There is the general spoiler page for general questions.
I’m making this set of pages for more specific questions.
The rule is: do not ask or comment about a book until it has been at least a month in issue. I think that will make everybody happy re spoilers.
Thanks. I’m much too stunned to say anything else.
The Dockmaster is being far too modest.
By the magic of brute force editing, the Alliance-Union thread is again about Alliance-Union matters, and the Linguistics discussion has been (somewhat messily) moved to its own thread.
As you were, troops!
Richard has been working on several Ships in the A/U universe: Norway, Lucy, Dublin again, Pride of Chanur, Hellburner, etc. He has a very nice collection of them.
Is Hestia set in the Alliance/Union universe? Having just watched Avatar, I am highly reminded of it. It doesn’t get discussed much, and I, personally, consider it both one of CJ’s lesser works (in fact, it’s one of the few that I will tell people not to read unless they are completists), and the one with the worst blurb that I have ever read. Plus it does an excellent job of showing why paragraph breaks are important!
Hestia is way old. Don Wollheim (DAW Books) asked if I had anything left in the closet, and that one should have gone through the typewriter again before I let it out. I was still teaching at the time and didn’t have a lot of spare time to do that—plus I wasn’t forward enough to tell Don wait for it. Should have.
I have a question. In some of the A-U novels (Rimrunners is the one that comes to mind) there is a reference to the “Hinder Stars” as a group of old stations being brought out of retirement. What’s the “Hinder” name from? Is it as “behind” (no one cares about these much, they’re sort of in the back) or as “hindrance” (they’re just in the way, when you want to reach Pell from Sol)?
When humankind left the old Circle Trade, after the mad scramble to get to Pell, they began to refer to this string of stars as behind them. The push after that was to go after the richer stars not so remote from Pell (Tau Ceti). Earth was somewhat annoyed, to say the least.
I read Hestia when it was first out in paperback…..after Brothers of Earth (First CJ EVER) and possibly Morgaine. At the time I kept looking at the copyright thinking it was a much earlier book…..nice to know my instincts were right……I would love to see what you would do with it now……in all the ‘free’ time 😉 you have!
I read Hestia a long time ago. But I have absolutely no memory of the content. I might remember it if I saw the lede graph, but….
Hello Richard , Concerning your message of ‘December 18th, 2009’ And Fore & Aft of that .
Are you able to post a URL to view the set of completed modles or even work in progress snapshots ?
Tia , JimL
You can wade through this if you wish. It’s not really a dedicated thing, just something I do for fun. There is also some sillyness involved.
http://z11.invisionfree.com/Shejidan/index.php?showtopic=1880
I waded, and got chuckles from the silliness. I have to agree with the Shejidan poster who said, a while back, that he had visualized riders as looking like Cylon fighters (original series, please!)… even manta-like, and curved to conform to the hull! Though as I write that, aren’t the riders carried on the frame? Which could be faceted with flat spots to mate up riders easily enough.
Richard, any chance you could post large-enough screen shots of your magnum opus (Norway plus riders) for us to drool over properly? Maybe CJ could create a page for images, or on Shejidan?
..and there I was thinking you liked my idea of painting Mahen ships in a loud check to match their kilts…
I’m still rather partial towards the Hive of Chanur and its variations.
I have toyed with my own page, with these models in one section. With CJ’s permission, of course. Failing that, I could share a TinyPic album.
Spider: Keep it up, and you will possess a plaid starship.
My hats off to Cj and the WWAS eBook Team. I am SO enjoying Heavy Timee and Hellburner. You guys did a bang up job.
CJ, I would really like to know how you go about choosing cover art. Is that up to you, or the publisher?
For the e-books, I did those with Jane’s help. I chose a publication ok star image and spun it and applied several other filters. That’s a real asteroid in the other image. And a real starfield. Just adjusted a little.
Re regular book publication, a writer has very little to no control of the cover image. Neither does the editor, in some houses: it’s an art department decision.
If you are e-publishing on your own how do you get an ISBN?
fsharon
I don’t, because it’s expensive, and since it’s primarily used by libraries and bookstores, it’s not much use for e-books. You don’t actually need one to be official. What you need is a copyright, from the US Copyright office. That’s 35.00 per short story or novel.
The pedant in me wants to know what happens when you have a book that’s a collection of short stories. 35 per story in the book, 35 for the book itself, or is it a combination?
Some handy rules of thumb.
An object impacting at 3 km/sec delivers kinetic energy (KE) equal to its mass converted to TNT. The kinetic energy goes up at the square of the velocity. An object impacting at 6 km/sec delivers KE equal 6/3=2, 2^2=4x its mass converted to TNT.
Earth’s orbital velocity is 29.85 km/sec around the Sun. Here’s the derivation:
Time for sunlight to hit the earth is 8 minutes and 20 seconds, or 500 seconds. Orbital radius is therefore 500 light seconds. One light second is 300,000 km (in round numbers)
2*pi*(500*300,000)=942,477,796 km (roughly). Earth travels that circumference in 365.249 days.
One day is 24 hours. One hour is 3600 seconds. One day is therefore 24*3600-86,400 seconds. One year is 31,557,513 seconds.
Divide the first number by the second, and we get 29.85 km/sec.
You don’t even need to get to c-fractional impactors. Hitting something with the mass/volume of fully loaded shipping container (roughly 25 tons in 100 cubic meters) at 60 km/sec will do:
60/3=20, 20*20*25 = 10,000 tons of TNT, or about half of a Hiroshima sized bomb. It would spend under a second in the atmosphere, and there’s plausible evidence that the first layer to turn into plasma on contact would act as a lubricating sheathe for the time it took to hit the ground.
And 60 km/sec is, well, ‘traffic cop’ speed in the A-U/Compact universe.
Let’s look at 0.8 c (240,000 km/sec).
240,000/3 = 80,000. 80,000*80,000*25 = 160 gigatons (!) of TNT equivalent. And this is roughly “Throw out the trash” for a ship.
One of my business partners would love to do products in this universe; I’m the game design corner of the company. (I’m also aware of how Darwin Bromley at Mayfair, to use genteel understatement, screwed CJ back in the 1980s, so I can understand if she’s cautious).
It’s a gedankenexperiment for me. I’m a fan of the books, but I’m worried that working within CJ’s physics models for space combat (which is largely what I’m known for) is going to collapse to a two or three solution puzzle, with low replayability. This is fine for a novel; it makes the writer’s job much easier. It’s not so good for a game.
Hey Ken, aren’t you the “Attack Vector: Tactical” guy? I never actually got to play it, but the manual is very rich and informative. I refer to it often, and it helps with visualizing actual 3D movement in space.
Nice to see you here.
Richard, that’s me.
I’m supposed to be laying out the 2nd edition Attack Vector: Tactical rulebook. What I’m doing instead is fighting off something that’s leaving me about as motivated as a bivalve and vaguely nauseous.
CJ: Hi. Where does the Morgaine saga fit into the A/U timeline? Or rather the insertion of the original mission into the Gate system? Thanks.