POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: Part III – 51 Pegasi and the Rest of the Mess

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 (2003) 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’m approaching the end of Grinspoon’s book and have skimmed his website (http://funkyscience.net/) several times. While it’s been “frozen” on his newest Pluto/Horizon book, I find myself looking forward to following this guy for some time to come!

I’m well into the book now (page 229) and I got my own copy on Wednesday through a Half-Price Books near me. After (*gasp*) dog-earing my Library copy, I transferred the noted pages to my own book.

And…I haven’t finished the book yet, partly because I got a book from the library (THE TEA MASTER AND THE DETECTIVE by Aliette de Bodard). If you like Sherlock Holmes homages (and I do!), and you liked Asimov’s R. Daneel Olivaw (and I did!), then is a masterful book for you! Anyway, onward.

51 Pegasi – the fifty-first brightest star in the constellation Pegasus, the Winged Horse – is a Sun-like star that has an entire suite of planets and has long been in the “exoplanet limelight”.

We’ve even gone and named one of the planets Dimidium (from the Latin, dimidius, which means half or halved, because it appeared to be about half of Jupiter’s mass…), and it’s the first of a now long-line of planet types we have called “hot Jupiters”. This is because it orbits very close to its sun every four days and has an average orbital distance of one one hundredth of an AU (Earth is 1 AU from the Sun, 157,000,000 km (or more familiarly to us Americans, 93 million miles)).

It’s kind of funny, because when I teach a summer school class called Alien Worlds, I insist on students NOT naming the planets of their star system until their intelligent aliens evolve both language and a knowledge of the planets in their star system – in other words, not until Thursday. But here we have Humans naming the worlds of someone else’s (conceivably) star system. Don’t you think there’s a certain amount of hubris there? Hmmm…

At any rate, when Grinspoon wrote his book, there were some 100 or so planets discovered orbiting fewer than a hundred stars. Many of the stars were NOT Sun-like, 51 Peg was the first. Today, there are literally THOUSANDS of exoplanets and hundreds of stars. That leads to this statement: “What if we live in a completely deviant star system, and our presence here indicates that such an unusual location is required for something like us to come along…From this we are tempted to conclude that ours is not a garden-variety solar system, but we don’t know this…We won’t know definitively how typical our own planetary system is until we take a more thorough consensus of the planets in our stellar neighborhood.” (p 215)

Today, “As of 1 November 2018, there are 3,874 confirmed planets in 2,892 systems, with 638 systems having more than one planet…About 1 in 5 Sun-like stars have an ‘Earth-sized’ planet in the habitable zone. Assuming there are 200 billion stars in the Milky Way, one can hypothesize that there are 11 billion potentially habitable Earth-sized planets in the Milky Way, rising to 40 billion if planets orbiting the numerous red dwarfs are included.”1

Space is an exceedingly strange place and the question STILL comes back to something called The Fermi Question and can be stated most simply as “Where is everyone?”

The Fermi Question has been made into a "mathematical formula" of sorts called the Drake Equation. It has also been amended recently with the Seager Equation: (both are included here: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2013/05/seager-equation-based-on-detected.html)

Most recently: “The Drake equation has been used by both optimists and pessimists, with wildly differing results. The first scientific meeting on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), which had 10 attendees including Frank Drake and Carl Sagan, speculated that the number of civilizations was roughly equal to the lifetime[non sequitur] in years, and there were probably between 1,000 and 100,000,000 civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy. Conversely, Frank Tipler and John D. Barrow used pessimistic numbers and speculated that the average number of civilizations in a galaxy is much less than one. Almost all arguments involving the Drake equation suffer from the overconfidence effect, a common error of probabilistic reasoning about low-probability events, by guessing specific numbers for likelihoods of events whose mechanism is not yet understood, such as the likelihood of abiogenesis on an Earth-like planet, with current likelihood estimates varying over many hundreds of orders of magnitude. An analysis that takes into account some of the uncertainty associated with this lack of understanding has been carried out by Anders Sandberg, Eric Drexler and Toby Ord, and suggests that with very high probability, either intelligent civilizations are plentiful in our galaxy or humanity is alone in the observable universe, with the lack of observation of intelligent civilizations pointing towards the latter option.”

Wow. Really. Wow.

If that’s not a “religious” statement, I don’t know what is. It’s like saying, “Either Christianity is true or it’s not.” It’s not particularly profound and in fact, might be considered a sort of…woo woo statement, that is, “descriptive of an event or person…[that/who espouses] authentic religious tradition[s] such as Hinduism or Zen Buddhism, but now practices an Eastern-influenced yet severely watered-down and Westernized pseudo-mysticism…” In other words, it’s always a safe bet to say something that sounds definitive but is carefully designed to not take ANY kind of stand.

Despite the fact that we have 2892 star systems that have confirmed planets, there is still no evidence whatever that there is anything approaching a Human level of intelligence – at least none that is leaking coherent energy of any sort. That then always leads back to the suspicion that we are alone in the universe. Unique or not, it just doesn’t seem likely at this point (without doing teleological [the philosophical idea that things have goals or causes -- like how Dr. Eleanor Arroway responds to the question from a child about if she thinks there's intelligent life "out there" and she responds saying that if there ISN'T, it would seem to be an awful waste of space...] or mental gymnastics that include STAR TREK’s Prime Directive (that intelligenes higher than ours are keeping their hands off so that they don't interfere with our development) that there's nothing but wishful thinking that there's anyone out there for us to talk to…

Resources:
Part One: http://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2018/11/possibly-irritating-essays-philosophy.html, http://www.openexoplanetcatalogue.com/
Part Two: http://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2018/11/possibly-irritating-essays-part-2-state.html
Exoplanets Defined: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exoplanet 1
Image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUGOthVSNSUaxivRh0p8U5Ub4NEr0KxiZyPOIBI91G4gAPdcWmSQ-krJynDH2RQu93hHeS6EFbgOFZiDNaZ3M35LGLVbwklBZDB_dEB6symLvWTaYSgbFymOAqbFO4rVwd4qGcEBnzlDk/s1600/Unknown-4.jpeg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 617

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: Isaac Asimov’s Three Kinds Of Science Fiction: “Gadget sci-fi: Man invents car, holds lecture on how it works.”
Current Event: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/12/131210071936.htm

Khünbish Qureshi said, “Once we drill through the ice, we can begin extract the uranium. But we have to do it fast.” He tapped the wide pipe with his heavily armored hand. While there was no true atmosphere and the surface of Europa was exposed to the radiation sleet from Jupiter, they both wore flexible suits and had ridden to the surface on little more than a hovering plate.

“You think extracting a few metric tonnes of uranium from this moon would have any kind of effect at all?” asked Yelizavta Zaya. She bounced a few meters back after stomping her foot.

“I can’t say for sure.”

“Why not?”

“I’m a geologist...”

“You mean a Eurologist?”

“That makes me sound like a bladder specialist!”

“Well, it’s not Earth, so you can’t be a ‘geologist’.”

“There’s not a bladder in sight, either!”

Beneath their feet, the ice sang. On any other world, it would have been a quake, but here the ice vibrated, shifting, sliding along cracked edges. Immense crevasses sang bass that shook the world like a drum head; smaller ones sang faint hymns of joy; the smallest sang beyond the hearing of Humans.

Khünbish slapped the pipe again and said, “If there were living things under the surface, maybe my sucking the lifeblood from the water will make them sit up and take notice.”

“I doubt there’re sitting beings under our feet, Khun.”

He grimaced at the diminutive – Americans and Loonies made a habit of lopping parts of people’s names off willy-nilly – and said, “Whatever they’re doing, I’m hoping they notice.”

“And if there’s nothing under our feet but ice, water, uranium?”

“Then we stand to make a fortune and retire wherever we want to.” He bounced back as the ice began to sing again. As he fell to the surface, he grimaced and said, “Can you hear that?”

Names: ♀ Russia, Mongolian; ♂ Mongolian, Pakistan
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: Young Adult Living For The MUCH Older...

Eight billion people live on Earth along with 400 million iPods and 60 million iPads.

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

We have (guessing) five 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 thirty-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. In September of 2012, over half of the consumers of YA fiction aren’t young adults. (http://www.bowker.com/en-US/aboutus/press_room/2012/pr_09132012.shtml) My guess is that number has grown. CURRENTLY, TODAY: "Over half of the people (55%) who buy YA books don’t follow into the YA category but are over 18 years old; 51% of YA book buyers over 18 years of age are between 30 and 44 years old, accounting for 28% of all buyers."

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)
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, https://wordsrated.com/young-adult-book-sales/; http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090118200609AAgNayT

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

IDEA ON TUESDAY 616

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: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BarredFromTheAfterlife
Current Event: “…theorize that the nuclear war destroyed the afterlife…”, “…some people...have studied and manipulated The Dark to such an extent that they've become functionally immortal…”

Functional immortality: “Research suggests that lobsters may not slow down, weaken, or lose fertility with age, and that older lobsters may be more fertile than younger lobsters. This longevity may be due to telomerase, an enzyme that repairs long repetitive sections of DNA sequences at the ends of chromosomes, referred to as telomeres. Telomerase is expressed by most vertebrates during embryonic stages but is generally absent from adult stages of life. However, unlike vertebrates, lobsters express telomerase as adults through most tissue, which has been suggested to be related to their longevity. Despite internet memes, lobsters are not immortal. Lobsters grow by molting which needs a lot of energy and the larger the shell the more energy, eventually the lobster dies from exhaustion during a molt. Older lobsters are known to stop molting which means the shell will become damaged, infected, or fall apart and they die.”

Juana de Forlán shook herself hard, took a deep breath and said, “I can feel the synthetic lobster juice in me…”

Shaking his head, Koegathe Melamu, “You can’t possibly feel a hundred milliliters of a transparent liquid in your...”

“I know that!” Juana exclaimed. She shook her arms, “My head knows it, but my body says otherwise.” She took a deep breath, shuddering. “I feel like I’m getting younger by the moment.”

“It’s not an elixir of youth! If it worked the way we thought it should, the telomerase will let your cells keep dividing – more or less forever. But it’s not going to make you younger.”

She held out both of her hands, palms up, and said, “Might as well. I’m gonna live forever!”

Koegathe shook his head, saying, “Maybe – but we have no idea what the long-term effects of living forever as a lobster might be.” They both laughed, but after a few minutes, Koegathe reigned his mirth in when he noticed the pitch of his voice had been climbing. He took a deep breath then said, “Maybe that wasn’t as funny as it sounded.”

She shrugged, suddenly feeling light-headed.
"What's wrong?" Koegathe said, stepping toward her. "I think I'm going to..." It seemed like the world around her rushed into a single dot of focused, bright light. Everything else was dark around her. The point of light remained steady for some time -- she wasn't sure how long because her *-sense of time was abruptly gone. Then the light moved toward her. She might have been moving toward the light. It didn't make any difference. It might have taken time. It might have happened instantaneously, she had no idea.

Once the light grew around her, she found herself standing on solid ground of pearly white. In a throne of the same pearly substance, there sat a being. She knew that it was Death. There was certainly some kind of harvest implement laying on the ground beside the throne, though it looked more like a silver weed whacker. Death didn't wear a robe, it -- he? -- wore solid work clothes, more or less like a technician in a computer manufacturing plant, though he didn't have a mask or gloves. He did have protective goggles pushed up on his head. Black, well-trimmed, wavy hair made it look like he was wearing a cap. The name badge clipped to his collar read, "Greaper".

"Cute," Juana said. "You're the Grim Reaper?" She rolled her eyes as only a young woman who grew up in the booming first two decades of the 21st Century could.

He lifted a leg to drape it over the arm of the throne and said, "You've presented me with a problem I've never faced before, young lady."

"What?"

"You're dying -- but you are functionally immortal -- and I have no idea what to do with you."

Names: ♀ Uruguay; ♂ Botswana Image: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51niGRrH6DL.jpg

CREATING ALIEN ALIENS Part 32: AN EXERCISE: Same Environment, Different Aliens – the Koalas and Sloths…

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...

You know what a koala is, don’t you? It’s an Australian animal that, while it resembles a small bear, it’s not. In fact, it’s entirely a vegetarian, eating ONLY eucalyptus leaves, while true bears are omnivores.

You know what a tree sloth is, don’t you? It’s a small bear-like animal that lives in Central and northern South America. While it resembles a bear, it’s not. It is also a vegetarian, but it eats MORE than just eucalyptus leaves.


So, two similar animals, they even have similar – but not exactly the same – environments.

I’m going to give them events and creatures that will force them to adapt as Humans had to adapt what they could find in their environment, see if they end up differently or pretty much identical…

Similarities: both are slow-moving (other differences are obvious, but I'm going to play off this one...)

Differences:
Koalas: Predators: goannas, dingoes, powerful owls, wedge-tailed eagles, and pythons – mostly dangerous to young koalas; marsupial; eat primarily eucalyptus leaves; smaller, “simpler” brain; they defend themselves using their extremely large claws and lashing out; good hearing and they have good vision; NOT a community creature; with two sets of vocal cords (one for mating purposes), one for everyday use, they make grunting and whistling sounds; they walk on ground only when changing trees, and then they are slow – unless they are startled, then they can sprint up to 30 km/h…

Tree sloths: Predators: harpy eagles, ocelots, and jaguars; placental; they have large claws and lash out; poor vision and hearing; wiry muscles, they cannot walk well on the ground; interact with a large bacterial and arthropod communities; NOT a community creature; they make sounds that have been described as “Humans who haven’t learned to talk yet”; they can barely walk, but are extraordinarily good swimmers…

All right, I’ve got enough here to initially develop two societies that might come about if koalas and tree sloths faced environmental challenges that DID NOT wipe them out.

Koala Civilization

As their usual predators increased, the koalas learned to use their heavy claws to fight off the mostly flying predators. Rolling over on their backs in a burst of speed, they learned to rake with their claws as the birds dove at them. They also became “attack huggers”, when a python attacked, they rolled and clasped, counter squeezing the python until their claws touched skin; then they suddenly raked their claws in opposite directions, sectioning the reptile. The claws were also useful for harvesting branches in order to build more permanent shelters that were used to stay safe from the flyers. The society would then, when a python was discovered nearby while on their slow meanderings for food, gather to create a trap but building it as they did the shelters. A young male or female would then volunteer to act as bait. This initially worked so well at reducing the python population, that an inventive koala built a large, basket/nest higher in the trees. A young one would volunteer to give their lives (or was accused of a crime and tied as a penalty), and the birds were killed when they were trapped.

Koala civilization was cooperative, though typically moved slowly. However, some members developed longer and longer sprinting abilities and as they became a specialized caste of runners, koala societies were able to spread out. Maintaining eucalyptus trees was accidental at first as like their sloth-neighbors did, they went to ground to expel solid waste. One smart koala learned to drop a seed in the waste, then return to the spot, nurturing the growing eucalyptus tree. These clusters grew and eventually extended for hectares.

Others learned to not only cut the branches but weave them together for structures and eventually capture water from the infrequent rains.


Sloth Civilization

Though they initially couldn’t see well, they learned to use their claws with greater precision. While sloths do NOT have great vision, they began to rely on their tongues to “taste” their environment as their young learned what to eat by licking the lips of their mothers. The tongue became the primary organ of sensing, while vision faded and their sense of taste and smell grew. They became adept at tasting and arranging their environment, moving toxic plants to the edges of their dwellings for protection and their foods closer to the center of their territory.

Sloths rarely gather together, mostly during breeding season. Females began to band together, and it was these bandings that led to the growth of Female Villages. While still slow, Sloth youngsters could move fastest and became “sentinels” for protecting the Villages. When they reached sexual maturity, males were chased out to fend for themselves. This led to males forming triads of the strongest, all other males being killed.

While outright combat between the Female Villages and the wandering Triads was rare, the division of Sloth society grew more obvious. In order to protect themselves, the Triads learned to engineer compounds in the trees to keep themselves safe.

The Villages learned something similar. But the problem remained of what to do with their male young. Constantly killing them was wasteful, so they offered them up to the Triads. The Triads, recognizing that they could accomplish more, developed “apprenticeship sites”. The sites morphed as the females sent their males to these Apprentice Homes; and the Triads protected them. Some males – as well as females developed certain skills in weaving branches and doing wood work. (Because they were tree-dwellers, Sloths never really developed metal-working. If they needed something to last, they developed a way of growing plants and weaving flat slate into the pattern. With time, the “slate trees” were as effectively protected as solid rock).

Sloth Swimmers explored the world, sometimes coming into contact with the Koala runners. In time, they formed partnerships, playing off each other’s strengths.

Technology? Hmmm…food for thought. Maybe next time…

Sources: https://www.quantamagazine.org/arik-kershenbaum-on-why-alien-life-may-be-like-life-on-earth-20210318/
Koala: https://friendsofthekoala.org/wp-content/uploads/We-Restore-Habitat.png
Tree sloth: https://www.thefactsite.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/sloth-facts.webp

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

IDEAS ON TUESDAY 615

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: Fairy Tale
Current Event: http://www.moonlyf.com/2013/07/the-magic-onions-2013-fairy-garden.html

"Fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already because it is in the world already. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St George to kill the dragon." —GK Chesterton

Leyla Manghirmalani wrinkled her nose at the overpowering smell of onions and called out, “Jie? What are you doing?”

Jie Busiri leaned back from his dorm room desk, holding a chopping knife and said, “What’s it look like?”

“That you’re stinking up the whole dorm floor on purpose?”

“No, not stinking up anything. I’m calling the onion fairies,” he said it like he was a little kid.

Leyla shook her head, “Another one of your lame attempts at recreating ancient fairy magic?”

“Hey! That’s not fair! Didn’t I make it rain last week after I did that Lakota rain dance?”

She snorted, “After checking the weather report for three weeks straight and then picking a day even the weather divas all agreed had a greater than ninety percent chance of rain.” She waved her hand in front of her face and backed up, “I don’t want to weep over spilled onion juice. I’ll come back...”

“No! Wait!” Jie grabbed something from his desk and strode across the room, chopping knife in one hand.

Leyla laughed, “If I hadn’t known you since pre-school, I’d have just gone running down the hall dialing 911 and telling them a freshman U of M student had just gone crazy.”

Jie shook his head, handing her a piece of pink gum. “Chew this, it’ll keep your eyes from watering.”

“Why didn’t you just soak them in cold salty water?”

He looked at her like she was crazy and said, “They won’t be magic then, stupid.”

“Hey! Don’t call me stupid! You’re the one they’d throw in the loony bin if they asked why you were chopping onions!” She chewed and stepped into the room and her eyes didn’t tear up automatically. “Hey, it works.”

He blew a bubble and said, “Why do you think I’m doing it?”

“I thought you wanted to be struck by your onion magic?”

He sniffed in disdain and went back to his chopping board. “I’m not interested in helping myself. I’m going to place the slices of onions with a slice of mushroom on top...”

Leyla cut in, “If I get a pain hamburger from Mac’s, can I just put them on and make a Whopper?”

“Ha, ha, ha,” he said, chopping again. “Just wait and see how well our floor does on finals – then we’ll see who has the last laugh!”

They hung out the rest of the night and Leyla helped him place the mushroom and onion slices in the rooms of the people willing to go with his craziness. By the time they were done studying and onion-placing, it was past two in the morning. “I gotta get some sleep,” she said, “I have a chem final first thing.”

Jie gave her a hug, saying, “I made sure I put the biggest onion slice in your room and I piled the rest of the mushrooms on top of it.”

“Oh, thank you so much,” she dead-panned. “Thank you so, so much for your fairly wonderful generosity.”

He smirked then said, “Just you wait, Leyla Higgins, just you wait.”

She smiled at the MY FAIR LADY jab and headed for bed.

Names: ♀Iran, India, ; ♂ China, Egypt Image: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/71/e5/9871e52bbc09c525af21b8f6471eab15.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: Part II – The State of Life in the Solar System and Exoplanets

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…

Grinspoon was appointed to a new NASA post in July of 2023. Formerly (or STILL?) Senior Scientist at Planetary Science Institute is now the new Senior Scientist for Astrobiology Strategy. 

"Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution and distribution of life in the universe. As Senior Scientist for Astrobiology Strategy at NASA Grinspoon will serve as the Agency's senior leader for astrobiology, spearheading efforts from NASA Headquarters to ensure significant progress is made in the field."

After reading LONELY PLANETS: The Natural Philosophy of Alien Life (2003) by David Grinspoon, his words sparked several thoughts and speculations. 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 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.” Now, that was in 2003. 

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. In fact, I (with all due respect) believe that astrobiology is an...imaginary science. Though I suppose genetic engineering was imaginary once, long ago...

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!

I’m a bit over halfway through the book now (page 198) and I’ve placed an order for my own copy through a Half-Price Books near me. I’m even (*gasp*) dog-earing my Library copy for later transfer to the book when I get it.

Couple of things I noticed thus far: the book is old. Published in 2003, (TWO FREAKING DECADES AGO!!!) it was most likely written in 2002. This was substantially BEFORE the Kepler Telescope was launched into an Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit in 2009, and absolutely FOREVER before the Webb Space Telescope. 

Six years later, Kepler celebrated the discovery of its 1000^th confirmed exoplanet. Another three years followed Kepler sweeping more and more prizes into its discovery bin. Then “On October 30, 2018, after the spacecraft ran out of fuel, NASA announced that the telescope would be retired. The telescope was shut down the same day, bringing an end to its nine-year service. Kepler observed 530,506 stars and discovered 2,662 exoplanets over its lifetime…” (Anyone else hear a faint echo of “…its five-year mission, to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no [one] has gone before!”?)

Despite the age of the book and now that I’ve read half of its 416 pages, I’m puzzled by Grinspoon’s not mentioning “hot Jupiters”. With statements like: “In the hot regions near the Sun, it snowed flakes of metal and rock. Farther out, around the present orbit of Jupiter, it was cold enough for ices to form: both the familiar snowflakes of water ice that adorn winter on Earth and more exotic snow of frozen methane and ammonia.” (page 82); and “The initial segregation of material by temperature, which made metal and rock near the Sun, and ice farther out, has been preserved.” (page 83). He obviously doesn't mention the Grand Tack model of the solar system (Proposed in 2018, it states "In planetary astronomy, the grand tack hypothesis proposes that Jupiter formed at a distance of 3.5 AU from the Sun, then migrated inward to 1.5 AU, before reversing course due to capturing Saturn in an orbital resonance, eventually halting near its current orbit at 5.2 AU.")

Why is that? He DOES mention the discovery that the star 51 Pegasi had a planetary companion. That happened in 1995 (embarrassingly, this story doesn’t start until page 209 and as I mentioned, I’ve only just today reached page 198!). After this account, Grinspoon goes on to marvel at the discovery of some hundreds of extrasolar planets (!), having only a faint idea that Kepler would soon blow that number out of the water.

My other trouble is that when discussing Venus, he makes virtually no mention of the fact that it 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.

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)

If any of you ever read the first book of my proposed series HEIRS OF THE SHATTERED SPHERES: Emerald of Earth (which is serialized here https://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/ starting in January or so…), 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’ll leave you with this, and I’ll continue next time.

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

Resources:
Part 1: http://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2018/11/possibly-irritating-essays-philosophy.html, http://www.openexoplanetcatalogue.com/
Part III: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2018/11/possibly-irritating-essays-part-three.html

Image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUGOthVSNSUaxivRh0p8U5Ub4NEr0KxiZyPOIBI91G4gAPdcWmSQ-krJynDH2RQu93hHeS6EFbgOFZiDNaZ3M35LGLVbwklBZDB_dEB6symLvWTaYSgbFymOAqbFO4rVwd4qGcEBnzlDk/s1600/Unknown-4.jpeg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: Part I -- Philosophy, Aliens, Galileo, and Other Stuff

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.

Part II: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2018/11/possibly-irritating-essays-part-2-state.html
Part III: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2018/11/possibly-irritating-essays-part-three.html
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 614

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: inside a computer system
Current Event: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23343-interspecies-telepathy-human-thoughts-make-rat-move.html
Old Event: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_(1971_film)

Amelia Qasoori curled her lower lip, tucking it under her teeth then tapped them as she stared at the Apple 27 inch Cinema Display screen. She tapped another key on her computer.

Artem Torres tossed his backpack on the lab table, peeked over her shoulder then went to his own computer and booted it up. His screen was much smaller however and there were multiple images. All of the images were of rats.

Amelia glanced over at him and wrinkled her nose and said, “I don’t know how you can stare at those ugly things all day long.”

He smirked at her and said, “I can open the cages and play with them if you’d like.”

“You’re both obscene and disgusting at the very same instant,” she said, leaning closer to her screen and tapping a section of an image. The screen was covered with tiny squares.

“What’s even more disgusting and obscene is that we’re trying to do the same thing with organic and inorganic matter.”

Amelia nodded slowly as she tapped another square then made an entry on an old-fashioned yellow notepad with an even older-fashioned pencil. She made a few more notes, then typed for several minutes. The images on the screen whirled wildly and when they were done, Artem leaned back on his lab stool, looked at the image and said, “I don’t see any difference.”

Amelia made a raspberry. “That’s because you’re a wetwareologist. You people couldn’t feel your way off a kindergartner’s graphing calculator.”

“That’s not true! I use computer modeling all the time!” He waved at his smaller computer screen. “Just because everything I do is reality instead of virtuality doesn’t mean it’s not important.”

“I’m not talking about ‘importance’ here, Art! I’m talking about relevance. What I do is relevant. What you do is...cute in a sort of old-fashioned way.”

From behind them, a stentorian voice spoke, “My two favorite high school geniuses continue to banter mindlessly, ignoring my strict instructions to MELD the techniques and technology to form something new.”

Artem and Amelia jumped to their feet, spinning around. In unison they said, “Hello, Dr. Willard.”

He nodded to them and passed between them. He was tall. Unusually tall, well over two meters tall. He patted both of them on their heads. “So, my tremendous twins, what do you have for me today?”

“Look, Dr. Willard, I can make a fine rat robot for you! There’s no need for...”

“Dr. Willard, if you get me some really great tech who won’t talk back every time I ask for something, I could have a ‘borg rat ready for you in two shakes of a…a...”

“A rat’s tail, Mr. Torres? There’s no need for me to have a biological brain, Ms. Qasoori?” He stood back and studied her screen. Then he stepped sideways and leaned forward to study Artem’s screen. Straightening, he said, “What I need, dear pupils, is a seamlessly integrated part organic-part inorganic creature to do a very, very interesting job.” He favored each one with a cold glare, then left the lab, adding without turning around, “A word from me can get you into the most select graduate study programs in the world.” He stopped in the doorway, and still without turning around, said, “A word form me can get you barred from the most pathetic study programs in the world.”

Names: ♀ Australian (NSW), Pakistan; ♂ Russian, Spanish
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 #24: Orson Scott Card “& 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 Orson Scott Card– with a few from myself…

Like everyone else, I first “met” Orson Scott Card in a world inhabited by a kid named Ender Wiggins. This kid “played” a Game – a game of war against a nearly implacable aliens who had invaded Earth called the Formics…because they were like ants…

But I didn’t meet Ender in the novels -- he appeared in August of 1977, when the first ever Ender Wiggins story appeared in ANALOG Science Fiction and Fact. I read it and reread it. I’m sure I tried to imitate it, but actually? I never really got into the Ender books. I don’t recall reading the novel, either. I just read the short story. Saw the movie, too, and I read one of the Alvin Maker books. But that was about it.

However…it is an undeniable truth (though many, many “non-religious” people have tried to knock Card down), that his work is popular. His work changed science fiction. And he continues to influence the field even today, almost half a century after the publication of a little, tiny novelette in a pulp SF magazine.

How does he influence it? Probably the first thing that comes to mind is his thirty-three-year-old book, HOW TO WRITE SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY. It’s short. Succinct. And I’ve read it at LEAST a dozen times. Every time I read it, I try to apply something I’ve learned from it. Probably the MOST memorable lesson is his discussion of something called the MICE Quotient.

In an article, Carlos Luis Delgado writes: “[The MICE Quotient is]…an organizational theory — coined by Orson Scott Card and popularized by Mary Robinette Kowal, among other fantastic writers — proposing that every story consists of one, or a combination of, these four elements: Milieu, Inquiry, Character, and Event.”

Briefly, the Milieu is the PLACE the story happens. NOT, “In Minnesota…” place; rather it’s the world that I create as a writer. 

Others design a world for a story and then throw it away. They build that world so that whatever it is the writer is trying to say will HAPPEN there in precisely the way that will make the end of the story both obvious and clearly say whatever message the writer’s trying to communicate.

As I’ve always loathed what I call “disposable worlds” or worlds that a writer creates for a single story, I have four worlds I place all of my science fiction stories into.

Card, Brin, Czerneda, Cherryh, and hundreds of other writers – (even non-genre writers like Stieg Larssen have taken the idea of Milieu seriously. He wrote the international best-seller: THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO. Then he wrote two more books in the series and NONE of them were published until after he died! The first became a runaway hit. The two that followed also were best-sellers. Because he had passed away before publication, it was left to the publisher to continue the series. The first book sparked two MORE writers to write two MORE trilogies in the series…

At any rate. Milieu is a place that can be reused over and over.

I made a pact with myself that I wouldn’t throw away a world. As far as I can recall, ALL of my stories take place in one of these four worlds:

Empire and Confluence: There’s no one but US. The Empire of Man insists a person must be 65% congruent with the first completed Genome (Human Genome Project completed: March 30, 2022 [ https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/educational-resources/fact-sheets/human-genome-project ]); the Confluence of Humanity allows ALL genetic engineering on the Human genome in order to design Humans to fit ANY environment.

WheetAh-Human: There is one other sapient species in the known universe. The WheetAh are intelligent, space-travelling plantimals (aspects of both animal and plant).

Unity of Sapients: Thirty-four Sapient species make up a (roughly!) unified civilization in the Orion Spur of the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way. We are the newest and least advanced (sent out our first interstellar probe; how we discovered our “watchers”.) To get other stuff, we have to trade. But there's really only one thing they want...

Heirs of the Shattered Spheres: An aggressive civilization of "saurians" evolved on Venus. Expanding rapidly, they left our Solar System to conquer the rest of space. Eventually, they were beaten back by Others. During the final battles, a micro-singularity engine broke free and blew uncontrolled through the Solar System. Uranus was tipped on its side; Mars' atmosphere was torn away; the singularity destroyed other ships, scattering debris through the Solar System. It rained destruction down on Earth about 65 mya and blasted Venus and its large moon, reversing Venus' rotation; and liberating its moon to fall into a new orbit around the Sun...

All of my stories can be placed in one of these Milieus. There are stories that take place EARLIER than First Contact, but the end result is the same.

Idea: “Idea stories are about the process of finding information. They begin with a question and end when that question is answered. Books in the mystery genre are often in this category.” These are OK for me, but I prefer a deeper story.

Character: I’ve finally started to learn that my main character has to CHANGE from what they were like at the beginning to someone (or some part of them) that is new – and that change is catalyzed by the PLOT (the things that happen). NO character can just randomly change. I am who I am today because certain things happened to me. Lots of time travel stories talk about “what if this hadn’t happened to…” Maybe the most profound one I’ve seen (which also inspired all kinds of arguments!) was “What if Adolph Hitler had gotten into the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna?” (The arguments stem from the idea that Hitler WAS what he WAS. History would be no different if he’d gotten into the school…)

Event/Catastrophe: “Event stories begin with a catastrophic event that threatens to totally destroy or alter the world and end either when the characters stop or when they overcome the catastrophe, or when everyone perishes.” I’m not fond of this one, but it HAS been used to impressive effect. Adrian Tchaikovsky uses this Quotient in his first novel CHILDREN OF TIME, in which a mission to seed a world to make it habitable by Humans goes…quite creepily…wrong. (I have a friend who could NOT read the book because of the creep-factor!)

This is a useful tool – and I need to go back to using it.

Lastly, this quote from Card is one I’ve taken to heart:

“Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.”

I’ve learned to see one or two a day!

References: https://www.ericjamesstone.com/biography/about-writing/my-notes-from-orson-scott-cards-literary-boot-camp-2003/ ; https://writelabel.medium.com/using-mice-in-your-copywriting-c1a8ee6f2bf2 ; https://www.azquotes.com/author/2450-Orson_Scott_Card/tag/writing ; http://www.hatrack.com/writingclass/index.shtml Image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhK6miXJMTMNyB3kzq-r6I2LVCTZJj0CDS0dPV2Qapl6e9rZPuHx2u5QKcKT1QGeDg1_tPMv-lpnuSr_eiBjwPXmex9mcgtuH2-SUtZEpGWV0_HdtJQelVt5K69NulJBUqNju5GNjHgQibXsIo4NeWpTOj4ai85jCRjMHOtwtkqshzxFvZPUSjXZNq6=s320