Beta Earth

Star Quark Enterprises would like to announce that the new planet your world has "discovered" is in fact a water covered world and would be suitable for human habitation "in the near future". We have manufactured this planet for you and have placed it in an appropriate orbit for your future habitation. It is not quite ready because it is currently undergoing beta testing for life compatibility (orbit stability, atmospheric equilibrium and magnetic field density testing for low probability high energy cosmic ray protection).

SQE is happy to announce that the planet will be ready for your occupation at about the same time your civilisation develops the appropriate transport technology to get there in a meaningfully short period of time, in a couple of thousand years time. We are aware of your self destructive nature and have made provision for the set-backs your species is expected to experience before this threshold point is reached. We know that besides technology development it also includes personal development and emotional maturity as a species. We would like to wish you peace and prosperity for the next two millennium celebrations before we meet. We look forward to welcoming you to the greater galactic community then.

Best wishes,
Obsidian & Schrodinger

Universal Balance

Please teach me gently. Incremental change is less traumatic. Sometimes big lessons require big knocks or big shifts. This is the principle of proportionality and assumes that the universe is well balanced. If everything is interconnected then balance must come, eventually, and karma has a place.

We think the universe is well balanced. One of the things that amazes me is that during a total solar eclipse the apparent diameter of the moon perfectly matches that of the sun at the point of eclipse. Given that the moon is slowly receding away from us at just under 4cm per year, I find it intriguing that our civilisation has hit it's peak at the point (give or take a billion years) that the moon puts on this amazing little spectacle in apparent diameter alignment.

Most of what I was taught at school and university (in more fields of science than I care to remember) was all centered upon the equals sign in mathematics. Something was always equal to something else... it's all about balance... the universal law of existence. Water flows through a pipe at a rate that is in balanced between the pressure driving force and the pipe's resistance from friction. Stars burn nuclear fuel at a rate that is balanced between the gravitational force compressing the atoms together and the explosive force of atomic particals, electro-magnetic radiation and light pushing them apart. There are other theories about the rate of expansion in the early universe, which either require balance to have existed for the theory to work out, or show that balance must be implicit in our universe.

I found an e-book called A Well Balanced Universe, which I would like to set some time aside to read. If it's good I'll endorse it here but for now it remains on my to-do list and carries the risk of containing content I may not agree with.

Balance has implications. Finding balance and staying in it's flow seems to be a good way to be in harmony with the universe. So if obstacles come our way they are a natural form of resistence for the path we are on.

This is obviously a lesson that Ted will have to learn with Obsidian's help.

Musical skits

It's amazing how people take the mickey out of existing stories. It's almost as if those who created these worlds have opened up a new dimension in time and space, where others can go to live and play.

Here are some musical examples:

Star Trekking song.
Imagine Yoda rapping and break dancing - this is the Star Wars Gansta Rap - lego version.
Then there's Star Wars compressed into 30 seconds (animated version) or the screen clip version.

Oct 2009 Asteroid Strike Surprise

New Scientist reported a recent asteroid strike to the upper atmosphere on the 8th of October above Indonesia (with no damage to anything on the ground). Pictures of the upper air dust trail have also been reported.

The asteroid was relatively small (10m across) and resulted in a blast with the equivalence of 50 000 tonnes of TNT (that's just over 5 on the Richter scale - if it was below ground). NS describes it as "about three times more powerful than the atomic bomb that leveled Hiroshima" which sounds quite impressive.

Objects of about 30m in size can reach the ground and do damage. The interesting little detail is that there is a window of blindness for objects smaller than 100m across, which are too small to find and track. This implies that 30-100m is a size range that leaves us with a blind spot for surprise. This NS article seems to indicate that even if we were aware of an imminent impact we may still not have the time or technology to avoid the potential results.

Classifiying objects according to their threat was a good idea and resulted in the Torino Scale. 50m sized objects with a high probability of impact are classified as 8 on this scale and are red. A no. 8 Torino object is where the surprises lie. They are the Black Swan's of astronomy.

Some people are calling for a global asteroid defence agency. Maybe a virtual one would be better. This way people could work on it part-time and get scrambled together 'Hollywood style' if the threat is confirmed.

Satire - where to start?

A friend of mine is an engineer and takes life too seriously. He has asked me to tell him a little bit about the art of Satire and Humour. Instead of quoting facts and being very precise, which can be very boring for most normal people (or Penguins) - why not use humour to get the message across?

The following link claims: "Satirists (people who compose satire) often use techniques such as irony, hyperbole, understatement, allegories and parody in order to ridicule their subjects." It may take years of study to understand this stuff and miraculously it comes naturally to some gifted and lucky people.

So I've put together a little collection:

Humans are wrecking the planet.
Bogus climate solutions and last minute desperate solutions from politicians.
Would those clever animals (humans) cause climate change? No, it can't be.

And just for the fun of it here's a Simpson crash course in evolution :-)

PS Any good writer will tell you never to start a sentence with "And" or "So".

Do all stories follow 7 basic plots?

One of my writing teachers told me about an idea that there were only seven basic plots in story telling. So I did a little research on it and it turns out to be based on the book: The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories, by Christopher Booker.

Actually there are more than seven... They are summarised as follows:
1. Overcoming the monster,
2. Rags to Riches,
3. The Quest (overcoming evil in search of some form of elixir or treasure),
4. Voyage and Return,
5. Comedy (confusion reigns until things are mended),
6. Tragedy (see a later note),
7. Rebirth (a radical transformation of character or situation).
and then there are two more...
8. Rebellion (think animal farm), and
9. Mystery ("who dunnit" or what actually happened?)

I love Denis Dutton's summary of the essence of fiction: "The basic situations of fiction are a product of fundamental, hard-wired interests human beings have in love, death, adventure, family, justice, and adversity." He goes on to remind us that Aristotle explained what makes for good drama: "A conflict between strangers or natural enemies is of little concern to us. What arouses interest is a hate-filled struggle between people who ought to love each other."

Denis reminds us about Aristotle's logical permutations of tragedy: "In tragedy, for instance, either bad things will happen to a good person (unjust and repugnant) or bad things happen to a bad person (just, but boring). Or good things happen to a bad person (unjust again). Tragedy needs bad things to happen to a basically good but flawed person: Though he may not have deserved his awful fate, Oedipus was asking for it."

Taking this to heart I can now see that my first novel is a Sci-Fi Mystery with elements of Voyage and Return. What happened to the moon? Why did it vanish? Where did it go? Who was responsible?

Pi from the Sky - a crop circle

Picture credit - Telegraph.co.uk

One of last year's crop circles seems to indicate that there is Pi from the sky. This mind food from heaven has many astrophysicists and other scientists on the back foot pondering the meaning and reason for the existence of such complex patterns.

Obsidian, the multi dimensional cat from the Andromeda Galaxy, has a very good idea of what might be going on but his lips are sealed. The truth is revealed in Alex Dawson's novel, but you're going to have to be patient until they can find an agent who is willing to let you in on the secret.

Climate Change Novella

I am currently working on a Novella while I wait for my Novel to mature in a nice cool secluded place. It's a bit of a gap-project before I go back and rework the novel, which needs lots of work following some critical feedback I got from some great critics and personal friends.

All projects have problems and my Novella is no exception. It's a highly ambitious project based on metaphors and tells the story of climate change without all the technical stuff.

I currently have the setting, the main characters, the major plot developments, the ending, the theme and main messages are clear, the conflict is also reasonably clear and is based on a series of conflicts. One would expect that with all these things in place the task of writing should be easy now - but it isn't. I'm still struggling. So what's the problem? This isn't classic writer's block - "I want to write but don't know what to write".

My challenge is exactly how to get the main message and theme across. I applied some alpha wave thinking today to trying to solve the problem but I haven't solved it all yet. This is the scary space of writing - trying to make a good idea come to life.

Proof of Aliens

This beautiful meteorite on Mars is "conclusive" proof that there are Aliens out there.

Since when does a meteorite travelling at hundreds of meters per second float down on to a planet like Mars and leave no impact crater (take note of the pictures)?

Consequently, the Fermi Paradox has been solved. It must have been someone from Star Quark Enterprises.

"Advanced" thinking at NASA's NIAC

One of my favourite Sci-Fi ideas is the space elevator. This idea and others were seriously looked at by NIAC. The concept relies on long enough strips of carbon nanotubes to be manufactured and joined together. As far as I know the current record length is 4cm. That means lots of nuts and bolts to join them all together. Oops, did someone mention steel connectors won't work - not strong enough? So what we need are nanotech thread seamstresses - new jobs for bored house wives or redundant clothing manufacturers with transferable skills.

Then I discovered the space orbital tether sling concept. Some lovely ideas came out of this group. I hope they are re-established.

Mars

This is a lovely "Video" with facts on Mars.

This is a blog entry about a stunning picture of the Victoria Crater on Mars. This video explains that the colours are "enhanced".

Funny how "we" can make reality look better than what it really is. Is this the new human condition? Is it about make-up and selling illusions? Is it all about smoke and mirrors?

Google Lunar X-Prize

Google wants to throw $30 Million at anyone who can land a 90% privately funded robot on the moon and take images. It's called the Google Lunar X-Prize.

I am proud to announce that I will be taking part. At the moment my assistant morph-droid, which isn't working properly, my Apple based Ai and I are working on the initial designs. We currently have some chop sticks, recycled tin foil, a few old batteries, a lighter and a box of matches as building material. Donations are welcome - please get in touch.

In addition to this Obsidian, Ted and Catherine (characters in my novel) will all be waiting there to welcome the winner(s).

I just love the video of the other contenders: Odyssey Moon.

Commercial Space Flight

We all want to go to space. Well I know I do and have wanted that since I saw my first picture of a rocket at the age of 5 and a picture of Jupiter at the age of 6.

The sub-orbital market is what the branson crowd are aiming for. It's like dipping your toes in the water. Excalibur-Almaz (EA) are planning to offer a deep dive and a long splash. I just love their video reminding us that it takes 90min to orbit the planet.

The Spaceports blog explains more.

Personal "Jet-pack" & disastrous urban taxi dreams

The personal jetpack has been around for just over a year now. It's actually not a jet but a propeller pack. Eat your heart our Leonardo Da Vinci. New Zealander Glen Martin took 27 years to develop this. Some videos of the test flights can be seen here, and here. I must say the spotters look nervous, I wonder why? Personally I would build the whole thing in a roll-cage, with some serious safety airbag deployment sections.

It's not elegant, it's a bit of a monster, but it does seem to work. It's a bit like a hybrid between a miniature helicopter and a suped-up motor bike. I think elevation control may be a massive challenge for extended use. I'd hate to know what the fuel bill is for this little baby. Safety issues and traffic control are going to be a nightmare and licensing is going to be difficult.

Rival technology look like this, but it looks suspiciously like a hoisted stunt, and a bit 1970's.

Good quality Sci-Fi always turns a blind eye to pragmatic issues, but not all good ideas end well... If personal flight in urband areas is the dream then try this story for size: Avcen was developing an urban taxi or jetpod concept. Sadly the managing director, inventor and test pilot, Mike Dacre, was killed on the first test flight this past weekend.

Savings Bomb

I discovered a hilarious idea - developed in Japan. It's a "bomb bank". If you don't regularly put coins into this little piggy-bomb-bank it explodes it's contents all over the place. Sounds funny on paper but I am sure it's just irritating in practice.

I think I file this one under "gadget". Would be nice if this happened to the bank of England though :)

Black Hole in my room!

I woke up the other day to discover a black hole had appeared in my room next to my bed.

I have a problem with information collecting. If I see something interesting I hold on to it - for later - but "later" never comes. Papers, newspaper clippings and books get piled on top of each other and form a heap of jumbled information. It's a knowledge management junk yard and the inevitable had to happen: gravitational collapse. I step over the black hole carefully. I peer deep into it's infinite void. I walk around it, trying to avoid the event horizon because I know if I fal in there it will swallow me up for a very, very long time.

So plans are to ship it off to another part of the galaxy. If I have enough time I'll dump some of it here in my blog, which is what the last entry on Rocket Technology was all about.

Rocket Technology

I spotted something that got me interested in the latest rocket technology. I have read a bit about ion thrusters in the past but now I see there is a whole category of "advanced plasma rocket propulsion technologies".

New scientist discussed an idea that these modern rocket concepts could reduce the flight time of a trip to mars from six months (using conventional rockets) to 39 days using a new rocket engine called VASIMR (Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket).

Last night I was talking to someone who said that news agencies have lost the edge because blogs are often more up to date on the latest developments in specific specialist areas. Fascinating concept - the world is changing. Had I been watching the right blog (note to self - find it) I would have known that 24 June 2009 was a significant day in advanced rocket testing history. This is when the first superconducting test was performed on VASIMR. Of course the place to watch is the horses mouth.

I wanted to look at rocket and engine classifications and then discovered (as expected) that it's a wide field that needs much more time and study.

SQE apologises for UFO sightings

The government is confused. They think they saw something but they are not sure. According to this report: Minister warned over 'UK Roswell', banana skins have been laid out all over the UK for high ranking government representatives to slip on.

Astoundingly accurate sketches have been released of real authentic UFO's showing their flashing blue lights. Obsidian and Ted are happy to know that images of their own starship were not found in these secret files. Some aliens are a little careless and this sometimes leads to unnecessary panic on planets that should be protected from these outside influences.

The representatives of Star Quark Enterprises would like to apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused.

District 9

Yesterday I saw a picture that stopped me dead in my tracks. Then I discovered it was a mind blowing film called District 9.

Set in South Africa where blacks and whites were once segregated - this film leverages off that legacy to depict a new form of apartheid between aliens and humans. The tagline is "You are not welcome here." The logline could be "Alien Apartheid".

Have a look at the trailer here, and also this one.

Those of you who know a little about South Africa will know the film title is taken from "District 6", which was a multi-racial area in Cape Town that was subject to violent forced removal and flattened during the bad dark days of Apartheid.

This is a gritty new look at aliens, and I think it has a lot more potential. What this space!

For those of you who are interested in accents, try this one at the end of the clip (in the field "Watch out for me") for one of the real accents right from the horses mouth.

Useful websites:
http://d-9.com/
http://multinationalunited.com/
http://www.mnuspreadslies.com/

Perseid Meteor Shower peaks today

For those in the northern hemisphere the Perseid Meteor Shower is visible at this time of the year. It also peaks today, which means the shooting star count is at it's highest today. Unfortunately London is cloudy today and I may see nothing tonight.

Any one got some cloud busting machines for me?

Novel set in local cluster of Galaxies

My novel is set in our local cluster of Galaxies, with a specific focus on our galaxy and Andromeda. I have deliberately ignored the third prominent galaxy (Triangulum) because I want to keep the setting simple in the readers mind.

As it is the gravitational center point of the entire group lies between us and Andromeda, which implies that these two sisters essentially dominate the group.

The first three chapters are ready!

Good news!

I have completed my review of the first three chapters. The rewrites are done. Once the final edits have been made, they will be ready for the outside world and will be posted here.

It's time to start soliciting the agents.

Prologue to the Novel

The universe is filled with many different and intelligent life forms. People on planet Earth just don’t know it yet. The reason is because those other life forms are better at playing hide-and-seek than we are. In most areas within our galaxy the cat has been let out of the bag. Interstellar trade between our galaxy, Eritrea, and our sister galaxy, Andromeda, is dominated by Star Quark Enterprises. This company was started by Obsidian, a multi-dimensional cat from the Andromeda Galaxy. You could say that this organisation is the ‘cat’s whiskers of the universe’. Multidimensional physics has lead to technological breakthroughs, which have revolutionised the very nature of existence. Star Quark Enterprises' ability to manufacture stars and planets has enabled civilisations to thrive beyond the point of merely surviving. Species have become abundant and massively diverse. Colonies have sprung up on customised living environments. The only exceptions are those communities lying behind the exclusion zones, where the hide-and-seek game of ‘Is there life out there?’ is still been played.

One of these exclusion zones is a section of the Gould belt in the Orion arm of the Eritrea Galaxy, about 25,000 light years from the galactic centre. Nestled precariously close to the edge, but still within this exclusion zone lies a tiny blueish planet orbiting an insignificant G2 star. The inhabitants of this planet have become surprisingly attached to an accidental satellite body, which they affectionately refer to as 'The Moon'. The satellite was only a temporary feature and wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place. This unfortunate situation emerged from an unlikely and unintended string of events.

When the moon vanished the inhabitants were pretty upset. The only person from planet Earth who came close to understanding the truth and complexity of these events was Catherine Campbell. She met Obsidian’s friend, Ted, while she was out chasing crop circles and discovered that he was quite literally, out of this world. Not long after that Catherine also accidentally bumped into God, who was having trouble with Her apprenticeship training, and that was when things really started getting complicated.

Methane on Mars

Aliens have landed on Mars and are using the planet to farm genetically modified cows.
(I wanted to modify this picture to show a spaceman's helmet lying in the dirt with Olympus Mons in the back ground - but I don't have a decent graphics editor yet).

Evidence of the methane is baffling scientists (see the BBC report here), who are in denial about the fact that there is life out there - it's just much better at playing hide-and-go-seek than we are.

Space ports has this to say about it.

Mirror in Space

This is NGC 7331, it's a spiral galaxy in the constellation of Pegasus. It is my favourite galaxy. It is reported to be similar in size to our galaxy. This makes me think that maybe there's a mirror out their in space and what we are seeing is a reflection of our own galaxy. Yes, that's it - that's what we look like.

This picture (follow this link) is the most magnificent version I have ever seen of this galaxy. It's like a precious gem that one might want to keep for one's self, but I offer it to you - I want to share it with you.

A little hint about my novel and it's content. The story is set in a 'universe' where there is plenty of life and business trade between our galaxy (which has a new name in my novel) and our sister galaxy, the Andromeda galaxy (see the picture below).

Planet Earth (which also has a different name in the novel) and it's inhabitants are not aware of any of this - except for the Trilobites.
It's true there are many other galaxies out there but these two form the setting of the story.

It's a pretty big place to loose a modest little moon like ours. But then it wasn't really ours, now, was it? Or at least that's what Obsidian says....

Ai Compatibility

Alex: "My application to become a cyborg was rejected. They told me the psychometric test results concluded that the artificial intelligence implants would clash with my creative spirit."

Sci-Fi Fan: "Tell them it was your creativity that lead you to want to have the implant. That will screw with their software!"

Alex: "Server crashed. The Ai was trying to write the FAQ on that and well... must have discovered an infinity loop or something. I'm getting "The browser could not find the host server for the provided address" type error messages. One of them actually said "hElP! wE hAvE a PrObLeM"

Supernova Alert

"Betelgeuse is a candidate to undergo a spectacular supernova explosion almost anytime in the next few thousand years." Source: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/

Beetle juice 'soon' to be splattered all over your corner of the galactic neighbourhood. Please make sure that your Assorted Celestial Threats insurance premiums are fully paid up. Also, don't hold your breath. The Galactic Stellar Nuclear Agency is trying hard to ensure that nobody tinkers with the underlying chain reactions. Any premature catastrophic explosions will be treated with suspicion.

Sci-Fi weapons: Isomer Bombs

The best place to find a Sci-Fi weapon is in the R&D labs where ideas have more often than not, failed.

Mystery and uncertainty surrounds the results of a test performed in an attempt to create a gamma radiation explosion using an nuclear isomer of Hafnium 178m2. The idea was to put a small amount of energy in and get a lot of gamma radiation out. This isomer bomb turns out to have an energy conservation problem. It's a classic energy storage problem where the energy released needs to be put there in the first place (I think of the silly idea of using Hydrogen as a transport fuel).

What a diabolical Sci-Fi weapon - an Isomer Radiation Bomb.

Euphemism for Sci-Fi

What is the euphemism used for science that is a little too close to Sci-Fi?
It's "pseudoscience". That's what "Darpa's Handheld Nuclear Fusion Reactor" was called when it got shelved.

The part I did like was the miniature particle accelerator. Who needs a laser gun if you've got a Higgs Boson accelerator ring? Eat your heart out Sauron.

"Non-lethal" electrocution

Just like the waste hierarchy there is a hierarchy for conflict situation engagement. Negotiate, negotiate, negotiate. It is only when those negotiations fail that a situation may arise where conflict threatens to become violent. If and when violence does arise serious questions need to be asked of the negotiators about why their negotiations failed.

I would like to believe that when some form of force is called for that it will be non-lethal and human. Unfortunately it also leads to potential abuse. Just because it's supposed to be non-lethal it may give people the impression that it's okay to use it whenever they feel like it.

Was force really necessary in these incidents? There was a highly public incident of a man who was killed at Vancouver airport by police using tasers. Then there was that incident with the student in the US. Then I discovered the granny incident, what a shocker. 'Emotional insecurity' comes to mind.

It's not going to stop those from developing a technology from doing so. Here's a man taking on the role of a taser guinea pig and having a shocking experience with the new X3. Then there's the Taser XREP, which is a wireless stun weapon fired from a shotgun. More ideas blossom from this previous reference - shock nets (Spiderman's favourite), liquid tasers and air ionisation.

The robots descended upon the humans with their tasers set to maximum power and declared "resistance is useless".

Freelance Diplomats, what next?

Just about every novel that has anything to do with war calls on the ever ready mercenary.
Then just as you thought war zones like Somalia, dubbed a "failed state", were sinking into a political blackhole - along come the "Freelance Diplomats" (the ASP link is a little slow).

I was grateful to read that it was "a Belgium-based nonprofit organization that offers diplomatic services on a 'pay-what-you-can' basis." I shudder to think just how many different services could be commercialised.

Reporter: Excuse me Sir, what's your title at this conference?
'Diplomat': Puppet government freelance diplomat.
Reporter: And last week?
'Diplomat': Last week I was a climate change negotiator.
Reporter: And what's in your agenda for next week?
'Diplomat': A group of aliens from Arcturus are discussing a contract with my agent to have me negotiate a first contact with the human race on their behalf.

Who is giving me the Evil Eyeball?

While I'm on the topic of miniature robotics, I also stumbled upon the “EyeBall R1" made by Israeli based ODF Optronics. It's small and inexpensive, operates during day and night and has a built in microphone too. The sited blog article describes the obvious disadvantages but in the mind of a creative Sci-Fi specialist this stuff can go places.

I dream of optical motes in a city where you cannot hide, where smartdust filled with MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical sensors) can sniff you out of any corner.

More mobile eyes on wheels here: Robo-Eye. Looks a bit like a dumbbell. It's robust and you can throw it around.

Robo-Hummingbird

The Pentagon has awarded Aero Vironment an extension contract to build a second generation "flapping-wing nano-UAV", also known as a "hummingbot". It's a very small drone and the desired specs are very ambitious: mass 10 grams, flying speed 10m/s, 2.5m/s wind speeds, it must be operable from 1000m and must be useable indoors.

It's obvious that the ultimate objective is to be able to make a "fly on the wall." Reality is not there yet but Sci-Fi certainly is.

Pop the Champagne corks

It's time to celebrate! Pop the Champagne corks.
The first draft of the novel is complete (90 000 words). It's a major milestone.
That's the good news.

The bad news is that it's not ready for the outside world yet. My writing mentor tells me that it's now time to place the manuscript in an oak barrel to mature for six weeks. I have been writing for four and a half months and I need a break.

Please be patient.

Aliens prepare to emerge from Venus

The atmosphere of Venus has been stirred up (report BBC 1 Aug 09). The Aliens are moving their equipment for the start of their assault on planet earth. It will take NASA and ESA two years to rush a programme together to place a radar imaging satellite in orbit around Venus to confirm what the disturbance is about, but, it will be too late.

Final chapter completed

Yesterday I typed the words "The end" at the end of the final chapter of my novel. It's a big milestone but there's still work to do. I left a small gap in Chapter 17 that needs to be completed. I have also thought of a wonderful epilogue, which will require a bit more time.

So it's the end, but not quite :)

Of course the end of the first draft is just the beginning of another stage of essential re-work and improvement in the process of producing a final draft, which is ready to be published. However, finalising the first draft is still a major achievement. I will let you know when it happens.

Reusable Launch Vehicles

A while ago I stumbled upon an awesome technical paper about Reusable Launch Vehicles.
It has all the stuff engineers get excited about: mathematics, graphic plots and trends, diagrams, and photos of technological artifacts. It even has some statistics on safety and failure modes.

One day when I am big I'm going to read it all and run the numbers through a spreadsheet.

Currently reading Ben Bova

"The Silent War" by Ben Bova (2004).

When my creative writing tutors told me about developing your own writing style I didn't really understand what they meant. Now that I am reading Ben Bova, I finally understand.

Ben does two very distinct things with his characters. He describes appearance and thoughts.

He describes the appearance of his main characters. This is obviously necessary to give the characters life. Some do it better than others. Ben does it in a way that looks as though it was drilled into him by a writing school many decades ago. His 'flat character' only get a succinct background briefing, which is just enough to justify their existence and in the end they compliment the story telling process surprisingly well. Examples are Yanni Ritos, the Greek communications officer who is on duty at the Chrysallis habitat in the Asteroid belt when the merciless Harbin unleashes his ruthless massacre. The other is the nameless crew of the Ore Carrier Starlight, with their recently born and first grandchild, who get destroyed in an accident of mistaken intent.

The other things Ben does, which takes some getting used to, is deliver the thoughts of the main characters in narration form. At first it felt a bit contrived to me but later I discovered that it accelerated my understanding of the character, their motives and their world view. I'm not convinced I like the technique, but I will admit it was effective.

So once again, King's advice to read as much as you can is proving to be invaluable in learning more about the art of writing.

Lost my Library Book

I was trying to travel light the other day and decided to just carry a book in my hand on a trip in to town. No need for a day pack, it's cumbersome and doesn't look cool.

As luck would have it somewhere along the way I got distracted enough to leave it. Was it on the train, in the pub or on one of the ships on the Thames? I don't know.

It is a library book, and I was hoping that someone would have the decency to had it back to a library if they found it. Unfortunately, two months down the line, this has not happened. So I will have to replace it, which I don't mind because I believe in taking responsibility for my actions.

I am saddened by the fact that I live in a society where some people simply don't care. I am even more saddened if it is one which chooses to exploit other's losses for their own personal gain. However, these are the seeds of new stories and sub-plots in novels. So don't be too surprised if this principle rises it's head in one of my novels.

Alternative plot endings

Every writer has an alternative ending to any story they see.
I loved this one of Lord of the Rings for it's brevity and clinical efficiency.

Think of it as the Occam's razor of story telling.

Final home straight sprint in the graveyard shift

Over the last few evenings I have been working till the early hours of the morning (2am and 3am usually). The reason? It's the home straight. I was writing the final two and a half chapters of the first draft of the novel. Everything is coming together nicely and I have enjoyed it.

Last night I ran out of steam (too many late nights in a row). Today I had too many meetings to attend and admin to do.

So the final chapter is sitting there, patiently waiting for me to return so that it can be completed.

Like any graveyard, it has it's fair share of spooks. I am certain that when I read what I wrote in that dark dash for the finish line, I will get a fright. I'll then bring out the ghost busting editing pen then hack the place to shreds and clear out all the cobwebs.

Matrix Humour

Humour is something that never came to me very easily while I had mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology rammed down my throat. Where do we learn Humour? Every now on and again we bump into it by accident. I loved the Matrix... and then I saw this matrix rip-off with a twist from that software package we all love to hate.

Then there's How the Matrix should have ended, with a cool bit of commentary on the plot at the end (which is the part us authors like to think about).

Is commercial space flight all a "scram"

I watched the first space shuttle launch in 1981 (Columbia). I was old enough to understand it's significance and I was mesmerised by the promise it held for space flight. While I was a kid I had read up about the Apollo missions and wanted to become an astronaut when I grew up. The shuttle seemed to make this dream more of a reality.


In 1986 I was shocked by the pictures of the Challenger disaster in the newspapers while I cycled on my way to school (oops, just given my age away).
Then in 2003, just over 20 years after it's maiden voyage, Columbia disintegrated during re-entry into the earth's atmosphere.

The dream of easy and accessible space travel was shattered. Reality bites!

So when Space-Ship-One won the Ansari X-Prise in 2004 most of us got our hopes up again. However, I suspect we are being over ambitious and hopeful. A few things tell me that we are a long way off from any real commercial space travel for several decades to come. One is this article on scram-jet technology. It's a pretty big jump going from Mach 3 to Mach 25, especially considering E= 1/2 mv^2. So that's nearly 70 times more energy required - so your fuel tank needs to be nearly two orders of magnitude larger. It's a bit like jumping from driving a motorbike scooter up to a bus. Now we are five years down the line and still the second generation commercial space flight ship is not visible.

The other thing that makes me think we're a long way off is that NASA is dropping the flight wing concept for a rocket design replacement for their space shuttles (See Ares 1). There is some cool animation with rocking beats on this video clip of the Orion capsule. Nasa currently plans to go to the moon by 2020.

The third way is to defy gravity. Boeing reportedly threw some cash at this as a research concept a while ago, but other sources say they deny it. This hype is all based on work by a Russian called Podkletnov who documented an effect called "gravitational force shielding." In this last link I just love the statement that "once you start talking about UFOs and Nazi antigravity you're not far from hidden tunnels under the White House full of lizard-men disguised as Freemasons." Classic Sci-Fi humour stuff :). As it is anti-gravity seems to be a bit of an "X-file". This is perfect
for Sci-Fi - something that is just not possible now - makes for a great breakthrough story.

Am I a skeptic? No, I am a realist. It may only be a few hundred kilometers between us and that magical place in space - but face it, gravity sucks, man!

This doesn't mean we can't write about it. Writing liberates the mind - anything is possible. As someone once told me "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story."

I've become a fan of Ken MacLeod

There are plenty of Sci-Fi authors out there and I admire many of them.
I discovered something beautiful about Ken's art. It's his ability to create independent stories that are clustered around a key event. This event creates the basic setting or state of civilisation for the stories. As a result I am more than just an admirer. I've become a fan of Ken MacLeod.

I love this clustering idea and will be using it for my forthcoming "post-apocalyptic" type novels. It solves a few problems. It helps clarify the nature of a new state of civilisation (which is complex at the best of times) without having to bite it all off in one book and run the risk of turning it into technical lecture. It also allows characters to drift across books without the books being sequels. Ultimately I think it is a more efficient way of writing. I suspect it may also cut down the risk of boredom with the "same old, same old" which I experienced with Kim Stanley Robinson's second Mars book (which is also the reason I haven't plucked up the courage to try the last one yet).

Thanks Ken. We all learn from the masters.

Getting the balance "write"

When I started writing this first novel I wanted to make it a funny and lighthearted story with a bit of satire. Most of the other stories I want to write are a lot more serious and "Hard Sci-Fi". "Hard" being that the laws of science, physics and reality are maintained. This story is "soft" and borders of the edge of fantasy in some places.

However, despite my best first efforts some of the seriousness has crept into this story too. I think it's good because I don't want the story to be frivolous and superficial. One of the reasons I write is because I have some wisdom to share and I want to introduce some philosophical thinking, which is uniquely mine.

So now I find myself reviewing my first three chapters, with the objective of sending them out to find an agent, and I need to strike a balance between the more serious stuff and the tongue-in-cheek humour. Initially it was painful as I started suspecting that I would need to rewrite quite a lot. Rewriting is like eating the same breakfast over and over again. It grates me. However, I asked myself the question: How do I make this technical stuff more humourous? I was delighted to discover that it wasn't all that difficult. Just a little bit of imagination and I was there.

That spark of imagination is the thing that keeps me coming back. It is the fire of love that I have for writing and it warms my soul. I have tried my hand at many things and here I feel grounded and at home. It's a liberating space to be in.

So I am about to rewrite those first three chapters so that I can get the ball rolling on the agent front. Coincidentally I have three more chapters to write to complete the first draft. The first draft of the manuscript is nearly finished. I can almost taste it!

Become a FaceBook friend!

Social networking seems to be the essential way of connecting people.
If you love Sci-Fi please sign me up as a friend on face book.
The more friends and potential fans I have the more books I can convince my publisher to print.

Many Thanks!

The Humans are Dead

While I was watching the wacky moon tune I also discovered these guys:
This "song" called "The Humans are Dead" by the Flight of the Conchords has some more wacky Sci-Fi humour.

Wacky moon tune

I just had to giggle at the creativity that went into this video & song.








I also found their Amazon Cyborg from another Dimension.

YouTube link to my new novel

Please have a look at a quick video clip from one of the characters in my new novel.






Edward and Obsidian, a multi-dimensional cat from the Andromeda galaxy, have taken the moon. The earth's inhabitants are in turmoil. Why did this happen? Where did the moon go? Will it be back? Catherine, from planet Earth, knows what happened. She vanished at the same time the moon went missing. Is this a coincidence?

Welcome to my multiverse

I first started working on my current novel about ten years ago. It's one hell of an incubation period but I realise now that I wasn't ready for it back then. I am a firm believer in the Buddhist proverb "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear". This is when that magic principle of synchronicity kicks in and helps you when you most need it. I have also come to understand that synchronicity arises when one's internal values and beliefs are aligned with one's external expression of one's self in the world.

So it's with these humble wisdoms that I now approach my writing with more purpose and greater joy. Not everyone is cut out for it's long, lonely, empty silences and it's demands for continuous creation. I, however, love it. For years I have done other things. Things I was told I should do. Now I am doing what I love. I am living a dream and revelling in it.

So this blog will be my thinking space and my promotional space. This is my gateway to you, the most important person in this dance of chance. You are the benefactor, the client, the hungry mind that drinks the cocktails I mix. Welcome to my world, and enjoy your stay!