Guy Stewart's Blog, page 73

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 391

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: Afterlife Express http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AfterlifeExpressCurrent Event: http://list25.com/25-most-dangerous-roads-in-the-world/
Fernanda Rabten shivered in the fog of deep night, the damp cold penetrating through her nylon jacket.
Yeshi Uehara said, his voice hoarse in the cold, “Did you see that coming?”
“See what?”
“The car. It was heading straight at us.”
“What do you mean?”
“They car. You were driving.”
“I wasn’t...” Fernanda began.
Headlights appeared in the distance as the sound of a high horsepower engine muttered, rolling toward them like miniature thunder. Yeshi said, “I think we’re dead.”
“What?” Fernanda exclaimed. The sound of the engine grew, the headlights sharpened. “We have to run!” She turned and started down the incline and suddenly stopped.
Yeshi tried to follow but found that his feet would not move. Fernanda was returning to the shoulder of the road in jerky motions, as if she were being manipulated, pulled to stop beside Yeshi.
“Stop that!” she screamed at him, swinging wildly. “We’re not dead!”
Yeshi squeezed his eyes shut, unable to back away or run into the road – the highway.
The roar of the engine grew until the headlights were bright as twin suns, and the shadows of the two humans stood behind them like holes in the road.
Like the prow of a yacht, a silver grill coalesced out of the fog, pushing it aside to be followed by a car so black it seemed to soak up what dim light dripped from the dark gray sky.
“We can’t...” Fernanda whispered.
The car was so long that the rear wheels were invisible. Feet suddenly released from the ground, Yeshi slammed the open passenger door and went to a door farther back. “This is a limo. We don’t have to ride up in front with the chauffer!”
He reached for the door and opened it to find that he was looking into the passenger side door. “What?” he exclaimed. He looked back along the side of the car. He slammed the passenger  door and stalked to the rear compartment door, reached and jerked it open again.
He was standing at the passenger seat at the front of the limo. This time he looked back at Fernanda. She was leaning away from him. “I can’t move my feet,” she whispered. He looked into the limo, leaned down to see the chauffer.
There was nothing there – not exactly. He stared hard and suddenly found he couldn’t breathe and heard a hollow voice say, “You and your friend. Get in.”
He tried to back away. Tried to slam the door. Tried to scream. Instead he found himself saying, “Fernanda! The chauffer said he’d take us back home!” He knew he was lying; knew he was not speaking his own words. He was being manipulated by the chauffer – or whatever it was. He stood back while his old friend, her feet free, ran to the door, shouldering him aside.
When he looked in again, she was bouncing on the seat, looking at the chauffer then back at him. She said, “Yeshi, this is my old next-door-neighbor! He was old when I met him and he had this old car…” she kept on while Yeshi was drawn into the car though he tried to step back. He squirmed, struggling and felt the invisible bond holding him begin to slip.
Fernanda spun then and lunged, grabbing him by the front of his shirt. She screamed, “You’re coming with me whether you want to or not!”
Yeshi staggered backward, shouting, “But what if I’m not dead yet?” For an instant, he thought he saw the sky overhead lighten...
Names: ♀Bolivia, Tibet ; ♂ Tibet, Alaska  Image: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OCWXw6InF70/TKigMBk87NI/AAAAAAAAAy4/tL7MhIfL9CM/s1600/2212_1025142570.jpg

Slice of PIE: Writing Observations from John Scalzi: The Breathlessly Original Idea That Old Age Doesn’t Have To Be “Fixed”

NOT using the panel discussions of the most recent World Science Fiction Convention in San Jose, C in August 2018 (to which I be unable to go (until I retire from education)), I would jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. But not today. This explanation is reserved for when I dash “off topic”, sometimes reviewing movies, sometimes reviewing books, and other times taking up the spirit of a blog an old friend of mine used to keep called THE RANTING ROOM…
While I have been taunted by John Scalzi (I can’t find the link anymore, but that’s not a problem. It had to do with my opinion that there was dearth of Christians in current science fiction because of a prejudgment on the part of the community. It’s something I’ve been working to undo in my own writing, when I can, so the issue isn’t one in my life anymore), it has nothing to do with how much I respect his books.
As I just picked up a copy of OLD MAN’S WAR to add to my library, it got to me to thinking about my own writing. On my way home, I reflected that OMW was a new concept, a new idea that catapulted Scalzi’s work into the reader’s eye and granted him a platform for his ideas and ideals.
I was puzzled when he said this in the article you can read if you follow the link below: “…Old Man’s War cannot be accused of being breathlessly original, either in concept or execution. I think that’s a fair enough assessment. To speak of novel in musical terms, it’s best described as a variation on a theme or an improvisational riff off a classic tune.”
I would disagree.
Speculative fiction, science fiction in particular, had been the literature of the young. When old age or infirmity was mentioned, it was part of the story’s set up – in other words, it was something to “cure”. In fact, this site (http://bestsciencefictionbooks.com/age-regression-science-fiction.php) considers it a sub-genre of SF. On the one hand OMW is a about age-regression, but rather than being the purpose of the storyline, it’s an event that intentionally creates young bodies around the wisdom of age.
While I’m hardly an encyclopedia of SF, a simple search of “Science Fiction that depicts old people positively” gave me nothing. “Science Fiction and old people” got me rejuvenation and OMW. “Science Fiction and the elderly” got me “10 of Science Fiction's Most Depressing Futuristic Retirement Scenarios” (https://io9.gizmodo.com/10-of-science-fictions-most-depressing-futuristic-retir-5943496). I’m half way through the March/April issue of ANALOG Science Fiction & Fact (BTW – I’ve got a story that will be in the NEXT issue, May/June!) and I think editor Trevor Quachri had a couple of themes running in this issue. One deals with aging. In “Final Say” by Eric del Carlo has a look at with neural stimulation, what might the last words of Alzheimer’s or dementia patients be to their families? “Running the Gullet” by Vajra Chandrasekera has two old friends reconnecting after a long life; then one goes in for a sort of rejuvenation. What does his old friend do? That’s as far as I’ve read, so I don’t know what comes next. But there you go.
Scalzi’s word is that the elderly, with a biological makeover, can contribute to society. In the case of OMW, I would argue that Scalzi hit on a new approach to aging.
Given that my dad passed away a bit more than a month ago, I guess I’m sensitized to the issue of aging and “cures” for it. But I want to explore MORE than cures for being old. I think that’s why the book, published in 2005, launched him onto awards lists. It was ground-breaking, maybe in a way he couldn’t see as the author, but it got the attention of plenty of others.
Scalzi’s “message” was that the elderly didn’t NEED to get rejuvenated in order to be important, he gave them a viable reason to not only be important, but to take a vital role in the future of Humanity; and THAT was where he was, in fact, “breathlessly original”.
Resource: https://whatever.scalzi.com/2003/04/05/lessons-from-heinlein/Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/e4/OldMansWar%281stEd%29.jpg/220px-OldMansWar%281stEd%29.jpg

My Daughter and Son-in-law Are Going To Have a Baby!

My daughter and son-in-law are going to have a BABY!!!!!(PS, my daughter is an artist and created the announcement!)

LOVE IN A TIME OF ALIEN INVASION: CHAPTER 102 The Trials of Team One – 6

On Earth, there are three Triads intending to integrate not only the three peoples and stop the war that threatens to break loose and slaughter Humans and devastate their world; but to stop the war that consumes Kiiote economy and Yown’Hoo moral fiber. All three intelligences hover on the edge of extinction. The merger of Human-Kiiote-Yown’Hoo into a van der Walls Society might not only save all three – but become something not even they could predict. Something entirely new...
The young experimental Triads are made up of the smallest primate tribe of Humans – Oscar and Xiomara; the smallest canine pack of Kiiote – six, pack leaders Qap and Xurf; and the smallest camelid herd of Yown’Hoo – a prime eleven, Dao-hi the Herd mother. On nursery farms and ranches away from the TC cities, Humans have tended young Yown’Hoo and Kiiote in secret for decades, allowing the two, warring people to reproduce and grow far from their home worlds.
Choral Reading
Yown’Hoo: “The literal decay of the fiber of Yown’Hoo morality accelerated when we refused peace with Kiiote.”Kiiote: “Interbreeding, internecine war, and ritual cannibalism devoured us in resisting harmony with Yown’Hoo.”Human: “Material gain from both Yown’Hoo and Kiiote fed our greed, so concord held no profit.”Chorus: “We might do something none of us alone can do, we might braid an unbreakable cord of unity.” (3/6/2019)
The primitive Kiiote Pack leader, Kang, who had given over leadership to Qap and Qilf leaped to blaze trail through the snow as if she was a puppy freed from a trap.
The Triad Pack leaders stared. Qilf said, “We will watch her.”
“And tear her throat out at the first scent of treachery,” said Qap.
“My mate,” they said in unison, sealing the promise as the small Human female called Cynthia approached them.
She said, “May I keep my spear? It will no longer be in service to Kang, but to you.”
Qilf nodded her head in the Human style, “We accept your offer, Human Cynthia.” She  offered her back and the child mounted easily, keeping the spear well clear of the Kiiote Lead female.
The smaller Human approached Qap and bowed, “I am Kobey. My spear will no longer be in service to Kang but to you, great male Leader.” Qap nodded and the boy scrambled up on Qap – with considerably less grace than the girl. Qap flinched when the spearhead came within centimeters of poking his eye out. He growled faintly. Kobey said, “My apologies, great Qap. Please…”
“Don’t worry about it. We should get going.” Towt fell in at Qilf’s haunch. The boy clung to Qap’s back fur and with a howl from Qilf, the Pack, like a living shadow, set off as night fell.
They easily caught up to Kang, who set a swift pace. Shifting to Growl-Snap, Qap said, “How far is this place?”
“Not a whole night’s run, Pack Leader. Perhaps a half night.”
“Winter nights are long,” Qilf said.
“As I said.” She put on a burst of speed. Qilf added a snort of pleasure. The young Kiiote female was not entirely intimidated by the older female. In fact, Qilf rather enjoyed the challenge the youngster was offering. She had a sense of real wildness. Qilf’s grin faded, reminding herself that the pup was also a total stranger, possibly more savage than civilized. Kiiote without a true Pack were prone to ferality despite two thousand Earth years of technological civilization. She farted derisively – even Humans were barely out of their Stone Age. They were discovering fire as the Kiiote were colonizing their star system. Yet they did not appear to behave like their great apes when they lived alone. In fact, some Humans she had read about relished the solitude, they were called “hermits”.
She was digesting that morsel, when Qap pulled up alongside her and said, “What is it that Retired has us searching for?”
“Some sort of aircraft.”
“I didn’t think the Humans had developed everyday applications for gravity modification,” Towt interjected. The little neuter was a cheeky creature and while it never interfered with the business of running the Pack, it felt perfectly comfortable questioning anything and everything else.
They were used to it, but Qap offered a jaw snap to emphasize that he and his mate were having a private conversation that might lead to Pack policy decisions. The neuter dropped back to a respectful distance. After a league, Qap slowed and answered, “They didn’t precisely, Neuter. They used heavier-than-air-craft that employed forcing air over an aerodynamically shaped wing.”
Qilf had a horrible thought. She said, “You don’t think this idiot creature is leading us to some sort of decrepit Human aircraft, do you?”
Qap farted derision, adding a double jaw snap of certainty. She said in Growl-Snap, “It knows something; and Retired would not have sent us here for no reason, so he must know something about this flying vehicle.”
“Can we possibly fly such a thing?”
The Pack ran in silence before Qap finally ventured, “The basics shouldn’t be difficult. But the practice seems particularly daunting. I do not think our passengers would be able to operate a flying machine built for adult Humans.”
Qilf said, “In our bipedal form we might, but it would still be difficult. Humans have incredibly slender digits.”
They kept running until Kang dropped back a bit, and said, “We need to take an extended break. The young Humans will be cold despite their coverings, and I need to both catch my breath and find the best path.”
Qilf threw Qap a look to say, “Keep an eye on her.” She slowed to Kang’s pace, which slowed further until the Pack stood panting beneath the branches of an enormous pine. She drew a deep breath and said, “This plant is among my most favorite on Earth.”
There was movement above…
Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Rhll_wire_rope.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 390

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: Comic FantasyCurrent Event: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_You_Think_You_Can_Dance_(United_States)
Sein Ryoo held Yi Ling Guinto’s hand tightly as she spun out from him. The light panel, extremely sensitive to the magic generated by motion, glowed a cool, mint green.
They were both panting. Yi Ling bent over, planting her fists on her knees. A few minutes later, she said, “If we want to get on ‘You Think YOU Got Dance Magic?’, then we’re gonna have to turn that traffic light green – and just as intense.”
Trying to pretend there was no stitch in his side, Sein said, “We’ve been working all summer. Dance Magic’s gonna be here in forty-eight hours. What can we do in two days the we haven’t done in three months?”
With a flick of her finger, Yi Ling changed music tracks on her tablet computer from the sober beginning of the fandango to the wild exuberance of her current favorite metal band, Cursed For Cash. Sein whooped, grabbed her arms and they danced until the panel glowed like a magic spotlight. They collapsed into each other’s arms, laughing. She kissed Sein’s cheek and he pushed away, laughing as well. He said, “You know better than that!”
“I keep hoping,” she said, stepped forward and hugged him. “Let’s call it quits for today. I’ll see you tomorrow morning. Mom says to tell your dad that we’ll be there at five am.”
“Ugh!”
Yi Ling sniffed then said, “If we lived in a real city, we wouldn’t have to drive so far.” She sighed, for the thousandth time, wishing she lived somewhere other than Duluth, Minnesota. Hardly a hotbed of dance magic, she was glad she at least had Sein. She relented, “But then we would never have met.”
He hugged her back, “I’ve got no idea what I’d have done if you weren’t here.” He shook his head. “Not only would I NOT be heading to the Dance Magic tryouts and I would have failed pre-calculus and physics.”
“No,” said Yi Ling, “I would have failed.”
“No, I would have,” they headed home. As the magic faded from their practice room, the panel grew dark, only occasionally flickering as flocks of Canadian geese flew their ancient dance to the south, overhead and far away.
Sein’s dad shot over his shoulder, “Five more kilometers to Chicago!”
In the back, Sein and Yi Ling squirmed. The ceiling light flared for an instant as did the dash light. Yi Ling’s mom sighed as her tablet readers glared brightly for an instant. “Stop it back there!” If the two of you keep back-seat dancing, you’re going to short out every light from here to New York!”
Sein’s dad squealed with laughter and squirmed in his own seat. But no lights flickered. The illumination stayed the same. Sein blushed furiously, pale skin under red-dyed and permed hair. Leaning to Yi Ling, he whispered, “I hate it when he screams like a girl.”
She pushed him back, saying, “I don’t sound like that when...”
“That’s cause you hardly ever scream.”
Sein’s dad heard nothing as he exclaimed, “Chicago’s flashing like a lighthouse beacon!”
Looking between the front seat headrests, Sein and Yi Ling gasped as golden light pulsed from the Windy City – as if welcoming them home.
Names: ♀Singapore, Philippines ; ♂ Burma, South KoreaImage: http://www.skyscrapernews.com/images/pics/6255CaernarfonCastle_pic1.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY: RED, GREEN, & BLUE MARS by Kim Stanley Robinson – SHOGUN + THE COVENANT + DUNE = Wow…

NOT using the panel discussions of the most recent World Science Fiction Convention in San Jose, CA in August 2018 (to which I be unable to go (until I retire from education)), I would jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. But not today. This explanation is reserved for when I dash “off topic”, sometimes reviewing movies, sometimes reviewing books, and other times taking up the spirit of a blog an old friend of mine used to keep called THE RANTING ROOM…
When I traveled in Nigeria, Cameroun, and Liberia, I had a suitcase that I had to carry with me EVERYWHERE. As such, I couldn’t really pack many books for those long trips between villages and cities.
I picked up books at Mission Station book exchanges and I made sure they were BIG books because I only rarely made it into the Stations and had to keep my books few…because they were far between. I read Nevil Shute’s ON THE BEACH for the first time; Alex Haley’s ROOTS; Colleen McCullough THE THORN BIRDS; MM Kaye’s THE FAR PAVILIONS and a dozen other books both classical and romantic. I brought James Michener’s CHESAPEAKE with me and then traded it for THE COVENANT and eventually CENTENNIAL. I found James Clavell’s

Of course, long before this, I’d read Frank Herbert’s DUNE (Trivia: What publishing coming originally bought DUNE and published it in novel form?*) and drowned in the world of the dune seas.
So why the foray into such an eclectic menagerie of novels?
In each one, the author made sure that the world was a character in the novel; in fact, while I can only remember a few of the names of main characters, I can remember the worlds they inhabited with brilliant clarity (Paul Muad’dib alone stands out, but he was a central character that persists through six books, all of which I’ve read.)
The Mars of Robinson’s books is also a central character in all three of its iterations, Red, Green, and Blue. If the planet were not exactly as it is, the characters themselves wouldn’t make any sense at all. You can’t take the First Hundred from RED and transplant them exactly as they are at that time and place into BLUE. The fact is that they are in the third book, but they are not only vastly changed, they are fractured, confused, and are brilliantly illustrated by the one of the First Hundred visiting the Uranian moon, Miranda. They are and they are not the same character, as changed by the land as the land has been changed by them.
The same can be said for the other books. After the first chapter in CENTENNIAL, Michener backtracks to the formation of the Earth. Really?!? How bizarre. Why would he possibly do that? He did it because the landscape of Colorado is intimately tied to the behavior of the characters. The land creates the characters who reflect the characteristics of the land; the two are inextricably linked.
I read a negative review of Robinson’s BLUE MARS: “All of [the] people [in BLUE MARS], all of them, they need to sit down and read some fiction, and realize that every issue does not need to be argued in the key of shrill. Other than that, this book skims over decades and decades, occasionally alighting, but it really is a bird's eye view that swoops down to individual characters every once in a while. There were sections I enjoyed a great deal, sections that drove me to distraction, and some that just bored it. It's such a mishmash, and I don't know how to put it all together.” (http://smorgasbook.blogspot.com/2016/03/blue-mars-by-kim-stanley-robinson.html)
I think Megan Baxter missed the point. None of Robinson’s books are about people alone. Just as SHŌGUN is definitely about a European who is shipwrecked on the shores of Japan, the land that created the Japanese is far more important than he is. The story would have been meaningless if the Shogunate culture of Japan and their way of thinking had developed any other way – it was the island of Japan that created a people who were so different from the Europeans that when he is allowed to visit his former crew members, “Blackthorne is astonished at how far he had ventured from the standard 'European' way of life (which he now sees to be filthy, vulgar, and ignorant), and he is actually disgusted by them.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sh%C5%8Dgun_(novel))
One of the elderly survivors of the First Hundred named Maya expresses a similar disgust with her old colleagues: “Maybe the final survivor of the First Hundred wouldn’t be such a bad thing anyway. New friends, a new life – wasn’t that what she was searching for not? So that these sad old faces were just a hindrance to her?” (Part 12 It Goes So Fast, section six)
Again, Maya was created by the world and like the First Hundred, she has been repeatedly shaped by the changing world, from Red to Green to Blue. She would not be the character she is if she had lived this long on Earth – or on Miranda or on Mercury.
A quick observation is that one of the reasons that Jackie, another one of the First Hundred, is so “irritating” is that she refuses to left the world shape her. She travels from Mars to Earth to Jupiter to Mercury to Uranus, all the while professing that it is Mars that changed her while refusing to change at all, remaining the same woman the entire time, resisting the influence of not only the worlds, but of the people. I suppose that, were I to be forced to, I would say that she (of all the characters) is drawn to be the Sun; the center of everything, immovable, virtually ageless and the only thing in the Solar System that will not change in the lifetimes of even the most life-extended Human.
At any rate, like the other books, Robinson’s are as much about the planet Mars – not even so much an inanimate object, but as a literal character with moods, a will, and a script with things to “say” – and its effect on the main characters. I don’t know if there’s a specific genre for them , but I would propose Living Landscape Novels.
RED, GREEN, AND BLUE MARS would be in that genre, keeping company with Pulitzer Prize, Nebula and Hugo award-winning books as well as those that have sold millions of copies, been made into movies, television mini-series (sometimes remade), radio plays, and served as defining works for many of their authors.
While I can’t say, “I loved it!”, I can say that I won’t forget it any time soon.
Answer: * Chilton’s, “…currently publishes hundreds of automobile repair manuals that cover thousands of models.” 
Image:  http://www.kimstanleyrobinson.info/sites/default/files/M3_Blue%20Mars.jpg, https://thelastmetroid.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/dune-cover.jpg, https://www.picclickimg.com/d/l400/pict/283275019017_/The-Covenant-Centennial-by-James-Michener-2.jpg

MARTIAN HOLIDAY 141: DaneelAH & Company Escaping Burroughs

On a well-settled Mars, the five major city Council regimes struggle to meld into a stable, working government. Embracing an official Unified Faith In Humanity, the Councils are teetering on the verge of pogrom directed against Christians, Molesters, Jews, Rapists, Buddhists, Murderers, Muslims, Thieves, Hindu, Embezzlers and Artificial Humans (They are HanAH, the security expert (m); DaneelAH, xenoarchaeologist (m); AzAH, language expert (f); MishAH, pattern recognition (f).) – anyone who threatens the official Faith and the consolidating power of the Councils. It makes good sense, right – get rid of religion and Human divisiveness on a societal level will disappear? An instrument of such a pogrom might just be a Roman holiday...To see the rest of the chapters and I’m sorry, but a number of them got deleted from the blog – go to SCIENCE FICTION: Martian Holiday on the right and scroll to the bottom for the first story. If you’d like to read it from beginning to end (100,000+ words as of now), drop me a line and I’ll send you the unedited version.
As the stuffcapsule slid through the tunnel deep under the surface of Mars, AzAH said, “Stepan can present the artifacts to the Mayors, but we need to get word to people who can help him.”
HanAH snorted, “Like who?”
“Our mystery guide, Paolo. He seems to know what’s happening on Mars. He’s certainly been manipulating us.”
“I don’t trust him,” said HanAH.
“You don’t trust nobody,” said QuinnAH. “‘at’s why we get along s’well.” His street urchin drawl had returned. “I don’t trust nobody, neither.”
AzAH said, “You trust Stepan.”
QuinnAH snorted, then dodging the statement, said, “Sit and take a breather. Once we get back up and into the HOD, we have to pass through it to get to Breachport.”
“We don’t have time to rest. We keep on from here. Once we get to Breach, we need to contact Paolo. He has some kind of plan to gather the artifacts and change Mars,” said MishAH.
HanAH snorted derisively.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
HanAH rolled his eyes and said, “What makes you think…”
DaneelAH cut him off, “Because he keeps pulling our strings.” He paused, then added, “As far as I can see, he’s pulling everyone’s strings.”
“He’s not pulling mine,” said HanAH. “No one…”
“Get ready!” said QuinnAH, then suddenly shouted, “Jump!” They did. All five of them tucked and rolled. Here the floor was clean; cleaner at least than it had been, and it was also a soft-hard floor, absorbing impact by giving. It kept damage to the floor to a minimum by giving way under hard impact. Brushing himself off, QuinnAH said, “All right. You go up from here and you’ll come out in the Freight Station in the Home Owner’s District. I’m gone get you started, then you go up the rest of the way…” HanAH’s arm flashed out to grab QuinnAH – and closed on air. “Nice try, old man!” he laughed as he danced away. “Take yourselves on up, then! Double door portal over there. Only open the left side or you set off deadly security. It’ll scan you as Human ‘cause we got people up top that have changed the scanners. I gotta go back and save preacher man. He need me.”
HanAH clumsily lunged again and laughing, QuinnAH easily slipped away, vanished over the platform edge, and was gone. His vatmates laughed as they headed to the portal at the edge of the tunnel, cautiously opening the left door. HanAH stood, arms crossed over his chest. AzAH stopped, looked back at him, and said, “Coming.”
He angrily shook his head. She shrugged and followed the others.
As they disappeared through the portal, he called, “Fine by me! See if you can make it to Breachport by yourselves!” Either AzAH or MishAH stuck a hand past the rim, waved, and vanished. He stood for a while longer, then with a deep sigh, he followed after them, stomping his feet until he realized he sounded like a child having a tantrum. Muttering, “I was the last one decanted. It’s my privilege to act like this.” They’d vanished up a steep ramp that curved gently into a spiral. Grumbling, he started to jog, following after them.
Image: http://img11.deviantart.net/c3c5/i/2009/067/9/3/dr__manhattan_by_theknightinhell.png

MARTIAN HOLIDAY 141: DaneelAH & Company

On a well-settled Mars, the five major city Council regimes struggle to meld into a stable, working government. Embracing an official Unified Faith In Humanity, the Councils are teetering on the verge of pogrom directed against Christians, Molesters, Jews, Rapists, Buddhists, Murderers, Muslims, Thieves, Hindu, Embezzlers and Artificial Humans (They are HanAH, the security expert (m); DaneelAH, xenoarchaeologist (m); AzAH, language expert (f); MishAH, pattern recognition (f).) – anyone who threatens the official Faith and the consolidating power of the Councils. It makes good sense, right – get rid of religion and Human divisiveness on a societal level will disappear? An instrument of such a pogrom might just be a Roman holiday...To see the rest of the chapters and I’m sorry, but a number of them got deleted from the blog – go to SCIENCE FICTION: Martian Holiday on the right and scroll to the bottom for the first story. If you’d like to read it from beginning to end (100,000+ words as of now), drop me a line and I’ll send you the unedited version.
As the stuffcapsule slid through the tunnel deep under the surface of Mars, AzAH said, “Stepan can present the artifacts to the Mayors, but we need to get word to people who can help him.”
HanAH snorted, “Like who?”
“Our mystery guide, Paolo. He seems to know what’s happening on Mars. He’s certainly been manipulating us.”
“I don’t trust him,” said HanAH.
“You don’t trust nobody,” said QuinnAH. “‘at’s why we get along s’well.” His street urchin drawl had returned. “I don’t trust nobody, neither.”
AzAH said, “You trust Stepan.”
QuinnAH snorted, then dodging the statement, said, “Sit and take a breather. Once we get back up and into the HOD, we have to pass through it to get to Breachport.”
“We don’t have time to rest. We keep on from here. Once we get to Breach, we need to contact Paolo. He has some kind of plan to gather the artifacts and change Mars,” said MishAH.
HanAH snorted derisively.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
HanAH rolled his eyes and said, “What makes you think…”
DaneelAH cut him off, “Because he keeps pulling our strings.” He paused, then added, “As far as I can see, he’s pulling everyone’s strings.”
“He’s not pulling mine,” said HanAH. “No one…”
“Get ready!” said QuinnAH, then suddenly shouted, “Jump!” They did. All five of them tucked and rolled. Here the floor was clean; cleaner at least than it had been, and it was also a soft-hard floor, absorbing impact by giving. It kept damage to the floor to a minimum by giving way under hard impact. Brushing himself off, QuinnAH said, “All right. You go up from here and you’ll come out in the Freight Station in the Home Owner’s District. I’m gone get you started, then you go up the rest of the way…” HanAH’s arm flashed out to grab QuinnAH – and closed on air. “Nice try, old man!” he laughed as he danced away. “Take yourselves on up, then! Double door portal over there. Only open the left side or you set off deadly security. It’ll scan you as Human ‘cause we got people up top that have changed the scanners. I gotta go back and save preacher man. He need me.”
HanAH clumsily lunged again and laughing, QuinnAH easily slipped away, vanished over the platform edge, and was gone. His vatmates laughed as they headed to the portal at the edge of the tunnel, cautiously opening the left door. HanAH stood, arms crossed over his chest. AzAH stopped, looked back at him, and said, “Coming.”
He angrily shook his head. She shrugged and followed the others.
As they disappeared through the portal, he called, “Fine by me! See if you can make it to Breachport by yourselves!” Either AzAH or MishAH stuck a hand past the rim, waved, and vanished. He stood for a while longer, then with a deep sigh, he followed after them, stomping his feet until he realized he sounded like a child having a tantrum. Muttering, “I was the last one decanted. It’s my privilege to act like this.” They’d vanished up a steep ramp that curved gently into a spiral. Grumbling, he started to jog, following after them.
Image: http://img11.deviantart.net/c3c5/i/2009/067/9/3/dr__manhattan_by_theknightinhell.png

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 389

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: Time TravelCurrent Event: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2665781/Could-time-travel-soon-reality-Physicists-simulate-quantum-light-particles-travelling-past-time.html
Anton Naoumov shook his head. “You’re not going to get me into that thing. I signed aboard this ship to practice being a paramedic, not to have my atoms scattered back and forth across space by this gadget.”
Piia Takala grinned, “You’re not going anywhere in space, Anton! It’s...”
“I know – it’s a time machine. But didn’t Einstein have some theory that space and time are related? Intimately.”
Piia blinked in surprise and managed to say, “I’m sure you got that wrong. You never had a physics class, did you?”
“I didn’t need the class. I’m not a total idiot, you know! Medical majors can dabble in other stuff, so I did. And I didn’t get it wrong,” he said, tapping his handheld computer. “It says right here that Einstein wrote about it and W. K. Clifford described the effect of gravitation on space and time. He figured out it was easily visualized as a ‘warp’ in the geometrical fabric of space and time, in a smooth and continuous way that changed smoothly from point-to-point along the fabric of space and time.”
Piia pursed her lips. She’d never get him into the thing to go back with her if she let him dig any deeper. She said, “Granted. Space and time are intimately connected. But this isn’t going to be scattering your atoms anywhere. The only things that will be scattered are the quanta that make up the atoms. Those are only going to be shifted a little...”
He held up his hand and said, “What do you want me to do this for anyway? What’s so all-fired important about me doing this?”
She sat down on the stool in front of the control board. The time-shift chamber wasn’t really a chamber at all – it was a platform made of ultradense matter that was so massive, it was making a tiny dimple in local space-time. Above, a bank of high energy lamps pointed downward to an EM lens that would focus them on the head of the subject with enough force to shove the person through the dimple and into another time. The time period was pinpointed by the tightness of the focus and the depth of the dimple. Piia’d done the calculations three times. She took a deep breath and finally said, “I want you to stop the Finnish Civil War of 1918.”
He scowled then said, “How am I supposed to do that?”
“You have to let the one man who can stop the whole mess die.”
“What?”
“It has to look like a natural death, too. I figured all you paramedics know how to keep people alive when they’re on the brink of death, you probably know how to push them over, too.” She slipped the stun gun from her pocket, flicking it on to maximum strength and minimum dispersion.
“You want me to commit murder?”
“Don’t worry about it – if you’re successful none of this will ever happen.”
“What?”
“I want you to let my great, great, great grandfather die,” she said as she stunned him.
Names: ♀Finland, Thailand ; ♂ Bulgaria, Iceland  Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/Shuttle-c_launch_painting.jpg

Elements of Cron and Korea #6: Building A Traumatic Past for My Character!

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
“The reader expects the protagonist to not only have a past, but one that affects the future.”
“None of us sprang into being fully formed. We humans – and hence our protagonists – all have a past that has brought us to this very moment. What’s more we make sense of what happens to us in the present based on what our past experience has taught us. Thus a protagonist without a story-specific past is a generic, cardboard cutout.
“Ask yourself: What happened in my protagonist’s past that landed her in the situation she’ll find herself in on page one? How will what her past has taught her affect the way she’ll react to what happens in the story?”
For the past few months, I’ve been practicing my writing and trying to align it to both this article (in which I first discovered Lisa Cron’s insights) and exploring how I can integrate insights from her book, WIRED FOR STORY, into my own stories.
I just started a story that will be divided into three parts, the first and last will be short and will be “side stories” to the longer main story. In classic art, such an arrangement is called a tryptic and often depicts three different but related scenes. One such example looks like this:


More modern pieces are simply continuations of a painting or a photo.
In it, I have struggled for YEARS to create a memorable character name Carlos Bander. I have known things about him, but when I read Cron’s article and book, I suddenly realized that I don’t know anything about him!
In the triptych I’m writing, I’ve had to dig into his personality. Initially, the first triptych was supposed to be some 4000 or so words long (I’ll allow myself up to 5000 words). I took my time developing the character…and suddenly found out that I was well on the way to creating a story that was 8000 words long.
I HAD to cut it down, but how could I reduce the number of pages? I had to develop the character, right? But how could I make a deeply drawn character that readers could identify with?
After reading WIRED FOR STORY and knowing that it was impossible for me to “apply” all four hundred pages of advice, I went through and condensed out the points most important to my own writing. The “long list” contained 52 points and inspired me to discover that out of Cron’s last name, I could take the first two letters and associate them with an element of the periodic table whose atomic mass was 52 – the element Chromium. Plated onto other metals, it creates a brilliant, mirror-like surface used to decorate, accent, or protect metals that corrode easily, or reduce friction on surfaces.
I quickly found that even 52 points were hard to apply. So I condensed once more , shortening sentences and coming up with a list of things I could DO.
In creating my new character, I started to use them as if they were tools. I started to grow him in ways he’d never gone before. In this first story of the triptych, I found that pages of internal musing had gotten me very, very slowly to where I wanted to be. Looking at the list, I held it out and started to pull real application points to him. A few of them: “Story is how a character reacts; to the plot which is what happens”; “…something is at stake on the first page”; “…confront their inner demons”; “…world view is knocked down”; “Everything that can go wrong, should”; “threat should be active”.
I restarted the story – making him lose his job (he’d already lost his wife); taking his home away from him – both legally and literally; and then getting kicked out on the street. Which is where I wanted him to be because he needed to confront his inner demon: inaction on his part given that he knew he regularly dealt with homeless kids, some of whom had been damaged by profound trauma. He’s aware that he’s not doing enough, but has no idea where he should go with that, so he’s been drifting.
In this world, something happens. He DOES have skills, and since his wife’s death, he hasn’t been using the skills. But the issues are bigger. FAR bigger than just the ones he can see on Earth. There are issues that have interstellar ramifications; and he can make a difference on that scale.
But first he has to get past refusing to deal with the issues on a local scale.
Lately, Carlos has started to come alive to me. I don’t WANT to push him this hard, but I think he’s made of tough enough stuff to deal with it. We’ll see. Maybe even YOU’LL see. I’ll see if the “Payoff is possible”…
Resource: https://www.creativelive.com/blog/essential-storytelling-techniques/, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bf/Annunciation_Triptych_%28Merode_Altarpiece%29_MET_DP273206.jpg/1280px-Annunciation_Triptych_%28Merode_Altarpiece%29_MET_DP273206.jpgImage: https://www.ducksters.com/science/chemistry/chromium.gif