100k Visitors

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Mayness says: "Meta-blogging?
Now get back to writing."

Time once more for a round of meta-blogging. Recently I've indulged in reflection and navel gazing in my 2015 year-in-review, after my 125th blog post of the year, my 500th total wikifiction blog post as well as my 1000th tweet. Now, the "special" occasion for this blog post is that Google servers have provided 100,000 page views for this blog.

In 2015 I had a record number of blog posts, 152. All of these "milestones" took six years to accomplish, so it is obvious that I'm not exactly burning up the interwebs. Still, it intrigues me that about 100 people a day drop by and view a page or 2 on this blog. The wikifiction blog is essentially a self-indulgent diary, my personal playground, and it is a puzzling phenomenon that anyone besides me comes for a visit. I say, "Welcome!" to all fellow nerds.

I'm 18,455,795th but I try harder.

The human family.

Images
Like most primates, I'm quite visually oriented. I enjoy illustrating my blog posts and I suspect that many people who drop in here for a visit are following an image to its source. Most people arrive here via the Google internet search engine.

The most frequently used search term that brings people to this blog is "denisova hominin". Back in 2010 I posted some brief comments about the importance of human evolution in Foundations of Eternity, my fan-fiction sequel to Isaac Asimov's Foundation saga.

Poster Collection

About the time that I started this blog I ended up with a Google+ account (I didn't even need to ask). Actually, I have 2; one associated with my YouTube account and one that stems from my Gmail account. Some of the traffic to this blog comes by way of those Google+ accounts.

Define "human"

If Google is to be trusted, almost 3,000,000 people have "viewed" my Google+ accounts and both of them link to this blog, but I've only ever made a handful of "posts" to Google+. I do actively use Google+ to archive some of my images: for example, see the Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers.

I suspect that the vast majority of the views of my other Google+ account are due to folks who are looking for other people who just happen to share my name. I should perform an experiment and create a new account called "Denisova hominin" as a publicity stunt!

Science If

cover art by Kenneth Fagg

From 1952 to 1974, If magazine published science fiction stories from authors such as Arthur C. Clarke, Jack Vance and Walter M. Miller. The January 1954 issue even included a review of the then recently-published Childhood's End.

Childhood's End was a book in which Clarke indulged his interest in paranormal phenomena. Sadly, Clarke seemed no better than the rest of us at wielding psychic powers and tuning into the future. Sure, with his technical knowledge he could predict the usefulness of innovations like communications satellites, but in his personal life he could not predict the future. In 1953 he got married, but in less than a year that was all over. He went off to Sri Lanka.

cover by David Stevenson

Not long after Clarke's death, Frederik Pohl blogged about his collaboration with Clarke to write The Last Theorem. In that novel we see one last version of Clarke's vision of advanced alien beings, now called the "Grand Galactics".

As is the case for other Clarke stories, there are intermediaries between the super-advanced Grand Galactics and we bumbling Earthlings. In The Last Theorem, the "One Point Fives" are sent to Earth by the Grand Galactics and they end up passing a bunch of high tech knowledge on to we primitive Earthlings, allowing us to eventually get on the good side of the Grand Galactics. Whew!

Asimov in Deep Time
read The Asimov Reality

Recently I indulged my fan fiction disease by starting a sequel to Jack Vance's novel Trullion. I quickly realized that I could write both Asimov and Vance into The League of Yrinna. However, why stop there? I simply had to also invite Clarke to the party (see here).

Apparently Asimov and Clarke first met in 1953. I'm now imagining a slightly different 1953 in the Ekcolir Reality.

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50 covers

It is fun to imagine a deep secret that stems from when Asimov and Clarke met in 1953, in the Ekcolir Reality.

In the Ekcolir Reality

The pace of scientific discovery was slightly faster in the Ekcolir Reality. In 1953, Harold Urey's Exobiology Institute held a conference called "Life in the Universe". Several science fiction writers with advanced degrees in science were invited to the conference, including Asimov (Ph.D. in biochemistry), Clarke (Ph.D. in physics), John Vance (Ph.D. in geochemistry) and Judith Grossman (Ph.D. in molecular biology).

Judith's research on synthetic agonists for nicotinic receptors led to self-experimentation and apparently frightening partial access to the Hierion Domain by way of the Bimanoid Interface. According to Gohrlay, Judith had to be extracted from Earth following her publication of sensitive information that she had obtained via the Bimanoid Interface.

January 2016

Using the Bimanoid Interface, Judith had been able to access information from the previous Reality, the Asimov Reality. Here in the Buld Reality, I find myself in a similar predicament. I've been tasked with telling the secret history of Deep Time, but it ain't easy.

Einstein in fiction.

Related Reading: Frederik Pohl

Next: Part 2 of The League of Yrinna.

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visit the Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers

Tales of Alien Worlds

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In my previous blog post I discussed a short story that Isaac Asimov published in 1977. Let's now go back to 1950 when "Legal Rites" was published in Weird Tales. Apparently Fred Pohl resurrected this story from among Asimov's rejected works.

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I long ago decided to write Asimov into The Foundations of Eternity. Not satisfied to stop there, Asimov also appears as a character in the other two books of the Exode Trilogy. Starting with hints that I received from Ivory Fersoni, I've previously explored the idea that Asimov might have been one of the lucky Earthlings who was given a second life out there among the stars.

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According to Ivory, Asimov once met Trysta Iwedon and I've previously mentioned that the one time I met Asimov at a SciFi convention, Thomas Iwedon was also present, so I know that they met at least once. Apparently Asimov was upset by the many annoying attempts made by Thomas to contact him, so it is not clear that they had a later meeting. Apparently Parthney came close to meeting Asimov, but it seems that Asimov stayed working at his typewriter and left it to his wife to hand Parthney a copy of one of Thomas' books (Daveed the Luk'ie).

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I've previously suggested the possibility that a "copy" of Asimov might return to Earth. In Exode, the physical details of anyone who is ever teleported are kept preserved and available in the Sedronic Domain. Thus, it is trivial for copies of people to be instantiated. Ivory told me that there is a copy of Asimov that is still alive.

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Carl Sagan found it difficult to escape the feeling that he had some kind of contact with his dead parents. What if there is some basis in reality for human interest in the ability of people to live on after death?

If some Earthlings have a genetic endowment that provides them with an innate ability to use the Bimanoid Interface then maybe they can have some sort of limited contact with "dead" people. I say "dead" because, in the case of Asimov, there might be one dead Asimov and a living copy of Asimov. Who knows? Maybe Sagan's parents also had "copies" who achieved some limited contact with their son.

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What if my interpretation of Ivory's tales has been wrong? What if the "copy" of Asimov already returned to Earth? Maybe Ivory had met the "copy" of Asimov and she was protecting his privacy and working to conceal him from the prying eyes of the media.

I must also account for my own undying fascination with the idea that Asimov was taken from us too soon. I might be one of the Earthlings who can access the Sedronic Domain, thus I might have some personal knowledge of the "copy" of Asimov, although the "knowledge" seems to be embedded at a fundamentally unconscious level of my mind.

I've never read "Legal Rites", but I'm intrigued by Asimov's attempts to write fantasy stories. According to Elton Gahr, "Legal Rites", is "more satire than either science fiction or fantasy". It is fun to imagine Pohl and Asimov laughing to the bank (although apparently Weird Tales never paid authors very much $) while making fun of fantasy and ghost stories by publishing "Legal Rites" in Weird Tales.

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I've been working for several years to find a way to write a fantasy story and so far I've failed. I've only gotten as far as imagining that Thomas could have written a spoof fantasy novel in an effort to attract Asimov's attention (see the image to the left).

Asimov returns from the "dead".
(click the image to enlarge)

The whimsical magazine cover to the right is having fun with the idea that it might be possible for me to make contact with the "copy" of Asimov.

I'm amused by the idea that a "copy" of Asimov might have had the opportunity to travel to the Andromeda galaxy and visit many new worlds.

Kach went to Andromeda in search for the Creators of the human species, but she could not even make contact with the Nereids since they long ago crossed over into the Sedronic Domain. However, I suppose there must still be a few Grendels on the Nereid home world, so it is fun to imagine Asimov telling the tale of his encounter with the Grendels. I'd be particularly thrilled if the "copy" of Asimov could provide me with some tips for how to make more efficient use of the Bimanoid Interface.

visit the Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers

Frederik Pohl

2019 update

I've occasionally read his blog, specifically for his lore about Asimov, but I don't think I ever read any of his science fiction stories. Pohl was probably of more value to the science fiction genre as a fan, an agent, an editor, a friend and a collaborator than as a lone writer slinging aliens and spaceships across the pages of his own stories. This is turning out to be a sad year with multiple losses from the "grandmaster level" of the science fiction ranks, first we lost Vance and now Pohl.

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I should probably read some of his "gateway" work. I'm curious about the "Heechee", but not sure that I can deal with "The Foe".

I'm also tempted to read The Last Theorem, but it sounds like Clarke and Pohl simply ran out of gas during the writing of that novel. It was fun the way Carl Sagan worked number theory into his science fiction novel, Contact, and I'd like to see the mathematical issues raised by Clarke and Pohl. I'm just not sure I could deal with the mercenary "One Point Fives".

I stand with Sagan and suspect that if there are ancient space-faring intelligences "out there", they won't be "testing" humanity and making dire decisions about sending an invasion fleet to Earth so as to prevent the "bad blood" of the human species from doing damage to the universe. I don't enjoy "military science fiction", but I think I can understand the need of Sci Fi authors who lived through World War II to put space wars into their stories. "I was in the war all right. I just wasn’t allowed to do any fighting."
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Related Reading:
2019: I finally read Gateway.
Discussion of a story by Asimov and Pohl.

Pohl on Vance

2019... how soon they forget (try this)