Sharrukin

Review: The Starved God, by Thomas Norford

May 26, 2023 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

Overall Rating: **** (4 stars)

The Starved God is a story of exploration and violent death, set in a world where humanity has diverged into multiple antagonistic species.

Our protagonist, Canna Dawn, is an amateur naturalist, living in the community of Riverbend. What we see of Canna and his people is both familiar and strange. They seem to be human, but it soon becomes clear that there are some odd elements to their biology and way of life. It also turns out that there are several different human species, all of them significantly different from each other, and none of them exactly like us. Riverbend and the kingdom around it seem to be at an early Nineteenth Century level of development, but they are oddly advanced in some ways and lagging in others. The world itself seems very Earthlike, but its geography is strange . . . and the planet is encircled by a prominent set of rings.

Soon, Canna is recruited for an expedition led by the sea-captain Skuld Heel. Captain Skuld has been commissioned to cross the ocean and explore lands at the very edge of human knowledge. He needs a naturalist to help him catalogue the plants and animals they find . . . and to evaluate the distant lands for colonization and exploitation. Canna isn’t eager to leave Riverbend, but he is soon forced to go. The things he learns along the way will have profound implications for him and his people.

The prose style here is quite clean, with very few copy-editing errors. Viewpoint discipline is decent; some passages are told from the perspective of different characters, but the result is clear and easy to follow. The reader will be pulled along by the desire to solve the mysteries posed by the narrative – is this story set on Earth? If it is, how did things get so strange? How will Canna and the other characters cope with the discoveries they make? The story kept me engaged from start to finish.

The world-building here is solid, the strangeness of the setting well-motivated and well-described. Some of its features were a trifle too derivative for my taste. For example, it won’t take too long for the reader to realize the exact Earthly-historical analogue for Canna’s adventure. (It doesn’t help that even Canna’s initials point directly to his real-world inspiration.) The world is grounded in ideas from evolutionary biology and cognitive science, but there aren’t a lot of surprises here.

Meanwhile, late in the story Mr. Norford succumbs to one of the terrible temptations that present themselves to any author engaged in rich world-building. For most of the narrative, he does a fine job of sticking to Canna’s viewpoint, allowing us to watch our hero unravel the world’s mysteries through observation and deduction. Then, close to the climax, the story abruptly drops out of “showing” mode and into a big chunk of exposition in “telling” mode. All the answers are dropped into our lap by a genuine deus ex machina. The overall sense is that of a high-concept, big-ideas, deep-world-building story that doesn’t quite stick the landing.

Still, this is a very well-crafted and intriguing story with lots of lovely scenery and clear sequel hooks. I enjoyed it, and I’m very interested to see what Mr. Norford works on next. Highly recommended.

Status Report (21 May 2023)

May 21, 2023 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

Things are moving along, if not as quickly as I might have liked.

As of today, I’ve finished initial layout for Architect of Worlds through Step Twenty-Seven in the design sequence (world albedo). At this point I need to do a little research and possibly reworking of the mini-model for atmospheric greenhouse effect. Once that’s done, I think I’ll be able to finish editorial work on the next few steps in the design sequence, and get those laid out in the interim draft. Probably won’t be able to get all the way to the end this month, but we’ll see.

Meanwhile, I need to write up two book reviews and get those posted before the end of May.

Some of my time has been taken up by a Muse-inspired side trip. I’ve been binge-watching the entire Star Wars continuity – the current canon, not the pre-Disney “Legends” canon. Kind of kicking myself for not having picked up on that earlier. The theatrical films are, of course, something of a muddle. On the other hand, the animated shows and the Disney+ mini-series have been superb. The experience has been tickling my world-building brain something fierce.

The concept that’s taken up residence in my head involves a kind of “alternate history” of the Skywalker Saga, with the (overt) point of divergence that Qui-Gon Jinn survives the Battle of Theed and lives to take Anakin Skywalker on as his student. I’m also indulging in some rampant speculation about the motives that Sheev Palpatine might have had for his decades-long campaign to subvert and take over the Galactic Republic. I may end up with a pretty solid outline for a divergent Star Wars RPG campaign, although actually running it for players (or writing a fan-fiction series on the premise) is probably out of the question. I’ll probably write it up here as time permits, rather like the Space: 2049 material I’ve been playing with at odd moments.

Don’t worry. Architect and my other top-shelf projects aren’t going to be neglected. Much.

For my patrons, I think you can expect to see a free-update of the Architect partial draft, with as much new material as I’ve been able to edit and lay out in May. No charged release for this month.

Planning for May 2023

May 1, 2023 Sharrukin Comments 1 comment

I was able to stay more or less on track throughout the month of April. I didn’t quite reach my original objective for Architect of Worlds book design and layout, but I did get a substantial chunk of work finished. I also managed to get to the end of Part Two of Twice-Crowned. A lot of items were done without me having to rush down to the wire at the end of the month, too – for example, I got April’s book review published quite early. I do seem to have mastered the skill of sticking to the big projects well enough to continue making significant progress.

As I mentioned a few days ago, I’m planning to do some work on the actual content of Architect before I get back to layout, so that’s a high-priority item for the month of May. Otherwise the plan for this month is going to look a lot like the one for April:

Top Priority:
- Architect of Worlds: Review and possibly revise the mini-model for a world’s internal heat budget, specifically for Step Twenty-Four of the design sequence.
- Architect of Worlds: Review and possibly revise the mini-models for a world’s atmospheric greenhouse effect, specifically for Step Thirty of the design sequence.
- Architect of Worlds: Continue work to design and lay out the finished book. Tentatively plan to finish through page 132 (out of approximately 180), or the end of the Designing World Surface Conditions section.
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.

As far as releases for my patrons are concerned: I expect a free update of the growing Architect release draft, and that’s about it. I may write another chapter or two of Twice-Crowned, but I don’t expect to produce enough new material to justify a charged release. Slow but persistent progress is the order of the day.

Status Report (27 April 2023)

April 27, 2023 Sharrukin Comments 2 comments

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

April 23, 2023 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

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

April 18, 2023 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

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?

April 10, 2023 Sharrukin Comments 2 comments

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”

April 4, 2023 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

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

April 2, 2023 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

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.

Review: Quantum Radio, by A. G. Riddle

March 31, 2023 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

Quantum Radio by A. G. Riddle

Overall Rating: **** (4 stars)

Quantum Radio is science fiction set in the present day, the first in what appears to be a planned series dealing with the “multiverse” concept.

Dr. Tyson Klein (“Ty” to his friends and family) is a scientist working at CERN, the European center for high-energy physics research. At the beginning of the story, he has made a remarkable discovery. The experiments running on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the most powerful particle accelerator in the world, are producing unexpected particles. What’s more, there appears to be a non-random pattern to these particles – as if someone, somewhere else in the universe, is sending a message.

Ty presents his findings to fellow scientists at CERN (and thus to the reader), hoping for funding and help to investigate further. Instead, when he returns home that evening, his apartment is bombed and he finds himself on the run from shadowy forces bent on killing him. Clearly his work has attracted attention from the wrong people, but who and why?

He soon finds allies, some unexpectedly familiar. With their help, he studies the LHC message and finds a way to interpret it. When they act upon the message, the story takes a sharp and rather unexpected turn . . .

Mr. Riddle’s prose style is immaculately clean, and he clearly had attention from a good editor; I didn’t notice a single copy-editing problem anywhere in the story. Exposition isn’t obtrusive, there’s no problem with tense or viewpoint discipline, both quiet scenes and action sequences flow very nicely. This is a very competent writer working at the top of his form. The story itself is certainly readable and fun, and I didn’t have any trouble getting through the novel in a couple of sittings.

Yet I also left the story mildly disappointed. The premise of mysterious messages from somewhere else in time and space, possibly leaning on the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics, isn’t a new one. Stories such as Greg Benford’s Timescape and James P. Hogan’s Thrice Upon a Time have walked this path before . . . and honestly, I couldn’t help but think that those classics did more with the premise than Mr. Riddle does here. The stakes here don’t seem as high, and the sense of wonder that can come from the best hard science fiction never quite materializes.

To me, Quantum Radio never managed to rise above the level of a simple adventure novel, sticking firmly to tropes that would be familiar to any Star Trek or Marvel Cinematic Universe fan. In fact, I suspect the purpose of this novel is to set up a series of similar adventure stories, taking advantage of recent audience awareness of the “multiverse” concept as driven by popular films.

So in general, I did enjoy Quantum Radio, finding it a fun adventure novel. I’ll certainly be interested to look for the sequels if and when Mr. Riddle releases those. On the other hand, if you’re looking for truly high-concept hard science fiction, with the sense of wonder such stories can provoke, you might want to manage your expectations with this one.

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