Filed under: Astronomy, Bad Astronomy, Cassini, NASA, Phil Plait, Saturn, Science, Science Fiction, Space, tech, Titan, Writing stuff
Via Phil Plait, news that in observation of the 10th anniversary of the Cassini launch, NASA has just released a bunch of very cool images and vids from the probe. Given that I set the bulk of Communion of Dreams there in the neighborhood of Saturn, I always find it stunning to see actual images which reflect what I envisioned. In particular, the scene in the book when the first research team is approaching Titan is perfectly caught in this image. Wow.
And here’s a passage from Plait’s post which precisely echoes my own sentiments, and would be prophetic if Communion was real rather than fiction:
We don’t go to these exotic locations in the solar system because we know everything that’s going on, or because we know what we’ll expect to see. We go because we don’t know. But we also go because we need to have our positions rattled, our notions shaken, our ideas tested. When we see Saturn from above, or co-orbit with a moon, or see a rainbow reflected in particles of ice a billion kilometers away, the only thing we can be sure of is that we’ll see new things, unexpected things.
Unexpected things, indeed.
Jim Downey
Filed under: BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow, Publishing, Science Fiction, Ursula K. Le Guin, Writing stuff
In July I wrote a brief post about something stupid a book reviewer said in reference to Science Fiction, and about Ursula K. Le Guin’s brilliant response, as reported in a BoingBoing post by Cory Doctorow.
This morning, in looking at the stats for this blog, I noticed a very large uptick in hits on that post, and also a lot of people searching using some combination of Le Guin and Doctorow’s names. Huh? When I went to BoingBoing I found out why: Doctorow posted an apology to Le Guin.
In keeping with the spirit of that apology, and the Open Letter from Le Guin, I have removed the portion of her short piece (about half the paragraph) I had in my post “Damn.” I replaced the excerpt with the following note:
(10/15/07: Text has been removed because of copyright issues. See this post by Cory Doctorow for a complete explanation. Since I took the text from BoingBoing, I feel it only appropriate to respect the wishes of the parties involved and remove it now. You can read it in its entirety at the Ansible link.)
I don’t have a dog in this fight. I respect both Le Guin and Doctorow as writers. I don’t know what kind of ‘history’ all the participants have, and honestly don’t care. I still think that the initial book review was ridiculous, and Le Guin’s response perfect (you should go read the whole thing). Beyond that, I hope everyone is able to move on to bigger and better things.
And if you’re one of the people who found this blog by searching for info on this topic, I invite you to poke around a bit, perhaps download my novel (it’s free – info here). I won’t claim to be on a par with either Le Guin or Doctorow, but so far the feedback I have received from the 6,000 or so downloads on the book has been very positive.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Astronomy, Cassini, NASA, Saturn, Science, Science Fiction, Space, Titan, Writing stuff
My good lady wife sent me today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day of ice geysers erupting on Enceladus, one of the inner moons of Saturn. While I don’t mention any of the other moons in Communion, I would imagine that should Titan’s Mistress ever actually be filmed, then such images would be a natural.
Anyway, it’s a cool image, and I thought I’d share.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Book Conservation, Feedback, Habanero, Health, Hospice, Science Fiction, Sleep, Writing stuff
I’ve been busy this week trying to finish up the first batch of books for the new client, and have to deliver them tomorrow. So I apologize if postings here have been a bit light. But I thought I would post some updates on recent events . . .
My MIL is still doing pretty well, in spite of my concerns in Fever. Her fever did abate for a while, but yesterday it was back up, and higher than previously. We still cannot identify the source for it, but the Hospice nurse will be here today to do a check-up, and we’ll see if she has any ideas.
I’ve slept every night this week! Amazing what a difference it is making already, even if I haven’t fully settled back into sleeping deeply on the nights when the respite person is here. Normally, my wife and I will split the other four nights a week, but she helped me out by taking the Tuesday night shift so I could be well rested for doing my conservation work (see above). I will probably still need months of regular rest to be fully restored, but at least now I no longer feel like I am constantly dragging. Remarkable.
Hits here to the blog crossed the 6,000 level yesterday. As it turns out, downloads of the novel may well have crossed that threshold yesterday as well – I’ll know later today. It’s close, anyway.
Oh, one last item . . . I wrote about the First Habanero some weeks back. Well, now I’m happy to say I’ve harvested and dried and given away dozens of the Red Savina habs, and have even gotten a few of the Devil’s Tongue. The garden season is wrapping up, but I hope that I’ll still get a bunch more ripe habs, and will undoubtably have a whole bunch of green ones (which have a nice flavor but don’t develop their full heat).
Well, I need to get back to work. May not post again until tomorrow night, or this weekend.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Architecture, Flu, Health, Pandemic, Plague, Predictions, Science, Society, Space, tech, Writing stuff
Couple of items of interest from the news.
First, researchers have figured out a way to produce what I called “plasteel” in Communion of Dreams, and used as the basis for a lot of the architecture of the future. From PhysOrg.com:
New plastic strong as steel, transparent.
By mimicking a brick-and-mortar molecular structure found in seashells, University of Michigan researchers created a composite plastic that’s as strong as steel but lighter and transparent.
It’s made of layers of clay nanosheets and a water-soluble polymer that shares chemistry with white glue.
Engineering professor Nicholas Kotov almost dubbed it “plastic steel,” but the new material isn’t quite stretchy enough to earn that name. Nevertheless, he says its further development could lead to lighter, stronger armor for soldiers or police and their vehicles. It could also be used in microelectromechanical devices, microfluidics, biomedical sensors and valves and unmanned aircraft.
Ah, I love to see my predictions actually coming true. (Not that I knew exactly how this would be achieved, but it was clear that materials science will reap a huge benefit from nanotech advancements.)
Now for the bad news:
Bird flu virus mutating into human-unfriendly form.
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The H5N1 bird flu virus has mutated to infect people more easily, although it still has not transformed into a pandemic strain, researchers said on Thursday.
The changes are worrying, said Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“We have identified a specific change that could make bird flu grow in the upper respiratory tract of humans,” said Kawaoka, who led the study. “The viruses that are circulating in Africa and Europe are the ones closest to becoming a human virus,” Kawaoka said.
This is unbelievably bad news. The thing which has kept H5N1 from becoming a real threat is that it is difficult for it to move from one human to another – almost all the deaths attributable to the virus so far have come in animal to human transfers. Part of this is due to the fact that the virus just doesn’t find us all that good a place to set up shop. But once it does, it will only be a matter of time before you start to see human-to-human transfers. And then it’ll be “hello, pandemic!” And depending on how virulent that strain is, it may or may not precipitate the sort of global catastrophe I envision as the basis for Communion.
That’s one prediction I’d really love to have completely wrong.
Jim Downey
Darnell Sidwell would turn 50 today. Yep, it isn’t stated explicitly in the text (though there are hints), but he was born the same day as the Sputnik launch. I liked the congruity of having him come into the world at that particular moment of history, given what else happens with him.
Also, a personal note: I have long harboured this little conceit that I was conceived on this day 50 years ago. I can’t ask my parents, who died in my early adolescence, so it’s just a guess. But my birthday is July 4th (1958) – you do the math and see where counting back 9 months takes you.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Babylon 5, Ballistics, General Musings, Guns, Science Fiction, tech, Writing stuff
“All of life can be broken down into moments of transition or moments of revelation.”
-G’Kar, Z’ha’dum
Yesterday a buddy of mine and I got out to do some shooting. It may seem odd to someone who isn’t into shooting sports, but this can actually be one of the most relaxing things you can do, at least for me at this time. Why? Because, when I’m shooting, I have to be completely attentive to what I am doing – I can’t be thinking about what is going on at home, whether my MIL is stirring and needs attention, et cetera. As I have mentioned previously, one of the most exhausting aspects of being a care-giver for someone with Alzheimer’s/dementia is that I always, always, have part of my attention diverted to keeping track of what is going on with my MIL. You try doing that with part of your brain while accomplishing anything else, and you’ll quickly understand the problem.
Anyway, it was a good time, doing some informal shooting out on private land. We shot some pistols, a little 9mm carbine of mine which is just a lot of fun, and then my friend got out one of his black powder rifles: a Peabody .43 Spanish made in 1863. My friend is something of an authority on 19th century guns, and has been educating me about them. We shot several rounds, the large 400 grain bullets punching paper at 40 yards, the gun giving a slow but very solid shove back into your shoulder. That’s typical with black-powder: it’s not the sharp crack you get from modern weapons, with their higher pressures from faster-burning powder. After each shot, we’d pull down the trigger guard, rolling the receiver down and ejecting the cartridge, then insert another cartridge by hand and set it before closing the rolling block to prepare the weapon to fire again.
After all the shooting was done, our equipment packed up and put away, we headed back into town and got some lunch. As we talked over lunch, I asked my friend about how long it was before the Peabody we had been shooting evolved into the later repeating rifles which proved so reliable and popular. Because, as I saw it, all the elements were there: a dependable brass cartridge, a mechanism to extract and eject the spent shell, the moving receiver. All that was needed was a way to hold more rounds and feed them.
As we finished up our meal he gave me the brief run-down of the history or the repeating rifle development (which is basically what you’ll find in this Wikipedia article, particularly the sub-headings of ‘predecessors’ and ‘development’), and the conversation moved on to a more general discussion. I started to explain that one of the things I find so interesting, one of the unifying themes in all the things I have done is an interest in . . .
“Transitions,” my friend said.
I stopped. I was going to say “innovations,” but he was right.
“It shows in your novel.” (He’d recently read Communion.)
“Actually, I was thinking more of ‘innovations’ – those instances when people bring together different and diffuse elements to achieve something new, whether it is a mechanism, or a procedure, or just a way of looking at the world.”
We paid the bill, headed out to the car.
“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.”
Transitions, indeed. Moments of transition, moments of revelation. Because that is all we have, when you come right down to it.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Expert systems, General Musings, Health, Hospice, Predictions, Press, Science, Science Fiction, tech, Writing stuff
Several quick items this morning…
First off, last stats I saw (yesterday morning), over 5,400 people have downloaded the novel. That’s like 1,200 this month alone. Yay!
Hits to this blog have also continued to rise – over 5,000 so far. So have submitted spam ‘comments’, of course, now over 2,000. Glad that the filtering software catches the vast bulk of that stuff.
A friend sent me the current issue of the American Ceramic Society Bulletin. Unfortunately, items he wanted to share with me are not available through their site, but with about 10 seconds of searching, I was able to pull up more complete information on the two things I wanted to mention. Sheesh – when will people figure out that hiding basic information behind a subscription firewall is not only pointless, but aggravating to the average person? Now, rather than linking to their content (and increasing their traffic/exposure/possibility for advertising), I’ll link to the other sources.
First of these is about the latest developments in transparent transistors. This is the thin-film tech I stipulate for the best computers in Communion of Dreams which are not based on the superconducting Tholen gel.
Second is how scientists have discovered a way to embed silicon nanowires right into living cells without causing damage to the cells. This is the basis of the mind-machine interfaces that I use for the computer and communications tech in Communion, though I don’t go into the details of it in the book.
In both cases the tech is further along than I had expected when I first wrote the novel, but it is good to see that my predictions about how things would likely develop were on track.
Lastly, there will be a newspaper feature about my wife and I caring for my MIL in the local paper this evening. I’ll post about it with a link probably tomorrow.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Bipolar, Depression, Failure, Health, Hospice, Sleep, Writing stuff
This is pretty raw. I reserve the option to amend or delete it entirely later. [9/18 7:15 AM: I’ve added a postscript – see below.]
I’m worn out. I’m emotionally and physically bankrupt. I’m spent, empty. Just a dry husk.
It was a *very* long day. Started with the migraine I mentioned in my previous post. Then care-giving was really rough. Worst it’s been, and that’s saying something. I don’t know whether my MIL had another little stroke, or is fighting an infection, or is approaching the end of her life, but damn – every fifteen to twenty minutes today I had to go tend to her, see what she needed. It was always some variation on the theme of her “needing to get ready to go home”, or wanting to “look outside to see if her ride is here,” or “needing to call the people she usually lives with in order to let them know that she was here”. I tried everything I know or could think of – distraction, answering questions, asking questions, reassuring, re-directing, lying outright – and nothing, nothing, would stick. Ten or fifteen minutes after I had gotten her calmed down or focused on something else, or whatever, she’d call again.
And this, of course, on a day when I was really trying to concentrate, punch through the mild migraine, get some conservation work done. Some rather delicate conservation work, at that. Work which had been promised to a client two weeks ago.
And, of course, my wife had a thing this evening that she had to go do (my suggestion that she do so – no fault to her). She got home after I had my MIL tucked in to bed and was working on the dishes.
And as I stood there at the sink, washing the dishes, thinking favorably on the option of having a heart attack, it sunk in that I was done. I mean, I’d been considering that a heart attack might be the best solution to my problems. Yeah, a heart attack. Hell, at 49, I’d probably survive it. It’d come as no surprise to anyone, given the kind of physiological and psychological stress I’m under. No one could blame me for no longer being a care-provider for someone with Alzheimer’s. Hey, it might even get someone to think about noticing my writing, since a tragic character (whether alive or dead) always gets more notice as an artist than does someone who has their life, and their shit, together.
So, that was that. I looked my own failure to continue right in the eye, and told my wife. I can’t continue to do this. I can’t deal with another day like this. Maybe later, but not now.
I thought earlier that I could do this indefinitely. But it has gotten so much harder in recent weeks. I don’t like to fail at something. I don’t like to set aside a job before it is done.
But it beats having a heart attack.
Postscript:
Like I said at the outset, that’s pretty raw. And I’m going to leave it as is, though following 8+ hours of sleep I feel better and have a different perspective on things.
This is one of the functions that this blog serves for me: being a form of therapy, allowing me to express things in a way that allows me to vent and get some perspective. I get it off my chest, so to speak.
And it serves another, related purpose: to help others understand just how difficult and demanding it is being a care-provider for someone with dementia, to share with other care-providers my stories as a form of support. And here, I am talking about those who choose to be care-providers for friends and loved ones at home. Professionals who do this, God bless ’em, do not have the same perspective: they get to go home at the end of their shift (or even their double shift, in rare circumstances). Doing this at home means you never get to leave.
I am by no means a ‘weak’ person. Not physically, not intellectually, not emotionally. And yet you can see what effects the constant, unending wearing has on me. There’s a good reason why care-providers suffer huge stress-related illness, including, yes, heart attacks.
As I said, this morning I feel a lot better. The migraine is just wisps and echoes, and I hope it remains that way. I have this trip to meet with my new client and pick up the first lot of books, which means a couple of hours road time to allow the worries and cares to unspool behind me a bit. Just getting out of the house for the bulk of the day will help.
I do not know where we go from here. My wife and I discussed my exhaustion last night, when I told her that I was “done”. But since we were already going to change the care-giving package to allow me more time to concentrate on my conservation work in the coming months, it may be that we keep my MIL here at home and I just try and ride this out, knowing an end is in sight. (As I told the social worker for Hospice when we first hooked up, “I can sleep on broken glass for six months, if I know that’s the end of it.”)
So, no fretting – I’m better this morning. And while I cannot control what might actually happen to me vis-a-vis my health (beyond doing what I can to stay healthy), I’m no longer even contemplating a heart attack as a good alternative strategy.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 