Thomas-Peters

I once held a moon rock. It was encased in metal, glass and vacuum, but still....

A moon rock.

I was a senior in High School, at the time. I was lecturing and writing shows for the city's Planetarium, and I was very active in the local Astronomy Club, which was affiliated with the Planetarium. The Planetarium Director also was the head of special science programming for the local schools, and he asked for volunteers to help set up a display being brought in by NASA outreach.

Being the space geek I was (and still am), I jumped at the chance to lug big padded boxes up multiple flights of stairs. And lug them down. And lug them up to another school's auditorium. For a whole week.

I loved every minute!

The NASA outreach coordinator, and chief speaker, was a great guy. Very knowledgeable, friendly, appreciative of our zeal.

The rock came in a heavy metal and glass enclosure. The glass was thick, almost looking armored. The container was several times as heavy as the small rock by itself.

The rock itself was held in the middle of the container by two rods that touched it at its top point and bottom. It looked like basalt-gray and slightly buff, and intricately pebbled. It was all sharp angles. Although its texture was rough, it sparkled, as all those microscopic angles, never softened by a single drop of water or zephyr of air, caught the light.

I stared at it from mere inches away, my breath fogged the thick glass.

The  rock seemed like an old friend by the end of the week, when it was hidden away once again in its padded, padlocked black box. White stenciled letters on the side gave no hint that the box contained a tiny bit of another world, carefully collected from the place it had laid for a billion years.

Somewhere in the world, there exists a photograph of me, in an Apollo pressure suit, idiotic grin clearly visible through the thick bubble helmet, holding a moon rock.

I wish I still had my copy.

Earlier this week my friend, consumate artist, and Force of Nature Bryan Gibson died. Bryan was a fellow Traveller artist, back in the '80's, part of a brotherhood including Rob Caswell and myself, who tried to bring consistency to the illustrations found in the game. More than that, Bryan was a HUGE, boisterous  and enthusiastic soul, brimming with ideas. I remember as some of my very best art memories, sitting late into the night at cafes at Gencon,busily sketching with Rob and Bryan, talking, challenging each other and trading off sketchbooks.

He defined the visual essence of many of the Traveller alien races-the Droyne, especially. His tech designs were unique and well-thought-out, and almost always triggered an urge to go PLAY the game we spent so much time thinking about. He took the rather bewildering concpt of Traveller's Powered Armor suits-Battledress- and gave it a functional, elegant but utilitarian visual design which instantly defined it, and much of the higher tech military visual design.

I've heard, and can well believe, he was the game creator, Marc Miller's favorite character artist. I can well believe that. Bryan had an uncanny ability to define a unique, interesting, and ALIVE character with just a few pencil strokes. He was fast, too. He'd have a rough finished usually before I could wrap my head around the concept of what I was supposed to be drawing.

On top of all his skills, he was also a huge, friendly, funny and enthusiastic soul. And that is what I will probably miss the most.

So farewell, Bryan. I will strive to take some of your spirit, and artistic insight, forward.
-Tom



This past weekend was the 34th Capricon in the Chicago area- a big science fiction convention which encompasses gaming, anime, film, filk, and SF literature. I was this year's Artist Guest of Honor, and the convention was incredibly fun and amazing. I'll post soon with some stories about the Con.

I just spent the fourth of July weekend in Minneapolis, Minnesota, attending CONvergence, and I have to say, of the many SF conventions I've been to, this one gets things just about perfect. It's only problems stem almost exclusively from the fact that that its attendance threatens to overwhelm the wonderful facilities they've worked with so well for so long.

Last week I sat down via Skype with my old buddy Rob Caswell (aka Arcas) and Paul Bussey of 3D Art Direct magazine to talk about Science fiction spacecraft design. Its a subject Arcas and I come back to often in our far-ranging talks. With Paul added into the mix, it was a fun discussion that covered many aspects of the constraints and compromises involved in visual design, and also the technical and physical realities of  making a realistic looking design. We could have probably gone on for another two hours easily on the subject. Perhaps we can revisit the topic on another podcast sometime. Paul did a great job editing the discussion, I hope you find it entertaining. You can get it here: 3dartdirect.com/3dad-007-sci-f…
On a sadder note, we learned in September of the sudden death of Andrew Boulton, a talented and highly motivated artist who was very active in the TRAVELLER community. One of Andrew's projects was a yearly calendar of Traveller art by an assortment of pro and fan artists, the proceeds of which going to a different charity every year. I was fortunate enough to have been involved in Andrew's calendar project for several years, and was working on next year's submission when I heard the news of his death. When the cadre of artists Andrew had assembled for the 2013 effort began talking over e-mail, we quickly decided that, to honor Andrew, we really wanted to continue to put out the calendar. The result has been overwhelming.The 2013 Traveller calendar is well into its finishing stages and promises to be a fitting tribute to Andrew's memory, with more artists than ever being represented.
Traveller artists have been gathering together here on DeviantArt recently. #TheTravellerGroup thetravellergroup.deviantart.c… formed here in the last month. Take some time to take a look at the group, there's some great work showing up over there.Finally, here are the calendar pieces for 2013 that have been posted here so far on DeviantArt. I'll post the url where you'll be able to buy the calendar here when it becomes available.

This past weekend, I took a much needed break. The Chicago Astronomical Society was hosting an all-weekend observing session in one of the most scenic places in the state, Starved Rock State Park. I dusted off my telescope, which has seen very little use since the neighbors installed their zillion watt "security" lights, collected my star charts, loaded everything into the car, set the ipod to the "Cosmos" soundtrack, and set off. After a beautiful drive through mostly farmland, I arrived and met up with my fellow astro-geeks.

There were some great telescopes  all ready there--among them a monster Dobsonian reflector with a 35" mirror! But there were scopes of every type; homebuilt reflectors, expensive apochromatic refractors, the stubby-barreled Schmitt-Cassegranians, like mine, big binoculars arrange on spidery counter-balancing systems, computer aimed, CCD equipped, or dirt-simple stuff Galileo would have immediately recognized. Some had big silver filters covering their muzzles, and were slowly tracking the westward course of the sun. All were standing in a large field,open to all directions to the sky.

The astronomers were as varied as their instruments. Most were middle-aged or a little past, most were guys, but their were some younger guys, and  some women of all ages. We all assembled in that field, listening to late afternoon crickets, waiting for twilight as we traded stories and talked about the stars.

As dusk set in, I started looking at the northern sky, trying to find Polaris.

The first constellations any stargazer learns are the northern ones, surrounding the pole star: The Big Dipper; Cassiopeia, the Queen of Ethiopia; Cephus the King; Draco the dragon; and the Little Dipper. There, at the end of the Dipper's long graceful handle, one of the brightest stars of the north: Polaris, the pole star.

It is coincidence that Earth's north pole points so directly at Polaris. During most of the time humans had been watching the stars, there was no star so convenient for navigation. When the Pyramids were being piled up into the dusty Egyptian air, the star Thuban had been pointed to by Earth's wobbling axis. Actually, a good bit more accurately than it now points at Polaris.

It was much easier to pick the north star out than it usually is, at my observing spots nearer to home. I found Polaris in the northern sky, as my dad would say, right where I left it, after a little searching. My father didn't have much use for astronomy, but he'd had considerable use for the stars, flying at night in the Second World War. In those days, long before GPS satellites, pilots used the sky not just for lift, but also for finding their way.

It seemed that, like celestial navigation, the importance and usefulness of the night sky had gradually diminished in his lifetime. The beauty of a clear night sky had slowly been replaced by the glare of strip malls, the sickly orange glow of interstate streetlights, and thickening layers of combustion exhausts over most inhabited regions of the United States. In order to get a view of the night without glare, it has become necessary to seek out ever dwindling pockets of relative dark. I'd traveled an hour and a half to get to Starved Rock.

The ease of finding Polaris was a harbinger of the night's treasures. I've grown so use to the milky gray that passes for night sky near my home, that the far from lightless sky of this park was a revelation. As dusk melted into night, stars that I have not seen in years became not just visible, but BRIGHT! The Milky Way began filling in early, and was soon clear and bright enough not only to see clearly, but to be able to pick out the dark lanes of the Coal Sack nebula with naked eye. It was a fond reunion with old friends; a sky I'd rarely glimpsed since my childhood stargazing days in West Virginia. I must admit almost ignoring all of the telescopes, entranced and absorbed by the great dark bowl above me, filled with stars. For years, I've had increasing trouble finding my way around the sky, so many of my old, reliable guide stars and patterns have disappeared in glare. This night, I could hop from one constellation to another, picking out colors in some of the more brilliant stars. We saw a couple of slow, arcing meteors, near Hercules, stragglers from this year's Persied meteor shower. I did catch a glimpse in someone's 'scope of the new comet visiting the inner solar system. It was beautifully framed in the eyepiece, next to a globular cluster. It was a night of wonders, and it reminded me why I'd started doing astronomy in the first place. Beautiful, etherial, and eternal, that sky was an instant cure to everyday concerns. It was a cool refreshing dip in cosmic perspective.

The sky is, as my father reminds me, still right where we left it. There, beyond the Mercury Vapor glow, the glare of parking lots, and the next-door neighbor's security floodlights, the stars still shine. Planets, star clusters, nebulae, and the thin wisps of stars that once were and will be again, are undimmed. Their light falls constantly upon our planet, ending its millennial journey drowned in the infinitely fainter, but much closer, glow from Wal-Mart down the street. But they're still there. We, in the western, industrialized parts of the planet have just cut ourselves off from their sight. For the sake of perceived convenience, or because we wish to display the aesthetics of our household yards, we have detached ourselves from the heavens. Our children can no longer glimpse the universe that used to hang in our skies at night, inviting them to tell stories about what they saw there.
Turn off the lights. The stars are still there.