IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 556

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)

Popular Horror Story/Series like the old Goosebumps Books
H Trope: Abusive Parents
Current Event: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2536926/Sharon-Glass-trial-Boy-12-testifies-starved-locked-closet-fathers-girlfriend.html

Austin Ventura stood in his room. What should he do? What could he do? Carlos Rodriguez Cruz – his best friend since kindergarten – had run off somewhere. Worse yet, he’d been gone for anywhere from a few minutes to four hours. Austin texted Carlos’ sister, Paulina, “You still there?”

“Not going anywhere. Really.”

“Can I come over?”

“Here?”

“Where?"

“Meet me at the school.”

“I can get there in ten.”

“No car. Give me an hour.”

“Why?”

“Walk.”

“I can come and get you,” Austin clicked. He waited. His screen dimmed to dark. She wasn’t going to answer. Shaking his head, he left the house, walking out the front door. Mom and Dad had long ago given up trying to keep him in the place – he’d “escaped” so many times…and they’d had to pick him up from the police station for curfew violations so many times, that they’d finally said if he was going to go out whenever he felt like it, he could pick himself up.

They refused. He tested their resolve exactly once. That was the night he had to walk home from down town Minneapolis. His parents insisted the cops turn him out. The also lied about how far away they lived – they said they were staying in a nearby hotel. It had been just before Christmas. Austin was twelve.

When a cop car stopped to nab him, it turned out it was the same one who’d grabbed him the first time. The lady had said, “Your parents made you walk home?”

Miserable – even in his fancy Columbia ReflectiveHeat Brand – in just his jacket and Converses, the cop relented and gave him a ride home. When she’d dropped Austin off in front of the mansion, she’d leaned forward, looked at the entryway and said softly, “I can file for child abuse if you want...”

“No!” Austin had exclaimed. The publicity would ruin Dad. Mom would never speak to him again. He could never tell anyone the truth about anything. Instead, he said, “I’ve learned my lesson.”

The cop had made a face, shrugged and said, “Suit yourself, kid. But if you ever change your mind,” she’d squirted a contact email to Austin’s cellphone then went on his way.

Austin-in-the-present shook his head and sighed, the only lesson he’d learned that night was that he had to be a helluva lot sneakier from then on. And he’d learned exactly how mad Dad could get. He set off to meet Paulina.

Names: ♂ Mexico, Mexico; ♂ Minnesota, Italy (= “baby in the woods”, “foundling”); ♀ Spanish form of French name
Image: https://cdn.britannica.com/40/11740-004-50816EB1/Boris-Karloff-Frankenstein-monster.jpg

WRITING ADVICE: Creating Alien Aliens Part 18...Harvesting Stories From Life, and Wondering How Aliens Might Think Differently Than We Do...

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, Julie Czerneda, and Lisa Cron. 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 professional writers...someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what I write. When I started this blog, that was NOT true, so I may have reached a point where my own advice is reasonably good. We shall see! Hemingway’s quote above will now remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing output and sales! As always, your comments are welcome!

It's been a while since I seriously analyzed my writing – though I’ve certainly analyzed individual stories as well as concepts (like “What went RIGHT?” and “Can this story be SAVED?”, creating Alien Aliens, and mining the asteroids, as well as gleaning advice from writers who’ve influenced me (both living and dead)), I’ve never looked at where my ideas come from and how they grow into stories.

Until now. What sparked this line of thought?

On Tuesday, my son and two of my three grandchildren, headed off into the wild-blue-yonder to do some “disperse camping”.

“The HECK?!?!?!” you exclaim. Yeah, me too, initially. But here’s the official definition for you: “Dispersed camping is the term used for camping anywhere in [a] National Forest [In the case of Minnesota, where I live, this also holds for State Forests] OUTSIDE of a designated campground. Dispersed camping means no services; such as trash removal, and little or no facilities; such as tables and fire pits, are provided. Some popular dispersed camping areas may have toilets. [Not the places WE went to!!! It’s dig a hole or go into Town for a gas station break!] There are extra responsibilities and skills that are necessary for dispersed camping. It is your responsibility to know these before you try this new experience. Camping rules and regulations apply to make your experience safe, and to keep the natural resources scenic and unspoiled for other campers.”

We went to Sand Dune State Forest (SDSF) and Sheyenne National Grasslands (SNP) for three days of semi-dispersed camping – “semi” because while Sand Dune was truly dispersed, Sheyenne was at a campground with level sites, a concrete picnic table, a fire ring, and a hand-pumped water source. (See above – this ALSO represents a “fountain of ideas”!)

So, we started at SDSF with a truly dispersed campsite. Clearly occupied by someone else before us, we did a bit of exploring until we figured it was fine for us to use. We found a hooded sweatshirt hanging on a branch on top of a bag of garbage…

To start with, WHY was it hanging there? Had a camper gotten sweaty, taken it off and headed on down the trail…and never returned, perhaps eaten by a wolf or a pack of coyotes? (We heard both later on during the dark of night…) Perhaps abducted by aliens?!? Josh later mentioned he’d inspected it as well, and as a veteran of many Army camping expeditions (though he’s still active duty), he’d noticed it was covered with burrs – not the soft and annoying burdock burr! In Minnesota, our burrs are sharp as needles and not only make you bleed, puncture you with numerous spikes, but also induce intense itching…with the apt name, “Cenchrus longispinus” – grass with a long spike…

The day continued, and as night fell, and we finished our supper of hotdogs, buns, fake-Oreo cookies, unscrewed and a fire-roasted marshmallow added for NOT-S’mores…we reached the night. Poets often wax ecstatic about the silence of the wilderness, but (and we weren’t exactly IN the wilderness), I can attest to the fact that it was NOT silent. Across the marsh, a passel of nasty varmints known as coyote chorused in noisy, garbled yapping, yipping, and barking.

That was until they were silenced by the long, “lone wolf” howl. We learned on a different trip farther into Northern Minnesota, that a single wolf will howl to find out if there’s a pack around. Possibly its own pack, possible a new pack (if it’s young). [This of course, plays into my recent thoughts about how to “think alien”…]

After sliding downhill and pulling myself back up all night (I slid in my sleeping bag to the bottom of my cot…), the sun rose, and after digging cattail roots and boiling them with eggs and kielbasa, we broke camp, loaded up, stopped for a cup of coffee for Grandpa (even my SON calls me “Grandpa” these days), and headed north. One of our initial stops was because we saw a “Brown Traffic Sign [that] indicates nearby recreational and cultural interest sites.”

This led to a small town in North Dakota that held a fort that was “the first permanent military settlement in what became North Dakota, and is thus known as ‘The Gateway to the Dakotas’. It was besieged by the Dakota for more than six weeks during the Dakota War of 1862…the small fort’s defenses were tested. When increasing Indian activity by reconnaissance parties, drove nearby settlers into the fort's stockade. The Dakota alternated between sniping and all-out attacks on all four sides of the fort. The garrison and settlers with rifles, shotguns, and howitzers held the fort. The War was far-ranging and this small fort was spared from major assault, though consistently harassed…Afterward, the town that built up around it served as a transportation hub, guarding the Red River Trails used by the Red River ox cart trains of the late fur trade, military supply wagon trains, stagecoach routes, and steamboat traffic on the Red River.”

The story as laid out by the place was incredibly one-sided. I understand NOW what was happening after reading several accounts of the wars fought over the Great Plains between the Dakota, Ojibway, and several other tribes. I WILL note here that the Dakota and Ojibway had been fighting each other for hundreds of years prior to colonial advancement into their territory. I will also note that several OTHER tribes of indigenous people sided AGAINST the Ojibway and Dakota as well. “Despite the myth that Aboriginals lived in happy harmony before the arrival of Europeans, war was central to the way of life of many First Nation cultures. Indeed, war was a persistent reality in all regions though, as Tom Holm has argued, it waxed in intensity, frequency and decisiveness. The causes were complex and often interrelated, springing from both individual and collective motivations and needs.” The problem here, was that the displays and comments made the white settlers into people who were just minding their business, and the Dakota into unreasonable savages…which begged the question, if we DO meet intelligent life Out There, will we be Dakota or Europeans? The choice might be OURS.

Several hours later saw us on the Sheyenne National Grasslands. A car tour took us to a few moderately interesting places…until it was no long only MODERATELY interesting! It sparked countless thoughts in me regarding my assumptions that aliens would think “just like us” and that Intelligence among other life forms may NOT be immediately recognizable to us.

For example, while monogamy among Human mates is a current hot topic in which several sides scream that polygamy is absolutely natural and only Humans clinging to outmoded, artificial forms of morality reinforced by equally outmoded and artificial religions; are incapable of grasping the true nature of…well Nature – which is, in their eyes, a wild free-for-all dance of doing whatever you want.

And yet…Trumpeter Swans mate for life; as do the far less majestic Canadian Geese. A couple of animal species around whom we’ve built transcendent mystique – Timber wolves and lions do so as well; as do animals who possibly stir even the most jaded of American hearts – bald eagles. We saw or heard all of these (except for the lions…not very common in North Dakota.) But we saw incontrovertible evidence that once eagles mate, they not only STAY together, they build a nest that they return to for as long as they both survive – and the result? A nest that has truly awe-inspiring proportions that you can see above, guarded as it is, by mated pair of near-meter-tall Bald Eagles.

Would eagle-like aliens THINK like Humans do? CLEARLY they would not! What exactly would such beings make of the Human ritual of divorce? How might they judge us?

I’ve got more to share, but I’ll leave you today with the image above that I took a couple of days ago.

References: https://www.fs.usda.gov/detailfull/fishlake/recreation/?cid=stelprdb5121831, https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/services/military-history/history-heritage/popular-books/aboriginal-people-canadian-military/warfare-pre-columbian-north-america.html
Image: From my Personal Collection

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 555

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: “When wizards are immortal, they don’t need to train successors, and may not be able to…”
Current Event: http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2013/07/pipeline-knowledge-lost-time-gained



Sidaji the Immortal pursed his lips, glaring down at the bucket of swamp water, tapping the edge. His fingers strayed to the runic marks inscribed on the sides. He stared for some time before looking up and saying, “You are Luca Růžička.”

Luca sighed and tugged on his soaking wet jeans. His black Converses squelched on his feet and he scratched at a mosquito bite on his forehead.

Ranghild Peeters, the beautiful and incredibly annoying second apprentice said, “You’re not supposed to pick at pimples. I’ve got a skin cleanser...” She stepped a bit away from him as the smell of Okefenokee swamp drifted up from the water leaking from Luca’s tennis shoes and dribbling on the Persian rug.

Luca snapped, “It’s a mosquito bite.”

“Yeah, right,” said Ranghild.

“You try sloshing around in a swamp to get a bucket of ‘water clear of duckweed, water clear of waste’ and see how long you can keep the mosquitoes from eating you alive!”

Sidaji looked at her and said, “You are Ranghild Peeters.”

She blew her startlingly raven black bangs up her forehead and said, “Yes, Immortal One. Now, can we get on with the transformation. I’ve got things I have to do today.”

Luca muttered, “Like flirt with every guy in Minneapolis?”

Ranghild shook her head, “We’re broken up. Get over it.”

“I didn’t break anything up. You dumped me.”

“Only because you’re being such a...”

Sidaji the Immortal straightened up, lifted his arms and thundered, “Silence!” The thunder was literal as the windows of the mansion they were living in on Mt. Curve Avenue overlooking Lowry Park shook in their frames. Only Luca and Ranghild’s unity spells kept them from shattering. Across the street in the park, an autumn flock of common egrets took wing, rising up in a cloud of white stark against the golds, reds, oranges, and browns of the pond.

The wizard looked down on them, having swelled to twice his usual height. The floor beneath him creaked as he stepped toward them, saying, “þearf sy forþsetennes héafodcwide manian gescaep lifiendee!”*

They looked at each other, shrugged, and Ranghild said, “Your Immortal Greatness, we are currently in the early part of the 21st Century. I’m not sure shouting in Old English will accomplish anything. Especially as neither one of us can understand it. You enchanted us with this century’s English vocabulary.”

Sidaji stared at her, blinked, then said, “I seem to be having some trouble remembering things today.” The wizard’s apprentices both stepped back in unison, finding that the grand piano behind them blocked their retreat. Sidaji laughed, rattling the chandelier in the entryway.

“You’re immortal!” Luca exclaimed.

“What do you mean you’re having trouble remembering?” Ranghild exclaimed.

Sidaji pushed his sleeves up to his elbows, exposing heavily tattooed forearms. His hands were blunt – the hands of a farmhand rather than a dandified city boy – and his nails, while clean and trimmed, the nails of a man who had worked for his livelihood. He looked at his hands, studying them for a moment. Then he looked at his apprentices. He smiled and said, “My body is immortal, child. There was never any guarantee that my memories would be immortal as well.”

They looked at each other and Sidaji laughed again. “What are you laughing at?” Luca said.

“The two of you are acting like you’re in a movie. Are you really that much in love that you can’t think independently?”

Both of them, temporarily frozen in age as teenagers and prone to forget that they had actually been born in 11th Century Denmark and the Kingdom of Bohemia, were neither teenagers nor Americans and effectively his slaves – blushed furiously. Sidaji waved them away, remembering at the last moment to disempower the gesture, said, “That doesn’t seem to help me remember how to turn this swamp water into botulism infected water.” He looked at them and added, “Why are we going to poison the water supply of Minneapolis?”

Names: ♀ Denmark, Belgium ; ♂ Austria, Czechoslovakian
Translation: (From Old English – http://www.oldenglishtranslator.co.uk/) “There is far more of import here than your mortal sex lives!”
Image: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/71/e5/9871e52bbc09c525af21b8f6471eab15.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY: Is It REALLY POSSIBLE To Write Humorous Science Fiction? (And HOW Can I Do It????)

NOT 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 NOT use the Programme Guide to jump off, jump on, rail against, or shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. 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…

While biking out to the Tessman Farm this morning, I stumbled onto a truth that I had never realized before: my favorite stories are a weird combination of science fiction (hard SF often, softer SF sometimes, and more-often-than-not having aliens) plus a bit of a mystery plus humor. What I just discovered, is that since I wrote and posted my first Possibly Irritating Essay in June of 2007 (fifteen years ago!), I’ve written about HUMOR often. Why is that? Because I love to laugh and I love to make people laugh!

I’m good with verbal humor. I’m able to make my students laugh…but honestly? I’ve never analyzed my humor; nor have I successfully applied what I know about making people laugh to my WRITING! Or, as my 12-year-old grandson is fond of saying these days, “Or DO you????”

So, let me analyze my writing and see if I MIGHT have figured it out and just don’t realize it – or if I don’t have any idea what I’m doing and turn to writing hack-and-slash horror stories. I think I’ve gotten the hard SF part down – with seven stories published in ANALOG Science Fiction and Fact (plus one more coming out in the November/December 2022 issue), as well as another nineteen in various other professional and/or semi-professional venues. I think I have a reasonable grip on the mystery as well. My most recent completed novel, THE LEOPARD’S SPOTS, is a straight-up future mystery. Not long before that, I completed and shopped around “The Murder of AutoTech #47269”. I’ve got some mysteries in several of them, like “Mystery on Space Station Courage” and “Road Veterinarian”. Am I consistent yet?

Maybe.

I’ve got the deadly serious concept down pretty well: “A Pig Tale”, “Dear Hunter”, “Firestorm!”, “Oath”, “The Penguin Whisperer”, “Invoking Fire”, “Pigeon”, “Kamsahamnida, America”, are just a few of them.

Hmmm…humor? I think the following stories have definite humorous veneers: “Road Veterinarian”, “Dinosaur Veterinarian” (less so than “Road”), “A Woman’s Place”, “Baptism of Johnny Ferocious”, “The Last Mayan Aristocrat”, “Bogfather”, “Doctor to the Undead” might be humorous (try it here and let me know what you think: https://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/2021/08/doctor-to-undead-by-guy-stewart.html)

What do the pros have to say?

Regarding Spider Robinson, O’Leary writes: “And for those who underestimate his art, I ask: You think it's easy to make someone laugh?

“Perhaps people condescend because most of Robinson's Art is between the lines, in what Albert Brooks would call "Timing...sayitwithmeTiming."…The way his characters suddenly feel like friends…Robinson's chief speculative leap is to imagine a place where community is possible. And the task he has taken upon himself is to embody the spectrum of Happiness. Now, that may seem a rather hifalutin way of saying he's funny and his books make you feel good. But what Robinson is up to is nothing less than a participatory utopia that a reader enrolls in by reading.

“Robinson himself describes Mike Callahan. ‘Fixed broken brains. Made sad people happy and happy people merry and merry people joyous. Tutored in kindness and telepathy. Smoked hideous cigars. Forgave people. Accessory before and after the pun.’”

“Think of the audacity and courage it takes, in these days of cynical Family Values and jaded Pulp Sensationalism, to create an art about the possibility of Joy. I suspect that's either a dream that terrifies, or a dream so many times broken that it hurts to contemplate.” http://www.spiderrobinson.com/oleary.html )

LOIS MCMASTER BUJOLD is another writer who has mastered the art of subtle humor: “I’ve been reading science fiction since I was nine years old…Eleanor Cameron’s ‘The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet’…What drew me was the adventure and the humor I occasionally found.’ Randall Garrett was always a good bet. Adventure was offered by too many writers to name, but then as now, smart humor was thin on the ground.” https://awthome.wordpress.com/2010/02/08/an-interview-with-author-lois-mcmaster-bujold/

JOHN SCALZI is obviously a sharp humorist as well as an amazing SF writer. When asked, “‘What role does humor play in your writing?’ he responded: ‘It plays a pretty important role, but it's a role that has to be integrated with everything else you're doing. It's like life -- there are funny parts and then there are the parts that aren't so funny, and you move between the two all the time…putting humor into the mix as part of the events that fuel the plot is a good way to make the reader feel the story has a natural flow. Of course, sometimes it's also fun just to write something, but even when I write something that's in a comic mode, I try to get a mix of other emotional moments in there -- if you go for funny every single second, you're going to burn out your readers.’ https://www.writersdigest.com/improve-my-writing/scalzi-1

CONNIE WILLIS Noted, “Learning to Write Comedy or ‘Why It's Impossible and How to Do It.’

From the beginning, she notes, “Writing comedy is a real pain, made more painful by two persistent myths. The first is that writing comedy is a hoot, something people do for fun when they! While reading comedy may be an amusing experience, writing it is the same pain in the neck as any other kind of writing, only more so.

“The way to learn to write comedy is to watch and read comedies and analyze what you’re watching and reading…writing comic science fiction is no different from writing any other kind of comedy. Which is why I use them as examples along with science fiction writers. After you’ve read a bunch of comedy, you’ll see that why it’s funny. If something is funny it’s due largely to the comic bag of tricks the writer uses and has nothing to do with the situation at hand.” (https://www.scribd.com/document/357893022/Willis-Connie-Learning-to-Write-Comedy)

The Stack Exchange (see link below), notes: “Humor in stories and novels, regardless of genre, is a function of the author's sense of humor, and the traits of the characters in their stories.”

Last of all, from SFWA’s blog, KE Flan had this to say: “Instead, channel real people who make you laugh. Funny people tend to view life through a slightly different lens. Perspective is a tool that’s very much available to a fiction writer. By filtering action through a character, you keep humor in-world rather than impose it. For example, Martha Wells’s “Murderbot” offers us an askew perspective that lends itself well to humor. The key is to ensure the perspective is consistent and nuanced, just as it would be in a real person.”

Hmmm…food for thought. Food for thought…What do you think?

References: https://www.tor.com/2013/07/15/eleven-funny-science-fiction-books/, http://www.ufopub.com/stories-archive/, https://dailysciencefiction.com/hither-and-yon/humor, https://writing.stackexchange.com/questions/46446/sense-of-humor-in-your-sci-fi-stories, https://www.sfwa.org/2022/04/12/i-feel-funny-humor-tips-novelists/, https://www.eldersignspress.com/?p=387, https://www.epicreads.com/blog/funny-science-fiction-books/
Image: http://best-sci-fi-books.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/funny.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 554

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: Aliens are perfectly unified in all ways – think, say, believe and do
Current Event: http://www.straight.com/article-395679/vancouver/david-suzuki-anthropocene-calls-unified-human-response-ecological-crisis

So, most forward thinkers believe that Humans are bad and that aliens are good. Except for a few – like David Brin (http://www.davidbrin.com/shouldsetitransmit.html) and Stephen Hawking (http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1004/30/lkl.01.html), believe that we may be stupid and aliens are dangerous.

Both viewpoints assume that aliens are perfectly unified in how they think and act.

So this week’s idea turns on that assumption:

David Lange has traveled with his parents for almost 18 years to every Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence conference, seminar and meeting in the US as well as hundreds of UFO conferences on the North American continent as well as several in Europe, Australia, China, Russia, Brazil and India. They’re psychologists trying to understand WHY people believe in aliens – and they have 26 books, 148 podcasts and have been on every television talk show from Springer to Meet The Press. They have DVD series and both of them regularly act as guest professors at universities all over the world, teaching on the psychology of belief.

Clara Finch’s father disappeared on her fourth birthday, when they were on a camping trip in the Rockies. Her mother has been convinced since then that lights she saw in the heights were UFOs and her husband was abducted a la Close Encounters of the Third Kind. She, too has followed the conference circuit as well as telling her story to a writer who collected alien abduction stories. The man wrote the book, Unsolved Abductions: Alien Overlords! Where Are Our Loved Ones?

They are in Roswell, New Mexico for the 75th Anniversary of the Alien Incident ( https://www.mcall.com/news/local/mc-nws-lehigh-valley-marks-75-years-after-roswell-20220709-jc3oztttszfsrgoxjrvmzakswi-story.html ). So, it seems, are all the other kooks. And researchers. And scientists. As well as psychics, parapsychologists, FBI agents, CIA agents, KGB agents and InterPol. There’s a contingent of nuns and one of Buddhist monks from Tibet as well. The city has swollen from its usual population of 50,000 to over 150,000. The National Guard is there as well as several Army platoons on “exercises”.

Clara and David run into each other, take a shine and spend most of a night at a local carnival. All is pretty normal until a man walks up to them and says, “Listen, I know this is insane, but Clara, I’m your dad.” He turns to David and says, “Your parents are wrong, and now the Earth might not be ready to face the Zheel…”

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: MINING THE ASTEROIDS Part 6 – Mining the Asteroids With ROBOTS! Of COURSE! Why Didn’t We Think Of That BEFORE?!?!?!?!?

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…

We’ve heard lots of talk about mining the asteroids with robots. Seems to be a great idea! Sound thinking! Cheap labor, no cost in Human life, an no need for pesky things like air, food, water, and living quarters.

Seems like a no-brainer, right?

OK – first question: how many successful off-Earth, robotic mining ventures have there been? Answer = none

OK – let’s make it easier: how many successful ON-Earth, robotic mining ventures have there been? There it is! March 15, 2022!!! Robotic gold mining in Australia! Obviously a success story that will give us a jumping off base for creating an effective off-Earth robotic mining program!

Oops…it’s a “proof of concept”. A slow scan of articles touting robotic, surface mining bring up…um…nothing. (https://www.zdnet.com/article/giant-robot-trucks-are-now-mining-gold/)

OK – how about the bottom of the ocean? According to one source (see below, May 2013), approximately $150 TRILLION in metals are waiting to be mined from the ocean floor. Great! Show me where to sign up! When’s the bonanza expected to start?

Uh…perhaps in this case “hold your horses” should be amended to “at a glacial pace”… The USGS is pretty clear on this: “To date, there is no mining of deep-sea minerals. In Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction, any marine mining is governed by the International Seabed Authority, which is currently drafting exploitation regulations. The Global Marine Mineral Resources project has provided scientific advice to the U.S. State Department and has served as a member of the U.S. delegation to the International Seabed Authority as an Observer Nation for the last 20 years. Japan completed equipment testing offshore of Okinawa in the fall of 2017, recovering 4 tons of metal sulfide. For comparison, it has been suggested that an economic seafloor massive sulfide (SMS) mine would recover on the order of 1 million tons of metal sulfide minerals. There is one permitted mine for copper, gold, and silver offshore Papua New Guinea, on 0.1 square kilometer of seafloor; and the Cook Islands are revising regulations for manganese nodules mining.”

Um….so…well then…

“Mitch Hunter-Scullion is describing a six-legged robot called Scar-e, the Space Capable Asteroid Robotic Explorer, which he aims to send to an asteroid to drill for precious metals such as iron, nickel and platinum.

“As well as being increasingly essential for phones, laptops and cars, some metals like platinum will also be needed to help produce hydrogen as we transition to greener energy.

“With only a finite supply of them on earth - people are increasingly looking to space to meet this increased demand. That's where Scar-e comes in. Its powerful claw, designed in partnership with Tohoku University in Japan, should grip on to an asteroid in space to stop it from floating away. It has been inspired by the way tarantulas hang on to walls.”

Nice…so, when will we begin launching the rockets to land the spiders to start picking up stuff from asteroids?

People have, as usual, leaped over the technological concerns – which, by the way seem (to me at least) insurmountable based on the fact that thus far, Humans haven’t used robots to mine ANYTHING ANYWHERE! Yet plans are proposed, touted, and trumpeted far an near that we’re well on our way to mining the asteroids with robots…

As far as I can tell, we also don’t have a true Artificial Intelligence yet. This article (https://spectrum.ieee.org/artificial-intelligence-index) starts off well, assessing various challenges face and aspects of progress toward true AI. But as for looking at the SCIENCE? Not so much.

Plateaus in computer vision, logical reasoning accuracy in this article are the only science aspects that it’s concerned with. It begins by looking at investments, international relations, and patent law, shifting to AI law, the number of college students taking computer science advanced degrees (really??? Have they asked these graduate students if the main reason they got their degree is to design computer games or become a really rich YouTuber??? My grandson doesn’t think he needs to go to college – he’s going to be a YouTuber! How many of them are interested in the uses of AI in advancing space exploration? I’d be HAPPY to bet that that number is a big fat ZERO! Really!); segues into women and POC in the field, , and concludes with climate change.

I am not encouraged about our ability to mine the asteroids with robots if we can’t even mine the AUSTRALIAN outback with retrofitted vehicles that ALREADY mine gold…

Ya know, I started this Slice of PIE with high spirits, expecting to find lots to hope for and I’ve reached a point now where I’m not even sure we’ll be able to mine our OWN planet for all of its resources! In fact, when I think about the shrill whining by the “Save The Earth” groups, I realize abruptly that they’re not particularly concerned about saving the PLANET…they just want to save the part that they live on – and not even to be sarcastic, but the total surface area of Earth that HUMANS live on is actually miniscule…

I figured that this would be an easy number to look up, but it’s INCREDIBLE how many websites go all squooshy about it! Not one has a straight-up answer. Here’s what I mean: “14.6% of the world's land area has been modified by humans, according to research.” (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/10/human-impact-earth-planet-change-development/) So WHAT exactly does that mean?

Earths land area (just straight up, not “modified”, not “habitable”, not “arable”. Just. Land. That number: 196,900,000 million square miles (Wikipedia “Earth” It’s right there) So, if that is true: there are going to be 8 billion people by the end of this year. (https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-population-projections/)

So: simple math can calculate, how many Humans are there on land? 196,900,000 / 8,000,000,000 = 4 people per square mile. OK – makes us look terrifically insignificant. But that doesn’t serve the agenda of doomsayers, so we won’ think of that because climate change is caused primarily by the extremely wealthy. Ten percent of the world has nothing to do with destroying the planet, in fact, about 60 percent of the world has less than $10000 to use each year.

But that also has nothing to do with mining the asteroids.

It DOES have something to do with how Humans think: mining the asteroids with robots is “right around the corner”, though we haven’t actually DONE anything to demonstrate that it’s possible (except scooped up a couple of ounces of Moon, Mars, and (but I may be mistaken) Venus, and a bit more from various asteroids (that we actually retrieved).

There are, in fact, only 4 Humans per square mile of LAND. THAT’S NOT COUNTING THE OCEANS.

So, when you talk about Earthy habitation and robotic mining of the asteroids, it looks like it’s probably not going to happen any time soon – at least not until we can mine our own land or the bottom of the ocean…

Of course, we CAN live in space for extended periods and we CAN reach asteroids with our technology. Have we MINED a space body? Not yet – but in my THOUGHTFUL opinion, we’re closer to a Human mining an asteroid than a ROBOT mining an asteroid…

RECENT: May 2022 – https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-61421787
Ocean floor mining: https://worldoceanreview.com/en/wor-1/energy/marine-minerals/; May 2013 – https://www.theneweconomy.com/energy/deep-sea-mining-could-provide-access-to-a-wealth-of-valuable-minerals, June 2022 – https://www.usgs.gov/centers/pcmsc/science/global-marine-mineral-resources
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

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 553

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: "And I Must Scream" (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AndIMustScream)
Current Event: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/my-life-aspergers/201405/serial-killers-autism-and-mass-murder-once-again

Krzysztof Oja blinked and slowly shook his head.

Eden Ochion thought he looked like a shaggy orangutan. A scary one. "There's no way you can tell me what you're thinking?" she tried again. Krzy -- whose unfortunate name lent itself to being abbreviated to "Crazy" -- squeezed his eyes shut harder. "You have to tell me what's going on in that shaggy head of yours!" She said, reaching forward and rapping on his skull. Why couldn't she get through to him? No one had ever been able to resist her charms. People ALWAYS told her their secrets. It's why she was the most popular person at Barack Obama High School. If people made her mad, she could always spill those secrets. "Don't you have any secrets, Krzysztof?"

He stared at her, took a deep breath, opened his mouth as if he was going to say something and then closed it again. It wasn't like he was going to stand up and leave, Eden thought. She'd actually, physically glued him to his chair. She'd set it up so that the chair was the only open one in the library. That was because she'd coaxed, coerced, and blackmailed everyone into leaving it alone just so that Krzysztof would sit there. What was weird was that he hadn't reacted at all. She knew -- somehow that she wasn't sure of -- that he realized he was sitting on several mounds of hardening crazy glue. She smiled at the interior joke. "Crazy glue for a crazy boy," she muttered. She fixed him with one of her brilliant smiles and said, "Anything you want to tell me?"

She was wondering why he hadn't said anything about the glue when he looked up at her. The intensity of his gaze was startling after the way he'd always let her looks slide off him. She'd been trying to catch his eye since he got to school on the first day. It rarely took her more than a week to break a new person down enough to find a secret tidbit or two. Even the principal, one of the wiliest old ladies Eden had ever met, buckled after a two week onslaught of kindness and interest. In her heart of hearts, Eden called BO High a garden of earthly preflight...because once she knew what she knew, most people were ready to take off. Or do her bidding.

Everyone but little Krzysztof here. That was why she'd made him her special project for the past month. After the challenge of Ms. Zarinche the Principal, she thought he'd go down into a blathering heap as soon as she unleashed her feminine wiles. Now she had to face the possibility that he was gay and she'd have to have one of her coworkers do the attraction and extraction. She smiled into Krzysztof's baby blues. She studied them, looking deep. There was something unexpected in there; a deep, dark secret. Her smile spread from ear to ear. Here it was at last! "So, saxy boy, you got something you want to tell Mama Eden?"

His gaze didn't shift, except that it felt deeper, as if it were pulling her forward. She wanted to turn away because she'd always thought there was something to the idea that the windows were the eyes into a person's soul. She couldn't. He still didn't smile. In fact, his face had gone weirdly slack, as if he were concentrating hard. She tried to blink, but couldn't. She tried to take a deep breath, to sigh or whistle or something, but couldn't. Strangely, her breathing was slowing down despite the fact that she was starting to panic. This was incredibly weird...

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

Slice of PIE: DISCON III – #10: Expanding Stories into Longer Pieces

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!

Panelists:
Howard A Jones: Award-winning fantasy author
Jenny Rae Rappaport: author of short fiction
Mary Turzillo: prolific poet, award-winning author
Michael Swanwick: Hugo, Nebula, and Locus author of short stories, novels, and essays
AC Wise: prolific author

Howard A Jones:

- in a short story, everything is known and plotted out; in a longer piece, you have to scaffold to get to the end and it takes a long time.
- you have to be in love with your characters.
- in a short piece, the villain isn’t well defined. Even there, you have to find what your character wants and KEEP it from them.
- in a long story, I can do whatever I want to do.
- finding your way in that “whatever I want” is what makes the story happen.
- I’m an outliner rather than a pantster – but do both. Whatever works. Write your way through to the mountain.
- use the old with completely new, like TODAY’S episodic television.
- I ask myself, “Am I going to enjoy working with the characters.
- keep the important stuff, then change whatever I want to, though be consistent. I can EXPAND the story.
- in DESERT OF SOULS, I took Arabian Nights fantasies, that sort of worked. Then I asked if [something else] would work if I just slide it in. It did.
- sometimes, I get a surprise!

Jenny Rae Rappaport:

- sometimes you CAN feel what the characters want to do.
- every secondary character is a hero in their own life!
- return to your work often.
- if it’s NOT working, rewrite it.
- when reading slush, I try an see what makes the story go.
- a pantster DISCOVERS the story, plotting kills the story.
- I don’t personal have to “like” my characters.
- there ARE no rules about changing a short story into a novel.
- your story HAS to have a finish. How is the problem solved? Resolutions change the character.
- the reader needs to know everything that happens.
- research makes the story richer

Mary Turzillo:

- if you have a short story and want to make it longer, expand PAST the climax.
- you can also add a subplot.
- try to make her lovable, weak on the villain, in trouble every ten pages – that what makes it a PAGE-TURNER.
- give up when I hit a brick wall???
- every writer works in different ways.
- “red line of death” is somewhere in the middle of the title [I’d never heard the phrase before, so I poked around and found this: “…a top sci-fi magazine editor…puts a red line on the manuscript at the moment where he or she loses interest in the story. Because it’s focused on losing instead of catching a reader, this sort of exercise makes it easier for a piece with solid writing to do well vs. one with a distinctive action hook.” (https://alphawritersworkshop.org/beginnings/)
- a likeable character with undeserved misfortune…HOWEVER: “walking is controlled falling”.
- our story is in another universe.
- Poems are ads for short stories; short stories are ads for novels; novels externally…
- Anne McCaffery [in her Dragonriders of Pern series] started with short stories and ended up with numerous novels with few discrepancies. She kept what was in the short stories.
- Jeff Landis said, “I don’t sell exclusive rights for two years. The editors seem to be fair.”
- a novel has to be RICH. That richness is what it needs to BE a novel.

Michael Swanwick:

- fix-up novels never get respect.
- it can take as much time to write a short story as a novel, but short stories go away and novels stay with it.
- when you consider expanding a short story, you get an idea of how long it “should” be.
- a novel 100,000 words (20 chapters, 5000 words per chapter; but a short story has a “certain SHAPE”. It could be a first chapter or an inspiration for a novel.
- in a novel, you can explain what’s happening and WHY. You can’t in a short story.
- a short story about time travel; plopped it in the middle of a novel – then changed it all until it WORKS.
- The Gardner Dozois Slush Pile Anecdote: https://www.asimovs.com/current-issue/in-memoriam-gardner-dozois/
- EXPAND YOUR STORY, regardless of the method – meticulous, pantster, daydreamer…
- cut stories out of your novel. “The Man That Melted” – cut out, reworked with different stories; like the character who lives in one, dies in the other.
- how does your editor FEEL about you?
- THE ENDING AND EVERY WORD HAS TO BE USEFUL

AC Wise:

- when you see “what characters want to do”, ask yourself: is this a trick?
- you can insert more details to make is seem “real”.
- if you already have a published story [in that “universe”] where do you pick up?
- in a short story, you create a “tone”, in a novel, the character is CHANGED.
- when you expand a story, you have to change it – but how MANT changes do you make?

I’ve underlined above which comments left an impression on me – now all I need to do is study them and apply them!

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