A little about me: I'm an older guy who grew up reading great science fiction by such masters as Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Clifford Simak, and Robert Heinlein. My favorite current authors are Neal Stephenson and Alastair Reynolds. I started writing a few years ago to try to create a book (and now series) that I think my younger self would have loved to read. Hopefully you will, too! And if you have any comments, I promise to always read your emails to me, and provide a response. I love hearing from my readers!
A personal announcement this month, combined with some science: We built our house here in Colorado Springs, and just got it certified as a Passive House, the first one in Colorado Springs and 8th in the state.
What's a Passive House? It's a concept that is better-known in Europe, but making inroads in the US. I usually explain it as a way to make a building extremely energy-efficient, with three fundamental elements:
Super-insulated: our external walls are about 12" thick, packed with wool insulation, and the windows are all triple-paned
Air-tight: we were extra careful during construction to avoid unnecessary penetrations and closing up possible gaps, e.g. sealing between plywood sheets on the floor. Doors and windows are ringed with mechanisms that seal tightly shut.
Continuous ventilation: fresh air is constantly brought in through a Heat Recovery Ventilator (HRV), which exchanges heat between the air going out and the air coming in, with >90% efficiency.
The result of all that is a house that doesn't need a furnace or air conditioner (i.e., no active heating or cooling, hence the "passive" label), relying on the sun to warm the house and the insulation to keep it warm at night. For example: it's currently below freezing overnight and 40's during the day, and our inside temp stays above 65F overnight, rising to 75F during the day when the Colorado sun fills our living room.
What's Rick Reading Now?
I learned about this book, Dissolution, when I listened to a podcast interviewing the author, Nicholas Binge, about his use of Scrivener, a writing tool I also use. It's a fascinating story focused on how fundamental memory is to who we are, weaving back and forth between an elderly woman recording her enhanced memories of her husband (afflicted with Alzheimer's), and her husband's early life researching groundbreaking improvements in human memorization. There's a shadowy organization lurking in the background, providing tension and a "what's really going on?" question for the reader. Highly recommended!
You just gotta love a book about space pirates! And even better if it kicks off a "post-cyberpunk space opera" series!
Check out The Fera, Book #1 in the "Space Marauder Chronicles" series, available on Amazon for just $2.99.
A housekeeping note: I changed over to a new email address this month, since I learned that using a gmail address can get my newsletters stuffed into junk folders. So the new address is rick@rickaallensf.com. You may want to add that to your contact list to ensure future newsletters don't end up in your junk folder.
Happy Reading!
Rick A. Allen
The Star Riders series:
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613 Columbia Court, Colorado Springs, CO 80904
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A little about me: I'm an older guy who grew up reading great science fiction by such masters as Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Clifford Simak, and Robert Heinlein. My favorite current authors are Neal Stephenson and Alastair Reynolds. I started writing a few years ago to try to create a book (and now series) that I think my younger self would have loved to read. Hopefully you will, too! And if you have any comments, I promise to always read your emails to me, and provide a response. I love hearing from my readers!
View in browser How Far is Far? Dear Reader, We're accustomed in science fiction to throwing around the term "light-year," but do we really have a good feel for just how far that is? I was reminded of this fact recently when I read an article saying that Voyager 1, after nearly 50 years, is almost 1 light-day from home (it will pass that point in November). At that pace, a light-year would take just under 18,000 years. A light-year is 16 billion miles, but how far is that? Our minds don't...
View in browser Beautiful as individuals, deadly in mass Dear Reader, It's that time of year again, when (depending on where you live) the snow falls. When I lived in Syracuse, it was inundating feet of snow with the redeeming factor that Syracuse has more snowplows per capita than anywhere else (or at least I thought so). It's much nicer here in Colorado Springs, where we get less snow and it melts away much quicker. And I can enjoy seeing snow on the top of Pikes Peak while my driveway is...
View in browser Writing Progress Dear Reader, I'm making good progress on the latest novel (#4 in the Star Riders series). I just finished the first draft of the first quarter of the book, where the action takes a left turn. I think I mentioned back in the July newsletter that I wrote the first couple chapters even though I planned to delete them, so that I knew what happened. I've now figured out a way to communicate the essentials of those missing events to the reader without a ton of...
