The Launch of Artemis II To Voyage Around the MOON For the FIRST TIME IN OVER 50 Years...

Just so you know...I was 13 when Armstrong walked on the Moon in 1969. We were at friends' house to watch. Afterward, I ran outside and looked up at the full Moon...to see if I could see Apollo 11 orbiting the Moon.

Today? I wept tears of joy...

IDEA ON TUESDAY 705

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)

H Trope: Attack of the Killer Whatever

Current Event: “In various Stephen King short stories, he has had people attacked by novelty chattering teeth, paintings, a toy monkey, evil toads... If it can be seen as even vaguely creepy by anybody in the Western world, chances are it's killed somebody in a Stephen King story.”

Liam Johnson held his Kindle, staring down at it.

Sophia Smith, sitting next to him, said, “What are you waiting for?”

The roar of voices in the lunch room was almost deafening. He didn’t hear her – or didn’t respond – until she nudged him.

When he looked over at her, there wasn’t any color in even HIS usually pasty face. His freckles, even now that he was fifteen, still stood out on his face like spaghetti sauce blotches. At least he’d got his hair cut super short over winter break, Sophia thought with approval. The red stuff at shoulder length had been almost too much to stand! He said, “The last time I read a new Stephen King book, I almost died.”

Sophia shook her head and took a bite of her taco salad then made a face. “The food didn’t get any better over break, I’ll tell you that much. Why can’t they just order out from Taco Bell?”

“You’re not listening to me!” Liam said.

“Sure I am – the last time you read this guy’s book, you almost pissed yourself.”

“I didn’t say that. I said I almost DIED.”

Shaking her head, she toasted him with another forkful of salad and said, “Whatever.”

He stood up abruptly, looking down at her with the strangest look then said, “I gotta go.”

“Go where? It’s the first day of a new semester. You don’t have any homework.” She sighed, he could be almost as dramatic as her friends. She grabbed his sleeve and pulled him down on his chair again. “OK – let’s start at the beginning.”

The cafeteria was jammed and someone had been moving in on Liam’s seat when she pulled him back. If it had been another freshman, she wouldn’t have bothered, but the look the guy was shooting at her was deadly. She grabbed her lunch tray without letting go of Liam and said, “This was making me sick, anyway.” She tossed it into the nearby garbage can and towing him after her, made her way to the stairwell.

The supervisor knew them both and waved them through. When the door shut behind them, muted to a dull roar, she said, “The last story this guy wrote almost killed you…” she paused.

He wouldn’t meet her eye, looking down at his ereader. Finally he lifted his chin and said, “Listen, I know it sounds crazy, but his stories...they’re somehow linked to me.”

“You mean like ‘Stranger Than Fiction’ linked to you?”

He make as if he were thinking, then shook his head, “Not that closely linked.” He pursed his lips, sucked the top one between his teeth then said, “I love reading…”

“Duh!” she said, slugging him softly on the shoulder. “I do, too.”

“Nah, you like your Ebony and Essence,” he held up one hand defensively, “Not that that’s bad! You’re like my only friend that reads as much as me, but,” he looked down again, “When I read a Stephen King book or story, I get sucked into it. I can’t explain it, exactly. It’s like the book is about me, but not about me. That’s why I don’t dare read his newest one...which I got for Christmas...which I can’t NOT read...which, if I do is gonna kill me. Like, for real...”

She grabbed his Kindle, cussing, and thumbed it on. The cover of the book showed a guy who looked like he was delivering mail in a tornado. In bold, red letters across the bottom – smaller than Stephen King’s name in bolder, redder letters across the top, was the word, MAIL…”

Names: ♀ ; ♂ Most common US names 2014
Image: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51niGRrH6DL.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: And The Best Captain In Star Fleet Is...

Over five years ago (January 26, 2021), I wrote the following essay for a website called STUPEFYING STORIES (the article was here and there are HUNDREDS of other articles and stories on the site: https://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com) I STILL LOVE IT! (Follow the link at the end of the article to the story!)

The best captain in Star Fleet is not named Kirk or Picard?! What is this madness?!?!?!

But seriously, consider...

Captain, father, diplomat, religious figure? For three seasons, Benjamin Sisko held the rank of Captain, and was then promoted to Commander for the last three. In my humble opinion, Sisko blew away Kirk (both Shatner and Pine), Picard, Janeway, Archer, and Lorca—blew them right out of the water—plus, he didn't have a starship to flash around in, just a dumpy old space station that broke down every other episode.

Picard was given the top-tech flagship of the Federation. Kirk captained the first starship to actually go on an exploratory mission (though the TOS version of the Enterprise didn’t seem to do much actual exploring or research). Lorca’s job was to save the Federation from a devastating war with the Klingon Empire. Archer took the very first Warp 5 starship and led the very first mission out of Human space, albeit under the watchful eye of the Vulcans, who stood ready to mop up any mess Archer got into. Janeway, with an amazing ship, had to rip disaster out of the mouth of diplomacy as practiced by the Federation and the Cardassian Empire.

Sisko got a ruined space station, intentionally sacked by the departing Cardassian former owners, a deeply suspicious population below who wanted nothing more than to get rid of all these frickin’ aliens and go back to Life As We Knew It…

Oh, and Siskko’s “liaison” with the Bajoran Transitional Government was one of their most celebrated terrorists, who saw the Federation as just another version of the Cardassians.

“Here you go, Sisko. Let’s see what you can do with this. Hehehehehehe…”

Woops, I forgot: along with an actively hostile civilian government on the world below; and an actively hostile military government a few moments away by starship (which neither he nor the Bajorans had access to); there’s also a clandestine observation by an actively hostile alien entity that can detach bits of itself to take on the shape of anything in order to spy on you.

His son Jake’s best friend was so altered by his relationship with the Siskos that he chose to become the first Ferengi to enlist in Star Fleet (and he eventually became a captain, too), which of course, ended up ameliorating the ”money-grubbing” nature of the Ferengi so much so that Rom, Quark’s brother, became the new Grand Nagus.

Oh, and another thing: Benjamin Sisko was the only one of the captains who dared to take the really risky voyage of marriage and family life. [Though Kirk apparently tried, briefly, and admittedly failed, except for the making-a-kid-part. In the canon Kirk tolerated fatherhood for an undisclosed amount of time, then ditched that ball-and-chain like an irritating Orion slave girl—though apparently in Orion culture it’s actually the men who are the slaves of the women who only pretend to be slaves, which is yet another interesting and kinky little corner of the Star Trek universe that remains unexplored.]

In addition to the above, Sisko’s son chose to be a writer, and eventually became deeply involved in Bajoran spirituality and Fulfilling the Prophecy and Freeing the Prophets and Restoring Balance to the Universe and all that stuff that made some sort of sense if you watched all the episodes in sequence, but that is impossible to explain to anyone who hasn’t.

Back to Benjamin Sisko. When confronted with the clandestine observation by an actively hostile alien entity called The Great Link, whose stated intention is to destroy all Solids; and which could detach bits of itself that could assume human-like form in order to spy on Humans, one of which ended up on DS9 and called itself Odo; Odo became so loyal to Sisko that he very nearly refused to halt a plague given to The Great Link because he’d fallen in love with a Solid. Odo’s respect and love for Nerice and Sisko then made him reenter The Great Link with the cure for the plague and save all of it/them, bringing about the end of the Dominion, the downfall of the Cardassian Empire (again), and the integration of a bit of Star Fleet into the Prophets of the Wormhole.

Talk about your big redemption series ending!

So let’s just tot this up. Benjamin Sisko:

• saved Bajor

• reformed the top Bajoran terrorist
• forever altered Ferengi social fabric
• became a religious icon
• fulfilled sundry religious prophecies, including the Final Prophecy of the entire Bajoran civilization
• saved and reformed an entire collective alien life form, in the process ending the Dominion War
• earned the respect of the Cardassian Empire

And he did this all without a starship, using just a dilapidated, booby-trapped, former prison of a space station as his base.

So tell me again, exactly what did Kirk, Picard, Janeway, Archer, or Lorca ever do that compared to that?
Finally, from a reality standpoint, Benjamin Sisko has been relegated to being an unsung hero of the Federation. Why doesn’t he receive more accolades? How many real biases did he topple? At the very least, two: he was the anti-absent black father and the anti-uneducated black male. Despite all of this, not only is Sisko—or more correctly, Avery Brooks—pretty much forgotten, he should in fact be a major hero in Star Trek canon.

But he’s not. People rave all the time about Kirk or Picard. Not only did Sisko/Brooks end up being a fictional invisible man, he actually tried to bring this up in the infrequently mentioned DS9 episode, “Far Beyond the Stars.”

Brooks commented:

“If we had changed the people's clothes, this story could be about right now. What's insidious about racism is that it is unconscious. Even among these very bright and enlightened characters – a group that includes a woman writer who has to use a man's name to get her work published, and who is married to a brown man with a British accent in 1953 – it's perfectly reasonable to coexist with someone like Pabst. It’s in the culture, it’s the way people think. So that was the approach we took. I never talked about racism. I just showed how these intelligent people think, and it all came out of them.”

However, it wasn’t supposed to be entirely about racism. Brooks added,

“The people thought it was about racism, well maybe so, maybe not [….] But the fact of the matter in 'Far Beyond the Stars' is that you have a man who essentially was conceiving of something far beyond what people around him had ever imagined, and therefore they thought he was crazy.”

This episode was Avery Brooks' personal favorite.
“I’d have to say, it was the most important moment for me in the entire seven years…It should have been a two-parter.”

Rene Auberjonois commented:
“Brilliant episode. One of the best of the whole series and Avery did a fabulous job of directing it.”

Michael Dorn said:
“It was wonderfully shot.”

Penny Johnson commented:
“This was beautifully handled and beautifully shot. But it still, in the heart, it got me.”

J.G. Hertzler commented:
“I thought it was one you could have built an entire series from. There was a scene toward the end where he falls apart with the camera right in front of his nose. It was just riveting.”

The same scene was also extremely memorable for Nana Visitor. Armin Shimerman thought highly of how the installment serves as a reminder of prejudice, especially racism, the actor commenting,

“That's what that episode does terrifically well…it’s perfect science fiction. I think it stretches the imagination of the viewer and breaks down the fourth wall to talk about the real heroes of any TV shows, which are the writers.”

As for me: Benjamin Sisko and Black Panther should have had a face-to-face...*sigh*
 

Go to for the original: 
https://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/2021/01/and-best-captain-in-star-fleet-is.html 

(You'll ALSO find twelve comments from people who read it!)

IDEAS ON TUESDAY 704

Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc.) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them? Regarding Fantasy, this insight was startling: “I see the fantasy genre as an ever-shifting metaphor for life in this world, an innocuous medium that allows the author to examine difficult, even controversial, subjects with impunity. Honor, religion, politics, nobility, integrity, greed—we’ve an endless list of ideals to be dissected and explored. And maybe learned from.” – Melissa McPhail.

Fantasy Trope: Witchcraft For World Peace!!!
Current Event:
http://wildhunt.org/2016/02/call-for-global-witchcraft-community-to-unite-against-terrorism.html

Saga Pai-Teles shook her head then said, “How much do you really expect us to accomplish?”

Djamel Vlach sighed, “I’m sure nothing, but what else can we do that might even conceivably make a difference? I’m not a soldier, and unless you enlisted in the Royal Marines or fought a stint with the Aegis Mercenaries in the past few months, I’m pretty sure you don’t have much experience with fighting, either.”

“But we’re not ‘fighting’ – not like that anyway. Our powers are of Earth, wind, ice, fire, and water.”

“Sounds like the name of an American band from the nineteen seventies.” She frowned at him and made a faint movement with her fingers. He laughed, “You think charms and wardings are going to be able to stave off the black market weaponry of Daesh, or Boko Haram, or the Taliban?”

“Shows how much YOU know! We’re not here to fight anger with anger. We’re here to fight anger with the power of nature and of the true spirit of Humanity. There are way more...”

Djamel wasn’t listening to her. His eyes had grown wide. “OK! Now you’re talking! Taking out Daesh with a hurricane or an earthquake or even a flood is totally cool! I could get into that and I even have a couple of spells that enhance water movement!”

“That’s not what I was talking about,” she stopped talking abruptly. “Then again, I have a couple of other spells that help anyone who’s got a gift for dowsing.”

“What’s that?”

She looked at him steadily and when she had his complete attention, she said, “Dowsing is all about FINDING water, Djamel. If I could find the water…”

“I could direct it.” Djamel scowled again. “My powers aren’t that…um…powerful.”

“Mine, neither. What we need is someone who can magnify or enhance our simple powers,” Saga said.

“I don’t have simple powers! They’re plenty strong enough!”

“That’s not what I meant! In order to deal world peace and muffle terrorism in our time, we have to overcome terror with peace. But it can’t be done if we’re weak.”

“We need, like, a talisman.”

“A crystal, or a…” Sag was saying.

Djamel cut her off, “The Vial of Trench!”

“What’s that?”

“A Vial of water collected from the bottom of the Marianas Trench.” He looked down at her, “Can you think of a more powerful talisman to increase our mission to bring peace on Earth than focusing our meager powers through a vial of water from the bottom of the Earth’s sea?”

“I can’t…”

“We’ll do it and it’ll start now?”

Names: ♀ Finland, Portugal; ♂ Algeria, Hungary

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

JAX LUNAR LUMBER CHAPTER 3B REDUX and REFRESH: “What’s So Funny About Little Green…Trees?”

A couple years ago, I related to my wife that, when I was working for the now-defunct Knox Lumber Company, I was told that if someone were patient, they could buy ALL of the supplies necessary to build a house ON SALE from the store. Knowing the company strictly from the perspective of a “yard ape” (aka Outside Lumberyard Attendant), and having moved zillions of tons (or watched it moved by the truly massive forklift that only a few people were allowed to drive) of building materials – from bags of sand to prefabricated trusses…I believed it. After a moment, I said, “Do you think you could buy the supplies necessary to build a Lunar colony from Knox?” We laughed and I said, “That’s ridiculous!” However, as I thought about it, it occurred to me that it might JUST be possible.

That speculation led to the first “Jax Lunar Lumber” little blurb. It wasn’t even a piece of flash fiction. But lately, after discovering that there are actually things called Moon Trees, and that scientists have just grown rock cress seeds in Lunar soil, I suddenly realize that there might be stories I can harvest from this subject…um…so to speak…

So, we’ve got Lunar Trees scattered around the US and a couple other places on earth: “…the Command Module Pilot on the Apollo 14 mission, to bring a small canister containing about 500 seeds aboard the module in 1971. Seeds for the experiment were chosen from five species of tree: loblolly pine, sycamore, sweetgum, redwood, and Douglas fir. In 2022, NASA announced it would be reviving the moon tree program by carrying 1,000 seeds aboard an Artemis Mission.

“After the flight, the seeds were sent to the southern Forest Service station in Gulfport, Mississippi, and to the western station in Placerville, California, with the intent to germinate them. Nearly all the seeds germinated successfully, and after a few years, the Forest Service had about 420 seedlings. Some of these were planted alongside their Earth-bound counterparts, which were specifically set aside as controls. After more than 40 years, there was no discernible difference between the two classes of trees.”

That’s the story. But whatever happened to the other 580? “Nearly all the seeds germinated successfully, and after a few years, the Forest Service had about 420 seedlings.” Did they “unsuccessfully” germinate? What might THAT mean? How about the kids from the class? Did seeing the Moon Tree affect any of them? I mean…for me? I could imagine a slightly different future (though I live in a state that did NOT get a Moon Tree (we’re too far north…). The nearest one for me to see is in Des Moines, IA. My son and grandkids saw one of the three trees in North Carolina.

“Most of the ‘Moon trees’ were given away in 1975 and 1976 to state forestry organizations, in order to be planted as part of the nation's bicentennial celebration. Since the trees were all of southern or western species, not all states received trees. A Loblolly Pine was planted at the White House, and trees were planted in Brazil, Switzerland, and presented to Emperor Hirohito, among others."

So, my senior year in high school, the trees were sent out to their new homes (the complete list of where they went are in the Wikipedia article linked below.

But I’m a writer. Some of the possibilities for story here: the tree that was given to the Emperor of Japan, Hirohito – the man who initiated and led the War in the Pacific – including the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. What??? Why would the US Government give HIM a tree that had gone into space? There’s a story there, I’m sure.

One of the trees was sent to Santa Rosa, Brazil to the “Soybean Fairgrounds, Parque Municipal de Exposições”. Ironically, this Brazilian State was settled by… “European immigrants in 1915, mainly Italians, Germans and Russians. The German dialect traditionally spoken in the region is Riograndenser Hunsrückisch.” Two of the groups were members of the Axis Powers along with Japan; the third a people who would become the second-greatest Communist empire on Earth…

Is this significant? *laugh* Probably not at all; but MAN it would lend all sorts of stuff to a STORY! Maybe throw these “gift Moon Trees” in with fact that “Nearly all the seeds germinated successfully, and after a few years, the Forest Service had about 420 seedlings.” The fact that the trees were handed out accounts for of them; as well, some 47 of the trees later died…though not one of the Redwoods… Based on a count from Wiki and under the assumption that only ONE tree was granted to each recipient (unless otherwise noted), that only accounts for 112 of the 420…so…what if 308 of them were planted on a remote mountain preserve or a place all of the species might flourish: Redwood, sycamore, Douglas fir, Loblolly pine, and sweet gum. They grew, and…(cue eerie music) what happened? What about the trees in Brazil? Planted in the Amazon Rain Forest??? There are even a few whose status is unknown. Why is that? You’d THINK something like that would make a splash; then again, NASA and the world forgot about the trees for a while – did they have something to HIDE?

While none of these trees is precisely "little", all of them share the legacy of having been to the Moon and back. And the fact is that: "Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin were the first of 12 human beings to walk on the Moon. Four of America's moonwalkers are still alive: Aldrin (Apollo 11), David Scott (Apollo 15), Charles Duke (Apollo 16), and Harrison Schmitt (Apollo 17)" -- four men left who walked. How many people flew to the Moon and back? In addition to the 24 Apollo astronauts, four others are slated to follow them for the first time in 50 years in November of 2024...WHICH, BTW, NEVER HAPPENED. CURRENT PLAN: "Artemis 2, the first crewed mission of NASA's Artemis program, is currently targeted to launch no earlier than April 1, 2026, to fly four astronauts around the Moon. The mission is designed to test the Orion capsule systems and will last roughly 10 days."

This is going to be FUN!

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_tree, https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/moon_tree.html, https://www.astronomy.com/space-exploration/when-will-artemis-2-launch-and-what-will-the-mission-do/
Image: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/moon-trees-that-traveled-to-space-now-live-on-earth-where-are-they-now

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS; REFLECTIONS I: Is There A Bias In SF Against Evangelical Christianity?

On June 15, 2007 I started this blog. I re-read my FIRST post on March 14, 2026…nineteen YEARS ago…

My wife and I are now retired senior citizens, our kids are all married (two of ours and a bonus daughter and her wife.) We have four grandchildren, the oldest of which will be a high school junior next year, one who will be be in high school next year; a bonus grandson who will graduate; the fourth will be a second grader; the fifth will be one soon. 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 and/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.

Five years ago, I started pondering this question and people have clicked on this essay 2584 times, making it the single most-viewed thing I’ve ever posted. I’d like to continue thinking out loud on the issue now that I’m older and the world has changed a bit...

The assumption used to be that once we left the surface of the Earth and go into space, we would leave behind the "religious chains" of outmoded human supernatural beliefs.

We've gone into space. Several times. In fact, we do so with such stunning regularity that space missions barely elicit comment in evening news. At the same time, the last time I looked, churches, synagogues, mosques and temples were still the choice spot for worship of God (and other deities). Atheism has not swept the world. Atheism hasn't even swept the Hallowed Halls of Science. There are still Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian (and other religious) scientists. Some of them are even making legitimate discoveries while believing in their God:

"The form, and nothing else, is all that is left of the original. On the outside, the hindlimb fossil designated MOR (Museum of the Rockies specimen) 1125 has this appearance.

“But when Dr Mary Schweitzer, of North Carolina State University, dissolved away the minerals, she found something extraordinary inside.

“The soft structures move back into position after flexing. She discovered transparent, flexible filaments that resemble blood vessels. There were also traces of what look like red blood cells; and others that look like osteocytes, cells that build and maintain bone."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4379577.stm

Mary Schweitzer is also a confessing Christian. (Discover Magazine, April 2006 http://discovermagazine.com/2006/apr/dinosaur-dna)

So, apparently, science and space exploration has yet to destroy Christianity (or any religion for that matter). That might mean that Christianity will make it into space. It might mean that there will be Christians in starships. It might mean that Christians will be colonists on new worlds. It may mean that Christians will greet aliens...

It might mean that SF writers are ignoring Christianity for no other reason than personal bias. It might also mean that ignoring Christianity is a prejudice that needs to, perhaps, disappear in all fairness. I find it illuminating that best-selling SF can postulate other religions. For an excellent example, read Tobias Buckell's CRYSTAL RAIN. He postulates a human colony world predicated on the worship of ancient Aztec gods. Reader accept the premise, and he advances the premise with skill and elan. But if he had predicated his world on the worship of the Christ, Jesus, I wonder how popular his books would be? He even decapitalizes the word “Bible" when he uses it, obviously referring to the bible of Christianity. Fine. He's a great story teller. I look forward to reading RAGAMUFFIN.

But is there a bias in SF against Christianity?

Nineteen years later, I still say: Yes…but I’ll add a caveat: Christians have brought it on themselves with travesties like…well, I won’t go into detail. But “Christian Science Fiction” publishers APPEAR (I haven’t read “all” novels labeled “Christian Science Fiction” or (more accurately) “Science Fiction with a Christian World View” that have been Bible stories dressed in starships and laser guns. In all fairness, many, many science fiction novels from the forties and fifties were Westerns dressed in starships and laser guns…

At any rate, this is the first of several essays based on my thoughts from nearly 20 years ago (when I had nine published works), and sparking new thoughts from a deeper, longer, broader perspective.

Inspiration: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2019/02/possibly-irritating-essays.html Image: http://coto2.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/2001-oddity.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 703

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.”

Suggested Title: Them, Robots
The fact is that robots are everywhere! From cleaning the bottom of the school swimming pool, to building the car you drive, robots are so much a part of our lives we couldn’t even LIVE without them…unless you could stand alongside a hospital bed and pump a respirator for a patient in a coma.

Event: The Arizona wildfire is likely going to go down in history as the Third Largest in that state. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43290922/ns/weather/ If it continues much longer, it may well go down as the second largest – maybe even the biggest one ever. They’ll bring in everything to stop it. Eventually, there will be robots – not humanoid ones like in I, Robot, but more like water, fire and chemical squirting tanks. Or possibly like the robots above. Of course, they’ll have to have a certain amount of autonomy. So what happens to them after the fire?

Santiago and Elijah are hiking in the mountains three half a century after after one of Arizona’s historic wildfires. They met the first day of their class on Introduction to Mobile AI Engineering. Way off the usual trails, they’re happily nattering back and forth and looking forward to lunch – Santiago’s dad packed a surprise, and Elijah’s older sister packed a different surprise. They’re going to swap meals and then serious critique them. After a while, they stumble onto a town that looks as if it had been burned mostly to the ground and entirely abandoned for the past fifty years, and they find some strange leavings. After poking around, they’re stunned to discover a nest of semi-intelligent robots who not only survived the fire, they’ve established a colony and they are making new copies of themselves. Surprising enough, but out of the basement of one of the ruined homes – and Arizonans don’t often have basements! – a humaniform robot steps up the stairs, looks at them and says in clear, Western-accented English…

Names: 2♂ Spanish, Galician, and Portuguese; Israel/Hebrew
Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Valkyrie-robot-3.jpg

SLICE OF PIE: Hard Science Fiction For Teens: Where Are We Today?

Hard science fiction isn’t just for adults. Kids today are more tech savvy than ever and fiction featuring real (or at least possible) science for teens is gaining steam. However, how hard should a hard SF novel get for young adults? What hard SF is getting it right? Who should we be reading? How can teens effectively pick through those old SF classics that they would find compelling today?

Steven Gould (m), Jennifer Brozek, Fonda Lee, Marissa Meyer, William Campbell Powell

I only recognized Steven Gould, and Fonda Lee (maybe Marissa Meyer)...I didn’t recognize the others. When I attended this talk about ten years ago, I only recognized the  moderator's name. At THAT time, I was a former science teacher (10 years middle school/high school substitute; 11 years 8th grade science; 10 years freshman science; and ten years counselor -- so my first question was “What are these people doing here?”

Your first question should be, “So what if you don’t recognize any of the names? You’re almost seventy! What would you know about hard SF for teens?”

I’ll look into the answer to the first in a second. The second I’ll answer right now: I’ve been a middle school and high school teacher for 34 years. I know what kids are reading because I SEE what they’re reading. I talk to them about what they’re reading. I teach summer school classes to the gifted and talented – THEY are the true future of hard SF – and I see and talk to them about what they’re reading. I’d be willing to bet that I have a pretty dang good idea of what they are and are not reading. I worked at Barnes & Noble a couple of years ago, tried to order a set of the Heinlein classics and put them in the Teen section…and they were repeatedly moved back to the “regular” science fiction section because the brick and mortar giant DIDN’T RECOGNIZE THEM AS BEING FOR TEENS, a cursory skim through the twenty-six pages of “hard science fiction for teens” on Amazon didn’t net a single Heinlein book.

So who are these people and what are they doing here?

Steven Gould is described by Booklist as writing “novel[s] straddle the line between YA and adult fiction; its lead character is a teen, but the story has many adult-themed elements”. He also has a couple of the YA “beasts” of his own. Perfect!

Jennifer Brozek seems to be well-experienced short stories and anthologies – but I’ll say right up front, that is not where and how most teens read. As an author of several RPGs as well as a BattleMech YA novel, she absolutely has the experience. But…not so much with the “beast” itself. And short stories isn’t the usual direction teens take in their reading. The ones I know want to be immersed in story; they want to escape the harsh reality of the here-and-now.

Fonda Lee has a novel, though nothing else published (Internet Speculative Fiction Database).

Marissa Meyers is the author of the best-selling LUNAR CHRONICLES (which consistently remained in the top three spots when my book came out last summer.)

William Campbell Powell is the author of a YA novel.

So all of them are more-or-less qualified to comment on YA hard science fiction.

However, I didn’t see that any of them are intimately involved with their target audience. I didn’t note that they TALK to young adults – though Mr. Campbell Powell and Mr. Gould each have two teens, and Ms. Meyers and Ms. Lee are still very much young adults themselves. However, this is not an absolute qualifier. I have two beasts of my own and they are notoriously opinionated – in my favor.

I would have loved to be there for the discussion and I’ve added books by all of them to my list of “to-reads”. However, the fact remains that I have not SEEN their books on the check-out lists of the high school I work in, and that, in the long run, is where we have to win middle and high school students over to the science fiction camp.

As for the Heinlein books – I love them and collect them, but the loving is more in the memory than in the re-reading. I find their prose clumsy and (also) very privileged “white folk”. Sorry, there’s no other way to write that; which in my own personal book disqualifies them as having any relevance for teenagers today. They live in a diverse world in which HALF of all Americans will speak Spanish as a main language by the year 2050, and it’s nearly impossible to advise kids what to take in school and college to prepare for their future career – because that career may not exist yet.

Maybe that’s what we need to do as SF writers for YA – imagine careers (and games, which is what Fonda Lee did in her novel) that might be there when they arrive.

That’s my mission. I wonder what the mission is for these others. Tell me if I did OK; read my hard SF novel for YA – a link to it is posted on your right.

(DANG! I need to get to one of these World Cons…someday!)

Links: https://reactormag.com/young-adult-spotlight-january-and-february-2026/#:~:text=If%20All%20the%20Stars%20Go,lots%20of%20adventure%2Dy%20fun. ; https://booksbonesbuffy.com/2025/11/11/26-science-fiction-books-to-read-in-2026-scifimonth2025/

Image: https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Publication211/v4/ac/05/0c/ac050c86-029b-31dc-dcc3-4817bf984454/9781250382061.jpg/536x0w.webp

IDEAS ON TUESDAY 702

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)

H Trope: Haunted Castle/Mansion
Inspiring Event: http://www.dreadcentral.com/news/31105/cold-spots-glensheen-mansion

“No! Really! I saw the ghost!” said Enzo Solem. His wild hand waving came more from the passion of his French forebears than the stolid formality of his Norwegian. First generation from both sides, he’d been born and raised just north of the Twin Ports of Duluth and Superior.

He also had a wild passion for the paranormal.

Weayaya Aguirre sighed. Enzo was her best friend but sometimes he bugged the living daylights out of her. Shaking her head, she said, “Why can’t you just accept that the world is the world and that’s all there is?”

He stared at her incredulously and exclaimed, “You work here, too! How can you say that? You’ve seen the apparitions just like I have!”

Shaking her head, Weayaya – Wee-ah to the rest of the staff at the Glensheen Mansion – said, “I’ve told you a dozen times that I don’t know what you saw that night. I saw some kind of heat shimmer from the furnace.”

“And I’ve told you two dozen times that I talked with Elizabeth Congdon!”

“A woman who’s been dead for half a century?”

“She’s not dead...” he scowled. “Exactly. Her spirit is trapped here because her son suffocated her under a pillow and then banged the night nurse over the head with a candlestick.” Wee-Ah sucked in her lower lip and bit it gently to keep from responding how she wanted to respond. He added, “All I’m asking is that you come with me tonight. It’s the night of June 26...”

“You want to see her ghost, right?”

“Nope.”

Wee-Ah frowned and looked at him. This was not the answer she’d expected. “What?”

“I want to see the ghost of her son. He confessed to her murder and was sent to jail, getting out five years later. His ex-wife, Elizabeth Congdon’s sociopathic adopted daughter never gave him any of the money she inherited from her mother’s murder. He killed himself five years after his release from prison – though I’ve heard people whispering that Congdon’s daughter did him in.”

“So you want to see if the ghost of one of Congdon’s ex-son-in-laws comes back here?”

“Yep. Marjorie died in prison in 2022, five years before the fiftieth anniversary of her adoptive mother’s murder.”

“And you think that that is significant...how?”

“It’s obvious! Marjorie-originally-Congdon is buried in the family mausoleum.” Wee-Ah nodded. That much was true. “It’s now half a century after her mother’s murder by her second ex-husband Roger Caldwell.” Wee-Ah nodded, not even realizing she was encouraging him. He went on excitedly, “So I figure the psychic energy will be so powerful that not only will Roger’s ghost appear, so will Velma’s; her third husband Wally was murdered as well as his ex-wife; plus some old guy she defrauded of all his money in a nursing home in Arizona. His same was also Roger, though his last name was Sammis. Her first husband – with whom she’d had seven children – was Dick LeRoy and he died the same year she did – 2022. So it’s 2027, fifty years after someone murdered Elizabeth Congdon. I would say that Marjorie Congdon LeRoy Caldwell Hagen has some serious psychic reckoning coming.”

Wee-Ah found herself nodding in agreement before she could think things through. That was how she found herself kneeling in the bushes near the Congdon family stone marker in the Forest Hill Cemetery on this dark and stormy night, cold summer rain dribbling down the back of her hastily donned poncho.

Enzo leaned over to her and whispered, “It’s five minutes to midnight…”

Names: ♀ Sioux, Spanish; ♂ French, Norwegian
Image: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51niGRrH6DL.jpg

SLICE OF PIE: On REMARKABLY BRIGHT CREATURES by Shelby Van Pelt

On October 7, 2007, I started this blog. Eighteen years later, I am revising and doing some different things. 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, (with a fourth on-the-way!) the oldest of which will soon finish his first year in high school, one smack in the center of Middle School; the third almost done with kindergarten. 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.

While it’s not listed or advertised, or even acknowledged as such, this book is true Science Fiction – because it extrapolates from what we KNOW to what MIGHT BE…

Tova and Cameron are the main characters – or at least that’s what a typical Human would regard as the main ones. The drama comes through them (and a small cast of “lesser” characters) – and the true main character: Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus.

You read that right: he’s a giant Pacific octopus. A photo of one – interacting with a Human is up above. In the book, Marcellus has his own voice and is ironically commenting on the Human animal. Wikipedia defines SF in part this way, “Science fiction [the] genre of speculative, science-based fiction [and] most lately, to… transhumanism, posthumanism, and environmental challenges. Science fiction often specifically explores human responses to the consequences of these types of projected or imagined scientific advances…including hard science fiction, which emphasizes scientific accuracy...”

While the novel is very much more complex than the premise above suggests, it remains at its heart an exploration not ONLY of Human interaction, but of interaction between a Human and not-human intelligence. Poking around at the definitions of “sentient” and “sapient” (and myself using the two words interchangeably (WHICH IS A SERIOUS MISTAKE!), I discovered that while they are similar words, “sentient” is a SUBSET of “sapience”.

In fact, I only yesterday discovered that the second is a part of Human’s technical name: Homo sapiens sapiens. The double is NOT a mistake: Homo sapiens is a species that INCLUDES Neanderthal humans, and Heidelberg humans, (that came from near Herto, Ethiopia) (though the discussion is ongoing to decide if it actually IS a subspecies). And that Cro-Magnon humans are now considered a CULTURE of H. s. sapiens. I did NOT know that!

At any rate, back to Marcellus – he is an elderly octopus captured out of Puget Sound. I discovered also, that the Sound is a “complex estuarine system of interconnected marine waterways and basins located on the northwest coast of Washington state. It has one major and two minor connections to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, which in turn connects to the open Pacific Ocean. He was captured and “imprisoned” in a huge aquarium at the Sowell Bay Aquarium. He eventually not only learns what happened to him (his entries are titled “Day XXXX of My Captivity”, but that he is increasingly witness to not only Human drama -- but Human secrets.

So, why isn’t this just a cute story using a neat trick of taking the point of view of an octopus? Because it’s well documented that octopi, especially the “Giant Pacific Octopus [who are] renowned for solving puzzles, opening jars, and escaping aquarium enclosures.”

“Oh, an octopus isn’t going to be able to think like a Human!” you’d be tempted to say. But, perhaps pause your “Humanocentric” point of view. What makes us think that Human thinking is the epitome of intelligent thought? If you’d pause for an instant, consider that Humans are master of only ONE FOURTH of the surface of Earth, where Octopi are conceivably masters of the OTHER three fourths of the planet (ie: the continents, aka above-surface dirt).

I’d point out that while Marcellus may not be smart as a Human, perhaps, in actual terms, he’s smarter than me or maybe even smart AS AN OCTOPUS, which would be intrinsically DIFFERENT than being as smart as me. Or you. Or any other Human around in absolute intelligence. Maybe he can’t drive a car…(though I wouldn’t put it past him now that I think about it…), but his kind manipulate their environment, and (given their environment) have avoided inventing electric power…

So, the idea that Van Pelt used an octopus, well known for its intelligence, and she wasn’t ridiculous with inventing starships, and laser guns, and other Human technology for them, instead played with the idea that their powers of observation and intellect might be far beyond our own – in other words, taking a scientific fact and twisting it around to give it a new appearance and inspire a serious consideration of the possibility that there might not be just intelligent life on Other Worlds, but not only INTELLIGENT life here on Earth (besides…well at least SOME of us!), but intelligent life whose perception of the planet we live on is no LESS accurate than those of Humanity…

THAT, I propose is exactly what the best science fiction is supposed to be doing, and not merely entertaining us with more and more and more iterations of STAR TREK and STAR WARS, and WAR OF THE WORLDS...

Inspiration: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2019/02/possibly-irritating-essays.html, https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/octopuses-keep-surprising-us-here-are-eight-examples-how.html, https://www.anmlzone.com/10-most-intelligent-octopuses/ Image: https://target.scene7.com/is/image/Target/GUEST_6ab40c16-61a5-4850-a34a-9abe333dafdc?wid=300&hei=300&fmt=pjpeg