Geek Day, Inspiration, and support for a great cause

I'll admit it. I get quite nostalgic when a new Star Wars story comes out. It was Geek Day just the other day – 25^th May, the anniversary of the first release of the movie forty-one(!) years ago. Who could have imagined back then what a juggernaut the franchise would become?

I thoroughly enjoyed the film (back then simply called Star Wars – A New Hope was added later) but when I saw The Empire Strikes Back I was smitten, lost in starry-eyed WOW. I've been a fan ever since. In fact, one of my earlier forays into writing was Star Wars fan fic.

Several years ago, I was at a loose end for plot ideas. But I had listened to the mantra that thou shalt not throw away what thou hast written, so I rummaged around in the archives and fished out a fan fic I'd thought was pretty darn good back then. My initial thoughts? After I'd stopped cringing? The execution was dreadful, but the bones of the story were there. I wrote a blog about it. Of course, any references to Star Wars characters, ships, planets etc etc would have to be replaced with something else. I expanded the plot, created my own Empire (maybe not Galactic, but pretty big), invented my own characters, and my own aliens.

About that time, I was contacted by some people wanting to set up a kind of writers' sandpit, a place where we could use each other's' universe and characters

The Dryden Universe is a science fiction universe available under the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license for use by authors, artists, and other creatives. This story is part of the Belle Epoque section of the timeline. find out more about the Dryden Universe and its timeline at its website Dryden Experiment

 There's plenty of room in Dryden for pretty much anything, really. I had a look through the NASA images of star clusters and decided upon the open cluster M24 in Sagittarius for my Empire, around 20k years in the future. I chose a star cluster because I wanted an area where the star systems are quite close together and yet the stars are old enough to have evolved intelligent life.

I had a story and I had a setting. That was enough for me to (re)write my first Dryden story, A Matter of Trust.

I still had a lot to do, though. I needed to identify my alien species and their history, as well as flesh out my Empire. Ah, but I had a whole new series to work on that. You can find all the books here.

On another topic, I watched the movie about Stephen Hawking's life the other day. It's not my usual sort of movie, with no action and not a single shoot 'em up, but it's fascinating for all that. Stephen Hawking was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS) at the age of 21. He was given 6 years to live. He died recently, aged 76, recognised as one of the most brilliant minds of the era. What's wonderful about this movie is how Eddie Redmayne,  the actor who played the part of Hawking, portrayed the manifestation of the disease and its effects not just on the sufferer, but on those closest to him. Redmayne receive a best actor oscar for his efforts.   

If you've no concept of the disease, take a look at the movie The Theory of Everything.

And on that note, today is the last day of theSky's the Limit promotion in support of research to find a cure for ALS.

Looking for Blue skies and smooth sailing to cure ALS

The skies are Blue,
Our books are too.
​We're fighting ALS
with some help from YOU! ​

Twelve enthusiastic sci-fi romance and paranormal romance authors. Fifteen fantastic blue covered books. One month to help support an outstanding organization.

From May 1-31, 2018 these authors will donate a minimum of 25% of their sales of these books to the ALS Association, an organization dedicated to providing ALS patients and their families with a multitude of different types of assistance, and continuing research to find a cure for this deadly disease. See all the books here: http://www.leakirk.com/supporting-als.html

Please help us if you can. Every dollar will make a difference.

Unintended consequences

Renowned astophysicist Stephen Hawking has died. At 76, he exceeded his life expectancy by over fifty years, having been diagnosed with ALS, a rare form of motor neuron disease, at age 21. I'm sure all of us have seen this small, hunched person contorted into a motorised wheelchair, giving his speeches through a disembodied computer voice.

I guess to me Stephen Hawking is the epitome of the triumph of mind over body - and, indeed, a cautionary tale. He's one of the greats of science, up there with Newton, Galileo, and Einstein.

He was much more than a theoretical physicist, though. He appeared on the Big Bang Theory, Star Trek, the Simpsons, and other popular shows, as well as giving academic lectures. It has been said he enjoyed his position as a famous scientist - but maybe he did these shows as much to make science accesible to people like me as anything else. Perhaps also to make a point that people with physical disabilities are not necessarily stupid. I like to think so.


I mourn his passing. But please let me share this wonderful piece of (pointed) humour. Do watch right to the end - you won't be sorry. Oh - and put your coffee down, first. You don't want it on your screen or your keyboard.

Professor Hawking actually had some influence on my science fiction, and how I think about some of the ways scientists delve into matters we don't know enough about. It's the eternal theme of SF, isn't it? Unintended consequences, such as taking  an alien life form on board the Nostromo.

Specifically, in my case, I wondered about manipulation of the human genome. Don't misunderstand - genetic modifications can often be very sensible if the intention is to eliminate a disease. But it's a delicate balance and there is still, always, a risk that taking something away might release something else, or take away more than just the disease. Just think. If a decision had been made to abort a foetus because it would develop motor neuron disease humanity would have lost an oustanding brain. Of course, if there's a specific gene for motor neuron and it had been elminated in vitro, Professor Hawkins would have had a much more comfortable life. But would he have had that amazing brain? It's a messy, grey area with so many 'what ifs'.

In one of my earliest books, Morgan's Choice, Morgan Selwood, who is a human cyborg, is discussing life and things with alien Admiral Ravindra. He and his people are gentically modified humans with some of our 'faults' specifically eliminated. Ravindra has found some sexually explicit images on Morgan's starship and is quizzing her about them.

"Look, same sex couples are tolerated in our society—where I come from, at least. It’s common in the Fleet. Boys locked together in an airtight cylinder, you know? Sure, there are women in the Fleet, but the men outnumber them, just as in your fleet, and some of the women prefer each other’s company, too. I had a friend at the Fleet Academy who was like that. When I first met her she carefully checked to see if I’d be interested in… her way of doing things. I wasn’t and after we got past that, we became friends. I was curious, though, because like you I find it all a bit odd. I looked up what information I could.

"A few centuries ago, there was a debate going on about what changes could be made to the human…" she wondered what the Manesa equivalent of ‘genome’ would be and gave up, "…to improve the species."

"You could do that?" interrupted Ravindra, eyebrows arched. But the look in his eyes signaled skepticism.

"Yes, we could—can. I take it you can’t?"

He frowned, stared at her as if he was trying to see into her soul. "Not that I know of." He waved his hand in a circular motion. "Continue."

"They started by making changes to the human genome to eliminate disease. The scientists isolated the genes they thought were responsible for certain conditions and modified them. They did a lot of that. That’s a good thing, sure. But, hey, it doesn’t always work quite so easily. You eliminate one thing and it affects something else where there was no obvious relationship. That was a problem for the same sex thing. The people who are that way don’t see it as an issue, and they weren’t happy at seeing their preferences called a disease. Eventually, after a lot of discussion it was agreed that the human structure would not be altered any further, but that children could be tested in the womb so that potential diseases could be eliminated in vitro. They say that humanity has adapted and changed and survived over the millennia and that if we play with our structure, we’ll jeopardize that resilience. Having said that, there are lots of Coalition planets where testing isn’t done at all."

"And yet you have been heavily modified, have you not?"

Oh, yes. Heavily modified. Even before she was born. "That’s because of the Cyber Wars."

"Which you will, of course, explain."

"The Cyber Wars ended about two thousand years ago. Humanity was on the verge of extinction. A problem with smart machines, you see."

"Like you?"

She bristled. "I am not a machine." Although he wouldn’t be the first person who thought so. "I… people like me… are a result of the Cyber Wars. Before the war, machines were being used to do all sorts of work that people used to do. It was cheap. Machines don’t need food, they don’t go on strike, make demands, want holidays. They took over in more and more jobs: working the fields, tending children, making goods for sale, designing things, building them and so on and so on. Running spaceships, controlling transit systems, buildings, you name it. The machines became smarter and smarter. Eventually, so the story goes, on the more advanced planets, they took over and flesh and blood people became inferior beings."

"And people like you took over."

"No. Shut up and listen." Uh-oh. Not the smartest thing to say, but it was what she would have said at home. She shot a lightning glance at him. One eyebrow lifted but he said nothing.

"What happened was that people were forced into poverty because machines did all the work. Those people rebelled and fought back against the machines and destroyed them. Millions, billions died just on the advanced planets. But that wasn’t the end of it. The smart machines had kept everything going so when they were destroyed there was disease and starvation on top of all the deaths that had happened already. Nobody knew how to keep the ordinary machines going anymore. Then people started killing each other in a struggle to survive. It became a self- perpetuating thing. Somebody got a disease on planet A and moved to planet B to start a new life, bringing the disease along for the ride. Or tribe A killed tribe B for the food they’d grown. Eventually, the survivors stopped fighting and started again. And the survivors, needless to say, were the primitive people on the backward worlds who knew how to farm."

Somewhere out in space, humanity’s past is about to catch up with its future.

When Morgan Selwood’s spaceship is stranded in unknown space she is relieved to be rescued by humanoid aliens. But her unusual appearance and her extraordinary technical abilities mean that everybody wants a piece of her. Who’s it to be? Autocratic Admiral Ravindra, who press-gangs her to help against a shadowy threat from the stars, or the freedom fighters who think she’s a legend reincarnated, returned to help them throw off the yoke of oppression?

Morgan doesn’t much care which it is until the uprising and the atrocities start. While civil war rages across the planet the shadowy threat from the stars emerges as an implacable killer bent on destroying all intelligent life. Morgan will need every bit of her superhuman, bio-engineered intelligence to save the man she has come to love and his people from annihilation. And spare a little to save herself.

Buy the book at  Amazon B&N Kobo  iBooks

+++++++++++++

THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING: SCIENCE+ROMANCE

Stephen in pursuit of Jane--nerdy/irresistible.

Stephen Hawking is the most remarkable scientist of our times, the Einstein of our generation.  His theories of time, the origin of the universe, black holes, even the possibility of alternate universes have startled the scientific world and caught the imagination of the public.

Hawking has strong beliefs and is not shy about expressing them.  He is absolutely in favor of manned space exploration.  He believes artificial intelligence may provide the answers to survival in a future fraught with environmental and other dangers, but AI itself represents a threat we may not have the brain power to overcome.  He believes in alien life—and thinks we should be grateful we haven’t encountered any.  He emphatically does not believe in God.

That we should know so much about this man and his ideas is a tribute not only to the impact of his expansive mind, but to the force of his personality.  Hawking is not the kind of scientist to hide in his classroom or his lab and keep his theories to a select few.  He has sought to share his theories of time and the universe with as many people as possible, through a series of popular books (A Brief History of Time, The Universe in a Nutshell), public appearances, television shows and so on.  His charisma has made it work.

All this despite the motor neuron disease that has progressively stripped him of the use of his body since the early 1960’s.  He was a young man, still a graduate student at Cambridge, when he was first stricken with the disease related to ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease) and given a few years to live.  He’s 72 years old now, confined to a wheelchair and forced to communicate by minute movements of his facial muscles, but his mind as sharp as ever. He’s living proof of the power of mind (and will) over matter.

But he didn’t accomplish the triumphs of his life alone.  With him for most of the journey was his wife of thirty years, Jane Wilde Hawking.  They met as graduate students, shortly before Hawking’s diagnosis, and were married despite the grim prognosis of the disease.  Hawking has said that Jane gave him “something to live for” at this crucial stage of his life.

The story of this romance (and its eventual demise) is told in THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING, in theaters now.  Actor Eddie Redmayne does a magnificent job with the role of Hawking, capturing both his nerdy youthful exuberance and his mischievous humor later in life.  Redmayne also manages to convey subtle emotion through the tortured constriction of Hawking’s body as the disease progresses.

In some ways, Felicity Jones, in the role of Jane, has the tougher job trying to avoid being upstaged by all the dramatics going on across the boards from her.  That, of course, was Jane’s problem, too.  Hawking’s needs overwhelmed her at times, especially after children were added into the mix.  (The Hawkings had three.  As Hawking explains cheerily to a friend in the film, “Different system.  Automatic!”)  The requirements of his fame were no help, either.  (The real Jane once said that her job was to remind Stephen that he was not God.)  Jones conveys this sense of handling everything with aplomb while teetering on the edge of desperation beautifully.  

Still, though Jane’s a good Christian, she’s no saint.  When she joins the church choir under the direction of a handsome, recently widowed musician, complications ensue.  She resists the temptation, only to find her husband has fallen for his new nurse.  (And male reviewers say romance novels are unrealistic!)

In this somewhat sanitized version of Jane and Stephen’s story, the breakup of their long marriage is amicable, Jane and Stephen each marry their lovers and stay friends with each other, and there is a HEA of sorts as Stephen accepts an award from the Queen.  The real story is a bit messier, of course. Although it’s true that Jane and the choir director are still happily married, Stephen and the nurse didn’t fare so well.  Jane and Stephen are still friends, though. (It should be noted that the film was based on Jane's autobiography, Traveling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen.)

 

THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING may have followed a timeworn pattern of similar inspirational movies.  Still, it had many moments of true emotion and fine actors in the leading roles.  And for those of us who write SFR, who can resist a true story that mixes science and romance?   

Cheers, Donna