WRITING ADVICE: Creating Alien Aliens, Part 11: Invading Aliens!

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
Part 7: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2021/04/writing-advice-creating-alien-aliens.html
Part 8: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2021/05/writing-advice-creating-alien-aliens.html
Part 9: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2021/08/writing-advice-creating-alien-aliens.html
Part 10: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2021/09/writing-advice-creating-alien-aliens.html

Invading aliens have been around for a long time, up to and including the October 2021 premier of AppleTV+’s INVASION television series.

I won’t be watching that one. The trailers didn’t tempt me enough to purchase a subscription to AppleTV+…But I doubt very much if I’ll ever give up reading and watching other movies about alien invasion!

“H. G. Wells published The War of the Worlds in 1898, depicting the invasion of Victorian England by Martians equipped with advanced weaponry. It is now seen as the seminal alien invasion story…” hardly the first of the genre, it’s the one that we most often think of when we talk about “alien invasions”.

There are plenty of novels, stories, and movies depicting aliens coming after Earthlings to do…well, any number of things. In “Independence Day”, they were after Earth’s resources, as they were in the creepy/stupid “V”, where they wanted Earth’s water (clearly, chemistry had not been invented on their reptilian world, as hydrogen is the most abundant gas in the universe. With a little hydrogen and oxygen mixing, all you need is a spark and you’ll have plenty of water…

Anyway, I’ve often wondered what could POSSIBLY tempt aliens to invade Earth. One of the most disgusting ideas is to use us for food. (I’ve actually written a SF story about that…with a twist. I’ll let you know if it gets published!) The problem with that scenario is that there’s no guarantee that Humans will “taste good”. Not only that, but there’s a good chance that we won’t even be GOOD for them – not like “poisonous” or anything, but more along the lines of us having the nutritional value of PopRocks®.

In HG Wells novels, Martians invade because Mars was dying and they needed more room. While the launch craft were barely more than cannon shells with walkers tucked inside, their heat rays and the tripod walker itself were advanced, even by today’s standards. Given that, they surely knew that the effects of extended high-gravity life that Earth offered would ultimately make their lives both miserable and short. They probably thought the idea of them catching a deadly of Common Cold was impossible, though clearly we’re from the same star system, so interplanetary cross infection apparently is possible.

Astrobiologist Lewis Dartnell, in his article on Lithub.com, writes, “I suspect that if aliens did come to Earth, it would be as researchers: biologists, anthropologists, linguists, keen to understand the peculiar workings of life on Earth, to meet humanity and learn of our art, music, culture, languages, philosophies and religions.” Of course, this presupposes that an advanced alien civilization would find Humans interesting or even worth studying. Certainly beings who could cross interstellar distances could find better things to do with their time. It’s somewhat “Humanocentric” to think that we might be interesting to aliens.

At the risk of projecting Human thought processes onto other sapients, I just want to noodle about WHY aliens might end up on Earth. What would drive them from the comforts of the world they evolved on and risk exposure to radiation, gravitational flux, and unimaginable distances?

I suppose I could ask what drove our ancestors to get into tiny boats and sail across the oceans?

Ancient Polynesian culture was an exploring culture. “Polynesian navigation of the Pacific Ocean and its settlement began thousands of years ago. The inhabitants of the Pacific islands had been voyaging across vast expanses of ocean water sailing in double canoes or outriggers using [NOTE: “nothing more than” seemed patronizing to me] their knowledge of the stars and observations of sea and wind patterns to guide them…[The] islands are scattered across an ocean that covers 165 mil km2 (64 mil miles2)…The Lapita and their ancestors were skilled seafarers...”

So…property. When the Polynesians arrived at these islands, as far as historical accounts note, they were uninhabited. They moved in, settled, then sent new colonists on ahead. Europeans also went to sea to find property. When they found that there were already Humans occupying the land they “discovered”, they legislated the indigenous people into animals, announced that the land was uninhabited, and any animal occupying the land could be driven away or killed.

We hope that someday we meet Polynesian-like aliens; but what if we meet European-style aliens? The late Stephen Hawking, world renowned astrophysicist said 11 years ago, “‘We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet,’ when he compared meeting aliens to Christopher Columbus meeting Native Americans, he quipped, ‘That didn’t turn out so well.’” Why do we even THINK that alien life would be conquering monsters?

Science fiction writer David Brin, best known for his UPLIFT novels, and a signatory of the petition protesting the campaign for active SETI said, “…we don’t know what’s out there and shouldn’t presume that aliens are benign…there are roughly 100 scenarios to explain why we haven’t heard from the aliens so far. About a dozen of those scenarios are unpleasant.”

By some measures, WE are like this, we’re advanced (though barely interplanetary at this point), so why would we expect any better for us than what several Earth cultures dealt out to other cultures?

Part of it is hubris. We find it hard to believe that advanced alien civilizations might actually be BETTER than us. Even Gene Roddenberry’s exalted Federation, in the end, when faced by the Founders, resorted to intentional genocide. From what I hear, PICARD’s future Federation is a pretty grim place. I don’t WANT to watch the federation fall apart. I WANT to believe that we’re better than that.

Why are there so few alien stories that deal with SUCCESSFUL exploration?

Partly, because, as Lisa Cron writes, “We're wired to turn to story to teach us the way of the world.” We are, perhaps wired for violence. We’re wired for war, so to speak.

But do we HAVE to be? Do the aliens we write HAVE TO BE WIRED FOR WAR AS WELL? Must they be born invaders, as we are? I want to explore this in future Alien Aliens posts, but I’d love your input!

References: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_invasion, https://lithub.com/why-would-aliens-even-bother-with-earth/, https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1586/polynesian-navigation--settlement-of-the-pacific/, https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/the-big-questions/why-these-scientists-fear-contact-space-aliens-n717271, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/the-latest-debate-about-space-aliens-should-we-say-hello-or-keep-quiet/2015/02/28/43aa4a52-bcf5-11e4-bdfa-b8e8f594e6ee_story.html
Image: https://www.cinematerial.com/tv/the-invaders-i61265/p/3zpulrub

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 519

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

F Trope: elves, gnomes and Halflings
Current Event: http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2011/07/02/icelandic-town-hopes-angry-elves-have-been-soothed-by-songs/

As I am born, my mother dies.

My father is driving too fast with Mom and an unborn me when he loses. He’s never clear on what it is he loses control of. He is an anthropologist and is analytical about Mom’s death when speaking to other people. After Mom dies, he keeps me and is raising me as well as he can alone. He is not a nurturer but a scientist. A scientist in the worst sort of way, not a mixture of scientist and father, nor of compassionate parent and scientist. He is a scientist alone.

I am certain he is loving only half of me because he hates himself. When I am a child, there are times he hits me. Then he helps me put on make up to cover the bruises. I’m older now and can put on my own makeup when he sees me and thinks too much of Mom. Usually though, I hold my breath, cover my kidneys, and curl my legs to protect my scrotum and I’m fine the next day. I limp some days, but never a lot.

Dad travels since six months after my birth. Together, we see a lot, but we rarely speak because he is often angry at others. I am the way he controls his temper when his feelings are hurt in public.

I regularly hack Dad’s computer and know he is obsessed with the origins of the legends that became root metaphors in European society. He skypes other friends all the time and has contacts all over the world. He has other interests as well, but after discovering those, I follow only his LORD OF THE RINGS searches.

He reads lots of fantasy and likes LORD OF THE RINGS and can even read the Icelandic translation (which his few friends think is weird). One of his heroes is “Snorri Sturluson, a descendant of Egil’s Saga’s hero, but this remains uncertain. The standard modern edition of Icelandic sagas is known as Íslenzk Fornrit.” His online name is “Snorri”.

I wouldn’t care about Egil’s Saga except that it has given me a clue what I can do to stop Dad. See, Egil's Saga is a family saga. It’s about the lives of the clan of Egill Skallagrímsson. He is an Icelandic farmer, viking and skald. The skald is an Icelandic poet, usually one who writes many poems. Its oldest piece of a manuscript over six hundred years old to 1240 AD, and comprises the sole source of information on the exploits of Egil. Most people think Egil and Snorri Sturluson, who is a real figure of Viking history, are the same person.

Dad is certain that they are two people and that he is descended from Egil and thus a hero. We are at a conference in Minnesota. Without Dad knowing, I am going to a fantasy and science fiction bookstore called “Uncle Hugo’s”. I don’t know anything about this city, but what do I need to know that would be any different from when he go to Oslo for Dad and my school?

I am following my inertial map and am almost to the store. I turn my had and see a banner reading International Marketplace. A gust of wind blows the scent of meat to me. Dad is not a meat eater, so I am not a meat eater. I will be shortly.

I am crossing the street – it’s just like any street in Oslo. I dodge cars and as I jump up the curb, a fight starts in the parking lot. Four white teenagers yell obscenities and racial epithets at a black man and an Hispanic woman. The man shouts back. The women turns and she runs toward me, looking at me, without saying a word, she is begging me to help her. The teenagers knock down the man and kick him, and punch him, and spit on him. One of the teenagers, a boy who looks like me, leaves them and runs after her. She stops in front of me then throws her arms around me. He knocks both of us over, grabs her and pulls her off of me even though I try to hold on to her.

I don’t see it but I hear a gun go off. The boy jumps to his feet, kicks the girl in the head. She doesn’t move. He runs across the parking lot. All of them disappear over a wall. The girl is bleeding from her head. I should do something, but I don’t know how to call 911 in the US.

Her eyes suddenly open. She pulls paper from her pocket. She pulls something out, wipes her bloody face with it then presses a folded sheet of paper into my hand as she dies and says…

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

WRITING ADVICE: Short Stories – Advice and Observation #12: Charlie Jane Anders "& 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 Charlie Jane Anders – with a few from myself…

I first stumbled across Charlie Jane Ander’s writing advice about ten year ago. She’s one of the founders of the FABULOUS website, io9. It’s been folded into another online magazine now called Gizmodo (which has some fun stuff in it by itself!), but I read her because of her writing advice. She’s since moved on and is now writing full-time. BUT…

Her writing is, of course, still available. (The link below separates her work out of the pack of fantastic writing on Gizmodo and io9…) She also reviews all kinds of media from a fascinatingly unique perspective. Over the years, I’ve taken some of her advice, and I’ve read some and NOT taken it…because, well, she’s herself and I’m myself and not everything she writes is useful to my own writing! So then, onward!

For example, Anders uses fascinating examples. In “10 Vital Storytelling Lessons I Learned from Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, she notes, “The best heroes wants something they can’t have.” Wow…I would add, though, that the hero has to come close fairly often in order to drive the story and keep me, as a reader (or watcher) coming back. In STAR TREK:VOYAGER, the whole point of the series is for the ship to get back to the Alpha Quadrant. The series can only end when they do – which happens of course, but not only are they changed by the journey (sounds like real life, eh?), but they lose people along the way. In my short story, “Road Veterinarian”, the main character, Doctor Scrabble, is falling in love with Sergeant Thatcher; but he feels he’s a freak and she feels she’s a freak, so how is it even possible?

Another idea Anders notes, “Big mysteries should always have a hard-hitting payoff”. This will be important for my current WIP. It is, literally, a mystery. Kidnapped children, a greedy politician, a marshal who was friends with the apparent perpetrator. The thing is that, I may have made it too obvious that his friend can’t POSSIBLY be the bad guy. In fact, while I know that there’s someone else in the background (though I introduced him almost immediately) who IS the bad guy, he hasn’t shown up much. I’m just realizing now that he HAS to pop in and out so that the reader will be suspicious and wonder why he’s there; but the marshal’s friend has to still look like a likely suspect – even to the marshal who wants to deny it but will do what’s RIGHT. I just haven’t spread that layer thick enough already.

Another interesting point she makes: “…old stories are where a lot of the most interesting ideas are, if you can just peel back all the dreck and rote expectations that have been stuck to them. Buffy the Vampire Slayer made one of the cornerstones of heroic storytelling fresh again [‘The Chosen’ going on a mission], and in the process showed how you can make any idea fresh—if you just ask the tough questions along the way.”

There’s a camp of writers who firmly believe that there is no such thing as a new story. Books have been written about it, too like, “10 Master Plots” (Writers Digest Books), “The Seven Plots” (New York Times), “Three, Six, or Thirty-six: How many basic plots are there in all the stories ever written?” (The Guardian), “The Seven Basic Plots” (Wikipedia).

Anders is one of the few who believes that while she agrees, she sees great hope in that – a writer can take a trope (there’s even a website called TV Tropes, where I get all of my ideas for Ideas On Tuesdays! https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpeculativeFiction) and twist it, combine it, or breathe new life in it even AFTER a story starts. The skill of a writer is in first realizing that there are layers of verdigris on the copper cathedral roof so it appears a rather dull green; but then to realize that with proper treatment, the roof can be transformed into shining, polished copper.

Even so, it also behooves a writer to remember that verdigris and rust can also PROTECT a metal from completely oxidizing into nothing.

Food for thought for me; hopefully some food for thought for you.

References: https://kinja.com/charliejane?_ga=2.117592897.993371918.1634957052-1755865972.1634957052
Image: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41JNnybcihL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 518

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Names: ♀ Tibet
Image: https://www.carthage.edu/live/image/gid/169/width/600/height/800/22601_BlueOrigin_NewShepard_NS10_Launch.rev.1548431292.jpg

WRITING ADVICE – Lisa Cron: WIRED FOR STORY Encore #2: : The Solution To Two PLOT Problems In Order To Meet Reader Expectations In My Work In Progress…

Since 2008, I have taken the advice of a number of published writers (with their permission) and then applied the writing wisdom of Lin Oliver, Jack McDevitt, Nathan Bransford, Mike Duran, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, SL Veihl, Bruce Bethke, and Julie Czerneda to an analysis of my own writing. Together these people write in genres broad and deep, and have acted as agents, editors, publishers, columnists, and teachers.

I will say that Lisa Cron who has worked as a literary agent, TV producer, and story consultant for Warner Brothers, the William Morris Agency, and others has had the most profound effect on my writing. After reading her book, WIRED FOR STORY, I was overwhelmed by the information, so I distilled it down to 23 of the most important points she made. I ran this series in 2019 and 2020. It’s so important that I’m running it again. I expect I’ll be learning as much as you…

2. The reader expects the story to revolve around one, single plot problem that grows, escalates and complicates, which the protagonist has no choice but to deal with…The plot problem is constructed to force the protagonist to confront, struggle with, and hopefully overcome a long standing internal problem…Can my plot problem grow, escalate and complicate from the first page to the last? If so, can it force my protagonist to struggle internally, spurring her to make a much needed internal change in order to resolve it?

I just got Lisa Cron’s book from the library, WIRED FOR STORY, and from the introduction, I’ve already learned something! Using clear references from brain research, she makes the point that “Story is what enabled us to imagine what might happen in the future, and so prepare us for it – a feat no other species can lay claim to, opposable thumbs or not.”

Whew! I expect that this will be a book I’ll buy soon so I can write in it. I will also make sure the kids in the Writing To Get Published classes know about it.

Back to the point at hand. I’ll be analyzing my work in progress through the lens of this expectation, which is currently called “Road Veterinarian”. I’m not going to go into plot detail mainly because the point above is concerned with character motivation.

Dr. Scramble – who I WANTED to call Dr. Scrabble, but the word is a trademark and I don’t want to get into trouble – is an urban veterinarian and researcher. He works with people who don’t have big budgets but need big budget things done with animals. But until this moment, I didn’t realize that Dr. Scramble – whose real name is Javier Quinn Xiong Zamar (Spanish (place name); Gaelic/Irish (descendant of Conn = wisdom, reason, intelligence); Chinese (cultural hero); Arabic (= secret)) – had NO motivation for doing what he’s doing.

But he’s got this job where he could make loads of money if he moved to the suburbs (which are being subsumed into the monolithic Vertical Villages, which are growing because the population of Earth has reached ten billion and the surface has to be returned to its wild and/or cultivated state. A loose world-wide confederation f independent states (NOT the United Nations any more) and seated in New Zealand (I think) has declared that Humans on Earth need to move to one of 20,000 Vertical Villages. He lives in the growing shadow of the Minneapolis Saint Paul Vertical Village (from a future I’ve created that culminates with Humans joining a Unity of Sentients whose foundation is interconnected debt…)

But who the heck IS he???

Until I started reading Cron’s book, I didn’t think it was important. His presence served my purposes…but now, apparently, I can’t really write the story until I know what his motivation is. So, you’ll now witness the creation of a character so that he will WORK in the story I’m writing!

Outward motivation: he’s a veterinarian, but WHY? He grew up in Minnesota, so that’s established. Northern Minnesota. In his time, roughly 60-80 years from now, the decay of the iron industry is complete and that part of the state has become a haven for the elderly – those who were born in the early years of the 21st Century. They’re characterized as Generation Z (born between 1995 and 2010): the complete integration of social media into their personal lives; AVATAR and HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL; the Disney channel, the submersion into porn; the rapid Islamization and sexual fluidity of Western society; their learning takes place online, but they have a terrible time separating fact from fiction; they believe that they will be in debt to others for the rest of their lives; as far as their pets go, they depend on veterinarians (one MORE debt) but see their parents more involved with PETS than they are with kids (whom they may treat as pets), they prefer non-traditional venues for their pet services, they are VERY eclectic in their ownership…

So Javier grew up as a child/pet and resented it. OTOH, his parents hated taking their pets to a “veterinarian” rather than the trendier Pet Hospital or (even worse), Animal Hospital, Pet Health Center, Veterinary Center, Partners in Veterinary Health Care, Animal Wellness Center, Advanced Veterinary Care…etc… He showed an aptitude for science, biology in particular, and they cultivated it, giving him more and more care of their iguana, pot-bellied pig, Hyacinthine Macaw, mouse house, Emerald Tree Boa, and turquoise Discus 400 gallon tank and four 40 gallon breeding tanks – with the intent of breeding a true Emerald Discus (they like green). Both of them are licensed, practicing pharmacists in a Box Store with a bent toward holistic remedies. Both of them were opioid addicts when they were YA and so he cannot EVER have painkillers. He is an only child as well (though mom had six miscarriages between 14 and 36 when she carried him to term and dad had two other kids outside of marriage and has no idea where they ended up; they married each other at 41 (dad) and 43 (mom) and he was born a year later without any kind of intervention). As they lost interest in taking care of their pets, that fell more and more to him. Then they were killed in a car accident (one of the newest, safest auto-autos) when he was 13 and all of the animals were sold off. He remained for the rest of his life with an older couple who were friends of his parents and who had two old dogs and a cat; until he graduated when he was 18 and went to college to be a vet because the dogs and cat were his only real companions…

So – his motivation to become a vet was to make sure he had someone around him at all times. Someone he could trust, someone who would take care of him. He narrowly escaped a drug addiction after starting to use a chemical called pegfilgrastim, originally used to stimulates to production of white blood cells after cancer chemotherapy, but with the conquering of 86% of cancers, there was an overabundance of it that made its way to the drug cartels. It became important after a mutation in the AIDS virus created a strain that could survive in saliva and mucus and was viable when passed by sneezing, called “pneumAIDS”. More virulent than the original AIDS virus, it was suspected that it was a Russian, Chinese, or North Korean bioweapon. The street name for pegfilgrastim became Boost, Stimwhite, SWBC (or Sweet Becky), and Peg or Phil (it became a trend to genderize the drug based on sex).

He lost friends to it and became more or less a loner, dependent on his animals. He preferred the anonymity of the city and had no trouble running his business from there as if it wasn’t actual animal treatment, he could consult anywhere in the world.

His motivation: don’t let anyone get close to you; help and trust animals (but don’t be stupid about it!); live and let live.

“Road Veterinarian” draws on his skills; he also has to interact with a very big woman, whom, he comes to suspect, is the product of some sort of genetic engineering or gene grafting…she looks like an attractive Bigfoot. The external story will be the two of them – she’ll be named Theodora Ujin Thatcher (Theodora: Empress of Byzantine Empire; wife of Ghengis Khan; first female PM of the UK) – who is very protective of her own heart – working together to save America from war with Canada…

They will each let the other get a little closer to them (they’ll also be sarcastic and there WILL be humor…)

So, there you go. Development of character in order to satisfy Reader Expectation #2!

NOTE: This story appeared in the September/October 2019 issue of ANALOG Science Fiction and Fact
Image: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/51ddbf8fe4b0bf85e2f4edd2/t/592c2f0b414fb5ddd3a1259d/1496067864402/BookImage.jpg?format=300w

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 517

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: Above Good and Evil (objectives are more valuable than meaningless considerations of good and evil)
Current Event: “Swat Sociopaths? I came up with the idea because I thought it would be useful for sociopaths to be able to speak to one another. I thought that I would like to meet other like-minded people, but there is absolutely no way to do that in general life. Thus, an anonymous forum of sorts seemed the best way to go about it.” (http://daily.swarthmore.edu/2013/03/20/qa-with-founder-of-new-anonymous-group-swat-sociopaths/)

Niya Ouellet stared at the email. The minute she’d seen the advertisement on the UofM Confessions wall, she’d been captured, bound, and gagged. Her pulse pounded in her ears as her finger hovered over the SEND icon. A club for sociopath’s sounded weird to her.

It also sounded perfect. All she needed was to get together with others who thought like her and together they could get rid of the people who were so jealous of her – and others like her who were so gifted and talented.

She sent it.

Mehdi Claes stared at his computer screen. The Dean of the Computer Science Department sat across from him, staring at a mirror screen. She said, “How many of these have you gotten so far?”

“Twelve,” said Mehdi.

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope.” Mehdi took a deep breath, held it, then let it out slowly. “It was a joke.”

“How many of these people do YOU think are joking?”

Mehdi pursed his lips. “I’m only a college freshman.”

“But you have a brain. You also had the sense to text me and have me come and look at these.” Professor Lenae touched her computer. If even one of these people is seriously a sociopath...”

“A what?”

“Sociopath.”

“What’s that?”

“They aren’t ‘its’, they’re ‘whos’. They have brains that compel them to certain behaviors.”

“Like what?”

“Sociopaths are charming, charismatic, spontaneous, intense, and are happy to betray people, threaten or harm others without giving it a second thought. They are also outrageous liars. They hate to lose anything; use their brainpower to deceive others; are entirely self-serving master wordsmiths; they never apologize; are delusional and literally believe that what they say becomes truth.”

“And there’s one of these here?”

Professor Lenae stared at him for some time before she said, “According to what you have here, there are twelve.” She paused, shook her head and added, “And they think you’re going to be their leader.”

Names: ♀Israel (Jewish), French Canadian ; ♂ Tunisia, Belgian

Image: https://cdn.britannica.com/40/11740-004-50816EB1/Boris-Karloff-Frankenstein-monster.jpg

Slice of PIE: Exploring An Old, Old Story…

NOT using the (Still-In-Progress) Programme Guide of the 2021 World Science Fiction Convention, DisCON which I WOULD have been attending in person if I felt safe enough to do so in person (Yes – I have BOTH COVID shots, Shingrix, and 2021-2022 Influenza Vaccination…ouch…) AND it hadn’t been changed to the week before the Christmas Holidays…HOWEVER, as the program firms up, 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. 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…

I tripped down memory lane this week reading ALGERNON, CHARLIE, AND I by Daniel Keyes…

I was in junior high when our class read a version of this story written as a play. Honestly? The story did something to my head and I never forgot it after that. I read it as the Hugo-winning novelette much, much later. I’d like to see if I can get this issue of F&SF, but we’ll see. I’ve been collecting too many books and stuff lately!

At any rate, I’ve even gone so far as to write a contemporary, middle-grade novel with a similar theme, though updated. THE RECONSTRUCTION OF MAI LI HASTINGS is about a young teen who helps his mother with his adopted sister, a developmentally disabled young adult who can do nothing for herself.

While all of my brothers and my sister were born in possession of all of the faculties our Human society recognizes as normal, I spent two years working in a facility that “…follows a person-centered, active support approach to ensure that the individuals with disabilities we serve have a hand in directing their services and a voice concerning their future. We place no limits on what a person is capable of accomplishing.”

I worked as a regular caregiver and eventually became a supervisor of the night shift. As a regular caregiver, I was responsible for eight residents – everything from assisting with daily life skills to doing their laundry. As a supervisor, I was required to be familiar with the entire facility’s 32 residents because I was required to do the job of caregiver for any one of the four units if a regular called in sick.

I took my experiences there, my job as a middle school teacher, and my science education, and wrote the novel. I wanted to look at Charlie Gordon’s story from a different angle – the sibling, CJ, of a kid who needed full-time care, who was Mai Li, when she was home; and who went to a day-program when she wasn’t at home.

Before working in the facility, I’d also been certified as a Nursing Assistant and had worked part time as a nurse’s assistant at a nursing home.

All of those observations poured into THE RECONSTRUCTION OF MAI LI HASTINGS.

After reading ALGERNON, CHARLIE, AND ME, I think I know why I wrote my story. “Flowers for Algernon” was last reprinted in February of 2018, in an admittedly obscure volume called The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929-1964. Your average adolescent isn’t going to pick that volume up and “discover” Daniel Keyes’ story.

Also, recent developments in neuroscience surfaced in late 1999 when Keyes stumbled across an article by Dr. Joe Z. Tsien (then at Princeton) genetically engineered a “smart” mouse, the concept, while different was remarkably like what the doctors in Keyes’ story did to Algernon, the eponymous mouse in the short story. The mouse’s surgery led to the same kind of surgery being performed on Charlie.

Of course, it was successful in the novelette and novel. But it has also been done in mice in reality…The question I have is if Tsien ever read “Flowers for Algernon”. While the article doesn’t mention it, I DO note that Tsien got his doctorate about ten miles from where I’m writing this – the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities; and we’re a pretty big SciFi and Fantasy community with some big names coming from here – including one of my all-time favorites, Clifford D. Simak, Poul Anderson, as well as Gordon R. Dickson, and more recently, Patricia Wrede, Lois McMaster Bujold, and Emma Bull among others, including four prominent black speculative fiction DC Edwards, Briana Lawrence, Marlon James, and André M. Carrington.

Who knows, maybe someone in his doctoral program said, “Hey, you ever read ‘Flowers for Algernon’?”

In ALGERNON, CHARLIE, AND I, Keyes wrote, “I write in hope that, long after I’m gone, my stories and books, like pebbles dropped into waters, will continue to spread in widening circles and touch other minds. Possibly other minds in conflict with themselves.” Yep, I like that. Those might be good words to adopt for myself – and a good sketch of a target I can aim at.

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Z._Tsien, https://twincitiesgeek.com/2020/02/4-minnesota-sci-fi-and-fantasy-books-by-black-authors-for-black-history-month/
Image: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51VgLfPcetL._SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_FMwebp_.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 516

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.

THIS is the beginning of a magical novel in the vein of Harry Potter and Diane Duane’s “So You Want to Be a Wizard” novels.

F Trope: A “magical” academy
Current Event: http://www.miripiriacademy.org/

Far below Andre Xavier Xavier, a Bryshwyn of Bryshwyns and Raven Zoe Jefferson, who called herself a Nobody of Nobodys, the evening meditation tone sounded. A cross between a buzzer and an ancient longhorn, the instrument was blown by a family with a tradition as deep as Andre’s. The young man said, pushing his turban back up on top of his head where it promptly released a curl of very pale, very curly hair, “There’s Fendwyri tooting his own horn again.”

Raven shook her head. Her turban was always perfectly wound. It was the only thing that could control her wild kinks. She loved it for that. The turbans gave everyone a similar look – even though in the dorms, certain girls made sure to see how long, and straight, and silky black THEIR hair was. She said, “You have nothing to be jealous about.”

“I’m not jealous!” he exclaimed.

Smirking, Raven headed for the stairwell that would lead them five stories down to the courtyard. “Come on, we need to hurry or we’ll be late.”

“We’ll be late if we take that way,” he said.

Raven spun around and said, “No!”

Ignoring her, Andre lifted both arms and said, “Jheregi SSothimazhu,” the stones around them began to glow red and tremble in their mortar cradles. Andre moved his hands slowly, seeming to grip the air. The temperature around them dropped precipitously until Raven could see her breath. Andre said, “Forginiway thoomITas herogiNOMUL!”

The stones leaped into the air, drawing their ability to form steps from the energy in the once sun-warmed air. Andre grabbed Raven’s hand and leaped to the first step.

Four stories above a stone courtyard, Raven knew better than to fight. Instead, she followed Andre as the stones assembled themselves into a flight of stairs switch-backing at a comfortable angle and leading them downward as they hurried for meditations. “We’ll be on time…”

They were still two meters above ground when the bricks that had been hastily assembling themselves into stairs and glowing in the deepening shadows of the courtyard as they ran down…suddenly turned the color of bricks and fell into a pile directly below them. Andre shouted in surprise, then cried out, “FeshET siMAYlee!” Immediately the air below him gained the ability to roar up and buoyed him the last meter, setting him gently on the ground.

Raven tried the enabling, but couldn’t pronounce the words correctly, and instead fell on to the pile of very ancient – and very hard bricks at a rate determined not by ability but mathematically by velocity and time, specifically where a= Δv/ Δt. Not that either of them knew that in this world. But not all students in all worlds were equally naïve.

Either way, the sound and the abrupt stop would been identical whether it had been caused solely by ability or solely by gravity…

Names: ♀ Popular African American name, Australian Capital Territory, Common African American last name; ♂ Popular American name, Brazil
Image:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/71/e5/9871e52bbc09c525af21b8f6471eab15.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY: Science Has NOTHING To Do With The “Sense of Wonder” We So Crave!

Using the Program Guide of the World Science Fiction Convention in San Jose, California in August 2018 (to which I will be unable to go (until I retire from education)), I will jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. This originally appeared on my blog in September of 2018. The link for the WorldCon is provided below (though I don't know if it's still alive)…

Science: The Core of SF's Sense of Wonder
Many readers come to science fiction for the jolt of wonder at imagining the clouds of Venus, the chromosphere of the sun, or the frigid surface of Pluto. They want their breath taken away by the long scope of time of evolution and geology and the stars. What is that sense of wonder experience and how do people feel it differently? What science in science fiction most succeeds at getting to those feelings? Our panel of writers and readers of scifi wax rhapsodic about science in science fiction.

Bridget McKinney: fantasy and science fiction writer (film and television).
Stanley Schmidt: author, professor, editor of Analog Science Fiction and Fact; musician, photographer, traveler, naturalist, outdoorsman, pilot, and linguist; Guest of Honor at the 1998 World Science Fiction Convention, Nebula and Hugo nominee for his fiction, Robert A. Heinlein Award, SFWA’s Solstice Award, retired
Becky Chambers: author, nominated for the Hugo Award, Arthur C. Clarke Award, Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction, won Prix Julia Verlanger in 2017.
Suzanne Palmer: writer and artist, won Asimov's and Analog reader awards, finalist for 2018 Hugo
Vincent Docherty: fan, con-runner, researched in Quantum Chemistry, works in the energy industry.
Annalee Newitz: journalist, editor, author of both fiction and nonfiction: Popular Science, Wired, Techsploitation, San Francisco Bay Guardian, io9, Gizmodo, Tech Culture Editor at Ars Technica.

This is a heavy group of individuals!

The question that vexes me (and has helped me!) is the answer to the question: What is a sense of wonder?

Here’s some definitions from the internet.

CAST OF WONDERS: “…we don’t rigidly define the genre…stories that evoke a sense of wonder, that have something unreal about them…non-condescending stories with wide appeal…without explicit sex, violence or strong language. Think Harry Potter or The Hunger Games…makes us think…thrilling entertainment and adventure…high fantasy, elves, dragons, secondary worlds, and magic…all forms of sci-fi: far-future, near future, space opera, hard SF — but accessible…”

Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction: “…a feeling of awakening or awe triggered by an expansion of one’s awareness of what is possible or by confrontation with the vastness of space and time…”

“On the Grotesque in Science Fiction”, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr., Professor of English, DePauw University: “…the primary attributes of sf at least since the pulp era. The titles of the most popular sf magazines of that period—Astounding, Amazing, Wonder Stories, Thrilling, Startling, etc.—clearly indicate that the putative cognitive value of sf stories is more than counter-balanced by an affective power, to which, in fact, the scientific content is expected to submit.”

John Clute and Peter Nicholls (Clute & Nicholls 1993): “…‘conceptual breakthrough’ or ‘paradigm shift’…achieved through the recasting…previous narrative experiences in a larger context. It can be found in short scenes (…‘That's no moon; it's a space station.’) and it can require entire novels to set up (as in the final line to Iain Banks's Feersum Endjinn. [Tried desperately to find it; couldn’t…)

George Mann, English author and editor: “…the sense of inspired awe that is aroused in a reader when the full implications of an event or action become realized, or when the immensity of a plot or idea first becomes known…” and “It is this insistence on fundamental realism that has caused Verne’s novels to be retrospectively seen as of key importance in the development of SF. …—people in droves came to the books looking for adventure and got it, but with an edge of scientific inquiry that left them with a new, very different sense of wonder. The magic of the realms of fantasy had been superseded by the fascination of speculation rooted in reality…”

Isaac Asimov: “…because today’s real life so resembles day-before-yesterday’s fantasy, the old-time fans are restless. Deep within, whether they admit it or not, is a feeling of disappointment and even outrage that the outer world has invaded their private domain. They feel the loss of a ‘sense of wonder’ because what was once truly confined to ‘wonder’ has now become prosaic and mundane.”

David Hartwell, editor and critic: “Any child who has looked up at the stars at night and thought about how far away they are, how there is no end or outer edge to this place, this universe—any child who has felt the thrill of fear and excitement at such thoughts…”

Damon Knight: (In Search of Wonder: Essays on Modern Science Fiction, referencing Samuel Moskowitz): “…some widening of the mind’s horizons, not matter what direction – the landscape of another planet, or a corpuscle’s eye view of an artery, or what it feels like to be in rapport with a cat…any new sensory experience, impossible to the reader in his own person, is grist for the mill, and what the activity of science fiction is writing about.”

Finally, from Clute, Langford, Nicholls, and Sleight’s ENCYCLODEDIA OF SCIENCE FICTION (the entire article here – http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/sense_of_wonder -- is very instructive, but I distill from it this diamond): “…‘sense of wonder’ may not necessarily be something generated in the text by a writer…it is created by the writer putting the readers in a position from which they can glimpse for themselves, with no further auctorial aid, a scheme of things where mankind is seen in a new perspective.”

I said earlier that this concept has both vexed me and helped me. I’ve been twice published in the online podcast called CAST OF WONDERS. It’s too bad that no one from that marvelous production wasn’t included in the discussion. I was rejected most recently with their standard note: “ Unfortunately, the piece is not for us. Our readers felt the story was missing the developed sense of wonder or fantastic element that we consider the hallmark of Cast of Wonders stories.”

It’s helped because I’ve had two stories published and cast with them (see the sidebar if you’d like to listen. The first one is “Peanut Butter and Jellyfish”, the second “Fairy Bones”. I haven’t cracked the market since they went to a professional pay scale, and every tom-dina-and-hawra have sent them their hot little pieces of fiction. Overwhelmed, they now regularly close their submission gates. They have a contest up now for a 500 word SF/F/H piece that oozes “sense of wonder”…I’ll try, but I wonder – is it that the competition is better or that they have more non-sense-of-wonder to wade through and they are grabbing things that meet their needs but may not be the “biggest” or “best”. No idea, just wondering.

At any rate, to summarize “sense of wonder”: While science or fantasy or horror can be the vehicle, this is entirely a FEELING that comes from inside a READER. It has little to do with the writer or editor. It has to do with the ability of a piece to force a reader to feel a certain way. It is, at its core, cognitive manipulation!

Now excuse me while I get my teacher’s hat on; very few people are as good at cognitive manipulation as the very best of teachers!

Program Book: https://www.worldcon76.org/images/publications/WC76_PocketProgram_2018_Final_WEB08152018.pdf, Who’s Who: https://www.worldcon76.org/guests/program-panelists
Image: https://www.sfexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/sf.Stephens.0409.jpg