June 2020

22 Jun

Posted at 13:31h in Uncategorized

For the first time, a spacecraft has sent back pictures of the sky from so far away that some stars appear to be in different positions than we would see them from Earth. More than 4 billion miles from home and speeding toward interstellar space, NASA's New Horizons has traveled so far that it now has a unique view of the nearest stars, but it looks like an alien sky. The difference is due to parallax, the same effect you see if you hold up a finger and close one eye, then the other. It’s a shift in perspective, caused by New Horizons’ great distance from Earth. I love the concept of parallax. My latest novel is named for it. A shift in perspective changes . . . everything. But once you've dared experience it you might mourn the time you lost believing your previous perspective was the only one....

01 Jun

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized

My country’s cities are burning again. Armed white men again in blue uniforms wouldn't again let an unarmed ununiformed again black man breathe again. Meanwhile, out in the Great Plains and Bread Basket other people are differently dying, the virus growing inside their lungs while meat packers sweaty with fever have to show up for work so their families won't starve, while farmers lie coughing and gasping for lack of equipment to keep them alive. Some of the people in small towns and on farms fell for the lie that all this was a hoax, the fault of dark people and people in cities; now they also can’t breathe. The blows come so fast and so heavy you can't stagger up from the last one before the new punch knocks you breathless again. Private enterprise launches itself into space, national economies collapse—hey, that’s the least of it. Heat waves melt South...