Filed under: Amazon, Apollo program, Astronomy, BoingBoing, Connections, Feedback, Kindle, Marketing, Mars, movies, NASA, Paleo-Future, Politics, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Space, tech, Travel, Wales | Tags: Amazon, Apollo, ars technica, blogging, BoingBoing, bookbinding, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, feedback, free, jim downey, Kindle, Mars, movies, NASA, politics, predictions, promotion, reviews, science, Science Fiction, space, technology, The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain, travel, Venus
Imagine three astronauts, 125 million miles from the Earth, talking to Mission Control with a four-minute time lag. They have seen nothing out their windows but stars in the blackness of space for the last 150 days. With a carefully timed burn, they slow into orbit around Venus, and as they loop around the planet, they get their first look at its thick cloud layer just 7,000 miles below.
It might sound like the plot of a science fiction movie, but in the late 1960s, NASA investigated missions that would send humans to Venus and Mars using Apollo-era technology. These missions would fly in the 1970s and 1980s to capitalize on what many expected would be a surge of interest in manned spaceflight after the Apollo lunar landings. They would be daring missions, but they would also be feasible with what was on hand.
Somewhat surprisingly, I don’t remember this at all. Though of course these were just “proof of concept” studies which were put together for NASA. Still, they were fairly well thought-out, as the article on ars technica demonstrates. As is often the case, technological limitations are less of an absolute factor in accomplishing something than economic/political limitations are. To borrow from a favorite old movie: “You wouldn’t believe what we did. It’s possible. It’s just hard work.”
What isn’t hard work? Getting entered into the drawing for a leather-bound copy of Communion of Dreams. Full details here. Yesterday’s Kindle promotion pushed us over 500 copies of the electronic version given away this month, and that puts the total number of copies out there somewhere in the neighborhood of 26,000. There are already 65 reviews posted to Amazon. Yet so far only 9 people have entered the drawing. You have until midnight this coming Saturday.
Jim Downey
Via BoingBoing.
Filed under: Amazon, Astronomy, Connections, Emergency, Feedback, Health, Hospice, Kindle, Marketing, movies, NASA, NPR, Predictions, Preparedness, Promotion, Publishing, Science, Science Fiction, Space, Survival | Tags: Amazon, appendectomy, appendicitis, blogging, bookbinding, care-giving, Communion of Dreams, David Casarett, direct publishing, emergency, feedback, free, health, hospice, jim downey, Kindle, leather, literature, movies, NPR, Philip James Bailey, predictions, promotion, reviews, science, Science Fiction, space, travel, video, Voyager
This morning, NPR repeated the story of Voyager 1 having apparently left the solar system.
I wonder why?
* * *
Philip James Bailey, Festus:
We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.
Life’s but a means unto an end; that end
Beginning, mean, and end to all things,—God.
* * *
We went shopping yesterday.
Big deal, right? Actually, it kinda was. It was the first time my wife had been in good enough shape to do so since her emergency appendectomy. Things are slowly returning to whatever passes for normal.
* * *
Dr. David Casarett is the director of hospice care at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He works with families as they try to navigate end-of-life decisions.
At least once a week, Casarett says, one of his patients expresses a desire to end his or her own life. “It’s a reminder to me that I have to stop whatever I was doing … and sit back down to try to find out what is motivating that request,” he says. “Is it really a carefully thought out desire to die, or is it, as it is unfortunately many times, a cry for help?”
It’s a good story.
* * *
Tomorrow’s the last day this month to get the free Kindle edition of Communion of Dreams. And this week is the last one to get entered into the drawing for a hand-bound leather copy of the special edition. Remember, you have to have posted a review on Amazon of the book, and then post a comment with a link to that review in this blog entry. There are currently 65 reviews on Amazon, but only 8 entrants for the drawing — don’t delay, as the end will come sooner than you expect.
As it usually does, for good or ill.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Babylon 5, Book Conservation, Connections, Emergency, Feedback, Health, J. Michael Straczynski, JMS, Kindle, Marketing, NASA, NPR, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Religion, Science, Science Fiction, Space, Writing stuff | Tags: Amazon, appendicitis, art, Babylon5, blogging, bookbinding, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, feedback, free, G'Kar, health, heliosphere, J. Michael Straczynski, jim downey, JMS, Kindle, leather, NASA, NPR, predictions, promotion, revelations, reviews, science, Science Fiction, space, St. Cybi's Well, Voyager, writing, Z'ha'dum
“All of life can be broken down into moments of transition or moments of revelation.”
-G’Kar, Z’ha’dum
Sometimes you don’t recognize when things change — the moments of transition — except in hindsight. That could be because the change is incremental enough that you don’t notice it for a while, or it might be that you’re so completely involved in the moment that the realization of what just happened doesn’t sink in immediately.
* * *
This morning there was a news item on NPR which caught my attention: that perhaps the Voyager 1 spacecraft has already left our solar system.
Scientists have known for a while that it was approaching the limits of the heliosphere. The expectation was that there would be a fairly clear change in orientation of the magnetic field when the craft crossed the boundary of the Sun’s influence into true interstellar space. But perhaps that boundary was less defined than we thought. From the story:
How did we miss that? As it turns out, it wasn’t entirely our fault. Researchers thought the solar system was surrounded by a clearly marked magnetic field bubble.
“There’s one at the Earth, there’s one at Jupiter, Saturn, many planets have them. And so just by analogy we were expecting there to be something like that for the solar system,” Swisdak says.
Scientists were waiting for Voyager to cross over the magnetic edge of our solar system and into the magnetic field of interstellar space. But in in the September issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters, Swisdak and his colleagues say the magnetic fields may blend together. And so in July 2012, when Voyager crossed from the solar system into deep space, “Voyager just kept cruising along,” Swisdak says. All they saw was a change in the field’s direction.
* * *
Last Thursday my wife had a follow-up with her surgeon to see how she was doing in recovering from her emergency appendectomy. She had been released from the hospital the previous Saturday, but there was some concern over the risk of secondary infection within her abdomen.
Well, without getting too much into the details, tests indicated that she might be developing exactly that sort of infection. The surgeon ordered a procedure called a needle aspiration and scheduled it for the following day.
We dutifully reported to the hospital for the procedure. It didn’t go smoothly, and the upshot was that it didn’t help her condition at all. A couple hours later we left the hospital, and she’s been mostly resting since. We’re now waiting to hear from the surgeon about what happens next. And what it means.
* * *
Some six years ago I wrote what could be considered a companion piece to this blog post. In it I quoted a friend, talking about Communion of Dreams:
“Yeah, but it’s like the way that the people involved in your book – the characters – are all struggling to understand this new thing, this new artifact, this unexpected visitor. And I like the way that they don’t just figure it out instantly – the way each one of them tries to fit it into their own expectations about the world, and what it means. They struggle with it, they have to keep learning and investigating and working at it, before they finally come to an understanding.” He looked at me as we got back in the car. “Transitions.”
* * *
Where Communion of Dreams was largely about transitions, in many ways St. Cybi’s Well is about revelations. How we experience them. How we understand them. How we do or don’t recognize them when they happen.
The Kindle edition of Communion of Dreams is free today. And you have less than two weeks to enter into the drawing for a hand-bound, full-leather copy of the book. So far only two people have entered. Don’t miss the moment.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Civil Rights, Connections, Constitution, Emergency, Feedback, Government, Health, John Lennon, Kindle, Marketing, Music, Predictions, Preparedness, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction | Tags: Amazon, appendicitis, art, bookbinding, Communion of Dreams, Constitution, direct publishing, Edward Snowden, free, government, health, intracostal, jim downey, John Lennon, Kindle, music, NSA, predictions, privacy, promotion, reviews, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, statins, writing
Last week my wife was at a professional convention. She got home late Friday night, understandably tired. She was dragging a bit Saturday morning, and Saturday afternoon said that her joints were aching and she felt a bit feverish. We figured that she had likely picked up a virus at the convention, since that’s not uncommon.
Sunday she wasn’t feeling any better, and had lost her appetite with a bit of a stomach ache. Mild headache. She elected to just try and sleep it off, taking OTC analgesics.
But come Monday morning …
* * * * * * *
Two weeks ago I had my annual physical. Routine stuff for the most part. My doc and I discussed some alternative pain-management strategies (I have chronic pain from a torn intracostal muscle – basically, it feels like I have a broken rib all the time. On good days it feels like a broken rib about four weeks into the healing process – mostly just a dull ache – and on bad days it feels like I just broke it, with intense and sharp pain). I have prescription meds for the pain, but even though they’re fairly mild as such things go, they dull my mind enough that I can’t really write very well when taking them.
But we also discussed dealing with another issue, for which I needed to start taking something else. A statin for cholesterol management. Which was fine by me, since diet only goes so far. I started taking the meds last week, and experienced the sort of side effect which is annoying but not really hateful as my body adjusted. Not wanting to get too graphic, let’s just say that I made sure to stay near a bathroom for a few days.
Anyway, I lost most of last week in terms of work, both in the bindery and on the novel. Neither one is easy to do when you have to keep running off to the bathroom at frequent intervals.
* * * * * * * *
Which really wasn’t too much of a problem, as far as it concerned writing St. Cybi’s Well, since for the last few weeks I’ve been somewhat … discombobulated … by recent news reports. Specifically, by the revelations of governmental spying, and the scope of the programs involved in it, all precipitated by the leaks from Edward Snowden.
Anyone who has read my blog for a while knows that these topics are ones I have discussed at some length in the past, well before the latest news. Just check the “Constitution“, “Government” or “Privacy” categories or related tags, and you’ll see what I mean.
And the things I have had to say in the past reflect a lot of what informs the background of St. Cybi’s Well. I don’t want to give too much away, but a lot of the book is concerned with what happens when a government uses tools intended to protect its citizens to instead control them. And working off of what was already in the public domain about the different security programs, I made a lot of projections about where such things could lead.
Then came the Snowden revelations and subsequent discussion. As it turned out, I was very accurate in my understanding of the spying technology and how it could be used. Almost too much so.
See, there’s a problem with that: when writing about an ‘alternate time line’, you have to strike a balance between this reality and the fictional one. And, well, some of my fictional spying programs are now shown to be just a little too close to real. So now I have to back up a bit and tweak a number of different elements in the book to get back to the correct (for me) balance. It’s not a huge problem, but one which has had me dancing/juggling a bit.
Not unlike my body trying to find a new equilibrium with the meds.
* * * * * * *
But come this past weekend, things had settled down, at least as far as my body was concerned. So I was able to get back to thinking about the hand-binding of Communion of Dreams, and the promotional stuff related to that. So I went ahead and scheduled some ‘free’ Kindle days, and wrote the blog post announcing that I would also be giving away a leather-bound copy of the book, and outlining how people could enter for a drawing for said book.
My intent was to do a follow-up blog post on Monday, reminding people about that, and the fact that the Kindle edition of Communion of Dreams would be free all day. That was the plan, anyway.
* * * * * * *
But come Monday morning, well, things didn’t go as planned. Not by a long shot.
My wife wasn’t feeling any better. And she was poking around online, seeing if she could find out anything which would help. I popped into the bedroom to check on her, and the conversation went something like this:
“Hmm, it says here that appendicitis sometimes starts with pain high in the stomach.”
“Really? I didn’t know that. I thought the classic was when you got a sharp pain in the lower right quadrant.”
“Yeah, it seems like it can start high, then shift down.”
“Huh.”
“You know, the pain I had in my stomach has shifted down …”
“We’re going to the E.R.”
And we did. Pronto. And I am very glad that we live about a mile from an excellent hospital. Again, I’ll spare you all the details, but let’s just say that my wife had surgery that afternoon, and they’re still pushing intravenous antibiotics into her. She’ll be fine, thanks to modern medicine. But it was a close call.
Yeah, so much for plans.
Anyway, about 120 people downloaded Communion of Dreams on Monday. It’ll be available for free next Monday, and the two Mondays after that. The deadline for writing a review and getting your entry in is the end of August. Remember, you have to post a link in the initial blog entry about the contest.
And some advice: don’t plan on doing it later. Take care of it now. You never know what might come up.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Connections, General Musings, Humor, Kindle, Marketing, movies, Music, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Weather, YouTube | Tags: A Tale of Two Cities, Alzheimer's, Amazon, blogging, care-giving, Charles Dickens, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, Fred Hoyle, free, Her Final Year, humor, jim downey, John Bourke, Kindle, Led Zeppelin, literature, movies, music, October The First is Too Late, predictions, promotion, Science Fiction, Sean Carroll, St. Cybi's Well, time travel, travel, video, www youtube
Partially related to stuff which happens in St. Cybi’s Well, but also I suspect because I just turned 55, I’ve been thinking about “time” a lot. The perceptions of it, how it ‘works’, how it is portrayed in books and movies. This topic is hardly new for me, though, since tropes about time travel are so common in Science Fiction.
Anyway, one interesting little side-track I was considering this morning was what you could do with a series of stories/books premised on a slightly different concept of time than what we commonly work with. Specifically, I was thinking of time as a manifestation of other aspects of the universe, analogous to how weather is a manifestation of other physical characteristics on a planet. You could have something like a “time forecast”, wherein changes in the quality of time itself had an impact on the story/characters. Perhaps our little corner of reality has long been in a ‘calm’ period of time weather, with things moving along smoothly and placidly, so that we’ve come to expect that it will always be that way. What happens when there’s a change? Perhaps a new front moves through? A storm? A tornado? Does everything get jumbled, a la October The First is Too Late? Perhaps it could literally be the best of times and the worst of times simultaneously.
Something to play with. But for now, I need to get back to work. And you, if you haven’t already, should take advantage of this last day of the week-long promotion and go download Communion of Dreams and/or Her Final Year.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Amazon, Feedback, Health, Hospice, Kindle, Marketing, Predictions, Publishing, Science Fiction | Tags: Alzheimer's, Amazon, blogging, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, free, health, Her Final Year, hospice, jim downey, John Bourke, Kindle, memoir, promotion, Science Fiction
… that the promotion is now running, and both Communion of Dreams and Her Final Year are now free to download! Things are off to a good start, and as I write this Communion of Dreams has been downloaded 500 times already, and is currently doing quite well in the Kindle rankings. Things have been a bit slower for Her Final Year but it is still doing well, and for the first time ever I’ve had one of my books downloaded by someone in India. That’s pretty cool.
So, if you haven’t gotten your copy of either book — or if you know someone who may be interested in either one — this is the time to act! Get ’em while they’re hot!
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Brave New World, Connections, Expert systems, General Musings, Predictions, Preparedness, Science, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Violence, YouTube | Tags: augmented reality, blogging, jim downey, Neatorama, predictions, science, Science Fiction, technology, video, www youtube
Sometimes I see a cool tech, and think that it is just a perfect example of how progress makes for a better world. Yesterday’s post was one of those.
And then sometimes a see a cool tech, and am just certain that it will be used to make the world a worse place, at least for some people. Via Neatorama, this is one of those:
Because I just know that once these are developed a little more so that they can run off wire, that it won’t be long until someone thinks that they would make excellent “homing landmines” or “land drones”. I mean, seriously.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Augmented Reality, BoingBoing, Brave New World, Health, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, tech, Writing stuff, YouTube | Tags: augmented reality, BoingBoing, Facebook, health, jim downey, predictions, science, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, technology, video, writing, www youtube
Via BoingBoing, this fascinating application of scanning and augmented reality technology:
Access to good dissection models is always problematic, but is absolutely crucial for medical education. Donor cadavers are often in short supply, and they have the problem that they’re, well, dead. Meaning that they died from something. And under even the best of circumstances, that will have an impact on the suitability for the student’s experience in studying a healthy body.
But with this kind of technology, a student can encounter a wide variety of body types: young, in the ‘prime of life’, aged, with any number of different medical issues (or none at all). Male. Female. Pregnant. Potentially, even as the body is “living”.
Amazing.
Jim Downey
(PS – the writing of St. Cybi’s Well continues. Occasionally I post fragments to the FB page, if you’re interested.)
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Brave New World, Connections, Constitution, Expert systems, Government, Heinlein, Humor, movies, Philip K. Dick, Predictions, Preparedness, Privacy, Religion, Reproduction, Robert A. Heinlein, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, tech | Tags: augmented reality, Heinlein, humor, jim downey, movies, NSA, Philip José Farmer, Philip K. Dick, predictions, privacy, Robert A. Heinlein, Science Fiction, simulated reality, simulation, technology, The Matrix
Everyone is thinking about the whole “NSA Spying” thing all wrong. This isn’t about surveillance. It’s not whether there is a trade off to be made between security and privacy. It isn’t a question of how much the government is watching you or that you shouldn’t worry at all if you have nothing to hide. Nope. It’s not about any of that.
It’s about whether you want to live forever or not.
The idea that we’re living in some kind of ‘simulated reality‘ has been a mainstay of Science Fiction for just about forever, whether you want to credit it to Philip José Farmer, Philip K. Dick, Robert A. Heinlein, or for that matter, Genesis. One popular twist on this perhaps best seen in The Matrix where at some future time hyper-intelligent computers have re-created our reality for their own purposes, using the best records available to run simulations and better understand us.
So don’t think of it as the National Security Agency. Think of it, rather, as a records-keeping entity. One which is doing everything possible to record as much of this world, and your life, as possible so that later it can be used to make an accurate simulation. Just call it the Nascent Simulation Archive, and rejoice that our government is being so ecumenical in trying to document as much as possible about not just America, but the whole wide world. Because it means that you’ll live forever.
And you want to live forever, right?
Jim Downey
Filed under: Babylon 5, Connections, Music, Predictions, Science Fiction, Travel, Wales, Writing stuff | Tags: Babylon 5, blogging, jim downey, literature, predictions, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, travel, Wales, writing
Thought I’d share something I hinted at last week, and which explains a bit why my posting to the blog has dropped off so much in recent weeks: I’ve shifted over from primarily working on the structure and individual scenes of St. Cybi’s Well to writing the bulk of the text. To use an analogy, I’ve got the skeleton done and am now putting flesh on the bones.
So while I only have about 23,000 words in the manuscript so far, and very little of that is what most people would recognize as parts of a novel, it’s actually probably a significant fraction (perhaps one-third? half?) of the overall amount of work which will go into the book. That’s because I know not only the overall plot and major characters of the book, I also know the pacing, the locations, and how all the major elements will work together throughout. In fact, you could grab a map of Wales and then find each of the locations tied to the individual chapters to get a sense of how the whole thing will progress. Here’s the working list of chapters:
- Prelude: Cardiff
- Chapter One: Pennant Melangell
- Chapter Two: Holywell/Conwy Castle
- Chapter Three: Portmeirion/Caernarfon
- Chapter Four: Snowdon
- Chapter Five: Ffynnon Gybi/Criccieth
- Chapter Six: Pistyll Rhaedr
- Chapter Seven: Pentre Ifan
- Chapter Eight: St. Non’s/St. David’s
- Chapter Nine: St. Govan’s Chapel/Gumfreston Church
- Chapter Ten: Deheubarth
- Chapter Eleven: St. Cenydd’s Well
- Chapter Twelve: Brecon Beacons
- Chapter Thirteen: Maen-du Well/Ffynnon Gynydd
- Chapter Fourteen: Tintern Abbey/Stonehenge
- Chapter Fifteen: Ynys Môn
- Chapter Sixteen: Ffynnon Gelynin
- Chapter Seventeen: Ffynnon Sarah
- Chapter Eighteen: St. Cybi’s Well
- Chapter Nineteen: Castell y Bere
If you care to dig around my various travelogues, you can actually find descriptive passages about each of these places. Those passages will be used as part of constructing verisimilitude through the novel.
And yes, “Prelude” rather than “Prologue.” Partly it ties in with this. Partly … well, you’ll see.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 