MARS - Not for Your Winter Vacation

Sci-Fi Deak Style
by John Deakins

In our SF tour of the Solar System, Mars holds a prominent spot. It’s our most Earth-like sister planet. There’s actually some water present; temperatures are sometimes above water’s freezing point. If we travel to another planet, it’s the first choice. A human colony could potentially survive there.

We aren’t going: not with current technology. The projected trip is a minimum two years, one way. The astronauts would arrive with ten percent of their brain cells dead and developing cancer, from cosmic radiation. We’d need a perfectly recycling ecosystem onboard that would last five years. We haven’t sustained one on Earth for six months yet.

Though writers have created unusual native Martian life, no Martians will be waiting when/if we land. We’ve tested repeatedly. Martian water was once abundant; the temperature is in the right range. Life just didn’t happen. There’s no Martian life now and no trace of any past life-forms. Though it sometimes hits 25ºC (80ºF) on the Martian equator in summertime, there’s no Mars surface that doesn’t fall below freezing nightly.

Humans would be limited to warmed suits, with oxygen, and sealed bases. Nevertheless, Mars can be terraformed. The polar “ice” caps are mostly frozen CO2, but there’s water, too. We need solar-powered Martian satellites that convert sunlight to microwaves. Microwaves beamed continually at the polar caps would release both water and CO2. We can give Mars a greenhouse atmosphere.

Excess CO2 is Mars’ friend; colonists would still require respirators for possibly centuries to come. Hardy lichens that grow on Antarctica would grow there now. We simply seed the polar areas; photosynthesis begins. Unfortunately, the photosynthesis that ups oxygen content steals the heat-holding CO2. We have to get the water content up, too, to produce more oxygen. Perhaps we could generate another greenhouse gas, such as methane, as we lower the CO2 content.

Good news: There’s plenty of water out there (but not on Mars). We’d need automated ships to the Asteroids. (Some have a high water content). With an attached rocket, a water-bearing asteroid could be crashed into the non-settled side of Mars, raising the temperature and releasing atmospheric H2O. There may be mountain-sized icebergs in Jupiter’s ring; Saturn’s rings are an unlimited supply of ice chunks. We could nuke Europa, blowing icebergs into space, to be steered toward Mars.

You may have been hearing a background sound like rupturing a hippo. We pause while the shrieks of the science purists die down. Would we dare to violate the pristine purity of Mars and/or Europa before they’re studied? You bet your bippy we would.

We’re SF writers. Of course we dare! That’s why we can’t quit writing. If humans are going to the planets, we’ll be going for human reasons. Profitable adventure is ‘way ahead of scientific purity. Those afflicted with the Mt. Everest Syndrome (“Because it’s there.”) aren’t going to wipe their feet before they step out on a new world.

John Deakins, B.A., M.S.T. is a four-decade veteran of the science classroom and lives in Arkansas. As an author, John has fantasy novels in print from the Barrow series.

To read an excerpt from Barrow book one, please click HERE.

Writing Through The Ages

by Andrea Colasanto

Gary K. Wolf is the author responsible for creating Roger and Jessica Rabbit, and all of Toontown. His groundbreaking 1981 novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit? served as the basis for the $950 million blockbuster film, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. His newest novel, the highly anticipated third in the Roger Rabbit series, Who Wacked Roger Rabbit? releases in just a few short weeks, on November 29th. This is clearly a guy with some serious and successful writing chops—but have you ever wondered how an author of this magnitude actually writes?

Gary takes some time with Musa to explain his process throughout the years; interestingly enough his first method in the 1970s reflects his exact process today!

I started writing my first Roger Rabbit novel in 1976.

I would write out my passages in longhand on yellow lined paper using a No. 2 pencil. Then I would type them out on the typewriter I got in high school, a portable Remington manual. Portable being a relative term since the thing weighed almost as much as our black and white, tube-type Emerson cabinet television set.

I would edit those typed pages using my pencil. If a passage had to be eliminated, I would cut those lines out of the page and paste the page back together using Scotch tape. If a passage had to be moved, I would cut that passage out and paste it in the proper position, again using my trusty roll of Scotch tape.

This resulted in pages of wildly different lengths. Some only six inches long, some nearly two feet.

I would then retype what I had done, and repeat the process. Doing that over and over and over until the book was done.

I would retype the book one last time in a clean draft using White-Out to cover any typing errors.

Then, to my great delight, along came the miracle of word processing.

I was working as a copywriter for an advertising agency that specialized in promoting hi-tech companies and products. One of my clients was Wang, a major mainframe computer manufacturer. Wang had developed a small computer they called a word processor. They intended to sell it to companies for use by secretaries.

They gave me one of their word processors to try out.

I rapidly discovered that the Wang word processor mimicked exactly the way I worked. I was able to type, cut, and paste. Except without having to physically print, cut, and tape.

My writing speed increased dramatically.

I took nine years to write Who Censored Roger Rabbit? The Wang turned me into a veritable speedball. I pumped out the sequel, Who P-p-p-plugged Roger Rabbit? in four and a half years.

I remember having a meeting with the top execs at Wang. I suggested to them that perhaps they were thinking too small. They should position their word processors as personal computers and sell them to individuals. They looked at me like I had suddenly grown a second head. “Who would want a computer in their house?” asked one of the senior vice presidents. The other executives agreed. What a silly idea.

Which is probably why, today, Wang is a footnote in computer history and Apple rules the world.

But I digress.

I went from the Wang to a series of other word processors and eventually personal computers. I currently use a home-built desktop machine I put together myself with the help of a grade school computer whiz who lives down the street.

I wrote four more novels on those personal computers.

Then I decided to write the long awaited and highly anticipated third Roger Rabbit novel, Who Wacked Roger Rabbit?

For this one I had a set deadline. The previous two Roger novels were published by big New York publishing houses. These publishers were extremely flexible about release dates. Whenever I finished the book, that was when the book got published.

Who Wacked Roger Rabbit? came out as a digital book. The big sales day for digital books is the last Friday in November. What digital book publishers and on-line book sellers call Black Friday. You miss Black Friday, and you might as well consign your book to the digital Buck-a-Book bin because you will have missed the majority of your sales opportunities.

In order to finish the book on time, I had to keep writing it during the eight weeks I spent in China.

Obviously, I couldn’t take my desktop machine.

So I looked into laptops.

Any of those would have worked. Except in my opinion they would have been useless to me when I returned home and went back to my desktop machine.

I decided instead to get an iPad. I could use the iPad with a Bluetooth keyboard, turning it into an ersatz laptop. Then, when I got home, I could either sell the iPad on eBay or use it for whatever people used iPads to do.

To my great surprise, the iPad changed my writing forever.

I swiftly discarded the keyboard. I’m a very fast touch typist, and the keys did not suit my fingers.

Instead, I used the virtual keyboard and a stylus. I wrote the entire novel one letter at a time. I found the experience to be very similar to the way I first started writing, when I used yellow lined paper and a No. 2 pencil.

I carried the iPad around with me in a red fabric shopping bag I bought for the equivalent of a nickel in a Chinese grocery store.

I worked on the book whenever I had spare time. In Chinese airports, in Chinese hotels (usually in the lobbies, the only places with Wi-Fi), on Chinese airplanes, on Chinese boats on the Yangtze River, in Chinese buses, once in a Chinese pedicab.

The book came together quickly and well.

My wife, who accompanied me on the trip and was usually by my side when I wrote, told me that I started talking to myself. Reciting the book out loud as I wrote. I was completely unaware of that. Although I was aware of getting strange looks from people around me as I sat writing in bars and restaurants.

When I got home from China, I continued to work on the iPad, even though I could have gone back to the desktop. I carried the iPad with me everywhere. I worked in libraries, coffee shops, college student unions, yoga studios, gyms, wherever I happened to be.

The book came together so swiftly and so easily, that I can’t ever envision myself going back to writing on the desktop machine.

I even used the iPad to write scenes for the new movie I’m writing.

My programs include Final Draft for screenwriting and Pages for novels. Because Pages won’t support the Track Changes program my editor uses, I also use Office HD.

Yes, in case you’re wondering, I’m writing this on the iPad, too.

Just goes to show, you can teach an old dog, or an old rabbit, new tricks.

Read more about Jessica Rabbit in Gary K. Wolf’s novel Who Wacked Roger Rabbit?, available now in digital-only publication from Musa Publishing.

Gary K. Wolf hass written many short stories and nine novels. He is well known for two kinds of writing. His science fiction novels include Killerbowl, A Generation Removed, The Resurrectionist, Space Vulture an old-school, throwback, pulp science fiction novel which he co-wrote with his childhood friend Catholic Archbishop John J. Myers. His newest is newest Typical Day. Both Killerbowl and The Resurrectionist are currently in production as major motion pictures.

His other kind of writing isn't as easily categorized. Gary calls it fantasy fiction. He was told early on by a marketing executive at a major publishing house that this kind of writing wouldn't sell. Because there was no place for it on the bookstore shelves. It's not a regular novel, not crime, not science fiction, not romance. He was wrong. Who Censored Roger Rabbit? did indeed get published. It went through sixteen printings, and became a visual reality in Disney/Spielberg's $950 million blockbuster film Who Framed Roger Rabbit? The film won four Academy Awards and the Hugo Award. Walt Disney Pictures has also purchased film rights to the sequel novel Who P-p-p-plugged Roger Rabbit?

One of his newest novels The Late Great Show! is solidly in the Roger Rabbit style fantasy category. Those who enjoy Toontown tales will most assuredly like The Late Great Show!, too.

Gary K. Wolf currently lives in Boston, but regularly travels around the world.

Venus - Not Just a Pretty Face

Sci-Fi Deak Style
by John Deakins

Returning to our tour of the planets: Venus is the next from the Sun. It has near Earthlike gravity, but no moon. The good news is that it’s a unique environment. The bad news is that that environment is impossible for human life.

On a balmy day at the Venusian north pole, the temperature drops to a mere 600ºC. If you set out a block of lead, it would melt like margarine during a sunny Earth afternoon. Venus experiences a runaway greenhouse effect. Solar energy that enters its atmosphere stays there. At the Venusian equator, the temperature reaches 800ºC. The atmosphere is many times denser than Earth’s. Pressures are enormous.

The Venusian air is made of carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid. There’s limited water. Even at room temperature, it would eat your lungs or skin for a snack. Worse, it’s never still. Hurricane winds of 500 km/hr blow continuously. The constant roiling and overheating lead to lightning. A few seconds on Venus sees more lightning hits than a day on Earth. No spacecraft From Earth would last more than minutes there.

We’ll assume that you’ve jumped the enormous hurdles of months-long travel times, closed ecosystems in flight, and radiation exposure. You’ve reached Venus: Now what?

It’s a little late to Ignore It. Past writers (Burroughs, Heinlein, Brackett) could set adventures in the steamy Venusian swamps, but you can’t get away with that. In the near future, you’ll have to use Live With It. Venus’ raging atmosphere and impossible heat have to be useful for something unique. You’re the SF writer: Work on it.

Unexplained Science can work, but only in the far future. Before we can exploit Venus, interplanetary travel will have to have become common. Could we terraform Venus? Twenty kilometers above its surface, the temperature drops to 15ºC (60ºF). The atmosphere is thin. We could take an airborne algae from Earth and a bacterium able to metabolize sulfuric acid, and play games with their DNA. Given enough lab time, we could create a hybrid organism that could float high enough to begin diminishing the CO2 and breaking down the acid, with its large potential chemical energy. After a few thousand years, we could reduce the planet’s temperature, transform the atmosphere, and begin seeding the surface with more complex plants. That takes a lot of patience.

Postulate anti-gravity. Build Cloud City, floating above the hostile atmosphere. All you need is a reason to be there.

Move an asteroid from beyond Mars and give Venus a moon: no atmosphere; plenty of shielding; many problems eliminated. Perhaps it could be a way-station to Mercury.

Build a Venusian beanstalk in orbit, with its “tail” intentionally dragging in the atmosphere. (You might use another metallic asteroid for your materials.) Sulfuric acid is a valuable industrial chemical that Venusian orbital factories might use. The excess heat, transferred up the beanstalk as electricity, could be used to power those same factories.

Timing is everything. We won’t be visiting Venus anytime soon.

John Deakins, B.A., M.S.T. is a four-decade veteran of the science classroom and lives in Arkansas. As an author, John has fantasy novels in print from the Barrow series.

To read an excerpt from Barrow book one, please click HERE.

Kickstart Your Career

by Jamie Lackey

I have had three stories appear in Penumbra's lovely emag. The first was published in the August 2012 issue, the second in the April 2013 issue, and the third in the November 2013 issue.

My writing life has been going pretty well since August 2012. I appeared in my first invitation-only anthologies, joined the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and ran a successful Kickstarter for One Revolution: A Year of Flash Fiction, my first short story collection.

Kickstarter is a crowd-funding site for creative projects. It's similar to a PBS pledge drive--you back projects and receive related rewards. People have funded books, movies, and games, as well as new tech gadgets, dice, jewelry, and tons of other things.

I write a lot of flash fiction (stories that are under 1000 words), so when I decided to create a Kickstarter project for my own fiction, I chose to write one flash piece each month to post on my website. If my funding was successful, I'd collect the new stories, along with some of my other previously published work, into a book. My backer rewards included print or electronic versions of the finished book, credit on the dedication page, and the option to give me a story prompt. I wrote thirteen original stories for the project, each one to a theme dictated by one of my backers.

I set my goal at $1200, and I exceeded it by enough that I was able to get some amazing cover art by Lukáš Zídka. I printed the book through Amazon's CreateSpace service, mailed out copies to my backers, and posted the book to sell on Amazon.

The most fun part of the project was seeing what kind of prompts people came up with and writing the stories. My prompts ranged from "zombie shark" to "cheerful apocalypse" to "something with flowers." I enjoy writing to a prompt (which is one of the reasons I love Penumbra's themed issues so much) and it was a lot of fun to come up with an idea and write a story for a specific person. It was also really wonderful and validating to receive support from friends, family, and complete strangers, and it was exciting to see how people reacted to their individual stories.

The hardest parts were getting the ebook sorted out and trying to promote the book after it was finished.

A lot of other awesome people and publications are using Kickstarter as a funding platform, including Neil Clarke, Ellen Datlow, Daily Science Fiction, and Crossed Genres, and it's been a great experience for me.

Jamie Lackey earned her BA in Creative Writing from the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford. Her fiction has been accepted by over a dozen different venues, including The Living Dead 2, Daily Science Fiction, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. She reads slush for Clarkesworld Magazine and is an assistant editor at Electric Velocipede.

Learn more about Jamie Lackey on her website. Follow her on Twitter, and like her on facebook.

New Lands and New Possibilities

by Chris Pavesic

Speculative fiction is not a new invention. It has existed at least since Beowulf (probably earlier, but without print or other recorded versions we cannot say for sure). Indeed, speculative stories cover the globe and are found in all cultures and in all epochs. In these tales humans place their sense of wonder about the world and its creatures, life, death, love, hate, and the other mysteries. Authors use speculative stories to try and help them understand the world around them and bring readers along for the imaginative journey. The territory just beyond the borders of their experience becomes their artistic playgrounds where anything (and everything) is possible.

There was never an era in recorded human history when people did not wonder what might lie beyond the next hill (or beyond the next star-system); those storytellers—and then authors—filled the blank spaces on their maps with their imagination. The authors of speculative fiction—writers like Homer, Malory, Tennyson, Shakespeare, Stoker, Poe, Wells, King, and Rowling—and the stories they and others created—Beowulf, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Mists of Avalon, The River of Dancing Gods, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and The Hunger Games —are part of our literary and cultural touchstones. These authors worked at filling in (and then expanding) the map with the worlds they envisioned— Discworld, OZ, Gormenghast, Wonderland, Xanth, and Pern to name just a few.

In uncharted places, some cartographers would write the warning “Here There Be Monsters” on maps. Writers of speculative fiction were never content with this, however. Questions about the types of monsters, their purpose, the reasons for their creation, and their motivations needed to be answered, and indeed answered in the most entertaining way possible. The men and women who battled against them needed to be described and honored in print for their achievements and explorations, even if the battles were only in our imaginations. Conan, Drizzt, Haroun, Coraline, Stark, and Dresden—Joseph Campbell described these types of literary creations as “the hero with a thousand faces” because these archetypes appeared again and again, always ready to start down the path and begin the hero’s journey in these new, uncharted lands. And because they were interesting—because we wanted to see how they fared against both the figurative and literal monsters—we readers would follow these heroes into the speculative landscapes. What we learned on these journeys about our own lives, world, values, beliefs, and so forth was just as illuminating as what the heroes learned about their fictional world(s).

Being a reader (as well as a writer) of speculative fiction, I realize that I can picture many of these landscapes more clearly than I do many of the places of the “real” world. Without much effort I can pull memories of pushing through pine trees covered in clumps of snow like Lucy just before she reaches the lamp post in Narnia, I can remember the terrifying, oppressive darkness and ruined grandeur of the dwarf mines in Middle Earth (and also the quiet English-like flower and vegetable garden settings of the Shire complete with the round doors of the hobbit holes), and I can recall the thrill of standing on the deck of the Neverland pirate ship, complete with the smell of the sea and the splash of the salt water on my face. (And because I am an avid reader of these stories, I need to stop this list before it grows intolerably long!) These settings unfolded the marvels and perils of all that I had always suspected was just past my immediate horizon—indeed just over the next hill; I just had to muster the courage to start my own hero’s journey and find them for myself.

By publishing speculative fiction, Penumbra has joined this vast literary tradition. With each issue the authors add new dimensions and nuances to the unexplored places on the map. New worlds are envisioned by authors and new landscapes are explored by readers who are yearning to push past the borders of their experience to see places that are out of reach only for those who lack the imagination to make the voyage. In the pages of the magazine readers may discover (in highly personal ways) other arrangements and interpretations of experience that directly relate to their daily lives. In those new imaginary places on the map, we may indeed find a sense of wonder—complete with monsters and high adventure—and we also may broaden our knowledge of our own world and find new inspiration to continue on our own hero’s path. Anything (and everything) is possible.

Chris Pavesic lives in the Midwestern United States and loves Kona coffee, fairy tales, and all types of speculative fiction. Her stories, “Going Home” and “The World In Front of Me,” have been published in Penumbra EMag. Between writing projects, Chris can most often be found reading, gaming, gardening, working on an endless list of DIY household projects, or hanging out with friends.

Stay in touch with Chris on her blog.

Reach for the Planets

Sci-Fi Deak Style
by John Deakins

Before we visit the stars, we need to reach the planets. Each presents unique problems, but all share nasty holdups. Travel time will be measured in months or years. We presently can’t sustain humans in a closed ecosystem that long. Never mind interstellar voyages: You’re going to need suspended animation for humans to reach any planet.

Cosmic rays will leave every (normally shielded) astronaut with brain damage and cancer. Jupiter and its moons are also a hot-spot of radiation, because of Jupiter’s near-brown-dwarf status. Suspended animation will require lead coffins, in addition to other problems.

Mercury, innermost, would allow us to use the Sun’s gravity as an assist inbound. We’d have to fight it outward bound, unless we use the Sun as a gravitational slingshot. Even so, we’re talking 1.5 to 2 years for flight. Solar radiation increases as you move toward Mercury.

Mercury’s solar face is a maelstrom of heat and radiation. There’ll be no landing there. It’s still very slowly revolving; every square meter was blast-furnaced sometime. Smelted metals – gold, platinum, uranium - will be accessible from almost any landing. Unlimited energy exists only a few kilometers from the light-dark demarcation line.

Mercury’s back face remains near 20ºK. The Sun never shines there. Energy would need to come from broadcasting satellites using solar super-power. Except for scientific studies, there’s not much reason to land there.

The only barely habitable area is Mercury’s twilight zone, at the demarcation line, at most a few kilometers wide. We could set up a station, in shadow, not too far from solar power, and mine heavy metals. Outside, we could use the element lead the way we use copper on earth. Lead becomes super-conductive in Mercury’s shade, and there ought to be plenty of lead available.

Problems? Getting there will be the biggest problem, but let’s set that aside. Mercury has oxygen, as metal oxides in rocks, but it has no elemental hydrogen or nitrogen. Those must be imported from Earth. Those essential elements were cooked out and lost into space long ago. Once again, we require a closed ecosystem (which we have yet to create) only the humans must remain awake.

As an inner planet, Mercury will have higher than Earth’s background radiation. All building materials will be radioactive, not enough to kill immediately, but enough to sterilize, cause cancer, or produce brain damage, over long exposure. That means either a terminal deployment, or regular, hideously expensive and difficult crew rotations.

How do you approach Mercury? For the flight, Ignore It works best. Concentrate on the need for humans to be there. Remember: If your story line is powerful enough, the reader won’t ask embarrassing questions about suspended animation, radiation, or missing elements. If the human need is great enough, every problem can be moved over to Live With It. Every Mercuryman will plan to die there or in transit.

If you use Unexplained Science, create a radiation-proof energy field for ships and Mercury base. Good luck. Using real science, Mercury remains almost out of reach.

John Deakins, B.A., M.S.T. is a four-decade veteran of the science classroom and lives in Arkansas. As an author, John has fantasy novels in print from the Barrow series.

To read an excerpt from Barrow book one, please click HERE.

Penumbra of the Orange Donkey

by B. Morris Allen

I started writing when I was young. It’s probably for the best that there’s only one survivor of the period, a piece called “The Orange Donkey”. It reads like what it is, a story written by a six year old. My parents were proud, but despite their acclaim, I didn’t do much more writing until a few desultory pieces for a college writing class.

After college, as I was deciding what to do about not becoming a veterinarian, I tried my hand at writing. I produced the outline and opening chapters of a fantasy novel, and a short story based on a Deep Purple song, “Blind”. Then graduate school called, and I gave up on writing again.

Over the next two decades, I sent out “Blind” every couple of years, with no result – mostly with no answer at all. Meanwhile, my writing process consisted of: 1) waiting for inspiration to strike, and 2) hoping to be near a keyboard or pen when that happened. It’s surprising how rarely the two coincide. My total output was essentially nil, though I did keep my ‘idea’ file regularly topped up.

In the fall of 2010, something changed – Absent Willow Review (now sadly defunct), accepted “Blind”, the story I’d been sending around for so long. When the shock wore off, I sat down to think. Clearly, my inspiration-based process wasn’t working; twenty years is a pretty fair test period. At the same time, I was working as a short-term consultant; I had time free between gigs. I’m pretty serious about my work. Why not do what so many people recommend, and treat writing as a job?

As with an annoyingly high percentage of popular wisdom, it worked. Every day, after an hour futzing around doing nothing, I would find my rhythm, and the words would pour out. At one point, I was writing a story a day – good ones! I found myself racing to complete stories before the mailman arrived, so that I could send them to those irritating magazines that only accept hardcopies. I was about to burst onto the writing scene in a big way!

Or maybe in a small way. My scintillating prose didn’t seem to wow the editors (it may be that the whole type-and-send approach deserved a rethink). Equally important, I accepted a full-time job, and my period of high production came to a close after only two months.

I kept writing new stories, but at a much slower rate – perhaps one a quarter, if I was lucky. One such was “Tocsin”, inspired by Thomas Covenant; at least, I was reading the latest by Stephen Donaldson, and he used the word. My immediate reaction was “Hey! [Fellow writer] Fran Wilde could use that” as the title for a story of hers that I loved, and which involved ships, a bell, and mysterious disappearances. Unfortunately, her story was more hopeful and uplifting, and I decided the title didn’t fit after all. So I was left with a clever title but no story to go with it. “Tocsin”, with its steady rhythm and echoes of John Donne, is what I came up with.

Despite my meager output, I’d been selling stories occasionally to ‘semi-pro’ venues during 2011 and 2012, and I’d reconciled to the idea of taking the world by light breeze, instead of by storm. Then, in February this year, Penumbra accepted “Tocsin” for its Ocean-themed issue. My first ‘professional’ sale!

Real world requirements have prevented much new writing this year, so the Penumbra sale didn’t open the floodgates, but there are several stories due in anthologies in the near future (including “Blind”, I’m happy to say). I’ve also been experimenting with self-publishing – a few stories, two collections, a novella.

It’s been a long, leisurely path from Alfred the Orange Donkey to here, but I like to think that he’d be pleased with the result. Despite the slowdown in production at the story factory, there’s a sizeable batch of new stories awaiting finishing touches, so there’s a chance that light breeze will pick up soon. Keep your eyes open for a change in the weather!

B. Morris Allen grew up in a house full of books that traveled the world, and was initially a fan of Gogol and Dickens. Then, one cool night, he saw the light of Barsoom...

B. Morris has been a biochemist, an activist, and a lawyer. He pauses from time to time on the Oregon coast to recharge, but now he's back on the move, and the books are multiplying like mad. When he can, he works on his own contributions to speculative fiction.

AGENCY

by Beth Cato

"Agency" is one of those terms that gets bandied about by writers and editors. But what IS agency?

This is something I've been delving into recently as I've been working on novel edits. I thought I understood agency. I have a main character with profound magical powers. If a building is on fire, she's the one who will dash inside to save people. She will go hungry if her coins will buy food for a beggar child. She's brave and resourceful when needed, and known to sling about a witty comment or two.

I had the big aspects of agency down, but what I forgot were the everyday details. Yes, my protagonist may be the one to dash into the burning building--but was it her suggestion to go to that street in the first place, or did a minor character coax her that way?

Minor characters are called minor for a reason. When I scrutinized my text word by word, I found that all too many times, the minor characters were the ones making the choice in those little directional shifts in the plot. Being the amiable sort, my protagonist nodded and went along.

Note: Agency shouldn't be confused with making a protagonist brash or bitchy, though some stories (urban fantasy in particular) do this well (or not well, depending on how you like the genre). It's about having the protagonist speak up first, even if it's in a whisper. They need to be the one to say, 'No. Let's go this way.'

Your character can be a god incarnate, but if someone is always telling them where to go, how much power do they really possess?

Beth Cato was the featured author in the Penumbra EMag May 2013 ocean-themed issue with her story "Clementine, Who Swims with Mermaids." In conjunction with Musa Publishing's birthday celebration this issue, and several others, can be purchased here at a 30% discount. Her poems also appeared in our Zombie and Space Opera volumes.

Her debut steampunk novel will be published by HarperCollins Voyager in late 2014.

Learn more about Beth’s stories, poems, and tasty cookie recipes on her website.

Two Years of Penumbra

by Dianna L. Gunn

Two years ago I sent an email to a woman named Celina asking if I could intern with her brand new publishing company. To be honest, as a writer with only a couple non-fiction clips and still in high school, I didn't expect to hear back. I was happily surprised when she invited me to become an intern, and happier still when I was moved from Musa Publishing to Penumbra EMag. Soon enough I was put in charge of this blog, and through it I've had the opportunity to work with many great authors.

Over the two years since my internship began, many things have changed. Musa has grown exponentially, publishing the works of Gary K. Wolf and the late great Homer Eon Flint. The website has been made over and we've published hundreds of books. This little publisher has grown to be a massive force that attracts some of speculative fiction's most renowned authors away from the Big Six. We have proven that an ebook publisher, who's completely open and honest with its authors, can succeed and that we can publish several good books in a single month.

I have also changed. I graduated high school, but I'm staying for an extra semester to help launch some massive writing projects. I have fallen in and out of love. I have become a woman in the eyes of the law, and I am now preparing to move out on my own for the first time. I've experimented with freelance writing and decided I'd rather have a normal job for now. I've written and edited several books of my own, and I am slowly gearing up to start submitting my first novel.

The literary world has changed, too. Ebooks are on the rise. J.K. Rowling is writing something other than Harry Potter. One of the most brilliant minds of the last century, Ray Bradbury, has been lost to the world.

As the third year of Penumbra begins it is time to celebrate what we've accomplished so far and the great successes soon to come. As such, we'll have different authors from this past year make an appearance here to talk about speculative fiction and Penumbra EMag. I hope you'll enjoy reading these posts as much as I've enjoyed working with these authors.

Dianna L. Gunn is a young Canadian fiction writer who specializes in dark fantasy. She also writes poetry, generally dark, which is her way of dealing with life. This insightful author hosts a website covering every aspect of fiction writing and interviews with noted guest authors.

Learn more about Dianna L. Gunn on her website and follow her on Twitter.

Long Live Penumbra EMag!

by Brian Griggs

Anniversaries are a big deal. I don’t think that I need to remind anyone of the elaborate parties that werewolves host every full moon (they’re rip-roaring events, to be sure) and everyone knows that the exploding giants of Erb’durindian can bring the house down. Don’t get me started on how husbands on Shazbar 3 have no excuse for forgetting anniversaries even though the planet completes an orbit every 55 days. You and I know that, whether you’re a squidfolk, an automaton, or somewhere in-between, anniversaries are a big deal.

It should come as no surprise, then, that Penumbra’s anniversary is an event to watch. Rumor has it that Paulis is grilling up some sim-steak and galta-fish for the potluck. Kyr is bringing his patented pre-fab coffee, which I hear is to die for. And for the first time in a long time, Wendell, Custodian of the Galaxy, will not have to clean up the whole thing afterwards.

It’s a time to celebrate, a time to enjoy hanging out with characters from all branches of speculative fiction. Because where else can you find great homages to Ray Bradbury one month and then the next be immersed in the zombie apocalypse? If you’re a fan of the imagination, Penumbra is your place.

I’ve enjoyed having stories run in issues of Penumbra EMag and it’s not just because I love seeing my name on their beautiful covers (thank you, Celina Summers and Kelly Shorten!). I know that when I have a story in an issue of Penumbra, I know that I’m a part of something bigger than myself. Fans of speculative fiction who are fans just like me will read our stories. I know that it’s about the quality of the story, the believability of the unbelievable, and not limited to what some big corporation says is good. (This is where I ask people to purchase a year’s subscription, right?)

I love that Musa Publishing is keeping great short stories and poems in the hands/ereaders/tentacles of spec fic fans because it is an art form that I don’t want to see disappear. There’s a powerful lineage with spec fic short works. Imagine a world without the kid genius going to Battle School or without the mind-altered man and his mouse, Algernon. The world would be drastically different, like “stepping on a butterfly while hunting a Tyrannosaur” different. Penumbra is doing its part to find this generation’s up-and-coming greats.

So here’s to Penumbra EMag! Happy anniversary! May your issues keep coming and may your trade routes be free of deathbots.

Brian Griggs is the World's Tallest (Non-Guinness Endorsed) Librarian and has been an educator for 12 years. He knows that there's hope for the next generation when a student raves about how crazy the ending to Ender's Game is or when he hears a student shout, "Long live the fighters!"

Find more updates from Brian on his website or if you have a recent deathbot sighting, you can message him on Twitter.

An Anxiety of Influence

by Steve Chapman

My story The Driver was written “in the style of” Ray Bradbury and published in Penumbra’s Bradbury tribute issue. In the wake of that story (of which I’m quite fond), a number of “in the style of” projects caught my eye, anthologies of new stories written in tribute to Jack Vance, Gene Wolfe, and Roger Zelazny, to name the first three that come to mind.

My first impulse was discomfort. Was all this tributing a bad idea? Shouldn’t writers be developing their own distinct voices, rather than trying to ape their forebears?

There have always been tribute books and stories in the relatively small neighborhood of speculative fiction. Motivations of genuine celebration and pragmatic brand extension drive such enterprises, often a bit of both. For an author, trying on a different, distinctive voice can be fun and instructive. That had been my experience on the Bradbury story. But what does the reader get out of it?

It struck me that there’s a voluminous SFF tradition of stories written “in the style of” H.P. Lovecraft going back twenty years at least, that once upon a time I was pretty familiar with. When I was younger, having run out of actual Lovecraft, I would hunt down these secondhand stories hoping to extract some fraction of the pleasure I got from the real thing.

That didn’t happen often, but over time I was struck by the fact that my enjoyment of such stories often came from writers bringing distinct voices to bear on the original material. Fred Chappell and Ramsey Campbell jump to mind as authors who applied their own style and concerns to Lovecraftian tropes, creating striking stories and novels. In a different mode, but equally pleasurable, are Neil Gaiman’s Lovecraft pastiches – deconstructive and humorous more often than not.

So there are clearly modes of writing ‘in tribute’ that result in quality work.

I wonder if I suffered little of this anxiety of influence in writing the Penumbra tribute because Bradbury has always seemed to me ground zero for story construction. A Bradburyesque story requires a clear, simple SFF concept, evocative but straightforward prose, and a fable-like insistence on teasing out the emotional meaning of the concept. This has always seemed to me like an essential thing to know how to do – not as well as Bradbury, of course, but necessary in the manner of basic draftsmanship to a painter.

What I learned from that story is that writing ‘in the style of’ Bradbury meant a striking concept, unfussy writing, and a clear emotional through line, requirements not so different from simply “write a good story.” For someone else, another writer might fill this position. Perhaps to an author there is real value in imitating/interrogating the styles of the authors who feel most essential to you.

A lapsed musician and engineer, Steve Chapman lives with his wife and daughter at the New Jersey shore. Though he spends most days high above Times Square, in the evenings he can hear the ocean. Recent stories can be round in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword & Sorceress 27, the Harrow Press anthology Mortis Operandi, and the January 2013 issue of Penumbra.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

by Edoardo Albert

In honour of Penumbra’s second birthday, and without the slightest (well, hardly) intention to ingratiate myself with its editors, may I say that this is undoubtedly the friendliest and most professional magazine I’ve dealt with. Penumbra pays well, looks marvellous, responds quickly and, apart from publishing my stories, provides me with this free soapbox to advertise myself and my wares. What’s not to like? And, more importantly, long may it continue, particularly if it publishes more of my stories.

Dianna Gunn, intern par excellence, asked me to write something about what I’ve been up to since appearing in the magazine (since you ask, the Revolution and Exploration issues) and it just so happens that I have my first novel due out next March.

It’s only taken me thirty-two years to get to this stage! Anyway, Edwin: High King of Britain was a result of the research that went into writing my book, Northumbria: the Lost Kingdom, on the history and archaeology of one of the key Dark Ages kingdoms of England (although, of course, England didn’t actually exist then). The story of the three successive Northumbrian kings whom the Venerable Bede accords the title bretwalda – that is High King of Britain – seemed so extraordinary I was astonished that nobody had written about them before. So I decided to.

One of the advantages of doing things this way round was that I had already done most of the historical research necessary – it was just a matter of trying to bring it all to life. Hopefully I have done so, it would be a grave discourtesy to some extraordinary but all but forgotten people if I haven’t. The book will be published by Lion Fiction in March. The publishers, spotting a link, have given the trilogy the overarching title of The Northumbrian Thrones but in truth, there really was something very like a game for thrones going on in the bloody, violent but extraordinarily creative kingdoms of seventh-century Britain. The foundations of England were laid, amid historical darkness, in a time when the only certainty for a king was a violent death. And yet, perhaps because of the very precariousness of the times, these men and women created things, such as the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Sutton Hoo jewellery, of quite extraordinary beauty. While in some ways the kings of the Early Medieval Period (the preferred academic term today) were like Mafia dons, enforcing protection rackets on their subjects, yet the culture they created and their sensitivity to language were as far removed from the profane and profanity filled life of a John Gotti as it is possible to be.

To do such times and such people justice is no small task. I can hardly hope to have succeeded, but at least I hope not to have failed.

Edoardo Albert is, on paper at least, a surprisingly exotic creature: Italian, Sinhala and Tamil by background, he grew up in London among the polyglot children of immigrants (it was only when he went to university that he actually got to know any English people). He avers that he once reduced a reader to helpless, hysterical laughter. Unfortunately, the piece that did so was a lonely-hearts ad.

Find Edoardo Albert’s books (he’s particularly proud of Northumbria: The Lost Kingdom) and stories via his website although the lonely-hearts ad will not be making an appearance in the foreseeable future. Connect with him through his blog, Twitter or Facebook.

How I Became a Writer

by BJ Leesman

It was by accident.

Don't remember much…just the sound of a crash, then total darkness.

I woke up to my teenager screaming, "What's happening?"

Our SUV spun in circles and jerked to a stop. The satellite radio hung off the dashboard at a crazy angle. I tried to put it back but it wouldn't stay.

Across the intersection, the car we never saw or heard moved in silence. Air bags deployed, it rolled to a slow stop on someone's front lawn.

"My head, my head..." Blood ran down Stewart's face.

Fumbling for my phone, I called my husband. "Paul, we've been in an accident. It's bad."

My family arrived before the ambulance rushed my son to the trauma hospital. I tagged along and almost passed out next to his stretcher. Family took Stewart home around midnight diagnosed with a concussion.

In the packed waiting room, I sat alone cradling my left arm against my chest. Around 2 am, Paul returned and convinced the nurse to give me two aspirin. My wrist began to curl at an odd angle as dawn lit up the faces of the sick and injured.

Thirteen hours after the ambulance ride, I saw an ER Doctor.

"No, you're wrong. My right hand's not broken, it's my left wrist."

"You have seven breaks in your left wrist and hand." The doctor pointed to the X-ray. "The break on your right hand looks bad. If this was the only break, you'd have the same kind of cast on your right arm. But you need to be able to use one of your hands."

My husband pushed me in a wheelchair to his car. An old-fashioned plaster cast from my fingers to my armpit kept my left arm stationary. A shorter removable cast immobilized my right hand.

On the long ride home, I watched the light change as the shadow of the Sandia Mountains receded from the foothills. Imagining how to capture the scene in a watercolor, an idea fractured the picture in my mind. I panicked.

My career as an artist is over. I'm doomed. I'll never be able to paint again. It doesn't matter about the art shows in New York, Chicago, and LA. What do I do now?

Months later I sat in front of my computer wearing purple and blue casts. It took weeks to figure out how to type again. I learned to punch the keyboard with my index fingers while resting both casts on a pillow and balancing ice packs on the back of my wrists.

Bored, restless and bored again...I got an idea for a story and haven't stopped writing since. And that's how I became a speculative fiction writer. It wasn't for a couple of bad breaks, I'd still be painting.

Read BJ Leesman's story The Little Man Who Wasn't There in the October issue of Penumbra EMag.

Gary K. Wolf Wants YOU!

by Liz DeJesus

Are you a fan of the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Did you know that this movie was based on a novel titled Who Censored Roger Rabbit? and that it was written by a novelist named Gary K. Wolf?

Do you have questions you’d like to ask the author? If so, this is your chance! I’m honored to interview Gary K. Wolf and ask him questions about his writing and his upcoming novel Who Wacked Roger Rabbit?, but I wanted to give the fans a chance for input.

For example:

What does Roger Rabbit have for breakfast in the morning?

Does Jessica Rabbit always look that good?

Does she have a bad hair day?

What does Eddie Valiant do on his days off?




The questions will be sent to Gary, and maybe your question will get picked! For what, you ask? Not only to be answered but for a chance to win a giveaway once the interview is posted.

Hmmm…interview, fan questions answered, and a giveaway. What’s not to love? Please post your questions right here in the Comments section.

Gary K. Wolf wrote his first short story when he was in the third grade. The teacher told the students to write about their summer vacation. Gary wrote about his trip to the moon! He always did have an over active imagination.

He's gone back to the moon many times since. Also to places in the galaxy far, far beyond that.

To date he's written many short stories and nine novels.

Gary is well known for two kinds of writing. His science fiction novels include Killerbowl, A Generation Removed, The Resurrectionist, Space Vulture an old-school, throwback, pulp science fiction novel which he co-wrote with his childhood friend Catholic Archbishop John J. Myers. His newest is newest Typical Day. Both Killerbowl and The Resurrectionist are currently in production as major motion pictures.

His other kind of writing isn't as easily categorized. Gary calls it fantasy fiction. He was told early on by a marketing executive at a major publishing house that this kind of writing wouldn't sell. Because there was no place for it on the bookstore shelves. It's not a regular novel, not crime, not science fiction, not romance. Gary asked the executive what he would do if he got Gulliver's Travels, The Wizard of Oz, or Alice In Wonderland? He thought for a moment and said he couldn't sell those either.

He was wrong. Who Censored Roger Rabbit? did indeed get published. It went through sixteen printings, and became a visual reality in Disney/Spielberg's $950 million blockbuster film Who Framed Roger Rabbit? The film won four Academy Awards and the Hugo Award. Walt Disney Pictures has also purchased film rights to the sequel novel Who P-p-p-plugged Roger Rabbit?

One of my newest novels The Late Great Show! is solidly in the Roger Rabbit style fantasy category. Those who enjoy Toontown tales will most assuredly like The Late Great Show!, too.

Gary K. Wolf currently lives in Boston, but regularly travels around the world.

Liz DeJesus was born on the tiny island of Puerto Rico. She is a novelist and a poet. She has been writing for as long as she was capable of holding a pen. She is the author of the novel Nina (Blu Phi'er Publishing, October 2007), The Jackets (Arte Publico Press, March 31st 2011) First Frost (Musa Publishing, June 22nd 2012) and Glass Frost (Musa Publishing, July 2013).

She is also a member of The Written Remains Writers Guild.

Liz is currently working on a new novel.

The Chill of Discovery

by Randal Keith Jackson

It's a wonderful, crazy time to be alive. The current state of scientific knowledge is advancing almost as fast as the universe is expanding. On any given day, just read the science newswires and you'll find something that might have made Isaac Newton's head spin.

But for me, within the daily parade of science epiphanies, there is also … a dark side. Some of the new stuff we're learning about our world and universe kind of freaks me out. To wit:

The multiverse theory. If theoreticians are right, our universe is just one of an infinite number of universes. And in that infinite set of alternate universes, every conceivable variation is being played out (as long as it obeys the laws of physics).

For just one example, among those many universes, there is one with no extra period at the end of this sentence..

Everything else in that alternate universe is exactly the same, except that tiny period simply isn't there. And there is also another universe where there's a semicolon instead. And yet another one where this blog doesn't exist because I was hit by a bus on the way to work. And so on. Creepy, isn't it?

Slime with memory. When food is plentiful, a slime exists as a single-celled organism. But when food is scarce, they congregate and hit the road. The tribe crawls along, amoeba-like, at the rate of about an inch per day, in search of chow.

These lovelies may resemble vomit and have no brains, but incredibly, new research shows that they have memories, of a sort. Slime molds secrete a viscous, translucent substance as they move, which they use like a breadcrumb trail to remember where they've been. This information helps them negotiate obstacles and find things. In an experiment, researchers hid a sugary meal inside a simple maze, and a slime mold found it by using its trail to figure out where it had already been. Thus, it was able to find the food faster.

These molds might not be able to solve Fermat's Last Theorem, but I'm pretty sure they could find their cars in a mall parking garage faster than I can.

Rogue planets. Have you heard about the nomad planets? Planets without stars that just wander aimlessly through the universe?

I'm not making this up. In 2011, a group of astronomers reported the discovery of 10 such planets roaming our galaxy, apparently unhitched to any star. But the finding was not surprising; computer simulations of planetary dynamics show that interactions between planets within a solar system are likely to fling planets out into interstellar space on a regular basis. It may have even happened during the formative stages of our own solar system.

And astrobiologists tell us there's no reason to assume such planets couldn't support life; an Earth-like rogue planet could have liquid oceans if the water were heated from below by the planet’s core and insulated from above by a thick layer of ice. Even if Earth were suddenly tossed into interstellar space, it would be able to sustain some of its microbial life because of the heat that comes from inside the planet.

But here's the most unnerving part of all: These eerie drifters are probably common. Astronomers think there are billions of them in our galaxy. In fact, free-floating planets may outnumber what we think of as "normal planets." Gaaaa!

In the next few months, I'm planning to write at least one short story based on these unsettling prompts. How about you? Have you come across a scientific discovery lately that completely freaks you out?

Find out more about Multiverse theory, slime memory, and rogue planets.

In some universe, Randal Keith Jackson is an Icelandic haddock fisherman. But in this one, he's Internet manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

His first published short story, "All the Devils," appears in the October 2013 issue of Penumbra.

Unexplained Science

Sci-Fi Deak Style by John Deakins

There’s another approach to Time Travel that creates space travel instead. Your Unexplained Science involves a device that moves in Time, separately from moving in Space. The Earth, however, is in constant high-velocity motion in Space. Thus, when you activate your machine, you’ll leave Earth behind and end up in the Great Vacuum . . . which is exactly what you want.

Once you get away from Earth’s gravity well, escape velocity drops off by the inverse square law. If you allow the Earth to move out from under you on its own journey by 50,000 km, its pull becomes negligible. You’ve just created cheap interplanetary flight. Instead of kinetic launching, which currently costs $2 million/kg, you’ll expend only the energy to run your time machine.

Stories in Martian or Asteroid conclaves have always depended on Ignore It or Unexplained Science. It’d destroy most economies to send out more than a handful of people. The enormous flight times are also a problem. We can’t sustain a closed ecosystem for the time required. A conservative guess for Mars is two years, one way. You’ve just created a way to cut travel time to months instead.

Good news: The Solar System as a whole, including you, has the same relative velocity in terms of the galaxy and the cosmos. Popping off Earth only enough to ignore its gravity won’t leave you hopelessly between stars, unless you try to go too far. All you wanted was off Earth, and you’re there!

Space is bigger than anyone really appreciates. You can send out repeated flights, and never have to worry about Flight 2 materializing inside Flight 1. By the time Flight 2 launches, the whole Solar System will have moved thousands kilometers in its orbit around the Milky Way center: You’ll be in pristine vacuum.

You’ll have to spend a lot of computer time calculating how “far” to move temporally, so that you take advantage of the sling-shot effects of the Earth’s rotation and revolution. You’ll want whatever help Conservation of Momentum can give. Space travel will still be expensive. Going to Mars? Let the Earth’s motions help throw you in the right direction, but leave its gravity behind.

We’ve solved all the problems: Right? The technology of move-in-Time/move-in-Space has to be kept Top, Top Secret. Sure, you’re going to launch your Mars expedition by popping your craft, say, five minutes backwards in Time and pushing off toward Mars, sans gravity. What happens if you only move, say, a tenth of a second?

Your device could end up inside the Earth’s crust. Its atoms and the crustal atoms would fuse; you’d generate a neat, homemade nuclear explosion. A terrorist could simply set up under New York, send a few pounds of rocks a fraction of a second in Time, and New York would rain down over the Eastern Seaboard. Retaliation could lead to Nuclear Winter and the extinction of Homo sapiens.

Children, be careful with your toys: more problems next time.

John Deakins, B.A., M.S.T. is a four-decade veteran of the science classroom now retired and author of his own fantasy series Barrow.

To read an excerpt from Barrow book one, please click HERE.

Daredevil Author

by Andrea Colasanto

Sonny Whitelaw.

Yep, that Sonny Whitelaw. Author of the Stargate novels, winner of the Draco Award—and soon to be a Musa published author with a new edition of The Rhesus Factor, available December 20th!

When Sonny’s not writing, she can be found exploring all the wonders New Zealand has to offer. Here she is being awesome, exploring caverns on Fox Glacier.

Working with Musa will give Sonny a wider audience in an e-publishing format. On her website, she mentions her Stargate novels are not available in New Zealand, where she resides. Musa Publishing will ensure that The Rhesus Factor will be available at the fingertips of all who wish to access it, anywhere!

Below is an excerpt from an interview with Sonny—you can read it in its entirety in the upcoming October issue of Penumbra EMag, so be on the lookout!

Sonny, were you a fan of the Stargate television series before writing the proposal for the novel?
Honestly? No. Not because I didn’t like it, but because I didn't see a television for two decades (aside from the odd trips overseas). But when I saw the movie, I loved the premise because back in the 1970s, I’d been intrigued by how the nineteenth century alien-gods-built-the-Egyptian-pyramids notion had escaped eighteenth and early nineteenth century science fiction and insinuated itself into pop culture and pseudo science. Back then, I thought it would make a great modern science fiction tale (after all, James Cameron turned Pocahontas into Avatar). The storytelling potential of Stargate was unlimited because it could capture every mythology from every culture for the past 10,000 years of human history, plus any number of aliens on unlimited planets. So yeah, when offered me the chance to play in their sandpit, I leaped at the opportunity.

Why do you think speculative fiction is so successful?
I wrote my second Masters thesis, The Attraction of Sloppy Nonsense, on that very question! (If by any chance anyone is vaguely interested, just Google the title). By its nature, speculative fiction explores and often challenges the human condition. It pulls apart what we believe, including our mythologies, and exposes the potential moral quagmires that science and technology are creating. That’s the storytelling side of speculative fiction. When it comes to movies and television, mind-blowing special effects breathe life into stories that many people would never normally read, if only because they don’t have time. Gaming takes it a step further: take great stories, add science fiction and a user interface, and even the most unadventurous can become immersed in fabulous tales set in realistic worlds without leaving the safety of their room.

As an author, what is your take on e-publishing and what it means for a changing market?
E-publishing has certainly come of age. I haven’t read the latest statistics but the last time I looked, around 60% of sales through some of the big name international print publishers were e-books. And many are struggling to compete with e-publishers who’ve been around for a while and have embraced the market and technology and run with it. Indeed, a top New Zealand publisher has just been forced to close, citing competitive pressure from e-publishers, and particularly self-publishing. While self-publishing is certainly taking a chunk of the market by virtue of the sheer volume of works out there, there is little or no quality control in the finished product. Readers quickly learn that if they want a quality product, they’ll buy from quality e-publishers.

What can you tell us about the upcoming The Rhesus Factor?
I'll let two reviewers explain:

Cause and effect, and for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Those principles are commonplace and indisputable. The Rhesus Factor by Sonny Whitelaw demonstrates with painful clarity that we ignore cause and effect at our peril. Perhaps the most frightening book of recent years, Whitelaw's thriller builds an all too plausible scenario of what might happen should our ecosphere decide to apply an equal and opposite reaction to our actions.

Fast-paced and grounded in solid research, the book charts not only the breakdown of ecosystems in the wake of global warming, but the breakdown of society that will be an inescapable result. It is precisely in the devastating detail of the wreckage of everyday life that the book is at its most explosive. While Joe Voter may dismiss global warming as a theory that doesn't affect him, the very real prospect of losing home, livelihood, educational facilities and medical care is bound to strike a chord. - Dr. Sabine C Bauer

Although fiction, I now know that some of the events in the book could happen in the future. The effects of global warming are evident, as is how this has put stress on the world, leading to world events that include terrorism, environmental vandalism and a lifestyle that we do not want for our future generations. I encourage all members to buy this book when it becomes available. - Barbara Stone MP for Queensland, Australia. (Excerpt from speech to Queensland State Parliament).

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Check back again for more information on the new edition of The Rhesus Factor by Sonny Whitelaw releasing December 20th!

On the Cusp of Science Fact and Fiction

by Randal Keith Jackson

Like most writers these days, I have a day job. And as a writer of speculative fiction, I could do a lot worse: I work at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

It's like camping out on the fuzzy border between science fact and science fiction. I mean, this is a place where SF story ideas lie strewn on the ground like gold nuggets, waiting to be picked up and smelted into narrative. Here's a small sampling of the mind-bending discoveries in which JPL has played a role in recent years:

• More than eight-hundred new planets have been found beyond our solar system, some of them weirder than anything dreamed up by the creators of Star Trek.

• Interplanetary probes have returned pictures of vast methane lakes on Saturn's exotic moon Titan.

• Satellites have revealed mysterious, tantalizing cave openings on the surface of Mars.

• Spacecraft have photographed cryovolcanoes on the Saturn's moon Enceladus that spew fountains of ice hundreds of miles into space.

• Scientists have found mounting evidence that a vast, salty ocean swirls just below the ice crust of Jupiter's moon Europa.

With such rich fodder to draw upon, you'd think I'd write some science fiction, right? Well, for some reason, when I sit down at the computer after-hours to tell a story, my imagination always seems to turn in a different direction. I write about what makes people tick; the riddles, mysteries, and occasional ghastliness of human behavior. My muse wants to explore inner worlds. So I write psychological thrillers and horror.

But it's tricky; I have to be very careful that I keep the two worlds separate. Day job: robots, planets, and space. Night job: Psychopaths, monsters, and ghosts.

I mean, we can't have a story about sociopaths living in a haunted Victorian mansion that overlooks the icy fountains of Enceladus, can we?

Then again … that actually sounds kind of cool. I'll have to think about that one.

Randal Keith Jackson is an Internet Manager at NASA and a produced playwright. He's originally from Georgia and now lives with his wife and son in Santa Barbara, California. He has been known to rescue neighbors from snakes and build elaborate Halloween experiences in the garage. His first published short story, "All the Devils," will appear in the October issue of Penumbra.

Maintain Your Balance

with David Elliott

How do you find the right balance between dialogue and action in a short story? Is there a trick to it or is it different for every story?

With action, as with dialogue and description, it’s knowing how much not to write. For example:

Brian woke up at 7:36 AM. He closed his eyes against the glare from the bedroom window, opened them again, closed them again, opened them, closed them, opened them, closed them, opened them, closed them, and then, finally, kept them open for at least four point three seconds before experiencing his first blink of the day. Giving his scrotum a satisfying scratch with the index finger of his right hand, he let out a brief but comedic fart, yawned with an ‘Eeeeeeraw’ kind of sound, and started to get out of bed. He threw the duvet aside with his left arm, planting his feet on the carpet, thus enabling his torso, arms, neck, head, eyes, nose, mouth, and ears, to rise from the mattress and greet the new day. Putting one foot in front of the other, right leg after left leg, in a motion that could only be described as ‘walking’, he headed towards the bathroom; a journey that took him five steps, including a sharp right turn. Taking the toothpaste in his left hand, toothbrush in the right, he squeezed out five point seven millimetres of blue sludge on to the two thousand and fifty three bristles, lifted the brush to his mouth, and painstakingly scrubbed each of his teeth: third molar, second molar, first molar, second bicuspid, first bicuspid, cuspid, lateral incisor, central incisor. He was just about to start on the opposite side of his upper mouth, when his Mother’s voice came floating up the twelve luxuriously carpeted stairs from their tastefully decorated hallway.

‘Brian? Are you up yet?’

Far too much action, in my humble opinion. Not to mention description. However, if Brian – in the context of the story – was to have a bad case of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, this passage might actual work.

On the other hand, you could have something like this:

‘Yes, Mother,’ said Brian. ‘Of course I’m out of bed. But then you’ve never really cared about me, have you? You cold-hearted bitch. Well, if you think I’m going to stand here, with only a quarter of my teeth brushed, and let you stick your bony, black-headed excuse for a nose into my private affairs, then you’re very much mistaken. I’m a fully grown man! Do you understand? A human being, with thoughts, desires, passions, ideas. And you’re stifling me, Mother. Do you understand? Suffocating me!’

‘Oh,’ said Mother. ‘Sorry. Would you like a cup of coffee?’

‘Coffee? What good is coffee when there are children starving in the world? How can you possibly talk about frothy hazelnut cappuccinos lovingly dusted with chocolate, while people are being systematically raped, murdered, and persecuted, all because of the colour of their skin, their sexuality, their religious beliefs? Answer me that, Mother, if indeed you are my Mother! Coffee? I spit in your coffee, and urinate on all who’ve been involved in the manufacturing of your sickeningly sinful brown dust!’

‘How about a cup of tea then?’

Brian has quite a lot to say for himself here. Too much, in fact. On the other hand, if Brian’s character is that of a pretentious, opinionated, ungrateful maggot of a son who deserves a good hard slap with a wet fish, then these examples of dialogue might well be appropriate.

So, how do you find the right balance between action and dialogue?

Erm … I’m not really sure. Sorry. I think it depends on the writer, the story, the characters, and what kind of effect you’re looking to create.

I hope you weren’t looking for a short answer to this question.

David Elliott was born in Liverpool in 1981. In addition to Penumbra, his short fiction has been published by journals such as The Rusty Nail, Eunoia Review, Danse Macabre, The Satirist, Apocrypha and Abstractions, Down in the Dirt, The Horror Zine, Linguistic Erosion, Flashes in the Dark, MicroHorror, Twisted Tongue, and Delivered.

The Juggling Act

with Randy Henderson

How do you find the right balance between dialogue and action in a short story? Is there a trick to it or is it different for every story?

Next time you're reading while tired, notice how you read. Quite likely, you skim dense paragraphs of description, but never skip dialogue, and rarely skip action sequences. This is because what most often engages readers and carries them through a story are the characters' journey and actions, not the description of the scenery, or the exposition or historical notes, etc. (as cool as these things can be).

The implication is that dialogue covers, or at least signals, all the really important bits – the dramatic bits, the revelation of plot points, and where the character is expressing something, revealing their thoughts and feelings, their desires and fears, their intentions and regrets. Dialogue also reveals conflicts and connections between characters, and expresses the tension of the plot. Dialogue that is not doing any of these things, then, dialogue that is mundane or thinly veiled exposition, is a prime candidate for the waste bin.

On the other hand, you shouldn't try to put everything into dialogue. Your characters may begin to seem like little more than puppets there to mouth the author's As You Know Bob infodumping and plot explanation. Action has its place, to manifest in the physical world the character's motivations (including sometimes the desire simply to survive, though this is actually a weak motivation story-wise). And without setting and description, we cannot visualize who is speaking, or where they are speaking, or what they are doing as they speak.

So let the characters say what these specific characters would naturally say given their situation, feelings and motivation (shaped by their personality, background, etc.), and share with the reader only the most interesting and relevant things said. Let the action, the description and narration say the rest.

To blur the lines a bit, you can also have non-verbal dialogue, conveyed through actions. And dialogue itself is action since something is happening, and that something is ideally dramatic, and possibly filled with conflict and tension, and moving the story forward. You can slice someone with words as surely as with a sword. In fact, it is quite often more memorable and enjoyable to the reader if you do.

Ultimately, though, dialogue and action in genre fiction are really just different aspects of the same thing – ways to move the story forward in a dramatic way, ideally with some form of tension.

In other words, it is what underlies the dialogue and action that is truly important, and will tell you if you are sharing the right bits of dialogue and action, and if those bits are conveying what you need them to.

What is it that should underlie the dialogue and action? The motives and needs of the characters. The characters should want and/or need something in every scene, and their words and actions are their way of trying to get it, or of dealing with the aftermath of being thwarted in getting what they want or need, and forming new plans to get what they want or need. If we care about the characters and whether they get what they want or need, then the dialogue and action become meaningful to us.

On a more technical level, you can use dialogue and action to control pacing. Dialogue tends to speed up the pace, as does action sequences written in short, active sentences, while dense and lyrical narrative slows it down and gives the reader a breather before pumping up the adrenaline again.

And finally, yes, every story does have its own tone and style, and the uses of dialogue and action reflect that. For example, a romantic fantasy may be heavy on banter and barbs between the characters, allowing us to share in the growth of their relationship, while an urban fantasy story may be heavy on the narration and action scenes but with short snappy dialogue.

For my Penumbra story "The Beloved Changeling Who was Neither", I imagined the story being told by an old man in an Irish pub to find the story's voice and style. In such narrated tales, and in most first person or omniscient fiction, the narration itself is a kind of dialogue between the narrator and the reader, reflecting the narrator's voice, and following the rules of dialogue more than the formal rules and restrictions of second, tight third or omni narration.

My closing thought is to read your work out loud. It is the best way to catch false dialogue, or areas of too-dense narration, and issues with pacing and balance.

Happy writing, folks.

Randy Henderson's fiction can be spotted frolicking in places like Penumbra, Escape Pod, Realms of Fantasy, Every Day Fiction, and anthologies. He is a 1st Place winner of Writers of the Future, a Clarion West graduate, a relapsed sarcasm addict, and a milkshake connoisseur who transmits suspiciously delicious words into the ether from his secret lair in Kingston, Washington.

Learn more about Randy Henderson on his blog Smorgh is Bored. Stay connected on Facebook and Twitter.