Behind The Scenes

Also, in the back of my mind is the thought that the Sol system does not have a slingshot. So to trade with Earth, you need to first travel a short distance to another system.

The implications are huge:

• The Earth could be very isolationist, much like America in the first half of the 21st Century.
• I want a sense of remoteness to build up the development of colonialism and gunboat diplomacy.
• There could be three trade factions
  1. Corporate - upspin
  2. Clan - downspin
  3. Government - Earth to nearest slingshot

The real impact is that communication would be on the order of years and not months.

When man first starts exploring other stars, it will take decades to get started. A good story would be the impact of the discovery of slingshots on colonial governments. Where mandates used to be ignored because they were very out of date, they suddenly start becoming very pertinent. If ignored, your replacement might arrive in a few months.

This would force expansion to further sites along the slingshots. Each slingshot would take a rebellious sole further away from Earth. Get far enough away and you might be back in the years. Of course, what happens when you think you are far enough away and the next link takes you back in a loop to the Earth link? :->

Or it might force you to go further down systems which are not connected via the slingshots.

I.e., the first expansion would be out towards nearby systems. The slingshots would not follow those paths. So we would see the development of newer stations with closer ties to the Earth. These would be the corporate traders.

And the earlier expansion could see the rise of the trader clans.

A slingshot is the act of using a Congruency Hole to travel from one system to another.

The twist to a using a slingshot (congruency hole is the technical term and slingshot is the popular usage) is that unlike a jump point, it can take you to two fixed destinations instead of just one.

Each slingshot has two directions, upspin and downspin. By approaching it via the upspin side (whatever that means, I’ll have to flesh it out), your journey will go to system A. If you use the downspin side, your journey will be to system B.

Furthermore, if at system A you then take the downspin cycle, you will end up back at your original destination.

So every time you find a slingshot, you know you have two new systems to explore.

How many slingshots per system?

So a title just came to me, Pandora’s Boxes. I was on my way to bed and realized it wouldn’t keep until the morning.

The premise of the research ships is that they are sent out into space to explore. But the project is secretly funded to conduct dangerous and unethical research. As these floating derelicts are found, you don’t know what to expect. There may be a buried treasure nugget of discovery which will make your fortunes. Or it may be a horrible death which awaits you.

Each one is a Pandora’s box.

So I just re-read the Antares Dawn and Antares Passage by Michael McCollum and to my dismay I realized my idea of having an event disrupt the transit points between systems. Only in the case of Antares, it is a supernova, and in my universe, it would be the work of a civilization.

Oh, I need to also add Rick Cook’s Limbo System as another influence. He writes about the strife that occurs when an FTL civilization with no data on where to go meets a sub-light civilization with all of the navigational data needed.

In fiction, holes in space between two systems are called:

• Gates
  • Jumpgates
  • Stargates
  • Wormgate
• Wormholes
• Portals
• Subspace tunnels
• Boom tubes
• Fold space

In looking through my notes, I see I’ve used the acronym of CH. I scoured my notes trying to figure out what it stood for and found I started calling them slingshots.

I also found that I called the natives Grubbers and at one point Belters.

Okay, a CH is a congruency hole. Unlike a jumpgate, it evidently does not allow instantaneous transit between the two points.

Every explored system has an asteroid belt. Congruency Holes can be captured and used to push ships off at sub-FTL speeds.

There is a clear intent to use time dilation as the hardship that explorers have to endure as they try to make their fortunes. As such, the Congruency Holes are but one of the rates of interstellar travel:

4 different speeds of interstellar travel:

• standard - really slow (crew frozen)
• sub-FTL - time dilation is huge
• slingshot - time dilation is on the order of months
• FTL - no time dilation, but only the Phoenix has it

These two passages from my notes are but a day apart. They clearly show how my understanding of this universe was changing. The sub-FTL concept was no longer tied to the CH (or slingshot as it is now referred to) .

We also see the use of Phoenix as a starship. Cherryh also uses this name - yet another need for differentiation. Hmm, a good tie in would be Phoenix, a whaler. The name didn’t come from Cherryh’s usage, but I can’t prove that right now. For some reason I was thinking of the Morrow Project game, but I could be associating that with Keith Laumer’s short story “The Night Of The Trolls”, which was rewritten as The Stars Must Wait. After a civilization collapses, the hero wakes up from a test of cold sleep technology for starship travel. His ship was called the Prometheus.

In January 2005, we vacationed in Maui. In Lahaina, there is a mall called Whaler’s Village. It has a small museum - the Whalers Village Museum - which provides a pretty bleak overview of a whaler’s life.

I’ve taken notes from that trip and a couple of others. I was struck by how easily we could change a whaling ship to a space ship, a native to a lost colony, etc.

I’m going to tie in a separate story arc, that of generational ships cast out as living research outposts.

I’ll call out some obvious influences on this new universe:

• Time for the Stars, Robert Heinlein - Generational Ships
• Citizen of the Galaxy, Robert Heinlein - Free Trader - clans, matriarchal culture
• Alliance-Union universe, C. J. Cherryh - merchanter families, economic warfare
• Foreigner universe, C. J. Cherryh - stranded FTL ship
• Antares Dawn, Michael McCollum - Disrupted gates and divergent cultural development (Note it looks like I missed Antares Victory being published and I have some further reading to do.)
• The Lost Fleet, Jack Campbell (really John G. Hemry) - Jump gates (Note this work postdates my notes but will predate any real writing)

I’ll try to dig up other influences as I come across them.

And I have to mention that one of the biggest hurdles I have, it is attached to my notebook with a yellow sticky note, is how do I differentiate my story from Cherryh’s Foreigner. (Note I’ve got this same problem with another plot outline, which is in my head, and Wen Spencer’s stranded alien race in the Ukiah Oregon series.)

My story may end up not looking at all like Foreigner, but clearly my notes are directly concerned with it.

It will be fun resolving that and tying my notes to this expose.

I started a webcomic today - Scoundrals on Inner Dialog Workshop. Since I can’t draw, the idea is to use cut and paste head shots and work on dialog. I find dialog hard because of the whole ‘he said’ thing. I did an exercise back in my high school creative writing class where I treated the dialog ‘terms’ as a volleyball game- ‘he parried’, ’she spiked’, etc. It really helped open the process up for me.

I came up with 3 characters and I didn’t have names, instead I had professions. The first is Preacher - he is a killer cricket who happens to be a vampire. I like that his eyes look like a mask. I’ve been doodling him for some time, especially if I’m in meetings. The second is TV chef - he has immaculate hair and an really nice fisherman’s sweater. The third is a hand that comes off of the wall to interact with other characters.

The premise of Scoundrals is that it is a monster world and they are just normal denizens of it. For right now, it is their professions which set them off as Scoundrals. I just don’t know how a TV chef can be considered sleazy. :-> I’m working on it though…

I created what was the start of the cast page and needed some labels. I don’t have names because they are easy, because the character tells me what is their name. I can’t just drop a ‘Jim’ or a ‘Bob’ on them.

The first two were easy to label, I just used their profession. The last was hard. For some reason, I saved the scan in a file called ‘4thfist’. When copying it up to the server, the name came to me, ‘4thhand’. It brings to mind second hand, but goes beyond that. And, as the hand is coming from the panel border, it really is all about Breaking the Fourth Wall.

And in the truck, I happened to catch a cover of The Waitresses “Christmass Wrapping” - it was by Save Ferris.

So, I’m thinking that the TV Chef will be called Ferris. Still have to let it stew for a bit.

Technorati Tags: Science Fiction writing webcomic

The best blackened chicken sandwich I have had in Tulsa was at a place which was called The Blue Rose cafe. It was on 34th and Peoria. (It was actually the place my wife and I went on our first date.)

It is closed down, but the current restaurant there seems to have much of the same menu. At least it has the blackened chicken sandwich. So go enjoy one at the Bru House.

While I first had the sandwich there, it is the same as the one served at the Eskimo Joe’s in Stillwater. If I’m passing close to Stillwater, I will go in for the sandwich.

Technorati Tags: Tulsa dining

There was a recent Pearls Before Swine comic (11/28/2007) that touched on blogging in general and how it related to writing. To paraphrase it, Rat thought Goat blogged because he was frustrated that he was not a good enough of a writer to get published.

I’ve struggled with trying to get published, which doesn’t mean I have a stack of rejection letters, just that I haven’t tried to get stuff published.

But, the kicker is that I have plenty of non-fiction publications from my academic career. And peer-review is brutal.

The other problem about research publications is that they invariably lead to trying to put 10 lbs of rice in a 6 lbs sack. I’m pretty sure I learned more about editing and page layout than I did about writing.

My natural writing style could be called rambling. After publishing enough research papers, my writing style is terse. I also tend to let the reader do some mental jumps to get points.

So as I write science fiction stories, I struggle with length. But I’ve come to realize that some of my stories are just right. For example, in Abduction, abduction, whaat’s your function?, I tried to write more, but I realized that for once I was happy with the dialog and adding anything else was fluff.

And I can clearly tell that both Batter Up and The Nanovampire have more to come.

Back to the title of this post, am I trying to get published or am I trying to write things which please me? I enjoy writing as a hobby. I also enjoy coding - most of the activity on Serialized Science Fiction has been writing perl scripts and CCS style sheets to present the stories.

But just as I don’t want to get paid for doing the web programming, I don’t want to get paid for the writing. And I don’t want to subject myself to whether or not some independent body thinks I am an author or not. (Which doesn’t absolve me from editing the stories…)

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We were out shopping tonight and were going to buy an entertainment center. Well, I was hungry, the store closed at 7:30 and I realized that we had to eat first because the box would be in the back of the truck. We were over at 41st and Sheridan, so my wife suggested we go to Panera Bread. We had just been there, but I knew it was fast.

As we pulled in, I noticed the sign for what I thought was Chinese food -
Desiwok - Indian and Asian Cuisine - Tulsa, Oklahoma. Note that the word ‘Indian’ was nowhere on the sign. I asked The Monster (my son) if he wanted to eat there or at Panera? Well we had just eaten at another Panera a couple of days ago (after an indoor soccer game) and we have a tradition of trying new Chinese places. So in we went.

As we entered, Stacy (my wife), started to wonder if it were Thai or Indian. MMM. Well, it had both Chinese and Indian entries. I wanted to try the Curry Chicken, but I really like the pale yellow one with coconut. They said they had a brown curry. So, I went with the Chicken Vindaloo - and I took it medium hot.

My son went with Sweet and Sour Chicken - my wife had already eaten. We started to wonder when they asked how hot he wanted it. We said mild.

By the way, the sign on the way out said it was Tandoorian style.

The rice ended up being Cumin and not the sticky steamed rice he likes. And the Sweet and Sour chicken looked glazed. Normally a sign that it is bad. He tried the rice, with and without Soy sauce. He didn’t like it.

My wife took him next door to get a bagel. I ended up eating all of mine. I can normally handle spiced food, but if that was medium, I don’t want to try hot without more Nan.

I tried a piece of pineapple from his dish - the sauce was spiced, but good. I didn’t want to try the meat.

When they came back, I got my wife to try the dish and she sat there picking at it until I left. She said it was better than it looked.

Overall, I will be going back at lunch time during the week. My wife said that if we didn’t have The Monster with us, she would be willing to dine with me if I was hungry for it.

The place is very casual - you get your own drinks for example.

Technorati Tags: Tulsa dining