For Readers (and Authors, too)
This blog is for anyone that reads my books, as well as for anyone else who is self-publishing, thinking about self-publishing, or just curious about what it’s like to be an author during rapidly changing times. Whenever you visit here, I hope you’ll share your own comments and thoughts. If you’d like to know whenever I post a new entry, please type your email address into the box in the right-hand column and check the appropriate box (and the newsletter one, too, while you’re at it).
Book Six is Live! Read The Argus Affair
It’s taken longer to write than I had hoped, but at long last, Frank Adversego is riding again. The new title, #6 in the series, is The Argus Affair, a Tale of Duplicity and Diplomacy, As with each of the previous books, there’s a unique technology focus, and this time around that focus is on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems, a/k/a LAWS (to their proponents) and Killer Robots (to their detractors). Why the difference in opinion? That lies in the word “autonomous” – as in operating under their own control rather than that of a human being. But since that autonomy derives from artificial intelligence, what could possibly go wrong?
Exactly. With the recent release of ChatGPT, immediately followed by variants from Google (Bard) and Microsoft (Bing), the world is abuzz with fears that such AIs may pose existential threat to humanity, even when they haven’t been given warbots to call home. How likely is that? Hint: the developers of the most advanced programs has asked the government to regulate AI companies before their creations go off the rails. read more…
Red States, Blue States and Nature: How do you Define a Wilderness?
There are many everyday language tools (metaphors, similes, memes and so on) we take for granted, barely noticing them as we use or hear them. That they scarcely register doesn’t detract from their value, though, as these efficient shortcuts aid understanding, add liveliness to prose, and signal group identity within cliques, cultures and countries. One of the oldest is the humble definition, a simple device used to establish the exact meaning – or meanings – of a given word, allowing the listener and the speaker to understand that word in the same way. Definitions are doubtless as old as language itself, existing ever since some ancient child first posed the question, “What does that word mean?” .
While definitions may seem simple, they beome powerful when used as instruments of public policy. In the legislative game, she who controls a definition has already won the first battle, and sometimes the war as well. read more…
Whose Wilderness is This?
Public land is – or, at least should be – just that: public. But what does that mean? And who should be able to decide how such common ground is used? One person’s wilderness policy may be another’s government overreach. read more…
Flakes
If you spend any amount of time hiking in the Southwest you will eventually happen upon a scatter of lovely, multicolored stone flakes lying in the sand. In some areas, black obsidian predominates, and in others yellow and red jasper. But most often you’ll find a beautiful mix of jasper, chalcedony, quartzite, and petrified wood spanning all of the colors of the rainbow and most of the delicate shades in between. What you have found is the remains of ancient tool manufacture. read more…
The Karma of Cheatgrass
Cheatgrass is an innocuous-looking plant you’ll encounter everywhere in the Great Basin. At higher elevations, it’s a wispy, occasional presence filling in the spaces between patches of sagebrush. But in the wide valleys between the mountains it reigns supreme, rolling out golden meadows that stretch as far as the eye can see.
Yesterday, I drove the hundred eighteen miles from Battle Mountain south to Austin, Nevada. Why? Because Austin (elevation 6,575, population 192) boasts its self-proclaimed status as the most isolated town in the lower forty-eight states. And indeed, a hundred miles, more or less, separates it from the closest towns at each of the cardinal points of the compass. In almost all that distance, I saw only an endless expanse of cheatgrass filling the wide valleys bisected by the gravel road I traveled. From inside the car on such a brilliant, blue-sky day, it looked beautiful, not unlike the proverbial amber waves of grain nodding in a lively breeze sweeping the valley. But I wasn’t fooled. read more…
The Endless Garden
August 25, 2005 – One of the great appeals to me of the Southwest is the ability to notice and appreciate each individual element of the natural surroundings as I encounter it. Water and nutrients are scarce, so plants keep their distance; some even exude poisons from their roots to prevent competitors from establishing themselves nearby. And without a thick covering of vegetation, rocks, crevices, and other features of the terrain command attention as well. read more…
At the Dimming of the Day
Had I the power to snap my fingers and transport myself to a favorite place at will, I’m not able to think of a destination more desirable than almost any isolated place in the Southwest at sunset.
Each night of this trip I’ve picked up a book as twilight began to gather after a day of hiking, thinking I’d relax and read for an hour. And each time, within a few minutes I’ve invariably set the book aside, and simply watched and listened as the colors of the setting sun took control of the horizon and metamorphosed it through subtly transposing changes as, all the while, the birds flew and called, the breeze faded, insects hummed and buzzed, the light faded, the planets and then the stars emerged, and finally the moon asserted its cool, white dominance over sky and earth alike.
It’s a performance that can’t be equaled by anything else on earth, until the same time the next day. read more…
North of Gerlach, Nevada
If you want to really get away, you should consider Nevada. Esmeralda County’s one thousand, three hundred forty-four inhabitants, for example, had two million, two hundred eighty-four thousand acres all to themselves in 1996. Today, fewer than eight hundred of those isolated citizens remain. Nye County is ten times larger – half the size of the entire state of Maine – and boasts about eight thousand citizens outside Pahrump, it’s only real city. The true total is more ambiguous, as Nye County also hosts the secret Air Force test facility called Area Fifty-one, which until recently did not officially exist.
All told, Nevada comprises more than seventy million acres, sixty million of which are federal, state or local public lands. Fifty million of those acres are owned by the federal Bureau of Land Management (the BLM).
All that emptiness draws me like a magnet. read more…
Beyond Burning Man
Those of you who have read the complete Frank Adversego canon may recall that in The Lafayette Campaign our hero came close to attending the Burning Man Festival. The following describes my own near miss in 2005.
If you consult an on-line map of Nevada, you’ll see that its upper left quarter is bounded on the south by Interstate 80 and on the east by Route 140. And inside that box, nothing, unless you keep zooming in. Eventually, you’ll find just a few more roads. If you were to turn on to any of them you would almost certainly find yourself driving on gravel at best, and rutted clay or deep, car-trapping sand at worst.
Leaving aside for the moment why you might wish to, let’s assume you’ve arrived in Reno with the object of visiting this consummately empty landscape. Thirty-four miles east of the capital of Nevada, you’ll want to turn north on state route 447 at the town of Fernley; the road will be paved there but will eventually surrender that extravagance in favor of gravel. When it does, go light on the gas. Otherwise, one of those sharp pieces of crushed stonewill eventually work its way up between your tire treads, leaving you changing a tire by the side of the road. But never mind, in only seventy-eight more miles you’ll reach your destination, the only town within a similar distance in any direction. read more…
Introducing Not Here But There: A Wilderness Journal
Yes, it has been a long time. And no, sadly, I haven’t made any real progress on The Argosy Adventure since posting the last chapters of the first draft here on May 31. In the interim, I’ve been holed up on an island off the coast of Maine, building a boat, rowing and sailing among the islands of Penobscot Bay, taking many hikes in the woods, and letting the draft lie fallow while I took a break. Hopefully, I’ll get back to it soon. In the meantime, I decided to return to a project I set aside earlier in my writing career. And also, to share it with you. read more…
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