2/23/14

Ice Planet Earth?



This morning I heard something that was hard for me to believe. The Weather Channel said that January was the third (4th?) warmest January on record. Say what? Warmest -- are they kidding? For sure it was freezing to those of us living in the northeast and many other parts of the US. We froze here. I thought we'd go down as the coldest winter in history. Oh well, perception is everything. Since the US is a small portion of the entire Earth, it may well be true. Sure didn't feel like it to me. And then the new TWC headline was "Bitter Cold Returns in a Big Way." 

Hmm... living in the tundra.

Brings to mind a young talented SF author I know. Moving away from freezing on Earth and to a distant galaxy where humans also exist in the coldness of an icy planet...

"The idea of setting a story on a frigid ice planet has worked for authors in the past, but it can be tricky to make it realistic," I say to this young author.

"I think it can work," he says, with a confident excitement I remember possessing a long time ago. Back when the brush of exuberance at creating my first SF was a heady experience.



His idea sounds super cool, no pun intended. It has a youthful appealing air and right at home in modern SF. Since he has asked me to help him work on creating this story, I asked his permission to share his idea:

The working title is Dome City Rescue. The hero, Hunter, must infiltrate an alien occupied compound to rescue the heroine, Jesse who was kidnapped by warring aliens because she has info they want. Plenty of  action takes place under a Terra-formed dome on a frigid ice blue planet as the two battle the aliens until they blow the dome to smithereens with an illegal weapon. They barely escape with their lives. As they head toward the hero's spacecraft, parked outside the dome, they find it missing. Now they must survive on this frigid icy planet alone.

The Premise:

In the ravages of a solar system torn apart by alien invaders, two young warriors take a stand. Weapons specialist Hunter Jefferies and science tech Jesse Sykes lead a tattered band of youth who vow to defeat the evil Cektod race that destroyed most of the adult population on their planet. Growing up where the young are the only ones left to fight the ransacked battles these aliens brought down on them, they set out to save what is left of the once mighty Alliance.

I think as his working partner, I have my work cut out for me! No pressure. We already have a couple of publishers who are interested in the story. Nail biting time for me.

Kaye



2/19/14

Cool Andromeda





When I’m creating stories with SF elements I search for inspiration in many places. One such place is the European Space Agency or ESA. It’s a good venue to find research information and fodder for story ideas.

In this view of the Andromeda Galaxy from ESA’s Herschel space observatory, cool lanes of forming stars are revealed in the finest detail yet. Andromeda, also known as M31, is the nearest major galaxy to our own Milky Way at a distance of 2.5 million light-years, making it an ideal natural laboratory to study star formation and galaxy evolution.

The image reveals some of the very coldest dust in the galaxy – only a few tens of degrees above absolute zero –  red in this image.

By comparison, warmer regions such as the densely populated central bulge, home to older stars, take on a blue appearance.

Intricate structure is present throughout the 200,000 light-year-wide galaxy with star formation zones in spiral arms and at least five concentric rings, interspersed with dark gaps where stars are present.

Host to several hundred billion stars, this image of Andromeda clearly shows that many more stars will soon spark into existence.

Following is a short excerpt; something I’ve been working on lately


     Karla remotely adjusted one of Starlab's telescopes and watched the screen fill with a dazzling light show. She maneuvered the controls for a wide angle.The distant spiral galaxy they were observing with its brilliant hues of color, whirling circles of light and dense arenas, came into view. Always awed by Andromeda, she sighed. If intelligent life did exist anywhere else, she just bet it would be somewhere in the Andromeda Galaxy.

This came from my ESA research. Just wanted to share it with you.


Kaye

ESA