Mid July 2022 - alien intelligence, book progress and space battles

Jeannette Bedard

Jul 15, 2022

Hello Everyone,

I just finished reading Fuzz by Mary Roach. For most non-fiction books I read I take notes (here’s the start of the gravity well explaining why). Here’s the one thing I wrote down:

Snowplows kill twice as many Canadians than grizzly bears.

Yes, I’m a Canadian living in Canada, but I live in an urban area far from any grizzly bears where it only snows once a year and I just stay home on that day. Not sure why I felt the need to write down that grizzly fact.

Alien Intelligence

I finished Solaris by Stanisław Lem. And I have to say, I much preferred the 2002 movie version. Both versions centre around one of my favourite tropes, which I wrote about over on my blog, here.

Currently for fiction I’m reading Bluebird by Ciel Pierlot (the kind of action packed space opera I always love—so far it’s great) and A Beautiful Blue Death by Charles Finch.

The other day when I took my daughter to stock up on manga from our local library, A Beautiful Blue Death was just sitting on the wrong shelf. I couldn’t help but pick it up. Since it’s a library book, I needed to start it right away as one of my weaknesses is returning library books on time. This one is a long way from what I normally read, it’s a Sherlock Holmes style murder mystery where the main character spends a lot of time sitting before a roaring fire, sipping tea and pondering who murdered the maid. So far, I like it.

Writing Progress

I’m finally making progress on Subject 34! So much progress (there may now be dragons in this scifi novel)—and I have a working keyboard. I’m also falling in love with the story again and can’t wait to have others read it.

Mark you calendars, The Alien Algorithm is out on 15 August 2022.

And, there will be a new Case File on the Armchair Alien SubStack in September.

Space Battles

I guess it’s more than a week since the final episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and I’m already looking forward to season 2.

No spoilers here, but the final episode left me thinking…

In a space battle where you weapons go down, and you happen to have transporter technology, why not just start beaming out random pieces of the enemy ship? Removing a few windows could cause the enemy problems.

Which leads me back to wondering why the crew of the Enterprise don’t don space suits before going into any battle. And they really need seat belts.

Cheers,

Jeannette

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