Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 272

Oh, here’s the list of Hugo nominees for 2017

That seems fast. I guess nominations did close about two weeks ago. Anyway, here’s the full list over at tor.com.

I’m quite disappointed not to see Cherryh’s Foreigner series make the list. It’s all series that started much more recently, I think. Let me see:

The Craft Sequence by Max Gladstone

The Expanse by James S.A. Corey

The October Daye Books by Seanan McGuire

The Peter Grant / Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch

The Temeraire series by Naomi Novik

The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold

Of course I did add the Vorkosigan series to my nominating ballot, so I’m not likely to complain about that one.

I thought the Temeraire series started off very! strong! But I was not as impressed with some of the later books and kind of stopped following the series. Maybe I should finish it sometime.

I can see the Corey one. I only read the first book, but it was an impressive big-idea kind of story.

I’ve heard lots of good things about the Craft sequence. Eventually I need to try that one.

Now, let’s see what’s on the list for novels:

All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders

A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers

Death’s End by Cixin Liu

Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee

The Obelisk Gate by N. K. Jemisin

Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer

… Okay, I’ve only read the one by Chambers. I liked it a lot, but not as much as the first book. Of the others here … let’s see. I have a sample of Palmer’s book. I have heard a lot about Ninefox Gambit and want to try that one some time. The others, I’m not sure they necessarily sound like my kind of thing.

The shorter work, looks offhand like Vox Day got fewer of his picks on the list, except for that exceptionally stupid looking novelette. I’ve heard of some of the shorter works, but the only one I’ve read myself is Bujold’s novella. Maybe I’ll check out some of the others just to see how I’d vote, if I were voting. Which I’m not.

If you are, though, and you have no idea about Editor, Long Form, may I suggest Navah Wolfe? She did a ton of work on The Mountain of Kept Memory and I can tell you for sure, she’s a very good editor.

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Good News Tuesday

I didn’t have a lot for today, but luckily Adam Jones on Twitter got me started with this one:

A ‘bionic leaf’ could help feed the world

It sounds like someone’s figured out how to insert a much more powerful carbon fixation pathway into leaves than ordinary photosynthesis can manage:

The artificial leaf is a device that, when exposed to sunlight, mimics a natural leaf by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen. This led to the development of a bionic leaf that pairs the water-splitting catalyst with the bacteria Ralstonia eutropha, which consumes hydrogen and takes carbon dioxide out of the air to make liquid fuel. Last June, Nocera’s team reported switching the device’s nickel-molybdenum-zinc catalyst, which was poisonous to the microbes, with a bacteria-friendly alloy of cobalt and phosphorus. The new system provided biomass and liquid fuel yields that greatly exceeded that from natural photosynthesis….

Heh. By “liquid fuel,” they may well just mean “sugars like glucose” — in other words, this look like photosynthesis. But they seem to be moving on to do the same with nitrogen, thus potentially giving other plants the advantage now enjoyed mostly be legumes, which use symbiotic bacteria to fix atmospheric nitrogen.

Well, it’s meant to boost outputs in areas like Sub-Saharan Africa. Those are areas that haven’t really yet fully utilized the methods of the first Green Revolution. Looks like they may get in on the ground floor of a second Green Revolution.

Here’s another cool technological item:

Graphene-based sieve turns seawater into drinking water

The sought-after development could aid the millions of people without ready access to clean drinking water. … The ultimate goal is to create a filtration device that will produce potable water from seawater or wastewater with minimal energy input.

Potentially very important for all kinds of uses, especially for the millions of people without easy access to clean drinking water. That’s a very serious health hazard for a huge number of people, so let’s hope this graphene sieve tests out.

Okay, and here’s something that seems too cool to be true:

Platypus venom could hold key to diabetes treatment

In people with type 2 diabetes, the short stimulus triggered by GLP-1 isn’t sufficient to maintain a proper blood sugar balance. As a result, medication that includes a longer lasting form of the hormone is needed to help provide an extended release of insulin. “Our research team has discovered that monotremes – our iconic platypus and echidna – have evolved changes in the hormone GLP-1 that make it resistant to the rapid degradation normally seen in humans,” says co-lead author Professor Frank Grutzner, from the University of Adelaide’s School of Biological Sciences and the Robinson Research Institute. “We’ve found that GLP-1 is degraded in monotremes by a completely different mechanism. Further analysis of the genetics of monotremes reveals that there seems to be a kind of molecular warfare going on between the function of GLP-1, which is produced in the gut but surprisingly also in their venom,” he says. … “We’ve discovered conflicting functions of GLP-1 in the platypus: in the gut as a regulator of blood glucose, and in venom to fend off other platypus males during breeding season. This tug of war between the different functions has resulted in dramatic changes in the GLP-1 system,” says co-lead author Associate Professor Briony Forbes, from Flinders University’s School of Medicine. “The function in venom has most likely triggered the evolution of a stable form of GLP-1 in monotremes. Excitingly, stable GLP-1 molecules are highly desirable as potential type 2 diabetes treatments,” she says.

Platypus venom! Very cool.

Okay, and then there’s this:

For The Ages: Russian Scientists Make Anti-Aging Breakthrough

I doubt anything of this kind will pan out IN TIME FOR ME PERSONALLY, which is highly disappointing, let me tell you. However:

When the mice turned eight months, the differences between both groups became evident. The mice from the first control group started to rapidly losing their weight and showed other signs of aging like spinal deformation and hair loss. At the same time, the mice that were fed with a SkQ1 containing supplement didn’t show typical signs of aging for at least additional 40-45 days. … All in all, they managed to prolong the lives of the mice by 15%.

Anti-aging developments can’t happen fast enough.

Moving on to something that caught my eye:

Gene Therapy Could Save Dogs With A Previously Incurable Muscle Disease

The disease is caused by a mutation in certain genes that normally produce a protein called myotubularin, which is essential for proper muscle function in dogs. Symptoms of this naturally occurring disease are usually visible when the dogs are young puppies, and they normally exhibit several of the features that babies with the same defective gene also demonstrate. The disorder, which only affects males, is relatively rare, and is called myotubular myopathy, or MTM. The major result of the disease is that it causes fatal muscle wasting, meaning that both dogs and boys who suffer from the disease will typically succumb in their early life due to severe breathing difficulties. … recent reports have now claimed that four collaborating research groups, in the United States and France, have now found a way to safely replace the gene that causes MTM with a healthy gene, throughout the entire musculature of dogs that are affected by it. The scientific paper reports that the diseased dogs that had been treated with just one single infusion of the corrective therapy were then indistinguishable from normal animals who had never had the disease, within the space of just one year. Dr. Martin K. “Casey” Childers, a UW Medicine researcher and physician, describes the success of the new research by saying, “This regenerative technology allowed dogs that otherwise would have perished to complete restoration of normal health.”

This isn’t an issue in Cavaliers. But I’m sure the dog people involved with breeds where we see this problem would be happy to test out gene therapy on a wide scale, hopefully quickly leading to these therapies getting approved for people.

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A clever (?) way to design a centaur

Here’s a post about centaur anatomy and diet, by Judith Tarr as you might expect, at tor.com.

I don’t want to give away Tarr’s answer to the question of how a human mouth could possibly manage to eat enough to power a big horse body.

Just click through and read the post yourself.

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Right, because no one else ever thought of a lone gunslinger, I guess

Looks like Stephen King’s getting sued for the Gunslinger character in the Dark Tower series.

I never could get into that series. But my immediate reaction is: Sure, buddy. No one could ever come up with a stetson-wearing gunslinger type of protagonist if they hadn’t stolen it from you. Especially not rich guys who by pure coincidence are expecting to have a movie made about this particular bit of intellectual property.

And sticking a tower in a desert, it certainly stretches plausibility to suggest that two authors might have come up with that one … oh wait, maybe the guy suing King should be hit with plagiarism charges for ripping off Browning’s “Childe Roland” poem. And trying to hide the inspiration by changing his protagonist’s name to Restin! That’s very subtle, there.

Well, I don’t know, I’m not an expert on the two properties in question. But as you can see my initial impression is: not impressed. Anybody who’s familiar with both the Dark Tower series and the comic series called “The Rook” want to weigh in?

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Don’t kill your darlings

Here’s a post by James Scott Bell at Kill Zone Blog: Don’t Kill Your Darlings—Give Them a Fair Trial!

This caught my eye because frankly the “kill your darlings” tidbit of advice always struck me as weird. I mean . . . if it’s a darling, it should be good. Assuming your taste is good, and let’s assume that. Then if it’s good, you should probably see if you can find a way to keep it in your book, not leap upon it with a butcher knife, hacking and slashing.

Anyway, I see from this post that Bell, at least, interprets the phrase as one that encourages authors to get rid of overly ornate, hard-to-follow prose. His conclusion:

It pleases me greatly to write darlings. So I don’t immediately plot their demise. I let them sit, I look at them again, I have my wife render an opinion, and then I decide if they must go. They get a fair trial. And sometimes they are set free!

Bell is advocating overwriting — including more stuff about the characters’ emotional reactions and so on — and then editing that kind of thing down.

As always, your mileage may vary. For me, I nearly always go through and *add* more about the characters’ emotional reactions rather than taking that kind of thing out. But he makes a good point given the specific example he offers.

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Great book covers

Here are a couple of book covers for new releases that happened to catch my eye recently:

First, this:

I saw this somewhere or other and then almost at once saw it in this Kirkus post by Thea of The Book Smugglers, about romantic fantasy

Thea says: “Youngest daughter Anna Arden watches enviously as her older sister, Catherine, prepares for her societal debut—involving dresses, dancing, but most importantly, a chance to impress the Luminate with her magical ability. … Another powerful story about choice and self-realization, Blood Rose Rebellion takes a young woman from the life she’s always wanted and awakens her to harsh realities of her world. Darkly magical and romantic, this first book in a new trilogy is highly recommended.”

That sounds possibly intriguing, but really, the cover is so arresting this one jumped off the screen at me before I saw any comments or review about the story.

Here’s another cover that caught my eye the moment I saw it:

Here’s a review at Kirkus, but seriously, again, it’s the cover that caught my eye. Very nice cover design; the idea of the broken hourglass is snazzy to start with and the the artwork is so good.

I will say, the review doesn’t necessarily work for me. This is apparently a sequel, and the review of this second book is confusing since I don’t know anything about the first book. So here is the cover for the first book, Firstlife:

Which I also like, and here is the Kirkus review for that one.



The afterlife’s warring realms compete for an important girl’s soul.

Tenley has grown up rich and privileged, but she’s refused to sign a contract with Myriad, the Everlife realm to which her parents have signed and which has provided her family with wealth in the Firstlife and assurances of comfort after death. That refusal causes her to be sent to a brutal asylum to be tortured until she changes her mind. Both Myriad (“Might Equals Right!”) and the other realm, Troika (“Light Brings Sight!”), believe Tenley could be the key to ending their eternal war. Each sends a Laborer to persuade her to finally sign; Troika’s is Archer, an impulsive wisecracker with a heart of gold, and Myriad sends bad boy Killian to seduce her….

Okay, well. Not sure it’s my thing, but on the other hand, those covers would make me pick these up and read the first pages if I saw the books in the store.

One more cover I really like for a 2017 release:

In general these kinds of stylized covers don’t work that well for me . . . unless they do.

Here’s the Kirkus review for Strange the Dreamer, if the cover makes you curious about the book.

Twenty-year-old orphaned librarian Lazlo Strange, whose brutish exterior conceals his cleverness, dreams of stories of a lost city. Two hundred years ago, six merciless, magic-wielding Mesarthim landed their seraphim-shaped citadel in the legendary city, blocking its skies and cutting it off from the outside world. Fifteen years ago, the Godslayer Eril-Fane ended their reign of terror with the Carnage, and now the city is known only as Weep. Seeking to restore the skies to Weep, reluctant leader Eril-Fane recruits scientists from the world beyond Weep—and bemusedly welcomes Lazlo—to move the allegedly abandoned citadel.

… Okay. How *do* authors come up with these ideas?

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Why even good books are rejected by publishers

Here’s a post by an agent that caught my eye: Eight reasons that even a good book is rejected by publishers

I can especially tell this must be true when an author friend of mine mentions that something of hers just got turned down. Uh huh. I’ve certainly been there, but I’m sometimes still surprised that everyone else has, too. Once you know that everyone has been there, it’s probably easier not to take it personally.

Anyway, eight reasons as laid out by, let me see, looks like an agent named Kanishka Gupta, who is CEO of the South Asia’s largest literary agency, Writer’s Side, it says. Looks like he’s thinking mainly of nonfiction, or certainly not concentrating on genre fiction, so not entirely relevant to my interests. But still, here we go:

1. No market for this particular book. That’s the Acquisitions people there. You can’t blame them for doing their jobs. I guess. Doesn’t stop me sometimes, though. Jerks. Anyway, moving on …

2. The author’s showing no networking ability. Good heavens. I hope that’s not a common reason to ditch a book. In today’s age of literary festivals, it helps to know some influential festival directors as well. Eminently publishable books are at times rejected in the absence of such contacts or commitments. Wow, I would not be thrilled to find out these kinds of connections were a big deal.

3. Prior sales record not good. Alas, I’m sure this is a big deal. One hears about this all the time.

4. Publisher not keen on taking a chance on a genre because they had a book of that genre tank previously. Well, imo, they should probably pull up their socks and think about how they might have failed with the marketing.

5. Publisher just brought out a similar book. Yeah, there’s nothing you can do if you if everyone just brought out a mermaid book last year and now you’ve got one you’d like to place. Except wait five or ten years and offer it around when the mermaid thing has run its course, I suppose.

6. Wrong editor for the book. That’s not a problem if you’ve got a competent agent, or it shouldn’t be. I know Caitlin doesn’t send my manuscripts out to random editors.

7. Editor hates the book. He’s talking about hating the subject of a memoir or disliking the ideological perspective of a book, but I imagine this is quite generalizable to “hates book for some reason.” Sounds to me like it’s essentially the same as “Wrong editor for book,” above.

8. Book would be too expensive to produce. Yeah, I wonder about the Illuminae books by Kaufman and Kristoff? Those are so creative in design. I bet they were pricier to produce than typical books. Well, taking a chance on them is obviously paying off for . . . looks like it’s Knopf. Yeah, I’m sure they’re pleased they didn’t turn down this trilogy!

Anyway, click through to read the whole thing.

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Just Twelve Books

So, I was thinking about that post earlier this week, about “average” readers only reading 12 books per year, and I just started wondering . . . if I were going to read only 12 books this year, which ones would they be?

Say that I knew I could get to only twelve books this year, and let’s assume I don’t want to put anything off till next year.

How about re-reads? I won’t count those in the twelve, I decided. That would make it too hard to pick just twelve. So I mean twelve new-to-me titles. What would they be?

It’s interesting which titles leaped to mind first and which I had to think about. You can really see what I’m regretting not getting to, because the first three titles I thought of have been on my TBR pile for some time. I’ll start with those and then my work my up in time to the books that aren’t quite out yet.

1. Railsea by China Miéville.

This book came out in 2012 and I’ve probably had it on my TBR shelves about that long. I’ve picked it up and put it down about a hundred times. Here’s how it starts:

This is the story of a bloodstained boy.

There he stands, swaying as utterly as any windblown sapling. He is quite, quite red. If only that were paint! Around each of his feet the red puddles; his clothes, whatever colour they were once, are now a thickening scarlet; his hair is stiff & drenched.

Only his eyes stand out. The white of each almost glows against the gore, lightbulbs in a dark room. He stares with great fervour at nothing.

The situation is not as macabre as it sounds. The boy isn’t the only bloody person there: he’s surrounded by others as red & sodden as he & they are cheerfully singing.

Whoa. You can see, probably, why I pick this one up and then put it down again. That’s quite a fraught opening. It both draws me in and repels me. Still, this is the very first book I thought of when I thought about twelve-books-only and what would they be?

2. The Demon King by Cinda Williams Chima.

This one has been out since 2009. I would almost certainly have tried it before now except I know it is the first book of a series and series take time. I haven’t wanted to commit. Still, every time I see it on the TBR shelves, I want to pick it up. If I had only 12 books to read this year, I think I would at least try this one. Here’s the beginning:

Han Alister squatted next to the steaming mud spring, praying that the thermal crust would hold his weight. He’d tied a bandana over his mouth and nose, but his eyes still stung and and teared from the sulfur fumes that boiled upward from the bubbling ooze. He extended his digging stick toward a patch of plants with bilious green flowers at the edge of the spring. Sliding the tip under the clump, he pried it from the mud and lifted it free, dropping it into the deersking bag that hung from his shoulder. Then, placing his feet carefully, he stood and retreated to solid ground.

He was nearly there when one foot broke through the fragile surface, sending him calf-deep into the gray, sticky, superheated mud.

Ouch!

This would seem an unusual setting if not for Railsea above, which is much weirder. Next to that, this seems like an ordinary opening. On the other hand, ouch. Poor guy. Don’t you want to know what happens next?

3. California Bones by Greg van Eekhout.

This has only been out since 2014. (“Only.”) I’ve really wanted to read it ever since it came out, and have I yet? No. Again, I probably would have if it were a standalone, but I know it is the first book of a trilogy.

Daniel Blackland’s clearest memory of his father was from the day before his sixth birthday, when they walked hand-in-hand down Santa Monica Beach. That was the day Daniel found the kraken spine in the sand.

It was a slate-gray morning and Daniel shivered without a jacket, but he wouldn’t complain. The soggy air carried roller-coaster screams from the pier, and Daniel hoped for a ride. Maybe he and his father would even drive the bumper cars, teaming up to bash other kids and their parents. But then he spotted the bone splinter in the foam of the receding surf, a silvery fragment the length of a knitting needle, rising from the sand like an antenna. Years later, he would wonder if his father had planted it there for him to find, but on this day, he hadn’t yet learned that level of suspicion.

Evocative drawing of a boy and his peculiar relationship with his father. The setting is beautifully drawn, and this first hint of weirdness – a kraken spine, really? – is perfect to tell us that this isn’t quite our world.

Moving on to items that haven’t been on my personal TBR pile quite so long…

4. Black Dove White Raven by Elizabeth Wein.

I only picked this up last year, but then it’s only been out since 2015, which is practically yesterday by my standards. I’m sure it will be fantastic. I mean, Elizabeth Wein.

Here’s how it opens:

Sinidu told me I should aim for the sun.

I still have a plane. There must be some way I can get Teo out safely. I think Momma’s hoard of Maria Theresa dollars is enough to pay for the travel. I am hoping my new passport is waiting for me in Addis Ababa. But Teo . . . Teo is trapped. I have thought about trying to get him a British passport – Colonel Sinclair has friends who have not left Ethiopia. I could throw myself at them in disguise as a Helpless Young American Girl All Alone. . . .

It is a waste of time trying to pass Teo off as Italian. I think I pretty much burned that bridge when I stole a plane from the Italian air force.

Sinidu is right. I am here at Lake Ashenge, north of Korem, and the emperor is in the hills above the town. There isn’t anyone else who can help me.

I have nothing to lose. I am going to dare it. I will aim for the sun.

Sorry to clip out half a page, but I couldn’t resist adding the last bit and didn’t want to type the whole page. Very eye-catching, that bit about stealing the plane. Tremendous opening overall. If I could only read twelve books this year, this one would go on the list for sure.

Let’s see . . . the next one is a pretty recent release:

5. The Queen of Blood by Sarah Beth Durst.

I heard such good things about this here and there . . . from Charlotte, most notably, as I recall. Also, I’ve liked every book I’ve read by Durst more than the one before, so she’s edging up toward an auto-buy author for me by this point.

Oh, I see I must have picked up my copy of Queen of Blood at a convention last year: it’s signed. That’s a nice plus, although I don’t generally go out of my way to get authors to sign books. Great cover. It does say Book 1 on it, which is not a plus, but I’ve got to other first books on my list so far, so whatever.

Here’s the beginning:

Don’t trust the fire, for it will burn you.

Don’t trust the ice, for it will freeze you.

Don’t trust the water for it will drown you.

Don’t trust the air, for it will choke you.

Don’t trust the earth, for it will bury you.

Don’t trust the trees, for they will rip you,

rend you, tear you, kill you dead.

It’s a child’s chant. You jump over a rope, faster and faster, as you name the spirits. Trip on the rope and that is the spirit that will kill you. Fire, ice, water, air, earth, or wood.

Clutching her rope, six-year-old Daleina slipped out her window and ran along the branches toward the grove, drawn to the torchlight. Her parents had said no, absolutely not, go to bed and stay there, but even then, even when she was still so young and eager to please, Daleina would not be kept from her fate. She’d run toward it, arms open, and kick fate in the face.

Ooh, a children’s chant. You know, this fall, Winter of Ice and Iron will be the first book of mine that’s got poetry embedded through it. I have loved that since reading The Lord of the Rings when I was yea high, but I have always been nervous about doing it myself. I really like it when it’s done well, though. That last line from the chant above is great. Yep, looking forward to this one.

Okay, here’s the sixth, and then I’ll be half done. Once again, having a hard time imagining only reading twelve books in a year:

6. Thick as Thieves by MWT. The next Queen’s Thief book! Very exciting. I think another book is expected after this, but it may be a while. Meanwhile, I would (and will) be right there for this one.

Yep, much anticipated title. This one would definitely be on the list. Coming out in May, I see.

Okay, now a slight problem about how to count. But here goes:

7, 8, 9. The Price of Valor, The Guns of Empire, and also Book Five of by Wexler, whatever that turns out to be called. I don’t know why the publisher . . . um, Del Rey . . . seems so coy about each new book in the series. I’d have no idea there was a fifth book coming out this year except I checked with Wexler last year via Twitter and he confirmed it.

I’m totally reading these. Plus the first two, but I’m not counting re-reads.

I don’t want to look at how these start, though. Let each come as it will, and anyway, I obviously don’t have the fifth. Whatever it will be called.

That leaves me with just three more titles for the whole year.

10. Convergence by CJC.

11. The Cold Eye by Laura Anne Gilman. I have it. I just haven’t read it, largely because I haven’t had time to linger over a book and also because I think I want to go back and linger over the first book again, and so no, really, I haven’t wanted to take the time to do that. However, if I had just twelve books for the year, this would be one of them.

And…

12. Harbors of the Sun by Martha Wells. This is the last Raksura book. No way I’d leave this off the list.

And that’s twelve. It certainly didn’t take long to whip together a list. Narrowing it down was a trifle difficult, of course. Here are five more titles that are struggling to bump one of the others off this list. No, six. I bet there are others that would jostle for room here, too, but six for now:

Silence Fallen by Patricia Briggs

York by Laura Ruby

Children of Earth and Sky by Guy Gavriel Kay

A Peace Divided by Tanya Huff

The third Illuminae book, apparently not yet named, by Kristoff and Kaufman.

Vallista by Steven Brust

If something up there on the list turned out not to grab me after all, these are some of the ones that might take its slot. I mean, it seems rather unlikely I’d get through the year without reading the latest Mercy Thompson book . . . and though the first two Illuminae books have their, um, less believable plot twists, they are still some of the most fun, exciting books I’ve picked up lately and I am so much looking forward to the third.

Okay, so, that’s twelve for me. Now that I’ve laid them out like that, I wonder if I’ll grab a month sometime this year and read them all? That would be quite a month.

How about you all? If you had to pick just twelve books for 2017, what are some of the titles that would be definitely appear on your list?

I do have one suggestion for a particular book you should certainly make room for:

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Copy edits and marked-up manuscripts

This, by cartoonist Grant Snider, is funny, even though these days at least half my copy edits are to Word documents with Track Changes turned on.

I particularly like the “Set in Italy” and “Horribly wrong font.”

Anyway, copy edit marks are kind of a thing of the past, or heading that way. I’m not fond of track changes — when you change something and then change it back and then adjust it again, it winds up looking really confusing on the page. But it’s okay for copy edits, where mostly you can either let the copy editor’s change stand or else comment “Stet” and seldom need to do much else.

These marks are still worth a giggle, though.

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Could this really happen?

Via File 770, I noticed this:

Firm Floats Plan to Hang Colossal Skyscraper From an Asteroid

Click through to see the amazing artist’s rendition of how this might look.

Don’t expect it to go up anytime soon, but a New York City-based design firm has floated a mind-bending plan for the erection of a skyscraper it bills as “the world’s tallest building ever.”

Dubbed Analemma, the fanciful tower wouldn’t be built on the ground, but suspended in air by cables from an asteroid repositioned into geosynchronous Earth orbit just for the purpose.

Over the course of each day, the floating skyscraper would trace a figure-eight path over our planet’s surface, according to plans posted online by Clouds Architecture Office. It would swing between the northern and southern hemispheres, returning to the same point once every 24 hours.

The speed of the tower relative to the ground would vary depending upon which part of the figure eight it was tracing, with the slowest speeds at the top and bottom of each loop, the plans say. The asteroid’s orbit would be calibrated so that the slowest part of the tower’s path would occur over New York City.

That’s … mind-boggling, both in itself and for the statement it would make. (LOOK, WE ARE IN THE FUTURE!)

a) I trust planes could avoid this structure?

b) Birds would be okay, I guess? It’s hard to see how anything could accidentally hit a thing as large as this.

c) Wow, talk about totally being safe from earthquakes and stuff, maybe they should hang one up over California?

d) The concern expressed in the article, that people who live in a tower literally separated from the Earth would feel disconnected and psychologically separate, I don’t know, could be. It would depend on how easy it is to go back and forth, probably.

e) This is just … really cool.

The future, we are in it.

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