IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 546

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

Fantasy Trope: The Quest
Current Event: http://contemplativequest.com/, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice's_Adventures_in_Wonderland

Světlana Angelika pursed her lips, looking out over the hectares of forest. In the MSP Vertical Village, it was mostly deciduous trees – oak, maple, patches of white-barked birch, poplar – with a sprinkling of pine trees. The concourse she and Uthman Aali were on was packed with people. Not a hundred thousand, for sure, but too many to think. “We need to go somewhere,” she said abruptly, speaking in the too loud manner of all the inhabitants of Vertical Villages everywhere.

Uthman gave her a look that said, “You’re crazy.”

She slugged him in the shoulder. It was a little kid move – but then, they’d been friends since they were three years old. “No, I’m serious. We need to go somewhere real.”

Without changing his stare, Uthman said, “We can go up to the six hundredth floor...”

“No! I don’t mean here. This is all so...boring. We need to go,” she pause, “through a looking glass.”

“A what?”

“A looking glass! Haven’t you ever read Alice in Wonderland?”

“I might have seen a threevee of it once. Wasn’t it a cartoon?”

“Yes – and no, you haven’t seen this. Lewis Carroll wrote a novel, it’s true. But he was a mathematician. His logic is all over the book. Math. Everything.”

Uthman snorted, “It sounds like science fiction.”

“It’s fantasy – she steps through a mirror.”

“If it’s math and logic, it’s science fiction.”

“There are talking rabbits,” said Světlana. “And a talking, disappearing cat. As well as a talking, smoking caterpillar, talking mice, and soldiers made of playing cards.”

“OK. You win. It’s a fantasy. But what does it have to do with us? What kind of mirror can we jump through? I’m sure there are some here – but...”

“The windows. We can jump through one of those.”

“A window?”

“Come on, let’s go to the outer walls. We’ll leap through one of those!” She turned and ran, Uthman running after her.

Names: ♀ Czech, Roman; ♂ Arabic, Hindu
Image:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/71/e5/9871e52bbc09c525af21b8f6471eab15.jpg

WRITING ADVICE: Creating Alien Aliens, Part 15: A VERY Alien Alien – Stretching My Imagination

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! (UPDATED 9/21/24)

The editor at Stupefying Stories sent an email about a month ago with the following “bullet point”, discovered by his granddaughter: “…Portuguese man o' wars aren't individual animals, properly, they're siphonophorae…a colony of animals.”

He thought it would make a moderately interesting column post…

I think he understated (or deliberately intended to spark the wild flight of sorta-fancy you’re about to read…) the effect the simple video and article referenced below would have on me!

So, first of all, I did a bit of reading about Order Siphonophorae in which there are about 150 species. Condensing the article on Wikipedia regarding the order’s Morphology – in other words “…the form of living creatures, and how all their pieces are put together and related to each other.” Our morphology would point out that we have two arms and two legs. The arms are divided into to joints and hands. The legs are divided into joints and feet. The hands and feet are further divided into fingers and toes which are used to pick things up…”

The morphology of the Siphonophore in general is this:

Siphonophores exhibit one of the three standard body plans.

One group has a long stem with individual animals that have tentacles. One kind captures and digests food. One kind lays eggs. Another makes gas to fill a float and they mainly drift at the surface of the water. The second group give the siphonophore the ability to push water, making them sort of jet propelled, pumping water back in order to move forward.

They are made up of a number of types of animals. A zooid is a single animal that is part of a colony. Siphonophores can have zooids that either stick to stuff or swim around. Zooids can develop to have different functions.

For example, nectophore zooids can move, and working as a group, help the entire siphonophore move in water. When nectophores are located in one part of the siphonophore, they can coordinate the swimming of colonies. They can also work with reproductive structures in order to provide propulsion during the colony breaks up for form “baby siphons”. (I'm gonna go with siphons because siphonophores is a long word to type!)

Bracts are zooids that are made to protect the siphonophore as well as make sure the siphonophore doesn’t float too high or sink too far down. Gastrozooids stay in one place and digest food for the siphon, and palpons are gastrozooids that make sure digested food gets circulated.

There are dozens of kinds of zooids in your average – or even monstrously-sized siphonophore. Pneumatophores are gas-filled floats that help the colonies stay upright in the water. Some pneumatophores have an additional function of assisting with flotation and can even sense pressure changes in the water.

So now you have a general idea of the makeup of a siphon.

Now here’s where I take it a step further and create the possibility of a sapient siphon.

Siphons are not animals – they are a COLONY of thousands or millions, and in the case of the “beautiful *giant* siphonophore Apolemia recorded during the Ningaloo Canyons expedition, perhaps more than the 86 billion neurons that make up a Human brain.

But there’s nothing like it that that we know of.

What if an alien creature had “neuroids”, individual animals that behave like neurons…

Let’s just say that the creature in the video formed an immense spiral for a reason. To bring not only the various creatures of the colony together, but to bring the neuroids into closer contact. What if the number went beyond 86 billion?

For example, as it is in the image, nerve impulses would have to travel from the tail to the head of the siphon. That’s stated to be about 118 meters long (390 feet!), stretched out, it would be as long as the US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, where I live.

Say an impulse travels 100 meters in a second. That means if I stomp on the siphon’s tail, it would take a second (literally) before it knew it in its head. That’s not too long. A siphon could easily survive in its “strung out” state without being intelligent. But if it somehow NEEDED to be intelligent, it could begin to coil, bringing the neuroids into contact.

OK – the next big problem I’ve recently realized and talked about a bit here: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2022/04/writing-advice-creating-alien-aliens.html. I have the same problem now, HOW WOULD A SAPIENT SIPHON THINK? Not just what would they think about, but HOW would they think?

It’s a siphon for heaven’s sake! What would it think?

Let’s start with what would it FEEL.

Water temperature, pressure, salinity, chemical components; maybe it could sense sound – but rather than with ears, along the entire length of its body. Probably it can sense light, though “seeing” as we do wouldn’t be that important. We already know it can sense water pressure, and it can move. It can hunt, it can reproduce, and now it can think -- and given the number of neuroids it has, it can probably think just as deep of thoughts as we can.

How much of the world would it be able to sense? We’re tempted to say, “It’s stuck in the water! How far can it go?” I’d have to point out that if you’re being perfectly honest, WE are the ones who are limited to the land – Earth is 71 percent water. That means our entire Human civilization is limited (at the MOST) to 29 percent of the Earth’s surface. Our Sapient Siphon can go pretty much wherever it wants to on the planet…

But see what I’m doing? I’m avoiding thinking about how would my intelligent siphon would think? WHAT would it think about? Beyond the same things we do regarding survival, what would it need to think about? Getting food. It might never see the stars, but Humans have never been into the depths of the ocean – and we developed intelligence. We would both have faced predators. We would both have developed ways of protecting ourselves…but…

The biggest difference between Humans and Sapient Siphon is that one Siphon is an entire world. The parts of the Siphon ARE NEVER ALONE! They are always together; always experiencing each other. Would they even understand the IDEA of the alien? I think Humans get it because anyone outside of us is an alien. You don’t know what I’m thinking; I don’t know what you’re thinking. And even with my very dearest friend, my wife…I truly have no idea what she is thinking.

An Intelligent Siphon would never be alone because it would be aware of all of its parts…

Now isn’t THAT an alien thought?

More on this later…

Resources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siphonophorae (basic background on the lifeforms and their characteristics); https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/deep-sea-predator-millions-clones (article is more informative on the Siphonophore discovered a bit over a year ago off the coast of Australia), the larger YouTube on the bottom is a more general survey of the creatures (colony????), the Tweet is just a 30 second clip from the larger video…); https://theconversation.com/it-feels-instantaneous-but-how-long-does-it-really-take-to-think-a-thought-42392 (how fast does a nerve impulse travel?)
Image: https://image.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/alien-human-600w-136457129.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 545

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: body transformations/cyber implants/the Borg…

Current Event: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2qPWc32LS8&feature=related, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIqAnrjqb0Y,http://www., youtube.com/watch?v=QWTE97GteZA
[NOTE: STAR TREK’s Borg still creep me out and while they ended up defeated, compromised and hardly implacable by the end of all the series, I wonder if the writers did that to make themselves feel safer. When they first appeared in ST:TNG, they were anything BUT beatable…and they still creep me out…]

Hajnal Nagy stared at her lab partner. “What do you mean, they ‘creep you out’?”

Voytek Jankowski shook his head. “It doesn’t bother you that Ms. Hawkinson’s substitute is more machine than human?”

Hajnal shook her head. “Why should the ratio of Mr. Yakovlev’s flesh to metal and plastic bother you?”

“Didn’t you ever see the old movie, ‘Terminator’?”

“Duh. I like old movies as much as you do, so yeah, I saw it. But what does a time-traveling robot have to do with our substitute? He looks Human.” She glanced at the man where he was working with another student at the front of the chemistry room. While he certainly did look Human, the left side of his face was augmented by non-flesh implants. He’d told them he’d been in a car accident and they’d rebuilt his eye, ear and replaced the left side of his jaw with plastic bone and teeth. His hand was also partially prosthetic and, he’d added, even though they couldn’t see it, he carried a pacemaker to keep his partially damaged heart beating and had an implanted TENS unit to take care of his pain. He’d finally added that TENS was an acronym for Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation unit.

He’d written that on the white board, smiling and saying, “Isn’t this one of those ‘teachable moments’?”

“You didn’t think him talking about ‘teachable moments’ was sort of creepy?”

“Why would that be creepy?” Hajnal asked.

“I want to know what he thought he was teaching us.”

Hajnal rolled her eyes and got back to the work on the page of problems. Voytek said, “But...” Hajnal waved him off half a dozen times before he left in a huff. Once he was gone, she found herself looking up at Mr. Yakovlev. He was leaning on one elbow, pointing to a worksheet and trying to explain something to a student.

She muttered, “Stupid Voytek!” and got back to work. But she couldn’t help it. Her eyes were drawn back to his face. The plastic skin was identical in color to his real skin. The eye had a white sclera, but the iris was silver and the pupil wasn’t exactly round but a vertical oval, almost lizard-like. The fake skin on his hand was also a perfect color match and – she noticed with interest from where she sat – there were hairs on both of his arms. “Stupid Voytek!” she muttered. She turned in her stool so her back was to the front of the room.

She was sitting like that, hunched over the worksheet, when a voice said, “Do you understand orbital notation…” the voice paused, rustled paper, then said, “Ms. Nagy?”

Knowing that she was blushing crimson, she didn’t turn or look up, but hunched farther as she said, “Uh, yes, sir. It seems pretty straight-forward.”

He hummed, “Perhaps you’d like to come up to the front of the room and demonstrate your methodology for the rest of the class. Few of them seem to understand why you do not fill in the 5s1 orbital until after you’ve filled in the 3d5 and 4p3 orbitals.”

Someone from the class called out, “Hajnal gets it!”

Someone else started pounding on the table, “Let Hajnal teach us! Let Hajnal teach us!”

She finally turned around. Now that she was thoroughly embarrassed, she looked up at Mr. Yakovlev as he said, “This is a teachable moment, Ms. Nagy.” He smiled and she noticed then that his teeth, instead of being white, were silver. And as she looked, a tiny red light lit up on each one, while at the same moment, the vertical oval glowed blood red…

Name Origins: Hungary, Poland
Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e1/Falcon_9_Demo-2_Launching_6_%283%29.jpg/220px-Falcon_9_Demo-2_Launching_6_%283%29.jpg

Slice of PIE POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY: DISCON III – #8 Crafting the Elevator Pitch: Pho, Irriarte, Bilmes, Bruto, Avery

Using the Programme Guide of the 2021 World Science Fiction Convention, DisCON III, 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…I will jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in 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!

"Success is equal parts preparation and luck—so be prepared when luck puts you in the right place at the right time! How do you get ready for a pitch opportunity with an editor or producer, when you may have less than a minute to sell your dream project?"

Diana M. Pho: Editor at Tor.com
José Pablo Iriarte: Writer
Joshua Bilmes: Owner of JABbberwocky Agency
Patrick LoBrutto: Former ACE Books editor, currently Editorial Consultant (with connections and project far too numerous to list, go here: https://patrickjlobrutto.net/)
Sarah Avery: Moderator

OK! So there was quite a lineup there! Everyone had something good to say. It was less organized than the others, but they all agreed on one thing: the pitch was “A way you approach an editor in order to get your foot in the door, or to interest them. BREVITY is key. You can get down to details later.”

Without further ado:

Diana M. Pho:
1) 30-45-60 sec0nds. You want to talk longer, arrange a meeting.
2) Title; word length; genre (but DON”T GET MARRIED TO the genre you choose – roughly!); plot; how big is the cast is; the protagonist, antagonist, and main supporting character for the protagonist; the FOCUS of the piece. Make it one, 60 second-long sentence.
3) Be EXCITED about your story. Passionate, knowledgeable, confident…Your enthusiasm can carry the pitch.
4) Respect the agent’s BOUNDARIES – don’t touch them, and be light. Respect their seconds and arrange a time later.
5) What kind of expertise do you have?
6) DO NOT SAY: “It’s difficult to describe”, or “It’s just like [current best seller]”. How do you want to envision the book? Open the doorway to how to POSITION it.

7) Hollywood Log Line: “Dinosaurs now live and hunt alongside humans. This fragile balance will determine once and for all, whether humans remain apex predators or share it with history's most fearsome creatures.” [Jurassic World: Dominion] Like this.

8) “Adjectives an author uses to describe their work [to an agent], go in one ear and out the other.”

Joshua Bilmes:
1) You elevator pitch should be like a press release – interesting stuff first, boring stuff last.
2) Title and first line – YOU NEED MORE THAN THAT! The pitch doesn’t matter without the rest.
3) Give the agent CONTEXT – where does it fit at B&N or on Amazon.
4) The agent should WANT to know more. Don’t give a boring pitch!
5) Be caught up in the pitch, but not ready for the follow up!
6) Give the CONTEXT of where your book fits! What books inspired you?
7) If you make a mistake, don’t kill yourself over it!

Sarah Avery
1) Don’t pitch what you haven’t finished!
2) Give me a map: PIXAR Pictures: “Once there was A…”, every day, one day, stuff happens, and FINALLY…
3) The pitch is in person. What are the social customs where you’re at.
4) It’s like “author-agent speed dating”. How much SHOULD you share?
5) Agents are gatekeepers; but don’t wave YOUR OWN red flag!
6) “I made my students read it and they all loved it!” is not a glowing endorsement.

Patrick LoBrutto
1) What have you had published?
2) The pitch isn’t working if the person doesn’t pay attention! You have to bring them with you with your words.
3) A casual approach works better. Aggressive approaches DON’T WORK! It’s not the ONLY time you can ever pitch!
4) Know what your novel is LIKE: (DAVINCI CODE meets JAWS). You have to be current and useful to the editor. What the characters like. Have a 1 page, 10 page, the whole novel WITH you…in case.
5) Best ones have never been published. IT’S ALL IMPOSSIBLE – I do it because I have to.
6) What the agent/editor already have – USE IT TO GIVE THEM TO COMPARISON.

José Pablo Iriarte

1) Manage your anxiety – the pitch is daunting! But don’t deliver a memorized…
2) Communicate! You understand the story’s structure – “I know what the story IS”.
3) There are many ways/opportunities to meet an agent/editor. You can put yourself in the way of opportunity.
4) Florida Writers – breakfast, genre “So, what is everyone reading?” You are a reader, too!
5) No misfortunes, lots of publishers. “Won’t work with SFWA” is a red flag.
6) ONE paragraph: Before – life is fine – then it’s NOT fine – what is the INCITING incident? – what’s the solution?
7) It’s not personal – it’s like the drug industry. You have to help yourself. Practice on your friends – but know that THEY ARE NOT PROFESSIONALS.
8) Creating the pitch is also a good way to help revise and rewrite the book. Your pitch is the first bit of advertising/marketing you write. It should be MEMORABLE; then REPEATABLE, and you should be willing to share it with LOTS of people at the drop of a hat!

Program Schedule: https://discon3.org/schedule/
Image: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQY860vAI2izm2g2mUgxzT14fGVmoGh66B51g&usqp=CAU

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 544

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)

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/

Geir Laxness glances at his cell. He’s got no mom and lives alone with dad, who is an anthropologist. The message says Mom on the address. He looks up and around himself. This is the third message he’s gotten from her and he is on his way to Marshall, Minnesota. Where she told him to go.

America is a strange place, but he doesn’t feel quite so strange in Minnesota. It feels…normal. Dad said he had worked with an Icelandic anthropolist out of the University of Minnesota in Marshall when he was young and before he got married.

Several people, three women and four men, have passed him by on the sidewalk, smiling and nodding to him. He’s certainly travelled a bit, so he’s seen a lot, but he’s always been shy. Like most people his age, he speaks fluent English and he’s reads lots of fantasy and likes LORD OF THE RINGS a lot. When he turned eighteen, he 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 he’s not even certain why, only to say that he feels a deep connection to the man. The standard modern edition of Icelandic sagas is known as Íslenzk Fornrit.” His online name is “Snorri”.

He skypes other friends all the time and has contacts all over the world. Dad is at a conference in Minneapolis, MN. He didn’t tell him about the texts from Mom. He probably wouldn’t understand. It’s his first time in the US interior and he manages to get away from Dad and go to a fantasy and science fiction bookstore called “Uncle Hugo’s”.

It’s not far from a REALLY intriguing International Marketplace. He’s wandered this far, though he’s not worried about getting back. His GPS is top notch. It’s needed to be as he’s been following texts from several people who say that they’re legendary Icelandic historical figures.

Geir’s hungry, but as he starts to cross the street a group of white kids, tattooed and heads shaved, on skateboards, cut across the street, throwing rocks and garbage at a black man and an Hispanic woman who are running from them.

They disappear back down a staircase to a bike trail below.

Geir looks , but doesn’t know to call 112 in the US. As he runs to the staircase, the Hispanic woman comes back up. She looks at him, then says in Icelandic, “Vinsamlegast aðeins þú getur hjálpað okkur."

“Please, only you can help us!”

She presses a folded sheet of paper into his hand. She gasps, and dies, falling backward and rolling down the stairs…

Names: ♀ Iceland
Resource: https://www.icelandicroots.com/minnesota

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

Slice of PIE: MINING THE ASTEROIDS Part 4 – Practicalities: We Can DO It! But, What Is Our Greatest Obstacle?

Initially, I started this series because 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 time passed, I knew that this was a subject I was going to explore because it interests me…

So, I’m going to make this an occasional feature of my blog – maybe even of Stupefying Stories if the CyberPunkMaster gives me a thumbs up…

Part 0: (before I started thinking about it…) https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2016/05/slice-of-pie-asteroids-in-fictionand.html
Part 1: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2021/11/slice-of-pie-mining-asteroids-part-1can.html
Part 2: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2021/11/slice-of-pie-mining-asteroids-part-2how.html
Part 3: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2022/03/slice-of-pie-mining-asteroids-part-3.html

So, let’s say, “We can do it!” (Make sure you wear ruby slippers and click your heels together with your eyes closed.)

OTOH – from the Wright Brother’s 1903 powered flight with a Human passenger, to Virgin Galactic flying passengers to the edge of space – it took us less than 100 years of experience to make flying in heavier-than-air-craft so routine, it means NOTHING to most people.

We’re actually PAST the 1903 point of Wilbur and Orville – we have rockets that go into space. We have REUSABLE rockets. Humans have been in space without a break, for 23 years. We’ve been conducting experiments in space for longer than that. We’ve had rovers or Humans digging into extraterrestrial objects since the first Russian mission specifically designed to “excavate” the Lunar surface: “Luna 13‘s mission was to assess the suitability of the lunar surface for a manned Soviet landing that would never come. The main instrument was a penetrometer, attached to the end of a long boom deployed after landing. The instrument had a short rod with a sharpened tip and a small solid-propellant rocket motor to drive it down into the lunar surface. It penetrated 45 cm into the regolith and measured the density and consistency of the soil.”

So, we dug our first space hole a mere 56 years ago. Since 1966? Can I even count the number of profound societal and technological changes that have occurred? What I’m typing on now; my cell phone next to me; organ transplants; antivirals; digital books; 4711 CONFIRMED extraterrestrial planets; smart phones, smart cars; Artificial Intelligence; robot cows; cancer treatments; distance learning…anyway, the naysayers for asteroid mining are (maybe) as blind as the 1966 Luna 13…

Since February of 2001, we’ve landed six craft on five asteroids and a comet, with five more in serious planning phases between 2023 and 2028…

What will we NEED to land on an asteroid? At this point, money.

What will we need to start mining an asteroid – more money, but probably some advances in robotics and artificial intelligence, as well as tests to take terrestrial mining practices and translate them into effective, low gravity protocols. We’ll need people to go to the asteroids – not for the “glory of landing on the Moon or Mars or whatever”, but for the practical purpose of transferring our industrial processes into space.

Possibly THE MOST SERIOUS HURDLE?

Trust.

Trust seems to be in extremely short supply as I write this.

Why trust? How many governments – or individual Humans – would be OK with knowing that there are OTHER Humans out there who are in control of an asteroid (any one) that could, if dropped on Earth in a fit of pique or in response to a refusal of [name the country] to do what they want, end all life on the planet? At the very least obliterate an offending nation’s capital city and most of its politicians…

How long would it take before such a plan was hatched; then how long until that plan was REALLY able to be executed?

While I fear it may take a while to bring such a plan to fruition, all it would take is a few well-placed, educated, and determined individuals to pull off such an event. And while I believe that asteroid mining is absolutely possible for us as a world to achieve, I am completely UNSURE if Humanity as a whole will be able to mature in synch with the technology…

Then again, they said the same thing about nuclear weapons, and (as I write this) we’ve only used it against each other twice; and no terrorist has ever exploded a nuke anywhere on Earth.

Maybe we’ll make it to the point where asteroid mining will “save the world”!

I certainly hope so.

Resources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_asteroid_close_approaches_to_Earth, https://www.pharostribune.com/news/local_news/article_7fcd3ea5-3c14-533f-a8d5-9bf629922f34.html, https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/04/29/like-asteroid-mining-be-careful-what-you-wish-for/, https://www.nps.gov/wrbr/learn/historyculture/theroadtothefirstflight.htm, https://hackaday.com/2019/03/27/extraterrestrial-excavation-digging-holes-on-other-worlds/, https://www.planetary.org/space-missions/every-small-worlds-mission
Image: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/A2D5/production/_114558614_hls-eva-apr2020.jpg

WRITING ADVICE: Focus on Short Stories # 16 – (Redux!) Ray Bradbury "& Me"

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”. In this case, I’m going to use a quote from a famous “short story artist” and jump off from there.

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!

It's been a while since I decided to add something different to my blog rotation.

Today, I’m going to 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. The advice will be in the form of a single quote off of which I’ll jump and connect it with my own writing experience.

Without further ado, let’s start with Ray Bradbury, a master storyteller in multiple genre, though perhaps best remembered for his speculative writing. Upon his death, The New York Times noted: “[Bradbury is] the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream”.

I started reading Bradbury’s short stories in THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES shortly after I graduated from John Christopher’s WHITE MOUNTAIN novels, Andre Norton’s entire body of work, and Heinlein’s juveniles. I found them weird and almost incomprehensible, but took from them a startling vision of Mars. Contemporary writer Kim Stanley Robinson evoked a similar sense for me in his epic, multiple-award-winning MARS trilogy (RED MARS, BLUE MARS, and GREEN MARS).

But we’re here to look at what Bradbury said about short stories – he wrote over six HUNDRED of them after all (he “only” wrote 27 novels…), so advice from him is perhaps wonted by anyone who wants to write short speculative fiction. We’ll start with a few quotes from him:

“Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.”

“I know you’ve heard it a thousand times before, but it’s true — hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don’t love something, then don’t do it.”

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”

“Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You must simply do things.”

“Ideas excite me, and as soon as I get excited, the adrenaline gets going and and the next thing I know I’m borrowing energy from the ideas themselves.”

“There’s no one way to be creative. Any old way will work.”

“The answer to all writing, to any career for that matter, is love.”

Wow! A lot to mine here, so I’ll focus on the one with which I have the most experience. In this case, I’m going to comment on two: “You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”

This is a part of the “who I am” of writing. As a science teacher and school counselor (since 1981 and while that continued; I’ve been in the second since 2010), I’ve seen grief. If I dare count, three or four of my students – ones I knew well – have been murdered or have taken their own lives. There are few things as sad as the death of a child. In this, I don’t mean “child” in a derogatory sense. I mean it in the sense that even though life has dealt them misery, they are completely unequipped to deal with it the way an adult is. They have either been drawn into a life where their time intersected with bullets; or they have given up entirely and saw no reason to continue on Earth.

At the school I work at, we have had an influx in recent years of students from countries torn by civil and declared war. They have personally witnessed atrocities. Others have lost parents to death, murder, or incarceration. Of those, some have dealt with the crushing load of life in a self-destructive manner. Others have risen so far above their past that I am convinced they look down on the rest of us with sad resignation.

All of that to point out that if I were to completely immerse myself in the lives of these students, I would soon find myself lost in a dark, grim place. My writing – and you’ll see that I tend toward the hopeful and the silly – is my way of dealing with that darkness.

The second Bradbury quote, “I know you’ve heard it a thousand times before, but it’s true — hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don’t love something, then don’t do it.

This is one that anyone who knows me – in particular my wife – will roll their eyes in mock (I hope!) frustration when asked what I do in my “spare” time. I DON’T HAVE spare time – I am either living life to the fullest or I’m writing. I was going to say there’s nothing else, but that’s not being completely honest. I DO use the bathroom; I DO sleep; I DO spend time with my lovely wife; kids; kids-in-law; foster kids; grandkids; and less-frequently, my brothers, sister, and nephews and nieces…

At any rate, I LOVE writing and I spend an inordinate amount of time writing. I’m currently organizing my files (after thirty or more years of writing, filing, and carting the files around.) I’ve written A LOT of stuff. By last count, I’ve submitted manuscripts to markets 1139 times since 1990. 107 of them have been accepted and published somewhere. But to tell you the truth, I don’t know how MANY manuscripts I’ve written that never reached to submission stage; and of the ones I’ve submitted, I don’t know exactly how MANY manuscripts there are there.

So, with that in mind, I think I qualify for the idea of working hard and loving what I’m doing! Seeing my name in print those 107 times STILL thrills me – and I page through the magazines and websites to find them every once in a while. It’s fun!

In conclusion, the advice of Bradbury is sound and I will continue to apply it to my own writing. How about you?

References: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_count, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Bradbury, https://writingcooperative.com/6-quotes-by-ray-bradbury-to-make-you-a-better-writer-3b341e840a84

Image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhK6miXJMTMNyB3kzq-r6I2LVCTZJj0CDS0dPV2Qapl6e9rZPuHx2u5QKcKT1QGeDg1_tPMv-lpnuSr_eiBjwPXmex9mcgtuH2-SUtZEpGWV0_HdtJQelVt5K69NulJBUqNju5GNjHgQibXsIo4NeWpTOj4ai85jCRjMHOtwtkqshzxFvZPUSjXZNq6=s320

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 543

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

Fantasy Trope: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Clarke’s Third Law (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ClarkesThirdLaw)
Current Event: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/magical-technologies-just-over-the-horizon/ “Real tech magic is simplicity plus awe.”
The Most Magical Cities on Earth (https://www.ranker.com/list/the-most-magical-cities-in-the-world/island-hopper-dan)

Yosef Halabi, youngest captain of the revived Palestinian Liberation Army, stared at the whirling vortex even though it made him feel like he was going to throw up. The elders, every one a general or higher ranking, stared on in unconcealed anger. The most honored among their members had tried the vortex – and every one had died, writhing on the floor of the lab. Their shame was so great that their compatriots had simply shot them in the head.

The scientist – the lone survivor – had told them that only the young had the plastic brain engrams necessary to allow time travel into the past. He resisted flipping off his elders, instead, jumping feet first into the maelstrom. It was time to end the stalemate. The plan was to land a hundred years in the past, but his secret questioning of the survivor had let him know that it might in fact be a century, though it might be more, maybe less. Frankly, he found that he didn’t care. He jumped a flipped them off anyway, shouting…well, he’d wanted to shout, “Alahu akbar!” – because the crazy old men funding the project clearly only one God – Power – in their hearts. He would shout it “because it would strike fear in the hearts of the non-believers.” But the whirlwind cleared his lungs with a solar plexus kick.

Noa Avital sighed. Among the volunteers, she’d drawn the long straw. She was supposed to feel honored to leap blindly into the time vortex and happily agree to be thrown a hundred years into the past; possibly more, maybe less. She didn’t know and frankly, after fruitless negotiations with the leadership, she didn’t care. She jumped and as she did, began to shout, “F….” but the whirlwind cleared her lungs with a solar plexus kick.

Noa and Yosef materialized together, dropping thirty centimeters to land on their feet, then stagger ahead. Both of them also threw up immediately, though managed to remain standing.

Noa was first to recover. She looked at the young man standing across the room from her and said in sequence Hebrew, Arabic, French, English, and Spanish.

He looked up and said, “English will do.”

She nodded and said, “Palestinian?”

He took a breath to calm his roiling innards, admiring her iron constitution if she felt as crappy as he did, and said, “Yes. Israeli?”

“Of course. You’re here to kill me?”

“Not you specifically, but something like that.”

“The same, though I also happen to be a temporal scientist.”

He nodded and sighed. Of course. Every woman who had intrigued him in the least small way was bound to be a hundred times smarter than he was. He cursed, “Allah sayukhti min aldhy yardi…”

Noa added, “…waman hu biliasith 'anah sawf yadae fi altariq alsahih, Swarat 6:39.” – “Allah will lead into error whom he pleaseth, and whom He pleaseth He will put in the right way” (Sura 6:39)

He said, “You know Koran?”

She shrugged, “I know a lot of things.” She looked around, “What I don’t know is where we are.”

“In the past…” he began, but gulped back a surge from his stomach. He noticed she was adjusting better than he was. Fine then, smart woman, iron constitution – and Jewish as well.

“Obviously. But how far?”

“You’re the scientist.”

“Didn’t your scientists send you back?”

“‘Scientist.’ Singular. They shot all the rest.” She used very vulgar Hebrew, which he understood quite well. He couldn’t help but smile.

“What are you laughing at?”

“Nothing. I’m trying not to throw up on your feet.”

He saw the twitch on her lips before she said, “You’re awfully…not radical…for a time-traveling terrorist.”

He shook his head and countered, “You’re awfully not radical for a time-traveling terrorist, too.”

She paused for a long time, took a quick look around the room and said, “There’s nothing here I’d recognize as coming from the 21st Century.”

He did the same survey and frowned. “There should at least be a gun or knives – maybe a radio. This is supposed to be somewhere around 1948 or 1949.”

She nodded, pursed her lips, then went to a window and said something vulgar in all of the languages she’d tried on him to begin with. He held his breath to move as smoothly as he could to keep from jostling his queasy innards. He echoed her when he looked out the window – though he noticed for the first time that there was no glass involved here. It was cut from the stone or bricks and had no covering but a curtain pushed to one side.

They were in a city, that much was clear. But there were no antennae, and, his gaze flicked upward to confirm that there were arrow-straight contrails. It was silent below them and with a glance, he could see that there were no cars, bicycles, or scooters. Certainly no jets, motorcycles, automated mobiles, hoverboards, or gMod disks. “Where the hell are we?”

Pressure in the room seemed to peak abruptly, as if there’d been an explosion. When they both spun around, a bluish being floated above the ground. It said, “I have summoned you from the future – a future which has none of the problems of this cursed place!”

This time Yosef was the first to speak, “Where are we?”

“The same place you started from.”

“Not…”

The djinn, for that was clearly what it was, down to the ancient lamp sitting on the roughly carved floor, laughed and said, “It is possible; but this reality diverged from the one you are used to shortly after Creation. In this reality, science is a poor and suspect cousin of magic.” Abruptly, he djinn swelled and grew darker as the light in the room seemed to be sucked into it, “And in this reality, you have been condemned to death for your heretical beliefs in science…”

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