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in 2015 I offered some speculation about how brain regions such as the amygdala and the caudate can shape human responses to the events that take place inside fictional stories. In 2017, Winfried Menninghaus et al published an article called "
Negative emotions in art reception: Refining theoretical assumptions and adding variables to the Distancing-Embracing model". They suggested that their
Distancing-Embracing model can help account for people's enjoyment of negative emotions. In my case, I find it difficult to distance myself from the horrific events that some authors include in their
science fiction stories.
I've been searching through the
infites that were given to me by
Yōd and
Nora and have found a few of their memories of some stories that now exist only in the library of the
Writers Block. In the
Ekcolir Reality, the analogue of
Jack Vance was born as twins. There was some synergy and competition between the two Vances and sometimes they wrote variants of each others stories. Apparently there was a version of
Araminta Station in which
Glawen had to live through both the murder of
Sessily Veder at the hands of
Kirdy Wook and the death of
Wayness Tamm on the shore of Lake Dimple.
In my own fiction, I find it very difficult to allow any of my characters to reach a tragic end. Most recently,
Georgy White died in a flood, but a copy of Georgy was made and sent to
Observer Base. I'm not really comfortable with the idea of Glawen loosing the love of his life twice within a few years time. Apparently in that version of the story, Glawen,
Eustace Chilke and
Flitz traveled together in a Fortunatus spaceyacht to Earth in search of the
Cadwal Charter.
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| Amanda |
Glawen meets Eustace's niece, Amanda, who works as a communications technician at the airport in Division City and dreams of saving enough money to travel to far worlds. Amanda is able to telephone the Shoup Import and Export facility in the nearby suburb of Boulton, gain the trust of an employee named Tanya Mirmar and obtain the address of Melvish Keebles, on the planet Nion, 4th planet of the Pharisse star system, far away in the direction of the constellation Argo Navis. Amanda insists on joining the mission to Nion.
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| on Nion in the Ekcolir Reality |
Arriving in Tanjaree, they find that Keebles has been murdered. Amanda is able to hack into Keebles' phone and find that just before being killed, Keebles had apparently been in contact with Adrian Moncurio in Moonway. Quickly taking the Fortunatus to the far side of Nion, they find Moncurio, but he refuses to provide any information and heads off among the
Standing Stones, soon to meet his demise at the hands of Benjamie.
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| Earth |
Amanda is finally able to hack into the files stored on Keebles' phone and finds an an address on Earth under the name Moncurio.
Arriving in Pombareales, Glawen and Amanda hatch a scheme to breech the defenses of Casa Lucasta and obtain information from the stubborn Irena Portils. Using forged documents, Glawen and Amanda pretend to be Mr. and Mrs. Moncurio and they file paperwork for adoption of Myron and Lydia. Dr. Olivano is happy to make use of Glawen and Amanda. Irena attempts to burn down Casa Lucasta, but Myron is able to telepathically contact Amanda. The children are rescued, but a search of the partially destroyed Casa Lucasta finds no documents of relevance to Cadwal.
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| Amanda and her daughter |
Myron sees the solution to the mystery in the thoughts of Eustace Chilke, and finally the Cadwal Charter is found where it had been hidden inside the
Atlas of Far Worlds at the Chilke farm near Idola. Glawen and Amanda are comfortable together and they decide to spend the rest of their lives together. Is Glawen's loss of Sessily and Wayness made up for by his relationship with Amanda? In the Ekcolir Reality, there was a novel called
Return to Araminta that described the daughter of Glawen and Amanda as having unusual physical and telepathic abilities due to the special nanites that she carried in her body.
1916
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| Wayness and her daughter (source) |
For several years I have had fun imagining that after the
Asimov Reality had been successfully used to tap into
Phari expertise in the design of
femtobot endosymbionts,
Isaac Asimov was allowed to create the Writers Block. The Writers Block was a refuge where a collection of
replicoids could turn the science fiction literary genre into a mechanism for warning people of the 20th century about impending events of the near future, particularly those events that would have dramatic impact on the development of new technologies and how technology would impact Earth's ecosystem.
Sadly, that effort backfired and resulted in an intensification of the
global warming problem in the Ekcolir Reality. "Riding on the coat-tails" of the Writers Block project, Jack Vance was allowed to write science fiction stories that reflected events in the far future of the Asimov Reality while Isaac Asimov was able to create fictional accounts of the far future of the
Foundation Reality.
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| in the Ekcolir Reality |
In the
Buld Reality, the function of the Writers Block was redirected towards the goals of the
Trysta-Grean Pact. The fiction of Vance and Asimov was allowed to function as a way of providing
the Editor information about
Deep Time. In the case of Jack Vance, the replicoid of Vance was allowed to experiment with how to use the
Bimanoid Interface to influence the behavior of an Earthling even before Vance was born. The Vance replicoid practiced how to use the Bimanoid Interface by connecting to the mind of an Earthling named
Joan Griffith Chaney.
Under the influence of the Vance replicoid, Chaney began writing stories about her visions of the past and the future. Joan Chaney had been engineered to be able to use the Bimanoid Interface by her parents. Joan's father, William Chaney, was a
tryp'At and her mother was an
Interventionist agent named
Svahr, using the name an identity of an Earth woman known as Flora Wellman. Svahr took over the body of Flora Wellman when she moved from Ohio to California at the end of the Civil War.
In the Asimov Reality,
sedron bombs had been used to destroy every site on Earth where nuclear weapons had been stored. A high-energy form of radiation from those explosions caused all nearby people to develop a form of radiation poisoning that was known as the Scarlet Death. Before the sedron bombs were detonated, all of the nuclear weapons were teleported away, so there was very little nuclear fallout.
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| in the Ekcolir Reality |
In the Ekcolir Reality, Joan Chaney published a short story called "The Scarlet Bomb" in 1897. She later expanded that tale into a novel, published in 1913. The plot of the story concerned a devastating nuclear war of the future (the war started in the year 2013) that used dirty plutonium bombs (in the Ekcolir Reality, plutonium had just been discovered in 1895). In the story, time travelers from the future returned to 1890 and tried to prevent the discovery of plutonium.
In 1903, Joan Chaney published a short story called "Archeology of the Archean". That was a time travel story about a woman named Rachel
Nyrtia who traveled into the far past of Earth and lived among a group of ancient alien visitors to Earth known as
the pek. The pek were investigating a series of hidden bases on Earth, Mars and Venus that had been built by the
Phari.
"Archeology of the Archean" was written back when time travel was still possible. Here in the Final Reality, Nora has long been an Interventionist agent and her memories extend back into the time travel era. She seems to have long anticipated that it would be Georgy White who would discover
hierions on Earth. Back before time travel became impossible, Nora had apparently viewed the future of the
Final Reality and saw that Georgy would wind up contributing her own stories to the library of the Writers Block.
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future science
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Based on hints in the infites that I received from Nora, I now suspect that Rylla's mother may have been
Radhas, who was herself a carrier of
Asterothrope genes. If so, it will be interesting to see how good a telepath Rylla can become with some training and practice.
There is also the lingering question of the fate of Radhas. Is she still on Earth? Nora's memories of Radhas seemed tinged with a hint if tragedy, as if some evil befell her. Will poor Radhas become a source of negative emotions in the
Exode Saga?
Next:
science fiction after 60
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