Author: lmontgomery

I’m very excited to be on Erika Nesvold’s Making New Worlds today.  Science fiction writers are not alone in contemplating what will come next in any new worlds humanity may reach.  The podcast explores the ethics of space settlement, and Erika addresses property rights with a sociologist, a colonial historian, and a space lawyer (that’s…

When we write we fill our fictional world with things we know, whether obtained from our own experience or through research.  I know that I get many of my ideas from my day job as a space lawyer.  I was at the Federal Aviation Administration for many years.  Prizes were really big in the space…

There’s world building. That’s when a writer tries to create a tangible story world.  In science fiction, the process is more involved because rather than relying on the world we actually live in–or a reasonable facsimile thereof–the writer creates an environment in space or on an alien planet.  For fiction set in the near future,…

Every now and then life presents an opportunity to make a point about something that has bugged me for years.  I’m talking about the dairy planet. I loved the first three seasons of the new Battlestar Galactica, with humanity on a giant exodus to the stars to avoid extinction. The rest of it was ok,…

It’s really easy to hate the other side.  I wish more writers remembered that. I’m posting today not as a writer, but as a reader.  Books need villains, or, at the very least, opponents.  Everyone knows that.  However, I wouldn’t mind if they were merely on the other side of a problem from the main…

I just finished my first draft of Like a Continental Soldier, the third book in my Waking Late trilogy.  Now I have to fix it, send it to a beta reader knowledgeable about muskets and early rifles, fix it again, send it to a couple other beta readers, fix it again, commission a cover, and…

I was a space lawyer for the Federal Aviation Administration. I worked in the Chief Counsel’s office and supported the Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST). A number of years ago a whole passel of school kids showed up for A Day At The FAA. One lucky little girl, maybe a fifth grader, got assigned…

I’m not in the path of totality. I didn’t buy the eclipse glasses because what’s the point of looking if the eclipse isn’t total? (That’s called letting the perfect be the enemy of the good). Also, I’m a grown up who knows better than to look at the sun. It’s 2:00 Eastern as I write…

Today we will talk about the Federal Register of the U.S. Government. (I know. Soon this blog will be guest-featured on Fun with Flags. It’s not everyone who’s waiting to be discovered by Sheldon Cooper.)  Why are we talking about the Federal Register?  It makes sense that I talked about it on my law blog,…