This I Believe

Footprint on the Moon (NASA Images)

It's now ten days into the new year. I know that this is a little late for the traditional stock-taking. The letting go of the past and starting fresh. At least theoretically.

Me, it seems I never let go of the past. The things I didn't understand get revisited and analyzed. Over and over again, until I understand them. Or think I do. Then I relish that bit of the past. It makes for good stories. Stories that help me more thoroughly understand, or, more often, understand differently.

Truth be told, I'm not much for letting go and starting fresh. I tend to let the day go and start again in the morning -- not "fresh" just start again where I left off.

For me, today's taking stock is an exploration of what I've come to believe.

This I believe:

I believe in and love People. Some of my best friends are people. We walk together and talk and laugh together. We worry together. But never in just the same way. We come from different countries. We've had very different growings-up. And very different adulthoods. Our politics are different. Some of us are faithfully religious. Some have our own faiths born of religion. And some have faith inspired by our experiences and educations. The one thing we have in common is that we all got to where we are by thoughtfully exploring our worlds and our lives. And we respect each other.

I believe in and love the Earth. It's my home. Its constancy reassures me. The Earth was here long before People and will be here long after us. Its atmosphere turns particles blown by solar winds into light shows. Its volcanoes burst full-flame into the night sky, building new lands. Tectonic plates shift and drift, forever changing Earth's face. Maybe not "alive" like mice and men, but Earth feels alive to me. And it sustains life.

I believe in and love Space. Space is the future of People and the Earth. From Space we can see Earth in its place in the Universe. How beautiful it is. How small. How much smaller are we. Earth, Sagan's Pale Blue Dot, is our birthplace in the Cosmos, where we have morphed from single-celled organism to sentient being. And now Earth is our staging ground.

Some of us have explored and colonized Earth's lands and waters until there is nowhere on Earth that we cannot go. Some of us will follow that explorer gene into Space. There will be new worlds, not to conquer, but to make new homes.

My middle name is not Pollyanna. I know there are difficulties among humans. There are Earth-borne catastrophes. There are dangers known and unknown in Space travel.

What I don't believe is that these negatives will be enough to stop us. We can and we will.

Into the Future!

Up, Up and Away!

If you've read three or more of my blog posts, you know that I think humanity's future lies in Space. And I tend more toward the "Shining city upon a hill" view of our future colonies, rather than post-apocalyptic outposts teetering on the brink of disaster.

And I hope, those shining new colonies will not be born of some global catastrophe on Earth like the current migration out of Africa and the Middle East. It is post-apocalyptic. Many of those people are not looking for a better life. They're just looking for any life at all.

I do not fancy an Earth left in smoking ruins. I don't think it will happen like that.

Humans have always moved on from their natal homes. They seek wealth, adventure, a new vista, a safer place to raise their children. A place where they can build the life they want. I don't think emigration from Earth will be any different. We'll have people who want one or more of these things just like we always have had.

Just as we do have.

I think colonies in Space will happen as they always have. Explorers will be inspired by the possibility of "going where no man has gone before." The new Columbuses will be funded by entrepreneurs who see the possibility of wealth by providing resources more abundantly and more cheaply.

Scientists will hitch a ride with the new Hudson Bay Companies to expand humanity's knowledge.
All manner of Engineers, will imagine and design better ways to get there, to live there. And the rest of us will go for the jobs, for the better neighborhoods. For the same reasons we up-stakes and move to a new town today. Eventually we'll even move to a colony because that's where the one we love is from and has family they want to be near.

That's just the way we humans work.

Yes is the answer. Space is our Future.

Up, up and away!

Character Introduction -- Novel Excerpt

My novel-in-progress Dead and Gone is a follow-up to Murder on Ceres, a science fiction/murder mystery. Joe is native to Ceres Colony, temporarily assigned to Earth, what is to him an alien planet.

Chapter 1

Joe passed the flashball to Joey. The little boy blocked it with his chest, let it drop to the ground, then dribbled past him. The kid was a natural, Joe hardly had to ease his defense at all. Not that he had a problem letting his boy do well against him. His own father had always played easy with him. His Dad didn’t believe a father should compete to win against his son. Brothers, yes. A rival team, of course. But competition with a kid whether on the pitch or in cyberspace was to train the child, not to beat him.

Bright light tugged at Joe’s eyelids. The flashball pitch and his son disappeared. He clenched his teeth against the cold. What was that smell? Smoke. He hadn’t heard the alarm. What the frak? Sounds, yes. But no alarm. Twittering sounds and rushing water. No emergency responders. The smoke sensors must have failed.

Something snuffled at him.

Dream or reality? Fire on the colony was never a good thing. Toxic fumes. He’d suffocate before he burned. He had to wake up. Had to get out. He tried to yell, but only groaned.

“Stay still,” someone said.

He struggled awake. A shadow blocked the sunlight. What he saw made no sense. A head, an enormous hairy head hung above him, silhouetted against the sun. He couldn’t see details. At least no details he recognized. No eyes. He saw nostrils half as big as his hand.

The sun? Where was he?

“Be quiet,” the voice said. “Just take it easy. She’ll move away. She’s just curious.”

Earth. He was on Earth and this was no frakking dream. He was trapped, wrapped in some kind of fabric, lying on the ground. Unprotected. Unable to move. With an animal standing over him.

The animal raised its head, enough so he could see more than its muzzle. It shook its head, slinging snot and saliva. Loose lips flapping like a banner in the Earth wind. Then it walked away. Ears twitching forward and back, its huge body swaying on stilt-like legs ending in hooves. Surprisingly delicate hooves considering the size of the animal.

“Moose,” Sheriff Macy said.

Joe watched the animal disappear into the pines. Or maybe they were fir trees. He didn’t know and he didn’t care. That animal was too big and too damn close.

Sheriff Macy poured a cup of coffee. “Don’t see many moose on Ceres Colony do you Hudson?”

“You’re damn frakkin’ right about that. Don’t want to see any more of them that close here either.” He wiped his face, climbed out of the sleeping bag, and accepted the coffee.

Rafe from Murder on Ceres

Today is a day for dental and eye appointments in my family. Luckily it’s Day R. Please meet Rafe, the protagonist in my novel, Murder on Ceres. These three snippets from Chapter 1 introduce Detective Rafael Sirocco of the Ceres Colony Police Department and his Solar System. It’s a time when human civilization is centered in the Mars Colonies and Earth is a backwater, truly the Old World. But humans are still human and murder happens.

    TS-17 Raiders screamed overhead. A flaming groundcraft hurtled toward him.

    “Off,” he said and exited the comfort bubble into the silent hotel room. Time for the next security check.

    He touched the control pad opening the bedroom door enough to see Shuller. The inoffensive business man had a wife and child tucked away somewhere safe on one of the Mars colonies. The man’s chest rose and fell. Inhale. Exhale. Quiet and even.

    “Still alive,” Rafe said heading toward the entry door.

    His partner Joe nodded and continued playing cards on the dining table.

    A red pinpoint of light in the upper right corner of the door’s security screen held steady. Locked. The screen showed an empty hallway. All quiet. He keyed his mobile and checked the closed circuit block cams. No unusual activity at the hotel’s front or rear entrances. No change in the last thirty minutes. Or the thirty minutes before that or thirty minutes before that. Nothing unusual for the whole shift.

He dialed the room’s window external view only and made a visual sweep of the street four stories below.  In the twilight which passed for night on Ceres Colony, he saw nothing of interest.

    A short siren blast broke the quiet. He froze. Joe came out of his chair tapping his mobile. The cards on the table blinked out.

    Another short blast. Inside the suite. Not from the bubble. A ringtone. Not his.

Joe crossed the room in three strides and keyed the offending mobile offline. “It’s Shuller’s. Don’t recognize the number, but it’s local.”

    They stood, listening. Nothing from the bedroom. That guy could sleep through anything.

    A second check of the entry door. The lock light still red and the hallway still empty.

    He relaxed. “All clear.” He spoke into his mobile reporting to the precinct. “They say to hold in place.”

    Joe returned to the table. The playing cards reappeared.

    Back in the bubble Rafe was again surrounded by flying objects and high decibel sounds. He liked Earth holographic videos, the effect of projectile weaponry on fast vehicles in deadly gravity added up to a near death experience. As close as he wanted to come. But this one had no plot. Besides cops don’t talk like that, probably never did. You’d think they’d at least get the dialogue right.

    With standard Earth-mix atmosphere and a full g, he knew projectile weapons would function on Ceres Colony exactly as they did on Earth. Like everyone on every colony in the solar system, he knew not to risk it. Being expelled into space through a hole in the super structure couldn’t end well.

***

    Joe flipped him a thumbs-up and nodded for him to take a seat at the table, then touched his mobile, and the cards reappeared.

    “TePaki was your first case,” Joe said. The faux wood grain of the table showed through the gaming surface and cards. Standard police-issue Ion-D’s graphics left a lot to be desired. Joe touched the next card. A ceramic bowl of fresh fruit distorted the king of diamonds.

    “TePaki was never my case.” He picked up an orange and peeled it. “They took it away from us before we could interview anyone.”

    “Anyway, we broke it.” Joe touched two fingers to the table and was dealt two cards.

    “Just which ‘we’ is that?” The thin, sharp scented skin came away from the orange easily.

    Sure, an early example of Detective Sergeant Joe Hudson exercising seniority. Nearly a year ago Joe had info-dumped all the TePaki files into Rafe’s inbox.

    Hudson reached across the table and helped himself to an orange segment. “It was a natural for you, you being a son of Sirocco Shipping. You got the red hair and all. And TePaki being a pirate, your family’s number one competitor.”

    At first he’d thought Joe was jealous of his family. The Siroccos were a wealthy, old colony family. But his uncle was wealthy not him. Dear old dad, ever the bleeding heart, had folded on the family fortune in favor of some misbegotten dedication to lawyering for the downtrodden. The one thing he liked about his dad was that he didn’t use the family name for status. Neither would he. He promoted early to detective because he was a good cop, a smart cop. But Hudson wasn’t jealous. He wasn’t even impressed.

 ***

    He and Joe were done for the night. All they had to do was file their reports and go home.

    “Beats uniform work anytime,” Joe said, as they stepped into the hall.

    “Seems like all we do is mop up. Like this case, we’re baby-sitting Shuller.” He looked both ways down the hall. “Training on Earth’ll give us a break.”

    “Yeah, sure. A break from the tedium, right?” Joe laughed.

    “Any idiot can face a crisis – it’s day-to-day living that wears you out,” he quoted. “Manny Turrentine”

    “The philosopher?” Hudson rolled his eyes. “One guy in the Department who quotes philosophers, and I got him for a partner.”

    “Joe, the goad.”

    “You calling me a goat?”

    Rafe ignored him. “They have a chase course for high speed ground craft. And rail guns. We can do things on Earth we’d never get to do here.”

    He was only about seven and a half centimeters taller than Joe, but Joe was at least fifteen centimeters broader, the difference between a runner and a weight man.

    A door to their left jerked open and a bald-headed man collided with Joe. The man bounced off and staggered a couple of steps. He bared his teeth and growled. He charged Joe swinging. Hudson ducked and grabbed the oncoming fist. He twisted it behind the man’s back and turned him to the wall.

    A wild-eyed woman wearing next to nothing charged past Rafe. She jumped on Joe’s back, punching and clawing. Joe and the man went to the floor with the woman on top of the pile. Rafe moved in to help.

    The commotion brought Harper and Gomez out of the witness’s suite. After checking both ways for potential threats, Gomez returned to the suite, and Harper called for uniforms.

    Rafe got an arm around the woman’s head and neck, pulling her away from Hudson. She squirmed out of his grasp and bit his right arm. She bit him hard. He shoved her away. She came at him screaming obscenities. He side-stepped her, grabbed an arm, and spun her to the floor.

    Joe cuffed the man and sat him against the wall. Harper, Joe, and the male combatant watched Rafe cuff the woman. She continued to struggle, screaming and spitting. He forced her to sit against the opposite wall.

“You mother-slagger. You failed abortion,” she shrieked at him, the auto-cuffs biting into her wrists. “I’ll tear your face off.”

    Rafe’s eyes narrowed. “Shut up.” His jaw clenched.

    She blinked at him. “What? What did you say?”

    His face was as red as his hair and mustache. His lips a thin, angry line. His face glistened with a sheen of sweat. He glared at her.

    She glared back, but she was quiet. 

Imagination -- short essay

earth-mind from dreamstime.com

The mind is a wonderful thing. It invents everything – even things that can’t be. Or, at least things that the very same mind can’t make be.

I had a dream, a very strange dream.

Something happened to the earth. A cataclysm that shook and frightened my sleeping self. And my first clue that something big had happened was in the sky. The clouds swirled oddly. Into a sort of disc, white clouds with blue sky all around.

And a man rode a horse off the edge of the earth. And lived to tell the tale. (This was a dream, after all.) Then somehow I could see the earth from a distance and it was a series of discs with space between, stacked several high. Maybe five or six. I don’t know. I didn’t count them. I was asleep.

None of the discs was the interior of the earth, just the mantel. Quite pretty, actually – all shades of blue and brown and green.

Dreams are fine, sufficient within themselves. But this dream stayed with me as I was waking. And my waking mind immediately set out to discover how this dream could be real.

How could this possibly work? Gravity? How thick would each disc have to be to have enough gravity to stay that close together? To hold the atmosphere? Then there are questions about rotation, atmospheric circulation, distribution of solar heat to generate weather and those clouds that so conveniently formed a disc, too. Not to mention having enough soil to grow grass and trees and horses for men to ride off the edge.

Where are the physicists and cosmologists when you need them?

There’s the rub. Scientists use their imaginations to figure out how the universe works, not ways to make it work the way we imagine.

Blog Hop

Thanks to Grace Wagner for tagging me.

1:  What is the working title of your book?
Murder on Ceres

2: Where did the idea come from for the book?
My favorite genres are mystery and science fiction. Diane Mott Davidson’s mysteries were my especial favorites. Her characters are believable and engaging. Her violence is done almost gently. For science fiction, I am drawn to Isaac Asimov. He provides believable, thought-provoking science.
I wanted to present humans as I think they are likely to be no matter the technological advances of the future. I want my characters to be accepted as real people by the reader. And I want my characters to realistically live in what is to them the normal universe.

3: What genre does your book come under?
Murder on Ceres is a natural cross-over, a traditional mystery set in the future.

4: Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
I’ve never thought of my characters as being like this or that actor. I will leave that up to the movie people, should it ever come to that.
No doubt, Rafe as the hero will be young and handsome; Terren as his wife will be tall and beautiful; Joe, the sidekick, will be older and ruggedly attractive. Mark, the antagonist, will be mature and charming. TePaki, the pirate will be tattooed and threatening.

5: What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
In a time when Mars is the center of humanity and Earth is literally the Old World, humans will still be humans and murder happens.

6: Is your book self-published, published by an independent publisher, or represented by an agent?
I am seeking an agent.

7: How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
Almost three years.

8: What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
Vernor Vinge’s Rainbow’s End successfully marries science and character. His people seem perfectly normal and live normally in their very different world.

9: Who or what inspired you to write this book?
Carl Sagan is the who. “Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.” – Cosmos
I believe out-migration from Earth is the inevitable and necessary next step for our species.

10: What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
Our hero must solve a murder and bring the murderer or murderers to justice. He must survive professional and personal disasters, some natural and some man-made, from the lovely pearl that is the asteroid Ceres through the vastness of space to the beautiful blue marble that is Earth.

Tagging more Writers:
This I cannot do without permission. So if you are interested in joining in, give me a shout and we’ll do it.