Off-Earth: Ethical Questions and Quandaries for Living in Outer Space

Traveling and living in space will pose a variety of technical challenges, but there are plenty of other social challenges that space will pose. Who owns space? How will workers get paid? How will we handle reproduction in an environment with limited resources? To start considering these questions and their answers, I recommend reading Off-Earth: Ethical Questions and Quandaries for Living in Outer Space, by Erika Nesvold.

Nesvold starts the book by acknowledging that some people may wonder why we should go to space when we still have so many problems to fix on Earth. There are a couple of reasons why we should start planning for space anyway. The first is that developing the technology needed for space travel may help us improve the situation on our planet. The other is that there are people and companies determined to get into space, so we need to plan accordingly. Attempts to regulate space internationally have had limited success, so we need to learn how to do so quickly.

Each chapter of Off-Earth raises a different question. (Some of the examples are listed in the first paragraph.) At the beginning of each chapter, Nesvold describes three scenarios, some based on history, others set in the future, about the topic. There are plenty of historical examples where exploration and exploitation of resources and people led to tragedy. If we don't learn from these examples and set up regulations/customs/laws before we establish lunar settlements or asteroid mines, we'll only repeat our mistakes.

At the end of the book, Nestvold discusses how we as a species can start discussing these questions. One thing we should do is to look to non-Western societies for possible solutions. For example, people living in the Arctic have experience with extreme environments like the ones in space. We could learn from them, but we shouldn't just appropriate their knowledge but make sure they're included in space exploration. One group Nestvold fails to acknowledge are science fiction writers. We have experience creating thought experiments about alternate societies in space. If authors consider ethical questions in their works, we can influence the development of real space societies, hopefully in ways that will be sustainable and beneficial for all.

Evolution in Science Fiction

My family and I saw Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 3, last weekend. While the scenes with animal experimentation were disturbing, overall it was better than I expected. I liked the storyline, and I always enjoy seeing Mantis and Drax interact. However, the main villain's project in evolution is not scientifically accurate for several reasons. I'll try to state them in a non-spoiler way:

1. Natural selection may work on individuals of a species, but that doesn't mean individuals evolve. Individuals have traits that make them more or less suited to their environment, which in turn affects their ability to pass those traits down to the next generation. Natural selection needs a context in which to work.

2. Mutations can appear in individuals that affect their ability to survive, but most of these either have no effect or a harmful one. Radiation or chemicals can increase the mutation rate, but an affected individual doesn't keep popping out random changes in body type. It's very unlikely that you could take an adult individual and make it change its body plan or develop new traits by mutating it. If you really wanted to create a new species, you'd have to change the genetic material in a fertilized egg and let it develop and mature.

3. Evolution doesn't happen with an end goal in mind. Humans are a twig on a bush, not the top of a tree. There are millions of other species that are extremely well-adapted to their niches, have traits that we would envy (better senses than ours, flight, ability to breathe underwater, etc.), and have been around much longer than us.

4. Genetics may set the potential for an individual, but the environment plays an important role in an individual's development. If you want to develop intelligent individuals, you need to meet their biological needs and also give them a stimulating environment.

I'm not just picking on this movie; I have long felt that the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Genesis," which features the crew "de-evolving," was bad biological science. It's possible that the writers portrayed evolution acting on adult individuals for visual effects and emotional involvement in the story. However, the writers might not have been familiar with the principles of evolution to begin with. Given that evolution is being dropped from some science textbooks in India, that trend may only get worse.

How well do you think evolution is portrayed in science fiction? Can you think of examples where it's done accurately? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

Dinner on Mars

If you're interested in worldbuilding for science fiction, then you know food is an important part of that. How a society produces and prepares food has a big impact on many other parts of their culture. And as Lenore Newman and Evan D.G. Fraser point out in their book Dinner on Mars: The Technologies That Will Feed the Red Planet and Transform Agriculture on Earth, thinking about food production in extreme environments can in turn change how we handle food on this planet.

This book was inspired by Zoom chats between the authors during the Covid lockdown, and they refer to that often in the text. However, the "meat" of the book is a thought experiment of how to feed the first colonists on Mars. The authors discuss what's possible--obtaining nutrients from the soil on Mars--and what isn't feasible--transporting animals or growing grains on the red planet. Given the challenges of living on a planet with little water, a thin atmosphere, and reduced sunlight intensity, future Martian colonists will have to be ingenious at maximizing their resources. They would have to rely on blue-green algae, yeast, and microbes to produce the building blocks of food, at least initially. Special arrangements would have to be made to grow plants on Mars (the plants would also produce oxygen and help us maintain a link with nature). The plants might have to be genetically engineered to be more efficient, and they could grown by robots that deliver the exact amount of fertilizer needed. Protein could be printed or grown in a lab, and cheese could be developed from yeast extracts. The authors optimistically end by imagining the types of meals Martian colonists would eat--protein bars for breakfast, salad and printed meat for lunch and dinner, with the occasional treat of something made from potatoes and maybe even a distilled beverage. They describe this as a much healthier diet than what we currently eat and point out that we need those technologies here and now to change our food supply. However, getting these technologies to the small farms around the world may be as challenging as developing them.

Newman and Fraser write in an engaging style that make this book accessible to general readers. If I have to find a fault with their thought experiment, I think that they dismiss carbs too easily. Rice, corn, and pasta are staples in many cultures, and I doubt the first waves of colonists will want to do without them, even if these foods aren't optimally nutritious. If it's impractical to grow vast fields of wheat or rice paddies on Mars, then people will find other ways to create carbs. Perhaps yeasts will be used to churn out simple sugars that can be printed into starches and flours. Or perhaps plants with starchy roots can be modified to be more grain-like. I think the challenge of recreating specific dishes in space or another extreme environment might make for an interesting solarpunk story. 

If you were going to colonize another planet, what kind of food would you want to bring with you and why? Feel free to share in the comments.

The Skeptics' Guide to the Future

I started listening to The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast a few months ago. I'd read the book with the same name and thought it was quite useful. So when Dr. Steven Novella and the rest of the podcasters mentioned they'd written a second book called The Skeptics' Guide to the Future: What Yesterday's Science and Science Fiction Tell Us About the World of Tomorrow, I had to (literally) check it out. If you're interested in futurism--as science fiction writers are by definition--then you'll want to do the same.

The book is divided into five parts. The first one is an introduction to futurism, which is the art of predicting the future. It discusses how previous predictions about the future were right or not and looks at general trends. (We tend to overestimate short-term progress and underestimate long-term progress. We also assume the institutions and culture we have today will persist with little or no change.) The other four sections deal with various aspects of technology: current, future, space travel, and science fiction tech. Each part is broken into several chapters, with each chapter focused on a specific type of technology. The authors discuss what types of technology are possible (they cover everything from stem cells to light sabers) and when they might be developed or become feasible. (Some familiarity with the technology is assumed, as this is a general overview, but the authors provide some history and current status for each type of technology.) They also discuss ideas that might not work; unfortunately for my stories Lyon's Legacy and Twinned Universes, we are unlikely to be able to travel to alternate universes through wormholes. The first four parts end with snippets of future fiction set anywhere from a few decades to more than twenty thousand years in the future.

Not surprisingly, the overall message of the book is that technology will continue to become an important part of our culture and change it in ways we might not be able to foresee. The general assumption is that humanity will continue to exist in some form or another; the authors ignore most potential catastrophes with the exception of artificial intelligence turning against us. They do discuss the possibilities of humans using brain-machine interfaces, uploading our minds into computers, or colonizing space. 

This book is worth reading not just if you're interested in science or science fiction, but the future. After all, every new day brings us closer to it.

The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy

Anyone who's watched any science fiction TV show or movie has probably noticed how human-like aliens are. Of course, this is because humans play the aliens. Given that the only experience we have with lifeforms comes from our planet, how realistic is it to expect creatures from other worlds to resemble what we know? According to Arik Kershenbaum, the author of The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy, even if evolution on exoplanets might not follow the same path it did here, certain traits will still be selected for.

Kershenbaum starts by examining what forms and functions might be common across worlds. In particular, he focuses on features such as movement, senses, and communication. From there, he builds to what we might consider more advanced features such as as intelligence , sociability, language, and more. He even considers whether aliens might be capable of creating artificial intelligence and whether we would think of them as "human."

Kershenbaum may not think much of science fiction, but science fiction writers might be able to get some good ideas about alien creation from this book. The Further Reading section at the end lists many other potentially helpful books. It's always good to improve your scientific knowledge when you're writing science fiction.

IWSG: Reading Genres

Welcome to March! Let's hope this month isn't quite as mad as last year. The first post of the month is always for the Insecure Writer's Support Group. Learn more about them on their website, Facebook page, or Twitter feed.

Our hosts this month are Sarah--The Faux Fountain Pen, Jacqui Murray, Chemist Ken, Victoria Marie Lees, Natalie Aguirre, and JQ Rose.

Here's our question for this month: Everyone has a favorite genre or genres to write. But what about your reading preferences? Do you read widely or only within the genre(s) you create stories for? What motivates your reading choice?

 The main genres I write are fantasy, cozy mystery, and science fiction. Those are also the genres I prefer to read. Occasionally I'll venture out of those genres into classics, an historical novel, or a popular contemporary work. About twenty to twenty-five percent of my reading is nonfiction; I tend to read science, history, research topics for writing (for example, I'm currently reading Rewilding North America for a climate-fiction short story I'm working on), or anything I want to learn more about. I read more widely when I was younger, but these days I'm more focused on the genres I enjoy. As for what draws me to these genres, I would say that science fiction and fantasy help me escape my everyday life. I still crave stories that evoke a sense of wonder, but the older and more experienced/cynical one gets, the harder it is to find wonder. Cozy mysteries not only offer a way to right a wrong and find justice, but, as the name implies, they can offer a cozy atmosphere and possibly an ensemble of characters that feel like friends.

What types of books do you like to read, and why? Feel free to share in the comments.

What the World Needs Now Is Hopepunk!

The year isn't halfway over, but I'm sure most of us are ready to see it go. Between the COVID-19 pandemic, massive job loss, police brutality, and rioters disrupting peaceful protests, it's obvious that our economic and political systems are failing a lot of people, especially marginalized ones. When the situation improves, we need to make systemic changes. Speculative fiction authors are leading the way in imaging what a better future would look like, particularly in genres such as solarpunk and hopepunk.

Hopepunk is a very new subgenre that was named in 2017. Like rebellions in the Star Wars universe, it is built on hope and surviving past the end times. The genre emphasizes community, kindness, and resistance. You can find examples of hopepunk stories at the link above and here. Much of Star Trek is hopepunk, as is parts of The Lord of the Rings. These stories obviously pre-date the naming of hopepunk as a separate subgenre, so the ideas have been around for a long time. However, I do think the psychological need for stories like this is greater than ever.

I have written a solarpunk story, "A Shawl for Janice," which is part of the Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Winters anthology. The main characters in my still-in-progress urban fantasy trilogy are kinder than many others in their community, which allows them to gather allies.

Are there elements of hopepunk in your stories? Do you have any favorite examples of hopepunk? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

Amazon's Upload: Is the Near Future Futuristic Enough?

Although I don't spend a lot of time watching TV, occasionally I'm able to squeeze in some time around dinner when I'm crocheting or cutting fabric for masks. I was intrigued by the ads for Amazon's new show Upload, about Nathan, a young man who's killed in an accident and uploaded to a digital afterlife represented by a fancy hotel. Helping him adjust is his customer service representative "angel" named Nora. The show is set in 2033, which is only thirteen years away. Technology has advanced to the point where people print food, use self-driving cars, and, as the premise implies, have the ability to upload a human's consciousness to digital format.

I'm in the middle of Episode Three, so it'll take me a while to finish this series. However, I have noticed a few things that don't seem realistic to me. For example, in the first episode, we see a woman with a black-and-white avatar, which was based on an old photo. This was probably put in to be funny and appeal to the audience. In practice, we can already add color to photos, so why wouldn't that be done for her? For that matter, why not allow people to customize their avatars or even choose non-human forms? There's also a pretty big plot hole in the first episode where a dangerous section of the afterlife has less security than a chapel in that same setting. The dangerous area is key to the climax of the first episode; however, I think it could have been set up to make the character work harder to gain access, which would have proven he was truly desperate instead of hangry and annoyed about a bad hairstyle. Perhaps I'm more critical of these things because I'm a storyteller and used to nitpicking my own work.

One of the biggest dangers of writing about the near future is that it can be so hard to predict. You can reference current popular culture, but will the songs and movies you use be a flash in the pan or still be popular a decade or two later? Your audience may appreciate the throwback, but would a movie from 2004 be meaningful for a character who could have been born that year? What new disruptions will occur in the next thirteen years that we couldn't have foreseen?

Anyway, as I keep watching, perhaps some of these "glitches" will make more sense. (I'm trying to avoid spoilers, so please don't add any in the comments.) It will be interesting to look back at this show in thirteen years and see how well it compares to reality.

Story Selected for Third Flatiron's Best of 2019 Anthology!

Since I sent in the reprint contract last week, I can officially announce that my short story "Specimen 1842," originally printed in Third Flatiron's Hidden Histories anthology, has been chosen to appear in their Best of 2019 anthology. The anthology will be digital format only, and the anticipated publication date is February 1st, 2020. I'm thrilled to have my story chosen and will be posting buy links to the anthology when they become available.

The Day It Finally Happens

The day before Halloween might be a good time to talk about witches, vampires, and mummies, but life has horrors that are far worse. Mike Pearl, a columnist who suffers from anxiety disorder, tries to manage his fears by studying how likely some situations are and what their impacts would be. In his book, The Day It Finally Happens: Alien Contact, Dinosaur Parks, Immortal Humans--and Other ImPossible Phenomena, Pearl examines all the situations listed above and more.

Some of these events, such as freeing all slaves worldwide, are good events, while a supervolcano eruption could theoretically kill half of humanity by blanketing the world in ash and causing a volcanic winter by blocking sunlight. Others, such as ending oil dependence and no longer killing animals to eat, would be a mixed blessing. Pearl introduces each event with a scenario showing how it might occur. He also rates how likely it is each event will occur in this century along with how plausible it is, how scary the event is, and whether or not it's worth changing our habits to avoid the event. Some of these events are more plausible than you might expect, such as creating a dinosaur park. (Pearl suggests this could be done by selective breeding and genetic manipulation, since actual dinosaur DNA would be too badly damaged to use.)  In my opinion, some of the topics he discusses, such as the end of British royalty, seem frivolous compared to the extinction of all fish or learning aliens do exist.

Although some of the scenarios Pearl discusses would be catastrophic if they ever occurred, Pearl attempts to assure us in an Epilogue that the future isn't lost. Humanity may not always exist in its current form, but our descendants would be better adapted for their environment. We may be able to avoid demise if we're able to colonize space. We also know too little about the universe to know what will happen in the far future. He stresses that he wants to convince us the future is worth it:

Some of the horrors I've outlined won't be avoided, and some will. Some of the wonderful things I've predicted won't happen, and others will....If we fundamentally don't believe in a future at all, I'm pretty sure of one thing: it'll be more horror than wonder.

As a science fiction writer, I try to predict the future even knowing how unlikely it is I'll be right. It's always interesting to read what other futurists think. Do you find these kinds of books useful for your own world-building? Free free to share your thoughts in the comments. 

What Makes a Story Memorable?

I subscribe to one of Book Riot's newsletters. A couple of weeks ago, they linked to an essay discussing "lifeboat thinking," stories that are thought experiments about who is worthy of survival in a given situation. One classic science fiction short story that illustrates this type of thinking is "The Cold Equations" by Tom Godwin. If you've never read it (I just read it after this discussion) you can find it here. This essay does a good job of analyzing it. Although the essay has over two hundred comments, it's worth going through them as well. Spoilers will be posted in the next paragraph, so if you haven't read the story yet, I recommend doing so now and reading the essay and comments later.




OK, if you're still with me, "The Cold Equations" is a story about a spaceship pilot who finds a stowaway on his ship. The pilot is on a desperate mission to deliver medicine to a group of explorers, but his ship doesn't have enough fuel to land safely with the weight of an extra passenger. Corporate rules are that stowaways are to be shot immediately and tossed out the airlock; since the passenger is a teenage girl named Marilyn who just wanted to see her brother, she's given an extra hour of life before the cold equations of the title force her to sacrifice herself.

Editor John W. Campbell really wanted the tragic ending; he made Godwin rewrite the story multiple times because the author kept finding a way to save the girl. Despite the rewrites, the story has received a lot of critique since it was published in 1954. Other than a sign, there are no security measures in place to prevent a stowaway from coming onboard. (I work in Quality Assurance, where we deal with corrective and preventative measures to ensure food safety. One would expect starship designers to use similar practices.) You'll see several security measures suggested in the comments sections of the second essay I mentioned earlier. Despite all the editing, there are still some internal inconsistencies within the story. At the beginning of the story, Marilyn thinks all she has to do is pay a fine to make up for stowing away, implying that she's rich. By the end of the story, we learn her family doesn't have much money. There's also another point that I haven't seen anyone discuss yet. If the pilot only has enough fuel for a one-way trip, then he's forced to remain with the group of explorers he's helping until the end of their mission. What if they run out of supplies? Will the pilot be killed due to other cold equations?

Despite the problems with "The Cold Equations," the story has been adapted and anthologized many times since its original publication. What makes it so memorable? Commenters suggest that the tragic ending makes the story memorable, particularly since when "The Cold Equations" was published, science fiction stories were about solving problems with science. For me, the worldbuilding flaws are frustrating, and I want to see better security measures put in place. Character gender may also be a factor. Stowaways in this setting are normally male criminals, not naive young women. The death of a young woman may anger some readers and secretly satisfy others. Many factors make this story memorable, and they may vary from reader to reader.

What's one of the most memorable stories you've read, and what makes it memorable for you? Feel free to share in the comments.

Distaff Anthology Releases Tomorrow

DISTAFF: NOUN

A staff used in spinning.
Of women and women’s work.
An anthology of women’s stories woven through time and space.

In 2018 a crack team of women sci-fi writers, all members of the sffchronicles community forum, came together to write an anthology. Distaff is the result. Join us as we share stories of people, of science and exploration, and enjoy the words we weave.

Further Info:

Distaff is a Science Fiction Anthology featuring nine short stories by female identifying authors. The anthology began in 2018 on SffChronicles.com, a webforum devoted to the Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror genres. Like the site that gave birth to the idea, Distaff encapsulates the broad range of the Science Fiction genre. The anthology shrugs off the negative connotations of the word Distaff and embodies the positive aspects of what women can achieve when they pool their talents. Distaff is entirely ‘of women’s work.’ 

Distaff contains nine stories from new and best-selling authors. 

·       Authors: Susan Boulton, Damaris Browne, Kerry Buchanan, Shellie Horst, Rosie Oliver, Jane O'Reilly, Juliana Spink Mills, E. J. Tett, Jo Zebedee.

·       Publication Date: August 15, 2019

·       Website https://distaffanthology.wordpress.com

·       Available at Amazon: http://hyperurl.co/8vsjzx

·       ISBN 9781074955007 

·       Cover Design: Shellie Horst 

Editing: Rosie Oliver & Samanda R. Primeau

Authors to Support

For the last week of Pride Month, here are a few LGBTQIA authors to support. I know some of them; others I've met at conventions. Many of these were mentioned a few years ago in my SF Authors A-Z series. To keep this short, I'm just going to post Amazon links. (Sorry, Alex; I know you like Apple! I'm not sure if some of the indie authors have wide distribution.)


Aviva Rothschild--the author of two Beatle fanfiction novels: With Strings Attached and The Keys Stand Alone.

Lauren Jankowski--author of The Shape Shifter Chronicles.

Mary Anne Mohanraj--Her work ranges from science fiction to erotica to short story collections. She also ran a Kickstarter for a Sri Lankan recipe book, but that's not yet published.

Catherine Lundoff--I'm still waiting for a sequel to her book Silver Moon, but she also has three short story collections available.

April Daniels--I enjoyed her duology about a transgender teen superheroine.

Ellen Kushner--Best known for her stories of Riverside.

Delia Sherman--Ellen's wife and author of Through a Brazen Mirror and several other books.

Nicola Griffith and Kelly Eskridge are another married pair of authors.

Lyda Morehouse writes award-winning science fiction.

I haven't read Laurie J. Mark's Elemental Logic series, but I hear it's very good.


I'm sure there are many more authors I could list, but I have to end my post here. Are there more LBGTQIA authors you would recommend? If so, please share in the comments.

Short Story Sale--Specimen 1842

I've been sitting on this news for a couple of weeks, but now that the contract has been signed, I can officially make an announcement. I've sold another short story, this one to the Hidden Histories anthology to be published by Third Flatiron Publishing in April. My story is called "Specimen 1842," and it's about a genetics postdoc who finds some anomalies in an ancient specimen. More details will come as the time draws closer to the publication date.

The exciting thing about this sale is that this market pays at the current U.S./SFWA professional rate (which goes up from six cents/word to eight cents/word later this year), so this is my first professional sale. Hopefully there will be more in the future!

Science Fiction Past and Present

I'm currently reading an omnibus edition of Samuel R. Delany's work. He's one of the authors I always intended to read, so when this collection became available at a bargain price, I bought it. This particular edition includes the novels Babel-17, Nova, and Stars in My Pocket Like a Grain of Sand. I've already finished the first book and am in the middle of the second. It's slower going than normal because I'm not used to reading science fiction from the late 1960s. (I have read some of Andre Norton's work, though not recently. I did reread some of Anne McCaffery's Dragonriders of Pern books a couple of months ago. Although gender relations in those works seem dated now, I found her work easier to read.)

The impression I'm getting from what I've read so far from Delany's work is that the science fiction of the 1960s was more focused on adventure and plot than character development. The focus is more on exploring an idea (at least in Babel-17) than on making the work a united story. (Perhaps this is due to each section of Babel-17 being written in a different style. The reader has to adapt to each new section; perhaps I'm just a lazy reader in wanting the writing to be transparent and not get between me and the story.) The main character, a poet named Rydra Wong, felt a bit Mary-Sueish to me with her abilities and the way so many of the male characters were interested in her. Some aspects of the world-building didn't age well; I can't imagine any teenagers (or even kids) these days who would carry marbles with them.

I'll continue to work my way through Delany; hopefully I'll get more out of it as I become more accustomed to his style. It's useful to get out of your comfort zone occasionally and expose yourself to different styles of writing.

If you've read older classic science fiction, were there stories you struggled with? Is Delany's work typical of his era? Which works do you think held up well? Please let me know in the comments.

Inheritors of the Earth

When most people think of biodiversity, they think of saving the species we already have. While that's important, there are other ways that nature adapts to change. Chris D. Thomas discusses them in Inheritors of the Earth: How Nature is Thriving in an Age of Extinction.

We are currently living in an Anthropocene Age, where the Earth is markedly affected by our actions. Many people say that due to human activity, we are currently living through a sixth mass extinction. Thomas, however, turns conventional thinking about biology upside down. Instead of removing invasive species and preventing them from hybridizing with local ones, we should move endangered plants and animals to locations where they are likely to thrive. Although there are cases where invaders out-compete native species, this is because the invaders are fitter. For examples, island birds may lose the ability to fly over time. For them, flying is a waste of energy (since they have no predators) that could be better used for reproducing. When predators come, the birds can't escape, and they may be less able to fight new diseases. Mainland birds that have had to deal with challenges constantly are better able to survive in this situation.

Moving new species to different locations can create new niches in the ecosystem and give rise to hybrids that can form new species. One of the examples discussed in the book is an invasive plant that offered butterflies a new source of food at a time when their normal food source was threatened. When the apple tree was brought to America, it allowed a type of fly to specialize in a different food source, ultimately splitting off to form a new species. This new apple fly has three specialized parasitic wasps associated with it, so the apple tree brought about the development of four new insect species. These developments can happen fairly quickly, over a couple of centuries instead of millions of years.

Thomas ultimately reminds us that we humans are a part of nature, so everything we do is natural. Since the dawn of civilization, we have developed new species by selective breeding and brought others with us on our journeys. Global travel is creating a second Pangaea. Change has been part of life since the first unicellular creatures came into existence (and they brought about a mass extinction by releasing oxygen into the air). We should not try to recreate some long-lost Eden, but try to preserve as much biodiversity--genes--as possible, no matter in what type of body they reside or what types of technology we need to use.

As a science fiction writer, I find these ideas intriguing. Often, future worlds are depicted as being either all city or an ecological wasteland. Thomas offers alternatives. Camels and mammoths roaming the American Southwest, anyone? Science fiction writers should also think about the implications of colonizing a new world. Will Terran life forms be able to hybridize with otherworldly ones? If so, what would be the result?

Do you have a particular endangered species that you love--or a common one that you love to hate? Feel free to share them in the comments.

Science Fiction and Society

Last week, I got to be part of a project on science fiction. A friend of mine has a son who was preparing a report on the subject, and since he needed to interview a science fiction author, he asked me. His topic turned out to be how science fiction influences society. He already had examples of scientists who chose their discipline because of science fiction, so I gave him another angle: how science fiction affects politics and protests. Here are a few points I made during the interview:

• Aliens can be a metaphor for the "Other," and how we view the aliens can reflect how we treat marginalized people in our own society
• The first interracial kiss shown on TV was on Star Trek. (It might have been more acceptable in a science fiction context than in a mainstream one.)
• Women have been dressing as handmaids from The Handmaid's Tale at political protests
• Dystopian novels like The Hunger Games, where a teenager challenges a corrupt system, had inspired teenagers with their own protests.

How else do you think science fiction affects society? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

Great Courses: How Great Science Fiction Works

Although listening to audiobooks feels much slower than reading, I like listening to lectures through my Audible account. I just started listening to How Great Science Fiction Works, narrated by Gary K. Wolfe. It's about 12.5 hours long, broken up into roughly-30-minute lectures. The first two lectures discussed Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Amazing Stories, with particular attention given to early contributors such as Welles, Verne, and Poe.) I'm about halfway through Lecture 3 (comparing science fiction with historical fiction, along with the topic of time travel) as I write this. According to one reviewer, this series is more of a history of the science fiction genre, not a how-to course on writing great science fiction. Nevertheless, it should be a interesting listen, though it'll probably take me a few months to complete the course.

Have you ever listened to one of the Great Courses? If so, which one (or ones)? Feel free to share in the comments.

The Alien Mind by V.L Jennings

One of my former blogging buddies had her YA science fiction book re-released recently. Here's some information about it:

When a group of aliens called the Aruk abduct Young Rivinaig and several other children, they are thrown into the adventure of a lifetime. 

The Aunantet, a benevolent race of aliens, rescue the children and adopt them into their culture and raised them as if they belong. The children's new families teach them how to harness the full capacity of their minds, enabling them to defy the laws of physics and develop special mental abilities. 

The past returns to haunt them as the Aruk plot revenge and regain control of their former captives. The fate of the entire galaxy depends on whether the children can maintain their freedom.

Goodreads Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36130453-the-alien-mind

Buy Links:

E-book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0755Q6D2V
Will be priced at .99 on Amazon till January 1! Normal retail price is 2.99

Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1974669661
Large Print: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1975813944
Hard Cover: http://www.lulu.com/content/hardcover-book/the-alien-mind/21245642

Audio Book: (coming soon)

When V.L. Jennings isn't traveling to other worlds through her imagination, she calls Dillon, South Carolina her home. She is the author of science fiction novels "The Alien Mind" (recipient of the Readers Favorite Five Star Review Award), and "Visionary From The Stars".

But what motivates Virginia to create, to illustrate, to prognosticate? Virginia is a speculator, the kind of person who always debates the "what if?" of where stories both true and fantastical are leading themselves to, which explains her love of post-apocalyptic fare such as "The Walking Dead." Through her writing, she enjoys trying to figure out what our human potential is, and where our innate desire for a better world could lead us.

Overall, Virginia is just about as real as a person can get. Yes, even authors love to sing along with their favorite local radio station while driving, and Virginia is no exception to this rule. She enjoys watching Doctor Who or Star Trek with her family over dinner, and also watching the latest sci-fi and action movies with her husband. On the weekends, you may even find Virginia and her family at the local comic book store, hunting down more comics to add to their collections.

V.L. Jennings spends her free time writing flash fiction on her blog and working towards her degree in Electronics Engineering. You can find out more about V.L. Jennings as well as join her newsletter at:

www.virginialorijennings.com

Science Fiction/Fantasy Book Giveaway!

Networking is a beautiful thing. Thanks to a self-publishing mailing list that I belong to, I was able to join a major science fiction/fantasy book giveaway being held on Instafreebie. It's running through November 26th, and over 40 authors are participating. You can see the entire list of available books here, including my work, Scattered Seasons. In return for these freebies, you will be asked to join that author's mailing list for each book you download. There's bound to be something for every SF/fantasy fan, so check it out.

Lady Gwendolyn lo Havil is an Ava Spring, born to heal others and lead the Season Avatars of her generation. Season Avatars with divine magic must work in groups of four to save the country of Challen from Chaos Season, times when all of the seasons appear at once. When the current Ava Spring dies in a riding accident, Gwen must find the other three Season Avatars she will link with.  But two of them are missing, and with Gwen's own magic crippled by a cursed pottery shard, she will have to use all of her skills to find the Avatars scattered across the country of Challen. During her journey, she meets a stranger who claims to know the shard's origin. Is he truly an ally of the Season Avatars, or is he trying to stop them from uniting?

Don't forget Seasons' Beginnings, the first book of the series, is permafree at major eBook retailers. You can find your favorite store through this link.

Kron Evenhanded is an artificer, able to enchant any man-made object, but he finds people more difficult to work with. When he visits the city of Vistichia, he encounters Sal-thaath, an extremely magical but dangerous child created by Salth, another magician Kron knew at the Magic Institute. Kron attempts to civilize Sal-thaath, but when his efforts lead to tragedy, Kron is forced to ally himself with a quartet of new deities and their human Avatars. Together they must defend Vistichia as Salth attempts to drain its life and magic. But Salth has Ascended halfway to godhood over Time. Will Kron’s artifacts be enough to protect the Avatars, especially the woman he loves, or will Time separate them?