Year: 2018 (page 4 of 32)

Yesterday I did a thread on Twitter — replete with animated GIFs! — that I thought was valuable enough to put here, too, at Ye Olde Blogge. So, here it is — note, the animated GIFs are missing, so you’ll have to behold the original thread for maximum effect.

*clears throat*

IN THIS TIME OF RAMPANT ASSHOLERY

IN THIS ERA OF FLAGRANT DIPSHITTERY

IN THIS UNHOLY EPOCH OF UNBRIDLED, UNMITIGATED, RECALCITRANT FUCKERY

Why make anything? Why be creative? Not how – but rather, WHY?

25 reasons, starting now.

1. Because you need to escape the fuckery, and what you make is a door. A book, a piece of art, even an excellent meal – it’s a doorway out. It’s the tunnel dug out behind the Rita Hayworth poster in your prison cell.

2. Because we need to escape, too. We need what you make. GIVE US THAT SWEET SWEET PORTAL, GIVE US A LOG FLUME RIDE TO ESCAPE THIS OUTHOUSE FULL OF CENTIPEDES

3. Because creation is #resistance. Making things is additive. And in a subtractive time such as this, you must balance the void with its opposite. That is an act of defiance. And we need more defiance.

4. Because stories and art change the world. Individually, collectively, sometimes fast, sometimes slow. Art is a glorious mutator. It evolves you. It evolves us. And eventually, the world.

5. Because you Making Cool Shit also makes the Worst People mad. Good. Fuck ‘em. Make stuff that makes those monsters mad.

6. Because what you make is a carrier for ideas. A Trojan horse stuffed with your NOTIONS. Packed tight with arguments and hopes and fears and solutions. Even when you don’t mean it to be? It is.

7. Because what you do is bigger than what’s going on. What you make is about tomorrow, so the cuckoo bananapantsness of today must not stop you.

8. Because what you make will outlast this ungovernable fuckshittery. What you make are mountains. We will cling to their peaks. And when the Tides of Stupid recede, the mountains of what you made will remain

9. Because it’s therapy. It’s therapy first for you, and if you share it, eventually for us, too.

10. Because it feels good, even when it feels hard, and feeling good is, uhh, well, GOOD. I don’t have to explain that any more than I have to explain puppies or cookies. Or cookies shaped like puppies, or cookies for puppies, or puppies baked into – wait scratch that last part.

11. Because you need that dopamine hit, baby. Mm, yeah, gimme that precious dopamine ping, that rush, that PAROXYSM OF CREATIVE DELIGHT. Nnngh. Unnngh. Yeah. *bites lip*

12. Because you need to up your game. No matter the era, no matter the epoch, no matter how fucking goofy things get – YOU STILL GOTTA UP THAT GAME. And making things ups your game.

13. BECAUSE I SAID SO

BECAUSE-A YOU FACE

BECAUSE SHUT UP, THAT’S WHY

I’m sorry that was very rude

14. Because you making something helps encourage others to make stuff, too. They see you doing it, and they want in on that BAD-ASS MAKER ACTION. CREATIVE SOLIDARITY, MOTHERFUCKER.

15. Because if you don’t, you disappoint this already-disappointed screech owl. Look at that owl. Feel its judgment. You need to turn this screech owl’s frown upside-down. That’s on you. DO NOT SHIRK YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES

16. Because seriously, what else are you going to do, just sit here and stare at Twitter? It’s like staring into a blender full of chipmunks. Jesus, go make something, if only to find something better to do for the next hour.

17. Because making stuff is SEXY.

…

Okay I don’t know if that’s true but I’m gonna go with it.

*strokes beard seductively*

*finds a half-eaten Kit-Kat in the beard*

*eats half-eaten Kit-Kat seductively*

18. BECAUSE ART IS A WEAPON. A far more effective one than your standard weapon, too. LISTEN SPITE IS A POWERFUL MOTIVATOR, OKAY. Spite is your fuel source. Art is your flamethrower. WHOOSH, MOTHERFUCKER.

19. Because when you make things, you learn things, and education is good.

20. Because when you make stuff, you improve yourself. And we need you in fighting shape. YOU MUST BE A WHETTED BLADE READY TO SLICE THROUGH SHENANIGANS, CHICANERY, AND GARBAGE.

21. Because it’s what Li’l Sebastian would’ve wanted.

22. Because time is a depleting resource. You have what you have, which is this moment, right now. There is no guarantee you can make things later. So make things now. And if that’s hard, there’s always

23. Because you’re going to fail sometimes, and that’s a necessary thing. Failure is an inoculation. It bolsters your creative immune system. And in this ENDLESS CYCLE OF STUPID, you really, really need a strong intellectual and creative immune response.

24. Because art is beauty. Stories, poetry, craftwork, food, it’s all beautiful and this ugly world needs a dollop of beauty. There is beauty in both the act and the result of making stuff. So kick the shitstorm out of the sky with an aggressive rainbow counterattack.

25. Because

FUCK

TRUMP.

You think that bloated sack of stinkbugs and hate has ever made a thing in his life? He is a sucking chest wound. He doesn’t make anything and wouldn’t know art if it parted that merkin atop his head. SO DO THE OPPOSITE OF THAT SUPPURATING ASSHOLE.

So, keep on making stuff, folks.

You have your marching orders.

Now buy my books or I die gesticulating in the void.

* * *

DAMN FINE STORY: Mastering the Tools of a Powerful Narrative

What do Luke Skywalker, John McClane, and a lonely dog on Ho’okipa Beach have in common? Simply put, we care about them.

Great storytelling is making readers care about your characters, the choices they make, and what happens to them. It’s making your audience feel the tension and emotion of a situation right alongside your protagonist. And to tell a damn fine story, you need to understand why and how that caring happens.

Whether you’re writing a novel, screenplay, video game, or comic, this funny and informative guide is chock-full of examples about the art and craft of storytelling–and how to write a damn fine story of your own.

Indiebound / Amazon / B&N

Amityville baywoman Ellie West fishes by day and bootlegs moonshine by night. It’s dangerous work under Prohibition—independent operators like her are despised by federal agents and mobsters alike—but Ellie’s brother was accepted to college and Ellie’s desperate to see him go. So desperate that when wealthy strangers ask her to procure libations for an extravagant party Ellie sells them everything she has, including some booze she acquired under unusual circumstances.

What Ellie doesn’t know is that this booze is special. Distilled from foul mushrooms by a cult of diabolists, those who drink it see terrible things—like the destruction of Long Island in fire and flood. The cult is masquerading as a church promising salvation through temperance and a return to “the good old days,” so it’s hard for Ellie to take a stand against them, especially when her father joins, but Ellie loves Long Island, and she loves her family, and she’ll do whatever it takes to ensure neither is torn apart.

* * *

What We Read is Who We Are

Let me say first that this whole post is going be a little political, because my novel is a little political. Great, you’re probably thinking, as you’ll be reading this a week after the election, and are more than likely over reading, talking, or thinking about politics. But you see, I’m writing all this a little more than one week before the election—so how could this post, this novel, fail to be anything but political? After all, I came up with the idea for Creatures of Want and Ruin in the late summer before the 2016 election and started writing it in earnest a few weeks into November, after it was all over and America was trying to figure out what the heck had just happened. All I was thinking about at that time was politics—well, that and my good friends had a baby four days after that fateful night. But even that joyous event was politicized for me. As I held their amazing, sweet child in my arms for the first time, not 48 hours after she was born, I remember whispering to her “I will fix this for you, little girl.” I haven’t made good on that promise yet, but this novel is one the ways in which I am trying.

Anyway, Creatures of Want and Ruin is a book about a lot of things, including politics—but it is also about reading. My co-tagonists (I just learned that word!) are very different people but they are both avid readers. Ellie West fishes and bootlegs to support her struggling family; Delphine “Fin” Coulthead is a socialite who’s lost her way, but they both take time to curl up with a book—and because of that, they find some common ground; see their similarities instead of their differences. The enjoyment of the written word links them—and even ends up saving them, after a fashion. We’ve all had to take a harder look at what we’re reading over the last two years, where it comes from, and if it is written in the spirit of truth or with the desire to spread lies. But I take comfort in the fact that even in times like these one may still find pleasure and hope within the pages of a book, still be refreshed and changed by the simple act of reading, so I wanted to honor that.

Sometimes, You Have to Lose Your Way to Find Your Way

As I mentioned above, Creatures of Want and Ruin has dual protagonists, Ellie and Fin. Ellie the baywoman and bootlegger was pretty easy for me to write, in part because she’s a pulp reboot of my maternal grandmother and in part because while she is a complex character, Ellie a straightforward thinker who needs to grow in her understanding of the world, but starts and finishes the novel knowing who she is inside.

Not so much the socialite Fin Coulthead. I had to wrestle with Fin the entire time I was writing the book. I felt like every time I tried to write her I was staring at a puzzle with no edge pieces. I knew who she was, but not why. I’d gone too far down the path of writing a careless person in the vein of Daisy from The Great Gatsby… but Daisy was no heroine, and Fin is supposed to be. It was only after I had a solid enough draft to show to my agent did I figure it out… after she told me she hated Fin. And not the cool “Katniss sure is hard to like!” kind of hatred. Given how my agent has close to a 100% record of being right when it comes to problems with my drafts, I went back to Fin. I listened to what my agent disliked—basically, Fin’s absence of any interest in the world beyond herself—and worked backwards from that. In the end, I’m really happy with Fin, and I hope readers will be, too.

You Can’t Escape Yourself, And That’s Okay

These days, I mostly write fantasy… but I got my start in horror. Lovecraftian horror, to be precise. My first collection, A Pretty Mouth, is a series of interconnected Lovecraftian tales set in different time periods; the only story I’ve ever had anthologized as a Best Of is “The Thing on the Cheerleading Squad,” a riff on Lovecraft’s “The Thing on the Doorstep,” but set in 1990 at a high school. That said, I don’t write so much cosmic horror these days, a decision that was both conscious and not. I wanted to explore different themes, different settings, different possibilities. And yet, one of the early reviews of Creatures of Will and Temper (the first, but largely unrelated book in this series), described the demons as “Lovecraftian,” which I found surprising as I hadn’t thought of them that way. I mean, the reviewer liked that, so good…

But it gave me pause just the same, and that’s when I realized I was writing a novel in which foul mushrooms sprout from the earth as masked, mysterious cultists terrorize the night, lighting fires and demanding a return to “the old ways”… even if the old ways they’re talking about are backwards, para-religious sentiments like keeping women at home and marginalized communities as marginalized as possible. Ah well! We all have our muses that we follow, consciously or otherwise.

America Is Hungrier Than We Knew For Hatred and Lies

In taking a “break” from writing this essay I clicked over to Facebook and saw that Florida’s agriculture secretary, Donny Purdue, described the Florida gubernatorial race as “so cotton-pickin’ important” at a GOP rally. As noted above, by the time you’re reading this we shall have seen the power of such rhetoric—whether it has rallied more to the Trumpist cause, or driven people away from it. Regardless, the last two years have been an alarming wake-up call for many as to the divided state of American ideas on race, class, gender, sexuality… even the need for a government at all.

When I began Creatures of Want and Ruin Trump was the GOP nominee; all the statisticians predicted a win for Hillary Clinton. And yet, Trump’s rhetoric, his presence, had begun to cause ripples in the ponds of my friends’ lives. We didn’t know then that those ripples would become a tsunami—we just knew that the summer of 2016 was a period in which many of us became vastly more uneasy around our parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins and family friends, whether we were at family gatherings like barbecues and pool parties, or on Facebook.

I’m one of the lucky ones; I don’t have to watch my tongue or risk a goodwill apocalypse around my family, but many of my friends have not been so fortunate. Perhaps it seems odd to talk about all this in a “Five Things I Learned Writing…” essay, but this hunger I saw on the news, heard about in my friends’ stories, saw on social media—it informed a crucial family dynamic as I was outlining Creatures of Want and Ruin. I wanted to write a story with a protagonist struggling with tensions similar to what so many of my friends were dealing with, because seeing them standing up to those closest to them when the stakes were so high was one of the most heroic things I’ve ever witnessed. I wanted to write something to them, and for them, because of that.

America Is Starving For Love and Truth and Justice

While it’s true that I wrote Creatures of Want and Ruin while in a dark place, it is still a novel of strength and of hope. Yes, during this essay I’ve foregrounded a lot of the pain I’ve felt post-2016, for my friends and my country, but now I’ll talk about why I had the novel end in a decidedly non-Lovecraftian way, with the promise of the possibility of positive change.

Why? I’ll tell you: Because I attended the Women’s March last year and this year, where had the honor of walking beside thousands upon thousands of dissenters in Denver—and five million worldwide. Because my small rural city held a Charlottesville vigil, a Pride march that was better attended than the one held by a certain notoriously liberal city to our southwest, and our own Families Belong Together rally. Because I’ve seen friends standing tall by creating art, running for public office (and winning!), volunteering until they’re dog tired, reaching out in amazing ways to friends and strangers, and really just resisting in any and every way they can.  They take their kids to rallies, host dance parties against Trump, moderate debates between local candidates.  They aren’t backing down, so why would my characters, when faced with similar (if admittedly more supernatural) turmoil in their communities? I couldn’t dishonor the love and passion and determination I’ve seen over the last two years with a dour tale of defeat. Instead, I wanted to praise it with a pot-boiler about bootlegging liquor, kissing who you want, and fighting tyranny. It’s a novel about the power of freedom—the real kind, “freedom to,” not “freedom from,” as the all too prophetic Margaret Atwood would put it in The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s a book meant to be as inspirational as it is cautionary, but it is up to you to decide if I succeeded.

* * *

MOLLY TANZER is the Sydney J. Bounds and Wonderland Book Award–nominated author of Vermilion (an NPR and io9 Best Book of 2015), A Pretty Mouth, the historical crime novel The Pleasure Merchant, and other works. She lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Molly Tanzer: Website | Twitter

Creatures of Want and Ruin: Print | eBook

I get way too excited when I find a new bird.

Which is not to say I’m literally discovering new species of birds, by the way — though if I did, do not think I wouldn’t call it the GRUFFLED WENDIGO or maybe the EAST PENNSYLTUCKY BEARDBIRD. Whatever. No, I mean, when I find a bird that is explicitly new to me. In this case: a cedar waxwing.

I found a shitload of them nomming on the many, many berries in the understory of our forest.

I snapped some pics — those can be found at the bottom of the post. And no, they’re not macro photos, but by now we’ve surely learned I care little for your HUMAN RULES.

Not much news this week —

The Daily Beast did a thing about the lack of safety around comic freelancers, and, for Obvious Reasons, I get namechecked. So go and check that out, if you choose.

Also, The Columbian recommends Damn Fine Story as a good NaNoWriMo book.

And I think that’s it.

HERE HAVE SOME BIRBS

A disillusioned major, a highwaywoman, and a war raging across time.

It’s 1788 and Alice Payne is the notorious highway robber, the Holy Ghost. Aided by her trusty automaton, Laverna, the Holy Ghost is feared by all who own a heavy purse.

It’s 1889 and Major Prudence Zuniga is once again attempting to change history—to save history—but seventy attempts later she’s still no closer to her goal.

It’s 2016 and . . . well, the less said about 2016 the better!

But in 2020 the Farmers and the Guides are locked in battle; time is their battleground, and the world is their prize. Only something new can change the course of the war. Or someone new.

Little did they know, but they’ve all been waiting until Alice Payne arrives.

* * *

Time Travel Is Hard

I don’t mean actually traveling through time, although yeah, that too. Time travel is hard to write because stories are, almost by definition, events in linear time, and once you start messing with that, it can be a challenge to preserve things like pacing, conflict, urgency or, uh, coherence, which are things I’m told some readers expect. Oh no the bad guy’s coming! He’ll be here any second! Hurry! Or…. use your time traveling device, stop by Ibiza, have an umbrella drink, whatever.

So the writer has to put limits on what time travel can do (it’s much like working with a magic system, this way), without destroying everything that makes time travel cool and interesting in the first place.

My friend Kelly Robson has written about why she made her time travel consequence-free in her novella Gods, Monsters and the Lucky Peach; she wanted to write about how time travelers would act if they believed that nothing they did would alter the future, to explore what it would be like to have a “Google Street view of the remote past.”

In Alice Payne Arrives, I set out to do the opposite, to explore the consequences of individual decisions on the future. In my novella, time travel is mostly restricted to two militaristic factions who are working endlessly to change the timeline, and so the history of the world and the characters’ own backstories can change, even within the span of the novella. (Did I mention plotting this was hard?)

So I had to build in other restrictions, other reasons why time travel can’t just fix everything. This is important not only for storytelling reasons, but also for ethical ones: If you write a book in which time travel can change history, and that history still includes any of the genocides and oppression of our own history, you’d damn well better have thought through the reasons you’ve made that authorial choice.

Chapter Titles Are the Neitherlands

Before I wrote this book, I thought about chapter titles mainly as guidelines and signals for the reader.  I loved them, but I thought of them as ornaments.

Because much of Alice Payne Arrives takes place in the 18th century, and one of my point-of-view characters was born in that century, I knew I wanted my chapter titles to include some echoes of the glorious chapter summaries from that period in English literature. Henry Fielding has some amazing ones in A History of Tom Jones, A Foundling, which was written in 1749:  “Chapter Twelve: Containing what the reader may, perhaps, expect to find in it.”

Although I wanted some of that flavor, Alice Payne Arrives is not an 18th century pastiche, and one of its point-of-view characters was born in the year 2132. So the chapter titles became an interstitial space between the worlds of my point of view characters. They started to remind me of the Wood Between the Worlds in the Narnia books, or the Neitherlands in Lev Grossman’s Magicians trilogy: places where the story isn’t happening, but the world of the story is still assumed to exist. This draws back the curtain on the ontological workings of the book as a construct. For example, my favorite chapter title in Alice Payne Arrives is: “Shit Gets Weird; Or, A Consequential Encounter.” That chapter title doesn’t belong to the 18th century point of view, or the 22nd century one. It belongs to both, or … neither?

Chapter Titles Are the Soundtrack

This whole thing with the chapter titles got me excited because I’ve long been fascinated by the way historical movies can use deliberately anachronistic music to shorten the emotional distance for the audience. What does it mean to tell the truth about the past if a Just the Facts portrayal of the past can actually convey a false emotional experience? For example, if I have a character say “zounds”, that feels different to my readers than it would have felt to the people in the room with the character because their social and cultural context is different.

One way to try to tell both kinds of truth is to present the facts and present some anachronistic cultural context, to help guide the modern time traveler.

Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette is a brilliant example of this, as is the movie A Knight’s Tale. For an exploration of what makes A Knight’s Tale so great in this way, read Michael Livingston.) Maybe, I thought, chapter titles in fiction could serve the same sort of mediating function that a soundtrack does in movies?

And of course, the musical Hamilton does exactly this with music too, so I was amused to find that the behind-the-scenes book Hamilton: The Revolution (affectionately known as the Hamiltome) does something similar with its chapter titles as I did in Alice Payne Arrives. (E.g.: “Stakes is High; Or, What Happened at Lincoln Center and What Came After, Including Lunch with Jeffrey Seller.”)

Worldbuild for Book 2 in Book 1

Roughly while I was working on the copy-edits and proofreading for book 1, I was drafting book 2. I’d never written a sequel to anything before.

World-building in a book is sort of like set dressing in a stage production: You show the reader the stuff they need to see, and you hint at other bits to create an impression that the world continues, off-stage. Sure, you have some ideas about what’s happening in those imagined spaces, but for the most part, behind and between the lovely painted sets, there’s nothing a bit of plywood and some rat poop. I’m used to doing just a little bit more world-building than I’ll actually require for a given book.

I soon discovered that a sequel would require me to fill in those gaps in my setting: sometimes quite literally. In book 1 I had some scenes in the study and some scenes in the foyer without nailing down which rooms were in between, but in book 2 I had a scene in which the characters move from the study to the foyer, so I had to make sure that the rooms I filled in for book 2 didn’t contradict any offhand remarks I’d tossed off about the layout of the house in book 1.

So now I understand why series writers love their wikis and their notebooks.

Go Weird or Go Home

I wrote Alice Payne Arrives when I was on submission with what would become my first published novel. Being on sub is a great time to just write whatever the hell you want, if you can carve out the time to do that, because your brain weasels are busy telling you you’ll never succeed in the industry. You can respond to said brain weasels by saying, “Yes, I know, that’s why I’m writing whatever the hell I want.” Win-win.

So I spent a month furiously writing 28,000 words of fast-paced, bonkers mash-up of historical romance and thematic political SF with complex plotlines, complicated relationships and world-ending stakes. Novellas are great for that kind of experimentation; they let you explore a bigger idea than will fit in a short story, but they won’t eat months or years of your life.

And lo and behold, my agent and I sold it to one of my dream publishing houses. It can be scary to write the weird joy of your heart without holding anything back. But sometimes, that’s exactly what resonates with other people.

* * *

Kate Heartfield is a former newspaper editor who lives in Ottawa, Canada. Her time-travel novella, Alice Payne Arrives, releases on Nov. 6 from Tor.com Publishing. Her historical fantasy novel, Armed in Her Fashion, was published in spring 2018 by ChiZine Publications. Also in the spring of 2018, Choice of Games released her interactive novel, The Road to Canterbury. Her short fiction has appeared in several magazines and anthologies.

Kate Heartfield: Website | Twitter

Alice Payne Arrives: Print | eBook

Earlier this year I wrote the foreword to a book called Putting the Science in Fiction, edited by Dan Koboldt — the book’s goal is to talk to scientists and help sci-fi authors write more authentically toward their subject matter. Here’s Dan to talk a little about some *cue creepy theremin music* HORRIFYING BUT TRUE TALES FROM SCIENCE. 

* * *

A few years ago, I started a blog series aimed at helping SFF writers create more realistic stories. Basically, I’d encountered so many misconceptions about human genetics that I wanted to set the record straight. People are always saying write what you know, and genetics happens to be my area of expertise. So I wrote a few articles to debunk some of the most common misconceptions. To my surprise and delight, some of my blog’s readers found them useful. They wanted more.

The problem was that science fiction encompasses a wide range of sciences and technical areas. I didn’t want to pretend to be an expert at everything (I save that for the grant applications). So I went out and recruited some other experts to contribute to my blog. Dozens of them — aeronautical engineers, neurologists, nurses, astrophysicists, and more – have written posts for my Science in Sci-fi, Fact in Fantasy blog series. Now, we’ve collected 59 of those articles into Putting the Science in Fiction, a book with Writer’s Digest.

One of the best things about hosting this series (and editing the book) is that I get to read all of the articles first. I’ve learned as much as anyone. Then again, there were a few factoids here that I almost wish I could forget. Disgusting things. Frightening things. Horrifying things.

Chuck’s blog seems like the perfect place to share some of them.

You Don’t Want These Parasites

If you want a really freaky classic sci-fi read, I recommend The Puppet Masters by Robert Heinlein (1951), in which aliens turn up on Earth as mind-controlling parasites. Gripping stuff. As it turns out, a number of real-world parasites are able to change their host’s behavior. The most famous of these is probably Ophiocordyceps, the zombie-ant fungus. After it infects a carpenter ant, the fungus releases chemicals that disrupt the ant’s neural control, causing it to wander around until it finds the perfect leaf. Then it dies, and the fungus grows out of its head.

Toxoplasma gondii is another fascinating parasite. This one infects rats and, strangely, erases their natural fear of cats. Obviously, it makes the rats much more likely to be killed and eaten by felines. Then the parasite multiplies and gets released in the cat poop. Yikes.

If you’re a fan of the Aliens movie franchise, you’ll like this one: parasitoid wasps like the giant ichneumon wasp, reproduce by laying their eggs in other insects. When the eggs hatch, the larvae eat the unwilling host from the inside out.

Sources: Zombie Microbiology 101 (chapter 13) by Mike Hays and Insects in Fiction: What Bugs Me (chapter 27) by Robinne Weiss.

This Planet Can (and Will) Kill You

The Earth is a fairly dangerous place. Humans, as a species, have discovered countless different ways to die here. Sometimes the planet itself is responsible. Tornados, hurricanes, flash flooding, mudslides… it’s almost like we’re not welcome on this rock. Earthquakes are a particularly fearsome kind of disaster. Some of the deadliest side effects occur after the quake is over. Tsunamis – caused by earthquakes that occur under the ocean – are a good example. Another one is soil liquefaction, when water-laden soil essentially turns to liquid, swallowing people, cars, and even buildings.

The ocean is also a pretty dead place, though not in the way that many people imagine. About 1,750 people in the United States die each year by drowning in natural bodies of water. Hypothermia is another danger because water wicks away body heat so efficiently.  Many shipwreck victims survive the initial wreck, only to freeze to death while waiting for rescue. It’s a simple, if unexciting fact that many more people die from these causes than from shark attacks.

Even so, the ocean has plenty of inspiration for sci-fi and horror writers. There’s a parasitic barnacle that grows entirely inside the body of a crab, and compels the crab to tend its eggs. There’s also an isopod (an ocean version of a pill bug) that feeds on fish tongues and in some cases, replaces the tongue with its own body. Yech.

Sources: Earthquakes: Fact versus Fiction by Amy Mills (chapter 41) and How the Ocean Will Kill You (chapter 43) by Danna Staaf.

It’s Just As Easy to Die in Space

Many of my book’s contributors work in aeronautical fields. I love flying and have taken lessons on small aircraft, so I’m fascinated by this stuff. And also a little terrified. Pilot and aviation writer Sylvia Spruck Wrigley informed me that if you fly into a cloud (losing sight of the ground) and you aren’t an instrument-rated pilot, your life expectancy drops from decades to 178 seconds.

Flying in space is even more difficult, because you have no point of reference. There are no directions in space, so you have to navigate relative to a celestial body, such as a planet. The body itself may be moving. Sounds tough. Adding to the difficulty is the fact that without friction, moving objects in space is at the whim of Newtonian physics. There are no brakes and no flaps. You just move, and continue moving, until enough force is applied to stop your momentum.

Of course, it could be worse. You could get ejected from your spacecraft and die in space. Contrary to popular belief, it wouldn’t make your blood boil or your eyes pop. Instead, the oxygen in your tissues causes your entire body to bloat, kind of like a corpse. You won’t freeze to death (heat transfer works differently in a vacuum) but I’m guessing you’ll be pretty uncomfortable.

Unless you’re a Jedi, there’s not much you can do to save yourself. Holding your breath will cause your lungs to rupture. It’s best to exhale slowly. Most likely, you’ll lose consciousness and then expire from hypoxia or embolism. On the bright side, as this happens, you can rest assured that you’ve died in the best way possible: with great scientific accuracy.

Sources: Misconceptions about Space by Jamie Krakover (chapter 50), Realistic Space Flight (chapter 51) by Sylvia Spruck Wrigley

* * *

Dan Koboldt is the author of the Gateways to Alissia trilogy (Harper Voyager) and the editor of Putting the Science in Fiction (Writers Digest, 2018). As a genetics researcher, he has co-authored more than 70 publications in Nature, Science, The New England Journal of Medicine, and other scientific journals. Dan is also an avid hunter and outdoorsman. Every October, he disappears into the woods to pursue whitetail deer with bow and arrow. He lives with his wife and children in Ohio, where the deer take their revenge by eating the flowers in his backyard.

Dan Koboldt: Website

Putting the Science in Fiction: Print | eBook