http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/blogs/chrispenycate/ Friendly science fiction and fantasy forums, discussing science fiction and fantasy books, film, media, writing, conventions, and related subjects such as science and history. en Sun, 26 May 2013 00:58:59 GMT vBulletin 60 http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/images/misc/rss.jpg http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/blogs/chrispenycate/ http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/blogs/chrispenycate/1510-dinosaurs-grow-too-big-for-seventy-five-words.html Sat, 29 Sep 2012 22:32:20 GMT The Yilanč are small, extremely intelligent dinosaurs (yes, I know everybody thinks of dinosaurs as universally huge, That's like thinking of mammals as enormous because there are blue whales and elephants. There are also shrews and marmosets. There were more small species than large.) They specialised in biotech, which meant they never had to develop mass production, because lifeforms (as any stock breeder will tell you) are willing, even eager, to see to their own production.

Biotech does not lend itself to space exploration (see the excellent "Crucible of time" by John Brunner). But launching battalions of heavily modified bombardier beetles from high floating, hydrogen-generating descendants of jellyfish they have pushed their first living, vacuum resistant weather satellites into orbit, heliographing data back.

But so far no dinosaur has travelled in space. Now read on.

"An orbital tower? that's fairly ambitious, isn't it?" said the Ylanč matriarch to her scientist counterpart. In front of her words scrolled over the skin of a chameleon descendant, rapidly replacing oral tradition for long-term records.

"The new spider silk has the tensile strength, and we've bred a strain that can live in vacuum for short periods, using the air retention techniques of the diving beetle. In twelve years there will be a close passage asteroid that would be perfect for the counterweight if we could capture it. and the same threads can be used there. We can do it!"

'Bowb your buddy time,' thought the matriarch, surreptitiously modifying some of the calculations with her override stylus. 'We can't have a mere scientist allowing Yilančkind to expand into the solar system, enabling their tailored organisms to produce warm, fertile beaches for the lazy males to succour the eggs on ice moons, to spread from planet to planet and ultimately out of the system entirely. Only a matriarch's name could be associated with this, and now the calculations had been done, the process could be done at any time. It might not be my name that went down in the history of the expanding race, but it would be a worthy name.'
"It will be done," she agreed. "You may start breeding the propulsors straight away."

As they leave a hadrosaur at the door salutes with both grafted on right arms; a controlled reflex, since the brute has no vestige of intelligence. Still, when has a soldier ever needed it?

* * *

It was the greatest migration of sauropods ever seen on the planet. Tens of millions of the massive beasts trudged across the continent. Each tiny thread drifting down was tipped with a tiny parasitic arthropod whose only function was to detect a saurian skin burrow and into it. Some of the animals received too many of the threads and, despite their mass, were dragged off their feet; others were missed completely, and continued trudging uselessly, but the majority settled down to applying the calculated force to circularise the orbit of the planetoid exactly at geostationary height. Incorrectly calculated; the matriarch hadn't known what she was modifying after all. The perigee of the still elliptical path cut deep into the atmosphere, heating the gas ahead of it to plasma, burning out the threads controlling it. The energy lost means that the next orbit cuts even deeper, losing more speed, going lower, a positive feedback path until the object plunges into the junction between the two halves of the twinned continent. A shockwave of fire spreads both ways,


It was a small, hairy, warmblooded creature whose RNA had been modified for multi-generational information storage that had observed the operation, both through its own senses and those of a multitude of other creatures. The capability of passing experimental data to your offspring isn't much use if you don't produce any, so she had been built tough, a survivor. As the asteroid ruled its line of fire across the sky, heralding the extinction of her creators, she thought, insofar as she was capable of thought, "Hmm, orbital tower. Interesting concept." ]]> chrispenycate http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/blogs/chrispenycate/1510-dinosaurs-grow-too-big-for-seventy-five-words.html http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/blogs/chrispenycate/943-a-diatribe-on-dragonkind.html Sun, 12 Jun 2011 21:19:09 GMT So, what do we know about dragons?

They're reptilian, for a start, and this could well indicate cold blooded. Their relatively infrequent feeding would tend to support this hypothesis.

They're big. No question there, everyone agrees. At least horse sized, and probably house sized. Of course, people tend to exaggerate, bringing shrews down to gnat dimensions, and postulating mosquitoes that fly away with small children, but I think we can be certain they are considerably larger than humans. Which sets us off on the next detail:

They fly. Oriental dragons fly without the use of wings; and Mesopotamian artists added wings symbolically to a number of their subjects, anyway, indicating speed and liberty; they added them to lions, for the liberty of library steps, and souls, giving the conventional image for angels, despite biblical descriptions indicating totally non-human forms of the latter. So we can't be any too confident of the accuracy of the illustrations. Still, it seems that western dragons have wings, albeit insufficient to overcome the cube/square law and get the beasts into the air. And once flying they are hardly aerodynamic masterpieces; that serpentine flexibility is everything you don't want in an airliner, and long and thin and pointy is not optimal for air friction. (apart from wyverns; but their "two legs, two wings" physical layout suggest they come from a completely different line from the rest of hexapodal dragonkind. Convergent evolution, no doubt.) If they nest on clifftops, perhaps they could use thermals to avoid losing height, and snatch prey while maintaining speed, but taking off from level ground is something outside our present physics; call it magic.

They control fire. In this they are unique; even insects, who've tried everything never managed this, (salamanders maybe, but I suspect they're just a small species of dragon) and it's across the board; even cheerful, chubby-faced Chinese dragons' portraits show stylised wisps of smoke emitted from their nostrils, while occidental dragons tend to use flame as a combat weapon, or in generalised destruction.



They live a long time; possibly not the 'thousand years' of legend, but certainly numerous human generations. Indeed with the 'Smaug' model (ultra territorial, ultra solitary) there is some indication they were created at the same time as the world, with no mechanism for either ageing or reproducing, just carrying on until killed. My dragons, being cold blooded, live for a certain number of heartbeats, rather than years, so are entirely dependent on temperature and activity; the cooler they are, the longer they last objectively by human standards. By their own consciousness related duration, of course, they all live about as long, assuming they're not killed before.

Intelligence? What use is that to a top of the food chain predator? Why should a solitary hunter develop a language centre at all, let alone a multisymbolic one, capable of translating and learning various human languages? The only things a dragon has to say to other dragons are "Shove off, or be prepared to die, this is my territory." or "Hey, honey, care to co-operate in making an egg?", and even a tortoise can communicate that, with a very limited vocabulary. Why should I suppose dragons are solitary? Ignoring the fact that it's always one dragon your hero goes up against, can you imagine any prey big enough to require a pack (or whatever the collective noun for dragons would be if they ever collected) of the beasts? So, there is no evolutionary pressure towards intelligence in dragons, beyond, of course, the cunning needed to catch prey. The "created from scratch" origin becomes more useful in this circumstance; if you have a master being manufacturing species to order there's no extra difficulty incorporating communications skills into the mix. No, I don't like this solution and, requiring symbol-manipulating intellect in my creatures defined that dragons educate their young, and fast, so language is a juvenile leftover.

Lighter than air. It could be that the flight and the fire are related. No, I'm not considering rocket-boosted takeoff; you'd almost have to start flying tail first, and twist round when in the air. Either that or expect serious cooking of tail. There's the theory of the lighter than air dragon, a thin, sinuous beast on the ground (although longer legged than your average illustration) whose body is mainly inflatable gas bag. When he wants to fly, he generates a lighter than air gas, and blows up into a far more airworthy shape, ultimately floating away. Now the cube/square law starts to work with us; a dragon like this would have to be big to develop enough lift to be useful. Most of the biologically generable lta gasses are inflammable; helium would be just too difficult to generate. It might be methane, although that is generally associated with a vegetable diet, while dragons are probably exclusive carnivores. (All right, they might be omnivorous, but there are no reports of a dragon stripping a tree of fruit, or rooting for potatoes; it's always killing a sheep, or expecting a virgin to be staked out as tribute. That's not proof, I know.) So I suspect hydrogen; reasonably easy to generate, and the most lift of any gas, but the risk of fire (from thunderstorms if nothing else) is considerable (see the 'Hindenburg') So it is quite likely that burning it off in a controlled manner is preferable to simply venting.
Perhaps a leaping dinosaur (many seemed to be bipedal) shared with bullfrogs and many lizards an inflatable throat pouch which made them look bigger or more sexually attractive, when this was blown up from the stomach rather than the lungs he could leap further, stay in the air longer. Over the generations the air sack extends over more of the body surface, a neck ruff extends and becomes stronger, capable of redirecting the body in the air, and the overall size increases as bigger= more lift. Tempting as this explanation is I don't like it:- firstly because your grounded dragon is weak, with fragile, hollow bones (leaving less fossil evidence) and no great muscle mass, its only effective weapon being its fire, while legend speaks of powerful teeth and claws, but also because of the scales. Everybody is in agreement they have scales.You don't armour plate a zeppelin; and if the skin thins out enough that the beast is actually floating in the air (more lift than weight) it's going to be very vulnerable to punctures. Probably a flock of crows could mob it, as there is no way it could risk breathing fire on itself.


Good or evil? If they are mere beasts, incapable of higher thought, the question doesn't arise. You kill the wolf stealing your sheep, the tiger turned anthopophage but, unless you imbue it with volition, you don't consider it evil. Perhaps a punishment delivered by an angry deity, like the volcano that drove you out of your village or the mighty storm and subsequent river overflow that lost you your growing season, but a force of nature, not a malevolent demon. But with an intelligent, reasoning dragon – one to whom vast wisdom might be ascribed, or else malignant cunning – the definitions might not be equivalent. Our definitions of good are largely socially based (with a strong undercurrent of personal convenience – this nomad leader is unspeakably evil because he bases his actions only on what is useful for his tribe; he does not consider the farmers and town-dwellers he massacres truly human, so feels no regret for their passing) and an asocial, solitary creature might have different opinions. Selfishness might be a virtue, love a temporary aberration, to be ashamed of. This would, of course, make translation between the two species of anything more complex than "You walk to tree." very complex and time consuming.

Hoarding. Obviously, rumours of vast wealth in dragon residences could be just a standard "inaccessible places" scam. After all, what would choose to sleep on nasty shaped metal things, even if straw is counter-indicated for a fire breather? And what value have gold coins or jewels have for a dragon, apart from the aesthetic? He can hardly pop down to the supermarket and buy himself a leg of royal tax inspector. Indeed, the idea of commerce would never occur to a solitary being –*much like human nobility, if there's something they want, they take, unless someone or something is strong enough to prevent them.
It could be bait in a quite sophisticated trap, to avoid those inconvenient trips to the supermarket by getting your meat to deliver itself. Slightly fairer than the technique of demanding a maiden each summer solstice, anyway. It would involve careful observation of the prey species, finding out which of the non-perishable objects removed from a victim are most attractive to future prey, but no-one doubts a determined hunter could manage this.
On the other hand – or forepaw – if magic is required for flight dragons are presumably sensitive to its presence, and small pieces of jewellery, armour and weapons are standard repositories for enchantments and spells. It could well be that all the objects collected are merely a reserve of power, and the precious stones or metals an irrelevant detail. ]]> chrispenycate http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/blogs/chrispenycate/943-a-diatribe-on-dragonkind.html http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/blogs/chrispenycate/619-short-short.html Fri, 07 May 2010 17:32:27 GMT I've been straining to hang on to very small ideas recently (takes a very fine strainer). Why? Just in case they can be squeezed down to seventy five words, obviously.

So, 'that's a nice little idea. I wonder how long it'll be when I write it out?'

As I passed the hundred word mark, I wasn't worried; there's always some dead wood to be pruned. The five hundred mark was more alarming, and the story had the bit between its metaphorical teeth, heading for the horizon. A thousand, still going; it's obvious this has no place in the Writing Challenge; indeed, no place anywhere really, but I wasn't going to stop now.

Then what? It's not something to use later, or critique.

So, here it is; somebody might like it. ]]> chrispenycate http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/blogs/chrispenycate/619-short-short.html http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/blogs/chrispenycate/581-amateur.html Sat, 13 Mar 2010 09:55:40 GMT My linguistically divided brain contorts and complains. It finds words, the essence of rational thought, on both sides of the barrier, reassuringly similar, and builds bilateral concepts, then discovers surface similarities are not enough. 'Peasant', universally pejorative in English, becomes 'paysan', the equivalent of the English yeoman as it crosses the channel, the tough hardy 'man of the land' who is the basis of agriculture, the independent spirit. Did the change come with the revolution, when the removal of the nobility allowed for the expansion of the lesser landowners, or does it date further back, to the Norman conquest and the denigration of those who spoke the older tongue? No matter; it exists.

Then the one I came to talk about: amateur. In English, it merely signifies something you don't get paid for, and generally carries a baggage of clumsiness, ineffectiveness. An amateur plumber is not merely not Polish, or polished; he is the sort who will cross pipes so your garbage disposal unit feeds directly out of your bidet. In French, the word has kept its links with 'amour'; it is someone who loves what he is doing.

Some of this carries across the boundary, obviously. An amateur of good food is not merely not a professional chef, but an enthusiast, a gourmet (ah, food goes deep enough that it has its own word; and amateur of books would be more difficult to classify as a bibliophile). I English I lost my amateur writing status when I actually sold a piece for money; whether I became any the less amateurish at this point is not clear but, as with an amatory amateur, losing one's literary virginity does not necessitate a sacrifice of passion. In French I can remain a professional amateur, which in English and Olympics, is a contradiction in concepts.

For concepts are the root of all this. If I'm thinking in French, I will think differently from the same brain organising ideas in English. If I attempt to do the same in German or Spanish my thoughts will be shallow, inconsequential, not through any fault of the language but because of my shortcomings. I can barely order a meal in either of them; what is my hope of considering philosophy?. My remaining language I once mastered but which is now sorely rusty, mathematics, resists translation. Though developed by men, it is hardly a human structure, too dependent on truth to be practical between men (and definitely impractical from men to women, or children). It lies there in my thought processes, but rarely offers a suggestion, puts up a concept for consideration.

It is likely my scribblings will never again achieve commercial success, so my loss of official amateur status has no more significance than a lady accepting a gift as a complement for an enjoyable night, but I trust that, even if there are future payments, I will always maintain the passion side of organising words into never before generated patterns. ]]> chrispenycate http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/blogs/chrispenycate/581-amateur.html http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/blogs/chrispenycate/443-two-weddings-and-a-funeral.html Tue, 22 Dec 2009 16:28:34 GMT The predicted blizzard closed Gatwick, and planes were cancelled, but mine took off a mere hour late, packed to the earballs with passengers who'd failed to get onto earlier flights, and -- well, you know it was an uneventful flight. Eventful ones get mentioned on the news.

Unfortunately there had apparently been no space left for my suitcase, which stayed in Geneva with my toothbrush, clean underwear, cheese and chocolate (I was lucky not to be thrown out into the snow by my family), and the pills I pop every evening to maintain this semblance of life.

"Oh, yes, sir. They'll put it on the next plane, and it will be delivered to you this evening, or tomorrow morning at the latest."

It had taken a fair amount of computer power to get that far, and a telephone call from the office, who had already been informed by Geneva Cointrin.

However encouraging this news might seem the first thing I did on passing 'nothing to declare' was to seek out the chemist's shop.
"Oh no, that is a Swiss prescription; you'll have to get one from an English doctor."

"But this is an airport; this must happen all the time."

"The law says..." She didn't actually say she existed to supply teethbreesh and sanitary towels to those careless enough to loose their luggage, but implied it. Neither was there any suggestion of a medical service within the airport which might be accustomed to this situation; after all, I might come back and oblige her to look for nasty complicated things in the backroom, rather than just ringing up suntan lotion. Admittedly, I didn't think of this until later, either, concentrating on keeping my blood pressure down without chemical assistance. My suitcase would be arriving in a few hours, wouldn't it? And it was my presence that was required at the wedding; a zombie Chrispy in the corner would suffice. Admittedly a zombie in three day worn socks and underwearwould tend to damp down the festivities, but that was a problem to face later; I was not going to miss the marriage of one of the twins having attended the other. Too dangerous even for me.

* * *

More planes were cancelled and regular telephone contact had told us -- by now my sister had taken over the aggression side -- that at ten o'clock, when the courrier had set out to deliver lost luggage, my case had not even left Geneva, let alone passed through customs.
"When are you travelling up to Yorkshire?"

"First thing tomorrow morning." Were they planning to truck the thing all the way up the country?

"Your case has arrived. The courrier is due back at midday, he should be able to get it to you by two this afternoon."

Relief; we are back on track, with a new toothbrush and pants.

* * *

Three o'clock, four... The case finally arrives at eight in the evening, with tie and polished shoes. Rats to be poisoned, beta to be blocked, chloresterol suppressed, sugars diminished -- I plough into my personal pharmacy. If a vampire were to bite me now it would probably keel over. We're going to make it, and I will be posh. The roads might be icy but nothing's going to stop a carful of determined Penycates. That pheasant we just hit should have known better than to get in our path. ]]> chrispenycate http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/blogs/chrispenycate/443-two-weddings-and-a-funeral.html http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/blogs/chrispenycate/84-animation.html Wed, 08 Oct 2008 10:48:01 GMT I've been writing a song for the start titles of an animated cartoon. Complicated, because it's only forty seconds, and the message (specific words they want to use) is fixed, and because, at the start they only requested a seven-footed line, to match the French, and my musician put stressed syllables at the end of every line (which, seeing they wanted "future" and "present" as accented terms, which doesn't make my job any easier) Still, I'm not one to back down from a challenge; and a first (demo) version has been sung; we'll see how the Taiwanese like it (the version in Mandarin is somebody else's problem ;))
You'd think that with that going on my muse would be happy to take a rest from rhyme. wouldn't you? But, as some have noticed, l'appetit vient en mangeant, and I exude verse in all directions.

Odd that; I hope it doesn't trigger another bout of limericitus. ]]> chrispenycate http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/blogs/chrispenycate/84-animation.html http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/blogs/chrispenycate/54-aging.html Sun, 24 Aug 2008 20:12:02 GMT The Who said (in My Ge-ge-generation) "Hope I die before I get old".
I might still manage it..

What, the pedantry and the 'know it all' way I throw out facts? I achieved both of them in my late teens, so if they're proof of age, I was never young.

My mistreated body falling apart, held functional by cocktails of pills? More telling, that, as once upon a certain time ago, I avoided even asprin. But not a proof; certainly my memory is not what it once was (we won't go into what it was) but I hold that is a question of organisation, or rather lack of it; with the years, more facts have accumulated in the chaos-heap between my ears, it just takes a bit more rooting to uncover them.

Remember "Don't trust anyone over thirty"? (if you do, you are, and shouldn't) I passed that milestone half a lifetime ago, and, from the untrustworthy side, tend to agree with the sentiment. If I were less than thirty, I wouldn't trust me, either; in fact, knowing my level of trustworthyness, I shouldn't now, but I was always a sucker.

But the reason I suspectI never grew up is my ignorance. Even babies cannot match it for scope. Iset my ignorance wide as the night sky, and haul it in with the cargo of facts and irrelevancies it's caught. There is space in it for physics, alchemy, cosmology and biology; a world can't fill it. Human interaction is a mystery, each person contains so many facts, so much data, and each is unique. Not only human persons; even a cat (no, cats are never even. By definition they are odd) contains a universe, and watching a dragonfly say "This is my swimming pool. My territory. You may have dug it, but to me it has always existed, and I have always owned it" is something only a child can appreciate.

Like the night sky, the ignorance has points of light, things I know (or, for the time being think I do) against the massive wash of darkness.
Being old must be like Asimov's "Nightfall"; no darkness between the twinkles.

I've still got time; what are a few discovered galaxies against that mass of dark? ]]> chrispenycate http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/blogs/chrispenycate/54-aging.html http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/blogs/chrispenycate/41-close-to-critical.html Tue, 12 Aug 2008 09:39:56 GMT Oh, dear, I've upset someone.

Following clues like an anal bloodhound it would seem someone has packed up and left because I was not nice in Critiques. And it is true that I am not nice therein, that is perfectly true; though my experience I am no more unpleasant than influential others the writing will encounter on its tortuous road toward fame and glory, and I'm easy to ignore.

I was encouraged, paradoxically enough, by the support I got, from people I can't even remember critiquing. Why paradoxically? Because, if I had put a little encouragement in with the corrections, it might have seemed less school teachery, less "I'm putting you down to show how clever I am"y.

Because we all need encouragement, just as we all need our mistakes pointing out. Without one, we don't progress, but without the other, we don't go on at all, so there is nothing to progress into.

I will try harder at not discouraging people

I will try harder at not discouraging people

I will try harder at not discouraging people

I will try harder at not discouraging people

I will try harder at not discouraging people ]]> chrispenycate http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/blogs/chrispenycate/41-close-to-critical.html http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/blogs/chrispenycate/20-so-ive-got-a-blog-now.html Tue, 05 Aug 2008 12:31:40 GMT Oh, great.

Another excuse for not getting down to typing my notebooks into digital form: a blog.

And I'm expected to update it regularly? Frequently? Occasionally?
I know nothing about blogs.

Inspiration has started to clog
A muse is not something to flog
Calendar canonical
Log onto the Chronicle
And immerse yourself in your blog.

What am I doing that's special? I'm in the studio, as always, with far too many projects started and nowhere near enough finished, preparing the music for a commercial about tyres.

A huge inspiration for writing about dragons, vampires or rocs. Perhaps I should concentrate on the terraforming one.

Or perhaps I'll investigate the new possibilities on the Chronicles Network; after all, it was here I got infected with the idea I could possibly write something that someone else could possibly enjoy reading…

A suivre. ]]> chrispenycate http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/blogs/chrispenycate/20-so-ive-got-a-blog-now.html