I voted for Harris: Let’s solve problems!

When Vice President Harris moved up to the top of her election ticket, I recall there were a few news and analysis articles about how her new role would fit with her unsuccessful run for the Presidency four years earlier. One position I remember reading was that she’d struggled to articulate her values, other than saying that she was a problem-solver. The traditional news media seemed to think that this was a vague statement that told us nothing useful about Harris or how she might govern.

This election, more than anything else, is about what vision we, as a country and society, have for the role of government in our civic life. We should solve problems is exactly a statement of my values on the subject.

Harris’ opponent presents an entirely different set of values for the role of government in our lives. (Besides his immediately disqualifying attributes and behaviors.) He thinks government should pick winners and losers. Power exists for the sake of the powerful. This is why the ultrarich are cozying up to him: they figure that, if they establish positive personal feelings with him, they’ll be among the winners he chooses. The end result is a Russia-style oligarchy, enforced by the government choosing winners and losers in the most invasive ways throughout all of society: between political parties, media organizations, religions, genders, sexual behaviors, art, and culture.

This attracts people who imagine they’ll be picked as winners. I always have to remind myself that fascism is appealing: it says, in what seems to be a complex world with myriad problems, things are actually simple: the problems are Their fault. We just have to get rid of Them. It’s a classic bully’s attitude. Ironically, this feels good. It makes people feel like they have a handle on their problems. It can make people feel like they are pulling together to support their community. They can understand things easily. And they know what the solutions are: punch down, at Them.

It’s extremely Sith.

But does this actually address any problems? NO! A brief glance at history is all it takes to see that fact. A brief application of critical thinking is enough to reveal that there is no connection between violence to Them and any relevant change in the “winners'” lives.

Most unfortunately, it’s extremely hard to dig a society out of the deep hole that results.

I have a different vision. We should look at the world as it is, carefully assess the relevant options, and choose those that are likely to be most effective at generating the outcomes we want. Government should be a creative effort to move the world towards a better state.

Let’s solve problems! This is Harris and Walz. Let’s find out what is making our country so unequal, so divided, so difficult to deal with. Then let’s make targeted policy changes that help reduce those problems. Let’s invest in education. Let’s break up oligopolies. Let’s get money out of politics. Let’s make our health system more like the more successful and cheaper ones elsewhere in the world. Let’s intervene with those who fetishize violence before they before a problem, and make it harder for them to act out against others. Let’s prevent a changing climate from ruining our way of life. Let’s repair things that are broken, clean things that are dirty, and upgrade things that are old. For any of the Democratic Party’s blindnesses or failings, for any incrementalism or compromise, for all the difficulty of conveying a pithy emotional message in an increasingly complex world, they are the party that has an interest in solving problems.

While I strongly believe that this election presents no option at all, I think that Vice President Harris would be a strong candidate against any alternative — precisely because she’s a problem-solver. I’m an engineer: solving problems is part of my identity, and “we should solve problems” is exactly the kind of core value I can get behind.

Vote for Harris in 2024!

Science as Heroism

(I’ve decided to write a few posts about the themes I explore in my new sci-fi novel, as I go through the process of seeking representation and trying to publish it.)

Pop science fiction is rife with scientist characters — yet, many of them are depicted either as supporting encyclopedias or as the untested and untrained learner at the feet of a protagonist. For the first, think of Gaius Baltar in Battlestar Galactica, who was introduced specifically as a cyberneticist — but who, after a couple episodes, is the single resident expert in biology, genetics, and nuclear physics. For the second, think of Jeff Goldblum’s hacker in Independence Day, who’s an expert in his domain, but whose main character arc is being taught how to not look at the cool explosion behind him by Will Smith’s hero. Rarely have I seen a story with a scientist — or even a team of scientists — who are the heroes because of their scientific efforts. So, one of the major themes in my recently completed novel is the depiction of scientific effort, the scientific process, and scientists themselves as heroic.

This thought process started way back around 2010, when I had Battlestar Galactica fresh in mind as I was working through a Ph.D. program. I realized that the way grad students thought of their work — grinding lab experiments, flashes of inspiration, high-stakes exams, publications, reviewers and revisions, rival labs, friendly compatriots, and romantic relationships — held enough drama to fill an epic. I followed this thread by writing a short story. I wrote about Ceren Aydomi, an early-career scientist struggling to prepare her results for publication at a conference. She makes a last-minute tweak to her analysis and thinks she’s uncovered a groundbreaking result. After her presentation, she fields questions — and she expects to treat this process like a battle, so it becomes one. A more established scientist belittles her work in front on everybody. But, in reeling from that experience, she kindles new relationships. Much of this was inspired by things that happened to me or the grad students around me.

In the novel, my scientist’s story expands from here. Ceren’s new result turns out to be correct, and terrifies her — but she has to fight an uphill battle to convince anyone else of its import. Her advisor is indifferent to her, and her institution doesn’t support her. She even faces repressive conspiracies and political headwinds, as she tries to raise awareness of the dangers she’s discovered with the government — only to have a politician, whose interests aren’t served by acknowledging the threat, turn her away. (The conspiracy’s weapons include campaign finance loopholes. Can you tell that another major theme running through this story is the climate crisis?) But, in making that all-too-political deflection of scientific results — “more study is needed before we’ll know enough to discuss policy!” — the politician tries to brush her off by putting Ceren in charge of the makework “more study” effort. And this is the call to adventure where Ceren starts to pick up a more heroic mantle: she’s been set up to fail, starting from scratch, but she has a network of colleagues and friends she can draw on. She takes her new position and sets out to do science. She builds herself a team of fellow scientists, disparate personalities all moving with a single purpose. She becomes the leader of a research effort, pushing forward until she finds a result that cannot be ignored. Her evolution is from early-career researcher to project leader. In this crucible, she makes new friends, weathers tragedies, suffers others trying to capitalize on her work, and finds love.

And it still is a space opera. She travels to exotic places, finds herself in battles, and deals with ancient sources of power. In the end, it’s Ceren whose actions must provide the resolution for the epic plot. And it’s her integrity and compassion — virtues of the modern scientific process, absolutely necessary for collaborating on multidisciplinary teams! — that make her exactly the right person for the job.

I Wrote a Novel!

I’ve been working on a big creative project: I finished writing my first novel!

It’s a standalone adult-audience space opera epic, and it runs about 180,000 words. That would amount to roughly 720 pages as a trade paperback, though of course there are variations in page size. The story follows a young scientist as she investigates a breakdown of the wormhole network left behind by a long-vanished ancient people and makes revolutionary discoveries about the nature of her galaxy, thrusting her into academic, political, and military conflicts. Of course, there’s everything you’d expect from a space opera — giant starships, court intrigue, space battles, romance, mysterious creatures, and even a detective sequence — but depicting scientists and scientific effort heroically was a big focus for me.

The book takes place in a distant galaxy I call the Cathedral Galaxy (more here and here), filled with nonhuman interstellar civilizations and ruins of the departed ancients. I first developed a map of this galaxy in about 2008 and wrote a few short stories over the following years — four of which ultimately became chapters in the novel.

I worked on an updated and improved version of the map as a personal project during the COVID-19 pandemic. I finished it in December 2020, but the creative feel of working with that map spurred me to keep going on a follow-on series of zoomed detail maps of major regions in the galaxy. As I worked, real-world events helped me crystallize a viable central conflict for an overarching Cathedral Galaxy epic. I finished the regional maps by January 2022. At that point I got myself a copy of Scrivener and started experimenting with its outlining features.

I didn’t think I’d be the kind of writer who meticulously planned out a story — I figured I would be the sort who had some characters and settings and wrote as exploration. But it turned out that I ended up plotting out every chapter and scene for the whole book, using Scrivener’s corkboard to track the three main point-of-view characters and drag scenes into the right order. By the time I was ready to write, I had a full set of template documents, each with a few notes about who was in them, where they took place, and what had to happen. This worked out well, as I found Scrivener really functioned as advertised: it helped break the big project into small, doable chunks. It helped me get into the mode of doing a little at a time, chipping away at the book until it was done, which happened in October 2023. (A few critical weeks of productivity took place dockside at a lake during the summer months!)

The hardest scenes to write were the ones I’d summarized as “this person talks to that person and learns this thing” or “so-and-so talks to whoever-it-is and gets a thing.” I found that my initial inclination to just start writing dialog and see how the characters interacted collided with the need to achieve whatever it was I’d plotted out. I sometimes ended up with people having an interesting conversation…that didn’t achieve what I needed. Or I’d rush into it: “Hello, Mr. Spoon Supplier, I need a spoon, please!” “–Sure, that’s my job.” It often took a lot longer for me to workshop all those pieces together than other scenes. Next time I do this, if there is a next time, I’m going to try and remember the “fractal method” for pivotal conversations: plot them out like mini-stories, with a beginning, middle, and end: suspense, tension, and resolution.

When I hit the halfway point, I gave it to a few family and friends. I wanted a check on the feel and style. The feedback I got was positive. I was on the right track! I could sustain this for another half! Once I finished, I sent it out again and gathered some comments. With the full story available, there were some aspects that didn’t work for some of the readers as well as they had in my head. (Funnily enough, they weren’t the plot threads I was worried about.) However, the feedback all pointed in roughly the same direction. Right away I had some ideas. I spent a few months revising, and finished that in July 2024. What I’ve received from the following round of feedback has told me that it will be the last round. Now I’m getting a few more outside opinions — and after I address any remaining comments, the next thing to tackle is querying agents.

I know I have a whole lot of rejection ahead of me, but I’m excited! I’m happy with what I’ve created, and I hope it goes somewhere. In the meantime…it will be nice to draw some maps again for my creative outlet.

A Spacecraft Engineer’s Review of Lego #42179 Planet Earth and Moon in Orbit

Update 18 June 2024: As discussed in the comments, a reader pointed out that I was misinterpreting the indication of the month of the year, and Lego’s instructions are correct. I’ve struck out the incorrect portions of this post. (And I’ve corrected the model on my desk.)

When I saw that Lego was releasing an orrery, I knew that I had to get my hands on it — for work! I deal with new space mission concepts around the Moon with some regularity, and you have no idea how often I find myself thinking, okay, that lamp is the Sun and my hat is the Earth, so the spacecraft has to point its solar panels over there — but then the Earth moves, so it has to point over there now…. A functional desk orrery would actually come in handy! Well, I’ve finally purchased and built Lego set #42179: Planet Earth and Moon in Orbit.

Here’s what I think of the model and how well it captures the real motions of the Sun-Earth-Moon system.

Continue reading A Spacecraft Engineer’s Review of Lego #42179 Planet Earth and Moon in Orbit

Why is This a Question?

Now that the 2024 US Presidential election is determined as a rematch between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, I will say this:

In 2016, I never considered voting for Trump because I thought he was an ignorant, bigoted bully who lied about everything and was only running for President for his own personal gain.

In 2020, I never considered voting for Trump because he governed as an ignorant, bigoted bully who lied about everything and used the office of President for his own personal gain.

In 2024, it is now documented that Trump is a rapist, a fraudster, and an openly anti-Constitutional fascist who instigated an attempt to overthrow the US Government and suborned a major political party to the goal of ensuring that he escapes any accountability.

I want America to count my vote in 2028, and therefore, there is no other choice than to vote for Biden in 2024. Do I wish the situation was different? Of course! I’m a policy-minded, solutions-oriented person and I want to weigh different options to solve problems against each other. But anyone sitting things out or writing in someone more aligned with their principles is making an unviable choice that very well might condemn us all.

It deeply worries me that the media continues to feign equivalence and that self-described conservatives aren’t out on the streets putting their conservatism into practice by vehemently campaigning for Biden.

The Zeitgeist Ad

Way back in 2015, the marketing team for General Electric released this terrible commercial:

The ad really does not make me think GE is a good company or entice me to work for them. But it stuck with me, and I have come to realize that it inadvertently captured some core challenges of our society. Below is a transcript. I’ve taken the liberty of naming the characters.

Grizzled Dad, holding sledgehammer: I’m proud of you, son. GE! Manufacturing. Well, that’s why I dug this out for you; it’s your Grandpappy’s hammer, and he would have wanted you to have it.

Milquetoast Mom: It meant a lot to him.

New Hire: Yes, GE makes powerful machines, but I’ll be writing the code that will allow those machines to share information with each other. I’ll be changing the way the world–

Grizzled Dad, incredulous: You can’t pick it up, can you?

All stare at each other uncomfortably.

Grizzled Dad: Go ahead. You can’t lift the hammer.

Milquetoast Mom, condescending: It’s okay, though, you’re going to change the world!

When I think about the intervening time from 2015 to now — rampant anti-intellectualism, rejection of institutions and expertise, rising embrace of violence, a slew of right-wing pontificators about masculinity — this aggravating and insulting little commercial becomes a meditation on generational divides, the shift in the US (and wider European-American) economy from products to services, the complexity of technology in our society, gender roles, and the glorification of physical strength and bullying.

You have the New Hire — presumably also a new college grad and, in 2015, a Millennial — who is just doing what he’s been told to do: get educated, learn to code, and seek a promising job opportunity. He’s found something that uses his skills and has become passionate about the application. (Not to mention the fact that his starting salary was almost certainly six figures.) He’s comfortable with himself and his choices: he’s relaxed, well-dressed, and not only familiar with his own new role but eager and able to explain it to others. He’s even diplomatic! His gentle correction of his father is a validating “yes, and” rather than a confrontational “well, actually.”

Then you have the Grizzled Dad. As the father of a new graduate in 2015, he could be Gen X, but he’s portrayed as older, so my read is Boomer. He’s proud. We don’t know what he does (or did) for a career, but we know he’s proud of his father — specifically his father’s physical strength. He’s thinking of an idealized past when the expectation was that the man of the house would go out and work to provide for his family, and that man needed nothing but his own body to do that successfully. (Very successfully, I might ad: look at the background living room. A two-story house, everything precisely positioned, painting on the wall, polished antique furniture, full china cabinet, decorative muntins in the window, hats and coats arranged for going out. This couple is well off.)

We also see clearly that he doesn’t understand what GE wants his son to do, and he doesn’t respect it. Rather than adopting a perspective that maintains the connection to the New Grad’s grandfather and recognizes how each of the three generations of this family have built upon the success of their predecessors, rather than asking for any details about the new job or expressing any interest in New Grad’s career opportunities, and rather than taking any pride in the fact that GE values the New Grad’s expertise and skills, the Grizzled Dad cuts him off and openly belittles him. The barb he slings at his own son demonstrates the only thing that the Grizzled Dad does seem to respect: physical strength. The world may have changed, become more complex, and become a place where new and different skills are valued — and his reaction is to simplify everything down to the increasingly irrelevant question: “can you lift the hammer?” Even his son’s “yes, and” correction — presented in the kind of validating way that younger Americans would be encouraged to use, a few years later, as allies and “upstanders” in talking with family members — simply can’t share space in the Grizzled Dad’s value system: physical strength matters, respect elders. No room for other things.

If the viewer is meant to see through the eyes of the New Grad, this is insulting. For this commercial to work as humor, the viewer must take the Grizzled Dad’s perspective. We are meant to side with a bully. (Who is making fun not only of his son, but also of GE, in fact. It’s a bad advertisement.)

Finally, we have the Milquetoast Mom, who I named that because she’s dressed in the same colors as the background walls and furniture. Her minor role is to quietly validate her husband and then fade into the background again. Until, that is, she joins in the belittling of her son, and when I examine her wording compared to what her son said earlier, it’s clear that she doesn’t understand or want to understand either. (Her version of this is passive-aggressive instead of the outright antagonism of her husband, though.)

This commercial popped unbidden into my mind after I read Christine Emba’s long essay in the Washington Post about men, their shifting role in our modern culture, and the right-wing tendency to prescribe violence and misogyny in order to fill any gaps. The producers and writers of this ad had put their finger on something similar. They realized that the cultural, technological, and — most of all — economic changes of the last few decades were a driver of inter-generational tension. They also realized that the older generation might — could? would? — react with antagonism. Bullying. Physical strength. The year after this commercial first aired, Donald Trump figured out he could build a winning Presidential campaign out of the idea “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more!” and that the answers to questions like “what’s ‘it?'” or “what should we do about it?” didn’t really matter to his appeal. Then he ran an entire Presidential administration on the idea that being a bully was serving his constituents, and ended his term with violence. It worked well for those who value physical strength above all else.

But it’s okay, honey, you’re going to change the world! We’ll just be sitting here among all the trinkets we bought instead of investing in your generation, thinking about your disappointingly skinny arms.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a better resolution to all this than the one the commercial offers: smile and nod, knowing that the Grizzled Dad’s opinions will soon be just as irrelevant as his father’s hammer, hoping that the right-wing politics of the last seven years are a last gasp of tired ideologies, and wait for my generation to finally gain a critical mass in positions of influence.

It’s Always Windfalls for the Military

One of the US Congress’ items of business for the end of the year is passing the National Defense Authorization Act. This funds the US military budget, and the act always draws immense bipartisan support, even despite a few ancillary culture-war issues injected into it this year. Here are three things about this act I wish citizens and journalists were more aware of.

One, US military spending is scored on an annual basis — unlike in any other area of policy funding, where the Congressional Budget Office scores spending and revenue over a 10 year timeframe. What this means, practically for us citizens, is that when you see that the NDAA authorized a military budget of $860 billion when the Democrats were advocating for a $2 trillion infrastructure investment not so long ago, those aren’t really the numbers to compare. You should multiply the military budget by 10 to put them on the same footing: $2 trillion infrastructure investment vs. $8.6 trillion military budget, both over 10 years.

Two, there’s a constitutional reason why Congress has to re-authorize military spending every single year. The Framers, fresh off living through an experience where their own government had an army oppressing its own citizens, wanted to build a system of protection into the US Constitution to prevent their new government from being able to do the same. Traditionally, 1700s European governments did not maintain “standing armies,” instead they raised armies only when needed for defense (or attack), and sent the soldiers back to their civilian lives when the conflict was over. It was extremely unusual for the British government to be keeping soldiers active all the time. The Framers viewed a government keeping a standing army in peacetime as having only one purpose: to use force against the civilian populace, as they experienced in the decades leading up to the American Revolution. So, they built what they thought was a poison pill into the US Constitution: they forced Congress to vote every year to re-authorize the military. Surely enraged citizens would oust any Senator or Representative dumb enough to keep voting for a military in the next election? This worked for a while: there was no “US Army” until the Civil War; the country relied on individual state militias for its defense.

Three, in its entire history, the Pentagon has only ever conducted one financial audit, in 2018, which it failed. I bet when I say “they failed an audit,” you imagine that they couldn’t fully match up expenditures against incomes on all their balance sheets — you know, something down in the details. But, in fact, the problem was more that when auditors asked Pentagon departments for their incomes and expenditures, the answer they got was, “We don’t understand the question. You expected us to keep track of what and what?” The Pentagon apparently has no concept of the idea that it’s funded by US taxpayers and is supposed to be a good steward of that money. Worse, the Congressmembers and Senators who represent us are unwilling to force corrections to the US military system, because of its role propping up jobs in their states and because they fear their opponents would attack them as not sufficiently supportive of “the troops” if they don’t pour endless piles of cash into military development programs.

I worked on military programs for a portion of my career. Once, assigned a duplicative, mind-numbing analysis project that nobody could ever express any purpose for, I decided to exercise my creative abilities by coding up some labor-saving tools so that I could accomplish the purposeless work quickly and then devote more of my time to more interesting and valuable projects. However, I then got in trouble with my boss for not spending the full amount of hours I’d been assigned on the project. When I pointed out that I’d accomplished the required work, my boss told me that the most important thing for our project was to spend all the (taxpayer) money we’d been assigned that year, because otherwise we’d get less money the next year. I quit that job.

Congress could probably cut the US military budget in half without affecting troop levels or readiness at all. The current funding levels are unconscionably wasteful in peacetime. And reducing them would do more to reduce the size of government than any other ideas anyone has put forward in my lifetime.

I don’t know what we want to be any more

My job is to explore space. The work I do, day to day, involves figuring out how to get space probes to exotic parts of our Solar System, so that scientists can investigate the inner workings of the planets and flesh out their understanding of humans’ place in it.

One of the strangest things to me about my job is that I agree with almost none of the reasons popular in space media for why this is an important and worthwhile endeavor. National prestige? No, I would be happy to work with scientists who aren’t funded by the US government. Finding resources in space for us to exploit on Earth? Nope, not only is that not what science is doing but I think it would be ultimately unproductive. Inspiring the next generation to pursue STEM careers and fill a supposed “STEM gap?” Heck no — I was inspired to study STEM in order to explore space, not to help a tech company sell surveillance or to fill up jobs in the military-industrial complex.

I explore space, I want to explore space, because I want to be part of something greater than myself. I want my work to help build a monument of scientific achievement that will stand for generations. I want to reach, to dream, to aspire, to learn, and to create. I want to explore space for the same reasons an artist or a poet wants to do what they do.

I think people in my field are afraid to say that. The reason is, I suspect, because we fear the obvious rejoinder: why are you wasting time and resources on that when we have so many problems to solve here on Earth?

My answer has been that it’s not a binary choice: We can feed the hungry, and have poets. We can heal the sick, and have art. We can make a better life for people on Earth, and explore space. But more than that, I think it is part of the measure of a society what we aspire to do and create for tomorrow, not just how we react to the events of yesterday. That’s why I explore space, and why I think it’s important that we — our nation, our society — continue to explore space.

But looking back over the last few years, I have a problem.

I have been completely caught off guard, emotionally and intellectually, by the approach my society is actually taking.

We faced a national disaster in the form of the COVID-19 pandemic, and we collectively decided, nah, we’re just not going to bother to do anything about this. A million people died as a result, most of them easily preventable deaths.

The looming crisis of catastrophic climate change is turning into a global disaster before our eyes, with wildfires, heat waves, hurricanes, floods, and other events rapidly racking up body counts and property damage, threatening our way of life in the near future with everything from decreased production to reduced military effectiveness to food shortages to logistical challenges that will dwarf anything we saw in 2020, and we collectively decided, well, I guess you’ve just got to get what you can while you can. So much for the next generation.

Inequity is a scourge on our national economic effectiveness, not to mention inhumane to those experiencing it, and we have collectively decided, if the worst-off among us have no bread to eat, then it’s on them to find cake. Just so long as the rest of us can’t see them.

Madmen enter our schools with devices designed to make human bodies explode, kill innocent children and young adults, and our society has decided, oh, well, too bad, and we hold a moment of silence while we wait for the next one to happen. Meanwhile, we traumatize kids with intrusive security measures and drills that will remain ineffective so long as we keep fetishizing access to violence. The recurring Onion headline is so biting because it is an exact measure of the depth of our failure.

We are, to put it simply, no longer a nation that tries to solve its problems at all. What solution-oriented programs we have continue only on inertia, not because we are trying to improve the parts of our society that need attention. What aspirational efforts we have also seem to continue on inertia, not because of a national drive to be better. So here I am, attached to a vestigial aspirational effort and arguing that we could do both while our society around me is deciding to do neither.

We got here because one of America’s major political parties has spent decades pushing a message that boils down to the insistence that government should not solve problems, or heck, government should not do anything except for a few legacy activities that benefit the relatively privileged. As a result, we have built a system where we don’t help the sick, we don’t help the poor, we don’t plan for the future, we don’t create opportunities, we don’t innovate, we don’t address the root causes of crime or oppression, we don’t educate our kids, we don’t even keep our kids safe from harm. And these things seem to have become our national values, so that enough voters feel a patriotic and political obligation to continue not solving the problems that face all of us. Now, only those of us who started with money have a chance.

I fear for the future because we live in a nation where that same party can win most state and federal representation with less than half the vote, is actively working to secure power regardless of future vote outcomes, and is willing to deploy violence and intimidation if it doesn’t get its way. For a brief window, though, we have a chance to ask ourselves: Is this really the kind of society we want to be? We really want to be the society who rearranges deck chairs on the Titanic, because oh, well, this is what being ‘Merican is, and we don’t want to see the iceberg so we just won’t?

It didn’t used to be.

I wish we could aspire again.

I wish we could solve basic national problems again.

The fact that we have collectively decided not to is so frustrating to me because it cuts right to my self-image.

The only thing I know of to do in response is vote for Democrats, and press them to safeguard our democracy.

Cathedral Galaxy Regional Maps and GM Resources

Complete Set of Region Maps

The Cathedral Galaxy setting is now complete with a full set of regional maps, each highlighting a particular area of the galaxy and an aspect of the setting. Extra lore and artwork are scattered throughout, in addition to the larger overview map and establishing descriptions of each region posted here. Enjoy!

My next step is writing a story in this galaxy. I will not make any statements on how long that will take!

In addition, I’ve had a few people ask me about setting role-playing games in the Cathedral Galaxy. That idea intrigues me, and I’m happy to learn that players are interested in using my universe for their games. So, I have put together some lore and gameplay reference materials that you may use. Click through to read more.

Game Master References

Updated 23 September 2022

Continue reading Cathedral Galaxy Regional Maps and GM Resources

Fiction: The Slow Invasion

Some time ago, I got the germ of an idea for a science fiction story after thinking about the ridiculousness of aliens invading the Earth for its resources. Basically, most raw resources that aliens could find on Earth are also present in other places in the Solar System…without a big gravity well to get down into, and without pesky native species to fight. With our limited space capabilities, we would have to sit here and watch as all the asteroids and moons in the system got stripped. I sat on this idea half-written for a while, until — during the COVID-19 pandemic — I realized something: this is a story about the climate crisis, and it includes some of the feelings I’ve been grappling with about our society’s declining ability to engage with the problems facing us. So, I’ve finished the story, and shared it with a few people.

The general feedback I got from early readers was that, while this is a neat exploration of an idea in the vein of Clarke or Asimov, it lacks character-driven development. And I agree…but I couldn’t think of a good way to add that without it seeming pasted on (or making the story completely about the character-driven problems, and having the alien invasion be the thing pasted on) and avoid muddling the whole point behind the story. So, since I think the lack of character-driven action will make a magazine unlikely to pick it up, I’ve decided to post the story in full here:


“Can I see, Mommy?” 

“No,” said Terry. She hunched closer to the monitor for a moment, then leaned over to scribble a note on her pad. Hailey’s day care let out early that day, but her parents were still engrossed in their work at the observatory. So they split their attention.

“Daddy?” 

“Hmm?” Dan glanced up. “Oh, sure. Here you go.” He hefted his daughter above the edge of the desk.

“Daniel! I don’t want her to see her whole future evaporate!”

“She’s too young to know.” Dan’s brow furrowed. “Besides, it’d be more like her great-, great-, great-, …” 

“That’s not helping, Dan.”

On the monitor, a repeating loop of sixteen false-color frames showed the telescope’s view of Neptune. Small sparks flitted among the dance of moons. In a time-compressed view spanning several days, some touched down and lifted off. Some of them dove into the outer atmosphere of the ice giant itself.

Hailey flapped an awkward toddler hand at the keyboard. Dan grunted and put her down.

“I’mna gonna evvaprate!” she protested.

“Will anybody even recognize this as a threat?” he asked. “I mean, there are a few groups doing asteroid mining at a proof-of-concept level…but getting to stuff around Neptune is decades, maybe centuries, away.” 

Terry rubbed the bridge of her nose. The alien craft had been in the Neptunian system for months. By now, it was clear – from albedo changes of the moons and careful examination of the changes to the aliens’ orbits – that they were mining and removing material. Water and nitrogen ice from Triton, hydrogen and methane from Neptune’s cloud layers – all valuable resources for a spacefaring civilization.

Continue reading Fiction: The Slow Invasion

Quantum Rocketry