The application period for the 2012 Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop at UC San Diego officially opened on December 1, and will remain open until March 1. If you’ve been thinking about applying, start tapping on those keys now. We’ve got a wonderful faculty waiting in the wings, featuring Jeffrey Ford, Marjorie Liu, Ted Chiang, Walter Jon Williams, Holly Black, and Cassandra Clare. Thanks to Clarion’s friends and supporters, there is scholarship money for those who need it. In addition to general scholarships, there are special grants for students of color, students who are affiliated with Michigan State University, and students who are affiliated with UCSD. Get further information on the web at http://clarion.ucsd.edu.

We could start with the obvious reasons why you should apply to Clarion. Every year, there are six of them, and every year they are the faculty. Six professional writers, all talented, all respected in the field. Often, they are also award winners and best-sellers. You will work with each of them, both in the workshop room, and one on one. Sometimes in the common room at 2 am when you are still reading for the next day’s that morning’s critiques. Some of them will become your friends and mentors. They will give you the respect of taking you, and your writing, seriously.

Here are another six reasons: six weeks. Six weeks in which you can make your writing your absolute priority. Is it hard to step away from the life you’ve known for that long of a time? Yes. Emotionally and financially, it is a sacrifice. But – and please forgive my bluntness – if you think that the life of a writer is not full of emotional and financial sacrifices, you are wrong. Even if you cannot go now, it is worth saving and planning for.

Here are eighteen reasons – yourself, and your classmates. You will meet amazing, wonderful, challenging people. Some of these people will become part of your chosen family. Some you will do crazy and impossible projects with – I am writing a ballet with one of my Clarionmates right now. Let me assure that this is something that had never crossed my mind to do before I went to Clarion.

And that is the other thing, the beginning of the less-obvious reasons that you should attend – you will learn so much about yourself. Perhaps one of the things that you will learn is that you are not a writer, or not someone who wants to write professionally, or at least not then. Believe me when I say that is a good thing to learn, and better to learn it in six weeks than in six months, or six years. But perhaps you will learn that you are. I did, when I was there.

Clarion is a difficult experience, sometimes. It gets called “boot camp for writers” and I think the description is apt. It can also be a trial by fire, and many other clichés. It will, in all likelihood, change the way you write, and change the way you think about writing. I applied four years ago, and applying was one of the scariest things I had ever done, until I attended.

I’ve written a post like this every year since I attended. I still look back and say that going to Clarion was the single best thing I have ever done for myself as a writer, and one of the best things that I’ve done for myself, full stop. If you want to write, I highly encourage you to apply.

Originally posted on Strange Ink.

Kat Howard is a Clarion 2008 graduate who is incredibly grateful to her instructors and Clarionmates for making her a writer. Her short fiction has appeared in Stories, edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio, Subterranean, Lightspeed, and is forthcoming in Rich Horton’s Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2012. When she’s not writing, she is a postdoc in the English Department at Stony Brook University. You can find her on twitter as @KatWithSword.

Jennifer Lott, YA author

Jennifer Lott has appeared in print in Neo-Opsis Magazine (“A Day in the Life”; Issue 18; December 17, 2009) and the Opus 5 Okal Rel anthology (“Pet Peeves”, Absolute XPress, 2011). Her first public foray into writing is her popular fan fiction Alternative Ending to the Animorphs, which was well received by readers disappointed by the dark turn taken by this young adult series in its final installments. An early childhood educator Jennifer writes mostly for children and young adults. But is currently working on an SF novel. She said “yes” to boyfriend JP Sullivan this December and the marriage is planned for June 2012.

A great deal of a writer’s inspiration comes from life. The first story in which I ever took pride came to me the day my little sisters refused to scrape leftover food from their dishes. I knew I was right, that they were lazy and deserved to suffer for it, so naturally I wrote a self-indulgent story about me being a wronged witch who had to curse their dishes to teach them a lesson.

I’ve since learned that no amount of magic actually communicates the dishes grievance effectively. My real-life sisters remained baffled and angry about my nagging right up until the point that washing the dishes became their chore.

Of course, the fictional versions of them give in to my curse and end up teaching their friends to respect it, too.

My vengeful motives for writing this story having cooled over the years, I have tried to shape it into something publishable. One submission still came back with the feedback that it was too preachy. This is the trap, I think, when a writer overindulges in their own side of any issue. A good story needs to be open to multiple possibilities, no matter how righteous the writer is feeling.

Have you written a self-righteous story or scene? Tell the tale. Did you let the transgressing characters influence your protagonist?

Susan J. MacGregor

Susan J. MacGregor has been an editor with On Spec Magazine since 1991. Her written work has appeared in On Spec, Northern Frights, and other venues. In 1998 her anthology Divine Realms was published through the Ravenstone imprint of Turnstone Books. Her non-fiction book The ABC’s of How NOT to Write Speculative Fiction was published in 2006 by the Copper Pig Writer’s Society and has been used for numerous workshops. Recently, she co-edited Tesseracts 15: A Case of Quite Curious Tales, released through Edge Books. At present, she is working on a paranormal romance trilogy set in an alternate medieval Spain–think the Inquisition vs. gypsies, tattoo magic and psychic gifts. When Susan isn’t writing or editing, she studies Spanish and dances flamenco. She lives in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

When I attended the When Words Collide convention in Calgary last August, I sat on the ‘Writing Difficult Scenes’ panel with a number of folks, including Lynda Williams (author of the Okal Rel Universe saga), fellow On Spec editor Barb Galler-Smith (author of Druids, Captives and Warriors) and others. I made a comment that I liked gritty scenes and that one of the most personally disturbing stories I ever wrote was about castration. The story was later published in Northern Frights V. After the con, Lynda asked if I might write about violence on her blog, Reality Skimming. She assumed that I liked to write ‘extreme stuff’, and that I might address some questions on ethical considerations.

I had to decline.

Why? Because what I write isn’t excessive compared to some of the really extreme stuff out there. But it did get me to thinking about the portrayal of violence in fiction, and what works for me and what doesn’t.

Violence in fiction needs to be there for a good reason. With my castration story, the horror wasn’t only in the act to which I alluded in the end; the horror came from my protagonist’s lack of conscience, her ability to manipulate events and her sense of loss and betrayal coupled with her need to control. Embedded even deeper in the story was the idea that her psychopathy stemmed from demonic influence. I kept the reader guessing, never knowing what my anti-hero might do next. Horror is much stronger when it leaves an aftertaste, when you can surprise your audience and make them wonder about the potential of such things happening in their own lives. I set out to write a story that suggested an unremarkable girl with a crush might hide something sinister, might stalk the object of her infatuation and see his involvement with another as an ultimate betrayal. Her love interest and his paramour had no idea of her intentions until my protagonist took matters into her own shaking hands.

I’m not titillated by blood spatters and intestines looping about one’s knees, left to steam in a pile on the floor with a ‘the end’ sign affixed to them. On their own, such scenes are gratuitous. For such visceral elements to work, they must be appropriate to the action. More importantly, there must also be a strong emotional reaction to them on the part of the point of view character. The stronger and more graphic the scene, the more I need to understand the character’s motivation and his psychological make-up. These things should be in place before the violence occurs, or afterwards, in some kind of a review. I have no sympathy for characters (or their writers) who fail to give me a reason for the violence. Even then, it will also be a question of whether the seeds sown beforehand are enough. Many times they aren’t, or there’s a disconnect, where, despite an attempt at validation, the violence is justified by a thin excuse like ‘that’s just what werewolves do’. A defense such as this shows a lack of imagination and the effort needed to present something original.

So perhaps I’m talking about the skill level of the writer, or maybe it’s just a matter of personal taste as to when something is ‘not enough’. I prefer to see some sophistication in what I read, which is another way of saying that I want to see solid characterization. Gratuitous violence rarely includes the inner workings of the characters’ minds or their world. It gives no understanding into the horror. The point is to shock rather than to offer insight.

Of course, there are times when the characterization doesn’t provide insight, but the theme does, and being theme, the reasoning doesn’t become apparent until the piece is seen or read in its entirety. One of the best examples comes from the movie, Pulp Fiction. Lots of violence there, but every brutal scene is linked with elements of down-home, folksy Americana, like the music in the background, the settings—kitchens, bathrooms, pawn shops, restaurants with look-alike Marilyn Monroe waitresses, consumer goods—hamburgers, gourmet coffee, magic markers, or simple niceties, like saying ‘pretty please with sugar on top’. Spoiler Alert: When Pumpkin and Honeybun chat over coffee and then hold up the coffee shop, when Jules recites Ezekiel 25:17 before he executes Brett, when Butch toasts toaster pastries and notices Vince’s gun on the counter before he blasts him full of bullets, or when Jules is more concerned about Vince bloodying Bonnie’s bathroom towels than the dead body in the back of their car, the message is obvious: Our culture is familiar, misdirected and dangerous. Violence is Us. The theme shows us who we are. Not to mention the irony and black humor that causes us to laugh because we recognize ourselves in it. If Pulp Fiction portrayed violent scene after violent scene without any juxtaposition to the culture, it wouldn’t be the amazing piece of fiction it is. It’s also interesting to note that the actual violence portrayed is short-lived. It doesn’t go on and on. When Marsellus tells Zed that he’s going to ‘get medieval on your ass’ we know that he’s going to have thugs take pliers and a blowtorch to Zed for sodomizing him, but we don’t actually see this scene. Marsellus threatening Zed is enough.

Violence is the stuff of action. As writers, most of us will pen a violent scene at some point or another. Therefore, it’s important to understand why we’re writing the scene, who we’re writing for, and what our motivation is. Here are a few reasons I’ve come across as to why writers write violent scenes:

1. They write them to prove they can.
2. They write them to live vicariously through them. The violence gives them an outlet where they can blow an enemy away or portray a rival in an unflattering light.
3. They like being able to stomach vivid, violent events with dispassion. They have guts. They can handle it.
4. They write the story to impress or compete with others. Anything you can do, they can do bloodier.
5. They write the scene or story because it’s based on real life. The event actually happened to them or to someone they know.
6. They write the piece in the hopes that it will work for a particular anthology, magazine or publishing house.
7. They write the scene or story to give the reader a thrill.
8. They write the scene because violence is the outcome of rising tension and action.

All of these reasons (with the possible exception of #5) fall short of why we should write violent scenes or stories. If we’re writing to prove we can, that’s fine for a start. Many of us begin this way. We want to push ourselves to see what we can do. But as we mature as writers, we need to get beyond this motivation. Reasons #2, #3, and #4 are misdirected. They’re all about the writer, and the focus is in the wrong direction. Reason #6—writing for a publication—is strictly pragmatic. On its own, it’s slightly removed from what a better motivation might be. Reason #7—writing to give a thrill—heads in the right direction, but it doesn’t go far enough. Reason #8—violence as an outcome—makes sense and is justified, but it shouldn’t be the sole reason for penning a violent scene. As for Reason #5, if a writer is writing a memoir, or using a past experience to add reality to a story, it may or may not be an appropriate reason for writing it. It depends on whether or not the violence provides a fulfilling experience for the reader.

The point of any violent scene or story should be to give one’s audience a visceral, an emotional and, by the end of the work, an insightful experience. Some readers are happy if they encounter only the first element. I’m not one of them. The trend to make things more graphic than ever doesn’t satisfy me. What does is encountering violence in a creative work that punches me in the gut, the heart, and the head. That brings me a new understanding or a way of looking at things. That makes me feel deeply for the characters. That makes me want to do something about a situation. That makes me feel richer for the experience, because what’s happened in the story matters.

Creating stories that do those things, takes a lot of work. There are many layers, and there is much thought and craft that goes into making them. Certainly, much more than the shallower stuff that settles for the shock of a cheap thrill. Here’s a final reason:

• 9. A writer depicts violence because it provides the platform and stimulus for higher ideals to address it. Those things might include actions involving sacrifice, forgiveness, love, justice, determination, survival, hope, gratitude or redemption.

This last point invites us to strive for loftier goals than simply pointing out that ‘life is hell and then you die’. But that’s me. And there are many folks who write from the opposite camp, where violence is depicted and relished for its own gory sake.

The application period for the 2012 Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop at UC San Diego officially opened on December 1, and will remain open until March 1. If you’ve been thinking about applying, start tapping on those keys now. We’ve got a wonderful faculty waiting in the wings, featuring Jeffrey Ford, Marjorie Liu, Ted Chiang, Walter Jon Williams, Holly Black, and Cassandra Clare. Thanks to Clarion’s friends and supporters, there is scholarship money for those who need it. In addition to general scholarships, there are special grants for students of color, students who are affiliated with Michigan State University, and students who are affiliated with UCSD. Get further information on the web at http://clarion.ucsd.edu.

So it’s that time of the year again, kids. The season when a young writer’s fancy turns to thoughts of Clarion and how many goats will have to be sacrificed to gain entry into that sacred realm. From now until the deadline you won’t be able to spit without hitting an encouraging post by an alumni telling you why you need to, nay, must apply if you’re at all serious about this writing thing, and there’s a very good reason for that. Are you sitting down? Have you taken a good, cheek-bulging mouthful of your beverage of choice so you can execute a proper spit-take?

Here it comes: because it’s fucking true.

This is not some dark conspiracy dreamed up by a shadowy group of chain-smoking, half-lit ner-do-wells working on behalf of the Secret Cabal of Genre Authors and UCSD Bigwigs, weaving their wicked webs to Steal Your Money from some leather-and-mahogany den beneath the lit department. It’s not rose-coloured nostalgia for a time when, for six whole weeks, you lived in a magic bubble by the sea where everyone around you was a writer and believed fully in your talents. Clarion works. I can’t say it works for everybody because what the hell ever does, but nine times out of ten you are going to come out of this thing a stronger, wiser writer, fully aware of both your strengths and your weaknesses. The instructors and more importantly the other students will teach you what works and what doesn’t. When you are sad, they will pick you up, dust you off, and buy you an ice cream cone, even if that sadness is because they just gently tore your story a new back passage. When you make a sale, they will be there to get rip-roaringly drunk alongside you and trumpet your praises to the heavens. And when you leave? You go with all those connections, all those little strands, all those I know a guy who knows a guy threads that honestly really, really help when you’re just starting out. Connections are important. They are so fucking important, and you leave with a host of them tied to your wrists like balloons, in addition to being a fully-fledged Clarion Alumni. These people are going to be your pack from now on. They’ll understand what you’re going through even when the well-meaning folks back home don’t.

I know I haven’t gone into a lot of depth about the actual teaching process and how effective it is, but I don’t need to tell you that; Clarion’s track record speaks for itself. It is VERY fucking good. The major thing – for me, at least – was growing an entirely new family that pummeled me into believing in myself. Teachers, other students, they all know you can do it, even when you don’t. If you’re anything like me, you’ll come back with a little more self-confidence, and that’s half your battle won.

And please, while you’re there, feed my ravens.

Originally posted on brookbolander.com.

Brooke Bolander writes weird things of indeterminate genre, most of them leaning rather heavily towards fantasy. She had to be bodily forced into applying to Clarion, finally doing so two days before deadline. She studied History and Archaeology at the University of Leicester and is an alum of the 2011 Clarion Writers’ Workshop. Since the end of the workshop she has sold to Lightspeed and Strange Horizons and is very, very grateful to the friends who goaded her into the whole affair.

Her hobbies include bizarre video games, drinking, and marksmanship, not necessarily all at the same time. She lives wherever she currently is and can be reached at @BBolander or at her website, brookebolander.com.

James Pailly

I was never a good actor. I was cast as a dead body twice and a zombie two other times, but what I learned when I wasn’t dead or undead helped improve my writing.

Actors begin getting into character by asking certain questions, such as:

• What does my character want?
• Why does he/she want it?
• What obstacles are in the way?
• How does my character plan to overcome them?

Writers can ask these questions too, not just for one character but for all of them.

Many actors also draw upon life experiences, reliving good or bad memories during a performance to add emotional impact. Most of us have never stood on a new planet, fought epic space wars, or gone drinking with Chewbacca at the Star Wars Cantina. But we’ve all felt joy, fear, or comradery at some point.

My acting friends tried to teach me—unsuccessfully—to tap those memories, but stage fright made it too hard. Sitting alone with a pen and paper is different. It’s easier to go back to the best and worst days of my life and let them seep into my words.

What ideas have you borrowed from other fields to improve your writing?

Keep writing!

Mishell

Lillian Cohen-Moore

Lillian Cohen-Moore is a multiracial Jewish writer and journalist based out of Seattle, Washington. Her speculative fiction has been published by 365 tomorrows, Timid Pirate Publishing, The Edge of Propinquity, White Cat Magazine and The Irish Times. She currently writes for Another Passion, a Seattle publication for creative professionals. When she isn’t compulsively interviewing people, she acts as the Editor-in-Chief of The Broadsheet, for Broad Universe. She thinks Lois Lane is cooler than Superman. She blogs at www.lilliancohenmoore.com.

Writing fiction that draws on your cultural or racial background is a little like a planning a heist. You’re perfect for it, because it’s an inside job. Here are some tricks I have picked up working as a journalist and researcher.

• Use other eyes because yours alone won’t work. Every writer knows about proof reading and editing, but writing this kind of fiction needs a read for accessibility. Can people outside your culture understand it?
• Act as an informant because you’re the person on the inside for your audience. You know your fictional world, but you’re also acting as their informant on your culture.
• Your audience is smarter than you think so don’t over explain. If you stop every page to unpack history or diagramming jokes, you’re wasting your time and the reader’s. This is fiction, not ethnography. At the same time, some of the words you use need to be in a language they can understand.
• Ask questions of yourself and the text. Why are you writing this story? Why does it matter? What about it is something people on the outside can connect with? Why this story now? A clear idea of where your story comes from saves you headaches later.

Share your thoughts on writing about your own culture.

Lynda Williams, Author of Okal Rel Saga

Your host, Lynda Williams, is the author of the Okal Rel Saga (Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing) and editor of the Okal Rel Legacies series (Absolute Xpress). She also works as Learning Technology Analyst for Simon Fraser University and teaches a introductory web development course at BCIT. For a list of Okal Rel titles see: Lynda Williams on Amazon.com.

The year that Edge publicist Janice Shoults asked me to improvise on Christmas and the Okal Rel Universe was the first time I was stumped by an opportunity to talk about my characters. It took me a while to get the knack of how to respond because my first reaction was to get all deep and analytical about identifying a parallel celebration in the ORU (i.e. A Swearing? The Pan Demish-Tournament?) It wasn’t until I realized the way through was to get in the spirit of the thing and treat it like a party game that I solved the problem. Then it was fun.

Amel would do Christmas surrounded by as many of the people he loved as possible. He would hug the women, enjoy the food, and play with the kids. He’d help with the dishes, too. In fact he’d probably like that part best because of the happy gossiping that takes place in the kitchen.

Alivda, on the other hand, would get bored unless she got to take charge. Then it wouldn’t be exciting enough for her unless there was a fire on the stove or a hot guy she could seduce, whether or not he was there with his wife.

Erien would be awkward about the social aspect until he found someone he could talk to about ways to improve the traditional aspects of the season to get through it more efficiently.

Horth would stake out a corner of the living room and stoically endure the babble of unintelligible conversation for as long as necessary to prove he could cope with it, then go jump in a rel-ship to clear his head with a little reality skimming. Unless Ilse was there. Then he’d stick it out.

Ranar would look like he was being very social but he’d actually be collecting data for an anthropological study on what the holiday meant to those present.

Perry would have a hell of a good time and take home doggie bags to her Killing Reach rebels.

Ayrium would make Ameron come, incognitio, and insist he didn’t talk politics with anyone.

Luthan would throw the party, with some help from Samanda O’Pearl as convener.

Eler would make a scene at the height of the evening and start a fight. And seize an opportunity to read his poetry, if he could pretend someone else wrote it.

from Edge feature countdown to Christmas 2010.

How about you and your crew? How would your characters do Christmas?

April Grey

April Grey‘s urban fantasy novel, Chasing The Trickster, is published by Eternal Press. Her short stories have been published in such print anthologies as Demonmind's Halloween 2010, The Best of Everyday Fiction 2, Northern Haunts, Ephemera and Terrible Beauty, Fearful Symmetry. Many of these stories can be found in her collection, The Fairy Cake Bake Shoppe available through Amazon and Smashwords.  More at: www.aprilgreywrites, www.aprilgrey.blogspot and
www.amazon.com/author/aprilgrey

In 2004 my life was a roller coaster. That spring, our six-year-old son went on steroids after being ill for four months. Moreover, I decided to switch from writing fan fiction to writing my own stories again, after not writing at all for over a decade. That summer my husband had his first heart attack. In the fall, a second heart attack necessitated a quadruple by-pass. Furthermore, our son, taken off of steroids, became so ill that I made the decision to home school him.

That winter, while my husband recuperated at home from his heart surgery, I home schooled our son. I discovered that our son did math two years above his second grade class and read three years above them. His problems had been a combination of giftedness and chronic illness. His teachers had only ever complained.

During that strange time, my novel took fruit. While writing Chasing the Trickster, I cried not for myself but for my characters as they went through worse things than I was going through. They gave me hope that things do get better.

Writing can help us not only survive bad times, but even teach us to flourish during adversity.

What do you think?

Many people immediately think of Atlantis when they hear the phrase “the Lost City.” Unlike Atlantis, however, this Lost City has been explored with submersibles and extensively documented scientifically. This Lost City is real – though it is neither lost, nor a city.

The Lost City is a hydrothermal vent field that was original discovered by the MARVEL cruise AT3-60 in the year 2000. The cruise’s original purpose was to explore and document the structure and geology of Atlantis Massif, an undersea mountain similar in size and topography to Mt. Ranier in the United States. That expedition found something more fantastic than they had hoped – the Lost City – and cruises were sent to that location in 2003 and 2005 specifically to investigate the site.

There are several different types of deep sea hydrothermal vents. You may be familiar with one type – the “black smoker,” made famous in the later 70s and early 80s by nature programs that followed the exploration of the ALVIN deep sea submersibles. Black smokers (and their somewhat gentler cousins, the white smokers) vent superheated water into the ocean and create an unusually acidic local environment, normally with a pH of 5 or 6. Black smokers are often remembered for the strange life that is found around them – particularly giant tube worms. Black smokers are geologically and chemically fascinating – but we’ll talk about them more some other time.

The Lost City was (and still is) a departure from everything that was known about deep sea hydrothermal systems. The water coming from these vents is markedly hotter than the surrounding sea water, of course, but is still less than 100 degrees Celsius. And while we’re used to hydrothermal environments being highly acidic due to their unique chemistry, the Lost City turned that norm on its ear as well.

The waters of the Lost City hydrothermal vents get up to a pH of 11. For comparison, the average pH of seawater is 8.2, though humans are helpfully lowering that a bit at a time by constantly pumping carbon into the atmosphere. And instead of pouring forth waters that are enriched with metals into the ocean, the low heat water of the Lost City is enriched in calcium and hydrogen as H₂. The high amounts of calcium in the waters are what causes the precipitation of the calcite and aragonite (CaCO₃) that make up the bulk of the white towers. (Calcite and aragonite are also the two minerals most sea animals make their shells from.)

Most deep ocean hydrothermal systems at mid-oceanic ridges get their heat and chemistry by interacting with the freshly made basaltic oceanic crust that the ridges are constantly manufacturing. The Lost City is a special case that where waters interact with rocks from the Earth’s mantle, called peridotite. Basalt has a higher magnesium and iron content than the igneous rocks we normally see on continents; the term ‘mafic’ is shorthand for this. Peridotite is ‘ultramafic’ – it contains far more magnesium and iron than basalt.

It’s very unusual to have ultramafic rocks so close (relatively speaking) to the surface. Ultramafic volcanic rocks haven’t existed since the Archean, when the Earth was a much hotter and less pleasant place. Usually the peridotite of the mantle stays put and doesn’t directly interact with the surface of the Earth. However, Atlantis Massif – the site of the Lost City – was not formed by volcanic activity. It was actually formed by the sea floor being put under extreme tension that caused faulting and uplift. This faulting (and the major degree of uplift) brought mantle rocks close up to the surface in a highly deformed shear zone, thus giving ocean waters a way to contact hot rocks of very different chemistry.

The ultramafic rocks are the source of the high amounts of H₂ seen at the Lost City. Peridotite is composed primarily of olivine, a mineral that forms at extremely high temperatures and pressures; that’s where it’s happiest. At the (relatively) low pressures near the sea floor, olivine is very unstable and interacts enthusiastically (exothermically) with water to form a secondary mineral called serpentine, magnetite, and a hydrogen gas.

The chemistry of the water coming through the Lost City vent system is highly reducing. Normal sea conditions are oxidizing – in large part due to the normally plentiful amounts of dissolved oxygen. At the Lost City, the water conditions are highly reducing. What we think of as normal respiration for animals is impossible. Primitive bacteria and archea are the organisms best suited to that sort of environment, and they thrive there, surviving using chemosynthetic metabollic processes. There is abundant H₂S and CH₄ in the waters thanks to the highly reducing conditions. Both of these can be oxidized by bacteria to release energy.

There are some larger organisms that survive in the Lost City by building a symbiotic relationship with these chemosynthesizers – gastropods, crabs, and several types of corals call the area home. Life isn’t as plentiful at the carbonate chimneys as it is at the acidic and much hotter black smokers, but there is still a community of organisms that thrive.

The deep ocean is still a largely unexplored space on our planet, where life thrives at conditions completely alien to those of us at the surface. Much speculation has surrounded hydrothermal systems were archea and primitive bacteria thrive, since these extreme, reducing oceanic conditions might give us insight into the conditions under which life first evolved. What new, beautiful landscapes we might find in the depths of our oceans is at the moment a question for the imagination – as is what wonders could exist in alien oceans.

For more information about the Lost City, start at the University of Washington research website.