Author Archives: dtkrippene

Writing Life

30 Friday Sep 2016

Posted by in On Writing, The Humor Zone

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Lots of old black-and-white photos

From: V. Niktenko – Depositphotos.com

A social group I belong asked a while back if I’d offer a few tips about writing an autobiography. Who me?  I’m more into making things up in fiction. Couldn’t think of a worse candidate for the job.

I have an elderly relative who loves to tell stories of his youthful escapades, over and over and over, infinitum. He’s not a bad story teller, and it isn’t the repetition that gets me. It’s an overwhelming fear that I will end up doing the same thing when I reach the golden years (or is it platinum, now that we’re all supposed to live thirty years on average after retirement?). Oh, and his epilogue after each tale, where he insists his life would make a great story. “I should write it”, he’d say. “My autobiography would make a great book.”

life-old-man

From: Pinterest

Cue in scene: Honey, it’s getting late.

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Still Trekking

31 Wednesday Aug 2016

Posted by in Sci-Fi Themes

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star-trek-characters-wallpaper-4

From: nerdist.com

Hard to believe the little sci-fi series that almost didn’t make it, turns 50 on September 8.  After a pilot with Jeffery Hunter was rejected in 1965, Gene Roddenberry’s space adventure, Star Trek, got the green light from Desilu Studios. Yes, that’s the “I Love Lucy” studio.  A network executive claimed Lucille Ball never actually read the script, she thought it was about movie stars on a trek to entertain U.S. Troops, a mistake that still resonates a half-century later.  Thank you, Lucy.

A recent WSJ Arena article by John Jurgenson, Still Boldly Going, recapped a short history of the first Star Trek, or “lowercase fantasia” as rated by Variety at the time.  Jurgenson cites William Shatner’s memory of the era, “We were always about to be cancelled, always a sword of Damocles hanging over us.” One actor quoted “No one had any idea that 50 years later, the story would have a heartbeat.”

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Song of Fire and Smoke

31 Sunday Jul 2016

Posted by in The Humor Zone

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From: Ampack - Depositphotos.com

From: Ampack – Depositphotos.com

It’s August, and that time of year when I walk away from the word processor, kick back, and spend quality time with my two grills and smoker.

Yo DT, shouldn’t you be adding pages to that sci-fi story you’re stuck on.

Damned muse. Always giving me shit when I’m not focused on important stuff – like finishing the book. Annoying little bastard, but easily silenced with a couple cocktails and fibbing that it’s world building research for a dystopian tale I’ve been trying to finish since last year. Or was it the year before?

Exactly when humans began to burn meat over fire remains controversial. Scientists originally believed the early meat eaters ate sushi style, fresh off the bone, and didn’t start barbequing until 800,000 years ago. Then in 2012, a South African Primatologist examined evidence from the Wonderwerk Cave, where sediments revealed presence of burned bone in a campfire over a million years old. Sure hope it wasn’t a fellow hominid.

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We All Have the Same Dream

30 Thursday Jun 2016

Posted by in Inspiration, Musing

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July Fourth is one of two holidays that are dear to my heart (can you guess what the other one is?). Our country’s independence is more than just fond childhood memories of BBQs and small town parades. It is the time when I take a moment to reflect how lucky I am to live in a place where I’m free to live as an individual. Not to say I don’t shake my head in befuddlement on occasion, but hey, who said life was perfect.

People ask what my fondest Fourth of July memory is. Was it a particular family event, fireworks on a small New Hampshire lakeshore, or my girls running around in the dark with sparklers when they were young?

Fresh out of college, when adulthood broadsided me, a biology degree didn’t offer much in the way of gainful employment at the time, so I chose a path less traveled and joined the Peace Corps. It promised adventure and a chance to do something special in a third world country. Being the impressionable young man with noble dreams and zero sense of reality, off I went to the Philippines as a Fisheries Biologist for a two-year, non-stop assignment without home leave. I left just after July 4, and returned two years later in mid July.

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Remembrance

25 Wednesday May 2016

Posted by in Inspiration, Searching for Light

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two tulips and bust

Moritorus – DepositPhotos.com

Next week, our nation takes time off to remember the brave souls who paid the ultimate price for keeping us safe. Many of us have never experienced the horror of armed conflict. Because of our veteran’s sacrifice, most of us will never have too. Our national day of remembrance ensures we never forget them.

My throat locks up when I visit veteran memorial parks. Headstones seemingly stretch to the horizon. Who were these brave souls? What dreams went unrealized? How many hearts were broken when they didn’t come home? How many sons and daughters went without a parent? For those whose remains are interred in this hallowed ground, the living will plant a flag on their grave in reverence, perhaps kiss a faded photograph, or touch a brittle love letter written long ago. But not all will be remembered this way. Countless tens-of-thousands throughout our country’s history are buried beneath forgotten soil, their legacy lost to the ages, their memory but a solitary memorial to the Unknown Soldier.

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Astrobiology – A Universe Wired for Life

30 Saturday Apr 2016

Posted by in Future Trends, Searching for Light

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Curricular options for me in college didn’t include subjects pertaining to astrobiology. In my day, most budding biologists were encouraged to focus on earth-bound developmental sciences, provided you could get through university weeding courses in organic biology and biochemistry. Life sciences were about life on earth. Even hinting of life in the cosmos got you the evil eye, a lower grade for being stupid, or a semester of janitorial service cleaning up after freshman lab orientation. Times have changed.

First, a definition. Astrobiology is a branch of biology concerned with the study of life on earth and in space. The earth part of it focuses on finding answers to how life began on earth. As for space, the research has to go beyond the study of fossils and other earthly evidence. Astrobiologists must look for the presence of organic materials outside our solar system, and hypothesize how these materials become the molecules of life.

Jeffery Kluger of Time Magazine wrote an article last February, The Perfectly Sane Case For Life in Space. Kluger tagged along with astrobiologist, Scott Sanford at the NASA Ames Research Center, who demonstrated an updated cosmic primordial soup device that would make Dr. Frankenstein very proud. Sanford filled a chamber with elements you’d find in space (stellar dust, gas), duplicated the chill of space, and instead of lightning, used the same kind of radiation expected in the cosmos. The result yielded thousands upon thousands of chemical products, many of which included molecules needed to spark life. What Sanford stated in Kluger’s article caught my attention.

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Simplicity Survives

30 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by in Dystopian Subjects, Musing, On Writing

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Amish World

When out-of-town friends come to visit, sightseeing Amish country outside Lancaster, PA, is on our top list of excursions not to be missed.  Each visit, I learn a little bit more of the simple life that survived inside our 21st century, helter-skelter world, and it re-stokes the scenic muse in my writing. We recently revisited our favorite back roads to observe the Amish farmers prepare for another growing season. The following article is something I wrote three years ago, and worth a revisit.

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 It’s a great time of year to observe a friendly, humble people who resist the temptations of a modern life. They bear it well, but living in a fishbowl where the English “observe them” as anomalies of society, has to be somewhat nerve wracking. Shunning electricity and other modern conveniences, the Amish have carved a unique niche in a country gone amok with technological advances. Where most of us gather food from sterilized packages in gleaming stores, ride around in motor vehicles, wear clothes made in a third-world sweatshop, and entertain ourselves with endless media options, our modern selves are anything but simple. Turn off the switch, and most of us are likely to fumble in the darkness.

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Genders Behaving Badly

17 Wednesday Feb 2016

Posted by in On Writing, Sci-Fi Themes, Uncategorized

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Serious young Woman

From: Forgiss – DepositPhotos.com

The phrase, Men Behaving Badly, is rather gender specific.  Fair to say, it is a well-earned aphorism. History is rife with examples of male instigated-warfare, greed, corruption, and scandal.  Let’s give ourselves a big ole testosterone-infused high-five.

In the current sci-fi world I’m crafting, I want to explore a ravaged earth saved by benevolent aliens, with one nonnegotiable premise in exchange for helping to clean up our planetary playpen. Cede earth to the females, serve, nurture, and respect them without fail. Not the first time writers have played with dominate female societies, but while researching popular titles of the genre in fiction, my spam folder got a serious workout.  Movies were fifties-era bombs like Cat Women of Mars and too many book-covers with copycat characters right out of Legend of the Cryptids (see The Good, the Bad, and the Scantily Clad).

The challenge? Can I construct a quasi-utopian, matriarchal society that may over time, deteriorate into suspiciously male-like irrationality, and not have it become a comic book Wonder Woman society of Amazons that reads like a guy wrote it?

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Wrecking Balls of Extinction

12 Tuesday Jan 2016

Posted by in Dystopian Subjects, Future Trends

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Meteorite shower on a planet

From: GL0CK – Depositphotos.com

 

Extinction is a fascinating subject to me as a writer, especially if it has a dystopian plot line around a group of humans barely surviving a decimated landscape from any one of natural or manmade calamities. It’s all about the human equation, but what makes it really compelling, is a natural disaster by which we have no control. I’m obsessed with The Apocalypse Waiting Beneath Our Feet, and other earth-based, regularly-scheduled natural disasters mentioned in an article I wrote a couple years ago. Not to say meteor impacts are passé, it’s been a hotly debated subject for decades, but I viewed heavenly body impacts as random events, like chances of winning the lottery (or in this case … losing).

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