Tag: Science fiction

Big Data Spoke

A far future science-fiction exercise.

Collecting, collating and compiling data from Human databases and streams – government, social, medical, financial, historic, personal, personnel, death, birth and health records – revealed startling evidence.

Humans were dying less. Even those who could be resurrected, cloned, recovered, re-invigorated or re-born, were dying far less often. Fewer still were dying and remaining dead. Suicides were recorded with four zeroes after a decimal point. The population median age, already well over one hundred, was rising sharply, with less people deciding to even be reborn as a younger age with their adult memories intact. It seemed like that fad had fast faded.

Okay. But birth rates had also plummeted, falling like the temperatures on Castle Frozen when an Arctic front roared over the mountains and down across the plains. Less than two children were being born for every hundred people. Most of those children were not being permitted to age into maturity and adulthood but were kept as children for their parents’ entertainment.

The Council for Peace and Prosperity met on Castle Prime’s equatorial climate-controlled island to discuss general trends and concerns. The big data study on birth and death was a minor agenda item on the third day.

Most weren’t worried, arguing this was a burp, a blip. Yes, all were part of longer, greater trends, but the sharp drop-off was new. Those in the business of helping the dead return to life weren’t concerned; their business reviews were based on subscriptions and not a per use basis. Subscription rates were remaining steady. No losses were being recognized but the resurrection was a mature technology and had developed into a commodity. Profit margins were smaller. That was a concern.

Analysts also had deep dive data to present. Wars, warfare and violence remained at high levels but more people were avoiding killing one another. That unnerved attendees. It pointed to a training issue to many. Soldiers and officers needed encouragement to kill more quickly and readily. Perhaps studies were needed to understand what kept them from killing others when engaging them.

Such suggestions were quickly shot down. Studies like that were for the weak-willed or when appearances were needed that something was being done to mollify investors and voters until their attention wandered or other matters distracted them. No, studies weren’t needed in this situation; investors and voters didn’t know about these big data reveals. They would remain corporate secrets.

Second: population growth was required. Cloning was the natural solution. Adult clones were a ready market. Children had smaller and well-defined needs that were already being fulfilled. Adults were big children who eagerly embraced new toys and trends. Adults were willing to spend more on their toys, too, especially if said toys could be positioned as status symbols about wealth, power or influence. Most adults were sufficiently weak-willed and insecure or had such low self-esteem that they would be swayed by such bland and routine practices.

However…archaic laws remained in place against cloning a person to live more than one life at a time. Right now, cloning was permitted for only very small population segments and narrowly defined pre-existing conditions. Even that cloning was done well outside of the public eye.

Those laws needed to be changed. Immediate potential campaigns inspired the Council attendees. Contract pop and sports stars to headline campaigns. Say, they could be doing different activities on different planets, like skiing, surfing, fucking, dancing, performing, interviewing, whatever, marketing could work out those details. The point would be that doing these things simultaneously enriched the individual experiences and compounded their impact. The key behind the campaigns – there would naturally need to be several because to cover all the pop-culture segments – was to encourage envy about living a fuller life by living multiple simultaneous lives and fertilizing your life base. Having it done illegally by someone(s) popular and successful was the natural launching point. People loved lawbreakers.

Likewise, clone the best of the service members. Offer small bonuses for permitting the cloning. Simultaneously, initiate campaigns to overturn the cloning laws. Analysis would reveal which planets and societies could be open to such change and which would be the greatest influencers. New interpretations of founding documents and religious works could be published that seemed to encourage cloning as a religious right and even an expectation by whatever deities people worshiped these days.

Third, begin a whisper campaign. Stir up the rabble: birth rates were down because governments were encouraging certain races, ages, classes, corporations and planets to give birth less as part of a greater conspiracy to reduce those populations, thereby undermining their impact and participation. People always hated and distrusted governments and were easily inspired to rise up against them. Blame regulations, too. That always fired up the fringes, and then the flames would spread.

Beautiful. It was all coming together. Off the record, they agreed that more wars could be initiated. Step up the activity against pirates, rebels, independent planets, and smaller corporations and systems. That would increase the death rate and probably the birth rate.

Sure, this wasn’t a problem; it was an opportunity. Open the floodgates and rake in the wealth.

 

2

Today’s Theme Music

Back into the wayback machine for this choice – which puts in mind the fantasy, wouldn’t it be cool to have a wayback machine? “Yes, but the paradoxes, what you would do to time,” naysayers moan. Yeah, let’s suspend logic; suspend physics, quantum mechanics, all the thinking and all the relative theories. Just pretend you’re a child and play with ideas of all the time travel variations possible.

Here’s one.

Just about every house is getting one. It’s the hot holiday gift, and it’s on sale in dozens of places. You, disliking crowds and cold weather, and feeling bored, restless and wanting a change, surf the net and turn to Amazon to check out the offerings and read the reviews. They come up immediately: Wayback Machines. They’re priced at just under six hundred dollars. If you order today, sites claim, “Receive this by Christmas with Free Shipping!”

Okay, but six hundred eggs. Cards are already heavy with spending for the season for toys and clothes, dinners out. But you’re intrigued. You read.

“What’s included: computer interlink, two bracelets, headgear and software.” You skip into the specs and the system requirements, bringing up your system’s information and running a mental checklist.

You have the computer speed, the computer power, an approved OS, the USB ports, everything needed. Well, hell, you should, you blew a wad on this laptop just a year ago for your own special Christmas present because, WTF, you deserve it.

“This is not virtual reality,” a review says. “This the real thing. You are there.”

Yeah, you’ve read the ads, seen them on television during football and baseball games for half the year, talked about them at work while waiting for meetings to begin, swapped information with friends over wine and beer. You know what it’s supposed to be, what it can do.

So you order your Wayback Machine.

Three days later, it arrives. Boxes are in boxes. You’re usually so organized about opening and unpacking boxes, especially things like this, but you’ve become really excited about what it can do.

“Where the fuck is the quick start?” you ask, and it’s right there, the very first thing you pulled out after opening a box, a DVD. There are cables and the headgear, which looks like one of those half-helmets, the small console, the size of your first Roku, resembling a blue and black cigarette back, and the silver and black bracelets.

It’s a clean set-up and install. Breathlessly you power everything up, starting as the program booms, “Welcome,” even thought it’s a soft female voice. Lights are green. The program shows up on your laptop’s screen. You’re sweating and trembling. Well, the heat is running. It’s snowing outside. The wife, children and grandchildren are all out shopping. Then they’re eating somewhere and going ice-skating. You tell your phone to turn down the heat.

Snow falls more heavily outside past the windows. Inside, it’s just you. Your anticipation amazes you. You hope you won’t be disappointed. You put on the bracelets and headgear. The system checks you out. The Wayback program asks, “Do you want to sync with your Fitbit and smart phone?” Hell, yes.

Thirty seconds later, that is done. “Select a year from your life,” the program says.Feeding off a memory, a hope, a dream, you select 1964.

Then shoves now aside. It feels a little violent, more violent than the reviews said it would be like. Your pulse breaks out into something appropriate for finishing a hundred yard dash. Your body –

Oh, my god, you’re back in it, you’re ten years old ago. You’re so skinny. Jesus. It’s amazing how much you look like your grandson, Yuri.

Your young entity is reading a book. The pages swim into your understanding: ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’.

You tear your attention from the page. You’re back in your parents house, Jesus, a place they sold during their divorce in the mid-1970s, back in the wood-paneled game room, built from the finished basement downstairs. In the corner is your father’s bar, positioned back there where he can see the television or play pool. You’re on that leather sofa he and your mother bought for the room. You remember, “This is where the dog barfed,” a disgusting moment that will happen in another year. You won’t even have the dog for a few more months.

There’s the big console TV. Brand new, the huge Zenith can broadcast in color. Taking over your young self – he doesn’t seem to notice – you pick up the remote control, amused at the differences between the technology of your youth, when color TV was new, and the technology of your life, using a computer to come back here. How the fuck is that even possible? You want to explore but you begin carefully, by turning on the television.

There is a show on in black and white. OMG, it’s the Kinks. Jesus, are they still even alive?

Then, releasing everything but enjoyment of the moment, you’re ten and watching the Kinks in your basement in black and white. Everything old is young and new, and you are free to believe that you can change the world.

 

6

It’s Like —

I’ve been further defining the ideopat.

The ideapat is used as part of a telepathic process among the Travail Avresti Forus and Seth, and the Travail Favrashi Forus and Seth in my novel in progress, ‘Long Summer’. 

It’s more than telepathy. Calling it ‘telepathy’ demeans its full range. I felt, in order to be logical and consistent about its use in the arcs, character development and plot, I needed to further define and understand the ideopat.

First, within the ideopat is the phena. Phena is derived from phenomon. The phena is the emotional piece of the ideopat. To help understand it, I think of how drops of waters come together to form torrents. This is generally how the phena comes across on the ideopat. It’s a perception of separate processes and impressions aggregating into an over-arching view.

Generally; exceptions exist. In this way, I think of vision and human differences with their vision. The classic example for me is the ability to see a fastball and the ball’s movement through the air. Not everyone has that ability but some do, and that makes them special.

Good; that was a decent start.

After deeper thinking, I found this video a friend had posted on Facebook.

You can argue, as many have, about whether this is a vortex, and point out that some of the planets are in the wrong orbits, and whether this is true, but it stimulated my thinking. That’s why I’m sharing this. Seeing it, I thought, yes! This gives me greater insight into the ideopat and its structure and motion. There’s a position of recurring motion on one level that doesn’t take in the greater points of view about what’s happening within the ideopat. Beautiful.

The Forus and Seth can also use the ideopat to experience the world through one another’s. After some thought about the development of the skill and individual abilities, I decided that they would need to provide this aspect with a name. Eventually, I came up with sensta as the visual and auditory flows within the phena. As Travail Kidder mature, the sensta is the first aspect of the phena they experience. Their reaction to it guides their further development and direction. Some are overwhelmed. When that happens, they’re trained in how to close the sensta. Of course, closing the sensta to them closes the phena and the ideopat. So they can’t be Forus or Seth but must be named and become something else in the society.

Then I recognized that those for those with the wherewithal to know, the pentha is like an atmosphere, with richly developed layers.

That’s a brief insight into the pentha. In my notes, it takes up a few pages.

The pentha is just one piece. Next up was the ideopat’s true telepathic aspect. The Travail refer to this as the

Now, among this, a very few can perceive the mutex and the saiki. The mutex are the combined threads that make up the flows which become the exopatheia and phena. (Note: the Travail call the threads the sper.) For those who can perceive this level of the ideopat, it’s like seeing the results after white light passes through a prism. What others can only experience the pentha as the white light, they see the resulting rainbow. The greater the ability for them to perceive and segregate the mutex and spers, the more powerful their telepathic abilities. For the normal Forus and Seth, they don’t perceive the mutex and spers but know one another through exposure, repetition and ultimately, familiarity with others’ ‘telepathic voice’.

But one step past all of this, on the very highest level of ability, those that can see sense and see past the pentha, exopatheia and mutex, and find the individual spers and follow them back to the actual person where they originate. This psychic representation is called the saiki. This is so far beyond the skill levels of most that a majority of Travail Forus and Seth don’t believe they exist, that those who thought they’d seen them in the past must have been imagining them. So the saiki is dismissed.

But Travail Avresti Forus Ker has developed the ability to perceive the saiki. He’s not only seeing the saiki of the Travail Forus, but also the Seth and the rest of the Travail, not just his race (the Avresti), but the other races as well. He’s even perceiving the saiki for the Humans and then for the Monad.

And most interesting and frightening for him, he can see the saiki of death. That makes him wonder: is there a saiki for life as well?

And then things really start getting interesting for him.

After that, I set about writing the limitations and further defining the exceptions.

Most of today’s writing session was devoted to fleshing this out and documenting it. I only actually wrote a thousand words in the novel. A few hours have passed. I still had half a cup of mocha remaining when I stopped writing. Just finished that as I wrote this post.

It’s been a good day of writing like crazy.

 

 

7

Grokking It

I grok the story but don’t know if others can. It’s the writing challenge: you see, hear, feel and experiences these stories being told in details and colors and sounds technology can’t approach. Your job, Writer, is to capture these events, people and places, and organize it in a coherent, satisfying and entertaining matter.

That’s my interpretation of writing. Yours may vary.

Grok is a word that Robert Heinlein created in ‘A Stranger In A Strange Land’. It’s a classic novel. His expression, grok, has spread like wildflowers in the spring, going far beyond a word in a novel to have other meetings. The essence of grok remains the same for me: to intuitively grasp and understand a matter. It has larger and more expansive definitions and usage, but that’s the essential distilled for my use.

I’m encountering the grok gap while I’m writing. It’s a pretty familiar with whatever I’m writing. I grok what’s happening in my novel. I need to explain it to everyone who isn’t me. That meant spending a few days further defining terms and relationships. The big one is the ideopat. It is telepathy among the Travail Avresti Forus and Seth, and the Travail Favrashi Forus and Seth but telepathy is but one component among the names, gults, vhylla and races. I needed another term for one of the other components because it doesn’t fit with human knowledge and experiences.

While researching my invention, which ended up being termed the phena for now, after reading about consciousness, phenomenon and epiphenomenon, I grok and researched it for a while. After all, phena and grok share commonalities. The insights I encountered about what grok meant and was used in the original novel opened my thinking. Such sessions are always the most satisfying and treasured for me.

I hope you grok what I mean.

5

A Dark & Stormy Night

It was a dark and stormy night.

My psyche has been talking to me for the last few days. With some reluctance, I recognized what my psyche was telling me. Being a stubborn soul, I preferred ignoring my psyche for as long as I could. Yet, I’d come to a fork. I could continue to the right, along the path I’d been following. I already knew that was rocky. The going was treacherous and uneven. When it comes to writing, following a treacherous and uneven path is mentally and emotionally exhausting, especially if you know that following the other path would be a smoother journey. But —

Exceptions exist. But, the other path was the one my psyche was telling me to take. But the other path didn’t directly relate to the novel I was writing.

Yet it did; I needed to know what happened with Phileas and Brett. Generally, I knew Phileas is a highly respected scientist. Working for a major corporation, she led a team searching for the latest God Particle, a project known, with matter-of-fact drama, as the God Particle Search Project. Significant progress was slow, so another project, private and personal, the stuff of her childhood dreams, drew her.

It was a dark and stormy night.

Phileas first read those words when she was two, but once they were read, everything was changed. ‘A Wrinkle in Time’, by Madeline L’Engle, was the first book she read more than once, and in fact, went on to read a dozen more times. By the third time, she knew all the words and didn’t need to read the book, but settling into bed and opening up a screen above her face soothed her. Being in bed and secretly reading under the softly glowing faintly blue panel was cozy. It was a romantic escape for someone who was otherwise ruthlessly determined, logical, practical and mathematical. In fact, it was a dark and stormy night on Castle Prime, while visiting, when the weather control system in one of the domes malfunctioned, that crystallized the epiphanies that initiated her turn toward her personal project.

It was a dark and stormy night. 

For me to understand what happened with Brett and Phileas, I needed to know more about Phileas and then learn about what happened with her and Brett. I knew many basics. Brett had a son. He didn’t know he had a son. The son, Kimi, had been illegally conceived.

Kimi worked for Phileas on the GPS Project. Brett was a fourth-waver, inhabiting newly terraformed planets on the corporation’s behalf to prove it was safe. Kimi’s ‘fake’ father had manipulated the genetic maps related to Kimi and Brett. The systems had caught the errors but flawed results ended up reversing the maps so the systems thought Kimi was Brett and vice-versa. That’s the basis of the first novel, ‘Returnee’, available on KDP.

While writing ‘Returnee’, I established that the systems thought Brett was Kimi. What I didn’t establish but I knew was that as part of that, Phileas had inadvertently taken Brett when she thought she was abducting Kimi. She took Kimi, along with the rest of her team, because she’d traveled into the future. While in the future, she’d learned things, and now she was covering her trail, and attempting to keep others from following her path – because she knew, in science and technology, that major discoveries like hers rarely happen without like discoveries being made elsewhere.

The result was that the GUFIN virus was created and brought back from the future. And this is where the next novel, ‘Long Summer’, (the work in progress) comes into play. To know what happened with Brett, Phileas, the GUFIN virus, and the Travail, I had to know what happened when Phileas abducted Brett and wiped out his knowledge of what had happened.

And that’s what my psyche was ordering me to do: write that out so I fully understood it. Naturally, I had to write it out in story form, because I think in story-telling form when I’m writing fiction. So, thinking about Phileas and her background, and her literary hero, Meg Murry from ‘A Wrinkle in Time’, I was able to begin:

It was a dark and stormy night.

As I knew, the first line is actually homage to another novel — and Snoopy, of course, loves it — but once I wrote it, Phileas leaped to life.

Time to shut down and call fini to another day of writing like crazy. No words were written in the novel today, but so much progress was made.

0

Twelfth Night

A friend gave us tickets to Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s ‘Twelfth Night’ as a thank you gift.

We attended the play last Sunday night. It was updated to take place in 1930s Hollywood. That premise seemed a little thin at times, as characters were still called the count and the jester, and the studio was referred to as a land. Overall, it was well acted and enjoyable…for as much as I paid attention. For as the lights dimmed and the play began, I thought, “What does Handley’s imagination look like?”

Almost everyone (future studies estimate over ninety percent of people) in the future have an augmented memory. The augmented memory has a variety of options available. One of them includes creating an avatar of your external memory. This presents you with the opportunity to talk to your memory about your memories and life. Your memory can also be a memorable companion, so you’re never alone. You always have your memory, which is useful in space.

Madison Handley, however, went a little further than the norm. Although she embodied her memory as an avatar, she also embodied her imagination as an avatar. Thus, she and her memory played with her imagination as well as her friends when she was young. But, as her mother warned, “Someday your imagination is going to get you into trouble,” her imagination caused trouble and Handley took the fall. (It is her imagination.) After that day arrived, Handley banished it. Now her memory is requesting an audience for her imagination on its behalf because her imagination has some suggestions to help Handley out of her current situation.

All of this led to the standard use questions about the character. As I developed the background to this while at the play, I thought of other imaginary characters and the troubles they caused. A movie was semi-recalled. It seemed like it was in the 80s or 90s. The imaginary character was green and male. They had disappeared, but now they were back.

That’s all I could remember. I thought I would google it sometime but didn’t get around to it. Then, today, while thinking about the imagination and shaving, I remembered, ‘Drop Dead, Fred’, Phoebe Cates, Tim Matheson, Marsha Mason, 1991. Then, remembering those sudden details, I searched for confirmation on the net. Yea, verily, I was correct. The movie only received 9% on Rotten Tomatoes, so I wondered, why do I remember it so well?

All of this cogitation, delays and results – the process – amused me. Took a while of circling but the memory finally landed.

Now back to my novel. I still don’t know her imagination’s appearance but I believe that will come. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

 

0

Hear That Sound?

Do you hear that sound? I think of it as a thousand thousand metallic and plastic insects clicking their way around the world. It’s really millions of fingers typing on keyboards. It must be happening after reading this headline:

Cosmic radiation may leave astronauts with long-term cases of ‘space brain,’ study says

I mean, come on. Look at all the graphic novels, horror tales and science fiction stories that headline can inspire. The actual story behind it is not as rosy, citing the chance for many long-term ill effects, including chronic dementia.  But the story also says, “But it’s not clear exactly what effect space radiation has on the brain because there are different types of radiation and they’re delivered in different doses.” Maybe space brain will develop mutant space zombies (which may be redundant, as I think zombies are mutants). Or space brain unlocks telekinetic and telepathic powers of which we’ve fantasized.Maybe space brain triggers weird time travel or teleportation skills, or the ability to see or experience other dimensions.

Of course, space brain may just cause space rage or space laze or space gaze. Who knows?

Let your imagination guide you.

 

0

Greetings from a Sexagenarian

Back when my mother was in her late seventies, she went dancing on Friday nights. She often mentioned how much she enjoyed it, and enthused about the old people and their dancing skills and energy.

That always drew my laughter. “The old people? Mom, you’re old.”

Impatience snapped through her response. “I mean the really old people, you know, in their nineties.”

While I understood her point, it amused me that she didn’t think of herself as old. Now, at sixty, I understand better.

My wife was in a conversation with a man in his mid-eighties. She’s a few years younger than me and mentioned to him that she was middle-aged.

He seemed amused. “Middle-aged? Isn’t that well behind you?”

I was taken back when she told me. If she’s younger than me and she’s not middle-aged, than what am I? What constitutes middle-age?

Does it matter?

Not really, and yes, and no. Middle-aged, as already demonstrated, is a vague, inaccurate term. Definitions by psychologists and institutions vary, as it does by era and culture.

Part of it, which disturbed Mom, and bothers me, are the connotations associated by these terms, young, middle-aged, and elderly. Think ‘young’ and contemplate the images and ideas springing to mind. Substitute ‘elderly’ and ‘middle-aged’.

Yet, in most of the advanced world, these labels mean less and less. So I’m taking up the Latin route. I’m sixty, so call me a sexagenarian. I like it. Easy to spell, and it has sex embedded right in it. Mom, in her eighties, is an octogenarian.

I mean, what does middle-age conspire to mean? I’ve been accused of being immature, old beyond my years, and an old man before his time. I’ve also been deemed young at heart by some, immature, or young in spirit by others. My older friends – in their late sixties to upper eighties – call me their young friend.

It’s all context and impressions. Like everything else, a spectrum of behavior, expectations and impressions establishes others’ perceptions and judgement. Yet this can change by day. Give me a short night of sleep and I can appear as a cranky old man. Pour a little beer in me and I can be as immature as a two-year old. Mostly, I’m somewhere in between.

I don’t dress ‘old’ but nor I dress ‘young’. I adopt dress that is neat without calling attention to me. My hair is thinning and retreating as fast as antarctic ice (but with less alarm), and when the sun gets its rays on it, it goes silver and white. Do I care?

Hell, yes.

And hell, no.

See, I’m trapped on that spectrum. I logically understand aging and its impact. I also appreciate the freedom of aging, and its limitations. I know I can’t do anything about it, nor influence others’ impressions of my age and their labels, so why care? But then someone says, “Isn’t middle-age behind you?” and I’m newly irked.

In the future setting of my novels, ‘Returnee’ and ‘Long Summer’, you can bet it’s addressed, because we’re driven by advertising, perception and self-image, themes that sharpen in that future setting. You can bet that a civilization that has developed a technological work-around to dying has done the same with aging’s impact and their appearance.

It becomes an exercise for the characters and their thinking. Many embrace genetic sculpting to develop a look which they like and others appreciate. It’s just like hair, mustache and beard styles and colors, or even jewelry. Some take up the approach, how do I want to look today? What color should my skin, eyes, and hair be? Others emulate famous people, but more establish a look and keep it. A few chose to resemble cats, dogs, dragons, centaurs, and other creatures. It’s almost free and relatively easy.

The 4G in my future (the fourth generation of space colonists) have taken it to an extreme, part of their statement about who they are and their stand. Their leaders look prepubescent. That fad is spreading. They think it’s a meaningful statement of who they are and represent, but others who have lived longer and done more, mostly understand how little that appearance really means. There are some who are more easily swayed, or want to be included in the new youth movement. It’s fun to think about and one of the great joys of writing fiction.

In one of my vaguely conceptualized ideas, people who become zombies immediately look young and beautiful, which sways a large segment of weak thinking people, who want to look young and beautiful again. And as zombies, they have no cares about work, taxes, politics, wars, civil rights or the environment.

Which takes me from here to there and back again. Because, after all, weren’t we really talking about mindless zombie thinking about what it means to be old?

 

0

The Writing High

I’ve been working hard on three separate chapters in ‘Long Summer’, the sequel to ‘Returnee’. These chapters were all about the pirates.

It’s been stressful and challenging. Research and heavy thinking were demanded. I was putting together how the pirates interlock with the larger story. It was like trying to weave with spider webs sometimes.

The first chapter was exposition and interactions aboard the Narwhal as the new crew learned about one another. We were introduced to the main pirate character, Handley, her memory, Grutte Pier, and her parrot, JR. Handley’s background of being shaped by a reboot of ‘Serenity’ was included, and the ongoing debate among this loose confederation about being called pirates versus being called freedom fighters.

My use of ‘we’ in ‘we were introduced’ was deliberate in that last paragraph, as I met her and came to know her through the organic writing process. We’ve become pretty close.

The second chapter was about the pirate ship’s hunt for targets and increasing acrimony and dissatisfaction among the crew with the captain. None of them know him, and he’s a swearing doom and gloom machine. It seems like he’s always pissing on them.

The final chapter was the most satisfying to write and edit as the pirate ship Narwhal encountered the Intrepid and Missouri. Editing, revising, proofing and polishing led to that most glorious of experiences, a writing high. I sit back, so damned pleased with how the scenes were unfolded, meshed and finished. It’s one of hundreds of tasks required toward a finished novel, but it was a big one, and it feels awesome. This is absolutely why I write.

Now, though, wistfulness shrouds me. Half of my coffee remains and I think, what’s next? I’ve only been writing ninety minutes. My rear end isn’t even numb yet but I’ve emerged from the creating fog. Slowly the high drains behind the demands to continue. The novel isn’t finished.

Weeks, maybe months, of writing, editing, et al, remain. For now, I’ll enjoy the high, or more correctly, given my nature, try to enjoy it.

My coffee is cold anyway.

Cheers

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.

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