View 533 August 25 - 31, 2008 (original) (raw)
Monday, August 25, 2008
I slept in today and feel better for it. You may find the notes in View and Mail from yesterday worth your time.
Tim Kyger, who was at the conference and rode with Niven, Henry Vanderbilt, and me from El Paso to Alamogordo (Fat Cottonwood, according to Roberta) sends this:
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I'm about a week late with this email message. Sorry about that. Family, job, etc., etc. You know the drill.
The book you want is Single Stage to Orbit by Dr. Andrew Butrica.
I can't *believe* the hardcover, new, price. $45?! Geez.
And you should see the following review of the DC-X reunion. You're quite well featured (IMHO): <http://thespacereview.com/article/1196/1>
Cheers!
== Tim Kyger
The review is fairly comprehensive and if you're interested in the conference it's a good summary (and yes, it does say some nice things about me).
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I have errands today. I do hope my Kindle comes -- it hasn't yet as of noon, so it will almost undoubtedly have to be tomorrow, I get very few deliveries after noon.
There was an article in today's LA Times
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/
la-he-skeptic25-2008aug25,0,1710935.story
on Alpha Lipoic Acid and Acetyl L-Carnatine. The article was quite favorable. Apparently there is evidence -- sketchy not decisive, but definitely evidence -- that these help slow down aging and Alzheimer's. As it happens I have been taking these for several years now without quite recalling why I take them. I think Jim Baen worked it out that they would have some of the effects of SAMe back when the US government was protecting us from SAMe, and I got in the habit of taking them. They are included in the commercial supplement REJUVENON but what I take is generic and a lot less expensive: I get the Alpha Lipoic Acid from Trader Joe's, and the Acetyl L-Carnatine from Great Earth; both are also sold by the Life Extension Foundation. Mind you the evidence is that if you are under 50 or so they won't do you a bit of good, and I am not recommending that you go out and buy this at any age, but if you are getting up there with me, you might look into this. I take a LOT of supplements including SAMe, so it's hard to determine the effect of any one set of stuff -- and I am not about to run the experiment of going without something just to see. I do a lot of silly things so you don't have to, but that's not one of them.
But I do seem to have reached 75 without too many setbacks, and very few mental problems, even with the 50,000 rads. Thursday I go back to my radiation oncologist to decide on what happens next, but the big bad tumor seems to have shrunk and stopped growing, and while the radiation sickness continues, things get a little better every day. Even my hearing seems to be improving, very slightly -- it's a lot worse than it was before all this nonsense started, but then my hearing hasn't been all that good since 1950. Anyway we need to decide where I should concentrate all my treatment efforts. My primary physician is at Kaiser Panorama City, as is the oncologist who first decided I had a problem (from my blood work) but all the radiation treatment facilities, the neurosurgeon, the oncologist, and the radiation oncologist are at Kaiser Sunset. It's agreed I ought to see an EENT about my hearing; I've seen one at Panorama City but that was early on, and he found nothing of interest and isn't likely to remember me anyway.
Anyway, this week we decide on medical management. I have considerable confidence in all of them, particularly the primary care man who I don't want to lose. Probably I'll end up going to Sunset for the tumor and stay at Panorama city for everything else. But we'll see.
Sorry to chatter on so about my own problems.
For those who have asked, I am beginning to work on THE MASK ON THE WALL, my book about all this. I am also getting back to Mamelukes. Thanks to all of those who have subscribed and renewed; that pretty well got me through all this without wiping out savings. I still need the subscriptions, but at least I am getting closer to publication time for ESCAPE FROM HELL; that will bring a publication payment. The trade paperback reissue of INFERNO will be out in September (you can preorder from Amazon now). And of course EXILE -- AND GLORY is out from Baen, and everyone who has read it says it reads as if it were written today. Alas. It's supposed to be about the world as it would be in about 2020; but we didn't make the progress I had hoped for. I may combine the Exile universe with the one Charlie Sheffield and I created in HIGHER EDUCATION ( I think you can still find copies of that). There are some good stories in an asteroid civilization -- and it may also be useful in illustrating both the degeneracy of current societies and what is available given freedom and resources.
And the Platinum Subscriptions, which will let me work on what I think is most important (that certainly includes finishing Janissaries) continue to come in. Not quite as quickly as I had hoped, but probably better than I had any right to expect. Anyway, thanks to all of you.
It doesn't look as if A STEP FARTHER OUT and the sequel ANOTHER STEP FARTHER OUT (never published) will take all that much work to get into shape for publication in one or another form, probably a Tor hardbound. I haven't even though about a publisher for a revised Strategy of Technology; the university press that put that out has vanished. The DC/X reunion made it clear that both those books are still needed: the "peace through arms control and technology suppression" crowd is back with a vengeance and fills much of the federal civil service; and the hard and practical reasons for going to space seem to have been lost.
So it's back to work.
For platinum subscription:
Platinum subscribers enable me to work on what I think is important without worrying about economics. My thanks to all of you.
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