Sense of Adventure

I love this kind of stuff: in 1999, a 16-year old kid named Tyler Lyson found a fossilized hadrosaur of the kind called Edmontosaurus in Hell Creek, North Dakota. (How great a name is Hell Creek, anyway?)

To start with, you go, Tyler! But it gets better. Turns out the fossil includes not just bones but what scientists somewhat creepily call its skin envelope. Which in turn means science can derive a pretty good idea of the actual size of its hindquarters and tail.

In the past they’ve had to “[infer] from skeleton structure,” which seems to be academic-speak for, “make a scientific wild-ass guess.”

It turns out that Big Eddie’s scientific name should probably be something like E. steatopygous, or whatever the appropriate word-ending would be - “steatopygous” being a fancy way of saying fat-assed.

Turns out this duckbill had a big ol’ butt. What is additionally incredibly cool is that one of the researchers “has now reconstructed its gait and bio-mechanics, concluding that it had a top speed of about 28mph (45km/h), making it swifter than one of its most fearsome predators, Tyrannosaurus rex.”

Ahem.

(more…)

And I’d pay to see it!

No, not this video of a computer-simulated race. Who cares about that?

What I’d pay to see is a video of a T. rex actually running down and devouring an overpaid, has-been Brit soccer star. And I’d like the screen to then switch to his wife, Ubiquitous Spice or whatever the hell her name is, sitting in the stands watching and showing no more emotion than she did when hubby finally scored a goal for American “major league” soccer. Is that so much to ask, in this age of CGI?

Interestingly, the Telegraph article I got that from claims a top speed of 18 mph for the Big T, seven miles an hour less than claimed by the piece that so evoked my ire a couple of months ago. But whereas the Times Online sniffishly dismissed T. rex as a “slow, clumsy beast” for running 25 mph, the Telegraph calls it “no slouch” for doing 18.

Go figure.

(I’m tickled by the subject line because it sounds like the title of an anime. OK, that’s probably just me. Again.)

The Dinosaur Lords has gone on the back burner - also again, sigh - as I strive heroically to wrap up Annja’s latest adventure so I can get started on the new one. This flu thing is less than fun, although it finally seems to be receding. At least last night I didn’t wake up unable to breathe.

None of which prevented an epiphany about DinoLords hitting me whilst I was in the bathtub just now. An environment in which I’m historically at-risk for such things…

Anyway, I was struck like a temple gong just now (and I mean just now: I’m still damp, with a towel over my head) with the right and true way to sum up the novel, and the cycle of which it’s part:

The Renaissance. With dinosaurs.

There you have it.

(more…)

Yes, dinosaurs. As in, I make toy dinosaurs fight.

How can you possibly resist?

If you should happen to find yourself at NASFiC/Archon on Thursday afternoon, August 2, at 4:00 PM, clearly you can’t.

I’ll be reading from my finally-nearing-completion-dammit high fantasy epic novel The Dinosaur Lords. The excerpts I read at the Albuquerque Science Fiction Society meeting last month got a pretty rockin’ reception from the audience. Of course, you could probably read from the phone book white pages and get a good reaction if you accompany it by having a molded-plastic Allosaurus bite a model Corythosaurus on the neck.

(Friendly tip: if you write to tell me Allosaurs weren’t, so far as we know, contemporary with Corythosaurs, I shall mock you. They are on my world, buddy boy. As I’m at pains to tell my audiences right off, it ain’t Earth. Please feel free to go back and review the definition for “high fantasy” if you need a refresher, here.)

So anyway, of course I have to schlep a pack of the things in my luggage to St. Louis. This will complicate my keeping my checked bag under the airline’s 50-pound limit. One is tempted to stuff ‘em in the backpack. One can, however, too readily imagine the grotesque melodrama that would educe from “security” screeners. That’s enough of a nightmare already, thank you kindly.

Oh - just struck me: I’ve actually made to-scale plasticine dudes, weapons, and even a howdah to help me visualize my action scenes. I’m sure the bitty figures would not survive the trip, so I thought about just taking a block of modeling clay and making them up when I get to the hotel.

Then I thought again. That’d go well, given the most recent phony terror scare. So, sadly, the fans’ll have to settle for dinosaurs sans riders.

Anyway … Dinosaur Lords is a smokin’-hot yarn, even without the visual aids. On the other hand, if you’ve never seen a middle-aged 230-pound guy with a ponytail thrash around onstage making model dinosaurs attack each other while making growling noises - and very, very few have - it’s not to be missed.

Really.

And if you have to miss it, there’ll be another performance at Bubonicon in August. Even if you have caught a prior reading, I should be reading different excerpts. And there’s no telling what’ll happen when I get rolling with the ’saurs!

And of course, Friday the 3rd is my birthday. Just to drop an unsubtle hint like a brick, there.

Hope to see you soon. The cons really will be fun. Both of ‘em. And so will my readings.

OK, last night I seriously came out (no, not that way), unveiling the big project I’ve been working on the last several years: a high fantasy novel called The Dinosaur Lords.

Remember that name. You will come to know it well.

I read a couple of chapters to the Albuquerque Science Fiction Society, to a gratifyingly enthusiastic response. (The able assistance of the museum-replica dino toys I brought, with additional sound effects by yours truly, helped a lot.) The book’s half done; I’m rockin’; and rollin’ on it; it’ll be great.

Expect to see lots more about it here and on my Forum in weeks to come.

Anyway, I was gonna go on about the reading - thanks so much to Craig and Steve and Kathy and Roslee and the rest for being a wonderful audience and supportive friends, and a particular shout out to Kevin for the suggestion about executions - heh, heh - but then this intervened.

According to the UK’s Times Online, scientists at the Royal Veterinary College, University of London, assure us that Tyrannosaurus rex was “A slow, clumsy beast.”

Really?

(Time out. Note: when I write something like that, please envision me doing the Mr. Spock, “You’re not so freaking bright, are you, Dr. McCoy?” eyebrow raise. I practiced for hours in front of a mirror as a kid to perfect it. You might as well get the visual.)

Like so much of what’s called “debunking” today, the article’s assertions don’t seem to make much actual sense.

T. rex is alleged to be slow because it maxed out, at least in the study, at 25 mph. To prove its slowness, they compared Rexy to a cheetah - world’s fastest predator - and a marlin. That’s, yes, a fish.

How does that differ from saying the T. rex couldn’t have been an effective predator because it couldn’t swim fast and stay submerged for long periods of time . . . like a shark? Or for that matter, that the shark can’t be an efficient predator because it can neither move nor breathe on land?

According to Infoplease.com, a lion can charge at 50 mph, twice as fast. If T. rex maxed out at 25, it is slow . . . relatively. Yet an elephant also charges at 25 mph. So how slow is that really?

Also: we are assured Rex was not agile because “it would have been hampered by its long tail.” Then later we are told the dinosaur “would have been front-heavy.” Do those two things add up? Doesn’t the long tail counterbalance the heavy front? If it doesn’t, how much could it hamper Rexy?

“The findings were reached after researchers used computer modelling and biomechanical calculations to work out the dinosaur’s speed, agility and weight.”

Ah. We all know if it’s shown on a computer, it must be true, right? We know from first person-shooters, for example, that if you shoot someone with a normal small arm, a rifle or a shotgun, they either fly twenty feet through the air (”rag-doll physics”) or disintegrate in a shower of bloody gibs (Doom.) So that must be how it works in the real world, too . . . right?

Apparently, you can always get headlines - which can readily translate by not very arcane processes into increased funding - by dissing the Big T.

The study’s assertions may be true; I don’t deny that. What does the study show, at least as represented through the article, which would lead a rational person to buy it? Keeping in mind the scientists can be presumed to have used their most compelling case to cadge free pub, they showed nothing that impressed this one.

A computer game isn’t science. A computer “simulation” isn’t necessarily a simulation of anything real. And “scientists say” has the same rational weight as “witch doctors say.” Assertion is not science. Neither is appeal to authority.

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Subject line: Mott the Hoople reference, ladies and gentleman. Yes, I am obsessed with referencing late 1960s-early 1970s rock songs. Thank you for noticing.