bad booze and worse food, and doesn’t make another movie for the rest of his life, we’d *still* come out ahead.
Seriously. Have a good laugh:
Jim Downey
Filed under: Blade Runner, Failure, movies, Philip K. Dick, Ridley Scott, Science Fiction | Tags: Blade Runner, blogging, Erik Kain, Forbes, Harrison Ford, jim downey, movies, Phillip K. Dick, Ridley Scott, Science Fiction
This news: Harrison Ford To Star In ‘Blade Runner 2’
strikes me as a supremely bad idea, exactly for this reason:
Moreover, Alien was just the first of many films. Blade Runner—based on Phillip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep—is a stand-alone film, and one shrouded in mystery. It’s one of those films that could be talked about forever without ever reaching a solid conclusion about its meaning or its murky ending. That’s part of what makes it a classic.
Sheesh, Ridley, just leave well enough alone for a change.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 