Jack Campbell's Blog, page 3

Thanks

Thank you to everyone for your condolences.  The burial service was as nice as one could be, and as I said then, my father’s pain has ended.

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Another loss

This morning my father died.  Jack had been in deteriorating health for a long time.  He was in a great deal of pain, and not really with us any more in many ways, so this is in some ways a mercy.  Still, it is very hard, especially after the loss of my younger brother last year.

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Precise can be an imprecise term

Recently I read an article about some conclusions regarding the track of the Andromeda Galaxy through space relative to our own galaxy.  The basis for the conclusions were what the article called “precise” measurements of the distances to stars in Andromeda.  What does precise mean when measuring the distance to and location of stars in another galaxy?  A little research established that the various methods that have recently been used to establish the distances to stars in Andromeda had a margin of error that averaged out to plus or minus .06 mly.  That sounds good, right?  Only mly stands for mega-light year.  One million light years.  .06 mly is sixty thousand light years.  A light year is equal to roughly six trillion miles or a bit less than ten trillion kilometers.  Sixty thousand light years, then, is about 36 followed by thirteen zeros miles, or 6 followed by fourteen zeros kilometers.  That’s the average margin of error, best case, if our measuring methods are as good as we think they are (and one of those measurements used cepheid variables, the once “standard candles” used a rulers to measure interstellar distances that were recently discovered not to be so standard after all, meaning the ruler we had been using to measure the universe was actually a rubber ruler).  Our own Milky Way Galaxy containing hundreds of billions of stars is estimated to be about 100,000 light years across, so that’s another way to visualize the margin of error in distances to stars in Andromeda.  So, precise?  It depends upon what you mean by “precise.”  I’ll probably take those recent conclusions with a grain of salt.  (How big is a grain of salt?  Well, that depends…) 

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Zombies in the Congress

Zombies are famous for two things, the idea of a spreading infection and of creatures who no longer think but just plod onward in search of brains.  Zombies don’t lead, they don’t create, they just find anyone who does try to do something and rips their heads off.  There no longer seems to be any doubt that we have a serious problem with zombies in the US Congress.  I say this because 34 senators have now announced that they will not support an international convention which has been followed by every president since (and including) Ronald Reagan, which is strongly supported by former President George W. Bush and his former Secretary of State Rice, has the full backing of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the US Navy, the US Coast Guard, and every major ocean industry, including shipping, fishing, oil and natural gas, drilling contractors, ship builders, and telecommunications companies that use underwater cables, as well as the National Foreign Trade Council and the US Chamber of Commerce.  The reasons given for opposing the Law of the Sea Convention since it was renegotiated by President George H. W. Bush have been repeatedly rebuted by past and present authorities from both Democratic and Republican administrations on national security, business and diplomacy.  The US is the only country that hasn’t ratified the convention, which means we’re the only country in the world that can’t benefit from it.  Only our industry and shipping is not protected by it.  That’s why US businesses and those responsible for national security want it ratified.  But, once again, it won’t happen.  Abraham Lincoln said that the US could never face a serious threat from external sources, that the only thing that could destroy us would spring from among us.  And he didn’t even know about zombies.  But they’re here, there seem to be more of them in the US Congress every day, and the Law of the Sea Convention is only one of the most recent and baffling victims of the zombies’ heedless assault on the long term interests of us all.

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ARCs of Tarnished Knight

I’ve got a couple of Advanced Reader Copies of The Lost Stars – Tarnished Knight.  Are there any reviewers in need of one?

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Pukin Dogs, or Life Is A Circle

Last Friday our family was down in Huntsville, Alabama for the graduation of our youngest son from the Space Camp Aviation Mach III Challenge.  Each team in the challenge takes an aviation-related nickname, and our son’s team was the Pukin Dogs.  This nickname was given long ago to the Navy fighter squadron VF-143, and on my first ship one of my shipmates (Commander Bill Dykes) was a real Pukin Dog, having served with VF-143 before coming to the ship.  (As CDR Dykes said “once a Pukin Dog, always a Pukin Dog.”)  My son isn’t a real Pukin Dog, of course, but it was still a funny coincidence.  (By the way, Bill Dykes was partly the model for Commander Steve Sykes in the JAG in space/Sinclair books such as A Just Determination.)

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Tarnished Knight chapter one is up

I’ve posted chapter one of the upcoming The Lost Stars: Tarnished Knight on my webpage (www.johnghemry.com or www.jack-campbell.com) .  This should give everyone a good feel for the flavor of the book (except that the battles on ground and in space happen in the second chapter).   Some have worried that The Lost Stars series is replacing The Lost Fleet.  It’s not.  I’m working on the next Lost Fleet book right now (tentative title Guardian).  The Lost Stars gives a different perspective on the Lost Fleet universe, and by giving me other people and places to write about it helps me from getting burned out on the Lost Fleet books (which would be bad for everybody concerned). 

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Growing up

I had that moment today, watching my youngest son walking off down the boarding way of a jet, on his way to a week at Space Camp.  I remember being him, looking ahead with a sense of hope and more than a little anxiety to a life in which my family would be what I made it instead of being something that surrounded me and defined me.  He’s a few years away from college yet, but he’s taken the first steps.  And now I really know how my mother felt when she watched me walk away down a jet ramp so many years ago.  I am incredibly proud of him.  He’s come such a long ways and almost fully recovered from the autism that almost claimed him.  He is smart and clever and interested in so much.  But it seems like only yesterday that he was proudly wearing a Bob the Builder costume at Halloween and seriosuly asking the people we met if they needed anything fixed.  I am so proud that he has grown so much, but God it was hard to watch him walk away.

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Taking Back “They”

Once upon a time (up until the late eighteenth century) the English language had an all-purpose pronoun.  It could refer to a man or a woman, and be singular or plural.  That pronoun was “they” (or its variations “them” or “their”).  “They” wasn’t alone in being either plural or singular.  “You” does the same thing, but “you” did not attract the meddling of self-appointed rulers of grammar who started insisting that “they” could only refer to plurals.  By the early nineteenth century this made-up rule was being written into all the usage and style guides.  The result has been to require people to either use the clunky “his or her” as a substitute for the singular use of they, or else use “his” as the default pronoun.  No matter how some may argue that “his” in that case is some sort of universal/all-mankind pronoun, that use of “his” conveys the clear impression that everyone worth talking about is male.  Despite the can’t-use-they-for-singular rule, great writers like Shakespeare, Austen, Shaw and Kipling went ahead and did it anyway.  That’s because “they” simply works better for both plural and singular usage.  A lot of people still use they in that manner, despite the rule, and we’re slowly making that usage acceptable again.  Keep it up, everybody.  We need that pronoun, and English speakers always knew it.  It’s past time the rule made up in the late eighteenth century got tossed out.

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Comic-Con San Diego

I’ll definitely be at Comic-Con in San Diego this year.  I should be there all day on Saturday, 14 July, and hopefully a little while the morning of Sunday, the 15th.  There will be a panel on military SF on Saturday that I’ll be part of.  Hope to see you there.

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