Author: J.S. Pailly

Living with a Star

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 6 Comments

Hello, friends!

I love space, you love space—lots and lots of people love space.  It’s easy to get large numbers of people hyped up about outer space!  But as soon as you start talking about funding space exploration, the mood shifts.  Folks get uncomfortable, and it turns out that space can be a controversial topic after all.  So today, I want to talk about one of the reasons (just one of the reasons) why space exploration is worth the high price tag.  It has to do with the Sun.

Earth has a complicated relationship with the Sun.  Sure, the Sun gives Earth something to orbit.  It also provides Earth with light and heat and generally makes this planet livable.  However, the Sun also throws spectacular temper tantrums, flinging all sorts of high energy radiation and electrically charged particles out into space.  Sometimes, when the Sun throws a temper tantrum, it flings all those charged particles and all that super scary radiation directly at Earth.

Fortunately, Earth’s magnetic field protects us, deflecting the danger away or redirecting it toward Earth’s poles (this is what causes auroras).  And so, for the vast majority of human history, the Sun could throw all the temper tantrums she liked, and we haven’t had to worry about it much down here on the ground.  That changed on September 1st, 1859.

On that day, English astronomer Richard Carrington was studying sunspots on the Sun (using the proper safety filters on his telescope, I presume) when he observed an absolutely stupendous flash of light.  Most likely, Carrington witnessed what we now call a coronal mass ejection, or C.M.E.  Seventeen hours later, that C.M.E. hit Earth.  It’s said that the resulting auroras stretched from the poles to the tropics and were bright enough to turn night into day.  I’ve read some versions of this story that claim auroras were even visible at Earth’s equator.

The Carrington Event, as we now call it, in Richard Carrington’s honor, must have been a beautiful sight.  However, this was also the first time a C.M.E. of that magnitude hit Earth while Earth was wired up with telegraph lines.  As Earth’s magnetic field reacted to the impact of the C.M.E., induced electric currents wreaked havoc up and down the world’s telegraph network.  Telegraph operators received electric shocks.  Telegraph equipment started shooting sparks.  In some instances, those sparks started fires.

The world today is even more wired up with technology than it was in 1859, so how bad would it be if something like the Carrington Event happened again?  No one really knows, but the Sun doesn’t need to produce another Carrington Event to mess with our technology.  Much weaker solar events have damaged or disabled our satellites in orbit, triggered power outages here on the ground, and caused radio communications blackouts.  Solar storms pose radiation hazards for astronauts, obviously, but they can also put the passengers and crew of aircraft at risk, especially if those aircraft are flying anywhere near Earth’s north or south poles.  Solar storms are enough of a problem that insurance companies are paying attention, and they get nervous whenever the Sun stars acting up (see the “want to learn more?” section below if you want to learn more).

So in the early 2000’s, NASA created the Living With a Star program, or L.W.S.  Because, for better or worse, the Sun is right there, and we have to live with it.  As of this writing, there are three active L.W.S. missions in space, plus a few other solar science missions that operate outside the L.W.S. program.  They’re all monitoring the Sun, gathering new data about solar physics, doing their best to give us a least a little warning whenever the Sun decides to hurl a giant, radioactive fireball our way.  In time, perhaps these missions will teach us why the Sun’s temper tantrums happen in the first place, so that we can better predict when they’ll happen next.

I heard something on a podcast recently: there is a difference between knowing the cost of a thing and understanding the value of that thing.  Space exploration costs an enormous amount of money.  There’s no denying that.  But for a society like ours, on an increasingly technological world like ours, the value of something like the International Living With a Star program far exceeds the cost.  This is just one example of why space exploration is worthwhile, despite the high price tag, and in upcoming posts I’m planning to offer other examples, too.

Thank you for reading, friends.  I hope to talk to you again soon.

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

Click here to read “The Carrington Event: History’s greatest solar storm” from Space.com

Click here to visit NASA’s website for the Living With a Star Program.

I mentioned that solar storms can make insurance companies nervous.  Click here for an article on how much money the insurance industry could potentially lose due to an “extreme space weather event.”

And lastly, here’s a link to the podcast I mentioned near the end of my post.  The podcast is called Stories from Space, and the episode is titled “WTF is Happening at NASA?”

The art used in today’s post is my own original work.  If you like my art, please consider visiting the I-Love-Space store on RedBubble.  Shopping on RedBubble is a great way to support artists (like me) so that we can keep doing what we do.  Thank you!

IWSG: I Believe in Fairies

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 24 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by Jennifer Lane, L Diane Wolfe, Jenni Enzor, and Natalie Aguirre.  Are you a writer?  Do you feel insecure?  Well then good news!  This is the support group for you!  Click here to learn more and to see a list of participating blogs.

As you can probably tell from the name of my blog, I love space.  I also love science and science fiction.  I’ve been loving space, science, and science fiction for such a long time now that I’ve developed a highly scientific, highly evidence-based view of the world.  I don’t pay attention to astrology.  I don’t take tarot cards or Ouija boards seriously.  I don’t knock on wood or worry about black cats crossing my path.  I don’t believe in any superstitions except one: I do believe in fairies.

That’s because I happen to know a fairy.  I call her my muse, and she can be super annoying sometimes, always pestering me with new ideas and nagging me about writing whenever I take even the shortest possible break from writing.

It’s hard to deny the existence of fairies when there’s this one fairy who just will not leave you alone, not even for one goddamn minute!

Anyway, the real point I’m trying to make is that there is a highly scientific, highly evidence-based approach you could take to writing.  You could learn all about the craft of writing.  You could study plot and characterization.  You could memorize all the heroic archetypes and all twelve steps of the monomythic journey.  You could find out what words like synecdoche and antimetabole mean and then apply those concepts to your writing.

And… okay, sure, you should spend some time learning about those things.  But don’t get too technical about writing.  Don’t take too scientific of an approach.  Leave room for sudden inspiration.  Be prepared for things to suddenly make sense, and you can’t explain why.  That’s probably your muse sprinkling fairy dust on your head, causing the magical side of writing to happen.

P.S.: Of course, the great science communicator Carl Sagan once said exactly what I’m trying to say, except much more succinctly: “A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”

Who Is J.S. Pailly?

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 14 Comments

Hello, friends!  Every once in a while, I think it’s good for bloggers to reintroduce themselves.  My name is James Serain Pailly, and I love space.

I love other things too, of course.  I love good food.  I love a glass of fine wine.  I love taking naps in the middle of the afternoon.  I collect books.  I have a few really nice leather-bound classics that I’m really, really proud of.  I also collect Lego, and I have several Lego sets on display in my house that I’m really proud of, too.  I love making art.  I love… well, sometimes I have mixed feelings about writing, but when the  muse is with me, I do love to write.  Oh, and I have a few close friends whom I love very much (you know who you are!).

But on this blog, I mainly talk about my love for space.  And on that note, dear reader, there is something I want to make sure you understand about me: I am not a scientist.  I’m not an aerospace engineer.  I don’t have any professional experience with space exploration whatsoever.  I’m just really enthusiastic about this stuff.  I read a lot about space, and I’m always trying to learn more.  Thanks to all that learning and all that reading, plus all that enthusiasm, the way I talk about space sometimes makes people think I must work at NASA, or something.  So I just want to clarify, for anybody who might get the wrong impression, that I don’t work at NASA.  I don’t work in the aerospace industry.  I’m just a big, big fan of space.

I also want to clarify (because this is another assumption people sometimes make about me) that my obsession with space and space exploration does not extend to U.F.O.s.  I used to be more openminded about U.F.O.s (or U.A.P.s, which seems to be the more politically correct term for them these days), but time and again the evidence never seems to hold up to scrutiny.  So no, I don’t take U.F.O.s seriously.  Or alien abductions, or conspiracy theories about reptilians running the government, or anything else along those lines.

I’m also not into astrology, though I do enjoy the astrology aesthetic.

One last thing I feel I should tell you: I’m in the LGBT community.  To be more specific, I’m a genderqueer bisexual.  That’s not super relevant to anything we talk about on this blog, but I also don’t want anyone to think I have something to hide or that I’m ashamed of who I am.  In other words: I’m here, I’m queer, now let’s get back to talking about space.

I haven’t been blogging much these last few months.  That’s due primarily to work-related stress.  You may be wondering: “So James, if you don’t work at NASA, where do you work?”  Well, dear reader, I work in news.  News is a depressing line of work, even at the best of times, and these are not exactly the best of times.  All the stress and all the anxiety of my day job has kept me from blogging, which is a real shame because blogging about space (i.e. blogging about a thing I love!) is one of the best ways I know to manage my stress and reduce my anxiety.

But I’m hoping to turn that around.  Today, I’m recommitting myself to writing this blog and posting on a more regular basis, because despite everything, I still love space.  If you also love space, then I hope you’ll join me on this adventure.

Thanks for reading, friends.  I’ll talk to you again soon.

IWSG: I Wish I Were…

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 14 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and cohosted this month by Ronel Janse Van Vuuren, Pat Garcia, and Liza @ Middle Passages.  Are you a writer?  Do you feel insecure?  Well, then this is the support group for you!  Click here to learn more and to see a list of participating blogs.

Each month, IWSG asks its members a question, and this month’s question is kind of a strange one:

If for one day you could be anyone or *thing* in the world, what would it be?  Describe, tell why, and any themes, goals, or values they/it inspire in you.

I wasn’t sure how to respond to this question at first, and I was considering skipping it and talking about something else.  But then I got thinking….

I’m pretty unhappy at the moment: unhappy with the state of my personal life, the state of my art/writing progress, the state of my financial situation, the state of my country and of the world at large….  Given all that, there are plenty of other people I’d rather be right now.  Transforming into an inanimate object doesn’t sound so bad at the moment, either.

But despite all of the problems I’m facing, there are a few things I wouldn’t want to give up.  Chief among them: my stories.  The weird, Sc-Fi worlds I’ve created inside my own head.  All the characters (humans, aliens, robots, etc.) who inhabit those worlds.  No matter what, I wouldn’t want to give any of that up.  I especially do not want to give up the two or three new story ideas that popped into my head within that last few months.

And the thing is all of the story worlds I’ve created are the product of my experiences.  My good experiences, my bad experiences.  My hopes and dreams, my successes and triumphs, and also my failures.  My disappointments.  My mistakes.  Swap my life with the life of somebody else, replace my experiences with the experiences of another person, and those stories wouldn’t be the same.  And the two (or maybe three) new story ideas that I’m currently working on… the ones that I am most excited about right now… they wouldn’t exist at all if not for the particular blend of fears and anxieties that I’m dealing with right now.

So despite everything, the only person (or thing) that I want to be right now is myself, because I am the only person who can tell the stories currently sitting in my head.

P.S.: Okay, after writing this whole post, I reread the initial question and realized that I’d misunderstood it.  I missed the “for one day” part.  If I could become someone else for just one day, I’d want to be an astronaut on the International Space Station.  I think my writing would benefit from me knowing, first hand, what it’s like to be in space (provided I got to go back to being myself the next day).

IWSG: How Writing Changes You

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 12 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by Joylene Nowell Butler, Louise Barbour, and Tyrean Martinson.  Are you a writer?  Do you feel insecure?  Well, then this is the support group for you!  Click here to learn more and to see a list of participating blogs.

I am not the same person I was 20 years ago.  In some respects, I’m sickened to think of the person I was 20 years ago.  My outlook on life and on the world has completely changed.  I left my church, I switched political parties, I came out of the closet, I lost a lot of friends, I went no contact with my family… it’s been a rough 20 years.  It was also about 20 years ago that I began my writing journey.

Which ties in nicely with this month’s question.  Each month, IWSG asks us an optional question, and this month’s question is:

Is there a story or book you’ve written you want to/wish you could go back and change?

Oh yes.  Very much yes.  When I think about my writing from 20 years ago, I’m sickened by some of the things I wrote.  Fortunately for me, very little of that old writing was published, and even less of it is still out there on the Internet today.

But while I’m glad that those old stories aren’t out there to be seen, I do not regret writing them.  You see, one of the magical things about writing is that it reveals to you who you really are and what you really believe.  I was raised to believe certain things.  I thought I knew who I was and what my place in the world was supposed to be.  But whenever I tried to express those beliefs in a story, the story felt… disingenuous.  Halfhearted.  Unconvincing, even to me.

Writing can reveal deep, personal truths to you.  Sometimes it will reveal truths that you’re not prepared to deal with just yet.  And you don’t have to be super introspective or meditative about your writing process for this to happen.  It could be as simple as thinking “Huh, my protagonist seems like a hypocrite,” or “Huh, my antagonist raises some really good points.”  (Or maybe—I don’t know, purely hypothetical example—that Sci-Fi utopia you’re working on keeps sounding like a dystopia, no matter what you do).  That could be the first sign that your own writing is trying to teach you something about yourself.

I suspect a lot of older, more seasoned writers already know what I’m talking about in this post.  As for any new, younger writers who might be reading this, keep an open mind.  Pay attention to what your own writing is trying to tell you.  If you do, the act of writing may change you.

What’s It Like Seeing Earth from Space?

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 6 Comments

Hello, friends!

I don’t know about you, but whenever I stop and look up at the nighttime sky, I feel… something.  It’s hard to explain.  And if I take out my telescope to look more closely at the planets and nebulae and galaxies up there, I feel that same indescribable something even more.  Whatever it is I feel, it’s a powerful, almost spiritual thing.  But as powerful as that experience is, I’m told it’s nothing compared to the feeling you get when you’re up in space, looking not farther out into the cosmos but rather looking back at the Earth.

In 1987, American author and space exploration advocate Frank White coined the term “overview effect” to describe the experience so many astronauts report having when they first see the Earth from space.  These astronauts don’t just look at Earth and think, “Huh, neat view.”  They describe this as a life changing experience, a dramatic shift in belief and perspective, a sudden realization that our world is precious and fragile and that we all must set aside our differences and work toward the common good.

If only more people could have an experience like that, maybe the world would be in a better state than it is currently in.  That would be great, wouldn’t it?  Well, there are individuals and organizations working to make this an experience more people can have.  One option is, of course, to make commercial spaceflight more affordable.  Another is to try to simulate the overview effect in virtual reality.  But if more people could see our planet for what it truly is—not as a globe crisscrossed by national borders but rather as a singular world that we all must share—that might bring about some real change.  It might, right?

Now obviously there’s been some criticism of this idea, and I do think some of the criticism is valid.  Even among those who’ve been to space, who’ve experienced the overview effect for themselves, and who’ve come back eager to do good things for our planet and our species… even among those people, some of them still say some troubling things.  For example, during the Cold War, Soviet cosmonauts would sometimes remark that seeing the Earth laid out before them reinforced their belief that communism must be spread all across the world.  American astronauts occasionally say similar things about spreading freedom and democracy.  Even if we all want to do good things for our planet, we’ll still disagree about what good things our planet needs us to do.

Frank White has acknowledged this issue in some of his writings.  If you’re one of the people lucky enough to see the Earth from space, cultural and political biases, religious beliefs, personal history… all sorts of factors may influence how you describe the overview effect to others, or how you interpret the experience for yourself.  But it does seem that no matter who you are or where you come from, seeing the Earth from space is a powerful and humbling experience.  Maybe White and others in the overview effect movement are right.  Maybe it would do some good if more people could have this experience for themselves.

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

A few years ago, William Shatner (a.k.a. Captain Kirk from Star Trek) went to space aboard a Blue Origin rocket.  What he saw moved him to tears.  Regardless of how you might feel about Blue Origin or its owner, Jeff Bezos, I think what Shatner had to say about the experience is worth hearing.  Click here.

Friend of the blog Matt Williams had the chance to interview Frank White a few years back, and I’m super jealous about it.  Click here to listen to that interview on Matt’s podcast, Stories from Space.

Jordan Bimm is one of the most noteworthy critics of the overview effect and the overview effect movement.  Click here to read his paper “Rethinking the Overview Effect,” which lays out his main points.

I’d also recommend reading Frank White’s response, entitled “Rethinking ‘Rethinking the Overview Effect.’”  Click here for that.

The art used in today’s post is my own original work. If you like my art, please consider visiting the I-Love-Space store on RedBubble. Shopping on RedBubble is a great way to support artists (like me) so that we can keep doing what we do. Thank you!

IWSG: Hope for the Future

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 16 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by Rebecca Douglass, Beth Camp, Liza @ Middle Passages, and Natalie @ Literary Rambles.  Are you a writer?  Do you feel insecure?  Then this is the support group for you!  Click here to learn more and to see a list of participating blogs.

Each month, the Insecure Writer’s Support Group asks us a question.  The question is totally optional!  IWSG member can answer it if they like, or they can talk about something else if that’s what they want (or need) to do this month.  No pressure, no judgment.  This month’s optional question is:

Describe someone you admired when you were a kid.  Did your opinion of that person change when you grew up?

Oh boy… so I had an assignment in school once.  I had to pick an American historical figure I admired and give an oral presentation on that person to the class.  The teacher said we could pick anybody, so I picked Gene Roddenberry.  Then the teacher said to take this seriously and made me pick somebody else.  I’ve been bitter about that ever since, but now—finally!—I can satisfy little kid me’s dream and tell you why I admired Gene Roddenberry so much.

Truth be told, though, little kid me didn’t know much about Roddenberry.  All I knew was that he created Star Trek, and I absolutely adored Star Trek.  When I was happy, Star Trek was the most fun and exciting thing on television.  And when I was no so happy, Star Trek offered hope and the promise that the future would be better than today.  No matter who was bullying me at school, and no matter what I was dealing with at home, Star Trek reassured me that the future would be better.

It’s also one of the main reasons I started writing.  Some of the first “books” I wrote as a kid were just Star Trek fan fiction.  I then branched out into writing Jurassic Park fan ficiton, Aliens fan fiction, Star Wars fan fiction, Battlestar Galactica fan fiction, Doctor Who fan fiction….  Later, I created my own original characters and sent them off adventuring in my own original Sci-Fi universe.  Meanwhile, I started reading Scientific American, Sky and Telescope, Universe Today… I tried reading more challenging, more technical sources of science info, too.  I didn’t understand everything I read, but the more I learned about space and science, the more convinced I became that Star Trek got it right: the future will be better than today.  Or at least, the future can be better, if we don’t lose faith in ourselves.

This isn’t a message unique to Star Trek.  All Sci-Fi, regardless of how realistic or unrealistic the science may be, offers us hope for the future.  Even darker, more dystopian visions of the future still offer hope, in their own way: hope that we may yet choose a different path forward.

As an adult, I’ve come to learn that Gene Roddenberry was kind of a jerk.  He cheated Alexander Courage (the guy who wrote the Star Trek theme song) out of half of the royalties he was owed.  He was wildly unfaithful to his wife.  He had a notoriously short temper and created a toxic work environment on set.  In short, Roddenberry was not the hero little kid me might have thought.

Still, Roddenberry had some good ideas, and (with the help of many other talented people) he made something that made a real difference in my life.  Now more than ever, here on this blog and in all my other creative work, I hope I can pass on some of that Star Trek-ian optimism to others.

IWSG: I Don’t Actually Like Writing

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 25 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by Ronel, Deniz, Pat Garcia, Olga Godim, and Cathrina Constantine.  Are you a writer?  Do you feel insecure?  Well, then this is the support group for you!  Click here to learn more and to see a list of participating blogs.

For most of my life, I’ve been telling people that I love writing.  But (confession time) that’s not entirely true.  I don’t love writing.  Most days, I don’t even like writing.  Writing is a tedious, time-consuming process that requires me to think really hard about words when I’d rather be watching Netflix.  I mean, have you seen Arcane?  That show is so good!!!  Wait, no… I need to stay on topic.  What was I talking about?  Oh yeah: writing sucks.  I hate it.  So why do I keep doing it?

Whenever I go around claiming (erroneously, as you now know) that I love to write, people will inevitably start suggesting things that I ought to write about.  I’ve been told that I ought to write smut, because that’s how you make the easy money (I’ve met writers who write erotica, and I know it’s not such an easy way to make money).  I’ve been told I ought to write a book about Abraham Lincoln, because it’s about time the truth came out about Lincoln (the person who suggested this… I do not know what he was talking about, and I don’t want to know).  I’ve been told I ought to write about what it was like to live through a global pandemic, because that’s an interesting experience that I’ve had (and other people haven’t, I guess???).

As a writer, it takes a lot to get me to sit down and do my writing.  All those suggestions from random people in my life—I’m sure somebody could write a good book about those things, but I cannot muster up enough enthusiasm to write about them myself.  I’d much rather curl up in bed and rewatch Three Body Problem on my laptop.  That scene in the Panama Canal gives me chills every time.  So upsetting.  Anyway… sorry, we were talking about writing.

For some strange reason, those same people who keep telling me what I ought to write about also keep telling me what not to write about.  They don’t think I should spend so much time writing about space.  They say I’ll never get rich, like E.L. James, by writing about space.  And maybe that’s true.  But here’s the thing: I love space.  I hecking LOVE outer space.  I mean, outer space is so cool!  Unless you wander too close to a star, in which case outer space gets face-meltingly hot.  Gravity’s weird up there.  There might be aliens.  All the planets (besides Earth, of course) are straight-up death traps, but we’re going to try to live on some of them anyway.  Remember to bring your own oxygen, and remember to hold on to your oxygen tank like your life depends on it (because it does).

Space is just so exciting to me!  It’s exciting enough that I’m willing to spend hours upon hours of my own free time writing about it.  That’s time I could’ve spent watching… I don’t know, Stranger Things, or something?  Doesn’t matter.  The point is I love space so much that I’m willing and eager to write about it, despite the fact that I don’t actually like writing all that much.

So going forward, I may still tell people, from time to time, that I love writing.  But between you and me, dear reader, you’ll know what I really mean.  You’re in on my secret now.  To me, writing is merely a means to an end.  It’s a tool I use to express a more important thought.  Namely, that I love space.

So friends, what do you love?  What do you love so much that you’re willing to write about it?

IWSG: Let’s Talk About Politics

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 14 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by Diedre Knight, Lisa Buie Collard, Kim Lajevardi, and JQ Rose.  Are you a writer?  Do you feel insecure?  Then this is the support group for you!  Click here to learn more!

So this blog post is scheduled to come out the day after the U.S. Presidential Election; however, I am writing this a few days before the election.  Therefore, the me who is writing this post does not yet know what the outcome of the election will be.  Perhaps, when this post comes out, we still won’t know what the election results will be.  It’s hard for me to guess what might happen, here in the past.

But I do know one thing.  I know that, whatever the outcome of the election happens to be, a whole lot of people will be real happy about it, and a whole lot of other people will be real mad.  I know I personally will be either really happy or really mad, depending on who wins this one.  But it’s important to remember that elections are not the only things that matter in a democratic society.  There are other ways to express your beliefs and advocate for causes you care about.

Which brings me, finally, to the real topic of today’s blog post: writing.  I’m a science communicator and science fiction writer.  I write about space, science, and the future of humanity.  I believe in a future where we don’t destroy ourselves through nuclear war or climate change.  I believe in a future where we come together as a species and where we go on to become explorers of the cosmos.  In other words, I believe in the Star Trek future.

Sometimes, my writing gets a little preachy.  Sometimes I want to get preachy in my writing.  And sometimes I don’t.  But even when I’m not deliberately trying to make some sort of moral or political statement, my beliefs and values still come through in everything I write.  You can’t be a writer and not have your beliefs and values creep into your work somehow.

So if you’re a writer and if you have strong feelings (positive or negative) about whatever just happened in the U.S. Presidential election, my advice to you is this: go write.  It doesn’t have to be overtly political writing.  Write whatever makes you happy.  Write whatever you’re passionate about writing.  Just write.  Your words matter more than you know.  Your words can help people understand your point of view.  Your words may change somebody’s mind.  Your words can make the world a better place.  So go write, keep writing, and make a difference.

P.S.: Oh no, I just wrote a blog post about politics and scheduled it for the day after a Presidential election.  Okay, everybody, please try to be kind in the comments below.  At the very least, try to be respectful.  If you want to get into a fight with somebody about politics, there are plenty of other places on the Internet where you can go do that.

IWSG: I Love Lovecraftian Horror

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 20 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by Nancy Gideon, Jennifer Lane, Jacqui Murray, and Natalie Aguirre.  Are you a writer?  Do you feel insecure?  If so, then this is the support group for you!  Click here to learn more.

Each month, the Insecure Writer’s Support Group asks us an optional question.  IWSG members can answer the question if they want, or they can skip it if there’s something else they want/need to talk about instead.  This month’s optional question is:

Ghost stories fit right in during this month.  What’s your favorite classic ghostly tale?  Tell us about it and why it sends chills up your spine.

I almost skipped this month’s question.  Ghost stories don’t do much for me.  I have a very sciency worldview, unfortunately, so stories about the occult or the paranormal don’t give me much of a thrill or a fright.  But there is an author who bridged the gap between science and the supernatural well enough to freak me the f*** out.  That authors’ name is H.P. Lovecraft.

Lovecraft did most of his writing in the 1920’s and 30’s.  He died young, unfortunately, in 1937.  As I understand his biography, Lovecraft was a huge fan of Edgar Allan Poe and was inspired by Poe’s work; however, Lovecraft believed that the traditional ghost story needed to be updated for modern times and modern, scientific sensibilities.  So rather than leaning on ghosts and devils, Lovecraft filled his stories with theoretical physics, extraterrestrial intelligences, and occasional references to a certain newly discovered planet (Pluto).

My favorite Lovecraft story is called “The Colour Out of Space.”  In that story, a meteor crashes on Earth, introducing an extraterrestrial something to the local environment.  The local environment begins to change as a result.  Plants and animals become weirdly mutated, and the humans living on a nearby farm gradually lose their sanity.  No one can explain what’s happening.  No one can explain what that thing from outer space is or even describe what it looks like.  The best anyone can say is that it’s a color unlike any color seen before by human eyes (hence the title of the story).

I can’t think of many stories where alien life forms are presented as truly unknowable beings.  There are the alien monoliths from 2001: A Space Odyssey.  There are the replicas from Solaris, or the sphere from Michael Crichton’s Sphere.  But that thing from “The Colour Out of Space”… whatever that thing was, it was the most incomprehensible of all incomprehensible aliens in science fiction.  And that truly scares me.

I love space and I love science fiction.  One of my dearest hopes for the future is that we will one day make contact with aliens—aliens like E.T. or Mr. Spock.  You know: the kind of aliens we can be friends with.  But that may not be what happens.  If/when we discover alien life, the aliens may be something totally and completely beyond human comprehension (and we humans may seem equally incomprehensible to whatever alien intelligence happens to discover us).  That’s a scenario that terrifies me, and it should terrify anyone who lives on this rather small and extremely vulnerable planet.