Nina Munteanu

Nina Munteanu

Congratulations! You’ve landed on the website of Nina Munteanu, Canadian SF author and ecologist.  Very soon, we will have some cool stuff to show you (besides what follows below). Meantime, here’s a little bit about Nina:

The ecologist:  Nina currently does research and gives talks in science and limnology (No! That isn’t the study of limbs! She studies freshwater) and is driven by a passion to help keep our planet’s environment healthy. She is a passionate traveler, and has tasted her way around the world from Bangkok to Paris…  

The author:   Nina has published short stories all over the planet (with translations by magazines into Greek, Romanian, Polish, and Hebrew. Her latest novel, “Darwin’s Paradox” (a science fiction ecological thriller by Dragon Moon Press), explores humanity’s co-evolution with machine intelligence and Nature’s intelligence. She also writes critical essays and reviews, several of which have appeared in Strange Horizons, IROSF, and The New York Review of Science Fiction. Her personal heroes include Dr. Lynn Margulis and author Ray Bradbury.

The Blogger:  Nina is also  The Alien Next Door, author of the award-wining blog which hosts lively discussions on pop culture, travel, science, science fiction, writing and philosophy.

This site, currently under construction, will eventually have diverting articles and news on the topics of:

For READERS it will also show you:

• what she’s written
• where you can purchase it or read it online
• exciting previews of NEW MATERIAL

If you are an aspiring WRITER, you can soon purchase these right here:

• “The Alien’s Guide to Cool Writing” (a practical writer’s guide for the beginner writer from an erudite Alien’s perspective), which gives you easy to adopt rules guaranteed to improve your writing in this or any other galaxy; and, 
• “How to Live Your Passion”, the DVD of Nina’s inspirational lecture (given at the Calliope Conference at the University of British Columbia, Southpointe Academy, Tsawassen and other schools and libraries across Canada) on how to get started and how to keep writing. (”Never give up! Never surrender!”–Galaxy Quest)

Here is what some readers have said about Nina’s writing tips from “The Alien’s Guide to Cool Writing”:

“Beautifully informative!”–Brady Frost, blogger

“Great points; this is an inspiration for me. It’s so motivating to read articles such as yours and get hyped for the work ahead.”–Blackburn, blogger & writer

“Great writing lessons! They are practical and simple for any budding writer.”–Jean-luc Picard (Graham Saeger), blogger & writer 

If you are part of a Book Club or School, Library or other literary organization, you can book Nina for a lecture or workshop.

Here is what a few have to say about Nina’s talks:

“Nina Munteanu  presented to a packed room of participants… [Her talk] was lively and knowledgeable and she made it approachable, relevant and humorous.  Nina was a pleasure to work with. She was enthusiastic, supportive and full of ideas… We had a great time!”—Pamela Richardson, Calliope Conference Coordinator, University of British Columbia.

You can visit Nina’s award-winning blog, The Alien Next Door, which hosts lively discussions on pop culture, travel, science, science fiction, writing and philosophy. Examples of her Alien posts to do with writing, science & science fiction, and reviews of movies and books follow below. You might also enjoy her popular in-depth reviews of movies and books there.

The Barnes & Noble book store in Bozeman, Montana, is located on Main Street, a hip and funky street that gets downright interesting by the time you hit 10th Avenue (more on that in a later post). I signed several copies of Darwin’s Paradox last week at the store and must thank Jeni, Karen and Louise (hope your ankle is better, Louise!) for their help in setting everything up on such short notice. If you live in or near or are simply passing through this cool city in the Montana mountains and gateway to Yellowstone National Park and Glacier National Park, drop in to Barnes & Noble and pick up a signed copy. Last I heard there were still some left.

Bozeman itself is a colorful and attractive city with cultural diversity and a level of “coolness” that comes from being a university town set amidst lofty mountains with a western flavor. Bozeman is located in the Gallatin Valley, surrounded by magnificent mountain ranges. North of the city, the Bridger Mountains attract thousands of skiers each winter. The Gallatin Range and the Madison Range, south of Bozeman, rise more than 10,000 feet and have peaks covered with snow much of the year. Montana State University is located in Bozeman, with a very attractive campus and programs that range from agricultural sciences, engineering to the fine arts. I spent some time there, particularly in the student union building, where the bookstore and the pub were. I would so enjoy teaching here; I just might…My son wouldn’t mind it too much either. According to PubClub.com: “this is place to go if you love to be outdoors and ski…ski bums are all over the campus and so are the hippies…its a true party college.” The Museum of the Rockies, located on campus, features many wonderful paleontology exhibits. Jack Horner, the world’s top dinosaur hunter and an adviser to the movie “Jurassic Park,” works at the Museum. Occasionally, Museum visitors see Professor Horner inspecting the Museum’s latest exhibits.

The visitor’s guide describes Bozeman as “a charming town. In a John Wayne—Norman Rockwell—Bob Marley sort of way.” The town’s history goes back to the time when Gallatin Valley (where Bozeman lies) was used by Indian tribes, including the Flathead, Sioux, Shoshone, Nez Perce, and Blackfeet, who all hunted for game and edible plants. According to tribal lore, Indians agreed not to fight in the Gallatin Valley, instead conceding to share the area’s beauty and resources with one another. European fur traders came in the 1700s, with Lewis and Clark leading a historic expedition to the Three Forks of the Missouri in 1805. Mountain men roamed through the area trapping beaver and acting as guides.

The town is named after John Bozeman, a Georgian who’d left his family to find fortune in the West. The town was named in his honor in 1864, shortly before he was killed near Yellowstone under mysterious circumstances.

Yellowstone National Park, just south of Bozeman, was created in 1872 and is the first and oldest national park in the world. Bozeman is often referred to as the “Yellowstone Connection”. After an unsuccessful bid to become the state capital, Bozeman was chosen as the site for the new agricultural college, which became Montana State University, home of the fighting Bobcats.

Bozeman currently supports a population of 30,000 interesting “urban cowboys” from young to old and funky to intellectual. From appearance, dress, comportment and speech I was treated to an attractive and exciting commingling of southern wild west and northern yuppy vogue. Travel & Leisure Online wrote: “The look on the street is Carrie Bradshaw in cowboy boots. No need to pack a blow-dryer; the Keep it Wild philosophy extends from nature to hair, which is also left untamed.” I felt at home.

Over twenty-five years after the first Star Wars motion picture blasted its way through our movie screens, the saga continues to live strongly in literature and cinema. To date, six films and three animated series for television were made, with a live-action series and a 3D CGI animated series in pre-production as well as a 3D CGI full-length theatrical movie, The Clone Wars, scheduled for U.S. release on August 15, 2008. The six films alone have generated over $4.3 billion in revenue to date, making them the third highest grossing film series.

Although the current Star Wars New Jedi Order series (its 27th and last installment released in spring of 2004) leaves much to be desired from a literary standpoint, loyal fans of the Star Wars phenomenon, including, alas, yours truly, have persisted with the series, helping it maintain a place in the New York Times Bestsellers list. How did this come to be? Why do we read on despite our better judgement about literature and art? To understand the enduring success of a shallow plot-driven adventure series is to understand the basis for its creation: the original Star Wars concept as realized by George Lucus. The answer lies in one word: myth.

In his original “Star Wars” trilogy, George Lucus fashioned for us a long awaited 20th Century myth. He captured the current North American zeitgeist and portrayed a deep and abiding truth about the deeper meanings of what lies beneath our daily lives. Lucus did this by “taking the symbols gathered from his own experience of the world and transforming them into a metaphor that revealed something about the mysteries of human existence” (Mary Henderson, author of “Star Wars: the Magic of Myth”). According to Henderson, Lucas dramatized the eternal struggle of good versus evil and, by suggesting a way to emerge victorious from that struggle, fashioned a tale with all the elements of myth. Lucas’s modern myth resonates with scores of earlier myths from around the world including the classic myths of Siegfried, King Arthur, Odysseus, Theseus and the Minotaur, Dante and Beatrice, David and Goliath, and a host of others. Lucus takes elements of all these ancient classics and stirs them up with technology into a retro-punk-rock cyber-version never before seen on screen.

If, as Joseph Campbell said, “The artist is the one who communicates myth for today,” then Lucas is a great artist. It starts with his intriguing and quirky ‘alternate reality’ of ancient archetypes within a highly advanced technological world that begins “A long time ago in a galaxy, far, far away . . .” Swords, sorcery and chivalry meld with robots and zooming rocket ships . . . a dark lord wearing flowing robes looks — and sounds — like an android . . . a damsel in distress, who packs a laser gun, sends a message through a cocky droid . . . a young “Siegfried” embarks on a quest armed with his father’s sword, a lightsaber that bites through metal, and whose ‘steed’ is an X-wing spaceship. Medieval legend meets space and technology. Says Henderson, “. . . it is in illo tempore, a timeless eternity, both now and forever.”

Lukas paints his myth with rich archetypical characters–princesses, knights, dragons, fools, and wizards who help or hinder the hero on his journey–and archetypal images that resonate with traditional mythical constants. To unfold his hero’s transformation as he discovers his deeper nature, Lucas sheds subtlely for bold strokes, which includes the use of allegorical names: Luke (Lucas’s alter-ego) Skywalker is destined for the stars; Han Solo is an independent, self-reliant cynic; and Leia Organa is leader of the living, organic Rebellion against a mechanized, lifeless system. In Leia, Lucas takes the passive damsel in distress and elevates her to a kind of “Joan of Arc”. She is Luke’s inspiration and by the end of the second movie (“The Empire Strikes Back”) she will rescue him, playing “Beatrice to his Dante”.

Lucas makes it very clear that the heart of the Star Wars story lies in the central conflict of paired and linked opposites such as good vs. evil, light vs. dark, love vs. hate, compassion vs. fear. Which brings us to one of the principal threads of this particular hero’s journey: the Force, itself made of opposite pairs: dark and light sides. The Force is something sacred, powerful and intangible. Ben, Luke’s mentor and a Jedi Knight tells Luke that to become a Jedi, Luke must know the Force: “The Force . . . surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.” In order to use his father’s old lightsaber, Luke must quiet himself from his desires and fears and tap into the spiritual network that connects us to all things. The Jedi and their use of the Force incorporate concepts of major religions and much of Eastern philosophy, while remaining true to a classic Western value: the importance of the individual. Biblical elements also abound. Darth Vader’s slide into the dark side of the Force is a fall from grace, like a fallen angel, who must be redeemed through atonement and reconciliation; while Luke, his son, struggles with the shadow of the dark side of the force as it creeps into his mind. Like a captivating samba, the pairs of opposites step in rythmic syncrony between mind and heart.

According to Henderson, 20th Century myths are obliged to incorporate the machine. Lucas’s dystopian vision in Star Wars marries the technological zeitgeist with a totalitarian dialectic, portraying the state as a fascist machine striving for ultimate order. Technology is itself an archetype, providing an extension of humanity’s power to control and manipulate itself and its world and in so doing, lose a critical part of what it means to be human. In Star Wars, the Empire uses technology as a malevolent instrument, with Vader, himself largely made of machine prosthetics, additionally subverting the life-supporting qualities of the Force to ensure Imperial domination. Vader’s human spirit has been consumed by the Imperial machine. Luke must resist the lure of “the system”, and the lure of his father’s invocation to join him, and revolt against the status quo.

Lucas’s visionary myth is ultimately appealing because it can be interpreted at so many levels from personal to societal. In striving for utopian order, the Empire’s totalitarian oppression of freedom of expression (and to be human) is played out through the relationship of Luke, Darth Vader and Leia. Inspired by his beloved country and people (Leia) our warrior poet (Luke) confronts and rebels against the system that helped “make” him (Darth Vader, his father). Only, in this galaxy, the damsel-in-distress is quite capable of taking care of herself.

Ellen Goodman, in her review of Star Wars in 1977, summed it up very neatly: “It’s not just about bad guys and good guys, but about bad technology and good technology. The good guys are on the side of truth, beauty and the cosmic force, but they aren’t opposed to machines. Nor do they fight missiles with stones. The real battle is between one technological society that supports a Lone Rider and praises his instinct, and a technological society that overrules individuals and suppresses instinct.”

Scoffed by literary snobs as space-opera fluff, Star Wars is no less visionary and relevant than any “real life” drama you could care to mention. This allegorical 20th Century myth explores good vs. evil in its truest sense, indeed, in a biblical sense. Says Luke Skywalker in the first page of “Refugee” (NJO): “There will always be people who are strong for evil. The stronger you become, the more you’re tempted.” This saga explores faith and the power in believing in something you can’t see. Says Yoda, Luke’s wise mentor (and himself someone who is not what he first appears to be): “There is no try; only do and do not.” This saga is about temptation (the dark side is always easier and looks more appealing to those lacking patience and vision) and overcoming fear and its cousin, impatience, toward wisdom. Star Wars is a classic “hero’s journey of enlightenment” and portrays in a rich tapestry of images and metaphor the hero’s classic struggle of paired opposites: love vs. hate; compassion vs. fear; forgiveness vs. retalliation; grace and humility vs. vain-glorious hubris.

Since the release of the Star Wars trilogy twenty years ago, George Lucas made two prequels. The third is scheduled to release summer, 2005, and will explain how the dark Jedi, Darth Vader, came to be. The most recent Star Wars movie, “Star Wars 2: Return of the Clones”, which chronicles the adolescent years of Luke’s father, Anakin, was released in May, 2002 to an audience agog with Star Wars fever. It would seem that ironically, the movie’s shortcoming and its strength is one in the same: special effects. In a stunning comment to me shortly after viewing the film, my then-eleven year old son told me that he found the movie too dazzling, so much so that it spoiled the story for him and he pined for something more simple (for the eye as well as the mind). I found this incredibly inciteful coming from the generation that tends to be “bored” with lengthy stories that lack non-stop action. Although the effects accomplished that of providing us with incredibly vivid and stunning settings, such as Coruscant as seen from several spaceships entering its atmosphere, I had to agree with my son: there is no surrogate for a well told tale. No amount of razzle-dazzle can replace this. What my son pointed out to me is that even a well told story can be lessened by distracting elements, such as special effects.

A decade since the trilogy a fast-growing Expanded SW series by Bantam/Spectra made its way to fans, eager to read about some of the most memorable characters in fiction and has swollen to over 100+ books by various authors (not including the 25+ books of the New Jedi Order series by Lucas Books (Del Rey) and a host of books set before “A New Hope”). Written by as many writers as there are books, this series provides rich detail of the Star Wars universe. But, the original myth of the hero’s journey slides beneath the details of adventure, conflict and war. Most books focus on plot-driven space conflict, hard-boiled humor and clichéd prose, their success relying on fan’s love of established characters and scenarios. The role of the Force in shaping humanity and the universe is all but invisible. Only the occasional author elevates one or more characters into a marriage of personal theme with the greater arena of myth.
So why do we keep reading? Perhaps it is simply to linger with characters who have previously resonated with us so deeply. And it is still worthwhile to peruse the mineral for a glance at the occasional jewel.

References:
Campbell, Joseph. 1973. “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”. 2nd edition. Nollingen Series no. 17. Princeton, N.J. Princeton University Press.
Henderson, Mary. 1997. “Star Wars: the Magic of Myth”. Bantam Books, New York, N.Y. 214pp.
Goodman, Ellen. 1977. “A ‘Star Wars’ Fantasy Fullfillment”. Washington Post, July 30.

• Show, don’t tell: a common error of beginning writers is to use dialogue to explain something that both participants should already know but the reader doesn’t. It is both awkward and unrealistic and immediately exposes you as a novice. For instance, avoid the use of “As you know…” It’s better to keep the reader in the dark for a while than to use dialogue to explain something. Which brings us to the next point.
• Have your characters talk to each other, not to the reader: for instance, “Hello, John, you loser drunk and wayward son of the most feared gangster in town!” could be improved to, “You stink like a distillery, John! Wait ‘til papa’s thugs find you!”
• Avoid adverbs: e.g., he said dramatically, she said pleadingly; instead look for better ways to express the way they said it with actual dialogue. That’s not to say you can’t use adverbs (I believe J.K. Rowling is notorious for this), just use them sparingly and judiciously.
• Avoid tag lines that repeat what the dialogue already tells the reader: e.g., “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “Do you have a dog?” she asked.
• He said, she said: reduce tag lines where possible and keep them simple by using “said”; another sign of a novice is the overuse of words other than said (e.g., snarled, hissed, purred, etc.). While these can add spice, keep them for special places as they are noticed by the reader and will distract otherwise.
• Pay consistent attention to a character’s “voice”: each character has a way of speaking that identifies them as a certain type of person. This can be used to identify class, education, culture, ethnicity, proclivities, etc. For instance one character might use Oxford English and another might swear every third word.
• Use speech signatures: pick out particular word phrases for characters that can be their own and can be identified with them. If they have additional metaphoric meaning to the story, even better. For instance, I know a person who always adds “Don’t you think?” to almost everything they say. This says something about how that person… well, thinks… I knew another person who always added “Do you see?” at the end of their phrase. Again rather revealing.
• Intersperse dialogue with good descriptive narrative: don’t forget to keep the reader plugged into the setting. Many beginning writers forget to “ground” the reader with sufficient cues as to where the characters are and what they’re doing while they are having this great conversation. This phenomenon is so common, it even has a name. It’s called “talking heads.”
• Contradict dialogue with narrative: when dialogue contradicts body language or other narrative cues about the speaker, this adds an element of compelling tension and heightens reader excitement while telling them something important. Here are a few examples:

  “How’d it go?”
  “Great,” he lied.

  “I feel so much better now,” she said, jaw clenched.
  “It’s okay; I believe you.” His heart slammed.

  Well, you get the picture, anyway. Hope this helps. Keep writing!

Apparently the vegetable kingdom in Mars, instead of having green for a dominant colour, is of a vivid blood-red tint—H.G. Wells

According to Nancy Y. Kiang (biometeorologist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies) green aliens are so passé. Well, she may have a point. In a fascinating article in Scientific American (April, 2008), Kiang tells us that “light of any color from deep violet through the near-infrared could power photosynthesis.” For instance, the cooler type M stars (red dwarfs) are feeble and planets receive less visible light. Plants might need to be close to black in color to absorb as much light as possible. Young M stars fry planetary surfaces with ultra-violet flares, so many organisms would likely be aquatic to survive. Our sun is type G, and on Earth green generally dominates the color of living plants. Around F-stars, hotter and bluer than our sun, plants might get too much light and would need to reflect much of it, so they would tend to absorb blue light and might look green to yellow to red or violet.

Photosynthesis, says Kiang, adapts to the spectrum of light that reaches an organism; and the spectrum results from the parent star’s radiation spectrum, combined with the filtering effects of the planet’s atmosphere. Kiang further adds that photosynthesis can produce very conspicuous biosignatures (see more below): 1) biologically generated atmospheric gases such as oxygen and its product, ozone; and 2) surface colors that indicate the presence of specialized pigments such as green chlorophyll.

When I first learned about photosynthesis in Grade 3, I thought it was a magical process. Scientists who make it their specialty still do. It is truly one of God’s wonderful gifts to life in this universe. Well, think about it: photosynthesis converts light energy (sunlight) into chemical energy through living organisms. The raw materials include carbon dioxide and water and the end-products include oxygen and (energy rich) carbohydrates, like sucrose, glucose and starch. The process is arguably the most important biochemical pathway on Earth since nearly all life either directly or indirectly depends on it. And like all marvelous things in nature, the pigments that harvest sunlight don’t operate in isolation. They operate “like an array of antennas, each tuned to pick out photons of particular wavelengths,” says Kiang. Chlorophyll preferentially absorbs red and blue light. Carotenoid pigments, responsible for the vibrant reds and yellows of autumn, pick up a slightly different shade of blue. All this energy is funneled to a special “hub” chlorophyll molecule, which splits water and releases oxygen.

How plausible is it for photosynthesis to arise on another planet? The process is so successful on Earth that it remains the foundation for most life (exceptions being organisms that live off methane of oceanic hydrothermal vents, etc.). The majority of life on earth depends on sunlight. Photosynthesis evolved early on in Earth’s history, with the first fossil evidence dating to about 3.4 billion years ago. “The rapidity of its emergence suggests it was no fluke and could arise on other worlds too,” Kiang contends and adds, “As organisms released gases, they changed the very lighting conditions on which they depended,” which meant that hey had to evolve new colors. We can see this in the evolutionary range in pigmentation of simple unicellular life, from the near-infrared absorbing first photosynthetic bacteria to the early blue-green algae, red and brown algae and finally the more evolved green algae. “Studying Earth life to guide our search for life on other worlds is the essence of astrobiology,” said Carl Pilcher, director of the NAI at NASA Ames. “This work broadens our understanding of how life may be detected on Earth-like planets around other stars, while simultaneously improving our understanding of life on Earth.”

Predicting alien plant colors takes experts ranging from astronomers to plant physiologists to biochemists. While the longest wavelength observed in photosynthesis on Earth is about 1,015 nm (in purple anoxygenic bacteria), the laws of physics set no strict upper limit. The limiting factor, according to Kiang, isn’t the feasibility of novel pigments but the light spectrum available at a planet’s surface, which depends mostly on the star type. Astronomers describe what’s called a “habitable zone” around each star. This is a range of orbits where planets can maintain a temperature that supports liquid water. In the solar system of our G star, this includes the orbits of Earth and Mars. The habitable zone of an F star, a hotter star, would be farther out and that of a K and M star, would be closer.

Aside from colors reflected by plants, the following features may provide signs of life (e.g., biosignatures) according to NASA:

1. Oxygen plus water: even on a lifeless world, light from the parent star produces a small amount of oxygen in a planet’s atmosphere by splitting water vapor. The gas dissipates quickly (e.g., rained out or through oxidation of rocks and volcanic gases). Abundant oxygen therefore signals an additional source;
2. Ozone: easier to detect, ozone provides an indicator of oxygen, being its product;
3. Methane plus oxygen: these two are considered an awkward combination, hard to achieve without photosynthesis;
4. Seasonal cycles: fluctuations of methane suggest life, given that levels tend to remain constant otherwise;
5. Methyl chloride: produced on Earth from burning of vegetation and the action of sunlight on plankton and seawater chlorine. An M star’s relatively weak radiation might allow the gas to build up to detectable amounts;
6. Nitrous oxide: released when plant matter decays.

• Anaerobic ocean life: where the parent star is a young star of any type and the organisms may not produce oxygen and the atmosphere may be mostly other gases like methane;
• Aerobic ocean life: where the parent star is older and photosynthesis has evolved, building up atmospheric oxygen;
• Aerobic life on land: the parent star is mature and plants cover the land (like Earth);
• Anaerobic land life: the star is a quiescent M star, so the UV radiation is negligible and plants wouldn’t produce oxygen.