Category Archives: writing

A riff on rhetoric — and music

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Personal confession: I am an unabashed lover of rhetorical devices. Never thought I would be, not after my freshman year at St. John’s College, reading what Socrates says about rhetoric in Plato’s Gorgias and other dialogs. And it is not favorable:

…the rhetorician need not know the truth about things; he has only to discover some way of persuading the ignorant that he has more knowledge than those who know…

But then I became a writer and user of (I hope) beautiful language, and was fortunate to take Margie Lawson’s excellent course in deep editing, in which she taught a number of rhetorical devices. It was an eye-opener.

And zeugma is one of my favorite rhetorical devices because it invariably makes me smile—and smiling is good, right? Zeugma, per Merriam-Webster, is “the use of a word to modify or govern two or more words usually in such a manner that it applies to each in a different sense.”

I thought of zeugma recently while listening to Adam Cohen‘s song “What Other Guy” from his album Like a Man. I really like this song, it’s on my “Favorites” playlist. The lyrics are lovely, and overall the song hauntingly speaks of unrequited love. But one phrase in particular always brings a smile:

“Seen you with nothing on but the radio”

Obviously, the woman is not wearing a radio. Or anything else.

This in turn reminded me of a song, “She Moves On,” from what might be my all-time favorite album, Paul Simon‘s The Rhythm of the Saints:

“She takes the corner that’s all she takes / She moves on”

A song about a break-up, but again, I can’t help but smile.

Actually, Paul Simon uses a lot of rhetorical devices in his songs, including on the album The Rhythm of the Saints. I listened to this album over and over again as I was writing the early drafts of my book Saving Aran in late 1990 to 1991. This verse near the end of the song “The Cool, Cool River” was in many ways the inspiration for that book:

…these streets
Quiet as a sleeping army
Send their battered dreams to heaven, to heaven
For the mother’s restless son
Who is a witness to, who is a warrior
Who denies his urge to break and run

The verse contains another rhetorical device: synecdoche. Per Merriam-Webster, this is “a figure of speech by which a part is put for the whole.” Here, the streets stand for the neighborhood, perhaps even the whole city.

If you’ve read Restless Son, you might recognize the city at the foot of the aliens’ starbase, where Cort grew up. Perhaps you might even recognize Cort, the hero of the book, the earliest drafts of which were named Restless Son.

In a recent interview, Paul Simon discussed the meaning that may be found in his music. And one thing he said in particular spoke to me:

I believe that the listener completes the song.

If this is true, then I’d like to acknowledge him here as a kind of coauthor. I listened to that album every night as I wrote the book’s first drafts, and the feel of that music certainly permeates the book. Thank you, Paul Simon!

Mightier Than Magic: Alaric meets the Mouse

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Here’s a small excerpt from my latest book Mightier Than Magic. I hope you enjoy it.

The door opened tentatively, and only wide enough for a wisp of a girl to peer in from the threshold. She gripped the edge of the door so tightly that her knuckles were white. She’d probably bolt if he frowned at her. Hadn’t he seen her before? He tried to make his expression pleasant.

“Leave the door open,” the guard warned.

“Yes, sergeant,” the girl said almost inaudibly. She nudged the door open a bit wider and took a small step. Now he recognized her—the girl from the banquet hall last night. She’d called the queen Mother, but she didn’t act like the other princesses. She wasn’t much to look at either, all shrunk into herself, maybe fifteen years old. The cut of her clothing suggested nobility, but the costly fabric was dyed an unassuming shade of dull brown, a color that nearly matched her long, straight hair.

Her eyes were pretty, though, somewhere between green and brown, with long, arched brows. Her generous mouth promised a hint of more boldness than all the rest of her put together. This was a surprise, and an enticing one. Alaric smiled.

The girl relaxed. Slightly.

“Your Majesty.” Her voice barely carried across the small room. “My mother the queen has asked me to visit you. To thank you. In person . . . for last night. And to . . . to see if you need . . . anything.”

“What, you?” He’d meant that it seemed strange to send a princess on such an errand, when a servant might do. But the instant the words escaped his mouth, he realized it was the wrong thing to say.

The girl’s cheeks flushed pink. She shrank against the door jamb and wrapped her chest in her arms. The protective gesture accentuated her womanly shape.

Alaric couldn’t help but notice, and his own face flushed with embarrassment. He raised his estimate of her age. She must be seventeen or eighteen, almost as old as he was, and he’d implied . . . “I’m sorry.” He couldn’t remember the last time he’d apologized to anyone. “I didn’t mean that the way it must have sounded. I only meant that if the queen is your mother, you would be an unlikely serving maid.”

He offered his best smile, well aware that sometimes people trembled when he smiled. And with reason. He hoped that now he would appear welcoming rather than frightening. “Please,” he said, rising and motioning to the chair, which he held for her as if she were a lady being seated for dinner.

“No, thank you,” she said. “There’s only the one chair, and I wouldn’t . . . I couldn’t make you stand while I . . .”

The room he’d been given was clean enough, and light streamed through its narrow window. But it was tiny and pressed in too closely. There was only the one chair, a narrow bed pushed against the wall, and a small table barely wide enough to hold two books side by side. “I can sit on the bed,” he said, then felt his face grow hot. The bed. Not a piece of furniture that should have been on display to this visitor, and he was sorry to have mentioned it. He cursed the room for its meagerness and himself for a fool.

But his guest appeared not to notice the implications. “Oh. Yes, of course.”

He held the chair as she sat, and then settled his tall frame onto the low bed. He avoided watching her too directly—her worried face, her hunched figure—as she fidgeted with her hands.

He waited.

“That was very kind, Your Majesty, what you did last night,” she said at last. She nibbled at a thumbnail, watching him from the corner of her eyes.

She was not as plain as she’d first appeared. Her skin was porcelain and clear, her face heart-shaped and perfectly proportioned. Though her nails were bitten to the quick, she had long, delicate fingers. But why so timid? And why had she not been invited to the dinner?

“Please, call me Alaric.” He spoke as gently as he could. “What’s your name?”

She hunched inward a little more and again wrapped her arms around herself. “Mouse.” Her voice was only a hair’s breadth above a whisper.

“Mouse? It’s . . . an unusual name.”

“That’s just what people call me.”

He could understand why. But he said, “Is that what you want me to call you?”

She didn’t answer.

“What’s your real name?” He attempted the friendliest expression he could muster. He was afraid this timid young woman might bolt like a deer scenting a wolf. He didn’t want her to bolt. He could use an ally, even one as unlikely as her, in Queen Claudia’s hostile court.

“Alicia Aurelia Katrina Emilia.” She raised her chin and straightened a little.

This time his smile was genuine—amusement at the string of names that stretched longer than his room was wide. “And how would you like me to call you, Alicia Aurelia Katrina Emilia? If I needed a glass of water and I had to ask you for it, I might die of thirst before I’d quite gotten all that out.”

She smiled shyly back at him. Fear still hovered around her eyes, but her face lit up. “Katie,” she said. “Call me Katie.”

Alaric’s heart catapulted. In the instant of her smile, she was radiant. She’d been wearing an expression of fear and worry so deep-seated that it masked her beauty. “And remember, you may call me Alaric. Please.”

Here was a person who was extremely competent at projecting her insignificance. He wondered if magic was involved.

Writing Alien Son

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Like my other books, Alien Son is science fiction, with more than a hint of romance.

It’s set in the same world as Saving Aran, and those of you who have read that book will recognize some of the characters. You may remember that there was a mystery in Saving Aran that was not resolved in that book: How can it be that there are humans on both Earth and Aran? These are people so genetically similar that they can interbreed. The odds they would evolve independently on two planets light-years apart are miniscule, like the odds that simple Brownian motion would suddenly lift your entire desk up into the air. Yet, though scientists have searched both planets for any archaeological or other evidence of any kind of alien contact in the past, there is nothing that can explain the existence of these two entirely separate human populations.

There’s also an unresolved personal mystery in Saving Aran. Cort’s father is no longer around. His mother tells him his father “went to Earth.” Does she mean that literally, that he somehow managed to get aboard one of the Earthers’ starships and literally fly to planet Earth? In the slang of the city where Cort grew up, the phrase “went to Earth” is a euphemism for dying. It seems more likely his father died than somehow managed to get to Earth. In the khenaran–the ancient forest–those who die are reborn, but the wise whynywir, who know everything about the planet, have no information about Cort’s father. Is it possible he really did fly to Earth?

Alien Son answers both of these questions. And way more, besides. Best of all, there’s no need to read Saving Aran first. Instead, you can read Alien Son first as a completely stand-alone book, and then later, if you wish, enjoy Cort’s back story.

In Alien Son, we meet Mikel, half Earther and half Arantu, the much-younger son of Cort’s father. The son born on Earth with an Earther mother. The son who is driven to pursue some great accomplishment in his life that will be worthy of his martyr father’s heroic efforts to save Aran from Earther exploitation.

We also meet Aiana, a historian from the far-distant future, who is using time travel based on technology-enhanced lucid dreaming to seek out a historically significant personage from Earth’s past (as she sees it). She finds Mikel on Aran. He’s the one she is looking for, but he has no intention of returning to Earth. Yet he must, for history has already been written. How can she get him to fulfill his destiny, even if it means his death? Worse, her dreaming self is getting harder to control. She’s falling in love with the man.

Time travel, it turns out, is incredibly hard to write. My future could be your past, and both of these might be different from an objectively drawn timeline. There is a very large time loop in Alien Son, spanning millennia of objective time. At any point in the story, the two protagonists know very different things because they’ve been in different objective times at different subjective times.

Finally, I had to draw a flowchart to keep it all straight, and to make sure the time-twisted story is actually self-consistent. I’ve shown this flowchart to a few people, but never publicly, not until now. You are seeing it first, here.

Spoiler alert! If you prefer to enjoy your surprises in the twists and turns of the book, scroll down no further! You can buy the book (or read for free on Kindle Unlimited) here.

Alien Son time loop

Saving Aran, my newest book

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I started writing Saving Aran about thirty years ago, and I’ve re-written it a few times since. It wasn’t my first book. I thought at the time that it was, in fact, my best book ever. I’d written maybe half a dozen YA books before it. Most of them starred a reality-shifter named Roderin, and all were enjoyed by my son, then in grade school, and some of his cousins–and not too many other people. I was too busy to publish. A mistake, I now see, but I was working fifty-hour weeks, including some travel, and raising two children. I didn’t want to take on a second job.

And honestly, I still don’t really want to be taking on this job of publishing. I want to keep writing new books, but I do also want to get this book into your hands and those of people everywhere who might enjoy a good science-fiction action adventure story.

Three images of the cover of Saving Aran, in a book, on an e-reader, and on a phone.

What’s it about?

It’s about perseverance and keeping promises. A city boy named Cort on the planet Aran whose best friend is abducted and sold to the aliens from Earth will stop at nothing to find and free her. When his first rescue attempt fails, he embarks on a journey to gain the skills and the help he needs to try again and succeed.

It’s about never giving up hope. Emprisoned on the aliens’ base, Cort’s friend Dilia continues to believe he will rescue her if he can. But maybe he can’t. Dilia girds herself to make the most of her time there. She learns much from the Earthers about the medicinal plants of Aran, while ever on the look-out for a way to escape.

Most of all, it’s about understanding that we are a part of a planetary ecosystem–a community larger than our neighborhoods and cities and even our nations. In Aran’s primeval forests, Cort begins having nightmares–the deep dreams of the trees that the aliens are destroying, upsetting the balance of life on the planet. And he will do what he must to protect them.

Is it really, finally finished?

Saving Aran has been through probably at least half a dozen re-writes, some of them substantial. It’s been edited and re-edited by my then-agent and still-friend Jim Frenkel. I think it’s really well done, a timeless story of biological and spiritual entanglement, and of love, completely worthy of the bold cover created by Deranged Doctor Design.

Here is a small excerpt from Saving Aran. Enjoy!

Between where they stood and the village, the forest opened up, and on a slight rise stood a man. He was of middle age, his black hair salted with grey. His vest was beaded in light and dark blue, and blue beads adorned the fringes of his dark pants. When he turned toward them, a blue crystal at his temple flashed in the sunlight. A seer!

The man stood straight and tall, his hands loosely holding a staff that extended from the ground to well above his head. Alternately rough and smooth, the staff had a slight bend as if it reached for something, and green leaves adorned a cluster of sprigs at its top. The wood of the staff gleamed in a rainbow of colors. It was the largest piece of worked khena wood Cort had ever seen.

Neder glanced at Cort, then nodded slightly as if acknowledging something someone had said to him. “It’s Tirei,” he said. “He’s the headman of my village, and a seer. He’s the one you’ll need to talk with about becoming a hunter.”

Neder set off down the hill. Cort followed him, his heart lifting, now that the end of his mission was finally in sight.

When they reached the older man, Neder introduced Cort. Tirei greeted him politely, and Cort managed a polite response, but he could barely tear his gaze from Tirei’s staff, which seemed to glow with a special light. Seen this close, it was even more remarkable than from a distance, dancing with sparks of an inner fire. His hand twitched with the desire to reach toward it.

“It is living wood,” Tirei said, following Cort’s gaze. “Would you like to touch it?”

‘Living wood’ was a good name for it. Colors and patterns swam like fish in its translucent grain. Cort didn’t trust himself to speak. He swallowed hard and nodded.

Tirei spread out his hands on the staff to open a large space between them. “Go ahead,” he said, with the kind of encouraging nod he might give to a small child trying something for the first time.

Cort stretched out his hand and took hold of the staff, then gasped in astonishment. The wood seemed alive in more ways than one. It was as if the staff had actively taken hold of his own hand. It was warm, and Cort could feel its strength. Vitality flowed down his arm and seemed to send sparks inward to his heart. He felt he had the power to do anything, to rescue Dilia, to succeed. His other arm felt weak by comparison, and so he placed his other hand on the staff just above the first. The feeling was utterly exhilarating.

“How do you ever put this staff down?” he said.

“It’s not difficult,” Tirei answered. Cort met the seer’s eyes. They were a soft, light brown, and his expression was filled with something serious, like sorrow or sympathy. “With the staff of the living wood comes great responsibility. Sometimes it’s good to put such responsibility aside.”

As had happened too often since he came to this forest, Cort failed to understand. His face must have betrayed his confusion, for the seer added, “While we hold this staff together, neither you nor I can lie to the other, and we will hold onto it until the staff lets us go. Now listen to me. I am Tirei-sunar of the clan of the hawk, instrument of the whynywir, seer, head of this village, and the father of five. I have lived here my entire life. Now tell me about yourself.”

“My name is Cort.” Cort felt terribly self-conscious. “I am city-born and clanless.” He lifted his chin slightly as he spoke, defying the seer to reject him. “I don’t live in the city anymore. I don’t know where I live. And, Tirei, even without the staff I wouldn’t have lied to you.”

Tirei nodded. “I know that—now. But without the staff, I wouldn’t have been sure. Now tell me about your name.”

“My name? But I already told you,” he said. “It’s Cort. I was named after my father.”

“But ‘Cort’ is not a forest name,” said the older man.

“No, I guess not. Why should it be? I’m not a forest person. His name was something else. Longer.”  Cort frowned, trying to get it just right. “Something like Cort-anaran—and so is mine. But no one wants to deal with a long name like that, so no one ever calls me that.”

The older man’s eyes went distant for a moment, as if he were considering something complicated. After a moment of silence, he asked, “Corodh-an-Aran?”

“What?” Cort tried to move his hands to a more comfortable position, but they were as stuck as if they had been glued to the staff.

“Could his name have been Corodh-an-Aran?”

“Yes, I guess that sounds about right. The way you forest people pronounce the old words is a bit different from how we say them in the city.”

“More correct,” said Tirei.

“I guess. Yes, probably; that would make sense.”

“Corodh-an-Aran.” The older man drew out the syllables like a benediction.

“Does it mean anything to you?”

“You don’t know what it means?” 

“Should I?”

The seer sighed. “‘Corodh’ is a fine old word but it’s fallen out of common usage. You might say, ‘justice,’ but that’s not exactly right. It has the flavor of being what one is meant to be, doing what one is meant to do, having what one is meant to have. The rightness of things, and also setting things right. A good word. ‘An’ and ‘aran,’ you probably know. Of the forest, or for it. This whole world.”

“Setting things right for Aran? For our world?”  The idea pleased Cort. He stood a little straighter.

“Yes, that’s part of it. The forest being and having what she is meant to have. The one who makes sure that happens. Who sets things right for our world.”

Cort smiled. “I like that,” he said. Then, after thinking about it, he added, “Still, it’s only a name.”

“An ancient one,” said the seer. “A good one. And why have you come here, Cort?”

“To become a hunter, like Neder.”

Tirei raised a quizzical eyebrow and glanced at Neder. Standing at Cort’s side, almost out of the range of his sight, the hunter nodded. “But why?” the seer asked.

“To save my friend Dilia, who is like a sister to me,” Cort replied. “More than a sister. My father and mother are dead. My home has been burned down. But Dilia is in the city or on the base somewhere, captive, and I intend to rescue her. It’ll be dangerous. I can’t do it alone. I’ll need a kiri.” He swallowed and added, “Probably no one’s ever hunted in the city before, but I intend to do it, and I’ll succeed, too. And—I didn’t know this at first, but now I do—when I’ve rescued Dilia, I want to bring her back here to the khenaran, and I still want to be a hunter then.”

“This will be decided by the whynywir,” said the seer.

It wasn’t quite a rejection, but it was far from the agreement Cort would have liked. “I understand that, but you’re a seer! You talk with them directly, so you must have some influence with them. Will you help me?”

Again Tirei exchanged glances with Neder. Then he gave Cort a slight, sad smile,  suddenly looking weary. “I will do what I feel is right for you, Cort-anaran. For you and for all of Aran.”

The dragon within

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Most people are familiar with the image of St. George and the dragon. Here’s one, for example, in Budapest:

St. George & dragon in Budapest

Pretty classic, right? Guy on a big horse slays a wicked-looking reptile with a long spear from a pretty safe distance. (Well, not so much for the horse, of course, but they have to put the man and the beast into the same statue, right? So there are space constraints. 

There’s a classic St. George on the facade of Casa Amatller in Barcelona, too. (Casa Amatller, designed by the architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch in about 1900, is right next door to Gaudi’s somewhat more famous Casa Batllo.)

Despite the lack of a horse, it’s pretty easily recognizable. The guy’s on the top, and he has armor and a shield. And (if you look closely) the obligatory spear, with which he has skewered the beast through the head and the heart.

When it comes to St. George and the dragon, let us be clear, there is not much of a contest. The beast is ferocious, but we are given the surety that the brave-hearted (and well armored) man wins.

But the artist is playing with us, as it turns out. There are not just one but three St. Georges with their dragons on the facade of Casa Amatller. 

This second St. George appears to be a parody. It shows a rather extreme version of the man-over-beast story. The man is a performer with a tambourine not a spear, and the beast has turned into a dancing bear. No harm to anyone here. Not a chance of nightmares. But look at what has become of the man. He makes a living with this defeated creature, but that’s all. If the beast isn’t much of a dragon, neither is the person much of a man.

The third St. George speaks to me deeply. Here, the man wears only a thin cloak, and he is wrestling with a beast that is his own size, maybe bigger. It’s not clear who will win. Look closely. If the man is strangling the dragon, the dragon also has his claws into the man, raking his arm. Leaving wounds that could be slow to heal. 

This one, at least, is an even contest. 

This one feels real to me, for we all struggle with our beasts. We all struggle to be more than beasts ourselves. Every psychologist will recognize this conflict. Every artist will see in it the creative process. Even Plato described the act of creation as “reason persuading necessity.”

For a long time, I placed this image of the creative struggle on the top of my home page, but it’s dark, and it’s difficult. It may capture you, and it may draw you in, but not in a way that will invite you and make you feel at home.

Please do come in. Please do feel at home in these pages. There is much of beauty and of joy here. But let’s just remember that it’s not a dancing bear lurking there in the dark corners–it’s a dragon.

A Brief History of Eden’s World, Part 1

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This is the first in a series of posts describing the history of the world of Freeing Eden from the late twenty-first century until the time of the story. This part covers the twenty-first and twenty-second centuries. I wrote the initial draft of this a few years ago, but despite the intervening time, the section about the twenty-first century still rings true–or at least believable–to me. How about you?

21st Century

By the middle of the 21st century, improved space-based optics enable the identification of potentially Earth-like planets in remote star systems. This development sparks some excitement, especially in the United States and in Russia, both of which countries have experienced setbacks in world influence. Amid great fanfare, they agree to cooperate to send unmanned probes to remote star systems. Not to be outdone, the Chinese independently also establish a program of exploration.

Exploration of Earth’s solar system also continues. A treaty is reached for cooperation in research and settlement in the solar system and in space that is similar to the ones already in place regarding Antarctica. Small international scientific research-oriented bases are established in orbit around Earth, on Mars, and on Luna, all environments inimical to human survival and therefore extremely costly and difficult to maintain.

Continuing experiments to validate (or disprove) string theory finally yield results. Space is proven to be ten-dimensional, with time itself providing the eleventh dimension that some theorists of the last century had insisted upon. The most advanced computers can now manipulate the mathematics of the structure of the universe as it is now understood.

But Earth is unable to solve its climate-change problem. Agreement after agreement is reached, but one government, or all, or the worst offenders, continue to mandate less action than needed, and in some cases, take less action than mandated, until a “point of no return” is passed in the middle of the century. But the point of no return is not the point of total disaster—not yet. Although climate-change effects are measurable, they are small enough on a worldwide scale, or local enough as a disaster, or slow enough to allow local action such as building dikes, for most people to ignore most of the time. Yet global warming becomes, according to scientists, essentially inescapable. Pollution of the air and waters also continues. Especially among the poorest and most vulnerable peoples, population growth continues. As in the previous century, there are humanitarian crises in the poorer regions, with potable water in short supply, occasional disease epidemics, continuing conflict, and deaths. Increasingly erratic weather triggers population migrations. In response to the changing climate, agricultural production becomes unreliable—in one place, flourishing where never before possible; in another, failing because of insufficient water.

The rich continue to get richer while the poor get little relief. As oil becomes a scarce resource and poverty becomes endemic in many third-world regions, terror groups and rogue governments continue to threaten the wealthier countries.

22nd Century

Sea walls are built to protect the streets of certain parts of New York, Tokyo, Mumbai, London, and other low-lying coastal cities around the globe. Even so, these places are flooded in severe storms, which occur more frequently than previously. Coastal areas where water rises from the ground, such as much of Florida, are abandoned. Conditions generally continue to deteriorate but at a slow pace. The world government moves to Geneva. Much of humankind’s scientific endeavor moves to research enclaves in higher-altitude areas such as Denver, including significant research departments of many of the world’s major universities.

Sub-atomic engineering provides the first prototypes of the rotational drive—a device that works by rotating matter from the three dimensions of regular space to three of the other seven special dimensions, all of which are tiny, tremendously shortening interstellar distances. Although scientists of previous centuries had predicted that the energy needed to bypass light speed would be greater than all the energy in the solar system, this has fortunately proved false. The early scientists had based their calculations on housing the drive in normal space, but the heart of the rotational drive is actually in quantum space, where statistical uncertainty sampling provides a basis for implementation of the rotation algorithm with almost no energy cost. Toward the middle of the 22rd century, the first human-scale (non-quantum) rotational drive prototype is produced and is used on a limited basis for research and for exploration. The research stations on Mars are now easily reachable.

Scientists receive the first results from the previous century’s interstellar probes and begin to discover more habitable planets using the rotational drive. Early in the century, several planets are identified that are quite Earth-like and have no sign of intelligent life.

Advanced digital printing techniques allow mass production of the rotational drive at low cost. Manned exploration of the stars begins.

In preparation for possible terraforming of dozens of new planets, a few limited terraforming experiments are conducted by the research stations on Mars. These are gratifyingly successful, but at much larger cost than anticipated. Scientists find no “tipping point” at which terraforming can transform the entire planet into an environment suitable for human habitation. It is much more economically feasible to discover, catalog, and settle the new planets.

Hundreds of planets are explored, and by mid-century, dozens are determined acceptable for human habitation as-is, or nearly so. Discussions ensue regarding whether and how to go about settling these planets. A treaty is signed by most of the nations on Earth that limits any kind of exposure, much less settlement, on planets with any signs of extraterrestrial intelligent life; however, no clear cases of such planets are identified. A few planets are found where the evidence is in one way or another equivocal (very ancient ruins of what appear to be built structures in one case); these planets are declared off-limits.

Enthusiasm builds for settlement of other planets as a goal in itself—a new frontier, a new beginning. A sense of optimism about the future, after so many dark years, begins to grow. Some groups, backed by wealthy individuals and consortia, begin exploring and settling some planets on their own.

When this news breaks out, discussions ensue regarding the minimum requirements for sustainable and equitable settlement, and whether private settlements should be allowed, and if so, what regulations should be enacted. Concepts of minimum viable population are discussed, and guidelines are promulgated that establish a baseline population of at least one thousand to ensure viability of the settlement population under most normal conditions.

Emotional momentum builds for outward migration, while conditions on Earth continue to slowly deteriorate. The governments of the larger, more powerful nations—those that are most interested in establishing settlements on other planets—create the International Settlement Control Board (ISCB), an international regulatory body to grant charters and to coordinate settlement efforts. There is heated debate regarding what groups or organizations may be granted charters for settlement (and have their settlement subsidized) by the organization. Private exploration and settlement drops off. As citizens of various nations, the people behind these efforts also fall under the aegis of the treaty to which their nations have agreed, and the minimum-viable-population requirement greatly limits the number of these private activities.

Habitable planets continue to be discovered, but expressions of interest by various groups become more numerous. Earth’s multinational regulatory body begins granting charters of settlement, giving funding priority to representatives of certain populations that are near extinction or threatened on Earth, and to those other groups that agree to incorporate such populations into their settlement plans.

As might be expected, a few settlements are lost because of factors not discovered during exploration, such as poisonous substances or microbes in the soil that were transmitted to the Earth crops the settlers planted. Scientists and engineers work out more careful planet-selection and modification strategies to ensure the safety of the humans and other Earth life that are settled there, with the minimum possible changes to the planetary ecology as a whole. The idea of massive terraforming is abandoned as unnecessary.

On Earth, oil becomes prohibitively scarce. Some regions revert to coal. This causes a significant increase in global air pollution, despite an increase in use of nuclear energy and a marked increase in use of renewable resources. Pollution of the sea causes the extinction of many marine species, with a concomitant drop-off of avian species as well. A major volcanic eruption at the end of the century further increases air pollution and causes two years so cold (in the midst of a trend of overall global warming) that crops in parts of the world fail. Settlement of the planets takes on new urgency.

Wednesday Writers

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Many thanks to Catherine Castle for the chance to share Freeing Eden with her readers! This post about the inspiration for Freeing Eden appeared today on her Wednesday Writers blog. Please join me in following Catherine’s blog and meeting more talented romance writers.

Freeing Eden: A brief history of cloning

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The history of cloning is intimately tied to the history of academic research in the twenty-fourth century and beyond. By the beginning of the century, more than one hundred habitable planets had been discovered and settled, and the expansion of humanity into nearby regions of the galaxy continued apace throughout the century as Old Earth became increasingly uninhabitable.

By the middle of the twenty-fourth century, Oxford University, Harvard University, Stanford University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, along with about half a dozen others, recognized that the center of human population was receding from Old Earth. They joined together to colonize a more conveniently located planet that would be oriented toward the pursuit of higher education, and in particular, to encourage multidisciplinary efforts through co-location. Intense discussions in committee fail to agree on a name for the new planet. To everyone’s dismay, some media jokester began calling the planet “Hoaxford.” Forced to make a decision quickly, the Joint Naming Committee adopted the only name they could agree upon, the singularly unimaginative name “University.”

The founding universities continued to maintain campuses on Old Earth as well as on other planets, but most disciplines, along with the institutions’ administrative functions, moved to the new planet. The charter of the planet also allowed other colleges and universities, existing or new, large or small, to establish campuses on University. Eventually, over three thousand institutes of higher education established branches on University, or moved there outright.

Early in the twenty-fifth century, a research scientist at Stanford (on University), named Marco Jefferson Eddy, developed a technique for growing fully adult human clones in tanks (in vitro) in just three years. In the course of his research, he made eight clones of his own, as well as three of his colleague, Monica Nguyen. The clones were fully physically viable but were, as it turned out, incapable of any kind of human intelligence.

Meanwhile, MIT professor and neuroprogramming expert Beneficio Rossi had been researching brainscan recording, the ability to capture the entire mental state of an individual human being. The two teams integrated their projects—realizing University’s founders’ vision of interdisciplinary cooperation—and created the first human clone who was more than a genetic identical twin but was also a total re-creation of the cloned individual.

Stanford’s Board of Governors declared the project unethical and insisted that it be closed down. MIT’s governing board, to the contrary, affirming free inquiry as a basic scientific principle, urged that the project be pursued. The dispute was referred to the Governing Board of University, who declared the project fraught with ethical problems and strongly recommended that it be discontinued.

Jeff Eddy, Monica Nguyen, and Ben Rossi remained adamant that their research not be restricted or controlled by any administration or government. Claiming the inviolability of academic and scientific freedom, they were joined in this position by many other scientists on University. Powerfully funded and supported by a number of extremely wealthy individuals who were interested in cloning themselves, the group of scientists applied for and received a planetary charter. They resigned their positions on University, and many of their scientific colleagues—including a team studying Eden’s unusual physical properties—joined them on their new world. They called the planet Bigollo, the actual surname of the extraordinary thirteenth-century mathematician Leonardo Fibonnaci.

The Governing Board of University sued the Republic of Bigollo regarding ownership of the research that the various scientific founders of Bigollo took with them, notably Eddy, Nguyen, and Rossi’s cloning and brainscan programming technology. However, the lawsuit was soon bogged down in the courts of Old Earth because of jurisdictional issues.

The dispute regarding cloning was finally resolved out of court at the end of the century when the new Union of Federated Planets passed a law forbidding the use of cloning-with-brainscan technology anywhere in the Union. Bigollo, however, was specifically exempted from this law and thus became the only place where cloning was permitted.

The cloning and programming process was both expensive and imperfect. Because of minor physical differences between the makers and their clones, brainscan programming was ineffective in about one in sixty clones, leaving them as incapable of thought, feeling, or development as the clones initially created by Eddy and Nguyen. Most clones, however, when brought to consciousness at the end of the process, were so successfully programmed that they initially believed they were their makers, with all their makers’ memories from childhood completely intact.

Freeing Eden: Why Eden?

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My first book, Freeing Eden, will be released on May 29th. That’s right around the corner! So between now and then, I’m hoping to share some of my thoughts about this book, and perhaps some vital background information as well.

Yes, it’s science fiction. You can read a short description of the plot on the book page at Amazon if you’d like. In fact, I’d be glad if you would, but that’s not what this post is about. This post explores why the planet is called Eden and what makes it particularly Eden-like.

The book initially came about because I began wondering about the story of the Garden of Eden in the Bible. Why should it be the case that simply knowing about good and evil is enough to be banished from Eden? At this point, we are not talking about Adam and Eve having committed evil. Sure, maybe a little deviation from the letter of the instruction, but evil? That would be a stretch. And yet, they were cast out.

In order to understand why this exile might be necessary, I had first to imagine a place that would be very Eden-like. Yet it also had to be a place where real people live. What would such people be like? They would be gentle and welcoming, surely, and they would also be simple and honest. They would abhor any kind of violence to others. But wouldn’t that make them easy prey for anyone else? Particularly if their Eden was full of riches that other people might want for their own?

Could it even survive for very long?

Facing loss of the paradise they live in, and their culture that preserves it, it seems to me that the Edenians would develop a style of nonviolent resistence that might not overcome outside oppression, but it might create a kind of stasis in which what they value most is preserved despite everything.

Into this conflict-ridden Eden, I have placed the very man meant to break the deadlock and save Eden. He’s been cloned from Eden’s great resistance hero and best hope, but somehow the brainscan programming that was supposed to make him an exact double of his maker has been interfered with, so that he remembers nothing.

Can a person of such innocence remain innocent for long on conflict-torn Eden? And for him, is there such a thing as learning too much–such a thing as coming to know good and evil?

Let’s say this happens. Let’s say our protagonist comes to know good and evil–and chooses good. Now, let’s just see how long he can stay on Eden.

The President Teaches Me Good English. The Best.

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Dan and I have enrolled in the Donald Trump Remedial English Program.

I can’t pinpoint the exact date this happened, but we reached the saturation point at about the same time. Perhaps it was when we were enjoying a glass of fine ten-year-old Rioja. We enjoyed the delicious aroma, observed how it coated the inside of the glass, and swirled it around in our mouths a bit before swallowing. “This is really good,” I said to Dan.

“The best,” he replied, a response that for the past several months has brought us laughter. It’s been fun imitating our President’s, er, distinctive verbal style.

We each saw the doubt in the other’s eyes.

“All the other wines are losers,” I essayed. But it was too late. This no longer had the cachet of fresh humor that it once had.

“Pathetic?” he tried.

No. Clearly we were done.

“This is really sad,” I said, ignoring the warning finger Dan was waving at me. “It’s the end of an era. We can’t go on this way. It’s just not working anymore. We can’t just say, ‘the best.’ It doesn’t mean anything.”

Dan agreed. “But what should we say?” he wondered. “The best wine?”

Suddenly, it was all clear to me. We have become grounded on the shoals of vagueness. “That’s better, but it’s not good enough. We have to be more specific. What do you mean, ‘the best wine’? Why is it the best? The best for what? The best wine you’ve ever tasted in your entire life? The one wine that Robert Parker will finally rate with one hundred points? The best wine on this restaurant’s wine list—and how would you know that? Or maybe just the best wine for this particular dinner?”

“Stop!”

But I couldn’t stop. “The problem is that ‘best’ is entirely the wrong We have to rediscover the wonderful world of picturesque description. We’d be better off with just ‘This wine is really good.’ But even so, we can do much better. We have to start learning all over again how to say what we really mean. And what we really mean here is, ‘This wine is delicious.’ Or, ‘It’s exactly the kind of wine I was hoping for.’ Or even, ‘I really like this wine; it’s just to my taste.’”

And so we vowed we would try, from that moment on, to avoid certain formerly funny phrases and instead to say specifically what we mean. It’s hard, but we are doing our best to keep each other honest. We may need to join a twelve-step program.

On our last night in Barcelona, we explored a restaurant that sounded promising on Yelp and was only a short walk from our hotel. After we’d been seated, looked over the menu and ordered, and our first course had arrived, Dan said, “This restaurant is the best.”

I gave him a squinty, head=tilted look.

“Restaurant. It’s the best restaurant.”

“Really?” I asked. “In the world? According to whom?” (Yes, folks, I do actually, from time to time, use the word ‘whom’ in ordinary speech.) “The best in what respect? Certainly not the tablecloths.” (There were none.) “No other restaurant has better service? Better ambiance? Is it the variety of items on the menu? How perfectly they are cooked? Have you tried enough items on the menu to be sure? Or are you talking about value for the money? Maybe it’s just that the restaurant is the right length of a walk from our hotel?”

Dan sighed. “I really like the menu and the food, and it’s exactly the quality and degree of informality I was hoping for, on our last night in Barcelona. I can’t imagine a better place for us to be having dinner tonight.”

I sighed and smiled. “I feel the same way.”