Ultraviolet Aliens

As a saltwater enthusiast and science geek, I have lately been astounded at how little is out there to read about dolphins. My most recent encounter on the Atlantic Ocean was with the similarly neglected Portuguese Man O' War. These are H.G. Wellian non-jellyfish. Alien colonies floating around with prickly poisonous pearl strands. And they are beautiful.

UV flashlight illuminating liquid highlighter pen

A week ago I bought an inexpensive UV flashlight. It is advertised as a tool to highlight pet urine stains, but I actually just wanted to own a light which sends out rays in the UV spectrum. Dog urine indeed permits an exceptional glow, once dried and the phosphors are left behind. Mr. Clean also lets off a spectacular sheen. I certainly did not expect to wish I had my UV flashlight with me when out paddling in Biscayne Bay near Miami, where I had my first multiple sightings of these Dale Chihuly designed floating sculptures. A brilliant blue one became wrapped around the paddle swirled by a man in my canoe, and it was soon in his lap, then twirling itself around him with the grace and stealth of a killer necklace. The victim did let me know the sensations were like those of being stabbed by numerous hypodermic needles.

I soon read as much as I could about the alien. One theory suggests that their brilliant blue and purple colors help the colony absorb the nonstop exposure to ultraviolet rays. I am only able to form in my mind's eye what it would be like to illuminate one of these beautiful monsters with my little flashlights and may have to add some of them to a short story about ultraviolet aliens. In the meantime, here is a link to some beautiful photos and video by someone who is much more infatuated with these creatures than I am: Deadly Beauty

And here is another image generated by a computer. What in the world are we looking at?

Computer Generated Siphonosphore

The Future of Science Fiction

2017 feels like the future. It's so close to 2020. Over new year's drinks with neighbors, I was asked if my most current book is science fiction. The question comes from people who just watched Rogue One: A Star Wars Story but do not read science fiction. Why? Would it confront their fear of science?

Science is an approach to understanding the world through repeatable experiments, the kind of experiments that lead to our ability to make movies. Is the non-science fiction reader afraid that Occam's Razor will gut the world of its fantastical assembly? Does knowing what a nanometer is crash the absurdity of the Romantic English measurement system we use in the U.S.?

My current novel, The Green Eyed Monster, is a story about what happens when people are no longer able to differentiate between a technology-based, virtual reality comic book and their "normal" lives. Though it is possible that their blindness to the fantastical nature of reality is blemished by their enthusiasm for technology and the explaining away by science of the profoundly exotic essence of life on planet Earth.

Science is a language, which relies on alphabetical type, character-based language in order to be discussed let alone proposed. Science is, as far as I am concerned, a fiction. If I name the color green by the stripped down Latinesque of nanometry, and call it 510 nm, it seems to sterilize the beauty of the color. If I substituted 510 nm for every time I use the word green in The Green Eyed Monster, I imagine it would make reading the book a tough go. I imagine the title The 510 nm Eyed Monster going over like the lead balloon.

I use some scientific language, frequently technology or quantum physics based in many of my stories because they are languages I use to understand my world, one which is exceptionally fantastical to me. Science, as a language, is like any other, and it falls severely short of capturing our amazing lives. For me it serves to prop up the world myths I harvest, recycle and give back to you.

If I use the word "silicon" - does it mean I'm downgrading a glass wall? Or am I celebrating the shiny crystals, which have semiconductive qualities to you and California but magical qualities to me?

Let us not allow the language of science to downgrade our tour of the solar system on our aquatic iron ball. Science fiction is our neomythology, as relevant now as myth was to the alchemists. Realism will pass and turn into a Wikipedia article hundreds of years from now. But Star Wars will live forever.