Guy Stewart's Blog, page 128

Slice of PIE: The Disaster People Write About…because it’s STILL SO SCARY!

[image error]Using the panel discussions of the most recent World Science Fiction Convention in Spokane, August 2015, I will jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. This is event #2306 (page 50). The link is provided below…
Anatomy of a Pandemic: Pandemics make frequent appearances in SF. But do what we read in books or see on the screen anything like real pandemics? The world just experienced the Ebola pandemic. The panel will discuss how real pandemics are likely to play out, and how that compares with their depiction in fiction.
SF writers have used past pandemics as story background – as in Connie Willis’ DOOMSDAY BOOK and Michael Flynn’s EIFELHEIM – as well as future pandemics like Matheson’s I AM LEGEND (which, paradoxically reversed in the movie, is all about the “zombies” fearingthe uninfected) and the pre-story for the wildly popular YA MAZE RUNNER series called THE KILL ORDER.
With the Ebola epidemic in West Africa “safely” out of the news (NOT out of reality, unfortunately, as the disease continues to kill people, though at a substantially reduced rate...I am sure that’s a comfort to the families[http://apps.who.int/ebola/ebola-situation-reports]) and with the influenza season rapidly approaching in North America, there seems to be no real concern (http://www.who.int/influenza/surveillance_monitoring/updates/latest_update_GIP_surveillance/en/)So why do we keep worrying at this whole pandemic story? It’s not like Modern Medicine can’t handle a little virus, right – kicked Ebola’s skriggly butt, didn’t we? Africa’s not only got a cure, they’ve got a vaccine, right? So writers like John Scalzi, in his book LOCK IN (book 1) are just whiling away the hours, trying to scare us like Stephen King did in THE STAND. There’s no real fear or nothing, right?

The staid ATLANTIC magazine brooks no hysteria, only calm, clear concern (http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/06/preventing-the-next-pandemic-ebola-spotlight-health-aspen-ideas-festival/397040/); while others like The Guardian hover on the verge of tabloid hysteria, making sure their quotes are framed in the most frightening way possible, “‘The virus is smarter than we are at this point. I don’t know of any disease that plagues us more. It’s very, very frustrating and a very inexact science,’ Robert Daum a Chicago doctor who heads the Food and Drug Administration advisory committee that makes the US recommendations, told The Post earlier this year, as the committee was about to meet to discuss strains to include in the coming season’s vaccines. ‘We do it with varying luck, and I think the luck is mostly the virus’ whim.’” (http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/08/computer-model-predict-flu-outbreaks)
My opinion is that it will sneak up on us from nowhere, blindsiding society because of an extended incubation period, and sweep across the planet until a significant part of Humanity has died off...
I’d have loved to be in on this discussion – anyone out there hear what was said?
Resources: https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/pandemicProgram Book: http://sasquan.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/ConGuide.toupload.pdfImage: http://a4.mzstatic.com/us/r30/Music/v4/5e/16/34/5e163440-1f88-baeb-1439-4198084f83e8/cover326x326.jpeg

MuseItYoung & MuseItYA: Heirs of the Shattered Spheres: Emerald of Earth

MuseItYoung & MuseItYA: Heirs of the Shattered Spheres: Emerald of Earth: We’re thrilled to announce Guy Stewart’s tween/YA sci-fi adventure… Emerald of Earth Book 1 in his Heirs of the Shattered Spheres series...

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 221

[image error]Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them.
 SF Trope: Humans are Something Special in the universe
Current Event: http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/08/15/interactive-infographic-of-the-worlds-best-countries.html
While this doesn’t rank HUMANS, it does rank COUNTRIES on Earth. What if there were a list like this of planets with intelligent civilizations – and Earth was last? It would explain The Fermi Paradox, wouldn’t it?
Fermi Paradox: “In an informal discussion in 1950, the physicist Enrico Fermi questioned why, if a multitude of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations exists in the Milky Way galaxy, evidence such as spacecraft or probes is not seen.” A clearer definition would be: “The apparent size and age of the universe suggest that many technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilizations ought to exist.However, this hypothesis seems inconsistent with the lack of observational evidence to support it.”
So, here we go!
Bintou Kogda  and Ouedraogo Ye are both just eighteen and come from the country of Burkina Faso, which recently came through the Reorganization Wars that redrew the map of the African Continent. Their small country has encompassed the former nations of Ghana, Benin and Togo and because of the peaceful nature of its Reorganization, has risen to prominence.
Both are at Harvard in the United States, ostensibly to study law and nanotechnology under grant scholarships from their own government – and as part of a program the US has started to gain a foothold in the New Africa. They’ve never met – except formally at a reception welcoming all international students to Harvard.
While they love their fields of study, both are dissatisfied with the “boring life” they lead. When a small group of students begins to meet to discuss Extraterrestrial Intelligence, they both show…
“What are you doing here?” Bintou asked in French.
Ouedraogo replied in the same language, leaning closer to her than he’d ever done to a woman – excepting his mother and sisters – and said, “The same thing you’re doing here. I’m bored and this sounded exciting.”
Bintou leaned away. She’d managed to maintain her sense of modesty despite the crazy American obsession with sex. She shook her head. She should have known that Ouedraogo would want to embrace that insanity.
Even so, she bumped his shoulder as a young man stood at the front of the room and clapped his hands, saying, “Let’s get this gig hummin’!”
Bintou puzzled for a few moments. Though she spoke English as well as anyone who completed high school in Burkina Faso, American idioms still left her totally confused. Especially when they piled them on top of each other. She could only deduce that it meant “This meeting will now come to order!” because others started taking seats. No one sat in ordered rows, it was more like a vaguely circular blob.
After the chairs were done scraping across the floor, the young man said, “Hey! My name’s Edgar Bailey and I’ll be the moderator tonight for this first meeting of the ET Discussion Society. If you’d tell us your name before you speak, it’ll help us get to know each other. To start things off, I’d like to toss this out to the group.” The lights dimmed abruptly and a projector hanging from the ceiling flicked on, projecting a web article.
Ouedraogo groaned. Bintou had managed to sit across the group from him. She kept her dismay to herself.
Edgar stood on his tiptoes to locate the source of the groan. He snapped, “What’s wrong with this article?”
Ouedraogo stood up and replied in English. Bintou shook her head. It was unlikely that his heavily accented English would impress the people in this room as he said, “First of all, the article is almost twenty years out of date – the information is patently wrong...”
Edgar cut him off by saying, “The information is unimportant...”
Ouedraogo fired back, “It’s important to some of us! You’re perpetuating a stereotype!”
Bintou sighed. So much for keeping a low profile. She stood up and said, “What Ouedraogo is trying to say is that he and I are from Burkina Faso and this list places our former country at the very bottom as the worst country in the world from 2008 to 2009. Unflattering, to say the least. But what you’re implying by using this is that Earth has somehow gotten on the bottom of some interstellar ‘worst place to live’ list and that that’s the explanation of what puzzled Fermi and Hart?”
Edgar blinked slowly, massively as Bintou sat down. A moment later, there was a crash as Ouedraogo knocked over his chair and stormed out of the room. Beside her, a young woman with wildly uncontrolled, curly red hair nudged her and said, “Nice going! I’m glad someone shut down the pompous windbag before he went on his superior rant about Fermi.” She snorted, “You even mentioned Hart. Edgar hates it when people know more than he does – and that they remain polite and pleasant while they’re telling him ‘what for’.” She raised an eyebrow and added, “You probably made his most-hated person list today!”
“I didn’t mean...” Bintou began.
“Don’t worry, you just made it on to about sixty people’s ‘OMG, I have absolutely GOT to get to know this woman!’ list. You’re certainly on mine. I’m Ginny Phleger. What are you doing after the meeting?” Names: ♀ ; ♂Both from Burkina Faso

Image: http://swittersb.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/off-limits1.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: Future Pharma – How will biotechnology and genome research revolutionize pharmaceuticals?

[image error]Using the panel discussions of the most recent World Science Fiction Convention in Spokane, August 2015, I will jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. This is event #2153. The link is provided below…
Future Pharma – How will biotechnology and genome research revolutionize pharmaceuticals? How can biotech be better integrated into fiction? This panel will help provide an understanding of the diversity of contemporary and theoretical pharmaceuticals and how biotechnological breakthroughs can help move a plot along. Heather Rose Jones (m), Peter Charron, Barry Gold
My first ever “published” science fiction story dealt with just this subject, back when I was a 9th grader in 1971. I remember my incredible success with this story because a girl in my Journalism class got really excited as I described my story, about a man-on-the-run from the Galactic Drug Corporation. As I read, the character commented that the company provided the purest form of any drug you could want.
She looked up at me and said, “Where are they?”
As I recall, I just gave her a blank look...as a ninth grader I was about as “uncool” as you could possibly be: plaid, high-water slacks, bowl cut hair, hated blue jeans and pizza, read all the time...I had no idea what I was writing about, but I had somehow picked up on the prevailing culture enough to write the piece.
Since then, everyone I know has benefitted from biopharmacology: my wife takes human insulin produced by bacteria; my brother and father have stents in their hearts that had been coated with a substance that prevented the rejection of the foreign object; my brother-in-law who was born a hemophiliac, took freeze-dried Factor XIII in order to increase the clotting ability of his blood; I could go on, but there’s no reason to. The science fictional possibilities of pharmacology, biology, and biotech is undeniable.
I have a world where I’m exploring the possibilities right now. In my future, there are no aliens. There are also very few habitable planets (ever read the book, HABITABLE PLANETS FOR MAN? If you haven’t, here you go: http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/commercial_books/2007/RAND_CB179-1.pdfThis book not only inspired me, it lit a fire under me that hasn’t ever gone out. I LOVE alien worlds, aliens, and everything else about SF!)
In my future, Humans are modified to fit environments and Humanity has split into two factions – the Empire of Man and the Confluence of Humanity. The Empire refuses to admit that anyone who is less than 65% Original Human DNA is Human. The Confluence embraces the modification of the Human genome to whatever lengths it takes to serve the rest of Humanity.
Obviously there will be conflict, and my focal point is in the clouds of the super-Jovian, puffy-Jupiter, named River. I’ve had two stories published in this world, “The Baptism of Johnny Ferocious”, “The Prince of Blood and Spit”, plus the as-yet-unscheduled, “Into The Deaths”. I imagine I’ll collect them altogether someday.
But back to the point of this essay, we will continue to expand our use of “manufactured” biotech products and will continually be faced with the problem of limits. At what point do we draw back?
Case to point is the refusal by parents of technology that would allow a deaf child to hear. The argument is that “deafness is not a handicap or a disease”. Deaf Australia puts it this way: “...a [cochlear] implant ‘implies that deaf people are ill or incomplete individuals, are lonely and unhappy, cannot communicate effectively with others and are all desperately searching for a cure for their condition. [This] demeans deaf people, belittles their culture and language and makes no acknowledgment of the diversity of lives deaf people lead, or their many achievements.’”
If this is already an issue, what does the future hold?
Resource: http://nad.org/
Program Book: http://sasquan.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/ConGuide.toupload.pdf
Image: http://www.thelivingmoon.com/41pegasus/04images/Critter/Jupiter_Hunter_02.png

MARTIAN HOLIDAY 72: Aster of Opportunity

[image error]On a well-settled Mars, the five major city Council regimes struggle to meld into a stable, working government. Embracing an official Unified Faith In Humanity, the Councils are teetering on the verge of pogrom directed against Christians, Molesters, Jews, Rapists, Buddhists, Murderers, Muslims, Thieves, Hindu, Embezzlers and Artificial Humans – anyone who threatens the official Faith and the consolidating power of the Councils. It makes good sense, right – get rid of religion and Human divisiveness on a societal level will disappear? An instrument of such a pogrom might just be a Roman holiday...To see the rest of the chapters, go to SCIENCE FICTION: Martian Holiday on the right and scroll to the bottom for the first story.
Aster Theil, former general secretary and assistant for the City of Opportunity, now Consort of the Mayor-for-Life, Etaraxis Ginunga-Gap, said, “The problem with the Orphan’s Ball is that it’s always excludes the people who have less power and low status – the people that orphans end up becoming. If the intent is to help the kids we all created, then shouldn’t we all be responsible to lift them up and help them meet the people they need to meet in order to grow up empowered?”
“But they aren’t even Human!” FardusAH exclaimed. “Some of the little freaks look like furless kangaroos!” She felt her face darken to black when she realized what she’d said. She leaned back in her chair. Aster fixed her with a look, though it wasn’t judgmental. It was compassionate, patient, and even worse, faintly challenging. FarduAH rushed through all of the things she might say to excuse herself and finally arrived at, “If Etaraxis lets you go – or worse – he should retire for a complete brain reboot.” Shaking her head, she added, “I can see exactly what you want to do.” Leaning forward, she fixed Aster with a gaze that could only be called voracious and said, “Where do I sign up?”
Aster leaned back a bit. The intensity of FardusAH’s response wasn’t what she’d expected. “What do you think I’m planning?”
FardusAH cleared her throat, leaned back and said, “Sorry about that.” She paused, made a face then said, “You’re planning to force a paradigm shift onto this whole sorry society we have here on Mars.”
Aster sat back, unconsciously mirroring FardusAH’s pose. Finally she said, “You’re right, of course. If we invite the orphans themselves to the gala, then they become the focus rather than the benevolence of the givers.” She recalled a scene from an ancient movie her father had watched over and over again. In it, the main character had said something similar: “If...he…really wants to help...why doesn't he give the money per plate to the inner-city schools and eat a little bit lighter that night..?” She could accomplish both goals at the same time.
FardusAH was nodding. “That would mean we need to get the press involved as well as the foster families.”
Aster nodded slowly, “Most of the foster families live out in Last Ring, don’t they?”
 “Ouch. I see your point…”
Aster grinned and said, “No, I don’t think you do.” FardusAH caught Aster’s gaze, held it, then grinned in response. Finally she said, “Oh, my.”
“Exactly. We’re going to mix classes; mix orphans and natural-borns; rich and poor; management and service...” They laughed abruptly together, neither one of them noticing the small man. His name was Shafter, and his eyes grew wide as he ducked back into the office. He’d just delivered a pile of encrypted, “Physical Transfer Only” chips to the Mayor’s desk – FardusAH had nodded him in with her typical, haughty demeanor – and he was on his way out when he heard the Consort and FardusAH talking. He loathed the Artificial Human – she acted like she was better than him! He was Human – he lived on the Rim, true, but that was just a matter of geography! He deserved better than some blue b...He listened, eyes growing wider until he couldn’t listen any more. He knew exactly where he had to go and exactly who he had to see. He straightened, tugged down the shirt of the penguin suit the Mayor insisted he wear and strode out past the woman and theinti. He also knew what the Mayor would do if he spoke the crude epithet out loud, but it was true! It was even a scientific word – it just meant the filthy intihad had all their introns removed – the non-coding sections of their Human DNA and were way less than pure Human. They couldn’t even reproduce without real Humans doing the hard work!
He’d just go see how much this little bit of intel would buy him at the source with Security Director vo’Maddux!
Image: https://dainspires.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/esther4.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 220

[image error]Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them.
H Trope: Back to school!
Current Event: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeepers_Creepers_2
Asmunder Helguson stopped at the edge of the school ground.
Rynhildur Eggertsdóttir shoved him, “Oh, come on, you big baby.”
Asmunder swallowed hard and said, “Maybe I shouldn’t have watched those last five movies of the 30 Scariest School Movies of all time.”
She shouldered him, laughed, and said, “You think? Maybe you should listen to your best friend sometimes.”
Asmunder glanced at her. She looked away. He whispered, “I would if that Greenland shark hadn’t eaten him.” Rynhildur growled and shoved past him, ramming him into a garbage can. He called, “Ryn! Wait! I wasn’t thinking...”
She turned as she walked, saying, “Try thinking before you say mean things, Ass.” She kept turning and disappeared into Reykjavik High School. He cussed in one of the obscure languages – Basque – and took a step toward the school. He stopped and stepped back. People who didn’t know him couldn’t figure out why he refused to go into the school. Even the people who knew him accepted that he couldn’t go in, but still didn’t understand why he wouldn’t do it. “Can’t do it,” he muttered. He looked up at the third floor, the wide dormer with three windows. Even as he looked, he saw a faint, ghostly shadow pass into the school.
He was certain the Greenland shark that had murdered his best friend haunted his school. That it waited for him.
That it might be waiting for something else. Suddenly, high overhead, the head of the shark came out of the building, paused, looked down at him, then turned and re-entered the school, disappearing. Asmunder staggered backward, certain that the creature – the ghost – had truly horrible things in store for the students. He was quite sure there was one, special student the shark would be visiting...
Names: ♀ Iceland; ♂ Iceland
Resources: http://horror.about.com/od/horrortoppicklists/tp/30-Great-Back-to-School-Horror-Movies.htm
Image: http://www.greenland-guide.gl/sharkchallenge/download/petersteensen9.jpg

WRITING ADVICE: What Went RIGHT With “Invoking Fire” (Perihelion, November 2013) Guy Stewart #22

[image error]In September of 2007, I started this blog with a bit of writing advice. A little over a year later, I discovered how little I knew about writing after hearing children’s writer, Lin Oliver speak at a convention hosted by the Minnesota Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Since then, I have shared (with their permission) and applied the writing wisdom of Lin Oliver, Jack McDevitt, Nathan Bransford, Mike Duran, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, SL Veihl, Bruce Bethke, and Julie Czerneda. Together they write in genres broad and deep, and have acted as agents, editors, publishers, columnists, and teachers. Since then, I figured I’ve got enough publications now that I can share some of the things I did “right” and I’m busy sharing that with you.
While I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it...neither do all of the professional writers above...someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what I write. When I started this blog, that was NOT true, so I may have reached a point where my own advice is reasonably good. We shall see! Hemingway’s quote above will now remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing output and sales! As always, your comments are welcome!
This is a story I loved! (Not that I don’t love everything I write…) But this one was special for a few reasons. It didn’t make it into one of my “first tier” markets. Initially I wrote it for the anthology “Futuredaze”, though after it was reviewed as being most “meh”, I’m glad I didn’t.
The story allowed me to access a few of those “write what you know” things. It also allowed me to explore an area of my fiction where I’m REALLY unsure of the reaction I will bet when my second novel comes out this Fall.
I’ll start with the area I’m nervous about: I wrote a black, young adult male character.  Na’Rodney Jones Castillo-Vargas Daylight Hatshepsut (as should be obvious), has been strangely named. What no one ever asked was WHY he was named this way. So I’ll tell you here: a created American black name, standard “white” last name, Mexican mother-father last name, Native American name, Egyptian last name. I wanted him to NOT be “black” or “white” or “Mexican” or whatever. I wanted him to show the ethnic diversity several of my students show. I wanted him to be a new paradigm.
As it is, no one really cared, so my daring experiment went unnoticed. (My Autumn novel may not be so invisible – the main character is biracial and the IRRESPONSIBLE one is a white dude who left his son in the care of his black mom. “How can you get into the head of a black kid? Only black writers can possibly do that!!!!!!” Yeah, well, the black, high school, male reader who read it and commented extensively didn’t object – and offered comments that helped clarify THAT character…anyways, that’s the subject of an Advice column in the future…)
Na’Rodney lives up on the Iron Range, the Vermillion Range to be precise. In my version of the future a couple of things are happening that I’m concerned about. Again, the ideas went unremarked, anywhere. The first is that I have concerns about electronic books – a couple of concerns, actually. The first is that I wonder about the…shall we say… “external influences on manuscript fluidity”…the question being, what’s to stop electronic books being tampered with so that the text reflects the current political, sociological, psychological, or ideological “atmosphere”. I use a passage from Stephen King’s CARRIE as a prime example. The beginning of the book shows a bullying scene. In order to protect young minds from such horrific images, there are (I DO NOT DOUBT) those who would just as soon edit the scene. This would make paper, which is much harder to edit post-printing, the only externally verifiable source of a manuscript’s unchangeability.
Na’Rodney’s great-uncle was a proponent of storing works, as unchanged as possible, in a safe, distant place. In this case, the Erg of Bilma in Sahara. He sends his great-nephew on a quest, financed by contacts who will pay big credits for the original paper versions of books in a backpack Na’Rodney has to carry from northern Minnesota…in the company of his autistic brother and a REALLY annoying, genius young lady whom his great-uncle was also tutoring.
In case you were wondering, this is supposed to be the first chapter of a novel.
The second part of the story was that it took place in an atmosphere of profound change. Humans have finally decided to clean up the planet. They have the technology to build immense Vertical Villages, four kilometers tall and housing a million or so people apiece. On the Iron Range, where contemporary American society is already disassembling villages, townships, towns, and small cities – though in our current state of mind, we’re just abandoning them rather than recycling them...
So – Perihelion editor Sam Belatto (after “Futuredaze”, ANALOG, and ASIMOV’s passed on it) loved it, bought it, and published it.
Based on my meanderings above, you can probably figure out what when right here:1) I love writing YA science fiction.
2) I covered several areas of concern: the “whiteness” of SF, the changeability of electronic documents, and (unstated) my concern that with the advent of ebooks, there will no longer be a steady source of paper books being sent to developing countries.
3) I kept submitting the story until someone bought it.

I’m going to write this novel someday. It’s just a matter of time. But I want to find a bigger market than that publishing my first novel (this coming Friday!!!!) I have ideas. I have concerns, but I need to keep Heinlein’s admonition firmly in mind: “If a writer does not entertain his readers, all he is producing is paper dirty on one side. I must always bear in mind that my prospective reader could spend his recreation money on beer rather than on my stories; I have to be aware every minute that I am competing for beer money - and that the customer does not have to buy.”
How am I doing so far?
Image: http://static4.quoteswave.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/We-are-all-apprentices.jpg

JOURNEY TO THE PORTRAIT’S SECRET #75: July 30, 1946

[image error]This series is a little bit biographical and a little bit imaginary about my dad and a road trip he took in the summer of 1946, when he turned fifteen. He and a friend hitchhiked from Loring Park to Duluth, into Canada and back again. He was gone from home for a month. I was astonished and fascinated by the tale. So, I added some speculation about things I've always wondered about and this series is the result. To read earlier SHORT LONG JOURNEY NORTH clips, click on the label to the right, scroll down to and click OLDER ENTRIES seven or eight times. The FIRST entry is on the bottom of the last page.
Tommy Hastings was still staring at Freddie Merrill as the other boy nodded, not looking up from the place where Nils Wangenstein struggled to breathe. He was kneeling as Freddie patted his back then lifted the other boy’s arm, put it over his shoulders and stood. The two of them walked slowly past Tommy. He watched as they went into the cabin then followed after them.
Nil’s mom was on the phone. She said abruptly, “If you wait ‘til morning, they’ll be gone.” She listened, made a disgusted face then said, “Keeping your back side safe’s always what you were good at, Walter.” She hung the phone up hard, muttering, “That’ll give the gossips something to do tomorrow.” She looked over at the boys, “Go to bed. Walter’ll be out to pick you boys up at daybreak, so you’d best be ready to go.” She stomped across the kitchen, into another room and slammed the door.
Nils said, “Walter always makes her crazy.”
Tommy and Freddie nodded. Freddie said, “My dad drives me mom crazy, too.” The boys drifted into the bed room and when Nils turned out the light, dropped into the bed. All three of them were snoring a few minutes later.
They were woken up by pounding on the door. “Let’s go, boys! Breakfast in five minutes, then Walter’ll be here at five thirty!”
Somehow, they’d ended up in a heap, tangled arms, legs, and torsos. Rolling out of bed, they each ran to the bathroom, used it, and ran out. Sixty seconds later, they were in the kitchen. Three plates stacked with flapjacks, bacon, and sausages steamed on the table. “Eat fast, ‘cause when Walter gets here, you’ll be flying out like bats outta you know where.”
By the time they were done stuffing their faces, a sheriff’s squad car had pulled up. A large, red-faced man rolled out. Looking up at the brightening sky, shading the sun, he shouted, “Let’s go! Day’s gettin’ on!”
The boys scrambled to their feet, but Nils’ mother waved them down. “I’ll take care of our sheriff.” Wiping on her apron, she headed out the door. Tommy and Freddie stared. Nils grabbed the shoulders of their shirts and pulled them to their feet and backward to the room. When they were there, he said, “Get your stuff packed and get going.”
“What?” said Freddie.
“Mom and Walter’s gonna talk forever. If you don’t get on the road early, them crazies from Duluth is gonna catch you.” The boys nodded. “Just keep the clothes. Ma won’t mind. I got too much stuff anyway.” He looked at Freddie, nodded, then slugged Tommy in the shoulder. “Get goin’.”
Tommy started out the door. Freddie stayed a minute longer, slugged Nils in the shoulder then said, “Who knows. Maybe I’ll come back up next summer.”
Nils nodded, then said, “Hurry up. I’ll tell Ma you left. She’ll be OK with that.” He walked out of the room.
Freddie said, “Too bad he doesn’t living in the city.”
“He’d have been one of us.”
“Yep,” said Freddie. “Let’s go before the Communists wake up.”
“They’re Socialists.”
“Same thing,” said Freddie. The boys walked through the house. “She cooks good, too.”
“Better than my sister,” said Tommy.
Freddie laughed and said, “That’s not hard to do.” Tommy slugged him, feeling better. They slipped out the back door. “Which way do you suppose the road is?”
Tommy stopped. Freddie stopped beside him. The sun was up, slanting through a grove of widely spaced pine trees from their left. “That’s east,” Tommy said.
“Duh.”
“So we go straight, keeping the sun on our left.” He started walking. Soon they reached a blacktop road going east-west. He turned and they walked into the sun until they reach a wider blacktop.Freddie shaded his eyes, looked left, then right, “Sign says it’s fifty-six.” There were no cars. “Middle of the week, ain’t gonna be no one going nowhere.

“Sounds right.” He started walking. “We wait until someone that don’t speak Finnish stops to give us a ride.”
“Right.” They’d walked a mile or so when Freddie added, “Sorta gonna miss Nils.”
They kept walking on the silent road as the summer sun climbed slowly into the sky.Image: http://pascosheriff.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/HISTOR1.gif

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 219

[image error]Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them.

F Trope: White magic
Current Event: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD1SLcyMZRE
Mahamat Abeche and Liha Beledweyne looked at each other across the table in the Gersthofen Commons of Göggingen College.
“The thing about Americans?” Liha said. She watched a gaggle of students mutter on by.
“Which thing about Americans?” asked Mahamat. Liha looked at him in disgust. For having so many bad things to say about the US, he certainly had no qualms about the food. He was stuffing a sheaf of “French” fries into his mouth then washing it down with a Coke.
“The thing about Americans is that they’re so…materialistic. They think that what they see is what they get.” He rolled her eyes and shook her head. Even she picked up Americanisms without even realizing it. Her father had warned her that America would badly muffle her perception of the spirit world. She’d figured she could handle it. She now figured that it was a good thing that the college was so close to a Somolian neighborhood – while her spiritual sense was nowhere near as sharp as it had been at home, at least she still had one.
Mahamat looked up at her over his plate of fried. Once he’d chewed and swallowed, she said, “You East Africans are so proud of your supposed closeness with the spirit world. What about us? Chad grew from a population emigrated there in the seventh millennium B.C.!”
She snorted. “We were there from the ninth millennium B.C. onward. We were practically there are the dawn of Human civilization.”
“So you supposedly know all about everything spiritual because your forebears were around a couple thousand years before mine were?”
“No, I’m more spiritual because I’m more spiritual. You’re a brainless blob with so little spiritual sense that I’ve been dead trees with more spiritual energy than you have.”
“Hey!” Mahamat exclaimed. The tip of a fry fell from his mouth.
“So, if you’re more spiritual than a log, you’re gonna have to prove it.”
He grunted then said, “I didn’t want to have to bring out the big guns, but now you’ve impugned my masculinity. I have to...”
“Do you even know what the word means?”“What? ‘impugn’ means ‘honesty of (a statement or motive); challenge; call into question.’ See?” He smirked.

“That’s not the word I meant.”
Scowling, he said, “I know white magic and I can prove it.”
“What?”
Mahamat lifted his chin. “In white magic – as it was passed on to me by my mother – we follow specific ethical codes and adopt social convention. But I know a spell to protect an item.” He leaned over and grabbed his backpack, opened it and pulled his laptop out, opened it and powered it up. Sitting back in his chair, he muttered then looked up at her. “I’ve protected my laptop with a spell.” He stood up. “I gotta go to the bathroom,” he said loudly and walked away.
Liha said, “What are you doing? If you leave your...” He flipped her off and kept going.
She stared after him incredulously, flipped him back, spun around and walked away. She walked past the Göggingen Gallery then came back around, unobtrusively watching the open laptop. It sat just fine for several moments. Four people walked past going in different directions, but no one made a move for the computer.
Then a peculiarly shabby male student, long hair obscuring his face, his sweatshirt slightly rattier than usual walked toward the table. He reached for the laptop…
Names: ♀ Somalia; ♂ Tchad  
Image: http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YkBOejFNmnU/0.jpg

Slice of PIE: “Is There a Government in the Story?”

[image error]Using the panel discussions of the most recent World Science Fiction Convention in London, August 2014, I will jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. The link is provided below…
“Ideology versus Politics in Science Fiction – Most “political” science fiction doesn’t really deal with politics, it deals with the setting out of ideologies. In other words, it tells stories that have little to do with running a government. The result is a debate of ideas where the political is described by greed and corruption, but never the merely bureaucratic. Why are these tropes recycled time and again? How can politics be approached in a more authentic way and remain interesting to readers? With: Teresa Nielsen Hayden (M), Martin McGrath, Laurie Penny, Kim Stanley Robinson, Jon Courtenay Grimwood” (page 61)
Fascinating thought – and it forced me to weed through my books.
Where do we actually SEE government in a novel?
Once set of books where I’ve seen not only the working of a government – but that HOW the government works is integral to the story is in Lois McMaster Bujold’s VORKOSIGAN books. In them, the entire series begins with an attempted overthrow of the standing government. Miles, the usual viewpoint character, is CREATED by this event. Without this seminal event – the crippling of Miles – the rest of the series would not only be impossible, but it would be downright boring.
Who Miles is, is a direct result of politics in motion.
Rereading the blurb above, though, made me realize that the “complaint” seems to be that “‘political’ science fiction doesn’t really deal with politics, it deals with the setting out of ideologies.” So I suppose George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s BRAVE NEW WORLD would be the “political” SF the author of the blurb is looking for. Most in the panel might mark THE LATHE OF HEAVEN as political SF; or DUNE…no?Probably not, because we never see the Landsraad actually meet or debate. We just see Paul Muad’dib overthrow the government and declare himself God Emperor and then never talk about politics again...We see the machinations of the Harkonnen family as it works to outmaneuver the Atreides family, then again, it’s a space adventure and while the discerning 29 people voted that  it’s political SF, the majority won’t read it that way. Look at the movies – very little politics, lots of explosions and special effects!

The VORKOSIGAN novels can’t possibly be political SF novels, either voted on by the body of people nominating Best SF or suggested by the site owners. No one voted them onto the list, yet the introduction of reproductive freedom for women strikes me as eminently political.
I would argue that DUNE is more of a political novel than BRAVE NEW WORLD. I would argue that ANCILLARY JUSTICE (and ANCILLARY SWORD) are more political SF novels than THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE because they demonstrate the effect of political decisions on the “voters” or the proletariat, in fact, again, they posit such a radical change as the feminization of the generic pronoun. While CAT’S CRADLE may have received raves as a literary novel and hold the fifteenth spot on Best Science Fiction Books list of political novels, CJ Cherryh’s FOREIGNER books don’t even rank – yet every novel turns on political machinations of the complex world of the Atevi, the place of Humans in that world, and the actions of one particular Human, the paidhi, Bren Cameron.
What exactly were the criteria that the voters of on the Best list and the organizers of LonCon laid down for the discussion?
Your thoughts?
Program Book: http://www.loncon3.org/documents/ReadMe_LR.pdf
Resources: http://bestsciencefictionbooks.com/political-science-fiction.phpImage: https://www.yourprops.com/movieprops/original/4bc92f25856ac/Star-Trek-VI-The-Undiscovered-Country-Klingon-Mask-2.jpg