Moon landing sale!

I am a big supporter of returning to the moon; I think it’s our best way of becoming a spacefaring civilization.  As such, I will often spend an hour or so going over the list of future moon missions on Wikipedia.  As I write this, CAPSTONE is on its way, but there could be a dozen more missions within the next year.  I wish them all success. 

But the reason for this sale is to mark the Apollo 11 landing.  Even though it happened before I was born, I do see it as an important day.  So to mark this year’s anniversary, I’m having a sale on three of my ebooks.  Just so you don’t think I’m just having a sale to have a sale, two of them deal with the moon, and the third deals with the future. 

You’ll be able to grab the following three ebooks for free between Monday July 18th and Friday July 22nd.

 

The Moon Before Mars

Over the last few years a lot of people have caught Mars fever. It seems a week doesn’t go by without a report of some new group wanting to send people to Mars, or some big name in the industry talking about why we have to go to Mars, or articles talking about the glorious future humanity will have on Mars. All of this worries me. In my opinion, a Mars base is currently not sustainable because there’s no way for it to make money. A few missions may fly doing extraordinary science, but if it’s then cancelled for cost the whole Mars Project may just be seen as an expensive stunt.

Fortunately, there are other places in the solar system besides Mars. While bases on the moon and amongst the asteroids won’t be as inspirational as one on Mars, they will have opportunities for businesses to make goods and services as well as profits, meaning less chance of them being outright cancelled. This will make life better on Earth and secure a firm foothold in space for humanity. The essays in The Moon Before Mars: Why returning to the moon makes more sense than rushing off to Mars allow me to describe my ideas on what can be accomplished on the moon and with the asteroids, and why Mars isn’t the destiny of humanity its cheerleaders make it out to be.

The Future is Coming

As a science fiction writer, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how technology will change the way we live. I’ve come up with these ten short essays about science fictional elements that will – almost certainly – one day become science fact as a way for people to start coming to terms with them. Because I’ve spent time thinking about clones and AIs, I feel I’ll be okay when they do finally show up whereas most people will probably freak out. I hope these essays will get people to start thinking about the future because, no matter what we do, the future is coming.

A Cabin Under a Cloudy Sea and other stories

Hopefully, in the not too distant future humans will return to the moon. We will build bases and colonies, make farms and factories, and live, love and learn. A Cabin Under a Cloudy Sea and other stories contains five short stories that are all set upon the moon. They give the tiniest glimpse of the possibilities awaiting us there.

Random Story – Disposing of a couch

This is just an odd little story from my life.

Many years ago, to save money a couple friends and I got an apartment together.  I think the one guy’s sister had a couch she was getting rid of and gave it to us.  It was starting to break down, but it still worked as a couch.  A couple years later, we all went our own way, and nobody else wanted the couch so I ended up with it.  I moved it to my new apartment, and over the years it broke down even more.

Some years later, when I moved out, I needed to get rid of the couch.  But how?  The complex where I lived had eight or nine apartment buildings, and between all of them were four or five fenced off areas with a dumpster and recycling bins.  There were signs around the fence about how you weren’t allowed to dump things like TVs or couches.  So I stopped in at the office and asked how to get rid of a couch, and they said I’d have to call the garbage company and make arraignments.  And there was a fee, like $30 or something. 

As I walked back to my apartment, I wondered if I would need to take an afternoon off work because they would be there “Between 1:00 and 5:00.” I also wondered if they would take it out of my apartment or if I would have to get it to the dumpster.  And if I got it to the dumpster, how would they know it was mine?  Despite the signs, over the years I had seen a few mattresses and such set near the dumpster.  These usually stayed there for a few weeks, probably until the complex ponied up the $30 to get rid of them.

After some thought, I decided to do something else.  I took the cushions off and put them in a garbage bag.  With my pocket knife, I then cut off all the padding from the back and arms, and filled a couple more garbage bags.  I was then left with a wooden frame with some metal brackets and springs, probably a third of them broken.  For the next day or so, I’d watched TV and when a commercial came on I’d take a screwdriver and work on taking all the metal pieces off. 

I had a little saw, which was really for small craft projects, like cutting quarter inch balsa wood, not the inch thick whatever wood this couch was made out of.  But for the next week or so, whenever a commercial would come on I’d start sawing.  And it probably took me a couple commercial breaks to make a complete cut.  I think there was also one board that had a crack most of the way through it, so I just smacked it with a hammer a few times to finish the break.

It took me a week or so to disassemble my couch into seven or eight garbage bags, which I took out to the dumpster over the next month.  But I got rid of my couch and saved $30.  And years later, I got a blog post out of it.