Growing Rana Station's agriculture

What's Bred in the Bone, Cover art © 2019 by
  Jody A. Lee

Rana Station's agriculture is a big part of my vision for the primary backdrop of my characters' lives. If you've read my first novel, What's Bred in the Bone, you've possibly gotten an inkling that very little arable soil inside the tori of my characters' habitat space station home lies fallow. Even small spaces are nearly all devoted to growing food.

I've blogged in the past about how humans will feed themselves and provide enough protein to live permanently in space. I've long been an interested follower of efforts to grow food crops on the International Space Station, as well as intensive gardening efforts here on earth.

Gardening sisters

Last week, my sister G. S. Norwood wrote on The Weird Blog about the joy, beauty, and health benefits of her gardening projects. Having grown up under the same influences, I've long been a gardener, too.

But while G. specializes in flowers, I've always been more of a fruits and veggies woman, myself. Having grown up in the '60s and '70s, I was always half-convinced I'd better hone my skills at organic gardening, in case I survived the coming nuclear armageddon, and needed to feed myself and others afterwards (unlike a prepper, I figured learning how to can the food I grow would feed me longer than squirreling away canned foods like Spam and beans).

I'd worked most of the summer of 1974 to buy that bicycle. I posed for it (with G.'s dog Finnian) in my garden. (photo probably taken by G. or our mother, to send to my then-boyfriend, now-husband, who was working in Colorado).

Eventually, worries about nuclear Armageddon receded as a real possibility in my maturing brain. But I still followed organic gardening methods. They appealed to my evolving environmentally-friendly consciousness.

More recently, in a concession to knee injuries, I've taken up container gardening. This has led to some interesting experiences--and inspired more ideas to use for Rana Station's agriculture.

New in 2019: I added a cedar planter to my patio container garden, seen here dominated by lettuce and marigolds. (photo by Jan S. Gephardt)

My thought-experiment world

These influences all combined in my world-building efforts on Rana Station. Years of watching how our world and its societies work, years of teaching, and years of gardening have given me some strong opinions. How better (or more sfnal!) to explore their possibilities and shortfalls than to test them out in a "thought-experiment" world?

In my concept, Rana Station's agriculture is not only necessary for their own consumption. It's also a key export that is vital to their economy. A problem every space-based habitat faces is how to feed its inhabitants. The more I looked at the possibilities, the clearer it became to me that the early NASA developers were not gardeners or farmers.

A year or so after my garden photo with Finnian and the bike, this was NASA's idea of farming on a space colony. Note the stark division between agricultural and residential areas. (detail of uncredited NASA photo found on Socks Studio.)

What if a gardener from farm country did take a whack at figuring out how to feed the 8.4 million humans and 2.4 million ozzirikkians I wanted on Rana? What would such an effort take?

Thinking outside of strict divisions

First, I eliminated the strange division between "agricultural" and "residential" areas that seemed endemic in many of the space colony concepts (Designed by men who never got food anywhere but a grocery store?).

"Salad wall" and raised bed give good examples of food grown intensively in a small amount of space. (Photo courtesy of QuickCrop).

There's no rule that swaths of land on a space station has to be devoted to grass (how unproductive!), or that residents can't live in a garden. Why not grow "veggie walls" in commercial buildings? Why not cultivate vine crops that hang from baskets or planter boxes on the residence towers' balconies?

Then I conceived my living area not as a broad, relatively flat plain, but more like the agricultural terraces of Yemen, Asia, and the Incas. I envisioned a convex/concave profile of the Ranan hillsides would maximize arable surface area.

Rice terraces of Longsheng (Longji) in China (Photo by Anna Frodesiak - Own work, Public Domain)

This also creates an endless, undulating river valley that accommodates natural patterns of water flow. Yes, they still have to dredge parts of it occasionally. But they'll have prepared for it.

Rana Station's agriculture and its economy

In my universe, Rana Stationers have made a name for themselves as an interstellar farmers market of the first order. Not being required to haul their fresh produce up from a planetary gravity well, they have a pricing and freshness advantage to offer the interstellar transports that stop over at the station to restock between transits through the local jump point.

Fresh produce from the Fresh and Local Farmers Market, near Arizona State University (photo courtesy of Facebook/Fresh and Local at ASU, via Phoenix New Times)

I think it's likely space environments will be dominated by utilitarian freeze-dried, frozen, and reconstituted foods in the form of microgravity-friendly ration bars, packets, or bulbs. In light of that, what sybaritic joy might fresh produce offer? I can imagine captains who plot their course through the Chayko System's jump point specifically to access the fruits of Rana Station's agriculture.

Taken in the Food Tasting lab in building 17: Bags of International Space Station food and utensils on tray, 2003. (Photo courtesy of NASA, via Wikimedia Commons).

Visions to come

I'm currently working with illustrators, and also on my own artwork, to come up with better ways to envision the station. I plan to share those efforts in future blog posts, and once I get my newsletter off the ground, they'll also show up there on occasion. I hope you'll join my explorations.

IMAGE CREDITS

What's Bred in the Bone cover art © 2019 by Jody A. Lee. The 1974 photo of me was probably taken by G. or our mother, to show off the bike to my then-boyfriend, now-husband. I took the photo of my most recent container-gardening addition. 

Many thanks to Socks Studio for the uncredited NASA photo of agriculture on a space colony; to QuickCrop, for the intensive planting photo; to Anna Frodesiak - Own work, Public Domain for the rice terraces photo; to the Phoenix New Times for the farmers market photo; and to NASA and Wikimedia Commonsfor the ISS food photo. I appreciate you all!

For the characters

Book Four is Aces and Eights. Available now!
(Photo courtesy of Amazon.)

I've heard it said that people pick up the first book of a series for the plot, but they stay with the series for the characters. This is true in spades (sorry: pun intended), when it comes to the "Aces High, Jokers Wild" series by O. E. Tearmann.

If you're already a fan of this series, I have excellent news! The fourth book, Aces and Eights, is now available in e-book format (here's hoping a paperback and audio version are released soon!).

If you're not already a fan of this series, I have even MORE excellent news! There is a wonderful series awaiting your discovery--and it's now four books long! (plus a Christmas-themed novelette, After Hours Game, that ideally should be read between Books 2 and 3)

If you're not reading the XK9 books, why not these?

Dystopian warm fuzzies?

Personally, I tend to steer clear of fictional dystopias, although I have a dear friend, Lynette M. Burrows, who writes a great dystopian series. (Scroll down her homepage for a list of great dystopian novels, if you love to read them).

The Hands We're Given  (Book One) was
a tour de force introduction to this world.
(Image courtesy of Goodreads.)

But I made an exception for the "Aces High, Jokers Wild" books--and I'm very glad I did. The people in these books are all their own kind of special. Talented, broken. Abused by the brutality of the world in which they live. But they rise above. They pull together. And, bit by bit, the oddballs and misfits of Base 1407, AKA The Wildcards, triumph. They use their unique talents and diverse strengths to succeed where more conventional approaches fail.

I love these people so much, I will gladly read anything Tearmann writes about them. Strictly for the characters, this series has become an "insta-buy" for me.

I love them because they're smart. They're perceptive--about their situation, and about each other. They love first, and while they may quarrel about details, their love is unconditional. Put to the most severe tests, they stay true to themselves and their team.

If you haven't discovered this series, you're in for a treat (Image courtesy of the Aces High Jokers Wild website).

The world they inhabit

Call the Bluff, Book Two, is a bit shorter,
but every bit as riveting. New dangers
threaten, and cherished lives endangered.
(Photo courtesy of Amazon.)

Tearmann has done some interesting world-building in these books. The Unites States of America that we know has been overrun and subsumed. In this world, seven corporations rule much of North America, each with its own territory, its own rules, and its own moral code. Codes which are imposed on the subject-citizens, although the "Corps" themselves follow an amoral code of self-interest and absolute control to the greatest extent possible.

Climate change has wreaked its havoc on the world, and most of the formerly-verdant plains states are now desolate near-deserts. Only the areas farmed by AgCo, with its patented, genetically engineered food crops that can't reproduce on their own (no seeds but those controlled by AgCorp will grow) feeds the nation.

The Co-Wy Grid (contemporary Colorado and Wyoming, where the Wildcards of Base 1407 stay on the run) is a patchwork of danger and sanctuary, respite and conflict. For the past 60-some years, the Democratic State Force (on the Co-Wy Grid they're informally known as the "Dusters") has sought to restore democracy.

The LGBTQ angle

Raise the Stakes leads the Wildcards
into newrealms of possibility, and sees
a promising new turn in the fight
against the Corps. (Photo courtesy
of Goodreads).

If you're not normally a reader of LGBTQ fiction, this series may take you by surprise. As with everything they do, the Wildcards don't particularly adhere to conventional gender norms.

That starts with the protagonist of the very first book, Commander Aidan Headly (born Andrea), who gradually transitions into his true self over the course of several volumes.

The books include a fair number of rather graphic sexual interactions. They may or may not be your "cup of tea," but as I noted in my review of the first book, I've never read a book in which such scenes were more essential to the plot, or more appropriately used to express character growth. If you're willing to roll with it and let your hair down, these scenes are pleasantly steamy no matter what your orientation. After all, love is love. And it's masterfully handled here.

For the characters.

But there's also a lot of plot between the steamy sex scenes.

Do you like suspense? Join Kevin and his team when they go on the Grid. Do you enjoy sticking it to "the man" and triumphing over the machine-like inhumanity of large corporate entities? Then Tweak and her unique talents are your sweet spot. She'll have you cackling with glee.

Do you love the drama of bringing a traumatized human being into an accepting space, then helping him or her understand they are finally, finally safe? (Or as safe as it's possible to be, in this world.) Then you will love these books.

Buy them. Read them. You will not regret it.

IMAGE CREDITS:

Many thanks to Amazon for the cover images for Call the Bluff and Aces and Eights. Thanks to Goodreads for the cover images for The Hands We're Given and Raise the Stakes. And many thanks to O. E. Tearmann's website for the four-book series image. I appreciate all of you!

My first original video

What more auspicious day to post my first original video on my own YouTube channel, than on Star Wars Day?

What's my first original video about?

It's a reading, of the kind I love to do--and attend--at science fiction conventions (Ah! Remember back when it was safe to hold science fiction conventions in person?). The video is about 27 minutes long. It features me, reading Chapter One of The Other Side of Fear.

Here's the information that accompanies my video reading.

I owe Virtual DemiCon, and the amazing Joe Struss, a lot of thanks. They premiered this video during their event. 

They also got me off my butt! I've known I probably should do a video reading for a long time, but it's hard to get off "square one." Especially when it's your first foray into a new medium. They provided the needed motivation. Thanks very much! You guys are awesome.

While Virtual DemiCon is still available, please do yourself a favor! Check in, then take in as many of the events as still remain online!

Thank you to DemiCon for this image.

What makes Star Wars Day appropriate?

By Source, Fair Use

The original Star Wars movie made a huge impression on me when it came out in theaters in 1977. I may have lived in Kansas City for more than 40 years, but I didn't move here till my marriage in 1978. So I managed to miss MidAmeriCon I in 1976, where there was a big display and all the stars came to talk about this movie they were making.

In 1977 I lived and taught in tiny Lockwood, MO. I'd watched and enjoyed Star Trek reruns on TV by then. My soon-to-be husband had turned me on to Frank Herbert's Dune, and the librarians at the Ash Grove Library had by then gotten me intrigued in science fiction stories from Poul Anderson and Isaac Asimov. 

But I had never seen anything like like that movie before. 

I paid the at-the-time-exorbitant price of $3.00 for a ticket multiple times to see it over and over again (No VHS, no Betamax--not on my horizon till years later! No Blockbuster Video, and certainly no Netflix, Hulu, or Disney Plus, back in those ancient days!). 

I didn't go back again and again for the plot. I didn't go to critique the space physics. No, I went to bask in the spectacle (Artist. Visual creature. I drank it in.)

And not long after that, I started writing my first science fiction novel. I still have the typescript somewhere--typed on a manual Underwood in the evenings, after I finished my lesson plans for the day. It's horrifying dreck, but it's the first novel-length fiction I ever actually finished.

A 1952 Underwood "Rhythm Touch," like the one I used. Many thanks to Machines of Loving Grace for this photo.

Does that make me a "Warrior," not a "Trekkie"?

Well, no. As time went on, I came to enjoy lots of different science fiction stories, shows, and films. I love Star Trek, too. And--sorry, diehard "Warriors"--a lot of the Star Wars movies make little to no "real-world" sense (don't get me started on things I find cringeworthy). 

But the visuals, the droids, other-world creatures, the exotic vistas, the sheer spectacle of the Star Wars movies--those, I still enjoy. They attracted me in formative ways, during my early days of writing sf. And they bring a nostalgic smile to my lips to this day (well, some of them. Give me Darth Vader in a TIE fighter, but leave Jar-Jar in the closet where he belongs).

So my first original video--my own "mini movie"--that opens a glimpse of my science fictional world, is an appropriate thing to release on Star Wars Day. It's not too long on spectacle. But I hope you enjoy it, nonetheless.

Give me that quintessential villain Darth Vader in his TIE fighter! Many thanks ImgFlip.

IMAGE CREDITS

My video may be found on my YouTube channel.  I created the information card with the Cover for The Other Side of Fear,  plus copyright information, etc. Many thanks to Virtual DemiCon for the "CONTAMINATED" design, to Wikipedia, for the original 1977 Star Wars movie poster image, and to Machines of Loving Grace for the photo of the 1952 Underwood "Rhythm Touch" manual typewriter.  Many thanks also to ImgFlip, for the photo of Darth Vader in his TIE fighter.