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Category: DIY Space Station series

Lucy’s beautiful, verdant landscape captures the terraced hills with their little farms on either side, the meanders of the Sirius River through the center, and the torus’s perverse upward curve in the distance.
Thinking About Space Stations

Thinking About Space Stations

By Jan S. Gephardt I’ve been thinking about space stations, lately (sure, doesn’t everyone?). As a regular reader of science fiction, I encounter the fictional kind pretty often. And I’m always interested in news from Earth’s very own space station, the ISS. Technically we Earthlings have two, but it seems like China doesn’t want to share. I’m particularly interested in Jessica Watkins’ long-duration ISS assignment. She’ll stay in orbit for 6 months, adding valuable insight to our knowledge about the…

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BFFs Lynette M. Burrows and Jan S. Gephardt.
A Pair of BFFs Talk about Writing

A Pair of BFFs Talk about Writing

By Jan S. Gephardt and Lynette M. Burrows A note from Jan to her readers: My longtime friend Lynette M. Burrows and I belong to some of the same writers’ groups, and first met through the Kansas City Science Fiction & Fantasy Society (KaCSFFS). We bonded over (among other things) our interest in writing, and we’ve been friends literally for decades. We regularly check in with each other to “talk shop” or be each others’ cheerleaders. Earlier this summer, I…

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Cutaway views of a Stanford Torus and a Bernal Sphere from the mid-1970s.
Real and Fictional Space Stations

Real and Fictional Space Stations

By Jan S. Gephardt I love both real and fictional space stations. Anyone who’s read my books, or the blog posts I’ve devoted to this topic will probably roll their eyes and say, “No. Really?” Yeah, really. You got me. I love the whole idea, and I’m endlessly fascinated by the many visions of what a space station—or space habitat—could be. Why? I’ve enjoyed science fiction for decades. When I was a kid I thought of sf books as “the…

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The Veggie Project on the ISS
Growing Rana Station’s agriculture

Growing Rana Station’s agriculture

Rana Station‘s agriculture is a big part of my vision for the primary backdrop of my characters’ lives. If you’ve read my first novel, What’s Bred in the Bone, you’ve possibly gotten an inkling that very little arable soil inside the tori of my characters’ habitat space station home lies fallow. Even small spaces are nearly all devoted to growing food. I’ve blogged in the past about how humans will feed themselves and provide enough protein to live permanently in space. I’ve long been an interested follower…

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Welcome to Rana Station

Welcome to Rana Station

Where did Rana Station Come From? The first of the XK9 “Bones” Trilogy, What’s Bred in the Bone, is now available on Amazon as a paperback or in Kindle format. It explores ideas I’ve been developing for a long time. Its setting, Rana Station, is almost a character in its own right. That’s partially because of the culture, partially because of the communities, and partially because of the incessant need to grow food everywhere possible. Origins of Rana Station I chose the classic Stanford Torus as the basis for my design. But–like many sf authors–I…

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“Moving the needle” and author readings

“Moving the needle” and author readings

I just wrapped up a delightful weekend at ConQuesT 49 in Kansas City, MO. Yes, it’s my “home convention,” but it was a particularly good one, this year–and I’m not the only one I heard say that. The presentations by the amazing Elizabeth Leggett were worth the price of admission, all by themselves–Especially the big reveal of my friend Lynette M. Burrows’s cover for her soon-to-be-available new book, My Soul to Keep. It was part of Leggett’s presentation on the making of book covers. This is only a tiny glimpse of…

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So, I wrote this book . . . the saga continues.

So, I wrote this book . . . the saga continues.

Anyone who’s been reading this blog periodically may have stumbled onto a mention or three about the science fiction novel I’ve been working on. To be fair, it’s a science fiction universe I’ve been creating, the physical setting and milieu for a whole series of novels. Any blog posts I’ve written about future trends, such as last year’s series on automation, the DIY Space Station series, first responders, and/or police K-9s, MWDs, or service animals, all have been directly inspired by research aimed at making my fictional world seem more real. The book’s still not…

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Challenging assumptions in science fiction: 3. Worth their weight in diamonds

Challenging assumptions in science fiction: 3. Worth their weight in diamonds

This is the third in a series of posts that question some of the classic tropes in science fiction. This series was inspired by observations made while reading Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey. The book is a really wonderful space opera, first in The Expanse series, which later inspired the creation of the SyFy Channel show, The Expanse, in its third season as I write this. But it does seem to accept unexamined some of science fiction’s time-honored (and, in my mind, outmoded) tropes. In particular, my comments…

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A time of new challenges–and then some

A time of new challenges–and then some

Although my children now are grown and I am no longer either teaching or enrolled as a student, this time of year has always felt like a pivot-point for me. For most of my life, August has been the time when my family (Mom and Dad were both teachers) and I would shift from a summer of differently-structured time, to plunge back into the challenges of the new school year. Headed back to school: What should we prepare them for? My time at…

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DIY Space Station: Farmers in the sky

DIY Space Station: Farmers in the sky

As I’ve been designing a space-based habitat that is home to the characters in my “XK9” novels, one of the recurring questions is how will these people feed themselves? On the eve of the US Thanksgiving holiday, it seems an especially apt question. Space Farmer by Jay Wong: if we’re out there, we’ll have to eat. As you may have picked up from comments I’ve made in several of my previous “DIY Space Station” posts, I have some rather pointed…

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