IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 256

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: Magic Realism

Current Event: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/centaurs-have-been-trashing-the-earth-for-eons-study-says

Navid Daisuke shook his head, "What do you mean, 'the centaurs are coming'?"

Ngọc Mirjam scowled at him then said, "The centaur objects are sort of a hybrid between an asteroid and a comet -- not all of them are bare rocks like asteroid, not all of them are pure ice like comets. One of them, called Chiron, look like asteroids but have cometary halos. They're strange objects..."

"So then why are we talking about them? We're supposed to be getting ready for the IB Alchemy exam and right now, the only thing I can see that's IB is that 'IB gettin' ready to leave.'"

Ngọc sniffed and took out her wand, tapped it on the edge of the mortar and pestle and said, "Fine then. How about we conjure some of our own centaurs?"

"I can conjure a centaur with some crushed ice, gravel, and a blowtorch."

"Only blowtorch in this room is the one standing next to me." With a flourish, she tapped the edge of the mortar. There was a flash and smoke. When it cleared, nothing had changed.

Navid snorted, "So, where's your centaur?"

"Shut up."

"Wasn't this supposed to be our interdisciplinary group 4 project -- you were the Alchemistry person and I was the mythology person."

"I said, 'shut up'. The centaur I was trying for wasn't the half-horse, half-man," she gave him a sidewise glance, "You're the only half-man I want in my life. I don't need one that clomps around not crapping in the restroom. I wanted to create the composition of the Chiron so I could examine its properties pertaining to chrysopoeia, which is..."

"I'm not a moron. I know what changing base metals into gold is all about. My dad majored in transmutational engineering in college."

“So you have a good idea of what I was trying to do. Now if you’ll shut up, I want to figure out where our centaur is…”

Navid turned away in disgust and pulled out his sorcTab and touched it with a finger wand. It expanded and started scrolling through his Favorites. He tapped a screen, scowling. Then his eyes went wide and he said, his voice a whisper, “I found your centaurs.”

“What did you say?” He didn’t say a word. He just turned his sorcTab toward her, tapping it to enlarge the image. Her eyes went wide as Hubble Telescope image drew into a close up: a long asteroid, rimed by a halo of frost was falling toward Earth. Wearing a spacesuit, astride the centaur, was another centaur, this one waving wildly as it plunged toward Earth…

 Names: ♀Vietnam, Estonia; ♂ Arabic, Japan

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

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY: “It’s a Mistake To Write About People of Different Ethnicities…”

Using the Programme Guide of the 2020 World Science Fiction Convention, ConZEALAND (The First Virtual World Science Fiction Convention), I will jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. I will be using the events to drive me to distraction or revelation – as the case may be. The link is provided below where this appeared on Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 1500 hours (aka 3:00 pm).

Indigenous authors come together to discuss the craft of writing, how they build futures and alternate worlds through an indigenous lens, their creative process and current projects.

Toni Wi: writer; editor; prospective PhD student

Sloane Leong: cartoonist, artist, writer (Hawaiian, Chinese, Italian, Mexican, Native American and European ancestry)

Sascha Stronach: writer

Darcie Little Badger: writer, PhD in oceanography

Rebecca Roanhorse: writer, Campbell, Nebula, and Hugo Award-winning (LOVED Trail of Lightning)

This would have been the first event on my list were I going!

However, I’m adding another pair of guests here – my Mind Guests: Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward, authors and workshop leaders. After following various leads, articles, and commentaries by other writers, I reached their “workshop book” WRITING THE OTHER, A Practical Approach.

In 1992, at the Clarion West Writers Workshop, “One of our classmates opined that it was a mistake to write about people of different ethnicities: you might get it wrong. Horribly, offensively wrong. Better not to even try.”(WRITING THE OTHER: A Practical Approach, Aqueduct Press, 2005; p 6)

It seemed to Ms. Shawl “to be taking the easy way out.” This led her to write the essay, “Beautiful Strangers: Transracial Writing for the Sincere” (Speculations, October 1999; retrieved from:  https://www.sfwa.org/2009/12/04/transracial-writing-for-the-sincere/)

“Amy closed her mouth, and mine dropped open. Luckily, I was seated when my friend made this statement, but the lawn chair must have sagged visibly with the weight of my disbelief. My own classmate, excluding all other ethnic types from her creative universe! I think this sort of misguided caution is the source of a lot of sf’s monochrome futures.” (It can certainly be said of Children's Literature at this moment...)

It was certainly mine – though I occasionally tried to slip in a name that was not typically given to Caucasian newborns, like “Candace”, “Dejario”, and “Ozaawindib” – and as much of a cultural referent as I could in a short story.

After writing my novel, OUT OF THE DEBTOR STARS, and sending it in eventually to be evaluated at BAEN BOOKS, it has been sitting in my computer, awaiting a rewrite for a couple of years now. In it, my main character is white and Ojibwe. Where I live, the Ojibwe are the predominant indigenous people, though there are Dakota as well. The Dakota lost the war with the Ojibwe a long time ago, so, I wanted to create a character who was not me – I wanted to attempt to be a transracial writer.

The first roadblock I slammed into was an objection to Noah’s bi-cultural name. His first was a popular American name (though actually, Wiki (with infallible accuracy, and interested solely in passing correct, factual, and totally and completely bias-free information) points out that “in view of the Sumerian/Babylonian source of the flood story”, it was Hebrew only secondarily after being stolen from Sumer and Babylon…)

At any rate, Noah’s last name is Bemisemagak and the editor commented that it was too long and he’d just skipped over it...

Really? I get irritated when people refuse to believe that my name is Guy! (I have been subjected to a quick query of “more likely” alternatives: “Greg? Gary? Grant? (any my personal favorite) God?”

So, let’s trample on an indigenous name by noting that it’s too long and we’ll just skip over it...

Admittedly, I was weak on the history when I wrote it. Since then, however, I’ve read THE ASSASSINATION OF HOLE-IN-THE-DAY and a poetry collection by Ojibwe author and poet, Richard Wagamese, (resided in British Columbia, Canada), EMBERS: One Ojibwe’s Meditations.

I absolutely do not claim familiarity with the Ojibwe people, though I have passed through the skeletal remnants of their vast lands; I’ve secretly rejoiced at their prosperity and the white community’s vast irritation when, “Minnesota tribes were the first in the nation to negotiate and sign gaming compacts with a state government.” (https://mnindiangamingassoc.com/about-miga/history-of-indian-gaming/. My home also holds a far darker record – not only the largest execution of Dakota in the state’s microscopic history, but “The mass hanging of 38 Dakota men was conducted on December 26, 1862, in Mankato, Minnesota; it was the largest mass execution in United States history.”

I have a profound motivation to include “the other” in my writing. I’m trying to sell a short story that also takes place at this time, with Director Bemisemagak, but I haven’t had any luck yet. I wrote a contemporary YA novel, VICTORY OF FISTS in which Langston Hughes Jones is a biracial teen who is a genius, has anger issues, and works to deal with them by writing poetry. My agent tried 17 markets, all of them rejected it for reasons other than “a big, old, fat, white guy can’t possibly [be allowed] to write about a biracial teenager!!!!!” But, it was clear that I was flying into the gathering hurricane that's roaring through YA, childrens, and speculative fiction publishing as people who are leaders attempt to do IMMEDIATELY (and with fanfare) what should have been done wholesale decades ago.

While I hesitate to speculate, I wonder if the REST of the publishing community holds Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward’s enthusiasm for bofwhigs like myself trying to include POC in my narratives? I think it’s important that POCs begin to appear in stories in the proportion in which they are in a society. While there may or may not be enough writers who are POC to cover that need, I’ll continue to include characters who are POC in my writing – whether people notice it or not. Larry Henry, the main character in my story, “Kamsahamnida, America”, was supposed to be black, based on Robert Henry Lawrence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Henry_Lawrence_Jr.), First African-American astronaut, died before ever going into space. Robert Henry Lawrence? The Henry’s obvious; Larry is short for Lawrence…nah? *sigh*

I don't want to appropriate culture, I’m want to be part of the effort to ensure that hidden people who made the world are drawn forward to take their real place in history, in today’s world, and in the future worlds. For context, I've worked in a multicultural, average high school as a counselor for the past ten years; if you went there and asked around, others would speak for my behavior and character -- otherwise, you have no idea if I'm writing fiction or fact.

Shawl & Ward conclude with the following, “Tom Wolfe spoke at a Press Club lunch on the subject of ‘writing what you know.’ His point was that this is great advice, but that as writers it’s our job to continually know more…So welcome the Beautiful Strangers. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes with them. Do your best, and you’ll avoid the biggest mistake of all: exclusion.”

In my writing, I'm working hard to do this. I'm working to become transracial and antiracist. I am a work in progress.

Programme Book: https://sites.grenadine.co/sites/conzealand/en/conzealand/schedule

Image: https://scontent.ffcm1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/93711499_2974237795969833_8163210792070545408_o.jpg?_nc_cat=111&_nc_sid=6e5ad9&_nc_ohc=dAOzDSzD2WUAX9kIXBK&_nc_ht=scontent.ffcm1-1.fna&oh=14320e7b26efd9663e3994e5da14a839&oe=5F417949

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 455

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: Evil de-evolution

Current Event: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devolution_(biology) (Fascinating article in which an evolutionists tap-dances around the idea that the dissemination of correct information is NOT the responsibility of scientists but of...um...Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, but ultimately Nobody and CERTAINLY not them…(http://www.corsinet.com/braincandy/hlife.html))

Ugnė Mertens flipped her pigtail back again as she stared at the image on her laptop. Muttering, she stepped sideways to the microscope and moved the slide using the X-Y translational control knobs fine adjustment. The image of the chromosome she was studying moved fractionally.

Naranbaatar Todorov picked at his thin, first beard and said, “Staring at it isn’t going to make the genes magically appear, Ug.”

“That’s what you think,” she straightened up, she smiled and added, “Baaaaa,” drawing out the stereotypical sheep sound. “Watch.” She touched a pressure toggle on an odd, goose-necked device standing beside the microscope. The computer’s screen fuzzed suddenly, then the single chromosome lit up as if it was a candy cane.

Baa started, looked at the lamp and exclaimed, “What is that thing?”

“Something I invented and you didn’t,” Ug said, sitting on the lab stool, leaning forward.

Baa swallowed hard, pursed his lips then said, “Listen, I know you don’t much like me...”

Ug reached out and typed an entry into the text box then said, “If I had a choice between dissecting three-day-old roadkill and having lunch with you...” she paused, made a face, then said, “I’m not sure which one I’d pick.”

Baa glanced at the clock on the wall. He still had four hours left of his shift. He couldn’t skip it or Dr. Harber would find out and dock him points. But he wasn’t sure he could keep his feet still and not kick Ugnė in the butt. He took a deep breath and said, “Must be an infrared to ultraviolet, rotating frequency projector.”

She shot him a look then went back to making notes on her computer. Occasionally she tapped her smartphone as well, which lay next to the laptop. “Lucky guess.”

“So that means, ‘yes’. Then you must have bathed the chromosomes in a solution that would...” Naranbaatar hooked another stool with his foot to drag it closer. Shrieking as it vibrated along the floor tiles, he winced and said, “Sorry.”

Ugnė sniffed but didn’t reply. Finally she said, “I used a mix that the older the gene, the less fluorescing compound it would pick up.”

Baa frowned then asked, “What are the chromosomes from?”

“A narn.”

“You’re kidding!” he exclaimed. Reports had been circulating for years about animals whose genes had suddenly started evolving – a quantum evolution event – from static forms to much, much more intelligent forms.

“These are chromosomes from raccoons killed in southern Minnesota.”

“We have narns here?” Baa exclaimed, backing away from the microscope.

Ug turned to look at him. “The genes aren’t contagious, idiot! This isn’t a disease – it’s animal chromosomes. Dyed and fixed at that! What are you afraid of?”

“Nothing. Nothing!” He spun around and took long strides out of the lab. He didn’t care if he lost hours – all he could see in his mind’s eye was the raccoon he’d nearly run over when he was biking on rural trails near his family’s home in an outer ring suburb of what was slowly becoming the three, four-kilometer-tall towers of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Vertical Village.

He would never forget the look on its face as it held out a mangled aw to him and said, “Help...”

Names: ♀ Lithuanian, Belgian; ♂ Mongolian, Bulgarian

Sidebar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium      

Image: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D0rHIU_VYAARC9l.jpg

WRITING ADVICE: Can This Story Be SAVED? #27 “Not Quite Blue Boy” (Submitted 3 Times Since August 2019, Revised 0)

In September of 2007, I started this blog with a bit of writing advice. A little over a year later, I discovered how little I knew about writing after hearing children’s writer, In April of 2014, I figured I’d gotten enough publications that I could share some of the things I did “right”. I’ll keep that up, but I’m running out of pro-published stories. I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it, but someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what I write. Hemingway’s quote above will remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing output and sales, but I’m adding this new series of posts because I want to carefully look at what I’ve done WRONG and see if I can fix it. As always, your comments are welcome!

ANALOG Tag Line:

What do you do if you find out you’re not normal, but not the Next Step in Evolution, either?

Elevator Pitch (What Did I Think I Was Trying To Say?)

Seventeen-year-old Martian teen, Kalbin is about to graduate from high school and choose his training. He’d overcome the handicap of having a rare blood disease that kept his body from utilizing oxygen. What he finds out on the eve of his graduation makes matters worse after a friend asks him if he’s one of the quasi-slave Artificial Humans. He’s not. Only parts of his DNA are artificial; the rest are Human…

Opening Line:

“Kalbin Chang sprinted along the edge of Burroughs Dome’s biggest park. ‘If he thinks he’s gonna…’”

Onward:

From behind the Oldest Tree On Mars, a figure dressed in black charged him, screaming curses. Kalbin tried to drop the ninja assassin with a football block tackle modified to sweep the legs, but the bigger boy easily knocked him over. Flat on his back, Kalbin stared up at the Dome.

Jerking the mask from his face so his curly black hair sprang from his head, his best friend Waqas Tahtamouni laughed. “You’ve been ninja assassinated!” He offered Kalbin a hand up.

Kalbin, smaller by ten kilos, took it, saying, “What are you doing?” He glanced at his hand, “You got my heart rate going so fast I think I might have an attack!”

Waqas’ eyes bugged, his gloat changing to contrition. “Awh la! I didn’t mean to! Are you hǎo?”

What Was I Trying To Say?

Not entirely sure, though my character IS a metaphor. He represents a biracial teen – one foot in one world; one in another completely different one. He also discovers his father lied to him. Why? To keep him safe; to blunt the suspicions people will have about him because he’s a half-breed. Discrimination is illegal in fact; but not always “in mind.”

The Rest of the Story:

Kalbin’s friend begins to ask questions about Kalbin’s origins that he’s not ready to answer. His friend then just flat-out asks him if he’s an Artificial Human; a subclass on Mars that means the same as “inferior” and “slave”.

When they finish graduation rehearsal, Kalbin confronts his father who tells him that he’s an experiment. He refuses to tell Kalbin WHY and the teen ends up ditching his father, his friends, and the sham that his “graduation” has become. He heads into the depths of Burroughs, the oldest colony on Mars.

End Analysis:

I’ve learned something lately: in order to tell a story, it has to mean something. That’s obvious. What I learned in conjunction with that is that the story has to be both a mystery and be layered in metaphor. This is a layered story for certain; but I think I have TOO MANY layers for it to be effective. It’s also too short for the subject. I was writing it for a specific market, so I didn’t have enough words to really delve into it.

Can This Story Be Saved?

I think so – but I have to rethink the symbolism and metaphor here. While I wrote this using Lisa Cron’s methodology, I’ve come lately to believe that a story has to do more than entertain.

Of COURSE it has to be entertaining first and foremost. Even the Bible is entertaining – sex, murder, slavery, execution, subjugation, demonic possession, war, betrayal and so much more; the Book is impossible to put down. (If only they’d get rid of those nasty “judgement” and “commandment” thingies…)

But I now think that metaphor has to be in service of the story if it’s going to not only speak to a reader today; it’s got to be so deep that it will speak to readers tomorrow. In fact, it has to be so deep that it can speak something NEW to the same reader weeks, months, years, and centuries later.

A tall order for a few thousand words. But, then doesn’t that same Bible say, “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12)

If I’m just entertaining, then the sword isn’t sharp enough. If I’m just preaching, then the sword isn’t sharp enough, either. In either case, it’s at least half dull.

Image: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/9f/22/3b/9f223b1e57a36e14db3eb13715fbe3f9.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 454

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: Abduction = Love; a stranger kidnaps a total stranger and never lets them go.

Current Event: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/05/08/cleveland-missing-women-berry-dejesus-knight-castro.html

They’d been locked in the basement for longer than either of them could remember. The windows – Natasha Reno-Pardo assumed that the boarded up, black painted rectangles near the ceiling of the basement were once windows – were impossible to open.

The permanent stairs had been removed and replaced by a heavy, steel drop-down stairs. Rudyard Bernal, her fellow captor had worked at getting those to drop from the ceiling for a whole week. He’d tried to pry them from the ceiling seven times after they woke up. The eighth time, he’d gotten a shock so bad his hands were burned. Not enough to blister the skin, but very painful.

Light came from two fluorescents set behind thick plastic. They never went out. Food and water came in bags dropped from a hole in the ceiling whenever they were both asleep.

They were trapped.

In the dim silence, not long after both of them were awake, Rudyard said, “I think we’ve been here a month.” Then he burst out crying. Natasha looked up at the ceiling and into the corners. They knew they were being watched all the time. Once, when they’d tried to sleep together on the same pile of blankets, to get away from the bathroom hole, snakes had suddenly dropped down from the ceiling hole and the lights had gotten super bright.

They’d spent an hour sweeping the things into the hole. They’d spent most of the time fighting the rattlesnake. Neither one of them had been bitten, but they threw the blanket covered in snake guts in another corner after stomping it to death.

This day was different. Natasha stepped over the immense red door in the center of the basement floor and sat down next to Rudyard. At first he flinched and looked up at the feeding hole and muttered, “No. What are they gonna throw at us next?”

Natasha said, “We’re not doing anything.”

He leaned against her, cried a while longer and finally rested against her.

As if to curse their closeness a grinding sound came from the drag-down stairs. Real light leaked from a narrow crack that gradually widened, letting in more and more real light. When the stairs were half uncovered, they began to come down from the ceiling, making a sound like a descending castle drawbridge.

It thudded to the floor.

A shiny, black leather boot with a neatly cuffed pant leg dropped down on the top step…

Names: ♀ Russia, Mexico ; ♂ English, Mexico

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

Slice of PIE: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, and Poverty

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. I wrote this some time ago (August 2017), yet it seems even more relevant today. I also added a few new thoughts at the end.

Fantasies of Free Movement: A number of recent works have explicitly linked the trope of transportation in SF to issues of migration and home, ranging from the strange topologies of Dave Hutchinson's "Fractured Europe" series, to the "death of the majority" in Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota, or the more contemporary parable about seeking refuge found in Mohsin Hamid's Exit West. What do such works do to help us explore the opportunities and challenges of a free-movement world? In a time of (seemingly) closing borders, where in fantastika can we find grounds for hope? And what questions remain under-explored?

Niall Harrison – moderator and member of the WorldCon 2o17 team

Nicholas Whyte – science fiction fan

Rosanne Rabinowitz – contributed to anthologies: Jews vs Aliens, Horror Uncut: Tales of Social Insecurity and Economic Unease, Something Remains and Murder Ballads. Her novella “Helen's Story” was shortlisted for the 2013 Shirley Jackson Award.

Teresa Romero – no information on her and she only participates in this event

John-Henri Holmberg – Swedish author, critic, publisher and translator, and a well-known science fiction fan

This is truly a fantasy that only the wealthy might even be able to imagine…

I can’t respond to Dave Hutchinson’s series, but having read Ada Palmer’s first book, I am of the belief that the kind of movement she postulates will ONLY be possible for the mega-wealthy.

In fact, it may be embarrassing how little of the world’s population even have an INKLING of what such a world would look like. According to the two articles below, one seventh of the world’s population has to walk some six kilometers to get drinkable water. Hilary Clinton made it a cause de célébrité. Based on a wild guess, Christine Negroni of AIR&SPACE magazine says that perhaps six percent of the world’s population has flown at all…

That means that 94% of the Earth’s population would have little to no idea what such a concept as “freedom of movement” is (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement) as a purely physical concept.

Politically out of the 197 regimes on this planet, one in four are considered “not free”. Of the other three fourths; one third are only partly free. In 2016, the “free world” was made up of less than half the countries on Earth…

While science fiction writers have for decades attempted to both entertain and cast a light into the future and explored possible futures, I am increasingly bothered that those futures seem to be more for the wealthy and less for the poor. For some reason “the poor” seem to have vanished miraculously – from Gene Roddenberry’s wildly optimistic United Federation of Planets of which Deanna Troi says, “…Poverty was eliminated on Earth, a long time ago. And a lot of other things disappeared with it - hopelessness, despair, cruelty...

And to which Samuel Clemens replies, “Young lady, I come from a time when men achieve power and wealth by standing on the backs of the poor, where prejudice and intolerance are commonplace and power is an end unto itself. And you're telling me that isn't how it is anymore?”

To virtually every other story I’ve read recently, though Kameron Hurley created a new definition of “poverty” in her THE STARS ARE LEGION the author doesn’t talk about poverty, nor do they deal with the powerless. In 2013, Charlie Jane Anders sparked a discussion about how science fiction writers deal with poverty (read the original article and the comments here: http://io9.gizmodo.com/where-is-the-science-fiction-about-ending-poverty-472693273) I’ve got a few books to check out because of the Anders article, but I can just note that her debut novel isn’t about poverty but about teen love, magic, and technology. Nothing wrong with that, but I simply note that here for effect.

So…my rant is over. The reason I feel strongly about this is that “some” people in the comment section of Anders’ article claimed that there is no poverty anymore and that it’s just a matter of distribution. I would direct them to the nearest Calcutta slum; or possibly the Chicago projects; or even Mary’s Place in downtown Minneapolis to have a little chit chat with someone who lives on the streets. I know students who live in a family car. I personally know two boys who were born in the back of a van in which the family lived because there was no way for them to afford the trip to the hospital or to live anywhere else (may I also point out that they were born 21 years ago in 1997 during the reign of the Democratic Party…which prides itself on taking care of the poor…which, in this case, it didn’t.). When attempting to interview for a job (I might point out that this incident occurred in the Golden Age of Barack Obama), they were told “No.”

The reason given was that they were “urban hillbillies”…

Another problem is that if you present your main character as one who has no power; who is disenfranchised; who is marginalized…then the story can’t go anywhere because without power – or even a tool with which to leverage power – nothing will happen in a story. Even when a novel begins with a slave or the poor, it usually turns out that they were some sort of royalty and actually DO have power (Twain’s “The Prince and the Pauper”; Heinlein’s CITIZEN OF THE GALAXY; even Ada Palmer’s TOO LIKE THE LIGHTNING and Gordon R. Dickson’s WAY OF THE PILGRIM gives a slave a fulcrum with which to change his world.) [I find it ironic that someone living in poverty would have been unable to add anything to the conversation on poverty...as they would not have been able to attend WorldCon...]

So, how DO we empower the impoverished?

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

Resources: http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/04/29/drinking.water/index.html, http://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/how-much-worlds-population-has-flown-airplane-180957719/, http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/figures-at-a-glance.html, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2017

Image: https://i0.wp.com/somaliainvestor.so/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Poverty--scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1714&ssl=1

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 453

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: a sorcerer who is dead but his “soul” lives on trapped somewhere

Current Event: http://www.alunajoy.com/2012-mar18.html

  

Martin Jönsson stared at the blog and said, “You’ve read this stuff?” He scratched his scruffy blonde beard – little more than rough peach fuzz

Vukosova Gavrilović, long-time friends and NOT girlfriend, smirked. She learned the Swede phrase for her buddy’s newly sprouted beard was duniga skägg. She considered teasing him, but the look on her face warned her that he probably wasn’t in the mood tonight. Instead she said, “I read it. What about it?”

“It like, says that people can soak up ancient energy and transport it from place to place!”

Vukosova shook her head. Her friend was a philosophy major – she wished him luck in finding a job as something more than an intelligent garbage collector. She was a physics major, and if her freshman grades and undergrad presentation were any indication, she may have just written herself a ticket to the Cooperative Lunar Colony Fusion Research Center after she graduated. The CLCRFC – better known by its euphemistic name, The CooL Co. FuR Center and what NASA insisted on calling ClickerFick in its press releases – was every physicists dream. Nuclear fusion was a hop, skip and a jump away from becoming practical. All they needed to do was solve one or two containment issues...she yanked her attention back to Martin and said, “We’ve been soaking up energy and taking if from place to place since the evolution of the first life form.”

He finally looked up from the screen that showed some wackoid Egyptian goddess background overlain with a the foolish ranting of someone who was certain they’d been able to imbue and ancient Egyptian site with energy sucked up in their souls from Atlantis. He said, “This is amazing! It sounds like what you guys are doing in that science class you’re taking!”

She sighed and said, “It’s called Elementary Nuclear Fusion – and it doesn’t have anything to do with storing energy. It’s about creating energy.”

He frowned then said, “I had some science classes in high school...”

“That was last year, wasn’t it?”

“Hey! Just ‘cause I’m a prodigy doesn’t mean I don’t deserve respect!”

“You were a prodigy in acting, Martin! Now you couldn’t shake a stick at an T-comp without breaking into a cold sweat!”

He stood up abruptly, snapping the cover in his computer. “Shows how much you know! I’m gonna see if I can soak up some fusion energy from...from…”

She smirked and said, “Idfu – it’s on the east bank of the Nile in east central Egypt.”

He glared, “You think you know everything just because you’re a physics major! But there’s another world out there, too. One you can’t see! It inhabits the same realm as your gravitons.”

“Gravitons are real!” Vukosova exclaimed.

“Yeah? Show  me one!”

“Well, you can’t just open your eyes and see one! You need special equipment…”

“And then can you see one?”

“Well...not exactly. But we can see evidence that gives a strong indication of the properties and the effects of...”

“So your gravitons are as imaginary as my negative Atlantean energy.”

“They aren’t the same...”

Martin turned away and stalked out of the dining hall. He stopped just before he slammed the door and shouted, “We’ll see whose god is more powerful! The trapped sorcerers of Atlantis and Ancient Egypt or the trapped gravitons of the Unified Field Theory!”

She blinked in surprise as he finished his rant and stomped away. She muttered, “I didn’t know he knew anything about the Unified Field Theory!”

Name Source: Sweden, Serbia

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

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: An Alien Invasion May Already Be UNDERWAY!!!!

NOT using the panel discussions of the most recent World Science Fiction Convention in Dublin, Ireland in August 2019 (to which I be unable to go (until I retire from education)), I would jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. But not today. This explanation is reserved for when I dash “off topic”, sometimes reviewing movies, sometimes reviewing books, and other times taking up the spirit of a blog an old friend of mine used to keep called THE RANTING ROOM…

So, I spent the morning chopping down the invasive tree/bush known as the common buckthorn…For my money, it is not only annoying, it is an horrendous MONSTER! (https://scontent.ffcm1-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/106777038_10156827573131324_1338251936212348319_n.jpg?_nc_cat=101&_nc_sid=8024bb&_nc_ohc=9q9yeayXZNAAX8wacF5&_nc_ht=scontent.ffcm1-2.fna&oh=0578f6e378467324c0b4b97446be1500&oe=5F25001B

Oddly, this got me to thinking about a favorite set of novels from my young adulthood. I was a pretty freshly minted science teacher. I could teach lots of the sciences, but my interest had always been in biology.

David Gerrold, of STAR TREK fame (“The Trouble with Tribbles” in particular), wrote a unique alien invasion novel (actually a series), that detailed how the Chtorr had begun their invasion by wiping out a substantial portion of Humanity through a viral attack.

The survivors began to find weird plants, animals, and “stuff” all over. The “worms” are only the most voracious members of the “invasion suite” – but they are terrifying: “…they range in size from as small as a dog to as large as a bus…They have two double-jointed ‘arms’…with incredibly sharp claws. Their bodies are covered with symbiotic ‘fur’, each strand of which is a distinct lifeform and acts as a sensory input.”                  

This is a sort of invasive species on steroids.

Yesterday, I spent the morning attacking an invasion of a European plant called “common  buckthorn”, whose scientific name is Rhamnus cathartica. It was brought here as an “ornamental shrub” from “from the central British Isles south to Morocco, and east to Kyrgyzstan.”

It blends in and is seemingly innocuous, though its scientific name hints at one of its uses in herbal medicine: “The seeds and leaves are mildly poisonous for humans and most other animals… [causing] stomach cramps and laxative effects…[suggesting a] common name purging buckthorn…”

It’s a nasty thing that grows leaves before most of the rest of the northern species of trees and grows fast. Local animals don’t graze it; though birds eat the seeds. As well, the plant contains a chemical called an “emodin”. It made me think of Imodium when I first saw it and while this over-the-counter anti-diarrheal medication STOPS diarrhea, emodin causes it. Animals that try and eat the little hard, black berries drop them all over the place – spreading them everywhere.

This is just one example of a particularly obnoxious plant that is insidiously taking over vast swaths of North America. The species is naturalised and invasive in parts of North America. Rhamnus cathartica has a competitive advantage over native trees and shrubs in North America because it leafs out before native species. Of the annual carbon gain in R. cathartica, 27–35% comes from photosynthesis occurring before the leaves of other plants emerge. Soil in woodlands dominated by R. cathartica was higher in nitrogen, pH and water content than soil in woodlands relatively free of R. cathartica,[15][18] probably because R. cathartica has high levels of nitrogen in its leaves and these leaves decompose rapidly.

"Rhamnus cathartica is also associated with invasive European earthworms (Lumbricus spp.) in the northern Midwest of North America. Removing R. cathartica led to a decrease of around 50% in the biomass of invasive earthworms.

"Soils enriched by extra nitrogen from decayed buckthorn leaves and…Invasive earthworms (which in MN means ALL earthworms…)…need rich litter, break [buckthorn leaves] down rapidly, destroying beneficial fungi and exposing bare soils in the process. These soils provide ideal conditions for buckthorn germination and seedling growth but many native trees and shrubs need the beneficial fungi and will not reproduce without it…it is particularly prevalent in the Great Lakes states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan.”

Why can’t we fight it with 21^st Century science? “Numerous potential biocontrol insects for common and glossy buckthorn were screened for host-specificity and impacts. Early on, glossy buckthorn biocontrol was eliminated from consideration due to lack of promising agents. Research continued on common buckthorn.  After 11 years of searching for a biocontrol insect that is both host-specific and damaging to common buckthorn, we concluded that we do not have any promising agents at this time so we ended the project.”

So, while I’ve always laughed at the labels that say “Non-GMO” (because Humans have been genetically modifying organisms since the first Mayan crossbred the first corn plant to get bigger seeds – by hand and by century: (https://i.redd.it/mbe42vdt49841.jpg), 

I’m surprised that we haven’t tried to modify some kind of bug to take care of it. It does have an economic impact here; it certainly has an impact on the timber industry in other states – but none of the states affected by buckthorn are LUMBER-producing states, so…we don’t do it.

It's kind of creepy to realize that some sort of alien Chtorr could set up an alien ecosystem and we might not even notice it. What if biological invasion is a LONG-TERM proposition? What if some sort of AI ship or landcraft landed and proceeded to introduce various species across their normal boundaries, weakening the entire ecosystem. Then instead of the dramatic “red” invasion of the War Against the Chtorr, you’d have something virtually unstoppable.

How would we even know?

How about the first starship to reach an Earth-like world finds that the lifeforms are incredibly…familiar; and that the survey shows that a number of the species they find on the planet are what we would call “invasives” or even “introduced” – and as far as that goes, pheasants are “introduced” in Minnesota rather than invasive, because “some people” released them for hunting purposes…

So, I have a scenario where one of the new colonists is from around here – or find out where the most invasive species reside – is on the bio-survey team. They can’t find anything of Human-level intelligence. Then another, farther-reaching mission finds and makes a First Contact, and their “home world” has species very familiar on Earth…in fact, their biology is suspiciously Earth-like…

Foundation: https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/invasives/index.html#:~:text=Minnesota's%20natural%20resources%20are%20threatened,land%20or%20in%20the%20water., https://files.dnr.state.mn.us/natural_resources/invasives/terrestrialplants/is-bmp.pdf

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_Against_the_Chtorr#A_Matter_for_Men_(1983), https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/invasives/terrestrialplants/woody/buckthorn/index.html, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhamnus_cathartica, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emodin, https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/invasives/terrestrialplants/woody/buckthorn/index.html

Image: https://www.lwcurrey.com/pictures/medium/145919.jpg