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Planning for September 2026

Planning for September 2026

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Hmm. Looks like I did it again – by the time I reminded myself about posting a planning message for August, it was already almost the end of the month. Retirement does not seem to have improved my tendency toward procrastination.

A lot has, in fact, been going on! So here’s a summary of events over the summer, and plans for the coming month.

University Studies

Summer vacation is about over, and I’m going to be starting to do some pre-review of the coming year’s course materials. In the 2026-2027 year, I’ll be taking two courses.

One is a straightforward astrophysics course, Astrophysics of stars and exoplanets, which looks as if it’s going to be digging a lot further into the quantitative aspects of modern astronomy. I’m looking forward to learning some new bits and pieces that might make their way into the putative second edition of Architect of Worlds.

The other is an experimental-physics course, Remote experiments in physics and space. You’d think it would be tough to do a lab course when you’re remote-learning across the Atlantic, but the university seems to have figured that out. I’ll be working with other students to plan and carry out some physics experiments and astronomical observations using remote access to the university’s instruments.

The courses formally open in about a week, although actual instruction doesn’t start until October. I plan to spend some time in September reading ahead and generally getting ready. At the end of this year I should be 75% finished with my BSc degree, still on track to start my post-graduate work by about 2029.

No formal objectives here for September. Those will start in October once my courses are actually under way.

Therapy Writing (Fan Fiction)

Since my last planning message, I’ve finished two stories, “The Country of Silence” and “Clear as Mudd.” The next story, “Sixpence in Her Shoe,” is under way and I plan to get that finished in September.

At this point, my return to fan-fiction writing has been going on for about a year and a half, involving 15 stories and over a third of a million words. Still not the biggest chunk of my fan-fiction corpus – my Mass Effect stories (written between 2014-2016) come to around a million words – but it’s been more robust than I expected when I started. Probably going to keep going for at least another few months before the planned series is complete.

A side project: the site where I started posting fan-fiction back in the day has become a sad example of the “dead internet” theory. It’s very poorly maintained, a lot of its functions no longer work well or at all, and it’s apparently awash in scam bots. So I’m in the process of moving all of my work off that site for good. Fortunately, I kept all my earlier work in my own files. Hence I can pull those stories up, possibly give them another coat of polish, and repost them to Archive Of Our Own (AO3) without much trouble. So as time permits, I’m doing that, including a few stories that I wrote and never did post to the old site. I’m also going to be updating my CV page on this site to make sure it points to the new master copies of everything. Once all that’s done, I’ll be deleting all my stories from the old site and deactivating my account there. Unfortunate, but probably necessary.

The objectives for September are:

  • Finish and post “Sixpence in Her Shoe”
  • Finish copying all my old stories over to AO3
  • Update the CV page on this site to reflect the current status of my fan-fiction
  • Deactivate my original fan-fiction site account

Architect of Worlds & Composer of Cultures

August and September were mostly devoted to an overhaul of the draft Cultural Evolution game for Composer of Cultures. The result was enough different from the incomplete version 0.5 draft that I’m labeling it version 0.6.

The game mechanics themselves are complete, and in fact Ken Burnside has done some red-pencil on them. Currently I’m in the process of writing all the supplementary material for the new draft (basically, all the material that would let the user interpret the results of the “game” and build an historical timeline for their fictional alien culture). No firm timeline as to when that will be finished, although I’m hoping to be able to release a complete draft to playtesters sometime this fall.

The objectives for September are:

  • Finish version 0.6 of the Cultural Evolution Game for Composer of Cultures
  • Contribute to the initial design for other portions of Composer of Cultures
  • Continue to collect other research for a potential second edition of Architect of Worlds, and make occasional world-building posts to this site based on that new research

Personal Universes

I’ve been creatively blocked with my “Human Destiny” space-opera universe for quite a while. To review the bidding: in its original concept, this is a universe in which benevolent aliens arrive (about 18 years from today) and conquer Earth in order to save us from our own folly, after which humans slowly become citizens of the galaxy.

Much of my trouble with that concept has been two-fold. First, it really was hard to write stories about human characters with agency when the Overwhelmingly Benevolent Aliens were in charge of literally everything. Second, I was just having trouble believing in the premise. Okay, it’s not like there’s any shortage of human folly around, but the back story is otherwise already falling apart. As an example, one of the stories I’ve actually written for this setting had a character loosely modeled on Elon Musk as the protagonist, set on Mars in the early 2040s. These days I have zero appetite for taking any inspiration from Elon Musk, nor do I believe we’re going to be putting any humans on Mars that soon.

So the solution I’ve meandered toward is to rethink the setting, so as to preserve a lot more human agency and simultaneously divorce it from those last vestiges of America-centrism. One aspect of this is to assume humans will explore and colonize the rest of the Solar System over the next century or so, although it will be a slow process and it will be driven primarily by powers like China, India, and the European Union rather than (e.g.) Russia or the United States.

To this end, I’ve been tinkering with a tabletop game, Stellar Horizons by Andrew Rader (who is a well-known space scientist). Probably the best “explore the Solar System” game I’ve come across for messing with plausible future histories. It’s been working pretty well! There’s a sequel too, which covers the exploration of the interstellar neighborhood over the next few centuries. I’m hoping the end result will be a medium-to-long-term timeline that will get my Muse moving more effectively.

The objective for September is to finish working with Stellar Horizons and build a first revised timeline for the “Human Destiny” universe.

Photograph of a completed boardgame, "Mega Empires," portraying the alternate-historical evolution of civilizations in Europe and the Near East through the early Iron Age.
Planning for July 2026

Planning for July 2026

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June was a month of ups and downs. I did accomplish quite a bit last month, although I struggled a bit at the very end of my academic year, and not all of the planned projects got completed. So, on to July . . .

University Studies

I stumbled right at the finish line for my courses in 2025-2026. The final exam for my mathematics course was 100% of the grade for the course overall, and I simply ran out of time on it, so the highest possible score I could have earned was a 90%. Annoying, given that I didn’t score lower than a 95% on any assignment throughout the course – if any of those assignments counted toward my final grade, I would be pretty confident of the result, but they didn’t. So this may be the first course I fail to pass “with distinction.” Which isn’t a disaster – it’s not like I’ve failed the course entirely, and missing a “with distinction” on one course won’t prevent me from starting on my graduate work when that comes around. Still, it’s annoying that I may have that blot on my transcript.

At any rate, I’m done for the next two months, until I start looking at my courses for the 2026-2027 academic year in early September.

Therapy Writing (Fan Fiction)

I actually didn’t get much done on my current story, “The Country of Silence,” in June. At present I’m three chapters in, out of what will probably be five or six chapters. At least the exercise gave me the opportunity to (attempt to) read William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land, and then actually read James Stoddard’s epitome of the novel. I should be able to finish my story in early July, and then get started on the next story in the series.

The objective for July is to finish and post “The Country of Silence.”

Architect of Worlds & Composer of Cultures

I spent a big chunk of June researching improvements to the Architect of Worlds design sequence, mostly having to do with flare stars, atmospheric retention, and atmospheric greenhouse effect. At the moment I’ve got about 5,000 words of notional “second edition” material, which has already been applied to one of the worlds in the Ten Worlds setting of Ad Astra Games. In July I’m going to pivot back to working on the Cultural Evolution Game for Composer of Cultures.

The objectives for July are:

  • Finish version 0.5 of the Cultural Evolution Game for Composer of Cultures
  • Contribute to the initial design for other portions of Composer of Cultures
  • Continue to collect other research for a potential second edition of the book, and make occasional world-building posts to this site based on that new research

Personal Universes

Portion of the game map at the end of an 18player game of "Mega Empires," displaying the situation among the civilizations around the Indian Ocean.

Many hours in June were spent on an alternate-history-generating experiment for my Great Lands Iron Age fantasy setting. Specifically, I used the tabletop game Mega Empires to build a potential back story for the setting. This was a big project, requiring me to set up the game and play 18 (!) positions against one another, taking notes the whole time.

(In case you’re not familiar with tabletop games lore, Mega Empires is the current edition of the classic Avalon Hill game Civilization, with decades of polishing and a much-expanded map. In fact, the publisher is currently working on even further expansions of the game as far as China and Japan, which could theoretically permit up to 30 (!!) players to participate at once. That would be far too much for my available space, so I’m content with the alternate history I was able to sketch out with the existing pieces of the mega-game.)

I’m actually quite pleased with how this project turned out, giving me material for the Great Lands back story that I’ll probably spend weeks or months analyzing and fleshing out.

As before, the next step remains construction of a revised “historical atlas” for the setting, which I can make available both on my Kofi page and on World Anvil.

Now that I’m finished with the “Great Lands” setting, I have another tabletop experiment I want to roll out, in support of my space-operatic Human Destiny universe. More about that in the coming months.

Planning for June 2026

Planning for June 2026

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May 2026 was a fairly productive month, although I didn’t get as much done on creative tasks as I had hoped. June is going to mark something of a transition point, as I’m finishing up the 2025-2026 academic year and getting ready for summer break.

Here’s the plan for June.

University Studies

I finished my astronomy course’s final exam back in May, and I’m reasonably confident that I passed that course with distinction. For the past few weeks I’ve been intensively “revising” for my mathematics course, especially since the final exam is 100% of the grade and I have reason to believe it will be challenging. That final takes place on 9 June, after which summer break starts and I won’t have too much to do for a few months.

The objective for June is to take the final exam for my mathematics course and score no less than 90% overall.

Therapy Writing (Fan Fiction)

I finished “Home Front” in May, and I’ve started on the next story in the series, with the working title of “The Country of Silence.” This is going to be the first of a number of stories that involve my personal take on the history of artificial intelligence and synthetic life in the Star Trek universe.

The objective for June is to complete and post “The Country of Silence.”

Architect of Worlds & Composer of Cultures

A new item that’s come up involves corrections to some of the world design for Ad Astra’s Ten Worlds setting. In particular, as I observed here, I’m working on some incremental improvements to elements of the Architect of Worlds design sequence, which we can apply to the Ten Worlds and eventually integrate into a second edition of Architect.

Meanwhile, once I’m done with my finals, finishing the new draft of the Cultural Evolution Game for Composer of Cultures will rise to first or second place on the priority list.

The objectives for June are:

  • Produce new models for EUV-driven atmospheric escape and planetary greenhouse effect, and apply those to revisions to the Ten Worlds setting
  • Finish version 0.5 of the Cultural Evolution Game for Composer of Cultures
  • Contribute to the initial design for other portions of Composer of Cultures
  • Continue to collect other research for a potential second edition of the book, and make occasional world-building posts to this site based on that new research

Personal Universes

I’m still focusing on my “Great Lands” Iron Age fantasy setting. I decided I wasn’t happy with the geography I was building, and chose to discard that in favor of making the setting an explicit alternate Earth – the physical geography is going to be very close to what actually existed in ancient times, even if the history and cultural geography are very different.

The next step remains construction of a revised “historical atlas” for the setting, which I can make available both on my Kofi page and on World Anvil. This remains relatively low on the priority list, but I’m making progress with it and may have some interim reports in the month of June.

Planning for May 2026

Planning for May 2026

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April was a productive month. I didn’t get everything I planned done, but I made decent incremental progress on just about every front, and hit a couple of major milestones. About all I can ask for.

Here’s the plan for May.

University Studies

Just about finished with studying and assignments for both my courses for the 2025-2026 year. Late May and early June are going to be final-exam season.

Meanwhile, I’ve registered for two more courses for the coming year. One’s an astrophysics course, the other is an experimental-physics course in which I’ll be working with other students and getting time on some remote scientific instruments. In particular, I’ll be getting some time on the Open University’s telescopes in the Canary Islands and doing some actual astronomical observation, which will be cool.

The objectives for May are:

  • For my astronomy course: Finish reading Topic 7 and prepare for the final exam on 29 May.
  • For my mathematics course: Finish the tutor-marked and computer-marked assignments due on 5 May and 12 May, then prepare for the final exam on 9 June.

Therapy Writing (Fan Fiction)

I was able to finish “What’s Past is Prologue” in April, which rounded out the “sixth season” of Star Trek: Lower Decks in my personal continuity. Once that was finished, I spent a few days planning and mapping out the “seventh season,” which I’ll be writing as time permits over the next year or so. I’ve started writing the first story in that sequence, with the working title of “Home Front.”

The objective for May is to complete and post “Home Front.”

Architect of Worlds & Composer of Cultures

One big milestone for April was the new version of “Abbreviated Architect of Worlds for Traveller,” which has been released by Ad Astra Games and is apparently already selling reasonably well.

I’m still working on version 0.5 of the Cultural Evolution Game for Composer of Cultures, making good progress on both rules mechanics and supporting material. Rather than release yet another partial draft, I’m working toward having a first complete draft for my half of the book, and there’s a decent chance I’ll be able to get that done in May. I know, I keep saying that, but I do keep getting closer every month . . .

The objectives for May are:

  • Finish version 0.5 of the Cultural Evolution Game for Composer of Cultures
  • Contribute to the initial design for other portions of Composer of Cultures
  • 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

Personal Universes

I’m currently focusing on my “Great Lands” Iron Age fantasy setting, and I’ve posted a few draft maps here and to World Anvil. I’ve also applied the draft “Cultural Evolution Game” from Composer of Cultures to help me work out an historical back story for the setting. Next step is going to be to build a revised “historical atlas” for the setting, and make that available both on my Kofi page and on World Anvil. This is fairly low on the priority list, but I do hope to make some decent progress on it in May.

Planning for April 2026

Planning for April 2026

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Huh. My apologies to my readers – it looks as if I completely failed to post a planning message for the month of March. I certainly made out a planning board, and I know I intended to make a post about it, but “I’ll do it tomorrow” must have gotten a little too entrenched. So let’s pick back up with the month of April.

In general, retired life is agreeing with me, I’m keeping up with my university coursework, and I’m getting at least a little creative work done most days. It’s just a matter of pushing long-term projects forward until I have something worth sharing . . .

Here’s the (not so tentative – I’ve got some definite commitments I need to meet) plan for April.

University Studies

Still very much on track, and as far as I can tell I haven’t scored lower than about a 94/100 on any assignment or exam so far this year. Coming down to the final stretch for both courses, with exams coming up in May.

The objectives for April are:

  • For my astronomy course: Read Topic 6, turn in the sixth graded assignment, and then read Topic 7.
  • For my mathematics course: Read Units 11, 12, and 13. Get started on the computer-marked and tutor marked assignments due in mid-May.

Therapy Writing (Fan Fiction)

“What’s Past is Prologue” reached Chapter 20 just before the end of March, and I’m definitely getting into the end-game of the plot. Probably aiming for 24-25 chapters in all. Very good chance I’ll be able to finish that novel in April, depending on how my time works out. It’s getting very good engagement, including from new readers, to the point it should soon pop into the top-five list of all the stories I’ve ever written on Archive of Our Own.

The objective for April is to complete “What’s Past is Prologue.”

Architect of Worlds & Composer of Cultures

Ken Burnside would really like to have a revised version of “Abbreviated Architect of Worlds for Traveller” ready to sell, and I suspect I can have a draft ready for him before the Mayday celebrations kick off, so that’s a major project right now. I’m not seeing any reason why that revised and expanded document, based on the final release version of Architect, can’t be available on the Ad Astra Games catalog within a few weeks. This is my top priority right now.

Still working on version 0.5 of the Cultural Evolution Game for Composer of Cultures. I had originally intended to do just a little polishing of existing mechanics, but the more I worked, the more I saw ways to improve the whole structure. The simulation model is complete at this point, but I’m working on the section the reader can use to translate the game results into a more-or-less detailed history of their sophont species’ cultural development. Hoping to have that done sometime in early-to-mid April.

The formal errata list for Architect of Worlds is finished and has been posted here.

The objectives for April are:

  • Draft a new edition of “Abbreviated Architect of Worlds for Traveller“ and release to Ad Astra for publication
  • Finish version 0.5 of the Cultural Evolution Game for Composer of Cultures
  • Contribute to the initial design for other portions of Composer of Cultures
  • 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

Personal Universes

The “Human Destiny” and “Tree of Worlds” universes are getting occasional attention, as time permits, although progress on both is very slow. Maybe more over the summer, when I don’t have university courses to take up time and energy?

I’ve also gone back to look at my “Great Lands” Iron Age fantasy setting, with the intention of reworking some of the worldbuilding and re-releasing the fiction (“Krava’s Legend”) that I’ve written in that universe. Incremental progress there too. There’s a good chance I’ll eventually be able to point to a World Anvil page for this setting . . .

Planning for February 2026

Planning for February 2026

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January was a fairly productive month, actually. I didn’t move out ahead on my university courses as much as I’d hoped, but I haven’t fallen behind, and so far my grades have continued to be exceptional. I’m quite pleased with my progress in the mathematics course, in which I seem to be succeeding with subjects that I failed to master forty years ago as an engineering student.

I made good progress on my creative projects too. I seem to be hitting my post-retirement stride – I’m having no trouble filling my days, and I seem to be exercising the discipline necessary to keep making incremental progress every day.

Here’s the tentative plan for February 2026.

University Studies

If I can do some advance work, that would be helpful at this point. If I hit the following marks, I should be about two weeks ahead at the end of the month.

Objectives for February include:

  • For my astronomy course: Read Topic 4, turn in the fourth graded assignment, and then read Topic 5.
  • For my mathematics course: Read Units 8, 9, and 10.

Therapy Writing (Fan Fiction)

I’m continuing to work on “What’s Past is Prologue,” and I suspect that’s going to be an active project well into March if not longer. Definitely going to end up at short-to-medium novel length before it’s done. It’s getting good engagement from my usual readers, though, so that’s nice to see.

The objective for February is to complete “What’s Past is Prologue” at least through Chapter 16.

Architect of Worlds & Conductor of Cultures

I was able to complete version 0.4 of the Cultural Evolution Game, and playtesters and my collaborators have had a chance to look at it. Not a lot of feedback yet, so I don’t have a sense as to whether this version is a step forward or if I’m going to need to do a redesign. I do plan to produce a version 0.5, possibly in February, although that’s likely to be more fleshing-out and adding supporting material rather than changes to the mechanics.

I also got started on a formal errata list for Architect of Worlds, although I still need to track down a couple of items before I can release the thing. Lesson learned: keep a formal list of errata while you’re producing them, dummy, that way you don’t have to rack your brains months later to figure out what you were thinking at the time.

The objectives for January are:

  • Work on a minor rewrite and expansion (version 0.5) of the Cultural Evolution Game
  • Contribute to the initial design for other portions of Conductor of Cultures
  • Begin researching and drafting a new edition of “Abbreviated Architect of Worlds for Traveller“
  • Continue working on a formal errata list for Architect of Worlds, 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

Personal Universes

Still continuing to collect notes and do game design for a version 0.60 of the “Human Destiny Sourcebook,” based upon FATE. Incremental progress means I’m a still long distance from being able to share any of this.

I did get some work done late in the month on something I call the “Tree of Worlds” setting. Think of this as a low-fantasy framework for alternate histories, with a generous helping of esoteric conspiracies in the mix. I’m actually writing this document as a GURPS supplement, of all things, and that’s probably how I’ll end up releasing it when it’s done.

Both of these will be posted to my Kofi, free for subscribers, when they’re presentable.