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I’m going to try, in 2022, to write a monthly recap of the books (and other things) I read each month. I had a good reading month and am well on my way to meeting my annual goal of 52 books! I track this on Goodreads, and I feel no qualms in including graphic novels in my reading; a good graphic novel is its own challenge and reward because the art demands attention as much as the words. I will also admit that I’m trying to get ahead of my Goodreads challenge a bit because I have some long “doorstop”Down the rabbit hole….

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I haven’t mentioned this, but the rocket bearing the James Webb Space Telescope blasted off the other day. The telescope is headed for the L2 Lagrange Point, a spot in space where it will orbit the Sun in such a way that it maintains its relative position to Earth. This telescope will have stunning visual capabilities that will put Hubble to shame, which is a bold statement considering the decades of astonishing imagery and science produced by the Webb Telescope’s predecessor. I cannot wait to see the images that come back and to learn the things that Webb helps usDown the rabbit hole….

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As I continue to struggle to plow the rocky soil in which the plot to The Song of Forgotten Stars V is supposed to grow–and more on that later on, at some point–I still take inspiration in space photos, like these from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. This is all just amazing stuff, via Hubble. Remember how everyone laughed when Hubble was launched and deployed in orbit, only for a slight flaw in its main lens to be discovered? Well, we fixed it and thirty-one years later, Hubble still entrances. (And for me, Hubble also remains an outstanding rejoinder to peopleDown the rabbit hole….

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 Richard Feynman was an American physicist who contributed greatly to the field of quantum mechanics, eventually winning a Nobel Prize for his work. He also worked on the atomic bomb project and wrote a number of books about his colorful life and his views on science and technology, and in his time he was nearly as well-known a scientist as Carl Sagan. Toward the end of his life he notably served on the panel that investigated the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, most notably bringing focus to a hypothesis that a failed O-ring seal led to the shuttle’s demise–aDown the rabbit hole….

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 A fascinating astronomy image today! Behold: NASA explains: A spectacular set of rings around a black hole has been captured using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory. The X-ray images of the giant rings have revealed new information about dust located in our Galaxy, using a similar principle to the X-rays performed in doctor’s offices and airports.  The black hole is part of a binary system called V404 Cygni, located about 7,800 light-years away from Earth. The black hole is actively pulling material away from a companion star — with about half the mass of the SunDown the rabbit hole….

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 It’s been a while since I posted an update on books I’ve been reading, so here’s a bit of catch-up! ::  Edge of Sundown is a noir-mystery set in Chicago, by indie writer Jennifer Worrell. A writer who was once a fixture on the bestseller lists for his genre potboilers has spent the better part of a decade in the creative doldrums, until he starts writing what is a marked departure for him: a dystopian thriller in which alien beings are ridding the city streets of “undesirable” elements. But when real-world events start to mirror those in his novel, our heroDown the rabbit hole….

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 I saw this on the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s Flickr stream. It’s a cool illustration of the formation of a planet. All that lightning and whatnot is, I must admit, somewhat inspirational as “sensawunda space opera” pictures go. Description from the photo page: Five million years might sound like a long time, but it’s a young age for a planet!   Hubble studied an exoplanet that’s grown up to five times the mass of Jupiter over a period of about 5 million years.   This illustration of the newly forming exoplanet PDS 70b shows how material may be fallingDown the rabbit hole….

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 A few more books I’ve read of late: ::  I can’t possibly keep up with the eternal flood of new books that is Star Wars publishing, but I do try to pick and choose the ones that sound good or come with good referrals. Last year, Lucasfilm announced a new project in their Star Wars publishing empire: a new series within the larger overall tale that focuses on life in our favorite galaxy far, far away two hundred years before the rise of the Sith, the fall of the Republic, and the arrival on the scene of a couple generations of Skywalkers.Down the rabbit hole….

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 It’s amazing what stories stay with us through the years. Some stick for obvious reasons, but some do not; some just stick all on their own. When I was in fourth grade, more than forty years ago, I watched the first broadcast of Carl Sagan’s science show Cosmos. In the fifth episode, entitled “Blues for a Red Planet”, Sagan discussed at length Mars and our human relationship with that planet, up to and including the Viking Lander. In the midst of that episode, while discussing the possibilities for life on Mars, Sagan related a story about a friend of his,Down the rabbit hole….

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That may be my favorite quote from the movie Apollo 13. Jim Lovell says it to his wife as they relax in their backyard, after all of their guests have gone home from their watch party for the Apollo 11 moon landing. Lovell’s amazement at the feat of landing on the moon isn’t just at the fact of the location, but that all it took to get there was a decade-plus (well, with a lot of stuff coming before) of applied human ingenuity. The human presence in space hasn’t quite gone according to the plan my six-year-old brain thought itDown the rabbit hole….