The Observers - A Science Fiction Odyssey C.R.Downing's Book Tour 2018. Book #3

My publisher is having a sale the e-book version of The Observers.

https://www.amazon.com/Observers-C-R-Downing-ebook/dp/B00P288OOY/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

It's only $1.00.

Laughter guaranteed!

Book #3:

The Observers - A Science Fiction Odyssey

There is a link to Amazon for the title book in the line above this. Additional links are provided to original short stories involved in the development of the title book in the description of each story below.

Elevator Speech

Observers are expected to perform only that role for the Glieseian Ministry of Observation, Investigation, and Intervention (MOII). However, observers Mxpan and Zerpall are imprisoned twice, banished from two solar systems, threatened with selective destruction by targeting their DNA, trapped in android bodies after a faulty brain essence transfer, and forced into an ethically convoluted situation. The Observers is a comic sci-fi trip across the solar system that will keep you thinking and laughing.

Background Information

This story that triggered this book was written in the 1980s. However, it was not a novel. Neither was it science fiction.

It was a short romance story titled Magnetic Attraction.

There were no aliens. There were KGB agents.

The story morphed into what is the fourth mission by Zerpall and Mxpan.

As luck would have it, I found copies of the original story and an intermediate version, which includes Zerpall and Mxpan. However, in the intermediate version, the two observers were from the planet Rigel, not the planet Gleise.

Both versions are included in the PDF for this book. Here’s the link.

Given the fact that I had fewer than 20 legitimate dates before I met the fifth girl that I ever dated, why I thought I could write a romance story is a mystery. The romance story was mediocre, however, the story’s main plotline had potential as a science fiction piece.

By the way, I married the fifth girl 47-years ago this August 7.

June 1970. Grad Night at Disneyland. 
Leanne and I were married 13-months later.

I admit to rushing the publishing process with this book. Thankfully, the editor I worked with at KoehlerBooks saw the potential of the four missions described in the story.

The manuscript I submitted was complete, but it lacked the internal structure linking the missions together. His idea of making converting a couple of them to read as flashbacks saved the day . . . at one level.

Here’s a sample of the communication between one editor and me. The editor’s comment is the black print. My response is the red print.

4) Unless I missed something, Mxpan and Zerpall never had memories restored of their third, most uneventful mission. It'd be fairly easy to insert a sentence that makes it clear they rebuilt their memories there, too. It might seem insignificant, but if the third mission is kept hidden from them, the reader might come to think it was unimportant.

The restored memories are for how they met and their first two missions: Rigal and Epsilon-Eridani. They were “lost” during the BET process—they were not transferred into the android AI matrix, but were stored in the BET storage on the ship and degraded over time.

Memories of the Tau Ceti mission were not degraded because Mxpan selected those memories as being necessary (probably based on recency of production) during BET in their ship. Remember the colored lines on the machine?

Alpha Centauri memories were formed during the BET procedures and also never left the brains of either Glieseian. In both these cases, no reconstruction was necessary.

I should have taken the time and put in the effort to revamp the plot points like into a cohesive linear storyline. Instead, I justified my writing without due consideration of what a reader could experience. 

This review by Nebula Books that follows describes the final product as an incompletely developed story with the potential for greatness. In the end, the missions were linked into a positive flow. Still missing was detail about the civilizations being observed.
The complete review is here. ttps://nebulabooks.wordpress.com/page/4/   You might have to scroll through other reviews until you travel back in time to May 30, 2016.

The Observers explores complex scientific themes; should science and technology advance simply for the sake of progress? Who should be in control? Who does ownership of information really belong to? These themes are explored through our two main characters, Mxpan and Zerpall. Mollusc-like telepathic beings, Glieseians have made themselves technological overseers that monitor species technological development and intervene as necessary. The Observers is a comedic buddy-cop novel about two investigators, one being the by-the-book professional, and the other being a fun-loving take-it-as-it-comes kind of guy…

Different alien worlds and civilizations are treated almost indifferently – despite well developed characters downing has forgotten to characterize the worlds or environments, and with the vague story this lends to the feeling of staleness throughout the book.

However, this is a comedy book and the humour is well written: timing is everything in comedy, and Downing delivers witty punch-lines and well-paced gags that carry the reader through an often drawn-out experience. The banter between Mxpan and Zerpall is delightful and Zerpall’s child-like innocence is often laugh-out-loud material. If Downing had given even a fraction of the attention he gave his characters to the settings and plot, this book could have been a monumental entry to the genre, placing him with the likes of Heinlein or Asprin. 

What I learned from this painful experience is

• Don’t rush the process.
• Look more at the plotline.
• Have a larger beta-reader team.
• Keep characterization true to life.

The conclusion of this “book look” will focus on the science and characters.

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Almanac. Deeper Thoughts on Presenting at Conferences

Deeper Thoughts on Presenting at Conferences

This series of blogs is written in past tense because I don't think I'll be presenting at any other conferences.

Who Gets to Speak

All conferences have some form of a selection process to determine who speaks and on what day and time. Depending on the size of the conference, that process might generate thousands of applications for hundreds of slots.

I mentioned in the first blog post on this topic that I was part of that selection process for the 50^th Anniversary national conference of the National Science Teachers Association. I was the chairman of one strand of conference content. The committee of four people and I spent hours reading and rating session proposals.

Some of the proposals were outstanding, some were good, some were okay, and some were horrible. When we submitted our list of sessions, I learned that politics is never far from any process.

The powers that be cut our last five sessions and replaced them with five of the horrible ones, which were incomplete and lacking substance. When I asked why I was told that they were from one of the major sponsors of that year’s convention. As such, they were guaranteed five slots in each of the four content strands.

Picking Sessions to Attend Is a Crap Shoot

In spite of the due diligence of selection committees, unless you are familiar with a speaker, choosing which sessions to attend must be based on the quality of either the Title, the quality of the Description, or Time of the presentation.

I’ve sat through some terrible sessions by presenters who must have blackmail material on their school district administrators because the presentations were a mix of ineptitude, incompetence, and/or confused misinformation. When I found a quality speaker, I checked future conference programs for sessions they were presenting.

Typical Convention Program Page. I'd choose my session of most of the others in this time slot. Just sayin'... 
This presentation was while I was professoring at PLNU, that's why it's got the 23-years of experience. I kept adding years each time I presented this. 

 Being a Repeat Presenter with Good Rating Forms Helps

I presented a lot of sessions at a lot of conferences. As a general rule, attendees like the content and the style of those presentations. I recognized several teachers who faithfully came to session after session of mine because they knew that they’d get quality materials and an engaging presentation.

I can’t complain about my treatment by selection committees. It wasn’t uncommon for me to submit three or four session proposals. It was common for all of my proposals or all but one to be included in the program.

I got to know the NSTA employee responsible for notifying presenters of the acceptance or rejection of session proposals. I suspect that was primarily the result of the number of sessions with my name as the presenter she processed over the fifteen years I was a regular speaker at science conferences. While we never met face-to-face, I did talk to on the phone more than a few times.

Cookbook Surprise

One of my favorite presentations started out with a very creative title.

What Do You Do If Betty Crocker Wrote Your Lab Book?

The description promises teachers instruction on a way for students to think more and “fill in the blanks” less. In other words how to make student lab directions less like a recipe.

Description: In this session, you will learn how to move your labs from cookbook toward inquiry.  Steps in the process of developing open-ended labs will be discussed.  Specific examples will be given.  Handouts will be provided.

 I had a tremendous response to this session . . .

Until one conference when I distinguished-looking female approached me before the session began.

“Are you Dr. Downing?”

“I am.”

“My name is Betty Crocker,” she said while handing me her business card. She was faculty at a university in Texas and was an advocate of doing what my session promoted.

I apologized profusely.

She laughed and said, “I would appreciate it if you’d retitle your presentation.”

I agreed to do that and emailed her a copy of the replacement name and description.

Performing Pedagogical Alchemy: Transforming lead-en labs into gold-en opportunities for student learning

Description:   Learn how to change lead-en labs, heavy with cookbook procedures, to gold-en opportunities for student learning through inquiry and writing. Specific examples and handouts provided.

Betty responded positively. Ultimately, that title and description were more successful than the Betty Crocker versions.

Tricks from an Old Dog

The above heading is the title of my favorite session of all time. It’s 60-minutes of stream-of-consciousness speaking on a variety of topics dealing with teachers and teaching.

The idea for the session came by way of a visit from a first-year science teacher. Her mother also in the Grossmont District. The new teacher was feeling overwhelmed and didn't want other teachers at her school to know that. Mom told her to take a sick day and watch me teach.

She arrived before school on the assigned day. She shadowed me--LITERALLY. I mean every time I turned around, I ran into her. She asked A LOT of questions and dutifully wrote down my answer to each one.

At lunch, I told her she couldn't ask me any questions. I wanted her to talk with my colleagues. She did. I'm sure it gave her a broader perspective.

When she was ready to leave, we had a short final conversation.

"You have to send me a copy of all the questions you asked," I said.

"Okay," she answered.

"And, you have to include the answers you wrote down."

"Why?" she asked.

"Because I have no idea what I told you, but I think other new teachers might like to hear those answers."

I got the questions and answered in school mail the next week.

The first time I offered Old Dog was at a San Diego Science Educators Association’s conference. Although run entirely by the local group, over 2000 teachers attended the conference on several occasions. It wasn’t uncommon for the SDSEA convention to out draw at least one of the National Science Teachers Associations regional conferences in a given year.

The session was scheduled in the curved foyer of the San Diego Civic Theater. While unhappy when I found out, I suspect they ran out of rooms for sessions and knew I’d be okay in that venue.

Probably 40-50 teachers followed my ramblings. Below is the handout from that session. The title page has been updated for the last time I presented. Unless you were a teacher in one of Old Dog presentations, you didn’t know all the stuff on the first page, even if I worked with you. I wanted attendees to know that I “can do” and still chose to teach!

Cover Page and Agenda for this session. 

 

I know you might not be able to see the right side of this, but it's too small to read if 

I don't choose the full-size option.

Filling the Gap

You never know when a presenter won’t show up for her/his session. At least twice, as I was wandering after one of my sessions I came upon a room full of people with no one presenting.

The first time, I walked to the front and asked if they wanted to hear my session. Most of the audience stayed. A couple came up afterward and thanked me. One said my topic was more interesting than the other anyway.

The second time, I knew the presenter. In fact, I worked with him on part of what he was presenting. I got up and explained that something must have happened because I knew that the speaker wouldn’t bail.

Fortunately, my friend arrived late. He’d missed his shuttle. Since I’d run out of knowledge on his topic, I was glad to see him.

The most novel “presentation” I’ve ever done was in Ft. Worth, Texas. It was around 8:00 p.m. on the proverbial “dark and stormy night.” The wind was blowing so hard that the rain was “falling” parallel to the ground.

The electricity in the hotel went out. The only light was from emergency lighting in the hallway. Within minutes, about a dozen science were seated on the hallway floor.

I asked if they wanted to hear the session I’d presented that day. Possibly because it was that or nothing, they agreed. I did an abbreviated version that was punctuated by building-shaking thunder.

The power was restored. People returned to their rooms.

All but one young woman.

“Would Y’all stay and sit with me out here in the hallway for awhile more. When I was growing up, my family’s house was struck by lightnin’. Nobody got hurt and there wasn’t no damage we couldn’t repair. But, since then I’ve been terr’fied by big lightnin’ storms.”

I sat back down

We talked about nothing special for about an hour. By then the thunderstorm passed. We said good night. I never saw her again.

Next is the final blog in this series: Dissecting Conference Attendance

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INSECTICIDE C.R.Downing's Book Tour 2018. Book #2. Finale

Book #2:

INSECTICIDE - A Science Fiction Thriller

There is a link to Amazon for the title book in the line above this. Additional links are provided to original short stories involved in the development of the title book in the description of each story below.

Elevator Speech

Insecticide is the story of a bipolar planet. Bafwique is shattered into two planets by a meteorite. Civil wars, genocide, deception, exploration, and other struggles on and between the two planets lead to a search for a new home for the Clurn.

Background Information

If you were born before 1975, there’s a good chance you remember the Cold War at some level.

I was born in 1950. I lived through almost the whole Cold War.

For those of you too young to remember the Cold War, it was contested mostly with threats and propaganda. There were some military actions, but other methods of demonstrating communist or democratic superiority were much more common. Track meets and swimming meets, ice-skating, hockey, and the like reached fever pitch at the Olympics.

Misinformation was commonly released. Children in Soviet countries were removed from families and placed in training facilities if they showed athletic prowess.

Bottom line.

Better dead than red was more than a catchphrase in many parts of the United States.

The original short story is a simple account of an alien species invading and conquering another planet. Expanding the story to the length of a novel involved adding backstory to the original.

I’d first thought of marketing the book as a newly discovered history book released by the Intergalactic Alliance. The title of that version was The Book of Bafwique – An Unconventional History of a Planet and Its People. My beta readers’ comments were similar. It took too long to get to the story; there wasn’t enough action.

At that point, I decided to have one of the half-planets be the Soviets and the other the USA.

Narxon, even the name sounds ominous, is an unapologetic parody of the USSR. Leaders are incompetent, cruel, or both. Inhabitants are nothing more than commodities to use as desired. Narxonian drones are asexual brutes, with one notable exception.

Both Narxon and Bafwique use technology. Narxon tech is more—just more—in every way. The government of Narxon sends drones to infiltrate Bafwiquian society. They are charged with committing genocide of their relatives.

The basic backstory details the invasion of Bafwique and the struggle of the miraculous survivors of the invasion. Ultimately, the novel covers over 1000-years of Clurn history.

The book ends with a twist. There’s a challenge issued to the reader on page vi. I’m not aware of a single reader that successfully completed the challenge. Here’s your chance to be a leader!

Don’t skip the Epilog!

The Clurn develop some intriguing technology. Two of my favorites are

Selective Memory Eradication

Laboratory records recovered from The Fortress indicate that memory eradication was achieved by calculating the length of time phosphodiester bonds between consecutive ribose molecules in RNA had existed. All such bonds were formed within the last ten carnottis were broken. The efficacy of the process decreased dramatically on bonds formed for longer than ten carnotti. This procedure was able to selectively target “new” RNA in brains of Clurn and trigger their digestion by restriction enzymes in vivo. RNA production is an initial first step in Clurn memory formation. By removing the RNA basis for memories, those memories were eradicated. The downside was that RNA not involved in memory formation was lost during the digest as well. As a result, some early test subjects suffered the loss of more than memory—leading to the very tight regulations on the use of the process. (page 176)

Topographic Map Projection System

The transport vehicles arrived at the village coordinates five carnots before daylight. Eight Bafwiqueians leaped to the ground. P’lna pulled a portable projection system from her vehicle. After attaching an inflatable balloon to the unit, she filled the balloon with helium. The projection system slowly rose into the Bafwiqueian night, tethered to a winch on the front of the transport vehicle.

Once the balloon reached the designated height, P’lna radioed a command to the unit. Two additional tethers dropped to the ground. She attached one to a low wall and the other to the eve of a roof. The projection system now hung, motionless, directly above the village. A second radio command activated the unit. A life-size map of the village area was projected down. Each body and artifact was outlined in the image that provided both light and direction for the process. (page 216)

When you make up a world, there is a multitude of conditions and circumstances that must be addressed beyond the storyline.

What’s the gravity of the planet?

What kind of atmosphere is there?

How long is a day? A year?

What type(s) of government exist?

How do the inhabitants reproduce?

What are some of the customs, traditions, and ethical codes of the dominant species?

The bad news is that you HAVE TO make all the stuff up.

The good news is that you GET TO make all the stuff up.

Whether you have a glass-half-full or a glass-half-empty outlook on that situation, the hard reality is that your planet must make scientific sense.

I include three appendices to lend credibility to Bafwique as a planet. Below is a sample from each. While not as enjoyable as writing the story itself, describing a new world was fun. Here's a sample of each appendix.

I mentioned in part one of this blog post that original idea behind INSECTICIDE was to market it as a history book. Toward that end, I “obtained” copies of twenty-eight source documents like this one.

At least one of them is real. It’s a telescopic image taken by one of my Great Oak High School students in one of her college classes. All the others have at least the ring of truth.

That’s it . . .

 . . . except for an excerpt from a review of the book. I changed the font color of my favorite sentence to red. It’s the kind of comment authors live for.

I read this book thinking, maybe, I dunno, aliens?  Hmm… This was my first tango with a Science Fiction Thriller. I usually have this problem with aliens or extraterrestrial beings and that is I usually cannot empathize with them. I usually label them away as alien and drop the book or movie and never give it a second thought. It’s a wonder to me that I love Doctor Who so much, though, I guess it’s because the Doctor seems pretty human and if anything, having two hearts makes him more relatable than a human.

Anyway. The reason I stuck with Rifts [now INSECTICIDE] was because, well I am a fan of world building and this book has it. Boy! Does it have it . . .

I am so glad I picked this one up. I am so glad Rifts opened my eyes to science fiction thrillers and mystery. Rifts [now INSECTICIDE] pulled me into an entire genre I was missing out on. I only hope that this well crafted novel doesn’t spoil me and put all the other stories in it’s genre to shame for me.

I highly recommend this book. I especially recommend this book if you are into things like Doctor Who.

The whole review is available at https://crdowning.com/insecticide.html

Maximizing a Storyline

In February 2018, I submitted an 8000-word short story for inclusion in an anthology titled, A World Unimagined. It was accepted for publication. The anthology will be released in June of 2018.

The editorial staff of https://lefthandpublishers.com/ are fine people. Not only did they accept my manuscript, the offered suggestions to consider for fine-tuning the story.

I chose to incorporate two of their ideas. One of those is a tie-in to the ending of INSECTICIDE. Learn how by reading “What Goes Around . . .” when the anthology is released.

Next book on the tour: The Observers – A Science Fiction Odyssey

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