Category Archives: A Writing Life

147. Novella 2, Hunter, Come Home

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I was in high school when I read Hunter, Come Home for the first time and found it deeply moving. Richard McKenna was a force in the science fiction world, but only for a sadly short time. I had to search the internet and my local interlibrary loan to find a copy to re-read. I found it in Casey Agonistes and Other Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories by Richard McKenna, Harper & Row, 1973.

McKenna is famous outside the science fiction community for his one best seller The Sand Pebbles. He was born in Montana in 1913, joined the Navy in 1931 at the height of the depression and served in WWII and Korea. After retirement, he used the GI Bill to finished the education that had been cut short decades before. He became a writer, but of only a few stories and one novel. He had only six years between his first publication and his death.

If you get the book, you will certainly read the other stories and be glad you did, but my focus is Hunter, Come Home.

Here is a brief, spoiler-free summary. Mordinmen were descendants of a lost Earth colony which had fought a generations long war against the dinosaur like creatures which inhabited their planet. Manhood had become symbolized by the killing of a dino, but now the dinos were scarce and poor families, like Roy Craig’s, could no longer afford a hunt.

Mordinmen had now claimed another planet and were setting about to destroy its native ecosystem, in order to rebuild it in the image of their home planet. Red dots (successful hunters) were running the show, assisted by blankies like Roy who was working toward the time he could make his kill on the new planet. Hired as specialists, the Belconti biologists were providing the virus-like Thanasis used to destroy the native life.

When the story begins, the fight to transform this new planet has been going on for decades, and it is failing. Now the Mordinmen, against warnings by the Belacaonti, are about to unleash newer, harsher, more dangerous plague on the planet.

That’s about as far as I can summarize without a spoiler alert. Roy Craig wants more than anything to be a full fledged member of his machismo society, but his blanky status leaves him marginalized and frustrated. At the same time, he is drawn to the relatively gentle society of the Belaconti with whom is is working, symbolized for him by the woman Midori Blake.

The native life of the planet is totally interconnected, essentially a one-world-tree (shades of Gaia). It does not so much fight back against the invaders as simply refuse to die

There is a three way contrast in Hunter, Come Home. The Mordinmen, from a macho society built on killing are placed in contrast to the Belaconti, scientists who understand and treasure the ecosystem they are trying to destroy, and they in turn are contrasted to the interlocked, almost self-aware native life of the planet. Roy and Midori are each caught in conflicting loyalties as the planned apocalypse moves forward.

Hunter, Come Home is beautifully written, full of human passions, and insights into cultures in conflict. On publication, it was far ahead of its time in its appreciation of the importance of ecology.

146. Novella 1

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I have concluded that every piece of writing has its natural length. Take Flowers for Algernon, surely one of the great pieces of science fiction, or any other kind of fiction. When it was published as a short story, it was superb. When it was expanded to novel length, it was still a fine work, but it lost some of its impact. Charly, the Academy Award winning movie made from it, was clearly excellent, but not up the the quality of the short story.

That is, in my opinion – but what else matters in choosing the best of the best.

As a youth, I started off devouring short stories like candy. Over the years, my taste moved to novels, but throughout my life I have had a weakness for the novella length. It seems to bring out the best in writers.

Take Hemingway, for example. I love reading his work but I have never been convinced of his mastery. He seems more like the greatest writer of novels in which a man fights a war, makes love to a woman, lands a fish, and dies on the final page. Nevetheless, I don’t argue with his Nobel prize, because he won it for his one true masterpiece The Old Man and the Sea. A novella, you will note, even though it is sold as a novel.

Even people who don’t read Dickens love A Christmas Carol, which is a novella. Conan Doyle’s four long Sherlock Holmes stories, including Hound of the Baskervilles, are novellas.

Even two of the stories I hate most in science fiction are novellas: The Persistence of Vision (it won a Hugo and a Nebula) and A Boy and His Dog (it won a Nebula and was nominated for a Hugo) There is no accounting for taste.

I wanted to write appreciations of two of my favorite novellas (tomorrow and Thursday), so I decided to do a little background research. What a morass! No one agrees on anything, except that novellas are a hard length to sell.

In the science fiction world, the word of the SFWA is final for nebula award nominees. They set these lengths:

short story    under 7,500 words
novelette       7,500 -17,500 words
novella         17,500-40,000 words
novel            40,000 words and up

Anything outside of science fiction doesn’t have to follow these rules, and very few outside the field have ever heard of a novelette.

Chuck Sambuchino of Writer’s Digest says, “Novellas generally run 20,000 to 50,000 words. About 30,000 words is average.” That may be true in 2016, but when I started writing in the 1970’s the typical paperback mystery, western, or science fiction novel came in at about 50,000 words.

A good cynic’s rule would be, “It’s hard to sell a novella, so stretch your story into a novel. If it won’t stretch, pretend it’s a novel anyway.”

Next, I went to Goodreads. I only recently got high-speed internet because I live in a dead zone in the Sierra foothills, so I am just now learning to use what is clearly a fine resource. I find their reviews surprisingly sensible, so I went to Listopia: World’s Greatest Novellas. It’s a nice list, well introduced, but if you want entertainment, slide down to the comments. I give these people credit for trying to make sensible choices in an under-defined situation, but it also looks like seven blind Hindus describing an elephant. Not that I could do any better.

Let me add one more bit. Here are some of the stories that, according to Wikipedia, are traditionally presented as novels, but still short enough to fall into the novella category — The Call of the Wild, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Heart of Darkness, The Stepford Wives, A River Runs Through It, Billy Budd, Animal Farm, Of Mice and Men, The Pearl, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Time Machine, and The Picture of Dorian Gray.

There are a lot of familiar faces here. One would almost think that our teachers and professors picked out books for their curricula because they were short; but that can’t be, can it?.
tomorrow, Hunter, Come Home

145. The Soul of the People

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The Earth to which the Cyan explorers have returned is much changed. What was overpopulated at their departure is much worse at their return. Governments have fallen and been reconstituted. NASA has been replaced by a military space organization.

The one stable thing in this new world is Saloman Curran, the world’s richest and most powerful man. His overriding consistencies are ruthlessness and obsessive dedication to the colonization of other planets. The explorers find themselves on his team and under his power as they plan for Cyan’s colonization.

Even Curran is not omnipotent. He finds himself blackmailed into adding a contingent of colonists from India. When Keir and Gus inspect these new colonists, they are given a new perspective on Curran by the Indian leader.

***

Bannerjee explained, “There was no Saloman Curran to finance our colonization effort. Each colonist had to pay twenty billion rupees for the privilege of going. Each applicant had to pay one billion rupees, non refundable, for the privilege of applying.”

“You mean only your rich could even apply?”

“That is correct.”

Gus shook his head. Bannerjee smiled and said, “I see you don’t know the history of your own country. How do you think Europeans got to America? Do you think ships’ captains just said, ‘Get on board, I’ll be glad to take you?'”

“I never thought about it.”

“To get to America in the early years, one either had to be rich or had to indenture oneself, that is, agree to be what amounted to a slave for a set number of years. Exploration and colonization have never been free.”

Keir said, “We chose our colonists on the basis of what skills they could bring to Cyan.”

“Indeed.  So did we. There are plenty of people who are both rich and skillful.”

They walked on through the camp. It was noisy, brawling, dusty, hot, and exciting.  Keir felt a smile growing on his face with every step. What an addition to Cyan these people would be!

“Kumar,” Gus said, “who is supplying your transportation to Uranus?”

“Gee Craft, Ganymede.”

Keir exchanged a look with Gus.  GCG was a subsidiary of Curran International. “How much per head?”

Bannerjee quoted a price that was three times the going rate.

“You’re getting screwed.  Why not shop around?”

“‘Shopping around’, as you put it, is not permitted. The price of transportation was negotiated as part of the main agreement. So was the price Curran is charging for the ship his people are building for us.”

“That means you are actually helping to finance the USNA expedition.”

“Yes. We are financing a major part of the expedition.”

They were thoughtful as they walked back to the VTOL. Finally, Bannerjee mused, “I wonder what Curran is buying with our money?”

“What do you mean?”

“Your people are not paying for their passage. I assume that means that they are not co-owners of the expedition, as ours are.”

“That is correct. The factory modules are being supplied by CI, so CI will own them. The people going are guaranteed land and subsistence food and clothing for five years.”

“And employment?”

“Well, the farms and factories won’t run themselves.”

“Will it take fifty thousand to run them?” Bannerjee asked.

“Perhaps not.”

“So there will be an excess of labor, and one man will own all the means of production. Does that seem healthy to you?”

Keir did not respond.

“It is said,” Bannerjee added as they were standing at the ramp of the VTOL, “that the man who owns the factory, owns the soul of the people. I would think about that, if I were you.”

144. Who Said You Were Mexican?

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Happy May fifth, although I’ve already covered Cinco de Mayo in a sneaky way in my post on Saint Patrick’s Day. This last post for Teacher Appreciation Week is also about teaching Mexican-American students.

I was once asked to chose the races of my students.

If you’ve followed A Writing Life at all, you know my belief that we are all one gene pool.  All “blacks” have some “white” ancestors, and all “whites” have some “black” ancestors. There may be a few statistical anomalies that fail to bear this out, but probably not.

Look at any post between January 18 and February 18 of 2016, and you will find out more than you want to know on the subject.

If this is true of the USA, it is doubly true of Mexico. The English came to America as families, and avoided Indians or fought with them. The Spanish came to Mexico as soldiers and married the native women. That’s painting with a broad brush, but it’s a reasonably accurate overview.

Back to the story. When I was a relatively new teacher, I was preparing to administer the yearly state-wide standardized test to my students. I was given a computer printout with their names and told to fill in the appropriate race for each. White, hispanic, black, eskimo . . .  You’ve probably seen similar lists.

I asked how I was to know? I didn’t get a good answer, but it was apparent that I wasn’t supposed to ask the kids themselves. Given the history of Mexico, the Mexican-Americans were all white, at least partially, but that would not have been acceptable.

Okay, there they sit. Help me choose.

What about using skin color as a criterion? I had no student that year that anyone would have called black, so that simplifies things. What about that boy? Is he Mexican, or did he just spend the summer playing shirtless in the sun? What about Khrishna Srinivas; he’s dark enough?

Maybe names will tell us. What about Maria de la Rosa, that pale blonde whose parents just moved here from Madrid? If I don’t put her name down, anyone who just reads these names will think I cheated.

What about Paul Rogers, son of Bill Rogers and Delores Sandoval? White, of course.

But what about his cousin Raul? His father is Jorge Sandoval, Delores’s brother, and his mother is Beth Rogers, Bill’s sister.

Raul Sandoval – Mexican, of course.

If you don’t find this humorous, don’t worry; neither do I. The event actually happened. I made up the examples, but there were real ones I could have used.

This all happened thirty years ago. Things are better now, aren’t they? Maybe? Try this on for size. The man on the six o’clock news says that the latest poll determined that 73 percent of Latinos prefer Hillary Clinton.

Really? How does he know?  Who said the members of the survey group were Latinos? Who set up the criteria for what it takes to be a Latino?

And doesn’t this all sound just a little absurd?

143. Class on Cyan

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This is the third post for Teacher Appreciation week.

Until I retired, I called myself a novelist who taught, rather than a teacher who wrote books. It was a bit like a British officer dressing for dinner in his tent while serving in India – not a denial of the moment, but a reminder-to-self that present circumstances were only temporary.

My attitude was not disrespectful. I dedicated my complete energy to teaching for nearly three decades, and counted it an honorable profession. I just had further plans.

Some of the things I learned as a teacher spilled over into my writing. I wrote  a teaching novel (35. Symphony in a Minor Key) and Keir, the lead character in Cyan, took up teaching ecology and survival education to the colonists’ children, walking quite literally in my footsteps.

***

The snow started in the afternoon, first as scattered flakes, but soon clinging to the kaal stalks and frosting the gray-purple bowl of the valley with white.  Will turned to Keir for advice, something he rarely had to do any more.

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Keir replied. “It looks like this snow shower will pass quickly.  We’ll push on a few more kilometers and make camp by the river. When we set up the tents, have them staked carefully. Ramananda said we could expect heavier weather when Procyon sets.”

Will nodded and turned away to organize his troop. Then he touched his throat mike and relayed Keir’s advice to Marci’s group who were coming in from another angle and still out of sight in the forest that rimmed the valley.

Most of Will’s kids were about twelve, and this was their graduation exercise. After two years of laying the groundwork, Keir had convinced the council to devote most of the seventh year of the colony’s school to Cyanian ecology and survival techniques. Keir had taught the first few years, but since they had turned sixteen, Will, Marci, and Sven Aressen had taken over the day to day teaching. Keir remained as mentor, and planned each graduation trip.

A few of these kids had seen snow trickling down onto city streets on Earth when they were six or seven, but none of them, including their young leaders, had ever seen snow falling in a natural environment. They were wide eyed with wonder.

They had taken a cargo skimmer eight hundred kilometers north from Crowley and had come the last hundred kilometers on foot. Except for the brief sweep through the region which Keir and Gus had made three weeks earlier, no one had ever explored this area. That was the essence of the exercise; it was real. The land was new and the dangers were only partially known.

The second party broke out of the trees across the valley. Keir glassed them. Marci Nicholas was waving her arms about, pointing out something, still teaching. She was a natural. Gus stumped along beside her.

Keir turned back to his own group, who had quickly moved ahead of him. Each child carried a massive pack and a fletcher in a holster at his side. Only Will could have handled the recoil of one of the scout’s automatics, but those polymer rocket launchers were recoilless, just as deadly, and only a fraction of the weight.

These children were the cream. Of the four hundred children of their age group, these were the thirty who had passed every test, mental, physical, and moral, that Keir could devise. They had learned everything Keir had to teach them. Cyan’s Olympians. Keir smiled with pride, then hurried so they did not leave him behind.

142. Still Worthy of Praise

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WOPYesterday, I compared my elementary experiences with what happens in our schools today. Today I’ll talk about my high school, repeating a post from last October.

I started out to be a scientist, then defined myself as a writer, but along the way I became a teacher. Not an educator; that term is ruined for me by the fools in high places who have all but destroyed our schools.

I want to acknowledge some of my own teachers, but since I didn’t live a traditional childhood, this won’t be traditional praise. None of what follows will make sense unless you remember that my elementary school class had only eight students and my consolidated high school only brought the number up to thirty-seven. A larger school would have led to a different experience, even in Oklahoma in the early sixties.

My typing teacher was tough, knuckle slapping perfectionist, and she wasn’t afraid of public opinion. We called her The Warden. She was the only teacher who ever gave me a B. Dyslectic fingers killed me, no matter how hard I tried. She gave me exactly what I deserved and I respected her for it.

Later, when I was teaching science, my favorite exercise was a long term project where students had to build a gizmo to perform some physical feat. It was different every year, and they could only build it in class to keep their parents’ sticky fingers out of the works. Every year kids who only knew computer games and multiple-choice tests found themselves depending on their teammates who knew how to use hammers and wrenches. It was humbling to them; I smiled serenely and remembered The Warden.

My math teacher had a sense of fun. Whenever an unknown appeared in an equation, he would draw something barely recognizable as the back view of a bunny and say “That represents the number of rabbits in Rogers County”. His grin was infectious; he always looked like he was about to break into laughter. He kept us moving at top speed and made it impossible to hate or fear math. From him, I learned how to teach.

In science, I typically had read the textbook by the fourth week. I sat quietly in class and answered only enough questions to show I knew the material, then let the other students take their turns. My science teacher’s gift to me was trust. He let me work in the lab unsupervised except for his presence next door. I spent my study halls there building science projects, and that is where my science education really happened.

My English teacher gave me similar freedom out of a mixture of wisdom and laziness. I turned in every assignment early and better than required; in exchange I frequently wandered the school at will when I was supposed to be in his classes. I would never let one of my students do that, but it worked for me. I spent my time running errands for teachers, building things for the school, or working in the science lab.

It would have been a disaster for most kids, but it was the perfect education for me.

At home, my parents were hyper-controlling. Freedom was not an option. When I scored high on the National Merit Scholarship test and wanted to go to Michigan State University, they would not let me apply. It would have let me to move beyond their control.

My high school counselor let me fill out the application forms in his office and use the school as a return address, so my parents would not know until it was too late. He was putting his career in jeopardy, but I think he saved my life.

141. K-8 in Another Century

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This is Teacher Appreciation Week, and I’ve known a lot of them. The good ones are a treasure beyond price and the bad ones ought to be shot – metaphorically, at least. Fortunately the bad ones are fairly rare and they usually don’t last.

Back in October I praised my high school teachers in a post that I plan to run again tomorrow. After high school and a couple of decades of assorted adventures, I became a teacher myself. I didn’t plan it that way; in fact, it was the shock of a lifetime.

I grew up in a different world. In many ways, a farm in Oklahoma in the fifties was closer to the nineteenth century than to the twenty-first. The same could be said about my elementary school. Those old ways were not necessarily better. Neither are our new ways, but a comparison can be useful.

I started school in first grade. Kindergarten existed in the cities, but not where I lived, and preschool was unheard of. Talala School had shrunk over the years as the town lost population. The building was half full of students when I enrolled. Mrs. Stout taught first and second grades in one room. There were eight first graders and about ten in second graders. We first graders were taught reading, then we worked on our own while the second graders were taught reading. Then we were taught spelling; then we worked alone while she taught spelling to the second graders. And so forth. We spent half of every day working uninstructed, but under her eagle eye. By the end of the year, we had heard everything she taught to the second graders. The next year, we heard it again, in the same room, with new kids in our old first grade desks.

Third and fourth grades meant a new room, a new teacher, but the same pattern. Fifth and sixth meant the same pattern again, except that in fifth grade the Russians launched Sputnik and science was added to the curriculum. By sixth grade the high school was consolidated and gone; we moved to the high school end of the building, but still with two classes per teacher. For the last three years of its existence, Talala School was seven-eighths empty and haunted by the few students who remained. When I was in eighth grade, there were still eight students in my class, but the only two remaining in seventh grade. They were moved on to the consolidated school and for the first time in my elementary career, we had a full-day teacher all to ourselves.

Educationally deprived? Don’t you believe it. For seven years we had worked and learned all day, every day, and that was plenty. Having a full time teacher in eighth grade was no better, and no worse.

Fast forward through high school, college, military service, more college, becoming a writer, more college, until thirty years later I found myself teaching sixth, seventh, and eighth graders. Now we had Kindergarten, and pre-school, and pre-pre-school, and nursery school, and before school help, and after school help, and tutors, and ———

A true believer might say that students needed all that help. A moralist might say that they had to be made to work more hours because they were lazy. A cynic might say that somebody had to warehouse the kids until their parents got home – whenever that might be.

Algebra was moved from the ninth grade to the eighth. The theory was that  they needed readiness, which is code for, “If they aren’t smart enough do learn algebra in the ninth grade, start teaching it in eighth. If that doesn’t work, start in seventh.” All down the line, I watched subjects get moved earlier and earlier, while the students’ scores went lower and lower, and pre-school started a year sooner.

The goal, clearly, was pre-natal algebra.

Somewhere in the middle of my career, a local high school announced that they were going to begin teaching Advanced Placement classes. That sounded like a program where I would fit in as a teacher, so I attended their orientation. Maybe I misjudged them (I don’t think so) but I heard nothing about better teaching or deeper understanding. Instead, I heard a lot about more hours, more work, more reports, a chance to get ahead of the other guy, and to earn college credits while still in high school.

I was not impressed. I returned to teaching challenging things which were age and skill appropriate – to filling my students’ days with knowledge, while leaving their nights and weekends free for the other lessons life would teach them.

While you’re learning, learn. While you’re playing, play. If you’re in high school, get what high school has to offer. If you are too advanced to do that, move to college.

If this be treason, make the most of it.

140. I Have a Bad Feeling

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For the explorers returning to Earth from Cyan, seven and one half years have passed, but that perspective comes from twin journeys at near lightspeed. Twenty-five years have passed on Earth, and there have been changes.

Tasmeen was at the controls; Stephan stood behind her with his toes hooked under her seat.  He said, “Stand by to cut.  Cut!” 

The torch died, weightlessness returned, and the static that had been a soft background accompaniment to their actions became understandable speech.  Sort of.

“Bellig-acq.  Akno ID.  Bellig-acq, hype.”

“Huh?”

Gus said, “I would have expected to understand her better than that, even after twenty-five years.”

Stephan said, “That sounded more like code.”

“Or military jargon.  Roger-wilco kind of stuff.”

The message was repeated, and the tone of voice was more harsh.

“We’re still several light minutes away,” Stephan said. “Those messages were sent when our torch was still burning. Any minute they’ll figure out who we are and we’ll get a message that makes more sense.”

Sure enough, the grating, official voice now said: “Unidentified craft approaching Ganymede, are you the Darwin? If you are, acknowledge and proceed according to agreed flight plan. If you are not the Darwin, identify yourself quickly or we will assume belligerence.” The message repeated.

“Bellig-acq. Akno ID,” Tasmeen mused. “Belligerent acquisition, acknowledge identity?”

Stephan cut the gain and said, “That doesn’t sound very friendly. I wonder what happened to Ganymede Station?” He keyed the mike and spoke into it, “Ganymede Station, this is Darwin returning from Procyon system. Our trajectory is nominal for the approach we agreed upon twenty-five years ago. If you want any changes made, tell us quickly. We don’t have much delta-V to play around with. Are your ready to receive a flash synopsis of what we found?”

Stephan increased the gain again. The voice of Ganymede Station droned on while Stephan’s reply ran past it at the speed of light. Keir looked at the viewscreen, but there was nothing to see but stars. Even the sun was just a fat, bright dot in the sky. 

“Darwin, Darwin. We copy your message. Do not, I repeat, do not make uncoded transmissions.  Utilize protocol 7Y4B. Your old flight plan is fine. We are kicking a freighter out of her berth, but we’ll have a place cleared for you by the time you arrive. Welcome back.”

There was little welcome in the voice that said it.

“Jesus Christ, is that all they have to say?” Angrily, Stephan punched the mike key and said, “Ganymede, I will be glad to utilize protocol 7Y4B or whatever makes you happy, as soon as you tell me what the hell it is. What’s gotten into you people? Go get the NASA site administrator.”

Even as Stephan was speaking, Ganymede Station was replaced by another, more pleasant voice.

“Welcome home, Darwin. You will find the language of this year somewhat different than it was when you left. When the Dog Star returned in 2088, we found that it would be best to train comtechs in the jargon of your departure year, and that is the reason for this tape. I know you’re as full of questions as we are, so I’ll save you a time lag. No, we don’t have FTL drive yet. Relativity falls deeper into disrepute every year but no one has come up with a comprehensive theory to replace it. Yes, Dog Star, Europa, and Magellan have all returned. Dog Star found what would have been an Earth type planet, except that it has a Uranian inclination to the ecliptic. They call it Stormking, for obvious reasons . . .”

The tape cut out and the original voice returned. “Darwin, Darwin. Stand by to copy at flash, protocol 7Y4B.” Tasmeen made the connections. There was a high pitched whine as the flash transmission was fed into the computer. Then the tape resumed where it had been interrupted.

“. . . Europa and Magellan both found prime planets. We’ll fill you in on them later.

“The biggest change you will have to be ready for is that NASA no longer exists . . .”

Again the tape was interrupted by the voice of Ganymede. “Darwin, Darwin, copy this carefully. There is no NASA site administrator. You may continue transmitting in clear, but restrict yourselves to necessary navigational queries and replies. No other transmissions will be responded to.”

“. . . because after the general elections of 2103 the people of North America decided to combine all space efforts into one military organization. You are all now members of the Federated Space Service.”

Tasmeen said, “I have a bad feeling about this.”

139. D-i-v-o-r-c-e

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DIVORCE

If you don’t recognize the reference, D-I-V-O-R-C-E, sung spelled-out with a powerful twang, was a country western song from my childhood. It dealt with the horrors of divorce as a sad lament. If you wonder what it has to do with science fiction or A Writing Life, hang on until I set the stage and I’ll tell you all about it.

I have been married forty-six years (so far) to the love of my life. My marriage is the most important thing to me – more than my writing, my education, or my teaching career.

I equally believe, firmly and unalterably, in the healing power of divorce.

I was twenty-one when we married. It was the end of the sixties. People were beginning to live together without marriage. If we had done that, we would still be together. We stayed together because we wanted to, not because we had to.

Marriage between the right two people is the greatest thing on Earth. Marriage between the wrong two people is sheer hell. I’m sure you’ve seen examples of both.

***

When the issue of gay marriage arose, I was largely unmoved. Of course I thought, “Yes!” It seemed inevitable and right. It reminded me of arguments about racially mixed marriages during the sixties and seventies. What was shocking then, goes unnoticed today.

However, in those states where gay couples had all meaningful rights except the name marriage, I had to shake my head at all uproar. Advocates of gay marriage and those opposed to gay marriage both seemed to be missing the point.

After gay marriage, then what? Triads? Quartets? Hockey teams?

And if marriage is a bond between one man and one woman, then what man and what woman? Siblings? First cousins? Second cousins? Blacks and whites? Catholics and protestants? Jews and Muslims? 49er fans and Raider fans?

The plain fact is that when any two people say marriage, chances are they are talking about two different institutions. Marriage is undefined – or rather, it has a thousand definitions.

It’s all about property . . . and children . . . and wills, and power of attorney , and hospital visitation and . . . and sex . . . and infidelity. It’s about growing old together . . . or not. It’s about financial rights while you’re married, and who get’s the dog when you divorce. Or who gets the kids. Or which kids inherit when you die. (Remember that old fashioned term illegitimate child?)

There are rules about this, but they vary from state to state and from decade to decade. When Heinlein and his wife-to-be Virginia  were essentially married while waiting for his divorce from his previous wife, they had to hide out because it was illegal to have sex with someone you weren’t married to, and getting caught at it would have screwed up the divorce. This was not that long before Stranger in a Strange Land, the sixties, and free love.

Polygamy was once such a horror to “right thinking Americans” that the Mormon church removed it from its doctrines. Then the sixties came along and any number could play, as long as you didn’t get married.

Talk to any woman old enough to have fought her way through the feminist movement about what marriage meant in 1916. You will hear horror stories of domestic slavery, about an absence of financial rights, an absence of the rights to have or not have children, and about laws that did not consider forced sex to be rape, as long as it was done by the husband. The next time you hear the words traditional marriage, think back more than a decade or two.

Talk to any man who has divorced outside of a no-fault state, and he will tell you that marriage is still slavery of a financial kind. But don’t mention the word alimony.

There is an answer to all this confusion, but it doesn’t have emotional resonance, so it’s a hard sell. Marriage has two components. It has the deep seated comfort and life affirming excitement of loving people sharing their lives. And it has the rights and obligations that go along with the joy, which have to be spelled out during marriage, and litigated if the marriage ends. In my opinion, only the latter is the business of the government.

It’s time to stop pretending that one size fits all, that traditional marriage ever existed as a stable entity, or the the government can define the undefinable. Let there be contracts with choices of clauses to protect the rights of those involved. Let them be written down, debated, agreed to, and ultimately, signed or refused. Call them what you want, but don’t call them marriage.

Then let let every Baptist and Jew and Muslim and Catholic and unreconstituted hippie call whatever floats their boat marriage if they want to. Let them wrangle and argue to their heart’s content, but outside of the courts.

Do you think that will ever fly? I don’t. People would rather pretend that their answer is the answer, and force everyone else into their mold.

If it did fly, then two women, three men, and a transgender going either direction could write a contract that met their needs and call it marriage. Others could disagree as a loudly as they wanted. The Catholic church could excommunicate them, the Baptists could damn them to Hell, and it wouldn’t matter. The contract would go on independent of the in-fighting, spelling out and protecting the rights of those in the group.

138. Alone, and more alone

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In the novel Cyan, due out shortly from EDGE, the starship Darwin carries ten explorers at relativistic speeds to explore the Procyon system.

Ten explorers working eleven light years from Earth. As the only humans on the entire planet Cyan, the death of any one is sure to send shock waves reverberating through the group.

Keir Delacroix, groundside leader of the explorers tried to put this into perspective upon the death of one of his colleagues. You will note a deleted name, to avoid a spoiler.

It seems to me that funerals are for the living, for saying things that we already know, to put life and death in perspective and find some comfort.

“We are alone here. We are more alone than any other humans have ever been. When one of us hurts, we all hurt. When one of us dies, a piece of the whole dies. We must be very careful with one another, because we are all we have.

“We come from an Earth that is overflowing with people. One death there is nothing. Had (***) stayed behind, and died, no one would have noticed. Here, her death puts our whole world out of balance. And that is why we are on Cyan — to find a world where individual lives can be valuable again. At least, that is why I am here. Not as a scientist; not even as an explorer; but as a man searching for a place where humanity can find its soul again.

Death is a hungry beast, seldom satisfied with just one victim. And exploring a new planet is no safe endeavor.

***

When pioneers arrived on the east coast of North America, the forest they faced was vast. It was later said that a squirrel could travel from the Atlantic to the Mississippi without ever having to touch the ground. That forest is no more.

When Heinlein’s pioneers reached the stars, flaming laser axes in hand, they wrought similar destruction. Today’s reader knows better.

I wrote Cyan as an exercise in seeing, not what could happen, but what probably would happen, in near-term stellar exploration. That includes both the pressures for colonization from an overcrowded Earth, and a knowledge of the ecological disasters which need to be avoided.

The explorers on Cyan are careful in their daily actions and in planning for future colonization, but they are not prepared to find a truly half-human species. Viki Johanssen, crew anthropologist, demands that Cyan be placed off limits to colonization for their sake. Keir disagrees, and colonization plans go forward.

Viki is faced with a decision. Being one of so few is a lonely thought, but could she survive being truly alone? What if she stayed behind when the Darwin returned, to study these creatures while they were still pristine, before human colonists came in.

What would you do, if you knew that mankind’s only chance to study this half-human species was at hand, but you would have to become the sole inhabitant of an entire planet, certainly for decades, perhaps forever?

Would you choose to stay behind?