BLOGS

Published on Monday, April 01, 2013

Alicia kindly asked me to come and talk about my website, Alien Star Books, how it all came about, and what I’m doing with my vast proceeds of 54 cents for the past year. (Ummm, nothing, they don’t pay out until you’ve reached $10!)

Let me start at the beginning. A little over a year ago, my son needed a book to read for his English class. He’s a hockey player, not a reader, so he really doesn’t have any books that he’ll willingly read. He hates reading. Painful to me as a writer, yes, but I can’t cram the books down his throat, so I keep coughing up the cash for hockey.

Anyway, I found him perusing my bookcases looking for a book. I suggested several and he said no, no and no yet again. Finally, after I told him that the main character in Robert Heinlein’s book “Tunnel in the Sky” was Black, but you have to figure it out for yourself, he gave a heavy sigh and said he’d take that one.

I was excited! Having found something, anything, that the boy would read, I started a search for age appropriate science fiction and fantasy books that featured main characters of Color.

That was when I slammed into the brick wall. The classic stereotypical White male hero -- think John Carter of Mars -- is alive and well in my favorite genres.

Where are the swashbuckling, action-adventure, space opera heroes? Alas, they’re awash in a sea of White testosterone. Oh, there’s a sidekick here and there and the occasional exotic female alien, but sci-fi is filled with stereotypical “White guy saves the universe” tales. Fantasy, while it does incorporate non-human heroes, including elves, is all too often based in the mythology of one tiny island off the coast of England. There’s nothing wrong with Irish legends and the Fae, but dang, there’s a whole world out there! Why are 99 percent of fantasy stories based on Irish mythology? There’s nothing wrong with featuring red-headed, green-eyed, magic-wielding men and women, but where are the People of Color? Where are the magical tales of Egypt and Africa and Asia and the Americas? Where are my ancestors, my mythologies, my heritage? Where does my son’s mixed heritage fit in?

How is this boy of mine, a child of the new century, a young man of Black/Mexican/Italian/Welsh/Cherokee/White/mixed heritage supposed to relate to a constant parade of White-makes-Right heroes of the future? The answer is: he can’t. He can’t relate to John Carter because no matter how fair his skin, no matter how mixed his heritage is, when he steps outside the door of his home and into the view of strangers, he’s a 6 foot tall Black man. Dark, medium, light, so bright he’s darn near White, it doesn’t matter -- he’s still Black.

As I wrote in one of my blogs a while back, there is a deep scar, a chasm across the consciousness of this country. The deeply held pain of the Trail of Tears, the many trails of tears, manifest destiny, slavery and the Civil War, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1880, the Mexican Repatriation of the 30s, the Japanese internment and so many more acts against People of Color, lead directly to the policies of exclusion that affect the United States to this very day. Racism hasn’t gone away. It’s still here, just clothed in a suit and tie and smiling mask that hides that bitter truth.

Still, just because the ugly past has shaped our nation and our peoples in so many ways, and few of them good, we don’t have to be held to that path forever. We can move past it and into a better future that includes all of my Brothers and Sisters of Color.

We have to live in the present, but our imaginations can soar to a new level of understanding. We can look forward, even as the ground-breaking TV show Star Trek looked forward, and give our kids a dream of a different future, where the color of a man or woman’s skin is not the defining factor in their lives. Where a young man can guide a spaceship to Mars or where a woman can lead a rebellion against alien oppressors and his/her Color is just a part of who he/she is, accepted and cherished as a part of a unique Terran or Martian or far future culture. A future where our skills and talents are the most important factors in our lives -- not the color of our skin, the texture of our hair, our Faith or the birthplace of our forefathers.

Thus Alien Star Books was born. I am determined to find books that feature protagonists that my son can relate to while he enjoys good stories and shares my own vision of a diverse future. This website is a labor of love, to help not only my own child, but also the teens, young adults and their parents, guardians, caregivers and teachers find good books with main characters of Color that can inspire our children to reach for the stars.

It’s a continuing process, to find new as well as classic books that will inspire our kids to read and look past the ugly realities of the present and into a new and exciting future, full of possibilities. Science fiction, fantasy, urban fantasy, paranormal romance, steamfunk -- all fill a void in our kids’ lives. There is a whole universe out there, ready for our youth of all races, colors, ethnicities, creeds, sexualities, human, non-human and alien to reach out and claim the future as their own.

Please feel free to come by, check out the titles and send me great suggestions. I’m always open to a referral, a review or a fabulous new author. And remember, Alien Star Books is all about INCLUSION, not EXCLUSION, so there is a place for everyone.

Well, OK, maybe not KKK members, neo-Nazis, racists, terrorists or other “not nice” people -- unless they’re the bad guys. LOL!

Visit Ruth DeJauregui @ Alien Star Bookshttp://www.alienstarbooks.com

Historical Links:

Chinese Exclusion Act -http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/immigration/exclusion.html

Civil War -http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2967.html

Japanese Internment -http://www.pbs.org/childofcamp/history/index.html andhttp://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1679.html

manifest destiny - http://www.ushistory.org/us/29.asp

Mexican Repatriation of the 30s - http://public.csusm.edu/frame004/history.html

Trail of Tears -http://www.cherokee.org/AboutTheNation/History/TrailOfTears/Default.aspx andhttp://www.history.com/topics/trail-of-tears

 (Oh, and just for your own info, this was my family, my ggggrandpa William Shelton was among those murdered in the massacre -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelton_Laurel_Massacre)

My recent coverage of 

School Page: Virginia State University

Physics arXiv: Universal Doomsday: Analyzing Our Prospects for Survival

I Write Like

I write Like is a Web site that takes a sample of one's writing, does an analysis of the writing style and reports whose writing style is closest to of many of the greatest historical and contemporary writers.

I submitted a couple of samples and both times the site reported I Write Like Isaac Asimov, very flattering indeed. Check out who You Write Like!

(Photo Credit: Graphic by Sam Lazerson) A simulated plasma in the Large Helical Device showing the thin blue saddle coils that researchers used to make diagnostic measurements with the new computer code

PPPL:
A fast new method for measuring hard-to-diagnose 3D plasmas in fusion facilities

Assoc Prof Darren Sun holding the patented Titanium dioxide nanofibre in a test tube and the hydrogen reactor in the background. (Credit: Image courtesy of Nanyang Technological University)

Science Daily:
Multi-Purpose Wonder Can Generate Hydrogen, Produce Clean Water and Even Provide Energy

Extra rough

Click the link and enjoy.

Yin and yang are actually complementary, not opposing, forces, interacting to form a whole greater than either separate part; in effect, a dynamic system. Everything has both yin and yang aspects, (for instance shadow cannot exist without light). Either of the two major aspects may manifest more strongly in a particular object, depending on the criterion of the observation. The concept of yin and yang is often symbolized by various forms of the Taijitu symbol, for which it is probably best known in Western cultures. (Wikipedia)

Star Trek Blog: Star Trek’s replicator is an amazing technology concept that has fascinated us for decades. Working at the molecular level to synthesize materials, the replicator is able to instantly produce nearly any object, food or medicine on demand. It is easy to imagine how the replicator would quickly change the world. Such a device could dramatically reduce or even eliminate the cost of most products. Hunger and poverty would be stamped out worldwide, and much of the time and energy spent working for a living could be used instead for pursuits of education, exploration and the advancement of society.

Star Trek envisions the future of humanity to be one of incredible achievements made possible by evolved philosophies as well as technologies. This hopeful view of tomorrow is perhaps the reason so many have dreamed of inventing real-life versions of Star Trek tech -- from the transporter to the tricorder -- and the replicator is one of the most coveted.

A process called “additive manufacturing,” or its more popular nickname, “3D Printing,” has captured the imagination of the tech industry. These machines work much like the two-dimensional printer you may have on your desk, but instead of printing a layer of ink, a 3D printer extrudes many layers of melted plastic to form a physical object. You can imagine this as similar to a hot glue gun, where the heated glue stick is carefully extruded from a nozzle. In the case of a 3D printer, that nozzle is controlled by software and digital design files that tells it how to form a shape.

The comparisons between 3D Printing and the Star Trek replicator don’t end with plastic. Other materials like wood, metal and even some foods are now being extruded in similar ways to make on-demand creations. This has led to excited speculation that soon we may see the beginnings of a new era of manufacturing in America and around the world, where small-scale production is possible at very low costs. We may even “print” biotechnologies and human organs one day.

Gene Roddenberry's underlying message of the future: eternal optimism. As much as I am a fan, I'm afraid I possess a healthy dose of skepticism. Even the Star Trek Memory Alpha Wiki mentions some rough roads prior to 1st Contact with Vulcan. I sincerely hope "life does [not] imitate art" in this case (the "rough road" part; 1st Contact would be OK).

The last five mass extinction events were completely involuntary; unassisted since we hadn't showed up just yet. I end below the embed with two quotes from Einstein:

“I don't know what weapons will be used in world war three, but in world war four people will use sticks and stones.”

"We cannot dispair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings."

Science: New, Off-Road Robot Inspired by Nature

I am a researcher, not because I am doing a college thesis or a gov job, but because I have a need to know. The problem is that the things we have been called and are called do not fully disclose a remedy to our plight. Not as the overall group we are associated with, not as the various camps within the group. Thus we have no rights or privileges other than what we are allowed by the powers that be (over us as a group).

OK, putting all the recent marbles on the table and keeping it brief:

We got off the boat that came from Africa.

We were here in America already.

We are Africans, Egyptians, Hebrew Israelites, native but Black Indians, Moors, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, others and because each designation has their own myth stories that may or may not link us altogether, we can't agree. Why?

You can not put all of us into the same box if only some of us have that particular history. The group who did come from Africa can not claim oneness with the group that were indigenous Black Americans and so on.

We don't all have the same story and so our masters to keep it simple called us slave names from their property ownership titles to derogatory names. We keep looking for a lumped together name with a common history attached. Slavery is the common experience no matter where we came from. History is most always to make political or religious control or to recover from it. Once written history is not removed. False history is not deleted, just challenged by another perspective. You could be teaching/spreading a lie or a spin-off.

Today we are schooled in all the master's arts and sciences and law. None of this has provided a remedy for us in this country. It should be noted that the main problem is not what we call ourselves among ourselves, but how we are defined in the legal system of the country in the constitutional documents (contracts). Forget about the local law stuff, look at the law that governs the country. As I am not trained in those things I don't have the language skills to comprehend well myself but you lawyers of hue do.

It seems that the American Moorish Movement is heading in this direction. I don't agree with being a Muslim as I am a so-called Christian (don't like that either). I also know these are referring to a more esoteric (cosmic understanding and application) knowledge and not the secular perspective. But, you can't get past names and events attached to names (our slavery started with Muslims, converted Jews and Christians). All the major religions say esoteric knowledge are witchcraft, magic and devil worship. There is much evil in the common religions too! Secret societies had hoarded knowledge, thus inviting corruption and decay of the truth and have abused application. While dispersion of knowledge is not a fruit to the masses, a guiding by wisdom is ignored completely, which is why the whole nation is crumbling.

So what I see is that no matter how we name ourselves we are listed in constitutional documents as property in a corporate institution. That is the problem and we need to see what we need to be to secure our rights under the constitutional contract. That might be the missing 2/5. Today the corporation is restructuring. We might be written out of the new plan or assimilated into the matrix. All us old farts are being put aside because we still remember. Or what if the foreign investment is a guardian, we being the perpetual underage ward (via lame schooling, social confusion, financial disenfranchisement, etc), never realizing this is our country. The renters are tearing up the house we own, we think we are from Europe (we learned (slum-lordism) from them their thoughts). This is our home!?

Lots to sort out, but look at the legal first, the constitutional stuff that established this mess.

There is a new documentary on Angela Davis called “Free Angela and All Political Prisoners” see https://www.facebook.com/freeangelafilm and http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2350432/.  Black Bloggers Connect (see http://blog.blackbloggersconnect.com/2013/03/black-bloggers-connect-presents-free.html) invited people to blog about why such a film is necessary.  The question can be asked, “Do African and African American astrophysicists need to know about Angela Davis?”  My answer is “Yes!” 

I had the pleasure of meeting Professor Angela Davis PhD when I was a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Davis).  At the time I was playing my role as the first African American graduate student in the Astronomy & Astrophysics department.  I was slowly being worn down by the petty discrimination, insults, and slights that I had to face on a daily basis with no one available within the department with which to decompress.  Enter meeting Dr. Angela Davis and her graduate students.  She and her students helped me put my negative experiences into the context of the USA incarnations of racism, sexism, and who has the right to make new knowledge.  In effect, I learned that what I was experiencing was not specific to just me, UCSC, or to astrophysics.

Dr. Angela Davis is an icon of the Black Power movement in the United States, however when you spend your life studying physics and astrophysics...that part of my education was neglected.  All I knew was the outline of who she was, what she had done, and in the mid-1990s when I met her that she had one of the best jobs in the University of California system: an endowed chair.  What I did not understand at the time that became important to me later was that before she became an internationally recognized political figure, she was already a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles; she was already Dr. Angela Davis with a doctorate in philosophy (see
http://histcon.ucsc.edu/faculty/singleton.php?&singleton=true&cruz_id=aydavis).  This point is important enough that I am going to refer to her as Dr. Davis throughout this blog.

Meeting Dr. Davis and her intellectual community personally helped me endure a difficult situation long enough to complete my doctorate degree; however, knowing her story is important for our collective Black peers in astrophysics for many reasons, but one stands out.  Mentoring students of astrophysics, the fear emerges of being transformed during the PhD process into someone unrecognizable.  This issue touches on the imposture syndrome (see astrophysicist Dr. John Johnson’s blog on this at http://mahalonottrash.blogspot.com/2012/09/impostor-syndrome.html) which arises from not seeing people like yourself in your profession as well as touches on the fear that in order to succeed in astrophysics you have to ‘whitewash’ yourself.  This whitewashing may include extraction and disassociation from family and community, adopting the value system of the majority, self-imposed silencing on certain topics, and in the extreme the adoption of majority fashion, speaking, and interaction style.  Dr. Davis is our peer in that she earned a doctorate and her working world is academia.  The process of earning a doctorate did not sever her connection to the African American community and did not change her values.  She was and is brave and courageous and willing to stand up for what she believes in and willing to sacrifice a comfortable academic lifestyle in the process. 

Dr. Davis is an example for us Black astrophysicists to emulate.  Our cause is that we want more diversity in astrophysics.  Then we have to bring our values with us and we have to not be silent.  We have to insist that our colleagues create an environment that supports all students especially those we are trying to attract to astrophysics.  Dr. Davis had the California government standing against her (and she was on the FBIs Most wanted list!) and she won.  We simply have to stand our ground to our academic colleagues and dare to forego the comfort of our fairly prestigious positions.  I plan to see “Free Angela and All Political Prisoners” when it comes to my town and I know that I will be better educated for it and I will be inspired. I think that the same will be true of the other African and African American astrophysicists if they make the time to see this film. 

Philip Phillips, a professor of physics and of chemistry at Illinois, and colleagues found that something other than electrons carries the current in copper-containing superconductors known as cuprates.

News Bureau, Illinois:
Electrons are not enough: Cuprate superconductors defy convention

Lopsided universe: Planck’s new skymap shows that one half of the microwave background is brighter than the other, and the universe has a large cold spot. Credit: ESA and the Planck Collaboration

Discovery: Four Surprises in Planck's New Map of the Cosmos

...the prevailing theory:

Huffington Science: New Study Suggests Comet Instead Caused Extinction Event

Flash Fiction is gaining popularity at the speed of light on the Internet. FF  is more than simply creating a story with a beginning, middle and end in less than 1000 words. There should be a plot twist and moral. This is a thin slice from the thick juicy part of  a much bigger story; the reader may have to fill in the blanks.

The BSFS has presented  Flash Fiction on its website -- in many excepts or stand alone pieces. This is good. We need to encourage more writers and webmasters to offer AFRO Flash Fiction to readers.

I have posted AFRO Flash Fiction  on my new website: http://www.afroflash.com

As always, I post a link back to BSFS to encourage us all to reach out and let others know that African Diaspora Speculative Fiction  is trending upwards.

(Image from Black Flash by Caesarium on Deviant Art -- it is not necessarily AfroCentric, but it is cool.)

NOTHING IS MORE IMPORTANT TO A NATION'S PROSPERITY, THAN THE SAFETY OF ITS WOMEN!!!

L.I.A. #8 - Spring Call for Violence Against Women
http://www.myspace.com/drocksouljah/blog/546788112

Electrons traveling through two slits and a single slit

Physics World: Feynman's double-slit experiment gets a makeover
Feynman Physics Lectures: Site Link and You Tube Channel