Browsed by
Month: April 2022

Lucy’s beautiful, verdant landscape captures the terraced hills with their little farms on either side, the meanders of the Sirius River through the center, and the torus’s perverse upward curve in the distance.
Thinking About Space Stations

Thinking About Space Stations

By Jan S. Gephardt I’ve been thinking about space stations, lately (sure, doesn’t everyone?). As a regular reader of science fiction, I encounter the fictional kind pretty often. And I’m always interested in news from Earth’s very own space station, the ISS. Technically we Earthlings have two, but it seems like China doesn’t want to share. I’m particularly interested in Jessica Watkins’ long-duration ISS assignment. She’ll stay in orbit for 6 months, adding valuable insight to our knowledge about the…

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On a background of plastic straws, a photo of The Ocean Cleanup’s haul of waste plastics after a day’s run, and a mountain of baled plastic waste in Boise, Idaho.
Eco-Dreams

Eco-Dreams

By Jan S. Gephardt Which eco-dreams will fuel the solutions of tomorrow? The climate change challenge has put fire in many bellies. It’s inspired the imagination of people all over the world. And well it should! Our future depends on those clever ideas and ambitious visions. But not all eco-dreams work out the way we expect. A Brilliant Idea Back around 2009-2010, a Japanese scientist-inventor named Akinori Ito developed what he hoped could be a solution to two problems: the…

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Hildie stands on a balcony at her home. She wears a red and gold saree.
A Vision From a Different World

A Vision From a Different World

By Jan S. Gephardt To a certain extent, every piece of fiction opens a vision from a different world. But in works of science fiction, fantasy, and speculative fiction, the idea of “a different world” is often more front-and-center. But translating that into visual art can be tricky. As I’ve described in the last two blog posts, “Visualizing a Character” and “Portraying Hildie,” this winter my friend Lucy A. Synk and I undertook a multi-painting project. We sought to create…

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Lucy A. Synk’s painting “Hildie Gallagher at Work.”
Portraying Hildie

Portraying Hildie

By Jan S. Gephardt Portraying Hildie Gallagher has been a rewarding collaboration Lucy A. Synk and I tackled this year. Each winter since 2019, my artist friend and I have combined our visions to create illustrations showing aspects of my XK9 “Bones” Trilogy. The books comprise a science fiction mystery series about a pack of extremely intelligent police dogs who live with their humans on Rana Habitat Space Station. Last week’s post addressed the considerations that go into visualizing a…

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