Let's Get Off This Rock Already!
An Author's Adventures in Space Travel, Science Fiction, and Worlds Beyond
Howdy, folks! I'm sorry about the unannounced hiatus. It's been a wild month for me, working 12-hour night shifts with lots of overtime, not to mention finalizing the text of my novel. I've been swamped! Today, though, we're kicking things off again with a special post: a showcase of the incredible work of my cover... Continue Reading →
Harry Turtledove is a big fish in a small pond. He may not be widely known outside of alternate history circles, but within them everybody knows his name, and has probably read some of his work. Dust jackets have proclaimed him the "Master of Alternate History" for about three decades now. He was my personal... Continue Reading →
We all have our bad days at work. Sometimes you have to deal with an abrasive, domineering boss. Sometimes you're tasked with meeting impossibly high quotas, despite unclear instructions and faulty equipment. And sometimes, all those things are going on at once, and you happen to be working in the control room of Chernobyl Reactor... Continue Reading →
The 1990s were not a good time in the former Soviet Union. When the central government fell, it wasn't just a political collapse, but a collapse of just about everything---the military, the economy, society itself. Ethnic tensions erupted into raging civil wars; rushed free-market reforms threw countless millions into poverty; amid political turmoil, President Boris... Continue Reading →
Very early on, my family instilled in me a love of coffee table books: hefty, hardcover volumes, large enough to double as paperweights or even footstools1, bedecked with photographs and artwork from front to back. Instead of reading straight through, you could open one to whatever page you fancied. They covered all sorts of topics,... Continue Reading →
It was on October 7, 1959, that the dark side of the Moon finally came into the light. Mind you, it was never "dark" in a literal sense; all parts of the Moon undergo a complete day/night cycle, with the far or "dark" side being lit when the near one is in shadow, and vice... Continue Reading →
The Soviet space program was more cautious than people give it credit for. Sure, the Soviets had their share of disasters1, but unless one subscribes to certain theories about lost cosmonauts, they didn't just send people into space without any preparation at all---they sent dogs, first. Scores of them. You see, the epic flight of... Continue Reading →
Happy Halloween, everyone! We haven't had a proper Halloween special since my review of Event Horizon, all the way back in 2019, so I'm here today with something appropriately spooky: a conspiracy theory. Read on to uncover tales of ill-fated missions and doomed space travelers... First in space? Yuri Gagarin is recognized as the first... Continue Reading →
It's been the better part of a year since I posted my early experiments with Midjourney. Today, in what may be one of my shorter, sillier pieces, I'll fill you in on my antics during the intervening time. It's stunning how far generative AI has advanced just while I've been using it; if I were... Continue Reading →
This piece is going to be about something very local. While I know I have a far-flung readership---just last week, I had visitors from Germany, South Korea, Thailand, and Poland, among others---it may still be of use for those of you who will one day visit the great state of Oregon. And for those who... Continue Reading →
