In Wyoming

I am in Laramie, Wyoming, attending Launch Pad, which is an astronomy workshop for SF writers and other creative people, intended to give us sufficient astronomical knowledge so that our fiction won't embarrass the professionals.

Hosting is writer/astronomer Mike Brotherton, ably assisted by astronomers Jim Verley and Kevin R. Grazier, who is the science advisor to Battlestar Galactica and Eureka.

I am living in a dorm, eating in a cafeteria, and attending classes from morn till night. Since this is totally unlike my own college experience, I am clearly living out someone else's nostalgic fantasy. All I can think about is that if I were ever forced to share a space this small with another human being, either he or I would very shortly have gone out the window.

Kevin has blogged about the workshop, including a photo in which I am clearly doing a Jack Nicholson impersonation. Cecilia Tan is posting over on Jeff Vandemeer's blog, as is Rachel Swirsky, who is liveblogging the event. This leaves me with very little actual reporting to do here.

But y'know what? I was totally wrong about why slingshot maneuver work. Fortunately I just put them in my books, I didn't explain them. Now I can do both.