Category: Science
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Notes on Worldbuilding, Part 18: The Planet Chart
I’ve been putting together a talk about worldbuilding, distilling this whole series down into a couple of hours. As a handout I’ve created this chart, indexing planetary size against temperature to classify planets. It’s intended as a quick-and-dirty guide for people who don’t really want to go into the minutiae of planetary science. Anyway, here…
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Australia, Part 7
From Warrnambool we drove west along the coast some more, but not far. Just a few miles away is Tower Hill, a fascinating environment well worth the stop. The southern part of the Australian state of Victoria is made of limestone. It's even called the "Limestone Coast." That's how you get cool formations like the…
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Australia, Part 5
On May 8 we toured the State Library of Victoria, which is an impressive complex in the core of Melbourne. We admired some of the rare and unusual books on display, and went up to the walkway around the top of the rotunda for a view of the reading room below. Diane then had to…
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Notes on Worldbuilding, Part 17: Aliens!
We've finally arrived at discussing actual intelligent extraterrestrial beings. I'm going to come at this concept from two directions in separate posts. This entry will discuss the science of alien beings — what they might be like, based on all the previous worldbuilding entries in this series. My next entry will look at aliens from…
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Boskone 61!
On February 9-11 I'll be at the fabulous Westin Waterfront hotel in Boston for the 61st BOSKONE! The venerable New England convention is back again and I'll be part of it. Come on down and see some of the best writers in the U.S. talking about science fiction. And me. Here's my schedule: Friday,…
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There Is No Fermi Paradox
The famous Fermi Paradox is one of the central concerns of research on the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Just to summarize quickly: we know of no good reason why technological civilizations can't emerge on other worlds in our Galaxy, but we see no signs of any. Paradox! "Where is everybody?" Enrico Fermi asked plaintively.…
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Notes on Worldbuilding Part 16: Alien Reproduction
All living things reproduce. Organisms on Earth have evolved a dizzying array of reproductive habits and anatomy. I'm just going to look at the very basics in this post, and next time we'll look at how reproduction might affect the mentality and society of alien beings. Strategies: Biologists have identified two basic reproductive "strategies" for…
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The Zoo Hypothesis: Objections
Recently the magisterial Centauri Dreams 'blog ran a post by Paul Gilster about the "Copernican Principle" and how it conflicts with the observed facts about life in the Universe. (Short version: the Copernican Principle says Earth should be an average world, but if that's the case, why don't we see more signs of life elsewhere?…
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Notes on Time Travel Stories
Time travel has been a fixture of science fiction ever since a young Englishman named H.G. Wells wrote his first novel, The Time Machine. Wells wasn't the first person to write about time jumps — Mark Twain did it in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court — but before Wells it was always treated…
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The Subsurface Agency Wants YOU!
Geoff Manaugh is an interesting writer — his book A Burglar's Guide to the City is something everyone should read — and he has a fascinating blog called BLDGBLOG. The most recent post (as of this writing) is about some ambitious projects to do large-scale surveys of the subsurface environment using ground-penetrating radar, sonar, and…
The Cambias Digression 