Like Asimov, Heinlein, and other sci-fi writers, I’m an ex-scientist who loves to tell stories—all Asimov’s stories were sci-fi, for example; mine are mysteries, thrillers, and sci-fi. (To be fair, Dr. Asimov wrote some excellent sci-fi mysteries! He was also a fan of the mystery genre.) But Asimov might be better known to some readers for his non-fiction popular science books. I once thought of writing them too—it’s writing, after all, and I love to do it—but I was too hooked on fiction to write those kind of books.

Every now and then I occasionally write a blog post in the popular science category, though. I’ve been remiss in doing that, so let’s do one! I can never compete with Dr. Asimov in either sci-fi or popular science, but I’ll do my best.

Let’s talk about scientific scales. Much science in the twentieth century explored scales from the smallest to the largest, from the tiniest bits of matter to galaxies and clusters of galaxies at the far reaches of the cosmos. Astrophysics and cosmology connect the two extremes, and these connections are like good twists in a good mystery.

One might think the smallest scale is determined by quarks—those usually invisible particles that make up protons, neutrons, and a menagerie of strange particles, all organized by the special unitary group SU(8) as proposed by Murray Gell’Man. Instead, I’d propose it’s the Planck length, defined as follows: take the square root of Planck’s constant h multiplied by Newton’s gravitational constant G and divide by the cube of the velocity of light and twice pi (it’s a constant derived from fundamental constants). From the very definition you see that it connects quantum mechanics and gravity. In fact, it is believed to be the length where quantum gravity effects become important. Planck’s length is a very, very small fraction of the size of a proton, and it could very well define the granularity of space-time in our Universe.

The largest scale is the size of the Universe, of course. That’s finite, but it’s expanding, a bit too fast according to conventional theoretical astrophysics, which is a puzzle. Adding to that mystery is the existence of dark energy and dark matter that astrophysicists invented to explain other oddities (these are just names for things the scientists don’t really understand). The presence of dark energy and matter should make the Universe’s expansion slow down more!

We start realizing there’s a lot we don’t know about our Universe. In fact, we don’t even know whether it’s unique. Certain theories add metaverses, and there’s an infinite number of them. Some of those theories were created especially to provide science with dark energy and matter, or help in the quantization of gravity, a vexing problem for astrophysicists.

Infinite numbers of metaverses? An easy way to get at them is to realize that the Universe must have its own quantum state, so, according to the Many Worlds Theory of Quantum Mechanics, at each point on the Universe’s world-line winding around in some higher-dimensional continuum (usually ten dimensions), that quantum state splits up into an infinite number of states, ad infinitum. These many world-lines are called quantum histories. They’ve been used as objects as astrophysicists try to quantize gravity, starting with James Hartle and Stephen Hawking (Hartle was one of my professors at UC Santa Barbara).

All those metaverses, parallel states of our own Universe, lead us to question the concept of infinity itself. Some used to think the Universe was infinite and existed in a steady state, everything arranged neatly so that the more the Universe changed, the more it stayed the same. Let’s accept for the sake of argument that’s not true—i.e. the Universe is finite, although it’s certainly not in a steady state with its expansion. What happens at the other end of the scientific scale? Can we go smaller than the Planck length?

We describe the physical world with mathematics, mostly with real numbers or combinations of them (three space dimensions plus one time, for example). The set of real numbers is a larger infinity than the infinity of integers or even fractions constructed from them. But does the cosmos have to match the larger infinity of the real numbers? In other words, is space-time quantized and countable like fractions? Maybe with the Planck length as the size of a bit of Universe? We could think of these chunks as pixels in space-time. We could no longer say “space-time continuum” because it wouldn’t enjoy the continuity of a real-number based Universe. Every position in space-time would represent a four-dimensional cube—albeit a very small one, to be sure, but the Universe would then be finite at both ends of the size spectrum (technically at the lower end, it would be a countable infinity like integers and fractions).

I enjoy thinking about these questions. I wish someone would answer them!

***

Comments are always welcome!

“Reading Notes for The Last Humans.” This free PDF can be downloaded by visiting the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page at this website. It’s designed to provide useful information to all readers about my new post-apocalyptic novel, and it contains a list of questions that will stimulate discussions in book reading clubs. The ebook is available now for pre-orders on Amazon and Smashwords, and it will be released in print and ebook versions by Black Opal Books on March 30.

While you’re on that web page, be sure to check out the other free PDFs that are available—these are all just a thanks to you for being a reader.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

[Note from Steve: Not exactly a movie review…or is it a review of two?]

While I reviewed Andy Weir’s book (Oct. 16, 2015), I don’t think I reviewed the movie with Matt Damon, which I saw (readers can confirm that by perusing the movie review archive—I couldn’t find one). I’m sure I won’t see First Man. Ryan Gosling can’t compare to everyman Matt Damon, but that’s not the main point of this article. My intention is to compare the focus of these two movies.

Although The Martian is clearly fiction, both movies are fictional, the second being historical fiction, of course. They’re both about space exploration, the first about exploring Mars and the second about exploring Luna. That’s where the similarities end.

First Man focuses on the past, namely astronaut Neil Armstrong. It’s a screen biopic. Nothing against Armstrong, who has been made into a folk hero, but it’s the focus on the past that bothers me. The U.S. government has all but destroyed NASA. They shut down the shuttle program and didn’t replace it. We’ve been forced to pay Russia to haul our astronauts to the ISS. Now that Russia’s rockets are having problems (the last one failed and came close to killing a cosmonaut and astronaut), we are basically excluded from manned spaceflight for the present. All of this is due to ill-advised budget cutting by various administrations, and public opinion seems to have gone along with it, saying we can no longer afford space exploration. Many of us have shed a few tears—space is the last frontier, and our pioneering spirit is dead!

A similar thing happened to the SSC (“Superconducting Super Collider”), cancelled by Congress. We have ceded our lead in space exploration to the Europeans and Russia; we have ceded our lead in particle physics to the Europeans (CERN). Per capita, other countries are spending far more on non-military R&D than the U.S. Worse, that parallels huge U.S. increases in military R&D.

All that looks backward at an ignoble past where past glories are forgotten as scientific research takes a back seat. Sure, it was great to step on the moon in 1969, but can we swallow the bitter pill of knowing we couldn’t reproduce that feat now, even if there was a desire to do so?

The Martian has a more positive outlook. Forget about the moon. Let’s look to Mars and beyond. While the book and the movie still tells the tale of budget-cutting bureaucrats fighting those who want scientific progress, it shows that a few plucky heroes can still get it done! The Martian is positive and First Man is negative exactly for those reasons.

Of course, Weir’s story suffers the same failings as Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea. The latter has pages and pages of narrative about undersea flora and fauna. Excess narrative is characteristic of many 19^th century novels, from Moby Dick to Pride and Prejudice, and it’s damn boring. Weir’s narrative is too—worse than a manual for turning whale blubber into lamp oil (Moby Dick), it’s a manual for growing potatoes in human excrement.

But The Martian looks forward in a positive way that First Man can never do. That makes a big difference. Both movies are sad. First Man looks sadly back at NASA’s glory days. The Martian sadly reminds us of what might have been if our leaders weren’t so stupid. Yet looking forward is always better than looking backward. We can’t change the past, but maybe we can change the future? You don’t have to see either movie to make a choice here.

***

Comments are always welcome!

More than Human: The Mensa Contagion. One reviewer compared this novel to Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars series. The first part is about how an ET virus creates homo sapiens version 2.0 on Earth, though. The second is about how these new humans colonize Mars and discover a starship of ETs who sent the virus to Earth. The ebook is available on Amazon and Smashwords and all its affiliates.

In libris libertas!

[Note: It has come to my attention that my settings for comments to these blog posts were incorrect…probably since the last WordPress upgrade. They are now correct, so feel free to comment. I apologize for any inconvenience this might have caused.  Also, as an FYI, your comment has to be approved by me to avoid trolls who rant and use foul language, but I get an email for each potential comment, so that approval is usually quick. I check my WP spam folder on a regular basis too. I don’t mind differing opinions—it’s good to have discussions. I do mind strong and insulting language.]

Water is rarely mentioned in fiction unless it’s almost a main character (thirsty party lost in the desert, villain poisoning a water supply, lack of water on the moon, etc—writers, are you jotting down these ideas?). In Niven and Pournelle’s Fallen Angel, it is a main character, in the form of snow—lots of it produced by extreme weather. In London’s “To Build a Fire,” it’s the snow again. (Anyone suffering through recent blizzards in the high Sierras, Midwest, or Boston area will probably agree that snow can become a villain.)

I’m surprised there aren’t more apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic novels about extreme weather. Maybe The Wizard of Oz was the last one to be really famous, but that tornado in Kansas only had a cameo role. Tornados are spawned by thunderstorms—lots of water. I once saw a tornado in Kansas—it was impressive but far away on the horizon, so it seemed not to be such a villainous character. But it was soon raining like hell!

Drought has more than a cameo role in my new post-apocalyptic thriller, The Last Humans (scheduled for publishing in 2019), but it more enables the prose rather than being a main character. My protagonist, Penny Castro, is preoccupied with water.

First, she’s an ex-USN search and rescue diver who ends up recovering corpses for the LA County Sheriff’s Department—ponds, rivers, and the ocean are where she works as a CSI. Second, after the apocalypse (a bio-engineered contagion delivered by missiles), she spends a lot of her time searching for and collecting water just to survive, or to help others survive. Third, she wants to grow things—understandable when she can’t find much to eat except dog and cat food—so she needs more of it. And fourth, she hates water because her brother almost drowned her as a kid, but she met her fear head-on to become a champion high school swimmer and Navy diver.

California, even before the apocalypse, worried about having enough water. Desalination platforms dot the coast and pump fresh water to thirsty Californians. Survivors of the apocalypse become even thirstier when the platforms stop pumping and mountain snow packs diminish. Drought seems like a villain.

Fresh, potable water is, of course, a big deal. Life on Earth couldn’t exist without it. Lack of fresh, potable water is already a problem in many areas of the world—emphasis on “clean, potable.” Lack of water will become even a bigger problem over time. As often happens when a problem is big and no one can think of a solution, people ignore the problem.

In my novel, Penny Castro can’t ignore it. Even with not many people left in the world, those last humans still need water to survive. That’s a theme in the novel. The jury’s out on whether we can solve this problem in real life. Stay tuned.

***

The Secret Lab (2^nd Ed). Four students on the International Space Station discover the origins of a mutant cat and uncover a conspiracy in a sci-fi mystery that’s sure to entertain young adults and adults who are young at heart. In a new second edition completely rewritten and reedited by Steven M. Moore’s collaborator A. B. Carolan. Now available in a print version (Create Space) as well as all ebook formats (Amazon and Smashwords).

From a review of the first edtion: “I will disclose this: I picked up The Secret Lab because of Mr. Paws, the intelligent cat. Yes, I could not resist the temptation to read the adventure of a sentient, mathematics inclined cat, told by Steven M. Moore. It exceeded my expectations. Mr. Paws is the result of a genetics experiment aboard a facility orbiting Earth in 2147. The cat and his newly found friends, a group of four smart teenagers, find themselves in an intrigue with corporate agendas, young curiosity, dangerous and ethically problematic research, relationships and their difficulties when coming of age. The complexity is enthralling, but the author also makes it easy to follow, using a light, natural style to tell us their story.”–Alfaniel Aldavan, in a Smashwords’ 5-star review

In libris libertas!

Those who are accustomed to my blog posts—minimally, an op-ed comment on current events on Tuesdays and something on reading, writing, or the publishing business on Thursdays—might find it strange that I’m placing this post here on a Tuesday. There’s a simple explanation: reading and understanding what we read are building blocks in the democratic foundation of our country.

A dear friend and I were talking over the holiday about reading “popular science” articles. These are supposedly designed so that an “intelligent layperson” can develop some understanding about an esoteric bit of science or technology. I complained about Scientific American’s overly detailed articles in fields I’d like to learn more about for my sci-fi writing. “Don’t worry about it,” said my friend. “They’ve dumbed down the articles now.”

Some translations are in order. First, there’s no such thing as “popular science” anymore. Science isn’t popular, from outright attacks on it by religious fanatics and politicians who are sycophants for Corporate America, unwilling or otherwise, to teachers telling students that they should study something else because science is too hard (especially egregious when a male teacher adds “…for girls”). In all age groups, many consider science and technology to be the root of all the problems society faces, and there are many others who encourage such an opinion.

Second, “intelligent layperson” is all too often another oxymoron nowadays. I’m not speaking to the obvious cases where someone believes dinosaurs and human beings coexisted and the world with all its wonderful diversity of flora and fauna was all created six thousand years ago. I’m talking about the average Joan or Joe who reads something but can’t understand what they’ve just read. Call it what you will, it’s an indictment against popular culture. At the critical lower levels in our educational systems, teachers over-emphasize getting through the words—understanding is secondary. Certain content is emphasized; there’s not much practice analyzing and digesting new content. Too many people read something that’s devoid of facts but don’t have the background or even common sense to know better.

Third, “dumbed down” is a nice way of saying that essay and book writers know all about the problems mentioned above and bend over backwards to compensate in order to get their message across. The latter is a struggle that’s becoming increasingly difficult, even for fiction writers, where “dumbed down” has destroyed serious literature.

Even if we get people to read with all the other distractions they have—streaming video, social media, video games, and so forth—getting them to understand what they are reading is a high hurdle to jump over. I’ve often read a review of a “popular science” book and asked myself, “Did the reviewer read the same book I did?” That would probably happen with fiction too, but I don’t bother to read those reviews unless I’m making excerpts for the PR and marketing of my own books.

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I loved those original Star Trek episodes because the best were based on sci-fi stories written by seasoned sci-fi writers, ones like Theodore Sturgeon and Harlan Ellison. They were often morality plays too, that is, good stories with some important themes mixed in. (Who could forget the message that racial prejudice is just plain stupid in the classic episode about the two black-and-white guys fighting on and on, one black on the left and white on the right, the other just the opposite?) These episodes often contained some sound scientific extrapolation too—your smart phone is a version of the Starfleet’s communicator, for example.

Episodes in the spinoff series, often written by screenwriters who had little training in science and often promoted pseudo-science, were much less entertaining if not downright distasteful. They were also just bad writers of sci-fi, starting a tradition that continues today. Generally speaking, of course, Hollywood fails at putting believable science into sci-fi and often creates pseudo-science in its screenplays. While maybe everyone knows Wiley Coyote can’t go over the cliff in an inverse-L-shaped path and finds it hilarious when he does so, is that any different than the Enterprise coming to a full-stop, thus violating Newton’s First Law? (What maybe that ether drag, created in theory by Maxwell and disproven by Einstein, suddenly reappears?) And Next Generation’s Counselor Cleavage reading minds is pretty farfetched and bordering on fantasy too. Of course, the Star Wars tales are also just fantasy episodes—they even have princes, princesses, and knights who fight with sabers (making them neon-colored with sizzles doesn’t make them more sci-fi-like—it just makes them silly).

So let’s forget about Hollywood and move on to literature.  As a continuation of a previous article, “Does Fiction Have to Seem Real?” let me ask, “Does the science in sci-fi have to seem real?” I’m talking about hard sci-fi. That’s still a broad sub-genre. But consider the sub-sub-genres of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic. While I enjoyed Christopher’s No Blade of Grass, Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, and Howey’s Wool, my kneejerk reaction to these books was that there was no real explanation of cause, only the effect. I’ve changed my mind a bit, though. The story in these books is found in the effect—hence the post in post-apocalyptic. My own post-apocalyptic efforts—Survivors of the Chaos and Full Medical are examples—discussed the causes much more than the three books named, but that was a personal choice because I put as much emphasis on the causes as the effects. In my upcoming The Last Humans (see the last pre-publication excerpt in my blog archive), I also focus on the effect, although the cause is mentioned, and I’m satisfied with the result.

Other hard sci-fi genres need a more detailed extrapolation of current science. Of course, the farther the extrapolation goes into the future, the more chance for error. Any scientist knows that extrapolation beyond real data is a dangerous game. Some things like interstellar drives and faster-than-light (FTL) starships or communication systems are far in the future, if they’re even possible. When that happens, the best solution is to get beyond the science and go on with the story. But human variants like the clones and mutants in my “Clones and Mutants Series,” the MECHs in the “Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries,” or Humans 2.0 produced by an ET virus in More than Human: The Mensa Contagion, have to be more plausible if only because they’re easier extrapolations of current science to events in the near future.

That’s why a scientist might feel more comfortable reading speculative fiction that doesn’t go far beyond current science and technology. For example, s/he might prefer Hogan’s Code of the Lifemaker to his Giants series, although the first book in that series sticks pretty close to current science and technology. Your opinion on how believable the futuristic science is might depend on your background too. When I read Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep, I felt insulted that a sci-fi writer violated current physics (his solution to FTL was a varying speed of light, slower the farther away you are from galactic center, as if those central black holes did a lot more than expected). Obviously not enough sci-fi readers cared about that—he received a Hugo—but I think there’s a warning there: some readers will not tolerate a violation of known laws of physics, chemistry, or biology. But they might not have a problem with the unknown.

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Isaac Asimov in his extended Foundation series (it brings together the Foundation Trilogy, the robot novels, and The End of Eternity) commented toward the end during the search for Earth that humans’ home is an E-type planet with a very large moon. Some gas giants have even larger moons, of course, but Earth’s satisfies the Goldilocks Principle twice over: its distance from the Sun and its diameter are just right so that it just blocks the Sun. That occurs about every eighteen months on Earth, but most eclipses aren’t seen by many people because the Earth’s surface is 70% covered by water.

Eclipses have left their observers agog from prehistoric times to present day. Originally explained via magic and superstition, we now use the magic of technology to observe them. These observations have aided and will continue to aid us in understanding our home star. The eclipse of May 1919 confirmed a prediction of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. While telescopes can now block the solar disk to study the sun’s corona and prominences, there’s something special about the moon doing it for us.

The eclipse occurred a week ago. Because the NYC area wasn’t in the path of totality, I decided to watch the totality multiple times with ABC’s reporters stationed along the totality path. Here are some notes (with annotations from yours truly) that I made during that experience:

The last cross-country total eclipse was 1776. I need to check that. If correct, that eclipse was the most patriotic one.

People were saying all viewers in the U.S. were at a “Woodstock for Nerds.” I was happier just seeing ordinary people, not Sheldons and Leonards, getting excited. Even the Great Denier of Science Fact seemed into it.

I’m not sure the two making their wedding vows during the eclipse got the wedding present they’d bargained for. It rained on them.

ABC’s left-clock announcing the “next totality” must have been created by a lover of oxymoronic phrases. There was no “next”; the moon’s shadow swept continuously across the country. They should have said “next report about totality” or something similar.

“Diamond ring”? Not a bad name, but that and the Bailey’s beads (named after astronomer Francis Bailey) are both due to the sun either peeking and/or diffracting through craters and valleys on the moon. Its limb isn’t smooth by any stretch of the imagination.

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(Cixin Liu, The Three-Body Problem, Tor, 2006)

I’ll admit it: I struggled through this Hugo Award winner. It’s a cross between a physics textbook; a historical account of China, including the Cultural Revolution; and a story about first contact.

The physics is a bit much for the average sci-fi reader perhaps, especially for those who think Star Wars, Star Trek, and other Hollywood gruel are real sci-fi. The history is more interesting. I feel I don’t know enough about China. Books like this one, Ludlum’s third Bourne novel (and not the third movie!), and The First Excellence by Donna Carrick, represent good ways to understand Chinese history and modern culture via fiction. First contact is overdone in the sci-fi literature (perhaps Asimov was smart to avoid ETs altogether in his Foundation series), and this book offers few novelties.

I can’t refrain from commenting on the title. The Centauri star system has achieved some notoriety lately because there’s an Earth-sized planet orbiting the red dwarf Proxima (the usual extra-solar planets are Jovian-sized). Obviously the author didn’t know about this planet when he wrote his book, but any inhabitants of that planet might be interested in exact solutions to the three-body problem because the “suns” in their sky form such a system. Beyond that, the mysticism that shrouds the three-body system in this novel is unwarranted because the Centauri three-star system has been stable for millions of years.

The end of the book leans more to Harry Potter-like fantasy than hard sci-fi. Unfolding a proton and etching integrated circuits on its surface is a story that Harry’s house dwarf might dream up (if the author knew anything about science, that is). It’s a silly extrapolation, if it can even be called that. And it’s definitely not good sci-fi.

The climax is too long coming. The description of the two camps of human thought about how to deal with the ETs is too. I’d say 70% of the book is how one woman dealt with and had her little victories against the Cultural Revolution; there’s very little sci-fi beyond the fact that she and her father were physicists. That’s about 270 pages out of 390 before the reader even gets to the point.

The usual sci-fi story elements are missing: fast-moving plot (there’s not much world-building here, so why is it so slow?); interesting characters (I don’t like any of them); strange settings (OK, there are foreign and interesting ones, but I wouldn’t call them all that strange, except for the fantasy home of the Centaurians, and you can’t tell them apart from those in a computer game); and so forth. The author also spends too much time writing about a computer game. I’m just not into them because they’re a waste of time, but this one is used to subvert and convert and recruit intellectuals to further the ambitions of the main character (hard to tell whether she’s protagonist or antagonist, by the way). Maybe you like computer games. If that’ the case, you’ll maybe like some of this book.

I kept thinking as I read, “Hey, Steve, this is a Hugo winner. It must get better.” It never did–not for me. I found it to be a slog. Maybe the Hugo judges were trying to achieve some rapprochement with China? For me, Hugo has been slipping the last two decades. This one was a major slip-up (I previously tried to read another Hugo winner, one I couldn’t even finish, so I didn’t review it).

This is the first book in a trilogy. I won’t be reading the two remaining ones. That’s my cultural revolution against Hugo as much as this author.

***

Rembrandt’s Angel (a mystery/thriller from Penmore Press). To what lengths would you go to recover a stolen masterpiece? Scotland Yard’s Arts and Antiques Inspector Esther Brookstone goes the extra mile. She and paramour/sidekick Bastiann van Coevorden, an Interpol agent, set out to outwit the dealers of stolen art and recover “An Angel with Titus’ Features,” a Rembrandt painting stolen by the Nazis in World War Two. Their efforts lead to much more, as they uncover an international conspiracy that threatens Europe. During their dangerous adventures, their relationship solidifies and becomes a full-blown romance. This book is available in ebook format at Amazon and at Smashwords and its affiliate retailers. It’s available as a print version at Amazon, B&N, or your favorite bookstore (if not there, ask for it). Happy reading!

In libris libertas…

Maybe I’m just getting old, but every day it seems to be more difficult to process the information I look for and find. I seem to be drowning in it. I try to be selective, but the selection takes time too. Some days the selection process takes more time than processing the information I’ve received.

Information is now mined by corporations who sell what they’ve mined to other corporations. The latter are probably in the same boat I’m in. Will Corporate America come to a grinding halt when it has so much information that it can’t process it? Will I?

Some computer gurus discuss a tipping point when computer networks become sentient and human beings become superfluous. (The Terminator movies are built on this premise.) I don’t think that will happen. When information overload maxes out, computers will be turned off, AIs, robots, and androids will crazy, and civilization will end. We’ll probably return to a hunter-gather society. The only information we’ll need then is what to hunt and what to gather.

We’re already networking computers to solve problems of great complexity. But will we reach the point that the solutions to these problems are just as complex and human beings can’t begin to understand them? I can imagine a worldwide network going crazy because it has solved a complex and important problem but the solution is so complex that only another worldwide network can understand it!

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When you get to be my age—old but young-at-heart—you start wondering if you had to do it all over again, what different choices would you make. Life is about choices, of course—choices covering an entire spectrum, from small to big. You might have some regrets too. That’s only human.

I don’t regret the choices I’ve made in my personal life. Given the same circumstances, I’d make the same ones. I wouldn’t have minded if some of them had turned out differently—I’d like to decrease the bad experiences and amplify the good ones—but I generally wouldn’t change the choices I made that led to these experiences.

I started publishing my fiction 10+ years ago (the first edition of my second novel, Full Medical, was published in 2006). At an early age, I knew I wanted to be a writer. I’m a practical person, though, so I made the choice to become a scientist, figuring that being a successful writer was too much like winning the lottery. It is, no matter what some authors or writing gurus say. Don’t give up on your day-job just yet. I think Dean Koontz’s wife gave him a year or so to achieve success. That’s unheard of nowadays, unless you win the lottery like Hugh Howey, J. K. Rowling, or Mark Weir. Writing good fiction is a necessary condition; there are no sufficient ones.

Science might not seem like a career that forms a basis for writing success (except maybe for sci-fi—many successful sci-fi writers are ex-scientists). One can wonder what careers are best for that. A love of languages has always accompanied my love for writing. I have a modest ability with languages. Given other circumstances, I might have become a linguist. That seems to be a fulfilling career for putting food on the table while you write stories and wait for some modicum of success. Probably not as lucrative as hard science and technology, though, which everyone calls STEM nowadays. While a journalism degree is probably better than an MFA (the former produces more understanding of and exposure to the human condition), the study of languages is undeniably related to what a writer does all the time: putting ideas into words and choosing the right words and logic to do so.

Of course, any writing career does this, even writing verses for Hallmark. But the study of languages goes far beyond writing skills. Understanding the linguistic history and structure of languages, especially one as dynamic as English, offers the future and present writer an incredible base for the logical choices s/he must make in her or his writing.

I don’t own many print books now. Although I have enough to keep bookshelves sagging, I generally find ebooks more practical—they’re easy to read, very accessible, and don’t take up any physical space beyond my Kindle. But there’s one print book on my reference shelf that I greatly value, David Crystal’s The Stories of English. Even if you ignore current dialects and regional variations, English is a complicated amalgam of many bits and pieces that has seen a dynamic and rapid development. The Spanish reader can still read Cervantes; we struggle with Shakespeare. And these men were almost contemporaries (Shakespeare died one day after Cervantes).

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The state of my birth is becoming a world leader and taking up the slack when Washington (AKA Trump, his minions, and the GOP) fails. San Francisco recently was the site of a meeting involving Canadian and Mexican environmental ministers who discussed maintaining the Paris Accord, among other things, with state leaders. The state’s legal team is getting ready to block any Washington attempt to push back on their tough laws for vehicle emissions. Gov. Jerry Brown (AKA Gov. Moonbeam) is traveling to China to discuss global warming with Chinese officials. And the state is moving toward single-payer healthcare for all—the Cal Senate just approved it.

Calling it “slack” on the part of Washington is a bit too nice, of course. Trump and his cronies are attacking the environment in any way they can. From supporting the coal industry, which has done more to hurt our climate than almost anything else (it’s ironic that even in coal states, they’re moving away from coal in power plants), to emasculating the EPA and rolling back provisions to protect the environment to favor their rich friends in other industries, Washington seems bent on ruining the planet for our children and grandchildren—maybe us too, if they keep up with the onslaught. Remember Trump is the candidate who declared global warming a hoax. Should we put him on that Antarctic ice shelf and see what happens when it breaks off? Maybe the lobby of Trump Tower will be the first to be flooded when the sea level rises by six feet, as predicted.

The U.S. as a whole is the world’s second worse polluter—only China is worse. California doesn’t accept this all-out attack on the environment by Washington. They have led the nation in positive environmental actions and have boldly stepped up their efforts to counter the evil dark lord in the White House and his GOP goblins. Other states—all blue, of course—try to follow along with the state’s defense-of-environment plans. As the most populous state in the union, the food provider for much of the nation, and estimated to be the sixth or seventh most powerful nation in the world if it ever separates from the union, the Golden Bear is a heavyweight. If Washington doesn’t listen, the rest of the world does. California doesn’t need Washington, but the United States does.

Saving the environment is a no-brainer. This means that Washington is now brainless and California is an Einstein. Even China is getting on board, while Trump backed out of the Paris Accord, incurring the wrath of the rest of the world. It’s hypocritical for states with so much at stake—tourism to national parks in many red states, for example—to become anti-environment. Most big game hunters are NRA members who are hypocritical too—wild animals are part of the environment. Aquifers are being damaged all over the country, but you can bet the anti-environment zombies will be the first to complain when their water turns bad. I can go on and on, but the truth is being insensible to what we’re doing to the environment and the flora and fauna of the world is idiocy. No. Anyone who does this is immoral and evil. There’s a reason that the Pope has an encyclical on the environment. He gave a copy to Trump; will he ever read it? He certainly took no heed of the Pope’s advice when he made his decision to withdraw from the Paris Accord. And his comment about Pittsburg v. Paris is the height of stupidity—Pittsburg went overwhelmingly for Clinton in 2016.

California has been leading environmental protection efforts for a long time. They did so out of necessity. If other American cities and states and countries in the world wait until necessity spurs them to action, it will be too late. If others don’t care, Earth will eventually end up like Mars. We all share this planet. Let’s be good tenants by keeping it clean and healthy. And letting the naysayers remain in power at the ballot box will make us accomplices of the thugs who would destroy the environment. Vote green today, not GOP-red. And work to get California rules to protect the environment adopted in your state.

***

Rembrandt’s Angel. To what lengths would you go to recover a stolen masterpiece? Scotland Yard’s Arts and Antiques Inspector Esther Brookstone goes the extra mile. She and paramour/sidekick Bastiann van Coevorden, an Interpol agent, set out to outwit the dealers of stolen art and recover “An Angel with Titus’ Features,” a Rembrandt painting stolen by the Nazis in World War Two. Their efforts lead to much more, as they uncover an international conspiracy that threatens Europe. During their dangerous adventures, their relationship solidifies and becomes a full-blown romance. Published by Penmore Press, this novel is available in ebook format at Amazon, Smashwords, Kobo, B&N, and Apple, and in print through Amazon or your local bookstore (if they don’t have it, ask them to order it). Great summer reading!

And so it goes…