IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 524

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A narn.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Names: ♀ Lithuanian, Belgian; ♂ Mongolian, Bulgarian
Image: https://www.carthage.edu/live/image/gid/169/width/600/height/800/22601_BlueOrigin_NewShepard_NS10_Launch.rev.1548431292.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: FRIGHTENINGLY CLOSE ENCOUNTER…[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – “Past Tense” (two parts) (Season 3)]

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…

Today is June 7, 2020. I wrote this review in February of 2019. While it was relevant THEN, it is even more relevant today, as I sit in my comfortable, suburban home in Minneapolis -- the flash point of awakening civil unrest that has swept around the planet. I post this because my deepest hope is that this time, history will change. THIS time, we will embark on a future that might possibly resemble in some way, the future the original series of STAR TREK shows. I did not march; but that does NOT mean I don't care. I need to do what fits my personality. I need to do something that I can do effectively that might lead to systemic changes in our society. Until then, read and if you like STAR TREK, watch these two episodes.

My wife and I just finished watching the two part episode and to say that it scared the bejeezis out of me would be to phrase it mildly.

From Wikipedia: “[In Past Tense (part 1 and 2] The crew of the Defiant is thrown back in time to 2024 on Earth. The United States of America has attempted to solve the problem of homelessness by erecting ‘Sanctuary Districts’ where unemployed and/or mentally ill persons are placed in makeshift ghettos.”

Written in 1994 some time, it includes the use of Internet podcasting (which didn’t really catch on until 2004) as well as the eerily prescient idea of “Sanctuary Districts” (https://americasvoice.org/blog/what-is-a-sanctuary-city/).

Even in the 90s, it was a real suggestion “…an article in the Los Angeles Times described a proposal by the Mayor [Richard J. Riordan (R)] that the homeless people of that city could be moved to fenced-in areas so as to contain them, in an effort to ‘make downtown Los Angeles friendlier to business.’…” to put aside part of downtown Los Angeles as a haven, nice word, a haven for the homeless.’…‘That was what [our fictional] Sanctuary Districts were, places where the homeless could just be so no-one had to see them, and literally there it was in the newspaper. We were a little freaked out.’” (https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Past_Tense,_Part_I_(episode))

But it never happened, and the episode was written thirty years before the fictional Bell Riots took place in San Francisco’s Sanctuary District A. This social shift is part of the original Star Trek timeline and, as Captain Sisko notes, “It was a watershed event…” in that it precipitated a reevaluation of how society, in particular, American society treats the mentally ill and homeless.

Only that’s  five years from now, and the Bell Riots took place on October 2, 2024. There are already rumblings every which way that have made this far more possible in OUR future than it could have appeared from Ira Steven Behr and Robert Hewitt Wolfe’s 1994. Things are very, very different in 2019.

The theme running through this episode is that the Sanctuary Districts were a total surprise to everyone. From the wealthy “Interweb” magnate, Chris Brynner to the mentally ill Grady who was living in the District; and from Vin, the guard and Lee, the social worker – none of them had any idea how the Districts happened. They just…grew. No blame, no “The Republicans…” or “The Democrats…” or “The Unions…”. The Sanctuary Districts just happened.

For me, this is more frightening than if they had been planned by an evil government (take your pick of who you define as evil, every government has been defined as evil by someone in the country at some time…)

I’ve heard it said that the actor who play’s Captain Sisko is a deep thinker. In the episode, because he knows that the future of (at least) the United States hangs in the balance, he yells at Vin, the guard who keeps coming across as a tough guy, disdainful of and in his mind, superior to the “dims” and the “gimmes” of the District.

As I watched it, it appeared that Avery Brooks was doing more than acting; doing more than just “getting into his part”. Holding a shotgun under Vin’s chin, Brooks-Sisko-Bell shouts, “‘You don't know what any of this is about, do you? You work here, you see these people every day, how they live, and you just don't get it!’”

“‘What do you want me to say? That I feel for them? That they got a bad break? What good would it do?’”

“‘It'd be a start! Now, you get back in that room and you shut up!’”

Vin hangs his head. He knows Bell is right. He knows he’s just given up; and he clearly has no idea how he got to be this way.

Lee confesses to Dr. Bashir that, “‘…[I] processed a woman with a warrant on her for abandoning her child because she couldn’t take care of him and left him with a family she worked for. [I] felt sorry for her and didn’t log her into the system which would have alerted the police, instead [I let] her disappear into the Sanctuary. [My] supervisor almost fired [me] when the incident was revealed. [I don’t] know what happened to the woman but [I] think about her all the time.’ Bashir explains that it's not her fault the way things are.” But she clearly has given up on the system.

If you haven’t watched this episode in a while, take the time to do so.

Then do something. I guess it really doesn’t matter WHAT you do. As

Congress, no matter the stripe, isn’t interested in doing anything for the “unwashed masses”; nothing substantial that is purely beneficial for the majority of Americans and has nothing to do with personal profit or gain; that’s all about making life better for most of us. Like lowering health care costs and forcing pharmaceutical companies to just charge us 20% over cost for all drugs of any kind – from aspirin to Glybera (“…first approved in October 2012 for familial lipoprotein lipase deficiency (LPLD), a rare genetic disorder that disrupts the normal breakdown of fats in the body…[the] drug was never approved in the US, but would have cost more than $1.2 million per year. It will not be marketed any further in Europe by drug maker uniQure as it has become evident that it will be a commercial failure.” https://www.health24.com/Medical/Meds-and-you/News/7-of-the-most-expensive-treatments-in-the-world-20180129)

As Brooks-Sisko-Bell notes, “It'd be a start!”     

Image: https://media.agonybooth.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/02042353/pastense1_528-2.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 523

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: Haunted Castle/Mansion
Current Event: http://www.dreadcentral.com/news/31105/cold-spots-glensheen-mansion

“No! Really! I saw the ghost!” said Enzo Solem. His wild hand waving came more from the passion of his French forebears than the stolid formality of his Norwegian. First generation from both sides, he’d been born and raised just north of the Twin Ports of Duluth and Superior.

He also had a wild passion for the paranormal.

Weayaya Aguirre sighed. Enzo was her best friend but sometimes he bugged the living daylights out of her. Shaking her head, she said, “Why can’t you just accept that the world is the world and that’s all there is?”

He stared at her incredulously and exclaimed, “You work here, too! How can you say that? You’ve seen the apparitions just like I have!”

Shaking her head, Weayaya – Wee-ah to the rest of the staff at the Glensheen Mansion – said, “I’ve told you a dozen times that I don’t know what you saw that night. I saw some kind of heat shimmer from the furnace.”

“And I’ve told you two dozen times that I talked with Elizabeth Congdon!”

“A woman who’s been dead for half a century?”

“She’s not dead...” he scowled. “Exactly. Her spirit is trapped here because her son suffocated her under a pillow and then banged the night nurse over the head with a candlestick.” Wee-Ah sucked in her lower lip and bit it gently to keep from responding how she wanted to respond. He added, “All I’m asking is that you come with me tonight. It’s the night of June 26...”

“You want to see her ghost, right?”

“Nope.”

Wee-Ah frowned and looked at him. This was not the answer she’d expected. “What?”

“I want to see the ghost of her son. He confessed to her murder and was sent to jail, getting out five years later. His ex-wife, Elizabeth Congdon’s sociopathic adopted daughter never gave him any of the money she inherited from her mother’s murder. He killed himself five years after his release from prison – though I’ve heard people whispering that Congdon’s daughter did him in.”

“So you want to see if the ghost of one of Congdon’s ex-son-in-laws comes back here?”

“Yep. Marjorie died in prison in 2022, five years before the fiftieth anniversary of her adoptive mother’s murder.”

“And you think that that is significant...how?”

“It’s obvious! Marjorie-originally-Congdon is buried in the family mausoleum.” Wee-Ah nodded. That much was true. “It’s now half a century after her mother’s murder by her second ex-husband Roger Caldwell.” Wee-Ah nodded, not even realizing she was encouraging him. He went on excitedly, “So I figure the psychic energy will be so powerful that not only will Roger’s ghost appear, so will Velma’s; her third husband Wally was murdered as well as his ex-wife; plus some old guy she defrauded of all his money in a nursing home in Arizona. His same was also Roger, though his last name was Sammis. Her first husband – with whom she’d had seven children – was Dick LeRoy and he died the same year she did – 2022. So it’s 2027, fifty years after someone murdered Elizabeth Congdon. I would say that Marjorie Congdon LeRoy Caldwell Hagen has some serious psychic reckoning coming.”

Wee-Ah found herself nodding in agreement before she could think things through. That was how she found herself kneeling in the bushes near the Congdon family stone marker in the Forest Hill Cemetery on this dark and stormy night, cold summer rain dribbling down the back of her hastily donned poncho.

Enzo leaned over to her and whispered, “It’s five minutes to midnight…”

Names: ♀ Sioux, Spanish; ♂ French, Norwegian
Image: https://cdn.britannica.com/40/11740-004-50816EB1/Boris-Karloff-Frankenstein-monster.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS (Though Probably NOT This Time…): Interplanetary Exploration and Me

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…

I was born just before the space age on May 11, 1957.

Then, the Soviet Union-launched Sputnik began transmitting on October 4, 1957; four months and seven days after my birth. This event was well-presented in the turn-of-the-century movie, “October Sky”. Coalwood, West Virginia was nine hundred and seventy-seven miles away from me, and Homer Hickam was fourteen years older than me (they obviously messed with the age of the character and the actor!)

As a child, I missed most of the early development of space exploration. But on July 20, 1969,

two months after my 12th birthday, I was “born again” into space.

I watched, with my own eyes, the televised landing of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon at 20:17 UTC, though I’d have more easily recognized the time as (15:17 military time, or most likely as 3:17 pm CDT) when the Eagle landed.

After the landing, everyone at the Daly house (Mom and Dad’s friends) either sat around talking (Dad and Mr. Daly); while the moms started supper; the kids played ball, and hide-and-seek (Mike and me hide under the bunk bed – no idea why we’d pick such a dusty place!), and just messed around until supper.

The climax, the TRUE purpose of the Moon Landing was to happen six hours later at 9:56 CDT: Neil Armstrong was going to walk on the Moon. As he came down the ladder, he said the words that STILL bring tears to my eyes: “One small step for Man; one giant leap for Mankind.”

Shortly after the landing, I ran outside to look up at the waxing crescent Moon, hoping I’d see the Command Module orbiter. The sky was clear at 10:56 that night, but no matter how much I squinted (we didn’t have anything like binoculars!), I couldn’t see it…

Not long after that, I discovered my first science fiction books in Birch Grove Elementary’s library, which you can read about here if you’re so inclined (https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2016/09/possibly-irritating-essay-gateway.html). This one and SPACESHIP UNDER THE APPLE TREE by Louis Slobodkin started my love story with science fiction. Heinlein, Norton, and Nourse, and countless others continued.

But what excited me most was that SPACE EXPLORATION continued as well!

The first real space station, Russia’s Salyut 1 fascinated me. Then, suddenly, amazement set in: on March 3, 1972, shortly before my 15th birthday, NASA launched the Pioneer 10 space probe with the stated mission of flying past Jupiter and taking pictures of it. It flew off with this plaque attached to it: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f5/Pioneer10-plaque_tilt.jpg/220px-Pioneer10-plaque_tilt.jpg

While its mission, to fly by and photograph Jupiter was amazing, to me, what was most exciting to me as a teen, was that it was the first serious public acknowledgement that maybe, just maybe, there might be aliens “out there”! Also, the summer I graduated from high school, there was the very first international, crewed space mission. The Soviet Union and the US spacecraft, a Soyuz and an Apollo craft actually linked up. STAR TREK had long been off-the-air, though resurrected in re-runs, but there were no new shows, and no movies. THIS was real-life international cooperation: “The project, and its memorable handshake in space, was a symbol of détente between the two superpowers during the Cold War, and it is generally considered to mark the end of the Space Race, which had begun in 1957 with the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik 1.”

Then things started to accelerate. In 1975, I graduated from high school and started college, and the Soviet Union not only orbited Venus in October 1975, it landed and took the first successful photos from the surface of another planet (Venus). In April of the US Bi-Centennial, the US/West German spacecraft, Helios 2 did the closest flyby of the Sun, and in 1976, the Viking Lander took the f irst successful photos and soil samples from the surface of Mars.

In March of 1979, Voyager 1 did a Jupiter flyby and took totally spectacular pictures of the five Jovian moons, followed closely by Pioneer 11’s Saturn flyby where it took the first photographs of Titan from space. Voyager 1 followed by doing a Saturn flyby and did a close encounter with Titan as well as dozens of other Saturn’s moons.

Dozens more names hit the headlines – SkyLab, roaring into the 1980s with the first and hundreds of consecutive flights of the Space Shuttles, starting on April 12, 1981; Venera 13

1982 saw the first mixed gender crew aboard space station, and in 1984, the first woman, Svetlana Savitskaya, to walk in space, on space station Salyut 7; 1983 saw international cooperation for the First Infrared Orbital observatory between the US, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. Pioneer 10 continued to fly farther from Earth taking pictures of Neptune (first spacecraft to pass beyond all Solar System planets). In 1985, the Soviet Union deployed the first balloon deployed on another planet (Venus).In 1986, Voyager 2 flew past Uranus.

I was sleeping because I was a night supervisor at a home for the physically and mentally and had gotten off at 9 am. Seventy-three minutes after the launch of the Space Shuttle CHALLENGER, it exploded, killing all of the crew, including the first Teach in Space, Christa McAuliffe, a high school teacher. One of my best friends called me, waking me up, and after taking my portable TV out from under the table where I kept it, I watched the replay a hundred times, unable to fathom it.

The space program came to a screeching halt. It resumed some two-and-half years later, after interminable changes, finger-pointing, and calls to stop sending people into space – because “We should be spending that money on our own people, not throwing it into space! What a WASTE of perfectly good money!”

The 80s and 90s were amazing years with the Soviet Mir space station, Soviet comet landing and the ESA’s comet closeup in 1986; the first exoplanet discovered (the discover was retracted, then confirmed in 2002) in 1987. Radar images of Venus, the Hubble Space Telescope, Galileo’s imaged of Jupiter, Sojourner’s roving all over the surface of Mars in 1997 (I was at a Nobel Conference that year, and they had LIVE video from Mars. I wept realizing I would never be able to go into space…and lest you say, “You don’t know that!”

I, in fact DO have proof that I will never go into space from NASA in 2009! (Blogger won't let me insert it here, but see my NASA rejection letter below...)

After that – the US, European Union, Russia, Japan, and Canada initiated the orbital reign of the International Space Station in November of 1998. Cassini went to Saturn and dropped a probe on Titan between October of 1997 and September of 2017; Japan landed a probe on an asteroid (Hayabbusa), India found ice on the Moon (Chandrayaan), the ESA landed a probe on a COMET! in 2014, the US photographed PLUTO in 2015, China landed on the far side of the Moon in 2019, and Captain Kirk finally managed to leave Iowa and REALLY make it into space a few months ago…

For me, these are the defining moments of my dream of going into space. The dream of ACTUALLY doing it really died on June 30, 2009; but I continue to go into space in my imagination – and I can ALWAYS hope some descendant of mine will eventually get off the surface of Earth and into REAL space…

Resources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_exploration, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_space_exploration, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo%E2%80%93Soyuz,
Image: https://i0.wp.com/cheapshottees.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Space.png?fit=500%2C500&ssl=1

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 522

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: government bans art; group uses it to restore…
Current Event: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Culture/Art/2012/Jan-13/159678-uk-unveils-restored-rare-roman-helmet-mistaken-for-bucket.ashx#axzz1oOPYDSZF

Hector Blaine has lived his entire life on a ranch in central Kansas. When his family is killed in a tornado while he’s on a mission trip, he’s shipped off to a wealthy, elderly aunt and uncle who live in Minneapolis, not far from the Walker Art Museum in a huge house. He has a room of his own, but he never sees them – only the housekeeper and a cook.

He’s been in Minnesota for three months and he hates it, but the school year is starting and instead of taking his aunt and uncle’s suggestion to attend an exclusive private school, he opts for a public one, figuring he’ll have a better chance surviving among the poor and rough rather than among the rich and snotty.

They comply and he’s set to start Southwest Minneapolis High School. But he just doesn’t want to be there at ALL. He’s trapped. He can’t escape. It’s like he’s been captured, enslaved and totally out of control of his life.

NOT that he ever felt like he had any control when he lived in Kansas – his two older brothers and older sister pretty much used him as a dumping ground for the chores and work they didn’t want to do. The kids in Brownell think of him as a country hick. The kids in Salina, Kansas (the nearest “big city”) – the one time he’d been there – had looked at him like he was from another planet. But at least they’d been from Kansas. He’s certain he’s going to DIE at Southwest.

So he runs away. Sort of. To the Museum, which is the only place he’s felt at home since he came to this Northern Nightmare. He wanders most of Sunday, ending up at a new exhibit of Roman artifacts. He has no desire to leave and hides, studying one of the things – a bucket of some sort – when a group of five people come in. They’re talking, and he hears them say clearly, “It’s not a bucket. It’s a helmet. A Roman helmet in a Briton dig.”

“What would a Briton be doing with a Roman helmet? Was he insane? A collector of war memorabilia? What?”

A softer, woman’s voice, with a clear British accent, speaks up then, “I think that instead of inventing fantastic excuses why a Briton couldn’t have a helmet, we accept instead the simplest answer – that during the First Century AD, the Britons and the Romans weren’t all about hating each other. Some Brits were accepted into the Legion as soldiers.”

“He’d have been a pariah among his own people!” one man exclaimed.

“Hated above all others!” a woman cried.

The soft-spoken woman remained silent until the others had finished then said, “A man set apart whether by choice or circumstance is still a man set apart – and he might have been set apart for greatness.”

Hector didn’t hear the rest of the argument, he reached up and touched the Plexiglas cube covering the “bucket”. For a moment, the people break into chaotic shouting, but the sound fades as does the room around him…

Names: ♀ Greece, Scotland (Gaelic)
Image:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/71/e5/9871e52bbc09c525af21b8f6471eab15.jpg

Slice of PIE: MINING THE ASTEROIDS Part 2…How Can We POSSIBLY Do Something So CRAZY?!?!?!?

Using the 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 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. The link is provided below where this appeared...sometime soon! But I’ll have to stick with the Program Guide for the last Virtual WSF Convention for inspiration…

Part 1: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2021/11/slice-of-pie-mining-asteroids-part-1can.html

They say you have to learn to WALK before your can FLY, so before we start driving asteroids around the Solar System (and I can’t believe that Russia, China, the EU, India, Brazil, and the United States will give a happy thumbs up to that action (which just put in my mind that MOVING asteroids into Earth orbit will have to be a true, multi-national effort with multi-national crews…which, of course, will lead to incredible stress and possible conflict…)) let’s look at how we’ll start walking…

Humans have been taking pictures of asteroids, and doing flybys for twenty or more years. Recently, we’ve started landing on asteroids: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_landings_on_extraterrestrial_bodies#Asteroids

Since 2001, there have been 11 landings, so we’ve done a few baby steps. First is the Asteroid Redirect Mission (https://www.nasa.gov/content/what-is-nasa-s-asteroid-redirect-mission) which was cancelled in 2017. The purpose was to lift a large asteroid boulder and place it into a stable Earth orbit. NOTE: While it’s not stated anywhere, I can only imagine the objections from China (mostly) and Russia and India against the US “parking” a huge rock in orbit (and hiding a rocket engine that, ignited, could push the rock into a decaying orbit that would drop it on a target of US choice…) knowing that the Barringer crater, a kilometer across and almost 200 meters deep, was formed by a boxcar-sized rock some fifty thousand years ago.

Even a small rock, dropped into central Beijing would cause catastrophic damage. We’re going to have to get experience with landing crewed ships on asteroids and setting up operations there.

In conjunction with that, we’re going to need to get used to mining the Moon. It’s a much smaller body, has a supply of water and there’s the likelihood we can use resources on its surface to manufacture air and raw materials, and it’s a far easier target to hit. Compare that with FIRST landing the Blue Origin booster rockets and capsule in the middle of the Arizona desert and then figure landing on an ASTEROID would be like trying to using a laser pointer to shine it on a target on a person running in a straight line across a university courtyard…while you’re bouncing on a trampoline…

Oh, and you’d have to land it, too…

So, let’s just say we solve the problem of creating smaller spacecraft (say, the size of a nuclear submarine…), maybe building them in space, though the FIRST ones are going to have to be built here AND land on an iron asteroid. Once it was there, we COULD send mining bots, but there’s going to have to be a small crew there to troubleshoot…maybe a crew who could build the NEXT mining ship and send it on its way to another asteroid.

I write it like it’s a simple job; but it took us from 1944 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MW_18014) to now to reach a point where we can even talk about the feasibility of mining the asteroids – seventy-seven years. Can we start today?

Nope. HOWEVER, there’s a foundation that has been laid.

We CAN land Human-made probes on asteroids and lift off again.

We CAN land people on the Moon, while we may be rusty, it’s likely to happen again in the next fifteen years or so.

We CAN support people in space, which we have done (with international cooperation no less!) with the International Space Station.

We CAN put a number of people in the space at one time, both in the past and recently.

And without a doubt, we need resources if Human civilization is to continue to advance. The resources on the planet, while there are reserves and life as we know it is NOT going to end today, they won’t possibly last forever. We need to do something besides host conferences, posture, and throw money at our social ills. Please do NOT read your own prejudices into that statement.

Programs need to be funded, but 40 years in education have shown me that unless the programs have a very specific goal and SHOW THAT THE GOAL HAS BEEN ACHIEVED, then it’s little more than rearranging classroom desks or virtue signaling. We need to get serious about living here, and we need to step back from our personal agendas, party agendas, and national agendas.

It seems to me that we CAN mine the asteroids. Human civilization certainly has the SKILLS. Now we need the naysayers to either give clear alternatives and explain their objections – and then offer solutions rather than to repeat their objections louder and begin to weep alongside or they need to stuff a sock in their mouths, bite down, and get on the bandwagon ANYWAY.

Resources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Origin_facilities
Image: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/A2D5/production/_114558614_hls-eva-apr2020.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 521

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: Aura Vision – The ability to perceive normally invisible Life Energy of others, often colour-coded for good/evil, emotions, amount of life, Power Level, etc. This can be presented as Functional Magic, Psychic Powers, related to spirituality, a biological gift, or even technological.
Current Event: (From my writer-niece’s blog: “This is because red was suddenly born in little jagged bursts along the horizon. Perhaps this is only something you can understand after months of upper Midwestern winter. The desaturated palettes of chickadee and snow shadow have a way of changing the mode of sight. Color might exist, but it is lost to us for a time. In March, first thaw we begin to retrain the eye. Light comes in bursts, gives way to miles of camel colored grass, bursts of red– barn, flag, brick. The braided intestines of road kill bloom in an eagle’s beak. There is still no green save for pine boughs dulled to rosemary gray.” https://lettersfromchurchofthetoastedcoconutdoughnut.wordpress.com/ )

Eyvindur Mjöll pursed his lips and looked down at the handheld scanner in his hand. “I can’t make this do what I want...”

Pich Dara Sophana, leaned over the scanner and shook her head. He couldn’t see it as both of them wore surface suits. “It’s impossible because it’s so cold out.”

“I calibrated it for that,” he said. “Besides, it’s supposed to be warm enough now.”

“Original Humans were homeotherms – they’re going to still be.”

“We’re broad-spectrum eurytherms. But if I point the scanner at you,” he did. “Your aura is peculiar.”

Pich Dara sniffed. “Your aura is always peculiar. But I don’t blame your temperature regulation on that. You’re just weird.”

“Takes one to know one,” Eyvindur said. She started to speak, but he cut her off, “This isn’t about auras, anyway. I’m trying to find a way we can screen the people that are evolving on the surface to see if they can be reintroduced to the gene pool.”

“We don’t want to pollute the pool, either! It’s small enough as it is.”

Eyvindur headed up a trail that had been worn into the dusty surface. Since Earth had frozen nearly solid after the climate had gone into wild gyrations under pressure of Humans, the Sun, and geologic cycles. The evacuation to Mars – even using the massive instantaneous matter transmission gates that gave anyone a chance to move to the tiny, rusty, cold world of HG Wells’ imagination –was traumatic and over two billion stayed behind to take their chances on an planet attempting to find a balance again.

But Humanity changed. Something happened to both populations. There was talk that Humans had split into two new species...

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

Slice of PIE: MINING THE ASTEROIDS Part 1…Can An Asteroid Be OWNED??? By Whom? How?

Using the 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 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. The link is provided below where this appeared...sometime soon! But I’ll have to stick with the Program Guide for the 2020 FIRST Virtual WSF Convention for inspiration…

Catalyzing Space Entrepreneurial Ecosystems
2 Hour workshop on catalyzing a space ecosystem/industry in your city, region or country.
Emeline Paat-Dahlstrom, SpaceBase

Of course, I wasn’t able to be there, but the blurb started me thinking…

I was crushed a few weeks ago to discover that Planetary Resources, “Following financial troubles caused by ‘delayed investment’…on 31 October 2018…the company's human assets were purchased by the blockchain software technology company ConsenSys, Inc. In May 2020, ConsenSys made all Planetary Resources intellectual property available to the public domain, and in June 2020, all the remaining hardware assets were auctioned off,” which I had wanted to invest in, was no longer a company. That led to a bunch of reading, and eventually to this mind-discussion – as well as the question poised above.

So…what the heck is an “entrepreneurial ecosystem”? Sounds like a greenhouse for business people…Apparently, the term itself comes from biology, but it’s been applied to business now. “In biology, an interspecific competition, in ecology, is a form of competition in which individuals of different species compete for the same resources in an ecosystem…”

It's “sort of right”, then. That being a wild guess, according to a 2014 article in the Harvard Business Review, “…no one owns or represents an entrepreneurship ecosystem, there can be no one objective that motivates all of the actors.”

So, here’s my speculation and musings…Because no one can own an asteroid (yet), Planetary Resources couldn’t really PROVE that they were a business. While they successfully orbited at least two satellites – the little teeny ones – they had several setbacks and a major investor (reading between the lines), withdrew their support.

But the main problem remained: Could Planetary Resources REALLY put a stake down on any asteroid that came by? Would they be allowed to keep it, and even more importantly, would they be allowed to MINE it?

It’s possible the answer to the question lies in a couple directions. First off, the Great Migration, in which Europeans/Americans “staked claims” on land that was either used by various Indigenous tribes or claimed by them, and subsequently ignored, parceled off, and that-was-that…the government created laws (for a brief reading, try this: https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2013/05/homestead-and-mining-claims-in-19th-century-america/) that essentially declared the lands “empty” and so put them up for EuroAmerican grabs.

Simple mining and homestead laws were pretty simple initially: “The 1862 Homestead Act allowed for settlers to lay claim to 160 acre lots of public land which had been surveyed by the Federal government.”, the Mining Act of 1872 stated, “The Mining Act allowed prospectors to survey and claim public lands in the western states. The stated purpose of this law was to open the mineral claims in the public lands of the United States to exploration and purchase…this law recognized that several people might band together and become co-owners of a mining claim. Should one of the co-owners fail to contribute to annual improvements of the claim upon notice, his stake would revert to the other co-owners.”

21st Century mining claims are covered now by law from this document called, “TITLE 30: Mineral Lands and Mining”. In particular, “CHAPTER 2—MINERAL LANDS AND REGULATIONS IN GENERAL”. This document does NOT include asteroids, not specifically at any rate.

So, even if we could get Humans out to an asteroid, assuming it has been assayed to contain mineable ore, Title 30 doesn’t seem to cover it explicitly, though this seems like it would be stretchable: “The locators of all mining locations made on any mineral vein, lode, or ledge, situated on the public domain…shall have the exclusive right of possession and enjoyment of all the surface included within the lines of their locations, and of all veins, lodes, and ledges throughout their entire depth, the top or apex of which lies inside of such surface lines extended downward vertically, although such veins, lodes, or ledges may so far depart from a perpendicular in their course downward as to extend outside the vertical side lines of such surface locations.”

That seems clear, though whoever wrote it wasn’t thinking about asteroids!

Right now, it doesn’t seem that any company is seriously pursuing asteroid mining, though one might be, The Asteroid Mining Company in the UK. “Asteroid Mining Corporation Ltd. was founded in March 2016 by Mitch Hunter-Scullion because…asteroids are staggeringly valuable resources…asteroid mining is vital…the ultimate goal of AMC: to advance the march of human progress by moving as many polluting industries into space and out of Earth's fragile biosphere as possible so that the Earth can become the garden of the Solar System.”

Hmmm…seems a bit hyperbolic, but, OK. Let’s go with it.

Where does SpaceBase come in? The New Zealand-based company is multi-purposed. Their vision: “We see a world in which all people have opportunity to participate in the space industry on an equal footing, in accordance with their aptitude and ambitions. We plan to contribute to this vision by making education and entrepreneurial support available to those who need it most. In short, we want to democratize space for everyone. We believe that outcome is best achieved when as many people as possible have the education and support required to participate in that effort.”

They’ve done this by forming a space entrepreneurial ecosystem. I’m interested, but not excited yet. They don’t seem to be ones who intend on going into space to drill asteroids. What does “making education and entrepreneurial support available to those who need it most” really mean?

“Entrepreneurial support” doesn’t sound like “we’ll give you the cash you need”….sounds like…“we’ll help you look for the cash you need from someone else”. That’s fine, I imagine. But, if I have a plan to fly to an asteroid, do a survey – most likely take some cores, or blast a bit free and collect the debris – and come back to Earth, they’re not the ones I’d go to.

Maybe they have connections? What about “making education support available”? Not quite sure. I need to find out stuff about sending spaceships up, but does their “education support” provide me contacts with people who can build the necessary rockets? How do I raise the capital when ONE person going into space (for like 5 minutes and not even REALLY in space, at least not in any useful way!) would set me back $250,000?

Harvard Business Review points out another problem here: “There is no one driver of an entrepreneurship ecosystem because by definition an ecosystem is a dynamic, self-regulating network of many different types of actors.…raising capital, finding talent, and overcoming bureaucracy are three of the top challenges entrepreneurs ascribe to their environments. As I have argued, this is such a ubiquitous phenomenon that it probably reflects something fundamental about the generic process of entrepreneurship, rather than a deficiency of the ecosystem.”

OK – this whole thing got me thinking. I’m going to have to several other parts to this as I muddle around the idea of REALLY mining asteroids, I can ponder what it would take, and how I can make a story of my research and thoughts. Maybe “Asteroid Veterinarian”?

(ADDENDUM: OK, this is the most recent article I can find addressing the issue of asteroid ownership: https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/you-can-own-an-asteroid-sort-of-fc04e0d76901

Program Book: https://sites.grenadine.co/sites/conzealand/en/conzealand/schedule
Resources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_Resources, https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2013/05/homestead-and-mining-claims-in-19th-century-america/,https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/prelim@title30/chapter2&edition=prelim, https://spacebase.co/about, https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/USCODE-2011-title30/USCODE-2011-title30-chap2-sec29, https://spacebase.co/about
Image: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/A2D5/production/_114558614_hls-eva-apr2020.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 520

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: adaptational heroism
Current Event: “Throughout this work, we advance four primary ideas: (a)The concept of heroism is a way to unify several types of courageous or brave actions that have largely been treated independently in the literature to date; (b) that the simple presence of risk accompanying prosocial behavior is not enough to define heroism; (c) heroism is viewed as distinct from other prosocial activities, such as compassion and altruism (and may represent an entirely different behavior); and (d) that while heroism is primarily a positive and prosocial act, a simplistic view of this behavior misses important (and sometimes negative) aspects of the phenomenon.” (http://www.scribd.com/doc/161425346/A-Conceptual-Analysis-and-Differentiation-Between-Heroic-Action-and-Altruism)

Altered Definition: This idea originally meant that when people write scripts of books, they make the main character BETTER than they really were. No doubt – in the HP books, H himself is a jerk. They maintained that pretty much in the movies, but he STILL came across as “wunderkind”. I interpreted this to mean that a normal person will become a hero under the correct set of circumstances: to win the girl, save his parents, get the golden fleece, whatever. It takes a really good writer to create a situation and character in which the character even CAN become a hero…

“My baby sister tells me you can help us find Carlos,” Carmita Rodriguez Cruz said. Her eyes narrowed, “She’d better be right.”

Austin Ventura remembered then that she was also taking kickboxing lessons – and that his best friend was missing. “I’m not sure exactly where he is. I just know that there are certain places he’s likely to be.” He dared, “We’re in probability together. You do the math.”

She scowled darkly at him, but didn’t contradict him.

Score one, he said to himself.

Paulina Rodriguez Cruz, sister to Los Traviesos Gemelos, said, “Quit flirting, you two! Carlos has been kidnapped and we have to rescue him!”

Austin exclaimed, “I’m not flirting!”

Looking at him, Carmita said, “She’s right, A-man.” Looking at Paulina, she said, “¿Qué te hace pensar que fue secuestrado?”

“I have another question for you, dear sister – what would he be doing out in the middle of the night, by himself, without telling one of the three of us? Aren’t those enough reasons?”

“The bigger question is why would anyone kidnap him,” said Austin.

Carmita bristled, “Just ‘cause he’s not rich like you, doesn’t mean that there’s no reason to kidnap him!”

“You two have to cut it out! Carlos may need us out there!” Carmita and Austin looked at each other then looked away, hanging their heads. “You both know that Carlos is a better person than all three of us put together.”

Austin felt a chill run up his spine. He said, “What would that have to do with kidnappi?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. It just…felt right. Don’t you think?”

He grimaced as a chilly breeze blew from across the parking lot, chasing bits and pieces of leaves and paper over to them. “Much as I know about him, I have to say I agree.”

“What do you mean?” Carmita said. “I’m his twin. I’m just as good as him!”

“Better,” Austin said.

“What?”

“You’re better than him in everything. It’s like when you guys were conceived, you sucked all the talent out of him. You got everything.” Carmita was glaring at him. He added slowly, “You got everything except his good heart.” She opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it. Austin said, “You look like los peces de colores loco.”

“A crazy goldfish?” she echoed, puzzled.

“Yep. You ever seen one?”

“No.”

“Sure you have. Someone who’s locked up and can’t do a single thing – and if they don’t start moving, it’s gonna drive ‘em crazy.”

Paulina said, “Fits you like a glove, Cabroncita.”

Carmita snorted and said, “Let’s get going.” She tossed her gigantic purse over her shoulder, “A-man, we’re gonna need your car.”

Names: ♂ Mexico; ♂ Italy; ♀ Spanish/French/Hebrew

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