A follow-up to my earlier post this week, catching up on some more news. But first, here is a couple of snaps (one enlarged and annotated) I took earlier today in the early morning as I walked to East Finchley tube station.

The Moon, Jupiter and Mars, annotated

The Moon, Jupiter and Mars

All very evocative, and leads nicely into my next link, which is a guest post I wrote for Lisl’s Before the Second Sleep blog, on the subject of title. Naturally enough, it’s a topic that really interests me – how will human settlements across the solar system adapt to and reflect the physical nature of the world they are set on?

In particular I look at Mars’ moon Phobos, both in the post and in Timing. So far as we can tell, Phobos is extremely fragile. Several factors cause this, including its original component parts, the closeness of its orbit to Mars, and the impact of whatever piece of space debris caused the giant crater Stickney. But whatever the cause… how might human society adapt to living on a moon where you can’t trust the ground below your feet? For the rest of the post, follow this link.

And also here’s a reminder of the Kindle Countdown offer on most of my books, and the Goodreads giveaway on Half Sick of Shadows. Here are the links…

Half Sick of Shadows is on Goodreads giveaway, with three copies to be won by the end of this coming weekend.

All the other books are on Kindle countdown deal at £0.99 or $0.99 if you are in the UK or US respectively – but once again only until the end of the weekend. Links for these are:

Science fiction series
Far from the Spaceports UK link and US link
Timing UK link and US link

Late Bronze Age historical fiction
In a Milk and Honeyed Land UK link and US link
Scenes from a Life UK link and US link
The Flame Before Us UK link and US link

And I haven’t forgotten about the upcoming Alexa news, following recent activity coding for the new Alexa Show (the one with the screen). But that’s for another day…