Chinese villagers build a bridge across a tributary of the Yangtze River.

So after burning up an appropriate amount of time and grey matter pondering how I could accomplish my vision for this website, I’ve realized I need to build something from the ground up that will turn TomorrowSage.com into much more of a canvas for conveying knowledge and stories. Or rather, a series of canvases upon which each article or story can be communicated in its own unique way.¹

Ultimately what I envision isn’t just a different approach to a website, but a different way tell stories (and ultimately for me, a broader creative experience).

I will do my best to bring about the new TomorrowSage.com as quickly as possible, but given other demands (professional and personal), it is likely to be a matter of weeks (or months) rather than days before everything goes live. And finally, while I don’t intend to provide any new posts on this site until after the reimagining is complete, I do promise to read and respond to any thoughts or comments you share below on this new direction. I’ll also remain active in my other online domiciles and quite possibly provide the occasional update about TomorrowSage.com in those locations. So please stay in touch at:

• twitter.com/tomorrowsage
• www.kevinabarnes.com

1. A quick clarification: When I say, “build something from the ground up,” I don’t mean lovingly code every line of every single web page. My intent is to develop a custom, highly-flexible content management system that will allow me to create and communicate in the way I envision. And no, I currently have no desire or intentions to sell the resulting tool — it is being designed and built for my unique needs and to meet my creative vision.

Photo Source: Milwaukee Chamber Theatre

In Which Steampunk Comes to Milwaukee²
Steampunk Night promises to impart the very latest in 19th century music, theater and entertainment.³ The evening commences at 6:00 pm with pre-show activities hosted by Steam Century. At 7:30 pm the Chamber Theatre will present Mark Brown’s stage version of Jules Verne’s recent (1863) novel “Around the World in 80 Days”. And following the show, Eli August — a Steampunk band from the American frontier town of Madison, Wisconsin — will perform using the very latest 19th century musical instruments.

In Which A Visitor From East India Joins Our Author
My companion for the evening will be one Priyadarshini Sengupta Barnes, recently returned from Calcutta, British capital of colonial India.⁴ Priyadarshini (or Priya, as she is know in the more distinguished social circles) will entrance other guests with her stories of Bengal tigers, the effort to construct a memorial to Queen Victoria in central Calcutta and other wonders of the subcontinent.

In Which Phileas Fogg Bursts Onstage
“Around the World in 80 Days” proffers the tale of wealthy adventurer Phileas Fogg and his manservant Passepartout who — pressed into action by a gentleman’s wager — set out to circle the world in the amazing brief span of just 80 days. In the Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s dramatization of Fogg’s adventure, 5 actors portray 39 characters scattered across 7 continents.

So if you are seeking an adventure of a most sophisticated yet humorous kind, employ any means of conveyance — steamers, railways, carriages, yachts, trading-vessels, sledges, airships or elephants⁵ — and journey to Milwaukee for Steampunk Night on August 20.

1. Yes, this post is being written entirely in character, so hang on to your goggles and top hat! The footnotes, however, will pull you out of your suspension of disbelief and provide 21st Century perspective and details.
2. If you are familiar with the original Jules Verne novel, you’ll recognize this as the terminology Verne used for his novel’s chapter titles.
3. Given that I read — and occasionally write — Steampunk fiction, I was pleasantly surprised to learn of a Steampunk event right here in Milwaukee.
4. At the time of this post, Priya is still in India visiting her family. Ironically over the course of her trip to India and return to Milwaukee, Priya actually will have traveled around the world. Her total travel time for that circumnavigation will be somewhat less than 80 hours … and far less than 80 days. Phileas Fogg would be astounded.
5. With the exception of airships, all of these modes are transportation appear in Verne’s original “Around the World in 80 Days”.

Where traditional internet search engines like Google return a list of links that may or may not lead to the answer the user seeks, Wolfram|Alpha attempts to cut out the middle steps and deliver the actual answer directly to the user. Wolfram|Alpha really shines when you’re seeking specific factual information. Let’s look at a couple of examples of what might arise when conducting research for a science fiction novel.

47 Ursae Majoris b Wolfram|Alpha search

Extrasolar Planets
Assume I’m working on the next Nebula-winning novel and I’ve set the story on 47 Ursae Majoris b (an exoplanet I vaguely remember hearing about when it was discovered in 1996). I plug the planet’s name into Wolfram|Alpha and immediately get a wealth of information. I now know that 47 Ursae Majoris b is 45.86 light years from Earth and it is located in the constellation Ursa Major.² About the only thing it doesn’t tell me is whether the planet is inhabited. (Some things have to be left to the imagination of the writer!)

Now let’s assume that in my novel, the inhabitants of 47 Ursae Majoris b decide to travel to another exoplanet from which they’ve picked up radio signals indicative of intellegent life — Epsilon Eridani b. I plug the names of both exoplanets into Wolfram|Alpha and discover the two are 50.81 light years apart. Based on my novel, I “know” the inhabitants of 47 Ursae Majoris b can only reach about 70% of the speed of light, so I ask Wolfram|Alpha how long the trip to Epsilon Eridani b will take at .7c. It turns out they’ll be traveling for 72.6 years (not counting time to accelerate and decelerate).

For this first test, Wolfram|Alpha gave me all of the information I needed and the research took a fraction of the time it would have using traditional search engines.

September 4, 1963 Wolfram|Alpha Search

Historical Settings
For my next Nebula-winning novel, the protagonist is thrown back in time³ to a random date I’ve just pulled out of thin air — September 4, 1963. But I know nothing about that date … not even what day of the week it fell on. Let’s plug the date into Wolfram|Alpha and see what we get.

I immediately learn that September 4, 1963 was a Wednesday, that the time difference from today is 45 years, 10 months and 2 days,⁴ sunrise was at 6:19 am U.S. Central Time, and there was a waning gibbous moon that day. Now for my novel, the protagonist arrived in Chicago after traveling back in time. I want to make sure I have the details correct, so I ask Wolfram|Alpha to tell me the “weather in Chicago on September 4, 1963.” I learn that on that date in that city, it was 63 degrees Fahrenheit, overcast and rainy, with light winds up to 8 mph. Perfect dreary weather for my character to drop out of a time portal, lost in space and time.

Of course there are limits to the historical information available through Wolfram|Alpha, but the tool does an amazing job extrapolating for those cases where it doesn’t have definitive data. Building on the previous example, I asked Wolfram|Alpha to tell me the “weather in Rome on January 17, 1193.” It tells me the weather data for that day is not available, but then makes predictions based on overall weather data for that location (guessing an average temperature of 45 degrees Fahrenheit).⁵

Other Areas of Expertise
Wolfram|Alpha serves up an impressive amount of hard data that can help science fiction writers build their stories. You can query formulas for everything from algebra to organic chemistry.⁶ Wolfram|Alpha even has a sense of humor. Ask it, “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” and Wolfram|Alpha responds:

“Angels are pure intelligences, not material, but limited, so that they have location in space, but not extension. Therefore, an infinity of angels can be located on the head of a pin. (according to Dorothy Sayers (who also maintains that the question is simply a debating exercise))”

These examples barely scratch the surface of what Wolfram|Alpha can do. Overall, my experience using Wolfram|Alpha as a writing resource has been a positive one. In the past when I needed some fact to add credibility to something I was writing, I would use Google to find a data source, explore the links Google provided, and hopefully find the fact I was seeking. Now I ask Wolfram|Alpha and — more often than not — it provides the fact I’m seeking. Often (as an added bonus) it also provides related facts that I hadn’t even thought about, but which suddenly become an integral part of what I’m writing.

If you write science fiction, or any other genre that makes use of factual data, I encourage you to check out Wolfram|Alpha.

1. If you’ve somehow missed all the hype, Wolfram|Alpha calls itself a “computational knowledge engine.” It essentially is a new kind of search engine. Its ambitious goal is to provide all objective data in a way that allows users to crunch, convert, compute and compare that data.
2. In fact, Wolfram|Alpha provides a star map and tells me the exoplanet’s exact location in the sky based on the fact I’m in Milwaukee at the moment.
3. No doubt this character was playing around with Red Matter, the amazing McGuffin from the latest Star Trek film that — defying the laws of physics — enables black hole-powered time travel.
4. Useful information when wondering how far back in time my character has traveled.
5. Wolfram|Alpha also points out that it is using an extrapolated Gregorian calendar for that date, just in case I’d forgotten how the official calendars have shifted between 1193 and 2009.
6. For example,  ask about eicosapentaenoic acid and you’ll learn the chemical formula is CH_3(CH_2CH=CH)_5(CH_2)_3CO_2H.

Dragon Fountain Rue St. Michel, Paris

Sean McMullen’s¹ newest story, “The Art of the Dragon”, is one such successful genre-melding work. The story appears in the Aug/Sept 2009 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (F&SF). From the very first sentence, the reader is likely to be hooked: “I was there when the dragon first appeared — and ate the Eiffel Tower.”

“The Art of the Dragon” follows the mystery of why a two-mile long dragon suddenly appears and sets out on a worldwide dining tour (of which the Eiffel Tower is only the first course).  The story’s details feel right, from humanity’s initial reactions to the dragon through the emergence of the Dragonists. McMullen’s main character embodies a fair degree of complexity for a 25-page story, yet his actions remain both plausible and understandable throughout. In contrast, the dragon’s motivations initially are incomprehensible to both the main character and the reader, setting the stage for an intriguing story of discovery.

The pacing of the story is effective. Although a lot of ground is covered (geographically, chronologically and plot-wise), it never feels rushed. The one component of the story that seems underutilized is the cast of secondary characters. In particular, one supporting character seems destined for full development, but in the end exists solely to advance the plot at a critical point. Ultimately the story succeeds without McMullen needing to flesh out those secondary characters — I just wonder if doing so could have pushed the story up yet another notch.

As I stated in a previous post,² “The Art of the Dragon” is one of my favorite stories from the current Aug/Sept 2009 issue of F&SF. Whether writing fantasy or science fiction (or a combination of both), Sean McMullen has demonstrated himself to be an accomplished storyteller.

1. Australian Sean McMullen has written both science fiction and fantasy. His debut novels — Voices In The Light (1994) and Mirrorsun Rising (1995) — were rewritten and combined for a publication in the US as Souls In The Great Machine (1999). More recently, McMullen has written a number of fantasy/cross-genre novels in his Moonworld Saga, including The Time Engine which was published in August 2008. McMullen also appeared in the April/May 2009 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction with the story “The Spiral Briar”. McMullen’s official web site can be found at: http://www.seanmcmullen.net.au/
2. Review: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Note: That review contains an image of the cover from the Aug/Sept issue of F&SF, with artwork based on McMullen’s “The Art of the Dragon”.

Cover of F&SF Aug/Sept 2009 issue Artwork by Cory and Catska Ench

It’s probably been 15 years since I read an issue of F&SF from cover to cover,² so the launch of TomorrowSage.com seemed a great excuse to reacquaint myself with the magazine.³ Overall the magazine matched my fond memories from years past, with over 200 pages of well written, thought provoking stories. Reading this issue of F&SF reminded me why I fell in love with science fiction and fantasy in the first place.

What Works
One of the things I most enjoyed about F&SF when I was growing up was the balance the magazine struck between columns and fiction pieces. That balance still feels right in this new issue — there are roughly 225 pages of fiction and 28 pages of nonfiction “Departments” as the magazine calls them. The bottom line is that if I’m buying a magazine of science fiction and fantasy, I want the vast majority of that magazine to consist of fiction.

Under the headings of “fantasy” and “science fiction,” there are numerous sub-genres (and sub-sub-genres), resulting in a diverse range of content, themes and styles. F&SF doesn’t limit itself to just one or two sub-genres, so the result is an eclectic mix of stories. The risk with such eclecticism is that sub-genre readers may find only one or two stories of interest to them in any given issue. I believe, however, that F&SF’s content illustrates how expansive and diverse fantasy and science fiction have become. And since fantasy and science fiction stories expose us to things beyond our everyday norm, it seems natural that a fantasy and science fiction magazine would expose us to stories beyond our everyday reading.

The fiction published in F&SF typically is of a very high caliber (as evidenced by the fact that every year stories from the magazine are nominated — and even win — Nebulas and other awards). The quality of the fiction in the Aug/Sept 2009 issue is no exception. It’s tough for me to pick favorites from the issue, but personally I most enjoyed Bruce Sterling’s “Esoteric City” and Sean McMullen’s “The Art of the Dragon.”

In addition, the story “Icarus Saved from the Skies” was a very short, wonderful find. It is from French fabulist Georges-Olivier Chateaureynaud whose novels have not yet been translated into English.

Areas for Improvement
Ironically, what I most missed in this particular issue of F&SF were things that frequently appear in the magazine, but just happened to not be part of the Aug/Sept 2009 issue I reviewed.

For example, I would like to have seen at least one story by a new author. After reading the entire issue, a reader could come away with a sense that F&SF was playing it safe and sticking with proven authors for its fiction. Even the one author who makes her first F&SF appearance in this issue — Melinda M. Snodgrass — is someone who has a substantial, successful writing career. I understand that for marketing purposes you want to have some easily recognizable names in every issue (like Bruce Sterling …), but I personally would love to see a new author debuted in each issue.⁴ The excitement of discovering author Georges-Olivier Chateaureynaud in this issue (since his fiction previously has not been translated and published in English) reminded me how it feels to read a previously unpublished writer, with the promise of enjoying that writer’s yet-to-be-created future stories and novels.

I also unexpectedly found myself missing the Science department which normally appears in only two issue per year. I say “unexpectedly” because F&SF is first and foremost a fiction magazine. What I enjoy about F&SF’s occasional science articles is how they examine a science topic in the context of science fiction settings. In a recent issue (April/May 2009), for example, Pat Murphy and Paul Doherty examined the science behind balloons and went on to discuss how balloons might be used on other planets, such as Mars.

Up until very recently, F&SF was published 11 times a year — the August/September 2009 issue is only the third issue since the switch to the bimonthly schedule.⁵ The bad news is that readers now have to wait twice as long between issues. The good news is that even though there now will be only six issues per year, each bimonthly issue is substantially larger than the previous monthly issues. The editor estimates that over the course of a year, total content will be about 90% of what it was under the monthly publication schedule.

Contents of the Aug/Sept Issue
The August/September 2009 issue of F&SF contains:

• Editorial (Department) — Gordan Van Gelder
• “The Art of the Dragon” (Novelet) — Sean McMullin
• Books To Look For (Department) — Charles de Lint
• Books (Department) — Elizabeth Hand
• “You Are Such a One” (Short Story) — Nancy Springer
• “A Token of a Better Age” (Novelet) — Melinda M. Snodgrass
• Obsolete Theories (Poem) — Sophie M. White
• “Hunchster” (Short Story) — Matthew Hughes
• “The Goddamned Tooth Fairy” (Classic Reprint, originally appeared in Oct. 2000) — Tina Kurminski; introduction by Gordan Van Gelder
• “The Bones of Giants” (Novelet) — Yoon Ha Lee
• “Icarus Saved from the Skies” (Short Story) — Georges-Olivier Chateaureynaud; translated from French by Edward Gauvin
• “The Others” (Novelet) — Lawrence C. Connolly
• “Three Leaves of Aloe” (Novelet) — Rand B. Lee
• “The Private Eye” (Novelet) —Albert E. Cowdrey
• Films (Department) — Lucius Shepard
• “Snowfall” (Classic Reprint, originally appeared in Sept. 1988) — Jessie Thompson; introduction by Harlan Ellison
• “Esoteric City” (Novelet) — Bruce Sterling
• Curiosities (Department) — Patricia A. Martinelli

The issue also contains seven cartoons⁶ and boasts a cover (see above) by Cory and Catska Ench.

Next Issue
The next issue (Oct/Nov 2009) marks the 60th anniversary of F&SF. According to a short item at the end of the Aug/Sept issue, they’re already hard at work on the extra large anniversary issue. That issue will feature cover art by David Hardy and stories by Joe Haldeman, Robert Silverberg and others.

What Do You Think?
What do you like most (and least) about The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction? How does it compare to the other fiction digests (present and past) in the field? What memories do you have of reading F&SF? Please share your thoughts and experiences using the Comments box below.

Still to Come
During the coming weeks I will post detailed reviews of several of the pieces of fiction that appear in the Aug/Sept 2009 issue of F&SF. To begin, a review of Sean McMullin’s “The Art of the Dragon” will be posted on Friday, July 3.

1. Asimov’s Science Fiction and Analog Science Fiction and Fact are the other long surviving digests that immediately come to mind. Realms of Fantasy, which previously announced it was ceasing publication after the April 2009 issue, was recently purchased by Tir Na Nog Press and is scheduled to resume publication in July.
2. This is a scary admission from someone who claims to be both a reader and writer in this genre.
3. Disclosure: The F&SF circulation manager provided a complimentary copy of the Aug/Sept 2009 issue for review.
4. I realize debuting a new author in every issue may not be as easy as I’ve implied. For starters, it means that every other month the editor must receive or seek out a novelet or short story of publication quality from a previously unpublished author.
5. http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/2009/01/05/fsf-is-going-bimonthly/
6. Cartoonists represented in this issue are Arthur Masear, J.P. Rini, John Jonik, Bill Long, S. Harris, Danny Shanahan and Tom Cheney.