The mail recently brought in my contributor’s copy to Paula Guran’s new Year’s Best Fantasy series from Pyr Books. It’s a pretty thick volume with over twenty stories from people like Elizabeth Bear, Karen Joy Fowler, Fran Wilde, Isabel Yap and “Many Others,” including well, me. She included “The Fox’s Daughter,” a Yamada story from BCS.
The book releases on August 16, but it is available for pre-order at the link.
Long time readers will know that we’ve been here before. For those who aren’t, I’ll lay it out: I’m a serial obsessionist. Meaning that I grab on to intense interests that may last for weeks, months, even years. I’ve found this to be a useful trait for someone trying to be a writer. For example, I spent a few years in the literature and history of classical Japan. The result was the Yamada Monogatari series from Prime Books. Even when such interests don’t inform an entire series, they usually make their way into numerous books and stories, either giving the initial impetus or fleshing them out with new information, or both.
All of which brings me to the item above. On one such whim, I acquired a 3D Printer, as I’ve also mentioned before. There’s an entire sub-culture dedicated to creating designs strictly to be brought to life on such devices. One can spend an awful lot of time tracking them down online and doing just that. And yet…
You know what’s really fun, and doesn’t get old nearly as fast? Learning the basics of CAD (Computer Aided Design) and creating your own designs. Like that vase above. Nothing really special about it, except that particular design with those particular proportions is something I created myself. I mean, it’s just a vase. It won’t win any design awards, but I’ll lay odds it’ll hold flowers and look good doing it. Also, I have a tsuba (Japanese sword guard) that is normally stored in a specially made box, only the box got broken in our move to New York state some years ago. For my next project I’m going to recreate that box in PLA down to the millimeter. And the best part?
Actual printing of such items takes hours.
Leaves plenty of time for writing.
Chapter 11 is almost done. Marta is traveling to Mataria to help out some friends, surprising even herself. She’d planned on taking on Amaet’s debt for the cost of it, but so far the Power is silent on the price. Very strange. One assassination attempt thwarted, a new player appears, and Tymon the Black has taken an interest in Marta, though she hasn’t a clue why (Yes, I know why, but it isn’t time for Marta or, alas, any of you to know.)
Dessera the ghost has proven to be extremely helpful, if not in any way Dessera herself actually realizes. Marta now understands something important about the craja that she never realized before.
Bonetapper is as snarky as ever. That’s probably never going to change.
Here we are again. Nearly half of one party’s caucus in Congress was either actively involved or complicit in attempting to thwart the will of We the People. Our former alleged president is still pushing the Big Lie. SCOTUS is so enamored of the 1950’s that they’ve decided we should all live there forever, adding Loving vs Virginia and subtracting the 47%+30% Excess Profits corporate tax rate, of course.
We’ll celebrate anyway, and why not. The bastards do not represent who we are and they may win a few battles but the war is ours.
The radical judges were put in place to do a job, and they are doing it. Every woman I know is mad as hell, and every man with more understanding than a brick is also. Not to mention that the freshly-packed Trump Supreme Court (TSC) immediately went chipping away at the separation of Church and State, and Thomas has proclaimed they’ll take on Marriage Equality (as in attack) and contraception later. Everyone knew this was coming, and I’m only surprised it took this long, and that’s all I’ll say on the matter…for now.
I want to talk about happier things, or at least something else. The Seventh Law of Power is going along fine (new character(s) coming in soon), and I bought myself a late birthday present: a 3D Printer.
I always thought one of the coolest things in later Star Trek was the notion of the Replicator. More magic than technological so far as I was concerned. A thing in the wall and you ask it for precisely what you want, and if you get the request in the proper form (Earl Grey, Hot), you get it…mostly. Tell me that’s not a Genie granting wishes, though I’m a little surprised the thing didn’t try to create Earl Grey on fire. It was very literal.
Those of you who have experience with 3D Printers already know they have a lot in common with the Replicator, if far less capable. You have to know what you want, express it precisely enough that a slicer app can turn the image into g-code instructions the device understands, and the thing makes it for you…if nothing goes wrong. Though calling it a printer is a bit of a misnomer. It’s more of a mini additive manufacturing device in this context, though I have seen versions large enough to make a house.
Anyway, once I had it assembled (which is another story. Supposed to take an hour. Took most of the day), I took my first stab at it just to see if I had put the thing together right, using an existing file for the test. You can see the result above. Not bad for a first attempt, if a little fuzzy around the ears.
Next I’m going to get my feet wet in CAD software so I can make my own designs. Because.
Richard Parks 