David Lee Summers's Blog, page 61
January 20, 2020
Remember Yamato
On Christmas, my older daughter surprised me with a copy of one of the myriad Space Battleship Yamato soundtrack albums. She found the Japanese import at a convention this past year. A search of Tim Eldred’s amazing Yamato fan site, OurStarBlazers.com, revealed that it was the 1995 release of the Space Battleship Yamato: The New Voyage Symphonic album.
[image error]As I’ve mentioned before, I collect soundtracks and love to play them while I write. They can help me find a mood or a tone while I’m writing...
January 17, 2020
Weighing Planets
At this month’s meeting of the American Astronomical Society, the team developing the NEID spectrograph at Kitt Peak National Observatory announced the instrument’s first light and released a great, processed image of the first spectrum that illustrates much of what I’ve talked about when giving behind-scenes-glimpses of the work. This is a spectrum of 51 Pegasi, which happens to have been the first star discovered to have an exoplanet back in 1995.
[image error]Credit: Guðmundur Kári Stefánsson/Princeton...January 14, 2020
The Addams Family: An Evilution
Back in October, when I discussed the new Addams Family film, I expressed a hope that we would see some new reprints of Charles Addams’ original cartoons that inspired the TV series and the movies. As it turns out, the only new books I’ve seen are tie-ins to the movie itself and most of them are aimed at kids. Fortunately, one very good book that was published a decade ago by Pomegranate Press is still in print. It’s called The Addams Family: An Evilution and I bought a copy for my wife,...
January 11, 2020
2020 Foresight
In the last post, I looked back to the previous decade. Now, I want to take a look forward at what’s coming next. As it turns out, I’m entering the year 2020 with three projects right at the final editing and typesetting stages, so those are occupying much of my attention at the moment and I expect they will all go “live” in the first quarter of this year.
[image error]One of the projects that will appear in the next couple of months is the anthology Exchange Students edited by Sheila Hartney. It...
January 7, 2020
My novels of the 2010s
In my last post, I mentioned that I had the attitude of being a temporary employee at Kitt Peak National Observatory. Much of the reason I adopted that attitude in the first place is that then and now, I see myself first and foremost as a writer and editor. When I returned to Kitt Peak in 2008, I feared my writing output would fall off because of my job’s demands. I’m pleased to look back at the previous decade and realize that I actually produced more novels than in any previous decade.
[image error]In...
January 4, 2020
New Year's Eve at Kitt Peak
Earlier this week, I rang in the new year while on the job, helping observers commission the DESI spectrograph on the Mayall 4-meter Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory. Looking back, I see I rang in eight years of the last decade at the observatory. So, working on New Year’s Eve is getting to be something of a tradition for me.
[image error]Working at the observatory on New Year’s Eve is much like working on any other night of the year. It all starts out with me evaluating the weather. In the...
December 31, 2019
End of Year Sales
As the year draws to a close, Hadrosaur Productions is pleased to offer our ebooks at a discount through the Smashwords End of Year Sales Event. All of our books normally priced higher than $1.00 are on sale through tomorrow. This is a great chance to load up your e-reader with some great new books.
Travel to the Past [image error][image error][image error]Fallen Angel is the story of Mabel, an angel from Hell, who accompanies General Grant’s army during the last days of the Civil War only to discover that Martians are watching...
December 28, 2019
Books for a Buck
Did you receive a new e-reader or a tablet this week? Does it need some good books? Are you just looking for some good reading for the new year? If so, I’m here to help you out! Smashwords is having its annual End of Year Sale and Hadrosaur Productions is happy to be one of the participating publishers. All of our books are on sale and many of them are available for only $1.00 apiece. Read on to learn more about them. Remember, when you check out, make sure coupon code SEY75 has been applied...
December 24, 2019
Steampunk Christmas
To me, steampunk and Christmas go hand in hand. Steampunk is all about Victorian-inspired fantasy worlds. What’s more, Victorians in England and America gave us many of the trappings of the modern secular Christmas. Thomas Nast in New York gave us wonderfully detailed renderings of Santa in his workshop, using such scientific gadgets as telephones and telescopes to fulfill his mission of figuring out who was naughty and who was nice. In the meantime, Charles Dickens unleashed a series of...
December 21, 2019
Christmas in Space
Last year was the 50th anniversary of the first celebration of Christmas in space. This happened during the Apollo 8 mission commanded by Frank Borman with James Lovell Jr. serving as command module pilot and William Anders serving as lunar module pilot. On Christmas Eve 1968, Apollo 8 entered orbit around the Moon. During the mission, they took the famous Earthrise photo, showing the Earth rising over the Lunar horizon. Ten hours later, they took turns during a transmission to Earth to read...
