Guy Stewart's Blog, page 42

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 526

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)

F Trope: dark lord
Current Event: “In November 2012, satellite photos revealed a half kilometer long propaganda message carved into a hillside in Ryanggang Province, reading, ‘Long Live General Kim Jong-un, the Shining Sun!’. The message, located next to an artificial lake built in 2007 to serve a hydroelectric station, is made of Korean letters measuring 15 by 20 meters, and is located approximately 9 kilometers south of Hyesan near the border with the People's Republic of China.” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/23/north-korea-hillside-homage-kim-jong-un)

Ardian Goodpaster tapped on his tablet-computer – t-comp – and said, “Look, you have to read this!” He held it out to her.

Noemi Zweifelhofer grunted, hunched over her own t-comp. She said, “Doar stai un minut!”

Ardian’s eyes grew wide and he whispered in German, “Ich denke nicht, dass Sie Rumänisch in diesem Augenblick sprechen sollten! Wir sind in genug Schwierigkeiten, wie es ist!”

Noemi finally looked up, her dark eyes flashing and said, “Do you think speaking in English would be all right?”

Ardian snorted, “Better than speaking Romanian. We can get in trouble for that…”

“You don’t think believing that Kim Jong-un is an incarnation of The Dark Lord will keep us out of trouble?”

“I didn’t say I believed it – just that it seems…logical given what Mom and Dad say about how he acted when he went to school here.”

“Your mom and dad were his friends! He hated my dad!”

Ardian shook his head, “I’d probably dislike your dad, too if he stuck my head in a toilet and flushed it…”

“That was a kid’s prank!”

“…fourteen, fifteen and sixteen times on ten different occasions in honor of the illustrious North Korean leader’s birthdays?”

Noemi glared at her best friend, then burst out laughing. Finally she said, “All right, it wasn’t a kid’s prank. But all of our parents agree he was creepy and mean.”

Ardian tapped the t-comp and said, “You really believe that the inscription means what they say it means?”

“‘Long Live General Kim Jong-un, the Shining Sun!’?” He stared at it then slowly shook his head. Noemi continued, “I know my Korean is adequate…” Ardian snorted, but she overrode him, “But I’ve cross-referenced this in half a dozen dictionaries.”

“So what do you think?”

She zoomed in on the image of the inscription then swung to the right, saying, “When it’s written like this, left-to-right and with the order of the characters – and given that the archaic form was used intentionally, it reads, ‘Long dominate Kim Jong-un, Darkest of the Dark Lords’.”

“And no one else in the world reads it that way?”

She held out her t-comp, “I wouldn’t say that.” Their eyes met and for a moment locked. Ardian felt the blood drain out of his face. She handed him her own t-comp. “Read it.”

He kept his eyes on hers then finally looked down. The headline was in German, from a recent edition of Die Welt. “Different Interpretation of North Korea’s Paean of Praise?” He read, looked at her.

“Scroll to the next document. Two weeks later.”

He did and read, “Interpreter Found Murdered..."

Names: ♀; ♂ Today, both are entirely Swiss namesImage: https://cdn.britannica.com/40/11740-004-50816EB1/Boris-Karloff-Frankenstein-monster.jpg

WRITING ADVICE: Creating Alien Aliens, Part 12: ICONIC Alien vs Iconic Human, and How China Fits Into All of This…

In September of 2007, I started this blog with a bit of writing advice. A little over a year later, I discovered how little I knew about writing after hearing children’s writer, Lin Oliver speak at a convention hosted by the Minnesota Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Since then, I have shared (with their permission) and applied the writing wisdom of Lin Oliver, Jack McDevitt, Nathan Bransford, Mike Duran, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, SL Veihl, Bruce Bethke, and Julie Czerneda. Together they write in genres broad and deep, and have acted as agents, editors, publishers, columnists, and teachers. Since then, I figured I’ve got enough publications now that I can share some of the things I did “right”.

While I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it...neither do all of the professional writers above...someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what I write. When I started this blog, that was NOT true, so I may have reached a point where my own advice is reasonably good. We shall see! Hemingway’s quote above will now remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing output and sales! As always, your comments are welcome!

Part 1: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2020/01/slice-of-pie-creating-alien-aliens.html
Part 2: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2020/02/slice-of-pie-creating-alien-aliens-part.html
Part 3: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2020/02/slice-of-pie-creating-alien-aliens.html
Part 4: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2020/04/slice-of-pie-creating-alien-aliens-part.html
Part 5: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2020/09/writing-advice-creating-alien-aliens.html
Part 6: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2021/02/writing-advice-creating-alien-aliens.html
Part 7: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2021/04/writing-advice-creating-alien-aliens.html
Part 8: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2021/05/writing-advice-creating-alien-aliens.html
Part 9: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2021/08/writing-advice-creating-alien-aliens.html
Part 10: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2021/09/writing-advice-creating-alien-aliens.html
Part 11: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2021/10/writing-advice-creating-alien-aliens.html

What could be a more iconic battle between Human and Alien than Batman vs Superman?
]I’ve never been a big fan of the movie versions of the DC universe, preferring to get my super hero fix in the Marvel universe. That being said, I HAVE enjoyed some of the DC movies: “Shazam!”, “Wonder Woman 1984”, and “Green Lantern”.

According to the TARGET website, the plot of “Batman vs Superman” is as follows, “Fearing the actions of a god-like Super Hero left unchecked, Gotham City’s own formidable, forceful vigilante takes on Metropolis’s most revered, modern-day savior, while the world wrestles with what sort of hero it really needs. And with Batman and Superman at war with one another, a new threat quickly arises, putting mankind in greater danger than it’s ever known before.”

IMDb summarizes the movie as follows: “The general public is concerned over having Superman on their planet and letting the ‘Dark Knight’ - Batman - pursue the streets of Gotham. While this is happening, a power-phobic Batman tries to attack Superman. Meanwhile, Superman tries to settle on a decision, and Lex Luthor, the criminal mastermind and millionaire, tries to use his own advantages to fight the ‘Man of Steel’”.

That other threat isn’t mentioned in either one of these synopses, but IS in the Wikipedia entry: “…unleashing a monster genetically engineered from DNA from both Zod's body and his own…” So, somehow, the ultimate horror is a Human/alien hybrid? Zod/Luthor’s hybrid is worse than the half-breed Human/Vulcan, STAR TREK’s Spock?

Hmm….can you say “double standard”?

At any rate, “Batman vs Superman” lays out a major problem we as Humans face – we respond negatively when faced with the alien. From the Online Etymology Dictionary: “alien (adj.) c. 1300, ‘strange, foreign,’ from Old French alien ‘strange, foreign;’ as a noun, ‘an alien, stranger, foreigner,’ from Latin alienus ‘of or belonging to another, not one's own, foreign, strange,’ also, as a noun, ‘a stranger, foreigner,’ adjective from alius (adv.) ‘another, other, different,’ from PIE root *al- (1) ‘beyond.’

“Meaning ‘residing in a country not of one's birth’ is from mid-15c. Sense of ‘wholly different in nature’ is from 1670s. Meaning ‘not of this Earth’ first recorded 1920. An alien priory (mid 15c.) is one owing obedience to a religious jurisdiction in a foreign country.”

I could look at any number of conflicts in the US and abroad, but I think I’ll keep this more academic than personal.

How about the current conflict between the Great Empires? NO! Not the US and Russia! Both of those are waning, though one of them doesn’t realize it is. The current major conflict between China and the United States. These two empires are probably as close as we’ve come to a conflict between Humans and Interstellar Aliens. It also highlights the difficulty SF writers have had in creating truly alien peoples rather than just “Humans in funny masks and makeup”.

Culturally China and the US are as different as they can get. For example, the US believes (at least it’s working toward being a culture that “celebrates diversity” and we continue to move in that direction.

Our movement toward diversity is the polar opposite of Chinese culture, which values and honors conformity. China’s mantra might as well be “Everyone the same, difference is not only abhorrent, but incomprehensible. It’s one of the reasons China has become militant about Hong Kong and Taiwan.

China long ago gave up any connection with other Asian cultures – Japan, and the Koreas, as well as driving out the intractable Hmong culture and the current campaign to eradicate the Uyghurs. My son was stationed in South Korea for four years WITH HIS FAMILY. His children attended KOREAN SCHOOLS from kindergarten onward and both spoke fluent Korean; my grandson was an excellent interpreter between his parents and anyone else they interacted with (living off base in a Korean apartment complex). In the course of writing a short story, I discovered why China is loathe to provoke a conflict with either Korea: such a war would mean that refugees would flee to China – and to the Chinese there ARE no other cultures; there ARE no other languages. The Chinese consider Koreans, essentially inhuman which is the same thing as “not Chinese”. Citizens of Hong Kong and Taiwan are also NOT Chinese, perceived as more Western than Chinese.

A former student of mine taught in China for almost ten years – he and his Chinese wife have to children. Neither would ever be considered Chinese in any way, and if he and his wife died, the children would likely be abandoned, effectively executed because they are aliens.

China is an alien civilization in everything except that they look Human.

They neatly fit the definition of ‘alien’ above. They have an incomprehensible language which has an entirely alien way of spoken communication: a single Chinese word can have at least three different meanings dependent entirely on the TONE with which it is spoken – not just an “angry” or “sweet” or “indifferent” tone; rather a high, middle, and low tone. Traditional Chinese is written top to bottom, right to left, while modern Chinese is typed and read left to right, as English is.

The philosophy of today’s China: “Chinese philosophy never developed the concept of human rights, By the time of the Xinhai Revolution in 1911, there were many calls…to completely abolish the old imperial institutions and practices…incorporate[ing] democracy, republicanism, and industrialism…Mao added Marxism, Stalinism, Chinese Marxist Philosophy...the Chinese Communist Party [denounced] previous schools of thought…as backward, and later even purged during the Cultural Revolution…

Religion…Spiritual and philosophical institutions [were] re-established, as long they are not perceived to be a threat to the power of the CPC [and] are heavily monitored.”

The Chinese are aliens as far as Western thought and behavior exist on Earth. Chinese Communism is entirely different than Russian Communism because of the alien world view of the Chinese mind.

So, what does this mean to me as a writer?

I’ve rarely read truly science fiction that presents a totally different culture. All of Space Opera can be eliminated as a source of alien aliens, as can STAR TREK, STAR WARS, FIRELFY, and any “big screen” alien civilization – even “Independence Day” is boring and predictable. In fact, if you can even understand a science fiction novel that deals with aliens or an alien society, then the writer failed. The plethora of Chinese SF writers – who have become popular in the US recently – is not true Chinese SF. Because we as Westerners can make sense of it. If we encounter SF that is incomprehensible to us, we scoff and say the writer’s not making any sense!

Alien aliens should NOT MAKE SENSE TO US. If they do, then perhaps the writer has failed. And by not making sense to us, I don’t mean writing gibberish! SOLARIS is mostly gibberish with the alien Solaris communicating in dreams – we seem to think that an alien communicating telepathically with us will use symbolism we will somehow magically understand (as in Spock communicating with the Horta in TOS, “Devil In The Dark”). It will NOT be that easy. Even David Brin’s cool aliens are comprehensible to me. I get them and they behave in ways I understand.

That spells instant failure. If I can understand what’s going on in an alien’s mind without any effort on my own, then the writer has failed.

I HAVE FAILED…”Batman vs Superman” has failed, because Superman loves his adoptive mom, Martha. How can I possibly understand an alien? Maybe Kal-el and Bruce’s conflict comes out of them not understanding anything about each other? Now THAT would be success in writing! Maybe if Hal Jordan had had more trouble understand what it meant to be a Green Lantern instead of acting like he was a fourteen year old who discovered, I dunno, a box of his favorite candy under his bed and stuffing his face…then “Green Lantern” might have become significant. Maybe us not having any clue why Mar-Vel doesn’t come back to Earth for years and years means that Marvel Pictures actually created a GOOD alien out of her?
Probably. This whole idea will require study. Are my aliens too Human? Yep, I'm pretty sure they are...(Oh, and I don't count a writer as successfully writing the alien when someone says, "Wow, that was so weird! I felt like I was reading about a real alien!" That just means they understood the alien...which isn't a success..."

Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/31/Batman_v_Superman_Dawn_of_Justice_poster.jpg/220px-Batman_v_Superman_Dawn_of_Justice_poster.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 525

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: Historical Fantasy, https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HistoricalFantasy
Current Event: 80th Anniversary of the Attack on Pearl Harbor, https://ussslcca25.com/japscode.htm; https://www.amazon.com/Hawaiian-Magic-Spirituality-Scott-Cunningham/dp/1567181880

Patricia Hernandez looked up into the predawn sky of Hawaii. She yawned. She’d been awake most of the night scrambling frantically as part of a team trying break the so-called “gobledegook” spell locking the latest communique from Imperial Japan.

She couldn’t help but look west then. “Silly. It’s night. You can’s see that far even in daylight. You haven’t learned even the most basic skills in conjuring a space compression spell.” She shook her head. The pressure was getting to her. All she wanted to do now was sleep. In fact, that bench over there looked perfect.

She’d just sunk down on the bench, a warm breeze – it was tough to imagine that Christmas was only two-and-a-half weeks away! – tinged with the oily fumes wafting from the Seventh Fleet at anchor in Pearl Harbor.

Another figured was strolling past. It stopped and said, “Patty?”

“Pika?” She said. She tried not to sigh. Pika Hekekia might be a first rate code-breaker, but he was a class one jerk as well. He refused to follow war protocol and used unauthorized spells he said were ancient Hawai’ian, when dealing with Japanese code-breaking. That he’d been successful a couple of times was even more irritating.

That he acted like he wanted to ask her out on a date was ridiculous. She could only imagine what her parents, farmers in Nebraska! would say if she ever brought him home! Even though he’d been born in San Francisco and was a junior grade lieutenant, they’d never see past his vaguely Japanese face. They hated foreigners.

Pika dropped onto the other end of her bench and said, “What are you doing out alone so late? Don’t you know this is an Naval base full of sailors who’re interested in just one thing?”

She snorted, “And what is that one thing?”

“Gettin’ a beer on a weeknight and blowing their paychecks on a hot poker game!”

She shouldn’t help it. She laughed out loud. “You’re crazy!” She thought for a moment that he was going to take advantage of the opening and slide closer to her. But unexpectedly, he didn’t.

Instead, he said, “What if I were to tell you that while I was meditating this morning, and I had a vision. It was creepy powerful and I could tell there was some serious Mana. The magic fed my dream, calling to me and I saw a great flock of birds visit Hawaii…”

“What, like sparrows or crows or whatever they have that are the Hawai’ian equivalent?” She shook her head, “Doesn’t sound very important to me…” she couldn’t stifle a yawn and stood up. “See you in the morning, Pika.”

“Listen,” Pika said, standing. Patricia could see in the streetlight that he was trembling. “I don’t think it’s going to be anything good. In fact, I got the impression that it was going to be bad. Very bad.”

Names: ♀ American (Nebraska); ♂ Traditional Hawai’ian
Image: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/71/e5/9871e52bbc09c525af21b8f6471eab15.jpg

WRITING ADVICE: Short Stories – Advice and Observation #13: Connie Willis “& 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! Hemingway’s quote above will now remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing output and sales! As always, your comments are welcome!

Without further ado, short story observations by Connie Willis – with a few from myself…

I love well-written time travel stories. To be clear: for me time travel has to be for a very specific REASON. Vengeance doesn’t do it for me. Joy-riding doesn’t do it for me. “Exploring time” doesn’t do it for me…Accidents are OK. Righting a wrong is REALLY OK with me. So, what science fiction time travel stories do I fall for?

Obviously, BACK TO THE FUTURE is one of my favorite series of movies and I watch the whole thing twice a year.

But what about WRITTEN time travel – and I’m going to include alternate history as well, but only the ones that left a “mark on me”. THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, by Philip K. Dick, is of course on that list. The entire TIME QUINTET by Madeleine L’Engle and Heinlein’s DOOR INTO SUMMER (together, they helped usher the adolescent me into the entirety of science fiction!). The ineffable Octavia Butler gave me KINDRED. The classic, HG Well’s THE TIME MACHINE; with humor, A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR’S COURT by Mark Twain; of course, the countless time-travel adventures of DOCTOR WHO…there are many influences here, but let me come down to the two most influential.

STAR TREK: The Original Series, “City on the Edge of Forever” and the heart-stopping moment when Edith Keeler must either die, and the Allies defeat Adolf Hitler; or she lives and creates a peace movement that never leads to the United Federation of Planets.

The other? DOOMSDAY BOOK, by Connie Willis: “…draw[ing] upon her understanding of the universalities of human nature to explore the ageless issues of evil, suffering, and the indomitable will of the human spirit.

“For Kivrin, preparing an on-site study of one of the deadliest eras in humanity's history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing an alibi for a woman traveling alone. For her instructors in the twenty-first century, it meant painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location where Kivrin would be received.

“But a crisis strangely linking past and future strands Kivrin in a bygone age as her fellows try desperately to rescue her. In a time of superstition and fear, Kivrin—barely of age herself—finds she has become an unlikely angel of hope during one of history's darkest hours.”

After I read this book and watched “City on the Edge of Forever”, my time travel reading and writing HAD to deal with significant issues. So, without further ado, what can I learn from Connie Willis about writing SHORT stories?

Willis says, “My process is similar to that of seat-of-the-pants writers. They just get an idea and go with it. I do that too…before I start the writing. By the time I have begun the story, I basically have my whole plot in place, or at least the beginning and the end, with a blurry idea of the middle…I usually outline the plot…I jot down whatever occurs to me at the time. With the piece I am working on right now…I know what happens but I don’t know the mechanism I will use to make it all happen. A mystery has two stories; there is the story about what really happened, and then the story that appeared to happen. Of course, the detective’s job is to figure out how to get past the latter.”

I start with a sheet of paper and small sticky notes, outlining by writing down the main purpose of a scene. Once they story is written out, I put it away for a day. Usually I write the opening paragraph after thinking of a sharp hook to get the reader to want to follow along.

Character building is a tough one for me; especially because when I write a story, I want it to BE about something; I want to “say something”. Willis has this to say, “Getting people to care is the only way to show them the truth…Emotions…show us what’s right. We don’t only think it’s right, we feel that it’s right. Mostly in stories…there are messages in it, there are certainly messages in Huckleberry Finn, but they’re not messages that can be encapsulated as a slogan or moral. The reason the message gets through is because you love Jim, and that’s why you believe that message.”

The stories I’ve written that have been published are ones in which the message is intrinsic rather than baldly stated. Even CS Lewis had something to say about such writing: “What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects – with their Christianity latent.” (Christian Apologetics”, GOD IN THE DOCK).

So, how long does it take me to write a story? That depends – on the subject, what I’m trying to say, and by how good I am by the time I start writing it. I’ve written stories LONG before I should have tried to write them. They’ve been underthought or WAY TOO complicated for the form I was trying to use for them. Willis notes, “Every story basically takes your whole career to write, both in the skills you acquire and where the stuff comes from that the stories are about.”

Wow! That discovery has made me want to go back and try to rewrite a story I just didn’t do a good enough job writing the first time. I’ve found THAT very hard. I find that I do the same with my newer work, more and more. For example, I’m writing a kidnapping mystery that takes place in the early part of the 22nd Century. The United States has fractured into thirteen separate countries. As I reach different incidents and plot changes that deviate from my original outline, I have to go back and place the characters or precursor incidents I need to get to the end of the story. Willis apparently, does something similar and refers to one of my FAVORITE movies: “I love the scene in Stranger than Fiction where Dustin Hoffman tells Emma Thompson, ‘You realize that now your ending doesn’t match the rest of the story?’ Emma says, ‘Yes, so now all I have to do is rewrite the book to match the ending.’ That’s pretty much how it is with me. After I write the ending, I have to go back and make the whole thing match.”

Amazing. Maybe I AM approaching a point where I’m a better writer than I ever imagined I could be! I’ll keep you posted!

References: https://tetheredbyletters.com/interview-connie-willis/ , https://www.diabolicalplots.com/connie-willis-interview/ , http://talkingwriting.com/connie-willis-success-is-the-best-revenge
Image: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41JNnybcihL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 524

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: Evil de-evolution
Current Event: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devolution_(biology) (Fascinating article in which an evolutionists tap-dances around the idea that the dissemination of correct information is NOT the responsibility of scientists but of...um...Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, but ultimately Nobody and CERTAINLY not them…(http://www.corsinet.com/braincandy/hl...))

Ugnė Mertens flipped her pigtail back again as she stared at the image on her laptop. Muttering, she stepped sideways to the microscope and moved the slide using the X-Y translational control knobs fine adjustment. The image of the chromosome she was studying moved fractionally.

Naranbaatar Todorov picked at his thin, first beard and said, “Staring at it isn’t going to make the genes magically appear, Ug.”

“That’s what you think,” she straightened up, she smiled and added, “Baaaaa,” drawing out the stereotypical sheep sound. “Watch.” She touched a pressure toggle on an odd, goose-necked device standing beside the microscope. The computer’s screen fuzzed suddenly, then the single chromosome lit up as if it was a candy cane.

Baa started, looked at the lamp and exclaimed, “What is that thing?”

“Something I invented and you didn’t,” Ug said, sitting on the lab stool, leaning forward.

Baa swallowed hard, pursed his lips then said, “Listen, I know you don’t much like me...”

Ug reached out and typed an entry into the text box then said, “If I had a choice between dissecting three-day-old roadkill and having lunch with you...” she paused, made a face, then said, “I’m not sure which one I’d pick.”

Baa glanced at the clock on the wall. He still had four hours left of his shift. He couldn’t skip it or Dr. Harber would find out and dock him points. But he wasn’t sure he could keep his feet still and not kick Ugnė in the butt. He took a deep breath and said, “Must be an infrared to ultraviolet, rotating frequency projector.”

She shot him a look then went back to making notes on her computer. Occasionally she tapped her smartphone as well, which lay next to the laptop. “Lucky guess.”

“So that means, ‘yes’. Then you must have bathed the chromosomes in a solution that would...” Naranbaatar hooked another stool with his foot to drag it closer. Shrieking as it vibrated along the floor tiles, he winced and said, “Sorry.”

Ugnė sniffed but didn’t reply. Finally she said, “I used a mix that the older the gene, the less fluorescing compound it would pick up.”

Baa frowned then asked, “What are the chromosomes from?”

“A narn.”

“You’re kidding!” he exclaimed. Reports had been circulating for years about animals whose genes had suddenly started evolving – a quantum evolution event – from static forms to much, much more intelligent forms.

“These are chromosomes from raccoons killed in southern Minnesota.”

“We have narns here?” Baa exclaimed, backing away from the microscope.

Ug turned to look at him. “The genes aren’t contagious, idiot! This isn’t a disease – it’s animal chromosomes. Dyed and fixed at that! What are you afraid of?”

“Nothing. Nothing!” He spun around and took long strides out of the lab. He didn’t care if he lost hours – all he could see in his mind’s eye was the raccoon he’d nearly run over when he was biking on rural trails near his family’s home in an outer ring suburb of what was slowly becoming the three, four-kilometer-tall towers of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Vertical Village.

He would never forget the look on its face as it held out a mangled aw to him and said, “Help...”

Names: ♀ Lithuanian, Belgian; ♂ Mongolian, Bulgarian
Image: https://www.carthage.edu/live/image/gid/169/width/600/height/800/22601_BlueOrigin_NewShepard_NS10_Launch.rev.1548431292.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: FRIGHTENINGLY CLOSE ENCOUNTER…[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – “Past Tense” (two parts) (Season 3)]

NOT using the panel discussions of the most recent World Science Fiction Convention in San Jose, CA in August 2018 (to which I be unable to go (until I retire from education)), I would jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. But not today. This explanation is reserved for when I dash “off topic”, sometimes reviewing movies, sometimes reviewing books, and other times taking up the spirit of a blog an old friend of mine used to keep called THE RANTING ROOM…

Today is June 7, 2020. I wrote this review in February of 2019. While it was relevant THEN, it is even more relevant today, as I sit in my comfortable, suburban home in Minneapolis -- the flash point of awakening civil unrest that has swept around the planet. I post this because my deepest hope is that this time, history will change. THIS time, we will embark on a future that might possibly resemble in some way, the future the original series of STAR TREK shows. I did not march; but that does NOT mean I don't care. I need to do what fits my personality. I need to do something that I can do effectively that might lead to systemic changes in our society. Until then, read and if you like STAR TREK, watch these two episodes.
My wife and I just finished watching the two part episode and to say that it scared the bejeezis out of me would be to phrase it mildly.

From Wikipedia: “[In Past Tense (part 1 and 2] The crew of the Defiant is thrown back in time to 2024 on Earth. The United States of America has attempted to solve the problem of homelessness by erecting ‘Sanctuary Districts’ where unemployed and/or mentally ill persons are placed in makeshift ghettos.”

Written in 1994 some time, it includes the use of Internet podcasting (which didn’t really catch on until 2004) as well as the eerily prescient idea of “Sanctuary Districts” (https://americasvoice.org/blog/what-is-a-sanctuary-city/).

Even in the 90s, it was a real suggestion “…an article in the Los Angeles Times described a proposal by the Mayor [Richard J. Riordan (R)] that the homeless people of that city could be moved to fenced-in areas so as to contain them, in an effort to ‘make downtown Los Angeles friendlier to business.’…” to put aside part of downtown Los Angeles as a haven, nice word, a haven for the homeless.’…‘That was what [our fictional] Sanctuary Districts were, places where the homeless could just be so no-one had to see them, and literally there it was in the newspaper. We were a little freaked out.’” (https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Past_Tense,_Part_I_(episode))

But it never happened, and the episode was written thirty years before the fictional Bell Riots took place in San Francisco’s Sanctuary District A. This social shift is part of the original Star Trek timeline and, as Captain Sisko notes, “It was a watershed event…” in that it precipitated a reevaluation of how society, in particular, American society treats the mentally ill and homeless.

Only that’s  five years from now, and the Bell Riots took place on October 2, 2024. There are already rumblings every which way that have made this far more possible in OUR future than it could have appeared from Ira Steven Behr and Robert Hewitt Wolfe’s 1994. Things are very, very different in 2019.

The theme running through this episode is that the Sanctuary Districts were a total surprise to everyone. From the wealthy “Interweb” magnate, Chris Brynner to the mentally ill Grady who was living in the District; and from Vin, the guard and Lee, the social worker – none of them had any idea how the Districts happened. They just…grew. No blame, no “The Republicans…” or “The Democrats…” or “The Unions…”. The Sanctuary Districts just happened.

For me, this is more frightening than if they had been planned by an evil government (take your pick of who you define as evil, every government has been defined as evil by someone in the country at some time…)

I’ve heard it said that the actor who play’s Captain Sisko is a deep thinker. In the episode, because he knows that the future of (at least) the United States hangs in the balance, he yells at Vin, the guard who keeps coming across as a tough guy, disdainful of and in his mind, superior to the “dims” and the “gimmes” of the District.

As I watched it, it appeared that Avery Brooks was doing more than acting; doing more than just “getting into his part”. Holding a shotgun under Vin’s chin, Brooks-Sisko-Bell shouts, “‘You don't know what any of this is about, do you? You work here, you see these people every day, how they live, and you just don't get it!’”

“‘What do you want me to say? That I feel for them? That they got a bad break? What good would it do?’”

“‘It'd be a start! Now, you get back in that room and you shut up!’”

Vin hangs his head. He knows Bell is right. He knows he’s just given up; and he clearly has no idea how he got to be this way.

Lee confesses to Dr. Bashir that, “‘…[I] processed a woman with a warrant on her for abandoning her child because she couldn’t take care of him and left him with a family she worked for. [I] felt sorry for her and didn’t log her into the system which would have alerted the police, instead [I let] her disappear into the Sanctuary. [My] supervisor almost fired [me] when the incident was revealed. [I don’t] know what happened to the woman but [I] think about her all the time.’ Bashir explains that it's not her fault the way things are.” But she clearly has given up on the system.

If you haven’t watched this episode in a while, take the time to do so.

Then do something. I guess it really doesn’t matter WHAT you do. As

Congress, no matter the stripe, isn’t interested in doing anything for the “unwashed masses”; nothing substantial that is purely beneficial for the majority of Americans and has nothing to do with personal profit or gain; that’s all about making life better for most of us. Like lowering health care costs and forcing pharmaceutical companies to just charge us 20% over cost for all drugs of any kind – from aspirin to Glybera (“…first approved in October 2012 for familial lipoprotein lipase deficiency (LPLD), a rare genetic disorder that disrupts the normal breakdown of fats in the body…[the] drug was never approved in the US, but would have cost more than $1.2 million per year. It will not be marketed any further in Europe by drug maker uniQure as it has become evident that it will be a commercial failure.” https://www.health24.com/Medical/Meds-and-you/News/7-of-the-most-expensive-treatments-in-the-world-20180129)

As Brooks-Sisko-Bell notes, “It'd be a start!”     

Image: https://media.agonybooth.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/02042353/pastense1_528-2.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 523

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: Haunted Castle/Mansion
Current Event: http://www.dreadcentral.com/news/31105/cold-spots-glensheen-mansion

“No! Really! I saw the ghost!” said Enzo Solem. His wild hand waving came more from the passion of his French forebears than the stolid formality of his Norwegian. First generation from both sides, he’d been born and raised just north of the Twin Ports of Duluth and Superior.

He also had a wild passion for the paranormal.

Weayaya Aguirre sighed. Enzo was her best friend but sometimes he bugged the living daylights out of her. Shaking her head, she said, “Why can’t you just accept that the world is the world and that’s all there is?”

He stared at her incredulously and exclaimed, “You work here, too! How can you say that? You’ve seen the apparitions just like I have!”

Shaking her head, Weayaya – Wee-ah to the rest of the staff at the Glensheen Mansion – said, “I’ve told you a dozen times that I don’t know what you saw that night. I saw some kind of heat shimmer from the furnace.”

“And I’ve told you two dozen times that I talked with Elizabeth Congdon!”

“A woman who’s been dead for half a century?”

“She’s not dead...” he scowled. “Exactly. Her spirit is trapped here because her son suffocated her under a pillow and then banged the night nurse over the head with a candlestick.” Wee-Ah sucked in her lower lip and bit it gently to keep from responding how she wanted to respond. He added, “All I’m asking is that you come with me tonight. It’s the night of June 26...”

“You want to see her ghost, right?”

“Nope.”

Wee-Ah frowned and looked at him. This was not the answer she’d expected. “What?”

“I want to see the ghost of her son. He confessed to her murder and was sent to jail, getting out five years later. His ex-wife, Elizabeth Congdon’s sociopathic adopted daughter never gave him any of the money she inherited from her mother’s murder. He killed himself five years after his release from prison – though I’ve heard people whispering that Congdon’s daughter did him in.”

“So you want to see if the ghost of one of Congdon’s ex-son-in-laws comes back here?”

“Yep. Marjorie died in prison in 2022, five years before the fiftieth anniversary of her adoptive mother’s murder.”

“And you think that that is significant...how?”

“It’s obvious! Marjorie-originally-Congdon is buried in the family mausoleum.” Wee-Ah nodded. That much was true. “It’s now half a century after her mother’s murder by her second ex-husband Roger Caldwell.” Wee-Ah nodded, not even realizing she was encouraging him. He went on excitedly, “So I figure the psychic energy will be so powerful that not only will Roger’s ghost appear, so will Velma’s; her third husband Wally was murdered as well as his ex-wife; plus some old guy she defrauded of all his money in a nursing home in Arizona. His same was also Roger, though his last name was Sammis. Her first husband – with whom she’d had seven children – was Dick LeRoy and he died the same year she did – 2022. So it’s 2027, fifty years after someone murdered Elizabeth Congdon. I would say that Marjorie Congdon LeRoy Caldwell Hagen has some serious psychic reckoning coming.”

Wee-Ah found herself nodding in agreement before she could think things through. That was how she found herself kneeling in the bushes near the Congdon family stone marker in the Forest Hill Cemetery on this dark and stormy night, cold summer rain dribbling down the back of her hastily donned poncho.

Enzo leaned over to her and whispered, “It’s five minutes to midnight…”

Names: ♀ Sioux, Spanish; ♂ French, Norwegian
Image: https://cdn.britannica.com/40/11740-004-50816EB1/Boris-Karloff-Frankenstein-monster.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS (Though Probably NOT This Time…): Interplanetary Exploration and Me

NOT using the Programme Guide of the 2020 World Science Fiction Convention, ConZEALAND (The First Virtual World Science Fiction Convention; to which I be unable to go (until I retire from education – which I now have!)), I WOULD jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. But not today. This explanation is reserved for when I dash “off topic”, sometimes reviewing movies, sometimes reviewing books, and other times taking up the spirit of a blog an old friend of mine used to keep, called THE RANTING ROOM…

I was born just before the space age on May 11, 1957.

Then, the Soviet Union-launched Sputnik began transmitting on October 4, 1957; four months and seven days after my birth. This event was well-presented in the turn-of-the-century movie, “October Sky”. Coalwood, West Virginia was nine hundred and seventy-seven miles away from me, and Homer Hickam was fourteen years older than me (they obviously messed with the age of the character and the actor!)

As a child, I missed most of the early development of space exploration. But on July 20, 1969,two months after my 12th birthday, I was “born again” into space.

I watched, with my own eyes, the televised landing of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon at 20:17 UTC, though I’d have more easily recognized the time as (15:17 military time, or most likely as 3:17 pm CDT) when the Eagle landed.

After the landing, everyone at the Daly house (Mom and Dad’s friends) either sat around talking (Dad and Mr. Daly); while the moms started supper; the kids played ball, and hide-and-seek (Mike and me hide under the bunk bed – no idea why we’d pick such a dusty place!), and just messed around until supper.

The climax, the TRUE purpose of the Moon Landing was to happen six hours later at 9:56 CDT: Neil Armstrong was going to walk on the Moon. As he came down the ladder, he said the words that STILL bring tears to my eyes: “One small step for Man; one giant leap for Mankind.”

Shortly after the landing, I ran outside to look up at the waxing crescent Moon, hoping I’d see the Command Module orbiter. The sky was clear at 10:56 that night, but no matter how much I squinted (we didn’t have anything like binoculars!), I couldn’t see it…

Not long after that, I discovered my first science fiction books in Birch Grove Elementary’s library, which you can read about here if you’re so inclined (https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2016/09/possibly-irritating-essay-gateway.html). This one and SPACESHIP UNDER THE APPLE TREE by Louis Slobodkin started my love story with science fiction. Heinlein, Norton, and Nourse, and countless others continued.

But what excited me most was that SPACE EXPLORATION continued as well!

The first real space station, Russia’s Salyut 1 fascinated me. Then, suddenly, amazement set in: on March 3, 1972, shortly before my 15th birthday, NASA launched the Pioneer 10 space probe with the stated mission of flying past Jupiter and taking pictures of it. It flew off with this plaque attached to it: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f5/Pioneer10-plaque_tilt.jpg/220px-Pioneer10-plaque_tilt.jpg

While its mission, to fly by and photograph Jupiter was amazing, to me, what was most exciting to me as a teen, was that it was the first serious public acknowledgement that maybe, just maybe, there might be aliens “out there”! Also, the summer I graduated from high school, there was the very first international, crewed space mission. The Soviet Union and the US spacecraft, a Soyuz and an Apollo craft actually linked up. STAR TREK had long been off-the-air, though resurrected in re-runs, but there were no new shows, and no movies. THIS was real-life international cooperation: “The project, and its memorable handshake in space, was a symbol of détente between the two superpowers during the Cold War, and it is generally considered to mark the end of the Space Race, which had begun in 1957 with the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik 1.”

Then things started to accelerate. In 1975, I graduated from high school and started college, and the Soviet Union not only orbited Venus in October 1975, it landed and took the first successful photos from the surface of another planet (Venus). In April of the US Bi-Centennial, the US/West German spacecraft, Helios 2 did the closest flyby of the Sun, and in 1976, the Viking Lander took the f irst successful photos and soil samples from the surface of Mars.

In March of 1979, Voyager 1 did a Jupiter flyby and took totally spectacular pictures of the five Jovian moons, followed closely by Pioneer 11’s Saturn flyby where it took the first photographs of Titan from space. Voyager 1 followed by doing a Saturn flyby and did a close encounter with Titan as well as dozens of other Saturn’s moons.

Dozens more names hit the headlines – SkyLab, roaring into the 1980s with the first and hundreds of consecutive flights of the Space Shuttles, starting on April 12, 1981; Venera 13

1982 saw the first mixed gender crew aboard space station, and in 1984, the first woman, Svetlana Savitskaya, to walk in space, on space station Salyut 7; 1983 saw international cooperation for the First Infrared Orbital observatory between the US, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. Pioneer 10 continued to fly farther from Earth taking pictures of Neptune (first spacecraft to pass beyond all Solar System planets). In 1985, the Soviet Union deployed the first balloon deployed on another planet (Venus).In 1986, Voyager 2 flew past Uranus.

I was sleeping because I was a night supervisor at a home for the physically and mentally and had gotten off at 9 am. Seventy-three minutes after the launch of the Space Shuttle CHALLENGER, it exploded, killing all of the crew, including the first Teach in Space, Christa McAuliffe, a high school teacher. One of my best friends called me, waking me up, and after taking my portable TV out from under the table where I kept it, I watched the replay a hundred times, unable to fathom it.

The space program came to a screeching halt. It resumed some two-and-half years later, after interminable changes, finger-pointing, and calls to stop sending people into space – because “We should be spending that money on our own people, not throwing it into space! What a WASTE of perfectly good money!”

The 80s and 90s were amazing years with the Soviet Mir space station, Soviet comet landing and the ESA’s comet closeup in 1986; the first exoplanet discovered (the discover was retracted, then confirmed in 2002) in 1987. Radar images of Venus, the Hubble Space Telescope, Galileo’s imaged of Jupiter, Sojourner’s roving all over the surface of Mars in 1997 (I was at a Nobel Conference that year, and they had LIVE video from Mars. I wept realizing I would never be able to go into space…and lest you say, “You don’t know that!”

I, in fact DO have proof that I will never go into space from NASA in 2009! (Blogger won't let me insert it here, but see my NASA rejection letter below...)
https://scontent.ffcm1-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.15752-9/s206x206/258564418_638501643994089_8610744387781260372_n.jpg?_nc_cat=102&ccb=1-5&_nc_sid=aee45a&_nc_ohc=m-Pfjf1uxkQAX_8NoO9&_nc_ht=scontent.ffcm1-2.fna&oh=7001555b1c065d85532411e2eb79a629&oe=6198F53D
After that – the US, European Union, Russia, Japan, and Canada initiated the orbital reign of the International Space Station in November of 1998. Cassini went to Saturn and dropped a probe on Titan between October of 1997 and September of 2017; Japan landed a probe on an asteroid (Hayabbusa), India found ice on the Moon (Chandrayaan), the ESA landed a probe on a COMET! in 2014, the US photographed PLUTO in 2015, China landed on the far side of the Moon in 2019, and Captain Kirk finally managed to leave Iowa and REALLY make it into space a few months ago…

For me, these are the defining moments of my dream of going into space. The dream of ACTUALLY doing it really died on June 30, 2009; but I continue to go into space in my imagination – and I can ALWAYS hope some descendant of mine will eventually get off the surface of Earth and into REAL space…

Resources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_exploration, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_space_exploration, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo%E2Soyuz,
Image: https://i0.wp.com/cheapshottees.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Space.png?fit=500%2C500&ssl=1

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 522

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: government bans art; group uses it to restore…
Current Event: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Culture/Art/2012/Jan-13/159678-uk-unveils-restored-rare-roman-helmet-mistaken-for-bucket.ashx#axzz1oOPYDSZF

Hector Blaine has lived his entire life on a ranch in central Kansas. When his family is killed in a tornado while he’s on a mission trip, he’s shipped off to a wealthy, elderly aunt and uncle who live in Minneapolis, not far from the Walker Art Museum in a huge house. He has a room of his own, but he never sees them – only the housekeeper and a cook.

He’s been in Minnesota for three months and he hates it, but the school year is starting and instead of taking his aunt and uncle’s suggestion to attend an exclusive private school, he opts for a public one, figuring he’ll have a better chance surviving among the poor and rough rather than among the rich and snotty.

They comply and he’s set to start Southwest Minneapolis High School. But he just doesn’t want to be there at ALL. He’s trapped. He can’t escape. It’s like he’s been captured, enslaved and totally out of control of his life.

NOT that he ever felt like he had any control when he lived in Kansas – his two older brothers and older sister pretty much used him as a dumping ground for the chores and work they didn’t want to do. The kids in Brownell think of him as a country hick. The kids in Salina, Kansas (the nearest “big city”) – the one time he’d been there – had looked at him like he was from another planet. But at least they’d been from Kansas. He’s certain he’s going to DIE at Southwest.

So he runs away. Sort of. To the Museum, which is the only place he’s felt at home since he came to this Northern Nightmare. He wanders most of Sunday, ending up at a new exhibit of Roman artifacts. He has no desire to leave and hides, studying one of the things – a bucket of some sort – when a group of five people come in. They’re talking, and he hears them say clearly, “It’s not a bucket. It’s a helmet. A Roman helmet in a Briton dig.”

“What would a Briton be doing with a Roman helmet? Was he insane? A collector of war memorabilia? What?”

A softer, woman’s voice, with a clear British accent, speaks up then, “I think that instead of inventing fantastic excuses why a Briton couldn’t have a helmet, we accept instead the simplest answer – that during the First Century AD, the Britons and the Romans weren’t all about hating each other. Some Brits were accepted into the Legion as soldiers.”

“He’d have been a pariah among his own people!” one man exclaimed.

“Hated above all others!” a woman cried.

The soft-spoken woman remained silent until the others had finished then said, “A man set apart whether by choice or circumstance is still a man set apart – and he might have been set apart for greatness.”

Hector didn’t hear the rest of the argument, he reached up and touched the Plexiglas cube covering the “bucket”. For a moment, the people break into chaotic shouting, but the sound fades as does the room around him…

Names: ♀ Greece, Scotland (Gaelic)
Image:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/71/e5/9871e52bbc09c525af21b8f6471eab15.jpg

Slice of PIE: MINING THE ASTEROIDS Part 2…How Can We POSSIBLY Do Something So CRAZY?!?!?!?

Using the Programme Guide 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 the program firms up, I will jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. I will be using the events to drive me to distraction or revelation – as the case may be. The link is provided below where this appeared...sometime soon! But I’ll have to stick with the Program Guide for the last Virtual WSF Convention for inspiration…

Part 1: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2021/11/slice-of-pie-mining-asteroids-part-1can.html
They say you have to learn to WALK before your can FLY, so before we start driving asteroids around the Solar System (and I can’t believe that Russia, China, the EU, India, Brazil, and the United States will give a happy thumbs up to that action (which just put in my mind that MOVING asteroids into Earth orbit will have to be a true, multi-national effort with multi-national crews…which, of course, will lead to incredible stress and possible conflict…)) let’s look at how we’ll start walking…

Humans have been taking pictures of asteroids, and doing flybys for twenty or more years. Recently, we’ve started landing on asteroids: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_landings_on_extraterrestrial_bodies#Asteroids

Since 2001, there have been 11 landings, so we’ve done a few baby steps. First is the Asteroid Redirect Mission (https://www.nasa.gov/content/what-is-nasa-s-asteroid-redirect-mission) which was cancelled in 2017. The purpose was to lift a large asteroid boulder and place it into a stable Earth orbit. NOTE: While it’s not stated anywhere, I can only imagine the objections from China (mostly) and Russia and India against the US “parking” a huge rock in orbit (and hiding a rocket engine that, ignited, could push the rock into a decaying orbit that would drop it on a target of US choice…) knowing that the Barringer crater, a kilometer across and almost 200 meters deep, was formed by a boxcar-sized rock some fifty thousand years ago.

Even a small rock, dropped into central Beijing would cause catastrophic damage. We’re going to have to get experience with landing crewed ships on asteroids and setting up operations there.

In conjunction with that, we’re going to need to get used to mining the Moon. It’s a much smaller body, has a supply of water and there’s the likelihood we can use resources on its surface to manufacture air and raw materials, and it’s a far easier target to hit. Compare that with FIRST landing the Blue Origin booster rockets and capsule in the middle of the Arizona desert and then figure landing on an ASTEROID would be like trying to using a laser pointer to shine it on a target on a person running in a straight line across a university courtyard…while you’re bouncing on a trampoline…

Oh, and you’d have to land it, too…

So, let’s just say we solve the problem of creating smaller spacecraft (say, the size of a nuclear submarine…), maybe building them in space, though the FIRST ones are going to have to be built here AND land on an iron asteroid. Once it was there, we COULD send mining bots, but there’s going to have to be a small crew there to troubleshoot…maybe a crew who could build the NEXT mining ship and send it on its way to another asteroid.

I write it like it’s a simple job; but it took us from 1944 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MW_18014) to now to reach a point where we can even talk about the feasibility of mining the asteroids – seventy-seven years. Can we start today?

Nope. HOWEVER, there’s a foundation that has been laid.

We CAN land Human-made probes on asteroids and lift off again.

We CAN land people on the Moon, while we may be rusty, it’s likely to happen again in the next fifteen years or so.

We CAN support people in space, which we have done (with international cooperation no less!) with the International Space Station.

We CAN put a number of people in the space at one time, both in the past and recently.

And without a doubt, we need resources if Human civilization is to continue to advance. The resources on the planet, while there are reserves and life as we know it is NOT going to end today, they won’t possibly last forever. We need to do something besides host conferences, posture, and throw money at our social ills. Please do NOT read your own prejudices into that statement.

Programs need to be funded, but 40 years in education have shown me that unless the programs have a very specific goal and SHOW THAT THE GOAL HAS BEEN ACHIEVED, then it’s little more than rearranging classroom desks or virtue signaling. We need to get serious about living here, and we need to step back from our personal agendas, party agendas, and national agendas.

It seems to me that we CAN mine the asteroids. Human civilization certainly has the SKILLS. Now we need the naysayers to either give clear alternatives and explain their objections – and then offer solutions rather than to repeat their objections louder and begin to weep alongside or they need to stuff a sock in their mouths, bite down, and get on the bandwagon ANYWAY.

Resources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Origin_facilities
Image: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/A2D5/production/_114558614_hls-eva-apr2020.jpg