For the first time, astronomers have found a planet other than Earth that’s in the right temperature zone for liquid water.

Naturally, in the excitement, that leads one of the scientists interviewed for the story to make a stupid logic error that I have seen several other people make when discussing the possibility of extraterrestrial life:

But because conditions are ideal for liquid water, and because there always seems to be life on Earth where there is water, Vogt believes "that chances for life on this planet are 100 percent."

Now, we may indeed find in the future that on any planet with liquid water, the existence of life is almost certain. But so far, we have a sample of exactly one planet on which we know there is both liquid water and life. But just because water is a necessary condition for life (as we know it) to exist on our planet does not mean that the presence of water is a sufficient condition to assure the existence of life on another planet. There may be other factors necessary to life that are not present on this newly discovered planet.

Another similar mistake I see people make happens when some strange form of life is found to exist in extreme conditions.  People tend to conclude that if life can survive in such extreme conditions here on Earth, then there is probably life in similarly extreme conditions on the moons of one of the gas giants in our solar system, or whatever other place such conditions are found.

Again, it’s possible we may find life under the ice of Europa or in the volcanoes of Io.  But just because life can adapt to extreme conditions does not mean life can develop initially under those conditions.

Earth is far too small a sample from which to generalize with any certainty about the conditions in which life is likely to arise and exist.

(Fortunately, as a science fiction writer, I don’t need certainty; I just need plausibility.)

Today is the official release date for Blood Lite II: Overbite. My story humorous horror story “American Banshee” is in it, along with stories by Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Kevin J. Anderson and Janis Ian, Mike Resnick and Leslie Robyn, Amy Sterling Casil, Heather Graham, L.A. Banks, Kelley Armstrong, Allison Brennan, Sharyn McCrumb,   Mike Baron, Edward Bryant,   J.A. Konrath, Scott Nicholson, Jordan Summers, Sam W Anderson, Derek Clendening, Don d’Ammassa, Brian J. Hatcher, Nancy Kilpatrick, John R. Little, Mark Onspaugh, Aaron Polson, Daniel Pyle, Jeff Ryan, D.L. Snell, Lucien Soulban, Jeff Strand, Joel A Sutherland, Steve Rasnic Tem, and Christopher Welch.

To whet your appetite, here’s the start of my story: Read More »

Just a reminder that the adult registration fees to attend Renovation, the 69th World Science Fiction Convention, go up by $20 starting October 1. So register by September 30 to save money.

Here’s a link to the registration page.

Back in the early 1990s, I was a member of the now-defunct GEnie online service. One of the areas I used to frequent was the Punnery, which had topics for various different types of puns. One of the topics was for Tom Swifties.   (While dining with friends at NorWesCon earlier this year, I discovered that not everyone is familiar with the Tom Swifty form. Basically, the joke has two parts: the thing that a person said, followed by the way in which the person [usually named Tom] said it.   There is some sort of pun that connects the two parts. As a really stupid example: “It’s freezing out here,” Tom said coldly.)

Anyway, one day I decided to write a whole story in Tom Swifties. I posted the following on GEnie on May 11, 1992. Thanks to one of my fellow punsters who kept an archive of the Punnery, I recently got a copy, so this work of literary genius was not lost forever.

“CAPTAIN SWIFTY VENTURED”

“Commander Jones, the starship Punisher is returning to Stardock because of an emergency,” the ensign reported.

“Tell Captain Swifty we’re sorry, but all our ports are full right now,”
Commander Jones said, preoccupied.

“Yes, sir.   Captain Swifty, we are full.   You may not approach,” the ensign said haltingly.

“But our engine shields are failing and the temperature is increasing
steadily,” Captain Swifty said hotly.

“Are the cryogenic systems still working?” Commander Jones asked coolly.

“Negative,” Captain Swifty said knowingly.

“Then you have no choice but to abandon ship,” Commander Jones said, dejected.

“Number 1, I hope we can all squeeze into one lifeboat,” Captain Swifty said fitfully.

“That’s right!   The extra lifeboat was destroyed!” Number One said in despair.

“I can reconfigure the lifeboat to give us more room,” the engineer said
expansively.

“Make it so,” Captain Swifty said, knitting his brow.

“We haven’t time for that, Captain, because the ship is going to crashland on that planet,” Number One said condescendingly.

“Number One, try to keep us level as we land,” Captain Swifty said steadily.

“At this speed, the ship will be buried deep in the ground,” Number One said gravely.

“Prepare for sudden deceleration!” Captain Swifty said forcefully.

“Tell me when we’re down!” The engineer said, ducking.

“We made it!” Captain Swifty said creatively.

“The atmospheric friction must have reduced our velocity,” Number One said slowly.

“The impact collapsed the front of the ship,” the engineer said, crushed.

“And the gravity is only 5% of Earth’s,” Captain Swifty said lightly.

“I estimate it will take seven days for Spacefleet to find us and rescue us,” Number One said weakly.

“And the only food we have is one slice of ham, one slice of cheese, and one slice of bread,” Captain Swifty said, after a fruitless search.

“If only the news media would focus attention on our plight, we would be rescued sooner,” the engineer said, depressed.

“Drop your weapons,” an alien voice said disarmingly.

“And if we do not?” Captain Swifty said, fit to be tied.

“Then an electric bolt from my gun will give you a cardiac arrest,” the alien said with a hearty laugh.

“We have personal force fields,” Captain Swifty said defensively.

“If you do not surrender I will be forced to fire!” the alien said, inflamed.

“Do that and there’ll be nothing left of you but smelly smoke,” Captain Swifty said, incensed.

“Our races will do battle for centuries,” the alien warned.

“And you would lose in the end,” Captain Swifty said finally.

“Then maybe we should sign a peace pact,” the alien entreated.

“I’m sure that our ambassadors could work something out,” Captain Swifty said diplomatically.

“Can you help us repair our ship?” the engineer asked, transfixed.

“We can lend you another ship,” the alien said, relenting.

“That’s great!   Great!,” Number One said gratefully.

“Well, let’s get going again,” Captain Swifty said, relieved.

“Th-th-that’s all, folks,” Number One appended.

Before going to bed tonight, I will write at least 500 words in my Codex Halloween Contest story.

If I do not, then tomorrow I will have to post a blog entry praising Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

A few years back, I create a list to help with brainstorming titles. Alethea Kontis, Douglas Cohen and John Brown also contributed to the list, which got published in the SF & Fantasy Workshop newsletter. I figured I might as well post it on my blog in case it’s helpful to anyone (and so I can locate it more easily in the future for my own use.)

1. Person. It could be an actual name (EMMA, JANE EYRE), a nickname, a title or position (SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD, THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO), or a description (THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE, THE LAST JUROR, THE THREE MUSKETEERS). The person in question should probably be either the protagonist or the antagonist, although if the person has great “off-stage” importance it can still work (REBECCA.)
2. Place. It can be a specific place name (MANSFIELD PARK, MAIN STREET, CETAGANDA), more generic (ISLAND, NEUTRON STAR) or a description (THE TWO TOWERS, THE RESTAURANT AT THE END OF THE UNIVERSE.)
3. Thing. (THE SWORD, THE PERFECT STORM)
4. Event or action. (THE TRIAL, THE RETURN OF THE KING, KILL BILL)
5. Date, time or period. (1984, 1632, SEVEN DAYS IN MAY, TWILIGHT)
6. Number or measurement (FAHRENHEIT 451)
7. The Ludlum Method. Follow the pattern used for most Robert Ludlum books: The [Name] [Noun]. (THE BOURNE IDENTITY, THE DA VINCI CODE) [I'm not saying Ludlum wrote THE DA VINCI CODE, I'm saying it follows the pattern.]
8. Blank and Blank. (ROMEO AND JULIET, WAR AND PEACE, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA)
9. Blank of/from/to/on/in/for/other-preposition Blank. (A STORM OF SWORDS, THE DEED OF PAKSENARRION, NIGHT OF MADNESS)
10. Blank’s Blank. (HART’S HOPE, ENDER’S GAME, EXILE’S VALOR)
11. Quotations or literary allusions, whether well-known or obscure. (SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES, TO SAIL BEYOND THE SUNSET, STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND)
12. Plays on words or clichés. (SLEEPING DOGS, MONDAY MOURNING, OPEN RANGE)
13. Professional or other jargon. (PRESUMED INNOCENT, ABSENCE OF MALICE, BROKEN ARROW)
14. A word or phrase from your own piece. (CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY; HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS; ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT IN CHROME)
15. A word or phrase from a particular historical period. (BUFFALO SOLDIERS)
16. The/A/An Man/Woman/Boy/Girl/Other Who/That Blank. (THE MAN WHO SOLD THE MOON, THE GIRL WHO LOVED TOM GORDON, THE SHIP WHO SANG, A SHIP THAT BENDS)
17. The thematic title. (LOVE, SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION)
18. Edited to add: My father points out that I did not include neologisms as a category (giving “Utopia, Neuromancer, Catch-22, Wyrms, Timestorm, etc.” as examples). Although I didn’t include any examples of neologisms in the list above, I kind of thought that fell under #14: A word or phrase from your own piece. However, it’s certainly possible that one could come up with a good title consisting of a neologism that is not included in the story itself, as long as the meaning of the neologism were relatively obvious.

I’ll be doing two book signings this Saturday, September 25, at the Barnes & Noble in West Jordan and the Borders in Murray. But I will not be alone: a bevy of Utah science fiction and fantasy authors will also be there for at least one of the signings, including Dave Wolverton/David Farland,   Tracy Hickman, John Brown, Larry Correia, Dan Willis, Jaleta Clegg, and Brad Torgersen.

Technically, the release date for Blood Lite II: Overbite (containing my humorous horror story “American Banshee”) is September 28, but Barnes & Noble (and maybe Borders) should have them available on Saturday.

Details on the individual signings:

Barnes & Noble
11:00am – 1:00pm
Jordan Landing
7157 Plaza Center Dr.
West Jordan, UT 84084
[Facebook Event]

Borders
3:00pm – 5:00pm
132 East Winchester St.
Murray, UT 84107
[Facebook Event]

Lately I’ve been using Bit.ly to shorten URLs, particularly for Twitter and Facebook updates. Before that I used Tinyurl.com, but I switched to Bit.ly because of the extra 5 characters it gave me for tweets.

But I’ve got something better now. It’s just as short as Bit.ly, but a whole lot cooler — for me, anyway:

EJS.me

So now I can do things like:

• http://ejs.me/bio
• http://ejs.me/2
• http://ejs.me/cool

I know what you’re thinking: How can I EJS me some URLs?

Sorry, folks, but I’m the only one who can create EJS.me links.

(For those who are interested, I’m using a slightly modified version of PHPurl to run the back end.)

The two most recent books I’ve read were both fantasy novels published by Tor. They were two very different kinds of fantasy, but I highly recommend them both.

The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson has pretty much everything I want in epic fantasy: a wide range of characters from kings to commoners, magical powers, mysterious prophecies, ancient artifacts, terrifying monsters, unstoppable assassins, desperate battles, honor, treachery, thievery, and treasure. I’ll admit it took me a while to really start to like Kaladin, the first of the major characters to be introduced, but by the end of the book I admired all of the major viewpoint characters, and many of the minor ones, too.

The book is the first in a series of ten books, so naturally it leaves several plot threads open at the end.   But there were also several story arcs that reached some form of resolution by the end, so the book felt satisfying.

The fate of the world is not at stake in Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal. The novel is best described as “Jane Austen, with magic.”   The stakes are typical of Austen novels: marriage and social status.   The main character, Miss Jane Ellsworth, is considered rather plain and believes herself destined to be a spinster aunt to the children of her sister Melody, who is young and attractive and sure to marry well.   Jane does have one advantage over Melody: she is adept at glamour—the magical art of creating illusions. And that skill just might allow her to win the affections of one of the gentlemen she encounters.

Readers familiar with Jane Austen’s novels will recognize homages to them, but the plot is still unpredictable enough that I did not know until near the end how things would work out.

For my allergies, every day I take a generic form of Claritin-D 24-hour. The Costco version of the drug is very cheap relative to elsewhere, so I generally buy a pack of 15 tablets every 15 days.

Unfortunately, because the pseudoephedrine in the decongestant used in the tabled can be used for making illegal drugs, federal law has set limits on how much a person can purchase.   However, purchasing a packet of 15 tablets every 15 days was never a problem at my local Costco in American Fork, Utah.

But when I was in California last week, I went to a Costco there, and the person behind the counter claimed I could not purchase any because that would put me over the limit of what they could sell to me.   The record showed I had bought 15 pills on July 28 and another 15 on August 12. Since it was August 27, he said I would have to wait until August 28, because it was illegal for them to sell me more than two packets per month.

I told him that I didn’t think that’s what the law said, and that I’d never had any problem purchasing a packet every fifteen days.

He said he could get me a printout of the applicable law.

I told him I’d like to see it.

So I waited. And waited. And waited. (And did a little internet research on my phone.) Finally, I asked him if he’d managed to get the printout.

He said he was waiting for it to be sent over from another store, and offered to mail it to me if I would give him my address.

I told him I didn’t live in the area, and that I’d looked up the law online and the limit was based on the amount purchased within 30 days, not within a month.

He passed me off to his manager, who used the monthly method to determine it would be illegal to sell me the medication before the 28th.

I explained that measuring by monthly dates was not the same as measuring 30 days, since July had 31 days. I even offered to show him using a calendar.

He said that, since it was obvious to him I was not a drug dealer (apparently drug dealers don’t dress all in black with an “I am not a serial killer” tee-shirt or don’t have goatees or something), he thought it would be okay to sell me a pack one day early.

I decided to take yes for an answer, rather than to try to further explain that his interpretation was wrong and therefore it was not one day early.

That was not the only customer service problem I ran into on my trip. On the way back, I went through a McDonald’s drive-through in California. At my local McDonald’s in Saratoga Springs, Utah, I get a large water with my order rather than getting a soft drink. The large water is free.

At this particular McDonald’s, though, when I ordered a large water, the employee said, “You can only get a small water for free.”

I don’t really have a problem with that. Since there’s a cost involved for the cup and straw (and a minute cost for the actual water and ice), plus the labor to provide it to me, getting water for free is actually cutting into their profits on the transaction. At a Burger King a few months ago, they charged me 25 cents for a large water, and I didn’t complain.

“So, how much is a large water?” I asked.

“We have to charge you the same as a soft drink, so [some amount between $1-2 that I don’t remember exactly].”

“Then I’ll take a small water. No, make that two small waters.”

And so I got two small waters for free, almost certainly costing the store more in materials than providing me one large water. And if the charge for the large water had been reasonable, I would have paid it.   So what idiot at that McDonald’s decided that a large water should cost the same as a large soft drink?