Humans are Weird – Packing Snow
“Do you hear that?”
Quilx’tch clicked his mandibles in confirmation and adjusted his warming stone underneath his thorax.
“What do you think the humans are up to now?” his younger companion asked, poking her eyes out of her blanket cocoon.
“I don’t know,” Quilx’tch said, carefully stretching out one leg after another, being careful not to stick his paws out of the ‘fleece’ the humans had provided him with.
He had his apprentice were sitting facing the data kiosk in the middle of their common room. Both were wrapped closely in the bright red blankets gifted them from the other exploratory species on the planet.  The color contrasted with the various dust colored shelves and containers they held.
“Should we go check on it?” She asked eagerly.
“Do as you wish,” Quilx’tch said amiably. “I for one, will be waiting here, under my blanket, until the base temperature reaches acceptable levels for the day.”
Tas’ka started to shrug off her blanket but shuddered as the air hit her mass and quickly pulled the fleece back over her head. “I can wait,” she said.
The odd double beat of approaching human feet heralded the arrival of one of the younger, more eager humans.    His bright red face nearly filled their low door as it opened at his signal.
“Hey Task! Do you want to come out with me?” The human called.
“Out in the cold?” Tas’ka asked.
“Yeah, it snowed last night!” The human said.
“Frozen precipitation has fallen every night for the past forty night cycles,” Tas’ka pointed out, adjusting the blanket around her mandibles and eyes.
“Yeah, but this is packing snow!” The human insisted. “First time that has happened.”
“I am staying under this lovely blanket until the base reaches optimum temperature,” Tas’ka said firmly. “No matter what type of frozen precipitation has fallen.”
“Fair enough,” the human said with a grin. “I will give you the play by play when we get back in.”
The door closed and the human’s footsteps receded.
“Packing snow,” Tas’ka mulled over the word. “I wonder what that means…”
“They will tell us,” Quilx’tch said, sinking down onto his warming stone with a sigh. “They will not doubt tell us.”
 

Zombie rottweilers were not what his friend promised when they went out for a night of adventure, but that is what Will got. Like many of his generation Will Blackwood finds himself deeply dissatisfied with his lot in life. A part-time job as a theatric jouster isn’t enough to keep his older brother from worrying about him, nor is it enough to keep him from worrying about their younger brother. But dead end jobs, a sad dearth of romance, and a general ennui take the back seat when their father’s oldest friend appears to arm them for a mystic battle, just before getting kidnapped by something that should not exist in the twenty-first century.
Layton Green has created a complex and enjoyable fantasy world and has set his modern characters in it while skillfully balancing their twenty-first century ethos with their surroundings. The main characters are all well developed and engaging. The storytelling flows well and the writing is technically good. His merging of the fantastic world the titular brothers have to face and the mundane world they come from is smooth and doesn’t distract from the story over all. He has an especial talent for remembering the more mundane details of the fantasy world; from the taste of the bread to tired muscles after unexpected exercise.
The story frequently becomes formulaic in the telling and there are few true surprises and plot twists. The author does have a tendency to “tell and not show” especially when developing the main characters personalities and some of the secondary characters can feel two-dimensional.
The story is aimed at a slightly older audience with plenty of sexual (though not explicit) interaction and parents will probably want to give the book a once over before letting younger readers pick it up. There is also the usual sword and sorcery violence to consider.
All in all it was an enjoyable fantasy romp with the promise of more to come in later books. Enjoy and read at your own discretion. 

The folk music tradition in the Pacific Northwest (for those of you who don’t know that is the states of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska) is rich and varied. Despite some of the trite and common themes there are usually some deeply ironic twists that gives it its own special flavor. Some times looking back over the tunes you hummed as a child can be … interesting.

• -Good gosh and golly aren’t our rivers GREAT! I mean they are dangerous and people die in them all the time but still.
• -A detailed explanation of a forest animals life that only slightly anthropomorphizes the animal.
• -I totally rebelled against the moral rules of my parents but now that I am an adult THEY WERE RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING and I will totally raise my kids the same way.
• -The prettiest girl in the area lives up that hill and I am going to go up there to court her even though her Daddy is ex-special forces and has trained all the birds on the mountain to spy for him and will probably kill me for trying.
• -PLOT TWIST, the pretty girl’s Daddy actually is a great guy and likes me but said pretty girl didn’t want to marry no stinking coward and told him to keep any out. Now we have five kids and he’s the best grandpa. (I am slightly afraid of my wife though)
•  -I never shave or do anything to look attractive but my significant other loves me anyway. We plan on moving out to the country and living like hermits.
• -I went to Alaska to get rich and died of cold. My family down south will cry over my body.
• -I know all of my friends are worried about my hedonistic lifestyle but I don’t care, I don’t plan on living past 35 anyway.
• -I sure wish I had appreciated how much Daddy loved us all before he worked himself to death feeding us.
• -Did I mention how great our rivers are? Well our lakes are nice too.
• -Holey Moley isn’t that one specific river the BEST! It literally carried us from hunter/gatherer villages into the space age. (Please forget all the controversy over the giant dam.)
• -Mama loved us all deeply and expressed that love through rigid discipline. I still can feel that willow switch on my bottom.
• -To praise the merits of farm life I will mimic the sound of several dozen animals.
• -There used to be a LOT more salmon in the river, I bet it is the fault of whoever is in political power now and I will singe a thinly veiled metaphor for it that can be taken several ways so my song will sell no matter who is in power.
• -Grandma's house was a near magical place in the forest with all sorts of weird homemade food and we had great times there, sometimes she’d cry about missing Grandpa but she could probably kill a pig with her bare hands.
• -I went to the Alaska gold fields to get rich and escape my dull job. I got rich and came back south. Life as a rich man is pointless and dull. I deliberately let questionable women swindle me out of my money so I can go back to Alaska.
• -The forest is thick, the animals are dangerous, my best friend was killed by a cougar, still beats that horrible city job.

 

What is the prescription for when you are feeling down and out? When the aspirin won't take the edge off of the headache and you have to leave work a little early? When the air is full of smoke and you just can't?
Why plenty of fluids and lots of cheesy 90's fighting robot anime of course! Bonus points if there are robot dinosaurs and twin brother robots who can merge. 

As this author begins her third audio book by Leo Tolstoy this month she takes a moment to ponder what it is that makes his works so addictive even after they have been translated from Russian to English. 
Seriously, as each chapter ends there is an almost hunger for the next to begin. 
Does anyone else have an old classic author who they not only can't put down but can't resist picking up? 

No matter how hard you work on a daily basis your muscles will find new ways to make you hurt. 

General Intergalactic Alert

It is far wiser to never attack them at all. If you must, if you are backed into a corner, sell whatever weapons you planned to use and hire other humans to do it. 
If you are deranged enough to attack humans make sure you get all of them, all of their genetic loci group, all of their social loci group, and make sure they don't have contracts with any formal military, informal military, or any band of seedy looking characters..
If they survive they will force themselves to be stronger and they will come and get you. 
If they do not survive other humans will come and get you. 
​Just don't. 

On the subject of Earth being a death world. 
Here is a picture of a stinging insect on a plant that has more armor than a knight errant. 
How can so much potential suffering be so cute? 

​Humans are Weird - We Figured

You want to hear the story of the Battle of Homeworlds? Ah, yes that is a story. Or rather it isn’t, and that is the story. Of course it doesn’t make sense young one. The story is about humans after all. Have you ever known humans to be logical? No, no, not individual humans. With proper training they can put up a good front of sanity for years. Not individuals, but groups, humans as a whole, when they get tribal. What? Of course there is a certain logic to genetically predetermined behavior  - look who is telling this story? That is better. Now where was I? The Battle of the Homeworlds.  Now settle down on all your legs and listen.
We spotted the humans long before they spotted us. That Artist Forbidden system piqued the interest of that particular brand of scientist that seek out the most horrible of everything. Every one of their planets was a Forbidden world. Some scorched their rocks under unbearable radiation. Some had no core the probes could find and devoured the probes themselves with planet sized storms. And the one planet that actually carried liquid water, that gift of the Artist, and carried life was as much of a Forbidden world as any of the others. The axis tilts, the poles are covered in ice, yes permanent covers of solid water young one. Indeed it is horrifying.
 But most horrifying of all was the sentient life that called that planet from home. Yes humans. Now they are our allies. Then they were terrifying. They nearly tore their planet apart with war. They were deeply tribal. Their warfare tactics, well you are old enough to remember the War of the Wanderers. Their tactics are as terrifying and mad as the world that birthed them. Even those mad scientists of ours were terrified. We hoped that their ignorance would protect us. But it was not to be. They were space hungry. They lusted after the stars, the longed to encounter aliens, and in our ignorance we saw them as predators seeking new prey. So we crept from the system and prayed to the Artist that they would never leave their planet. That their tribalism and as yet primitive tech would keep them trapped.
Oh do stop laughing young one. Now we know better. Our ignorance was for the best I suppose. Who knows what we might have done had we know how fast they would reach the stars on their own? Of course they came and found us. You have read the records of first contact no doubt. How strong their desire, their lust, to meet other species was. We feared that passion. We could not see how so strong a drive could lead to anything good. Our terror turned to confusion at their joy. How much they were willing to submit to submit to us, to trust us as if we were older hatchings of the same clutch. We learned to work with their aggression and tribalism but the more we learned the more we came to fear their concept of vengeance.
Ah, you shudder. You remember the glassing of colony GamaX? Yes, you understand why we feared their vengeance. For you see we knew we had denied them the desire of their hearts. It is figurative young one. They figuratively say that their desires come from their hearts. Strange I know. But wherever that desire came from it was unbelievably powerful. We had spent centuries denying it, hiding, actively preventing them from the discovery of their neighbors. So yes, we feared their vengeance. We did not imagine we could hide it from them forever but we hoped to delay the discovery until we were prepared. Each homeworld and well developed colony produced a defense fleet, smaller colonies were evacuated on the sly and the colonists brought back to the homeworlds. It cost entire industries. Whole sectors of economic development crippled. Don’t give me that look. We were terrified. We had sinned against the humans and waiting for their infamous vengeance to fall. You are laughing again. Do you want to finish the story? No. Good.
Now here is why you came to me I presume. It was on my ship that humanity discovered our sin. I was set in command of a joint scientific task with a human research group. There was a military contingent with them. We stumbled on an old deep space exploration vessel that, unbeknownst to us had been tasked with removing the last observation satellites we dared leave in the humans system. To make a long harrowing misadventure short they humans got to the computers first and read the mission logs. I chose to face down the military commander myself when I was informed by my first officer. He suffered a minor aneurism poor thing. Well I won’t bore you with tales of my heroic plans to protect my ship and crew from their vengeance. I contacted central communications and gave the code that let them know the gig was up. Every homeworld fleet mobilized and waited for the final transmission from my ill fated ship. I swarmed onto the bridge of the humans’ ship, and the military commander wasn’t there. I was informed by a distracted comms officer that he was in the mess. I swarmed into the mess and found the commander casually sipping coffee.
I stared at him blankly until he glanced up and smiled at me.
“What’s up Commandant?” He asked.
It is a human turn of phrase. Look it up in the data banks.
“Haven’t you read the logs of satellites,” I asked in confusion.
“I had a summary of the relevant bits,” the commander said taking a sip of his coffee. “Nothing too interesting.”
“….so…” I pressed, utterly befuddled now. Where was the rage? Where was the sense of betrayal?
“Did you see something the human techs missed?” the commander asked, his interest piquing.
“Are you not offended?” I asked.
“Offended?” he said with a frown and I could see his brain parsing the data he had. “What about?”
I felt a surge of hope that the humans had missed the relevant data. If we could secure it-
“Do you mean about how hard you guys avoided first contact?” He asked his face lighting as if he had stumbled upon some minor revelation.
My hoped died a cold death as he examined me.  And yet, I had learned to read human emotions. I could see no rage. Not even surprise. In fact it appeared that-
“You already knew?” I demanded in an embarrassingly high pitched voice.
He chuckled, chuckled, at the greatest insult ever offered to a sentient species, and turned back to his coffee and reports.
“Well, we figured.”
And all the homeworld fleets had to stand down and be dismantled and be disarmed and the cost of our ignorant mistake bled our share of the interplanetary markets for decades afterwards. They humans sometimes think to ask how they came to so easily claim such a share of the trade market and hopefully they are still as ignorant as we were.  Humiliation was no easier a burden for us to bare than terror.
But we can’t be sure that decades from now it will not come up, and some human will sip their coffee and mutter.
We figured.

Everyone knows that most generally applicable old saying "Where there is smoke there is fire."
Photographers know the lesser applicable saying that, "Even if there is a sky full of smoke the chance that a forest fire will give you the chance to photograph actual flames from a safe distance is far less than the chance that the photogenic flames will die out just as you park and get your camera out."

On a side note this author just had a personal first. The editor of the magazine just accepted the article I submitted as is with no alterations or edits at all.