WRITING ADVICE: Short Stories – Advice and Observation #10: Octavia Butler “& Me”

In this feature, I’ll be looking at “advice” for writing short stories – not from me, but from other short story writers. In speculative fiction, “short” has very carefully delineated categories: “The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America specifies word lengths for each category of its Nebula award categories by word count; Novel 40,000 words or over; Novella 17,500 to 39,999 words; Novelette 7,500 to 17,499 words; Short story under 7,500 words.”

I’m going to use advice from people who, in addition to writing novels, have also spent plenty of time “interning” with short stories. While most of them are speculative fiction writers, I’ll also be looking at plain, old, effective short story writers. The advice will be in the form of one or several quotes off of which I’ll jump and connect it with my own writing experience. While I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it...neither do most of the professional writers...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!

Without further ado, short story observations by – with a few from myself…

“Her fresh approach to what some might consider a nonliterary genre framed serious and often controversial topics through a literary lens. Tackling subjects such as power, race, gender, sexuality, religion, economic and social status, the environment, and humanity, Butler combined the tropes of science fiction and fantasy with a tightly rendered and entertaining prose style.” – Natalie Russel, Assistant Curator of Literary Collections; The Huntington: Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens

“‘The one thing that I and my main characters never do when contemplating the future is to give up hope.’”(Huntington)

I have been writing like this ever since I started writing. In fact, I recently wrote about how I think that the point of view of much science fiction has change from generally positive futures, to darker, grimmer futures. Again, I wrote about it here: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2021/07/possibly-irritating-essays-science.html

“For Butler, writing was first and foremost about telling a good story. Challenged by writer’s block and self-doubt, she kept at it, finding in renewed efforts the ultimate path to success. Butler’s relatable, flawed, passionate characters help us question ourselves and see our place in the world with more clarity.” (Huntington)

Maybe part of my problem lately is that my characters aren’t relatable. OK…I just thought of one character is so consistently unpleasant, I’m wondering what I created him out of. Oh, that’s right…I created him out of MYSELF. Hmmm, I think there may be both food for thought and a path back to where I usually am.

“Any optimism that Butler felt about her writing as she returned from Clarion evaporated as The Last Dangerous Visions—the book that was supposed to make her career—languished, and her subsequent stories accumulated rejection after rejection. At times she felt like the only thing that Clarion had gotten her was additional debt, as she struggled to pay back the loans she had undertaken from friends and family to attend the workshop in the first place. Her letters from this period to her Clarion friends evince a preoccupation with the sales side of the business: who is selling, who isn’t...” (Gerry Canavan, Octavia E. Butler)

WHOA! I SO GET THIS!!! It’s where I am right now. I haven’t sold anything for the past two years. I continually go back to “What am I doing wrong? Have I lost any modicum of skill or talent I’ve gained for the past forty years?” I was feeling stupid feeling that way, but I find here that Octavia Butler had similar pangs and misgivings.

“‘When I began writing science fiction,’ Butler once told an interviewer, ‘when I began reading, heck, I wasn't in any of this stuff I read. [. . . ] The only black people you found were occasional characters or characters who were so feeble-witted that they couldn't manage anything, anyway. I wrote myself in, since I'm me and I'm here and I'm writing.’ Butler’s act of writing herself in transformed the science fiction genre in ways that are still being felt today.”

While it’s impossible for me to feel this way, being a bofwhig (my personal acronym for “big, old, fat, white guy”) I had every advantage and opportunity presented to me, I CAN read, talk to people, and learn. A YA novel I wrote was based on behaviors and thoughts some of my students had at Cooper while I was teaching. For one of the drafts, I had a friend of my daughter’s, a son of Somalian immigrants and a poet in his own right, read the story and offer up excellent commentary and advice – virtually all of which I incorporated into the book (which was subbed by my agent 17 times, was in the top 25 of the old AMAZON novel-search contest, and garnered some interest). But the writing on certain walls never allowed it to be picked; though I’m hoping to learn more from a book I wrote about a year ago: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2020/07/possibly-irritating-essay-its-mistake.html

“Writing for publication may be both the easiest and the hardest thing you’ll ever do. Learning the rules — if they can be called rules — is the easy part. Following them, turning them into regular habits, is an ongoing struggle.”

Here are the rules:

1. Read widely both the stuff you want to write and HOW to write better.

2. Writing is communication. You need other people to let you know whether you’re communicating what you think you are and whether you’re doing it in ways that are not only accessible and entertaining, but as compelling as you can make them.

3. Write. Write every day. Write whether you feel like writing or not.

4. Revise your writing until it’s as good as you can make it.

5. Submit your work for publication. First research the markets that interest you. Seek out and study the books or magazines of publishers to whom you want to sell.

6. Forget inspiration. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence and practice.

7. Forget talent. If you have it, fine. Use it. If you don’t have it, it doesn’t matter. As habit is more dependable than inspiration, continued learning is more dependable than talent.

8. Don’t worry about imagination. You have all the imagination you need, and all the reading, journaling, writing, and learning you will be doing will stimulate it. Play with your ideas. Have fun with them.

9. Persist.

What does ANY of this have to do with me?

Octavia Butler is everything I’m not: a woman, black, famous, experienced, wise, and incredibly smart. All I have to fall back on is #9, which is to persist.

I KNOW I’ve written stuff good enough to get into ANALOG, STUPEFYING STORIES, CAST OF WONDERS, and other science fiction venues. I’m not being published right now, but maybe (MAYBE!) I’m in a learning phase. Maybe I’ve finally reached a point where I can either sink or start to swim like an Olympian (this is being written during the 2020 Summer Olympics Which Are Actually Being Held In 2021)!

There are amazing swimmers this year, and the first ever coed relay team ABSOLUTELY DISPLAYED HOW THE STRENGTHS OF MEN AND WOMEN CAN COMPLEMENT EACH OTHER! No shock there, but to see it so clearly displayed was incredible!

Once again, I’ve learned things I didn’t know I did that I may be learning better as I read and reread the advice, articles, and books of Octavia Butler.

References: http://media.huntington.org/uploadedfiles/Files/PDFs/Octavia_E_Butler_Gallery-Guide.pdf, https://pdfcoffee.com/conversations-with-octavia-butlerpdf-5-pdf-free.html, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/j.ctt1hfr05s, https://www.writerswrite.co.za/octavia-e-butlers-writing-advice/, https://apilgriminnarnia.com/2018/03/26/rules-of-sf-writing/
Image: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41JNnybcihL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 507

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: The Adjectival Man
Current Event: http://ktla.com/2013/08/08/suspect-in-murder-of-fontana-father-commits-suicide/#axzz2dD6in844

Ajdin Paixão shook his head and said, “Are you sure we should be here?”

Magdalena Aggrawal made a face – as if she’d accidentally bitten into an orange that had been sitting on a warm shelf in a closed refrigerator for three weeks. “’course. You afraid?”

“Yes. Very.”

Magdalena – who did NOT go by “Maggie, Meg, or any other American abbreviation of my name” – shook her head. “What’s the worst thing that can happen?”

“The worst? It turns out that The Creeping Man is real and he’s mad at us for spying on his private life.”

Magdalena snorted. “It’s not like he can run us down. That’s why he’s called The Creeping Man.”

Ajdin glanced to either side then lifted his chin at the clean, dark lab in front of them. “It’s not like monsters usually inhabit science labs. They’re more associated with dungeons with dripping water and cobwebs.”

She snorted again, “This might as well be a dungeon. I don’t think I’ve seen a bar or restaurant since we started school.”

His voice lowered as he muttered, “Not like I haven’t tried...”

She slugged him just as the sound of a heavy object, like a refrigerator or a filing cabinet ground loudly across the plastic sealed concrete floor. Filing cabinets having gone extinct decades earlier – even their fossil-of-a-professor only had two in his office – that left only one of the lab’s six refrigerators. Magdalena whispered, “He lives under a refrigerator?”

“If you were The Creeping Man, where would you live?”

“In a penthouse apartment?”

“That would make Creeping really difficult, don’t you think?”

“Shut up!” she stood up, peering over the lab table, Ajdin mirroring her every move.

The Creeping Man saw them the instant they saw him. He was emerging from under a fridge which was tipped back as if it was glued to the trapdoor The Creeping Man held up with one hand. He squeaked a wet, gargled exclamation, lurching forward, releasing the trapdoor with the refrigerator attached to it.

It slammed down, cutting him in half, spattering blood and entrails and gore on to the refrigerator’s white surface and across the gray floor.

Magdalena screamed, “We killed him!” Ajdin stared then gagged as The Creeping Man – or rather half of him – began to creep across the lab’s floor toward them…

Names: ♀ Liechtenstein, Portugal; ♂ Bosnia/Herzegovina, India
Image: https://cdn.britannica.com/40/11740-004-50816EB1/Boris-Karloff-Frankenstein-monster.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: Shades of Gray – Anthropogenic Climate Change as Proof of Human Godliness

NOT using the panel discussions of the most recent World Science Fiction Convention in San Jose, CA in August 2018 (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…

Shades of gray from my toes to the vault of the Atlantic cathedral, I stand and wonder. In wonder.

Seventy-five percent of the world is sheathed in water. Of the rest, we inhabit only 10% or 90% (http://www.curiousmeerkat.co.uk/questions/much-land-earth-inhabited/). If you exclude our lit civilization, we are invisible of the surface – despite the myth that the Great Wall of China is visible from space (https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/great-wall-from-moon/).

Our newly fire-wise ancestors began worshipping multiple goddesses, gods, and immaterials and keep at it even today, though with a more refined and decorous mien. Science became the god of the age, predicting the transformation of Humanity into a global, biocybernetic civilization of, oddly enough, immaterial minds (“the element of a person that enables them to be aware of the world and their experiences, to think, and to feel; the faculty of consciousness and thought.” [I recently witnessed the disappearance of my father’s mind from his body…]) linked together into a new, self-worshipping god.

Discarding God, we have transferred our affections to ourselves. Unfortunately, the evidence is clear that we die – in car accidents, of cancer, even from previously conquered diseases like measles – we are a sad substitute for the eternal gods of yore. What could we find that would grant us god-like powers? We’ve extended our lives a paltry decade or two, we reached for the stars, stopped at the Moon, then went back to near-space, pretending that two drifting pieces of junk passed through the heliopause and (it was announced: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/voyager-2-spacecraft-enters-interstellar-space/) and “into interstellar space” are a great accomplishment of Humanity…

We haven’t conquered world hunger, want, our population, the wasteful production of power (every form of power production has an ecological impact, no matter how green. Electric car batteries will be difficult if not impossible to recycle, windmills, and solar panels need…um…wind and sun…to create power. We still worry about creating some way to store the power we make. Science fiction writers assume fusion power while scientists tell us every decade that practical fusion power is only two decades away (https://www.newstatesman.com/sci-tech/2014/11/forever-20-years-away-will-we-ever-have-working-nuclear-fusion-reactor).

So how do we prove our divinity?

The only way we have so far discovered is that we have changed the climate of our homeworld to a degree that anthropogenic global warming is the sole reason we are having unprecedented: cold, hurricanes, tornadoes, heat waves, droughts, floods, glacial/polar melts, and species extinction.

In fact, there are no other factors that have an effect on Earth but Humanity. Forget volcanoes, solar activity, El Nino, La Nina, the Polar Vortex, or our position in space – they don’t matter. Even so, from space, the profound changes in climate of the third planet of a minor star in an arm of an unremarkable barred spiral galaxy are without apparent cause, a sort of planetary spontaneous generation of climate change. Certainly there are sources of CO2, chlorofluorocarbons, H2SO4, and other odd chemicals that appear from nowhere.

*sigh*

Even the master of future building, Kim Stanley Robinson, flooded Earth in BLUE MARS with erupting volcanoes beneath Antarctica rather than anthropogenic global warming. I imagine he used catastrophe purely for dramatic effect as the extreme, story-driving effects of anthropogenic global warming are in the future twenty or so years. AGW – I prefer to call it what we started with rather than whatever the current name change as the philosophy of AGW remains the same. (It reminds me of the marketing of the fictional pharmaceutical company in BIG BANG THEORY, that Bernadette Wolowitz-Rostenkowski works for…)

Last point in the rant above: overpopulation, pollution, and AGW seem to me to miss the point by crying out that we “Save the Earth!” Earth is a planet which will be around until a massive impact event or it’s consumed by the expansion of an aging Sol into a red giant. It’s HUMANITY and several other lifeforms (though only the expansion will eliminate the cockroaches…) will disappear. It’s likely that anything short of that will leave some kind of life on Earth.

Please don’t get me wrong: I work to keep my carbon footprint as small as possible by recycling, buying locally, biking instead of driving, reusing and thrift-store shopping frequently, and using “environmentally safe” products. We all need to do what we can. We rescued our pets and if they weren’t, we neutered or spayed them; we strive with others against world hunger and disease and local hunger and disease prevention and work against teen pregnancies, and give to charities targeted at issues that are important to us; and our investment portfolio is as green as we can make it.

But in witness to the Human penchant for drama, I have only to nod toward Bollywood and Hollywood, and the latest best-sellers in electrons or on paper. The number of SF short stories set on post-climatic-apocalyptic Earth are abundant in electronic and paper magazines (though Rebecca Roanhorse’s TRAIL OF LIGHTNING has a delightfully different take on the subject, adding an engrossing immaterial angle.

I’d like to write like that myself and will be poking around at creating a slightly different world that has a slightly different immaterial view!

Image: https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Screen-Shot-2016-09-03-at-6.25.03-AM.gif

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 506

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What’s that?”

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

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

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

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

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

“We need, like, a talisman.”

“A crystal, or a…” Sag was saying.

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

“What’s that?”

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

“I can’t…”

“We’ll do it and it’ll start now?”

Names: ♀ Finland, Portugal; ♂ Algeria, Hungary
Image:

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

Slice of PIE: Captain America Was NOT THE FIRST AVENGER (and Neither Was Phoenix)!!!

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…

This essay started out as an investigation into why it seems Humans need “superheroes”.

I’d reserved several books about it, including DOES THIS CAME MAKE ME LOOK FAT? and SUPERGODS. There are others on Amazon.com like WHAT IS A SUPERHERO, THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SUPERHEROES, and OUR SUPERHEROES, OURSELVES.

Then, during a book study (NOT one of these!), I happened across a Bible verse that actually doesn’t have to be bent in order for it to fit the paradigm I’m looking at. In fact, in light of the NEW fact that Phoenix is actually the first Avenger, leading the Marvel Universe’s Stone Age Avengers (https://screenrant.com/first-avenger-was-not-captain-america-phoenix-marvel/), it STILL makes sense.

I Thessalonians 4:6 reads, “That no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter: because that the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also have forewarned you and testified.” (King James version)

Despite the archaic language, the definition of the First Avenger actually holds across translations: New American Standard (the version I like) “…and that no one violate the rights and take advantage of his brother or sister in the matter, because the Lord is the avenger in all these things, just as we also told you previously and solemnly warned you.”

The Amplified is where I turn when I want to examine the deeper meaning of a verse: “…and that [in this matter of sexual misconduct] no man shall transgress and defraud his brother because the Lord is the avenger in all these things, just as we have told you before and solemnly warned you.” (Lest you think it not apply, sit down and watch the nightly news (local, national, or international…your choice…EVERYTHING is about sex/gender today…)

Lastly, we turn to the original Greek that the New Testament was written in:

The first Avenger was the Lord, the Christ of humanity sent to protect those who are defrauded by others – and unlike the Amplified Bible, the Greek makes it clear that it’s NOT only about sex!

The First Avenger is NOT Phoenix, either. The First Avenger goes farther back than a million years, the First Avenger stepped up for duty right after Cain killed Abel with a rock to the skull. Then Ekdikos Ha Kurios (literally, “Avenger the Master”) had to be the avenger of Abel’s murderer.

Note, He didn’t kill Abel, he CURSED him, but Abel was still alive; though it makes you wonder which one got the better deal – Abel or Red Skull… So, while lots of people note that while God is supposed to be a God of Love, He’s constantly killing people, it’s interesting to note that the Marvel Avengers have a startlingly high body count for the Superheroes.

As Nathan Miranda points out in “Which Avenger Has Killed The Most Characters In The MCU”, “Thor and Iron Man are in a league of their own, with the remaining four Avengers far behind. Cap's service in the deadliest conflict in human history during Captain America: The First Avenger certainly means he has a higher kill count than might be initially expected, but this no doubt pales to the Hulk - especially counting the green giant's time in Sakaar. Hawkeye and Black Widow round out the list at number five and six, respectively, as while Black Widow’s troubled history and Hawkeye’s Ronin escapades could account for many deaths, their assassin roles were better suited to taking out individual targets, which means the volume of them is arguably far less.” (https://screenrant.com/avengers-mcu-thor-most-kills-deaths/)

So, the true First Avenger, while Their body count is high, also appears to have some stiff competition from Tony Stark (who did, if you recall, do away with ALL of Thanos’ army of who-knows-how-many sentient and sapient beings) and that other plucky god, Thor.

So, what do the Avengers do? What is their high moral purpose? According to Wikipedia: “…S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury…envisions a group of heroes working together in response to planetary threats, following the appearance of superhumans such as Carol Danvers, who is imbued with the power of the Tesseract. He names his plan after her U.S. Air Force callsign, ‘Avenger’. Years later, Fury assesses various individuals for the initiative, including Tony Stark and Steve Rogers. Stark's membership is declined after a negative report on his suitability by Natasha Romanoff. The World Security Council expresses a desire for Emil Blonsky to join the initiative, although they abandon their wish after Stark deters Thaddeus Ross from the idea.”

So, the purpose of God, in the form of Jesus the Christ is to “…reverse the effects of Adams sin.” (Gen 3:15).

Here’s the rub then, first you have to believe that Humanity sinned.

The other rub then, is that you have to believe that Earth has extra-planetary threats.

Jesus, the Son of God would take care of the first, the Avengers would take care of the second.

Hmmm…in range of importance, salvation from eternity in Hell would seem to rank higher than alien abduction. Of course in the grand scheme of things, a few billion deaths by alien invasion don’t even come close to the number who might die outside of the saving grace of the Christ.

And we’d say, “The Avengers and their whole series of movies are fake!”

Perhaps we’d say, “But God and whole Islam/Judaism/Christianity thing is a fake!”

Be that as it may, given both are fake, then my claim that God in the form of Jesus Christ was the First Avenger, is just as legitimate as anyone else’s claim that Phoenix was the First Avenger.

And I would argue that the saving the eternal soul is a bit more important than saving Humanity from an alien invasion is slightly more important…

Resource: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-do-we-need-super-heroes-piyush-patel-super-hero-next-door/
Image: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTlHRYw2xOjO72Yz386phRw0nI6f0U6txXlFBx4v9AXv06A4JU8YuEu8oLGuzSej3X17INbfUjzuBfrGQ&usqp=CAU

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 505

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: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DepopulationBomb
Current Event: http://www.rfdtv.com/story/34096878/metabiotas-top-five-epidemic-risk-factors-for-2017

Ngozi Adeyemi sighed and sat back from the scanning electron microscope. She said, “This machine…”

Ibrahim Eto'o Fils held up one hand, then lowered it, knowing it might be offensive as he said, “I know. It’s ancient. I’d rather have a QTM. But the Chinese aren’t exactly handing them out to West African disease researchers.”

She shook her head. “I was educated in England, worked for seven years at the CDC in Atlanta, and chaired the International Society for Infectious Diseases for six years. I’m not just a ‘disease researcher’!”

Ibrahim held up both hands in defense. “You won’t get any argument from me, Doctor Adeyemi. It’s been a privilege working…”

Ngozi brushed him away, “Save the flattery for someone who’ll believe it. You’re as skilled as I am and you’ve been here longer. We have work to do – and two of us may be the only ones who can accomplish it.” She paused. “When we finally tracked down the initial outbreak of the AIDS virus; and finally eradicated Ebola, we got cocky.”

“We didn’t,” Ibrahim said as he settled onto his lab chair. Another wave of his hand and his virtual computer screen materialized over the lab bench. “We know what we’re dealing with here. Climate change cooled Sahara and brought rain it hasn’t seen for over a thousand years. We’re afraid it’s also reactivated extinct pathogens.”

Ngozi sighed. “That’s why I came home. There’s something going on up north – it feels like a disaster waiting to happen. But there’s no proof,” she gestured at the SEM. “We’ll never get it if we have to work with stone knives and bear skins!”

Ibrahim grinned, “Thank you so much, doctor! These are the tools I used to earn my doctorate!”

Ngozi let herself lean forward until her forehead rested on the microscope’s control panel. “No offense intended, Doctor Eto’o Fils. It just frustrates me. We conquered hundreds of diseases with tools less complex than this, but I’m less afraid of disease than I am of attitude.”

Ibrahim puffed a laugh and said, “We thought we had climate change under control – and then it flipped from warming trends to cooling trends and wild solar weather.”

“We can’t control attitudes the way we can control viruses and bacteria – a few antivirals here and a vaccination campaign there. It’s this damnable community attitude.”

“That’s why I came back to Lago. So many western doctors think curing the common cold by fighting it with a molecule-evolving mutation smart drug signified that they’d claimed the Grail.”

“Monty Python and the Holy,” Ngozi said.

“I take it you experienced the movie?”

She sat up and gave him a sad grin, “With both English and American friends. You’d be startled how different their responses are.”

“How so?”

She shrugged, “I can’t quantify it. The movie was identical, but the two groups of people – all who’d seen it dozens of times – laughed at totally different places and repeated totally different lines. And I laughed at different times from both of them! It was embarrassing both times!”

Ibrahim sighed. “We need to get back to work. I’ll get back online and see if can’t at least get a virtual QTM to work for us.”

She called up the next slide and got to work, muttering, “If we can’t beat this now, it’s going to go global in ten months.”

He shot her a look and added an emphatic plea to his email just before he sent it.

Names: ♀ Nigeria; ♂ Cameroon

Image: https://mk0spaceflightnoa02a.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/49956692363_f73a7a6a69_k.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: Science Fiction Has Become TOO SERIOUS (aka HOPELESS)…

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…

At NEW SCIENTIST, on 19 May 2021, Simon Ings, who writes for New Scientist about books, films and all things culture wrote the article referenced below and immediately caught my attention because it expressed a feeling I’ve had for some time. Ings is an English novelist and science writer living in London. He’s written a number of novels, short prose and articles for national newspapers, and is an arts editor at New Scientist. His non-fiction book The Eye: A Natural History delved into the science of vision exploring the chemistry, physics and biology of the eye. He has collaborated with M. John Harrison on short fiction “The Dead” and “The Rio Brain”. He has also collaborated on short fiction with Charles Stross.

This means to me that, as he has much to say, he has much to back up his opinions with.

In his article that looked at “works at the online European Media Arts Festival, he wonders in print, “Has science fiction become too serious?”, adding, “Sci-fi has become the only way to talk about today's problems, and that means it has lost its ability to help us imagine better futures…”

Architect and attendee at the festival Liam Young, said, “Sci-fi used to be full of such possibilities, but he argues that these days it has become our favourite way of explaining to ourselves, over and over, the disasters engulfing us and our planet. The once hopeful genre ceded ground to dystopia, leaving us “stranded in the long now… waiting for the end of the end of the world”.

“If this all sounds rather grim, even hopeless, I don’t think the selection or even the [media] works individually are to blame…the problem lies in science fiction: it has ceased to be a playground and has become instead a deadly serious way of explaining our world…[what we] have yet to find is some other way – less technocratic, perhaps, and more political and spiritual – of imagining a better future.”

What’s scary is that I think that this is true of written SF as well.

Currently up for the “Emmy award of science fiction”, the Hugo, are several novels and short stories that depict bleak, hopeless futures.

I can’t speak for all of science fiction, but I CAN speak about my favorite hard science fiction magazine, ANALOG Science Fiction and Fact.

I just finished reading the May/June 2021 issue. I’ve been reading ANALOG since I was a teenager, discovering it on the magazine racks of my local library, I started reading shortly after I finished devouring my junior high school’s SF collection. What began with John Christopher’s WHITE MOUNTAIN trilogy in 7th grade, had morphed into the PERN books of Anne McCaffery, Robert A Heinlein’s juveniles, as well as Huxley’s BRAVE NEW WORLD, JG Ballard’s short story collection, VERMILLION SANDS; and not Ursula K. LeGuin’s EARTHSEA books, but THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS and THE LATHE OF HEAVEN (among others).

ANALOG was always been filled with writing that pointed to positive futures. Even when I read John Brunner’s “Who Steals my Purse?” in 1973, a full two years before Vietnam ended in a bust for the US, he offered a positive possible outcome of the conflict – an opportunity not only for healing, but also for building a better world on the ashes of disaster. It wasn’t a rosy picture, but he allowed for hope in a hopeless mire of an undeclared war.

The May/June issue of ANALOG isn’t bereft of hope, but it feels decidedly grim. The darkness opens with the guest editorial, which concludes with “Is it even possible to create a voluntary, world-wide pause on a regular basis?” reflecting the author’s suggestion that that is the best way to save the planet…

A few stories later, we have an incredibly wealthy man able to take an incredibly expensive treatment so that he will effectively live forever. Cool biotech, but sucky for the rest of the poor planet. In another, a man working on the surface of an alien world looking for ways for the corporation to make money, finds alien life – then buries it so that the evil corporation (implying that all corporations are, by definition, evil?) won’t find it and exploit it. Another depicts the inevitable birth of piracy on the high metallic asteroids. Another, the futility of deceptive religion. A time traveler whose fondest wish is to travel through time, figures out how to do it – and materializes in the future to find that he absolutely DID IT!…but NOT in space.

By NO MEANS are “ALL!” of the stories negative; but there are more than there seemed to be when I started reading the magazine, and I don’t think that the darker view of the future started when Donald Trump came into power. I think we started sliding into grimmer futures in September of 2001. Since then, the future seems to be doomed to be subsumed by a present in which wealth, evil capitalism, evil religion, stupid people (not scientists, regular people who don’t want to understand science (personally, the T-shirt that reads “I Believe In Science” gives me the willies. Science isn’t something you do or don’t’ “believe in”. It’s about proposing a way to solve a problem, gather data on the solution, then see if the data support the effectiveness of the solution.

“I Believe the Science” would be better, but that’s just me as a science teacher of almost forty years of experience…). Liam Young may have already hit the nail on the head, “Sci-fi used to be full of such possibilities, but…these days it has become our favourite way of explaining to ourselves…the disasters engulfing us and our planet.

As well, commoners haven’t fallen in line to get COVID19 vaccinations (I got mine as soon as I could get the appointments!), either, remaining skeptical of recombinant DNA, and the frantic push to get everyone vaccinated. I myself, and my science teacher colleagues bear some responsibility for that opacity! We just never really address vaccinations in ANY standard biology curriculum I ever used.

Commoners and the poor also appear unprepared to sacrifice modern civilization in order for the wealthy and scientists to deflect Anthropogenic Warming (which we don’t write any more, but which is STILL what it’s all about) and create a world for them to live safely in.

Of course, this spate of dark futures could certainly be read as cautionary tales. I can’t argue the “The Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin, or Nevil Shute’s ON THE BEARCH, or Stephen King’s THE STAND are anything but grim…

But…But…

I think Simon Ings has made an astute – and possibly true -- observation when he writes, “…science fiction…has ceased to be a playground and has become instead a deadly serious way of explaining our world…”

Now what can I do to change that trajectory?

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25033351-900-has-science-fiction-become-too-serious/#ixzz6xt0rR6JI
Image: https://www.gotquestions.org/img/OG/apocalypse.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 504

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: Realism-Induced Horror (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealismInducedHorror), specifically Mundane Horror – https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MundaneHorror
Current Event: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57707530

Inna Safin looked up and shook her head, saying, “There’s nothing we can do. Everything we try, they block.”

Semyon Kazansky sighed, staring at the meter-wide screen, “The thing is that they’re just as smart as we are.”

Inna snorted, “Smarter. They’re making money hand-over-fist, and we’re sitting here, pretending to be Americans, and driving to work in the middle of the night for government pay.”

Semyon nodded, smiling faintly, “At least our pay is in American dollars and not bitcoin or Rubles.”

“There is that.” She reached out to turn off the screen, “I think I’m done for the day. I can’t think of anything else we can do.” She stood, groaning, hunched over a moment before she could straighten a spine bent most of the night. “I always feel like crap when I’m done. My back hurts, my feet are swollen, If it weren’t for helping the world be a safer place, I’d quit and join the cyberterrorists.”

He looked up at her, “You wouldn’t. Your heart is too pure.”

She sighed. “I was a captain in the Russian Space Force. I couldn’t have been TOO pure.”

He hummed. “Didn’t know that part of your past. I was in the SVR.”

Her eyes widened, “You really do everything people whisper about?”

He looked up, raising his eyebrows. He looked both ways, grinned an evil grin, widening his eyes and leaned toward her, whispering, “Way, way worse.” He bounced his eyebrows.

She burst out laughing, then abruptly sobered. “What if we could do that?”

“Do what?”

“Make our response to cyberterrorism actually painful?” She sat down again, turning on her screen. She hunched over her keyboard a moment later, typing furiously. Her English words morphed into Cyrillic, which came out as gibberish until the computer corrected and started to respond to her typing correctly.

His eyes grew wider and his jaw dropped open. He turned to his own computer and started typing. Shortly his own words drifted into Cyrillic, though his keyboard changed faster.

When she sat back, Inna looked at Semyon. She whispered, “I think this is just barely short of Frankenstein’s Monster.”

His voice was soft as well, “More like an avenging angel. Or demon.”

“Either way, they could cause some really serious damage,” she said.

“Worse than that,” Semyon’s voice dropped to a bare whisper, “This thing is like a nightmare come-to-life.” He paused, adding, “I’m pretty close to messing my pants just sitting here.”

“What if we tested it?” said Inna. “Just one cyberterrorist. One that targeted kids…”

Names: ♀, ♂ -- Russian
Image: https://cdn.britannica.com/40/11740-004-50816EB1/Boris-Karloff-Frankenstein-monster.jpg

WRITING ADVICE: Writing the Alien – God, Jesus, Earth, and Intelligences “Out There”

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! (This essay first appeared in December of 2020.)

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/3a/eb/83/3aeb8303cd61baaaff46a45fe45b7847.jpg

As a Christian since I was seventeen and a science fiction fan and writer since I was thirteen, I understand the SF community’s objection to Earth-based religions. Mostly the arguments grant that religion is fine, but it’s a totally local phenomenon, that is, the only Christians in the universe exist on Earth. Any kind of universal religion would be impossible.

I can appreciate the argument. It seems obvious that Jesus, Mohammed, Siddhartha Gautama, Moses, Brahma, Laozi, and others, being Human, and creating their religions at various times; are in their essence no different from the Pastafarianism of Bobby Henderson. I think the majority of SF readers and writers probably fall in somewhere on the spectrum of “I’d rather wait and see” and thinking there will be a plurality of religions along the same lines as the Prophets in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (and of course, they aren’t really prophets, just manipulative aliens); the religion of DUNE (a mishmash of Human religions with bits of Roman Catholicism, Islam, possibly a bit of Buddhism with sprinklings of various other Human faiths) – and the idea that matter is all there is; there isn’t anything invisible, and “spirituality” is an aspect of Human consciousness alone.

The Wikipedia entry gives (probably) a fairly complete list of SF religions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_ideas_in_science_fiction

CS Lewis had a very different point of view regarding aliens. In an essay called, “Religion and Rockets” (see THE WORLD’S LAST NIGHT AND OTHER ESSAYS) it was Lewis who asked the question, “How can we, without absurd arrogance, believe ourselves to have been uniquely favored?” and “...if we discovered that no form of redemption had reached them, then the human task might be to evangelize them…redemption, starting with us, is to work from us and through us [to the extraterrestrial beings].” He continues, “Those who are, or can become His sons, are our real brothers even if they have shells or tusks. It is spiritual, not biological, kinship that counts.”

Of course the belief of Lewis (and me) is that there is one God who made the universe – and every intelligence is given a “Garden of Eden Test”. We failed; Venusians passed. His idea about the salvation of Earth (and any other fallen intelligences) is actually best illustrated in his answer to a young person regarding the fantasy world of Narnia: “I’m not really representing the (Christian) story in symbols. I’m more saying, ‘Suppose there was a world like Narnia and it needed rescuing and the Son of God…went to redeem it, as He came to redeem ours, what might it, in that world, have been like?’”

I wrote a story some time ago that looked at a sort of map that intelligences who develop interstellar travel eventually discover. It shows stars where fallen and unfallen civilizations exist. I revised it recently and sent it out, and got a “that was close, but no thank you” from the editors.

The image above sparked these thoughts and while I’m certainly no Lewis, I’ll keep exploring the possibility that there are fallen and unfallen intelligences…I don’t THINK anyone is doing that right now. So we’ll see. As the holiday season rolls in, I might be sharing some other thoughts about this as well – and probably testing our a few more stories.

Me, writing on a different aspect of this: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2014/12/a-slice-of-pie-is-there-perfect-alien.html
References: https://instituteforfaithandculture.org/blogarticles/is-christianity-compatible-the-existence-of-aliens, https://scientificgems.wordpress.com/2016/09/04/lewis-aliens-and-the-fermi-paradox/, https://www.christiantoday.com/article/c.s.lewis.letter.testifies.narnia.lion.as.christ/4724.htm I tried to use this article as a reference, but it’s literally RIDDLED with inaccuracies, beginning with the date Lewis wrote the response – 8 June 1960 (THE ESSENTIAL C.S. Lewis, Ed. Lyle W. Dorsett)
Image: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/9f/22/3b/9f223b1e57a36e14db3eb13715fbe3f9.jpg