Belated holiday greetings to all. I’ve neglected this blog for a while, but I’m back. New Years Resolutions, and all that. The cultural shift from over population being the doom to under-population being the problem is slowly but surely gaining traction. In the 70’s and 80’s the fashionable doom was…
Leave a CommentFor my last novel, “The Clorox Contract”, I needed an alien race. I didn’t want them to look like humans in makeup, but they still need to be understandable to the readers. So, meet the Ard’uinath. I went with an avian species, raptors who are obligate carnivores. I wanted them…
Leave a CommentWhen you take on a serious job, you need serious tools. When Murphy invites himself on the job, you need someone who can get the tool you need. Some characters are less fictional than other characters. Next time, it’s my tab. Risk Enterprises Corporate HQ, tsunami Contract Day 31 Jeff…
Leave a CommentEven if it’s just a day at the office, Murphy can walk in the door, and there are a lot of ways a planet can die … Chapter 2 Measure Twice The probability of the bread falling butter side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.Corollary of…
Leave a CommentThere was a fad in science fiction for a while for relativistic weapons, where material projectiles moving at a high fraction of light speed were an unstoppable superweapon. The concept was introduced to science fiction by Charles Pellegrino and George Zebrowski in the novel The Killing Star. It was used…
Leave a CommentIf you really want disaster on the grand scale, go big. Why bother with the various planets, possible space colonies and bases if the inhabitants are space-faring? Just go whole hog and blow up the star. Can this be done? Umm, …yes, actually, it can. It could even happen by…
1 CommentThe Yarrabubba impact crater is the oldest known impact crater in the world, and it was hard to find, hidden by over 2 billion years of overburden and erosion. Found it was, though. Those interested in the details can find them in this article in Nature Communications. This certainly qualifies…
Leave a CommentAs a writer who collects planetary disasters for my Portal Authority series, I found another candidate Contract for Master Blasters. The Devil, as always, is in the details, so I’m taking a closer look to see whether this could be a good fit. A recent study, A Global Environmental Crisis…
Leave a CommentWelcome to the New Year, which we may all hope will be better than the old year. Today’s post is about a lesser, but still significant, disaster whose effects have already been seen of late on a small scale and historically on a much larger scale. Mega- tsunamis. My attitude…
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