POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY: CHICON 8 – #1 Belief and Religion in Science Fiction Settings

Using the Programme Guide of the 2022 World Science Fiction Convention, ChiCON 8, which I WOULD have attended in person if I had disposable income, but I retired two years ago, my work health insurance stopped, and I’m now living on the Social Security and Medicare…I will be using 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. My opinions may bring glad hearts to some, or cause others to wish to stomp me into the muddy ground of Lilydale Park shortly after a long rain…

A.L. DeLeon (moderator): author fantasy and science fiction, poetry, non-fic, fictio

Emad El-Din Aysha: researcher, journalist (critical essays), short SF, bilingual

Magenta Griffith: non-fiction writer, librarian, Pagan Witch

Menachem Cohen: spiritual director, inter-spiritual rabbi, game designer, the unhoused, and people afraid of being judged by those giving spiritual care

Rachel Gutin: writer and special education teacher

“A belief in something spiritual has shaped how humanity understands the world for thousands of years. It seems likely that this will continue for thousands more. How have various authors woven this human need for religion into their science fiction, and how have the religious identities of authors been reflected in their work? What kinds of stories involving religion do we want to see in future works?”

My gut sense is that I would have been thrown out of this group – or never allowed to enter the room; especially if I said I was an evangelical Christian. I would LOVE to think that I’d have been welcome to the table, but as a straight, Big Old Fat White Guy, I fear the judgement-free atmosphere this group was trying to cultivate wouldn’t be interested in anything I had to say…

Then again, maybe I’m wrong and they would have brought me to the table and listened respectfully to whatever I was compelled to say. That is my most profound hope, in fact that everyone will be welcome to speak their truth without fear – no matter what that truth is, and if it’s spoken respectfully with an expectation that the thought would be heard and judged on its merit rather than its presenter…

So, what do I think about belief and religion in science fiction and fantasy? I have to confine my comments here to science fiction as my reading of fantasy is highly limited: HARRY POTTER; JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR. NORRELL; LORD OF THE RINGS; CHRONICLES OF NARNIA; THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING (T.H. White); THE EARTHSEA CYCLE; CHRONICLE OF THOMAS COVENANT, UNBELIEVER; NIGHT’S EDGE series by Julie Czerneda; and a smattering of fantasy my daughter has vetted and approved, like DON’T CALL THE WOLF (which was wonderfully enchanting!).

The most obvious SF religion is that of the Bene Gesserit and the God Emperor of Dune. Religion isn’t just “part of the story”, the entire religion of Dune IS the story. It's a complicated combination of Catholicism, Buddhism, Islam, and others. Philip Jose Farmer’s RIVERWORLD series “an artificial Super Earth where all humans (and pre-humans) are reconstructed. The books explore interactions of individuals from many different cultures and time periods. Its underlying theme is quasi-religious. The motivations of alien intelligences operating under ultra-ethical motives are also explored.” Another obvious religion-in-science fiction is CS Lewis’ SPACE TRILOGY, as another intelligence faces both the Eden test and interaction with the evil one.

My own MARTIAN HOLIDAY, combines four different sets of Biblical people from entirely different time periods, on Mars as they face the possibility that not only aren’t Humans alone in the universe, but that we were witnesses – and emphatically NOT players – in an ancient war. Esther, Queen of Persia; Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego; Paul the Apostle; and Steven, the first martyr for Christ are characters fit for my Mars, with Five Domes, and a population of some six million Humans who are driving to a conflict driven by a religion that sees the long-dead survivors of the ancient war as gods, and a Mars that’s trying to throw off the restraints of the United Faith in Humanity and the iron grip of the five Dome Mayors as well as the advent of Artificial Human freedom, and Artificial Mechanical Intelligence…Complicated, I know, but I LOVE the place. I’ve even written several short stories in the world (none published yet).

I’m of the opinion that even when we go into the stars, we’ll bring our varied faiths with us. I hope I would have been somewhat encouraged by this session, but not certain I would have been welcome there. If my novel ever gets published, maybe I’ll be invited to join the group! We’ll see!

Program Guide: https://guide.chicon.org/
References: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_ideas_in_science_fiction, https://gizmodo.com/a-guide-to-dune-s-strange-and-intense-religions-1843460283

Image: https://i0.wp.com/chicon.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/chicon2022-logo-1.png?fit=640%2C365&ssl=1

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 563

Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc.) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them. Octavia Butler said, “SF doesn’t really mean anything at all, except that if you use science, you should use it correctly, and if you use your imagination to extend it beyond what we already know, you should do that intelligently.”

SF Trope: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ForWantOfANailCurrent Event: http://www.breitbart.com/video/2014/11/15/maher-if-obama-had-lost-us-wouldnt-have-fruit-or-jobs/And A Prompt From My Niece-In-Law: wool, celery, parallel universe, dynamite, fireman’s ball, fishing tackle.

 Jose Taylor-Perez shrugged his shoulders, settling his wool sweater more comfortably. “You eat that and it’ll be like someone lit a stick a dynamite and shoved it up your…”

Emily Patel-Kelly tossed the celery stick at him then punched Jose in the shoulder, “If you weren’t my best friend, that would have been hard enough to knock the humerus out of the ball park.” She snickered, “Not that anything short of a wrecking ball would be able to knock any of your face bones free of that fishing tackle in your mouth.”

“Hey! No fair! I can’t do anything about braces!” he said, shaking his head, “Besides, your premed jokes are only funny to you…added to that, you won’t even be able to BE premed until at the earliest your junior year.”

 Ignoring the frustrating fact that she couldn’t start college until she could do College In The Schools, she said, “Like I can do anything about a celery allergy?” She lifted her chin, “Besides, I don’t exactly have a standard reaction to it.”

“You can say that again,” he said as he fiddled with his transparent computer tablet where it hovered over his lap. “You’re the only person I know that can use a V8 Harvest and Strawberry Smoothie as a gateway to a parallel universe.”

She shook her head, “I wish I could see into the universe where I passed this history final with flying colors.”

 “That’s for sure,” said Jose. “I’ll never remember who came after President McCain.”

 “Don’t be such a sexist – President Palin took over after McCain had his coronary two years after he got elected.”

“Right, the first lady...”

“No, it was the First Husband Todd…” she said, adding a smirk.

“I was gonna say, ‘President’.”

 Shaking her head, Emily hunched over her own transparent tablet, setting it to project a holographic screen in front of her. Walking her fingers through a manipulation panel, she absentmindedly picked up a celery stick and shoved it into her mouth. After her eyes grew wide, she muttered, “Oh, crap...”

“What’s wrong?” Jose asked. Her tablet began to glow then flames flickered around the edges as she tried to shove the instrument away from her. “You ate the celery!” He exclaimed. “Why did you do that?”

 “I wasn’t thinking! I was playing around with tensor calculus…”

 “And you opened a door into a parallel universe!” Jose shouted as the fire alarms went off and a robot fireman’s ball floated out from its nook and began to sprout nozzles. “Now we’re gonna…”

 An explosion cut him off…

 Names: ♀US(California); ♂ US(New York)

A Prompt Blog: http://lettersfromchurchofthetoastedcoconutdoughnut.wordpress.com/2015/01/05/and-so-it-goes/

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

WRITING ADVICE: “The Daily Use of Gravity Modification in Rebuilding Liberian Schools”, OR “God Bless You Gravity Modification”…NEITHER of Which Saw Publication of This Story I LOVE

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, In April of 2014, I figured I’d gotten enough publications that I could share some of the things I did “right”. I’ll keep that up, but I’m running out of pro-published stories. I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it, but someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what I write. As I work to increase my writing output and sales, I’m taking another look at “old ideas” to see if I can figure out where I went wrong. As always, your comments are welcome!

SORRY THIS IS LATE! I was Up North this week and wi-fi was very spotty, so I got of habit of working ahead. THIS is the result!

ANALOG Tag Line: We always thinks about how paradigm changes will affect “society”, but what about how will it affect the “little people”?

Elevator Pitch (What Did I Think I Was Trying To Say?)
For the first time ever, I drew on my missionary experiences from my eight months in Nigeria, Cameroun, and Liberia. I wanted to imagine what the introduction of gravity modification would do in a situation of rebuilding after war – war that the “big countries” had never paid much attention to. I was modeling the story on John Brunner’s ANALOG March 1973 short story, “Who Steals My Purse?” In THAT one, repurposed ICBMs are used to drop small TVs on Vietnam along with tools, seeds, and other developmental material that the people could use to raise their quality of living (and presumably grow to love Americans and overthrow the communist regime…)

Opening Line:
“Gordon Oyeyemi Daboh huffed, shaking his head.”

Onward:
“He said, ‘Building five new schools here in God Bless You isn’t impossible. We have clay, concrete, straw, lumber, paint, and bamboo.’ He flicked his hand at the meager supplies piled near the edge of the burned-out clearing. The faint concrete outline of the original elementary school was visible through a layer of fine ash. A pile of debris loomed on the edge of the gravel boulevard, waiting for removal or reuse. ‘But we don’t have time, and we have few volunteers. We have limited building supplies! Your, your,” he karate chopped the air in front of the young woman standing before him. Her eyes widened and she stepped back, ‘handwavium is as useless to us as our three buckets of glow-in-the-dark paint!’”

What Was I Trying To Say?
I wanted to communicate that technology, even when it’s incremental, can be used to dramatically change the lives of normal people for the better. (It contains the obligatory warning against the military machine…the fact is that my son, my father, two of my nephews, and some of my best friends have served and DO currently serve in all of the branches of the military. I STILL stand by my statement.)

The Rest of the Story:
Gordon and Comfort butt heads almost immediately. The shoestring operation of rebuilding the schools (the original title was “The Everyday Use of Gravity Modification in Rebuilding Liberian Schools”) is fraught and gets worse when a squad of wandering mercenaries get wind of Comfort’s gmod device. Expecting to easily find it, they have no idea it’s woven into strips of hook and loop (for a fascinating AND HUMOROUS (I REALLY appreciate the humor!) take on hook and loop and its registered trademark, watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRi8LptvFZY) that are easily applied to pallets. There are accidents – and then a kidnapping of the village Elder and his daughters – and Gordon has to use the soldiering skills he swore off of to rescue them and get back on track…)

End Analysis:
OK, so writing the synopsis up above, I just realized what my problem is…Lisa Cron’s rules from her book WIRED FOR STORY clearly spell out the mistakes I made:

2) Grab the reader, something is at stake from the first page.
5) Plot (what happens) makes characters confront internal and external issues to confront their inner demons.
9) Start: character’s worldview is knocked down.
11) Character is action and anything they do makes things worse.
17) Challenges start small and end huge.
19) Character becomes one by doing something heroic.

First line has no grab; Gordon’s inner demon is NOT clear (“I REFUSE to ever be a soldier again!”), external circumstances don’t slam into internal issues (He wants to be JUST a teacher! He didn’t even want to be a principal!); his worldview stays pretty much the same – it should start with him thinking he’s escaped notice and that quitting Lagos’ special operations unit of cloning soldiers after meeting his has set him free; he can’t do everything right from the moment he leaves to rescue the Elder and his daughters, he has to screw up.

As well, the title is probably off-putting to SF readers and editors; not only is it WAY too long, my second attempt is trying too hard to “be a witness”. Even Jesus couched his messages to a skeptical public in stories in the form of parables. They were not always clear, but after discussion, they became more so.

When I first wrote it, I didn’t know about Lisa Cron’s advice. Now that I DO, I can rewrite the story with the “rules” (she didn’t call them rules, I did…) in mind; which of course, answers the question below:

Can This Story Be Saved?
Simple answer – “Yes.”

Complex Answer: Some things have to change though – not only in Story According to Cron. I’ve learned some things since I wrote this story. Perhaps the hardest is that I need to say what I have to say and say it CLEARLY and QUICKLY. Even the longest one, The Prodigal Son is only 500 or so words; the shortest is only three! (“Physician, heal thyself.”) My biggest problem lately has been keeping my stories short. I tend now to write in the vicinity of 9000 words and that’s just TOO LONG. I have to pull my punches…or more precisely, I need to conserve my energy and FOCUS my punches.

I ran across this interesting observation regarding parables:

“First: The meaning of most parables (both the short sayings-parables and the longer story-parables) is not so obvious, or at least it shouldn't be. If we assume we know what Jesus is talking about, we are probably missing the main point; if we are too familiar with the story (having heard it so often before), we might not think carefully enough about its real meaning.

“Second: most parables contain some element that is strange or unusual. They should cause you to say, "Wait a minute! That's not how farmers do their work! That's not what kings usually do! That's not what normally happens in nature!" The strange element should cause you to think.

“Third: Parables do not define things precisely, but rather use comparisons to describe some aspect of how God acts or interacts with human beings. Yet to say ‘A is like B’ does not mean that ‘A is identical to B in all respects’ (that also happens to be bad math. Jesus would NOT use bad math – besides being the Son of God, HE WAS A CARPENTER!); so we should be careful not to misinterpret or misapply the parables.

“Fourth: Most parables are open-ended. Rather than reaching a conclusion, they challenge us to keep on thinking! Rather than having us ‘stop thinking’, they invite us to ‘stop and think’.”

My next move? Stop and think...and I need to do this with a couple of OTHER stories I got wordy on...

Resource: https://catholic-resources.org/Bible/Parables.htm
Image: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/9f/22/3b/9f223b1e57a36e14db3eb13715fbe3f9.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 562

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: Humans abduct aliens for nefarious purposes
Current Event: http://www.squidoo.com/captureanalien

Strangely enough, GOOGLE will not allow me to search for “Humans abduct aliens”…which gave me the idea for this idea…

Cerys Finch was from England, an exchange student staying with a family in Minnesota. Elias Ian Serano is also an exchange student staying with another family nearby. He’s been trying to get her to go out with him for weeks, ever since the school hosted an Exchange Dinner with Honors Program families and the exchange students at the school.

She thinks he’s cute and all, but he’s not her type. She tries to explain, but he’s insistent and she reported his behavior to the school counselor. That was yesterday…

That night, Cerys is up late and hears noises outside. Going to a backyard window where the family’s house looks out over a state park reserve, she sees wildly flickering lights. Looking down, she sees her host family – mom, dad and three young adult men she’s never seen; older kids who no longer live at home. The five of them have something in a net that is struggling wildly. Hand to her mouth, she sees what she thinks at first is a bear.

Then she sees Elias Ian rush into the back yard. His arms waved wildly, he startles her family and they back up. The creature she thought was a bear throws off the net with help from Elias Ian and bolts for the brush. But it wasn’t a bear – it was wearing something on its back, something that looked manufactured.

Elias Ian looked up , directly at the window she’s standing at. She backs away, gasping and when she steps back, he’s gone. She hurries to bed as her hosts come back into the house, cursing, angry and making lots of noise. She goes back to her room.

The next morning…

Names: Names: ♀ England; ♂ Israel/Greece; Spanish (also, Portugeuse, Philippino) 
Image: https://cdn.britannica.com/40/11740-004-50816EB1/Boris-Karloff-Frankenstein-monster.jpg

WRITING ADVICE: Short Stories – Advice and Observation #19: Spider Robinson “& Me”

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

I’m going to use advice from people who, in addition to writing novels, have also spent plenty of time “interning” with short stories. While most of them are speculative fiction writers, I’ll also be looking at plain, old, effective short story writers. The advice will be in the form of one or several quotes off of which I’ll jump and connect it with my own writing experience. While I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it...neither do most of the professional writers...someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what I write. When I started this blog, that was NOT true, so I may have reached a point where my own advice is reasonably good. We shall see as I work to increase my writing output and sales! As always, your comments are welcome!

Without further ado, short story and life observations by Spider Robinson – with a few from myself…

I first met Spider Robinson…well…I didn’t exactly meet him, but I did read my first CALLAHAN’S story in the February 1973 issue of ANALOG Science Fiction and Fact. (I was fifteen and had only recently discovered ANALOG. I WON’T mention the reason I devoured that issue is because of Poul Anderson’s amazingly fantastic Ythrians (pictured on the cover), but WILL mention that once I read “The Guy With The Eyes”, I was a new Spider Robinson fan.

I actually tried my hand at writing a piece similar to the adventures of the group of men, women, werewolves, aliens, and Other who went into Callahan’s Place with deep troubles and who came out sometimes with new problems, sometimes with new friends, but most often they came out with new insight. My people went into a Christian fellowship that met in the basement of the large, mostly unused church of indeterminant origin…I think it was called “The Dragon in the Vestibule”, I’ll have to check…But that’s probably another story.

Not so much another story, but a forgotten chapter. Apparently, in 1993 (I would have been 36), some thirty years ago, I actually wrote a paper letter to Spider Robinson. I have no idea where the original letter went, but his extremely kind, thoughtful, and slightly humorous responses indicated that I was asking to use Doc in one of my own stories. I’ve unearthed the actual paper file, so I’ll be reading the story again and see if there’s anything I can do to bring it back to life – or failing that, use whatever seed of an idea occurs to me.

For now, I want to examine not so much WHAT Spider Robinson wrote, but HOW, and how I have – or have NOT – applied the advice absorbed from decades of reading and rereading his stories.

In November of 1995, Patrick O'Leary wrote: “It’s…not what he writes, but what he leaves out. Pettiness. Smirking. The unlikable person without hope. Pain for pain's sake. Easy love. Miserable sex. Evil that doesn't cost anything. Suffering that only makes you squirm. Individuals so stuck in their own heads that the real world is just another POV…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…what Robinson is up to is nothing less than a participatory utopia that a reader enrolls in by reading…His Callahan books are about the experience he creates, not just portrays.”

Spider Robinson said in a Locus interview in February of 2004, “…Callahan is about, and I keep coming back to tolerance…of the weird, the strange…no matter how bent you are, as long as there is no malice in you, you’re welcome. All my life I’ve been weird.”

I also tend to be a positive person; I absolutely have no desire to cause anyone any pain. And yet…I am also a Christian, active in my faith and profession, but emphatically not rude. As witness, I’ll share an incident that occurred several years ago when I was a science teacher. The father of one of the other teachers passed away suddenly. The event was traumatic as well. She and I could NOT have been more different – from gender to our views on religion. But we LOVED talking and making each other laugh and we were in fact, good friends. When her father’s funeral approached, she asked if I would be willing to stand beside her as she read her father’s eulogy, and if I would take over if it proved too difficult for her. I proved FAR too difficult and I ended up reading it – and accepting one of his many, many “crazy ties”. It hangs right now in my closet.

I think that Robinson’s imagination to “embody the spectrum of happiness” is one I’ve adopted as well. I also think that I have always been “weird” – not just “wah-wah-poor-me” weird, but REALLY weird. I’ve shared countless times in this blog about my adolescent sense that I was in the “wrong family”. I didn’t fit, most obviously as an athlete; but I was the first person in my family to accept Christ into my heart and then act out that acceptance in a way that didn’t conform to our family norms. That’s an evasive answer, but that’s all I’ll say here!

At en.academic.com, they point out that, “Frequently in his writing, the conflicts center around a science fiction issue with a Human solution…”

Without a doubt, this is something I try to do – HOWEVER, because I know I haven’t done this consistently, I see now that what I’ve done often by accident I can do intentionally. In fact, when I “channel” my human side rather than my “superhuman side”, I’m a far better writer. This is something I need to do far more consciously than I do now. In fact, this essay is the direct result of a great deal of struggle I’ve had writing my current story that was originally named, “At the KAPITIAM On Olympus Mons”.

In an interview on Ideacity, he said, “If you’re struggling to write a story, then you’re afraid of something.”

I’m not sure he meant it in the way I’ve taken it, but to ME it’s saying that in this story, I’m trying to dig into something that, on a deeper level, I don’t want to touch. Thus far, it seems like a story about pirates who make off with a shipment of virtually priceless green coffee beans on Mars and the three people (with four minds!) who go after it and take it back. The story comes out of a world I’ve created in which there is only one acceptable faith – the United Faith in Humanity. All others have been (they thought) eliminated because “faith in anything but ourselves is misplaced and a waste of effort, resources, and mind”. It SEEMS like that’s what is happening now. The “christianity” of the radical Right is NOT what I embrace. And that is exactly what I’m exploring in the story. Maybe I don’t want to expose my own faith quite so publicly.

“…I’ve noticed in the last five or ten years I’m reading less science fiction and more mystery, and as a writer I’m trying to gracefully segue into mystery, crime, detective -- whatever you want to call it.”

Me, too! Me, too! My current ANALOG submission, “Misisipi Crossing” is a mystery set in an apocalyptic Earth. I don’t focus on the event, rather on the aftermath and how it’s affected the main characters.

For a January Magazine interview, when asked where the Callahan stories came from, Spider Robinson said, “… in order to keep myself from going insane with boredom [as a security guard at a construction site that was nothing but a large hole] -- I pecked out a story about where I'd rather be: a bar where they let you smash your glasses…an extraordinary bar. The bartender would have to be a special human being and his customers would have to be rather unusual folks. The kind of folks you could trust to fling glassware around while drunk. And it sort of all grew from there.”

That one I can’t empathize with. My first story was written in pencil and was an adolescent rip off of John Christopher’s (aka Sam Youd) THE TRIPOD books. I wanted to read more stories in those worlds, found out my writing was truly horrible, then set out to figure out how to do it RIGHT. There’s a reasonable chance that I will have a novel coming out some time in the next year that is my legitimate answer to my initiation into science fiction!

That was where I “met” Spider Robinson (it’s rumored his birth name was Paul…). It would seem that his career was set on “full-steam-ahead” with that first story in ANALOG. But it wasn’t that simple: “…I proceeded to write a whole bunch more stories and mail them off…a year or two went by and I didn't sell a word to Ben or anybody, but Ben would…scribble one sentence on the bottom of it…I'd always look at this and think: He's out of his mind! And then send the story to every other market in the world…[They were always rejected]…then I tried it his way and it was a better story and I sent it out and somebody bought it. So I went to the next one in the pile…and eventually every one of those stories sold to somebody because I followed Ben's advice.”

Fact is that I got very little of this feedback from anyone, actually. Until Stan Schmidt took over Ben Bova’s editorship at ANALOG. As hard as it is to imagine, I too ignored Stan’s comments on my work. I’d give up and start something new. I finally realized how few people an editor actually takes time with; how rare real comments are to get. When I DID take Stan Schmidt’s advice, he bought my first ANALOG story and fulfilled a lifelong dream of seeing my story in the magazine. When Trevor Quachri took the helm, I had a new editor to approach – and I confess it was with much trepidation – and hope to win over with my writing. My worry was well-placed! Trevor Quachri took over in September of 2012, and after submitting three different stories, he bought a really odd little Probability Zero that was based on a favorite story of mine from Clifford D. Simak (WAYSTATION, 1963). My story was called “Whey Station”. It was supposed to be a pun, but I had several people write (which Trevor Quachri forwarded to me!) who didn’t understand it. So, there you go, my first experience with making a pun (as Spider Robinson did consistently and without mercy! In his CALLAHAN stories.)

“Robinson says that he and Jake, ‘share many characteristics in many ways. In part Jake is me as I might have turned out if I hadn't met Jeanne.’”

I honestly haven’t examined my work in that light, though I don’t have a long series of stories with the same character. But my new story at ANALOG is, in fact, the second story of Javier Quinn Xiong Zaman, DVM and Corporal Thatcher, a genetic experiment with a price on her head…which, oddly, gave me a new idea for another story to add to the pair…

I’ve learned quite a bit from diving into the writing mind of Spider Robinson, but more than anything, I was forced to examine myself. I suppose I can’t ask anything more of an author than to invite me to see myself in a new way…

References: https://www.januarymagazine.com/profiles/spiderrobinson2.html , http://www.spiderrobinson.com/oleary.html , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nth0ugxbkdE , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_Robinson, https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/134021 , https://www.locusmag.com/2004/Issues/02Robinson.html
Image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhK6miXJMTMNyB3kzq-r6I2LVCTZJj0CDS0dPV2Qapl6e9rZPuHx2u5QKcKT1QGeDg1_tPMv-lpnuSr_eiBjwPXmex9mcgtuH2-SUtZEpGWV0_HdtJQelVt5K69NulJBUqNju5GNjHgQibXsIo4NeWpTOj4ai85jCRjMHOtwtkqshzxFvZPUSjXZNq6=s320

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 561

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: Low Fantasy (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LowFantasy)
Current Event: http://codecondo.com/what-the-distant-future-is-going-to-be-like-infographic/

Somokene shielded his eyes from the blood-red dome of the Sun as it set and said, “The new star does not fade with day. You know what that means.”

Squatting on the bare, rounded boulder, Bardinanda sniffed the air and said, “Yes. It means you need to bathe.”

Somokene shook his head, “Be serious, Sister!”

“I am always serious, Servicer.”

He squatted as well in the lee of the boulder. A cold wind blew from the south, off of the glacier wall that fenced the entire equator of the World in. It was impossible to go farther north or south without paying the exorbitant fees of the Ice Lords. He said, “It means that the end is nigh.”

This time Bardinanda laughed outright. “Which end is this, brother?”

“You know as well as I do.”

“But I love to hear you say it. It makes me appreciate history.”

He sighed as he unfolded a heat cloth and anchored the four corners with the plutonium disks he carried. They had decayed to inertness and he had carved and polished the ancient reactor core slices himself. Incised on the surface were his logograph and Bardinanda’s. He tapped the cloth and it glowed red. He held out his hand and a moment later, she placed the aquapon gently in it. Far heavier than it looked, it was a gate into their food trough hidden on the other side of the World in Uluru. He set it on the cloth and said, “This is the one thousand, four hundred and sixty-ninth End Time; one million, three hundred and ninety-six thousand, four hundred and twenty-first Year since the founding of Human civilization.”

Bardinanda sighed and slithered down the boulder, flat, splayed feet gripping the rough surface. Patting Somokene’s bare head, she said, “You know that despite the fact that Endless Ending is a tenet of your faith, eventually it will be the Last End Time.”

“There is a sect that believes that, yes. I don’t belong to it, but I have studied it.”

She nodded, running slender fingers over the sensitive skin of his head. They both shuddered. Nodding, she turned her back on the setting Sun and said softly, “Then perhaps you are the best one to judge me when I say that I believe the Last End Time has come upon us and I am the Harbinger and you are my Prophet.”

Names: ♀ South American (Barbara, Diane, Fernanda); ♂ Chewa/Igbo
Resources: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/doomsday-preppers/articles/endless-food-systems-fish-powered-aquaponic-gardens/
Image: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/71/e5/9871e52bbc09c525af21b8f6471eab15.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: Spider-Man: No Way Home, Men In Black 3, Guardians of the Galaxy 2...and Other Tear-Jerkers…

NOT using the Programme Guide of the 2022 World Science Fiction Convention, ChiCON 8, which I WOULD have attended in person if I had disposable income, but I retired two years ago, my work health insurance stopped, and I’m now living on the Social Security and Medicare…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…

Do you find yourself tearing up or weeping uncontrollable whenever you watch Spider-Man: No Way Home, the Back To The Future Trilogy, AVENGERS: Infinity War, and Men In Black 3?

No? It’s only me?

Maybe if I just explain a bit, you’ll recall the time you found yourself crying during these emotionally charged movies and you’ll agree with me!

OK, I’m starting with Spider-Man: No Way Home (herewith: NWH) because my wife and I just finished watching it. First of all, we all know that Peter Parker is a young man with no real male role-model left in his life. His mom and dad were killed (mostly in a plane crash, though sometimes murdered) and he was raised by his Aunt May and Uncle Ben. In NWH, we find three versions of Peter who show up in HIS universe via Ned creating multidimensional portals and them hopping through. Their meeting is convenient at first, until they start “sharing” and they all find out they’ve lost someone important to them. (PS: Apparently ALL the Spider-Mans in this movie are weepy, too). But the scene that gets to me is the very end when they all say “Goodbye” to each other Peter NWH knowing what’s coming. He tells Doctor Strange that he wants EVERYONE to forget that Spider-Man is Peter Parker, and the look Strange gives him – and the understanding on Peter NWH’s face make me weep harder, until I’m using my hanky to wipe my eyes.

In Men in Black 3 (MIB3), J (Will Smith) has been bitter his entire life because he grew up without a father. Sadly, the reason I never questioned this is because I fell prey to the “Black Father” meme – that “all black men are bad fathers and leave their families”. While patently NOT true, if you ask honest White people, they’ll usually admit that they’ve subconsciously bought into the lie.

It's so insidious that even J has bought into it.

MIB3 wouldn’t work if anyone watching it assumes that J’s dad is gone for the same reason we all think we know…What none of us THINK is that J’s dad, Colonel James Darrell Edwards Jr. died a hero, protecting his country. When J witnesses that, realizes that HE was the little boy that K neuralizes…I weep.

In the Back-To-the-Future Trilogy (BTTFT), Marty McFly’s dad is a spineless, fawning twerp whom NOBODY, not even Marty can respect. Instead, Marty has latched onto Doc Brown as a father figure and willingly follows him through alternate timelines (sensing a pattern here yet?) – and helps him fix the past, present and future that MARTY screwed up by creating a terrified by BRAVE George (his dad) and altering the timeline. He and Doc spend the rest of the first and the next three fixing the timeline…

The place where I find myself weeping every time is when Marty tries to keep Doc Brown from being murdered by the “Libyan terrorists”…but fails, even AFTER stealing the De Laurean and working so hard to fix everything. He sees Doc gunned down and runs up to the (bloodlessly) dead Doc Brown and break down, weeping. As I do…then Doc wakes up, show Marty his Kevlar vest, and shrugs off the slight tweak to the timelines…of course, saving Doc Brown from being murdered by Mad Dog Tannen merely changes the PERSON who dies. Horrified, Doc Brown sets out to save Marty…

In Guardians of the Galaxy 2 (GG2), Quill thinks he’s found his father, and has!

The problem is that his father is a psychopathic god who only wanted a child so he could create another creature that was half himself. The purpose of that, is to get his DNA and then recreate himself forever…or something stupid like that. Yondu, the alien with the head fin, who both told him the only reason he kept Quinn around was because he “was a runt and could get into small places” and constantly kept Peter in terror by threatening to eat him”. What we eventually find out is that Yondu saved Quill from certain death when he found out about Ego siring children on every sapient life form in the known universe, then murdering the resulting, “disappointing” child when they proved they didn’t carry his “god genes”. When he realizes the truth, he honors Yondu as his true father.

Lastly, there’s the relationship between Tony Stark and Spider-Man H: and this is one that BOTH of them became a true father and son team. Stark’s father, while he DID have strong feelings about Tony, was totally incapable of sharing them with his SON. He had no trouble sharing those feelings with the adult Tony when they shared a “two-men-whose-wives-were-expecting” moment in the past. Nor did he have any trouble sharing those feelings on a movie made about his “vision” of the future of humanity – but ending with “I built [Stark Expo] for you…it represents a whole lot more than people's inventions…one day you'll figure this out. And when you do, you will change the world. What is, and will always be, my greatest creation…is you.” Tony’s need to repair his relationship with his father was IMPOSSIBLE TO DO as his father was long dead by the time he found the film.

Spider-Man H/Peter Parker H was in desperate need of a strong father figure. The two of them were a match made in Heaven – or the Multiverse (feel free to choose according to your belief system!) And it worked. Tony Stark turned Stark Industries over to a much more caring and responsible Peter Parker H; and he saved the world by using the Infinity Stones he snatched from Thanos to putting it back to a time BEFORE Thanos had eliminated half of all life in the UNIVERSE…

That cost him his life, but he was almost happy to pay the price. He certainly “won over the Woman”, and he certainly received a son’s adoration from Peter Parker H. When he dies at the end of Infinity War…I cry every time.

So, there you go! Everything you need to know!

“Excuse me?” I listen, then reflect the question back to the Asker, “You still don’t know why I’m the one who weeps at all of these scenes?” (and I’m sure I’ve missed many others). I nod, then reply, “I was hoping that you hadn’t noticed me dodge that bullet.” Listen, then nod sagely, “I suppose I DO owe you that.” I purse my lips, breathe in deeply through my nose, release the breath slowly, conjure up a stool, sit and say:

My relationship with my own father AS SEEN BY ME was fraught. I was born when Mom and Dad didn’t have much money, and after mom quit (it WAS after all, 1957) to stay home and “raise the children”, Dad go another job. He was a general laborer, who’s someone in the construction job site hierarchy whose rank is virtually 0, with 10 being the Site Supervisor (aka The Suit In The Hard Hat). He needed another job to feed his growing family, so he worked oil changing and “whatever” at a local, NON-Chain garage (Tony’s, if you must know). He bowled in the winter, played softball in the summer, and all-in-all, put food on the table in the Best Of Times, and did scab work (non-Union carpentry) when we had to use food stamps in the Worst Of Times.

He didn’t seem to have much time for me; and as I loathed organized sports (after a DISASTROUS attempt at Little League Baseball when I was seven: I was always the right fielder (as it was the position that saw the least action). Remember the scenes in MEET THE ROBINSON’S when Goob (Michael Yagoobian) plays baseball, drops the catch in the Championship Game? That was me at 7…only our team wasn’t that great – and I was the worst of them. Even the coach was disparaging.

I’m pretty sure Dad was embarrassed. I have a picture of me at about two years. Mom and Dad had dressed me up in a baby-sized football helmet, shoulder pads, and put a football in my hands. Scrawled on the back in my mom’s feminine script are the words, “No interest at all!” Yep. Those words might as well have been tattooed on my forehead. My dad had played basketball and football; brother #1: football, hockey (school, traveling, college with scholarship), baseball; brother #2: (choir) football, hockey, track and field (State Record shot-putter); sister: ?, volleyball, softball, Mom: college fencing (!!!).

Me? Reading; just call me a square peg in a round hole.

Near the end, Dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and because I was closest physically, much of the day-to-day contact with Mom and Dad fell to me. No problem, but by then, my feelings of animosity toward my dad was pretty much a hard shell. I find myself wishing the picture above was Dad and me reconciling...but by the end, he hardly knew me, and I was exhausted.

And then, to add insult to injury, I NEVER had a substitute Dad…no male figure ever tucked me under his wing and made certain I was being nurtured and he was genuinely interested in whatever it was I was doing. I became very bitter – and I’m quite certain some psychologist would find a goldmine of various and sundry psychological neuroses, etc. to dig up and confront me with and prescribe treatment. But, the fact is that, I’m not interested because I’ve found my own comfort.

Besides those I note above, IMDb lists some 1300 “sci-fi, father-son relationship” movies. If you drop the sci-fi, the number LEAPS to over 21,000. I’m clearly NOT the only person who has experienced and tried to reconcile this relationship. When I type in, “sci-fi, father-son reconciliation”, I get 70 hits…of which, three are sci-fi (two are actually horror), and one episode of an old TV show…and then the list repeats the 35 selections again to give a nice 70…FWIW, none of the entries are the movies above…

So, why did I write all of this? It’s all fantasy, right? I all of a sudden realized that
I’ve been looking for a reconciliation with my father most of my life. He died of complications of Alzheimer’s three-and-a-half years ago, so there’s no chance that I’ll EVER reconcile in reality, but now I understand why, when I see that happening in movies – and I react with grief.

Now that I know that, perhaps what I’ll start doing is WRITING my way into reconciliation by focusing my narrative on creating those kinds of stories. The kinds of stories I'd LIKE to see…

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_and_Mary_Parker#:~:text=Richard%20and%20Mary%20Parker%20appear,Uncle%20Ben%20and%20Aunt%20May's.,
Image: https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/two-old-men-exchange-a-brotherly-hug-picture-id156894368?s=612x612

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 560

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: Absolute xenophobes
Current Event: http://io9.com/what-will-human-cultures-be-like-in-100-years-453934475

Diandra Ngobogo and Guychel Kolchak walked side-by-side in the Mall of America. The Mall was crowded – more so than it had been in decades. The entire building had been renovated and vertical banners proclaiming, “Fifty Years Of Quality Shopping” floated from antigrav advert-eyezers, brushing shoppers with trailers of brilliantly colored silk.

It was just as effective as elaborate signage had been in the last century. Most of the people ignored them. While it was true people ducked into and out of shops, the majority simply walked, talking.

To themselves.

Even so, it was quieter. The near silence was broken only by the squeak of tennis shoes and murmuring voices, as if someone had stumbled into a Buddhist temple filled with saffron-robed monks doing their morning prayers.

Diandra said, “What could you possibly want with that?”

Guychel said, “Where would she go with someone like him?” He squeezed Diandra’s hand so hard, she yelped, yanking her hand away from his.

He didn’t notice even when she glanced at him. He did notice when she shoved him hard enough to stumble into a column that rose up all seven stories to support a semi-transparent roof panel. He said, “I’ll talk to you in a minute,” tapped his phone and glared at Diandra and exclaimed, “What was that for?” He tapped his phone again and muttered, “No, not you! I’m talking to Diandra.” He paused. “She’s my girlfriend.” Paused again then said, “Why would you think that?” and hung up on the caller. He finally looked at Diandra and said, “What?”

Balled fists on her hips, she jerked her head sideways once, calling Guychel. She murmured, “We haven’t said a word to each other since we got here.”

“We’re talking now,” he murmured back.

“You didn’t even notice when I stopped holding your hand!” she said.

He looked stupidly at the offending member then at her, murmuring, “So?”

“Why do we even go to the trouble of getting together if we’re just going to walk alongside each other and still talk to the rest of the world?”

He stared at her then swallowed hard. He hung up and said to her directly, “Are you breaking up with me?”

She hung up as well and said out loud, “I like you a lot. Why would I break up with you?”

“You’re not talking to me, though,” Guychel said.

“I’m talking to you.”

He gestured angrily, “You know what I mean! We’re not on the same circuit!”

Diandra stared at him for several seconds before he looked away. She said, “I skipped fifteen times from Jakarta to here just to be with you. Do you see any more couples here?”

Guychel looked. He frowned. Then he turned in a circle and finally said, “None that I can see. They’re all here by themselves for whatever reason, but they’re with their real friends, too. What’s wrong with that?”

She’d done the same thing, tracking various Mall walkers. She finally said, “I ain’t a genius…”

“You are, too. That’s what the datafile says. It’s why I texted you.”

She blinked in surprise then smiled, “You flirted me because I was smart?”


He grinned lopsidedly, “That and you’re a sexbag.”

She sniffed and slugged him on the shoulder and said, “You’re no outtrash yourself.”

He blushed under his pink dyed blond hair. The two colors clashed remarkably. He said, “So, what you’re saying is that we should like, really talk to each other?”

Diandra shrugged, “Could be new.”

Guychel grinned then looked up. Way up. He frowned. “What?” Diandra asked.

He jerked his chin up. “Someone was watching us.”

She touched her headset then said, “I ran it back. You’re right. Who was that?”

Names: ♀ Indonesia, Central African Republic; ♂ Democratic Republic of Congo, Russia (Siberia)
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: “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" -- Science Fiction or Fantasy???

NOT using the panel discussions of the most recent World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago in August 2022 (I retired from education, but I STILL couldn't go to CHICon because we're on a fixed income now. SO... I will jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. But not today. Today, I go back to an essay I wrote that was both Irritating and, for me, inspirational...

My wife and I re-watched the movie, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”, starring Ben Stiller. The screenplay was based on a short story of the same name, written by well-known humorist, James Thurber.

Apparently they really have nothing to do with each other, so I’m going to treat the Stiller movie as a science fiction flick.

Why SF and not Fantasy?

It involves both psychology (soft SF) and technology (hard SF) – and advances in technology and how they affect society (classic hard SF)…

The premise is how advances in technology will affect society, in this case, how the internet affects the lives of people whose employ was in a paper magazine that depended on physical film images; at its heart, the kind of SF we all enjoy reading – the book I’m reading now is an exploration of what post-humanity will be like when our psyches can be uploaded to vastly more advanced computers and how that might overtake the biological Human. John C. Wright’s COUNT TO A TRILLION is no more hard SF than Stiller’s TSLOWM.

The psychology is obvious and where in Thurber’s TSLOWM, Walter never moves from his imagination to any kind of reality at all, Stiller’s Walter begins his life lost in a sort of fantasy world, he enters the real world and begins to bring some of those fantasies into reality.

Of course, the only way he can do that is by the application of everyday technology – a combination of jets, helicopters, ocean-going vessels, cars, subways, elevators, high-altitude/low temperature gear, and eHarmony (an online dating site)…

Most importantly to me, however, is that the movie is inspiring. While I can’t say exactly why, I do know that as a writer, I tend to live in my head as Walter did. I can also say, though, that I’ve had my fair share of adventures as a missionary in Nigeria (where we experienced a coup d’état) and I helped perform a puppet show on national TV; Cameroon where we experienced an attempted coup d’état, stepped on a scorpion in the middle of the night, and came down with malaria; and Liberia where nothing of “adventure” happened except that we traveled up and down the coast and I walked along a black sand beach. I was also in Haiti for two weeks, helping to lay the foundation of an orphanage. I guess traveling with a band counts – twice – counts too…two summers running a Bible camp in the center of the Chippewa National Forest and actually SEEING wild timber wolves. Having lunch with Newbery Award-winning author Kate di Camillo. Meeting Mary Grandpre, artist of Scholastic Book’s HARRY POTTER books and a cover of TIME magazine…I have a “real” letter from Madeleine L’Engle, a response to a letter I wrote her, as well as a different one from Anne McCaffery and another from David Brin…

I was the Science Museum of Minnesota’s Teacher of the Year in 1997…

OK, so I’m not exactly an example of Thurber’s Walter Mitty; but I’m certainly not Stiller’s Walter Mitty, either. It’s Stiller’s Walter Mitty, though who is the character of a science fiction movie. While it doesn’t involve space or time travel, it does involve MIND travel as we got to see what he was imagining – saving the dog from a building about to erupt into a fireball; the guy who came out of a LIFE Magazine ad from the Himalayas to talk to Cheryl; being Benjamin Buttons to Cheryl's Daisy Fuller; plus a few others I can’t recall (and can’t seem to find listed anywhere). For a moment, we see what he sees – or where he goes when life isn’t going in the direction he wanted it to. It's a sort of...time travel or psychotic adventure that moves me to want more in my life.

So there you have it – why I think Stiller’s SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY is a science fiction film rather than a fantasy film and why it is SF in the very best of the tradition.

After reading Lisa Cron's book, WIRED FOR STORY, I started creating a framework for me to use her idea -- that we read stories to learn how to deal with real life. In an article my sister forwarded to me, Cron states: "The reader expects the story to revolve around one, single plot problem that grows, escalates and complicates, which the protagonist has no choice but to deal with...[which] is constructed to force the protagonist to confront, struggle with, and hopefully overcome a long standing internal problem. Story is about an internal change, not an external one...Can my plot problem...force my protagonist to struggle internally, spurring her to make a much needed internal change in order to resolve it?"

This is exactly what Walter Mitty does in the movie. Deep down, he feels he has no control over his life. So he creates fantasies in which he CAN control the situation to the extent that he becomes a hero. Real life is a lost job, a brutal boss, multiple relationship fails, a bossy sister, and the loss of an important film negative -- the only one on Earth. In his mind, he makes heroic decisions and people love him. Then he starts to make REAL (sometimes dumb!) decisions and gets hurt, nearly dies, and then hurts the person around whom his entire life has revolved...but he GROWS and then becomes a real man with a real woman who is interested in him. And he tells the boss off.

THAT is what story is supposed to do, and because we don't read (or even pay much attention to) stories anymore, we don't know what the HECK to do to make life better...“...we're wired to turn to story to teach us the way of the world.”

Image: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/07/d1/3b/07d13b89120aa69106d0410bd5671b52.jpg