Mars

...could very well become a setting of future novels (don't worry, I'm not talking about The Burning Ages). In light of NASA's successful launch of the Curiosity probe I decided to try and get back into a creative mood by fiddling around with some pseudo-cover artwork. It's no Rembrandt, but I believe I'm getting better in my command of GIMP. I might also make use of this image for Mars.

The only thing that for some reason keeps still looking really amateurish is the fonts I use to scribble proto-titles on the images (hence I left them out)... Click for full size.

How about The Dunes of Mars: Crimson Sands?

The same one without the actual Dunes. I wish I could make a fluid transition to
atmosphere/space with GIMP, but that's still beyond me.

Different style, different theme. I tried mixing the futuristic (map of Mars)
with the old (brass compass). Probably needs a wooden ruler and a pencil,
or maybe a brass sextant. What do you think?

Bro Team Pill: Skyrim

Pretty much how I feel after all the hype has settled on that game. Minus the profanity... mostly.

Major Alexander Kaufmann

Having recently read the ARC of David Weber's A Rising Thunder I found myself surfing the web for "Honorverse" related pictures and artwork. By pure chance I came across the magnificent portfolio of French artist Genkkis who has done many of book covers of the French language edition of the Honor Harrington saga. To my even greater surprise - and joy - his cover for Storm from the Shadows 2 features a man looking exactly as I envisioned the rather ambiguous character of Major Alexander Kaufmann from my novel Wolf Hunt.

The male lead character featured in Genkkis' artwork, looking very much like the German "uptimer" Major
Alexander Kaufmann. I believe the actual character depicted is Mr. Detweiler, the leader of the so-called
"Mesan Alignment", a nefarious group plotting the takeover of pretty much the known universe.

In Defense of David Weber's "A Rising Thunder"

The next Honor Harrington novel A Rising Thunder is out in ARC form. For those who don't know, "ARC" stands for Advanced Reader Copy, and is basically the pre-final form of the book, subject to perhaps some minor editing and proofreading before it sees print.

Let's jump right into it, shall we? A Rising Thunder certainly isn't as stellar or ground-breaking as On Basilisk Station used to be, but it's the first since a long time that the plot directly involving Honor was able to interest me (the last book was fine as well, just for the record...), having been more enthralled by the actions and plans of other characters for most part over the last five or so books.

That said, the book isn't the bad piece some of the initial and very critical commentators made it out to be. Most of the decisions taken by the protagonists (and antagonists) do make sense given the data and intel they are based on. And Detweiler of the Mesan Alignment seems to really grow into a competent villain. The novel's problems are less ones of content and more related to its structure.The Zilwicki/Cachat parts were, quite frankly, a total waste of space, adding nothing of substance to the narrative. And the drawn out ending of A Rising Thunder works to the novel's detriment: it takes away from the bang that Beowulf's decision to hold a referendum about secession should have been. The novel should have ended right there.

One more thing I found odd was Havenite officers easily using Honor's aristocratic titles and pronouns despite the previous book making a point of how uncomfortable it makes them.

Typos

I've gotten a new review in over at Amazon, and it seems that the typo/editing issue still leaves much to be desired. I'm kinda at a loss here, though. This work has been proofread literally a dozen and more times, and it has been through two rounds of editing. I apologize to everybody whose reading experience may have been marred by the occurrence - and, apparently, persistence - of typos, but I've reached a point where I'm no longer capable to make any meaningful changes, it seems. All I can try is to go with a new editor for the sequel. I'm genuinely sorry.

Short Story: The Mistake

Preface:

I have not written this one. I found it ages ago on a message board and rediscovered it on my harddrive today and decided to share it with you. If you are the actual author of it, leave a comment and I'll put your name on it.

The Mistake

!MESSAGE BEGINS

We made a mistake. That is the simple, undeniable truth of the matter, however painful it might be. The flaw was not in our Observatories, for those machines were as perfect as we could make, and they showed us only the unfiltered light of truth. The flaw was not in the Predictor, for it is a device of pure, infallible logic, turning raw data into meaningful information without the taint of emotion or bias. No, the flaw was within us, the Orchestrators of this disaster, the sentients who thought themselves beyond such failings. We are responsible.

It began a short while ago, as these things are measured, less than 6^6 Deeli ago, though I suspect our systems of measure will mean very little by the time anyone receives this transmission. We detected faint radio signals from a blossoming intelligence 2^14 Deelis outward from the Galactic Core, as photons travel. At first crude and unstructured, these leaking broadcasts quickly grew in complexity and strength, as did the messages they carried. Through our observatories we watched a world of strife and violence, populated by a barbaric race of short-lived, fast breeding vermin. They were brutal and uncultured things which stabbed and shot and burned each other with no regard for life or purpose. Even their concepts of Art spoke of conflict and pain. They divided themselves according to some bizarre cultural patterns and set their every industry to cause of death.

They terrified us, but we were older and wiser and so very far away, so we did not fret. Then we watched them split the atom and breach the heavens within the breadth of one of their single, short generations, and we began to worry. When they began actively transmitting messages and greetings into space, we felt fear and horror. Their transmissions promised peace and camaraderie to any who were listening, but we had watched them for too long to buy into such transparent deceptions.

They knew we were out here, and they were coming for us.

The Orchestrators consulted the Predictor, and the output was dire. They would multiply and grow and flood out of their home system like some uncountable tide of Devourer worms, consuming all that lay in their path. It might take 6^8 Deelis, but they would destroy us if left unchecked. With aching carapaces we decided to act, and sealed our fate.

The Gift of Mercy was 8^4 strides long with a mouth 2/4 that in diameter, filled with many 4^4 weights of machinery, fuel, and ballast. It would push itself up to 2/8th of light speed with its onboard fuel, and then begin to consume interstellar Primary Element 2/2 to feed its unlimited acceleration. It would be traveling at nearly light speed when it hit. They would never see it coming. Its launch was a day of mourning, celebration, and reflection. The horror of the act we had committed weighted heavily upon us all; the necessity of our crime did little to comfort us.

The Gift had barely cleared the outer cometary halo when the mistake was realized, but it was too late. The Gift could not be caught, could not be recalled or diverted from its path. The architects and work crews, horrified at the awful power of the thing upon which they labored, had quietly self-terminated in droves, walking unshielded into radiation zones, neglecting proper null pressure safety or simple ceasing their nutrient consumption until their metabolic functions stopped. The appalling cost in lives had forced the Ochestrators to streamline the Gift’s design and construction. There had been no time for the design or implementation of anything beyond the simple, massive engines and the stabilizing systems. We could only watch in shame and horror as the light of genocide faded into infrared against the distant void.

They grew, and they changed, in a handful of lifetimes they abolished war, abandoned their violent tendencies and turned themselves to the grand purposes of life and Art. We watched them remake first themselves, and then their world. Their frail, soft bodies gave way to gleaming metals and plastics, they unified their people through an omnipresent communications grid and produced Art of such power and emotion, the likes of which the Galaxy has never seen before. Or again, because of us.

They converted their home world into a paradise (by their standards) and many 10^6s of them poured out into the surrounding system with a rapidity and vigor that we could only envy. With bodies built to survive every environment from the day lit surface of their innermost world, to the atmosphere of their largest gas giant and the cold void in-between, they set out to sculpt their system into something beautiful. At first we thought them simple miners, stripping the rocky planets and moons for vital resources, but then we began to see the purpose to their constructions, the artworks carved into every surface, and traced across the system in glittering lights and dancing fusion trails. And still, our terrible Gift approached.

They had less than 2^2 Deeli to see it, following so closely on the tail of its own light. In that time, oh so brief even by their fleeting lives, more than 10^10 sentients prepared for death. Lovers exchanged last words, separated by worlds and the tyranny of light speed. Their planet side engineers worked frantically to build sufficient transmission infrastructure to upload the countless masses with the necessary neural modifications, while those above dumped lifetimes of music and literature from their databanks to make room for passengers. Those lacking the required hardware or the time to acquire it consigned themselves to death, lashed out in fear and pain, or simply went about their lives as best they could under the circumstances.

The Gift arrived suddenly, the light of its impact visible in our skies, shining bright and cruel even to the unaugmented ocular receptor. We watched and we wept for our victims, dead so many Deelis before the light of their doom had even reached us. Many 6^4s of those who had been directly or even tangentially involved in the creation of the Gift sealed their spiracles with paste as a final penance for the small roles they had played in this atrocity. The light dimmed, the dust cleared, and our Observatories refocused upon the place where their shining blue world had once hung in the void, and found only dust and the pale gleam of an orphaned moon, wrapped in a thin, burning wisp of atmosphere that had once belonged to its parent.

Radiation and relativistic shrapnel had wiped out much of the inner system, and continent sized chunks of molten rock carried screaming ghosts outward at interstellar escape velocities, damned to wander the great void for an eternity. The damage was apocalyptic, but not complete, from the shadows of the outer worlds, tiny points of light emerged, thousands of fusion trails of single ships and world ships and everything in between, many 10^6s of survivors in flesh and steel and memory banks, ready to rebuild. For a few moments we felt relief, even joy, and we were filled with the hope that their culture and Art would survive the terrible blow we had dealt them. Then came the message, tightly focused at our star, transmitted simultaneously by hundreds of their ships.

"We know you are out there, and we are coming for you."

!MESSAGE ENDS

Off to Skyrim...

Won't be doing much writing in the coming days now that TES V: Skyrim's arrived. Awesome game, and came with the best trailer for a PC game I've ever seen.

Short Update

First of all, thanks for the kind words. I'm very happy so many people seem to like my novel.

Secondly, the question about a possible release date for the sequel to "Wolf Hunt" has been asked frequently. I can't give you a specific date, but I'm shooting for a release in late spring next year (2012).

The Summary of Every Internet-Based Debate, Ever

Today, Ghadaffi - Tomorrow, You?

Moammar Ghadaffi after his violent death.

Most of the accessible mainstream media agrees:

In Lybia, an evil dictator, who was maybe worse than Hitler and who slowly murdered his own people, has been toppled. NATO "helped" the Lybian "rebels" doing so to the sound of applause of the "Lybian people".

Opposition against this depiction of the events which have transpired during the past months was largely relegated to obscure places on the internet (which, I assume, makes my own blog "obscure" as well).

The truth is, as always, a wee bit more morally ambiguous.
NATO attacked without just cause a sovereign nation which had neither attacked nor threatened a NATO member, killed or at least caused the death of thousands of innocents and tacictly approved of the torture and killing of the Lybian head of state (Ghadaffi). NATO has guaranteed the rise to power in Lybia of the very same breed of people it claims to combat in Afghanistan: in one of the formerly most modern nations on the African continent (and one that, at least for the past 10 years, has done its best to tow a friendly line w/regards to the West) radical islamic Shariah will now become the law of the land. And the other members of what the retarded members of the Western media like to call the "Arab Spring" - Tunisia, Egypt - have moved strongly towards islamic orders during the past months.

But why should we care? It's just some loser country in Africa that has been bombed, right? What do we have to do with that?

Well, aside from the fact that it happened in our name? Yes, Lybia wasn't a nation I would have liked to live in, lets be clear on that fact. It was a dictatorship run by a nutjob. But half the nations on this Earth qualify to be in that category. Lybia, however, is above all a piece of evidence.

• Lybia proves that all the hollow phrases about human rights and human dignity does not serve to protect peoples, but rather as an one-fits-all reason to attack and possibly occupy sovereign nations.
• Lybia proves that regardless of the ascent of "new media" and its increasing reach, the dominance of a small group of people over established media conglomerates is nearly total. While some may have presented criticism over various points of the whole mission, there was no (Western) mass media which to my knowledge criticised the mission on principle.Whenever there is no tangible opposition on a topic (be that, just to pick some examples, Climate Change, Gender Mainstreaming or one-sided campaigns against certain political POVs), we as concerned citizens of our respective nations, regardless of creed, ethnicity and political leanings, should be alarmed.
• Lybia also proves that a large number of our politicians do not act in our respective nations' best interests, let alone are interested in what we want. It also proves that large parts of our leaderships obviously seem to believe that we are stupid enough to mistake a brutal tribal conflict where NATO in effect helped bomb an islamist regime into power with "liberation". As long as it's called that way, no deed done appears to be an evil one.
• On a different note, Lybia also seems to prove that the desire of creating an independent and autarkic nation against the powers of "globalization" can have lethal consequences. It underlines the volatility of supposedly set-in-stone realities by condensing it to the simple formula: "Friend Yesterday, Enemy Today". Lybia ended its WMD programs in 2003 and put its support for radical islam on the backburner from then on. NATO repaid Lybia's good behavior with, well, bombing radical islamists into power.

Lybia's fate sets a dangerous precedent for the future. Going by the paperthin reasons brought forward for the invervention, basically every country on Earth could soon find itself in danger. We should be careful in who we trust. And, w/regards to all the sudden and unconditional support for the Arab Spring and the Lybian intervention (and soon, Syria), we need to ask the one, ugly question: Cui bono?

originally written by Kairos @ Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit

translation and changes where opinions diverge on points: S.P. Breit

The author of this blog is not responsible for the opinions held by third parties. Linking to a blog does not automatically entail an endorsement of all that is published there.