MINING THE ASTEROIDS Part 28: KARMAN+ This Is REAL NEWS and REALLY NOW!

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

So, today, the “internet was blowing up” with the news regarding a $20,000,000 investment in the asteroid mining company, KARMAN+ who have “raised $20 million in seed funding led by Plural and Hummingbird. The funding, which included participation from HCVC, Kevin Mahaffey (Lookout), co-founder Teun van den Dries and angel investors, will be used to develop its first technology demonstration mission and customer missions, expected in 2027.”

Aside from being a different company, why is this such a big deal? LAST month, AstroForge made a similar announcement, which I wrote about here: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2025/01/mining-asteroids-part-27-future-marches.html

Then there’s Open Asteroid Impact, whose plan is to send robots into space to mine the asteroids: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2024/04/mining-asteroids-part-21-startling.html

While this still smacks of Science Fiction. The generally recognized SF story detailing asteroid mining was “The first mention of asteroid mining in science fiction apparently came in Garrett P. Serviss' story Edison's Conquest of Mars, published in the New York Evening Journal in 1898. Several science-fiction video games include asteroid mining.”

Needless to say, this came out around the same time as the the works of Jules Verne started to appear.

“So what?” you say.

Well, Jules Verne might not have gotten a lot of the DETAILS spot on – FROM EARTH TO THE MOON; TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA; AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS; JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH…and others (though he DID hit one or two of the nails on the head in PARIS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.) However, Humans have landed on the Moon, dived 20,000 leagues under the sea; easily gone around the world in eighty days; though the whole “journey to the center of the Earth” thing doesn’t really work out as the planet isn’t hollow…

What’s to stop this 21st Century version of Humanity from seriously mining the asteroids? Hmmm?

Today’s Source: (Multiple reports!) https://techfundingnews.com/karman-plus-asteroid-mining-technology-funding/ ; https://www.karmanplus.com/techcrunch-karman-digs-up-20m-to-build-an-asteroid-mining-autonomous-spacecraft/; https://spaceinsider.tech/2025/02/21/karman-raises-20-million-to-mine-asteroids-to-supply-the-space-economy/; https://www.theengineer.co.uk/content/news/asteroid-mining-startup-raises-20m-usd ; https://www.finsmes.com/2025/02/karman-raises-20m-in-seed-funding.html ; https://payloadspace.com/karman-raises-20m-for-asteroid-mining-demo/
Foundational Resource: (A general Wikipedia post detailing what the authors currently know about asteroid mining: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining)
Noted 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
Interesting Stuff The Might Apply To Mining Asteroids: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgej7gzg8l0o

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

IDEAS ON TUESDAY 661

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: xenofiction (point of view of an animal)
Current Event: http://www.arkanimalspace.com/ark-blog/theo-the-bomb-sniffing-dog/

Mia had one mission in life.

She was an IED-expert. When she was called up and shipped to Afghanistan, it was the single most exciting moment in her short life. She was certain she’d been made for it. Certain that no one else could do it as well as she could. She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that her mission was to save lives by getting rid of IEDs that littered this sad country after its abortive war. She was set to do whatever was necessary – almost.

When she found IEDs, she refused to touch them and certainly refused to disarm them no matter how simple the device was. In fact, she couldn’t disarm an IED even if her partner’s life depended on it. She couldn’t handle them – because she didn’t have hands.

But smelling an IED was an entirely different story. She could tell the exact makeup of the IED from thirty meters away.

It had taken her a lot of time to train her partner to be as good as she was. The language barrier itself was nearly impossible to overcome. Ethan Pai-Teles was virtually deaf, couldn’t tell the difference between a rubber band bomb and a mercury-tilt switch bomb. Mia could smell mercury from a long way away – the sharp, poisonous tang would keep her away even when Ethan tried to bribe her with treats.

She’d usually answer him, “Totally unsafe, Ethan! Totally unsafe!”

He rarely understood her. At least now he slowed down some. When they first started working together, he’d tried to get her to understand English. She got that – some of the first words she’d understood were “toy” and “walk”. But the language was so limited. Ninety percent of the scent keys aligned with real language were missing in English. It was nearly impossible for Ethan to hear anything but the most rudimentary phrases in the Bark Tongue.

Yun, a Chinese Shih Tzu soldier Mia had met at the Summer Olympics had it easier. Her partner at least understood the importance of pitch in real speech. Ethan – she loved him, but MAN! – was practically tone deaf, even as far as Humans were concerned.

She had to rely on body language, just as he’d devised a series of hand signals that allowed them to work together as their sight at close range was very nearly the same.

They were patrolling a stretch of road they hadn’t been in a bit. They’d been working together – she knew it was many, many sunrises past the last sandstorm, Ethan said “Two years, six months, five days, thirteen hours and,” he’d glance at his arm, “fourteen minutes” – and she caught the whiff of an IED.

She growled. It smelled strange. Very strange. There was the sharp, Human smell of plastic explosive but it was overlain with something different. She’d never caught the scent of anything like it…except maybe when they’d trained together when she was a pup. It had been in a very dry place, a long way away from her favorite water and the fabulous birds Ethan killed for her but didn’t allow her to eat.

This place had two white marks laid on the floor of one of the buildings. Ethan had made a violent sound and exclaimed something softly and low so she could actually hear it, “Area Fifty-One?”

This smell was the same as that...

Names: ♀ UK-Scotland ; ♂ UK, Portuguese
Image: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/71/e5/9871e52bbc09c525af21b8f6471eab15.jpg

CREATING ALIEN ALIENS Part 40: Why Do We Think “The Worst Aliens” Are…Unbelievable?

Five decades ago, I started my college career with the intent of becoming a marine biologist. I found out I had to get a BS in biology before I could even begin work on MARINE biology; especially because there WEREN'T any marine biology programs in Minnesota.

Along the way, the science fiction stories I'd been writing since I was 13 began to grow more believable. With my BS in biology and a fascination with genetics, I started to use more science in my fiction.

After reading hard SF for the past 50 years, and writing hard SF successfully for the past 20, I've started to dig deeper into what it takes to create realistic alien life forms. In the following series, I'll be sharing some of what I've learned. I've had some of those stories published, some not...I teach a class to GT young people every summer called ALIEN WORLDS. I've learned a lot preparing for that class for the past 25 years...so...I have the opportunity to share with you what I've learned thus far. Take what you can use, leave the rest. Let me know what YOU'VE learned. Without further ado...

I am a brutal critic of aliens in ANY TV series, movie, book, or any other media format. Part of the reason is that my undergraduate degree is in biology and my graduate degree is in psychology/school counseling. My life experience is in teaching 4th-12th graders, mostly in science…

I expect my aliens to MAKE SENSE. I don’t really care if they’re “scary” or “monstrous” or disgusting. They NEED to make sense to me.

Take for example, as much as the “Alien” xenomorphs scared the living crap out of a friend of mine and I, the possibility of something like them walking around, being insectoid, and under 1g, Earth normal gravity? (“How can you tell that???? They could have evolved under a different gravitational field that we did!” While all that wailing is true, the fact is that from the first movie, the xenomorphs interact with Humans UNDER EARTH-NORMAL GRAVITY!

“How do you know it’s Earth normal?” Mostly because none of them appear to have either technological nor biological adaptations to work or live under any level of g higher or lower than Earth normal. Ergo, to me, while they startled me and give me the heebie-jeebies, they don’t work biologically.

There’ve been all sorts of alien invasion movies, too with aliens who make no sense at all. The original 1953 version of HG Wells classic novel, WAR OF THE WORLDS made no sense, either. The screenplay writing tried, I’ll give them that! But the aliens really WOULDN’T be able to walk around under Earth’s gravity. Plus, the possibility of them catching a cold from us or US catching some sort of plague (UNLESS it was specifically designed from one or another of the Diseases of Humanity for a very specific purpose. As we all saw with H1N1, even COVID19, while killing a vast swath of Humanity, couldn’t take out ALL of us. (Current totals for world-wide death due to COVID 19, from 28 days through January 25, 2025 = https://data.who.int/dashboards/covid19/deaths?m49=001
My question then is this: “What qualifies anyone to judge that an alien is ridiculous?”

We have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING on which to base such a statement. We have had no VERIFIABLE experience with extraterrestrial life of ANY sort. We have NO data regarding life existing ANYWHERE but on Earth – oh, we have VERY imaginative people coming up with VERY imaginative guesses. We have POWERFUL arguments against anyone, anywhere DENYING that our VERY AND TOTALLY IMAGINATIVE GUESSES are ridiculous. We will fight to the DEATH insisting that everyone else’s guesses are stupider than our.

If a five-year-old decides that there are candy-cane aliens out there somewhere, upon WHAT AUTHORITY does anyone on Earth base their categorical rejection of such an alien? “Science”? I was a biology major who graduated in 1981. I KNEW the categories of life and if you were to tell me that there was “an exotic new disease” that appeared in May of 1981 that was variously refered to as lymphadenopathy, KSOI, GRID, the 4H disease and would be resistant to virtually every antibiotic, and any other way of treating it, I’d have agreed. My IMMUNOLOGY textbook had nothing in it about Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome…because it was a mystery. It was an unidentifiable, undefeatable form of life – of course, viruses aren’t technically alive, but they didn’t know WHAT it was at that time (and before you decide to unleash judgmental anger at me, my brother-in-law died from complications caused by AIDS.)

Our attempts to replicate alien BEHAVIOR are actually more than pathetic! Kira Nerys and Dr. Bashir? Worf and Jadzia Dax????? REALLY? Not even a snowball's chance of being even CLOSE to making any kind of sense at ALL!

What DO we know about the possibility of life on other worlds? What CAN we say is categorically “impossible”? Heavier-than-air flight was impossible. So was landing on the Moon. Treating AIDS was once impossible. Microorganisms living in boiling water were CERTAINLY impossible! So was life in ice! ABSOLUTELY life in lava was impossible…

Yet, all of them are now known to be fact.

Maybe the best we can say at this point is, “Well, it doesn’t seem likely – I certainly can’t imagine it – but who knows? Somewhere in the universe…”

I DO know people who would accuse anyone who subscribes to the “somewhere in the uiverse” response as downright absurd, a copout, naïve, and just plain stupid.

Then again, “Zoologist George Shaw was the first westerner to describe a platypus, the pelt and bill of which he was sent in 1799 from Australia. Shaw tried to understand the platypus but, like many of those who studied the strange creature after him, couldn’t shake the feeling he was being tricked.” 

Who am I to deny someone else’s sincere attempt to theorize what is and isn’t a believable alien?

LIST OF WEBSITES CATALGOGUING THE WORST MOVIES WITH EXTRATERRESTRIALS IN THEM:
https://showtimeshowdown.com/top-5-worst-alien-invasions/
https://screenrant.com/worst-science-fiction-movies-rotten-tomatoes/
https://www.ranker.com/list/underrated-alien-movies/tyler-mitchell
https://www.ranker.com/list/underrated-alien-movies/thomas-west?ref=collections_btm&l=2912334&collectionId=1612
https://www.flickchart.com/charts.aspx?genre=alien+invasion+films&perpage=50&order=desc
https://orbitaltoday.com/2023/11/03/best-alien-films/
Platypus lore: https://www.ripleys.com/stories/platypuses-were-fake

Image: https://image.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/alien-human-600w-136457129.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 660

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: Humans are Something Special in the universe
Current Event: http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/08/15/interactive-infographic-of-the-worlds-best-countries.html

While this doesn’t rank HUMANS, it does rank COUNTRIES on Earth. What if there were a list like this of planets with intelligent civilizations – and Earth was last? It would explain The Fermi Paradox, wouldn’t it?

Fermi Paradox: “In an informal discussion in 1950, the physicist Enrico Fermi questioned why, if a multitude of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations exists in the Milky Way galaxy, evidence such as spacecraft or probes is not seen.” A clearer definition would be: “The apparent size and age of the universe suggest that many technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilizations ought to exist.
However, this hypothesis seems inconsistent with the lack of observational evidence to support it.”

So, here we go!

Bintou Kogda and Ouedraogo Ye are both just eighteen and come from the country of Burkina Faso, which recently came through the Reorganization Wars that redrew the map of the African Continent. Their small country has encompassed the former nations of Ghana, Benin and Togo and because of the peaceful nature of its Reorganization, has risen to prominence.

Both are at Harvard in the United States, ostensibly to study law and nanotechnology under grant scholarships from their own government – and as part of a program the US has started to gain a foothold in the New Africa. They’ve never met – except formally at a reception welcoming all international students to Harvard.

While they love their fields of study, both are dissatisfied with the “boring life” they lead. When a small group of students begins to meet to discuss Extraterrestrial Intelligence, they both show…

“What are you doing here?” Bintou asked in French.

Ouedraogo replied in the same language, leaning closer to her than he’d ever done to a woman – excepting his mother and sisters – and said, “The same thing you’re doing here. I’m bored and this sounded exciting.”

Bintou leaned away. She’d managed to maintain her sense of modesty despite the crazy American obsession with sex. She shook her head. She should have known that Ouedraogo would want to embrace that insanity.

Even so, she bumped his shoulder as a young man stood at the front of the room and clapped his hands, saying, “Let’s get this gig hummin’!”

Bintou puzzled for a few moments. Though she spoke English as well as anyone who completed high school in Burkina Faso, American idioms still left her totally confused. Especially when they piled them on top of each other. She could only deduce that it meant “This meeting will now come to order!” because others started taking seats. No one sat in ordered rows, it was more like a vaguely circular blob.

After the chairs were done scraping across the floor, the young man said, “Hey! My name’s Edgar Bailey and I’ll be the moderator tonight for this first meeting of the ET Discussion Society. If you’d tell us your name before you speak, it’ll help us get to know each other. To start things off, I’d like to toss this out to the group.” The lights dimmed abruptly and a projector hanging from the ceiling flicked on, projecting a web article.

Ouedraogo groaned. Bintou had managed to sit across the group from him. She kept her dismay to herself.

Edgar stood on his tiptoes to locate the source of the groan. He snapped, “What’s wrong with this article?”

Ouedraogo stood up and replied in English. Bintou shook her head. It was unlikely that his heavily accented English would impress the people in this room as he said, “First of all, the article is almost twenty years out of date – the information is patently wrong...”

Edgar cut him off by saying, “The information is unimportant...”

Ouedraogo fired back, “It’s important to some of us! You’re perpetuating a stereotype!”

Bintou sighed. So much for keeping a low profile. She stood up and said, “What Ouedraogo is trying to say is that he and I are from Burkina Faso and this list places our former country at the very bottom as the worst country in the world from 2008 to 2009. Unflattering, to say the least. But what you’re implying by using this is that Earth has somehow gotten on the bottom of some interstellar ‘worst place to live’ list and that that’s the explanation of what puzzled Fermi and Hart?”

Edgar blinked slowly, massively as Bintou sat down. A moment later, there was a crash as Ouedraogo knocked over his chair and stormed out of the room. Beside her, a young woman with wildly uncontrolled, curly red hair nudged her and said, “Nice going! I’m glad someone shut down the pompous windbag before he went on his superior rant about Fermi.” She snorted, “You even mentioned Hart. Edgar hates it when people know more than he does – and that they remain polite and pleasant while they’re telling him ‘what for’.” She raised an eyebrow and added, “You probably made his most-hated person list today!”

“I didn’t mean...” Bintou began.

“Don’t worry, you just made it on to about sixty people’s ‘OMG, I have absolutely GOT to get to know this woman!’ list. You’re certainly on mine. I’m Ginny Phleger. What are you doing after the meeting?”

Names: ♀ ; ♂ Both from Burkina Faso
Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e1/Falcon_9_Demo-2_Launching_6_%283%29.jpg/220px-Falcon_9_Demo-2_Launching_6_%283%29.jpg

WRITING ADVICE: Short Stories – Advice and Observation #30: “Neil Gaiman & 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 Neil Gaiman – with a few from myself…

Twenty-three years after its publication, I FINALLY read Neil Gaiman’s novelette, CORALINE. OTOH, I DID read his AMERICAN GODS eight or nine years ago (a mere nine years after its publication). While I’m not a new convert to his writing, the two books – one for adults, the other for younger…adults (it wasn’t for the faint of hear by any means!), I wanted to look at his writing advice and see what I can learn and apply to my own writing. I also want to see if I’ve been doing things right!

1) To start out, I’ll share this most glorious truth from him: “…we convey truth with stories, which is fundamentally the most gloriously giant contradiction that you can ever imagine.” Why is it a contradiction? Because in even more simple language, he – and anyone who has ever written a word of fiction – are trying to share TRUTH using out-and-out LIES!

I have been committing socially approved LYING! And I find myself among a truly amazing list of people – and among them, some are some TRULY AMAZING LIARS!!! Intending no disrespect, Jimmy Carter is a LIAR!!! (The Hornet's Nest: A Novel of the Revolutionary War (2003)! Enea Silvio Piccolomini (who later became Pope Pius II) wrote wild lies in a tale of a novel adultery in 1444 before taking holy orders). Ted Geisel, WWII humorist and political cartoonist became a popular writer telling crazy lies to little kids! Conan Doyle, a prosperous doctor wrote lies about a detective who never existed and never would! He’s a LIAR!!! He even made up stupid words!

Salman Rushdie is an Indian-born British and American novelist. He combines fantasy with historical fiction and in 1988, a religious leader in Iran ordered all Muslims who believe as they do to assassinate this fiction writer. They agreed – he was telling lies to the world and he needed to die. All because he likes writing fiction.

I do, too! Just…nobody has ever tried to kill me for my fiction. I don’t think that ever happened to Neil Gaiman, either.

Anyone who writes fiction is, as Gaiman writes, “…taking people who do not exist and things that did not happen to those people in places that [don’t exist], and we are using those things to communicate true things to kids and to each other.”

2) “I wrote short stories and sent them out to places that could conceivably publish them, and they all came back. And I looked at the stories which went out and came back and went out and came back, and I thought, ‘Okay, well one of two things is true here. Either I’m not good enough or I don’t understand the world, there’s stuff I don’t get, there’s stuff I need to know.’” -Neil Gaiman

Sometimes, just knowing the “superstars” simply gives me peace. It’s also not that I HAVE no publications. But as you can see over there on the right, it’s been a while since I made a major sale. I am at a point where I’m…discouraged.

3) “Everything you encounter in life has the potential to influence your work: overheard dialogue in a coffee shop, that song on the radio you can’t get out of your head, the television scene that perfectly depicts the sexual tension of a first date. Don’t limit yourself to only the influences in your genre. Drink from a wide-brimmed glass of creative inspiration.”

I CAN say that I’ve followed this bit of wisdom! Do I still read science fiction? Sure – but I read lots of other things now as well. In the box in the bathroom alongside the toilet: October 2024 Writer’s Digest; Personal Collection of writing articles; WITH CHRIST IN THE SCHOOL OF PRAYER (Christian Theology); THE THREE POUND ENIGMA (Medical Books/Medicine); CORALINE (Children’s Fiction); so…a few things that I read besides science fiction.

Also, my life has been fairly interesting: night supervisor for a home for the profoundly physically and mentally handicapped young adults; CNA for two different nursing homes; visited Haiti as a missionary; camp counselor; camp director; traveled with Christian bands twice (once when I was 20-ish all over Minnesota, N,S Dakota, Iowa, and Wisconsin; later when I was 25-ish from the Rockies to New York City then to Nigeria, Cameroon, and Liberia: military overthrow of the Nigerian government while we were there; attempted military overthrow of Cameroon’s President-For-Life; taught at private, public, and charter schools: science-plus whatever was needed for 21 years; school counselor for 10 years at an inner-ring suburban high school; taught all levels: middle school, high school, English Language Learners; Special Education; International Baccalaureate; husband of 38 years; grandfather for 15 years; father/father-in-law/foster parent; published writer…

Anyway, I’ve had a few…unusual life experiences that find their way into my stories.

4) “Don’t tell readers how to feel…I would rather you just felt it. I will tell you what happens, and if I leave you crying because I just killed a unicorn…and I’m gonna break your heart.”…Many professional authors preach “Show, don’t tell.” Even though that advice is commonplace, Gaiman’s unique spin on that advice is more memorable than most…Create emotion in the scene without dictating emotion. Give readers a reason to care about the characters and the events they read, and their emotions will follow.”

Whoa…I guess I never thought about this. HOWEVER, I’ve had people accuse me of manipulating them in classes I teach or stories I write. I think there’s a difference between telling a story and having someone experience it; not digesting it for them. I am guilty of doing that kind of messing with my readers.

I have been manipulated by an author – and I HATE it. It’s like when you watch broadcast news. I loathe when the reporters, the station managers, and the company arranges, cuts, and focuses the news on what they WANT me to feel. Lately, it seems that broadcast journalists have bought in almost entirely to the aphorism, “If it bleeds, it leads…” Journalists, who claim that they are impartial are no more that people with a job. They may have had a bit of training, but their JOB is to sell papers; or views; or clicks; or downloads; or reels. They will ABSOLUTELY report the news – but they will repackage the facts to get a maximum amount of emotional voltage. Movies do the same thing.

And before drawings, paintings, celluloid, the internet, and computers? There were writers. It’s my job AS A WRITER to “…I will tell you what happens…and I’m gonna break your heart.”

WOW. I learned a lot about how Gaiman writes and how I do it, too.

References: https://bobbypowers.com/neil-gaimans-top-13-writing-tips/

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

IDEAS ON TUESDAY 662

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: Apocalyptic Diary
Current Event: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385522045/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_3?pf_rd_p=1944687402&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0143036874&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=12GZ8H98NAT6JAAX4NBC

July 4, 1895

Mother said that when she was a girl, they ate pigeon every day at a time, and sometimes for days and days at a time. She said she hated pigeon meat.

She also said that pigeon didn’t make you vomit until you brought up only blood. She said there were days when pigeon’s didn’t fill the sky and eat everything in sight, including people sometimes. When I asked her if they sounded nicer when she was a girl, she said, “No, they’ve always sounded like a rusty mill wheel pump in an afternoon breeze.”

July 14, 1895

Mother is worried. The store in town said that they’re out of shotgun shells.

Pa and Danforth, my oldest brother spent the afternoon casting lead ball shot and packing Grandpa’s old musket.

This morning, a family came through town in a covered wagon. Mother covered my eyes, but I saw before she could get her hands over them. The wagon cover was shredded and there were dead people in it. It didn’t look like they had any eyes, either. Mother took me and Dennis, Dorothy, and Debra into the tornado shelter. We’ve never had a tornado in Minnesota in the fifteen years since I was born, but Pa said there was one just before him and Mother met and courted. She started crying about the end of the world until Pa came down and held on to her tight. Danforth didn’t even say anything nasty to me when I held Mother’s hand.

After we got back to work, he came up to me and asked if I wanted to know what was really going on.

“Why you wanna tell me?” I asked.

“’Cuz you’re always readin’ them crazy books.”

His idea of crazy books are Jules Verne’s FROM EARTH TO THE MOON, and HG Wells’ THE TIME MACHINE. I shrugged, expecting him to start in on me again. Ever since he stopped school and started working with Pa, he’s acting like he’s all better than the rest of us. But I’ve seen the look on his face lately, like when the pigeons in the sky are worse than a tornado storm. When they all land and eat the land bare and there’s nothing we can do because the feathers and skin are poison, and the meat makes you vomit blood…Danforth said, “I been hearin’ some things in town.”

I scowled, crossed my arms over my chest – which had gotten bigger lately – and said, “What kind of things?”

He shrugged. “Fine then, if you don’t want to know.” He turned and headed out of the house. Mother busied herself with cleaning up after dinner.

I hated myself for it, but I blurted, “What have you heard?”

He turned and leaned toward me, “You know that crazy Wells book you were so moony over last summer?”

“THE TIME MACHINE?”

“That’s the one. I heard in town that it’s real. In Washington.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

He shrugged, “Someone said that someone said that even though it didn’t look like the illustration I seen, there’s a time traveler come to the president. A couple of years ago.”

“The illustration you saw was from a children’s book!”

He grunted, “Anyway, they said they heard that someone heard that the traveler asked about pigeons.”

“Why’d they want to know about pigeons?”

Danforth shrugged and went back to work. Mother called me to help with supper.

July 19, 1895

I’ve been thinking about what a time traveler could possibly want with pigeons. They’re monsters and the preachers round these parts think that they are a curse placed on mankind for the hubris of thinking he was better than nature. Most of them are old enough to remember when people actually ate pigeons instead of pigeons eating the clothes and food off us. Pa says that the pigeons don’t eat Human meat – except for the eyes. Mother hushed him up real fast and asked me if I’d heard what he said. I turned around and said, “What?”

Mother managed a pained smile and a glance at Pa that would have peeled paint from the outhouse – if there’d been any paint left on it.

Later that day, a pigeon flock passed over our town and it was dark enough to have to light the lanterns. The sound is horrible and we could hear the sound of the birds as they relieved themselves on our house.

Mother shouted at the roof as if she was trying to scare them away. She scared the littles so much, I finally had to hold the youngest and let the others lean on me.

It took fifteen hours for the flock to pass. Mother said, “This is the end of Humanity. The very, very end, and we will have died surrounded by meat we can’t eat any more, bereft of what food we grew and might have eaten, with our waters poisoned by pigeons who drop a deadly rain as they pass over us…”

Pa said nothing, but hung his head. Danforth and me looked at each other until finally Dan looked down. He was so much like Pa, it made my heart clench tight.

Outside, the deafening shriek of the passing flock faded into complete silence.

Names: ♀ American Midwest, ; ♂ American Midwest

Image: http://www.redflagmagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Extinction-5.jpg

Image: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51niGRrH6DL.jpg

[A longer version of this story titled "Pigeon" appeared in the March 2016 issue of the Scottish Science Fiction and Fantasy magazine SHORELINE OF INFINITY]

JAX LUNAR LUMBER Chapter 9: Hmmm, Not QUITE So Fast!

On the way to the neighborhood Home Depot for the obligatory weekend project as well as a load of flowers and potting soil, I started musing on my hitch as a “yard ape” for a company called Knox Lumber. We, too were busy this time of year, and it was a familiar feel whenever I went to one of these stored. Know was one of the original “Do It Yourself” (aka DIY) stores, a precursor to today’s Lowes, Menards, and Home Depot. In 1986, Payless Cashways purchased Knox Lumber Company, eventually filing for bankruptcy. Before it vanished, the rumor in the store was that you could build an entire house by waiting patiently for a year while EVERYTHING went on sale…

Rolling down the driveway, I suddenly had a thought and snickered.
When my wife asked, “What?” I shook my head. “No, what?”
I reiterated the train of thought above, then added, “I was wondering if it would be possible to build a colony on the Moon using just what you could buy at Knox?”
We pondered it for a few moments, then suddenly said in unison, “Yes!” Inspired by Matt Weir, the result of my musings continues below.

Once my grandkids – Noah, Natalie, Ronan, and Rayna – arrived and set about separating Roza Rymbayeva Golovkin, Six-Times-Great-Granddaughter Of The Last Lunar Walker’, Gene Cernan from her “handler”, I grinned at Sturdlan Vilbix, self-proclaimed "handler" of the obviously exhausted speaker and artist.

The grandkids went to her, gently taking her hands and leading her as they pushed Sturdlan Vilbix aside, ignoring them.

As they did, every piece of spy equipment Turdman’s people had brought had its electronics and quantum circuits scrambled. “Sturdland” shouted, “Hey!” and then found themselves alone and in Truflesh without an Image Enhancement Field surrounding them.

I was startled to see “they” were a rather round, runty “he” with blaze orange hair, coiffed into something they’d have called a beehive in the 1960s mostly worn by women in the US – the grandkids’ great great grandmother had worn one just like it, but brunette instead of orange. He reminded me of a TwenCen cartoon character called Complex or something like that. It wasn’t really flattering on either Sturdlan’s real face or their/his virtual face.

I waited. The grands were waiting too. Finally, sensing the show was over, the main part of the pack escorted Roza out, chattering like a passel of grandchildren typically do, keeping their voices down and trying to amaze her with their intelligence and sense of humor. Natalie – who had just finished her training as a sergeant in the Solar Marines – was a specialist. She stepped closer to him, expertly blocking a move by Sturdlan to follow her and “rescue” his meal-ticket…or whatever she was to him. Nat blocked him/them and the man found himself un able to move and in danger of experiencing a broken arm.

It wasn’t clear exactly what she’d specialized in, but I don’t dig that deeply into my kids or grandkids’ lives. OTOH, by the precision with which they had rescued their target and the “enemy” (not sure how long Sturdlan was interested in maintaining that position), I was pretty sure it was some form of logistics. She was also in the Solar Commonwealth’s United Marine Marching Band and reportedly challenging the current Drum Major for their position.

I waited a bit longer then opened my mouth…

Sturdlan said, “Fine…” he started to walk free. Nat increased the pressure of her grip. Sturdlan winced, nearly going down on his knees.

I said, “That’s not the phrase I was looking for, Mr. Turdland. Perhaps you’ve forgotten. I only wanted to hear two words: ‘I accept.’” I shot Nat a glance. She eased off a bit and he started breathing again. He remained silent. Nat increased the pressure. He started to pant.

A few moments later, after sagging, he growled, then managed, “I. Accept.” He paused, adding, “Grud…”

Nat squeezed hard enough for me to hear a pop. He screamed and started to collapsed. Nat held him up, then twisted his elbow. I heard another pop and he gasped. When she released him, he went to his knees and his hands, head hanging between his shoulders. He muttered something I didn’t appreciate. “What was that?” I said.

Nat took a step back to him. He hastily said, “Nothing! Nothing!” She leaned in and he winced. She said, “Probably shouldn’t continue trying to mutter sweet-little-nothings again, eh? Boy?” He managed to nod without passing out. Nat grinned, kissed me on the cheek, and followed the rest of the herd of family.

I said, “So, how about we arrange an itinerary that will feature Roza instead of your somewhat…how can I say this and offend you most…childish, simplistic, and meaningless trash?”

“It’s what people want!” they said, struggling to their feet. The air around them flickered and the image of a purple baboon formed around Sturdlan Vilbix. The eyes grew wide the baboon exclaimed, “That’s not what’s supposed to happen!”

I nodded. “Rosa probably wasn’t supposed to share her own music, either. Nevertheless, it will.” Sturdlan glared. I said, “It’s a good thing you’ve got a smaller, but reasonable venue to share your music in, generously sponsored by Jax Lunar Lumber.” I grinned.

“Over my dead body!” Sturdlan shouted, surging to his feet. The effect without his image enhancement was less than threatening; thought worrisome even so, mostly because his face had changed color as his blood pressure soared, and I was pretty sure he carried concealed weapons. I passed him the Lunar ordinance regarding unregistered firearms as enforced on the Moon by all signatories – which currently included all of the nation states from Earth with either single-nation colonies or cooperative colonies.

“That’s the penalty for anyone who chooses to take out any one of the weapons recorded on your person or concealed in various pieces of luggage…”

“You can’t…”

I leaned in, “You might want to read through Lunar Law, Mr. Turdland.” I turned and walked away. I turned back, “Just to show you there’s no hard feelings, the venue you’ve been offered is owned by Jax Lunar Lumber, Limited Liability Lunar Company.” I turned and headed own. I was under no illusions that I had won anything but a brief reprieve from conflict between myself, family, and this man.

Resources: The Moon Trees, https://www.urbanforestdweller.com/we-almost-forgot-about-the-moon-trees/ ; https://www.space.com/moon-colonists-lunar-lava-tubes.html

Image: fabricated by me using two public domain images.

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/YkAeUwwE2aksDqd5tgwyec-970-80.jpg.webp