Laura Montgomery's Blog, page 4
July 20, 2021
New Release: THE GEAR ENGAGES is Now Live on Amazon
I’m beyond thrilled to announce the publication of the fourth Martha’s Sons book, The Gear Engages. I’ve never published a fourth book before, so I’ve got a little bit of that personal-best feeling. Anyway, do give it a look. And enjoy!
It takes more than a single terraformer to start a new world.
The human colony on the lost world of Not What We Were Looking For faces fracture and schism. On one side of the river, the settlers from Earth remember what it means to live in a free society. In...
July 12, 2021
Cover Reveal for The Gear Engages. Also, Simple Service is on Sale This Week
I’m in the final stages of formatting The Gear Engages, the fourth book in the Martha’s Sons series. I can’t wait, however, to share the cover because Tom Edwards did another marvelous job. Check it out!
It takes more than a single terraformer to start a new world.
The human colony on the lost world of Not What We Were Looking For faces fracture and schism. On one side of the river, the settlers from Earth remember what it means to live in a free society. In the Marss-controlled city, the go...
June 22, 2021
Space Law and Science Fiction: From Hugo Grotius’ Freedom of the Seas to Tom Godwin’s Cold Equations
Jasper Bovenberg, writing for the Duke Law and Technology Review in his 2006 article Mining the Common Heritage of our DNA: Lessons Learned from Grotius and Pardo, provides a nice summary of the Dutch legal scholar Grotius’ arguments about the freedom of the high seas. We’ve all heard how this fellow Grotius was an early proponent of the freedom of the seas. The 2015 U.S. law recognizing the rights of space miners to extract resources from outer space follows in his footsteps. He got a lot r...
May 13, 2021
Revue Diplomatique n°13
I have an article, Certain Legal Issues Associated with Private Space Activity, in this quarter’s Revue Diplomatique n°13, which is dedicated to “Les nouveaux défis juridiques et géopolitiques du secteur spatial,” that is, the new legal and geopolitical challenges of space. Mine is in English.
A copy of the publication may be found here. The Revue Diplomatique is published by the Institute of Applied Geopolitical Studies, a French think tank.
by 
April 17, 2021
A Prize for Orbital Debris Remediation
This is complete paperback fiction. There is no such prize that I know of. I did make one up, write a novel about it, and put ITAR, CFIUS, and an unnamed regulatory body in it. (I was working for the FAA at the time and unsure whether we or the FCC would get jurisdiction over space traffic management. Shows how prescient I am.)
Manx Prize, my second book, came about because of all the space prizes being offered, such as the Ansari X Prize for private suborbital flight and the Northrup Grumman...
April 10, 2021
From Alien Invader to Home Defense
I’ve learned a lot in the past two months. Although what I’ve learned relates to terraforming alien worlds by turning them into Earth facsimiles, some is more relevant to this world and my garden.
I’ve always enjoyed gardening, but never been any sort of master gardener. I watched with pleasure as the ligularia popped up in different places in the yard after I first put it in, and was quite excited because the butterflies loved it. This seemed a great candidate for taking on a terraforming miss...
February 15, 2021
Sci Fi Blast!
Valentine’s Day falls in February, and I think I picked a good month to give one of my books away for free. People give presents on Valentine’s Day. I and a number of other authors are doing this all month. I even put Simple Service into two promotional give-aways.
The first book in my Martha’s Sons series, Simple Service, is part of Book Funnel’s SciFi Blast promotion. You can get free science fiction books from the Blast, including mine!
I’ve been looking them over, and plan to pick up Fri...
February 11, 2021
Commercial Space Law
Friday, February 12, I will be moderating a panel at noon on space commercialization for a symposium, Space: The New Legal Frontier, hosted by the Journal of Law and 
Technology at Catholic University’s law school.
This is what the schedule looks like:
10:30 a.m. – Welcome
10:40 a.m. – Keynote
Audrey Allison, Boeing, Vice President, Global Spectrum Management
11:40 a.m. – Break
12:00 p.m. – Panel 1 – Commercialization of Space
Moderator:
Professor Laura Montgomery, Ground Based Space Matters, P...
February 1, 2021
Free Science Fiction and Fantasy Books!
My science fiction colonization adventure novel, Simple Service, was accepted into a Book Funnel promotion. The promotion lets you download science fiction books when you sign up for the writer’s newsletter, and you can pick up a copy of Simple Service there in February.
From Simple Service, the first in the Martha’s Sons series:
They’re stranded beyond the known stars. Will his treacherous mission on an unforgiving world end in death?
Twenty-year-old Peter Dawe has learned to keep his mouth ...
December 21, 2020
A Gift List
We celebrate Christmas in my family, and I like to share gift ideas every year. So, for those of you looking for ideas at the last minute, I will suggest books! Amazon can ship fast.
For a very young friend I bought Cedar Sanderson’s Cute Moose, which is full of fun rhymes and lovely art. It’s a surprisingly rich book that will lead to the mystery of not just where the cute moose might have gotten to, but also what all those things which rhyme with moose might be. It’s charming.
J.M. N...
