What if a President committed an impeachable offense on TV from the South Lawn and no one in his party cared?

I worry we may be about to find out. https://t.co/P2ejR63xbg

— Orin Kerr (@OrinKerr) October 3, 2019

Inside "The Outside" By Ada Hoffman - A Review

The AI’s of Asher’s Polity and Banks’ Minds may run everything, but at least they don’t demand to be worshipped as actual gods. In Ada Hoffman’s “The Outside,” (https://www.amazon.com/Outside-Ada-Hoffmann-ebook/dp/B07H71QF2C) the quantum supercomputers humanity built became super-intelligent, seized control of the Galaxy and now rule humanity as literal Gods. The Gods provide humanity with advanced technology, protect it from alien enemies and rogue godlets, and apparently reap their actual souls upon death (!) (a feature sadly not explained). The world-building of “The Outside” was excellent. I wanted to read more about the Gods, the Angels, humans and aliens of Hoffman’s galaxy. What I had to read, however, was an uninteresting bildungsroman of the least-compelling main character I have dealt with in a while. Dr. Yasira Shien is a physicist, who was a child prodigy and a student of the brilliant but odd genius Ev Tallir. Shien helps put together a major applied engineering project drawn from her and Dr. TAllir’s work, since the enigmatic Tallir has disappeared. Unfortunately, the “Shien-Tallir Reactor” causes a tear in the space-time continuum, destroying the space station and killing hundreds of people. Shien is immediately sequestered by Angels, the cybernetic superhuman enforcers of Nemesis, the God of Vengeance. They reveal to her that there is a whole realm outside our space and time (the titular “Outside”), where there are angles that drive men mad and intelligences, cool and unsympathetic. Yes - Lovecraft was right and the real nature of the world is madness-inducing chaos. Also, her mentor Tallir is a heretic (an interesting word in this context) who has used advanced mathematics and outre science to contact the Outside and bring chunks of it into our spacetime, causing disasters like the destruction of Shien’s space station. She has contaminated Shien with heretical beliefs, which makes Shien “the most dangerous person in the galaxy” (an Angel actually says this to her!). The Angels want Shien to help them chase down Tallir and neutralize her. Shien is whisked off into intergalactic space where the Angels ask her to act as a mole, getting into Tallir’s confidences and bringing her down from the inside. This plan to infiltrate Tallir is important, because it comes at the 47% point in the book (I read this on kindle) and it is the first time Shien makes a decision! Up to this point she is simply swept along by events or directed by others into actions. Even worse, in my opinion Shien returns to this passivity and by the end of the book only makes two (2) more decisions - and frankly I’m not sure what the last decision even was. This huge problem with Shien as a character turns the last half of the book into a slog. There are some fascinating questions presented by the world of the Gods. Nemesis’ methods are as terrible as her name suggests, but from a purely utilitarian perspective are justified by the “greater good.” Ev Tallir goals seem to be very Randian - she is looking for fellow geniuses and the deaths of lesser persons are acceptable costs - but are driven by her twisted childhood; does this excuse her actions? Sadly, the book’s ability to explore any of these questions are hampered by Shien’s passivity. Shien is by turns outraged by the Gods cold-bloodedness, and Ev's carelessness, but she never seems to *do* anything about it. Two other issues leaped out at me. What exactly is Ev Tallir’s evil plan? To overthrow the Gods? To what end? Also, the ending is muddled and unclear. Shien foils the Angels’ evil plan to kill a large segment of the population of planet (to cauterize a massive incursion of the OUtside) by...taming the Outside’s malignancy and only driving a third of the population crazy? Is Shien troubled by her acceptance of the lesser of two evils? Not that she expresses clearly. Shien makes arrangements to send her love interest off to safety - but can’t follow through with it and love interest decides to stay with her. Once again, Shien simply fails to act and someone else takes the initiative. Hoffman’s writing style is clear and descriptive. Her world-building is fascinating. Sadly, her characters, especially her protagonist, are passive cardboard cut-outs that are swept along by the plot and react as required by the needs of the story. I look forward to reading her next book, if she can write more compelling characters than here.

My Short Story Collection is Out!

My first short story collection, published by Oloris Publishing, is out now in various ebook formats!

You can get it in kindle at Amazon or in various other formats at Oloris' own website. This collections assembles a number of short stories which I am very fond of, including my first real quasi-hit, "Security Question" and the long but fun "Handel's Duelist." I'd buy it if I were you - $6.00 US for hours of reading fun and stimulation. And, if you do buy it, please leave a review or feedback on the Amazon site!

Apollo Pictures on Flickr!

Thousands of high-res photos photos from the Project Apollo Moon Missions. https://t.co/76VoWWl7UA pic.twitter.com/WSwJottpGj

— La La La Logan (@logandecker) August 11, 2016

The Best Thing So Far of the Rio Olympics...

Not saying Phelps WILL become an intergalactic despot, I'm just saying we can't ignore the possibility pic.twitter.com/ojW1w9Hsd3

— Jay Busbee (@jaybusbee) August 8, 2016

EVERY DAY FICTION IS BACK!

One of my favorite markets to read and submit to is Every Day Fiction, a web zine of daily flash fiction of all genres and types.  In fact, the first story I had "go big" was on EDF, a flash piece called "Security Question."  The feedback they offer on submissions, even rejections, is very valuable, and the editors there are great to work with.  The readers are also engaged, and love to leave comments (good and bad), which is wonderful for a writer.

Sadly, EDF suffered some technical problems in 2015 and was been unable to accept new submissions for a while.

Happily, they just announced they've fixed the problem and are open for business again!  If you write flash fiction, make sure you are submitting to EDF.  Follow them on twitter as well at @EveryDayFiction.

If you like bite-sized reads, bookmark them and check it out every day.  You won't be sorry!

Welcome back, Every Day Fiction!

"Quick Shivers About BUGS" is Out!

My flash horror piece, "Myrapodia," is included in the "Quick Shivers About BUGS" anthology out today.

Check it out at Amazon!

2016 Women in Horror Flash Fiction Contest

Congratulations to my friend and very talented writer, Myriah Strozykowski, for her win!  She wrote an excellent flash piece called 'Staying,' and won the Mocha Memoirs Press flash fiction contest for 2016 Women in Horror!

Check out her piece when it gets published in their ezine!

SALISH SEA - Today's Microfiction

"This is going to be great!" Dylan enthused from the front of the canoe.

"Shush, man! Be quiet," Robert said.

The two friends were on a canoe on the Salish Sea, pursuing the idea they'd hit upon during their weed-filled weekend. They were going to solve the mystery of the solitary human feet that washed up on Vancouver's shore. “Over there!” Dylan pointed.

Robert squinted through the fog. A shimmering circle of light hung over the water, at waist height. “What is it?”

“I have no idea.” The two rowed until the bow was under the hovering circle. The friends stared in awe at the glowing hole in the air. Dylan reached out one hand while Robert looked down at his waterproof pouch, fumbling out his phone.

SHWOOMP – and then a plop.

Robert looked up, startled. Ripples at the side of the canoe showed where something had fallen overboard.

Dylan was gone.

“Dylan?” Robert whispered. He tried louder. “Dylan?!”

He crawled to the front of the canoe and stood. The circle glowed peacefully.

Robert tentatively reached out one hand and touched the circle.

It sprang closed, pulling Robert’s arm and then his whole body into it with a quick sucking SHWOOMP. The circle snapped shut, and Robert’s left foot, still in a sneaker, fell free and dropped into the water to bob for a second before it sank.

Good News & A Contest!

I'm running a contest! Right here and right now.

As you know, my short story "Restore Point" was published by online zine Liquid Imagination. (http://liquidimagination.silverpen.org/article/restore-point-roman-rozas-iii/)

I am happy to report that the story was also selected for the 2015 Write Well Anthology for excellence in the short story field!

You can see the anthology (ebook and print version) here at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/2015-Write-Well-Award-Taubold-ebook/dp/B014B2Z0SO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1455939310&sr=8-1&keywords=2015+write+well+anthology

As you can see, the anthology does not have any reviews as of today.  So I have decided to have a contest!

Post your name and why you would like to write a review in the comments, and I will randomly select two commentators from the group and send them a free Kindle version of the anthology - on one condition.

You must agree to read the whole anthology and write a review on the Amazon website.

Sound good?  Let me know in the comments!

THE NERD AWAKENS - SOME THOUGHTS ON STAR WARS: EPISODE 7

WARNING – SPOILERS FOR THE FORCE AWAKENS (AND EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, TOO, I GUESS)

            It’s difficult to talk about Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (TFA) without spoilers, so I’m just going to go ahead and speak freely.  If you haven’t seen the movie, stop reading now.

            Okay, did they leave?  Good. 

            I really liked it.  Even though, as I was watching it, I was thinking the whole time, I shouldn’t be liking this.  TFA is a combination of a rehash of A New Hope, with pure fan-service scenes thrown in.

            Look at the parallels: a droid with information vital to the Resistance/Rebellion is stuck on a desert, rescued by an orphan and helped off planet.  They have to look for a ride in a crazy multi-species cantina.

            Later, they need to conduct a daring raid on a planet-sized death machine – explicitly compared to the Death Stars! – and there’s a daring trench run by X-Wings to finally blow up the giant death machine.  Meanwhile, the orphan has gotten in touch with the Force, and uses it to defeat the bad guy.  Scene wipe to end!

            And, by the Force, the perpetual fan service!  The shock reveal of the “hunk of junk” Millennium Falcon, the dejarik table, the seeker drone Finn finds as he rifles through storage, the knowing reference to “twelve parsecs” – I smiled and laughed at all of it, but in the back of my mind I kept wondering why am I liking this?

            I think what people like – what I like – about TFA is the sense of wide-open possibility that exists.  With the prequels (putting their quality aside), we knew where it would all end up – Republic converted to Empire, Anakin in black armor and a respirator, the Jedi Order destroyed.  Now, we have no idea what’s happening.  Is Rey Luke Skywalker’s daughter? How can Finn use a lightsaber (which is traditionally limited to Force-sensitives)? Why did Kylo Ren leave the Order? Why are the “Knights of Ren” not Sith?  A sense that anything could happen in Episode 8 and 9 has a liberating feel, and people are buying into it way more than the movie itself might justify.

            Again, not that I didn’t like it.  I saw it twice!  I had a smile on my face the whole time it was on, from the text-crawl in the beginning to Luke Skywalker’s pregnant stare at the end.  I’m just not sure my enjoyment was of the movie itself, or of what it represents. 

            Star Wars is back.

TIME IS NOT ON YOUR SIDE

Historically, time-keeping has been a hassle for large empires on Earth.  Different seasons, different time zones – all kinds of hassle.  Now imagine an interstellar empire.  Heck, just imagine a culture that exists on two or more worlds!

            With artificial habitats and ships throughout the Solar System, the problem is simple.  Everybody is on Greenwich Mean Time, a day lasts 24 hours and 7 days is a week; a year is 365.25 of those days, regardless of how long it took your personal cylinder of metal to circle around the sun.  See you all at the pub.

            Interject a planet with an environment that the residents have to interact with, however, and differences immediately begin to add up.  Take Mars for example.  If the first colonists (let’s call them Muskies, like Greg Benford http://www.strangerviews.com/books/war-dogs-greg-bear-book-review/ ) land on Mars on January 1, 2040, they’ll make camp and begin a day that is, generally, 24 hours and 37 minutes long, or 41 minutes longer than Earth’s 23 hours and 56 minutes.  As the days goes by, the Muskies will fall farther and farther behind Earth.  In fact, they’ll wake up around February 4, and it will be in fact February 5 on Earth.  On March 9, it will be March 11 on Earth.  (NASA mission controllers for Mars probes have a fascinating system for dealing with the problem but it is not one usable in the long-term.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timekeeping_on_Mars).  Other celestial bodies generate even worse problems.

            Some science fiction writers have turned to a “metric” or SI solution of using the kilosecond (I just finished reading Paul MacAuley’s In the Mouth of the Whale, http://www.amazon.com/Mouth-Whale-Quiet-War/dp/0575100753/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1439907850&sr=8-1&keywords=In+the+Mouth+of+the+Whale and the characters use this scheme).  The second is a fixed, known period of time (roughly 9 billion vibrations of a cesium-133), and time-units based from there would be certain.  Under this definition, a day is 86.4 kiloseconds, and a month is 2.3 megaseconds, for comparison.

            A character living with such a system would say to his friend, “Do you remember that book I loaned you two megaseconds ago?”  “Grandma lived to be 2.5 gigaseconds (78 Earth years).”  Dates would be set by megaseconds from a fixed date: “Today is 1 kilosecond, and 1449 megaseconds After Moon Landing.”

Here’s the problem for the author and the reader: it’s hard!  When a character says, “X was two weeks ago,” you know exactly what they mean.  When they say something was a megasecond ago, you have to stop and do a quick calculation in your head.  It brings the narrative to a screeching halt.  It breaks up the flow of the dialogue or exposition, and may leave your less-than-hard-sf readers a little queasy.

On the other hand, a character living on an extrasolar planet, with a different rotational time and different length of the year, can’t simply write “July 5, 2042” on their checks.  That doesn’t even mean anything in the context of a world where the day is 28 hours and a year 36 of our months long.

            So which should it be, gentle readers?

WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE...

Good old H20 is essential to life (as we know it!).  Luckily, it also seems to be pretty common in our Solar System, at least in its solid form of ice.  Even liquid water may be more common than we once thought, with oceans on Europa, Enceladus and Ganymede.  (https://www.sciencenews.org/article/aurora-shift-confirms-ganymede%E2%80%99s-ocean)

So my pet peeve?  SF writers who have aliens traveling light-years across the galaxy to steal our water. (By "our" water, I mean the Earth's water.  I leave to the reader the exercise of determining whether humans, vis-a-vis aliens from another star, "own" the Moon's ice, or Saturn's rings).

Why take our water?  It's at the bottom of a gravity well and surrounded by angry primates with nuclear weapons and a self-destructive streak.

There are things that invaders might want: heavy elements, which tend to congregate in rocky inner worlds, biological products that are unique to Earth's biosphere, etc.  Or they may just want to eliminate potential future competitors (http://news.discovery.com/space/alien-life-exoplanets/space-invaders-unlikely-for-now-130214.htm).

Just don't use water as your crutch, writers.  Pick something unique!

"Restore Point" SF Short now on Issue 23 of Liquid Imagination!

Happy to report that my SF short story, "Restore Point," is up today as part of Liquid Imagination's Issue 23!


http://liquidimagination.silverpen.org/article/restore-point-roman-rozas-iii/


Go check it out!

Killing Godzilla

           Perhaps I shouldn’t be proud of this, but I spent some time tonight figuring out what kind of weapon you would need to kill Godzilla (or any other kaiju, I suppose).  I saw Garth Edwards' Godzilla last night and I rather liked it.  I liked it more than I liked Pacific Rim, but I’m not sure why.  I think it might be because I’ve never understood the idea of making giant robots to fight kaiju.  We already have excellent weapons to fight large animals – they are called guns.

            So I gave some thought to what kind of weapon it would take to bring down the King of the Monsters.  I started with some basic assumptions (maybe a lot of assumptions, but it’s fun!).

            First, I went with Popular Mechanics’ excellent article on Godzilla’s anatomy (http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/digital/fact-vs-fiction/the-impossible-anatomy-of-godzilla-16785535). They guess his mass at 160,000 metric tons.  An African Elephant can mass up to 7 tons, which makes Godzilla 23,428 times more massive than an African Elephant.

            In the old days, an elephant gun would be used to kill an elephant with one shot to the head.  Those old howitzers generated about 8,000 foot/pounds of force, or 10,847 joules of force.  That means a headshot on Godzilla would need 23K times more than that, or 255 million joules to kill the beast!

            The main gun on a M1 Abrams tank generates about 2,624,832 joules of energy, so that’s not enough.  However, the BLU-109 Air Force “bunker buster” bomb has a warhead containing 240kg of explosives.  That warhead can generate 984 million joules on detonation!  Get that in his head and Godzilla is going down.

            So, instead of giant robots just use an F-16 with a BLU-109 in guided (JDAM) configuration and go for the headshot.  Sorry, Godzilla – you’ve been pwned.

(Wikipedia, Google and Wolfram Alpha were essential to this thought experiment)

"Said the Spyder to the Fly..." Up at EveryDayFiction.com

The great people at www.EveryDayFiction.com publish a flash fiction piece every day, and today they put up mine!

Take a look and comment at  http://www.everydayfiction.com/said-the-spyder-to-the-fly-by-ramon-rozas-iii/

Thanks!

"RESOLUTIONS" for New Year's 2013!

            “Fifteen minutes until the ball drops!”  Langley was rushing around excitedly, handing out noisemakers and party hats.

              “Whoopee,” Mary said, waving one finger in the air.  She never lifted her eyes from her computer screen.

            “That’s not exactly the holiday spirit, Mary,” her friend Cal chided her.

            “Maybe because I’m working on New Year’s Eve, trying to get these images interpreted from the satellite,” Mary responded tartly.

            “You chose that,” Cal pointed out.  “It could wait until January 3.”

            Mary was horrified.  “The images are being taken now!  I couldn’t bear to wait that long.”

            “Neither could anyone else, apparently,” Cal said as he looked around the analysis room of the JHU/Goddard Space Flight Center.  Fourteen scientists milled around, waiting for the images from the Super Massive Astronomical Observer (SMAO) in orbit around the Moon to be assembled by the powerful computers downstairs.  Langley, the “clown” of the group of astronomers and astrophysicists, had turned the TV in the room to the Times Square countdown and was dancing – poorly – with a giggling red-headed graduate student from MIT.

            “These are the best images ever taken of a Wolf-Rayet type pair, Cal,” Mary said impatiently.  “The resolution on the SMAO telescope is good enough for us to see the discs of the actual stars of WR-104 that make up the binary pair.”

            WR-104 lay 8,000 light-years away from the Earth and was Mary’s and Cal’s obsession, though for different reasons.  Cal’s dissertation had been on the stellar gases surrounding WR-104 – a gorgeous pinwheel of light thrown off by the two giant stars spinning around each other.  The elemental makeup of that pinwheel could be studied, and provided crucial clues to the make up of the Solar System early in its history.

            WR-104 was particularly interesting because the axis of the two stars pointed in the Earth’s direction; the “pinwheel” which revolved around them was perpendicular to the Earth and in full view of telescopes in the Solar System.

            That same position gave telescopes a perfect view of the stars orbital dance, which was Mary’s specialty.  She had written her dissertation about gravitational anomalies in the orbits of stars, and WR-104 was the perfect laboratory to observe any such problems.

            “I think Langley has a different kind of resolution in mind,” Cal observed dryly.

            Langley was up near the TV, hand in the air, solemnly resolving to lose twenty pounds in the New Year.  He pointed to another scientist, and he swore to stop smoking.

            “You have any resolutions, Mary?”

            She didn’t answer him, but continued to stare at her screen.

            “Mary?”

            She shook suddenly, then turned to him.  Her face was pale.  “Cal, come look at this.”

            He leaned over her shoulder, putting a hand on her back.  He recoiled slightly from her trembling.  “Mary, what’s wrong?”

            “The binary pair.  Look at its orbit.”

            Carl looked at the data and the image and blinked.  The two stars of WR-104 orbited around each other every two hundred and twenty days, at a distance of two hundred million miles.  Except now the fuzzy plasma discs of the stars’ coronas actually overlapped each other.

            “What’s going on, Mary?”

            She shook her head.  “Some sort of gravitational instability has broken up their orbit.  They’re going to crash into each other.  If they explode as a hypernova, we may get a GRB.”

            A gamma ray burster, or GRB, was one of the most energetic objects in the universe.  A super-massive star collapsing into a hypernova would leave behind a black hole – and generate a massive pulse of gamma rays.  Telescopes had observed gamma ray bursts from the edge of the universe and from galaxies millions of light years away.

            GRB’s generated a focused pulse along the objects rotational axis – like twin search-lights pulsing straight out from the north and south poles of the star.  Radiation outside of the poles was limited – within the beam it was apocalyptic.

            Earth lay directly in line of the poles of WR-104.  A GRB within ten thousand light years would deliver ten times the lethal dose of radiation to every life form not shielded by a kilometer of rock or water.  Everything on Earth with a nervous system would die, painfully and fairly quickly.

            “How long?” Carl asked hoarsely.

            WR-104 was 8000 light years away.  The collision between the two giant stars, if it happened, had occurred before the Pyramids were erected.  Gamma rays traveled at the speed of light; if the collision happened eight thousand years less one hour ago, the rays would arrive at the Earth in one hour.

            “I think they’re about eighty seconds from collision in this image,” Mary said.  Her voice was quiet.

            “So.  We’ll know in half-a-minute.”

            “Yes.  Yes we will.”

            As they looked at each other, pale and frightened, Langley and the other scientists joined in a group hug in front of the TV focused on Times Square, in New York.

They counted out joyfully, “Ten!”

“Nine!”

“Eight!”

“Seven…”

Cromwell v. Maryland - Legal SF

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ON NET

CONDENSED DECISION –SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

Arthur L. CROMWELL vs. State of MARYLAND

No. 2397 Fall 2023 Term

Argued October 12, 2023 - Decided March 10, 2024

Unanimous opinion by Martinez, Chief Justice – This case appears before this Court by writ of certiorari issued to the Court of Appeals of Maryland to review its decision in Cromwell v. State, 567 Md. 889, 107 A.3d 223 (2022).  Cromwell contends his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination was violated when his own electronically recorded memories were used in court against him...[procedural history omitted].

I

            Petitioner Arthur Cromwell was the president and head scientist at the Brain-Machine Interface Corporation (“BMIC”) in Rockville, Maryland.  After billions of dollars of federal and state grants and other funds as well as hundreds of man-years from many brilliant persons, BMIC developed a method to “off-load” a person’s memories and, perhaps, very personality onto an extremely complex optical storage device.  This memory could be kept stored and, perhaps, “re-installed” into another, cloned brain.  See New York Times, “Digital Immortality Invented?” at A-1, February 5, 2021.

            As with all breath-taking discoveries, there were questions about costs.  Specifically, allegations arose that BMIC had used test animals from small mammals to chimpanzees in any number of gruesome and fatal experiments which had not been disclosed on grant applications as required by law.  The Maryland Office of Special Prosecutor executed an otherwise valid search warrant on March 23, 2021 and seized, among other items, the complete data storage of Petitioner Cromwell – in essence, a copy of his memories.

            The State of Maryland indicted Petitioner Cromwell on fifty-two counts of felony aggravated animal cruelty, Ann. Code of Md., Crim. Law Art., sec. 10-606 (2020 Ed).  Cromwell moved to exclude his memories from trial, arguing such evidence violated the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.  His motion was denied; he was convicted by a jury in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County of all counts, and sentenced to five consecutive years incarceration on each count.  All subsequent state appeals were denied, and Cromwell sought relief with this Court.

            Cromwell contends he would not have been convicted absent the use of his memories, as there were no documents remaining in existence concerning the experiments and no other testimony was elicited.  The Attorney General of Maryland, before us in oral argument, concedes Cromwell’s memories were pivotal, but contends there was no error.

II

            The Fifth Amendment provides, in relevant part, that “No person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself...”  Cromwell argues that when his memories were played as evidence, he was essentially compelled to be a witness.  Maryland contends such evidence was no different than the production of records and diaries which a defendant maintains.

            The restriction against compelled self-incrimination is an ancient one in our law, having been brought by the Puritans to America, in response to their experiences with the oath ex-officio...[historical review omitted].  Cromwell argues use of his own memories is “monstrous,” relying in part on language from one of the most famous cases in existence at the time of the drafting of the Constitution.  See Entwick v. Carrington, 19 Howell’s State Trials 1029 (1765)(Lord Camden, J.)(“Has a secretary of state a right to see all a man’s private [papers]?  This would be monstrous indeed!”).  In Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616 (1886), we rejected use of a diary as a violation of the Fifth Amendment, calling it a person’s “dearest property.”  Are his memories, Cromwell asks, any less valuable?

            The Attorney General replies, quite naturally, that we have successively eliminated or narrowed the privilege in Boyd.  See, e.g, Couch v. United States, 409 U.S. 322 (1973)(no privilege when handed to a third person); Fisher v. United States, 425 U.S. 391 (1976)(producing documents not ‘testimonial’).  Quoting Fisher, the Attorney General argues “[s]everal of Boyd’s express or implicit declarations have not stood the test of time.”  Fisher, supra at 407.  Mechanically applying our post-Boyd cases would seem to make a result clear: using Cromwell’s own memories against him does not violate the Fifth Amendment. 

Such a conclusion seems repugnant to the very idea of a “private inner sanctum of individual feeling and thought” the Fifth Amendment was designed to protect.  Bellis v. United States, 417 U.S. 85, 19 (1974).  These are not gambling sheets.  These are not tax returns.  These are the very memories from Petitioner Cromwell’s brain.  If the privilege against self-incrimination, a bedrock fundamental right, is to mean anything in this “Brave New World” of  “brain copying” and “memory downloads,” than the thoughts and memories of an individual – regardless of whether they are stored in silicon, photons or messy old proteins – must be protected.  Any subsequent language narrowing or eliminating Boyd is hereby repudiated.  It was a violation of the privilege against self-incrimination for Cromwell’s memories to be seized and admitted at trial.

III

            For the foregoing reasons, the decision of the Court of Appeals of Maryland is REVERSED, the conviction of Petitioner Cromwell is VACATED and the matter is remanded for proceedings consistent with this opinion.

Me and Some Guy Named Mike Resnick are in "Not Just Rockets and Robots"

The first anthology from Daily Science Fiction (www.dailysciencefiction.com) is out and it looks great!

There's some awesome stories from Tim Pratt, Cat Rambo and lauded SF author Mike Resnick in the book - and a short SF flash from little ole me!  Amazing to be sharing a ToC with these names!

If you want to order a copy, here is the link:

http://dailysciencefiction.com/not-just-rockets-and-robots

Best $24.95 you can spend this holiday!

Leadership the Starfleet Way

Learn to lead from James Tiberius Kirk!
http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/03/05/five-leadership-lessons-from-james-t-kirk/