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wildoates said:
Not real, but realistic. ;D
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That's her goal, and as far as I can tell she's been consistent and mostly successful in achieving it. I actually got to know her through her son, Todd. He and I struck up a casual conversation at a convention years ago (well, I can say decades ago, now) before I knew who his mother was, and we discovered we had common interests in piloting aircraft, the space program (I was working directly for NASA back then), and most SF. Todd and I have been friends ever since.

One thing led to another, and eventually my wife and I were invited to his mom's place in Ireland for a few days, I was tapped as one of the technical consultants on one of her Pern books, and eventually my wife, my kids, and I became "characters" in one of the modern Doona books (co-written with Jody Lynn Nye, another friend of ours). Believe me, it is a totally surreal experience to encounter characters named after yourself, living completely different lives in an alternate universe! ;)
 
wayneb said:
That's her goal, and as far as I can tell she's been consistent and mostly successful in achieving it. I actually got to know her through her son, Todd. He and I struck up a casual conversation at a convention years ago (well, I can say decades ago, now) before I knew who his mother was, and we discovered we had common interests in piloting aircraft, the space program (I was working directly for NASA back then), and most SF. Todd and I have been friends ever since.

One thing led to another, and eventually my wife and I were invited to his mom's place in Ireland for a few days, I was tapped as one of the technical consultants on one of her Pern books, and eventually my wife, my kids, and I became "characters" in one of the modern Doona books (co-written with Jody Lynn Nye, another friend of ours). Believe me, it is a totally surreal experience to encounter characters named after yourself, living completely different lives in an alternate universe! ;)
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WHAT?!?!? Are you KIDDING ME? Ha! I am extremely jealous, I don't normally get starstruck, but McCaffrey was one of the most influential authors in my life, she really was a big deal to me!

EDIT: Do you remember what book you consulted for, and what aspect of it? I'd love to go grab a copy and re-read it, thinking that someone I know was involved!
 
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wayneb said:
That's her goal, and as far as I can tell she's been consistent and mostly successful in achieving it. I actually got to know her through her son, Todd. He and I struck up a casual conversation at a convention years ago (well, I can say decades ago, now) before I knew who his mother was, and we discovered we had common interests in piloting aircraft, the space program (I was working directly for NASA back then), and most SF. Todd and I have been friends ever since.

One thing led to another, and eventually my wife and I were invited to his mom's place in Ireland for a few days, I was tapped as one of the technical consultants on one of her Pern books, and eventually my wife, my kids, and I became "characters" in one of the modern Doona books (co-written with Jody Lynn Nye, another friend of ours). Believe me, it is a totally surreal experience to encounter characters named after yourself, living completely different lives in an alternate universe! ;)
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My dad was one of the characters in Clive Cussler's books, so yeah, that's awesome!

Now I have to go through all my Pern books to see which one has your name in it--and I have them all, pretty much. The first one I read was White Dragon, which was found in a pile behind a bookstore, unsold with the cover torn off, destined for the trash. Of course, once you've read the third book you have to read one and two, and then you end up buying all of them. :o
 
Smarrikåka said:
I hope Wayne doesn't mind.
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Thanks, Johan! Now everybody knows that I'm a pig farmer in an alternate universe.... :p ;D

And Jenn, I'll save you some time. It was "Renegades of Pern" that benefitted in a very minor way from my 'rocket scientist' expertise. Now to be clear that's the one I consulted on - my name's not in it (at least as far as I remember).
 
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I remember that book for sure, do you recall what exactly of your rocket science ended up influencing it?

This is crazy cool.
 
Well, at the time I was working in the Space Station Program Office at NASA, and we were developing various "use case" scenarios for the station. One of those (never realized because of incessant budget cuts) was as a jumping off point for human planetary exploration (and future colonization). Since she was defining the parameters of what an initial human colony on another planet would be like (as a very small subplot in the Renegades story), I got to see if her ideas "passed the sniff test."
 
You know, I wish more authors and screenwriters (and video game writers, for that matter) would do that... (have someone legitimate run it though a "sniff test" I mean, to make sure things are at least plausible instead of making the reader hang his disbelief out on the clothesline just to get through a book, like some of the "science" in Spelljammer)...
 
wayneb said:
Thanks, Johan! Now everybody knows that I'm a pig farmer in an alternate universe.... :p ;D

And Jenn, I'll save you some time. It was "Renegades of Pern" that benefitted in a very minor way from my 'rocket scientist' expertise. Now to be clear that's the one I consulted on - my name's not in it (at least as far as I remember).
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Ah, I liked that one. :)
 
Hello all would like to chime in on this thread and offer you 3 names for fantasy books. Brent Weeks, Gail Z Martin and Patrick Rothfuss. All three top notch writers.
 
I may have not said it before, but I will certainly say it again:

Thank You Gotmeaders.
Thank You for inspiring me.

I'm a lightweight in the sci fi department, but have seen some authors names thrown around here and decided to pay a visit to the audiobooks section of the library.

Got myself started with Anne McCaffrey's Dragonflight. Thank you for introducing me.
 
Misery, Sorrow & Thorn, one of my favorite trilogies of all time, I have first press editions in hardback of all three. In fact I think I'm due to re-read them about now, it's been a few years.
 
Loadnabox said:
Misery, Sorrow & Thorn, one of my favorite trilogies of all time, I have first press editions in hardback of all three. In fact I think I'm due to re-read them about now, it's been a few years.
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This is probably one of the most re-read series for me in my life. Have you checked out his new series? I haven't finished it yet (took a good 3 or 4 years off to let him finish the thing, I was tired of waiting between books!), but it's good stuff. Frankly it steals a lot from the MS&T series though, but I guess if you're stealing then it might as well be from yourself!
 
AToE said:
This is probably one of the most re-read series for me in my life. Have you checked out his new series? I haven't finished it yet (took a good 3 or 4 years off to let him finish the thing, I was tired of waiting between books!), but it's good stuff. Frankly it steals a lot from the MS&T series though, but I guess if you're stealing then it might as well be from yourself!
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I haven't seen them yet, I'll need to go check Amazon. My recent readings have been titles such as "Your wife's pregnancy hormones and how not to get killed" and "Your baby's feces, dealing with it getting on you and everything else"[sic]

I also though John Scalzi's "The Androids' Dream" was a nice read, easy and interesting
 
Loadnabox said:
I haven't seen them yet, I'll need to go check Amazon. My recent readings have been titles such as "Your wife's pregnancy hormones and how not to get killed" and "Your baby's feces, dealing with it getting on you and everything else"[sic]
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Strangely, this does sound like SciFi to me...

Presently I'm having Watership Down read to me on tape.
 
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