Browsed by
Month: June 2025

Planning for July 2025

Planning for July 2025

Comments 1 comment

It’s not quite the end of June yet, but I find I’ve made decent progress on all my objectives for this month, and I’ve discovered a couple of dependencies in my creative work that mean I need to move a few tasks up in the priority order. So I think I’m going to lay out the plan for July a few days early and get started on that now.

As I began with last month, the planning message for July is going to be organized around a list of high-level projects, with a few paragraphs for each. Note that for any item that has multiple objectives listed, those will be more or less in priority order, and I’m not making any commitment to finish all of them in the coming month.

University Studies

I successfully completed my two courses for the 2024-2025 academic year at the beginning of June. Haven’t seen the results of my finals or my overall grades yet, but I’m reasonably confident I did well with both courses. I’ve selected two courses for the 2025-2026 year, but those don’t start until September, which leaves the rest of the summer free. No objectives for this item.

Therapy Writing (Fan Fiction)

I completed the Star Trek: Lower Decks novella “Panem et Circenses” a few days ago. Turned out pretty well, I thought – at least it’s been keeping my regular readers over on Archive of our Own happy and calling for more.

I haven’t come up with a title for the next story, which is going to involve character development, identity politics, and dealing with family issues, all of it happening on Vulcan. As I’ve observed, someday someone is going to write a story involving pon farr in which the characters involved resolve the situation without complications, and just end up happily married and ready for the next adventure. I’m not going to be writing that story!

The objective for July is to write the next story in my Lower Decks fan-fiction series.

Architect of Worlds

Today I had a lengthy conversation with Ken Burnside about a number of items having to do with Architect of Worlds. In particular, we had a long-overdue discussion about his vision for providing automation for Architect. We also talked about some possible follow-on products, most notably an expanded and improved version of the “Architect of Worlds for Traveller” document I put together a couple of years ago.

The objectives for July are:

  • Draft a one-page specification document for an automated utility for Architect of Worlds which can he hosted on the Ad Astra Games website, and get that approved by Ken Burnside
  • Begin researching and drafting a new edition of “Abbreviated Architect of Worlds for Traveller,” with the objective of being able to start final layout in August
  • Reconstruct a formal errata list, so readers can see what’s been fixed in each minor-version release so far
  • Continue to collect research for a potential second edition of the book, and make occasional world-building posts to this site based on that new research

The Human Destiny Universe

I was able to rework my basic “structure of interstellar civilizations” document for Human Destiny in June, and published that for my Ko-fi readers. The next step in reworking that setting is going to involve some cartography, and some general notes on ship design. One I’ve finished those steps, I think I’ll be going back to the star system writeups I’ve already done and revising those, then starting to produce new ones.

The objectives for July are:

  • Build revised maps for near-Sol space on two scales, one for just the “Human Protectorate” region, another for a substantial portion of the Orion Arm that places the 8-12 other civilizations that humans will interact with most frequently, and release those to Ko-fi
  • Produce a one- or two-page document that describes typical starship designs and mission profiles, and release that to Ko-fi
  • Re-work the spreadsheets I have modeling the exploration and colonization of near-Sol space, now based on FTL assumptions
  • Revise existing “Atlas of the Human Protectorate” documents to reflect the reappearance of FTL in the setting, and release the new versions to Ko-fi
  • Resume producing new documents in the “Atlas of the Human Protectorate” series (most likely starting with the Alpha Centauri writeup) and release that for patrons to Ko-fi

Upcoming Conventions

I had originally intended to hit some of the conventions closest to me this year, but the windows for getting on con programming and making other arrangements passed while I was still employed by the federal government, and I missed a lot of those opportunities. So in 2025 I think I’m going to hit the same conventions I attended last year: Travellercon in October, and Philcon in November. I’ll revisit my plans for conventions in the Baltimore-Washington area next year.

The objectives for July are:

  • Register for convention programming for both Travellercon 2025 and Philcon 2025
  • Begin preparing a world-building seminar, tentatively titled “World-Building for Science Fiction: Getting the Astronomy Right,” for one or both conventions
  • Begin preparing 2-3 tabletop game sessions to run at both conventions

Re-publishing Earlier Fiction

I made very little (although not zero) progress on this item in June, and it’s probably going to stay close to the bottom of the priority list. The objective for July will be to continue researching my options for re-publishing, and starting to develop a workflow for it.

Water in the Very Early Universe

Water in the Very Early Universe

Comments 2 comments
Image credit: NASA

Okay, now this is a really interesting result.

Abundant water from primordial supernovae at cosmic dawn

The claim is that the hypothetical Population III stars, the very earliest generation of stars in the universe, could have seeded the interstellar medium with vast amounts of water. This might have led to the formation of rocky, water-bearing planets – possible abodes for life – as early as 200 million years after the Big Bang. Long before galaxies really started taking shape, certainly long before the Milky Way began to form.

Take it with a grain of salt, of course. We don’t have proof that Population III stars of the kind modeled here ever actually existed. Still, this suggests we might be able to push the start date for biological life in the universe back by a lot. I may need to rethink the deep back-story for the Human Destiny setting . . .

Notes on the Structure of Interstellar Civilizations

Notes on the Structure of Interstellar Civilizations

Comments 0 Comment

I’ve just published a PDF document to my Kofi page, free for current subscribers:

Notes on the Structure of Interstellar Civilizations

This is a collection of assumptions, a bit of mathematical modeling, and lots of commentary on the prevalence of interstellar cultures in the Human Destiny setting. Even if you’re not interested in that setting per se, it may be of some interest as an example of deliberate world-building on a very grand scale.

There’s going to be a follow-on project, involving making some maps of the Human Protectorate’s primary volume, and of the immediate galactic neighborhood around Sol in the Human Destiny universe. Not sure if I’ll turn to that immediately, but it’s in the critical path for my project to re-think that setting, so probably sooner rather than later.

Planning for June 2025

Planning for June 2025

Comments 2 comments

Well, here we go, my first creative-planning message in close to six months. Now that I’m retired and have a lot more open time, I intend to get back into a regular schedule of creative work, organized as before around a loose plan that’s updated each month.

I’m going to experiment a little with the format, though, starting with this month. Instead of publishing a bullet-point list, I’m going to have a few one- or two-paragraph sections, each of which describes the current state of a project set and sets out tentative goals for the coming month.

So, without further ado . . .

University Studies

This month I’m wrapping up my university studies for the 2024-2025 academic year – this is my effort to acquire a second degree in Natural Sciences (Astronomy) and maybe acquire a graduate degree in the discipline in the coming years. The first week in June is probably going to be spent mostly on studying for my final exams, which are scheduled for 5 June and 9 June.

Therapy Writing (Fan Fiction)

The one creative outlet I managed to maintain, during that last stressful five months of my federal career, was a new burst of fan-fiction writing. That’s been in the form of a series of Star Trek: Lower Decks stories, forming a personal continuity that picks up where the television series left off. So far I’ve written five complete stories and am busy with the sixth.

If you’re interested in reading any of those:

The objective for June is to finish “Panem et Circenses,” and maybe get started on the next story.

Architect of Worlds

Now that I have some time free, there are a few things I’ve been wanting to do with Architect of Worlds that may be rising to the top of the priority list. Most of this is just product maintenance.

The objectives for June are:

  • Talk to Ken Burnside about how to approach the question of automating Architect – do we want to license one pro developer to be able to sell a piece of software, do we just want to be able to offer a seal of approval for amateur developers, or do we want to try something else?
  • Reconstruct a formal errata list, so readers can see what’s been fixed in each minor-version release so far
  • Start collecting new research for a potential second edition of the book, and make occasional world-building posts to this site based on that new research

The Human Destiny Universe

This is my primary space-opera setting, which has seen a few published stories already and is intended eventually to support more fiction as well as a tabletop RPG.

Lately I’ve been continuing to re-think the setting’s core premises, possibly because I’ve been on a Star Trek kick of late and I’m looking for ways to make the stories and the eventual RPG more Trek-like. For a while I was thinking in terms of a slower-than-light-only universe, but in many ways that’s a poor fit for pseudo-Trek, and it makes it much harder for any one character to have lots of interstellar adventures in their lifespan. I think I see a way to keep the over-arching premises of the setting while re-introducing FTL starships, but that will require some re-thinking of the structure of interstellar civilizations.

The objectives for June are:

  • Re-work the document I have that describes the shape and structure of interstellar society in the setting
  • (Tentative) Re-work the spreadsheets I have modeling the exploration and colonization of near-Sol space, now based on FTL assumptions
  • Finish writing another document in the “Atlas of the Human Protectorate” series (most likely the Alpha Centauri writeup) and release that for patrons on my Ko-fi site

Re-publishing Earlier Fiction

This is probably the last item in the priority list, but I eventually want to evaluate my previously published fiction (3-4 ebooks, mostly published on Amazon Kindle Direct) and prepare to re-issue all of it. That’s going to involve removing these ebooks from Amazon, possibly giving them each an editing pass and rebuilding them, and then re-publishing them on a few less-billionaire-owned outlets. (I’m making almost no money from Amazon anyway, so I don’t anticipate losing much by moving my work elsewhere, and who knows? Sales may actually improve.)

The objective for June is probably going to be limited to researching my options for re-publishing, and starting to develop a workflow for it. I may get a first ebook re-issued this month, but that seems unlikely.