Los Angeles in Flames + How Astronomy Inspires David Lee Summers

I suspect I’m not the first to inform you that Los Angeles is strangled by flames that spark wider than our fire departments can keep up with. News streams images and statistics about decimated architectural wonders owned by L.A.’s Uber-wealthy. My mind’s too preoccupied with the survival of those I care about to query for literary representation of my novels (about them here).

My heart swoons seeing so many brave people battle flames close enough to singe their ears and eyelashes. My condolences to anyone beset by crisis. There’s meager reporting on unhoused renters who don’t earn enough to pay for homeowner’s insurance, let alone lose days of work. There’s a smattering of coverage of rescued pets, but nothing on wildlife that’s fled or fried, zilch on our iconic palm trees and greenery that’s now rubble. I’ve lived, worked, and hiked in Los Angeles County, loved it all, for many many years. Much of it is gone…

Speaking of my heart, it skipped a few beats some hours earlier, when my phone shrilled with an evacuation alert. Like a nasty trickster, a few minutes later, the government agency apologized for sending it in error. No one can predict whether such a notice might be real later.

Thank goodness my husband and I own a house to lose, one that we’ve offered to friends who’ve lost theirs. And dear friends have offered to keep us if we’re without a roof. We’re lucky we don’t attach to objects. Most of our photos and videos are on the cloud. At the top of my list of evacuation things to gather are my husband, my dog, me, and a full tank of gas. Wallet stuff, health and legal coverage info. A first aid kit, meds and supplements. Enough clothes that I don’t become homicidal from wearing the same outfit day in and day out. Pens and paper because, you know, I’m a writer. I totally relate to the evacuated guy who said he tossed a book into his trunk. How I wish he’d said which one! Mine would be a collection of “All Creatures, Great and Small“ short stories, not because it’s my all-time fave, but because they’re escapist and warm-fuzzy enough that my husband would let me read them aloud. A deck of playing cards, aka my Zen exercise to enjoy the ride, rather than the win. Food, water, nuts, fruits, snacks, greens, yogurt, our best cheese and wine, chocolate, thermoses for hot water, loose tea.

I’m assuming we wouldn’t be venturing into a Mad Max void, where we’ll need a scary collar for our scaredy-dog and we’ll have hone our skills at pet-cockroach wrangling.

Back to gratitude: challenging times are when it’s most important to embrace the good and goodness around. Just turn on your device and you’ll see an outpouring of that. From the heroic to the ordinary, from the spectacular to the ever day gift of another day to live…

Today’s guest blog post comes by way of David Lee Summers. He’s a science fiction, fantasy, and horror author who has published thirteen novels and over one hundred short stories. His most recent novel is the vampire tale, Ordeal of the Scarlet Order. His short story “No One Alone” from the steampunk anthology Other Aether was a two-star selection on 2024’s Tangent Online recommended reading list. He’s also an astronomer who operates telescopes at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona. Check out his blog by clicking here. And learn more about his novels by clicking here.

Unexpected Ways Astronomy Has Inspired my Stories by David Lee Summers

By day I’m a mild-mannered writer of science fiction and horror. By night, I operate the Mayall 4-meter telescope and the WIYN 3.5-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory outside Tucson, Arizona. These two telescopes have contributed greatly to our understanding of the universe. They’ve played a role in the discovery of dark matter, the large-scale structure of the universe, dark energy, planets outside the solar system and much more. Working with these telescopes has also done much to inspire my writing – often in unexpected ways!

There’s perhaps no surprise that the objects we see with telescopes directly inspire my writing. For many years, I specialized in observations of spotted binary stars. Spotted, in this case means that they have spots, like sunspots, only much larger. In some cases, the spots can take up over a third of the star’s surface. Binary means that two stars orbit each other. These are very active, violent stars and I visit such a system in the opening scenes of Children of the Old Stars, which is part of my first series, the Space Pirates’ Legacy Series.

While working at Kitt Peak back in the 1990s, my wife also obtained her Masters of Business Administration with a specialty in entrepreneurship from the University of Arizona. Her final project was developing a small press science fiction publishing enterprise and we originally planned to publish the Space Pirates’ Legacy Series through our own company. However, the writing muse and publishing paths aren’t always so clear cut. 

Before working at Kitt Peak, I spent a summer working at Maria Mitchell Observatory on Nantucket Island, off the Massachusetts coast. Nantucket was once the center of the American whaling industry and is home to many proud, old families. What’s more, the novel Moby-Dick opens on Nantucket Island. Several years ago, when I was looking for a way to tell a story about hunting dragons in a unique way, I imagined mighty airship plying the air looking for dragons. This draconic retelling of Moby-Dick became my story “The Slayers” which I sold to in Realms of Fantasy Magazine back in 2001 and has just been republished as part of the audio anthology The Museum of the Omniverse: Dragon Exhibit. In the new version, I even wrote an airship shanty based on all the old sea shanties that Nantucket whalemen used to sing.

Astronomy has also inspired my horror writing. At one time, one of my co-workers used to joke that those of us who operate telescopes were the vampires of the mountain because we were never seen before sunset or after sunrise. She was also a fan of vampire fiction who introduced me to Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire. Because of that, I began to ask what if a telescope operator really were a vampire? That line of questioning led me to create an African-American astronomer named Daniel who became a vampire in the nineteenth century and is featured prominently in my novels Vampires of the Scarlet Order and Ordeal of the Scarlet Order. Soon after I finished Vampires of the Scarlet Order in 2001 after my short story sale, I decided to shop it around to publishers. Around the same time, an artist I worked with also started working with a company called LBF Books based in Pittsburgh. My artist friend spoked to the publisher and they agreed to look at the vampire novel. They loved it and agreed to publish it, then asked what else I had. That’s when I showed them the Space Pirates’ Legacy novels and they took those as well.

Lest you think vampires are the scariest thing you might encounter at an observatory, we do have our share of ghost stories. There are tales of a rocking chair in the 4-meter lounge that rocks all by itself. A few years ago, police reported getting a 911 call from the observatory. When the telescope operator on duty checked the number, it came from inside a locked, empty elevator. More recently, the breaker to the kitchen tripped mysteriously. The breaker was down one of the spookiest hallways in the building, where I often feel someone is walking right behind me. Now, all of these stories actually have rational explanations, but when my publisher asked me if I could write a full-on spooky horror novel, the shivers these tales induced helped me to create The Astronomer’s Crypt.

Over the years, the tides of publishing change, businesses change hands and the rights to all these books I’ve mentioned have reverted to me, so they’re all available through the company my wife started in business school, all those years ago, Hadrosaur Productions. You can visit the company online at https://www.hadrosaur.com

Writing is a passion and a calling for me, but I’m grateful for my career in astronomy. Even if I were to leave it, I’ve seen wonders and had experiences to inspire many books to come.

What’s on your evacuation list?