The Universe Within Update

And the first draft of THE UNIVERSE WITHIN is complete!!

It clocks in at 64,451 words, which is a hefty chunk considering all the [skipped scenes] and [vague notes and instructions] and [half finished chapters], lol. *motions at Alex and Caleb and all those rich, fully formed worlds and stories that burst to life wherever they go*

I don't think a story has come together this quickly since Abysm, which is really saying something. But boy, do I have a ton of work ahead of me. I was flinging brackets left and right as fast as I could type them, just to get the plot out of my head and onto the page.

So, yeah. Time to grab the fire extinguisher..

Cartwheel Galaxy

The latest from the Webb Telescope:

“NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has peered into the chaos of the Cartwheel Galaxy, revealing new details about star formation and the galaxy’s central black hole. Webb’s powerful infrared gaze produced this detailed image of the Cartwheel and two smaller companion galaxies against a backdrop of many other galaxies. This image provides a new view of how the Cartwheel Galaxy has changed over billions of years.”

https://www.nasa.gov/universe/webb-captures-stellar-gymnastics-in-the-cartwheel-galaxy/

Note: There are 3 versions of the image. The composite from Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) and the MIRI-only image are shown in the article, and the NIRI-only image is shown below and in this NASA tweet.

The Future Is Going to Be Weird

Well OF COURSE brain chips are going to replace phones. One of my safest "predictions," to be honest. And I love that the future is going to be weird!

““The Future is Going to Be Weird.” Elon Musk Predicts Brain Chips Will Eventually Replace Phones”: https://thedebrief.org/the-future-is-going-to-be-weird-elon-musk-predicts-brain-chips-will-eventually-replace-phones/

The Search for the Anti-Aging Holy Grail

Faster, please! None of us here are getting any younger....

Important finding: the mice didn't just live 25% longer - they were healthier in virtually every respect for that extended lifespan.

Still partially in mouse trials, but the drug is already being tested in humans for other purposes. This one may be more real than most?

Slightly click-baity headline: “Experts create anti-aging holy grail drug that extends life 25% and prevents cancer and gray hair” https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13644081/Experts-anti-aging-extends-life.html

“In just 25 weeks following the therapy, the animals had a lower risk of cancer, no gray hair, improved vision and better muscle functionality. The treated mice had fewer cancers, and were free from the usual signs of ageing and frailty, but we also saw reduced muscle wasting and improvement in muscle strength.”

“Anti-IL-11 treatments are currently in human clinical trials for other conditions, potentially providing exciting opportunities to study its effects in ageing humans in the future.”

Professor Cook told the BBC that while the trial is not yet completed, the data has suggested that the drug is safe for humans.” 

Saturn's Rings

It’s your periodic Cassini Appreciation Post (no, Cassi, it’s not about you!).

From Jason Major: “Here's a view of Saturn's rings made from images captured with Cassini on July 4, 2008. Prometheus is visible inside the F ring at the bottom; the even smaller Atlas is on the left along the outer edge of the A ring. Saturn's shadow falls across the rings at upper right.”

Directly Imaging Exoplanets

What's that giant blue blob in the bottom left quadrant? It's an exoplanet. I haven't done the digging to confirm, but it feels like this is the highest quality direct imaging of an exoplanet we have achieved so far.

The Nancy Grace Roman Telescope, launching in 2027, is going to bring another huge leap forward in finding and imaging exoplanets, but this is already really impressive. Being able to see these planets is going to change everything.

"This image from ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) shows the newly discovered planet HD95086 b, next to its parent star. The observations were made using NACO, the adaptative optics instrument for the VLT in infrared light, and using a technique called differential imaging, which improves the contrast between the planet and its dazzling host star. The star itself has been removed from the picture during processing to enhance the view of the faint exoplanet and its position is marked. The exoplanet appears at the lower left.

The blue circle is the size of the orbit of Neptune in the Solar System."

https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1324a/

(Going to Need A) Bigger Coffee Mug

New hobby: collecting coffee mugs. In order to make the cut, a mug must meet two criteria: (1) it must be quirky or geeky, and (2) it must be giant - I am not sipping espresso over here.

My first acquisition was this awesome mug of one of my most favorite movies since I was a child! (I also have Jaws socks....) The size isn't conveyed very well by these pics, but it just might hold the big man himself.

The Results Are In

You guys rock (of course, I already knew this ). Despite only being out for 3 weeks, THE THIEF won 2nd place in Discover Scifi's Best Sci-Fi Books of 2024 (So Far)! I could not be more thrilled. I adore this book so much, and it makes me happy to know you all do, too.

You can see the Top 10 here: https://discoverscifi.com/the-best-sci-fi-releases-of-2024-so-far/

Forge of God

Wow. This book. (Forgive the ratty, beat-up mass-market paperback, but used bookstores are awesome.) Yes, it took me until now to read it, and I regret that delay.

Haunting, at times grim and depressing (so be warned - this is not high action/adventure), but also an achingly beautiful love letter to our precious blue marble and the equally precious humans who inhabit it.

The Best Sci-Fi Books of 2024 (So Far)

My readers are the absolute best. THE THIEF has only been out for 2 weeks, but you've spoken up so much that it's now in the running for The Best Sci-Fi Book of 2024 (So Far) over at Discover Sci-Fi. And hey, Eren deserves every bit of recognition he gets (he would agree, I think).

If you're so inclined, head over and vote! https://discoverscifi.com/time-to-vote-first-half-of-2024-best-scifi/

Alex, what have you done?

It’s time for the occasionally annual celebration of the unofficial theme of the Amaranthe series:

This year, it struck me that this excerpt from INVERSION between Alex and Nika is rather on point.

Miriam wasn't on scene to exclaim "what have you done?" when Alex did this on Portal Prime in VERTIGO, but I'm pretty sure Caleb *thought* it, lol.

Of course, the answer to the question, "what have you done?" was "save everyone, obviously."

I wonder what utterly audacious stunt she's going to pull off in THE UNIVERSE WITHIN?

Starship Soars In Test Flight #4

Starship's fourth test flight went so beautifully! As before, it cruised around the planet for around 40 minutes. This time, the SuperHeavy booster not only survived re-entry, but completed its landing burn and a soft splashdown in the ocean, intact.

And the big news: the ship survived re-entry through the atmosphere, completed its flip and landing burn and splashed down as well. Now, the trip down was spicy AF, and it landed beat up, with the landing flaps hanging on by a thread. But it made it, which is *more* than SpaceX was expecting today (the focus was on making it through the atmosphere without, well, exploding).

Every test has achieved so much more than the last; the iteration SpaceX is able to achieve is incredible.

MisCon 2024

That's a wrap on another amazing MISCON (https://www.miscon.org/)! A huge thanks to Katie J Cross, the best friend and booth collaborator I could ask for, to Justin Barba for pulling off the herculean task of organizing a crazy, entertaining celebration, and to Robert Olson for keeping us all endlessly caffeinated and entertained. It was awesome to spend the weekend meeting readers, writers and fans of all things geeky, and hanging out with Kristine Endsley, Thomas Gondolfi, Hunter Cowles Wallace, Sanan Kolva, C E Chester, Grant Theron, and Peter Jones (I'm definitely forgetting some lovely people).

NOW, how about we do a "The Thief" launch this week?

(FYI: links are to Facebook profiles)

GS Watches TV and Movies, May Edition

(1) All the rumors were true. The Fallout TV show was pretty great. Maybe a little weird for people who haven't played any of the games? Maybe not. Delightfully silly, absurd and fun. Violent, sure, but frankly not as much as I expected. Lucy was pitch-perfect, the Ghoul was the villain we all love to hate, until we just love him, and even Maximus grew on me by the end.

(2) Shogun was beautiful, heartbreaking and haunting, but also uplifting in the end. It pulled no punches about the culture and practices of historical Japan, yet somehow made you fall in love with the place anyway. It didn't try to "update" the story for our modern sensibilities. It's been a long, long time since I read the book, but my sense is, it stayed pretty close to the source material.

(3) Godzilla Minus One was...sweet! It felt like an homage to the old Japanese Godzilla movies in the best ways, and didn't let its cautionary themes about the toil war takes overwhelm its story of the importance of found family. And, you know, killing Godzilla.

(4) Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, though? Possibly one of the worst movies I have ever seen in my life. And I say this is an unashamed lover of terrible disaster and monster movies. It wasn't just nonsensical and boring. It was BAD.

Feel free to disagree with me on any of these! We all love (and hate) what we love (and hate).

At the Sun's Edge

Check out this incredible image of the solar flare that caused* our aurora party last weekend!

*Okay, technically this is not the exact flare that triggered the auroras, but it was captured in the same time frame from the same region. :)

Via APOD: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240515.html

“Pictured, a large multi-pronged solar prominence was captured extending from chaotic sunspot region AR 3664 out into space, just one example of the particle clouds ejected from this violent solar region. The Earth could easily fit under this long-extended prominence.”

SETI and Dyson Spheres

First, a disclaimer: I doubt that any of these initial candidates will pan out. Striking gold the first time we pan for it seems unlikely; we'll likely need to both refine the process and develop even more powerful, refined instruments.

But, I think this is a superior way to conduct SETI research. The truth is, in order for a civilization to be advanced enough for us to find them across the vast distances involved, they're likely going to need to be able to construct Dyson structures.

Now, whether we want to attract the attention of a species so advanced is another question (interestingly, one I'll be talking about on a panel at MisCon next weekend!). But we should definitely be looking!

“A Study Suggests We Found Potential Evidence of Dyson Spheres—and Alien Civilizations”: https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/deep-space/a60780331/dyson-sphere-evidence-alien-civilizations/

“For more than half a century, scientists have wondered if searching for technosignatures like Dyson Spheres from super-advanced civilizations could help us discover intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.

Two new studies analyze data from star-gazing satellites to develop a framework for eliminating false positives or potential natural explanations in that search.

Each study found evidence that a handful of stars among the millions observed contain excess radiation that’s consistent with potential Dyson spheres and can’t be immediately explained away as a natural phenomenon.”

And if you want to deep-dive into the science of this research, here’s a piece on the always excellent and thoughtful Centauri Dreams blog: https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2024/05/18/seven-dyson-sphere-candidates/