Nasfic 2007

Folks:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BACK FROM ARCHON 31

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And now for the fun stuff:

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

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

http://www.linneasinclair.com/

Alien Culture & Alien Sexuality Themes

THEMES For BUILDING ALIEN CULTURES and ALIEN SEXUALITY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

www.spacelawstation.com/

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

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

RELIGION:

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

LANGUAGE:

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

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

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

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

PART II: CREATING ALIEN CULTURES:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://www.isna.org/faq


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

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

Lion social behaviors are shown here at

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

and at

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

7. Symbiotic cultures. Bloodchild by Octavia Butler

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

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

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

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

Thank you.

Barbara Karmazin
www.sff.net/people/selkiewife

A clean slate

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Improving on Humanity

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

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

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

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

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

Kiss Me Deadly and Fear

The Reading Demographic Today

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can we trust an alien of our own making?

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

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

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


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

Psychological consequences of Alien Sex

Psychological consequences of alien sex for the human character (... and, especially for the alien!)

By Barbara Karmazin

www.sff.net/people/selkiewife

1. FIGHT or FLIGHT response: This is the very basic response pattern regardless of species.

Imagine that you’re a caveman/woman/child picking berries when you come nose to nose with a sabre-tooth tiger. While you were gathering, the tiger was hunting, and the sight of you makes his mouth water.

Evolution gives your body a set of automatic responses that take over in the event of an emergency. At the sight of the tiger, your hypothalamus sends a message to your adrenal glands and within seconds, you can run faster, hit harder, see better, hear more acutely, think faster, and jump higher than you could a few earlier.

Your heart pumps at two to three times the normal speed, sending nutrient rich blood to the major muscles in your arms and legs. The tiny blood vessels (called capillaries) under the surface of your skin close down (which sends your blood pressure soaring) so you can sustain a surface wound and not bleed to death. Your eyes dilate so you can see better.

All functions of your body not needed for you to fight or flee shut down. Digestion stops, sexual function stops, even your immune system is temporarily turned off. If necessary, excess waste is eliminated to make you light on your feet.

Your suddenly supercharged body helps level the odds between you and your attacker. Consequently, you narrowly escape death by leaping higher and running faster than you ever could before. When the danger is, you find a safe place to lie down and rest your exhausted body.

FLASH FORWARD to the present day. Despite the huge amount of technological change in the ensuing 25,000 years, you have the same set of internal body parts as that of your remote forefathers and foremothers. You're in the break room at work, hunting for coffee and gathering donuts.
Your boss walks in, hunting you. He says, "Could I see you for a moment in my office, please?"

At the sight of the tiger, er, uh...your boss...your hypothalamus sends a message to your adrenal glands and within seconds your body summons the strengths and abilities that your stone-age ancestor needed to fight a sabre-tooth tiger.

Blood pressure soars as you take the long walk down the hall to your boss's office. You remember a rumor you heard about an upcoming round of layoffs. Now your mind races, your heart pumps harder, your mouth dries up, your hands feel cold and clammy, sweat pours down your and you may even feel a sudden urge to go (to the bathroom). Maybe you'd like to run and hide or maybe you'd like to punch your boss in the nose, but you can't do either. Welcome to the modern era.

(Every time your body triggers the fight or flight response, for situations that are not truly life-threatening, you are experiencing, in effect, a false alarm. Too many false alarms can lead to stress-related disorders like, heart disease, high blood pressure, immune system disorders, migraine headaches, insomnia and sexual dysfunction.)

So, going back to our aliens. If an alien, vampire, werewolf or stranger suddenly appears in your bedroom, what’s going to happen? Are you going to open your arms and legs and invite him or her into bed with you for a sexual tryst? Or are you going to reach for the baseball bat you keep under your bed and clobber this intruder, then run away and dial 911 for help?

Keep this normal psychological reaction in mind whenever you set up a sudden meeting between human and alien.

I kept this fight or flight response in mind when I wrote the first face-to-face meeting between Sonia and Rulagh. And because Rulagh is an exo-biologist working for the Interstellar Humane Society, then this meant he would also be aware of this common response to danger and/or a potentially dangerous stranger. So of course, he uses that knowledge to defuse the situation and reassure Sonia that his intentions are harmless instead of dangerous.


2. Stockholm Syndrome: I’m sure you’re familiar with this syndrome.

The Stockholm Syndrome comes into play when a captor/abductor shows token acts of kindness to his or her prisoner. It typically takes about three or four days for the psychological shift to take hold.

A strategy of trying to keep your captor happy in order to stay alive becomes an obsessive identification with the likes and dislikes of the captor which has the result of warping your own psyche in such a way that you come to sympathize with your tormenter. Rescue attempts are seen as a threat, since it's likely the captive would be injured during such attempts.

It's important to note that these symptoms occur under tremendous emotional and often physical duress. The behavior is considered a common survival strategy for victims of interpersonal abuse, such as battered spouses, abused children, prisoners of war, and concentration camp survivors.

Needless to say, if your hero or heroine is a reasonably intelligent and educated human, then he or she would also know about the Stockholm Syndrome and would be suspicious of his or her feelings if he or she were captured, kidnapped and/or imprisoned by an alien.

I’m also sure if your readers are reasonably intelligent and educated, they would also be aware of the effects of the Stockholm Syndrome and would also be suspicious of the validity of any emotional attachments formed under this type of alien/human scenario. Last but not least, it’s a very common SF cliché to have aliens kidnapping human females for sexual experimentation.

So, if you’re going to have a situation where a human is abducted, number one, you need to make it a plausible abduction, not a cliché one and number two, you need to establish very quickly that the human is free to go within the first hour after abduction but decides to stay and help the alien resolve the issue that caused the abduction in the first place.

For example, the alien abducts the human because he or she needs a critical component to repair his or her spacecraft. Have the human and alien work together to solve a problem and in the process of solving the problem get to know each other better and watch the sexual attraction and emotional bonding grow before you have any sexual interaction take place. Create the sexual tension first. It’s a lot more exciting, sensual and romantic that way.

Another example or twist of the trite alien kidnap cliché could be a third alien enemy species who kidnaps the human and throws him or her into the holding pen with another alien species. This type of scenario forces the human and alien to work together to escape and of course they forge emotional bonds while planning their escape, escaping, eluding their mutual enemy and defeating their mutual enemy.

3. Florence Nightingale Syndrome:

Florence Nightingale Syndrome refers to an inappropriate attraction which can arise between two individuals, one of whom is receiving support or positive attention of some kind. In time, natural feelings of gratefulness and appreciation become exaggerated, turning into declarations of love. The receipt of medical attention is a prime opportunity for such interactions to take place. Obviously, the relationship between Florence Nightingale and the soldiers of the Crimean War, who were said to kiss her shadow as it fell across their bed, gives rise to the syndrome's name.

Florence Nightingale Syndrome is also used to refer to a constant and uncontrolled desire to protect and alter the lives of others, often without regard to whether one possesses either the right, or indeed the ability to do so. The feeling of providing help reinforces within the individual a feeling of power, and thus provides for the basic need to feel wanted and loved.


4. Dominance/Submission:

Many of the different animal species you will look at as models for shapeshifters and aliens have a complex social hierarchy that blends dominant and submissive behaviors to form their packs and family groups.

a. BDSM is a specific sexual subculture with specific rules and guidelines for the relationships within this subculture.

D/s consists of a consensual relationship that is based around a power exchange between two people. One person is the controlling one, known as the Dominant; the other person is the controlled one, and is known as the submissive (note that 'Dominant' is usually capitalized and that 'submissive' is not). The submissive gives a certain amount of 'power' to the Dominant over their lives. This can be as simple as the Dominant telling them what to wear each day, or can be as complex as the submissive having to ask the Dominant for permission to even leave the room. The important thing to note here is that we are talking about consensual relationships. The rights of the submissive are not taken from them without consent, they are given freely during a period of negotiation.

Total Power Exchange Arguably, the 'pinnacle' of D/s relationships is a Total Power Exchange (TPE) relationship, where the submissive gives up all control to the Dominant. Total means just that. The Dominant controls every aspect of their lives from what they wear or eat, to where they go and who they see. (You’re walking a very fine line between D/s and Domestic Violence with this type of relationship. Why? Because many abusers seek to control every facet of their spouse or lover’s life.)

Here’s a list of terminology within the D/s lifestyle:

Dominant - The person who has been given some amount of control over the submissive. Other terms describing them are Dom and Domme.

submissive - The person who gives some amount of control to the Dominant. Other terms describing them are sub, pet and slave.

D/s - Dominance and submission. A power exchange relationship.

Lifestyle - Generally those that practice D/s are part of 'the lifestyle'. It doesn't mean anything, it's just a descriptive term.

Vanilla - a non-D/s relationship.

24/7 - Living a D/s relationship 24 hours a day, seven days a week. To put it another way, you are always in a power exchange relationship.

Scene - The best way to describe this is to think of a 'scene' from a movie. This is one interaction between a Dom and a sub. It doesn't have to be sexual; all that is required is that a power exchange has taken place. Those not in a 24/7 relationship tend to have 'scenes' where the power exchange happens. Even those in 24/7 relationships can have scenes, where the exchange becomes deeper.

Top - A person who Dominates for only a scene. If you think of it as a 'one night stand' in the D/s lifestyle you wouldn't be quite correct, but it's a good start. This doesn't mean that the Top is a 'Dominant', just that the dominate for the one scene.

Bottom - A person who is submissive for only a scene. This does not mean the person is always a submissive, just that they are submissive for the scene. See 'Top'.

Switch - Someone who switches between the Dominant and submissive roles.

Safewords - These are words that are used by either Dom or sub to slow down, or stop a scene. Having negotiated a safeword is very important. It means that if something is happening that makes either person uncomfortable, they can either back off a little, or stop.


b. A Few Myths, D/s isn't about Abuse

Though the point has already been made it's important to emphasize that the normal D/s relationship is about a consensual power exchange. Whatever happens to the sub, whatever demands are made of them, they have agreed to this. If they haven't, if they never asked for this, or they don't want this, then it's an abusive relationship not a BDSM relationship.

Submissives aren't always women. If your image of a submissive is a woman, no matter how she's dressed, think again. There are a great number of male submissives.
Submissives aren’t weak. If someone has to have someone else run their lives for them they must be weak, right? Wrong. Many submissives are quite powerful people outside their D/s relationship: lawyers, managers, business people, police, soldiers and so on. For some, being a submissive in the home, or merely in the bedroom, is a way of escaping from the normal pressures of being in charge.

D/s isn't about Kinky Sex. Sure, D/s couples often have kinky sex. Then again, vanilla couples often do too. What defines a D/s relationship has very little to do with the methods used, so much as the power exchange. A simple 'no' when a sub asks if they can have a drink can have as much 'power' as getting them to kneel.
Entering a D/s Relationship. When two people are about to enter a D/s relationship, the first step is negotiation. This is a period where no power exchange occurs, but is a discussion where the parameters of the relationship are discussed. How much power will the Dominant have over the submissive? What hard limits do both have; that is, to what activities are one or both opposed? What will be the safewords? What will be the period of the relationship?

Often after negotiation a contract is drawn up, setting out all of the parameters discussed. In this way there can be no misunderstandings.


c. Erotic SF/F, BDSM and aliens

Many Erotic SF and Fantasy writers model their alien and futuristic human cultures using the BDSM culture. A few of the very popular stories walk a fine line between an abusive type of relationship and the classic Stockholm Syndrome psychological response.

You can incorporate elements of BDSM into your alien cultures but make sure you know what you’re doing and make sure you have a specific list of behavior/cultural rules set up for the culture when you do this. Don’t just do it on a random fashion and always show consent for the relationship. Know what rules you have and know how each rule effects the way the aliens interact with each other and with humans.

Because I worked for twenty-nine and a half years as a bilingual social worker in my day job and have had numerous cases that involved abused women, abused men and abused children, I’m very aware of this fine line. I also have a tendency to avoid the more extreme versions of BDSM culture and will often use only the mildest forms of sex play from this culture in my writing because of my past work and personal experiences.

When I created Rulagh’s alien culture for The Huntress, I modeled his entire culture on a basic pack family system where dominant and submissive members cooperate within their pack and fight all outsiders. Their corporate/business interactions are also very dependent on dominant and submissive behavior patterns with each corporation/business looking at the other corporations/businesses as non-pack members and enemies to be watched.

Sonia and Rulagh staged ‘scenes’ of dominance and submission during their sex games with one another and forged deeper bonds of love and commitment to each other with these scenes.

I combined the fact that reptilian sexual arousal is scent-based and the fact that many animal species use scent to physically ‘mark’ their territories. So, because Rulagh’s species has two penises, I decided that the second penis was used to ‘scent mark’ their women. Rulagh’s unique pheromone scent from his penis happens to be cinnamon.

Sonia and Rulagh had to fight the other alien members of the team sent to Earth on their animal control mission in order to establish their dominance and leadership of the team.


5. Cross Species References/Standards of Beauty and Sexual Attractiveness:

When you look at a horse galloping across a field, you recognize and admire the beauty of its body even though this is a different species. The same recognition and admiration occurs when you see images of wolves, bears, seals, dogs, cats and many other animal species.

You’re not sexually aroused because you’re aware that they’re animals and that their intellectual capacity and ability to communicate with you and interact with you is not on the same level as another human being. However, this doesn’t stop you from forming bonds of love. I love my furbabies, my dogs and cats. And I’m sure that those of you who are in this group who have pets, all love your pets dearly and you know your pets love you and return your affection with licks and touches and body contact and they enjoy it when you touch them and pet them also.

The key element here is intelligence. I went over that element in detail during my first lecture when I went over the definition of bestiality. Regardless of shape and form, if the intelligence is present and the intelligence level is equal to or higher than human intelligence, there is no bestiality. Without intelligence then there is no way to form emotional and sexual relationships.

Many SF writers when they write an alien often show the aliens looking at humans with disgust and horror because humans look so different from them and humans don’t meet their standards of alien beauty. Perhaps, but the ability to recognize the beauty of another species is already there despite the physical differences. I believe that aliens have this ability also and will be able to recognize the attractiveness of the human form despite the differences the same way humans can recognize the beauty of a horse, wolf or panther.

On the other hand, just as there will be aliens who can recognize and admire the physical beauty of other species, there will always members of the alien species who loathe anyone or anything different from their normal expectations of beauty and sexual attractiveness.

The traditional view of sexual arousal focuses on the physical changes associated with the genitals. Sexologists have broken the sexual response cycle into four phases, excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution. The amount of time a person spends in each phase, and even the order in which they experience them may vary.

At birth we respond to sexual stimulation based solely on instinct. If we feel safe and our basic material needs are met, we will most likely respond to sexual stimuli very easily. This is perhaps why the simple acts of nursing and exposing the genitals to air results in sexual arousal in infants. At birth our bodies are very sensitive to external stimuli, and our minds have not learned "appropriate" sexual response yet. As a result, at birth, orgasm is probably controlled more by physical stimuli than mental thought processes. Orgasm is a simple physical reflex response at birth.

By the time puberty rolls around we have already been taught "appropriate" sexual response.

Sexual arousal and orgasm is a complex process involving the entire person, mind and body. The human mind receives in sexual stimuli from the body, processes the stimuli, and based on past learning and experience this causes a physical response. The brain may start the sexual arousal process in response to thought (sexual fantasy), visual stimuli (seeing a partner nude), audible stimulation (hearing a partner's voice), olfactory stimuli (the smell of a partner's body), and taste (the taste of a partner's body).

The mind and body while able to experience sexual arousal separately cannot experience orgasm separately. Orgasm requires both the mind and body to work together. Mental thought alone can trigger orgasm, but the actual sensations are physical reactions.

Then there is what I call the feedback loop in sexual arousal. Knowing and seeing that your lover is aroused makes you feel sexy. The same thing applies to your lover, when your lover knows that you’re aroused that increases your lover’s arousal. Back and forth this feedback loop continues throughout the love scene until both (or more) participants orgasm.

Many SF writers use this ‘feedback loop’ to describe two or more persons linked mentally while they’re making love and knowing and feeling the other lover/lovers reactions and arousal stimulates all to a mutually satisfying and mind-blowing orgasm.

What if your aliens have a special sensory and telepathic ability that occurs whenever they have physical contact with others? You could write very intense and involved love scenes using this concept.

Keep the complex dance of sensual thoughts, actions and reactions in mind when you consider how to show an alien’s POV (point of view) and their cultural matrix for interpersonal relationships. Try to apply this information on general psychological reactions to different situations and the basic information about sexual arousal when you create your aliens. The possibilities are endless.


Thank you.


Barbara K.

Romances With Aliens

Romances With Aliens...

Apparently, it was last Saturday --a week ago-- that the allegedly alien lights were seen in the sky over Stratford-Upon-Avon (but I did not see it on the news until Thursday).

Last Monday, the distributor from the UK sent me an email to tell me that Insufficient Mating Material is now in stock in the UK, in case I wanted to promote it a bit. I've cried Wolf! in good faith so many times to my friends in the UK, that it's a bit of a problem being believed, not to mention my own embarrassment!

Anyway, when I saw the TV report and heard the description of the lights, I had a "Close Encounters" moment.

"How can I make something of a triangle?" I thought. "As a signal!"

In my books --and probably every other alien romance or action adventure-- sign language is used, because not all species can speak, and because we're used to soldiers and swat teams making signals to one another.

"And, it has to be something to do with Romance or Sex."

Do you remember the childish designs we made using W, X, Y, Brackets?

So then, I put out a specious press release (sort of), claiming responsibility for something that had nothing whatsoever to do with me.

"Insufficient Mating Material arrived in the UK to widespread awe and speculation... and much confusion.

Alien Star Forces commanders assumed that Earthlings would understand that a display of a triangle formation was a signal of their peaceful interest in human pubic regions."

I know there were two other moving lights. I had an explanation for those, too. Now, I'm writing an interest in pubic triangles into the almost-finished next book.


What other news events are favorite PR hooks for alien romance publicity?

Best wishes,
Rowena Cherry

Attaining Adulthood

An article in the April/May issue of SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MIND, "The Myth of the Teen Brain," offers a thought-provoking rebuttal to the popular belief that the "incompletely developed" brains of teenagers predispose them to immature, impulsive behavior and that adolescent turmoil is an inevitable developmental stage in human growth. The author of this article, Robert Epstein, who has written a book called THE CASE AGAINST ADOLESCENCE, maintains that imaging studies of teenage brains, which purportedly demonstrate a neurological basis for irresponsible behavior in adolescence, don't actually prove what they are claimed to prove. Observed phenomena in brain wiring and chemistry can be the result as well as (or instead of) the cause of environmental factors. Epstein believes the roots of the behaviors that lead people to perceive teenagers as immature and incompetent arise from social rather than neurological sources. He points out that young people in many other societies don't display the same types of "adolescent" behavior (but when exposed to American culture, they often begin to do so). He also cites the findings of historians that "through most of recorded history the teen years were a relatively peaceful time of transition to adulthood. Teens were not trying to break away from adults; rather, they were learning to *become* adults." Teenagers in Western society today, by contrast, have no useful role to play. Stereotypical teenage turmoil results from the "artificial extension of childhood" past puberty. Studies show that teens are as competent as adults "across a wide range of adult abilities." Moreover, in some areas they're superior to adults. For example, as we aging boomers can testify, visual acuity, memory, and the ability to learn new things rapidly. These abilities make evolutionary sense, according to Epstein, because mammals begin to bear young shortly after puberty. If human teenagers hadn't been able to take care of themselves and their offspring competently, the human species would have died out long before the industrial age.

A similar thesis about the roots of teenage angst is proposed in the online article "Why Nerds Are Unpopular." (Google that phrase and read the whole thing. It's fascinating.) The author of this essay begins by asking why intelligence seems to make kids an object of persecution by their peers in high school, but he eventually moves on to the larger issue of what high school is for and the whole issue of how our culture deals with adolescents. Teenagers can't be turned loose to support themselves in a highly technological society, so the "artificial extension of childhood" inevitably ensues. Most American young people, as this author puts it, grow up in an environment "as artificial as a Twinkie," with no function for its form to follow. By contrast, prior to the twentieth century, teenagers were capable of making a genuine contribution to the economic well-being of the family (and, in the working-class level of society, required to do so). In our contemporary U.S. culture (aside from the rare computer-savant prodigies) nobody can earn a living wage without eighteen or more years of school. The only jobs open to most teens are minimum-wage positions in retail and fast food (the latter, as Epstein puts it, having developed specifically to take advantage of this pool of cheap, disposable labor).

Epstein's arguments about the ability of teenagers to learn quickly remind me of the "First Year" phenomenon in Jacqueline's Sime~Gen universe. Young Simes immediately after changeover (which coincides with puberty) have an amazing ability to absorb new knowledge and skills, including language, which for ordinary human beings becomes almost impossible to learn fluently after early childhood. It has been hinted that newly established Gens may also have some of that "First Year" learning capacity. It's easy for readers to forget, when reading HOUSE OF ZEOR and the other books in the series, that most of the "adult" Simes and Gens in the stories are teenagers!

In writing stories of human settlement on distant worlds, we should keep in mind that in a frontier society, young people just past puberty have to take on adult responsibilities. Many of them will marry at that age and start families while they have youthful health and energy, especially if the new colony has a desperate need to increase its population of workers. As Isaac Asimov points out in one of his essays, in preindustrial cultures a boy became a man when he grew a beard, and a girl turned into a woman when she became capable of getting pregnant. (As generations of lovelorn teens have reminded their parents, Juliet was fourteen.) And what about our aliens? Suppose we modeled an intelligent alien species on Terran creatures (many insects, for example) that live only a short time after breeding. They would have to cram all their "adult" living into the life stage we'd ordinarily think of as adolescence.

Is Harry Potter an Alien?

Whoo-hoo, the boy wonder is grown up!

I saw an interview with the actor on TV the other day -- in his real persona, he's scrumptious.

Teens everywhere have throbbing hearts. (so what else is new?)

I haven't read the final installment in the saga yet, though I will. I did see the Phoenix movie as I mentioned last week.

And I've been following all the hype in the media -- and the reporting on the hype.

Boiled down, the media sees the Harry Potter saga as "good vs. evil" and says that accounts for the popularity. (i.e. if it didn't have "good vs. evil" at the core, it wouldn't be popular - they say.)

So since today is Tisha B'Av (the 9th day of the Hebrew Month of Av), the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, and subsequent to that, a day when major blows have fallen on the world, (not a superstition, but historical fact if you look at the dates via the Hebrew calendar) I wanted to explore this "good vs. evil" theme that is so very popular that it lies unquestioned as a model of the real universe we live in.

The premise is that there's more true "Evil" in the world than "Good" and it is the job of "Good" to fight "Evil" even though "Evil" is terrifyingly strong.

And it must be a fight to absolute destruction.

Where "Good" encounters "Evil" there must be combat to annihilation (not Love, not Romance, not persuasion, not understanding, not empathy, not compassion, not problem solving, but COMBAT TO THE DEATH.)

Good vs. Evil is the conflict in Dresden Files, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Supernatural -- maybe not Forever Knight so much -- but many Fantasy novels focus on the vision of the universe in which there is a thin crust of "good" over a seething cauldron of "evil" and it's the plight of a certain few humans to keep "evil" from breaking through.

Potter's fight gets personal, so does the fight of Harry Dresden (who jokes about having Potter's first name, then points out he was named for Houdini.)

Why is Harry Potter such a success when these other shows and novels (which many would say are better written, better crafted, or better backgrounded) have not had similar play?

And where does that view of the universe as floating on a seething cauldron of Evil come from?

Frankly, I don't know any answer to Potter's success exceeding that of other novels except publicity.

I saw an interview on the Lehrer News Hour with a top Children's Librarian and a publisher, and their consensus was that it's the MEDIA that made Harry Potter more successful than other equally good books about the same topics.

I read a statistic that readers who gobble up Harry Potter novels, still only increase the sale of other books by barely 10%. Potter is ALL they read. For the rest of their time it's computers, games, music downloads, text-messaging, maybe Potter fanfic.

Harry Potter is a tiny (itsy-teensy) fraction of Scholastic Publishing's annual gross sales (Scholastic is the US distributor). But those same interviewees mentioned above considered that this whole set of novels will become a classic that new crops of 11 year olds will be reading into the far future. They will continue to sell.

This "Good" must fight "Evil" is a general portrait of reality that is, I think, not "believed" so much as "assumed" by the general public. It's never challenged or discussed in grammar school where you learn your view of the universe.

Here the question of whether Harry Potter is an alien (and therefore a fit subject for "alien romance" (definitely of the djinn variety)) gets really abstract.

Harry Potter taps into a somewhat new twist on a very old mythology. The prevailing Group Mind, or general mindset in the world today (including among those without the education to know what the word "philosophy" actually refers to) has changed drastically in the last 50 years -- maybe 70 or so years.

We've never been so obsessed with "Evil" since maybe The Inquisition.

To see how it all fits together, we have to be able to step back from our Civlization -- way, way back -- and view ourselves as the result of the flowering of the Greek culture.

The Greeks took over from the huge world-conquering Egyptian culture that spread mathematics, science and learning throughout North Africa and the Middle East all the way around the top of the Mediterranean. According to some archeologists, there is an odd coincidence between the bare beginning of the fall of Egypt and the best guess date for the Parting Of The Red Sea.

That's just a theory, but we're fiction writers here and we play with history and pre-history all the time.

The Greeks invented "democracy" made mathematics even more useful than the Egyptians did for building big things, and worshipped gods whose family relationships have to be described today as "dysfunctional" -- the Greek ideals included naked games, homosexuality and even what today in America would be statutory rape of young boys.

The Greeks fell and the Romans ate up their culture and made it their own -- growing bigger than Greece ever had, reaching all the way to Britain (I've been reading the lastest of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Avalon series -- this one, Ravens of Avalon, by Diane Paxton).

Rome fell -- etc -- and after various invasions and so on, Britain erupted in fleeing Pilgrims who founded what eventually became the American Colonies - and then us.

Our modern Civilization is a direct descendent of Ancient Eqypt -- if you look at it like say, Francisco St. Germain (Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's vampire) might.

Ancient Egypt was ruled by "gods" who became incarnated and often produced the Heir Apparent mating with their closest sibling.

But Greek philosophy gave us a way of looking at the world which is now and always has been diametrically opposed to the MYSTICAL or MAGICAL way of looking at the world.

The Greeks laid the foundation for the later works in Britain by Bacon which promulgated the scientific method.

The notion is that the Universe is a mechanism -- a giant clock -- and nothing more. It's just a machine, and it runs by itself. There is no such thing as a "seething cauldron of Evil" and no Evil to fight. The "worst" behavior of their gods (Dyonisis comes to mind) was actually celebrated and lauded.

Almost all of science is based on this Helenistic Philosophy. Our civilization has had enormous success applying this philosophy (remember Science used to be called Natural Philosophy for a reason.)

Just skipping over the Assyrians and Babylonians -- we're looking at the invention of the Wheel as around 3,000 BCE, The Patriarch Abraham at around 2100 BCE (give or take), and Egypt invades Canaan at around 1950 BCE, and the Israelites being enslaved in Egypt around 1300 BCE -- with Moses leading the escape around 1250 (that can be argued vigorously on a lot of sides. The general figure for the length of the sojourne in Egypt is about 400 years, but slavery came at the end) And the fall of Egypt around 1065 BCE (they had a couple changes of "dynasty" in there, struggling to survive.)

First Olympic games in Greece around 776 BCE.

Founding of Rome about 753. About 509 BCE The Roman Republic is founded. 399 BCE Socrates is condemned to death for heretical teaching. 323 BCE birth of Euclid. Egypt still exists but it's not THE power in the ancient world. 170 Rome invades Egypt. (see Shakespear)

When one country invades and conquers another, the conquerer acquires a lot of the attitudes and valuable accomplishments of the conquered. The cultures blend with every intermarriage. Remember, the Romans didn't care what god you worshipped as long as you also worshipped the Roman gods and the Emperor got his due. That's cool, until it runs up against Monotheism, and the Egyptians had sun worshipping monotheists who were not a majority though.
In Israel, the monotheists were a majority.

So today's secular majority relying on a view of the universe that sees reality as an uncaring machine that can be manipulated by science if only we know enough -- that SHOULD be manipulated by science to subjugate the world to our Will -- is the direct descendent of the philosophy promulgated in Greece.

Why would the Greeks, Romans and their spiritual ancestors, the Egyptians, Babylonians and Assyrians, have wanted so very much to believe the universe is just a mechanism, and there is no such thing as "good" and "evil?"

Just read the mythology -- how their gods handled power and personal relationships (seduction but never romance.) Those powerful, unseen, Evil Entities who diced with human lives and had to be appeased with offerings are the contents of that "seething cauldron of Evil." They became the symbol of "Evil" because they had immense power over mortals, but no love for us.

Can't you see why the Greek Natural Philosophers would think it would be so much nicer if those gods didn't really exist? Or didn't have all the power? Pythagoras comes to mind.

Running counter to the development of our "Natural Philosophy" called modern science there was the philosophy of the line of the Patriarch Avraham and all the cultures and religions that sprang from him.

Now I can't give a reprise of the Qabalistic view of the universe here. You can get a lot of the "real thing" on chabad.org if you want it. If you google Kabbalah and variant spellings you'll get all kinds of kooky nonsense mixed in with the version I'm talking about, so start at chabad.org .

But the essence of the notion is that the Creator of the Universe not only Created the world -- but continues to do so moment to moment.

Existence itself is sustained by the deliberate application of Divine Will. Every single moment and every single event in your very personal life is a miracle. All of this is a Word being spoken by the Creator RIGHT NOW. And it's a song of love.

The essence of Qabalah lies within its notion of the purpose of human existence, the purpose of Life.

The premise is that all souls were created at the moment of creation -- there are no newer souls (unlike some other esoteric traditions). Souls reincarnate enough times to master all 613 Commandments in the first 5 Books Of Moses (the first 5 books of the Bible).

The purpose of mastering the Commandments is to use them to uncover the sparks of Godliness hidden within all the elements of our material reality.

The Creator Created the world twice (this is described in Genesis). The first time the blast of the pure essence of this Divine Being shattered the vessels that held creation. The pieces flew apart and fell "down" -- chaos -- the second time, we got Creation as we know it today.

But the Divine sparks of pure good attract the flotsam of the shattered vessels and become encrusted with this dross. The dross isn't Evil and it isn't bad, it's also a result of Creation and exists by the Will of the Divine which is Good and basically pure Love.

Our job is NOT to "battle evil" or to cram it back down under the thin crust of good, because there really is no such thing as "Evil" -- there is only this icky dross clinging to and smothering the light of Goodness.

Our task is not to destroy that dross but to TRANSFORM IT INTO GOOD --to peel away the dross and uncover the gold within and send those golden sparks of divine substance winging back upward, and thus elevate the dross.

The idea is to uncover the hidden goodness within every individual and situation and to elevate the not-so-good to be better. Life is not a punishment detail -- it's what our souls were created for.

We're designed for this world and this job. So it's FUN. It's joy in its purest form to find goodness and unleash it. (classic Romance writing lesson: what does she see in him? How do you know it's "love?" -- answer: each brings out the best in the other's personality.)

Philosophically, the Qabalistic notion has battled the two other notions down through the ages with first one then the other predominating.

So there are 3 major philosophies extant today (plus a zillion smaller ones).

The "seething cauldron" model of reality. The "just a mechanism" model of reality. And the "big mess to clean up" Qabalah model of reality. (the process of cleaning up that mess is called Tikun Olam, fixing the world. You do it by love, not combat.)

Everyone HAS a philosophy, though very few know what their own philsophy is, and most deny having one at all. But it's like breath - you can't live without it.

They say "there's no accounting for taste" but that's not true. Your "taste" comes from your philosophy which resides in your subconscious and jerks your life around unbeknownst to you -- i.e. creates such things as "love at first sight".

The "taste" for the Harry Potter tale wrapped in its FIGHT AGAINST EVIL is caused by the philosophy that the world REALLY IS a thin crust over a seething cauldron of Evil and all we can do is fight or run screaming.

I saw an interview on TV with people standing in line to get the last Potter book, and one young girl in costume told the camera "yes, magic is real" (and from the tone of voice it was clear she didn't mean that metaphorically - we're talking 12 year old girl here).

Something in our current civilization has convinced a huge number of people that Evil is real and the only righteous response to Evil is to Fight it.

And thus Harry Potter is a Hero to young children who have imbibed this subconscious assumption from parents, friends, teachers, books, movies, films, DVDs, and GAMES, maybe past lives too.

I mentioned "love at first sight" -- there is (in the magical view of the universe) a certain reality to the "recognition" and "attraction" to things and people from past lives -- and who represent a subconsciously held highest aspiration.

The world today is very much like Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover -- the world where there is an intransigent war between the technological civilization from Earth and the indigenous ESP based civilization of the planet Darkover. That war is on moral grounds.

Today we "believe in science" and look to our labs to produce solutions to every ill if we only throw enough money at them. But something inside says "no, that's not the whole truth" -- or "Wait! There's More! If you phone right now - " --

People reach back into prior lives (maybe from Atlantean times?) and find the dim etching of an almost memory of the Magical View of the universe -- and they want that view to be true.

Remember, in my blog entry about the Robert Heinlein Centennial, I said I learned that Heinlein had held memories of past lives even into his teens. It is common for young children of the Potter reading demographic to have echoing memories of past lives -- lived in a time when Magic was considered "real."

But that view of the universe also scares people terribly -- because in Greece and Rome, the most power over "reality" was wielded by insane entities called gods who did not know how to love.

Most of the people who are trying to learn Qabalah today don't understand the thousands of years of history that spawned these 3 major philosophies.

So they look at the world, see really BAD stuff all around, and accept the explanation that Evil has to be Fought. (to me that's like cutting starfish in half to get rid of them).

They want Magic to be REAL, so they can have a tool to Fight Evil (because Science can't Fight Evil, because Evil doesn't exist in the scientific view of the universe).

It appears, in our modern universe, those are your only choices, fight evil, condone it or foster it by ignoring its existence. (Qabalah teaches a fourth approach to the problem.)

So Harry Potter as an adult now becomes a really sexy attraction because he has acquired the Power to Fight Evil! He's become our Protector. And from the scientific view of reality, he truly is "alien" because of that Power -- and science is losing the battle against Evil because Science doesn't know it's in a battle.

You shouldn't have any trouble googling up some hot-sweaty-sexy Harry Potter fanfic on the web. Look it over and think about what these people are really writing about in their own lives. Then think about other ways to parse the problem so it can be solved.

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