Fantasist’s Scroll

So, I’ve gotten a lot of hits here looking for information about Sheridan Simon.

Sheridan Simon was a very well-known and respected Physics professor at Guilford College who was also quite enamored with science-fiction. In fact, he used to create logically plausable solar systems and planets for science-fiction authors, for a small fee. He advertised in the back of LOCUS magazine, the trade mag for the speculative fiction crowd. He designed Hoffman’s Quartet for me in 1992, but sadly passed away in 1994. He was truly an amazing man and had a real genius for translating hard physics into very readable language that even guys like me could understand.

What’s a bit more interesting, though, is that he wrote science-fiction, too. Now, for a long time his pen name was quite a mystery. In fact, the story went that even his wife didn’t know the name he wrote and published under. While that makes for a good story, I don’t know if it’s actually true or not. In any case, a lot of folks have been through this website looking for that pen name, since I mention Dr. Simon on occasion and do rather well in the search engines. In any case, I got a wild hair to track this down the other day and I have an answer, I think. If I’m reading the entry on LocusMag.com correctly, he published under the name “Yeaton Clifton“.

Of course, since all his work seems to have been published in now-defunct magazines, I doubt it will be very easy to find. At least you know who to look for now!
Good luck!

Or, putting a little more science into science-fiction.

Way back in the Old Days, before I was so weighed down with bills and obligations to creditors, I dreamed that I’d pay my way writing science-fiction.  As a result of that dream, I commissioned one Sheridan Simon to build a solar system for me.  Specifically, a system with four habitable worlds that might have developed independantly.  The result was far more than I could have hoped for and I made that available via this website some time ago, as Hoffman’s Quartet.

Now, however, it seems that Dr. Simon was  more spot on than I could have imagined, lo, those many years ago.  Just recently, National Geographic ran a news story talking about habitable planets circling so-called “hot Jupiters”, which are more properly “brown dwarfs”.  Back in 1992, when Sheridan Simon crafted this hypothetical world system for me, that’s precisely how he got me my requested four habitable worlds.
It’s been interesting over the years to see the several pseudo predictions he made in creating that extra-solar system for me come true.  Or, more accurately, becore more popular.  I wish he were still around to see it, but, sadly, Sheridan Simon passed away a number of years ago.
Maybe I’ll take up that system again and write a story or two, dedicated to Dr. Simon.  Just because that world system has become timely again, and, somehow, evokes an interesting flavor of nostalgia in me.  Ah, the good old days.  Everything old is new again.

Been a lot of talk about extrasolar planets lately…

In the past week, Space.com has reported about both a “giant Earth” and two Neptune-sized planets being found. So, there’s been a lot of talk about voyages to other planets and finding other Earths lately. I think we’ll eventually go, but it’ll be in generation ships and things on Earth will have to get really desperate first. After all, that would be a “one-way” trip.
That’s nice and all, but I think they’re missing the boat in some ways. I mean, why not inhabitable moons? According to Space.com, they could very well exist. In fact, I speculated on that quite some time ago and I even got a physist to back me up! A very nice man by the name of Sheridan Simon, who’s also done work for Lawrence Watt-Evans, did up a whole planetary system for me. I actually based it around Tau Ceti, which he said was a good choice, actually, since it’s very similar to our own star. Anyway, he did up a whole system for me. I ought to scan it and make it available on-line… Well, we’ll see about that, but it is an interesting line of thought for science-fiction, isn’t it?
Read the articles, think, then write! Go on!