Depiction Part 18 -- Interstellar Commerce by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Depiction
Part 18
Interstellar Commerce
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts in this series on Depiction, a writer craft tool essential to Romance Genre because it is the core of Characterization, and essential to the Science Fiction Genre because it is the core of social impact is here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/index-to-depiction-series-by-jacqueline.html

China, as noted below, is trying to build a new "Silk Road" - an intercontinental trade route that will give them a sort of ownership of Global Commerce.  The USA did that with the Panama Canal, so now we have a second Panama Canal about to open.  

http://thediplomat.com/2014/05/chinas-new-silk-road-vision-revealed/

So let's look at this pattern and project it onto an Interstellar scale.  

Science Fiction as we noted last week, is the Literature of Ideas, while Romance is perhaps best identified as the Literature of Soul Mates -- or possibly just the Literature of the Soul.  Or the Literature of the Happily Ever After -- the Literature of Happiness.  Or maybe the Literature of Relationship -- but "relationship" seems way too broad since it includes too many kinds of relationships.

So Science Fiction Romance might then be regarded as the Literature of Romantic Ideas.

One of the reasons we have the Internet and the Web (they are two separate inventions) is the TV Series, Star Trek.  The series sparked a

"romance" with science in many viewers who could imagine the world in which Spock commanded the Enterprise Computer.  Kirk's romance with adventure, with going where no man had gone before, and Spock's romance with (he has 6 Ph.D.'s) innovation, combined to inspire a generation, which one day might earn the title of The Greatest Generation.

The Ph.D. degree is traditionally awarded for adding to the sum total of human knowledge -- of ideas about how this universe actually works (scientifically).  The Ph.D. degree is all about going where no one has gone before, and doing the impossible while you are there.  Before the Ph.D. candidate does it, it is considered "impossible" because "you can't do that."  

In other words, the main Character Trait of the Ph.D. type person (school or no school) is that they never just do "all I can" -- but they do the job, regardless of what they can or can not do.  The Ph.D. Character Trait is "doing the impossible" even though it takes a little longer.  The Ph.D. type Character accepts no limits, especially those imposed by others, or most especially the limits imposed by the imagination of others.

So Spock is a Character depicted as having earned 6 Ph.D. Academic Degrees.  His curiosity knows no bounds.  That is the core of that Character, according to Roddenberry -- curiosity.  The intangible of "curiosity" is depicted by casting Spock as the Science Officer.  His having been cast ALSO as the First Officer (Command, not Science department) was due to Network Officials who would not buy the show with a female (Number One) as First Officer.  Roddenberry fineagled Uhura onto the bridge by persistence and subtrefuge.  

Star Trek depicted humanity's curiosity let loose in the Galaxy.  The show is a Romance with The Unknown, which is a core definition of Science Fiction and of Romance.  Romance is about getting to know a stranger, and science is about getting to know reality.  Knowing is Ideas.

Humans (and Vulcans, apparently) are capable of establishing and maintaining Relationships with intangibles such as Ideas, and tangibles such as The Enterprise, as well as processes such as Exploration, Innovation, or Commerce, and Curiosity.

No single human can exemplify all these kinds of Relationships, all at the same time.  But over a lifetime, humans can and often do cycle through the panoply of Relationships.  

A Character may "arc" (or learn from the plot events) from the beginning of a Relationship to the end or transition point of that Relationship, a point in the Character's fictional life when the focus of his/her Romance shifts to one of the other types of Relationships.  Each such "arc" has its own readership.  In targeting a Readership, we have discussed the elements of romance stories that different readerships enjoy.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/index-to-targeting-readership-series-by.html

There can be a Romance with Commerce as a process, a way of life, a life style.  Several branches of Romance Genre -- most notably, Historical Romance books -- explore the Archetype of The Trader.  

Science Fiction has many stories and novels about the Tramp Trader, the free trader, the pirate (Pirates are a part of The Trader archetype).  Historically, on Earth, we have had Pirates and Traders, owning their own ships, plying the trade winds among the South Sea Islands, the Carribean, and so forth.  Today it's Liberia and funding some disruptive Causes, but Pirates and the Shadow Banking system have always been part of the human world order.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/reviews-10-shadow-banking-in-fantasy.html

Even non-fiction books have been written about being one of the two or three passengers on a Tramp Steamer, traveling to places tourists don't go, or are not welcome.  Seeing the world is the story that targets the house-or-town-bound readership.  If you live shackled to a single place, your "Romance" is with traveling elsewhere.  If you live by traveling, (say with a Circus) or as a "Military Brat" -- your "Romance" is with the stationary, settled, suburban lifestyle.

Or take the Western, for example.  Best Selling Western Romance has been written about the Drifter who begs a job on the ranch of a recently widowed woman (sometimes with children). 

There is something about the Character who has been doing what enchants readers that sparks Romance.  

All these "settings" -- South Sea Tramp Steamer, Western High Chapparal, Australian Out-Back, African Safari -- are ripe settings for the Romance story to blend with the Science Fiction plot of Confronting The Unknown.

The Science Fiction novel is the Quest of the Hero for a Ph.D. -- for adding some crucial bit to the sum total of human knowledge.  

Take, for example, the movie The African Queen:

http://www.amazon.com/African-Queen-Humphrey-Bogart/dp/B003F3KKCW/

In Africa during WW1, a gin-swilling riverboat owner/captain is persuaded by a strait-laced missionary to use his boat to attack an enemy warship.

Yeah, and it's a HOT ROMANCE, Intimate Adventure all the way.  "The Unknown" includes leeches, boat breakdowns, and being hunted.  The plot is about floating around in an old boat, and the story is about how Danger causes two susceptible people to Bond.

You can do that in the Galactic Setting, too.  

So, let's say you decide to write The African Queen set during a Galactic War.

If you've got a Galactic War, you need to depict two conflicting sides.  Maybe it's two human factions, or two non-human species.

Say it's two non-human species fighting each other for the right or privelege of owning all humanity as slaves, or possessions of some kind (maybe they're so alien, the concept slavery just is not translatable to them.)

Now create a Character from one side of that War, a venerably worn down Starship, and a Character from the other side of that War.

Here is where the Theme-Plot-Story-Worldbuilding blend has to be teased apart.

The theme is what you have to say by writing this book.  What is the take-away for the Romance reader?  What is the take-away for the Science Fiction reader?  

Why do you want to write this book (as opposed to some other book)?

Maybe you want to talk about the intrinsic worth of the human spirit?  Or the ineluctible value of the individual?

If you want a theme about the worth of the human spirit, you need Aliens who are fighting each other over some Religious premise, or the lack of Godliness).  The War, the conflict, has to be about Spirit -- whatever aspect of Spirit you want to talk about.  That specific aspect becomes your theme.

If you want to talk about the Value of a human individual -- and where that concept fits into the Idea of the value of humanity as a whole, or specific human Groups -- the two Alien species have to be at War over some sort of issue involving Value.

On Earth, historically, we fight over arable land, over potable water, or irrigation water, over Valuable Minerals (this century it seems to be Oil, but it was Gold at one time).  

So what would galaxy-spanning Alien Civilizations war over?

Habitable Planets - good stars to hold them in orbit, etc.  In other words "land" or "territory" is always a motive that is easy to explain to modern readers.

Shipping Lanes -- or paths from one place to another such as "Worm Holes" or artificial ones left by some previous star-faring civilization.  Command of Commercial Transit has always been worth War -- think of the Silk Road and Marco Polo.

China is funding a rebuild of The Silk Road to open commerce with Iran etc. and the West is suspicious that the commerce involves fissionables.

--------------quote---------

The maps of the two Silk Roads drive home the enormous scale of the project: the Silk Road and Maritime Silk Road combined will create a massive loop linking three continents. If any single image conveys China’s ambitions to reclaim its place as the “Middle Kingdom,” linked to the world by trade and cultural exchanges, the Xinhua map is it. Even the name of the project, the Silk Road, is inextricably linked to China’s past as a source of goods and information for the rest of the world.

China’s economic vision is no less expansive than the geographic vision. According to the Xinhua article, the Silk Road will bring “new opportunities and a new future to China and every country along the road that is seeking to develop.” The article envisions an “economic cooperation area” that stretches from the Western Pacific to the Baltic Sea.

http://thediplomat.com/2014/05/chinas-new-silk-road-vision-revealed/

-----------end quote----------

So just expand that map into a connection among the "arms" of our Galaxy.  Suppose that, with some massive capital investment, one faction of your Waring Species could gain CONTROL of the access to all the others?

Of course, one of the species fighting for control might be "part human" or some kind of genetic hybrid.

Suppose it was not humanity per se that these Aliens are fighting to own.  It isn't slaves they want or need -- but genes.  

They need to inject human genes into some Aliens (maybe their own species, maybe some non-sentient species they've found somewhere) to create Pilots or some kind of necessary functionary to explore, open and/or hold the Commerce Access Points -- the Interstellar Silk Road.  

And of course, at some point, someone uses the same process to inject Alien genes into humans.  

Would they engineer the hybrid to be sterile?

Would such a sterile hybrid be able to Love?  

So, suppose the galaxy is fighting a Trade War, and the object-item-resource being Traded -- the market being cornered -- were fresh human genes.

Many good Science Fiction novels have been written about genetics, even interstellar civilizations at war, and many of the "species" involved are genetic hybrids between Earth humans and Earth animals.  S. Andrew Swann is master of complex galactic civilizations, plots-and-counter-plots, all mixed up with arcane (and fantasy) genetics.

http://www.sandrewswann.com/books

S. Andrew Swann creates many complex and compeling Relationships for his Characters, but not Romance Genre.  Check out the Moreau Omnibus.

This does not narrow the choice of Theme very much.  There is the morality of genetic commerce to explore, and there is the morality of mixing species to discuss.  There are the ramifications of creating such living hybrids -- what are they?  What rights do they have?  What will they do to assert those rights?  

So another thing humans and Aliens might go to War over would be the entire spectrum of "rights," "priveleges," and where there are no rights or priveleges, then "power."  

Leading science fiction writers, such as David Brin and Robert Sawyer, have suggested interstellar commerce, especially with Aliens, would be conducted in beamed transmissions of coded patterns from which things can be constructed - 3-D printing of genetic constructs.  The human genome has already been "reduced" to code, to numbers.  

So the transport of physical objects might not be what "commerce" means among Alien civilizations.  

Knowledge -- that Ph.D. concept of adding something new to the sum total of human knowledge -- could be what is trafficed via interstellar commerce.  

Jack Campbell has done Interstellar War (two wonderful, related, series) among human factions, with some Aliens fomenting the humans to a 100 year war by playing "Let's You And Him Fight" so they can pick off the weakened winner later.

http://www.amazon.com/Jack-Campbell/e/B001H6W4PU/

His books depict wonderful space battles that use plausible understanding of time and distance, plus 3-dimensional maneuvering.  The technology is likewise plausible.  And there are some good Love Stories!  

Jack Campbell's themes center on the Human Spirit, and the value of the individual in combination with differently talented individuals.  He relies on inherent personality, plus acquired skills, to round out his Characters.

Ownership can be very sexy.  We often evoke the satisfaction of "possessing" in depicting sexuality.

And we have seen what the Creator of Buffy The Vampire Slayer did with professionalism in Prostitution in Firefly.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Train-Job/dp/B000H4TX9I/

 Read the one-line descriptions of the episodes to get an overview.

Note in Serenity -- "precious salvaged cargo" -- in The Train Job "cargo turns out to be badly needed medication" -- in Shindig we have a "smuggling transaction."

The prostitution/companion hired-woman concept is about "commerce" and the material goods being moved theme is about commerce.  Commerce is the envelope theme, and each story depicts a sub-theme of commerce.

In Old Mrs. Reynolds it says:

--------quote---------

After ridding a peaceful planet of a group of bandits, Mal and his crew are honored for their heroism. But when he returns to the Serenity, a horrified Mal is told he inadvertently married one of the local women during the celebration.

---------end quote--------

Bandit, married, two types of commerce, as is "being Honored."  The trade of tangible and intangible value -- commerce.  Firefly is famous for the lack of non-human Characters.  What if there were non-humans? 

See how tight, focused, pointed the thematic structures are, then see how the fans of this show react to the show. Few, if any, fans will say they are reacting to the tightness of the thematic bundle structure -- but that tightness almost always attracts dedicated fans.

Inside the envelope of "Commerce" -- you find your statement, your theme, your reason why you want to write this particular story.  For example, "All commerce is good."  "Commerce is only trade for profit."  "All commerce leads to war."  "Trade is Trickery."  

Pick some statement about barter, value, as a theme and it will instantly define the Main Character and the Mate to that Character.  The Plot begins when the two meet, working at cross-purposes, or to similar goals but by different methods.  See again, the film, The African Queen.

If your theme is, "All commerce is good and leads to Peace," your Main Character may be trying to Open Trade Negotiations with Aliens while the Soul Mate Character is a thief, grifter, guerrilla warrior, freedom fighter, or just plan smuggling scalawag. 

Or perhaps the Soul Mate is an Alien guerrilla marketer looking to promote a product on the cheap to humans.  Maybe the product would be the Fountain of Youth for humans, or perhaps it would be the most potent poison known (possibly a drug that gives a High then kills.)  Or maybe he's selling Tribbles.  Or perhaps he's selling "protection." 

Choose the Soul Mate's endeavor or business model from the master theme, and give it a sub-theme of that set.  

For example: "All commerce leads to Peace" might generate the sub-theme for the Soul Mate of the Trade Deal Negotiator of "Creative Accounting is in the Cost of Doing Business" (meaning skimming and bribes are included in the shelf-tag price as are tariffs.)

The skimming, bribes, etc. are a normal part of an employee's compensation in many countries, and there the Peace Shattering Offense would be to object to skimming or bribery.

Many low or minimum wage employees in the USA today look at Office Pilfering and approximating the "petty cash" envelope's due when making change out of it as a legitimate part of their compensation for loyalty to their jobs. 

So suppose your Trade Negotiator tried to hire a local for the equivalent of what we call minimum wage.  Then various items go missing from the Embassy offices.  That is PLOT generated from Theme via Character.  "Items go missing" is a Plot Event that illustrates the envelope theme of Commerce and the sub-theme of Creative Accounting (minimum wage being redefined as only part of the job's compensation.)  What your Main Character does in response to discovering items missing is Plot.  Why he/she does it is Story. 

Falling in love with your New Hire, accusing some High Ranking Noble you are negotiating with of petty theft, then discovering the New Hire is your Office Thief generates the STORY that is welded to the Plot via the Theme.  The story is about trust and betrayal, two of the core elements in a Commercial Transaction.  

Entire civilizations and even religions open up behind that bare bones conceptual outline set in a Trade Mission's office where the objective is to make Peace with Aliens, not fleece them.  

Some other member of the Trade Mission may have orders to fleece the Aliens (because it would be stupid to expect to make Peace with Aliens), and see the theft by the New Hire as proof it is morally obligatory to fleece the aliens. That is Story generated by the Setting which is generated by the Theme.  

Each of the characters has family, trigger issues, blind spots, and mission-critical, life-or-death results to deliver to superiors.  Each of these Character Traits is derived from the Master Theme, and depicts the individual Character's theme. 

By the time you have all these elements put together, they become so blended you can not distinguish plot from story from character from theme -- all these elements contain and depict all the other elements.  Often the best way to communicate all that to the Reader is via Symbolism.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/01/theme-symbolism-integration-part-4-how.html

Pick a set of elements and blend them into a Depiction of Interstellar Commerce you could write.  As an exercise, you might do three or four outlines of this type.

If you run out of Ideas, check out Polesotechnic League: Book 1 of 7 (also known as The Man Who Counts):

http://www.amazon.com/War-wing-men-Poul-Anderson/dp/B0007JG1YS/

Poul Anderson was famous for his socio-economic science fiction with believable Aliens, derived as I've said many times, by imagining what various Earth animals might be like if they developed intelligence and an interstellar civilization.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com 

Aliens In The Offing? (or Not)

"The offing" is either the deep part of the sea as visible from the shore, or something likely to happen or manifest itself soon... (ie, metaphorically on the horizon).

I'd like to share a few links to DiscoverMagazine.com/Aliens  It's the sort of blog I ought to have found years ago!  This article, about Tabby's Star is great inspiration, and is also fascinating for the comments. KIC 8462852 might be too far off to be "in the offing"! It has a mysterious flicker.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/outthere/2016/07/31/alien-megastructure-star/

This article is about how to dupe aliens into thinking that Earth has no oxygen, and other ways to not attract undesirable alien attention, 
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2016/03/31/hostile-alien-protection-plan/

Please scroll down to enjoy the guest blog from Friday/Saturday.

All the best,
Rowena Cherry

The Shifting Landscape of Publishing

Here are links to two blog posts related to the challenges of flourishing as an author in today's publishing environment.

Horror writer Brian Keene on how maintaining a balance between traditional releases from mainstream publishers and newer methods and formats helps an author hang onto long-time readers:

Missing in Action

He discusses the advantages of digital publishing and online distribution but also recounts his experience of the downside of having no traditionally published books in physical bookstores. Many of his older readers didn't follow him online because they didn't realize he was still writing new material. The article reminds us that not everybody is cutting-edge computer-savvy or in the habit of seeking online first (or at all) for products they want, including books. Having books stocked in stores offers another advantage he barely touches on—the chance to sell to impulse purchasers who otherwise wouldn't know the author exists.

Kameron Hurley on when to quit your day job:

When to Quit Your Day Job

The surprise in this essay is that, unlike most people giving advice on this topic, Hurley doesn't focus on strategies for leaving the "day job" as soon as feasible. Instead, she recommends sticking with it as long as you can (provided it's not a soul-sucking ordeal) for the financial security of salary and benefits. How long can an individual live (much less support a family) on a $100,000 advance, which looks like a fortune at first glance? The portion left after taxes and the agent's percentage will last at most two or three years, depending on the cost of living in a particular city. And how many aspiring authors will ever receive a windfall of that magnitude? An advance that size WOULD be a functional fortune for me, because my husband and I are already living perfectly well on our combined retirement-income streams. That fact, however, supports Hurley's recommendations, because one of her points mentions quitting the day job if one has a reliable income such as the salary of a steadily employed spouse.

Selling a book for a huge advance is in that way a bit like winning a million dollars in the lottery. If a young winner thinks, "Wow, I'm a millionaire," and starts spending like one, he'll soon go broke. If he decides to quit his job and exist on his windfall with a modest lifestyle, he'll get at most twenty years or so of leisure before he has to find a job again. On the other hand, a million dollars really would make the winner rich if he or she were already at or near retirement.

My personal fantasy of writing as a get-rich scheme involves film options. Since the books are already written and published, that income would be free money, similar to winning a lottery (and, from what I've heard, not much more likely).

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Depiction Part 17 - Depicting First Contact - Take Me To Your Leader by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

 Depiction
Part 17

Depicting First Contact

Take Me To Your Leader 

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts of the Depiction Series are listed here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/index-to-depiction-series-by-jacqueline.html

This Tuesday blog is generally about Alien Romance Novels, about how to blend science, fiction, and romance into romance stories where love conquers all and brings a couple to a happily ever after "ending."  Science Fiction is largely defined as, "The Literature of Ideas."

So you wouldn't think politics was our beat.  Just look at current election coverage, political ads, and punditry of political analysis.  What could politics have to do with Leadership or Literature of Ideas?

However, this blog is about science fiction romance, and in science fiction one must build the entire world behind the characters around some one, single, unique, new, concept or premise.

There is an entire sub-genre of science fiction called sociological science fiction where the science being fictionalized is Sociology.

Such novels examine the fallacious assumptions humans make about "reality" -- such as which traits are inherently just human, and which traits human infants acquire from parents.

What is cultural, and what is genetic?  What precisely defines "human."  Are we just another species of Great Ape, or something else?

And if we're just another Great Ape right now, does that mean we will be nothing more than a Great Ape thousands of years from now?  Or thousands of years ago?

We are now accumulating data about exoplanets, and how common the conditions for life are in the galaxy.  What would Aliens on other planets have in common with Great Apes?

One common organizational theme among chimps and bonobos is that there is a single, dominant individual in each group.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/07/opinions/mothers-day-chimps-bonobos-safina/

With chimps, it is a dominant male, and with bonobos it is a dominant female who creates order in the grouping.

It can be argued that humans likewise pick an "alpha" male, a leader to follow, such as Donald Trump, or any of the 15 other men and 1 woman, Republicans, who ran for the office of President of the United States in 2015-2016.

And on the Democratic side, in US Politics, we have Hillary Clinton.  I see Bernie Sanders as an alpha male, and Hillary as an alpha-female.

To "depict" a human grouping, do you (the writer of romantic fiction ) have to designate a "Leader?"  Does the definition of human grouping include a Leader?

And if so, are we chimps or bonobos.  Do read that article.  It depicts chimps as war-like, belligerent, because they are dominated by a male, but bonobos as peaceful, easier to negotiate with, because they are dominated by a female.

If you look at humanity around this Earth, you see we seem to have some of each kind, but the problem is any particular human can be this kind on Monday and that kind on Tuesday.

The USA has never had a female president (yet), but other countries have been "led" by females.  Has that change in gender of leadership changed the behavior of those groups?

If you listen to the political rhetoric bandied about today, you will hear the word Leader (or related leadership, leading, etc) quite frequently.  The pundits analysis seems to be that everything that's "wrong" with the USA is due to a lack of "leadership."  That may be one of the fallacious assumptions we discussed in parts 3, 4, 6, and 7 of the Theme-Plot Integration series.

Here's the index to theme-plot integration:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/index-to-theme-plot-integration.html

And we built on those concepts later:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/12/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding.html

To create a theme and a plot for romance novels set among the stars, you need to build your Aliens (maybe not their World, but the Alien species itself) using the human template but with some, single, element different.

Only one difference (per alien species) is not an unbreakable rule, but it is the most reliable rule.

Since this is science fiction romance, you formulate the aliens using the kind of thinking trained into students of science. When designing an experiment, science teaches us to vary just one element at a time -- one feature -- one parameter at a time, and compare the results.

Note how Gene Roddenberry created Vulcans with the single "difference" of being non-emotional.  Yes, there's a long story behind that -- originally Number One (a female First Officer) was un-emotional and the Vulcan science officer was emotional but extra-smart.  To get the show on the air, Roddenberry had to eliminate the female bridge officer because no viewer would believe a man would take orders from a woman.  (how times have changed!)

So we ended up with the non-emotional Vulcans, and Roddenberry redesigned his aliens to suit the network executives so that their entire world culture, perhaps biology, was non-emotional.  Then to make the drama work, of course the non-emotional Vulcans turned out to have raging emotions.  But for Depicting First Contact, we learn to hide all differences except one.

Take C. J. Cherryh's Foreigner novel series, which I have been reviewing here for years.  Most recently #16 Tracker #17 Visitor :

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/07/reviews-27-foreigner-series-by-c-j.html

Cherryh depicts her human "lost colony" as having all the varied traits humans have, included complex politics.  Her aliens on this planet, the Atevi, are at first depicted the way Roddenberry  presented the Vulcans to us, as having a single trait at variance with humans, and most everything else pretty much similar.

That single different trait is the first defining attribute presented, and often repeated in various forms.  For the Atevi it is that they don't love, and can't understand Love, but have all other emotions plus one humans can't understand.  They bond in couples, and have vast and complicated political alliances often based on family relationships.  In other words, they're more human than we can realistically expect any aliens we meet (or find the ruins of) to be.

The Atevi form their political alliances around a Leader - a single dominant individual.  And the dominant individuals vie with each other to be the most dominant among all dominants.  But with Atevi, that dominate individual may be either male or female, and the distribution seems fairly random.

We have also seen Gene Roddenberry's Vulcans at least revere an elderly but dominant female, T'Pau.

So, according to that article on chimps and bonobos, there is a distinct difference in brain configuration that developed when a river formed and divided their mutual ancestors geographically.  They evolved in separate directions, and today that brain distinction manifests as a difference in gender of the Leader.

So, should that cliche opening line for a First Contact story be, "Take Me To Your Dominant Female?"

And if so, then what for?  I mean why would Aliens land and make a bee line for a Leader?  Doesn't that plot-element require that the Aliens only do business leader-to-leader?

Is there a fallacy embedded in the whole concept of Leader?

Note, Roddenberry and Cherryh both depict their main Aliens (who will produce individuals who bond with humans) as having leaders.  The Atevi need leaders.  All hell breaks loose among Atevi if Leadership fails.  They are essentially evolved from herd creatures and physiologically need a Leader.  Vulcans, on the other hand, appear to have chosen a social structure organized around a Leader, and a group of Leaders creating a structured government.

The question a writer of romance stories should address when designing an Alien Lover is, "Do humans need leaders?"

When you have a vision of human "society" (as opposed to generic Great Ape society), what humans absolutely need and what humans choose as convenient (because we're lazy apes) or what we choose because some among us are big bullies and grab leadership, then ask yourself what humans need Leaders for.

What purpose or function do human leaders serve?  What happens among leaderless humans (such as a random collection of survivors of a lost colony -- or maybe a colony on Mars).

What is the connection between social Leadership, and Command of "the economy?"

What is "economy" -- where does it come from, who makes it happen, why does it happen, what is it for, and who needs it anyway?

Does an "economy" need a leader as society does?

Now presumably, aliens operate their economy according to the same laws and principles that humans do.  It is something we ought to have in common with any space faring species.  Many famous First Contact stories ...

(such as In Value Decieved In Value Deceived by H.B. Fyfe
Analog/Astounding Science Fiction, November 1950, pp. 38-46
http://www.unz.org/Pub/AnalogSF-1950nov-00038  )

...depict Trade as the first transaction, not friendship, love or even war.

C. J. Cherryh took that approach with the story of how the first human colonists moved from the Space Station around the Atevi world, down to the ground.  At first meeting, the humans managed to start trading with the local Atevi -- much as the first colonists in North America traded with the Native Americans.  It was only later that misunderstanding due to that single Atevi trait that differs from human caused war to break out.

In human sociological history on Earth, we have seen trade precede war many times.  Trade (or an economic transaction -- Value for Value) is perhaps more fundamental to human nature than even sex or war.

Language evolves rapidly and diverges when there is isolation.  If you are writing Historical Romance, you should keep in mind that modern characters could not pop back in time and understand spoken English.  Even written English is not that easy, if you look at some actual manuscripts.

https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2016/03/25/how-far-back-in-time-could-you-go-and-still-understand-english/

Even today, with the internet, populations that do not communicate with each other (such as the age-gap) evolve different meanings for the same words. Thus on this blog, I try to define the difference between what I designate as Plot and what I designate as Story, many times.  Plot is the sequence of events or character actions; story is the characters' reactions to those events, feelings and motives, lessons learned. Plot is generally external, Story is generally internal. Many writing teachers reverse the meanings of the words, but all identify these two separate moving parts of the novel's mechanism.

So when you are building an Alien Civilization from scratch, keeping in mind the "one-difference" rule, you might decide that since C. J. Cherryh has already done "Love is Incomprehensible" and Gene Roddenbery started to do "Emotion is Incomprehensible" then chickened out (but I did it in Kraith
http://simegen.com/fandom/startrek/  ),
you might want to explore what single difference your Aliens might have in the realm of Commerce that would make, say, MONEY incomprehensible.

We make many assumptions about "money." It is such a common idea, dating back before Biblical Times, that we often assume that all creatures in the cosmos have money.

But really, what we use for money now is very different from what it was 4 thousand years ago.

Coin of the Realm is a term which had literal meaning.  The reason Julius Ceasar's profile was on coins was that The Leader was the creator of COIN.  The coin was "of the Realm" -- the kingdom or empire struck the coins.  The original concept was that the coin was made of something that had intrinsic value (gold, silver).

Common practice was to shave slivers off the edges of coins and then pass off the light-weight coin as a whole coin.  Also coating wood -- the wooden-nickle -- to look like money was done.  Counterfeit Money has always been with us since money was invented.  Today it's hacking into the bank computers and jiggering the numbers.  Or the Federal Reserve (Central Bank) just printing more of what looks like money but is as counterfeit as any criminal's coin, having the same effect on the economy as counterfeit money does.

Remember, counterfeiting was weaponized in World War II to bring down whole countries by flooding their economy with bogus bills.

So would such deception be the expected practice with your Aliens?  Or would they have an economic system which was immune to counterfeit coin of the realm?

How would you design an economic system that was impervious to a counterfeiting flood (or hacking, identity theft and taking out a mortgage in your name which essentially counterfeit's your personal realm's coin?)

Note how Roddenberry created Aliens lacking all emotion, but Cherryh created aliens lacking only Love, but replaced "Love" with another emotion rooted in different biology.

Look at chimps and bonobos. They trade in mutual grooming, share food, and create an "economy" based on sex and dominance.  Yet they're smart enough to figure out how to cooperate to get food.  Wolves bring down large prey in packs, cooperating for food but then letting the dominant wolf apportion the meat.  Apparently, human tribes can develop a society based on that cooperative model on a tribal level.

One question you, as world builder, have to answer is, "Once food (wealth) is acquired by cooperation, does The Leader apportion the wealth among His/Her followers as he chooses, or do the individuals who cooperated snatch what they think is their own portion?"

Poul Anderson, among many early science fiction writers, pointed out the way to build Alien Species that "make sense" to modern, human readers is to examine the basic biology of animal species that really exist on Earth and extrapolate what kind of civilization that biology would generate, given evolved intelligence.  He founded a long and prolific career on that method, and modern science fiction writers tend to follow that rule successfully.

Understand the biological drives shaping human cultural choices about Trade (such as they may be free will choices), then find one parameter to change to create your Alien.

Which parameter you change, and from what to what you change it, will define your THEME.

Your plot will explode outward from that premise with natural inevitability. You will have depicted an abstract statement about the nature of Reality in concrete terms as we discussed.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/communicating-in-symbols.html

Or in this entry on depicting Dynastic Wealth:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/01/depiction-part-5-depicting-dynastic.html

To do that as well as Roddenberry or Cherryh have done with emotion, you have to understand what money is to humans, and why we created it, then change that why to make your Aliens.

Humans started with barter -- trade.  I'll trade you this horse-halter for that bushel of corn?  No, no not THAT bushel, it's wormy.  This nice halter is worth that other, nice fresh clean bushel of corn.

Trade is object for object -- and it is all about what an object is worth to you, right then.

I'll trade you this gold coin for that bucket of water?  No, this water was too hard to come by -- I'll give it to you if you give me that horse.  Well, if I don't have a horse, I don't need a whole bucket of water.

Value is subjective and situational.

If you're dying of thirst, water is worth all the gold you are carrying.

The value of your aching back (drawing a bucket of water up from the bottom of a deep well sans donkey) vs. the value of a bushel of corn you could buy in town (5 mile walk away, then back again hauling a bushel of corn) if only you had a gold coin to give to the farmer in the market (provided you could get there before the market closed or all the corn was gone.)

Calculating the value of a gold coin is a vitally important skill, and always has a wild card factor, a gamble involved.

Today we call that arbitrage.

The value of a material object, or a coin, is fundamentally guesswork.

A gold coin, or a hundred dollar bill (actually a 1 ounce gold coin is about $1200 today), is coin of the realm, and medium of exchange.

You can "sell" a bucket of water for the value of the water, plus the value-added by that water being in a bucket at ground level rather than 200 feet down a well.  You might sell the leaky wooden bucket with the water -- or not.  Separate deal.

You give the water, you get the coin, you carry the coin to town, you give the coin, you get the bushel of corn.  Now you don't have any water to cook the corn in and you're 5 miles from home where you can shuck the corn and cut the kernels from the cob, making the burden lighter.  You have to pay someone so you can borrow their wagon?

That's an economy.  The bushel of corn cost someone a sore back, too, and a year's work tilling the soil, pulling weeds, etc etc -- it's not easy growing corn.  In the price of that bushel of corn is also figured the cost of paying soldiers to defend the land from invaders who would steal the corn and kill the farmer.  To pay the soldiers, the Leader has to create Coin of the Realm as a Medium of Exchange.

Aliens might trade in buckets of water, but might not have corn, or any kind of vegetable crop. Maybe they only eat animals, but they surely eat something.

Last week, we examined the very definition of life, itself.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/08/alien-sexuality-part-two-what-is-life.html

The value of "life" has mystical variables -- which you can pick through to find that ONE element to change to generate your Aliens.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/12/8-pentacles-kavanah.html

So what is the "value" of work?  A material object (hunk of wood, for example) is worth something -- variable with how difficult it was to acquire, how rare it is.  That same material object plus "work" might equal a Polished Soup Bowl, a Comfortable Rocking Chair, hoops-and-loops to hold clothing together (frogs), table, shelves, hair clasps, whatever you can make out of wood.  To make those things requires a) skill and b) time maybe c) bleeding from splinters.

The work is intangible, but has VALUE in coin-of-the-realm.

Consider that the realm authorizing that coin is your own, personal, only-you, ecology of one person. You are a sovereign individual.

Read Clan of the Cave Bear .

http://www.amazon.com/Clan-Cave-Bear-Earths-Children/dp/0553250426/

This famous novel depicts the economy of the sovereign, lone, individual.

Every collected object used for food, clothing, shelter, has an assigned value in time-effort-energy and in how replaceable it is.  When the hero returns "home" to find his little shelter utterly destroyed, you understand what a dollar actually IS.  You understand what ownership and sovereignty is.  And you understand what Capitalism really is (as opposed to what "they" have told you capitalism is.)

The rule of Fallacy being more popular than Accuracy seems to hold with respect to Capitalism.

But words are as variable in value as coins.

Again, consider how language shifts and changes -- the same words do not mean the same thing to all people.
https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2016/03/25/how-far-back-in-time-could-you-go-and-still-understand-english/

A word is "worth" (e.g. means) what you say it does, just as a coin is worth what you think you can get for it (fallacious thought or not.)

Today's online dictionaries try to keep up with the ever changing definitions of words.

https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/capitalism

... defines capitalism thusly:

----------quote---------------
an economic system based on private ownership of capital
Synonyms:
capitalist economy
Antonyms:
socialism, socialist economy
an economic system based on state ownership of capital
Types:
venture capitalism
capitalism that invests in innovative enterprises (especially high technology) where the potential profits are large
Type of:
free enterprise, laissez-faire economy, market economy, private enterprise
an economy that relies chiefly on market forces to allocate goods and resources and to determine prices

--------end quote-------------

No, that's not it.  "Capitalism" is actually just a system of describing what the hero of CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR lost when his belongings were destroyed -- belongings he had gathered raw materials for and crafted into items essential to his survival.

"Capital" is not MONEY.  Capital is not COIN (of any Realm).

Capital, like the "Packing Fraction" from physics, is the Money you do not have BECAUSE you have a thing instead.


---------quote----------
The ratio of the total volume of a set of objects packed into a space to the volume of that space. The difference between the isotopic mass of a nuclide and its mass number, divided by its mass number. The packing fraction is often interpreted as a measure of the stability of the nucleus.
Packing fraction | Define Packing fraction at Dictionary.com

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/packing-fraction

----------end quote---------

As in Physics, Capital has stability measured by how much it cost -- how MUCH is NOT THERE, how much it would take to pry your hot fist away from your possession.

Understanding this secret of reality (hidden by changing definitions of words) makes the difference between the rich and the poor.

I've discussed Rich Dad: Poor Dad previously.  The book explains how what we sometimes call the "cycle of poverty" is more a matter of language facility than wisdom or skill at life.  By cycle of poverty, I mean the phenomenon of poor parents raising poor children trapped in poverty all their lives, raising another generation of poor kids.

We have many prominent examples of those who have 'broken the cycle of poverty' among our political candidates in 2016.

We have Dr. Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, even Ted Cruz, -- they all have tales to tell of that steep, hard climb out of having nothing.  They do not seem (from what they say in public) to understand that what they did depended on knowing the difference between money and capital, but look closely at their stories and it is plain as day.

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What The Rich Teach Their Kids About Money - That The Poor And Middle Class Do Not!   Robert T. Kiyosaki

https://www.amazon.com/Rich-Dad-Poor-Teach-Middle-ebook/dp/B0175P82RA

The secret is simply that capital is not money.  You can 'save' capital.  You can NOT 'save' money.  When you put "money" in a bank, it becomes "capital."  (unless it's in a checking account to be spent).

Money (coin) is a MEDIUM OF EXCHANGE -- it is worth whatever two entities (Aliens included) think or say or determine it is worth.  The real value of "money" lies in its velocity, the rates and direction of movement of the coins.  Money is a force (mystically, you can consider it fueled by the Soul.)

Capital is fixed, real, tangible asset that is worth to you exactly what you paid for it, what it cost you to acquire, and that includes emotional investment.

This is what the Atevi can't grasp -- humans LOVE the objects they invest their emotions into (grandma's hand-stitched quilt is worth more than the scrap rags she made it from).  We make things, and we "love" those things because we made them.  It is a capital investment of Self.  We even accuse people of "loving" Money.

Your potential work (your aching back) has a value to you, independent of anything anyone else might think it is worth.  Your potential work is your human capital.  It is potential 'value' because it is unrealized.  You can't exchange it. You can't move it.  You can't reassign ownership.  It is capital.

Money and Capital share a property that I expect Aliens would understand.  Money and Capital can both be "made."

As in Clan of the Cave Bear, a single individual can gather material objects in one spot and craft mission-critical items from that material.

The gathering costs expenditure of capital (remember, labor, your aching back, is your capital).  The crafting (learning to do it, then doing it, failing, discarding gathered material ruined by failure, finally succeeding) of the matter into a usable object costs an expenditure of Capital.

Life -- time, effort, energy, health, RISK, combat with others, competing for rare stuff -- is your Capital.  You invest that capital by gathering then crafting.  Now you HAVE an object that is mission critical, and that object is Capital.

For more iconic imagery on this abstract definition of what is money and what is capital, watch the film Enemy Mine.

http://www.amazon.com/Enemy-Mine-Dennis-Quaid/dp/B000I9YXOC/

This is a true Love Story, complete with human/alien pregnancy, sans sex!

When corporations report "Capital Expenditure" they do not refer to taking Capital (land, buildings, factory equipment) and selling it.  They refer to taking from incoming cash flow and BUYING land, buildings, equipment.  For example, if you own a house, and it needs a new roof, you do a Capital Expenditure, spending your wages or salary to buy a new roof (or the materials to go hammer a new roof over your head yourself.)

Capital is STATIC -- trapped, concrete -- but MONEY has a value derived from its VELOCITY.  How trade-able is your gold or silver coin?  What is a dollar worth?  Capital is what you exchange (barter) but Money is the medium by which you exchange it.  Money is a SYMBOL.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/communicating-in-symbols.html

Coin of the Realm has a value based on the value of the Realm, itself.

Your aching back is the coin of your own, personal, sovereign realm.

I think any living Alien species we meet up with will be able to comprehend an aching back (or carapace), or at the very least, "Whew!  I did it!"

Of course, a hive species might have a problem with "I."  Writing a Human/Alien Romance with a hive species might be a challenge.

But assume your Aliens are individuals, and here they are among 21st Century humans on Earth (or maybe finding a human colony on Mars or "out there" somewhere.)

How will they understand working for a living?  Paychecks?  Cell phone bills.  Starbucks expensive coffee.

The film Starman gives you a start on this problem.

http://www.amazon.com/Starman-Karen-Allen/dp/B004ZCM2Q4/

This kind of story fairly well defines science fiction.  In a First Contact situation, you have to set aside your assumptions because they are all probably fallacious.

C. J. Cherryh depicts this process with razor sharp precision in the entire FOREIGNER series, but targets it especially well in the novel VISITOR where the language of the new Aliens, the Kyo, has to be puzzled out nearly from scratch.

Finding your own fallacies amidst your assumptions is extremely difficult, but it is in fact one of the primary skills of the working scientific researcher.  Nothing blinds you to facts more than your assumptions, and how assiduously you have examined your assumptions determines how blinded you will be by Romance.

So, what if your Aliens have as many unexamined and possibly fallacious assumptions as the human Characters in your Romance story?  That could be a source of Conflict for your couple, and misunderstandings greater than C. J. Cherryh has depicted.

Armed with that idea, and your own personal take on what an economy is, where it comes from, why bother to have one, and what "labor" is (Capital or Money?), and who owns the resulting material objects, write a 750 piece of dialog for a First Contact Romance novel.

Consider the subject might be the Minimum Wage.  Suppose the Alien is trying to hire a Security Guard for a foray into the White House and an official, "Take Me To Your Leader" meeting.

What should the Alien pay?  What multiple of the Minimum Wage?  And how do you convince an Alien (with an alien idea about paid labor and skilled labor) to pay that much?

Depict that entire Alien culture's economic system in 750 words of dialogue, and spark the hottest Romance in this Galaxy.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Of Petitions, Persecution? White Roofs and White Roads.

Are you an author and a copyright owner? Do you agree that copyright promotes and protects free speech and creativity? If so, the copyrightalliance has written a petition to the 2016 political candidates, and you are urged to sign it, too.

http://takeaction.copyrightalliance.org/21036/open-letter-to-2016-political-candidates/

That's the positive. On the negative side, an artists' rights blogger has made a strong statement that President Obama has presided over the worst every administration ever with regard to copyright and the rights of creators (especially songwriters). It's interesting reading.

https://musictechpolicy.com/2016/08/04/mr-obama-meet-mr-kafka/

This week (and this is purely personal) I had my flat roof painted with silver-coating. I do this every few years to preserve the roof, also to reflect heat and thus put less strain on my a/c system and on my wallet.... and on the planet.

Here's an interesting article about The White Roof Project.

http://www.whiteroofproject.org/faq

Apparently, cities are "Heat Islands" and can measure temperatures up to 22 degrees F hotter than the suburbs owing to the heat-absorbing properties of black tarmac on roads and roofs, and of cement etc. One wonders what the science fiction DUNE worlds would have been like if modern scientific theory had been followed, and the desert sands were covered with (presumably white) plastic sheets.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2009/jan/16/ethicalliving-climatechange

As we may lose the reflective whiteness of snow and ice, perhaps substituting other white expanses might be helpful, even if they are not exactly cold white?

Like white roads? http://cleantechnica.com/2014/06/04/white-roads-help-reduce-urban-temperatures/
It is claimed that white roads in Australia have reduced temperatures by as much as 12.6 degrees F!
http://livinggreenmag.com/2013/01/03/climate-change/can-white-roofs-fight-global-warming/

All the best,

Rowena Cherry
For a limited time, Forced Mate, autographed, is $4.70 + $3.99 shipping.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0505526018/ref=olp_f_new?ie=UTF8&f_new=true

Amazon charges the seller (me) $3.05 and media mail shipping is $2.61

Suspension of Disbelief

I recently read SIRE AND DAMN, the latest (I hope not the last, but I fear it may be) "Dog Lover's Mystery" by Susan Conant. It started me thinking about the conventional but "unrealistic" elements mystery authors have an implicit agreement with readers to treat as believable, similar to the theatrical convention that actors can speak "aside" to the audience without being heard by any other characters onstage.

Most obvious is the convention that makes amateur detective series possible at all. We have to accept as normal that a hero or heroine not involved in law enforcement, an investigative profession, or the criminal underworld encounters dozens of murders in his or her daily life. It's the phenomenon that gives the small Maine town in the TV show MURDER SHE WROTE a higher per-capita homicide rate than Baltimore or Washington. Sometimes the author offers a sort-of rationale for the protagonist's repeated clashes with violent death. Walter Mosley's series protagonist Easy Rawlins, a black man in post-World-War-II southern California, builds a reputation in his community for solving problems people don't trust the police to deal with. Similarly, Barbara Hambly's "free man of color" in antebellum New Orleans, Benjamin January, after unraveling a few mysteries in which he accidentally gets entangled, becomes the person his friends and acquaintances—black, white, and mixed-race—turn to when delicate problems arise. Most "cozy" mystery series, though, simply ask the reader to accept the premise that a chef, a writer, or (as in Susan Conant's series) a dog trainer will trip over a murder or two every few months.

Likewise, we expect the murderer to be revealed as a member of the heroine's circle of acquaintances, not someone from out in left field she's never met. In the classic tradition established by such authors as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers, pinning the crime on a character not included in the roster of suspects would be considered unfair to the reader.

The more hard-boiled varieties of murder mysteries, the kind with a higher level of onstage violence, feature another "unrealistic" convention: The hero or heroine usually gets knocked unconscious at least once per book. Yet he or she recovers (sometimes after a credible period of recuperation, sometimes "unrealistically" fast) and soldiers on through adventure after adventure with no sign of permanent brain damage. Given all the recent media publicity about the dangers of concussions (in children's athletic programs, for instance), we have to accept the hero's phenomenal toughness and good luck as part of our genre expectations.

More often than chance would predict, early in the story the protagonist comes across just the bit of specialized or confidential information that she'll later need to solve the case. This example seems to me a borderline case; the effectiveness of suspension of disbelief depends on the author's skill in planting the information in the natural flow of the action. It stretches the bounds of credibility, however, when the amateur detective just happens to overhear a fragment of dialogue that conveys the vital piece of missing information. There was a TV series about a crime-solving priest and nun that, although it was lots of fun, did that kind of thing too often. One of Elizabeth Peters's suspense novels satirizes this device when the heroine sneaks into the villains' lair and eavesdrops on them, lamenting that nobody conveniently says something like, "I will now go to the dungeon and check on our prisoner, who is in the third cell on the right."

In general, any reliance on coincidence to solve the mystery is problematic; an author might be allowed one such incident every now and then, but a little bit of coincidence goes a long way. There can be a fine line between disbelief being suspended and (as Marion Zimmer Bradley used to say) hanged by the neck until dead.

Then there's the direct opposite, Tolkien's "secondary belief," when an author draws the reader so deeply into a fictional world that it comes to life for us. No "suspension" is needed, because we experience the secondary world as a realm that could truly exist on a different plane of reality.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Alien Sexuality Part Two - What Is Life? by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Alien Sexuality
Part Two
What Is Life?
by
 Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Part 1 of this series on Alien Sexuality is
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/12/alien-sexuality-part-one-root-of-all.html

Part 1 is about the root of all conflict -- i.e. sexuality itself.

Last week
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/07/reviews-27-foreigner-series-by-c-j.html
we discussed the various reasons writers of Science Fiction Romance novels should be sure to read C. J. Cherryh's FOREIGNER series novels, if not the entire Alliance-Union universe novels.

One reason we did not discuss for reading this 16 book series was the underlying style of the writing in the Foreigner novels.

They are chatty, internal dialogue focused, watching the linguistic gears mesh (or fail to mesh) inside the mind of a human who is being acculturated into a non-human society, and ends up sleeping with an Alien who does not have the capacity to comprehend the emotion of "Love."  This Alien has a totally different, but equally "hot" emotion.

The current trilogy in the FOREIGNER series (so far, no cross-fertilization) opens a new jar of worms with the main protagonist (Bren Cameron) once again acting (after way over-thinking) to disrupt the balance of power in a war between the Kyo and a segment of humanity his own group of humans lost touch with two centuries before.  So those humans would be almost as alien to him, culturally, as the aliens he lives with (the Atevi).

To create such a large canvas as C. J. Cherryh writes on (the Universe called the Alliance-Union universe), a writer needs a very large set of what I call "nested themes" -- wheels within wheels -- themes that accrete in layers like the layers of a natural pearl.

We discussed nested themes here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/10/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-4.html

Since this blog is about Alien Romance -- romance between a human and a non-human -- whether it be ostensibly science fiction or fantasy or Paranormal -- we focus on when, how, and whether to blend "science" with "romance."

I define "Science" as the facts we know (by independent verifying experiments) to be true about the structure of the universe organized in a way that the body of knowledge can be passed down from one generation to another, added to along the way.

I define "Fiction" as the art form that creates a story out of a selective arrangement of subjective "facts" (or emotions, spiritual states, Eternal Truths learned or discarded).  A story may not be "true" at all, but has the power to reveal truths otherwise imperceptible.  Story is an art form -- and can use real people and true facts about their actions arranged to reveal something which might not be true.  The same art form can be used on imaginary people and non-real facts about what they did and why.

Sometimes, fiction can reveal more about reality because nothing in the story is true.

When you put Science and Fiction together in a seamless blend you may be able to "pass down from one generation to another" the Wisdom of the Ages.

Now add Romance to that mix, and you can communicate the Wisdom of the Ages about Life itself.

Science is in hot pursuit of "the origin of life" -- not just "life on earth" but the origin of life itself, somewhere out there among galaxies like grains of sand.

-----------QUOTE-----
In a fascinating 2014 study for Nature, a team of scientists mapped thousands of galaxies in our immediate vicinity, and discovered that the Milky Way is part of a jaw-droppingly massive "supercluster" of galaxies that they named Laniakea.
---------END QUOTE--------

http://www.vox.com/2014/9/4/6105631/map-galaxy-supercluster-laniakea-milky-way

In that image, each of the tiny pixel sized dots that make up the hair-like threads of light -- each dot is a whole Galaxy, some bigger than ours.

Studies are turning up "earth-like" planets and traces of complex organic chemicals far out in space, chemicals which are either the building blocks of "life" or maybe the by-products of "life."

Current arguments debate whether Earth is surrounded by deceased civilizations out there somewhere, or embedded in (maybe at the edge of?) interstellar traveling civilizations we just haven't found yet. (which may or may not have found us.)

Yes, that very old debate is once again raging.

So a science fiction romance writer has to do what C. J. Cherryh has done and postulate the basic facts about that image of all the galaxies like grains of sand.

Science deals with the physics, math, and chemistry -- with Higgs Bosons and other nifty particles that the Hadron Collider is documenting.  Fiction deals with the ultimate truth behind that scientific reality, with reasons and motives.  Romance combines to create that which lives, which propagates.

Classic biology identifies 5 basic functions that define "life" as opposed to matter in general.

If you want to turn your ad-block off, you can find a good primer on basic biology here:

http://slideplayer.com/slide/5956766/

But that is derived from life on this little planet.  Science Fiction has long postulated a wide variety of kinds of sentients with "life" distinguished by other factors.

To create a "romance" that modern readers will believe well enough to enjoy, you need your alien member of the couple to be configured somewhat like humans -- even if other species in the novel are very different.

Such a species would, like humanity, have imagined, postulated, encountered, or otherwise discovered or perceived (maybe prophesied) a Cosmology and Cosmogony.  They would have their own notions of how things work.

You, as the writer, need a notion of how your Aliens approach describing the cosmos, and what moral principles they might derive from that description.  To begin writing your saga, you do not need to create the entirety of the Alien's history and religion.  You need only one, fixed, vividly delineated difference between your Aliens and your human readership.

That one starting point will lead to all the rest, and sometimes it is best if you do not consciously know all the details but discover them with the reader as you go.

You can find examples of Alien ways of looking at reality all over the literature of science.

Take, for example, the question of "What Is Life?"

Even the question is ambiguous.  Does it refer to growing up, getting married, having kids, defaulting on a mortgage, getting divorced, etc?  We say "that's life" with a sigh and a shrug when stuff goes wrong.

Or the question could refer to the simple facts of biology as delineated in the five basic functions of living organisms.

If you can find a philosophical point where the two meanings of that Question coincide, you can generate an entire set of nested themes (like that pearl mentioned above) rooted in that single concept.

For example, today, in the midst of the political fracas in the USA, one pivotal issue (other than The Economy and War) is Abortion.

How could you explain to your visiting Alien the simple biological process of voluntary reproduction becoming a political football?  How could you explain the adamant pursuit of "the origin of life" -- either out in the galaxy, seeded onto our primeval Earth by meteors, or arising uniquely on this planet?  And from the other direct, the biologist's pursuit of the moment "life" "begins."

This year, biologists discovered a "flash of light" emitted at the moment of conception when human sperm meets human egg cell.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/04/26/bright-flash-of-light-marks-incredible-moment-life-begins-when-s/

It is the result of a chemical reaction, nothing mystical.

But immediately, the political dimensions are apparent since the argument against abortion is that a fetus is a human life, and killing it is murder under the law.  However, the law in the USA is settled at the adult woman's right to choose whether to gestate that fetus -- or not.

So some humans regard the discovery of a chemical reaction at conception as proof that a human "life" (in both senses, marriage-kids-divorce, and 5-basic-functions) begins at joining of sperm to egg cell.  The two-celled organism is a human being with all the legal rights and protections due a human being.  Others are offended that anyone could use SCIENCE, the main opponent of ignorant superstitious nonsense, to take away the basic human right to control one's own reproductive processes.

Note how REPRODUCTION is one of the 5 signature traits of "life" -- and nowhere in the biological (scientific) definition of "life" is there anything about voluntary control of any of these 5 traits.  In fact, there's nothing "voluntary" about "life."

What would your Alien think of this argument?

Would he/she consider all reproduction voluntary?  Would your alien's very biology require the alien to will themselves to become pregnant?

The concept of "Free Will" is actually somewhat "mystical."  Free Will is a property of the Soul, usually considered to be the key to spiritual growth.  Choose, of your own free will, to do good rather than evil, and you will experience "life" in a more fulfilling and satisfying way -- a very mystical concept.

Today there is some scientific investigation into the idea that we actually do not have any Free Will.

http://www.iflscience.com/brain/free-will-may-be-more-illusion-we-previously-thought-claims-study

Free Will may be imaginary?  Or we, as a society, could come to believe that and structure our various cultures around that idea, then meet up with Aliens who are convinced they have Free Will.

Here's an article about the illusion of Free Will published in May 2016.

http://www.iflscience.com/brain/free-will-may-be-more-illusion-we-previously-thought-claims-study

-------------QUOTE---------
“Our minds may be rewriting history,” Adam Bear, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Psychology at Yale University and lead author of the study, said in a statement. The implication here is that when it comes to very short time scales, even before we think we’ve made a conscious choice, our mind has already subconsciously decided for us, and free will is more of an illusion than we think.
-----------END QUOTE-------

Yes, and our favorite Alien, Spock, may be the result of deliberate genetic mingling because it was the logical thing to do -- if Logic rules, then obviously Will is not "Free" - right?

Would studies like this reveal "hard science" facts that would have to be accepted by any Alien life anywhere in all the galaxies?

The Higgs Boson is a "fact" of that sort, as is the curvature of space, and the variability of "time" (whatever time might be).

But mere facts do not always impinge meaningfully upon intelligent minds, and 'sentience' is an illusive thing we will not nail down until we've met up with several space-faring species.

So, then, "What Is Life?"

Is the question a mystical one?  Or a scientific one?

Is there an "either/or" structure to that dichotomy?  Is "life" either one thing, OR the other?  Is the Universe "Zero-Sum" -- either this or that -- binary?

Or are there shades of gray?

Consider that your visiting Alien Hunk may look at our political tangle over abortion and find his eyes (one assumes he has some) crossing.  In May, 2016, a judge ruled on the stored embryos (which already emitted their spark)  of a divorced couple, bringing the Law into the personal reproductive decisions of individuals.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-divorced-couple-embryos-20151118-story.html

If you want to craft a theme involving Law and Religion (which publishing wisdom says you must never mix), looking at court cases such as this from an Alien angle could provide dynamite ideas. Make that an interstellar court run by some consortium in which Earth does not hold membership.

Consider that your visiting Alien Hunk may look at our political tangle over abortion and find his eyes (one assumes he has some) crossing.

The Alien Hunk may look at our religious take on the importance of that SPARK at the joining of sperm and egg cells (which also happens with animal conception), and conclude that the entire human species is stark raving nuts.

"Everyone knows," he will tell you, "that the entire universe is infected with life, with living cells, sluicing through space in many spore forms.  The origin of human life is the origin of life itself, trillions of years ago in the farthest galaxy."

If you think about it that way, he might declare, you will see there is nothing special about human life.

Now, will he accept the idea that the distinctive trait of people (human and otherwise) is that they have and exercise Free Will?  That Free Will is a property of Soul?

Or perhaps there are "people" who do not have Souls?

I discussed THE FLICKER MEN by Ted Kosmatka in Septemper 2015 blog entry:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/09/reviews-19-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html

He postulated alternate universes and humans here on Earth who had Souls -- others that did not.  Wonderful writing, great concepts, good characters, strong Relationships, and a must-read for Science Fiction Romance writers. You can pay homage to this great entry into science fiction by creating a Romance where not all your Aliens have a Soul, and what difference that makes (if any).

http://www.amazon.com/Flicker-Men-Novel-Ted-Kosmatka/dp/0805096191/

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com