Sci-Fi story goes well, though I think the draft is going to end shortly. One major downside for me and pantsing is that the plot the story develops often doesn't have enough earlier foundations for it to work well. On the plus side, both the story and setting work rather well and I can easily fix it up in another draft and make it work just fine. This draft is, alas, not that one.
Also trying to ignore another story idea entirely, damn it :p
Showing posts with label rogue dreams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rogue dreams. Show all posts
Monday, November 18, 2013
Thursday, November 14, 2013
Madness, the: Day IIIIX The words are hunting me down. Send help.
The second nanowrimo goes well. Just hit 33K on it, and approaching a grand total of 95,000 words. My plan, story and plot willing, is to get to a total of 100,000 words by the end of tomorrow. I hit the 50K mark on day six and should hit 100K on day 15, which isn't that bad at all. This week has been marked by work and the effort of doing over a weeks worth of work in a single day on Tuesday led to a dismal 2,500 words last night when my brain gave up and demanded sleep.
On the plus side, the sci-fi story is solid and going well. I know how the story ends, and what some characters end-goals are, but I have no idea how the main plot is going to be achieved. If you create what amounts to God (for all intents and purposes) and then wish to upgrade It, what makes you think the god will allow that? It is pretty much the major plot of the book and attempts by various characters to drag the MCs into their conspiracy. As with all grand dreams and plans, it is not going to end well at all.
Some fragments of recent dialogue:
“I’m trying to access files in me. They altered me a lot you know.”
I pause. “Yes?” I offer up warily.
“What if I am now older than you?”
“It really doesn’t work like that.”
I hold myself together, barely ripple, the tendrils of my body still. He has to know my sib hunted System for any information about what was done to me. And that we failed to find anything at all. He’s giving away what he could have traded to us for no reason at all. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because Asral asked me to. Insisted that I tell you anything I found to make up for his mistake in assuming you were your sibs pet. His father approved it.” Bren smiles slightly at whatever reaction my body gives away. “People aren’t monsters, even the worst of us.”
“That’s not what the war taught us.”
“The war ended. That should have taught you something as well.”
“You misunderstand: I don’t hate you. I do not even pity you. You are not worth that much notice. I suppose I may mildly regret knowing you exist at all.”
“You would be kind? In this world, knowing the things you now know?”
“I will be kind because it is this world. And maybe because there is nothing left to die after hope.”
“A dream that can come true was never a dream at all.”
On the plus side, the sci-fi story is solid and going well. I know how the story ends, and what some characters end-goals are, but I have no idea how the main plot is going to be achieved. If you create what amounts to God (for all intents and purposes) and then wish to upgrade It, what makes you think the god will allow that? It is pretty much the major plot of the book and attempts by various characters to drag the MCs into their conspiracy. As with all grand dreams and plans, it is not going to end well at all.
Some fragments of recent dialogue:
“I’m trying to access files in me. They altered me a lot you know.”
I pause. “Yes?” I offer up warily.
“What if I am now older than you?”
“It really doesn’t work like that.”
I hold myself together, barely ripple, the tendrils of my body still. He has to know my sib hunted System for any information about what was done to me. And that we failed to find anything at all. He’s giving away what he could have traded to us for no reason at all. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because Asral asked me to. Insisted that I tell you anything I found to make up for his mistake in assuming you were your sibs pet. His father approved it.” Bren smiles slightly at whatever reaction my body gives away. “People aren’t monsters, even the worst of us.”
“That’s not what the war taught us.”
“The war ended. That should have taught you something as well.”
“You misunderstand: I don’t hate you. I do not even pity you. You are not worth that much notice. I suppose I may mildly regret knowing you exist at all.”
“You would be kind? In this world, knowing the things you now know?”
“I will be kind because it is this world. And maybe because there is nothing left to die after hope.”
“A dream that can come true was never a dream at all.”
Sunday, November 10, 2013
Day 01010: on writing methods
74,000 words on day 10. 7,500 of that is mostly discardable Rogue Dreams bits, but hey. The new start to said sci-fi story is going quite well and just proves, once again, that me and pantsing a story do not go well together. I need more of an idea of where a story is going before I start out or it gets nowhere. Every time I've worked on this story it has been about themes, so this draft is tossing all that aside to focus on story. One of them three main characters -- in fact, the one the story was ostensibly about -- no longer exists at all. I know who is manipulating things, though their end-game is still a mystery, and the two MCs are playing off of each other rather well. I think I am going to need to tighten up the timeline and make it only a short time since the end of the war they were involved in, but that's minor.
What I have been thinking of, because of a friend's post on pantsing and plotting, is that those terms have done damage to a lot of writers. (I keep wanting to write 'untold damage', which must be nano creeping into my writing style :)) I don't think making the terms seem exclusive helps anyone, nor does saying a writer is one or the other: some stories can be done entirely by the seat of one's pants, others cannot. At the extremes, plotting is seen as writing out everything that happens in the novel so the story is basically the expansion of an outline where nothing surprising happens. Pantsing becomes, 'omg! AHHHH!' and rants about characters not doing what the writer wants. And so forth.
But ask any writer, once they start a story, about the story. Ask about characters, motivations, goals. And they know. It might only be subconsciously, in the case of the avowed pantser, but the author knows the characters, if not the exact thrust of the story they are going down. Ask 'if this ending happens, what does character B do' and they will be able to figure it out. The novel might be a choose-your-own-adventure in their heads, with story and plot not nailed down tight, but it seldom is for any author. Characters have their own voices. Ideas come up, things get nudged and changed.
Stories grow in the telling.
But thinking one has to write a certain way, that pantsing or plotting means a specific thing, is rubbish of the highest order. Every writer does what works for them. If something doesn't work, discard it and try something else. See what works best for the specific story you're telling. Don't become slaves to the terms, or take absurd pride in defining yourself by one or the other. They aren't mutually exclusive terms, or even clubs which one has to supply credentials to join. You're writing. So go write.
What I have been thinking of, because of a friend's post on pantsing and plotting, is that those terms have done damage to a lot of writers. (I keep wanting to write 'untold damage', which must be nano creeping into my writing style :)) I don't think making the terms seem exclusive helps anyone, nor does saying a writer is one or the other: some stories can be done entirely by the seat of one's pants, others cannot. At the extremes, plotting is seen as writing out everything that happens in the novel so the story is basically the expansion of an outline where nothing surprising happens. Pantsing becomes, 'omg! AHHHH!' and rants about characters not doing what the writer wants. And so forth.
But ask any writer, once they start a story, about the story. Ask about characters, motivations, goals. And they know. It might only be subconsciously, in the case of the avowed pantser, but the author knows the characters, if not the exact thrust of the story they are going down. Ask 'if this ending happens, what does character B do' and they will be able to figure it out. The novel might be a choose-your-own-adventure in their heads, with story and plot not nailed down tight, but it seldom is for any author. Characters have their own voices. Ideas come up, things get nudged and changed.
Stories grow in the telling.
But thinking one has to write a certain way, that pantsing or plotting means a specific thing, is rubbish of the highest order. Every writer does what works for them. If something doesn't work, discard it and try something else. See what works best for the specific story you're telling. Don't become slaves to the terms, or take absurd pride in defining yourself by one or the other. They aren't mutually exclusive terms, or even clubs which one has to supply credentials to join. You're writing. So go write.
Friday, November 08, 2013
Rogue Dreams: the new start
Written at 2 am for the sci-fi story. New intro, new starting off point. Probably a new story entirely. I have no idea :)
There are warning messages flashing across my right eye. I think that’s what they are. I still have eyes. There is pain. I can feel that burning through whatever passes for sinews in my body like rivers of cold fire. I never thought you could hurt so much you fall out the other side of pain. Never thought. Not once never ever.
Fragments: Luka screams. I watch her left arm dissolve. There is no pain now. I move. I am sharp as my pain, cold as the fire. I tear through plasteel and flesh. Other things. There is other fire. Luka’s right arm pumping out shot after shot into targets. People. Targets.
(I am being shot.)
Luka, running, legs leaving craters in the ground, weapon systems belting out slug-throwers. Didn’t know they put those in anyone anymore. Flowing. Flexing. There used to be pain here. I move around her, blanket in the darkness, darkness as a blanket. She fires around me, something tears apart. Not us not her not me
silence
Silence doesn’t tear apart.
Luka is standing, swaying, left arm ruined coils, right arm smoking and juttering, legs functioning. Functioning. Not real legs. Walks toward me. I try to stand. Nothing to stand with. They changed me. (I was shot. No, Luka. Before. She was shot before.) I fall inward, feel pain. There is pain in the silence. She is grabbing me, my sib, and I am flowing through her grip into the ground.
There are no warnings now. I think
I think this is
I think this is bad
I think we won
We’re not dead so we won.
There are warning messages flashing across my right eye. I think that’s what they are. I still have eyes. There is pain. I can feel that burning through whatever passes for sinews in my body like rivers of cold fire. I never thought you could hurt so much you fall out the other side of pain. Never thought. Not once never ever.
Fragments: Luka screams. I watch her left arm dissolve. There is no pain now. I move. I am sharp as my pain, cold as the fire. I tear through plasteel and flesh. Other things. There is other fire. Luka’s right arm pumping out shot after shot into targets. People. Targets.
(I am being shot.)
Luka, running, legs leaving craters in the ground, weapon systems belting out slug-throwers. Didn’t know they put those in anyone anymore. Flowing. Flexing. There used to be pain here. I move around her, blanket in the darkness, darkness as a blanket. She fires around me, something tears apart. Not us not her not me
silence
Silence doesn’t tear apart.
Luka is standing, swaying, left arm ruined coils, right arm smoking and juttering, legs functioning. Functioning. Not real legs. Walks toward me. I try to stand. Nothing to stand with. They changed me. (I was shot. No, Luka. Before. She was shot before.) I fall inward, feel pain. There is pain in the silence. She is grabbing me, my sib, and I am flowing through her grip into the ground.
There are no warnings now. I think
I think this is
I think this is bad
I think we won
We’re not dead so we won.
The madness. Day: After 7. Before 9. Hi?
Yesterday I managed 7.5K by 11:30 pm. In the space between morning and afternoon I wrote and re-wrote over 3K of words four times. I wrote the last 2K while closing in on midnight, noted that I'd lost both character's voices but there were at least a few pieces of good dialogue to dig through.
Went to bed. Thought. At 1 AM I realized I'd been doing the whole story wrong. At 1:30 AM, I realized the main character shouldn't be in it until near the end. If at all. At 2 AM I got up for over an hour and wrote 1,300 words to start the story back far, far earlier than it had begun. There is a piece of writing advice that one should begin as close to the end as possible. I began far too close to the end. No one had any reason to care about the other characters. So I'm pulling back. Altering. This may no longer even BE the story I planned to write twice before.
It will be a better one.
Went to bed. Thought. At 1 AM I realized I'd been doing the whole story wrong. At 1:30 AM, I realized the main character shouldn't be in it until near the end. If at all. At 2 AM I got up for over an hour and wrote 1,300 words to start the story back far, far earlier than it had begun. There is a piece of writing advice that one should begin as close to the end as possible. I began far too close to the end. No one had any reason to care about the other characters. So I'm pulling back. Altering. This may no longer even BE the story I planned to write twice before.
It will be a better one.
Thursday, November 07, 2013
A ramble. AKA it is late and I am tired
I have been trying to figure out what to do for a next November project. I worked on two projects in my head a little and discarded others -- not from lack of desire, but I need a mental break from Urban Fantasy in any way, shape and form. It's not an exaggeration to say that Curdled Magics took up all the space that was in my head for stories. I was forcing myself not to change ideas just before November, as I am want to do, and fully expected the draft to take a) longer and b) be longer.
It did not.
So tonight has been bits of research and slowly pulling an old idea back from the recesses of my head. Rogue Dreams began life in 2010 as a nano I scrapped for other stuff. In 2012, the same thing happened again to it despite having over 10K of notes to the project. I fiddled with the idea off and on since, shifting the setting and the kind of story being told by it. Even now my brain is shifting away from notes I wrote less than 20 minutes ago to a new conception of the store.
At core, it is about a boy, his sister, and a robot. It's a bit more complicated, but that's always been the core that the setting continually shifts and alters about. Right now it is YA in my head, but we shall see if that can survive where my brain goes with sci-fi concepts. So now I am going to drag this story from my head in some form, kicking and screaming, and see what it turns into.
With luck.
It did not.
So tonight has been bits of research and slowly pulling an old idea back from the recesses of my head. Rogue Dreams began life in 2010 as a nano I scrapped for other stuff. In 2012, the same thing happened again to it despite having over 10K of notes to the project. I fiddled with the idea off and on since, shifting the setting and the kind of story being told by it. Even now my brain is shifting away from notes I wrote less than 20 minutes ago to a new conception of the store.
At core, it is about a boy, his sister, and a robot. It's a bit more complicated, but that's always been the core that the setting continually shifts and alters about. Right now it is YA in my head, but we shall see if that can survive where my brain goes with sci-fi concepts. So now I am going to drag this story from my head in some form, kicking and screaming, and see what it turns into.
With luck.
Monday, September 24, 2012
Mental Rummagings
I am no longer a fan of epic fantasy: reading bucketloads of it in high school turned me off of them, to the point that trying to read one about 7 years ago by an author I liked proved impossible. On the other hand, most everything I've written for the past few years has been set in the modern world, or at least a recognizable facsimile thereof. I am hoping to do sci-fi for nanowrimo this year, but sci-fi is just -- at heart -- extrapolating on the present.
The crappier the present, more dystopic (or, in reacting to all that, utopic) the sci-fi settings are for that period. The novel is set in the future, but it is also a meditation of privacy and cameras and a big-brother/ID tagging society, so the core of it is set in present worries and concerns. Fair enough: a novel without relevance isn't one anyone would want to read.
And yet it feels like a long-term rut, in a lot of ways, and I find my mind straying back to fantasy worlds that never-were and considering settings and character ideas for such a story again. Part of me wants to revise an old novel from 2004 about two brothers who end up on another world and whose goal is to get home, the one brother worried about rent and his car being towed because most 'travel to another world' novels tend to ignore issues like that and it royally bugged me. On the flip side, while the novel I write now would be a lot better I am not sure I'd be saying anything new to add to the concept. The other idea involves the stereotypical 'prince sets off on quest' from the POV of the prince's manservant wondering how the hell the King and Guard and so forth are letting this happen and would lead the prince and servant to realizing how little power the throne really has and such.
I may write one of those. I may not. Hell, I could end up doing one of them for nano given my brain. It would be a fun change at least.
The crappier the present, more dystopic (or, in reacting to all that, utopic) the sci-fi settings are for that period. The novel is set in the future, but it is also a meditation of privacy and cameras and a big-brother/ID tagging society, so the core of it is set in present worries and concerns. Fair enough: a novel without relevance isn't one anyone would want to read.
And yet it feels like a long-term rut, in a lot of ways, and I find my mind straying back to fantasy worlds that never-were and considering settings and character ideas for such a story again. Part of me wants to revise an old novel from 2004 about two brothers who end up on another world and whose goal is to get home, the one brother worried about rent and his car being towed because most 'travel to another world' novels tend to ignore issues like that and it royally bugged me. On the flip side, while the novel I write now would be a lot better I am not sure I'd be saying anything new to add to the concept. The other idea involves the stereotypical 'prince sets off on quest' from the POV of the prince's manservant wondering how the hell the King and Guard and so forth are letting this happen and would lead the prince and servant to realizing how little power the throne really has and such.
I may write one of those. I may not. Hell, I could end up doing one of them for nano given my brain. It would be a fun change at least.
Saturday, September 01, 2012
Rogue Dreams Glossary
Glossary of Terms
No man means all he says, yet few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is vicious.
- Henry Adams
- AI
- Common term for Artificial General Intelligence; none exist any longer.
- Artist
- A class of people who can modify generic AutoMake outputs into novel designs.
- AutoMake
- Autmatic Makers, nanotech devices that create basic clothing and food at need; businesses have specialized ones.
- 'borg/cyborg
- having cybernetic body parts.
- 'Bot:
- Like a MedDoc, these are basic programs that can analyze simple problems and issues with a pleasing visual interface.
- Calendar
- Global one set as 6 months/year, with 6 day weeks and 60 days in a month. Holidays exist at the ends of each month as needed.
- CenNet
- The Census Network, a government body.
- City-State
- Term for one of the 1000 cities that exist in the world. Each boasts a population of ~10 million.
- Creator
- The people artists steal from. Original designers, often programmers of Makers as well.
- Drone
- Lowest-order of citizens, compromised of ne'er-do-wells and prisoners along with clones. They monitor the global camera system and examine specific citizens 24/7 or situations System flags as suspicion to see if they are actually suspicious.
- Fissure
- 'Cities' that exist under the City-States in the ruins they are built on top of. Population and amounts are largely guesswork.
- Governor
- Any citizen elected for government office in a City-State.
- Hacker
- Terrorists who try to alter System.
- Maintenance
- The people who fix and repair things; work for WorldGov and make sure the world functions.
- Maker
- Slang term for AutoMake.
- 'Mod*
- Any body-modification, from altered skin tone, different eyes or movable tattoos.
- MagLev
- the magnetic train system used for almost all travel in and between City-States.
- -Net/Network
- A government organization.
- Military
- WorldGov army, exists to defend the moon base, mars and earth from possible alien attacks.
- Nano*/nanotech
- machines inside the body. Intelligent ones are highly illegal.
- Police
- Police officers; they often respond to Watcher notes about crimes and investigate problems in person.
- Poli/Politicians
- WorldGov career politicians, often with short actual careers. Social science fits into this along with diplomacy.
- Programmer
- Those who program System; often City-State level workers designed to make System operate at maximum efficiency within their City.
- Scientists
- Catch-all term for the people who design all the tech that keeps the world working.
- Servant
- Civil servants, employees of WorldGov.
- 'Stem/stem
- Short for System, aka the internet
- Stemming
- Prolonged use of the internet via virtual inteface.
- System
- The global computer network.
- Vir-Edu
- Virtual-Education, the education software that teaches everyone how to be human.
- Watcher
- low-ranking job; assigned to watch Drones and decide is incidents Drones have flagged are worthy of police attention.
- Worker
- Slang term for any generic citizen holding a job.
- WorldGov
- The global governing body. Consists of Politicians, Police, Scientists, Military and Maintenance.
* Both these terms see very wide use and consequently tend to be confused and misused.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
ramblings
The basic premise of Rogue Dreams involved a civilization built around cameras and the government watching all the citizens a la Big Brother. Right now, we live in a Little Brother world of data mining and the like that won't exist in this future; the point of the system developed is to stop and prevent crimes. The trade-offs between security and freedom are always interesting to explore and in this case one of the definite themes to tease out is that the government is doing the right thing.
People should not be assholes. This is as true in the future as the past, and works as a general rule. In RD, status is Important and jockeying for it can involve slander and naked ambition, which an omnipresent camera system can help contain. It helps that this society has been entirely social-engineered at some point in the past in a desperate effort to not repeat the mistakes of its predecessors and there are going to be characters who rightly think the government-watchdog idea isn't viable; obviously such things cannot work in a long term, as a better method would involve educating the populace to be better people .... only sometimes being a bastard works.
That the government does not use AI means that citizens cannot be watched effectively, which creates an entirely different set of problems and issues .... to be considered in another post.
People should not be assholes. This is as true in the future as the past, and works as a general rule. In RD, status is Important and jockeying for it can involve slander and naked ambition, which an omnipresent camera system can help contain. It helps that this society has been entirely social-engineered at some point in the past in a desperate effort to not repeat the mistakes of its predecessors and there are going to be characters who rightly think the government-watchdog idea isn't viable; obviously such things cannot work in a long term, as a better method would involve educating the populace to be better people .... only sometimes being a bastard works.
That the government does not use AI means that citizens cannot be watched effectively, which creates an entirely different set of problems and issues .... to be considered in another post.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
"The War"
A quick write-up on the limited understanding the present world has of 'The War'. Effectively, it's as if all the optimistic predictions for the future happened and created a civilization that turned inward on itself. An age of glory crippled by the fact that humans have not changed fundamentally since the cave man days.
The War happened. This much is done,
along with that it was against the very AI humanity had made. How
long it lasted and how humanity won are not known: all data was
stored in AI clouds that were lost along with the AI, the most
glorious period of history turned into one giant question with very
few answers. The words computer and AI had all but vanished from the
world at that time, becoming omnipresent and ignored as background
noise: houses did what we wanted on command, from making new floor
plans, altering itself or even changing us: inbuilt medical programs
in the clothing and the body meant that any disease could be caught
within hours and death by accident became the most common cause of
death though the machines in our bodies could allow us to survive
most of those as well. It became hard to die; perhaps that is one
reason for the war.
Technology had become wishing, science
become magic: wave a hand and things would float, ask and something
would materialize. Fleets of ships scoured the skies for the energy
to allow this to happen: alien worlds were gutted and no one knew.
Or, knowing, did not care. If you can do anything, wouldn't you want
to do more? Some say humans tried to become AI, to upload and alter
ourselves to match them in a quest to become spirit and not flesh. Or
the AI had a few errors, and the elite tried to alter them or shut
them down as a form of punishment.
Again, no one knows. Maybe we woke up
one way, and realized how great they had become, how little we were
without them. Most believe we were afraid, in the end, of what we'd
made and that it clearly no longer needed us. What was humanity but a
drain on AI resources? If we could think it, so could they, and their
morality was not our own. Fear, some rumours, a few stories – that
is possibly all it took too destroy everything we had been.
Some even say that as the AI were our
gods, they too were making their own gods, or planning to remake us
as true gods. They said many things, during and after the war,
records left behind for a future they thought might never happen. But
how much of that was left for AI or humans? Did the AI simply leave
and are out there, somewhere? We don't know. It could be possible to
find out, but it would not be safe at all. The War ended. Humanity
won. That is the story that matters, the only one we dare tell
ourselves.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
This is going to be hell....
... in a fun kind of way, but hell. You see, I had the idea(s) for Rogue Dreams back in 2010. The first version was some 5 pages of notes and 3-4 of story, stalling out when I had to pause the entire thing to find a calendar system to adapt to the setting. Because: novels, man. (Actually 'because novels' would be a handy explanation for many things.) I quickly realized what I had in mind was too much story for one novel and had too many things it focused on, so set it aside in the back of my head. The ideas continued to poke at me, and even try to convince me they'd work as science-fantasy by making the MC some kind of magician in a future-SF setting.
Ideas lie like that, desperate to come to life in one form or another.
So I began a new set of notes, grabbed some recent sciencey books (Physics of the Future, How It Ends, a book on quantum mechanics that's recent (as most of the books I'd read on it were 4+ years ago) and a couple of other odd titles) and am, this time happily, running into issues of setting and research again.
For example: names. The world is an indeterminate amount of time in the future, after a war against AI that humanity both won and lost [no AI has been allowed to exist since the war, probably to the detriment of the society, in a classic case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater] and there is one global government divided into 1000 city-states all linked together by one vast computer system. As such, there is one homogeneous culture with a single shared calendar (sexagesimal, meaning that there are six months, with six-day weeks and 60 days in each month, holidays between some of them) and language.
It also means that names are purely identity-numbers. 0 is a placeholder, with the first six numbers being a grid reference on the world map, the next six being what city-state one lived in and twelve after that being ones personal identity in that location. Additional numbers indicate city-state of birth, how often one has moved and the like; you meet someone, ping them through System, and get their basic data. As it is both impractical and absurd to use such a system in actual conversation, everyone selects their own use-name at some point, or accepts one giving to them by parental/authority figures. As use-names can be changed and be jokes and so forth, they also allow people a sense of fun and spontaneity that their 'real' name does not allow.
Ideas lie like that, desperate to come to life in one form or another.
So I began a new set of notes, grabbed some recent sciencey books (Physics of the Future, How It Ends, a book on quantum mechanics that's recent (as most of the books I'd read on it were 4+ years ago) and a couple of other odd titles) and am, this time happily, running into issues of setting and research again.
For example: names. The world is an indeterminate amount of time in the future, after a war against AI that humanity both won and lost [no AI has been allowed to exist since the war, probably to the detriment of the society, in a classic case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater] and there is one global government divided into 1000 city-states all linked together by one vast computer system. As such, there is one homogeneous culture with a single shared calendar (sexagesimal, meaning that there are six months, with six-day weeks and 60 days in each month, holidays between some of them) and language.
It also means that names are purely identity-numbers. 0 is a placeholder, with the first six numbers being a grid reference on the world map, the next six being what city-state one lived in and twelve after that being ones personal identity in that location. Additional numbers indicate city-state of birth, how often one has moved and the like; you meet someone, ping them through System, and get their basic data. As it is both impractical and absurd to use such a system in actual conversation, everyone selects their own use-name at some point, or accepts one giving to them by parental/authority figures. As use-names can be changed and be jokes and so forth, they also allow people a sense of fun and spontaneity that their 'real' name does not allow.
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Assassin spiders and spies
aka: This is the future on tech.
This is the future. According to some uncertain estimates, insect-sized drones will become operational by 2030. These drones will be able to not only conduct surveillance, but to act on it with lethal effect. Over time, it is likely that miniaturized weapons platforms will evolve to be able to carry not merely the quantum of lethal material needed to execute individuals, but also weapons of mass destruction sufficient to kill thousands.
(via)
Some things to keep in mind: weapons tend to outstrip defenses for a time. Does a society positively teeming with cameras just lead to more innovative weapons of murder? The technologies that bring the world closer together also cause greater harm, or the potential for it [air travel and plagues, at a simple scale]. As the article points out, violence becomes more common the further one is removed from it: anonymizing the weapon and/or killer just makes the threats that much more dangerous.
Further thoughts: This novel is set after the war against AIs, which limits tech to drones powered by humans and basic command-driven robots. Need to work out to what extent the pessmistic views of the future are just back-story to the novel and help explain the current state of government on all levels to prevent such flagrant abuses of freedom in the future.
Thursday, July 01, 2010
Why I should not have begun work on a sci fi novel
On the second page of the first draft of the opening, a character asks what day it is. There is an hour-long pause while I realize that they wouldn't use the current calendar and consider various metric calendars before settling on one, altering some bits of it and printing it off. End result: "It's the 42nd day of the second month."
OTOH, it does add a certain realism that is fun, but damn .... :p
OTOH, it does add a certain realism that is fun, but damn .... :p
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