Wiki Fiction Blog, Year 1

Asimov and comrades.

This blog post is a look back at the first year of this blog. There were 84 blog posts and about 44,000 words. That means there was a new post about every 4-5 days and about 520 words per post. There were an average of 7 posts each month and the most active month was February with 13 posts.

During this past year I have become very involved with writing The Start of Eternity, a fan fiction sequel to Isaac Asimov's time travel novel. In honor of all the attention I've paid to Asimov's science fiction in this blog I selected an image that includes Asimov to grace this blog post. That image was created for a blog post called Asimov the Collectivist.

If I have to select one blog post from the past year as my favorite, it would be Time Loop. While developing the plot of The Start of Eternity, I came to realize that it would be fun to write Asimov himself into the story. During the past year I have benefited from writing about my fiction, both here and in my on-wiki blog.

Year 2. I don't enjoy writing fiction if I feel like I have a deadline or a due date. However, it might be possible for me to complete The Start of Eternity before the end of 2010. I hope that during the next year there might be at least one person who sees this blog and decides to participate in some collaborative fiction writing. Although The Start of Eternity has grown to 130,000 words, new collaborating authors are welcome, either for that project or another collaboration.

The power of an "edit" button

Image source

I was recently searching the internet (Google scholar search) and came across "Encyclopedia Of Science Fiction" by Don D'Ammassa. It boggles my mind to see science fiction writers such as D'Ammassa who have familiarized themselves with every corner of the speculative fiction literature. However, in this age of the internet I tend to first turn to online resources before consulting printed books.

Wikipedia has a 2,700 word article about Isaac Asimov's time travel novel The End of Eternity. Wikipedia's article has been collaboratively written by Asimov fans such as Johnny Pez. I have a certain amount of faith that someone like Johnny Pez has actually read The End of Eternity.

Can a collaboratively and openly written resource such as Wikipedia hope to provide science fiction fans with better encyclopedic information than a professionally authored and print published book such as D'Ammassa's "Encyclopedia Of Science Fiction"? Can any one writer, no matter how well read, actually keep up with a crowd of collaborators?

Here is what D'Ammassa had room to say about The End of Eternity in his encyclopedia: "The framework is a now familiar one: An organization stands independent of time, sending its agents to prevent alterations of history. Asimov told the story from the viewpoint of a rogue agent who tries to manipulate history for the benefit of the woman he loves." Eh? Well, I suppose Brinsley Sheridan Cooper was the agent who was used to generate the time loop at the heart of the Mallansohn Reality, but why describe that in the twisted way of D'Ammassa?

The Wikipedia article correctly states that the function of the time travel "organization" (called Eternity; populated by the Eternals) is to make alterations in time, the so-called Reality Changes. I like to think that the Cooper time loop was imposed by the positronic robots who secretly controlled Eternity. A few of the Eternals (such as Twissell) simply "play along" and act to support the existence of the time loop.....seemingly never questioning how it came into existence.

I agree that the protagonist of The End of Eternity, Andrew Harlan, becomes something of a "rogue agent". He wants to save "the woman he loves" from a Reality Change and when he thinks he has lost her, he strikes out and tries to destroy Eternity.

It turns out that "the woman he loves", Noÿs Lambent, is a secret agent from the far future who was able to deftly manipulate Harlan and use him as a tool for achieving the destruction of Eternity. Working from within the cultural perspective the early 1950s, Asimov did well to create a character who was a "modern" liberated woman. I've spent many years wondering how Noÿs might have shaken up the 20th century after arriving in the 1930s. That was one of my main motivations for making The Start of Eternity, a fan fiction sequel to The End of Eternity.

27 years after publishing The End of Eternity, Asimov gave us a fun new bit of background information in Foundation's Edge: "it was the robots who established Eternity". If we run with that idea then we have to ask if Noÿs, while manipulating Harlan, was also being manipulated by unseen robots. According to Don D'Ammassa, Asimov's novels are short on literary depth, but it is a whole lot of fun when Asimov created so many layers: robots using Noÿs to end Eternity, Noÿs manipulating Harlan, Harlan plotting to blackmail Senior Computer Twissell, Twissell plotting to use Harlan to assure the continued existence of Eternity.

Sadly, Asimov was taken from us before he had a chance to finish his task of merging his many stories into a single fictional universe and showing us the ultimate fate of the Foundation. Perhaps Asimov's fans, working in the spirit of fan fiction, can use the power of collaborative tools like wiki to tie up the loose ends.

Related Reading: The Foundations of Eternity is a fan fiction sequel to Asimov's The End of Eternity. 

O happy dagger!

Romeo and Juliet. Source.

I was amazed and pleased when Isaac Asimov linked many of his novels into a coherent "future history". In Foundation's Edge Asimov mentioned the idea that "Eternals" had used their time travel technology to select a Reality in which humans would spread through the galaxy. The Start of Eternity is a fan fiction story that explores the relationship between Asimov's time travel novel (The End of Eternity) and his Foundation Saga.

The main character in The Start of Eternity is a genetically-modified Neanderthal named Gohrlay. Originally I wrote a 2,700 word "teaser" that was intended to be the only part of the novel showing Gohrlay. It might at first seem strange that the protagonist of a novel would only appear in one short scene, but mind transfer is an important element of the story and Gohrlay's mind continues on after her death.

source

In popular culture minds get transferred between bodies as easily as we might put on someone's hat, but The Start of Eternity attempts to be a bit more realistic about the technical challenge of mind transfer. Our human minds are produced by our biological brains. Our minds depend on the physical structure of our brains. In order to transfer Gohrlay's mind into a new body, a means must be found to reveal the details of her brain's structure. Sadly, the crude "brain scan" technology developed by Neanderthal scientists on the Moon destroys brain tissue while it scans the structure of neural networks in a brain.

As the story is told in The Start of Eternity, the brain scanning technology has existed on the Moon for hundreds of years, but nobody volunteers to have their brain scanned and destroyed during the process. It is not at all clear that it will be possible to instantiate the scanned mind in a new body. The plan is to make a copy of the scanned brain structure in the form of "positronic brain circuits", but the lunar roboticists have no way of knowing if the copied brain circuits will actually produce a functioning mind. All they know for sure is that after the brain scan, the person who has their brain scanned will be dead.

assembling R. Gohrlay's body

Gohrlay "volunteers" to have her brain scanned. Is this suicide? Is The Start of Eternity in danger of "glamorizing suicide"? As discussed here, I don't view Gohrlay's death as conventional suicide. She has been guided towards participation in the mind downloading experiment by the crafty Anagro, a robot of alien design. Every time Gohrlay has doubts about participating in the experiment, her thoughts are adjusted by nanorobotic devices that swarm through her brain and control her behavior.

Does Gohrlay have "good reasons" for participating in an experiment that will end her life? Gohrlay is a criminal who has had large parts of her memory disrupted by the nanites that swarm through her brain. She no longer has memories of her family and friends or the details of her crime. She remembers that she grew up with a desire to be an Observer and study Earth, but she is now forbidden from having any contact with the Observer corps.

Is it wrong to depict suicide in fiction? For me, one of the most memorable depictions of suicide in science fiction is in Level 7 by Mordecai Roshwald (see this review). The story is told from the perspective of Push-Button Officer X-127, who robotically pushed the button that kills not only himself but all of humanity. Do such fictional accounts of suicide encourage or discourage suicidal behavior?

I have not seen Avatar, but as discussed here, it seems to stand in the long line of movies where the "hero" is ready and willing to die for some "good reason". Depending on the outcome of the battle, which culture you come from, the tone of the press coverage and who writes the history book, the "warrior hero" might either be viewed as a suicidal maniac or the heroic father of his country.

Does The Start of Eternity "glamorize" suicide by showing Gohrlay's mind living on in robotic form as the mother of tribe of positronic robots? Is someone reading The Start of Eternity in danger of thinking, "I'm going to kill myself because Gohrlay did"? I don't think so. I think the message in The Start of Eternity is that Gohrlay has been manipulated by Anagro. The reader sees that a crafty alien is taking advantage of the fact that humans do make life and death decisions. Anagro creates a "tragic scene" for Gohrlay in which those around her respect her decision to participate in the mind downloading experiment. Everyone has been pushed towards accepting Gohrlay's death by Anagro's manipulations.

A theme that arose in Asimov's fiction is intuition. Several of Asimov's characters were depicted as simply knowing things, without knowing how it was possible that they knew. The culture that Gohrlay finds herself in was created by aliens and is controlled by aliens. Gohrlay has latent "mentalic" abilities that help her sense that it would be better to die and be "reincarnated" as a robot than continue living as a puppet of the aliens.

There is a similar situation in Asimov's story "The Mule", first published in 1945. Ebling Mis is under the mental control of a man who has "mentalic" powers and who is driving Mis to his death in an effort to learn the secret location of the Second Foundation. Was it irresponsible to depict Mis as uninterested in life and willing to die, just as long as he could learn the secret? The only "onlooker" who is not under the mentalic control of the Mule was Bayta Darell. Was Asimov irresponsible for showing that Bayta kills Mis in order to keep him from revealing the great secret?

I think it is no more likely that a reader will commit suicide after reading about Gohrlay than a reader is likely to commit murder after reading about Bayta Darell.

Related reading: does Gohrlay actually die in the brain scanner?

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Wearable Technology in Fiction

Maybe the decade from 2000 to 2009 could be called the Dick Tracy decade. Mobile phone technology finally caught up with the Dick Tracy science fiction wrist phone of the early 1940s.

I suspect that when our grand children look back, they will view these times as a series of Digital Decades that will have come to comprise a Computing Century. I think computer miniaturization and mobility are the number one digital development for the past decade, but Web 2.0 technologies like wikis, blogs, Facebook and Twitter come in a close second.

Another piece of wearable technology from the golden age of science fiction is Isaac Asimov's "temporal field generator", which is a plot device used in Asimov's time travel story, The End of Eternity.

For Asimov's imagined time travel technology, most paradoxes are avoided by supposing that a new Reality is created if you go back in time and change the course of events. As long as you wear your "physiotime field generator" you will not be erased from existence by killing your own grandparent.

Noÿs asks: "And what if they make the Change while you’re there?”

Andrew replies: “It won’t catch me...my wrist generator keeps me in physiotime so that a Change can’t affect me, you see.”

We still have a long way to go in order to have a real "physiotime field generator", but wearable technology already includes some devices for monitoring and controlling physiological processes. Some people wear heart rate and blood pressure monitors.

In The Start of Eternity, during the early days of time travel there are no personal physiotime field generators. R. Nahan travels back in time to save Gohrlay, but he is "caught" in the Reality Change and erased from existence. Asimov imagined time travel technology coming into existence several centuries in our future, but he also played around with the idea of taking knowledge of time travel into the past in order to speed the development of time travel technology. Why did Nahan never get help from his future self? I blame the Huaoshy.

If time travel is possible, what would keep the past from being over-run by meddling time travelers? Asimov imagined a future time in which humans decided that time travel was a BIG MISTAKE, so they eliminated the technology. But if a technology is discovered once, can you really prevent it from being discovered a second time? A "sure fire" way to make time travel impossible is explored in The Start of Eternity.

Images. 1) The Dick Tracy "wrist radio". 2) A modern wrist phone. 3) Wearable heart rate and blood pressure monitor. 4) Time travel kettle (for image credits click here).

The nature of reality

Last month I started thinking seriously about the nature of physical reality. In his novel, The Gods Themselves, Isaac Asimov imagined the implications of possible contact between our universe and another universe where there were slightly different physical laws. Asimov's story, The Gods Themselves, was the first science fiction novel I ever read. It is fair to say that "my mind was blown" by the idea of multiple universes, each with its own set of physical laws (this was before I had ever taken a physics course).

Any science fiction story involving communications between "multiple universes" raises the problem of how it is possible to send information between two universes. I've seldom been satisfied with the "explanations" given by authors for how it might be possible to communicate between universes. For example, in his book, Paths to Otherwhere, James Hogan suggested that it might be possible for your conscious mind to "take over" the brain of your analog self in another parallel universe. As a biologist, there are few things that annoy me more than physical scientists who start playing fast and loose with the nature of consciousness. It is fun to imagine other universes, but saying that our conscious minds can magically migrate between universes is a plot device that is not worthy of the kind of hard science fiction that I prefer.

Last month I blogged about Time Travel and Mental Powers and expressed my long-standing uneasiness about science fiction stories that involve time travel, telepathy and fast-than-light travel. I think we should never tire of trying to devise better plot devices for our science fiction stories. Even if most readers are not bothered by a wave of the hand (hyperspace jump, go through the worm hole, etc, etc.) justification for science fiction plot elements, the true spirit of hard science fiction is to have something more scientific up your sleeve than just a wave of your hand.

Including multiple universes in science fiction stories has become quite common. One of the most audacious types of story involving the idea of multiple universes is the type involving the idea that it might be possible for humans or some species with advanced technology to engineer entirely new universes, or, at the very least, engineer changes to the physical laws of our universe. In his novel, Contact, Carl Sagan explored the idea that our universe might have been engineered by a "designer" who established the physical laws of our universe in such a way that a coded message was built into the structure of our universe...a message that unambiguously shows that our universe was designed, not simply created by chance. Albert Einstein famously said that he wanted to know if there was any choice in how our universe was created. More recently, evidence has been found suggesting that Einstein's cosmological constant is not a constant, that its value has changed during the billions of years that our universe has existed. If such a "universal parameter" of our universe can change spontaneously, maybe it really is possible to make modifications to the fundamental physical properties of the universe. Maybe "different universes" can differ in the details of their physical laws.

Imagine that the diagrams in this blog post represent the "dimensional state" of a universe. Further, imagine that it might be possible, by way of some kind type of high-energy physics experiment to trigger a change in the "dimensional state" of our universe. I think that Carl Sagan hinted at some such engineering project in his novel, Contact. I've been thinking that maybe our universe came into being by way of spontaneous symmetry breaking that "selected" among the possible "dimensional states". There could have been some "ground state", possibly the most energetically favorable set of physical laws. However, maybe there is a way to harness prodigious amounts of energy and shift our universe out of the "ground state" into a slightly more interesting state. What might be "more interesting"? Well, imagine that it is strictly impossible for anything to travel faster than the speed of light in the "ground state", but maybe faster-than-light communications and faster-than-light space travel might be possible upon a small engineered modification to the physical laws of the universe.

Being able to alter the physical laws of our universe might be one of the most important features of our universe. I'm exploring this idea in The Start of Eternity, a sequel to Asimov's time travel novel, The End of Eternity. The story is still under construction and collaborating authors are welcome.

Images. The images in this blog post are explained in some detail at the "meta" page for The Start of Eternity. These images are available for use under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike license.

Time Travel and Mental Powers

By "mental powers" I mean abilities such as telepathic communication of thoughts, precognition and the "mantalic" abilities described by Isaac Asimov in some of his science fiction stories. Time travel is another popular plot element in science fiction. I am a fan of Asimov's Foundation Universe and the way he united it with his Robot Stories. I also like the idea that his time travel story The End of Eternity can be linked to the Foundation Universe by means of telepathic robots who used time travel to assure that the Foundation would come into existence. 

Time Travel and Mental Powers are popular science fiction plot elements that have long made me uncomfortable. Along with Faster-Than-Light space travel, I have no reason to suspect that Time Travel and Mental Powers are possible. I enjoy hard science fiction and I always feel most comfortable when stories stay away from plot elements that seem to contradict what we know about the universe. However, I've been trying to become more open to plot elements like Time Travel and Mental Powers. For example, I worked hard to get comfortable with telepathy in "The Search for Kalid". To do so, I had to invent an entire "science of telepathy" that I could imagine as speculative future science. 

I've long been puzzled by the way that Asimov seemed to pull the idea of telepathic robots "out of the blue". My first step towards finding a way to accept telepathy within the context of "hard science fiction" was the story Mnemtronium. The idea behind that story is that it might be possible to discover some "new physics" that would make telepathy possible. I'm pleased with the way the idea of "T particles" developed as a plot device for telepathy in "The Search for Kalid" and I look forward to further developing the idea in "The Start of Eternity", particularly in the context of robots with positronic brains.

When I started writing stories set in what I call the Exodemic Fictional Universe I did not allow myself the luxury of Faster-Than-Light space travel. However, I'm certainly dealing with FTL travel in The Start of Eternity and I was able to live with FTL communication in VirileMail. Of course, "The Start of Eternity" also deals with Time Travel (as imagined by Asimov), although my intention is to arrange things so that Time Travel becomes impossible by the end of "The Start of Eternity". I still have mixed feelings about FTL travel in science fiction. I think there are many interesting science fiction stories that could be written about a future without it, but most people just reflexively assume that outer space is boring unless you can travel quickly from world to world. I'm very troubled by time travel in science fiction. Asimov's "The End of Eternity" has some appeal because it puts a limit on the use of time travel. Without such a limit, time travel scenarios tend to degenerate into silly fantasies such as "time travel wars" where people endlessly revert each other's changes to time. 

I started thinking about Time Travel and Mental Powers today when I was playing around on Facebook. I began experimenting with Twitter earlier this year and I finally got around to starting a Facebook account. I found a Facebook group devoted to Asimov and a discussion post there from Paul Levinson. This knol contains the topic of that Facebook post (the Facebook post links to where you can listen to an audio version). I'll explain in my next blog post how Levinson's topic (How Pierre-Simon Laplace’s Demon Finds a Stage in the Foundation and Dune Trilogies) and his novel "The Plot to Save Socrates" got me thinking about Time Travel and Mental Powers...and exactly what I'm thinking along those lines. 

Image. I made this as a cover image for "The Search for Kalid". This image was made by using a few copyleft images: Details and Credits.

Taking Turns

"One-word-at-a-time" was one of the first types of collaborative writing that was explored at the Fiction Wikia. Participants were supposed to take turns adding one word at a time to a growing story. This type of collaboration is a good way to get new participants involved with wiki editing. A serious problem with this type of collaboration is that it only takes one person who is trying to be "random" to derail a developing story. I previously made this rather harsh statement:

"We really need tools that allow collaborators to choose exactly who can participate in a particular story writing effort. If someone is causing trouble, they must be excluded from the collaboration."

Another type of "taking turns" collaboration is "One-paragraph-at-a-time". According to the rules that were established for this collaboration, authors "don't discuss the plot with other authors". Such a restriction puts a serious strain on the process of collaboration. In my experience, good writing collaborations are built on good communication between authors. For example, live internet chat is a good tool that can be used by collaborating authors.

An option for writing collaboration that falls between "One-word-at-a-time" and "One-paragraph-at-a-time" would be to have authors take turns writing one sentence at a time. A recent experiment at Twitter comes close to this, but uses Twitter's arbitrary 140 character size limit for successive contributions. The collaboration is called abookduct. Using Twitter to do a writing collaboration that can be coherently sustained through time is a serious challenge. Before I could participate I had to create a document where I could put together the individual tweets all in one place. Hopefully there will soon be a website where these growing stories from Twitter can be compiled (update: see this website). In any case, this is an interesting example of how to use social media to start writing collaborations and find potential collaborating authors.

I suggest that tweets starting with

#abookduct #001a #m

can contain information about the story (not actual story content). "m" is for "meta", and a meta-tweet helps authors of the story communicate useful information that can aid in collaboration. For details on how to participate see abookdect.com.

Image. Sierpinski pyramid by Peter Bertok. License: Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0

The Djinn

I previously blogged about the story Moon Hammer, a science fiction ghost story. I'm getting close to writing the "thrilling conclusion" of the story and I've started thinking about the main character as a genie.

I'm fairly certain that I was introduced to the concept of a "genie" by the television show "I Dream of Jeannie". By thinking of them as a silly Hollywood plot device, I was successful in dismissing genies from my thoughts until I read Gödel, Escher, Bach and saw Douglas Hofstadter's description of meta-genies. A meta-genie can grant meta-wishes. For example, a regular genie cannot grant a wish about wishes such as, "I wish that you grant me 100 wishes". Of course, there are also meta-meta-genies, etc. In Arabian mythology there are several types of sentient beings including humans, angels and genies. In what sense is the "Moon Hammer" character Brother Institoris a genie? If Institoris is a genie, then are there also meta-genies in Moon Hammer?

"Moon Hammer" is a story set in the Exodemic Fictional Universe. The Exodemic Fictional Universe includes the idea that there are "layers" of sentient beings between Earth humans and aliens from other star systems. For stories set in the Exodemic Fictional Universe it is essentially impossible for Earthlings to meet space aliens...if you are lucky you might get to interact with a Genesaunt. In "Moon Hammer", Brother Institoris is a "poor man's Genesaunt", existing on the lowest rung of Genesaunt culture. Institoris was taken off of Earth 500 years ago and allowed to have an "afterlife" with his mind housed inside a robotic body.

It has been suggested that in some ancient Middle Eastern cultures "genies" were sometimes viewed as evil females who could do things like spread diseases among humans. Spreading disease was one of the claims that has sometimes been made against witches by European witch hunters like Institoris. It is a bit of a crazy, but fun, strange loop to think of Institoris as being a genie. A genie is "concealed through time" and that describes Brother Institoris in Moon Hammer. After 500 years on the Moon he is "released from his bottle" and allowed to haunt Earth.

It will be a shame to have to stuff Brother Institoris back in a bottle, but the meta-genies are ready and willing to do so. We might wonder why any responsible meta-genie would leave a genie's lamp laying around where bumbling Earthlings can get at it. In the case of Moon Hammer, the problems arise because curious Earthlings cannot keep from bumbling around the Solar System.

Image. "FataMorgana8" by Wim Strijbosch. GFDL

The Medium Future

I just found "Jack Vance and the Medium Future" by Robert Gibson. Gibson suggests that, "The ease of interstellar travel has the effect of retarding other types of scientific advance."

I suppose the idea is that in the Vance Universe it becomes easy for people to ride a spaceship to another world and live happily without any need to develop advanced technologies such as robots with human-like intelligence. Sorry, but that just does not do it for me. Even if 99.99% of humanity was content to live a bucolic existence on worlds such as Trullion, all it would take is that other 0.01% to keep pushing the envelope of technological development.

Gibson also mentions, "the deliberately anti-progress organization called simply the Institute, which is rumoured to use unscrupulous means to suppress inventions that might free mankind from toil". I think that the kind of technological stasis that is seen in Vance's "medium future" would only be possible if there was an active mechanism for the prevention of technological innovation. In the Demon Princes series, Vance carefully developed the Institute as a powerful force, with some even fearing that the Institute might soon start placing limits on space travel.

At the end of The Book of Dreams, the status of the Institute is very uncertain. The new head of the Institute is shown as being unsympathetic to the "secret" of the former leadership. Alice Wroke's father is revealed to have been a member of the ruling council of the Institute.

I think it would be a tribute to Vance if a sequel to "The Book of Dreams" was written. The sequel could explore the mystery behind Howard Alan Treesong's rise to rank 99 within the Institute. Why did Alice Wroke's father avoid the banquet where the rest of the Dexad was poisoned? What new directions are taken by the new leadership of the Institute? What will Gersen and Alice do after leaving Bethune Preserve?

Related Reading: ideas for a sequel to The Book of Dreams.

Image. Public Domain. Source

Free fiction war?

This blog post was the result of me seeing "Hot, Hot In The Summertime And Hot Under The Collar!", a blog post by Rob Shelsky. I'll start by saying that I am sympathetic to the plight of professional writers. I'd be more sympathetic if a larger fraction of the money I have spent on books actually ended up in the pockets of the writers. I think we all have to ask if the print publishing industry is worth saving.

Let's face it. Printing books is technology from a past era. It was a great idea 500 years ago, but all things change. News flash: we are now in the computer age. Information was once expensive and text was once tedious to work with. However, computers increasingly make information cheap and text easy to sling...and copy. Get used to it.

Rob wrote: "...those people who write 'just for the fun of it,' all the time, and who say they don't care about any monetary proceeds and just give it away consistently, in my opinion are not helping the author community as a whole."

Okay, that comment is targeted at me, so here is my reply....

Imagine this comment from 1850: "...those people who try to make machines for picking cotton are not helping the institution of slavery." I'm sure that people who made a living from selling slaves were "hot under the collar" when the Southern Slave Economy collapsed, but should anyone have shed a tear for them? Now, in this analogy, Rob is more like a slave than a slave master. His plight reminds me of former slaves who were made uncomfortable by the need to become self-autonomous when the Civil War ended and they were no longer a slave.

I think what we need is a unified internet-based system for making fiction accessible to readers. Some fiction content inside that system will be free and some will be available for a fee at download. Some writers will likely only make teasers available electronically and will continue to force readers to purchase "hard copy". I'd like to see a system where authors get the vast majority of what readers pay for fictional works. Editors and publicists should work for authors and come to authors looking for work...."I'd be thrilled to edit your next novel for a small fee".

We need to explore new ways to channel money to authors. I'd like to see a culture "tax" that allows people to check a box on their Form 1040 and donate to a fund for creators of free culture. We need to get busy creating an electronic system that will allow the creators of free cultural works to be compensated according to the value of their contributions to society. Note: free culture does not have to mean "free as in beer"...free culture is mainly about the freedom to share and use intellectual property...there are still ways to profit within an information economy that rewards sharing. I think such a system for rewarding intellectual creativity would require that each person in the information economy have a unique personal electronic identifier. If I download and read a work of fiction, my unique personal signature would be credited towards the author of that work. The author would be paid a share of society's free culture fund.

Rob wrote: "...we may end up with so many rank amateurs who want to give away their poor quality work free, that the discerning reader simply can't find what's good anymore, can't wade through the dross to find the gem, because it is buried in an ever-growing mass of what's bad". Yes, a fundamental problem of the information age is finding "the good stuff". This is nothing new. I've suffered my entire life with the problem of sorting through the ocean of "what's bad" and published. Within Science Fiction Publishing there is a pattern: ignore all authors until they start to sell. Then publish everything that author ever writes, including all the crap they ever write.

I think the internet has the potential to host great oceans of "what's bad", but it also has the potential to provide us with tools for searching and finding "what I like", which for me seldom matches what the publishing industry likes to publish. So I say, rather than bitch about all the crap on the internet, let's all pitch in an make the tools that are needed to sort what we like from what we want to ignore. Let the internet flower, let the fiction flow...the more the merrier. Let's find new ways to help creative people receive monetary compensation for their work. Let's not mourn for the fact that the old print publishers have new competition.

Related blog post at Book Oven.

Will authors of the future need publishers? by Nathan Bransford

Future of self-publishing by thinkfeel

Image. Source. GFDL.

VirileMail audio script

I previously described the creation of a script for the VirileMail science fiction novel. Wiki user ShakespeareFan00 was the instigator of this audio project and he showed up at Fiction Wikia to polish the script.

In order to create the audio version, I cut the novel down to about 25% of its original size. Initially I was saddened that I had to write Dr. Redes out of the script, but the more I think about the sequel for VirileMail the more I wonder if it might be for the best if it is Briana who is joined to Janek. However, I still cannot bring myself to edit the novel so as to make that change.

After the tragic loss of Dr. Redes, the second largest change between the novel and the audio script is the first scene in the fourth half-hour-long segment of the audio version. In the Novel, Joe spends a couple of months on Mars and then returns to Earth, finding that his belongings were placed into storage by his brother. In contrast, the story line in the script is greatly compressed temporally. Joe finds himself in need of a way to get the video tape with the critical evidence out of the Antler Network Services HQ building. For the audio version, Briana agrees to get the video tape for Joe.

When ShakespeareFan00 and I were polishing the script, I noticed the need for this plot change. The need to add in this new scene was good luck. I've also been concerned about the way Joe's romantic interest in Chloe had almost been written out of the audio version. This new scene gave me a chance to emphasize Joe's infatuation with Chloe. This is an important issue because it is Joe's deep concern for Chloe's welfare and safety that motivates him to figure out the odd behavior of the Antler Network Systems staff.

So, I am pleased with the way I patched that hole in the plot, but this experience leaves me wondering if there are other similar problems that were introduced by changing the novel into a much shorter script. I'm tempted to offer a reward for anyone who can spot such a problem.

Image. I made the image of the video tape for VirileMail. This image is available for use under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license.

Collaborative Fiction

I recently looked at the Wikipedia article for collaborative fiction while I was helping to write a Knol about using wiki software as a platform for collaborative fiction. I was amused to see that the introductory paragraph of the Wikipedia article is written from the point of view of professional publishing and says that collaborating authors agree on what "percentages of remuneration are earned by each party". I wonder what percentage of collaborative fiction writing is actually done by professionals in this "age of the internet".

Mention of the Fiction Wikia was added to the Wikipedia article in 2006 and then removed.

The Wikipedia article has a page section on "Wikinovels" which mentions A Million Penguins. That project can be counted as one of the "failed experiments" by which conventional publishers tried to explore wiki technology. A Million Penguins was a case of "too many cooks spoil the brew". I've had the same experience at Fiction Wikia (to a much smaller degree!) with stories such as VirileMail for which I just had to wait for non-constructive editors to go away before the story could be completed. Even with very small collaborations such as Wiki fiction stew, all it takes is one difficult participant to derail a collaborative project. I'm interested in the idea that "forking" of projects might be the solution to this problem. We really need tools that allow collaborators to choose exactly who can participate in a particular story writing effort. If someone is causing trouble, they must be excluded from the collaboration. I developed a wiki approach to such collaborations at the Academic Publishing Wikia.

The Wikipedia article on collaborative fiction mentions Wikinovel, which appears to be a failed project where "there are 27 pages that are probably legitimate content pages". The problem for websites such as Wikinovel is that even the best of ideas on the internet will die off if there is no way for people to find them. A Million Penguins was ruined by too much traffic, Wikinovel appears to have gotten too little. Similarly, at "Wikistory", "there are 15 pages that are probably legitimate content pages".

Fiction Wikia might be the right size, with just enough participants, to slowly develop a viable wiki community that supports collaborative fiction writing.

Image: "Richard D'Oyly Carte, W. S. Gibert, and Arthur Sullivan together again".

Structure of a novel

My previous blog post was about complex plots. Since I made that post, I completed The Search for Kalid and blogged at the fiction wikia about the structure of that novel.

Wikia seems to be working out the bugs in their system for blog articles at wiki websites, so I have been doing most of my blogging there. Another recent blog post was about creating a book cover for The Search for Kalid.

Image. I made this image. The diagram shows that The Search for Kalid has four parts. The first seven chapters establish the Space Opera aspect of the story and the mystery of "Mental Powers". Chapters 9-12 take the reader off in an unexpected direction, our Solar System! Chapters 14 & 15 take place on Earth, but the reader might not recognize our poor and abused planet. After a quick trip to the mysterious Haldus star system, the story concludes back on the Moon. Chapters 8, 13 and 16 are pivotal chapters that twist the plot off in new directions. The following video was made to be watched by readers when they reach the end of the novel:

Is plot structure simple?

In this blog post by Victoria Mixon she says... "plot structure is simple".

By analogy, we could say, "song writing is simple". Such a devotion to simplicity might be appropriate for someone trying to make the next hit pop music tune, but does such a slogan apply to a complex piece of classical music?

Similarly, is there a temptation to "dumb down" novels so as to increase their potential for mass marketing? I think a novel should be a slice of life and life is often complex and messy so why can't a novel reflect the reality of life by being complex rather than simple? Maybe most readers will not be able to keep up and slog through a novel with a complex plot, but does that matter? Does the goal of making a profit and maximizing the number of paying customers dominate this world to the exclusion of letting a novel be complex when it is about a complex story?

"The middle of a book is common bogland". So, if an author does take on the challenge of making a novel with a complex plot, how do you keep the reader from getting confused and bogged down? I'm a great fan of maps, both physical and conceptual. A great advantage of constructing novels in wiki format is that hypertext links and media files can be provided for the reader. For example, The search for Kalid has maps and a glossary. How much of the aversion to complexity in novels is the result of printed books being an inferior medium for dealing with real world complexity?

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Jack Vance talks about the value of complexity in life.

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"A book filled with characters talking the way we really talk, with tags, goes on forever and bores even the writer to tears." Well, surely it depends on what they are talking about. I think Isaac Asimov showed that novels "filled with talking" can work. Of course, in this age of the tweet, fewer people probably have the required attention span to read a challenging novel. That does not mean that challenging novels should not be written.

Image. This is a diagram of functional modules in the human brain. Creative Commons Attribution License. See: "Uncovering Intrinsic Modular Organization of Spontaneous Brain Activity in Humans"

Escaping certain death

I've been having fun with the Space Opera elements of The search for Kalid. Ever since the escape of Odysseus from certain death at the hands of Polyphemus, unlikely escapes have been a grand tradition in adventure stories. I'm now in need of a "great escape" for The search for Kalid.

Before I was old enough to read about getting Polyphemus drunk and poking his eye out, I learned about unlikely escapes from death by watching television. Lost in Space was ahead of Star Trek by a year and ahead in Space Opera theatrics by a light-year. The waving arms of the Model B-9, Class M-3 General Utility Non-Theorizing Environmental Control Robot of the Jupiter 2 were a surer sign of immanent danger than the appearance of a new red-shirted crewman on the Enterprise.

A supernova explosion is over a billion times stronger than a nova. Similarly, there is a big difference between 1) showing a character's impossibly narrow escape from death and 2) making the reader think that a character died, only to later say, "fooled you, that character did not really die!" It is this category of super-deception that I'm dealing with. I've never enjoyed it when other story tellers pull this Dirty Trick on me, so I'm searching for an acceptable way to "bring back to life" an apparently dead character. Actually, it is a package deal...two characters have to be returned from the "not quite dead".

A major part of The search for Kalid is its mystery elements. As the story unfolds, the reader learns about the science of "T-particles", the basis of telepathy. I want the reader to start out by adopting the assumption that telepaths can be tracked down and killed because of their emission of "T-particles". But eventually it is revealed that some telepaths can control their production of "T-particles" and escape detection. I want to find a way to let the reader suspect that a particular telepath escapes detection and is not dead, even if Kalid himself can't figure it out. Would the reader, by feeling superior to Master Kalid, not feel so cheated by the Dirty Trick?

Image: Polyphemus takes one in the eye. GFDL.

Telepathy and Humor

Image source: Flickr Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
and Fair Use.

Isaac Asimov wrote a story called Jokester in which it is discovered that jokes only exist as part of human culture because of an experiment being run by aliens. In The search for Kalid, telepathic communication is portrayed as a recently evolved human ability. I've been thinking about the evolution of telepathic communication and the idea that aliens might play a decisive role in allowing humans to develop telepathic communication.

Baby talk, or "parentese" is is a special style of speech used by adults when talking to children who are learning human language. The idea is that it is helpful for language learners to hear a simplified and exaggerated version of language while they are trying to learn it. Similarly, is there a "trick" that could be used to help people develop their innate telepathic abilities?

The search for Kalid

The plot device for telepathy in The search for Kalid is that telepathic communication involves exchange of "T-particles". But even if a human brain could "encode" a thought in the form of "T-particles" and even if another brain could produce neuronal signals in response to received "T-particles" carrying encoded thoughts, how could the receiving brain ever decode such a signal? If you were bombarded with a pattern of flashing lights that represented a thought, how would you know that it represented a thought, and a particular thought?

Can a SciFi Story Poke Fun at SciFi?

Jokes can be "hard to get" unless you share the cultural background of the person telling the joke. Example: "There are 10 types of people...those who know binary and those who don't." If you know binary and realize that "10" in binary is equal to "2" in decimal, then you can "get" this nerdy joke. (For a related chuckle, see the binary joke from Reboot.) Would the telling of jokes provide an efficient way to develop someone's telepathic skills? Knock knock.

"Knock-knock. (Who’s there?) It is not the owner of Yu-Gi-Oh."

In The Bicentennial Man, comedian Robin Williams had a funny scene in which he played the part of a robot trying to tell jokes. He told them "robotically". Could a robot with no experience or understanding of human experience tell jokes in an intentionally funny way and truly "get" them?

Language of Thought

I was thinking today about a way for Set and Amethyst to interact in The search for Kalid so as to awaken her telepathic ability. Why not have Set tell a joke?

This fits with an idea in The search for Kalid, the idea that telepathy evolved as a way for humans to judge each other. People such as the anthropologist Terrence Deacon (See his book The Symbolic Species) have discussed the idea that human language might have evolved as a way for humans to judge if potential mates have worthy brains. Why not the same for telepathy? How many people look for a mate with a good sense of humor?
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August 2014
Note:  I modified the original text of this blog post so as to put Robin Williams in the past tense.

More book and magazine covers.

Hypertext in fiction

One of my favorite authors is Jack Vance. Many of his books have footnotes and glossaries and accessory text that complements the story. I love fiction that educates and uses hyperlinks to connect the story to additional resources. I'm not sure that I would feel comfortable making fiction under conditions where I could not use multimedia resources and hyperlinks. I'm addicted to the hyperlink.

Back when I started reading science fiction, one of my favorite collections of short science fiction stories was one that had brief accounts of the relevant science for each of the stories. Sometimes science fiction can be explicitly designed to explore science or even the boundaries of science (example: the Science Fiction Challenge) and in such cases it is particularly convenient to be able to link from the fiction to discussions of the relevant science.

I'm also addicted to complexity in stories. Hypertext links for technical terms are a good way to help readers deal with complex story lines. For many of my stories I like to have a glossary that can both help the reader keep track of names and provide discussion of some of the key details of imagined science and technologies that are included in the story.

One of the advantages of writing fiction in a wiki environment is that there are constant opportunities for feedback from readers, even while the story is first being created. Sometimes I'm surprised by elements of my stories that puzzle readers, but in a wiki I can always quickly add a link and explain terminology that is problematical. Can't remember the difference between the worlds Sakkara and Azur? Just click over to the the glossary and refresh your memory.

Another use of hyperlinks that we are experimenting with at Novelas is branch points and alternate endings for stories. For example, see the alternate endings for the story VirileMail. In this kind of collaborative wiki environment, if you do not like the ending of a story you can always make your own and link to it from the others!

Image credits. Click image to enlarge.

It would be fun to see what Jack Vance might be able to do with hyperlinks in a wiki environment.

Related: the glossary for A Search Beyond.

Images. The image of a world seen from outer space (above) is a depiction of the planet Sakkara from The Search for Kalid. This is a modified screen shot from Celestia. The second image shows the Cotedazur ocean of Azur.

Science Fiction Challenge

The Science Fiction Challenge is a collaborative fiction writing project exploring the nature and boundaries of science through science fiction writing.

The images in this post and at the top of this blog are from the video teaser for a story called "The nanoepitaxy of Susanne Marie" which is part of the Science Fiction Challenge. The story explores the idea that there might be evidence for extraterrestrial life that can be found right on Earth....if we knew where to look and what to look for.

In the story, Susanne Marie Ganice becomes the first person found to be a host for a nanorobotic life form of extraterrestrial origin. Normally, such nanorobotic life forms do not interfere with the course of development of the native life forms on Earth. However, certain "renegade" nanorobotic life forms make use of cloned humans as a tool for passing knowledge from generation to generation. The goal of these renegades is to artificially stimulate human progress, but their methods are illegal. This illegal program involves producing clones, allowing the clones to remain on Earth and then performing a form of "nanoepitaxy" to connect the brains of the parent and its clone, allowing a form of shared consciousness and "downloading" of thoughts from the parent to its clone. Susanne Marie Ganice is such a clone. The story is about how she discovers what is going on, and then how the people of Earth do also.

If you would like to help write this story, feel free to participate at this wiki page.

Below: video teaser for "The Nanoepitaxy of Susanne Marie"...


Images: Available for re-use under the Creative Commons attribution share-alike license