Update: The Girl From the El Dorado Star System

So Smashwords tells me that I have to revise my free preview.  Apparently links and bookmarks are not functioning properly.  I also saw that the copy Iuploaded was no the latest draft, and so there are some texts errors apparent in the document.  So I will be working on all of this.  If you download the epub version of the text you'll see some odd things about the links, and the interior links for the table of contents is not functioning.  So just hang in there and it will be resolved as soon as I figure out how to fix it.  I have the latest edition of the Smashwords style guide and links to a blog and a Youtube vid dealing with the subject.  A head cold is slowing me down at the moment, but I'll be working on it.

Otherwise the finished volume one looks like it will have 25 chapters, and I expect to have it finished in early 2014.  (Unless I move a few from volume two into the end of volume one!)

peace, merry Chistmas, and happy New Year!

J Allen W

Merry Christmas!

Just sayin'.  Merry Christmas!

Interview Published on Smashwords

This is a short interview that was published today on Smashwords.  You can find it at https://www.smashwords.com/interview/jackwilder1957.

 

Do you remember the first story you ever wrote?

              

Barely. It was in the 5th grade. That would be the fall of 1967. I don't remember if it even had a title. It was about a trip to the Moon, in a rocketship of the type you'd expect to see in a George Pal movie. And I imagine it was very badly written. I remember my classmates didn't like it and thought the whole idea was silly. "Nobody will ever go to the Moon. It's impossible." I thought my classmates were lacking imagination. I was right. Two years later Neil Armstrong was walking on the Moon, and I was building models of the Apollo spaceship and the lunar lander.

              

Do you remember the first story you ever read, and the impact it had on you?

              

I don't remember the first story I ever read, but I do remember the first science fiction story I read. That was The Runaway Robot by Lester del Rey. (To be accurate, it was ghost written by Paul W. Fairman using an outline by Lester del Rey, and published in 1965.) I got it through the Scholastic Book Club in 1966. I was in the 4th grade. I had read other stories before that: Charlotte's Web and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but I didn't get it. The stories were confusing to me at the time. I guess having dyslexia and ADD (which I wasn't diagnosed with until I was 55) had something to do with that. But The Runaway Robot was different. It captured my imagination, unlike more mundane stories, and made me think. "What is a domestic robot?" "What about this place Ganymede? What would it be like to live there and how would I get there?" That started something new for me. Of course, I had seen some old classic sci fi movies on a black and white TV, I had seen Lost in Space which came out when I was in the 3rd grade, and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, a few 1950s' alien invasion movies, some classic George Pal movies, and Mysterious Island and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, a couple of classic Disney movies based Jules Verne's stories. Star Trek had just hit TV when I was in the 4th grade, but I didn't pay any attention to it at the time. But literary science fiction was something entirely new for me. It kind of grabbed me. After The Runaway Robot, I read another book under del Rey's byline and ghost written by Fairman, Tunnel Through Time, which I got from the Scholastic Book Club in 1966. Then there was Theodore Sturgeon's 1961 novel, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, which I found in my parents' stash of paperback novels. In the summer of 1967 at a supermarket in Albuquerque I found Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter by Isaac Asimov, who was writing under the pen name Paul French. I don't know how many times I read that book in 67. Then later that year I found Dave Van Arnam's 1967 novel Lost in Space in a bookstore in Yuma, Arizona. By that time I had started watching Star Trek, a late bloomer, I suppose, but del Rey (Fairman), Sturgeon, Asimov, and Van Arnam had me hooked on literary science fiction.

What do you read for pleasure?

              

Right now I'm reading through Alexander Kent's series on Richard Bolitho, about the life of an officer in the British Navy during the American Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. I also keep up with David Weber's Honor Harrington series, and I'm somewhere in the middle of Kevin J. Anderson's Saga of the Seven Suns. And then from time to time I dive into history, usually Roman history or the American Civil War, and into heavy duty theological texts, like God, Time, and Eternity by William Lane Craig. Theological questions about time, eternity, and justification, who-or-what-is-God, why does the universe exist, and what is the nature of the universe and reality (do we live in a holographic reality, and if so, why, and is there any real meaning to it all?), are things that deeply intrigue me...for the fun of it.

              

What is your e-reading device of choice?

              

For now, Kindle.

              

Describe your desk

              

In a word: cluttered. I once worked with someone, a neat-and-always-in-control type, who threatened to clear everything off my desk and trash it all, but sorry. That's my desk, not hers. My desk top goes through a life cycle. Every few months I clean it off. It quickly accumulates stuff, though.

              

You have graduate degrees in history and theology. How do these fields of study influence your writing?

A lot more than some people think. For example, I like to pick up on small details from history, say the frock coats worn by Union Army officers in the Civil War, and work those into my stories. There will be allusions to Roman history and Japanese history and culture. Bits and pieces of 1960's culture find their way into the stories. Monitors are a type of ship that hasn't been active in the US Navy since the early 1900's, but a type of monitor appears in my stories as a littoral space combat vessel. And the Imperator of the Commonwealth, Harry Truman? Of course, his name comes straight out of history. He's sort of an amalgamation of FDR, Winston Churchill, and (I hate to admit this, but it's true) Obi Wan Kenobi. Theological themes find their way into the stories also. One of the main characters in The Girl From the El Dorado Star System is Jewish and drops things from time to time that his rabbi says to him. Another character wonders what would have happened to him if he had never been born, a question he believes would stump a Zen Catholic rabbi. And there are questions about good and evil; what kind of god do the perpetrators of great evil believe in? Or do they believe in any god at all? A blind "prophet" does not foretell the future, but knows details about a hidden past he should not know at all, and can clearly see what needs to be done in the present, and so he speaks forth, speaking the will of Yah, the God of the Zen Catholic Communion. There are a lot of theological issues that appear throughout the story, sometimes in subtle ways: issues of conscience, idolatry, ethics, integrity, loyalty, honor, redemption, existence itself, and the will of God.

Who are your favite authors?

Jack McDevitt, J.R.R. Tolkien, Isaac Asimov, David Weber, Alexander Kent, Steven Saylor (Rome Sub Rosa series), Colleen McCullough (Masters of Rome series), Robert Harris (Roman novels), Robert Heinlein, A. Bertram Chandler, Poul Anderson, Kevin J. Anderson, Frank Herbert, Brian Herbert, Terry Brooks, Dennis McKiernan, William Safire, Tom Clancy, Michael Shaara, Jeffrey Shaara,... Well, there's a few. And they're not all science fiction or fantasy writers, either.

Corby's Point and The Girl From the El Dorado Star System update

Corby's Point was a short story that I had on Smashwords for about two years (has it been that long?!  Where did time go?!)  It was posted as an experiment more than anything else, just to see if I could do it.  Corby's Point is a short ghost story set in the Terra Arcadian universe.  It was partly a spoof on the ghost hunting shows on TV, partly and experiment in writing a short story within a certain word limit, and partly an experiment in publishing something on Smashwords.  It got a number of views and ended up in someone's library, but no buyers.  (It went for $0.99)  I removed it from publication today in order to revise it, lengthen it, and finally find a cover for it.  So, if anyone is actually looking for Corby's Point, just wait.  It will be back.

Meanwhile, I have published a free preview of The Girl From the El Dorado Star System on Smashwords.  It's chapters 16 &  17.  It is pending review for inclusion in the Smashwords Premium Catalog.  You can find it here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/390467. 

pax, J Allen W

Planetary Classification: A Sort of Addenda to the Last Post

The Star Trek universe is the only place I know of where one will hear references to an "M Class planet."  OK.  What is an "M Class planet," anyway?  Any Trekkie will tell you it's an Earth type planet.  OK.  But where does the term come from?  NASA?  Astronomers?  Mt. Palomar Observatory?  The late great Carl Sagan?  Nope.  Look it up.  It exists only in Star Trek and the minds of Star Trek fans.  In the real universe there is no such thing as an "M Class planet."  It was made up for Star Trek back in the 60's when writers for the TV show wanted to have some scientific sounding shorthand to refer to different types of planets but didn't have a clue how real life astronomers and scientists talked about real life planets (of, course, to be fair, Earth WAS the only Earth type planet we knew of back then).  Check it out here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M_class_planet (there are references), and here: http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Class_M.  In the Star Trek universe there exists a whole long range of planets designated by letters, A-Z.  It is one way in which the Star Trek universe is organized. 

Now, that's OK.  You create your universe.  You create the categories in that universe.  You create the terminology.  You decide the norms.  You create your own frames of reference.  I'm all for it.  Do it as much as you want and more power to you.  If you want to see an intentional major effort to do this among a number of science fiction creative types, just check out Orion's Arm here: http://www.orionsarm.com/xcms.php?r=oa-intro.  They have their own classification scheme for planets, and I haven't seen an "M Class planet" there yet.  In fact, they have 18 (yes, eighteen) different classifications for Earth type worlds, not to mention all the others in their user-created universe.  (See: http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/491c78b89879b)

And this is OK.  I like it.  I wouldn't want to imitate it, but I like it.

I suppose one of the points I'm getting at, perhaps a soapbox for me, is the extent to which Star Trek and Star Wars have influenced the thinking of the American science fiction community.  I like Star Trek, TOS and the new movies since 2009.  I like Star Wars.  But, please, let's not treat Star Trek and Star Wars as if they are the end all of science fiction.  (Indeed, it could be argued that they aren't even science fiction at all, but a form of "science fantasy," if that matters, and to some people out there, it does.  See here: http://scifi.about.com/od/starwarsglossaryandfaq/a/Star-Wars-Faq-Is-Star-Wars-Sci-Fi-Or-Fantasy.htm, here: http://forum.gateworld.net/threads/10755-Star-Trek-Science-Fiction-or-Fantasy, and here: http://io9.com/damon-lindelof-star-trek-is-hard-science-fiction-not-483030807.)   

But let's not get distracted.  This is not about whether or not one or another space tale is science fiction or fantasy.  The point really is that there are other ways to be creative.  A whole universe of ways.  Be yourself.  Do your own thing.  Create your own universe.  Be independent.  To quote a character in one of my (no, not published yet) stories, "The thing to do is to strike out on one's own, irregardless.  Take off! Be free! Independent! Head for the stars! Life is waiting, you see." 

And so we come back to world building.  Star system building.  Universe building.  Classify your worlds anyway you want, but strive to be creative.  Independent.  BTW, another example of planet classification may be found here: http://home.arcor.de/christianlenz/planet_classes.html

Finally, if any other indie creators out there are working to build their own science fiction worlds, I'd like to hear about it.

Oh, yeah, needless to say, there are no "M Class planets" in the Terra Arcadian universe.  But there are plenty of Terran Class worlds nonetheless.

pax,  J Allen W

Some Handy Tools for Science-fiction World Building

Originally I had planned to use a real-world star for the home star system of the Star Commonwealth of Arcadia. That star was going to be Beta Canum Venaticorum, a.k.a. Chara. It seemed like a good candidate because it's a Sol analog, and isn't that far away from Earth, a mere 27 some-odd light years away. (Precise measurements of the star's distance vary. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_Canum_Venaticorum for a starter discussion of the star, references, and links. To date, no planets have been spotted at Beta Canum Venaticorum, but that doesn't mean they aren't there.) The star could, in theory, have an Earth-like planet. My idea at first was that a nearby star system would be settled by refugees from Earth, and a Sol analog was perfect, but then I decided Chara was too close to Earth. I liked the idea of a star system far away. It gave me more elbow room to flex the muscles of my star nations, which I like. Greater distance also made it easier to work the theme of Earth-is-lost into the long range story line. But I kept Beta Canum Venaticorum as my model for the home star of the Commonwealth.

Several years ago I found a star system generating program online, StarGen. It came in very handy for generating random star systems given a few parameters to start with, like the mass of the parent star. I used StarGen online to generate a batch of hypothetical star systems for Beta Canum Venaticorum. One of those models became the star system I now use as the home of the Star Commonwealth. That model included the double planet system known in my stories as Terra Arcadia and its large moon Elysion. It also included a third Earth type planet in the star's hab zone! It was too good to be true. I had a model star system with three Earth-like worlds, two of which were super Earths. The model also included a number of other interesting worlds, Jovian, Martian, Venusian, sub-Jovian, thirteen planets in all. I grabbed it and ran. The Shara star system was now more than just a few ideas scribbled on paper.

BTW, StarGen is not accessible at the time of this posting. You can find the site here: http://fast-times.eldacur.com/StarGen/RunStarGen.html, but when I last checked (19 Dec 2013) it was not possible to generate star systems online, and the links to the rest of the website appear not to be working. Hopefully it will be back up and running in the future.

Some time after creating my model star system with StarGen I found AstroSynthesis. AstroSynthesis is now in its third incarnation. It is more than just a star system generator. It will generate an entire volume of space light-years across, with hundreds and even thousands of randomly generated star systems! Fantastic! See the link below. The software is not free, but there is a free trial version, and it is well worth the cost for anyone wanting to create worlds for a science fiction universe.

I used AstroSynthesis to fine tune my model of the Shara star system, adding a small moon to Terra Arcadia.

Other online tools came in handy for fine tuning the individual planets of the star system. How does one calculate the Hill Sphere of a planetary body? The Roche Limit? The angular size of planetary bodies or the parent star seen from a distance? The orbital data of a planet? What about the relationship between planetary mass, density, and gravitational pull? And so on. I'm not all that mathematically skilled. Despite having two grad degrees, I barely survived Algebra 2 in high school way back in the Dark Ages. I get the basic mathematical concepts, of course, but a little thing called dyslexia, perhaps with its attendant co-morbidity dyscalculia, kind of gets in the way of handling some of these mathematical problems. Fortunately there are numerous calculators online that can are designed to handle these problems. See the links below.

Unfortunately a few of the online tools I have used to create my worlds are no longer accessible, and I have not included them in the list below. (One example is something that used to be found as astro_calculator.htm, a Java script calculator that I can find nowhere on the web now. It was a very useful program.) The one exception to this is StarGen, which I list in hopes it will return, new and improved.

Celestia is also another great program, useful for checking out real-world stars and known exoplanets, but at the moment I can't access the website. Hopefully this is a temporary situation.

Also, check out the world-building links at Orion's Arm, Hidden Way, and Project Rho in the list below. There will be other world-building sites useful for creating star systems and planets, but these are the bulk of what I have used. One word of caution: not all planet-building calculators will agree, given the same input.

And finally, Online Conversion has a ton of useful calculators. I find the length-distance conversion calculator to be especially helpful in converting from US miles/feet, etc., to metric.

 

Links

AstroSynthesis 3:http://www.nbos.com/products/astro/astro-generator.htm

Star Gen (may not be supported!):
http://fast-times.eldacur.com/StarGen/RunStarGen.html

Angular Size Calculator:
http://www.1728.org/indexast.htm

Astronomy and astrophysics calculators:
http://www.calctool.org/CALC/phys/astronomy
 ...and a whole host of other neat calculators at the site home page:
http://www.calctool.org/CALC

Boiling point calculator:
http://www.calctool.org/CALC/chem/substance/boiling

Celestia (link not working on 19 Dec 2013 for some reason, hopefully back soon):
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/

Circle and Sphere calculator:
http://www.csgnetwork.com/circle_sphere_area_calculator.html
 
Gravity Calculator:
http://www.ericjamesstone.com/blog/home/gravity-calculator-for-astronomical-bodies-based-on-radius-and-density/

Habitable zone calculator:
http://depts.washington.edu/naivpl/sites/default/files/HZ_Calc.html 

Hidden Way:http://hiddenway.tripod.com/world/ 

Hill Sphere, Interior and Exterior Reach, Velocity calculators (and more):
http://orbitsimulator.com/formulas/

Online Conversion:
http://www.onlineconversion.com/

Orion's Arm:http://www.orionsarm.com/xcms.php?r=oa-page&page=gen_worldbuilding_links 

Plan a Planet Orbiting a Main Sequence Star:
http://www.oocities.org/albmont/mseqstar.htm

Planet Designer:
http://www.transhuman.talktalk.net/iw/Geosync.htm

Project Rho:
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/starmaps/software.php

Temperature conversion calculator:
http://www.lenntech.com/calculators/temperature/temperature.htm


　

pax, J Allen W

Some basic ground rules for the Terra Arcadian Universe

Here are some basic ground rules by which the Terra Arcadian universe works.  I use them as basic guidelines to help me write the stories.  They help to provide a framework within which the characters and their world(s) live and work.

1. People are still people, regardless of their level of technology, even if they have been genetically modified by an alien virus. This is very important. No one is perfect, and people have flaws. They have desires. They have fears. They have ambitions. They have love. They have hatred. They have sanity...and insanity. They have motivation. They have lives.

2. As Robert Heinlein once said: TANSTAAFL: There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.  Unpacking this statement we find that the future society of the Terra Arcadian universe is not a utopian, socialistic, communistic, atheistic, politically correct, monolithic, bland, multi-cultural-non-cultural welfare paradise lacking depth and character in which all individuals happily and mindlessly march in lock step harmony to someone's arbitrary politically correct tune so that no one is possibly offended by real life.  (Was most of that just one sentence???  Yup.) 

3. The third law of Arthur C. Clarke's "Three Laws" states that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."  That may be true to a certain extent.   For example, a stone age hunter-gatherer would regard a modern flashlight as an instrument of magic. However, to be true Clarke's requires technology that is sufficiently advanced.   What this means in the Terra Arcadian Universe is...

4. There's no such thing as faster-than-light communications.  All communications are limited by the speed of light.

5. There's no such thing as true faster-than-light space travel.  Yes, there is a form of "warp" travel, but it isn't like Star Trek and it isn't real FTL travel. 

6. There's no such thing as "artificial gravity."  (I wish there was.) 

7. There's no such thing as energy beam weapons that magically do anything and everything from stun to vaporize.

8. There's no such thing as magical, undefined "force fields" that miraculously stop any and all attacks of every kind (except, for example, in Star Trek, when it is convenient for the story line for the "force field" or "shield" not to stop attacks.)

9. There's no such thing as magical, all-seeing, all-discerning, undefined "sensors" that somehow instantaneously discern every single tidbit of information about a target down to the atomic level, whether it is a ship, planet, or individual being. Only in Star Trek will a "sensor" be pointed at one hemisphere of a planet and detect instantaneously that there are 12 billion life forms on the entire planet (only 12 billion living organisms on a whole planet?!), all of them Borg.  (Even the microbes are Borg?)

10. Computers are still just computers, no matter how complex and sophisticated.  But, a true Artificial Intelligence just might be something more...

11. All technology is not compatible.

12. Nanotech exists but within limits.

14. Weather control and earthquake control - not.   There is no magical God-like control of the weather or plate tectonics of any given planet. 

15. Teleportation, as portrayed in Star Trek, using "transporter beams" which dematerialize people (essentially destroy them atom by atom) and then reconstruct them on the other end, does not exist. Star Trek style teleportation violates the laws of thermodynamics, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and quantum physics.

16. Starships have circuit breakers, unlike the vessels portrayed in Star Trek. Control panels and keyboards simply do not blow up with lethal force (usually only on the ship's bridge) killing and maiming crew members if the ship receives a direct hit by an energy beam. Duh.

17. Intelligent aliens are not lurking around every corner. Neither are super intelligent aliens.  (But they may be out there somewhere.) 

18. Last, but by no means least, above all else remember: The stories set in the Terra Arcadian universe are just stories.

Some of these points I'll touch on in upcoming posts.

Peace, all.  J

Coming Soon: The Girl From the El Dorado Star System

The Girl From the El Dorado Star System

 

Volume One: Winter's End

Published by J. Allen Wilder at Smashwords

A madman with superhuman abilities seeks to destroy the Star Commonwealth of Arcadia in pursuit of his utopian dream. A girl who is not what she seems tries to hide a secret past while seeking revenge on an ancient enemy, before she marries the man who may be the key to her future. An independent investigator reluctantly accepts a mission from his insane aunt to track down his missing cousin. A mystic who is also the Imperator of the Commonwealth sees a fantastic future for humanity, and knows that interstellar war lies ahead. Tom Aster merely wants to get away from his psychotic mother, marry the girl from El Dorado, and have a life. The dauntless agents of the Intelligence and Security Agency are pursuing the most dangerous prey in the galaxy. The blue jackets of the Star Navy are just trying to keep peace in one small corner of the galaxy...and all roads lead to planet Calaverras in the Fortunguna star system.

At times politically incorrect, satirical, quirky, sexy, dramatic, romantic, and humorous, The Girl From the El Dorado Star System is a science-fiction/future punk story about ordinary people (and some not-so-ordinary people) who are drawn together by events, chance, and circumstance, or perhaps by the Will of God, into a fateful rendezvous in the distant future. In the process unlikely relationships form, comic situations unfold with serious consequences, and lost souls find a path leading to redemption and new life.

This particular story, The Girl From the El Dorado Star System, Volume One: Winter's End, serves to introduce the Terra Arcadian Universe and some of its main characters and secondary characters, in particular John Allen Aster, Harry Truman, Martin Feldmann, Heidi Zeiss, Dianna Falkin, Anton Sorokon, and last, but not least, the Kydervails. The Terra Arcadian Universe operates by it's own rules, with its own style (with a good deal of style borrowed from the 1960's), possessing its own quirks (definitely), and within it's own rules and limitations (of course), beginning with the rule that people are just people, after all, despite technological advances, and technological advances do have limits. And, by the way, there never was a utopian singularity. (Sorry, Raymond.)

Look for The Girl From the El Dorado Star System, Volume One coming soon at https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/jackwilder1957.

The Star Commonwealth of Arcadia

OK, here we are.  This is my new blog for all matters concerning my stories set in the Star Commonwealth of Arcadia and the Terra Arcadian Universe.  Its been just over a year since I have been able to do this, on a previous blog that didn't go very far.  Unfortunately, a little thing called LIFE got in the way.  A heavy duty sinus infection which knocked me off my feet, followed by a change of address, a change of jobs, working for a landscaping and gardening business - manual labor with long hours and and hard work all the way, my wife's surgery - we dodged a bullet there, and another change of jobs all conspired to take my attention away from any attempts at writing.  Recently I've been able to get back to it. 

Look for J. Allen Wilder at https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/jackwilder1957.
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pax, j allen w