As SF aficionados, I’m sure you’ve noted the successful launch of SpaceX’s Falcon and Dragon, the first privately-constructed rocket to make it to LEO. The mere fact that we’re entering an era of commercial space flight is enough to make this a significant milestone, but it gets even more interesting when you break it down:
1. SpaceX was started by Elon Musk, the creator of PayPal and an early internet entrepreneur, who is now turning his wealth into visionary ventures like this and Tesla Motors.
2. The cost of the launch, per SpaceX’s published rate card, is about 1/10 that of a shuttle launch. While Falcon carries only 1/2 as much payload to LEO, it actually is more capable than the shuttle at boosting payloads into GTO. And yeah, apples and oranges, etc, but the fact is: Falcon is WAY cheaper for supplying the ISS.
Second, we have 6 crazy guys getting in a can to simulate a 520-day trip to Mars and back, to see how well they do in isolation and cramped quarters. Yeah, again, apples and mangoes–they’re not going to be suffering the effects of zero-g, they don’t have the uber-cool experience of walking around on Mars at the halfway point, etc, etc–but a cool experiment nonetheless.
And finally, something I joked about in Overhead: a Japanese company is proposing ringing the moon with solar panels, using robots and native Lunar materials as much as possible, and beaming energy back to earth, to serve the world’s entire power needs. Nuts? Sure. So is quantum computing. I wish them massive success.
I’ve had a lot of people asking me when Winning Mars, my first novel, is going to be released, especially since Amazon still claims “March 2010” for the release date. Well, I’m pleased to say that my Quantum Time Transposer is operational, and I’ll be moving the entire world back in time till February 2010 so we can meet that release date.
Or, well, not.
In actuality, I agreed late last year to extending the release date with Prime Books, and that was never reflected on the Amazon site. The new release date is September 2010.
(And, just to be clear, this version of Winning Mars is substantially different than the one I released under a Creative Commons license a few years ago. Time marches on, the world changes, and I felt that significant updates were needed. So, if you want to experience the best Winning Mars out there, you’ll have to shell out some bux.)
You can also look forward to the Winning Mars countdown, starting August 2010, where you’ll have a chance to win some really cool Mars-related stuff. More details as they are available . . .
Over the long weekend, I met Tyler, a smart graduate student who is finishing a Masters degree in philosophy. An outspoken, debate-team champion on the national level, I worried when he collided with another smart, outspoken, and extremely well-read acquaintance who is about as paleoconservative as you can get.
I shouldn’t have worried. Tyler not only kept his cool, but asked great questions, and, over the course of an evening, the two gained much mutual respect. I can imagine them going on to be fast friends.
One of the things Tyler said was, “I always challenge my assumptions. I come away with stronger belief in my ideas, or discover new, better ideas. Either way, I win.”
And what was truly amazing is this: he was willing to change, rather than rabidly defend. He was willing to look calmly at the other side of an argument, rather than simply go on the attack.
Are you ready to challenge your assumptions?
If so, pick up The Rational Optimist, by Matt Ridley. This is a book full of challenge, no matter your political or ideological stripe. This is a book that upends the “doom is just around the corner” crowd. This is a book that explains why we (as a whole) are so negative, when the reality is that things are getting better. This is a book that takes a serious look at the past and what has fueled human advancement, identifies the forces that have held us back, pulls the rug out from under people who say that there has been no progress, stares the crises du jour in the face and makes a strong case that they will soon be non-problems, just as many other doomsday scenarios that have never come to pass. This is a book that not only gives reasons to be optimistic, it outlines why we should be optimistic.
Is it a perfect argument? No, but The Rational Optimist makes a very strong case that we can and will have an amazing 21st Century, where things get better all around the world.
Do I agree with everything Matt Ridley has to say? No, of course not. But his position is strong enough that I’ll have to examine the points on which I disagree–which will lead to me either changing my mind, or strengthening my current positions.
So . . . are you up for a challenge? Have you been living in a monoculture of bad news and pessimism for too long? Are you old enough to remember those days when we all knew we’d end up being wiped out in a nuclear war? Or knew we’d live in warrens eating Soylent Green? Or knew we’d hit peak coal in 1865?
If so, as Tyler would say: Challenge your assumptions.
For me this was the best story of the anthology and not surprising it is the one that involves exploration of Outer Space, namely a colony on the dark side of the moon – so it stays out of touch with humanity except for regular deliveries of technology and people that want to join – where humanity can “reboot” if needed and where the rules are designed to create a better society. In a past thread that mixes with the current one and explains how the colony came to be, we follow executive Roy Parekh setting up an insurance company with a twist. Sense of wonder, memorable characters and a superb ending made “Overhead” a story that induced me to follow Mr. Stoddard’s career from now on. I would love a novel that would expand this story since I think the necessary depth is there.
While I greatly enjoyed almost all of Shine’s stories, a handful of those really impressed me. Jason Stoddard’s Overhead was one of them. It was a brilliant story written with a beautiful style. In Overhead, Stoddard uses flashbacks very intelligently to build his story on two alternate threads. The present thread develops the story while the flashback thread gives the reader more background helping her to understand the present thread. Furthermore, Stoddard manages to keep the suspense until the last page.
From Suite 101, Colin Harvey:
‘Overhead’ by Jason Stoddard shuttles setting between Earth and the Moon, and an embryonic lunar colony. Stoddard raises the stakes, bringing an intensity absent from much of the other fiction, making the payback all the greater. Highly Recommended.
But there are some strong stories: “Overhead”, Jason Stoddard’s sketch of a moon colony, is the best; Holly Phillips’s “Summer Ice”, set in a greener future metropolis, and Kay Kenyon’s “Castoff World”, also satisfy.
Author comment: is it surprising that financially oriented peeps would think a story about an insurance salesman is the best?
Jason Stoddard’s ‘Overhead’ is only partly set on Earth, the other part of the action is on an idealistic, experimental lunar colony. The colony develops from a dubious insurance company in the kind of unexpected development that typifies many of this anthology’s stories. Technology and social developments that are often assumed in SF to have a negative future have been turned on their head to great effect.
Two warily pet the woolly mammoth in the room: space exploration. Of these, Marie Ness’ “Twittering the Stars” (despite its gimmicky structure and grating title) is absorbing and complex, whereas Jason Stoddard’s too-earnest “Overhead” lets its most exciting premise – Europan life – lie totally fallow. In compensation, the latter contains the sole character in the anthology who’s instantly memorable: a heroic-despite-himself version of Henry the Navigator.
There are a lot of other reviews that don’t mention Overhead specifically, which I’ll take to mean one of the following:
a. The reviewer hated it and was being polite.
b. It made no impression on them at all.
Which is fine . . . ya can’t please everyone.
Now, the question from Jetse de Vries, based on Gardner Dozois and Rich Horton’s lukewarm-to-cautiously-positive reaction to Shine in the April issue of Locus magazine (not online.)
I suppose we can agree to disagree about the ‘greatness’ of certain stories, but I do wonder why an anthology full of stories where people try to change things for the better needs to be ‘approved’, while anthologies where the population is decimated, the Earth is brought to the brink of destruction (sometimes beyond) and nihilistic characters gleefully engage in violence get that stamp of approval by default. Maybe this says something about the current mindset of written SF?
My opinion: for every negative thing happening in the world today, there are one or more equally positive things. Spend some time on PhysOrg. Look at the crazy people at Copenhagen Suborbitals or the Open Space Movement. Check out the amazing beauty of Festo’s robotics. We’re on the edge of some truly amazing breakthroughs — and, no, they aren’t all going to be used to propagate the agenda of large, evil organizations.
So, to the naysayers, fear-mongers, and doom-merchants: Stand aside, and watch us make a future worth living in!
1. SpaceX was started by Elon Musk, the creator of PayPal and an early internet entrepreneur, who is now turning his wealth into visionary ventures like this and Tesla Motors.
