100 seconds to midnight?
It’s no accident that my cover for 1999 has a nuclear explosion on it. The plot is about a year that repeats over and over. I started with the central idea of so many time loop movies, but I asked, “What if the time loop was for a whole year instead of just a day?” I also wondered, “What if everyone knew they were in a time loop? And not just the one or two main characters?” The more I played out the scenarios in my head, the uglier it got. Hence, the bomb right there on the cover. Our collective experience of COVID featured heavily Read more…
Are we really going to space?
There was news last month of a company working on plans for a space hotel. They want to open in 2027. It all sounds very exciting until you read that they have hit their initial fundraising goal of $1 million. One million dollars is a lot in Earth Money but in terms of Space Money, you may as well have $1,000. It’s just not going to get you that far. (Although space isn’t as far away as you think. I’ve joked that I’m closer to space than any other border. From where I live Washington state, I’m about 320 miles away from Read more…
The power of play
I’m fascinated by the ways that recreation and play react to technology changes–but sometimes can drive technological change too. How to make a whistle One of the examples of “play” following technology is the tin whistle. I knew the rough idea of how the tin whistle came to be when I identified it as the title for the last book of The Lattice Trilogy. But in order to make sure I was using it appropriately I did a lot of research, including purchasing my own (pictured above). This one has the name of the original inventor on it. Clarke was the first Read more…
GPS and the fictional history of The Lattice
The origins of our Global Position System are actually pretty interesting. And it tracks very closely with the fictional history of the Lattice in The Lattice Trilogy (which is available as a box set if you haven’t read it). Let’s start with the history of The Lattice in the books. In the future, the US develops the Lattice as a secret defense project to spy on the rest of the world. It works! They can see all of history and they can see thoughts of anyone they want to. They have total knowledge. That is, until Japan figures out how to hack into the signal Read more…
✅ “I’m not a robot”
I’m not an artist exactly either, but for a little while now I’ve been thinking about this idea of putting haunting images of the protests into captchas. I finally put the images together last night. Like many white people right now, I have the privilege of just scrolling past pain and horror when it’s not happening to me directly, or I can miss the bigger picture of what needs to be done. By putting these images in captchas, it makes it all too clear how easy it is to miss the larger picture and just… click through. Read more…
An American Blogs About Brexit
Tomorrow, January 31, the United Kingdom leaves the European Union. I’ve been fascinating by Brexit since the vote. There was a streak of things in a row that weren’t “supposed” to be happen. The UK votes to leave the EU in June 2016. The Cubs win the World Series. Trump beats Clinton. The envelope snafu at the Oscars a few months later. And Brexit was what kicked it off. My interest in Brexit picked up after the 2017 election, when Theresa May’s conservative majority fell enough that she needed to rely on Irish unionists to keep her majority. It set Read more…
Why “Dune Peninsula” at Point Defiance Park?
On Saturday, July 6, Metro Parks opened a new park in Tacoma. “Dune Peninsula at Point Defiance Park” was the culmination of years of work at Metro Parks. Hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of dirt moved… EPA cleanup… construction… and more. It was an amazing achievement that the voters of Tacoma, Metro Parks, and the many people who took on this challenge should be very proud of. And long-time readers know that the name of the park has been something of a quixotic goal for me since 2013. Along with some others like Katy Evans and Dan Rahe, we Read more…
Light the Night
One of things that I love about science-fiction writing is that it gives me an opportunity to really write about how the legacy of past is still shaping our lives today. Back in 2014, I wrote about how from space you could still trace the divide in Berlin, even though it’s long since been demolished. How? Because East and West Berlin used different kinds of street lights, and even though the city is unified, changing them out was really expensive. So, 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the lights were different enough they could be used to Read more…
It’s not a blog.
It’s been a year since I’ve blogged on my personal website. And it was six months before that since I’d posted and six months before that since the previous post. Three posts in two years, does not a blog make. I didn’t even remember to write about the completion of my sci-fi trilogy last summer (Hey! The Tin Whistle is out, the trilogy is complete! Read it now). So it’s time to face facts. For all practical purposes, I don’t have a “blog” anymore. I have a website. Once that was clear, then I knew I needed to spruce things Read more…
2018 Year in review in Tacoma
It’s that time again. A 2018 year in review and a look ahead for Move to Tacoma with Tacoma REALTOR Marguerite Martin. The good, the bad, the Tacoma. 2018: What’s Next for MoveToTacoma?
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