Inigo Press

In my latest story Jay Myriad, an android, is suffering from irreversible memory loss which will destroy his current personality. He enters a memory care facility as its first emergent person client. There he meets Ray Carney, a human angry that an android has been admitted and takes up a bed a human might use. Myriad attempts to befriend Carney and is rebuffed. A later encounter late at night in a common room gives Myriad an idea of where Carney’s antagonism arises. A subsequent health event illuminates what they have in common.

November Skies is currently being submitted for publication.

I have a story set in a far future in which all record of humanity has been lost. A  collective intelligence compiling a history of the universe discovers that, although Sol should have had intelligent life, no record exists that shows it participated in galactic civilization. A collective committee journeys to Sol and discovers a museum on the North Pole of the Moon. The Rosetta Stone, which can unlock the mystery of a spacefaring civilization that never achieved interstellar travel, is found in an ancient artifact from the dim prehistory of the Hemmen, an intelligent species that arose near Sol.

Elon Musk is famously aiming for a private expedition to Mars a decade earlier than the most likely government-financed trip. Planetary Resources and other companies are working on asteroid mining technology. What impact will these activities have on the world in the future?

Worlds of Sol explores this question.

In the March/April issue of Analog C. Stuart Hardwick presents an analysis (Taming the Genie: How Fear of the Atom Threatens our Future) of the safety of nuclear power generation compared to that of other sources. He shows what every competent physicist knows: nuclear power, even  considering Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, has caused far less environmental damage and human health detriments than any other source.  (I have a Ph.D. in Radiation Biophysics and I have expert knowledge of his arguments. He’s right.) There’s a lot of excellent detail, all of it scientifically sound. Even the risks of nuclear waste storage are addressed.

Fear, as he points out, has made nuclear power a bete noire far out of proportion to its actual ability to do harm. As Japan and Germany retreat from nuclear power, they damage the environment far more than keeping them while reducing reliance on coal-fired plants and moving toward exclusive reliance on wind and solar. New designs make even the accidents we are familiar far less likely to recur. And lest anyone complain about the high cost of nuclear, by far the biggest contributor is misguided regulatory hurdles placed in front of potential nuclear power plants. For those of us who consider the future of travel throughout the solar system, nuclear power in its many forms can be a key component.

We are science fiction enthusiasts, mostly not scientists, but we need to make our voices heard about the terrible neglect of the  environmentally cleanest source of centralized power. Ironically, buying a plug-in electric car may make your carbon footprint increase due to the large reliance on coal for electricity in the U.S.

There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Wm. Shakespeare

I’ve been seeing a lot of posts in my SF Facebook groups about various things in the solar system and beyond. Astronomers are beginning to learn so much about the solar system that we never knew. ‘Oumuamua is the first known object that came from outside the solar system and, unless something happens, will be leaving. I have a story about that topic. Watanabe’s Hammer,  I am trying to publish. Here’s a little tidbit that addresses the same question, although not from the same storyline.

Who goes there? (in memory of John W. Campbell)

Incoming

I am still collecting rejections but I have six stories out for review at various magazines.

The most interesting rejections have come from GigaNotoSaurus and Fantasy and Science Fiction. GigaNotoSaurus suggested three resources  listed below:

CC Findlay is the editor of F&SF, from whom I have collected three rejections so far. If you read the last resource in the list above, you’ll find F&SF uses a variety of form letters for stories not used, so you do get a touch of feedback about whether it wasn’t ready for prime time, your hook worked, there was some problem with the rest of the story or it was’t bad but somehow just didn’t make the cut.  (My analysis, not exactly what it says in his post.) I’ve gotten enough encouragement for some of my submissions that I think they’re worth revising and submitting elsewhere. I know if you can’t take rejection you shouldn’t be trying to publish, but you look for crumbs of acceptance wherever you can.

I read today an essay from The New Yorker that said the 20th century railroads made the mistake of thinking they were in the railroad business instead of the transportation business. I think American steel is making a similar mistake. A lot of American manufacturing in general survived WWII with their physical plant intact. The European, Chinese and Japanese combatants were bombed virtually into oblivion. That gave America dominance in the 1950’s but left them in the 1960’s with aging plants trying to compete with rebuilt, modern plants elsewhere. It’s too soon to say what the effects of tariffs, threatened or imposed, will be in American steel. But there is another perspective.

America’s forte is its high tech basis and its educated workforce, not low cost. America already has companies investigating asteroid mining and space manufacturing. American steel from asteroids would reduce CO2 emissions, pollution and  other externalities that have large costs. It would also create new jobs that don’t exist today.  It won’t happen overnight, but what will 21st century opinion writers say about American industry? Will they cite mistakes or vision?

See http://inigopress.com/life-on-mars/  for where this might lead.

A while ago I met an astronaut. He had given a presentation about flying the space shuttle at a meeting I had arranged. Afterwards, I introduced myself and told him I had applied for the astronaut program in 1979 and been rejected.

“Me too,” he said.”And again in 1980, and 1981, and every year for thirteen years until they accepted my application.”

While I was trying to process that, he smiled. “You screwed up, buddy,” he told me.

Yesterday I got another rejection for one of my favorite stories. I felt a little down about it, with many rejections and no acceptances in the last three months. Then I thought about the astronaut.

All authors say they have copied with rejection.  It feels personal sometimes, but I am determined to persevere. Someday I’ll be an astronaut.