Tag: space

Why Write…New Release

Why Write,

As I publish my latest novel, ‘Earth’s Last Hope’ people ask me, why?

That’s a head-scratcher.

I will couch this next paragraph with blunt honesty. Everyone thinks that they can write.

While you might have made it through high school English and college, that doesn’t mean you can write. It’s not impossible, but it takes practice. It takes more than just practice. It takes passion.

When I think back on all the hours I spent learning to paint or play the guitar, the passion drove me.

“Why?” That is the question that drove me.

Since I began my writing career, I have written over forty-five million words. Yes, that’s quantified.

Much like my early painting, I cringe when I look backward at my previous works.

‘That is how it should be.’

Some predators thought they could write. Since these predators can’t, they pose as SMEs in a facet of writing.

I know of nobody that doesn’t think their first novel isn’t going to be a New York Times Best Seller.

Reality is a sucky thing, but don’t stop dreaming. Dream big. Be real… Get beta readers that you trust.

These posers know that if you spend time writing a novel, you are so involved that you will spend money to make it big. While they laugh all the way to the bank, your hopes are what you got for your money.

I get that same ‘feeling’ when I purchase a lottery ticket. My dollars’ worth of entertainment is this. “What will I do with all that money when I win?”

Friends, that is the only reason to spend that dollar. If you paid attention in your statistics class, you understand that the house always wins. Stay out of gambling joints unless you have money to piss away.

Yes, I go to Vegas but have an ‘oh shit budget.’ The key is to realize that the ATM is not a slot machine.

When those wheels don’t end where I wanted,” Well, Shit.”

When the house wins….”Well, shit.”

Vegas is an atmosphere for entertainment. Not a retirement strategy.

Writing novels is not a retirement strategy; it is entertainment. Firstly, it is entertainment for the author. Secondly, it is a stepping stone toward being better at your craft. Thirdly and lastly, it is entertainment for your audience.

With those few words of wisdom, let me expound on my latest novel.

Earth’s last hope, in short, is this… Hope.

In this novel, I kill off 8 billion folks and destroy the planet, and …the story has a happy ending.

Please don’t spoil it for yourself and read the last chapter first; it won’t make sense.

For you writers, the characters had negative and positive arcs. The story has negative and positive arcs.

For you readers, it’s a page-turner.

The story is light sci-fi, a thriller, and a romance with a strong female lead.

I hope you read my book, give me feedback and if you like it, please go to the place you purchased it and leave a review.

Over a million books are put into the marketplace every year. Trust me, few of those books are worth the time to read.

The Star People is the backstory of the main character. I published a version of it in our league’s Anthology to whet the appetite of readers like yourself. In Earth’s Last Hope, those few chapters are included but modified to go along with the rating and theme of the book.

Some names changed, as did the rating. MA 14.

Thanks for reading the blog and for following me.

Follow me if you are interested in writing. I pick different topics and expound on them, cutting through the BS. Just free info from me to you.

Much Love -Scott

Earth’s Last Hope

Pioneer deceleration problem, My take. #space #time

In 1992, we launched Pioneer 10, which is leaving the solar system. As it reaches further away from the sun, it has begun to decelerate.

Scientists believe to have discovered the solution. They are proposing that particles leaving the spacecraft as heat are pushing against the forward momentum of the craft slowing it.

“I beg to differ.”

Using the good old formula F=MA, that simply does not seem to add up.

I read about this anomaly years ago and have noodled the issue for, well years.

Time is not a constant.

We here on earth think of time as purely a linear progression that we measure with clocks, watches, and calendars.

For years we have all seen the model of the solar system on a green grid with the sun, planets and other bodies all warping the fabric of space as they “fall” in their respective orbits.

Picture the solar system not on a horizontal plane but inside a bubble. Maybe it is an oblong bubble and not a perfect sphere but a bubble never the less.

Now picture the other things inside that solar system in their respective bubbles, each creating a bubble that is respective of its mass.

That bubble is warped space. Its intensity of warpage is directly proportional to the amount of gravity.

When we see these huge storms on the sun that go on for days, or the Magellanic Clouds that seem to be frozen in time, this is our first clue that time is not a constant.

If we could build a craft that could tolerate the heat of the sun and orbit it much closer to the sun, I also suspect that the storms on the sun would happen at an accelerated rate. That craft would be in a different “local time.”

1dbd_flux_capacitor_car_charger — Pick this handy little gadget up at Think Geek!

Much like traveling through the country we pass time zones and date zones. If you hopped in your faster than lightspeed spaceship with your version of the flux capacitor and left to see the Horsehead Nebula, when you got there, it would not be there.

Leaving your “local time” heading outside of the solar system would put you into another time zone. Instead of being based on some ancient 60 seconds to the minute, the next “bubble might be 75 seconds to the minute.”

Traveling between the Bubbles in that area of empty space, where gravity does not play a role might very well find you traversing the distance in “no time,” as there is nothing there to create the bubble!

Pioneer 10 and 11 are slowing because they are reaching the end of this bubble and entering into another local time. Once outside the bubble of the Milky Way, I suspect it will speed up significantly.

Where the demarcation point of that bubble is, is truly a mystery.

This postulation can be proved or disproved with a simple test.

As the spacecraft get further away, does the bit rate of the telemetry change at all, even in the slightest?

The bit rate should not change with distance, only time!

I am a science fiction writer. I don’t pretend to understand the books of math that these scientists do. Because I don’t constrain my thought process to what I can find a formula for, I can think outside the box.

The postulations no matter how preposterous they may seem to the scientific community, I claim them as mine and hold that copyright.

They may very well find themselves in one of my next novels which is possibly the only place that they belong.

-Best

#space.com #Russian #meteorite still a mystery.

Space.com reports that meteorite over Russia is still a mystery.

If I can figure it out, why can’t you?

http://www.space.com/28568-Russian-meteor-mystery-2-year-anniversary.html?cmpid=559072

Meteor Mystery Remains

https://thetimedok.com/2014/04/15/meteors-asteroids-and-other-heavenly-bodies/

https://thetimedok.com/2013/02/16/asteroids-and-meteors-oh-my/

https://thetimedok.com/2014/11/14/comet-space-and-you/

And finally the smoking gun…

https://thetimedok.com/2015/01/27/asteroid-2004-bl86/

This last link is more than enough proof to at least give my hypothesis more than a passing glance. I might point out that some of our greatest discoveries were not made by people with large names, or egos, just some guy or gal that can think outside the box, like your humble writer of this blog.

-Best

Gravity.. Million Dollar Arm

I rarely get time to watch movies much less TV in general. Today I was under the weather a bit so I decided to kick back and veg.

Sandra Bullock who is probably one of my favorite actresses performed in a role out of her norm and I must say I was impressed.

The plot was predictable and the Russians always seem to be the bad guy, even in my book that I am working on, they play the role of antagonist. Most of the Russians that I have met however do not fit the stereotype so maybe we as writers need to find another “bad guy.” I digress…

I am also a fan of Clooney and I really liked his country western music, story telling character. I even appreciated the way he “rides off into the sunset, although technically I think it may have been sunrise..

Some of the special effects went too far in my humble opinion and I could have done with a lot less of the spinning, whirling and breathing in the fish bowl. I think the director might have gone too far with a lot of what they were trying to convey and this definitely gave me some flashbacks of 2001 space odyssey.

Was the movie believable or plausible, no… But if you check your brain at the door, the special effects are good and while I really should have seen this one in 3D, it was still ok on the TV at home and popcorn and a drink that did not set me back $20.

If you happen to keep up with what is up above the earth at all, they do bring up the very real possibility of what would happen if some of those artificial satellites were to become tiny bits and pieces. It underscores the need to have a complete “cradle to grave” solution for everything that leaves the earths orbit.

I also caught Million Dollar Arm this weekend.

The movie gives one a flavor of India. It moves along rather slowly and is also predictable. I kept looking to see Clint Eastwood looking for talent instead of someone who I am not familiar with.

Trouble with the Curve is a much better movie than this; and for my money this is a rental on a rainy night, or wait for it on Cable. I was rather curious about the outcome of the two recruits from India to see how they actually performed but have yet to do the research. The comic relief was some rather brilliant writing, but not enough to go spend $11 or more to see.

I would really like to see more of the two in the picture below but, I just don’t know how you would make a sequel out of it.

Space Pollution, a possible niche market for someone with deep pockets

Since this “political football known as sequester” we need someone who wants to tame the new frontier, to “boldly go….” Ok enough..

Calling Bill Gates, or any of you other billionaires out there with nothing to spend your money on…. I have a proposition for you! Read on to hear my plan…

One year ago, in April, we just about lost a $960.000.000 telescope to a defunct Russian spy satellite. Quick thinking on the part of several people managed to save our telescope however; the risk remains and it is not getting better, but worse.

With each and every launch, other “stuff” is left in space to orbit, and slowly fall back to earth. Depending upon the altitude and velocity, it could take weeks, years, decades or centuries for the orbit to decay enough for the earth’s gravity to pull it back down.

The good news is that things fall back to earth often and usually burn up during the re-entry process , falling harmlessly into the ocean or some other body of water, the Canadian Wilderness or the Australian outback. This is just about a verbatim statement from “those who know.” I for one am glad that these things only fall where people aren’t; pretty clever of them to arrange that.

Truth be told, (you know how I like truth) this claim is made because 70% of the earth is covered with water of one kind or another. If you have ever gambled you know that it is all about the odds, which are derived from percentages of one thing or another.

By last estimates there are 23,000 pieces of space junk and about 1500 satellites give or take the dozens that neither country will admit to. That means that there are about 24,500 objects up there with no planned way of removing them safely. I think that we actually have an “end of life” policy created for ours, if the thing is still functional.

The hazards are increasing exponentially with each and every launch and of course should two satellites collide as they did in 2009 at hyper speeds, lots of space junk gets released into orbit. The collision between Iriduim 33 and Kosmos 255 was not the only collision in space. In fact there have been 8 known high speed collisions and several minor collisions. Someone gets paid to keep up with each and every little thing up there. How well do you think they do their job?

As of yet, there are no Universal treaties as to who does what in space; so the problem continues to get worse. The lawmakers are too concerned about anything but what they should be, so don’t look for help from any government.

Along come the visionaries…

Well maybe not these folks…

We need some visionaries to come up with a way to reclaim the space junk. Instead of figuring out ways to make a weapon more precise or more lethal, how about working on this problem before it is totally out of hand?

I actually have an idea that might work. Scientist have proposed building a type of tractor (not like the one on Green Acres) but a “Space Tractor” to snag or deflect an asteroid causing its trajectory to change enough to save the earth.

What if…we tested that theory on some space junk? What if…. we slowed the orbit of some space junk down enough so its orbit would decay at a more rapid rate, and maybe, just maybe with some practice, we could manage where and when it would fall, not using the current Vegas method of science, but real science. Instead of trying to deflect an asteroid first, start out with something small and closer to home like, a defunct satellite. One could actually make a business out of it, and charge Millions! Why does it take a science fiction writer to come up with this stuff? Maybe if the space station has enough mass they could figure out a way to test the theory with it. It is already up there, with a crew and everything!

No, Ok well how about this?

If any of you happen to know Michio Kaku; or the guy that demoted Pluto, or some other notable “scientist,” forward this to them. If you know Bill, give him my best and show this too him but, sell it as the newest form of software development. Someone would have to write the stuff to control this thing, right?. I would love to hear why it would not work or why it is not a good idea. Personally, I think if the nation(s) could focus on something else, other than politics, it would be a good thing. If any of you scientist need any more “out of the box thinking”…call me….phone is write here…waiting….

-Best to you and those that you care about.

Why do I think that UFO’s are not visiting us?

Why would they?

The only reason’s that “aliens” would come to this planet would be to exterminate us, and take the planet for themselves, or to simply take its resources or, manage us, much like we manage the deer population. They might very well find sport in hunting us; and they might have a taste for human flesh.

Then of course we have the ET or Alf varieties, who just want to make friends and possibly eat our cats.

As a race of people, we are a violent race. While some countries are “more mature” than others, there are elements or factions in this world who are malevolent in nature, and in fact still “live by the sword!”

There are other factions that enslave us with their corrupt, power hungry, narcissistic, maniacal, psychotic view of life, bent on gaining even more power or money, damn the cost! I would ask them, how much money is enough? Writing laws by the thousands, in order to enrich their lives by taking from the peasants. No race or group is sacrosanct, they just manipulate us into believing that we are.

There is a list on the internet of the wealthiest men. Bloomberg is worth Billions; is it any wonder that he now acts like a god; telling you what you can eat or drink or smoke. Take your billions and go retire somewhere, buy an island and don’t take any guns or soft drinks.

There are factions on this earth who have been at war with one another most probably since they were in caves; learning to master fire. There is in fact nothing that we have to offer a space traveler other than entertainment, much like the Romans throwing Christians to the Lions for being unpatriotic and not worshiping their gods Jupiter, Mars, Juno and Vesta. Then they might want to do like the writers of Star Trek suggest in one episode, (original version), pitting one human against another in some sort of competitive sport where they fight to the death, with the aliens betting on which one would be victorious. Whatever a quatloo is worth in our money, maybe we should print some, just in case. Actually thinking about it that was kind of a theme, I still remember the Gorn, do you?

My personal feelings are that if we were visited by a friendly race, we would be chastised for how noisy we were as a planet, and warned not to bring our war mongering ways outside of our planet. I would in fact welcome such a visit as then, just maybe the super powers and the war mongering idiots of this world would see that there are bigger things out there other than themselves and their petty bickering. Personally, I think they are all so wrapped up in their own agendas, that they truly can’t see the forest for the trees!

They all in fact need a “time out!”

Technology has truly outpaced our humanity. We have “scientist” sending signals into space, looking for a response as well as SETI, much like the Short Wave Listeners of years ago, just listening to see what they hear.

We have more and better ways to kill one another. We have created WMD’s that will kill off the inhabitants, while leaving the infrastructure in tact. We have such a low value for human life that we call it a women’s choice vs. what it truly is “murder,” and then we make it a political lever or football in order to paint one side in a negative light. We kill innocent people, in order to make a point of how “bad ass we are” and than threaten that you had better capitulate to our god, or more will die.

As far as a race coming here to take our resources, I have serious doubts that we would be worth the trouble. There are far too many worlds out there that most likely have no life at all or possibly simple microbial life, at the beginning of its evolutionary cycle. One has to wonder if Aliens did visit us, would they consider us at the beginning of our evolutionary cycle.

Carl Sagan was a man that I admired, and while I loved his shows, his brilliant forward thinking mind, I can not help but wonder if sending a map, to where we are; out into interstellar space was a good idea. Hopefully by the time it is discovered, we will have evolved as well. If when found and we are visited what will they find? A functioning world with intelligent beings, or a world wrapped in nuclear winter?

Any alien passing by, on their way to who knows where, most certainly would listen to our broadcast, and if they could make sense out of them they would know that they would most likely be met with hostile threats or actions from some nation on this planet, probably multiple nations as the proliferation of nukes make there way into the hands of people who are not of sound mind and body, or have such twisted ideas of man and morality that most “normal” people, would not recognize them as sane. They may in fact pass us by because of the hostility that exists on this world deeming us simply not worth dealing with; just to get a few cats.

-Best to you and those that you care about!

The case of the misfit hand tool.

The following is my guess to what this company is searching for. Hope you enjoy the tale..

https://www.facebook.com/OldeCrowAntiquesPrimitives

After searching servers throughout the world, I came across a wiki leaks article dated from 1947.

It seems as though a man was found wondering aimlessly through the New Mexico desert. He had no memory of how he had gotten there but, was visibly agitated when a small lizard scurried by his feet, while talking to authorities.

He was brought to the local hospital for observation and treatment for dehydration and exposure. Days later, while he was getting his clothes back on, he noticed something in his pocket. Plucking it out revealed a strange looking device. Not knowing what it was or how it got there, he put it back into his pocket and made his way down to the cafeteria in the hospital.

Later he was greeted by a Doctor who used hypnosis to bring back memories, so they could find out who this guy was and where he belonged.

Once under hypnosis (so the story goes) he told of wild things, crazy things, he told about being taken from his car in the middle of the night and brought aboard some sort of craft. He was so visibly shaken by the retelling of the events that the therapist had to stop the session and awaken the man for fear of a seizure or other such malady.

The two met again and again, day after day; each time getting a little more information. The good Doctor was either putting the pieces of an extraordinary puzzle together or, the twisted mind of a seriously ill man. Either way he wanted to continue as this was by far the most interesting case that this doctor had ever dealt with.

As the sessions progressed, the man told of being on a table where these creatures which stood on two feet and looked somewhat like lizards, were bringing instruments over his body to “examine” him. At this instance with incredible lucidity the man looks at the “probes” and other devices and tells the creatures “Aw Hell No!” and with much surprise breaks the constraints on the table and escapes the examining room to find himself in a maze of corridors and hallways.

As the lizard people had much shorter legs than him and long since lost their ability to run on all fours; he was able to outrun them and for several hours lurked around the bowels of the ship. While in one room, he saw all sorts of gadgets and other meters and lights and what have you as well as strange looking shafts of light, emanating from the floor to the ceiling the light pulsed with a low droning noise coming from somewhere in the ship.

He told of watching their “people” adjusting a device that they called the Quantum entanglement regulator or QER. (The precursor to the flux capacitor I am sure.) When they adjusted the QER correctly the pulsed light coalesced into a nice steady rhythm. After the two “aliens” working on the QER left; our hero went up to the QER, grabbed the “tool” off of the table and “tweaked” the QER just a little bit, as to cause the pulses of light to flash more erratically; after which, he put the tool into his pocket and left the room.

As the tool that adjusts it is made from the same metal that the QER is made from, and at the same time, the tool and the device are a match both metallurgically as well as atomically. Any other device used to adjust the QER would result in immediate destruction of the device, or so they thought.

It was not long before our hero was discovered wandering the hallways and brought back to the examining room. Once there, they wiped his memory of the events and deposited him in the middle of the desert, many miles from where they took him from.

As the aliens were really not familiar with the concept of clothing, they also did not know about pockets. Had they known, they might have searched him before they sent him back to the planets surface.

After the doctor awakens his patient he asked him about the tool. With little more than a blank look, the abductee reaches into his pocket and retrieves the tool, and hands it to the doctor.

While there is nothing visibly exceptional about the tool the good doctor laughs and tells the guy that it looks like a really poorly designed nutcracker, and hands it back to our hero. Our good doctor was now convinced that the mans’ time in the desert had left him lost in episodes of delirium and there was little more that he could do other than to get the paper to see if they could help discover who this guy really is.

News of the person found in the desert reached the media of the day, and it was not long after that before he was reunited with his loved ones. The tool ended up in the back of a junk drawer where it sat, collecting dust, until the man’s death several years later. His children then had an estate sale and the tool was sold with the “lot” of the contents of the junk drawer.

Meanwhile, when the aliens tried to leave orbit, they discovered that their Quantum Entanglement hyper drive was not “regulated” correctly and immediately dispatched a crew to regulate it. When the tool to do so could not be found they were forced to stay on our planet much longer than they had planned for. A brash decision was made to attempt to regulate the QER with something other than the correct tool, and in July of 1947, as a result of that decision, there was a crash of one alien craft inhabited by “lizard people” in Roswell…

Somewhere in a dungeon at Write Patterson Air Force base lies the remains of the craft which our people have tried for years to reverse engineer. So far the only technology that they could replicate is fiber optics and Velcro, and some claim the laser, but I tend to think we did that one.

The QER is still out of sync and because of the signals that it is emanating, had to be put several stories under ground to keep the Russians from picking it up on their spy satellites.

If they only knew that in some small antique shop lives the key to unlimited power, space travel; not only at incredible speeds, but also time, they would be ecstatic! Yes the QEHD (Quantum Entanglement Hyper Drive) also allows for easy travel both forwards and backwards in time.

Can you imagine what would happen if General Wainright at the pentagon, were to read this story on the internet and find the key to power beyond his wildest dreams, and it lives in a small antique shop? He will never see it however; as security is so tight that no computer can ever be connected to the public internet, ergo he will never read about this on Facebook. All the unlimited power that this tool controls will be lost to all of mankind forever!

Another fun fact is about the aliens themselves. Unlike the media hype, several survived and have been working in the skunk-works programs at Write Patterson and Area 51. Our government did not force them into this; they found that after getting to know us, that we are not really all that bad. As the matter of fact, one of those aliens is a celebrity of sorts; you see him on TV, selling insurance. You just think that he is CGI…..

I would also be totally remiss if I did not entertain the other theory, that this is simply a poorly designed nut cracker, so poorly designed in fact, that few were made as the nuts and or shells escaped, putting people’s eyes out. The company abandoned the idea of making this model and this is the one, the prototype that survived going back into the crucible, to be made into something more useful, like pull tabs on beer cans.

The story, people and depictions in this “article” are a complete creation of an over active imagination, and should be looked at as “entertainment.” Or are they….? The Truth is out there, and, I Want to Believe…

Update: 10-14-14

Mystery solved!

Some time ago this picture was placed on Face Book by a company that sells antiques and other one off things. Nobody had a clue what this was or what it was used for. We guessed that it was a tool but for what. I frequent antique stores as this type of thing interest me.

While digging around I found something that looked very similar and on the handle was a tag describing it. This device was used to turn the flu in a stovepipe off or on, or adjust it as it would be hot. I still like my story better but alas, the truth is out there…

-Best to you and those that you care about.