Been gray here for a couple of days, temp is good around the mid sixties or so when the sky is gray, when the sun is out the temps have hit eighty. Barometer is steady around 30.
Being a long time reader of sci-fi and fantasy, you start realizing that it is all stories about trying to do something that can’t really be done. Granted, there is a spectrum to this, there are sci-fi/fantasy novels that are possible should the political will and drive occur (this is where a lot of “hard” SF resides). The other end of the spectrum is pure fantasy. Where things that just can’t be are put into play and the characters are reacting to an unknown in a human way.
Since I am trying to write something a step beyond fanfic (a subject I have to discuss sometime in light of my failed attempt) I need to stake out where my world lies on the spectrum described above.
Books have been written that deal with things (more sci-fi) I am trying to wrestle with. So lately I have been reading up on asteroids and nuclear pulse propulsion. In doing so, I have been using the digital card catalog that is currently being fobbed off as “artificial intelligence”. Overall, I am pretty pleased with the results.
It seems that as long as I ask focused questions, the answers that I get are pretty focused as well. The answers thus far come with pretty extensive lists of articles to support the answers.
So, just to give you a hint, the reading list that I think will give an inkling of the “technical” direction my story will take is:
↦Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
↦Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson
↦Anathem by Neal Stephenson
↦Universe by Robert Heinlein
↦The Sparrow by Maria Doria Russell
I am inconveniencing some ones and zeros over at a different site at Dreamwidth where I will post answers that I get from Grok and/or Gemini concerning specific technical/scientific questions.
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