Martha Wells's Blog, page 86
June 21, 2016
Books!
* False Hearts by Laura Lam
Laura Lam's adult sci-fi debut False Hearts: Two formerly conjoined sisters are ensnared in a murderous plot involving psychoactive drugs, shared dreaming, organized crime, and a sinister cult.
* Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee
When Captain Kel Cheris of the hexarchate is disgraced for her unconventional tactics, Kel Command gives her a chance to redeem herself, by retaking the Fortress of Scattered Needles from the heretics. Cheris’s career isn’t the only thing at stake: if the fortress falls, the hexarchate itself might be next.
* Dreams of Distant Shores by Patricia McKillip
Bestselling author Patricia A. McKillip (The Riddle-Master of Hed) is one of the most lyrical writers gracing the fantasy genre. With the debut of her newest work, Dreams of Distant Shores is a true ode to her many talents. Within these pages you will find a youthful artist possessed by both his painting and his muse and seductive travelers from the sea enrapturing distant lovers. The statue of a mermaid comes suddenly to life, and two friends are transfixed by a haunted estate.
* Lilith Links by J.L. Clark
Suddenly, Sophia is thrust into a world that she never knew existed, and finds herself in the middle of an ancient struggle between good and evil. Time is against her as she and her new friends struggle to take possession of a powerful magic before it falls into the wrong hands.
* Tor.com: Lullaby for a Lost World by Aliette de Bodard
Charlotte died to shore up her master’s house. Her bones grew into the foundation and pushed up through the walls, feeding his power and continuing the cycle. As time passes and the ones she loved fade away, the house and the master remain, and she yearns ever more deeply for vengeance.
* League of Dragons by Naomi Novik
Napoleon’s invasion of Russia has been roundly thwarted. But even as Capt. William Laurence and the dragon Temeraire pursue the retreating enemy through an unforgiving winter, Napoleon is raising a new force, and he’ll soon have enough men and dragons to resume the offensive. While the emperor regroups, the allies have an opportunity to strike first and defeat him once and for all—if internal struggles and petty squabbles don’t tear them apart.
Novella: The Dinosaur Hunters by Patrick Samphire
Mars in 1815 is a world of wonders, from the hanging ballrooms of Tharsis City to the air forests of Patagonian Mars, and from the ice caves of Noachis Terra to the Great Wall of Cyclopia, beyond which dinosaurs still roam.
Laura Lam's adult sci-fi debut False Hearts: Two formerly conjoined sisters are ensnared in a murderous plot involving psychoactive drugs, shared dreaming, organized crime, and a sinister cult.
* Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee
When Captain Kel Cheris of the hexarchate is disgraced for her unconventional tactics, Kel Command gives her a chance to redeem herself, by retaking the Fortress of Scattered Needles from the heretics. Cheris’s career isn’t the only thing at stake: if the fortress falls, the hexarchate itself might be next.
* Dreams of Distant Shores by Patricia McKillip
Bestselling author Patricia A. McKillip (The Riddle-Master of Hed) is one of the most lyrical writers gracing the fantasy genre. With the debut of her newest work, Dreams of Distant Shores is a true ode to her many talents. Within these pages you will find a youthful artist possessed by both his painting and his muse and seductive travelers from the sea enrapturing distant lovers. The statue of a mermaid comes suddenly to life, and two friends are transfixed by a haunted estate.
* Lilith Links by J.L. Clark
Suddenly, Sophia is thrust into a world that she never knew existed, and finds herself in the middle of an ancient struggle between good and evil. Time is against her as she and her new friends struggle to take possession of a powerful magic before it falls into the wrong hands.
* Tor.com: Lullaby for a Lost World by Aliette de Bodard
Charlotte died to shore up her master’s house. Her bones grew into the foundation and pushed up through the walls, feeding his power and continuing the cycle. As time passes and the ones she loved fade away, the house and the master remain, and she yearns ever more deeply for vengeance.
* League of Dragons by Naomi Novik
Napoleon’s invasion of Russia has been roundly thwarted. But even as Capt. William Laurence and the dragon Temeraire pursue the retreating enemy through an unforgiving winter, Napoleon is raising a new force, and he’ll soon have enough men and dragons to resume the offensive. While the emperor regroups, the allies have an opportunity to strike first and defeat him once and for all—if internal struggles and petty squabbles don’t tear them apart.
Novella: The Dinosaur Hunters by Patrick Samphire
Mars in 1815 is a world of wonders, from the hanging ballrooms of Tharsis City to the air forests of Patagonian Mars, and from the ice caves of Noachis Terra to the Great Wall of Cyclopia, beyond which dinosaurs still roam.
June 20, 2016
Comicpalooza
So, last weekend I had a somewhat sore back from being in an unstable position while trying to keep a box from falling, then Tuesday evening my back gave out while I was getting out of the bathtub and probably got a torn ligament. It was extremely painful, like getting a small electric shock in the back, and I almost fainted. So, that happened.
Then Thursday I went to Comicpalooza. I had a cane and a back brace and a lot of Aleve, and my husband was helping me. At that point, I could walk and sit but couldn't pick things up off the floor or do things like put my shoes on, but it got gradually better over the weekend. We got to the con, got our passes, and then I rested in the room until friends came to pick us up to go to dinner. (It was a place near the hotel that served Chinese and Vietnamese food and it was delicious.)
Friday I hobbled down the skybridge and did my two panels and managed to eat lunch down on the convention floor near the maker faire but didn't really get to see anything. After my second panel I was pretty much out of it so we went back to the room. I felt better by the time we needed to go down to meet J. Kathleen Cheney and Michelle Muenzler for dinner and hanging out in the bar afterward. It turns out rum is a great muscle relaxant.
Saturday I did my panel and a signing, and spent the rest of the time hanging out with friends who had come in for the con. I got to see the Orion capsule in the big NASA exhibit, my husband bought me a small light-up Atlantis Stargate that is awesome, I got a t-shirt with Rey from Star Wars and a NASA t-shirt, and saw a lot of costumes. Then we met up with a big group for dinner. I did pretty well that day, and was able to walk in the dealers room for about an hour and a half. One of the friends was
pentapus
who did some fabulous Raksura art for me during the panel.
Sunday I was done with programming, so we went through the artists alley until I started to feel bad, but as we were leaving my husband stopped and got me an autograph from Peter Mayhew, who is also awesome. (He was sitting next to Carl Weathers, who is extremely cool too.) Then we took off for home.
This was a contest where robots had to attack that castle.
Then Thursday I went to Comicpalooza. I had a cane and a back brace and a lot of Aleve, and my husband was helping me. At that point, I could walk and sit but couldn't pick things up off the floor or do things like put my shoes on, but it got gradually better over the weekend. We got to the con, got our passes, and then I rested in the room until friends came to pick us up to go to dinner. (It was a place near the hotel that served Chinese and Vietnamese food and it was delicious.)
Friday I hobbled down the skybridge and did my two panels and managed to eat lunch down on the convention floor near the maker faire but didn't really get to see anything. After my second panel I was pretty much out of it so we went back to the room. I felt better by the time we needed to go down to meet J. Kathleen Cheney and Michelle Muenzler for dinner and hanging out in the bar afterward. It turns out rum is a great muscle relaxant.
Saturday I did my panel and a signing, and spent the rest of the time hanging out with friends who had come in for the con. I got to see the Orion capsule in the big NASA exhibit, my husband bought me a small light-up Atlantis Stargate that is awesome, I got a t-shirt with Rey from Star Wars and a NASA t-shirt, and saw a lot of costumes. Then we met up with a big group for dinner. I did pretty well that day, and was able to walk in the dealers room for about an hour and a half. One of the friends was
pentapus
who did some fabulous Raksura art for me during the panel.Sunday I was done with programming, so we went through the artists alley until I started to feel bad, but as we were leaving my husband stopped and got me an autograph from Peter Mayhew, who is also awesome. (He was sitting next to Carl Weathers, who is extremely cool too.) Then we took off for home.
This was a contest where robots had to attack that castle.
June 15, 2016
The Edge of Worlds Audiobook
Just saw this! The release date for The Edge of Worlds on Audible.com is apparently today:
http://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/The-Edge-of-Worlds-Audiobook/B01H29DN2S/ref=a_search_c4_1_1_srTtl?qid=1466024911&sr=1-1
http://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/The-Edge-of-Worlds-Audiobook/B01H29DN2S/ref=a_search_c4_1_1_srTtl?qid=1466024911&sr=1-1
Last night became sort of fraught when a strained muscle ...
Last night became sort of fraught when a strained muscle in my side apparently caused a back spasm when I was getting out of the bathtub. I fell down and felt sick and faint for a while. Fortunately my husband was in the next room and helped me get out of the tub. (That was a very, very bad place to have a back spasm.) I feel kind of crappy right now but I'm still planning to go to Comicpalooza. I just may be moving slowly.
June 14, 2016
The Writing Middle Slump
(repost of something I wrote earlier this year)
I wanted to do a blog post about getting through writing slumps, because of something someone said on Twitter. (I can't remember what it was now, but that's how my brain rolls lately.)
A lot of people talk about the mid-book slump. Writing the beginning of a book is exciting, everything is new, you're creating the world, meeting the characters for the first time. The end is also exciting, because all the plot threads are tying up and you should be done soon.
The middle is the hard part, where you have to make the magic happen and start pulling things together, increasing the complication but starting to find answers to mysteries. You have to make all the cool stuff you came up with in the beginning make sense.
Sometimes it feels like a slog, and that's when you want to quit and go write something else. You want that really, really bad sometimes. If you do that with every book you write, it's going to be a problem and end up getting you zero finished books. (This, by the way, is why agents, and publishers who take unagented submissions, only want to see finished books from new authors. It's a lot easier to start a book than to finish it, and they want to make sure you can finish.)
So if your book middle feels like a horrible slog and you'd rather go out and shovel snow or haul rocks or dig holes in the back yard, it isn't necessarily a problem.
One thing I've noticed about myself is that if the writing doesn't come easily (and it's not just because I'm tired or unwell or stressed etc.) then the chances are good that there's a problem that part of my brain is aware of even though the rest of me is willfully trying to ignore it. Figuring out what that problem is can be tricky, but first you have to figure out whether it's actually a problem.
*I think you do need to ask yourself if it's just that you're tired and need to apply more hard work?
* Or is there an actual problem? Is it a pacing issue, are things moving too slowly?
* Are the characters still in character, are you making them act in ways you kind of know they wouldn't just to make your plot work?
* Is there something you're trying to do now that needs more setup earlier in the book? Did you forget to put in something you know you really needed?
* Or are you actually getting bored with your plot? Because if you're bored with your plot, readers may be bored with it too.
If you're saying: "I have to write this part and I don't want to." Ask yourself: Do you really have to? Is it necessary for the plot, characterization, the story? Why don't you want to? Is it not right for the pacing, slowing things down when it should be speeding things up? Maybe it doesn't need to be there.
If you don't like it anymore, it's okay to make something else happen instead.
You can always take a step back and re-imagine your plot. You should know the characters better at this point; maybe your plot needs to change to accommodate that. (It's often hard for some writers to create a character in a vacuum. It's only when I write characters interacting with other characters that I start to get a real sense of who they are and how they behave under stress.)
What is the coolest, most exciting thing that could happen here that will still fit the story you want to tell? Maybe you should be writing that instead.
Your plot is not carved in stone, even if you did an outline. One thing I've found out over and over again is that plot points can sound great in the outline and it's only when you start actually writing those scenes that you see the flaws.
This is where experience and understanding how your own writing brain works is important. The only way to get experience is of course to keep writing through those middles, no matter what you have to do to conquer them.
I wanted to do a blog post about getting through writing slumps, because of something someone said on Twitter. (I can't remember what it was now, but that's how my brain rolls lately.)
A lot of people talk about the mid-book slump. Writing the beginning of a book is exciting, everything is new, you're creating the world, meeting the characters for the first time. The end is also exciting, because all the plot threads are tying up and you should be done soon.
The middle is the hard part, where you have to make the magic happen and start pulling things together, increasing the complication but starting to find answers to mysteries. You have to make all the cool stuff you came up with in the beginning make sense.
Sometimes it feels like a slog, and that's when you want to quit and go write something else. You want that really, really bad sometimes. If you do that with every book you write, it's going to be a problem and end up getting you zero finished books. (This, by the way, is why agents, and publishers who take unagented submissions, only want to see finished books from new authors. It's a lot easier to start a book than to finish it, and they want to make sure you can finish.)
So if your book middle feels like a horrible slog and you'd rather go out and shovel snow or haul rocks or dig holes in the back yard, it isn't necessarily a problem.
One thing I've noticed about myself is that if the writing doesn't come easily (and it's not just because I'm tired or unwell or stressed etc.) then the chances are good that there's a problem that part of my brain is aware of even though the rest of me is willfully trying to ignore it. Figuring out what that problem is can be tricky, but first you have to figure out whether it's actually a problem.
*I think you do need to ask yourself if it's just that you're tired and need to apply more hard work?
* Or is there an actual problem? Is it a pacing issue, are things moving too slowly?
* Are the characters still in character, are you making them act in ways you kind of know they wouldn't just to make your plot work?
* Is there something you're trying to do now that needs more setup earlier in the book? Did you forget to put in something you know you really needed?
* Or are you actually getting bored with your plot? Because if you're bored with your plot, readers may be bored with it too.
If you're saying: "I have to write this part and I don't want to." Ask yourself: Do you really have to? Is it necessary for the plot, characterization, the story? Why don't you want to? Is it not right for the pacing, slowing things down when it should be speeding things up? Maybe it doesn't need to be there.
If you don't like it anymore, it's okay to make something else happen instead.
You can always take a step back and re-imagine your plot. You should know the characters better at this point; maybe your plot needs to change to accommodate that. (It's often hard for some writers to create a character in a vacuum. It's only when I write characters interacting with other characters that I start to get a real sense of who they are and how they behave under stress.)
What is the coolest, most exciting thing that could happen here that will still fit the story you want to tell? Maybe you should be writing that instead.
Your plot is not carved in stone, even if you did an outline. One thing I've found out over and over again is that plot points can sound great in the outline and it's only when you start actually writing those scenes that you see the flaws.
This is where experience and understanding how your own writing brain works is important. The only way to get experience is of course to keep writing through those middles, no matter what you have to do to conquer them.
June 13, 2016
Monday
Well, yesterday was a terrible day. Here's a good info post on the Orlando shooting, and it also includes ways to help and donate.
***
Catherine Lundoff has reposted her series on LGBT SF and F through the years: Before 1970, In the 70s, In the 80s, In the 90s, 2000-2010 Part 1, and 2000-2010 Part 2
***
Saturday I spent the day at a friend's house on an ongoing project to sort and unpack and declutter, and again we made huge progress. Sunday I worked on the novella I'm writing.
Later this week is Comicpalooza in Houston, on June 17-19, which is one of my favorite new cons. It's a comiccon, with actors and media guests, and a huge dealer's room and artist's alley plus a small makerfaire, but it also has a full schedule of literary and writing panels (like 50 of them) and a large number of writer guests.
My panel schedule:
- Friday 11:30 to 12:30 Outlandish Others: How Genre Fiction Employs Androids, Elves, and other non-human Races
Carrie Patel, Tex Thompson, Donna Grant, Martha Wells
- Friday 2:30 to 3:30 Young Adult Fantasy
Joy Preble, J.L. Clark, Katherine Catmull, Angela Holder, Martha Wells
- Saturday 11:00 to 12:00 Plotting and Pacing a Short Story
Ken Liu, Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, C. Stuart Hardwick, Martha Wells
- NEW: Saturday 1:00 to 2:00 Signing at the Barnes and Noble Booth in the Dealers Room
Last year it was in the artists alley, next to the celeb signing area. Hopefully they'll have copes of The Edge of Worlds
***
Catherine Lundoff has reposted her series on LGBT SF and F through the years: Before 1970, In the 70s, In the 80s, In the 90s, 2000-2010 Part 1, and 2000-2010 Part 2
***
Saturday I spent the day at a friend's house on an ongoing project to sort and unpack and declutter, and again we made huge progress. Sunday I worked on the novella I'm writing.
Later this week is Comicpalooza in Houston, on June 17-19, which is one of my favorite new cons. It's a comiccon, with actors and media guests, and a huge dealer's room and artist's alley plus a small makerfaire, but it also has a full schedule of literary and writing panels (like 50 of them) and a large number of writer guests.
My panel schedule:
- Friday 11:30 to 12:30 Outlandish Others: How Genre Fiction Employs Androids, Elves, and other non-human Races
Carrie Patel, Tex Thompson, Donna Grant, Martha Wells
- Friday 2:30 to 3:30 Young Adult Fantasy
Joy Preble, J.L. Clark, Katherine Catmull, Angela Holder, Martha Wells
- Saturday 11:00 to 12:00 Plotting and Pacing a Short Story
Ken Liu, Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, C. Stuart Hardwick, Martha Wells
- NEW: Saturday 1:00 to 2:00 Signing at the Barnes and Noble Booth in the Dealers Room
Last year it was in the artists alley, next to the celeb signing area. Hopefully they'll have copes of The Edge of Worlds
June 8, 2016
Books!
* Mother of Souls by Heather Rose Jones
All her life, Serafina Talarico has searched in vain for a place where she and her mystical talents belong. She never found it in Rome—the city of her birth—where her family’s Ethiopian origins marked them as immigrants. After traveling halfway across Europe to study with Alpennia's Royal Thaumaturgist, her hopes of finding a home among Margerit Sovitre’s circle of scholars are dashed, for Serafina can perceive, but not evoke, the mystical forces of the Mysteries of the Saints and even Margerit can't awaken her talents.
* Hwarhath Stories: Transgressive Tales by Aliens by Eleanor Arnason
Hwarhath Stories: Transgressive Tales by Aliens collects a dozen Hwarhath tales with commentary by their translator. As the translator notes, ''Humanity has encountered only one other species able to travel among the stars. This species, who call themselves the hwarhath, or 'people,' are also the only intelligent species so far encountered. Of course, we interest and puzzle and disturb each other... The stories in this collection were written after the hwarhath learned enough about humanity to realize how similar (and different) we are. Our existence has called into question many ideas about life and morality that most hwarhath would have called certain a century ago...''
* Will Do Magic For Small Change by Andrea Hairston
Cinnamon Jones dreams of stepping on stage and acting her heart out like her famous grandparents, Redwood and Wildfire. But at 5'10'' and 180 pounds, shes theatrically challenged. Her family life is a tangle of mystery and deadly secrets, and nobody is telling Cinnamon the whole truth. Before her older brother died, he gave Cinnamon The Chronicles of the Great Wanderer, a tale of a Dahomean warrior woman and an alien from another dimension who perform in Paris and at the 1893 Chicago Worlds Fair.
* Dragon Sisters by Joyce Chng
The compilation of both Xiao Xiao & The Dragon's Pearl and Ming Zhu & The Pearl That Shines. Enter a world of fantasy and magic and recipes set in Qing China. Read about the adventures of Xiao Xiao, a daughter of an Imperial Courtesan, and Ming Zhu, a dragon princess, daughter of the Dragon King.
* Spear of Light by Brenda Cooper
When the post-human Next suddenly re-appear in a solar system that banished them, humans are threatened. Their reactions vary from disgust and anger to yearning to live forever like the powerful Next, who are casually building a new city out of starships in the heart of the re-wilded planet Lym. The first families of Lym must deal with being invaded while they grapple with their own inner fears.
* The Root by Na'amen Gobert Tilahun
A dark, gritty urban fantasy debut set in modern-day San Francisco, filled with gods, sinister government agencies, and worlds of dark magic hidden just below the surface. When a secret government agency trying to enslave you isn’t the biggest problem you’re facing, you’re in trouble. Erik, a former teen star living in San Francisco, thought his life was complicated; having his ex-boyfriend in jail because of the scandal that destroyed his career seemed overwhelming. Then Erik learned he was Blooded: descended from the Gods.
All her life, Serafina Talarico has searched in vain for a place where she and her mystical talents belong. She never found it in Rome—the city of her birth—where her family’s Ethiopian origins marked them as immigrants. After traveling halfway across Europe to study with Alpennia's Royal Thaumaturgist, her hopes of finding a home among Margerit Sovitre’s circle of scholars are dashed, for Serafina can perceive, but not evoke, the mystical forces of the Mysteries of the Saints and even Margerit can't awaken her talents.
* Hwarhath Stories: Transgressive Tales by Aliens by Eleanor Arnason
Hwarhath Stories: Transgressive Tales by Aliens collects a dozen Hwarhath tales with commentary by their translator. As the translator notes, ''Humanity has encountered only one other species able to travel among the stars. This species, who call themselves the hwarhath, or 'people,' are also the only intelligent species so far encountered. Of course, we interest and puzzle and disturb each other... The stories in this collection were written after the hwarhath learned enough about humanity to realize how similar (and different) we are. Our existence has called into question many ideas about life and morality that most hwarhath would have called certain a century ago...''
* Will Do Magic For Small Change by Andrea Hairston
Cinnamon Jones dreams of stepping on stage and acting her heart out like her famous grandparents, Redwood and Wildfire. But at 5'10'' and 180 pounds, shes theatrically challenged. Her family life is a tangle of mystery and deadly secrets, and nobody is telling Cinnamon the whole truth. Before her older brother died, he gave Cinnamon The Chronicles of the Great Wanderer, a tale of a Dahomean warrior woman and an alien from another dimension who perform in Paris and at the 1893 Chicago Worlds Fair.
* Dragon Sisters by Joyce Chng
The compilation of both Xiao Xiao & The Dragon's Pearl and Ming Zhu & The Pearl That Shines. Enter a world of fantasy and magic and recipes set in Qing China. Read about the adventures of Xiao Xiao, a daughter of an Imperial Courtesan, and Ming Zhu, a dragon princess, daughter of the Dragon King.
* Spear of Light by Brenda Cooper
When the post-human Next suddenly re-appear in a solar system that banished them, humans are threatened. Their reactions vary from disgust and anger to yearning to live forever like the powerful Next, who are casually building a new city out of starships in the heart of the re-wilded planet Lym. The first families of Lym must deal with being invaded while they grapple with their own inner fears.
* The Root by Na'amen Gobert Tilahun
A dark, gritty urban fantasy debut set in modern-day San Francisco, filled with gods, sinister government agencies, and worlds of dark magic hidden just below the surface. When a secret government agency trying to enslave you isn’t the biggest problem you’re facing, you’re in trouble. Erik, a former teen star living in San Francisco, thought his life was complicated; having his ex-boyfriend in jail because of the scandal that destroyed his career seemed overwhelming. Then Erik learned he was Blooded: descended from the Gods.
June 7, 2016
Airships
We were talking a bit about airships on Tumblr yesterday, and this is a post I wrote a few years ago:
A Quick and Very Basic Airship Primer
I've seen some bizarre and annoying mistakes made with regard to airships lately, so I wanted to collect some basic links in one handy spot.
What are they?
Dirigibles, Zeppelins, and Blimps
A rigid airship is a powered, steerable, lighter-than-air vehicle which maintains its shape by means of a rigid framework, or "skeleton," surrounding one or more individual cells inflated with lifting gas.
A blimp has no internal skeleton, and a semi-rigid airship has only a partial one.
Rigid airships are generally called zeppelins, but a Zeppelin is actually a rigid airship made by Count von Zeppelin.
Airships are generally not very fast, compared to say, planes. LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin could do about 80 MPH.
Metal-Clad Airships were not popular. Only four ships of this type are known to have been built, and only two actually flew...
Airships used flammable hydrogen as a lifting gas or helium, which is inert but more expensive and the supply was limited, and there was debate on which was better: Aeronautics: Helium vs. Hydrogen Nor is the danger of fire totally eliminated with the use of helium; the gas-tanks and the fuel system generally are still vulnerable. But when a ship is properly designed and carefully handled, the danger of fire is comparatively small, even with hydrogen. Personally, I feel it comes down to whether you'd rather die by burning up or by plummeting to the ground.
Landing: How To
Hot air balloons can land on their own because the balloonist is controlling the temperature of the air inside the balloon with the burner. Hotter air = balloon go up, Cooler air = balloon go down. To land, they let the air cool slowly (hopefully slowly) until the balloon touches down. (Or drags across the ground and then falls over.)
Airships don't do that. See Larry's U.S. Navy Airship Picture Book: Our Landings Were Always Exciting They don't just drop down and park. Landing our giant airship was a major operation where few things were in our favor. Often it took us several tries to make a good approach, roll to a stop, and to get enough groundhandlers on the lines to hold us stationary. The slightest wind could push us enough so that the ground handlers couldn't hold us in place for the mobile mast to approach and lock to the airship bow. That happened many times.
Mooring to a building, like the Empire State Building, is possible but the building has to be carefully designed for it, which the Empire State Building actually wasn't. From the article Airships and the Empire State Building: Fact and Fiction (not online anymore)
Granted, the building's framework was stiffened against the 50-ton pull of a moored dirigible, some of the winch equipment for pulling in arriving ships was installed, and the 86th floor was readied with space for a departure lounge and customs ticket offices. The builder's lawyers even prepared a thick brief, arguing, amongst other things, that owners of neighboring buildings could not sustain a claim of trespass when they found dirigibles overhead. But no one worked out one other problem: wind. The steel-and-glass canyons of Manhattan are an airship captain's nightmare of shifting air currents. Raskob and Smith were inviting the unwieldy craft to come in low and slow, over hazards such as the menacing Chrysler Building spire, and somehow tie up without use of a ground crew. Then, too, if the crew released ballast to maintain pitch control, a torrent of water would cascade onto the streets below. And once secured, a dirigible could be tethered only at the nose, with no ground lines to keep it steady.
Passengers would have to make their way down a swinging gangway, nearly a quarter mile in the air, onto a narrow open walkway near the top of the mast. After squeezing through a tight door, they would have to descend two steep ladders inside the mast before reaching the elevators. "Can you see some 75-year-old dowager doing that?" asks Alexander Smirnoff, the current telecommunications director of the building, as he stands on that walkway.
Crashing: How To
The Hindenburg didn't crash into the ground. The hydrogen gas cells caught on fire, and then it fell.
Blimp Crashlands on Roof of a Building in Manhattan In airship on skyscraper collisions, skyscrapers mostly win.
The Crash of Navy Blimp L-8 If no one is controlling them, airships will eventually hit the ground. Caddies at the Lake Merced Golf & Country Club witnessed the blimp disappear behind two hills, and then rise again after a brief snag on a cliff on Ocean Beach. This snag gouged the cliffside, causing the starboard engine to be packed with dirt, and bending the propeller blades. Also, one of the two depth charges on board the airship broke free from its rack, and fell to the ground at the Olympic Club's golf course.
USS Shenandoah Buffeted severely by air currents, Shenandoah's crew lost control of the airship. Rapidly rising and falling, the airship's structure amidships became overstressed, breaking it in two. As Shenandoah broke up, its external control car and engines fell free, killing Lansdowne and several of the crew. Lieutenant Commander Charles E. Rosendahl and other members of the crew were able to safely descend, flying the bow section as a balloon. All told the crash claimed 14 dead, while 29 managed to reach the ground alive.
And eventually they crash one too many times: USS Macon A violent gust tore off her upper fin, causing damage that soon brought her down into the sea. Though all but two of her crew were rescued, the dirigible sank in deep water, effectively ending the Navy's controversial, and trouble-plagued, program of rigid airship operations.
Oh, and before there were UFOs, there were Unidentified Flying Airships
A Quick and Very Basic Airship Primer
I've seen some bizarre and annoying mistakes made with regard to airships lately, so I wanted to collect some basic links in one handy spot.
What are they?
Dirigibles, Zeppelins, and Blimps
A rigid airship is a powered, steerable, lighter-than-air vehicle which maintains its shape by means of a rigid framework, or "skeleton," surrounding one or more individual cells inflated with lifting gas.
A blimp has no internal skeleton, and a semi-rigid airship has only a partial one.
Rigid airships are generally called zeppelins, but a Zeppelin is actually a rigid airship made by Count von Zeppelin.
Airships are generally not very fast, compared to say, planes. LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin could do about 80 MPH.
Metal-Clad Airships were not popular. Only four ships of this type are known to have been built, and only two actually flew...
Airships used flammable hydrogen as a lifting gas or helium, which is inert but more expensive and the supply was limited, and there was debate on which was better: Aeronautics: Helium vs. Hydrogen Nor is the danger of fire totally eliminated with the use of helium; the gas-tanks and the fuel system generally are still vulnerable. But when a ship is properly designed and carefully handled, the danger of fire is comparatively small, even with hydrogen. Personally, I feel it comes down to whether you'd rather die by burning up or by plummeting to the ground.
Landing: How To
Hot air balloons can land on their own because the balloonist is controlling the temperature of the air inside the balloon with the burner. Hotter air = balloon go up, Cooler air = balloon go down. To land, they let the air cool slowly (hopefully slowly) until the balloon touches down. (Or drags across the ground and then falls over.)
Airships don't do that. See Larry's U.S. Navy Airship Picture Book: Our Landings Were Always Exciting They don't just drop down and park. Landing our giant airship was a major operation where few things were in our favor. Often it took us several tries to make a good approach, roll to a stop, and to get enough groundhandlers on the lines to hold us stationary. The slightest wind could push us enough so that the ground handlers couldn't hold us in place for the mobile mast to approach and lock to the airship bow. That happened many times.
Mooring to a building, like the Empire State Building, is possible but the building has to be carefully designed for it, which the Empire State Building actually wasn't. From the article Airships and the Empire State Building: Fact and Fiction (not online anymore)
Granted, the building's framework was stiffened against the 50-ton pull of a moored dirigible, some of the winch equipment for pulling in arriving ships was installed, and the 86th floor was readied with space for a departure lounge and customs ticket offices. The builder's lawyers even prepared a thick brief, arguing, amongst other things, that owners of neighboring buildings could not sustain a claim of trespass when they found dirigibles overhead. But no one worked out one other problem: wind. The steel-and-glass canyons of Manhattan are an airship captain's nightmare of shifting air currents. Raskob and Smith were inviting the unwieldy craft to come in low and slow, over hazards such as the menacing Chrysler Building spire, and somehow tie up without use of a ground crew. Then, too, if the crew released ballast to maintain pitch control, a torrent of water would cascade onto the streets below. And once secured, a dirigible could be tethered only at the nose, with no ground lines to keep it steady.
Passengers would have to make their way down a swinging gangway, nearly a quarter mile in the air, onto a narrow open walkway near the top of the mast. After squeezing through a tight door, they would have to descend two steep ladders inside the mast before reaching the elevators. "Can you see some 75-year-old dowager doing that?" asks Alexander Smirnoff, the current telecommunications director of the building, as he stands on that walkway.
Crashing: How To
The Hindenburg didn't crash into the ground. The hydrogen gas cells caught on fire, and then it fell.
Blimp Crashlands on Roof of a Building in Manhattan In airship on skyscraper collisions, skyscrapers mostly win.
The Crash of Navy Blimp L-8 If no one is controlling them, airships will eventually hit the ground. Caddies at the Lake Merced Golf & Country Club witnessed the blimp disappear behind two hills, and then rise again after a brief snag on a cliff on Ocean Beach. This snag gouged the cliffside, causing the starboard engine to be packed with dirt, and bending the propeller blades. Also, one of the two depth charges on board the airship broke free from its rack, and fell to the ground at the Olympic Club's golf course.
USS Shenandoah Buffeted severely by air currents, Shenandoah's crew lost control of the airship. Rapidly rising and falling, the airship's structure amidships became overstressed, breaking it in two. As Shenandoah broke up, its external control car and engines fell free, killing Lansdowne and several of the crew. Lieutenant Commander Charles E. Rosendahl and other members of the crew were able to safely descend, flying the bow section as a balloon. All told the crash claimed 14 dead, while 29 managed to reach the ground alive.
And eventually they crash one too many times: USS Macon A violent gust tore off her upper fin, causing damage that soon brought her down into the sea. Though all but two of her crew were rescued, the dirigible sank in deep water, effectively ending the Navy's controversial, and trouble-plagued, program of rigid airship operations.
Oh, and before there were UFOs, there were Unidentified Flying Airships
June 6, 2016
Monday All Over
Still not doing much besides working, but here's some things I liked recently:
* The Salt Roads by Nalo Hopkinson
This is an incredible book and it's available again in a variety of ebook formats.
* Young Justice: I hadn't seen this when it first came out, but seasons 1 and 2 are on Netflix now. It's an animated show about the younger DC characters forming their own team to support the Justice League. The writing, the characterization, the plot is all fabulous. It takes full advantage of the universe, and I can't believe how much story they pack into 22 minute episodes.
* The new Doctor Who comics by Titan. There are separate comics for Ten, Eleven, and Twelve, and they're all so good. It's everything I want from Doctor Who but with no budget restrictions. And I love the new companions. Ten's companion is Gabi Gonzalez from New York, a Mexican-American girl who wants to go to art school, and Eleven's is Alice Obiefune, a librarian from London.
***
Plus I'll be going to Comicpalooza in Houston, on June 17-19, which is one of my favorite new cons. It's a comiccon, with actors and media guests, and a huge dealer's room and artist's alley plus a small makerfaire, but it also has a full schedule of literary and writing panels (like 50 of them) and a large number of writer guests.
My panel schedule:
- Friday 11:30 to 12:30 Outlandish Others: How Genre Fiction Employs Androids, Elves, and other non-human Races
Carrie Patel, Tex Thompson, Donna Grant, Martha Wells
- Friday 2:30 to 3:30 Young Adult Fantasy
Joy Preble, J.L. Clark, Katherine Catmull, Angela Holder, Martha Wells
- Saturday 11:00 to 12:00 Plotting and Pacing a Short Story
Ken Liu, Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, C. Stuart Hardwick, Martha Wells
* The Salt Roads by Nalo Hopkinson
This is an incredible book and it's available again in a variety of ebook formats.
* Young Justice: I hadn't seen this when it first came out, but seasons 1 and 2 are on Netflix now. It's an animated show about the younger DC characters forming their own team to support the Justice League. The writing, the characterization, the plot is all fabulous. It takes full advantage of the universe, and I can't believe how much story they pack into 22 minute episodes.
* The new Doctor Who comics by Titan. There are separate comics for Ten, Eleven, and Twelve, and they're all so good. It's everything I want from Doctor Who but with no budget restrictions. And I love the new companions. Ten's companion is Gabi Gonzalez from New York, a Mexican-American girl who wants to go to art school, and Eleven's is Alice Obiefune, a librarian from London.
***
Plus I'll be going to Comicpalooza in Houston, on June 17-19, which is one of my favorite new cons. It's a comiccon, with actors and media guests, and a huge dealer's room and artist's alley plus a small makerfaire, but it also has a full schedule of literary and writing panels (like 50 of them) and a large number of writer guests.
My panel schedule:
- Friday 11:30 to 12:30 Outlandish Others: How Genre Fiction Employs Androids, Elves, and other non-human Races
Carrie Patel, Tex Thompson, Donna Grant, Martha Wells
- Friday 2:30 to 3:30 Young Adult Fantasy
Joy Preble, J.L. Clark, Katherine Catmull, Angela Holder, Martha Wells
- Saturday 11:00 to 12:00 Plotting and Pacing a Short Story
Ken Liu, Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, C. Stuart Hardwick, Martha Wells
May 29, 2016
Sometimes People Just Want You to Stop
Every time I've done a panel that gets into the topic of finding time for writing, there's always somebody who asks what to do if someone they know actively discourages their writing, or goes out of the way to interrupt or stop them while they're doing it.
Everyone's situation is different, so it's hard to give an answer to that. Hopefully it helps to know that this happens a lot, to a lot of writers.
(I had an ex-friend/roommate once who tried off and on to stop me from writing. She wanted to write movie and TV scripts, and that was great, but me wanting to write novels not so much. It was okay if I wrote fanfic, but not original fiction. Once when I was at home working on The Element of Fire, she saw what I was doing and said, "Oh, you know you'll never finish that."
Well, I did, and it was published in 1993 by Tor Books.)
Another question that's impossible to answer is why do people do that?
It's hard to answer because it's all different reasons.
Some people probably don't know they're doing it and/or couldn't explain why if you asked them. Some people might feel jealousy that you're writing, annoyance that you're paying attention to a screen or a piece of paper rather than them, or they're uneasy because they don't understand your desire to write.
Sometimes it's about power and control. Stop doing what you're doing and do what I want you to do. Stop writing what you're writing and write what I want you to write. Or else.
Sometimes it's about the type of writing you're doing. Writing literary fiction is great, but people will try to discourage or stop you from writing SF/F or mystery or romance or fanfic. I've had that happen to me. Or writing fanfic is great, but people will turn abusive if they catch you writing original stories. I've had that one happen too.
(Your fanfic is great but your original writing is worthless. Original writing makes you a hack, you're a bad person, you're disrespecting other fanfic writers who don't want to write original fiction. Stop, just stop. Or else.)
If you're a woman, sometimes people just want you to stop.
Sometimes it's concern. If you write, you'll be rejected and it will hurt so just stop. Sometimes it's concern trolling. Oh, I know you'll be rejected and you just won't be able to handle it, you're weak because I tell you you're weak, so just stop.
There are a lot of reasons for this and sometimes even if you know the person very well, you can't tell what their reason is. But sometimes there's only one thing you can do about it.
Don't stop.
Everyone's situation is different, so it's hard to give an answer to that. Hopefully it helps to know that this happens a lot, to a lot of writers.
(I had an ex-friend/roommate once who tried off and on to stop me from writing. She wanted to write movie and TV scripts, and that was great, but me wanting to write novels not so much. It was okay if I wrote fanfic, but not original fiction. Once when I was at home working on The Element of Fire, she saw what I was doing and said, "Oh, you know you'll never finish that."
Well, I did, and it was published in 1993 by Tor Books.)
Another question that's impossible to answer is why do people do that?
It's hard to answer because it's all different reasons.
Some people probably don't know they're doing it and/or couldn't explain why if you asked them. Some people might feel jealousy that you're writing, annoyance that you're paying attention to a screen or a piece of paper rather than them, or they're uneasy because they don't understand your desire to write.
Sometimes it's about power and control. Stop doing what you're doing and do what I want you to do. Stop writing what you're writing and write what I want you to write. Or else.
Sometimes it's about the type of writing you're doing. Writing literary fiction is great, but people will try to discourage or stop you from writing SF/F or mystery or romance or fanfic. I've had that happen to me. Or writing fanfic is great, but people will turn abusive if they catch you writing original stories. I've had that one happen too.
(Your fanfic is great but your original writing is worthless. Original writing makes you a hack, you're a bad person, you're disrespecting other fanfic writers who don't want to write original fiction. Stop, just stop. Or else.)
If you're a woman, sometimes people just want you to stop.
Sometimes it's concern. If you write, you'll be rejected and it will hurt so just stop. Sometimes it's concern trolling. Oh, I know you'll be rejected and you just won't be able to handle it, you're weak because I tell you you're weak, so just stop.
There are a lot of reasons for this and sometimes even if you know the person very well, you can't tell what their reason is. But sometimes there's only one thing you can do about it.
Don't stop.
