Tag Archives: scifi

The Alien

ellie

The first issue of Scaffolding Magazine

Not another infection. I can’t stand it.

I know I asked for this. I know I volunteered. But the doctors didn’t say it would be this bad. I knew I’d be giving up my life with the first injection, but they didn’t say anything about this kind of suffering.

Even when the symptoms seem to have subsided for a while, the slightest warning sign, such as a sneeze or a mild sore throat, drives my anxiety to dangerous levels.

The doctors say I need to stay calm, that emotional aggravation could make me feel even worse and endanger the success of my treatment. How can I stay calm when they’re doing this to me?

OK, I understand. Take deep breaths. What an odd sensation.

Let me go back to the beginning. Maybe it will help you, whoever you are reading this (they won’t let me post videos for obvious reasons), understand what I’m going through and why.

We are on the verge of exploring and investigating a new planet. The planet is dominated by a sentient species, which is the problem. So far, all of our monitoring has been passive and remote, listening to their communications broadcasts, observing video transmissions. Last year (their year based on a single, complete revolution of their planet around their star), we sent a shielded drone into orbit, undetectable through the specific bands of the EM spectrum they typically monitor.

But you can only learn so much that way.

This is the first part of my story published in the first issue of the new scifi and fantasy publication Scaffolding Magazine. To read the rest, click the link and purchase a copy. I promise, you won’t be sorry.

The Perfect Woman

the perfect woman

Image: shutterstock.com

Max Schmidt felt a little uncomfortable holding Aika’s hand in public, but as they were strolling past the Botanical Garden in the park she leaned into him and he felt it was the right thing to do.

“Tell me you love me again.” He felt her body heat as she nuzzled against him and he had to stop walking momentarily to regain his balance.

“I love you,” he whispered in her ear, too shy to say it louder for fear people nearby might hear him. She turned to Max and hugged him. “I love you, too,” she murmured into his chest.

Her Japanese accent was only mildly noticeable and he felt it was one of her more charming attributes. English was the only language they had in common though, and he felt a bit embarrassed that his own German accent was so thick. But then, the 34-year-old software engineer often felt embarrassed about himself.

Aika took Max’s hand again and they resumed their walk. He hadn’t meant to go this far from his flat. When Aika suggested they go out together for a while, he was thinking maybe a walk around the block. But it was a beautiful summer evening in the city, and Max enjoyed the delight he could see in Aika’s face. Everything in the world was new to her. It was like watching a small child discover the universe in a field of flowers or by the seashore.

“I’m so glad we met, Max.” She leaned her head against his shoulder.

“Me, too.” His reply was a bit stiff but she didn’t seem to notice. As much as Max enjoyed Aika’s company, he couldn’t help but be bothered by all of the barriers between them, not the least of which was the legality of her being here with him, or for that matter, the legality of her existence.

“We’d better head back.” He looked down at her. Her hair was a beautiful jet black, soft, silky to the touch, and smelled just slightly of strawberries.

She looked up with those big, gorgeous brown eyes. He watched her blink, noticed her eyelashes, her small, pert nose, her large, luscious lips. “Whatever you say, Max,” she cooed.

He was already getting aroused.

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Searching for Life Outside the Anthill

Let’s say we have an anthill in the middle of the forest. And right next to the anthill, they’re building a ten-lane super-highway. And the question is “Would the ants be able to understand what a ten-lane super-highway is? Would the ants be able to understand the technology and the intentions of the beings building the highway next to them?”

-Michio Kaku

ants

Ants building an anthill – Image: shutterstock

Commander Janice Nichols sat expectantly in front of the orbiter’s pilot console waiting for the initial report about Lyre’s Planet, the more “human-friendly” name for HD 85512 b. At 3.5 times the mass of Earth, it wouldn’t be ideal for human colonization, but it was smack dab in the middle of this star’s “Goldilocks’ zone,” and even casual observation told her that there were liquid oceans and land masses on this world, certainly indicating the potential for life, maybe even intelligent life.

Sixteen hours ago, the orbiter Elysium had detached from the FTL drive and main life support unit, together known as the Wayfarer. The drive was too valuable to risk close planet approach and she had left Clarence Ross in charge of their only hope for an eventual return home, along with Mitchell, and Smith. If something happened to the Elysium, Ross and Mitchell could either bring in the Excursion, Wayfarer’s back up orbiter, to attempt a rescue, or if deemed too risky, abandon them here and make the return trip home.

Eight hours ago, Elysium assumed a standard orbit around Lyre’s and after a thorough systems and orbital check, Nichols ordered planetary and environmental specialist Timmison Singh to deploy the sensor pod, extending it fifteen meters planet-side, below Elysium’s main hull, and then had him crawl down into the pod to perform the initial scan of the planet.

This was the sixteenth attempt, the sixteenth expedition to explore what they used to call “super earths” in the early part of the last century, the sixteenth effort to discover some form of extraterrestrial life, any form of life more advanced than a single cell organism.

The first fifteen had failed.

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The Woman Who Fell Into Time

A particle accelerator accident creates wandering spacetime distortions that allow random people to time travel.

woman falling“Why won’t you people tell me who you are?”

Maria Calvert, Ph.D in Applied Physics, manager of Superconductivity and Magnet Circuit Systems for the Machine Protection and Electrical integrity group for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), had been isolated in a windowless interview room in the administration building at CERN (The European Organization for Nuclear Research near Geneva, Switzerland) for the past four hours. The man seated across the table from her seemed kind but unrelenting. She hadn’t been told his name or who his two colleagues were, or even what agency they represented.

“I’ve told you Dr. Calvert, my name is unimportant. What happened to you earlier today is. Can we go over it again?”

“I’ve already told you every…”

The man, dressed professionally and generically interrupted. “Just tell us your story again, Dr. Calvert.”

She’d only been allowed out of the room once, to use the bathroom, accompanied by the lone female of the group questioning her. She felt grungy, sweaty, out of sorts, and totally betrayed by her co-workers and supervisors. Why had she been abandoned to these people? Why had the LHC collision accident done…this to her?

“Come on, Doctor. Just tell us again what happened.”

Maria closed her eyes and instantly her Daddy’s face appeared to her. No, two faces, one dying, and one very much alive.

“The first collision between two protons had just occurred in the LHC’s main ring and data was being fed to the mainframes. Then, a few seconds later, there was a vibration lasting just for a moment. After that, all hell broke loose and every alarm…”

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The Day I Discovered Time Travel

the well

The well

After reviewing Randy Ingermanson’s time travel novel Transgression yesterday, I was reminded that I wrote my own wee time travel story just over two months ago. I decided to port it over unedited from its original version. It’s very different from Ingermanson’s vision, although given the motivation of his character Damien West, maybe not too different.

I’m no good at the fake physics of time travel, so I had to create a method of getting from now to then that didn’t require any inventiveness or understanding on the time traveller’s part. It’s probably the standard time traveller story, a tale of regrets and an attempt at redemption. Let me know what you think.

My name is Mark Miller, and when I discovered time travel, I decided to use it just like everyone else does in all those science fiction books and movies. I decided to change the past. No, not just the generic past, mine. I wanted to change history, just like Marty McFly did in “Back to the Future”.

Here’s what I want to change.

When I was five years old, I killed my brother. It doesn’t matter that it was an accident, I did it. Jason’s dead and it’s because of me. He was only three years old.

I probably should blame my Dad, but I can’t. I should probably blame him for going to the store “for just a minute” and leaving me and Jase alone. I should probably blame him for leaving a loaded 45 caliber pistol in an unlocked drawer in his night stand.

But I can’t.

I’d seen where Dad put the pistol after cleaning it and loading it. He cleaned it every couple of weeks, I think. Mom wouldn’t let me and Jase even have toy guns. Mom and Dad got divorced when I was four, and whenever we got to visit Dad, she was pretty strict about what toys we could play with at his house.

So when Dad put us in front of the TV with “Toy Story 3” in the DVD player so he could go to the store “for just a minute” (he’d run out of beer), me and Jase were alone.

I think it was because Woody was a cowboy and cowboys always have guns that made me think of Dad’s gun. I paused the movie and took Jase into Dad’s bedroom. I just wanted to show him something cool, a real gun, like what a real cowboy would have.

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Book Review: “Old Venus”

old venusI decided to check Old Venus, an anthology edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, out of my local public library, because I’d already read their Old Mars anthology last fall and enjoyed it.

The premise of both books is to get together a bunch of modern science fiction authors and ask them to write stories about Mars (in the case of “Old Mars”) or Venus (in the case of the book being reviewed here) as if it were before about 1960.

In the early 1960s, we sent probes to Venus and Mars and discovered one disappointing fact: there’s no way in hell either planet could support life now or probably not even in the dim past.

But before we knew that, science fiction writers were crafting wonderfully imaginative tales about both worlds and how we, as well as native Martians and Venusians, could live together and have adventures. What would it be like to just “ignore the rules” and pretend you could visit Venus, with its swamps, rain forests, vast oceans, unending clouds, and dip into the indigenous flora and fauna?

“Old Venus” answers that, and in most stories, does so remarkably well.

I can’t say I have a favorite story. “Frogheads” by Allen M. Steele was pretty predictable, and “Botanica Veneris: Thirteen Papercuts by Ida Countess Rathangan” by Ian McDonald was too British to hook me and I stopped reading after a few pages (having a headache, slight fever, and recovering from yesterday’s nasal surgery probably didn’t help).

“Pale Blue Memories” by Tobias S. Buckell tugged at my heart the most because the racism experienced by our protagonist wasn’t (and isn’t) limited to a single world. Oh, it was also a story depicting an old-fashioned, missile shaped rocket ship, like the one of the cover. “Old Mars” had a similar ship on the cover, but not one story about such a 1950s classic design was between the covers. I was tempted to write such a tale, but got stuck on Arabia Terra, a story I’m not (yet) qualified to write. If you’re going to have such a ship on the cover, make sure one of your stories actually is about such a ship.

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Farmbots and Inspiration

farmbot

Farmbot. Image from the Arduino blog

Although I have a pretty good idea of how I’m going to develop my novel about AI androids and their evolution, I keep coming across articles online that modify certain details.

For instance, a friend of mine named Tom just posted an article on Facebook about a new Farmbot that will soon be for sale.

According to the article:

Designed with the Maker community in mind, FarmBot is driven by an Arduino Mega 2560, a RAMPS 1.4 shield, NEMA 17 stepper motors, and a Raspberry Pi 3. What’s more, all of its plastic components can easily be 3D printed, while its flat connecting plates can be made with either a waterjet, plasma or laser cutter, a CNC mill, or even a hacksaw and drill press.

This is deffo for the DIY community. Of course, some people will still prefer to grow their vegetables in the backyard the old fashioned way, but it gave me an idea. It’s not an idea for a story, more like for a story element. As the collective of AI entities grows and expands throughout the solar system, preparing planets and moons for human colonization, someone, or rather something has to grow the food. It wouldn’t do to have a bunch of Watneys farming potatoes all the time.

Farmbot is controlled remotely and as the IoT, it can be hacked. What about “farmbots” controlled by advanced AI?

Next Steps in Writing a Novel: The Table of Contents

toc

Image: wikihow.com

I finally hammered out the Table of Contents (TOC) for my proposed science fiction novel (I’m stuck on giving the book a title at the moment). You wouldn’t think a TOC would be hard to put together, but I had to consider the appropriate “building blocks” for the book. What information would I need to present, and in what order, to create a cohesive storyline taking place over maybe a century or so?

Here’s what I’ve come up with so far. Note that I’m not revealing the names of all the chapters:

  1. The Machine That Loved God
  2. The Maker Dilemma
  3. The Good Android
  4. Uncooperative Neighbors
  5. The Rescuers
  6. – – – – – – – –
  7. – – – – – – – –
  8. Vesper 21
  9. – – – – – – – –
  10. – – – – – – – –
  11. – – – – – – – –
  12. – – – – – – – –
  13. Epilogue

The Epilogue is somewhat controversial since it changes the end of the novel. Depending on whether I include or exclude it, the whole meaning of the story alters, and rather drastically, too. If I leave it out, I promise a lot of religious people, mainly Christians, aren’t going to like me. I think secularists, atheists, and the average science fiction reader would be more than OK with it, though.

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The Hardest Part Of Writing A Novel So Far

questor

Mike Ferrell as Jerry Robinson on the set of Gene Roddenberry’s “The Questor Tapes” (1974)

Admittedly, I’m just starting out, so I can’t say my analysis is at all comprehensive. That said, I am working on it.

I mentioned previously that I’ve been writing a high level outline of the TOC (Table of Contents) as well as chapter summaries. I’ve stopped that for a moment because I realize I have to drill down into the definition of my characters and my concepts. I’ll need all that before I can even re-write the currently existing material, let alone create new chapters.

Since I’m getting rid of anything “Asimovian” including “Three Laws” and “Positronics,” I need to do a lot of renaming. I have to invent names for the corporation creating these “intelligences,” the underlying science that allows AI entities to “come alive,” and what to call them. The word “robots” is totally inadequate and I only used it in my previous short stories as an homage to Asimov.

These entities are more closely related to Data from Star Trek: the Next Generation or his predecessor Questor. Even then, both of them are basically machines with hardware (wires, diodes, blinky lights) and programmable software (Questor was programmed via data tape uploads and Data says he was programmed and that his programming can even be changed, although he doesn’t say how). A true artificial life form has to be so much more.

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Better Ideas

idea

Image: Clipart Panda

As much as I’d like to believe that everything I write about comes from between my ears, strictly speaking, that’s not true.

I’ve read about how writers can have certain influences, usually other writers. I have no idea which writers influence me. Decades ago, I may have said Harlan Ellison. Plenty of writers made me want to read, but he was the only one who made me want to write.

Unfortunately, over my long and unproductive “career” of attempting to write fiction, I have failed miserably, mostly because I felt my characters were wooden and my concepts derivative.

I suppose you could say that Isaac Asimov is an influence, but that’s only true because I’ve been writing Three Laws Positronic robots stories. I suppose you could also say Anthony Marchetta is an influence since it was his anthology God, Robot that started off my most recent attempts at fiction writing, but besides the concept of “religious robots” themselves, that’s not particularly true (we really, really think about “theobots” in very different ways).

The closest thing to the truth is that my friend Tom is currently my greatest influence.

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