Edward M. Lerner's Blog: SF and Nonsense, page 18

Look! Up in the sky! ...

It's astronomy news!

And surely real news of astronomy beats an imaginary guy in tights and a cape.

The Mountains of Madness (er, Pluto)Case 1: the mind-blowingly mobile mountains of Pluto. (Say that quickly ten times.) See "Pluto’s mountains may have slid along a kilometre a day."  That rate of motion isn't something you'd expect to see of a glacier on Earth, much less of ice mountains in the outer Solar System deep freeze. But facts are stubborn things ...
Case 2: As the New Horizons pro...

Move 'em on, head 'em out (the annual posts roundup)

Starting in the ancient past of 2011 with "Postscript (or is that post post?)", I've blogged every year around this date about popular posts here at SF and Nonsense. These annual summaries have always begun with the blog's top-ten, all-time hits -- but this year, I'm going to dispense with that bit of the tradition.  The all-time top ten remain the same as a year ago (see "Post posting"), differing only in a couple slight changes of position within the list.

Fine posts, every oneBut rece...

Trope-ing update

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Snapped moments ago from Amazon: Number 1 New Release in general technology and reference. Gotta admit, I like the sound of that.

(And incidentally, this Kindle edition of Trope-ing the Light Fantastic: The Science Behind the Fiction is on sale till the release date, April 30. The hardback edition will also be out that day.)  ====================== from Edward M. Lerner's "SF and Nonsense"

Looking back

For today's post, some physics (including astrophysics) retrospectives ....

And ... it's beautifulMy first interest in any kind of science -- likely before I knew the word science -- was with astronomy. Who among us wasn't fascinated at a young age with the fascinating show that is the night sky? And so (with added interest because of the University of Chicago connection), I was sad to read that "Yerkes Observatory is closing its doors." Yerkes is historic both for the uniqueness of its primar...

Of space ... and spaciness

The Moon remains the the high-water mark of in-person human exploration. (That may someday change -- thank you, Elon Musk -- but for now, it is what it is.)

Mmmm. Dough ... nut.One of the things I find most fascinating about that too-long-since-visited neighbor is how little we know about it. The debate continues about how the Moon first came to be. While I find the prevailing Theia/Giant-Impact Hypothesis qualitatively plausible -- it's not like I've done the math -- that theory has its share...

Not *exactly* random ...

While the writing biz has kept me unusually busy of late, a rather eclectic bunch of stuff  -- all somehow germane to SF and Nonsense -- has  been catching my eye. A few highlights from among those are the basis of today's post.

My writing appears often in Analog magazine: in fiction, science articles, and even guest editorials. Because my preferred sub-genre is (I hate the term, but love the concept) hard SF, Analog is my favorite among the zines. And so, I was happy to make this di...

Tiptoe, through the Trope-lets, ...

In my most recent post, "Trope-ing closer to release :-), I reported that I'd received -- and would disappear for awhile into a close reading of -- copy edits of Trope-ing the Light Fantastic (subtitled, The Science Behind the Fiction).

Inching closer :-)I've reemerged -- after a weekend and a day of reading and commenting -- from that task. So exciting! Which is not to say you can yet rush out to order a copy. (I wish.) But we are closer. Yay, team!

Part of the time I was involved in that, my...

Trope-ing closer to release :-)

Woohoo! I just received copy edits for Trope-ing the Light Fantastic: The Science Behind the Fiction.

The draft coverWhy the enthusiasm? (Hint: it's not because I enjoy proofreading.) Copy edits in hand means the book is that much closer to release :-)

But today's incoming also means that I've got ~100K words to give a close, final read-through -- ASAP. Hence: you've just seen about all I expect to get posted this week.

For the back story of Trope-ing, check out the ironically titled "From might...

What the %^&$#!! NOW?

The incompetence that is Yahoo continues its luge ride to oblivion (an update to last month's frustrated post, "What the &$#!! is wrong with Yahoo?"). A set of new failings:

Why does my Yahoo home page lose the ability, from time to time, to display RSS feeds? Given that the suddenly unavailable sources are as disparate as Fortune magazine, Yahoo's own financial service, and PCworld, I have to believe the problem is Yahoo's.

Why has my Yahoo home page spontaneously switched from its three-c...

That's heavy, man!

After yesterday's awesome launch -- and two-thirds recovery -- of the Falcon Heavy, what more is there for a technologist and  SF author to comment upon? Read on.

If you haven't yet had OD-ed on the coverage, check out "The best photos and videos of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy launch."

SpaceX founder Elon Musk is highly motivated to make humanity a multi-planetary species by colonizing Mars. (Yesterday's mission seems to have gone a bit off course: "Elon Musk’s Tesla overshot Mars’ orbit and is...