Hi. Very nice blog. I\’ve been reading your other entries all day long..lol….

I agree that anyone living in this day and age should know something about science and technology. So I took a quick inventory of what I know, and it turns out that I know a lot more than I realized. I’m also taking a fresh look at what it’ll take to write the SF stories that I have in mind. If all goes well, I believe I can pull them off with a bit of targeted research (not from an encyclopedia ). Since I am mainly interested in writing high adventure SF, not hard-science SF, I think your suggestion of visiting the local library will help to get me over my science writing fears.

Thanks again for your advice. I think the next story I write will be one of my SF gems that I have tucked away in my files.

(Keep in mind that a book published in Year X will have been written in Year X-1 or even X-2.)

Most of these general books have bibliographies. In fact, don’t bother with a book that doesn’t have a bibliography, is my own personal rule. Anyway, if what you’ve read intrigues you, find some of the title from the biblio. and read them.

If you want to write space adventure SF, make sure you know something about astronomy, for sure. I am thinking of a pseudo-SF Romance novel that came out some years back now, in which the author thought that there were 7 planets in our solar system and that “galaxy” meant “alien solar system.” She was furious when people ridiculed her, but she could have prevented the jokes if she’d only done a bit of research first.

Neither are accurate enough for real research, in other words. Consider the structure of the eye — there has been a lot of new research lately on how the human eye works, done at MIT among other places, in the hopes of providing computers with real vision. For the details of the physical structure of an eye, Encarta is probably accurate — that is, it can show you a dissection diagram, if it has one, that won’t have changed since the days of the Resurrection Men. BUT when it comes to how that eye transmits information, and what information it’s actually transmitting — well, for that you’re going to need a newer source, I bet.

(somewhere around here I have a copy of Encarta that came with The Machine, but I couldn’t find it to cross check.)

For another example, possums. We have a plague of possums in our neighborhood; they get into our garage among many other places and leave by-products. Wikipedia insists that possums go narcoleptic when scared. My personal objective observation shows that when scared, they hiss and run like hell. Many neighbors can provide corroboration.

Doubtless Britannica repeats the same misinformation. That doesn’t let Wiki off the hook.

Ditto the structure of the human eye, which also plays a primary role in a couple of chapters. I needed a basic overview, not a 300-page thesis of the entire field of optometry.

And btw… you call Wikipedia “infamous,” Kit… but I assume you’re aware of the recent study by Nature magazine which concluded that Wikipedia is pretty much just as accurate as Britannica?

What do I mean, “fourth hand”? Suppose you want to research California history in the 1890s. A primary source would be documents from California written in that period, ie, political documents, news reports, contemporary historical articles, and the like. A secondary source would be a book or article written by someone who’s read the primary sources and is using them to make a point, discover trends, and so on — ideally the point of view will be fair and accurate, but one never knows.

With tertiary sources, you have a book or popularized article written by someone who’s read and compiled a lot of secondary sources — you’re in Textbook Land, in other words. Encyclopedias take this pre-digested material and boil it down some more. What comes out is — oh never mind that metaphor . . . Online encyclopedias, like the infamous Wikipedia, are even more UNreliable.

With scientific topics, the problem’s even worse, obviously, as scientific information arrives in a flood daily and long-established theories fall fast and often.

If accuracy matters to you, and it should, go to the primary sources.

But yes on the rest–lately I have expanded my on-line resources more, and bookmarked them (impratical in the days of dial-up, a blessing now that we have the house wired.) We still have our splendid encyclopendia Britannica bought new 11 years ago, which i supplement with Google and with my own library.

I store offsite as well as on a Lexar.

Notes still tend to be scrawled mostly on post its (like school concerns etc) so I end up with a zillion of them yellow-snowing my desk and then have to laboriously type them in. I think I need one generation higher of ipaq than mine–but again, it costs money we don’t have. So I don’t even know what the current capabilities are.

It’s a 3-in-1 writing program, intended largely for academics (humanities-based academics, at that! As I recall the story, the originator was working on a doctorate in theology and got so frustrated by all the idiocies of the mass-market word processors out there that he said: ‘I could do better than that,’ and basically designed what he wanted), but it does–and does very well–some of the things mentioned in this post.

Its three components are: the word-processor itself, a reference program called Ibidem, and a textual database program called Orbis.

The wordprocessor has all the features of the mass-markets and then some, the most useful for me is the ability to format automatically (using what they call “frameworks”–basically an outline function) to match any of the major academic style manual requirements. It can change to and from, reformatting all text, notations, and bibliography on the fly. I originally got it for its ability to use non-standard characters (my writing includes a lot of Czech and other ‘extra character’ Latin alphabet languages), which it does more efficiently than mass-markets (including Greek and Hebrew, the latter running correctly right-to-left). It has gone Windows, but retains a host of command-line and keystroke functions that date back to its DOS days and still work. It also includes a rich dictionary and thesaurus (though I do use wordweb, too).

Ibidem will store the bibliographic information on any source I consult, so that I only ever type the information for a footnote once. The newest version added the ability to create a note-taking file linked to that information, so that when I refer to notes, and use a citation, the reference comes with it automatically (and these note-taking files can be indexed by Orbis, see below). Ibidem will keep track of all citations, reformat them if you change style sheets, and of course renumber them if you delete or add–and it supports three levels of footnotes (numbers, alpha, roman alpha, for example) simultaneously. Bibliographies are generated automatically and also change to match style demands if you change stylesheets.

Orbis will index any word you have ever written and make it available for Boolean searching, but it also searches by keyword if you have the discipline to keyword your notes as you type them in.

And the three parts are seamlessly integrated into the whole, so you don’t run into any compatibility problems among different programs.

For a fiction writer, these things may not be crucial, but it’s a great academic’s program anyway!

Now, onto the comments….

A CD or DVD-ROM dictionary, thesaurus, and encyclopedia.

A good computer dictionary/thesaurus program that I refuse to be without is WordWeb (http://wordweb.info/) . The dictionaries/thesaurusi I use when not on the computer are the electronic, handheld kind, but WordWeb has basically replaced them for me.

As for as a cheap, dependable laser printer is concerned, finding one that is cheap is difficult for me. Most I’ve seen cost around $100 or more. But I’ve recently lucked onto a good find of one around $60.

Concerning thumb drives and online storage–I love my thumb drive. Especially since if you try to work on a floppy and use that floppy between more than one computer, the odds are the floppy is going to end up messed up (and right when you most need the contrary thing, too But instead of signing up for online storage, I tend to email myself files periodically.