Richard V. Rupp

March 30, 2022

Good Wednesday morning! I'm novelist Richard V. Rupp, writing from Burbank, California. Welcome to RUPP'S NOTES/FBI SPECIAL AGENT HARTMANN SERIES posts.

 

Over the past couple of days, we received quite a bit of needed rain. It is absolutely beautiful today. I love it when it rains here in Southern California, as it clears the air and you can see for miles.

 

Those of you who have been following me for a while know that I occasionally get on the wrong side of FaceBook. I did it again with my last post titled MEN AND WOMEN ARE LIKE RIGHT AND LEFT HANDS. Their algorithms decided the post addressed certain social issues that are no-no's to them for some reason. And two additional levels of their review process indicated the same thing. They don't tell you what the issues are, and in re-reading my post, I have no idea. If you get my posts on FB and like what I write, please "like" them and "share" them with your friends.

 

It has been a busy week for me. My time is split between research, writing, and reading. I don't seem to finish one book before I get involved in reading another. I'm still reading CAN'T EVEN by Anne Helen Petersen about how millennials became the burnout generation, which relates to my Bowman Twins and their clique in SKYWARD (the manuscript I'm working on). Then there is CHINA'S YOUTH by Li Chunling about China's millennials and examines their status, lifestyles, attitudes, values, and behaviors, which apply to my character Bic Wang, a millennial. Bic and the Bowman Twins meet together on the Moon, as the Bowman Colony and Chinese Military base are just 300 miles apart. There is millennial to millennial discourse and action. Here's a paragraph from my novel about Bik –

 

* * *

The next day Bik drove to the Jiuquan Space Launch Center in northwest Gansu province and went to his office on the third floor of the Technical Center. He met with technicians who sent instructions to the satellites they had parked in Earth orbit to move to Moon orbit. Then the satellites were instructed to use their reverse thruster to land at the spot the Chinese Military had selected in the Leibnitz Mountains, on the north-eastern rim of the Aitken basin on the Moons South Pole. Next, he met with the Rocket Assembly Group. They were instructed to speed up the assembly of vehicles to be launched for the planned Moon military base.

 

* * *

 

Recent research led me to the PHILOSOPHY FOR LIFE website, which further complicated my juggling act as I'm now also into reading the book PHILOSOPHY FOR LIFE AND OTHER DANGEROUS SITUATIONS by Jules Evans. Based on my reading of Evans, I'm finding many of my ideas about constructing "the new world" were considered in the writings of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and of course, H. G. Wells and Aldous Huxley. Here are two quotes that apply to my writing from each -

 

 * * *

 

"Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people." – Socrates

 

"Prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory, the other perpetual." – Socrates

 

"Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another." – Plato

 

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws." – Plato

 

 "It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world." – Aristotle

 

"Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies." – Aristotle

 

"This world is out of joint. It's broken up, and I doubt if it'll heal. I doubt very much if it'll heal. We are in the beginning of the sickness of the world!" – H. G. Wells

 

"The world state must begin; it can only begin, as a propaganda cult, or as a group of propagandist cults, to which men and women must give themselves and their energies, regardless of the consequence to themselves. The activities of a cult which sets itself to bring about the world-state would at first be propagandist, they would be intellectual and educational, and only as a sufficient mass of opinion and will had accumulated would they become to a predominant extent politically constructive. Such a cult must direct itself, particularly to the teaching of the young." – H. G. Wells

 

"Maybe this world is another planet's hell." ― Aldous Huxley

 

"That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach." ― Aldous Huxley

 

I will add two more quotes that apply –

 

'The idea of a mixed 'race of the future' was quite popular, especially in Californian occult circles. The head of the Theosophist Society of Pasadena, Gottfried de Purucker, said in 1930: 'the race to the future will be a composite, composed of the many different races on earth today.'" – Jules Evans on his Philosophy for Life website.

 

The choice is the Universe…or nothing. – H.G. Wells

 

* * *

 

Onward and upward! My story SKYWARD is a composite of the above quotes and much more. Everything is tied together with the realization that the process of colonizing space screens those who can go and that their survival depends on their scientific knowledge and teamwork. It is recognized that the way things are done on Earth will often not work in developing the Bowman Moon Colony. In my writing, I try to analyze things in a real-world way, even though I'm somewhat in the Sci-Fi genre.

 

I have to mention one more book I have just purchased. It's Huxley's last novel, ISLAND, where a society exists that is the envy and enmity of the rest of the world. I look forward to finding out why this society is so envied. By the way, Huxley lived the final years of his life on an estate in the Hollywood Hills, near the big Hollywood sign, just a few minutes from my Burbank pad. He worked in Hollywood as a screenwriter and wrote the original screenplay for Disney's animated 'Alise in Wonderland' (1951), and co-wrote the screenplays for 'Pride and Prejudice' (1940) and 'Jane Eyre' (1944).

 

And then there is my research into growing plants on the Moon. I am convinced that it is possible to produce enough food in "growing pods" on the Moon to feed those living there. The Bowman colony uses many growing pods, each supporting a different growing method (i.e., hydroponics, aquaponics, raised bed soil). They need to develop soil to efficiently grow root crops. This article from THE WEEK has given me an idea – "Converting a person's remains as an alternative to cremation – In the process of "natural reduction," the deceased's corpse is decomposed over six months in a chamber with wood chips, alfalfa, straw, and microbes." I don't expect many people to die in my Moon colony, but those that do will end up contributing to its food production.

 

I will end today on that note. Uggg.

 

Cheers,

 

Richard V. Rupp, Author

Website – www.richardvrupp.com

Email – rupprisk@gmail.com

Copyright©2022 by Richard V. Rupp