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This is inspired by the book of Dede Orkut which I'm reading at the moment.
Pen and ink with watercolour. Each page 25cm x 17.5cm. Click to enlarge.

Three more cards in my newest series. Hopefully 22 more to come.
Pen and ink with watercolour . Each one 11cm x 5cm. Click to enlarge.

Three more cards in my newest series. Hopefully 22 more to come.
Pen and ink with watercolour . Each one 11cm x 5cm. Click to enlarge.

The fried egg planet.
Mixed media 22cm x 27cm. Click to enlarge.

 12 days of sci-fi day 3:

Nuns are people too, and we are given a view of the diversity of personalities who are called to the religious life as the stories move from Antivenin to An Exercise in Logic. Parents should be apprised that the salty ship commander engages in mild cussing akin to a John Wayne style character, but only a few instances…

 An Exercise in Logic by Barton Paul Levenson

RESPECT FOR OTHERS

 Editor’s comment: “She holds herself with the dignity of her position as both a nun and a diplomat, yet is willing to bend–whether that means by sneaking out in defiance of the mission  commander’s orders or going to her knees to pray when logic seems to fail her. “

 How many times, when trying to get a point across in a conversation with someone of a totally different life experience, we have said it to be alien or foreign to them? In this story, trying to explain Christianity to people raised in secluded colonies is a bit like trying to explain a life of freedom to someone whose lifelong existence has been dictated under communist rule. But even more difficult is being the foreigner…the one who cannot comprehend the faith belief being explained. A nun and expert on alien religions, Sr. Julian is called in to negotiate with a group of aliens whose obedience to the decisions and words of their ancestors is taken to the extreme, and she has a short time to learn their religion in order to prove them illogical.  Aristotle is oft quoted as saying “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”, and this story demonstrates how respectful discourse rather than angry debate can lead to Truth. For those who like stories of intellect and strategy, this one is for you! Pick up the entire anthology at Amazon http://ow.ly/4F48e .

 (About the author: Barton has a degree in physics. Happily married to genre poet Elizabeth Penrose, he confuses everybody by being both a born-again Christian and a liberal Democrat. His work has appeared in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, ChiZine, Cricket, Cicada, The New York Review of Science Fiction and many small press markets. His e-novels, “Ella the Vampire,” “Parole,” and “Max and Me” can be downloaded now from Lyrical Press or amazon.com, and his first paperback, “I Will” is available from Virtual Tales (or amazon).   Barton was prohibited from entering the Confluence Short Story Contest again after winning first prize two years in a row.)

I have obtained a confidential document from the Ministry of Planetary Security: the object of this publication is to provide a simple reference to facilitate the recognition of the different types of Alien craft. Here are 2 samples from a boxed set of 143 cards depicting the silhouettes of Alien Spacecraft originally prepared by the UK Air Ministry, London and issued to Roof Watchers in our major cities.
Each card 10cm x 10cm. Click to enlarge.

My latest sculpture is named The Immobile. It's an anti-mobile, the antithesis of a Calder sculpture. It can be floor or ceiling mounted. On another level it refers to Kurt Vonnegut's critique of his mantra "Im" in Slaughterhouse Five.
Steel and concrete 110cm x 60cm x 106cm. Concept by me, realisation by J-M Fritsch. Click photo to enlarge.

Michelle Rafferty, Publicity Assistant

Which is more important: saving the environment or fixing global poverty? Economist Paul Collier argues that we can find a middle ground and do both in his new book The Plundered Planet: Why We Must—and How We Can—Manage Nature for Global Prosperity. A former director of Development Research at the World Bank and author of the widely acclaimed and award winning The Bottom Billion, Collier’s The Plundered Planet continues his life mission of advocating for the world’s poorest billion people.

Collier made a quick stop in NYC recently and I was able to ask him a few questions about his new book. In Segment 5 Collier discusses his “rock star alliance” (his book The Plundered Planet was photographed in the hands of U2 frontman Bono).  You can check out the rest of the series here.

Michelle Rafferty: What’s it’s like to have this pop cultural force behind your work, and further do you think that celebrities can really make a difference when it comes to global problems like poverty and the environment?

Paul Collier: I know Bono, I know Bob Geldof. They are smart people who have actually taken the trouble to read, so they understand a lot I think. They are the victims of their own medium—which is it’s hard to sing a book. But what they are doing, they’re using their money to fund organization data which actually goes way beyond the songs that’s trying to help with the analysis and to advocate a much more sophisticated agenda. It’s very important to have people like Bono and Bob Geldof who draw people in. To get a critical mass of informed opinion, you’ve got to have a lot of people, and they do that. So I’m very proud of my alliance with the rock stars, and welcome it.

Michelle Rafferty, Publicity Assistant

Which is more important: saving the environment or fixing global poverty? Economist Paul Collier argues that we can find a middle ground and do both in his new book The Plundered Planet: Why We Must—and How We Can—Manage Nature for Global Prosperity.  A former director of Development Research at the World Bank and author of the widely acclaimed and award winning The Bottom Billion, Collier’s The Plundered Planet continues his life mission of advocating for the world’s poorest billion people.

Collier made a quick stop in NYC recently, in which I was able to ask him a few questions about his new book. In Segment 1 he reflects on the shift in the world’s “passionate concern” from poverty to the environment. To hear more from Collier be sure to check in tomorrow for Day 2 of this week long series!

Michelle Rafferty: In the first line of your book you write: “I grew up before nature was discovered.” Can you talk about watching environmentalism explode over the course of your lifetime and when you realized it would be crucial to your work?

Paul Collier: Yeah, I mean environmentalism came in In the early 1970s. I remember there was a book of an image of the earth taken from space called The Limits to Growth, and that was the first sort of statement that the environment might constrain our choices. And as a young economist I remember being very irritated by that. I was working on development, how the poorest countries could escape from poverty and this idea that everything was going to be constrained by environment seemed to me just nonsense. And then things moved on.

Personally I married an environmental historian, and so that brought me pretty starkly face to face with environmentalism. And then more recently, especially after I wrote The Bottom Billion, I now do a lot of speaking especially to young people, especially to audiences full of young people. And I realized that whereas I was their age, for me the passionate concern was how to lift people out of poverty. For young people now the passionate concern is how to protect the planet. And so I often get posed the question, that surely we can’t afford for everybody to develop, because if everybody develops the planet will be ruined. And so I realized I had to confront that question seriously, and that’s what the book tries to do.

Pen and ink with watercolour 21cm x 15cm. Click to enlarge.

I long for a bothy on Pollux.
Pen and ink with watercolour. 21cm x 15cm. Click to enlarge.