Guy Stewart's Blog, page 6

WRITING ADVICE: “God Bless You Gravity Modification” Gave Up On It, READY To Fix It NOW?

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. Hemingway’s quote above will remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing output and sales, but I’m adding this new series of posts because I want to carefully look at what I’ve done WRONG and see if I can fix it. As always, your comments are welcome!

Forever ago, ANALOG Science Fiction and Science Fact did something called a "Tag Line". It was an editorial summary of what the editor thought was the PIVOTAL question that the story attempted to answer. As it wasn't published, I had to think of my own 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=rRi8LptvFZY) 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): make characters confront internal and external issues to confront their "inner demons."
9) Start: character’s worldview is knocked down.
11) Character is action: to start with, anything they do makes things worse.
17) Challenges start small and end huge.
19) Character becomes one by doing something heroic. In other words, "The Character HAS TO CHANGE!"

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 former "enemies" 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.

OK – I get it. I didn’t know about Cron’s advice when I wrote this one. Now that I DO, I can rewrite the story with the “rules” (she didn’t call them rules, I did…) in mind.
Rewriting with a newer and wiser goal in mind! Which answers the question below:

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

[BUT…if anyone would like a copy of the current work, and if you would read it AND maybe help me figure out a new name for it AND if you promise to be brutally honest with me…I would be in your debt.]

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

WRITING ADVICE: “God Bless You Gravity Modification” I Gave Up On It, Am I READY To Do A Serious ReWrite?

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. Hemingway’s quote above will remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing output and sales, but I’m adding this new series of posts because I want to carefully look at what I’ve done WRONG and see if I can fix it. As always, your comments are welcome!

Forever ago, ANALOG Science Fiction and Science Fact did something called a "Tag Line". It was an editorial summary of what the editor thought was the PIVOTAL question that the story attempted to answer. As it wasn't published, I had to think of my own 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=rRi8LptvFZY) 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): make characters confront internal and external issues to confront their "inner demons."
9) Start: character’s worldview is knocked down.
11) Character is action: to start with, anything they do makes things worse.
17) Challenges start small and end huge.
19) Character becomes one by doing something heroic. In other words, "The Character HAS TO CHANGE!"

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 former "enemies" 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.

OK – I get it. I didn’t know about Cron’s advice when I wrote this one. Now that I DO, I can rewrite the story with the “rules” (she didn’t call them rules, I did…) in mind.
Rewriting with a newer and wiser goal in mind! Which answers the question below:

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

[BUT…if anyone would like a copy of the current work, and if you would read it AND maybe help me figure out a new name for it AND if you promise to be brutally honest with me…I would be in your debt.]

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

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 663

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: "It occurs to me that robot stories about naturally-occurring robots present an untapped sci-fi resource in terms of commenting on what constitutes life, or a meditation on the machine like nature of biological man, etc."
Current Event: http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/scientists-create-life-like-cells-out-of-metal/

Ebony Jones pursed her lips, tweaking the landing jets of the surface ship. “I don’t like how it looks down there.”

Marquis Deonte ran another scan, tapping one of the readouts as he said, “It’s mechanical life, sure. Maybe the first time we’ve ever run across it naturally...”

“There’s nothing ‘natural’ about ‘mechanical life’. It’s an oxymoron,” she almost added “Like you...”, but decided against it. They’d butted heads enough times on the trip out from Earth – mostly because you could only live out virtual adventures so many times before you got bored. You could also only prep for landing on an alien world so many times before you were twitching in your sleep with the movements you’d repeated a million times.

You could only tell someone you just wanted to be friends so many times before you both started to... Marquis cut into her litany, saying, “Didn’t you come out here to find life as we DON’T know it?"

“Of course it’s what I want! Just because I question the possibility of some sort of metallic, mechanical...”

“Look! Down there!” he said, aiming the external sensors at the roiling surface.

Ebony said, “Besides, water mixed with just about any kind of salt would be corrosive to metal...”

“Our bones are metallic,” he said, his voice taking on the deadpan, lecture mode they’d fallen into after they’d first become fast friends. Since about ten months into the flight to HD 196944, a star rich in heavy metals when they’d stopped being best friends and become the banes of their separate existences.

“True, that. But...”

“There’s something moving under the surface,” said Marquis.

“I don’t see anything...”

“It’s not visible in our part of the spectrum. Change the frequency reception of your scanner. I’m getting lots of movement in the UV band. Also IR.”

She tapped the screen, slid a spectrum bar and watched as the imaged jumped into view. There were larger shapes deeper down. Smaller ones close to the surface. They were angular rather than rounded; mechanical rather than biological. “What kind of ecology would they have?” she muttered. After a moment, she said more loudly, “There’s something – cloudy – under the surface. Seems to be...” she paused, defaulted to a space-view of the lander, zoomed in then added, “The cloud is matching the shape of our shadow.”

“Huh?” Marquis said.

“Our shadow! A cloud is forming underneath us in the water.” Below them, something burbled, as if the water were boiling. A larger bubble burst beneath the surface, splashing the lander. Ebony swung the imager to the belly of the lander and cried, “The ship’s skin is boiling! I’m taking us up!” Without waiting for his confirmation, Ebony pushed the throttle to full...

Names: ♀, ♂ Top 20 Whitest and Blackest Names (http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=2470131) Resource: http://io9.com/5628989/ten-tropes-youll-find-in-science-fiction---over-and-over-again, http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso0129b/
Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e1/Falcon_9_Demo-2_Launching_6_%283%29.jpg/220px-Falcon_9_Demo-2_Launching_6_%283%29.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: Indifferent Incomprehensibility Between Alien Intelligences = Conflict?

On October 7, 2007, I started this blog. Sixteen years later, I am revising and doing some different things. My wife and I are now retired senior citizens, our kids are both married, we have a bonus daughter and her wife and we have three grandchildren, (with a fourth on-the-way!) the oldest of which will soon finish his first year in high school, one smack in the center of Middle School; the third almost done with kindergarten. I have forty-five professional publications, plus countless other publications as a slushpile reader, and sometime essay contributor to Stupefying Stories https://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/.

These days, I write whenever I want to – or when I’m not busy exploring the world with my wife or kids or grandkids. I write and read constantly. Then I discovered that I was writing longer and longer pieces. My new focus is to write shorter; and to write HUMOR. On purpose. Maybe I can still irritate people while being funny. It works pretty well for John Scalzi! We’ll see what happens.

Inspiration: February 28, 2025
Interesting Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NlqhEeK1iw

I read and write science fiction. I couldn’t tell you how many stories I read include some kind of peaceful confederation of intelligent aliens.

The stories don’t always depict those beings getting along! Even in the most hopeful one, one many of us grew up with, STAR TREK’s United Federation of Planets, there’s all kind of conflict. There’s hatred. Humans hate Klingons; Klingons hate Humans; Vulcans don’t hate Humans, but feel they are infinitely superior to Humans; the Borg are the ultimate form of organic life – to be controlled by technology (kind of like us…) and aren’t technically part of the Federation. There’s bias based on color (Andorians, Orions); gender, (Orion females were the foundation (while appearing male) ; Skreeaa males were too emotional; and (obviously) mental capacity – Vulcans being telepathic, Humans only mildly so); Betazoids; the Cairn; Species 8472; El-Aurian…there are others as well.

Among Humanity, our largest conflicts haven’t been based on any biological difference (though the Nazi believed that anyone who wasn’t blonde with blue eyes was an inferior Human; possibly not even Human at all. Probably I could safely say that the largest conflicts resulted from different philosophies, points of view, or perception of what the Universe should be like or was like.

I’m secretly convinced that I would love aliens to be “just like me”! I’m secretly convinced that aliens will prove that what and who I am indicates some kind of innate superiority. It’s not even a secret that I’m convinced that other people are absolutely certain that the universe, aliens, and other intelligences will turn out to be clones of themselves, and identically mirror their points of view, and philosophy or not even their philosophy, but the TRUTH of the universe…

Most of us UNDERSTAND how unlikely that is; in our brain. It’s just hard to get our emotions to agree with our brains. Without any conscious effort, we find it necessary to firmly believe that we’ve got it all figured our and KNOW what the universe beyond Earth is going to be like. Back to STAR TREK, Gene Roddenberry was convinced that by the time Humanity reached the stars – ostensibly sometime in the 23rd Century – religion would have vanished, mostly because it had vanished from his own life and it would obviously collapse the instant Humanity met non-Humans. To his worldview, this was the only INTELLIGENT, STAR-FARING conclusion.

And yet…religion crept back into STAR TREK, mostly after he passed away.

So, giving the whole idea of a United Federation of Planets a serious thought, a REALLY serious thought…let’s look at one of the more fascinating aliens STAR TREK presented. They were simple, really: the Horta. Creatures who lived in solid rock, passing through it like we pass through air. They were silicon life forms. Since then, we’ve even discovered life on Earth that, while it’s not BASED on silicon, it’s dependent on silicon – the diatoms. “Living diatoms make up a significant portion of the Earth's biomass: they generate about 20 to 50 percent of the oxygen produced on the planet each year, take in over 6.7 billion tons of silicon each year from the waters in which they live, and make up nearly half of the organic material found in the oceans. The shells of dead diatoms can reach as much as a half-mile deep on the ocean floor, and the entire Amazon basin is fertilized annually by 27 million tons of diatom shell dust transported by transatlantic winds from the African Sahara, much of it from the Bodélé Depression, which was once made up of a system of fresh-water lakes.” (From the WIKIPEDIA entry) Discovered in the early 18th Century and finally identified for what they were in the latter part of the same century, they opened a gate for the identification of life forms first discovered in the mid-to-late 17th Century…and published with illustrations in the book Micrographia.

Currently, Humanity is convinced that ALL life in the universe will OBVIOUSLY be multicellular and recognizable to us and that with just a bit of effort, we’ll be able to communicate with them. The we will be able to understand their hopes and dreams and intentions and senses of humor or even what they find offensive – because it will be what WE find offensive…though we’ve somehow managed to understand that we won’t have the same artistic senses. Art and beauty and non-quantifiable aspects of Humanity will be acceptably mysterious. But government? Right and wrong? The importance of certain kinds of math or physics or sciences – well, we are CERTAIN that all of those will not only understandable, but OBVIOUSLY ones we share and a firm foundation on which we can build a comprehensible, mutually beneficial, and enjoyable Federation (as we will all have identical DEMOCRATIC ( = Democratic PARTY) beliefs and sensibilities…because we are expecting that alien civilizations will want to SHARE…

STRANGE assumptions to make as we have absolutely no evidence to back up such a belief…only a “feeling of certainty that we have it figured out”. One might even say it’s become a practically RELIGIOUS doctrine.

And like (some people I’ve heard of and read) religion – supported by absolutely NO PHYSICAL EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER.

Having a conflict implies that we will share enough biology and psychology to have to both WANT…or NOT WANT. Do we dare make such an assumption? Last thought: I’ve long thought that the absolutely worst result of First Contact would be that Interstellar Civilizations WOULD IGNORE US because no one will have absolutely nothing AT ALL in common…

Image: https://c7.alamy.com/comp/RJPJ88/spotted-hyaenas-crocuta-crocuta-and-vultures-on-a-zebra-kill-in-the-masai-mara-kenya-RJPJ88.jpg

MINING THE ASTEROIDS Part 28: KARMAN+ This Is REAL NEWS and REALLY NOW!

Initially, I started this series because of the 2021 World Science Fiction Convention, DisCON which I WOULD have been attending in person if I felt safe enough to do so in person AND it hadn’t been changed to the week before the Christmas Holidays…HOWEVER, as time passed, I knew that this was a subject I was going to explore because it interests me…

So, today, the “internet was blowing up” with the news regarding a $20,000,000 investment in the asteroid mining company, KARMAN+ who have “raised $20 million in seed funding led by Plural and Hummingbird. The funding, which included participation from HCVC, Kevin Mahaffey (Lookout), co-founder Teun van den Dries and angel investors, will be used to develop its first technology demonstration mission and customer missions, expected in 2027.”

Aside from being a different company, why is this such a big deal? LAST month, AstroForge made a similar announcement, which I wrote about here: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2025/01/mining-asteroids-part-27-future-marches.html

Then there’s Open Asteroid Impact, whose plan is to send robots into space to mine the asteroids: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2024/04/mining-asteroids-part-21-startling.html

While this still smacks of Science Fiction. The generally recognized SF story detailing asteroid mining was “The first mention of asteroid mining in science fiction apparently came in Garrett P. Serviss' story Edison's Conquest of Mars, published in the New York Evening Journal in 1898. Several science-fiction video games include asteroid mining.”
Needless to say, this came out around the same time as the the works of Jules Verne started to appear.
“So what?” you say.

Well, Jules Verne might not have gotten a lot of the DETAILS spot on – FROM EARTH TO THE MOON; TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA; AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS; JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH…and others (though he DID hit one or two of the nails on the head in PARIS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.) However, Humans have landed on the Moon, dived 20,000 leagues under the sea; easily gone around the world in eighty days; though the whole “journey to the center of the Earth” thing doesn’t really work out as the planet isn’t hollow…

What’s to stop this 21st Century version of Humanity from seriously mining the asteroids? Hmmm?

Today’s Source: (Multiple reports!) https://techfundingnews.com/karman-plus-asteroid-mining-technology-funding/ ; https://www.karmanplus.com/techcrunch-karman-digs-up-20m-to-build-an-asteroid-mining-autonomous-spacecraft/; https://spaceinsider.tech/2025/02/21/karman-raises-20-million-to-mine-asteroids-to-supply-the-space-economy/; https://www.theengineer.co.uk/content/news/asteroid-mining-startup-raises-20m-usd ; https://www.finsmes.com/2025/02/karman-raises-20m-in-seed-funding.html ; https://payloadspace.com/karman-raises-20m-for-asteroid-mining-demo/
Foundational Resource: (A general Wikipedia post detailing what the authors currently know about asteroid mining: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining)
Noted Resources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_asteroid_close_approaches_to_Earth, https://www.pharostribune.com/news/local_news/article_7fcd3ea5-3c14-533f-a8d5-9bf629922f34.html, https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/04/29/like-asteroid-mining-be-careful-what-you-wish-for/, https://www.nps.gov/wrbr/learn/historyculture/theroadtothefirstflight.htm, https://hackaday.com/2019/03/27/extraterrestrial-excavation-digging-holes-on-other-worlds/, https://www.planetary.org/space-missions/every-small-worlds-mission
Interesting Stuff The Might Apply To Mining Asteroids: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgej7gzg8l0oImage: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/A2D5/production/_114558614_hls-eva-apr2020.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAY 662

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: xenofiction (point of view of an animal)
Current Event: http://www.arkanimalspace.com/ark-blog/theo-the-bomb-sniffing-dog/

Mia had one mission in life.

She was an IED-expert. When she was called up and shipped to Afghanistan, it was the single most exciting moment in her short life. She was certain she’d been made for it. Certain that no one else could do it as well as she could. She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that her mission was to save lives by getting rid of IEDs that littered this sad country after its abortive war. She was set to do whatever was necessary – almost.

When she found IEDs, she refused to touch them and certainly refused to disarm them no matter how simple the device was. In fact, she couldn’t disarm an IED even if her partner’s life depended on it. She couldn’t handle them – because she didn’t have hands.

But smelling an IED was an entirely different story. She could tell the exact makeup of the IED from thirty meters away.

It had taken her a lot of time to train her partner to be as good as she was. The language barrier itself was nearly impossible to overcome. Ethan Pai-Teles was virtually deaf, couldn’t tell the difference between a rubber band bomb and a mercury-tilt switch bomb. Mia could smell mercury from a long way away – the sharp, poisonous tang would keep her away even when Ethan tried to bribe her with treats.

She’d usually answer him, “Totally unsafe, Ethan! Totally unsafe!”

He rarely understood her. At least now he slowed down some. When they first started working together, he’d tried to get her to understand English. She got that – some of the first words she’d understood were “toy” and “walk”. But the language was so limited. Ninety percent of the scent keys aligned with real language were missing in English. It was nearly impossible for Ethan to hear anything but the most rudimentary phrases in the Bark Tongue.

Yun, a Chinese Shih Tzu soldier Mia had met at the Summer Olympics had it easier. Her partner at least understood the importance of pitch in real speech. Ethan – she loved him, but MAN! – was practically tone deaf, even as far as Humans were concerned.

She had to rely on body language, just as he’d devised a series of hand signals that allowed them to work together as their sight at close range was very nearly the same.

They were patrolling a stretch of road they hadn’t been in a bit. They’d been working together – she knew it was many, many sunrises past the last sandstorm, Ethan said “Two years, six months, five days, thirteen hours and,” he’d glance at his arm, “fourteen minutes” – and she caught the whiff of an IED.

She growled. It smelled strange. Very strange. There was the sharp, Human smell of plastic explosive but it was overlain with something different. She’d never caught the scent of anything like it…except maybe when they’d trained together when she was a pup. It had been in a very dry place, a long way away from her favorite water and the fabulous birds Ethan killed for her but didn’t allow her to eat.

This place had two white marks laid on the floor of one of the buildings. Ethan had made a violent sound and exclaimed something softly and low so she could actually hear it, “Area Fifty-One?”

This smell was the same as that...

Names: ♀ UK-Scotland ; ♂ UK, Portuguese
Image: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/71/e5/9871e52bbc09c525af21b8f6471eab15.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAY 661

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: xenofiction (point of view of an animal)
Current Event: http://www.arkanimalspace.com/ark-blog/theo-the-bomb-sniffing-dog/

Mia had one mission in life.

She was an IED-expert. When she was called up and shipped to Afghanistan, it was the single most exciting moment in her short life. She was certain she’d been made for it. Certain that no one else could do it as well as she could. She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that her mission was to save lives by getting rid of IEDs that littered this sad country after its abortive war. She was set to do whatever was necessary – almost.

When she found IEDs, she refused to touch them and certainly refused to disarm them no matter how simple the device was. In fact, she couldn’t disarm an IED even if her partner’s life depended on it. She couldn’t handle them – because she didn’t have hands.

But smelling an IED was an entirely different story. She could tell the exact makeup of the IED from thirty meters away.

It had taken her a lot of time to train her partner to be as good as she was. The language barrier itself was nearly impossible to overcome. Ethan Pai-Teles was virtually deaf, couldn’t tell the difference between a rubber band bomb and a mercury-tilt switch bomb. Mia could smell mercury from a long way away – the sharp, poisonous tang would keep her away even when Ethan tried to bribe her with treats.

She’d usually answer him, “Totally unsafe, Ethan! Totally unsafe!”

He rarely understood her. At least now he slowed down some. When they first started working together, he’d tried to get her to understand English. She got that – some of the first words she’d understood were “toy” and “walk”. But the language was so limited. Ninety percent of the scent keys aligned with real language were missing in English. It was nearly impossible for Ethan to hear anything but the most rudimentary phrases in the Bark Tongue.

Yun, a Chinese Shih Tzu soldier Mia had met at the Summer Olympics had it easier. Her partner at least understood the importance of pitch in real speech. Ethan – she loved him, but MAN! – was practically tone deaf, even as far as Humans were concerned.

She had to rely on body language, just as he’d devised a series of hand signals that allowed them to work together as their sight at close range was very nearly the same.

They were patrolling a stretch of road they hadn’t been in a bit. They’d been working together – she knew it was many, many sunrises past the last sandstorm, Ethan said “Two years, six months, five days, thirteen hours and,” he’d glance at his arm, “fourteen minutes” – and she caught the whiff of an IED.

She growled. It smelled strange. Very strange. There was the sharp, Human smell of plastic explosive but it was overlain with something different. She’d never caught the scent of anything like it…except maybe when they’d trained together when she was a pup. It had been in a very dry place, a long way away from her favorite water and the fabulous birds Ethan killed for her but didn’t allow her to eat.

This place had two white marks laid on the floor of one of the buildings. Ethan had made a violent sound and exclaimed something softly and low so she could actually hear it, “Area Fifty-One?”

This smell was the same as that...

Names: ♀ UK-Scotland ; ♂ UK, Portuguese
Image: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/71/e5/9871e52bbc09c525af21b8f6471eab15.jpg

CREATING ALIEN ALIENS Part 40: Why Do We Think “The Worst Aliens” Are…Unbelievable?

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 am a brutal critic of aliens in ANY TV series, movie, book, or any other media format. Part of the reason is that my undergraduate degree is in biology and my graduate degree is in psychology/school counseling. My life experience is in teaching 4th-12th graders, mostly in science…

I expect my aliens to MAKE SENSE. I don’t really care if they’re “scary” or “monstrous” or disgusting. They NEED to make sense to me.

Take for example, as much as the “Alien” xenomorphs scared the living crap out of a friend of mine and I, the possibility of something like them walking around, being insectoid, and under 1g, Earth normal gravity? (“How can you tell that???? They could have evolved under a different gravitational field that we did!” While all that wailing is true, the fact is that from the first movie, the xenomorphs interact with Humans UNDER EARTH-NORMAL GRAVITY!
“How do you know it’s Earth normal?” Mostly because none of them appear to have either technological nor biological adaptations to work or live under any level of g higher or lower than Earth normal. Ergo, to me, while they startled me and give me the heebie-jeebies, they don’t work biologically.

There’ve been all sorts of alien invasion movies, too with aliens who make no sense at all. The original 1953 version of HG Wells classic novel, WAR OF THE WORLDS made no sense, either. The screenplay writing tried, I’ll give them that! But the aliens really WOULDN’T be able to walk around under Earth’s gravity. Plus, the possibility of them catching a cold from us or US catching some sort of plague (UNLESS it was specifically designed from one or another of the Diseases of Humanity for a very specific purpose. As we all saw with H1N1, even COVID19, while killing a vast swath of Humanity, couldn’t take out ALL of us. (Current totals for world-wide death due to COVID 19, from 28 days through January 25, 2025 = [image error] https://data.who.int/dashboards/covid19/deaths?m49=001
My question then is this: “What qualifies anyone to judge that an alien is ridiculous?”

We have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING on which to base such a statement. We have had no VERIFIABLE experience with extraterrestrial life of ANY sort. We have NO data regarding life existing ANYWHERE but on Earth – oh, we have VERY imaginative people coming up with VERY imaginative guesses. We have POWERFUL arguments against anyone, anywhere DENYING that our VERY AND TOTALLY IMAGINATIVE GUESSES are ridiculous. We will fight to the DEATH insisting that everyone else’s guesses are stupider than our.

If a five-year-old decides that there are candy-cane aliens out there somewhere, upon WHAT AUTHORITY does anyone on Earth base their categorical rejection of such an alien? “Science”? I was a biology major who graduated in 1981. I KNEW the categories of life and if you were to tell me that there was “an exotic new disease” that appeared in May of 1981 that was variously refered to as lymphadenopathy, KSOI, GRID, the 4H disease and would be resistant to virtually every antibiotic, and any other way of treating it, I’d have agreed. My IMMUNOLOGY textbook had nothing in it about Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome…because it was a mystery. It was an unidentifiable, undefeatable form of life – of course, viruses aren’t technically alive, but they didn’t know WHAT it was at that time (and before you decide to unleash judgmental anger at me, my brother-in-law died from complications caused by AIDS.)
Our attempts to replicate alien BEHAVIOR are actually more than pathetic! Kira Nerys and Dr. Bashir? Worf and Jadzia Dax????? REALLY? Not even a snowball's chance of being even CLOSE to making any kind of sense at ALL!

What DO we know about the possibility of life on other worlds? What CAN we say is categorically “impossible”? Heavier-than-air flight was impossible. So was landing on the Moon. Treating AIDS was once impossible. Microorganisms living in boiling water were CERTAINLY impossible! So was life in ice! ABSOLUTELY life in lava was impossible…

Yet, all of them are now known to be fact.

Maybe the best we can say at this point is, “Well, it doesn’t seem likely – I certainly can’t imagine it – but who knows? Somewhere in the universe…”

I DO know people who would accuse anyone who subscribes to the “somewhere in the uiverse” response as downright absurd, a copout, naïve, and just plain stupid.

Then again, “Zoologist George Shaw was the first westerner to describe a platypus, the pelt and bill of which he was sent in 1799 from Australia. Shaw tried to understand the platypus but, like many of those who studied the strange creature after him, couldn’t shake the feeling he was being tricked.” 
Who am I to deny someone else’s sincere attempt to theorize what is and isn’t a believable alien?

LIST OF WEBSITES CATALGOGUING THE WORST MOVIES WITH EXTRATERRESTRIALS IN THEM:
https://showtimeshowdown.com/top-5-worst-alien-invasions/
https://screenrant.com/worst-science-fiction-movies-rotten-tomatoes/
https://www.ranker.com/list/underrated-alien-movies/tyler-mitchell
https://www.ranker.com/list/underrated-alien-movies/thomas-west?ref=collections_btm&l=2912334&collectionId=1612
https://www.flickchart.com/charts.aspx?genre=alien+invasion+films&perpage=50&order=desc
https://orbitaltoday.com/2023/11/03/best-alien-films/
Platypus lore: https://www.ripleys.com/stories/platypuses-were-fakeImage: https://image.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/alien-human-600w-136457129.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 661

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: Humans are Something Special in the universe
Current Event: http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/08/15/interactive-infographic-of-the-worlds-best-countries.html

While this doesn’t rank HUMANS, it does rank COUNTRIES on Earth. What if there were a list like this of planets with intelligent civilizations – and Earth was last? It would explain The Fermi Paradox, wouldn’t it?

Fermi Paradox: “In an informal discussion in 1950, the physicist Enrico Fermi questioned why, if a multitude of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations exists in the Milky Way galaxy, evidence such as spacecraft or probes is not seen.” A clearer definition would be: “The apparent size and age of the universe suggest that many technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilizations ought to exist.
However, this hypothesis seems inconsistent with the lack of observational evidence to support it.”

So, here we go!

Bintou Kogda and Ouedraogo Ye are both just eighteen and come from the country of Burkina Faso, which recently came through the Reorganization Wars that redrew the map of the African Continent. Their small country has encompassed the former nations of Ghana, Benin and Togo and because of the peaceful nature of its Reorganization, has risen to prominence.

Both are at Harvard in the United States, ostensibly to study law and nanotechnology under grant scholarships from their own government – and as part of a program the US has started to gain a foothold in the New Africa. They’ve never met – except formally at a reception welcoming all international students to Harvard.

While they love their fields of study, both are dissatisfied with the “boring life” they lead. When a small group of students begins to meet to discuss Extraterrestrial Intelligence, they both show…

“What are you doing here?” Bintou asked in French.

Ouedraogo replied in the same language, leaning closer to her than he’d ever done to a woman – excepting his mother and sisters – and said, “The same thing you’re doing here. I’m bored and this sounded exciting.”

Bintou leaned away. She’d managed to maintain her sense of modesty despite the crazy American obsession with sex. She shook her head. She should have known that Ouedraogo would want to embrace that insanity.

Even so, she bumped his shoulder as a young man stood at the front of the room and clapped his hands, saying, “Let’s get this gig hummin’!”

Bintou puzzled for a few moments. Though she spoke English as well as anyone who completed high school in Burkina Faso, American idioms still left her totally confused. Especially when they piled them on top of each other. She could only deduce that it meant “This meeting will now come to order!” because others started taking seats. No one sat in ordered rows, it was more like a vaguely circular blob.

After the chairs were done scraping across the floor, the young man said, “Hey! My name’s Edgar Bailey and I’ll be the moderator tonight for this first meeting of the ET Discussion Society. If you’d tell us your name before you speak, it’ll help us get to know each other. To start things off, I’d like to toss this out to the group.” The lights dimmed abruptly and a projector hanging from the ceiling flicked on, projecting a web article.

Ouedraogo groaned. Bintou had managed to sit across the group from him. She kept her dismay to herself.

Edgar stood on his tiptoes to locate the source of the groan. He snapped, “What’s wrong with this article?”

Ouedraogo stood up and replied in English. Bintou shook her head. It was unlikely that his heavily accented English would impress the people in this room as he said, “First of all, the article is almost twenty years out of date – the information is patently wrong...”

Edgar cut him off by saying, “The information is unimportant...”
Ouedraogo fired back, “It’s important to some of us! You’re perpetuating a stereotype!”

Bintou sighed. So much for keeping a low profile. She stood up and said, “What Ouedraogo is trying to say is that he and I are from Burkina Faso and this list places our former country at the very bottom as the worst country in the world from 2008 to 2009. Unflattering, to say the least. But what you’re implying by using this is that Earth has somehow gotten on the bottom of some interstellar ‘worst place to live’ list and that that’s the explanation of what puzzled Fermi and Hart?”

Edgar blinked slowly, massively as Bintou sat down. A moment later, there was a crash as Ouedraogo knocked over his chair and stormed out of the room. Beside her, a young woman with wildly uncontrolled, curly red hair nudged her and said, “Nice going! I’m glad someone shut down the pompous windbag before he went on his superior rant about Fermi.” She snorted, “You even mentioned Hart. Edgar hates it when people know more than he does – and that they remain polite and pleasant while they’re telling him ‘what for’.” She raised an eyebrow and added, “You probably made his most-hated person list today!”

“I didn’t mean...” Bintou began.

“Don’t worry, you just made it on to about sixty people’s ‘OMG, I have absolutely GOT to get to know this woman!’ list. You’re certainly on mine. I’m Ginny Phleger. What are you doing after the meeting?”

Names: ♀ ; ♂ Both from Burkina Faso
Image: 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

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 660

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: Humans are Something Special in the universe
Current Event: http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/08/15/interactive-infographic-of-the-worlds-best-countries.html

While this doesn’t rank HUMANS, it does rank COUNTRIES on Earth. What if there were a list like this of planets with intelligent civilizations – and Earth was last? It would explain The Fermi Paradox, wouldn’t it?

Fermi Paradox: “In an informal discussion in 1950, the physicist Enrico Fermi questioned why, if a multitude of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations exists in the Milky Way galaxy, evidence such as spacecraft or probes is not seen.” A clearer definition would be: “The apparent size and age of the universe suggest that many technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilizations ought to exist.
However, this hypothesis seems inconsistent with the lack of observational evidence to support it.”

So, here we go!

Bintou Kogda and Ouedraogo Ye are both just eighteen and come from the country of Burkina Faso, which recently came through the Reorganization Wars that redrew the map of the African Continent. Their small country has encompassed the former nations of Ghana, Benin and Togo and because of the peaceful nature of its Reorganization, has risen to prominence.

Both are at Harvard in the United States, ostensibly to study law and nanotechnology under grant scholarships from their own government – and as part of a program the US has started to gain a foothold in the New Africa. They’ve never met – except formally at a reception welcoming all international students to Harvard.

While they love their fields of study, both are dissatisfied with the “boring life” they lead. When a small group of students begins to meet to discuss Extraterrestrial Intelligence, they both show…

“What are you doing here?” Bintou asked in French.

Ouedraogo replied in the same language, leaning closer to her than he’d ever done to a woman – excepting his mother and sisters – and said, “The same thing you’re doing here. I’m bored and this sounded exciting.”

Bintou leaned away. She’d managed to maintain her sense of modesty despite the crazy American obsession with sex. She shook her head. She should have known that Ouedraogo would want to embrace that insanity.

Even so, she bumped his shoulder as a young man stood at the front of the room and clapped his hands, saying, “Let’s get this gig hummin’!”

Bintou puzzled for a few moments. Though she spoke English as well as anyone who completed high school in Burkina Faso, American idioms still left her totally confused. Especially when they piled them on top of each other. She could only deduce that it meant “This meeting will now come to order!” because others started taking seats. No one sat in ordered rows, it was more like a vaguely circular blob.

After the chairs were done scraping across the floor, the young man said, “Hey! My name’s Edgar Bailey and I’ll be the moderator tonight for this first meeting of the ET Discussion Society. If you’d tell us your name before you speak, it’ll help us get to know each other. To start things off, I’d like to toss this out to the group.” The lights dimmed abruptly and a projector hanging from the ceiling flicked on, projecting a web article.

Ouedraogo groaned. Bintou had managed to sit across the group from him. She kept her dismay to herself.

Edgar stood on his tiptoes to locate the source of the groan. He snapped, “What’s wrong with this article?”

Ouedraogo stood up and replied in English. Bintou shook her head. It was unlikely that his heavily accented English would impress the people in this room as he said, “First of all, the article is almost twenty years out of date – the information is patently wrong...”

Edgar cut him off by saying, “The information is unimportant...”
Ouedraogo fired back, “It’s important to some of us! You’re perpetuating a stereotype!”

Bintou sighed. So much for keeping a low profile. She stood up and said, “What Ouedraogo is trying to say is that he and I are from Burkina Faso and this list places our former country at the very bottom as the worst country in the world from 2008 to 2009. Unflattering, to say the least. But what you’re implying by using this is that Earth has somehow gotten on the bottom of some interstellar ‘worst place to live’ list and that that’s the explanation of what puzzled Fermi and Hart?”

Edgar blinked slowly, massively as Bintou sat down. A moment later, there was a crash as Ouedraogo knocked over his chair and stormed out of the room. Beside her, a young woman with wildly uncontrolled, curly red hair nudged her and said, “Nice going! I’m glad someone shut down the pompous windbag before he went on his superior rant about Fermi.” She snorted, “You even mentioned Hart. Edgar hates it when people know more than he does – and that they remain polite and pleasant while they’re telling him ‘what for’.” She raised an eyebrow and added, “You probably made his most-hated person list today!”

“I didn’t mean...” Bintou began.

“Don’t worry, you just made it on to about sixty people’s ‘OMG, I have absolutely GOT to get to know this woman!’ list. You’re certainly on mine. I’m Ginny Phleger. What are you doing after the meeting?”

Names: ♀ ; ♂ Both from Burkina Faso
Image: 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