Guy Stewart's Blog, page 61

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 437

Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc.) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them.
SF Trope: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CryoPrisonCurrent Event:Astrophobia is an irrational fear of stars and space and may take different forms, from fear of aliens to fear of space exploration. (https://www.verywell.com/fear-of-space-2671680)
Harper Zakaria pursed her lips. She tapped them for a moment then said, “So you want me to revive this…criminal so that we can escape the dirty sandbox people like you have made of Earth?”
Abdelkader Mäkinen scowled at her. In the past, people would have said his high forehead and wide-set, almost entirely brown eyes made him look like an alien. “I had nothing to do with Anthropogenic Global Warming. My ancestors lived in Northern Finland and Algeria – mostly they were teachers and scientists, so they had nothing to do with AGW and in fact, my great-grandfather started the first windmill farm in northern California in the early Oughts.” He actually sniffed and as Harper rolled her eyes, he continued, “Now that we’ve established my credentials and innocence…”
“You didn’t establish any credentials, sir. You just absolved yourself from blame because of something one of your distant ancestors did.”
“Now see here, young lady! My family…”
“Credentials?” she said, smiling.He actually harrumphed then said, “I’ve been on the UN Global Climate Reconstruction Committee for fourteen years and was recently appointed Chair because of my brilliance and based on the plan I’ve devised that will…”
Harper held up a hand, pursed her lips, shook her head, then looked up at the tall meta-alien in her office. “So you want me to revive one of the bad-boys from the mid-Twenty-first Century so you can fly him to one of the Martian Colonies and get the Prairiedogs back into space again, right?”
He started at her, his mouth actually open. She considered pointing out that he was a cartoon cliché in the flesh, but was pretty certain he wouldn’t be a buff of TwenCen flat animated cartoons. She let him sputter a few moments, planning on interrupting him if it took too long when he said, “How did you…”
“I don’t spend all of my time watching the sleepers, Senator Mäkinen. I have to have something to do in my spare time. I’ve read up on the astrophobia pandemic.” She smiled sweetly. “I confess that you wouldn’t be able to pay me enough to leave Mother Earth, no matter how filthy she is.”
The man wasn’t going to respond, instead, he scowled more fiercely and said, “You can mock all you want, young lady, but those of us afflicted are all that we have left behind. It seems that somehow the Colonists took the wanderlust gene with them when they abandoned the Mother World.”
She shrugged. “Not my problem, I guess. So you still haven’t explained why you want to revive prisoner,” she glanced down at her ‘pad, then up at him. “AAA000200.”
“That’s not for you to question, young lady! I have here,” he flourished an opad at her. She took it, glanced at it, and handed it back to him as he continued, “An order from the UN GCRComm demanding that you revive and release the prisoner to me.”
“It wasn’t countersigned by the Secretary General,” she said, handing it back to him. She grinned a toothy grin at him, then turned off the effect.
“It’s not necessary…”
She cut him off, “You may think I’m just a button-pusher, Senator, but as I said, I don’t just sit here watching the sleepers all day. I have a BA in pre-Law from Columbia Online and I’m two thirds of the way through Columbia Law School. I have my MD from Brigham and Women’s in CryoMedicine with graduate studies in Revival Mechanics.” She stopped, smiling at him.
He held her gaze for several minutes, then finally began to fidget, still maintaining eye contact. Finally he looked away, pocketing him ‘pad. He looked back at her, a different look on his face. He studied her then said, “I was told you were young and idealistic. I was also told you were smart and stubborn.”
“Correct on all counts.”
“But we need…”
She cut him off, “I agree, Senator. You need this prisoner in order to get the rest of us off Earth again. But I’m not sure you know who you’re dealing with.”
His ‘pad reappeared in his hand and he glanced down at it, “Admiral Concepción Shimizu was decorated…”
Harper glared at him as he continued reading, unaware of her regard. When he looked up finally, his monologue faltered then stopped. “What?”
“She’s a thief, a murderer, and despite the fact that she single-handedly stopped the South African Resurgence from turning the southern half Africa into a new Apartheid regime, she still single-handedly also severed this world from its Colonies when she bombed the Elevator.”
This time he was prepared and flashed a false grin at her before he turned it off and said, “That is why my plan is brilliant. We will give her the opportunity to redeem herself in the eyes of all Humanity.”
Names: ♀ New Zealand, Somalia; ♂  Algeria, Finland; ♀ Paraguay, Japan         Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/01/Ariane5_VA221_liftoff2.jpg/220px-Ariane5_VA221_liftoff2.jpg

WRITING ADVICE – Lisa Cron #16: Story is Character Action, Plot is World Action

In 2008, 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. To learn more – and to satisfy my natural tendency to “teach stuff”, I started a series of essays taking the wisdom of published writers and then applying each “nugget of wisdom” to my own writing. During the six years that followed, I used the advice of a number of published writers (with their permission) and then applied the writing wisdom of Lin Oliver, Jack McDevitt, Nathan Bransford, Mike Duran, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, SL Veihl, Bruce Bethke, and Julie Czerneda to an analysis of my own writing. Together these people write in genres broad and deep, and have acted as agents, editors, publishers, columnists, and teachers. Today I add to that list, Lisa Cron who has worked as a literary agent, TV producer, and story consultant for Warner Brothers, the William Morris Agency, and others. She is a frequent speaker at writers’ conferences, and a story coach for writers, educators, and journalists. After reading her book, WIRED FOR STORY, I was overwhelmed by the information, so I distilled it down to 23 of the most important points she made. For the next few Elements of Cron and Korea and Cron, I’m going to share what I found – not so much for you, but for me!
Action Plan 1: Story is how a character reacts and acts to the plot, which is what happens.
As strange as it may sound, I forget this sometimes.
Let me back up. I write from an outline of my story, not a “literary” outline, but a storyboard I create with small, yellow sticky notes (invented, I might add, through a tangled, lawsuit-strewn path, by 3M (which actually stands for Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing), which world HQ is 25 miles from where I am writing this!)
Ahem…
Once I set up the outline, I write from it. Not slavishly, as I allow for my characters to occasionally do something I hadn’t foreseen, but it IS like putty – hard to reshape once I’ve got it down.
I’ve forgotten recently, that my characters are “alive” in the sense that while I’m writing a story, I’m trying to move them along a predetermined path, but they also need to react to what’s going on around them out of the personality I’ve created.
I’m a Christian (in case you haven’t figured it out!), and I know that while God gives me free will, He has also laid out a plan for my life. I’m free to choose not to follow the plan, but He does know what’s best for me and I would be wise to follow His will.
My current work-in-progress is a case to point. I’ve brought back two characters that readers liked in “Road Veterinarian” and though Thatcher left a note with Dr. Scrabble reading, “You and I are not finished yet”, this new story doesn’t allow them the intimacy they had in the Northwest Angle. So, now what? Scrabble asks Thatcher out on a date – and she turns him down. Why? The problem is that it has nothing to do with the story, and now he’s disappointed. What am I supposed to do with that development?
As well, this story is complicated by a number of factors, including a resurrected dinosaur called a Korean Tiny Terror and a possible infectious disease (which I haven’t even gotten to yet in the story, and what the heck does that have to do with Scrabble – he’s a veterinarian!)
On the other hand, she has “…doctorates in invertebrate zoology and molecular biology from UBC, Vancouver, with undergraduate studies in nanochemical engineering, wildlife management, and forestry.” So, she’s smart.
He is, too. Though I don’t reveal it in the first story, besides having a doctorate in Veterinary Medicine, he also has undergrad degrees in Cellular and Molecular Biology, Animal Sciences with an emphasis in Animal Biomedical Science and, Veterinary Technology.
But neither one has much experience with paleontology…
OK, so you see my problem. I get off track. I am a science geek and I love research, but in this story series, I am easily distracted by the SCIENCE rather than focusing on the story.
To write a good story, I need to concentrate on the character’s reaction to what is HAPPENING (plot). I tend to overwrite things that are happening. In this case, I also have many characters – Thatcher, Scrabble, Hosik, Hulan, and Jang. The story’s going to be long, BUT I need to start killing some of these people off in order to get back to the story of Thatcher and Scrabble. Maybe I can let Jang live, even though she’s the most disagreeable of the lot of them.
But…hmmm…I need to get back to the story because in writing this, I’ve gotten some clarity on what I need to do and what I have been doing. In this case, they aren’t the same and have been bogging down the story. I’ll be letting you know what happens!Image: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/51ddbf8fe4b0bf85e2f4edd2/t/592c2f0b414fb5ddd3a1259d/1496067864402/BookImage.jpg?format=300w

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 436

Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc.) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them.
H Trope: creepy basementsCurrent Event: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2175774/JonBenet-Ramsey-murder-New-clues-revealed-detective-shed-new-light-case.html
 Mattie Capp Washington – I hated her. She was cute where I was ugly; she was short where I was tall; she was light where I was dark; she was popular where the world loathed me.
Everyone mourns her passing which the police and the rest of the country suspected was a murder. I’m the only one who actually saw anything, but if I talk about it, then I’ll be a suspect and even though their suspicions wouldn’t be entirely true, it would probably be enough to convict me.
It would certainly be enough to get me sent to the electric chair (if they had one any more) in the courtroom of public opinion.
I suppose I should back up a bit. I could probably start at the part where the world loathed me. I’m pretty sure you think I’m exaggerating when I say that, because there’s pretty much nothing that the world uniformly loathes. On the other hand, a paper I read once stated, “In virtually every culture there has existed some word for evil, a universal, linguistic acknowledgment of the archetypal presence of ‘something that brings sorrow, distress, or calamity...’”
So if every culture has a word for it, then the word must have been invented to describe something – ‘cuz that’s what Humans do. We put labels on stuff as soon as we want to get a handle on it. It’d be interesting to see which came first – the word for “evil” or the word for “God”.
I’m it – the thing that every culture has named. And almost without exception, I live in dark places. In the middle of the 21st Century, while there aren’t many caves left, there are lots and lots of basements. That’s where you’ll usually find me – evil lurking in basements.
It’s funny, ‘cuz bad guys always act like they’re looking for me. The real nut cases say that they’re seeking me to worship me. Those are the ones that amuse me the most because no matter how hard they tried to find me, no matter how many millions of dollars they spent or how many people they murdered to come to me face-to-face, the second they look at me, they completely lose it and beg to leave; they grovel, roll around on the ground, mess themselves and volunteer to sacrifice to me anything and everything they have.
And I’m not even Incarnate – I’m excarnate. I’m the one who DOES the dirty work because I am the one who is Unmade flesh. I was alive on Earth at one time and when I joined the ranks I became excarnate and now I serve. In basements. All the time.
Someone came down the stairs: thud, thud, thud; male heaviness. The young Ms. Washington was here, too. But there might have been a surprise or two in the offing.
I smiled an excarnate smile and opened my mouth.                                              Image: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OCWXw6InF70/TKigMBk87NI/AAAAAAAAAy4/tL7MhIfL9CM/s1600/2212_1025142570.jpg

WRITING ADVICE: Can This Story Be SAVED? #24 “The Princess’s Brain” (Submitted 7 Times Since 2017, Never Revised)

In September of 2007, I started this blog with a bit of writing advice. A little over a year later, I discovered how little I knew about writing after hearing children’s writer, In April of 2014, I figured I’d gotten enough publications that I could share some of the things I did “right”. I’ll keep that up, but I’m running out of pro-published stories. I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it, but someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what I write. Hemingway’s quote above will remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing output and sales, but I’m adding this new series of posts because I want to carefully look at what I’ve done WRONG and see if I can fix it. As always, your comments are welcome!
ANALOG Tag Line:A blue-blood royal has her brain transplanted into a genetically “impure” body to spark change on a world. (SF twist on PRINCE AND THE PAUPER)
Elevator Pitch (What Did I Think I Was Trying To Say?):The world RIVER is sharply divided, but in the clouds of a puffy Jupiter, there should be enough room for divergent philosophies. Usually it is, but as the populations who came from the Empire of Man, in which your Humanity is judged by the percentage of your DNA aligned with the 20th Century data of the Human Genome Project; and the Confluence of Humanity, in which uninhibited genetic engineering allows society to design Humans to fit virtually any environment for any conceivable purpose. What if one of the Imperial Family wants to change things? What if they have their Pure brain transplanted into a highly engineered body?
Opening Line: “The shoulders of the passenger in the center seat had been gray-taped to the back of the chair and the tape wound down his torso.”
Onward:“Wrists, knees and ankles had also been taped firmly to the seat and the chair’s pedestal. Around him, ten passengers dozed with heads thrown back or chins on chests, soft snores muttering in the warm air, loud snores disturbing those nearby occasionally.None of them were taped in place.
“The cargo zeppelin’s gondola swayed, orange sunset light painting slow strokes on the deck around them. The pilot, virtual control panels floating around her where she hung from a ceiling harness, slipped out of it and dropped to the deck. Padding to her prisoner, she leaned over and whispered, ‘Gordon, wake up.’
“Gordon Oyeyemi started awake, dark skin stroked for an instant by a scarlet glow. ‘What do you want?’”

What Was I Trying To Say? I was TRYING to recreate a science fiction version of THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER in the skies of a world I’ve created called River. It’s a puffy Jupiter where Imperials and Confluans inhabit different bands of clouds decided by war and treaty. I wanted to say that “we’re all Human”…
The Rest of the Story: Gordon and Anibal, after quipping back and forth, drop off passengers at the interface between a calm Band and cloud Belt (east blowing) or Zone (blows west) and after meeting Gordon’s boss (and genetically engineering master), the head for the Depths of the planet, encountering a Confluan engineered from Gordon into a kilometer-wide, intelligent ambulance ship – a hūmbūlance. Gordon didn’t know anything about Irog, though Irog knows all about him (which of course, introduces another entire story line into an already complex story). They descend into the “Deaths” and find that the princess was not only kidnapped, but has also had radical surgery to place her Pure Human brain into a Confluan body designed to flourish in the conditions of the Depths. They rescue her…without taking any precautions to see if she’ll even survive in Heaven (the cloud miner’s name for the thin, Human normal air pressure of the inhabited Belts and Zones of the planet…)
End Analysis: What I was trying to say, “we’re all Human” isn’t clearly stated at the beginning of the story. It’s not even EVER stated.
In fact, while I know the story of Mark Twain’s novel, THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER, I don’t know that I’ve ever actually read it. Not to get a grade anyway. Because if I HAD read it and studied it, I would have discovered what Twain was trying to say:
“The introductory quote — ‘The quality of mercy is . . . twice blest; / It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: / 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes / The throned monarch better than his crown" — is part of ‘The Quality of Mercy’ speech from Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice”.
“While written for children, The Prince and the Pauper is both a critique of social inequality and a criticism of judging others by their appearance. Twain wrote of the book, ‘My idea is to afford a realizing sense of the exceeding severity of the laws of that day by inflicting some of their penalties upon the King himself and allowing him a chance to see the rest of them applied to others...’”
Whoa. Talk about relevance to today! While “Princess’” was a good story three years ago, it’s even more relevant to today!
Can This Story Be Saved? Sure! But can I do it? It appears to be an adventure story, but it remains solely that because I didn’t lay out the main question right away, and it doesn’t appear to be anyone else’s concern but the princess, and she doesn’t show up until the end.
I’ve started to realize recently that my intended message often exceeds my skill as a writer. Several stories whose IDEA is powerful were not executed effectively by me as a writer. For example: “After Soft Rains, Daisies” is a case to point; another is “May They Rest” where I use science fiction to address the abandoned graves of Confederate soldiers I saw when I was with my son in North Carolina; and the example above. Years ago, I wrote a story called “Noel”, about a girl born with Down’s Syndrome whose mother decides to have a post-birth abortion. Noel’s father kidnaps her and they end up hiding in a house…inhabited?...by an artificial intelligence who is defying a county order to vacate in order to expand a nearby park…I sent it out to a magazine and got a personal rejection noting that the editor doubted that the law would ever devolve to such a point that post-birth abortions would be sanctioned.
If I’m going to “change the world”, I have to sharpen my skills. As well, I need to sharpen my faith. Reading THIS PRESENT DARKNESS by Frank Peretti, I realized that while I’m NOT going to be writing Christian Fiction, I can make my characters more Christian than I have, and I need to. I need to allow Jesus to bleed into my writing the way authors have written “secular” works that carry the Cross of Christ before them. Tolkien, Lewis, Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers, Gene Wolfe, Madeleine L’Engle, Kathy Tyers, and David Walton, to name a few.
At any rate, yes this story can be saved. BUT – I need more practice at bringing important issues into my stories.
After reading “The Princess’ Brain” through to the end, I found it both muddled and futtering around without a clear direction. That’s evident by the first sentence. In fact the story doesn’t even (as I mentioned above) talk about the princess’ intentions until page 17. She doesn’t cross the stage until the end. While that may not be a big problem because I’m dealing with the consequences of the politics of River, I am using an invisible person as the motivation for the story. The main character doesn’t even know what’s happening at first. The secondary “main” does, but she’s not talking, which creates problems – but they’re unnecessary problems. If two mains had been up front from the beginning, half of my “tension” in the story would have vanished.
That seems to be a problem I have with all of the stories I mentioned above; as well as with my writing in general.

Note: “Possessive forms: princess’s (main form used by academics) The princess’s golden hair.; princess' (main form used by newspapers) The princess’ golden hair. A princess is usually styled “Her Highness”.” https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/princessResource: https://www.penguin.com/static/pdf/teachersguides/princepauper.pdfImage: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/9f/22/3b/9f223b1e57a36e14db3eb13715fbe3f9.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 435

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: Fantastic ComedyCurrent Event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpIJNGMh0IQ
Aarav Tlak shook his head and said, “Horses don’t talk.”
Kyla Das sniffed and said, “Shows what you know.”
“There’s no such thing as magic; there’s no such thing as a talking ani...”
“To reiterate what I said, you’re showing your ignorance by making such a categorical and sweeping statement. Are you including animals who have been trained or recognize commands?”
“Of course not! Animals can be smart and trainable, they just can’t talk.”
She gave him a long look then said, “So you’re saying that no animal on Earth can communicate?”
“No! You’re twisting my words. Animals communicate in a thousand different ways – some we can’t comprehend, like elephants talking below our level of hearing. But you’re talking about...about...about...talking like we’re talking and animals don’t do that.”
“How do you know?”
“You know what I’m talking about!”
“I could say that you’re a bit of an animal,” Kyla said with a smirk.
“I am not!” Aarav exclaimed.
She snorted then said, “You’ve never had to deal with yourself after you and your gf haven’t had a chance to make out.”
Sputtering, Aarav exclaimed, “That’s not fair!”
“That’s what criminals all say.”
He glared at her, took a deep breath, glared a while longer and finally said, “Proof would be you introducing  me to some animal and then me and the animal having a conversation.”
“You’d accept that as proof?”
He gave her a funny look and she burst into laughter. Blushing furiously, he said, “Of course I’d accept it as proof! I’d hardly be a dispassionate scientist if I ignored an actual animal actually speaking to me.”
“Any animal?”
Aarav scowled, “I don’t like the direction this conversation is taking. What do you mean by that?”
She held out a stethoscope and said, “Put these into your ears.”
His eyes grew wide, he took them in hand, and said, “This isn’t funny anymore.”
“It’s not supposed to be. Warm up the end of that thing and put it on my belly – and prepare to be amazed.”
Names: ♀Philippines, Bangladesh; ♂ India, CroatiaImage: http://www.skyscrapernews.com/images/pics/6255CaernarfonCastle_pic1.jpg

Slice of PIE: Creating Alien Aliens, Part3: Looking at Original Aliens

NOT using the panel discussions of the most recent World Science Fiction Convention in Dublin, Ireland in August 2019 (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…
Part 1 -- https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2020/01/slice-of-pie-creating-alien-aliens.htmlPart 2 -- https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2020/02/slice-of-pie-creating-alien-aliens-part.html                                            
I’m going to dissect, so to speak, an alien that is less…um…alien than it is exaggerated.
From the universe created by Dan O'Bannon, Ronald Shusett, how the aliens look (as envisioned by H.R. Giger), are less important to me than how they act.
In the original three movies (which spawned (ironically), an entire franchise (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(franchise)), the aliens appear to be simple monsters; a giant-sized version of rats.
While the aliens here weren’t new, nor was the tone of the movie: “…the Doctor Who serial ‘The Ark in Space’ (1975), in which an insectoid queen alien lays larvae inside humans which later eat their way out, a life cycle inspired by that of the ichneumon wasp. He has also noted similarities between the first half of the film, particularly in early versions of the script, to H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness, ‘not in storyline, but in dread-building mystery…’”
Being a biologist, I’m most interested in the connection between the Aliens and the wasps. They’re part of a very small family of the order of Hymenoptera (ants, bees, wasps, sawflies) of which there are some 150,000 species. Within their suborder, they are a secondary branch described as parasites. Though this group is only unofficial, within the rest of the Hymenoptera, we have the insect superfamily that inspired the Alien franchise.
The Ichneumonidae, of which there are some 100,000 species, mostly unidentified, are distinguished by the quintessential characteristic of the Alien species – they lay eggs inside of living caterpillars. The young hatch, and eat the insides of their host on their way out. Then they go on with their lives.
So, the problem with creating aliens and THE Aliens, is that the writers had tow ways they could have gone. They could have left the aliens as animals or they could have made them intelligent; with a society, morality, and thoughts to think.
Instead, they chose to make them MOSTLY animals with just enough brains to appear to threaten the Humans. They don’t speak, just hiss and drool a lot. They aren’t particularly intelligent. The implication is that they are mostly an “infestation”. When the NOSTROMO crew first discover them, their hosts were immense humanoids who apparently piloted the ship. They find a hold full of eggs, which is where the horror begins to grow.
I’m not the only person who’s noticed this: “In Alien Vault, the excellent account of the first film’s creation by Ian Nathan, the nature of the creature is briefly discussed by its creators. ‘It’s never been subject to its own culture,’ said screenwriter Dan O’Bannon. ‘The alien is not only savage, it is also ignorant.’”
“Savage and ignorant the alien may be…in Alien, the creature uses the ship’s darkness and hiding spaces to its own advantage, turning a tatty old mining vessel into a hunting ground – abilities you’d expect from a natural, highly-evolved predator. But later on in the film, the alien begins to do things you wouldn’t expect of a mere animal.”
Hmmm…I expect dogs, cats, and monkeys to hide. I expect these animals to seek out the warmest, safest place to hide their young. Ryan Lamble uses this instinct to imply intelligence: “In Aliens… Ripley points out that the creatures' lair is located right beneath a reactor, meaning any stray gunfire could destroy them as well as the aliens…Did the aliens choose this spot for their nest as a tactical advantage, or was it merely the coziest spot in the base?” Another question is that using other life forms as hosts, do they also need exposure to outside sources of energy to complete their metamorphosis into adults? Or do they get that energy from eating both the host and anyone else around the host?
They bring up another point, “Ripley…threatens to torch the alien Queen’s eggs if the latter doesn’t restrain her soldiers – a moment of bargaining that probably wouldn't work with mere animals.” Consider though that even wolves and other animals might back off when a Human threatens their litter. “…and echoing the events at the conclusion of Alien, Ripley later discovers that the Queen has snuck aboard the Sulaco, avoiding destruction on LV-426 in an almost identical fashion to her predecessor on the Nostromo decades earlier. To do this, the Queen had to work out how to operate a lift, and then, we're guessing, hide itself away in the landing gear of the dropship...”
But as the kid’s movie “Homeward Bound” shows, even Earthly animals are capable of amazing feats. Higher animals like the elephants and dolphins are capable of self-sacrifice. I understand that people always argue that animals are people, too, but I think part of that is a ploy to get their puppy a seat on the jet and a table at a five star New York restaurant, rather than to preserve the elephants and dolphins…
At the end, animals are animals no matter how much caviar you feed them.
Speaking of eating tasty delicacies, “…[a] proposed final scene would have revealed that [after eating Ripley’s brain, a] xenomorph is capable of rational thought - or, more chillingly still, it's somehow capable of imbibing the intellects of its victims [implying that xenomorph is much like we humans in certain respects: it's a creature of its environment as well as its breeding…[they also have an] uncanny ability to anticipate their prey’s movements, and even manipulate machinery…unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality…”
Given all of that speculation, the Aliens in the franchise are severely short-changed and left to stew in their own highly corrosive juices. We’re never given a chance to find out what they might have become. Rationality implies at least a possibility of rational thought. Even the leftist of the left and the rightest of the right can’t imply that their far distant counterpart isn’t Human and capable of all of the other assumptions we make about Humanity. In the Alien franchise, the Xenomorphs aren’t given a chance to show their “Human” side (to be specist!)
Would hive intelligences be inherently our enemies? How SHOULD they react – besides skulking about in dark starships and murdering Humans right and left and lashing their pointy tails (have you ever noticed how they are more-or-less an “alienized” version of our image of Satan?)? Do the writers ever give them a CHANCE to do anything but be…monstrous?
What about their dreams? Bizarre, no doubt; but would they be any more bizarre than an elephant dream? David Brin took time to develop the personality of dolphins in his UPLIFT books. What if the purveyors of the Alien franchise took the same amount of time with the Xenomorphs? (They may have as I’ve never read an Alien original novel…of which there are a dozen or more…) has anyone ever tried to imagine what it would be like to be an intelligent colony of Ichneumonidae?
Maybe I should read one of the books!
Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(film)#Sequels_and_franchise, https://www.denofgeek.com/us/movies/alien/261999/alien-just-how-intelligent-is-the-title-monsterImage: https://hips.hearstapps.com/digitalspyuk.cdnds.net/15/39/movies-prometheus-xenomorph.jpg?crop=0.563xw:1.00xh;0.269xw,0&resize=480:*

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 434

Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc.) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them.
SF Trope: Isaac Asimov’s Three Kinds Of Science Fiction: “Gadget sci-fi: Man invents car, holds lecture on how it works.”Current Event: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/12/131210071936.htm
Khünbish Qureshi said, “Once we drill through the ice, we can begin extract the uranium. But we have to do it fast.” He tapped the wide pipe with his heavily armored hand. While there was no true atmosphere and the surface of the moon was exposed to the radiation sleet from Jupiter, they both wore flexible suits and had ridden to the surface on little more than a hovering plate.
“You think extracting a few metric tonnes of uranium from this moon would have any kind of effect at all?” asked Yelizavta Zaya. She bounced a few meters back after stomping her foot.
“I can’t say for sure.”
“Why not?”
“I’m a geologist...”
“You mean a Eurologist?”
“That makes me sound like a bladder specialist!”
“Well, it’s not Earth, so you can’t be a ‘geologist’.”
“There’s not a bladder in sight, either!”
Beneath their feet, the ice sang. On any other world, it would have been a quake, but here the ice vibrated, shifting, sliding along cracked edges. Immense crevasses sang bass that shook the world like a drum head; smaller ones sang faint hymns of joy; the smallest sang beyond the hearing of Humans.
Khünbish slapped the pipe again and said, “If there were living things under the surface, maybe my sucking the lifeblood from the water will make them sit up and take notice.”
“I doubt there’re sitting beings under our feet, Khun.”
He grimaced at the diminutive – Americans and Loonies made a habit of lopping parts of people’s names off willy-nilly – and said, “Whatever they’re doing, I’m hoping they notice.”
“And if there’s nothing under our feet but ice, water, uranium?”
“Then we stand to make a fortune and retire wherever we want to.” He bounced back as the ice began to sing again. As he fell to the surface, he grimaced and said, “Can you hear that?”
Names: ♀ Russia, Mongolian; ♂ Mongolian, PakistanImage: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/01/Ariane5_VA221_liftoff2.jpg/220px-Ariane5_VA221_liftoff2.jpg

POSSIBLY [not] IRRITATING ESSAY: An “Other” Point of View When Writing Speculative Fiction, Young Adult, and Middle Grade Fictions

Using the Program Guide of the World Science Fiction Convention in Dublin, Ireland in August 2019 (I am (finally!) going to DisCon III in Washington, DC, Aug 20-25, 2021!!!!), I will jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. The link is provided below where this appeared at 2 pm on August 16, 2019…
Cultural appropriation: a product of a shrinking world?
White SFF authors have historically appropriated other cultures to add depth and excitement to their characters: The Wheel of Time takes the culture of POC and gives it to the Aiel, and Frank Herbert appropriates Islam and applies it to the Fremen. With relatively easy access to travel and digital information these days, how can we make use of a range of influences while avoiding cultural appropriation?
Dr Wanda Kurtcu: Moderator, wrote Star Trek: The Next Generation episode 'A Matter of Honor', recently retired Curriculum and Technology Integration Specialist in the San Francisco Bay areaMichi Trota: Editor at SFWA, four-time Hugo Award winner, British Fantasy Award winner, and the first Filipina to win a Hugo AwardFulvio Gatti: Italian journalistPRK: Australian reviewer, Aurealis Award judgeJeannette Ng: From Hong Kong and UK writer of gothic fantasy with a theological twist
This subject has implications to both my speculative fiction stories and my YA/MG stories.
It may be that a YA novel I wrote with a biracial teen boy as the viewpoint character was unsellable because I’m a big, old, fat, white guy (a bofwhig). No proof, just that my name most likely belongs to someone like me rather than hinting at or actually being a name from another culture. I’ve heard that the YA market currently is very militant in protecting the rights of cultures often pirated by white men and women or people outside of a community they’ve written about. (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jun/15/torn-apart-the-vicious-war-over-young-adult-books) I actually considered asking one of my beta readers, Abbas Noor, if I could put his name as my “nom-de-plume”. He could go to any award banquets or accept awards in my name – for a cut of the profits! (jk)
I agree that cultural appropriation has been rampant for centuries and that it’s imperative to examine all of our writing for cultural bias.
However…there are issues in the room that are somehow “overlooked” by the same field when an author has a large following. Two examples that come to mind immediately I will frame as questions.
In children’s literature, the novel THEN AGAIN MAYBE I WON’T, famed author Judy Blume’s main character is a pre-adolescent boy who (among other things) falls into being a window-peeper. The question: what does Judy Blume know about the sexual awakening of boys and how can she authentically portray a boy like this? She did and no one ever questioned her right to do so. In fact, she’s celebrated for doing it, and her book remains in print .
In speculative fiction, author Tobias Buckell is a writer who was born and lived in the Caribbean (whose first novel, CRYSTAL RAIN I loved!) However, as far as I can find out, while he grew up on Grenada, he is not a person of color and while his characters don’t appear to be POC either, he has also appropriated the Aztec culture. He is celebrated and unquestioned for doing so.
In 1997 science fiction story by me, I wrote from the viewpoint of a girl (illustrated as a black young adolescent, though I hadn’t mentioned anything about how she looked) in “Mystery on Space Station COURAGE”. There were no protests. In fact, the story was one of CRICKET Magazine’s nominations for the Paul A. Witty Short Story Award…
(The publication dates may have something to do with these books, 1971 for Blume’s; 1997 for mine; and 2007 for Buckell’s. It was a different publishing world, that is for certain.)
My question – for once I’m not interested in being irritating – I’m wondering Amazon summarizes the short book like this, “During the 1992 Clarion West Writers Workshop…one of the students expressed the opinion that it is a mistake to write about people of ethnic backgrounds different from your own because you might get it wrong—horribly, offensively wrong—and so it is better not even to try. This opinion…struck Nisi as taking the easy way out and spurred her to write an essay addressing the problem of how to write about characters marked by racial and ethnic differences…she realized that similar problems arise when writers try to create characters whose gender, sexual orientation, and age differ significantly from their own. Nisi and Cynthia collaborated to develop a workshop that addresses these problems with the aim of both increasing writers’ skill and sensitivity in portraying difference in their fiction as well as allaying their anxieties about ‘getting it wrong.’…It discusses basic aspects of characterization and offers elementary techniques, practical exercises, and examples for helping writers create richer and more accurate characters with ‘differences.’”
I’ll be starting it this week and will likely use it to do a few other essays.
Until then, let me know your thoughts about my question: “How I can populate my story with young people and men and women of color and not appropriate their culture?”
Program Book: https://dublin2019.com/whats-on/programming/programme-schedule/Image: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41vnYSnzs9L._SX311_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 433

Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc.) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them.
H Trope: Ghost TownsCurrent Event: http://www.ghosttowns.com/states/mn/taconiteharbor.html
Mary Croft may have been the only certified dredge operator on the North Shore of Lake Superior – but she hadn’t expected to be the ONLY operator in the abandoned town of Taconite Harbor.
The dredge she captained was mostly operated by an “artificial intelligence idiot”, which was why she was required by Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Company to actually direct the floating suction dredge boat. The harbor was a small one, the taconite loads mostly taken out by rail, and the robots inside did most of the work in the town.
Her job would take a week and the company wanted her to work as much time as possible, so they’d given her one of the floating suction dredgers with an actual bed, galley and deck. “Henry?” she said.
“Please call me Hal,” said the idiot.
She shook her head. “I’d rather not. I have an original DVD of the old movie 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.”
“You can’t,” said Henry.
“I can’t what?”
“Have an original DVD. The movie 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY was filmed in 1967 and premiered in 1968. The first true DVD was not manufactured for movies until 1995.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do not.”
She sighed and shook her head. “Let’s call it a day and shut down operations,” she said, tapping the shutdown key on the flat screen.
“Very good, ma’am.”
Mary rolled her eyes toward the ceiling and stepped out on the deck. Henry would take it from here until the actual docking procedure which she would do in the gloaming. She loved that word, she thought, unfolding and dropping into the lawn chair she kept carefully stored until the end of the day. No one would have said anything if she’d lounged about all day, issuing orders to Henry via her cellphone, but that had never worked for her. When she did a job, she wanted to actually DO something. For the time being, however, Henry was working hard pulling in and storing the collapsible pipe they used to siphon sediment from the floor of the harbor. It was pumped to a barge where it was dried and shipped down to Duluth for further processing or shipment to central North American markets.
The sun had fallen behind the steep shoreline to her left. It was a calm evening, a choice night on the cool waters of Superior. Such a night was rare enough to make her sigh.
Farther out across the water, to her right on the lake, waves rippled like a thin band of diamonds reflecting sunset light.
What was left of the town was now invisible as was the power plant. It had once operated on coal and had had a solar conversion during the third term of America’s first black president. There was no one left living there.
When the three remaining streetlights farther up the shore, intermittently lining the stretch of road that had once been the main street of the long-abandoned town, abruptly lit, she frowned.
When lights on either side of the abandoned basketball court at the near end of the street, close to Taconite Harbor itself, suddenly lit, the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She went into the boathouse and grabbed a pair of digital binoculars, took them out and scanned the shoreline.
The lights were gone.
Frowning, she lowered the binoculars and rubbed her  eyes. When she looked again, the lights were on and in the distance was the slow, faint thup-thup-thup of a basketball bouncing...
Names: ♀ Hebrew, English; ♂ ,     Image: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OCWXw6InF70/TKigMBk87NI/AAAAAAAAAy4/tL7MhIfL9CM/s1600/2212_1025142570.jpg

Elements of Cron and Korea #15: From 10% to 30%...Applying Lisa Cron’s Wisdom Consistently

I may  have mentioned that one of my goals is to increase my writing output, increase my publication rate, and increase the relevance of my writing. In my WRITING ADVICE column, I had started using an article my sister sent me by Lisa Cron. She has worked as a literary agent, TV producer, and story consultant for Warner Brothers, the William Morris Agency, and others. She is a frequent speaker at writers’ conferences, and a story coach for writers, educators, and journalists. I am going to fuse the advice from her book WIRED FOR STORY with my recent trip to South Korea. Why? I made a discovery there. You’ll hear more about it in the future as I work to integrate what I’m learning from the book, the startling things I found in South Korea, and try and alter how I write in order to create characters that people will care about, characters that will speak the Truth, and characters that will clearly illustrate what I’m writing about.
“Remember when Luke has to drop the bomb into the small vent on the Death Star? The story writer faces a similar challenge of penetrating the brain of the reader. This book gives the blueprints.” – David Eagleman
I’m done with iterating what I’ve learned and applied from Lisa Cron’s “A Reader’s Manifesto: 15 Hardwired Expectations Every Reader Has for Every Story”. The list is below here and I’ve put links to each essay in the series below.
So, now what?
I practice. I’ve been working hard to use this methodology since I read the article and then the book – which all started April of 2018. Since then, I’ve written nine stories and sold three – two of them to my dream market of ANALOG Science Fiction and Fact.
My usual number of published stories has run about ten percent for decades. Since reading Lisa Cron’s article and book, the percentage has jumped to 33 percent. A third of what I write.
That’s significant. It shows that I’ve started to internalize the ideas she presented in the book and article. It shows to me that they’re an effective way to look at writing stories.
The reader expects…
…that the story will start making a very specific point, beginning with the first sentence.…the story to revolve around one, single plot problem that grows, escalates and complicates, which the protagonist has no choice but to deal with.…a glimpse of the big picture from the very first page.…that there will be a protagonist.…that the protagonist will be flawed and vulnerable – never, ever “perfect.”…the protagonist to not only have a past, but one that affects the future.…that the protagonist will enter the story with a longstanding agenda – that is, something she already wants, which is what gives true meaning to her goal.…the protagonist will have a longstanding misbelief that has kept her from easily achieving that goal.…that the plot will force the protagonist to confront and overcome her misbelief, something she’s probably spent her whole life avoiding.…to feel something, from the first sentence to the last; and what the reader feels is what the protagonist feels.…a clear, present and escalating force of opposition, with a loudly ticking clock.…that there will be something crucial at stake in every scene, continually forcing the protagonist’s hand.…that as the protagonist tries to solve the plot problem, she will only make things worse, until she has no choice but to face her misbelief.…that everything in the story is there strictly on a need-to-know basis.…that at the end of the story the protagonist will emerge changed, seeing the world through new eyes.
So, I’m working on a new story that combines my veterinarian and South Korea. The working title is “Dinosaur Veterinarian”. In the reviews of “Road Veterinarian” (ANALOG, September/October 2019), while people had trouble believing that a road covering could be a living substance and given enough prodding (starvation) it could actually move, reviewers did like the interaction between my genetically modified soldier and a veterinarian with a genetic disorder called “piebaldism”. I suppose my message is that just because people are genetically changed, they’re still people. Also, the message is that we have a choice: we can take something wonderful and make a weapon out of it; or we can just take in something wonderful. In this case, it’s wildlife – we can take it in (obviously not something like bubonic plague, coronavirus, or other diseases that cause suffering – though I’ve heard that there has been discussion of the philosophy of microbial rights (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3059913/, https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-016-0702-7) or we can turn wildlife into weapons.
The metaphor is carried in my characters, Thatcher is a deliberately modified Human; Javier is an “accidentally” modified Human. The antagonists in the story have not only modified an influenza virus (one of a series of iterations of the H1N1 virus that caused the 1918 Flu Pandemic) to make it more virulent, they have altered the genes expressed in certain species of birds who are the most closely related to prehistoric velociraptors (Microraptoria), in this case, the red-legged and black legged seriemas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seriema) though they are the sole survivors of the small bird family of Caramidae and represented by these two separate species. One, the red-legged seriemas is a runner and often captured in its South American niche and domesticated as a “guard bird”; like a carnivorous form of farm geese in Europe and North America.
A “flock” or pack of these “terror birds” is infected with an avian flu and released in the DMZ. It’s up to my main characters with the help of two others to figure out what’s going on and stop it.
While maintaining the romantic tension between the two mains. If I can execute Cron’s methodology and meet the reader’s expectations, I may be able to sell this story as well.
As always, I’ll keep you posted.
Resource: https://www.creativelive.com/blog/essential-storytelling-techniques/Image: https://www.ducksters.com/science/chemistry/chromium.gif