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Snagglepuss, a pink lion, waving and smiling.

When I was 10 years old, before a measles vaccination had been developed, the adults knew an epidemic was coming, and sure enough, I got sick, very sick.

Among my many bad memories of measles was waking up one night in a pool of vomit while hallucinating from a high fever. I remember my mother coming to clean me up, and as she cleaned up the bed, I sat on a bench in the corner of my room.

While I waited, Snagglepuss, a cartoon character I liked, a pink lion, came to sit and talk with me. He was comforting, calming, even a little funny, and he genuinely made me feel better and feel safe.

A few days later, as I thought about it, I appreciated Snagglepuss talking so soothingly to me when I really needed comfort, but the whole thing was obviously a hallucination. (I had other, very unpleasant hallucinations that night, too.) What puzzled me was the way I had imagined his personality, very unlike the TV persona. Normally he was a smart-aleck, even.

Much, much later, I realized that yes, I had been hallucinating, but not the way I thought. Through my mental haze, I hadn’t recognized the kind person providing such gentle, loving care, but in retrospect I could distinctly identify his personality. He had been my father.

Dad in his college days as a football lineman.

Botany may be entering a golden age as improved scientific tools allow for new insights and new uses for plants. Here’s some recent news.

‘Sheep eating’ tropical plant flowers in Hampshire after 10 years | BBC

“Its actual name is ‘sheep catcher,’” she explained. “It would typically entangle wildlife around it and then hold on to it and unfortunately if they perish it would then give nutrients to the plant.”

Plants can hear tiny wing flaps of pollinators | Popular Science

“Plant-pollinator coevolution has been studied primarily by assessing the production and perception of visual and olfactory cues, even though there is growing evidence that both insects and plants can sense and produce, or transmit, vibroacoustic signals,” said Francesca Barbero, a professor of zoology at the University of Turin in Italy.

Volcanoes Send Secret Signals Through Trees And NASA Satellites Can See Them | SciTechDaily

As magma moves upward through the Earth’s crust, it releases gases like carbon dioxide. Trees absorb this carbon dioxide, and in response, their leaves often grow more vibrant and healthy-looking. Using powerful tools like NASA’s Landsat 8 satellite, along with airborne instruments flown as part of the Airborne Validation Unified Experiment: Land to Ocean (AVUELO), scientists are now able to detect these subtle signs from above.

The Rabbit Hole of Research EP 35: Weird Plants | podcast

Dive into the wild world of weird plants! In this episode, the crew explores plant biology, carnivorous plants, zombie survival gardens, and Molly’s journey from forest explorer to plant store owner. Our goal is to have fun learning science through the lens of science fiction, fantasy, and pop-culture … and you’ll learn a few facts you can use to impress your friends at a party or use as a conversation starter to go down your own rabbit holes.

Next big thing in sustainable building: Iron-fortified wood | Anthropocene

The construction industry faces pressure to be more sustainable. And the demand for greener buildings has led to a fresh look at wood construction. Wood is one of the oldest building materials used by mankind, but it does not have the strength needed to be used the load-bearing material in structures larger than houses and cabins.

Subjective mapping of indoor plants based on leaf shape measurements to select suitable plants for indoor landscapes | ScienceDirect

A subjective plant map of 40 indoor plants based on plant impressions was prepared. The physical shapes of leaves were measured that could represent a subjective map. Both experts and people reported relaxation and liveliness on seeing plants. Plants with small leaves induced a sense of relaxation. Leaf shape classification may assist in selecting plants for indoor landscapes.

Mathematicians solve centuries-old mystery of how ‘broken’ tulips get their stripes | The Global Plant Council

Often referred to as “broken tulips,” the striped variations of the popular flower were coveted in the 17th century for their beautiful markings. It’s been known since 1928 that the pattern is caused by a viral infection known as the tulip breaking virus, but exactly how the signature stripes are formed remained an unsolved mystery until now.

Artificial intelligence

I’m a member of the American Translators Association. The translation field is coping with neural machine translation (such as Google Translate) and AI translation:

ATA Statement on Artificial Intelligence | ATAnet

The latest wave of artificial intelligence (AI), powered by large language models (LLM), is reshaping numerous professions, including the translation and interpreting industry. However, a growing reliance on AI highlights—not diminishes—the necessity of expert human linguists who possess the specialized skills to address translation and interpreting challenges that arise in this new context.… One of the greatest dangers of AI-generated translations and interpretations is that they may appear accurate to the general observer, making errors harder to detect for those without linguistic expertise.

A philosophic look at AI in writing:

Listening for the Human Voice: Reflections on AI, Authenticity, and Education | Queer Translation Collective

On one hand, AI tools promise efficiency, personalization, and access. On the other, they provoke a deep discomfort. If students can simulate fluency and polish with a few prompts, what becomes of the messy, vulnerable, and transformative act of writing? What becomes of the human voice?

The view from the trenches:

Teachers Are Not OK | 404 Media

They describe trying to grade “hybrid essays half written by students and half written by robots,” trying to teach Spanish to kids who don’t know the meaning of the words they’re trying to teach them in English, and students who use AI in the middle of conversation. They describe spending hours grading papers that took their students seconds to generate: “I've been thinking more and more about how much time I am almost certainly spending grading and writing feedback for papers that were not even written by the student,” one teacher told me. “That sure feels like bullshit.”

Reviews of my novels

Stack Overflow: Alien Intelligence | GeekDad

It’ll be hard to talk about the whole Semiosis trilogy without some spoilers for the first two books, though I think I can communicate at least some of it in broad enough strokes. The overarching theme is sentience, and each book has its own tagline: “Sentience takes many forms.” “Sentience craves sovereignty.” “Sentience will prevail.”

Tom (Germany)’s review of Usurpation | Goodreads

Then I realized – or believe to have realized – that, while this book plays in an even more distant future than its precursors, its content, how it feels to me, is even closer to what is happening currently on planet Earth, and suddenly all disappointment disappeared, first to be replaced by some horror, as the book progressed, and then … by hope.

Earthrise over the Moon. Photo by NASA.

We live in a habitat, an environment, an ecosystem — the web of life. We depend on plants and animals and other organisms to keep the Earth liveable.

You yourself are a habitat. Our digestive system is a biome. We need to keep our gut flora healthy by eating well, and it’s not a bad idea to deliberately ingest probiotics such as yogurt or kimchi. Your skin, too, is a biome that hosts bacteria, viruses, fungi, and mites. Some cause problems, but others keep you well by protecting their home against aggressors.

These are revolutionary ideas. We used to think all “germs” were bad, so anything anti-bacterial made us more healthy. It turns out that’s not always so. The microbes in us and on us outnumber our own cells ten to one.

Scientist and doctors are trying to sort out this new territory. Meanwhile, you can take pride in being a generous host just like a tree who shelters birds, insects, moss, lichen, and other organisms. We travel through life with lots of friends.

Fiction writers have an ongoing debate about whether or not to plot: that is, whether to use an outline. But outlines and drafts come in many varieties, which complicates the debate. Here’s everything I know about outlines and drafts condensed into handy bullet points (itself a kind of outline), which I hope will be helpful to you.

Why outline?

• Ideas for novels are too big to hold in your head all at once; you need some sort of notes.

• You might be able to write faster using an outline.

• Outlines can let you write less anxiously because you know what will happen next.

• Outlines are a “big picture” tool to help you revise/re-envision your story for subsequent drafts.

• Leonardo da Vinci used outlines when he painted; this is a respectable artistic tool.

Why avoid outlines?

• Your brain simply doesn’t work that way; you can do just fine without one.

• You lack experience using this tool, so it’s hard to figure out and feels uncomfortable.

A few kinds of outlines

• Three-act structure

• Save the Cat formula

• Romance novel formula

• Scrivener or other software

• 3 x 5 cards or Post-It Notes

• Pictures/scrapbook/artwork/poems

• Spreadsheets/charts/maps

• Hero’s Journey

• Heroine’s Journey

• Fool’s Journey

• Beat Sheets

• Snowflake method

• East Asian four-act kishōtenketsu

• Detailed scene-by-scene

• General chapter-by-chapter

• Character driven

• Theme or narrative focused

• Crisis or paradox centered

• A series of questions

• A series of causes and effects

• Continuous re-evaluation

• Joyous amalgam of all these

Some secrets to using an outline as a writing tool

• You can make an outline at any time: before, during, or after any draft or part of a draft.

• Your outline can be a simple list of beats, plot twists, or key scenes.

• The plot outline is not the manuscript outline, which might not be chronological or logical.

• There is no Platonic ideal story; a story can take different forks in the road along the way.

• You can begin plotting from the end, middle, or beginning of the story.

• Any single step or couple of steps of a standard plot outline can be a short story.

Kinds of drafts

• Zero draft, a wildly experimental initial draft that doesn’t “count” as a first draft.

• Dialog-only draft, with the rest to be filled in during subsequent drafts.

• Disconnected scenes, to be connected in a later draft.

• Fast drafting, writing as quickly as possible without looking back, NaNoWriMo-style.

• Writing each scene as a short story.

• Messy, ugly, crappy early drafts; only the final draft needs to be beautiful.

Exercise: a tiny outline

Summarize your story in three three-word sentences. Such as, for a romance: 1. Girl meets boy. 2. Girl loses boy. 3. Girl wins boy. Or for Hamlet: 1. Hamlet has doubts. 2. Doubts are resolved. 3. Hamlet gets revenge. Does your story have a beginning, middle, and end?

(This post is available as a one-page PDF here.)

“A tree’s wood is also its memoir.”

— Hope Jahren, author of Lab Girl, an award-winning scientific memoir about her work in botany.

As a member of SFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Association, I get to vote on the Nebula Awards. Here’s my vote for best novella (17,500 to 40,000 words). The awards will be presented at the Nebula Conference on June 7 in Kansas City.

The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed (Tordotcom) — A woman ventures into a dangerous forest to save two children from a monster. A grim story told with urgency.

The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler (Tordotcom) — Elephants and newly-revived mammoths face extinction from ivory poachers, but they have protectors. The story explores its ideas back and forth in time to dramatize a contest between greed and survival.

Lost Ark Dreaming by Suyi Davies Okungbowa (Tordotcom) — An ancient power arises in a post-apocalypse dystopia, and three very different people in a literally stratified society must try to survive.

Countess by Suzan Palumbo (ECW) — A story inspired by The Count of Monte Cristo, but in space.

The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain by Sofia Samatar (Tordotcom) — The chain is about an ex-slave, the practice is about the chance to become something better, and the horizon the chance to get it. A lot of social justice, told with the distance of spaceships.

My vote: The Dragonfly Gambit by A.D. Sui (Neon Hemlock) — A former lover, now an enemy, conspires to bring down an empire. I was impressed by the tight storytelling, emotional tension, and frequent reversals.

The name STEVLAND spelled out in pictures of land features, such as the curve of a river in the shape of an S

NASA/USGS’s Landsat program has compiled the longest continuous space-based record of Earth’s land in existence. The data is used to make informed decisions about Earth’s resources and environment.

Just for fun, Landsat created a tool by which you can enter your name — or any other word — and see it spelled out in images of Earth. Hovering over the picture tells you where in the world the picture is from with a link to more information.

I made it spell out Stevland: S is Rio Chapare, Bolivia; T is Lena River Delta, Russia; E is Breiðamerkurjökull Glacier, Iceland; V is Padma River, Bangladesh; L is Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada; A is Lake Guakhmaz, Azerbaijan; N is Yapacani, Bolivia; D is Lake Tandou, Australia.

***

If you’re looking for a rock-hard science fiction novel, The Mary Sue has ten suggestions. One of them is Semiosis:

“Do you ever feel like your houseplants could be watching you? That maybe they’re more aware of their surroundings than their innocent, leafy, seemingly helpless without you watering them bodies would have you believe? Sue Burke’s Semiosis will justify all of your paranoid plant musings, turning them into scientific reality! The novel concerns a group of crash-landed astronauts, who begin to believe that the plants on their new alien planet home have more to them than meets the eye. The novel is a deep down dig into the roots of botanical science, and is chloro-filled with all the real life ways that plants are evil psychopaths. Seriously, Earth’s plants are murdery enough, but sentient planet-ruling plants from beyond the stars? Diabolical.”

***

Dragonfly.eco calls itself “an exploration of eco-fiction, blowing your mind with wild words and worlds.” It just interviewed Cristina Jurado about her novella ChloroPhilia, which I translated from Spanish into English. Cristina currently lives in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and she explains how living there with its “insidious, powerful” sandstorms and hostile heat helped her create the story’s setting.

As a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Association, I get to vote for the Nebula Awards. Here is my vote in the category of novelette (7,500 to 17,500 words). The award will be presented at the Nebula Conference on June 7 in Kansas City.

Overall, the stories amounted to a satisfying little anthology. I based my vote on the strength of the storytelling, not an easy metric to apply since they’re all good, but I thought one in particular was slightly better. Of course, your opinion may differ.

“Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being” by A.W. Prihandita (Clarkesworld 11/24) — A doctor finds herself limited by bureaucracy when an unusual alien comes seeking her care. Your heartstrings will be tugged.

“Loneliness Universe” by Eugenia Triantafyllou (Uncanny 5-6/24) — Friends try to meet, but they can’t find each other even though they’re in the same place. Then things get more eerie (no spoilers). Not quite horror but very unsettling.

“Katya Vasilievna and the Second Drowning of Baba Rechka” by Christine Hanolsy (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 4/18/24) — Romantasy, sweet and fulfilling. All fairy tales (or rather, tales about vengeful river spirits) should be like this.

“The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video” by Thomas Ha (Clarkesworld 5/24) — The accidental discovery of a book printed on paper triggers an existential crisis in an electronic world with constant volatility. The understated storytelling style effectively delivers growing horror.

“What Any Dead Thing Wants” by Aimee Ogden (Psychopomp 2/24) — Terraforming by magic leaves behind ghosts that want something. The cool, deadpan narration makes the fantastic feel real, but the magic system seems inconsistent to me.

“Joanna’s Bodies” by Eugenia Triantafyllou (Psychopomp 7/1/24) — A teenage girl finds a supernatural means to bring a dead friend back. Although this is an obviously bad idea, it’s made worse by resentment, manipulation, immaturity, and guilt. Told with a gripping voice.

My vote: “Another Girl Under the Iron Bell” by Angela Liu (Uncanny 9-10/24) — A demon will do anything to get freedom from an evil master. Which one, the demon or the master, is the most evil? Which one is in love? Every word is measured and every detail impeccable.

In my novel Dual Memory, the main character, Antonio, is always polite to the AIs that operate machines on the hunch that they appreciate it.

From Chapter 7:

I take a deep breath, stretch tense back muscles, pick up the pad, and get on the elevator. “Ground floor, please.” Maybe machines really don’t care if you’re polite. Maybe I’m fooling myself. But I say “Thank you” as I enter the house. I’m going to need all the friends here I can get.

Some readers scoffed at his weird precaution, but it turns out that one of our own here-and-now AIs does seem to appreciate politeness.

I stopped saying thanks to ChatGPT – here’s what happened | TechRadar

ChatGPT spends tens of millions of dollars on people saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you,’ but Sam Altman says it’s worth it | TechRadar

Each year, the members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association choose the winners of the Nebula Awards in seven categories, including short story (fewer than 7500 words). As a member, I can vote for the one I consider most deserving. Voting is closed, and the awards will be presented on June 7.

All these short stories are high quality and worthy of nomination, so your choice may very reasonably differ from mine:

“The Witch Trap” by Jennifer Hudak (Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet 9/24) — An old charm against witches inspires a reconsideration of the way that the fear of witches creates witches. Reconsideration, the story makes clear, might not be a bad thing.

“Five Views of the Planet Tartarus” by Rachael K. Jones (Lightspeed 1/24) — Flash fiction about horrors faced by those found guilty of treason, with an ennobling, subversive twist.

“Evan: A Remainder” by Jordan Kurella (Reactor 1/31/24) — A man who recently transitioned slowly comes to terms with his new identity. This involves coughing up a new skeleton (this is not a spoiler). Although it is tender, beautiful, and heartfelt, I think it’s literary fiction because the “magic” is wholly symbolic, not science fiction or fantasy — you may reasonably disagree, of course. While the lines between genres are always permeable and debatable, I think the Nebulas ought to stick to actual SFF. Literary writing has its own awards.

“The V*mpire” by PH Lee (Reactor 10/23/24) — A vulnerable adolescent on Tumbler gets bullied into letting monsters into his home. This story may be more metaphor than actual fantasy, but it’s brilliantly written, and the toxic manipulation involved is heartbreaking to witness.

“We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read” by Caroline M. Yoachim (Lightspeed 5/24) — A message is sent apparently to humans from a very different, brief-lived species: a simple message that holds entire lives. The story is told in a successfully experimental format, and it left me with a lot to think about.

My vote: “Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole” by Isabel J. Kim (Clarkesworld 2/24) — I nominated this for the strength of the storytelling voice, and after reading all the finalists I still like it best: “... tell me there is a better solution than putting one single kid in the hole, and letting that one single kid have a miserable life, in return for the good lives of all of our children?” Moral certainty is so messy, but at least the kid in the hole can be ethically sourced.

My translation from Spanish of the short story “Proxima One” by Caryanna Reuven has just been published by Clarkesworld Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine! Read it here. A machine intelligence called Proxima One sends probes into the galaxy to search for intelligent life, and the probes must cope with the surprising things they discover.

***

What happens at a science fiction convention? I’ve written a report about the most recent Windycon, a Chicago regional convention. It’s the longest-running convention in the area, now in its 50^th year. About 1000 people attended, and it fell like a busy but relaxed weekend with friends and family. Read it here at the Science Fact & Science Fiction Concatenation website.

Zoi by Jane Mondrup

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Full disclosure: I was asked to write a blurb for this novel by the publisher, who supplied a copy of the book.

A lot of books are written about first contact with a species alien to Earth. This novel asks an original question — because if we ever get first contact, nothing will remain the same. We, as a species and as individuals, will need to made decisions and choices. So what do we do?

In Zoi, Jane Mondrup gives us a clear, anguished voice that must weigh the risk of making dreams come true against an irrevocable choice — with no way to know what is the right choice. Space and time are immense, and her characters struggle to keep their humanity and purpose while accompanying an alien that has its own biology and methods of dealing with new species.

This is an intense story about one woman’s decisions. She had always wanted to meet the aliens and go to the stars, but it comes at a price. Can she make the right choices? How will she know?

View all my reviews

Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right by Jordan S. Carroll

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this short book before it became a finalist for a Hugo Award for Best Related Work, and it’s a timely choice that deserves the attention the nomination brings.

The author, Jordon S. Carroll, discusses the ways that alt-right/fascist/White nationalists have long used popular culture to promote their ideas, including science fiction, fantasy kingdoms, and superheroes. Alt-right readers, he says, are willing to convince themselves that the future in science fiction is a blueprint for their hopes. This explains their objections to Lt. Uhuru in Star Trek. Black people don’t belong in their future.

Speculative Whiteness shows how these ideas really belong to the past, and how alt-right expectations are self-contradictory in any case. The book includes copious footnotes and ends on a hopeful note: “the alt-right promises a bold new future in space but it never achieves escape velocity from white supremacy’s perpetual present.”

However, the book was published in October 2024, and a lot has happened since then. The alt-right won the US presidential election and many other political offices, and our present seems to be slouching toward a future that only the alt-right wanted.

Here are some articles that extend the focus of the book into the present:

Interview with Jordan S. Carroll - Exploration Log 7: Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations
https://sciencefictionruminations.com...

China Miéville says we shouldn’t blame science fiction for its bad readers - TechCrunch
https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/30/aut...

We’re sorry we created the Torment Nexus - Charlie Stross’s Diary
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog...

How Trump and Musk Are Ruining Sci-Fi - Daniel W. Drezner on Substack
https://danieldrezner.substack.com/p/...

The big idea: will sci-fi end up destroying the world? - The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...

View all my reviews

From April 23 to 25, Barnes & Noble is having a pre-order sale: 25% for B&N members for print, ebook, and audio; 35% off for Premium Members for print pre-orders only. Use the code PREORDER25

The trade paperback edition of Usurpation will be released on October 21, 2025. Plan ahead!

You might have an idea for writing a work of fiction, but is it flash fiction, a short story, a novel, or an epic trilogy? It can be frustrating to begin what you hope will be a short story, but soon it’s grown too long, and you don’t have time for a novel right now. Or, you might start a novel and run out of steam because there isn’t enough of an idea to fill all those pages.

Here are a few ways to help you evaluate your idea before you start.

• How many scenes can you imagine? A novel might have 80 scenes of 1,000 words each, and a short story just a few scenes.

• How many plot points can you imagine for a three-act outline, Hero’s Journey, or other novel plotting tool? A shorter piece may have only one or two pieces of the plot.

• Can you imagine the story as a picture? The artist El Greco will help illustrate this concept.

A simple picture can be a short-short story. Boy Lighting a Candle, by El Greco, 1571.

This story might be:

“The little glowing fairy was fragile and needed help to stay alive.”

Add a few more characters, and you have a longer short story. An Allegory with a Boy Lighting a Candle in the Company of an Ape and a Fool, by El Greco, 1577.

This story might be:

“The little glowing fairy was fragile, but it attracted too much attention, and the boy didn’t think he could keep it safe.”

With more characters and more conflict, you might have a novel. The Miracle of Christ Healing the Blind, by El Greco, ca. 1570.

This story might be:

“The protagonist’s unusual but successful medical techniques often got him into trouble, and eventually he faced a death sentence.”

A big canvas with a lot happening could well be a trilogy. Burial of the Count of Orgaz, by El Greco, 1586. The painting is 15 feet / 4.5 meters tall.

This story might be:

“The Count’s death unleashed an epic conflict between men and God.”

(Notice the lack of women at the Count’s funeral. That could become an important plot point in the story.)

Exercise

Think of an idea you’ve been playing around with. Try to imagine it as a work of art. Would it fit nicely on a postage stamp? It might be flash fiction. Would it fill a wall-sized mural? You might have an epic. The goal is to avoid unpleasant surprises when you finally start to write. If you need an idea, here are a few:

• A medical team must decide if it can ethically flee a deadly situation.

• A technology company begins to operate in increasingly illegal activities, but the change is so slow and the money is so good that one of the engineers, who becomes deeply troubled, can’t afford to quit.

• A family living in a haunted house refuses to believe in ghosts.

• Two individuals initiate a series of gift exchanges, and the gifts tell more about the givers than they realize.

• Friends witness the breakup of a family from different perspectives and have different opinions.

Helios, a substack that goes deep on big ideas, has taken a look at my novel Semiosis:

“For centuries, we’ve measured intelligence through a profoundly narcissistic lens. We’ve built entire philosophical and scientific frameworks around the idea that cognition is a uniquely human trait — a linear progression of thinking that starts with simple organisms and culminates in our own supposedly superior consciousness.

“Sue Burke’s Semiosis isn’t just a science fiction novel. It’s a radical dismantling of those comfortable delusions.”

Besides an article and podcast, there are study materials: References, Executive Summary, Briefing Document, Quiz, Essay Questions, Glossary, Timeline, Cast, FAQ, Table of Contents, Index, Polls, 3k Image, and Fact Check.

You will find spoilers — and a lot to think about.

***

My translation of “The Coffee Machine” by Celia Corral-Vázquez has been nominated for the 2024 Best Translated Short Fiction Award by the British Science Fiction Association. It was originally published at Clarkesworld Magazine. Read it here. See the full list for the awards here. The winners will be announced at Eastercon, April 18 to 21.

***

A new review of ChloroPhilia by Cristina Jurado, which I translated, is at Strange Horizons Magazine. Reviewer Rachel Cordasco writes: “ChloroPhilia — an unsettling, enticing novella about evolution in overdrive — is Cristina Jurado’s most recent work in English. Like her collection Alphaland, which came out in English in 2018 and then was reissued in 2023, ChloroPhilia offers readers Jurado’s unique vision of the world, in which the bizarre and grotesque erupts into the mundane world.…”

Here’s a little story from medieval Spain that I translated, and it has a moral and a punch line. It comes from El Conde Lucanor [Count Lucanor], a book written in 1335 by Don Juan Manuel (1282-1348), nephew of King Alfonso X of Castile.

The book is filled with “exemplary stories” to help the fictitious Count Lucanor deal with his concerns. This one, Exemplum XLIII, was cribbed from a popular story at the time. The Count asked how much he should tolerate from bad people. His advisor recounts this story, and the final line became a refrain.

(Photo: A bath at the Alhambra, Granada, Spain.)

***

A good man owned a public bath, and a madman came into the bath when people were bathing. He hit them with buckets and stones and sticks and everything else he could find, so no one in the world dared to go to the bath that belonged to the good man, who lost his income.

When the good man realized that the madman was making his business fail, he got up early one day and went to the bath before the madman came. He took off his clothes as if he were a customer and got a bucket of boiling water and a large wooden club. Then the madman who had been attacking people arrived at the bath.

The naked good man, who was waiting, saw him and ran at him with fierce anger. He threw the bucket of boiling water at his head and grabbed the club and began to strike him again and again on his head and body. The madman was afraid he would be killed and thought that the good man was mad.

He ran out screaming, and when he met a man who asked him why he was running and yelling, the madman told him:

“My friend, beware, because there is another madman in the bath.”

The ebook edition of my novel Usurpation is on sale all this week, March 31 to April 6, for only $2.99 at all retailers.

Usurpation is the third book in the Semiosis trilogy. Stevland, the dominant sentient lifeform of Pax, has sent some of its seeds to Earth, but Earth is a powder keg. As more and more conflicts break out, Earth’s rainbow bamboo works in the background to try to control human behavior and — they desperately hope — bring peace to the planet.

This fine building, we are told, is fully one hundred years old. It has weathered storms and bluster that brought other buildings to the wrecking ball, and it has witnessed a full century of drama for us to acknowledge and commemorate.

Yet I see parts of this building that existed long before. Think of all the hands that touched this banister. Its straight-grained wood came from an oak likely a hundred years old when it was harvested.

The red bricks in the walls are made from clay, which is weathered from rocks, a process that takes thousands of years. At the front door, the limestone in the steps and threshold was formed no later than the dinosaurs. The slate shingles are older still. The pinkish granite cornerstone may have been formed from magma that cooled and solidified before life appeared on Earth.

But, you say, the moonlight shining through the windows must be even older.

True, the Moon may be as ancient as the Earth itself, billions of years old, but the light? It came from the Sun, only seven light-minutes away, which then bounced off the Moon, and in less than two seconds, it reached these windows. Moonlight is the newest thing in this room, younger than you or I, cool with the energy of youth.

April 20 is the spring equinox on Earth, which we celebrate here in Chicago with Chicagohenge. (See photo.)

In Chapter 3 of the novel Semiosis, on the planet Pax, they celebrate differently. The human colony is living in a new location and has just survived an attack by ground eagles a little before the spring equinox.

Meanwhile, Stevland, the rainbow bamboo, has been trying to communicate with the humans by means of flowers to demonstrate the idea of opposites and dualism, and he is growing impatient.

***

HIGGINS: Some of the children, and some of the adults (especially us killers), had nightmares or insomnia, so we decided to hold the annual spring equinox festival early — the next day. The festival commemorates arriving at the city from the old village, so we ate the traditional travelers’ meal of trilobites, wild onions, and dried rainbow fruit. We walked around on stilts pretending we were Earthlings.

Finally, at dusk, at the site of the old central tower, we took off our clothes in spite of the cold because being naked showed we were willing to move on. We lit a bonfire to burn images of straw, wood, and paper of what we wanted to leave behind. Hydrogen seeds had been stashed in the images to explode with satisfying bangs and flashes.

The children and I had worked together all day to build a big eagle out of twigs. It stood at the center of the heap with a smaller beak than it ought to be and not as deadly hooked, which was fine with me. Sylvia had taught the children how to weave the feathers that hung off the eagle, no two alike, different sizes, different skill levels, different grass and leaves used to make them, giving the bird a ragged look. It hardly resembled the beautiful and vicious creatures that still raced in my dreams in deadly choreographed packs, but I was more than eager to see it burn.

My parents, like a few other older Pacifists, contributed straw figures of tall and skinny humanoids. Sylvia’s always looked spookily lifelike, since she was a master basket-weaver. I used to pester my parents about why they burned Earthlings, and finally, when I was older, they told me everything about leaving the original colony that I had been too little to understand or remember. That year I realized that the festival wasn’t for children, although children had the most fun at it.

STEVLAND: I observed the foreigners’ fire tonight, a large fire I have learned that I need not fear, although I do not like it. Animals are cyclical, and the large fire is an annual event.

But this year, the fire was not held on the evening of the spring equinox. I believe the eagle attack has disturbed a cycle. I could help them assess the passage of the days and years with accuracy. Repetition is important to animals. I respect their needs. I want to help them.

Answer me! Dualism is a simple idea. Light, dark. Up, down. Live, dead. Communication, silence. Even if you do not understand, show me that you wish to communicate. Night has come, and the morning will follow soon. You can accomplish much in a day. A small action will suffice. Speak to me.

***

Sweden’s Lund University Centre for Languages and Literature will host a CogSem Seminar: “Semiosis and cognition in science fiction narratives” with Carlos H. Guzmán on the way that science fiction authors have incorporated ideas from the field of semiotics into their stories. He will focus on Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, The Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang, and Semiosis by Sue Burke. The Zoom event on March 27 is open to all. More information is here.