[Part 3 out of 4. Read Part 1 and Part 2.]

“Welcome to your new quarters, Lieutenant Vell’An. You and your men are now consigned here.”

The sliding transparent door slammed shut between the two Rims, locking itself in the same split second. The tall officier turned in a quick movement, for Vall’Eran to meet him with a confident smile.

“What the…” said Vell’An in a cold voice. “Open the door. This is an order!

— Sorry, Lieutenant. Before you ask, if you decide to attempt anything, I’ll have to release this. You know, of course, that your bodies aren’t protected with nano-bots.”

He flashed the small sealed vial marked with the red etiquette, in a move that he hoped looked threatening enough, and saw the surprise and anger in the officer’s grey eyes. Of course, the man had seen the laboratories, as well as the carefully aligned and shielded containers for the virus he was supposed to bring back to Ewell, once its development would be finished.

“This is an act of treason. The Ministry will be informed!

— We should reach Shigari Archipelago in about six hours”, Vall’Eran said. A certain feeling of satisfaction rose in him upon seeing the surprise on the Lieutenant’s face. “If I were you, I’d make sure to take a seat. It’s the first time we’re moving this flyland. There could be… accidents.

— You’re completely mad! It’s not meant to—

— Nano-tech can be put to many uses, you know. Not only to harm and destroy.”

Sisyphean posted an annoucement about this at Writers Blog Alliance, and after taking a peek at the webpage, I thought it’s a pretty interesting project, worth being advertised a little more.

Without further ado, let me thus introduce you to Orion’s Arm, a collaborative project aiming at creating a science-fiction universe, complete from breeds to timeline, while following currently accepted science matters.

Our goal is to create a dramatic far-future universe that is internally consistent and abides as much as possible with the accepted facts and theories in the physical, biological, and social sciences. Thus matter cannot travel faster than light, matter and energy are conserved, no evolved humanoid aliens have been discovered, future ultratech social issues are likely to be very different to those of today, and so on. We embrace speculative ideas like drexlerian assemblers, mind uploads, posthuman intelligences, femtotech, magnetic monopoles, wormholes, as it is proposed that future sciences, technologies, and developments will make these possible. And we attempt a logical explanation for even the most fantastic-seeming elements in OA. We aim to paint a future that is plausible at every level, from the scientific to the social to the psychological.

While this may seem too scientific to one’s liking, for an author who’d like to write science-fiction, this approach can turn to be a very valuable one. Indeed, science-fiction is not just “something easy to write: you can invent anything”. Let’s not forget the word science in it, and that when creating our own little pocket universes, basing them off real scientific theories is a necessity, in order to make them more believable to our readers. I’m really not a scientific type, but grabbing a magazine here and there has taught me a few invaluable things to add in my stories.

It’s all about credibility—and seeing such a world being created is anyway a fascinating enough process in itself to at least take a few minutes and have a look at it.

Y Tags: science-fiction | worlds | writing

This one’s been up for more than one month. Time to change the playlist again.

I’m in a bit of a nostalgic mood these days, as some of the songs may betray it.

A comment left by Silmy on the French version of my blog led me to think a little more about this question: why do we keep several blogs, and is this a good thing to do? Why not keep everything in the same place?

To someone who’s not into blogging, or doesn’t have a lot of interest in it, it may seem a weird thing, not to mention a waste of time, to write in different blogs. This just creates more work for us, in a life that is already busy enough as it is. I used to think the same way, to be honest; I don’t mind taking one or two hours every day to write, because I really like doing it, but whether it’s a pleasure or not, there are days when time is short, period. So why?

Here are a few reasons why I consider that it can be a good idea, after a while if not from the start, to keep several blogs instead of one.

• People in general tend to “expect something”. If they do a search for business-related matters and find your blog through a keywords search, they want to read about business-related matters, not about family stories. They’ll visit a dogs-related blog to read about dogs, not crochet nor gardening. Although reading about “all and everything” is an interesting way to get to know a person, there are times when we just want to grab the info we’re looking for, without having to sift through ten pages and five categories first.


• Remaining clear and focused is always a good thing for blogs. This applies to professional blogs mostly, although I suppose one could want this for a more personal blog as well. Avoiding to clutter it with too varied topics is an appropriate choice.


• For AdSense (or other targeted ads) users, better have a blog to revolve around one theme, or at least very similar themes, for purposes of ads relevancy.


• Different topics call for different settings. This may seem a little restrictive and sectarian, yet the fact is that in the world of websites, one doesn’t usually design a personal page the same way as a professional one. There often are “codes” to use, and it’s evidently easier to choose one of these codes if you don’t have to pick among thirty very different areas of topics.


• You may want to heavily advertise one blog, while keeping another one in a more restricted sphere. You can’t do that with one blog only, in which case it’s an all-or-nothing matter.

There probably are other reasons than these, perhaps more personal ones as well, and this list is by all means no holy word. For someone who wants to take on a more professional way of blogging, or at least not spread oneself too thin, I however feel that it is an important point.

Y Tags: blogging

Passing the word along: Duncan at The Blog Herald is holding a 100 blogs in 100 days projet. Starting Monday 22, he’ll be presenting one blog per day, during 100 days, in order to help promote less known blogs.

Email me at editor@blogherald.com with subject line of “100 blogs in 100 days” with your blogs details (name, url etc..). You also need to include up to, but no more than 100 words about your blog, what it does, what it’s about, or why the readers of the Blog Herald should visit it that will be published as part of the post. In return though I’ll be inviting Blog Herald readers to provide some feedback in the comments here on what they think about your blog.

Feel free to send your blog URL along—or to simply check The Blog Herald, which is an interesting read in itself anyway.

Y Tags: blogging | 100blogs