Analog SFF, January-February 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “Of course not,” he said. “But that doesn't change the ugly parts. We only get one chance at this, and we're not ready."

  “Why do you assume they are?” I leaned forward. “Sure, they talk about how important it is to be usaalif—what we've been translating as ‘civilized.’ But have you noticed they're mostly saying how important it is for them? After the whole gender roles discussion, there were people on both sides who disappeared for a while. I gather that they were as embarrassed as we were."

  “Are you saying we can all be immature together? In a bigger sandbox, with more shovels? I'm not sure that's any better."

  “I'm saying maybe we can't grow up until we have someone else to talk to. The same way you question your parents more after you see how things are done at the neighbor's house. Maybe we're stupid in different ways. Sure, there's a chance that we could all come out of this with some new bad habits, but I'm optimistic enough to think it's more likely that we can help each other. We all want to be usaalif, after all, right?"

  “I do, at least."

  “Everyone here does,” I said. “When you make new friends, you want to imitate the things you like about them."

  “Not always the best idea in the world. I picked up some pretty nasty habits in college, I remember.” But he was meeting my eyes again and smiling.

  “Probably. But the cosmic equivalent of frat parties has got to be better than hitting each other with shovels."

  He laughed. “You can't have been to many frat parties. I'll bet you had some wild study groups, though!"

  “Sort of a combination. Stats make more sense after a couple of beers, anyway. You going to be okay?"

  He nodded.

  “We'll make this work. We're as ready as we're ever going to be until we actually go through with it."

  * * * *

  At three weeks, we had a mini-conference. Everyone gave a twenty-minute talk on what they'd learned, and then the rest of us tried to point out all the obvious questions they'd missed. It was a breath of familiarity, and I think we all needed it. Sure, we were running the first contact with an alien species, with no chance for rehearsal. Sure, we'd been having real-time conversations across fifty-four light years and completely revising our physics as a result. But as long as we could summarize everything in a computerized slideshow, we could handle it.

  The physics people went first. I couldn't have told you what most of the talk was about, but the last slide was mind-blowing: a photograph of a scaffolded steel frame, half completed, and an inset of an engineering diagram. Dr. Christoffels intoned: “I see a long journey in your future,” and the room exploded into applause.

  Isham from bio was next. I'd been particularly looking forward to this part. I hadn't been able to catch up with him earlier to check my guesses about the Skaan nervous system, and was hoping to corner him during the question period.

  “So,” he began. You can always tell the professors who are recovered social phobics, because they still can't help stalling a little before they start talking. “I want to begin by giving you a bit of context. Last night we got our first and, given the cost of the bandwidth, probably last, visuals through the ansible.” A low and eager whisper filled the room, and I leaned forward. Isham fingered his notes. “I should warn you that these are all stills, and the image quality is only fair. That said, however—"

  He changed the slide, and I caught my breath. I clenched my fists, then forced them open. I kept my therapist's face on, bland and sympathetic, because I couldn't fake anything else. Fortunately, the people around me were too excited to notice.

  The Skaan didn't really look that much like Terran snakes. Sure, they had long, coiling bodies, and scales, and those expressionless black eyes, and those lipless, noseless faces. They were also much larger, and had eyespots all along their bodies, and two lines of tentacles arching around their torsos, one just behind the head and one about halfway down. The tentacles looked nothing like hands. They looked like Medusa's hair, if Medusa had been a snake herself. They looked wrong.

  I had come to know Feese, to think of her as a friend. I had stayed up late hashing out theories of comparative psychology with her, had chatted about her husbands, had imagined what it would be like to sit down to dinner with them. She couldn't be anything so repulsive. I liked her.

  * * * *

  Five feet from Zulu, I focused on my breathing. Inhale and exhale, inhale and exhale, just like I'd practiced alone in my room. The snake was out of his cage, draped around Tess's torso. If only he would stay still, I thought, I'd be able to handle it. But he kept trying to crawl off her—toward me, usually—and she kept pulling him back. That meant touching him with her hand.

  “How can you do that?” I demanded.

  “What, this?” She ran her fingers along his back. “It's nice. He's got soft skin. Here, try it.” She held out a scaly coil in my direction. I didn't pull back, but it took effort.

  “I don't think I'm ready for that, yet."

  “Come on. He's not slimy, you know."

  “I know that,” I said. He didn't even look slimy. My hindbrain, though, insisted that if I touched him, I'd come away fouled.

  “So pet him. Pretend he's your friend's new hatchling.” She made rocking motions. “Oh, Feese, what a cute little boy! Such lovely brown and black scales! Such itty-bitty tentacles!"

  Bile filled my throat. “Tess, stop it. Now."

  “A week, Serafina. We've got a week. Touch the damn snake."

  I stood up. “I don't need you pushing me. This is my job; I know how to do it."

  She snorted. “Yeah? Your client's got a deadline. You'd better start pushing her, or she's going to screw it up."

  I left, cursing myself.

  * * * *

  At around 0100, I came back to Tess's quarters. She opened the door in a plaid nightshirt, eyes still half closed.

  “Oh, sorry. I didn't think I'd wake you up."

  “Didn't want to, you mean.” She swept out an arm. “Right this way to the chamber of horrors."

  “The yawn ruins the effect."

  She lifted the top off the cage, then eased Zulu up and over her shoulders. “Oof. You're a heavy boy. Don't squirm. That's right. I know, you were sleepy, too."

  I eyed him nervously. “Don't you worry that he'll strangle you?"

  “Nope. Rats are food; Mommy's way too big. You've just got to make sure you give him something else to hold onto."

  I came closer. Inhale, exhale. Inhale. Exhale. I couldn't do it.

  “Close your eyes,” Tess said. Swallowing, I did so.

  I felt Tess's fingers close gently around my wrist, guiding my hand forward. I tried to empty my mind of images and expectations and any connection between what I was about to do and what I would see if I opened my eyes.

  I felt smooth skin, only faint grooves marking the edges of scales. “He's dry!"

  “I told you that."

  He was cool, too, like a stone wall or polished wood. Muscle flexed underneath as he moved. He really was soft—not like a cat, but more like ... actually, more like a dolphin. This was strange, but I seemed to be managing. I opened my eyes.

  The problem was that when I looked, there was still a snake in front of me. I pulled my hand away, trying to avoid the temptation to wipe it off. Zulu lifted his head and flicked his tongue at me, and I flinched. I backed off a pace.

  “That went ... better,” I managed.

  “It did, though,” said Tess. She smiled. “If you keep this up for the next couple days, we might actually pull this off."

  I shook my head, taking my eyes off of Zulu. “If not, I can always go dirtside wearing a blindfold."

  * * * *

  One week later. Second shuttle down. First had been the people with status, the ones who needed to make fancy speeches and sign things. Second were the people that really mattered, the people who knew things and whose job it was to learn more.

  We had been getting and analyzing visual and auditory signals s
ince we hit the system border—enough work to keep me busy and to force me to look at what I was getting into. I'd barely had a chance the last two days to visit Tess, but I'd been getting my full share of exposure to the feared stimulus. I'd also been getting full exposure to Skaan dramas and music, cross-cultural debates, unspoken assumptions, and linguistic intricacies. I was high on exotic anthropology. My mantra, when I had time to practice it, was: Being a xenopsychologist is more important to me than being a phobic. I am not going to lose the thing I love because of the thing I fear. I had a picture of Feese with her family, printed out and secreted in my pocket in preparation for the actual meeting. I fingered it while I waited, trying to decide if I should look at it again before we left.

  Second shuttle down, dropping through layers of white, edged in fire, atmosphere wailing around us. Adrenaline, the same adrenaline that ran in our ancestors’ veins when they left the plains of Africa, heading north into the cold. Sweat and fear and joy, lust for learning and for survival. We were as ready as we were going to be, without actually going through this.

  The air was warm and humid. Short, purple grass covered the landing field. On the far side, Skaan were waiting for us. These were to be our fellows, the scientists and researchers with whom we'd been speaking for these past few months. They were also, indeed, giant snakes. I breathed, tried to find one of them to concentrate on, so I didn't have to look at all of them. I glanced at the printout, looked for the semi-familiar face and scarlet-and-purple diamond scaling.

  A Skaan who seemed to match the description dropped from its resting coil and slithered toward me. I stood still. Part of me was still frightened, but part of me was singing. I focused on that part. I am not going to lose the thing I love because of the thing I fear.

  “Serafina?” There was no hiss to her voice: Her voicebox and thick tongue were as flexible as a parrot's.

  “Feese.” For most of our exchanges, we were still going to depend on translation aids, but I had worked hard to at least be able to say hello. In her language, I continued: “I bear joy at our meeting and hope for our greater learning together. I will share in patience, for the greater joy of both our peoples."

  Up close, I could see how her body stretched and pushed together as she moved, waves of muscle passing down her torso. Like Zulu, but larger. “It is a pleasure to meet you.” Not entirely to my surprise, she spoke in English. “We bear joy together."

  She stretched one of her tentacles and wrapped it around my wrist. I closed my eyes. Her scales were cool and dry, like polished wood or a stone.

  I opened my eyes and—for the moment, at least—I saw the thing I loved.

  Copyright © 2006 R Emrys Gordon

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  * * *

  Special Feature: How To Write Something You Don't Know Anything About

  by Richard A. Lovett

  There is a fundamental rule of fiction that you'll find in virtually any writing primer: Write what you know. If we followed that to the letter in science fiction, though, the field would be dull indeed. No warp drives. No manned spaceflight beyond the moon. No time travel, antigravity, force fields, nanobots, artificial intelligences, alien life forms, laser cannons, e-brain implants, or virtual-reality headsets. How can you write what you know if the things you write about don't exist?

  And yet, nowhere more than in Analog, science fiction writers are expected to sound knowledgeable.

  How to do this is a perennial panel topic at conventions, and as a dual science/science-fiction writer, I may be approaching a record for the number of times I've been part of such discussions.

  Science journalism is the art of writing things you don't know a lot about. If you really were the expert, you'd be the one with tenure, publishing in the journal of It-Really-Is-Rocket-Science.

  I learned this two decades ago, early in my nonfiction career. Late in the first year in which I actually turned a profit at writing, I was contacted by a food-industry publication that needed a West Coast writer to attend science meetings and hearings on regulatory toxicology. Could I do it? Oh, by the way, the first hearing was tomorrow.

  The pay was good—roughly the same for that first hearing as my entire year's profit to date—so I said yes. That led to a decade in which I bounced from toxicology to microbiology, biotechnology to analytical chemistry, nutrition to cardiology. I even wrote about regulatory standards regarding insect body parts in salads and the best ways to ferment sausages to kill E. coli bacteria.

  At first, it was an exercise in terror. My science background was in astrophysics, which was about the only field I was certain not to be writing about. What I discovered was that it really is possible to learn on the fly, especially under deadline pressure. There were days when I had to file stories on only a few hours’ notice, knowing they would be scrutinized by executives wanting accurate, technical information.

  I quickly learned the first rule of science reporting: If you didn't understand it, it didn't happen. It's a good rule for any type of writing that stretches your knowledge, and it has only one true exception: It may still have happened if you can quote it exactly.

  But woe to those who botch the quote. My trade publication once had to write a retraction that went something like this: “Somewhere between talk, tape, and type, the phrase ‘type II diabetes’ became ‘typhoid diabetes.’ We regret to admit that there is no such ailment."[1] Luckily, I wasn't the one who made that mistake, although I did fumble the nomenclature of mycotoxins in my first article in that field. Mycotoxins are the toxins produced by molds, and anything that ends in “-in” (I now know) is the toxin. If it ends in “-ium,” it's the beastie that makes it. That can be a critical difference. In fiction, it's the type of error that draws “gotcha” letters.

  [Footnote 1: If you think this is only a problem with technical fields, consider the following laugher that appeared in Newsweek, early in 2006: Correction: In the original version of this report, NEWSWEEK misquoted [conservative Christian leader Jerry] Falwell as referring to ‘assault ministry.’ In fact, Falwell was referring to ‘a salt ministry'—a reference to Matthew 5:13, where Jesus says ‘Ye are the salt of the earth.’ We regret the error.

  Still, it's often better not to know too much about a field. Partly that's because another axiom of journalism is that (mycotoxins aside) it's almost always the things you think you know that will come back and bite you. Being unsure makes you a paranoid fact-checker, which (within reason) is good.

  At least as importantly, experts are often lousy writers in their fields. That's because they don't realize what the average reader doesn't know. The nonexpert, who had to learn everything from scratch, is in better touch with the readers—and can draw on his or her own learning process in the writing.

  During my trade publication days, I wrote as many as 250 articles per year. That taught me three critical skills:

  —How to be a quick study;

  —How to translate techno-speak into English; and

  —How to acquire a working knowledge of diverse fields.

  None of these can be acquired overnight, but they are skills, not talents. They can be learned. Here are a few drills to help you get started:

  —Read widely. Go online, to the library, or to the science-fact section of Analog. Try reading the news section of Science or subscribe to New Scientist (a large-circulation British weekly that's also a good source of story ideas). Read about fields you know nothing about but find at least vaguely interesting (boring yourself won't do any good). Talk to friends about their jobs, hobbies, passions. Not only is this a good drill, it's also of practical value. A couple of years ago, a friend told me about his hobby of collecting American large cents. I'd heard of these old coins before but knew almost nothing about them. Sometime afterward, when I was looking for a setting for a science-fictional detective story, I remembered our discussion. The result appeared in these pages as “Numismatist” (April, 2006).

  —Bore your friends. When I was a ki
d, I liked to explain my latest scientific interests to my English-teacher mother. I'm sure I severely tested her patience, but the experience taught me to how to boil the science down to basics and explain it in vivid analogies.

  —Once you've learned about an arcane field, keep current. In doing this, the internet is your friend. Of course, it's also your enemy. When you've learned to tell the difference, you can be confident you're acquiring some expertise.

  So far, this has mostly been about learning how to communicate science. But how do you incorporate this skill into fiction writing?

  Obviously, one way is by increasing the accuracy of your info-dumps. If they've got to be there, it would be nice if they're correct. But stories, even the hardest of hard science fiction, are far more than info-dumps. Often the trick lies in explaining as little as possible. Then, you can sound like you know more than you actually do, while minimizing the chance of mistakes.

  This may sound contrary to the spirit of Analog, but it isn't.[2] How many of us really understand how a cell phone works? Or a GPS receiver? With the cell phone, we have a vague idea that it's in radio communication with a network of towers, but how does it manage the handoff from one tower to another? That's a nifty switching trick that would have looked like magic fifty years ago.

  [Foonote 2: In fact, a variant on this idea is so deeply "Analog" that it has become known as “Schmidt's Law,” based on editor Stanley Schmidt's advice that writers spend as much time as necessary working out the science of their stories—and as few words as possible explaining it. The official version is: “Know as much as you can about your background, and don't tell any more than you have to."]

  If you'd been smart enough to think of cell phones back then, you could have written a fine story without knowing anything about the details of the switching. All you'd have needed would have been the idea of limited range, line-of-sight operation, and miniaturized equipment. The real story is the cultural one: using the cell phone to page your kids from the house to help carry in the groceries, using your spouse's cell phone to call your own because you can't remember where you put it, efforts to ban driving while talking, the frustration of listening to everyone's one-sided conversations.