Yes, I Have A Plan! (And It Might Even Work!)

 Hi Guys,

Ok, so as the title says I have a tentative plan for publishing two more books this year. 

The first is another detective - Art Mystery 101 - which is currently in the process of being edited. And I'm thinking the cover will be similar to the one above - which is another Deep Dream work. The only problem with it is that my character actually is sort of half Oriental and for unknown reasons she actually only has four fingers and thumb on her right hand! (Though ironically enough Cayllee Chambers does have badly damaged fingers on both her hands as a result of an abusive childhood. Could Deep Dream somehow be reading my thoughts?!)

Anyway, the story follows a number of the themes I've had running through my works for a couple of years now, but also takes a couple of sharp left turns. One of them being that she is an actual art forger who has been working quietly away, completely unnoticed by anyone - until an attack / fire / mass murder on the art facility where she is employed for her day drive, threatens to expose her alternative occupation, forcing her to flee.

Of course, nothing is ever what it seems!

The second book is - Good Neighbours - an urban sci fi, set in a fictitious New Zealand town, where our hero is the local vet trying to live a normal life while ignoring the fact that the town is home to an alien research base - and that some of the visitors might actually be insane!

Don't know if this will be the cover - but I love the image!

Good Neighbours is a little further off, but the first draft is complete and I'm flat out working on the edits / revisions. With luck it'll be out for Christmas. Unfortunately, one little wrinkle in my plans is that I'm due for eye surgery next month, so I don't know what that's going to do to everything. The other little wrinkle is that every time I sit down to type, the cat seems to want to sit in front of the screen and get petted!

Anyway, that's where I am at the moment, and I will do my damndest not to get sidetracked as usual. (If the cat lets me!)

Cheers for now,

Greg.

RUN!

 Hi Guys,

As you may have noticed I've been offline for a while now. No great mystery about it I'm afraid - I put my back out about three or four weeks ago, and haven't been able to stand, walk or sit down for any length of time since then. I'm really annoyed about it - long time ago I had a physio tell me that once you pass fifty the frequency of back seizures decreases. Haven't noticed it! And in fact the last couple of seizures have been the worst I've had in years!

Any way the good news is that while I've been offline I have still been writing - by virtue of lying on a couch and typing on a laptop on a coffee table! And as a consequence, I have managed to complete the rough draft of another mystery / detective. The title is Run, and I think the cover will be based on the image above. It still needs to be edited and revised so publication will be a little way off.

Actually I've written two, but the other one - Model Behavior - won't be published for a good while as it falls back into too many old tropes of mine. (The cover might be a little racy too!)

And sadly, I've also been spending a lot of time watching Youtube videos - including a lot of short stories. The one thing I have noticed - most of them appear to be AI generated. Oddly they don't just have the same plots, they have the same character names which spring up again and again. For example, I don't know how many different space navy officers and scientists named so and so Chen - but if that's your name it looks like your career path is already sorted! Congrats! 

Also why does every spaceship in a battle decide to do "jinking"? (I think it's a typo that's somehow been cut and pasted by every AI program out there. You'd think that one of them would have the sense to read a dictionary - unless of course jinking has been added to it!)

The other thing that keeps popping up are the repeated variations of whole sections of text, as if someone decided to rewrite a section, add a few lines here and there to it, and then just pasted it in without cutting the old section. It's really strange and somewhat disconcerting. But then again, maybe that's simply my editing eye coming out. That's one of the consequences of becoming a writer and editing so much of your work - you can't read anything else without picking up issues.

Anyway, that's where I'm at, and hope to have Run out by the time I next update the blog. And I hope you guys are having a better time health wise than me!

Cheers, Greg.

Conway - Ancient Space Travelling Humans In The Tropics Space Opera - On The Way.

Hi Guys,

Thought I'd let you know that I haven't been completely bone idle this past month or so. (I tried to be, but people and especially the cats wouldn't allow it!)

So this is the next book coming off the press - probably very shortly since it's already been through it's main revisions and edits. It's another ancient humans  from the stars space opera book - I sort of like that theme - with a few tweaks from other books. It may be slightly heavier than the Barton Villa books, and it's somewhat cynical about governments and rule (I'm just feeling that way a little lately!)

But the cover from 123RF looks glorious. Wierdest space craft I've ever seen and I love it! Actually it's supposed to be a shuttle - a futuristic steampunk space shuttle?! It took me a fair bit to get it looking like that by the way. This is the original image I purchased:

 

 

The original brilliant image is by 3000AD

And this is the first time ever the AGFA filter in Photoscape has actually been useful for me! But it gave me the start of the green grass. Then I had to use practically every other filter there was to bring up the colour and vibrancy and add some sky. It took me ages. But I love the result! It's not bad for a blind man! (At least until my cataract surgery in a few months!) 

But here's the thing - why shouldn't space craft be colourful?! Especially alien ones?! Why do they have to follow the set layout of colours and shapes - mostly metallic cylinders with pointed noses and stubby wings that the world seems to dictate? I'm not sure what the design language of this image is - kitchen utensil perhaps? - it looks to me like on of those old style loose tea brewing spoons - but I hope 3000AD has a few more of these coming!

Anyway the book is on the way, and hopefully not long after that I'll be able to actually see the computer screen again!

Cheers, Greg.

.

 

 

So A Funny Thing Happened ... !

Hi Guys,

 

 

Yes, you guessed it - the Barton Villa bug grabbed me again! This is the problem with being a pantster - I never know what I'm going to write next.

But I'm really happy with this book. I'd missed that crazy island and it's characters, even after I had so successfully ended the previous trilogy by sending everyone off to Mars to live happily ever after. It's a little like that old sweat shirt you put away in the closet which you think you'll never wear again because it's a bit faded and maybe it's got a loose thread here and there. And then one day you find youself thinking about it and pulling it out because you really liked it.

So that's what happened to me. But as I swung into it again, I decided that I had to make a few changes. For a start I didn't want to bring Moncrief Jones out of retirement - I mean the man's been shot, beaten up, in a car crash and suffered numerous other horrid injuries. It's getting old. So I thought I should let him be. At least for now. (But who knows, there could be another good beating in his future!)

I also wanted it to be a harder, edgier sort of book. More a Sam Watson type story - and you know she's always ready with her gun - and it's trained on the bad guy's nuts!!!

The other thing I did was to go back to the racism theme I explored in book three. I don't know why exactly but something about all the Black Lives Matter protests and the police killing of George Floyd etc, has really got under my skin a little. You can't watch that horrible event and not think to yourself, just what the hell is he doing? It just goes on and on. Also the John Griffin story - Black Like Me - has stayed with me for a long time. Not just the experience of a white reporter medically altering himself to appear black and experience life as such, but the reaction he got after what he'd done was revealed. It really is a thought provoking story. So I returned to that and made the bad guys the white supremacists who had united into a world wide movement. (Something about that feels horribly close to the bone lately.)

The other thing I should mention is that us sci fi writers are supposed to pose questions about the future etc and of course various technological advances coming. The genetic manipulation needed to change a person's skin colour from white to black or any other colour of the rainbow, is probably only five to ten years away. The ethics involved in doing so however are light years beyond us!

So just think - what are you going to do when your son or your daughter comes to you one day and says - I want to be black / or white / or yellow? Makes you think, doesn't it!

Anyway that's where the book comes from, and I hope people enjoy it.

Cheers, Greg.

Prince Of Stars

Hi Guys,

Ok, still behind in my posting unfortunately. Still dealing with a lot of personal stuff I'm afraid. But that's life I suppose and I'm slowly getting through it. 

Anyway, even if I'm a bit slow in posting, I have still been keeping up with the writing. (At the moment I've been finding it quite therapeutic to just be able to lose myself in my writing - and also in UTube music videos!) And my latest space opera, Prince of Stars has just been pubbed. 

I'm quite pleased with the book. It has a fun element about it and a feel of a seventies style space adventure which will hopefully make for an enjoyable read. Given some of the stuff that's been happening in my own world that was something of a blessing to be able to escape into when I was writing it. And I think the cover, above, is a beaut too. It was one of those images that just seemed to grab my eyes when I first saw it.

And the good news is that I've also completed an urban sci fi called Who? which is now just starting to go through the editing process. It is a somewhat genre bending work set in the 2040's and definitely sci fi but including werewolves, vampires and skin walkers. Hopefully Who should be out in the next month or so.But the cover is as yet a work in progress. It's really hard to find something that fits the lead character who is a gender swapping, shape changer, millionaire recluse living on his own island  - but I'm working on it!

There's also a fantasy in the works - Jax - which starts with the main character's execution - but that's a little way off yet.

Anyway, I hope that that brings you guys a little cheer in these strange days and you're all well etc.

Cheers, Greg.

Gone has Gone!

 Hi Guys,

As some of you may know, Gone has just gone out a few days ago. It's another urban sci fi with UFO's and tropical islands. But it's not part of the Barton Villa series or world. It is however, just as unhinged! Undoubtedly it's all that sunshine that drives tropical islanders into the arms of insanity (he says while sitting in a freezing cold study, staring out at a dark grey sky and plenty of water falling down, and wondering when summer will finally arrive!).

Chy is still sitting on my computer, barely a couple of chapters away from completion, but hopefully due to be finished soon. I've just hit a bit of a road block with it and am waiting for inspiration to strike. The life of a writer!

Anyway, here's the blurb for Gone and I hope you're all safe and well:

 

GONE

Life on a tropical island in the Pacific was a blessing. Michigan Jennings loved it. He could go swimming or diving or just laze out in the sun all day. He could drink rum on the beaches, hang with his friends or play an exciting game of squid ball. And of course being a Jennings he didn't have to work.

Could things be any easier?

But then someone stole Bora Bora, and Mich's world turned upside down. People started trying to kill him! Aliens began floating around in their flying saucers! And an overly affectionate mountain lion kept trying to lick him to death!

What was a guy to do?

Of course there was only one thing to do. He had to get Bora Bora back, rescue his friends – and the girl – and save the world! Somehow! It should be simple really. He was a Doctor after all – of anthropology!

Cheers, Greg.

Airlocks and Reality

 Hi Guys,

Bit of a pet peeve of mine, which I thought I'd let loose. (Sometimes you just see the same thing too many times and you just have to say something.) For me it's airlocks. I've been watching a whole bunch of sci fi / space opera shows lately, (even though I should be writing!) and I don't know how many times I've seen it but people keep getting blown out of airlocks. I hate that! It drives me nuts! It's just so wrong!

There's a couple of reasons for that. The first is of course the design of airlocks which has a single overwhelming priority - keeping the air inside the ship. Air is absolutely the most precious resource a space ship can have, and it can never be wasted. Which means that every airlock in a space ship has a single operational principle - the outer hatch will not open if there's air in the airlock. If it did every time one opened the ship would lose air.

So the way they actually operate, is that you get into the air lock, both hatches are closed, and then the air is pumped out of the airlock, before the outer hatch is opened.

It works exactly the opposite way on submarines where the water is trying to get in. The airlock is emptied before you can open the inner hatch. If it wasn't, then every time you opened the inner hatch, you'd be hit by a wall of water. 

Of course there's a physics issue too. In order to blow someone out of an airlock, you need a pretty good blast of wind. But unless the inner hatch is open as well - in which case all of the ship's air is escaping to space and everyone's dying - it's not happening. The airlock itself is only a small space within the ship - lets say eight cubic metres - or a two by two by two cube. The hatch has to allow people in and out so it's probably the same size as a door in your home, say two square metres. So if all the air rushes out in one second when the door opens, the jet stream hurling the guy out is blasting at a rate of two metres per second for that second or four and a half miles an hour. Which means that only if the man inside was standing right at the outer hatch and got hit by all the air escaping the airlock, would he have to face a full second of this tiny breeze. But most likely if he was up against the inner hatch, banging away frantically as they do in so many films, he wouldn't get hit by any rush of air at all.

You could of course speed up the rush of air by decreasing the size of the outer hatch - rather like making air fly faster by blowing through a straw. But there are limits to how fast the air can fly, and even if all the air smashed into the chest of the trapped man, there would still be no more air mass hitting him than before. And worse, even if for a second that faster moving eight cubic metres of air at one atmosphere dislodged him, he wouldn't go very far. The outer hatch would be so much smaller to achieve this, that he would hit it and get stuck!

So airlocks are a pet peeve of mine - as are killer storms on Mars which has an atmosphere only one percent as dense as that of Earth. Even thousand mile an hour winds would be no worse than someone blowing on you on Earth. And ray guns making noises in space where there's no sound.

My point here is that space operas like all genres, needs to follow some basic physics rules and you can't just write things because they sound cool. And I say that as someone who isn't even a hard science fiction writer. So my thought for writers of sci fi when they're plotting is to add another question to their plotting process - "is this possible?"

Anyway, enough griping. I should get back to writing. After all I am busy working on three books at once! But the good news is that Chy is almost done and hopefully in another month or so it'll be out.

Cheers, Greg.

Adrift Among The Stars

Hi Guys,

Short post this time. Just to tell you all that Adrift is out.

It's a space opera about a man who's abducted by aliens, rescued by alien police and then just wants to get back home to Earth. The book continues the theme from The Travel Bug, that alien really means alien - not people with funny noses and extends it to their worlds, pointing out that it's unlikely we'll ever be able to just wander around safely on alien worlds in a T-shirt etc. But mostly it's just a romp in space with a lot of twists.

I hope you enjoy it.

Cheers, Greg.

New Years Blues!

Hi Guys,

Well I meant to start this year off with a bang (no not the one half of you are thinking of!). But things haven't gone quite according to plan. At least not my plan!

Still, there is some good news. Manx' first draft is done, and as soon as I've finished the first draft of my current space opera - sadly it can't be titled Lost in Space even though that precisely describes the plot - I'll move into the starting edit.

Manx is the story of a man who can talk to cats - but who would want to! A cat who's really above all the troubles in her servants' lives and just wants to be fed and groomed and maybe have a nice shoe or two to take a dump in! And a three eyed woman who can see into other realms. After all what would be the point of a third eye if it didn't let you do that! I suspect the book cover is going to be a problem!

The bad news is that summer has finally arrived in Rotorua, and as I sit here typing, I'm more or less dissolving in front of the keyboard - which may or may not be melting. It's hard to tell when your eyeballs are sweating!

Anyway, I'll try to keep going through the heat and the perspiration. And I'll bravely ignore the cries of my neighbors as they discover that I'm typing in the nude! (Hysterical blindness isn't a real thing!!!) And I hope you all have a great year.

Cheers, Greg.

The Travel Bug

Hi Guys,

Just a quick note to let you know that my latest book is out: The Travel Bug. And no, despite comments to the contrary it's not a hot, steamy romance! It's a sci fi - bordering on space opera. But you try finding a cover that shows astral travel space opera!!!

Anyway, here's the blurb:

Abel Montgomery had slept his way to the top – literally!

He was a traveller. He spent his days searching the stars in his dreams. Hunting for advances that would make the world a better place.

It was a good job. The hours were good. The pay was very good. And he got to see all the wonders that were out there.

Until the aliens started following him home!

Cheers, Greg.

Fear And Loathing In Outer Space

Hi guys,

Bit of a different post this time. Hopefully one that makes you think a bit. But to begin with I put out Madness and Magic about a month ago – really happy about that – and have got some nice reviews for it which is great. And of course immediately after that, while I probably should have been doing something useful, I started on a brand new book.

But this one I actually completed!

The rough draft is now finished – (87 K in a month – don't tell my editor!) and I'm tinkering with it at the moment. Turning it into something more fun to read mostly. At the moment it's title is “The Travel Bug” which is a bit of a pun and it's a sci fi – but not a traditional space opera. There are no spaceships – a few flying saucers though – and no epic space battles. Instead the action is set mostly on Earth and the book is based on two basic ideas.

The first is astral travel and the idea that some people who experience lucid dreams or astral traveling, are in fact actually able to travel to the stars. And that scientists will one day be able to record our dreams, meaning that these people, these actual astral travelers will become the equivalent of astronauts. Traveling the stars and bringing back all the wonders out there for the rest of us to see and learn from.

This of course is not a new idea. There aren't a lot of new ideas in fiction. And this one though it's been used a bit, mostly comes from Simak's “Time is the Simplest Thing”, which is a really great read and I recommend it. I fairly much recommend anything by Clifford Simak.

But it's the other idea contained within the story that's really the subject of this post. That we don't know and can't really understand what alien actually is. And we won't be able to until we actually experience it for ourselves.

This idea has been used all over literary fiction. If you read Lovecraft you'll know that his great and terrible creatures aren't just terrifying, but they overwhelm the understanding of his characters. A few years back the movie Gareth Edwards film “Monsters” came out and one of the central themes in it was that aliens while dangerous and apparently determined to immigrate to Mexico, are something we've just never encountered. The film tried desperately to make us experience a concept of “alien” not really seen before. I also recommend seeing this film, not so much because of the usual things, but because it is an experience. A little bit on the mind blowing side of things.

In “The Travel Bug” I wanted to take this idea and advance it. To ask the question, what would people do if one day they encountered something – an alien – that was completely beyond their understanding? Would they be terrified? Shocked? Overwhelmed? How would we deal with it?

This is actually an important question. We all know that the chances that there is alien life out there are high. The chances that it will visit us in the near future are quite a bit lower, but never the less, we've come up with plans for dealing with that eventuality. But every one of those plans that we've ever heard of centers around the idea that there will be a commonality between our visitors and us. That we will be able to understand them on some fundamental level. But is that realistic? Will we be able to understand them at all? Or will the sheer alien nature of them, completely overwhelm us?

I think this is a possibility we need to seriously consider. Because I'm not sure that we are at all ready to understand what alien really means. And yet we keep imagining that we are. And we even attempt to justify our imaginings with theories that may have no more scientific weight than candy-floss.

We can talk about concepts like parallel evolution meaning that certain body types and ways of interacting with the world will be universal. But really that's guesswork. Evolution has no plan, there are multiple ways of interacting with the world we live in, and worlds themselves may vary wildly. Is there actually any reason to think that an alien water life form should look at all like a fish? It may have evolved a completely different way of living in water.

And why should we assume that they think like us at all? Just because they go to the trouble of visiting us, does that mean they actually want to see us? Some of you will have read the story Roadside Picnic in which the aliens came to Earth simply for some sort of stopover on their journey and mankind wasn't even on their radar. They weren't interested in us at all. And we're trying to interpret the items they left behind in the belief that they left them for us. But really, it's just rubbish that they tossed aside. The point is that we assume aliens will be like us in some ways. That they'll behave in ways we do. But I suspect that may be a mistake.

Assuming that some alien with funny ears may simply wander down the landing ramp and tell us they come in peace, is likely a mistake. Whatever arrives may actually ooze through the porous hull of its vessel and then completely fail to recognize any form of intelligent live on Earth as it really just came to look at the pretty sunsets.

And how would we deal with aliens? We want to think we're rational people. But just as one example, what if what came down that landing ramp was a human sized spider? We already know that a certain proportion of people will run screaming in terror if that happened, while others would find themselves rooted to the ground in terror. We don't know why, but arachnophobia is a common human issue. We fear spiders. They have too many legs, move in unpredictable ways and we're frightened that they're poisonous. Yet the reality is that they're mostly harmless. And we're far less terrified of dogs even though vastly many more people are hurt by them every year. The reason I suspect, is that we can sense a sort of kinship with dogs. When a dog barks or growls, we can get a gist of their intentions and what they'll do. Spiders are simply too alien, for want of a better term.

But spiders are from Earth. We have far more in common with them than any alien being that may come from the stars. So why not take that phobic reaction we get from seeing spiders, and amp it up a thousand times or so, to try and understand what our reactions to our alien guests might be. Suddenly it might not just be a few people screaming in terror, running away in blind terror, depositing the contents of their stomachs on the ground, or standing rooted to the spot like statues. It may be half the population.

And I can hear the doubters scoffing at this even now. They watch horror movies. Nothing could scare them. Not like that. But my counter would be that this wouldn't be a movie. It would be real. There's no screen in front of you, constantly telling you that what you're seeing is only a movie and that you're safe. Instead there may be sounds and smells that simply make no sense. Actions we just can't interpret. There's no way to predict how people will respond when something truly alien walks into their life without the reassuring safety net of a screen between them and us. But my guess is that it could be very badly.

The gist of this blog is really that when it comes to aliens, we don't actually know what alien is, and we won't until we finally meet it. We also don't know how we'll react to it. And we won't even be sure why it came. But the one thing we do have to do, is put away our beliefs that we do. Because all our theories about aliens have rooted deep within them, the idea that they'll be just like us in some ways. 

And the whole point of being alien, is that they're not.

Cheers, Greg.

House Prices in Midsomer and Unintended Consequences!

Hi Guys,

This time I thought I'd turn my attention to unintended consequences in world building. And the title, though perhaps a little tongue in cheek, says it all. Would you buy a house in Midsomer? I wouldn't when the chances of your surviving there until old age are remote and the likelihood of suffering a gruesome death is high. (On the other hand St Mary Mead is once more a desirable place to live now that Miss Marple has gone away, and house prices in Cabot Cove are starting to rise again since the departure of Jessica Fletcher!)

I know, this all sounds very odd. But in essence it's a simple point for writers. We dream up characters and world builds and all sorts of wonderful things, but too often don't stop to think what the consequences of our dreams would be in the real world. Nowhere is this more true than in the realm of science fiction and fantasy.

The reason I bring this up is that in writing more steampunk fantasy like Madness and Magic and now Callum, I've been having to concentrate a lot more on this very issue. In Madness, I had my hero riding on a steam powered motorbike - which I thought was damned cool idea, I admit. But in doing that I had to deal head on with the question - could you have steam powered motorbikes in a world full of magic? Because if everyone had magic, why wouldn't people just fly or portal wherever they wanted to go? On the other hand if magic was rare, complicated and difficult and only a few had it, why would anyone even care about it let alone desire it? Everyone would be getting motorbikes and the roads would be perfectly smooth.

This has been my struggle with world building for steampunk for the last couple of years. A tricky balancing act where I have to both advance and hold back technology and magic to explain why neither of them has dominated the world. Why there hasn't been an industrial revolution and mass production - or a magical enlightenment. What lets them compete in the world without one dominating the other.

For me I've developed and used a number of answers to resolve these questions and I think they've been reasonably coherent. Enough that my worlds don't leave people scratching their heads too much - I hope! But after handing Callum over to my editor I've begun watching more shows of late, and seen more versions of these problems popping up everywhere.

In Powers - a show I really enjoyed - I watched superheros and villains streaking across the sky and having aerial battles over the city and a question struck me - would you have air travel in a world like this? Because planes would be horribly vulnerable to attacks and accidents and the safest way to travel would quickly become the most dangerous. The industry would never take off! (They actually had a partial explanation for this in the show about flight heights and rules, but it didn't sound plausible to me.)

I re-watched Lord of the Rings and once more found myself caught with the question about the eagles. If you can simply get on an eagle and fly why wouldn't you just fly the damned ring to the mountain? I know, there is an explanation - the ringwraiths on their dragons would tear the eagles apart - but really Mordor is a big place and the ringwraiths can't be everywhere. They could sneak through. Especially at night. And more so when they have invisibility on their side.

Then there was Powerless - a fun little comedy where the employees of Bruce Wayne beaver away in their building creating all sorts of devices to protect people from super villains. But a single question arises - why haven't the super villains got together and destroyed the building and its people? They are after all villains and it is a threat to their continued villainy.

My point in this post is really just that actions - or in this case characteristics of your world build - have consequences, and that we as authors really need to sit down whenever we come up with a cool idea like wizards on motorbikes, and start asking ourselves what is this going to mean for our world? Will house prices go up?!

Cheers, Greg.

Magical Science

Hi Guys,

This time I thought I'd turn to a slightly different aspect of writing - magical science. Or put another way, science that simply isn't possible.

Now as you know I write space opera and one of the impossible sciences that's fairly much vital to the genre is faster than light travel. To those purists among you who only read so-called hard science fiction, this is pure fantasy. And who knows, maybe you're right. But maybe, you're wrong. It all comes down to whether the theory of relativity is right. And for my part, while I don't intend to expound in great detail about the problems I find with the theory, I would point out one important fact. It's a theory. Therefore I feel quite comfortable inventing and using various methods of FTL travel in my books.

There are however, other scientific principles that I have a harder time allowing to be broken. One of them as you may know - since I actually wrote a book about it - is the concept of disassembling and reassembling someone and expecting them to somehow live through it. Yes this is the Star Trek transporter! This device, invented because the show was low on budget and they couldn't afford to create sets of shuttles etc, if it worked would actually be a killing booth that murdered a man at one end and created an exact duplicate at the other, Or according to others a nearly exact duplicate with bits of fly mixed in!

Having said that, there are other, similar ideas which for me at least, don't pass the sniff test. One of them, which pops up all over the place, is the idea of somehow uploading your consciousness into a computer to become a digital immortal. To me at least, this is pure nonsense. It will never be possible. Yes you may be able to make an exact digital copy of your brain / mind one day and put it out on a network of some sort. That seems perfectly plausible. But what isn't plausible is that that copy will be you. It'll just be a copy. You'll still be where you were in the real world - though quite possibly dead.

Time travel also falls within the spectrum of impossible science for me. I don't accept that time travel is possible in anyway - and not just because of the inevitable paradoxes it would cause.

And while I'm at it, mirror universes are also out. Parallel universes are fine. But mirror ones where there's an exact duplicate of everyone on Earth living the same lives? No. That's fantasy too. I mean think about it - an exact duplicate universe with just one tiny little change as they all inevitably have? That change, no matter how minor, after its been experienced by every person in the mirror universe for millions of years, is no longer minor. The butterfly effect would have kicked in and it would be extremely unlikely that any single person in our universe would have a duplicate in the other one.

I could go on. I could mention the bizarre mish mash of diseases that turned up in the Helix tv series - none of which made any sense. Or the immense windstorms on Mars that apparently blow people around like confetti when the atmosphere there is only one percent as dense as that on Earth. Then there's the Xelayan heavy worlder from the Orville. Yes she may have vast strength. But unless she also weighs thirty or so tons, when she hits a metal wall with all her strength, she's the one who's going to be bouncing off it!

My point here, is that everyone has different limits to what they will accept as believable, and when it comes to basic scientific principles you have to tread very carefully as authors. Because it doesn't matter how you spin it - whether you try to gloss over the impossibility without any explanation, make up some pseudo scientific sound basis, or simply assert it as scientific fact - the moment you cross these boundaries, you're going to lose readers.

As someone once said, as a writer you can be allowed one impossible thing in a story, but no more. So treasure it and use it wisely.

Anyway, Cheers, for now,

Greg.

The Speed Of Information

Hi Guys,

Bit of a change in topic this time. First up the next book – Fineas and Tusk: The Epic Journey of a Man and His Pig, is with the editor at the moment, but since she's in the process of moving house at the moment, it may be a while before it returns to me. The image above by the way is one that I found on DeviantArt.com while I was searching covers for the book, and while I can't use it since it doesn't really match the story at all, I loved it so I thought I'd share it. I may contact the artist and get him to paint me something similar.

However, this time I thought I'd return to an old chestnut of mine – Relativity and space opera. We all know the basics, Relativity means that faster than light travel is essentially impossible, so most space opera is impossible. In essence if we want to write space opera grounded in any sort of reality we have to resort to cheats like warp drives and hyperspace. Theoretical speculations and mathematical possibilities but still things not observed. Or else write things like The Expanse and Starhunter – sub-light speed space opera contained within the solar system. Alternatively we risk arousing the wrath of hard science fiction fans and being told we're fantasists. (That may actually be true in my case!)

But as some of you may know, I have never been the most ardent believer in Relativity. Yes I know – it's one of the most tested and validated theories in physics, and even suggesting that it may not be right is like standing on sacred ground for many. But I have never been comfortable with the idea that time is mutable. To me it seems that if time can be slowed by motion or gravity, or even stopped, then it can be reversed and time travel becomes possible – and I really do not accept time travel. To me something either is completely mutable or it isn't at all. And if time is actually mutable as Relativity says, than we live in a universe of time travel paradoxes.

Naturally I don't think my speculations are going to end up on the title pages of any physics text books any time soon! In fact quite likely I may end up labelled as a Luddite! But that's life.

However in keeping with my views, I've often found myself wondering over the years, is there a way to explain the observations of Relativity without actually having to claim that time itself is somehow being bent? And the answer is yes – at least in my view. I'll attempt to explain my answer here. (Physicists avert your gazes now – this may be treason!)

So my theory is a simple one. That what is observed, has nothing to do with time being bent or slowed. It is in fact nothing more than an artifact of what I'll term the speed of information. Time is not in any way affected by motion. Only the information about it is.

Now I should say at the outset that this artifact is real. It must logically exist. So any theory of apparent time dilation must include it. I'm not sure however, if it's included in current relativistic calculations. I thought about contacting NASA and asking but could feel the laughter building!

OK, that said lets consider the old twins paradox which is what essentially buggers up a lot of space opera. Now according to Special Relativity we have one twin on Earth and the other on a rocket ship leaving Earth at the speed of light. The twin on the rocket ship has time slow down or stop for him, so that when he returns to Earth, he finds he is in fact younger than the twin he said goodbye to. And we have evidence that objects travelling away from Earth do in fact appear to be experiencing less time. Sounds like a case closed sort of thing doesn't it?!

But what I would ask you, would we expect to see if Relativity wasn't an issue? If the universe operated purely by Newtonian principles? Would we expect to see the rocket ship leaving us at the speed of light and everything as if it was happening right in front of us?

Actually no. If Relativity was not an issue we would expect to see that rocket ship which is heading away from Earth at the speed of light, seemingly only travelling at half the speed of light. And if there were portholes on that ship, we would expect to see the people on board moving and ageing at half speed. It would look like everything was in slow motion.

This has nothing to do with time dilation. Time is not being slowed in any way. This is purely an artifact of the speed with which the information about that rocket ship's travel comes back to us – at the speed of light.

To explain this, consider that the rocket ship has been travelling at the speed of light for a year. Could we sitting on Earth staring at it with our telescopes, expect to see the rocket ship one light year away? No. We would see it at the six month point in its trip. This is because the light from the rocket ship as it travels takes time to get back to us. So at the one year point in its journey, that light will take a second year to get back to us, meaning that we will observe the rocket ship at its one light year point, after two years.

To extend this point a little, if the ship is travelling to Alpha Centauri, four and a half light years away and is travelling at the speed of light, it will arrive in the system in four and a half years. But we on Earth will observe it arrive nine years after it left, without any time dilation being involved. Naturally this fits perfectly with the fact that everything we see of Alpha Centauri is four and a half years out of date.

Now lets reverse this a little. What does the man on the Rocket ship staring back at Earth see when he's travelling at the speed of light? And the answer assuming that he sees anything at all, is that he would see the Earth as if it was frozen in time. Someone had hit the pause button on the dvd player. This again is simply an artifact of the speed of information. All the light from Earth telling him what's happening there, is travelling with him at exactly the same speed. So the light that left Earth one second after he did, is still one second behind him for the entire journey.

And again to extend this point a little, when he arrives at his destination and stops, four and a half years later, he suddenly sees the Earth start moving again as someone hit play on the machine. But everything he sees is four and a half years out of date. Naturally once more this fits perfectly with the fact that everything seen of Earth from Alpha Centauri is four and a half years old.

Now lets add a third observer. This time the guy at Alpha Centauri watching the rocket ship come to him. What does he see in a universe without time dilation? Oddly, he sees nothing. The rocket ship takes off, but he won't see that until four and a half years later – at exactly the same time as the rocket ship arrives beside him. So he has the unusual experience four and a half years after the rocket ship leaves Earth, of seeing it take off, travel for four and a half years, and arrive all in the same instant. A sort of photonic boom.

So what does all of this mean for us space opera writers? It means at the very least that there is a simple explanation for why we might observe what seems to be time dilation without it actually existing. It also means there might be a very simple reason that we cannot observe anything travelling faster than the speed of light – all the information about that thing travels to us at the speed of light since it's axiomatic that light cannot travel faster than the speed of light.

Most importantly it means that we can write space opera involving faster than light travel without having to invoke the gods of hyperspace and warp drive etc, and still feel good about it! Hard science fiction be damned!!!

Anyway, must dash. I see the men with the white coats walking up the drive and I suspect they have a new jacket for me – one that straps up at the back!

Enjoy your writing.

Cheers, Greg.

Even The Penguins Are Freezing!

Hi Guys.

 

 

Haven't posted anything for a while as usual – this time mostly because I haven't had much to say. But just at the moment I feel inspired.

It may have something to do with the polar blast that seems to be streaming up the country at the moment. The big chill certainly doesn't inspire me to head out of the house any more than absolutely necessary, which leaves me stuck in front of the computer more often. That would be good except that I'm also sure my fingers have frozen to to the bone which makes typing difficult! Fortunately my cat has selflessly volunteered to take over the writing duties by sleeping on the keyboard at every opportunity. Unfortunately I have no idea at all what she's been typing. I just don't read cat!

Then again it could be because of the latest news in the world of writing which is a disgruntled author who has apparently been turned down three hundred and nineteen times by agents and decided to have a bit of whine about it. Unfortunately not about being rejected so many times, just about the latest agent to do so and her appearance, dress sense, and motives for not paying him the attention he so richly deserves. I won't mention his name or give a link – because I'm just cynical enough to suspect he may have written such an offensive piece simply to gain publicity and if so I don't want to help him. It'll be easy enough to find his blog and the endless scathing reviews of it if you just google “how to get yourself blacklisted” since it's gone viral.

But in the meantime to said author – dude a few words of advice;

First, agents are people too. Yes I know it's hard to believe, but personal attacks will not endear you to them. And yes, the rest of the writing community is largely unimpressed by your rant too. So you probably have got yourself blacklisted. Congrats!

Second, despite your rant, you actually know her motivations. She wants clients with books that are going to sell and make her lots of money. Was that not perfectly obvious from the start? So why did you even bother going to see her if you weren't prepared to sell her your book on that basis?

And third and probably most critically – three hundred and nineteen submissions?! Did you get dropped on your head at some stage?! It's time to go indie and let the readers decide whether your book's any good. Though I'd probably put it out under a pen name if I were you. Readers also read blogs, and most I suspect won't be any more impressed by your rant than I was.

However, to switch to a more positive note my latest space opera “Spaced” has now completed two full edits with Tickety Boo Press and I believe they're just finishing up now as they prepare to publish. So really looking forward to that. It's been a challenging process, using different editors with different styles and an emphasis on different aspects of the writing, but I think well worth it. So I'm hoping you'll all agree and it sells well and I can afford some new winter thermals!

Anyway, must get back to freezing to death! But looking forwards to the news in the next few days. Selena Gomez is coming to town for a concert, and I'm expecting records to be set. One in particular. Most concert goers ever to come down with hypothermia in one go! Also her new single which is really quite good may well be retitled after the event – Killing them with Frostbite!

Stay warm guys!

 

Cheers, Greg.

New Space Opera In The Works.

Hi Guys,

 

Just thought I'd give you an update of what I'm doing - if only so you don't think I'm simply sitting on my backside all day! (I am - but I don't want you to think that!)

 

My next book a space opera called "Spaced" has just come back from the editors last night, and I'm currently going a little blind going through the revisions. But it's all in a good cause and with a little luck Spaced should be published within the next month or so. I should also say I'm enjoying the experience of having it published by Tickety Boo Press - you guys should check out some of their other authors. They do a lot of space opera and fantasy. And as you can see above, their cover art is pretty cool too!

 

And just to wet your appetites here's a first draft of the blurb:

 

Spaced.

 

 

The Translation Drive. The wonder of the ages. And the drive that opened up the universe to exploration. But the drive has a down side. With the push of a button you could be anywhere in the universe. But you could also be eternally lost – Spaced.

 

 

This is the fate that befalls Doctor Carmichael Simons. Returning to Aquaria after a successful mineral survey he finds himself named as a terrorist and bomber. With the police trying to kill him and the navy closing in, he does the unthinkable. He jumps wild, in effect spacing himself. Now he can never get home and clear his name – but that won't stop him trying.

 

 

Back on Aquaria Detective Annalisse Samara, given the task of investigating the bombing and finding out why a respected scientist would blow up a hydroponics reserve, begins work. But what she uncovers may well turn the Commonwealth on its head and get her killed.

 

 

In the end they may both be spaced.

 

Cheers, Greg.

 

 

The Battle Between Hard Science and Space Opera

Hi guys,

The Arcanist is in editing at the moment so I have a little time to spend on my blog. This time I thought I'd turn my thoughts to a controversy that keeps coming up.

 

This is a far from a new topic. In fact it's one that keeps coming up again and again and again in my various writing groups (Damn – almost said gropes – fingers aren't working well today!) How much science should we put in our books? One that rages through the world of sci fi. How far can we move from what we know – or what we think we know – about how the universe works as we write?

My answer is that sci fi is a genre based on two simple words – “what if?” It doesn't operate on the phrase – “well this what we know so lets work with that.” It goes beyond that to speculate on what we don't know. And sometimes to cross the boundaries between what we know and what might actually be.

 

Nowhere in sci fi is this tension between what we believe we know about the workings of the universe and what we need to speculate might be for our stories to work, more pronounced than in my own sub-genre of space opera. Because space opera is based on one founding acceptance, the idea that we can travel to the stars. Relativity on the other hand quite clearly says no. You can't go faster than the speed of light, and really that's pushing it too far. So realistically speaking the closest you can come to space travel is generation ships. I don't know about you guys, but if someone offered me a ticket on a spaceship heading for a new star to explore, with a round trip time frame of a century or more – I'd say no. I might sign up for a trip lasting a few months, but once we start talking generations I have better things to do.

So for me like generations of sci fi authors before me, I'll resort to cheating to write my space operas. I'll use hyperspace and subspace, warp drives and time dilation drives, worm holes and slip streams – maybe even the dreaded spin dizzy drive of Doc Smith. And though some people may – and have – criticised me for it, I won't apologise. Call me a scientific heretic – I'm comfortable with that though I prefer fantabulist! Because the ultimate reality is that I want to write books about travelling to the stars, about alien invasions, and interstellar wars.

 

In my mind those who want sci fi to limit itself to science fact, have lost a large part of the joy of the genre. They have lost the what if that is the heart of what sci fi is all about.

Cheers, Greg.

 

The Stars Betrayed Almost Done

Hi Guys,

Just a quick update. The Stars Betrayed is nearly through it's final edit, and the cover above almost ready too. The artist by the way is Adam Kopala of Deviant Art though I added the text.

So hopefully in a few days The Intruder will take to the stars - and my first book of the year will be published. (It's been a long time between drinks as they say!)

It's a space opera as you might have guessed, with a strong theme of betrayal running through it. Essentially everyone save the hero is both betrayer and betrayed and that weaves together to form the plot. It is most similar to "All the Stars a Grave" though it's set in a very different universe. One in which humanity has been made second class citizens by genetically engineered Ubers, and a war is raging between the Terran Empire and the Alliance.

After this The Arcanist heads down to my editor - just in time for her birthday! I always give the best presents!

Cheers, Greg.

Of Warp Driven Spaceships And Betrayal

Hi Guys,

(Mock up model of The Intruder from my cover artist Adam Kopala - can't wait to see the finished version.)

 

Just sent off "The Stars Betrayed" for its second line edit, and so have a little time to spend on other things. So I thought I'd talk a little bit about the ship.

 

First, though the ship - The Intruder - is important to the story, this is not a simple "man in a battleship goes off to have adventures" space opera. The ship is just a vehicle (pun intended!) for the story. Rather this is a story of lies and betrayal - betrayal at every level. (Though I will not explain that any further since it might spoil the story by giving away some plot elements.) It's about why people will betray others including the ones they love. What will push them to do something almost unthinkable. And what sorts of betrayals can be forgiven. But also it asks the question, is their a longer term price to be paid?

 

It's also a story about Nietzsche's supermen. As some of you may know I am not a fan of Nietzsche, and I regard his supermen as people akin to sociopaths. People with no moral compass other than what they decide for themselves to be right and wrong, good and evil. That is not in my view a good thing. And when you give such people power, it can become a very bad thing indeed. When you give them ultimate power through say genetic engineering, it can be a nightmare.

 

Nietzsche himself saw his ubersmench as heroic figures in the ancient Greek tradition. Almost godlike and unbowed. He saw them as a vision of what men should be. He did not seem to accept that men have the impulses of both angels and demons in them. That yes we can be wonderful, true and loving. But we can also be monsters. And when psychologists tell us that one to three percent of our society have sociopathic tendencies, the monster within has to be recognised.

 

The Stars Betrayed grew out of these disparate ideas and also one further one - that some betrayals, even the most terrible can be forgiven. For example the father desperate to save both his drowning children who can only save one. He has to sacrifice / betray one to save the other, or else lose both.

 

Yes that can be forgiven. It can be understood even. But the cost of such a decision would be soul destroying for the father. And the question hardly ever asked is what would the sacrificed child think of his father's betrayal? Could he forgive him? Could he understand? Or is it a betrayal too great?

 

I hope that this book will make readers think about these same issues - as well as hopefully be entertained!

 

Cheers, Greg.

 

The Man Who Wasn't Anders Voss - The Idea.

Hi Guys,

To start April off with a bang I published a new book - The Man Who Wasn't Anders Voss and I thought I'd share something about the book with you. Mostly I thought I'd share where the concept for the book came from.

As a writer I sometimes get asked where I get my ideas from, and in this case it is - and I'm proud to admit it - Star Trek.

This book began with one of the unexplained and potentially unexplainable mysteries about the show - the transporter. How does it work, and more importantly if it does work how is it that the guy being transported, having his atoms scattered through space and reassembled somewhere else, survives?

As a trekkie this has been one of the questions that has puzled me for a very long time. I mean it's fairly obvious that if you disintigrate someone into their composite atoms, they die. But then somehow when the atoms get put back together somewhere else, they live again. And that of course leads to the next question - how do you know that the person assembled elsewhere is the same person that was dissassembled?

So my take on this was that they aren't. That the transporter in fact kills the person sent and a completely new person with the old person's memories and features is created. In short a copy.

Naturally this wouldn't make for a good story. Not if the copy was in fact completely convinced that he was the original. Then as far as he was concerned and the rest of the universe, he would be the original. Only the original woul know better and he of course would be dead.

So that lead to the next key idea in the book. What if the copy in fact knew he was the copy? Then we end up in a whole new world of possibilities and plot elements, and key among them, identity.

All of us are blessed with one certainty in life - we are who we are. It never occurs to us that we might in fact be someone else. Other works have touched on this idea, that we might in fact be someone other than the person we think we are. That we might have say been brainwashed, or had amnesia. But the transporter gave me a whole new vehicle to examine this possibility, and to look at the conflicts it creates.

Identity is crucial to us. It is who we think we are. It is the one thing we never consider we could be wrong about. But if we were a copy of a man, perfect in every way, and so every memory we have is of being the original, but at the same time we also have the additional memory of the original having died and of being created from his remains, what would that do to us? Could we call ourselves by the name of the original even though we know we aren't him? Can we consider his family as ours? What about his actions, both good and bad? Can we truly be held responsible for the crimes the original migt have committed? Can we accept the credit for the good things he did?

So in large part this book is an exploration of those questions. Of the struggle of a man to decide whether he is in fact the original or is a new man.

And then of course I threw in some aliens, a transporter that doesn't work perfectly, and a rather nasty scientist with a God complex!

So that's where the book goes, and I hope that those who read it will find themselves asking many of the same questions as I have in writing it.

Cheers and as always, be good or don't get caught! (And if one is ever invented do not step into a transporter!)