Why an Index?

With 550 posts as of today, I’ve started to have problems remembering what I’ve already put on here. This is particularly a problem with posting existing content such as poems, short pieces from the Summer Arts Festival, or science explanations originally written for the Alaska Science Forum. I can’t remember which books or DVDs I’ve posted reviews on. It also is starting to be a problem when I want to link to a previous post and can’t remember when it was put up or what the title was. And there are posts on this blog that have permanent information, like the series on planet building and the one on horse color genetics, or the book and DVD reviews. I want to make it easier for my readers as well as myself to find things.

I made a start some time ago by adding an index page, which can be accessed from the menu at the top of any page. Right now, the only links are to index pages on my author site. This takes you out of the site and sometimes back in, which is rather clumsy. The index list is also incomplete.

I’m going to start posting an occasional entry which is strictly an index of past posts on a particular topic. These posts will be linked from the index page, and will link forward to the individual blog posts. As it takes a while to find all the posts that belong together, this will be a slow process—probably extending over the next few months. The first in this series, on DVD reviews, is already queued for January 3. Others will follow, most on Thursdays.

I probably won’t be indexing every post. Some, like those early posts which were simply glossary entries for my books, are on the author site and really belong there. Others, like the regular Monday updates on North Pole weather starting in November 2010, can be found easily enough just by using the calendar on the site. But I hope that by the time I have finished this, older posts of interest will be easier to find.

Excerpt from Jarn’s Journal

If Saturday blogs are to be about my science fiction civilization, the Jarnian Confederation, I thought I’d start with Jarn, the R’il’nian who in my fiction is a remote ancestor of every Human alive today. Timing? Sometime early in the Last Interglacial, some hundred and twenty-five thousand years ago.

Selections from the Journal of Jarn

Day 1:

 I am alive, which still astonishes me.  I do not know enough about this planet yet to have more than a rough idea of its year length, but no doubt I will find out soon enough.  If I ever get back to where designing another starship is possible, I will design it with a few more of the standard safety features.  Like the block against exiting a jump point too close to a gravity well.

If by any chance I do not get back home, and this record does, perhaps I should introduce myself.  I am Jarn, a R’il’nian and a designer of starships.  Not, I regret to say, as good a designer as I thought, or my third ship would be around me instead of lying in pieces on the bottom of one of this planet’s oceans.  Indeed, it all happened so fast I am still somewhat confused, but I will try to state briefly what happened.

I was aiming for the vicinity of a G-type sun, and I exited the jump-point too close to the third planet’s atmosphere, and heading into it.  All I could do was maneuver into a braking orbit and try to kill enough energy that a water landing wouldn’t vaporize the ship.  No, I could not have teleported to safety.  I never was any good at interstellar teleports, or at going someplace I hadn’t been before. That’s why I went into starship design.

Anyway, not only does the planet have lots of water, it also has land areas with large stretches of chlorophyll green.  A huge one stretches almost halfway around the planet in the northern hemisphere, with an extension into the southern hemisphere at its trailing end, and a pair on the other side of the planet together extend almost from pole to pole.  It looked as if there was ice at both poles, though it could have been clouds, and the readouts as we got into the atmosphere indicated one part oxygen to four of nitrogen.  All this strongly suggested life, and it would be unethical in the extreme to let the ship destroy any more of that life than I could help.

(To be continued next week.)

Winter Solstice

Sunset Dec 21 at Fairbanks, latitude 64 degrees 50 minutes. Photo taken about 2:40 pm, looking a little west of south.

Happy Southday! (Or, if you don’t follow time as measured on the planet Central, Happy Winter Solstice.) The days in the northern hemisphere are getting longer again!

Solstice has nothing to do with distance from the sun. In fact, we are rapidly approaching our closest approach to the sun, around January 3. But because the earth’s axis is tilted relative to its orbit around the sun, there are times (the solstices) when one pole or the other comes as close as it ever gets to pointing directly at the sun, while the other is as close as it can get to pointing away. That happened on Dec 21 this year with the north pole pointing as far as it could get away from the sun.

On the winter solstice, the sun never rises north of the Arctic circle, while it never sets south of the Antarctic circle. Closer to the equator it rises and sets, but the northern hemisphere days are at their shortest for the year, and the sun at noon is at its lowest in the sky. The low sun and short days combine to minimize the solar heating of the ground and water. The opposite is true in the southern hemisphere, where it is the first day of summer, and both day length and solar elevation are at their greatest for the year.

Our Earth’s axis of rotation is 23.5 degrees from axis of rotation of its orbit around the sun. What would happen if that angle were 0?

I actually invented such a planet, called Eversummer, for my second science fiction novel, Tourist Trap. It wasn’t exactly paradise!

The planet’s name, Marna thought, must have been picked out by a publicity agent.  Everspring would have been more accurate, or Everfall, or perhaps Constancy.  Maybe even Boredom.

The planet, with its rotational axis almost perpendicular to its orbital plane, had no seasons.  The poles were bitterly cold, glaciated wastelands where the sun forever rolled around the horizon.  The equatorial belt was an unchanging steam bath, the permanent home of daily tropical thunderstorms, varied by hurricanes along its poleward borders.  The desert belts, inevitable result of the conflict between the planet’s rotation and its unequal heating by its sun, were broad and sharply defined, with no transition zones where the rains came seasonally.  The temperate zones, between desert and polar ice, were swept year round by equinoctial storms, varied only by occasional droughts.  No monsoons, no seasonal blanket of snow to protect the dormant land, no regular alternation of wet and dry seasons.

Would you like to live on such a planet?

Firstday (Homecoming Glossary)

FIRSTDAY: #scifi First day of a fiveday. It is considered a holiday at Tyndall, but different religions and occupations take various days of each fiveday as being “special” in some way.

Follow-me (Homecoming Glossary)

FOLLOW-ME: #scifi A person teleporting himself normally brings along anything he is touching (such as clothing) unless deliberately leaving it behind. (A person could, for instance, teleport into or out of an isolation suit.) For massive objects, a “follow-me” circuit will link the object to a small receiver carried by the teleporter, as well as providing the extra energy needed for the teleport of the object.

Screamer (Homecoming Glossary)

SCREAMER: #scifi An electronic gadget that produces a burst of telepathic noise. They can be set for various intensities, and a good telepath can to a certain extent work through one, but not easily or without special training.

Artificial conscience (Homecoming Glossary)

ARTIFICIAL CONSCIENCE: #scifi The R’il’nai literally share in the emotions of others, which they referred to as empathy. Riyan society evolved with the assumption that everyone had this trait. The rare children lacking this ability were considered badly handicapped and treated while young to react as if they felt the pain of others. In severe cases, this could lead to a treated individual actually convulsing or collapsing if he or she caused pain to another, but this was considered better than having one individual disrupt the whole society.

Month (Homecoming Glossary)

MONTH: #scifi A thirty-day period composed of six fivedays. In the Confederation, it has nothing to do with a moon. (Central doesn’t have one, anyway.)

Accelerated healing mode (Homecoming Glossary)

ACCELERATED HEALING MODE: Under normal circumstances, the body reacts against rapidly dividing cells. A Healer can temporarily suppress this reaction, allowing healing to take place much faster than normal. However, this state is not normal and can lead to cancer if not reversed within a few days.

Calendar (Homecoming Glossary)

CALENDAR: #scifi The Confederation calendar has slightly more than 364 days a year, with 4 of those days and whatever leap years are needed being considered outside the twelve 30-day months. “Day” and “year” are based on Central’s orbit and rotation rate, so the Confederation calendar does not quite match that of any other member planet of the Confederation. Most member planets have their own calendars, though year and day lengths are close enough to Central’s (and Earth’s) that matching is possible over a few fivedays’ time. The Confederation calendar is used to synchronize time across the Confederation as well as being the usual calendar on Central.