Author name: gardensofhansen@hotmail.com

Syfy – My favorite science fiction writer I’ve written about early science fiction writers from the 19th and early 20th centuries. But my personal favorite writer of science fiction remains Robert A. Heinlein. In my pre-teen years I discovered his juvenile syfy stories mesmerized me for hours of reading. I read everything I could find, and was never disappointed. Early reads included “The Star Beast”, “Rocket Ship Galileo”, and “Have Spacesuit – Will Travel”. These were fun and low key adventures. My favorite from my earliest reading was probably the family adventure of “The Rolling Stones”. It was years later that I discovered that “Farmer in the Sky” started off as a serial for Boys Life, the scouting magazine. “Tunnel in the Sky” was a lot of fun, although I was a bit disappointed in the ending, probably because I was starting to think of girls and the protagonist doesn’t wind up with the girl in the book. It was also the first of his books that I recognized as drawing from the classic, “Lord of the Flies”. But to be fair, this storyline keeps getting remade in other forms every decade include this one. My favorite Heinlein book is “Citizen of the Galaxy”. It is quite episodic, but a grand story. Again, Heinlein draws from another classic, “Kim”. Thorby is a child sold into slavery with no clear memory of his past. His is purchased by a beggar, who turns out to be a spy investigating the slave trade. Thorby grows to the point of comfort, when his world is turned upside again, and he winds up in a culture dramatically different, the traders. Then he moves on to the military. Finally he is identified and returns to Earth for his most challenging adventures. A great story, I just relistened to it this Spring and it still holds my attention closely. It seems logical that Heinlein’s works would be great fodder for movie stories and they have been, but not very well. Starship Troopers has been the most successful, and it strays far from the imagery of the book. The Puppet Masters is a weak translation, but his vision had already been used in other more popular movies. Some of his sub-plot ideas have been well used, such as the tribbles in the Trouble with Tribbles in Star Trek. So which would I most like to see converted to a movie? For kids: The Rolling Stones with a healthy budget and Farmer in the Sky For all: Between Planets Citizen of the Galaxy Double Star Podkayne of Mars I wouldn’t be disappointed to see his other works converted, even stories like “The Door into Summer” Producers just need to discover and sell the project. But beware, some great stories have been destroyed by the writers, directors, and budgets for other past books such as John Carter.

Okay, I admit it, the only time I’ve seen a good brother/sister story in science fiction is Podcayne of Mars by Robert Heinlein. Ryder and his sister don’t always get along, but what is their true relationship. Many elements of the story are drawn from my own five children, including the tv controller incident in this excerpt. Ryder is certainly an introvert by nature. Debbie is the polar opposite. Friends who have read the book indicate they can clearly identify who Debbie is based on. As you read the book you may not believe anyone could really be like that, but she is more real than fictional. In the previous excerpt we saw how Debbie stands up for Ryder, but how about the other way around? Ryder was surprised how easily his parents had gone along with his going abroad for a year. They sounded almost as if they had been expecting the trip to Europe. Mom had gone so far as to say, “We knew it had to come up sooner or later.” They had been more hesitant about Debbie going along. “She’s too young,” Mother had said. “I’m not so much worried about her age as her sense of adventure,” Dad had stated. “She’s not afraid of anything, and I don’t think she has the judgment to avoid mischief. I just don’t think she’s ready for Europe and all that goes with it.” Ryder would never admit it to Debbie, but he had finally sold his parents on letting her come. She had been in tears when she ran to her bedroom. “I’ll take care of her,” Ryder volunteered. “I’ll make sure she stays out of trouble.” Ryder tossed and turned as he tried to get to sleep that night. The excitement of visiting a far-off land had him contemplating the things he might see, the places he might visit. He rose three different times to check out information about the Swiss Alps, the Prado, and finally the Black Forest. He could not seem to get his mind to shut down. Finally, he decided to get up and grab a snack from the refrigerator. As he reached the kitchen, he could overhear voices in the dining room. “Elise, we knew this day would come. We’ve been planning on it for what, six years now?” he heard his father console. “But it wasn’t for another year. William isn’t even sixteen yet.” His mother sounded on the edge of tears. “And Deborah? You know the troubles I had. She isn’t even close to old enough to go.” “Yes, I was surprised that Debbie was invited too. But it makes some sense. She’ll have William to keep an eye on her. I’d rather she went the same time he goes,” his dad replied. “It isn’t safe,” Mother stuttered. Ryder felt embarrassed. He never liked to be around when she, or anyone else for that matter, was crying. “Frankly,” Ryder’s dad interjected, “after what William experienced at that ridiculous excuse of a school, I think they will both be safer at Europe. Who knows, maybe they’ll bring us back some dewsnips?” Ryder heard his mother laugh halfheartedly as he slipped back down the stairs. He decided he would have to bring some dewsnips home. He spent the next hour trying to find the word online, but despite using every combination he could think of, he came up empty. The search did get his mind off the upcoming trip, and eventually he dozed off at his computer. Over the next few weeks Ryder frequently regretted talking his parents into letting Debbie come along. She seemed twice as irritating as normal, and her confidence seemed to be expanding beyond reality. “I’ll bet I can get the pilot to let me fly the plane,” she boasted. She would then go on to say she was going to be a pilot when she grew up. Later, she was going to join the Air Force. Then she was going to be the President of the United States. “After that I assume you’ll be an astronaut and become a multi-millionaire selling energy drinks,” Ryder responded sarcastically. The fire in Debbie’s eye warned him in time, and he ducked as the TV controller sailed past his head and broke against the far wall. “Dad’s going to kill you.” Ryder laughed as he fled to his room, locking the door behind him as Debbie’s body slammed into it.

For some reason (perhaps to get published) scientists are always hemming us in. We cannot go faster than the speed of light. There is no potable water outside of Earth. Civilization as such has only been around for 6,000 years. Those are just some of the more obvious hems. Recently investigators have revealed a manmade bridge inside a cave on the island of Mallorca. They are theorizing that this means that cognizant humans occupied the island hundreds if not thousands of years earlier than thought. Interesting guess. The under the sea discoveries of sunken cities and full civilizations we did not know existed expand beyond just theory. When did these civilizations actually exist? Were they earlier, or even the earliest civilizations or are they just earlier civilizations we now know existed. Buried under those cities are there cities even more ancient? Now we believe that life, as we know it, probably existed on Mars. That there was an atmosphere, that there were above ground water resources, and that there are massive amounts of water buried under the surface of the planet. What if a dying civilization on Mars Martian-formed Earth so that they could flee to that planet as their own planet died? What if, instead of evolving from single celled life on Earth, we are actually immigrants from Mars? It seems far fetched, but is it more far fetched than current scientific theory. And if so, is it reasonable to assume that scientific theory may evolve from one that believes traveling faster than the speed of light is not possible for mass? Another interesting “theory” about the universe is that it started with Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago. Yet, now we are finding galaxies over 60 billion light years from Earth. Scientists create theories to explain that away, but simple math implies that regardless of direction there should not be anything further away than 2 times 13.8 billion or 27.6 billion light years. So which part of the math is wrong? Meanwhile, futurists such as Robert Heinlein, seem to have a better track record (not perfect) of forecasting the future than scientists. I think I’ll vote for the syfy authors who had great vision.

Chapter 1 of Demeter introduces us to three of the main characters and tells us a lot about their personality. At this point they are still in junior high school. Ryder has a crush on a girl, Cynthia Flores and although more of a nerd, he decides to attend the school dance. His younger sister Debbie, true to form, crashes the dance and is hanging out with Cynthia while Ryder is holding up the wall. Deciding to eave the dance he is confronted by his nemesis of sorts, a school bully. And then… “Well, if it isn’t Spider Ryder,” Barry Hales sneered from somewhere behind him. Ryder knew that responding was a waste of time, but he couldn’t help himself. He turned around. Barry wasn’t as tall as Ryder, but he had the build of a football player. Barry was a star player on the junior high team, and was already the talk of the high school coaches. Ryder wasn’t sure what position he played, but knew it had something to do with knocking people over and trying to hurt the quarterback in any way possible. “Wow, Barry, did you stay up all night thinking that up?” Ryder knew he shouldn’t bait Barry. “You’re gay!” Barry taunted, but started to turn away. Ryder was ready for this one. “If you mean happy, carefree, merry, bright…not really.” Barry turned back. Ryder knew he should have let Football Head move on to harass someone else. “Come on, show me what you got.” Barry’s knuckles were folding, not a good sign. “Let me see, you’re what, a blue belt in aikido?” Ryder asked. “Aiki what?” Barry was starting to boil. “You know, the Japanese self-defense art using principles of non-resistance to debilitate the strength of the opponent.” “No! I’m a black belt in karate,” stormed Barry “Ah, the art of the empty hand.” “Empty hand!” Barry exploded. “I’ll show you empty hand.” Ryder received a double jab from Mr. Karate. He fell back two steps, trying to get his breath back. “Impressive,” he said, choking. “You’re going down, punk. I’ll turn you into a punching bag.” Barry sent another punch at Ryder’s solar plexus. Ryder shifted enough to take the punch as a glancing blow, then dropped to the floor. “You win, I’m down. Congratulations.” Ryder hadn’t counted on the mocking laughter from the growing audience. This unexpected turn was bad news. Ryder noticed Barry’s pointed-toe cowboy boots as one came flying at his stomach. The connection knocked the wind out of him, and he could hear the laughter cut off. That was the last moment he was aware of the surroundings for the next several seconds. Repeated blows came to his face, back, and stomach, depending on how he turned to avoid further contact. He was starting to fade in and out when a chaperone (he thought) arrived and broke up the “fight.” The throbbing pain started to overcome him. “That didn’t turn out so well,” he mumbled as he threw up, then passed out. Ryder wasn’t sure how long he was out, but he was still on the floor in the same position, so it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. As shapes started to come into focus, he was wishing he was still unconscious. The throbbing pain was starting in. He’d felt pain like this before. When was it? Oh yes, when he fell out of that tree and cracked a rib. But in this case, he couldn’t make up his mind which hurt worse, his face or his back or his ribcage. Yup, that same cracked rib. Ryder wondered whether the rib was cracked or broken this time. Meanwhile, it felt like someone had gone over his face with a hammer. No, that was cowboy boots, wasn’t it? he thought. With his vision back into focus, he saw Mr. Small standing over him in an almost protective crouch and trying to check his pulse at the same time. There was some sort of altercation going on beyond his vision, and screaming, he thought. “Mr. Small, I’m alive,” Ryder croaked. He realized he must have been kicked in the throat as well. “We’re calling an ambulance. Lie still.” Mr. Small was using his reassuring voice. “I’m fine.” Ryder tried to get up, but the throbbing made it easy to relent to Mr. Small’s severe look. “Come on kids, the show’s over. Back away. We need some air here,” Mr. Small commanded. The crowd seemed to disperse quickly as there was something else going on just out of Ryder’s vision. Finally, he was able to make out something that made him wonder if he was delirious. Debbie seemed to be flying in circles and he caught glimpses of Cynthia swinging just below her. Suddenly, Debbie seemed to disappear, and there was a great deal of laughter. Ryder thought, I must really be fading. Maybe I’m dying. Then he heard another sharp voice. Was that Mrs. Peterson? “Get off him you two!” There was an abrupt screech. Ryder had never heard anything quite so terrifying in his life. It sounded like…well nothing Ryder could imagine. Then his senses came to him quickly. Barry was obviously beating up Debbie. The adrenalin kicked in, and Ryder rose to his feet, holding his side. What he saw made him start to chuckle. His ribs just couldn’t take it. Barry Hales’ voice could now be heard distinctly yelling, “Get them off me! Get them off me!” Mrs. Peterson seemed to be taking her time removing Cynthia and Debbie from Barry, who was now collapsed on the floor. Debbie had two handfuls of hair that had apparently belonged to Barry in her clenched fists. Ryder saw a glaring bald spot on one side of Barry’s head. Cynthia’s foot was retracting from one of those spots guys just don’t like to think about getting kicked. Ryder started to laugh, then spluttered, “Oh no,” and fell unconscious to the floor. In these few paragraphs you get

Aloha – Regularly I intend to add excerpts from the Orion’s Spur series that I especially like. What better way to start than to share the prologue to the first book: Ryder sat on the cold, rocky ground leaning against a boulder. He was holding a single shot Taser. The bleeding in his right leg was staunched by the rock shard that had ricocheted off the wall in the last round of fire and embedded in his flesh. “Who would have thought,” Ryder muttered to himself, then fell silent as he realized the noise might pinpoint him to the alien who wanted him dead. Who would have thought eight months ago that I would be sitting in a cave a hundred light years from Earth waiting for an alien to kill me? He almost laughed, but held it in. If he wasn’t careful, he might lose consciousness too soon. If I can just hold on a few minutes longer. UFOs, aliens, garden planets within rocky shells, galactic wars, all real and all little consequence if he did not survive the next few minutes. The clatter of loose rocks to his left drew his attention. It would be over soon. The first thing Ryder noticed as his assailant turned the corner were the boots, and for an instant his mind flashed back to a dance that seemed a hundred years ago.

In 1968 the movie industry realized that okay science fiction movies could become great with the right soundtrack. Case in point, 2001: A space Odyssey. The story is convoluted. It is based on a short story I read before most people reading this were born. How they managed to stretch it out to a full length movie eludes me. I do not remember any of the characters in the film, they were inconsequential. I do vaguely remember HAL the computer. He was the best actor in the film. But the film is best remembered for its score, which ironically was composed by Richard Strauss, born in 1864 and died in 1949, almost 20 years before the movie was made. It is a great composition, and well used to provide some sort of narrative to a weak story. Of course, sometimes you can get both a good story and a good soundtrack. Case in point: Star Wars. I remember the characters, Spielberg certainly gets credit for creating memorable characters not only in Star Wars but in most of his films (even the bombs). Spielberg hit a homerun with picking John Williams to compose the music. His music has moved film after film from mediocre to great. Unfortunately, some pretty good science fiction films have been ruined with poor musical scores. The Space between Us was a great story, but often losing the narrative and acting to a score that seemed totally mismatched to the film. Compared to the weak story and overuse of special effects (consider the seemingly endless panning around the Enterprise) The Space between us is a heart stopping and interesting science fiction tale. Sadly it did not have Jerry Goldsmith (Star Trek) nor John Williams to score the film.

I’m always looking for new ideas in astronomy and science for a new story. The most interesting one I’ve run across is the quasi-moons that follow Earth’s orbit around the sun. There are several of these masses that range from 50 meters in diameter to a few miles. If we ignore the hype they are really asteroids following our orbit around the sun. This week there have been a number of stories about an object in the Milky Way traveling at 1.3 million miles per hour. To put that in perspective, if you were traveling to the moon at that speed it would take 11 minutes. That’s shorter than almost all commuter times to work. A trip to the sun would take about 3 days, and a trip to Mars would be about four and a half days. So what is this object and why is it significant. Scientists believe that it is likely a brown star that was kicked out trajectory by a supernova. Size-wise it is much smaller than our sun, but bigger than our planet, if the scientists are correct. As a science fiction junkie I’d be inclined to think of it’s as a very large planet that has a huge basement (or infrastructure) to house an entire civilization. It is currently moving in a path that would take it out of our galaxy. Why is it significant? Objects traveling this fast 0.1% of the speed of light have been hypothesized, but this is the first evidence of such speeds being documented. Will I use this in a future story? Well, in reality I have used the concept of such speeds and greater with the crazy sister of Ryder in the Orion’s Spur series, but most especially in the last book, Paragon’s Virtue. Will I use it in any upcoming stories? In Salt of the Earth it is a factor. Even though Salt of the Earth is confined to our Solar System the protagonists do discover an element that enables them to approach such speeds in the Solar System. Glad to see its possible. For galactic tales speeds even greater are necessary. https://www.yahoo.com/news/rare-hypervelocity-star-may-able-191548544.html

Okay I admit it is not a totally original concept. But in Book 5 of Orion’s Spur, crazy Debbie has to race between the Perseus arm of the galaxy to the Sagittarius arm of the galaxy in the Sara. To continue accelerating she sling shots off of multiple stars along her path, going faster after each swing. I was not surprised, but delighted to see an article today about this same concept being put to practice by NASA. They are doing a multiple sling shot using first the Moon, and then Earth to send a spacecraft to Venus, and then on to Jupiter cutting across the Solar System using a shortcut. My only disappointment is that they didn’t also use Venus as yet another speed accelerator along the way. The article is a good and short read: https://www.yahoo.com/news/spacecraft-slingshot-around-earth-moon-203913638.html

The setting for Demeter is 100 light years from Earth in the Orion’s Spur. What is Orion’s Spur? It is a minor arm (and thus sometimes referred to as a spur) sitting between the Sagittarius and Perseus arms of the galaxy. Both of these larger arms have billions of stars scattered in their comet-like journey around the center of the Milky Way. Orion’s Spur has a much smaller star population with estimates running between 300 and 800 million stars. Our sun and Earth are in Orion’s Spur. The Orion’s Spur series focuses on William Ryder, his sister Debbie, and their friends. It begins as an adventure as they are kidnapped or conscripted for a year of service in a far away system. The issue of bullying sets the story up at the individual level in chapter 1, but goes on to the broader issue of large powers and their impact on those in between. The series also addresses such things as – who can you trust and does might make right? The story arc of the five books follows the adventures and coming of age of several characters as they grow and change. My favorite aspect of the story is the ability to influence others through kindness, even one’s enemies. The first book, Demeter came out 10 years ago, followed by Return to Demeter, Defending Demeter, Haumeah and Paragon’s Virtue. The books are available in e-book format at Amazon, along with paperback versions for those who like to actually hold what they read. In the end of July of this year, all five books are now available on Audiblebooks.

I recently read an article about the asteroid that caused the mass extinction of the dinosaurs. The latest theory is that it was a water rich asteroid from beyond Jupiter. The scientists claim the previous theory was incorrect (caused by a comet) because no comets they are aware of contains ruthenium, a rare element. As I read the article I thought back to the parable of the blind men and the elephant. If you’re not familiar with the story it tells of a group of blind men trying to describe an elephant. Each of the blind men feel a different part of the elephant and announce that it is like what they felt. Depending on what part of the elephant they touched they individually came up with the theory that an elephant was like a rope, a tree, a snake, a wall, etc. Theories are great, but explaining the universe or even what happened on Earth three billion years ago, or 50 million years ago, or 10,000 years ago is still speculation based on the limited knowledge that we have today. A little over a hundred years ago scientific theory believed that diseases came from ‘bad air”, another that the universe was unchanging and infinite; diseases could be cured by draining some of the bad blood from a person’s system. It doesn’t take centuries or millennia for new scientific facts or theory to change. Now theories seem to be changed as often as you might change your clothes. Robert Heinlein is often referred to as a futurist. Many of his visions of the near future became a reality. More than science I believe that science fiction results in the evolution of things to come. Science in and of itself seems more focused on what cannot be rather than what can be. Example, based on mathematical theories we cannot travel faster than the speed of light or we will turn into a bolt of lightening (or energy). Rather than limiting what we are and what we can be we need to move beyond scientific theories that have their foundation on the toenail of the elephant.