Earthquake alert

How much warning do we get of an earthquake? Seconds.

A minute would make a much bigger difference - and pretty soon we may have it. Techniques developed for gravity-wave astronomy have now been used to pick up on gravity changes associated with large movements of mass before a quake. This moves at, ya know, light speed, giving as much as a minute for people to dive for a doorway.

It might not be much, but it could save lives.

Abominable Snowman?

So, it appears that the lead theory about the nature of the Yeti has been confirmed...

...and yes, it's real.

Surprise surprise, most of the Yeti relics DNA-tested came from Himalayan or Tibetan brown bears. A couple came from Asian black bears and one tooth turned out to have come from a dog (likely a Tibetan mastiff to be large enough to be mistaken for a Yeti tooth).

In other words, a "yeti" is just a bear that's climbed a mountain. Ah well. No wise mountain apes.

On the other hand, it might tell us more about bear populations in the area and with both the Himalayan brown bear and the Asian black bear being endangered...

Cover Reveal: Rising Dawn!

So, it's almost here - the third book of Lost Guardians, that is!

And here, courtesy of the amazing Starla Huchton, is the cover.

Looks like she's up to something, doesn't she. I wonder what...

Finally saw Thor

The third Thor movie was, to be blunt, fun. It wasn't high cinematic art, but it was good entertainment - and sometimes that's all you need.

I'm going to mostly do this by character. The plot was pretty predictable, but...

Tessa Thompson's Valkyrie. How often does a woman get to be Han Solo? The only other example I can think of is in the abysmal Italian Star Wars rip off Star Crash (which is fun in a terrible way). To see a woman in the Solo arc was surprising and delightful. (Gamora also comes pretty close, but the difference is that Gamora was brainwashed to be a villain. Valkyrie ran away from her duties after a tragedy and comes back to be a hero). Thompson is a talented actor I hope to see more of.

Loki. Loki is different in this movie, much more like the actual Norse Loki. He's not declaring himself the fascist ruler of Earth - he's taking over Asgard and being benevolent and stuff. His betrayal of Thor seems almost a habit he can't break, and in the end...well, let's say somebody actually read a version of the Ragnarok prophecy.

Oh, and the romance between Valkyrie and the Hulk was entertaining (and might lay to rest the entire Bruce/Nat stupidity. Maybe. Sorry to those who actually sail that ship).

Then there's the villain.

I have seldom had more mixed feelings about a character. Cate Blanchett does evil beautifully. Irredeemable evil in the CCA mode (the rules used to be that villains had to be all villainous) yet with reasons and motivations. The movie gave us a villainess you loved to hate.

Unfortunately, she's supposed to be the Norse goddess Hela.

I haven't read enough Thor comics to know if she's as bad in the comics, but this is the worst thing Marvel has ever done to Norse mythology, the most offensive to modern worshippers of the pantheon...

...and utterly cool.

See. Mixed feelings.

I'm torn between wishing she didn't exist and wishing I had the craft chops to cosplay her and it sucks.

But if you haven't seen it yet, go ahead while you still can. It's not the best movie, or even the best superhero movie of the year, but the opening scene is worth the price of admission.

A fight scene set to "Immigrant Song."

In Muspelheim.

"We come from the land of the ice and snow"

I almost fell out of my theater seat.

Speciation In Action

So, in 1981, a single male cactus finch got blown to the Galapagos...

...and became foundation sire of a new species. His offspring were larger than the other finches on the island, and found a new niche - and now their songs are different enough not to interbreed.

This happened in two generations. Hybridization triggering speciation is known, but hasn't been observed directly.

Two generations. More evidence in favor of the idea of punctuated equilibrium? Speciation happening only when needed...but very, very fast indeed.

Happy Thanksgiving

Go ahead, eat too much - we all do it ;).

Thankful for, well...everyone who's taken a chance on my writing. I hope you all enjoyed!

Science fiction...

...is full of stories about chasing down objects. Alastair Reynold's Pushing Ice comes to mind.

Unfortunately, we're not going to be able to catch the most interesting - cigar-shaped 'Oumamua, which came from another solar system and is darting through ours at high speed. We just don't have the technology yet.

Which sucks. It could teach us so much about planet formation, but maybe by the time the next one shows up?

Let's hope...although let's hope any chase attempt goes better than Pushing Ice.

(Of course, another famous science fiction object was also cigar-shaped...)

If it...

...wasn't reality? In one of those "Drat, now I can't write this" moments...

...a 61-year-old flat earther actually plans on trying to launch himself into the sky.

In a steam rocket.

The worst part, is I can make this stuff up, but...

Oh, and if he survives, he's going to run for Governor. (Of California).

Not that he expects to reach space - but as a flat earther, he probably doesn't believe in it anyway.

I really wish I'd come up with this one.

Pirates & Ghosts!

I could have sworn I posted this - but I apparently didn't. The Pirates & Ghosts book is now available from Flame Tree Publishing - containing contributions by some awesome authors and in a beautiful (I haven't got mine yet, but I've seen other books in the series) hardbook format to show off.

It is shipped from the UK, so I suspect US shipping is going to be a little on the pricy side, but you can order a copy here: https://www.flametreepublishing.com/Pirates-&-Ghosts-Short-Stories.html

Caves of Steel, Asimov, and the City

So...one of my favorite books of all time is Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel. For those not familiar with this classic - it's a fairly typical police procedural. A detective is assigned to a tricky case with an out-of-town partner that he initially doesn't get along with - pretty much a mystery trope.

Of course, this being a science fiction book, the out-of-town partner is a robot. R. Daneel Olivaw (who became a large part of the inspiration for a robot/android we are all familiar with - Data). It is set in a future New York City that has become a giant underground arcology overtaking most of New Jersey, in which people live a hive-like existence.

I won't say more because there may be people reading this who haven't read it. If so, get thee to a bookstore or a library. And send your mystery fans there too - The Caves of Steel is a great gateway drug to get mystery lovers into science fiction. It also has two equally fascinating sequels, The Naked Sun and The Robots of Dawn.

This summer I finally made it to New York City, a trip I'd been wanting to make for years but somehow never got around to. Isaac Asimov was a New Yorker, and I decided to reread The Caves of Steel and its sequels with the current, present day city in mind.

Those who know anything about Asimov's background know that he suffered from a crippling fear of flying and never traveled far from the city of his birth. His hero, Elijah Baley...suffers from a crippling fear of leaving the underground cities, which he has to overcome in the sequels in order to solve the crimes. He has an ambiguous relationship with the City, which is sometimes called a womb to reflect the fact that it is a comfortable, safe space...which one must eventually leave. Earth and it's Cities are shown as a dead end.

That ambiguity of love and the desire to escape struck me far more in this re-read, but what hit me the most was that this could well have represented Asimov's own relationship with New York. His love for his city tempered by the fact that his fears would never allow him to be free of it. And this weaves into a larger fear that extreme urbanization could become a dead end from which humanity cannot escape.

Whether you agree with Asimov or not (and be aware, some of the population figures in the book seem laughable to us now, as do the 50s-esque gender relations), my extended reaction to this book reminded me of something:

There is something of the author in every character we create. There has to be.

But there is a lot more of Isaac Asimov in Elijah Baley than I thought.

Phoning ET

A while ago there was a Probability Zero in Analog entitled "The Ears Have It." In it various civilizations gave up on searching for intelligent life...because they were all listening.

Hence METI - Messaging Extra-Terrestrial International - SETI's cousin. And they just sent their first targeted message.

The target is a super earth 12 light years away. The content? Mathematical data and...music. (It's very likely music is a universal).

If anyone's there, we could get a response as early as 2042...

If anyone's there and they're advanced enough to hear it and respond, that is.

Gene Editing

...inside the living body. It's being attempted for the first time. The subject suffers from Hunter's disease - which is incurable and, in the US, costs a ridiculous $100,000 to $400,000 a year to treat (I won't start on our health care system).

They're using a viral vector - a domesticated virus - to insert a good gene into his liver, allowing him to make the enzyme he hasn't been able to make. If the trial is a success it will give hope to the parents of children with the disease, who seldom survive to adulthood.

Let's keep our fingers crossed.

In News Which Surprises No One...

...archaeologists have pushed the invention of wine back to about 5,980 BC in the Caucasus. Or rather, they've found evidence people were drinking wine then.

I suspect the actual invention was even earlier. And probably by accident. Somebody ate rotten grapes, got drunk...

...but humans do have this habit of making alcohol. We can't seem to resist the stuff.

Philcon!

First, thanks to everyone who bought books. I was vending, so didn't get to do as much con stuff as I'd like.

Thanks to everyone playing Cards Against Humanity too. You all rock.

Next year is still up in the air (I may not be able to manage both Philcon and World Fantasy) but we'll see what ends up happening.

Fashion Police!

Come arrest the Doctor, stat!

Look at that - objectively it's soooo awful. Suspenders? Skants? I don't know if I want to cosplay her after all! (Esp. as I have no idea where I'd find skants like that and ya know, I can't sew).

On the other hand, there's something amazingly meta about the Doctor wearing TARDIS socks.

And the more I look at it, the more I hear Jodie Whitaker saying "Jelly baby?"

All of the new series Doctors have had fashion sense. It's kind of refreshing that Thirteen clearly doesn't. I think we're getting goofy, which the show could use. (And it also does neatly evade "I'm a woman now, I care about FASHION. Or subverts it"). The other thing I'm noting is that while Whitaker is obviously *wearing* makeup, it's natural makeup - indicating the Doctor *isn't*, which I like.

Sheep...

...can identify human faces, a feat also shown by horses and dogs.

I would reasonably assume that the same ability is also shown by cows, cats, pigs, water buffalo, camels...IOW, at this point I think we can safely say all domestic animals have developed the ability to recognize a human by their face (they used the same photograph test previously used on the other species).

Knowing which humans are nice and which are nasty (and the vet is automatically nasty) is an important survival value if you're going to hang out with humans.

Apparently...

...NASA has learned nothing from the "Boaty McBoatface" scandal.

New Horizons reached Pluto with plenty of fuel, so they redirected the probe to another KBO. Now they want a nickname for the new world.

So, what are they doing?

Of course they're crowdsourcing. Because humans don't learn.

Thankfully, the lead name right now is fairly sensible - Mjolnir. Z'ha'dum is another suggestion that's coming in strongly.

And fortunately, they do seem to have learned a little bit - they filtered the nominations to remove the stupid ones.

This also most likely won't be the formal name, which will presumably be the name of a deity (mostly Greco-Roman, but they seem to be choosing Hawaiian names for one class of CBOS). This will just be what NASA people call it instead of "2014 MU19"

If you want to vote - go here.

RIP Dudley Simpson

I don't often write an obit for a musician, but this one deserves a mention.

He wrote incidental music for no less than 290 episodes of Doctor Who in the 1960s and 1970s. (He also did a cameo in The Talons of Weng-Chiang.

He also wrote the theme music to Blake's 7 and The Tomorrow People.

IMDB.com also credits him for music in multiple Shakespeare movies.

We often forget people who aren't actors, directors and (sometimes) writers, so I figured I'd stop a moment to honor a composer who made a great contribution to my favorite show.

Just when...

...we think we know everything about this planet, we find a species of ape that's been hiding from us in the Indonesian jungle.

What's next, Yeti?

PhilCon

Because I keep forgetting to post this - I will be at PhilCon this month.

I will be selling books at the Rantings of a Wandering Mind booth and participating in the Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading (4pm on Saturday).

And, of course, the costumes are coming for party time ;). I'll be at the booth a lot if people want to track me down.

This Planet...

...is too big to be explained by current planetary formation theory. It's not so much that NGST-1b is that big. It isn't. It's 1.33 the radius of Jupiter, which is big, but...not beyond the bounds of possibility, and it's light, only 0.88 percent of Jupiter's mass.

No, the problem is that its primary, NGST-1, is rather on the small side. It's an M-dwarf, half the size of the sun. Which means this is a planet almost the quarter of the size of its star.

By our current theories, that just can't happen. So now we have to find where the theories are wrong.

Again.