Comet Pan-STARRS is at its brightest right now, and finally rising high enough above the horizon for people living in the Northern Hemisphere to see it. Lots of details and observing recommendations on Sky & Telescope's website. Here's a chart of where to look, when:


Click the image to see the Sky & Telescope article.

But if a little comet isn't exciting enough for you, we have another one coming in the fall! Space scientists are eagerly awaiting comet Ison, due to fill the sky in November of this year.

In other news, have you seen today's Google Doodle? Don't panic! But be sure to click through the Encyclopedia Galactica, and see if you can identify all the objects on the spaceship control panel. The best description of the Doodle is on the Telegraph's site, but it's full of spoilers! After you play around with the Doodle for a while, check it out.

Finally, the experiment with writing first thing in the morning has resulted in huge productivity. I've been planning about an hour of writing, but every time I've started, I've ended up writing far longer than that. I'm up a couple thousand words since I started doing this last week. (Today's work was mostly Appendix material, but also some story. Writing is weird.) HOORAY! Conversely, whenever I've start doing something else (as I did over the weekend), that's it: No writing.

For those of you playing along, I hope your own experiment is going well.

Best,
Chris

We all have the time, suggests Cory Doctorow.

(By the way, we now have the hard drive containing the videos of his talk from last week, and I'll be editing and posting it soon.)

While he was here, we talked about how he finds time to write while whirling around the world more days than he's at home. Yet he gets more written than most people (besides Asimov, but who could?).

This is a big issue for me. At the start of this semester, with one of my courses now an online course, I thought I would make Mondays and possibly part of Tuesdays my "Writing-Only Days" (I even put those into my Google Calendar). I have a novel well under way and outlined, and I'm enthusiastic about writing it. Wow, I was going to get this sucker done before finals were in!

Not so fast.

I discovered that a new course requires a lot of focus. Not only is it a new course, but it's an online course, which requires TONS of regular interaction. Plus spring is when I do most of the reading for the Campbell Award; I was responsible for planning, promoting, organizing, and participating in the Doctorow talk; I've had to write a couple short pieces that have actual due dates; I'm planning talks at WorldCon, the Eaton Conference, and ConQuest; we're working on the upcoming Sturgeon Award Anthology; I have a million duties as CSSF Director; I have two other courses that require regular attention and classtime; and even I occasionally need a break from the keyboard. Heck, I'd even like to have a personal life - when the snow blanketed town, I really wanted to work on the Chevelle! But those days required EXTRA teaching time to make up online for missing in-class time.

Goodbye, "Writing-Only Days." I deleted those from my calendar a couple of weeks ago. That was discouraging and a little depressing.

I've just been unable to find the big blocks of time that I feel I need to get writing done. Momentum, focus, all that. I've always written that way, sometimes planning so well in advance that I can write entire short stories, novel chapters, and even the occasional novella in one sitting! Not so anymore.

Well, Doctorow says that we can train ourselves otherwise. He always tries to write at least a couple hundred words a day; other days he writes more, some days less. The point is that he writes whenever he finds the time, and gets done as much as he can. A few hundred words a day equals a novel a year. When I asked how he maintains momentum with such short, separated bursts, he answered, "With practice."

Later, as if to demonstrate, I witnessed this in action: While he was sitting in my office at work between events, he pulled out his laptop and wrote part of an article that was due soon. Just like that, during a 15-minute lull. What a role-model!

Fellow Lawrence spec-fic author Kij Johnson has been forced to use this same writing process since starting her career in academia, and now she writes first thing every morning before anything else. She has a novel due soon, and must continue to publish or order to make tenure, so she had just enough outside pressure to help her create a new habit.

These are two very different authors, each with very different writing, but it works for them both, with practice.

Time to start practicing.



I know that the hardest part for me is going to be letting go of checking in with my students first thing each morning, because there will always be emergencies to deal with, and there goes my focus. I need to start putting my writing career first: I have yet to encounter an emergency that was more important for an hour or two than my writing career as a whole. I can check in later.

(This is a challenge; it's hard just to write that publicly. But it's not as difficult as seeing another week go by during which my writing adds up to only some more notes.)

Tomorrow I start this! I'll report back from time to time to keep myself honest and to let y'all know how it's going. I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks he needs big blocks of time to write... and then ends up not writing nearly as much as he needs or wants to. I hope to serve as yet another good example of creating good writing (or whatever your art is) habits!

Chris

Finished reading Scalzi's Redshirts last night (one of the Gollancz and Tor nominations for this year's Campbell Award). It was an absolute blast and an extremely quick read: Even ill, I finished it in less than 24 hours, and I'm not a fast reader.

Yes, I am still enjoying the suffering that comes around every time this year for many. Another night of sweating the bed into a puddle, blowing my nose a billion times, and feeling like smeared poo. When I have a fever (yesterday's high was just short of 101°F), I get emotional, as evidenced by my weeping pretty much continually over poor Dean Winchester's suffering (we watched some Supernatural last night). What surprised me is that Scalzi's self-proclaimed "piss-take on televised science fiction" also set me to sobbing. (Okay, I get very emotional when feverish). By the end, though, the rational part of my mind came to the conclusion that this book really is far more than just a romp, and in fact has a lot to say about being human in our age. I promise that though it might make you sad at points, it'll mostly just elicit a single bold tear from most of y'all, plus if you're a fan of TV SF, it'll also elicit a lot of laughter. Every once in a while, Scalzi's micro-writing seems unfinished to me - he doesn't describe any of the characters, provides almost no set-dressing, and seldom appeals to any senses - but you don't read him for beautiful prose. You read this book for rompin' action, entertaining characters, and an interesting idea. If those attributes spin up your warp core, this book is highly recommended.

Speaking of Scalzi, have you noticed that he placed NUMERO UNO on Locus' All-Centuries Poll for Best 21st Century SF Novel for his book, Old Man's War? That gave me pause. I very much enjoyed it then, so perhaps I ought to give it a re-read to analyze why.

I was very pleased to see both Stephenson's Anathem (2nd) and Wilson's Spin (4th) make the top novels list for this century. Both are FANTASTIC books, my favorites of their respective years. I wasn't surprised by much on the 20th Century lists, but is Asimov's The Foundation Trilogy really the 3rd-best book of the last century? Hm. I loved it as a 1980s kid, but pulled it from the required reading list for my SF novels course after getting too many complaints about its crap writing. His The Caves of Steel - a much better novel in every way - is still on my readings list (and placed 56th on the Locus poll).

Another interesting detail: Very little from the last two years made the list in any of the 21st Century categories. I wonder if we should attribute this to our simply needing some time to catch up with reading. If you're like me, you seldom read current work, mostly relying on awards and nominations for such. Too bad for the writers staying in the business of earning money from writing, though. Unless... hm, perhaps this is why we're seeing an up-surge in ebook sales: People discover work well after it's already pulled from physical bookstore shelves, so end up buying used or ebook. Hm.

On the plus side of being feverish, this slightly altered state helped me come up with a new story idea, 1001 words of which I wrote today. Hooray, new story!

Okay, time for a nap, methinks. Hope you're doing well and enjoying 2013.

Chris

Just saw this fantastic response by author Scott Lynch to small-mindedness in speculative fiction.

I've been talking with several people lately about this very issue, ever since Chernobylred got me started thinking. She gave up on Game of Thrones right away upon realizing that, socio-politically, women have been suffering the same sexism as they have in our world.

Fantasy so often fails to try new things because "that's not the way they were." BULLPOOP. It's FANTASY, people, which means IT'S NOT AND NEVER WAS REAL. Why re-create the same sexist, racist, religionist, etcetera-ist stereotypes from our own history when you can create fresh, vivid, DIFFERENT worlds? It just reveals the authors' own imagination limitations. In fact, if you're writing any form of speculative fiction, you have no excuse for limiting yourself to the way things were or the way things are; it's SPECULATIVE, which means you can - and ought to, if you want to write something that stands out - invent futures where elections aren't affected by someone's genetic heritage, or whether they belong to a religion, or how many times they've been married, or if they're even fully organic after the shipwreck. Heck, that's the whole point: to speculate on possibilities, to examine what it means to be human encountering change.

What are your thoughts on this? Can you accept the problematic, sigh a bit, then go on to enjoy a work? Or does it stop you from being able to read it?

Chris

Y'know, checking my posting frequency really reveals how much time grading and teaching-related work consumes a teacher's life from mid-terms through the end of the semester. Sorry! Dropping in for a quick update before, yes, getting back to grading.

But first, I'm going to VOTE EARLY at the Burge Union at the University of Kansas! You can probably vote early where you live, too. But whether you do or you wait for the Big Day, VOTE.

Over the last week, I've:

* Tinkered with the Chevelle. Wanted to do a lot more, but... life.

*Finally bought myself a proper solar telescope, which I've been coveting since the Venus transit observing event in the spring. I got a super deal for it barely used on eBay; it's a double-stacked Coronado SolarMax 40mm Hydrogen-alpha with the SM40 and T-Max tuner. Here it is:



As soon as it arrives (just got it from eBay - half price!), you KNOW I'll drop it onto my antique German equatorial mount with slow-motion handles to track the Sun across the sky, take some photos, and post 'em here.

* Reorganized the sheds to make room to move the (wrecked, soon-to-be Land Speed Record) Aprilia RS50 and put the BMW R100S away for winter. This means the covered front-porch parking spot is available for my winter transportation: My Vespa S150! (With windshield, of course.)

* Wrote another 2500 words on the novel, which means I finally broke the 20k barrier! I'll be using the NaNoWriMo excuse to work lots more on it this coming month.

The Galactic Adventures of Jack and Stella progress:


In case you haven't seen it yet, John Scalzi wrote a smart (and disturbing) response to some politicians about rape and politics. Check it out, but be warned it's just plain creepy. Some of the responses are disturbing in other ways. But it's an important thing to read right now as we head into politics season, as The Handmaid's Tale becomes less SFnal and more mimetic.

Speaking of politics,
xkcd does it again with a fascinating infographic on changing political demographics in the US.

To those who live out East, please be safe as the big storm blasts your way.

Best,
Chris

I'm really excited about being on the Minnesota Public Radio show, "The Daily Circuit," tomorrow (Tuesday), with SF scholar Gary Wolfe and show host Kerri Miller. Show starts at 10:00am and runs until 11:00am, though the science fiction segment we're doing begins about 20 after. We'll be discussing Ray Bradbury (of course), but mostly we'll talk about SF reading recommendations: What work should everyone read - especially recent things - and what great stuff is coming out soon, like that. Here's a little blog intro to the show with a place to make your rec's if you wish to interact that way.


Click the image to go to Minnesota Public Radio's The Daily Circuit page.

It's a call-in show, so join me! If nothing else, I'd love to hear some of your recent and upcoming SF-reading recommendations: In your opinion, what should I make sure to mention?

Week in Review:

• Prometheus rocks. It has now become one of my favorite movies. Must see again, soon. Loved it so much, in fact, that I must now re-watch the whole anthology. Started last night with the much-derided #4, Alien: Resurrection, which I have always liked (except for the last few minutes). chernobylred had the same reaction, and we came up with the best ending: Monster-Baby chases Ripley back to the Betty, Ripley terrified that it's hunting her. She jumps aboard just as the ship lifts off, and we see Monster-Baby raise its arms, look sad, and cry as it watches her leave him - she realizes it just wanted to be with her, not harm her, and she can have the same emotional response as they watch the military vessel crash with her baby aboard. Fixed.


• Astro-Porn of the Day: Two Solar Eclipses, one with Ray Bradbury. Lots of photos from the Venus transit of the Sun and the solar eclipse. Also, tons of information about the Venus transit here.


• Remembering Ray Bradbury. James Gunn's remembrance, and a few words from me. Plus a great letter from Bradbury to a fan.


• ConQuest convention report.


• Campbell Award and Sturgeon Award finalists, plus Campbell Conference update.

And of course:
Adventures of Jack and Stella progress:

This means I'm over half way to the 30,000 word sample I plan to complete in time to submit to an agent before the SF Writing Worshop begins. At at average of 1000 words/day (as it seems I've been doing lately), it'll be close but totally do-able. HOORAY!

Chris

Calling it quits for the day so I can go wish a friend well on his new home.

Adventures of Jack and Stella progress:


Jack and Stella have now been kicked out of their home, hit the road, and had an emotional bombshell dropped on them....

Best,
Chris

Hope you had a good weekend. Mine was wonderful! Always great to see old friends and new acquaintances at ConQuest, the KC SF convention. I only wish I had more time during the days not serving on panels to hang out with people. The nights are full of great parties (especially RoomCon - thanks, Jimmy!), but not everyone attends, and it's not always easy to talk there. Oh, and I remembered to bring swim-trunks this year, so I finally got to swim in the rooftop, salt-water pool.

Last week, I wrote Jack and Stella into deep trouble, and finished the first few chapters just in time to read at the convention. I mean literally just in time: I finished the chapters just as Opening Ceremonies began. Whee!

Adventures of Jack and Stella progress:


Here's from the Saturday reading; what I'm holding up are the hand-scribbled original pages from 1983 or something when I first started working on what would later become the idea for this book:



Oh, and I should point out that I donated to the charity auction (which benefits AboutSF) a "Tuckerization" in the book. It saw some hot bidding and ended up raising a nice sum. The winner didn't just want her name but as much about her as a character as I would like to use. Bwahahahaha! This'll be fun.

On the Thursday evening before the con, a bunch of Hadley Rille authors got together at Prospero's Books in KC. I read a couple pages of my story, "The Empty Utopia," from the wonderful anthology, Ruins Extraterrestrial. It's a pretty cool place:



We also held a big chat at the con. Nice to meet so many interesting brothers-and-sisters-in-Hadley-Rille! Another large-group panel highlight for me was the "Taste of the Campbell Conference" with 8 authors onstage. We could have talked for hours about the publishing industry, ebooks, and so on.

While at the con, I also decided it's time to upgrade my portable communicator. That's right: I didn't say I'm replacing my beloved and long-abused Sanyo Katana, did I? I'm going to buy a 7" Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 tablet. All I really need a smart-phone for, a tablet can do better, right? Texting, email, GPS, video-calls, getting onto the internets while out and about, and so on. I can even save all my writing onto it, and work on stuff using apps or even MS Word - handy for cons. And as opposed to smart-phones, tablets don't come with $100/month fees unless you really want that. Viola! Plus, how geeky is it to walk around downtown, holding a 7" tablet up to one's ear, in a VOIP call? Aw, yeah. Puts a whole new spin on drunk-dialing.

Okay, I should get back to work. Just wanted to let y'all know I'm still alive and that the weekend was a BLAST.

Chris

Calling it quits for the day. Making good progress - I like these kids! It's fun tagging along as they begin to discover their hidden abilities and have to hit the road before they're captured.



Tomorrow I finish the big scene where Mom drives them out of the house and tells them they need to run as far and as fast as they can, trust no one!

Chris

 

 

Guess who just turned in final grades for Spring 2012? THAT'S RIGHT, A DAY EARLY!

After tomorrow, when grades are official, I go offline for a week, during which I write the first chapter or three of my next novel - that'd be Jack and Stella's True-Life Space Adventures - so I can read from it at the upcoming ConQuesT SF convention in Kansas City.

Speaking of SFnal stuff in Kansas City, this weekend is the Spectrum Fantastic Art Live! show at Bartle Hall. If the writing is well underway and I feel I can afford to get away for a day, I shall be there on Saturday.

(Now begins the countdown for the lamentations of those who are shocked, SHOCKED, that they didn't get an A. And those who feel that completing missing projects on the last day will result in a positive outcome.)

Chris