Alastair Mayer’s T-Space Blog

Readers of The Chara Talisman (and there are a bunch of you out there, thank you!) already know that the sequel, The Reticuli Deception (working title) touches on mysteries in addition to those of the millions of years ago Terraformers and the more recent Spacefarers. Namely, whether there was anything to some of the UFO contacts reported in the 1960s. Since these books are set 150 years after that, there’s some question as to whether the original Blue Book files can still be located, and they do try, although that’s a side story to the main plot. In particular, they’re curious about the Betty Hill incident, and the star map she drew.

Sometimes, though, truth can be stranger than fiction. I’d heard that the Project Blue Book files were all transferred to the National Archives when the project was shut down in 1969 (or 1970, depending on which report you read). It’s not quite that simple. They were first transfered to the Air Force Archives at Maxwell AFB in Alabama, where they resided for about five years, although nominally available to the public. It was in 1975 that they were transferred to the National Archives, but only after redacting witness names and similar personal information. The Air Force kept a microfilm copy (also censored) for their own use.

It turns out, though, that uncensored microfilms also exist, discovered in the National Archives in 1998, and that “these rolls also contain some pages that are not on the NARA [National Archives and Records Administration] rolls” (– bluebookarchive.org). Curiouser and curiouser.

Eagerly I began to browse through Blue Book Archive’s list of microfilms. These are on line. Fantastic! I’d love to read the actual Betty Hill files. Pages one through four of their listings cover the pre-Blue Book projects, Sign and Grudge, as well as all the Blue Books up to 1954. The Hill contact was in 1961, I’m getting close. Page five … begins in mid-1968. Wait, what?.

So I dig a little deeper. Flip back and forth through various rolls. Search for “Betty Hill”, and find nothing relevant. Search for “Pease Air Base” (where they supposedly reported the incident) and find many interesting reports … from 1965. Ah, but what’s this? One of the first rolls has an index to all the cases. Great! Skip ahead 25 pages at a time: 1954, 1956, 1958, 1960… I’m getting close, slow down. Page 498, 16-30 April, 1960. Page 499, 1-15 May, 1962. Nineteen sixty two? What the…?

Okay, flip back and forth some more. Ha! Page 497 of the index is also 1962, page 498 must have been misfiled. Not a good sign (and at this point all the microfilm images are very faint, it’s near impossible to make out the text), but I’ll keep looking. Page 489 looks like it might be August, 1961, but the typewritten text is ghostly, and there’s an ominous hand-scrawled “missing” beside several of the cases listed. The next few pages are even less legible. (For example.)

I incline toward the sentiment “never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence,” and that’s probably what’s going on here (not, let me hasten to add, on the part of Blue Book Archive, who are doing an admirable job, but on the part of whatever bored Airman or clerk was microfilming this stuff in the first place, and other clerks who may have misfiled things). On the other hand, as Ian Fleming supposedly said, “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.” I wonder.

For the record, I don’t really think Betty and Barney Hill were abducted by aliens. On the subject of UFOs as alien spacecraft overall, I’m a skeptical agnostic. I’ve seen enough strange things in the sky that I couldn’t identify at the time to have no doubt that plenty of people see unidentified flying objects. I think that to immediately identify them as alien spacecraft is silly. Some might indeed be, but the burden of proof is pretty high as far as I’m concerned. I think it’s also silly to say flat out that alien spacecraft are impossible. We just don’t know enough.

As far as research for The Reticuli Deception goes, I may not be learning anything new about the Hill incident or the supposed Zeta Reticuli starchart, but I am gaining a good insight as to how my characters feel when they’re looking for this stuff: frustrated.

Readers know that none of my characters take frustration well, and they tend to come up with creative solutions to it. This is gonna be fun.

Actually I think I’ve mentioned it here a time or two before 😉 Now I’m announcing that The Chara Talisman, the first full-length novel set in T-space, is now available in e-book and trade paperback form. (First to be published. A novel set earlier in the time-line is in progress.) This is the expansion of my Analog story “Stone Age”.

E-book versions are available from Amazon (for Kindle) and Smashwords (all formats) and should be available direct from B&N, Sony, Apple and others soon. The trade paperback version is available from Amazon (or should be, by the time you read this) as well as through bookstores (you might have to special-order it — bookstores rarely take chances on newer authors these days unless the publisher is doing a mega-marketing blitz) and my publisher, Mabash Books.

There’ll be some promotions for Chara Talisman and some of my other T-space stories going on over the next month or so, so stay tuned. I haven’t decided on the rewards yet, but I’ll be offering prizes for the first person who reports to me a typo or factual error (only one prize or reward for each typo/error) in the book. It could happen — Larry Niven had the Earth rotating in the wrong direction in the first edition of Ringworld. 😉

(Update: added link (above) to paperback version at Amazon.)

Another MileHiCon — the Denver area’s annual SF convention — is underway. I have a full schedule this year, with four panels (FTL, collaborations, writing humor, and space mining), a reading — I share the slot with Kevin J. Anderson, which pretty much guarantees me an audience 😉 — an autographing — sharing the table with Vernor Vinge, so there’ll be a long line for one of us — and an interview for the Machine Readable podcast.

It promises to be a lot of fun, as always, and I get to announce the imminent release (on 11/11/11) of my novel The Chara Talisman, which I may have mentioned here once or twice already.

Hope to see you there.

(BTW, the astute among you may have noticed a gap here since the pre-Worldcon post. Mea culpa. There was plenty happening — Worldcon, Bubonicon, the report of possible FTL neutrinos, and more — and I took notes. But I didn’t immediately turn said notes into postings here, and a bunch of the other stuff happening (of lesser interest to anyone not me) got in the way. Some of those notes, particular on the possible superluminal neutrino observations, will make it here soon. Or perhaps I can figure a way to use superluminal neutrinos to post them a month ago. Cheers.)

I’m in the middle of prepping my story “Stone Age”, which appeared in the June issue of Analog a couple of months ago, for ebook publication. Here’s the cover, based on the Frederik Catherwood print which partly inspired the story. I’ll update this when it’s available, and probably do a special intro offer through Smashwords.

This story is, as I think I’ve mentioned before, based on a couple of the first chapters of The Chara Talisman. Publication plans for that are still pending — the traditional publishing industry moves slowly — but I’m considering making an e-version available sooner, possibly serializing it on-line. Let me know if you’re interested.

Update: “Stone Age” is now available in ebook format from Smashwords, and should be available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and outlets supplied by Smashwords (such as Apple and Sony) soon. Stay tuned for an offer in connection with The Chara Talisman.

Two months is a long time to go between blog updates. Things have been crazy busy around here, more chaos than usual.

I mentioned a few posts back that I’ve been having issues with hosting this site. Still am (my internet connection was just out for 2.5 days; that sucked), but I have a plan. As soon as I figure out an easy way to port the content database, this site is getting rehosted on a commercial provider (right now it’s on a server about ten feet from where I sit in my basement office). I’m giving up some control and gaining a bunch in reliability and connection speed.

I’ve already been using that provider to host the MagicBakeshop. As I explain there, the name Magic Bakeshop is adapted from Dean Wesley Smith’s “Magic Bakery” concept, the idea being that stories are like magic pies: you can keep selling (or giving away) slices of them and still have the whole thing. MagicBakeshop’s first product is a computer app to help authors and indie publishers track their sales through Amazon, Pubit, Smashwords, etc. If that’s up your alley, check it out.

Partly because I’ve been working on the above software, and partly because of some of the other events going on in my life, I haven’t been spending as much time writing as I’d like. I have two stories (shaping up to be novelettes in length, perhaps) about half done, one a Jason Curtis story, the other set in what may well be T-Space, but in our past rather than the future. I’m having a lot of fun with both of them, I just wish I had more time.

I have several more stories (including “Stone Age” from the June Analog) almost ready to up as ebooks. And I really need to get that redraft of Alpha Centauri finished.

Anybody got a time machine I can borrow?

No, nothing to do with Rocky Horror, sorry “Time Warp” fans. It seems that colliding black holes can severely warp space and time too, according to this article at Astrobiology Magazine. . The warped space vortex and tendex lines (read the paper referenced in the linked article) spiral out from the hole.

This is interesting enough in its own right (if you’re into that sort of thing), but it touches on something I’ve been pondering in my T-space universe: what happens if a ship in a warp bubble flies into a black hole? There’d be some similar effects, the edge of a warp bubble is highly curved space, like a black hole. Perhaps if you do it right, and the wormhole is rotating, you can create a “closed time-like curve”, i.e., travel in time. (Loosely based on the theory Tipler proposed in his paper “Rotating Cylinders and the Possibility of Global Causality Violation” — see also Larry Niven’s story of the same name.) It’s an idea I’ve been toying with for some stories. Guess I’d better start writing them.

Image credit: The Caltech/Cornell SXS Collaboration

I trust everyone survived April Fools Day? Personally I think it’s getting a little out of hand, you can’t trust anything you read on the web on April first. Okay, I’ll grant you that could also be said of just about every other day of the year, but still.

Anyway, it’s no joke that the June issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact is now on the news stands. The next (July/August) issue goes on sale May 10, so you have until then to buy a copy if you want to read “Stone Age”. 😉

The latest (June, 2011) issue of Analog just arrived and it includes my story “Stone Age,” my first Analog story that’s not a Probability Zero flash piece. Not that I have anything against PZ of course. They’re great fun (and a challenge!) to write as well as to read. But the length “Stone Age” gives me a chance to set up some real character and world building. It stands on its own (else Stan Schmidt wouldn’t have bought it), but in a slightly different form it kicks off my novel (pending publication) The Chara Talisman.

If you’re not a subscriber, the June issue of Analog should be on the stands around April 5th. (See the cover image over there on the right.) It’s also available electronically for Nook and Kindle. I’d be interested to hear what you think, good or bad.

I have finally started to make some of my stories available through Smashwords, for those with non-Kindle e-readers or who just don’t like Amazon. Smashwords also makes the files available through other outlets; I’m still sorting through the details on that. The process for uploading the books was fairly painless, and I like how fast Smashwords makes the work available on its site.

Three titles up so far. My first ever sale, Snowball, and two Jason Curtis stories, Into the Fire and Renee (aka Renee and the Space Raiders. Click any of the cover images below to get to the Smashwords page. Smashwords also makes possible discount coupons. Stay tuned for details, I’ll be putting something together a (time-limited) opportunity to download a complete book for free. You can already download samples (the first 20%) of each, to whet your appetite.
    

For those interesting in the publishing side, I’ll be posting stats when enough have accumulated to be interesting. One data point, I sold a copy of Snowball within a couple of hours of making it available, without any publicity on my part! (Smashwords links new books on their home page. I’m guessing somebody saw it and liked it.) If you want to prep your own books (or stories), Smashwords Book Marketing Guide is a free book that tells you how.

UDATE – Limited time free offer: I’m offering a coupon good for 100%-off the retail price of Into the Fire (which, for any of you doing math on an old Pentium with the floating point bug, makes it free 😉 ). Click on the red cover above (the middle one), and use the coupon code TM58S at checkout to get the deduction. The coupon expires on February 11 (2/11/11), so act soon. If you enjoy the story, you might consider leaving a review to that effect on Smashwords or Amazon.

Word Fantasy Con in Columbus, OH this past four days was a blast. This is not your average SF con, there’s a much higher proportion of writers and editors among the attendees at WFC, and much time is spent schmoozing. Between the late (and early) hours and the energy it takes for a natural introvert like me (and many other writers) to schmooze, I’m still kind of tired. More WFC details in a later post.

The galleys for “Small Penalties”, which will appear in Analog‘s Probability Zero section, came in and look good. I don’t know which issue, but I’m guessing maybe the April 2011 issue, early March or late February. I’ll keep you posted.

And this is the first day for NaNoWriMo (see previous post). Of course NaNo’s servers are massively bogged down under the load, but that should ease up as thing progress. Anyway, you don’t need their server to begin writing. I’ve got over a thousand words in already on the new novel (a sequel, or perhaps it will end up as Part 2, to my last year’s NaNo, about the first expedition to Alpha Centauri. It’s set early in T-Space, and it tells (among other things) how Sawyer’s World gets its name.

It’s early days, so if anyone wants to toss me a plot bunny I might use it. That also goes for suggesting a lifeform that could have branched off from Earth fauna or flora 60 or 70 million years ago. (Sorry, no dinosaurs.)