Edward M. Lerner's Blog: SF and Nonsense, page 19

Readin', writin', and 'rithmetic (authorial style)

Despite the traditional order of elementary skills you will have noted in my subject line, I'll begin with writing. To wit: last week, I completed the first draft of DEJA DOOMED. Woohoo! This is a hard-SF/space-opera/technothriller hybrid.  Everything we hold dear is in existential peril, of course ....

Crossing the 100K word mark?That first draft of the novel came in at about 128K words, making it my longest. (Not that that comparison matters. My novels don't have a contest going on, or...

Space-y matters

And my fascination with matters astronomical continues. If you share my interest, you will want to read on.

Whistling in the dark (matter)?To date, not a single experiment has shed any light (bon mot intended) on the nature of dark matter or dark energy. The former is invoked to explain certain otherwise inexplicable, and presumably gravitationally caused, behaviors (e.g., the orbital periods of stars in galaxies, and galaxies within clusters). The latter is invoked to explain the otherwise in...

What the %^&$#!! is wrong with Yahoo?

Yahoo services have been getting worse and worse. What is the worst? It's so hard to choose.
In email, spam delivery (to my spam folder, which is a small mitigation) has risen to >100/day. This makes checking for the occasional misdirected real email all but impossible. Why can't Yahoo throw out the OBVIOUS spam (like, ya know, anything sent a dozen times per day!) as it did before Verizon took over? As Gmail does? In email, if I empty my spam or trash folder, Yahoo uses the screen space to...

I'm ENERGIZED! (Now you can be, too)

I'm delighted to report that my 2012 technothriller Energized is back in print and electrons. (Alone among my older titles, Energized was briefly unavailable in these formats.) It was and is available as an audio book.

Latest coverOr perhaps I should call this my prescient 2012 technothriller. In the headlines: private space companies, renewable energy, the imminence of asteroid mining -- and, sadly, also nuclear proliferation, chaos across the Middle East, homegrown terrorism, and meddling by...

That's life?

For a change of pace here at SF and Nonsense, where physics, astronomy, and IT tend to dominate regular looks at the frontiers of science and tech, this post will consider biology.

We'll begin by "Introducing 'dark DNA' – the phenomenon that could change how we think about evolution." By analogy to dark matter, dark DNA denotes genes that conventional understanding insists must be present in a species's genome -- but aren't. Wild, wacky stuff.

And sticking for the moment at the cellular level,...

Starting off 2018 with the write stuff ...

Writing updates to begin the new year:

On the final day of 2017, I was happy to see "The Torchman's Tale," my debut short-story appearance in Galaxy's Edge, had received a three-star recommendation in the Tangent Online 2017 Recommended Reading List.

And I'm delighted to report that my secret-history novella "Harry and the Lewises" has been accepted by Analog. If the story title rings a bell, that's not by accident. But neither, I predict, is the significance what you think ...

Almost before you...

Not your average holiday greeting

Okay, I admit it. Technically speaking, I shoulda posted this yesterday. Having said that ...

’Twas the eve of the Solstice, and no matter the hype     Not a creature was stirring, not even on Skype;The chat rooms were silent, the listservs were bare,     No matter I hoped to find diversion there; ...
Intrigued? Appalled? Amused? One of them, I'll venture to guess. Then you'll wanna check out (at Sci Phi Journal) "A Visit to the Network Control Cent...

2017 retrospective

Since Career Two began back in 2004, I've gotten to see a new Lerner book reach store shelves, physical and virtual, most every year. Some years, it's been more than one. (Still, 2010 -- which saw four books published -- was quite the fluke. I don't write that fast.) But 2017? Nada, although the new book that sold this year is expected to be out early next year.

It got me to wondering: where has the time gone? Despite life's many intrusions, both large and small, 2017 -- rather to my surprise...

A (non)post

Yeah, I'm overdue to post. Apart from a brief(?) rant, not gonna happen this week. Because of:
the wife's Windows 7 PC dying. (At least it died when sales are on.)her new PC (which I picked and ordered, so I'm not blaming her), on which Windows 10 came out of the box looking nothing like Windows 10 on my PC.the vendor hiding the Windows product key, and telling me I'd never need to know it. (Because nothing ever goes wrong with Windows? Or disk drives?)  the absurd length of time Windows...

Shopped out yet? Then thank your lucky stars for *this*

Okay, not stars exactly, lucky or otherwise. But nonetheless astronomy news to take your mind off the post-Thanksgiving rat race ....

(Wait. What? You say you're not yet shopped out? Then see "Buy-a-Book Saturday redux." No need to be too literal here.)

Let's start with "." The very first known interstellar interloper will henceforth be known -- never mind that it will soon have receded forever beyond our sight -- as Oumuamua. ("This is a Hawaiian name, meaning,...