Guy Stewart's Blog, page 75

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY: “Obscuring Issues With Fantastic Set Dressing” (?!?!?!) SpecFic For YA

Using the Program Guide of the World Science Fiction Convention in San Jose, California in August 2018 (to which I will be unable to go (until I retire from education)), 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 on page …55 and 56.
Young Adult: Looking at the World Through a Skewed LensOne of the key advantages that SF/F has is allowing us to tip the real world to the side to expose the interconnective tissue. This is often a powerful lens for Young Adult authors. It allows them to obscure issues with fantastic set dressing. Our panelists look at what that skewed lens offers, be it fantasy, science fiction, steampunk or other genres. How does it affect the stories they can tell and the audiences they can attract? What are some of the best ways to leverage the skewed lens of SF/F for a Young Adult audience?
Diana M. Pho: Hugo-nominated editor at Tor Books and Tor.com Publishing, Beyond Victoriana, an award-winning, US-based blog on multicultural steampunk, articles on science fiction and its community. Tina Connolly: Writer of the Ironskin trilogy, the Seriously Wicked series, one of the co-hosts of Escape Pod, runs winning flash fiction podcast Toasted Cake.Scott Sigler: Writer of fifteen novels, six novellas and dozens of short stories, co-founder of Empty Set Entertainment, which publishes his Galactic Football League series.Gail Carriger: Writer of comedies of manners mixed with paranormal romance (imagine all the Jane Austen with psychic powers…).Fonda Lee: science fiction and fantasy for adults and teens; nominated for the Nebula, Locus, named a Best Book by NPR, Barnes & Noble, Syfy Wire, Junior Library Guild Selection, Andre Norton Award finalist, Oregon Book Award finalist and winner, YALSA Top Ten Quick Pick.
“It allows them to obscure issues with fantastic set dressing.” I read this sentence and I laughed out loud, “Hahahahahahahahahahaha!”
Clearly an adult who has little to no contact with young adults wrote this sentence. Otherwise they would have never been able to lay the accusation that YA authors “…obscure issues…”.
IMHO the reason adults fell into the YA orbit is because it is “adult” literature that obscures issues and YA story that illuminates them by facing them head on.
*shakes head in amazement*
I hope that the authors above kicked that absurd statement right where it needed to be kicked – in its “sensible adult” head. Of course, that sensible adult head was probably in a very dark place as it wrote those words.
YA has been facing issues that “adult literature” has been avoiding ever since the publication of  THE OUTSIDERS (I know SE Hinton didn’t create YA) but, “…it’s not true that The Outsiders was the first book written for—or about—teenagers and their problems…Hinton's greatest strength lay in re-translating all these influences and writing about them through the eyes of a teenager writing for other teenagers, he writes. In that sense, she did create YA. At the same time, Hinton's book was received by other teenagers in a way that indicated there was a market for literature dealing with the teenage experience, including its dark and difficult parts.”
Science fiction and fantasy does deal directly with issues that adults ignore. The entire HARRY POTTER series begins with child abuse – direct, intentional, and deadly abuse in the form of Voldemort, and un-subtle emotional abuse of Harry by his aunt and uncle, and bullying by his cousin because they feel superior to him and entitled to do with him as they please. (An argument could be made that it was racism as well – but you’d have to answer the question: are witches and wizards a different RACE than muggles? Hmmm…). The end of the HP series reads like an expanded version of IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE, Sinclair Lewis’ masterpiece of fiction detailing the voluntary fall of the US to a duly elected totalitarian regime, though HP has more to do with Nazism than the sort of the lazy, non-directional regime Lewis imagined (and countless writers have compared with the current administration (as well as GW’s administration…I’ve wondered if democrats are somehow immune to having totalitarian visions, and if so, why.)) It appeared to me that DFL leader are more apt to ignore parts of its constituency (central states and young adults) and suggest, “No, no, you don’t want Bernie Sanders. You REALLY want HC! See, she’s just what you wanted all along.”
YA confronts issues that old adults ignore by burying themselves in adult SF like Ada Palmer’s TOO LIKE THE LIGHTNING and feeling superior because of her radical vision of the future and how it confronts issues boldly but doesn’t really call for any change in their lives. YAs were dealing with GLBTQ, race, economic, violence, toxic masculinity, and bullying issues long before adults noticed them and announced that NOW they would deal with these very important issues. A poke around these books might give you an idea of what YA’s were reading years ago in which the “issues have been obscured”. I might also direct you to A WRINKLE IN TIME (1968) (bullying by both peers and adults); THE CHOCOLATE WAR (1974) (social and class bullying, classism, terrorism); THE WAVE (1981) (a YA version of Lewis’ book); I’LL GET THERE. IT BETTER BE WORTH IT (1969) by John Donovan (the first gay teen novel).
End rant, and not doubting at all that this will irritate one or two people.

On second reading, I realize this is pretty fragmented. I may take this apart more methodically later. For now, there are family issues waiting to be dealt with...
Resources: Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/why-outsiders-didnt-create-ya-fiction-180962967/#HPf6lbp1FLys34Ij.99, https://www.amazon.com/Ill-There-Better-Worth-Trip/dp/0738721344/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?keywords=I%E2ll+Get+There.+It+Better+Be+Worth+the+Trip&qid=1548008002&s=Books&sr=1-1-fkmrnullProgram Book:  https://www.worldcon76.org/images/publications/WC76_PocketProgram_2018_Final_WEB08152018.pdfImage: https://o.aolcdn.com/images/dims3/GLOB/crop/5760x2880+0+682/resize/630x315!/format/jpg/quality/85/http%3A%2F%2Fo.aolcdn.com%2Fhss%2Fstorage%2Fmidas%2F8c5bd8c311f75e786e2c4a053759a6b6%2F205884144%2Fgirls-hands-resting-on-a-book-picture-id814604748

LOVE IN A TIME OF ALIEN INVASION: CHAPTER 100 The Trials of Team Four – 5

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.
“We had nearly fallen into stagnation when we encountered the Kiiote.”“And we into internecine war when we encountered the Yown’Hoo.” “Yown’Hoo and Kiiote have been defending themselves for a thousand revolutions of our Sun.” “Together, we might do something none of us alone might have done…a destiny that included Yown’Hoo, Kiiote, and Human.” (2/19/2015)
From a pine and oak wood, burst an immense white-tailed buck, sixteen points of stone-hard, twisted antler bone. He led his harem that came after him, a thundering animal herd that, for whatever reason, stirred Dao-hi’s blood, reacting to the buck as if it were a powerful female. She wanted to follow them and crouched to leap.
An instant later, what she thought at first was a deformed Earth deer followed the animal herd.
Suddenly she realized what it was and froze. The potential and the immature dropped to the cold, frozen ground. The elderly Yown’Hoo, its long fur dragging over the snow, looked at her then strode, every step difficult, stiffly, the sound of the fur across the snow a faint hiss. Either she was decrepit or moved with studied dignity. For a moment, Dao-hi stared, unable to decide which way the creature was moving. The air was curiously clear, devoid of scent. Dao-hi’s decision flipped back and forth until the bass voice of a Herd Mother, deeper than any voice she’d heard on Earth or in recordings, said, “Daughter. Your presence is long-awaited. Welcome at long, long last.” The scent of authority abruptly swirled in the air between them. The others rolled onto their sides as if they’d been struck dead.
Dao-hi stepped back, then forced herself forward and said, “You are clearly a Great Mother, and I acknowledge your authority, but I…I…have questions.” Startled because she’d never before felt – much less exhibited – such a confusion of senses.
The Great Mother shook herself, but so slowly, it was like a groundquake rolled through her body, threatening and comforting at the same time.
“I am Ji-Hi.”
Dao-hi’s knees went weak and trembled. She locked the joints, and it was the only thing that prevented her from falling to the ground in a quivering heap. She managed a hoarse whisper, “You cannot be Ji-Hi.”
“And yet, I am.”
“The Mother of All would be ten thousand years old!”
“And I am, child.”
“I am not a child in your sight, I am an egg!” She fell to her forward knees.
The tentacle the Mother of All pulled from its sheathe was leathery, dark, and deeply wrinkled. She lifted the fingers at its tip toward Dao-hi and slowly unfurled them. The Earth-born and raised Yown’Hoo had seen Humans who had aged this much look as haggard, but never one of her own kind. In fact, she had rarely seen Yown’Hoo older than herself. The Mother of All said, “I am not entirely ten thousand of the Earth years old, DNA.” She shuddered in gentle laughter. “My parts have been regrown and replaced many times, though this mind has indeed experienced ten thousand years of events.”
“But how…”
“I do not remember events as you or your Human and Kiiote partners remember. For one as old as I, memories are stored in tight coils of DNA then packed in cells that rarely die,” she lifted  hoof and bowed her head to show a crown of bone.
Dao-hi’s voice was a whisper, “A Crown of Wisdom?” She paused, “I thought that was myth?”
“Stolen from the echoes, it gives me memory of what must be done. It is the reason the Triads were formed. In time, the Triads will absorb echoes, conjures, and Human demonsalike – the worst into the best. That, my daughter, is the Plan that will save all three, weaving us into a civilization strong enough to stand against the Chaos.”
Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Rhll_wire_rope.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 386

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/AceCustom(An ace custom is a piece of technology that differs from the normal model due to being tweaked in order to better fit its user...typically Ace Pilots...)Current Event: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn, http://usvsth3m.com/post/78650868521/a-13-year-old-boy-in-preston-just-successfully-built-a
Zsigmond Alajos Becskei pursed his lips to stare at the old man in the wheelchair in the distance and said, “How old did you say he was?”
Sissinnguaq Âviâja, standing beside him, tapped her tablet computer. The answer popped up in front of them and she said, “Sixty-one.”
Zsigmond shook his head, “Looks like he’s a hundred.”
“Radiation exposure can do that to a person,” she paused, “I think he looks sad.”
 Zsigmond snorted, “You’d look old, too if you were playing with radioactive materials in your backyard when you were sixteen, too.”
Sissinnguaq shook her head, “We didn’t have back yards in Iceland. They kept getting covered in volcanic ash.”
“At least you had something interesting going on in your country. My parents moved here because they were bored.”
“That’s stupid.”
“You’re stupid.”
“Right,” said Sissinnguaq, “Maybe we should talk to him before he dies. Like in a couple of minutes.”
“Can’t argue with that.” Zsigmond swallowed nervously even though he walked along the sidewalk and up to the nursing home’s security station.
The guard behind the window looked up and slid the palm scanned under the slot and said, “Name and purpose.”
Zsigmond hesitated – this would be the true test of his forgery – and covered it by saying, “I’ve never seen my grandfather before. What if I want to leave before I have to talk to him.”
The guard, who’d been looking bored up to now, shook his head. “Old age ain’t a disease kid. He’s not contagious. He’s your ma or your pa’s dad. You ain’t gonna catch nothing.”
Sissinnguaq leaned and said, “My boyfriend’s not afraid of his grandfather in that way. He’s just never seen anyone…”
“Save it, girl. Are you guys going in or are you gonna run away scared like most of the other snot-noses?”
“You are an incredibly rude man,” she said, slapping her hand down on the scanner.
“I didn’t get to be eighty-three by being a sweetheart.” He looked at Zsigmond, “Either slap the ID pad or get out of here, kid. I ain’t gettin’ younger.”
 Zsigmond sighed and laid his hand on the scanner. A moment later the guard pulled it back under, looked at the ID and raised his eyebrows, saying, “Good thing you’re here. I don’t think Dave has many more days left in him.” He typed at his solid keyboard and the first entry door swung open. Zsigmond and Sissinnguaq waited for the second door while the entryway disinfected them. A moment later, the guard said, “Computer says he’s out in the courtyard.”
“Thanks,” said Zsigmond. The headed into the nursing home as the door swung slowly inward. He whispered, “Now if he’ll only be able to remember the last step he screwed up, we can get the reactor started tonight and blow up the city in the morning...”
Names: ♀ Native, Iceland; ♂ Hungary      Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/Shuttle-c_launch_painting.jpg

Elements of Cron and Korea #5: Broken Characters Waiting To Be Smacked

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 that the protagonist will be flawed and vulnerable – never, ever ‘perfect.’
“Story is about how the protagonist changes, internally – which means that your protagonist can’t be perfect when she steps onto the page, because then why would she need to change? Yet writers often fear that if the protagonist isn’t perfect – read: socially acceptable – she won’t be likeable.
“The irony is that “Ask yourself: Where is my protagonist vulnerable? How is she reading the world wrong? What belief does she hold that the plot will force her to reconsider? What will she need to realize in order to change?”
So, anyone who reads this blog knows I’m a Christian. Christians writing in the speculative fiction field are odd ducks – though one of my favorite has a quote emblazoned above. Others are less obvious, but present nonetheless, so I know I’m not alone.
How does this relate to the idea that “what makes us likeable isn’t being perfect, what makes us likeable is the fact that we’re vulnerable”? I’m going to go on a tangent for a moment and recall a T-shirt I first saw forty-one years ago: https://res.cloudinary.com/teepublic/image/private/s--h0rVJAZo--/t_Preview/b_rgb:191919,c_limit,f_jpg,h_630,q_90,w_630/v1529744513/production/designs/2817939_0.jpg

While the meme comes up when you do a Google search, I’ve yet to see this T-shirt ON anyone any more. It’s like the concept of Christians being perfect has taken precedence. Admittedly, it’s not foisted off on us. There are Christians who ACT as if they are perfect and not forgiven. Though if you asked one about it, they would of course dissemble and say that of COURSE they’re not perfect. They just act that way.
“Christian” has also gotten tangled with “Conservative” and “Republican” so much that it seems that if you ARE a Christian, there’s either an expectation or a demand that you be a “conservative Republican”.
And yet…Jesus Himself was neither. His politics: “Render unto [the] Caesar that which is [the] Caesar’s, and unto God that which is God’s.” (Matt 22:21; Mark 12:17; Luke 20:25).
His actions regarding social justice (among other things): “…the Samaritan woman said to Him, ‘How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?’…His disciples came, and they were amazed that He had been speaking with a woman…” (John 4:7-38) and “…When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that He was eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they said to His disciples, ‘Why is He eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners?’” (Mark 2:16).
Note (as you read further), Jesus didn’t call them sinners. He DID call them sick. We’re all sick in some way. As a counselor in training, a requirement of the degree was to book a session or two with a professional counselor – to see what it was like to sit on “the other side of the couch”.
The perception of Christians being perfect – and therefore both unable to be characters in stories as well as people that cannot be talked to – has become a deeply embedded meme.
So – what can I do with that? I can have Christians in my stories who are far from perfect and deeply in need of healing. I can have Christians in my stories who are like me and most of the Christians I know – normal. Everyone has wounds and challenges. In fact, the school I work at has started looking at something called “the trauma informed school” – as in, we need to realize that SOME of our students have experienced trauma. I have known students whose parents have been murdered in front of them; who have seen executions in refugee camps; who have witnessed the rape of their mother. In fact, a study that began looking at why some people are INCREDIBLY fat ended up discovering that virtually all behaviors can be traced back to some kind of traumatic event (not ALL trauma has to be of the variety above).
It’s called ACES – the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study. A simplified version can give therapists, teachers, and even parents of adoptive children, some sense of how to deal with behaviors a child (or coworker or pastor or teacher) exhibits. EVERYONE has an ACES score, even the most well-adjusted of us. In fact, taking it yourself (as in “Why I do what I do is no one else’s business!”) can even give you insight when looking for New Year’s Resolutions…
At any rate, Christians will ALSO score on ACES. We are NOT perfect, only forgiven…and perhaps that is the message I need to work on in my writing, as well as creating engaging characters who work through difficult situations with flawed personalities. Even the Bible mentions that Christians have to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12). If that’s not a prescription for making an interesting character that creates plot (what the character DOES) and story (how the character REACTS), I don’t know what is.
Resource: https://www.creativelive.com/blog/essential-storytelling-techniques/Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/Chromium.svg

MARTIAN HOLIDAY 139: Aster of Opportunity

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 “What’s vo’Maddux’s plan?”
“To become First Consort initially. Then to become Mayor-for-Life.”
Aster narrowed her gaze and leaned forward. “Over my dead body.”
Fardus leaned closer and whispered into her ear, “She’d have to step over mine as well.” She leaned back, “Most likely another part of her plan includes stepping over the boy of Etaraxis Ginunga-Gap as well.” She feigned a faint, adding in a papery voice, “He was so young to die of such a simple thing as a heart attack.” Aster couldn’t help but smother her guffaw.
The two women sat back as their drinks arrived. They toasted as if they were celebrating their friendship, but anyone who glanced at their faces would have shivered at the cold, calculating gleam in the eyes of both of the women.
Then they would have felt their hearts quail in fear.
After surveying the Middle-of-the-Road for obvious eavesdroppers, FardusAH said, “We have to get the Orphan’s Ball stuff moving. Fast. We have four weeks until the event and we need to find some really cute orphans – and some really cute, really young Artificial Humans.”
She made a noise, “Are there very young Artificial Humans?” FardusAH pursed her lips, hesitating. Aster’s gaze narrowed. “Is it something I might find revolting or something that make me angry and do something rash?”
“The latter. That’s why you’re going to have to trust me on this one. I can get cute, young Artificial Humans, but you have to take it on faith that they are neither illegal nor coerced.”
“On faith…”
“You’re good at that faith stuff – not the United one in which only part of the Humans on Mars can fully participate. You know, that ancient ‘separate but equal’ thing…”
“Apartheid? You can’t be serious! You-fee practices apartheid?”
FardusAH shrugged, “You notice that You-fee only banned Christians, Molesters , Jews, Rapists, Buddhists, Murderers, Muslims, Thieves, Hindu, and Embezzlers. It wasn’t specific about – though if you ask around, they’ll tell you that ‘of course it implies that You-fee is against them – racists, sexists, or any other kind of ‘-ists’’ They’ll swear that’s what it means – but the honest ones will admit that it is not stated the same way the injunction against your type is spelled out.”
Aster stared at the lovely echeveria skin of her friend and opened her mouth to reply. She leaned closer, “How long have you known?”
FardusAH smiled, “Your father is well known among Artificial Humans in the underground.” The smile faded, “Not all of them trust him, figuring he’s got an angle or he’s working for vo’Maddux…”
“My dad?” Aster breathed. Then she leaned back and shortly nodded. “I’d have never seen it before Etaraxis called me to be his consort, but what goes on up in the Pylon is more closely related to Roman Court intrigues than in Twenty-fourth Century politics.” She thought for a bit, then said, “We’re going to have to be not only sneaky, but we’re going to have to start playing the shell game.”
FardusAH frowned. “What’s that?”
Aster looked down at the table, then got three ‘sauce’ cups from the bartender. She took a ground nut and held it out. “I’m going to place the ground nut under one of the cups then shuffled them. I want you to guess which cup has the nut.” She shuffled the cups, then stopped. “Where is the nut?”
FardusAH studied them, then touched the one on her left. Aster flipped it over. “Nothing there! If we’d been playing for credit, you’d have lost.”
Scowling, FardusAH said, “Flip over the other two.” With a wide grin, Aster did. “None of them had the nut! I would have lost no matter which I chose!”
Aster caught her eye then leaned forward, FardusAH mirroring her stance. Aster whispered, “The game is called a confidence trick, or a ‘con’. The nut is here.” She opened her fist. “I slipped it out while I was shuffling the cups.”
“That’s…”

“If you were going to say ‘cheating’, that’s not entirely true. Every gamble requires taking a risk. But if the con artist is good enough, they can make the gambler believe whatever they want them to believe.” She leaned closer, “That’s why a good con takes lots of planning – and inside people.”
FardusAH leaned back, studying the Mayoral Consort. After several moments, she said, “Remind my never to play against you in poker.” With a mirrored nod, they stood up and headed to their separate homes.
Image: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/pv5BzHM3TJ8/hqdefault.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 385

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: The Adjectival ManCurrent Event: http://ktla.com/2013/08/08/suspect-in-murder-of-fontana-father-commits-suicide/#axzz2dD6in844
Ajdin Paixão shook his head and said, “Are you sure we should be here?”
Magdalena Aggrawal made a face – as if she’d accidentally bitten into an orange that had been sitting on a warm shelf in a closed refrigerator for three weeks. “’course. You afraid?”
“Yes. Very.”
Magdalena – who did NOT go by “Maggie, Meg, or any other American abbreviation of my name” – shook her head. “What’s the worst thing that can happen?”
“The worst? It turns out that The Creeping Man is real and he’s mad at us for spying on his private life.”
Magdalena snorted. “It’s not like he can run us down. That’s why he’s called The Creeping Man.”
Ajdin glanced to either side then lifted his chin at the clean, dark lab in front of them. “It’s not like monsters usually inhabit science labs. They’re more associated with dungeons with dripping water and cobwebs.”
She snorted again, “This might as well be a dungeon. I don’t think I’ve seen a bar or restaurant since we started school.”
His voice lowered as he muttered, “Not like I haven’t tried...”
She slugged him just as the sound of a heavy object, like a refrigerator or a filing cabinet ground loudly across the plastic sealed concrete floor. Filing cabinets having gone extinct decades earlier – even their fossil-of-a-professor only had two in his office – that left only one of the lab’s six refrigerators. Magdalena whispered, “He lives under a refrigerator?”
“If you were The Creeping Man, where would you live?”
“In a penthouse apartment?”
“That would make Creeping really difficult, don’t you think?”
“Shut up!” she stood up, peering over the lab table, Ajdin mirroring her every move.
The Creeping Man saw them the instant they saw him. He was emerging from under a fridge which was tipped back as if it was glued to the trapdoor The Creeping Man held up with one hand. He squeaked a wet, gargled exclamation, lurching forward, releasing the trapdoor with the refrigerator attached to it.
It slammed down, cutting him in half, spattering blood and entrails and gore on to the refrigerator’s white surface and across the gray floor.
Magdalena screamed, “We killed him!” Ajdin stared then gagged as The Creeping Man – or rather half of him – began to creep across the lab’s floor toward them…
Names: ♀ Liechtenstein, Portugal; ♂ Bosnia/Herzegovina, IndiaImage: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OCWXw6InF70/TKigMBk87NI/AAAAAAAAAy4/tL7MhIfL9CM/s1600/2212_1025142570.jpg

Slice of PIE: Near Future Fiction – How Do You Write It When Everything’s Changing?

Using the Program Guide of the World Science Fiction Convention in San Jose, California in August 2018 (to which I will be unable to go (until I retire from education)), 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 on page 59…
Keeping Ahead of Tomorrow: Near Future Fiction
How do you successfully write near future fiction when reality is constantly catching up? Is it meant to be predictive? A warning? Can your story avoid becoming dated? Panelists explore stories, books, and authors that have done this successfully, as well as the techniques that make it work.
John Scalzi: Mr. “Whatever” himself! No one is more opinionated and expressive than this writer. His books are fun, thought-provoking, and apt to take a critical look at our future as a species.Sarah Pinsker: Speculative fiction writer and musician, she is also a fellow CODEXIAN.Linda Nagata: Incomparable writer of science fiction. While I’ve only read her short work, she’s fantastic.Annalee Newitz: Co-founder of i09. Nothing more needs to be said.The perfect group then!
As I wasn’t there and we’re getting farther and farther from the event, I’m going to restrict my comments to what I’ve been trying to do with my own writing.
I know I’m not extensively published, but as regards my SF, I have been exploring ideas close to me. In particular, I wrote a short story about one way we might assist Alzheimer’s patients. As my father is currently in memory care facility, I wanted to explore ways we might better care for people like him.
So I tried to imitate the first “real” science fiction writer I ever read: Ray Bradbury. His “There Will Come Soft Rains” left a deep impression on my as a thirteen-year-old, so when I wanted to look at an idea that involved an “intelligent house”, his story was the first place I went to.
“And After Soft Rains, Daisies” was my attempt to show what it might be like to use an AI room to care for an Alzheimer’s patient. A session I’d attended on dealing with my dad had suggested that when you’re dealing with someone who has memory challenges, you should just “go with their perceptions”. So if Dad started talking as if he was living at one of his old homes, I was supposed to just act as if we were talking about that time period.
Needless to say, it’s hard to talk with Dad when he talks as if my mother is still living. I sort of refuse to do that…It’s also difficult to tell him that he can’t leave the memory care unit. My attempt at the story is here: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2018/05/possibly-irritating-essay-and-today.html
Haven’t sold it, never will as it’s posted on my blog (duh!) and that counts as published.
Another near-future story is out in submission (one rejection so far, from Clarkesworld), but it came out of my three week sojourn in South Korea with my son, his wife, and my grandkids. The South Koreans I met and the museums I visited…as well as “how” they live, and their tenacity (South Korea was within HOURS of being annihilated when the United States, along with other UN countries, finally quit dithering and stepped into Six Two Five (in reference to the day North Korea invaded, June 25, 1950) at the very last instant when the North Koreans reached something call the Pusan Perimeter. I was there, standing on the part of the bridge that was intentionally blown up (and later replaced -- that's my DIL, son, and grandkids passing over the very spot...) where the UN stopped North Korea, China, and Russia) – lead me to believe…well, hopefully the story will see print and then you can read it yourself!
Of my other near-future ideas, one looked at infiltrating North Korea with meme-carrying cardboard cockroaches (of course, the Chinese and Russians had the same idea); another tempted a young tribal chief to use biological warfare against North and South Dakota; another still looked at the impact of aliens snatching Humans and using them in First Contact situations – after providing us with the plans for micro-fusion reactors. The understanding is that we are in debt to the intelligences who gave them to us. And the governments KNOW…
Anyway, I love speculating on technology in the near future – now I just have to figure out how to present my ideas so I can sell them!
Program Book:  https://www.worldcon76.org/images/publications/WC76_PocketProgram_2018_Final_WEB08152018.pdfImage: Taken in South Korea, August 2018

LOVE IN A TIME OF ALIEN INVASION: CHAPTER 99 The Trials of Team Three – 5

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.
“We had nearly fallen into stagnation when we encountered the Kiiote.”“And we into internecine war when we encountered the Yown’Hoo.” “Yown’Hoo and Kiiote have been defending themselves for a thousand revolutions of our Sun.” “Together, we might do something none of us alone might have done…a destiny that included Yown’Hoo, Kiiote, and Human.” (2/19/2015)
Xio started. Seg-go said, “Do we go, Herd-auntie; or do we back up and return to our leaders in abject failure?”
Xio scowled down at the little Yown’Hoo and said, “Don’t bother, Herd second, we are not peers, so the pressure you are attempting to place on me isn’t working.” She straightened her spine and stepped forward, “I had already decided to enter before you challenged my authority.” She kneed Seg-go, who stumbled as it tried to lead the Herd. She added a toe nudge and the Herd second backed up, its fellow Yown’Hoo pressing against it to relieve it of the stress of the Challenge. She smirked as she passed through the door, though her pulse raced when the door irised closed behind them.
The voice of Mother Kan Yuen said softly in Chinese, “Perhaps there is hope for you yet, Daughter of Humanity. Perhaps there is hope for us all.”
“What…” Xio began.
“Hold your questions. I cannot lay out appropriate query markers for the Herd unless I understand who you are and what you need to know to complete your mission. ” The floor began a slight downward slant first which increased until it was all they could do to hold back from rushing faster into the dimness, yet Kan Yuen did not seem to move any faster, nor did she seem to have any trouble keeping an even pace.
It was some sort of projection, Xio thought. The image had said as much. Xio said, “Where are we going?”
“To learn.”
“We don’t need to learn anything! We have to rejoin the Triad with a weapon!” Xio exclaimed.
Seg-go and Ali-go suddenly pressed on both sides of her. Seg-go said, “You cannot speak to the Mother with disrespect! She may be Human, but she has seen your St. Admiral, and the Kiiote, Pan and Zir, but most importantly, she has seen and spoken with and touched Ji-Hi, Mother of All.” Seg-go’s voice fell to a whisper, “And she has felt the slash of the Mother’s claws and survived the poison to serve as a bridge between Humans and Yown’Hoo.”
Xio shoved both of them away, “She’s as Human as I am! I can speak to her…”
Mother Kan Yuen turned and held up a finger. “We are sisters, it is true, Xiomara Mary-Laura Kimpo, but,” she moved closer and spoke in Twentieth Century English, “While Humans do not place great stock in ceremony, the Yown’Hoo and the Kiiote do. Once, long ago, we had the luxury of holding ceremony. But this world is a different place. Once we join with our enemies, then Human ceremony will return – and it will mix with Kiiote and Yown’Hoo ceremony until the three will be indistinguishable. Until then,” she waved away Seg-go and Ali-go, “Let them think they protect my honor.” The image started to move again.
Xio scowled. Who did this woman think she was? She’d done nothing to earn her respect! Respect was given, not claimed! “Follow the avatar, child!”
Muttering angrily as she did as the elderly Query Marker guru commanded, she didn’t notice the abrupt change of their path until she stumbled. The steep incline had flattened and become a broad, paved circle of stone. A door far across opened, spilling golden light in a widening wedge until it stopped at their feet. She swore and stopped.
“I live in the apartments ahead of you. There are rooms for you to rest. Then we will begin your training.”
“What kind of training are you offering? What do you know about what’s going on outside? It looks to me like you’ve been sitting around down here while everything outside has gone to hell in a gods-damned handbasket!” She’d spoken in Twentieth Century English again. Her small Herd moved away from her, their tentacles slurping menacingly.
“There is only one kind of training you need, child.”
Xio set her jaw, lifting her chin then said, “What you possibly teach me?” She braced herself for a bellowing, angry reply.
Instead, Mother Kan Yuen whispered, “Only that a soft answer turns away wrath, child. And once Earth has grown the Triads into effective governing units, Humanity, Kiiote, and Yown’Hoo will need all of their wisdom and skill to softly turn aside the spectre that seeks to devour us all.”
Xio’s mind was abruptly filled with an image of some…thing intangible, malevolent, horrifying…yet it was not spirit. It was technology; technology so far beyond the Triad, that not only did it appear to her to be magic…it appeared to be necromancy.
Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Rhll_wire_rope.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 384

As THIS Tuesday happened to fall on New Years Day (on the Gregorian Calendar…other New Years Days are here: https://247wallst.com/special-report/2018/02/09/26-completely-different-new-years-days-around-the-world-2/2/
The grandkids and daughter-in-law may have seen this! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pyxCHvTtOw)
And lastly, the idea represented above.
Have a blessed and happy New Year, no matter the date you celebrate it or how you ring it in!
Image: https://stream.org/wp-content/uploads/2019.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: Part V – In Space, No One Can Hear You…

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…
I know I’m a few years behind, but I just checked out a copy of LONELY PLANETS: The Natural Philosophy of Alien Life (2003) by David Grinspoon. He does, of course, have a “doctor” in front of his name, but it appears that he doesn’t use it very often. He also has the endorsement of Neil deGrasse Tyson – the quintessential new face of astronomy and the immediate successor to Carl Sagan.
Tyson said of Grinspoon’s book “…brings together what has never before been synthesized…he is a planetary scientist as well as dreamer, born of the space age.”
As is apparent to anyone who reads my blog, I LOVE aliens! I write about aliens! I do (guardedly) believe that there is intelligent life “out there, somewhere” – HOWEVER, I don’t believe that we have any real proof yet and that it is, at this point, an intellectual and philosophical exercise.
Be that as it may, I’m approaching the end of Grinspoon’s book and have skimmed his website (http://funkyscience.net/) several times. While it’s been “frozen” on his newest Pluto/Horizon book, I find myself looking forward to following this guy for some time to come!
I’m well into the book now (page 229) and I got my own copy on Wednesday through a Half-Price Books near me. After (*gasp*) dog-earing my Library copy, I transferred the noted pages to my own book.
So now I’m at the end…Dr. Grinspoon has titled this part of the book simply, “Belief” and he patiently teases apart the rationale of the SETI. However, outside of Grinspoon’s 2003 book, we have this: Fifteen years past the book’s publication date, and even so a year old, Dr. Jill Tartar, the current “name” in the Human search for life beyond Earth, believes we need to leave behind the acronym to indicate the real search that is currently underway – the search for technological signatures that would be evidence of life off of Earth, a rebranding of SETI into something like the Search for Extraterrestrial Technology Signatures – SETS so to speak.
Dr. Tartar explained that the phrase “‘…search for extraterrestrial intelligence’ generates an incorrect perception of what scientists in this field are actually doing. A more appropriate title for the field, she said, would be ‘the search for technosignatures,’ or signs of technology created by intelligent alien civilizations.”
Grinspoon tentatively poses a sort of caveat to this idea in this part of LONELY PLANET: “The problem of survival is not fundamentally technological. It is spiritual and moral. It is evolutionary. Technical solutions may provide temporary Band-Aids, but they do not save us from our nature. If we want to be one of the survivors, we must create a global society where curiosity is tightly bonded to compassion, and where (this is hardest to picture) not a lot of people want to do violence to others. You’re probably not going to like this next though, but one solution would be to just surrender to the machines.”
Another thing that has happened in the fifteen years since the publication of the book is the call by scientists to throw out the Drake Equation as well as its successor in 2013, the Seager Equation (Sara Seager, MIT), which looks for BIOLOGICAL traces of life in the atmosphere of planets. At the time of her adaptation of the Drake, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite was in the works. TESS launched this year (April 18, 2018), but as I write this, there have been no real releases of data except for a scan of Southern skies and images of comet C/2018 N1 snapped by the craft (https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/13030). There are plans for future conferences however: (https://tess.mit.edu/news/tess-science-conference/conferences/)!
So we’ll be seeing more data regarding the SETS or, alternately, the Search for Extraterrestrial Biological Signs – or SEBS.
Looking for technosigns based on the philosophy of Dr. Tatar; looking for signs of atmospheric modification via biology based on the philosophy of Dr. Seager; or looking for something else…
In a recent article, “Alien Hunters, Stop Using the Drake Equation” by Paul Sutter (Astrophysicist, Ohio State University; Chief Scientist at COSI Science Center. PhD in Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Paris Institute of Astrophysics, research fellowship in Trieste, Italy.) (https://www.space.com/42739-stop-using-the-drake-equation.html). He points out that “…the Drake equation's power is more as a philosophical treatment, to help guide our thinking and help us navigate the murky waters of a deep and fundamental existential question…huge uncertainties in the parameters, the unknown ways those uncertainties mix, and the absolute lack of any guidance in even choosing those parameters robs it of any predictive power. Prediction is at the heart of science. Prediction is what makes an idea useful. And if an idea isn’t useful, why keep it around?”
Grinspoon has an article of faith that more or less incorporates all three of the views above: “We calculate and speculate about finding others that are slightly spiffed up versions of ourselves and take it as an article of faith that such a stage will arise soon after the one that we are in now...it takes more than technology to be a broadcasting society. It requires that you survive with high technology for many thousands of years…they ‘must’ have solved many of the great social, political, and spiritual problems we now face.” (p393)
I’m not confident that ETs have “solved…the great…problems we now face.” That seems to ME to be in the province of spiritual changes that (at least as it appears to me) God in man in the form of Jesus Christ can cause (lectures about the Crusades, the Reformation, the Inquisition, and Manifest Destiny are not appreciated unless they acknowledge the POLITICAL aspect of all of the above, which, as politics always does, coopts whatever belief system is useful to create places for the majority of politicians to gain as much money, power, and influence. Call me whacko if you’d like. That’s where I stand. Grinspoon points out, “We blame spreading irrationality on scientific illiteracy. Yet, in my opinion, it is alienation from science, not science illiteracy that is the root problem…if we want the world to see us as wizards, not muggles, then we can’t sell our services to the highest bidder, and we need to spread the magical (and spiritually evocative) story of Cosmic Evolution…Technical advancement without spiritual progress creates a dangerous and unstable condition that will be selected against.” (pp411-412).
Hmmm…
“So say we all,” (Battlestar GALACTICA) or in Earth English, “Amen”.
Part I: http://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2018/11/possibly-irritating-essays-philosophy.html, http://www.openexoplanetcatalogue.com/Part II: http://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2018/11/possibly-irritating-essays-part-2-state.htmlPart III: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2018/11/possibly-irritating-essays-part-three.htmlPart IV: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2018/12/possibly-irritating-essays-part-iv.html
Image: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HvBJ-0Cc1G4/UuMOA98-RJI/AAAAAAAAAwQ/r5JUlNiN2Tw/s1600/Unknown-4.jpeg, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amen)