I fell asleep before the plane even left the ground and slept most of the way home. I woke up about half an hour before we landed and amused myself by reading Zoe’s Tale. Yes, I know that makes some of you jealous and it should, because it’s a darn good book. Since my flight […]
Back from WorldCon 08 Read More »
I truly, without false modesty, did not expect to win this. I’m still in a state of utter giddy shock that I have the Campbell tiara on my head right now. It is so beautiful and I am deeply, deeply honored. I would have been happy to see any of the other nominees win, and
The Campbell Award Read More »
I’m just hitting the fast highlights because I’m beat. I went to the Codex breakfast this morning. Fantastic to see familiar faces and to meet people that I’ve previously only know in two dimensions. Much fun. Then it was off to my workshop on how to give an effective reading. It had twenty-five or so
I had a blast today. So much so that summing up is hard. I started the morning by having breakfast with Ron Serdiuk, Pamela and Diana Rowland. Conversation ranged from Diana’s stories about living through Katrina to vampires as lovers and the problems inherent with that. ((They’d be cold. Ick)) I trotted off from there
I rode down to Denver with Mike Brotherton, David Levine and Deanna Hoak. You’d think the week had been enough, but we kept talking astronomy on the way here. We got in about 11:00 and went straight to our panel on Launchpad, where we were joined by the lovely and talented Samantha Henderson. Basically, we
Just in case you haven’t been able to tell from the sheer volume of information I posted, this week has been an amazing experience. I am sad to leave these astronomically lovely people. Tomorrow we all head our separate ways, a number of us to WorldCon where we will sit on a panel about Launchpad
Launchpad final post: Online Astronomy Resources for Writers Read More »
Raw notes: Exoplanets.org is a catalog of stars with planets. It behooves you to check the catalog to see if the star you setting your story around has planets so that you are at least consistent with what is existing. This won’t be all we know in the future, but it’s a good place to
Launchpad Day 6: Extra-solar planets (Mike Brotherton) Read More »
Thursday at Four PM at the Hyatt Hotel, room Granite B, I’ll be sharing my reading with John Scalzi. I had a crazy hour and a half slot, which I just wouldn’t use and he didn’t have a reading so if you come you can get a special 2-for-1 reading deal. As he says: Right
WorldCon: Reading with Scalzi Read More »
<!– @page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } –> Raw notes: The environment out there is inherently strange to us. It is by definition not earthlike. When you are thrown out an airlock, you don’t explode. Odds are you won’t be at 14psi. 3 lbs of pressure per square
Launchpad Day 6: The Human Element in Space (Jerry Oltion) Read More »
Computers in Astronomy, really? Computers have infiltrated almost everything. Something that frightens him is that they have computers in the cars and they all have to work together. The fact that he can get to the grocery store is a minor miracle. Computer Uses Controlling Equipment – In this context you might think of telescopes.
Launchpad Day 6: Computing in Astronomy (Ruben Gamboa) Read More »
Raw notes plus two fiction bits from me. Jeffrey Lockwood was at a conference in New Mexico, funded by the Templeton Foundation. Doug Backoff, from SETI Institute. Doug was supposed to design a program from active SETI. Insteading of shotgunning the universe with messages we can now target them. Doug was working with visual artists
Launchpad Day 5: Writing for SETI (Jeffrey Lockwood) Read More »
Hubble’s Law When we measure the distances to galaxies and their velocities, we find out that they are correlated. We take the spectrum of the galaxy and can tell distance. But because of the geometry of space/time things that are far away do not always look smaller. We can model what’s happening in the Hubble’s
Launchpad Day 5: Cosmology (Mike Brotherton) Read More »
I have a ton of information from today’s lectures, but I’m going to take it easy and just show you this picture that we ((Meaning the astronomers who were running the telescope at WIRO)) took. We went into the image lab and manipulated it today. Then tonight, we went onto the roof and looked at
Launchpad Day 5: Ring Nebula Read More »
Check out Frequently Asked Questions in Cosmology.
Frequently Asked Questions in Cosmology Read More »
The Milky Way. Almost everything we see in the night sky belongs to the Milky Way. Since we are inside, we only see the one band. From outside, our Milky Way might very look like our cosmic neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy. If you dare, read “Galaxy 666” Widely regarded as one of the worst SF
Launchpad Day 5: Galaxies (Mike Brotherton) Read More »