Ashley R. Pollard's Blog, page 14

SnakeBots

I found this snake robot climbing a tree, and just love how some of the whacky ideas I had for my Gate Walker setting are coming to fruition.

Of course, I'd heard of flexible robots before writing my novels, and just thought "wow, that's cool," I've got to have them in my story.

Moving on. The last couple of weeks have been difficult.

Full of unexpected obstacles that stole from my writing time, and the worries of juggling stuff outside of my control, have left me drained with fewer new words written than I would like.

But despite all that, I've been putting together a short novel.

It's a collection of my three novelettes set in the World of Drei AI cybertank universe with an additional prologue I wrote. Reviewing the text I found a shed load of typos that I'm in the process of correcting.

Once that's done then I just have to sort out a cover. It is what it is.

Two Moons Progress

When writing a story I prefer to start with the seven point novel structure.

My first three novels were action adventures. This means you have a leader who is surrounded by a team to solve the problems they face.

Two Moons, and my other novel The Bureau, are effectively mysteries.

So a center person solves the puzzle, and has others do the physical action, provide humour and perspective, with a fixer, and a boss that the team reports to. This has totally discombobulated me.

Last time I mentioned Two Moons, I was at 14,856 words. I've stalled and restarted this work several times over the last few months just because the narrative is driven by a different set of needs.

Who would've thought, huh!?

Anyway, I'm now entering the middle of the story, running at 32,714 words. Here's a taste of the opening of Two Moons.

TRANSCENDENCE 

I wake in the darkness, stretched on a cold surface. The air musty from the passage of time. Only the sound of my breath fills the silence.
   "Is anyone there?' My voice echoes around me.
   A soothing voice replies, "You are safe."
   Emotions rush through me. A sadness that is full of grief and loss. "Are you my mother?"
   "No, I am a machine. You can call me mother, if you wish."
   My senses adjust, the reality of the room coalesces around me. Machinery lines the walls, and in the center I lie on a table, with tubes that snake up from my body into machine.
   Confused, I ask, "What is happening? Where am I?"
   "You are being cared for. The facility exists to create life."
   The answer triggers a flood of jumbled memories.
   This is where we changed the genetic heritage of my kind. A place where the seeds of all life can be shaped. A place where our learning is recorded for all time.
   I am last of my kind, trapped in a secure facility, all alone, waiting to die.

HyperStealth

In my Gate Walker series I call this concept ChameleoFlage, and World of Drei series I call it Adaptive camouflage. Either-way, meta-materials might well be a game changer.
If you follow the link above you can see that this stuff interferes with thermal imaging, which I thought wasn't possible.

First Generation Power Armour

 
Here's a link to Onyx from Lockheed Martin, a further development of their earlier HULC system. For those of us who have dream of power armour and exoskeletons this is exciting news. While Onyx is only a lower torso enhancement it does look promising.

There was a thread on the Heavy Gear FB group about the practicality of mecha – larger walking power armour. I posted this:

In general to the OP. It all depends on your assumptions whether or not large bipedal combat suits make sense. When writing my novels I made some assumptions on how they developed (basically a step on from riding a mechanical horse), to use (dense terrain), and factored in adaptive camouflage (reduce chance of being seen).

So it's all about the assumptions. Open field advances across the steppes of Russia, not so much. Lurking around in urban areas providing fire support for infantry and able to keep up with vehicles, possibly what's needed.

The last couple of weeks I have been writing more, working on my novel Two Moons, which will give the readers more information on where the series story arc is going that the characters will have to work through. I'm excited.

Black Holes

Black Holes have been in the news lately, and I've been working to get my head around why a Black Hole looks the way it does, because quite frankly it was doing my head in. The above image, which you can click on to enlarge, explains why a black sun looks like this.

This link will take you to an article with further explanation.

Besides research, because I'm always looking for nifty new science, I've been writing more. This week was the first time in a long while where I managed to beat my target of 200 words a day.

In other news, the world seems to have gone insane, by world I mean the news on the internet, not the planet.

Another Twitter user seems to want to muckrake a dead SF author, which caused me a certain amount of sense of humour loss, because the author was cleared after a Police investigation, and the primary motivator seems to be that wards shouldn't be named after people.
Other than that, I've been reading more. I will have to compile a list of books I've enjoyed and post them here at some point. That's all, catch you on the bounce.

Keeping Up With Tech

I found this on New Scientist; Spies and soldiers might soon be able to go behind enemy lines using a parachute or glider made from a polymer that vanishes on exposure to sunlight.

The idea was that these sensors could be spread across a battlefield, say, and used to collect information for the army. “But you don’t want anyone to discover it and take it apart and see how it works,” says Kohl.

That’s why he and his team wanted to invent a self-destructing material. They began with polymers that have a low ceiling temperature, which is the point at which the key bonds holding the substance together begin to break.

Lots of polymers break down slowly when they reach this temperature because many bonds have to be broken. But Kohl designed his material so that as soon as one bond breaks the whole thing rapidly unzips.

Those of you who have read Strike Dog will remember the scene where the drop sleds are deployed and what happens after they land. So it was cool to see an article describing this tech.

September Already

 
I could say where has the year gone, but I already know the answer to that.

The Bank holiday and this weekend were spent shooting my new longbow. The one I made back in January that was too strong for me to pull. Now home after Master Bowyer Pip Bickerstaffe fettled the tillering to bring the poundage down to my level.

So all is good with my bow. The fact that my shooting fell off a cliff is down to me. Good news I have an appointment in early October for a scan and injection to fix my left wrist. Fingers crossed it does the job.

I'm currently researching archaeology, getting the lowdown on how it is done from a friend who is an archaeologist. So the next block to moving forward with the novel is about to be breached.

Other than that, I've been reading a lot. I will at some point put a list I recommend checking out. Until then, see you all on the bounce.

Just Another Furore in Fandom

Jeanette Ng made a statement at this years Worldcon when receiving her award for best new writer. I stand by her right to say whatever she pleases.

But while Jeanette Ng can say whatever the hell she wants, she is responsible for what she says.

John W. Campbell was a bad father of modem science fiction. The Hugo awards named after Hugo Gernsback, likewise. I don't disagree that both men were horrible. The more I read history the more I find that it's filled with unpleasant people.

Take other historical figures, like Freud for example, who is considered the father of psychology and psychotherapy. To say he's a bad dad is a humerous understatement.

Alfred Noble is another historical figure who is probably known for the award named after him. He was no angel.

They all share the fact that their lives cast a shadow cast over the prizes named after them.

History is full of people who had views that it would make any conversation with them difficult. But, in the bigger scheme of things, they're all low hanging fruit of unpleasantness.
 
Because there's very little in this world that is completely black or white.

All prizes have value that is greater than who or what they are named after. The Campbell award is important because of who it has been awarded to, not because it's named after John W. Campbell.

As an SF fan I've read countless stories where people's opinions are used to sway public opinion. A recent example is a season one episode of The Orville in the episode called Majority Rule about the effects of a democracy run by upvoting/downvoting.

The current trend in fandom to create mobs is not something to be admired. The conversations that have followed her statement have done nothing but fuel the divisiveness and hate in fandom.

I think this very bad thing.

Some Progress

 
In a couple of weeks I will see my rheumatology consultant for a review. It's been a year since she started me on medication and roller-coaster ride doesn't really quite capture the picture of what is has been like. For those of you old enough to remember corporal punishment at school, think being smacked across the back of your hand everyday while riding a roller-coaster.

OK. Perhaps that's over egging it a bit.

So what little I've done is disappointing at one level, but the fact I've done something at all is a testament to my sheer bloody mindedness.

Looking back over the last year this is where I am:

Two Moons: 16,146 words
Red Dog: 9,581 words
Dead Dogs: 3,443 words
The Bureau: 67,943 words

I've mentioned previously that I was up to around 20,000 words on Two Moons, but realized I was mixing up my stories and have spent a lot of time breaking apart what scenes went with which story. Hence I now have three novels as works in progress.

The Bureau has grown and I haven't gotten around to finishing the revision, which has mostly been driven by what I learnt after three months of doing various online writing courses with Dean Wesley Smith and Kathryn Kristine Rusch. Their workshops are excellent.

My target was to write 1,400 words per week. We are at week 33, which means I should have 46,200.

If I'm generous, I've managed 25,328 words. Though if I take twelve weeks off for the courses then that comes 16,800 lost, so a revised target number would be 29,400 words.

Short by four thousand and a bit words. It is what it is.

Grim Dark Kittens

We've been watching season two of Westworld, which was intense and compelling. So much so that we've gone back to rewatch season one. As a result we've been talking about the complexity of the narrative in Westworld.

What has this to do with Grim Dark Kittens?

I'll get there, just hang onto to your horses.

I've always agreed with the notion that that there's SF and then there's other genres. SF to be truly science fictional mustn't just be westerns in space, because it's not exploring the effects of science on society.

And yet, here we are watching an SF western. And boy does it meet the criteria of science affecting society. So I've come to the conclusion that the paradigm of space westerns are not science fiction is not true for all cases.

But still what has this to do with kittens?

Imagine if kittens wrote stories. Given the memes on the internet I imagine it would do with being ignored and not being fed. A grim dark tale for kittens would have an empty food bowl and a starving kitten mewling. Or a kitten sitting before a door that has is barrier to freedom and choice, and the wail of the cosmic horror of kitten existence. Or the above.

OK. It amused me.