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Email: normsperling@gmail.com
Postal: 2625 Alcatraz Avenue #235, Berkeley, California 94705 USA.
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The Farsighted Astronomers
By Norman Sperling
who taught astronomy for 31 years at the University of California, Berkeley, and at other universities.
Written with John Westfall
(1938-2018), astronomer and Professor of Geography, San Francisco State University.
© 2023 Norman Sperling. All rights reserved. To be notified when the following versions are ready, email normsperling@gmail.com: Paperback PoD 978-0913399-30-9; hardback PoD 978-0913399-31-6; Ebook 978-0913399-32-3; audiobook 978-0913399-33-0.
Summary
In 1881, lady computers at Harvard discover a tiny comet and figure out that it will demolish St. Petersburg in 1908. They alert the observatory director there, who tells Tsar Alexander III, who gives them a blank check to save the capital of the Russian Empire.
Recruiting the most effective astronomers and engineers, they work out the details. Cannons and rockets wouldn’t work. They invent ways to concentrate heat on the comet, turning its ice into steam, shoving it aside.
They steam around the world to use rare opportunities. Lenin tries to screw up their project, to let Nature destroy the capital of oppression. The comet, diverted from St. Petersburg, clobbers Tunguska.
Genres
Steampunk, Hard-Science Fiction, Alternative History, Astronomy.
Additional appeals
Feminism, Science, Victoriana, Makers, Stamps, Slide Rules.
Steampunk fans will enjoy the many inventions and contraptions, from a giant infrared ray gun to a windbreak of flapping flags. History buffs will love the authentic and realistic events.
50,000 words + many illustrations.
Fiction: Almost all the characters were real. They all act in character, using the science and engineering of their time. Every device could have been built back then. No magic is invoked.
Table of Contents
The Personalities
0 Ground Zero
1 What Was That?
2 Going, Going, Gone
3 Not Precisely 3
4 Converging on St. Petersburg
5 The Krupp Works: Calling in the Big Guns
6 Jules Verne: Net Force
7 Konstantin Tsiolkovsky: Spaced Out
8 Alexander Ulyanov: Explosive Potential
9 Charles S. Peirce: When Push Comes to Shove
10 Steam Rising
11 To Send a Message
12 Eclipses and the Electric Telegraph
13 Sawai Pratap Singh
14 Reflected Success
15 Engineers Versus Deserts
16 WynnSingh, 1893
17 Security and Insecurity
18 Flagstaff, 1896
19 Welsbach’s Great Infrared Ray Gun
20 Getting Warmer
21 Gear in the Sand, Sand in the Gear
22 Their Final Shot
23 Afterwards
Appendix: The Telegraph Code
Fandom and Crowd-Sourcery
Pose yourselves! Steampunk costumers may inquire about illustrating characters and scenes. Especially:
Tella Wynn, the heroine, American woman, 30ish
Sawai Pratap Singh, Rajput Indian man, 30ish
Telegraph clerk/spy (minor role), namable, any age/race/gender plausible in 1880s-90s Russia.
Other illustrations craved: a Steampunked sliderule; and Welsbach’s Great Infrared Ray Gun (ch 19).
Other forms of illustration might work. Email me about your idea.
People whose submissions are accepted receive by-line credits, and their choice of 3 free paperbacks using their pictures, or 10 free Ebooks using their pictures.
The Farsighted Astronomers would make splendid videos, articles, podcasts, etc. Who would be the right producer or the right author? Describe what you propose and offer, in an email to normsperling@gmail.com .