Ashley R. Pollard's Blog, page 15

State of the Writer

I've been very quiet of late.

Lots of good reasons, which are in fact not so good. Health issues have been a bit of a strain. However, I have been working on parts of my craft doing online courses with Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathyrn Rusch here.

I recommend all my writing friends to check them out.

The picture is for those readers who want to know what the Conex boxes of Alpha Base look like. This is the kitchen unit.

Science in Science Fiction 2019

 
Last year I Didn't go to this event run by Dr. David Clements and hosted by Imperial College London as I was in France. So it was nice to be back to listen to experts in their fields present their latest findings.

You can find more info on Science in Science Fiction over here. Check it out.

I didn't take my camera, so there's no pictures of the event, but I did make a connection with Mark Hempsell, director of Hempsell Astronautics Limited who is designing a spaceship to be presented in the British Interplanetary Society journal. It's designed for Earth–Lunar operations with the capability of Mars and Venus missions. The picture of his proposal graces this post.

Very exciting to see this. It may not be obvious from a casual glance but this ship rotates around its central axis to provide centrifugal force for the crew.

You can find out more about Mark Hempsell here. And here's his brief:

To immediately satisfy any glimmers of interest and intrigue I have attached a few images.  The technical paper describing the vehicle is very close to completion and hopefully will be published in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, although it is not a Society project.The ship is called the Scorpion.  It is build and serviced using the Skylon launch system (and lots of in orbit assembly). Key features – 107 m long, unfuelled mass 230-240 tonnes Maximum fuel mass Hydrogen 400 tonnes oxygen 110 tonnes crew 6 people – and (here’s the boring bit) is it intended to mostly be used in Earth Moon space although it can reach Venus and Mars orbits. In the case of Mars with two landers.  Not immediately obvious is that it can land on the Moon’s surface using four LH LOX chemical engines, it can also be spun to provide artificial gravity for the crew.The engine is another piece of genius from Alan Bond which he calls Serpent.  It indirectly thermodynamically heats hydrogen using a fission reactor. It then augments that heating with arc jets in the 4 thrust chambers.  The thrust is 200 tonnes and the SI 12,760 N s /kg.  The picture is a little misleading in its detail the components are real and connected up correctly but the shape and pipe sizing of the secondary stuff is artistic interpretation.

For those interested in spaceships I would refer you to check out the Atomic Rockets website.

Decomposing CO2

 
Climate change: everyone thinks they have the answer. I think it's more complicated than that. Here's a link to an article proposing a solution, and a couple of comments on why said solution is only a part of the answer.  Link to article.

In other news, writing is taking a back seat while I'm doing a bunch of studying and revision.

Writing Update

 
As one of my friends commented, I've been missing in action over the last few weeks. A combination of things involving medication, other demands, stuff like archery (well out of practice after an enforced four month break).

However, things are starting to look up. I've been practicing my craft and have done a couple of online writing courses that have helped me be more objective about my writing.

Last time I wrote, I'd reached 16,294 words into Two Moons, at one point I went up to nearly 20K. But after having an insight into how the story would unfold I put those words into the sequel. So now I stand at 18,998. It is what it is.

AI Visual Processing

An observation about visual processing. dancing ballerina / spinning dancer optical illusion made easy.

A personal anecdote.

One evening, I remember walking up St. Martin's Lane on my way home from work. I had a moment where my brain failed to understand what I was looking at. I saw a person with no face. The eyes nose and mouth were missing, the face was blank flesh. It was just for a moment, then the eyes, nose and mouth appeared.

I suspect this illusion happened due to tiredness and the level of light.

Holographic Quantum Gravity

Holographic Quantum Gravity is one of those outré ideas that's rather intriguing, but whether or not it's true is another matter. However, I liked it enough to use the idea to underpin the workings of the pillars in my Gate Walker series. You can read more about it here.
Currently I'm taking an online writing course as a way to refresh my creative voice, which has been bashed around a bit by health issues.

Catch you all on the bounce.

Ytterbium Con Report

A very sunny and warm Easter weekend.Well I'm home after a weekend at the 70th British National EasterCon: Ytterbium. We had a good time and went and saw a bunch of panels that, all bar one, were entertaining.

Briefly met John Scalzi who turned out to be more human than his online persona, and had a whole bunch of interesting conversations with people, though I singularly failed to meet up with long time friend Geoff Ryman to talk about my novels that he so kindly expressed an interest in hearing about.

GoH: DC, Frances Hardinge, and John Scalzi (Sydney Padua not present) being introduce by the Con chair and moderator. The opening ceremony kicked off the convention, though we felt that Friday's programme was a bit thin on alternative choices, the rest of the weekend had plenty of things to choose from.

Made some new friends too. Shout out to Daniel M. Benson, Emil Minchov, and Kimberley Moravec who we went to dinner with.

Daniel Benson, myself, Karen Furlong (moderator), and Aya Eloise (Gareth L. Powell unable to attend).The first panel I was on was the Mental Health: Fiction vs. Reality, which seemed to go down well.

We discussed various misconceptions in the portrayal of mental health in fiction and film. In short, multiple personality disorder is bogus, Freud was a "bad dad" who left a lot to be desired when he founded psychotherapy, and very few films and or books are an authentic portrayal of mental health.

Virginia Preston (moderator), Dr. Bob, and myself.The second panel I was on Military SF: Good, Bad, and Ugly.

By this point of the con I was totally brain dead (I hadn't slept well the night before as I was mulling over how to address the negative assumptions of the panel blurb). However, I was able to steer the topic away from the underlying assumptions by presenting a quote from a friend:

"Look, there's a question as to whether these wars (or some other set of wars) are justifiable or not, and almost regardless of the answer, isn't SF one of the best means of exploring the question and having the debate?"

And on that note, we had a fruitful discussion of Mil-SF. We discussed what made the genre good, what might be bad, and the occasional ugly parts. I emphasized that a lot of Mil-SF is mildly military, and about the only misstep was our failure to talk more about space battles, as both myself and Dr. Bob are aficionados of "boots on the ground" stories.

This panel was very much a dead dog item, being at the very end of the weekend. But despite that the room was pretty full, which actually made a pleasant change from when it was totally packed to the gunnels, which tested the air conditioning to its limits.

 So, after it finished we made our weary way home.

Ytterbium British National Convention

EasterCon is coming this weekend. I'm on two panels.

Mental Health: Fiction vs. RealitySunday April 21: 16:30 - 17:30 (1 hour) Have you ever read a book and thought “is it really possible to have 25 completely different personalities”? Well if you have then this is the panel for you. Whether you’re living with mental health issues, just interested or simply walked into the wrong room. Join us as we discuss the difference between how mental health is portrayed in stories and what it’s like to live with a mental illness and consider the challenges of writing about mental health. We will be exploring what it’s like to live in a world where mental health is a priority but where our entertainment industry considers it a commodity. Military SF: Good, Bad, and UglyMon, Apr 22: 12:45 - 13.45 (1 hour) We are used to thinking of military SF as gung-ho jingoism, as the last bastion of the glories of space opera, as the one place where we can destroy aliens without moral qualm. But there have always been analytical and critical voices from both left and right: authors such as Ursula LeGuin and Joe Haldeman challenged the motivation for military adventure, David Drake and Karen Traviss asked us to consider how we treat the troops. Military SF has often reflected the polarisation and anguish about the latest overseas adventures as newer authors seek to construct a moral high ground in a politically ambivalent and complex world. This panel considers what authors we think rise to the challenge of writing complex, believable military SF while avoiding the traps of jingoism and imperialism... or not.

A Journey to the End of Time

Found this while meandering around the internet. It runs a little under half-an-hour, but the visual representation of going forward to the end of time is stunning. Truly awe inspiring.

It's existential stuff like this that drives my fictional scientific extrapolation behind my stories, which probably makes me a bit weird.

In the meantime I've been busy. First with a presentation on anxiety and depression for Imperial College, London. The talk went well, and as it was recorded it may even appear on YouTube at some point.

Writing is progressing slowly.

I've taken the running total of Two Moons from 14,856 to 16,494 words, over the last couple of weeks. A combination of distractions: the presentation, hospital tests, and researching information to be able to write convincingly about astrophysics and archaeology, which I enjoy for the simple pleasure of learning new stuff.

One final thing, I have an author GoodReads page here. That's all for this week, catch you on the bounce.

What is Good?

The future of all books, to be sold on a secondhand stall.
And not only that, but what is remembered?

The latter question is probably more important than the former, because if writer's and or their works are not remembered, then no matter how good they may or may not be, no one will read them.

A thought triggered after I came across an article bemoaning the fact that bookshops don't stock new authors. 

In the past, works have been lost for lots of different reasons. Fires, earthquakes, and other disasters have played their part. I posit that in the future that quantity will also play a part in works being lost, for the simple reason that so much more is being written now than was written even just a hundred years ago.

I propose Pollard's Law:

Ninety-nine percent of everything written, and the names of their creator's, will be forgotten, lost in time.

Besides that, what is good is down to the assessment of others yet to come. Or if you prefer, what is good is a matter of taste, and tastes change. Patricia Wrede has a piece here, but there are many other writers who have said similar things too.

So, looking back over the last week what have I been doing?

I've gotten back my draft of The Bureau with a list of corrections: errors and omissions that need to be addressed.

In the meantime, I'm writing a creation myth for an alien race that appears in my next novel, Two Moons, which is tasking me. That's it for now, catch you on the bounce.