NaNoWriMo starts Tuesday

Posted on October 29, 2011 by Sci Fi Engineer

So I did the good thing and contributed to NaNoWriMo (or the organizing group, The office of light and Letters.) I am going to do this and so am moving forward with my planning/thinking. It’s probably fairly obvious that 1700 words a day is not out of this world for me, but keeping the fingers fed with coherent story and words is going to be the trick. We shall see…I still think Elgin’s going to get to go first, but the others all have a corner of my brain….

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Intro to : Mage in Trouble…….(Working title to Fiona’s story)

Fiona MacWallachi stood on the deck of the skyferry and watched the clouds building to the west. The conductor had said they’d make it to Bodwady Bend before the storms came. She really didn’t want to spend another night on the ground watching for young bucks out to get some treaty booty. Particularly Fiona didn’t like the possible option of having to surrender herself as treaty booty, or killing some plains bred teenage idiot who thought all white skin girls were squealing simpletons and easy as well.

“Bodawdy Bend fine off the port bow!” called the navigator who’d been forward in the eyes of the skycraft. Fiona moved to look, pulling her looking-glass from its belt pouch. Bringing the brass tube to her eye she quickly found the town, spotting the towering spire of the Sky Father’s prayer house first. The town, spreading along the East bank of the Missippa river was typical of western Aural treaty towns, its streets and lanes organized on a grid pattern, the manufactories to the east, down wind, of the main living areas. There were docks on the river for water craft, and on the bluff the shinning oval of a landing pond. She turned to scan north, picking up the brown and green line that would be the wheeler road that led back to the Sweet Water Sea and the heart of the Aural Republic.

Looking down she realized that the lanes of the town spread out into the treaty platt and she could make out the outlines of Aural style farms, though there was a lot of open grass and scrub land as well. On a knob of land to the North she could see a fortified great house, probably the Platt Sheriff’s home.

Breathing in a relaxing lungful of cool air Fiona turned and walked back to the second class cabin she had been sharing with a girl coming out to Nanny for the Sheriff’s daughter in law.

Half an hour she was standing on the deck holding on to a grasp rail as the skyferry made its approach to the landing pool, like most it was near the center of town and as one could expect for a small, somewhat isolated community a fair number of people had come out to meet the biweekly Post Ferry. Forward she could see bundles of periodicals ready for landing as well as leather sacks with the post offices seal branded every few hand spans to make sure they couldn’t be stolen and reused by enterprising, if dishonest merchants.

The tones of the airfans eased, then burped up to a roar, one pushing fore, the other aft, spinning the hull as they slid down out of the sky as the pilot let the charge bleed off the lift spines. In the last instant the hull was aligned with the vector of motion imparted by the wind and the engines. Then the keel chines kissed the water and the hull was shuddering, slowing, the airfans splashed to a stop. The slender hundred and some feet of hull settled into the wather with some groans and creaks, as the wooden planked frame of the hull reacquainting itself with the buoyancy of water rather than the focused lift of the spines.

The conductor had done an outstandign job, the skyferry coasted towards the dock with no need for the airfans. The ferrymen and the dockers called out jocular greetings and ran about tossing ropes back and forth, belaying on iron pollards on the dock and hauling, brining the bow to a soft stop and swinging the stern up tight in a few moments. They made it look easy and graceful, but Fiona knew that it was long practice that made it look easy, and layered grace on brute muscle and slightly dangerous work.

The gangplank was thrust out from the ferry to land with a thump on the dock, a ferryman, a girl in this case, leapt across with the landing document, meeting a tall redbrown skinned man in the cream buckskins of a Fire Keeper tribal speaker, his feathered head dress said he was a sub chief. The sub chief read the letter, handed to the man next to him, the post master by the long red jacket with the green pipping. The post master read it and nodded, and the two mean, both gave it their chop with their quill pens.

Now the postal goods started to come off and the élite and first class passengers and luggage started to flow up the second gangplank. Fiona sat on her duffel and watched this all calmly, she was used to being middle class, she saw it as a major step up from where she had started.

-o-

More on her memories later…its later than I thought, have to get back to this tomorrow….

Under Siege is available at Smashwords

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Sci Fi Engineer

M.A. Harris’s Smashwords Author Profile: http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/MAHarris.
Book page to sample or purchase Under Siege: http://smashwords.com/b/99853.

Far Future Adventure, Intrigue and Battle

NaNoWriMo Post something or other: Five and the Base

Posted on October 23, 2011 by Sci Fi Engineer

Five opened here eyes and looked at the base spread out across the grays and browns of the asteroidal body it had been planted in. She didn’t know which base it was, she was fairly certain that it was one she hadn’t seen before.

“We are shedding the kids Commander.” Mother said in Five’s head. A glance showed the twenty roughly similar pieces of rubble that had trailed behind the slightly ovoid blob that was Watcher Sixty five thousand, five hundred and sixty-five were diverging and forming up to make their way into the repair and update bay.

Five looked back at the base. she was looking into the side, though at first glance it was like a city of tall skyscrapers seen from directly above, all sharp edges and spires poking out of the asteroidal body. The gravity generator spikes speared ‘down’ from the asteroid. Mother and Five continued towards the ‘sky scrapers.’ as Five wondered where the word skyscraper had come from, it tasted familiar, but it elicited no definition tag from the tac glossary.

Mother’s target was now very obviously the ‘bottom’ of the structure, dark blocks with massive lattice structures between above and around them. That was the BlankBank, like every BlankBank in every other base. There Five would find her sisters and be able to exercise, eat maybe, think, even sleep, “Perchance to Dream?” a voice not her own or Mother’s seemed to whisper.

“Uh, Mother?””

“Yes dear?”

“Uh did you, hear something?”

“No dear.”

They were both silent during final approach. From what Five could see there were at least ten other Watchers docked. That seemed a lot and if each of the Banks had the same number that would be a Hundred at this base alone, and several thousand more out on their long looping patrol orbits. Seven minutes later Mother entered a bay and docking arms reached out to snag the camouflaged fighter. Continue reading →

NaNoWriMo the Countdown

Posted on October 16, 2011 by Sci Fi Engineer

So the daughter likes the one about the swordmaid and the old mage, sounds like a bad joke in a MMOG. The good thing is that this story is based in the universe of a novel I’ve been working on for a year or more and ‘know’ pretty well. It could be pretty interesting to work at developing that universe more, with its multiple parallel worlds with different levels and types of magic and different though related inhabitants.

It’s what one might call a QuantFunk universe where magic works because of differences in the ‘Quantum fabric’ of the universe. All of my Fantasy is of this type, not because I have a philosophical thing against supernatural magic, but because I cannot come up with a supernatural magic ‘system’ that makes sense to me. I’ve read plenty of good novels where the author creates good ones, but I just have a mind block, comes from being an engineer I guess.

I had been working on the Five concept, have some settings, characters and plot elements laid out. All of which Fiona and her Mage lack but that’s not stopped me in the past.

So to Fiona’s universe:

I happen to have loved Victorian times long before they became tres chic with CyberPunk, so think of: dress, furniture, buildings, towns, politics and much else as ‘looking’ Victorian.
Fiona’s home world is essentially similar to Earth as it might have been if the tectonic plates had moved slightly differently.
In general this is a world where males and females are more equal than not. Sexual dimorphism in size & strength is less pronounced in a world of magic (don’t make me explain why, I can probably do it) Equalitarian systems exist but Patriarchies are common and there are some matriarchies.
The world is ruled by the King of Kings, an Elven warrior. The Elves come from a parallel universe. Thousands of years ago they lifted Man up from barbarism but have often regretted it since. The Elves find themselves constantly having to get between factions of Men who want to kill off each other.
There is a large faction of Elves who want the KoK to just leave Men to kill themselves off. There are several small political factions of Men who want to exterminate the Elves.
There are also Trolls, Goblins and Dwarves. They kind of play the roles you’d expect. With some differences, Dwarves aren’t that small and are engineers and scientists as well as sorcerers and fighters. The Trolls are not only big and mean they can also be brilliant scientists and powerful sorcerers. The Goblins come in two types, one aligned with the Trolls, the other essentially unaligned. While Goblins can be pretty frightening to a human, they can be extremely attractive.
All of the races, Elves, Men, Trolls, Goblins, Dwarves are genetically related and can interbreed but its not terribly common.
Even with the King of Kings there is no ‘World’ gov’t as such. The KoK tries to control at the international level have a basic rule of law, human rights and fair trade.
Local gov’t varies from place to place, from Democracies to Despotisms and the KofK does not interfere unless its egregious and or he is asked for help by the subjects.
Firearms never evolved because all forms of gunpowder are too easily triggered by sorcery.
Swords and knives are the standard personal weapons, with ‘carry’ laws varying from country to country.
Bows not crossbows are used again because a crossbows too easily messed with.
They have heavy weapons that compress air into glowing ‘meteors’ that can be tossed around but they are relatively slow firing and slow moving, the weapons are electrically powered.
They use kerosene (essence) that is converted in directly to electricity plus H2O and CO2′ in a form of fuel cell for powering most of their technology.
They have essence / electric horseless carriages though they are fairly rare.
Their aircraft are lifted by a form on contra gravity and propelled by fans powered by essence fueled generators, they are mostly wooden and lightly built but can be hundreds of feet long. Aluminum and other light metals are not commonly available due to lack of industrial infrastructure.

So enough for tonight, more thinking to be done.

Tomorrow is another day but it never comes

Posted on October 7, 2011 by Sci Fi Engineer

I am editing and in a foul mood so I’m not going to get much of a post out today unless things improve. Hope the rest of you are doing better.

Aliens in the Belfry

Posted on October 5, 2011 by Sci Fi Engineer

In Sci Fi aliens serve a myriad purposes, but most often as humans in bad makeup. One reason for this is so that the author can tell an allegory without having to worry about being considered racist, or misogynistic, anti immigrant, anti american, etc. Also, if they act/react like humans but are described as ‘Other’ the reader has a much easier time relating, we can understand their motivations and like, or dislike, them. This makes telling a complex story much easier and makes it more enjoyable to read.

They also make better class of zombie, vampire, elf (don’t tell me Spock’s not an elf), gods (small g), etc. In other words they let us retell stories again and again just changing the protagonists and antagonists, the setting and the point of view, creating an endless array of potential stories to tell ourselves.

As a dilettante in the sciences my current expectation is that life at least at the level of microbes is fairly to extremely common, but life at the level of complexity/sophisticated seen on Earth is rare, possibly to the point of singularity. My expectation is that if life will probably come in many forms but from a terrestrial world you will get terrestrial looking creatures that, to the citified might just be one other weird ass racoon, or chicken, etc, they are unlikely to look like Predators etc. Would an intelligent dinosaur or wolf be horrific? Leaving aside the potential they’d consider us good eating or a lower class of pest that is.

And while a Non – Terrestrial world’s environment could easily produce creatures we have a hard time relating to (maybe they’d even be horrific in appearance.) They’re unlikely to want to interact with us except on a purely business matters since its unlikely we’d be of much interest to them. Though again empire builders might not care about having to live in domed cities while the locals mine the tar pits.

So having wandered all over the topic, what is my point you ask?

I don’t really have one I guess, I was thinking about the Post a Day challenge and then decided to post about what I would write if I take up the NaNoWriMo challenge and wandered off from there. Am I going to write Sci Fi again, I think so. Will it have aliens, again I think so, though perhaps not obviously. Am I going to try to do NaNoWriMo…who knows…if a big job hits at work then certainly not, 1,700 words a day and 80 hour work weeks do not mix. But the aether appears clear at this time. So Maybe.

Editing Writing with an iPad

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Sci Fi Engineer

I am here tonight to admit in front of you all that I am an addict. An iPad addict. I to have been assimilated into the great collective.

I read the Economist, Aviation Week and Space Technology, and more on it, follow the news and blogs. I watch shows, read books, play games, stay in (calendar) synch with my wife on it. But it’s not just because it’s the uber net to brain link, though that plays it’s part, that I am so addicted.

Despite what S.Jobs and others have said the iPad is a content creating platform, it’s just not a Mac or PC. For some jobs it is awkward and it does change how I express myself, writing and editing are harder and I tend to be ‘flatter’ less expressive but that’s not always bad I do have a tendency to be too flowery even repetitive if unconstrained (and use too many big words.). For art/picture creation it is a revelation. And it enables creation in places I have not been able to create in before, primarily on travel for my work because carrying 2 laptops is (for me) not an acceptable option.

I have created the covers to both my novels, one published the other upcoming, on my iPad and am happy with both, here’s the upcoming one the other is Moon Dreams shown down a few links.

While typing on the iPad is not as fluid as it is on my ThinkPad laptop it is possible to do lying in bed one finger hunt and peck.

The iPad has had a profound impact on me and my family, hopefully generally for the better (how else could I listen to Pandora and read Instapundit while on the elliptical machine at the gym?