You got your peanut butter in my chocolate

For starters if you don’t get the title to this blog:

A) you just made me feel old

and

B)

 

The point is that sometimes completely unrelated things happen to go together and make something new and wonderful.

I have been plotting out a series of science fiction books about the Galactic Consortium. The Consortium arrives in space above Earth in the present day (our timeline diverges from reality at 2013). They terraformed Earth eons ago as a base for their expansion into this galaxy. They sent settlers, humans, to this planet thousands of years ago. What happened to cause us to lose this history and their technology is anyone’s guess.

The series mostly deals with the cultural and political upheavals that occur when this much older and powerful culture shows up on our doorstep. These upheavals are seen through the eyes of ordinary people whose lives are changed by the unfolding events.

Lately I have been watching a lot of documentaries on Netflix. One of the subjects that has always fascinated me is cults. So I’ve watched a number of good documentaries about people who have escaped from cults. I am particularly interested in how the children from very restricted groups adjust to life outside the confines of their practice.

And like peanut butter and chocolate, my next work in progress is starting to come together. The main character is a young transwoman. She has fled from a polygamist cult to become herself. Finding the world outside only slightly more accepting of her, she takes her chance on Shoshone Station.

Shoshone Station was a gift from the Consortium to the people of America. In geosynchronous orbit above Denver, Colorado, the station has a huge solar array, which produces an incredible amount of energy. The station is tethered to the ground via a nanotubule cable and a space elevator hauls people and goods up and down.

The station arrives with a skeleton crew of Consortium people onboard. It’s supposed to be under joint control of the Consortium and U. S. authorities. Due to diplomatic issues and mistrust, most Americans are hesitant to embrace the station and it is mostly empty as Zoey arrives.

The Consortium has sophisticated medical technology and long familiarity with transgender people. Their culture has a complex system of gender that includes a broad spectrum of gender expression for both men and women and numerous traditional groups and categories that fall outside our narrow concept of male and female. (There are seventeen basic genders. I charted them. I’ll share that in a later blog post, perhaps.) For Zoey, becoming a woman is only the first step, she must also figure out what kind of woman she wishes to be.

 

Trivia Time: Florence Nightingale

Here is something most people don’t know about me, I am obsessed with Florence Nightingale. Florence Nightingale is probably the most influential figure in the history of nursing, and she’s definitely the most recognized. But this is not what intrigues me about the woman. It’s how different the real woman was from her public image.

Florence’s public image

The events that launched her into the history books and cemented her legacy was her involvement in the Crimean War in 1854. She arrived at Scutari Barracks Hospital to find the place dilapidated, dirty and woefully unprepared for the thousands of wounded soldiers brought there. The mortality rate was astounding, 42% by one estimate. In a matter of months she turned the place around, reducing mortality to 2% and making it a model for military and civilian hospitals alike.

In public perception, she is the Lady with the Lamp, making rounds through the hospital at night. She is a saintly, almost Mother-Theresa-like figure. She is epitome of kindness and compassion. Nurses today still take the Nightingale Pledge and the image of the Lady with Lamp adorns many nursing pins, caps and nursing school logos.

The real Florence Nightingale

640px-Florence_Nightingale_CDV_by_H_Lenthall

The real Florence Nightingale was a wealthy noble woman who detested the “gilded cage” of her social position. A staunch feminist, she saw nursing as means to give women an avenue for independent careers and lives. Her reforms at Scutari had to do with demanding better sanitation, higher standards of care, adequate supplies for the staff and patients alike. She was a capable administrator, but more than anything, she was a bitch. And I say that with pride. A friend described her in a letter, “she scolds sergeants and orderlies all day long, you would be astonished to see how fierce is grown.”

This is the Florence I love. She knows what needs to be done and she’ll see it done, no matter what. If she couldn’t get the men under her to do what needed done, she complained to their superiors. When the superiors didn’t budge, she wrote letters home to influential people she knew. In one letter she said, “It is a current joke here to offer a prize for the discovery of any one willing to take responsibility.” A prize she notes, that remained uncollected. When influential men back home proved unable to help her, as was often the case, she took matters into her own hands and did it herself. She broke into and rummaged the purveyor’s office almost daily to steal supplies, by her own admission even. When they failed to assign enough carpenters to repair the hospital, she went and hired more on her own.

This is the Florence I wish they taught about in nursing school; the fierce advocate for her patients. The tough woman who wouldn’t back down when she knew she was right. The practical problem solver who invented the notion, if you want something done, do it yourself.

And then there is this…

I have recently returned to my obsession with Florence because I had the idea that she would make a great steampunk character. In the course of my research I picked up Edward Cook’s 1913 biography of her life. It’s the kind of book only a history buff would love, but they will love it well.

Here is the most amazing tidbit I’ve picked up so far. The conditions at Scutari when Florence arrived were so bad, the hospital was over ran with vermin. Florence joked that “if they had but unity of purpose” they could easily have carried off the entire hospital. One of the skills she was noted for in the early days there was killing rats. A visitor wrote home to tell the story of how Florence, sitting at a Nun’s sick bed, knock a rat out of the rafters and killed it, without waking the patient.

What is not to love about this? Florence Nightingale, mother of modern nursing, killing rats. Now I have to make her a steampunk character, for that one scene alone.

 

5 things that happen in fantasy that would never happen in real life

It’s not just big things, like magic or non-human creatures. Here are some small flaws that happen in fantasy all the time, but would never fly in real life.

1. New guy looks okay so let’s trust him with our lives.

We’ve all encountered some version of this. A new character shows up. After a few minutes suspicion, the other characters decide he’s an okay chap and then never doubt him again. Not once. Ever. I don’t know about you, but I am on the fence about new friends for several weeks, even months sometimes. They seem like okay people and I treat them like they are okay people, but I don’t really trust them until I have known them for awhile or we have been through some tough times.

2. Hey, let’s go for a three week hike in armor, with no supplies.

Seriously, how often to fantasy characters take off on long treks with essentially nothing? Tolkien has his fellowship trekking all over the middle earth with the flimsy excuse of Lembas. Yeah, it’s elven but, come on. A few loaves of bread? That’s all it takes to keep a dwarf in chainmail up and going for weeks of hard hiking? I don’t buy it. And did you see the lembas in the movies? That was a meal?
Even if we accept that an oversized cracker is somehow a meal, thanks to elvish magic, how many pieces do they have? You and I eat three times a day. A harden medieval warrior might be used to one solid meal, but it would have to be a solid meal.
Tolkien at least made an effort. So many of his copy cats have huge forces setting off at a word, with no reference to any sort of supplies, tents, hiking gear, often for months. How do these people survive?

3. This dull sword will chop through any armor.

Real swords don’t work that way, just so you know. Given that it’s fantasy, I will give you one or two magic swords that are razor sharp. But some heroes can seemingly pick up any sword and chop through metal plates like they were butter. Real life weapons don’t work that way, no matter how great the warrior wielding it is.
Don’t even get started on types of swords, that is whole different rant.

4. The fate of the world will be in this boy’s hand someday. Let’s stick him on some farm and not tell him.

I have never understood why the wizards or other powers-that-be never think of actually training the chosen one. What if Belgarath and Aunt Pol in the Belgariad had said, “you know this kid is going to have to fight a great battle someday, let’s teach him to fight.” Or Allanon in the Shannara series decided to wake up a few months early to go warn whichever Olmstead kid that some heavy shit was coming.
I know, sometimes doing the obvious thing would make for a short, drama free story. I get that. But seriously, none of them even consider the possibility of preparing the hero. It seems like a huge oversight.

5. Pull this cloak and hood over your face. It’s the perfect disguise and not completely suspicious or anything.

Yeah, disguises. Sigh. Okay so in a crowded courtyard someone could maybe keep their face covered and blend in with the crowd, as long the person looking for them doesn’t know them well. (I don’t know about you, but I can identify family members and close friends by their stature and how they walk.) Of course once you walk inside and don’t remove the cloak, that might raise a red flag or something.
There are better ways to disguise someone, and you might be tempted to use them. But those require some logistics. Do you carry hair and some sort of skin friendly glue around just in case you need to make a fake beard? A thief might, a warrior, probably not.
On a related noted, what about people sneaking around in armor? That’s another big pet peeve of mine. The knight in full chainmail and pieces of plate armor (90 plus pounds or so) climbs nimbly up the castle wall and then drops silently behind the guard. He then steals the guards sword and chops him clean in half, without making a sound or leaving a blood trail.

What about you? What common fantasy plot devices rub you the wrong way. Do you care that the feats described in some fantasy stories are impossible in real life? Or do you just suspend disbelief?

What is the Suckiest Superpower?

Here is my latest writing prompt/idea. What is the worst superpower possible? Let’s make a list, vote on our favorite and then I will try to write a story about a character with that power. I was brainstorming with my son and here is what I have so far.

  1. A gay man with the power to seduce women
  2. Constantly getting wrong numbers, but the person ends up giving you some sort of information you need to solve a mystery.
  3. A teenager with powers like Aquaman, but they live in Arizona
  4. The ability to make really bad decisions that put you in the right place to stop crimes
  5. Being able to shape-shift into something completely harmless like a gecko lizard or a tea cup poodle
  6. The ability to be instantly disliked by everyone
  7. You can get songs stuck in people’s head
  8. You constantly win things you don’t want, never anything you do
  9. Chicken man – he can’t fly but he can sort of flutter through the air for a short while.
  10. You always have a pen handy. Call it a gift.
Chicken Man – He can’t fly but he can sort of flutter a few feet off the ground.

What do you think would be the worst superpower. Add yours in the comments. Which do you think I should do as a story? Let me know in the comments.