Creating Alien Aliens, Part 14: Philosophical Ruminations on “What is Human?” and “What is Alien?”

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...

What engineering problems were involved with the Cassini/Huygens mission to Saturn & Titan in order to design an experiment that had to survive the journey, and then the harsh conditions on the surface of Titan?

What are the environmental constraints and engineering imperatives for Venusian colonization imposed by the environment?

All you need to know about space and interplanetary exploration is bottled for easy consumption for writers, space fans, and DIY space vehicle construction (don't try this at home folks) on the internet.

I’ve been a science teacher since I was licensed in 1981. I retired in 2020 – just short of forty years. I’ll continue teaching classes for gifted and talented kids called ALIEN WORLDS…and I make sure my science is as up-to-date as I can make it. When I started teaching the class 26 years ago, there was no such things as the Open Exoplanet Catalogue ( http://www.openexoplanetcatalogue.com/) and my kids had to make up everything from the star-type to the number and types of planets. No more – I make them choose a REAL star system and they have to include the REAL planets that are known to exist.

So, what does this have to do with creating Alien Aliens?

Well, we DO have a fabulous resource. Derek Künsken, whose novel HOUSE OF STYX appeared first in ANALOG Science Fiction and Fact, and will be published as a hardcover in April 2021. It’s incredibly real and intersectional in that the complex, cumulative way in which the effects of multiple forms of discrimination such as racism, sexism, and classism intersect (combine, overlap) in the experiences of marginalized individuals or groups.

Künsken didn’t interest himself in ONLY the physical aspects of Venus and its exploration and colonization, but also in the people who were the colonists. His approach to the Venus is far, far beyond that of, say CS Lewis, Edgar Rice Burroughs or even Ben Bova. The problem of course, is that our understanding of extreme Solar system environments changes daily. Even in my work in progress, I have to read constantly to know what is “current” on Mars; and when or if it’s published, the data will be dreadfully out of date!

But once Humans have been hanging around in the atmosphere of Venus for a few decades…or centuries…or millennia…will they still be Human? Would they be transhuman? The definition of transhuman is “a being that resembles a human in most respects but who has powers and abilities beyond those of standard humans…including improved intelligence, awareness, strength, or durability…and appear in science-fiction…as cyborgs or genetically-enhanced humans.”

What is “Human”? There are 22 of the “best” definitions here: https://www.yourdictionary.com/human. [What about pets? Are they Human? (Be careful who you ask for a comment on this. Interpretations run from “hell no!” to “absolutely yes!” Sometimes even in the same family.)]

Maybe that’s the biggest problem faced by those who are trying to make plans for landing on the surfaces of the various bits of flotsam and jetsam. In my River Universe, Humans have had experience exploring Jupiter – but the engineering here is biological. The Confluence of Humanity has essentially no taboo on the genetic engineering of Humans. But, giving free reign for science to do whatever it feels it should do, has given rise to a backlash. The Empire of Man became an empire of hard technology and created a divide between levels of genetic engineering such that, if you are more that 65 percent Original Human DNA (as defined by the first results of the Human Genome Project in 2003), you are legally Human. If you are NOT 65% or more, you are NOT entitled to the protections and laws of Humanity.

Think about the surface of the Moon. It’s airless, lightless (half the time), and the temperature variation swings from 127 C to -173 C a swing of some 300 degrees. How do you not only dress an astronaut for that, but design MACHINERY for that? What will it take to really, truly colonize Mars? [How long will the colonists remain “human”? What will the standard of “Human” be? That’s what I’m looking at in my River stories…]

We’ve clearly got a reasonable grip on EQUIPMENT surviving on Mars. But what about people? It seems to me that we’ve just assumed that we could plop a colony on Mars, stand back, and let everything develop. But the FACT of the matter is, is that Humans evolved/were designed to live on Earth. Our biology – from our bone structure to our bowels is built to work in what we even call a “standard G”; based on Earth’s gravity of 9.8 m/s2. How will Humans survive, I mean REALLY survive on Mars when gravity there is is 3.7 m/s2 ? How will our digestion work with only .38 g’s pulling the food down – I KNOW some of our digestion comes from peristaltic action – but how much? We only have long-term experience with microgravity (“zero-g”)…How about real reproduction? Can we make babies on Mars; ‘cause if THAT’S a no-go, then true colonization is impossible.

Venus? It has gravity that’s very close to Earth. It may give us some problems, but far fewer than we’d find on Mars, the Moon, or in the Asteroids. A 188 degree temperature swing. It’s famously inhospitable, though Derek Künsken, Sarah Zettel, and others (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_in_fiction), and Zettel postulates that Venus has been colonized by aliens for whom it’s a “good fit”.

How can you design stuff to work reliably under conditions that are so far outside of those needed to sustain Human life? Well, apparently, that’s what scientists and engineers are trying to do. How would you design a rover for Venus? We’ve sent rovers to the Moon, Mars, and even dropped probes to the surfaces of comets and Titan, one of the Moons of Saturn.

Obviously sending Humans to any of those targets would be an entirely different challenge, but engineers are going to need to do it. So, what would a surface probe of Venus look like? Most scientists figure that such an undertaking would be impossible. How could we possibly design anything that would survive those conditions? The heat and pressure alone would destroy anything we made and dropped down to the surface. The RECORD for the survival of Human engineering is 127 minutes for the Russian Venera 13 lander.

Most Venus-explorer types insist that surface exploration is moot. We will need to explore with balloons set adrift in the high atmosphere and perhaps drop gliders…

What if we genetically engineered creatures like, say squirrels or bats or something else we could armor and then let them fly in huge swarms? So designed, would they become “true Venusians”? What if they developed a “swarm intelligence”, would they colonize and own Venus?

What is our definition of “Human”? Are robots Human? Artificial Intelligences? Who defines “Human” and Alien?

Living on Mars: https://lasp.colorado.edu/home/mop/files/2019/08/Humans-Will-Never-Colonize-Mars.pdf, https://futurism.com/mars-colonists-mutation-evolution
Image: https://image.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/alien-human-600w-136457129.jpg

Guy Stewart is a husband supporting his wife who is a multi-year breast cancer survivor; a father, father-in-law, grandfather, foster father, friend, writer, and recently retired teacher and school counselor who maintains a writing blog by the name of POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS where he showcases his opinion and offers his writing up for comment. He has 72 stories, articles, reviews, and one musical script to his credit, and the list still includes one book! He also maintains GUY'S GOTTA TALK ABOUT BREAST CANCER & ALZHEIMER'S, where he shares his thoughts and translates research papers into everyday language. In his spare time, he herds cats and a rescued dog, helps keep a house, and loves to bike, walk, and camp. He thinks out loud in print at: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/





Image 2: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIWSRIn0aP8R1M7NXFKRKFP1GAJBoTK1DUjXKA5a2b38je1SAeO6Ipni9Osb-wEFra4ic8udTbHT-EeZgzFrzFNSGHlA9Dj4VRzzk_WzA8fBj95qeKmjIpjekqiysmra74pjctiKLrtebF/w150-h200/164054184_900009080544732_2810066332651630100_n.jpg

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Fiction • "It Came From The Slushpile," by Bruce Bethke

Editor’s note: A few days ago Guy Stewart brought it to my attention that there was something of a mystery as to why we’d named the magazine Stupefying Stories. Here, in a sense, is our origin story. This one was first published in the July-August 1987 issue of Aboriginal Science Fiction magazine, then republished in the Best of Aboriginal anthology, and then anthologized and reprinted so many times in the late 1980s and 1990s that I lost track of all its reprint appearances. It was even optioned to be the pilot episode for a proposed Twilight Zone-like TV series, and while the project made it as far as an approved shooting script, the series never went into production.

“It Came From The Slushpile” has been a part of my life for so long I’d forgotten that we’ve picked up a lot of new friends lately, and most of you probably have never seen this one, as I quite likely wrote it before you were born. Therefore, here, for your entertainment, is…

Actually, no. This is not a story. It’s true. It’s all true. This is what it’s like every day here at Rampant Loon Press. Honest.

___________________

 

Original art by Larry Blamire • Used by permission.

The place stank. A queer, mingled stench that only the manuscript-buried offices of fiction magazines know. Groping for the light switch, Rex Manly, the two-fisted editor of Stupefying Stories Magazine, led two junior college interns into the cramped and windowless back office.

“This is the slush pile,” Rex said in his deep, mature voice. “Normally we try to stay on top of it, but our associate editor quit six months ago and we couldn’t afford to replace her. So we’ve let it get a little out of hand.” Rex found the light switch; after a few crackles from a dying transformer, flickery blue fluorescent light flooded the room. Sheila, the tall, willowy, blonde intern, gasped. Janine, the other intern, bit her lip and fought back the tears.

“There are some six thousand unsolicited manuscripts here,” Rex continued. “Of those, six hundred are worth reading, and one hundred worth publishing. At best, twelve suit our current needs and budget well enough to be purchased.

“Your job,” Rex said, as he laid his massive hand on the manila-colored heap, “is to sift through this and find the dozen gems that might be hiding here.” Suddenly, the  stack of manuscripts shifted and began to collapse around him like an erasable bond avalanche. With an agility uncommon in a man his size, Rex leapt clear. “You get half an hour for lunch,” he said calmly, as if nothing had happened. “We see there isn’t a clock in here, so we’ll send someone by at noon to check up on you. Coffee’s in the art department. If you didn’t brown-bag there’s a Burger King up the street.” The two women were still overawed by the Herculean— or rather, Augean—task they faced, and asked no questions. Rex closed the door as he left.

¤
“Ready for lunch yet?” the tall, shapely, brunette asked as she arched her back against the doorframe, and with studied carelessness caught a polished fingernail on the hem of her skirt, tugging it up to expose a flash of silk-stockinged thigh.

“In a minute, Gina,” Rex said to the Art Director, without looking up. “We’ve got a really tough comma fault here we’re trying to nail down.” Gina pouted and sighed heavily, reminding Rex that it was dangerous to leave her with idle time on her hands. “Tell you what,” Rex said. “Do us a favor and tell those two interns working the slush pile that it’s time for lunch, okay?” Without answering, the Art Director turned and sauntered down the hall, her high heels clicking out a seductive Morse code on the terrazzo floor.

This was followed, in short order, by a piercing scream.

Rex vaulted over his desk and ran out into the hall, to find Gina wailing hysterically. Mascara streamed down her cheeks like oil from a leaky rocker-arm cover. “What happened?” he demanded, as he grabbed her roughly.

“You’re hurting my roughly!” she cried. Rex relaxed his grip; Gina sobbed, buried her face in his broad chest, and said, “It’s awful! Terrible! Hideous! Grue—!”

He slapped her. “Excess adjectives!”

Gina shuddered, then regained her composure. “Sheila and Janine, they’re... Oh, it’s too horrible!” A small crowd was gathering around the door of the interns’ office, so Rex helped Gina into a chair and bulled his way through the staffers.

“Does anyone here know—?” He stopped, the question caught in his throat. Sheila and Janine lay on the floor, two crushed, ink-smeared corpses half-covered in manuscripts.

“The slush pile must have imploded,” said Phil Jennings, the Science Fact Editor, who’d slipped through the crowd to stand at Rex’s right elbow. “No one has ever researched the critical mass of unpublished manuscripts. They may undergo gravitational collapse, like a black hole.”

Rex crouched; Phil crouched with him. “But the ink stains,” Rex said softly.

Phil gingerly reached out and touched Janine’s face. “Still fresh,” he said.

“Then at least we’re getting through about using new typewriter ribbons.” Rex stood, resolve giving strength to his voice. “Okay, let’s get them out of there. Jerry, Dave,” he pointed to two of the keyliners, “get in there and get their feet. Phil, take Sheila. We’ll take Janine.” Cautiously, the two keyliners waded into the office, but before they’d gotten more than ankle-deep they both slipped and fell on the erasable bond. “Are you okay?” Rex called out.

“Think so,” answered Jerry, who was closest to the center of the heap, “but there’s something funny going on here. My foot’s caught on something.”

“Oh my God,” Dave gasped.

Behind Jerry, a large, white- and black-speckled pseudopod was slowly extruding from the slush pile. “Phil?” Rex asked calmly, his voice belying the cold horror he felt. “What do you make of that?”

Phil leaned forward, squinted, took off his glasses and cleaned them on the tail of his shirt, put them back on, and then squinted again. “Hard to tell from this distance,” he said softly, “but it looks like a plagiarization of an old Twilight Zone script.”

“What are you...?” Jerry rolled around and caught a glimpse of the thing slithering up behind him. His scream catalyzed the rest into action.

“Give me your hand!” Rex bellowed as he leapt into the room. In moments he’d wrenched Dave free and pushed him out the door, but by then the pseudopod had Jerry and was drawing him deeper into the pile. “Someone find a rope!” Rex shouted. Fighting for balance, he waded in deeper. Jerry clawed for him like a drowning man; their fingers touched briefly, and then Rex lost his footing and went down.

“Hold on, Rex!” Phil shouted. He pulled out his butane lighter, set it to High, and charged in, wielding the lighter like a flaming sword. With four wild slashes, he freed Rex.

“Now for Jerry!” Rex bellowed.

“Too late!” Phil screamed. Rex plowed back into the manuscripts, while Phil tried to stave off the advancing pseudopodia, but a sixty-page rewrite of Genesis 5:1-24 rose up and slapped the lighter out of Phil’s hand. Then the slush pile began building into a great wave that towered over them. “Rex! Get out!” Phil yelled as he dove headfirst through the doorway. Reluctantly, Rex followed. “Shut it!” Phil shouted. Most of the staffers had already run away, and those who remained were paralyzed with fear, but one of the freelance book reviewers still had something of his wits left about him and he pulled the door shut, just as the heap smashed against it with a great soggy thump.

Rex sagged against the wall. “Jerry,” he said softly. “Oh, Jerry, we’re sorry.”

Dabbing her eyes with a Kleenex, Gina gave Rex a consoling hug. “There’s nothing you could have done,” she said.

Resolve flooded back into Rex, and he began issuing commands. “You there,” he barked, pointing at the surviving production crew. “Find something to barricade this doorway.”

“Phil!” he snapped. “What is that thing?”

Phil took off his glasses, chewed the earpiece for a bit, and then shrugged and said, “Beats the Hell out of me.”

“We pay you two hundred dollars a month for Science Facts,” Rex growled, “and all you can say is—”

“Hey, I only minored in Biology!” Phil said defensively. “I majored in Philosophy. You want a philosopher’s guess about it?” Rex said nothing, so Phil continued. “Okay, here’s the hard sci-fi guess: It’s a cellulose lifeform that mimics manuscripts for protective coloration. Maybe it’s symbiotic with that scuzzy blue mold that grows in old coffee cups. Kathryn was always leaving half-empty cups in there.”

Rex shook his head. “Too 1940-ish. Old hat.”

“Okay,” Phil said.  “Here’s the philosophical guess. It’s divine retribution for letting manuscripts sit for six months.”

“We never buy theological fantasy.” Rex thought a moment more, then reached a decision. “It doesn’t matter where it came from. The question is, what do we do about it?”

“Get more lighters,” the book reviewer said. “Torch the sucker.”

“We’d rather not,” Rex said. “This building’s a firetrap.”

“Let’s lure it into the paper cutter,” Gina suggested. “Do a Conan on it. Fight hacks with hacks, I say.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Phil answered. “It’s extremely amorphous. It may even be a colony organism. Cut it in half and we may well end up with two monsters.”

“Do you have a better idea?” Rex asked.

“I think we should attack its component parts,” Phil said. “If we can disperse them, we might destroy its will to exist.”

“Huh?” said Gina.

“We must reject it,” Phil said portentously. “Reject every last piece of it.”

“I know where there are some rejection slips!” the book reviewer shouted. He dashed over to the managing editor’s office, and in moments returned bearing two fistfuls of paper.

Rex took one, and pushed the other into Phil’s hands. “If it gets past me...,” Rex began. Phil nodded.

“Oh, be careful!” Gina sobbed, as she hugged Rex.

“Easy, kid,” he said coolly. “You’re getting mascara on my shirt.” Then he looked to Phil. “Ready?” Phil nodded.

Luckily, the staffers Rex had sent running to find barricade materials had simply kept running, so all he had to do was kick open the door, step into the breach, and start passing out the slips. In seconds, though, it became obvious that something was terribly wrong. Instead of being driven back, the thing was surging forward, swelling, growing. It even formed a pseudohead and started catching the slips on the fly, like a spaniel jumping for Doggie Snax. “What the Hell?” Phil wondered aloud. Then he looked at the slips he held:

---

STUPEFYING STORIES

Dear Writer,
      Thanks for showing us the enclosed manuscript. We’ve read it and are sorry to say we do not think it’s quite right for Stupefying at this time. Please don’t regard this as a reflection on the quality of your work; we receive a great many publishable stories but simply don’t have the space to print every one we like.

      Because of the great number of submissions we receive, we cannot make more specific comments. But again, thanks for giving us the opportunity to consider it, and we hope you find a market for it elsewhere.

      Cordially,
      Rex Manly
      Editor  

---

“Rex!” Phil screamed. “Get out of there! “You’re encouraging it!” Rex hastily backed  out of the room; the thing followed him, swirling around his feet and emitting happy yipping sounds. When it realized Rex had gotten away, it began hurling itself furiously at the door, and it took both Rex and Phil to hold the door closed.

“What went wrong?” Rex demanded. “Analysis, Mister Jennings!”

“We need something colder and blunter,” Phil answered. “We need to stun it, depress it, crush its ego.” The thing built up into another great wave and crashed against the door; this time the book reviewer had to throw his shoulder into it, too. “And soon!” Phil shouted.

“The previous editor used slips like that,” Rex said. “Can you hold the door while we look for some?” Not waiting for an answer, Rex sprinted back to his office and began rummaging around in the filing cabinets.

“I hate working on spec,” the book reviewer said.

In a few minutes, Rex returned. “These are all we could find,” he said. “Will they do?” Phil took one and read:

---

STUPEFYING
Stories and Science

Dear Contributor,

We regret that we are unable to use the enclosed material. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to consider it.

The Editors

---

“It might,” Phil said. “It just might.”

With Gina’s help, Rex laid out a semi-circle of rejection slips in front of the door. When the last one was in place, he yelled, “Now!,” and Phil and the book reviewer leapt clear. The door burst open with a violence that nearly tore it from its hinges, and the disgusting, pulsating mass slithered forward, found the first rejection slip, paused...

“It’s working!” Phil crowed. The slush pile shuddered, drew back slightly, and began whimpering. This quickly built into a spastic quivering, and the pile began sloughing off return envelopes and loose stamps.

“Is it dying?” Gina asked.

Phil wiped the perspiration from his glasses, peered closely at the trembling hulk, and said, “I’m not sure.”

“I’ll show you how to make sure!” the book reviewer shouted, as he ran up the hall. “We give it the coup de grace!” He found a typewriter, cranked in a sheet of letterhead, and began frantically clacking away.

“What are you doing?” Gina asked.

“What I do best,” the book reviewer said with a wicked grin. “Crushing an ego.” He finished the letter, yanked it out of the typewriter, and ran back to show it to the others. “One look at this, and it will shrivel up and die!”

“A bit strong, don’t you think?” Rex observed. It read:

---

STUPEFYING STORIES

Dear Talentless Hack,

Were you by chance going to the town landfill on the same day that you mailed your manuscript? We ask because it appears that you got confused, discarded your story, and mailed us your garbage instead.

In the future you may save yourself postage by simply not submitting to us at all. We will be watching for your name; rest assured that we will never forgive you for attempting to foist this load of pathetic crapola off on us.

With malice aforethought,
The Editors

---

“I’m not so sure this is a good idea,” Phil said.

“Nonsense,” the book reviewer countered. “I’ve done this a thousand times. Just watch.” He slipped the letter under the nearest edge of the slush pile; within seconds, the thing was smoking, shaking, and letting out hideous groans. “You see?” the book reviewer said smugly—and in less time than it takes to describe it, the slush pile rose up, quivering and roaring, and squashed him flatter than a thin-crust pizza.

“Good God!” Rex shouted. “That only enraged it! Run!” he shouted, as if Gina and Phil needed instructions.

The thing surged down the hallway after them, bellowing angrily and engulfing chairs, desks, ashtrays—anything that stood in its way. There was no plan to their flight, only sheer adrenalin panic, and so they wound up dashing into the Art Department two steps ahead of the thing. Phil slammed the door in its pseudoface; sinews straining, Rex held the door shut while Phil tipped over a few filing cabinets and pushed them together to form a barricade.

Frustrated, the pile drew back and threw itself against the door with all its force. Miraculously, the filing cabinets held. “Well, we’re safe for now,” Phil said, between gasps. “It can’t get in.”

“Just one problem,” Rex noted. “We can’t get out, either.” The three of them looked around. There was indeed no other way out: no window, no door, no conveniently large air duct...

“We’re trapped!” Gina wailed.

“Get a grip on yourself!” Rex shrieked. “This is no time for hysteria!”

“I’m trapped in a dead end by a monster that wants me for lunch!” Gina sobbed. “Can you think of a better time?”

“She’s right, Rex,” Phil said softly. “Sooner or later that thing will realize it can just ooze around the barricade. We’re done for.” He took off his glasses and slowly, mournfully, began to clean them on his shirt tail one last time.

“NEVER!” Rex bellowed, finding his full imperative strength at last. “We do not buy stories that end in futility!

“Look at us!” he commanded, as he stalked about the room, gesturing wildly. “What are we? Three people trapped in a blind alley by an unstoppable monster? No! We are three archetypes! The brilliant, scientific, nearly omniscient mind! The curvaceous, screamy, eminently rescuable heroine! The aggressive, dynamic, mightily thewed hero! We have an obligation to beat that thing!

“You! Phil!” he ordered. “Go discover something! Me! I!” Rex paused, stunned with the realization that he’d dropped his editorial plural. “I’ll think of an ingenious plan to take advantage of whatever you discover. And Gina? You—” Rex sat down, and grumpily put his chin in his palm. “Aw hell, go make some coffee or something.”

As the weight of his new responsibility settled onto Phil, he sat up alertly and said, “Listen! It’s stopped!” Rex’s ears perked up; the thing had indeed stopped hammering at the barricade. Phil crept to the door and peered out. Rex followed, and saw the quiescent beast  lying in the hall.

“Is it dead?” Rex asked hopefully.

“Do archetypal monsters ever die?” Phil answered scornfully. “It’s dormant, of course.”

“So now would be the perfect time to strike?”

“If we had a weapon,” Phil agreed.

“We’re out of coffee,” Gina said. “Will tea do?” She held up a Salada tea bag.

Rex snatched the tea bag out of her hand. “Of course!” he cried, the light of inspiration burning fiercely in his eyes.

“Didn’t know he liked tea so much,” Gina muttered.

“Don’t you see?” Rex shouted, holding up the tiny paper tag on the end of the string. “Gina, honey, can you reduce our logo and make it fit on this?”

“Well,” she said dubiously, “normally it’d take a week to keyline and shoot the stats, but I think—”

“Don’t think! Do!” He spun around. “Phil! Help me with our paper stock. I want something truly obnoxious. Fluorescent Yellow will do, Blaze Orange would be better! And find some glue sticks! Lots of glue sticks!” Rex started dumping boxes on the floor and searching through the resulting heap.

“What—?” Phil started to ask.

“We,” Rex said proudly, “are going to create the ultimate rejection slip. One that crushes all hope, destroys all incentive, leaves no room for doubt, argument, or interpretation—”

“Well, we’d better hurry,” Phil said ominously. “I don’t know what it’s doing out there, but I’m sure I won’t like it when I find out.”

¤

An hour later, they were nearly ready. They’d had to modify the design slightly as they went along to suit the materials at hand, but the result—

—on a postage-stamp-sized slip of Neon Lime Green stock, was coming off the copier. “Remember,” Rex was saying, “we hit it hard, hit it fast, take no prisoners—”

“And we hit it soon,” Phil added, as he peered out the door. “I’ve figured out what it’s doing. It’s metastasizing.”

Rex stopped short.  “What?”

“Look at it,” Phil said. “Those lumps all over its back; they’re buds. It’s getting ready to reproduce.”

“Good grief,” Rex gasped. “You mean, we’ll have more of those things?”

“Worse,” Phil said pensively. “If I’m right, in its larval stage it takes the form of an unsolicited manuscript. In a few minutes this place is going to be crawling with stories: thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of stories. Stories about flying saucers, deals with the devil, time travelers killing their grandparents.” The panic began to rise in Phil’s voice. “Evil galactic empires, sexy Celtic witches, sentient dragons, killer robots disguised as toasters.” Phil was bordering on total hysteria now.

“Rewrites of the Old Testament! Star Trek ripoffs! Twenty-first Century Barbarians!

“Rex!” Phil screamed. “There are enough post-Apocalyptic nuclear holocaust stories in there to wipe out this entire solar system!”

“Gina!” Rex growled. “Hurry up with those slips!”

“Be patient!” Gina snapped. “You can’t rush quality work!”

“Omigod!” Phil yelped, his face ashen. “They’re hatching.”

“Gina!” Rex barked. “I need those slips and I need them now!”

“Hold your damn horses. They’re just about ready...”

¤

Even with ten years’ experience in hand-to-hand fiction editing, the fifteen minutes that followed were the most ghastly Rex had ever lived through. Armed with the new rejection slips, he, Gina, and Phil waded into the heart of the beast, tearing open envelopes and slapping down tags. Gluing them to the manuscripts, to force retyping. In an odd way the process had a familiar feel, as if they were driving thousands of little stakes through thousands of tiny vampires’ hearts.

It was a grisly job, but at last, they were done. “It’s harmless,” Phil pronounced. “We’ve destroyed its will to live.”

Rex brushed aside a pile of spent glue sticks and collapsed into a chair. “Did we get it all? All?”

“Here’s one we missed!” Gina called out, as she crouched on her hands and knees and peered under the receptionist’s desk. She fished out the manuscript and read aloud, “It Came From The Slushpile, by some guy I’ve never heard of.”

“Ugh!” Phil spat. “Sounds like a bad ’50s sci-fi movie.”

“I don’t know,” Gina countered. “Listen to this. ‘The place stank. A queer, mingled stench that only the—’”

“That’s the opening of John Campbell’s Who Goes There?,” Rex said wearily. “At least he plagiarizes from a good source.”

“So you don’t want to read it?” Gina asked. Rex answered her with a sneer more eloquent than any words.

“Okay,” Gina shrugged, as she dabbed some glue on a rejection slip and prepared to slap it down.

But then, she hesitated...

¤   ¤   ¤   ¤

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A little something for the weekend?

Recommended watching, maybe.

The DC Cinematic Universe has a well-deserved reputation for being a gigantic dumpster fire. While there have been a few worthwhile movies to come out from Warner Bros. in recent years, in general, movies based on DC comic book properties are just not in the same league as the competing Marvel/Disney products or even the Marvel/Sony products. The reason for this at first seems a mystery. Is the Marvel cinematic universe really that much richer? Why, this is DC we’re talking about! They have Batman and Superman, and… and Batman, and Superman, and yet another reboot of Batman, and some more Superman…

And then all those other guys.

It seems a shame that so many other good characters are so completely overshadowed by the Big Blue Boy Scout and the grumpy guy in the cave. If you haven’t yet seen Aquaman, you should consider it: it’s easily the equal of any of Marvel’s standalone Thor movies. Definitely see Wonder Woman, and Wonder Woman 1984 is actually much better than the reviewers said. After that, another one worth tracking down is Shazam!, as it’s a lot of fun, and isn’t that what a comic book movie is supposed to be? Fun? (Okay, we’ll leave Dredd out of the conversation for now.)

But after that…well, then we’re down to all those “other guys,” and that brings us to Harley Quinn and The Suicide Squad. 

The 2021 movie The Suicide Squad fits into an awkward place in the DC Cinematic Universe. To begin with, it has almost the same title and many of the same characters as the 2016 bomb. Suicide Squad, so it’s starting out with a major disadvantage. 

Secondly, the focal character is Harley Quinn, as played by Margot Robbie, and it follows hot on the high heels of her playing the same character in 2020’s Birds of Prey, which was just plain awful in just about every way that it’s possible for a movie to be bad.

[Maybe Birds of Prey would have been better if they’d given Harley a tank to drive and some mutant kangaroos to pal around with. It certainly looked as if that was what they were trying to do.]

As concerns The Suicide Squad, though, the good news is that you can completely ignore both Suicide Squad and Birds of Prey. There is zero continuity between the three movies. Pretend that the previous two movies never existed. I’m sure there are plenty of people at Warner Bros. who feel the same way.

The better news is that while Harley Quinn remains the focal character, Margot Robbie doesn’t have to try to carry the entire film herself, as she did in Birds of Prey. She is surrounded by an excellent supporting cast.

The best news is that Warner/DC apparently gave writer/director James Gunn permission to go really deep into DC’s giant cesspool of “other guys” and to do whatever he wanted with them, and he turned up some true delights. Idris Elba as Bloodsport? (Will Smith wasn’t available to return as Deadshot; no great loss. Elba is much better.) Sylvester Stallone as King Shark? Nathan Fillion as The Detachable Kid? Peter Capaldi as Thinker? David Dastmalchian as The Polka-Dot Man? (One of the more ludicrous super-villains in DC’s pantheon.) Starro the Conqueror? Above all, John Cena as The Peacemaker—and he was so good in the role he got his own spinoff TV series on HBO Max, which is getting great reviews and has just been renewed for a second season.

Be forewarned, though, this movie is not merely violent; it’s ultra-violent. It’s Deadpool-level violent. It is so over-the-top violent the violence itself becomes cartoonish and ludicrous. So this is not a movie for the squeamish or to watch with your young children. 

But if the violence doesn’t bother you, then The Suicide Squad is well-made, well-cast, well-acted, and just all the way around a great big, loud, colorful, noisy, impossible, and at times laugh-out-loud mess. It’s got action, excitement, plot twists, villains who think they’re heroes, heroes who turn out to be villains, villains who actually are heroes in the end, and it climaxes with an enormous boss fight that puts the final battles in pretty much every other recent DC or Marvel movie to shame.

Isn’t that exactly what you want from a comic book-based movie? 

 

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How to succeed with Kindle Vella • by Henry Vogel

 

In April of 2021, Amazon announced a new publishing platform called Kindle Vella. Even though the platform has been live since July 13, 2021, many writers have questions about Vella. What is it? How does it work? Can writers make any money from it?

For those who don’t feel like reading the rest of this column, the short answers are ‘a serial fiction platform,’ ‘oddly,’ and ‘I have.’ If you’d like more details, read on.

» Link to the rest of Henry’s column on the Mad Genius Club site

_________________

Read the books that spawned the series!

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Goodbye, Melissa Mead

 

Frequent contributor Melissa Mead passed away last night. It was a pleasure to get to know her through her fiction. Until she sent us “I Don’t Hate Tiny Tim. Really!” I had no idea what her real life was like, as unlike most writers, she was always strangely reluctant to talk about herself. She preferred to talk about her stories and other writers. 

Rather than say more, I will turn the microphone over to her sister, Cindy.

______________

My oldest sister, Melissa Mead, passed away peacefully this evening at 8:43pm… my parents, sister and I were all able to be by her side tonight thanks to an incredible hospital staff. We were beyond blessed to have the past 12 days to visit one on one and talk… share stories, fears, questions, laughs, hugs and a lot of love.

Thank you for all of the prayers and thoughts, they were much appreciated by all of us.

For those of you who don’t know Missy as well… she was the strongest, smartest and kindest person I know. She was born fighting at only 2lbs with cerebral palsy… beat odds and shattered misconceptions and stereotypes throughout her life. Backed by the most incredible parents in the world she was the first disabled child to be mainstreamed at Shenendehowa, paving the way for a future of inclusion and education. She and my dad helped make Clover Patch Camp into a place where children with disabilities could learn, grow and experience nature. She went on to earn a bachelors and a masters degree from SUNY Albany, of course with high honors all while once again beating impossible odds and fighting what should have been a lethal case of autoimmune hepatitis. Nothing ever stopped her or got her down… she lived a life of humbled success, drove her own van, owned and lived in her own house all while being a published author and very well respected science fiction writer. Even while at the hospital her focus was always on everyone else being okay, she spent her life trying to make the world a better place when it already was just because she was in it. I have watched her in awe since the day I was born, and I will continue to strive to be more like her every day. Nothing is the same without her, but I’m at peace knowing everything was amazing because of her.

______________

If you’re on Facebook, you’ll find Melissa’s page here: https://www.facebook.com/MelissaMeadCL, and can post a note there. In her author’s bios, she always listed https://carpelibris.wordpress.com/ as her blog site. It’s a group blog, and I’m a bit surprised to find that her last post was a plug for the New Year’s story she wrote for us, “That Darn, Dear Cat.”

Personally, I’d like to point you to “Time Machines” on Daily Science Fiction, as she wrote it for our For Sale, Used Time Machine contest, but sold it there. 

Melissa was a bright talent. She will be missed.

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Email address update

Because Microsoft Exchange continues to play hob with the RampantLoonMedia.com email addresses—email sent to any of the RLP addresses might get through, or it might end up diverted to the Spam, Trash, or Junk mail folders, or it might simply disappear; there seems to be no rhyme or reason as to how Exchange sorts incoming email (and it now appears to be filtering outgoing email, too)—I have created a backup email account: StupefyingStories@gmail.com. If you are trying to contact me/us, use this one, at least for now.

Please do NOT take a guess at my personal email address and send email to brucebethke@gmail.com or bruce.bethke@gmail.com. Whoever those people are, they are NOT me. I have no idea what happens to messages sent to those accounts, but they do not get through to me, and if you have received email from either of those accounts, that also is not coming from me. 

—Bruce Bethke

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Creating Alien Aliens, Part 13 B: Iconic Alien vs Iconic Human, and How China and India Fits Into Creating Alien Aliens…

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...

Like I said last week: “Let’s start with China first – and we no longer have to wonder what an alien society would be like…let’s start with naming TEN ways China and the US are different (and if you’re really brave, name TEN ways India is different from the US and different from China (20 things in total)…”

I just figured out that might take years. So I’m going to look at one difference and poke at it a bit.

How are the US and China different? This is one that fascinates me – and it may just be me, but it’s a clear image of how alien that culture is to Western culture.

I'll go with a science fiction alien society to start my thinking. I don’t know CJ Cherryh, but in her FOREIGNER series, she’s taken the Humans and the Atevi and changed one, small fundamental factor and then allowed that factor to propagate through the Atevi civilization and then showed how that one different assumption could drive not only a series of 20-plus novels, sparking endless conflict in the books, but also still forces me to struggle with understanding the Atevi.

The Atevi don’t “love”, they have “associations”.

Atevi and Ateva don’t love each other – they are part of an association that may or may not shift over the course of a marriage. Children don’t love their parents, they are part of the parent’s association – which may or may not survive through childhood. Even their "horses" don’t love. They have man'chi or "association" with  a rider they have come to respect because they held firm when the animal challenged them. They respond to a strong leader by migrating to that association. A rider doesn’t coddle their horse (technically, macheti), he or she forces them to acknowledge that the Atevi or Ateva is the LEADER. Then the other macheti will follow that leader.

What does this have to do with the US and China; what does it have to do with an alien worldview?

It’s a 2022 Olympic observation: men and women who are citizens of other countries – many even born there – are celebrated as “Chinese” for their ethnicity. They are Chinese FIRST and Americans or Canadians or whatever during the Olympics – more than half of the “Chinese” hockey team come from North America. But China “identifies” them as Chinese and celebrates “its” victories as if they had raised, trained, and supported these athletes since birth.

Have you ever heard how cuckoo birds reproduce? Female cuckoos don’t make their own nests. They lay their eggs in the nest of other birds, who incubate the eggs. The baby cuckoos hatch before most birds do – then they shove the legitimate babies out and take over. And they are sometimes twice as big as their “mothers”…hmmm. But how can I FAULT that? Is this an...association with the Chinese worldview? It’s effective and really, none of my business, is it, China is undeniably a growing country.

Culturally China and the US are as different as they can get. For example, the US “celebrates diversity” at least it’s working toward being a culture that does that, and we continue to move in that direction. Our movement toward diversity is the polar opposite of Chinese culture, which values and honors conformity. China’s mantra might as well be “Everyone the same, difference is not only abhorrent, but incomprehensible.

It’s one of the reasons China has become militant about Hong Kong and Taiwan. The two countries DO NOT conform. Maureen F. McHugh wrote CHINA MOUNTAIN ZHANG, published in 1992 (she’d actually lived and studied in China…) and after a recent re-read, it's a perfect combination of Human and alien – with the main character trying to live in two worlds. This dichotomy is also well illustrated in the movie “Crazy Rich Asians” – American culture and Chinese culture are fundamentally different. The main character was born in China, but raised in the US. Her mother makes a clear point that while she may LOOK Chinese, SHE IS NOT. Her best friend even calls her a “banana” and then starts to explain it.

The estrangement of our two world views was obvious in a recent gold medal won by an American skier…for China.

We cry “foul!”, they whisper “Victory…” How? They are ALIEN…

China long ago gave up any connection with other Asian cultures – Japan, and the Koreas, as well as driving out the intractable Hmong culture and the current campaign to eradicate the Uyghurs. My son was stationed in South Korea for four years with his family. His children attended KOREAN SCHOOLS from kindergarten onward and both spoke fluent Korean; my grandson was an excellent interpreter between his parents and anyone else they interacted with (living off base in a Korean apartment complex). In the course of writing a short story and after spending a month there and touring countless museums, I discovered why China is loathe to provoke a conflict with either Korea – NOT because they would lose. Their armies would roll over both Koreas without pause. But such a war would mean that refugees would flee...to China – and to the Chinese there ARE no other cultures; there ARE no other languages. The Chinese consider Koreans, essentially not-human which is the same thing as “not Chinese”. Citizens of Hong Kong and Taiwan are also NOT Chinese, perceived as more Western than Chinese. (Beijing Billionaires however, seem to be exempt…)

A former student of mine taught in China for almost ten years – he and his Chinese wife have two children. He and their kids would ever be considered Chinese in any way, and if he and his wife died, the children would likely be abandoned, effectively executed because they are aliens to the Chinese culture.

China is an alien civilization in everything except that they look Human.

They neatly fit the definition of ‘alien’ above. They have an different written language, and have an entirely alien way of spoken communication: a single Chinese word can have at least three different meanings dependent entirely on the TONE with which it is spoken – not just an “angry” or “sweet” or “indifferent” tone; rather a high, middle, and low tone. Traditional Chinese is written top to bottom, right to left, while modern Chinese is typed and read left to right, as English is.

The philosophy of today’s China: “Chinese philosophy never developed the concept of human rights…by the time of the Xinhai Revolution in 1911, there were many calls…to completely abolish the old imperial institutions and practices…incorporate[ing] democracy, republicanism, and industrialism…Mao added Marxism, Stalinism, Chinese Marxist Philosophy...the Chinese Communist Party [denounced] previous schools of thought…as backward, and later even purged during the Cultural Revolution…

"Religion…Spiritual and philosophical institutions [were] re-established, as long they are not perceived to be a threat to the power of the CPC [and] are heavily monitored.”

The Chinese are aliens as far as Western thought and behavior exist on Earth. And Chinese Communism is entirely different than Western Russian Communism because of the alien world view of the Chinese mind: [Abhishek Mohanty, Junior Research Associate German-Southeast Asian Center of Excellence for Public Policy and Good Governance]: “Russian Communism advocated a workers' revolution, while Chinese Communism refocused its philosophy toward a peasant revolution. The former also proposed coexistence with capitalism, while the latter refused that notion and remained aggressive toward the US as its imperialist enemy…Chinese Communism shifted to market socialism…China provides its citizens with more freedoms and modifies its economic policies to be more favorable towards foreign trade.” Conflict is inevitable despite the chummy face currently being projected.

So, what does this mean to me as a writer?

It means that we have aliens here that I don’t understand – and that are a serious resource if I’m willing to read and think and consider. My current work in progress has forced me to look at a simple pair of characters – one is Human, the other a sort of bird. It has forced me to ask myself how the two characters would respond in EVERY PARAGRAPH, because I can’t assume that a Human and a Galeborne see the same thing – I can’t even assume they EXPERIENCE THINGS THE SAME WAY.

I have a murder scene; and I also found out that birds can hardly smell anything – but their eyesight is incredibly ADJUSTABLE…how does that affect a simple crime scene investigation?

You’d be startled…

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

Guy Stewart is a husband supporting his wife who is a multi-year breast cancer survivor; a father, father-in-law, grandfather, foster father, friend, writer, and recently retired teacher and school counselor who maintains a writing blog by the name of POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS (https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/) where he showcases his opinion and offers his writing up for comment. He has 72 stories, articles, reviews, and one musical script to his credit, and the list still includes one book! He also maintains GUY'S GOTTA TALK ABOUT BREAST CANCER & ALZHEIMER'S, where he shares his thoughts and translates research papers into everyday language. In his spare time, he herds cats and a rescued dog, helps keep a house, and loves to bike, walk, and camp. He thinks out loud in print at: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/



Image 2: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIWSRIn0aP8R1M7NXFKRKFP1GAJBoTK1DUjXKA5a2b38je1SAeO6Ipni9Osb-wEFra4ic8udTbHT-EeZgzFrzFNSGHlA9Dj4VRzzk_WzA8fBj95qeKmjIpjekqiysmra74pjctiKLrtebF/w150-h200/164054184_900009080544732_2810066332651630100_n.jpg

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Status Update: 14 February 2022

 

Karen had a medical emergency on Tuesday, February 9th. Fortunately she was actually in the oncology clinic and hooked up for chemotherapy when it happened, so medical help was practically instantaneous. At 2pm she’d seemed to be fine. At 5pm she was on her way to the ER. It took them about 18 hours to stabilize her and then move her from the ER unit to the regular hospital, and she’s been in a hospital room ever since. She is much improved since last Tuesday and is supposed to be undergoing an invasive diagnostic procedure this morning, but as of the last time I checked, it hadn’t yet begun.

We’ve had worse Valentine’s Days, but not many.  

All of which is to say, if it seems like I haven’t been responding to email or IM since last Tuesday, that’s pretty close to correct. Thanks for your patience.

—Bruce Bethke

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A little something for the weekend?

Assuming you’re not already glued to your TV and watching either the Olympics or all the warmups to the run-ups to the pre-game shows for tomorrow’s Super Bowl, we have three movie in the queue this week. Depending on your frame of mind, we recommend:

Black Sunday (1977)

 

If you’re in the mood for gratuitous violence, political intrigue, heroic Mossad and FBI agents chasing evil Middle Eastern terrorists, and then more violence, may we suggest Black Sunday. Based on the novel by Thomas Harris (The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal), directed by action movie master John Frankenheimer, this movie features Bruce Dern at his batguano craziest and tells the story of a disgruntled ex-Navy blimp pilot (!), who has been seduced by a beautiful Palestinian terrorist (Marthe Keller) as part of a plot to turn the Goodyear blimp into a giant flying suicide bomb and detonate it over the stadium during the Super Bowl. Robert Shaw plays the intrepid and heroic Mossad agent who has been on the trail of the terrorists ever since Chapter 1 and who saves the day in the final reel, and just all the way around, if you love thrillers, hate football, and don’t mind characters who have all the depth of cartoon characters, this one is great fun. Watch it!

Heaven Can Wait (1978)

 

If you’re more in the mood for a romantic comedy, may we suggest Heaven Can Wait. This 1978 remake of the 1941 adaptation (filmed as Here Comes Mr. Jordan) of the 1938 stage play (titled Heaven Can Wait and written by Harry Segall) stars Warren Beatty as Joe Pendleton, the quarterback for the Los Angeles Rams (!), who is accidentally taken to Heaven by his overzealous guardian angel (Buck Henry) and to correct the problem must be returned to Earth in a new body, whereupon much romantic comedy ensues before a wonderful happy ending. The casting is superb, the movie was nominated for nine Academy Awards, and if you’ve ever wondered why Warren Beatty was considered the heartthrob of a generation—or why it was such a pity he kept trying to play those kinds of roles long after he was way too old to get away with it—this is the one to watch. Highly recommended.

Wag the Dog (1997)

On the other other hand, if you really can’t stand to watch another thing about football and are far more interested in mankind’s oldest full-contact sport—war—may we suggest Wag the Dog. The story of an American president whose spin team gins up an imaginary war in the Balkans in order to distract the public from a presidential sex scandal, this is a wonderfully dark, cynical, and sadistically funny movie. If I was teaching political science and trying to get my students to understand the American politico-media complex, this movie would be required watching. The script is first-rate; the casting is flawless—Woody Harrelson is particularly good as Sergeant Schumann—and just all the way around, this one is worth a look. It is of course pure fantasy, and has nothing to do with anything that might be happening in contemporary reality. The imaginary war created to distract the voters from the president’s scandals is in Albania. Ukraine isn’t mentioned once.

Have a great weekend, and see you Monday!

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Creating Alien Aliens, Part 13 A: Iconic Alien vs Iconic Human, and How China and India Fit Into Creating Alien Aliens...

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...

What could be a more iconic battle between Human and Alien than Batman vs Superman?

I’ve never been a big fan of the movie versions of the DC universe, preferring to get my super hero fix in the Marvel universe. That being said, I HAVE enjoyed some of the DC movies: “Shazam!”, “Wonder Woman 1984”, and “Green Lantern”.

According to the TARGET website, the plot of “Batman vs Superman” is as follows, “Fearing the actions of a god-like Super Hero left unchecked, Gotham City’s own formidable, forceful vigilante takes on Metropolis’s most revered, modern-day savior, while the world wrestles with what sort of hero it really needs. And with Batman and Superman at war with one another, a new threat quickly arises, putting mankind in greater danger than it’s ever known before.”

IMDb summarizes the movie as follows: “The general public is concerned over having Superman on their planet and letting the ‘Dark Knight’ - Batman - pursue the streets of Gotham. While this is happening, a power-phobic Batman tries to attack Superman. Meanwhile, Superman tries to settle on a decision, and Lex Luthor, the criminal mastermind and millionaire, tries to use his own advantages to fight the ‘Man of Steel’”.

That other threat isn’t mentioned in either one of these synopses, but IS in the Wikipedia entry: “…unleashing a monster genetically engineered from DNA from both Zod's body and his own…” So, somehow, the ultimate horror is a Human/alien hybrid? Zod/Luthor’s hybrid is worse than the half-breed Human/Vulcan, STAR TREK’s Spock?

Hmm….can you say “double standard”?

At any rate, “Batman vs Superman” lays out a major problem we as Humans face – we respond negatively when faced with the alien. From the Online Etymology Dictionary: “alien (adj.) c. 1300, ‘strange, foreign,’ from Old French alien ‘strange, foreign;’ as a noun, ‘an alien, stranger, foreigner,’ from Latin alienus ‘of or belonging to another, not one's own, foreign, strange,’ also, as a noun, ‘a stranger, foreigner,’ adjective from alius (adv.) ‘another, other, different,’ from PIE root *al- (1) ‘beyond.’

“Meaning ‘residing in a country not of one's birth’ is from mid-15c. Sense of ‘wholly different in nature’ is from 1670s. Meaning ‘not of this Earth’ first recorded 1920. An alien priory (mid 15c.) is one owing obedience to a religious jurisdiction in a foreign country.” (Now THERE’S a story idea!)

I could look at any number of conflicts in the US and abroad, but I think I’ll keep this more academic than personal.

How about the current conflict between the Great Empires? NO! Not the US and Russia! Both of those are waning, though one of them doesn’t realize it yet. The current major conflict is between China and the United States with India waiting patiently in the shadows. The maneuvering between these empires are probably as close as we’ve come to a conflict between Humans and Interstellar Aliens. It also highlights the difficulty SF writers have had in creating truly alien peoples rather than just “Humans in funny masks and makeup”.

Let’s start with China first – and we no longer have to wonder what an alien society would be like…let’s start with naming TEN ways China and the US are different (and if you’re really brave, name TEN ways India is different from the US and different from China (20 things in total)…you start, I'll be back with my lists next week...

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

Guy Stewart is a husband supporting his wife who is a multi-year breast cancer survivor; a father, father-in-law, grandfather, foster father, friend, writer, and recently retired teacher and school counselor who maintains a writing blog by the name of POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS (https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/) where he showcases his opinion and offers his writing up for comment. He has 72 stories, articles, reviews, and one musical script to his credit, and the list still includes one book! He also maintains GUY'S GOTTA TALK ABOUT BREAST CANCER & ALZHEIMER'S, where he shares his thoughts and translates research papers into everyday language. In his spare time, he herds cats and a rescued dog, helps keep a house, and loves to bike, walk, and camp. He thinks out loud in print at: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/

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Talking Shop: Eric's Writing Challenge Update 17

Hello brave fellow travelers. I come to you once more with tiding of my keyboard peckings.

I thought that keeping you all up to speed on the revisions to the space opera would be a more straightforward process. It hasn’t been straightforward because the actual revision process hasn’t been straightforward. I’m picking through the feedback I got, which bears only a tangential relationship to the linear. That means my revisions haven’t been linear. I go from chapter 5, where I change one paragraph, to chapter 23 where I add a scene, to the ending where I weep bitter tears and think:

“You can make this better!”

So, when I try to write an update on the process, I’m not sure how to categorize it for you with anything more substantive than:

“Yeah, stuff is happening.”

If I tried to quantify it, I think I’d say I’m about 50% to 60% of the way there. But it may well be closer to 80% and I wouldn’t know it. So, yeah, stuff is happening. I have set myself a hard deadline for completing this round of revisions by the 21 of February, which I hope is realistic and not just naïvely aspirational.

In other news, because my imagination is a jackass, I’ve written about 10,000 words of a new novel. No, it’s not Rinn’s Run, Part 2. No, it’s not the never quite finished urban fantasy. No, it’s not the sequel to The Midnight Ground. It’s a whole new story, with a whole new hero, set in what I think is a whole new fictional universe. I want to call it space opera, but it leans into science-fantasy territory. It’s as least as much science fiction/space opera as Star Wars. Right now, I’m just calling it Mage Gladiator. Make of that what you will.

Why am I writing that? Because my imagination won’t leave me alone about it. It crops up while I’m doing other things. The characters haunt my dreams. I have scenes that I cannot get out of my head. So, it’s basically a sanity-preserving action. Okay, say it with me:

“Yay for sanity!”

So, until next week, when I’ll report back about whatever my imagination is doing to me, keep reading!

 _______________________________________________

Eric Dontigney is the author of the highly regarded novel, THE MIDNIGHT GROUND, as well as the Samuel Branch urban fantasy series and the short story collection, Contingency Jones: The Complete Season One. Raised in Western New York, he currently resides near Dayton, OH. You can find him haunting obscure sections of libraries, in Chinese restaurants or occasionally online at ericdontigney.com.

 

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I Don't Hate Tiny Tim. Really! • by Melissa Mead

 

Poor Tiny Tim.

I’m not saying that because he has a disability. I’m saying that because everyone, from his readers to his creator, pities him because he has a disability. He doesn’t pity himself, though! He joins in his siblings’ games whenever possible, and they cheerfully take him along with them. And while his father calls him “good as gold,” he’s not a perfect saint. When his father insists that the family drink a toast to his hard-hearted boss, Ebeneezer Scrooge, “Tiny Tim drank it last of all, but he didn’t care twopence for it.”

As someone who’s also familiar with braces and crutches, yes, the line “He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple...” makes me want to “spit nickels,” as my mom says. “The C-word” gets on my nerves, especially. But Dickens did one thing that I’ve appreciated more and more as I get older.

He tells us that Tim “Did NOT die.” He doesn’t say that Tim was cured. People often assume he was, but Dickens doesn’t say so.

It’s called “the Miracle Cure.” It’s so common I had a hard time coming up with examples where the protagonist isn’t rewarded for their bravery, virtue, etc. by being “made whole.”

Again and again, like some literary Jesus, authors make their lame characters walk and their blind characters see. It’s so pervasive I’ll bet most readers don’t even think about it, or if they do, simply nod. After all, how can the hero have a real Happily Ever After if they’re still “broken?”

Imagine what this says to a real-life kid who can never be “brave enough” or “good enough” to make their disability go away.

Sorry, kid. Glass slippers don’t come with orthotics. Castles have sweeping staircases, not wheelchair ramps. Wizards don’t write their spellbooks in Braille. People like us are only in books to be pitied, martyred, or cured.

Mostly.

In 1875, 32 years after A Christmas Carol, another book came out. The Little Lame Prince, by Miss Mulock, is about Prince Dolor, who, because of an injury as a baby, doesn’t walk, but gets around with “active froglike leaps.” When I read this, and saw the illustration of Prince Dolor with his atrophied legs, I shouted “He has CP like me!”

Now, this was the 1800s, so the C-word is still in there, but Miss Mulock gave kids like me a huge gift with her ending:

“Thus, though he never walked in processions, never reviewed his troops mounted on a magnificent charger, nor did any of the things which make a show monarch so much appreciated, he was able for all the duties and a great many of the pleasures of his rank.”

King Dolor is a real king. He works. He governs. People complain about him. He deals with it. And he lives about as happily ever after as anyone can expect to.

Books like this helped confirm that you can have a disability and still be a whole person. A writer, even! My characters have Cerebral Palsy, Acromegaly, paraplegia, quadriplegia, blindness, deafness, mental illnesses, Down Syndrome, and whatever else fits their character. Some things get cured, but not as a reward for virtue. Most don’t.

So will you join me? If you’re a writer, build your “castles in the air” with ramps and elevators. Readers, seek out books where the heroine packs her antidepressants along with her other quest supplies, and the Prince and Princess hand-sign “I do” before they kiss.

And we’ll ALL live Happily Ever After.

_______________________

Melissa Mead lives in upstate New York with the imaginary people in her head. Her web site is here: https://carpelibris.wordpress.com/

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A little something for the weekend?

Recommended Watching

DUNE (2021)

This film is just plain beautiful. Well-scripted, well-cast, well-acted, beautifully filmed, and the effects are done so perfectly you’ll forget they’re CGI. True, the script does deviate from Frank Herbert’s original 1965 novel in ways that are in some cases trivial and in other cases significant, but in nearly all cases the deviations improve on the original material. 

But…

It’s long. Holy mackerel, is it long! The running time on this one approaches three hours, and at that length it still makes it to only slightly past the halfway mark in the original novel. If you’re familiar with the original story—

Okay, I don’t want to hear any complaining about spoilers here. The original novel has been out since 1965 and won both the Hugo and Nebula awards. Even the damaged David Lynch film adaptation of the novel has been out for nearly 40 years. If you’re still in a position to be surprised by anything in this story, it’s your own fault. Were you also surprised when the titular ship in Titanic sank? 

Back to the movie. It’s difficult to draw direct comparisons to the novel because Frank Herbert didn’t use chapters or chapter numbers, but in the Ace mass-market paperback I have on my desk right now the novel is 500 pages long (with an additional 50 or so pages of appendices and glossaries), and this movie ends with the scene on page 318, in which Paul and Jessica have been taken under Stilgar’s protection and provisionally accepted into the Fremen community.

Which means there’s nearly 200 more pages of novel waiting to be scripted, shot, and filmed, and Dune Part 2 is not scheduled to be released until October of 2023. It’s supposed to be a two-parter, but if the filmmakers keep to the pace they’ve established in this movie it may well turn into a trilogy.

Recommendation: If you have three hours to kill and don’t mind waiting a few years to see how it ends, this one is definitely worth streaming. If not…

Recommended Watching (?)

DUNE (1984)

David Lynch’s 1984 adaptation of Dune is… challenging. It’s probably best to think of this one as a marvelous buffet of cinematic junk food, from the same people who brought you Barbarella and the 1980 version of Flash Gordon. Parts of it are brilliant. Parts of it are awful. If you are familiar with the original novel, parts of it will leave you wondering, “Where the f*** did they find that in the book?”

Parts of it had me going back to the novel, to realize that yes, Frank Herbert did in fact write that scene exactly as it was filmed. The excessive use of voice-overs, for example, to reveal what characters were thinking: yes, Herbert was constantly switching points of view and diving into and out of his characters’ interior monologues. 

Father, the sleeper wants to hit snooze!

Still, this one remains in my permanent collection and I bring it out every few years to watch again. For me it’s become a guilty pleasure; a great movie to watch when I just want to make a big bowl of popcorn and take my mind off the hook for a few hours. It’s a trippy artifact of its times, with some really impressive practical effects balanced off against some really terrible traveling matte shots, and every time I re-watch it I feel more strongly it’s a shame the writers for Star Trek: The Next Generation never gave Jean-Luc Piccard the line, “ATOMICS!” Patrick Stewart delivers it so well.

Ultimately, David Lynch’s 1984 adaptation of Dune belongs right up there the 1980 version of Flash Gordon. It’s loud, noisy, garish, stupid, over-the-top fun.

And sadly, it really highlights the fact that Toto was not Queen. One can only imagine what this movie would have been like with a really great big bombastic 1980s arena-rock score.

Recommendation: If you have an affinity for cheesy sci-fi, this one is an all-you-can-eat cheese plate. Bon appetit!

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Creating Alien Aliens, Part 12: What Would a Parasitic Intelligence Look Like – and WOULD WE LIKE THEM?

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...

A session of 77th World Science Fiction Convention (Dublin 2019—An Irish Worldcon) posted this: “Like the dolphins of Hitchhiker’s Guide, nonhuman life can communicate with humans in numerous ways including non-verbal interactions, signaling, and even parasitism. Panelists from diverse fields of research discuss the oddness of life and the strange ways the natural world talks to us.” I wrote the following blog and I’ve updated it and added some thoughts for this post.

I confess that “non-human life can communicate...including…parasitism” was what caught my eye.

The obvious example leaped to mind, from Heinlein’s THE PUPPET MASTERS. But there have been others as well, the aliens from the ALIEN franchise are another one that sticks out. Dean Ing’s series “Anasazi” in ANALOG (July, 1980) and novel about the “users” is another one that caught me up in a weird world of biological parasitism. I’d just graduated from college with a biology education degree (which proved to be useless except for being a substitute teacher. Once I added a Earth science portion to it, I got a job…)

The website TV TROPES also has a list if you want to peruse it, at https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PuppeteerParasite

I get that dogs (we had two until recently, only one now); cats (three until recently and now just a male and female from the same litter); horses; and various other pets of various species, have been trained or bred to respond to and communicate with Humans. You could probably even consider plants as communicating with us.

I’m certain the “rotting meat” plant (carrion flowers – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrion_flower) communicates clearly that it “wants” nothing to do with Humanity. People go to see it and smell it for a “daring trip”. I can consider these as parasites communicating with Humans. But what I’m thinking of is “intelligent” communication. To look at that, maybe I could consider the largest most intelligent parasites on Earth.

While the malaria parasite seems to be noted as “super smart” (https://blogs.unimelb.edu.au/sciencecommunication/2012/10/21/a-super-smart-parasite/) , apparently lots of parasites control our minds: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/there-are-hundreds-examples-mind-controlling-parasites-180950312/. (Having suffered through malaria, reading about the HOW was distinctly creepy…)

But would we ever “meet parasitic aliens”? Seems to me unlikely. If parasites evolve on a planet, then they’re going to have hosts that evolved on the same planet, so making the leap between their evolved host on (say) Ceti Alpha V (Star Trek: Wrath of Khan) to Human ears seems…unlikely. Dramatically gross, but unlikely.

The aliens from ALIEN are likewise suspect. How is it that they can infect Humans? They have ACID for blood, for heaven’s sake! What would they possibly get from a Human? Our blood is iron-based with a pH between 7.35 and 7.45. For “blood” to be able to eat through armored plating, (speculation here: https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/x2pud/can_an_acid_be_as_corrosive_as_the_alien_blood_in/) it would need to be (and then looking it up and finding that HF’s pH = 3.27) some pretty powerful stuff. I’ve personally gotten car battery acid burns that were painful enough to check in with a doctor, but battery acid, which is H2SO4 = 0.7, dissolves just about anything that passes for life on Earth. Certainly Xenomorphs making contact with Humans would mostly be disastrous for us, probably not for them. This would seem to indicate that alien parasites would probably not bother with us.

For the sake of argument, let’s imagine that we DO meet parasitic aliens. I will stipulate that they CANNOT become parasitic on US. (Even to the point of laying an egg in a Human body that would develop seems…absolutely horrifying but biologically very difficult…) So, what can we do?

How about an intelligent alien parasite that has a host THAT WE FIND ATTRACTIVE? (NOT in a Sigourney Weaver way (she was 28 when she made the ALIEN movies…I was seven years younger…)) Let’s postulate a really gruesome parasite, say along the lines of a tapeworm. It has a dog-level of intelligence spread along proglottid-type segments when it implants in the host creature – a centauroid feline creature with a remarkably Human face, though with furry tentacles for arms. They do NOT have opposable thumbs and are, in themselves, no more intelligent than a horse or dog. The more proglottids the parasite grows, the smarter it becomes, and the more integrated it becomes with the host’s nervous system.

The intelligent tapeworms – the Taenapta – make contact with Humans from inside their hosts. We are swept off our feet by these heavenly beings and Humans are thrilled when they ask for our help. The Taenapta are aware of the Human opinion of both parasites and their mammal-o-centric bias (Duh! Look at STAR TREK and STAR WARS – Mammals reign supreme! Supposedly Klingons evolved from reptiles, but…really? Have you ever paused “Star Trek GENERATIONS” when Lursa and B'ator are onscreen? Klingon mammalian descent is obvious…), so they really don’t disabuse the fawning Humans of that notion.

How do PARASITES view the world? 

Their first assumption would be that Humans are hosts to some sort of parasitical intelligence -- because they are. What would the discovery that the Human was the intelligence and that the parasites that inhabit us are just disease – or even undesirable! What would the Taenapta think of discovering this little tidbit: “Tapeworm infections are usually treated with an oral medication, such as praziquantel, which paralyzes the adult tapeworm. The praziquantel causes the tapeworms to detach from the gut, become dissolved, and then pass out of your body through your stool.”? [Another story: thinking the lovely lion centauroids are being held captive, someone gives them a powerful dose of praziquantel to FREE THE TAENAPTA!!!!]

Their view of the world would not only be through the eyes of their host, but also through the mindset that only small, hidden creatures can rule the world, encased in a brutish “tank” of a highly mobile host that is both strong enough and intelligent enough to protect itself – and subsequently are a sort of armor for the Taenapta – but hosts have no intrinsic value and are exchangeable. Sort of a Trill symbiont, but one that doesn’t value its host any more than we value our horses, cats, dogs, and elephants…

In fact, what if the Taenapta chose ELEPHANTS to use as transport creatures? Now THERE’S a another story idea!

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

Guy Stewart is a husband supporting his wife who is a multi-year breast cancer survivor; a father, father-in-law, grandfather, foster father, friend, writer, and recently retired teacher and school counselor who maintains a writing blog by the name of POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS (https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/) where he showcases his opinion and offers his writing up for comment. He has 72 stories, articles, reviews, and one musical script to his credit, and the list still includes one book! He also maintains GUY'S GOTTA TALK ABOUT BREAST CANCER & ALZHEIMER'S, where he shares his thoughts and translates research papers into everyday language. In his spare time, he herds cats and a rescued dog, helps keep a house, and loves to bike, walk, and camp. He thinks out loud in print at: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/

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