WOTF = Writers of the Future, an organization endowed by the famous SF writer L.Ron Hubbard. Among other activities the WOTF organization conducts quarterly Science Fiction and Fantasy writing contests. I entered a short story in the 2nd Quarter 2023 contest. I received Honorable Mention for my story titled “Death Do Us Part” . I received a second Honorable Mention from Allegory Magazine (Summer Issue 2023) for the same story. Next step is to polish the story and submit again.

ABOUT THE STORY: Written in 2022, the story is about a woman who has her beloved dying husband uploaded to computer hardware. “It was what he wanted, but it is not what she needs. Spending her days enjoying his company, and her nights deeply grieving. She chooses a drastic solution.

It is now 2/19/2023, and I didn’t make my 2022 goal. However, all the chapters are written now. Some I have re-written, using my now-improved writing skill. I have decided to split the story into two volumes. My original goal was to follow John’s trail from Ireland to America and that would be the end. Reactions to the draft version showed me that Margaret’s story would be interesting to 21st century women. She was more than a mother and housekeeper. So the scope of the novel is expanded to include both John and Margaret’s separate paths, and reunion in America.

Volume II will cover their life in America but the information I have has many gaps. More genealogical and historical research is needed. For example, we know they landed in Philadelphia, lived for a time in and around Syracuse, possibly Rochester and possibly Littlestown,Pennsylvania, before finally coming to rest in Queens and/or Brooklyn. We don’t know when they moved from place to place but there’s more census data becoming available to the genealogy community all the time, and possibly property records can be found in Cleveland, NY where — oops, no spoilers! Consequently, Volume II at this point is a possibility not a plan. I am confident that someday it can be written, if not by me, then someone else.

Now, I’m going back to my editing and prose polishing.

Hang in there!

As of July 30, 2022, I have completed the final ten chapters. That’s what publishers would call a first draft. I’ve also polished the prose in to a readable second draft. That required 1,500 changes (using Grammarly and editing help from my wife and sisters). My aim is to get the novel into a third draft soon, and printed in fall 2022.

For those who are unfamiliar with my saga novel project, you may wonder “What is the story about?” Read on.

My Kelly family lore includes stories of my great-grandparents, John and Margaret who owned a big house on a lake in New York, which they bought with money John earned from his 30 patents for shoe-making machinery. He even had his own shoe manufacturing company for a time. His wife, Margaret, was known to “march for causes”, presumably that included the number one issue of her time — the Women’s Suffrage Movement. She also bore ten children.

Each of my relatives had a piece of this American success story, but no one knew the story behind the success story. Where did they live in Ireland? Was John’s name really “on a list” of people to be arrested? What had he done? Why did they leave their homeland, Ireland? After some research, the outline of a story emerged. The saga novel answers these questions and many more.

The saga begins with the Fenian political revolutionary groups and the story of my Great-Great Grandfathers, William Kelly, and Denis Marrey. These two buddies participated in an attempted revolt against the English in1867. The core story of the saga is their children, John and Margaret. They followed in their father’s political footsteps, active in Fenian groups. Married in 1882, their first year together was interrupted when the English initiated a new round of oppression in Ireland. Irish assassins retaliated. The English responded to the retaliation with mass jailings. One step ahead of the law, John fled to the United States, leaving Margaret behind. Margaret overcame many obstacles in following him. A year and a half later, she re-joins John in Philadelphia, where they resumed their interrupted lives.

One star

I bought this book thinking it was devoted to the gravity lens effect. It has one chapter about this topic. That was disappointing. However it’s the best non-mathematical explanation of the effect and its uses that I have seen.
The first half of the book is an introduction to the great questions of astronomy. It is well-written and timeless because it is history.
The rest of the book is a survey of the state-of-the-art of astronomy as of 1988. Which is merely confusing because some things have been resolved. Dark matter, for example, was a new idea then, but seems to be accepted now, even though I don’t see much progress in understanding or capturing any of it.
The field of astronomy seems continue to evolve. I would recommend buying a more current book.

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My Rating: Five Stars

This is a book for writers, or anyone who want a peek at how Joan does her writing. In typical memoir style, she talks about studying writing in college, and what drew her to the craft. She has some witty observations on the anxious high school kid she was, who didn’t get into her first choice college, then found out it didn’t seem to make much difference. She’s avoids generalizations, staying always in the particularity of her experience. As she points out, this is her, all the time. She could never be a philosopher or historian, because she’s enmeshed in the world as it is experienced.

She describes one of her novel-writing techniques. She receives shimmering visions in her mind’s eye of scenes and characters, often in dialogue. She writes these unconnected pieces down. Then she weaves a story that connects the visions. The vision-based pieces seem to act as anchor points, at least in the beginning, to get the novel through the first draft.

I thought I was the only one who saved these little visionary scenes that appear from nowhere. I don’t recall seeing shimmers, so now I’ll look for them. I had thought of my tree of folders more as a well-stocked and structured scrap pile while Joan treats them as messages that are interconnected. It is her strategy to begin writing the novel, and discover the connections. Perhaps I’ll try her approach.

Other writers have said that they have never salvaged an idea from their scrap pile of ideas and snippets. Maybe they just didn’t have it organized so they could easily retrieve just the right snippet. Maybe Joan’s real secret is some method she uses to select the snippets that belong together. Whatever the answer may be, this is far afield of the John Campbell approach to writing that so many ‘writing experts’ tout.

It felt good to hear that I had a kindred soul out there. Unfortunately, Joan Didion passed away in 2021. She doesn’t lay out her creative approach with any recommendation, just making the point that it works for her. If there’s a theme, to this entire book, that is it.

She also describes some assignments where she honed her craft. The longest being ten years at Vogue magazine, writing captions and short pieces to accompany photos. It turns out to be a very disciplined task. The book wraps up with an in-depth non-fiction piece on Martha Stewart. Joan’s incisive comments are fun, but I felt like Martha was an easy mark for Joan’s incisive wit. I couldn’t finish the last chapter. I’d still give this book five out of five stars.

Do You Dream of Terra-Two? by Temi Oh
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The prose is solid. The editing well done. Technically well-executed. A bit long in the middle. Lacks the action usually in SF. If it were not so well-crafted I might not have finished the book.

The novel focuses on the reactions of the teenage crew members to the stresses of prepping and enduring the flight. This is not a typical hard SF action story, and I give it a plus for that. Variety is good. The characters do what I would expect teenagers to do. They do spend a lot of time thinking about themselves and working out the neurotic twists that are mostly results of upbringing and environment. But their upbringing, their training, the spaceship’s claustrophobic conditions are all part of the science and technology that carries them along, yet these factors are not presented as influencing their behavior.

Adults play pivotal, but otherwise inconsequential roles. They are all good people, most of the time. I would re-classify it as a YA novel.

The concept of breeding/selecting a few for ‘command’ is very British. In crisis, they never consider voting on a course of action or even considering everyone’s opinion. Always, one person assumes command and makes the decision. American kids would likely rebel at that. I give the book good marks for showing a distinct culture at work.

The teenagers are tracked at age thirteen for specialized astronaut training(another reflection of the English education system?). This is justified as the only way to bridge the generations over the long span of the voyage, but I am not convinced. There is no mention of a build-up of multi-year voyages to the outer planets that shows that this is achievable. This voyage is a ‘giant leap’ for mankind, and no one acknowledges how risky it is. There is a discussion of risk and the fact that the crew is made up of expendable people, not geniuses, but this realization does not go anywhere.

American teenagers might rebel at the regimentation that is demanded. Or would they? The reward is to explore another planet. It is a seductive proposition and all but one signs up for the voyage. The girls are giving up ever being mothers but never discuss it, and have no family pulling them the other way. It makes me wonder what I would do? Or others would do? I give the book good marks for making me think, but low marks for not digging deep enough to reach some tentative conclusions.

The technology has weaknesses: 1. Packing about a dozen people into such a small space for 23 years is a non-starter for me. 2. Having such a small crew, they don’t have the breadth of technical expertise to handle all the possible accidents and equipment failures. 3. I highlighted several physics bloopers, but I don’t think a YA audience would catch them. 4. The gravity-generator is fantasy, and unnecessary. Just build the spaceship as a wheel and spin it to make artificial gravity.

I will keep an eye out for another story by Temi Oh, but I will wait for reviews to be sure it is not YA.

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Semiosis by Sue Burke
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I have been reading mostly award-winning SF novels recently, and also new novels, Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, and Klara and the Sun by Kuzuo Ishiguro(It got my Goodreads vote, edging out the competition). Semiosis’ intelligent plants hooked me. Sue Burke handles the discovery that the plant life is intelligent on this distant planet, very deftly. She even has character development of several plants! I was satisfied that the humans had reached an uneasy coexistence with the plants. It seemed like a good ending. However, the novel runs on for another 100 pages where it shifts into a generational political history of the humans coming to terms with the intelligent plants and carving out their niche on this odd planet. I think that is a different story that belonged in the next volume. Nevertheless, I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed the way the plants were presented in all their strengths and character flaws despite their limitations as plants.
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