Top 10

Former #1 most visited blog post.
Hierion Confinement

Back in April of this year (2019) I celebrated the first ten years of the wikifiction blog. Below is my Top 10 all-time list of wikifiction blog posts.

Guilty. One of my guilty pleasures is going back into my old blog posts and editing them. Sometimes I add a hypertext link to a future blog post. I'll be indulging in this practice while I gaze back at ten of the most visited wikifiction blog posts. So, to the time machine and back to the beginning of the wikifiction blog...

2009

Grendels

Diabolus ex machina was an early wikifiction blog post that touched on the issue of how we depict space aliens in our science fiction stories. I'm a fan of interesting space aliens, so the alien species that I write into my stories (for example, the Retair, the Nereids, the Grendels and the Fru'wu) are not savage warriors who rage across the galaxy behaving like psychotics.

artist's depiction of Grean

According to The Rules of Intervention, a species such as we humans should not expect to have contact with technologically advanced alien visitors from distant worlds. In keeping with this expectation, most of the aliens who appear as characters in the Exode Saga are very similar to us biologically. Furthermore, it is often the case that the non-human characters take pains to adopt a human appearance while they are interacting with human characters. Some of these non-human characters are artificial life forms composed of nanoscopic structural components and they can often take on any convenient physical form.

2010

image source

If there is one thing that I have learned during ten years of blogging about science fiction it is that including the word "Asimov" in the title of a blog post is a great way to attract readers. Asimov's struggle with aliens is the most popular wikifiction blog post from 2010. That blog post was my year 90 celebration of Isaac Asimov's fiction. (100 Years of Asimov)

Asimov and Aliens. The first printed science fiction story that I ever read was The Gods Themselves. For that novel, Asimov invented aliens who lived in another universe where the physical laws were slightly different than here in our universe. Since the day when I first saw an episode of Star Trek, I have believed that space aliens are the most fascinating characters and plot elements in science fiction stories. A good measure of a science fiction story writer is this: can you depict an interesting alien?

2011

Exodemic

The most popular wikifiction blog post from 2011 was Been Here, Done That, which was about ancient aliens. The Fermi Paradox is central to my personal science fiction writing obsession (the Exode Saga). Right when I was first discovering the science fiction literary genre, I read Chariots of the Gods. When I first began writing stories that were set in the Exodemic Fictional Universe, I imagined that the first aliens to visit Earth arrived here on this planet about 7,000,000 years ago.

The Iidi

During the past ten years, I have several times pushed further back in time the arrival of the pek in our galaxy (to >2,000,000,000 years ago). Also, I have adopted the idea that there were already some highly sophisticated aliens here in our galaxy at that time, the Phari.

In addition to the ancient past, the Exode Saga includes plot elements related to the far future. In particular, I've enthusiastically adopted Asimov's idea that we might be visited by time travelers from the future. Thus, the Exode Saga includes the character Trysta Iwedon who is an Asterothrope from the future.

Ivory investigates a cell bioreactor.
At Phari Base in the Slave Craton.

2012
With the Exode Saga backstory full of technologically advanced space aliens, a constant theme is the question: is the behavior of we Earthlings controlled by the aliens? The most visited wikifiction blog post for 2012 has long been Slavery in Science Fiction. My favorite slave-related story from the Exodemic Fiction Universe is in a blog post called Slave Craton. Were humans destined to be slaves since the first arrival of the pek on Earth billions of years ago?

2013
The most popular wikifiction blog post of 2013 is Post-Singularity Science Fiction. In the Exode Saga, I imagine that the Huaoshy exist as a very ancient life form which long ago achieved complete mastery of science and advanced technologies. Sadly, we Earthlings don't get to interact directly with the Huaoshy. They reside in the Sedronic Domain as artificial life forms.

Priscilla the pek

In order to have some indirect interactions with we humans, the Huaoshy worked through their agents the pek and the Huaoshy caused the Kac'hin to be created. The pek are composed of zeptites and they can take on any convenient physical form. Back in the First Reality, the pek who were in charge of Observer Base were known as the Orbho. The pek take very seriously the idea that they must enforce the Rules of Intervention and they like to install Earth Overseers who keep humans in line.

image source

The other major political faction of the Huaoshy is less conservative than those who believe in the Rules of Intervention. The main manifestation of the "liberal" wing of the Huaoshy is what I call the bumpha. The bumpha enjoy experimenting with biological life forms, and it was their meddling on Earth that led to the creation of the first positronic robot, R. Gohrlay. Like the pek, the bumpha take on any desired physical form, so the image to the right is fanciful.

2014

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Reality Reviewing concerns one of the great science fiction plot devices invented by Asimov, which was introduced right at the end of his time travel novel, The End of Eternity. Noÿs says, "We, too, had Time-travel, you see, but it was based on a completely different set of postulates than yours, and we preferred to view Time, rather than shifting mass.

Four pages later, Noÿs adds, "We don't calculate alternate Realities. We view them. We see them in their state of non-Reality."

I could not resist making Reality Viewing an integral part of the Exode Saga. With time, I also made room for Reality Simulation, which allows for people to view events in Deep Time.

The End of the World, Clarke style.

2015
As of today, the most visited wikifiction blog post from 2015 is Syfy's Overmind. Most of my blog posts concern written science fiction stories and I don't enjoy most of the Sci Fi that graces television and film. Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End is a science fiction classic (1953) that presents us with Clarke's ideas about first contact with space aliens who are as far beyond we humans as we are beyond bacteria. Clarke's science fiction stories had a very strong influence on me and I like to celebrate his vision of aliens who might be impossible for we primates to understand.

2016

Nanomégas

Currently, the most visited wikifiction blog post of 2016 is Hierion Femtotubes. For the Exode Saga, I imagine that there are three related segments of the universe: the Hadronic Domain (the world as we know it), the Hierion Domain and the Sedronic Domain. Back in 2014 I got tired of describing connections between Earth and Eternity as "portals", so I invented the term "Hierion Tube".

Some of the characters in the Exode Saga are nanoscopic, so I imagined that there might be Hierion Tubes that are so small only someone like Qaz can pass through them. I enjoy making illustration for my stories. Of course, it is a challenge to depict a character who is invisibly small.

by Don Martin

2017
The most visited blog post from 2017 is currently Don Martin. In general, science fiction story tellers should not take themselves too seriously. Growing up in the 1960s, I knew Don Martin for his cartoon illustrations in Mad magazine. In the late 1950s, Don Martin got paid to illustrate a few pulp magazine stories and I'm glad I discovered them in 2017. Martin died 20 years ago 😢, but judging by the number of page views for Don Martin, many people roam the interwebs in search of his artwork.

2018

The tryp'At Guide to Oxypathin

In 2018 I celebrated the science fiction of Theodore Sturgeon who was born in 1918. My blog post called Fictional Chemistry is currently the most visited wikifiction blog post of 2018.

Sturgeon was a high school dropout, so nobody should expect him to have had anything coherent to say about hormones and their roles in the human body. In Sturgeon's story, progesterone is used inhibit the hero from having sex with his wife. 😕

I'm going to blame Sturgeon for the fact that I have created additional fictional chemistry for the Exode Saga. Thus there is now oxypathin and frenchkissin, two neuropeptides that were originally part of Asterothrope biology but which also play a role in development of the the Mind Clone Network.

wikifiction labels

2019
The eighth most frequently used "label" for blog posts here at the wikifiction blog is "telepathy", so it is surprising to reach the end of this blog post and only now mention telepathy. I've been making a special effort here in 2019 to settle my thinking about the role of telepathy in the Exode Saga.

Vulcan telepathy.

The most visited wikifiction blog page so far this year is Retrotelepathy. It would be fun to know what Asimov thought when he read Clifford Simak's 1939 story "Cosmic Engineers". Asimov went on to write stories about positronic robots such as Daneel and Dani who had telepathic powers and in turn those stories were highly influential on me.

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