Interesting Speculation on the Fermi Paradox

I have two major interest; The first is the hard question of what is consciousness; and the second is where are all the aliens?

This Galactic Colonization video I found that discusses a recent paper: The Fermi Paradox and the Aurora Effect: Exo-civilization Settlement, Expansion and Steady States.

What I found useful is the analysis of the confounding variables and the possible solutions to explain what they call, "Fact A:" why we haven't met aliens or found signs of them visiting Earth.

Tagging Dr. Brin who may have an opinion on this?

Ferretti's Buster

When I wrote Bad Dog I had a vision of what the lead character's combat armor suit looked like. I have over the last seven years built models to acts as a guides for the cover art of my novels, which you've seen here.

But I'm not only a fan of science fiction, for as long as I can remember, I have enjoyed playing futuristic table top wargames like: BattleTech, Ogre/GEV, and Star Wars X-Wing.

So I dearly want to be able to play games in my own universe, and as my long term wargaming friends know I have a lot of 1/300th - 6mm armies. However, my stories feature small infantry unit tactics with support elements, and my go to scale is small, which makes the models hard to see.

So my original plan had been to go with Dream Pod 9s 1/144th - 10mm Heavy Gear range, because they're a nice size.

But, I've been frustrated trying to find the right models for power armor and combat androids. Lots of choice in 1/100th - 15mm, but nothing that quite tickles my fancy in the smaller scale, hence I've decided to go up a scale, using original large RAFM Heavy Gears.

Readers saw my take on Captain Tachikoma's Dog here.

This new larger model represents Ferretti's Air Force Security Force Buster: CAS-C4P: Combat Armor System Dash C4 (Command, Control, Communication & Computer), Model P, which makes its first appearance in Ghost Dog.

These models have wet my appetite for making more 1/100th - 15mm scale mecha.

Cool Mech Pilot Control

YouBionic forearm I found on YouTube, as one does, which is just cool.

I deliberately left how the mecha in my novels are driven to avoid Zeerust (yesterday's vision of tomorrow), warning the link will take you to TVTropes, and you're at risk of losing hours of time browsing.

I know I just did.

Catch you all on the bounce.

A Reminder of What is Good

 
Found this Patrick Rothfuss piece talking about Terry Pratchett with a transcript of an interview. Here's a clip:

O: You’re quite a writer. You’ve a gift for language, you’re a deft hand at plotting, and your books seem to have an enormous amount of attention to detail put into them. You’re so good you could write anything. Why write fantasy?

Pratchett: I had a decent lunch, and I’m feeling quite amiable. That’s why you’re still alive. I think you’d have to explain to me why you’ve asked that question.

The full post can be found here. It's well worth reading as a reminder that the root of all stories lies in the imagination.