IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 651

Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc.) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them. Octavia Butler said, “SF doesn’t really mean anything at all, except that if you use science, you should use it correctly, and if you use your imagination to extend it beyond what we already know, you should do that intelligently.”

SF Trope: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ForWantOfANail
Sparking Event: http://www.breitbart.com/video/2014/11/15/maher-if-obama-had-lost-us-wouldnt-have-fruit-or-jobs/
And A Prompt From My Niece-In-Law: wool, celery, parallel universe, dynamite, fireman’s ball, fishing tackle.

Jose Taylor-Perez shrugged his shoulders, settling his wool sweater more comfortably. “You eat that and it’ll be like someone lit a stick a dynamite and shoved it up your…”

Emily Patel-Kelly tossed the celery stick at him then punched Jose in the shoulder, “If you weren’t my best friend, that would have been hard enough to knock the humerus out of the ball park.” She snickered, “Not that anything short of a wrecking ball would be able to knock any of your face bones free of that fishing tackle in your mouth.”

“Hey! No fair! I can’t do anything about braces!” he said, shaking his head, “Besides, your premed jokes are only funny to you…added to that, you won’t even be able to BE premed until at the earliest your junior year.”

Ignoring the frustrating fact that she couldn’t start college until she could do College In The Schools, she said, “Like I can do anything about a celery allergy?” She lifted her chin, “Besides, I don’t exactly have a standard reaction to it.”

“You can say that again,” he said as he fiddled with his transparent computer tablet where it hovered over his lap. “You’re the only person I know that can use a V8 Harvest and Strawberry Smoothie as a gateway to a parallel universe.”

She shook her head, “I wish I could see into the universe where I passed this history final with flying colors.”

“That’s for sure,” said Jose. “I’ll never remember who came after President McCain.”

“Don’t be such a sexist – President Palin took over after McCain had his coronary two years after he got elected.”

“Right, the first lady...”

“No, it was the First Husband Todd…” she said, adding a smirk.

“I was gonna say, ‘President’.”

Shaking her head, Emily hunched over her own transparent tablet, setting it to project a holographic screen in front of her. Walking her fingers through a manipulation panel, she absentmindedly picked up a celery stick and shoved it into her mouth. After her eyes grew wide, she muttered, “Oh, crap...”

“What’s wrong?” Jose asked. Her tablet began to glow then flames flickered around the edges as she tried to shove the instrument away from her. “You ate the celery!” He exclaimed. “Why did you do that?”

“I wasn’t thinking! I was playing around with tensor calculus…”

“And you opened a door into a parallel universe!” Jose shouted as the fire alarms went off and a robot fireman’s ball floated out from its nook and began to sprout nozzles. “Now we’re gonna…”

An explosion cut him off…

Names: ♀US(California); ♂ US(New York)
Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e1/Falcon_9_Demo-2_Launching_6_%283%29.jpg/220px-Falcon_9_Demo-2_Launching_6_%283%29.jpg

WRITING ADVICE: Analyzing What Went Into EMERALD OF EARTH *** THIS IS LONG. I KNOW. I ASK YOU TO READ IT...***

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, though 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!

As my kids and wife will attest, I started EMERALD OF EARTH twenty-one years ago in response to the wave of dystopian science fiction aimed at young adults. Of COURSE there has always been "dark" science fiction -- HG Wells' WAR OF THE WORLDS springs to mind!

In fact, I was really and truly hooked on science fiction by the grim future in John Christopher’s THE WHITE MOUNTAINS books. Lois Lowry’s THE GIVER came when I was in high school, and Margaret Atwood’s THE HANDMAID’S TALE rose to the top NOT as teen lit, but as subversive science fiction – not for teens, but for adults who were looking for MORE after rereading the HARRY POTTER fantasies a dozen times.

Then came the deluge of the “book-to-movie” best sellers like THE HUNGER GAMES and MAZE RUNNER following on the heels of what I think of as “teen carnage” novels where, like the Harry Potter series after GOBLET OF FIRE with teens slaughtering each other and being slaughtered by evil adults became normal for YA fiction. Because while they were ostensibly for teens and YA, adults were reading them in DROVES.

There’s been some serious research on this as well: “Why Do Adults Read Young Adult Novels?" Monica Hay, Fellow at Portland State University0 Department of English wrote “Book industries and trade, Publishers and publishing, Young adult literature” (from the abstract): “Young adult books are widely read by adults. Through interviews with publishing professionals and a survey of 2,139 participants, several reasons were discovered regarding why adults read young adult literature.

“In the research, the most common reasons were the influence of Harry Potter and Twilight, the relatability for millennials, the social media presence of YA online, and the success of women writers in the category. Survey participants had more to add. The survey themes were nostalgia, ‘less pretentious,’ ‘faster reads,’ diversity, escapism, ‘less graphic,’ and perhaps most importantly, hopeful.”

So I started to look at a DIFFERENT future than the doom-and-gloom presented by some of the books that adults and kids appeared to be reading.

What if Humanity launched into a serious exploration of the Solar System and it wasn’t just with soldiers and old people? What if the future included young people? The ones would would spend a long time living in space?

I was compelled to give my novel a title that would draw in YA readers expecting carnage in their reading. I changed it to EMERALD OF EARTH: HEIRS OF THE SHATTERED SPHERES, with the intent of writing a series. And I WILL if sales of the first book go well. came out in March 2024, and while sales haven’t been stellar, I’m doing things like this to boost the signal.

It takes place in a future where Humans have launched into an exploration of the Solar System thoroughly and methodically. Using a hollowed out asteroid called the SOLAR EXPLORER (SOLAREX for short!) as a base, they will spend a year at each planet, probing, landing on, collecting samples, data, and answering questions without having to worry about shipping tiny amounts of material “home” to be analyzed by experts. The experts were right there.

But at one point, I thought EMERALD OF EARTH was boring and would have had a hard time finding advocacy among the more exciting titles (except THE GIVER; that was hardly self-explanatory, nor was THE HANDMAID’S TALE or even Butler’s 1979 masterpiece, KINDRED). Flashy titles had replaced subtle, so I had to do the same.

I came up with EARTH ATTACKED! Ugh. Then I tried LEGACY OF THE WOUNDED WORLDS…Worser and worser!

Finally, I resorted to something I’d never done: I sat down with a thesaurus and the “Legacy” title and found synonyms for all of the words and wrote them on slips of paper. Then I went to a table and began to rearrange them, speaking them out loud countless times until I found one title that held up under the stress of repetition.

HEIRS OF THE SHATTERED SPHERES. Instead of a single book, though, I suddenly had an idea for a SERIES.

Emerald’s story would be its own story, separate from eleven others but intertwined with them because they all live aboard the hollowed out asteroid SOLAR EXPLORER.

Emerald’s story would be the first of a much, much larger story. I wouldn’t have her defeating Inamma in one fell swoop. She needed to fight for her existence, so I made Inamma smarter than it had been before and more subtle.

Even more though, I needed Emerald to have “kid problems”. She needed to deal with issues every kid on Earth needed to deal with. So I gave her friend problems. She wanted them but couldn’t seem to keep them. But what began as a nebulous, “I can’t get friends”, needed a firmer foundation.

As a guidance counselor, I’d started working closely with several autistic students and had come to understand them just a tiny bit. The ones I dealt with were brilliant – but challenged by the world they lived in. I realized that my growing understanding of these young people might be an aspect of Emerald that I hadn’t really developed.

Once I started to understand Emerald, other things fell into place – things like answering the question: “What do teenagers DO on a spacecraft called SOLAREX, committed to a twelve year mission?” So I had to give them “school in space”. But NOT a clone of “school on Earth”, cloned from a form that came from England with American colonists in the 18th Century.

To tell you the truth, when it comes to school for teens in space, SF writers have TOTALLY lacked imagination!

Star Trek: The Next Generation and ST:DS9 have children and teens going to school and SITTING IN DESKS!!! They don’t even go to a holographic “virtual school” that is identical to what we had during the pandemic as in Michael’s Burstein’s award-winning short story, “Teleabsence”. Yet we’ve fled BACK to kids with butts in seats in schools…because we’ve got this weird idea that PARENTS are incapable of educating their kids and ONLY TRAINED TEACHER can do the job.

As a teacher for 41 years: during which time I taught science 6th grade general science, 7th grade life science, eighth grade Earth science, 9th grade physical science, 10th grade biology, 11th grade chemistry, and 12th grade physics, as well as designing and teaching TWO Astronomy classes – as well as writing classes for gifted and talented young people between 4th and 10th grade – I can tell you that THE BEST TEACHERS ARE PARENTS.

(I’m one of those, too…and a grandparent.)

For science fiction writers, you have Orson Scott Card training children to just “be soldiers” in ENDER’S GAME books. Why is that? I think the Science Fiction world has treated the future of education as if we’d already reached the PINNACLE of “educational technology” here in 21st Century America…I don’t even see SF attempting to include educational theory and practice from other cultures! A quick Google search reveals only that there are lots of articles on how to use SF to teach about science or inspire girls to be scientists. This list / is a good start, but hardly complete – at least I hope it’s not complete.

At any rate, to create an educational system that made sense, I drew from my own experience. One thing I knew for certain was that I didn’t want my teens – and there are 130+ of them on SOLAR EXPLORER – just “going to school” and then “hanging out”.

As important as that activity is, and knowing that I’m not speaking tongue-in-cheek – these young people are not only going to be in space for twelve years, they are going to mature into adults who will in their own time take their places in the operation of the ship. Some will be “promoted” to apprenticeships or leadership positions; some will become menial laborers. Some perhaps will become philosophers, others still recorders, writers, and artisans.

But how do they get there? NOT ONLY just “hanging out” on their cellphones and on social media all the time! That is PART of their education – social and educational media are adjuncts to formal education – but THEY have to be adjuncts of PARENTAL education efforts as well.

Honestly? This society has abdicated our wisdom by waving our kids in the general direction of “teachers”. THAT’S A BAD THING. I’m telling you here that not ONLY have I known absolutely shitty teachers; I’ve known EVIL teachers. You know what else? There are times in my life that I’ve been a shitty teacher myself.

Education in classical literature, mathematics, social studies (including history as well as the social experiment they live in!), physical education, science (duh!), art, and practical skills like programming, global languages, welding, recycling technologies, particle physics, gravitational manipulation technologies, and mass communication and journalism – how do you cover all of these things without sitting the fat butts of these kids down? And we need to start teaching our kids MANNERS – not sloppy adult manners, but a FOUNDATION of manners that EVERY SINGLE SOCIETY ON EARTH HAS.

In my novel, SOLAREX is a tiny, closed society. You might consider it a microscopic section of countries like “Andorra, Luxembourg, Greenland, Norway, Liechtenstein” where “literacy reaches virtually 100 percent.” Surveillance is practically universal (though I touch on the fact that it’s NOT!), so teens will only get into minimal trouble in the ways that they do. As well, there’s an “illicit” athletic outlet (pryzhok) as well as plenty of other things to do. Education is experiential as well as academic. They work on Intensive Training Teams as well as receive homework assignments in the “traditional subjects” we expect teens to study. They also receive tangible rewards as a result of inter-Team competition in both their vocational training and academics. And YES, “‘Vacation days, Leisure Study days and tours, credit chits to buy food at the alternate restaurants and hang outs, mostly.’”

Instructors design educational pathways for students – “He was willing to admit that he’d been a master query marker guide at one time. He’d figure out what someone needed to know then lead them there. After the suicides, he’d adjudged himself a stupid query marker guru, quit, and fled.”

I’m trying to explore ways that we might educate our young people. It SEEMS sometimes like it’s a lonely business, educating young minds. It SHOULD NOT BE. It needs to be EVERYONE’S job…

And it’s no longer seen that way. And from MY perspective, that is ALSO the main reason the Pandemic Distance Education hit our kids so hard…NOT ALL OF THEM THEM…but lots of them.

I put forward community effort on SOLAR EXPLORER as a model for us to return to – and then allow communities to ADAPT TO THEIR KIDS…

Comments anyone?

LINKS: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/eng_bookpubpaper/35/; http://sf.hackeducation.com; http://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-highest-literacy-rates-in-the-world.html;
IMAGE: https://www.amazon.com/Emerald-Earth-Heirs-Shattered-Spheres/dp/1958333166/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.PMZul37u_A-yH1LfdxoJ_4iBsTIPAa-dcKcAYmv6WDJZJACtYOnZ8toIWHepGLzwDgcwPZa5ySaFTyXxDHB6x85EysrwG8c_Fs_6IxTzQ6L3naz7ZGJ4nJL1UMFwPAR6HPceUFI79nNdKI79TOzkCzNlUM0Fslu7enXSYjoi5shC0EWph5S5EukqRan_LFpafkgVdrt5AriNaxk4v6AWYTRuDaSk_91uYI1tD4ZiQ3s.RSgRAQeOVuHkoEpV9T_vci5uBYmbWChcdjg1uzqkqpw&qid=1713588732&sr=1-1

IDEA ON TUESDAY 650

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 horror, I found this insight in line with WIRED FOR STORY: “ We seek out…stories which give us a place to put our fears…Stories that frighten us or unsettle us - not just horror stories, but ones that make us uncomfortable or that strike a chord somewhere deep inside - give us the means to explore the things that scare us…” – Lou Morgan (The Guardian)

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 Blank (one with no face…)
Current Event: http://patch.com/illinois/joliet/ex-con-charged-blowing-dogs-face-firework-surrenders-cops-0

Laurențiu Gabor pursed his lips and looked over at his partner, saying, “Can we believe them?”

“I don’t see why not,” said Tereza Dalca. “We know the guy blew the face off the dog.”

“Does it follow that there’s a faceless dog roaming the streets of Minneapolis though?” Laurentiu said.

“We can ask the victim and her dead daughter,” Tereza said, “but I’d really rather not call up that psychic again. He gave me the creeps.”

Laurentiu snorted, “He gave you the flu – on purpose.”

She shrugged. “We have to catch the thing before it kills again.”

“I’m open to ideas,” he said, tapping the computer screen to clear the file. “Animal Control hasn’t had any luck…”

“Luck is something you have your financial advisor buy on the Exchange. We’re a bureaucracy – we have to order our stuff after filling out the forms in quintuplicate.”

Laurentiu scowled. “We have to do something. What if the thing’s developed a taste for kids?”

Tereza gripped her lower lip between her pointer finger and thumb, rolling it thoughtfully. Finally she said, “There’s always your nephew.”

“He’s twenty-one now! Not like last time!”

“Yeah, but he looks like a kid. He’d be perfect. We know where the looney blew the dog’s face off. We know where the kid was attacked and killed. So we send your innocent looking…”

Laurentiu snorted, saying, “He’s about as innocent as any other twenty-one-year-old...”

“Exactly!”

Neither of them noticed the pit bull laying quietly on the ground under the dumpster. Neither one of them would have been able to detect the invisible leash or the invisible woman holding the leash unless they’d been looking closely to see the glamour’s shimmer. They would not have appreciated her wicked grin if they’d seen her. They also wouldn’t have appreciated the way she tugged on the faceless dog’s leash – especially because her own face was mostly missing as well…

Names: ♀ Romania; ♂ Romania

Image: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51niGRrH6DL.jpg

AT MY FAVORITE PLACE:

STUPEFYING STORIES!

The Week in Review • 10 November 2024 ~ Stupefying Stories Magazine

MINING THE ASTEROIDS Part 26: NEAR EARTH PASS Asteroids MIGHT TEMPT REALITY!

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

“Mining and returning platinum or gold from asteroids could make a person a trillionaire overnight, with the potential to flip our entire economy, trade, and market.”

While this sounds ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC, how realistic is it? Well, according to this article, “…2024 PT5 is part of Arjuna, an asteroid belt consisting of space rocks that follow orbits around the Sun very similar to that of Earth. ‘And for that reason, sometimes they remain briefly trapped in our gravitational field,’ Dr. Cappelluti said.”

Never heard of this asteroid belt? Neither had I: “Arjunas are a group of asteroids that have a nearly circular orbit around the Sun. They also have orbital period of a year. Essentially, they are the Earth’s closest neighbors, sharing the same space around the sun.”

While it seems likely that the Arjunas are asteroids captured by the sun from the general space debris following both creation and collisions in the ancient Solar System, there’s a possibility that they are made of “stuff” that’s similar to Earth in more ways than one. Also, as they follow the same orbit we do, intercepting them would SEEM to be a matter of Earth first “dropping” a cluster of probes and satellites, then setting them in a “station-keeping” orbit to wait until the Arjunas asteroid “catches up to them”, then initiate an orbital insertion and landing on the surface.

Let’s say that the probe discovers deposits of primarily iron, with a few possible traces of the precious metals: gold, silver, palladium, and platinum. A crew of miners were prepared ahead of time and launch. They begin work, seeking the asteroid with robotic micro-miners, swarms of diggers who sniff out the metals. Several months later, they lift from the surface of the asteroid and set a station-keeping orbit with holds laden with iron and other valuable ore.

In THIS scenario, all they’re carrying is metal ore, unprocessed. This would carry two advantages: first of course is that holds full of “rocks” aren’t nearly as tempting to hijackers who would have a long, hard processing road ahead of them instead of flying away with ingots of gold and girders of iron.

Secondly, the crew of the asteroid mining team are descendants of old-Earth-based miners. Skills gained by corporations and individuals and trainers over centuries of Earthly mining, would perhaps be more easily adaptable to space.

The mining and processing equipment itself might not have to be invented from scratch, either, but maybe adapted, set upon by micro-made “builders” who begin with the original Earth-made smelter, then adapted by an AI and retooled from the original into a similar one that might process Arjuna asteroid ores.

While this isn’t exactly “exciting” in a story sense, it’s MORE exciting in a “Hey, this could possibly happen!” sense. There are still chances for story to take place here – for example, what if the “micro-made builders” get out of control? What if their sheer MASS give them sapience? Will environmentalists protest of the “ruining the pristine nature of space, knuckling under the conglomerate mentality of ‘USE EVERYTHING FOR HUMANITY!”?

What if some of the miners hack the AI run mining equipment (or more interestingly, join forces!) to build clandestine colonies on the asteroid and hijack it for themselves?

These and more thoughts, and even thoughts leading to events unimaginable today, await as Humanity and AI leap from Earth and into space…

Today’s Source: https://www.sci.news/space/space-mining-13350.html; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arjuna_asteroid; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arjuna; https://www.news9live.com/science/arjuna-asteroid-2023-fy3-may-collide-with-earth-within-next-100-years-2408435;
Foundational Resource: (A general Wikipedia post detailing what the authors currently know about asteroid mining: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining)
Noted Resources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_asteroid_close_approaches_to_Earth, https://www.pharostribune.com/news/local_news/article_7fcd3ea5-3c14-533f-a8d5-9bf629922f34.html, https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/04/29/like-asteroid-mining-be-careful-what-you-wish-for/, https://www.nps.gov/wrbr/learn/historyculture/theroadtothefirstflight.htm, https://hackaday.com/2019/03/27/extraterrestrial-excavation-digging-holes-on-other-worlds/, https://www.planetary.org/space-missions/every-small-worlds-mission

Image: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/A2D5/production/_114558614_hls-eva-apr2020.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAY 649

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: good vs evil If you’ve never read THE DARK IS RISING sequence by Susan Cooper – you should! (https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Rising-Sequence/dp/0689829833)

Current Event: http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/12/politics/ukraine-russia-sanctions-us-eu/

This is just an idea day, so read the article above about the possibility of Vladimir Putin reassembling the old USSR out of its original annexed nations.

What if he was training a group of teens and then lost control of them to the demon Blud, who sows disorientation – chaos – wherever he goes… and a group of them met at an abandoned “reeducation camp” east of Moscow…to discover they were avatars of Perun, Morana, Triglav, and Belobog…and didn’t particularly WANT the Union to pull back together? What if they set out to stop Vladimir Putin, who, by all accounts is a devout Christian? What might happen in Russia then... (http://hollowverse.com/vladimir-putin/)...

Resources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Slavic_mythological_figures
Names: All Russian or Polish...

Image: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/71/e5/9871e52bbc09c525af21b8f6471eab15.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS/SLICE OF PIE: The Movie AVENGERS Endgame, the End Times, the Rapture of the Church, and the Final Battle Between Good and Evil – Odd Parallels

On October 7, 2007, I started this blog. Seventeen years later, I am revising and doing some different things with my blog. My wife and I are now retired senior citizens, our kids are both married, we have a bonus daughter and her wife and we have three grandchildren, the oldest of which just became a teenager. I have forty-five professional publications, plus countless other publications as a slushpile reader, and sometime essay contributor to Stupefying Stories https://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/ These days, I write whenever I want to – or when I’m not busy exploring the world with my wife or kids or grandkids. I write and read constantly. Then I discovered that I was writing longer and longer pieces. My new focus is to write shorter; and to write HUMOR. On purpose. Maybe I can still irritate people while being funny. It works pretty well for John Scalzi! We’ll see what happens.

By the way – I’ve been offline from the blog as well as some emails and Face Book because my computer all of a sudden stopped working a week ago. It just turned off and wouldn’t turn back on. After talking with my son, he made a few connections (he built his own computer from spare parts when he was 12 or 13; it’s been part of his job on the Army for the past 12 years, so he “sorta” knows what he’s doing around computers. Anyway, he had me try a few things, including a charger he’d ordered; and was set to come over yesterday to take it apart and start testing if certain components were fried…when the stupid thing just started working again. He said something in mysterious Computer Mumbo Jumbo which I didn’t understand at all except for a word that might have sounded like “bios” from the Lenovo corporation…and now I’m back online. So, here goes:

I'm almost positive to offend a certain kind of person who would read this...so be warned if you are either a Christian or an Avengers fan.

My wife and I finished watching AVENGERS: Endgame for about the fiftieth time, and for the twentieth time when I suddenly realized that there were startling parallels between AE (Avengers: Endgame) and ETE (End Times Eschatology).

First and foremost, is that Thanos (Greek, short for Athanasios, or “immortal”) causes half of all life IN THE UNIVERSE to vanish into a cloud of gray dust with a snap of his fingers after he gathers the Infinity Stones. Their divinity didn’t matter. Their power didn’t matter. They were gone.

In the Christian Church, there is a doctrine called “Escatology, the part of theology concerned with death, judgment, and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind.

‘Christian hope is concerned with eschatology, or the science of last things.” A BRANCH of eschatology is called Dispensational Futurism. “The futurist interpretation of the book of Revelation is one of four approaches to understanding the prophecies of Revelation…The basic premise of the futurist viewpoint is that the majority of the prophecies in Revelation still await a future, literal fulfillment. This view of interpreting Revelation is very popular today, particularly among dispensationalists. It is the method used by the authors of the bestselling Left Behind series. Those who hold this view generally believe that everything after Revelation 3 will be fulfilled in the future.” (https://www.gotquestions.org/futurist-Revelation.html)

Within DF, you’ll find the peculiar variety that attracted me as a kid who loved science fiction. Because the belief is that the Church will suffer a world-wide, all encompassing persectution during which Satan attempts to destroy all Christians. Its duration is divided into three arguments: Pre-Tribulation, during which the Church would be Raptured or “taken up”, and NOT suffer at all. This point of view is based on a single Bible verse: 1 Thessalonians 4:17. Other arguments are that the Church would be taken from Earth DURING the Tribulation (mid-Trib); where the Chuch will suffer for 3.5 years then be Raptured; or Post Trib, during which the Church will suffer for seven years, then the survivors be released without suffering death.

This is eeriely similar to what Thanos did to half of all life in the Universe. With a snap of his fingers, all suffering of those released was stopped – though if you were in the Quantum Universe, you’d apparently survive unscathed.

Before, during, or after a period of suffering, Christian Eschatology sees a huge war between the powers of Good and Evil. In AVENGERS: ENDGAME, the battle comes at the very end of the movie. The remaining, battered, broken, and hurting Avengers and their allies, stand before the numberless throngs of Thanos’ minions.

Then the Lost return, albeit through Magical Portals, including all of the vanished of Earth’s Greatest Heroes – including Spiderman, Black Panther, Doctor Strange, and others, equally dear and valued. These heroes engage the armies of Thanos (which also include a High Priest as well as various other generals and monsters).

When the head Archangel Michael…er…Captain Marvel, returns with her God-like powers from protecting the Rest of the Universe, she arrives with Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, as well as Salathiel, Jegudiel, Barachiel, and Jeremiel, to effortlessly slaughter the minions of Thanos/Satan. Together, they not only VANQUISH the forces of Thanos/Satan, but Tony Stark/Iron Man, snaps his fingers to destroy Thanos and his army. He has given his life for the lives of the rest of the UNIVERSE and dies from the irreversible damage the Infinity Stones cause to his body.

Please don’t get me wrong – I LOVE the movies in the Marvel Universe (like everyone I have my favorites!), but Infinity War and Endgame are by far and a long shot my favorites – partly because I can see my own beliefs in the end times in the stories. The movies NEVER fail to bring me to tears when the wreath remembering Tony Stark/Iron Man is pushed out into the pond at the farm he and Pepper Pott had retreated to parent their little girl.

But where some may be thinking that it’s great story telling and a fine ending to a great story line, I AM SEEING the end of the universe as we know it and the defeat of NOT just a guy with an ugly face who claims, “I am inevitable!”, by a guy in a rocket-powered, self important, sometime jerk…

I am seeing the defeat of the one who claimed he was master of the universe, the one who tricked the universe away from Humanity (and however many OTHER sapient peoples Satan tricked); and, who was saved from destruction by the true Son of God, who like Tony Stark, gave his life to redeem the universe from evil, but lived a life a bit more...HOLY than Tony ever thought of doing.

Inspiration: Re-watch of AVENGERS: Endgame

Image: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.polygon.com%2F2018%2F6%2F29%2F17380862%2Favengers-4-title-release-date-trailer&psig=AOvVaw3rKMuxcjdlN_5sgx6g7unS&ust=1730785555189000&source=images&cd=vfe&opi=89978449&ved=0CBQQjRxqFwoTCMCV3eT8wYkDFQAAAAAdAAAAABAE

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: Spider-Man: No Way Home, Men In Black 3, Guardians of the Galaxy 2...and Other Tear-Jerkers…

On October 7, 2007, I started this blog. Sixteen years later, I am revising and doing some different things with my blog. My wife and I are now retired senior citizens, our kids are both married, we have a bonus daughter and her wife and we have three grandchildren, the oldest of which just became a teenager. I have forty-five professional publications, plus countless other publications as a slushpile reader, and sometime essay contributor to Stupefying Stories https://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/.

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

Do you find yourself tearing up or weeping uncontrollably whenever you watch Spider-Man: No Way Home, the Back To The Future Trilogy, AVENGERS: Infinity War, and Men In Black 3?

No? It’s only me?

Maybe if I just explain a bit, you’ll recall the time you found yourself crying during these emotionally charged movies and you’ll agree with me!

OK, I’m starting with Spider-Man: No Way Home (herewith: NWH) because my wife and I just finished watching it. First of all, we all know that Peter Parker is a young man with no real male role-model left in his life. His mom and dad were killed (mostly in a plane crash, though sometimes murdered) and he was raised by his Aunt May and Uncle Ben. In NWH, we find three versions of Peter who show up in HIS universe via Ned creating multidimensional portals and them hopping through. Their meeting is convenient at first, until they start “sharing” and they all find out they’ve lost someone important to them. (PS: Apparently ALL the Spider-Mans in this movie are weepy, too). But the scene that gets to me is the very end when they all say “Goodbye” to each other Peter NWH knowing what’s coming. He tells Doctor Strange that he wants EVERYONE to forget that Spider-Man is Peter Parker, and the look Strange gives him – and the understanding on Peter NWH’s face make me weep harder, until I’m using my hanky to wipe my eyes.

In Men in Black 3 (MIB3), J (Will Smith) has been bitter his entire life because he grew up without a father. Sadly, the reason I never questioned this is because I fell prey to the “Black Father” meme – that “all black men are bad fathers and leave their families”. While patently NOT true, if you ask honest White people, they’ll usually admit that they’ve subconsciously bought into the lie.

It's so insidious that even J has bought into it.

MIB3 wouldn’t work if anyone watching it assumes that J’s dad is gone for the same reason we all think we know…What none of us THINK is that J’s dad, Colonel James Darrell Edwards Jr. died a hero, protecting his country. When J witnesses that, realizes that HE was the little boy that K neuralizes…I weep.

In the Back-To-the-Future Trilogy (BTTFT), Marty McFly’s dad is a spineless, fawning twerp whom NOBODY, not even Marty can respect. Instead, Marty has latched onto Doc Brown as a father figure and willingly follows him through alternate timelines (sensing a pattern here yet?) – and helps him fix the past, present and future that MARTY screwed up by creating a terrified by BRAVE George (his dad) and altering the timeline. He and Doc spend the rest of the first and the next three fixing the timeline…

The place where I find myself weeping every time is when Marty tries to keep Doc Brown from being murdered by the “Libyan terrorists”…but fails, even AFTER stealing the De Laurean and working so hard to fix everything. He sees Doc gunned down and runs up to the (bloodlessly) dead Doc Brown and break down, weeping. As I do…then Doc wakes up, show Marty his Kevlar vest, and shrugs off the slight tweak to the timelines…of course, saving Doc Brown from being murdered by Mad Dog Tannen merely changes the PERSON who dies. Horrified, Doc Brown sets out to save Marty…

In Guardians of the Galaxy 2 (GG2), Quill thinks he’s found his father, and has!

The problem is that his father is a psychopathic god who only wanted a child so he could create another creature that was half himself. The purpose of that, is to get his DNA and then recreate himself forever…or something stupid like that. Yondu, the alien with the head fin, who both told him the only reason he kept Quinn around was because he “was a runt and could get into small places” and constantly kept Peter in terror by threatening to eat him”. What we eventually find out is that Yondu saved Quill from certain death when he found out about Ego siring children on every sapient life form in the known universe, then murdering the resulting, “disappointing” child when they proved they didn’t carry his “god genes”. When he realizes the truth, he honors Yondu as his true father.

Lastly, there’s the relationship between Tony Stark and Spider-Man H: and this is one that BOTH of them became a true father and son team. Stark’s father, while he DID have strong feelings about Tony, was totally incapable of sharing them with his SON. He had no trouble sharing those feelings with the adult Tony when they shared a “two-men-whose-wives-were-expecting” moment in the past. Nor did he have any trouble sharing those feelings on a movie made about his “vision” of the future of humanity – but ending with “I built [Stark Expo] for you…it represents a whole lot more than people's inventions…one day you'll figure this out. And when you do, you will change the world. What is, and will always be, my greatest creation…is you.” Tony’s need to repair his relationship with his father was IMPOSSIBLE TO DO as his father was long dead by the time he found the film.

Spider-Man H/Peter Parker H was in desperate need of a strong father figure. The two of them were a match made in Heaven – or the Multiverse (feel free to choose according to your belief system!) And it worked. Tony Stark turned Stark Industries over to a much more caring and responsible Peter Parker H; and he saved the world by using the Infinity Stones he snatched from Thanos to putting it back to a time BEFORE Thanos had eliminated half of all life in the UNIVERSE…

That cost him his life, but he was almost happy to pay the price. He certainly “won over the Woman”, and he certainly received a son’s adoration from Peter Parker H. When he dies at the end of Infinity War…I cry every time.

So, there you go! Everything you need to know!

“Excuse me?” I listen, then reflect the question back to the Asker, “You still don’t know why I’m the one who weeps at all of these scenes?” (and I’m sure I’ve missed many others). I nod, then reply, “I was hoping that you hadn’t noticed me dodge that bullet.” Listen, then nod sagely, “I suppose I DO owe you that.” I purse my lips, breathe in deeply through my nose, release the breath slowly, conjure up a stool, sit and say:

My relationship with my own father AS SEEN BY ME was fraught. I was born when Mom and Dad didn’t have much money, and after mom quit (it WAS after all, 1957) to stay home and “raise the children”, Dad go another job. He was a general laborer, who’s someone in the construction job site hierarchy whose rank is virtually 0, with 10 being the Site Supervisor (aka The Suit In The Hard Hat). He needed another job to feed his growing family, so he worked oil changing and “whatever” at a local, NON-Chain garage (Tony’s, if you must know). He bowled in the winter, played softball in the summer, and all-in-all, put food on the table in the Best Of Times, and did scab work (non-Union carpentry) when we had to use food stamps in the Worst Of Times.

He didn’t seem to have much time for me; and as I loathed organized sports (after a DISASTROUS attempt at Little League Baseball when I was seven: I was always the right fielder (as it was the position that saw the least action). Remember the scenes in MEET THE ROBINSON’S when Goob (Michael Yagoobian) plays baseball, drops the catch in the Championship Game? That was me at 7…only our team wasn’t that great – and I was the worst of them. Even the coach was disparaging.

I’m pretty sure Dad was embarrassed. I have a picture of me at about two years. Mom and Dad had dressed me up in a baby-sized football helmet, shoulder pads, and put a football in my hands. Scrawled on the back in my mom’s feminine script are the words, “No interest at all!” Yep. Those words might as well have been tattooed on my forehead. My dad had played basketball and football; brother #1: football, hockey (school, traveling, college with scholarship), baseball; brother #2: (choir) football, hockey, track and field (State Record shot-putter); sister: ?, volleyball, softball, Mom: college fencing (!!!).

Me? Reading; just call me a square peg in a round hole.

Near the end, Dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and because I was closest physically, much of the day-to-day contact with Mom and Dad fell to me. No problem, but by then, my feelings of animosity toward my dad was pretty much a hard shell. I find myself wishing all these movies were about Dad and me reconciling...but by the end, he hardly knew me, and I was exhausted.

And then, to add insult to injury, I NEVER had a substitute Dad…no male figure ever tucked me under his wing and made certain I was being nurtured and was genuinely interested in whatever it was I was doing. I became very bitter – and I’m quite certain some psychologist would find a goldmine of various and sundry psychological neuroses, etc. to dig up and confront me with and prescribe treatment. But the fact is that I’m not interested because I’ve found my own comfort.

Besides those I note above, IMDb lists some 1300 “sci-fi, father-son relationship” movies. If you drop the sci-fi, the number LEAPS to over 21,000. I’m clearly NOT the only person who has experienced and tried to reconcile this relationship. When I type in, “sci-fi, father-son reconciliation”, I get 70 hits…of which, three are sci-fi (two are actually horror), and one episode of an old TV show…and then the list repeats the 35 selections again to give a nice 70…FWIW, none of the entries are the movies above…

So, why did I write all of this? It’s all fantasy, right? I all of a sudden realized that
I’ve been looking for a reconciliation with my father most of my life. He died of complications of Alzheimer’s five years ago, so there’s no chance that I’ll EVER reconcile in reality, but now I understand why, when I see that happening in movies – and I react with grief.

Now that I know that, perhaps what I’ll start doing is WRITING my way into reconciliation by focusing my narrative on creating those kinds of stories. The kinds of stories I'd LIKE to see…

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_and_Mary_Parker#:~:text=Richard%20and%20Mary%20Parker%20appear,Uncle%20Ben%20and%20Aunt%20May's.,
Image: https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/two-old-men-exchange-a-brotherly-hug-picture-id156894368?s=612x612

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 648

Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc.) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them. Octavia Butler said, “SF doesn’t really mean anything at all, except that if you use science, you should use it correctly, and if you use your imagination to extend it beyond what we already know, you should do that intelligently.”

SF Trope: “The Space Whale Aesop suggests a real, viable course of action ("don't perform nuclear tests") by presenting fantastic consequences ("radiation from the tests will awaken a giant monster that destroys Tokyo") instead of a more realistic but not quite as dramatic example ("it can burn whole buildings if someone is careless"). Overlaps with Gaia's Vengeance if the intended message is an environmental one, which it often is.”

Recentt Event: Earth Day April 22, 2024

Paraskeui Russo pursed her lips and said, “Everyone’s positive this is a safe test?” She wasn’t one of the science staff overseeing the test of a fast reentry vehicle. In fact, she wasn’t even out of high school yet, but after she won second place in a contest that was supposed to provide a near-instantaneous evacuation of Space Station Courage.

Mychajlo Dąbrowski shook his head and said, “They wouldn’t be doing it if it wasn’t safe.” It was his project they were testing. His was the First Place Winner. Not that this was exactly what he’d proposed. His idea had been to make a bunch of reentry pods from waste-metal, melted and inflated with pressurized waste CO2. The rapid expansion of the gas would have cooled it, cooling the bubble. Cutting a doorway, outfitting it with a rebreathing mechanism, then coating all of them with melt from the asteroid smelter orbiting a bit higher that SS Courage. They could be tethered anywhere, everywhere.

Para shook her head, “Lots of scientists thought fission was a safe idea.”

Mych grunted. The contest was supposed be an innovative solution that would prevent an incident like the Sindikat Rossiyskikh Soyuznikov Space Station Muzhestvo – which had been badly holed and there hadn’t been enough life pods to save more than a hundred of the five hundred people who lived there. “No argument from me.”

Para looked at him, surprised. “You agree with me?”

Mych shook his head and hissed. “Watch! They’re launching.”

She scowled, but turned her full attention to the viewscreens. Instead of waste-metal bubbles, the Combined Forces part of the station had taken Mych’s idea and left out the rebreathers – those could be snatched while evacuating – and replaced them with variable explosives. Now called Situationally Designed ReEntry Shrapnel – SiDeReES or Sidereez – the things were being live tested today.

The first cluster of what looked like a large bunch of silver grapes was drifting out of orbit, headed down to Earth. They disappeared from sight. The window shivered and a sensor image replaced it. The capsules had started to glow red. Even as they did, the alarms in the space station suddenly began to shrill and wall panels began to glow red, fade, then glow red again. Station Command came over the public address, saying, “All crew please report to emergency stations. All others report to your emergency gathering points. This is not a drill.” The voice went on to repeat.

Para looked at Mych and said, “What do you think’s happening?”

Mych’s eyes bugged wide. She turned to look at the screen. He said, “The planet – something’s happening.”

First a hole appeared to open abruptly in the surface of the Pacific Ocean. Then it widened into a gap, for all the world like a mouth opening. Where the nose would have been on a face, were the Hawaiian Islands. They were fiery pustules in the ocean that spread to engulf the entire chain, spewing lava into the water that boiled into steam. The Sidereez fell toward the mouth. For whatever reason, water was no longer pouring into the mouth-like crevasse. Simultaneously, it appeared that volcanoes had erupted in northern Mexico and on the Russian Syndicated Federation’s side of the Bering Strait.

Para blinked and whispered, “It looks like a face...” Space Station Courage shivered.

The voice said, “All personnel report to evacuation pods immediately. All personnel report…”

That voice cut off and another took its place, low, resonant, but definitely female. It was just definitely not Human and spoke words that neither teen had ever heard before. Mych said, “She’s speaking Russian.”

“Not Russian, Greek,” Para said. They looked at each other, then grabbed hands and ran to an evac pod, a few dozen meters from where they’d been watching. The station shivered, loud groans echoing down hallways whose pressure doors could no longer shut because the frames were no longer true.

The voice of the planet sounded, no matter what language they heard, like an immense Humpback Whale singing as it said, “Enough is enough...”

Names: ♀ Greece, Italy; ♂ Ukraine, Poland
Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e1/Falcon_9_Demo-2_Launching_6_%283%29.jpg/220px-Falcon_9_Demo-2_Launching_6_%283%29.jpg

SLICE OF PIE: MARTIAN HOLIDAY: Another Layer of Latent…

I’ve written a number of times about C. S. Lewis’ quote regarding Christian writers creating works in which their beliefs are latent rather than blatant:

http://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2008/01/flashicle-4-writing-longer-short.html 

 http://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2010/03/possibly-irritating-essays-latent.html 

 http://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2010/02/pie-dragons-and-christians-and.html   http://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2007/09/christianity-disappears-in-space-ii.html 

http://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2009/07/slice-of-pie-why-do-we-need-christian.html (Until this moment, I didn’t realize just HOW many times I’d written on the subject...

At any rate, today it occurred to me abruptly that any philosophy might be promulgated in this way. In fact, several writers whose work I enjoy immensely and whom I respect use the methodology of injecting their specific belief systems into their writing without “preaching”. Few writers do more than latently promote their ideology; though some do so more blatantly. In fact, Christian writers who try to write science fiction and fantasy and other speculative fiction “with a message”, might learn a thing or two from writers who simply allow their beliefs to permeate their work.

The examples below are single phrases in much larger novels and while they pitch a particular philosophical viewpoint, they don’t hammer the belief, either.

Frank Herbert, DUNE: “When law and duty are one, united by religion, you never become fully conscious, fully aware of yourself. You are always a little less than an individual.” – from “Muad’Dib: The Ninety-Nine Wonders of the Universe” by Princess Irulan (p 408)

Anne McCaffrey, DRAGONSDAWN: “‘We may not be religious in the archaic meaning of the word, but it makes good sense to give worker and beast one day’s rest,’ Emily stated in the second of the mass meetings. ‘The old Judean Bible used by some of the old religious sects on Earth contained a great many commonsensical suggestions for an agricultural society, and some moral and ethical traditions which are worthy of retention, she held up her hand, smiling benignly – ‘but without any hint of fanatic adherence. We left that back on Earth along with war!’” (p 112)

Lois McMaster Bujold, BARRAYAR: “The two shall be made one flesh. How literal that ancient pious mouthing had turned out to be.” (p 474)

Carl Sagan, CONTACT: “But imagine that your kind of god – omnipotent, omniscient, compassionate – really wanted to leave a record for future generations, to make his existence unmistakable to, say, the remote descendants of Moses. It’s easy, trivial. Just a few enigmatic phrases, and some fierce commandments that they be passed on unchanged…Such as ‘The Sun is a star.’” (p 136)

Jack McDevitt, ODYSSEY: “‘It can be a major loss, Mac,’ [Valya] said, finally. ‘There are times when you need to be able to believe in a higher power, or you can’t make it through.’…[Mac replied], ‘Maybe. But the notion that we need a higher power, that’s more a human failing than a reflection of reality. The universe pays no attention to what we need. Truth is what it is, and the inconveniences it might cause us don’t change anything.’” (p 203)

David Weber, OFF ARMAGEDDON REEF: (I’ve commented on his work at length here: http://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2008/08/slice-of-pie-by-schism-rent-asunder.html )

It's been a long time since I thought about how I can, as a Christian share my faith without coming across as mean-spirited, superior, and anything that Jesus WASN'T (since 2010, so...fourteen years have passed) while writing a true science fiction novel. I need to learn from the masters – only a few phrases can share your faith and get the Word into the hearts and minds of unbelievers who might be seeking life in Christ without even knowing it.

I finished my novel, MARTIAN HOLIDAY (serialized here over a period of several years), and completed about a year ago...and submitted almost two months ago. I sent it first to Christian speculative fiction publisher ENCLAVE PUBLISHING  (https://www.enclavepublishing.com/), who sent it back without comment seven weeks later...

So, I sent it to a secular publisher -- and I'm waiting to see what they think. I'll keep you posted here, though it may take a YEAR before I hear anything at all. Then again, that's the way it IS in publishing.

I'm going to dig back into the book, which is overtly Christian, though without preaching too much. But like I've been doing lately, I wonder if I made a comment or statement in the book that might summarize my own faith and the evangelical intent of the book...

I'll let you know if I find it!

Image: https://www.englishcathedrals.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Exeter-Mars-Photo-c-Dave-Parry-Press-Association-P.jpg