Rocket Science for the Rest of Us

Please pardon me as I take a small detour into the religious realm.  I'm not asking you to believe as I do, and I won't entertain a religious argument in the comments section.  However, this was too lovely a coincidence, and I want to share it.

Most of you know I'm Catholic  (C'mon--I write about nuns in space!), and this year, I agreed to teach 4th grade religious education.  (God help the children!)  Last weekend, we read this psalm:

Praise the LORD from the heavens;

praise him in the heights.

Praise him, all you his angels;

give praise, all you his hosts. 

Praise him, sun and moon;

praise him, all shining stars.

Praise him, highest heavens,

you waters above the heavens.

Let them all praise the LORD’s name;

for he commanded and they were created

I tried to explain to the kids how all creation praises God, even if not in voices--the stars burn and the birds sing.  This led to praising God in our actions by living according to His will.  However, on the 27th, Space.com printed an article about the sounds of the magnetosphere, and how they sound like birds:



So, it seems in its own way, even the magnetosphere sings praises to God.

This has given me a great idea for a short Rescue Sisters story.  Three of my favorite characters are Sister Rita, an Earth-born woman who joins the Sisters, and Sisters Thomas and Ann, who were born in space.  Ann is a very literal person.  Rita's parents send her a recordingof the birds around her their home, and she listens to them when she's homesick.  Ann will comment that they sound "off."  She'll start listening to the recording, then tweaking it, then analyzing it...  She'll insist it's not from Earth, but it's not until one of the other sisters sees her equations that she realizes Sister Ann thinks it's the magnetosphere of a planet. 

Hope you don't mind, but I'm pretty excited about this:

Just got the cool news from Jan Verhoeff that Infinite Space, Infinite God II made the ACE Best Seller of the Month! Their award is based on reader reaction to the nominations, so I'm tickled since I didn't even know about it.

For those who don't know about the book, it's an anthology of 12 science fiction stories with Catholic characters or themes.  However, it's about exploring how faith helps someone become a hero rather than pushing the doctrine.  It's gotten a lot of terrific reviews from Catholics and non-Catholics, and is a great book for folks who like clean science fiction with a unique angle.

Why am I telling you about this on my commercial space blog?  The ISIG anthologies started because Rob and I had written some stories about the near-future of human space exploration.  If you check out the Rescue Sisters Universe page, you'll see the whole story about how we created a religious order dedicated to space search and rescue. One of those stories is in this anthology.



Congratulations to all the contributors, and a big thanks to the readers of ACE Writers!