I reacted badly to an article in the February 21st NY Times, “Writers Wonder Whether People Want to Curl Up with a Covid Novel.” The reason? The Times wants to label any novel dealing with a pandemic in this manner, which is completely moronic, of course.

Is Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain a Covid novel? What about my own More than Human: The Mensa Contagion and “The Last Humans” series? We can’t ask Michael his opinion, but I can tell you mine: I’ll verbally blast anyone who says my books are Covid novels (as I’m doing now to the editors of the Times!).

Many stories have been written with a pandemic theme. Strain and More than Human are both about ET viruses, but mine turn out to be a lot more benign than Michael’s. In “The Last Humans” series, I consider the plausible scenario where an enemy uses a bioengineered virus as a WMD. Clancy also did that in one of his novels—I can’t remember which one—but his hero stopped that attack whereas mine has the more difficult job of coping with the post-apocalyptic aftermath. (Of course, in the real world, we might want to blame Xi’s China of doing that with Covid…or maybe Trump?)

The WMD scenario is actually more plausible than the ET scenario, but both are examples where bioengineered viruses can lead to drastic upheavals and die-offs. It would be another case of tech coming back to might the foolish humans who create it, perhaps well-meaning but not too bright as they ignore their unintended consequences.

I prefer the benign consequences of More than Human to Strain‘s. And I don’t know why I continue to promote “The Last Humans” series. The traditional publisher of the first book in the series (Black Opal Books) really disappointed me, and then the Amazon bots confused both books. The series seems to be doomed whether the Times might call it a Covid book or not.

Right now, I suppose that most readers aren’t in the mood for any fiction involving pandemics. I can understand that. But readers’ complaints about vaccine and masking mandates enacted to protect us against Covid fall on my deaf ears when I think that people would have had ample warning about pandemics if they had only read more pre-pandemic literature.

Sci-fi, mystery, and thriller novels often provide useful warnings about threats humans could face. When we ignore them, there can be real and deadly consequences!

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Comments are always welcome. (Please follow the rules on the “Join the Conversation” web page.)

Coming this spring! I hope you weren’t spoiled by the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” novels, Defanging the Red Dragon and Intolerance, that you can download for free (see the list of free fiction on my “Free Stuff & Contests” web page). I was thinking about ending the series, you see, but I’ve changed my mind. Esther and Bastiann conspired with my muses (really banshees with Tasers!) to “encourage” me to write novel #8, The Klimt Connection. Despite the title (Gustav Klimt was an Austrian artist), the novel is another warning about how we can never let our guard down in the eternal war of democracy vs. autocracy (Putin’s Russia invading Ukraine is a recent example of the dangers). This novel will be published in ebook format by Draft2Digital. Look for it then, wherever quality ebooks are sold.

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

I certainly wasn’t the first sci-fi writer to portray a viral pandemic, but my More than Human: The Mensa Contagion follows the progression of a contagion in human populations that was a preview of what we’re experiencing with Covid: Deadly at first and not so transmissible but then mutating to a more benign version that has “learned” not to kill so efficiently so the virus can survive.

Of course, this is no accident. Before I started that novel, I studied many aspects of viral pandemics, basically how viruses do their thing. I was super-specialized as a scientist; as a sci-fi writer, I’ve had to become more of a generalist because sci-fi themes cover most of science (assuming they’re not fantasies or space operas). Some topics I’ve had to study are: cloning, dirty bombs, possibilities for FTL travel, AI, and robotics. (You can have some fun trying to matching these up with fifteen years of works.) Becoming an amateur and armchair scientist in this self-educational enterprise, I suppose I’ve made some mistakes. (For the experts reading this, assuming they also read sci-fi, are always welcome to correct me.)

In a similar novel (similar only in its pandemic theme), The Last Humans, a virus was bioengineered and weaponized to have killer characteristics like the original Covid and speed of transmission of the new Omicron mutation. That usually doesn’t happen in nature because natural viruses tend to evolve from one extreme to the other,. But I imagined that a bioengineered virus could do both and be carried around the world on prevailing winds, no matter where the original target happened to be.

These books were warnings, of course, at least from the viral point of view. I will never claim to be prescient, but I can always say, “I told you so,” because I did. I studied the science!

And that brings me to an important question: Do people who diss science, don’t believe it, and believe the many falsehoods about our natural world and universe instead, do these people read sci-fi? Do they ever read anything beyond the lies and conspiracy theories propagated on social media and outlets like Fox News? I suspect not., At the most, they think Marvel Comics characters and Harry Potter tell us how the real world works! Their take on the real world is pure fantasy. Maybe these people could benefit by reading hard sci-fi, not fantastic tales from Hollywood, TV, or social media that just amplify and pander to their ignorance?

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Comments are always welcome. (Please follow the rules found on the “Join the Conversation” web page.)

You’ll find the ebook versions of the novels mentioned above at most online retailers that sell quality ebooks. A print version of The Last Humans is also available.

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

Sci-fi often extrapolates current science or “invents” new science we might see in the future. A.B. Carolan’s new book Origins (see last week’s preview) does both, but it’s mostly based on ongoing scientific discovery about human beings’ past. Denisovan and Hobbit hominids have had more press lately than Cro-Magnons and Neandertals because they’re new discoveries. They flourished thousands of years ago, and bits of their DNA are found in modern humans’ DNA (modern humans are mainly Cro-Magnon descendants). A.B. summarizes the current situation in his end notes:

“When I began thinking about a plot with genetics as a theme, Anna Utkin [an early short story of mine] turned me towards human prehistory. The final inspiration occurred when I found the portrait of a young Denisovan girl. (The interested reader can google ‘What did Denisovans look like?’ to see answers to that question—I focused on the BBC version.) It might seem weird, but I immediately thought, ‘Here’s a young girl who doesn’t look like any girl I know.’ That led to other thoughts along the lines that we often react negatively to people who don’t look or act like us and don’t seem to fit into our personal ‘tribe.’ Could I write a story that takes such a girl and makes her into a reluctant hero—almost a superhero even? I could and did, and you have just read the first installment. I hope more will follow.”

“That BBC portrait* has an interesting history, by the way. From genetic material in a pinky and jaw bones (not from the same archaeological site, mind you), researchers were able to construct the entire Denisovan genome and then use it to show us what that Denisovan girl must have looked like. For me, that portrait is Kayla [A.B.’s protagonist], a twenty-first-century Denisovan descendant who is super-smart and can kick ass with the best superheroes”

“The search for the origins of modern humans and their cousins continues to be the focus of exciting research, and the Denisovans, only discovered recently, are no exceptions. Unlike the equating of ancient hominids to burros and horses, i.e., species unable to breed and have fertile offspring, a theory found in Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens (his first two chapters, in particular), which Steve and I read long after I wrote the manuscript for this book, the DNA evidence shows ancient hominids did interbreed. Yet I had to wonder: If they could do so, why not more? Why aren’t we more of a mix of Cro-Magnons (always called Homo sapiens by Professor Harari), Neanderthals, and Denisovans, as well as other ancient hominids thrown in? Considering that Cro-Magnons’ descendants have come to be the dominant species, maybe that just means that they were the bad-ass denizens of ancient Earth? Maybe they were so bent on conquest that they didn’t have that much time to intermingle? I then asked myself: Would they even do so if that hominid evolution was interrupted by visitors from the stars?”

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First they ignored masks, social distancing, and washing hands…young (i.e. idiots less than forty) doing just what the virus wanted people to do. It was all about hedonism and freedom; “we deserve to have fun!” Completely irresponsible behavior! Now they refuse to be vaccinated. As we approach a situation where vaccine supplies are more than enough to vaccinate anyone over sixteen, i.e,. we can achieve herd immunity in a safe way, too many in this age group now express their freedom by refusing the vaccine.

Unlike the “marching morons” in C. M. Kornbluth’s classic novella, our current morons might be bright enough otherwise—and maybe that’s how their sociopathic behavior arises—but they’re too stupid to realize they’re playing Russian roulette with five chambers loaded. And, when it comes to public health, they’re selfish people who don’t care about their fellow citizens.

It’s not for lack of information. They obviously don’t read this blog, which isn’t much of a surprise (they might never read anything intelligent!), but can’t they see and hear all the warnings about the danger of those crazy actions mentioned above? Maybe they do; they just don’t believe them because they don’t want to.

Because of political proclivities, religious beliefs, conspiracy theories—whatever—some of these current morons rationalize their actions with them. That verb is absurd’ there’s nothing rational going on here. Others are just in defiance. They’re all marching over the cliff. Generally there a lot of hypocrites too…or maybe some part of their brain is just wired wrong, causing suicidal actions?

Their leaders, unlike the lemmings, sometimes exploit this for political and religious gain while secretly getting vaccinated (like Il Duce aka Mr. Trump the Big Loser), if the morons actually listen to them. Two recent cases show that all too often leaders are members of the marching morons too. Both Florida and Tex-ass governors have banned the use of “vaccine passports” in their states: No institution there can require a vaccine! This is the same thing as not allowing a “no shoes, no shirt, no service” policy or prohibiting states from requiring vaccinations for school children (why people are allowed to skirt these requirements for any reason is the ultimate stupidity!).

We’ll see who wins in future SCOTUS cases when this resistance to vaccination is adjudicated—I suppose the current court will approve policies that amount to mass suicide because they don’t give a rat’s ass about protecting public health (especially cult member Amy and the perverts Kavanaugh and Thomas). Democracy is being attacked from many directions! Logic and reason are thrown out the window!

If the suicidal morons only marched to their own deaths, I wouldn’t give a damn; I’m tired of these people, and the world would probably be a better place without them! But they’ll hurt the rest of us, and that’s equivalent to aiding and abetting murder. And if they kill me or anyone else I love and there’s an afterlife, I’ll try to make sure they go straight to hell when they die! I don’t want them to mess up heaven for me or my family and friends!

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Comments are always welcome!

The “Detectives Chen & Castilblanco” series. A seven-book series ideal for binge-reading. You’ve seen some reviews in “Reviews not on Amazon,” and I’ll be archiving more on Wednesday.  Pick an ebook and jump in anywhere. Available everywhere quality ebooks are sold.

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

(Note: While science and sci-fi writing motivated this post, some readers might find the following material offensive. Tough.)

The U.S. president wanted a Space Force. The U.S. military capitulated. And the U.S. Congress gave it to him on December 20. Sounds neat. Does it make sense?

Traditionally the USAF took care of most things happening above the Earth’s surface, including spy satellites and whatever secret weapons are up there (yep, and they’re just as dangerous as the U.N.’s black helicopters that will invade the U.S.). Astronauts have generally been a mix of USAF and Navy pilots, discounting civilian scientists, so there was already a lot of overlap with other services. And the U.S. NASA wasn’t above getting into the militaristic aspects either. So forget tradition. Maybe we should call a spade a spade? The military is in space, so maybe we should admit it and wrap it up in one tidy package?

Is there some savings to be had? Even if the answer were yes, that’s probably not an argument most reasonable persons would make…or believe. The current administration will have created a trillion dollar U.S. debt very soon, so what’s a few more dollars here and there? A precedent might be the moving of the Coast Guard into Homeland Security, but the creation of Homeland Security also increased federal bureaucracy and incompetence (not to mention murderous enforcement on the southern border where thousand of illegals are invading). Maybe they should have put anything to do with protecting the U.S., including what’s now in Space Force, into Homeland Security? Isn’t Space Force about protecting the homeland and not invading ETs or killer asteroids? U.S. of A., uber alles!

Bigger isn’t necessarily better. Smaller isn’t either. (Seems like the Goldilocks Principle needs to be applied here, but the Pentagon’s good ole boys would never listen to a girl.) And where does the Earth’s atmosphere become space? Where does it end and space start? I can’t wait for scramjet technology, where intercontinental flights hop and skip across the atmosphere, going from the USAF’s domain to the USSF’s and back. Who will have authority over those flights? Or might that be the FSA (not to be confused with the Russian equivalent of the FBI) instead of the FAA?

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Before I get into the subject of this article, let me wish everyone a wonderful and safe Thanksgiving. We tend to lose the meaning of this holiday that leads into the commercial end-of-year rush, starting with Black Friday…or earlier! It should be a time for personal contemplation about having family and friends and to give thanks for what we have in our lives. It’s not political or commercial but spiritual, a time to recognize our common humanity, something we share independently of political proclivities, religious preferences, or sexual orientation. We are all on spaceship Earth together, and we have a lot to be thankful for. Now, to the article….

While the sci-fi master Isaac Asimov certainly motivated me to write sci-fi—I read his first robot novel Caves of Steel at age twelve—I’m not Dr. Asimov. The ex-biochemist was also a master at writing popular science books that explained current science. I’ve failed miserably at that! A few blog posts, but not one book.

Like him, I’m a fan of Science News. Scientists are now super specialized in general, so we have to turn to more popular works like anyone else to see what other scientists are doing. I think both Isaac and I had that in common—we kept up with general scientific and technology progress in spite of our specializations. But the sci-fi master was already a generalist with many popular science books to prove it.

Of course, those books were also a respite from his sci-fi writing. His Foundation series is evidence for that. He wrote the Foundation trilogy, robot novels, and End of Eternity, and then he took a vacation of several decades to write all those popular science books. After that period, he returned to sci-fi and completed the Foundation series, bringing all those earlier novels together and continuing to write more, creating a masterful oeuvre the likes of which will never be seen again.

“Decades” is the key word. Like King and other famous genre fiction writers, Isaac Asimov got an early start. That’s difficult to do nowadays. I won’t complete two publishing decades until 2026…if I make it that far.

I’ve been tempted to write a few popular science books, but so much in that area is available now. In short, there’s no lack of authors and books explaining science. There’s also an apathy among readers who might otherwise read such books. Most people no longer care how things work; they just use the science and technology without thinking about it. There’s some interest in space science and astrophysics beyond sensationalism and controversy (is Pluto a planet?), but there’s also a societal disease where people think science is just belief and it’s responsible for society’s woes. And then there are the naysayers, deniers of global warming and climate change, or believers that the world was made 6000 years ago when humans were contemporaries of the dinosaurs (those fossils came from Noah’s flood, don’t you know?).

I would have a hard time channeling Dr. Asimov in such a toxic anti-science environment. True science is secular, but we’re becoming a belief-based society, even though the beliefs contradict facts. In one of the first Foundation books, there’s a scene where the principal confronts an archaeologist, telling him to prove his assertions by going out and digging up the evidence. The “scientist” refuses, saying that theories (his beliefs) are enough. Our scientists today haven’t gone to those extremes, but many in society have, denying scientific evidence while creating their own “theories” (intelligent design is the perfect example of an oxymoron, because the people who champion this belief ignore facts).

No, I’m not about to hit my head my head against the brick wall of public opinion. Let’s face it: it’s a lot more fun to write fiction that includes or extrapolates current scientific knowledge, allowing astute readers to see the possibilities in a fictional context. I just hope that my stories are enough to make Dr. Asimov happy. One can popularize science in many ways—mine are just a bit different than some of the old master’s.

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Comments are always welcome.

Evergreen Series: “The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy.” Survivors of the Chaos starts with a dystopian Earth controlled by multinationals and their mercenaries, and ends with an expedition to the 82 Eridani star system. Sing a Zamba Galactica begins with first contact where Humans meet the strange ETs they name Rangers, and ends with a mercy mission where Humans convince one strange collective intelligence to cure another. In Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in Your Hand!, a Human industrialist is bent on controlling near-Earth planets in the Galaxy, and Humans and their ET friends must try to stop him. Centuries of development in near-Earth space are covered in these novels, all three evergreen books; sci-fi is always current! And all three novels are contained in the ebook bundle, The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection, a bargain you can find wherever fine ebooks are sold.

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

Today is a solemn but sad day, full of nostalgia and yearning. Fifty years ago, I was part of the party-like atmosphere in College Park, Maryland, as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first human being to set foot on the Moon. No good and wonderful event since then has brought the US and the world so much together to share our common humanity and hope for the future.

Space is the final frontier., but we have shied away from it and Armstrong’s hopeful and inspiring message, putting our petty and tribal squabbles ahead of that great adventure, going where no human has gone before. Will we return to space? The way into that final frontier is not to be found with militarized space commands, seeking to sully space with political saber rattling, but via a motivated and concerted effort by all human beings to go into that great beyond out of scientific curiosity. I don’t imagine that it will happen in my lifetime, if ever, which makes today doubly sad for me.

My heartfelt thanks goes out to all those courageous and intelligent space pioneers of the past. I regret that our collective myopia and efforts to further more trivial agendas have inhibited human beings’ reach for the stars. Hopefully we will come to our senses…sometime.

“Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.”—Isaac Asimov

When A.B. Carolan was writing Mind Games, he was torn between various names for a principal character. Should he call the android cop Olivaw, Rebus, or Rubik? Rebus won, in honor of Ian Rankin’s inspector.

But both Olivaw and Rebus are cops, so Olivaw fit the bill in that sense. Daneel Olivaw was Asimov’s android detective who worked with Elijah Bailey in the sci-fi mysteries Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun. Given that Mind Games is part of the “ABC Sci-Fi Mystery Series” of books written by A.B., that was another plus for using Olivaw. But I’d honored Daneel in Rogue Planet, so I told A.B. that would be two honorifics, which seemed excessive.

Rubik was an alternative because of the famous cube that became such a fad. It’s really a monument to logic and reason and could be an iconic representation for AI. The android in Mind Games is a walking AI and part of an AI network serving to augment a planetary police force.

I was reminded of Rubik’s cube recently for two reasons. One was my observation that Ms. Ginger Zee, GMA’s weather person, was wearing a dress that consisted of square patches with the same color scheme as the cube—garishly strong but happy colors that looked better on the cube than on her (sorry, Ginger). Just my opinion, of course. I’m no fashion expert.

Many see the cube as a game, but there’s math lurking in its twists and turns. There aren’t many simpler structures in advanced algebra than groups. You have one basic operation (like multiplication or addition—let’s write it as *) and one inverse operation in a group, and the group can either be finite, like the one describing Rubik’s cube, or infinite.

The Rubik’s cube’s group is constructed by labeling each of the 48 non-center facets with the integers 1 to 48. Each configuration of the cube can be represented as a permutation of the labels 1 to 48, depending on the position of each facet. Using this representation, the solved cube is the identity permutation which leaves the cube unchanged, while the twelve cube moves that rotate a layer of the cube 90 degrees are represented by their respective permutations. The Rubik’s cube group is non-commutative because a*b isn’t the same as b*a—doing two sequences of cube moves in a different order can result in a different configuration.

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It comes in two forms: we meet them out there, or those out there come here to Earth. In any case, the theme is ubiquitous in old sci-fi. I’m not sure how much it’s used today. Recent discussions in the media of UFO sightings (remember, UFO only means “unidentified flying object,” not an ET’s vehicle, in spite of NY Times crosswords’ clues) might increase tales about first contact. Who knows? So it might be worthwhile to study how believable such tales can be.

Both versions have the problem that “out there” means the vast reaches of intergalactic space…and beyond. I’ve already discussed this in a previous post. Either version means someone, either an ET or human being, has to travel so far that it’s hard to get our minds around what the distance is. But let’s assume that it can be done, that two groups, ETs and humans, could somehow get together for the first time and have a chat. Why would they or we want to do so?

For humans, we could say that it might just be curiosity or the challenge. That’s why people who know nothing about climbing want to climb Mt. Everest—even why those who do so attempt the climb. That’s why people decide to visit all the continents after they retire. And that’s the scenario for the colonization of Mars in More than Human: The Mensa Contagion. But would that be enough to go to the stars?

Today isn’t 1969 or just before. I never bought into the competition with the Soviet Union to motivate the space race. Most people I knew didn’t. What motivated us was answering the question “Can we get to the moon?” We didn’t care about US pride or international politics. We were motivated by the challenge. Today one sees many people who even think going back to the moon is a waste of money. And the Pentagon certainly wouldn’t support that—all they probably want to do is put up more spy satellites, or sneak in a few satellites with nukes on them. And private industry just wants comsats and so forth where they can make lots of money. We’ve gone from sublime curiosity and meeting abstract challenges to greedy profit-making.

Sure we have a few visionaries like Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and their ilk, but not even the general public supports space research anymore, unless NASA can do it on a shoestring budget. And the politicos take this attitude and run with it. Budget cuts are crippling the space agency, as they are most scientific research.

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It’s hard for anyone to get their head around how far away the stars are. The nearest, Proxima Centauri, is 4.243 light-years distant—a light-year is the distance traveled by light in a year, going at 186,000 miles per second!

Three Sol-like real stars (i.e. like our sun) are where the Human colonies of New Haven, Novo Mondo, and Sanctuary are located in The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection (a three-novel bundle from Carrick Publishing). In A.B. Carolan’s Mind Games, the main character visits two of those colonies, plus a much-changed Earth. The stars, 82 Eridani, Tau Ceti, and Delta Pavonis, respectively, are about twenty light-years from Earth. They’re G-type stars like our own. I started writing about these colonies around 2000, so I didn’t know if there were real Earth-type planets in those faraway solar systems. I still don’t.

Today scientists have discovered many real extrasolar planets. Some are in the zone where liquid water can exist, so a sci-fi writer today might choose one of those as a setting for a story. The stars I chose are still good ones, but if scientists find they have no planets or none are in that sweet spot relative to their parent star, I’m toast.

In addition, we now know some stars have a huge Jupiter-like planet in that sweet spot. That’s not a bad setting either because a planet like that can have a large moon that’s like Earth, full of life. Such is the case of Hard Fist, a satellite of Big Fellow, and where the action of A.B. Carolan’s The Secret of the Urns takes place.

When I began writing the books in the trilogy bundle above, no one knew if any stars besides ours had planets. At least now we know planets are ubiquitous. Three of my four fictional ones I’ve mentioned had life before Humans arrived. That might be less likely than being in that sweet spot—if water exists, it doesn’t mean life does. Both our moon and Mars have some water, for example, but no observable life.

Statistically it’s likely that life exists out there. It might not exist very close to Earth, though, as it does in my fiction. I’m thinking of an active biosphere, of course. Even Mars might have some life. And it’s unclear how long Earth will continue to have a biosphere unless we recognize the dangers of climate change. CCDs (that’s “climate change deniers”) are trying to get everyone to believe their lies.

Let’s consider some possibilities A.B. Carolan, in his short story “Harvest Time” two weeks ago in honor of Brian Aldiss, considers one possibility that’s also at the end of the first novel in the collection named above—a long-range starship. Its propulsion system, yet to be determined, would apply a constant acceleration and then a constant deceleration to arrive at the target star. Humans aboard might be in cryosleep or stored as frozen embryos, or even in banks of frozen sperm and ova, and the colonists could be woken at the end of the trip and nurtured by robots. Things could go wrong on the journey, as in A.B.’s short story.

Any attempts at organizing a galactic empire, or even a trade union like ITUIP (“Interstellar Trade Union of Independent Planets”), a la European Union, would require faster communication between planets than that provided via long-range starships. Faster-than-light travel (FTL) was invented by sci-fi writers for that purpose. Many old stories talked about hyperspace; Star Trek had its “warp drive”; and my stories have ships traveling through the metaverses provided by some esoteric theories from particle physics, superstring theories to be precise, as considered in yesterday’s short story “Shipwreck.” It all boils down to skirting Einstein’s theory of relativity by leaving our universe where the speed of light mentioned above limits all velocities.

Humans haven’t been around too long, geologically speaking, and have wondered what’s out there for even less time. The way things are going, we won’t be going out there anytime soon, no matter how organized we become to do it. Some wonder if what’s out there will come to us. Either way, the distances covered will truly be a star trek. And all that’s still in the realm of sci-f for now.

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Comments are always welcome.

More than Human: The Mensa Contagion. Amazon reviewer S. D. Beallis called it “broad in scope and cautiously optimistic.” Amazon reviewer Debra Miller said she “was reminded at times of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy.” Both comments indicate the epic nature of this one novel where an ET virus creates Homo sapiens 2.0, and then the new humans colonize Mars. Available on Amazon and Smashwords.

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