The WIP by Michael E. Gonzales

First and foremost, let me wish everyone a happy and prosperous NEW YEAR!  This is a leap year so we each have 366 days to succeed!

___________

I am finding the research for my WIP very interesting.

I enjoy all the research I do for my stories, learning a lot with each keystroke.

Today I can discuss, intelligently, with any interested party, such topic as; faster than light travel, stellar radiation, the effects of red light on plant evolution, the history of dragons around the world, and metallurgy in medieval times.

I have always been eager to learn new things, particularly when it come to minutia that can be of little use in daily life.

The idea came over me one morning

as I drove to work to write an adventure/love story revolving around witches, covens, and a warlock.

By the time I pulled up to the office a rough concept of a plot had formed. Once home that evening I sat down and began to hammer out my idea.

You could have taken everything I knew about the subject and put it into a size 6 pointy hat. Like most I’ve seen the movies; Bell, Book and Candle, and of course the Harry Potter series. So, these were my starting points.

However, my research revealed and entirely different “magical world”, not one that fit into my adventure/love story, at all.

So, online I made contact with a young woman who is an actual practicing witch.

She was very helpful but only reaffirmed what my research had revealed.

This left me a bit despondent. What was I supposed to do with this new knowledge?

Then I looked up a laundry list of books about fictional witches. They have been depicted as comical, i.e., “Bewitched”, to very sinister, communing with Beelzebub himself.

Then an epiphany washed over me, like a beam of light through the clouds on an overcast day. I’m writing a fiction! My witches can be anything I wish! They can be from Mars if I so desire.

My story is set in contemporary times. My witches are all very young, in their early twenties,

with the exception of the “priestess” of each of the two covens who are, of course, older and wiser.

The warlock is a typical young man, who is oblivious of his “gift” with no concept how to call forth his powers nor how to control them if he could.

The two covens, a coven being a group of witches usually thirteen in number, are polar opposites of one another. They are at war for possession of the novice warlock. Their battle will take them all over the globe and eventually beyond it.

A great many emotions will be at play, jealousy, avarice, hate, but also devotion, generosity, and love.

As with all my stories, the plot never survives the first chapter, so this story will unfurl as a surprise, even to me in the first draft, and this, I feel, is how it should be. Then the draft will undergo a great many alterations, like clay on the potter’s wheel forming and reforming until it is the perfect vessel for the story I want to tell.

Research, it can make a fairie tale a believable story, one that I hope will cast a spell over my readers and bring them into the pages.

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Synchronicity by Michael E. Gonzales

I have been writing since before the turn of the century. My first manuscripts were saved on floppy disks (if you aren’t aware of 3.5-inch floppies, ask your parents).

I began writing after seeing a movie with my wife and commenting as we came out, “I believe I could have written a better story.”

She replied, “Yeah? Do it.”

After a time, wherein which I read a number of books on the art of writing, I came to enjoy the process. Exercising the mind, the imagination, even the research, editing, and rewriting.

As I look back to 2016, I marvel and my extreme good fortune to have been published.

Initially the thought of publishing my stories never even entered my mind. When my wife encouraged me to make the attempt, I did. Sending query letters to publishers throughout the US and several in the UK.

No one would have considered it possible that I would, through a pure act of synchronicity, find a publisher right here in Oklahoma City.

I cannot possibly explain the euphoria I felt when signing that first contract. Nor the incredulity of seeing my name on the cover of my first published book.

I’ll never know how many people have read my stories, but if one person truly enjoyed one of them then I am ecstatic. I am fortunate to have received reviews both on Amazon and via email from many happy readers. I know you are all aware what a great pleasure it is to receive these.

So, on this all hallows eve, I sit not with visions of vampires and monsters on my mind, rather I bask in the glow of my small success with my stories of…monsters and vampires. I dream yet of adventures in space, explorers on Mars,

great battles among the stars,

and of witches and warlocks battling for supremacy and falling in love for their troubles.

I have my wife to thank for pushing me. And Jef, Michelle, Jessica, Cheryl, and countless friends who cheered me on.

Before me there opens a dark passage with countless twists and turns. There are pitfalls too, but also stairwells that can lead one to the stars, and beyond.  

Into that yawning maw I will proceed. I trust that good fortune precedes me, luck accompanies me, and hope that Carl Jung was right!

Happy Halloween, everyone.

Mike

The Suspension of Disbelief. By Michael Gonzales

Okay—this might at first seem a bit rambling, but hang in there.

In science fiction and fantasy there is an expectation of the suspension of disbelief.

After all, believing a vast advanced culture resides beneath the sands of Mars, or that dragons can be harnessed and flow about…well, really. Everyone knows, you can’t saddle a dragon, please!

Even in “hard” scifi there are two (currently) impossible pieces of “science” that are forgiven: Faster Than Light speeds (FTL), and Time Travel.

In recent years another impossibility has been gaining in acceptance, the “Star Gate.” Even faster than FTL travel, you just step through the gate and…poof; you’re in another galaxy.

The concept is certainly not new, and even predates the 1994 movie staring Curt Russell and James Spader, and the follow-on TV series. These two entertainments made the words “Star Gate” nearly a household term.

Those two words used together today, evoke the visual of a vertical toilet flushing you away...to an off-world adventure.

What the Star Gate is supposed to be is a black hole brought into being by intelligent design, alien intelligent design, of course. For as we all know only aliens from an advanced civilization, eons older than our own, possess such technology.

Two twentieth century scientists, Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen proposed a solution to the Einstein Field Equations.  In short, and I mean very short, the solution is what has come to be know as an Einstein-Rosen bridge, or…a black hole.

The Einstein-Rosen Bridge is the geometrical property of a black hole; on the other end of the black hole one would find another set of dimensions at a location…well, somewhere else.

Einstein himself said that the creation of such a tunnel was theoretically possible, but it would require the energy of several suns.

Now I ask you, who but aliens have control of that kind of power?

These aliens would be at least a level III on the Kardashev Scale.

The what…scale?

The scale was originally designed in 1964 by the Russian astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev. He was actually looking for signs of extraterrestrial life within cosmic signals.

His scale for determining just how advanced a civilization is started with 3 basic classes, each measured by the amount of energy a given civilization can harness: Types I through III.

Since then other astronomers have extended the scale to include Types IV and V.

A Type V civilization would be able to capture all the energy available in not just our universe, but in all universes and in all time-lines.

At this point I think it an interesting fact to note, that Earth does not even measure on this scale.

To surmise, a Type I civilization would have control over all the energy existent on a planet, a type II would harness the power of a star, which would resulted in them harboring enough “disposable” energy to essentially make that civilization immune to extinction.

But the Type III would be a species that had become galactic traversers with knowledge of everything having to do with energy, resulting in them becoming a master race.

Dr. Steven Hawkins warned of making contact with a spacefaring civilization, the renowned astrophysicist said it was, "perfectly rational to assume intelligent life exists elsewhere.”

But he warned that aliens might simply raid Earth for its resources, then move on.

"If aliens visit us,” he said. “The outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans.” 

After considering the Kardashev Scale, perhaps one might think that Dr. Hawkins’ warning should be taken to heart.

But…after reading my next novel, Beyond a Sea of Stars, you might worry that; it’s already too late.

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Will we find love...out there? Michael E. Gonzales

Recent research for another story, led me to consider the infinite. I first considered our own ‘universe’, containing many billions of galaxies, each galaxy containing billions of stars, the vast majority of those the stars with planets orbiting them, with the clear and high possibility that advanced life resides there. 

The question then follows … how many trillions upon trillions of sentient beings, within our own galaxy, are out there pondering the same question…right now?

And if string theory is correct, and there does exist the multiverse, an infinite number of universes floating in the endless ether, like soap bubbles, then what is the mathematical equation to estimate advanced life in that endless sea?

Infinity…

What, I wondered, are some common denominators that might run through those other beings? Of course, Maslow's hierarchy of needs comes to mind, they are:

1. Biological and Physiological needs - food, drink, shelter, warmth, sex, sleep.

2. Safety needs - protection from the elements, security, order, law, stability, freedom from fear.

3. Love and belongingness needs - friendship, intimacy, trust and acceptance, receiving and giving affection and love. Affiliating, being part of a group (family, friends, work).

4. Esteem needs - achievement, mastery, independence, status, dominance, prestige, self-respect, and respect from others.

5. Self-Actualization needs - realizing personal potential, self-fulfillment, seeking personal growth and peak experiences.

Number three, I think, is a commonality that will transcend time and space. If a creature is indeed sentient, having the capacity to feel, perceive, and experience subjectively. Possessing that metaphysical quality that requires a close, interpersonal relationship. Beyond the basic needs of number one, above, the sentient entity will long for the knowledge that he, or she, is loved.

I feel certain that wherever one might travel, in this or in any universe, love will be there.

A thousand years from now, if mankind does not destroy itself, humanity may likely be living on worlds far, far from the home planet. Generations will come with no recollection of Earth at all, only knowing it from legends, and bedtime stories.

Humans will encounter life alien to us. However, I think a lot of what we find, on Earth like planets, will look much as we do. 

The engineering for the human being, residing on Earth, is perfect. Given conditions here, like our atmosphere, gravity, and the other creatures we share the planet with, our mental capacity, and how all these acted upon us during our evolution, well, there is little else we could have become.

We are still evolving, of course, and will likely look different a thousand years in the future, but I feel certain our physiology will remain the same.

We will share worlds with ‘people’ who, though not ‘Earthlings’ will nevertheless be advanced, intelligent, and desirous of friendship, intimacy, trust and acceptance. They will possess the ability to receive and give affection. They will be quite capable of love, as are we.

As our authors and poets have written for centuries; love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is never envious nor arrogant nor prideful. Nor is love conceited.  

Doubtless, the bloodline of humanity will mix with other races and spawn entirely new beings, with increased capacity, and hopefully, greater intelligence. 

I have ventured to hazard the possibility in my soon to be available third book in The Unborn Galaxy series, Across a Sea of Stars.

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On Writing Science Fiction by Michael Gonzales

Writing Science Fiction demands something that many other genres do not. It demands that the author conceive a future technology for our planet, or invent an altogether alien technology. 

We’ve all seen the movies, and the TV shows depicting life thirty and a hundred years into the future. Everyone is wearing silver jumpers, living in skyscrapers that tickle the ionosphere, and the air is filled with flying buses and other public transportation.

For those long trips, say to Tokyo or Berlin, there are super-sonic trains in glass tubes moving at near super-luminal speeds, putting you at your destination in mere minutes.

It’s all so familiar to us—and that’s the problem. Trying to be new, fresh, original in this, the twenty-first century, is a real challenge.

On the other hand, an author these days does not have to spend a chapter and a half describing the Utopian citadel wherein characters reside; just a few key descriptors and the average reader can easily recognize the metropolis of the future—in their already-programmed minds.

Still, what writer of SciFi can resist trying to accomplish what Jules Verne did in 1863 in one of his earliest novels, “Paris in the Twentieth Century.” His descriptions of society and technology a hundred years in the future were frighteningly accurate.

A testament to this fact is the reaction he got from his publisher, Pierre-Jules Hetzer, who refused to release the book because he thought it too unbelievable.

The book's description of the technology of “1960” was in some ways remarkably close to actual 1960s technology. The book described in detail advances such as cars powered by internal combustion engines ("gas-cabs") together with the necessary supporting infrastructure, such as gas stations and paved asphalt roads, elevated and underground passenger train systems, and high-speed trains powered by magnetism and compressed air, skyscrapers, electric lights that illuminate entire cities at night, fax machines ("picture-telegraphs"), elevators, primitive computers which can send messages to each other as part of a network, resembling today’s Internet (described as sophisticated electrically powered mechanical calculators which can send information to each other across vast distances), the utilization of wind power, automated security systems, the electric chair, and remotely-controlled weapons systems, as well as weapons destructive enough to make war unthinkable.

The book also predicts the growth of suburbs and mass-produced higher education (the opening scene has Dufrénoy attending a mass graduation of 250,000 students), department stores, and massive hotels. A version of feminism has also arisen in society, with women moving into the workplace and a rise in illegitimate births. It also makes accurate predictions of twentieth century music, predicting the rise of electronic music, and describes a musical instrument similar to a synthesizer, and the replacement of classical music performances with a recorded music industry. In addition, it predicts that the entertainment industry would be dominated by lewd stage plays, often involving nudity and sexually explicit scenes.

With Hetzel’s refusal to publish, Verne locked the manuscript in a vault where it languished for 131 years before being discovered by his great-grandson in 1989. It was first published in 1994.

THAT, my friends, is forward thinking. He was able to describe things not in existence at that time because he stayed abreast of scientific advancement in his own time. Equipped with a knowledge of where science had come from, where it was, and what it was aiming for, Jules Verne extrapolated the future, accurately, a century in the future. Incredible!

As for alien tech, well, the sky’s the limit (no pun intended). We are a long way from the flying saucers of the 1950s. Today alien spacecraft have been described, in Science Fiction, as everything from massive cities in space to living biological creatures, harnessed to transport the aliens anywhere they care to travel. 

Alien space craft can be anything you can conceive, tiny ethereal objects of light with dimensional anomalies that allow them access to the multiverse, with limitless capacity to transport entire populations, or vast armies.

The aliens could even come to us with no spacecraft at all. Imagine a mind so powerful it can place itself anywhere it can comprehend in the blink of an eye. An alien life with no corporal form.

And if such a wraithlike life existed, what could they possibly see in us? What indeed?

I relish such questions and enjoy trying my best to answer them in a manner that my readers will find entertaining, or better yet…riveting.

Follow me then into worlds beyond our own. The next three stories in The Unborn Galaxy series will take us far from our tiny blue orb to worlds of SciFi adventure mixed with Fantasy and Romance.

I’ll not claim to be a Jules Verne, no one can, but I have called upon a power granted me by an other-worldly entity that allows me to tap into vast reservoirs of imagination; that, combined with the ability to spin a yarn, will provide you, dear reader, with an experience I hope will entertain and enlighten.   

Mike Gonzales

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