Those of you who went to the website yesterday may have noticed it was down in protest of SOPA/PIPA. It's back now. The news about those two idiotic bills seems promising.-JRS

It's tempting to believe that, while technology has changed drastically, if the Victorians (for example) had had material x and technological skill y, they could have built aircraft, spacecraft, and so forth and so on. The more I dig into it, and the more I watch the present world change, the more I think that however fun this is to play with in steampunk, it's not really quite true.

Consider this: Between 1988, when I was engaged in learning computer science, and today when I am completely out of the field, one particular problem went from taking 82 years to solve to less than a minute, an improvement by a factor of 43 million. Now processors got 1000 times faster in that time, but the algorithm got 43,000 times faster as well. See this link.. Likewise, while the initial insights of chaos mathematics date to the late 19th century, as a science it was not given serious study until the middle of the 20th century. (I don't pretend to understand chaos mathematics, but they seem to be proving useful in a great many areas, such as climate change.)

We don't tend to think of mathematics and algorithms as technology, but they very much are, as much as the technology we can put our hands on. And they march on the same way.

So stealth fighters, for example, depend on high tech materials, but those materials were designed based on computer modeling, in turn based on Pyotr Ufimtsev's 1962 book "Method of Edge Waves in the Physical Theory of Diffraction" In fact, the reason the F117 stealth fighter is made up of flat planes is that the software used for the modeling couldn't model complex curves. The stealth Bomber (B2), and the F22 Raptor were built with more modern software that could. It's interesting to speculate what might have happened if you'd sent an F117 back in time to, say, the Nazis. While having the artifact in hand and knowing it works would have given them a huge jump on knowing what the goal was, one must ask, did they have the math to understand it, and would they need it to recreate it?

This matters in Steampunk fiction because Steampunk is all about asserting things existing before their time. As an example, I'm handwaving fusion for power, because fusion can power steam, and thus fits very comfortably into the Victorian technosphere. I further assert (though rest assured, only in my notes thus far) that the fusion system they use, they don't really understand how it works or what neutron radiation really is, or any of those things. They developed it Edison-light-bulb style - throw ideas at it and see which ones stick. It worked for Edison in the lightbulb, and I assert that it worked for him - and others - with fusion once they knew it could be done. It helped them that they also captured the factories to make these fusion plants. (It also makes me giggle to power the whole story with what amounts to Pons-Fleischmann cold fusion.)

At its heart, Steampunk is a fantasy genre. It's things that never actually happened, mixed with some things that could have happened but did not (Babbage engines) combined with anachronisms and some flat out magic.

At least, that's my take this week. :)

-JRS

A million 1895 dollars worth of silver weighs about 9 (US) tons, and would amount to about 260 1000(troy) ounce bars. As a solid volume it would take up about 27.5 cubic feet, a cubic block a little more than 3 feet on each side *edit* Someone missed a free book. The numbers I had in here originally sounded fishy so I re-ran them (also with better figures for the price of silver in 1895 and the relative value of the dollar). No book was given, though, so the offer stands. If anyone finds problems with /these/ numbers, the first one to send me corrected ones gets a free copy of Drumlin Circus/On Gossamer Wings or whichever other of my books you don't already have, signed by me (and Jeff if it's DC/OGW.) -JRS

In light of GoDaddy's support of SOPA (of which I am apparently the last person on the planet to hear) and in light of their continued failure to get it even when they dropped their support for SOPA, I am transferring the domain name control of JamesRStrickland.com to a more reputable domain host. There shouldn't be any problems that you, the reader, notice, but if there are, this website and I will be back as soon as they are resolved.-JRS

Middle age moment today. See #9. I'm 44 years old. Statistically speaking, I have a lot of middle age to go, but I've already learned a few things I wish I'd known last year, the year before, and so on. So here, in no particular order:

1. Do what you love. By now you know that life's too short to work a job you hate to buy shit you don't need. (To paraphrase Fight Club). Find work that you enjoy that will also pay the bills. Don't let them promote you to a job you don't like from a job you liked. Don't take career advice from work-at-home authors. Yanno, like me.

2. Love someone. This is probably harder than you think, but worth it like life itself. Also, it makes the sex better. Those hot young things you secretly envy have no idea what they're missing when they haven't slept with someone with twenty years of practice with them.

3. Make more friends, especially younger friends. Statistically speaking, not all of your old crew is going to make it to old age. Hopefully your crew will be different, but the fact remains that while you can't replace them, and it's a mistake to try, keeping the ranks of your friends up helps. Real friends. People you spend time with in person. Internet friends, however dear, are pale imitations.

4. Go to joyous formal occasions in real life - weddings, baby showers, that kind of thing. It helps offset the increased number of funerals.

5. Drink the good stuff. Try the blends. When we were younger we were purists - only grapes from a certain vintage, only singlemalt Scotch and all that. But you know what? Wine and whiskey blenders have centuries of craft experience making blends that taste good. Try 'em.

6. Evolve. When you're in your 40s, it's time to admit that your upcoming adventures will probably not center around your junk. Physically? sure. But your mind moves on and changes. Those pretty naked people you look at on the net? They're young enough to be your children. You've probably noticed this already, and it probably makes you a tiny bit uncomfortable. This takes some getting used to. Fortunately, you have a lot of other senses you've probably been neglecting while chasing girls/guys/farm animals/etc.

7. Evolve. Challenge a habit. Confront a fear. Do something not because it is easy or comfortable or familiar, but because it is hard. (Thank you JFK.) Change happens. It's going to continue to happen. But you can control some change. Cause some of it. Become stronger for it.

8. Make peace with your parents. No matter how screwed up your upbringing was (mine was fairly idyllic, all things considered) you've now had 20 years since your parents ran your life. Whoever you are now is as much your doing as theirs. Forgive. If you can, enjoy the time you have left with them.

9. Get your eyes checked. Presbyopia comes on fast, folks, and there's nothing more disheartening than feeling like you're going blind. Your eye doctor can do a test where they give you a reading distance with very small print, and throw a reading prescription on. If your reaction is "oh wow, that's so much better" it's time. Don't, however, let them give you a reading prescription too soon. (Why yes, I'm reading the screen from behind my first pair of progressive trifocals. OMFGWTFLOLCATS I can see better. It makes a huge difference.) By the way, optical technology has marched on. You don't have to wear windshields with lines in them.

10. See your doctor. Get one you trust. Scary things happen to your body, and most of them don't mean a damn thing other than "Hey, you're over 40 now." Skin tabs are not skin cancer. That soft fatty lump that showed up on your ribcage? Lipoma. A change in texture of your body fat. Doesn't mean anything. But yanno, we're not doctors, so you need a doctor you can talk to. Someone you'll believe when they say "No, that's completely normal for your age," or "Actually that is something to be concerned about, let's do some more tests." Either way, at least you can sleep instead of lying awake in medical-industry-induced panic. (Remember, the doctors on tv are selling something.)

It goes without saying that weird new moles, chest pains, erectile dysfunction, and things like that are definitely see your doctor moments. No, not doctor internet, a real doctor. ED, for example, has been described as a great dipstick for the condition of your circulatory system in general. Yanno, like your coronary arteries? Yeah. See your doctor.

11. If you are female and/or are in love with a middle aged female, you need to know about perimenopause. The mood swings, stress, lack of libido, sudden gusts of strong libido, dry skin, body shape changes and forty five other things that freak her and/or you the hell out? News flash. They may be normal, as a woman's reproductive career heads toward the finish line, even if she's still technically fertile. See also #10.

We're not taught anything about this next stage of life. That's why we don't know what the hell we're doing. Medical science doesn't know much about middle age. They study college students as the "norm" primarily, so how would they know? Also, when we're children and up through our twenties, physically we're much more alike than after 20 years of genetic expression, environmental related changes, and eating our own cooking.

There's mounting evidence, according to this article, that middle age is not the noticeable beginning of degeneration, but a developmental stage. Like puberty. It may well be that you're supposed to get grey hair, presbyopia, a paunch and back hair, and menopause for females so that, evolutionarily speaking, you can stop having more children and focus on raising the ones you already had who survived.

Be thankful for middle age. For most mammals, when your breeding life comes to a close, you die, leaving your last batch of young to die with you. Humans are different. We, along with elephants and some species of whales have a middle age. We have a time after childbearing, and before degeneration, from our forties into our sixties or so, maybe as much as seventy if you're lucky. I mean really, what else is there to do? The alternative - dying young - is worse.

-JRS