Children as Aliens

Recently I saw the movie THE LAST MIMZY, based on a classic SF short story, "Mimsy Were the Borogoves," by Lewis Padgett. Even if I hadn't read the reviews, I would have known a full-length film would have to change and expand the story, adding plot elements that weren't in the original. However, I wish the movie hadn't glossed over the central premise of Padgett's work, that children's brains operate differently from those of older people. According to this tale, the reason only children can understand the marvelous "toys" from the future, which reshape their thought processes in ways impossible for adolescents and adults, is that children essentially have alien minds. After a certain age, people who look at these advanced artifacts (actually educational devices that have accidentally been transported back in time) see only meaningless shapes. Children below the critical age threshold, on the other hand, understand the "toys" and have their brains rewired by interacting with them. The author suggests the reason we don't remember many of the events of our childhood is that our minds were so alien in our early years that the adult brain can't connect with those thought patterns.

I'm not sure I can completely believe this theory, but it makes a great SF premise and resonates with some of the things we know about children's brains. For example, there's a developmental window for learning language. Once the critical age has passed, it becomes much harder to learn a second language, and native-speaker fluency will probably never be achieved. Moreover, "feral children" deprived of exposure to language past this age can never learn to speak beyond a crude, rudimentary level. In Suzette Haden Elgin's "Native Tongue" series, human linguists learn extraterrestrial languages by immersing very young girls in the target species' speech environments. While the infant mind may not be a "tabula rasa" capable of being molded into almost any shape (a twentieth-century misconception thoroughly debunked by Steven Pinker in THE BLANK SLATE), the brains of young children are certainly more malleable and receptive than those of adults. In Isaac Asimov's classic "Nightfall," in which a planet with multiple suns experiences darkness only once every thousand years or more, one character speculates that whatever remnants of culture carry over between the times of chaos are passed down by people who were small children at the time darkness fell. To an infant or toddler, the whole world is new, so the strange phenomenon of darkness wouldn't drive him or her mad as it does adults. Children have a flexibility their elders have lost. I'm also reminded of the many examples of the competence and creativity of real-life young people Robert Epstein provides in THE CASE AGAINST ADOLESCENCE. In the realm of fantasy, we learn from the Mary Poppins series that newborn babies can understand the speech of birds, a power they lose in the process of learning human language.

SF application: Is it possible that the best ambassadors to send forth for first contact with extraterrestrials would be children? I can imagine an embassy of children under the leadership of pre-teens or young teenagers, a squad of Terran representatives young enough to retain their adaptability, facility in learning new languages, and sense of wonder.

Ace of Swords

Folks:

First, I have to say that at Nasfic, Linnea Sinclair provided me an advance copy of THE DOWN HOME ZOMBIE BLUES. I just started reading it (it's a 516 page pb and I'm on p 10) and it's so good I'm recommending it to you now. NOTE: I'm reading an ARC so changes might have been made in the version you buy now.

Remember I teach writing, and (even at Nasfic on panels about writing) students say it's not possible for editors to reject a book on the first 5 or 10 pages.

Well, it IS possible because those pages have to contain the bits and pieces that form the foundation for the novel, all arranged in the right order. Linnea's done that first 10 pages perfectly except for one parag I (as editor) would have deleted (but as writer, I'd have wanted to save) -- so I'm watching to see what it foreshadows.

The paragraph on p 7 starts "Unless you were a pilot taken prisoner by the Tresh." and ends with the POV character deciding she couldn't afford to think about that now. This is a classic "abort" -- starting the reader down a path then pulling them out for no obvious reason.

That parag. would have worked better later. Or perhaps the last sentence might have been deleted.

But it's on p 7 -- and it's only one small paragraph! It does have a purpose (starting the internal conflict, giving the character a haunting past and the sense you've read about this woman before). Then everything moves straight forward again, so I anticipate a smooth, good read here.

It had to be a difficult decision - that paragraph! Which brings me to the topic I want to address. Decisions, habits and actions.

I've found myself writing little essays for this blog each week, and I feel guilty because it's time I should spend writing. So instead of writing, I'm writing! Well, that's what writers do -- they write!

So I'm going to try an experiment that may not work because there are so many interesting things happening in life all the time that I'd like to discuss here.

Let's see how many little essays I can write (I have 20 on my list of must-write essays) essentially about the core topic here, alien-romance, yet still also about the Tarot Minor Arcana Swords (decisions and actions) and Cups (love, character, relationship).

As many of you know I teach writing via Tarot and Astrology - those disciplines are very fruitful sources of plot-twists and characters with recognizable dilemmas. I've been invited to teach at Ecumenicon 2008, March 27-30, 2008 at the Best Western Convention Center in Baltimore, MD. And I would dearly love to finish these 20 essays before that.

These next 10 essays will be a book in the series begun with my book  THE NOT SO MINOR ARCANA (available on amazon.com) - a short introduction to how to go about learning Tarot. The Wands and Cups Volumes and  the Swords and Pentacles Volumes, are now all available separately on Kindle.  The 5 Volumes combined are also available on Kindle as one book, cheaper than buying them individually.
The Not So Minor Arcana: Never Cross A Palm With Silver Aug 30, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0108MC26O

The Not So Minor Arcana: Wands Sept. 1, 2015  99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0106RVPKU

The Not So Minor Arcana: Cups Sept. 11, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0106SATX8

The Not So Minor Arcana: Swords  Sept. 17, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0100RSPM2

The Not So Minor Arcana: Pentacles  Sept. 21, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0106RVKF0

The Not So Minor Arcana: Books 1-5 combined Sept. 24, 2015 $3.25
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B010E4WAOU

This series is designed not for the beginner or the advanced student, but for the intermediate student and specifically for writers doing worldbuilding..

------------

So THE ACE OF SWORDS!

I use the paradigm where Wands is Fire, Cups is Water, Swords is Air, Pentacles is Earth and Tarot is structured on the Kabbalah's Tree Of Life diagram, or more specifically Jacob's Ladder.
The Aces are beginnings, origins, the number ONE -- the unity behind all reality.
Aces exist at the level of reality where all things are just one thing, and haven't yet been divided into many things.

The moment just before the Big Bang began to fling all the matter of the Universe out from that tiny, collapsed central point is an "Ace" moment. All human activity replicates or recapitulates that moment, over and over on many levels.

Thus the Ace of Swords represents the very beginning point of an action sequence, or course of action, such as writing a book, fixing a leaky faucet, going to college, buying a house.

The Ace of Wands is the point where you wake up at 2AM, grab a notepad and scribble down the IDEA (Ideas are Wands) for a story. The Ace of Cups is the emotion from which the story arose, usually subconscious. The Ace of Pentacles is the moment when you hold the first printed copy in your hands (Pentacles are materialization of Ideas.). The Ten of Pentacles is where you bank the Nobel Prize money. The Ace of Swords is TYPING THE FIRST WORD.

The Ace of Swords isn't "I am writing a book" -- it's "I'm going to write this book."

The Ace of Swords is, "I'm going to fix that leaky faucet." The Two of Swords all the way to the Ten describe the comedy of errors up to the point where you get the next IDEA -- call the plumber. (and the water-damage cleanup company) (and the insurance company)
The Suit of Swords is often thought of as misfortunate. I don't think so.

Swords represent force in motion.

The four "Worlds" of the Kabbalah are expansions of the 4 letters in the Divine Name -- Yod, Heh, Vav, Heh.

The letter Vav is a Yod (a little fillip like a comma or a spark suspended in mid-air near the top of the writing line) with a staff under it, reaching down to the bottom of the writing line.

The Vav is a Yod that has GENERATED downward like a tornado touching down. It is a nail that connects things together. The Yod has expressed itself in the Vav. So the "World" represented by Swords is the expression of the Idea represented by the original Yod, a spark of fire.

Thus "Swords" is Divine Power Expressed -- or in motion.

A human being is the visible end of a connecting channel (a kind of "worm hole") that reaches all the way up through all the Worlds of Kabballah and brings down the cyclone of Divine energy.
Think of the Indian concept of the Chakras, or Marion Zimmer Bradley's Keepers who have to have their "channels" cleared.

The human being is a complicated bit of circuitry, and endowed with Free Will (that's a Kabbalah given -- humans have Free Will at all times).

The human being can be like the Sorcerer's Apprentice and reach up to channel down more power than they can handle. The human being can have more ambition than skill and not know it. The human being can have more imagination than judgement and not believe it.

The human being has to make choices and take action by balancing a myriad factors. Losing that balance doesn't make the energy stop flowing -- thus the cards in the Suit of Swords that follow the Ace, the next stages in the project of fixing the leaky faucet or writing the novel often don't manifest smoothly. That cyclone tip of downrushing Divine energy can touch your life and rip it to shreds. Thus the Suit of Swords has a bad rep.

The Suit of Swords, the 3rd World "down" the Tree of Life, is represented by the "Element" Air which we learn in Astrology symbolizes Thought, the Intellect. Gemini, Libra and Aquarius are Air Signs.

And so we learn that a Thought is an action -- as is speech. How we think, what we think, affects our reality, our world. What we say affects even those who never hear it. Thoughts and deeds are one and the same.

We learn this from the power of positive thinking, and how imagining success often brings success. Your thoughts infuse your deeds with exceptional power when both thought and deed are alligned. (think golf swing)

Decisions (de-cision -- to cut in half) are represented by Swords.

A story or novel (your evereyday life is a story you are writing) usually starts where the two elements which will conflict to generate the plot first come together. At that single (ACE of SWORDS) point, the author and by extension, the main character, must DECIDE what to DO when CONFRONTED by the antagonist element.

The antagonist might not be a person -- it could be a storm, a planet to be explored, a disease to be beaten. Whatever it is, at that moment of confrontation, a THOUGHT has to become a DE-CISION, a dividing point.

It can be nothing more than the recognition of an adversary, or perhaps worse, the recognition of one's True Love. Or a failure to recognize, and thus failure to act. The failure to act is also an action, and thus symbolized by Swords.

Human beings have an analogue brain, so we make decisions based on "experience" -- in other words, we are lazy. What's worked before, we do again - until it becomes a habit. And with age, we become so hidebound we can't do anything but what we've made our habit.

We tend to take that kind of habit from lifetime to lifetime (yes, in Kabbalah, reincarnation is real).

So confronted with a unique situation, we boggle. Confounded, we think slowly, or in non-logical sequences, or by free association. Then we hunt frantically for elements in the situation that remind us of something else we already know the answer to.

Wands represent the kind of original thinking we apply to a unique situation without trying to find a similarity to some other known situation.

Swords represent the kind of habitual thinking we prefer where memorized solutions apply to new situations.

Thus the Ace of Swords can represent the origin of a new habit -- or the groping for a memorized solution that almost applies to the new situation.

More accurately, the Ace of Swords is the moment when you decide if this situation can be handled by a memorized solution or needs something entirely new and different.

The moment right after that is the committment to the course of action, the point of no return. "Now you've done it!"

And the Two of Swords is the moment when you think over what you've done, hoping nothing will happen until you figure it all out!

The ACE OF SWORDS reversed is that exact same moment of tension at the threshold of action -- but without enough tension, without enough potential energy to get the project all the way to the 10 of Swords -- the ultimate consequence of the begun action.

Often, actions begun this way -- ill considered decisions and actions -- take hold of a person because the person is striving mightily to avoid doing something else, or to avoid "feeling" (i.e. Cups) something, or is simply doing too many things at once.

It isn't a particular amount of energy that you must accumulate before you act that makes the Ace of Swords come right side up and a project take off with a bang big enough to reach its necessary end.

Each project requires a different amount of energy, a different amount of committment.

And yes, the Swords represent "committment" -- in relationships, paying off a loan, showing up at work every morning, not drinking too much at night so you can show up alert in the morning, getting through school, staying married to the same person even when things go bad.

So whether the Ace of Swords comes up right side up or upside down in a reading depends a lot on what is going on within the person on the levels of Wands and Cups -- ideas, and emotions -- Fire(wands) and Water(cups) make steam, and steam drives the turbine of life. Working at the level of Swords, remember you are still way above the level of Pentacles which is our everyday 4-dimensional reality, material reality. So we're talking about psychological and psychic energies here in Swords.

The fuel for actions is intentions and the totality of understanding of the universe (what E. E. Smith called, in the Lensman Series, the Visualization of the Macrocosmic All). How well you manage your life will show up in how well matched your selected project is to the amount of "committment" you put behind that Ace of Swords. But it also depends on how shrewdly chosen your projects are -- on whether you've done your homework before selecting a project.

Take the fury of Al Queda for example. It is fueled by religious conviction and the perfectly human sense of right and justice. That fuel is not Swords but Wands and Cups -- and the steam that combination makes drives their swift sword with the full might of human belief.
What will it take to thwart such conviction driven actions?

Now translate that question into the story you've decided to write at the moment when you face the blank page in the Ace of Swords. That question is the conflict which is the essence of story. What it will cost the Hero to thwart the Villain is what your readers want to discover.

In a Romance, the two destined lovers can be each others' enemies (as Linnea's DOWNHOME ZOMBIE BLUES points out) and allies at the same time, against something bigger than both of them -- until they combine forces.

And by the way -- "plot" is Swords. Plot is the sequence of actions the characters take. A deep study of the Suit of Swords might improve your plotting ability by an amount even you would notice.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/

Earth as a Vacation Destination: Jorie's view

Writing THE DOWN HOME ZOMBIE BLUES was a fun challenge, predominantly because--and I deliberately did this--I had to view our planet, our cultures, our daily lives through the eyes of someone who'd never been to this planet.

In figuring out how we'd appear to such a visitor--and yeah, I think about this stuff a lot--I was forced to remove all my long-time ideas and knowledge of Life As We Know It. I tried to look at my surroundings with fresh, virginal eyes. Things like traffic lights caught my attention. Why would someone used to space travel even know what they were for? What kinds of misinterpretations could occur? How about our slang expressions? Our ubiquitious, um, hand signals? Our holidays?

In short, I had a ball writing ZOMBIE.

I'm sharing a snippet below. To set the scene, Jorie and her team have arrived at night on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, oops, I mean Bahia Vista, Florida. They have little accurate information to go on about the locale, other than the local language is somewhat similar to another galactic language Jorie is familar with. Similar, but not quite (think Spanish and Portuguese, or perhaps, Spanish and Italian...).

From THE DOWN HOME ZOMBIE BLUES

“Nice work, Trenat.” Jorie laid both hands on the vehicle’s guidance wheel and, looking over her shoulder, offered the young ensign an appreciative smile. He had done very nice work locating a well-concealed storage area of land vehicles and using a combination of mechanical and technical skills to override a series of locks and security devices. All in under ten minutes. Hopefully, determining Danjay’s status and returning him and his critical T-MOD unit to the ship would go as smoothly.

Trenat all but beamed at her from the rear seat, most of his earlier unease gone. “This power pack,” he said, holding out a thin box slightly smaller than her hand, “will create an ignition sequence and activate the engine.”

She followed his instructions as to placement and tabbed on the power. The vehicle vibrated to life, a grumbling noise sounding from its front. “No aft propulsion?”

“No, sir.”

No antigravs either. Well, damn. But when in Vekris, one must do as the Vekrisians do. She draped the headset around her neck and studied the control panel with its round numbered gauges. Other gauges had symbols like those she’d seen on signs as they walked the short distance to A-1 Rental Cars. Danjay’s reports noted that the local language was similar to Vekran, which Jorie spoke along with three other galactic tongues. The two languages shared a similar—though not identical— alphabet which explained why many of the signs she saw didn’t made sense.

As to why the local language was similar to Vekran, she had no idea. That was out of her area of expertise and Danjay’s. His report had noted it and had been forwarded to the scholars in the Galactic Comparative Cultures Division of the Guardian Force.

Jorie was just happy the locals didn’t speak Tresh.

Tam Herryck, rummaging through the vehicle’s small storage compartment on the control panel, produced a short paper-bound book. “Aw-nortz Min-o-al,” she read in the narrow glow of her wristbeam on her technosleeve.

Jorie leaned toward her. Tam Herryck’s Vekran was, at best, rudimentary. “Ow-ner’s Min-u-al,” she corrected. She took the book, tapped on her wristbeam, and scanned the first few pages. It would be too much to ask, she supposed, that the entire universe be civilized enough—and considerate enough—to speak Alarsh. “Operating instructions for the vehicle’s pilot.” As the engine chugged quietly, she found a page depicting the gauges and read in silence for a few moments. “I think I have the basics.” She tapped off her wristbeam, then caught Trenat’s smile in the rectangular mirror over her head. “Never met a ship I couldn’t fly, Ensign. That’s what six years in the marines will teach you.”

The vehicle’s control stick was between the two front seats. She depressed the small button, eased it until it clicked once.

The vehicle lurched backwards, crashing into one parked behind it.

“Damn!” She shoved the stick again and missed a head-on impact with another parked vehicle only because she grabbed the wheel and yanked it to the left.

Herryck bounced against the door. “Sir!”

“I have it, I have it. It’s okay.” Damn, damn. Give her a nice antigrav hopper any day.

Her feet played with the two pedals, the vehicle seesawing as it jerked toward the open gate.

“I think,” Herryck said, bracing herself with her right hand against the front control panel, “those are some kind of throttle and braking system. Sir.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant. I know that. I’m just trying to determine their sensitivity ranges.”

“Of course, sir.” Herryck’s head jerked back and forth, but whether she was nodding or reacting to the vehicle’s movement, Jorie didn’t know. “Good idea.”

By the time they exited onto the street, Jorie felt she had the nil-tech land vehicle under control. “Which direction?”

“We need to take a heading of 240.8, sir.” Herryck glanced from her scanner over at the gauges in front of Jorie, none of which functioned as guidance or directional. “Oh.” She pulled her palm off the control panel and pointed out the window. “That way.”

They went that way, this way, then that way again. Jorie noticed that Trenat had found some kind of safety webbing and flattened himself against the cushions of the rear seat.

“What do you think those colored lights on their structures mean?” Herryck asked as Jorie was again forced to swerve to avoid an impact with another vehicle, whose driver was obviously not adept at proper usage of airspace.

Jorie shrugged. “A religious custom. Wain mentioned that locals hang colored lights on their residences and even on the foliage this time of the year. Nil-techs can be very supersti—hey!” A dark land vehicle appeared on her right, seemingly out of nowhere. Jorie pushed her foot down on the throttle, barely escaping being rammed broadside. There was a loud screeching noise, then the discordant blare of a horn. A pair of oncoming vehicles added their horns to the noise as she sped by them.

“Another religious custom,” she told Herryck, who sank down in her seat and planted her boots against the front console. “Their vehicles play music as they pass. And they’re blessing us.”

“Blessing us?”

Jorie nodded as she negotiated her vehicle between two others that seemed to want to travel at an unreasonably slow rate of speed. “They put one hand out the window, middle finger pointing upward. Wain’s reports stated many natives worship a god they believe lives in the sky. So I think that raised finger is a gesture of blessing.”

“How kind of them. We need to go that way again, sir.”

“I’m coming up to an intersection now. How much farther?”

“We should be within walking distance in a few minutes.”

“Praise be,” Trenat croaked from the rear seat.

Jorie snickered softly. “You’d never survive in the marines, Ensign.”

The book won't be out until November, 2007. But in the meantime, if you want to have some fun and try living in Jorie's shoes for a few hours, look around your world with fresh eyes--outer space alien eyes, if you will. It's worth a grin and a giggle.

~Linnea
www.linneasinclair.com

SF physics and Forensic info

SF Physics and SF Forensics for writers

Fantasy Physics of Star Trek & Bad SF Physics in Movies

The following websites look at the Fantasy Physics of Star Trek.
Lots of good stuff here,

www.physicsguy.com/physandtrek/index.html

members.aol.com/emmagic/private/physics.htm

ssdoo.gsfc.nasa.gov/education/just_for_fun/startrek.html


INSULTINGLY STUPID MOVIE PHYSICS

Here at www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/

More informational/educational websites you might want to check out regarding the basic physics and mechanics of space flight and bad science often used in SF movies.

www.badastronomy.com/bad/movies/spacecowboys2.html

www.badastronomy.com/bad/movies/#list



Trajectories.

When you're trying to intercept another moving object in space with
your space vehicle, you need to calculate the flight plan of the object
you're chasing and figure out WHERE it will be and plot the correct course or trajectory to intercept it.

Then, when you intercept it, you need to match speeds with the
object. At that point it may look to you like you're not moving but
you are. Both ships are now moving together at exactly the same speed.

Here's a very simple simile. Take a merry-go-round. You want
to intercept it at a certain point and jump on it to join one
of the passengers. How do you do this? Do you run straight at the
merry go round and jump on hoping you won't break your neck? Or do you
run alongside of the merry go round until your speed matches it
then jump on?

Each option requires a ton of subsconscious and instinctive calculation of trajectory as you aim to intercept the merry go round at a specific point.

Even if you're writing Space Fantasy/ Space Opera, you still have
to follow some of the basic conventions of flight in space or it'll
bomb, IMHO. Which means, you need spacesuits and space ships
can't STOP DEAD in space, they COAST when the engine power is cut.

The Earth continues to move through space. The moon continues
to revolve around the Earth. The Space Station parked in its
orbit continues to move in order to maintain its position at one
location above Earth.

Definition and general information about trajectories HERE:

www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/conghand/traject.htm


science.nasa.gov/faq/faq.htm#anchor156390


General thoughts about warp drives here at this website.

www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/research/warp/warp.html


Another odd factoid is that astronauts have to wear diapers and use catheters in spacesuits if they have to wear them for hours and days at a time.

Here's a website that details how Spacesuits work
inventors.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=inventors&zu=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.howstuffworks.com%2Fspace-suit.htm


If you're in the mood for reading, here's a 28 page very detailed pdf article about spacesuits that includes lots of pictures and diagrams.
history.nasa.gov/spacesuits.pdf



This is one of the reasons why I created selkieskins as bioengineered symbiotic spacesuits for my Sidhe series and for my book The Huntress. It's a lot nicer than wearing one of our spacesuits. LOL.

Why is a lit candle on a space ship a big SF blooper? Is it because of the oxygen content? Does this apply only to space ships nowadays or to space ships in the future as well?


The answer to this question involves the oxygen content inside spaceships and would also apply to the oxygen content inside future spaceships.

Why?

Two reasons:

Reason #1 involves 'da bends' or decompression sickness in space and high altitude flying. The easiest way to avoid decompression sickness is to flood the body and blood cells with a high concentration of oxygen and to maintain this concentration by having an atmosphere inside the spacecraft that has a higher than normal amount of oxygen.

Many people are not aware that decompression sickness or 'da bends' is a very dangerous reality for astronauts.

FAA OFFICE OF AVIATION MEDICINE
CIVIL AEROMEDICAL INSTITUTE
PUBLICATIONS
ALTITUDE-INDUCED DECOMPRESSION SICKNESS
www.2pi.com/les/flying/faa_400altitude.html

The space shuttle is normally pressurized at 14.7 psia (pounds per square inch absolute) or one atmosphere, which is equivalent to sea level pressure on earth. The pressure in the EVA suits is deliberately kept lower-only 4.3 psia or about one third of an atmosphere-to maintain the flexibility the astronauts need to do their work. If the suit pressure were higher, it would be like trying to work inside an inflated balloon.

Reducing the risk of decompression sickness

On the shuttle, a staged technique is used to reduce the astronauts' risk of decompression sickness. First, the astronauts who are doing the EVA prebreathe pure oxygen for an hour, which starts to flush nitrogen from their tissues.

Next, the shuttle's pressure is reduced to 10.2 psia for a minimum of 12 hours-and, in practice, for an average of about 38 hours-before the EVA begins, creating conditions that facilitate further loss of nitrogen from the tissues during that time. Because it's inconvenient for astronauts to continue wearing the mask needed to prebreathe oxygen for 12 hours or more, they go off pure oxygen at this point and breathe slightly oxygen-enriched air containing 26.5% oxygen. Finally, an hour before the EVA, the crew members get into their suits and prebreathe pure oxygen again. If the shuttle's pressure couldn't be reduced for some reason, they'd have to prebreathe oxygen for much longer periods.

(This is another reason why I created the selkieskin spacesuits for my stories. The selkieskins are bio-engineered symbiotes that automatically adjust to the different air pressures just like whales adjust to the different pressures in the ocean and can do deep dives and surface without any problems. I consulted with a ex-NAVY SEAL when I wrote The Huntress. When I explained the concept and abilities of my imaginary selkieskins, the look on his face was like a knight seeing the Holy Grail. )

Reason #2 Any spark of fire inside this type of high oxygen content atmosphere means a very high danger of deadly flash fires.

Here's a chronological series of events and notations from NASA files that illustrates the dangers of the atmosphere inside a spacecraft and why you can't have a lit candle, let alone a lit cigarette inside them.

On January 27, 1967, during a simulated countdown for mission AS-204, a fire inside the command module resulted in the deaths of the three prime crew astronauts, Virgil I. Grissom, Edward H. White II, and Roger B. Chaffee.

January 31, 1967
Col. Charles F. Strang advised the Apollo 204 Review Board of an accident in an altitude chamber at Brooks Air Force Base, Tex., that morning. A flash fire had swept the oxygen-filled pressure chamber, killing Airman 2/C William F. Bartley, Jr., and Airman 3/C Richard G. Harmon. Col. Strang presented a short briefing on the circumstances and was asked by Chairman Floyd Thompson to provide follow-up information.

Lt. Col. William D. Baxter, Air Force Eastern Test Range representative to the Board, advised the group of existing Apollo spacecraft hazards, including:

* high-pressure oxygen bottles that might be pressurized to 335 newtons per square centimeter (485 pounds per square inch) and be subject to embrittlement;
* pyrotechnics on the service module; and
* a launch escape system with a 40-kilonewton (9,000-pound-thrust) rocket motor.


February 27, 1968
NASA officials testified in an open hearing of the Senate Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences on the Apollo 204 fire. MSC Chief of Center Medical Programs Charles A. Berry reported that the cause of the three astronauts' deaths could be refined to asphyxiation from inhalation of carbon monoxide, bringing unconsciousness in seconds and death rapidly thereafter. The astronauts were believed to have become unconscious 18 to 20 seconds after the fire began.


FORENSIC INFO for SF writers.

Here are a couple of websites that I find useful. Beware, though: Some of these contain very graphic photos & images.

The Writers Medical and Forensics Lab (Dr. Doug Lyle has been a huge help to many mystery writers on questions of forensics and autopsies.)
www.dplylemd.com


Description of how an autopsy proceeds:
web2.iadfw.net/uthman/Autop.html


www.mysterywriters.org/pages/resources/links/crime.htm#autopsy


www-medlib.med.utah.edu/WebPath/webpath.html#MENU


www.crimelibrary.com/


If you want to know what happens to a dead body in space, go to this webpage.

www.madsci.org/posts/archives/apr2000/956328615.Ot.r.html

Thank you for reading my blog. Hopefully, I’ve helped other Science Fiction writers.

Barbara K.
www.sff.net/people/selkiewife
www.myspace.com/barbarakarmazin
groups.yahoo.com/group/TheSensuousAlien

MATING NET

Alien Invasions and Terran Unity

Barbara's latest post mentioned alien invasions and aliens seeking refuge on Earth. These topics brought to mind the numerous SF scenarios in which contact with extraterrestrials, especially aggressive ones, brings the nations and cultures of our world together as one, overcoming all our age-old hostilities and perhaps leading to a unified Terran government. I've even read a story in which a small conspiracy of scientific geniuses fakes an alien invasion to incite peace and unity among the peoples of Earth. The Star Trek universe assumes a world government and a worldwide multicultural society, as exemplified by the rainbow of ethnic groups on the Enterprise, and we can infer from the ST movies and the TV series ENTERPRISE that humanity's first contact with the Vulcans initiated this process of unification.

Would it happen that way? On a PBS folk music special filmed a few years ago, one group sang a song whose chorus proclaimed, "On September the eleventh, we were all just Americans." I clearly remember that in the first few weeks after the 9-11 attack I felt obligated to be especially nice to everyone I met, because in a sense we were all going through a terrible catastrophe together. And most of the rest of the world rallied in support of us. Of course, as we know, this pervasive feeling of unity didn't last. (Months later, Miss Manners sardonically remarked in one of her columns that it was clear the terrorists hadn't won, because we'd started being rude to each other again.)

Would an alien invasion, or perhaps just the unsettling experience of alien first contact, make us feel that "we are all Earthlings" (in the words of a song on SESAME STREET)? And would such a unifying sentiment have permanent effects on the social and political climate of our planet? I would like to think so, but I fear much of the historical evidence is against it. Isaac Asimov dismissed fears of alien invasion on the grounds that any species advanced enough for interstellar travel would have outgrown aggression and war. How anyone who lived through the twentieth century could believe there's a necessary correlation between advanced technology and peaceful motivations baffles me. It was a nation noted for its scientific and technological achievements that perpetrated World War II and the Holocaust. As any Dungeons and Dragons player learns during the first game session, intelligence and wisdom are two separate qualities.

And yet -- we now have the European Union. We have the U.S. and Russia cooperating on the international space station. Maybe there is some hope for the future we SF fans dream of. If we meet the aliens (when they arrive) as a united Earth, our next step should be to learn to see extraterrestrials as "human," too.

Dragoncon

Anyone going to Dragoncon? I'll be in Atlanta over the Labor Day weekend and am supposed to be on several panels. Please come by and say hello. If you live in the Atlanta area or can fly in at a reasonable cost, this is the conference for Science Fiction and fantasy fans. About 40,000 strong, the con attracts gamers, celebrities from the SF world, movie stars, producers, directors, writers and anyone who wants to have fun. Costumes are appropriate. So is painted nudity. :) And there's a cool parade. A belly dancing drum circle goes to early in the morning. Films play all night. I'll try to bring back lots of pictures and put them up here.

Nasfic 2007

Folks:

I have emerged unscathed from another flying excursion, and have many tales to tell.

Jean Lorrah and I arrived in Collinsville, IL (near St. Louis, MO) the day before Nasfic ( check nasfic.org for current and future nasfics) where we both had jammed panel schedules.

So before the con we spent a good ten hours discussing the framework for one of our projects in terms of what is going on in this world right now.

This time, Nasfic was held in a Holliday Inn near (but not very near) a convention center surrounded by motels clustered at a big Interstate intersection.

In early August in Illinois it was not fun to be walking from hotel to convention center. (triple digit daytime temps, heavy humidity)

To get from Convention center to Holliday Inn (which also had programming in it) you had to use a set of stairs up to a foot bridge over a dry wash, then down more stairs down. The con website hadn't mentioned the stairs, nor did the online info about our Hotel mention there were no ground floor rooms -- and no elevator to bring suitcases up to the room.

All the hotels were booked solid -- there were no alternatives. We ended up in a smoking room (my clothes came home STINKING-REEKING) because that was half the number of stairs than the room we thought we'd booked (the kind of motel room you back your car up to the door!) But it was actually closer to the convention center than the Holliday Inn!

If you couldn't climb the stairs to go from Convention Center to Holiday Inn, you had to circle around on the service roads connecting the hotels -- no sidewalks and much farther.

Failing that, you had to use a car (Jean had driven in, so we could!). There were no restaurants that were easy access for someone in a wheel chair or scooter. These details were not evident in the convention materials.

Fortunately, both Jean and I made our way around without too much real trouble, but others weren't so lucky. This was not a good place to hold a Nasfic, but the convention workers were energetic whirlwinds getting everything done.

Jean and I had talked ourselves nearly hoarse by the time the convention opened on Thursday.

Then we discovered almost none of the panel rooms had microphones, but they did have good sound deadening walls and very cold air. After every panel, we could hardly wait to get outside to warm up.

One of the most well known of the Sime~Gen fans, Kaires, who runs the simegen.com/simecenter/ section as well as simegen.com/sgfandom/ called us when Registration opened on Thursday. We were sitting in our room -- plotting, of course.

Kaires turned up at most of our panels, too, but she was everywhere wearing the starred-cross and our S~G T-shirts.

Thursday evening, we went to dinner with Linnea Sinclair (I finally got to meet her!) and two of her friends who are also writers and in the mundane world, extremely formidable individuals. Linnea is as impressive in person as she is when writing. We traded life stories, and I learned a lot about how to live well.

By early Friday, there were about 2,000 people at the con. The halls seemed much, much fuller on Saturday and Sunday but I didn't get a final total of those in attendance. There was a large gaming track, too.

Most panels were sparsely attended, but I always counted more in the audience than on the panel, and the audiences were alert and involved in the topics.

A memorable highlight was being on panels with Linnea. She has the knack of expressing things in a way that student writers can understand.

When we had time between panels and waiting for the next panel we were on, Jean and I visited the video room.

One time we sat in on part of an Anime showing of a thing called Lucky Star (which has nothing to do with the novel series). It was about several young Japanese girls suffering through the summer and dragging themselves through English courses. Their real passion in life was anime songs, not school. That room was almost empty.

I accidentally ran into Marc Zicree whom I've known for years (he and I were on several panels at Lunacons -- at that time he had worked on Sliders and other Sci Fi Channel projects). So he told me about his screening at this convention of a unique project, a new Star Trek episode done as a STAR TREK NEW VOYAGES (see http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/ -- they have all about the new episode at the top of their page)

So Jean and I made a point of finding the right video room to see Marc Zicree's new Star Trek episode, "World Enough, And Time," starring GEORGE TAKEI.

THAT time, the video room was standing-room-only. They brought in extra chairs, and still there were people sitting on the floor against the walls. When it was over, the room had to empty kinda the way an airplane does!

This episdoe is made with the group of actors who have been putting up the ongoing voyages of the Enterprise on the web for years. Marc connected them with a script that would have been an episode of the broadcast Original series, an episode that would have added dimension to the Sulu character, and so Marc got George Takei connected to the project.

Marc used his production facilities and enlisted lots of volunteer labor while he sent the actors to actor camp where they sweated to master new skill levels. The result is this ultra-low budget production that has polish and style gallore. (you gotta see this thing!)

August 28th, there will be a big premier and breaking news for this Star Trek project. Meanwhile, watch zicree.com and http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/ for updates.

Later, we saw a trailer created by Richard Hatch -- a lot of famous Battlestar Galactica (the re-imagined one) scenes but with behind-the-scene glimpses showing how the music was created and added. Richard Hatch spoke at length about how this and other TV shows are put together. See http://www.richardhatch.com/ for more about who he is and what he's been doing lately.

We dropped buttons, flyers, and temporary tattoos related to Sime~Gen at the EPIC table (the organization of professional e-book writers) -- and later, when I checked back, I found that some people had been asking for me. Later, we met Linnea at the broaduniverse.com table and she asked us to join.

When Jean picked up the left-over flyers and buttons -- there weren't many left!
I spoke to several authors who had been with the now closed Meisha Merlin publishing company. We all have such similar stories to tell!

Jean Lorrah and I did a short podcast for "Fear The Boot" RPG podcasters who were doing a special series on Nasfic more than for gamers though gaming was big at this convention. We talked about the various things people can find on simegen.com, from Intimate Adventure to writing lessons, and more about the future of the fiction delivery system. ( http://www.feartheboot.com/ )

I found a table where they were selling NEW Blakes' Seven episodes made for RADIO broadcast - sound only. Wow. It is unbelievable what is being done with all these media. I gave them a flyer of my vampire story that was broadcast as a radio episode.

Jean had driven in, so she brought her laptop with video player in it.

I brought a DVD of Lady Magdalene's (a very low budget film starring Nichelle Nichols) (which I like a lot, but that doesn't make me uncritcal) a film just finishing lab work and now seeking theater release. See more on that at the bottom of the index page for 2007 in my review column -- http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/

So Wednesday night, before the con, we watched Lady Magdalene's.

Jean and I discussed that film, contrasted and compared it to the Lucky Star Anime episode, and a DVD film which was low-budget and made by and for gamers which Jean found at another sales table at the con.

So our discussions toward the end were contrasting and comparing a host of low budget video projects with widely varying production values and script qualities.

For us, this was a weekend of heavy immersion in the visual side of story-telling. For others, this convention was all about books -- and very interestingly, was less hostile to SF-Romance than I've ever seen before.

Live Long and Prosper,
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/

BACK FROM ARCHON 31

My flight from St. Louis to Ft Myers, FL landed at noon. It's 141 pm. I haven't unpacked but I'm blogging. Go figure.

Q -Why didn't I blog from the con? A - My brand new Sony Vaio died.

Q - Is this going to be a great recounting of what went on at Archon? A - No. Read my first line. I just got off the plane. I'm exhausted. But they say a picture is worth a thousand words...

Autographing session with Barbara Hambly. (!!!!) We had lunch Thursday and I can't wait for her Anne Steelyard series to come out. More on that later...

Saturday's panel with Elizabeth Moon (who is funny and delightful and just all around wonderful), me (behind toy dog--will explain that later, also), Carol Berg, Richard White, Joy Ward, Janni Lee Simner

Stacey Klemstein (cutie redhead on far end) on panel with Rachel Caine, Rae Morgan/Monette Micheals and others.

Vic Milan (who is a hoot) and my agent, Kristin Nelson on a beginning writers panel.

And now for the fun stuff:

I also had dinner with Jacqueline Lichtenberg and Jean Lorrah, and was on a panel with them as well. WHAT A THRILL! Briefly, Jean has a wonderful, warm smile and sparkling eyes. Jacqueline is one of the most elegant gals I've met--BUT when she smiles, she's an imp! They're both beyond brilliant them and meeting them was top notch.

Hugs all, I need a nap... ~Linnea

http://www.linneasinclair.com/

Alien Culture & Alien Sexuality Themes

THEMES For BUILDING ALIEN CULTURES and ALIEN SEXUALITY

a.) War, Alien Invasion: The most common theme is aliens seeking to conquer Earth or destroy Earth. Prime examples of this type of story are SF movies and TV series like H. G. Wells War of the Worlds, Independence Day with Will Smith as a fighter pilot taking Earth technology against the evil aliens, and V-the TV mini-series.

b.) Evil Aliens: Another common theme involves human heroes and heroines fighting evil bloodthirsty alien creatures, either on Earth or in space. Classic examples of this theme are The Thing, the Alien horror series with Signoury Weaver, The Blob and of course, the movie Signs staring Mel Gibson.

c. Earth as a refuge: Aliens seeking Earth as a refuge for their people, the TV series Alien Nation was an excellent example of this theme. Zenna Henderson also uses this theme in her short story series entitled, The People, No Different Flesh.

d.) Miscommunication: Aliens come to Earth for peaceful reasons. Humans are afraid and believe the aliens are evil and mobilize their armed forces to fight back against the evil aliens. A very early black and white SF movie made in 1952, The Day the Earth Stood Still is a classic example where the alien flying saucer lands on the White House lawn and the president calls up tanks, airplanes and the military to defend humanity against the alien invasion.

Another good example of miscommunication is the novella Subcommittee by Zenna Henderson.

Here's the first paragraph of that story. First came the sleek black ships, falling out of the sky in patterned disorder, sowing fear as they settled like seeds on the broad landing field. After them, like bright butterflies, came the vivid-colored slow ships that hovered and hesitated and came to rest among the deadly dark ones.

In this story aliens came to Earth for a refuge. Battles take place in space and many lives are lost on both sides. This story starts where humans and aliens are trying to negotiate peace but they're not getting anywhere because neither side wants to reveal their weaknesses. What finally brings peace is when a human and alien child meet and their human and alien mothers learn to become friends and the human mother brings the crucial piece of information to the negotiation table as to WHY the aliens came to Earth.

LEGAL THEMES:
a. Space law: There are a number of Space Treaties and laws already in existence on Earth. http://www.spacelaw.com.au/

www.spacelawstation.com/

b. Alien criminals, alien cops and bounty hunters: This is a subset of the basic alien invasion theme played out on a more personal level, usually with one or two humans figuring out the problem and fighting back. Prime examples of this theme are the Predator movies and the movie I pointed out at the beginning of my class, I Come In Peace, where the alien criminal comes to Earth killing humans while draining endorphins from their bodies to sell as drugs while another alien cop/bounty hunter arrives chasing him and humans get involved to help the alien cop/bounty hunter kill the alien criminal.

The theme of alien criminals and bounty hunters/cops chasing these criminals is a popular theme for Erotic Alien Romance type stories. I used another subset of this theme with my Erotic SF story, The Huntress, where Rulagh is an alien exo-biologist sent to Earth on an animal control mission by the Interstellar Humane Society. The Men in Black movies used this concept also but they did it as parody/comedy rather than a straight SF action-adventure type story.

RELIGION:

Every culture has religious beliefs and beliefs about life after death. As I mentioned in my previous lecture, in my story The Huntress, they not only believed in reincarnation, these aliens had documented reincarnation as scientific fact. There are many examples in human culture and history that you can adapt and use when you create alien religions and even alien cults that are on the outskirts of the main alien culture. Do not make the mistake of having aliens where every alien has the same culture and religious beliefs. Look how many different cultures and religions we have here on Earth.

LANGUAGE:

The most common SF theme is aliens who can speak and understand English because they've been listening to our radio and TV broadcasts for a hundred years. Another common SF theme to take care of language differences is the universal translator device.

C.J. Cherryh's leonine aliens cannot understand their human stowaway when they first meet him. In fact, they're not even sure he's not an escaped animal until he starts writing numbers in his blood that's smeared on the deck plate from the cuts he received from one of the Chanur spacer's claws. Half of the first book in that series shows the human working with a computer and painstakingly speaking his words into that computer for the different images shown in order to give their translator device enough human words to use. Gaining a complete dictionary/glossary of the human language becomes a critical and very important item of trade for the Chanur.

In The Huntress, Rulagh implants his language into Sonia's brain with a sleep-teaching device. I also created alien words for Rulagh to use when he referred to breasts and genitals and because he has a forked tongue, he hisses and for every word in English that began with an s, I added extra ss's. For example, he would say "I ssee you."

For my Alternate Earth Reality book Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, they have mute telepaths who can transfer the new language into a person's mind. Teoh, the mute telepath in this story transfers his language into the two women, Twig & Sammy who get transported into this alternate Earth via the Bermuda Triangle.

PART II: CREATING ALIEN CULTURES:

You can use following types of cultural systems as a basis for your alien cultures.

1. Patriarchal: A system of social relations whereby the senior, decision-making member of the group, clan or tribe is a male elder. Patriarchal groups often have a matrilineal kinship system, with descent being reckoned from a male ancestor. Extreme examples of patriarchal cultures are manifested by a few of the more restrictive Islamic religions. There's nothing that says your aliens can't have a patriarchal culture. However, if your aliens have the exact same culture as the basic WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) mainstream culture in many countries on Earth including the USA, then they won't seem very alien to your readers, would they?

2. Matriarchal: A system of social relations whereby the senior, decision-making member of the group, clan or tribe is a female elder. Matriarchal groups often have a matrilineal kinship system, with descent being reckoned a female progenitor. Many of the Eastern Native American tribes like the Iroquois had matriarchal cultures. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A890552

a.) Celtic: Celtic laws were created by a matriarchal culture. http://www.ancientworlds.net/aw/Group/46415

The position of women in the Celtic Law system was amazingly advanced compared with the rest of the world. They were lawyers and judges and queens, while women in other parts of the world were the chattels of men.

Even in some religions today women are not given the power that men have. Ireland was possibly the most advanced of all European cultures: it had an Iron Age culture which included bards, historians, judges and a set of laws that governed all aspects of life.

This voluminous set of laws covered everything from hurting a chained dog to behavior while drinking. The set of laws was known as the Law of the Commoner or Freemen, or the Brehon Law. So balanced and just was the ancient Law that it was adopted by the majority of the Norman conquerors and held sway among the populace until ruthlessly put down by Cromwellian forces in the 17th century. Many suppose that the Brehons served as judges. Actually, the Brehon was but the legal expert.

b. Australian Aborigines: The Australian Aborigines are said to have a matriarchal culture. http://www.aboriginalartonline.com/culture/culture.php

c.) Tauregs: The Tuareg culture are a Berber tribal culture in Africa's Sahara that has a complex system of both matrilineal and patrilineal descent. They were originally patrilineal but adopted matrilineal descent. They also have a complex society of Thaggaren or nobles. Marabouts or priests, Innghad or serfs, and Ireghenaten or cross-breeds.
http://www.gosahara.org/kel.html

http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/cultural/oldworld/africa/tuareg.html

http://lexicorient.com/e.o/tuareg.htm

d. Role Reversal: This is another subset that's under matriarchal cultures. Too many writers make the mistake of doing role reversal when they try to create a matriarchal culture. This is incorrect. A true matriarchal culture is NOT a patriarchal culture with women as the strong rulers and men as weak, submissive partners.

A strong woman wants a strong man as her partner, not a weak, submissive slave. Wen Spencer does a little bit of role reversal in her SF story, A Brother's Price but she makes sure the men in this culture are strong and sexy. You can read an excerpt of Chapter One from A Brother's Price here at this url

http://www.wenspencer.com/abrothersprice.html

Wen Spencer uses polygyny (more commonly referred to as polygamy) for this culture i.e. one husband with multiple wives instead of polyandry where you have a woman with multiple husbands.

Another common SF cliché is to portray women only, matriarchal cultures as static, technologically backward, hierarchical and insect-like. Those stories based their culture on Queen bees and their hives filled with female workers and male drones. This kind of fiction operated very much out of traditional cultural assumptions. The female characters were alien because they weren't "proper" women.

Or they have men and women living in separate societies (and I'm not talking Mars and Venus, either).

3. Polygamous/ polyamorous cultures. A basic l definition of polygamy is the practice of marriage to more than one spouse at the same time versus monogamy where each person has only one spouse or life mate. Technically speaking with divorce and remarriage accepted as normal part of the mainstream WASP cultures, you could say they practice serial monogamy rather than pure monogamy which would mean 'until death do us part' with no remarriage after the death of a spouse. There are numerous examples and excellent definitions presented of the many different types of polygamous cultures at this web page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygamy

There is additional and detailed information about polyamory arranged by topics at the following website.

http://www.polyamory.org/~joe/polypaper.htm

Classic SF books that look at polyamorous line marriages are Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in A Strange Land and The Moon is A Harsh Mistress. Another excellent SF novel with polyamory/group marriage as a normal part of the culture is Courtship Rite by Donald Kingsbury. But don't expect a lot of sensual sex in these stories. The sex scenes are very short.

I created a matriarchal/polyamorous culture for my Sidhe trilogy, Covenants, Down Came a Blackbird and Out of The Dark. If you're interested in reading the first three chapters of these books, they're at my author website of www.sff.net/people/selkiewife


4. Transgendered cultures: A good example of this would be the Native American Berdache. Bisexuality, cross-dressing and transgendered were all part of
the many different types of berdache in the Native American tribes.

http://www.healthyplace.com/communities/gender/intersexuals/berdache_tradition.htm

http://www.geocities.com/westhollywood/stonewall/3044/berdache.html

http://www.hotcakencyclopedia.com/ho.BerdacheOriginMyth.html

Ursula Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness is a classic SF novel where the inhabitants are a neuter gender who change to either male or female depending on pheromones of their lover.

My novella Christmas Noir has a hermaphrodite as the main character in a future where hermaphrodites are the last minority to receive equal rights. Of course, there's a serial killer targeting hermaphrodites in this story and Shannon the hermaphrodite character has two detectives, a man and woman guarding her after Shannon receives a death threat with photos of the latest murder victim.

I also have hermaphrodites as part of the alternate Earth reality in Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, which won the 2005 Dream Realm Award for Best SF Erotica.

Lots of possibilities here if you want aliens who are transgendered, who can morph into either sex depending on who their lover is or who are dual-sexed.

You can find tons of information about hermaphrodites at this website.

http://www.isna.org/faq


5. Animal culture models: If you want to create an alien culture modeled after wolf pack socialization, this website has very detailed information.

http://www.fiu.edu/~milesk/behavior.htm

Lion social behaviors are shown here at

http://www.thebigcats.com/lion/lion_social.htm

and at

http://www.nature-wildlife.com/liontxt.htm

Feeding habits, social behaviors of seals, sea lions and walrus.
http://www.britannica.com/ebi/article-207840

Development of sea lion social behavior through play.
http://icb.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/14/1/391

Some animal species reproduce asexually. Seahorse males carry their fetus in pouches. Other fish species lay their eggs in the water and have nothing to do with them afterwards. I mentioned in an earlier lecture the fact that reptilian reproduction is scent-based and that many reptilian species have a double penis. Flamingos need a group of other flamingos around them in order to reproduce. Some zoos use multiple mirrors around their caged flamingos in order to encourage them to reproduce.

6. Marriage customs: A subset of the different cultural systems covers marital customs:

When a community does not allow marriage with members outside of the community, this is called endogamous marriage patterns. Endogamous marriage means that individuals are marrying their relatives in some way and so the lines of descent remain fairly pristine.

When a community marries only members outside the community, this is called exogamous marriage patterns. Such communities incorporate the one spouse into the other spouse's community, depending on which family the married couple settles down with. Individual married couples and nuclear families almost never settle by themselves, but they move in with or next to one of the spouse's family.

In exogamous marriage cultures, then one spouse must move out of their kinship-based community and move to the other spouse's community. If a society demands that the wife move in with the husband's family or move to the husband's community, that is a patrilocal, or "father-located" kinship society. If the husband must move in with the wife's family or community, that is a matrilocal, or "mother-located" kinship community.

In C.J. Cherryh's sprawling epic about human space exploration, Downbelow Station, she shows a mixture of marriage customs. There are three political structures pitted against each other, the Alliance, Company and Union. Stationers and merchanters are the Alliance. Earth with its vast mercenary troopships funded by corporations is the Company and Cyteen and its colony planets are Union.

Stationers have a patriarchal and patrilocal structure. The traders who live on the vast merchant ships that travel from star to star have a matriarchal and matrilocal structure. The soldiers on the Company ships fighting the colonies of Cyteen have a polyamorous structure for their lives and no children. The colonies past Cyteen run the gamut of all the different customs depending on the planet.

She illustrates this with the relationship between Quen and Konstantin, the stationmaster at Pell. Ellen Quen's ship was destroyed in the war. She is the last Quen simply because she left her ship for one year to be with Konstantin and now that her ship is gone, she wants to get pregnant despite the war that is going on between Alliance, Company and Union space.

Konstantin wonders about trader morals. He asks Quen about the fact that they move from station to station and they make love promiscuously and accept all children born to their women into their family name. Quen looks at him and says, "But all the men on my ship are my cousins, where else would we get our children?" So, after he thinks about it for a bit, he comes back to her and tells her, yes he'll give her children and he agrees that the first child she has will be a Quen in order for the Quen Name to continue because the Konstantin family already has more than enough children to continue their Name.

7. Symbiotic cultures. Bloodchild by Octavia Butler

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/bloodchi.htm

shows a large wormlike alien species that develops a unique symbiotic relationship with humans. In return for humans acting as the host bodies for the alien fetuses, the aliens cure human illness and give them a much longer lifespan. Of course, there's also extreme danger with this symbiotic relationship. The aliens must remove the fetus via C-section right before it becomes fully mature because the normal process of "birth" has the fetus eating its way out of the host body.

I used symbiotic aliens for my book, On The Edge of Time. In that book, the aliens are shapeshifters who can function on their own within wrymhole space and they form a partnership with humans whereby they fight wrymdragons in wrymhole space and keep the wrymdragons from destroying the human spaceships and brutally killing the humans. However, in order to survive outside of wrymhole space, the aliens in this story must link with their human hosts and they appear as living serpent tattoos on their hosts' bodies. Plus, for reproduction, they implant their eggs within the male host because the male has the larger and stronger body.

*******
In order to write Alien Sexuality, you need to think the cultural themes through first. After you’ve developed the culture, the sexuality for your alien characters will have a natural flow within the story and the love scenes will be believable.

Thank you.

Barbara Karmazin
www.sff.net/people/selkiewife

A clean slate

I love puns and word play! (So do my characters.)

Anyway, my blog today is not about the wholesomeness and hygiene of a very minor character in one of my alien romances. (War-star Leader Slayt.) It may end up that way, because this is a blog, not an essay.

I just re-read Margaret's post Improving On Humanity... and as I made my morning instant coffee, I considered the idea of "souping up" a human being. If humankind were a make of computer, I don't think we'd be "God's Mac". Then again, I don't want to offend anyone. Think of the patches and peripherals, extra DIMMs and SIMMs, external drives we need to make us better. And now, Margaret tells us, we can be fixed by a cell from the tail of a mouse? (!!)

I also thought about starting sentient life with a clean slate. Improving upon humanity by taking some of the best ideas (faces, hands, pecs, abs, penises) and putting those components into an all-new package.

Of course, being the low element that I am, I am especially interested in the intellectual exercise of designing and engineering a better class of penis. I've seen it written that our great-grandfathers' were larger. I dimly remember a newspaper photograph pinned up on my all-girls school news board showing the IceMan, which may go to prove that point. However, I'm not sure how practical great size would be if one spent one's life swinging through the trees... or charging through the thorny undergrowth on all fours.

One has to consider evolution. And the vegetation and climate of one's alien worlds.

I'm working on a superior shapeshifter, and the Incredible Hulk model doesn't do it for me. No matter how big, green and angry Bruce Banner grew, his pants always stayed on. That's not going to happen for a man who turns into a dragon... or a manatee. So, he needs to evolve some "adaptation", some natural "protection" for when he shifts back. (Unless he only shifts back for mating... in which case, one has to ask ones freshly shifted hero not only "Do You Feel Lucky?" but "Why?")

Small and hidden among coarse hair --the Bonobo solution (I think)-- isn't going to enrapture my editor. I read somewhere that moles have toughies. I've wondered if being literally "horny", like a rhino, would be romantically acceptable.

Going in the other direction, when I was young and impressionable, I read about ancient Japanese warriors who were able to voluntarily retract part of the problem into the iguinal canal. That might have been a canard. I haven't looked into it.

War-star Leader Slayt isn't a particularly well developed character. In FORCED MATE he had to move out of his suite, so that Ka'Nych the gynecologist and Grievous the Earthways Advisor could bunk near the Imperial Suite in case they were needed, which they were when the heroine broke the hero's nose.

Slayt reports, takes orders, does his job efficiently in the background. The only interesting detail about him --to me-- may be his name: Slayt. It wasn't the first name I gave him, but he ended up with it for all the connotations of "slate the stone, slate the gray, to slay/ slayed, and the pop group Slade.

The naming of characters is very important to me, and I might have written about that, too. Maybe I will another time.

Improving on Humanity

The September issue of the MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION includes a story about a near future in which most forms of genetic manipulation are legal; the only major crime in that category is cloning someone without the subject's consent. There's an epidemic of public hysteria about the stealing of people's DNA to create cloned children for vile purposes such as sex slavery. The theft usually occurs (or so it's assumed) by the concealment of abrasive objects in places where unwitting victims will be wounded by them. Despite the rarity of this crime (at most five confirmed cases per year), people see evidence of it everywhere, and law enforcement agencies obsess over it. (Sound familiar?) In the story we see this hysteria in action, with the accompanying suspicious, repressive behavior by those in authority.

This tale highlights the way the general public views anything related to cloning with suspicion and fear, even though we've been cloning plants for thousands of years. ("Clone" comes from the Latin for "twig.") The horror of any technology that might subvert the essence of human nature, of course, goes all the way back to what's arguably the first science fiction novel, FRANKENSTEIN. People who are neither scientists nor SF readers tend to think of clones as not-quite-human abominations, forgetting that identical twins are naturally formed clones of each other. Robert Heinlein's novel FRIDAY stars a protagonist who was created in a lab rather than conceived by man and woman and therefore thinks of herself as not-human, even though every bit of her DNA is of human origin. A similar quandary about the definition of humanity surrounds cyborgs, human-machine hybrids. How much of one's body has to be artificial before one crosses the line into nonhumanity? Consider the brain ships of Anne McCaffrey's series, piloted by human beings permanently sealed in metal shells in early childhood, all their sensory input coming through the ship's equipment. Less drastically, how about a "bionic" person, like the Bionic Woman who's going to be the star of a new TV series this fall?

The April/May SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MIND had an article about brain prostheses, implanted devices that will be able to restore sensory perception for patients such as the blind and deaf. Already “brain-computer interfaces" are being developed that allow paralyzed patients to operate artificial limbs and even computer cursors by thought alone. The latter sounds almost like telepathy! The next step is to create implants within the brain that will transfer information from the outside world into the subject's neurons.

On the biological side of human "improvements," I came across an article that states, "Scientists have succeeded in reprogramming ordinary cells from the tips of mouse tails and rewinding their developmental clocks so they are virtually indistinguishable from embryonic stem cells" (in the Baltimore SUN a few weeks ago). The researchers actually managed to grow new mice from these cells. If this technique could be perfected for human beings, each patient could have his or her own replacement organs grown with no need to create and destroy a cloned embryo. Beyond curing such disorders as Parkinson's disease, might this technique eventually enable the rejuvenation of human beings to the point of making near-immortality possible, as many SF authors have speculated (including Heinlein in his Howard Families novels)? Would everyone want corporeal immortality? (I don't think I would.) A more critical question, would all who want this "boon" have access to it, or would it -- more likely -- be restricted to the wealthy? We can easily imagine (again, many SF writers have done so) a society sharply divided between the privileged who take full advantage of genetic manipulation or artificial aids such as brain-computer interfaces, and the massive underclass who suffer disease and disability followed by death from old age as people have done from the beginning of our species.

Heinlein's I WILL FEAR NO EVIL quotes a court case that decreed “identity resides in the brain.” So no matter how drastically modified one's body might become, as long as a person retains a human mind, he or she is human. As an extension of that principle, if computers ever become sentient, a self-conscious computer should have legal status as “human.” (And a sentient computer could fall in love with a human being, as in Heinlein's TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE and Susan Kearney's THE DARE.) Our society already wrestles with ethical and political problems revolving around questions such as the dividing line between “alive” and “dead” and when a human zygote becomes a distinct individual with legal rights. Philosophers of science and bioethics should grapple with these other questions of the definition of “human” before technology becomes advanced enough to make them practical problems.

Kiss Me Deadly and Fear

The Reading Demographic Today

On the way to Nasfic near St. Louis where Linnea and I actually get to do a panel together -- I have a few thoughts on the mega-trends driving change in the publishing industry, particularly in the "genre" end of the field -- and specifically Science Fiction, Fantasy and SFR.

One definition of SF (and thus an important component of Alien Romance) is that SF stories are found at the point where technology impacts society. (the ipod is an example -- revolutionizing the music industry. Suppose it had been introduced by an alien civilization trying to destabilize the Earth civilization so they could take over?)

Well, a similar impact has been made on the publishing industry by technology, and this shift is a prybar separating generations of readers farther and farther apart.

What I've long called the Fiction Delivery System is morphing faster than we can chronicle it. (Second Life for example.)

We have to assimilate the significance of these changes -- and as Alien Romance Writers, we must extrapolate from them. To do that, we have to understand what has happened, what is happening -- and draw a line onwards to what may yet happen as a result. Take a person who is 6 years old today -- and when they're twenty, link them up with an Alien and see if the sparks of love fly.

Now consider the elements of the fiction delivery system now being developed.

1) E-books. The publishers aren't ready to edit to the Mass Market level. Reading devices are up to the job now. E-books are really coming of age.

2) VIDEO -- YouTube is breaking new ground. Animation software costs I think about $3,000 but is of course a whole different profession to learn touse.

We need software that lets a writer TELL A STORY without learning a bunch of technical skills. Graphic Novels are being turned into films all the time.

3) The burgeoning video/ feature film / TV market is hungry for fresh new scripts.
The problem is that the demographic the Historical Romance or Big Fat Book genres sell to has gone elsewhere -- and not just gabbing on the cell phones.

They're finding deep, absorbing, complex stories to become involved in outside the print-book market. If they read a book, it's because others they know have read it. (Harry Potter comes to mind. See my post from last week.)

People think the problem is that the generation of an age to read is wasting themselves on videogames and chatrooms.

I don't think so. I think the problem won't be solved by those who think that.
I think the real problem is that the demographic print books are aimed at doesn't read fiction anymore.

I think the reason they don't read fiction is that the reading demographic used to read fiction in order to feel a sense of communicating with the world.

To read the words of someone "important" enough to get published and to recognize within those words an echo of one's own self -- to feel in contact with others like yourself -- is the real reason people have read fiction in any day and age. But it's especially true of the SF/F and Romance Reader demographic.

Today, that feeling is delivered much stronger on SECOND LIFE, YouTube, Blogs and chats, online RPG's, posting fan fiction they write themselves, or commenting and discussing posted fan fiction -- etc. etc.

My book, Star Trek Lives! blew the lid on Star Trek fandom which published fanzines unlike any that it's root-stock, SF fandom, had ever published. Star Trek fans published fiction in their 'zines -- not just non-fiction. That spread to other TV show pastiche. Then moved from paper to the internet, and exploded into multi-billions of words being posted on every sort of TV show -- not just SF/F.

Some of the demise of paper publishing may in fact be my fault for doing that book on what Star Trek fans do because they love the show so much.

A generation ago, during the boom in publishing, families were being uprooted and moved around the country and the world by corporations -- uprooting kids from the hard won friendships at school and neighborhood.

That's still going on -- but kids have cell phones with circles, and buddies, and other deals that let them keep in touch with old friends during the day, and on their bedroom homework computer blogging and posting fanfiction at night.

It's the readers, you know, who indulge in fan fiction, not the "rest" of the population.

And if you look very closely, you'll find that the "Alien Romance" may have some tentative examples from prior generations (The Leather Stocking Tales come to mind) -- the real origin of today's "Alien Romance" genre is in the Star Trek (Original Series) fan fiction. (check out simegen.com/fandom/startrek/ for a unique early example, an Inspirational Alien Romance!)

When I ran the dynamics of the K/S Star Trek fanfic through my own creative mechanism, it came out as my vampire novels Those of My Blood and Dreamspy which are available on amazon.com .

Live Long and Prosper,
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/

Polly Wants A Cracker, or The Issue of Trust in Romantic Science Fiction

The past few posts, such as Barbara Karmazin’s most recent one on alien sex, has raised a number of very interesting questions (an ideas) for writers and reader of romantic science fiction. Jacqueline Lichtenberg—here on this blog as well—has often referred to the RSF/SFR genre as “intimate adventure” and in viewing these posts, the reasons why that label is so apt can become clear.

The posts to date have for the most part explored the arena of human and alien in a first encounter or first contact situation.

But where do the stories—and the characters—go when aliens are not so alien?

Let me digress a moment and talk about parrots. (Yes, I’m tired, behind deadline and packing for Archon but bear with me, I will make sense eventually). It’s been my experience that most humans are uncomfortable with large birds. Sharp claws, large beaks and fluttering wings make us a bit timid. Children who willing stick their fingers through the bars around a kitten’s or puppy’s cage at the pet store stand with hands behind their backs in front of the parrot’s cage. “CAUTION: HE BITES” is often tacked to the cage.

The reason parrots bite are many but very often come down to two things. One, a finger thrust into their view is looked upon as potential food (based on instinct, which is why you always offer a parrot a fist, not a finger). More likely, though, is the fact that a parrot’s beak is used as a third foot. This is something most (non-parrot) people don’t realize and something I’ve learned after many years of being owned by feathered friends.
You put your hand into the parrot’s cage. He leans his head down and latches firmly on to your arm with his beak. NOT to bite (but he will if you jerk your hand away) but to steady himself so he can climb on.

It’s the jerking-away reaction that causes the bite, you see. The fear by the human who doesn’t understand the parrot’s methodology and mind set.

Since being owned by a variety of large and small parrots (that's our Amazon, Bird, above), my husband and I often now find ourselves being feathered-friend rescuers, for the simple reason we’re not afraid to approach any kind of bird or parrot. We understand a bit more about them—and their beaks. We’ve handled injured egrets, baby terns, seagulls, Muscovy ducks, lovebirds and cockatiels. We understand the beak, like a human’s hand, is primarily for grasping. It can, like the hand, also injure. But we don’t come into the situation with that mindset.

Which brings me back to alien sex, or romantic adventures with someone who is not a Terran of the human variety.

What if the aliens in your novel aren’t totally alien? What if they’re like parrots? Not feathered, though I wouldn’t rule that out. But what if they’re just another species or race that shares some of the same breathing space your human characters do, but without complete familiarity?
We’re very aware of birds in our environment on this planet. But most of us have no information or experience in interacting with them.

Think of Chewie in Star Wars. Han Solo—a human—was definitely very at ease with Chewie. There was no perceived human-parrot reaction (ie: I’ve seen you but I don’t really understand you). I don’t know if in Lucas’s universe there are any human-Wookiee couples, but given Han’s comfort level with Chewie, it wouldn’t surprise me. (And the image here is from fabulous artist Dave Dorman's site.)

I structured Ren, the gilled Stolorth in my Gabriel’s Ghost, more on the parrot mold. Chaz Bergren, the female human protagonist, knew of Stolorths and had seen many in her life but never really knew one. She knew what she’d been taught about Stolorths. She knew what others said about Stolorths. But until life (and my plot) threw her in close contact with Ren, Stolorths were—for all their visibility in her existence—still “other.” Alien. Extending your hand could as likely get your bit, as not.

Part of Chaz’s growth in the book was her replacing Ren’s “alien” label with one of “person.” Someone she was capable of understanding and trusting. And Ren was not the love interest in the plot (for those of you who haven’t read the book). But Chaz’s extension of trust to Ren paralleled and mirrored (and foreshadowed) the issues she had with Sully (the love interest and male protagonist).

And it turns out, of course, that Sully is far more “alien” than she suspected. A parrot in human clothing, if you will.

Captain Tasha “Sass” Sebastian also faced that issue (gee, you think it’s one I like?) in Games of Command. Branden Kel-Paten was a bio-cybe, a man/machine construct, his human familiarity now blurred by the knowledge of his cybernetic augmentations. Like me yet not like me. A known unknown. “Can I trust him?” was a huge issue for Sass even though Kel-Paten’s very “alien” qualities were created by humans.

Can we trust an alien of our own making?

One of the reasons I so enjoy C.J. Cherryh’s FOREIGNER series is that—excerpt for the first book—her aliens are a known alien to the human, Bren Cameron. Differences and lack of full information about each other are acknowledged and the extension of trust has begun. We’ve learned that a finger may get bit but a closed fist can tolerate the pressure of the (potentially injurious) beak.

That’s Lesson One and I think it’s a big lesson. Not that “You’re so totally different and alien that all I can do is react in fear” but “You’re different and alien but we have some commonalities, I’m learning some of your ways and looking forward to exploring more.”

The exploring more is the reason I write what I write.


~Linnea
http://www.linneasinclair.com/