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The Invisible Life Of Addie Larue
by V.E. Schwab
21.8 Seven starlike freckles have made their impression on history because their owner has lived it. Born in the Eighteenth century and now trying to get by in the Twenty-First, Addie Larue lives her life on the edge – the edge of discovery. The curse that keeps others from remembering her and causes her to move through the world without leaving a mark won’t save her if someone catches her. But she’s good. She’s had centuries to perfect her pilfering and squatting techniques. Now she drifts along with just enough care to keep her on her toes. That is until she meets the one person who does actually remember her. Does she dare dream that she can find some sort of normalcy after all the years of her curse? Can she find happiness even though the god of darkness follows her footsteps waiting for his promised payment in return for her many years? Or will this be the one thing that finally breaks her?
-September’s meeting is on the 15th in person at the Simpson Library, Mechanicsburg (unless otherwise announced) and the book of the month is Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny -Cover art by Eric V. Hardenbrook
Check out the website at: watchtheskies.org or
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NEW RELEASES
SEPTEMBER 2021
JOE ABERCROMBIE - The Wisdom of Crowds
NINA ALLAN - The Art of Space Travel and Other Stories
KRISTEN BRITAIN - Winterlight
ELLEN DATLOW, ed. - When Things Get Dark: Stories Inspired by Shirley Jackson
SEBASTIEN DE CASTELL - Play of Shadows
ANTHONY DOERR - Cloud Cuckoo Land
STEVEN ERIKSON - Upon a Dark of Evil Overlords
LAURIE FOREST - The Demon Tide
SIMON R. GREEN - Jekyll & Hyde Inc.
DAVID HAIR - World’s Edge
TJ KLUNE - Under the Whispering Door
JAY KRISTOFF - Empire of the Vampire
JONATHAN MABERRY - Empty Graveyards
JULIET MARILLIER - A Song of Flight
SEANAN MCGUIRE - When Sorrows Come
NAOMI NOVIK - The Last Graduate
ADA PALMER - Perhaps the Stars
H.G. PARRY - Short Stories
RICHARD POWERS - Bewilderment
CAT RAMBO - You Sexy Thing
ANTHONY RYAN - City of Songs
JONATHAN STRAHAN, ED. - The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Volume 2
CHARLES STROSS - Invisible Sun
J.R.R. TOLKIEN - The Nature of Middle-earth
CADWELL TURNBULL - No Gods, No Monsters
ALIYA WHITELEY - From the Neck Up
PAUL WITCOVER - Lincolnstein
AVAILABLE IN NOVEMBER
You Should Be Watching Nestflix
It's the dog days of summer. The doldrums. Media is scattered far and wide, but people aren't focused on sitting down and watching whatever they can scrounge. Folks are squeezing in one more beach trip or working hard at getting ready for back-to-school time. Reruns and re-watching old movies is the kind of relaxing thing that can fill gaps between all this summer activity. But when you do the re-watching, do you notice the world inside the world? Do you catch the shows that are on the screens in the background?
This is not a true “what to watch” in the sense that these shows don't actually exist, except in an alternate world. When you're going back to an old Futurama episode, do you recall anything about “The Scary Door”? How could you miss a show with a description like this: “You are entering the vicinity of an area adjacent to a location. The kind of place where there might be a monster, or some kind of weird mirror. These are just examples; it could also be something much better. Prepare to enter: The Scary Door.”
There is a fun site out there that lists more than four hundred of these magical shows inside shows. Have you noticed a show within a show? Do you have a favorite? When you get a few minutes head on over to the Nestflix site and check out this crazy collection. https://nestflix.fun/
By Eric V. Hardenbrook
DEAR CRABBY Dear Crabby, Why, WHY for the love of all that is holy are we getting a live action version of Avatar:
The Last Airbender? Hollyweird has failed at this once before. Wasn't that enough? https://www.tor.com/2021/08/12/netflixs-live-action-avatar-the-last-airbender-has-
found-its-main-cast/ Sincerely, Air Bent
Dear Bentimage.gif, Obviously, it's because whatever higher being there might be obviously doesn't love
us as much as it loves the comedy that is our life and the pandemic, insurrection, earthquakes/typhoons/fire tornadoes/etc. haven't been enough to satisfy them...or maybe it's another sign of the apocalypse? Who knows at this point? The human race makes so many bad decisions why not try again to make a live-action version of something amazing after the last one sucked harder than deep space? I have no answers, but I also have no hope so, take that for what you will. Seems like to continue the trend I should consider an 8 ball/high ball/ high dive combo and call it a day.
Don't ask why just ask how we can get out of this.
Crabby
AVAILABLE SEPTEMBER 8TH
SCIENCY STUFF
Israel may have tardigraded the Moon… What else do you call it when thousands of the little buggers are accidentally scattered across the lunar landscape? The mission, called Beresheet (which in consideration that tardigrades are called “water bears” suddenly takes on humorous aspects), unfortunately crashed into the Moon scattering its cargo. These particular tardigrades were in a “tun” state, which leaves them in a sort of suspended animation with no metabolic activity. So, after coming down on April 11th 2019, they were probably completely unaware of their new circumstances. What happens now? Not much more than likely. Tardigrades are tough little buggers. They shrug off vacuum, freezing, boiling and excessive pressure. Ultraviolet rays apparently are their downfall. In that case, our lunar exploring Water Bears would need to find a way to be in the shade since there is no atmosphere on the Moon to limit any infalling UV radiation. The possibility of them encountering water to bring them out of their tun state is exceptionally low and even if that were to occur, there is nothing for them to feed on. That means a very short unhappy life for the first tardigrade explorers of the Moon. Let’s face it, none of it’s been fun so far and that’s a hell of an ending – congratulations on surviving the crash, now you can starve to death. Looking at things another way, how much responsibility does Israel have for the problem? There are laws in place that cover what can be left behind on space missions, but most of them deal with poisonous or radioactive materials. After all, there are still frozen bags of astronaut feces on the Moon somewhere. (In fact, some of our gut bacteria could possibly be revived after becoming dormant in their unexpected circumstances, according to scientists. So, before we point any fingers, it might be good to remember who might have been the first polluters…) However, even if the tardigrades were deemed to be something worthy of legal action, there really isn’t an international body that has the power to pursue an offender. It is generally accepted that countries involved in missions that may propagate Earth microfauna will do their best to keep things sterile to avoid transmission to places off the planet. This was obviously an accident on Israel’s part. Mars on the other hand would be a different story. Since we are actively pursuing the evidence of Martian life, adding anything from Earth to the mix is definitely not part of the program. Even colonization by humans would more than likely introduce bacteria and other invaders from Earth into an ecosystem whose life (should it be found) probably exists in a delicate balance. Invading organisms could wipe out natives. We’ve seen plenty of evidence of this, including local invasive species such as the spotted lantern fly. The tardigrades are probably still there even now. So, why isn’t there a Save the Tardigrades campaign on facebook? In the Martian, they went back for Matt Damon, why aren’t we making this part of our future lunar missions, NASA? I suspect that the reality of an astronaut holding something similar to a pooper scooper ever so slowly sweeping up the dust around the impact site lacks the punch of putting down some new footprints and a wire reinforced flag at a jaunty angle reminiscent of the MTV logo. So sorry tardigrades, you’ve been bumped down the mission priority list.
AVAILABLE NOW
Tillyer’s News of the High Frontier September 2021
-Whatever happened to the other space capsule program? We’ve been seeing success after success for the SpaceX Crew Dragon, but what happened to Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner? NASA decided from the start that it did not want to go with a single provider for its crewed space missions going forward. 2016 found the organization doling out 6.8 billion dollars to start the program in an unequal split to Boeing (getting almost twice as much of the pie) and SpaceX. However, since then, the tables have turned the other way as SpaceX continues to outpace its competitor leaving NASA with a situation they didn’t want. Recent news indicates that more troubles are occurring for Boeing. December 2019 found them trying to send an unmanned capsule to the International Space Station. An error in engine sequence firing caused it to miss its docking with the station. After that, Boeing continued to work on ironing out the bugs. On the 3rd of August, Boeing was ready to try again with the capsule set up on top of an Atlas V rocket. This time valves in the capsule’s propulsion system were stuck closed. Boeing workers spent ten days attempting to salvage the launch and, on the 13th, accepted defeat. At this point, the capsule with be brought back to the factory in an attempt to discover the issues at the heart of the stuck valves. This also means that Boeing will once again have to work through the scheduling problems of acquiring another rocket and time on the launch pad to try another test. On the other hand, SpaceX has demonstrated that it can accomplish the required tasks with the Crew Dragon Capsule. After logging multiple successful flights, the company can continue to refine its program while Boeing is dealing with the Starliner’s issues. It could be that in the future NASA may decided that it is fine with just one capsule. It should be noted that Boeing has over 4 thousand orders for planes and many defense contracts that it has agreed to fulfill, so failure of this project is definitely not a serious blow to the company. -NASA was playing “where’s rover?” with recent images taken by the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars. On its 11th flight, Ingenuity began to do part of its mission to help map out the terrain ahead of the Perseverance. Flights of the helicopter were initially proof of the concept and also helped the mission controllers to discover the best methods of using the drone like device. Now that they are more confident it is capabilities, Ingenuity will start getting down to work. The recent flight with a duration of a little over 2 minutes took the helicopter up almost 40 feet in the air and not quite a third of a mile ahead of the rover. From this height, NASA scientist are able to get a better look at the terrain in the rover’s immediate area and can look for areas that might be difficult to drive through or perhaps are worth a second glance due to interesting features. Before this, mapping would have been done by one of the orbiters and local views available only at the level Perseverance could raise its camera. Now the two can work in tandem for greater efficiency. The area that of Jezero Crater that Ingenuity flew over is known as South Seitah and NASA scientists expect to do at least one more overflight during the mission.
AVAILABLE NOW
