Writing a hard-sf story is not easy. I should know – I tried it once.
After careful study, I ripped not one but two ideas from that week’s top science stories and combined them for extra unpitying induracy. For a little dazzle, I structured the whole thing around an allusion to a canonical story. Then one of the two science stories at the core of the endeavour promptly fell apart.
But here it is anyway:
As the arsenic-based lifeform’s computer printed out the nine-billionth name of god, it adjusted its telescope to observe the other end of the optical spectrum and, overhead, without any fuss, the small red stars were going on.
*Actually 2 December 2010. Then this happened.
2/12/2010
Mark Bould 