Author: Pat Chiles

An expatriate Southerner in the Midwest, writing about writing and whatever dadgum else interests him. Author of the science fiction thrillers FROZEN ORBIT, FRONTIER, and ESCAPE ORBIT, published by Baen Books.
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History Repeats Itself

First as tragedy, next as farce.

And that, my friends, is the only thought Karl Marx ever expressed that I would even halfway agree with (assuming I’m correct in attributing that to him).

So what’s got me wound up on such a topic? Current events, as usual.

At the top of the list would be supposedly intelligent people believing we can solve the world’s financial problems by just printing more money. And where, exactly, has that worked whenever it’s been tried? Think Wiemar Germany or Zimbabwe can’t happen here? You can’t ignore the laws of economics any more than you can physics. The effects just take longer to materialize.

Next, an administration which foolishly encourages Israel’s enemies (and by extension, our own).

Just for fun, how about the rise of the “Fifth Reich“? (No one expected the Spanish Inquisition!)

Finally, our pathetic inability to understand or appreciate our own history, which just cements the deal. I’ve never been one to think like a tin-foil-hat survivalist, but the likelihood of a global catastrophe just keeps growing . 1914 or 1938, pick your year, because I fear we’re about to find out what that was like.

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Coming Soon

Is this sweet, or what?

It’s in final editing and should be ready for Amazon and Barnes&Noble.com in time for Christmas. If all goes well, both e-book and paperback versions will be available.

If you’re looking for cover art, I highly recommend JT Lindroos. A pleasure to work with and terrific results, as you can see.

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One Good Thing About Bankrupting the EU

There won’t be much money left to fund crazy stuff like this:

A group of scientists is pushing to publish research about how they created a man-made flu virus that could potentially wipe out civilisation.

The deadly virus is a genetically tweaked version of the H5N1 bird flu strain, but is far more infectious and could pass easily between millions of people at a time.

The research has caused a storm of controversy and divided scientists, with some saying it should never have been carried out.

I would have to agree with that last sentiment. There’s been far too much fooling around of late with things that I’ll officially call Really Bad Ideas. Like the Dr. Moreau-ish human-animal hybrids, and to a lesser extent, the dinosaur reverse-evolved from a chicken.
Now I’m a big fan of scientific advancement and its subsequent benefits to modern life. You know, really important things like life-saving drugs, HDTVs, PCs, iPods…
But is there really any good reason to be intentionally monkeying with things that could lead to a great deal of ugliness if only one or two people got careless? To my mind, this isn’t like the CDC keeping live samples of smallpox or polio because those are viruses that already existed in nature. It’s probably not smart to think they’ve been completely eradicated. Certainly, nobody’s turned them into civilization-killing superbugs yet.
No doubt there are more scientifically astute people than I who can explain the rationale for this, but it’s hard to see what that might be. Where does a society draw the line on morality or common good when we don’t share a common moral framework?
Kind of like the weather: everybody talks about it, but nobody ever does anything.

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College Isn’t Always The Right Choice

Jay Leno explains why:

I would bet a lot of the OccuDrones are wishing they’d learned this (or electrical work, or even plumbing) instead of wasting four years and tens of thousands on Medieval French Literature.

Hint: if the title of your major ends in “…Studies”, it’s probably not worth your time. And certainly not your money.

UPDATE: If Jay Leno’s opinion isn’t good enough, there’s always Mike Rowe’s WORKS foundation.

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PERIGEE: Almost There!

Except for the final 30 pages, Perigee is finished and with my editor. The rest needs some clean-up for continuity’s sake and will be easily completed this weekend.

That means it’s time for cover art. These aren’t final selections, but an idea of what I’m toying with in terms of imagery and lettering:

So it’s reader input time: if you were browsing through Amazon, which image would make you want to have a look?

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The Shoulders of Apollo

Andrew Chaikin is the author of A Man on the Moon, an eminently readable history of the Apollo program which Tom Hanks used as the basis for his HBO miniseries, From the Earth to the Moon.

The book reads like a novel. It’s hands-down the single best source of information on one of our nation’s greatest achievements, and provides excellent context for more detailed inside-baseball histories written later on by key players like Gene Cernan, Chris Kraft, and Gene Kranz.

They are all men whom I have a tremendous amount of respect for, and held high places among my list of boyhood heroes. But sadly, many of the men who made Apollo successful have also fully imbibed the NASA Kool-Aid, based on their advocacy for the atrocious Senate Space Launch System. SLS threatens to become a fiscal black hole from which no other program money will escape.  I found this ironic for Mr. Kranz, who in his own book, Failure is Not an Option, lamented as to how NASA has devolved into just another butt-covering government bureaucracy.

Which brings me back to Mr. Chaikin, who recently penned an excellent piece on the sorry state of U.S. human spaceflight in Space News. An unquestioned expert on Apollo history, he appears to have benefited from an historian’s sense of objectivity. It probably didn’t hurt that he wasn’t drinking from the water fountains in Houston or Canaveral in the ’60s, since they were apparently flush with the aforementioned Kool-Aid.

An excerpt:

Four decades later the challenge is not just to follow Apollo’s trail into deep space, but to do it affordably and sustainably. That’s not going to happen if NASA continues to be run as a jobs program as much as a space program.

These are the things I think about when I hear people like my manager friend say that commercial companies should be patient and wait for the fruits of NASA’s experience to spin off to the private sector. They apparently don’t see that this spinoff has already happened, that companies like SpaceX have digested the collected wisdom of NASA’s first half-century and are building on it.

But don’t take my word for it. Read the whole thing at Space News.

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Happy Veteran’s Day

To all Americans, but especially the brothers and sisters I served with in the Marine Corps.

As the saying goes: “If you can read this, thank a teacher. If you can read this in English, thank a veteran.”

On a lesser note (pun intended), today’s date is 11/11/11, which also makes it Nigel Tufnel Day.

Crank up your patriotic music to 11!

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And One More Thing…

Every time I say I’m not going to do something on this blog, events conspire to force me into doing that which was denied. Namely, updating the blog…

In other words, Sarah Hoyt has once again posted a couple of essays that are just screaming to be shared. If you’re like me and are just now wading into the e-pub universe, they’re especially worthwhile.

From Quick, Get Me a Flashlight:

Until recently, if you wanted to be read by the largest number of people, the path was easy.  First, you had to impress the gatekeepers.  Fortunately the gatekeepers were a small clique living mostly in NYC and all attending the same parties and reading the same books or – more likely – watching the same movies.  And they weren’t shy with their opinions, either.  They talked all the time, because you see, living in an echo chamber, they viewed their tastes and opinion as symbols of their status and intelligence.  So, attend one or two conventions, and you could psyche them.

Failing that, there were slews of books, seminars and workshops that taught you how to think the way they did, for the purpose of creating stories they’d love.

Finally, from We Band of Writers:

Of course, editors and publishers couldn’t have you killed and all your wealth confiscated, but they could block you from publishing, which for a lot of writers is worse than death, and make sure no one saw your books, ever.

And while some of the books that made it to the top were good, no one who saw how the sausage factory worked on the other side, can have the slightest belief that these workings are in fact even vaguely “fair” or that traditional publishing is in any way a meritocracy.

In fact it was more like a “Meritrocracy” in which we meretriciously tried to ingratiate ourselves with the powers at the top, who could make or break our career even while resenting their power and often insane decisions.

Which fully explains the bad taste left in my mouth after over a year of querying. Yuck. I finally gave up on that path after an otherwise reputable agency that was interested in my work decided to follow the crowd and open their own e-pub “imprint”. I subsequently decided they didn’t need to see the manuscript revisions they’d asked for, if they can’t get the whole “conflict of interest” concept.

No way to know yet if that was the right decision, but it certainly feels better to actually be doing something on my own terms. Call me a control freak, but that’s business.

Which is what this is, by the way. What, ya’ll thought I was doing this for fun?

Okay, well, that too…

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About Perigee

It’s almost done. Really. I promise. In fact, that’s the reason why you haven’t seen a lot of activity here in blog-land lately. With a job and family, there’s only so much time in each day left for writing (which I’ve complained about enough).

If I’m to have the slightest chance of having this book ready for Christmas, the next month will be a little intense. So there won’t be much activity here unless something really catches my eye for a quick posting…like the Camaro Hot Wheels edition, for instance. Maybe Dodge will step up and do the same thing for the Challenger, which is already pretty Hot-Wheelsy.

I’ll try and update at least once a week, and post a few more sample chapters for your test-reading pleasure.

In the meantime, here’s an example of what I’m thinking about for cover art:

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