The Just City, by Jo Walton

Athena, Apollo, time travel, Socrates, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Marsilio Ficino and robot ethics.

The Size of New Horizons

New Horizons is often described as the size of a grand piano. Somehow it pleases me to come from a culture that calibrates the size of spacecraft in musical instruments.

On Pluto's Doorstep

New Horizons has entered Pluto's Hill Sphere, the space where Pluto's gravity dominates that of the Sun. Pluto and Charon are starting to look like actual places rather than discs covered with low resolution blotches. And it gets better. The closest approach will be July 14th.

New Horizons will streak through Pluto space at 13.8 km/sec. It left Earth faster than any other spacecraft, and it took almost 9 1/2 years to get there. Next stop, deeper into the Kuiper Belt.

These are the days of miracle and wonder.

What to expect when you're expecting a flyby.

Filking the 2015 Hugo Slates

Three pups for the Genius Club, no one knows why
Seven for John C. Wright and his Saudi prose
Nine for the Brad that calls you a CHORF
One for the Vox with a grudge he owns
In the noisy kennel where the puppies lie.
Two slates to rule them all, two slates to find them
Two slates to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the noisy kennel where the puppies lie.



At last we bared our fangs to bay
HOW I WISH I WAS IN SASQUAN NOW
Our noisy yapping made an awful din
But with one quick snark John Scalzi stove us in
God damn them all!
I was told we’d cruise the con and have rockets to hold
Be envied...by our peers
But I’m house-broken now with no Hugos to cheer
The last of Puppy Privateers