Inside Apollo

The June 2019 issue of SMITHSONIAN magazine includes a long article on little-known aspects of the Apollo lunar exploration project. Unfortunately, the online publication is behind a paywall. Here's a sample of the article:

What You Didn't Know About Apollo

Pick up a copy of this issue if possible. It contains some shocking revelations (shocking to me, anyway). Despite his inspirational public speeches about the race for the Moon, President Kennedy stated in private that he had no particular interest in space as such. He simply wanted to beat the Russians. A significant percentage of Americans considered the space program a waste of money. In 1968, only four weeks after the Apollo 8 flight, a Harris Poll survey revealed that only 39% of Americans favored landing a man on the Moon. When asked whether the project was worth its cost, 55% said no—even though the war in Vietnam was costing more per year than the total price of the Apollo program so far. Aside from the excitement of televised launches, most ordinary citizens didn't give much thought to the Moon project. Even scientists, polled in 1961 by Senator Paul H. Douglas, were divided on the importance of a manned Moon mission, 36% believing it would have "great" value and 35% "little" value. This attitude seems so remarkable to me as an SF fan, since I've regarded the vital importance of space exploration as obvious for most of my life. In October 1963, funding for the Apollo program was being reduced. Ironically, if Kennedy had lived longer, lunar aspirations might have faded away, whereas President Johnson "was an authentic believer in the space program."

Equally astonishing to me, as described in the SMITHSONIAN article, was the United States' level of unpreparedness for the promised goal of a man on the Moon by the end of the 1960s. When Kennedy announced that goal, "he was committing the nation to do something we simply couldn't do." As the article puts it, "We didn't have the tools or equipment" and furthermore "didn't even know what we would need." We didn't have a list of requirements; "no one in the world had a list." And yet we proceeded to do the impossible, producing along the way results such as the most advanced computers created to date, "the smallest, fastest and most nimble computer in a single package anywhere in the world." Furthermore, NASA invented "real-time computing." Not being a tech person, before reading this article I had no idea what a revolutionary development that was. Previously, the only way to get problems solved with a computer was to submit a pile of punch cards and wait hours or days for the printed results of the calculations. Clearly, the space race gave us a lot more than Tang!

It felt strange to read this article and realize how the groundbreaking achievements of our nation's space program, which now seem like a foregone conclusion of unique historical significance, often hung by precariously slender threads.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

How To Use Tarot And Astrology In Science Fiction Part 3 - Suspend Reader Disbelief

How To Use Tarot And Astrology In Science Fiction

Part 3

Suspend Reader Disbelief 

Previous posts in this discussion:
Tarot:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/10/index-to-posts-about-or-involving-tarot.html

Astrology:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html

Part 1
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/12/how-to-use-tarot-and-astrology-in.html

Part 2
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/12/how-to-use-tarot-astrology-in-science.html

And now in Part 3, we'll look at UFO reports, which are (oddly) lumped in with the "Paranormal" (which includes ghosts).

In ordinary consciousness, people go about their business never giving a thought to ghosts, telepathy, teleportation, prophecy, or kidnapping by UFO.

So when they do turn their attention to such occult phenomena, it is like peering into a compartment where you keep ridiculous ideas, a toy box of concepts to push around into new patterns just for fun.

Most readers of Romance or any of the Fantasy (even Science Fiction) genres don't "take it seriously."  So as a writer, you don't have to work hard to attain "suspension of disbelief."

However, if you're writing a book to be published as non-fiction about such phenomena, you have to hammer away incessantly at convincing people that their toys are real.  It's part of the appeal of the Christmas Classic, The Nutcracker where toys come alive.

Tarot and Astrology, as they are mass-marketed for profit, are regarded like toys by most people.  These toys produce fun stuff, but they don't mean anything and don't have to be taken into account when living your day to day existence.

Romance is like that (until you do experience it for real).  The "for real" experience is like the toys in the toy box coming alive, an astonishing moment suspended outside of time.

In psychology, that moment is called "cognitive dissonance" -- and that experience of reassessing what is and is-not real is the essence of the fiction writer's craft.

To work across the boundary between the real and the inside of the toy box, the writer must study both fiction and  non-fiction.

The New Year's fare in Newspapers is peppered with "psychics" making predictions about the coming year (and other linear prognosticators doing "if this goes on.")  Tarot and Astrology get featured, as they sometimes do for Halloween (see my Halloween Tarot/Vampire story, "False Prophecy" in: Through The Moon Gate (and other tales of vampirism)

https://www.amazon.com/Through-Vampirism-Jacqueline-Lichtenberg-Collected-ebook/dp/B004MPRUZM/

In August (the silly season) newspapers carry stories about UFOs.  When people are bored (because Congress isn't in season, all their friends at work are on vacation so projects stall, the kids are home going stir crazy), they open their toy box of ideas and get lost in playing with them.  It's amusing and refreshing.

Non-fiction about UFO visits to Earth, about Astronauts sightings, other credible witnesses, photos (which we disbelieve more so now than ever), occupy that part of the mind.

I've been a UFO-NUT since grammar school when I found that section in the library and had my Mom take the books out so I could read them.  I never believed any of it, but could construct a world where it was true, "...they are watching us!"

Then I met a couple people (at different times) who told of their own abduction by a UFO.  Very convincing, especially since they weren't giving speeches about it for money or writing books, or being paid by a newspaper, etc. No profit motive, just a disturbance in life.

I have friends who follow the UFO reports, so one time I was at a speech where the guy was selling a book on the topic, and spent over an hour presenting "evidence" for the validity and verification, the credibility of witnesses, etc. -- pounding away at trying to prove (to an audience of true believers) that UFOs are real.

So afterwards, I listened to everyone reinforcing their true-belief, buying the autographed book, and treating the author as if he were important.

I waited for most to leave, then asked him why, if his case actually convinced him, he is still trying to convince people.  If these visitations are real, then accept that and move on to the next logical step -- or to debating what that step should be.  If it's true, act as if it's true.  If it's not true, shut up.

I've never before or since seen such a totally flummoxed speaker.

He simply had no answer, and as far as I could tell, had never considered that option -- assuming what he knows to be true is in fact true, and going to the next step.

So, I'm still a wide-open question on UFOs in general, kidnappings in particular.  It seems to be the reason these people write these "non-fiction" books is to make money. There's more profit in manufactured or exaggerated evidence and sincere insistence on the impossible than there is in the truth.

And that gives you a formula for a hot-hot-hot Romance Character, a UFOLOGIST who doesn't know he doesn't believe what he's peddling.

To write such a story, you need a theory of reality built by ripping items from the headlines - using newspaper stories widely believed as if they are fact.

And you need a theory of existence that explains how and why Tarot and Astrology work, how they are related to each other, and what Aliens From Outer Space have to do with that.

Astronomy and Astrophysics are barreling toward Astrology and Tarot (yes, Tarot is more like Astrophysics, if you look aslant the right way).

Here's a TOY BOX item for you:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-the-many-worlds-interpretation-of-quantum-mechanics-has-many-problems-20181018/

Subtitle of that article:
The idea that the universe splits into multiple realities with every measurement has become an increasingly popular proposed solution to the mysteries of quantum mechanics. But this “many-worlds interpretation” is incoherent, Philip Ball argues in this adapted excerpt from his new book Beyond Weird.

Tarot is all about decision points in life, and what you USE of your interior, spiritual, innate or learned skills and resources to navigate the white-water-rapids of life's decision points.  This article discusses the new mathematical and quantum physics view of multiple universes -- which has been a staple of science fiction since before JACK OF EAGLES by James Blish (author of the first STAR TREK novel published, SPOCK MUST DIE):

https://www.amazon.com/Jack-of-Eagles/dp/0380611503/

Today, people believe in science even without understanding all that hard stuff.  Science has produced usable results (smartphones for one), so people believe in human interference with the cyclical climate surges (glaciations followed by polar melts over millions of years) because it is settled science.

With the setting aside of religion in most organized forms, humans search for things to believe in.  UFOs, Romance, Science, multiple universes, all have their share of true believers.

To write science fiction romance of the caliber of James Blish's JACK OF EAGLES, you need to grab and incorporate a bit of speculative science and weld it to a bit of speculative occultism, then build your entire world selecting every detail to symbolize or illustrate that composite element.

Psychics have long predicted, in the New Year's Prediction issues of the papers, that this year Aliens will arrive, reveal themselves, or that we will get a signal from outer space proving there are people out there.

So, to get your readers to suspend their disbelief, you must accept your belief in your fictional world as real.

STAR TREK the original series, (all cardboard sets and flat colored backdrop paintings) as popular and gripping because the actors were able to treat what they were doing as REAL (even when it was using a salt shaker to detect an Alien's state of health).

Writing is a performing art.

Accept the reality of your fictional world, your specific blend of the Esoteric and the Scientific, and sidestep reader disbelief.

Your readers believe in Romance, and believe in Science, and some believe in UFOs (at least during August).

Accept what they believe as actually real.  Don't be like the UFO lecturer and be unable to understand what is implied if the belief is real.  Accept the reality, and plot onwards through the next action, and the next.

Your characters have to implement their decisions out of the unconscious assumption that these elements are real.

So, suppose your Character is to meet up with (or be kidnapped by) a UFO alien.

What is this Alien?

Use widely believed science to answer that question.

We are now (with orbital telescopes) discovering the size of our Universe,

https://www.cnet.com/news/hyperion-is-an-ancient-cosmic-beast-formed-2-3b-years-after-big-bang/

Another outlet, Gizmodo, (probably working off the same publicist's press release) gives more depth, pointing out Hyperion's relationship to the supercluster Earth is in, Laniakea.

https://gizmodo.com/trying-understand-the-size-of-this-new-space-discovery-1829824870

I discussed Laniakea here:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/02/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-18.html

For decades, science fiction has been speculating about parallel universes (and anti-matter ones -- do read the STEN series).

Here are entries where I discuss the STEN SERIES.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/theme-plot-integration-part-8-use-of-co.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/theme-plot-integration-part-9-use-of-co.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/theme-plot-integration-part-10-use-of.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/06/theme-character-integration-part-1-what.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/06/acquiring-new-techniques-part-1-pun.html

So what sort of Alien arrives by UFO (yes, I do love both THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL and STARMAN), and kidnaps a human?

Once you determine what sort of alien, you should be able to derive why he would do such a thing.

Keeping in mind the size of the Universe we are now exploring by reading energy particles that are billions of years old, and keeping in mind all the new science produced from putting humans in weightlessness on space stations (showing how humans can't survive a trip to Mars or living there - we are gravity dependent and cosmic-ray sensitive), think hard about an Alien poking around Earth.

If we can't go to their planet (because settled science says so), then how could they come here?

Your readers keep their UFO knowledge in their toy boxes.   Make them take that knowledge out of the toy category.

How are we going to go visit Aliens who lived billions of years ago, and will be long dead by the time we get there?

Look around at current science headlines.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2018/10/18/this-is-how-we-know-there-are-two-trillion-galaxies-in-the-universe/#570035995a67

And look at what Forbes has been reporting on Artificial Intelligence

https://www.forbes.com/insights-intelai/ai-issue-2/

Forbes -- a financial organ -- talking about the size of reality and the nature of consciousness, intelligence, and robots as tools.

If we can create Artificial Intelligence, we can begin to determine if intelligence is related to the Soul -- and therefore what makes a Soul Mate.

Before we get to such spiritual questions, it is very likely we'll be sending AI entities to Mars and/or Venus - maybe to explore, to send back resources, to terraform, to build a habitat humans can live in.

Remember, with the nailing of the Higgs Boson, we are starting to get a handle on mass, weight, and perhaps one day, artificial gravity so we can take our fragile bodies out to the stars.

One might expect "Aliens" to haul their habitat around with them, too, but likewise to send ahead a wave of Artificial Intelligence -- not just robots programmed to do things, or remotely controlled as we try to do, but AI that can learn, think, reason, conclude and act.

Perhaps an AI explorer was sent out as an ordinary Intelligence, but along the way somehow acquired a Soul?

Perhaps your Main Character is kidnapped by an Alien AI with a Soul, and the experiments described in so many UFO books are actually an investigation into whether humans have Soul, and if so what Soul might be, where it comes from, and how it can be lost.

Or perhaps the UFO denizens are just trying to find Soul Mates?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Dialogue Part 13 - Writing Inner Dialogue Of A Hero by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Dialogue

Part 13

Writing Inner Dialogue Of A Hero

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts of Dialogue series are indexed here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/10/dialogue-parts-1-4-listed.html

And depiction posts are indexed here:

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

Depicting a Character is tricky if the Character's dialogue does not match what you, the writer, assert is true about the Character.

Dialogue is usually considered to be what a Character says aloud to another Character -- but in science fiction Romance, Paranormal Romance, and all our favorite variations, one must consider telepathy as part of Dialogue, even when not worded-thoughts.

Realistic Characterization includes the Character being unaware of his/her own true motivations.  Most silent, inner dialogue -- the things we repeat to ourselves -- are rationalizations for how we feel, justifications for feeling that way, and consequent "reasons" for why we act that way.

Real humans are complicated.

Characters have to be ultra-simplified, at least in the first few novels you write to introduce them.

Hollywood screenwriting insists Major Characters have 3 (and no more than 3) Traits that distinguish them from other Characters.  But in screenwriting, you don't usually get to reveal inner dialogue.  The Actors supply that counterpoint embellishment,and you, the writer, don't get to telll the Actor what the Character is thinking or in what words (telepathy being an exception).

But note how telepathy has been handled in Star Trek -- silence, leaving the audience to guess what Spock learned from the Horta until he interpreted -- and we don't know if he told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Here is a bold and inconvenient truth for Romance writers to ponder.

Readers judge Characters by the Character's inner (silent) dialogue with him/herself.

You can tell the reader this Character is a highly placed, powerful executive whose word is law in an international corporation (the "How To Marry A Billionaire" story needs a Billionaire readers can believe is real) -- but if the Character is not thinking (inside their own mind) like a successful Billionaire, the readers won't believe a word in the entire novel.  In fact they won't finish reading it.

But since writers aren't Billionaires, or action-heros of any sort, how do you learn what your Character (human or Alien) should be thinking in a crisis, where the stakes are saving the Galaxy, where failure is not an option?

We see in the remake of the TV Series, MACGYVER, how the ultimate problem solver thinks when everything he tries fails.  He "innovates."

Usually, in real life, that doesn't work, which is why it is so fascinating to see on TV.

What does work, what allows humans to survive on this fragile world, is team work.  But every team has a point-man, a leader, a person who thinks faster about more things, who sees the big picture and charts the course through the current mess.

A Hero in a 3 piece suit and tie.  Or coveralls and boots.

Every team has a Leader or it isn't a "team." (at least for humans).

However, at any given time, any particular Team may follow any one of the members -- whichever one has the Big Picture and a Plan.

Which team member is the Leader is not a distinguishing Characteristic (among humans).  Any follower might become a Leader in the right circumstances.  Take for example, a ship's crew in battle, and the Captain and First Officer get killed (or beamed off the ship), -- so a Lieutenant steps into the Captain's role and does what they've seen the Captain do.

Leadership is not a property of a given Character.

Leadership is a property of Inner Dialogue.

A lot of the mystique of Leadership is shrouded in Silent Dialogue.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/10/dialogue-part-10-silent-dialogue-from.html

We discussed Culture and physical movement (all humanity has body-movement "codes" alike such as eye-blink-rate and mirroring or matching another's micro-moves), but Cultures differ in what means what.

Robert J. Sawyer has written a solid science fiction (somewhat Romance, too) about a psychiatrist who discovers a way to identify sociopaths by micro-movements of the eye.  We are, in fact, close to being able to do such fine tuned work.  The novel is QUANTUM NIGHT.

https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Night-Robert-J-Sawyer-ebook/dp/B00X59368Q/

The Characters are well depicted scientists (both the man and the woman) with real emotional lives, and a solid grasp of the sciences they are known for.

Now, put this all together, and study this article about how NASA trains mission control folks to avoid panic in an emergency.  It is so much better, more effective, and more realistic than the British WWII "Stay Calm" nonsense.

Telling someone to stay calm just makes them more acutely aware of all the reasons not to.

Read this article:

http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-flight-director-stress-crisis-2017-11

Note this list of questions -- these will guide you to creating the thoughts.  Your Characters will not be thinking these questions -- but rather listing in their minds all the answers they know, and what specifically they can do to find more answers.  Study, internalize, practice using this list in your own life's panic-situations, until you have polished the performance.

---------quote from NASA Flight Director--------------
Mission control has a strategy for staving off panic
This intense focus is partly how the flight controllers are able deal with potentially catastrophic situations. Instead of "running down the halls with our hair on fire," Hill said the team would focus on a series of questions.

• What was everything they knew — and did not know — about the situation at hand?

• What did the data actually say about the situation at hand?

• What was the worst thing that could happen as a result of the situation?

• Did the team have enough information to know for sure — and how could they get more information?

• What immediate steps could be taken to continue making progress in the mission or keep everyone safe?
--------------END QUOTE-------------

It is vital not to fall into the habit of assuming that things will now go as they always have before.  Old solutions can not be relied on in new situations.

That is the source of the non-Leader Character's paralysis before fear in a crisis.

When time closes in, and a correct action must be chosen and executed perfectly without thinking, Characters who have graven habits will fail.

Characters who avoid letting habit rule them, but who use habit as a tool, subordinate habit to achieving objectives, who go to the trouble to understand all the moving parts, will succeed in an emergency.

It is the same sort of training that is done in Martial Arts.  The objective is to identify an incoming threat and counter it WITHOUT THINKING.

In Martial Arts this is "muscle memory" and reflex -- in Mission Control it is Situational Awareness and a holistic grasp of the Big Picture.

Thus, Billionaires and other successful people generally have a sports hobby -- whatever is most popular in their circles.  Handball or MMA -- whatever uses the body-brain interface, because that same brain circuit provides the instant response to emergencies -- new emergencies never dreamed of before are met with smooth idea processing and solution generation.

Study the new TV Series, MACGYVER.  It is silly, contrived, not nearly as cleverly done as THE A-TEAM or the original MACGYVER -- but well worth studying for the depiction of smooth response to crisis.

The Successful Billiionaire, and the (still alive) Astronaut respond smoothly, and stay in control of the moving parts of a complex Situation gone awry, by drilling constantly (starting as toddlers) in that series of Questions from NASA Mission Control.

The Character who can meet a bizarre - ever seen by humans before - Event, parse it, decide, and act successfully, will not be telling themselves inwardly "don't panic" -- they will not be thinking of all the ways things could go wrong, they will not be picturing their messy deaths, they will not be AFRAID for their Soul Mate.

The Hero Character -- to be convincing -- must be working the problem using that list of bulleted questions.  Not one at a time, but the whole list all at once.

The Leader of the team will be taking what information the team can supply from that list of questions and DEVISING (improvising) ways to acquire more answers.

This process occupies so much of the brain, all at once, that the Hero Character's inner dialogue convinces the Reader that this is a Hero.

More than that, it convinces the reader to practice being like that in their own lives.

Ultimately, this is why we read novels -- to find role models that are not present among those we know personally.  Or perhaps, are present but not recognizable until we start practicing these habitual thought patterns.

Note, processing problems via NASA's list of questions will make sure that this Character is never a victim, never thinking of him/herself as a victim.  But this Character is also never -- ever -- an attacker, a victimizer.

Successful people are not attackers, not victimizers, not bullies.

If you see success and you see a bully -- suspect there is something else going on that you don't yet know about.

Make your Characters realistic by giving them an inner-voice commentary on events that reveals a true understanding of Life, of human psychology, of History, and Reality.  Such Characters are always questioning, always curious, always marveling, always certain they don't know everything -- and their awareness of their ignorance does not make them afraid.

What you don't know can kill you.  So what?  Don't bother me.  I'm busy solving this problem.  Focus.  That's the secret to inner dialogue.  Unfocused, random, wandering, distracted inner dialogue is the sign of a very weak Character who will not succeed.

Depict your Hero Character as able to deal with catastrophe with his hair on fire, and people will believe that Character is heroic (but the character will deny it.)

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelictenberg.com