Rasmus Bjoerk vs the Fermi Paradox

Exploring the Galaxy using space probes

It turns out that if you assume that a given species will only ever build a handful of probes once, it takes a surprisingly long time to explore the galaxy, even though presumably the species will be aware how futile this approach is. Bjoerk's scenario has 40,000 stars explored so slowly that thousands of species could rise and fall in the time it takes the probes to finish.

Rasmus Bjoerk vs the Fermi Paradox

Exploring the Galaxy using space probes

It turns out that if you assume that a given species will only ever build a handful of probes once, it takes a surprisingly long time to explore the galaxy, even though presumably the species will be aware how futile this approach is. Bjoerk's scenario has 40,000 stars explored so slowly that thousands of species could rise and fall in the time it takes the probes to finish.

Rasmus Bjoerk vs the Fermi Paradox

Exploring the Galaxy using space probes

It turns out that if you assume that a given species will only ever build a handful of probes once, it takes a surprisingly long time to explore the galaxy, even though presumably the species will be aware how futile this approach is. Bjoerk's scenario has 40,000 stars explored so slowly that thousands of species could rise and fall in the time it takes the probes to finish.

Never mind fast vs slow

Is it better for a writer to be tall or short? Anyone selling to the US market is selling in a nation where the taller of the two candidates in presidential elections usually wins. Clearly if you expect to meet your editor, it may be handy to be tall: the taller you are, the more naturally submissive your editor might be [1]. On the other hand, if you don't think you will ever meet your editor, you can just lie about how tall you are and it may be that smaller authors require less food than tall ones.

1: Clearly, Galactus would enjoy a significant social advantage over Scott Lang, even if Lang were still alive.

Never mind fast vs slow

Is it better for a writer to be tall or short? Anyone selling to the US market is selling in a nation where the taller of the two candidates in presidential elections usually wins. Clearly if you expect to meet your editor, it may be handy to be tall: the taller you are, the more naturally submissive your editor might be [1]. On the other hand, if you don't think you will ever meet your editor, you can just lie about how tall you are and it may be that smaller authors require less food than tall ones.

1: Clearly, Galactus would enjoy a significant social advantage over Scott Lang, even if Lang were still alive.

Never mind fast vs slow

Is it better for a writer to be tall or short? Anyone selling to the US market is selling in a nation where the taller of the two candidates in presidential elections usually wins. Clearly if you expect to meet your editor, it may be handy to be tall: the taller you are, the more naturally submissive your editor might be [1]. On the other hand, if you don't think you will ever meet your editor, you can just lie about how tall you are and it may be that smaller authors require less food than tall ones.

1: Clearly, Galactus would enjoy a significant social advantage over Scott Lang, even if Lang were still alive.

Two covers

(With the permission of Eos, who sent me jpegs when I asked who did the cover on the second one)

Both are by Julie Bell. I never saw the first cover until Eos sent me the jpegs because I read the first book in manuscript.

What caught my eye with the second cover is that the artist has not only decided to show Dag's prosthesis, she put that arm on the side towards the viewer, not on the side away from the viewer. Quite often, even when the artist has read the book [1], somewhere along the line the choice is made to downplay elements of the characters that might not appeal to the hypothetical book store browser.

The title obscures it slightly but that's not a decision the artist would have made.

1: Often the mismatch of book and cover is not the artist's fault. I seem to recall one story where an artist read some irritated comments by Jack Vance about the cover on Vance's latest book, decided to make sure that the cover the artist was working on would be the most appropriate cover possible for the book it was intended for and produced something so fine that it was reassigned from the book it was intended for to the next Jack Vance book.

Two covers

(With the permission of Eos, who sent me jpegs when I asked who did the cover on the second one)

Both are by Julie Bell. I never saw the first cover until Eos sent me the jpegs because I read the first book in manuscript.

What caught my eye with the second cover is that the artist has not only decided to show Dag's prosthesis, she put that arm on the side towards the viewer, not on the side away from the viewer. Quite often, even when the artist has read the book [1], somewhere along the line the choice is made to downplay elements of the characters that might not appeal to the hypothetical book store browser.

The title obscures it slightly but that's not a decision the artist would have made.

1: Often the mismatch of book and cover is not the artist's fault. I seem to recall one story where an artist read some irritated comments by Jack Vance about the cover on Vance's latest book, decided to make sure that the cover the artist was working on would be the most appropriate cover possible for the book it was intended for and produced something so fine that it was reassigned from the book it was intended for to the next Jack Vance book.

Two covers

(With the permission of Eos, who sent me jpegs when I asked who did the cover on the second one)

Both are by Julie Bell. I never saw the first cover until Eos sent me the jpegs because I read the first book in manuscript.

What caught my eye with the second cover is that the artist has not only decided to show Dag's prosthesis, she put that arm on the side towards the viewer, not on the side away from the viewer. Quite often, even when the artist has read the book [1], somewhere along the line the choice is made to downplay elements of the characters that might not appeal to the hypothetical book store browser.

The title obscures it slightly but that's not a decision the artist would have made.

1: Often the mismatch of book and cover is not the artist's fault. I seem to recall one story where an artist read some irritated comments by Jack Vance about the cover on Vance's latest book, decided to make sure that the cover the artist was working on would be the most appropriate cover possible for the book it was intended for and produced something so fine that it was reassigned from the book it was intended for to the next Jack Vance book.