IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 341

Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them.

SF Trope: Aura Vision – The ability to perceive normally invisible Life Energy of others, often colour-coded for good/evil, emotions, amount of life, Power Level, etc. This can be presented as Functional Magic, Psychic Powers, related to spirituality, a biological gift, or even technological.

Current Event: (From my writer-niece’s blog: “This is because red was suddenly born in little jagged bursts along the horizon. Perhaps this is only something you can understand after months of upper Midwestern winter. The desaturated palettes of chickadee and snow shadow have a way of changing the mode of sight. Color might exist, but it is lost to us for a time. In March, first thaw we begin to retrain the eye. Light comes in  bursts, gives way to miles of camel colored grass, bursts of red– barn, flag, brick. The braided intestines of road kill bloom in an eagle’s beak. There is still no green save for pine boughs dulled to  rosemary gray.” https://lettersfromchurchofthetoastedcoconutdoughnut.wordpress.com/ )

Eyvindur Mjöll pursed his lips and looked down at the handheld scanner in his hand. “I can’t make this do what I want...”

Pich Dara Sophana, leaned over the scanner and shook her head. He couldn’t see it as both of them wore surface suits. “It’s impossible because it’s so cold out.”

“I calibrated it for that,” he said. “Besides, it’s supposed to be warm enough now.”

“Original Humans were homeotherms – they’re going to still be.”

“We’re broad-spectrum eurytherms. But if I point the scanner at you,” he did. “Your aura is peculiar.”

Pich Dara sniffed. “Your aura is always peculiar. But I don’t blame your temperature regulation on that. You’re just weird.”

“Takes one to know one,” Eyvindur said. She started to speak, but he cut her off, “This isn’t about auras, anyway. I’m trying to find a way we can screen the people that are evolving on the surface to see if they can be reintroduced to the gene pool.”

“We don’t want to pollute the pool, either! It’s small enough as it is.”

Eyvindur headed up a trail that had been worn into the dusty surface. Since Earth had frozen nearly solid after the climate had gone into wild gyrations under pressure of Humans, the Sun, and geologic cycles. The evacuation to Mars – even using the massive instantaneous matter transmission gates that gave anyone a chance to move to the tiny, rusty, cold world of HG Wells’ imagination –was traumatic and over two billion stayed behind to take their chances on an planet attempting to find a balance again.

But Humanity changed. Something happened to both populations. There was talk that Humans had split into two new species...

Names: ♀ Khmer; ♂ Iceland                        

Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b1/3,2,1_blast-off!_(15871161250).jpg/511px-3,2,1_blast-off!_(15871161250).jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY: Common (and some UNCOMMON) Mistakes From the Slushpile

Using the Programme Guide of the World Science Fiction Convention in Helsinki Finland in August 2017 (to which I will be unable to go (until I retire from education)), I will jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Programme Guide. The link is provided below…

Clearly, I wasn’t there, but this person was AND took notes! So, many thanks to David Alex Lamb. His blog is here: http://davidalexlamb.blogspot.com/2017/08/thursday-at-worldcon-75.html

Common Mistakes from the Slushpile: Slushpile readers share their thoughts on what they have seen in the slushpiles! Come and learn to avoid the most common mistakes when submitting a story!

David Thomas Moore: commissioning editor for Abaddon Books

Laura Pearlman: author in Shimmer, Flash Fiction Online, Daily Science Fiction

David Pomerico: joined Harper Voyager US in Spring 2014 as Editorial Director, coming from Spectra, Del Rey, and 47North

Sam Bradbury: Science Fiction and Fantasy Editor at Hodder & Stoughton; previously worked for Jo Fletcher Books

Marcus Gipps: Commissioning Editor at Gollancz

“There was a lot on how editors and publishers deal with the slushpile (un-agented submissions), but also a bit of advice:”

My comment – all of these folks work with novels, so the applicability to short fiction, while similar I’m sure, isn’t exactly what I’m about. Hence, my own comments at the end!

1) Follow the submission rules on the publisher website, especially with regard to the genre or kind of submission they publish and the submission format they want (such as submitting a Word document).

My first thought is “duh”. Why WOULDN’T you follow an editor’s explicit guidelines? Then again, my own small experience with reading a bit of the slushpile for a magazine would bear CONSTANT repeating to would-be authors. The executive editor at SS was much more forgiving of this than I was. I wanted to read the manuscripts in any form of Word. People sent it in all sorts of formats that, when they appeared on my computer, took the shape of all kinds of weirdness. That automatically made it harder for the author to get past me. The story had to be totally and awesomely “stupefying” [which means:  shock, stun, astound, dumbfound, overwhelm, stagger, amaze, astonish, take aback, take someone's breath away] as opposed to “stupefying” [which means: stun, daze, knock unconscious, knock out, lay out, as in the Harry Potter magic spell]. Very rarely did any stories meet the first criterion. A truly stupefying number met the latter.

2) The first 3 pages are critical.

In a novel. In a short story, it’s a fair approximation of an aphorism that a short story writer has anywhere between the first sentence and the first paragraph to complete their mission of catching a reader’s attention. Novels have between three pages and the first chapter. After that, if you haven’t caught your reader, you’re toast.

3) Good ideas still require good writing.

Why does this have to be said? Oh, that’s right, HOW many stories did I read that took a totally cool idea and proceeded to bore the bejeebers out of me? About a third of them. Because, quite frankly, the writing that came into SS was two thirds…frankly…awful.

“Oh, that’s because you’re a minimum pay market! What do you expect?”

Hmmm…based on a submissions website I use to track my own subs on, I find that the TOP paying markets…well, let me just share this: my favorite SF market, ANALOG Science Fiction & Fact: Acceptance rate = 3.61%. Clarkesworld (a PREMIUM market): Acceptance rate = 1.10%. The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction: Acceptance rate = .61%. Beneath Ceaseless Skies: Acceptance Rate = 4.4%. Any other you’d like to ask about? I can look it up and tell you. I can guarantee that these magazines see good ideas coupled with not-so-good writing.

4) Pace and plot have to be established in the first few pages.

Tougher to do than it is to write. What’s pace in a story? “…determines how quickly or how slowly the writer takes a reader through a story, explains Writer's Digest. The story itself determines the pace of the story. It relies on the combination of mood and emotion as these elements play out in the dialogue, setting and action.” (https://penandthepad.com/narrative-pace-3907.html). How about plot? Most simply it’s what happens in your story. In traditional storytelling, the plot is linear. In Speculative Fiction? Hmmm…depends on what kind of story you’re trying to tell! Michael F. Flynn’s novel EIFELHEIM takes place in the present and in 14^th Century Germany, flipping back and forth between the two times; though within each TIME, the story is linear.

5) Tailor your cover letter to the publisher.

Again: “Duh.”

6) Avoid attacking other authors.

“Double duh.” If you go after some author (who is probably published), what’s the editor think is going to happen if they publish you and you don’t like something that happens? I wouldn’t say “avoid attacking authors”; I would say. “NEVER attack authors.”

7) You don’t need a big social media presence to submit. [“(at least to the panelists; I`ve heard other editors say they always check social media). One contradicted an agent I heard, saying you don’t need to compare your work to the market (the editor can do that better).”]

This is interesting and to tell you the truth, not something I can comment on with surety. What I CAN say is that when I start this blog almost eight years ago, I had roughly a thousand site visits per month. Now, taking into account the absurd hits by spambots, I average roughly double that. Some months more, a few less. I don’t have a huge platform, but I don’t have a novel to build a fan base. I have short stories, an ancient (1991 publication date) collection of children’s sermons, and a few other odds and ends. My platform pretty much consists of my friends and curious students from Young Author’s Conferences and my Writing to Get Published classes, and places I have taught in over the past ten years.

That’s what I’d say I gathered from the brief overview provided by the website

I’ve been a Slushpile reader for several years, on-and-off, for STUPEFYING STORIES (http://stupefyingstories.com/). Here are a couple of things I would share from that experience:

1. SOMETHING has to happen in a story!
2. Whatever the character was doing had to make sense.
3. I have to somehow connect with a character.
4. The story has to have clearly important events.
5. Write a story that will “stick in my mind”.

Anything else anyone wants to add? Otherwise, have a great day!

Program Book: https://sites.grenadine.co/sites/worldcon75/en/w75/schedule

Image: https://tihiw.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/screen-shot-2016-07-12-at-11-32-36-am.png

LOVE IN A TIME OF ALIEN INVASION 79: The Trials of Group Three

On Earth, there are three Triads intending to integrate not only the three peoples and stop the war that threatens to break loose and slaughter Humans and devastate their world; but to stop the war that consumes Kiiote economy and Yown’Hoo moral fiber. All three intelligences hover on the edge of extinction. The merger of Human-Kiiote-Yown’Hoo into a van der Walls Society might not only save all three – but become something not even they could predict. Something entirely new...

The young experimental Triads are made up of the smallest primate tribe of Humans – Oscar and Xiomara; the smallest canine pack of Kiiote – six, pack leaders Qap and Xurf; and the smallest camelid herd of Yown’Hoo – a prime eleven, Dao-hi the Herd mother. On nursery farms and ranches away from the TC cities, Humans have tended young Yown’Hoo and Kiiote in secret for decades, allowing the two, warring people to reproduce and grow far from their home worlds.

“We had nearly fallen into stagnation when we encountered the Kiiote.”

“And we into internecine war when we encountered the Yown’Hoo.”

 “Yown’Hoo and Kiiote have been defending themselves for a thousand revolutions of our Sun.”

 “Together, we might do something none of us alone might have done…a destiny that included Yown’Hoo, Kiiote, and Human.” (2/19/2015)

“All right, everyone back down the tunnel. Team Two, get ready to head for the surface. Xurf, take one of the others with you and let them hear your destination directions. Only two of you.” Retired gave me a look. Irritated? Offended? Nah, I suddenly realized, respect. I ignored it. “Just don’t both of you get killed.” Xurf fell back into her four-footed form and trotted after Retired. The Yown’Hoo Zei-go followed. Already I could see growth in the Yown’Hoo. Those who earned responsibility grew larger, tapping the subcutaneous fat stores. It already looked leaner, faster.

When they got back to what was left of the group, I nodded to Xurf and she led them up the tunnel then to the surface. The sounds of their feet scrabbling on the concrete faded. Another second and there was a metallic shriek followed by a tremendous crash.

Lieutenant Commander Bakhsh (ret) looked over at me but didn’t say a word. My Great Uncle Rion did the same. I opened my mouth, looked at the door to the surface, and closed it.

“Oscar?” said Retired.

“Uh, yeah?”

“What’s next?”

“Uh…” the Triad that remained, them, Da0-hi, Lan-ma-ti, Por-go-el, Xio, Seg-go, Ali-go, Nah-hi-el, and me…still had to keep moving. We could still be caught by…whoever was following us. I started off and what remained of the Triad followed. I slowed until I was walking beside Retired. The others passed me and when she did, I said to Xio, “Your team is up to the surface next. Lead the group. Great Uncle Rion, would you walk with her and help her with strategy? Retired and I will catch up with you.”

She gave me a weird look. For a second, I didn’t know what she was going to say. Nothing, it turns out. She nodded and moved ahead with her typical long-legged stride. For a moment, I forgot she was my sister – practically speaking – and noticed she looked more than strong. More than smart. More than…

“Down, boy,” said Retired next to me.

“What?” I started, walking to catch up with him.

“There’s no time for that. You’re running for your lives…” he shook his head and said, “Adolescents,” like it was a curse.

I sighed. He’d seen my reaction when I was standing in front of him being scanned for electronic or bioelectronic bugs. I knew what I felt about Fax. “Yeah,” I said. “Hell.” He gave me a look then a smirk. “The map. I want to see if I remember it. We were sort of in a hurry when you tossed it up on the windshield.”

“You have an eidetic memory.”

“True. But I don’t think I just want to trust to memory when everyone is counting on me to lead them.” He suddenly slapped me on the shoulder. “What was that for?” I blurted.

Nodding, he said, “Proud of you, kid. Now. Tell me what you remember.”

I rolled my shoulder like he’d hurt me, but the truth of it was that it had felt good. Like he trusted me. Weird, I know. But there you go. “Before I do though, tell me what you think of my guess.” Thinking about the map ever since we got underground, there were three odd markings on it. “At the exit of each of the tunnels they’re taking, I saw three little marks. Characters.” We kept walking for a while. If what I guessed was wrong, Retired would laugh at me and I’d lose whatever good feelings he had for me. But if I was right, then this whole “running away” thing wasn’t what it appeared to be.

“Well?”

“One was the Kii Basic character for Old Pack. That’s Group One’s mission; that’s why you sent Qap, Qilf, and Towt. They’re going to meet up with a Pack ally living on Earth.” He didn’t say anything. “OK, I’ll take that as a yes. Group Two…there wasn’t any symbol there, so I’m going to suggest that they’re going to get some form of transportation that can take all of us to Grendl. And be able to defend us. Probably made by the Kiiote.” He still didn’t speak, walking alongside me. “Xio’s leading the third group and there was a Chinese character for Master next to their exit. Group four is led by Dao-hi, and as near I could figure there was a word in Y’eh 2349, I’m pretty sure meant ‘Primeval’. These are the Organizers.” Retired hummed but carefully did not nod or give any other sign of either approval. “And I leave at the end. Alone.” A grunt. “To do something…”

Retired said abruptly, “You’ll find out when it’s time.” Then he lengthened his stride and I had to run to catch up.

It was a long and boring hike and somewhere in the middle of it, when we stopped to sleep, Retired disappeared. Just like that, he was gone. I should have known he would do this. All that approval stuff was just a set up to get me to lead the Triad – what was left of us. Once we got to the surface exit, me and Xio – and the younger Herd members had hashed out their pecking order. GURion refused to help me lead, it wasn’t like Retired. It had its own agenda. So the departure of Group Three was sort of dark thing for me. I’d be the last Human in the group with a robot, the Herd Mother Dao-hi, and two of the youngest Herd members.

The only startling part was that Xio kissed me before she left. Absolutely NOT like a sister. After we pulled apart, she also punched me in the chest and said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, ‘Car, but I’m pretty sure you’re not my type.” She paused, “I might be interested in older me.” She gave me a dirty leer, adding, “Much older men.”

Then she led her team up the tunnel to the surface.

****

Xio found the ladder leading up and shook her head. “How the hell are you supposed to climb this?”

Seg-go and Ali-go, males who held equivalent rank in the Herd, often spoke at the same time, which resulted in them hip-checking each other until one of them managed to knock the other over. Xio snapped, “Enough! Seg-go, you speak for both of you! We don’t have time to decide rank right now. After our first night stop, I’ll let you two battle it out, but now I’m making an executive call.”

Ali-go pulled it’s tentacles free, ready to fight, but Xio landed a kick on the side of his head before he could even raise them up to do battle with Seg-go. “I said wait. Then, if you want me to kick you some more, I’d be happy to figure out which one of us is stronger.”

The Yown’Hoo backed down, sheathing its tentacles and crouching some in front of his brother. Nah-hi-el was still small and fast – but had nothing approaching their rank in the Herd. It was lucky that it was still alive and it knew it.

Seg-go said, “I can see a side tunnel here. Send the least into it to see where it leads.”

Xio nodded, and said, “Go.”

The small Yown’Hoo dug its claws into the earth and ran. They could hear it scrambling for some time. Shortly it returned. “It is a much disused ramp and my stronger brothers will of need go on first joint to move freely, but it exits in a large, Human built room.”

Xio said, “We go. Now. We have no time to waste. I will lead.” She ducked into the tunnel, glad she wasn’t any taller than she was. All she needed to do was crouch. ‘Car would have had to crawl. Retired…she cut off that line of thought. He was an old man. Probably would have had to slither, getting all muddy. And wet. She swallowed hard and led her team upward and into an abandoned storage room to find a door with no handle.

Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Rhll_wire_rope.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 340

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: Ancient tombs discovered/cursed/releases monster/mummy & fairy dust

SF: Starship Troopers

F Trope: Elves, gnomes and Halflings

Western Trope: Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman

Romance Trope: Beauty and the beast

Current Events:

Rayyan Brakus powered his exoskeleton armor up and swung down from the troop transport. Granted, he was supposed to be eighteen; granted, he’d lied about his age.

But when the InterWar recruiter had shown up at the base of Butte Vertical Village in their shiny starship, offering lots of cash and a life of adventure, Rayyan ran to place his thumbprint. His ID didn’t show that he was 16 and a half. It showed he was 22. So what if the recruiter’d said, “You bring your cat along to lick your whiskers off, soldier?”

Rayyan snorted, blowing a blot of snot on the inside of his faceplate. He reached up to wipe it away, remembered it was inside and ignore the other soldiers who laughed at him. He’d show THEM!

He clomped down the ramp, stepped to one side and stopped, scanning. A bleak place, this world. Looked like lots of dunes, dead trees and boulders – some sort of adobe village a couple klicks. Command channel blasted into his ears, “Target acquired. Mumiyah’s Cavern has been partially secured. Local resistance armed and should be considered dangerous. Squads Delta and Theta proceed with caution. Air support unavailable.”

Rayyan felt his stomach drop to his feet then sprinted to follow the rest of Theta Squad. His first live combat mission...

He wasn’t expecting the attack. He should have been, but they’d never trained against cavalry.

Horses ridden by midgets. With bazookas. Trying to kill him. “Not me personally!” he shouted into his helmet as he fired into the mob with his stunner. There wasn’t any reason to…

A female midget – sorta hot looking, he noticed before she sprayed something on his armor – swung a mass-balanced lance that glowed as it cut through the first layer physical defense then was deflected by the monomolecular fluid underlayer.

Deflecting the lance, the inertia transferred to him, her speed and weight knocking him over. Instead of a hard crash, it felt like he’d fallen on sponges. The midget on her full-sized horse, was wearing a cowboy hat and clenched a cigar between her teeth. She raised a mace and shouting, brought it down on his helmet.

****

Vesna Lobato stared down at the man wrapped in bug scales and shook her head. Polish him up a bit and he might be a good-looking boy. A bit older that her little brother, his blonde hair was snarled, the fabric body suit was soaking wet from the dissolution of the armor by her fairy dust. She was reasonably certain the dust was no longer potent, though she’d had at least ten soldiers of the hundred the Imperial Mounted Police had repelled from Mumiyah’s Cavern – die. Their skin liquefied, sloughing from the bones. The screams made her shudder.

But it wasn’t like she was fighting people. They were soldiers, impersonal, caring nothing for the cultures of the New West. They wanted only to dig out its secrets and turn them into another weapon to subjugate the worlds!

She lifted the lance to strike the youngster’s head off.

“Hold your blade, Vesna!”

“Why, brother? He’d have killed me if I hadn’t knocked him down first.”

Her brother looked down at the soldier and said, “If nothing else, we can strip out of his brain what he thinks he knows about the Cavern.”

She lifted her blade, took a deep breath and said, “I’ll stop my lance – but only ‘cause I might ask him out on a date before we magick out his brain.” She wheeled on her horse and headed back into town.

Name source: (m) Malaysia, Greek; (f) Macedonia, Portuguese

Image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2-arXKTiwzTybeiZ-IjR8P9j_aP2vqKXJulRCqqk_e42EoyXriDrQffp-dV_b96wQqLf5Y-M9XYpYkS4Lpz0PJvQcjGfHXS3M8QSPWCq9l9UURqlah0AR2TAlNeS4yX_NR2arOLIZVuY/s1600/2212_1025142570.jpg

MARTIAN HOLIDAY 118: DaneelAH & Company, and Stepan In Burroughs

On a well-settled Mars, the five major city Council regimes struggle to meld into a stable, working government. Embracing an official Unified Faith In Humanity, the Councils are teetering on the verge of pogrom directed against Christians, Molesters, Jews, Rapists, Buddhists, Murderers, Muslims, Thieves, Hindu, Embezzlers and Artificial Humans – anyone who threatens the official Faith and the consolidating power of the Councils. It makes good sense, right – get rid of religion and Human divisiveness on a societal level will disappear? An instrument of such a pogrom might just be a Roman holiday...To see the rest of the chapters and I’m sorry, but a number of them got deleted from the blog – go to SCIENCE FICTION: Martian Holiday on the right and scroll to the bottom for the first story. They are HanAH, the security expert (m); DaneelAH, xenoarchaeologist (m); AzAH, language expert (f); MishAH, pattern recognition (f).

QuinnAH had stopped both talking and taunting, hurrying through shabbier and shabbier corridors. Dust changed to debris, then became real garbage, accumulating into a grinding grit beneath their feet the closer they got to the razor-thin barrier separating the interior of the Domes from the thin, suffocating atmosphere of the surface of Mars. Ongoing terraforming and the increase in atmospheric pressure had raised it to something like a tenth of an Earth atmosphere after the addition of Krypton and Xenon gases from several comet strikes. The end point of a habitable surface was still a century in the future – and then there’d only be exit with complete environmental suits rather than hard spacesuits.

In other words, if anything happened to the Dome, everyone directly exposed to the Martian atmosphere here on the surface would die. Just as they had when FirstDome had been breached during the initial unrest. After that, the Unified Faith in Humanity had gained a strong foothold.

QuinnAH stopped at a hollow lift tube, slapping the activation pad. The floor glowed a dim red as he stepped onto it.

“I’m not riding on that!” HanAH said. “It’s so old it’ll quit halfway up!”

The boy shrugged, “Suit yourself. The stairs are down the corridor and to your left.” AzAH, DaneelAH, and MishAH stepped in with the boy.

DaneelAH waved. “See you upstairs.”

HanAH strode forward, muttering, “Someone in this pod has to use their head for something more than a battering ram!” He squeezed between the boy and his vat mates as the gMod lift tube started up to the surface.

There was a moment when the lift faded and they slid back down a meter or so. HanAH said, “I told you…”

They started moving up again. QuinnAH said, “They built stuff to last in the olden days, huh?” AzAH smiled faintly as the lift stopped. “Let’s go. Next stop is up!” He darted out of the lift and they four vat mates followed, longer legs meaning shorter steps.

“I should have brought my stunner,” HanAH said.

“You’d have lost it by now to a v-born,” said DaneelAH. HanAH only grunted. The boy took off down an alley and they had to pick up their pace to keep up. He stopped and turned into a recessed doorway that they found had a ramp leading another meter down.

AzAH said, “This is an old part of the Dome. It’s sunken into the permafrost here. Not supposed to, but it has. Who knows how weak the infrastructure is here…” She stepped into the darkened interior of a huge, abandoned warehouse. A few breaks in the roof and a shattered window high up let wan, red light in. “Spread out a bit. I don’t want all of us to fall into Mars if the floor collapses.”

“Ain’t gonna collapse,” said QuinnAH, suddenly appearing in a cross beam of light full of dust they’d raised with their passage. “He’s up on the roof…or…I don’t know…”

“Where was he when you last saw him, son,” asked DaneelAH. Quinn described what his master had been doing when he’d vanished.

HanAH said, “We need to get up on the roof?”

“I don’t think so – Stepan said that the stairs were leading down, into the building. Like in an lift shaft or something that had been boarded over; except he said there were stairs and there was like a room that went into the wall.”

They went to the roof first and met QuinnAH’s friend, the man he called Pastor.

HanAH was stood and was staring at the hole in the roof of the warehouse as he said, “How do we know he found them here?”

DaneelAH, AzAH, and MishAH all looked at him. MishAH finally managed, “Where would he get something like he’s just described?”

“He could have…” HanAH opened his mouth, knowing that he looked like an idiot and closed it before he could get himself into any more trouble. A moment later, after QuinnAH had tossed the gMod disk down to Stepan Izmaylova, he rose up slowly, a geological sample bag tucked under one arm.

The four Artificial Humans from Malacandra stepped forward. Stepan looked at them then pulled something from the bag. He set the bag down and lifted what he’d found. It was a bag, narrowing half-way down then flaring at the bottom; four meters long and obviously ancient. Darkened, it was obvious even so that there had been metallic parts that pierced the strangely shaped bag.

They stared, uncomprehending until suddenly AzAH said, “I recognize this.”

“You’ve seen something like this?” HanAH said.

“No,” she said.

HanAH looked at her, scowling.

“Not something like this. Part of this.”

“What?” said Stepan, AzAH, and DaneelAH in unison.

She shook her head. “I can’t even begin to speculate how they’re related, but I can only state that Mayor Turin, in his personal collection of Martian geological artifacts, has something like this. It has more metal and what were once four protrusions, though two have been torn away. Seeing this, I can only come to one conclusion: the two halves together would make a spacesuit.”

Pastor Stepan shook his head, “It can’t be. No one could fit into anything like that.”

“Not one of us, people. Not something Human.”

Image: http://img11.deviantart.net/c3c5/i/2009/067/9/3/dr__manhattan_by_theknightinhell.png

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 339

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: (reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmutation. I think I’m going to mine THIS idea in various ways for a while!) , more specifically covered here: “…sexual transmutation, is the attempt, especially among some religious traditions, to transform sexual impulses or "sexual energy" into creative energy. In this context, sublimation is the transference of sexual energy, or libido, into a physical act or a different emotion in order to avoid confrontation with the sexual urge, which is itself contrary to the individual's belief or ascribed religious belief. It is based on the idea that "sexual energy" can be used to create a spiritual nature which in turn can create more sensual works, instead of one's sexuality being unleashed “raw.” The classical example in Western religions is clerical celibacy. As espoused in the Tanya, Hasidic Jewish mysticism views sublimation of the animal soul as an essential task in life, wherein the goal is to transform animalistic and earthy cravings for physical pleasure into holy desires to connect with God. Different schools of thought describe general sexual urges as carriers of spiritual essence, and have the varied names of vital energy, vital winds (prana), spiritual energy, ojas, shakti, tummo, or kundalini. It is also believed that undergoing sexual sublimation can facilitate a mystical awakening in an individual.”

Current Event: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080428062406AAqmB2e

“That’s ridiculous!” Beatriz Velastagui T. exclaimed.

“No! Really, I read it online!” replied Kaew Savane Xiong (“precious” “mountain” “bear”)

“I KNOW you don’t believe everything you read online, so why this thing?” Her lids narrowed as she looked at him through her long lashes.”

“Are you trying to seduce me?” Kaew – she said it like she’d say ‘cue’; he’d snap, ‘keh-oo’. She’d reply with the same word and he’d roll his eyes – said.

She sniffed and said, “No, I’m trying to send you into godhood so you’ll get out of my hair.” She stepped around him and hurried on her way to chemistry. He followed and she said, “I’m gonna call the deans and charge you with stalking!”

“You can’t because you know I’m going to physics.”

“Then it’s amazing that you believe in something like,” her voice dropped, “sex making someone into a god or goddess.”

He shrugged, “That’s what these crazy Americans think.”

“We’re crazy Americans now!” she said as she turned in to her class.

He sniffed and shook his head. The teasing had gone out of him, snuffed like a candle in a harsh wind. He passed her, head down and slipped into his own classroom. Beatriz was certain she heard him say, “You might be, but me?”

They met for lunch like every other day, but Kaew seemed as depressed as he had been when she’d started teasing him. She dropped her books on the table, startling him. “Why’d you do that?” he exclaimed.

“All right, I’ll listen to your theory. How CAN a Human use sex to transmute themselves into a god or goddess?”

He shook his head, “Supposedly it all has to do with focusing the sexual energy tightly enough.”

“Like how are we supposed to do that?” She pulled an orange out of her string pack and peeled it, making a neat little pile of rough fruit skins at her elbow.

Kaew opened his own bag and pulled out a notebook. An odd figure had been scratched into the green ink that used to cover it, leaving a white circle-within-a-circle and a bunch of odd lines and curlicues. “With this.”

Beatriz closed her eyes and shook her head slowly. “So we hold this magical circle between us and think about sex and, ‘poof!’ you’re a god and I’m a goddess?”

Kaew made a face then said, “You promised you’d listen to me.”

“This isn’t just some cheap trick to get into my panties, is it?” She was rewarded by his deep pinkish-pale blush.

He always stammered when he was nervous, so she knew she’d pricked him as he said, “N…n…no! It’s real! I’ve been studying this for a long time!”

She shook her head, eating three sections of the orange then saying, “Why do you want to be a god?”

He glanced both ways, then prairie-dogged to get a view of the whole lunchroom, then leaned forward and said, “There are people here who deserve to come under the wrath of a vengeful god!”

Image: http://www.skyscrapernews.com/images/pics/6255CaernarfonCastle_pic1.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: Climate Change Rant Entangling Writing, The Vertical Village/Unity World, Christianity, and Our Place In The Universe

NOT using the panel discussions of the most recent World Science Fiction Convention in Helsinki, Finland in August 2017 (to which I be unable to go (until I retire from education)), I will jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. But not today. This explanation is reserved for when I dash “off topic”, sometimes reviewing movies, sometimes reviewing books, and other times taking up the spirit of a blog an old friend of mine used to keep called THE RANTING ROOM…

The title alone should get me more hits than I usually do, so I’ll get right to the point: I’m not denying Climate Change. Wooly mammoths in Texas and Xiphactinus fossils “from the Niobrara Chalk formation in western Kansas” are clear evidence that the climate has changed over time.

My rant is against the claim that Humans are the sole cause of climate change and that if we don’t stop doing…whatever, life on Earth, and the Human race in particular, will cease to exist.

I could get extremely snarky and point to the response of some Anthropogenic Global Warming advocates and their attacks on anyone who disagrees with them and reference the response to Alfred Wegener’s theory of continental drift. “David Attenborough, who attended [Cambridge University] in the second half of the 1940s, recounted an incident illustrating [the scientific community’s] lack of acceptance then: ‘I once asked one of my lecturers why he was not talking to us about continental drift and I was told, sneeringly, that if I could prove there was a force that could move continents, then he might think about it. The idea was moonshine, I was informed.’” At that time, most scientists believed that the science of earth movement was quite settled. I’d also like to note that each of the Climate Change Conferences must have left a carbon footprint, but I can’t seem to find that data.

I won’t get snarky, though.

What I will do is write very briefly about a universe I’m creating in which Humanity finishes its move to urban areas by instituting the Return To The Wild laws. In my universe, population is concentrated in 20000 mega-urban structures scattered over the face of the Earth, occupying places of many of today’s major cities. The climate rebounds from its warming period by dropping into a mini-ice age. Progress toward “the Singularity” continues apace. Not long after RTTW, Humans discover that We Are Not Alone and become a reluctant part of a union of sentients held together by their debt to each other…

At any rate, I’d like to propose one possible reason for the tenacity with which people who resist the idea that climate change is not the sole responsibility of Humanity. While I know some of these people, I don’t know all of them. My own belief is that Humanity has CONTRIBUTED to climate change, but so have other factors – some simply the cyclical nature of variations in Earth’s orbit and axial tilt, variations in solar activity, variations in volcanic activity, continental shifts, El Niño, and geologic CO2 release.

The belief that we are the sole cause comes from the announcement of the death of God (if it ever existed at all) and the possibility of belonging to something greater than the individual. Some people who have eliminated the idea of God have discovered that they have an unexpected (though minor) deficit in their lives. They have trouble with being part of “a country”, especially as countries have (at their very best) dark periods in their histories (yes, even Sweden, Nigeria, and Canada have created or supported policies or rulers and authorities in their histories that they would rather not highlight). They have trouble with being part of a scientific community (which despite claims to the contrary, doesn’t always agree on the science of ANYTHING, for example, the speed of light…)

They choose to believe in the power of Humanity (I won’t get snarky about the exclusion of the parts of Humanity they don’t like, like roughly half of the political structure of this and most other countries), and how, like the God of Old, their Humanity can do ANYTHING – their Humanity can Transcend its physicality, it can throw off the chains of institutional religion and believe in the purely “spiritual” part of its Humanity (if it wants to), it can change the genetics of Humanity and reserves to right to declare this part or that part of Humanity useful or useless. In order to be all powerful, Humanity must certainly be able to change the environment of an entire planet. It must be seen to not only be ruler of the planet, but the ACTIVE ruler. The only Humanity some people want to belong to is the Humanity that can at first accidentally change the Climate and then can, through force of will and application of Human-created technology, change it back to “the way it was”.

I believe that there is an aspect of the people of the Anthropogenic Global Warming community – and I believe that even though the currently useful phrase is “Climate Change”, the underlying belief is that Humanity is responsible for it ALL – that seeks to fill a void created when God was slaughtered in this post-modern, Singularity-welcoming, post-Christian era…again.

In my story, Earth has rebounded from our future Climate Maximum with a Little Ice Age…and while Humanity is powerful and can influence future events, it’s not All-Powerful.

That place still belongs to God.

Resources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age, https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/228755/variable-speed-of-light-in-loop-quantum-gravity

Image: http://www.travelingkings.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Pic-08-Admiring-the-Xiphactinus-one-of-the-largest-bony-fish-ever-discovered.-570x380.jpg

I Missed the THURSDAY FREE FICTION Post...

I have been BURIED at work as the end of First Semester for the Class of 2018 AND the initial meetings with the Class of 2022 coincided...I'll be back on track next week.

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 338

Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them.

SF Trope: alien parasites take over humans

Current Event: http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2011/07/have-earths-pandemics-originated-in-outer-space.html

Choden Wangyal is the first generation of Tibetans to be born in the US. Her parents rarely come out in public and as an only child (not from lack of trying, her mother regularly assures her), she is their connection with the wider – and wilder – culture in which they live.

Choden was reading when she was 2 and has taken the most advanced classes her school offers. A 10^th grader now, she applied for and was allowed to begin college at the University of Minnesota through a program called Post-Secondary Education Opportunities (PSEO) and has been there for four months now.

With her college experience and her interaction with other American students, Choden realizes that she HAS to escape her family – soon!

One night, she chooses to stay late with a post-graduate student whom she KNOWS is flirting with her. They go to the Gartner Labs building where he has a night key. She never “actually told him” that she was fifteen, so when he makes amorous advances that terrify her, she cries out that she’s only fifteen.

Angry, he leaves her alone in the Labs, not realizing that his key card lanyard broke. Choden finds it and explores the labs alone. She stumbles in into the Virology Lab and without quite knowing what she’s doing, enters a restricted area that the boy, apparently, has access to. There she studies various experiments and when she picks up a shell vial culture to look at it, the plastic dissolves in her hand, the culture medium oozing over her fingers – and suddenly disappearing. She stares at her hand, suddenly doubting anything was there are all.

Choden hurries out of the Lab and to her aunt’s cousin’s sister’s dorm room where she spends the night. When she wakes up in the morning, she suddenly feels like she’s outside of herself. When she opens her eyes, she can see herself; wildly distorted. A moment later, one of her eyes pulls back into her head from the long stalk it was on and she can clearly see the other eye at the tip of a long, pale optic nerve sheathed in what appears to be chitin. That’s when she realizes that some sort of hideous, Kafkaesque metamorphosis has taken place. Or has it?

That’s almost acceptable until she begins to hear a voice speaking in her head. She can’t understand words, but the attitude is recognizable…

Names: ♀ Tibet                                            

Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b1/3,2,1_blast-off!_(15871161250).jpg/511px-3,2,1_blast-off!_(15871161250).jpg

Slice of PIE: The Role of SECRETS In Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Etc…

Using the Programme Guide of the World Science Fiction Convention in Helsinki Finland in August 2017 (to which I will be unable to go (until I retire from education)), I will jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Programme Guide. The link is provided below…

Role of Secrets in Speculative Fiction: Secrets are powerful things: secrets from a character’s past, secrets between characters, secret worlds, secret doorways, secret words, secret abilities. The mystery these secrets convey can increase tension and suspense, make a character more intriguing, suggest mood (for good or evil), create plot twists, complicate relationships between characters, alienate a character from others or from his society, change the course of a life... the list goes on.

J.A McLachlan, Author: a short story collection and two College textbooks on Professional Ethics, novels Walls of Wind, The Occasional Diamond Thief, and The Salarian Desert Game, another novel, mystery thrillers and short stories

Jennifer Udden, Literary Agent: with Barry Goldblatt Literary LLC, and represents SFF authors Emma Newman, Mur Lafferty, Mark Tiedemann, Ren Warom, Maurice Broaddus, WL Goodwater, and Ruth Vincent

Ian Sales, Speaker: author of Apollo Quartet; also 3 other books, two short stories; reviews books for Interzone.

Kim ten Tusscher, Author: five novels, known for her characters

J. Sharpe, Speaker: His novel Broken Memory was nominated for the Harland Awards for best novel; honorable mention for extraordinary originality; nominated for a Bastaard Fantasy Award; translated to English

Oddly enough, this past year has been an AWFUL years for selling my work.

I sold one story. Five published; one sold.

Ouch.

I know I can sell my work to professional markets, it’s just not consistent. I know I have something to say, but I can’t say it so that others catch my concern.

I started looking into how to make my concerns “catch fire”, so to speak. How do I speak so that others get excited about what I’m saying? How can I writer better so that others will read and go, “Jeez! That was important! Let me think about what he wrote!”

There are writers I return to time and again – I reread the CHRONICLES OF NARNIA, the MILES VORKOSIGAN books, every Christmas, I reread “Easter Egg Hunt: A Christmas Story”; I often return to “Can These Bones Live?”

Why – and how can I write that way?

A hint in the article referenced below: Chuck Wendig makes the startling statement, “EVERY STORY IS A MYSTERY STORY”. He goes on to defend his thesis by saying, “All stories need unanswered questions. All stories demand mysteries to engage our desperate need to know. We flip the little obsessive dipswitches in the circuit boards of our reader’s mind by presenting enigmas and perplexities. Why is our lead character so damaged? What’s in the strange mirrored box? How will they escape the den of ninja grizzlies? Storytelling is in many ways the act of positing questions and then exploring the permutations of that question before finally giving in and providing an answer.”

I never knew that.

So, I’m writing a new story and I’m starting it with a mystery: What is the pile of intelligent alien cockroaches doing in the middle of the Voyageurs National Forest in the middle of the winter when the temperature is about to dip to forty below zero?

You know what? It has ME interested. I’d been working on another story which had seemed straightforward adventure and I was having a TERRIBLE time writing it. I couldn’t seem to get going on it. I kept going back to the beginning and trying again. Then I read this article, and instead of having the main character rescue the girl from a sewer and have her wake up and tell him who she was…I made her unconscious. He has to drag her to the Station veterinarian to wake her up. Then she won’t say who she is or what she’s doing. He doesn’t find out until the very end WHAT she is…and then he has to decide whether to turn her in or go with her after they murder a government cop together…

After twisting the story that way, it had me interested again.

I can’t say that mysteries are my favorite reading, just like I don’t much care for fantasy (unless my daughter recommends it or it’s written by one of my favorite authors) – however because I love some of my friends and family members enough to read the books that THEY like, I have taken on the works of Craig Johnson, William Kent Kruger, Tom Clancy and Agatha Christie and decided that while they’re not my cup of tea, I’d enjoyed them enough to return to their worlds on and off again.

So I’ve decided that I’d start throwing a little mystery into my writing…in fact, I just realized that the ONE story I had published this past year was a murder mystery! Also, I came to a gentlemen’s agreement with a publisher for my YA science fiction novel, HEIRS OF THE SHATTERED SPHERES: Emerald of Earth…which also has a mystery at its core.

There it is, then, as my son, who just finished “play programming” his crawling robot: proof of concept.

Any thoughts?

Resource: http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2012/05/08/25-things-writers-should-know-about-creating-mystery/

Program Book: https://sites.grenadine.co/sites/worldcon75/en/w75/schedule

Image: http://cdn1.sciencefiction.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/aliennation1.jpg

LOVE IN A TIME OF ALIEN INVASION 78: The Trials of Group Two

On Earth, there are three Triads intending to integrate not only the three peoples and stop the war that threatens to break loose and slaughter Humans and devastate their world; but to stop the war that consumes Kiiote economy and Yown’Hoo moral fiber. All three intelligences hover on the edge of extinction. The merger of Human-Kiiote-Yown’Hoo into a van der Walls Society might not only save all three – but become something not even they could predict. Something entirely new...
The young experimental Triads are made up of the smallest primate tribe of Humans – Oscar and Xiomara; the smallest canine pack of Kiiote – six, pack leaders Qap and Xurf; and the smallest camelid herd of Yown’Hoo – a prime eleven, Dao-hi the Herd mother. On nursery farms and ranches away from the TC cities, Humans have tended young Yown’Hoo and Kiiote in secret for decades, allowing the two, warring people to reproduce and grow far from their home worlds.

“We had nearly fallen into stagnation when we encountered the Kiiote.”

“And we into internecine war when we encountered the Yown’Hoo.”

 “Yown’Hoo and Kiiote have been defending themselves for a thousand revolutions of our Sun.”

 “Together, we might do something none of us alone might have done…a destiny that included Yown’Hoo, Kiiote, and Human.” (2/19/2015)

“Let’s get moving.”

I glanced at my watch – cellphones had disappeared a long time ago; before I was born, I guess. Mechanical watches survived the high energy, electromagnetic pulses the Yown’Hoo and Kiiote fought with. Humans hadn’t stood much of a chance of remaining a technological civilization when all-out war broke over Earth. “Good luck, my friends.” No one else spoke as the three Kiiote, in four-legged form loped up the exit to the surface. It was winter and by now, it would be dark. Cold, probably, too. I wished I could go with them…

The rest of us continued on for five more kilometers in the tunnel, pretty much silent except for directions and like, “tactical” conversations from Retired to Group Two. This time, Xurf, Fax, Doj and leader Zei-go with Hil-hi-el, Jus-hi-el, and Eel-go-el. They’d plant their trackers underground, exit, then go to the surface through an old fueling station, coming out through a false floor in an historic repair bay. Retired said, “You have an actual mission.”

Xurf, the male Pack leader, made a faint query noise. Retired heard only that, though. I could hear the undertone of nervousness and doubt. Xurf rarely had to lead alone. Now all of a sudden, besides just getting a third of the Triad to the surface, avoiding any search teams from the Cities – and any independent community’s patrols – he was going to have to…

“We need not only supplies of food, but we need to contact someone on the surface here who we can trust to get us transportation to Grendl.”

“You know someone near here?” I said.

Retired blinked, like I’d surprised him. He didn’t say anything for a moment, then, “Yes, Oscar. There’s a contact here, while not a sympathizer of the Triad Corporation, she also does much care for what the Yown’Hoo and Kiiote have done to Earth. I’ve spoken with her before,” he grinned faintly, “She’s even older than me.”

I was going to make a smart aleck remark. Xio looked at me so I shut my mouth. I couldn’t just be a ‘kid’ anymore. I was a Human and while the Pack and Herd leaders were otherwise occupied, I was the defector leader…in training.

Fax. Shit. He was my…I don’t know. He just was. I considered him part of my own little Human Tribe as well as part of the Triad. I had feelings for him beyond the ones I had for all of the group. Weird feelings, if you had to know. A lot. He was my best friend. I mean, I loved Xio, but that was like a sister. And it’s not like I’ve never seen any other Humans before. The Triad – at least me a Xio – have been out and about the Cities on expeditions and stuff, mostly with the Master, Mother Kan Yuen. I never say much about her because she lives undercover in the Cities. She teaches us very specific lessons, but we have to go to here because she’s so old. I said, “Older than Mother Kan?”

Retired looked surprised, then shook his head. “Not as old as Mother Yuen.” He used the old term for her – because we studied multiple Human cultures, we knew that the Family name in most Asian cultures was the first name. Most of Retired’s generation used the second name as the last name. Dummies. No wonder Humanity was a fractured mess when the Kiiote-Yown’Hoo war came on us. He continued, “They’ll contact her and she’ll get some form of transportation for you to bring to us.”

Xurf looked up at him, “We’ll have to manipulate a Human vehicle?”

He shrugged, “If you used one from the Kiiote, not only would it become a target for the Yown’Hoo, it would be way too conspicuous for any Human community.”

“You mean they’d try and destroy it because they hate us?” Xurf said, unfolding from his four-legged form and taking his two-legged form. Even Retired waited politely until the process was complete.

Retired bit his lip, but it was Great Uncle Rion who said, “Of course they would. This is a world at war.” He gestured to Xurf then the Herd Mother. “Your people hate each other. Do you think that if we took some form of transport belonging to either of your peoples it would escape notice?” They both had the grace to be ashamed, Xurf tucking her tail; Dao-hi letting her tentacles slip half out of their sheaths. Even I hung my head. “It will be some beat-up piece of Human shit…” GURion paused. I’d never heard it cuss in front of us. I knew it did, GURion had been around for over a hundred years. It knew how to behave around Humans. It even cussed when it didn’t think I was listening, but it’d kept it clean when it’d been with us. Any doubt I had that it cared about the outcome of our flight from the war I blew out just then with a long sigh.

Fine then. “All right, everyone back down. Team Two, get ready to head for the surface. Xurf, take one of the others with you and let them hear your destination directions. Only two of you.” Retired gave me a look. Irritated? Offended? Nah, I suddenly realized, respect. I ignored it. “Just don’t both of you get killed.” Xurf fell back into her four-footed form and trotted after Retired. The Yown’Hoo Zei-go followed. Already I could see growth in the Yown’Hoo. Those who earned responsibility grew larger, tapping the subcutaneous fat stores. It already looked leaner, faster.

When they got back to what was left of the group, I nodded to Xurf and she led them up the tunnel then to the surface.

***

Xurf paused, taking a deep breath of the air of the Human world. Even though it was the only place she’d ever known, she also could tell it smelled ‘wrong’. Not bad. She loved her Human Pack members. But she also knew it wasn’t the same as the Pack homeworld.

Plus, the basement of the fueling station was full of leaks. Volatiles had seeped into the ground, poisoning both the land and the air around it. Snarling a grin, she set off for the escape path Retired had shared with them. Her respect for the elder Human grew more still as her third of the Triad broke to the surface and headed west. The scent from the material Retired had shared with her was strong in her mind. She would find the Human and they would move on to the next step of their flight.

Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Rhll_wire_rope.jpg