Minnesota Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Speculative Fiction Convention!!!!

NO POST SATURDAY AS I WILL BE AT THIS PREMIER EVENT Friday Evening, March 29, 2024 through roughly 3:00 Sunday afternoon, March 31, 2024.

I will resume posting on Monday!

If you READ the book, would you post a Review???

 

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: The Current State of Our Solar System...and SHEER Speculation About How It Got There

My other trouble with David Grinspoon's book is that when discussing Venus....he makes virtually no mention of the fact that Venus has a retrograde rotation when compared to the rest of the planets (I don’t count Uranus among those having a retrograde rotation. That gas giant’s rotation is retrograde only because its “north” pole is actually south of its “equator” (the Solar Equator, if you will. 

That is, the planets and minor planets orbit the Sun orbit in the same direction on pretty much the same plane. Confused? OK, this is how I explain it to my astronomy classes. Imagine your head is the Sun. If you stick your arms out and start to turn slowly in (ignoring the direction at this time) and stuck ball bearings of increasing sizes on your arms with duct tape at increasing distances from your head, you would have a basic illustration of the Solar System as it turns in space. Imagine then, that each of the ball bearings are turning the same direction: except for Venus. It rotates in the opposite direction of everyone else – and it turns VERY, VERY slowly. When you reach Uranus, let it keep spinning in the same direction, but tip its north pole 98 degrees (90 degrees is like a “90 degree angle” or as you may remember from geometry or trigonometry, a “right angle”.) Uranus is tipped MORE than that…but it’s still rotating the same direction as it did when it was upright…but now it’s spin, relative to the other planets, is backwards (aka “retrograde”).
At any rate, Dr. Grinspoon talks about what it is that has created Venus’ hellish conditions and while he does include its location (closer to the Sun than Earth), the fact that the Sun is brighter and hotter today than it was when the Solar system formed), and a peculiar venology (it can’t be “geology” and “aphrodology” just sounds weird…) that includes a sort of cyclical disruptive plate tectonics (pages 171-173); he doesn’t mention the slow, retrograde rotation. By slow, I mean that a “day” on Venus is 243 Earth days; and the Sun would rise in the west and set in the east…eventually.

It could be that I haven’t reached those pages yet, so we’ll see...

AND THEN I DID REACH "THOSE PAGES" A FEW DAYS AFTER WRITING THE ABOVE...Perhaps the biggest “kick-in-the-teeth” is that he clearly lays out what happened to alter our Solar system longer ago than 65,000,000 years: “As the planets approached their final sizes, giant also-rans, the contenders that could have been planets, came hurtling down to Earth (and Mercury, Venus, etc.) at speeds of tens of thousands of miles per hour. These final giant impactors left a trail of destruction throughout the solar system, stripping Mercury of its outer rock mantle, leaving Venus spinning backward, and knocking Uranus on its side And in an event as propitious for us as it was random, a Mars-size protoplanet smacked into the young, still-forming Earth, splashing a massive ring of vaporized rock into Earth orbit, which quickly condensed to make out singular, giant Moon.” (page 82)

In my new novel, EMERALD OF EARTH I have a slightly more fantastic explanation for the current state of the Solar system: Emerald Marcillon’s mother, Nhia Okon, explains to a group of high-ranking military brass:

“The evidence we’ve gathered so far clearly indicates that a massive object, probably a microscopic black hole, grazed Uranus and tipped it on its side….A fleet of invading interstellar warships, using black-hole-energy technology probably experienced a disastrous explosion shortly thereafter. Debris swept through the solar system, probably missing Saturn but raining down on Jupiter and setting off the Great Red Spot hurricane…The worst was yet to happen…Mars had shallow oceans that teemed with microscopic life forms. A large rock, possibly an asteroid knocked from a stable orbit and carried on the shockwave of the explosion, slammed into the planet, blowing away much of its air allowing the oceans to boil away under low pressure…Another asteroid carried on the shockwave struck off the coast of what would one day be the Yucatan Peninsula. The dinosaurs and thousands of other life forms, already environmentally and genetically stressed, were launched into extinction…This is the world of an alien, probably sauroid intelligence native to the planet we now call Venus. They were aggressive and powerful. Spreading through our solar system, we have evidence that they conquered beyond it. The invasion fleet had come to put a stop to it….But the accident that destroyed the fleet and saved the sauroids from certain invasion, next threatened them with the mindless destruction of chance…An object nearly large enough to split Venus in half hit the sauroid moon, knocking it cleanly out of Venus’ orbit, where it drifted until the sun captured it again, the molten scar on its surface glowing red hot for nearly a century. The world we call Venus was pounded by meteorites sleeting through the vacuum of space. A second monstrous object was large enough to reverse Venus’ rotation…The solar system had been reshaped and the intelligences on the new, second planet of the shattered star system were extinct. We are the heirs of those shattered spheres. We are the ones who must piece together the details. We are the ones who must find the bits of technology that we can use to go to the stars...”

I go into both more detail, and the event is a driving point of story's plot.

If you want to find out more, read a bit more below.

Links: PSI's David Grinspoon Appointed to New NASA Post (spacedaily.com)

Original Post: POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: Where Writing, Christianity, and Speculative Fiction Interact : POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: Part II – The State of Life in the Solar System and Exoplanets (faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com)

The Kindle version of my Book EMERALD OF EARTH (that incorporates the story above) WENT LIVE on Wednesday (3/20/2024), and is now available here: 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CYMCV6XP?fbclid=IwAR2X_buOGcC5b4wBQoeAcc3onAdptyFtpJHnItjIdMme_XuCBYkJAb3QRbQ

The trade paper version will be released at the end of March.

Image: Personal Files

MY NEW BOOK IS LIVE FOR PURCHASE: Trade Paperback, EBook, and Audible!

(If you DO buy a copy and read it, make sure you share a few words in a review on any of the sites!)

My book, EMERALD OF EARTH is NOW LIVE both for Kindle/Nook, and other electronic platforms AND TRADE PAPERBACK!!! on Amazon.com and many other of your favorite online book sites!

The link for Amazon is here. (I'll add others as I find them!)

Amazon.com: Emerald of Earth: Heirs of the Shattered Spheres: 9781958333167: Stewart, Guy

Also -- on STUPEFYING STORIES, Bruce Bethke has some interesting commentary on how the publication came about and a sidenote about the Audible Version at 

"WHAT, *ANOTHER* NEW BOOK RELEASE?!

By ~brb March 21, 2024

https://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/2024/03/what-another-new-book-release.html

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 629

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.” 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: Alien artifacts
Current Event: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/27/tibetan_alien_statue_discovered_by_nazis/

Hans Bonhoeffer and Sa’Niah Green pursed their lips as they leaned over the Plexiglas box protecting the ‘Pseudo-Tibetan Nazi Buddha’ under the lights of the University of Minnesota’s Weisman Art Museum.

His voice heavy with a German accent, Hans said, “Why would they carve it out of meteorite iron?”

“You’d think they’d just sell it. I’ll bet they coulda got twenty grand on ebay,” said Sa’Niah.

Hans snorted, straightening up. “Even so, it’s strange. Why would anyone go to the trouble carving it and then pretending it was collected by Himmler?”

Sa’Niah straightened up as well and looked at her friend. They were about as opposite as possible – he had blonde hair, blue eyes, almost two meters tall, lanky to the point of skinny with hands large enough to grip a basketball with just five fingers (if he cared, he was a European football fanatic). She was barely a meter and a half tall, her grandparents had come from Sudan, she was squat and round (her friends called her Black Winnie – after Winnie the Pooh) and she wanted nothing more than to play on the Minnesota Lynx.

Good thing he was gay, otherwise she’d live one frustrated life. They were also both history majors. Which reminded her, “Hans – how’s your book?”

He looked up and arched an eyebrow, “Why do you think I’m standing here with you discussing pseudo-Nazi alien artifacts?”

She snorted softly, “Because we’re best friends?”

“No, because you’re the only person I know of who’s read Harry Turtledove.” She grinned. They’d met in the Wilson Library during finals first semester of their freshman year the year before. They’d gotten into an argument over who would be able to check out the newest Turtledove novel. Ultimately Hans had won because he held the book over his head and there was no way for her to get at it. She said, “It’s a good thing you decide to share it with me at Caribou.”

He grinned at her and said, “Speaking of which.” He lifted his chin and made a motion toward Dinkytown proper.

She nodded and said, “I’ll even walk outside.”

Mock-amazed, he said, “What’s wrong? Have you contracted some spinal fungus you haven’t told me about and you are preparing to die?”

She laughed. Several other arts patrons glared at her. The Weisman wasn’t for giggling college sophomores. They headed for the exit then started up East River Parkway, heading for Southeast Fifth Street. Sa’Niah said, “So, what’s the story?”

Hans fell into one of his brooding moods. They’d almost reached Dinkytown when he said, “It’s not a story.”

“What?”

“It has to do with my family,” he said, his accent thicker than usual. She’d noticed that happened when he got emotional – which happened every time he broke up from his current love interest. She just listened and walked, huffing slightly. When he wasn’t paying attention, he took long, long strides and it was hard for her to keep up.

“What would a fake Nazi-Buddhist made out of meteorite iron have to do with your family?”

They reached the Caribou, ordered their favorites and settled in a booth that allowed him to stretch his legs before he said, “My family were Nazis.”

She blinked in surprise. “What?”

“My grandparents – both sides, except for one of my father’s uncles. His name was Dietrich and he was executed by the Nazis.” She didn’t know what to say. He continued, “They also dealt with the regime in antiquities.” He paused, scowling then said, “The Nazi Buddha? It’s legitimate.”

“How would you know?”

“Because I have a picture of my great-great-great grandfather holding it. And he does not look Human.”

Names: ♀ USA, African American culture ; ♂ Germany
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

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY: Living In An iPod World With YA Fiction

Eight billion people live on Earth along with 350 million iPods and 55 million iPads.

Next year, the total number of active cell phones on Earth will surpass the total population of that same planet.

We have seven billion people who spend more time on their phones talking to people far away than they spend physically talking to the people they live next door to.

The generation to which my two adult kids belong to has even made a sort of “game” out of the dilemma. Ask your nearest twenty-something if they’ve ever played the game where a group of friends gets together at a bar, a restaurant or a party and they pile their cell phones in the center of the table. The first person to give in and answers their phone during the face-to-face event pays…the tab, the bill, for the next party…whatever.

My guess is that even if they have never played it themselves, they know people who have and almost universally they find the idea offensive, horrifying, unbelievable, or ridiculous.

It is not at all uncommon for my kids to come home with friends and have the entire group sitting in the living room not interacting with each other at all, but hunched over their cell phones incidentally not talking to each other. In fact, they are not even really communicating in English but in a dialect that has replaced “you” with U; “to” with 2; and has created LMFAO for…well, I have no doubt that you know what that stands for.

What does this have to do with the writing life?

Everything. While people are still reading – more and more are moving to ebooks, but that’s a completely different issue that I addressed in a published short story I wrote (http://www.perihelionsf.com/1306/fiction_6.htm) – they are reading less and reading shorter.

It’s also nothing new. Teaching a writing class to young people, we do a brief unit on journalism. The journalistic writing style is best defined as an inverted pyramid:




It would be easy to say that today’s text language is simply a logical growth from this style. The question remains: what does this mean for writers? For me?

What would it have meant for Tolkien? What kind of impact did it have on the Harry Potter books? How does it affect a midlist writer?

It is my belief that among other things, the “novel” will shrink. The move to “shorter” novels has already begun as young adult fiction sales have experienced a tremendous upsurge – and the people who are buying and reading YA fiction are full-on ADULTS. Publisher's Weekly reports that, "According to January 2023 WordsRated statistics, 51% of YA books are purchased by people between the ages of 30 and 44, and 78% of those buyers said that they intended to read the books themselves." My guess is that number has grown.

There’s all kinds of speculation about why adult adults read young adult novels. Young adult author and professor of English, Marie Rutkoski summarizes them neatly: “…adults like YA because young people feel things very strongly, and the representation of this makes for a potent read…YA is ‘easy,’...adults these days live in an unnaturally prolonged state of adolescence... Perhaps the best explanation given to me, though, is that readers are drawn to stories about first experiences...readers...want to behold a transformation. First experiences draw us in because they are the crucible for change.”

While I’m sure all of these factors come into play, I believe that the main reason is that adults began to read “little” stories in programmed reading books; they graduated to newspapers; then online news sources mostly supplemented by Youtubes and video clips. This condition was exacerbated by television programs in which every event is compressed into a slice of thirty minutes – which is actually 22 minutes of programming. An hour-long television show like BONES (one of my favorites), solves a grisly murder in 44 minutes.


Even when directors strive for reality in movies like Warren Beatty’s REDS (compresses two years into 3 hours and 25 minutes) and Richard Attenborough’s GHANDI (compresses seventy-nine years and the lives of nearly one billion people into 3 hours and 21 minutes) or Fox Television series 24 (24 episodes, each one 44 (“one hour”) minutes long) which attempt a realistic representation of a twenty-four hour event – they compress time into watchable bytes.

Why would ANYONE be surprised that adult adults have embraced generally short YA novels?

If what I believe is true, then Robert Jordan’s WHEEL OF TIME is the end of an era and the Harry Potter books are the last time we’re going to experience extended stories of nearly two million words.

What we once called a novella (17,500-40,000) will become the New Novel (surprise! This is how long the average YA “novel” is!); and the categories will change name and move backward until what we think of as a “long” novel will be what our forebears thought of as a longer short story.

As a writer, I need to plan several things:

1) Write shorter
2) Show dramatic transformation with a “first experience” sensibility
3) Drop big words which, while making for precise ideological communication, take too long to read and are subsequently skipped
4) Make the characters adult, but younger – even the old folks (oh, that’s right, there’s no such thing as “old adult” fiction – ‘cause even though they can read, they can’t see! (PS: I'm within striking distance of 70!, so don't accuse me of ageism!))
5) Don't do anything TOO new

There you go. Comments?

Resources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_iPod_models, http://ipod.about.com/od/glossary/qt/number-of-ipods-sold.htm, http://adrianofarano.com/2012/01/how-many-ipad-have-been-sold-in-the-us-so-far/, http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/mobile-phone-world-population-2014/, http://io9.com/the-real-reason-why-grown-ups-love-young-adult-fantasy-1172843218, http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index? qid=20090118200609AAgNayT ; Who Is YA For? (publishersweekly.com)

Image: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_me7k3m9ysC1qdx4lmo1_500.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY AND WRITING ADVICE – Lisa Cron: Readers Expects the Protagonist Will Have a Longstanding Misbelief

In 2008, I discovered how little I knew about writing after hearing children’s writer, Lin Oliver speak at a convention hosted by the Minnesota Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. To learn more – and to satisfy my natural tendency to “teach stuff”, I started a series of essays taking the wisdom of published writers and then applying each “nugget of wisdom” to my own writing. During the six years that followed, I used the advice of a number of published writers (with their permission) and then applied the writing wisdom of Lin Oliver, Jack McDevitt, Nathan Bransford, Mike Duran, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, SL Veihl, Bruce Bethke, and Julie Czerneda to an analysis of my own writing. Together these people write in genres broad and deep, and have acted as agents, editors, publishers, columnists, and teachers. Today I add to that list, Lisa Cron who has worked as a literary agent, TV producer, and story consultant for Warner Brothers, the William Morris Agency, and others. She is a frequent speaker at writers’ conferences, and a story coach for writers, educators, and journalists. Again, with permission, I am using her article, “A Reader’s Manifesto: 15 Hardwired Expectations Every Reader Has for Every Story” (2/16/18 http://blog.creativelive.com/essential-storytelling-techniques/)

“The reader expects the protagonist will have a longstanding misbelief that has kept her from easily achieving that goal.”

This is a tough one for me to figure out because belief is so deeply ingrained in us, that even atheists seem to have trouble after dragging themselves free from anything not made of matter, ie, “the divine”.

Case to point that I can support: aliens.

Astrophysicist Carl Sagan had no patience with those who believe in any sort of invisible deity: “How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, ‘This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?’” [Odd – he never asked me…] “Instead they say, ‘No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.’ A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.”

Stephen Hawking wasn’t interested in God, either: “‘We have finally found something that doesn’t have a cause, because there was no time for a cause to exist in,’ Hawking wrote. ‘For me this means that there is no possibility of a creator, because there is no time for a creator to have existed in.’”

Yet, neither man has any trouble believing in aliens: beings who exist solely in the imagination of Humans. Those of you who read my blog, know I write science fiction that includes aliens. No matter how intellectual the person believing in them is, they are believing that aliens “must exist”.

But when pushed (I teach a class called Alien Worlds for gifted and talented kids from 9-16), I have to say that the science teacher in me; the one that insists on EVIDENCE to support a position…has no response other than, “There is no evidence anywhere that there is life ANYWHERE but on Earth.”

“None. Nothing. Nowhere. No one has anything.”

“THERE IS NO EVIDENCE OF LIFE ON OTHER WORLDS.”

One of these avowed atheists had no trouble writing: “If it is just us, seems like an awful waste of space.” – (Contact, screenplay by Carl Sagan).

Additionally: “Contrary to the popular belief that aliens would be destructive to mankind, Sagan advocated that aliens would be friendly and good-natured.” https://www.famousscientists.org/carl-sagan/

Stephen Hawking said: “‘One day, we might receive a signal from a planet like this,’…referring to the potentially habitable alien planet Gliese 832c. ‘But we should be wary of answering back. Meeting an advanced civilization could be like Native Americans encountering Columbus. That didn't turn out so well,’ he added…” https://www.livescience.com/62015-stephen-hawking-quotes.html

So, if my protagonist has some sort “longstanding misbelief”, and the reader agrees with that misbelief, will they follow the story through to its conclusion? To THEM, the conclusion is foregone.

What if the character has a misbelief that the readers violently disagrees with, will they assume that it was that “misbelief that has kept her from easily achieving [her] goal” and throw the story aside, assuming that it was all propaganda, so not worth the reader’s time of day or effort?

How much leeway does a writer have when giving the protagonist a misbelief?

For some people, “…are concerned for the wellbeing of all, are committed to diversity, and respect those of differing yet humane views. We work to uphold the equal enjoyment of human rights and civil liberties in an open, secular society and maintain it is a civic duty to participate in the democratic process and a planetary duty to protect nature’s integrity, diversity, and beauty in a secure, sustainable manner.” Others, “We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are. For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.” Either would be guaranteed to put off some number of readers.

Or is Cron just talking about something like, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” Even so, I suppose that someone, somewhere would find that statement objectionable. Some would find it objectionable in the extreme; or biased and homophobic…And yet, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE continues to be popular and the plot foundational to literature written in English (possibly in other languages, but I could only find PRIDE, PREJUDICE, AND OTHER FLAVORS (Sonali Dev), so there’s never been a groundswell of hatred and rejection of the books, so maybe my thoughts are absurd.

Any thoughts?

Source: https://scientificliteracymatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/carl-sagan-1024x576.jpg, https://www.livescience.com/63854-stephen-hawking-says-no-god.html, https://americanhumanist.org/what-is-humanism/manifesto3/, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+3%3A+21-25&version=NLT, https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/5882-it-is-a-truth-universally-acknowledged-that-a-single-man, https://www.amazon.com/Sonali-Dev/e/B00JOSJQFO/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1 Image: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/51ddbf8fe4b0bf85e2f4edd2/t/592c2f0b414fb5ddd3a1259d/1496067864402/BookImage.jpg?format=300w

IDEAS ON TUESDAY 628

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, late of Iceland were working together in the physics lab. "If I can get this stupid file to work with these special effects..."

Hofi said, “Komdu og líta á þetta!”

He sighed. He hated when she used Icelandic. “We’re in America now! 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 the curves are beautiful.”

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: ♀,♂ Iceland
Image: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51niGRrH6DL.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: Emily Blunt, Edge of Tomorrow, and Alien Aliens

On October 7, 2007, I started this blog. Sixteen years later, I am revising and doing some different things with my blog. My wife and I are now retired senior citizens, our kids are both married, we have a bonus daughter and her wife and we have three grandchildren, the oldest of which just became a teenager. I have forty-five professional publications, plus countless other publications as a slushpile reader, and sometime essay contributor to Stupefying Stories https://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/.

These days, I write whenever I want to – or when I’m not busy exploring the world with my wife or kids or grandkids. I write and read constantly. Then I discovered that I was writing longer and longer pieces. My new focus is to write shorter; and to write HUMOR. On purpose. Maybe I can still irritate people while being funny. It works pretty well for John Scalzi! We’ll see what happens.

The movie, Edge of Tomorrow, with Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt came out a decade ago. My wife and I watched it a few nights ago and I came away AMAZED. (I also found out tonight from Dale, that I’ve seen the movie, albeit several years ago.)

By the way – this is NOT a movie review! If you’ve never heard of the movie, I suggest you watch it. I was able to check out the DVD from my friendly neighborhood library. I could probably ((WILL, probably), pick it up for a couple bucks somewhere eventually.

A couple of things impressed me.

First of all, it was startling to see Mary Poppins as an enhanced mechanized soldier who easily blew alien monsters away! It reminded me of a scene from GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY 2, where “Yondu [is] yelling ‘I'm Mary Poppins, y'all’ while using his arrow to float back to the ground. It turns out that wasn't originally in the script. When [the writer] was visualizing the scene, it didn't look quite as heroic as [he] intended it to be. So then [he] put the Poppins line in Peter Quill's mouth. And Yondu, of course, not knowing the name Mary or Poppins might think he's sort of a Lee Marvin type and he owns it.”

Of course, I mean actor Emily Blunt. My wife and I discovered we’re a pair of Emily Blunt fans! Besides playing Mary Poppins, a fashion magazine secretary (alongside Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, and Stanley Tucci); she has played memorable characters as diverse as Young Queen Victoria, Miss Piggy’s Receptionist, the mother of a psychic child marked for execution by a time-traveling agent, a Baker’s Wife, an Amazon River adventurer, a nuclear physicist’s wife, and a pharmaceutical executive-then-whistleblower…

And, of course Sergeant Rita Vrataski, (also known as the Full Metal Bitch) a mech-suited Army soldier. Amazingly, the movie is considered a horror “comedy”, mostly for the repartee between the Sergeant and Major/Private William Cage. While the die repeatedly in variously gruesome ways ranging from Vrataski shooting Cage to start the loop cycle again, to both of them being violently torn to shreds by the…sort-of-micro-tornado of tentacles of some sort, to crashes, crushing, and literally dozens of creative ways someone can die on a battlefield.

How she comes across as HUMOROUS in this splatter-gore movie escapes me – though I personally believe that while the humor is sometimes slapstick, it leans more heavily on sarcasm between Vrataski and Cage. That’s my FAVORITE form of humor.

At any rate, Blunt’s performance and her and Cruise’s increasing skill at blowing the Mimics away leads me to contemplate the aliens themselves.

It’s bluntly (no pun intended) stated pretty much from the beginning that they want Earth. But WHY? They LOOK absolutely alien – but to me, they make no sense whatsoever. Created for their “creep factor”, they’re typically nothing more that flailing tentacles that kill Humans.

Why? Why do they even CARE about Earth or Humans? Their blood is obviously not iron-based so they’re not going to use Earth as a cattle ranch (so to speak) – how do they breathe on Earth? They don’t have suits – at least not suits a Human would recognize. They don’t even really have weapons, except slashers and hard skin: they can only be destroyed by intense, high-speed machinegun fire. Also, there’s no way they can really SEE, as there are no obvious eyes. I believe at one point, the movie alludes to them having psychic powers. But that’s even MORE ridiculous! In order to telepathically link with a life form, your electrical/psychic system would have to be able to synchronize – and based on what we see, Human-Mimic psychic link would be impossible: they aren’t even the same SPECIES – and the Mimics don’t appear to have any kind of central nervous system.

The following discussion online offers some interesting insight into the Mimics: https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/24557/what-is-the-origin-of-mimics-in-edge-of-tomorrow

So, let me take a stab at it – as the Mimics obviously come from an entirely alien environment and we know their either evolved there or were created there – then they must have some kind of environment that they were designed for. Their ability to “spin through soil” might point to their origins or life as a…sort of mole-like creature. As they originally attacked from the oceans, like us, they might have a saline internal fluid like blood. You get a better sense of the tentacles if you scroll through this link: https://aliens.fandom.com/wiki/Mimic_(Edge_of_Tomorrow).

Despite their wild appearance, their movement would suggest that they not only originated on a high-gravity world, but they were, at one time, “prime prey”. To survive, they would have had to develop defenses against their main predator. Humans became SMARTER than just about everything that hunted them. Did the Mimics do the same – or are they simply “animals”? Maybe the drone Mimics are, but the Alphas and Omegas are NOT – they’re a hive organism, somewhat like a beehive, though NOT precisely…

Anyway, this is getting long. I think I’m going to stop here and continue later. Have a good day!

Inspiration: “Live. Die. Repeat.” or EDGE OF TOMORROW
Links: https://bleedingcool.com/movies/james-gunn-reveals-im-mary-poppins-yall-wasnt-script/#google_vignette ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Blunt
Image: [Webb image of the Horsehead Nebula…looks like dragons to me!]
https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/stsci-01gfnn3pwjmy4rqxkz585bc4qh.png