It should be somewhat clear from the lack of posts that this year has not gone to plan. Catching COVID-19 after Christmas last year was not great, so 2021 began with a period of recuperation lying on the sofa. After that you might imagine that the only way was up but things didn’t quite work out that way…
During the course of the year there were again various personal issues and family events that significantly disrupted my ability to add to web site. I won’t go into the details but this has been my worse year ever and sadly I haven’t had time to devote to new blog posts even though that would have been a welcome distraction.
Anyway, I have recently managed to revive the site with a new look by moving from Blogspot to WordPress. There are still a few more tweaks required but overall all this is an improvement. I have also decided to expand to cover some aspects of fantasy worldbuilding due to the popularity of some of my posts on Reddit. This will hopefully make more sense once I have flesh out the concepts a bit more. Please let me know what you think of this though.
Site Statistics
In 2021 my most popular articles were the two on lighter-than-air gasbag life covering the basic physics and the idea of floating aeroplankton. I had intended to complete the remain articles in the series this year but that is probably not likely before New Year’s Day now.
Around a third of my visitors this year have been from the US (32.6%) and while the UK (5.8%) is still the second most common location for my visitors it has fallen drastically while many other countries are now represented. The next five countries are: Australia (5.5%), Spain (5.5%), Canada (3.7%), Brazil (2.8%) and India (2.6%). However, judging from the massive amount of spam comments I’ve received since moving to WordPress I can’t guarantee they were all interested in worldbuilding!
Finally, Reddit has been the source of most referrals this year by quite a margin. Other sources have been the Speculative Evolution Forum, Deviantart (despite not being an artist), the Planet Furaha blog and the Worldbuilding Pasta blog.
Thank You
I should definitely thank anyone who reads this as I am sure my absence during 2021 has been disastrous for building a dedicated readership. Also, I really need to thank Concavenator on Deviantart for quickly producing sketches for my lighter than air life concepts even though I have failed to publish them this year.
Happy Christmas and may the New Year be better than this one for us all.
Hello and happy new year from a new reader! I’m the most statistically probable of readers, apparently, being from the U.S. and finding out about the blog from your reddit post on Langford’s Basilisks. The idea of some sort of sensory input or the introduction a certain concept being enough to kill or drive one insane is very intringuing to me and I was trying to find artistic interpretations when I came across it.
It’s funny that not very long ago I was perplexed by the fact that, while life can be found in the most extreme conditions and deepest depths of the oceans, there appears to be a relatively low height limit in earth’s atmosphere, and my research brought me to the topic of, amongst other things, aeroplankton. I was also familiar and intrigued with the concept of lighter-than-air organisms, because as a child I remember my father had a fascinating book, which I believe may have been Barlowe’s Guide to Extraterrestrials, that discussed and depicted possible ecosystems on gas planets like Jupiter.
You certainly cover very interesting territories for a humble speculative daydreamer such as myself and I appreciate how you explore the varieties of possibilities that could arise from such concepts. I’m excited to delve further in and will be adding myself to the mailing list.
Addendum: It was not Barlowe’s Guide (which I still loved), but rather Carl Sagan’s Cosmos apparently! Adolf Schaller painted imagery of speculative floating lifeforms in Jupiter which was placed in the book along side some brief commentary.
Thanks. I’m glad you like it. I just wish I had more time to get all the ideas swirling around in my head on to the web site. I’m certainly going to try and do better this year though assuming life doesn’t get in the way again.