LOVE IN A TIME OF ALIEN INVASION Chapter 17

The Cold War between the Kiiote and the Yown’Hoo has become a shooting war.  On Earth, there are three Triads one each in Minneapolis, Estados United; Pune, India; and Harbin, China. Protected by the Triad Corporation, they intend to integrate not only the three peoples and stop the war that threatens to break loose and slaughter Humans and devastate their world.; but to stop the war that consumes Kiiote economy and Yown’Hoo moral fiber. The Yown’Hoo know about the extra-Universe Braider, aliens whose own “civil war” mirrors the Cold War. The Braiders accidentally created a resonance wave that will destroy the Milky Way and the only way to stop it is to physically construct a sort of membrane that will produce a canceling wave – generated from the rim of the Galaxy inward. The Braiders don’t DO physical stuff on that scale – the Yown’Hoo-Kiiote-Human Triads may be their only chance of creating a solution. The merger of Human-Kiiote-Yown’Hoo into a van der Walls Society may produce a stability capable of launching incredible expansion, creativity, longevity and wealth – and building the Membrane to stop the wave.

The young experimental Triads are made up of the smallest primate tribe of Humans –two; the smallest canine pack of Kiiote – six; and the smallest camelid herd of Yown’Hoo – a prime eleven. On nursery farms and ranches away from the TC cities, Humans have tended young Yown’Hoo and Kiiote in secret for decades, allowing the two warring people to reproduce and grow far from their home worlds. Grendl, Manitoba is one such place. No one but the Triad Company has ever heard of it and the physical plant http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/0/77/316636-81553-fly-man.jpggoes by the unobtrusive name of Organic Prairie Dairy.

The city Triads never hear of anything they aren’t spoon fed in their luxury worlds and have heard only rumors of the farms and ranches. Surrounded by a Humanity that has degenerated into a “duck-and-cover” society as the Big Boys fight their war, the Triads don’t care about anything but their own lives. Oblivious, cocooned, manipulated, they have no idea that their privileges are about to be violently curtailed and all of their biology ransacked for the correct Membrane pattern. (update: 5/2/2014)

Naturally, I slammed on the brakes.

Lieutenant Commander Patrick Bakhsh (ret)’s leaped to his feet, shoving my foot aside and flooring the accelerator.

I screamed and tried to push him away as the truck surged at the inferno. “Hold your breath!” he shouted. He reached over me, grabbed the door handle and slammed it shut. He dropped back into his seat and slammed his own door shut, then popped up again to floor the accelerator and steer us straight at the inferno.

I shouted, “What are you…”

“Hold your breath now!”

Not used to others telling me what to do almost made me defy him just on principal, but he was leading us somewhere. He seemed like he cared. I gulped air as the truck blew through the wreckage of the helicopter. As we reached the center – and I discovered it wasn’t as bad nor as hot as I’d imagined – he signaled me to turn right. I did. An instant later, we were out of the flames.

Directly in front of me was a garage door. I looked to the commander and he swept his arm forward. I floored it as three meters away from crashing into it, it vanished and we swept into darkness and hit a ramp that plunged downward. “What the priz?”

“Just drive, kid!” We hit a raised concrete mound in the middle of the road. The truck jumped underneath us. With a deafening shriek of metal, we hit the roof. Howls, whistles, and screams came from in back. The commander cursed in a language I’d never heard and cried out, “Slow down!” I hit the brakes, eliciting more noise from the back, “Don’t stop! Just slow down! We have to make it to the bottom alive!”

Once I slowed the truck down, I noticed that the side windows were covered with soot. I managed, “Where are we going?”

“I’ll tell you when we get there,” he held a hand up to my face as I opened my mouth to reply. “Don’t go all proud on us now. We have people to meet and a schedule to keep.” He glanced at me and I spared a look at him as he said, “You have lives to protect.”

Abruptly realizing that besides the two of us, there were eighteen others in the back of the huge truck. None of them had any idea where we were or what I was doing. I concentrated on following the downward slant of the floor. When we reached a flat area, Commander Bakhsh said, “Turn here, go to the end of the parking area and stop. Slow it way down. The ceiling is lower here than it was in the ramp.”

“If it gets any lower, we’ll have to let the air out of the tires,” I said.

“How’d you learn about that?”

“I read books. Watch movies. I like parables.”

He grunted, then said, “Me, too.” We came to the end of the flat area and he said, “All right. Stop here.” He stood and opened the window into the back and said, “We’ve arrived, but you can’t leave until we meet our transportation out of the City.” Everyone in back started talking at once and the commander shut them up with a low whistle. In ‘Hoonish, it meant something like, “If you don’t shut up, I’ll cut off your back legs and stuff them in your mouth.” The Herd’s language is expressive when it comes to directions for hiding.

He say back down next to me and looked to one side. He muttered something and slid the door open. The stench of burnt paint rolled in. I coughed and he shot me a look. That was when I realized it should have been dark down here. We were underground – I had no idea where we were underground. The old Metrodome – built in the latter part of the Teens – did have anything like it. “What did they store here?”

“Cars,” the commander said.

“What?”

“Automobiles. They were temporarily stored here while their owners conducted business in the City. Before First Contact with the Kiiote-Yown’Hoo Conflict, Humans transported themselves on a vast highway system, as well as by a railway far more extensive than the one he have now. Humans flew just about everywhere else. They also owned the planet, though ownership was split about two hundred and fifty ways. Before everything fell apart, there were nearly eleven billion of us.”

I laughed and said, “Liar.”

He shrugged, saying, “Doesn’t matter anymore. The five billion survivors have to live. That’s where the nineteen of you come in. That’s why I’m risking my life to get you all out of the City before one of the Crazies nukes the whole place.”

“The Crazies? Nukes?” I said.

He hissed me silent. There was a deep growling noise coming from outside. The commander slid out of the truck, releasing his gun from its holster as he did. “Don’t move.”

I couldn’t have if I wanted to, my head worrying at what he’d just said. I’d never read in the histories that there’d been eleven billion Humans on Earth! It was a ridiculous thought! The carrying capacity of the planet was clearly three billion. Human government along with the Kiiote and the Yown’Hoo were working to reduce the excess. For the first time in  my life, I wondered exactly what that meant.

I didn’t want to go there right now.

I sort of knew about automobiles because of the movies. I just never realized that Humans drove them very far. None of the visual histories said much about them, treating them as if they were so common no explanation of them was necessary. We had delivery trucks and buses now – that was a given; but none of us had ever gone very far from our home. I’d heard of trains and we saw them occasionally from a distance, but I’d never really cared what they were for.

The growling got louder. The rest of the Triad was silent in the back of the truck. The smell of burnt paint and metal was overwhelming and my eyes started watering. It had nothing to do with the terror that had made me freeze at the wheel of the truck.

There was a deafening explosion...

Image: http://www.amerrescue.org/scans/nycf.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 163

I’ll be taking a BRIEF break from writing a fantasy, a science fiction, and a horror novel online – to just provide you with a trope, a current event, and a shove in the right direction.

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.

H Trope: Abandoned Malls

Current Event: http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/12/travel/abandoned-buildings-irpt/

Kehlanna McGee and Trayvon Dehvahn crouched in an overgrown bit of woods that had sprung up around a drainage ditch outside the four-meter-tall cyclone fence, staring at the abandoned mall beyond. She said, “Wha’d’you think they’re hiding?”

Trayvon laughed softly and said, “A shameful past of excess spending at cheesy, overpriced, trendy shops that sold mostly lingerie and salt and pepper shakers?”

Kehlanna bumped him with her shoulder, “Seriously.” She gestured. A pair of city black and white police cars sat in the lot along with another pair of silver cars emblazoned with a security logo.

 “I am being serious,” he said, bumping her back.

She rolled her eyes and said, “Salt-and-pepper shakers are so 1950s...”

“Thereby retro and incredibly popular now.”

“Ah!” she exclaimed, lifting a finger, “Now I know you’re wrong.” She consulted her palmtablet and after a few finger swipes, said, “ ‘Arbor Mills Mall, was the destination of a generation of shoppers starting the year it opened in 2001 and was decommissioned,” she paused and rolled her eyes, muttering, “...makes it sound like it was an important aircraft carrier or something...in 2024...” she paused then said, “That’s only half a generation.”

“Be that as it may, are we going in or are we just going to stand here talking about generations and malls?”

“In,” she said suddenly. “But we’re going to have to go back to the trailer and get a few things.” She paused, “And wait until it’s dark.”

Trayvon grinned, nodded and headed for where they’d parked trailer two kilometers away.

***

Four hours later, dressed in knee-high rubber boots and wearing black, they made their way silently through the culvert. No one had taken time to fence it, so they easily slipped under the meager security. Trayvon tapped his earpiece and subvocalized, “What are we expecting to find in here?”

“Treasure.”

He couldn’t help but snort, and Kehlanna hissed at him, sub-vocalizing, “Quiet or they’ll hear us.”

“I’m not the one hissing like a punctured whipped cream can.”

They moved as far as they could in the ravine, then climbed at a likely spot. His night

goggles confirmed they were only six meters short of their goal. They scanned for the police and security cars, saw neither, so Trayvon stood up and aimed a very-illegal device at the surface between them and the abandoned mall. After a moment, he subbed, “No active pressure security spots and no evidence of landmines.”

“Landmines?” Khehlanna subbed.

“You said there’s treasure. People protect treasure with landmines and lasers and other high tech gadgets. I was checking for everything.”

She nodded in the darkness a moment later, then subbed, “Let’s go. The map I found has a maintenance door into the rear of one of the anchor stores straight ahead.” She paused, then went up the embankment and scurried across the broken asphalt. He followed three minutes later. By then, she’d cut through the locking mechanism of the door with an infrared laser. Trayvon sprayed the old hinges with a silent stream of lubricant and then door swung open a moment later as Kehlanna pulled it.

They entered the darkness and the goggles switched to a sonar image – the power had been cut to the building a decade earlier when it closed  in order to prevent fires. They avoided collapsed ceiling tiles and piles of mouldering cardboard boxes. Trayvon subbed, “If this is the ‘treasure’ we can expect to find, we might as well leave right now.”

“Nah. There has to be something in here that those people are protecting.”

“Hmmm.”

They exited the back room of the store and passed through piles of stacked shelving, display cases, light fixtures, and garbage until they reached the mall proper. In front of him, Kehlanna stopped abruptly and cursed out loud rather than subbing.

Trayvon subbed, “Shut up! I can’t tell if there are audio security pickups in here...” He stopped as he pulled up alongside her. Outside the door with its corroding security gate, a group of three people, linked together by rope tie around their necks, passed by. The figure at the front of their line, holding the rope and wearing an army-style helmet that was twice as large as Trayvon had ever seen before, was a giant creature that looked for all the world, like yeti…

Names: ♀ American, Irish ; ♂ American, Greek

Image: http://cdn.visualnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Seph-Lawless-Abandoned-Malls-1.jpg

WRITING ADVICE: The Publishable Short Story 1 -- SHORT! (Guy Stewart #2)

In September of 2007, I started this blog with a bit of writing advice. A little over a year later, I discovered how little I knew about writing after hearing children’s writer, Lin Oliver speak at a convention hosted by the Minnesota Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Since then, I have shared (with their permission) and applied the writing wisdom of Lin Oliver, Jack McDevitt, Nathan Bransford, Mike Duran, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, SL Veihl, Bruce Bethke, and Julie Czerneda. Together they write in genres broad and deep, and have acted as agents, editors, publishers, columnists, and teachers.

While I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it...neither do all of the professional writers above...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! Hemingway’s quote to the left will now remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing output and sales! As always, your comments are welcome!

Every summer I teach a class to young people called Writing To Get Published. The class is self-explanatory and for the most part, I get realistic young people who take the class for several reasons. One of them is that while they are excellent readers and have read both extensively and INtensively, they feel that there is something more out there. They usually aren’t content with reading. For whatever reason, many of them feel a drive to CREATE books.

Being that they are typically between ten and seventeen years old, it goes without saying that they have had limited experience with the world of publishing.

For example, a decade ago, preteens and teens were devouring the REDWALL books, by Brian Jacques (whose human-like animal characters were praised from the beginning for “‘…action, poetry, songs, courage, and vivid descriptions...create a unique style’, ‘equal-opportunity adventuring, in which female creatures can be just as courageous (or as diabolical) as their male counterparts.’ The ‘development of unique language intrinsic to certain species, giv[es] the novels an ‘endearing dialectal dialogue.’ Some critics noted that the books ‘give too simplistic a view of good and evil,’ and that ‘The characteristics of the animals in the novels are fixed by their species, making them quite “predictable”’.

My students, enamored of the series eschewed the elements that made the stories memorable – poetry, song, courage, vivid description, adventuring, language, and the age-old concept of good versus evil – and focused exclusively on the battle scenes, writing reams of hack-and-slash and then breathlessly bringing the “stories” up to me for comment.

I tried to be kind, but most ignored my advice and churned out reams of battle scenes without any thought to plot, then showed it to their parents, who thought the writing was wonderful and asked if I knew any publishers...

When I (also inevitably) announced that I wasn’t sure most people in the class were ready to write novels – and then meticulously went over the typical lengths for novels for young people (after pointing out that most of them weren’t qualified yet to write a coming-of-age novel about a young man or woman...and having some of them violently disagree and write about adolescent romance anyway.

ALL OF THIS TO SAY: Write Short to start with.

There are hundreds of markets (keeping in mind my “to get published” goal) that do NOT require you to give away your hard-earned cash. The pay can be non-existent (these markets are called “4-the-love”) all the way up to professional markets that pay seven cents a word or more. Literary fiction, essays, poetry are showcased in the Pushcart Prize collections (http://www.pushcartprize.com/news.html); speculative fiction, essays, and poetry is catalogued at ralan.com (http://www.ralan.com/index.htm); and romance at http://cindimyersmarketnews.wordpress.com/category/short-fiction-markets/. All of them have a voracious appetite for short fiction.

None of them require the hard work and commitment of producing a novel and all of them will take the efforts of new writers. In fact, all of them depend on the efforts of new writers.

HOW do you write short?

That will be subject of my first series in Guy’s Writing Advice.

For the time being, try and keep your story short – which means that everything should happen over a period of time no longer than a week. It also means that you need only three or four characters – no “cast of thousands”.

Until next time, then...

Image: http://static4.quoteswave.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/We-are-all-apprentices.jpg

CONGRATULATIONS CLASS OF 2014!

Guidance counselor for the stars! (So, no post this day, sorry!) Will resume reality on Saturday!

Slice of PIE: Assisted Suicide in Speculative Fiction

This is a difficult subject to discuss as it evokes uncomfortable thoughts in me...

So I’ll start with Star Trek.

One of the most memorable episodes in The Next Generation also starred a favorite actor of mine, David Ogden Stiers (Charles Emerson Winchester The Third of M*A*S*H fame). In “Half A Life”, he played the scientist Dr. Timicin. In the episode, Deanna Troi’s mother, Lwaxana, falls in love with him – and is stunned when she discovers “…that, approaching the age of 60, Timicin is, upon returning to his planet, to undergo the ‘Resolution’, ritual suicide.” The story progresses and in the BEST of Star Trek, calmly, clearly, and evenly presents both side of the argument: “Each ends up finding the other's point of view cruel: Lwaxana because she sees it as arbitrary murder in an uncertain universe when death can come both well before and well after the designated age, Timicin because she is denying people control of their fate and the opportunity to end life with dignity.”

The movie “Soylent Green” mentions assisted suicide when the main character, Roth discovers what Soylent Green is made out of… “Roth seeks assisted suicide at a government clinic called ‘Home’.” (The aged friend Solomon ‘Sol’ Roth (played by Edward G. Robinson) of the main character, New York City Police Department detective Frank Thorn (played by Charlton Heston))

Alexander Zaitchik, in Salon.com did an article on 7/29/13 on this very subject and reviewed several old speculative pieces toward the end of the article – though nothing new or even close to “mainstream” science fiction (GULLIVER’S TRAVELS (1726); BRAVE NEW WORLD (1931); MAKE ROOM! MAKE ROOM! (1966)/”Soylent Green” (1973); THE CHILDREN OF MEN (1992); William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson’s movie “Logan’s Run.” (1976). The article was actually more interested in trumpeting the cause of Anthropogenic Global Warming than in assisted suicide…

At any rate, you can see that the subject doesn’t appear to be currently engaging the speculative fiction community. I bring it up here because it surfaced for an instant in discussions at DIVERSICON 2013, where I and a friend spent two days. My primary interest was hearing author Jack McDevitt whose work I fell in love with several years ago after reading ANCIENT SHORES (1996). The conclusion of the discussion was somewhat prescriptive: if intelligence is short-lived, then ritual and assisted suicide should be unacceptable. If life is long, it should be acceptable. If life has reached extreme length, it should be encouraged.

The catching point seems to be the definition of “long”. In his 1981 ANALOG short story, “Petals of Rose”, three civilizations meet to solve the problem of instantaneous communication. The work is sponsored by the Lazarines, alien beings whose life expectancy is millennial; Humans whose life expectancy is roughly 200 years; and the Rosans, whose entire life is lived in two Human weeks. While the issue of assisted suicide never comes up – unless you credit a Human-Lazarine war that Humans will lose as suicide – though it easily begs the question.

My own personal thoughts are complex and while Zaitchik implies that anyone who votes conservative right must disagree with his correct liberal left viewpoint, as a conservative rightist, I have nowhere near the assurance he seems to think I should have. My brother-in-law suffered for years from AIDS (hemophiliac, lived 30 years past the diagnosis and helped science realize that survival from full-blown, University of Minnesota diagnosed AIDS was possible and not the certain death penalty it once was); my wife as well as several friends and in-laws have suffered from cancer, some of them terribly at the end. I am completely unsure about what it means for me personally nor what I think the government should do, or allow…

In an article in Britain’s Spiked! Online magazine, author Kevin Yuill, points out, “...how many of the 70 per cent who support a change in the law would exercise the ‘right’ to die, if it were legal? In the US states of Oregon and Washington, where assisted suicide is legal, less than two per cent of those who qualify for it go through with it. Not even the most prominent campaigners for a right to die choose to exercise it, opting instead to hang on to what little life is left. This explains the wide disparity of opinions on legalisation between the general public, who are generally supportive, and those who have some experience of death – like those in the hospice movement, doctors and other medical professionals – of whom a majority are against a change in the law.”

Maybe it’s something that NEEDS to be explored in science fiction. Maybe I could be one of the people to do it...

Resources: http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Half_a_Life_(episode) , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green, http://www.salon.com/2013/07/29/global_warming_lsd_euthanasia_bring_on_the_death_panels/ , http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/hayley_cropper_and_the_fiction_of_assisted_suicide/14536#.U4sYp2dOXIV

Image: http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/63982000/jpg/_63982966_euthanasia_image.jpg

SHORT LONG JOURNEY NORTH #60: July 25, 1946

This series is a little bit biographical and a little bit imaginary about my dad and a road trip he took in the summer of 1946, when he turned fifteen. He and a friend hitchhiked from Loring Park to Duluth, into Canada and back again. He was gone from home for a month. I was astonished and fascinated by the tale. So, I added some speculation about things I've always wondered about and this series is the result. To read earlier SHORT LONG JOURNEY NORTH clips, click on the label to the right, scroll down to and click OLDER ENTRIES seven or eight times. The FIRST entry is on the bottom of the last page.

A flatbed truck stopped on the side of the road had been full of men, staring at them and trying to wave them down. Steam poured from the front of the truck as Arnie Volz, truck driver and boyfriend of Edwina Olds, Lieutenant, WACS (ret.) hit the brakes of the logging truck they’d gotten into while they were trying to hitch hike from Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada.

Finns poured out of the truck that had pulled over to the side of the road, pointing up when they saw the boys.

Freddie Merrill and Tommy Hastings screamed, “Don’t stop! Don’t stop!”

Tommy cried, “That’s Ilmari!”

“What did you say?” Arnie asked.

“Go! Go! Those men want to kill us!”

Arnie floored the accelerator and chugged past the men. Unfortunately the semi didn’t accelerate very fast. Even so, the back was loaded with barkless logs headed for Minneapolis and there wasn’t really any place for them to latch on to the cab. One of the Finns climbed on to the running board. The window was open and he shouted,  “Annamme sinulle mitään kuva!”

“What’s he talking about?” Freddie screamed.

Arnie reached under his seat and pulled out a gun, and stiff-arming Freddie and Tommy, pointed it in the man’s face.

The Finn fell off the truck and as they picked up speed, they left the men behind them. Arnie grunted and put the gun back and said, “All right, boys. Maybe you’d better start explaining what just happened.” He paused. “From the beginning, because that man just shouted, ‘We’ll give you anything for the picture!’”  

Freddie glanced at Tommy who couldn’t escape the hard look of the truck driver – looking right at him. He was as scary as Ed had been when she got mad at them. So he started at the very beginning, even though Freddie elbowed him when he told Arnie that they both lived in Minneapolis near Loring Park.

Arnie’s eyes lit up and he exclaimed, “Is Lars still there?”

Freddie turned around, looking up at Arnie’s bristly chin and deep wrinkles, and said, “Yeah, he caught Tommy smoking in the bushes.”

Tommy slugged him in the back, “You were doing the same thing!”

“Only cause you dared me!”

“No I didn’t! You brought the cigarettes from your dad!”

“Did not – you got ‘em from Earl!”

Arnie tapped on the brakes and the rig slowed down as he said, “Should I just take you back to your Finnish friends? I’ve established that you know Lars and I’m pretty sure Lars knows you...” His tone of voice told them to try and deny it, but both boys blushed to their tips of their ears. “I thought as much. So...”

Tommy took up the story, Freddie interrupting whenever there was a detail they disagreed on. They didn’t talk slowly, but they didn’t tell the story from beginning to end, either. It wasn’t long before they reached the customs station at Pigeon River. The sun had just set as they slowed and pulled up between the facing log cabins that were all there was of the international border between the US and Canada. The two countries were allies and shared the same continent with Mexico – though Canada was the biggest of the three and was the only country ever to have invaded Washington, DC and set fire to the Capitol Building.

“About five hours to Duluth, now boys. Where do you want me to drop you off?”

“I thought you were going home!” Freddie exclaimed.

Arnie laughed, “I am – but this ain’t my truck and I only go home once every three months. I gotta take the train just like everyone else.”

“Don’t you have a car?” asked Tommy. “My sister’s boyfriend’s got a keen one.”

Arnie snorted, “I make a good living, boys, but cars is for the rich. I wanna get me one, but for the time being, the trains and the trolleys are good enough for me.”

“How are we supposed to get home now?” Freddie cried.

“Same way’s you got here – hitchhike.”

“What if we meet Bonnie & Clyde and the Finnish mobsters and the witch and all of them again?”

“I think your mobster friends are stuck with a broken down truck about a hundred fifty miles back. The others are with them, most likely.”

“Why do they want us, Arnie? What’s in the picture that they want it so bad as to chase all over creation?”

Arnie scowled then said, “Only thing I can think of, boys, is that the picture shows not just your mom, but the two men shaking hands are not supposed to be friendly to each other.”

Freddie said, “You mean like one’s a socialist and ones a Communist?”

Arnie’s eyebrows went up as he said, “That’s EXACTLY what I mean, son. Exactly.”

Image: http://www.thekingshighway.ca/PHOTOS-2/hwy61-21_lg.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: What Am I Trying To Do As A Writer?

The late, great Robert A. Heinlein once said that his only goal as a writer – indeed, he may have said the ONLY goal any writer should have – was to entertain.

The statement seemed to imply that education, elucidation, insight into the Human condition, agenda, politics, religion, and anything else should take a very low priority to entertainment.

I’m not sure all writers would agree. Some seem intently focused on their message and, in my opinion, lose or have lost their stories. They keep lots of the people who read them initially looking for sheer entertainment, but those hangers-on seem to move from fans to sycophants (in case the definition of this word escapes you, try inserting “toadies, flatterers, bootlickers, brownnosers, minions, yes-men” instead and see if that clears things up). Others seem to publish the same thing over, and over, and over again and fans swipe their cards often enough to keep the writer on their leash. It seems rather like farmers who would rather be feeding the world but find it impossible to stop growing tobacco because the profit margin is so high that it would mean financial ruin to follow their convictions.

Jesus probably faced a similar dilemma. He had a message he wanted to deliver to the people of Judea, but the bald face of it – that they needed to surrender their lives to God and follow Him – would probably not pull in enough believers to perpetuate His Church. So he told stories. He told funny stories like the one about the short tax collector in a sycamore tree. He told dramatic ones like the one about the people who worked on a farm all day and the people who worked on the farm for a couple of hours all getting paid the same thing. He told knotty ones like the one about what to do at harvest time if you planted wheat and someone came in the middle of the night and planted dandelions. He told deeply profound ones that even inspired an American Law...(Hmmm, let’s see, in three parables, Jesus hit the humor market, the literary market, the mystery market. Some would say that the story about calling into a tomb and having the formerly dead occupant walk out hit the speculative fiction market (albeit the currently dead zombie market – if you’ll pardon my pun). The last became the unacknowledged basis of a law the general public expects everyone to follow.

No matter how you classify Jesus, the parables he told to the crowds and were recorded by his disciples remain embedded in more cultures than the ones occupying North America.

So who to emulate?

I have tried for  years to emulate Jesus and his parables with only a little success. My published work, while far from religious polemic, absolutely includes reference to and benchmarks of my Christian beliefs; and while some might scowl, shake their heads and mutter, “sour grapes”, I have no doubt a few of my stories were rejected because an editor didn’t approve of conservative, Christian touches. I’m also not yet good enough writer to bring a powerful idea to life, or to create a character vividly enough to be able to stand between my faith and the editors or readers; to project my beliefs while living stronger than any reader’s doubts or biases.

Some have – CS Lewis’ short stories appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction; Michael Flynn’s faith pops up almost every chapter; Gene Wolfe, while acknowledged by Neil Gaiman to be the “best writer, bar none, of the 20^th Century”, is a man whose deep faith in Christ shows up as metaphor and allusion in The Book of the New Sun; and Star Wars author, Kathy Tyers who also has a best-selling Christian science fiction series of books originally published by Ace Books.

What am I trying to do with my writing? I am trying to do what every Christian is called to do – CS Lewis, Michael Flynn, Gene Wolfe, Kathy Tyers – “...make disciples of all the nations...teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you..” Matthew 28: 19-20

Image: http://houseofgeekery.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/hobbitsbow.png

LOVE IN A TIME OF ALIEN INVASION Chapter 16

The Cold War between the Kiiote and the Yown’Hoo has become a shooting war.  On Earth, there are three Triads one each in Minneapolis, Estados United; Pune, India; and Harbin, China. Protected by the Triad Corporation, they intend to integrate not only the three peoples and stop the war that threatens to break loose and slaughter Humans and devastate their world.; but to stop the war that consumes Kiiote economy and Yown’Hoo moral fiber. The Yown’Hoo know about the extra-Universe Braider, aliens whose own “civil war” mirrors the Cold War. The Braiders accidentally created a resonance wave that will destroy the Milky Way and the only way to stop it is to physically construct a sort of membrane that will produce a canceling wave – generated from the rim of the Galaxy inward. The Braiders don’t DO physical stuff on that scale – the Yown’Hoo-Kiiote-Human Triads may be their only chance of creating a solution. The merger of Human-Kiiote-Yown’Hoo into a van der Walls Society may produce a stability capable of launching incredible expansion, creativity, longevity and wealth – and building the Membrane to stop the wave.

The young experimental Triads are made up of the smallest primate tribe of Humans –two; the smallest canine pack of Kiiote – six; and the smallest camelid herd of Yown’Hoo – a prime eleven. On nursery farms and ranches away from the TC cities, Humans have tended young Yown’Hoo and Kiiote in secret for decades, allowing the two warring people to reproduce and grow far from their home worlds. Grendl, Manitoba is one such place. No one but the Triad Company has ever heard of it and the physical plant goes by the unobtrusive name of Organic Prairie Dairy.

The Triads never hear of anything they aren’t spoon fed in their luxury worlds and have heard only rumors of the farms and ranches. Surrounded by a Humanity that has degenerated into a “duck-and-cover” society as the Big Boys fight their war, the Triads don’t care about anything but their own lives. Oblivious, cocooned, manipulated, they have no idea that their privileges are about to be violently curtailed and all of their biology ransacked for the correct Membrane pattern. (update: 2/13/2014)

The lieutenant came to my door and said, “What are you doing?”

“Aren’t you going to drive?”

He swore, spat out the open door, and said, “Who’s gonna ride shotgun, kid? Someone who doesn’t know a shotgun from a nose hair scissors, or someone who can kill with a dirty look?”

I shivered down to my shoes at the look he turned on me. For a second there, I figured he’d have killed me if he was told that’s what his job was. I took a deep breath and said, “Our meeting you wasn’t chance.”

His head snapped toward me, pinning me under an intense gaze. He pursed his lips grimaced, then said, “Point, young sir.” He took a deep breath, adding, “Your escape from the Cities at this time has drawn the partisanship of more than the Human community – certain Yown’Hoo and Kiiote have taken an interest in your safety. Unfortunately, other Yown’Hoo, Kiiote and Humans have planned your kidnapping for some time.”

“Why us?”

“Because the three Triads represent both change where none is desired, and the very same Triads represent changes long sought. The Triads are a drastic shift of paradigm for the aliens. Their cultures have been locked in mutual near-destruction without a care of the damage they cause to those weaker cultures all around them for nearly a thousand years.”

“They’ve been fighting for a thousand years?”

He turned his attention back to the road and said, “Drive, boy. Now. Or you and I won’t be alive long enough of to continue this discussion.”

“Why would we wanna do that?”

He shot me another one of his glances and it felt as if my IQ had dropped seventy points. He flicked a finger out the door, “Left here and step on it.”

“This thing’s electric – it only goes so fast! Especially with Herd and Pack jammed into the rear of this thing like zoo animals.

His fist hit me in the chest so fast, I wasn’t even aware he moved, only that I slammed against the seat back and couldn’t breathe. The truck rolled to a stop and before I could get us rolling again, Lieutenant Commander Patrick Bakhsh (ret) had leaned over to me and breathed in my ears, “Don’t ever say that again. We act like animals, all of us at times. Any one of us – Human, Yown’Hoo, or Kiiote – might snap the bonds of civilization and be fit for nothing but a cage. None of any of us deserve such treatment.” I opened my mouth, but the Commander’s gaze stopped it. “There are aliens who wish for nothing but an end to this senseless war.”

“And others who would wish for nothing but the coldness of the conflict be fanned into all-out war,” I added.

He nodded, gesturing down another street. I turned the truck and the others variously cursed, yipped or whistled from in back. “Perhaps you’ve actually learned something in that gilded cage of yours.”

“I know lots of stuff...”

The end of the street we were driving down exploded in a fireball as a Human helicopter plummeted to the ground.

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