wipedown

Mom and Dad are in Virginia Beach for the week, visiting Nana; this is their last chance before Mom enters her busiest months of the year - many Christmas engagements and then the January cabaret. The house feels empty without them, although it gives me a chance to do housework. There is no real reason housework should be harder to do in a full house - there might be more dishes, but there isn't, say, appreciably more dust. But I have noticed that people tend to get nervy when someone in the same room is cleaning something.

This stands in stark contrast to the televisual cliche of the chummy barkeep, who comforts his customers by swabbing a table as he banters. This is often exactly what I am doing, to opposite effect. Maybe I'm just bad at it; people are comfortable if I'm polishing a shoe or painting a wall, and only become uncomfortable if I'm polishing a glass or wiping down that same wall.

I say "people" but I'm similarly uncomfortable with watching cleaning take place. I just tell that part of my brain to fuck off and stop internalizing patriarchy. I'm not sure it's really patriarchy; it may be a more general taboo around acknowledging bodily secretions. But when telling myself to fuck off, it's more effective to invoke patriarchy.

The Ways Couples Fight At Holiday Time

The major religious schism between me and Ciro is aliens.

Not whether we have been visited by aliens, or whether we're ever likely to find aliens, or whether extra-terrestrial life would be intelligent. It's more basic than that.

I don't believe any life exists or has ever existed anywhere other than Earth, mainly because I think the odds of even us existing are nil. To support this hypothesis, I point to the complete failure of experiments that have tried to spontaneously generate life, even on a planet where we know life has happened. I think we are the beneficiaries of literally astronomical good luck.

Ciro, in contrast, supposes that life existing proves life can exist, and therefore does plentifully. Moreover, any number of things that theory suggest are possible have not been successfully practiced, and I have no trouble assuming we eventually will.

This is an area where it's easy to agree to disagree. For now, there is insufficient scientific evidence to support or discredit either position; we're deep into "vague hunch" territory. And like belief or disbelief in dead relatives watching benignly from Heaven, it makes no real difference to how we conduct our lives - and only a little difference to how we feel about them.

Oh wait no - we are science fiction authors and we collaborate.

It comes up.

Schism.

We can be professional about it. Both of us are willing to accept almost anything as a premise and then work from there. ESP? Fine. Flying carpets as mass transit? Sure, why not. Aliens? If the story needs it. But at least one of us will switch to thinking of that story as space fantasy. And the other one will know.

If we found extraterrestrial life, that would be that; I'm not dogmatic. Meanwhile, Ciro can't really be proven wrong; given that we can't possibly explore the whole universe, life could always be out there. Like Amazons.

I think it would be interesting to find other life. I think it might be even more interesting to find extraterrestrial non-life that challenged our idea of life - say, a complex society of viruses, or a procreative conglomeration of self-organizing protein.

Truth be told, I think extraterrestrial life makes for a good science fiction premise, even a great premise. I also think it's been totally ruined by being the assumed thing in all science fiction. How did first contact become rote, the thing we snore about while we wait for the story to start? Discovering any kind of life at all would be insane. Scientists would freak out. They would see a fossilized flagellum and freak out.

In a good way.

If someone wants to write an electropop song called "Fossilized Flagellum Freakout" I am all for it.