Guy Stewart's Blog, page 81

WRITING ADVICE: What Went RIGHT #43…With “Fairy Bones” (Submitted 5 times with one revision, sold to CAST OF WONDERS, November 2015)

In September of 2007, I started this blog with a bit of writing advice. A little over a year later, I discovered how little I knew about writing after hearing children’s writer, Lin Oliver speak at a convention hosted by the Minnesota Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Since then, I have shared (with their permission) and applied the writing wisdom of Lin Oliver, Jack McDevitt, Nathan Bransford, Mike Duran, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, SL Veihl, Bruce Bethke, and Julie Czerneda. Together they write in genres broad and deep, and have acted as agents, editors, publishers, columnists, and teachers. Since then, I figured I’ve got enough publications now that I can share some of the things I did “right” and I’m busy sharing that with you.
While I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it...neither do all of the professional writers above...someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what I write. When I started this blog, that was NOT true, so I may have reached a point where my own advice is reasonably good. We shall see! Hemingway’s quote above will now remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing output and sales! As always, your comments are welcome!This story started out as a story about me and where I live. So the first thing I did right was start with something familiar; to use the proper writer’s vernacular, I “wrote what I knew”.
Of course, I’d also been told never to write a story claiming “it’s true! I only changed the names!”…well, that doesn’t cut the cheese.
“…simply jotting down a transcript of a real event and inserting it into a novel may not work particularly well; all too often, a purely factual account will not provide the reader accustomed to fiction’s standards of world-depiction with sufficient information to be able to picture what the writer experienced…There’s a reason that perennial cry of the realistic writer — ‘But it really happened that way!’ — doesn’t particularly impress agents, editors, or contest judges, you know. With apologies to Aunt Virginia, no matter how true the facts, it’s the writer’s responsibility to make them seem true to the reader.” (Anne Mini)
Besides, there are no fairies in the marsh near my house. Cranes, fox, coyote, wood ducks, pheasant, bald eagles, red-tailed hawks – absolutely yes! Also, there’s no retirement community right next to the park reserve. At least not yet. But the rest of it? The weather, the owls and their pellets, the grandson (mine is only eight years old right now), and the science of checking meals of owls to ascertain the health of the populations of  both the predator and prey – though there are no stick pads to reconstruct skeletons on (who would bother?) – those are all real.
Combined, they created something I wrote about last week. They made a story that communicated a sense of wonder. There are LOTS of definitions of what constitutes a sense of wonder. Distilled down from a FEW sources I found:
“While science or fantasy or horror can be the vehicle, this is entirely a FEELING that comes from inside a READER [from stories that]…have something unreal about them…a feeling of awakening or awe triggered by an expansion of one’s awareness of what is possible or by confrontation with the vastness of space and time…‘conceptual breakthrough’ or ‘paradigm shift’…achieved through the recasting of…previous narrative experiences in a larger context…speculation rooted in reality…Any[0ne] who has looked up at the stars at night and thought about how far away they are, how there is no end or outer edge to this place, this universe—any[one] who has felt the thrill of fear and excitement at such thoughts…some widening of the mind’s horizons, not matter what direction…any new sensory experience, impossible to the reader in his own person, is…what the activity of science fiction is writing about…a position from which they can glimpse for themselves, with no further auctorial aid, a scheme of things where mankind is seen in a new perspective…”
Given this as a starting ground, both of my stories unconsciously did this. In the first, I had a group of Human teenagers spend several days with a group of WheeAh teenagers isolated on a sailboat in the middle of the ocean. Something bad happens and the group pulls together and “saves the day”.
In “Fairy Bones”, a cranky teenager shuffled between divorced parents ends up cooling his jets with grandmaw: a sentence to boredom, without a doubt. She isn’t any more thrilled about spending time with a moody adolescent, but just figures she’s got a job to do. He’s the one then who discovers what appears to be the skeleton that is NOT a mouse or anything else, but a HUMANOID. Together, grandmother and grandson begin to unravel what appears to be something the government even knows about! They draw together and end up appreciating each other – expanding both their knowledge of the UNIVERSE and of each other.
It may not have impressed editors whose usual markets diminish the importance of anyone younger than (say) 35 or 60…but COW bought it after suggesting a few things that sharpened both the focus of the story and the interaction between the boy and his grandmother. After incorporating the editor’s suggestions, the story was much stronger and they published it.
Takeaway: the sense of wonder is something I need to incorporate not only for COW stories, but also for all of my work. It is, after all, what science fiction is supposed to be about. I aimed it at this market and the wrote to editorial request.
This was a fun story and I have an idea for a sort of “sequel”. Working title is “Fairy Tones” about communicating with the fairies…
Resources: http://www.annemini.com/2013/01/25/capturing-the-distinctive-buzz-of-reality-22/Image: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/9f/22/3b/9f223b1e57a36e14db3eb13715fbe3f9.jpg

LOVE IN A TIME OF ALIEN INVASION: CHAPTER 91 The Trial of Team Four - 3

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)
“Yes. Our mission, which I thought was a Human trick, or an elaborate Yown’Hoo prank…has now been confirmed as truth in a most startling way,” said Dao-hi.
“What mission?” said Lan-mai-ti.
“We seek the Primeval.” Por-go-el shuddered alongside her, and the immature Por-go-el dug its claws into Dao-hi’s side. She continued, “The Primeval chose this world for all of the Herd. It chose it because it was perfect. At the same time, Kiiote discovered that it was perfect for them. And Humans have bred here for tens of thousands of year.” She paused, “It does not strike you as strange?”
Lan-mai-ti, “It is a strange, perhaps important event, Herd Mother.”
Por-go-el said, “This world is more than it appears, Herd Mother. It must have been both chosen and ideal for a reason deeper than we can see.”
The Herd Mother curled her neck to look down at the potential male. If it continued to grow in such deep thought, she would have to make sure she bore at least one litter with it. She said, “Indeed, Por-gel. Indeed. The Primeval is on this world; and we go to meet her.”
“How will we find her?” said Por-go-el.
“Follow, small Herd, we must distance ourselves from the tunnel. There may be eyes on this world other than those of the Herd, the Pack, and the Naked Apes.” She usually didn’t refer to Humans in the derogative her people used in private, but one of their own had bestowed the name, and reading the text of the manuscript in a few days, she had to agree. Particularly with the Hoonish observation that “If something bites you, it’s most likely to be female.” Such was reality in the Herd. Males might have claws and speed, but females sharp teeth, sharp hooves, and powerful minds.
Such was reality among other species the Yown’Hoo had met face-to-face in their millennial past. “The Primeval is here; there are two Humans who have pledged to help us, the first is the Lieutenant Commander Patrick Bakhsh.” She wondered again at the Hoonish sound of his name.
“We know that one. There is another?” Por-go-el asked from her back.
“There is another Human who has acted with honor on our behalf and it is from her that I received a message before we were forced from our home in the City. The last time I spoke with her face-to-face was before you broke free of your chrysalis.”
“There was a time before I came from the chrysalis?” said Lan-mai-ti, stretching his long legs to barely keep up with her though she was only cantering.
Dao-hi swung her heavy head on its long, supple neck, knocking the potential male from his feet. “Mother Kan Yuen, Triad Query Marker Guru and Specialist. You have learned of her; and yes, of course there was a world before you broke free! You think yourself as one so special as to be the first of us?”
He dropped back, the physical manifestation of his stupidity denaturing the adrenaline he needed to keep up with her. On the Homeworld, Dao-hi had discovered, such stupidity was quickly culled to feed the Hunters who were still allowed to exist there. But since Dao-hi had never been there and she knew nothing but legends, it made no sense that she should sentence one of her Herd – not as one of the true Herd Mothers did. She slowed, whistling encouragement to the potential male.
Shortly, he caught up again, saying, “I will endeavor to use my brain for more than a batter ram, Herd Mother.”
“Well said, potential. But we now have greater concerns. We must find the Primeval. You are the only one who can do that.”
Per-go-el stumbled but didn’t fall. A moment later, he caught up with her and Lan-mai-ti again and called up to her, “How may I serve, Herd Mother?”
She shuddered. It was a good response; precisely the response a potential male should have given. He didn’t apologize. She suddenly realized that there would be more to being a Herd Mother than simply punishing stupidity. If she had acted first, then thought second, Por-go-el might have died back in the snowbank. Instead, he was running with her, willing to help. She would have to reflect on this. He had no need to know how close he’d come to death, so she said, “You are potentially male, so your nose is the only one among us who can detect the microscopically small amounts of Ji-hi, Mother of All. I cannot as I am female; Lan-mai-ti cannot, for it is simple potential. This is the reason the Lieutenant Commander Patrick Bakhsh sent you with us. This is your destiny.” She surged ahead and was gratified when the smaller Por-go-el followed the surge and kept up with her.
Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Rhll_wire_rope.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 368

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: body transformations/cyber implants/the Borg…Current Event: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2qPWc32LS8&feature=related, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIqAnrjqb0Y, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWTE97GteZA
[NOTE: STAR TREK’s Borg still creep me out and while they ended up defeated, compromised and hardly implacable by the end of all the series, I wonder if the writers did that to make themselves feel safer. When they first appeared in ST:TNG, they were anything BUT beatable…and they still creep me out…]
Hajnal Nagy stared at her lab partner. “What do you mean, they ‘creep you out’?”
Voytek Jankowski shook his head. “It doesn’t bother you that Ms. Hawkinson’s substitute is more machine than human?”
Hajnal shook her head. “Why should the ratio of Mr. Yakovlev’s flesh to metal and plastic bother you?”“Didn’t you ever see the old movie, ‘Terminator’?”
“Duh. I like old movies as much as you do, so yeah, I saw it. But what does a time-traveling robot have to do with our substitute? He looks Human.” She glanced at the man where he was working with another student at the front of the chemistry room. While he certainly did look Human, the left side of his face was augmented by non-flesh implants. He’d told them he’d been in a car accident and they’d rebuilt his eye, ear and replaced the left side of his jaw with plastic bone and teeth. His hand was also partially prosthetic and, he’d added, even though they couldn’t see it, he carried a pacemaker to keep his partially damaged heart beating and had an implanted TENS unit to take care of his pain. He’d finally added that TENS was an acronym for Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation unit.
He’d written that on the white board, smiling and saying, “Isn’t this one of those ‘teachable moments’?”
“You didn’t think him talking about ‘teachable moments’  was sort of creepy?”
“Why would that be creepy?” Hajnal asked.
“I want to know what he thought he was teaching us.”
Hajnal rolled her eyes and got back to the work on the page of problems. Voytek said, “But...” Hajnal waved him off half a dozen times before he left in a huff. Once he was gone, she found herself looking up at Mr. Yakovlev. He was leaning on one elbow, pointing to a worksheet and trying to explain something to a student.
She muttered, “Stupid Voytek!” and got back to work. But she couldn’t help it. Her eyes were drawn back to his face. The plastic skin was identical in color to his real skin. The eye had a white sclera, but the iris was silver and the pupil wasn’t exactly round but a vertical oval, almost lizard-like. The fake skin on his hand was also a perfect color match and – she noticed with interest from where she sat – there were hairs on both of his arms. “Stupid Voytek!” she muttered. She turned in her stool so her back was to the front of the room.
She was sitting like that, hunched over the worksheet, when a voice said, “Do you understand orbital notation…” the voice paused, rustled paper, then said, “Ms. Nagy?”
Knowing that she was blushing crimson, she didn’t turn or look up, but hunched farther as she said, “Uh, yes, sir. It seems pretty straight-forward.”
He hummed, “Perhaps you’d like to come up to the front of the room and demonstrate your methodology for the rest of the class. Few of them seem to understand why you do not fill in the 5s1 orbital until after you’ve filled in the 3d5 and 4p3 orbitals.”
Someone from the class called out, “Hajnal gets it!”
Someone else started pounding on the table, “Let Hajnal teach us! Let Hajnal teach us!”
She finally turned around. Now that she was thoroughly embarrassed, she looked up at Mr. Yakovlev as he said, “This is a teachable moment, Ms. Nagy.” He smiled and she noticed then that his teeth, instead of being white, were silver. And as she looked, a tiny red light lit up on each one, while at the same moment, the vertical oval glowed blood red…
Name Origins: Hungary, PolandImage: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b1/3,2,1_blast-off!_(15871161250).jpg/511px-3,2,1_blast-off!_(15871161250).jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY: Science Has NOTHING To Do With The “Sense of Wonder” We So Crave!

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…
Science: The Core of SF's Sense of WonderMany readers come to science fiction for the jolt of wonder at imagining the clouds of Venus, the chromosphere of the sun, or the frigid surface of Pluto. They want their breath taken away by the long scope of time of evolution and geology and the stars. What is that sense of wonder experience and how do people feel it differently? What science in science fiction most succeeds at getting to those feelings? Our panel of writers and readers of scifi wax rhapsodic about science in science fiction.
Bridget McKinney: fantasy and science fiction writer (film and television).Stanley Schmidt: author, professor, editor of Analog Science Fiction and Fact; musician, photographer, traveler, naturalist, outdoorsman, pilot, and linguist; Guest of Honor at the 1998 World Science Fiction Convention, Nebula and Hugo nominee for his fiction, Robert A. Heinlein Award, SFWA’s Solstice Award, retiredBecky Chambers: author, nominated for the Hugo Award, Arthur C. Clarke Award, Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction, won Prix Julia Verlanger in 2017.Suzanne Palmer: writer and artist, won Asimov's and Analog reader awards, finalist for 2018 HugoVincent Docherty: fan, con-runner, researched in Quantum Chemistry, works in the energy industry.Annalee Newitz: journalist, editor, author of both fiction and nonfiction: Popular Science, Wired, Techsploitation, San Francisco Bay Guardian, io9, Gizmodo, Tech Culture Editor at Ars Technica.
This is a heavy group of individuals!
The question that vexes me (and has helped me!) is the answer to the question: What is a sense of wonder?
Here’s some definitions from the internet.
CAST OF WONDERS: “…we don’t rigidly define the genre…stories that evoke a sense of wonder, that have something unreal about them…non-condescending stories with wide appeal…without explicit sex, violence or strong language. Think Harry Potter or The Hunger Games…makes us think…thrilling entertainment and adventure…high fantasy, elves, dragons, secondary worlds, and magic…all forms of sci-fi: far-future, near future, space opera, hard SF — but accessible…”
Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction: “…a feeling of awakening or awe triggered by an expansion of one’s awareness of what is possible or by confrontation with the vastness of space and time…”
“On the Grotesque in Science Fiction”, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr., Professor of English, DePauw University: “…the primary attributes of sf at least since the pulp era. The titles of the most popular sf magazines of that period—Astounding, Amazing, Wonder Stories, Thrilling, Startling, etc.—clearly indicate that the putative cognitive value of sf stories is more than counter-balanced by an affective power, to which, in fact, the scientific content is expected to submit.”
John Clute and Peter Nicholls (Clute & Nicholls 1993): “…‘conceptual breakthrough’ or ‘paradigm shift’…achieved through the recasting…previous narrative experiences in a larger context. It can be found in short scenes (…‘That's no moon; it's a space station.’) and it can require entire novels to set up (as in the final line to Iain Banks's Feersum Endjinn. [Tried desperately to find it; couldn’t…)
George Mann, English author and editor: “…the sense of inspired awe that is aroused in a reader when the full implications of an event or action become realized, or when the immensity of a plot or idea first becomes known…” and “It is this insistence on fundamental realism that has caused Verne’s novels to be retrospectively seen as of key importance in the development of SF. …—people in droves came to the books looking for adventure and got it, but with an edge of scientific inquiry that left them with a new, very different sense of wonder. The magic of the realms of fantasy had been superseded by the fascination of speculation rooted in reality…”
Isaac Asimov: “…because today’s real life so resembles day-before-yesterday’s fantasy, the old-time fans are restless. Deep within, whether they admit it or not, is a feeling of disappointment and even outrage that the outer world has invaded their private domain. They feel the loss of a ‘sense of wonder’ because what was once truly confined to ‘wonder’ has now become prosaic and mundane.”
David Hartwell, editor and critic: “Any child who has looked up at the stars at night and thought about how far away they are, how there is no end or outer edge to this place, this universe—any child who has felt the thrill of fear and excitement at such thoughts…”
Damon Knight: (In Search of Wonder: Essays on Modern Science Fiction, referencing Samuel Moskowitz): “…some widening of the mind’s horizons, not matter what direction – the landscape of another planet, or a corpuscle’s eye view of an artery, or what it feels like to be in rapport with a cat…any new sensory experience, impossible to the reader in his own person, is grist for the mill, and what the activity of science fiction is writing about.”
Finally, from Clute, Langford, Nicholls, and Sleight’s ENCYCLODEDIA OF SCIENCE FICTION (the entire article here – http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/sense_of_wonder-- is very instructive, but I distill from it this diamond): “…‘sense of wonder’ may not necessarily be something generated in the text by a writer…it is created by the writer putting the readers in a position from which they can glimpse for themselves, with no further auctorial aid, a scheme of things where mankind is seen in a new perspective.”
I said earlier that this concept has both vexed me and helped me. I’ve been twice published in the online podcast called CAST OF WONDERS. It’s too bad that no one from that marvelous production wasn’t included in the discussion. I was rejected most recently with their standard note: “ Unfortunately, the piece is not for us. Our readers felt the story was missing the developed sense of wonder or fantastic element that we consider the hallmark of Cast of Wonders stories.”
It’s helped because I’ve had two stories published and cast with them (see the sidebar if you’d like to listen. The first one is “Peanut Butter and Jellyfish”, the second “Fairy Bones”. I haven’t cracked the market since they went to a professional pay scale, and every tom-dina-and-hawra have sent them their hot little pieces of fiction. Overwhelmed, they now regularly close their submission gates. They have a contest up now for a 500 word SF/F/H piece that oozes “sense of wonder”…I’ll try, but I wonder – is it that the competition is better or that they have more non-sense-of-wonder to wade through and they are grabbing things that meet their needs but may not be the “biggest” or “best”. No idea, just wondering.
At any rate, to summarize “sense of wonder”: While science or fantasy or horror can be the vehicle, this is entirely a FEELING that comes from inside a READER. It has little to do with the writer or editor. It has to do with the ability of a piece to force a reader to feel a certain way. It is, at its core, cognitive manipulation!
Now excuse me while I get my teacher’s hat on; very few people are as good at cognitive manipulation as the very best of teachers!
Program Book: https://www.worldcon76.org/images/publications/WC76_PocketProgram_2018_Final_WEB08152018.pdf, Who’s Who: https://www.worldcon76.org/guests/program-panelistsImage: https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/qghficsimjkaeibhfztnpjrqiezhzuadzsjxwpnxusefbthfes/images/c/c7/Lupin-class.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/180?cb=20130401201343

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 367

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: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AndIMustScreamCurrent Event: http://nypost.com/2013/10/15/brother-of-missing-autistic-teen-searches-on-his-own/
Yarelis Smits held up her tablet computer and shouted to the mass of people, “My foster brother has been missing since yesterday! He’s autistic and he can’t speak! A friend of his from school saw him in this neighborhood late yesterday,” she stopped shouting as the crowd had quieted. “Please remember that even though he can’t speak, Ray Cantú can hear us.”
A girl from school, a year older than Ray, who was in ninth grade, said, “This is a really bad neighborhood. What if we can’t find him?”
Yarelis’ heart felt as if it had stopped in her chest. She looked around the crowd, hoping to see Dorian. The high school police liaison officer had showed up after most of the volunteers had arrived, hanging back, supposedly separated from them all, but still part of them. No one else had noticed him yet.
She was also pretty sure no one had noticed that he was an android. The only reason Yarelis knew was because her Mom was a detective with the local peakers – peace keepers and Yarelis had stumbled across a stray text message that hinted at it. When she’d asked Mom, who never lied outside of work, she’d admitted it.
So to find her missing brother, she had a bunch of people she went to school with, and a robot cop. All she was really missing was her best friend, the mysterious, supposed reincarnation of the late Turkish singer, Selda Bağcan.
Warm breath brushed her ear as a voice mimicking a Turkish accent said, “What, you think I was going to leave you all alone with these insane muggles?”
Yarelis rolled her eyes, the whole HP phenom was so four decades ago. Jane Eyre – which was her real, actual name – was the only one Yarelis knew who still read the things. Except for her, but Yarelis only read them because Jane was her best friend. That’s what she told everyone, anyway.
The girl shouted again, “Isn’t it dangerous here?”
“Dangerous for who?” called a low, bass voice. Yarelis didn’t recognize it and stood on her tiptoes, scanning the crowd. On the edge opposite Darius, there was movement as people who had actually heard the voice turned, then parted between the speaker and Yarelis.
“You’re not from school,” she said, scowling.
“No, I’m from the neighborhood.”
“What are you doing here?”
“You might call me a vigilante.”
“What? My brother’s harmless – he’s autistic, mute. He’d never say anything to anyone!”
The man, who wore a faded, black cowboy hat, pushed up the rim then looked at her intently from under it. He said, “They say it’s the silent one’s is the most dangerous.”
“He’d never hurt anyone!”
“Then how do you explain this?” the man said and pulled his hat off. The blood mixed with his gray hair had been concealed by the back rim of the hat. “I was on my way here and he attacked me with a broken board. He...”
“You must have done something to frighten him, then!” Yarelis cried.
“He ain’t the one scared here, missy. I am.”
Names: ♀Puerto Rican, Dutch, ; ♂ Mexican
Image: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OCWXw6InF70/TKigMBk87NI/AAAAAAAAAy4/tL7MhIfL9CM/s1600/2212_1025142570.jpg

REFLECTIONS ON KOREA AND CRON #1: Communicating and Growing

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.
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.
I spent three weeks in South Korea, returning a week ago today.
While I was there, I had a number of profound experiences. The most disturbing was how much history I had ignored and how much current change I was ignoring.
There is a reason. In reading up on it, I found a couple of the names given to the Korean War. One was The Forgotten War, the other The Unknown War. Of course, those were names given to it by Americans. Flush with the victory of WWII and still naïve enough to think that the Russians and Chinese were our buddies and only at the beginnings of the reign of Joseph McCarthy, there was little that Americans thought that they couldn’t do.
For the South Koreans, however, standing with a token American “advisory group”, their world caved in at the end of June in 1950. White Americans were enjoying unprecedented affluence then – though they were also sowing the seeds of explosive civil unrest in the glowering 1960s followed by the death of “American dreams”, but things happening in such a far-away and exotic place as an Asian peninsula nation had nothing to do with "us".

Then the North Korean Army poured into Seoul and captured it. The elected government moved to Daegu and became a government in exile…sixteen kilometers from where I stayed in suburban Waegwan (say it Weh-gahn). Three years later, the turning point of the invasion occurred less than a kilometer from my bedroom. In 1953, the North Korean Army had taken over most of the Korean peninsula and what was left of South Korea encompassed a bit more than 8000 square miles -- smaller than the state of Vermont. The fighting had involved slaughter on a level that the US hadn’t seen since the early part of the 1860s (ironically barely less than 100 years earlier) and left the entire country in a shambles.
At any rate, you can see that I learned my history.
The history of South Korea sparked a series of ideas and in fact, it added to the foundation of a concept I’ve been writing about for a while and you can read it in my blog work-in-progress, LOVE IN A TIME OF ALIEN INVASION (Scroll back to Chapter One if you want the whole story: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/search/label/Love%20In%20A%20Time%20of%20Alien%20Invasion%20--%20YA%2FTeen%20Science%20Fiction. It’s the idea that the Human fear of invasion by aliens might turn into something much worse.
Earth may become a battleground and the Human race unimportant bystanders to the much more “important” clash of ideologies. The more I read about, studied, and observed the aftermath of the Forgotten War, the more I wondered about our own place in the universe. 

The more I pondered the Fermi Paradox and read up on that, the more I wondered if it was just a matter of time until a couple of alien species discovered that Earth would be the perfect proving ground for their battle of ideologies…I wanted to tell the story and to tell it well enough to engage people so that they might look at our own planetary history.
Lisa Cron’s book had created a methodology based on how our brains work. While I've been working on my story for some time (since 2013!), I can begin to apply the principles of Cron's book now. I’m a science geek, having been a science teacher for over 30 years. I like what she wrote and I especially have an innate respect for and I am drawn by her premise.
In this place, over the next few months, I’m going to forge a link between this new story I want to tell and the work she’s done that will help me create not only sympathetic characters that will form over the page in three dimensions, but also live in a story compelling enough to increase the response of editors to the stories I write.
David Eagleman, on the cover of Cron’s book writes, “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.”

That's what I want to do. Later.
Image: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bJUj3wMDec8/T6zzXoj_w8I/AAAAAAAAC6U/Qfa-N1AEgFU/s1600/old+man+from+pixar+animated+movie+UP+real+life+cartoon+characters+funny+humor.jpg

I'M BACK!!!! IDEAS ON TUESDAY 366

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: “jerkass gods” (CS Lewis Till We Have Facesand Neil Gaiman American Gods)Current Event: http://www.wftv.com/news/news/local/9-investigates-dolphin-manatee-deaths-indian-river/nZYSx/
Abril Molina stood with balled fists on her hips. “They did this, you know.”
Santiago Ribeiro pursed his lips and said in a low voice, “It’s the easier answer. You know, blaming jerkass gods rather than taking responsibility for polluting the lagoon ourselves.”
Abril bristled, “You blame Humans for this?” She grunted, “I know you hate all of us who are pure blooded Humans…”
“Please! Don’t bring magism into this! I may be three fourths elf, but I can no more conjure poisons from the water than you can conjure a will-o’-the-wisp to light your way to bed!”
Abril turned to belt him. He caught her fist but was powerless to stop her words, “How dare you! I am no magist! We’ve been friends since...oh, I don’t know, since I had to change your nest litter! I am no more magist than you are thoughtful.”
Stung, he released her and returned to the side of the lagoon. Squatting, he reached out and spread his fingers, lowering his hand until it was centimeters from the surface. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and stilled himself. After a few moments, the same stillness seemed to flow from his hand and across the surface of the lagoon, traveling from shore and farther and farther into the water.
The stillness spread until the air seemed to stop gusting; even the light grew gellid, thickening until the image of near-elf and water appeared to be a painting.
After some time, dark began to creep upward from the water. Boats, barges and skiffs collecting dead animals slowed until the stopped moving. Abril felt her breath congeal in her lungs and could not breathe.
Then Santiago stood up, turned to her and said, “We are both right.”
“What?”
“True war brews and this is but the first skirmish.”
“There’ve been other die offs! Twelve years of them – how do you explain that away with magic?”
“It’s the dolphins and the manatees.”
“What?”
“It’s the dolphins and the...”
“No, no! I know what you said, I mean to say, ‘What have dead dolphins and manatees...”
“And the pelicans and the algae and other microscopic life,” he interjected.
She nodded, adding, “…and pelicans and phyto and zooplankton have to do with magic and pollution?”
He lifted his chin to the farthest reaches of the lagoon, the water between a barrier island complex, “There is a war brewing.”
“Between who?”
“I can’t tell, but the gods jerking the strings have stuffed each dolphin and each manatee with a spirit and they are the front line – and the manatees are losing.”
“Which side is the good side?”
Santiago turned to look at her, his gaze boring deeply into her own. Abril shuddered as he said, “In the war between these gods, their only good is their entertainment.”
Names: ♀ Uruguay, Spain; ♂ American Hispanic, PortugalImage: http://www.skyscrapernews.com/images/pics/6255CaernarfonCastle_pic1.jpg

I WILL NOT BE REGULARLY BLOGGING FOR THE NEXT

AS I WILL BE IN WITH FAMILY.I WILL BE POSTING PICTURES ON FACEBOOK.IF YOU FRIEND ME, I WILL FRIEND YOU BACK.PROBABLY...

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 365

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.
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: “In 1953, Isaac Asimov published an article titled ‘Social Science Fiction’ in Modern Science Fiction. In that article he stated that every science fiction plot ultimately falls into one of three categories: Gadget, Adventure, or Social.” This week: “Adventure: The invention is used as a dramatic prop. It may be the solution to a problem, or it may be causing the problem itself, but the main focus is on the caper and how the invention's presence helps or hinders it.”Current Event: http://news.yahoo.com/astronauts-poised-second-spacewalk-repair-station-020420313.html
Keven Mean floated free of the International Space Station and turned so that he could look down on the BA 330 module that had just been connected.
Beside him, following NASA protocol, his fellow cadet Brooklyn Kukk floated. She said, “They say it’s haunted.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Keven asked. He was self-conscious of his Brazilian accent and tried to imitate a Midwestern American one in his English.
“You must have heard about the accident when they were putting on the finishing touches down on Earth?”
“Accident?”
“Yeah,” she said, stopping to breathe for a few moments and move closer to the module. “They were working inside and a section of the floor collapsed – not that it would do anything like that out here in micrograv – but on Earth I guess it was a big deal. Killed him in a freaky way, too.”
Keven jetted forward, pushing his tether out of the way. Behind them, two regular crew of the ISS monitored their work. It was a simple maneuver – attaching a UHF antenna to a socket on the BA 330. Nothing could go wrong. He focused. Brooklyn made him nervous. Aside from the fact that she seemed to like him and was always putting her hand on him, she was also very dramatic. He wasn’t much, despite the reputation of his fellow Brasilias. His parents had been masters at hiding everything – their anger, their joy, their divorce, when they gave him to a state-run orphanage.
“You ever see that old movie, ‘Gravity’?” Brooklyn said suddenly.
Over their headsets, one of the crew said, “This is López, focus on your work, trainees.”
“I am,” Keven said.
 Lópezcontinued, “Good job, Mean. But just to calm your fears, the Skysweeper Act has done a good job of clearing out all the junk floating around out here.”
“What about the robots themselves?” Brooklyn said as they moved toward the socket. The antennae, delivered – ironically, Keven thought – by a robotic maintenance robot about an hour earlier, floated on its own tether nearby.
“As far as anyone has been able to tell,” López said with a laugh, “There have been no rogue AIs wandering near-Earth space preparing to rain a hail of death down on the governments of the planet.”
Brooklyn gasped then said, “You’ve seen ‘Skies Of Death’?”
López said, “It’s how we pass our nights and days here.”
“So there’s no chance that an AI could spontaneously become an intelligence?”
“This is the universe you’re talking about – there’s no assurances to apply for, none given.”
“So...”
López cut her off, “You have a job to do, Kukk. Please proceed.”
She snorted and jetted forward. As she did, she muttered, “This was supposed to be an adventure. I haven’t seen anything adventurous since I signed the contract…”
The edges of Keven’s helmet abruptly turned red, flashing on and off and a keening sound filled his headphones.
Names: ♀Canada (P.E.I.), Estonia ; ♂ Aruba, Brazil (Divine)Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b1/3,2,1_blast-off!_(15871161250).jpg/511px-3,2,1_blast-off!_(15871161250).jpg

Slice of PIE: THE LAST JEDI vs The Last Christians

NOT using the panel discussions of the most recent World Science Fiction Convention in Helsinki, Finland in August 2017 (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…
My wife and I just finished watching THE LAST JEDI on our new DVD.
I read an article “As Churches Close, A Way of Life Fades” the next day.
Some months ago, I read the book UNCHRISTIAN by Kinnaman & Lyons.
The three very different media intersected in a fascinating way.
Yoda has this to say about Luke’s crisis of faith (in the Force, in the Jedi, in everything he’s ever believed):
“Luke: So, it is time for the Jedi Order to end?Yoda: Time, it is...hmm, for you to look past a pile of old books, hmm?          Luke: The sacred Jedi texts!Yoda: Oh? Read them, have you?Luke: Well, I...Yoda: Page-turners, they were not. Yes, yes, yes. Wisdom, they held, but that library contained nothing that the girl Rey does not already possess. Ah, Skywalker...still looking to the horizon. Never here! [pokes Luke with his walking stick] Now, hmm? The need in front of your nose!Luke: I was weak. Unwise.Yoda: Lost Ben Solo, you did. Lose Rey, you must not.Luke: I can't be what she needs me to be!Yoda: Heeded my words not, did you? ‘Pass on what you have learned.’ Strength, mastery, hmm...but weakness, folly, failure, also. Yes, failure, most of all. The greatest teacher, failure is. Luke, we are what they grow beyond. That is the true burden of all masters.”https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Last_Jedi
[The culture of the United States and Western Europe (of course these areas are MOST important and anywhere NOT Western doesn’t really matter (*sarcasm*) has long been sliding away from the kind of Christianity practiced by Jesus, the Christ and his followers all over the world. http://www.pewforum.org/2011/12/19/global-christianity-regions/]
According to the article “As Churches Close, A Way of Life Fades” (7/21/2018, StarTribune, Jean Hopfensperger), “Steep drops in church attendance, aging congregations, and cultural shifts away from organized religion have left most of Minnesota’s mainline Christian denominations facing unprecedented declines.”
Yet the aging of America hasn’t caused a steep decline in the membership of health clubs. Cultural shifts haven’t closed Caribou Coffee shops (though Netflix and live streaming have affected movie theater attendance…maybe there’s a connection?) Oddly, the article doesn’t talk about the loss of a life of faith with the demise of the churches. Rather it notes: “The closings and mergers are leaving a void in communities where churches frequently house child care, senior programs, food shelves, tutoring, and other services.”
I can’t help but note that the collapse of the Jedi order parallels the phenomenal growth of The First Order – and it’s not just among the pillars of that Order, but among the common people. They don’t know who the Jedi are any more. Rey has no idea who the Jedi are, except as a sort of magic or something:
“Luke Skywalker: What do you know about the force?Rey: It's a power that Jedi have that lets them control people and... make things float.”
Nobody but Rey actually seems to care. The New Republic certainly didn’t employ any Jedi. It attempted to rebuild itself WITHOUT them. Look where it got them (I’m not sure if the writers were trying to be ironic or if they had no idea what the did). But “today”, in TLJ, we don’t NEED the Jedi. Yoda, Jedi master, clearly says as much, Rey has everything she needs all bundled up in herself. Without any training or Jedi writings or Jedi masters, Rey will surpass them because…well, just because. (Though I find the irony delightful and can’t wait to see if the writers bother to raise it up later or if, like the Jedi-less New Republic being blasted out of existence by the New Order, they didn’t notice what they’d communicated.)
Young adults (and old adults as well) are attempting to rebuild the church in the form of a social “ministry” with a massive increase in social services available through the most institutionalized public service: schools. When I was a child, schools provided lunch. Today, the high school I work at provides lunch…and breakfast, after school snacks and programming, nearly-full-service medical care, counseling, psychological care, family planning, and social skills training as well as assistance with job placement, college application, and career resources.
This has come as no surprise to the authors of the book UNCHRISTIAN: “Most people I meet assume that Christian means very conservative, entrenched in their thinking, antigay, antichoice, angry, violent, illogical, empire builders; they want to convert everyone, and they generally cannot live with anyone who doesn’t believe what they believe.” [p 26]
All of this has mish-mashed in my head into a murky view of what’s happening to Christians here and how the world outside of Christianity is promoting something similar as well. This “new” world view might be summed up as: “You don’t need anyone or anything else. Make your own way – it’s the best way.”
I guess we’ll see both how Christianity in the west (and the rest of the world) fares in the next thirty years and the new Force users starting with Rey (and by implication) some of the jockeys on Casino World (aka Cantonica; the casino itself is called Canto Bight) fare in the next ten years of Disney’s STAR WARS franchise…
Image: https://i2.wp.com/nerdbastards.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/starwars_casino1.jpg?resize=600%2C411