Alastair Reynolds's Blog, page 14

 I've been following recent developments in space tourism with a sort of guarded interest, impressed by the technical achievements (even sub-orbital flight is difficult) but less persuaded by the billionaire gold-rush behind it all. It's not the timeline I wanted to be on, but it's the one we've got. 

Of the three major commercial players, it's fairly obviously the case that Space X (which hasn't yet done any space tourism) is much further along in terms of offering reliable access to orbit, whic...

 As mentioned last year, we took an interest in bat detection:

http://approachingpavonis.blogspot.com/2020/05/bat-tales.html

This interest has continued through 2021 but bat sightings in and around our house have been noticeably scarcer, for some reason. The near-nightly displays by soprano pipistrelles simply haven't been replicated to the same degree, and when we do catch sight of a bat, there hasn't generally been the same pattern of intense vocalisation, presumably because the bats aren't as a...

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/jun/22/joni-mitchell-blue-my-favourite-song-james-taylor-carole-king-graham-nash-david-crosby-kt-tunstall-birdy

I've mentioned it before, but digging into a Joni Mitchell boxset has been one of the great musical adventures of my life. So much genius, and yet more to discover.

Make of this what you will - I'm still not quite sure what to make of it myself - but while sniffing around the web I discovered this rather beautiful guitar from the Chapman range:

Now, objectively that's a nice-looking instrument, with an absolutely gorgeous finish to the body. True, I've got a thing about blue (or blue-ish) guitars, but that's just me. What snagged my attention was the name given to the scheme:

Chapman Guitars have updated the ML1 Pro Modern formula to make it one of their best...

 I should have mentioned this sooner, since we're already into the dregs of May, but some of you might be interested in joining Media Death Cult's summer-long reading program of my RS novels and stories. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0YDrzzMao4&t=87s

The idea is that, at some point in the next few months, Moid will record an in-person Q&A session with me relating to the read-through. The whole thing looks like great fun and I'm grateful for the enthusiasm and interest, especially in the run-up...