DARPA Reconfigurable Wheel Tracks

This has being doing the rounds, so I thought I'd post a link here for reference. My first thought was transformable wheels for combat armor suits. But you probably guessed that, given how mad keen I'm on mecha.

Light Mobility Suit

Billed as the Comau MATE – HUMANufacturing experience, this system would make a good basis for the various exoskeleton suits in my Gate Walker series. As is it would be a good start for the Light Mobility Suit used by my civilian characters, and the technology would be the basis for the PACE and MARPACE suits used by the military.

Just a few years ago this would have seen as being out of reach, but now it looks like technology is creating a future where exoskeletons will be everyday items, like cars, boats and planes.

Practice

I took up archery a couple of years ago. I've always had the thought in the back of my head that I would do Japanese archery, but as I've got older I've become less inclined to put up with the Zen mysticism of Japanese martial arts as practiced in Britain.

Don't get me wrong. I have a lot of respect for those that do Japanese martial arts, and I practiced Aikido for 16 years, and Iaido for three, so this is just me saying as I've got older I've become a bit more cussed in outlook.

Anyway, that's not the point of this post.

I was talking to my partner about having changed from shooting my bow from right-hand to left-hand, and the difficulty I had shooting the Hereford at this year's Whiteleaf competition, which the above picture was taken at.

Last year I scored 482 points, this year 336. That looks, because it is, a drastic difference. But, when I checked my score sheets the real difference lay in the scores at 80 yards. My results for the 60 and 50 yard distances were almost identical: three points in it (175 last year versus 172 this).

Then Susan said, short-term pain for long-term gain.

And that is true of writing stories too. Transitioning from a writer with their first novel to one who has a second out, and soon a third novel is a learning process. And part of that learning process is practice. And as one practices one learns new ways of doing things.

So, while I'm not meeting my word targets, what I am managing is a reduction in the number of drafts and revisions I need to make to get a piece of writing finished. I'll take that as a win.

Break Out – Now Available

 

I'm happy to announce that Break Out, story three in The World Of Drei series is now available to buy on Amazon.

Blurb

Defeated, Lieutenant Morozova and Sergeant Rozhkov get the chance to rest and recuperate. Refitted with state-of-the-art equipment they must be the eyes of a newly formed battle group. The point of the spear.

The third story of a future Russian civil war set in the World of Drei universe, "Break Out" delivers combat-grade military action revealing how human camaraderie grows in the face of terrifying adversity.

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If you've not yet read any of the stories in this series then all of The World of Drei stories can be found here.

Important Note: If you already have a copy of this series, I've updated the text. If you wish to have the new version, go to your digital library, there you will see on the far right side of the screen, opposite books that have been updated, a button that says "Newer version available."

Reviews for Terror Tree

Very interesting. The character is an AI. Looking forward to more from Ashley

Very interesting. The character is an AI. Looking forward to more from Ashley. She is a very talented writer and story teller.

Do robot tanks dream of electric sheep

I really enjoyed this short story, the writer was able to bring the cold logical voice of the AI into the narrative and tell a story in the first person, which is no mean feat.

the reader is left wondering about the back story of this conflict as we only see it from the tanks perspective as it returns to combat, learning more and more on each occasion.

the first chapter of the next book, that is included has also wet my appetite and I'm looking forward to finding out more about this universe

The future of AI driven armoured combat...

An interesting POV take on where the future of AI driven armoured combat could go.

Particularly apposite with the recent news that Russia's military has a new armed robot tank (the Nerehta, which can be fitted with a 12.7mm or 7.62mm machine gun or an AG-30M grenade launcher) that outperformed manned vehicles in recent exercises, Colonel Oleg Pomazuev told the Russian news site Military Review, as well as Russia's taking a hard-line on the United Nations' proposed ban of Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS).

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Generalizations Are False

Taken from All Generalization are False and adapted for fiction by me.

I follow a number of blogs, not all related to either my hobbies or writing science fiction. All Generalizations are False is blog about assessing the news one reads. She admits to a slight left of center position, but to my British sensibilities it looks pretty centrist to me.

Anyway, the point being is that she does a good job of analyzing new sources and looking for bias.

What she does, is pretty much what I was taught many years ago at Trent Polytechnic when I was doing my degree in photography and film studies.

But, it struck me, that  one could also use this as a basis for analyzing fiction.

As you can see above, I've put a yellow circle in to mark where I think I'm writing from. I may be wrong about this, and I'm open to people pointing out my blind spots. Fiction is not fact. Therefore, it's aim is not to present facts, but to tell stories; and in SF this is generally about how changes from technology might impact humanity.

Remember, stories: fictions, which are therefore not facts, rather they are imaginations that develop from "what ifs."

An important distinction. And, contrary to some authors statements, stories are not lies. Fictions are functionally different to lies. One is about imagination, the other about deception.

However, when I looked at the chart, I could easily see myself pining certain authors into areas on this illustration. As I'm sure my readers can too. And, just to be clear, I offer no judgement on the validity on any position, other than is it reasonable and supported by truth.

Not because I want to avoid arguments per se, but because my training was to be non-judgemental, and have unconditional positive regard for other people's opinions, because the bottom line is that other people's opinions are not my concern. Something drummed into me during my training in mental health.

Note: If I had a complaint about the above chart it would be the use of emotionally weighted language e.g.: unfair and nonsense. My thoughts would be to replace these with unreasonable and unsupportable, but there again I may be wrongly interpreting the original authors intent.