Update on David Weber's Projects

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Relax wrote:Science fiction is NOT selling well. Baen does Sci-fi so... yea; I can see a there being a problem. Not sure this is going to change as state of technological progress in the world has plateaued massively over last 40 years. Maybe if Space X can get the BFR working and get to moon mars there will be an uptick, but pretty much ever "big" section of physics, engineering progress was figured out by 1980 and pretty much nothing new since other than making things nano scale.... It is really hard to get excited about nano scale technology. To me it is exciting, but to the layman? Nope. Not sexy at all.

Huh? What world are you living in that doesn't have big engineering projects and physics discoveries? The LHC is massive and the three gravitational wave detectors (two from LIGO and one in VIRGO) are also kilometres long to measure a tiny space contraction. The proof that gravitational detectors work is as revolutionary to astronomy as radioastronomy was 80 years ago.

Twenty five years ago, we didn't know a single planet outside our solar system. Now we know thousands.

We've also mapped the entire human genome in the last 20 years. We have computing capacity to map a virus' genome in less than a day.

Though I'll grant you that the we're still missing the staples of sci-fi: fusion power production and fast, interplanetary ships.

Let me quote myself for you: "It is really hard to get excited about nano scale technology. To me it is exciting, but to the layman? Nope. Not sexy at all"

Do laymen give a damn about what you just wrote? Nope. Can't be seen. Rockets can be seen when never done before. Landings on the moon can be seen. Supersonic aircraft can be seen. Slightly more efficient aircraft: Don't matter a damn. Slightly different physics which have not been proven and are pretty much ~guesses and nothing but theory... No. Do they matter to the laymen? No.

Seeing planets for the first time around Jupiter, Saturn, the layman understands and can dream about. A single pixel around another star? No one gives a damn as everyone knows with 100% certainty no one alive will ever be able to see it. They can dream, "theoretically," about standing on Mars, Europa, etc.

Why most "sci-fi" today is post apocalyptic pretty much doom and gloom end of earth due to everyone running around like Chicken little due to Global Warming.

Relax wrote:[snip]

Huh? What world are you living in that doesn't have big engineering projects and physics discoveries? The LHC is massive and the three gravitational wave detectors (two from LIGO and one in VIRGO) are also kilometres long to measure a tiny space contraction. The proof that gravitational detectors work is as revolutionary to astronomy as radioastronomy was 80 years ago.

Twenty five years ago, we didn't know a single planet outside our solar system. Now we know thousands.

We've also mapped the entire human genome in the last 20 years. We have computing capacity to map a virus' genome in less than a day.

Though I'll grant you that the we're still missing the staples of sci-fi: fusion power production and fast, interplanetary ships.
Let me quote myself for you: "It is really hard to get excited about nano scale technology. To me it is exciting, but to the layman? Nope. Not sexy at all"

Do laymen give a damn about what you just wrote? Nope. Can't be seen. Rockets can be seen when never done before. Landings on the moon can be seen. Supersonic aircraft can be seen. Slightly more efficient aircraft: Don't matter a damn. Slightly different physics which have not been proven and are pretty much ~guesses and nothing but theory... No. Do they matter to the laymen? No.

Seeing planets for the first time around Jupiter, Saturn, the layman understands and can dream about. A single pixel around another star? No one gives a damn as everyone knows with 100% certainty no one alive will ever be able to see it. They can dream, "theoretically," about standing on Mars, Europa, etc.

Why most "sci-fi" today is post apocalyptic pretty much doom and gloom end of earth due to everyone running around like Chicken little due to Global Warming.

Be thankful for small mercies! Things are enormously better now for SF and Fantasy readers than when I first started reading SF back in the 1960s. Back then in the UK, most bookshops just didn't stock it, and those that did were usually small independent booksellers who kept it as a side-line to their major seller, which was usually pornography. For many years, my only reliable source of SF was a guy called Ken Slater – God rest his soul – who ran a postal service called Fantast Medway from his store in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire. He imported SF and some Fantasy from the USA.

The first shop I ever found in the UK which specialised in SF was a shop in London called Dark They Were and Golden-Eyed which was just off Shaftesbury Avenue, near Raymond' Revue Bar( ) This was later superceded by Forbidden Planet which now has branches in most major cities, and I also found a shop called Murder One (now defunct) which sold SF among other genres.

But none of them compare with the 'net. I spent over 10 years looking for a copy of John Brunner's The Gaudy Shadows without success. Then I got access to the net, and found 20–30 copies within 10 minutes.

Like I say, count your blessings!
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Relax wrote:Why most "sci-fi" today is post apocalyptic pretty much doom and gloom end of earth due to everyone running around like Chicken little due to Global Warming.

Speculative Fiction has contained dystopic and apocalyptic stories long before people worried about Climate Change. Consider "I am Legend", "1984", "Brave New World", "A Boy and his Dog", "Dr. Strangelove", "On the Beach", "To Serve Mankind" (it's a cookbook), and others. It is much harder to write about any utopia that could actually contain real people.

Are we classifying the Honorverse stories as post apocalyptic, because of the "Final War"?

Remember that the Earth has fluctuated between Snowball Earth and forests on Antarctica and has had some spectacular extinction events while doing it.

dobriennm wrote:Sad News! AND Happy News!!

David Weber was on Zoom meeting today (Essence of Wonder).

Said he hasn't started next Safehold book. He's working on collaborative projects now.

But he says he's talking to Radar Pictures(?) about a TV series based on the Honor Harrington series. They are also suppose to be talking to the BuNine folks for technical details.

So this is probably the Manticore Ascendant series, the Star Kingdom series, and sequel to Crown of Slave series ["which will be set immediately after Uncompromising Honor and follow Victor and Anton (and new recruits Damien and Indiana) as they go hunting for the core of the Alignment onion"]. And maybe a sequel to The Apocalypse Troll [collaborative project info from David Weber's Oct 19, 2019 posting]

No update on when book #4 of the Manticore Ascendent is going to be out?

tlb wrote:

Relax wrote:Why most "sci-fi" today is post apocalyptic pretty much doom and gloom end of earth due to everyone running around like Chicken little due to Global Warming.

Speculative Fiction has contained dystopic and apocalyptic stories long before people worried about Climate Change. Consider "I am Legend", "1984", "Brave New World", "A Boy and his Dog", "Dr. Strangelove", "On the Beach", "To Serve Mankind" (it's a cookbook), and others. It is much harder to write about any utopia that could actually contain real people.

Are we classifying the Honorverse stories as post apocalyptic, because of the "Final War"?

Remember that the Earth has fluctuated between Snowball Earth and forests on Antarctica and has had some spectacular extinction events while doing it.

Awhile back I read an article about Sci-Fi and how it (as art does) reflects the prevailing attitude of the times. The article started focusing on H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds"; his original work, set in the industrial age in the years leading up to the first world war, focused on the arms buildup and tensions of the world pre-WWI. Orson Wells' radio play reflected the tensions and paranoia pre-WWII of news from beyond the horizon; the 1950s movie was a study in Cold war nuclear panic; while the early 90's television show reflected the concern from the mistakes made in the Cold War coming to haunt us; and finally the 2000's movie, made post-9/11 focused on the breakdown in trust of both institutions and interpersonal relationships.

The article then moved to it's focus, the late 2000's "Battle Star Galactica" series and how firmly grounded it was in the attitudes of the time - even questioning the need/validity of torturing one of the human appearing Cylons. How we (as humans) can draw the line between us and another human and say "he's different" and build massive mistrust, fear and animosity towards entire ethnic groups, without knowing anything about them. And the prevailing fear, that "one of them" is among us, secretly planning to kill us at the least expected time.

And if you look back, much of Sci-fi is like this: a way to discuss human events in a side forum, without actually discussing the events. Sometimes, the message is evident - with nuclear 50' ants, a post-nuclear world, or that Star Trek episode with the planet where the superior race was purple on one side and white on the other, and the inferior, slave race was identical, but the colors were reversed. Other times, it's something more subtle, hidden in the story and waiting to prey on our fears.

So nothing new.

Or how Niven's Known Space series dealt with multiple races all dealing with population pressure and different solutions to it.