I’m just going to leave this here. Let me know what you think about it. The raptors in a war zone are probably not going to last long…

And here’s the source article over at Wired: Army Scores a Super-Stealthy Drone That Looks Like a Bird

I met Doug Farren in the summer of 2012 at the Launchpad Astronomy Workshop in Laramie, Wyoming. Doug is a popular and successful indie writer of science fiction and fantasy. Check out his Amazon page here. Doug does an occasional column on “The BS in SF.” I really liked his post on thermodynamics and asked if I could re-post it here. Enjoy!

Thermodynamics: I consider it the bane of science fiction. Nothing is 100% efficient and most of the loss in efficiency shows up as heat. A perfect example is something I deal with every day—power production. Nearly every large power plant has a cooling tower and all that vapor pouring out the top is waste heat. How much? About 65% of the energy generated in the reactor or boiler! This waste heat creates a MAJOR problem for science fiction. In order to understand why, let’s take a step back and talk about heat transfer for a moment.

Heat can be transferred in three ways: convection, conduction, and radiation. Convection and conduction require the heat source to be in physical contact with the transfer medium. A spacecraft is isolated from everything else by the vacuum of space which rules out both of these as a means of dumping waste heat. That leaves radiation, which is the transfer of heat through the emission of electromagnetic radiation. This means that if you want to keep your ship cool you need large radiators to dump the excess heat.

If you look at a picture of the International Space Station (ISS), the first thing you will most likely notice are the huge panels extending away from the primary truss. The largest of these are the solar panels that provide the station with electricity. The others are the heat radiators. Damage enough of these and the station will quickly become uninhabitable. Ever wonder why the space shuttle kept its cargo doors open the entire time it was in space? Because the inside of the doors served as heat radiators to keep the shuttle cool. If you’re building a nuclear powered warship equipped with directed energy weapons, you’re going to have to get rid of a tremendous amount of waste heat. To do that, you’ll need a heat radiator with a very large surface area. Now you have a problem. (more…)

So…I just finished a very rough draft of The Red: Trials, the follow up to The Red: First Light. There is A LOT of fixing up, figuring out, and filling in to do — and maybe there will be fatal flaws, I don’t know — but this was a very difficult book for me, so getting to this point is a triumph.

For those of you who are writers, I thought I’d share my experience of how I finally got those last pages done, in case you might find it helpful someday.

With many writers it’s common to write faster as you approach the end. That’s usually the case for me, but it didn’t happen this time. I was still slogging through it, even though I really didn’t have that far to go.

This has happened to me before. Long ago, when I was writing the first draft of my novel Vast, I was stuck. I was maybe 80% through and I couldn’t write anymore. I had a decision to make about how the end would work, and the uncertainty of what that decision would be worked to hold me back. I’m a very linear writer. I write chapter 1, then chapter 2, and so on, through to the end. I don’t jump around — until I got stuck writing Vast, that is. Eventually, out of desperation or despair, I jumped ahead and wrote the climactic end of the novel–and after that, writing the rest of the draft was relatively easy.

Every novel is different. With Trials I wasn’t facing a decision about the end. I knew how it would end — the generalities anyway, if not the details — but as with Vast, it turns out I needed to write the climactic ending scene before I could write all the scenes leading up to it. After a terrible writing day, I sat down on the evening of November 21, and skipped to the end. 1500 words later I felt far, far better about things. Over the next five days I added another 8500 words to create the missing scenes. I won’t say the writing was painless, but it was much less of a struggle than almost all the rest of the novel.

So this is the Vast method: when you’ve struggled close to the end but the story still isn’t writing itself, try writing the climactic scene first, and then drop back and fill in the rest.

Sometimes it works.

Over the past year or so I’ve read several disparaging comments about my favorite kind of science fiction — the hard stuff. So I thought I’d address some common misconceptions about the sub-genre in a post that published today at io9.com. Please check it out and let me know what you think.

I’m pleased to report that the War Stories Kickstarter successfully funded yesterday, two days before the deadline! This means the anthology, edited by Jaym Gates and Andrew Liptak, will move forward, and see publication in 2014. It will include my story “Light and Shadow.”

So a big thank you to everyone who supported the project and who helped to spread the word!

Today is my birthday. I’m fifty-three years old. I’m sure that sounds ancient if you’re in your twenties or thirties, and terrifying if you’re in your forties, but honestly, it’s not bad. My advice to anyone of any age is to get in shape and stay in shape. The journey’s a lot more pleasant when you take care of yourself. Go check out this book: Younger Next Year by Chris Crowley and Henry S. Lodge, M.D. Very inspirational.

So what did I get for my birthday? An `ōhi`a tree, because we’re weird like that. 🙂

This is a tree native to Hawaii and very common in the mountains where native forest lingers. The new tree has yellow flowers. It will complement our much older `ōhi`a tree, shown below, which has vermilion flowers:

After I took the photo above, I noticed an odd green color right in the center. This required investigation, so I took another photo with increased telephoto:

Yes, just as suspected, a Jackson chameleon photobombed my `ōhi`a pic!

Here’s a closer shot, taken from underneath the tree:

I’m happy to report that the mature tree was absolutely buzzing with honeybees. We still have a healthy bee population in this neighborhood.

But — as this little photo-excursion demonstrates — I am easily distracted from the real business. I need to finish both an essay and a novel — so back to work!

The sale is done now. Thanks so much to all who participated and who helped to spread the word. If you enjoyed MEMORY and would like to see a sequel please let me know. And do sign up for my newsletter (“New Book Alerts” at the top of the right hand column)–it goes out only a few times a year.

“[A] kick ass big idea, hard SF novel…Yes, I’m raving. But I seriously love this book.” —Tobias Buckell

Many of my readers consider Memory to be their favorite among my novels, and I would love to write a sequel, but I’m going to need the support of a lot of readers to do it. This will probably mean doing a Kickstarter to make sure the interest is there. In the meantime, I’d like to persuade more of you to read Memory, so for a limited time I’m offering it for only $3. Thanks for considering it!

The reduced price is available at Amazon US and Amazon UK, so if you’re a regular Amazon customer (and you don’t live in a country where Amazon tacks on extra fees) please purchase there. This will help the novel’s rank and give it more visibility to other customers. The reduced price is also available at my Mythic Island Press webstore, to buyers worldwide.

If you’re a regular customer of Kobo Books, here’s the link to their website

With luck the lower price will also become available at Barnes & Noble, but they tend to be slower about updating their listings, so no guarantees.

For news of upcoming books (and possible Kickstarters!) PLEASE SIGN UP FOR MY VERY OCCASIONAL NEWSLETTER.

And if you read Memory and enjoy it, please consider reviewing it at Amazon or Barnes & Noble, or otherwise spreading the word — because word of mouth is the best way to sell books, and I need all the help I can get! 😉