Guy Stewart's Blog, page 33

IDEAS ON TUESDAY 565

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: Attack of the Killer Whatever
Current Event: “In various Stephen King short stories, he has had people attacked by novelty chattering teeth, paintings, a toy monkey, evil toads... If it can be seen as even vaguely creepy by anybody in the Western world, chances are it's killed somebody in a Stephen King story.”

Liam Johnson held his cellphone, staring down at it.

Sophia Smith, sitting next to him, said, “What are you waiting for?”

The roar of voices in the lunch room was almost deafening. He didn’t hear her – or didn’t respond – until she nudged him.

When he looked over at her, there wasn’t any color in even HIS usually pasty face. His freckles, even now that he was fifteen, still stood out on his face like spaghetti sauce blotches. At least he’d got his hair cut super short over winter break, Sophia thought with approval. The red stuff at shoulder length had been almost too much to stand! He said, “The last time I read a new Stephen King book, I almost died.”

Sophia shook her head and took a bite of her taco salad then made a face. “The food didn’t get any better over break, I’ll tell you that much. Why can’t they just order out from Taco Bell?”

“You’re not listening to me!” Liam said.

“Sure I am – the last time you read this guy’s book, you almost pissed yourself.”

“I didn’t say that. I said I almost DIED.”

Shaking her head, she toasted him with another forkful of salad and said, “Whatever.”

He stood up abruptly, looking down at her with the strangest look then said, “I gotta go.”

“Go where? It’s the first day of a new semester. You don’t have any homework.” She sighed, he could be almost as dramatic as her friends. She grabbed his sleeve and pulled him down on his chair again. “OK – let’s start at the beginning.”

The cafeteria was jammed and someone had been moving in on Liam’s seat when she pulled him back. If it had been another freshman, she wouldn’t have bothered, but the look the guy was shooting at her was deadly. She grabbed her lunch tray without letting go of Liam and said, “This was making me sick, anyway.” She tossed it into the nearby garbage can and towing him after her, made her way to the stairwell.

The supervisor knew them both and waved them through. When the door shut behind them, muted to a dull roar, she said, “The last story this guy wrote almost killed you…” she paused.

He wouldn’t meet her eye, looking down at his ereader. Finally he lifted his chin and said, “Listen, I know it sounds crazy, but his stories...they’re somehow linked to me.”

“You mean like ‘Stranger Than Fiction’ linked to you?”

He make as if he were thinking, then shook his head, “Not that closely linked.” He pursed his lips, sucked the top one between his teeth then said, “I love reading…”

“Duh!” she said, slugging him softly on the shoulder. “I do, too.”

“Nah, you like your Ebony and Essence,” he held up one hand defensively, “Not that that’s bad! You’re like my only friend that reads as much as me, but,” he looked down again, “When I read a Stephen King book or story, I get sucked into it. I can’t explain it, exactly. It’s like the book is about me, but not about me. That’s why I don’t dare read his newest one...which I got for Christmas...which I can’t NOT read...which, if I do it's gonna kill me. Like, for real...”

She grabbed his cellphone, cussing, and thumbed it on. The cover of the book showed a guy who looked like he was delivering mail in a tornado. In bold, red letters across the bottom – smaller than Stephen King’s name in bolder, redder letters across the top, was the word, MAIL…”

Names: ♀ ; ♂ Most common US names 2014
Image: https://cdn.britannica.com/40/11740-004-50816EB1/Boris-Karloff-Frankenstein-monster.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS/WRITING ADVICE: Creating Alien Aliens, Part 19: The REAL Possibility of Intelligent Alien Aliens

Five decades ago, I started my college career with the intent of becoming a marine biologist. I found out I had to get a BS in biology before I could even begin work on MARINE biology; especially because there WEREN'T any marine biology programs in Minnesota.

Along the way, the science fiction stories I'd been writing since I was 13 began to grow more believable. With my BS in biology and a fascination with genetics, I started to use more science in my fiction. After reading hard SF for the past 50 years, and writing hard SF successfully for the past 20, I've started to dig deeper into what it takes to create realistic alien life forms. In the following series, I'll be sharing some of what I've learned. I've had some of those stories published, some not...I teach a class to GT young people every summer called ALIEN WORLDS. I've learned a lot preparing for that class for the past 25 years...so...I have the opportunity to share with you what I've learned thus far. Take what you can use, leave the rest. Let me know what YOU'VE learned. Without further ado...

I’ve been a fan of SF movies with aliens in them since I watched “Invasion of the Saucer Men” when I was 13 (1970). It was a movie that was, oddly, 13-years-old as well, made in 1957. I was watching a late-night TV show called “Horror, Incorporated” when the movie ran. Unlike my response to Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” (where I threw the blankets over my head when the camera panned to the eyeless farmer); my reaction to the still-living, alien hand – torn off when the couple who’d been making out at Inspiration Point and heading home, ran over one of the invading aliens – was total absorption.

Since then, and fueled by a BS in biology, and an addition that allowed me to teach Earth Science in MN, I’ve been fascinated by alien biology.

Like anyone else who reads and writes science fiction, I believe with all my heart that there is intelligent life Out There and just because we haven’t definitively “met Them” yet, they HAVE to be out there somewhere.

But, what’s the REAL possibility of finding intelligent life off of Earth, if not in our Solar System or orbiting a nearby star, then SOMEWHERE in the universe? I refuse to accept Ellie Arroway’s lecture to a group of kids at the end of the movie, “I'll tell you one thing about the universe, though. The universe is a pretty big place. It's bigger than anything anyone has ever dreamed of before. So if it's just us... seems like an awful waste of space. Right?”

Carl Sagan’s book of the same name, that has been misattributed to his own invention, which was coined by John Burroughs (American naturalist and nature essayist) in ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE (“On Other Stars”) (1920). His exact words are, “If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly; if they be na inhabited, what a waste of space.” It has repeatedly been attributed to Carl Sagan because he quoted it at a November 20, 1972 symposium on “Life Beyond Earth and the Mind of Man”, held at Boston University. But the fact is that, it originated half a century before he quoted it.

Like the quote, and despite our firm belief that Modern Civilization “invented” the idea of aliens and alien worlds – because we’re just SO forward thinking – the concept of aliens and alien worlds has been around since Roman Empire actually ruled Western Europe: “The famous Roman poet Cicero was interested in the possibility of living beings on the Moon, and his Somnium Scipionis may have inspired Plutarch (46 A.D. - 120 A.D.) to write his account of a visit to the Moon. In Facies in Orbe Lunare…

Plutarch endorsed the Pythagoreans thus: ‘They affirm that the Moon is terrestrial and inhabited like the Earth, peopled with the greatest living creatures and the fairest plants...’”

Then the author makes an unsubstantiated claim that the Church was responsible for a thousand-year silence regarding the possibility of space travel and alien life writing, though they hedge their bets by what I call weasel words, “…This may probably be attributed to the pervasiveness of the Church philosophy and its rigid opposition to the idea of the plurality of worlds. The pronouncement of…the Bishop of Chiusi, in 1145 A.D. was perhaps typical: The belief in many worlds was to be condemned as heresy.” They provide no references…then runs with their conclusions, making Thomas Aquinas into some kind of simpering idiot: “If God really was all-powerful, why was he only able to create one world? Conversely, if only one world existed how could God possibly be truly infinite and omnipotent? The theologian Thomas Aquinas (1225 - 1274) came up with a ‘solution’ to the problem: God had the power to create infinite worlds, but all the matter in the universe had been used to construct Earth!” Continuing the narrative (and using exclamation points to highlight the author’s disbelief, “…“…the Church subsequently partially reversed its extreme position. In 1277…[the Church] decried as new heresy the belief that a plurality of worlds was impossible!...According to the physics of Aristotle (“from his teachings…the West inherited its intellectual lexicon, as well as problems and methods of inquiry. As a result, his philosophy has exerted a unique influence on almost every form of knowledge in the West and it continues to be a subject of contemporary philosophical discussion.”)…still in vogue (sounds like the author is stating that Aristotle was some sort of fad that soon passed) until the 16th century, if any other worlds did exist they would have to gravitate to the center of the universe (where Earth was). But it became wrong to suggest that God could not create many worlds if He wished.”

“The debate was far from ended. In 1410 the Jewish philosopher Crescas wrote: ‘Everything said in negation of the possibility of many worlds is vanity and a striving after wind." Still, he was unwilling to stick out his neck very far: ‘...yet we are unable by means of mere speculation to ascertain the true nature of what is outside this world; our sages, peace be on them, have seen fit to warn against searching and inquiring into what is above and what is below, what is before and what is behind...’”

“…during the Inquisition in Europe in the mid-fifteenth century. Cardinal Nicolas of Cusa in 1440 in which he stated: Rather than think so many stars and parts of the heavens are uninhabited, and that this Earth or ours alone is peopled.. .we will suppose that in every region there are inhabitants, differing in nature by rank and all owing their origin to God.”

Considering how little we know about other animals here on Earth, he claims, "of the inhabitants....of worlds other than our own we can know still less, having no standards by which to appraise them.”

“As astronomical observations became more accurate, the geocentric Aristotelian/Ptolemaic world view began to generate problems that were difficult to resolve…[and] The roadblocks to the idea of intelligent alien life on other worlds were rapidly disintegrating.”

So, there’s an interesting view of the past. Now that we have the Science of the 21st Century, it should be obvious by now that all discussion of life on other worlds has more-or-less resolved itself into a fairly uniform belief: it’s ABSOLUTELY THERE!!!!

Hold on a moment!

Current speculation – and make no mistake, every thought we have or write (I include myself here and now) is PURE SPECULATION. There is NO EVIDENCE of life existing anywhere else but Earth. NO EVIDENCE (alien abduction victims to the contrary), we have no evidence (which is essential to good police work and science) of life existing anywhere but right here. That’s evident from the range of articles written and referenced below – that in the second and third decades of the 21st Century that there could  STILL logically be between “we’re all alone” to 42,777 intelligent civilizations to “numbers almost too large to imagine”.

It doesn't seem that we've progressed very far from Cisero, Plutarch, and the obstructionist Roman Catholic Church – we have no evidence PLUS theories and mathematical calculations whose solutions vary wildly from We Are Alone to a universe teeming with life eager to contact us if only…the most recent speculation I’ve heard is that communication between the members of the Inter Galactic Union of Intelligences and Humanity waits until a civilization can both detect and effectively control gravity waves the way they control the EM spectrum!

There was serious work done on generating gravity waves in 2012: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1875389212025163; though it wasn’t until 2016 that we detected them: https://ec.europa.eu/research-and-innovation/en/horizon-magazine/gravitational-waves-detected-scientists-announce#:~:text=Gravitational%20waves%20have%20been%20detected,detector%20in%20Italy%20have%20announced; and in April of 2022, astrophysicists discovered another way of detecting those waves: https://ec.europa.eu/research-and-innovation/en/horizon-magazine/gravitational-waves-detected-scientists-announce#:~:text=Gravitational%20waves%20have%20been%20detected,detector%20in%20Italy%20have%20announced.

Speculation (there’s that word again!) is, now that we can generate and detect g-waves, maybe we can finally hear if there’s anyone chatting Out There! (https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-science/extra-terrestrial-alien-communicate-gravitational-lensing/)

There seems to be a monumental gap between amorous teenagers and astrophysicists, but it's where we are right now. Until we get firmer evidence of aliens OUT THERE, (*sigh*), we’ll just have to be satisfied with the probability of intelligent aliens hovering somewhere between “we’re alone” and “too many to imagine”…

Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-many-aliens-are-in-the-milky-way-astronomers-turn-to-statistics-for-answers/, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-many-aliens-are-in-the-milky-way-astronomers-turn-to-statistics-for-answers/, https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/ast.2019.2149, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/15/magazine/extraterrestrials-technosignatures.html, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/15/magazine/extraterrestrials-technosignatures.html (I did NOT watch it all as there were an inordinate number of “Ahsss…” in the first fifteen minutes…); https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/news/1675/life-in-the-universe-what-are-the-odds/; (Generic article without the math: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a32603529/math-formula-aliens-exist/; SERIOUS article WITH the math: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1921655117
Resource: http://www.xenology.info/Xeno.htm
Image: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GK6c-cC6KDU/VGlk_Qf5fgI/AAAAAAAA1CU/SDdfP7hhT9I/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-11-16-19h01m18s14.png

I HAVE A NEW STORY IN THE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2022 ISSUE OF ANALOG!

Illustration from my newest story in the November/December issue ANALOG Science Fiction & Fact!

It's my SEVENTH story in the magazine, and the second one with the characters Javier Quinn Xiong Zaman DVM and Staff Sergeant Thatcher (the first was "Road Veterinarian" in the September/October 2019 issue).

The really fabulous art is by Eldar Zakirov. His website is here:https://eldarzakirov.com/

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 564

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: transmutation (reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmutation)
“Transmutation circle, a circle used to perform alchemy” I think I’m going to mine THIS idea in various ways for a while!
Current Event: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZjp32EiTzM

Alchemy is thought to have been the deepest roots of the science we know as chemistry. As such, it had its origins in many, many cultures – from Pharaonic and Hellenic Egypt, Eighth Century Arabia (the name “chemistry” comes from an Arabic word, al-kimia), Medieval and Renaissance Europe, India, and China – then matured into the science.

Ishaq ibn Musa and Meitreyi Nur Jehan are friends at Obama Middle School. Ishaq – who tries really hard to go by the nickname, IM – was skimming TreeFlicks (3D online streaming videos) when he downloaded a flik of a person drawing a transmutation circle.

He got the measurements and veeked – visually communicated – with Meity J and told her to meet him at a nearby playground after school...

Meity waited for Immy with her arms folded over her chest. It was cold today, even though it was late August. “So much for Anthropogenic Global Cooling,” she muttered. She veeked him again, but he wasn’t answering.

Suddenly someone behind her shouted, “Boo!”

Meity J turned around and said, “It’s not even close to Halloween yet Immy.”

He grunted and said, “Who spat in your bean curd?”

“No one! It’s just that I have a hundred things to do before school starts next Tuesday!”

“Like what? We’re just starting a new school. Nothing’s going to be different...”

“Except in high school, we might actually get to see a physical teacher!”

He grunted and put down a small plastic bucket. His jacket bulged in odd directions, as if he were carrying packages underneath. “That has about as much of a chance happening as me turning you into an oriole.”

“Orioles are extinct,” she said, irritated that he chose NOW to pick on her favorite extinct animal. “That was really mean of you.”

“What,” he said, straightening up, “If I told you I could turn a pigeon into an oriole?”

“I’d say, ‘fat lot of good that will do the species!’ You can’t repopulate a species with one bird, stupid!”

With a flourish, he reached under his jacket and pulled out a plastic box. Inside, something brilliantly orange and black squirmed. He said, “What if you had one male and one female?” He popped the top off and an oriole – the first one Meity J had seen since she was a kindergartner and her director had used query markers on colorful birds to lead the class to a discussion about ‘extinction’ – flew out. He removed another box. This one had a pigeon in it.

“What are you going to do with that thing?”

He grinned, set the box down and started clearing a circle on the concrete game square. “We’re going to make a transmutation square and start making orioles out of pigeons!”

Meity J scowled for a bit, then said…

Names: ♂ India, Muslim; ♀ India, Hindu
Image: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/71/e5/9871e52bbc09c525af21b8f6471eab15.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY: CHICON 8 – #1 Belief and Religion in Science Fiction Settings

Using the Programme Guide of the 2022 World Science Fiction Convention, ChiCON 8, which I WOULD have attended in person if I had disposable income, but I retired two years ago, my work health insurance stopped, and I’m now living on the Social Security and Medicare…I will be using the Programme Guide to jump off, jump on, rail against, or shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. My opinions may bring glad hearts to some, or cause others to wish to stomp me into the muddy ground of Lilydale Park shortly after a long rain…

A.L. DeLeon (moderator): author fantasy and science fiction, poetry, non-fic, fictioEmad El-Din Aysha: researcher, journalist (critical essays), short SF, bilingualMagenta Griffith: non-fiction writer, librarian, Pagan WitchMenachem Cohen: spiritual director, inter-spiritual rabbi, game designer, the unhoused, and people afraid of being judged by those giving spiritual careRachel Gutin: writer and special education teacher
“A belief in something spiritual has shaped how humanity understands the world for thousands of years. It seems likely that this will continue for thousands more. How have various authors woven this human need for religion into their science fiction, and how have the religious identities of authors been reflected in their work? What kinds of stories involving religion do we want to see in future works?”

My gut sense is that I would have been thrown out of this group – or never allowed to enter the room; especially if I said I was an evangelical Christian. I would LOVE to think that I’d have been welcome to the table, but as a straight, Big Old Fat White Guy, I fear the judgement-free atmosphere this group was trying to cultivate wouldn’t be interested in anything I had to say…

Then again, maybe I’m wrong and they would have brought me to the table and listened respectfully to whatever I was compelled to say. That is my most profound hope, in fact that everyone will be welcome to speak their truth without fear – no matter what that truth is, and if it’s spoken respectfully with an expectation that the thought would be heard and judged on its merit rather than its presenter…

So, what do I think about belief and religion in science fiction and fantasy? I have to confine my comments here to science fiction as my reading of fantasy is highly limited: HARRY POTTER; LORD OF THE RINGS; CHRONICLES OF NARNIA; THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING (T.H. White); THE EARTHSEA CYCLE; CHRONICLE OF THOMAS COVENANT, UNBELIEVER; NIGHT’S EDGE series by Julie Czerneda; and a smattering of fantasy my daughter has vetted and approved, like DON’T CALL THE WOLF (which was wonderfully enchanting!).

The most obvious SF religion is that of the Bene Gesserit and the God Emperor of Dune. Religion isn’t just “part of the story”, the entire religion of Dune IS the story. It's a complicated combination of Catholicism, Buddhism, Islam, and others. Philip Jose Farmer’s RIVERWORLD series “an artificial Super Earth where all humans (and pre-humans) are reconstructed. The books explore interactions of individuals from many different cultures and time periods. Its underlying theme is quasi-religious. The motivations of alien intelligences operating under ultra-ethical motives are also explored.” Another obvious religion-in-science fiction is CS Lewis’ SPACE TRILOGY, as another intelligence faces both the Eden test and interaction with the evil one.

My own MARTIAN HOLIDAY, combines four different sets of Biblical people from entirely different time periods, on Mars as they face the possibility that not only aren’t Humans alone in the universe, but that we were witnesses – and emphatically NOT players – in an ancient war. Esther, Queen of Persia; Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego; Paul the Apostle; and Steven, the first martyr for Christ are characters fit for my Mars, with Five Domes, and a population of some six million Humans who are driving to a conflict driven by a religion that sees the long-dead survivors of the ancient war as gods, and a Mars that’s trying to throw off the restraints of the United Faith in Humanity and the iron grip of the five Dome Mayors as well as the advent of Artificial Human freedom, and Artificial Mechanical Intelligence…Complicated, I know, but I LOVE the place. I’ve even written several short stories in the world (none published yet).

I’m of the opinion that even when we go into the stars, we’ll bring our varied faiths with us. I hope I would have been somewhat encouraged by this session, but not certain I would have been welcome there. If my novel ever gets published, maybe I’ll be invited to join the group! We’ll see!

Program Guide: https://guide.chicon.org/
References: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_ideas_in_science_fiction, https://gizmodo.com/a-guide-to-dune-s-strange-and-intense-religions-1843460283Image: https://i0.wp.com/chicon.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/chicon2022-logo-1.png?fit=640%2C365&ssl=1

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 563

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: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ForWantOfANailCurrent Event:http://www.breitbart.com/video/2014/11/15/maher-if-obama-had-lost-us-wouldnt-have-fruit-or-jobs/And A Prompt From My Niece-In-Law: wool, celery, parallel universe, dynamite, fireman’s ball, fishing tackle.

 Jose Taylor-Perez shrugged his shoulders, settling his wool sweater more comfortably. “You eat that and it’ll be like someone lit a stick a dynamite and shoved it up your…”

Emily Patel-Kelly tossed the celery stick at him then punched Jose in the shoulder, “If you weren’t my best friend, that would have been hard enough to knock the humerus out of the ball park.” She snickered, “Not that anything short of a wrecking ball would be able to knock any of your face bones free of that fishing tackle in your mouth.”

“Hey! No fair! I can’t do anything about braces!” he said, shaking his head, “Besides, your premed jokes are only funny to you…added to that, you won’t even be able to BE premed until at the earliest your junior year.”

 Ignoring the frustrating fact that she couldn’t start college until she could do College In The Schools, she said, “Like I can do anything about a celery allergy?” She lifted her chin, “Besides, I don’t exactly have a standard reaction to it.”

“You can say that again,” he said as he fiddled with his transparent computer tablet where it hovered over his lap. “You’re the only person I know that can use a V8 Harvest and Strawberry Smoothie as a gateway to a parallel universe.”

She shook her head, “I wish I could see into the universe where I passed this history final with flying colors.”

 “That’s for sure,” said Jose. “I’ll never remember who came after President McCain.”

 “Don’t be such a sexist – President Palin took over after McCain had his coronary two years after he got elected.”

“Right, the first lady...”

“No, it was the First Husband Todd…” she said, adding a smirk.

“I was gonna say, ‘President’.”

 Shaking her head, Emily hunched over her own transparent tablet, setting it to project a holographic screen in front of her. Walking her fingers through a manipulation panel, she absentmindedly picked up a celery stick and shoved it into her mouth. After her eyes grew wide, she muttered, “Oh, crap...”

“What’s wrong?” Jose asked. Her tablet began to glow then flames flickered around the edges as she tried to shove the instrument away from her. “You ate the celery!” He exclaimed. “Why did you do that?”

 “I wasn’t thinking! I was playing around with tensor calculus…”

 “And you opened a door into a parallel universe!” Jose shouted as the fire alarms went off and a robot fireman’s ball floated out from its nook and began to sprout nozzles. “Now we’re gonna…”

 An explosion cut him off…

 Names: ♀US(California); ♂ US(New York)

A Prompt Blog: http://lettersfromchurchofthetoastedcoconutdoughnut.wordpress.com/2015/01/05/and-so-it-goes/

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

WRITING ADVICE: “The Daily Use of Gravity Modification in Rebuilding Liberian Schools”, OR “God Bless You Gravity Modification”…NEITHER of Which Saw Publication of This Story I LOVE

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, 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. As I work to increase my writing output and sales, I’m taking another look at “old ideas” to see if I can figure out where I went wrong. As always, your comments are welcome!

SORRY THIS IS LATE! I was Up North this week and wi-fi was very spotty, so I got of habit of working ahead. THIS is the result!

ANALOG Tag Line: We always thinks about how paradigm changes will affect “society”, but what about how will it affect the “little people”?

Elevator Pitch (What Did I Think I Was Trying To Say?)
For the first time ever, I drew on my missionary experiences from my eight months in Nigeria, Cameroun, and Liberia. I wanted to imagine what the introduction of gravity modification would do in a situation of rebuilding after war – war that the “big countries” had never paid much attention to. I was modeling the story on John Brunner’s ANALOG March 1973 short story, “Who Steals My Purse?” In THAT one, repurposed ICBMs are used to drop small TVs on Vietnam along with tools, seeds, and other developmental material that the people could use to raise their quality of living (and presumably grow to love Americans and overthrow the communist regime…)

Opening Line:
“Gordon Oyeyemi Daboh huffed, shaking his head.”

Onward:
“He said, ‘Building five new schools here in God Bless You isn’t impossible. We have clay, concrete, straw, lumber, paint, and bamboo.’ He flicked his hand at the meager supplies piled near the edge of the burned-out clearing. The faint concrete outline of the original elementary school was visible through a layer of fine ash. A pile of debris loomed on the edge of the gravel boulevard, waiting for removal or reuse. ‘But we don’t have time, and we have few volunteers. We have limited building supplies! Your, your,” he karate chopped the air in front of the young woman standing before him. Her eyes widened and she stepped back, ‘handwavium is as useless to us as our three buckets of glow-in-the-dark paint!’”

What Was I Trying To Say?
I wanted to communicate that technology, even when it’s incremental, can be used to dramatically change the lives of normal people for the better. (It contains the obligatory warning against the military machine…the fact is that my son, my father, two of my nephews, and some of my best friends have served and DO currently serve in all of the branches of the military. I STILL stand by my statement.)

The Rest of the Story:
Gordon and Comfort butt heads almost immediately. The shoestring operation of rebuilding the schools (the original title was “The Everyday Use of Gravity Modification in Rebuilding Liberian Schools”) is fraught and gets worse when a squad of wandering mercenaries get wind of Comfort’s gmod device. Expecting to easily find it, they have no idea it’s woven into strips of hook and loop (for a fascinating AND HUMOROUS (I REALLY appreciate the humor!) take on hook and loop and its registered trademark, watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRi8L...) that are easily applied to pallets. There are accidents – and then a kidnapping of the village Elder and his daughters – and Gordon has to use the soldiering skills he swore off of to rescue them and get back on track…)

End Analysis:
OK, so writing the synopsis up above, I just realized what my problem is…Lisa Cron’s rules from her book WIRED FOR STORY clearly spell out the mistakes I made:

2) Grab the reader, something is at stake from the first page.
5) Plot (what happens) makes characters confront internal and external issues to confront their inner demons.
9) Start: character’s worldview is knocked down.
11) Character is action and anything they do makes things worse.
17) Challenges start small and end huge.
19) Character becomes one by doing something heroic.

First line has no grab; Gordon’s inner demon is NOT clear (“I REFUSE to ever be a soldier again!”), external circumstances don’t slam into internal issues (He wants to be JUST a teacher! He didn’t even want to be a principal!); his worldview stays pretty much the same – it should start with him thinking he’s escaped notice and that quitting Lagos’ special operations unit of cloning soldiers after meeting his has set him free; he can’t do everything right from the moment he leaves to rescue the Elder and his daughters, he has to screw up.

As well, the title is probably off-putting to SF readers and editors; not only is it WAY too long, my second attempt is trying too hard to “be a witness”. Even Jesus couched his messages to a skeptical public in stories in the form of parables. They were not always clear, but after discussion, they became more so.

When I first wrote it, I didn’t know about Lisa Cron’s advice. Now that I DO, I can rewrite the story with the “rules” (she didn’t call them rules, I did…) in mind; which of course, answers the question below:

Can This Story Be Saved?
Simple answer – “Yes.”

Complex Answer: Some things have to change though – not only in Story According to Cron. I’ve learned some things since I wrote this story. Perhaps the hardest is that I need to say what I have to say and say it CLEARLY and QUICKLY. Even the longest one, The Prodigal Son is only 500 or so words; the shortest is only three! (“Physician, heal thyself.”) My biggest problem lately has been keeping my stories short. I tend now to write in the vicinity of 9000 words and that’s just TOO LONG. I have to pull my punches…or more precisely, I need to conserve my energy and FOCUS my punches.

I ran across this interesting observation regarding parables:

“First: The meaning of most parables (both the short sayings-parables and the longer story-parables) is not so obvious, or at least it shouldn't be. If we assume we know what Jesus is talking about, we are probably missing the main point; if we are too familiar with the story (having heard it so often before), we might not think carefully enough about its real meaning.

“Second: most parables contain some element that is strange or unusual. They should cause you to say, "Wait a minute! That's not how farmers do their work! That's not what kings usually do! That's not what normally happens in nature!" The strange element should cause you to think.

“Third: Parables do not define things precisely, but rather use comparisons to describe some aspect of how God acts or interacts with human beings. Yet to say ‘A is like B’ does not mean that ‘A is identical to B in all respects’ (that also happens to be bad math. Jesus would NOT use bad math – besides being the Son of God, HE WAS A CARPENTER!); so we should be careful not to misinterpret or misapply the parables.

“Fourth: Most parables are open-ended. Rather than reaching a conclusion, they challenge us to keep on thinking! Rather than having us ‘stop thinking’, they invite us to ‘stop and think’.”

My next move? Stop and think...and I need to do this with a couple of OTHER stories I got wordy on...

Resource: https://catholic-resources.org/Bible/Parables.htm
Image: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/9f/22/3b/9f223b1e57a36e14db3eb13715fbe3f9.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 562

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: Humans abduct aliens for nefarious purposes
Current Event: http://www.squidoo.com/captureanalien

Strangely enough, GOOGLE will not allow me to search for “Humans abduct aliens”…which gave me the idea for this idea…

Cerys Finch was from England, an exchange student staying with a family in Minnesota. Elias Ian Serano is also an exchange student staying with another family nearby. He’s been trying to get her to go out with him for weeks, ever since the school hosted an Exchange Dinner with Honors Program families and the exchange students at the school.

She thinks he’s cute and all, but he’s not her type. She tries to explain, but he’s insistent and she reported his behavior to the school counselor. That was yesterday…

That night, Cerys is up late and hears noises outside. Going to a backyard window where the family’s house looks out over a state park reserve, she sees wildly flickering lights. Looking down, she sees her host family – mom, dad and three young adult men she’s never seen; older kids who no longer live at home. The five of them have something in a net that is struggling wildly. Hand to her mouth, she sees what she thinks at first is a bear.

Then she sees Elias Ian rush into the back yard. His arms waved wildly, he startles her family and they back up. The creature she thought was a bear throws off the net with help from Elias Ian and bolts for the brush. But it wasn’t a bear – it was wearing something on its back, something that looked manufactured.

Elias Ian looked up , directly at the window she’s standing at. She backs away, gasping and when she steps back, he’s gone. She hurries to bed as her hosts come back into the house, cursing, angry and making lots of noise. She goes back to her room.

The next morning…
Names: Names: ♀ England; ♂ Israel/Greece; Spanish (also, Portugeuse, Philippino) 
Image: https://cdn.britannica.com/40/11740-004-50816EB1/Boris-Karloff-Frankenstein-monster.jpg

WRITING ADVICE: Short Stories – Advice and Observation #19: Spider Robinson “& 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 and life observations by Spider Robinson – with a few from myself…

I first met Spider Robinson…well…I didn’t exactly meet him, but I did read my first CALLAHAN’S story in the February 1973 issue of ANALOG Science Fiction and Fact. (I was fifteen and had only recently discovered ANALOG. I WON’T mention the reason I devoured that issue is because of Poul Anderson’s amazingly fantastic Ythrians (pictured on the cover), but WILL mention that once I read “The Guy With The Eyes”, I was a new Spider Robinson fan.

I actually tried my hand at writing a piece similar to the adventures of the group of men, women, werewolves, aliens, and Other who went into Callahan’s Place with deep troubles and who came out sometimes with new problems, sometimes with new friends, but most often they came out with new insight. My people went into a Christian fellowship that met in the basement of the large, mostly unused church of indeterminant origin…I think it was called “The Dragon in the Vestibule”, I’ll have to check…But that’s probably another story.

Not so much another story, but a forgotten chapter. Apparently, in 1993 (I would have been 36), some thirty years ago, I actually wrote a paper letter to Spider Robinson. I have no idea where the original letter went, but his extremely kind, thoughtful, and slightly humorous responses indicated that I was asking to use Doc in one of my own stories. I’ve unearthed the actual paper file, so I’ll be reading the story again and see if there’s anything I can do to bring it back to life – or failing that, use whatever seed of an idea occurs to me.

For now, I want to examine not so much WHAT Spider Robinson wrote, but HOW, and how I have – or have NOT – applied the advice absorbed from decades of reading and rereading his stories.

In November of 1995, Patrick O'Leary wrote: “It’s…not what he writes, but what he leaves out. Pettiness. Smirking. The unlikable person without hope. Pain for pain's sake. Easy love. Miserable sex. Evil that doesn't cost anything. Suffering that only makes you squirm. Individuals so stuck in their own heads that the real world is just another POV…Robinson's chief speculative leap is to imagine a place where community is possible. And the task he has taken upon himself is to embody the spectrum of Happiness…what Robinson is up to is nothing less than a participatory utopia that a reader enrolls in by reading…His Callahan books are about the experience he creates, not just portrays.”

Spider Robinson said in a Locus interview in February of 2004, “…Callahan is about, and I keep coming back to tolerance…of the weird, the strange…no matter how bent you are, as long as there is no malice in you, you’re welcome. All my life I’ve been weird.”

I also tend to be a positive person; I absolutely have no desire to cause anyone any pain. And yet…I am also a Christian, active in my faith and profession, but emphatically not rude. As witness, I’ll share an incident that occurred several years ago when I was a science teacher. The father of one of the other teachers passed away suddenly. The event was traumatic as well. She and I could NOT have been more different – from gender to our views on religion. But we LOVED talking and making each other laugh and we were in fact, good friends. When her father’s funeral approached, she asked if I would be willing to stand beside her as she read her father’s eulogy, and if I would take over if it proved too difficult for her. I proved FAR too difficult and I ended up reading it – and accepting one of his many, many “crazy ties”. It hangs right now in my closet.

I think that Robinson’s imagination to “embody the spectrum of happiness” is one I’ve adopted as well. I also think that I have always been “weird” – not just “wah-wah-poor-me” weird, but REALLY weird. I’ve shared countless times in this blog about my adolescent sense that I was in the “wrong family”. I didn’t fit, most obviously as an athlete; but I was the first person in my family to accept Christ into my heart and then act out that acceptance in a way that didn’t conform to our family norms. That’s an evasive answer, but that’s all I’ll say here!

At en.academic.com, they point out that, “Frequently in his writing, the conflicts center around a science fiction issue with a Human solution…”

Without a doubt, this is something I try to do – HOWEVER, because I know I haven’t done this consistently, I see now that what I’ve done often by accident I can do intentionally. In fact, when I “channel” my human side rather than my “superhuman side”, I’m a far better writer. This is something I need to do far more consciously than I do now. In fact, this essay is the direct result of a great deal of struggle I’ve had writing my current story that was originally named, “At the KAPITIAM On Olympus Mons”.
In an interview on Ideacity, he said, “If you’re struggling to write a story, then you’re afraid of something.”

I’m not sure he meant it in the way I’ve taken it, but to ME it’s saying that in this story, I’m trying to dig into something that, on a deeper level, I don’t want to touch. Thus far, it seems like a story about pirates who make off with a shipment of virtually priceless green coffee beans on Mars and the three people (with four minds!) who go after it and take it back. The story comes out of a world I’ve created in which there is only one acceptable faith – the United Faith in Humanity. All others have been (they thought) eliminated because “faith in anything but ourselves is misplaced and a waste of effort, resources, and mind”. It SEEMS like that’s what is happening now. The “christianity” of the radical Right is NOT what I embrace. And that is exactly what I’m exploring in the story. Maybe I don’t want to expose my own faith quite so publicly.

“…I’ve noticed in the last five or ten years I’m reading less science fiction and more mystery, and as a writer I’m trying to gracefully segue into mystery, crime, detective -- whatever you want to call it.”

Me, too! Me, too! My current ANALOG submission, “Misisipi Crossing” is a mystery set in an apocalyptic Earth. I don’t focus on the event, rather on the aftermath and how it’s affected the main characters.

For a January Magazine interview, when asked where the Callahan stories came from, Spider Robinson said, “… in order to keep myself from going insane with boredom [as a security guard at a construction site that was nothing but a large hole] -- I pecked out a story about where I'd rather be: a bar where they let you smash your glasses…an extraordinary bar. The bartender would have to be a special human being and his customers would have to be rather unusual folks. The kind of folks you could trust to fling glassware around while drunk. And it sort of all grew from there.”

That one I can’t empathize with. My first story was written in pencil and was an adolescent rip off of John Christopher’s (aka Sam Youd) THE TRIPOD books. I wanted to read more stories in those worlds, found out my writing was truly horrible, then set out to figure out how to do it RIGHT. There’s a reasonable chance that I will have a novel coming out some time in the next year that is my legitimate answer to my initiation into science fiction!
That was where I “met” Spider Robinson (it’s rumored his birth name was Paul…). It would seem that his career was set on “full-steam-ahead” with that first story in ANALOG. But it wasn’t that simple: “…I proceeded to write a whole bunch more stories and mail them off…a year or two went by and I didn't sell a word to Ben or anybody, but Ben would…scribble one sentence on the bottom of it…I'd always look at this and think: He's out of his mind! And then send the story to every other market in the world…[They were always rejected]…then I tried it his way and it was a better story and I sent it out and somebody bought it. So I went to the next one in the pile…and eventually every one of those stories sold to somebody because I followed Ben's advice.”

Fact is that I got very little of this feedback from anyone, actually. Until Stan Schmidt took over Ben Bova’s editorship at ANALOG. As hard as it is to imagine, I too ignored Stan’s comments on my work. I’d give up and start something new. I finally realized how few people an editor actually takes time with; how rare real comments are to get. When I DID take Stan Schmidt’s advice, he bought my first ANALOG story and fulfilled a lifelong dream of seeing my story in the magazine. When Trevor Quachri took the helm, I had a new editor to approach – and I confess it was with much trepidation – and hope to win over with my writing. My worry was well-placed! Trevor Quachri took over in September of 2012, and after submitting three different stories, he bought a really odd little Probability Zero that was based on a favorite story of mine from Clifford D. Simak (WAYSTATION, 1963). My story was called “Whey Station”. It was supposed to be a pun, but I had several people write (which Trevor Quachri forwarded to me!) who didn’t understand it. So, there you go, my first experience with making a pun (as Spider Robinson did consistently and without mercy! In his CALLAHAN stories.)

“Robinson says that he and Jake, ‘share many characteristics in many ways. In part Jake is me as I might have turned out if I hadn't met Jeanne.’”

I honestly haven’t examined my work in that light, though I don’t have a long series of stories with the same character. But my new story at ANALOG is, in fact, the second story of Javier Quinn Xiong Zaman, DVM and Corporal Thatcher, a genetic experiment with a price on her head…which, oddly, gave me a new idea for another story to add to the pair…

I’ve learned quite a bit from diving into the writing mind of Spider Robinson, but more than anything, I was forced to examine myself. I suppose I can’t ask anything more of an author than to invite me to see myself in a new way…

References: https://www.januarymagazine.com/profiles/spiderrobinson2.html , http://www.spiderrobinson.com/oleary.html , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nth0ugxbkdE , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_Robinson, https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/134021 , https://www.locusmag.com/2004/Issues/02Robinson.html
Image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhK6miXJMTMNyB3kzq-r6I2LVCTZJj0CDS0dPV2Qapl6e9rZPuHx2u5QKcKT1QGeDg1_tPMv-lpnuSr_eiBjwPXmex9mcgtuH2-SUtZEpGWV0_HdtJQelVt5K69NulJBUqNju5GNjHgQibXsIo4NeWpTOj4ai85jCRjMHOtwtkqshzxFvZPUSjXZNq6=s320

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 561

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.
Fantasy Trope: Low Fantasy (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LowFantasy)
Current Event: http://codecondo.com/what-the-distant-future-is-going-to-be-like-infographic/

Somokene shielded his eyes from the blood-red dome of the Sun as it set and said, “The new star does not fade with day. You know what that means.”

Squatting on the bare, rounded boulder, Bardinanda sniffed the air and said, “Yes. It means you need to bathe.”

Somokene shook his head, “Be serious, Sister!”

“I am always serious, Servicer.”

He squatted as well in the lee of the boulder. A cold wind blew from the south, off of the glacier wall that fenced the entire equator of the World in. It was impossible to go farther north or south without paying the exorbitant fees of the Ice Lords. He said, “It means that the end is nigh.”

This time Bardinanda laughed outright. “Which end is this, brother?”

“You know as well as I do.”

“But I love to hear you say it. It makes me appreciate history.”

He sighed as he unfolded a heat cloth and anchored the four corners with the plutonium disks he carried. They had decayed to inertness and he had carved and polished the ancient reactor core slices himself. Incised on the surface were his logograph and Bardinanda’s. He tapped the cloth and it glowed red. He held out his hand and a moment later, she placed the aquapon gently in it. Far heavier than it looked, it was a gate into their food trough hidden on the other side of the World in Uluru. He set it on the cloth and said, “This is the one thousand, four hundred and sixty-ninth End Time; one million, three hundred and ninety-six thousand, four hundred and twenty-first Year since the founding of Human civilization.”

Bardinanda sighed and slithered down the boulder, flat, splayed feet gripping the rough surface. Patting Somokene’s bare head, she said, “You know that despite the fact that Endless Ending is a tenet of your faith, eventually it will be the Last End Time.”

“There is a sect that believes that, yes. I don’t belong to it, but I have studied it.”

She nodded, running slender fingers over the sensitive skin of his head. They both shuddered. Nodding, she turned her back on the setting Sun and said softly, “Then perhaps you are the best one to judge me when I say that I believe the Last End Time has come upon us and I am the Harbinger and you are my Prophet.”

Names: ♀ South American (Barbara, Diane, Fernanda); ♂ Chewa/Igbo
Resources: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/doomsday-preppers/articles/endless-food-systems-fish-powered-aquaponic-gardens/
Image: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/71/e5/9871e52bbc09c525af21b8f6471eab15.jpg