May 15, 2021 Newsletter

May 15, 2021

May 15, 2021 Newsletter

Hello, everyone! I’ve been doing a lot of writing lately, trying to wrap up my current work-in-progress in time for summer. I feel like I’ve been in some stage of drafting or revising nonstop for over a year, and while the isolation facilitated that, I’m in need of a break.

This would be right on time too, as days in isolation seem to be coming to an end, given new CDC guidelines. No matter how you take the news, I hope you and your family are getting vaccinated, and taking steps to protect not only yourselves but everyone else around you.

In this issue, I’ve got a couple of posts informed by the aforementioned WIP. For Fieldnotes, allow me to geekily share with you stuff I researched about the new-ish ways scientists are searching for alien life, and for Learning Out Loud, I’m chuffed to promote N.K. Jemisin’s MasterClass, and show you a bit of how it’s helped my own project.

As always, I hope things are going well with you, and thanks for reading!

Victor

MAY 2, 2021 - FIELDNOTES

Technological Signs of Alien Civilizations

With the recent successes of the Mars missions and the progress made by SpaceX and other private corporations, a lot of people are thinking about space, and indeed wondering, is anyone else out there? Every few years we hear of nearby exoplanets that could be habitable for humans, or at least sustain living things, which makes the question loom bigger.

There’s a lot of movement in the search for extraterrestrial life, and though the science is always shifting, I’m pretty persuaded by the probability that there’s life out there. For many of us not engaged in the field, all of it might seem based on radio communication. You may have heard of the Drake Equation, or the movie Contact, where the search for alien life relies on radio telescopes.

Of course there are many reasons why we have yet to receive any signals from space that indicate a far-off civilization. When the Fermi Paradox asked “where are they?”, scientists came up with many explanations—maybe they’re hiding from us, or maybe their tech is too advanced or too backward, maybe we just haven’t found them yet. Radio detection relies on communication, a signal being sent and received and there are many reasons such communication could break down.

Lately, the search for alien life has made advances in direct planet observation—maybe we’ll find them if we look for the right signs of life, instead of trying to catch a radio wave. One sign that scientists can search for is energy use: a civilization needs to use energy to grow and sustain itself, and such use of energy is detectable by infrared heat radiation. A powerful enough infrared telescope would be able to detect and observe such energy use, and could be a strong indicator for an alien civilization.

Above: different kinds of technosignatures; the full paper on which the project is based can be found here.

Although there are many forms of technology and energy expenditure that can be classified as a technosignature, the project will initially focus on two indicators: solar panels and pollutants. Habitable planets would have a certain light signature if it has the means to collect and convert the energy from their star. Also, atmospheric particles could provide clues as to the existence of life and technology on the planet; if there are artificial gases such as chlorofluorocarbons present, then that’s a good indicator of a civilization.

This is all very exciting but the field is far from fully developed. One day, we may be able to point our telescopes and satellites the right way and observe these technological markers on an exoplanet. For now though, at least the interest and the momentum are there.

I’ve been diving into this field because of my current project, which involves a generation ship. In this yet untitled novel, the last of humanity are traveling to find their new home on a distant exoplanet, and along the way they detect civilizations that exist in other planets. How are they able to observe this, and what might they conclude from what they see? How would they view these other civilizations, and might they be enticed to reach out to them instead of heading to their destination?

This bit of research also makes me think of what kind of technosignatures we Earthlings are giving off. If another species is observing us from far away, what kind of signs are they seeing? Based on the new NASA project’s categories, they might see how many satellites we have, how much man-made pollution is in our atmosphere, how little of our energy use relies on the sun. When they see these markers, what would they think about us?

Image credits: The Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope in New Mexico, photo by Donald Giannatti on Unsplash; Person looking up at night sky, photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash.

MAY 14, 2021 - LEARNING OUT LOUD

Character Arcs, via N.K. Jemisin

N.K. Jemisin’s MasterClass is sixteen short modules on speculative fiction writing, from worldbuilding to characterization, to finding an agent and publishing your work. I’ve done a few other MasterClasses in the past, and I gotta say, Ms. Jemisin’s is loads better. And I’m not just saying that because she’s one of the authors I admire most.

Her class spans the breadth of SFF writing and each segment is rich with concrete, actionable advice. For example, she breaks down worldbuilding in practical exercises that gave me a pretty compelling seed for my next novel project (but that’s a story for another time). She also shares her insight about what it means to be a non-white, non-cishet male writer in an industry that privileges a particular background and experience. I can’t convey enough how inspiring it was for me to hear her speak on that.

Throughout her classes, Ms. Jemisin draws from her experience as a seasoned writer, as a black woman, and also as a person with training and professional experience in psychology. In particular, her module about characterization blew my mind. She introduced a rubric from black racial identity development theory, and showed how the stages of that development can track a character’s internal arc.

She discusses the five stages of the identity development model: 1) Complacency, when a person is in a state of comfort and safety about their identity; 2) Encounter, a traumatic moment that challenges that safety; 3) Disintegration, the questioning and the internal struggle that follows from the encounter; 4) Reintegration, when the person absorbs ideas and influences to form a new sense of identity that feels positive to them; and 5) Resolution, the new stable sense of identity. Ms. Jemisin then uses examples from media to show familiar internal character arcs that follow these stages.

Memorable characters exhibit some kind of internal change, and it’s these progressions that I’m most interested in, both as a reader and a writer. So I was very excited to have a new way of thinking about how people change (I say people here and not characters, because it’s a psychological model, and because we want characters who read like real people). It’s particularly useful for my current project, which features a protagonist who I’ve been struggling with.

This character is a refugee and has a strong sense of this identity as a part of a displaced people in search of a new home. However, this identity crumbles when he discovers that he and his people might not simply be refugees, but invaders. (Thorny and relevant issues, I know.) I’ve been debating where to take that character following this discovery. After taking this MasterClass I realized that my initial plan seems to gloss over the disintegration that he’d need to undergo, and skips reintegration altogether—the character basically speeds onto action toward a new state of resolution. Now, I know to ask: how might one react when something so innate to their sense of self is challenged? What does that look like? What can he do to regain control or understanding of who he is? Learning the identity development model from Ms. Jemisin and seeing her apply it in fiction has unraveled that struggle for me, and now I’m pretty confident about what I’m gonna do next, and how.

For more posts like this, visit www.victormanibo.com/blog. You can also find more of me on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook:

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