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.

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.

• 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!

1. Voice: This is the feel and tone that applies to the overall book (narrative voice) and to each character. The overall voice is dictated by your audience, who you’re writing for: youth, adults, etc. It’s important to give each character a distinctive “voice” (including use of distinct vernacular, use of specific expressions or phrases, etc.). This is one way a reader can identify a character and find them likeable—or not. In a manuscript I recently reviewed, I noticed that the characters spoke in a mixture of formal and casual speech. This confuses the reader and bumps them out of the “fictive dream”. Consistency is very important for readers. They will abandon a story whose writing is not consistent. So, my advice to this writer was to pick one style for each character and stick to it. Voice includes what a character says. It incorporates language (both speech and body movements), philosophy, humor. How a character looks, walks, talks, laughs, is all part of this. Let’s take laughter for instance: does your character tend to giggle, titter, chortle, gafaw, belly-laugh? Do any of your characters have conflicts with one another? Either through differences in opinions, agendas, fears, ambitions… etc. One learns so much from the kind of interaction a character has with his/her surroundings (whether it’s another character or a scene).

2. Point of View (POV): Many beginner’s novels are often told through no particular POV. Many first manuscripts often start in the omniscient POV (that of the narrator) and ever so often may lapse into one of the character’s POV briefly. This makes for very “telling vs showing” type of writing (not to mention being inconsistent again). 90% of writers do not write this way because it tends to be off-putting, it distances the reader from the characters, and is very difficult to achieve and be consistent with. Most writers prefer to use limited third person POV (told from one or a few key characters; that is, you get into the head and thoughts of only a few people: all the observations are told through their observations, what they see, feel and think). This bonds the reader to your characters and makes for much more compelling reading. I would highly suggest you adopt this style. That’s not to say that you can’t use several POVs… just not at the same time; it is the norm to use chapter or section breaks to change a POV.

3. Passive vs. Active Verbs: beginners often use a lot of passive verbs (e.g., were, was, being, etc.). Some use too may modifiers. Try to find more active verbs. Many writers fall into the pattern of using verbs that are weak and passive (and then adding a modifier to strengthen it…it doesn’t). Actively look for strong, vivid verbs. This is a key to good writing. I can’t emphasize this enough. For instance, which version is more compelling: ‘she walked quickly into the room’ or ‘she stormed into the room’?

4. Show, don’t tell: this is partly a function of POV and use of active verbs. Once you change to 3rd person, much of this will naturally resolve itself. An example of telling vs. showing is this: [He was in a rage and felt betrayed. “You lied, Clara,” he said angrily, grabbing her hand.] instead, you could show it: [His face smoldered. “You lied, Clara,” he roared, lunging for her.] Telling also includes large sections of exposition, either in dialogue or in narrative. This happens a lot in beginning writer’s stories. It takes courage and confidence to say less and let the reader figure it out. Exposition needs to be broken up and appear in the right place as part of the story. Story is paramount. “Telling” is one of the things beginning writers do most and editors will know you for one right away. Think of the story as a journey for both writer and reader. The writer makes a promise to the reader that s/he will provide a rip-roaring story and the reader comes on side, all excited. This is done through a confident tease in the beginning and slow revelation throughout the story to keep it compelling. Exposition needs to be very sparingly used, dealt out in small portions.

5. Unclutter your writing: There is a Mennonite adage that applies to writing: “less is more”. Sentences in early works tend to be full of extra words (e.g., using “ing” verbs, add-ons like “he started to think” instead of simply “he thought”). Cut down the words in your paragraphs (often in the intro chapters) by at least 20%. Be merciless; you won’t miss them, believe me, and you will add others later in your second round of edits.

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.