One more week!
One more week and I’m done! Well, done with the first draft of The Ein Particle, that is.
Honestly, I’m ready for it to be done. I’ve spent the past six months using every free moment to write. It has been a mix of struggle and joy, and I know there still is a lot of work to do before this is publishable, but hitting that milestone of finishing the first draft means I’m almost sending it over for the first round of editorial feedback, during which I can relax a bit and focus on other aspects of my authorship. The website needs some attention, for example, and I have a ton of content from author blogs and conferences to catch up on.
Brain-in-a-dish plays Pong
OK, that is a very click-baity headline, I know. It’s not actually a brain, but what a bunch of scientists at Cortical Labs did is pretty intriguing none-the-less. They grew a tiny amount of biological brain cells, interfaced that with a computer and had it play pong. If the ball bounced off the bat, the network of brain cells was rewarded with a nice and orderly input whereas if it failed to hit the ball, it got random static instead. Not too far off from what the artificial intelligence that was the protagonist in my novelette Negative Reinforcement (which is available as part of the Isolated Futures omnibus) might have experienced.
The Vials of Our Wrath
Mark Leo Tapper
Concerto for Rachel, Book One
In the halcyon days of the twenty-third century, human beings are healthier, more beautiful, and more long-lived than ever before thanks to regeneration therapy from the Global Health Directorate. The assassination of a Directorate scientist starts a war between a genocidal bureaucracy and a group of self-mutilating religious fanatics. Dr. Rosemary “Roger” Mitchell must find her way through the violence and chaos to save as many as she can.
To bring down the architects of her brave new world, Roger has to navigate between the dangerous Directorate Council and the extremists of the Community of Natural Aging (CONA) to save the world from the Directorate’s eugenics and CONA’s madness.
Stowaway Star Runner
C.G. Harris
Viraquin Voyage Book Two
Ben and the crew have set course for an alien planet, but the inhabitants are far from what they expected. They have answers that could get their baby Viraquin home but Ben isn’t sure he’s willing to pay the price for the well guarded secret.
En route to the planet, they receive a distress call from a crippled ship and are bound by law to help. The life support system onboard is failing and the crew is dying. Ben and Lois are their last hope. The power couplings needed to ensure their survival are easy enough to get, they just have to be plundered from another ship. A perfect way for Ben and his crew to break into the space pirate business. Too bad they’ve targeted one of the most ruthless aliens in the galaxy as their mark.
It’s a race against time to escape destruction, save the crippled ship and learn the secret that can safely deliver the baby Viraquin home.
Simcity 4 Soundtrack
Recently, my husband and I were reminiscing about the classic game Sim City 4, and how much we liked the music in that game. Maybe it is because the tunes have been engraved in our gray matter during countless hours spent playing the game, but we both love the soundtrack.
Listening back to it on Spotify it became clear that even outside the game, the tracks hold up well after almost two decades. With titles like ‘Rush Hour’, ‘Street Sweeper’ and ‘Transit Angst’, the album paints a convincing picture of the moods and atmospheres of big city life.
Did you play Simcity 4 (a lot)? What do you think of the soundtrack?
