Slice of PIE: In Terms of My Writing, “Just What AM I Most Passionate About?”

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…

As an exercise in getting to know a casual friend of mine better, we’ve been exchanging questions and observations with each other. I’d asked about his interest in three seemingly unrelated sports, one IN high school, the other two after he graduated from high school. To my un-sports-interested-eyed, they seemed completely disconnected! Competitive swimming, flag football, and curling…

After he answered my query he sent one of his own. I’d forgotten that one of things that had drawn us together when he was a student on my “list” – as a counselor, we were assigned students by grade level, and as he was a homeschooled “kid”, my fellow counselors deferred to me as we’d homeschooled both of our kids for a period of time -- was an interest in writing...

We found out we had quite a few other things in common, and recently we reconnected. So one of his response questions was about my writing. I responded by sharing the four “worlds” I write in, then he asked the following:

“Wow, this is awesome! I think it’s the coolest when you have stories like example 3 above where you have a well-crafted universe and can continue deeper into it with multiple stories. Obviously a similar sci-fi vibe to each of these... where did that inspiration stem from? Was it something you read as a kid that changed your interest in reading and writing? Was it the science background? Just what you are most passionate about?”

I was startled by that last question – and it was made all the more disconcerting because my last two submissions to my favorite magazine, ANALOG Science Fiction and Fact, have been rejected.

So that I do this in a logical stream, let me answer each of the separate questions:

Where did that inspiration stem from? Was it something you read as a kid that changed your interest in reading and writing?
The inspiration has come from the people I’ve read since Louis Slobodkin in SPACESHIP UNDER THE APPLE TREE and Eleanor Cameron in WONDERFUL FLIGHT TO THE MUSHROOM PLANET entered my life in sixth grade. That was the year I discovered science fiction. Those two books drew me in and led me down the path to Robert A Heinlein, Andre Norton, Madeleine L’Engle, Murray Leinster, and finally to the stories that launched me into the life of a writer, John Christopher’s WHITE MOUNTAIN books, THE WHITE MOUNTAINS, CITY OF GOLD AND LEAD, and POOL OF FIRE. These were hard books to read because Humans had been enslaved by aliens and technologically batter back to the 1930s.

When I finished those books, I didn’t want them to end, so I started writing my own stories. Predictably for a 12 year old, they were pretty BAD!

Was it the science background?

Of course! I was crap a sports because I was a tubby little twit with a mouth. My one venture into sports was ‘cause Dad made me. Remember, this was in the time when if you were rotten, the coach told you so and let the rest of the kids do it, too. We didn’t HAVE feelings in sports. So, I spent my one summer playing baseball on a team of 8 and 9-year-olds in LEFT field…

I didn’t discover science until junior high, and then I was hooked…NOT GOOD, mind you. I was no Einstein and was scared to death of Physics. I loved biology. That led to more science fiction reading, and eventually a bachelor’s degree in biology education. I was a teacher and I finally had the tools to HELP other kids not have a wretched school experience. I also learned to keep science FUN! That helped me in my writing, though I didn’t get my first SF story published until early in the 90’s.

Just what you are most passionate about?
So, we arrive at the startling question I’ve been thinking about since I read it this morning (Thanks a lot, Mr. J Stiglicz!) – what IS it that I’m most passionate about?

First thing I’m passionate about is what I spent most of my adult career doing: teaching science. All of the stories I write have a firm FOUNDATION in science; most of them push past the established and into the speculative. But, as in ANALOG Science Fiction and Fact, I work to keep it realistic, if not real.

Second thing is FUN! I usually can’t write “funny” science fiction, but my characters can have a sense of humor. I love to laugh, and I often made my students laugh. I work to make my readers laugh – though I sometimes lapse into too much seriousness; and maybe that’s what’s been wrong lately. A couple of stories in ANALOG had funny bits in them; the characters laughed and so (I hope) the reader laughed. Then I go too serious. I’m NOT a serious person; at least not all the time. I like to make people laugh; I like to laugh. THAT has to change back!

Third thing though, is that I work to write about equity. I will be the first to admit that I’m a big, old, fat, white guy; inheritor of every privilege known to Humanity. But I typically don’t write from that perspective. Again, and again, and again, I will turn people to WRITING THE OTHER: A Practical Approach by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward. They say that someone like me CAN write characters who are NOT like me. There are ways to do it, considerations to make, and sensitivity to be grown and cultivated. But it CAN and HAS TO be done. (See my essay here for more detail: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2020/07/possibly-irritating-essay-its-mistake.html)

All writing is metaphor, science fiction and fantasy more than any other genre. There ARE no Vulcans from the planet Vulcan…but there ARE biracial Humans and they have to build a shell around “themselves” that can only rarely be lowered. I am privileged and I can be whoever I want to be and there’s no one who can effectively criticize me. But a lesbian woman does NOT have that freedom. So, you can write about difficult issues in SF. A universe I created is split between the Empire of Man, and the Confluence of Humanity. In the Empire, you are NOT Human unless you have 65% Original Human DNA (as compared to the original Human Genome Project’s 2003 database.) If you are LESS, then you aren’t Human.

The Confluence of Humanity rose up to counter that; and for THEM, no amount of genetic engineering will make you anything less than FULLY HUMAN…unless of course, you happen to be a giant, hollow manta ray who was designed from another Human’s DNA to be a living ambulance in the skies of a gas giant…then WHO WILL TREAT YOU AS ANYTHING BUT A MONSTER AND AN ALIEN?

So in answer to JS’s question, “So what are you most passionate about?” I say three things: teaching science, fun with science and with life, and lastly, I can ask hard questions and I am free to explore what it’s like to be Other. When I don’t understand, I ASK. (Sometime ask me what happened on the Cinco de Mayo when I had become the sponsor for the Hispanic Culture Club the first semester I was a temporary counselor…)

Now you know, but equally importantly, NOW I KNOW WHAT I’M PASSIONATE ABOUT.

(PS – I’m also passionate about the fact that Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior…but that’s something I only share with those who are close to me, though…ask me someday about the eulogy I was asked to read at the side of a friend of mine who couldn’t read it during her father’s funeral…)

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