Possibly Irritating Essays: MINING THE ASTEROIDS Part 9 – FINALLY! Serious Discussions About the Complexities of Asteroid Mining!

Initially, I started this series because of a presentation at the 2021 World Science Fiction Convention in Washington DC, 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…

It seems that Humans have taken a huge step toward mining the asteroids – instead of eye-rolling, pointing to such (now defunct) companies like Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, or crying FOUL! about allocating resources to mining in SPACE!! when there are problems here on Earth that need the money far more than we need to be playing with spaceships and pretending we’re Star Wars/Star Trek/whatever Fantasy world you want to live it…What about Minneapolis bull-dozing homeless encampments???? We need to house them all! (https://www.kare11.com/article/news/local/homeless-encampment-near-quarry-shopping-center-closure/89-9ee415ae-73a8-49b1-b83b-2128a41440e2)...

Individuals and companies seem to be talking about not only SOLUTIONS, but also about environmental issues (not in order to ban mining the asteroid) in order to make certain we don’t just carry current mining practices and problems into space and create problems for “future generations” to deal with. It appears we’re seriously discussing all of the issue above!

For example, where both PR and DSI seemed to be interested in building the industry from the ground up, one company is considering using technology that’s already on the shelf: “AstroForge is another company that believes space mining will become a reality. Founded in 2022 by a former SpaceX engineer and a former Virgin Galactic engineer, AstroForge still believes there is money to be made in mining asteroids for precious metals…To keep costs down, AstroForge will attach its refining payload to off-the shelf satellites and launch those satellites on SpaceX rockets…There’s quite a few companies that make what is referred to as a satellite bus. This is what you would typically think of as a satellite, the kind of box with solar panels on it, a propulsion system being connected to it…we didn’t want to reinvent the wheel…”

It's interesting that one of the articles I read was titled, “The Problems With Space Mining No One Is Talking About”. “The United Nations takes the view that space exploration should be done for the benefit of all. It is reasonable for society, which is being asked to fund investment in enabling technologies, to ask in return not only for a lack of harm from asteroid mining but for an equitable share of the positive benefits gained.” There’s sound philosophy and deep intent to avoid expanding “ ‘the mindset of colonialism to a truly cosmic scale.’ This mindset of colonialism is deeply intertwined with many of the stated motivations for resource exploitation in space and its ability to equip human expansion into the Solar System.”

Philosophers suggest that “ethics and anticolonial practices are a central consideration of planetary protection.” They recommend the space science community consider the ethics “short-term impact of largely unrestrained resource extraction on wealth inequality...This legacy of colonialist decision-making harming Indigenous people throughout history has left a stain on the profession of mining — a legacy space miners would do well to avoid.”

As well, “Weighing…ethical issues may become necessary in the face of climate change and ecosystem collapse. Planetary scientist Philip Metzger argues space mining will allow solutions to Earth’s increasing energy demands that are not currently feasible, such as beaming solar energy via microwave to Earth…there is little doubt that a human presence in space will entail harvesting resources from Near Earth Asteroids…a team of researchers from the University of Nottingham in Ningbo, China, examined the potential impact of asteroid mining on the global economy…market forces, environmental impact, asteroid and mineral type, and the scale of mining, they show how asteroid mining can be done in a way that is…for the benefit of all humanity.”

It also avoided one of the issues I’m curious about: with the ability to mine, refine, and transport the raw product, comes the ability – if not the practical methods and hardware – to MOVE an asteroid. If an entity like a government, company, or even individuals have a clearly demonstrated WAY to move an asteroid, what will prevent them from AIMING an asteroid at either a belligerent nation, island, or even a location and dropping it on that belligerent if they continue to refuse to give the “asteroid controller” what they want?

Obviously, rocks fall from space on Earth all the time. It’s also clear the SIZE of the object impacting Earth determines the degree of destruction. From the asteroid that slammed into the Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago and sealed the demise of the dinosaurs, reshaped the planet, its environment, and initiated the rise of mammals; it also gave rise to the phrase “extinction event” – but a meteorite strike doesn’t HAVE to be an “extinction event! On February 15, 2013 a meteorite slammed into the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia. While it injured over a thousand people, and damaged property, “The blast was stronger than a nuclear explosion, triggering detections from monitoring stations as far away as Antarctica. The shock wave it generated shattered glass and injured about 1,200 people.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRrdSwhQhY0 )

While Chelyabinsk was clearly a natural event, what would prevent disgruntled asteroid miners from doing the math (just because they’re miners doesn’t mean they’re stupid!), targeting a rock and sending it down to land in the laps of a particular group – or Board of Directors of the controlling corporation, for example?

All the philosophizing aside, THIS might be an issue we deal with sooner rather than later…

I’ll be looking at the other articles and mining (so-to-speak) an idea for my next post on this subject!

Resources: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/09/space-mining-business-still-highly-speculative.html ; https://impakter.com/the-problems-with-space-mining-no-one-is-talking-about/; https://phys.org/news/2022-11-asteroid-world-economy.html; https://www.researchgate.net/publication/360895801_Asteroid_Mining_Opportunities_and_Challenges; https://tech.hindustantimes.com/tech/news/untold-riches-from-asteroid-mining-the-problem-no-one-is-talking-about-71662979594608.html ; https://theconversation.com/can-we-really-deflect-an-asteroid-by-crashing-into-it-nobody-knows-but-we-are-excited-to-try-190865

Image: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/A2D5/production/_114558614_hls-eva-apr2020.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 572

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.

SF Trope: Archaeological Arms Race (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ArchaeologicalArmsRace)
Current Event: http://io9.com/carbon-nanotubes-were-an-ancient-superweapon-1707615687, http://www.ryot.org/autistic-teen-becomes-youngest-astrophysicist-world/394809, http://msc.tsinghua.edu.cn/sanya/StringMath2015/speakers.aspx

Puteri Etini shook sand from his hands and stood up, brushing it from his jeans. “What are we supposed to do with it once we get it?”

Marama Daeng looked up from the excavation and said, “This sword was supposed to be able to split the hair of a vicuna into identical halves with ease.”

“And The Massachusetts Institute of Technology needs it…why?” She shrugged and continued her work of brushing debris from the object they were unearthing. “You think it has anything to do with the superstring energy project in Moscow?” She snorted then sneezed, doubling over the hole, intent.

She straightened up and looking into the distance, she said, “They’ve tried magnets – super-cooled and room-temperature, dipole and monopoles; they’ve tried coherent EM radiation at every frequency imaginable from radio to gamma; electrical fields of every strength. They have captured a string, balanced between Earth and the Sun. Everyone is in Vysokaya Lomonosov Moscow State University – and everyone’s enemies have gathered around to see what they do.”

“Who’s the idiot who thinks a depression in the space-time continuum can be touched by something physical?”

“Jakob Barnett.”

“The man who can’t speak? He’s...he’s…” Pateri said.

“…the intellectual equivalent of Hawking, Kadanof, Ellis, Dyson, Leung, Becker, and Silk all-rolled-into-one are the name’s you’re thinking of.”

“How...”

“If I knew that, then I wouldn’t be digging in the sand in a remote corner not far from the Syria- Iraq border, south of the Euphrates River. I can only believe that he can do what he says. How about you?”

He sniffed, grinned, and drew the .45 from his shoulder holster…

Names: ♀Malaysia ; ♂ Tahiti
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

Stars of WONDER, "Star of Royal Beauty, Bright" Christmas 2022

Stars.

The foundation of science fiction is a journey to the stars. I remember as a kid searching for book titles with “star”, “planet”, “moon” or “alien” on the cover or the book spine.

One of Arthur C. Clarke’s most famous short stories is titled simply, “The Star” (Infinity SF, 1955). (If you never read it, try it here (it's short) https://sites.uni.edu/morgans/astro/course/TheStar.pdf

 Christmas lights.

What’s the connection between stars and Christmas lights? Most sources point to the practice of lighting Christmas tree candles or putting candles in the windows of homes as a measure of “pushing back the night” long, dark winter nights and having lifted various pagan religious practices in the process. Sites that are brutally honest say that Christians stole lighting, trees, yule logs and holly for the nefarious reason of subjugating all other traditions and belief systems to their own.

Others less brutal note that the reason for hanging lights at Christmas is at best unclear and at worst, disappeared like a ghost into Christmases past.

So I’m going to throw my own theory out there.

We do Christmas lights to add more stars to the universe we live in so that one particular star on one particular night might stand out even more than it already does. Adding stars to the universe – even imaginary ones on green coated electrical wire – seems somewhat silly when you consider that cosmologists number the stars in the observable universe at some thirty sextillion (30 followed by twenty-one zeroes). Others opine mathematically that the universe is infinite so that there are an infinite number of stars.

Cool! Ain’t God great?

OK, so rather than theorize why “we” put up Christmas lights, I’ll tell you that I like to put up Christmas lights in an infinite universe to mimic stars.

On that first Christmas night – whether it was December 25 or August 12 – a Star shone brightly in the night sky. It so outshone its usual companions that the star watchers or astrologers or magi of the Great Cultures at the time of the Christ’s birth – Ptolemaic Egypt, Carthage, Aksumite Empire in Ethiopia, Persia, Indus Valley Chera/Chara/Suaga/Satavahana, the Han Dynasty, Rome, Armenia, Scythia, the Three Kingdoms of Korea and Teotihuacan – made pilgrimage to where this bright star led them.

Three of them made it to Bethlehem in time for the Birth.

The strings of lights I put up are to celebrate the Star of Bethlehem. This celestial object seemed to hang over the City of David. The Roman Emperor had called for a census and Joseph and a very pregnant Mary had gone there. She had her Son, God Incarnate who came to Earth to solve the problem of Original Sin of humanity against God’s Sovereignty – because God loved the entire population of humanity everywhen so much that God chose to send the Son to redeem them with the only thing humans clearly understand: blood.

Jesus was born in Bethlehem as the unique Savior of all humanity – all of whom are free to accept that they are in need of saving or pass on the offer.

I choose to believe that I am in need of saving; I choose to accept Jesus as the Christ. I choose to believe that unlike what Arthur C. Clarke opines in his story, God did not capriciously wipe out a kindly advanced civilization to suit His own, cold whim. God used a cosmic celestial event to mark a cosmic spiritual event; and I use Christmas lights to remind me (and anyone who sees my lights) of the Bethlehem Star.

Someday, I want to write a story that responds to Clarke's -- not a vicious attack; not a mean-spirited diatribe; rather a gentle alternative to the one of an exploding star destroying a peaceful civilization of intelligences. I’ll let you know when my story, “The Winter Star” is done, but until then, in the words of Hub Pages columnist and fellow Minnesotan, Kika Rose: “These are my views. Attack me if you will, but I will believe what I will believe and you can’t change my mind for me.”

A Few Links To Follow:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe
http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEM75BS1VED_extreme_0.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wihttp://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEM75BS1VED_extreme_0.htmlki/Christmas_lights
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071209222932AAaEltD
http://kikarose.hubpages.com/hub/Christmas-Just-where-did-all-those-traditions-come-from
http://larryfreeman.hubpages.com/hub/How-long-do-empires-last

Image: https://www.inspiringlivesmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/image-2-e1639268944963.jpeg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 571

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: (reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmutation. I think I’m going to mine THIS idea in various ways for a while!), more specifically covered here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underworld_(1985_film)

Current Event: http://altimatrix.com/2012-and-your-dna (Truth? I can’t imagine that ANY person would actually believe this. Really.)

 Let’s focus on this little tidbit: “According to what the dowsing reveals, there will be 6-9 DNA upgrades for these people before our critical juncture in the photon belt. Their ascension will take place at the same time as other people, however they will have more advanced evolutionary changes initially.  In the meantime these people’s subtle energy bodies will be exposed to even higher frequencies of consciousness than the average person.  This will be possible due to the individual’s higher self, having the option to do this.  Once the first 3 DNA upgrades are complete, the connection to the higher self is so much less corroded that the higher self can do this type of work for individual chosen for such a role.”

 Snorri Benediktsson and Hofi Flosadóttir are going to college in Bemidji, Minnesota – they’re Icelandic exchange students.

 He wants to be a radio producer and is going for a mass media degree; she’s a future physicist studying high energy particles that enter Earth’s atmosphere through the North Pole.

 Late one night, they’re working together in the physics lab, he’s fiddling with making an electronic file and playing with special effects.

 Hofi said, “Komdu og líta á þetta!”

 He sighed. He hated when she used Icelandic. “We’re in the United States. We need to speak English.”

 “Ekki allir hér tala ensku.”

 “I know that. My roommate speaks better Spanish than he speaks English,” said Snorri.

 “Mine is fluent in Ojibwe, but she speaks English most of the time. She does use her native language when she chants at night,” said Hofi.

 “But we’re supposed to be experiencing a different culture.”

 “So why are we dating each other? Shouldn’t you be going out with a ravishing Latina?”

 “And you should be hanging out with some fratboy who only wants you for your body and has no idea you’ve got a brain that’s as sharp as your curves are mathematically perfect.”

 Hofi blushed and turned back to the window in the lab that looked north, out over Lake Bemidji and toward the frigid air of the pole. A particle collector floated in the atmosphere some hundred miles north and twenty miles up, the display near the window was connected to the college through a satellite uplink. She pointed at the rippling  patterns in the sky. “That’s what I wanted you to look at.”

 For a moment, even Snorri couldn’t ignore the display. When he finally worked up the nerve to put his arm around her, she turned away. “All right. This has all been done before. Electrons, ionized gasses and the lot has been done to death.”

 “What’s that supposed to mean?”

 “I’m going to do something no one has ever done before.”

 Scowling, he walked over to her humming machine. A small box, open on the side facing them, emitted an odd, pulsing sound. He said, “What are you going to do?”

 “I’m going to really collect particles from the aurora. I’m using one of the new particle transporters from England to move some of the particles directly from the upper atmosphere to here.”

 “Is that safe? I mean, I know I’m not a physics whiz like you, but I do know that high energy particles – like UV light – can burn human skin.”

 She shrugged. “Sure. But there are other particles up there. That’s what I’m trying to measure. That’s what I want to find – the other particles up there.” She waited a moment and then said, “Stand back.” She flipped a switch. The box sparked and she fell back, covering her facing a screaming. An intensely pink colored, gaseous substance flowed from the box, coalescing on the floor around where Hofi was writhing on the floor.

 Snorri dropped to his knees, hands grabbing her shoulders and coming into contact with the pink, amoeboid gas. For a moment he froze, then the cloud began to crawl up his arms. Both of the Icelanders shivered but otherwise didn’t move.

 Instead, their skin began to crawl.

 Literally…

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

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: Why Do ALIENS Intrigue Us (Well…ME anyway!)? Part 21

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…

I’ve been fascinated by “aliens” since I read THE SPACESHIP UNDER THE APPLE TREE when I was in sixth grade. That book propelled me into reading more and more science fiction, until it led to me writing the stuff…and now here I am!

The first aliens I really paid attention to – or understood, I suppose – didn’t happen until I reached adolescence. At that point, I got serious. By the time I was fifteen, I’d checked out every book from the library on UFOs and aliens that I could find: INCIDENT AT EXETER; FLYING SAUCERS: SERIOUS BUSINESS; UFOs EXPLAINED; PROJECT BLUE BOOK; CHARIOTS OF THE GODS; UFOs: HOAX OR REALITY; FLYING SAUCERS: SERIOUS BUSINESS. The photo above gives me chills to this day; it was in virtually every book about UFOs I read.

But what was the draw for me? Didn’t I want to play ball for the MLB, or NFL, or the NBA? Didn’t I wait with bated breath for the MLB Spring Training?

Nope. I was too busy trying to find a way I could see a UFO. I didn’t talk about it EVER, cause my family thought I was weird enough without saying anything about aliens and UFOs. Dad introduce me to “real science fiction” when he started to let me stay up and watch STAR TREK for the third season, 1968-1969 (I still have a fondness for peanut butter toast with a fried egg on it…he and I ate a late supper on “STAR TREK” nights. That was because besides steaks, Dad could cook one other thing: fried eggs.) I knew that people had seen UFOs – not because I actually KNEW someone who had, but just because…it had become a tenet of my personal philosophy that there HAD to be “someone else” out there.

I’ve since taught middle school through high school sciences – for forty years. I like to say I’ve taught every science at one time or another, from astronomy to zoology. I still use rigid science principles when I teach a summer school class to gifted and talented fourth to tenth graders. I even writer science fiction (look to the right of this column to see a few places you can read/listen to my stuff online.)

Because I’m a scientist (of sorts), however, I have to admit up front to myself and everyone else: There is absolutely NO EVIDENCE (the definition of science? “…the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation, experimentation, and the testing of theories against the evidence obtained.”) for the existence of life on any other planet ANYWHERE but here. No evidence. Therefore, belief in aliens is no different than belief in elves or magic or perpetual motion – it’s an unsubstantiated psychological construct Humans had somehow cobbled together out of the abandonment of belief in something that we simply WANT to believe: in the 1997 movie CONTACT Jodie Foster, playing the astronomer Eleanor Arroway says, “The universe is a pretty big place. It's bigger than anything anyone has ever dreamed of before. So if it's just us... seems like an awful waste of space.”

NEWSWEEK Magazine gives Sagan’s quote as: “"The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space."

But Sagan – or any other astrobiologist (the singular most peculiarly HOPEFUL field of science on Earth) has no proof that there is life anywhere but here on Earth. Granted that life is sometimes in the most inhospitable places: black smokers leap to mind; and there’s even a bacteria that live on the walls INSIDE of a nuclear reactor… (“The most extreme extremophile that is known at the moment is the Deinococcus radiodurans. This microbe can survive extreme cold, drought, thin air and acid. It has even been found on the walls inside nuclear reactors, where the radioactivity would be instantly fatal for humans.”
(https://www.micropia.nl/dossiercontent/microworld/en/12/?ph=1#:~:text=The%20most%20extreme%20extremophile%20that,be%20instantly%20fatal%20for%20humans.)

There’s the POSSIBILITY of life on other worlds living at the extreme edges of temperature, pH, humidity, and without oxygen.

But NO EVIDENCE.

So, what keeps my faith alive that there IS life “out there?”

Why do I so desperately want to believe that there are aliens? Korin Miller on YAHOOLIFE has this to say: “…what makes someone believe that aliens exist? Experts say there's more to it than many people think…The need to believe in a higher power can fuel viewpoints.

“For some people, belief in a higher power means turning to religion; for others, it's believing in aliens. Mayer says that a "strong personality characteristic" of people who believe in aliens is "a person’s need to believe that something exists beyond the earthly reality they are experiencing."

"For these individuals, their life is not fulfilling enough — they are searching for something more to fill the void inside them," he says.

“But French says that the desire to know whether we're alone in the universe is "perfectly understandable."

“Arthur C. Clarke famously said, 'Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying,'” he says.”

And why do things like this STILL HAPPEN, even in the third decade of the 21st Century?

“DORSCH: There was a rider in the COVID relief bill requiring a report from the Pentagon about the current state of the unidentified aerial phenomenon investigations inside the Pentagon…”

“CORNISH: Do you think that this is enthusiasm that will last - right? - like, now that this report is out?

“DORSCH: It would not surprise me. This is what UFO interest does. It goes through these sorts of peaks and valleys. There will always be an enthusiastic community, regardless of how visible they are in the media. But I would not be surprised if in the coming months, the story dissipates and, like a UFO does, disappears sort of back into the stars for the time being.

“CORNISH: That's Kate Dorsch, science and technology historian at the University of Pennsylvania.”

Don’t worry, this isn’t the end. I’ll be taking the subject up again in a few weeks!

Resources: https://www.capradio.org/news/npr/story?storyid=1011043735, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590291121000206 (VERY LONG paper!), https://time.com/4232540/history-ufo-sightings/, https://www.newsweek.com/arl-sagan-quotes-death-pale-blue-dot-astronomer-25-years-1661545, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremophile
Image: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp-content/uploads/sites/21/2015/01/UFO-04.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 570

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: black magic
Current Event: “In many popular video games, such as Final Fantasy, white and black magic is simply used to distinguish between healing/defensive spells (such as a "cure") and offensive/elemental spells (such as "fire") respectively, and does not carry an inherent good or evil connotation.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_magic)

Pastor Kim Dong Shik made a face and said, “I don’t dislike the game. I dislike the redefinition.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” said Martin Caine. A couple other boys from the youth group stood behind him, nodding.

Pastor Kim took a breath, but Trevor Mena cut him off, “You sure you’re not just trying to get us to stop playing a game you think is evil or something dumb like that?”

The pastor bit his lower lip for a moment then said, “Define ‘black magic’ for me.”

The third boy, Aagaard Zorilla said, “That’s easy – black magic is what you use to defend your characters from attack.”

“As opposed to what kind of magic?”

“White magic, of course!” said Trevor.

“Yeah, when you want to attack, you use black magic.”

“Or if you want to summon any of the elementals like earth, air, fire or water.”

Pastor Kim nodded. “So do you think that’s been the definition all along?”

All three boys looked puzzled. Finally Aagaard said, “That’s always been the definition I’ve used.”

“Care to hear a more…historical definition?”

All three rolled their eyes.

Pastor Kim laughed and nodded, saying, “Oh, I get it! Anything that’s older than you isn’t important anymore!” Even though Trevor and Aagaard laughed, Martin found himself stepping back. Pastor Kim smiled sadly then said, “So you don’t think I’m important anymore?”

The smile on the faces of two of the boys disappeared. Martin’s grew as he said, “Too bad you’re one of the only ones who noticed.” His voice had dropped an octave and his skin, instead of flushing red like a blush, was flushing black as if the toxins from pasturella pestis had flooded his blood vessels.

The pastor’s eyes bugged a bit, but Martin made a face. The old-fashioned “holy man” was supposed to run away, terrified of the spell the mage had cast over Martin a few weeks ago. The mage – a college professor Martin had heard speak at his sister’s college one night – had assured him that old-fashioned christianity wasn’t relevant, let alone imbued with the kind of power mages controlled.

When Martin had mentioned his pastor was pretty cool, the professor had laughed and asked if he wanted to be truly empowered – granted power great enough to make any old christian drop to their knees in quaking fear. Martin had shrugged and said, “Sure.”

At the moment, his chest swelled and he felt taller than he’d ever felt before. He seemed to be able to look over Aagaard and Trevor and down on Pastor Kim.

But instead of cowering, Pastor Kim…

Names: South Korean, American, Uruguayan
Image:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/71/e5/9871e52bbc09c525af21b8f6471eab15.jpg

Oddly Enough, This Appeared on My FACEBOOK Feed Today...

Oddly enough, this appeared on my FaceBook feed today via Writers Write who added a new photo to the album: More Quotes On Writing. The Quotable Anne McCaffrey.

WRITING ADVICE: Short Stories – Advice and Observation #20: Anne McCaffrey “& 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 observations by Anne McCaffrey – with a few from myself…

I "met" Anne McCaffrey long ago, when I was 21 and bought the 1978 paperback publication of DRAGONFLIGHT (the cover is below). I got it brand new for $1.50 at B. Dalton Booksellers at Brookdale, a now defunct and bulldozed mall a few miles from home. I was in my second year of college, had a job, and often went there to cruise for my science fiction fix. While the cover made it LOOK like a fantasy (which I usually deplored), reading the first paragraph, standing there next to the SCIENCE FICTION shelves, captured me for the next three decades:

“When is a legend legend? Why is a myth a myth? How old and disused must a fact be for it to be relegated to the category ‘Fairy-tale’? And why do certain facts remain incontrovertible while others lose their validity to assume a shabby, unstable character? Rukbat, in the Sagittarian sector, was a golden G-type star. It had five planets, and one stray it had attracted and held in recent millennia.”

I went on to read all of the DRAGONRIDER books – usually numerous times – and even sought out the original issues of ANALOG in which “Weyr Search” (October 1967) and “Dragonrider” (December 1967) appeared. The year they were published, I was too busy playing with Major Matt Mason in the sandbox…I was 10 years old.

She passed away after a career that covered half a century.

I’ll point out that she started her career with “The Ship Who Sang”, a novelette in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction…(ironically, the F&SF story was about a starship with a Human brain; the ANALOG story was about fire-breathing dragons). But she DID begin with short stories, and for that reason, I wanted to know what she had to say about writing them, then to look and see if I picked up anything from reading her writing.

“Once the kids are away at school – which is how I got to write a novel. In 1965 my daugh­ter, who is the youngest, went to school full time. It was like, who pulled out the plug? I had eight hours I could plan my time in. Okay, so I put on a load of wash or I’d start something for dinner in be­tween writing chapters, but I had the time I could devote to the concentrated work that a novel requires.”

I’ve discovered that this is truth for me as well. When the kids were infants, I wrote late into the night rather than any time when they were awake. Parenting was a full-time job in addition to my “money-making job” (I didn’t professionally sell a story until 1994, when ANALOG bought my first story. When I got the acceptance letter from Stan Schmidt, I wept.) Since retiring, I’ve written one novel, several dozen stories, and I’m editing a novel now that takes place on Mars and is as long as Kim Stanley Robinson’s GREEN MARS.

“The Milford Science Fiction Conferences that were held with all published writers. Damon Knight, Judy Merrill and Kate Wilhelm were the administrators of that. You had to submit a story to be criti­cized. Boy, moment of truth. Now listen­ing to twenty-five or thirty other writers in the field criticize stories, you got an awful lot of information on how to put a story together and also how to look for flaws in your own work. So it was ex­tremely good. Although I never put any of the stories that really meant a lot to me, like the ship stories or the Pern stories, into the conference I still learned a great deal about writing from that. So the peer group was extremely critical at that point in time.

While there is no Milford SF Conference in the US anymore, and I can’t afford events like Clarion, Odyssey, the defunct Orson Scott Card’s Literary Boot Camp, and Realm Makers – I can barely afford to sporadically attend fan conventions here in Minneapolis like MinniCon, MarsCon, and DiversiCon. So, as did Anne McCaffrey did, I rely on myself and a couple of other writer friends. I didn’t know any hard science fiction writers near me – except for Gordon R. Dickson and Clifford D. Simak. But I was a “no-one” writer, so even though I fantasized about taking the bus out to Simak’s house and knocking on his door, I never did. My parents thought I was crazy enough as it is!

“I can’t not write. So I’m busy with something most of the time. I am a story teller…That’s what writing is all about…making others see what you have put down on the page and believing that it does, or could, exist and you want to go there. Tell the readers a story! Because without a story, you are merely using words to prove you can string them together in logical sentences…Don't try to impress your reader with style or vocabulary or neatly turned phrases. Tell the story first!...I would recommend the short story form, which is a lot harder to write since you have to be so careful with words, until there is plenty of time to doodle through a novel.”

Maybe I read it from her first, but I have always felt that I can’t NOT write. I even wrote a blog post about something that happened to me while I was taking classes to get my Masters degree in school counseling and was entirely unable to write fiction because I was both working a forty-hour-a-week job and taking one or two classes a semester to get my Masters. I became physically ill – and didn’t even know it until I reflected on it some months later. So, my body requires that I write!

I do love to help people see something important. While few of my stories have what you’d call a “message”, all of them are specifically “about something”. For example, my story, “Dinosaur Veterinarian” is in the November/December issue of ANALOG Science Fiction & Fact. It takes place in South Korea and involves genetic engineering, the 625 War (what the South Koreans call the event, Americans call the Korean War, and the North Koreans calls either the “Fatherland Liberation War” or alternatively the “Chosǒn [Korean] War”), profound prejudice (which one reviewer thought was unrealistic or unbelievable…though I wondered if she’d lost a parent to a foreign power during a military conflict she would find the character’s motivation believable…)

Finding the story is often the hardest part of writing! I had to start a recent piece of work twice because I wasn’t sure WHOSE story it was. I’ve got a couple of other stories where I have to figure out whose story needs to be told.

“I have always used emotion as a writing tool. That goes back to me being on the stage…You must have occasionally read a book that annoyed you for some indefinable reason: It may be that the writer did not totally believe what he was writing. That disbelief comes across to the reader, making him/her uncomfortable indeed, and destroying any other factors the writer may have had working in his favor…One of the reasons the westerns of Louis L'Amour are so immensely popular is that he is known to have walked any area he used in one of his novels, known it so intimately that he could tell when a boulder or a pebble had been moved. This knowledge comes through to the reader and enhances his/her confidence in the author. Granted we can't all do such on-the-spot investigation, but we can research pertinent details and believe in what we're saying. It isn't so much a ‘suspension of disbelief’ as insurance that you will be believed. What is the cynical saying—‘Believe you're telling the truth, even if you're lying about it?’…We all must have those moments of high tragedy and personal frustration, anger, or hilarious humor (the latter being in very short supply in most lives), and we can translate those into the material we wish to enhance with an emotional content. But the writer has to be so immersed in those emotions, believe in them so firmly, that they reach the reader!...I have always believed in Pern. I enjoy going there: I enjoy poking holes in its complacency and seeing what happens to the people nearest the holes. I am comfortable with Pern. I know a lot more about it on an instinctive or intuitive level than even my most devoted reader. I keep lists of all kinds of things about my characters and my places…As long as you believe in them, you can convince your reader that the circumstances are valid for the course of the story. But you must deeply, sincerely, madly believe in what you are writing as you write, or the whole thing will fall flat on its face.”

This has manifested itself in an odd way as I edit through a (currently) 800,000 word story I finished writing several year ago that is both complex and has succeeded in drawing me into it – and even though I’m the one that wrote the revelation, I found I was SURPRISED by the twist in the plot. I’m pretty sure it can’t get better than surprising yourself in a story you wrote – and it was a LOGICAL surprise (if that makes any sense! HOWEVER, using emotion to rive story is something I'm not very good at. I need to sharpen that skill!

Tell us a bit about the short story "Beyond Between" in the Legends 2 Anthology from Del Rey. The story is about a very interesting facet of the Pern Universe…I don't have organized religion on Pern. I figured – since there were four holy wars going on at the time of writing – that religion was one problem Pern didn't need. However, if one listens to childhood teachings, God is everywhere so there should be no question in any mind that he is also on Pern. Thus, there is a heaven to which worthy souls go. So, without mentioning any denomination of organized religion, I figured that both Moreta and Leri deserved respite after their trials... and that's where ‘Beyond Between’ is.”

I found this amazing! I’ve always felt an indefinable sadness when not only contemplating PERN (by the way, the name of the world isn’t a real name – it’s an acronym regarding the type of planet it was labeled after it was surveyed: Parallel Earth, Resources Negligible – P E R N…), but wondering what happened to McCaffrey to lead her to lose organized religion on her imaginary world. This was a bit surprising and I’ll add it to my trove of little things I know about her – and how those things somehow combined in her mind to create the many worlds of Anne McCaffrey.

What do you hope to give readers through your work? “Mostly I'm telling people that they don't have to be victims. They can be survivors but I don't as a rule put 'messages' in my writing.”

Finally, I think I’ve started to learn this – not the specific message she weaves in her stories, rather the idea that stories should MEAN something. They should inspire, challenge, or cause us to grow. Stories can even make us angry – especially if instead of directing our anger outward to destroy as many people as we can, I direct it inwardly and use it to root out lousy ideas and attitudes in my own life; or even figure out how to use that energy to change the world around me and help people to live better, more peaceful lives.

References: https://www.writing-world.com/sf/mccaffrey.shtml, https://sfmistressworks.wordpress.com/category/anne-mccaffrey/, https://www.writinganalytics.co/quotes/21/ , https://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com/tips/mccaffrey.shtml, https://www.azquotes.com/author/19855-Anne_McCaffrey/tag/writing, https://www.tor.com/2015/04/01/anne-mccaffrey-gave-us-all-our-own-dragons-to-ride/, https://bobneilson.org/interviews/anne-mccaffrey/, https://www.dragoncon.org/dailydragon/dc1999/be-careful-what-you-wish-for-you-may-get-it-an-interview-with-anne-mccaffrey/, https://www.locusmag.com/2004/Issues/11McCaffrey.html, http://www.kittywumpus.net/blog/2015/06/01/the-sf-that-was-isaac-asimov-introduces-anne-mccaffrey/, https://m.media-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/b4/ea/5c061363ada0f65b32d50110.L.jpg

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

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 569

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: Time Travel
Current Event: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2665781/Could-time-travel-soon-reality-Physicists-simulate-quantum-light-particles-travelling-past-time.html

Anton Naoumov shook his head. “You’re not going to get me into that thing. I signed aboard this ship to practice being a paramedic, not to have my atoms scattered back and forth across space by this gadget.”

Piia Takala grinned, “You’re not going anywhere in space, Anton! It’s...”

“I know – it’s a time machine. But didn’t Einstein have some theory that space and time are related? Intimately.”

Piia blinked in surprise and managed to say, “I’m sure you got that wrong. You never had a physics class, did you?”

“I didn’t need the class. I’m not a total idiot, you know! Medical majors can dabble in other stuff, so I did. And I didn’t get it wrong,” he said, tapping his handheld computer. “It says right here that Einstein wrote about it and W. K. Clifford described the effect of gravitation on space and time. He figured out it was easily visualized as a ‘warp’ in the geometrical fabric of space and time, in a smooth and continuous way that changed smoothly from point-to-point along the fabric of space and time.”

Piia pursed her lips. She’d never get him into the thing to go back with her if she let him dig any deeper. She said, “Granted. Space and time are intimately connected. But this isn’t going to be scattering your atoms anywhere. The only things that will be scattered are the quanta that make up the atoms. Those are only going to be shifted a little...”

He held up his hand and said, “What do you want me to do this for anyway? What’s so all-fired important about me doing this?”

She sat down on the stool in front of the control board. The time-shift chamber wasn’t really a chamber at all – it was a platform made of ultradense matter that was so massive, it was making a tiny dimple in local space-time. Above, a bank of high energy lamps pointed downward to an EM lens that would focus them on the head of the subject with enough force to shove the person through the dimple and into another time. The time period was pinpointed by the tightness of the focus and the depth of the dimple. Piia’d done the calculations three times. She took a deep breath and finally said, “I want you to stop the Finnish Civil War of 1918.”

He scowled then said, “How am I supposed to do that?”

“You have to let the one man who can stop the whole mess die.”

“What?”

“It has to look like a natural death, too. I figured all you paramedics know how to keep people alive when they’re on the brink of death, you probably know how to push them over, too.” She slipped the stun gun from her pocket, flicking it on to maximum strength and minimum dispersion.

“You want me to commit murder?”

“Don’t worry about it – if you’re successful none of this will ever happen.”

“What?”

“I want you to let my great, great, great grandfather die,” she said as she stunned him.

Names: ♀Finland, Thailand ; ♂ Bulgaria, Iceland
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: Aliens From Alien Worlds PART 20

I’ve been teaching a class for gifted and talented children for almost thirty years called ALIEN WORLDS. It’s a popular class. I teach it twice each summer and also frequently teach the class at an annual conference for the parents of GT kids. (I'm doing it this weekend, actually.)

I used to let the students, who range in age from nine to thirteen, just choose an imaginary star with an imaginary star system. Of course, I started the class in 1997…since that time, we have grown the Open Exoplanet Catalog (http://www.openexoplanetcatalogue.com/) from nonexistent to containing 3468 confirmed exoplanets and they have to pick the star system they’re going to “grow” from those. In fact, the Catalog has become so much a part of our culture that the spellchecker on this laptop accepts it as a word – and I didn’t have to add it as I did in the past.

The discovery of new star systems makes it into the news regularly with the most recent splash being the Trappist System (40 light years away): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRAPPIST-1, as well as the biggest splash before that, Kepler-60 (2500 light years away) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler-90), and the “first” among the splashes, Kepler 186 (500 light years away) with its Earth-sized planet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler-186), and Gliese 876 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_876).

I started teaching the class using a book called HABITABLE PLANETS FOR MAN (http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/commercial_books/2007/RAND_CB179-1.pdf) and still use several graphs from it to this day in my Power Point lecture.

I begin this class with a discussion in which I ask the question, “How many of you actually believe in aliens?”

The kids are somewhere between enthusiastically waving their hands in the air and scowling at me. I usually smile and backtrack and say, “OK – how about this. Raise your hand if you believe,” (I flash an image of Gram-stained bacteria), “that there is microscopic life ‘out there’ that didn’t originate on Earth?”

They’re much more confident when they raise their hands now. I flash the next image, the bizarre Hydnora africana and ask if they believe that there might be alien plants. Most of the them are fine with that. When I get to animal life, I flash an image of the star nosed mole. They laugh, but are a bit less certain. Finally, I show a full Gray, bulging eyes and bulbous head and all, no UFO present, but might as well be one in the background. By then, half of the students have dropped their hands. It’s a lot of big leaps to go from alien bacteria to intelligent alien life. Then I ask them if we have found real, certifiable evidence.

One or two might mention the fossilized “Martian bacteria”, but I point out that the consensus that it’s the result of chemical reactions and not the remains of life is pretty solid in the scientific community (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Hills_84001). So…other than reports of alien abductions (which always gets a good giggle from these critical thinkers), I tender to them that there is NO EVIDENCE of life off of Earth.

“What about water under the ice of Europa?” one of the kids offers. I nod, then point out that unlike Minnesota, where a cold winter may cause the ice to reach four or five meters thick, the ice on Europa is estimated to be between 75 and 100 KILOMETERS thick. They can’t take their ice augers and drill through the surface of Jupiter’s moon!

Now don’t get me wrong, I badly want to see evidence of aliens, but as a science teacher, I teach FACTS. Speculation is fine for messing around with, but when you talk FACTS, you’re talking SCIENCE. So, when we talk about habitable planets, we have to be careful – we’re talking habitable planets for us, not the homeworld of the Klingons (Omega Leonis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_Leonis, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon) or the Eclipsing Binary home star (Eclipsing Binary Star M31V J00442326+4127082) of the Xandar Empire in the Andromeda Galaxy.

Aliens, despite Jody Foster’s (often misattributed to Carl Sagan) protestation to the contrary that “If we are alone in the Universe, it sure seems like an awful waste of space”; are not proven by making loud proclamations that space would be a waste if we were all that there is. The statement doesn’t produce any evidence that we are not the only technological civilization in the known universe. In fact, the evidence indicates that we are the only technological civilization. Sagan hedges his bets by stating in a COSMOS episode that the nearest technological civilization is possibly two hundred light years away, but more likely 1000 light years away. There is no way for him to be wrong in any sense of the word because the potential for gathering evidence either for or against his proclamation is miniscule. So, he opts for inspiring without having to make the sacrifices necessary to see his words through to the end; unlike president Kennedy, who put American dollars where NASA could use them in order to send Humans to the Moon the first time.

The industry, economics, and pure cash built around our profound belief in the existence of intelligent alien life (https://www.inverse.com/article/25908-hunt-for-aliens-grassroots-movement-funded-by-billionaires) surpasses the net worth of the planet’s religious institutions. (Wealthiest organizations, religions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_and_religion) vs net earnings from extraterrestrial (invasion ONLY) movies (http://www.boxofficemojo.com/genres/chart/?id=scifialieninvasion.htm). To put it into cash numbers: Religions approximately $1 trillion = Alien (invasion only, since 1985) $5.8 trillion dollars.

While I AM a religious person, I am also consumed by my love for aliens. I often wonder how I'd react if I met an actual, factual, living, breathing alien. I've pretty much lost interest in "alien invasion" movies that offer no insight or appear to have been discussed seriously or thoughtfully (example: STAR WARS I: Phantom Menace -- Were they REALLY serious when they created most of the characters in that movie? Did they even THINK about how stupid...ahem. Sorry. I'll take my aliens from "Arrival", thank you very much -- alien, difficult to understand, but THOUGHTPROVOKING!

I hope there are more of that type in someone's pipeline. Better yet, maybe one will appearing, hovering over Montana sometime soon: a 12 hour drive would get me there, no problem!

Image: https://68.media.tumblr.com/d740caf10011fae3eb89c340a2c0ad31/tumblr_oixik2Srjt1w0f40yo1_500.gif