LepreCon - SF Convention near Phoenix

Folks:

This past weekend I did a couple of panels at LepreCon which was held at a Marriott hotel in Tempe, AZ.

I didn't stay over at the hotel (it's just up the road from me about half an hour) -- but drove in for Sunday. I did a 10AM Sunday panel -- (notorious for sleepy people) -- and a 3PM close of the day panel. I ended up moderating both panels.

The 10AM panel was billed thusly:


Sunday Ballroom C 10:00 AM I have Seen the Digital Future and It is Full of Fans
Once we were the proud and lonely few. But here in 2007, SF tropes are everywhere, and the interactions of the internet -- blogs, livejournals and so on -- feel like fanzines reinvented for the digital age. Except these days, everyone seems to be doing it. Are we no longer special?
Judith Herman, Emily Hogan, Ernest Hogan, Jacqueline Lichtenberg, Michael R. Mennenga, Ken St Andre

And the 3PM like so:

Sunday Ballroom C 3:00 PM Spirituality and Writing
How much spirituality do you need to write with depth? Can you prevent too much from seeping through? Does your religion affect your writing?
Jacqueline Lichtenberg, Will Shetterly, David Lee Summers, Karen Traviss

After the first panel, I had an hour-long discussion on the craft of novel writing in the hallway, then went to the Green Room and talked some more -- could barely pull myself away from a fascinating conversation about everything in order to go to a Dr. Who panel.

They were showing the trailer for the 3rd season of the New Doctor -- I can't wait! And we discussed where Dr. Who fits into the SF reader's world. Then I had to run to my 3PM panel.

You'd think there'd be no connection, but it all fell together with the main topic of this blog - Alien Romance.

In the morning we talked about the vision of the paperless future that Margaret posted about on this blog a few days ago. Today the new generation is not going to cons because they get all the "intelligent conversation" they need online. "fanzine" fandom now posts online.

So the panel concluded that we won -- fandom of old has won. We have become the general public. If fans aren't a majority -- we are at least a respectable minority.

But that "fandom" was always about associations, about communication, about forming relationships.

In between I talked about the blog post I made here a couple months ago I think -- about fat fantasy novels that wildly invent everything-and-the-kitchen sink worlds which aren't thematically focused. And I concluded that these novels too are "art" in that they depict the kind of information-overload confusion that real people experience in the real world.

The digital information age presents the world as chaotic.

This led into the discussion of spirituality -- and we only scratched the surface of that, never getting into how a writer's religion might affect a novel ostensibly not about religion.

We talked about James Blish's A CASE OF CONSCIENCE and other famous novels that investigate relgion. I think I touched on C. J. Cherryh but can't recall in which conversation.

Religion is part of worldbuilding -- the anthropological part, the xenology part -- and so we discussed the human impulse or need to "worship" -- and that if there isn't a God concept handy, people will worship science, or technology, or something, because humans somehow just do that.

We just barely touched on questions about how humans could explain our religions or spiritual concept of the world to aliens. But I did mention this blog.

So this convention was a full day of non-stop talking and talking -- which is generally what cons are all about. But again, it was sparsely attended compared to say 15 years ago.

Hotels are expensive, travel is expensive, time is just not available, and so people are getting their convention experiences via the internet.

During this weekend, a news item surfaced about the advent of the virtual office -- where the entire office environment can be simulated at home via internet connection and a vast majority of office jobs could be done without the gasoline burning commute.

Someone in the audience commented that SF writers like Isaac Asimov were only off a little in predicting a future where we all sit in our sterile little cubicals of a home and never actually touch another person.

Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I think touching, even eyeball to eyeball conversation, can't be replaced.

What will we do when we have a free CHOICE about whether to go out "in public?"

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

Games of Command - Deleted CH 15 scene

From the original 2001 file, so don't mess with me on style or typos or inconsistencies or such, okay? ;-) This is raw, unedited shhhhtuff.

MAIN LIFT, I.H.S. VAXXAR

Sass heard Kel-Paten’s hard bootsteps come up behind her just as the lift doors opened.

"You’re off duty until I tell you otherwise, Sebastian," he said as they stepped inside.

"Ah. And who died and made you C.M.O.?"

"If I see you on the Bridge any time today I will forcibly carry you back to your quarters."

Could be interesting, Sass noted. Then: Naah.

"You don’t have to keep looking at me," she told him after the lift doors closed. "I’m not going to keel over on you again."

"I should have realized you weren’t well yesterday."

"You shouldn’t have realized anything. You can’t keep track of all four hundred fifty of us on board. That’s Eden’s job. If anything, I should’ve checked in with her earlier when I didn’t feel well." Those letters. Those damn letters and the way he’d looked at her when he’d walked into Sickbay. It made her stomach tense and she knew it was guilt knocking at her conscience’s back door. He’d thought she was dying. Cal Monterro had hinted how miserable Kel-Paten had looked.

"All the more reason you are not to be on active duty today."

"Kel-Paten--!"

"There’s been... a lot of stress accompanying this transtion, with the new Alliance," he said, ignoring the daggers she visually flung at him. "We’ve only this Serafino situation to wrap up right now and when that’s finished, well I think you might want to take some time off."

Oh no. Oh no. This wasn’t heading where she thought it was heading. Not now. Not so soon! "I really don’t think---"

"Perhaps just a couple of days. Some light R & R ." He wasn’t looking at her, but watching the digital deck numbers flash on the wall of the lift.

No. No, Sass pleaded. Please don’t mention T’Garis. Please. I can’t handle this right now!

"Have you ever been to T’Garis?" he asked just as the lift doors pinged.

She stepped out onto the Deck 2 Corridor. "No, I’ve never been to T’Garis," she said through clenched teeth. "You wouldn’t let me, remember? Something about a little inconvenient war going on. Damn tough to bust through the neutral zone with the Vax on my tail all the time."

She lay her hand against the door scanner. "But," she continued brightly as the door slid into the wall, "I’ll probably get there sometime. I know A.T. wants to go. I’ll mention it next time I talk to her." She nodded at him. "I’ll be in my office after lunch. Not on the bridge, Admiral. In my office." And she hit the manual override on the inside of the door frame, closing the door in his face.

From his position on the back of her couch, Tank perked up his fluffy ears and murrupped several times.

"Don’t ask, fidget, you don’t want to know," she told him, then stripped off her jacket and fell promptly asleep on her bed.

then same chapter, a few pages later...

BRIDGE, I.H.S. VAXXAR

Brynar Kel-Paten sat in the command chair, one elbow on the armrest, his chin in his hand and watched, without watching, the movement of his senior officers at their stations. No one spoke to him, which was just as well. His mind was on other things.

She thought he still doubted her allegiance to the Alliance, because she’d known Serafino years ago, when she was a card dealer at a nighthouse of questionable repute. Queenies. He’d never been there, but he’d been to the higher-priced versions the Empire had to offer. That Sass knew more about a darker side, a very much less legal side, of life, he had no doubt.

That that was also what created an ease between Sass and Serafino was also a logical conclusion. They’d spent their formative years in similar circumstances.

But Kel-Paten was afraid there might be more than just that. Everything about Jace Serafino when he was around Sass-- the way he moved with a controlled grace; the way he talked as if every word were intimate; the way he looked at her with anticipation-- everything said something more was going on.

But what it was he couldn’t prove, yet. Other than the one thing he did know was that Serafino would, given the chance, strip Kel-Paten of whatever he valued, whatever he held dear.

Because he’d been the one who had found out about Serafino’s sister. And he’d been the one who had relayed that same information to the Defense Minister, all the while uncomfortably knowing that the young woman and her son were innocent bystanders.

He wanted very much to believe that they had been taken into protective custody and were safely relocated.

But he’d never been able to prove that.

And Serafino had never mentioned that. But he knew; he knew Serafino knew he had been the one to find his sister.

And he also knew Serafino would stop at nothing to get revenge.


~Linnea

http://linneasinclair.com/gamescover.htm

Smoking Characters

I don't have any Mothers' Day thoughts for alien romances. Of course, aliens ought to have high days and holidays that they celebrate. Whether they have special days to honor various family members would depend on their social structure.

Would a society that is organized like a group of Bonobo, or like Emperor Penguins, or like a pride of lions --or a harem of hens-- celebrate Mothers' Day?

So, I think I'll default to the other burningly topical issue this weekend. Smoking!


In FORCED MATE, the alien hero --Crown Prince Tarrant-Arragon-- has his first reflective moment alone with the disreputable human mercenary who has been hired to be his driver and tour guide.

Grievous is a smoker. Tarrant-Arragon is not. You wouldn't expect someone who lives in a closed environment like a spaceship to indulge in the recreational slow burning of plant matter.

However, Tarrant-Arragon has seen movies. He knows what a cigarette is. He also understands machismo and one-upmanship. When a subordinate and a lesser being offers him a cigarette along with a critique of his romantic prowess, he is not going to wimp out.

-----

"I'd say we've frightened her, Sir."

"I cannot imagine how, or why. I told her I wanted to mate."

"Yup. That might have done it." The Earthling tapped two cigarettes out of a battered paper packet. "Want one, Sir?"

Tarrant-Arragon accepted it, and watched Grievous to see whether it mattered which end of the cigarette went into his mouth.

.....
(advice about Tarrant-Arragon's vocabulary and use of English follows)
.....

"Ah, well, I dare say you've had more young ladies than I've had cups of tea, Sir. But does this one know your ways, Sir? Eh? Or does she think like one of us Earthlings?"

Tarrant-Arragon didn't reply. He blew a perfect smoke ring, and watched its wavering ascent.

"Oh, splendid, Sir! Where did you learn to do that?" Apparently, Grievous thought flattery was expected.

Tarrant-Arragon grinned. "I've watched Earthling movies off your satellites, mostly for pointers on your courting customs. I find this smoking somewhat intoxicating. Will it adversely affect my breath for kissing?"

"It might, Sir. I shouldn't let that worry you. A girl will put up with all sorts of ill treatment if she knows she's going to marry a prince."

"No doubt," Tarrant-Arragon said, savaging the cigarette under his heel.

"Oh, that's right!" Grievous slapped his forehead. "You don't intend to inform her of her great good fortune, do you, Sir? It's going to be romantic, like Beauty And The Beast. Next thing we know, you'll be wanting her to love you for your sweet nature and kind heart."

-----

If blowing smoke rings is a measure of a smoker's excellence, Tarrant-Arragon manages to prove himself superior to Grievous, before he finds a plausible and macho reason to extinguish the cigarette.

I think this is my only "smoking" scene in my books. Just as movie actors of a certain generation liked to smoke because smoking provided a compact activity, so authors need some kind of "business" for their characters to engage in while they are delivering dialogue.

It's not always easy. Characters cannot constantly be drinking, or having sex (though those are favorite activities when something really important needs to be said). Eating presents logistical problems in a romance, alien or otherwise. You don't want people talking with their mouths full. Having a bath works within reason, but other bathroom activities may be frowned upon. Exercising is a good one, or sewing, card-playing, or staring into space (through a Bridge window).

What do you like your alien romance characters to be doing while they have a heart-to-heart?

Happy Mothers' Day!

Paperless World?

At my day job, copyediting in the Department of Legislative Services for the General Assembly of Maryland, we're struggling to adjust to the (latest) "new" system for processing bills, the House and Senate journals, etc. This go-round it's Microsoft Word, which displays serious limitations when forced to perform as a publishing system. When I started in this job, veterans from the earliest days of legislative proofreading told me that upon the introduction of computers it was predicted that soon proofreaders wouldn't be needed. You probably won't be surprised to learn that every legislative session we hire new staff, and horizontal surfaces throughout the office constantly sprout veritable mountain ranges of paper. The vision of the "paperless office" is still a long way from fulfillment in reality.

Personally, I have no ambition to eliminate paper from my life. I don't trust electronic storage that much. One little electrical surge could obliterate it. Whenever I want to keep a piece of information, I always print a hard copy. Likewise, I can't see the attraction of reading the newspaper online. To look up specific articles, sure. But not as a substitute for sitting at the breakfast table while browsing the whole paper and reading the comics. Online access works better for some functions, but not all. If I had to read the paper by clicking on links instead of flipping pages, I'd surely miss a lot of articles that might otherwise catch my eye. What about books? As an e-book author, I'm naturally in favor of the widespread adoption of electronic texts. Given a cheap, durable, user-friendly e-reader, electronic books will eventually become as common as cell phones and iPods. That reader doesn't exist yet, unfortunately, but some form of PDA or iPod-like device will probably evolve to fill the niche. I've noticed that among avid readers of e-books, the Palm Pilot-type product seems to be the favored reading medium. Already, many people who haven't yet discovered e-books keep their calendars, address books, and memos on handheld devices. (Another trend that leaves me unenthused, personally. Why would I prefer to switch on an electronic gadget when it's much easier to open a paper calendar and jot a note in pen? And the old-fashioned pocket calendar has no risk of batteries dying or memory crashing.)

However, I don't expect e-texts to drive paper books into extinction. Each form has its advantages. E-books, for example, take up less space, are cheaper (if the publisher is marketing them properly instead of expecting consumers to pay near-hardcover prices—and then using the resulting low sales as "proof" that nobody wants e-books in the first place), and can be read in the dark. They're clearly the wave of the future for textbook publishing—inexpensive, easily updated, and virtually weightless. Yet for some purposes, e.g. flipping through pages at random to browse the contents, they imperfectly mimic what bound books do well. (There's a good reason why the codex replaced the scroll back in the Dark Ages.) Even in future worlds such as the Star Trek universe and J. D. Robb's "In Death" series, where e-texts have become the norm, true bibliophiles still collect bound volumes, too.

TV, videos, and DVDs haven't abolished theatrical movies. Earlier, TV didn't drive radio out of existence. Thousands (if not millions) of devotees still play dice-and-paper Dungeons and Dragons despite the allure of World of Warcraft. Even vinyl records, I've heard, are making a comeback. Old media don't necessarily die; they simply adapt to new technological and marketing environments. In my ideal future, new media would become readily and cheaply available to everyone without loss of the old.

Presidential Politics Alien Style

Folks:

This is a blog about Alien Romance, but a while ago someone asked about the writing technique known as Worldbuilding -- and for most of my posts since, I've been developing a long instructional piece on how to do the kind of thinking native to SF while still telling a whopping romance story.

Most people think of worldbuilding as having to do with science -- and sometimes they dare to include sociology or psychology. But the real point of all the science (how big is the world you're building, what's its gravity, what kind of sun does it have, moons?, cycles and seasons, evolutionary pressures, contact with other worlds in this galaxy or another etc. etc) the real point is to start with the physics of the star's makeup, project what kind of worlds would circle that star, start with a raw dead hunk of rock and develope an environment conducive to life.

Then you have to populate that environment with plants and animals (or some bizarre equivalent) from single protein molecules on up -- then figure what pressures that environment would put on life to force the development of intelligence -- THEN decide what sort of Divine intervention actually happened to produce people, or what sort of Divine intervention those people postulate and/or believe solemnly.

And the point of all this -- ROMANCE!

The point of thinking through each step from raw sun to rock to life to intelligence is to postulate how physiology and environment combine to generate cultures.

Yes, Alien Romance is inherently about intercultural communication -- which may often include conflict. And where there's conflict, there's STORY.

But what good is all that hard work if the people who read your story don't understand it or care to try to understand it?

Your story has to say something about today, humanity, life on earth, our cultures and their conflicts. A story has to be relevant to its times (no matter if set in the future like Star Trek or set in the past like a time-travel romance).

The whole point of writing a story at all is to arouse the reader and provide an emotional experience they couldn't get from "real" life. But they must return to "real" life with some new point of view, some new idea, (this is SF Romance or Romantic SF -- any way you slice it Alien Romance is primarily SF and thus the Literature of Ideas - so readers must return to reality with an IDEA to think about and explore.)

You want to get famous as a writer? Produce ideas your readers will TALK about to their friends, thus inducing people to read your books.

So where do writers get those kinds of ideas? SF ideas?

Just watch the evening news!

We just saw an election in France that promises to change the political course there -- toward building a more capitalistic economy and edging away from the kind of economy that failed in Japan where laws made it hard or impossible for corporations to fire people. Strangely, the inability to fire people means that unemployment goes up and up and UP and the government crashes down in revolution -- or as in Japan, things get changed on the government level.

Now the USA faces a truly important Presidential Election. No matter which side you're already on, you know that the choice we make in 2008 will change things in the whole world.

Nearly a year before the first primary we have a field of 18 candidates - 10 of them Republican.

Hundreds of millions of dollars are going into this presidential campaign. It's a spectacle to rival the Roman Circus!

What's an SF writer looking for an Alien Romance story to do if the source of ideas is the evening news? And all that's on is Presidential Debates?

Sit back, put on your alien ears, and just listen to what these people are saying. Oh, yeah, they're all politicians. Like preachers, they have learned a certain "cant" -- a chant, a tune, a manner of speaking and a set of phrases, jargon, and so on, mostly incomprehensible to someone who's not American or maybe British (though I have to admit I don't understand British politics at all.)

Well, I did this exercise the other night and I've been watching the sound-bytes and reading some articles online -- and one thing leaps out at me more starkly even than in prior campaigns.

These characters all try to distinguish themselves from each other by WHAT they will FIGHT FOR -- not about their attitude toward fighting in general.

"Elect me and I'll fight for your right to X, Y, Z."

They'll fight global warming; they'll pledge to fight whatever people don't like at the moment.

How would that sound to someone from that planet we invented above, the planet upon which a species evolved to produce a major Hunk our Earthling can fall in love with while hating or rescuing him?

How we choose the SUN around which this bare rock forms -- (yes, worldbuilding goes that far back -- how you choose the sun) -- will determine whether politicians from those civilizations FIGHT or whether they PROBLEM SOLVE instead.

Do they argue instead of negotiate? Do they keep arguing until they convince everyone -- are their elections about finding out what is right instead of who is right?

If so, then our elections and our Presidential Politics will look pretty ridiculous or incomprehensible -- "How can you settle a war by fighting? It makes no sense."

Thus our glorious Hunk looks upon the Love of His Life who is running for President of the USA on the pledge to FIGHT FOR GALACTIC PEACE, and runs for the hills!

Ooops. Back to choosing the right sun to build our world around.

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

More "Lost" Games of Command scenes

Okay, this one isn't so much lost (it's part of Chapter 7) as it was pared down. This is the uncut version from 2001, so pardon some of the inconsistencies. The book was originally a series, you know. Poor thing's been through hell...




BRIDGE, THS VAXXAR

“All I know, admiral, is that Doctors Fynn and Monterro still have tests to perform on Serafino. They don’t want anything to occur that could cause him to relapse.”

Kel-Paten glanced down at the small woman standing next to him on the bridge. Her face was in profile to him. She watched the starfield flowing by the large forward viewport as the Vaxxar traveled at sub-light speed towards the nearest Fleet Base on Panperra Station.

He hated when he couldn’t see her eyes when she spoke. He was learning, sometimes the hard way, to read her expressions, the nuances between her words and thoughts. True, he’d been trained-- he liked that word better than programmed-- to correctly interpret over one hundred and forty human facial expressions and another sixty-seven non-human ones. But these classifications were useless when it came to Tasha Sebastian.

He needed to know more than the fact that her facial expression designated, for example, mild amusement. He needed to know if that amusement was directed at him or against him; if it were an amusement she felt he’d understand and wanted to share with him; if something he said or did was the source of that delightful and often pixie-ish smile. He needed to know if he made her feel something.

And nothing in his progr-- his training allowed for that.

Right now, the little he could see of her face told him she’d adopted her “professional expression”-- a noncommittal, almost bland mien. She simply reported the facts as she knew them, and had no opinions of same.

Or else she had deep opinions and was not about to share them with him. He’d known her long enough, studied her long enough, to see that also as a viable option. It was at those times he felt the most left out. She didn’t trust him enough to share her concerns with him. Or, like most of his crew, she believed he wasn’t capable of caring.

He was. She’d taught him that, too.

So he probed, asked a few more questions about Serafino’s condition and got nowhere. Except that now she thought he didn’t have any faith in Fynn’s medical abilities.

“I assure you, Sebastian, I have a great respect for the doctor’s assessment here. However, her focus is different from ours.” He liked that as soon as he said it. It aligned Sass with himself under the heading of “Command”, breaking from her usual allegiance with the CMO.

“As I understand it, we’ll have nothing to focus on if Serafino is comatose again. Or dead.” She looked at him briefly, a slight raising of one eyebrow as if to say, ‘Are you following me on this, fly-boy?’

She hadn’t called him “fly-boy” since the peace talks. Before that, it had been one of the names she’d taunted him with from the bridge of the Regalia. Fly-boy. An ancient aviator term for heavy-air fighter pilots. The first time she’d leveled it at him he’d taken offense but she’d used it so often after that that it became almost a term of endearment. At least, he liked to think of it that way.

Now, all he rated was the raised eyebrow.

“I only intend to question the man, not torture him,” he told her.

“At least not yet, eh, Kel-Paten?” she replied, her voice lowered a bit and with a hint of a smile.
“Sebastian.” He paused.

“Kel-Paten,” she replied and then paused.

It was the ‘name game’, one of their few rituals that had continued after the peace talks. He would say her name, followed by the appropriate warning-filled pause whenever something she said or did warranted his supposed disapproval. And she would reply with his name, either matching his warning tone or, more often, mocking it.

This time it was the latter.

“When we reach Panperra he’ll be turned over to Adjutant Kel-Farquin,” he said, watching her carefully for her reaction. “That should be torture enough.”

She choked back a laugh at his comment, which told him she remembered what he did. Homer Kel-Farquin’s whining, nasal voice and supercilious manner had been one of the low-points in the peace talks. Kel-Paten would steeple his hands in front of his face every time the Adjutant would launch into one of his obnoxious diatribes. After one such painful session, Sass had sarcastically complimented Kel-Paten on his ability to appear so focused on Kel-Farquin’s every word.

“I am not focused,” he’d told her without expression. “I am sleeping.”

He’d been rewarded then with one of her-- heart stopping-- smiles. Not dissimilar to the one now teasing across her lips.

“Why Admiral Kel-Paten,” she drawled. “I heard you were so impressed with Kel-Farquin’s oratory talents that you ordered copies of every one of his speeches.”

“I believe,” he countered dryly, “that would be grounds for a Section Forty-Six.”

“Unless one had a justifiable reason for ordering them. You know,” she said, continuing their verbal game, “those tapes may contain the very thing we need to defeat the Illithians.”

He thought for a moment. “A subliminal transmission of their contents into Illithian space could be very effective,” he posited, matching her feigned concern.

“Or considered cruel and inhumane methods.”

A slight shrug. “Who would be left to complain?”

“There might be a few. After all, I found copious amounts of gin to be an workable antidote.”
He glanced down at her. “I slept.”

“And well I remember your ingenious defense. Better than mine. No hangover.”

“It’s a methodology I developed after a long association with Triad politicians. Let my experience be your guide.”

She clasped her hands behind her back and rocked on her heels. “I’ll keep that in mind for your next staff meeting.”

Had he misread her? Was she aligning him in her mind with the likes of Homer Kel-Farquin? He wasn’t sure until she grinned up at him. “Gotcha!” she said softly.

He couldn’t help it. He felt a small smile form on his lips but she was turning away from him, her attention on a nav-tech on the lower tier of the bridge. There was a problem with some incoming data. She stepped quickly down the stairs.

Some of her warmth, however, lingered behind.

Gotcha.

Yes, indeed.


~Linnea
www.linneasinclair.com

Astronaut kidney stones

If the label at the Johnson Space Center in Houston gave proper attribution to the astronauts who kindly donated their kidney stones for the public to peer at, and wince over, I did not notice it.

One specimen on display was the size of my little toe!

I don't know whether I can make much of astronautical (should that be a word?) kidney stones in my "Forking" books (the sequels to my alien romances in the Gods of Tigron trilogy). With Forced Mate, the carefully (but not personally) researched military uses for urine were left on the cutting room floor. However, I don't think my hero is going to want to be weightless for any long period of time. I'll have to upgrade his mothership.

That means that there wouldn't be a lot of point in tying him into one of those cool, grey, astronaut sleeping bags, which had seemed to me to have some vaguely sexy possibilities... While alluding to bondage, I'd never, previously, given much thought to the fact that astronauts in a zero gravity environment have to be tied down in order to exercise.

As for floaters, did you know that astronaut toilets have a rear view mirror, so astronauts can check before leaving the throne that they are not about to be pursued around the spacecraft?

If you ever thought that an airliner's toilet made efficient use of space, with every surface a repository for some compactly-stowed item, imagine the space shuttle as an airline toilet... without gravity, and without the running water.

Every pull-out drawer had a net inside it, to stop the drawer's contents escaping whenever the drawer was opened. The different space suits were interesting. One which had chilled water pumped through it reminded me powerfully of the costumes worn in "Dune". Another made the astronaut look like a human lobster.

I've thought of "contact suits" for visiting aliens, but never before had I realised that a stiff and bulky (and sealed) headmask would mean that one could not contemplate ones own navel ... or chest. Astronauts have small mirrors on the insides of their wrists, so that they can read the dials in the control packs on their chests and other places. That means, any instructions have to be in "mirror writing".

Of course, this would not be an issue if an alien language was in symbols like our H or O or X which read the same whether upside down or backwards. Then, they'd have to have a Yoda-like concept of grammar, where word order did not matter.

Much as I love Tolkein, I don't think I'll take world-building to the extent he did, and actually invent (and use) a complete language for my alien worlds. Until every book is an e-book --and there will come a day when it is illegal to cut down trees-- pulp fiction allows a writer ever fewer pages to tell a story.


Best wishes,
Rowena Cherry

Insufficient Mating Material

Admin ... Can the dinosaur brain adapt?

I think I may have fouled up.

While I was in Houston for the Romantic Times booklovers convention, and inspired by all the good and positive things I heard about group blogging, I started a cross-genre blog for authors who love to write animal characters into their books. (Males-And-Other-Animals).

This morning, having noticed that my "new" co-bloggers hadn't put up their own websites and other urls of interest, I went stabbing around in the virtual dark, taking my responsibilities as site owner seriously, you see.

Before long, I realized that I didn't have to "do" HTML. This was inconvenient, because I couldn't copy and paste half a column of hrefs. However, there were compensations.

Book videos/book trailers, for instance, can be permanently lodged in the footer. What you do, having uploaded yours simply by title, is doubleclick on it, and then scroll to the top of the blogpage to watch it.

"I'm done watching this" will appear above the video. For a few moments, I was taken aback until I realized that this is not someone else's snark about my Insufficient Mating Material book trailer, but a handy link to stop the video.

Seductive!!! Linnea and Susan, take note. I think there may be links for podcasts and tv shows, too.

I tried to be responsible. I experimented on another blog that I control. The upgrade warning warned me that I'd lose any changes I'd made to colors and fonts. It also promised to save my original indefinitely. (Of course, I can't now find the original).

Too late, I find that I seem to have "lost" our silver heart logo. (Jacqueline, it is still on the old, unimproved, Survival-Romances site, so all is not lost)

I apologize for the inconvenience.

Best wishes
Rowena Cherry

The Big Bang

I had the extreme pleasure of presenting a workshop with some of the other outstanding authors on this blog and my part of it was on world building which I thought I share here today.

How to build a Universe.
Keep is simple. You do not want to spend the entire book explaining things.

Stargazer: page 181\
He slid the canvas away and ducked as a squeal and the slapping of skin came toward his head.
“Worrats,” he spat out in disgust. “They always stay away from the lighted areas.”

Without describing the “Worrats” you know what they are. Just add a few words here and there, enough to make it “sound” futuristic.

Shooting Star: page 132

Everything was so primitive. There wasn’t a piece of pexi or tunstun in sight.

Where does your story take place? On a planet? On a ship? Set the scene
Stargazer: the planet Oasis: page 56
They soon came out of the darkness of space and into the clear blue skies of Oaisis. Shaun found a set of eye shields; the air was so clean that it made the color more intense, and his eyes were still not accustomed to the brightness. They were soon flying over fields that were abundant with crops. The landscape was a myriad of bright color as the greens and golds of grains contrasted sharply with the pinks, purples, and reds of fields of flowers. In the distance glittered what looked like a huge diamond. It turned out to be a city of pure white granite that rose up from the landscape as if it had been carved from a mountain. It was surrounded by lush gardens full of flowers of every possible color, which stood out in sharp contrast against the pure whiteness of the walls of the city.
“We use every part of our planet; nothing goes to waste,” Lilly said, proud of her homeland.

Shooting Star: the planet Lavign: page 120
His door was one of three that led off the big room. There was a door in the middle of one wall that led outside. All he saw beyond it was green.
“This way,” Boone said and turned Ruben toward the back of the house. They made their way into another room where Tess was standing over a stove that had to be older than time. He saw flames shimmering beneath a pot that she stirred.
“Where am I?” he said again as he hobbled through with Boone and Ky’s help towards another door. “What is this place?”
They walked out onto a covered porch and he saw a garden, a large tower with metal blades slapping around in the breeze and some other buildings that he did not have the time or inclination to figure out at the moment.
Boone pointed to a narrow shack at the end of a trail of smooth stones.
“The necessary,” he announced.
Ruben quirked an eyebrow as they hobbled down the path. As he opened the door his nostrils were assaulted with a horrible smell and he realized that there was nothing there beyond a hole in the ground and a wooden seat. The bright sunlight that streamed though two cuts in the exterior wall did nothing to cheer up the interior.
“When you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go,” he told himself as he stood before the hole.
It wasn’t until he saw that the fluid coming out of him was bright blue that he realized he was in trouble.




Transportation
What do your cars look like? Your ships? Firefly used space ships and horses. Once again there is no need for indepth description unless you character is just arriving to your invented world

Food Sources
Grown normally? In space on giant asteroids? Manufactured in a factory?

Social Status
Royalty? Slavery? Just a regular guy? Outlaw? What are the crimes and the penalties?

Entertainment
I created The Murlacca…A gladiator type battle fought with hooked blades. The champions are treated like the athletes of today but it also used as execution for political prisoners. If you feel the need to explain the rules of the game have one of your viewers be witnessing it for the first time while the companion explains it.

Slang
That’s where you can really have fun. My teenagers in Star Shadows use Gank for Nerd, Geek, Jerk. Just make something up and slip it into the conversation as you would a current word. The readers will figure it out.

Politics
This is where it can get complicated. All worlds have some sort of political structure. This is where notes come in handy. If you’re writing a series then maintain continuity. My Star series has three political factions struggling for control.

New Release: Undine in Love

My erotic fantasy romance novelette "Aquatic Ardor" has just been published in the Amber Heat line of Amber Quill Press (www.amberquill.com). It was inspired by the legend that an undine (a water elemental) wins a human soul if she falls in love with a mortal. (I suspect Hans Christian Andersen had this story at least partly in mind when writing "The Little Mermaid.") But what if the last thing she wants is to become human? And she falls in love anyway? Since my favorite theme is intimacy between human and nonhuman beings, I had fun with my heroine's adjustment to the "alien" world of dry land and the thrills and terrors of love. I always like “fish out of water” stories, and though Melia isn't a fish, she certainly has problems with being out of water. :)

Here's an excerpt from the beginning of "Aquatic Ardor":

Alien sounds rippled over the water and filtered through it to stir the pondweed and stargrass on the floor of the lake. Voices. Her senses, permeating the liquid that embodied her, resonated with one of those voices. She had heard and seen land folk walking on her banks from time to time, but most of them had been strangers. Could this person be her boy?

No, not a boy. He had been a man for a long time. Human time flowed so swiftly that she lost track of the years. How long had she waited, one with the water of her home, to hear that voice? Why did he come here so seldom now? The vibrations emanating from him woke her memory. Yes, he had visited as a man, but not often enough. No wonder she’d forgotten the changes in him.

The weeds on the lake bed undulated as if swept by a gust of wind. A miniature whirlpool coalesced into a slender, four-limbed shape topped with hair and a face. Slowly Melia gathered her substance from all parts of the lake to concentrate it into human form. Now she saw only what fell within range of her eyes, but her vision became clearer, less diffuse. She could still hear the voices talking. Now, when she raised her head above the surface in woman’s shape, she could understand their language.

“One-acre waterfront lots,” said one of the men. A stranger. “The houses will get snapped up as soon as they’re built. Of course, there’s septic permits and stuff like that to take care of, but I don’t anticipate any problems.”

“I haven’t definitely decided to sell.” That voice reverberated through Melia like a summer thunderstorm. “I’m still thinking about it.”

It’s him. Adam.

“You’d be crazy not to,” the first man said. “Lakefront property an hour’s drive from Richmond? We’re looking at units priced in the high six figures, easily. That’s why I can make you such a great offer.” A low chuckle. “Not holding out for more, are you?”

Her man answered with a hint of warm laughter in his voice. “Hardly. Not a thing wrong with the offer. I just have to be completely sure first. This land has been in my family since 1931.”

“It’s not like I’m going to ruin the place. I’m talking low density, scenic views, sailboats. And you get to keep your house and a good-size slice of land around it.” The voices grew fainter, drifting away from the shore. “I’ll be in touch again soon, and meanwhile, you’ve got my number.”

Submerged up to her chest, surrounded by floating water lilies, Melia leaned against a bank under a weeping willow, her chin pillowed on her folded arms. She understood little of what she’d heard, with most of her knowledge of the human world limited to snatches of conversation she’d listened to over the years. She got only one clear impression…that change threatened her home. The strange man wanted to replace part of her woods with human dwellings. Although she’d missed her boy—no, her man—during his long absences, she didn’t want dozens more mortals tearing up trees and plants, bringing noise and artificial odors with them. She sighed with pleasure at the breeze stirring the humid air and inhaled the green aromas of leaves and pine needles. Now that the men had walked out of hearing range, the only sounds were the chirping of birds and the skittering of squirrels in the branches. She wanted to keep her lake exactly like this, sharing it with nobody except the man who’d at last returned from wherever he’d gone.

As a child, he had spent weeks here every summer. Vaguely aware of his parents and the young friends he’d sometimes brought with him, Melia had focused her attention on Adam. Although she’d cherished a mild fondness for his father and grandfather and even dallied with them in their youth, he was the only one who’d come here often enough for her to truly know him. She had watched him grow from year to year. She missed the fun of making the water swirl and eddy around him, startling him with splashes and miniature waterspouts. She’d enjoyed the sensation of enveloping his strong, blood-warmed flesh and sliding over his skin, making him shiver with delight. As he’d changed from a half-grown boy into a young man, she’d reveled in his body’s response to her liquid caresses. Catching him alone, she’d often teased one part of him to urgent hardness. She’d submerged him up to the neck and yearned to draw him below the surface where she could embrace him completely. But she knew no mortal could survive that total union.

-end of excerpt-

A Different Solution To Global Warming

The debate is still open on how much of Earth's temperature rise is due to the natural glaciation cycle and how much to human activity.

But it's pretty definite that we're in a very steep warming cycle, and losing species fast.
I read recently that there are a number of human-food species in our oceans that are in danger of sudden collapse.

The bees from a number of continents are dying off -- here there's some kind of infection in commercial hives, and the move northward of killer bees that don't pollinate but do invade domestic bee hives and destroy them.

The cost of food is rising because of the cost of renting bee hives to pollinate. A worldbuilding writer could forecast famine.

A huge number of frog species are going extinct. Amphibians seem to be reproductively sensitive to something that's killing them off. Fast. They're a vital link in the food chain.
Rise in temperature is causing migrations -- and the creep of tropical diseases north and southward from the equator.

Some of this is due to global warming -- changing habitats and water availability. Some is due to pollution. Some to the increase of UV from atmospheric pollution done decades ago when nobody believed aerosols could cause a problem in the arctic -- and nobody cared about the antarctic because it was so far away.

So an sf writer who wants to do some worldbuilding futurology has to look at what changes the increase in global temperatures may bring -- and it's not just ocean levels rising.

To cope with these conditions, humans will develop better buildings against storms, better flood control, and cheaper air conditioning.

But the really big profits will be in terraforming Earth -- trying to control the glaciation cycles, to reverse the damage from global warming.

Clearly, of course, we will try to preserve the genetic specimens from species going extinct. And we'll try to re-breed and rebuild those species.

We'll have to study and breed and release microbes -- and no doubt we'll make mistakes.
But there is one response to global warming that I can't recall ever being discussed on TV or in magazines.

We are all set to spend money looking for cheap renewable energy resources and to control the greenhouse gas emissions of power plants and vehicles.

But that may not be an effective approach. It may not target the actual cause.

RESTRICTING human activity and trying to eliminate greenhouse gas production might not work. Instead, we should be looking at the other side of the problem -- not restricting our emissions but increasing the Earth's ability to recycle greenhouse gases.

Today, human activity has reduced the Earth's ability to absorb and recycle Co2 -- cutting down the Brazlian rain forrest (and forrests in the USA early in the 18th century), and spreading oil slicks and other chemicals on the oceans which is killing plankton and other ocean surface plants that absorb CO2 and release O2.

We need to stop destroying the Earth's ability to recycle greenhouse gasses more than we need to pull back on our production of them.

Suppose industry saw a profit to be made in increasing Earth's ability to absorb and recycle pollutants to match our production of them?

The richest people in the world would be those who could produce trees, plankton, and other plants with more acre-feet of leaf surface and faster C02 recycling.

In our current world, a goodly number of people are convinced that the Western industrial lifestyle is wrong, or even just plain evil. Their response is to make an all-out effort to destroy Western economies that are based on such absolute immorality.

Here you can listen online to some of their reasons and decide for yourself if they're wrong.

http://www.obsessionthemovie.com/index1.php

Now do some SF worldbuilding and visualize the future they are driving toward.

Jacqueline Lichtenberghttp://www.simegen.com/jl/

Houston, we have lift off...

As you're reading this, I'm more than likely airborne or just landing. The ginormous (thank you, JC Wilder, who taught me that word this week)RT Booklover's Convention is over and I'm one of the last to leave here Monday morning (trust me, there's a method to my madness).

As always, it was wild. A crush. A zoo. Faboo. The most fun you can have with your clothes on. Exhausting. Draining. Silly. Enlightening. It was a total hoot meeting my readers, my Yahoo loopies ::waves to David:: and reuniting with old friends.

I'll post pictures on my website this week but I wanted to share with you all a wonderful thing: I met noted SFF author Barbara Hambly, one of my longtime favorite authors. I more than met the esteemed Ms. Hambly. I sat and talked with her for several hours.

I am--to quote my UK friend Lynne Connolly, who was also at the convention--gobsmacked.

I've read Ms. Hambly for years. The Silicon Mage is a top ten favorite. But there are so many others: Stranger at the Wedding, the Sunwolf and Starhawk books, her Star Wars and Trek books...oh, the hours of joy! You can see her booklist here: http://www.barbarahambly.com/hambooks.htm

Several times during the conversation I had to mentally pinch myself. Holy Crap. I'm talking to Barbara Hambly.

She is a gentle, gracious woman with large eyes behind round glasses. She listens intently and has that writer's slight perpetual puzzled expression that is a combination of thoughtfulness and curiousity. We talked industry talk, we talked of her new projects and mine. The whole paranormal romance thing interests her. I'm so very glad. I would love nothing more for a noted writer such as Barbara Hambly to come play in my pond. It would be a boon to this cross-genre.

And, holy crap, I met Barbara Hambly.

She's going to be Guest of Honor at Archon in St Louis this coming August. I'll be there as well, along with author Stacey Klemstein and, I hope, author Isabo Kelly. And another noted author: Jacqueline Lichtenberg.

I will definitely be gobsmacked.

~Linnea
www.linneasinclair.com

It's time to honk

Linnea, Susan, Cindy, and yours truly (as I like to sign off some of Insufficient Mating Material's blogs) are at the Romantic Times Booklovers' convention in Houston Texas.

Linnea organized an Intergalactic Bar and Grille party for readers, where ten authors of science-fiction romance did a spaced out version of wheel of fortune, and the house was packed. Not only that, those who came were ready and able to answer great (and not-to-challenging) questions about our books.

Janet Miller, Barbara Karmazin, Isabo Kelly, Susan Grant, Linnea Sinclair, Susan Kearney, Evangeline Anderson, Deidre Knight, Colby Hodge, and Stacey Klemstein (and I) put together thee or four gravity defying questions and a few fun prizes.

Susan Kearney, Susan Grant, PC Cast, Anne Groel, Deidre Knight, Colby Hodge, and yours truly were on Linnea's Starships and Swordfights panel workshop. Susan Kearney made a huge impression on the room (I hope!) when she told readers and writers that it is time science fiction romance came out from under the wing of paranormal... time science fiction romance lovers stood up to be counted.

The reason I am blogging today about what Susan said is that I had a jaw dropping conversation with a powerful gentleman (industry strength, not cover model) during the massive BookFair run by Katy Books in the Imperial Ballroom.

In effect, there seems to be a perception in some parts that there is a literary glass ceiling for science fiction romance, and it is in the avian armpit of paranormal. Now there is a mixed metaphor. It makes more sense if you think of paranormal as a big speckled hen with lots of multi-colored chicks.

While I was working on reviving my smile, three readers almost in succession came up to me and expressed their joy over science fiction romance as a genre. That is why I say that it is time to honk if you love aliens and space-faring humans in your romances.

Now, I'm off to look at the space center.

The Latest About Life on Distant Worlds

Have you all read about the discovery of a potentially Earthlike, life-bearing planet orbiting a distant red dwarf star? That's an encouraging step toward the refutation of the pessimistic view that the reason the aliens haven't contacted us is that there aren't any—that life as we know it is so rare throughout the cosmos that it's statistically unlikely for any advanced extraterrestrial civilization to spring up during the lifespan of our species. Recent discoveries have refreshingly suggested that planets are a not uncommon feature of the life cycles of stars. Now we have concrete reason to hope that Earthlike planets aren't uncommon, either.

How likely, however, is it that their inhabitants, even if intelligent, will resemble us? Some xenobiologists maintain that the humanoid shape, bipedal with manipulative limbs free to handle objects and with a head at the top to house the brain and sensory organs, is a logical body design likely to be replicated many times over on a multitude of planets. That view might be cast in doubt, though, by the reminder that right here on our own planet, lots of creatures who share our favored habitat don't look anything like us. Cats, dogs, spiders, roaches, and ants, for example, live quite contentedly in our houses. And I see no intrinsic reason why, given a nudge in a different direction, evolution couldn't have produced sapient felids or canids rather than sapient primates. Nor would they necessarily have to become bipeds. In Heinlein's delightful novel STAR BEAST, it's assumed that Lummox, the hero's eight-legged alien pet, can't be kin to an intelligent species that otherwise resembles her because she doesn't have hands. Well, surprise, she develops manipulative forelimbs with maturity. What about non-mammals? On land, crustaceans, cephalopods, and arthropods (insects, spiders, etc.) seem poor candidates for brains large enough to harbor intelligence. In water, however, such species don't have size limitations. Sapient giant squids or crabs look perfectly feasible in an aquatic environment. The Creator (or the creative process working through evolution, depending upon your viewpoint) is capable of almost infinite variety. So should we expect a STAR TREK universe inhabited by dozens of alien races who look almost like us except for cosmetic variations? Or should we prepare for extraterrestrial neighbors in a myriad of forms we can only begin to imagine?

As a writer of spec fic romance, I of course opt for the former, because I want aliens my human characters can plausibly fall in love with. In paranormal romances, for example, I'm perfectly willing to suspend disbelief in extraterrestrial vampires who can pass for human. But in the primary-world cosmos, I suspect the latter will prove more likely.

Life's Scutwork

Folks:

There was an article recently in the news about compensating the sibling who ends up living with an elderly parent and being the final care-giver while the other siblings live their lives.

Such a sibling sacrifices career building prospects, personal funds, and a huge swatch of their emotional well-being (i.e. the internal image of the parent held dear for the rest of life.)

Truths come out that don't otherwise impact the child's life.

So, this article suggested legal documentation (such as the Will) should provide compensation for the care-giver sibling.

In most families this would be considered a horrible travesty -- such care is given from love. If it's for money or material wealth, then the care itself is sullied.

So it's one of those situations that has to be thought about from all points of view (thus of course making it fodder for story ideas -- plot-bunnies under the bed.)

Our society has distanced this dying process by providing "hospice" care either in the home (by choice usually -- but it's the cheaper choice though it requires a family member be there at night at least) -- or in a hospital like environment. I've seen a couple really LOVELY hospice buildings, but I feel them as lonely and isolated. Family and friends visit seldom and for short times -- it's depressing.

But Linnea brings up a very interesting point in this regard. In Japan I think -- or maybe it's Microsoft or a combination -- there is a household chores robot in development. It's already pretty good and will be affordable - at least to rent when you really need it.

I've toyed with the dramatic elements of the emotional impact of being relegated to the care of machines.

A.I. shows some promise, but a real "personality" a human being can interact with is a long way off. Our robots show no signs of becoming "alive" as in the film NUMBER FIVE IS ALIVE.

But we have a very small generation getting set to give final care to a huge generation - the Boomers.

SF and Romance both have a great deal to say about the permutations and combinations of situations that could arise.

How about if a sibling care-giver is so badly "stuck" with a parental situation they can't physically manage, have put their own life on hold and feel they're getting older too fast -- and gets seduced into voluntarily becoming a vampire?

What if such a turned care-giver accidentally drank their parent dry? (or on purpose?)

How could the law deal with that? How could the siblings deal with that?

What if this happened a century ago and everyone in that situation is long gone except the vampire-caregiver? What emotional toll would that take?

What if there's a disease that evolves (like a virus) that kills vampires but not humans. After all, if vampires multiply and associate with each other, there's an empty ecological niche waiting for something to crawl in and occupy it, vampire infections.

Now the care-giver who voluntarily became a vampire gets this disease (he/she probably helped evolve) and another vampire has to give the last century of care to this sick elder (postulating a vampire would take a long time to die of a virus.)

Could love resolve that conflict? Maybe -- if ghosts are real in this built world.

At any rate, I think the plight of the final care-giver abandoned by family to go-it-alone should be closely examined and fiction is a good tool for that job.

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

Scutwork in the Future

Here's a link to an article by Ruth Rosen, "Why Working Women Are Stuck in the 1950s," on what she calls the "care crisis," connected to the way our culture has defined as "women's work" the routine maintenance of a household:

http://www.alternet.org/story/48370

Linguist and SF author Suzette Haden Elgin's blog recently discussed this article over several days, generating hundreds of comments. Go to http://ozarque.livejournal.com and check the archives beginning March 3.

How will our descendants deal with this issue? The most optimistic images of the future envision true equality between the sexes. Later series in the Star Trek universe portray women filling the same professional, military, and political positions as men. I don't remember ever seeing a cleaning crew on any of the Enterprises. Probably robots performed that function. Replicators produced food, at least later in the chronology of the universe, although Neelix on Voyager often cooked from fresh ingredients. Surely not all civilians could afford replicators and robots, though. The protagonist of Robert Heinlein's DOOR INTO SUMMER invents cleaning robots, intended for the average middle-class family, but his earlier models do only a few specific tasks. In J. D. Robb's futuristic mysteries, set in the 2050s, women perform the same kinds of work as men (women officers are even addressed as "Sir"), and droids do household labor. In this universe, such inventions serve only the affluent. In less prosperous households, some human being must be doing the scutwork (defined by Peg Bracken in her I HATE TO HOUSEKEEP book as "chores any boob can do"). American society in Robb's universe includes an official, paid (presumably by the government) career of "professional parent." (A concept I approve of, since it would remove the "welfare leech" stigma for the subsidizing of stay-at-home parenthood, while recognizing that people who choose to bear children are performing an indispensable service for society as a whole. SOMEBODY has to produce a younger generation to keep the economy going when the rest of us get too infirm to work full-time.) But it's not implied that this person necessarily does all the cleaning and other chores as well as parenting. And even with robots (or human servants, for that matter) somebody has to organize and direct the work, maintain the schedules for family members, etc.

In the future, the achievement of true gender equality would, one hopes, render obsolete the assumption that household upkeep is "women's work" -- her responsibility to arrange, even if she doesn't personally do most of the tasks. It would also be nice to see the "scutwork" decoupled from the primary-parent role. If parenthood is recognized (with or without pay) as a full-time job, then it should follow that the person in this role shouldn't necessarily be expected to handle all routine maintenance just because he or she happens to be hanging around the house. Until the advent of universal access to robot servants, though, who will do this work? Would chores be divided according to the number of hours each adult works outside the home? Inversely proportional to income contributed to the household? According to personal preference? (What about the jobs nobody likes?) By a rotating schedule, a point system, or a lottery? These are a few potential solutions discussed on Elgin's blog.

As for the "care crisis" in general, one way to ameliorate the situation would be to make polyandry legal. Aside from moral and spiritual considerations (as a Christian, I of course believe in monogamy), a marital unit of one woman and two men would pragmatically solve a number of problems. (Why not polygyny? Because the female is the reproductive bottleneck, so to speak, and more women in a household would mean potentially more babies, so care-crisis-wise you'd be right back where you started. Besides, historically the harem system has NOT been associated with female empowerment.) Three adults per household would provide three incomes, a big plus in areas with high housing costs. You'd have three people among whom to divide the tasks of daily life. If babies and small children needed care, the role of stay-at-home parent could be rotated, with two income-producing adults always working. Moreover, the average man can't keep up, sexually, with the average healthy woman. Two men to one woman would be just about the right ratio. (Of course, there are down sides to this system. We'd end up with an even greater imbalance between single women and eligible men than we have now. And the male biological tendency to sexual jealousy might disrupt a polyandrous marriage. We can't expect all adult males to behave like the blissful participants in the group marriages of such novels as Heinlein's STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND and TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE.)

Anyway, unless we eventually become cosmic disembodied intelligences as in Arthur Clarke's CHILDHOOD'S END (a prospect I don't find at all appealing), we'll always have the scutwork to deal with somehow.

The Dresden Files Interview with Jim Butcher

Folks:

Sunday, I spent an hour with Jim Butcher, creator of The Dresden Files then sat through his talk at a local bookstore, The Poison Pen in Scottsdale AZ. (he's a very good speaker -- and very funny too!)

It was very informative and enjoyable -- maybe 45 or 50 people turned out in a smallish bookstore.

He was born in 1971 and grew up on Anime, Spiderman movies, and modern adult fantasy - thinks visually of story in Anime and film terms and likes the Anime style of deep relationships and screaming hot action.

Patric asked a good question which I posed to Jim:

Is he satisfied with how his books were translated to the screen.

Jim said yes he is, the only real changes were cosmetic and for practical TV filming purposes.
The two we discussed were the switch from Dresden driving a VW Beetle to a Jeep -- and the reason was that a 6Ft+ guy getting in and out of a Beetle on screen would be funny/awkward every time it was shot whereas in his novels he can play it for laughs only when appropriate.

The reasoning for choosing a Jeep was consistent with the background point that Dresden's body field fries fancy electronics. Also the VW Beetle would be harder to shoot from various angles and catch Dresden's image inside -- but the Jeep is easy and thus cheaper. So he accepts that change.

The other visual change was the long duster changed into a fireman's jacket -- and Jim says that's fine since it's in keeping with the way Dresden uses fire. On the other hand he and I agree the jacket just doesn't have the right look -- the flowing leather duster would look better. I'm not sure of the reason for that change.

The wand becoming a hockey stick he can live with easily enough. The blasting rod we didn't discuss -- we only had an hour. But basically I agree that so far the TV version has only superficial changes necessary to make the budget work (fewer characters, less animation, fewer sets). If they do a second season and onwards I do hope they can increase the budget.
I have philosophy and writing-lesson material for several columns and the final episode of the first season airs tonight. I want to see that and then write some columns. They'll decide by June whether to do a second season - no word on the DVD yet. Of course as author of the books, Jim is the last to know!

I'm working on the July 2007 column and a few more that will feature bits from this interview.

My review column, ReReadable Books (because it's not worth its cover price if it's not re-readable) is published on paper in The Monthly Aspectarian, then posted to their website lightworks.com then archived on simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/ so you can always look up prior columns.

Live Long and Prosper,
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

http://www.simegen.com/jl/
Creator of the Sime~Gen Universe
where a mutation makes the evolutionary
division into male and female pale by comparison.

More from the Cutting Room Floor : Games of Command

More from the "cutting room floor"...deleted scenes from GAMES OF COMMAND:



ADMIRAL’S OFFICE, I.H.S. VAXXAR

He knew how she took her coffee just as he knew how she took her gin and what vegetables she liked and how seedless black grapes, chilled, were one of her favorite snacks. After eleven years of following her, challenging her and studying her, he knew all of those minute, concrete details.

But he still, no matter how hard he tried, didn’t know how to read between the lines of those light-hearted quips of hers. You promise me coffee and I’ll do anything.

He wanted desperately to believe that even a mild flirtation existed in those and many other things she said to him, as he tried to ignore the fact that she also frequently traded quips with others. He wanted desperately to believe he wasn’t the “Tin Soldier” to her, was not a cybernetic construct that so many of his crew viewed as simply another extension of the ship. He wanted to be real and warm and as human as he could to her, and had no idea how to do that without making more of a complete fool of himself than he already had.

So as much as possible, he kept her with him, in unscheduled meetings, extended conferences, detailed inspections and whatever other ways he could think of to commandeer her time.

He heard her step through his office door just as he was retrieving two hot cups of coffee from the replicator set in the far wall. He held one out. She accepted it with a bright smile and sipped at it gratefully as he stood in silent, appreciative appraisal in front of her. Then she moved towards the chair in front of his desk, and there was the light, seductive scent of sandalwood in the air around her. He could see where her short cropped hair was still slightly damp around at the nape of her neck. He had to willfully restrain himself from reaching out to touch it.

He took his own chair and placed his cup on the desk to the right of the datafiles he had pulled as an excuse for this discussion. He granted himself another moment of the silent pleasure of just looking at her before clearing his throat, and selecting a thin crystalline file, pushed it into the appropriate data slot. “As long as we have to be on Panperra, we might as well acquaint ourselves with some of the Adjutant’s recent projects.”

Sass groaned loudly and leaned back in the chair. “If this is one of Kel-Farquin’s reports, I’m going to need a lot more than just coffee to get through.”

“If this were Kel-Farquin’s, I would have brought pillows,” he replied blandly, his tone hiding the deep pleasure he felt at her responding wide smile. “No, this is some data on the recent ion storm activity which Panperran sensors were in prime position to record. Now...”

And then Sass leaned forward, as he knew she would, in order to better read the data on the desktop monitor. And for the next forty minutes he had her total attention, and physical presence, all to himself.

www.linneasinclair.com

Sarcasm, Irony... aliens don't "get" it

You Earthlings (humans, Terrans) are a funny lot. You don't speak the same language. You fight incontinently. You don't have a one-world government. You can't decide on one individual to lead you all --you don't even try!

It's no wonder we aliens shrug and go home when our extremely reasonable request "Take Me To Your Leader" causes such confusion and such unsatisfactory and inconsistent responses.

It's never the same leader. It usually turns out that whoever the leader is, he's not the Leader of all leaders. There was once a "she"... We had hopes of her.

And then, there's the human sense of humor. It makes no sense to us. In fact, there isn't just one sense of humor shared and enjoyed by all humans, which would be logical.

Any sentient being can understand that sudden bursts of malodorous gas and floating droplets of unmentionable matter in a confined space (and almost no gravity) are just cause for venting one's strongest and most appropriate swear words or else for laughing in manic despair.

But some of you cannot even talk sense. How is a highly intelligent alien supposed to know when you are using sarcasm or irony?

Do you mean what you say, or don't you? Sometimes, an alien could be forgiven for his confusion. It would be helpful to your alien cousins if you would show your teeth and heave your upper bodies to show that you think you are being pleasantly funny, and that you either do --or do not-- mean what you just said.

Sarcasm is when you Terrans say exactly what you mean, but in such a way that it makes your auditor uncomfortable.

The modern "Duh!" is much more useful.

"No sh-t!" is an obscenity which offends us beyond words, for reasons this alien has delicately hinted at above.

A --presumably rhetorical-- question, such as "Is the Pope Catholic?" or "Does a bear sh-t in the woods?" presumes that aliens have a wide understanding of your different cultures and the sanitary practices of wilderlife.

Besides which, a polar bear on an ice floe probably does not have that luxury. Nor for that matter does a captive bear in a concrete habitat mysteriously known as a zoological garden.

Irony is when you Terrans say the opposite of what you mean, but in such a way that it makes your auditor uncomfortable.

Making someone else uncomfortable, or finding "humor" in thoughts of another's discomfort seems to be a repeating theme.

Now this alien thinks about it, "pleasantly funny" may be an oxymoron ... a logical contradiction in terms.

We will leave you now. But We will be back!


Posted on behalf of a fascinated alien by,
Rowena Cherry
author of the Gods of Tigron trilogy
(Forced Mate, Mating Net, Insufficient Mating Material)

Talking with the Animals

I've just bought a DVD of the live-action film of CHARLOTTE'S WEB, one of my favorite stories. Its theme (as explicitly stressed in the voice-over of this new version) is the value of friendship. I especially like this book because of the way it portrays friendship across species lines, centering upon the marvelously improbable devotion between a pig and a spider. Eventually, all the inhabitants of the barn, even the unsavory rat Templeton, get drawn into the circle of friendship. Here's my pet theme of "intimacy across gulfs of difference" again, or as Spock would say, "infinite diversity in infinite combinations."

Tolkien says in his classic essay "On Fairy-Stories" that the other creatures of nature are like foreign countries with which humankind has broken off diplomatic relations. He suggests that one desire satisfied by fairy tales, through the motif of talking animals, is the yearning to re-establish that lost connection with the other species who share our world. A taste of dragon's blood gifts the mythic hero with the language of beasts, thus helping him in his quest. Dr. Doolittle talks to the animals and gains a fresh perspective on the human race. WATERSHIP DOWN immerses the reader in rabbit culture and language. In CHARLOTTE'S WEB, Fern is still young enough to understand the animals' conversations, although it's implied that she is poised on the cusp, soon to outgrow that connection with nature. Primate researchers conduct simple dialogues with symbol-using apes. Many people believe dolphins have true language.

Of course, we might not like what we'd hear if our pets could speak to us. Garfield thinks of Jon as "the man who cleans my litter box." Still, imagine what we could learn about our world if we could communicate with creatures (like cats, with their night vision, and dogs, with their extraordinary noses) whose senses perceive the environment so differently from ours.

Once an Alien Lover, Always an Alien Lover

Of all the questions I’m ever asked now that I write alien romance, probably the most common one is how or why I came to the genre. So I thought it would be fun to talk about my longstanding ties with sci-fi romance, and how I finally decided to put all my crazy ideas on paper.

For me, it all started that summer back in the 1980’s when the original Star Trek aired in reruns every afternoon at four p.m. I mean, before that I’d certainly loved Star Wars, had read a little Arthur C. Clarke, but Trek was a new dimension. It tapped into my imagination, to those parts of me that loved King Arthur lore and believed in other realms—and probably into my sixteen-year-old hormones. I mean, come on! Who can’t love a brilliant, emotionally rigid alien who goes wild during his mating cycle, right? Ah, Spock and his Pon Far mating needs. When you’re sixteen, that’s heady stuff. Super intelligent, geek reaction? Maybe not, but I ate it up.

Of course, it was far more than that too. Spock mentally bonding with the horta? Realizing she was just a mother protecting her young? My brain was in overdrive. Aliens, with their supernatural abilities and natures, were capable of things I’d never imagined. Forget PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, forget WUTHERING HEIGHTS (my earliest romance roots, plus approved summer reading!) I had TREK! That fall when school reconvened, I was amazed to discover that a whole cadre of my fellow geeks had also discovered these reruns. Next thing I knew three of us had formed a power triumvirate, trading black and white headshots and debating whether Spock or Kirk was the hottest one. Interestingly enough, of the three of us, I now write sci-fi romance and another went on to write for Buffy.

Something started for me then, a new place in my writerly development. I’d always made up stories, passing the time as a lonely child of divorced parents by living in the make-believe realm of my imagination. But that summer of Star Trek, the stories inside my mind shifted, became other-worldly oriented. It just took fourteen years for me to translate the crazy ideas inside my head to paper. I wrote and wrote in the interim, but somehow—for reasons I can’t understand looking back—it never occurred to me that I could write what I loved and thought about the most. Maybe I needed permission? Maybe we all do with our creative selves.

I give all the credit to a little known, compulsively watchable show of alien romance, Roswell. From the first episode I saw in 2000, it was as if every idea I’d ever had floating in my head coalesced. Romance, aliens, sci-fi… it could all come together. This was a massive sea change for me. Within months I began writing fanfic (no, don’t run and don’t hide!) It’s amazing how many of my fellow sci-fi romance writers began just the same way. I think fanfic is a fabulous way for new writers to push their boundaries, to realize what they can get away with. It taught me to take crazy chances and not worry who went with me—even my fanfic readers. And trust me, there were times when, with my unconventional romance pairings, very few followed me. I guess I’m saying that fanfic toughened me up. And it gave me confidence to trust in my writer’s heart.

In 2004 I’d finished my first novel. Big clue to self: It had absolutely no elements of the paranormal. It was a deeply felt, emotional women’s fiction novel, and although it was well-received by many editors, was simply too edgy to sell. Twenty-two rejections later I decided that maybe—just maybe—some killer clue lay in my sci-fi writings. After all, that was what I’d spent four years writing in the fanfic world. It was what first stirred my imagination with Trek. Even though it seemed odd after trying my hand at a literary novel, I poured all my energy into the proposal for the Midnight Warriors series. And guess what? Being true to yourself pays off: The series sold very fast.

Lesson learned? Go with what you love. Trust your fantasies and the passions that drive you. No matter how off the wall, or unconventional, I think being real and writing what you love will—in the end—bring you success. If you’ve read my books, you’ll see shades of Spock and Pon Far still shining through. Because once an alien lover, always an alien lover… and I’m proud to carry that ID badge.

Deidre Knight

author of:
Parallel Heat
Parallel Attraction
Parallel Seduction

Where it all began--PART 2

Continuing our foray into my old GAMES OF COMMAND/COMMAND PERFORMANCE files for purposes of backstory, here's more of the original, circa 2001 Chapter One file on Captain Tasha "Sass" Sebastian and Admiral Branden Kel-Paten.... Please note these are OLD ORIGINAL UNEDITED files.

Have fun! ~ Linnea
www.linneasinclair.com

(from the original Chapter One... and the cutting room floor)

Sass... Captain Sebastian arrived at exactly 2034.43.2, her bright pink cropped t-shirt top and side-slit work-out shorts still damp from her recent exertions.

Something heated flared correspondingly inside Kel-Paten, his gaze taking in far more of her than he was used to seeing. At least, not while he was awake. He didn’t miss her playful tap on Dr. Fynn’s arm with the tip of her racquet as she strode by. “Whipped his ass, 5-4!” she rasped, still somewhat short of breath.

The CMO hid her laughter behind a well-timed coughing fit as Sass plunked down into the chair next to his own. She wiped her face with a towel draped around her neck. A series of soft chuckles followed around the room as the lettering on the Captain’s t-shirt became obvious for all to see:

“My name’s No! No! Bad Captain!
What’s Yours?”

“Sebastian.” Pause. There was always The Pause. “You’re--”

“Late, I know.” Sass held up one hand as if to stave off his reprimand. “I apologize, Admiral. I’d every intention of being here on time. Even recheduled my game two hours earlier. But we—”

“And you’re out of uniform,” he cut in and made sure he didn’t allow his gaze to travel lower than Sass’ face. Interesting what dampness does to certain thin fabrics.

“I’d be later if I’d taken time to change,” Sass was pointing out. “But before you have me vented out the starboard exhausts for a total inattention to duty, at least allow me to state that I have read the entire packet and,” she said, swiveling one of the comp screens attached at regular intervals down the middle of the table, “my report has been filed and already disseminated to the staff.” She tapped at the “Report Waiting” icon flashing on the lower left.

“I assume you’ve all used the...” and she stopped, glancing at her watch, “...four minutes and forty three point two seconds that I was delayed to retrieve and review my report?”

Five faces, including his own, turned blankly to her. Only Dr. Fynn grinned back. Kel-Paten didn’t know if the CMO was just used to the petite green-eyed blonde’s diversonary tactics, or had known beforehand the report would be there. It didn’t matter.

From the conspiratorial nature of her grin, it was obvious she was the only one who’d read it

"Well, good, then it shouldn’t take the rest of you, Dr. Fynn excluded, more than four minutes and forty three point two seconds to do just that. And in that time,” Sass added, rising, “I’ll jog down the corridor to my quarters and grab a sweatshirt. Imperial issue of course,” she added, “before I freeze my butt off in here.”

The zip-front black sweatshirt with the Vaxxar’s signature slashed-lightning logo on the sleeves helped, but not much, Kel-Paten noted wryly as Sass returned to the ready room with ten point oh-eight seconds to spare. The sweatshirt, in generic extra-large, fell below the hem line of her shorts so that when she walked in all he saw were sweatshirt and nicely shaped bare legs... and nothing else. Oh, there were socks (also bright pink) and high-top sneakers (white), he knew, but that only made the illusion worse. It was only after she took the seat next to him that he let out the breath he’d been holding. Slowly.

When he turned back to the table five pairs of eyes regarded him expectantly: Kel-Fhay, the First Officer on his left; Kel-Arint, Chief of Tactical next to him. Then came his U-Cee-issue CMO. Her blue eyes held a a hint of amusement, so he passed over her quickly. His U-Cee-issue Chief of Security, Lt. Francisco Garrick, was opposite her. To Garrick’s left was Zahar Kel-Nilos. The grey-haired Commander had been his Chief of Engineering for fifteen years; he trusted Kel-Nilos, trusted him with his life and his ship and the lives of his crew. Hence, he was also trusted to be the only other officer allowed to sit next to the captain.

She, he noted, didn’t look at him but directly at Eden Fynn. He didn’t like the smile on either woman’s face.

Had he been prone to sighing he would’ve done so just then, but instead he eased himself up to his full 6’3” height’, well aware of the image he presented: an imposing figure in black with night-dark hair. Five diamond-studded stars glinted blue-white on his uniform’s high collar and were matched in their iciness, it was often said, only by the hardness of his eyes.

“Ladies and gentlemen, there’s a problem. It sppears we may have to do some damage control.”

The problem’s name was Shadow, or more accurately, Jace Serafino. Captain Jace Serafino though Kel-Paten’s tone as he said the rank relayed just how little respect he had for the often deadly, always flamboyant mercenary.

Serafino had quite a history, most of it conflicting, very little of it documented save for spaceport gossip and ‘tracker' legends. He was the illegitimate son of an Imperial nobleman and a prosti from the U-Cee pleasure world of Glitterkiln. He was defrocked Nasyry from the Warrior-Priest clan. He was a Q’itha addict and escapee from an Imperial Rehab compound. He was a reclusive and mega-weathly entrepreneur with a decidedly unorthodox philanthropic hobby. He was a bio-cybe crechling--one of Kel-Paten’s siblings--who’d been reported to have died at birth.

All were true. None were true. The only verifiable facts known about Captain Jace Serafino was that he had been very, very good at making trouble for the U-Cees and the Empire, now called the Alliance, and their mutual enemy, the Illithians. And he’d also been very very good at escaping from the clutches of all three.

Until now.

Suddenly made patriotic by the prospect of two hundred fifty thousand credits, Serafino had agreed to participate in a little undercover work for the newly formed Alliance. Kel-Paten had been openly against the idea but had been out voted by the Defense Minister and Admiral Kel-Varen. So Serafino had been paid half the money, pointed in the direction of the Illithian border... and vanished.

It had been almost five months and nothing had been heard of him or his ship, the Novalis. However, two weeks after he’d left Kel Station, a lowly ensign in payroll made a not-so startling discovery--the other half of Serafino’s payment was also gone. For all intents and purposes it looked like he’d taken the money, and run. And was probably comfortably holed up in some rim-world nighthouse, enjoying the soft charms of a sloe-eyed prosti. And laughing his ass off at the Alliance.

So the Alliance did what the Empire always used to do when the Empire got pissed: they gave the command to unleash Kel-Paten on the problem.

“Captain Sebastian’s report noted all the leads we have relative to a last known location on Serafino,” Kel-Paten said. “Lt. Garrick, I want you and Lt. Kel-Arint to head up one team; Commander Kel-Fhay and Dr. Fynn will head the second. The captain and I will head the third. If he isn’t found precisely in one of those locations, I have no doubt, based on the accuracy of our information, that we won’t be very far behind him.”

“We don’t have any reason to believe that Serafino will be cooperative about returning to Kel Prime,” Garrick noted. “Your instructions, sir, if we encounter resistance?”

Kel-Paten leaned his black-gloved fists against the table. This answer was easy. “Kill him,” he replied evenly.

Then he straightened, his hands behind him in correct military posture. “You all understand the situation. Dismissed.”

A nodding of heads accompanied the squeaking of chairs as the command staff of the Vaxxar rose almost in unison and headed for the door. Sass swiveled in her chair, followed Kel-Nilos around the far end of the conference table.

He said her name before she could reach Dr. Fynn’s side: “Sebastian.” Pause. “I will require your attention for a bit longer.”

She turned and faced him expectantly. “Admiral?”

Kel-Paten opened his mouth to speak only to find his mind blanking as My name’s No! No! Bad Captain! stared back at him. Sometime during the ninety-minute meeting her workout clothes had dried and Sass had unzipped the oversized black sweatshirt. Her arms, folded casually across her chest, obscured the What’s Yours?

He cleared his throat. “Sebastian.”

Pause.

She looked up. “Yes?”

Damn her, damn her! Two hours ago, he’d chosen what he’d thought was the perfect topic to delay her after the meeting, something important enough to be believable. Something they could discuss, leisurely, perhaps over a cup of coffee. Something that... something that he’d obviously forgotten.

“Your... report was very thorough.” One-point-four-million credits they had spent perfecting his flawlessly synchronized cybertronic brain interface and that was the best he could come up with.

She cocked her head slightly to one side. Perhaps she knew of the amount and was just now realizing what a tremendous waste of funds it represented.

“Thanks. But it was just a distillation of facts. The original report was kind of repetitive.”

“H.Q.’s usually are.”

“Well then, just goes to prove the theory that bureaucrats everywhere share a common DNA. I never read a report out of our H.Q. at Varlow that was worth a damn, either.”

“I can imagine,” he replied and knew that if the fate of the Universe relied on his conversational abilities right now they’d all be in the proverbial shitter.

However, his terse sentence elicited a raised eyebrow from her. “Didn’t think you had to imagine, Kel-Paten. I was under the impression that there was little the U-Cees did during the war that you weren’t directly aware of. I’d thought our reports provided you with the bulk of your bedtime stories.”

Actually, he’d always saved reports on the Regalia’s captain for that particular time of his day. “I was naturally aware of any information deemed to be important.”

“Oh, naturally,” she said, her mouth quirking slightly into a smile. “If there’s nothing else, Admiral?”

“Nothing else?” He’d been contemplating the soft curves at the base of her throat. Her usual uniform’s high collar covered that area, and though he’d often seen her in the ship’s gym, it had been from across the room. He’d never been this close to her when she’d had been so interestingly out of uniform. So enticingly out of uniform. The temperature in the ready room shot up a few hundred degrees.

“Yes sir, if there’s nothing else you wish to discuss, I’d really like to go back to my quarters and change out of this gear.” She tugged at the slitted hem of her pink shorts, which only drew his eyes down to her bare thighs. His mind immediately responded by informing him just how quickly one could slide those pieces of flimsy pink apparel down and...

“Yes, of course. I’m sure you want to change.” He turned quickly and took his seat at the head of the table. With a few quick touches on the comp screen, he called up a selection of files of unknown subject matter, only peripherally aware they were there. But at least it looked as if he were doing something productive. “Dismissed, Sebastian.”

Sass inclined her head slightly. “By your leave, Admiral.”

He waited until the doors whooshed closed before he let his head fall wearily against the high back of the chair, his body throbbing. He was surprised the chair hadn’t melted.

He was still in that position, eyes closed, a half hour later when the Vaxxar’s red-alert sirens jolted him back into reality.

He almost collided with Sass in the corridor just as his com badge trilled, demanding his attention. He managed to slap at it with one hand and grab Sass’ elbow with the other.

“We’re right here,” he barked as he guided her forcefully through the double sliding doors that led to the upper-level of the bridge.

The two-tiered, U-shaped command center of the huntership was already frenzied with activity. Voices were terse, commands clipped. Every screen streamed with data.

Sass immediately bolted down the short flight of stairs to the scanner station to check incoming data. Kel-Paten slid into the left command seat and, with a practiced familiarity, thumbed open a small panel covering the dataport in the armrest and linked into the ship’s systems through the interface feeds built into his wrist. There were the microseconds of disorientation as there always was when he spiked in. The last thing his human vision focused on before his mind merged completely with the Vax’s cybermechanisms was Sass’ nicely rounded bottom, clad in fitted pale pink sweat pants as she leaned over the main scanner console below him...

If I had to... could I?

Before I write about my sometimes alien heroines, I research the Earthly equivalent of the situations into which I dump them, and I like to think that if I were their age, in the shape they are in, and in similar circumstances, I could do almost as well.

But could I?

Could I purify and filter water without a commercial tablet or a store-bought gadget on my plumbing as Djetth (Jeth) does in Insufficient Mating Material? I know how in theory, and what I wrote passed muster with my survival consultant.

If global warming reduced my neighborhood to something close to a dust bowl, could I find water by making a solar still? Could I follow my own survival advice that I dish up in Insufficient Mating Material?

If I decided that I no longer trusted prepared, packaged foods from the supermarket, could I make pizza from scratch... on a hot rock?

Well, could I?

Maybe not pizza, if I didn't have yeast, but I might surprise myself. We women may be tougher than we think.

Actually, I used to make pizza when I lived in Dorset. I had a coal fired oven, which meant that I had to shovel coal into the fire box, wait for it to get really hot, and then bake. My paternal grandmother didn't have a refrigerator. She had a slab of marble in a cupboard under the stairs!

But as for doing some of the things Survivorman does.... I'm not sure, and I hope I never find out, but I pay attention, and I'm thinking of buying some of the best fire making tools I've seen him use on his show, and keeping them in my handbag. It won't do much for the shape of my bag, but a bit of extra weight-lifting should keep my arms and my bones in shape.

Insufficient Mating Material contains quite a lot of information from various survival sources and the consultative wisdom of Survivorman, Les Stroud. Like the alien hero, Djetth (Jeth), I took part in competitive life-saving at school. I still have all the badges that I earned. However, when I think back to all the mushrooms we used to gather in the local cow pastures at dawn, and the berries we picked from hedgerows in Autumn: hips and haws, elderberry, crabapples, blackberries, I wonder whether I'd dare to today, if I weren't desperate.

The problem is (for everyday people), practising making shelters by cutting down vegetation is not environmentally responsible, and experimenting with strange berries when I don't have to seems to be asking for trouble... and I don't mean experimenting in the way that Djetth and Martia-Djulia experiment once their alien romance heats up.

Best wishes,

Rowena