raymund

I'm a speculative fiction author whose middle American upbringing is a launchpad for journeys to the ends of the universe. My most popular works are military science fiction series The Confederated Worlds (novels Take the Shilling, Operation Iago, and A Bodyguard of Lies) and the Stone Chalmers series of science fiction espionage adventures (novels The Progress of Mankind, The Greater Glory of God, To All High Emprise Consecrated, and In Public Convocation Assembled). I have over ten other published book-length works and more than forty published short stories. My short fiction has appeared in Analog, Odyssey, Boundary Shock Quarterly, and the anthology Surviving Tomorrow, and has earned honorable mentions and a semi-finalist award in the Writers of the Future contest. My works are available worldwide in ebook, trade paperback, and audiobook editions. After circling the world by age five, I grew up in the Ozark Mountains of southwest Missouri. I earned a B.A. and a Ph.D., both in biochemistry, from Rice University. Though I've been out of the lab for decades, hundreds of papers cite my graduate research. In addition to my writing career, I've worked in patent law, won a national quiz bowl championship, am a husband and father, and agree with Robert Heinlein that specialization is for insects. I live in Houston with his wife, son, and daughter. In case you're wondering, my last name has one syllable and is pronounced “eye-sh.”

Two new books

I’m pleased to tell you about two new books I have coming out this summer from CV-2 Books. Coming July 17, 2014 OPERATION IAGO On July 17, 2014, return to the Confederated Worlds in the thrilling sequel to Take the Shilling The Confederated Worlds lost the war. Can Lt. Tomas Neumann win the peace? By […]

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The Fermi Paradox and the Drake Equation – From the Cusp, to Intelligence (f_i, part 2)

In our last post, where speculations about the Fermi Paradox moved from astrophysics to the life sciences, we looked at some of the many ways life could be prevented from giving rise to a pre-intelligent species–say, an animal like Proconsul, the earliest known ape, living about 25 million years ago. In doing so, we knocked

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Ebook Sale, Over 50% Off!

As I mentioned previously, now through November 11, every ebook edition of all my stories and novels are on sale at over 50% off list price. That’s right, you can buy a novel for $2.99 or a short story for less than a dollar, from most major ebook retailers in countries around the world, including

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The Universe Doesn’t Care

I had a marvelous image: a synthetic planet in the Kuiper Belt–deep deep space, far beyond the orbit of Neptune–made solely from water. We let buoyant fusion reactors drift in its depths, fusing deuterium extracted from all that water to provide the light and heat needed to keep the planet liquid. (All that water makes

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Skunk Works Nuclear Fusion

Charles Chase of Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works (the folks who designed the U-2 and SR-71 reconnaisance planes and the F-22 Raptor, among other aircraft) recently gave a talk suggesting his group’s work could lead to commercially available nuclear fusion reactors within 15 years. Here are some quick thoughts: He’s talking about deuterium-tritium fusion. Deuterium is

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The Fermi Paradox and the Drake Equation – From the Origin of Life to the Cusp of Intelligence (f_i, part 1)

So far in our speculations about the Fermi Paradox, uncertainty in calculating the Drake Equation has led us to a broad range, with N = [0.84-16.03] * f_i * f_c * L. Despite the uncertainty, we concluded that relatively high values of f_i (the fraction of life-bearing worlds that give rise to intelligence), f_c (the

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