Stars (4): Celestial motion

A lot of my calculations were performed using Microsoft Excel. I used it to calculate travel times, the ages of people, the timing of sequences.

I even used it for mundane things like story outlines and page counts. It was very helpful in calculating how long it would take the VIRUS units to digest the Stareater.

One other program I used was Microsoft Visual FoxPro for celestial mechanics (see the upcoming post Moons). When I was writing Part 2 of Rome's Revolution, it was very important for me to know where each of the two moons, Mockay and Givvy, were at each point of the story. I used FoxPro to produce a full day's worth of illustrations of the relative positions of the moons.

The point being, I believe in the stories and I believe in the math. So when I do these calculations, their results force the stories to follow a certain pattern. I adjust the story to meet those patterns rather than the reverse.

That's the difference between science fiction and fantasy. One bends to truth to tell a story. I bend the story to tell the truth.