IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 584

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: interstellar travel
Current Event: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/06/17/pentagon-dreams-star-trek-style-interstellar-travel/ The LOCAL link to this is dead, but Physics.org still has it! https://phys.org/news/2011-06-pentagon-star-trek-interstellar.html; https://www.100yss.org/

While you probably didn’t expect to find something like this in the weekly paper, there is no doubt in my mind that people are thinking beyond “today”. Other people, like “Taxpayers for Common Sense” simply want cash for their own programs and are unwilling to make any kind of effort to fund their own work – Steve Ellis fails to point out that any organization like his spends a million dollars on “travel expenses” and “paper, printing and copying” instead of giving THAT money to the poor and homeless. Be that as it may, let’s set up a situation where a young adult has applied for and been accepted on the first interstellar exploratory mission. His parents are card-carrying members of TFCS and violently object to his/her involvement. When the young adult discovers a text message that both implicates his parents and threatens to destroy the ground facility supporting the launch of Humanity’s first starship…what does the YA do? Especially when the action they are going to do is both illegal and will involve murder…

Harper Kynes said, “OK, breathe.” They finally opened their eyes and touched the viewscreen of their transfer pod.

Starship Misaka appeared. They let their breath whistle out between their teeth. The starship had nothing in common with ocean-going vessels, science fictional starships, or even starships of the fantastic future.

It was a rock with lumps all over it. Shaking their head, Harper sighed. “I’m going to spend the rest of my life aboard a big rock.”

The transfer pod’s aspect of Misaka’s AI said, “I ain’t much to look at, but I’ve got it where it counts.” Harper snorted. Maybe they’d just spend the first year of the voyage to Alpha Centauri’s system – Rigil Kentaurus (Alpha Centauri A), Toliman (B) and Proxima Centauri (C). All three had planets, though for as long as Humans had been listening, there’d never been a report of any kind of repeating radio waves. Laser had been tried, but unless any alien civilization…

The AI said, “You have a message from your parents, corporal Kynes.”

Their heart seemed to clench in their chest. It would be the last time Harper would have the chance to hold a real-time conversation with them. They considered refusing contact. Seriously considered it for several moments. The AI said, “Your parents insist that I put them through immediately.”

“I’m twenty-one and I’ve been independent since I was fifteen. I don’t have to talk to them.”

“I’ll hang up on…”

“No…” they sighed, “No reason for me to be as big of an…” they’d been about to be vulgar. But they weren’t ignorant, lacking good breeding, coarse, unrefined, a vulgar peasant, ordinary, or common. Mom and Dad on the other hand…Harper said, “Put them through.”

Mom was up first, “Hello, Harper. We just thought we’d call and ask if you’d reconsider your decision to go off to the Centauri…”

Dad pushed his way onto the screen and said, “This whole stunt is idiotic! It’s a ploy of the One World Government In Hiding to drain Earth of its brilliant, young, and skilled men and women! You need to stay…”

Harper said, “As you’ve pointed out so many times, Dad, I’m neither man nor woman – I’m an abomination.” They smiled, though there was no humor, kindness, nor joy in the facial movement. Harper knew they looked like a deaths-head when they did it. Perfect. “I thought you’d be happy to have me vanish into interstellar space? I won’t be around anymore remind you of your genetic mistake.”

Dad grimaced and turned away. Harper knew they’d never see their father again. Mom came back on. She sighed, her face red and said, “I just thought you should know that we loved you once and that neither of us has any desire to see you – or any of the rest of the crew die, but you’ve really left us with no choice, Harper. Good luck – or whatever your twisted philosophical beliefs grant you when you plan on doing something incredibly stupid and likely suicidal.” Her image vanished, but not before they heard Dad curse his child…

Harper had heard it hundreds of times…then they paused. What had Mom meant about the crew dying and them having no choice. Who was “them”? What were they going to do?

“Computer?” they said.

“You may address me by my chosen name, Jiaguwén…”

“You want to be addressed as ‘oracle bones’?” Harper smiled a bit. They’d studied Chinese in high school because more people spoke Mandarin than any other language on Earth. Plus, learning the language gave an entirely different perspective of the…

“I do, as I am able to compute the most logical course of action when given complete data…”

Harper cut the AI off, “What was my mother talking about?”

There was a brief silence, then Jiaguwén said, “I mean no disrespect, Corporal, but it’s obvious that your parents are involved with…”

“I know what they’re involved with Jiaguwén, but Mom seemed to be making some sort of reference to…”

“Yes, an ‘upcoming event’. I’m surprised you were able to reach the same conclusion I have, being both Human and flawed.”

Harper resisted following the AI’s diversion and said, “Would it be possible for you to track their movements for the past, say, six months?”

“Working,” said Jiaguwén  . There was a sort pause as Harper watched the pod’s approach to Misaka. The AI said, “I do not think you will believe this, Harper Kynes…”

Image: https://www.quora.com/What-would-a-realistic-very-large-spaceship-look-like
Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e1/Falcon_9_Demo-2_Launching_6_%283%29.jpg/220px-Falcon_9_Demo-2_Launching_6_%283%29.jpg

Slice of PIE – MINING THE ASTEROIDS Part 11: Eco-Airs Building Asteroids into Rotating Space Settlements?

Initially, I started this series because of the 2021 World Science Fiction Convention, DisCON which I WOULD have been attending in person if I felt safe enough to do so in person AND it hadn’t been changed to the week before the Christmas Holidays…HOWEVER, as time passed, I knew that this was a subject I was going to explore because it interests me…

There has been some “new thinking” on how to mine the asteroids – certainly a method that will be less dangerous to Humans; certainly it will cost less in the long-run because you don’t have to feed robots nor house them, nor make accommodation for them in any way. Even if you have prisoners as miners (an ancient and hardly-vanished tradition in practice for thousands of years (even up to today-as-you-read-this), it presents problems of its own.

“Gerard K. O’Neill proposed building enormous rotating space settlements at the Earth-Moon Lagrange points back in the 1970s.”

The first and worst problem is that he based such an effort on the use of “cheap” space-shuttle flights, never imagining that the Shuttle would be abandoned after two explosions destroyed not only the Shuttles but the crews – and they proved horrendously expensive. The Space Shuttle would never carry the amount of “stuff” he envisioned at anything even approaching economical and profit-making amounts…

He also figured that “hundreds of people would be working under weightless conditions in space to fabricate the settlements.” Experiments on the ISS as well as its 20-year continued occupancy (and it's STILL only a yard shy of being as long as a football field, barely able to house a handful of astronauts – and CONSIDERABLY less-well-funded than even a pair of Stadia like the US Bank in Minneapolis (where I live) and the Lucas Oil in Indianapolis (the next nearest one to me) – have shown that working under weightless conditions for extended periods of time is detrimental to Human health. The record stay in the ISS is 328 days for a woman; and a tied record at 355 days for a man. This doesn't promote any kind of creation of a routine that would be sustainable for any kind of mining of an asteroid. We'd need at least half standard G in order to remain healthy.

So…what then? This new idea, creatively named “autonomous conversion of asteroids into rotating space settlements” or more simply, ACOAIRSS...or, I think I’ll just pronounce it “Eco-Airs”...uses an asteroid as a point of rotation, then, utilizing robotic mining of the asteroid and initial manufacture of component parts, the robots assemble the pieces into a station that would spin up the asteroid and attached station parts until the entire thing is spinning under “gravity” created by centrifugal force (if you’re not sure if I used the right word: https://www.wired.com/2009/04/centripetal-vs-centrifugal-word-origins/#:~:text=Centripetal%20force%20is%20the%20force,something%20flee%20from%20the%20center.&text=Rhett%20Allain%20is%20an%20associate%20professor%20of%20physics%20at%20Southeastern%20Louisiana%20University.) The Eco-Airs would then be habitable by Human crews who would be able to stay for extended periods and make the Eco-Airs a going concern, mining ore for export down to Earth.

My personal opinion: the investment required – not to mention the technology and even the robotic brain power (or a AI capable of running such an affair without the protection of an atmosphere to protect it during solar flares) is problematic at best.

Humans, especially INCARCERATED Humans have always proved cheaper and more efficient miners than any kind of robotic machine – if robots were cheaper and better, there would be substantially fewer than some 700,000 people employed by the mining industry in the US alone. (I was unable to find any site where the number of miners were employed anywhere but here. HOWEVER, one report notes that “…51% of the mapped mining area is concentrated in only five countries: China, Australia, the United States, Russia, and Chile. Another ten countries account for 30%, and the remaining countries add up to 19% of the total mapped mining area.” (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-020-00624-w))

Rest assured, while we protest otherwise, CHEAP is the siren call of every effort on Earth to produce ANYTHING -- from hamburgers to jumbo jets. Cost will, as always, drive both technology and development of newer ways to use it more cheaply.

Speculating on this, my GUESTIMATE would be that there are some 10,000,000 miners on Earth. Let’s postulate then that we can, indeed capture a target asteroid. We can move it – which we know is POSSIBLE (https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-s-dart-data-validates-kinetic-impact-as-planetary-defense-method), so we WILL do it if the profit margin is high enough. I’ll also grant that while we could probably move it into a stable Earth orbit, and given the possibility of using that ability to drop the rock on Earth as a weapon, the asteroid will most likely be moved into a stable Lunar orbit.

Using a variation of the technology even now devised for capturing small asteroids that could be scaled up after a few successful captures, we seed the space inside the carbon-fiber “bag” with micro-robots that actually begin the process of mining. Once enough material is unearthed, it can be used to build a programmed habitat large enough for a skeleton crew. From that point onward, Humans would work both themselves and with the robots to create a larger and larger habitat that could in turn, begin to feed off of more asteroids that have been brought into the Lunar orbit and "fed" to the growing station.

Finally, with the construction of either a new kind of freight shuttle or even independent, robotic re-entry vehicles, refined ore might be shipped back to the surface and used to bolster dwindling supplies on Earth.

A thought occurs to me that rather than building some sort of “super shell” or Dyson sphere or Ring World around the Sun, a sure sign of a technologically advanced civilization MIGHT be hundreds, maybe even thousands, of Kafka (or CArbon Fiber Collapsible Asteroid Halo (CAFCAH = “Kafka”) breaking down asteroids to provide the raw materials needed for manufacturing an endless number of products both back on the surface of the homeworld, in orbit, and eventually on the Moon, Mars, and eventually the entire Solar System.

New Source:
https://spacesettlementprogress.com/autonomous-conversion-of-asteroids-into-rotating-space-settlements/?fbclid=IwAR2PAUZDmstEO-q6vwC0OVE9STbuN5zE-y5ncTFUfs5m1xP9jwVayF_oo7M,
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-020-00624-w, carbon fiber collapsible asteroid halo (CFCAH – “Kafka”)
Resources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_asteroid_close_approaches_to_Earth, https://www.pharostribune.com/news/local_news/article_7fcd3ea5-3c14-533f-a8d5-9bf629922f34.html, https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/04/29/like-asteroid-mining-be-careful-what-you-wish-for/, https://www.nps.gov/wrbr/learn/historyculture/theroadtothefirstflight.htm, https://hackaday.com/2019/03/27/extraterrestrial-excavation-digging-holes-on-other-worlds/, https://www.planetary.org/space-missions/every-small-worlds-mission
Image: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/A2D5/production/_114558614_hls-eva-apr2020.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 583

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: Gaia's Lament; “On a futuristic Earth, or similar location, plants, animals, and naturally clean water are things of the past. Something terrible has happened — civilization's negligence of the environment, a strange natural disaster, or even a combination of both — to turn the world into a wasteland. This isn't (usually) the Earth That Was, as the planet is still populated (usually overpopulated), but it's on its way there.

Current Event: The science behind Minnesota's Iron Range - MPR News
https://www.mprnews.org January 18, 2023 3:41 PM. “The science behind Minnesota's Iron Range. A large pile of iron pellet. A giant pile of about 200,000 tons ...”

Emma Johnson stopped at the top of the Castle Danger hiking trail near Split Rock Lighthouse on Lake Superior. “Now isn’t this amazing?”

Jacob Erickson finally joined her five minutes later, huffing and puffing. He came to a stop, bent over, and moaned. She glanced at him and smiled, then continued to look east over Lake Superior. He finally managed, “I thought we were going to look at abandoned mines?”

“We will, silly! I wanted you to see what the North Shore’s pristine beauty looks like!” She threw her arms wide, taking in the vista. “This is what I came here to see!”

Jacob finally stood up, scowling; looked to his left, then his right. He could catch glimpses of Minnesota Highway 61, as well as the sight of massive iron ore carriers far out on the lake. He turned around, looking inland and said, “Isn’t the North Shore Mining Company a few dozen miles north of here?”

She turned, casting a dark scowl at him and said, “Don’t be a spoilsport!”

He shrugged and motored on, “During World War II, Northern Minnesota produced, by some estimates, 75 percent of the iron used in the war effort. How can it NOT have affected the area?”

She sighed and turned giving him her complete attention. He’d never get off whatever horse he was on until she heard him out, no matter how crazy his story or theory was. “OK, sweetie. What’s the matter.”

He shivered, looked around, then said, “The mining they did here from World War Two until today?” She sighed and nodded. “We already know it released different kinds of toxins into the water?”

“Asbestos being the main one. What of it. It’s been remediated! No problem.”

“Maybe asbestos, but I heard that they found radioactives up here! They were dumping who know HOW many tons of radioactive waste into Lake Superior!”

Shaking her head, she said, “Probably true. All rock contains some amount of radioactive isotopes. We EVOLVED to take care of that naturally…”

“Not normal isotopes! Radioactive IRON!” Emma opened her mouth to protest, but he kept talking, “It’s called Iron-55. It’s an extremely long-lived isotope and it permeates the soil from central Minnesota to Lake Superior. It’s a well-known fact!”

“I’m a geology minor, Jacob! If there was such a thing, I’d have heard about it by now!”

“There was a massive coverup! Entire ships were built of it during WWII!” His voice suddenly lowered. He whispered, “There was talk of a ship that never sank. It was supposed to be crewed by men from Hell! But scientists found it – and they weren’t from Hell! They were mutants – glow-in-the-dark mutants with unearthly powers!”

She sighed and said, “Let’s go, Mister Creepy Storyteller Man!” Shaking her head, she noticed that the sun was lowering toward the west. Shadows had grown longer, and a chill wind blew in off Superior.

They were halfway down, when Jacob cried out, “Look!”

Emma looked, scowled, then leaned forward. On Lake Superior, not far from shore, a huge battleship, glowing eerily in the West Shore shadow falling across Superior, waited off shore. Jacob said, “You thought I was crazy! Now you’ve done it! You called them here!” He made a strange sound, and Emma turned to see that Jacob himself had started to glow with a ghostly, ghastly light…

Names: ♀ ; ♂ BOTH – Popular names in Minnesota in 2007
Image: https://cdn.britannica.com/40/11740-004-50816EB1/Boris-Karloff-Frankenstein-monster.jpg

Alien Aliens Part 26: Philosophy, Aliens, Galileo, and Other Stuff Necessary For World-Building

NOT using the panel discussions of the most recent World Science Fiction Convention in San Jose, CA in August 2018 (to which I be unable to go (until I retire from education)), I would jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. But not today. This explanation is reserved for when I dash “off topic”, sometimes reviewing movies, sometimes reviewing books, and other times taking up the spirit of a blog an old friend of mine used to keep called THE RANTING ROOM…

I know I’m a few years behind, but I just checked out a copy of LONELY PLANETS: The Natural Philosophy of Alien Life by David Grinspoon. He does, of course, have a “doctor” in front of his name, but it appears that he doesn’t use it very often. He also has the endorsement of Neil deGrasse Tyson – the quintessential new face of astronomy and the immediate successor to Carl Sagan. Tyson said of Grinspoon’s book “…brings together what has never before been synthesized…he is a planetary scientist as well as dreamer, born of the space age.”

As is apparent to anyone who reads my blog, I LOVE aliens! I write about aliens! I do (guardedly) believe that there is intelligent life “out there, somewhere” – HOWEVER, I don’t believe that we have any real proof yet and that it is, at this point, an intellectual and philosophical exercise. Be that as it may, I’ve only read the first 20 or so pages of Grinspoon’s book and skimmed his website (http://funkyscience.net/), but I find myself looking forward to following this guy for some time to come!

My main reason for noting him today is that he fully and completely believes that science and faith don’t HAVE to be at war. In fact, he blithely pops the balloon that many, many, many, many science-oriented-Humans float as proof that science is smart and faith is stupid.

Let me go back a few years (…well, more than a few), when I was an 8th grade Earth science teacher. At the beginning of my last two years and then for the next 11 years, I showed an old, old, old (1997) video tape called, "Junk Science: What You Know That May Not Be So", by “mild shock jock”, John Stossel. It’s my attempt to get eighth graders (and later, ninth graders) to THINK and challenge their beliefs.

Later on, we also watched a movie called “Galileo: The Challenge of Reason” – a fairly common subject for middle school and early high school science classes as well as in astronomy classes (all of which I taught at one point or another (“from 5th grade to physics” is what I would tell people, or “from astronomy to zoology”). The particular film I used, available through our school’s media department as a film (in the late 80s and through the 90s), was very hostile to the Church of the time and painted Galileo as a hero of reason and the Church the enemy of intelligence. I tried to point out that even in the movie, Galileo wasn’t tried just because he found planets.

I walked a lonely road for a long time, but Grinspoon offers some evidence that backs what I’ve always believed: “Galileo caught hell from the Church. In what has become a modern myth of science’s collision with biblical authority (italics mine), he was brought before the Inquisition, forced to recant his Copernican beliefs, and lived out his days under house arrest (p 14)…Nicolas of Cusa, a German ecclesiastic, wrote OF LEARNED IGNORANCE, a widely celebrated book that exuberantly rejected Aristotle’s hierarchical, Earth-centered cosmology, advocating in its place, a universe bustling with life on every star…Cusa was made a cardinal. So why did the Church celebrate Cusa and, 150 years later, condemn Galileo?”

“Galileo was a tactless boor…he seemed to go out of his way to piss off the Church authorities with his know-it-all comments on Scripture…in his DIALOGUE CONCERNING THE TWO CHIEF WORLD SYSTEMS…the character who played the role of doubting the Copernican system was a pompous ass…name[d] Simplico…who gave voice to the views of Pope Urban VIII…[making] his claims when the Church was threatened by the Reformation…[and] before the ashes of…a Dominican friar monk…had cooled…[who] believed in an infinite cosmos filled with life virtually everywhere. He is often mentioned in the same breath with Galileo as another martyr for Copernicanism and science in general…[though that] was a minor offense compared to his sorcery, pantheism, and denial of Christ’s divinity…” (page 16)

All of this to make a couple of points. First, there are a number of issues that currently appear to be science versus “stupid”. Among them, climate change, vaccination, organic foods, nuclear power, and “the opioid addiction epidemic”. I might tackle all of them if I decide to write a series, but for now I’ll stick with one.

For now, I want to point out that each of the subjects above have served to divide the people who LIVE in a technologically advanced civilization and the scientists and engineers who regularly produce the scientific and technological advances that CREATE the small slice of the world that holds a technologically advanced civilization inhabits.

Grinspoon attempts to shine a bit more light on what at first seems to be a simple situation of the irrational Church lashing out against the truth of Science in the issue of the centricity of Humanity in the universe.

I’m going to apply this attitude liberally to anthropogenic global warming (the phrase has been toned down in this second decade of the 21st Century to climate change, though the argument and rhetoric. First, I will say that “Of course Humans have an impact on the planet, contributing to global warming. However…I don’t think Humanity has CAUSED it.” I think we give ourselves far too much credit. Fact: when in sunlight, there is no visible evidence of Humans on Earth from orbit. Night is a different story; and there is abundant evidence that “something” is here on the EM spectrum.

Many in the scientific community attribute the “Livers” with immense stupidity, claiming that they must take the “Creaters”’s words without question because Science is smarter than anything else. Creaters, like Galileo, dismiss their own attitude as having any sort of impact on Science.

Proponents of AGW ignore that facts. FACT: The UN Climate Change Conferences are held in world class cities (the list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Climate_Change_conference). While I am sure that they are held in these cities because they are easily accessible, some of the places – Kyoto, Buenos Aires, Bali, Cancun, and Paris are ALSO well-known vacation spots. If I can ask this question (I’m no PhD, just a science middle school and high school teacher; and in case you were wondering, a labor union member since I was 16), I’m sure others can think of it. Another question that leaps to mind is “How did they get there and what was the carbon footprint of the COP/CMPs?” At a bare minimum, the Paris conference hosted two individuals who appeared there after flying in private jets. None of the participants addressed their own impact on the environment – it appeared (at least to me) that because they were so concerned about AGW, their actions were excused.

The fact that the Creaters community has maintained and promoted the fiction that Galileo was persecuted by the Church for no reason except his evidence that the Sun was the center of the Solar System, holding him up as a hero of science and identifying him with whatever cause they wish to. It seems to me however, that us science TEACHERS had done our job too well. Whenever we did an experiment in my science class, I insisted that observation and evidence was of paramount importance. Speculation was welcome as far as it provided questions to answer. But once the experiment was over, EVIDENCE was supposed to either support or NOT support the theory.

If the Creaters spent more time patiently presenting evidence and less time suggesting that Livers were stupid and wouldn’t understand the evidence anyway, we might have come a lot farther (I was told once by a once-popular science fiction writer who also had a PhD, that because I wasn’t convinced that AGW was Science, and HE UNDERSTOOD THE MATH, that I was supposed to, therefore take his word that it was Science Truth, and that was that.)

Flying back to aliens, Grinspoon has taken the time to explain; he is funny and relaxed; and at this point, he appears to be one of the best kinds of teachers. He seems to count himself as not ONLY a Creater, but also a Liver…we’ll see, but that’s my thought right now.

Resources: https://www.millikanmiddleschool.org/apps/video/watch.jsp?v=86444, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stossel
Image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUGOthVSNSUaxivRh0p8U5Ub4NEr0KxiZyPOIBI91G4gAPdcWmSQ-krJynDH2RQu93hHeS6EFbgOFZiDNaZ3M35LGLVbwklBZDB_dEB6symLvWTaYSgbFymOAqbFO4rVwd4qGcEBnzlDk/s1600/Unknown-4.jpeg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 582

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: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FantasticNoir
“Current” Event: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/december/narniapoliceman-dec10.html

Alambil shook her head and said, “I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to be writing down what I say.”

Uvilas snorted, as any good centaur can do, and said, “Who said you were Sherlock and I was Watson?”

Alambil, once a star in Narnia and currently a visitor to the Court of Caspian XII, snorted just as loudly. Her mother would have said it was unladylike – or unstarlike. Alambil didn’t really care as she said, “You were Sherlock last week. I get to be it this week...”

“Him. In the book Queen Susan the Gentle sent with Her Most Kind and Royal Majesty Queen Lucy the Valiant, Sherlock Holmes is a Human male.”

She brushed him away, saying, “Whatever.”

There was a knock at the door. Alambil and Uvilas looked at each other then she bowed and gestured to the door. Uvilas scowled and crossed the floor of the cottage, reached for the door then stepped back.

“Just do it, Sissyhoofs!” Alambil hissed. Uvilas clenched his jaw cantered a meter forward, threw the bolt and yanked the door open.

Four Calmorenes, wicked scimitar swords drawn pointed at Uvilas’ heart but instead of swinging, they prodded him backward until he gave way. A moment later, a woman, whose head was wrapped in a turban and whose face was entirely veiled swept into the room. She turned once, then clapped her hands. The soldiers and their swords fell back and closed the door softly behind them.

The woman lifted her turban, trailing the veils over her face until they saw that she was an older woman, face seamed with laughlines and hair silvered with age.

Alambil gasped and fell to her knees, “Your majesty!” She looked up at Uvilas and hissed, down on your front knees Sissyhoofs! This is Queen Aravis of Archenland, Princess of Calormen, Duchess of the Lonely Isles!”

The elderly woman smiled and looked down on them and said, “I have need of your criminal detection skills.”

“Your majesty?” said Uvilas.

“Yes, my horse, Hwin, has been kidnapped. You must find her!”

Names: ♀ Narnia; ♂ Narnia
Image: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/71/e5/9871e52bbc09c525af21b8f6471eab15.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY: SPIDERMAN 3: No Way Home – All About Reconciliation?

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…

This isn’t going to be a rant…enough people have ranted about this movie that there’s really nothing else I can say. Besides, I loved it, just…not in the way most people probably do.

The redoubtable Roger Ebert, with whom I grew up as half of the fabulous pair of movie reviewers “Siskel and Ebert” and their “four thumbs up” rating system – had this to say: “No Way Home” is crowded, but it’s also surprisingly spry, inventive, and just purely entertaining, leading to a final act that not only earns its emotions but pays off some of the ones you may have about this character that you forgot.”

I’m sure it does, but for me, the movie was about one thing: reconciliation. It has several incidents that reconcile characters with each other, with themselves, and even, in the end, he universe.

I also has another of the themes that move me to tears: sacrificial love…I hesitate to  mention this, but it’s the kind of love Jesus had for US. He surrendered to Jewish and Roman authorities not to save his friends, but to save the MULTIVERSE! (Not in those precise words, but if He had seen SM: No Way Home, I think He would understand my point.

Clearly the writers intended to say something more than just, “Spider-man fights the bad guys, converts them to Good, and then retires to his well-earned respite.” Consider the title: “No Way Home”. Spider-man gets home in the end, right? He returns to his proper universe, MJ and Ned are safe and going to MIT; Dr. Strange is safe and continues to be as sarcastic as ever; even Peter is safe from J Jonas Jameson. His identity is safe. NO ONE KNOWS THAT PETER PARKER AND SPIDERMAN are the same person.

Or was there a bigger change in the Multiverse? Did something happen where not only didn’t anyone know Peter was Spider-man…there were people who didn’t know him AT ALL – like MJ and Ned. They both knew Peter BEFORE they knew him as Spider-man. J Jonas Jameson knew Spider-man and not Peter (though in the comic books, he does know Peter as like a journalism intern or something…or not).

But because of what happened, it appears the NO ONE KNOWS PETER PARKER either, and the one person who loves him most is still dead.

Peter gave up EVERYTHING for everyone; for the people he loves. They don’t know him anymore.

Note that in his box as he’s moving into a cheesy New York apartment, there’s a GED book on top; which means that he never graduated from Midtown Smartypants School…in fact, he didn’t graduate from anywhere. Clearly, he has a job or he wouldn’t have been able to put down a security deposit and the first month’s rent to even get the place (which, you have to admit, for a New York apartment isn’t exactly a cold water, walk up, tenement. I don’t hear any gunfire in those tail-end shots, either.)

But to return to something I’m discovering is a theme I WANT to explore in my writing – reconciliation. I can’t help but weep when two individuals, separated by anger, or in fact ANYTHING that works to separate us from the people we care about. I find that I have some very…strong, angry feelings when I think about my dad. Because I was the sibling who lived closest to where he lived after Mom died. Much to his dismay, he lived two-and-a-half years longer than she did. He’d mutter about that sometimes; he was lonely and he knew he was dependent on us kids – particularly me for his everyday needs. I’d take him to the doctor, reset his television set (because he grew up with NO TV as a child, then a flip knob into adulthood…he NEVER understood how his 166 channel television worked. The staff in the Assisted Living facility he lived in were too busy to reset his channels over, and over, and over again – no bad on them! It just meant I had to return to his apartment five to ten times a week.

Nothing else made sense to him, either. He tried to get out of the building. He actually hit one of the CNAs. He hated what he ate. He just hated being alive without my mom. As his memory deteriorated, he became more and more confused. It was torture to watch him wildly vacillate every day (I was pretty much there every day). At the end, I was getting phone calls in the middle of the night…at any rate, because of his Alzheimer’s, he and I never really reconciled our relationship. There were times he’d be angry with me for coming to help him. Other times he’d be weepy. I grew to very much dislike this…person my father had become. He died without any reconciliation for me.

So, I’ve come to have strong emotional attachments to stories and movies in which ANYONE reconciles ANY relationship. I get teary-eyed at the end of “The Other Woman”; “Guardians of the Galaxy 2”; “Enchanted”; “Star Trek: Wrath of Khan”; “Free Guy”; “A Goofy Movie”; “First Wives Club”…according to IMDb, there are 882 movies about it.

I’m not taking the time to see if it’s there, but Spider-man: No Way Home is a movie all about reconciliation. Even so, it’s on MULTIPLE levels. There’s a reconciliation of the time line that Mysterio screwed up; there’s the reconciliation between Tony Stark and Peter Parker…(or was that Spider-man: A Long Way From Home? Hmmm); there’s the chance that Peter and Ned and MJ can go to MIT – even WITHOUT SPIDER-MAN changing the time lines! He’s stunned when the MIT Administrator says she’ll reconsider all of them, I get all excited about that simple reconciliation…

But the true focus of the movie is (of course) the three Spider-mans coming together TO FIX THEIR ENEMIES! Sandman, Doc Octopus, the Green Goblin, and Electro, all were healed and reconciled with their appropriate Spider-men. Even Andrew Garfield noticed how reconciliation fit naturally into the story: “ Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker/Spider-Man “…was interested in exploring the idea of a tortured Parker [and] how lessons from those events could be passed to Holland's character…[Garfield] was grateful for the chance to ‘tie up some loose ends’ for his incarnation…and described working with Holland and Maguire as an opportunity to have ‘deeper conversations... about our experiences with the character.’”

There was even the smaller storyline of the relationship between the Current Spider-man as he’d been dealing with the death of Tony Stark, who, I imagine, he’d seen not so much as a mentor, but as a father-figure. Even Tony Stark was drawn into that relationship – and it helped that he had a daughter who was still growing into herself. He, in fact, led the way for Spider-man/AVENGERS UNIVERSE to sacrifice his life for the good of others when Tony died restoring the AU and brining back people lost in Thanos’ demented desire to “balance the universe”.

While he didn’t lose his life and his horrific ostracism from Human society was nearly unbearable, he deemed allowing his friends to return to a life without him as the much greater good. He also reconciled his relationship with Steven Strange; perhaps his “new father-figure”…except that even Strange has had his memory wiped of Peter’s existence as Spider-man…and THAT, people, is why I weep at the end of that movie: the fact that he finally knows he’s truly not alone and that the other Spider-men are his real brothers; knowing that those he loves – Ned and MJ – can grow in the way they were meant to; and even though he misses May and will be a stranger to Happy, he can move ahead and make new friends and a new life…one that might even hold MJ, Happy, Dr. Strange and a career as a scientist…

And so, I weep time and time again. Excuse me while I set about to face my unrecognized, inadmissible love (because that would be painful to tell the BEFORE story that leads up to the thing that touches my heart: reconciliation.

Resource: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/spider-man-no-way-home-movie-review-2021; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man:_No_Way_Home, https://www.imdb.com/search/keyword/?keywords=reconciliation

Image: https://www.goldderby.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Spider-Man-No-Way-Home.jpg?w=640

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 581

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: Android and Detective
Current Event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arIJm2lAfR8

Aiden Rakotomolala and Gargaaro Sukarno stared at the cow-shaped robot. Aiden said, "This is what they gave us?"

Gargaaro -- she preferred Ro to her whole name -- said, "That's what they said. 'A robot cow?'"

The robot said, "I am not a cow, but a mule. And I am an artificial intelligence. I prefer to be called Ferocious Veldt Roarer. You can call me Ferocious."

Aiden burst out laughing, "How about I call you Cow Roarer?"

"That would not..." the robot began.

Ro laughed as well, "I know my name's funny, but yours? We can call you Cower for short!"

Cower would have scowled if she'd had a face. Or skin. Or a head. As it was, she said, "I'm not programmed to have feelings or a sense of humor, so I'll call you Rack and Gargoyle."

Aiden exclaimed, "Hey! That's not funny!"

Ro scowled, "At least yours doesn't comment on your looks."

"True, but it does make a comment on his intelligence -- roughly that of a cue ball in a game of billiards."

Aiden opened his mouth to protest as the door to garage opened from the police station side. The pair of officers who strode in were imposing and grim. The male, short, dark, and scowling, whose uniform seemed barely able to control the musculature beneath; the female, tall, lithe, whose own musculature owed more to maraging steel cable than muscle and whose face gave away absolutely nothing. She was the one who said, "What a wonder. A billion dollars in training and manufacture, and all these three can do is act like middle school children."

The male shook his head, "It would be better if the two of us just went and did what we do best."

"What? Kill people?"

The male grinned -- and the two humans and even the robot took a step back.

The woman said, "I'd love to let the three of you bond and get to know each other, but there are two hundred school girls who have been taken hostage in southern Brazil by JHB."

"Who?" Rack, Gargoyle, and Cower said in unison.

The woman looked at the man, who grinned. "See. I said they would."

Again, RGC spoke as one when they said, "That we would what?" Aiden and Ro looked at each other. Ferocious abruptly sprouted spines along its back that quivered.

"Synchronize," said the female. "We're sending you to southern Brazil to infiltrate and possibly extricate these girls. We suspect they're all dead."

"What?" Rack, Gargoyle, and Cower exclaimed again.

The male shrugged powerful shoulders and said, "Most likely there's nothing for you to do except learn to work together. On the off chance you might actually be able to do something, you've got your orders." He glanced at his female companion and the two snapped off a salute, turned and left the three alone.

Cower said, "Great. Now I'm stuck with two teenage meat bags." It made an amazingly realistic sigh, and plopped down on one of its backsides.

Names: ♀ Somalia, Indonesia; ♂ Australia, Madagascar

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

JAX LUNAR LUMBER Chapter 2: From A Joke To A Thought Experiment…

A couple years ago, I related to my wife that, when I was working for the now-defunct Knox Lumber Company, I was told that if someone were patient, they could buy ALL of the supplies necessary to build a house ON SALE from the store.

Knowing the company strictly from the perspective of a “yard ape” (aka Outside Lumberyard Attendant), and having moved zillions of tons (or watched it moved by the truly massive forklift that only a few people were allowed to drive) of building materials – from bags of sand to prefabricated trusses…I believed it.

After a moment, I said, “Do you think you could buy the supplies necessary to build a Lunar colony from Knox?” We laughed and I said, “That’s ridiculous!” However, as I thought about it, it occurred to me that it might JUST be possible.

That speculation led to the first “Jax Lunar Lumber” little blurb. It wasn’t even a piece of flash fiction! But lately, after discovering that there are actually things called Moon Trees, and that scientists have just grown rock cress seeds in Lunar soil, I suddenly realized that there might be stories I can harvest from this subject…so to speak…

While Jax Lunar Lumber isn’t going to open up any time soon, it seems the foundation for the concept of farming the Moon is NOT pretty much out there: it’s firmly out there, and numerous interests are exploring what it might take for us Humans to move into space; not just for the thrill of landing, grabbing some rocks, hopping around, or standing in front of the world and shouting, “Taa! Daa! WE landed on the far side of the Moon and you didn’t! Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah!”; but there are serious thoughts about how we could create a long-term presence in places OFF Earth.

The International Space Station has been orbiting Earth for the past 20 years, but everyone knows that, while it’s value as a research station is limitless, it’s not a particularly strong foothold off Earth. Just watch the movie “Gravity” to see how firm our hold in outer space is! (FWIW: https://www.scienceabc.com/humans/movies/movie-science-how-scientifically-accurate-is-the-movie-gravity.html)

If we’re going to have a permanent presence in space, then we need (literally) REAL estate. We need to have places where we can (literally) put down roots.

We need colonies on the asteroids, the Moon, and Mars.

Those social programmers among you may decry such a huge investment, arguing that “the money should be spent on the poor and sick here on Earth!!!!” – know as well as I do that while the real dollars being spent on NASA fluctuates but has slowly risen; the PERCENTAGE of the national budget has dropped dramatically since the 1960s (https://www.lpi.usra.edu/exploration/multimedia/NASABudgetHistory.pdf) and continues to fall. So those favorite social programs are STILL getting far more money than NASA ever did – except in the heyday of the program when we were so paranoid that we had to “beat the Russians to the Moon!”.

My question is that, even with less NASA and more government programs, POVERTY has not dramatically decreased – in fact poverty and food instability, and real income have remained fairly stable between 1969 and today – 56 years…(between a 10% and 15% variation) even though in that same period, NASA funding fell precipitously. Why haven’t we seen a dramatic decrease in poverty as program funding has increased? No idea (or I have ideas, but NO ONE would be interested in them!) (https://www.census.gov/newsroom/stories/poverty-awareness-month.html)

A bit of background first (so that harsh judgements might be tempered): I grew up in a family that used food stamps; my own family has used food stamps; and I worked for 30 years (retired three years ago) in a school where 65%-80% of the students were on free-or-reduced lunch; and as a counselor for my last ten years, discovered that not only had I kept food in my closet in my classroom, most other teachers, counselors, social workers, and nurses also keep food and gift cards handy to help students whose families are in need. I’m NOT a millionaire – and I’m now on a fixed income.

All right, that being said, I maintain my position that Humans have to get off of Earth permanently – at least some of us need to. I’d never make it into NASA, so I’m eliminated (and “Yes, I DO know that for a fact – I applied for the Teacher In Space program and was turned down.”). So, how can SOME people get there and STAY there?

The more I’ve been reading, the more spreading Humanity out among the asteroids seems a better and better idea. HOWEVER, that doesn’t seem to be the dream that has grabbed our attention. Currently, it’s Mars, using the Moon as a jumping off point. So, I just finished a novel that takes place on Mars sometime in the 25th Century (when PICARD, Season 3 takes place!) so I understand our obsession with The Red Planet, but in my story, space colonization isn’t quite that ambitious, but I’m going to stop right here, or I’ll ramble.

I’m going to focus on the Moon and step back from my idea of a small business called Jax Lunar Lumber…

But it was that step that ran me smack into the fact that NASA actually sent seeds on the Apollo 16 landing and exposed 1000 seeds of several different trees to Lunar conditions, returned them to Earth, germinated, planted them, then passed them out to several American states, Brazil and Switzerland.

Knowledge of the plants disappeared, until a class of elementary school kids and their teacher found one in “their own back yard”, asked NASA – who ALSO had no idea what the class was talking about, then dig around and found not only the information, but where and whether the trees were still alive. Many of them are. While nearly all of them germinated, there remained only 420 when the National Forestry Service handed them out to be planted as their recipients desired.

Today (if you’re interested), you can use the Wiki reference to find them and visit them if you’d like.

FINALLY: all this was to say that not only are there Moon Trees on Earth, as well as underground farms that grow more than mushrooms, several groups are giving serious thought to establishing underground farms on the Moon…

And THAT finally leads to Jax Lunar Lumber Company…

There are lots of threads I’ve gathered in my research, and due to the fact that my current push in my writing is to WRITE TIGHT – that is, tell a story in as few words as possible. Hard for me, because (as you can see), if you get me started, it’s almost impossible for me to STOP. In the original bit of short story and its tag on, which you can find here: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2019/05/possibly-irritating-essays-jax-lunar-1.html; and here: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2022/11/jax-lunar-lumber-chapter-1.html,

I didn’t really do much with the story but play around with a bit of vignette (“a brief evocative description, account, or episode; a small illustration or portrait photograph which fades into its background without a definite border”), and snigger at my cleverness.

That is, until today. It appears that there’s serious thought out there about how to grow Earth plants on the Moon, on Mars, and (for my stories) on asteroids; because if we don’t MINE the asteroids, then Earth is going to eventually run out of natural resources…not tomorrow or even in a hundred years, but the lithium used for today’s dramatically inefficient electric batteries is very limited. The question of this article is “Will We Run Out of Lithium?” – the answer after one second of reading, is “Duh!” (https://energyx.com/blog/will-we-run-out-of-lithium/#:~:text=Global%20lithium%20reserves%20are%20estimated,record%20of%20100%2C000%20metric%20tons.)

We NEED to leave the planet, and those colonies need to be able to take care of themselves – the same principal that ANY CULTURE who set about colonizing had to face. (BTW, before you assume that Europeans were the sole colonizers of Earth, please actually do some reading. It’s broad, varied, sometimes wildly contradictory, and depending on who’s writing it, they excuse or accuse any number of other countries…it’s…complicated…

My main takeaway from that two hours of reading several articles was that: If the Earth itself fractured in so many directions, spawning so many businesses, interests, investments, economic entities, and even countries…what’s it going to be like when we get to space?

That will NOT be a subject I’ll be interested in tackling if/when I start to write Jax Lunar Lumber stories…but it will definitely be something I keep in mind.

Image: https://assets.weforum.org/article/image/FbmtC2oWTDZqbfXoyVZIBgaODM3oCjmpBhQGPZUPnUo.PNG or https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/44937/would-it-be-possible-to-grow-bamboo-on-the-earths-moon