Humid, But Habitable

I came across an interesting article in last Tuesday’s newspaper: Newfound Planet Habitable But Humid. This kind of scientific news is right up my alley! Maybe it’s up your alley too. :)) I read on to learn that orbiting a star in the Vela constellation 35 light years away in the  “Goldilocks Zone” is a planet called HD85512b.

Catchy name, isn’t it?

The Goldilocks Zone refers to an orbit that is or can be habitable--not too hot and not too cold for the presence of liquid water. HD85512b has an estimated temperature range of 85 to 120 degrees, is about 1.4 times Earth gravity, and completes an orbit around its sun in sixty days.

Hmmm, on HD, then, I’d be well over 300 years old… GULP!

Astronomers theorize that this “new” planet would be extremely muggy, and the lifeforms, if any, could be squatter and shorter--closer to the ground.

Now here comes the fun part. Let your imagination roam. With the above details in mind, what science fiction storyline would you create?

While you’re percolating on that scenario, here’s one of my science fiction romances--ALIEN HEAT--that was inspired by current events. I came across a cover story in U.S. News and World Report on global warming. Then I theorized what would happen if this warming was due to villainous extraterrestrial factors, not just because of manmade interference like automobile exhaust.

Next, I researched the 1994 crash of comet Shoemaker-Levy into Jupiter and decided this type of event could happen on Venus. The force of impact could send out fragments of Venus that then, eventually, could collide with Earth.

In addition to a dramatic climate change, there’d have to be significant damage to human civilization. With that kind of trauma and annihilation, cultures and countries usually become fractured, to say the least. So my future world on Earth now had “primitive” villagers and the more technologically advanced people of Canusa pitted against each other. Then I threw in colonizing Venusian flowers, and voila! We have ALIEN HEAT!

All women love these flowers... but the feeling's *not* mutual.

Blurb: An almost cataclysmic bombardment by meteorites drastically altered Earth's atmosphere and human society. As if that isn't enough, in the intervening years, strange plants suddenly sprout up... seeming to have a mind of their own.

Because of her unfortunate past, young Glyneth doesn't want to marry. But when she is abducted by the Outsider, Lucas Jefferson, she learns not all men are like her despicable father. With her unusual abilities, she is the only person to understand the serious threat the Venusian flowers are to not only Lucas' people, but the Earth as well.

Available in print and electronically at Wings ePress, www.wings-press.com, Amazon.com, and other Internet locations.

But back to HD85512b. Maybe there will be a “Humid, But Habitable” science fiction story in my future. Then again, maybe I’ll write a contemporary novel set in Miami!!

For more info on Romance Writing with a Twist, visit me at my website or blog! Thanks!

Susanne Marie Knight