Tag: Rumination

Posted on

Crafting Generation Mars 4

AI plays a role in the book I’m working on, so that’s another topic I’ve been researching. In a fit of whimsy, I decided to use AI to research AI.

Wary confession: I discovered that an occasional focused chat session was a good way to work out my understanding of complex topics.

I keep transcripts of these sessions in the relevant Research subfolder. For the current book, I have sessions on AI, Earth-Mars cyclers, tethered spin gravity, Coriolis force, Mars taxi orbits, orbital proximity operations, and the Taoist concept of wu wei.

These sessions also provide me with citations for further, more in-depth research. What they don’t provide is usable calculations. AI still sucks at math. Never trust AI with math. Actually never trust AI.

AI is that friend you find entertaining and like to hang out with once in a while, but you would never have pet sit.

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg (license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en)

Posted on

Crafting Generation Mars 3

I use Scrivener. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best fit I’ve found for my process. The ability to drag scenes and chapters around and to visualize the emerging manuscript in different ways is invaluable during development.

Much of its functionality could be handled with plain old files and folders, but that gets increasingly difficult for longer projects. Scrivener just gets more helpful as the project grows. 

Of particular note is the ability to compile into different formats. I use this for manuscript printing and for digital (Kindle) preparation. For book printing, I use Scribus for layout, but that’s a topic for another day. 

Within Scrivener, I keep a folder called Research with subfolders for topics that come up in the books. For the current project, I have folders for Communications, Starvation, Orbital Dynamics, Food, and Space Weapons. In those folders are links and documents and quotes. 

I also keep a folder called Notes and a folder called UnusedFragments. More on those later.

Posted on

Crafting Generation Mars 2

I publish through my own publishing house: Noisy Flowers LLC. I came up with the name one particularly clamorous afternoon as my two daughters competed to see who could sing the loudest.

The winner drew the logo.

Posted on

Crafting Generation Mars (1)

I’ve been buried in the development process for the next book and haven’t had much time for social media. Now that I’m over the creative hump and in the refinement phase, I thought I might post a little about my creative process and production pipeline.

Posts in this series will be sporadic and likely span months. Maybe years, I dunno. Time is erratic. I’ll use the hashtag #CraftingGenMars followed by the number in the series to keep track.

I don’t interact with other authors as much as I’d like to. I have no idea whether my process is typical or weird. If you’re an author and find something interesting, please chime in with your thoughts along the way.

Image: “Woman with wax tablets and stylus (so-called “Sappho”)”, between 55 and 79 AD, Naples National Archaeological Museum 

Posted on

Surprise

I just listened to the latest episode of the Song Exploder podcast, which discusses Green Day’s Basket Case (https://songexploder.net/green-day). Turns out that the epochal ode to questionable mental health started out as a love song. Go listen to a few minutes right now, from 2:45 to about 5:10. Or listen to the whole thing if you want. I’ll wait…

That’s about how writing a book works for me (minus the crystal meth). Honestly, I don’t know exactly how I do it. I have an idea for a story; I read a bunch of stuff; I start typing every day: fragments, Socratic dialogues, technical notes, whatever bubbles up into my consciousness; eventually, the story begins to take shape and I move out of the journaling phase and into the real writing. And then surprises happen: ideas that sound good one day seem terrible the next; minor characters suddenly take on personalities that require a major plot thread; other threads that seemed critical lose their meaning and are cast aside. Finally, almost mysteriously, there is a book, and I can say with certainty that it ends up nowhere I might have guessed when I set out with that first idea.

I love that. The surprise is why I write. I can’t speak for others, but I would guess that even the most organized and methodical writers cherish that surprise when it happens. I hope they do.


(image: first draft of Kerouac’s On the Road, cc-by-sa-2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kerouac_ontheroad_scroll.jpg)

Posted on

Celestial movement

I’ve been meaning to write a short piece about something I noticed while watching the recent lunar eclipse, but I wanted to wait until the furor of eclipse pics died down.

Where I live, the eclipse was already under way when the Moon rose. I also have a small mountain between me and the eastern horizon, so there was a pretty big bite missing by the time I saw it. I pointed my little telescope at it, and the family took turns at the eyepiece. Every so often, I would tilt the telescope farther up to compensate for the Moon’s movement across the sky as we rotated beneath it.

Continue reading “Celestial movement”

Posted on

Existential risk

I’ve been reading about existential risk lately. This article is not immediately relevant to Mars or our future there. But it also kinda is.

The Tanis fossil site, in North Dakota, appears to be showing us creatures directly killed by the Chicxulub asteroid impact. The picture of that leg is reminder that “geologic time” includes now, just as it did for these organisms on a day that changed the world, 66 million years ago.

From the article:
“We’ve got so many details with this site that tell us what happened moment by moment, it’s almost like watching it play out in the movies. You look at the rock column, you look at the fossils there, and it brings you back to that day,” says Robert DePalma, the University of Manchester, UK, graduate student who leads the Tanis dig.

Tanis: Fossil found of dinosaur killed in asteroid strike, scientists claim
Tanis: Fossil found of dinosaur killed in asteroid strike, scientists claim

Remains are unearthed of a dinosaur that may have died on the very day a space rock hit Earth.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
Posted on

Mars optimism

A succinct and optimistic piece from Chris Carberry and Rick Zucker at Explore Mars on why a commitment to putting humans on Mars is a good idea right now.
“After over 18 months of worldwide upheaval and social isolation resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, people crave optimistic, ambitious, affordable and achievable programs that can help us overcome the negativity and division that hinders us.”

Access to this page has been denied
Access to this page has been denied

px-captcha
thehill.com thehill.com