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Month: April 2023

Status Report (27 April 2023)

Status Report (27 April 2023)

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Small course correction, with respect to Architect of Worlds.

A few minutes ago, I sent this month’s incremental update of the book design to my patrons. That’s a few days early and about 12 pages short of the goal I set for myself at the beginning of April.

The reason is that I just reached Step Twenty-Four in the main design sequence. That’s the step in which you determine the current geophysical parameters for a world under development – status of the world’s lithosphere, whether or not it has active plate tectonics, that sort of thing. The issue is that there are a couple really thorny bits of math in that step, probably the ugliest formulae anywhere in the previous draft. I’m also not entirely confident in the accuracy of the mini-model for that step. So I’d like to pause the layout long enough to do a bit of research, maybe develop a new mini-model, and simplify the procedure so it’s not as ugly and ill-polished.

While I’m at it, I also have similar concerns about some of the later steps, especially where we figure out how much greenhouse effect a world gets from its atmosphere based on its composition. I’m actually very happy with the way that procedure fits together overall – it models the evolution of an Earthlike world’s atmosphere very elegantly. However, the actual mini-model for greenhouse effect is again both ugly and not one I’m 100% confident in. So that might get some attention too.

So I’m going to set aside layout work on Architect for at least a few days, while I go off and do some of that redevelopment. In the meantime, I’m just one chapter away from the point in Twice-Crowned at which I was thinking another charged release of the interim draft for my patrons might be appropriate. So the last few days of April, I’m going to spend mostly on getting that chapter written and polishing up the last chunk of new material. Patrons should look for a charged release there, probably sometime on Sunday if all goes according to plan.

I also have another “bonus” book review I want to publish this month, but that will have to wait until I’m sure I can get this chunk of Twice-Crowned whipped into shape on time. if that doesn’t work out, at least I have a review ready to go early in May.

Review: Obelisks: Ashes, by Ari Marmell

Review: Obelisks: Ashes, by Ari Marmell

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Obelisks: Ashes by Ari Marmell

Overall Rating: ***** (5 stars)

Obelisks: Ashes is the second volume of a duology, set after the world falls into a very unusual apocalypse.

In the previous volume, Obelisks: Dust, the crew of the International Space Station awakened one day to find themselves orbiting a shockingly changed Earth. Making their way back to the surface, they find most of the human species is simply gone, driven to madness and suicide by the mysterious obelisks which have suddenly appeared throughout the landscape. Even to catch a glimpse of one of the obelisks is to risk losing one’s mind, or worse. Only a few people have managed to survive in the wasteland that was once the state of Texas.

Our protagonist, once again, is Flight Engineer Cynthia Han. In the first book, Cynthia struggled simply to survive and help a few others, while fighting through a steadily progressing terminal illness. Now she has found other groups of survivors, including a large (and very well-armed) group which has its own sinister plans for the transformed world. With her own personal clock running out, Cynthia and her friends must solve the mystery of the obelisks, and see if they can secure a future for any human beings at all.

The first volume of this story was pegged as horror, but this second volume ventures into cosmic horror of Lovecraftian scope. Cynthia is a clever and determined woman, but she’s up against a plot billions of years deep that stretches far out into the depths of space. Her story remains difficult and bleak, and it’s not one that promises easy victories.

The first volume was mostly about setting up mysteries and plots, and this volume is mostly about resolving them. The suspense remains at a high level throughout, with reversals and surprises every few scenes. The conclusion is satisfying and wraps up all of the relevant plot threads, although it leaves the door cracked open for a sequel.

The prose style here is very clean. I caught one or two minor copy-editing errors this time, but not enough to pull me out of the narrative. Viewpoint discipline is good; there is a bit more shifting of viewpoint than in the first volume, but it’s all clear and well-marked. There’s a bit more exposition as well, but by and large it’s still embedded in dialogue and character action. Mr. Marmell’s form remains very good.

The story merits one clear content warning, over and above the general bleakness and violence of the plot. A supporting character proves to be in the grip of a pedophilic disorder, an element of his character that was foreshadowed in the first volume, but not made clear until now. His scenes in this volume can be disturbing to read, although – to be clear – they are not sexually explicit. Also, to be fair, the author isn’t using this narrative move simply for shock value; it does play a clear role in the plot.

As with the first volume, I tore through this story in a single sitting, and now I’m interested to see what else Mr. Marmell might be working on in the future. Very highly recommended.

An Insight into the Galilean Moons

An Insight into the Galilean Moons

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Here’s a neat little bit of “new science” that I might be able to quickly build into Architect of Worlds while I continue editing and laying out the release draft.

The idea is that Jupiter, just after its formation, was probably much more luminous than it is today due to its heat of accretion. Its luminosity might have been as high as about 0.00001 times the current solar level. That doesn’t sound like much, but with the Galilean satellites (Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto) orbiting so close to the young, hot Jupiter, they would have undergone a period of extreme heating. It wouldn’t have lasted long – Jupiter would have cooled off and ceased to radiate so enthusiastically – but it seems to have been enough to drive off a lot of water ice and other volatiles.

Notice that Io, the closest to Jupiter, is almost free of water ice to this day. Which makes sense – in its first few million years, Io would have been getting over 30 times as much irradiation from Jupiter as it currently gets from the Sun. More than enough to melt and then boil water ices, and then drive the resulting water vapor into space. For Europa and Ganymede the effect wouldn’t have been as pronounced, which is why those moons still have plenty of ice today.

At present, the Architect of Worlds design sequence has a weird kludge in place to differentiate Io-like from Europa-like or Ganymede-like gas giant moons. It shouldn’t be too difficult to replace that with a rough estimate of a gas giant primary’s early luminosity, which (when taken with the moon’s orbital radius) will indicate how much irradiation the moon got early in its history. Particularly important for super-Jupiters, which we’ve already observed plenty of and for which the design sequence certainly allows.

I think I may also rearrange some text between Steps Sixteen (world density and surface gravity) and Seventeen (placing moons). Right now that’s the only place in the design sequence where you implicitly have to back up a step – after you place a moon in Seventeen, you may want to go back to Sixteen to determine its density and so on. Easy enough to move some of the pertinent text forward, so you can figure out a moon’s properties in the same step when you place it. That’ll also allow me to insert the new computation at a convenient place in the sequence.

A popular-science article on this result is here: Baby Jupiter glowed so brightly it might have desiccated its moon. The research paper involved, with references to other relevant work, is here: The effect of Jupiter’s early luminosity on the Galilean satellites.

Very Small “Habitable” Worlds?

Very Small “Habitable” Worlds?

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This article was brought to my attention a while back: “How small is the smallest habitable exoplanet?” (EarthSky, October 2019). The basic takeaway was kind of eye-catching.

Apparently some modeling work had been done to try to find the boundary between “planet-like” and “comet-like” water-rich objects. The distinction (in this specific context) is that “planet-like” objects can have atmosphere and liquid surface water, whereas “comet-like” objects can’t – they either retain water ice on their surface, or they lose their water entirely. The models pointed in the direction of surprisingly small objects falling into the “planet-like” domain – rocky planets or moons with as little as 2.7% of Earth’s mass could be “habitable” in this sense.

Naturally, that led me to raise an eyebrow, given that the Architect of Worlds design sequence is decidedly not going to give us worlds that small with liquid surface water. One of the reasons I wrote Architect in the first place was as a reaction against early planet-design sequences, in games like Traveller, which sometimes gave us those really implausible cases of worlds as small as Luna with Earthlike atmospheres and oceans. Had I been operating under a false assumption all along?

So I tracked down the actual paper: “Atmospheric Evolution on Low-gravity Waterworlds” (Astrophysical Journal, August 2019). If I’m reading this right, this is one of those cases where the Architect model probably doesn’t need to be adjusted to fit new science.

What the paper seems to be saying is that even some of these very low-mass worlds might be able to retain an atmosphere and liquid surface water. It looks primarily at the possibility of a runaway greenhouse, and at the mechanism of hydrodynamic escape for water. It doesn’t seem to address the possibility of simple thermal or Jeans escape, and it doesn’t take photodissociation into account at all. So it’s only looking at some of the mechanisms for atmospheric or water loss . . . and even so, these low-gravity worlds aren’t going to retain atmosphere or water indefinitely. What the authors have shown is that under ideal conditions, some of these small worlds may be able to retain liquid-water oceans for a while – up to a billion years or so. Which is interesting, but it doesn’t tell us anything about a long-term stable state, much less the possibility of the evolution of a local biosphere.

Architect generally assumes that the planetary systems you design with it are stable on several-billion-year timescales. Planets and systems of moons aren’t going to be crashing into each other, planetary surface conditions aren’t going to be in a state of rapid change. Which means the Architect model isn’t designed to look at edge cases like these, which are only likely to appear in very young star systems.

To astronomers, “habitable” means “there can be liquid water right now.” Which can include worlds that are not going to be at all comfortable for humans without environment suits and sealed habitats. It can also include worlds, as here, where the “habitable” state is more or less transient.

So in this case I’m not seeing the need to adjust my design sequences as they stand. It occurs to me that it might be worthwhile to provide some material on system or planetary states that aren’t long-term stable, so the reader can place some outliers. Planets that are likely to collide sometime in the next few thousand years, say, or tiny worlds like these with a surprising amount of free water on hand. For the moment, I think that’s going to be delayed until I write a second edition of the book.

Novelette Now Available: “Roanoke”

Novelette Now Available: “Roanoke”

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I’ve posted a new Human Destiny novelette, “Roanoke,” to the Free Articles and Fiction section of this blog.

“Roanoke” is a story about the fate of the first human outpost on Mars, after things go very badly wrong back on Earth, and then some unexpected visitors arrive. My patrons got to see this story about a year and a half ago, but now it’s available for free to everyone. Enjoy!

Planning for April 2023

Planning for April 2023

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March was a surprisingly productive month. I blew right past my milestone for the layout and book design of Architect of Worlds. I believe I can predict now, with high confidence, that the bulk of the layout will be finished sometime in June. At that point I’ll still need to make one more editorial pass, create and arrange a bunch of filler art, probably clean up the cover and a few other illustrations, and create the credits page and the table of contents. I can’t imagine any of that will take more than a couple of months to finish. Very tentatively, let’s look to see Architect of Worlds released in its first edition late this summer.

I also managed to get a chapter or so written in Twice-Crowned. That looks like a good trend to maintain in the coming month. On the side, I’ve been tinkering with the alternate history for the Danassos setting. I had become dissatisfied with a few elements of the history about the time of the Twice-Crowned novel, so I’ve been going back in what little free time I have and working out some changes. That’s set me back from working with Notion so much – that will probably resume once I’m happy with the new structure.

Once again, this month’s planning message is going to look a lot like last month’s.

  • Top Priority:
    • Architect of Worlds: Continue work to design and lay out the finished book. Tentatively plan to finish through page 115 (out of approximately 180).
  • Second Priority:
    • Danassos: Continue work on the new draft of Twice-Crowned.
    • Danassos: Rebuild the alternate-historical timeline.
    • Human Destiny: Continue compiling material for the eventual Atlas of the Human Protectorate.
    • Human Destiny: Produce a map of late 23rd-century Mars for the Atlas.

I expect at least one free update for my patrons – the next partial interim draft of the Architect book design. I suspect there’s a good chance that I’ll also be able to issue a charged release in April: the next partial draft of Twice-Crowned, hopefully well past the mid-point of the planned story.