#IWSG: Favorite Genre

Happy Insecure Writer's Support Group Day. IWSG is the brainchild of Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh.

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds! Thanks, Alex, for starting this group and keeping it going. We are rockin' the neurotic writing world!

The awesome co-hosts for the October 5 posting of the IWSG are Tonja Drecker, Victoria Marie Lees, Mary Aalgaard, and Sandra Cox!

This month's question: What do you consider the best characteristics of your favorite genre?

My favorite genre is science fiction romance. When I say that to those who don't know me well, I get strange looks. Science fiction? I answer "yes!" with all the enthusiasm of a true fanatic. Romance is a bonus. Even better, the two have one big thing in common--hope. Hope for the future. With science fiction, the possibilities are endless. Traveling to the moon? Been there, done that. And beyond? Why not? Habitats on planets in our solar system? Sure. Finding Goldilocks planets (where everything is just right for humans) can't be far behind. Building our own worlds, creating our own rules? What's not to like about that?

So many things we thought were fiction back in the 1950s and 1960s are here, now. Many people who work for NASA say it was science fiction (esp. movies like Star Wars and a television shows like Star Trek) that made them see possibilities and gave them the desire to try to accomplish them. 

As I mentioned, adding romance to science fiction is a lagniappe--something extra, an unexpected benefit. Many readers enjoy relationship stories. Watching two people fall in love and create a family gives proof that humanity will continue. That we have a future. 

Whether that future is here on Earth or on a planet far, far away, it doesn't matter. What does matter is that life will continue. We have a future.

Click here to find others on the Insecure Writers Support Group Blog Hop. Or go to IWSG on Facebook to see who’s blogging today.

Anniversary of a Tragedy

Thirty years ago last Thursday, I walked into my kids’ school. A television on a cart had been set up in the hall. Kids siting on the floor and teachers leaning against walls watched intently. I’d forgotten the shuttle launch was that morning. Which only shows how complacent I’d become over space launches.

For years, ever since the first rocket launch into space, I always stopped whatever I was doing and sat glued to the TV. Every channel broadcast the launches and, like millions of Americans, I eagerly watched. Then, sorry to say, the launches became almost commonplace. Ho-hum. Americans had walked on the moon—several times. The first shuttle launch was exciting, mainly because Hubs and I had taken our kids to Cape Kennedy Space Center and watched a demonstration on the tiles that covered the shuttle. But then interest dwindled. Even for me, who used to know the names of the original astronauts.

So that morning, when I saw the television, I joined the others to watch a space launch. How exciting that a teacher had been chosen to join the crew, especially that she would broadcast to classrooms from space. Then 73 seconds into the launch, the Challenger exploded. Right before our eyes.

Silence. Then gasps of horror. Followed by the realization of what had just happened. Tears and sobs. Even though 30 years have passed, I still remember the adults looking at each other in disbelief. Someone, I assume the principal, turned off the television and sent everyone back to their rooms. The teachers, still in shock, were left to deal with the children—their questions, their fears—while trying to deal with their own disbelief and grief.

What followed was an investigation with lots of finger-pointing. What happened, how did it happen, who was to blame.

Those who thought space exploration was a waste of money had more ammunition for their arguments. I’m reminded of the 2014 movie Interstellar. Because of drought and famine, all technology (including NASA) has ceased. Farming is all that matters. Forget exploration, find a cure for the drought. Ironically, only space exploration will help the inhabitants of a dying Earth.

Fortunately, we’re not that short-sighted. Space exploration continues. Our probes have found many “Goldilocks” planets (ones where the conditions are “just right” for human habitation). But the takeaway from the Challenger tragedy is that we can’t give up. In school, we learned about the voyages of Columbus, Magellan, Marco Polo, Balboa. How many early explorers perished? No idea. Certainly, many did. As horrific as the Challenger disaster was, we learn from it and continue.

RIP the Challenger crew.

Space Travel

If you’re a regular reader of my blog or can tell from the banner at the top, I’m infatuated with space travel. I grew up in the early days of NASA, glued to the television set with each space launch. That's why I find the possibility of traveling not just within our solar system but beyond fascinating. However, using current technology, it will take almost a year to get to Mars, our nearest neighbor, fifteen years to reach Pluto. Right now, traveling outside our solar system is the stuff of science fiction.

I’m such a newbie to science fiction. I’m still playing catch-up with the works of Bradbury, Dick, Asimov, et al. I did slog my way through Asimov’s Foundation series, but I couldn’t stick with Dune. Saw the movie, though. Science fiction movies spark my imagination much more than books. For a writer, that's probably blasphemy.

One thing most sci-fi stories assume is the ability to travel through space very rapidly. We use terms like faster-than-light speed, warp drive, hyperspace, and jump space or traveling through wormholes and hyperlanes to explain how to get from here to there in the universe. Possible? Not now. Someday, maybe. Where is Zephram Cochrane when you need him? (For those who don’t recognize the name, Cochrane invented warp drive in Star Trek.)

Speaking of Star Trek (you know I couldn’t resist) . . . When the TV series began back in the late 1960’s, the set designers tried to make things as “high tech” as they could imagine. But look at some of those tools in light of today. I find it amusing that they were using toggle switches instead of touch screens and numbers that “flip” instead of being digital. But many of their concepts have found reality in today’s world. Compare their communicators and our cell phones, phasers (weapons) that stun instead of kill and our Tasers, their replicators and our 3D printers, Spock’s tricorder and NASA’s LOCAD, which measures contaminates on the International Space Station. And many more “futuristic” devices that we now take for granted. Here’s the link to an article you may find interesting. http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/10-star-trek-technologies.htm

If devices we thought were too advanced are now possible, why not travel outside our solar system? Relying on our current knowledge of physics, scientists say faster-than-light speed is impossible. What? Impossible? No way.

Here’s the link to the article that sparked this post. http://earthsky.org/space/faster-than-light-travel-are-we-there-yet?utm_source=EarthSky+News&utm_campaign=953cca4e4a-EarthSky_News&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c643945d79-953cca4e4a-393789881

Considering the advances in space travel in my lifetime, I think we haven't begun to explore the possibilities. If we can imagine it, why couldn’t travel beyond our solar system come true some day?

Interstellar

photo credit: IMDB

We watched Interstellar over the weekend. While I can’t say it’s one of my favorite movies, it does present an interesting premise. What if we stop spending money on space exploration and maintain the planet as is? If so, what happens if our planet becomes uninhabitable? How does mankind survive?

In the movie, Earth experiences such extreme temperatures, drought, and famine worse than the Dust Bowl of the 1930s that humanity faces extinction. A secret NASA (secret because nobody wants to spend money on space exploration when people are starving) sends a team of astronauts beyond our solar system to find an inhabitable planet. Of course, there are various crises and dilemmas. Wouldn’t be a good sci-fi action/adventure if there weren’t.

Much has been written lately about the discovery of new planets that appear to be capable of sustaining life. But it would be no quick trip to check out what telescopes and probes tell us. To get beyond our solar system we’d need either faster-than-light propulsion or wormholes (hypothetical shortcuts through spacetime). So far, we haven’t invented the former or discovered the latter.

Let’s say, scientists discover a wormhole that will let us travel to another part of our galaxy or into a different one. What would it take to get mankind to leave Earth? A global disaster? Would we see it coming? Would we heed the warnings in time? In Deep Impact (an asteroid will hit Earth), we hide underground until the Earth becomes safe again. In the movie 2012, we build an ark. But who is chosen to survive? How? A lottery? Your job? Bribes to officials?

I’ve written before about Mars One, the privately funded project to send a team on a one-way trip to establish a colony on Mars. NASA is also working on a plan to go to Mars. Progress is slow. Funding is always a challenge. If we knew that sometime in the future humanity would have to leave Earth, would we expedite that endeavor now? Or would we leave it up to future generations?

A lot of questions in this post. I love a good adventure movie. Disaster movies, not as much. But they do make me think. It’s that “what if” question that writers instinctively ask. It’s what makes a good story. But what if (see?) it’s not just a story? What if it’s real?

What do you think?