Alex on her first scouting run in the Siyane, back when she was just a young, starry-eyed explorer? I think yes.
"Portal" by Shai Daniel: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/oO5b0O
Originally posted on Facebook.
STARSHINE's New Cover
What is this? STARSHINE has a new cover?!
I've tried to keep a similar feel and color scheme, so it fits in nicely with the other covers, while giving it more of a dynamic, exciting theme (spaceships!).
The new cover is live on the ebook already. It should be available on the paperback within the week. I'll also have new paperback stock later this month for my store.
I know, all of you already HAVE Starshine, so this doesn't actually affect you. It's cool - just enjoy the shiny.
Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction
Sci-fi nerds and aficionados, I'm about to derail your day. The HISTORICAL DICTIONARY OF SCIENCE FICTION, which tracks down how sci-fi terms were first used, and then evolved over time, launched this week: https://sfdictionary.com/
One of the main goals of historical lexicography is finding antedatings, as instances that push back the earliest known use of a term are called. By poring through oodles of issues of old sci-fi, including the massive trove of them scanned by the Internet Archive, the site's creator has made some truly delightful discoveries — often discovering that well-known sci-fi terms were used a lot earlier than readers may have suspected: "Deep space" was first used in 1921, "ray gun" in 1923, and "teleported" in 1931 ("The essential elements of sea-water, minus the undesirable saline properties, can be teleported to Mars", in Clark Ashton Smith's "Planet Entity").
The dictionary also illustrates the complicated interplay between imaginative literature and the real world. The words "graviton" and "biotechnician," for example, first appeared in science fiction sources before being adopted in the real world.
Read more about the Dictionary at Boing Boing: https://boingboing.net/.../the-historical-dictionary-of... and (if you have a subscription) the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/.../science-fiction-dictionary.html - or just go straight to the source and dive in: https://sfdictionary.com/.
Originally posted on Facebook.
NGC 2841
It is one of the more massive galaxies known. A mere 46 million light-years distant, spiral galaxy NGC 2841 can be found in the northern constellation of Ursa Major. This sharp view of the gorgeous island universe shows off a striking yellow nucleus and galactic disk. Dust lanes, small, pink star-forming regions, and young blue star clusters are embedded in the patchy, tightly wound spiral arms. In contrast, many other spirals exhibit grand, sweeping arms with large star-forming regions. NGC 2841 has a diameter of over 150,000 light-years, even larger than our own Milky Way. The featured composite image merges exposures from the orbiting 2.4-meter Hubble Space Telescope and the ground-based 8.2-meter Subaru Telescope. X-ray images suggest that resulting winds and stellar explosions create plumes of hot gas extending into a halo around NGC 2841.
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble, Subaru, Roberto Colombari.
Originally posted on Twitter.
Plotting Riven Worlds
So I started working in earnest on ALL OUR TOMORROWS (hey, if you haven't finished ECHO RIFT yet, the next book is called "All Our Tomorrows" ), but after writing a bunch of words (15K and change - the progress meter is up and running on the website now), I realized there were a couple of plot arcs that I really needed to have nailed down hard, from beginning to end, in order to get them right in this book.
Well, one thing led to another, as they do, and now I give you the visual outline for the 3 remaining books in the Riven Worlds series!
I know, it looks way complicated, but it's all good - this should represent over 350K words of action, battles, drama, suspense, romance, terror, badassery and joy. I won't tell you which ones are which, but the columns are titled such things as "Alex/Caleb," "Nika/Dashiel," "Concord," "Rasu," Eren" and...so on, all with lots of dotted lines interconnecting them.
The Medulla Nebula Supernova Remnant
What powers this unusual - and stunningly beautiful - nebula? CTB-1 is the expanding gas shell that was left when a massive star toward the constellation of Cassiopeia exploded about 10,000 years ago. The star likely detonated when it ran out of elements, near its core, that could create stabilizing pressure with nuclear fusion. The resulting supernova remnant, nicknamed the Medulla Nebula for its brain-like shape, still glows in visible light by the heat generated by its collision with confining interstellar gas. Why the nebula also glows in X-ray light, though, remains a mystery.
Learn more here: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210118.html
Originally posted on Twitter.
Happy Echo Rift Release!
A New Lease on Life for Juno and InSight
Fantastic news for space nerds! NASA has extended the Juno mission, which was scheduled to end later this year, until 2025, and detailed plans to send the spacecraft on investigatory flybys of Europa, Io and Ganymede. More stunning images and exciting science will be coming our way.
NASA has also extended the Mars InSight mission through the end of next year. InSight isn't as exciting as Juno, what with it just sitting there on Mars banging away at the ground, but it's still doing important work, and now more of it.
Galaxy In A Globe
What do you get the sci-fi writer in your life? The galaxy, of course! But not *just* the galaxy...the universe it inhabits!
#MrJennsen rocks at Christmas. :D
Happy Holidays
My BFFs and I wish you all the safest, healthiest and happiest holidays you can wrest through sheer force of will out of this insane year.
Originally posted on Facebook.
Echo Rift Teaser Quote
New Zoomable Map of Our Corner of the Milky Way
The most up-to-date map of our corner of the Milky Way, shown as if you were looking down on the Sun from above the plane of the galaxy. The zoomable graphic by @galaxy_map using data from NASA and the GAIA Catalogue of Nearby Stars. Go here to zoom away! https://gruze.org/galaxymap/10pc/
Originally posted on Twitter.
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Starship Test: A Successful Failure
This was INSANE to watch. The NASA Spaceflight commentators were completely nerding out, all cool objectivity tossed out the window.
Basically, SpaceX achieved 9 of 10 of its objectives, and it was amazing to watch this frigging tin can soar through the sky, deploy some fins, hover, flip over on its belly and smoothly descend again.
Until the end of course, which, given no lives were at risk, was one heck of an entertaining explosion as it didn't QUITE stick the landing. And when you're talking about rocket ships, a failure of inches leads to big booms.
SpaceX has already identified the problem and plans to have it fixed for SN9's test run soon.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/09/spacex-flies-its-starship-rocket-to-40000-feet-just-misses-the-landing-in-explosive-finale (follow the link for some awesome video)
Image credits: Trevor Mahlmann, SpaceX, National Geographic.
Originally posted on Facebook.
Echo Rift Update
Arrival
Mike, Victor, Shannon, and Soichi are now successfully on their way to the ISS! Crew-1 Dragon marks the first official SpaceX mission to bring humans to space (Bob and Doug's trip was the final "demo" mission). The first of many.
Oh, and they successfully landed the first stage back on Earth, in the dark, because they just do that. Have a few incredible images from the launch.
UPDATE: And they all arrived safely! The last pic is the jaw-dropping view the astronauts enjoyed on their approach to the ISS.
Image credits:
Trevor Mahlmann (https://twitter.com/TrevorMahl.../status/1328135014832332801)
Lori Garver (https://twitter.com/Lori_Garver/status/1328133839403819010)
Jason Major (https://twitter.com/JPMajor/status/1328135200002478082)
Conrad Teves (https://twitter.com/ConradTeves/status/1328136545199644674).
Sawyer R. (https://twitter.com/thenasaman/status/1328542882194657280).
Words in a Cloud
A word cloud of the most-used words in an early chapter of ECHO RIFT. This one caught my fancy.
Originally posted on Facebook.
Concord HQ
For #reasons, I have found myself in need of a somewhat detailed layout of Concord HQ for ECHO RIFT. And if I get one, why shouldn't you?
Also, to continue our tradition of making fun of my truly atrocious handwriting, below the graphic I'll post my original, hand-drawn sketch.
Originally posted on Facebook.
Echo Rift Update
What do 10 MILLION Stars Look Like?
Well, they look like this astonishing image, captured by the Dark Energy Camera on the CTIO 4-meter telescope as part of a survey of the Milky Way's center bulge.
What some more wows? The Milky Way galaxy contains around 400 billion stars in total - or 40,000x the number shown in this image. And the Milky Way's an average, ordinary galaxy, maybe a little on the small side. We believe there are around 2 TRILLION galaxies in the universe. Our brains aren't built to properly comprehend the scale at play - but it fills us with wonder to *try*.
How much of our night sky is pictured here? Well, if you go outside and hold your thumb up, you've about covered it.
The full-sized image pictured here clocks in at a whopping 3GB, so I doubt anyone will be downloading that. But there's a handy online, zoomable version here: https://noirlab.edu/public/images/noirlab2027a/zoomable/
Read more about the science, the numbers and see more awesome images in the article by the always excellent Phil Platt: https://www.syfy.com/.../what-do-10-million-stars-look-like
Originally posted on Facebook.
Sunlit Water on the Moon
To be clear, we already knew there was water on the moon, but until this discovery, we'd only found it deep in shadowy, frozen crevices.The more water that is harvestable on the moon, the easier it will be for us to establish permanent bases and, eventually, colonies, so this is great news!Also, the science is rather interesting, mostly because we don't know *how* water is not being created but retained in these areas of the lunar surface. Also, SOFIA is a very cool telescope, and an example of scientists getting creative with the resources available to them.
“NASA’s SOFIA Discovers Water on Sunlit Surface of Moon”: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-sofia-discovers-water-on-sunlit-surface-of-moon/
Originally posted on Facebook.