Jon Mac's Blog, page 5

Go Ahead, Punk...

So a while ago I came up with an idea... What if some of NASA's (and others) plans developed in the 1950's through 1970s actually came to fruition, instead of being cancelled? What would our world (and the solar system) now look like if projects like Orion and the Lenticular Reentry Vehicle and the original Space Transportation System were developed and put into use? And what if the natural progression beyond those projects had continued?
Naturally, I'm not the first to think of such a thing. In fact, there are already at least two really cool web sites concerning this idea. I've already mentioned one of them on this blog, called Atomic Rockets. The other is Rocketpunk Manifesto. The term for this concept, of course, is Rocketpunk.
Let's take a moment to break down the punks: Everybody know about Cyberpunk. And Steampunk seems to be building up a lot of, um, steam, lately. I just recently learned about Clockpunk (where the driving technology is based on clockwork mechanisms, duh!) I suppose you could add the -punk suffix to just about any subgenre - "Hey did you read that new wild-west-zombie-ninjapunk book? Pretty cool..." But as I see it, maybe the -punk should only be applied where it mostly concerns the most common technology of the setting. Cyber - computers, Steam - steam power, etc. And maybe it needs to have at least a sprinkle of gritty, film-noir, underground hard-boiled-ness to it, too. Like, say, Magipunk, where gritty down-and-out Magic pushers roam the alleyways hawking illegal talismans that drive an alt-future black market tech economy. Big Oil legislates against the magi-tech because talisman powered cars cut into their profits. But the illegal talismans occasionally have, um, unexpected side effects...
But back to Rocketpunk. I think it's an awesome idea. For a long time I've been toying around with a very pulpy space opera setting (you know, where spaceships go "whoosh" and anti-matter powered battle cruisers use pretty much the same tactics as Horatio Hornblower.) Actually, it's funny how that kind of unrealistic "futuristic" setting is a crazy combination of the Great Age of Fighting Sail and WWII dogfights with the terms warp, hyper, and flux thrown in for extra flavor. Who doesn't love epic space battles filled with Star Destroyers, Vipers and Klingon Battle Cruisers? But, sometimes it's nice to have a bit more science in the science fiction. That's where Rocketpunk comes in.
It can be a retro future where the microchip somehow failed at world domination. The ships in our story follow the laws of real physics. I'm thinking of having the One Big Lie be some kind of as yet unknown breakthrough power source, and follow the realistic engineering implications of that. And, there's rust on some of those rockets, and dirt. Some of them are about as glamorous to those that use them as a tractor is to a farmer.
So, let's add a Rocketpunk story to the ol Mythik Project List. I'm looking forward to seeing the timeline of space milestones that didn't end with Apollo, and where the Space Transportation System meant a Space Tug, Lunar Shuttle, and Interplanetary Shuttle instead of merely the Orbital Shuttle.
But right now I need to get back to the Mythik Weird West...

Weird Wednesday: Orion Battleship

A "small" Project Orion ship
Today's edition of Weird Wednesday features the Orion Battleship.

But first, a little history:

Sponsored by the U.S. Government, Project Orion dates back all the way to the late 1940's and officially began in 1958. The idea was to explode nuclear devices behind a space ship and ride the shock wave forward. 800 atomic blasts later, and you've ridden an atomic hop ball into orbit. Keep it up and you could even get to Pluto and back in under a year - if you managed to stay in one piece.

Switch out the run-of-the-mill fission bombs with thermonuclear fusion bombs (300,000 of them) and you could get to about 10% of the speed of light and reach Alpha Centauri in 44 years.

The project was classified at the time, of course, but George Dyson wrote a book about it called Project Orion: The Atomic Spaceship 1957-1965 . I haven't read it, but it looks like a fascinating tale of Cold War era retro-future "truth is stranger than fiction" real-life space opera. George Dyson, the son of physicist Freeman Dyson (of Dyson Sphere fame and a lot more,) is also the subject of a very interesting book called The Starship & The Canoe , which I did read when I was a kid. But I digress...

Project Orion was cancelled in 1963 due to the Partial Test Ban Treaty, which did away with above ground nuclear detonations. So that was the end of Orion, since you can't get much more above ground than blasting off into space atop hundreds of rapid-fire nuclear blasts.

Or...

Maybe it was cancelled because of the Orion Battleship. Taking the concept of Orion to a somewhat paranoid extreme, the Orion Battleship sported nuclear weapons in addition to it's nuclear propulsion: Hundreds of nuclear missiles, actually, and navel gun turrets, and the somewhat absurd-yet-sinister sounding Casaba Howitzer. The Casaba Howitzer turned a nuclear detonation into a directed plasma energy death ray.


Orion Battleship Model from Fantastic Plastic
According to legend, when President Kennedy saw a scale mockup of the Orion Battleship, he was so freaked out by it that he cancelled the whole Orion project.

Now, what fascinates me about things like the Orion Battleship is something that I've been thinking about for a while. I know we are lamenting the fact that NASA no longer has the capability to send humans into orbit, and everybody expected to be able to book a cubbyhole at the Lunar Hilton by now, or at least commute to work in a flying car. But an interesting thing about "the future," especially when looked at as the past, is this: Just because we can do something, doesn't mean we will or should. And conversely, just because we haven't done something, doesn't mean we can't do it.

I'll be expanding on the ramifications of that concept and such things as the future of space flight in upcoming posts. Ha ha, yes there is room for hard SF in the Mythik Universe :)

Sharp eyed readers will notice that I am posting again. Hopefully now that I'm taking Mythik Imagination off auto-pilot my web traffic won't go down ;)

The work load at the cool day job is finally easing up a bit, and I should be able to gradually get back up to blogging speed. I've also got a lot of catching up to do with ya'll.

I'm also working hard to get the upcoming Mythik Imagination books done as well as the myriad of other projects that are now in the queue.

Oh, before I forget, check out Atomic Rockets. It's a totally awesome web site that has everything you could possibly want to know about realistic/retro/future/pulp/any kind of space travel. Lots of cool math (I know, math+cool doesn't usually compute, but it does when you are calculating interstellar travel time,) for those of you that are especially nerdy.

Thanks for reading, and stay Mythik!
Jon

July Update

Well I have been a very bad blogger and twittererer. But I do have an excuse. No, it's not something quite as cool as having George Lucas demand I write the screenplay to Indiana Jones 5 or anything like that. But I have been very busy with the cool day job.
Sharp-eyed readers will note my tentative release date for MI#2 has come and gone. That is disappointing, but since my workload isn't going to let up any time soon, I am re-tentatively assigning the new release date of early August (how's that for vague?)
Also, my new email address is jon@jonmac.me. Don't ask, it's a long story. But if anybody has sent me an email and I never responded, it is because my old domain got all messed up. This new one works great, though :)
So I apologize for not being a very good net-citizen and I have not been keeping up with the blogverse and twitterverse, but I will as much as I can. Hopefully I will at least be able to crank out a Weird Wednesday this week.
For those of you interested, here's a list of some of the movies I'm working on that is taking up all my time:Pulp FictionGood Will HuntingThe OthersStripesGleeModern FamilyHesherThe CrowMimicTrainspottingThat's about a third of the list. I'm involved in creating Blu-Ray discs, and it has suddenly gotten very, very busy. Which is good, but also means I need to work long hours.
Thanks for reading,Jon

Weird Wednesday - The Evolution Machine

First, check out this article from New Scientist about The Evolution Machine. It's OK, I'll wait.

I love the description in the first paragraph of what sounds like a mad scientist Lego Machine mixed with Dr. Frankenstein designer labware and tormented bacteria. And, it would all fit on the desk in your dorm room or spare bedroom:

"Say hello to the evolution machine. It can achieve in days what takes genetic engineers years. So far it is just a prototype, but if its proponents are to be believed, future versions could revolutionise biology, allowing us to evolve new organisms or rewrite whole genomes with ease. It might even transform humanity itself."

That last line is pretty bold, but it's the aim of a geneticist from Harvard Medical School named George Church. His group has created this machine designed to "evolve" biological organisms using "highly directed evolution." This method of genetic engineering has been christened MAGE - Multiplex Automated Genome Engineering.

Church wants to mass-produce these evolution machines. So instead of taking hundreds of person-years and millions of dollars to make relatively small genetic changes the "old-fashioned" way, now scientists would be able to make revolutionary changes quickly and cheaply.

Working with Joseph Jacobson, an MIT engineer who invented the e-ink technology in your Kindle, Church's ultimate goal is to alter the genetic code itself. This achievement could make organisms "virus-proof." 

"Because all existing life uses essentially the same genetic code, organisms that translate DNA using a different code would be behind a "genetic firewall", unable to swap DNA with any normal living thing. If they escaped into the wild, they would not be able to spread any engineered components."

The logical end result is the production of virus-resistant organs and, eventually, virus-resistant humans. Of course, the consequence of that would be that these new super-humans would only be able to reproduce with other super-humans.

Wow, we've got all the elements for some great pulp sci-fi (only it's real science, so we can bring out the SF moniker instead.)
A guy named Church develops an "evolution" machineThe project has a wicked name: MAGEThe super-humans seem to be essentially a new speciesAnd yet, we still don't have flying cars or jet packs. Or Mars bases or lunar hotels. Anyway, what do you think? Is this brave new world the beginning of the end, or something wonderful?

Mythik Imagination #1 Reviewed

There's a good review of Mythik Imagination #1 at Frida Fantastic. Frida really knows her speculative fiction, and has a good breakdown of the three stories in MI#1. I like these kinds of reviews because they give you such a great idea of what the stories are like, you can decide if they might be for you or not.

While the above is for the readers out there, this next bit (also from Frida) is for you writers: How To Get Book Reviewers To Ignore You. I can't believe there is even a necessity for such a post, but apparently many Indie Authors have a problem with following directions and common sense. So go read it and don't let it happen to you! Er, wait... Better go quick before I take the link down - I just realized the more people who eliminate themselves from the writer gene pool means better odds for me ;)

Anyway, check out Frida Fantastic.  Even if you are interested in none of the above, she has great in-depth, insightful reviews. She really cares about reading and readers. And probably has too much of a soft spot for Indie Authors. Just remember Lester Bangs' advice from Almost Famous . And that's my review of the reviewer :)

Coming up tomorrow: Another exciting edition of Weird Wednesday.

FYI - Barnes & Noble and iTunes Added

It looks like the distribution to Barnes & Noble and iTunes has finally gone through for Mythik Imagination #1. So that's the good news..
But.


Since this blog is the "behind the scenes exclusive view" of all things Mythik (we are all about transparency, right?) I will say that I'm still not entirely happy with what the Smashwords Meatgrinder and I came up with in regards to the formatting of all the Smashwords versions of MI#1 (which includes iTunes and B&N.) I am a bit hesitant, though, to upload a new version to "fix" what isn't really broken. I might make it worse (haha, a very minor version of the "Unintended Consequences" scenario from the last Weird Wednesday.) Anyway, the problem is that sometimes the chapter breaks seem to cut off the titles. I was sure when I first downloaded and tested, it worked fine, but now it looks like it doesn't. It's very frustrating, after following the Style Guide so carefully. Anyway, I will try to make improvements with #2. On the flip side, I was very pleased with the Kindle version.
And in other FYI news, I'm making the final revisions to the print edition of MI#1. I think it will look really cool. So stay tuned for that.
I'm really excited about the MI#1 Podiobook. I'm behind schedule on that, but it should be a cross between the old CBS Radio Mystery Theater and a spoken-word Twilight Zone. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to "make use of time, let not advantage slip." Ha that's Shakespeare - who says the SF genre isn't literate? But I've got some good actors lined up and hopefully will get it done soon.
I'm still struggling to get MI#2 finished. So much to do, so little time...
What projects are you working on?

Disco Friday

Ha, fooled you. It's not Disco as in late '70s music and ducks, but Disco as in Disco-very. Get it? I know, whatever.

Anyway, here are a few things I've discovered in my virtual travels that you might find interesting:
Book Trailers for Promotion - Yay or Nay? - This is a nice little overview of the Book Trailer Phenomenon. Okay, cool. But you really have to look at the hilarious videos at the end of the post. I mean, really. Right now. I know everybody always says everything is hilarious, and everybody always says look right now blah, blah, blah, but in this case it really is really funny. If you've published a book or even considered it, these vids will be especially hilarious. Okay, I'm not going to use the word hilarious any more. Thanks to Lindsay Buroker.How to rise above the self-published slush pile - A great point-by-point guide that any Indie Author would do well to study. Thanks to Frida Fantastic.HitRECord.org - This just might be my favorite place on the internet. Which might seem odd, considering I haven't been there in ages. To tell the truth, it is a bit overwhelming to me, and I could easily spend hours there. You can find me as Jon Mac and check out some of the stuff we've RECorded. Now with work and writing and publishing and whatnot, I don't have the time, but hopefully that will change soon. You are no doubt very busy, too, but you should still try to check it out. If you are a creative type at all, HitRECord will make you feel like a kid in a candy store. It's a treasure trove of artists, writers, videographers, editors, singers, musicians and more. Everybody can use everybody else's stuff and there are always a lot of amazing collaborations going on. If you like to be more of a looker than a doer, then there are plenty of projects/art/music/conversations to see, hear and feel (yes, they even make physical objects as well as media of the electro variety.) You can take part as little or as much as you want. Thanks to

Interviewed by Nicholas Olivo

I've been lucky enough to be interviewed by Nicholas Olivo. He also has funny posts and very good Scrivener tutorials, so I recommend you check out his site even if you skip my interview.

Since we're being all personal and whatnot, I'll take this opportunity to say "Thanks, Nick!" It is actually really cool that somebody I didn't know took the time and interest to find out more about Mythik Imagination and me.

All right, I need to get back to work.

Thanks, stay Mythik and stay tuned :)
-Jon

Weird Wednesday - Lifeboat Foundation

At first, I thought the Lifeboat Foundation was a made up thing. Maybe some kind of J.J. Abrams-esque fictional web site along the lines of the Hanso Foundation. But nope, it appears to be the real deal.

The purpose of the Lifeboat Foundation is to protect humanity from, well, just about everything. From nano-plagues to asteroidal extinction, they have a plan to save the day. Heck, they even have backups for backups.

Ark-I, a self sustaining space colony, is their "fallback position in case programs such as our BioShield and NanoShield fail." That's some serious safety! The foundation is a treasure trove of sometimes weird, but always fascinating, emerging technologies such as: smart dust, space guns, and space elevators. I also like how they apply Murphy's Law to artificial intelligence. You just know that can't end well.

And I love how they connect SETI with the reason why you really need to have somebody keeping an eye on you. Check out this quote on their Security Preserver page:

"There's a long-standing problem in astronomy called the Fermi Paradox, named for physicist Enrico Fermi who first proposed it in 1950. If the universe should be teeming with life, asked Fermi, then where are all the aliens? The question is even more vexing today: SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence with radio telescopes, has utterly failed to turn up any sign of alien life forms. Why?

One chillingly likely possibility is that, as the ability to wreak damage on a grand scale becomes more readily available to individuals, soon enough just one malcontent, or one lunatic, will be able to destroy an entire world. Perhaps countless alien civilizations have already been wiped out by single terrorists who'd been left alone to work unmonitored in their private laboratories."

So the reason we are alone in the Universe is because ET mad scientists always blow everything up before they can say "Hi." If that isn't grist for the pulp mill, I don't know what is!

The quote is actually from science fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer, which the Lifeboat Foundation uses to illustrate their point about how there should be debate about the role of surveillance in the future.

One very interesting (heck they are all interesting) LF program is the AI Shield. One of the greatest threats we may face is the age-old problem of Unintended Consequences:

"Consider the simple case of an AGI that has been given the uncontroversial goal of eradicating malaria. A reasonable human expectation would be that such an AI would complete its goal by conventional means: perhaps by developing a new anti-malarial drug, or by initiating a program of mosquito control. The problem is that there are many other ways of eradicating malaria, some of which are undesirable. For example, an AGI might choose to eradicate malaria by eradicating all mammals."

Thankfully, The Lifeboat Foundation is on the job to avoid just those kind of situations. That may be bad news  for HAL, Colossus, and Sky-Net, but good news for us. Umm, assuming you aren't an artificially intelligent silicon-based life form. And if you are, please like my Facebook page.

Step by Step Scrivener to Kindle Tutorial

There are many ways to get your content onto a Kindle. But it's not so simple finding a way that produces satisfactory results. For Mythik Imagination #1, I used an .html template (shout out to Derek J. Canyon "Thanks for the template!") and formatted by hand. It seemed to work pretty well, but is tedious if you have to do a lot of unusual formatting. For instance I needed a lot of italics, so it was a pain to add the many, many, many HTML tags by hand.
My goal was to find a program I could use to write all my drafts, then be able to export to send to the proofreader/editor, then paste in the final locked words, then export to a nicely formatted and professional looking Kindle file, ready for uploading. I think I've found a one-stop method of doing all that, using Scrivener.
Scrivener is a great little program that has big capabilities. It is really amazing with all the things it can do. I don't know most of those things yet, because I've been focused on just one thing: Kindle formatting. You can Google dozens of Scrivener tutorials (and heck, even read the manual haha,) and you can also go see Nicholas Olivo for good Scrivener tutorials.
You should know the basics of Scrivener before using this tutorial. I also have a disclaimer. This method seems to work really well in my tests. But, I'm paranoid, so I won't be entirely convinced until I actually upload to Amazon, then buy the finished product and see what the buyer sees. So, I'm not guaranteeing anything just yet. But it should give you a head start to see for yourself if you like this technique or not.
For convenience sake, here are some helpful links before we start:For general help with Kindle Publishing, go to the the source: Kindle Direct Publishing Help PagesA lot of really helpful general info about ePublishing formatting can be found in the Smashwords Style Guide.For help with the interior first page cover image, see Formatting Images Within Kindle BookCheck this out for help with the Catalog/Cover Image.Kindle Publishing Programs download page.
All right, you have written your masterpiece, and now you want to get it on a Kindle, using Scrivener. Here's how to do it:
Step-1First, you will need to download and install two programs (available for Mac or PC) from Amazon:
The first is KindleGen, which is the program that Scrivener will use to do the actual converting to .mobi format.
The second is Kindle Previewer, which will let you see how your newly created .mobi file will look on a Kindle device or app.
So download those now and install them. It's okay, I'll wait.
I'm going to assume that you've figured out the basics of how Scrivener works, including the Compile command. But, if you haven't, I'll give you head start:
[image error]
Select File>Compile…
Then select Compile For: Kindle eBook (.mobi) and select KindleGen from the Compilation Options.
[image error]
Now you need to tell Scrivener where to find the KindleGen program. So, just point it to wherever you installed KindleGen. There's also a handy link to the Amazon KindleGen download page if you haven't downloaded it yet.
Okay, now you are ready to rock. Cancel the compile window and let's get down to bizness!
Step-2Here's a new, blank Scrivener project:
[image error]
Organize Scrivener's binder the way you want your Kindle book to look. You will see I used a combination of folders and files. In the Scrivener Universe, folders and files are essentially the same. They are both containers that you can also write on. But when you compile, you can set each of those types to do different things. So here I have six sections that will be in my book:
[image error]
Front Matter (folder)Contents (folder)Chapter 1 (file)Chapter 2 (file)Chapter 3 (file)Back Matter (file)
Front Matter is just a fancy way of saying "All the stuff that comes before your actual story," like the title and copyright info, etc. The consensus seems to be to keep the front matter short. The Chapters are, well, chapters of your novel, but in my case, they will be my short stories. The Back Matter is whatever you have after your story, such as an Afterword, links to your website and other books, excerpts from other books, whatever.
So here is what I will have for my book:[image error]
What you name these folders and files is very important, because the Compile settings will use these names to automatically title each of your sections using the folder or file name. It works like this: The title of my front matter will be Mythik Imagination #2, which will also have the text of the copyright etc. The title of my contents page will be Contents: and it will have the text of my table of contents. Each of my chapters will be titled with their respective names and contain the text of the actual story. Got it? Good.
Also, remember that that folders can have text, just like files. So, my front matter folder (called Mythik Imagination #2) will have the text of the front matter written on it. (You can think of it as an empty folder, since it doesn't contain anything inside it, but it has the text of the front matter --copyright etc.-- written on it.) The Contents folder is the same. Make sense? No?Don't worry; it will all become clear.
Step-3Next, we are going to create our Table of Contents. I select all of my chapters, which are The Silver Skull, The Schofield Crew, Requiem For The Wild West, and Author's Note.[image error]
Then I go to the menu bar and select Edit>Copy Special>Copy Documents as Scrivener Links:[image error]
Boom! Now I select the empty Contents folder:[image error]
Then right click (control-click on Mac) in the editing area and select Paste:[image error]
And viola:[image error]
There is our table of contents. Note, this screen shot is after I selected Align Text Center and I have Show Invisibles turned on, which is why you see those backwards "P" symbol things. For more detail about creating an eBook table of contents, you can look at the Scrivener User Manual, at the bottom of page 252.
Step-4There's one more thing to do before we compile. You've already got your cover art, right? Right? Please say yes. Good! 
Here's some bonus info on the interior Kindle cover. First, do not confuse this with the Catalog Cover. The Catalog Cover is the super-duper high quality image you upload when publishing on the Amazon KDP site.
But forget that for now. Right now we are concerned with the actual cover image that will be the very first page of your Kindle book. This is known as the Cover Image Within Kindle Book. Oddly enough, help for that can be found on the page titled: Formatting Images Within Kindle Book
You don't know it, but I just backspaced over a bunch of info that would have turned this into a graphics tutorial. Instead, I'll just say this:
Cover Image Within Kindle Book specs:Format: .jpgDimensions: about 600 pixels wide by 800 pixels tallFile Size: 127KB or less
That's a pretty small file size, so you may have to tweak the export settings of your graphics program to get the size right. It's worth the effort, though. Try to get as close to 127KB without going over, because your image will look better. My file size was 125KB, and it looks sharp and clean. Theoretically, if your image's file size is too big, KDP will do extra compression to reduce the size and it may not look very good.
Now, name it something logical, like Interior_Cover.jpg and save it where you can find it. Now drag it into the Research folder in the Binder of Scrivener:[image error]Very good.

Okay, so now let's say you have all the content of your front matter, chapters and back matter. It's all been proofread and edited and is word perfect, right? Right. Now let's make it a Kindle book!
Step-5Go back to Compile:[image error]
Compile: ContentsMake sure you have selected Compile For: Kindle eBook (.mobi) and then select Contents under Compilation Options:[image error]
We are going to include all of our folders and files. We want to checkmark Pg Break Before for everything except Mythik Imagination #2 (our Front Matter.)
Step-6Compile: Formatting[image error]Here, we are going to include the Title and Text for Folders and for files. We are not checkmarking anything on the middle line, because those are File Groups, which we aren't using. Here's why I made the front matter and contents folders instead of files. Because now we can set the Folder Title to "Heading 1" and set the Page padding to 3 lines.
[image error]AND we can set the Files Title to Heading 1 (or a different Heading if we wanted) and set Page padding to 8 lines. Heading changes the size of the Title, and Page padding determines how far down the page the Title is. So we end up with different settings for our Files, which are also our chapters.
Step-7Compile: Processing Options[image error]I'm not going to get into all of the reasons for the various settings (yes, we are trained monkeys pressing buttons.) Just make sure it looks like the pic.
Step-8Compile: Separators[image error]Section breaks determine where the Kindle will start new pages. The way our layout is organized, we want to have a Section break between everything. Just do it, please.
Step-9Compile: CoverNow we get to use the cover image we worked so hard on in Step-4:[image error]
Just select the cover image. It's pretty straightforward, especially if that's the only image in your Research folder.
Step-10Compile: E-Book Options[image error]Copy these settings. Make sure that whatever text you type into the "HTML table of contents title:" field matches exactly the name of your Contents: folder. Note that here I used "Contents:" with the colon. That is because my Contents: folder actually has a colon:
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When Scrivener compiles, it will automatically add the folder and page names, remember? so my final contents page will look like this:[image error]
Okay, we're almost done…
Step-11HTML Options[image error]
Make sure "Convert Scrivener links to HTML links" is checkmarked.
All the other Compilation Options should be fine to leave in their default settings.
Step-12Hit the Compile button.
When you save it, you will have a file ending in .mobi. That is your Kindle book :)
Step-13Open up the Kindle Previewer and drag your newly created .mobi file into Kindle Previewer. You should see a nicely formatted, professional looking Kindle book. Check it over and over again to make sure everything turned out the way you planned.

That's it. You should be able to upload the .mobi file to KDP and be good to go. Theoretically. I will make an update to this once I've done it. But in the meantime, this should give you a good idea of how to format your Kindle book using Scrivener.
So test it out, experiment, and have fun!