The Next Project

I've decided I like this new, lighter, if you will, blog format. The old AstralAviary.com was just getting to be too great a burden, one that I could not longer maintain, financially or otherwise. Having made the decision to abandon the old site, I am undecided whether to attempt to preserve the old posts, but I am now leaning against it. There is some good stuff there to be sure (if I may say so myself), but most of it were just writing exercises and I really think it is time to move on. I've written well over a million words since deciding to become a writer a couple of decades ago, a writer being someone who could at least communicate effectively. It would have been nice to have made money, of course, but it didn't happen. Obviously. I have no pretense of being or becoming a great writer but I was bad enough in the distant past that the effort was, despite everything, worth it. I do not know what will happen with the contents of the old site once I let them go -- perhaps to be preserved for a while on some server somewhere, perhaps to be lost forever -- unless I decide to run for office at which point they will be miraculously recovered in their embarrassing entirety. But it no longer matters. I certainly have no ego invested in the pieces I wrote and no fans to weep over their loss.

Anyway, my next project is what concerns me now. I was originally intending to do a series on quantum mechanics and life, researching what is happening out there in science land in that regard, to show how life, if not exactly intelligent life, follows from the laws of QM, so all the odd-against-it arguments are rendered mute. There is a surprising amount of material to be had, but researching QM and collecting and collating all the information was just too "daunting" a prospect. We're talking a book, and that is out of the question. Fascinating as the stuff is, writing about Life, QM, and Everything was just too much, especially given how unsettled my life is in terms of health, "career," and all that are and likely to remain. Time to greatly simplify and cut back. Fortunately, over the past few months, I stumbled across something that I think will be almost as fascinating and will be slightly more accessible and workable: a revisit to the late, great Dr. Robert L. Forward's wonderful little article published in Analog SF in April 1981: Spin Drive to the Stars.

What Forward attempted to do in this article (unfortunately, almost all of his science writings have yet to be put on-line) was to draw an analogy between the fall of the twin laws of conservation of matter and conservation of energy and subsequent fusion into a single law, the conservation of Mass-Energy. And we all know what happened next: in 1941 the first nuclear reactor (done under the direction of the great Enrico Fermi working under the University of Chicago stadium.) Forward suggested that something similar might be possible regarding the two very distinct laws of the conservation of angular and the conservation of linear momentum. That is, that a new law would emerge, called just the Conservation of Momentum perhaps, that would permit the conversion of micro angular momentum to macro linear momentum under certain circumstances. This might enable a future Fermi to construct a momentum "reactor" that would do just that and a true spin drive would be born with fascinating implications and consequences.

But let's not get too excited. There are a lot of problems with the idea and the whole business is subject to severe criticisms, but in the spirit of exploration (not to mention my overwhelming respect and admiration for Forward), I would like instead to work with and build upon his ideas and see where it all leads. No lame negativity here! In the meantime, I believe I have assembled sufficient resources to write intelligently on the subject so we will see what happens over the next weeks and months. I don't know if I will be able to do this in a single continuous series as I have done in the past (some of this stuff is quite complex and I am not a trained physicist!) or if it will have to be broken up into several parts with other stuff in between. Probably the latter, but I am confident that it will be at least be interesting. And that is all that matters.