Breaking News & Random Musings on Space, Technology, Sci-Fi & the View From A Writer’s Window
Road trip means it's time to bring out THE notebook. The one in which, way back in 2015, I brainstormed Aurora Renegades and Resonant. Then, on the next road trip, Asterion Noir. About 2 years ago, Shadows & Light (sorry not sorry for that final scene tease ).
And now, the next saga.
What an incredible vacation our trip to Seattle for PAX West was! Allow me to spam you with 154 - I mean 8 - photos.
Seattle brought its A-game, and the weather was absolutely gorgeous. I *know* it's usually overcast and drizzly, but 3/4 of our visits, the weather's been great. Makes it difficult not to move there...but I know better, dammit.
Despite the fact that PAX has grown into a juggernaut of a worldwide gaming convention empire, it honestly felt exactly the same as it did when we attended 14 years ago. A heavy emphasis on small, independent PC gaming studios, tabletop gaming and TCGs. Tons of playable demos, tournaments and freeplay for fun.
There weren't many AAA game studios there, but we did go to a jaw-dropping The Witcher 3 panel, where we saw half an hour of gameplay from the upcoming Songs of the Past expansion. And Mr. Jennsen got to immerse himself in the nostalgia of his beloved '80s adventure games at a panel with Sierra Online alumns, including Jane Jensen (no relation, lol, but I did write about her Gabriel Knight series just a few weeks ago), and the FMV gaming retrospective museum.
Somehow, despite visiting Seattle at least 5 previous times over the years, we had never gone to Pike Place Market. Why didn't anyone tell us how cool it is? Fresh fish and flower stands, hidden alleys with quirky stores full of genuinely unique items, endless levels that wind down to the waterfront.
10/10, do recommend. Good show PAX. Good show, Seattle.
Pictures:
1) How much fun did I have? This much fun.
2) and 3) Seattle was seriously showing off all weekend.
4) Then and Now: me playing game demos at PAX in 2012 and 2026. Not much has changed, lol.
5) Do I have a weakness for giant robots shooting lasers in space? YES I DO.
6) I somehow did not know that this game released earlier this year. It's a survival/strategy/base builder game, and you get to play as Janeway. YOU GET TO PLAY AS JANEWAY.
7) Golden Age Collectibles at Pike Place Market. This is one of the coolest stores I have ever had the pleasure of entering. At first glance, you think they have the standard geeky memoriabilia and trinkets you find at every geek store or convention. But no; 80% of the items, I had never seen anywhere before. We made out like bandits.
8) BLMF Literary Saloon (also at Pike Place Market). When you walk in, it looks like just another hole-in-the-wall used bookstore. It is not. You wouldn't believe the SF gems hiding in this chaos. Interesting astronomy/physics books, too! And I assume all the other genres. The owner was delightful & displayed ready knowledge of any book we mentioned (including its location in the store if he had it). He and Mr. Jennsen geeked out over Neuromancer - then he and I geeked out over Foundation. What a wonderful store!
So there you go. Now to finish the first draft of Naked Singularity!
The Nancy Grace Roman space telescope successfully launched this week on a Falcon Heavy rocket. Deployment went smoothly, and the craft is operating nominally and talking to NASA.
Roman will travel to the Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2, where it will use two instruments — the Wide Field Instrument and the Coronagraph Instrument — to search for exoplanets, dark energy, and other astrophysical phenomena. The WFI will capture images with the same resolution and clarity as Hubble, but has a * 100x * larger field of view, and the Coronagraph will allow the telescope to detect and see exoplanets better than any telescope in operation.
When it arrives at its L2 orbit, testing and calibration will begin. Expect the first real images in early 2027.
The telescope is amed for Nancy Grace Roman, an astronomer and NASA’s very first Chief of Astronomy in the 60s and 70s. Among many other achievements, she is responsible for getting Hubble off the ground-- not literally off the ground and into space, of course, but championing the project and driving the early planning of it.
Launch image credit: Andrew McCarthy (https://x.com/AJamesMcCarthy/status/2094042714580951147). Other images credit: NASA.
A month ago, I posted about Starship’s successful Test Flight 13, including how the ship most improbably survived its soft landing and belly flop into the ocean. Well, after weeks of nail-biting drama as recovery vessels rushed to the scene then tugged the mammoth vessel through rough seas, it has arrived in calm, sheltered waters off Christmas Island (Australian territory in the Indian Ocean). SpaceX engineers have conducted exhaustive on-scene analysis of the ship (you know how SpaceX loves data on what went right and wrong, so they can do it better next time).
And now a 48,000-ton semi-submersible named FORTE has arrived, and the ship is being loaded onto it. When it’s secure, they will begin another mult-week journey back to Starbase, Texas. Once there, you can believe engineers will pore over every square centimeter with an electron microscope (more or less).
What an incredible story - and incredible images! I can’t believe that such a massive vessel floats so well, and so high in the water.
I've talked often about how important the Mass Effect video games were to my becoming a writer. But long before there was Mass Effect, there was Gabriel Knight. Gabriel Knight 3, to be precise.
My husband was a lifelong PC gamer and Sierra Online fanatic, and GK1 and 2 had already won multiple Game of the Year awards and much critical acclaim. But me? I was an attorney, a former bookworm who no longer had much desire to read, write, or generally have any fun whatsoever. Well, GK3 came along, and he saw his chance. He wooed me in with teasers of a fabulous mystery, vampires, the Holy Grail, and a female computer nerd as a playable secondary main character. So I gave it a try.
I was enraptured! I devoured the game, twice in a row - the first video game I'd played since Super Mario Bros on the NES. Enraptured enough to then go back and play GK1 and 2, both equally incredible stories. So why were they incredible? A couple of reasons, but above all, due to creater and writer Jane Jensen. She envisioned telling complex, nuanced, novel-worthy stories within the medium of video games - then figured out how to do it.
Right person, right idea, right time. The Gabriel Knight trilogy spans several leaps in the technological capabilities of video games, from the 2D point-and-click adventure style of GK1, to the industry's brief (and weird to our modern eyes) experiment with full-motion video in GK2, to the arrival of 3D graphics and a free camera in GK3. Each leap forward gave Jensen more tools with which to tell a deeper story, and she took full advantage of them all. The gameplay of each installment can be clunky to modern gamers (each one in its own particular way), but the stories are as rich and compelling as anything we have today.
I didn't rush off to embrace my inner writer immediately upon completing my Gabriel Knight binge. But I DID become an avid video gamer because of it, and the first spark of creativity, that in time burnt away the lawyerly outer shell, was lit. And when Mass Effect crashed into my life 8 years later, I was ready for what happened next.
Why do I post this today? Because journalist Elías Casella has published an excellent deep dive into the making of these games and how their development interwove with Jane Jensen's journey, the rise and fall of Sierra Online, and the technological leaps that transformed PC gaming in the 1990s. If you are at all interested in this topic, give it a read: https://www.421.news/en/gabriel-knight-sierra-games-en/
Hauntingly beautiful capture of the solar eclipse last week at totality by astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy. In his words: “My favorite capture of the night: The moment the moon's shadow split the sunset in half, leaving a diamond ring in the sky and a breathtaking view. I call it "Shadows on the Balearic Sea".”
We are blessed with an abundance of extremely talented astrophotographers working today, but Andrew may be the best.
Absolutely stunning images captured by ISS astronaut Jessica Meir during last week’s spacewalk to install new equipment on the ISS. The urge to write a story about the first image is quite strong. Her description:
“While I wasn’t gazing at Anil Menon during last week’s spacewalk, my eyes were drawn downward to our majestic Mother Earth. Here’s how she looked from my spacesuit.
Photo 1: Coastal view framed by the ISS solar arrays.
Photo 2: The sun sets behind our newly installed IROSA mod kit, a mounting platform for new arrays to be installed on an upcoming spacewalk (like the shorter array in lower left of photo 1).
Photo 3: Mountain views framed by the solar arrays.”
Ready for your latest dose of feeling tiny and insignificant - while also an incredibly improbable, and thus special and meaningful, part of a vast universe?
Well, I give you one grainy, smudgy image. Not exactly inspiring at first glance, and yet. This timelapse of images (40 seconds in total) was captured by the Perseverance rover's Mastcam instrument on Mars last month, and it shows Earth briefly occulting behind the Martian moon Phobos.
As Carl Sagan so famously and eloquently said:
“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."
The speculative, intrigued smirk of a speculative fiction author, mid-panel discussion on "What makes science fiction, 'science fiction'?" at MisCon this summer.
So what might be going through my mind at this moment? Smug confidence that I've got a zinger of an answer to the clever question an audience member is asking? Delight at how awesome and insightful the discussion is turning out to be? (<-this one was definitely true) Or is an entire new world and story exploding into my mind in this instant, discussion be damned? Or the perfect solution to a thorny plot problem materializing, triggered by something a panelist just said (which would definitely result in delight breaking through to my expression)?
The thing you must understand about an author, and doubly-so a spec-fic author, is that at any given moment, even if the conversation we're having with you is engaging and fulfilling, odds are at least 50% that characters are chattering away in our head. Supernovas are exploding. Ships are firing. Dramatic reveals are unfolding.
We apologize for our distraction--it's not you, it's us--but we always have one foot in another world, and there's simply nothing to be done about it.
Thanks to Steven Sears for sending me the pic, and his lovely wife and awesome spec fic author Jessica Brawner for capturing it!
No context story of my summer, courtesy of my Oura ring. Can confirm its accuracy. Now? Now I just get to write my book.
Starship executed a *nearly* flawless test flight 13 yesterday evening. Perfect launch and flight, and Ship deployed 20 of the upcoming Starlink V3 satellites. Then Ship did the totally unexpected - its soft landing in the ocean was SO soft, when it fell over into the water, IT DIDN'T EXPLODE!! It just floated there in the waves (spawning a thousand memes). So now SpaceX has a slightly worn but flight-tested Ship that it wasn't expecting; oh, the tests they're going to run on that machine, lol.
The only flaw in the test was that the booster only lit 5 of its 13 engines during landing burn, so landed harder than expected in the ocean. Not nearly as severe of a failure as in the last test, but they do continue to have some issues with the booster engines they need to work out.
It was an incredibly beautiful flight, full of jaw-dropping visuals.
Incredible image captured by astronaut Don Pettit on the ISS. The inhabitants of Earth are creating, building, laughing, dancing, and most of all, shining.
From his post: “Milky Way views over the city lights of Earth. Humans shining back at the stars that inspire us! Taken with Nikon Z9, 14mm, f/1.4, ISO 6400 with homemade sidereal tracker on ISS Expedition 72.”
For the record, I dislike air travel. Not flying as such, but the incredible hassle the whole operation has become. Nonetheless, I must concede that it provides many opportunities for brainstorming, working through plot issues, and writing words.
These are my transcribed audio notes from my trip last week. Not the words on Naked Singularity that I WROTE, mind you - and those were quite substantial. These are just my random thoughts while driving or walking through the airports. So many threads to weave together and arcs to bring home!
Also, that last bullet header might or might not involve something unrelated to Amaranthe...
I tell ya, they will just put ANYONE in the paper these days.... ;)
I’m happy to report that a good time appeared to be had by all. Attendance was great for such a niche topic, and honestly, the questions came in fast and furious! Hopefully I answered them well. I wish I had some good pictures from the event, but while the venue was comfy and welcoming, the lighting was not conducive to quality photography.
Finished watching Widow's Bay earlier this week. It's Cthulhu, isn't it?
I haven't laughed so much while watching a TV show in a long time. The humor is effortless, the actors' comedic timing flawless. Of course, the next second I'm cringing in dread or jumping in terror. What an odd mix of dry humor, wit and horror! It shouldn't work, but somehow it does. Likely in no small part due to superb performances by Matthew Rhys, Stephen Root, Kate O'Flynn and Dale Dickey.
The day after we finished the season, the show was nominated for a whopping NINETEEN Emmys. So take that as a second endorsement, and if it sounds like something you might enjoy, give it a try.
A good time was had by all! Or, well, by me, anyway. ;) It WAS cold and rainy (though it was in the 80s right up until the moment the con began, lol - Montana is always unpredictable that way); in the picture of the panel below, you can’t tell just how cold we were - but we were! Luckily, it was fairly cozy inside the vendor hall, so I was able to debut my new Rocky tshirt one day. :D
I had several long-time readers stop by to chat, which was so awesome. And hopefully created many new readers.
I spoke on a panel discussing “Indie By Choice,” and moderated two panels: “AI in Fiction vs AI in Our Reality” and “What Is Science Fiction?” Both turned out to be really fascinating discussions, with great perspectives from the panelists. I spoke on a similar panel about AI at Dragon Con last year, and it was fascinating how much opinions have evolved in a single year; everyone is taking AI much more seriously now.
"Live at Andre's."
Who's Andre? Apparently, a guy who was deep in the Seattle music scene before he retired near Spokane, built a big house on the side of a mountain, then built a performance stage hanging off the mountain above the Spokane River and started inviting his musician friends to play there. 200 or so guests in Andre's back yard for a relaxing evening of great music and spectacular views (and cake, it turns out).
It was such an amazing evening! It's like a mini-mini The Gorge, without the utter nightmare traffic on exfiltration (we were home before 11pm).
The band? Red Wanting Blue. If you've never delved the indie Americana scene, you probably haven't heard of them. But if you do enjoy that style of music, check them out! They have more than 20 years of truly excellent music to enjoy. (We've been fans for years; this is the second time we've seen them perform.)
(Last summer’s edition featured The Gorge.)
I scored a share, woohoo. Mr. Jennsen says our retirement is set.
I allocated funds for a few more shares, so if the price dips a bit (it was up 20% at the close of its first day) I’ll grab a few more. Starship, Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, Starlink, xAI, X, MacroHard, data centers in space…. It’s worth $2 trillion today, but what might it be worth 10 years from now?
Incredible view of Saturn few days before “the grand finale” when the probe Cassini finished its trip after 13 years orbiting the planet (2004-2017).
I’m taking a stand: No offense to Juno and Jupiter - they’re delivering wonderful content - but Cassini was the best space probe, and Saturn is the best planet.
Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, Space Science Institute, Mindaugas Macijauskas. Via Xavi Bros on X
You all know I’m a gamer. Especially story/character-driven RPGs. Story/character-driven SCIFI RPGs? My happy place.
This past weekend was a big one for gaming, with a ton of trailers and reveals from the Summer GameFest, Future Gaming Show and PC Gaming Show. Most importantly, we got to see 20 minutes of EXODUS!
And I’m really happy with what I saw. The character animations, cut scenes and combat all looked much improved over earlier glimpses. Cue the hype meter! EXODUS will release in early 2027 (hopefully).
You can watch the full 20 minutes of gameplay here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOLJh9EEQOw.
P.S.: The Jun PC shown is just the default - you can customize your character’s gender and appearance.
P.P.S.: You get an Awakened dog as a companion! (Not a pet, a friend - he’s sentient.)
P.P.P.S.: They should’ve let a marketing person or voice actor do the commentary. The game producer is not exactly charismatic, lol.
