Back in 2019 I had a "year in review" blog post called
2019 Nuggets. Last year I built my end of the year review around
images that I had included in blog posts during 2020. Here in 2021 I had a lot of fun writing a short science fiction novel called
Old Time Gaming and gold mining had a big role in the plot of that story. So, here in this blog post, I'll look back at some golden nuggets from my 2021 year in blogging; the posts attracting the most visitors during each calendar month.
January. The most visited wikifiction blog post for January was "Grandma Acyreff". That blog page has the first chapter of the science fiction novel The Alastor Network.
One of my favorite novels is
Trullion, by
Jack Vance. I like to fantasize that in the far future of the
Asimov Reality, there was a human telepath breeding project in
Alastor Cluster.
The Alastor Network made a good start towards outlining that project and ended up with 23 chapters and almost 100,000 words.
An important source of telepathy genes in the Asimov Reality was a human variant from Deep Time: the Asterothropes. However, for The Alastor Network, I imagined that it was possible to mix human genes with genes from alien species (such as the Plesypy) that had evolved on various planets of Alastor Cluster.
February. The most visited wikifiction blog post from February was "The Pheni Effect"; on that blog page is chapter 13 of The Alastor Network. In that chapter, one of the plot points is the fact that artificial minds called embroids have been developed and they can communicate across interstellar distances using a form of telepathy. One such embroid mind (named QB5) and the mind of another more conventional artificial intelligence device (Josef) have merged to form a new entity called Joqueline.
The events described in The Alastor Network occur during the period of time known as the Trysta Truce. Human society is under restrictions that prevent human scientists from developing a science of hierion physics. However, humans have been provided with access to technology that makes interstellar travel quite easy, a key feature of Vance's Alastor novels. In his stories, Vance only hinted at human telepathic abilities, but for The Alastor Network I delve deeply into the details of telepathy.
March. The most visited blog post for March was "
The Hui-chi"; on that blog page is the first part of the science fiction story
Meet the Phari. I was able to complete chapter 11 of
Meet the Phari before I went on my summer vacation. Eventually, I hope to be able to complete that novel which is part of a series of stories going back to
2016. For
Meet the Phari I imagined another type of technology for technology-assisted telepathy: nanocoids.
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Illustrating science fiction stories with Daz Studio software - image source
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April. The most visited blog post from April was "
Daz 2021". I made a few illustrations for stories such as
Meet the Phari by using the
Daz Studio software. The frame shown to the right originated from an
animation that I made. I also used this image as part of a "teaser"
comic for
Meet the Phari.
May. In May of 2021, I was on a
mission to read all of the science fiction stories that were published by
Jack Vance during the year 1951. The most visited blog post for May was "
Vance's Worlds Beyond". In that blog post I looked back at Vance's story called "Men of the Ten Books".
Often when I read old science fiction stories I imagine how they might have been written in an alternate Reality where women dominated the early years of the science fiction literary genre. "Men of the Ten Books" is one of Vance's stories that features a "lost world". I suppose Vance grew up reading stories about "lost continents" and so it was natural to go to the "next level" and write stories about lost planets.
June. The most visited blog post in June was "The Hurria I Go" in which I commented on a set of old stories about meeting space aliens. I like the idea that if it is ever possible for aliens from a distant exoplanet to reach Earth, it might be some sort of artificial lifeform that makes it across the vast interstellar depths of space.
One old "first contact" story involving robots is "Lost Memory" by Peter Phillips. This is actually a "lost world" story where the resident robots have forgotten their origins. I can't prevent myself from contrasting this robotic forgetfulness to Isaac Asimov's robot Daneel who is depicted as retaining all of his memories across a span of 20,000 years. In Asimov's story, it was Daneel and his telepathic powers that caused the entire human population of the galaxy to forget the location of Earth. Only at the very end of the Foundation saga did Asimov raise the specter of aliens arriving from beyond the edge of our galaxy.
July. During July, I went on vacation and only had two blog posts; the most visited one is "
Destination Mars" where I discuss some of the science fiction elements in the computer game,
Civilization VI. I'll blame my summer time computer gaming vacation for why I did not completed
Meet the Phari (see
March, above). After playing the "
Outback Tycoon" game scenario I began writing a new novel called
Old Time Gaming.
August. As mentioned above (see
June), I'm rather infatuated with the idea that artificial lifeforms are most likely to be the first alien visitors to reach Earth. In the
Exode Saga, I pretend that "ancient aliens" might have visited Earth billions of years ago and played an important role in bringing the human species into existence. One of my favorite "ancient aliens" is
Many Sails, a sentient spaceship. The most visited wikifiction blog page for August was "
Old Time Gaming" which has the first chapter of the novel
Old Time Gaming.
For Old Time Gaming I introduced a new humanoid prosthetic for Many Sails named Manny. Many Sails can rearrange her zeptite components and take on any convenient physical form. When she needs to visit Earthlings, Many Sails can adopt the appearance of either Mahasvin or Manny.
September. The most visited blog page for September is "
Free Gold" which holds chapter 6 of
Old Time Gaming. Within
Old Time Gaming, one of the characters is depicted as writing a story about time travel. The first chapter of that time travel story ended up in a blog post during September (see
Dr. Twissell). For
Old Time Gaming,
Rylla is sent back into Australia of the 1800s. This prompted me to imagine what kind of time travel story might be written by someone living in the early 1800s. What I came up with is a novel called
Time Portal. In that story, the first time machine can only move time travelers backwards in time. In the case of Manny the bumpha, she has access to advanced time travel technology that allows travel in both directions along the time axis.
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in the Ekcolir Reality
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October. In October I began a search through
Philip Dick's writings in order to learn about his style of science fiction story telling. The most visited blog post for October is "
In My World". I'm a big fan of stories about "mind transfer", moving someone's mind into a new body. In 1952 Philip Dick published a story called "
Beyond Lies the Wub" in which a meat-loving Earth-man eats an alien and in so doing
turns into the alien. Sadly, Dick provided no explanation for this seemingly magical mind transfer, but for my own stories I like to imagine that in the far future it might become possible to encode minds in a nanoscopic substrate composed of
zeptites or some other form of matter that is unknown to current Earthly science.
November. The most visited blog post for November is "
Irhit in the Ekcolir Reality" which has the first chapter of the science fiction story
Telepaths of Site Q. In
Telepaths of Site Q, Manny the bumpha meets
Grean the Kac'hin. When growing up, Grean had a close friend named
Delpha. For
Telepaths of Site Q, I imagine that Manny also lived as a childhood friend of Grean, helping prepare her for the task of capturing
Eternity from the
positronic robots of Earth.
Grean is very busy working with her long-time adversary Trysta the Asterothrope to bring into existence a Reality in which Earthlings can acquire the advanced technology needed for interstellar space travel without managing to trigger a technological catastrophe and cause the extinction of the human species. Manny shows up at Observer Base and tells Grean about a new human telepath breeding project that involves Irhit the tryp'At.
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Figure 2. Wysy, Yenti and Riea.
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December. During December, I completed the 12 chapter story Telepaths of Site Q. Figure 1, above, shows a depiction of Manny while she is using the physical form of a Kac'hin hermaphrodite. In Figure 2 (to the right), Riea, an Asterothrope hermaphrodite, is depicted as being about half as tall as the Asterothrope female, Yenti. The third telepath from siteq who appears in Telepaths of Site Q is an artificial lifeform, Wysy. Yenti, Riea and Wysy visit Observer Base as part of Manny's human telepath breeding project. "A Femtocoid Fail" is the most frequently visited December blog post.
The most visited wikifiction blog post in all of 2021 is Grandma Acyreff.
Next: Hal Clement 1922 - 2022
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