Courage Reconsidered, Part III

"You don't have to prove you're a tough guy all the time."
--Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

"I don't believe in a no-win scenario."
--James T. Kirk, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

"We cannot defeat this enemy!"
"No, we cannot. But we will meet them in battle nonetheless."
--King Theoden, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

"I dare much more than my makers anticipated."
--Duncan Idaho, Dune Messiah

I've stated in a couple of essays now (here and here) that I don't consider myself a particularly courageous person. And on some matters, I suppose that's still the case. But if I have a place in my life that I feel supremely confident--bold, even--it's in my career. When I was younger, writing was my escape from the people who sought to (and did) harm me. In fiction, I could be brave, travel elsewhere, and right wrongs as I saw fit. Along the way toward acquiring something approaching mental health, I also developed a useful skill, which has managed to pay my bills for the last 15+ years. I have thrown myself into my writing career and all the skills that accompany it, including learning the aerospace (or defense or tourism) business and working well with other people.

I have taken more chances with my career than others might have believed, including my family members, who remain bewildered at the line of work I've created for myself. It is no accident that the name of my professional blog is Heroic Technical Writing. I read a lot of books on leadership. I've learned how to write and think like a leader, if only to write speeches for those who lead. That requires a certain boldness of thought that I do not often feel or practice in my personal life, but in the line of duty, I can think courageously. In such ways do I find myself writing to or on behalf of executives, program managers, and prominent space advocates. I learned how to speak and write in the language of leadership. Maybe over the years, some of it has begun to sink in, and I realize that parts of my life do not match the bold rhetoric that I churn out on a daily basis as part of my job.

What does courage look like in the workplace? For me, it is the ability and willingness to admit to error and propose solutions, not even knowing if your apology will be accepted. It is the willingness to tell a manager that you don't like their idea in such a way that they accept it and ask for help in making it better. It is a willingness to tell a manager that something they are doing hurts, bothers, or offends you and to ask them to change their behavior. It is, in my quiet little world, the willingness to "speak truth to power," as Anita Hill once put it.

Courage, again for me, was taking out loans to pursue a master's degree in technical writing, not knowing if I'd even get a job afterward. It meant leaving the relative warmth and safety of Disney World and meant moving to a new city where I knew practically no one and nothing about the content I was being paid to write. It meant stopping an interview for "serious money" to take a shot at a space-writing job because that was my passion. It meant writing a proposal, giving the presentation, and then leading the team that ran an 850-person conference a couple years ago. It has meant leaving the theoretical safety of a large corporation to join a much smaller company. It has meant trusting myself to learn what I've needed to learn to write about difficult subjects coherently. For all my doubts about my ability to interact with people, I've never doubted my ability to learn about subjects that interested me. Since I started getting paid to write for a living (1996), I've never had writer's block on the job. I've been willing to "throw something against the wall and see what sticks" rather than think I have no idea what to say. If I'm in a business setting, representing my employer or myself, I can turn on the "Disney smile" and speak with others as if it were the most natural thing in the world for me to do. That was not natural completely natural for me, but I learned how because I felt it was important for me to learn it.

And perhaps I don't give myself that much credit when it comes to my personal life. I've spent 20 years learning to function on my own: living, moving, going out, and taking vacations (including a three-week jaunt to Europe). It has meant long hours being honest with myself about what's broken in my life and taking action to fix it. It has meant fashioning a personality, philosophy, aesthetic sense, career, viewpoint, and way of life for myself rather than attaching myself to some other individual and group and following their lead.

But as I've gotten older and I have different experiences, I realize that there is always room for growth, always places where I might show a little more gumption, for lack of a better word. Do I need to socialize more? Time to get out and do something. Do I need to write more boldly or viscerally? Write clearly about my doubts in an open forum. Do I need to demonstrate a little more professional value and independence? Start a blog talking about the craft of technical writing. There are things that I can do to improve myself, make myself better, and still manage to have fun. The challenge, as always, is admitting what's broken and be willing to take steps to fix it.

I'm not a soldier. I'm not a fireman, policeman, or electrical lineman. I'm not in any sort of role that requires great bravery or steady nerves (great patience, perhaps). I'm not interested in skydiving, mountain climbing, or running with the bulls in Pamplona. But I know I need to take more chances in this life of mine while I'm still relatively young, coherent, and healthy. Which chances, and where, I'm uncertain yet. I can't live a quiet, boring life forever. There are challenges to be had if I seek to pursue them. All it takes is courage.

The Subject of Courage, Reconsidered

"I hate the British. You are defeated, but you have no shame. You are stubborn, but have no pride. You endure, but you have no courage."
--Colonel Saito, The Bridge on the River Kwai

"Everyone considered him the coward of the county
He'd never stood one single time to prove the county wrong"
--Kenny Rogers

"I thought I was defending your honor, and I never run away from a fight!"
"Yes, you do. You do all the time!"
--Mal and Inara, Firefly

"Listen, you promise me something, OK? Just if you're ever in trouble, don't be brave. You just run, OK? Just run away."
--Jenny Curran, Forrest Gump

A few years back, when I was still living in DC, some idiot left her bag on the Metro. This was in the wake of the Madrid train bombing in 2004, and people were obviously a little tense. And by "people," I mean me. I was getting off at the next stop anyway, but I eased my way toward the other end of the car before the train came to the station. Not like it would've mattered, but still. As I was exiting the station, I saw some lady taking the bag to the station ticket seller to report the bag to lost and found. I thought long and hard about that episode for the rest of that day, and obviously it's still a sore spot. I remember thinking at the time, "Jeez, that was stupid!" but I couldn't recall at the time if I was thinking about my behavior or that lady's. Obviously I pointed the accusatory finger at myself. A braver man would have assumed it was a bomb and taken it off the train anyway.


There are men who would sooner admit to having parts missing than admit to being scared. Good for them. The best I can manage is calm or hysterical humor in moments of high anxiety (tornadoes, hurricanes, etc.). I call it "laughter from the brink." But yes, there are parts of America--specifically the South--where bravery is at the very heart of being a man. Of course with that bravery can come some other traits, such as touchiness, machismo, and a willingness to employ violence. Far be it for me to complain. A lot of our military comes from the Southern U.S., and that job requires a bravery most civilians cannot imagine because it's not required of them.

Even in social situations, moral courage is not considered a particularly popular virtue. Two of the most popular Christian aphorisms out there are "Judge not, lest ye be judged" and "Turn the other cheek." I've employed both over the course of nearly 44 years on this Earth. Part of that seemed to be required, as I was a small, frail child, and didn't reach a respectable (among males) height until I was nearly 20. A "late bloomer" was the polite term. "Wimp" would have been another one.

I spent the worst year of my life in seventh grade. Word got around (thanks to my grade school peers, but also thanks to the guys I'd played little league with a couple years earlier) that I was a weakling and a wimp--easily hurt, easily upset. It became a game to see who could get Leahy to cry first. Not being a fan of exercise, I had to get incredibly desperate to try karate as a means of regaining some self respect. If anything, I realized that I at least needed to understand the rudiments of fighting so I wouldn't get my ass kicked every time I was within one mile of school. Naturally, word of my effort got around, and one kid simply could not wait to test my new-found fighting prowess. So one month after I'd started--still clumsily trying to keep up with the calisthenics and learn the proper fighting stances--one of the bullies decided to test me out. Needless to say, I ran, and when the kid finally caught me, he clocked me a few times before deciding he'd made his point.

That was the episode that caused a much tougher friend to tell the rest of the toughs to leave me alone, and that sufficed to stop the physical beatings. The episodes of people following me home continued here and there, engendering a certain paranoia, but the bruises stopped multiplying. I got about as far as yellow belt before deciding I'd had enough karate. The next level up was blue belt, which included weapons training, and I wanted nothing to do with those. I'd gotten enough self confidence at any rate to learn how to change my social behavior and not act like a terrified victim.

But my experiences in childhood taught me this lesson: if you're smaller, weaker, and slower than someone, it's probably a good idea not to provoke them. Of course some people don't require an excuse for abusive behavior. I know of several folks who considered my very willingness to be friendly and agreeable contemptible and worthy of a beating, so you can't please everyone (you can, however, keep your distance).

Another thing I learned over the succeeding 20 years is that the larger the social group you belong to, the more likely you are to say something to offend others. There are two approaches to this sort of problem: not to give a damn what other people think or to make a conscious effort to be inoffensive and to apologize for any offense (my chosen route). None of this requires a great deal of courage, merely verbal cleverness and a trained sixth sense that avoids pushing anyone's buttons. So I steer clear of politics. I don't push my religion. At church, I don't argue with doctrines that bother me. In most personal relationships, I let things that bother me slide to avoid arguments. Part of this is just a general distaste for conflict, part of it stems from not allowing every little thing bug me anymore, but part of it is the opposite of courage (which I defined previously as a willingness to take action even when the outcome is in doubt).

The behaviors above make me welcome among a wider variety of people than I might associate with otherwise. I've got a very diverse circle of friends, with any number of personal opinions, political affiliations, and personal lifestyle choices that don't match mine at all. I'm probably better off for holding my fire in certain circumstances, but at what point do I assert my own views? At what point do I test the patience and tolerance of my friends? Agreeableness only goes so far before I lose my own voice, my own thoughts. If I allow the opinions of others to completely overwhelm my own, who will know what I stand for, or if I stand for anything at all? That is where a man proves his courage, is it not?

In the last essay of this series, I'll talk about where I've tried to exercise courage in my life. It probably won't surprise you to learn that I do so through my writing career. You've got to start somewhere, right?

This is part 2 of three essays on this subject. Part 1 can be found here, Part 3 here.

The Vice of Courage

Most civilization is based on cowardice. It's so easy to civilize by teaching cowardice. You water down the standards which would lead to bravery. You restrain the will. You regulate the appetites. You fence in the horizons. You make a law for every movement. You deny the existence of chaos. You teach even the children to breathe slowly. You tame.

--Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

The great thing is not to lose your nerve.

--Jerry Pournelle

Yes, but these are not times for extraordinary men. Business is not war. Heroics are unseemly. They complicate. 

--Adlai Niska, Firefly

"Come on! Show a little backbone, willya?"

--Raiders of the Lost Ark

A coward dies a thousand deaths, a hero dies but once.

--Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare

 *

We don't talk much about courage these days, unless perhaps it's related to disasters or wars. Soldiers can be admired for their courageousness, but are just as likely to be denounced for being brutes or pitied as "victims of war." Firemen and policemen can be admired for rushing into the World Trade Center--and were--but the nation wants to abandon the war and forget 9/11 ever happened.

Oh, there are still moments where courage is called for today--in the face of social oppression, for example--though we live in a comparatively free society. There are moments like home invasions that call for personal courage, and some people test their courage on purpose through extreme sports or find themselves tested against their will through cancer or some other awful disease.

Yet where does that leave courage at home, in the human heart, in the workings of our daily lives? And what, exactly, do I mean by courage, and why do I feel its lack?

I suppose my personal definition of courage (composed during a five-mile walk this afternoon) boils down to this: courage is the willingness to take action even when you doubt that the outcome will be successful. It's not a virtue I was brought up with, cultivated in myself, or was expected to display. I find this lack unfortunate.

I also like John Wayne's definition of courage: "Real courage is being scared to death and saddling up anyway." Unfortunately, John Wayne was not a welcome presence in my household. In addition to courage, you see, Wayne had machismo, swagger, male ego, the aura of a tough guy--and that sort of stuff just wasn't wanted in a home run by a soft-spoken single mother. I don't blame Mom, but I'm learning in retrospect that it had long-term effects on how I faced the world, especially the world of my male peers.

It took me years to learn to stand up for myself. It wasn't like Mom told me to run away from a fight, but she had no advice to offer when it came to standing up for myself. As a result, I took a beating--several, in fact--until a tougher friend basically told most of the bullies to leave little Leahy alone. I finally got an opportunity to thank him through the miracle of Facebook a year or so ago, and it was a thank-you that was a long time coming. But behind gratitude lies that inevitable male resentment: if I'd had a set, the theory goes, I wouldn't have needed that help. But the absence of courage in my youthful training led me to doubt my ability to defend myself. This led to backing down from many a fight.

The funny thing is, Mom herself has noticed a lack in my behavior, but has been unable to quantify it precisely. Instead, she put it this way: "When I told you 'no,' you accepted it. When I told your sister 'no,' she kept trying." Now you can chalk this up to any number of personality traits: politeness, unwillingness to offend an authority figure, passivity, introversion, what have you. But it happens in my social dealings with other people as well. Told "no" by a woman that she is not interested, I accept it (albeit not always gracefully), and quit. Society has made this more problematic, as the line between "determined suitor" and "stalker" has become increasingly (and deliberately) vague. My history and behavior being what they are, though, I err on the side of caution and back off. Yet how many romance books or plays or romantic comedies have been about some guy (or gal) going to extraordinary lengths to win the love of the object of their affections? Sorry, that's art. We didn't really mean it...so I take no for an answer.

In social settings, if I sense that I am not accepted by a particular group, I tend to withdraw and find another group rather than fight to prove my worthiness. I justify it by saying that if people can't accept me as I am, then to hell with them. But how hard did I really try?

And how many "adventures" do I bypass (physical, social) because I doubt my ability to meet the challenge or fit in? Again, it might be a socially acceptable answer to say, "That (skiing, snowboarding, wilderness camp, speed dating, softball, volleyball, political rally) doesn't interest me." And 9 times out of 10, that's probably my actual answer. But there are times when I am interested but decide not to attend for fear of embarrassing myself, getting hurt (physically or otherwise), not fitting in, or not being liked. Yet there's no social sanction against social restraint. Occasionally you hear the phrase, "Man up!" but that's rare. 

Perhaps it's a factor of my age. I'm nearly out of the demographic that reads Maxim magazine, where kicking ass and getting laid are the number one priorities, but I wasn't like that even in my 20s. How much of that is a factor of being an "INFJ" or a "sensitive soul" and how much of it is just the result of being a plain old coward? I don't know. But somehow it has always been easy to take the easy way out and not try (to ask someone out, to tell someone to go the hell away, to punch someone who desperately deserved it). Society, for the most part, has given me a pass when it might have been better for me to take a risk. We don't do that sort of thing, anymore, do we?

So let's say I decide to find some social or personal courage. What would it look like, what would change? Maybe I'd stop caring so much about others' opinions of me. Maybe I'd date more, have more breakups, and get into more fights. Would that matter? Would my life be better somehow? I can't say. In my professional life, I've displayed a lot more gumption and willingness to take chances, though I stopped writing fiction or expressing political opinions years ago--in part, because I wished to avoid giving offense with some of my philosophical asides. How healthy is this? Do they even teach fortitude and moral strength to males anymore, or are those behaviors considered (as noted above) unseemly? 

I feel that the social backbone--the willingness to stand up for oneself, fight for what one believes--is born through the cultivation of courage. Going back to my earlier definition, I realize that, all too often, when I doubt the outcome of an action, I won't take it, preferring a sin of omission to one of commission, and yet something inside me feels that Shakespearean admonition of "a thousand deaths." Without becoming some extreme sports nut or volunteering for the armed services, how does one cultivate a courageous life at this age? In this time? What do I need to be courageous about, anyway, and how would my life be different if I embraced that virtue that others think is a vice? 

Welcome to my mind.

*

This is the first of three essays on this subject. Part 2 can be found here, Part 3 here. 

In Honor of National Poetry Month...

I don't write poetry often, but I had a moment, so here ya go. My apologies in advance for any hyperlinks added by Blogger. The original had none, and I'm not sure what to do to eliminate them.


Internet

Across the world
Across the wires,
We speak it all
And never tire
Of jokes and jabs
And jibes and jerks,
Of subtle knives
To do the work

We read each other’s
Thoughts to sleep
While others try
To stalk and creep.
To hide our thoughts
The only way
Is shut things down
And never play.

Yes, we’re social
True enough
But somehow empty
Too bad, that’s tough.
We want to know
What others think
But when we learn
We want to drink

Silly species,
The human race:
Machines advance
We don’t keep pace.

/b
4/14/13

National Security Policy, Nontraditional Threats, and Other Things

It's always interesting attending a Stammtisch gathering at the home of Les Johnson. There is no lack of interesting discussion material or vocal opinions. Tonight's edition featured a guest speaker, Dr. Kathy Hawk, who discussed "National Security Policy and Nontraditional Threats." Dr. Hawk has an interesting background, covering experiences as varied as the U.S. Navy, the Strategic Defense Initiative Office (SDIO), the U.S. Foreign Service, and teaching at UAHuntsville.

Any discussion of contemporary U.S. policy has to start with World War II and the Cold War, both of which presented relatively straightforward national security concerns. The Cold War, especially, provided a relatively easy problem for our national security apparatus: protect ourselves from communism overseas and at home by keeping ourselves strong on both fronts. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. experienced several new challenges:

• Many more independent state players appeared on the scene (as opposed to facing a "bipolar" world)
• Advanced or dangerous technologies became more available to more people
• Unstable or failed states became homes to criminal and terrorist actors with no nation having a clear mandate (or will) to do anything about them
• Individual criminals or terrorists were increasingly pursuing agendas hostile to American interests, with or without the support of a nation-state

The most dramatic example of this multipolar world is perhaps the 9/11 attacks, which set the paradigm for national security in the 21st century. Internationally, the U.S. and other Western nations launched a "War on Terrorism" while domestically they centralized their domestic security apparatuses through agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The mandates for Western nation-states didn't change--keep the nation safe from threats foreign and domestic--the challenge has become identifying the best way(s) to do that. DHS was built to bring down the "walls" between various intelligence agencies that allowed Osama bin Laden to slip through the cracks and his followers to seize control of four airplanes one day in September. Unfortunately, in reacting to similar types of threats, DHS has come to impinge on freedoms here at home.

Which begs the question: if you keep the people "safe" from terrorists but regulate and police them relentlessly, is that way of life really worth protecting? Needless to say, with a group of opinionated adults in the room, there were plenty of sidebars and other topics brought up in response to that line of discussion. My comment along these lines was that as national security threats have moved from state actors (Communist Russia) to individuals, governments have tended to target their protective measures down to the size of the actor involved. If the threat is from another country, you set up an army; if the threat is from individuals, you try to regulate individuals. That isn't the best way to ensure freedom, necessarily, but it is a natural consequence of how most governments operate.

Another important topic Dr. Hawk covered was what we mean by power. I was curious to see that her definition of power matched my own: the ability to make someone else do something they would not do otherwise.

In addition to terrorism and international criminal activities (anything from narcoterrorism to slaving), the world community faces potential threats from cyber attacks, unconventional weapons (e.g., nukes), environmental issues (global warming/cooling/climate change), and infectious diseases. If the U.S. is going to obtain cooperation from other nations on how to handle these issues, it will need a combination of hard (military) power and soft (diplomatic) power. These issues are complicated enough when negotiating with national governments that have some control over what things are done by their citizens or on their behalves; it gets much more complicated when national or local governments have little to no control over their populations or if those governments are compromised by criminal elements or corruption. It's one thing for Chinese People's Liberation Army launches a cyber-attack against U.S. information networks, it is something else when individuals like Osama bin Laden or Julian Assange pursue their own agendas without any clear support from anyone.

Another sidebar topic (I somehow doubt it was in Dr. Hawk's prepared remarks) was on the general decline in American power in the last X years--pick your timeline--and the potential sources of that decline. Explanations ranged anywhere from cultural rot to slacking youths to military decline to a general failure of national will to our own success. This last argument was forwarded by Les, who suggested that the rest of the world saw what hard work, capitalism, and technology could do, and decided to imitate our success. Having built our nation up to a certain level, we want to relax and enjoy ourselves while other nations are hustling to catch up to us. The world might be less admiring of the values that we claim to hold most dearly: freedom of speech and action, for example, since Hollywood regularly puts out movies and TV shows that depict a nation of people using or abusing their freedom badly--not the best "advertisement" for the American way of life.

The topic of global warming brought up all sorts of side chatter, ranging from the veracity of the climate models to the real efficacy of "going green" when China and India are building the equivalent of a coal plant a day. Say the U.S. was able to completely electrify its economy and switch to other power sources, but the world's two most populous nations continue to burn fossil fuels. What have we done to help the world in that case, and what could we do from a political power perspective to get those nations to "go green?"

One theme Dr. Hawk returned to as we wound down the evening was the danger of failing or failed states, which become a magnet for bad actors. Corruption, crime, and instability in such places (Afghanistan, Somalia, Zimbabwe) make those nations much less able to respond to issues that require coordinated international effort, such as climate, disease, or space-related threats (I brought up asteroids as a case in point). Someone asked, "So you're suggesting we take on international crime as a way to combat global warming?" It sounds convoluted or counter-intuitive, perhaps, but it made sense to me. In a nation with stable political, social, and physical infrastructure, it is more likely for the citizens of that country to feel safe enough to become politically engaged and make positive contributions to their nation and the world at large.

But lots of questions remain: is it the duty of the U.S. or some other great power to police or stabilize the Somalias of the world? Do we merely contain those areas or use hard/soft power to bring things under control? This being a Stammtisch of engaged citizens, not the U.N., we didn't have any immediate answers or solutions, but as always, a really good conversation.

Fiction Writing, World Building, Etc.

So I started writing the first few pages of a science fiction story, using as my starting point the questions I asked awhile back. The first cut was four pages, around 2,500 words, just to introduce my character and get myself used to writing fiction again (I'm a technical writer for my day job, and that uses the brain cells in a similar way). I have a story path laid out, but I keep going back to those first four pages. My second cut at them was to tighten up the writing and add or subtract useful/useless bits of prose.

However, I'm still not happy with it. If this is to be my introductory text, I need it to do a few things:

• I need to establish my character. In this case, the scene begins with my protagonist, Mike, doing something atypical for him. A California sun-lover, he is not particularly fond of the cold, so I have him snowboarding. Why is he doing this? In the future I'm writing, people grow up in peer groups of ten ("tens," in fact), where the group will is more important than the individual. Mike does not like being in the cold, but he doesn't want to be disagreeable, either. The social sanctions against noncompliance are too strong. This gives Mike color and attitude because snowboarding rubs him wrong a couple of ways--he's independent-minded and doesn't like complying with his peer group and he doesn't like the cold. As a final layer of character development, Mike is a klutz. He has been genetically designed for intelligence, sociability, and health, but athletic ability appears not to been in his particular mix. So snowboarding presents him with a level of uncertainty and danger. It might sound sadistic, all this stuff I'm doing to poor Mike, but if he began the story happily and well-adjusted, how boring would that be? Science fiction writer Orson Scott Card, in How to Write Fantasy and Science Fiction, challenges new writers to ask, "Who hurts the most in your world?" As a rule, I'm anti-drama in my personal life, but I've learned that my fictional worlds need conflict or the reader gets bored.
• I need to establish my style. I've read some absolute balderdash over the years, much of it because I was drawn into a narrative by the language of an author's opening paragraph. I've also struggled with or not bothered to buy books that failed to win me over in the first page, paragraph, or even sentence. Effortless or graceful writing takes work, as I've noted from reading the works and the writing habits of one of my favorite contemporary writers, Mary Doria Russell. She'll put a story through 50 drafts or so. Yikes! But the results are truly astounding. Her prose slips over my mind like water, and her stories are a pleasure to read. So the stylistic edit involves what Michelangelo might have called chipping away the unnecessary stone until the figure he saw within the marble appears.
• I need to establish my world. This is where I need to go next. I've established my character in my mind and how he communicates--I've decided to go with a first-person narrative this time--but now I need to help the reader and myself better "see" the world of 2117. Snowboarding is a contemporary activity, somewhat familiar to a 21st century reader, so what would be different in the future? Several things can change: the board, the rider, or the environment in which the individual rides the board. I've already touched on why Mike is on this mountain, doing something he doesn't want to do. Do I need to do other things to show that social pressure? He's wearing a sapphire implant in place of one eye, and in that eye lives an artificially intelligent adviser that talks to him and provides a head-up display (HUD) to give him guidance and information on everything from the ambient temperature to the state of his health, as for example when he slips and falls while attempting to avoid a rock outcropping. If it's the future, would the board have safeguards to prevent that type of accident? That would reduce the danger and thus the tension. Is the implant really necessary, or has technology advanced to the point where some other mechanism can provide the HUD? Is the climate different? Maybe the future world climate is colder and he's snowboarding in June or July. How "different" do I make my world or character? Science fiction readers are used to being immersed in unusual environments, slang, and technology, with the expectation that the author will explain them at some point. Make things too different or indecipherable, however, and the reader might give up out of sheer frustration. 

The bottom line is, I don't think my scene is quite "there" yet. I need to put my character and through them my reader into the future I have in mind. I'll try to keep these entries going as a way to keep myself honest and help the interested reader or writer understand my personal creative process. If you have specific questions, I'll be happy to answer them.

World Building

Lots of information in my brain these days, either from my job or activities related to my job, so I'm starting to get the urge to write science fiction (SF) again. Problem is, I write differently now than I did in my 20s, when I was kicking out a story a month. I want to understand the "universe" (or "world") I'm creating better before I just jump in and write. I ask a lot more questions and try to understand the rules of some future society. Here are some of the questions that are coming to mind as I lay the groundwork for whatever might come next:

• What is the weather/climate like (on Earth)?
• What do dwellings/homes look like?
• What's the world population?
• How do most people get around?
• What's the fastest means of transport?
• What does a ticket to the Moon cost?
• How many people live in space?
• What is the family structure?
• How do people spend their time?
• Is there any violence?
• Why do people leave Earth?
• What do people wear?
• What are the norms for beauty?
• What are the norms for romantic relationships?
• What are the major taboos? Jokes?
• How do people relax?
• Is there any privacy?
• What's considered a luxury?
• How is political power determined?
• Who are the popular people?
• How do people treat their parents?
• Who's at the bottom of the totem pole?
• How do people curse?
• How is depression treated?
• Who cares for the children?
• What is school like?
• What is the primary form of entertainment?
• What (or who) do most people aspire to be?
• What are the most important gadgets?
• Who are the worst villains?
• What do people eat?
• What are the arts like?
• How do people evaluate virtue? Vice?
• What's considered impossible?
• What do they take for granted that we would find a miracle?
• What do we take for granted that they would find horrible or primitive?
• What do they worship and how?

So those questions will form one piece of the puzzle. Other factors include economics and technology. That, and I got the SF bug from attending the Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop, so I'm trying to think about the people who would willingly join an interstellar expedition if they live in a world of peace, plenty, and progress. It might be as easy as Jean-Luc Picard saying, "The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our society. We seek to better ourselves and the rest of humanity." However, I find that statement a bit elitist and condescending. Is there another way to say that? Might there be other motivations for seeking out strange, new worlds?

A last piece of my current puzzle? Those actual strange, new worlds that telescopes like Kepler are discovering on an almost-daily basis. They are seriously different from Earth, and not in ways that result in just a slightly greener girl for Captain Kirk to flirt with--I'm talking seriously different: much higher gravities, atmospheres, axial tilts, temperatures, landscapes, resources, chemical bases of life. Are human beings really ready to cope with intelligent aliens that speak in sonar (dolphins) or reproduce by mitosis or that have no concept of the individual ego?

The future will be different--how different? How can a writer living very much in this world conjure up what life will be like for future star travelers who have never known hunger? And what sorts of adventures will those people have trillions of miles away from home? Plenty to think about, which is why I read and write SF in the first place.

Parting Thoughts About TVIW

I enjoyed two brain-filling days this week at the Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop (TVIW), taking notes as the conference "rapporteur," a fancy French word for reporter. The advantages of being a rapporteur are that you get a seat up front and plenty of room to set up a computer and type. The primary disadvantage you have is that you're so busy taking notes it's really difficult to absorb what's being said. Over the next week or so, I plan to go back over my notes and harvest what I can for article- and blog-writing purposes. My very high-level perspective comes from asking myself whether an interstellar workshop was really a practical thing to convene.

• While most space advocacy conferences (ISDC, NewSpace, etc.) focus on current or near-term (within 25 years) space activities, TVIW concentrates on the long-term and very long term (50-500+ years).
• The talks ranged from the practical (before we go to Alpha Centauri, where do we go and what do we need to do here in this solar system first?) to the esoteric (how might we detect alien races' starships around black holes?). They also included everyone from a 13-year-old Huntsville kid whose Geiger counter detected a gamma-ray burst before NASA to a former NASA astronaut to serious physicists and mathematicians pressing for better machines than the Large Hadron Collider to find that breakthrough that might get us to "warp drive" or something like it.
• Someone has to focus on the long game because it is very easy to get bogged down or discouraged by the near term, especially if you are easily annoyed by bickering or bad news, which all too often floods the news channels.
• Interstellar travel advocates are walking that fine line between concrete advocacy and science fiction because a lot of what they are advocating, while predictable if you understand how technology develops, might not happen within their lifetimes. There are a lot of leaps and stumbles that have to occur before we build technologies capable of sending humans starward--and even then, there's no guarantee whether those technologies would be employed that way, or when. As one attendee noted (name withheld as a courtesy), "It's difficult to sort out who's a serious visionary and who's a kook--and there are no set standards for that yet."
• The attendees were serious-minded people, and I'd say most of them (90+ percent) had a realistic understanding of "interstellar politics." While they're passionate about problems 500 years or 5 billion years in the future, the average person is worrying about this week's bills. Some of the more visionary politicians can think beyond their current term. Most reflective people might consider the world they leave their grandchildren. But who really has the time, energy, or inclination to think about our civilization in the next millennium or our species when our sun expands into a Red Giant well beyond any conceivable horizon? Darned few. 

So when faced with the realistic dichotomy between present-minded thinking and passionate future-minded imagination, how do you at least get the future started in the right direction? This was a workshop, after all, not simply a conference at which to pontificate. The participants had to come out with (and agree to) some sort of practical, near-term plan that could tie the present to the future and still sow the seeds for technologies and space vehicles not yet born.

What they came up with was a straightforward goal: ensure that humanity has access to one terawatt of electrical power from Earth orbit by 2050. Ridiculous? Consider that every second, at our comfortable reserve 93 million miles away, every square meter of the sunward side of our planet is getting hit with 1,365 Watts of energy. (Go do the math--it's 1,365 X 255 X 10 to the 12th power.) Solar power is serious stuff in space, where there's no night or day and the sun is "on" all the time. One terawatt is about one-fourth of all the energy the U.S. consumes in a year.

What does all that energy have to do with interstellar travel? Well, let's say you had solar collectors large enough to collect even a small percent of that energy and transmit it to Earth as microwaves. How big would that collector have to be? One proposal was a solar array the size of Texas. If you had a civilization that could obtain the resources to build such an array in space, you'd have a civilization that could travel great distances through space, capture and mine asteroids, manufacture materials and massive structures in space; and transmit incredible energies across space to orbiting satellites for relay to Earth. That civilization would have people used to living in space for long periods at a time, far away from the mother planet. They'd be used to living in and repairing large spacecraft. They'd be used to solving problems days, weeks, or months away from help. A civilization capable of all that eventually could send human beings to other star systems based on the lessons learned doing useful things in our solar system...incidentally making our home world better in the process.

So, yeah: it's a little goofy to be thinking about building the starship Enterprise (or even a slower-than-light version of it) when there are a lot more important near-term concerns to think about. But give these folks a little credit: they are simultaneously naive, far-thinking, creative, and ambitious enough to consider such efforts worth doing.

The Enticement of What is Forbidden

Over the years, I've heard a lot about how we shouldn't try to prevent kids from watching violent movies, having sex, or taking drugs because--human nature being what it is--kids will be more enticed to do something just because it's forbidden. I find it curious, then, that some folks react with such shock, anger, and dismay when similar bans are put on the purchase of personal weapons.

Let me start by laying out my experience with or interest in guns: up until a few hours ago, it was zero. I hadn't fired anything more vicious than a pump-action BB gun when I was 17 and the occasional Nerf dart gun up until, say, last week. but handguns of the made-to-kill variety? Never touched the stuff. Rifles, shotguns, repeating rifles? Likewise. Wasn't interested.

Then the government and some activists started getting a little too aggressive about wanting to curtail a clearly stated right in the U.S. Constitution. And yes, I'm one of those people who will act contrarily, just because because I don't like to be pushed or nagged, even if it's for my own good. Think on that, anti-gun fans. Your very vehemence--your pushiness, your meddlesome behavior, and your desire to tell me what to do--got me irritated enough to ask a friend to introduce me to a gun range and firing a handgun.

So there I was: I listened seriously and carefully through my ear and eye protection to the safety briefing from the gun range supervisor. I took what pointers he could offer, and asked what questions I needed to before I picked up the heavy black metal thing and fired 50 feet down a shell-littered concrete floor at a piece of paper mounted to an adjustable cardboard target. My hands shook so badly through the first magazine that if half my bullets hit the 7X9" paper, I'd be most surprised (nervousness combined with an essential tremor--a great combination). Even through the thick ear protection, I was startled by the noise and explosive force of the weapon (I'd rented a Glock .45 automatic). Nevertheless, after the first magazine, I understood more or less what I was doing, and started hitting the target often enough not to feel too embarrassed.

You professionals, go ahead and laugh. This was a first-time outing by a 43-year-old with glasses and shaky hands. Let me also point out that I was not the first one to fire at the cardboard--it had been there a while. I fired about three magazines' worth--36-42 bullets, depending on how well I shoved in the casings, which wasn't that efficiently.

I also fired my friend's 1911 Model .45 pistol and the six of us (the outing increased in size as word got around) took turns firing a rented Beretta at extreme range. Eventually I steadied down a bit and was able to understand what I was doing, even if I wasn't particularly skilled at doing it.

Here's what I came away with after that 90 minutes at the range:

• While I'm not enough of an expert to understand what exactly makes a good weapon, the easiest to handle and fire was the 1911 Model .45. It wasn't quite as heavy as the Glock and the trigger was tight enough that there wasn't any guessing or surprise as to when the weapon would discharge. The Beretta was the worst in that regard, the Glock about the middle--again, based on my very amateur standards.
• I finally understood the psychology of Frodo Baggins. I felt myself surrounded by terrible destructive power, and I felt the immense paranoia of being responsible for it--as well as feeling the very great wish that such power was not available to anyone and should be destroyed. Another new gun user in my group said, "After being in that place, I understand the need for more gun control!" That isn't quite the same thing I felt, but we shared a common dismay at the massive power of the weapons we fired. 
• And yet despite my above feelings, I didn't change my mind about buying a weapon (mind you,  a little more training might be in order). Skip Frodo for a moment, and consider Peter Parker (a.k.a., Spider-Man), who noted that "With great power comes great responsibility." Do I want only other people, some of whom might be terribly irresponsible (or evil), to have the power to wield such things? No. Am I eager to run out and fire such weapons with impunity? Absolutely not. The idea is horrific.

So there you go: I tried something dangerous and new, not because I particularly wanted to, but simply because some people wanted to take away my ability to even make the choice.