Category Archives: Spaceward–ho!

A small personal odyssey, shared

Apparently Reddit was asked for a list of the best spec-fic novels of all time.

As I read the list, I thought about the first time I read each of them; there are a few I have missed, so I think I’ve just got a new reading list for next few months:

Dune by Frank Herbert
I remember reading this when I was in college and being impressed by the plot and the writing. I’ve re-read it a dozen times since then, and I continue to be impressed. Unfortunately, Mr. Herbert went back to the Dune well far too many times, and his son needs to leave it the hell alone lest he do his father’s creation even more harm.

The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
I laughed. And laughed. And Laughed. ‘Nuff said.

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
I have never read any of Card’s work, and knowing that his homophobia runs to the depths of his sitting on the board of NOM, I never will.

The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov
This trilogy is regularly voted the best spec-fic series of all time. I have to say that this, like much of Asimov’s early work, has not aged particularly well. But everyone I know who reads it for the first time is still stupefied by the surprise ending.

Hyperio by Dan Simmons
I don’t know this work. It’s going on the reading list for the summer.

Neuromancer by William Gibson
This is a book that has been on the back burner list for years. I guess I need to move it forward.

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
This is the first of two Stephenson novels on the list. I personally would have placed Cryptonomicon rather than Snow Crash, but both are really good reads.

Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke
Rated by many as the single best spec-fic novel ever written. Wistful, potent, and final.

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
A wonderful first novel, whose level of writing and plot was never quite matched again by the author.

Ringworld by Larry Niven
I love Larry’s Niven’s early works. I think he’s lost his way in the last 20 years, and he had no business writing about Ringworld after the first effort.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick
DADoES is absolutely nothing like Bladerunner, so much so that the two works should not be compared at all. You either like Dick, or you really don’t like him — except me. I still can’t make up my mind about the man’s work.

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
Heinlein is a lot like Dick in that people either really like his work, or they don’t. I fall into the former camp; I like his stories (particularly his earlier juvenile works) and find the characters engaging. I personally would have included The Moon is a Harsh Mistress rather than Stranger, which was groundbreaking work for its time.

Starship Trooper by Robert A. Heinlein
Hands down the best military spec-fic novel ever written. It is the only fiction found in the Marine Corps Bookstore, and a very engaging read about a young man learning how to be a moral human. There are many folk that don’t like ST, but I’ve never seen a single critic that could logically argue against most of the points the author makes.

The Culture Series by Iain M. Banks
I don’t know much about Mr. Banks’ work, other than some of his short stories. It goes on the reading list.

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
A small shiny gem in the spec-fic world. Go read it. Now.

Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
I was more impressed by the notions raised in this book, rather than the book itself. And like so many authors, Mr. Clarke went back to the Rama well too often for the health of his literary reputation.

Pandora’s Star by Peter F. Hamilton
I don’t know this book or its author. Does anyone else know this one? It’s now on the reading list.

The Mote in God’s Eye by Niven and Pournelle
Robert Heinlein considered this novel to be the finest spec-fic novel ever written. I don’t know if I’d go quite that far, but it is a really fun read.

The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
In my personal Top 5 of any genre any time. Gully Foyle deserves to be considered in the same rank as Jean Valjean and Charles Darnay.

Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan
Unknown quantity. On the list.

Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
This is the only entry that I vehemently disagree with. Trite characters and a potentially wonderful plot made pedestrian and plodding. Yuck.

2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
What can I say? The movie’s shadow casts unfair comparisons to the book, which has more engaging characters and far more interesting plot points.

Contact by Carl Sagan
For once, this is a book that is not nearly as interesting as the movie. The movie is the novel that Sagan should have written.

Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
I don’t know this story, and I’m not the world’s biggest Vonnegut fan. I’ll have to give this one a try.

I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
Like much of Asimov’s work, this one has not aged well. If you want a real treat, find a copy of Harlan Ellison’s unproduced screenplay of I, Robot. It is the best movie you’ll never see.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin
I read this many years ago, and my recollection says I should re-read it. An interesting study in gender identity and xenophobia.

Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds
Another novel I don’t know. It’s on the list.

Old Man’s War by John Scalzi
Ditto.

Anathem by Neal Stephenson
As a matter of coincidence, I am in the middle of this one right now. I appreciate the worlds that Stephenson builds, and this one hasn’t disappointed me.

Armor by John Steakley
I don’t know this one.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Ditto.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
I”m not the world’s biggest Bradbury fan (hope lightning doesn’t strike!), but this one is a somber reminder that totalitarianism is always uncomfortably close.

A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
I’ve not taken the time to get to know Mr. Vinge’s work. Now’s my opportunity.

Quarantine by Greg Egan
On the list.

The Great Book of Amber by Roger Zelazny
I have so many friends that love the world of Amber, and I can’t say I’ve ever read any of the stories. Now’s the time.

Star Wars: Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn
I generally avoid Star Wars and Star Trek novels like the plague. I’ll give this one a go.

The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
I like Wolfe’s works, but I haven’t read this one. Yet.

Curiouser and curiouser

Off to Mars again!

It’s worth remembering that if we moved one small nickel-iron asteroid into orbit around the earth and started mining it, we’d have enough pure nickel, iron, rare earths, and other metals to last Earth for a century. If we moved a small carbonaceous asteroid into orbit, there’s enough oxygen and carbon to last space stations for a millenium.

“Life looks for life”

I love videos of the night skies. I love to listen to Carl Sagan speculating aloud. I love pithy thoughts and statements.

You can probably guess how much I enjoy this video. Watch it full-screen.

Fair winds, Endeavour

Thanks, Sherry, for finding the Ustream HD recording, which is the feed we watched this morning.

We are rapidly approaching the end of the most historic era in human history–manned space travel to expand the human  horizon.

UPDATE!! Reader Kirk sent me a link to the most amazing-damn photograph. It’s Endeavour emerging from the cloud cover during its launch:

ET won’t be phoning home soon

I am SO glad we have Washington paper-pushers and slackweights keeping an eye out on the federal budget. They’ve trimmed back programs that threaten to increase the national debt. Like…

SETI, which was spending $2.5 million a year to gather signals generated by extra-terrestrial life–a search that will someday be deemed the greatest scientific search in the history of mankind.

Let’s see. $2.5 million a year against a national debt approaching $15 trillion. That means that defunding SETI will close the debt in…6 million years.

Yeah, that’ll work.

Fucking morons.

Thoughtful quote, no comment

“You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.‘” — Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell

“All you have to do to find beauty is to look up.”

Who needs mythos when we have this:

Say hello to UGC 1810 and UGC 1813

This is not someone’s painting, folks. This is one of the latest images from the Hubble Space Telescope. These are two galaxies from the Arp’s Peculiar Galaxies catalog, entry 273. (Greetings, Mr. Webb!)

Who the hell needs God, or Yahweh, or Allah (or Thor, for that matter) when we have this in the sky?

“…as we send a messenger to the stars”

The Messenger payload nudged itself into orbit around Mercury yesterday!

Note the heavy sunshield that protects the probe from the sun.

Here was its flawless launch:

Now, almost 7 years after launch, and flyby slingshots off of Earth once, Venus twice, and Mercury itself three times, we’ll get far and away our best data from Mercury yet.

And for those folk who enjoy a bit of whimsical music:

“I gotta get outta this place!”

Humanity has all of its eggs in one basket–Earth.

If we hope to have our race survive into the distant future, we’ve got find more baskets. So where do we find them? The Solar System is not a very viable source of new home planets (with the scant possibility of Mars).

The asteroids and stars provide that answer.

DARPA is working on development of the processes needed to find more homes for humanity. A conference of scientists, thinkers, and (yeah!) a few science fiction writers was held last month to chart out some answers to three questions:

  • Why go to the stars?
  • What kind of organization is optimal to make it happen?
  • What will an organization need to succeed?

There’s an interesting read on Tao Zero Foundation’s blog from Marc Myers on what was discussed. The conference focused more on how to run an organization that would get the job done, rather than how the trip would be made, but it was interesting nonetheless.

No answers yet, but at least someone is starting to form the serious questions.

 

“Per aspera ad astra”

Voyager 1, launched 33 years ago to explore Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus, has reached the heliopause.

When I was 33 years younger, the twin Voyager vessels were as exciting to me as the Apollo project had been a decade earlier. Voyager was another example of humanity pushing the frontier a little further. Exploration of the the outer solar system (in the day when the best pictures of Pluto were fuzzy blobs on film) was one shocking revelation after another–

close-ups of the Great Red Eye of Jupiter

the vast majesty of Saturn’s rings

the cracked-ice surface of Europa and the sulfur-rich hell of Io

These all seemed harbingers of a bright future of space exploration for humanity.

*sigh*

So now we’ve made it to true interstellar space.

Barely.

There are no plans for any manned exploration for the foreseeable future. No lunar base, no landings on Mars, no nothing. We should be reaching out, not looking in.

We are starstuff that has reached sentience, and we’re trying to get back to where we came from.

A fall of stardust

The Japanese space probe Hayabusa returned to Earth near Woomera, Australia around 14:00 UT today.

Why is this a big deal? Because we now (hopefully) have a pristine sample of an asteroid to examine.

Hayabusa landed on asteroid 25143 Itokawa in November of 2005. It is thought to have successfully scooped up a tiny portion of dust from the asteroid’s surface. Portions of the Hayabusa craft were designed to survive a fiery reentry, and we now have our first real sample of stardust.

A big damned day, folks.

Water, water everywhere!

A story quietly came across the wire today, the subject of which has increased chances of establishing permanent residence on the moon a hundredfold.

Using NASA’s Mini-SAR radar instrument on India’s Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter, it has been discovered that the moon’s north pole contains at least 600 million metric tons of water ice in permanently-shadowed craters. Sub-surface water was also discovered last year near the moon’s south pole.

This not only allows future lunar base establishment without having to ship water from Earth, but also would allow oxygen for breathing and hydrogen fuel for energy and for propulsion. We don’t have to bring it to the moon ourselves; it’s already there.

America may not establish the first lunar base, but the odds of creating one within my lifetime just bumped way up.