Michael Flynn's Blog, page 72

An SFnal Speculation Based on Civil Marriage

Ominous Muse at the End of an Age

Mark Shea notes the following footprints in the sands of time:

When I was a kid, the State used language that assumed the citizen was a human being worthy of respect. "Buckle up for safety." "Keep America Beautiful".

Now the State uses a bullying, contemptuous tone appropriate for a bureaucrat who assumes "the Masses" are so much concrete to be shoveled around, so many cattle to be prodded, so many sheep to be startled in this or that direction by...

AnLabs

At Last It Can Be Told

My story "Where the Winds Are All Asleep" won the ANALOG "AnLab" award for novelette.  Woo-hoo.

[image error]

Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight

Lunar Temperatures, Back in the Day

Apollo 15 left a temperature probe on the Moon which reported temps from 1971 to 1975.  The Moon was warming.  But we all know local weather is not climate.  And remember- they drove an SUV around there. 




This likely has nothing to do with the fading ice caps on Mars, or Neptune changing its reflectivity, Neptune’s moon Triton increasing in temperature by a whopping 5%, Pluto’s atmospheric pressure tripling due to higher temperatures, or the recently-ended S...

Bantering with the magpies

In the Lion's Mouth

For your amusement, a snippet of dialog from the new book.  Donovan has just been removed from an autoclinic following a long recovery by two "magpies".  (These are Confederal subordinates to the Shadows.)  The younger magpie is a medic, and after a bit of talking......

Donovan looked at the older magpie.  “You don’t talk much.” 
“Don’t need to, usually.” 
“And you are…?” 
“Your sparring partner.  Physical therapy.” 
“I had enough sparring with Ekadrina.  I was hoping to...

Henchmenitude

Playing the Pied Piper   Over at the TOFSpot, tofspot.blogspot.com/2010/05/playing-pied-piper.html  the duplicate site to this journal, I have discovered a thingie called "Followers", which lists my slavish and loyal henchmen (SALH).  These are useful folks to have around should I need a hench.  There are, however, only four, listed (appropriately) at the very bottom of the page.  This means that Henches of Considerable Magnitude (HOCM) might go unhenched for lack of SALH willing to thr...

Life as a Video Game

Adam and the Baloney

So Margie picked me up at the client in Jersey City and drove me home.  In the back seat was Adam the Wonder Baby.  He announced he was hungry and, nothing loathe, we stopped along the way at a Panera's.  Adam assumed the Mood Cranque and refused to eat the Grilled Cheese.  Okay.  That's it then.  

But as we resumed the Journey Interrupted, Adam announced from the back seat that he wanted a baloney sandwich when he got home. 

No, you had your chance to eat.  Now you'll have...

Odds and Ends

Venus: A Lot of Hot Air

The common supposition that Venus is Really Hot because of the CO2 seems contraindicated.  It is the sheer weight of the atmosphere that heats things up down below.  Seems sunlight doesn't even penetrate the atmosphere deeply enough for the "greenhouse" effect to matter.  (No sunlight filtering in = no IR on the bounceback.)  The attached essay is interesting; and you can ignore the snipes at the AGW folks and mentally return to the days when science meant knowledge rat...

Gratuitous Exsult

My Faithful Reader

OK, one of them.  Made the following comment up-post from here:

In trying to describe The January Dancer (especially the cultural mixing), I once described it as "a combination of Dune, Firefly and The Maltese Falcon, as told by an Irish bard in an Indian restaurant."

Should he consent, I'll put his name to it; but I am ROFLOL. 

It is apt.  I wrote the early version in HS and College, inspired in part by Dune.  And I did have the Maltese Falcon in mind as a background.  Fi...

The Writing Life

The Scrivener's Oath

Yr. Obt. Svt. once swore a most solemn and fearful oath that he would see published every story he ever wrote, even if he had to rewrite it with different characters and a different plot.  He is now one step closer to that goal, given that one previously unpublished story has now at last seen print.  This story was considered by and passed on by several SF magazines, but in no case on the quality of the writing.  Perceptive readers will see why ANALOG chose not to use it; ...

Further Adventures of Adam

Adam Discovers the Mulligan

The adventures of Adam, a.k.a., the Energizer Bunny, continue.  A couple weeks ago, he had the Walking Pneumonia (and the Boogie-Woogie Blues).  His mother took him to the clinic and thence to the emergency room.  I asked him later how he enjoyed his adventure. 

I had germs, he told me.  But at the hospital the doctor wiped all the germs off me.  (A pause)  But he didn't get them all, so mama has to wipe the rest of the germs off me. 

+ + +

At another point, the weat...