Tempel 1

[greygirlbeast]

I've spent the last hour or so online, looking at the astounding images from Deep Impact's collision with comet Tempel 1. After a journey of 172 days and 431 million kilometers (268 million miles), the little probe has successfully reached its destination, and many of the questions that mankind has spent millennia asking about the nature of cometary bodies — and perhaps the origins of life — will now be answered. Science has caught a falling star, so to speak. Comet Tempel 1 was discovered in 1867 by Ernst Tempel. The comet has made many passages through the inner solar system, orbiting the Sun every 5.5 years. It has a mass of 370-kg (~820-lbs), and is traveling at 23,000 mph. Here's a shot taken from the flyby spacecraft at or near the moment that the Deep Impact "smart impactor" made contact with the surface of the comet:





For my part, I'm entering into the peculiar depression that usually catches me immediately after I've "completed" something. Yesterday, I wrote 1,256 words and finished Chapter Six of Daughter of Hounds (it has a total length of 11,846 words, shorter than Chapter Five). I'm so tired that I couldn't possibly write anything else today or tomorrow, or probably the day after, but my imagination is still in overdrive. My mind is still grinding away, regardless of the fact that I'm having trouble focusing my eyes on the screen. I went to sleep shortly after midnight, very early for me, and awoke about 7:30 from various nightmares, and was unable to get to sleep again. But Chapter Six is done. At least Chapter Six is done.

About that Amazon.com "review," "Failure of Genre-Switching," I want to make certain that I'm clear on a number of points. I'm not objecting to the fact that reader was unhappy with the novel. Having written Murder of Angels, I've done my part, and I can only ask that it be read. Whether or not people enjoy reading it, that's an issue entirely divorced from my work as an author (except, perhaps, as regards the impact of sales upon my future work and, of course, the emotional impact of negative "reviews" and reviews). You will like the book, or you will not. What I was objecting to was 1) the claim that MoA switches genre relative to Silk, 2) that a well-written work of fantasy requires of the author the sort of decades-long devotion lavished on Middle-Earth by Tolkien, 3) that I'm a "horror" writer, and 4) that Silk (wherein we first glimpse the hemispherical world of MoA) is a "horror" novel. None of these things are true, and I know that because I wrote these books, and that's what I was saying yesterday. I suspect this reader (who has chosen anonymity) was mostly disappointed that MoA wasn't Silk II, which it was emphatically not meant to be. That is, he or she simply wanted more of what I did in Silk and so wasn't particularly interested in what I did in MoA.

We didn't have Thai last night, because after the writing I was too tired to bother getting dressed for a real restaurant, so we had fiery Indian take-away, instead.

Comments

[robyn-ma.livejournal.com]

'None of these things are true, and I know that because I wrote these books'

But obviously an Amazon.com 'reviewer' who calls himself 'Some Guy' knows those books better than the person who merely wrote them. Writers are jukeboxes anyway, machines to be fed quarters and to spit out their greatest hits over and over without regard for the new music they might prefer to play. Writers certainly have no business being creative. Let them sing us old tunes for their supper, and relinquish such childish concepts as 'innovation' and 'originality.'

This rant has been brought to you by the word 'sarcasm.'

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

...and that Amazon Whomever's review was brought to us by the letters S and H and the number 2.

Collest thing about Tempel 1

[wishlish.livejournal.com]

We made a football-field-sized crater in a comet 83 million miles away. And TOOK PICTURES.

We may never solve the issues with the environment, world peace, hunger...but we can blow stuff up like no other species in the business.

I'm getting a little teary-eyed just thinking about it...sniff...Goood bleeeessss Amerrrrrrica...
(OK, I'm being silly, but man, Tempel 1 is all sorts of cool. Amazing stuff.)

[girfan.livejournal.com]

I was quite excited to watch it on TV this morning (the BBC pre-empted daytime show to feature it). Very exciting stuff!

[msieu-severin.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid that given that I've never read any of your novels I couldn't comment on the particulars of Murder of Angels etc. I would wonder if this reviewer was simply defining his genre boundaries (It's scary ergo it's horror) Perhaps he lacks the verbal flexibility to properly articulate his criticism, However one question comes to me Ms Kiernan:
Why do you care how you are labelled by the people who do not know you and do not care to find out?

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

Why do you care how you are labelled by the people who do not know you and do not care to find out?

Because, while I have no general objection to labels (so long as they're reasonably accurate), I am considerably offended by sloppiness.

[msieu-severin.livejournal.com]

So you object more to his stupidity than to the fact that he inflicted it on you?

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

So you object more to his stupidity than to the fact that he inflicted it on you?

I think I'd say that I object just about equally to both.

Could NASA have anticipated this outcome?

[bev-vincent.livejournal.com]

Russian astrologer Marina Bai has sued NASA, claiming the Deep Impact probe that punched a crater into the comet Tempel 1 late Sunday "ruins the natural balance of forces in the universe," the newspaper Izvestia reported Tuesday. A Moscow court has postponed hearings on the case until late July, the paper said. Bai is seeking damages totaling $300 million _ the approximate equivalent of the mission's cost _ for her "moral sufferings," Izvestia said, citing her lawyer Alexander Molokhov. She earlier told the paper that the experiment would "deform her horoscope."