Not QM, ordinary boundary-condition waves.
1,326 2016-09-26 11:09:11
Re: First Person Multiple Narrative Young Adult Book Anyone? (32 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
1,327 2016-09-26 02:37:26
Re: First Person Multiple Narrative Young Adult Book Anyone? (32 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
Charles_F_Bell wrote:
rhiannon wrote:I agree with Fred Miller's definition of science fiction vs. fantasy. SF is in an orderly universe, governed by understandable natural laws. Fantasy isn't.
Anything vs. fantasy is an orderly universe, governed by understandable natural laws versus fantasy which isn't.
I'm not really eager to come into this debate, but I disagree with this point. Tolkien wrote Fantasy, but his world has its laws. They are rooted in myth rather than in modern physical science, but there are laws.
I would argue (and don't want to argue at length!) that Science Fiction is characterized by differences from our world that are expressed through the physical sciences, whereas Fantasy is characterized by differences from our world that are expressed as myth or craft.
Consider my recent chapter A Lesson with Kirsey (sitting, for convenience, as ch 94 of The Sorcerer's Progress, Book 1: Children and Beasts). Does the introduction of wave functions turn it from magic into science? I don't think so, but you might.
1,328 2016-09-25 14:04:58
Re: First Person Multiple Narrative Young Adult Book Anyone? (32 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
Asimov and Tolkien were very strong and skilled writers. Not everyone can follow their paths.
1,329 2016-09-25 05:38:22
Re: Say the first word that comes to mind... (1,634 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
Erudite
1,330 2016-09-25 03:21:01
Re: Say the first word that comes to mind... (1,634 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
Tee Ess ELIOT!
1,331 2016-09-25 02:05:19
Re: Say the first word that comes to mind... (1,634 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
No, sadists. Macavity, Macavity ...
1,332 2016-09-24 14:33:21
Re: Say the first word that comes to mind... (1,634 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
In the real world, the cat trips you.
1,333 2016-09-24 06:09:17
Re: Roll call (Originally Role Call) (42 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Kdot gave the description ... from France.
1,334 2016-09-23 23:24:36
Re: Roll call (Originally Role Call) (42 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Kdot wrote:
bimmy wrote:Hey ya'll. I'd love a roll with some honey butter.
so... a baked ball of controlled fungus with bee vomit and a cow's fat-based mucus
Hey! Who let the coneheads in? (From France.)
1,335 2016-09-23 03:53:09
Re: Roll call (Originally Role Call) (42 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
It explains SO much.
1,336 2016-09-23 02:26:35
Re: Roll call (Originally Role Call) (42 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Don't you mean 'roll call'?
1,337 2016-09-22 02:38:48
Re: Ran across this today (7 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
I'm not sure that 'run' is the right word. 'Creep' maybe?
1,338 2016-09-22 01:47:45
Re: meaning for 'strongest start'? (42 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
Charles_F_Bell wrote:
I say that SS should include indications of impending conflict (the trigger, the reason for making a critical choice), scene-setting (stasis), and finally the "surprise" - and the reader is off in journey to the resolution through the rest of the book.
What I find failing in many TNBW novels is a timely (if any) presentation of the stasis for the ensuing story -- all the bits of information a reader can set his mind to the context of what is and will happen. In fact, there are those who ridicule the notion as mere a "info dump." There is a right way and a wrong way to "info dump" a stasis, but it is always wrong to ignore the task in SS.
In many of these 'starts' the reader is presented with the character and jeopardy first, sometimes in a setting that will be absurd if not quickly explained. In the extreme cases, I find it unsettling and unsatisfying, almost like the book cover that says, "Buy this book or I will shoot this dog."
So I think I agree with this thesis in principle. In practice, our language is expressed in a linear sequence of words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, etc., and it is necessary to put one thing before the other.
1,339 2016-09-22 01:39:43
Re: meaning for 'strongest start'? (42 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
That's not entirely new. It continues from the terser, tighter style that came between the World Wars. It will be interesting to see how much it can reverse in the 'long tail' created by ebooks and Print on Demand. Take a look at some of the stuff by the Mad Genius Club authors.
1,340 2016-09-22 01:32:02
Re: The Galaxy Tales - Dirk B. (1,217 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Interesting. When I read off digits, I round the tones on the first and last in the sequence, but otherwise hold them as flat as I can. And yes, that is otherwise unnatural in Engish, because we accent words by voiced stress rather than by length (which I am given to understand is the way that Russian places accents).
A fellow I know wrote an early voice-response system. (NOT for cold-calling!) He recorded each digit four times: Beginning of sequence, middle of sequence, end of sequence, and standalone.
1,341 2016-09-22 01:27:00
Re: Ran across this today (7 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
Oh, yeah!
1,342 2016-09-21 18:53:38
Re: meaning for 'strongest start'? (42 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
Nice summary.
1,343 2016-09-20 09:32:48
Re: The Sorcerer's Progress (1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Edits made to A Lesson With Kirsey; thank you Seabrass. Working on edits for The Garden of End and Beginning.
1,344 2016-09-20 06:07:25
Re: General Comments Section (281 replies, posted in Alpha to Omega - Review Group)
Just noticed the praise. That's more the reviewer I am trying to be than the one I am!
1,345 2016-09-20 04:21:22
Re: The Galaxy Tales - Dirk B. (1,217 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Wordplay on Janitor?
1,346 2016-09-20 02:13:16
Re: The Sorcerer's Progress (1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
For the fans, the 'completed' battery powered supply:
Front
Back
I'm looking for a way to put a voltmeter and ammeter on this. Because there's not a lot of spare power, a fancy LED display or LED-lit display is a bad choice, so mechanical meters are the way to go. But they're big, and pose a mounting challenge. Also the ammeter would (will?) have to be cut into the circuit above both the output and current bootstrap transistors. Quite doable, but I have another project for the moment. I spent a couple of hours looking for the high-speed diodes I thought I'd used on the previous breadboards, but it turns out that I used the same schottkys that I'd used in other places. Grumble.
I also have to continue putting parts in their proper boxes.
1,347 2016-09-19 08:04:49
Topic: Class Action against Harlequin (1 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
1,348 2016-09-19 01:07:34
Re: NorthernSkies or NS - Janet (213 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Give that bat shit some lithium.
1,349 2016-09-19 00:35:41
Re: Ha! The monsters are real! (14 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
The branch of math is called Combinatorics. I can't imagine a mathematician looking at the thing without wanting to do the calculation. Heck, I'm tempted to see if I can duplicate it. It's all a question of the parity rules and the symmetries you have to divide by. Just doing the center rotations would be fun. The rotations applied to the various faces must sum to zero; you can account for that by making one of the six center faces dependent upon the others. So four positions to the fifth power, or 2^10: 1024. Just multiply that in above.
Hmm. That's a 20 digit number. Euler was said to be able to multiple sixteen digit numbers in his head (and get the right result, too!) so maybe four digits by 20 would have been in his reach.
1,350 2016-09-18 23:07:14
Re: Say the first word that comes to mind... (1,634 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
(I knew that would be the next entry.)
