Sunday, December 07, 2003
Blogger's been offline for the better part of the day, which is why I'm only just now making this entry.
Yesterday, I did 1,072 words on the "Untitled Novella," and another 1,140 words today. That's brings the total to 8,715 words, coming up on a third of the probable total length, at 41 ms. pp. And I am cold, and I am tired, and my writerly morale is low.
Jennifer had a conversation with Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press last night, and it now seems likely that the hardback of Low Red Moon won't out until at least late January, and it might be early February. My apologies to those who preordered. Sometimes these things just happen. But I do promise that it will be a beautiful book and, what's more, the delay will make possible the inclusion of a new Nyarlathotep CD with the volume, based on the book. And this time I'm actually going to contribute a couple of songs, which I will sing. And that's kind of weird, as I haven't been anywhere near a recording studio since about 1998. Also, Jennifer and Bill talked about the novella, and about the subpress edition of Murder of Angels, which I assure you, will be out in a much, much timlier fashion than the subpress edition of Low Red Moon. Ryan Obermeyer will be illustrating again, which is, I think, very cool.
This morning, trying to wake up, I sat on the sofa reading an article in the new National Geographic about the Hubble Telescope. It opens with a three-page spread devoted to a single photograph of a 50,0000 light-year wide spiral galaxy. I sat there, bleary eyed, staring unexpectedly dumbfounded at the beauty of it. This is what men can do, I thought. This is why — if there is a why — we've evolved. And this, this incredible photograph, is only a baby step. And then I thought about all the stars that comprise this one galaxy in this one photograph. Literally, tens of billions of stars. And the odds are that the majority of those stars have planetary systems. If only the smallest percentage of these planetary systems include one or two bodies where life has arisen, then this one galaxy in this one photograph is teeming with life. And I suspect that, regarding life, conservative estimates will some day be proven wrong. Given certain conditions (which we are only just beginning to understand), the origin of life is inevitable. How many alien Hubbles drift around the planets of the billions of stars in the photograph? How many have taken photos of the Milky Way? How many trillions of eyes from this one galaxy might be looking out at us, debating our existence? Staring at the photograph, I know this is a close as I come to religious experience.
But I think it's close enough.
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