Will van der Vaart's Blog, page 6

The most exciting scientific advancements of April 2013 (so far)!

This week has seen me genuinely excited by science news much more than I usually am. Some jadedness is only natural given the various life/not-life announcements coming out of NASA’s Mars missions lately, and I’m still pretty hesitant to get on the bandwagon given that the press so frequently distorts, overhypes, or plain misunderstands the science aspect of things.

However, this week has been hugely exciting. To recap:

Two Earth-like planets were discovered in Goldilocks zones

Potential vacuum- and radiation-insulating nano shields were accidentally discovered in the lab (with long-term space exploration applications)

Fingerprints of the solar system parent supernova were found in meteorites

Plus the usual assortment of little things. As an sci-fi/space enthusiast, it’s pretty awesome to have more or less direct evidence of what came before us still visible (if we know where to look), but more importantly the combination of other Earths – and maybe the means with which to protect ourselves on the way there – is incredibly exciting.

Now to get NASA some funding…

Further Hard Drop on its way!

For those of you asking for additional material, there is indeed more on the way. I’m putting together the second book in the series, titled Hard Drop: After the Storm. As we speak. I’m past the rough outlining stage and in the portion of my writing cycle where I’m itching to get pen to paper, so you can expect things to accelerate in a hurry.

But, if you can’t wait that long, there will likely be a few short novellas to catch you up on the origin stories of some of the crew (departed and otherwise) from the first novel.

Specifically, the plan is to write both sequels in prequels, likely first the sequel, then a prequel with the previous characters, so you learn a bit more about the story and the backgrounds as we go (as do I!).

In the meantime, would love your comments – come find me on Twitter (vandervaartwill) or on Facebook at the Hard Drop page, or drop me a line on Gmail. I’m also on Reddit occasionally, although in the interest of actually putting metaphorical pen to paper I’m trying to keep that to a minimum right now.

Welcome!

You’ve found the page for Will van der Vaart, science fiction author, screenwriter, and enthusiast. Titles out so far include Hard Drop and Old Fool’s Errand.

The second Hard Drop novel “After the Storm” is currently in the works, and a third one is on the horizon.

In the meantime, enjoy the novels, and please do leave comments, either on Amazon or on the goodreads page.