Category: fiction

‘Speak, Memory’ and Me

‘Speak, Memory’  is a recounting of one person’s creation of a bot based on a friend to cope with their grief. The bot is based on her friend’s emails. It is a fascinating read into how one person turns to clever use of technology and information to bridge her loss.

The tale has meaning to me for my writing. Memory is an enormous aspect of the future in ‘Returnee’ and ‘Long Summer’. While death is conquered through complex machinations involving resurrection, regeneration or cloning (multiple paths exist), and diseases and illnesses are staved off by embedded nano-meds (which use compilers and teleporters to seamlessly import medicines and treat you without pause), memory is a larger problem. First, your pre-death memories must be stored and accurately restored to you when you’re returned to the living. People living longer need to remember more, especially as space exploration and colonization exponentially expands and technology keeps racing ahead. Memory thus becomes augmented with biological drives as well as networks. You’re constantly connected.

As part of this extrapolation of what might be, memories of specific people, such as grandparents, are further developed through big data/social media mining. This creates a far deeper and broader database of their personality. Further, the database is housed in an avatar and AI dedicated to being that person. So, for example, your grandfather can be summoned into your presence as an avatar and converse and interact as your companion, even though he passed away several hundred years ago, or still lives, but is on the galaxy’s far side.

Last, as people struggle to remember specifics, many have created a separate avatar that houses the augmented, expanded personal memory. For Brett, his memory is an attractive tan blonde. He does not name her but calls her ‘memory’. Madison Handley, however, once based her memory on Mal Reynolds from ‘Serenity’ and ‘Firefly’. After out-growing it, she changes her memory’s appearance and disposition several times. By the time of ‘Long Summer’, when she’s become a pirate, her memory has taken on the aspect of Grutte Pier, the Frisian pirate formally known as Piers Gerlofs Donia.

As a further component of memory and extended living, I had to determine what route memory will take. Are future people’s memory perfect? What does it mean to perfectly recall a moment? Recent studies show that our memory is very imperfect, and those imperfections help us cope with existence and survive. Oh, the lies we tell ourselves. As part of that, which version of memory is collected? The perfect, unbiased version, or our personal edition? In the end, both are collected but only law enforcement normally accesses the perfect memory to resolve conflicts and solve crimes.

The rest of us prefer our personal recollections.

2

The Fork

There is a book called ‘The World According to Garp’. 

It’s not an obscure novel so you might know it. Written by a guy named John Irving, who has written and published several pieces of interesting fiction. Some have even been made as movies. I think this one was made into a movie, and had several major actors star in it.

In the book I reference, the main character is TS Garp. TS Garp is an author. His mother, Jenny, a nurse, also becomes a writer. But her process irritates Garp (as I remember it) because she never seems to indulge in the silence of thinking and editing. She’s always hammering the typewriter.

I often think of that because I love that silence, when I drop a still bomb on my existence, cross my arms and stare out the window to think, where do I go today?

That summarizes my situation. I just finished a major piece of the pirates’ tale. Today, I’m thinking, do I continue writing the pirates’ arcs or do I turn to Pram and his team’s activities, or back to Brett and his role? Each have beginnings and middles to further develop in the push toward climax and denouement. The arcs all seem equally easy and difficult to write, that paradox of writing tension where you’re on a peak, trying to capture the lightning. But I’ve been spending so much time with Handley and her captain and crew, I’ve really enjoyed their company and know them so well. I wonder, how important is that? I know Brett very well, too, but he is a more complicated person, in a complex situation, and yet is the novel’s largest cog. But Pram’s POV offers a major twist and I’ve been sitting on the edge of that for several weeks, letting it brew.

So I sit in personal silence amid the coffee shop’s music and conversations, meditating to a degree about which story to take up. That’s actually a lame description of the process. I open the book in my mind and return to each arc’s place where I paused. Consideration of where they’re stopped and what’s to happen next is studied. From that process, one aspect gathers a stronger brightness, a sharper focus, a more immediate presence. My mind takes up its mental pen. I begin to see and hear words. Words become sentences. Scenes flower.

Then I know where to go, what to write, and I begin again, to write like crazy, at least one more time. Often it’s the middle of a scene. It may not even be ‘connected’ with what’s already written. I know I can write such bridges later. I’m interesting in writing down the bones. I’ll add verisimilitude and substance in the immediate edit. The immediate edit is the stage I conduct after completing a scene, just part of building continuity and managing pace and story.

In that marvelous way that brains can work, my thought processes are segregated and compartmentalized, and while I’ve been thinking about this post and my process and writing, I’ve been thinking about the novel and the aspects I’ve described. From these ruminations have arisen the next piece to write.

Here I go again. It is such a wonderful high, the sort of moments that you hope will never end….

3

Apologies to Joss Whedon

Many science fiction works have affected and inspired me. Hundreds of books, of course, from fantasy like ‘The Hobbit’ and the ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy, to ‘hard’ science fiction, like Asimov’s Foundation series, and books and series by authors such as Bradbury, Clarke, Heinlein, Biggle, le Guin, Butler, and many more. The ‘Star Trek’ franchise is a large influence, but also ‘Battlestar Galactica’, movies like ‘2001: A Space Odyssey,’ ‘Bladerunner’ (along with several other movies based on Philip K. Dick’s works), ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ and more recent offerings such as ‘District 9’. One series and movie I really enjoyed, however, was Joss Whedon’s adventures of Malcolm ‘Mal’ Reynolds, and his crew on Serenity’.

Three things happen in my distant, planet terraforming, space-colonizing future. One is that people are still affected, inspired and shaped by these fictional works. Second, the series is often ‘rebooted’ multiple times. And third, when the reboot takes place, some fundamentals are changed.

Rebooting is a recent trend. We used to just call them a re-make. But as books and movies are rebooted, they’re often changed. Look at all the changes we’ve seen in the reboots and re-makes of Sherlock Holmes. They’re often updated (such as the ‘Holmes’ series, where Watson is a vet of the war in Afghanistan), or given new skills (see Robert Downey Jr’s performance of Guy Ritchie’s ‘Sherlock Holmes’), but their sex can be changed (like Lucy Liu playing Watson on ‘Elementary’), or their race (James West in ‘Wild, Wild West’), to provide new angles.

So, in my future setting, one of the characters was inspired by Joss Whedon’s ‘Serenity’. In their future, the movie was rebooted as a series, and then more movies followed. But Mal’s character was changed from a man to a woman. Mal was a man (in my version) who took on a female sex and appearance after his wife disappeared. See where all this is going? In a way, future Mal is a Josey Wales – Richard Kimball – Robin Hood aggregate. Mal is a female, with an all-female crew. Jayne, portrayed by Adam Baldwin, is re-named Mahrk, so the character, a female, would have a pseudo male name. My character fantasized about being Mal and traveling the universe in her own ship, and thus ended up working in space for a corporation.

Stealing from reality, many people actually believe Sherlock Holmes was a real person. Groups and societies are dedicated to this premise. Likewise, my hero, Handley, was once part of a group who believe Mal Reynolds was real, and part of a secret history that has since been covered up.

So, apologies to Joss Whedon for what I’m doing to your creation in the future, but thanks for giving it to us.

And now my coffee cup is empty, and I’m finished writing for today…for the moment.

4

The Pirates

I’m at a point in the novel, Long Summer (sequel to Returnee) where the pirates are about to enter.

Yes, this is science fiction. Yes, these are space pirates (cue dramatic music). Or cue a Monty Python moment.

I always like ‘fly in the ointment’ tales. That’s the pirates’ role in Long Summer. They’re naturally a plot trigger to cause the stories to bank sharply into another direction, bringing the three disparate story lines into contact with one another at last, thirty-five thousand words into the novel. Creating  the pirates enabled me to embark on my favorite fiction writing activity: making things up. In this case, I was given permission to make up the pirate ship and crew. Who are they, why are the pirates, where did they come from and how did they come to have this ship?

The ship is the CSC Narwhal. CSC is Castle Corp Security, a spin-off from the original Castle Corporation that dominates the Returnee series as one a major part of the setting. (The corporation is constantly restructuring, re-organizing, acquiring and divesting.) As Castle Corporation was originally an Anglo-American effort when they first formed on Earth (with roots in 3D printing, with specific focus on home security devices…from there to space), the company sometimes invokes its heritage when naming ships. This was strongly evidenced in the naming of the security ships (the preferred nomenclature over warship). I’d remembered Narwhal from my history lessons, so I looked up Narwhal and confirmed its role in England’s maritime history, confirming it was part of the Arctic Fleet. Two Brit submarines were then named the same, along with a US sub. So, sweet, that worked out.

(I had to refer back to my Returnee notes a little as I worked out that naming, confirming corporations and financial consortiums led the way into space. Governments had little to do with it.)

I then needed to further define my new vessel’s manning, which is complementary to its role. As a security vessel, Narwhal is small, with three squadrons of droid fighters. Why droid fighters? I started with manned weaponry and realized that robots dominate my future. It would be weird to have manned fighters. But humans maintain control….

Essentially, I evolved the Droid Commander. Droid Commanders remotely oversee the flying of four droid fighters simultaneously from pods on the Narwhal. Yes, we have the sophisticated technology to do that in my future. Likewise, Droid Techs remotely manage maintenance/software/hardware, keeping the fighters armed and flying, repairing them via nano-bots, droids and automation.

Each Narwhal squadron has three Droid Commanders, each flying four droid fighters. So each squadron is twelve fighters. Three squadrons, thirty-six fighters, nine each Droid Commanders and techs. A squadron commander coordinates their activities with the ship and mission briefs.

Narwhal is structured to run silent, fast, launching quick strikes and then bailing. Their defensive systems are lightweight and automated. They’re not going to bombard a planet or take on a battleship. They’re more likely to run escort and interdiction missions.

Once I had those things in place, what did I need for manning for the actual ship, the Narwhal? Well, again, it’s automated, and lightly manned. I ended up with three defensive coordinators. Commander, DO, pilots to fly it (in the event of worst case situations), navigator (overseeing the droids and systems), intel officer, techs to treat it.

Shuttles? Escape pods? Logistics? Medical? All done by droids, except I decided the three shuttles would have human pilots. Ten techs oversee droids that do the repairs.

So there it was, forty-seven humans crewing the Narwhal and its squadrons.

Since it’s going head to head with River Styx, the stasis pod ship, I went through the  same exercise for the Styx (which has only light defensive systems). Then I mentally plotted the sequence of events as I walked over here to write today. The twists arose on their own, pleasing and exciting me, further evolving my sketchy plot.

(Quite deliberately, because the pirates are out to disrupt corporate domination of space and human activities, Castle Corporation also owns the River Styx. The pirates love the irony of a ship they appropriated from the Castle Corporation, stretching the truth, as the Castle Corp had spun off the division that owns and operates Narwhal,  attacking another Castle Corp vessel.)

This summarizes my basic writing approach. I begin with a concept or a character. In this case, three ideas came together. That gives me a bare structure. As an analogy, if my novel is a car trip, I’m getting in and pointing the vehicle in the general direction of a horizon I see, with the vaguest idea of what’s over that horizon, and what’s between here and there. That works for each chapter, story line and character arc.

Reflecting on all of this today, I recognize how much my writing approach parallels my other methodologies. As a senior NCO in the USAF, I was always imposing and maintaining order and discipline, but also loved instilling vision in my people about how to improve ourselves and our operations. To do that, I’d simply seize a direction and go for it, correcting as I went. Likewise, in my last position as a data scientist with IBM, when given a challenge, I mentally played with it until something formed, and then I launched myself into it. And in my youth, when I was taking art classes, painting and drawing, sudden inspirations would seize and carry me.

The confrontation between River Styx and Narwhal awaits. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

3

Sat Down to Write

I sat down to write today after a pleasing session yesterday. The baristas had gifted me an extra espresso sized serving mocha in addition to my standard QSM. I sipped it down, delighting in the melange of mingling flavors, and I remembered —

A new character’s name is Ckyl. Came to me last night.

A scene I wrote in my head about the starship, River Styx, and its occupants and description.

And more details about tachyon syndrome.

Changes to Chor. I’d focused on sex and sexual preferences and choosing or accepting sexual identities, but I’d not considered some of the other matters available to my future people. So I’d overlooked that Chor is a cat person.

And Pram wonders why becoming a cat person is a popular choice. People don’t want to be dog or bird people, although he’d encountered some of them. He knew of a few who went the centaur route (with one also managing to incorporate a unicorn appearance). A small society of humans had transgened themselves into dinosaurs, and another group into dragons, and there are small knots of gnome, fairy, demon, and leprechaun peoples, but cat people were far the most popular and most frequently encountered. He was pleased, though, because he remained unique. There were a few Titans out there, and a cyclops, and a couple of Hercules pretenders, Minotaurs, Hulks, and Avatars, and super-heroes from ancient comic books, but he was the only Colossus, even after all these years.

Pram had not asked Chor about why she was a furry human Siamese with diamond blue eyes and a lazy, busy tail. Asking people about their choices is impolite.

Okay, now that I remember those things, my imagination is fired up. Time to write like crazy, one more time.

5

Delivery Rules

I know he’s out there. Watching. Waiting, exercising Zen patience. I know the Delivery Rules.

First Rule: inconvenience the customer as significantly as possible.

It’s not about profit and loss or corporate vision and mission statements. It’s about people with power. They have the package. I want the package. So they have the power.

Oh, delicious power, how they love watching me leap up when a truck passes my house. “Is that it?” they mock, imagining my voice, bringing up their super-powerful binoculars to see my disappointment, laughing as they finger a few more drooping French fries into their mouth.

They don’t know that I know the rules. I’m aware of them and their delivery watch. “Keep hidden,” I tell my wife. “Don’t go past any windows.”

“This is ridiculous,” she answers.

“Shhh,” I hiss, pointing up. “They’re listening.”

She stares at me.

I explain, “They’ll know you’re here. We want them to think we’re not home or can’t come to the door.”

Amazement disturbs her gaze. “And why do we care if they know I’m here?”

“Shhh.” I look out the windows. Of course I can’t see a delivery vehicle. They’re not fools. They cloak the van with invisibility so they can stay out there, watching, without being detected, until they believe I’m not home or available and ‘attempt’ delivery. I know how this works.

I move closer to my wife so I can whisper. “They’re out there. They’re waiting for me to leave or take a shower. Then they’ll ring the bell. I won’t hear it so they’ll leave a notice and try again tomorrow. That’s how they get you.”

She stares at me. I don’t know what that look means. “How do I fit into this?” she asks in a Very Normal Tone.

Her refusal to keep her voice down disturbs me. “Quiet,” I hiss. “Come on. What’re you trying to do?” Realizations penetrate my thinking. “They got to you, didn’t they?”

Her eyes widen. “Who?”

But I get it. I understand. “Never mind.” I smile. “I was just joking.” I let slip laughter. “Pretty convincing, wasn’t I?”

She doesn’t seem convinced but I put her behind me and leave the room. Out there, in the living-dining-kitchen great room, I pace and pace, trying to figure out what I can do.

But it doesn’t matter. They have her. They’ve already won the day. Yet, I can’t give up. Not that easily. I’ve been playing the game too long. This isn’t my first delivery. “I’m going to take a shower,” I call, very loudly.

“Okay,” she answers, a mumble.

I go into the master bath and turn on the shower, hoping to fool them, and then slip into the hall to get to the front door to wait. I meet my wife coming down the hall. She looks startled. “I thought you were taking a shower.”

Checking on me. Oh, I get it. I smile. “I am.”

“But you have all your clothes on.”

I nod. “I know.”

Shaking her head, she walks past, saying, “I think you need to relax.”

Relax, oh, they’d like that. Hearing her turn off the water, I run back into the bathroom. “What are you doing?”

“You’re wasting water,” she replies.

Pushing past her, I turn the water back on. She’s talking but I can’t understand her. “What?” I ask. She’s talking again but I still can’t understand her. “What?” I shake my head. “I can’t hear you. You’re talking too low.”

Diversion, I realize, and then the phone rings. The rules require them to ring the doorbell, but if I don’t hear it or answer in time, they leave – and then they won. “Was that the doorbell?” I run for the door and yank it open as my wife answers the phone.

A notice hangs from the door handle. I rush out to see if I spot the truck, a rookie error born from frustration. They already cloaked the truck. Nobody can hear or see it now.

“Did your computer come?” My wife asks from behind me.

I smile without looking back. “No. They left a notice.” I go back in past her, glancing at her face. They got to her. I see it in her brown eyes. I don’t know how. Probably bribed her with a discount coupon for shoes.

“I’m sorry,” she says, closing the door, but there’s no sorrow in her voice.

“That’s okay,” I answer with false cheerfulness. “There’s always tomorrow.”

Yes, there’s always tomorrow, when we’ll play again. I know the rules.

Someday, I’ll win.

1

Beyond 3D

Ghostbusters 3D is in our local cinemas tomorrow, and we’re hitting it.

3D movies are normal and expected, so much of it being put into 3D. My first experience with it was Hugo. When the snow fell in the film’s beginning, I was astounded by how the snow flakes seem fall toward me from the scene. Beautiful and amazing, and now, like jets, cars, microwaves, computers, the Internet and a million more modern technologies, processes, and services, so common, it’s the new normal.

Virtual Reality movies may be the next iteration. Imagine, instead, of attending a movie, and while sitting in the theater, you experience the movie from within. With tiered ticketing, the opportunities to watch can be inter-active, so in one side, you can reside within one character, watching, hearing and generally experiencing the movie through them. In another scene, you can be a fly on the wall, turning your attention to whatever attracts you.

Such scenarios drive ideas about what can go wrong. Trapped in a movie, trapped as a character, launched into a new dimension through a movie, time traveling through movies, accidently becoming someone else during the movie – or reversals of these things. Discovering you thought you were born here when actually, you came through a movie. Now they’re hunting you.

Oh, the fun we can have with this.

0

Dueling Novels

Hard writing day. When the Dallas sniper struck, it sapped my interest/desire for writing about murder.

But I had to write, so I began writing a sequel to “Returnee”, “The Long Summer”. Yet, the me that is a writer knew that other novel, “Personal Lessons with Savanna”, remained in progress, and he still had some writing to do.

So I end up doing a chapter of TLS, and then a chapter of PLwS. I’ll be writing one and realize a line or change for the other. Both story arcs are growing and stretching out before me, beckoning as a calm sea on a summer day, but exhausting as I jump from one to the other and strive to grab the evolving threads of each and order them. Neither can be shut down. Each generates their own aha excitement, stirring enthusiasm. Writing like crazy is driving me crazy.

I’m achieving progress, but man, oh, man, that excitement is a burning fire, consuming my patience and energy as its fuel, leaving me a short-tempered, barely functioning shell.

More coffee. Quick, damn it, quick. Ah, now the battery is low.

Time to stop. For now.

0

More OMG

As I walked today, I returned to a favorite concept and toyed with it. I love the concept but lacked a vehicle. Yesterday’s concept that pleased me so greatly yesterday rose up. Ah, what can I do with it?

Blink, blink. The favorite concept could be told through a sequel to Returnee. I’d been wanting to write a sequel to that – there’s more story to be told. (There always is, isn’t there?) Blink blink. And the conceptual basis of the novel could be the new, exciting concept.

Blink blink. Blink, blink, blink.

OMG, yes, the story and setting began cascading into me. Now, now, I chided myself, stay true to the current novel. It’s in progress, must be written, finished, revised, edited, polished, published, released. Yes, but, yes, but –

Yes, but crashed through. Excitement couldn’t be stopped. A first line emerged. Oh, yeah, what a wonderful first line. So I’ll write it, just it, along with, maybe just a little scene. As the setup evolved, I thought, perhaps I’ll just write a chapter.

Okay, one chapter. Just one, just, like 2,000 words.

That’s all. For now.

 

0

Mysterious Writing

Writing sometimes seems like such a mysterious process. It used to deeply mystify me as I would apply the questions, the who/what/why/how/when melange that flavors fiction and struggle forward.

Not so today, this week. I sit down, open up, read a bit of what’s written and resume. I guess I’ve trained and ordered my mind to ‘think like a writer’ and create fiction. But this book is coming along so seamlessly, I worry that perhaps it’ll be thin and bland. I wonder, if it’s easy writing, is it poor story telling? If it’s easy, is it too predictable, too simplistic? Yet, I enjoy it.

It might be that I’ve been reading wonderful fiction, having just finished The Signature of All Things and now progressed two thirds through My Brilliant Friend. I’ll often end up editing books because they’re written in passive voice, or they tell and then show, or the reverse, at any rate, displaying a need for editing. Not so with Gilbert and Ferrante’s books. Ferrante especially creates such a sense of people and place that I’m inspired.

So maybe this is just a zone contrived from writing the third book in a series (which gives me intimacy with the characters) and reading writers I enjoy. After thinking about the matter, I’ll not worry myself about it. Take it for what it is, a blessing, a luxury. Perhaps it’ll end in a day, an hour, a minute. Just write like crazy and see where I end up when I’m done.

2

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