The letter from the Editor in the August 10, 2010 Writer’s Digest Newsletter said:

We often get people asking if we offer free webinars. Well, this week those folks (and you) are in luck: Sign up for “Get Published with Nina, The Writing Coach,” a free on-demand webinar where host Nina Munteanu answers some of the most frequently asked questions that writers need to know. And the best part of on-demand is that you can watch it whenever you want, where ever you want, which means two things: Computer required, pants optional.

Take care of yourself and your writing,
Brian A. Klems
Newsletter Editor
Writer’s Digest

Looks like people are enjoying the Webinar. Here’s a comment Writer’s Digest shared with us from a Webinar student:

“Words can not express the joy I received by watching the video with the two authors [Vernon Oikle and me] on The Writing Coach, Can Help You Get Published. Thanks so much.”

The webinar is still online at Writer’s Digest. If you hurry you can still register for it and view this entertaining and educational conversation about things writers need to know to get published. For FREE!

Nina, The Writing Coach

Nina, the writing coach, can help you!

Join her for a free webinar where she will share some of her best tips for getting published.

She will also answer some frequently asked questions that came straight from Writer’s Digest!

See you there!

Nina, the Fiction Writer

What’s Stopping You From Publishing Your Book?

Yes, I’m a successfully published author with acclaimed novels, short stories and essays published all over the world.  But I almost didn’t get there. What if I told you that I never read as a kid, I was the worst speller in my school and I used bad grammar? I didn’t excel in typing class and practically failed English 101. Based on my Career Aptitude Test score, the school counselor recommended that I go into some trade like car mechanic. Believe me, I started from behind.

• I’ve experienced your disappointment and your fear—and prevailed.
• I’ve battled the gridlock of time and schedule conflicts, priority problems and lack of support from family and friends—and forged a way.
• I’ve felt lonely and depressed because no one understood my dream or took it seriously—and found a community.
• I’ve been lost in a sea of unfocused ideas, undirected plot, excessive—even boring—characters—and created a masterpiece of tense page-turning excitement.
• I understand your pain, your moments of hesitation and lack of confidence, your yearning. I’ve been rejected and rejected and rejected—and then published!

Are you a storyteller? Because that’s where it all starts. With a story. The rest is window dressing. Every author is on a journey, a hero’s journey, really. Because that’s what most writers are: heroes. We journey into the dark frightening abyss and return with the prize for the world: truth. The writer’s life is not really romantic, like many believe. It is rife with doubt, rejection, betrayal and disappointment. But it is also graced with the richness of joy, satisfaction, energy and fulfillment. When a writer writes what he or she is passionate about, there is nothing better. Absolutely nothing. So, let me tell you a story now, about how I almost didn’t become a writer but did because it was what I had to do.  Like most stories, this one has a beginning, middle and an end…

The Beginning: The Sweet Promise

When I was ten years old, I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up: I was going to be a paperback writer. It was 1964 and I’d taken my favorite rock group’s song to heart, the Beatles’ “I Want to be a Paperback Writer”. It was an incredible moment of clarity for me and despite being challenged by my stern and unimaginative primary school teacher, who kept trying to corral me into being “normal”, I wasn’t going to let anyone stem my creativity and eccentric—if not wayward—approach to literature, language and writing. I was a confident, but lovable, little brat and I knew it. She and I didn’t exactly get along, as a result. But I did okay anyway, and, despite her acidic commentary (I didn’t cross my “t”s the way she wanted me to), Miss House begrudgingly awarded me my due A’s and B’s.

Nina pretending to read

I wrote some fan fiction but quickly found my own creations far more interesting and less limiting. As a teenager, I wrote, directed and recorded “radio plays” with my sister. When we weren’t bursting into riotous laughter, it was actually pretty good. She and I shared a bedroom in the back of the house and at bedtime we opened our doors of imagination to a cast of thousands. We fed each other wild stories of space travel, adventure and intrigue, murmuring and giggling well into the dark night long after our parents were snoring in their beds. Those days scintillated with liberating originality, excitement and joy. I also enjoyed animation and drew several cartoon strips, peopled with crazy characters as I dreamt of writing graphic novels like Green Lantern, Magnus, Robot Fighter and Spiderman. My hero was science fiction author and futurist, Ray Bradbury; I vowed to write profoundly stirring tales like he did. Stories that mattered. Stories that lingered with you long after you finished them. Stories that made you think and dream and changed you imperceptibly.

I had found what excites me—my passion for telling stories—and I’d inadvertently stumbled upon an important piece of the secret formula for success: 1) having discovered my passion, I decided on a goal; 2) I found and wished to emulate a “hero” who’d achieved that goal and therefore had a “case study”; 3) I applied myself to the pursuit of my goal. Oops… the third one, well…

…It went downhill from there…

Life got in the way.

I grew up.

The Middle: The Struggles & Confusion of “Reality”

Well, that, and the environment intervened. In several ways. It started with my parents. Recognizing my talent and interest in the fine arts (I was pretty good in visual arts), they pushed me to get a fine arts degree in university and go into teaching or advertizing. They made it obvious that fiction writing was not a viable career or a forté of mine (I was lousy at spelling and, despite my ability to tell stories and my love for graphic novels, I didn’t read books!). I can still remember my father’s lecture about how perfect the teaching or nursing profession was for me. I wasn’t enamored by either. The second blow to my author-ego came in the form of a school “interest-ability” test, meant to prepare us for our career decisions. I remember the test consisting of an IQ portion (spatial, English and math), and a psychology portion (including problem-solving and scenarios meant to tease out our affinity for a particular career). Secretly harboring my paperback novelist dream, I filled out my forms with great excitement. I still remember the deflating results, which suggested that I was best suited to be a sergeant in the army! LOL! Remember what I said about my spelling and grammar. “Writing” as a career barely made it on the graph, and scored well below “computer programmer” and “mechanic”; none of which interested me.   

Forest road near home

Dante’s Forest

I began to see a career in advertizing as a viable option; my love and abilities in cartooning seemed to naturally tie in with this pursuit. I also had an affinity for graphic design. So, I deferred to the “wisdom” of others and let myself be diverted and distracted by clever reasoning and an appeal to logic. I did what I thought I should do, not what truly excited me.

I still quietly held my dream of being a paperback novelist close to my heart, even if it was closeted in my subconscious. But self-expression had dwindled to a trickle; the creative flow of stories dried up and in its empty wake I discovered a cause worth investing a fervent energy: the well-being of our planet. With the cause came my relentless pursuit of a science degree. I left home and surprised and disappointed my parents by electing on registration day at the university to go into science rather than pursue a fine arts degree in advertizing. Although I wasn’t “expressing”, I was nevertheless inspired. I obtained several degrees in science, including one in Limnology (the study of freshwater), which were all to prove worthwhile in my ultimate “calling” and self-expression: that of making science accessible to the lay-public and eventually writing hard-science fiction stories and novels of substance about the environment. The latter didn’t happen for several years after I acquired my Masters of Science degree and did a long stint of teaching at university (yes, I DID teach after all!) while successfully publishing articles for magazines.

The End: Fulfillment

Nina outside Bakka Books in Toronto where her novel is for sale

My non-fiction pieces became my entrance into the world of fiction (much harder to break into) and I used this venue to polish my writing skills in fiction (don’t let anyone tell you that non-fiction can’t be exciting, bending to many of the same rules as in fiction writing). Once I began publishing fiction stories, I never looked back. And as far as I’m concerned, the sky’s the limit now.

Not too long ago, I quit my day job and moved across the country to an artistic community on the east coast. I am currently travelling the world and pursuing my dream as a full-time author and writing coach. It’s not an easy life. And it can be lonely at times. But it is so incredibly fulfilling and blessed with meaning.

Come, walk with me and pursue your dream. It’s for the taking.

Nina Munteanu, Prospect Bay, Nova Scotia

“Nina’s ability to take arid academic prose and make it interesting to students is actually rather remarkable. I have been regularly using material she created for helping my students understand the hero’s journey in literature – the students find her writing engaging, accessible, and (and this is important) easily applicable not only to their readings but to their essays as well. Brava, Nina, brava.”

–David Merchant, English Instructor, Louisiana Tech University

Students to professionals find Nina’s coaching and workshops lively, fun and very instructive.

Book Nina for an online or on-site personal or group coaching session at nina.sfgirl@gmail.com (use message title: Nina Coaching). You can also book Nina for weekly phone consultations, online webinars and livestream lectures through membership with “The Passionate Writer“. Rates are posted here.

Nina’s writing guide The Fiction Writer: Get Published, Write Now! forms the basis for many of her lectures and workshops (see examples of her popular lectures and workshops here on “Nina’s Workshops“) and is found useful by a variety of writers from beginners to professionals. The guide is popular with college and university instructors of creative writing and English, and thoroughly enjoyed by students of writing and professional writers, alike.

“The Fiction Writer is at the top of the required reading list for my students…A veritable cornucopia of hands-0n help for aspiring writers of any age…The quintessential guidebook for the soon-to-be-published.”

–Susan H. McLemore, Language Arts Instructor, Glynn Academy

The Fiction Writer: Get Published, Write Now! is available at Amazon.com, Chapters and Barnes & Noble, as well as discerning independent bookstores near you.

“Nina Munteanu’s The Fiction Writer is the book I wish I had 15 years ago.  Writers young and old can find ways to improve their work, with the book’s fun, easy to read format.”— Theresa Vinson, Book Seller

The Fiction Writer: Get Published, Write Now!

Hi there!

Nina Munteanu - The Writing Life

You’ve landed on the website of Nina Munteanu, internationally published Canadian SF author and ecologist.  Nina is living her dream of the writing life!  She is currently putting the finishing touches on her next science fiction novel.  And if you’re lucky, you might catch her at one of her writing workshops where she coaches great fiction writing!

The Mentor: Nina is frequently sought after for one-on-one mentoring as well as personal coaching and group workshops on all aspects of writing and publishing.  Because she has published frequently in both fiction and non-fiction, she knows exactly how to help her clients succeed in getting their works published.

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.  In April 2010 she will participate in talks with the Dalai Lama as part of the Mind and Life XX Conference on Altruism and Compassion in Economics in Zurich, Switzerland, where she will lead discussions on the use of ecological relationships in economic policy. Nina is a passionate traveler, and has tasted her way around the world from Bangkok to Paris.

The Author: Nina has published award-nominated short stories all over the planet (with translations 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. Nina’s guidebook on writing, The Fiction Writer: Get Published, Write Now! is currently used in schools and universities across North America.

The Blogger: Nina is also  The Alien Next Door, author of the award-wining blog which hosts lively discussions on pop culture, travel, science, writing and philosophy. Nina co-authors an environmental blog on climate change, Climate of Our Future. She frequently guest-blogs on Toulouse LeTrek, her feline friend’s travel blog.

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.

“We’re just children,” she counters. “We have nowhere else to go. If you turn us away you’ll be sentencing us to sure death. They don’t care who they kill. Please, you must help us.” Her hands reach out in supplication. “We work hard and we don’t eat much.”

When she finally raises herself off the floor without my help, she scoops my little brother in her thin arms, takes up her tattered clothes and limps back to the sleeping barracks. She does not look back to see if I’m following.

~~~~

This is the first in a new series I’ll be posting that deals directly with climate change, a topic of great controversy among scientists still and one meriting discussion among us here. Okay, I lie: I posted several articles already that touch on this subject. I touched upon the chaotic nature and interrelatedness of climate and weather in my post on chaos theory. In two blog posts, “Climate Change & the Nobel Peace Prize” and “Blog Action Day—Truth”, I devote lengthy discussion to the dedicated work of Al Gore, his film, “the Inconvenient Truth” and generate lively discussion on the topic (check out the comments pages!). In “Tornadoes Connected to Global Waming?” I described my own personal experience with the historic unseasonal tornadoes in the US earlier this year and how some believe this is related to climate change and is a sign of more to come. In “Polar Cities” I describe Dan Bloom’s concept for surviving the aftermath of global warming and explore the need for paradigm changes. Then in “The Complexity of Nature” I discuss how perspective plays a role in our perception of both our future and that of our planet.

I left off with a discussion—actually a series of questions—related to “scale” and whether or not we should intervene, when everything that we are and do is PART of the global network already. Is it simply that we are being hubristic once again by seeing things from a strictly anthropomorphic view? Perhaps, it isn’t our place to succeed, but rather to secede to something more suited to what is yet to come… I’d like to think that it may be neither, rather that these global events will hasten our own evolution into a higher form. But I’m getting way ahead of my own series. Because today’s post is entirely from a human’s viewpoint and concerned with our own well being. Much of the information here is from an article written by the medical community in Nova Scotia, Canada. I start with some very interesting statistics. For instance, did you know that:

• Close to 8% of all non-accidental deaths in Canada are caused by air pollution resulting from by-products of burning fossil fuels.
• Following smog days, hospital admissions for respiratory problems increase by 6%, admissions of infants with respiratory problems increase by 15%.
• Forecasts show that without reductions in fossil fuel consumption, in 20 years there will be a 60% increase in particulate emissions with a corresponding increase in respiratory illnesses, hospitalization and health care costs.

A report by the US National Academies’ National Research Council, Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises, warns that people can expect “climate surprises” in the form of “large, abrupt and unwelcome regional or global climatic events,” including drought, floods, extreme heat, hurricanes, (how about unseasonal tornadoes?…) and rising sea levels. Dr. Paul Epstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, says the report indicates that “we’ve underestimated the rate of this change, we’ve underestimated the sensitivity of biological systems, we’ve underestimated the cost of global warming.”

Epstein and other authors published a paper in the Canadian Medical Association Journal where they suggested that the direct effects of climate change to humanity include: illness and deaths from heat waves, drought, floods, storms and the breakdown of systems in the aftermath of weather disasters. Indirect effects would include decreased crop productivity owing to pests and climate change, changing water availability, lower air quality, rising sea levels and animal-based diseases appearing in regions in which they had previously been unheard of.

I dedicate this Friday Feature page to the stellar websites and blogs devoted to educating us, challenging us and guiding us on climate change, some of which appear below. Please check them out and let me know of any sites you think should be included that I’ve neglected to include.

The David Suzuki Foundation on Climate Change
Environment Canada’s page on Climate Change
The International Institute for Sustainable Development on Climate Change and Energy
Climate of Our Future
Climate Ark
Real Climate
Climate Feedback
Climate Change Action
Talk Climate Change
Global Climate Change
Grenedia
GlobalWarming.org
Global Warming: early warning signs
Global Warming Blog
Climate 411
Climate Crisis
Global Warming Futurist

The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond
them into the impossible—Arthur C. Clarke

When I was in my early twenties (some time ago) I read Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke. He’d written it a year before I was born. I remember being moved by the story’s grandness and scope about the transformation of humanity. On the slightly garish cover of the Ballantine science fiction classic book jacket Gilbert Highet’s endorsement said, “…a real staggerer by a man who is both a poetic dreamer and a competent scientist.” This remains an apt assessment of this self-professed “mildly cheerful” British science fiction author, inventor, and futurist, perhaps best known for the novel 2001: a Space Odyssey (also about the transformation of humankind).

On March 19 of this year, Arthur C. Clarke died at age ninety in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he’d made his home since 1956. He left behind a legacy of incredibly imaginative works, valuable scientific inventions and concepts and profoundly thoughtful discussions of the future.

During the time Clarke served in the Royal Air Force as a radar instructor and technician (from 1941 to 1946) he proposed satellite communication systems, which won him the Franklin Institute Stuart Ballantine Gold Medal (in 1963) and a nomination in 1994 for a Nobel Prize. What you might not have known about him is that he was an avid scuba diver and helped fight for the preservation of lowland gorillas, which won him the UNESCO-Kalinga Prize in 1962. Clarke was also fascinated with the paranormal and admitted that it was part of the inspiration for his novel Childhood’s End. He was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1986. And in 2000, he was knighted. Yes, he is Sir Arthur Charles Clarke. He served as the first Chancellor of the International Space University from 1989 to 2004, has an asteroid named in his honour and a species of ceratopsian dinosaur (Serendipaceratops arthurcclarkei), discovered in Inverloch in Australia.

Born in Minehead, Somerset, England, Clarke enjoyed stargazing and reading old American science fiction pulp magazines when he was a boy. His first professional sales (e.g., Loophole and Rescue Party)appeared in Astounding Science Fiction in 1946 at age 29. In 1948, Clarke wrote The Sentinel for a BBC competition; although it was rejected it represented a turning point in Clarke’s writing, which introduced a more mystical and cosmic element to his work (the Sentinel was the basis for his best known work, 2001: A Space Odyssey). Many of his subsequent works (including Childhood’s End) features the theme of a technologically advanced but prejudiced humankind being confronted by a superior alien intelligence—the encounter of which produces a conceptual breakthrough that accelerates humanity into the next stage of its evolution.

Among Clarke’s visionary science (fiction) and inventions, some of his most notable include the following:

• Geostationary satellites as telecommunications relays (described in a paper in Wireless World, October 1945 entitled, Extra-Terrestrial Relays—Can Rocket Stations Give Worldwide Radio Coverage?) The geostationary orbit 36,000 km above the equator is officially recognized by the International Astronomical Union as a “Clarke Orbit”;
• Space elevators (first described in The Fountains of Paradise, 1979); and,
• A “global library” (in Profiles of the Future, 1962).

We get a good sense of Clarke’s beliefs and philosophy in his works. In his introduction of Mysterious World: Strange Skies, Clarke said, “I sometimes think that the universe is a machine designed for the perpetual astonishment of astronomers.” At the end of the episode, of the Star of Bethlehem (of which his favorite theory was that it was a pulsar) he added, “How romantic, if even now we can hear the dying voice of a star which heralded the Christian Era.”

In the 1973 revision of his 1962 book, Profiles of the Future, Clarke added two laws to create his famous three laws of prediction, aptly termed Clarke’s Three Laws:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Fiction is more than non-fiction in some ways…you can stretch people’s minds, alerting them to the possibilities of the future, which is very important in an age where things are changing rapidly—Arthur C. Clarke

Clarke’s most notable works include 2001: A Space Odyssey, Rendezvous with Rama, Childhood’s End, The Fountains of Paradise.

With a powerful entrance like that, it is hard to imagine that this 1997 movie directed by Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump) and based on the novel by Carl Sagan, received very mixed reviews by critics. Cindy Fuchs of the Philadelphia City Paper called it “far more mundane than its aspirations to cosmic insights might have produced.” Kevin N. Laforest with the Montreal Film Journal said, “Contact is not a bad film, but I can’t say it’s all that good either.” Even TVGuide.com rated it a two out of four: “It’s really about [Jodie] Foster, and with her lips pressed tightly together and her hair carelessly shoved behind her ears, she’s utterly convincing as a researcher who’s subverted everything to a life of the mind. Unfortunately that adds up to a rather remote protagonist and Ellie is surrounded by a supporting cast of one-dimensional types…far too cold-blooded for summer audiences.” This is ironic, considering that the advertizing pitch calls Contact “a journey to the heart of the universe.” Finally, Christopher Null (Filmcritic.com) recommended it for its looks but not highly. Said Null: “Carl Sagan’s ode to the superior intelligence of aliens (and how us darned humans mess everything up) is consistently beautiful and interesting, but it never makes a point (except for that bit about the darned humans). Well, Mr. Null, I think you’ve missed the point, as have some of the critics I have just quoted. Contact—and its somewhat tortured protagonist—demonstrates much in the way of “heart” and in doing so, makes a compelling story. Hearts beat deeply inside us, and this movie is no different; its “heart” runs deep, deep beneath the surface rhetoric that seems to have distracted several critics who likely prefer to take a shallow sip of their coffee steaming hot than wait and savor the rich flavor of a dark blend in a deep swallow. Perhaps I’m too harsh, you say. Well, hear me out. Here’s my argument:

First of all, for those of you who have not yet seen this 1997 motion picture by Time Warner, Contact examines the moral, social and religious implications of our first contact with extraterrestrial intelligence through the personal journey of astronomer, Eleanor (Ellie) Arroway (played impeccably and sensitively by Jodie Foster). Never knowing her mother (who died at child birth) and having lost her father when she was ten, Ellie grows into a strong-willed scientist who dedicates her life to finding alien life in the universe by foregoing a career at Harvard to join a SETI Observatory in the Puerto Rico jungle. In an earlier scene with her father, she asks the question we have all pondered at least once: “Do you think there are people on other planets?” to which her father blithely answers, “if it’s just us, seems like an awful lot of wasted space,” a simple argument that appeals to the young logically-minded Ellie and one that will dominate the perseverance of her adult life in her resolute search for life in the universe.

And persevere Ellie must, because nothing comes easy for her. Shortly after she settles at the SETI Observatory her teacher (and nemesis) David Drumlin (Tom Skerritt) pays her a visit with implied threats of shutting the place down. Ellie also meets Palmer Joss (Mathew McConaughey), a man of faith, who is writing a book about the effects of science and technology on the third world. Although she is attracted to him, alarm bells go off in Ellie, who feels threatened by his faith (something she does not outwardly understand yet clings to in another form). Wanting to see him again, she introduces him to the man he wants to interview: Drumlin. And one of the most poignant conversations follows:

When Ellie challenges Drumlin’s apparent wish to do away with all pure research, he responds with, “What’s wrong with science being practical, even profitable? Nothing—”
Palmer cuts in, “—As long as your motive is the search for truth, which is exactly what the pursuit of science is.” Drumlin counters peevishly, “Well, that’s an interesting position coming from a man who crusades against the evils of technology.” To which Palmer responds, “I’m not against technology; I’m against the men who deify it at the expense of human truth.”

Palmer and Ellie collide from two different worlds and despite their differences, they are profoundly attracted to one another. But as quickly as she falls for Palmer, she recoils from him.

Nothing comes easy for Ellie: “small moves, Ellie,” her father is accustomed to telling her, “small moves…” Shortly after she and her colleagues have been shut down by Drumlin and have set up anew (thanks to eccentric billionaire entrepreneur, S.R. Hadden, played by John Hurt), Drumlin and others shut them down yet again. But, as though a greater force intervenes, this is when Ellie makes her momentous discovery and intercepts an alien message from Vega, a young star still surrounded by a proto-planetary cloud of debris about 27 light years away from us. The scene is scientifically plausible and elegantly powerful— it gave my husband goose-bumps (even the second time watching!)—as we witness the drama of this phenomenal discovery unfold in a frisson of action. Zemeckis wisely shows us exactly how such an event would really play out. And Sagan didn’t pick Vega out of whimsy: a sphere sixty light years thick of radio communication radiates from Earth from our radio and TV broadcasts. These signals may be captured by alien technology and sent back as a “message”. In theory, such a signal could be received on Earth anytime after 1990, the round trip time for a light or radio signal to travel to Vega and back from the first global signal, which in itself is momentous and telling. In another spine-tingling scene, the scientists who have descended upon Ellie decipher the arcane harmonics of the “message” as the broadcast of the opening ceremony of the Berlin Olympics in 1936 (the first truly global TV broadcast made) over which Hitler presided. In fact, in another stroke of irony, the now infamous swastika is the first icon they decipher. Later still, they discover embedded instructions to build a machine that appears made to take a human on an extra-galactic trip.

At the same time that Ellie intercepts this message, Palmer Joss experiences a meteoric rise to stardom with his bestselling book, Losing Faith: the Search for Meaning in the Age of Reason (which could well have been the alternate title for the film; it certainly describes the subtext of the story and the major thematic element: Faith & Meaning). In an interview with a prominent news show host, Palmer asks the question that most of us have avoided: “The question that I’m asking is this: are we happier? Is the world fundamentally a better place because of science and technology?…We shop at home, we search the web—at the same time we feel emptier, lonelier, and more cut off from each other than any other time in human history…We have meaningless jobs, we take frantic vacations [and] trips to the mall to buy more things to fill these holes in our lives.” Ironically, Palmer touches a similar nerve in Ellie when he brings up her dead parents: “It must have been hard… being alone…” insinuating that her fanatical search for intelligent alien life may simply be filling a hole in her heart. She flees Palmer shortly after, fearing his revealing intimacy. When they next meet, years later, they fall naturally into their familiar banter and she turns the table to challenge his faith in the same way: “What if science simply revealed that [God] never existed in the first place?” She then evokes Occam’s Razor, which says that “…all things being equal, the simplest explanation tends to be the right one…what’s more likely? An all powerful mysterious God [who] created the universe then decided not to give us proof of his existence or that he simply doesn’t exist at all and we created him so we wouldn’t have to feel so small and alone?” Both of them are saved from an answer by the intrusive rings of their cell phones.

Ironically again, it is Ellie’s lack of belief in God that causes her to be overlooked for the momentous journey in the alien craft, in favor of the crafty Drumlin with the oily smile. Unfortunately, a religious zealot sabotages the mission and Drumlin, along with the whole alien craft and construct, are blown up in a spectacular explosion at NASA’s Cape Canaveral. Ellie gets her chance after all when they build a second one. Her journey in the alien space craft, which we are later told takes up eighteen hours of her time but passes instantaneously on Earth (to the point where they all think nothing actually happened), is truly epic and elegantly portrayed. Her encounter with the aliens is also in keeping with the plot and imagery of the story. One of the most poignant scenes in the movie is the one where Ellie is introduced to the incredible and indescribable beauty of the vast Universe. It is at this point that she experiences her epiphany: science is not the sole purveyor of truth in the Universe. As she gazes at the splendor revealed before her, she acknowledges that the language of science is unable to express the sheer magnitude of the breathtaking scene. Grasping at something to say, she blusters with a scientific term then finally gasps, “No words…to describe it…they should have sent a poet…”
Upon her return, Ellie is challenged by skeptics who think she suffered a giant delusion (remember that on Earth, no time had passed during her supposed eighteen-hour voyage). Ellie offers up a strained scientific explanation (e.g., wormhole travel through space-time also called Einstein-Rosen bridges) which is challenged by National Security Advisor, Michael Kitz (James Woods) as only theory, and must finally resort to her faith; one she selflessly offers to the world: “I… had an experience. I can’t prove it, I can’t even explain it, but everything that I know as a human being, everything that I am tells me that it was real. I was given something wonderful, something that changed me forever. A vision of the universe, that tells us undeniably, how tiny, and insignificant and how… rare, and precious we all are. A vision that tells us that we belong to something that is greater than ourselves, that we are not, that none of us are alone.”

Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat of Spirituality Practice said it best: “Robert Zemeckis has fashioned a truly awesome movie that celebrates the spiritual practices of listening, wonder, love, and zeal. It affirms that there are times and places where reason must yield to mystery.”

The SETI Institute, who currently conduct the search for alien life, have a website dedicated to the move: http://www.seti-Inst.edu/phoenix/contact.html. ]]> http://www.ninamunteanu.com/180/critique-of-the-motion-picture-contact/feed/ 12