This is my 200th post to this blog, so I'm going to take a look back and reflect on some of my experiences with collaborative fiction writing and blogging that have changed the way I write science fiction stories.
In 2005 I started exploring the use of wiki websites as a tool for collaborative fiction writing. Prior to that time, working by myself, I had created the first story set in the Exodemic Fictional Universe. Exodemic was written as a kind of alternative history story, but I was feeling dissatisfied and constrained by that format. It was valuable for my growth as a writer to go online and find other science fiction writers who I could collaborate with and by doing so gain writing experience that expanded my fiction writing repertoire.
Elsewhere, I've summarized some the important online collaborative writing projects that I've had the pleasure to explore by making use of wiki technology and in 2009 I started blogging about my fiction writing, both here and atotherwebsites.
Looking back on what I've learned from these online experiences, I can identify a few types of activities that have been particularly fun and educational. The rest of this blog post provides a summary of those experiences. Fan Fiction
Back in 2005 I had recently discovered the joy of fan fiction. I've occasionally blogged about my condition: I now suffer from "fanfiction disease", the incurable desire to write stories that make use of famous characters created by others and it is my habit to do so by inserting those characters into stories that are set in the Exodemic Fictional Universe.
My first act of fan fiction sin involved the creation of an X-Files/Star Trekstory in which I brought together Gene Roddenberry's characters from Assignment: Earth with some X-Files characters. I've also sinned by making fan fiction using characters from science fiction novels published by Isaac Asimov, Jack Vance, Carl Sagan and Sydney J. van Scyoc.
The most egregious example of my tendency to hijack famous characters is a fan fiction novel called The Start of Eternity. As described in a recent blog post, I'm very pleased with The Start of Eternity because it allowed me to make use of the Huaoshy to provide an amusing ending to Asimov's Foundation Series. At the same time, I was forced to develop my thinking about the technological prowess of the Huaoshy and define some limits on their seemingly god-like powers.
Right now I'm feeling very happy with my fan fiction experience because as a consequence of my dabbling in this sinful activity I was able to imagine a satisfying backstory for my current science fiction writing project: Exode. That backstory involves time travel, but Exode is not a time travel novel.
Time Travel
One of the first science fiction movies that I remember seeing was The Time Machine. Even when I was ten years old I was disappointed by the idea of a time machine looked like a sleigh. The only time travel story that captivated me was The End of Eternity.
For most of my life I was a space travel snob, convinced that the proper domain of science fiction is stories about spaceships and distant planets with alien beings. However, I was haunted by the thought of Noÿs Lambent living out her life in the 20th century after having been born ten million years in our future. When I finally decided to write a fan fiction sequel to Asimov's Foundation and Earth I could not resist the temptation to include Noÿs in the story.
When I translocated Noÿs into the Exodemic Fictional Universe I had no desire to write a time travel story, rather, I wanted to put an end to time travel. This was possible for the Huaoshy, who, it turns out, were responsible for the existence of time travel. When the Huaoshy altered the dimensional structure of the universe so as to make possible faster-than-light travel, they inadvertently also made time travel possible. As described in The Start of Eternity, time travel was not invented by the Huaoshy. In a strange twist of fate, time travel was discovered by positronic robots.
Having developed the technology for time travel, the positronic robots of Earth caused a big headache for the Huaoshy. Eventually, the Huaoshy decided that the had to undertake one final dimensional engineering project that would make time travel impossible. At the same time, that shift in the dimensional structure of the universe ended the ability of positronic robots to exercise the telepathic abilities that Asimov had depicted in his robot stories.
About a billion years ago, in a distant galaxy, a sapient biological lifeform developed the technology that is required to harness fusion energy and antimatter-based spaceship propulsion. They started slowly exploring their galaxy while looking for the means to travel through space at speeds faster than light. These beings were not yet Huaoshy, but I'll use that label for convenience since they eventually transformed themselves into the Huaoshy.
The Huaoshy discovered that they could alter the dimensional structure of the universe. By first switching the dimensional structure from the "ground state" to a "transitional state" they made possible faster-than-light communications using hierions. This was a great advance for the management of their growing interstellar civilization.
However, the Huaoshy really wanted to be able to travel through space at faster-than-light speeds. They completed another even more technologically challenging alteration in the dimensional structure of the universe that gave them mastery over sedronic matter and which allowed for faster-than-light travel through space.
The Huaoshy were satisfied with that new dimensional structure and they slowly transformed themselves into an artificial lifeform composed of sedronic mater.
However, when humans invented positronic robots the Huaoshy discovered that their dimensional engineering had also made time travel possible. Eventually the Huaoshy made one more change to the dimensional structure of the universe which made time travel impossible while continuing to allow travel through space at faster-than-light speeds....which, afterall, is an important technology to have around for space operas!
Space Opera
My personal introduction to space opera was similar to that described by Will Stackey. When I was 12 years old it was fun to imagine building a spaceship and heading off to the stars...meeting aliens, defeating the bad guy and ending up with the girl...at least, for as long as the innocence lasted. Unfortunately, the more I learned about science the less I was able to tag along with Dr. Smith and his cosmic adventures, particularly when they involved spacecraft that flew at the speed of thought.
Smith can be blamed for starting my revolt against science fiction written by physical scientists. Given my interest in biology it should be no surprise that I have trouble when chemical engineer starts trying to get me to believe that thought "travels" faster than the speed of light.
By the time I was out of my teens I had developed a preference for "hard science fiction" that never seemed to violate the laws of physics or trot out biologically implausible plot elements.
For example, when I started writing Exodemic, I wanted to depict a future in which there was no faster-than-light travel, no time travel, and no telepathy or "mental powers"....and no religion, too.
I had reached the point in my thinking where I was more comfortable traveling slowly from star to star in generation ships than flashing across the universe in defiance of the laws of physics.
Then I was lucky enough to participate in the collaborative writing of The Search for Kalid. Left to myself, I never would have started writing a space opera. Three of the important things I learned from that collaboration were 1) that some characters can be crafted and developed in certain ways just because it is fun to do so (plot-driven science fiction can take itself too seriously), 2) it can be fun to include social elements like religion in a science fiction story even if the story is not directly about cultural elements like religion and 3) I was able to start making room in my science fiction for imaginary technologies like faster-than-light travel, teleportation and even forms of "weird biology" that would make possible "mental powers" and telepathy.
These changes in my science fiction writing "comfort zone" were very liberating. I've learned to live with "imaginary science".
Fictional Science
My science fiction writing has been powerfully shaped by three key ideas: 1) the Fermi Paradox, 2) Richard Feynman's realization that there is plenty of room at the bottom and 3) Clarke's suggestion that advanced technology can seem like magic.
The plot of Exodemic involves the realization by humans that small can be powerful and during the past year while creating Exode I've further refined my thinking about how to include the power of the very small in my fiction.
Nanotechnology
When I wrote Exodemic I used the term "nanodevice". At the Fiction Wikia I picked up the term "nanite" and started using it, for example to account for the ability of Isis to morph between human and cat forms.
Originally I conceptualize nanites as microscopic devices composed of conventional matter. However, I imagined that sophisticated nanorobotic devices could use fictional "hierions" to exchange information. Hierion-based communication between microscopically small symbionts inside people became a means of achieving telepathic communication.
Later, I developed the idea that there could be a type of matter formed by hierions where the bond lengths were zeptoscale. In Exode, the pek are composed vast numbers of nanorobotic devices that are made from of such matter.
Not satisfied with that level of miniaturization, the Huaoshy have taken their technology to an even smaller scale where intelligent artificial life exists in the form of sedronic matter in which bond lengths approach to within a few orders of magnitude of the Planck length.
Mental Powers
I never understood how Asimov imagined that telepathy would work in his stories. In Second Foundation he wrote about returning "the recording of his original brain-wave makeup" to Bail Channis in order to restore his erased memories, as if our memories are some kind of electronic software program to be loaded into a computer, or erased.
Asimov wrote that the Mule could sense the electric fields generated by a brain, thus allowing him to "read thoughts". He could also alter personalities using "mentalics", impressing his pattern of brain activity on others.
First Foundationers who lacked the biological equipment needed for "mentalic abilities", were shown using sensitive brain wave recording technology to detect evidence that the function of brains (like that of Homir Munn) had been altered by "mantalic manipulation". So, electromagnetism was the basis of "mentalics", but the brilliant Dr. Darell had to invent an electromagnetic "mental static" device with hundreds of circuits in order to prevent mentalic mind control by the Second Foundationers. Eh?
While working on The Search for Kalid I took the time to seriously think about how it might be possible for telepathy to evolve and be present in a biological species like we humans. Thus, the telastid was invented and used as the fictional explanation for telepathy.
Having grown comfortable with such an imaginary mechanism for telepathy I no longer have qualms about endowing technologically advance artificial lifeforms with "mental powers" that can involve hypothetical hierions and be entirely independent of any physics as primitive as electromagnetism.
Illustration and Video
In my teens, when I first started writing stories, I had a dream about a science fiction book that I would one day write. In my dream, that book had an animated cover like a miniature television screen. When we finally rumbled into this millennium I was pleased that my science fiction stories no longer had to be restricted to text.
One of the joys of writing stories in electronic format is that images and videos can be easily added to the text.
In the first scene of Exode that I imagined, Hana saw a business card from Parthney with the provocative text: "Change your world" and images of some planets located far away towards the center of the galaxy.
Hemmal became the most important such planet in Exode, the world where Parthney was born. The nearby planet Oib was where the Pla developed their plans for how to bring a technological culture to the people of Earth.
The Koly star system has one other inhabited world, Clu'ten'ium. No human would think to live there, but it is a world with some appeal to the Fru'wu, so that becomes the secret location of Lendhalen.
Blogging about Writing
As described above, my online experiences have greatly modified and expanded my interests as a writer. While I greatly enjoy collaborative writing, I've also learned to make use of blogging as a way to explore and develop a story.
Of course, when I say "develop a story" I really mean the development of the imagined universe that I think of as the Exodemic Fictional Universe. For me, that development process is endless fun because there is a logic to the Huaoshy. As an artificial lifeform that designed itself, the Huaoshy have an identity that is hidden from we humans, but if we keep chipping away we can reveal the structure of that logic.
There is no escape from the recursive nature of that logic. The Huaoshy created we humans and we find ourselves struggling to understand our origins. To do so, we we must imagine the Huaoshy and what they must be like in order for them to have created us and kept us so ignorant of our origins.
_________________________ Exode is the story of a small group of people who are trying to discover the nature of the aliens who made we humans. The story is under development and collaborating authors are welcome.
______________________
I recently saw the Star Trek: Aurora video which provides a nice demonstration of how far the technology for at-home CGI movie making has come. (Compare it to what was possible a few years ago.)
The plot of Star Trek: Aurora reminded me of how much I dislike Star Trek episodes with parallel universes (The Alternative Factor, Mirror, Mirror, The Tholian Web).
As a hard science fiction fan, I've struggled and come a long way
towards being able to suspend disbelief when scientific nonsense is
hoisted as a plot device within a Sci Fi story.
I've found ways to accommodate myself to faster-than-light space travel, telepathy and time travel, but parallel universes remain just beyond my grasp....particularly when I'm told that the "quantum flux structure" of one's RNA is involved in how the protagonist has moved between universes. My inability to suspend disbelief in such situations in no way detracts from how wonderful it is that one Sci Fi fan (Tim Vining) can now create a lovely CGI Star Trek-inspired episode.
___________________________________________________ POS TOS
In some cases it is easiest to describe the types of stories that did not interest me. As mentioned above, I have a personal problem with stories that involve "parallel universes", particularly when they drift into explorations of "good vs. evil". The Enemy Within, which pretended that the transporter could split animals into two near duplicate individuals, one "good" and meek and the other "evil" and aggressive, was, along with Mirror, Mirror, the answer to this question: What do you expect from a Hollywood script writer who is told to use a technological plot device to explore "good vs. evil"?
The Man Trap is an example of a Star Trek episode where we are subjected to a "monster of the week". I can accept that while out exploring the galaxy one might come across all kinds of strange creatures, but as a biologist I have a particularly hard time accepting the sorts of biologically-implausible creatures that Hollywood script writers invent. The fundamental problem is that I am not interested in horror as a genre. No surprise that I do not like The Enemy Within (by horror story author Richard Matheson)
Balance of Terror is an example of an episode where we must suffer through a war with Romulans or Klingons or some other proxy for "the bad guy". Endless space wars....going "where no man has gone before"? No, going where we always are forced to go by script writers who "cleverly" translate tired old Earthly conflicts into a new science fiction setting. Yawn. Sadly, the entire Star Trek: Aurora story is built on a mindless attack upon a defenseless cargo ship by a Romulan war ship. I enjoy Sci Fi for adventure, exploration and the fun of imagined science, not clanking plots extracted from Earth history and forced into the future.
Ten Interesting Episodes
Why go through this exercise of looking back at Star Trek episodes? I want to explore the extent to which my Exodemic stories have been influenced by watching Star Trek. Asimov suspected that most of his stories could be traced back to the work of other writers, particular the Sci Fi stories that he read in the "pulps" as a child. How much was I influenced by watching Star Trek as a child?
1. Assignment: Earth
This is one of several Star Trek episodes that involved time travel. However, what I like about Assignment: Earth has nothing to do with time travel. As discussed below, one of my favorite types of Star Trek story involves human interaction with aliens who have advanced technology.
We must ask: if the galaxy is full of planets where humanoid aliens long ago developed advanced technology (see #9, below), then did some of those aliens visit Earth long ago? If so, then Gary Seven can easily be imagined to be a human who was born on a distant planet and who functions as an Interventionist agent on Earth.
Isis and Gary Seven
What should we make of the "Isis" character who can shapeshift between human (April Tatro) and cat forms? It is fun to imagine that advanced artificial lifeforms might be composed of nanorobotic components (nanites) that can assemble themselves into any convenient form. So I imagine that Isis makes use of advanced alien technology and acts as a kind of supervisor for Gary Seven. It is not clear that Gary is aware of this.
By the Rules of Intervention, any changes to the historical course of events on Earth must be initiated by a human, but by stretching the rules a bit, Isis can travel to Earth with Gary...as long as she does not get caught. She disguises herself as a cat, except during a moment of weakness when she befuddles Earthling Roberta Lincoln (Teri Garr) by briefly taking on the form of a woman.
Maybe some day Assignment: Earth will finally be made into a television series. Related reading: X-Seven, Star Trek and X-Files crossover fanfiction.
Speaking of fanfiction, this is one of the Star Trek episodes that was written by Jean Lisette Aroeste. It is wonderful that a Star Trek fan could contribute to the series as a story author.
Also, speaking of time travel, this was one of the least offensive episodes of Star Trek that involved going back in time. However, if you insist on making this a time travel story, I'd make one change to this episode.
Drop the idea that when Spock goes back in time he starts acting like a "primitive" Vulcan of past ages.
Spock is half human... alone and stranded with Zarabeth (Mariette Hartley). If you want to have a Spock romance then just do it; don't introduce a lame time travel plot device that implied some sort of temporal panpsychism.
In The End of Eternity, Asimov imagined that it might be possible to focus a world's technological development on either time travel or space travel. If All Our Yesterdays was written today, a third option would be to imagine that the people of Sarpeidon developed some sort of computer-based advanced virtual reality technology. Rather than travel back in time, we can just as easily imagine that they upload their minds to a computerized virtual reality world.
Mr. Atoz
If you insist on the idea that Sarpeidon's star is about to explode and the Enterprise drops by at the last moment in order to rescue the inhabitants, then you could accomplish the mission, assuming that Zarabeth and Mr. Atoz and the entire population of the planet has been encoded on some fantastic sort of computer memory.
In Exode, I imagine that the Prelands devote significant effort to the design and perfection of mythical lives that they try to live out. In Exode, they do this with a minimum of technology (mostly nanites), but the people of Sarpeidon could easily be humans who were long ago taken to a world near the galactic center and given computer technology that allows for mind uploading to virtual realities.
Why is our galaxy full of planets that are populated by humans and humanoids? In Star Trek: The Next Generation it is discovered that our galaxy was "seeded" by an ancient humanoid species. In that episode it is concluded that those "ancient humanoids" are long gone, but it is more fun to imagine that their influence remains active and accounts for the presence of humans on ice worlds such as Sarpeidon and mysterious visitors to Earth like Gary Seven (#1, above). Related reading
Imagine that the humanoid inhabitants of Talos IV can trace their origins back to Earth, possibly 100,000 years in the past. The Talosians have been genetically modified and they look "alien", but it is fun to assume that they are descended from Earthlings.
Early in Earth's exploration of the galaxy, a crippled SS Columbia reachesTalos IV and Vina (played by Susan Oliver) is the only survivor of the ship's crew.
Vina is very ill and horribly disfigured by the time Columbia reaches Talos IV, but the people of Talos allow her to grow up happily within a virtual reality where she appears to be healthy.
Later, the Enterprise, at this time commanded by Christopher Pike, visits Talos IV. Pike is "invited" to stay as a companion with Vina, but he declines the invitation. Later, after Pike is injured and confined to a wheel chair, Spock takes him back to Talos IV so that he can live out his life with Vina, both of them seemingly free of their deformities within a happy virtual reality existence.
I don't think that Gene Roddenberry had the concept of a computer-generated virtual reality in 1966. He imagined that the Talosians had some sort of telepathic ability to make humans imagine that they were in locations that actually only existed only in their memories of past experiences.
I wish we could get in a time machine, go back to the 1960s and get Roddenberry to drop the idea of slave girls and adopt the concept of computerized virtual reality. There were a few science fiction authors such as Stanslaw Lem who had already written about virtual reality. Unfortunately, it is not clear that Roddenberry's knowledge of science fiction was much deeper than Hollywood fluff like Buck Rogers.
In All Our Yesterdays (#2, above), Mr. Atoz had robotic assistants. What Are Little Girls Made of? was another Star Trek episode with human-like robots. This was the first of three Star Trek episodes by Robert Bloch, two of which are discussed on this page (see #7 Catspaw, below).
This episode has similarities to the film Forbidden Planet. Imagine an ancient off-shoot of humanity that developed a sophisticated technology for creating robotic bodies that they could transfer their minds into. Those humans became extinct, but they left behind their technology.
It would be interesting to know how Roddenberry made casting decisions. Sherry Jackson was a likely candidate for Playboy magazine. The plot device of Kirk's ability to evoke emotional responses from robots was also included in Requiem for Methuselah (#10, below).
This is one of the Star Trek episodes that could have been cut to half the typical episode duration, but it was fun in how it depicted a humanoid starship captain (Balok) who seemingly just enjoyed cruising around the galaxy.
Kirk and Rand
There was so much time to kill in this episode that we even get to "enjoy" Dr. McCoy and Yeoman Rand trying to put Captain Kirk on a diet.
First, the tranya.
The image to the left shows Captain Kirk and Yeoman Rand in an early Star Trek publicity photo.
Kirk: "When I get my hands on the person who gave me a female
yeoman..."
McCoy: "What's the matter, don't you trust
yourself?"
After a tedious and long-drawn-out test of the intentions of the Enterprise crew, we finally meet the alien, Balok, and get a tour of the Fesarius. I like to imagine that there are actually millions of aliens living within the giant spaceship that initially confronts the Enterprise. In most Star Trek episodes we go and visit a distant planet, but it was strange when the Enterprise came across a generation ship that was transporting people between the stars. Look how easy it was for humans to develop warp drive. Why would anyone spend thousands of years traveling on a generation ship? In contrast, it was very satisfying to see the advanced technology of the Fesarius. Related reading
This is the last episode from Season One that is discussed here. This episode has similarities to the "Q" episodes that would come later in the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation.
In keeping withRoddenberry's formula for Hollywood success, Yeoman Ross (Venita Wolf) was yet another Playboy playmate (see Sherry Jackson (#4), above).
This episode is interesting because it depicts advanced and apparently disembodied aliens who give their young offspring, Trelane, a planet to play with. Trelane brings some of the Enterprise crew down to the planet to play, but eventually his parents notice the mischief he gets into.
This is the second episode by Robert Bloch that is discussed here (see #4, What Are Little Girls Made of?, above). This was the seventh episode of the second season and featured an iconic redshirt crew member, Jackson, who dies quickly at the beginning of the show. Actually, Jackson wears a yellow shirt :(
Korob and Sylvia are alien visitors from a distant galaxy. Playing out Clarke's 3rd Law, the aliens make use of an advanced device that allows them to seemingly have magical powers. However, while our galaxy swarms with humanoids, these creatures are fundamentally different and their telepathic powers give them the false impression that human nightmares and Hollywood horror movie tropes define human thought.
Korob eventually can't tolerate the tricks that Sylvia plays on the hapless humans and he tries to help them escape. Sylvia enjoys the experience of using a human body form, although she also temporarily takes the form of a cat.
Kirk on alien probe duty
Sylvia
In keeping with Star Trek tradition, Kirk is ready and able to indulge in some human-alien sex, particularly if it will allow Kirk to defeat the evil alien. Kirk enthusiastically volunteers to probe Sylvia (Antoinette Bower) ... at least before he gets a glimpse of her true physical form.
The image to the right shows the pipe cleaner model of Sylvia's true alien form. Ah, the glory days of pre-CGI special effects! I spent many years being puzzled over the lame animation of the death of Korob and Sylvia, it being a meaningless blur when seen in fuzzy black and white on a small television screen.
The Catspaw episode has similarities to By Any Other Name. By Any Other Name was built upon an alien invasion plot, while in Catspaw the aliens are simply explorers. I'll take inept exploration over a lame invasion.
This episode is just plain fun and it is interesting because of what it can tell us about the art of creating a good television show. The story of how this episode was created by Jerrold Friedman is almost as entertaining as the show itself.
McCoy: "The nearest thing I can figure out is they're born pregnant, which seems to be real time saver."
This is the only Star Trek episode with Klingons that I can tolerate, mainly because we do not have to try to take the Klingons seriously....all the fake political hand-wringing does not appear on the screen during this episode.
This is the last episode from season two that I discuss here. Sargon and his wife, Thalassa, have been disembodied minds for the past million years. Sargon suggests that in the distant past his people might have visited worlds like Earth, long before there was a modern human species.
I wish they could have come up with a better reason for why Sargon et al were trapped in their bottles, but it was apparently impossible, in the middle of the Cold War, to do other than say there had been a catastrophic war.
Sargon
In this episode, two aliens transfer their minds into the bodies of Kirk and astrobiologist Dr. Ann Mulhall (played by Diana Muldaur).
Director's instructions to Diana Muldaur: "Try to smile."
This is one of the Star Trek episodes where Spock (Leonard Nimoy) had to play a very nasty character (the evil alien, Henoch). Nimoy was very good at being a dick. Related reading
Along with All Our Yesterdays (#2, above), this was a third season Episode. This episode strikes me as the most interesting of those written by Jerome Bixby. Flint, born on Earth thousands of years in the past, was a seemingly immortal human. Some of the great historical figures from Earth's past were actually Flint, who would live in various locations, pretend to age, and then move on.
In the Space Age, after leaving Earth, Flint settled on the planet Holberg 917-G where he began the task of creating a robotic woman (Rayna) who could be his eternal mate.
Rayna and Flint
Kirk arrives and falls in love with Rayna, triggering a jealous conflict with Flint. Worse still, Kirk's romantic intentions have caused Rayna to develop powerful but confused emotions. Unable to accommodate her new feelings for Kirk and Flint, her artificial mind disintegrates.
At the end of this episode, McCoy reports that Flint is now dying. McCoy: "You see, Flint, in leaving Earth with all of its complex fields within which he was formed, sacrificed immortality." How might we accommodate out thinking to this mumbo jumbo? Imagine that various advanced alien species have been visiting Earth in the distant path. Might an Earthling become inadvertently infected by life-extending alien nanites, possibly nanites intended for an interventionist agent like Gary Seven (#1, above)? Related Reading: The Man from Earth
Conclusions.
Fun. Good Sci Fi plays with ideas. The Trouble With Tribbles (#8, above) is good fun, but it did not deal with an interesting Sci Fi topic.
It's green
Extragalactic Aliens. Most Star Trek stories play out among the stars of our galaxy. Two episodes explored visitors from another galaxy; Catspaw (#7, above) and By Any Other Name. In both stories, the aliens took on human form, which was their downfall. I enjoyed Catspaw more because it did not try to introduce a lame alien invasion plot. Both of these episodes had good doses of fun. How many alien invasions are stopped by drinking the aliens under the table? The silly Halloween theme of Catspaw is about as close to horror as I like to be. For my own stories, I've never been able to buy into the idea that our galaxy is full of humans and humanoids but other galaxies have different forms of life.
Humanoid Galaxy. Assignment: Earth and Requiem for Methuselah (#s 1 and 10, above) are easy for me to relate to my interest in stories that are set in the Exodemic Fictional Universe. If aliens visited Earth long ago, why don't we have evidence of those visits? Or are we, unknowingly, the handiwork of alien visitors?
I can imagine that the other six episodes on my list are all stories about humanoids who originated on Earth long ago. The Squire of Gothos- 2,000,000 Return to Tomorrow - 1,000,000 What Are Little Girls Made Of? - 500,000 All Our Yesterdays - 250,000 The Menagerie - 125,000 The Corbonite Maneuver - 50,000
It is fun to imagine that Balok's ancestors were taken off of Earth 50,000 years ago: maybe they were related to Homo floresiensis. In Exode, the Buld clan members mostly live on space ships, not planets. Imagine the surprise of Earthlings if we eventually learn how to travel between the stars, only to find that there are hundreds of human-variants out there, humans having long ago been taken off of Earth then genetically and culturally modified.
To what extent can my interest in the Exodemic solution to the Fermi Paradox be traced back to watching Star Trek when I was young? I'm sure that I latched onto the suggestion from Return to Tomorrow that an older humanoid species could have spread humans around the galaxy. I was never a great fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but when I saw The Chase I was put off by the idea that a holographic message could be encoded in DNA molecules that had evolved over billions of years. According to this page, The Chase was inspired by Sagan's novel, Contact. When I started writing Exodemic I was certainly thinking a lot about the reasonableness of "ancient aliens" as depicted in Sagan's novel. However, Sagan never adequately explained how it might be possible for technologically advanced aliens to keep their hands off of worlds like Earth. Certainly the Huaoshy were not willing to take a hands-off policy towards Earth.
First Foundationers who lacked the biological equipment needed for "mentalic abilities", were shown using sensitive brain wave recording technology to detect evidence that the function of brains (like that of Homir Munn) had been altered by "mantalic manipulation". So, electromagnetism was the basis of "mentalics", but the brilliant Dr. Darell had to invent an electromagnetic "mental static" device with hundreds of circuits in order to prevent mentalic mind control by the Second Foundationers. Eh?
