Filed under: Amazon, Brave New World, Carl Zimmer, Connections, Emergency, Feedback, Flu, General Musings, Health, Kindle, Marketing, Pandemic, Plague, Predictions, Preparedness, Promotion, Publishing, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, The Loom, Umberto Eco, Writing stuff | Tags: Amazon, antibiotics, blogging, Carl Zimmer, Communion of Dreams, Darnell Sidwell, direct publishing, fire-flu, flu, influenza, jim downey, Kickstarter, Kindle, literature, norovirus, pandemic, predictions, promotion, science, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, technology, Umberto Eco, virus, Wordpress, writing
So, the WordPress Machine informs me that I’ve had a fairly busy year blogging here.
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As I mentioned a while ago, earlier this month I had fallen prey to the nasty bit of cold virus going around. Turned out that the damn thing was even more stubborn for my wife, who is still struggling with a hacking cough and various other annoying symptoms. We’ve been keeping a close eye on it, watching for signs of secondary pneumonia, which would call for antibiotic intervention, but I think she’ll get past this on her own.
Which is good, because there really isn’t much we can do to fight a virus. In this sense, medical science is at about the same place in viral treatments as we were in dealing with bacterial infection 70 years ago:
In 1941, a rose killed a policeman.
Albert Alexander, a 43-year-old policeman in Oxford, England, was pruning his roses one fall day when a thorn scratched him at the corner of his mouth. The slight crevice it opened allowed harmless skin bacteria to slip into his body. At first, the scratch grew pink and tender. Over the course of several weeks, it slowly swelled. The bacteria turned from harmless to vicious, proliferating through his flesh. Alexander eventually had to be admitted to Radcliffe Hospital, the bacteria spreading across his face and into his lungs.
Alexander’s doctors tried treating him with sulfa drugs, the only treatment available at the time. The medicine failed, and as the infection worsened, they had to cut out one of his eyes. The bacteria started to infiltrate his bones. Death seemed inevitable.
* * * * * * *
You may not have heard much about it here, but the norovirus is causing all kinds of grief in the UK. Cases are up 83% over last year, and are estimated to have hit over a million people already. In the UK the norovirus is commonly called the “winter vomiting bug” whereas here we tend to call it “stomach flu”. As miserable as it makes people feel, it’s usually not a life-threatening disease for otherwise healthy people, and the best thing to do is just ride it out.
Of course, public health authorities have taken steps to try and limit the spread of the disease into populations where the virus could be life-threatening, and a lot of hospitals have curtailed or eliminated visiting hours. Furthermore, appeals have been made to the public to not to go see their doctors or go to emergency rooms for routine cases of the norovirus, since there is little that can be done to treat the virus and this just contributes to the spread of the disease.
Still, people get scared when they get sick, even when they know that it is a fairly common bug that’s going around — and one that most people have had before and gotten over just fine. So they tend to swamp available medical services, overwhelming the health care system.
Just think about what would happen if it was a disease which wasn’t known. And one which was killing people so quickly that they’d drop over in the street on the way home from work.
* * * * * * *
I’ve been thinking about that a lot, since it is an integral plot point to St. Cybi’s Well. This isn’t a spoiler, since the advent of the fire-flu is part of the ‘history’ of Communion of Dreams.
But it is something which has had me in a bit of a quandary this fall, as I’ve been working on writing St. Cybi’s Well.
Howso? Well, because I kept going back and forth on making one final decision: where to end the book.
See, I know how the *story* plays out — I’ve had that all sorted since I first worked up the background for Communion of Dreams. But in going to write St. Cybi’s Well, I needed to decide exactly where in the story that book would end. Which is to say, I needed to decide how much, if any, of the onset of the fire-flu would be included. Because I could set everything up and have the book actually finish at the onset of the fire-flu — after all, the reader would know what was about to happen. Why drag the reader through that horror?
* * * * * * *
A week or so ago I made my decision, and I’ve been chewing it over since then as I’ve been busy with other things, making sure that I was comfortable with what I have decided, and why. I’m not going to give you the details, but you can safely assume from what I’ve said in this post that at least some of the pandemic will be portrayed.
I decided this not because I have a desire to write about the horror (in spite of what I may have said previously) but rather because it is critical for character development of the main character.
Poor Darnell.
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So, the WordPress Machine informs me that I’ve had a fairly busy year blogging here. 293 posts (this makes 294), which is a faster pace than in some years. Of course, I’ve had a lot of promotional stuff do to with the launch of Communion of Dreams last January and everything to support that through the year, not to mention the Kickstarter for St. Cybi’s Well.
And while I’ve cautioned that I won’t be writing quite as much here on the blog as I’m working on St. Cybi’s Well, well, it does make for a nice change of pace.
So thanks for being along for the ride this year. Together we can see how things go in 2013.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Apollo program, Brave New World, Failure, General Musings, Government, Man Conquers Space, NASA, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Space, tech, Violence | Tags: Apollo, blogging, Golden Spike, jim downey, Moon, NASA, Pearl Harbor, predictions, science, Science Fiction, space, technology
“Pearl Harbor” was 71 years ago today.
The launch of Apollo 17 was 40 years ago today.
That means that there was less time between the start of WWII (well, our involvement in it) and the end of humankind’s time on the Moon than there is between now and when Apollo 17 left the Taurus-Littrow valley.
That don’t seem right.
Yeah, sure, there’s a company saying that they want to send commercial flights back to the Moon.
Somehow, I doubt that it’s quite that easy.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Augmented Reality, Bipolar, Brave New World, Connections, Feedback, Predictions, Psychic abilities, Science, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Wired, Writing stuff | Tags: bipolar, blogging, jim downey, Kevin Dutton, literature, predictions, science, Science Fiction, Scrivener, St. Cybi's Well, technology, writing
As I’ve noted before, writing a long work of fiction is a strange thing, at least for me. I spend a lot of time intensely chewing over ideas, doing research, starting to conceptualize a narrative theory for the book, outlining various relationships between images and characters, sorting out what it is I really want to say more than the actual words to use.
Betwixt & between all of this, some honest to goodness writing gets done, then reorganized and shuffled, with plans and outlines changing. More research, more thinking, more feeling my way through the darkness with the only illumination occasional flashes of lightning.
This morning, after a lot of consideration, I downloaded Scrivener. Over the next week or so I’ll play around with it a bit, see whether it will be a useful tool.
And over lunch, some research & reading. It might be interesting, or even telling, what it was that I found. Here’s an excerpt:
The effects aren’t entirely dissimilar. An easy, airy confidence. A transcendental loosening of inhibition. The inchoate stirrings of a subjective moral swagger: the encroaching, and somehow strangely spiritual, realization that hell, who gives a s—, anyway?
There is, however, one notable exception. One glaring, unmistakable difference between this and the effects of alcohol. That’s the lack of attendant sluggishness. The enhancement of attentional acuity and sharpness. An insuperable feeling of heightened, polished awareness. Sure, my conscience certainly feels like it’s on ice, and my anxieties drowned with a half-dozen shots of transcranial magnetic Jack Daniel’s. But, at the same time, my whole way of being feels as if it’s been sumptuously spring-cleaned with light. My soul, or whatever you want to call it, immersed in a spiritual dishwasher.
So this, I think to myself, is how it feels to be a psychopath. To cruise through life knowing that no matter what you say or do, guilt, remorse, shame, pity, fear—all those familiar, everyday warning signals that might normally light up on your psychological dashboard—no longer trouble you.
Interesting, indeed.
And not unlike the high which comes with creating. Or entering a manic phase in my mild bipolar cycle.
Yes, interesting. Quite.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Brave New World, Connections, Diane Rehm, Expert systems, Failure, Google, Government, Harry Potter, J. K. Rowling, Kindle, Music, NPR, Predictions, Preparedness, Publishing, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Writing stuff, YouTube | Tags: Amazon, augmented reality, blogging, Blood Sweat & Tears, cars, Communion of Dreams, Diane Rehm, direct publishing, failure, Google, Harry Potter, jim downey, JK Rowling, Kickstarter, Kindle, literature, music, NPR, predictions, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, status, success, technology, video, writing, www youtube
“Could you take care of this for me?” I said. “I find myself surprisingly … attached.”
* * * * * * *
Just a couple pages into Communion of Dreams, there’s this passage:
He picked up a meal at the airport and ate in the car on the way over to his office, relaxing and watching the city roll by around him.
Early in the second chapter there’s this one:
The car he was in threaded through the old suburban streets, past still vacant houses and the occasional empty lot. Following the great death of the fire-flu, many homes had simply been abandoned.
The opening paragraph of Chapter 3:
‘What was it?’ he wondered as the car wound through the streets, stopping before the USSA building. He got out, standing there in the plaza, looking up at the golden plasteel supports and the draping glass fabric.
As a writer, particularly of science fiction, you have to know what to explain and what to just assume. By this I mean you have to explain certain things to the reader, enough to give them a grasp on important story elements, but that you can assume they will fill in the background with other less important elements on their own.
Nowhere in Communion of Dreams do I state that cars are largely self-driving. There’s really no need to. Most readers are used enough to the tropes of science fiction that they can read the above passages, and fill in that detail on their own. It’s a little trick which helps anchor the reality of the book in the mind of the reader quickly.
* * * * * * *
And, honestly, the notion of a self-driving car is only barely science fiction at this point. I mean, one of the primary issues right now is having our legal system play catch-up with the technological changes in this field. From a discussion on the Diane Rehm Show yesterday:
GJELTEN: So the — I guess what — driverless cars have been in development for many years. But the big news this week is this law that passed in California allowing some driving of self-driving cars. Tell us what’s in this law exactly.
LEVANDOWSKI: Well, this law is called SB 1298, and it sets forth the framework for the DMV to set up the guidelines that vehicles will need to adhere to in order to, in the future, be able to drive themselves with or without people inside them. It outlines the type of technical standards, the types of insurance requirements. Everything that you would expect a person to go through when they get their driver’s license, you would expect a vehicle that doesn’t have a driver in it to be able to have.
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“I do feel that I’m a very lucky, lucky person, in all sorts of ways. And one of the ways in which I’m fortunate is Harry Potter set me free to write whatever I want to write. I don’t — you know, we’re not living hand-to-mouth — I, clearly I can afford to pay all of my bills and now my writing life is a great experience. I can really do whatever I want to do. So I’m a fortunate person — I’m a fortunate writer.”
From JK Rowling’s interview on “Morning Edition” today.
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“Could you take care of this for me?” I said. “I find myself surprisingly … attached.”
“Sure,” said my wife.
Attached?
Yeah, to my car.
Which is a surprise. Because I don’t usually become attached to things. Oh, I keep some things for sentimental value, because they are somehow connected to an important person or event in my life. But otherwise I tend to be very pragmatic about material things.
I got the car new 20 years ago. A Subaru wagon, which served me well. The last five or six years when it needed work I would weigh the pros and cons of getting the work done — was it worth it? Could I afford it? Could I afford not to?
See, I don’t *really* need a car. I work at home. For a while now when I needed to drive any distance, I took my wife’s car anyway, since it is a few years newer and in substantially better shape.
This past spring it developed some exhaust problems. The work it needed was more than the car was worth. I decided the time had come to just sell it and be done. Consolidating down to one car for the household would be a minor annoyance, but made the most sense.
Well, I made the intellectual decision. The emotional one, I found, wasn’t quite as easy.
Why?
I owned, and drove, that car for more than half the time I’ve had a driver’s license. There was simple ‘time in harness’ associated with it.
But there was more. Specifically, status.
I don’t worry a lot about status. As in, conventional measures of “success” in our society. When you don’t make a lot of money, you learn to not put so much store in such things, or it’ll drive you completely nuts. And as I noted earlier this year, I don’t make a lot of money.
But confronting the hard truth that I can not afford to buy a new car was a bit more than I really wanted to face. And selling my car meant exactly that. Because in our society, if you sell your car, you’re supposed to get another one. Preferably a new one. At the very least, a newer one. To not do so means you’re not successful.
And you should never, ever, under no circumstances, admit that you’re not successful.
So, yeah, the emotional truth was harder to come to terms with. Which would mean that I would be piss-poor at selling my car — at advertising it, at negotiating a sale, all that stuff.
But I’ve come to realize that there are other approaches to defining success, other strategies which can change how you accomplish things. My Kickstarter project is one such, stepping in to crowd-fund what a conventional publishing contract would previously do.
So I asked my wife to take care of it. She didn’t have the same emotional baggage to contend with. And she took care of it in her usual competent & efficient manner: last night the car drove away from our driveway for the last time.
Who knows? Maybe next year, after St. Cybi’s Well is done and available, it’ll be enough of a hit that I’ll be able to afford a new car. One which can partially drive itself. Stranger things have happened. Just ask JK Rowling.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Brave New World, Connections, movies, Predictions, Quantum mechanics, Science, Science Fiction, tech, YouTube | Tags: Alwyn, art, blogging, Communion of Dreams, Diva, Gorodish, jim downey, movies, predictions, science, Science Fiction, technology, video, www youtube
“I think he actually plans that ahead.”
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Interesting news item:
Study broadens understanding of quantum mechanics
(Phys.org)—Former and current USC Dornsife physicists have led a study that represents the first, quantitative account of the universal features of disordered bosons—or quantum particles—in magnetic materials.
The study published in the Sept. 20 edition of Nature magazine broadens our understanding of quantum mechanics and challenges the accepted predication in quantum theory.
“It’s remarkable to find such universality in disordered quantum systems,” said co-author Stephan Haas, professor of physics and astronomy and vice dean for research in USC Dornsife. “And it’s even more amazing that we may have finally identified a real-life example for one of the most elusive quantum glasses in nature.”
Yeah, OK, so? What’s that actually mean?
Potentially, a lot. Quantum particles are thought of as wave-forms, operating in a range of space/states (this is known as quantum superposition). This characterization leads to such particles being ‘trapped’ — unable to escape a given space/state due to interference — what is termed ‘localization.’ Having a way to control localization is the key to much finer control over quantum effects, and helps to turn it from a theoretical physical problem almost to an engineering one. From the above article:
Quantum magnets and other occurrences in quantum mechanics could set the stage for the next big breakthroughs in computing, alternative energy and transportation technologies such as magnetic levitating trains.
* * * * * * * *
“He dreams of stopping the wave.”
Who? Gorodish:
Gods, I love that movie.
* * * * * * *
“Alwyn, wait up, bud,” said my wife, as our dog trotted past us on our morning walk.
He went a couple more paces, but stopped before he got to the entrance of a care facility. That entrance comes off a busy street, and we only want him to cross it with us so as to keep him safe.
“I think he actually plans that ahead,” I said. “He trots ahead here so that he can sniff that bush for messages.”
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Art, Book Conservation, Brave New World, Connections, Feedback, General Musings, Kindle, Marketing, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Writing stuff | Tags: Amazon, art, blogging, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, free, jim downey, Kickstarter, Kindle, Latin, literature, promotion, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, Wikipedia, writing
Well.
The Kickstarter has launched:
St. Cybi’s Well – a prequel to Communion of Dreams by Jim Downey
Prequel to the popular novel Communion of Dreams. Get an early release download or a hand-bound copy in your choice of cover material.
I was surprised a bit yesterday when one of my friends — an artist, even — asked what “Kickstarter” is. I guess I’ve been so wrapped up in paying attention to it for the last year or so that I had just assumed that it was something commonly understood. But if you’re not sure, here’s the basic description from Kickstarter:
What is Kickstarter?
Kickstarter is a new way to fund creative projects.
We believe that:
• A good idea, communicated well, can spread fast and wide.
• A large group of people can be a tremendous source of money and encouragement.
Kickstarter is powered by a unique all-or-nothing funding method where projects must be fully-funded or no money changes hands.
There’s a lot more there on the site. But basically, it is a way to crowd-fund a creative project. In my case, I’m trying to use it as a substitute for a traditional “advance” from a conventional publisher by generating advance sales of my next novel. But since I also have a fairly unusual set of skills as a bookbinder, I’m also able to offer something fairly unique: a limited edition of hand-bound books. This edition will be printed differently, in a manner which will allow for me to fold and then sew actual signatures rather than relying on machine ‘perfect binding’ as you typically find in paperbacks. These book will also be in hardcover, with a variety of different selection of covering material and design. The full information is there on the Kickstarter page.
This is a big deal for me. I’ve been thinking about doing this since early this year, as I watched the response to Communion of Dreams. It was clear that many people enjoyed that book, and one of the most common things which showed up in reviews and discussions was when/whether my next book would be available.
There are many challenges for me here. One is just seeing what the actual level of support for my writing is, which to some extent is expressed by how successful the Kickstarter is. Another is pushing me to actually concentrate on completing St. Cybi’s Well, and proving to myself and the world that Communion of Dreams wasn’t some kind of fluke. Doing the bookbinding won’t be a problem, but it still needs to be attended to. And there are the ongoing promotional matters which require time, energy, and the willingness to engage as something of a public person — no small feat for someone who is as much an introvert as I am.
Yesterday I said thanks for helping me get to this point. And I mean that, most sincerely. Any further help you can give by sharing news of the Kickstarter would be greatly appreciated. And likewise, anyone who wants to kick in some money on the Kickstarter will earn my personal gratitude above and beyond whatever ‘rewards’ they choose.
Now we’ll see how the game plays out.
Jim Downey
*Full explanation here. I choose this version rather than the more common one precisely because in this instance it isn’t a matter of a single roll of the dice being cast, but rather of the game being started.
Filed under: Amazon, Brave New World, Connections, Failure, General Musings, Kindle, Marketing, Preparedness, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Writing stuff | Tags: Amazon, blogging, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, free, Heidegger, jim downey, Kickstarter, Kindle, literature, predictions, promotion, Radiolab, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, volcano, writing
Tomorrow we’ll launch the Kickstarter for St. Cybi’s Well.
* * * * * * *
I listened to the rebroadcast of the Radiolab show “Emergence” this noon hour, as I had a nice salad. From the show description:
What happens when there is no leader? Starlings, bees, and ants manage just fine. In fact, they form staggeringly complicated societies–all without a Toscanini to conduct them into harmony. This hour of Radiolab, we ask how this happens.
What it’s investigating is the phenomenon of emergence; that is, of self-organization or spontaneous order from a chaotic or non-ordered system. A lot of people think that intelligence and consciousness are emergent properties.
* * * * * * *
Since the beginning of this year when I launched Communion of Dreams, almost 20,000 people have gotten a copy of the book. In the years before that, as I was working to try and get the book conventionally published, between 35,000 and 40,000 people downloaded the earlier version of the book.
And all along I’ve benefited from the help of many people in getting out the word about CoD. Thanks. This has quite literally been a case of being outside of my control. The wisdom of crowds, indeed.
* * * * * * *
From Communion of Dreams (first shows up in Chapter 9):
“That which emerges from darkness gives definition to the light.”
* * * * * * *
Tomorrow we’ll launch the Kickstarter for St. Cybi’s Well.
It’s been a very long slog through a range of mountains, with highs and lows. I’ve seen a lot. I’ve learned a lot. Some of it I have shared. Some of it I still need to come to understand.
And this last bit has been like climbing up a volcano, one I’m not sure is actually active, though I have seen signs of life in it. I’m almost afraid to look over the rim and down into the crater. Yet I am drawn to the heat, to the light, to the power of the thing.
Tomorrow we’ll launch the Kickstarter for St. Cybi’s Well. As part of that, Communion of Dreams will be free to download all day long. If you haven’t downloaded it yet, please do. And tell your friends to do so.
Thank you. Thanks to all of you. For helping me make it this far.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Brave New World, Fermi's Paradox, General Musings, Humor, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, SETI, Society, Space, tech, Writing stuff | Tags: augmented reality, blogging, Communion of Dreams, Fermi's Paradox, humor, jim downey, Kickstarter, predictions, Rich Terrile, science, Science Fiction, simulation, space, technology, writing
Interesting article, all in all. But I particularly had a chuckle over this bit:
Beings with whom you could interact?
Maybe, or maybe I’d just let them go. They’d be living out their lives in an incredibly short amount of time. Maybe I could change the physical laws. I could make them live in places both hospitable and inhospitable. I could make it so that they’re completely alone—perhaps that’s a boundary condition for us, and explains why there are no aliens.
Hehehehehehe. Yeah, maybe it does. Maybe it does.
Kickstarter is almost ready. Watch for an announcement soon.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Brave New World, DARPA, Predictions, Science Fiction, Society, tech, YouTube | Tags: blogging, Boston Dynamics, DARPA, jim downey, predictions, robotics, Science Fiction, video, www youtube
Step by step, the future gets closer:
That’s a new robot from Boston Dynamics called the LS3 – Legged Squad Support Systems. It’ll carry 400 pounds and run for 20 miles/24 hours before needing to be refueled. You don’t even need a ‘driver’: it’ll follow a designated leader automatically, picking its way over terrain on its own.
I’ll leave it to you to consider the implications of that last point.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Brave New World, Connections, General Musings, Publishing, Science Fiction, Society, Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, direct publishing, golf, jim downey, literature, play, Science Fiction, sex, world-building, writing
I live across the street from a golf course. No, I don’t play golf. And we didn’t move here because of the golf course, or have the house built because of it. Heck, the course didn’t even exist when our house was built — it came along some 40 years later.
Anyway, I live across the street from a golf course. And after years of wrangling, the course is now undergoing some fairly major revisions and redesign. Most of the changes are taking place on the far side of the course from us, but even the area across from our home is seeing a lot of construction. It’s been interesting on our morning walks to see the changes, try and figure out what the guys running the big equipment are doing.
And that’s had me thinking about playgrounds. Because even though I don’t play golf, I can see how changing the course — making it more modern — would be something which would be exciting to those who do play. New challenges in approaching the course, new problems to overcome.
Play is important to us. Particularly, variety in our play is important to us. We like novel things, whether it is in video games, television shows, sex partners, or, well, novels. Each one can be understood as a kind of playground.
This is hardly a new or particularly interesting observation. Except that as I am in the early stages of thinking through St. Cybi’s Well — of creating a new playground — I feel an unexpected kinship with the guys operating the heavy earth-moving equipment across the street.
World-building, indeed.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 