IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 594

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: Fantasy Noir (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FantasticNoir)
Current Event: http://theirturn.net/former-racehorse-breeder-unmuzzled/

I’m not from around here. In fact, where I’m from, the worlds you ascribe to authors like JK Rowling and JRR Tolkien are pale representations of life in OUR 21st Century…

Even so, we got one thing in common – there are scumbags in both places. My dad is a cop in a place I’ll call Rowkien. He works in the biggest city, the equivalent of your New York or Los Angeles, called Mohrpohrq.

The problem is that I’m NOT supposed to be here and it’s really, really hard for a teenager with a horse’s body and a human chest, arms, and head to hide out until the gate that let him through to here opens again. It’s a good thing I learned how to glamour in Rowkien and for whatever reason, that kind of low-level magic works here, so I can make it appear that I'm a regular horse. The other problem is that what are totally COOL names in Rowkien -- like mine -- are not very...um...powerful here. My name's Hokey Flemm. Yup. Cool in Rowkien. Not so much here.

Keeping up the glamour is hard work and it makes me incredibly hungry. I also like to eat a whole lot more than just oats. We aren’t a vegetarian people in Rowkien. Especially us centaurs. I was losing weight and starting to look pretty scrawny. Worst of all, I couldn’t keep the glamour up for more than a few hours at a time, so I mostly had to let it down when I thought I was alone.

That’s how Waqas Said and me met, which just so happened to be the night both of us almost died...

Names: ♂ Rowkien; ♂ Pakistan

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

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY: In Space No One Can See You Hide the Evidence: Crimes in Space

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 Sunday, Aug 2, 2020 at 1100 hours.

In Space No One Can See You Hide the Evidence: Crimes in Space

Trish Matson: journalist, physicist
Valerie Valdes: writer
Carl Fink: instructional designer (creates, delivers materials to learners including paper materials like handouts, manuals, eLearning technologies, multimedia for all educational institutions and adult training)
Kat Clay: crime and horror author

I am a recent convert to the Mystery genre. I stumbled into it originally through reading the Hardy Boys as a kid, though I never really read many more than that. Asimov’s R. Daneel Olivaw’s stories fascinated me; but I didn’t really fall into the mystery genre until I read my first Longmire mystery a few years ago.

Once I did that, I found I was hooked. In fact, I find a novel dull if there isn’t some essence of mystery in it. It can be the “big idea”, as in Jack McDevitt’s ACADEMY series (where the nature of the mysterious Omega clouds is the backdrop for the series) and his ALEX BENEDICT books (Benedict is an antiquities dealer whose job often rubs up into mysterious disappearances…) or the origins of PERN, of the DRAGONRIDERS OF PERN series, as a colony of a space-faring civilization that met with disaster – and coped.

McDevitt led to Connie Willis’ books, and Bujold’s VORKOSIGAN novels, which always hinge on some kind of mystery.

Which eventually led me to the realization that LIFE is a mystery and every SF novel I have in my library has a mystery in it. My favorite series by my favorite author (Julie Czerneda) is the SPECIES IMPERATIVE books; the entire series depends from the unknown answer to two questions, “What created the Chasm, an expanse of dead worlds filled with the ruins of alien civilizations? Living worlds are dying again, how can it be stopped?”

I’ve finally started to experiment with including mystery in my writing. I DID write a science fiction mystery for kids…in 1997. “Mystery on Space Station Courage” was published in CRICKET: The Magazine for Children. It was even included in supplemental materials for an elementary school reading program.

But, as you might notice, I haven’t played around with mysteries since then – though “Road Veterinarian” is a…sort-of mystery in which an experimental, genetically engineered organism that digests and replaces asphalt roads, decides to cruise internationally all by its lonesome, which might spark war...The problem is WHY...and they bring in an innocent veterinarian to figure it out. (ANALOG Science Fiction and Fact, September/October 2019)

 Science fiction and mystery or thriller have to be intimately woven together. Oddly, there doesn’t seem to be much written along the “how to” lines, so I guess I’ll have to take the bits and pieces I can find and paste them together into a thoughtful whole!

1) The mix of SF and mystery has to be even – IOW, you can’t just tack a spaceship on to a murder. (Or make the murder victim a robot…though that’s what I did in “The Murder of AutoTech #47369”. An AI is killed by someone, and the police are confused. Of course, so is the suspect. They don’t remember anything about the murder, though there’s a suspicious gap in their memory where the details should be. I subbed it to all of the top markets…)

2) There’s got to be a legitimate mystery. As in: “the protagonist is trying to find out what happened during a night he blacked out, the location of a mysterious star stone, and who wants it enough to leave threatening or bizarre notes…” As in number one, you can’t just tack a mystery onto an alien world or in a starship.

3) The reader should be one step behind the investigator. “...became a war criminal at the age of six; investigates crimes for the Diplomatic Corps; tough, hard-nosed bureaucrat; more investigator than fighter; uses her intelligence to save the day, and they follow the mystery maxim that the reader should always be one small step behind the hero, but only one step behind; witness interviews, juicy red herrings, and a final reveal right out of Holmes.” Clues should be placed and discovered naturally. Convolution here isn’t welcome.

4) Create a place that is distinct and where the crime could occur. “gritty, hard-boiled detective story; sense of place you get from this story is as well realized as the characters living in it.” As always, the place should be a character as much as the Humans (or aliens as the case may be!)

5) The cop, sleuth, mystery solver, has to have a clear, clean voice. “When reaching for a detective story, it’s always the sleuth’s voice that draws me in and keeps me turning pages. I like my detectives quick-witted and cynical and, if I’m being honest, more than a little unlucky; not cynical; a hustler with a heart of gold; gritty, hand-to-mouth life; peace and determination.” My kid mystery solver does have a clear voice; I can’t remember the sleuth in “The Murder of AutoTech #47369”, though it might be an AI…hmmm.

6) The mystery has to be personal. In one of my favorite Miles Vorkosigan stories, “The Mountains of Mourning”, the main character, at this point a newly graduated officer, has to solve a murder. But it’s not just “some guy”…it’s an infant; and she was murdered because of a cleft palate. Even in the recovering world of Miles, such a birth defect is easily repaired…in the city. It doesn’t help that he LOOKS like he has a radiation-induced birth defect…

7) The main character has to act as if it’s a mystery. “Constantly questioning the angles of the case; becomes more embroiled in the criminal plot, the stakes raise on a personal level; ‘ticking time-bomb’ (sometimes literal in the SF/Mystery/Thriller); internal dialoging; shades-of-black view of the world.” This harkens back to the first key and the fifth – the mix of SF and mystery has to SOUND like a mystery to the reader. While it doesn’t have to be a professional, amateur sleuths have been overdone in the “simple past”…they would be hard to believe in 21st Century America, let alone on 24th Century Mars. Our Earthly societies have continued to grow more and more complex. You never read of “armchair sleuths” solving real mysteries…(https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/28/give-us-a-clue-inside-the-world-of-amateur-crime-solvers-and-sleuths, https://www.websleuths.com/forums/

8) With those commonalities though, SF mysteries are able to deal with current and even future mysteries – which would never have happened BEFORE. “Most detective novels deal with humans who have become monsters–and in SFF, this is often literal. But does PK Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" play with the idea that the monster might be more human than we’re comfortable with, which is what ultimately sets it apart?”

9) On the other hand…murder is murder… Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s Retrieval Artist series have mysteries that are just that. Whether Humans murdering aliens – or not and still incurring the death penalty (for them or their children…), sapient beings that were living and are now dead is, by definition, murder (and others would consider the killing of ANY living thing as murder (fruitarians only eat things that have fallen from a tree and are, in fact, dead already…)

So, now what do I need to do? Re-reading “The Murder of AutoTech #47369” and see what I did wrong, and have some ideas...but they biggest need seems to be clarify the who and what...

References: https://www.sldirectory.com/libsf/booksf/mystery/sfmysteries.html, https://bestsciencefictionbooks.com/best-science-fiction-mystery-books, https://best-sci-fi-books.com/23-best-science-fiction-mystery-books/, https://www.wattpad.com/299996219-how-to-write-mystery-thriller-mixing-scifi-and,
https://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2015/07/mind-meld-favorite-sf-detectivemystery-novels/
Program Book: https://sites.grenadine.co/sites/conzealand/en/conzealand/schedule

Image: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/04/77/23/0477230729bceb2af1a994c604a79e97.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 593

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

SF Trope: “One Big Lie: Authors of works in this class invent one (or, at most, a very few) counterfactual physical laws and writes a story that explores the implications of these principles.”
Current Event: http://www.gamesradar.com/10-lies-video-games-tell-us-about-outer-space/

Badria Al Busaidi shook her head and said, “If you could make one thing true about real space, what would it be?” She squirmed in her tiny tube. The two of them were the only ones awake in their pod and the side of the transport device pressed against her, massaging muscles that hadn’t moved in…she stopped that line of thought. They’d been in space ever since they left Earth. They were two among ten thousand who were on their way to the nearest star system to the Sun, Alpha Centauri A.

Mehrdad bin Abdullah squirmed as well. The transport device that held each of them was only transparent at the top. She could tell from the look on his face that he was pre-occupied at the moment. Eyes half-closed, she sighed and turned away, blinking up a three-dimensional image of what the ship looked like on the outside and where they were in relation to Earth and AC-A. Lots of stars.

Boring.

Badria found herself wishing that she could sleep the entire trip away. But the biologists had already brought everyone on the ship as close to death as possible. If they stayed that way, there was evidence that they would simply stay dead. After a short pause during which Mehrdad managed to keep his breathing regular until the very end, he said, “All right. Sorry.” She was about to tease him, but he said instead, “The one thing I’d change is that there’d be aliens waiting for us when we got to AC-C.”

“There ARE aliens, Mehrdad! Haven’t you been listening to the broadcasts?”

“Not aliens just like us! Real aliens. Something that’s different.”

“Different how?”

He shrugged and it made a squelchy sound she could have heard from a mile away. Another thing the ship’s captain-psychologists had made sure of is that when you were awake, you were supposed to have every sense stimulated. She’d already experienced the pain of a broken toe as it was set then healed. Mehrdad was nervously waiting for what was going to happen to him to stimulate his sense of pain.

She’d been lucky in that, though. She’d been assaulted by the smell of newly-mown hay. Mehrdad had to endure the smell of burning Human hair. He’d also experienced another version of things coming out of his body when he barfed not long after he’d had his olfactory senses overloaded.

Suddenly another voice broke into their conversation. Badria rolled her eyes and immediately decided she wasn’t going to talk when she heard the American accented English. She could speak English just fine – all of them could. The American could speak Arabic as well, but the ones who’d been awake when she was usually didn’t. Which was not exactly a bad thing – American English had absolutely no music to it. Arabic sounded so flat and dull whenever someone else tried to speak it. The voice said, “Hello? Anyone alive in here?”

She held her breath, hoping that for once, Mehrdad would hold his tongue.

“We’re all alive here, dickhead. Otherwise why would be going to AC-C?”

There was a long pause and the American voice said, “مهلا، أنا آسف. لم أكن أقصد أن تكون مهينة.” He was almost understandable and there was a sort of cute tone to his voice as he said, “Hey, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be insulting.”

“Well, you were,” said Mehrdad.

Badria liked to keep her own counsel, but something compelled her today. She said in Arabic, “You say you want to meet real aliens – but you can’t even keep a civil tongue in your head when you talk to an American! Our civilization is twice as old as his – ours is the one that should be graceful and forgiving. Ours is the parent, his is the child.”

She wondered briefly if the American was going to object or act offended or whatever she expected a child of a self-centered, declining civilization to do. But he said nothing. Mehrdad muttered under his breath and she was about to say something when she abruptly felt tired. “Oh, no!” she managed before she began to drift off into her interstellar slumber...

Names: ♀Afghanistan, Oman ; ♂ Afghanistan, Oman
Image: https://mk0spaceflightnoa02a.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/49956692363_f73a7a6a69_k.jpg

Slice of PIE: James Thurber, O. Henry, M*A*S*H & Science Fiction

NOT using the Programme Guide of the 2020 World Science Fiction Convention, ConZEALAND (The First Virtual World Science Fiction Convention; to which I be unable to go (until I retire from education – which I now have!)), 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…

James Thurber was a well-known cartoonist and humorous short story writer. Most of his work was published in the New Yorker. Today, he’d be best known for his short story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”, which was released as a film starring Ben Stillerl years ago and has become one mf our favorites (though it has little to do with the short story except for the title...). He is still celebrated by “the annual Thurber Prize [which] honors outstanding examples of American humor”.

O. Henry is the pen name of William Sydney Porter. He chose the name – the choosing of which has three different tales but I like this one best! – when he began writing humorous short stories while he was in prison for embezzlement. He kept it and went on to write some 381 other short stories. He is still celebrated by “The O. Henry Award...a prestigious annual prize named after Porter and given to outstanding short stories”. (I wrote an essay about his influence on my writing: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2021/03/writing-advice-short-stories-advice-and.html

What does this have to do with speculative fiction and science fiction in particular?

Unfortunately not much.

From ANALOG, Stan Schmidt collected a few shining examples of humorous SF in ANALOG’S LIGHTER SIDE and BEST OF collections – most notably “The Dread Tomato Addiction”, though it wasn’t strictly a short story and it turned on the idea that you can make statistics say whatever you want them to say. Written by Mark Clifton, it was published in ASTOUNDING in 1958, and when I read it for the first time in left a deep impression on me.

Kelvin Throop was the star of several ANALOG short stories in the 1960s through the 80s and had numerous sayings attributed to him. Invented by R.A.J Phillips, several writers wrote stories about him and he became a sort of fall back for snarky sayings that were space fillers.

The website BestScienceFictionStories.com has more than 80 stories that they consider “Funny” – http://bestsciencefictionstories.com/category/funny/. I just discovered it when I started looking for humorous SF. Other recent forays into speculative short fiction humor come from a writer I first came across in an online writer’s group I’m a member of, CODEX’s Alex Schvartsman. The fifth UNIDENTIFIED FUNNY OBJECTS anthology is due out later this year and while I've tried several times, I guess I'm not able to transfer my moderate sense of humor to the page..

So I KNOW humorous short stuff is being written – but it doesn’t seem that there are many writers who have become closely associated with it any more. Gordon R Dickson and Poul Anderson wrote the Hokas series, Asimov’s sporadic funny stuff, even Haldeman wrote “A !Tangled Web”, Mike Resnick – but no one seems to have emerged as a regularly humorous  writer – and it seems “everyone” has written funny short stories as evidenced by Resnick’s THIS IS MY FUNNIEST: SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS PRESENT THEIR FUNNIEST STORIES EVER in 2006 and 2007.

Yet it doesn’t seem that the awards come to humor. An old friend of mine who is a prolific writer of YA humor (Gordon Korman) has never once been up for a Nebula, a Hugo, a Newbery, a Printz, Morris, Globe-Horn, or ALA Best...because none of the committees believe that serious issues can be dealt with humorously.

I think that this may also be the problem with speculative short fiction as well. When it comes time for the awards to be handed out, people say to themselves, “Wow! That was funny! But serious can’t be funny, so I’d better not nominate/vote for/write something funny because no one will take me seriously.”

Of course, we need only look at the accolades showered on the King of Television Dramedy, M*A*S*H: 12 Emmys, a Golden Globe, a Peabody, a Director’s Guild of America, several Humanitas Prize and Writers Guild of America nominations, an exhibit in the Smithsonian, and one of the highest ratings in the history of the Neilson’s for its final episode. The SF medical drama of James White tries to be funny in his SECTOR GENERAL novels, but the seriousness overwhelms the gentle comedy...where M*A*S*H usually managed to keep the drama and the comedy neatly separated by different story lines...

So where is science fiction’s short fiction version of M*A*S*H, O. Henry, or James Thurber, eh? 

Image: https://i.imgur.com/ZM4fDGk.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 492

Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc.) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them. Regarding horror, I found this insight in line with WIRED FOR STORY: “ We seek out…stories which give us a place to put our fears…Stories that frighten us or unsettle us - not just horror stories, but ones that make us uncomfortable or that strike a chord somewhere deep inside - give us the means to explore the things that scare us…” – Lou Morgan (The Guardian)

H Trope: creepy basements
Current Event: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2175774/JonBenet-Ramsey-murder-New-clues-revealed-detective-shed-new-light-case.html

Mattie Capp Washington – I hated her. She was cute where I was ugly; she was short where I was tall; she was light where I was dark; she was popular where the world loathed me.

Everyone mourns her passing which the police and the rest of the country suspected was a murder. I’m the only one who actually saw anything, but if I talk about it, then I’ll be a suspect and even though their suspicions wouldn’t be entirely true, it would probably be enough to convict me.

It would certainly be enough to get me sent to the electric chair (if they had one any more) in the courtroom of public opinion.

I suppose I should back up a bit. I could probably start at the part where the world loathed me. I’m pretty sure you think I’m exaggerating when I say that, because there’s pretty much nothing that the world uniformly loathes. On the other hand, a paper I read once stated, “In virtually every culture there has existed some word for evil, a universal, linguistic acknowledgment of the archetypal presence of ‘something that brings sorrow, distress, or calamity...’”

Even the etymological root of the word is practically prehistoric! “PIE *upelo-, from root *wap- ‘bad, evil’ (source also of Hittite huwapp- ‘evil’).

“this word is the most comprehensive adjectival expression of disapproval, dislike or disparagement" [OED]. Evil was the word the Anglo-Saxons used where we would use bad, cruel, unskillful, defective (adj.), or harm (n.), crime, misfortune, disease (n.)”

So if every culture has a word for it, then the word must have been invented to describe something – ‘cuz that’s what Humans do. We put labels on stuff as soon as we want to get a handle on it. It’d be interesting to see which came first – the word for “evil” or the word for “God”.

I’m it – the thing that every culture has named. And almost without exception, I live in dark places. In the middle of the 21st Century, while there aren’t many caves left, there are lots and lots of basements. That’s where you’ll usually find me – evil lurking in basements.

It’s funny, ‘cuz bad guys always act like they’re looking for me. The real nut cases say that they’re seeking me to worship me. Those are the ones that amuse me the most because no matter how hard they tried to find me, no matter how many millions of dollars they spent or how many people they murdered to come to me face-to-face, the second they look at me, they completely lose it and beg to leave; they grovel, roll around on the ground, mess themselves and volunteer to sacrifice to me anything and everything they have.

And I’m not even Incarnate – I’m excarnate. I’m the one who DOES the dirty work because I am the one who is Unmade flesh. I was alive on Earth at one time and when I joined the ranks I became excarnate and now I serve. In basements. All the time.

Someone came down the stairs: thud, thud, thud; male heaviness. The young Ms. Washington was here, too. But there might have been a surprise or two in the offing.

I smiled an excarnate smile and opened my mouth.

Names: Multiple origins (see above) – “this word is the most comprehensive adjectival expression of disapproval, dislike or disparagement”
Image: https://cdn.britannica.com/40/11740-004-50816EB1/Boris-Karloff-Frankenstein-monster.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY: Near Future SF (once again) IGNORES Human Education!

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 Sunday, August 2, 2020 at 1100 hours.

The Day After Tomorrow: Near Future SF

What are the challenges of SF set in the near future? What are good examples?

Shiv Ramdas: panelist, writer
Karl Schroeder: author and futurist, love his world, CANDESCE!
Glen Engel-Cox: writer
Caren Gussoff Sumption: writer, mental health professional
SB Divya: author, co-Editor of Escape Pod, data scientist

The vast majority of my professionally published work has been, much to my dismay, based in the Near Future. Most often, the story revolves around genetic engineering – or gengineering. Four of my published pieces deal with aliens, three are historical, and thirteen others deal with us messing around with our Human genetic code.

In one set of stories, Humans mess with the DNA so much that another part of Humanity has splintered off in protest and has narrowed Human to being someone with 65% or more unaltered Human DNA as documented in the 2003 Human Genome Project results. So anyone with fewer Human genes than that arbitrary number is, by definition NOT Human; though at the same time, they aren’t ALIENS, either. I’ve had two stories published that take place in that universe.

So what else will happen the day after tomorrow?

How about changes in EDUCATION? One of my biggest pet peeves is that for some reason, SF writers appear to be insisting that “In the 23rd Century, children will sit in desks while being taught by a Human teacher – with (of course) the obligatory tools of computers…remind you of another century in which computers were integral parts of a classroom? Does “Twentieth” ring a bell? The writers of STAR TREK have kids sitting in desks aboard the FREAKING FLAGSHIP OF THE FREAKING UNITED FEDERATION OF PLANETS! Oh, and the children are members of a variety of species of aliens – all of whom, apparently, learn the exact way Humans do…as IF HUMANS ALL LEARNED THE SAME WAY!!!!

OK, I’ll try to tone down the shouting. The thing is, no one seems to want to look at the future of education. is it because they believe that how we educate our children had reached its absolute pinnacle in 1950 and there was nothing else to add? Close the book. End of entry. Bye-bye…

Is it a profound limitation of the Human brain that the ONLY way we can learn is by sitting in desks and allowing OTHER people to teach our children, ones who are TRAINED to do it in the CORRECT manner?

I call “Hooey” on that one! If that were actually true, then Abraham Lincoln as well as Edison, Teddy Roosevelt, Agatha Christie, Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Hamilton (of recent musical fame), MacArthur & Patton, DaVinci, both Wyeths, Brigham Young, John Phillip Sousa, Alex Haley (who, of course, wrote ROOTS), and William F. Buckley (plus several OTHER presidents beside Lincoln and Roosevelt)…would have been uneducated louts.

“Ah, but that was in the OLDEN DAYS!!! EVERYTHING IS DIFFERENT NOW, the 21st Century is so incredibly more complex. We KNOW (and have been repeatedly told by the Education Machine) that parents are in NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM QUALIFIED TO TEACH THEIR CHILDREN!!!!”

OK, I’ll pick up the gauntlet you’ve tossed down to tell me that the pandemic has conclusively proven that parents can’t (read: didn’t realize their kids were so DIFFICULT to teach) possibly provide an effective education to their children (read: and pursue their own lives and careers) – [(please keep in mind that I was a middle school and high school science teacher (all levels, grades 6-12; astronomy to zoology; special education; English Language learners; and International Baccalaureate/Honors program) for 21 years; followed by ten years as a counselor; most at a near-inner-city high school which drew ten percent of its population FROM inner city families whose intent was for their children to get the best education they could – and I’ve taught at private religious, a public charter school, a summer school program for Gifted and Talented student; as well as homeschooling our own children from K-4th grade and 1st to sixth grade…] and throw a few other names out: the first woman confirmed as a US Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O’Connor. The Jonas Brothers were all home schooled. So was Simone Biles (you know, that Olympic Gold Medalist in Gymnastics…); Tim Tebow, Serena and Venus Williams, Ryan Gosling, Emma Watson (yeah the one who had a small part in those little known movies about some kid named HARRY POTTER…), Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Condoleeza Rice (66th US Secretary of State (as well as first woman, and first African American (under a REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT no less!) to be so appointed. Speaking of which, a fair number of other presidents were homeschooled…)), and mathematics genius Erik Demaine. I’m sure there are other people who have “survived” being homeschooled and who contribute to society in meaningful ways. Oh, and the objection that, “Homeschooling will not give my kids the essential SOCIAL skills that they need to SURVIVE in the world and get a job!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Yeah, too bad Teddy Roosevelt was such a shy wallflower. Put him and Tim Teboe and Emma Watson in a room and no one would say a word because they haven't been properly socialized...

I’d be willing to bet money that the subject this panel did NOT discuss changes in education – NOT just adding technology to do the same stuff Humans have been doing at least since 1642. (“The first compulsory education law in this country was enacted in 1642 in the Massachusetts Bay Colony…by 1918, all states had passed school attendance legislation…”) Formal education was initiated in Egyptian history during the Middle Kingdom, around 1040 BCE. So, science fiction writers telling me that public education won’t change in the future (except that we’ll add computers…) is quite honestly ridiculous! I call “Hooey” on that attitude!

I’ll also call, “Where EXACTLY is the creative, forward thinking that made science fiction the ‘literature of ideas’…” I’ve worked on it think I have a fascinating and advanced way to teach…and have been regularly and silently rebuffed in my attempts to present OTHER ways that Humans might effectively learn. Can anyone show me an SF story that actually proposes something that is more than a reiteration of a system that is well over 5000 years old…

I wish I could say I’d expect a challenge or response to this suggesting that there’s been SEVERAL stories and novels that show novel, creative ways of teaching…

…but I sadly doubt that I will.

Reference: https://www.homeschoolacademy.com/blog/famous-homeschoolers/
Program Book: https://sites.grenadine.co/sites/conzealand/en/conzealand/schedule
Image: https://elearningindustry.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/online-education-is-the-future.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 491

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

SF Trope: The Good Guys travel through time to stop a historical Bad Guy, usually Hitler
Current Event: “The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna rejected [Hitler] twice, in 1907 and 1908, because of his ‘unfitness for painting’.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler)

Johannes Klingle and Shoshanna Barbivai glared at each other across the room. She said, “Why do I have to go with him?”

The technician looked at both of them, then shrugged, “I just run the time machine. I don’t make policy.” He tweaked a control, then turned away to make adjustments to a touchscreen on the wall behind the console.

Johannes said, “Feeling’s mutual, lady.”

She snorted and said, “I’m surprised you’d even talk to me.”

Johannes – Joe – shook his head, “I’m a American Democrat. We’re trained to be inclusivist to the exclusion of all else.”

“An American and a Jew...”

He cut in, “...walked into a bar…”

She cut him back, “I don’t drink, so the rest of the story would go, ‘and she watched as the stupid American teenager got sloshed and pissed away the opportunity to do whatever it was he was supposed to be doing.”

“I’m not a teenager.”

“That only changed last night,” she said.

“Yeah? Well I read your dossier, too. You’re here as a last resort to save the military career of ‘Daddy’s little girl’ – oh, and I wouldn’t toss around the part about Americans getting sloshed. From what I read, apparently you didn’t need a bar to get wasted...”

They were standing face-t0-face when someone in a white lab coat walked into the room, took one look at them, pointed a wand and depressed a button.

Both Johannes and Shoshanna gasped and fell to the ground, writhing in pain.

The woman in the lab coat released the button and said, “You’re a matched pair of fools. That’s why you’re here. This is the first in a series of time travel experiments and you’re both under arrest by the governments that shipped you here. Johannes – you’re here because not only did you do a DUI, you ran over a Republican Senator’s daughter. She’s still in ICU and the murder charges are waiting on a judge’s screen. Shoshanna, your father said this will be the last time you embarrass him if you fail. I have in my possession papers that will remove you to,” she glanced down at a tablet computer she held in one hand, “Ravensbrück, circa 1944 – if you don’t ‘get your act together’. You also both have a pain enhancing device clamped on to your brain stem. You’ve seen a demonstration of what it can do. While it may not work in the past, no one is entirely sure of that. So we’ll have to see.” She smiled a Reaper’s smile at both and said, “Your mission is to convince the Director of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna to admit Adolf. The Director’s name is Gustav Wessely. You’ll be brother and sister visiting your great-grandfather on his deathbed. Adolf is your mother’s sister’s brother-in-law’s son. He’s been in trouble, but he’s a good kid. A little lazy, but he had problems with his father.”

Shoshanna stood up slowly, shook herself and glanced down at Johannes. “Who the hell are you and what am I supposed to do to make that happen? From what history says, Hitler was a mediocre artist. Even I could have painted circles around him.”

He nodded and said, “That is exactly what you are going to do. And Joe there on the floor is going to help you.”

“How’s that?”

“The future possible Führer of all of Germany is deathly afraid of beautiful women. He’d never talk to you. But he loves drinking – especially when other people are paying. Between the two of you, you’re not only going to give him watercolor lessons,” he said looking at Shoshanna. “You,” he pointed at Joe on the floor, “Get up. You look like a fool.’ Joe struggled to his feet, leaning on the wall, feeling like he was having six hangovers at the same time. The woman continued to shout at him, saying, “You’re going to get him drunk and then teach him how to talk to women.”

“Him?” Shoshanna exclaimed.

“Me?” Johannes exclaimed.

“Yep. The dynamic duo.”

“Who the hell do you think you are?” Johannes shouted.

The man in the lab coat smiled and said, “My name is Frank Adolph Hitler.”

“Who the hell would name their kid that?” said Shoshanna.

“Famous artists often name their children after themselves. Often times the next generation passes the name of an important ancestor on as well.” He bowed, sweeping on hand dramatically backward then stood up, adding, “I am one such descendant of one such ancestor – in a very, very different timeline than the one you two came from.” She paused, “Now, will you come into my parlour?”

Johannes and Shoshanna completed the aphorism at the same time, “Said a spider to a fly…”

“Exactly,” said Frank Adolph Hitler.

“Who’s gonna make us?” said Johannes.

The erstwhile descendant of the most horrific man in Human history held up the TASER and said, “You can get in two ways, one way on your own; the other way stunned and with clothing soiled with feces and urine. The choice is yours.” He pulled the trigger, producing a loud snap.

Shoshanna exclaimed, "You already have the brain paralyzer in our heads!"

He smiled, "I do. After I use that, I'll use this. I hear the effect is downright synergistic."

They got into the time machine and vanished a moment later…

Names: ♀ (Modern) Israeli ; ♂ German/Austrian
Image: https://mk0spaceflightnoa02a.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/49956692363_f73a7a6a69_k.jpg

WRITING ADVICE: Creating Alien Aliens, Part 7: An Alien Will Have To SENSE Differently…

In September of 2007, I started this blog with a bit of writing advice. A little over a year later, I discovered how little I knew about writing after hearing children’s writer, Lin Oliver speak at a convention hosted by the Minnesota Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Since then, I have shared (with their permission) and applied the writing wisdom of Lin Oliver, Jack McDevitt, Nathan Bransford, Mike Duran, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, SL Veihl, Bruce Bethke, and Julie Czerneda. Together they write in genres broad and deep, and have acted as agents, editors, publishers, columnists, and teachers. Since then, I figured I’ve got enough publications now that I can share some of the things I did “right”.

While I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it...neither do all of the professional writers above...someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what I write. When I started this blog, that was NOT true, so I may have reached a point where my own advice is reasonably good. We shall see! Hemingway’s quote above will now remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing output and sales! As always, your comments are welcome!

Part 1: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2020/01/slice-of-pie-creating-alien-aliens.html
Part 2: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2020/02/slice-of-pie-creating-alien-aliens-part.html
Part 3: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2020/02/slice-of-pie-creating-alien-aliens.html
Part 4: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2020/04/slice-of-pie-creating-alien-aliens-part.html
Part 5: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2020/09/writing-advice-creating-alien-aliens.html
Part 6: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2021/02/writing-advice-creating-alien-aliens.html

Mammal, cephalopod, insect, reptile, bird, fish, and (of course), plant – of COURSE none of them could hold a candle to the MASSIVELY MARVELOUS INTELLIGENCE of Human Beings! We are the pinnacle (of Creation or Evolution, take your pick)…I know many philosophers are busy knocking Humanity off its high horse by proclaiming that its puppies or kitties or sea turtles or the climate or whatever that is TRUE PERFECTION on Earth and that Humans are a canker fit only to be cut from the face of the planet (except for the Human writing the articles, who are SPECIAL because they have kenned the true INTELLIGENCE and have forsaken the follies and attitudes common to the Canker of REGULAR People…)

Except for coffee. Nothing wrong with THAT! Or Big Macs…now THERE’S a fine naturally occurring food! Or electric cars – nothing at ALL wrong with them! Those children digging cobalt are really part of the LOATHSOME Humanity that is NOTHING SPECIAL AT ALL (https://www.reutersevents.com/sustainability/electric-car-makers-drive-remove-human-rights-stain-cobalt). Their lives sacrificed for a greener future and all…Or WINDMILLS! Natural as the air Mother Nature provides us! (They grow from seeds, right? The blades are SO reusable, you can just shorten them and you have a perfectly good…um… https://www.npr.org/2019/09/10/759376113/unfurling-the-waste-problem-caused-by-wind-energy)

Ahem. Excuse the rant…

So, if I want to write believable aliens, then perhaps practicing with creatures I can look up, study, and possibly even observe in a zoo or in nature!

How do I devise a test to see if I can do it? How can I have my animals focus on one thing or do one thing and then consider HOW THEY WOULD REALLY DO IT, then write the result? What will be my test? It needs to be something I could do without any kind of technology, because despite the evidence that other animals on Earth use “stone age technology”, any tech they’d encounter that we could manipulate automatically prejudices the tests. So…something natural…

Start a fire? Nah, too much tech there, even if you posit that our remote ancestors learned how to do it, it REQUIRES hands…and air…automatically eliminating fish, octopi, and plants…

How about changing something? Maybe…domesticating something? Let’s look at a fascinating

book I read years ago, GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL by Jared Dimond. He had this to say about domestication: “Domestication…the most momentous change in Holocene human history. Why did it operate on so few wild species, in so few geographic areas…why did people adopt it at all…how did it spread?”

Are there instances of the “smartest of their Kingdom, Phylum, or Class” domesticating some other living thing? What does it mean to “domesticate” something? Seems a definition is in order. According to Wikipedia: Domestication is “…a sustained multi-generational relationship in which one group of organisms assumes a significant degree of influence over the reproduction and care of another group to secure a more predictable supply of resources from that second group.” As well, tool using, city building, and even cooperation of normally incompatible organisms…

Insects: ants who farm aphids for their sweet secretions, and grow a fungus to feed the colony… https://modernfarmer.com/2014/04/meet-earths-oldest-farmers-ants/#:~:text=Ants%20have%20domesticated%20fungus%20similarly%20to%20how%20we%20domesticated%20many%20plants.&text=If%20cutter%20ants%20are%20the,called%20honeydew%20that%20ants%20eat.
Fish: first ever case of an animal domesticating another…https://newatlas.com/science/fish-first-animal-domesticating-species/
Octopus: city builders! https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/octopus-city-observed-180964936/#:~:text=In%20the%20waters%20of%20Jervis,scientific%20name%20Octopus%20tetricus%E2%80%8B.
Plants: a war between to very different plants to “a stranger peace…” https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191115074414.htm
Birds: such legendary tool users, that their behavior became one of Aesop’s Fables, “The Crow and the Pitcher”: http://read.gov/aesop/012.html
Reptiles: even American alligators have become tool users! https://www.livescience.com/41898-alligators-crocodiles-use-tools.html

OK – I’ve established that animals can domesticate other animals, build cities, negotiate peace, and use tools…

So, how does the world look through the eyes of a representative of each of these. I’ll start with the ant farmers. How do they see the world? What do we know about ant senses? “‘…we have demonstrated that we have the basic tools we need to act as ‘odorant receptor detectives” to map the ants “odor space” and identify the chemical signals that trigger specific behaviors in the ant’s extensive repertoire,’ Slone said.” (https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2012/09/10/ants-have-an-exceptionally-high-def-sense-of-smell/#:~:text=Ants%20have%20four%20to%20five,team%20of%20researchers%20has%20discovered.&text=They%20found%20the%20industrious%20insects,proteins%20that%20detect%20different%20odors.)

According to the article, ants have some 400 specific “odorant receptors”, including one for cooked beef and pork – the researchers don’t get that one! In particular, “The olfactory system of most insects is centered in their antennae and is broadly made up of three different classes of receptors: odorant receptors, that identify different aromatic compounds and pheromones; gustatory receptors (GRs), that distinguish between different tastes and react to some pheromones; and newly discovered ionotropic glutamate receptors (IRs), that are narrowly tuned to various poisonous and toxic compounds.”

According to a different article: “The two antennae on either side of the head serve as the ant's main sensory organs. Ants also have a pair of compound eyes that consist of many photoreceptors that allow them to see light and shadows. However, their eyesight is poor, and ants rely primarily on their sense of smell for understanding their environment.” (https://www.livescience.com/ant-facts.html).

All right, given that, I’m going to make a stab at giving an ant-like alien’s perspective when landing on Earth…I’ll be making a few assumptions, so bear with me.

***

Two-hundred and thirty-fourth of seven-hundred and ninety-three Adults held their mandibles still. They could not control the corona of tendrils sweeping the air of Third Planet from Its Star. While nothing was precisely familiar, Two-Three-Four’s minds automatically categorized each odor into its chemical type. The odors of nitrogen and oxygen and their abundant compounds were obvious and of only academic interest. Two-Three-Four’s specialty was to sense the unique odors of life on a newly contacted world. While plant life was a given and the precise proportions of the atmospheric mix had been determined by a probe long-since returned to the Chamber Ship in orbit, Two-Three-Four’s highly developed and trained odor sensor suite was the reason it stood on the surface of the new world.

A squirt of strong impatience generated from the odor ring around their neck prompted it to fire a gentle puff of “Anticipatory patience” that would permeate the queen-commander’s chamber in the center of the ship. Her response was a whiff of apology. Two-Three-Four stepped down the ramp, followed by the rest of the landing party. Their larger size and heavier mandibles – as well as a small set of weapons chosen from an even larger collection and based on the preliminary assessment of life forms on Third Planet – were guaranteed to repel any accidentally hostile contact. The Smallers, like Four-Nine, Seven-Two, and Three-Eight, were less sensitive, heavily armed, and would do whatever Two-Three-Four needed them to do. Not that they were non-sapient, but they were only past their third and fourth molt. Each molt increased the size of the neural net. Each would take their place among the adults eventually. For now, they learned and did as they were told.

Basic scans had revealed a fascinating mix of life on Third, though hardly unique in the experience of the Memory on Homeworld. Two-Three-Four’s job was to investigate the unique characteristics. They scuttled away from the ship, not stopping for several hundred heartbeats. It released a waft of “listen” to the Smallers, and “commencing” to the queen-commanders chamber.

Under its direction, the ship had landed in an area where the view all around was unimpeded to allow the winds of Third to pass over Two-Three-Four’s corona. Smallers made a ring around them and powered up their weapons. They would be far too busy with their primary job to protect themselves from any of Third’s life forms that might exhibit aggression. It shut down its generic visual input and focused on the odors of Third.

Dryness. Mild decay, common for any world with seasonal plant life. Then something of interest: hydrocarbons! While hardly unique to intelligent civilizations, it made clear that the sapients of Third could manipulate their environment in a profound way. Of course they’d detected cities, a gigantic web of orbital satellites, a large presence of life on Third’s airless moon and in several orbital habitats. They’d even discovered a crater on Fourth that held several hundred life forms. All well and good; intelligence of a species that likely came from Third – all of that was, while remarkable in the First Queen’s universe, was still fairly common.

What they sought…ah! There! It was a very faint scent, but now that Two-Three-Four knew what to focus on, it found that the odor was present in small but significant quantities. It signaled the queen-commander a complex message, “Genetic manipulation! Artificial tissue construction!”

Resources: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dog-cognition_n_8398810, https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/how-do-octopuses-experience-the-world, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/intelligence-test-shows-bees-can-learn-to-solve-tasks-from-other-bees, https://www.reptileencounters.com.au/news/the-5-most-intelligent-reptiles/#:~:text=The%20result%20was%20that%20the,reserved%20for%20birds%20and%20mammals.&text=And%20coming%20in%20at%20the,and%20weigh%20more%20than%2010kg, https://www.cnet.com/news/how-crows-are-the-smartest-birds-in-the-world/, https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/six-fish-that-are-smarter-than-we-give-them-credit-for, https://www.ambius.com/blog/are-plants-intelligent/, https://www.nature.com/articles/nature01019
Image: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/fa/9c/44/fa9c446e206072dadca2bbe4e3497a92.jpg