Bill DeSmedt

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2007)
Bill DeSmedt

Born 1943
Occupation Knowledge Engineer, Novelist
Genres Action/Thriller/Science fiction
Official website

William H. DeSmedt is an American author of science fiction. His first novel, Singularity (2004), explores the 1908 Tunguska event and the speculative hypothesis that it was caused by a submicroscopic, primordial black hole. Although the novel is frequently generalized as a work of science fiction, its premise is heavily supported by factual science fleshed out with fictional characters. The novel qualifies in the action/thriller genre as the pace of the plot development resonates with the works of Tom Clancy or Michael Crichton.

DeSmedt has a depth of knowledge in both Russian language and Russian Studies which are both highly employed in his debut novel, Singularity (2004). He completed eighteen months of Russian language instruction at the Army Language School (which later evolved into the Defense Language Institute (DLI)) in Monterey, California. He also earned both a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), a Master of Arts (M.A.) in Soviet Area Studies, and a Master of Science (M.S.) in Computer Science. The culmination of his Soviet-oriented education was a ten month tour in a US – USSR student exchange program.

Since then, DeSmedt has served in the capacity of programmer and system designer, consulting for both startups and Fortune 500 companies. He also developed a specialty in Artificial Intelligence research and language. More recently, he is highly regarded as a knowledge engineer [1].

DeSmedt is married with both children and grandchildren.

Contents

[edit] Fiction

Year Cover Title Notes
2004 Singularity 512 pages; Hardcover, Per Aspera Press (ISBN: 0974573442)
2005 Singularity Podcast version read by author, Podiobooks.com
2007-08? Dualism Currently being written as a sequel to Singularity

[edit] Awards

  • Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Awards: Winner – Gold Medal for Science Fiction, 2005 (Singularity)
  • Independent Publishers Association: Winner – Ippy prize for Best Fantasy/Science Fiction novel, 2004 (Singularity)
  • Publishers Marketing Association: Finalist – Ben Franklin “Best New Voice” Award, 2005 (Singularity)

[edit] Literary influences

DeSmedt has cited two authors, Larry Niven and Roger Zelazny, as having a strong influence on his writing style.

To me, they stake out the opposing poles of the science fiction I grew up with: Larry, with the extremely hard science fiction focus and an extraordinary economy of prose - it never ceases to amaze me how tersely he can craft a sentence and still have it really sing. And Roger, just the opposite - discursive, with elements of the fantastic, yet he can instantly bring you down to earth with just a turn of phrase that grounds the whole thing.

– Bill DeSmedt, speaking of his literary influences on "scifidimensions.com" [2]

Speaking of authors he enjoys, DeSmedt mentions Jorge Luis Borges and Vernor Vinge as favorites. Specifically speaking of Vernor Vinge, DeSmedt elaborates;

… I am a huge fan of Vernor Vinge’s work, he of any of us has as clear a view of the future, and also - and I guess this is something science fiction is supposed to do - has an ability to present the present through the mirror of the future. For example, if you go back and read his 1992 novel A Fire upon the Deep, you’ll get a sense projected onto a universal scale of what the Internet culture and economy was going to become, five or seven years before it happened.

– Bill DeSmedt, speaking of his favorite authors on "scifidimensions.com" [3]

[edit] Scientific concepts

In his debut novel, Singularity (2004), DeSmedt marshals his fascination with non-fiction science in order to bring validity to the long defunct hypothesis that the devastation of the Tunguska basin in 1908 was the result of a submicroscopic, primordial black hole. He uses real principles in quantum physics and cosmology to elucidate that the Jackson – Ryan hypothesis may actually be correct.

[edit] Speeches

[edit] The Jackson – Ryan Hypothesis

In November 2004, Bill DeSmedt spoke at a meeting of the Johnson Space Center Astronomical Society in Houston, TX, along with Drs. Albert A. Jackson IV and Michael P. Ryan Jr. who first put forward the Tunguska-black hole hypothesis in 1973. The lecture centered around the "Jackson – Ryan hypothesis" on which Singularity is based.

At this lecture, DeSmedt had the unique opportunity to defend the Jackson-Ryan hypothesis against the co-creators who, in DeSmedt’s words, had “come around to the conviction that it was probably a meteor or a comet” [4].

[edit] References

  1. ^ "A Conversation With Bill DeSmedt by Claire E. White"; see the complete interview at writerswrite.com
  2. ^ " Interview: Bill DeSmedt (Author, Singularity) by Carlos Aranaga"; see the complete interview at scifidimensions.com
  3. ^ " Interview: Bill DeSmedt (Author, Singularity) by Carlos Aranaga"; see the complete interview at scifidimensions.com
  4. ^ " Interview: Bill DeSmedt (Author, Singularity) by Carlos Aranaga"; see the complete interview at scifidimensions.com

[edit] External links

Persondata
NAME DeSmedt, Bill
ALTERNATIVE NAMES DeSmedt, William H.
SHORT DESCRIPTION American novelist
DATE OF BIRTH
PLACE OF BIRTH
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH