Guy Stewart's Blog, page 32

Oddly Enough, This Appeared on My FACEBOOK Feed Todat...

Oddly enough, this appeared on my FaceBook feed today via Writers Write who added a new photo to the album: More Quotes On Writing. The Quotable Anne McCaffrey. Read more about the author here bit.ly/3VyNGHN
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WRITING ADVICE: Short Stories – Advice and Observation #20: Anne McCaffrey “& Me”

In this feature, I’ll be looking at “advice” for writing short stories – not from me, but from other short story writers. In speculative fiction, “short” has very carefully delineated categories: “The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America specifies word lengths for each category of its Nebula award categories by word count; Novel 40,000 words or over; Novella 17,500 to 39,999 words; Novelette 7,500 to 17,499 words; Short story under 7,500 words.”

I’m going to use advice from people who, in addition to writing novels, have also spent plenty of time “interning” with short stories. While most of them are speculative fiction writers, I’ll also be looking at plain, old, effective short story writers. The advice will be in the form of one or several quotes off of which I’ll jump and connect it with my own writing experience. While I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it...neither do most of the professional writers...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 as I work to increase my writing output and sales! As always, your comments are welcome!

Without further ado, short story observations by Anne McCaffrey – with a few from myself…

I met Anne McCaffrey long ago, when I was 21 and bought the 1978 paperback publication of DRAGONFLIGHT (the cover is at the top left of my post). I got it brand new for $1.50 at B. Dalton Booksellers at Brookdale, a now defunct and bulldozed mall a few miles from home. I was in my second year of college, had a job, and often went there to cruise for my science fiction fix. While the cover made it LOOK like a fantasy (which I usually deplored), reading the first paragraph, standing there next to the SCIENCE FICTION shelves, captured me for the next three decades:

“When is a legend legend? Why is a myth a myth? How old and disused must a fact be for it to be relegated to the category ‘Fairy-tale’? And why do certain facts remain incontrovertible while others lose their validity to assume a shabby, unstable character? Rukbat, in the Sagittarian sector, was a golden G-type star. It had five planets, and one stray it had attracted and held in recent millennia.”

I went on to read all of the DRAGONRIDER books – usually numerous times – and even sought out the original issues of ANALOG in which “Weyr Search” (October 1967) and “Dragonrider” (December 1967) appeared. The year they were published, I was too busy playing with Major Matt Mason in the sandbox…I was 10 years old.

She passed away after a career that covered half a century.

I’ll point out that she started her career with “The Ship Who Sang”, a novelette in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction…(ironically, the F&SF story was about a starship with a Human brain; the ANALOG story was about fire-breathing dragons). But she DID begin with short stories, and for that reason, I wanted to know what she had to say about writing them, then to look and see if I picked up anything from reading her writing.

“Once the kids are away at school – which is how I got to write a novel. In 1965 my daugh­ter, who is the youngest, went to school full time. It was like, who pulled out the plug? I had eight hours I could plan my time in. Okay, so I put on a load of wash or I’d start something for dinner in be­tween writing chapters, but I had the time I could devote to the concentrated work that a novel requires.”

I’ve discovered that this is truth for me as well. When the kids were infants, I wrote late into the night rather than any time when they were awake. Parenting was a full-time job in addition to my “money-making job” (I didn’t professionally sell a story until 1994, when ANALOG bought my first story. When I got the acceptance letter from Stan Schmidt, I wept.) Since retiring, I’ve written one novel, several dozen stories, and I’m editing a novel now that takes place on Mars and is as long as Kim Stanley Robinson’s GREEN MARS.

“The Milford Science Fiction Conferences that were held with all published writers. Damon Knight, Judy Merrill and Kate Wilhelm were the administrators of that. You had to submit a story to be criti­cized. Boy, moment of truth. Now listen­ing to twenty-five or thirty other writers in the field criticize stories, you got an awful lot of information on how to put a story together and also how to look for flaws in your own work. So it was ex­tremely good. Although I never put any of the stories that really meant a lot to me, like the ship stories or the Pern stories, into the conference I still learned a great deal about writing from that. So the peer group was extremely critical at that point in time.

While there is no Milford SF Conference in the US anymore, and I can’t afford events like Clarion, Odyssey, the defunct Orson Scott Card’s Literary Boot Camp, and Realm Makers – I can barely afford to sporadically attend fan conventions here in Minneapolis like MinniCon, MarsCon, and DiversiCon. So, as did Anne McCaffrey did, I rely on myself and a couple of other writer friends. I didn’t know any hard science fiction writers near me – except for Gordon R. Dickson and Clifford D. Simak. But I was a “no-one” writer, so even though I fantasized about taking the bus out to Simak’s house and knocking on his door, I never did. My parents thought I was crazy enough as it is!

“I can’t not write. So I’m busy with something most of the time. I am a story teller…That’s what writing is all about…making others see what you have put down on the page and believing that it does, or could, exist and you want to go there. Tell the readers a story! Because without a story, you are merely using words to prove you can string them together in logical sentences…Don't try to impress your reader with style or vocabulary or neatly turned phrases. Tell the story first!...I would recommend the short story form, which is a lot harder to write since you have to be so careful with words, until there is plenty of time to doodle through a novel.”

Maybe I read it from her first, but I have always felt that I can’t NOT write. I even wrote a blog post about something that happened to me while I was taking classes to get my Masters degree in school counseling and was entirely unable to write fiction because I was both working a forty-hour-a-week job and taking one or two classes a semester to get my Masters. I became physically ill – and didn’t even know it until I reflected on it some months later. So, my body requires that I write!

I do love to help people see something important. While few of my stories have what you’d call a “message”, all of them are specifically “about something”. For example, my story, “Dinosaur Veterinarian” is in the November/December issue of ANALOG Science Fiction & Fact. It takes place in South Korea and involves genetic engineering, the 625 War (what the South Koreans call the event, Americans call the Korean War, and the North Koreans calls either the “Fatherland Liberation War” or alternatively the “Chosǒn [Korean] War”), profound prejudice (which one reviewer thought was unrealistic or unbelievable…though I wondered if she’d lost a parent to a foreign power during a military conflict she would find the character’s motivation believable…)

Finding the story is often the hardest part of writing! I had to start a recent piece of work twice because I wasn’t sure WHOSE story it was. I’ve got a couple of other stories where I have to figure out whose story needs to be told.

“I have always used emotion as a writing tool. That goes back to me being on the stage…You must have occasionally read a book that annoyed you for some indefinable reason: It may be that the writer did not totally believe what he was writing. That disbelief comes across to the reader, making him/her uncomfortable indeed, and destroying any other factors the writer may have had working in his favor…One of the reasons the westerns of Louis L'Amour are so immensely popular is that he is known to have walked any area he used in one of his novels, known it so intimately that he could tell when a boulder or a pebble had been moved. This knowledge comes through to the reader and enhances his/her confidence in the author. Granted we can't all do such on-the-spot investigation, but we can research pertinent details and believe in what we're saying. It isn't so much a ‘suspension of disbelief’ as insurance that you will be believed. What is the cynical saying—‘Believe you're telling the truth, even if you're lying about it?’…We all must have those moments of high tragedy and personal frustration, anger, or hilarious humor (the latter being in very short supply in most lives), and we can translate those into the material we wish to enhance with an emotional content. But the writer has to be so immersed in those emotions, believe in them so firmly, that they reach the reader!...I have always believed in Pern. I enjoy going there: I enjoy poking holes in its complacency and seeing what happens to the people nearest the holes. I am comfortable with Pern. I know a lot more about it on an instinctive or intuitive level than even my most devoted reader. I keep lists of all kinds of things about my characters and my places…As long as you believe in them, you can convince your reader that the circumstances are valid for the course of the story. But you must deeply, sincerely, madly believe in what you are writing as you write, or the whole thing will fall flat on its face.”

This has manifested itself in an odd way as I edit through a (currently) 800,000 word story I finished writing several year ago that is both complex and has succeeded in drawing me into it – and even though I’m the one that wrote the revelation, I found I was SURPRISED by the twist in the plot. I’m pretty sure it can’t get better than surprising yourself in a story you wrote – and it was a LOGICAL surprise (if that makes any sense! HOWEVER, using emotion to rive story is something I'm not very good at. I need to sharpen that skill!

Tell us a bit about the short story "Beyond Between" in the Legends 2 Anthology from Del Rey. The story is about a very interesting facet of the Pern Universe…I don't have organized religion on Pern. I figured – since there were four holy wars going on at the time of writing – that religion was one problem Pern didn't need. However, if one listens to childhood teachings, God is everywhere so there should be no question in any mind that he is also on Pern. Thus, there is a heaven to which worthy souls go. So, without mentioning any denomination of organized religion, I figured that both Moreta and Leri deserved respite after their trials... and that's where ‘Beyond Between’ is.”

I found this amazing! I’ve always felt an indefinable sadness when not only contemplating PERN (by the way, the name of the world isn’t a real name – it’s an acronym regarding the type of planet it was labeled after it was surveyed: Parallel Earth, Resources Negligible – P E R N…), but wondering what happened to McCaffrey to lead her to lose organized religion on her imaginary world. This was a bit surprising and I’ll add it to my trove of little things I know about her – and how those things somehow combined in her mind to create the many worlds of Anne McCaffrey.

What do you hope to give readers through your work? “Mostly I'm telling people that they don't have to be victims. They can be survivors but I don't as a rule put 'messages' in my writing.”

Finally, I think I’ve started to learn this – not the specific message she weaves in her stories, rather the idea that stories should MEAN something. They should inspire, challenge, or cause us to grow. Stories can even make us angry – especially if instead of directing our anger outward to destroy as many people as we can, I direct it inwardly and use it to root out lousy ideas and attitudes in my own life; or even figure out how to use that energy to change the world around me and help people to live better, more peaceful lives.

References: https://www.writing-world.com/sf/mccaffrey.shtml, https://sfmistressworks.wordpress.com/category/anne-mccaffrey/, https://www.writinganalytics.co/quotes/21/ , https://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com/tips/mccaffrey.shtml, https://www.azquotes.com/author/19855-Anne_McCaffrey/tag/writing, https://www.tor.com/2015/04/01/anne-mccaffrey-gave-us-all-our-own-dragons-to-ride/, https://bobneilson.org/interviews/anne-mccaffrey/, https://www.dragoncon.org/dailydragon/dc1999/be-careful-what-you-wish-for-you-may-get-it-an-interview-with-anne-mccaffrey/, https://www.locusmag.com/2004/Issues/11McCaffrey.html, http://www.kittywumpus.net/blog/2015/06/01/the-sf-that-was-isaac-asimov-introduces-anne-mccaffrey/, https://m.media-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/b4/ea/5c061363ada0f65b32d50110.L.jpgImage: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhK6miXJMTMNyB3kzq-r6I2LVCTZJj0CDS0dPV2Qapl6e9rZPuHx2u5QKcKT1QGeDg1_tPMv-lpnuSr_eiBjwPXmex9mcgtuH2-SUtZEpGWV0_HdtJQelVt5K69NulJBUqNju5GNjHgQibXsIo4NeWpTOj4ai85jCRjMHOtwtkqshzxFvZPUSjXZNq6=s320

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 569

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. Octavia Butler said, “SF doesn’t really mean anything at all, except that if you use science, you should use it correctly, and if you use your imagination to extend it beyond what we already know, you should do that intelligently.”

SF Trope: Time Travel
Current Event: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2665781/Could-time-travel-soon-reality-Physicists-simulate-quantum-light-particles-travelling-past-time.html

Anton Naoumov shook his head. “You’re not going to get me into that thing. I signed aboard this ship to practice being a paramedic, not to have my atoms scattered back and forth across space by this gadget.”

Piia Takala grinned, “You’re not going anywhere in space, Anton! It’s...”

“I know – it’s a time machine. But didn’t Einstein have some theory that space and time are related? Intimately.”

Piia blinked in surprise and managed to say, “I’m sure you got that wrong. You never had a physics class, did you?”

“I didn’t need the class. I’m not a total idiot, you know! Medical majors can dabble in other stuff, so I did. And I didn’t get it wrong,” he said, tapping his handheld computer. “It says right here that Einstein wrote about it and W. K. Clifford described the effect of gravitation on space and time. He figured out it was easily visualized as a ‘warp’ in the geometrical fabric of space and time, in a smooth and continuous way that changed smoothly from point-to-point along the fabric of space and time.”

Piia pursed her lips. She’d never get him into the thing to go back with her if she let him dig any deeper. She said, “Granted. Space and time are intimately connected. But this isn’t going to be scattering your atoms anywhere. The only things that will be scattered are the quanta that make up the atoms. Those are only going to be shifted a little...”

He held up his hand and said, “What do you want me to do this for anyway? What’s so all-fired important about me doing this?”

She sat down on the stool in front of the control board. The time-shift chamber wasn’t really a chamber at all – it was a platform made of ultradense matter that was so massive, it was making a tiny dimple in local space-time. Above, a bank of high energy lamps pointed downward to an EM lens that would focus them on the head of the subject with enough force to shove the person through the dimple and into another time. The time period was pinpointed by the tightness of the focus and the depth of the dimple. Piia’d done the calculations three times. She took a deep breath and finally said, “I want you to stop the Finnish Civil War of 1918.”

He scowled then said, “How am I supposed to do that?”

“You have to let the one man who can stop the whole mess die.”

“What?”

“It has to look like a natural death, too. I figured all you paramedics know how to keep people alive when they’re on the brink of death, you probably know how to push them over, too.” She slipped the stun gun from her pocket, flicking it on to maximum strength and minimum dispersion.

“You want me to commit murder?”

“Don’t worry about it – if you’re successful none of this will ever happen.”

“What?”

“I want you to let my great, great, great grandfather die,” she said as she stunned him.
Names: ♀Finland, Thailand ; ♂ Bulgaria, Iceland
Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e1/Falcon_9_Demo-2_Launching_6_%283%29.jpg/220px-Falcon_9_Demo-2_Launching_6_%283%29.jpg

SLICE OF PIE: Aliens From Alien Worlds

I’ve been teaching a class for gifted and talented children for almost thirty years called ALIEN WORLDS. It’s a popular class. I teach it twice each summer and also frequently teach the class at an annual conference for the parents of GT kids. (I'm doing it this weekend, actually.)
I used to let the students, who range in age from nine to thirteen, just choose an imaginary star with an imaginary star system. Of course, I started the class in 1997…since that time, we have grown the Open Exoplanet Catalog (http://www.openexoplanetcatalogue.com/) from nonexistent to containing 3468 confirmed exoplanets and they have to pick the star system they’re going to “grow” from those. In fact, the Catalog has become so much a part of our culture that the spellchecker on this laptop accepts it as a word – and I didn’t have to add it as I did in the past.

The discovery of new star systems makes it into the news regularly with the most recent splash being the Trappist System (40 light years away): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRAPPIST-1, as well as the biggest splash before that, Kepler-60 (2500 light years away) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler-90), and the “first” among the splashes, Kepler 186 (500 light years away) with its Earth-sized planet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler-186), and Gliese 876 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_876).

I started teaching the class using a book called HABITABLE PLANETS FOR MAN (http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/commercial_books/2007/RAND_CB179-1.pdf) and still use several graphs from it to this day in my Power Point lecture.

I begin this class with a discussion in which I ask the question, “How many of you actually believe in aliens?”

The kids are somewhere between enthusiastically waving their hands in the air and scowling at me. I usually smile and backtrack and say, “OK – how about this. Raise your hand if you believe,” (I flash an image of Gram-stained bacteria), “that there is microscopic life ‘out there’ that didn’t originate on Earth?”

They’re much more confident when they raise their hands now. I flash the next image, the bizarre Hydnora africana and ask if they believe that there might be alien plants. Most of the them are fine with that. When I get to animal life, I flash an image of the star nosed mole. They laugh, but are a bit less certain. Finally, I show a full Gray, bulging eyes and bulbous head and all, no UFO present, but might as well be one in the background. By then, half of the students have dropped their hands. It’s a lot of big leaps to go from alien bacteria to intelligent alien life. Then I ask them if we have found real, certifiable evidence.

One or two might mention the fossilized “Martian bacteria”, but I point out that the consensus that it’s the result of chemical reactions and not the remains of life is pretty solid in the scientific community (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Hills_84001). So…other than reports of alien abductions (which always gets a good giggle from these critical thinkers), I tender to them that there is NO EVIDENCE of life off of Earth.

“What about water under the ice of Europa?” one of the kids offers. I nod, then point out that unlike Minnesota, where a cold winter may cause the ice to reach four or five meters thick, the ice on Europa is estimated to be between 75 and 100 KILOMETERS thick. They can’t take their ice augers and drill through the surface of Jupiter’s moon!

Now don’t get me wrong, I badly want to see evidence of aliens, but as a science teacher, I teach FACTS. Speculation is fine for messing around with, but when you talk FACTS, you’re talking SCIENCE. So, when we talk about habitable planets, we have to be careful – we’re talking habitable planets for us, not the homeworld of the Klingons (Omega Leonis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_Leonis, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon) or the Eclipsing Binary home star (Eclipsing Binary Star M31V J00442326+4127082) of the Xandar Empire in the Andromeda Galaxy.

Aliens, despite Jody Foster’s (often misattributed to Carl Sagan) protestation to the contrary that “If we are alone in the Universe, it sure seems like an awful waste of space”; are not proven by making loud proclamations that space would be a waste if we were all that there is. The statement doesn’t produce any evidence that we are not the only technological civilization in the known universe. In fact, the evidence indicates that we are the only technological civilization. Sagan hedges his bets by stating in a COSMOS episode that the nearest technological civilization is possibly two hundred light years away, but more likely 1000 light years away. There is no way for him to be wrong in any sense of the word because the potential for gathering evidence either for or against his proclamation is miniscule. So, he opts for inspiring without having to make the sacrifices necessary to see his words through to the end; unlike president Kennedy, who put American dollars where NASA could use them in order to send Humans to the Moon the first time.

The industry, economics, and pure cash built around our profound belief in the existence of intelligent alien life (https://www.inverse.com/article/25908-hunt-for-aliens-grassroots-movement-funded-by-billionaires) surpasses the net worth of the planet’s religious institutions. (Wealthiest organizations, religions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_and_religion) vs net earnings from extraterrestrial (invasion ONLY) movies (http://www.boxofficemojo.com/genres/chart/?id=scifialieninvasion.htm). To put it into cash numbers: Religions approximately $1 trillion = Alien (invasion only, since 1985) $5.8 trillion dollars.

While I AM a religious person, I am also consumed by my love for aliens. I often wonder how I'd react if I met an actual, factual, living, breathing alien. I've pretty much lost interest in "alien invasion" movies that offer no insight or appear to have been discussed seriously or thoughtfully (example: STAR WARS I: Phantom Menace -- Were they REALLY serious when they created most of the characters in that movie? Did they even THINK about how stupid...ahem. Sorry. I'll take my aliens from "Arrival", thank you very much -- alien, difficult to understand, but THOUGHTPROVOKING!
I hope there are more of that type in someone's pipeline. Better yet, maybe one will appearing, hovering over Montana sometime soon: a 12 hour drive would get me there, no problem!

Image: https://68.media.tumblr.com/d740caf10011fae3eb89c340a2c0ad31/tumblr_oixik2Srjt1w0f40yo1_500.gif

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 568

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. Regarding horror, I found this insight in line with WIRED FOR STORY: “ We seek out…stories which give us a place to put our fears…Stories that frighten us or unsettle us - not just horror stories, but ones that make us uncomfortable or that strike a chord somewhere deep inside - give us the means to explore the things that scare us…” – Lou Morgan (The Guardian)

H Trope: horrible spiders
Current Event: http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/bugs/egyptian-giant-solpugid/

In the creepy tradition of the movie PIRANHA (1978) (which contained a line that, even though I saw the movie 32 years ago has remained etched in my mind forever: “Sir, the piranha, they’re eating the guests.”), I offer you this twist on the theme…or, if you prefer, a twisted theme…

Paul Grogan looked through the windshield of Maggie McKeown’s 2035, Ford F-Series SuperDuty pickup through the pouring rain and into Kelly’s Slough National Wildlife Refuge eight kilometers east of Grand Forks, North Dakota.

“This doesn’t seem to be ideal camping weather,” Paul said.

“Oh, Paul! Where’s your sense of adventure?” Maggie said, then laughed.

He glanced at her. “Probably at the Minneapolis/St Paul International Airport Hilton-Best Western-Marriot-Hyatt Luxury Hotel where I booked us…” He sighed. Mom and Maggie’s dad, officers in the Air Force, scientists – her dad’s a doctor, his mom a specialist in arachnids…

“I thought you wanted to see spiders? This doesn’t exactly scream ‘Spider Haven’.”

“I’m not sure it would be any better for horseback riding, though,” said Maggie.

He sighed, swallowed hard. She knew his wildest dream was to be a horse vet. He said, “What would you want to be more than anything else in the world.” He fingered the engagement ring in his pocket, secretly smiling.

Maggie said, “I want to marry a really, really rich old guy who ‘dies before his time’.”

“What? I thought we were gonna get married!”

She smiled up at him, reached over, patted his hand and said, “I want to marry the rich guy first so I can inherit his millions. After he dies, I’ll marry you and then support you as a vet so you can live wherever you want to live.”

“I want to live with you…” Paul says. He screamed, shaking his hand wildly, “Something bit me!”

“Probably a spider. Your mom says they’re working on spider control here.” She grinned at his horrified look, “You know that that means she’s on some kind of top-secret project to develop spiders as weapons.” Shaking his hand again, he looked behind him and then the place on his hand again.

She said, “Aren’t you afraid it’s going to bite you again?”

“Aside from the fact that I’ve been bitten by just about every spider known to Humanity and have a broad-based anti-venin booster every six months? Not really.”

She snorted. “You just don’t respect spiders the way I do.”

He shook his head and said, “I do feel sorta weird.”

“What do you mean, sorta weird?”

“Sorta like...I want to eat spider meat.”

“Not with the same mouth that kisses these lips!” she exclaimed. “I may love spiders, but I’m not in a kissing relationship with any of them.”

He blinked hard and swayed. “I’m not kidding, Meg. I feel like I’m out of time.”

For the first time, she looked alarmed. “Like you’re going to die?”

“No – not that out of time. Like I’m out of our time. Like I want to go Spider hunting…”

“Why do I get the feeling that we’re not talking about traditional Earthly spiders?”

“I...I...have a really, really awful craving for some spider meat. Lots and lots,” he looked at her with wide eyes, “Spider meat.”

Names: ♀ Ancient Greece, Ireland; ♂ Israel, Ireland
Image: https://cdn.britannica.com/40/11740-004-50816EB1/Boris-Karloff-Frankenstein-monster.jpg

Jax Lunar Lumber: Chapter 1

For some reason, this post originally attracted some 1200 hits. I'm ready to get back to it now, but I'll start with this...
On the way to the neighborhood Home Depot for the obligatory weekend project as well as a load of flowers and potting soil, I started musing on my hitch as a “yard ape” for a company called Knox Lumber. We, too were busy this time of year, and it was a familiar feel whenever I went to one of these stored. Knox was one of the original “Do It Yourself” (aka DIY) stores, a precursor to today’s Lowes, Menards, and Home Depot. Eventually bought out by Payless Cashways (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payless_Cashways), the rumor in the store was that you could build an entire house by waiting patiently for a year while EVERYTHING went on sale…Rolling down the driveway, I suddenly had a thought and snickered.
When my wife asked, “What?” I shook my head. “No, what..."
I reiterated the train of thought above, then added, “I was wondering if it would be possible to build a colony on the Moon using just what you could buy at Knox?”
We pondered it for a few moments, then suddenly said in unison, “Yes!”

Inspired by Matt Weir, the result of my musings begin below.

As we rolled down the driveway, I snickered. We were on our way to pick up supplies for our early May project in the backyard. This year, her first as a Retired Person, she had exploded from the gate with dozens of plants ready and waiting to be transferred outside. An early spring blizzard had chased anxious Minnesotans back inside twice this year and so the porch was a jungle of young tomato, squash, herb, cucumber, zucchini, chamomile, beans, onions, and carrot plants. She said, “What?”

“I just had a weird thought.”

She rolled her eyes and with a justifiably long-suffering tone, said, “What?”

“Well,” I started, hesitating. It was a strange idea, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought maybe… I said, “You remember how, when I worked for Knox, they said if you waited a year, you could buy everything you needed to…”

“…build a house. Of course I remember. What about it?”

“Well, I was just wondering if it would be possible to buy everything you needed to build a Lunar colony.”

At first she snickered, but after a pause, we both said in unison, “Yes.”

That was the birth of Jax Colony, and I sit here looking past a pile of Lunar regolith outside the main airlock of the colony, I’m amazed that someone didn’t think of it thirty years ago during the “rush” to go to Mars.

I know that Weir Base on Mars is a going concern, but they only have fifteen people and they’re mostly scientists and engineers. We have those here at Jax, but we also have fifty-three other Waqans, Khadijahs, Toms, Katherines, Mayras, Miguels, Dayvons, and a bunch of other people who cook, patch, build, and like me, maintain the plumbing…

Resources: http://anynewsbd.com/lunar-lava-tubes.html

Image: http://anynewsbd.com/images/lunar-lava-tubes-3.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 567

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. Regarding Fantasy, this insight was startling: “I see the fantasy genre as an ever-shifting metaphor for life in this world, an innocuous medium that allows the author to examine difficult, even controversial, subjects with impunity. Honor, religion, politics, nobility, integrity, greed—we’ve an endless list of ideals to be dissected and explored. And maybe learned from.” – Melissa McPhail.

F Trope: Most lycanthropy, telekinesis, etc starts at puberty why not at menopause…
A Not-So-Current Event: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werewolf

According to the source above – “A notable exception to the association of Lycanthropy and the Devil, comes from a rare and lesser known account of an 80-year-old man named Thiess. In 1692, in Jurgenburg, Livonia, Thiess testified under oath that he and other werewolves were the Hounds of God. He claimed they were warriors who went down into hell to do battle with witches and demons. Their efforts ensured that the Devil and his minions did not carry off the grain from local failed crops down to hell. Thiess was steadfast in his assertions, claiming that werewolves in Germany and Russia also did battle with the devil's minions in their own versions of hell, and insisted that when werewolves died, their souls were welcomed into heaven as reward for their service.”

Teodors Pakalns (Latvian) – who goes by Ted in his Minnesota high school is in his supposedly “native land” while mom and dad go clubbing on the French Riviera to celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary. While admitting to himself that with the divorce rate at 73%, it might be something worth celebrating. But sending him to live with his LATVIAN grandfather in some dinky town of Lode! Near the bustling metropolis of Rujiena? What the heck is he supposed to do?

He frets, fumes and mutters about lousy internet connections until he’s so hungry, he can’t stand it. Coming out to eat, he finds that his grandfather has made a simple meal. It smells great and looks sort of like a calzone. Ted eats one, then eats another and then in sudden and surprisingly good English, grandpa tells him a story. He also tells him he needs to watch out – grandpa Pakalns is a werewolf. He’s a werewolf on a mission from God!

Jaanjika Kivi (Estonian) is called Jan in Helsinki where she lives with her artist mother. She drags Jan to visit her “she’s-been-dying-for-the-last-ten-years” grandmother in Mom’s home of Estonia, which she escaped as a kid by winning an art scholarship to Helsingin Yliopisto the University of Helsinki. Jan and her mother trek to the tiny Estonian town of Karski near the roaring metropolis...of Tartu.

*sigh*

Mom says she can go, but she’ll have to walk. Then Mom goes out to paint, leaving Jan with her elderly grandmother. Jan is mostly afraid of the old woman and doesn’t remember her speaking anything but some old language Jan assumes is Estonian.

Until suddenly Grandma starts to tell a story – in clear English – about how she was a werewolf, on a mission for God...then she turns to Jan and says, “You are my granddaughter. My own daughter refused to take up the mission. I am asking if you would take up my mission; complete it and do what our people have been called to do for five hundred years. I will be with you the entire time, but you must be my strong arms and strong legs. Will you do it, Jaanjika?” Grandma’s eye’s suddenly clear and seem to pierce her heart. “Will you?”

Jaanjika meets Teodors on the border between Estonia and Latvia – in the heart of the ancient land of Livonia, a land with an ancient history that may very well be poised at the dawn of a new era that rights a millennium old wrong.

But what about the forces that don’t want the wrong set right. The ones who have profited from the carnage? Who are they and what will they do to Jaanjika and Teodors?

Resource: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livonia
Image: http://img.costumecraze.com/images/vendors/california/01047-Adult-Big-Bad-Wolf-in-Grandma-Dress-Costume-large.jpg
Image:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/71/e5/9871e52bbc09c525af21b8f6471eab15.jpg

WRITING ADVICE: Can This Story Be SAVED? #32 “DRIVING [GENDER FLUID, RELATIONALLY EXPEDIENT] DAYZEE” (Submitted 4 Times Since Sept 2020, Never Revised)

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. In April of 2014, I figured I’d gotten enough publications that I could share some of the things I did “right”. I’ll keep that up, but I’m running out of pro-published stories. I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it, but someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what I write. Hemingway’s quote above will remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing output and sales, but I’m adding this new series of posts because I want to carefully look at what I’ve done WRONG and see if I can fix it. As always, your comments are welcome!

ANALOG Tag Line:
What if Humans aren’t as “primitive” as aliens THINK we are; and what if aliens aren’t as ADVANCED as we expect them to be? [After re-reading it and reading about the movie that sparked it, “Driving Miss Daisy”, the theme would be “Can aliens and Humans communicate without words – and maybe if they DID try to communicate without word, their message would come across more clearly.”]

Elevator Pitch (What Did I Think I Was Trying To Say?)
Someday, Humans will come into contact with aliens. We seem to think it will be totally random and one-sided – aliens abducting Humans for experimentation – or entirely between equals; like Zefram Cochrane meeting the Vulcans. What if it’s messy and only barely standardized; yet still interstellar?

Opening Line:
The beat officer scowled as the Tesla Ten Luxury Limousine Conversion seemed to float silently past his unmarked squad car, turning down the street his daughter and granddaughter lived on.”

Onward:
Someone at the end of Carlos Bander’s block has kidnapped an alien intelligence who somehow crash-landed in the marsh at the edge of the park. The Kifush alien, going by the name of Miz Dayzee is there to find out where it went before one of the primitive Humans murders it and causes an interstellar incident.

Through endless talking, they figure out who; Carlos approaches him; he surrenders the alien. The end.

What Was I Trying To Say?
Humans may have a skill at domestication, which a particularly violent intelligence might be interested in learning. This story was sparked by the movie, “Driving Miss Daisy”, winner of numerous awards for films made in 1989. Of that inspiration, virtually nothing overt remained…though there are hints of it I can see after rereading the story and reading the synopsis of the movie.

The Rest of the Story:
Carlos, killed when Chek runs him over is resurrected and saves the life of the granddaughter of the man who’s holding the Shabe hostage – is pressed into service in order to fix things up. This is supposed to be the first of an entire series about Carlos; and I have a Triptych planned for him as well (two of the stories are already written)…

End Analysis:
I’m on page 10 and nothing has really happened – except Carlos go run over and (presumably) almost died. Otherwise, there’s NO ACTION AT ALL. It’s been “sparkling repartee” and that’s it. That and a turkey dinner will nourish your imagination.

The red ball, which is actually part of the common language of the Unity is extremely distracting. I would have to figure a way to incorporate it into the written English transcript.

Also, there was no driving, except by Chek Yeltsin…

The thing is that, I think I may have heard the voice of this story. I wrote it a year or so ago, I was trying to be “trendy”. While there’s nothing wrong with that, the title promised WAY more than it delivered. In fact, there was nothing in the story that had ANYTHING to do with “Miss” Dayzee. It was cutesy in the extreme with absolutely no meat on its bones whatsoever – and might as well have been called, “Some Stuff Happens After a Man In the Neighborhood Captures an Injured Alien and Nobody Cares”…

Can This Story Be Saved?
As is? Absolutely not, mostly because absolutely nothing happens that isn’t predictable and actually boring.

HOWEVER: Of “Driving Miss Daisy”, “Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called it ‘a film of great love and patience’ and wrote, ‘It is an immensely subtle film, in which hardly any of the most important information is carried in the dialogue and in which body language, tone of voice or the look in an eye can be the most important thing in a scene. After so many movies in which shallow and violent people deny their humanity and ours, what a lesson to see a film that looks into the heart.’”

What if I reimagined this using Carlos as a bitter widower, his anger with no target, who finds an alien he recognizes as one that’s bent on using Earth. Can he get even with its people – or does he have a basic decency that makes him step back and learn to communicate with it; begin to understand it, and discover that it has a real fear of Humanity because we possess the ability to alter them for all time, making them powerless to stop anyone from taking them over? Who will be responsible? Who will save the day – if the day can be saved at all? Can anything be done to change Carlos – and to change the aliens?

Image: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/9f/22/3b/9f223b1e57a36e14db3eb13715fbe3f9.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAY 566

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. Octavia Butler said, “SF doesn’t really mean anything at all, except that if you use science, you should use it correctly, and if you use your imagination to extend it beyond what we already know, you should do that intelligently.”

SF Trope: “All Planets Are Exactly Like Earth http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AllPlanetsAreEarthLike
Current Event: http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/07/a-super-earth-found-in-the-habitable-zone-of-a-sun-like-star/

Hamsa Mohmand squirmed in his wheelchair and muttered, “This isn’t exactly how I envisioned meeting an alien welcoming committee.”

“Be happy the *trill*Geh are willing to meet with us at all,” said Layan Joya. “There are indications their culture has no tolerance for handicaps.”

“We’re not handicapped!” Hamsa exclaimed.

“To them we are. Now be quiet.” The airlock from the lander to the outdoors irised open. A fresh breeze blew across their faces. Layan said, “Dill weed.”

“Lemon.”

“Alien,” she said, then sneezed. She glanced at Hamsa, eyes wide, “What if we’re allergic to them?”

“Allergens would have shown up in analysis. There’s never been a meeting so carefully coordinate and planned as this one.”

“Yeah, from fourteen hundred light years away!”

“Good thing we have the q-no.” The quantum nonlocality device allowed them to speak with anyone on Earth without delay. Their first encounter with the *trill*Geh was being broadcast back on Earth in every format and language.

“A lot of good that’s done us…”

“Quiet, they’re here.” A broad moving platform on multiple small wheels rode up to the foot of the ship’s gangplank. On it lay a living being that looked like a biological version of the vehicle – wide, flattened, and covered with what appeared to be gray leaves that lifted and fell in a rhythmic, faintly nauseating pattern. “Watching them never made me feel queasy from the ship,” she whispered.

“It’s the direct contact and the smells and the double gravity – all together. One of the braniacs on Earth said this might happen.” He sneezed.

The *trill*Geh moved off the vehicle with a sinuous, millipede-like stride. The forward portion of the creature lifted from the ground and four pairs of tentacles unrolled. The tips of the uppermost two and lowermost two twisted together, the central four stretched out at forty degrees from each other. The effect was of a six-pointed star. At the top was a crown of blue cilia that never stopped moving. Abruptly, every one of the leaves stuck out and the *trill*Geh dropped to the ground. It was instantly back on all of its feet again.

“What was that?”

“I have a funny, unfunny feeling about this…”

Names: ♀ Afghanistan; ♂ Afghanistan
Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e1/Falcon_9_Demo-2_Launching_6_%283%29.jpg/220px-Falcon_9_Demo-2_Launching_6_%283%29.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY: MINING THE ASTEROIDS Part 8 – Faith in God and the Exploitation of the Riches of the Asteroids (literally, “star, like”…)

Initially, I started this series because of the 2021 World Science Fiction Convention, DisCON which I WOULD have been attending in person if I felt safe enough to do so in person AND it hadn’t been changed to the week before the Christmas Holidays…HOWEVER, as time passed, I knew that this was a subject I was going to explore because it interests me…So, I’m going to make this an occasional feature of my blog – maybe even of Stupefying Stories if the CyberPunkMaster gives me a thumbs up…

OK…a thought occurred to me, but it’s going to take me several paragraphs to get there, and some people won’t like where I end up…

Take this article from 2016, where none other than Neil deGrasse Tyson predicts that the first TRILLIONaire on Earth will come out of asteroid mining. (https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/neil-degrasse-tyson-says-space-ventures-will-spawn-first-trillionaire-n352271).

Another writer predicts that the only way we’ll be able to mine the asteroid will be the drive of religious minorities of EVERY stripe – the way Europeans invaded North America in the first place.

The Harvard International Review, in an April 2022 article notes, “Notably, the Tel Aviv researchers also predicted that within this struggle, developing countries would be significantly affected because they heavily rely on mineral exports and do not have the resources to build their own asteroid mining operations.” The article concludes, “While this is a necessary debate moving forward, it is imperative that such conversations not only involve countries with significant abilities to enter space and conduct asteroid mining operations but also those who stand to bear the brunt of its negative economic impacts. It is high time to bring all countries to the asteroid mining table.”

So…let’s speculate. Using an ANALOG article by Raymund Eich (I already referenced it in Asteroid Mining #5 here: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2022/06/slice-of-pie-mining-asteroids-part-5.html ) and the quotes from above, I want to look more closely at how asteroid mining by religious groups would look.

How about the most obvious? The British, Spanish, Russian, Italian, Dutch, Norse, Portuguese, and French grabbed the “kindest land”, leaving California, the Patagonian Desert in South America, the Northwest Territories from California north to Alaska, and the northern Great Plains for later. (Even today, the Great Plains is technically “uninhabited” (“The Great Plains includes portions of 10 states (Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas) plus parts of three Canadian Provinces (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta) and occupies the central third of the land mass of the United States. The area covered is roughly 2,900,000 km2. There are currently 6.2 million inhabitants of the Great Plains giving a population density of 2.1 persons/km2.” (https://www.britannica.com/place/Great-Plains/Study-and-exploration) The US was settled by several groups of religious dissidents: Indigenous religions remained, and adding to the mix were Judaism, Anglican, Baptist, Catholic, Congregationalist, German Pietist, Lutheran, Methodist, Quaker, Puritans, natural religion, Protestant Rationalism, and non-conformist Protestants.

“Mongolia is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south. It covers an area of 1,564,116 square kilometers, with a population of just 3.3 million, making it the world's most sparsely populated sovereign nation. Calculations show that this works out to 2.1 persons/km2.” (Mongolia, Wikipedia) Mongolian shamanism has been widely practiced throughout the history of what is now Mongolia, with similar beliefs being common among the nomads of central Asia. Half of the population are Buddhist, most of the rest are no religion (or shamanist), and there is a smattering of Islam, Shamanism, and Christianity.

The predominant religious populations in Canada were initially French Latin Rite Roman Catholics, primarily Jesuits who were dedicated to converting the Natives. Protestants of the Lutheran variety moved in, as well as Congregationalists, Baptists, Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians, and Methodists.

All of this to say, that invading colonialists from Europe or from China had a profound effect on the industrialization of four immense continents (North and South America, Europe, and Asia) that they claimed that their authority was either sacred or secular – it apparently didn’t matter which. Africa has a similar mix of religion as Europe, Asia, and North and South America and is the birthplace of at least three of them. India is the birthplace of the third-largest belief-system on Earth: Hinduism. It is dharma, a religious and universal order or way of life by which followers abide. Referred to as Eternal Dharma, this refers to the idea that its origins lie beyond human history, as revealed in the Hindu texts.

So – as various religions had a hand in creating every society on Earth, so it seems logical that they would ALSO have a hand in creating societies in space. In a short story I wrote, I completely missed this aspect when I assumed that prison inmates would have no religion. When the opposite may be true. Two of the most influential African Americans during the Civil Rights era came from deep faith backgrounds – Malcolm Little became a convert to Islam, and that faith a vehicle for change in the United States as well as the rest of the world. “In 1934, the Baptist World Alliance sent Reverend King Sr. on a multinational trip, including to Berlin for the meeting of the Congress of the BWA, [visiting] sites in Germany associated with the Reformation leader, Martin Luther. While there…they issued a resolution: ‘This Congress deplores and condemns as a violation of the law of God the Heavenly Father, all racial animosity, and every form of oppression or unfair discrimination toward the Jews, toward coloured people, or toward subject races in any part of the world.’…King Sr. changed his name to Martin Luther King, and his 5 year old son's name to Martin Luther King Jr.”

Religion, faith even in Humanity, is a potent driver of change. The faithful, finding the Earth growing more restrictive of their beliefs – and please reflect carefully before you exclaim that I must be crazy (and if you equate faith with a certain demagogue, then you’re not thinking deeply enough). If you are a person of faith, you know what I mean.

But what does this mean for me NOW?

If governments don’t move soon, religions will eventually populate the skies the way they populated the landmasses of Earth. What does that mean, “MAGA Conservatives raining down from space?” Hmmm…that has interesting story potential, but they need to remember that there are other religions on Earth (I would even say that there are people for whom science is a religion (religion: (it may only be the third meaning, BUT it's here, “a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance”. As a science teacher for 41 years (and a summer school science teacher who uses science in his classes), I KNOW what science is. My major was in biology, but included training in geology (physical and historical), physics, chemistry, mathematics, philosophy, and education; fairly broad swaths of Human thinking. I happen to be a Christian as well – with a variety of friends who don’t think like I do, and for whom I am immensely thankful and have no trouble asking questions.

What would the “religious skies” look like? Many non-religious people automatically think that religions would tear each other apart and soon they’d be all gone. Evidence to the contrary – which I tried to show about – differences in faith hasn’t ALWAYS been an automatic “hate sentence” and mass slaughter of people with different beliefs. Don’t get me wrong, is HAS happened. But, the blame has to go around to ALL systems of belief, not just the one you dislike most – and it would be best to include philosophies her as well. Communism, which is intentionally and vehemently NOT religious, has fostered plenty of hatred for those who believe differently, as well as promoting ethnic hatred…

So, where will these refugees go?

Where they’ve always gone: as far from their persecutors as possible.

Today’s Links: https://hir.harvard.edu/economics-of-the-stars/
Resources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_asteroid_close_approaches_to_Earth, https://www.pharostribune.com/news/local_news/article_7fcd3ea5-3c14-533f-a8d5-9bf629922f34.html, https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/04/29/like-asteroid-mining-be-careful-what-you-wish-for/, https://www.nps.gov/wrbr/learn/historyculture/theroadtothefirstflight.htm, https://hackaday.com/2019/03/27/extraterrestrial-excavation-digging-holes-on-other-worlds/, https://www.planetary.org/space-missions/every-small-worlds-mission, https://www.spacesettlement.com/asteroid-mining.html
Image: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/A2D5/production/_114558614_hls-eva-apr2020.jpg