Case for the Gigasecond

by benmweilertNo Comments
Time is such an odd thing to measure. Depending on the circumstances, time can feel a lot longer or shorter than it actually is. What’s really strange about time is the fact that it can never be measured twice. Sure, you can measure the same amount of time again, but you will never be able to measure that exact same section of time again. It’s gone, relinquished to the past. Does this mean that scientific measurements involving time cannot be repeated? If we want to be bogged down in semantics, nothing is ever repeatable because the time will never be the same. In fact, the ever-changing nature of time could almost be considered the purest universal constant. Now you might be asking yourself why I’m currently so focused on time. Well, as a matter of fact, my birthday is at the end of September. Last year I turned 30 years old, and it struck me that I had actually reached “full...
Read More

1890: A San Francisco Steampunk Treat

by benmweilertNo Comments
One of the genres I have not had a lot of experience writing is that of steampunk. However, when I was given a lead to a short story anthology with the theme of “steampunk heroes”, an idea immediately came to mind. Of course, with this genre being new to my repertoire, I had quite a bit of research to do in order to meet the theme and genre requirements. For those who are unaware, the steampunk genre has many interpretations, but in general it focuses on advanced technologies brought about by the industrial revolution in the Victorian era. What this boils down to is a lot of gears, brass, corsets, top hats, steam, and the color brown infused into the story’s setting and accouterments. Many consider steampunk to be a sub-set of historical fiction because of its known timeframe (the aforementioned Victorian era). Consequently, historical accuracy can help to make the story believable, even if it has certain technological advances well...
Read More

Nuclear Pasta

by benmweilertNo Comments
As a writer who tries to be "surreptitiously educational," one of the tenets of my fictional works is that the science in them is at least somewhat realistic to how things work in the real world. Granted, they are still works of fiction, but I want there to be just enough of a scientific reality to them that my readers' interest would be piqued enough that they might learn these scientific concepts are at play in our universe. Consequently, I don't mind using Wikipedia as one of my sole sources for research. One of the problems with using Wikipedia for my writing research is the tangential research that ends up being added to the singular topic I wanted to learn about. This, in turn, leads to me wanting to include more and more interesting scientific concepts in my writing. In my first set of books, The Fluxion Trilogy, I tried to cram too many references into each one of them, a...
Read More