2024 - 02/2024 Meeting
Page Created: 01/14/24. Last Updated: 02/28/24.
NESS BROWN
ONLINE
Website: https://ness-brown.com/about/
Meeting Date: February 20, 2024.
Meeting Site: Bergen Highlands United Methodist Church. .
Official Attendance: 20 + 7.
Meeting Program: Talk by science fiction author / astrophysicist.
Notes:
Eleven people joined the pre-meeting Ice Nine discussion. They talked about mythology, The Monkey King, The Thing (both movie versions), The Expanse, and traffic circles.
Nine people went to the Stateline Diner after the meeting.
Newsletter Account:
The following account is reprinted with permission THE STARSHIP EXPRESS Copyright 2024 Philip J De Parto:
Meeting Notes:
Astrophysicist
From New Mexico
Will be relocating to University of Colorado
Book comps were to movies ALIEN and EVENT HORIZON.
Has taught Astrophysics & Astrobiology for 5 - 6 years.
Centauri system has three stars.
It would take 100,000 years to reach the Centauri system with today's technology.
Proxima A & B orbit one another and are unsuitable for life.
Proxima C (Centuri) is a Class M star.
It is a small, slowly burning star which will last several trillion years, three times longer than the projected lifespan of the universe.
It emits powerful flares which would strip the atmosphere of any planet in the Goldilocks zone.
There is a world in the Goldilocks zone which is quite close to the star.
The sun would appear much larger in the sky than does our sun.
The hottest area of a star is in its atmosphere, not its surface.
Inspirations for the book include DUNE, PITCH BLACK, and the game, DEAD SPACE.
The oldest stars in the universe are Population 3 stars. They were they were utterly massive and much more energetic than today's stars.
Book is set on spaceship returning from visit to terminator zone of tidally-locked planet with an 11 day orbit.
A day of the planet Mercury is longer than its year.
Name of the starship is The Calypso.
Design of ship is based on Project Orion and Project Daedalus spaceship plans.
Master's Thesis is in-progress.
Deals with investigating magnetic fields.
We are seeing supermassive black holes created by primeval Generation 3 stars.
Quasars only existed in the early universe.
Modified gravity hypothesis.
Speaker's parents were fans of sf / f / h movies.
Started trying to write at nine years old.
The characters of this book existed before there was a story.
Tor Nightfire announced a one-month open, unagented call for submissions for works by diverse writers in June 2020. Ness had an idea but had done no work on it. Fortunately, most of the science information was already in our speaker's toolkit from years of teaching. It took writing until 2:00 PM every night for a month to hit the deadline. The book was sent out without a beta reader or an editor goiong over it before submission. Nightfire made an offer in December 2020.
Ness is a person of ritual who writes for 2 - 3 hours each morning, 7 days a week, with a music soundtrack (usually from video games) playing.
Couldn't finish stuff in Grade and High School
Current writing is more film and games.
Early author influences were LOTR and Harry Potter
Went on an ecological trek to Costa Rica while in High School, protecting turtles who came on the beach from poachers. The ocean, the turtles on the beach, and the clear, unpolluted night sky made it a transcendental experience.
Went to Columbia College but didn't like the literature classes, but had a great time in the astronomy class and changed major.
First work was a bad fantasy novel.
Laid off as an adjunct professor.
Nightfire editor was Kristin Temple. Some structural edits to make book more Amazon-friendly. Word County reduced from 50K to 40K.
THE SCOURGE BETWEEN THE STARS is hugely informed by STAR TREK terminology.
Earned out advance in first quarter.
Cover Artist is Chris McGrath.
Literary agent is Chelsea Hensley at KT Literary.
Used MAC Pages for the first book. Now uses scriver.
Working on 260K doorstopper which will be edited down to 200K.
Imagined actress Nafessa Williams as the lead in Scourge.
Audio book narrator Bahni Turpin.
Royalties are higher on ebook sales.
Wanted to do a fantasy book about an astrologer. The apprentice to the astrologer gets them into trouble by selling fake horoscopes. Narrator is a John H Watson (Sherlock Holmes) type.