Kate Rauner's Blog, page 77
December 25, 2015
Merry #Xmas :) Keep an eye out for Santa
Harvey – cover model for Glory on Mars – watches for Santa – or, at least, for reindeer
Filed under: Kate's Books, Neat Science News, Poetry, Science Fiction Tagged: cover model, cute cat meme, mars, Merry Christmas, santa claus, science fiction, SciFi, Xmas
December 24, 2015
Drones over #Mars not #scifi – #NASA considers adding a helicopter drone to a Mars mission
There’s enough atmosphere to “actually do stuff with wings or rotors.” Well – we know parachutes work, so why not? In my novel Glory on Mars settlers don’t have drone copters – maybe they should :)
More at npr.org
Filed under: Neat Science News
December 23, 2015
#Science and #Poetry for #MerryChristmas
Light Times Two – a poem by Kate Rauner
My Xmas Tree 2015
The speed of light is constant,
That’s what you think you know.
But only in a vacuum.
Through glass it can go slow.
An index of refraction
Predicts the speed of light,
Determines how the wave is bent
On its transverse flight.
Some light transmits through the glass,
And some will be reflected.
Brewster’s angles, Fresnel calcs,
The focal length of lenses.
So with great precision,
With science as explainer,
Every light on my Christmas tree,
In the window, has a doppelganger.
Optics is a fascinating field. Consider the refractive index at wikipedia.
Filed under: Poetry Tagged: Brewster, focal length, Fresnel, lens, light, poem, poetry, reflection, refraction, speed of light
December 20, 2015
I’m Number 822! Sound like a strange boast? #amwriting #amreading #scifi
Okay, so it’s not much of a bumper sticker, but my new book Glory on Mars is in the top third of its Amazon Kindle category for the second time in a month. That’s a thrill for me – an unknown author. I’ve been told 90% of the books sold in American are written by 1% of the authors.
It’s so hard to break into writing. Thanks to everyone who read Glory on Mars. I hope you’ll try Born on Mars, too.
Consider posting a review – on Amazon, Goodreads, your favorite retailer, or wherever you hang out. That’s how books get noticed.
My books are available from all major retailers – more links here.
Now I’ve got to hurry and post this while it’s still true – things change quickly on Amazon.
Filed under: Kate's Books, Science Fiction Tagged: #marssurvivaltips, colonization, colony, ebook, mars, novel, science fiction, SciFi, settlers
December 19, 2015
Born on #Mars no picnic in #scifi #novel #Amazon #Kindle #books
We know some of the dangers you and I would face on Mars – how will we find water, air, and shelter from cold and cosmic rays? How will a small group of settlers face each other, cooped up together? What will happen to kids born on Mars? Will earthly technology help them? Check out Born on Mars, second book in my On Mars Series. Now available at Amazon and all major on-line retailers.
The Tharsis Plain stretched endlessly between the largest volcano on Mars, Olympus Mons, and a string of three shield volcanoes to its southeast, smaller but still massively wide and tall. The colony lay shrouded by drifts on the flank of Peacock Mons. Here settlers could extract what humans needed to endure the planet’s lethal surface deep dunes – traces of water, wisps of nitrogen, and sand to sinter into construction blocks. It was a hell of a place to be born.
Filed under: Kate's Books, Science Fiction Tagged: #marssurvivaltips, book, Born on Mars, colonization, colony, dangers challenges on Mars, ebook, kindle, novel, science fiction, SciFi, Tharsis Plain
December 18, 2015
#Mars Colony Without an AI? #MarsSurvivalTips #scifi #Amazon #kindle
Colonists take an Artificial Intelligence with them in my On Mars Series because, as one of my beta readers said, could anyone believe a novel about the future without AI? It feels like a given that computers will soon approach consciousness. Sometimes I have to ask on-line chat help if they’re human or not – sadly, because they didn’t seem to be answering me – maybe not the best argument for AIs. Intelligence is hard to come by.
Scientists from Toronto, NYU, and MIT developed an algorithm that captures our learning abilities, enabling computers to recognize and draw simple visual concepts that are mostly indistinguishable from those created by humans. Their work appears in the journal Science.
We human beings turn out to be pretty darned smart:
It has been very difficult to build machines that require as little data as humans when learning a new concept.
The machine’s not yet as smart as a human child, but even science fiction AIs are still learning.
Filed under: Kate's Books, Neat Science News, Science Fiction Tagged: AI, Artificial intelligence, mars, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, New York University, science, science fiction, SciFi, Turing test, University of Toronto
December 17, 2015
No Aliens at Cygnus Star :\ #space #star
Remember the speculation that odd dimming patterns of a star in Cygnus might be caused by orbiting structures there, built by an intelligent alien civilization? Scientists jumped on the hypothesis and checked. Alas.
We found no evidence of an advanced civilization beaming intentional laser [or radio] signals toward Earth,” said study co-author Douglas Vakoch, president of SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) International in San Francisco. space.com
So maybe the star has an unusual cloud of comets – strange and fascinating, but not sentient. Keep looking and listening, SETI.
BTW – why do scifi aliens say they are “from” a constellation? Constellations are regions of the sky as seen from Earth. The stars forming the main pattern are seldom related or even especially close to each other – it’s just an optical illusion and a little pattern-seeking by the human brain. Quit it, scifi aliens!
Filed under: Neat Science News Tagged: alien, comet, constellation, Cygnus, SciFi, search for intelligent life, SETI
December 16, 2015
December 12, 2015
Eat Like a Martian – #MarsSurvivalTips Bananas in #Space -How About Banana #Beer? :)
In my new #scifi #book Born on Mars, a visitor from the European colony tastes banana beer in the Sino-African colony. Not a big part of the story – just a little fun on Mars.
Try it yourself at home:
You’ll need ripe bananas, some wads of grass, water, and Saccharomyces cerevisiae (which is also used for grape wine) or the microbe of your choice. Use cloth to filter the final product. On Earth you can add sorghum flour to improve the taste.
Clean your equipment with boiling water, and be sure to wash yourself, too.
Peel ripe bananas by hand. Use only bananas ripe enough to be peeled by hand
Extract Juice. Knead the bananas in the grass until clear juice is extracted. The residue will remain in the grass. Recycle that in your garden – settlers need every scrap of organic material available.
Mix 1 cup of water to 3 cups banana juice.
Mix sorghum flour if you have it, to taste. Start with 1 cup flour to 12 cups banana mix. Stir well.
Ferment in a covered container for 18 -24 hours.
Filter. Force the liquid through a cotton cloth bag with your hands.
Enjoy. The beer should be refrigerated and drunk with a few days.Ya gotta survive, but, hey – ya gotta live, too.
More ways to eat like a Martian:
fish supper
mealworm snack
practice on Earth for Mars
Martian colony demonstration
Thanks to gourmetsleuth and howtopedia
Filed under: Kate's Books, Neat Science News, Science Fiction Tagged: banana, beer, book, Born on Mars, colonization, colony, Glory on Mars, mars, Martian, recipe, science fiction, SciFi, settler
December 11, 2015
First Cat on #Mars – does the #scifi #cat have a name? :\
Harvey posed for the cover of Glory on Mars
In Glory on Mars, colonists take a cat with them to Mars, and he figures in a pivotal discovery. One reader says, given the title, the cat’s name should be Glory.
The book never mentions the cat’s name.
What is it?
Once a book is published, I think the author is no more an expert than any reader – maybe less so. The author is burdened with threads that didn’t work and abandoned versions that were changed – while the reader knows the story.
So perhaps readers should decide – what’s the cat’s name?
Filed under: Kate's Books, Science Fiction Tagged: #marssurvivaltips, adventure, colonization, colony, ebook, enovel, hard science fiction, mars, Martian, novel, science fiction, SciFi, space, spacecraft, spaceship
