Six sentences from Tourist Trap

Continued from last week.

She reached for the piece she had bumped into, and dragged it close enough so that she could put it carefully on top of her little fire, where the flames could lick at the few dry curls of bark. Once it caught, she dragged half a dozen more branches back on hands and knees. Finally her sense of urgency eased, and she shook out the air blanket, wrapped it around herself, and lay down as close as she dared to the fire.

She ached all over, she found once she was no longer moving. For a while she kept reliving the day – the sudden cutoff of Roi’s mental voice, the shock as she struck the cold river water, and her frantic efforts to protect her head as she was carried helplessly through the rapids. She could not remember dragging herself out of the river onto this bar, and she must have lain here for hours.

Tourist Trap is now available from Barnes and Noble and from Amazon. Please consider reviewing it on either. This is near the end of this scene, and after next week I’ll start doing excerpts from WIP.

Other Six Sentence Sunday excerpts:

Autumn Colors

I originally wrote this article for the Alaska Science Forum almost 25 years ago. Given the time of year, I thought I’d recycle it.

Alaska Color

The fireweed and blueberry leaves are turning scarlet above treeline, and soon autumn will paint the birches and aspens on the lower hillsides gold. Where do these brilliant colors come from? And why are Alaskan trees golden, instead of the burning crimson and purple of New England?

During the summer, most leaves are green. The color is due to chlorophyll, without which life on earth would not exist. It is chlorophyll, condensed into little packets called chloroplasts within the cells of plants, that allows a plant to use carbon dioxide from the air, water from the ground, and energy from sunlight to produce the sugars and oxygen that support animal life. This process only occurs, however, when the leaves are unfrozen. Since leaves are useless for producing food for a plant during cold winters, many plants drop their leaves in the autumn and regrow them each spring. The fall of the leaves is usually preceded by the destruction of the chlorophyll.

The chlorophyll destruction can be triggered in two ways, or by a combination. Plants that are native to an area, like the birches and fireweed of Alaska, will begin to prepare for their winter rest at about the same time each year, regardless of temperature. This is possible because plants can sense day length, or more accurately, night length. As the nights grow longer and colder in the fall, the trees stop growing, the circulation of sap to the leaves is cut off, and the chlorophyll in the leaves breaks down.

Imported ornamentals, on the other hand, are often from areas of the world where the proper time to start shedding leaves would be signaled by a much longer night. These trees are given an abrupt warning by the season’s first frost. An unusually early frost may affect native plants in the same way, making them speed up their normal schedule.

There are other pigments in leaves in addition to chlorophyll. Many of the yellow and orange colors in flowers and vegetables such as tomatoes and carrots are caused by a group of pigments called carotenes. (Yes, they are named after carrots.) In leaves, these carotenes are packed in the chloroplasts with the chlorophyll, and in summer are hidden by the green chlorophyll. As the chlorophyll breaks down in fall the carotenes remain, producing the gold of birch and aspen leaves.

Ithaca, New York. That spray of leaves in the foreground would never be seen in Fairbanks.

The red of fireweed and blueberry leaves is produced by a different set of pigments, the anthocyanins. Anthocyanins are responsible for most red, pink, purple, and blue flowers — in fact the word means a flower (anthos) which is blue (cyan). They are also found in the cell sap of some but not all leaves. In Alaska, anthocyanins are common in the leaves as well as flowers and fruits of undergrowth and tundra plants, but not in the trees that grow here. Furthermore, the amount of anthocyanins in a plant which is able to produce them depends on environmental factors: cool but not freezing nights, drought, and sunshine. Fall in much of Alaska is the rainy season, and the transition from warm summers to sub-freezing nights is rapid in the drier areas. Our weather conditions would not promote the development of red fall color even if the raw materials were present in our trees.

In fact, there are only two places in the world with abundant trees (such as maples and oaks) with lots of anthocyanins in the leaves along with dry, crisp, autumns. These two areas are eastern North America and eastern Asia. Both areas are noted for their displays of crimson, scarlet, purple, and gold. Here in Alaska, we must be content with golden trees in the autumn.

Jarn’s Journal, Day 351

This is a selection from the Journal of Jarn, a R’il’nian starship designer who (in my science fiction) was stranded on Earth when his ship failed some 125,000 years ago, during the interglacial which preceded the one we are in. The two novels I’ve written are much more recent — supposedly about the time George Washington was born. But this is the beginning of the universe they describe.

Day 351

Never again will I try to teleport an unconscious sentient who does not know and trust me!

Oh, it worked. She is in my shelter. But it also produced a night and a day of the most violent nightmares it has ever been my misfortune to experience! And experience them I did – she has no idea of how to shield her emotional broadcasts, and she does broadcast. Loudly.

At the moment, I am a good half hour’s walk from the shelter. Distance does help, a little. Patches is very puzzled, though willing to accept that the child is to be guarded, not regarded as food.

Physically, she is doing well. I can shield, though not without losing my ability to spot predators approaching, and I have been shielding and checking her regularly. She is not fevered, and aside from the occasional flailing about from the nightmares, she seems to be resting quietly. If only her mind were as quiet!

I suppose I had better get back to the shelter. The sun will be setting soon, though I doubt I will get much more sleep than last night. I made her a bed of sorts, with some of the insulation from the ship, and luckily it is on the floor. She may roll away from the padding, but at least there is nothing for her to fall off of.

I wonder what she will think when she does wake up? She looks very much like a young R’il’nian, but will she see me as being of her own species? Will she think I am merely from another tribe? Or do they have tribes? If they do, are the relations between them friendly? They must be!

Unless …

They must mate with non-relatives, but in some animals one sex disperses and finds a new group.

Will she trust me enough to let me help her?

What have I done?

The earlier parts of Jarn’s Journal are on my author website.

Shipbuilder: a New SF Novel

I can’t say that I couldn’t put this book down, because I’m reading it on a computer screen—but I’m not getting much else done on the computer! Marlene Dotterer’s just-released Shipbuilder is the book, and without further ado I’ll let her describe the book and interview the characters.

Imagine being there before the Titanic set sail.

 Now imagine being there before she’s even built.

 Sam Altair is a physicist living in Belfast, Ireland. He has spent his career researching time travel and now, in early 2006, he’s finally reached the point where he can send objects backwards through time. The only problem is, he doesn’t know where the objects go. They don’t show up in the past, and no one notices any changes to the present. Are they creating alternate time lines?

 To collect more data, Sam tries a clandestine experiment in a public park, late at night. But the experiment goes horribly wrong when Casey Wilson, a student at the university, stumbles into his isolation field. Sam tries to rescue her, but instead, he and Casey are transported back to the year 1906.

 Stuck in the past, cut off from everyone and everything they know, Sam and Casey work together to help each other survive. Then Casey meets Thomas Andrews, the man who will shortly begin to build the most famous ship since Noah’s Ark. Should they warn him, changing the past and creating unknown consequences for the future?

 Or should they let him die?

A big “thank you” to Sue Ann, for sharing her blog with me. I’m happy to meet all of you who read her blog.

This is the last stop on the Time Travel Blog Tour, and I have to say, it has been a lot of fun. We’ve talked about the book (ad nauseum, I’m sure), the characters, time travel, and writing. To close it up, I thought we’d do a group interview with the three main characters from TTJ: Shipbuilder.

They are:

Sam Altair, physicist from the 21st century

Casey Wilson Andrews, a young woman from the 21st century

Tom Andrews, shipbuilder from the 20th century

This interview takes place circa 1908. I’d like to pass a nod on to the Live Journal blog, WritersFive, for the questions.

MD: Welcome everyone. Pour yourself some tea and be sure to try the scones. I’ll throw out a question and you can chime in with your answers in any order. Ready?

First question: the three of you are in the unique position of having the chance to change history. Do you have an ethical right to do this?

Tom: How can I have an ethical right to not do it? Sam and Casey have told me that 1500 people die when my ship sinks. I could not possibly ignore that.

Sam: Yes. Not only a right. We have a responsibility. In fact, I’m convinced we have to change more than just Titanic. Now, we’re only three people, and there’s only so much we can do. But we know of future problems resulting from actions taken in the early years of the twentieth century. I can think of ways to change some of them, and I’m going to try to do it.

Casey: The thing is… I’m not convinced that everything will happen exactly as it did before. I mean, it doesn’t have to, as if it’s written in stone or something. I absolutely do not believe in determinism. We are not breaking any universal laws by causing things to be different.

MD: All right. Here’s a more general question. Do you believe in an afterlife?

Tom: Oh, of course. I can’t say I know what it’s really like – somehow, I don’t think it’s all pearly gates and streets of gold, or hell fire, either. I do think God has other plans for us after we die.

Casey: Nope, not in the sense you probably mean, where our souls live forever. We get what we got and that’s it. Now, recycling – sure. We die, we become part of the earth, maybe we help a plant grow and feed another animal. Life goes on.

Sam: Hey, I’ve done some weird experiments while trying to figure out time travel. Other dimensions, multiple universes… I can’t prove they’re real, but I’ve had odd enough results to make me wonder. Still, I’ve never seen anything that indicated life after death.

MD: What kind of person are you? Do you confront your problems head on, or ignore them until you have to do something? Do you procrastinate?

Tom: Mostly head on. I’m a busy person, I take care of problems as they come up, at least at work. Personal issues, especially if they involve someone else – that depends. Sometimes you have to let things sit for a while before you can know the right thing to do.

Casey: I hit the ground running. Patience is not something I’m good at. If there’s a problem, it better get out of my way, fast.

Sam: She’s telling the truth. I still have a bruise from that last time…

Casey: Is it my fault you’ve been the cause of most of my problems since the moment I met you?

Sam: And bloody well paid for it, too. Me, I’m more of a live-and-let-live kind of fellow, at least to start. Some problems flitter out if you leave them alone. But sometimes you have to act, and those cases, I believe I step up to the plate if I have to.

MD: Money, fame or happiness, you can only have one… what would you rather have and why?

Tom: I refuse to accept that I can only have one. I’m accruing all three as we speak.

Casey: Me too. Good call, love. Frankly though, I could do without the fame. Too many speaking engagements.

Sam: I agree in theory. If I have money, why am I necessarily going to be miserable? They aren’t really related, but in the spirit the question was asked – I’ll take money. The food is better, and people don’t mind having you around.

MD: What is the most important value you can pass onto your child?

Tom: Love for life and people. If you start with that, you end up being honest, helpful, and a joy to be around. You end up happy.

Casey: You probably end up with money, too, since you’re more likely to get a good job. A little famous, too, since everyone wants you around.

Sam: I’m not even going to touch this.

MD: What would you place in a personal ad if you were making one?

Tom: What’s a personal ad?

Casey: It’s an ad you place in a newspaper, so you can meet someone special.

Tom: Is this something people do in the 21st century?

Casey: Sure. Before that, actually. I don’t know when it started.

Sam: “Happy, famous, rich scientist looking for charming, buxom lady who’s not shy or falsely modest.”

Casey: Yeah, like that.

Tom (giving it some thought): “Handsome shipbuilder looking for beautiful, hotheaded time traveler to share future with.” How’s that?

Casey: Where do I send the reply?

Tom: Can Sam finish the interview? I’ll show you…

MD: Newlyweds. Can’t do a thing with them…

That’s all, folks. The blog tour is over. Thank you for tagging along with us. If you haven’t left a comment yet, do it today, so you’ll be entered in the contest. And be sure to let me know what you think of the book!

Sue Ann: I’ve a bit more to say. I met Marlene through SheWrites, and I’m delighted to have her as a guest. Her book is now available in paperback from Amazon, as well as at Smashwords and through her site.

Marlene Dotterer grew up as a desert rat in Tucson, Arizona. In 1990, she loaded her five children into the family station wagon, and drove north-west to the foggy San Francisco Bay Area. To stay warm, she tackled many enterprises, earning a degree in geology, working for a national laboratory, and running her own business as a personal chef. She’s a frustrated gardener, loves to cook, and teaches natural childbirth classes. She says she writes, “to silence the voices,” obsessed with the possibilities of other worlds and other times.

 She is married to The Best Husband in the World, and lives in Pleasant Hill, California.

 Her website is http://marlenedotterer.wordpress.com/

Oh, one last thing: Must Have Give-Aways!

Ships are launched with a bottle of champagne. My book is about a ship, so…

Actually, perhaps it’s best if I don’t try to mail anyone a bottle of champagne. But how about a free book?

Throughout the blog tour, I’ll keep track of everyone who leaves a comment on any of the blogs and enter them into a drawing. At the end of the tour, I’ll pick three winners, each to receive an autographed copy of The Time Travel Journals: Shipbuilder.

So, read on! Comment!

Science Fiction and Fantasy Quotes

“In the sea there is not the same gravity pull as experienced on land.” Meyers. Context? Dolphin Boy. Young John, a mutant with very slow breathing, has been thrown into the ocean by an explosion and rescued by dolphins.

“The hall was not lit up for light, but for the keeping out of the darkness.” McKinley. Context? “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” from The Door in the Hedge. A description of the hall in which the soldier first meets the princesses.

“When you give a military force an impossible task, all you are doing is asking them to endure.” Barnes. Context? Mother of Storms. Written in 1994, this is an extreme global warning story, in which a nuclear strike on methane clathrates in the Arctic Ocean produces a greenhouse effect—and a tropical storm—of cataclysmic proportions.

“The ability to kill is a necessary survival characteristic of the human animal.” Garrett. Context? Too Many Magicians. The Archbishop of York to Lord Darcy, when the latter is attempting to solve a murder, apparently carried out by supernatural means, at a conference of Church-approved magicians

“The deed is nothing. It is the thought that breeds fear.” Garner. Context? The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. The dwarf Fenodyree, encouraging the children on a particularly tricky place in the tunnel.

“Nearly a third of twenty-first-century society loathed that society from the bottom of its collective heart.” Blish. Context? A Case of Conscience. This was written in short form in 1953, and expanded to novel length in 1958, so it is well over 50 years old. The time scale, at least looks questionable, but the sentiment in the quotation?

“Could it possibly be deliberate terrorism?” Bowling. Context? Tourist Trap. Marna is trying to understand the plague that has affected Eversummer. She has traced it to a toxin, but how is the toxin spread?

Musk Ox Art

Ever heard of musk oxen?

They’re more closely related to goats and sheep than to cattle (though larger) and they’re definitely an Arctic animal, with a luxurious underwool called qiviut under an outer shell of long hair. They have horns that make a helmet over the tops of their heads with wickedly forward-curved, sharp tips, and they’re a daunting sight head-on. Their defense against their traditional predators such as wolves was to gather in a circle, heads out, with the vulnerable calves in the center. However effective against wolves, such a defense was useless against human hunters, and musk oxen were close to extinction when restrictions on hunting, and transplantation, allowed them to bounce back.

Today musk oxen are being farmed for their qiviut, though it is probably going too far to call them domesticated. The best qiviut is allowed to loosen naturally and combed from the animal (with the aid of a holding chute!) and knit by village women—one of the few sources of cash income in remote Alaskan villages. It’s not overrated — I had a nachaq before the fire, and qiviut is an incredibly soft, warm, lightweight fiber.

The animals themselves have not gotten much attention in art – until recently. Our local PBS affiliate, which has a contest every winter for a poster design, had a semi-abstract muskox painting a couple of years ago. And this month there is an exhibit of musk oxen at the Bear Gallery in Fairbanks.

Have you heard of the Painted Ponies?

Lacie Stiewing decided that musk oxen would be just as good as horses for decorating. Better, in fact, and she designed a somewhat abstract musk ox form and decorated copies of the form with abandon. The result is a herd of musk oxen, a few shown here, in the Bear Gallery at Pioneer Park in Fairbanks, Alaska. It’s an exhibit to make you smile, even if small varieties of the critters are not available. Lacie, have you thought about that?

Fairbanks Weather 9/5/11

The sun rose this morning at 6:43 and sets at 8:58 tonight for 14 hours 18 ½ minutes of daylight. We’re losing 6 minutes 40 seconds a day, now, and that will stay pretty constant for the rest of September. We had over an hour of astronomical night last night, which means the sun is now dipping more than 18° below the horizon, but it’s making up for it at solar noon—less than 32° above the horizon.

It’s getting colder, too. Last night’s forecast was for 30° to 40° F, and I managed to get out just before dark to get the geraniums in the garage and the plastic covers over the squash and beans. Picked the first almost-ripe tomato, and covered the rest.

Our deciduous trees are mostly birch and aspen, which turn yellow in the fall, and they are definitely turning. The fireweed and the highbush cranberries do turn red, so we have some red mixed with the yellow and green. It won’t be long, though, before most of the green comes from the spruce. Already the lawn is sprinkled with yellow leaves. The lilies are getting in the last blooms of the season, and the garden is supplying me with beets and zucchini almost faster than I can eat them.

Daytime temperatures still get into the 70’s at times, but 60’s and even 50’s are getting more common. No snow yet, but non-sticking flurries are not uncommon in September. In fact I remember one year when the snow cover was well established by the end of September. I hope it doesn’t do that this year!

Six Sentences from Tourist Trap

Continued from last week:

Amber ran her hand carefully over the gravel, finding a considerable accumulation of smaller bits of wood and dry twigs in a ragged line parallel to the shore. She scraped them together in a small pile and put a fuzzball in the middle, then got out the sparker and began trying to light it. The sparks dazzled her eyes at first, and it took several tries before she could get a few to fall on the fuzzball. The soft outer layer went up in a flash that eliminated the remainder of her night vision. Then the wax caught, and in a few minutes she had enough of a fire to see the larger mass of driftwood.

It wasn’t a single dead tree, she saw with relief, but a row of branches a little higher up the shore than the light stuff she’d scraped together.

Tourist Trap is now available from Barnes and Noble and Amazon. Reviews on either would be much appreciated.

Other Six Sentence Sunday posts:

It’s Class Time–Even for Adults.

It’s sign-up time for OLLI (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute) classes again, and how I missed the ice cream social signup a couple of weeks ago I don’t know. I always take a few science classes, just to keep up with things, and since I write science fiction I have to keep up with changes in what we think we know. (I also have a weakness for ice cream, and thanks to the insulin pump and lots of blood sugar testing I can occasionally indulge.)

Of the five classes I wanted to take, though, two were wait-listed – my fault for being so late. I’d hoped to take the one on using  iMovie because I’ve been thinking of making video trailers for my books, but that one’s full. The other wait-listed class is on evolutionary biology, and I really hope I can get into that one. Looks like the origin of life, current atmospheric research, and Mesozoic Alaska are all still available, and I’m especially excited about Mesozoic Alaska. Sarah Fowell and Patrick Druckenmiller have taught two previous classes on paleontology, and they are marvelous instructors. I’ll have to do some blogging on Alaskan dinosaurs. (Yes, they were up here, and yes, Alaska was at an even higher latitude than today, so they had to cope with long, dark winters and probably with temperatures that at least occasionally dropped below freezing. How? I’m hoping to learn more about the latest thoughts.)

I’m tempted by “Falling and Not Falling,” but it’s wait -listed too, and I’ve already taken it once. It really wasn’t very helpful for my type of loss of balance, which I’m pretty sure is related to the stroke I had some 13 years ago. It was a brainstem stroke, and I think it affected the part of my brain that controls balance.

You know the test they use to determine sense of balance? Stand on one foot (I’m hopeless) stand with one foot directly in front of the other (I can manage about 3 seconds) stand with your feet side by side but touching (only with my arms out for balance.) For me the main point is knowing how to avoid falling (difficult, since I can’t see my feet and where I’m going at the same time) and getting up once I have fallen. (Roll over, walk my feet up to my hands, and slowly and carefully stand up. It probably looks pretty funny, but it gets me back to my feet.)

Actually, it’s the helpful spectators who need instructions. I took a pretty good fall last Saturday at the Farmers’ Market. I was walking toward a display of ripe tomatoes when someone pushed  a stroller (the kind with low wheels out front) right in front of my feet. I didn’t even know what had caught my feet until I rolled over and sat up. Of course everyone was saying, “Are you all right? Do you need help?” which was fine.

What was not fine was that they wanted to pull me back to my feet at once. Not so fine. Anyone can break a bone in a fall, especially someone my age. Give a person who’s fallen time to take inventory and make sure everything’s there and unbroken. And then ask for instructions on how best to help her. In my case, people grabbing my hands and trying to pull me up from the front prevented my rolling over and getting myself up until I finally asked them to release me so I could handle the situation. Certainly they meant well, and I appreciated their efforts to help, but their actual help – wasn’t.

Anyway, I suspect I’m beyond class-work on not falling. I just have to remember and when possible avoid the situations that are most likely to land me on the ground, and how to get up without sounding ungracious when they do.

And enjoy the more academic classes.

When you stop to think about it, it all comes down to balance. Not just standing up and walking, but keeping a balance in your life. I can’t write if I don’t continue to read and learn, and the OLLI classes – two months in fall and another two months in spring – are an important part of that. Hooray for adult learning!

Jarn’s Journal, Day 350

This is part of the background history of the Jarnian Confederation, the universe in which both of my science fiction books are set. Think Africa 125,000 years ago, with the narrator being a stranded R’il’nian and the “aliens” being early humans.

Day 350

I think she will live.

I had some real worries as to whether the antibiotics I brought, which work well on my own species, would work on this alien child, but already her fever is reduced. Anesthetics were not among my supplies, but I managed to straighten and set the bone while she was still unconscious, and I believe the swelling and inflammation is down a little today.

I stayed with her last night, in the hut where her fellow tribesmen left her. I think the warnoff did more than the thorns to keep us safe, and I was reluctant to teleport back to my own shelter and trust to the thorns alone to protect her.

I could treat her much more easily back at my own shelter. Certainly I would be far more comfortable! I actually had to sleep – or rather try to sleep –on the ground last night! And the insects! Luckily I had the warnoff set to repel insects from actually biting, but with the clearer light this morning, I found that it did not stop them from laying eggs – the child’s leg was crawling with maggots before I cleaned it out yesterday, and I found flies trying to lay their eggs in the wound when I rechecked it this morning!

And the smells! There is no way to clean the hut at this point, and the miasma of rotting flesh, sickness and bodily waste almost overcomes me. She would be much better off at my shelter, where I could keep her clean.

I wish I could teleport her there, but one of the first things I learned is that teleporting another sentient being, without that being’s full understanding and cooperation, can produce permanent mental trauma in the teleportee.

Wait.

She is still unconscious.

Could I teleport her in that state?

Jarn’s Journal to date is on my Author website.