Kate Rauner's Blog, page 8

Science Fiction Fantasy Adventure on a Strange Planet

Wander farther than ever before in my latest story. Cross the galaxy with colonists to start life on an exoplanet and discover an alien race touched by fantasy. Join me in this stand-alone tale – the entire story is right here in one book.

A journey to a new world. An unexpected indigenous culture. Two reluctant leaders desperate to save both their people.

Trey Jackson yearns for purpose. Burdened by guilt over his lover’s death four decades prior, the old pilot languishes in a small community fearful of exploring the planet they colonized. But he’s inspired by a fresh-faced teen studying native whales… and shocked when their research raft gets dragged by one of the creatures to the aliens’ shore.

Zahra strives to protect her own kind. Unwillingly serving as a Shamanic herbalist for an abusive chieftain, she struggles to stop him from his murderous raids by keeping him drugged. But once her herbs lose their effectiveness, she desperately steers the violent man’s attention from her birth home to plunder other islands.

When Jackson seeks Zahra’s help returning to the colony, his communication with the mysterious natives risks triggering a dangerous chain of events. And while Zahra fears her leader’s unquenchable greed and plots the unthinkable to save those she loves, she senses the tired old man could be the hero they all need…

Will their mutual first contact bring opportunity and understanding, or end in tragedy?

Chronicle of an Alien World is an action-packed science fiction adventure. If you like relatable heroes, fascinating what-if scenarios, and heartbreaking moral quandaries, you’ll love this thought-provoking tale.

Buy Chronicle of an Alien World to cross faraway frontiers today! Click here.

I can offer a few promotional copies. Are you willing and able to post a review/rating on Amazon? Then contact me before September 30, 2023, tell me if you’d like an EPUB, MOBI for kindle, or PDF and I’ll email a free copy for you to read and review. Why? I want to know what you think of the story, and your review will help other readers find Chronicle. That’s vital for an indie author like myself, and good for your karma too. (If you receive this via email, there should be a link below for “submit a Form.” Click that to request your copy.)

Submit a form.

Wild Food – Banana Yucca from my yard

I live in the mountains of southwest New Mexico, USA. I’ve left my property wild, and have lots of native plants, but this is the first year I harvested Banana Yucca fruit. (Don’t confuse this plant with cassava yuca.) I’m no expert! Here’s my experience.

Yucca are evergreen and have beautiful flowers in the spring Lots of critters eat the flowers, but some fruit develops. Critters like the fruit too. I’m the critter who decided to try the fruit this August. Most of the 40 types of yuccas have dry hard fruits, but the fruits of banana yucca are fleshy and rumored to be tasty. Roasted on the grill… The fruit are packed with seeds, each segment surrounded by a shelly sort of case. The seeds scoop out easily. Sometimes I got the casings out easily and sometimes not. To eat, I scraped the flesh out of the skin with a spoon. It’s mild, sweet, and soft, sort of like a ripe peach in terms of texture. Like most wild foods I know of, a lot of work for the reward.

Click here for another post from someone who’s tried eating various parts of the yucca – note the warnings! Approach any wild “food” with caution.

I’ve seen suggestions to crush and boil the seeds until tender. I did grind some seeds in my coffee grinder. They’re so hard, I can’t imagine how you’d do that by hand! I tried mixing the seed-flour with water and pan-frying, but it stayed like sand. If anyone has first hand suggestions for the seeds, please let me know.

“These fruits are a traditional food of the Apache and Navajo, prepared by roasting or baking, stripping out the seeds, pounding the remaining flesh into a pulp, forming the pulp into flat cakes, and sun-drying them for later use.” US Forest Service

What smashed $15 million worth of concrete to smithereens? #spacex #rocket

Have you kept track of the aftermath from Spacex’s failed launch of Starship last April?

The rocket didn’t reach space and had to be destroyed – not unusual in early test flights. But…

Starship prototype

The system designed to destroy the rocket in the event of an emergency didn’t behave the way the company expected, either. [40-second delay between the system’s activation and the destruction of the vehicle.] The launch pad itself, tested for the first time by 33 powerful rocket engines firing at once, dissolved, pelting the area surrounding the pad with chunks of rock. Sand was hurled into the air and rained down on communities six miles away from the launch site. Quartz

The regulatory finding of “no significant impact” to the environment seems to have missed a few things. The Federal Aviation Administration is demanding corrective measures before issuing another launch permit – as it should. I’m as big a fan of space launches as anyone, but I live on planet Earth, and I’m a big fan of the ground too.

Thanks to Quartz for their update, and the story behind the Texas launch site too. Turns out, there may be some reasons for those pesky regulations.

The search for Nessie heats up

Almost a century ago, the Loch Ness Monster emerged into modern consciousness. “The biggest search for the Loch Ness monster in 50 years is about to kick off. Enthusiasts will be armed with drones and underwater acoustic devices, which have never been used to look for the mythical beast.” Quartz

Famous old photo of Nessie. Generally seen as a hoax, the original image remains controversial (as noted in the Wikipedia article.) It is difficult to comment on it without reference to this visual image.

Nessie is perhaps the most famous of the cryptids. Cryptids, elusive beasts science cannot confirm, are fascinating. Bigfoot is my favorite, though after decades with no solid evidence, I have to say, my hope for the big ape has dwindled.

Loch Ness is the second-largest and second-deepest loch in Scotland, so a thorough search may yield some nifty finds, even if no plesiosaurs turn up. I’ll be interested to see the results.

I suspect that cable TV’s appetite for mysteries (even old ones with plausible explanations) helps keep crytids alive, and the appeal is undeniable. For me, more-and-more reports of crytids in more-and-more places makes them seem less-likely to be real. If so many people see so many of them in so many places… why no tangible, undeniable proof?

One of my favorite places to learn about cryptids is the Skeptoid podcast. I like how the host searches for original source material and tracks his topics through their history.

The Moon is still hard – Russia’s crash, India’s historic first

Soft landings on the Moon are difficult. Russia managed it in the 1970s, but success is hard to replicate.

The loss of Luna 25 [over the August 19th weekend], Russia’s first moon mission in decades, likely came down to engine failure, Yury Borisov, the head of Russian space agency Roscosmos, told state media. CNN

But a fourth country has now successfully landed on the Moon.

India has become the first country to successfully land a spacecraft on the moon’s south pole. news.sky

A short operational life is planned for Chandrayaan-3, aimed at discovering mineral composition of the moon’s surface. The south pole may have enough water ice in permanent shadows to support astronauts need for water and oxygen, and perhaps allow solar panels to remain in sunlight permanently too. It’s a special place in humanity’s move into space.

Congratulations to the Satish Dhawan Space Centre and all of India.

You’ll need science fiction to travel to the Moon yourself. Try the adventures of Winnie Bravo, a brash, reckless, and often annoying young space pilot. Click here to find her story.

What’s the ultimate answer to preventing burn-out? You knew it all the time (if you’re a scifi nerd) #fortytwo

People today feel more pressure than ever, but there’s a formula for taking care of yourself. Science is clear on the amount of time required: it’s 42%.

There! The answer to the ultimate question of life, your life, is: 42. Of course it is. (If you don’t know why, check out the Wikipedia article by clicking here.)

That’s the percentage of time your body and brain need you to spend resting. It’s about 10 hours out of every 24. It doesn’t have to be every day; it can average out over a week or a month or more. stylist.co.uk

There’s some serious research behind this result, and you can read about it here, but… really… you don’t need to be convinced… do you? I know that I feel better already.

Best journal title ever: If I Fits I Sits #citizenscientist #cats

Cats love boxes, but what do they see? Trust a citizen scientist to run experiments to find out.

Kanizsa Square – which ain’t actually there

The urge to inhabit enclosed spaces is well-known to cat owners and has been documented to decrease stress in laboratory cats… cats deprived of shelter resources like boxes will attempt to manufacture their own by hiding behind or underneath box-like objects… this behavioral phenomenon proves to be an excellent tool to study the visual perception of shapes and contours in domestic cats. Science Direct

Imagine depriving your cat of, well, anything! But onward to scientific testing. Researchers created pseudo boxes with, among other things, Kanizsa Squares, where the illusion of a square is created by the surrounding shapes. We humans see the square, and so do cats. They’ll sit in that shape.

Your cat perceives the world the same way you do, at least in this situation. Doesn’t that make your day? As to why, exactly, cat’s love boxes… that will take more research. But read all about this project in Science Direct, or this article from ARS Technica.

My babies didn’t participate in the study, but here’s proof they like boxes too.

Space Junk: first-of-its-kind operation to crash a defunct satellite safely into Atlantic

Defunct spacecraft are a headache. They can smash into useful satellites and crash to Earth… who knows where.

“Today, we have 10,000 spacecraft in space, of which 2,000 are not functional. In terms of mass, we are speaking about 11,000 tons.” The ESA scientist added that around 100 tons of human-made space debris reenter Earth’s atmosphere each year, with large objects falling back to our planet at a rate of around one per week. Space.com

The European Space Agency is using the fuel left in its Aeolus satellite in a “first-of-its-kind operation to guide a dead and disused satellite back to Earth safely. The mission will pave the way for the safe return of other space-based equipment in the future.”

The descent has already begun, with Aeolus’s impact expected this Friday, July 28, 2023. Good luck, ESA.

The mess we’re making in space will only get worse. That inspired my scifi story.

Newly minted pilot Winnie Bravo sets out to clear junk from Earth orbit. She’s brash, reckless, and more than a little annoying, and capturing a stealth probe that’s destroying satellites seems the perfect way to demonstrate her talents. But the mysterious craft escapes, and someone at her corporation’s lunar base is willing to kill to stop her. Click here now and start readin g.

54 Years Since We Landed on the Moon

Do you like that “we?” NASA’s astronauts did come in peace for all mankind. (“Mankind” Well, it was 1969. Progress happens.)

“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
But after returning from space, Armstrong said that wasn’t what he had planned to say.
He said there was a lost word in his famous one-liner from the moon: “That’s one small step for ‘a’ man.” It’s just that people just didn’t hear it.”
While it seems no one heard the “a,” some research backs Armstrong. In 2006, a computer analysis of sound waves found evidence that Armstrong said what he said he said. Navytimes

Learn more from NASA’a 50th anniversary page: click here.

Until we return in person and in real-life, science fiction will have to do.

In the battle for space, someone has more than satellites in their sights.

Winnie Bravo, newly minted pilot, joins veteran Bertram clearing space junk from Earth orbit.

She’s brash, reckless, and more than a little annoying as she sets out to prove herself. Capturing a stealth probe that’s destroying satellites seems the perfect way to demonstrate her talents, but the mysterious craft escapes. Now, someone at her corporation’s lunar base is willing to kill to stop her.

Can she track down the lunar spies before they strike again?

Click now and head into orbit today.

Not the prettiest image of Earth, but if you were on Mars, you’d see this #Mars #space #astronomy

This isn’t the most impressive image of Earth from space, but image yourself pioneering on the Red Planet, looking back at your far-away planet-of-origin. Life in a colony will be hard, a mixture of tedium and terror, so are you homesick?

Look again over several weeks and – with the aid of binoculars – you’ll see a little white dot orbiting around a bigger dot. That’s our Moon, orbiting Earth. ESA

Thanks to the European Space Agency

Ever dream of a life on Mars? Join a scifi colony now – from humanity’s first fragile foothold through generations.

No matter how noble the aspirations, how alluring the technologies, colonizing requires individual intelligence, ingenuity, and courage. First, they must survive.

Click here now and start reading.