Alastair Mayer’s T-Space Blog

No, not that bionic man. Back in 1958, then Major Jack Steele, MD, coined the term “bionics,” which later helped inspire author Martin Caidin to write the book Cyborg (in which Dr. Steele is mentioned), which in turn spun off the TV series “The Six Million Dollar Man.” So Jack Steele could be considered “the father of bionics.” Since I married his daughter, that could make me the “brother-in-law of bionics.” Since then, I’ve had a few mechanical/electronic implants of my own.

All of which is a long way of saying I’ve been through a few things over the past few years, including a pacemaker implant, a couple of crashes due to a defective pacemaker lead, and finally a pacemaker replacement (no leads, now directly implanted in my heart!) That is part of the reason I’ve only had one new book published in the past year (Kakuloa: The Downhill Slide – more about that in a bit.)

The other bit of cyborg-iness (hey, I’m an author, I’m allowed to make up words) has to do with my kidneys. They don’t work very well, in fact, hardly at all. Partly due to lifelong hypertension, partly due to the insult from losing a lot of blood due to an internal bleed, partly due to the repeated insults of having my heart rate drop to its default setting of thirty beats per minute (hence the pacemaker). (That default setting, by the way, is a fascinating bit of biology having to do with heart muscle cells. If you grow heart tissue in a petri dish, it will start beating on its own once a threshold is reached. It’s related to the Belousov-Zhabotinsky) (or BZ) reaction.) Anyway, decreased kidney function leads to increased fatigue. Unfortunately, there is no “bionic” replacement for kidneys, at least, not exactly. An artificial kidney machine is currently way too big to implant, and requires regular clinic visits to be hooked up to. The alternative (other than a transplant) is something called peritoneal dialysis, where what amounts to a cleaning solution (mostly sugar water) is pumped into the peritoneal cavity (where your organs live), allowed to soak up the waste and toxins that have built up, then drained. (Sounds worse than it is.) I now have a computerized machine that I hook up to each night which takes care of the filling and draining…and I feel much better.

All of which is a rambling way of saying that I’ve been away from the writing because I’ve been sick, but I’m feeling better now, and I’m back.

What’s been happening publishing-wise

While I didn’t update this site, I did manage to get a few new things published, including two short stories, “Roadside Assistance”and “Relic,” published in The Expanding Universe 9 (TEU9) and The Expanding Universe 10 (TEU10), respectively. “Roadside” is available as a standalone ebook, and “Relic” will be Real Soon Now.

I mentioned above Kakuloa: The Downhill Slide. This is a follow on to Kakuloa: A Rising Tide, and both are continuations of the Alpha Centauri trilogy. The resort and casino that Parry Cohen is building in Rising Tide is now fully operational, so when a dead body turns up in a hotel elevator, things get serious very quickly. Retired detective James Watson (whom you may remember from the short story “Shakeup”), now living in the Alpha Centauri system, is called in to investigate. Several readers have praised Downhill as my best yet. Find out for yourself here.

What’s next?

Next up is the third Paul Fabron book, Delta Pavonis: Destiny. The title is subject to change, because as I work through it I’m wondering if it needs to be two volumes. Destiny will be the last, but I’m wondering if there needs to be a Delta Pavonis: Side Quest in there. Just kidding about the title, it doesn’t fit the pattern, but Paul is getting a bit sidetracked from what he sets out to do at the start of the book.

There’s more Carson & Roberts in the works, and a couple of people I’ve mentioned it too are pushing me to finish the Apollo 18 novel that I abandoned when that movie of the same name came out. I’m also toying with the idea of a time travel story. We’ll see.

Let me know your thoughts. Cheers!

One would think that, what with so much being closed, I’d have finished at least one of the books I was working on in the spring. Alas, things rarely go according to plan (see below), but I have made progress.

My son Robert (the paleontologist) came home for spring break, and, because of covid closures, ended up staying until mid-June. He was able to teach his classes (he’s a TA while studying for his master’s at Oklahoma) online, and some of the rest of the time he helped me with more brainstorming and world building T-Space. We pinned down many of the planetary system details, drew maps, and discussed back-story. Some of that information has made it to the T-Space wiki, and more will be showing up as the story lines develop.

Late June and early July found me increasingly tired, wanting to take long mid-day naps, and making it difficult for me to concentrate on writing. I put it down partly to summer blahs, until a casual pulse-ox test started alerting because my pulse was too slow. How slow? Thirty beats per minute. After a few days of trying to figure out what the problem was, (well, I knew it was bradycardia, but that’s a label, not a cause), I called the doctor. (Okay, yes, I should have done that sooner.) She told me to get myself to an emergency room, stat.

Less than two hours after showing up in the ER, I was being wheeled into surgery to have a pacemaker installed. Turns out that, loosely speaking, the top half of my heart was not communicating with the bottom half, and thirty BPM was essentially the emergency fall-back setting my heart beats at when not being told otherwise. The pacemaker (mine, anyway; there are different kinds) detects the signal that’s trying to make my heart beat faster, and directs it to the rest of my heart muscle. So I’m now part cyborg. (It’s programmable, with the right setup, and it will, via a bedside relay, periodically report back to the mother ship to let them know I’m still alive, so I guess I’ve been assimilated. Resistance was futile.)

Anyway, I felt much better after that. Just in time to work on taxes before the extended deadline. (Not just mine, but also those of my two sons to see if they still qualified as dependents. Spoiler: they don’t.) So then I could get back to work on the novels, right?

Not so fast. There was an anthology deadline coming up, and though I knew what story I was planning to submit, I hadn’t actually written it. I wasn’t too worried. Eight thousand words should have been easy, I started out writing short stories. (Several of my Analog sales were under a thousand words each.) However, for the past several years, I’ve been writing novels, not shorts, and this would be potentially reaching folks who had never heard of T-Space or of Carson and Roberts (yes, they’re in the story). It was running long, too long. I threw out the first two thousand words and started over again. Then trimmed it and polished it. I’m rather pleased with the result. More about that when I can say more.

Meanwhile, it didn’t help that while in the hospital, they’d changed my meds, and a side effect of two of the new prescriptions was fatigue and somnolence. I was still struggling to stay awake. That’s since been sorted out, changing my meds yet again, and I’m getting back into my old writing routine. Over 2,500 words yesterday, split between two novels, and on track for the same today. It’s also looking like I can split out another short story from a scene I’m writing for Downhill Slide. I’d like to do more of this in future, creating short stories I can give away to my newsletter subscribers, separately from the novels. We’ll see.

Barring unforseen events, I should still have two new books out this year, as well as some bonus goodies that I’ll talk more about later.

Meanwhile, how did you spend your summer vacation?

It’s Veterans Day here in the US, Remembrance Day in Canada, the UK, and other commonwealth countries. Sometimes called Poppy Day, after the traditional symbol named from the poem “In Flander’s Fields” (where poppies grow…)

To all veterans of the US, Canada, the UK and allied countries … thank you.

If you posted a legitimate comment here recently, you might want to re-post. I hadn’t checked the spam bucket in a couple of weeks, and found something like 1,127 items in it. I’m not going to wade through all that, so I just flushed them.

Sorry if your post got caught up with all that, although my spam filter is usually pretty good. (Once you’re authorized, your comments won’t have to wait in the moderation queue. But trust me, you really don’t want to see some of the crap that spambots try to post here.)

Happy New Year, folks. Not much to post because of the usual year-end chaos, but Kakuloa: A Rising Tide is now available in both e-book and paperback from Amazon. I’ll be at the CoSine SF convention in Colorado Springs January 19-21.

More later.

Today is Veterans Day in the US, Remembrance Day in Canada and the UK, and is also marked in other countries under different names.

To all those who served: thank you.

As mentioned earlier, the Colorado Authors League (of which I am a member) will be part of the Colorado Country Christmas Show this weekend (Nov 2-4) at the Denver Mart (I-25 & 58th). My books (trade paperback) will be on sale at discounted prices, even bigger discounts if you buy multiples. Use the coupon at right (click on the image for full size) for discounted entry to the show (there will be a lots more going on than just books, but lots of books.)

All books are signed, but I will be happy to personalize them from 2pm to 4pm on Nov 2, 11am to 1pm on the 3rd, and 2pm to 5pm on the 4th. Look for the T-Space poster.

Cheers!

Jerry Pournelle passed away in his sleep yesterday. I heard about it this morning. I considered him a friend, and I will miss him.

I first read Jerry’s science fiction back when he was writing for Analog Science Fiction magazine, and later had the opportunity to work with him at Byte magazine. Byte flew me out to his Chaos Manor to get him up to speed on their new BIX system, a computer conferencing system based on my CoSy software. That didn’t take long, he was a very bright man, and we spent much of the afternoon into the evening in his study, discussing science fiction, space, fandom, and other common interests. As we were both headed to San Francisco the next day (he for a book signing, me to show BIX to the McGraw-Hill office there) he invited me to an after-party at his hotel. That’s where I met Larry Niven, Bob Silverberg, and Poul Anderson, among others.

I later worked with him, Niven, Anderson and a number of other writers, scientists and astronauts as part of the Citizens Advisory Council on National Space Policy. We (mostly he) helped get the DC-X project started — reusable, vertical-takeoff-and-landing rocket technology that SpaceX built on (indirectly) for their Falcon launcher.

(Jerry and me in 1993 at White Sands for the first public (2nd actual) flight of DC-X. Gods I was young.)

Jerry also inspired me, by example, to start selling my writing, both non-fiction and later fiction. In fact, through a series of events I won’t go into here (but involving the Council, L5 and an International Space Development Conference) he led to me meeting the woman I later married. When we had twin boys, we briefly (very briefly) considered naming them Jerry and Larry.

His passing isn’t a complete surprise; he was getting on in years and he had had health issues in recent years, but it is still sad to see him gone. His last public appearance was at the recent DragonCon, and now I really regret not making sufficient effort to attend it. My condolences go out to his family, who were all very gracious when I visited his home.

He inspired a lot of people, writers, scientists, and others. And while his opinions may have annoyed many, a large number of those still respected the man. He will be missed.

Ad astra, Jerry.

Happy April! Just a few short updates here, then back to working on the next book. 😉

HTTPS – I’ve enabled the website for https access (thus https://www.alastairmayer.org and so on). At the moment, your browser might complain about the certificate. Temporarily I’m using a self-signed cert, which in general you shouldn’t trust unless you know what’s going on. But you shouldn’t be posting any sensitive information here anyway. No doubt you’ve seen it before with other sites.

Books and Covers – some of my older covers look a bit outdated, I’m looking into doing a refresh to coincide with new volumes in each series coming out. And I kind of want to change the ship on the cover of Alpha Centauri: First Landing to look more as described in the book. And speaking of looking outdated, this whole website could stand a refresh. Coming Real Soon Now.

Publishing Schedule – Alpha Centauri: Sawyer’s World is about to go to edit, and barring major changes should be out sometime this May. I’m hoping for sooner rather than later, I’ll keep you posted. (For faster updates, and some special offers, join my mailing list. See below.) The Eridani Convergence, third in the Carson & Roberts series (aka the Starship Sophie series, still trying to find a good name to differentiate those books from other mini-series set in T-Space) is past the halfway point on the first draft. Target is as soon as possible after Sawyer’s. There will be at least one more in the Centauri series, Alpha Centauri: Kakuloa, covering the return to that planet and segueing into the era of the Jason Curtis stories.

Mailing List – Some of you, I know, have been wanting more timely updates on what’s happening with the next books in the series, and I’d like to offer my fans something extra for their loyalty. Perhaps advance notification of special deals and events, freebie short stories or novelettes, background material that isn’t in the public wiki, that sort of thing. No spam. Here’s a link to the signup page.

Cheers!

It’s Veterans Day here in the US, Remembrance Day in Canada, the UK, and other commonwealth countries. Sometimes called Poppy Day, after the traditional symbol named from the poem “In Flander’s Fields” (where poppies grow…)

To all veterans of the US, Canada, the UK and allied countries … thank you.