Special snowflakes

Tis the season
when I want to start linking snowflake chemistry pages at a whole lot of image makers.
Snow crystals are so pretty when they're right.

Yes I know I end up sounding like this guy, ranting about corrupting nature, but he's got a mini point. Draw pretty branching fives or eights if you like, have fun with that, but they're just not snowflakes.

... *starts looking at snowflake pictures, may be some time* ...

Filing off serial numbers

I know when people want to write wildly unlikely Stargate Atlantis alikes they just do and post it as an AU. But while attempting to sleep the people in my head started being a version of the expedition that started from now and had watched the TV series Stargate, and indeed Atlantis. Therefore calling them John and Rodney is a bit too meta for me. So my brain, while poking around for names a bit like Rodney but definitely not Rodney at all, came up with Rhodri.

So then my expedition has Rhodri and Sean. And suddenly it's British. ( Read more... )

So, Rhodri and Sean, arguing about whether the stone circle is a stargate or a transmat, making bets on probability of finding a Federation that just hasn't asked us to join yet. Trying to pull together... probably not a couple of hundred people, this being British, but at least a couple dozen people willing to step through a stone circle and vanish.

You could get so many reasons to want to do that, from so many frames of reference. You'd have the people arguing they're in a fantasy, or horror, as well as science fiction. You'd want to bring people with skills on a variety of tech levels, because you have no idea if you're going to be figuring out advanced physics or just trying to get food and water out of your environment with hand tools.

There's totally story in there.

What the future looks like

I just read an article that reckoned 2012 looks just like 1992 and declared the end of style history. I'm not sure I agree with its basic premise. ( Read more... )

I guess there's only no new look for a given value of new.

So then I was wondering, what would really new look like? What would be so new and different it would be immediately apparent?

Costume designers for F&SF, especially SF, have been answering that one repeatedly.


Are there any website collecting costumes of future civilisations? What the year 2000 used to look like, compared to what went on for reals? Worlds full of future humans?

I've been seeing more in the shops that looks like it came out of Blakes 7. Only often with a better budget.

I didn't reckon skintights would ever catch on, but come to think, current trends in tights seem to be heading that way.

F&SF costume design is extra fun because they're trying to be the future but they look so dated so fast. And it's weird, because how can they be dated, when they never really were?

What's your favourite set of SF costumes?
What show had the best over all look?
Or what species?

British expedition through the teleport circle

Am bored. Should be studying. It's Saturday and I don wanna.
So...

Say the first British expedition through the teleport circle has a couple of dozen people. What expertise needs to be represented?
( Read more... )

If I'm making adventure parties I should get the GURPS books out. If I'm making story seeds I should keep on figuring out who knows who how and why they're going to get pulled into component atoms and thrown at an unknown world.

( Read more... )

They'd be trying to pack the maximum skill set in the minimum people, having drawn from people who don't mind dropping everything to take a wild chance. Tricky.



I did 50K words of a book that isn't halfway finished last summer. Why am I spinning up whole different 'verses?

... because it's easier than anything I'm supposed to be doing, or indeed adding more words to the long already thing.

... okay, time to do something else.


*Edited to swap some names around