X. Ho Yen's Author Newsletter (27 Jan 2025)
IN THIS ISSUE:
* Kilometerstones
* Convention Report
* Eulogy for sister Heide
* Std stuff - how you can help
I’ve written more substack articles since last newsletter. Check them out!
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NOTE: Having finally and happily abandoned vampiric “social media”, I’ll be sending newsletters slightly more often. But I’ll try to keep them somewhat entertaining. :) My substack articles and youtube channel replace social media, and contain fun and thoughtful material.
=== Kilometerstones ===
Bona fide journalism coverage!
As a result of MSD earning a Finalist laud in the CAL Book Awards 2024 (both novels now have 2 Finalist lauds), the Colorado Sun ran a Sunlit piece on me on 29 Dec 24, a day after my 28 Dec newsletter. :)
That led to public radio station KUNC contacting me for an 8-minute interview for their “In the NoCo” show. It went really well!
I’m absolutely thrilled by this coverage, and I’ll be pinching myself for a long time to come! These are permalinked on my Media page. Share and enjoy!
Speaking of my Media page, I continually improve my web site as I update it. If you haven’t visited in a while, please do! Go down the rabbit hole! :)
=== Convention Report ===
Colorado Springs Science Fiction Convention (COSine) 2025
I was on three panels at COSine this year, and I also enjoyed chatting with some con attendees and my fellow creatives (in no particular order) Lena Johnson, Ben Weilert, Jim Henderson, Tiffany Passmore, Caitrin Casey, Rachael Kuintzle, and Stephanie A. Gillis, plus Science Guest of Honor Dr. KaChun Yu (grad school buddy, also with Cantonese roots). Look them up! We’ll miss you, Stephanie! Bon voyage to Ohio!
The panels:
FRIDAY 24 January, 2025
5-6pm: Cripple Creek
War in Space
”Our panelists discuss what war in space might look like, both realistic as-of today, and potential based on the trajectory of technology.”
Wil McCarthy (M), Jim Henderson, X. Ho Yen, Chris Miskimon
This was a fun discussion. I started off with my framing of the topic, which was that
Another year with snow at COSine
Dead seXy! (Adding this hotel pic to see who’s reading. Way outside my comfort zone! Not me! Regrets already!)
cold war is war, and cold war has two purposes — to prevent hot war and to prepare for hot war — so tech research and recon are part and parcel, both of which involve a ton of activities. Then I stated my position that we have been at (cold) war in space since October 1957, when Sputnik I was launched. Ever since then, there have been many anti-satellite weapons programs, and a number of demonstration tests, including tests that actually destroyed satellites. I also mentioned the high ground problem (revealed starkly in “The Expanse”), and the space junk problem, wherein every destroyed satellite brings us closer to the space junk avalanche (Kessler syndrome), and those who have less to lose by initiating the Kessler avalanche might just do so. Various possibilities were discussed, and I was glad that the conversation was based on realism and not a romanticized and unrealistic pulp vision of hot war with pew pew guns and crewed space battleships. (I sincerely hope we cross the transhumanism barrier before we have those capabilities.)
FRIDAY 24 January, 2025
7-8pm: Cripple Creek
The Guild, Dr. Horrible, & Other Straight-to-Web Shows
”Not every show needs a $60 million budget per episode. Our panelists discuss shows that were made specifically to go to the web. Followed by a showing of some episodes of The Guild (Felicia Day’s straight-to-web series).”
David “Shady” Shadoin (M), X. Ho Yen, Amy L. Kessler, Mark Stallings
Unfortunately, we had no attendees to this panel. Perhaps the Friday evening/dinner time slot was a factor. So, we just shot the shite amongst ourselves about this topic, which was fun. Kudos to knowledgeable moderator Shady for spurring and guiding the conversation, which actually ended up much more interesting than I’d expected it to be. :)
SUNDAY 26 January, 2025
10-11am: Cripple Creek
The Case For/Against Mars
”There’s been a lot of talk about colonizing Mars, but is it remotely practical? Our panelists discuss the reasons and challenges.”
Dr. KaChun Yu (M), Hawkings Austin, David Gibbons (not the author), Jim Henderson, X. Ho Yen
We all expressed our support for space exploration. We as a species can’t ostrich and pretend that Earth is a safe little bubble and that not exploring space is an option (e.g. space weather, “asteroids are the universe’s way of asking ‘how’s that space program coming?’”, etc.). But the panelists ranged from “I want to go to Mars now” to “let’s develop the Moon while making informed forays to Mars” to my (and David’s) side of the range, which is that developing the Moon is the fastest, safest, least expensive way to get to Mars, both in terms of money and human life.
Mars may as well be another star system, the distance is so vast (given rocket propulsion). Everything that goes there to overcome the challenges and make going there worthwhile must be proven spaceworthy and reliable with no support. We could throw a lot of stuff at Mars and watch it go dark (the history of Mars exploration is exactly that — JPL makes it look easy). So, not only would going directly there be wasteful, it would not teach us any lessons about how to improve matters, and it leaves us behind China, et al. in lunar development. So my case for Mars is, sure, go if you want to, but via lunar development, which also gets you easier, faster access to everywhere else, including the asteroids and asteroid deflection, in addition to proving out the technologies required to work on Mars with no backup support from Earth.
Direct to Mars, even if it works, then leaves you with nothing to show for it in terms of reach into the solar system, which is nothing compared to having infrastructure and production capability on the Moon. But most likely direct to Mars efforts will fail miserably and without revealing why on any iterative time frame that matters.
All the panelists were intelligent and civil, even if we disagreed on some points, so all in all these were great fun.
I even had two attendees come up and grab my info postcard afterward (once at each of the two attended panels), so I guess I gave a good account of myself in their eyes. Yay! :) Saturday would have been better for public visibility, though.
Side note: I predicted in December that the new administration in Washington would kill the rest of our lunar program in order to funnel money to SpaceX (quid pro quo tax money funneling corruption), which would put us behind the rest of the world in terms of military strategic capability, economic capability, and education/inspiration. Guess what?
https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/4992934-elon-musk-trump-space-policy/
https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/5065804-trump-administration-space-decisions/
Note that they already killed VIPER prospector rover and they’re going to kill SLS and Orion, in order to divert that funding to SpaceX. It’s blatantly corrupt quid pro quo, and helps push the States into “third world” status, dangerously. From a purely practical standpoint, SpaceX will get a lot of tax money until their efforts kill enough fanboy volunteer astronauts and otherwise fail repeatedly, just like ‘Starship’ is years late and who knows how far overbudget, and our nation will have nothing to show for it. Note that SLS took longer and cost more than proposed, but everyone knows proposals are undershoots, and SLS worked the first time it was used. So did Orion. Starship has flown multiple times unsuccessfully, aside from booster return-to-pad. Who cares if your booster comes back when you fail to deliver a working payload?
Heide died in glorious battle with a universe harsher than her own.
May her memory move our universe toward hers.
=== Standard Stuff === How to Help ===
Why help? Since I subvert pop genre expectations instead of pandering to them, and because of my autism and other isolating factors, it’s extremely difficult and expensive for me to reach out into the world to find my audience. I don’t have a team helping me. Just writing newsletters like this is an exercise in self-esteem suspension of disbelief (swirly thing alert!).
I truly rely on word of mouth and grassroots support. In case anyone assumes this is some kind of gravy train side hustle, I’m still thousands of dollars in debt on this, and every convention adds more red to my ledger. I’m in this for the long haul, but I must keep reaching out and pushing. This is not “write it and they will come”, that’s the erotic fantasy romance section (which sells itself).
How to help: Reading my books, writing reviews (if you liked them :), and passing the word would be great. If not that, then one could post my one-page ads (see below, or on each book’s page on the web site) on appropriate billboards and tell people about my web site, https://XHoYenAuthor.com .
But here’s something very nice that anyone can do to help — request that “Minimum Safe Distance” be carried by your local library!
It’s usually as simple as going to your library system’s web site and searching for “suggest a purchase” or “submit a suggestion”. Usually, there’s a special page for that, and often it’s at the front of your dashboard.
They will want information like this:
Title: Minimum Safe Distance
Author: X. Ho Yen [please get the capitalization and spaces right, one after the period, another after ‘Ho’]
Publication year: 2022
Format: Book/Paperback
# of pages: 396
ISBN: 978-0-9766158-1-1
Publisher: Grand Unification Monastery
Audience: Adult
Language: English
Notes:
Good professional editorial reviews, including Kirkus:
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/x-ho-yen/minimum-safe-distance/
“…Ho Yen’s descriptions of advanced technologies should please fans of hard SF, but what really makes the book work are the questions it raises about what it means to be a person and a member of a species.” Our verdict: Get It
Carried in Arapahoe County Library System:
https://arapahoelibraries.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S115C2180350
and the Colorado State Library Book Club Resource (https://csl.catalog.aspencat.info/Union/Search?view=list&lookfor=minimum+safe+distance&searchIndex=Title&searchSource=local),
and Biblioboard (https://library.biblioboard.com/content/a3f3fc17-626b-428b-b6a2-5b5a9a44a494).
Author web site: https://XHoYenAuthor.com
This process usually takes only a few moments once you find the book suggestion/recommendation page. Thanks! Put a reminder in your calendar right now!
I haven’t been emphasizing “Custodians of the Future” as much as MSD, but only because MSD has more kudos (which is because I spent a lot more money on MSD, and that’s unsustainable). I’m hoping that interest in MSD will lead to interest in my other stuff.
Space Autistic Author
If you haven’t watched “Space Autistic Author”, Logs 1 to 3, yet, do check them out. They’re only a few minutes long, but they’re fun! Logs 2 and 3 demonstrate how SAA allows cross-promotion with other creatives without requiring anyone to vouch for anyone else’s work. Pass the word!
While you’re there, check out the other videos on my channel, especially the Galacticon ‘23 video (in 4 parts). That one’s longer, but it shows why my pen name is not cultural appropriation, and gives a fun overview of Mars exploration (since the late 1800s) with details of my participation in it, mostly on the Mars Global Surveyor mission.
https://XHoYenAuthor.com/media
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All purchase options can be found here: https://XHoYenAuthor.com/books. Both sites include links showing how several of the big vendors allow you to gift eBooks.
Thanks for sticking with me! I hope it’s at least mildly entertaining to watch this author second career thing come together.
Please do share my page with fellow realism-based sci fi fans, especially anyone who enjoys Corey’s The Expanse, Older’s Infomocracy, Card’s Speaker for the Dead, Mandel’s Station Eleven, Suarez’ Delta-V, or movies like “Arrival” and “Don’t Look Up”. I'm convinced my books would appeal to the same audience, because I wrote them for me and I'm in that audience.
Thanks for your support!
XHY
https://XHoYenAuthor.com