Capek and the Talinians of Forlani Saga

     Karel Capek was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but his writing career coincided almost precisely with the period of the first Czechoslovakian Republic, between World Wars One and Two.  He was a close associate of the Czech president Masaryk and thus at the crossroads of all the developing political theories of the time, from Communism to Fascism.  These new ideas are often reflected and satirized in his works.  Best known perhaps for coining the term "robot" in the play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), he was never afraid to deal with dark, dystopian perspectives.  These sort of visions predominate in the novel War With the Newts, originally in Czech, and thus known by various titles in the many languages that it was translated into.

     Capek's newts originate on Earth, in the Pacific near Indonesia, where they are discovered and quickly bred and exploited by humans, who also experiment on them scientifically.  Soon they proliferate to form a slave race that performs all sorts of work on and under the water for their masters, who scorn and mistreat them.  Eventually they revolt, at first secretly through sabotage and clandestine activities, and eventually in an open conflict.  Because they quickly neutralize human navies, far less at home in the water than they are, the advantage swings to their side and they begin to aquaform the Earth into an ideal liquid habitat for them, leaving only a few grim islands where the surviving humans in turn become their subjects.

     This work, which was rapidly recognized as a political allegory, parallels Wells's War of the Worlds and Food of the Gods in many ways, especially in the disorganized and pathetic reactions of human beings to the "invaders."  It serves as an implicit influence for all sorts of modern sci fi works, from the Planet of the Apes movie cycle to such B-movie examples as Empire of the Ants and more thoughtful efforts like Alien Nation and District Nine.  Even the recent zombie cycle The Walking Dead can list Capek as a distant relative.  

     For us, War With the Newts offered both rich biological source material and opportunities for social commentary.  We started in our universe with the postulate that evolution on alien worlds could be very different from that on our planet, which was shaped by various cosmic accidents that could take place in varying ways in other systems, or not at all.  Why not a planet where the evolutionary thread was never interrupted by a Permian extinction, so that amphibians became the alpha life form?  There is nothing to prevent an amphibian life form to develop with all the manipulative limbs of a human -- or even more.  Of course, the approach to fire might be radically different or even absent, but undersea volcanic sources could even furnish the beginnings of a metal technology. Furthermore, being amphibians, newt-like creatures would not be excluded from exploring on land and accessing many resources available to mammalian or other evolutionary groups.

     Our newts in the Forlani Saga universe come from the watery world of Talini, where they developed advanced organization, communication, and technologies. They were not a space-faring race until they experienced First Contact with neighboring planetary civilizations and though they do not excel in space transport, they can travel as passengers with relatively little trouble between systems.  There are numerous parallels for this on our own planet, from Filipino sailors serving on supertankers to African bush pilots of aircraft that their own nations could not build (at least not in the present economy).  Moreover, their adaptability to many divergent liquid environments allows them to become valuable "manpower" on many worlds, fostering a remittance system to their own relatives and the possibility of sooner or later having fleets of their own.  

     In Life Sentence, the reader first encounters Talinians in work teams on the aquaplanet Song Pa, where they engineer jobs for the resident squid-like inhabitants who possess a higher tech level.  Disguising his identity as an indentured human worker for the Song Pai, our protagonist Klein toils alongside Talinian crews in his daily duties.  Their mutual communication takes place via electronic tablets, since humans, Talinians, and Song Pai have vastly diverse vocalizing systems that render sound communication virtually impossible.  Klein exchanges favors with a Talinian nicknamed Fatty, who provides valuable information to the Earthman and later delivers news of his survival to Entara and other friends on Forlan. This allows them to re-establish contact with him just when he most needs their help, for his pursuit of revenge leaves him severely injured and near death (again).  

     In the second novel of the series, Spy Station, Entara and her eldest daughter Ayan'we, delegates to the Zonal Peace Conference form a strong alliance with the chief Talinian delegate, the wise old Kee'ad of Tionar.  They bond with other species, as well as AI individuals of the Robotic Guild, to campaign for peace between bellicose factions, as spies for the warmongers attempt to subvert the conference for their own purposes.  Tionar also becomes an important friend for Ayan'we as she faces difficult choices in her private life.  At the end of the novel, he accompanies the Forlani who leave the space station and helps Ayan'we reach Earth, where she plans to solve her life problems with Klein's daughter Amanda. Other Talinians are already busily working to salvage civilization on our world, which has been decimated by a plague that nearly exterminates the natives.  Henceforth, human Earthlings may not be exclusively dominant, but may share their planet with Talinian and robotic colonists.

     Our Talinian newts are one way of exploring the possibilities of evolutionary plurality.  Their approach to conflict will be quite distinct from human "normalcy." Their priorities in existence will offer relativistic alternatives to the ones we take for granted.  The possible permutations of a water-based life form are unlimited and can make contemporary speculations like Waterworld or Aquaman quite limited in comparison.  Just imagine how the very notion of place takes on whole new dimensions in the eyes of an amphibious creature that was never framed by human precedents!  

Forlani Saga Newsletter #4

Hello again to friends of the Forlani Saga,  

Fun at the Book Fair at Cityspace in downtown Charlottesville.

We'd like to thank all of you who came out to get your copies of Life Sentence and Spy Station at the Charlottesville Book Fair yesterday, and a special welcome to our new members: Martin, Jean, Ben, Bob, Dave, Crystal, Emily and Becky.  It was a fine event, expertly organized by Carolyn O'Neal of the Blue Ridge Chapter of Virginia Writers Club.  We were especially happy to say hello again to some readers who had already enjoyed Life Sentence and who shared their admiration with us.  

Short Story Published

Recently our short story "Whipping Boy" was published in the Creatures, Crimes and Creativity 2017 Anthology.  It deals with a time in the relatively near future (22nd century), when our loaded prisons begin to accept substitutes, first typical humans and then later clones, for criminals rich enough to pay the System to avoid serving out their sentences in person.  When one clone begins to realize he is different from some of the other prisoners and to ask thorny questions, fellow inmates begin to reveal the bitter truth.  Will they tolerate this naive, but curious newcomer or subject him to prison discipline?  Will he ever live to get his own tattoos?  The anthology is a limited printing, but we plan to republish this story with others in a collection.

Spy Station Gets 5 Stars

The first reviews are in on Spy Station, released weeks ago, and they are top rate -- five stars on Amazon.  We hope the rest of you who have ordered the book will add your voices as soon as you can.  Just go to our page and scroll down to the Add A Review button.  https://www.amazon.com/Spy-Station-Forlani-Saga-Book-ebook/dp/B075R3V1RH 

Life Sentence and Spy Station are a great gift bargain

On Amazon Kindle, you can get either novel for $2.99 or both for $5.98.  The printed books are $18.50 and $12.00 respectively.  Treat yourself to a great reading experience, too.  This is the time of year in Iceland, the world's top country for literacy and rates of reading, when people stock up on books for their long winter nights and we should imitate that example.

Next Events

We have been invited to speak at several conferences.  These include the Agile Writers Conference in Richmond in January, Mysticon at Roanoke in February, and Ravencon in Williamsburg in April.  We plan on adding some local signings in the Fredericksburg area as well.  More to come on these and on the progress of the third series novel, Earth Regained.  For now, we wish you Happy Holidays and continued fine reading.  Jim and John Gaines

Futures Before the Internet: of Star Trek and Blade Runner

 

   Since the mid 1990s, the thrust of American technological progress has come through the commercial Internet.  Streaming video, smartphones and MMO games such as Destiny are but some of the many advances that owe their mass adoption to Internet connectivity.  It is difficult to imagine a world today without the ad-supported commercial Internet, so much that a vast amount of today's futuristic science fiction stories don't even try.  What kind of a world would exist without the ad-supported Internet--or, possibly, if it was replaced by something else?  Some of the more interesting approaches to creating a speculative world without the commercial Internet have been demonstrated by two sci-fi franchises created before its existence.

   For all the sophisticated technology shown on the various Star Trek series, none of them has ever demonstrated a world in which the Internet as we know it exists.  This is a world which has incorporated, over the course of several series, video games that have become so sophisticated that they can simulate actual life experiences (the Holodeck), androids that have become nearly human (Data), starships that can travel considerably faster than light, and matter replicators that could create numerous objects.  Of course, since the Star Trek world is both post-capitalist and post-scarcity, any online connective system that exists in it would likely be very different from the ad-laden, user-data hungry Internet of today, but actual storylines involving "hacking" and the data side of technology can be surprisingly rare over the course of the various Trek series.  Even the latest series, Star Trek Discovery, which has gone out of its way to conform to the tropes of "Prestige TV" in utilizing a darker atmosphere and a very serialized narrative, still does little to explain how a world of such technological wonders would exist without the current Internet.  As its narrative continues to evolve, it seems more preoccupied with conspiracies in the Klingon Empire and the bizarre "Tardigrade Drive" creature than how its technological wonders could work.  Ultimately, Star Trek has always been defined by its striving for a better future than a painstaking analysis of exactly how such a future could work, and Discovery seems likely to maintain this legacy over the course of its run.

   Another pre-online culture sci-fi series that has not incorporated the modern commercial internet is the Blade Runner films.  The first Blade Runner, though set in 2019, was released in 1982, before online services were widely available; its portrayal of a world 37 years from its release date is understandably different from our own.  Its visual aesthetic, of blocky shapes, bright neon, and visible "cyberpunk" technology seems very different from our current 2017 reality.  And yet, it is a world that, if different from ours, is in many ways parallel to it; although there is no "Internet" in Blade Runner, computers clearly have some form of searchable databases and online connectivity.  It is a world that is far more advanced than our own in many ways (complete with flying cars!) and  no less commercially oriented, with gigantic neon billboards for corporations and loud audio advertisements bombarding the citizens of the future megacity Los Angeles at every waking moment.  If not quite the same as our current timeline, Blade Runner in many ways anticipated it from the perspective of the early 1980s.

   The unique aesthetics of this world make a return in its sequel, this year's release Blade Runner 2049.  The various Star Trek series have very different looks in terms of production design; the bright colors of the 1960s original series seem particularly jarring when contrasted to Discovery's comparatively shadowy hues.  Unlike this, the two Blade Runner films strongly resemble each other; 2049 retains the blocky look, flying cars, and gigantic billboards of the original, as well as its dark, noirish color pallete.  But a closer analysis reveals that the advertising technology of 2049 has grown far more advanced than its precursor, with eerie, aetherial holograms populating the sides of buildings and numerous digital billboards...and even the main character, "K"'s apartment.  The "Joi" hologram in K's apartment serves partly as an incredibly sophisticated evolution of the various "personal assistants" available now like Amazon's Alexa; like these, she can obey voice commands and search requests for her owner.  But she is far more advanced than any currently available personal assistant; she is able to perfectly read the emotions of K, arrange her holographic appearance in any manner he desires, and respond to his wants better than a human being could possibly hope to.  The Joi holograms have such an uncanny ability to intuit human emotion that K's final encounter with one occurs in a haunting way that will have the viewer question the motives and programming of them during the entire film.  Though 2049 lacks the familiar "social networks" of our age, it presents a world in which the soul of our Internet--the advertising--has become so incredibly sophisticated that it can achieve an almost human status in our physical world.  What will happen if that technology that Silicon Valley has invested so deeply in--the adware of our current "primitive" Internet--becomes so advanced that it no longer needs a computer screen to reach into our lives?  This is one of the true questions that 2049 poses for our age, as much as the techno-utopianism of Star Trek's seemless replicators was a project of the now-lost optimism of the 1960s.
 

Horror in an Age After Imagination

   This October, in a month of candy, costumes, and commemorative rock music, take a minute to ponder the fates of our original cinematic horror icons.  Vampires have become identified more as the stars of trashy YA romance lit such as the Twilight series than as the classic Lugosi inspired figure.  Frankenstein's Creature is rarely seen onscreen anymore, and succesful films featuring it are even rarer.  Mummies are perhaps the rarest of all, and the last major film featuring a mummy, a poorly reviewed Tom Cruise starring vehicle, inspires little confidence. What's happened to these creatures that once haunted our dreams?

   When these creatures first appeared onscreen, there was still an element of surprise and awe in seeing a legendary horror made flesh. Films about legendary horror creatures date to the very dawn of commercial cinema; the first Frankenstein film dates all the way back to 1910!  During the silent era, the cinematography, makeup, and stylistics of monster films rapidly became more sophisticated, particularly in 1922's Nosferatu, an unlicensed adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula novel.  Early sound films such as 1931's Frankenstein, the beginning of the classic Universal Monsters series, could not match the wondrous cinematography of Nosferatu, but featured amazing acting from horror stars such as Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi.  These films, relatively short (especially by modern standards), and far from the most expensive of Universal releases, were among the most resonant in an America racked by the poverty wrought by the Great Depression and racked by the racial cruelty of Jim Crow laws.  This was a transitional phase in America, a country where people still rarely left the state of their birth and could be awed by Karloff as a mysterious, Egyptian stranger who just may have powers from beyond the grave.  It was a nation that could only see its injustices mirrored in the horrors endured by Frankenstein's creature because the Code and other censorship of the time prevented the honest depiction of racial and other injustices endured by millions of Americans.  In a darkened theatre, in an imaginary realm of shadows and darkness, Americans confronted the strange and the mysterious in the only environment that felt safe to them in a changing, foreboding world.

   Then the worst thing that ever happened to the American horror genre occured--the victory of the Allies in World War II.  America enjoyed a burst of postwar prosperity as the only nation involved in WWII that had not seen its manufacturing centers bombed into a ruin.  In the period of success and equality that followed the war, class equality and incomes grew, racial injustices were slowly rectified through the efforts of civil rights leaders, and the once-formidable Universal Monsters became little more than a punchline in a joke.  It's quite telling that their last collective appearance, in 1948's Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, was a solely comedic one; the "classic" Universal Mummy would also make a last apperance in a comedy, the 1955 film Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.  The Abbott and Costello Mummy film represented the end of Universal's interest in its classic monster films and the death of mainstream Hollywood's interest in horror themes, as the studio's only remaining use for its old creatures was as matinee rereleases and fodder for local TV horror hosts.  The banner of memorable horror releases during the 1950s fell to those nations that were far more devastated than America by WWII, ranging from Japan's Godzilla to Britain's Horror of Dracula.  Products of anguished and wounded nations, these films were more graphic and brutal than the American horror that had preceded them, and those foreign studios that had created them, Japan's Toho and Britain's Hammer, frequently had superior production budgets and better directon than the remaining low budget American horror fare.

   Only as America's involvement in Vietnam lingered on and as storm of societal unrest gathered, did major Hollywood studios finally regain their interest in horror films.  Even as releases like Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist gathered critical acclaim, the classic monsters (no longer were they Universal-made) were typically relegated to poorly made schlock like Dracula vs. Frankenstein and Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks.  Even during the 1980s, a decade full of sexual trauma over the AIDS crisis and the end of the "free love" era, the old creatures were mostly displaced by newer slasher film villains like Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger.  The legendary creatures would receive one last loving homage, the memorable 1987 release The Monster Squad.  A sort of "horror Goonies", this movie managed to make its creatures both funny and scary at the same time, and featured great monster design and makeup which resembled that of the Universal creatures while retaining enough imagination to not being totally derivative of them. Sadly, the aim of horror had already moved past the age of matinees and and films that could still be seen by children; The Monster Squad did not fit the appetite of an audience that had come to value gore and lurid thrills above all else, and the film bombed as a result.

   Now, in the late 2010s, Universal has finally taken interest in its back catalogue of horror films once more. However, the early results are...not optimistic.  Universal's interest in its legendary creatures is no longer a thing of mists and shadowy castles but the stuff of massive franchise crossovers; the studio wants to invest hundreds of millions into creating a "Dark Universe" to rival the imaginary worlds of Marvel and DC, and fling boatloads of expensive CGI at its viewers while doing so. The Dark Universe's first release, the 2017 remake of The Mummy, is emblamatic of this; much of the film isn't even about the mummy itself so much as it is about Tom Cruise's hero character interacting with a pseudo-SHIELD organization that fights monsters around the world.  The mummy wanders around and does stuff, draining the life force of men to sustain herself (conceptually, she's more a vampire than mummy, although I don't know if the screenwriters considered this too heavily) and sets boldly get exploded, but this is a film entirely devoid of imagination, of the striving for the mythic darkness that the old Universal films and even older silent films evoked.  This is the product of an age beyond suggestion, beyond subtlety, beyond thought itself, and in its cynical attempts to rip off the "Marvel model", it evokes another poorly regarded entry in a long-running series, Godzilla: Final Wars, which also pilfered Marvel's SHIELD model of a secret organization and featured CGI-laden fights that were perfunctory and unsatisfying.  There has been no further movement on the Dark Universe following The Mummy's disappointing summer release, suggesting Universal has put its legendary menagerie to rest once more.  Could Universal regain the old vital spirit of madness, that spark that once animated its creature in 1931 while Dr. Frankenstein yelled "It's Alive!"?  Such a thing would mean that our own cinematic dark age, the Age After Imagination, would finally be coming to an end.     

Zombies Redux

     Before chairing a panel at Creatures, Crimes, and Creativity that was largely devoted to zombies as a focus of speculative fiction, I had promised to return to the topic, so here are some further thoughts.  The first thing that struck me from talking with John Maberry, Lester Yokum, F. J. Talley and Sandra R. Campbell (and at an earlier panel on the topic with Weldon Burge an Belinda Gordon) was that zombies, or more properly neo-zombies are now ubiquitous, just folks you might meet around the neighborhood.  I'm surprised they haven't been taken up by Sesame Street.  Americans have become so inured to them that there are now whole sub-genres of fiction devoted to zombie romance, zombie comedy, etc.  Their role as agents or creations of an impending Apocalypse is so mundane in American culture that it no longer gives rise to disputes or surprise.  Indeed, that familiarity may eventually begin to breed a certain contempt, since according to the adage tout beau, tout nouveau, a fad that ceases to draw a spark of recognition is often doomed.  Will zombies soon become the new kid in town who loses his cool when people start to take him for granted?

    Maybe not yet, because zombies have rooted themselves deeply in the sub-structure of American capitalism, below the personal level.  The former Wall Street operative become Wall Street critic Michael Keyser often lambastes zombie banks and zombie finance that rise from the apparent death of insolvency to feed off the flesh of the living citizens, fashioning the bizarrely counter-intuitive economy that has progressed over the past two decades.  Behind the "too big to fail" approach to debt and banking is the same haunting attraction/fear of death that spawns the zombies of page and screen. Americans have existed  for decades now on the edge of a financial precipice, always conscious that the tilt of a recession, a housing crisis, sudden workforce downsizing, medical emergency, a credit disaster, or other series of unfortunate events could set off a dizzying social descent that can dispel family cohesion like a mist and send the proudest middle-class wannabes straight to the homeless shelter without passing go.  Apocalypse is all too obviously now.  

     The Christian heritage fuels zombie angst.  After all, wasn't Lazarus the original neo-zombie?  Didn't Ezekiel prophesy that the Valley of Dead Bones would rise again?  Wasn't Jesus himself a kind of zombie forerunner as he grasped the hand of doubting Thomas and thrust it into the wound in his side? Doesn't nearly every liturgy include a Credo calling for faith in the resurrection of the body?  And what sort of body? What Sunday School teacher has not had to deal with a child's innocent question about whether they will emerge from the grave with rotting flesh?  What has been a sure path to canonization in the Roman Catholic Church, if not the capacity of a dead body to unnaturally refuse to decay?  It is somewhat ironic that, apart from Ancient Egypt, it has mainly been our Christian churches and the Communist Party that have given undertakers and embalming a glorified role.   Afraid of death, we recoil against our own organic condition, reluctant to let go of that dear fleshy karma and distrustful of even the most perfect dharma that could await us.  We sing about that strength of faith in the final verse of Luther's mighty hymn ("let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also..."), but how many quaver at the difficulty of putting it into practice?

   We have to face it: zombies have, in a way, become cozy.  While zombies have to be initially horrifying to elicit the desired chemical response in the audience, making them willing to pay $12.00 (not counting over-priced concessions) to sit and be scared for 120 minutes in a gigaplex theater, the end effect is to desensitize the public to death.  Especially when so many pathetic characters deserve it. As with any other sort of violence and gore, this ultimately serves the purposes of the State by making for a compliant citizenry.  More willing to step out into harm's way if ordered to do so and not complain about the VA hospital. To live placidly on top of a toxic waste dump.  To shelter in place as the tidal surge approaches, when the lawgivers have forgotten to implement an escape plan. To accept to be collateral damage.  To take for granted that those pills might have side effects.  Zombies might actually be the ideal subjects.  Give them a Good Conduct Certificate.

   It is significant that the popularity of zombies has come at the expense of the good old staple of horror, the ghost.  What trick-or-treater, besides Charlie Brown or ET, dresses up as a ghost?  I think I can tell you why: ghosts are unforgivably individualistic and downright scornful of the flesh.  They are ectoplasmic anarchists.  Ghosts don't just stumble about in crowds, they think, they plot, they are selective, they have definite preferences.  They care very much about how humans perceive them, or don't.  I remember the affable ghostly couple in the old television program "Topper" who were always playfully manipulating the feckless Leo G. Carroll, alternately thwarting and protecting him.  Who ever heard of a ghost without a personality? A ghost is nothing but an individual who persists once the body is gone, while a zombie is a (partial) body that persists after the individuality has gone.  It says something about the United States as a culture that we have all but forgotten about the ghosts of individualism to embrace the depersonalized fungibility of the zombie.  

     This lamentable truth does not, I maintain, mean that the zombie is inevitably doomed to be dismissed as an insignificant character type.  Indeed, I believe the future of the zombie genre lies in a further development -- the anti-zombie.  The very differentiation of zombie literature into sub-genres such as zombie romance and zombie comedy promises that zombies will regain that which they lost, that is ti say, personalities.  I would foresee zombies who become conscious of the limitations of their zombified state and search for an anterior consciousness, rather like some of the latter-day Borg in the Star Trek universe who had to deal with the anguish of having to function without the mindless conformity of The Collective.  Seven of Nine in "Voyager" showed that, with the requisite pectoral development, a zombie could actually manage to steal the show from less interesting human characters. The anti-zombie could then join many other mass culture phenomena such as the X-men, the Watchmen, and Spiderman, who have do adapt to their sheer freakishness through understanding, self-discipline, and cunning.  

What an explosion of Russian interest in our blog the past couple of weeks.  Welcome to our new friends.  Let's start a comment thread and give us some updates on what's new in Russian science fiction!  We want to know.

Valerian as Espionage 

     It is not by accident that we chose this poster as an illustration.  Unlike much of the publicity for the Besson film, it conveys a richness of character and diversity that better corresponds to the story than the images that focus only on the characters of Valerian and Laureline in an uncharacteristically threatening pose.  

     Like Besson's earlier sci fi classic, The Fifth Element, this movie has generated heated controversy between its proponents and a large body of detractors who have, we feel, misunderstood and hence misjudged the film as an art work.  The primary reason for this split is probably because Valerian demands the viewer's attention to a degree that is uncommon today.  With most action films, a spectator can run for a pee-pee break or stand in the popcorn line for a few minutes without missing too much, since a few explosions more or less will not vary the plot line, nor will omitting several iterations of "Go! Go! Now!" change the impressions of a character. Not so for Valerian.  The action is non-stop, but the events are also tightly interwoven.  This is because it is more than a science fiction action film.  It is also, fundamentally, a spy film.

     We are probably more sensitive to this spy designation because our own second novel in the Forlani Sage, Spy Station, is also centered on espionage.  Espionage always demands mystery more than direct confrontation.  Another word for spy is secret agent, so espionage presumes secrecy.  Valerian and Laureline are not truly military personnel, but intelligence operatives.  Their primary mission is to retrieve a stolen generator organism.  To perform it, they must employ disguise, deception, and cunning, rather than just blasting their way into an enemy base and destroying it.  Of course, as with any espionage, there is always collateral damage.  But the point is to minimize direct confrontation so as to complete the mission: slip in undetected, snatch the object, escape as intact as possible.  

     Of course, there are lots of fancy accessories.  Just as James Bond has his specially equipped spy cars and his Walther PPK, Valerian and Laureline have morphing body armor and impressive sidearms.  Like those subject to JamesBondage, sci fi fans sometimes put undue emphasis on these technical gadgets to the detriment of story line and character (a classic example that pokes fun at fan obsessions is the wonderful parody Galaxy Quest). However, the discerning spectator needs to avoid excessive concentration on details in order to keep the overall operation in focus -- one needs to see the forest as well as the trees.  It is essential to "follow the money," or in this case, the predicament of the Pearls and their last surviving pet generator beast.  This is what all the critics and viewers who complain that Valerian is "hard to follow" have failed to do.

     Another complication in this confusion is that this film departs from the usual trends of military sci fi, since it is the military that has caused the problem and that ultimately poses the greatest threat to the survival of The City of a Thousand Planets, Space Station Alpha.  It is important to remember that the Pearls' home world is ravaged as collateral damage in a military engagement that they have no part in.  It is the human space rangers who are responsible for the very radiation that threatens Alpha, since they turned the Pearls into galactic refugees.  For their part, the Pearls do not envision any threat to the other species on the station and take great pains to "slime" their opponents rather than killing them when they have the chance.  The danger lies in the military chain of command (the backbone of much military sci fi), while salvation eventually requires the space rangers to essentially mutiny in support of "humanitarian" ends (how strange that phrase sounds in the face of an interplanetary, interspecies reality that we all may have to face sooner than we imagine). The Space Cadets in the audience will always have trouble accepting a conflict where the military is at fault, just as war buffs cannot help finding issues with Platoon.  All the more so when the smarter of the spy pair is -- unforgivably for some -- a woman.

     For anyone who has made their way through one of John le Carre's contorted spy tales, Valerian is not truly that hard to follow.  In many ways, it can be compared to one of the cinematic adaptations of Fleming's Bond stories, though in this case the spies have to navigate the interdimensional Big Market instead of the canals of Venice, deal with slinky females who can shape shift, and avoid an enforcer who looks like Ghostbusters' Zool and tears apart space ships instead of just throwing an iron hat.  It is a travelogue where the viewer is zipped through space and time as well as mere geography.  In fact, this is cleverly underlined by Besson in the Big Market sequence when a couple of kitsch-collecting American tourists provide a humorous homage to Sheriff J. W. Pepper on vacation in The Man With the Golden Gun.  It can be said that Valerian is, in typically French fashion, very intertextual as well as interdimensional.  Very nouveau roman!  

     In some ways, Valerian and Laureline are unlike Bond in that they are super-conscious of their role as secret agents and the human price they pay to do their jobs.  They are closer to the realm of George Smiley.  Their courageous friend Bubbles, done to surprising perfection by Rihanna, belongs more with the endearing figures in Smiley's People than the tinsel superficiality of the Bond Girls.  Laureline, who is, we must remember, an "old-fashioned girl" from the Middle Ages in her comic strip genesis, forces Valerian to renounce his philandering ways as a tombeur de filles to an extent that Bond, even in On Her Majesty's Secret Service or Casino Royale (sic),  never has to endure.  How appropriate, since Laureline is never a fille but a fully conscious and unrepentant woman.  

     The espionage plot in Valerian unfolds in stages, as most spy intrigues must.  On the surface, things begin with what appears to be a simple caper, recovering an object of dubious legitimacy.  Casino Royale begins as an attempt to recover money embezzled by a labor official,  Dr. No with the disappearance of a bird watcher, Goldfinger with a vacationer cheating at gin rummy.  There is always more going on than is apparent, a seemingly sinister organization at work, many levels of things being covered up.  There are obligatory escape sequences that have to introduce surprise after surprise, preferably contrasting extremely bizarre elements with others that are mundane and ironically comical.  There is spycraft and the inevitable awkwardness of dealing with superiors who always demand more than is reasonable and reveal less than is necessary.  In Valerian there is even the arch-enemy, the mole in the system who has a personal agenda that is counter to the general welfare.  

     We will return to Valerian in a future post to deal with some further issues of characterization.  We hope that this discussion of the "spy side" of the movie will cause people to return and review it with a fresh perspective.  Clearly, it is a film that, like The Fifth Element is destined not just for cult popularity, but ultimately for a classic status.

Another Close Call for our World

We're just back from a wonderful cruise along the the Norwegian coast on the Hurtigruten Line's MS Nordnorge.  As we docked briefly at Risoyhavn on the Vesteralen island of Andoya, we learned about a scary and unlikely incident back in 1995.

Andoya is home to Norway's modest space program, which is located on the seaward side of the island.  Therefore, sailing up the coastal channel, we did not see it, but only the mountains between it and us.  

Launches at Andoya are strictly scientific and employ Black Brant missile systems.  Most of the research focuses on Arctic phenomena, such as the aurora borealis and its relationship to the magnetosphere.  

Such was the 1995 mission that almost led to a global nuclear conflict.  A missile aimed at the Norwegian far-north archipelago of Svalbard unfortunately assumed a course and a radar profile similar to that which would be produced by a US Trident nuclear-tipped missile launched from one of the numerous submarines we maintain in Arctic waters close to Russia.

The incident only lasted ten minutes until the Russian military was able to determine that this was not a first strike against their country.  Nevertheless, their version of the Nuclear Briefcase was brought to President Boris Yeltsin and a retaliatory strike was being organized when the stand-down was given. You see, there is not much time to think, since it would take an American sub-launched missile only ten minutes to reach Moscow.  This was at least the second time that cool-headedness on the Russian side saved the planet from an apocalyptic war, the previous time being a 1983 incident that is still not completely explained in a convincing manner.

When the several thousand natives of Andoya learned of this after the fact, they were astonished their little municipality could have such far-reaching influence.  They celebrated the big misunderstanding with a droll Norsk sense of humor by printing up a batch of t-shirts inscribed with the message "We Started World War III!"

Cephalopods and the Forlani Universe

     One of our new UK friends, S. e. Murphy, recently asked on Facebook why we have cephalopods playing an important part in our Forlani novels.  First of all, the word cephalopod may seem strange, but they are creatures almost everyone is familiar with: octopi, cuttlefish, squids, and nautili.  As mollusks, they are a very ancient life form, having emerged and dominated the Earth's seas long before most life was crawling up on land.  Like the nautilus, ancient cephalopods had an external shell, which modern octopi and other members of the family have lost, although they still have a small internal remnant of the old shells.  Unlike the modern nautilus, ancient cephalopods, such as the ammonites in the picture, could be huge.  They were a dominant, alpha species in their watery environment and ruled the planetary seas.  Perhaps, if extinction events on Earth had happened differently, they might still be here today.

     Modern cephalopods often show extreme intelligence for such a "primitive" animal.  Octopi and others have well-developed senses and surprising problem-solving ability.  They can squeeze themselves through tiny holes to get to new places.  Moreover, they are skillful stalkers and hunters, able to outwit their prey.  Their color-changing powers, linked to a complex range of emotions, can be used to express messages to others of their kind or to camouflage themselves almost instantly against enemies.  Who knows whether, if environments on Earth had allowed them to continue developing over hundreds of millions of years after the great ammonites became extinct, octopus intelligence might not have developed far beyond our current human limits?

     In some ways, it might seem that cephalopods might be evolutionarily blocked by living in the sea, but there is absolutely no necessity for this.  Several years ago, we viewed a television program where scientists and artists proposed various types of amazing alien life that might exist in the cosmos, and one of them was a huge, intelligent, land-roving octopus.  Wait a minute, you might object, how could they come up on land?  It's true existing cephalopods don't have lungs, but consider whether they might be able to develop bladder-like organs that could store enough oxygenated water to allow them to start exploring the land.   After all, the opposite has happened in the case of our oceans' present intelligence champions, the marine mammals.   The ancestors of whales, dolphins, walruses, and other marine mammals were once four-footed, fur-bearing coastal mammals that ventured into the tides to search for their food, slowly and gradually developing the ability to live in the sea for long periods of time.  Need more proof?  Darwin discovered it in the Galopagos, where in relatively recent geological time, land-dwelling iguanas evolved to become comfortable in the sea and dependent on it for survival.  On another world, given time and luck, cephalopods could adapt to land, at least on a part-time basis.

    That is how we arrive at the Song Pai, the space-worthy cephalopods of the Forlani universe.   we postulate a world where cephalopods develop in size, intelligence, and power to an advanced point. Their planet, Song Pa, had an older, land-based dominant life form which unfortunately destroyed itself through reckless genetic engineering.   This left the stage open for the emergence of the cephalopods and their inheritance of the vacant lands that were still loaded with the technological lore of the Ancient Ones.  Earthly octopi are notoriously opportunistic, and the Song Pai are likewise. They master the engineering of their hapless forerunners and, like them, move on into space.

    Our Song Pai share many characteristics of existing terran octopi.  Above all, they are aggressive and competitive.  Think of them as viking squids.  Yet they are fiercely protective of the newly hatched.  The Song Pai life cycle has several stages, from cherished hatchling to dog-eat-dog adolescence through adult adaptation to a strict hierarchical order.  We also postulate that the Song Pai would face a problem common to all alpha species -- overpopulation.  Their solution is to restrict breeding so that only the bravest are allowed to reproduce, albeit posthumously!  By proving its valor in kamakazi-like space battles, a Song Pai warrior, its eggs and sperm cryogenically preserved on the home world, is given the honor of having them released in the hatcheries and passing on its genes. Life and death exist together in a unique set of priorities that make Song Pai a fascinating type of creature, capable of many, many types of actions and reactions

     The Song Pai are introduced in Life Sentence as allies and protectors of the female-dominated, quasi-marsupial Forlani.  The "squids" honor the Forlani because of their common devotion to generation and the ongoing life force.  Notably, they protect the Forlani from humans, who long to exploit them and their planet.  The human convict Klein, protagonist of the first volume, develops an irresistible urge for revenge against the haughty cephalopods because of a personal matter, and it is exacerbated by a period of slave-like labor in their service.  In the second novel, Spy Station, due out later this year, Song Pai reappear at a peace conference on Space Station Varess, where an assembly of aliens has been convened to prevent a war between Song Pai and a mysterious and powerful race called the Blynthians.  The Song Pai's aggressiveness threatens to make Entara's peace initiative fail. Even worse, a number of secret agents employed  by potential war profiteers stretches the alliance with the Forlani to the breaking point, but also leads to the discovery of new and unexpected qualities in the cephalopods.  Introduce yourself to them by getting Life Sentence on Amazon and stay tuned for the upcoming release of Spy Station.  Follow this blog to stay in the know.

Star Wars and the Election of 2016

    People of many persuasions are scratching their heads to explain what happened last fall in the presidential popularity contest, but they are overlooking many factors, perhaps because they are too rooted in the past to see into the future.  They say soldiers are always trying to fight the LAST war instead of the one they are in, so why not consider a different type of war to explain what happened? A Star War!  

     Let's take as a starting point that by the time Hillary Clinton faced up against Donald Trump in November, she had already lost.  She lost a long time before she started running against the Donald. In fact, it was obvious that she had lost at her party's nominating convention, and actually some time before that. Oh, she could in fact have beaten Trump, but she had already made decisions that rendered that impossible when she and her staff and her DNC friends so badly underestimated what was happening to the only other campaign in town, that of Bernie Sanders.  

    Hillary's brand of candidacy was set in stone before the primaries began (and in fact remains in force among the DNC establishment):  she was going to sweep the female vote and the minority vote even more effectively than Obama had done, and she was going to raise humongous sums of money to blow away any Republican opposition.   She took the second half of this strategy to such a point that she not only raised more than she needed for 2016, but was already piling up cash and promises for 2020.  It was a done deal -- how could she lose?

     Meanwhile, in a galaxy far, far away, another candidate believed in something other than electoral technology.  Remember, Hillary was essentially running from Coruscant.  New Yorkers seemed not to care that she did little for them in the Senate but run for higher office.  Eh! That had happened before. Wall Street didn't give a rat's derriere what had happened in Benghazi or Kiev, or anywhere else as long as it didn't disturb their balance sheets.  In fact, there was always somebody poised to make money over another little war.  And as for the Times, they loved her cuddly relationship with Netanyahu and were prepared to blame any misfortunes on the Putins and Xis of the world.  

    On the other hand, here was this character running from Tatooine.  Vermont, the pits of the United States in political terms: small, remote, sparsely populated, and poor.  And their champion a geezer who looked even older than Clinton and whose only power seemed to be "an elegant weapon from a more civilized age," rewarmed Cold War non-communist socialism.   For heaven's sake, nobody even remembered that old saw -- those old crackpots had been subverted and replaced by the Blairs and Hollandes and Merkels.  Or had they?  Among the youth of the USA, Sanders' sensible socialism slashed like a light sabre.  They were a generation whose future had been sold out, forsaken, beguiled by the promises of a "sharing economy" that they were quick to realize was no more than a new kind of  wage slavery without rights, unions, or pensions.  They had grown up with fifteen-year wars that were going nowhere, crusades against all sorts of invisible enemies and evaporated paradises.  They were willing to believe in a Force and still are.

     Hillary was confident she could prevail.  She and her husband had run Democratic Conventions before, and thanks to that heritage, she possessed the Death Star of party politics -- the superdelegates who could un-vote any challenge.  Trump even made things so much easier, because how could Sanders refuse to submit with such an awful alternative confronting the nation?  But she just didn't get it.  Sanders knew deep down that he was probably going to lose, but he knew what he had to do to at least offer some future to the kids who were willing to try something new.  What was it Obi-wan said to Darth at the end of their duel? "If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."  Hillary never realized that she could not win because she had always already discounted Sanders and his rebels.  She refused to admit her weak points, and there was not just one exhaust port that was not adequately shielded against ALL attacks.  

     Of course, the struggle is far from over.  In this galaxy, the Death Star of the two-party monopoly was never destroyed; in fact, it  was barely damaged.  The Sanderistas will have to count on some rough moments ahead. There will be more than one rout at Hoth to deal with. Yet this rebellion seems to have a lot of room to grow, as fewer and fewer of the youth accept the barrage of propaganda that is served up about the economy, foreign affairs, acceptable morality, or other chapters of the Prosperity Gospel that is forced on them.  Science fiction is speculation par excellence, but then again, so is politics, as anyone who ever doubted that we would be ruled by an orange-haired clown other than Bozo or Ronald McDonald can attest.  Reality may turn out to be stranger than science fiction.

Greenhouses on Mars? --Some Things We Still Need to Know

      Donald Trump recently ordered NASA to send men to Mars by 2020, at at most 2024 and they wisely replied that it wasn't going to happen.  In this post, we want to examine a few biological reasons why we need a lot more experimentation before we talk about colonization.  In science fiction the viability of agriculture on alien worlds or even in deep space has often been taken for granted.  Consider the greenhouse that Sean Connery's character destroys in Outland, the ridiculously undersized plantations in generation ships like the one in Space Mutiny, or the floating remnants of national parks defended by  Bruce Dern and his bots in Silent Running.  But the truth is that we have precious little information on how plants would exist (or not) far from the vicinity of Earth.

     So far, our expeditions to Mars have focused only on machines.  Can we assume that photosynthesis, the key to any kind of agriculture, would function the same, or function at all, on the surface of Mars?  Is the light on Mars sufficient to allow plants familiar and useful to humans to grow in any sufficient quantity to provide food, oxygen, and waste recycling? Optimists will immediately reply that all will be well once a bit of terraforming is done. However, we should probably make sure that is true, or at least likely, before we begin the immensely expensive process of modifying the atmosphere of the Red Planet.  Even if we are able to construct a magnetosphere to reduce the atmospheric erosion of solar bombardment, would it be enough to enable a viable agricultural infrastructure?  It would seem necessary to observe some kind of plant growth experiments in the vicinity of Mars in order to determine if it works.  And we cannot begin this possibly "polluting" activity until we know a lot more about whether there is already any kind of microbial life on that world.   We cannot afford to take it for granted that great forests would simply spring up as they do in Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles.  

     Even if terrestrial plants could be coaxed into growing in an existing or easily altered Martian atmosphere and soil, that does not in itself solve all the problems.  One great menace to Earth's plants today is the massive decrease in pollinator populations.  After all, it is not enough just to plant seeds, for the plants must be able to reproduce themselves in the new environment.  Some plants can be pollinated without zoological help, but would they be able to prosper not just for a single season, but in such a way as to re-enrich the soil to a point where continual production is guaranteed?  One element in soil quality is the lowly earthworm, but now we need to know also if that whole collection of creatures could also function sufficiently well beyond the Earth's orbital neighborhood.  Even the experiments performed with biologicals on the ISS are not enough yet to answer these questions.

     It is worthwhile to ponder also who would be the farmers of a colonized Mars.  On Earth, the people who own and manage farms are not necessarily the people who do the work. The majority of human farmers could never afford the price of transportation to another planet. Would governments or corporations be able to persuade them to make the leap?  In our novel Life Sentence, we examine the vicissitudes of agriculture on the colonial world of Domremy.  Most of the  manual labor can only be procured by transporting prisoners, as happened in colonial Australia.  But on Domremy, the majority of the convicts are inept at agriculture and the only success is among a refugee religious sect, The Circle, which has learned subsistence farming the hard way on Earth.  Can you picture NASA's astronomical engineers spending a back-breaking day hoeing rows of vegetables? John Deere will not be right down the road to provide specialized machinery to replace manual work, either.  It is hard to imagine Earth-based governments or corporations paying the transport bill for farm workers without any established proof of profitability.  

     There may even be difficulties in constituting a panel of experts to mull over these problems.  The scientists of Cargill and Monsanto are used to dealing with inalterable terrestrial conditions that they can easily master and mold to their demands, even if it means using economic arm-twisting to force distant farm populations to grow commercial crops, engineering new genetic creations to fit the market, or displacing whole communities thousands of miles to accommodate Big Ag.  The rules will be changed on a new planet. Even the questions to be asked may be radical departures.  They will have to be asked and solved by people on the ground, not in the board rooms.  The issues of agricultural subsistence are being constantly avoided on this planet, lest they disrupt the large-scale economies of multinationals.  Can NASA, ESA, the Russians, or maybe even the Indians or the Chinese reach down to consult practical farming communities to help in the propective greening of Mars?  If so, it might be better to start sooner than later.  In dealing with Mars, mankind will not have the luxury of the many "throw-away" colonies that failed during our own colonial period.  Without careful preparation, our settlements on Mars might become Lost Colonies that would make Cuttihunk, Roanoke Island, L'Anse aux Meadows, or Parris Island look like sedate tea parties.

Why Attend Science Fiction Conventions?

In the three years since we have become active in the science fiction community, we have come to discover the many advantages of science fiction conventions, known among the crowd simply as cons. We have attended several in the immediate area of our home in Virginia, and there are at least two more in this state alone that we look forward to visiting. Within driving range in North Carolina, Maryland, West Virginia and the District of Columbia, there are several more, and Jim will be present out of state for the first time later this year at the Creatures, Crime, and Creativity meeting in Columbia, Maryland. This does not even begin to mention some of the even larger cons, such as San Diego's famous Comicon or the many overseas cons that have proliferated over the years. Participating in any con involves some time and expense, which often runs to three days and several hundred dollars unless the venue is within commuting distance. However, we have found that the experience is invaluable in a variety of ways and no aspiring author or fan should miss the opportunity. Here are a few of the specific reasons to attend a con.

First of all is education in the sci fi profession, particularly for indie authors like ourselves, who do not have large publishing houses to coordinate the plethora of activities involved in bringing out a book. While there are resources, in print and otherwise, that offer guidance not only in writing a text, but in the subsequent stages of editing, formatting, publishing, marketing, and publicizing, there is no substitute for plunging yourself into an environment where hundreds of authors and fans are brimming with first-hand information that is more up-to-date than almost anything in print. Furthermore, at con panels, one can ask questions and get an immediate and frank response, along with personal reactions to all sorts of situations that can bewilder any neophyte. We gathered precious tips on how to negotiate the myriad complexities of self-publishing, after having spent a couple of years delving into the maze of agents and large or small publishers with only modest results. The publishing industry is in such a state of flux that timely information is absolutely necessary in order to avoid missteps. Once one can follow trails laid out by more experienced hands, the self-publishing road is not at all as difficult as it may seem at first glance. From working with Kindle Direct and CreateSpace, to finding a good cover artist and copyrighting, cons can provide links to virtually any question one may run into.

In addition, cons give very palpable examples in marketing and publicity. At most cons, there are authors who are engaged in readings or signings – these are perfect examples to follow in the distribution of one's own books. You can develop strategies that will work for getting your own books to the public. In fact, there are so many different types of examples, that you can pick strategies that seem appropriate for the particular type of book that interests you. You can compare, mix and match dozens of approaches to find one that best suits your own goals and capabilities as a writer. We have always been amazed at the openness and generosity of accomplished sci fi authors who are willing to welcome new voices into the fold and to share their pitfalls and triumphs with newcomers. This is priceless for us, because like most authors, our first love is writing itself, and the skills and methods involved in sharing a book with the public demand a completely new orientation that can be daunting to the normally introspective bookworm. Just grasping the fact that presenting anything from a stand-alone novel to a whole sci fi series requires a long-term investment of thinking and effort, rather than an overnight business success, is a crucial step in reaping the rewards of interaction at a con.

At a convention, a writer soon realizes the wide scope of the sci fi community, since the span of

subgenres, as well as associated genres like urban fantasy, steampunk, comic horror, etc., is present everywhere. Ideas abound in often overwhelming profusion. One soon sees that the novel aspects that originally seemed so isolated and incomparable are part of a universe of speculation reaching out in every direction through time and space. Needless to say, you walk away from a con with a million new notions about character, plot, timing, dialogue, research, and every other facet of the construction of a story. One the one hand, it's humbling to take into account how much everyone else is already doing or has done, but on the other, the perspectives for new creation open up so much new territory that you are dying to get back and start putting new things on the page. Space is mighty big, but there you are in the middle of it, zooming along with the other pilots. You perceive just how good writing can be and you yearn to make yours better and better. This educational process is probably just as important for other types of fiction, from romance to detective, yet it's all the more vital in sci fi, where the liberation of the imagination is sine qua non. Finally the time comes when you step from the status of privileged spectator and learner to that of panel participant, for there is always a passing of the baton and one needs to be ready when the time comes to assume a role of peer among peers.

Of course, cons also offer pure pleasure. Though we are not adept at the complex art of cosplaying, we have come to appreciate and enjoy the elaborate masquerades and costume contests that are part of just about every con. To see the rooms and halls filled with elves, gremlins, aliens, heroes, robots, and monsters is every bit as exciting as carnival. It creates a visual medium where the concrete normality of banal life can be turned upside-down, privileging the new and unexpected. There are also frequently screenings of experimental films, show-casings of cutting-edge music and dance, and exhibitions of art closely related to sci fi and fantasy. Each con has, as a natural economic feature, vendors of every imaginable type of object, clothing, book or cd, jewelry, or geegaw. Other cons will have booths to attract people to their upcoming events in own locations, often with their own particular topic or featured star. Finally, there is the gaming. Whether it be board games, arcades, RPGs, or any other ludic form, it is bound to be available in some form at a con. Where else can you gather at the drop of a hat a half-dozen friends fascinated with the same game experience and willing to pass several hours in delightful concentration as they work out the mysteries of an old favorite or a new game that has not even been released yet to the general public?

As you can understand, cons offer a total experience. For those of us who have grown tired of waiting in lines for the standard kinds of programmed amusements or bored with poring over the details of a publishing plan, the con provides a breath of fresh air and a tonic to restore our creative juices, free of the pre-packaged brands that litter our daily lives. Try it, join in, become part of the celebration, lift yourself in spirit and skill. Come to the con.

Alternate Evolutions

     A planet where the dominant life form is very large telepathic insects?  That is Domremy. One of the key elements of our novel, Life Sentence, is the idea that there is no single evolutionary thread for the development of life in the universe.  Considering that Earth's evolution has depended on several catastrophic cosmic collisions, as well as perhaps geological shifts in the Earth itself, it is reasonable to speculate that, absent those extinction events, or possibly in cases of even more such disasters, life on other planets might evolve in quite different ways.  After all, humans have been around for only a tiny fraction of our world's history.  What if the Permian, Cretaceous, or other extinctions had never happened and earlier life forms had been allowed to continue to adapt?  There is nothing per se that would prevent reptiles, amphibians, other mammals, or even insects from developing intelligence and other characteristics that would allow them to develop an advanced culture or technology.  

     In the planets of Life Sentence, there are several different scenarios of evolution.  The Locals (as humans call them) of Domremy have managed to develop a sophisticated culture without material technology.  Communicating through touch telepathy, they are able to share vast amounts of common memory and species lore.  Since humans have no such capacities themselves, they are unaware of the Locals' gifts until Willie Klein and the Religious Dissenters unravel the mystery of the original inhabitants of their corporate-run colony.  Once they realize the terrible consequences of Hyperion Corp's semi-terraforming of Domremy, Willie, Peebo, Dr. Patak and others vow to try to restore as much as possible of the precolonial ecology.

     The Locals shared their environment with mammalian and quasi-mammalian creatures that had evolved alongside them, as well as smaller life forms.  Since many of these had been wiped out by the terraforming (as indeed the Locals themselves almost were), it is necessary for the Dissenters to use genetic engineering to restore missing species.  One of these is the "pippo," so dubbed by Willie because they look like a cross between a pig and a hippo.  He learned about their existence on the Locals' savannas through a telepathic session, but was astounded that Dr. Patak, who had perfected regeneration of mammoths and other extinct Earth beasts, had already been able to produce fertile clones from hides, bones, and other archaeological material uncovered on Domremy.  This gives the Dissenters, more interested in venerating life than exploiting it in the manner of the corporations, the rare chance to make amends for some of mankind's earlier crimes.  

     Domremy is just one of the worlds of Life Sentence, and in a later post we will examine the very different conditions that led to divergent types of life on Song Pa and Forlan, where particular conditions produced dominant species of cephalopod (octopus-like) and marsupial natures.  These topics are especially pertinent as NASA prepares to land on some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, which seem more and more likely to harbor some form of life. NASA has already indicated it plans to observe nothing like Star Trek's prime directive, preventing the interference with existing life forms.  Remember that Mars itself may still display some type of life that is so far undetected, since we are looking for something fairly close to ourselves or familiar contemporary Earth creatures.  It is looking increasingly the First Contact may not be just a one-way experience, but rather a give and take that may be either positive or negative.  Reason to consider the possibilities of what might be out there and how we should approach it.

    If these questions fascinate you, go to : https://www.amazon.com/Life-Sentence-Forlani-Saga-Book-ebook/dp/B01MCUIHXY and order your print or digital copy of Life Sentence.  We would love to hear your reactions.

An Epic of Speculation: Creating a Plausible Dinosauroid

               Attempting to write about nonhuman species brings with it many challenges, among them the difficulty of trying to represent nonhuman species accurately, and to what extent a human writer can actually do so.  For much of the twentieth century dinosaurs functioned as a sort of “throwaway monster” in the public conscience, something that would show up, randomly attack jungle explorers or historically inaccurate cavemen, and then get killed. Tyrannosaurus often had a penguin-like waddle, when he wasn’t unfortunate enough to be played by an iguana with a fin glued on his back. Sauropods and stegosaurs would randomly eat meat, dinosaurs from distant time periods would encounter each other, non-dinosaurs such as Dimetrodon would explicitly be called “dinosaurs”, and nobody cared as long as Doug McClure would show up and save the day in the end.  During the 1970s, the “Dinosaur Renaissance” took place in paleontology, and new discoveries were made about dinosaur behavior and biology that contradicted earlier stereotypes. Only once Michael Crichton’s novel Jurassic Park was published in 1990 would these discoveries influence the broader public perception of dinosaurs.

               And yet, in creating the Garanians, a “dinosauroid” race for Spy Station, our second Forlani Saga novel, I found that many of the “Dinosaur Renaissance” era assumptions had themselves become dated.  Dale A. Russel’s original Troodon-derived dinosauroid concept did not have any feathers; since 1982, multiple fossils of Coelurosaurian dinosaurs have been found with fossilized feathers, therefore I decided to give the Garanians a vestigial neck crest of feathers that would stand erect when they were agitated.  I was also fascinated with trying to research dinosaur intelligence and brain size.  The pre-Dino Renaissance belief that dinosaurs were all dimwitted clods was clearly wrong, but beyond a very generalized “birdlike dinosaurs were probably the most intelligent” consensus, I had trouble finding a set of theories that were broadly agreed upon.  This was made even more difficult by the lack of research into the brains of still living archosaurs; there are far fewer studies of avians and crocodiles than there are of mammals.  With newer studies indicating surprising signs of intelligence in crocodiles, could there be potential aspects of dinosaur behavior that our current level of scientific understanding doesn’t understand yet?

               Even the basic dinosauroid body plan is now considered contentious in some circles.  Some researchers believe that a dinosauroid of sapient intelligence would have to use its head and feet to manipulate objects, as the forelimbs become less used in existent ground-dwelling birds and dinosaur groups such as the abelisaurs and tyrannosaurs.  I decided on a body plan resembling Russel’s original dinosauroid more than these; not only did numerous coelurosaur groups such as the “raptor” dromaeosaurs and therozinosaurs retain their large forelimbs, but I aesthetically thought that having Tashto operate a gun with his feet would have made him more of a warrior parrot than a warrior dinosaur.  Of course, this could be my own bias in simply wanting something that resembled my own pre-2010s notion of what a dinosaur could be.

               Part of the nature of speculative fiction is that it is as much bound by what an author enjoys as it is about scientific reality.  As a writer, I tried to bridge the notion of the popular Jurassic Park “raptor”, my own personal favorite depiction of a dinosaur, with the newer insights into how dinosaurs would have looked.  This was perhaps slightly easier with a “raptor” since this type of dinosaur was newer in the popular imagination, and therefore more malleable, than creatures like Tyrannosaurus.  Ultimately, we only know a tiny fraction of knowledge about most given dinosaur species, and much of our expectations about their behavior lies rooted in imagination, conjecture and (sometimes erroneous) tradition.  Regardless of whatever is discovered about dromeosaurids in the time after Spy Station is published, I can at least take pleasure in the fact that, unlike Jurassic World, I bothered to put feathers on my “raptors”.

1947 and the Cosmic Quarantine

The year that the term “flying saucer” was invented (perhaps due to a journalist's mistake) may not actually mark a First Contact situation for humans and aliens. The USA tends to use that as a benchmark for strictly americacentric reasons, since the UFO sightings in Washington state and New Mexico generated wide media attention here. It also coincides neatly with the development of the Nuclear Age, since the heat and radiation intensity of the atom bomb explosions two years earlier would plausibly have created unique features that may have drawn the attention of alien observers. From a worldwide point of view, UFO observations had been going on more or less regularly for some time in various parts of the Earth, all the way back to ancient Egypt. Nevertheless, 1947 does merit a place in history as the birthpoint of ufology and the beginning of a period of intense UFO reports that stretched into the 1960's. The tailing off of this phenomenon also coincides well with the dawn of the Space Age, as from the Sputnik launch onwards, humans became greatly enabled in their observations of our own upper atmosphere and the space immediately near it. One might surmise that, if anything, this heightened ability would have led exponentially to more UFO reports, but that does not seem to have been the case.

With this in view, I would like to examine the speculative question of whether our planet may currently be subject to a cosmic quarantine that has resulted in a decrease of “flying saucer” type reports. This is a difficult area for many reasons. First of all, a great deal of information has been hushed up by military and intelligence sources. This is particularly true of World War II era incidents, when the development of secret weapons made this sort of obfuscation a matter of daily fact. The Cape Girardeau case and the various “foo fighter” claims during the war fall into this category, as does – after the fact – the Roswell incident which was tardily varnished with a story of high altitude observation balloons that was close enough to reality to fall into the parameters of deniability. As regards the stories of alien landings on the planet, especially two incidents in Sweden and Brazil, there are also serious scientific impediments to accepting them at face value. For alien creatures to willingly expose themselves to the Earth's atmosphere and the soup of potentially harmful organisms and substances contained therein would seem to be a contradiction to common sense, even if an alien civilization had done a fairly thorough biological scan of our planet. After all, new species are still being discovered in parts of the Earth and new microbes are evolving rapidly right now. The Earth is literally bursting with life, so that any survey would become obsolete in a short time. Thus, even within the bounds of speculation, it is most reasonable to assume that alien observation would most likely take the form of robotic devices rather than appearances in the flesh.

One possible exception to this caveat about physical encounters is the famous Hill Incident in New Hampshire, in which the aliens are reported to have established a type of telepathic communication and perhaps control over the human subjects and are not described as exiting from their vessel. There are too few descriptions to hypothesize about whether humans might have been able to be examined in sterile conditions by alien visitors, yet the details of the Hills' experiences do not preclude such a scenario. The vast mass of alien abduction stories that have proliferated since the Hill Incident tend to swamp the original case in a mass of essentially unrelated material. Examined on its own rights as a single chain of described evens, though, the Hills' encounter will probably continue to stand as a keystone reference for speculative thought until further information is available. I would propose that one regard it as a climax event, rather than a springboard, for speculative ufology.

Supposing that if there is any truth value at all to UFO reports from 1947 on, and that it may indeed have been nuclear fission that attracted observation of Earth from outside near space, there are several possible explanations for why conditions of observation may have changed since the early 60's, leading to the existence of a cosmic quarantine on the planet, and perhaps much of the solar system. The primary one has to do with what in the StarTrek lore is referred to as the Prime Directive. What Roddenberry's Star Fleet imputes to moral imperatives could even more convincingly be associated with sheer scientific procedure. As our own species delves deeper and deeper into the study of animal behavior, we find it more and more necessary to establish some separation from the species we are observing. Thanks to remote devices that do not attract the attention or fear of study subjects, we can peer into the nests of tree ducks, the burrows of meerkats, or the habits of deep-sea fish without causing that behavior to be altered or to disappear because of our immediate physical presence. Assuming humans are a species that requires observation – admittedly something we ourselves have been too reluctant to accept, it logically follows that separation is a highly desirable protocol of understanding.

Of course, a behavioral Heisenberg principle also applies. Given our natural curiosity as an organism, if we were to detect the presence of another intelligence, we would very likely change our actions so much that it would destroy the reliability of previous data. In other words, now that we are able to observe not only near space with far greater accuracy, but even deep space through orbiting telescopes, we become increasingly likely to discover something that would profoundly alter the very notion of ourselves, so that we might not only change our value as subjects for observation, but even dangerously affect our ability to go on surviving. And there may not be a benevolent group of aliens willing and able, as in Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End, to coddle us and usher us into a new cosmic age. So without an immediate need to exploit Earth or humans for some reason, an external intelligence might well want to limit intrusion into what is going on inside our atmospheric blanket right now. Added to the inducements for distance is the possibility that we might be more unique than we give ourselves credit for. An intelligence capable of traveling in interplanetary space would – it seems more and more likely, as we discover a plethora of exoplanets – presumably discover many inhabited worlds, but others may not offer the richness of species diversification or the isolation of this little rock. Our “primitiveness” related to a space-faring intelligence may actually bode us well.

A few final speculations as to how a cosmic quarantine may work. First of all there would have to be some kind of a space-based “Do Not Feed the Bears” sign. This could easily be achieved by a couple of stable units, probably placed at a good distance and perpendicular to the ecliptic of the solar system and protected from our view by stealth technologies, that would detect approaching craft and warn them off. The same units could contain sensors to observe Earth, as well as remote drones that could operate in closer proximity to the subjects. They might also be able to shield Earth from interstellar communication by generating an interference field that would cover the band of whatever it is an interstellar intelligence would use to communicate with. We already do this with our own military aircraft to jam certain bands used to target missiles, for instance. This is a sensitive area, since our technology is rapidly developing and we become more susceptible to “tripping over” a communications form currently unknown or undetectable to us. Of course, provided we don't destroy ourselves in the near future, we are likely to become too smart eventually for any quarantine to work. How an alien intelligence might deal with that puzzler extends beyond the scope of this essay. More speculation will be needed.