Could you read this book?

It's not as easy as it seems. The book will only open if you approach it with a neutral face. It won't open if you're looking sceptical - or even if you're excited! That's me done for then.

I'm not entirely sure that I can see a use for it except as an idea for a science fiction story. Now that would be something I'd really like to read!

Sunstruck

Polenth has published a book that I really enjoyed. It's a paranormal story, a cop buddy story, and a mystery story all rolled into one but somehow she's made it more than any of those. She's taken the legend of Bigfoot (which I would never have guessed could be interesting) and created a culture for them that that I found intriguing and convincing. It read to me like good science fiction where we see ourselves through the eyes (and in this case nose) of an alien, although in this case it's a terrestrial alien.

I liked the really quirky characters a lot and I enjoyed the exchanges between Ari (the Bigfoot) and her OCD human partner Ben. There is a plot but for me this was the least important aspect of the book. I just thoroughly enjoyed stepping into Ari and Ben's world and I can't wait for the next book to come out so I can join them there again. I think you might like it too.

Space opera and Georgette Heyer

How can it have taken me so long to find the Vorkosigan saga?

This science fiction series was started in the 80s. Mind you, I was a bit busy in the 80s what with having babies and all.  I still find it hard to realise that it's been available all these years and I've only just discovered it!

For those of you who haven't discovered it yet: Lois McMaster Bujold has written a series that is pure space opera in the early books, with a Georgette Heyer type romance later in the series, and some murder mysteries. All set in the future.

I love her world; I love her main character; and in the last few months I've read nine or ten of the books. I can't get enough. This is addiction at its worst but at least it's non-fattening.

Sci Fi book voting

What's your favourite science fiction book? You get the chance to vote here.

Out of the ones on offer mine were: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Heinlein, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, and Enders Game by Scott Card. (I hate Card's politics but I loved the book.)

What are yours?

In other news

Here is one I made earlier

I've had some sort of a bug, which on top of the CFS mostly had me stuck on the sofa for a week feeling too knackered to post. I dug out an old granny blanket (afghan) that I'd abandoned years ago and added a few rows and looked online for some wool (yarn). Then I found Ravelry. There should be trumpet sounds here but you'll have to imagine them.

Ravelry is a site for people who love knitting, or crochet, or both and I've found a whole host of fellow crocheters as well as learning more about how to crochet than I have in the past thirty odd years.

What's odd to me is how I seem to end up in the more marginalised section of whatever I love. Crochet is looked down on by a lot of knitters, who are in the majority. And in the same way, I've always loved reading but my favourite genre sci fi is even now often regarded as inferior and many people only seem to relate it to films. It was worse in the 60s: a girl reading sci fi! You could see by the covers the books were meant for men!

I've no idea when this is from

Being a woman, and older, and into computer games isn't entirely mainstream either. I don't do any of these things because I like to be in a minority; they just come naturally!

Are there any things that you do that put you outside the mainstream?

My work in progress

Aliens

This is what the aliens' faces look like in my Space Escape nanonovel, although their bodies are similar to spider monkeys'.

You can see more potential aliens here.

I'm not writing or editing and I haven't been around much because I've had a CFS flareup. I hope to be back to normal soon.

Omnivorous trees

There are a lot more amazing pictures of trees eating objects over at Funzug.com. Imagine if trees moved fast enough to eat people...

I'm thinking SF again. (I've been informed that the term "Sci Fi" is so last century. Well how was I to know? I'm so last century myself!)

How did I miss this?

Image by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid  some rights reserved 

A leading cannabis researcher has called for cannabis to be legalised for recreational use.

Now, to be honest, I can't get wound up about recreational use one way or the other. I like a glass of wine with dinner and I don't see why someone who prefers a puff shouldn't do that instead. (I can't stand any sort of smoking myself but that doesn't mean I want to stop everyone else doing it.) On the other hand, if wine were banned I'd still cope so not having your recreational drug of choice available doesn't seem appalling to me.

What I do feel strongly about is the people I know who are ill and who would get better pain relief from cannabis than they can from traditional medicine. I have a friend with fibromyalgia who'd be up and around if she could legally smoke. My Mum would probably have got relief from her arthritis - but how was a housebound old lady to get hold of an illegal drug?

Of course the other advantage to legalising cannabis is ending the drug trafficking in it and getting clean drugs to people.

My mind always wanders onto the sci fi implications of the news. I wonder what drugs they might use in other worlds.

Spray-on clothing

When I've thought about future clothing (for sci fi stories) I've mainly had in mind a torc worn round the neck that produces an electric field all over the body. The field could be transparent, translucent or opaque and as multi-coloured and changing as desired. The idea would be to keep dry and warm with as much or as little concealment as desired.

Well, we're not there yet but this is one I didn't think of: spray-on clothing. The future is now and I love it!

The future is here...

...with a flavour-changing cookie!

You choose a flavour from a computer, then as you go to eat the plain cookie an image of the appropriate texture is projected on to it and the right scents are wafted to your nose. Almond or chocolate? The same cookie can be any one of seven flavours.

You just can't get more extreme in writing sci fi than real life already is.

The full article is in New Scientist.

First Contact

For those of us interested in science fiction, I wrote in a previous post about the problems of talking to aliens. How could we communicate with beings so vastly different from us? Most of us have enough problems understanding someone from France or Russia.

A lot of people seem to think that drawing and maths are key. I recently came across this article which makes some interesting suggestions.

I'm not convinced that even simple drawings would be understood across such a vast cultural gulf. Suppose the aliens "see" by echolocation? But if we're writing stories we have to assume a lot of commonalities or there would be nothing to tell. Or would there?
 

Avatar

My Beloved and I celebrated Christmas Eve by going to see Avatar 3D.

It had the same effect on me as seeing the first Star Wars film when it came out: it took my breath away. I've not seen anything like it before.

The special effects are perfectly integrated with the real actors. The plot is only so-so in places and with a few real holes. I could see the ending coming from a long way off but that didn't seem to matter. What makes this film extraordinary is the beauty of the alien world and with the 3D effects you feel like you're there with them.

It's exciting and tender and sad.

A major theme is the transformation of the main character. It's also a love story but not just the love between a man and an alien: the man falls in love with the whole world. And so did I.

These pictures don't do it justice. You really must see it!

Are your aliens weird enough?

they feel no pain [...]their lips are behind their front teeth, they breathe mostly through their skin, and acid doesn't really burn them

from Popsci

These aren't aliens. They are naked mole rats.

If a terrestrial mammal is so very weird, how much stranger do our aliens need to be?

The Language Problem

If you were to meet a sentient being on another planet, it's not very likely that they would be speaking English. Even on this planet it's not the language with the most native speakers. (According to Wikipedia it comes third.)

In science fiction there are a few well-tried ways to get around this problem, most of them involving hand waving.

1. Have some sort of universal translation device e.g. the Babel Fish


2. Have the traveller live in the alien culture and learn the language over an extended period of time e.g. Out of the Silent Planet


3. Have a reason why the language is like a dead earth language and take along an expert in that language e.g. Stargate


4. Have the aliens intercept our radio and tv signals and decode them, despite the fact that they aren't even compatible worldwide e.g. The Simpsons


5. Use maths and chemistry to start the communication. I'm not sure if you can get to war and peace like this.


6. Ignore the problem, have everyone speak English and hope that no one notices e.g. Star Trek

I have to admit that this last one is tempting although I find it unsatisfying.

If you were writing about someone meeting a totally new group of sentient beings, how would you get them to communicate?

Talking to aliens

When I was at High School we had assembly every day. The whole school assembled in the hall and sang hymns, listened to a Bible reading and joined in prayers followed by the headmistress reading out school notices. I used to sit cross-legged on the floor in my school uniform wondering what it was like in the French schools during assembly and what their school uniforms looked like. What I didn't know was that French schools don't have anything resembling assembly and the children don't wear uniform.

I can't help thinking that when we write science fiction about aliens we are just as blinkered as I was then. Take for example:

At least one species, the Manti, were found to be intelligent. [...] Within several months of first contact, the scientists were able to develop a common language with the Mandi.

(From Conundrum on Titan by Patricia Stewart on 365 Tomorrows.)

I'm not sure that I can believe that if we find creatures that are less intelligent than we are that we will manage to find a common language. We don't seem to have done very well with chimps or bonobos and we certainly don't treat any Earth animals as intelligent beings on a level with ourselves.

If we meet aliens that are more intelligent than us, I wonder if they will treat us as we do the chimps, yet this is assuming that their culture is in many ways similar to ours. Somehow that feels rather like wondering what hymns the French children sing in assembly.

One small step

Today is the moon landing anniversary. I was fifteen when Neil Armstrong took his first step on the moon. It was a wonderful moment and I watched it on television with my family and some of our neighbours.

Oddly enough, though, the moment I remember as being the most emotional was when Apollo 8 was the first space craft to travel behind the moon and lose radio contact with Earth. While they were behind the moon they had to perform the manoeuvre that would bring them into a lunar orbit. It was a risky undertaking because if the burn was not precisely timed it could fling them off into space or send them crashing down onto the moon's surface. We were all hardly breathing as we watched the television screen for those ten anxious minutes. The relief when they reappeared on time was amazing. We felt like the whole world started to breathe again and we were part of that.

All these years on, that moment has been eclipsed in history by the moon landing itself, but for me it will always be the defining moment of space travel. No wonder I love science fiction.

What shall I write?

When I was growing up I loved science fiction and I was a fan of Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, E.E. "Doc" Smith and John Wyndham, amongst others. All men, of course. I didn't know of any women writing science fiction at the time. I loved the rather terse and understated style of the writing and I tend to look back on those days as the peak of the genre.

More recently I've been trying to write and I've felt a bit lost as there doesn't seem to be a market for that kind of science fiction these days. I've been wondering whether it's even worth trying to write science fiction. (I know that Writtenwyrdd writes in that genre but she has her own particular take on it and she is seriously talented.)

Then I read Man in the Dark for Evil Editor's next book chat and I thought that it's the kind of book that couldn't have been written fifty years ago. It made me ask myself: "what kind of stories could I write now that I couldn't have written then?"

A whole new mental space has opened up in front of me and I'm looking forward to exploring it.

The future is happening now.

Did you know you can move objects with your mind? I didn't until I saw this video on Sentient Developments



If you write science fiction you really will enjoy Sentient Developments, including the new feature Yesterday's Tomorrow which features retro visions of the future.

Other Earths

Earthlike planets may not be as uncommon as we always thought, according to Sentient Developments. I didn't know that one had already been found only 20 light years away. It's still too far to go for a visit but as interstellar distances go I suppose that counts as next door.

I'm not sure if this is good news for science fiction writers or not. Given that we're writing fiction maybe the state of the real universe isn't too important. I like to think that it's based on science though. Now all we need is to perfect that faster than light travel and we'll be sorted.

Evolution is a soap opera

Did you know that evolution is like a soap opera? No, nor did I until I read Pharyngula today.

Pharyngula points out that evolution is not a simple progression with us at the end of it as many people seem to believe. The trouble is, that idea makes a good story which is probably how the view has come to be so popular. Looking for a way to explain the complexities of evolution in a way that will grab our imagination he comes up with

evolution is like a soap opera. I can see it.

Both have lots of characters and story lines, every one full of anguish and drama, some ending happily (for a while), others ending miserably;

It's worth popping across there to read the whole post.

I thought that those of you who write science fiction might be interested both in the soap opera idea and in the picture of evolution. I like the way that we're tucked up in one corner as just part of the web of life. I wonder what an alien ecosystem would look like.