Monday Morning Musing on OUTLANDER

photo credit: IMDB

I had today’s blog post all worked out in my head before getting up this morning. I often do my best thinking in that twilight between awake and asleep. Then I watched the episode of Outlander that I’d recorded last night. Oh my goodness. Such a heartbreaking episode. At least, that’s how I felt as a mother. Then immense joy.

*** Spoiler Alert ***

Have you been watching Outlander? It’s a Starz original series based on Diana Gabaldon’s eight-book Outlander time travel collection. I read the series when it first came out. Everyone was back then. Or so it seemed. The main question in my book group's discussion was would she go back?

When the series premiered in 2014, I was excited to watch it, because of reading the books. I even blogged about it three years ago. Hubs enjoyed the series because of the Scottish history. (His grandfather was born in Scotland.) While he was interested in the battles, I watched for the romance between Claire and Jamie. Of course, I anticipated their happy-ever-after. Would they get it or not? What trauma Gabaldon put them through! What heartache.

I said (above) this episode was heartbreaking to me as a mother. To be reunited with her true love, Claire must leave her daughter (and Jamie’s) behind. It doesn’t matter that her daughter encourages her to go. I’m not sure I could do that. Perhaps, I'm not the romantic I always thought I was.

Amazon

Last year, I wrote a novella called Mission to New Earth. The beginning of the blurb reads: Would you go on a one-way trip to explore a new planet? Would you do it to save humankind? My main character (Sara) has no family to leave behind. My answer to the question in the blurb is no, not in my present life. Never to see my family again? No way. But other characters in my story did leave their families. In a future story (one that's in the early stage), I'll explore the rest of the crew's reasons for leaving those families behind.

When I wrote that novella, I didn’t consciously think about Outlander. Since I can now see the similarities, I must have done it subconsciously. At the beginning, Claire isn’t given the choice to travel back in time. Sara chooses to go on the mission. Later in the series, when Claire discovers Jamie survived the battle of Culloden, she’s torn between her family (daughter) and her true love. That’s what makes the story so emotional. What would we do for love?

I’m looking forward to watching the next episode. What does Jamie feel when Claire returns? How will that affect his life?

Are you watching Outlander?

Come back tomorrow when I share a fun new release from some friends of mine: an anthology titled Embrace the Romance: Pets in Space 2.

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?

Going to Mars

If you had the chance to go to Mars, would you? What if this was your dream? The dream you’ve had since you were a child?

Your chance is here. A group of people are actually preparing for just such a trip. A one way trip. And there lies the kicker. You would leave everything behind—your family, your home, the world you know—to be the first inhabitants on another planet.

Mars One plans to “establish a permanent human settlement on Mars in 2023.” http://www.mars-one.com/en/about-mars-one/about-mars-one   Here's a rendition of what the settlement should look like in 2024 when the second group arrives.

Credit: Mars One / Bryan Versteeg

This project has engendered a lot of interest because over 78,000 people applied to go within two weeks of the announcement back in April. First they’ll send cargo—food, supplies, equipment to build the habitat—then the humans. Four at a time, once very two years. I can't imagine what the selection process will be, especially with so many applicants. 

What would it take to set off on such an adventure? The Mars One website has a very extensive list of qualifications. Major requirements include resiliency, adaptability, curiosity, ability to trust, and creativity/resourcefulness.

Periodically, I’ve blogged about pioneers and the thrill of adventuring into space. I write about space travel, but I never really thought about all the consequences. Like never returning to Earth. Never holding my husband, children, grandchildren again. Then there are things like once you get into the spaceship, you'll never breathe fresh air again. Never walk through forests, swim in the lake/ocean, feel the grass under your bare toes.

So knowing all that, would you go? They’re still taking applicants.

Pioneers--Past and Future

I love traveling out west. The rugged rocks, deserts, canyons, mountains remind me how difficult the journey was for those who left all behind to forge their way through the wilderness. I can’t imagine how they could leave their families, their friends, everything familiar for the unknown. When we travel, we’re in our air conditioned (or heated) vehicles with restaurants and hotels along the way. Sleeping outdoors? No thank you. Hubs always told his friends that my idea of roughing it was a hotel without a restaurant. (I’ve revised that—roughing it is no coffee maker in the room.)

Now, when I was a lot younger, I did the Girl Scout thing with my daughter. As the leader, I sucked it up and took the girls camping. That was the year Hubs gave me a sleeping bag for my birthday. Nice guy. Actually, I had a good time camping with those ten- to twelve-year-olds. No canvas tents staked to the ground, though. Platform tents. Off the ground. On cots, with mattresses. I know, wimps. The fun part was watching the girls learn to cook over a campfire. You probably would’ve laughed yourself silly watching me make a cookstove using tuna cans, dryer lint and parafin, and a large coffee can. Hey, it worked. I loved the girls’ excitement seeing nature up close and personal, their amazement at how bright the stars are at night away from the city lights. We all knew this wasn’t roughing it. We went home on Sunday to showers and flush toilets.

Those pioneers in the 17th and 18th centuries had to be stalwart souls. Brave and maybe a little crazy. And the women did all that roughing it in dresses. With petticoats. And corsets. Can you imagine? Trust me, if I was living back then and Hubs said we’re moving to Colorado—or wherever—after I screamed “are you nuts?” and cried my eyes out, I sure wouldn’t have packed dresses. Okay, maybe a couple for propriety’s sake, but then I would’ve found pants and shirts and ditched the corset.

Leaving my family behind would have been the worst. I know a little about this. In the 1980’s, we followed Hubs’ job from Michigan to Missouri. Our parents were fifteen hours away—that was during the oil crisis and the speed limit was fifty-five. No Internet, no email, no Skype, no free long-distance phone calls. We kept in contact the old-fashioned way—short phone calls and letters. For the pioneers, the only method of communicating with family back home was letters and service wasn’t all that good.

Now, imagine how it would be to leave this planet. To venture into the frontier of space. We know there’s a time lag between transmission and reception of communication between Earth and our moon. Even with relay satellites, the farther you travel from Earth the longer the lag time. Until no communication at all. Jayne Castle writes a series about pioneers who left Earth and then, because of circumstances, discovered there was no way to return, no way to communicate with those back home. Isolated, those pioneers had to start over.

Starting over isn’t such a bad thing, though. Some people left for our western frontier to escape, to leave behind a bad life or reputation, to start anew. Starting with The Pilot, my new Outer Rim series takes place on the frontier of space, an area far away from the “civilized” planets with their central government. The Rim is a place of dreams, where you can be whatever you want to be.

If you had the chance, would you be a pioneer? Either in the past or in the future?