James Oberg, a fascinating fellow I was fortunate enough to meet almost 20 years ago, has an extensive article on terraforming up at Space Daily. Rather, it appears to be either a comprehensive overview/introduction of Oberg's book New Earths, published in 1981 by Stackpole Books, or a reprint of the original book proposal/outline. In any event, it's a nifty read.

The introduction can be found here, New Earths: Transforming Other Planets for Humanity, but the really interesting bits are located in the extended essay. Unfortunately, the copyediting on the article is abyssmal--it reads badly in places, and it's obvious the editors merely scanned from Oberg's original hard copy and posted without bothering to proof read.

That's secondary, though. While Oberg begins with a rather dry recount of official, scientific appraisals of terraforming, he quickly refocuses on where the real innovation comes into play. Namely, science fiction. He properly credits the great Jack Williamson with coining "terrforming" in the first place, and references writings by Robert Heinlein and Carl Sagan on the subject. The concept of a "smoke ring" is sadly ignored by Oberg, but one 1976 NASA paper cited, "Creation of an Artificial Atmosphere on the Moon," is one I sincerely wish to get my hands on.

Oberg's article is entirely speculative in nature, and rather than pointing out any particular paths terraforming may take, serves as an effective overview of the various ambitious (and sometimes downright loopy or wrongheaded) ideas that have been proposed for Mars, Venus and practically every other body in the solar system at one time or another. I've always wanted to add New Earths to my library, and this article may just be the one to light a fire under me.

Now Playing: Fine Young Cannibals The Raw and the Cooked

Forgot to post the other day that there's new fiction up at RevSF. The mighty (mighty as in mighty prolific) Jay Lake has a piece of flash fiction (apparently, the is the new vogue term for stuff that's a really brief short-short. The Redundant Order of the Night is interesting and quirky, and takes a couple of reads to tease all the references out. Of course, we've also got new installments of Mark Finn's hilarious The Transformation of Lawrence Croft, in which Deej has a brush with Death, and another chapter of Don Webb's mind-twisting Uncle Ovid's Exercise Book.

I also popped open the first bottle of my cherry homebrew. Not bad at all, even though I must admit the cherry is more subtle than I was expecting. I enjoy home brewing, but tend to use the canned kits, as I don't have the patience for starting with the raw ingredient kits. This batch had an Australian Real Ale base, because I tend to favor the medium-bodied dark beers. It's a good combination. Cheers!

Now Playing: Colin James Hay Looking for Jack

I'm back from College Station and Aggiecon 35. What a weekend--I never even made it over to the Monkeyhouse. I must be getting old.

This was, I was startled to realize during the "Happy 35th Birthday, Aggiecon" panel earlier today, my 15th consecutive year in attendance. It seems like only yesterday I was a know-nothing freshman working dealers' room at AC20, utterly oblivious there was anything more to the convention than gaming. The birthday panel unfortunately devolved into a little bit of "This con doesn't compare to the Aggiecons of yore" complete with gripes about the film program being stolen by other committees and the lack of this or wrongheadedness of that. But as Joe Lansdale pointed out, we all keep coming back year in, year out. Aggiecon is fun. It's laid back and the program participants and guests of honor hang out and shoot the bull with fen until the wee hours of the morning. It's a convention that invited Harlan Ellison to come as guest of honor at the very first one way back at the height of the Vietnam war (Texas A&M is known for both it's conservative nature and the large Corps of Cadets on campus). It's a convention that saw a number of up-and-coming young writers--Bruce Sterling among them--style their hair in "honeybuns" and parade around announcing "I'm Princess Leia!" in 1978, with Damon Knight, the Guest of Honor, greatly disappointed that he'd missed the opportunity to participate in the stunt. Aggiecon may not have a bar, but by golly, it is fun.

All the more reason to celebrate this year. You see, the university pulled the plug last year, using the state budget crisis as an excuse to yank funding (the reasoning was bogus, but to explain why would take a lot more typing than I'm willing to do tonight as well as a brief course in creative accounting). But the students would not be denied. They raised money by cleaning Kyle Field after football games this year. They landed a generous grant from ALAMO, Inc. and another from a Houston chapter of the Association of Former Students. They scaled back on a lot of things, but boasted two solid GoHs in Jacqueline Carey and Todd McCaffrey (McCaffrey may not have attracted a large number of paying attendees, but he was great on panels and a great guy to have around). The art show was one of the biggest ever--in terms of both quality and quantity--despite the fact there was no artist GoH this year. The dealers' room was packed and very diverse. The costume contest had more entries than ever before, with some unusually elaborate outfits--and the traditional Miss Aggiecon contest was won by a nine-foot long paper mâché Jabba the Hutt complete with prehensile tongue. The after-contest gathering and general mingling was brought to an abrupt halt by the entrance of guest relations officer Jennifer Franz. Jennifer, it must be pointed out, arrived decked out as Trinity from The Matrix in all her glossy black glory, and the abrupt silence was broken by the sound of every single guy's jaw in the place hitting the floor at the same time. And I finally found a copy of the Farscape soundtrack in the dealers' room--this was a Good Thing for me, as I absolutely love all things Farscape.

Aggiecon even managed to increase attendance over last year's incarnation, which was headlined by Virginia Hey and Lani Tupu of Farscape fame. Since this year's con didn't have to pay those large appearance fees, the bottom line is looking quite healthy. After the bills are paid, they're splitting the remainder between an Aggiecon 36 operating fund for next year and an endowment fund for long-term growth. These students have the plan to get it done. I can't express how impressed I've been with them--especially since at this time last year I figured 2:1 odds against another Aggiecon ever happening. But they've pulled it off and look set for a long run to come. Which is good, because I like the idea of attending my 30th consecutive Aggiecon in 2019.

Now Playing: Subvision and Guy Gross Farscape Soundtrack

Well, well, well. It appears that I'm not the only one who was unimpressed by Jane Austen Doe's exercise in self-pity. In fact, a lot of people came down on her a lot harder than I ever dreamed of. There are some truly scathing responses from authors, editors and readers you can read if you click on Responses to "Confessions of a Semi-Successful Author". Naturally enough, there are some gestures of sympathy, but these are decidedly in the minority.

I'll be at Aggiecon all weekend, and I don't know what kind of internet access I'll have, so if I don't post here, please don't panic and call the police. I'm certain I'm fine. Either that, or I'm passed out on the floor of Freebirds World Burrito moaning in blissful discomfort.

And I have finally activated site feeds and made this blog public. The results have been noticable. I even see where my sister's come in and looked around a couple of times. I imagine she'll turn up this weekend at Aggiecon at some time or other.

Now Playing: Billy Joel & Richard Joo Fantasies & Delusions

Aggiecon is this weekend, and true to form, the schedule arrives at the last minute. Actually, the sked is a bit early this year--traditionally you find out the panels you're on when you actually show up for the con. A quick perusal shows that I've got some interesting panels this year:

Friday
Print-On-Demand and E-Publishing, 1:45 p.m., Rudder 402
Autograph Session, 4:15 p.m., Rudder 404

Saturday
Future Squared (the future of the future: genre trends), 10 a.m., Rudder 402
Comic Incarnations (strips, books and graphic novels), 12:30 p.m., Rudder 402
Reading: Dracosaur, 1:45 p.m., Rudder 407

Sunday
Making Your Marks (an introduction to editing), 11:15 a.m., Rudder 402

I'll be reading the original prose short story of "Dracosaur" during my allotted time on Saturday, and will have a sneak peak of the comic adaptation coming out in July. I'll discuss the process of adaptation and collaborating with artist Lori Krell in bringing this to the sequential art medium. And maybe, just maybe, I'll have the sequel to that story with me: "Dracosaur: A Sound of Blunder!"

Now Playing: Violent Femmes The Blind Leading the Naked

Wow wow wow wow! This could be HUUUUGE! And I don't exaggerate. Science writer Bruce Moomaw was kind enough to point me to Oliver Morton's Mars blogsite.

Dick Kerr of Science magazine, who's been writing planetary science a good bit longer than most of us in this game, has a remarkable story up on the Science Now site -- something potentially far more striking than the crossbedding announcement. The team on the Mars Express Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS) has announced the discovery of what look like methane absorption lines in the Martian atmosphere at 3.3 microns. Kerr quotes the PFS principal investigator, Vittorio Formisano saying it's "A very little amount," -- 10.5 parts per billion -- "but the result is clear." If this is indeed methane, then it's evidence that something is going on: either volcanic activity or life.

Methane is not a stable molecule in the Martian atmosphere. Left in the sun it will fairly quickly react with hydroxyl ions in the atmosphere; estimates suggest that it has an atmospheric lifetime of a few hundred years.

Run, don't walk, and read the rest of Morton's fascinating Methane (and thus life?) on Mars entry now!

Now Playing: Mike + The Mechanics Living Years

I have always made a living off my writing, just not my freelance writing. I've worked almost a decade in the newspaper business, and when I've not been in newspapers, I've done media/public relations. Which for me mostly means writing press releases and editing newsletters, brochures, etc. At Texas State I get to write some of the most interesting press releases... well, that's not entirely accurate. Technically, they're press releases, in that they're intended to generate buzz about the university in area and state media. But in fact they're feature stories. I write them like feature stories, striving to keep them away from the dry-as-dust fact sheets or overblown hyperbole that characterized so many of the releases I saw when I was on the other side of the media aisle. And I've been rewarded for this approach by seeing many of my stories run verbatim in area papers, or mined heavily for information and quotes by larger, statewide or even international publications. That's quite gratifying.

New Clean Room opens doors for Texas State students

SAN MARCOS – The new clean room in the Mitte Complex at Texas State University-San Marcos hasn’t even been open a year, but already it’s making quite an impression.

In just a short period of time, both bipolar and metal oxide silicon transistors--the first complex electronic devices ever created on the campus--have been produced, proving the lab’s capabilities. Transistors, the workhorse within a computer’s circuitry, are a mere half-micron across. To put that in perspective, the diameter of a human hair is 75 microns.

All the more impressive once you realize the students working in the clean room are just as likely to be undergrads as they are graduate students.

Read the entire article here.

If you don't think it's hard to cram approximately 16 tons of technical jargon into an 800-word article while making it both comprehensible and accurate, well then, you're welcome to try it yourself. This release fought me every step of the way, but in the end it turned out to be a pretty good piece. And that's part of the fun and challenge that makes the job so appealing.

Now Playing: Jerry Harrison Casual Gods