SciFi – Toby Weston

SkyWhale

Exciting news, folks! My new book is taking shape! It should be out towards the end of this year (or possibly next depending on how distracted I am by the relentless march of craziness!)

One of the locations is a floating vacuum dirigible—SkyWhale. If you’ve read my previous books, you might recognise the concept. It was on the cover of book 3 but from the angle it’s form still fairly ambiguous.

(Cover by the amazing DoFresh)

As we spend so much time there in the new book,I decided to put some effort into designing the SkyWhale properly…

I got to thinking about the aerodynamics. I decided to make the tail like the wings of a glider (sailplane) with high wing-loading and low-drag. I added multiple sets of forward fin/flukes for maneuvering at low speeds. These flatten against the envelope when the vessel is cruising.

Assuming it’s built with super light materials and nothing inside, it almost looks plausible, right?

Original sketch:

😉

Bitcoin’s Coming…

“The globe’s powers had been rabbits, nibbling shoots on the central reservation of a six-lane highway, aware of, but unconcerned by, the approach of a far-off beam of flickering yellow. They were prepared to make a leisurely lollop to safety if the meandering scooter—which each fully expected would eventually resolve from the glare of the approaching halo—came too close. Far too late, they had understood that the light was not the low-wattage lamp of an approaching electro-cycle, but the single remaining headlight hanging precariously from the rusty cab of an apocalypse-punk, articulated war-lorry fishtailing towards them on eighteen screaming wheels of certain death.”

This is how I described the arrival of the new paradigm in ReImagination. It’s MeshCoin—and it has layers in the Singularity’s Children Worldline—but same difference.

SALOA and the Flat Solar System Hypothesis

Most people are not interested in fundamental truth nor the nature of reality. Most people, as a friend of mine often quotes, just want to: “get born, keep their heads down, and die… if they’re lucky!” Reality is messy, and, as I point out in my upcoming book, insufficiently graceful to act as a foundation for society.

In the new book, the Kin, one of SāmeruMandala’s factions, embrace this limitation, settling on a world-view fictional enough to soothe simple minds, but with enough utility to support day-to-day interactions. Their cosmology is loosely based on the Indian Vadas, mixed through with generous dollops of flat-earthism.

Maps from my upcoming book (a Space Opera, imaginary voyage of two outer system natives to the home-world):

With this in mind, I just stumbled across this article: ‘Australia is FAKE – and if you think you’ve been there, you’re wrong

I do tend to prognosticate pretty well in my writing—mostly, simply by choosing the most cynical and incompetent action from the options available to our intrepid leaders. Here, the ‘spider senses’ of my paranoid, conspiracy-affine mind, can’t help thinking they are planting the seeds of a new flat-Earth cosmology in order to conveniently push all the wars and poverty to the North (real) while they, the Kleptocrats, and lucky not-so-natives, enjoy the South (mal-information, make-believe land). I’ve got a hunch Australia and New Zealand will gradually become fake news so they can be transformed into a WEF utopia for the ultra-elites: it’s the ultimate lock-down!

Long term, they are probably still hoping for luxury space colonies, but the Antipodes will provide a medium-term stopgap for the next century or two.