JADE CITY By Fonda Lee

19.5 Jade is power and the Clans have always wielded it. But the times are changing and the contest of who rules Janloon has come to a head. No Peak and The Mountain will go to war in a contest of wits, might and magic. The Kauls may seem like they are cautious and smart, but they will be forced to risk each other and their territories in a game of cat and mouse with their rivals. Bloody acts of retribution and counting coup whittles away the strength of the Clans in the battle. Whoever wins controls not only the jade but also the future of Janloon.

-June’s meeting will be on the 19th and the book of the month is City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty. -Cover art by Eric V. Hardenbrook. -Dear Crabby has some advice on dealing with our spoilerific world.

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NEW RELEASES May 2019

JOHN JOSEPH ADAMS, ed. • Wastelands: The New Apocalypse DAVID AFSHARIRAD, ED. • The Year’s Best Military & Adventure SF, Volume 5 KEVIN J. ANDERSON • Spine of the Dragon STEPHEN ARYAN • Magebane TERRY BROOKS • The Stiehl Assassin ERIC BROWN • The Disciples of Apollo and Other Stories ERIC BROWN • The Ice Garden and Other Stories ORSON SCOTT CARD & AARON JOHNSTON • The Hive SAMUEL R. DELANY • Letters from Amherst: Five Narrative Letters SARAH GAILEY • Magic for Liars MAX GLADSTONE • Empress of Forever MIRA GRANT • The Shadows of Spindrift House RICHARD KADREY • The Grand Dark JULIE KAGAWA • Soul of the Sword KATHARINE KERR • Sword of Fire GREG KEYES • Kingdoms of the Cursed CASSANDRA KHAW • Gods & Monsters: The Last Supper Before Ragnarok TIM LEBBON • Relics: The Edge SHARON LEE & STEVE MILLER • A Liaden Universe Constellation, Volume 4 YOON HA LEE • Hexarchate Stories KAREN LORD • Unraveling LAURIE J. MARKS • Air Logic SIMON MORDEN • Bright Morning Star KARL SCHROEDER • Stealing Worlds SHERWOOD SMITH • A Sword Named Truth RIVERS SOLOMON • The Deep FERRETT STEINMETZ • The Sol Majestic NEAL STEPHENSON • Fall; Or, Dodge in Hell MICHAEL SWANWICK • The Iron Dragon’s Mother CADWELL TURNBULL • The Lesson MARIA TURTSCHANINOFF • Maresi Red Mantle MICHELLE WEST • War TYLER WHITESIDES • The Shattered Realm of Ardor Benn FRAN WILDE • The Fire Opal Mechanism SHEILA WILLIAMS, ED. • Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine: A Decade of Hugo & Nebula Award Winning Stories 2005-2015 JANE YOLEN & ADAM STEMPLE • The Last Tsar’s Dragons

Watch the Skies will be volunteering at the 5th SimCon. Saturday, May 18, 2019 at 10 AM – 5 PM Location: First Church of God Community Center 201 E Green St Mechanicsburg PA 17055 For more information go to www.thesimcon.com Or call the library at 717-766-0171

There’s still time to jump onboard for the In Harm’s Way Kickstarter, which aims to fund three books. In addition to the aforementioned Defending the Future Volume 8, eSpec also plans to publish Footprints in the Stars(Beyond the Cradle 2) and Devil Dancers, a collection of stories from Robert Waters. The kickstarter will run until May 19th and has already unlocked short stories for contributors from James Daniel Ross, Danielle Ackley-McPhail, Mike McPhail and Jagi Lamplighter. In Harm’s Way features stories from two WTS members and many familiar author names. Kickstarter— http://kck.st/2UJaPM5

DEAR CRABBY

Dear Crabby, Over the weekend a lot of us were amped up to finally get to see the completion of the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe story arc and then people lost their minds. Buffalo Bills running back LeSean McCoy tweeted a major spoiler after he saw the movie and was thoroughly trounced for the indiscretion with some people even calling for the NFL to suspend him for the act. Do you feel that's fair? Spoiled for the Endgame

Dear Spoiled, We live in an odd world where we coddle people, treat celebrities like gods, and protect people from themselves and natural consequences on one hand and then on the other we laud people for blaming others for their problems, condemn people in positions of fame or fortune for doing the same things they would do if they weren't famous and nobody would bat an eye at, and call to leave people in unfortunate situations of their own making to handle it themselves because we don't want to encourage handouts. Frankly, I long to see everyone treated the same. LeSean shouldn't be treated any differently because he's a celebrity and we have to start taking responsibility for ourselves and our actions. I personally went on an approximately month-long media blackout to avoid spoilers. I know not everyone can do that, but honestly if you have a life it's not nearly as hard as some people seem to think. No, LeSean should be treated like anyone else who did something so thoughtless. In China they beat a man who left the theater yelling spoilers loudly till he shut up. Nice and neat. Everyone treated the same and held responsible for the consequences of their actions. Ah, the good old days!

Fed up with foolishness, Crabby https://1079thelink.radio.com/blogs/matt-ramona/avengers-endgame-fan-hospitalized- crying-too-much-lesean-mccoy-spoiler-beat

· When you are an animator, you can ignore the fossil record. Gendy Tartakovsky creator of Samurai Jack, Dexter’s Laboratory and the Hotel Transylvania movies has new project called Primal where a caveman makes his way through a violent world filled with dinosaurs and other deadly predators. It definitely has a Samurai Jack feel to it, with a less stylistic presentation.

· The Mouse has started to swallow the green screen– Hulu is now controlled by Disney. Pundits believe that this will give Disney balance in terms of programming by allowing a streaming outlet for darker, less family friendly offerings such as would be available on Disney+. The agreement between Comcast and Disney means that in 2024, Disney will purchase the remaining shares of Hulu from Comcast and that right now, Disney has immediate control over the streaming service. This makes sense since Hulu already runs Marvel properties.

· Bond is down– Daniel Craig slipped during filming one of the final scenes on location in Jamaica for the 25th Bond film and hurt his ankle. Craig was airlifted to the U.S. for x-rays and the production has halted on the film. Bond 25 (still unnamed) will be directed for the first time by an American, Cary Fukunaga, known for his Netflix series, Maniac. Rami Malek, fresh off of his success in Bohemian Rhapsody and known for the starring role in Mr. Robot, will play the villain. The movie was expected to hit theaters in April 2020 and hopefully the incident won’t delay things.

· Apparently, the first season wasn’t enough to carry it, The Passage has been cancelled. This adaptation of Justin’s Cronin’s novel of the same name, while often hitting the mark with the characters, made deviations from the novel that were often difficult to justify. Fox pointed to the 2 million view deficit between the season premier and the season finale as grounds for dismissal.

· Christie’s will auction off the manual that got Buzz Aldrin to the moon. The Apollo 11 Lunar Module Timeline book gave step by step instructions for completing the historic mission that took both Aldrin and Armstrong to the moon, also contains various notes scribbled in by the astronauts.

· Game of Thrones is a phenomenon and one of the things that sets it aside from other shows is its amazing soundtrack by Ramin Djawadi. As the show nears its end, HBO has created a tour for performances of the music. The composer with conduct the New York and two California performances. Local fans can catch the concert in Philadelphia on September 12th. The concert will feature music from the Eight season as well as the previous ones. Concerts for the show were first put together in 2017 and featured a European as well as American tour. Tickets went on sale for performances on Monday, May 13th.

AVAILABLE SOON SCIENCY STUFF There are a number of things in our nature, that as humans, keep us out of trouble. When it comes to AIs all of their reactions are programmed by us. So, if we put them in situations where we want them to react similarly, we can perhaps emulate our responses to achieve the desired results. However, does it make sense to teach a machine to fear? Microsoft believes that emulating this reaction could actually make the software running self-driving cars safer. Human fight-or-flight response keeps us on the road and out of trouble with other drivers and potential obstacles. How do you do that though? Well, you start with the original. Researchers hooked up a several volunteers and ran them through driving simulations. They measured their pulse and the way that it changed in certain situations. From this, an algorithm was built to determine the areas in the course where there were problems. This was then applied to a self-driving program and run through the same course. What scientists found was a 25% decrease in the number of potential crashes versus an unaltered program. They also ran a separate test where a different algorithm was built based around merely the proximity of objects. While this one works, it doesn’t provide the depth of responses the original does. This is obviously just the beginning of things, since the next step would to be to build a lexicon of reasons to apply to this algorithm and then run things on numerous different courses. At the heart of things though, are we teaching our AIs our caution, our fear? At what point does a reaction become an overreaction for an AI? Human accidents occur because we’ve reacted to one danger and then put ourselves in the way of someone else—a deer in the road causes you to veer into another lane and an oncoming driver hits you. It may be impossible to consider all possible outcomes, but having said that, a machine will do a much better job of accessing all of the ones that we give it. One of the sidebars to this, is the fact that developing programs that react to situations in a more human way could even improve your experience when you take a robo-uber. There are several ways that a self-driving car can move in a safe fashion that we as a passenger could find uncomfortable or even make us carsick. However, since we are approximating the way a human would drive the car, these suddenly become much more unlikely. Something else recently came up about self-driving cars—they can actually help stop traffic jams. The beginning of a jam lies in how drivers apply their brakes. Everyone reacts slightly more than the person in front of them and suddenly a large wave propagates down through a long chain of traffic eventually bringing the tail end to a halt. But a self-driven car doesn’t overreact. It has the ability to brake exactly the same amount as the car ahead of it to avoid a collision. Researchers found that adding just one automated for every fourteen in a simulation could double the speed of cars passing through an intersection. The self- driving cars created more of a buffer between themselves and the other drivers meaning the human drivers had to brake less often. Researchers pointed out that the results of this study can also be used for current adaptive cruise control systems.

AVAILABLE IN NOW THROUGH THE GATE : STAGATE SG1’S VILLAINS

It’s very obvious from the movie onward, that the universe is not a completely hospitable place. Humanity has been scattered among the stars by the ruling Goa’uld who see us as merely a convenient host. These parasitic creatures were originally carried by a host species called the Unas and found in the stargate system a way to conquer most of the galaxy. They latched on to human hosts because our bodies were easier to repair with their advanced technology allowing them to live much longer than a typical human. This, along with their technology, was the reason they eventually became worshipped as gods. SG1 faced many different aspects throughout the first eight seasons when the show was focused on the liberation of humans from the Goa’uld. It’s both a clever and interesting psychological ploy that the enemy looks just like you. Initially, the SG faced the problem of detecting the Goa’uld. Since the parasite is internal there were no immediate signs one was taken over. Goa’uld tried multiple times to infiltrate and establish control over the Earth Stargate. They also repeatedly underestimated the team’s determination and cleverness much their detriment. The Star Gate Command also has to deal with issue of the life of the host being held hostage by the Goa’uld. Comrades not only become enemies but also human shields for the invaders. This certainly adds an element of complexity that belies the idea that it’s cheaper to make your aliens indistinguishable from your other actors. The show starts with individual ruling Goa’uld, such as Apophis and then branches out to others known as system lords. With the help of rebel Goa’uld called the Tok’ra, the SGC makes inroads on the removal of Goa’uld from hosts, the detection of the parasites and even foments a rebellion among their slave race, the Jaffa. Stargate SG-1 does one thing that several other shows do not, it remembers its advances and technologies. The show builds upon what was previously discovered and the weapons that the SG teams bring to bear, and the eventual creation of their own starships is based on acquired technology. It’s a real pleasure to watch the development of the human future as it assimilates the knowledge that will give them not only star flight but also eventually control over the finer operations of the Stargates themselves. Along the way fighting against the Goa’uld, the SGC finds plenty of other inimical lifeforms, makes mistakes and triumphs in first contact situations and on the tramps across the worlds of the galaxy looking for what humanity needs to survive the next catastrophe. Stargate SG-1 is certainly not a fluffy walk in the park. It absolutely has its wonderful humorous moments too. But the one thing Stargate SG-1 definitely remains is positive. It believes that humanity is worth the struggle. There’s always going to be a conflict and they might not always win, but they are in it for the right reasons. You don’t always get that from a show in a way that’s done well enough that it doesn’t feel overstated or sappy. JYSciFiGuy

Tillyer’s News of the High Frontier

May 2019 Last month, we looked at plans for a Moon village and the building designs have an interesting similarity to the design the AI SpaceFactory used to win the NASA competition to 3D print space habitats. Like the Lunar Village, the winner, named Marsha, is tall and conical. AI SpaceFactory says they chose this particular orientation because not only does it mean that a large flat surface is no longer required initially, but also the design is optimized to deal with structural stresses and internal atmospheric pressure. In this case, the design is printed by a arm attached to a rover laying down concentric double layers of material. Various windows, airlocks and a skylight at left as openings and then inserted with material printed around them to provide an airtight seal. In the contest, only the exterior shell of the habitat was printed. The company imagines that the interior will contain labs, living area and even a garden. Exterior airlocks will provide access to vehicles and suits for exploration will attach directly to the exterior of the habitat with the explorers crawling into them and then detaching. The material used for printing is a mixture of basalt fiber, which could be extracted from Martian rocks and bioplastic, which would come from plants grown on Mars. So, setting up a garden in Marsha does more than just feed us. The competition is broken up into three ten-hour segments of build time with examination by the judges. Habitats were built to one third scale and the printers must be primarily automated requiring minimal human interaction. AI SpaceFactory just finished the habitat with seconds to spare. When team AI SpaceFactory attempted to install the skylight, it fell through. Since they were out of time, they were unable to repair it. However, the strength of their design was evident in test where a front-end loader pressed down with its bucket on the top of the Marsha habitat. After the judging, AI SpaceFactory was awarded $500k for their work. They then packed up the remains of the habitat to ship back to their New York Base. The material of Marsha is designed to be recycled and re-printable. AI SpaceFactory plans to use the same material to print an Earth habitat they are calling Tera as display model. Tera should be available for viewing this month. It looks to have the same egg-shaped design as Marsha but with perhaps more windows. Tera will also display the interior printed sections, stairs and partitions left out of the contest print. Find out more here—https://www.aispacefactory.com