Filed under: Art, Connections, Ray Bradbury, Science Fiction, Writing stuff, YouTube | Tags: art, blogging, jim downey, Jonathan Crow, Open Culture, Ray Bradbury, Science Fiction, video, writing, www youtube
Another gem of a video from Open Culture:
The whole thing (about 4 minutes of actual interview, done as an impromptu chat in the back of a car about 40 years ago) is worth enjoying, but this bit in particular will resonate for anyone who writes:
If you can’t resist, if the typewriter is like candy to you, you train yourself for a lifetime. Every single day of your life, some wild new thing to be done. You write to please yourself. You write for the joy of writing. Then your public reads you and it begins to gather around your selling a potato peeler in an alley, you know. The enthusiasm, the joy itself draws me.
The joy, and the sublime struggle to understand. Like all art.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Brave New World, Connections, Genetic Testing, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Superman, tech, Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, Chinese, Chu Ling, Communion of Dreams, ExtremeTech, genetic modification, genetics, health, jim downey, John Hewitt, predictions, science, Science Fiction, technology, writing
From Chapter 5 of Communion of Dreams, after the revelation that the Chinese orphan Chu Ling is a clone:
Jon looked around. He decided to tell them the rest of the bad news. “And that’s not all. There’s evidence that the original host had been genetically manipulated to radically change several characteristics related to intelligence.”
Bailey looked a little confused. “What’s that mean?”
Gish sighed. “It means that someone has created a better human, and now is producing copies.”
“Well, better in their eyes, anyway,” said Gates. Her voice contained a touch of bitterness.
Gee, here’s a bit of news:
Chinese scientists create first genetically modified human embryos
And so it has come to pass: Chinese scientists at the University in Guangzhou have created the first genetically modified human embryos. Although there had been rumors circulating for some time that it had already been done, until now, there has been no official scientific report.
Another prediction come true.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Gardening, Habanero, Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, gardening, Habaneros, health, hope, humor, jim downey, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, tomatoes, writing
Because I want this:
And this:
I took advantage of the cool but beautiful Spring day and did this yesterday:
That’s about 40×40. Good deep churn to about 10″ depth. The soil conditions were just about perfect. Now it’s prepped for me to plant things in a couple more weeks (it’s still a little too early here for tomatoes and Habaneros). And surprisingly, I don’t hurt nearly as much today as I expected.
Back to work on St Cybi’s Well. All that time tilling yesterday gave me a chance to think through some things.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Connections, Humor, Science Fiction, Wales, Writing stuff | Tags: Armageddon, blogging, Communion of Dreams, Darnell Sidwell, humor, jim downey, Pillar of Eliseg, Science Fiction, serendipity, St. Cybi's Well, Tel Aviv University, Valle Crucis Abbey, Wikipedia, writing
Man, I love serendipity … all along I had planned on including the Pillar of Eliseg as one of the sites in St Cybi’s Well. It was one of the first places I saw in Wales, and I’ve always loved it and the nearby Valle Crucis Abbey. Well, they’ve recently discovered that there is an Early Bronze Age cist under the medieval ‘pillar’ — something which I also wanted to include for other reasons related to the story.
Now, the protagonist of this novel — Darnell Sidwell — lives in Tel Aviv, and we know from Communion of Dreams that he has some history doing volunteer work on archeological digs in Israel. So I checked the Wiki entry for Tel Aviv University, found a member of their archeology faculty who it would be logical for Darnell to have known and volunteered for. I just like to have those sorts of details all accurate or at least plausible. Yeah, it’s part of the reason why this book is taking me so long to write.
Anyway, I found a faculty member who fit the bill, and who is a specialist in the Early Bronze Age. Cool — everything worked out just fine. But in continuing to dig a little into that guy’s background and research, I found that he has done a lot of work at one particular site which it would be logical for Darnell to have also visited, if not actually volunteered there: Tel Megiddo, or often as just Megiddo.
But you probably know it as “Armageddon“.
Hehehehehehehe …
Jim Downey
Filed under: Google, StreetView, Wales, Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, excerpt, jim downey, Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, travel, Wales, writing
Excerpt, set here:
She reached a hand out to help, steadying herself with her other hand on the tiller, and Darnell stepped down onto the small deck area. There was a low rail around the deck, about knee-height, but there was nothing else between him and the low rail of the bridge trough. And on the other side of the trough rail was a drop of almost 40 meters to the valley floor.
“Very nice,” said Darnell, one hand on the roof rail, as he leaned out and looked over the edge. He turned back, extended his hand to the woman. “Thanks. Name’s Darnell.”
“I’m Sharon. And welcome to the Tedford’s Folly, if only for a short hop to the other end of the aqueduct.” She patted the tiller in her hand, then gestured off the open side of the boat. “Pretty remarkable, isn’t it? You know the history of the Pontcysyllte?”
“The basics, anyway,” said Darnell. “And yeah, it is remarkable what people can achieve when they put their minds to it. Both for good and ill.”
She smiled, and there was an intensity to her bluish-grey eyes. “I love all the canals, but especially this one. There’s always something new to be found when you cross over from one side to the other. A new perspective, depending on the time of year, the time of day, and where your head is at. But not everyone understands that.”
Jim Downey
Filed under: Astronomy, Fermi's Paradox, Humor, NYT, Privacy, Science, Science Fiction, Seth Shostak, SETI, Space, Survival, tech, Writing stuff | Tags: astronomy, blogging, Communion of Dreams, Drake Equation, Fermi's Paradox, humor, jim downey, New York Times, science, Science Fiction, Seth Shostak, SETI, space, Stephen Hawking, technology, writing
Seth Shostak, on the topic of how to introduce ourselves to our neighbors:
A better approach is to note that the nearest intelligent extraterrestrials are likely to be at least dozens of light-years away. Even assuming that active SETI provokes a reply, it won’t be breezy conversation. Simple back-and-forth exchanges would take decades. This suggests that we should abandon the “greeting card” format of previous signaling schemes, and offer the aliens Big Data.
For example, we could transmit the contents of the Internet. Such a large corpus — with its text, pictures, videos and sounds — would allow clever extraterrestrials to decipher much about our society, and even formulate questions that could be answered with the material in hand.
While I still agree with Stephen Hawking on the idea of ‘active SETI’, I think that there’s merit in the idea of exposing other nearby civilizations to what we’re really like, warts and all. Because as soon as they decoded our transmissions well enough to understand the comments section of pretty much any major site on the web, they’d either completely wall off our solar system* and post warnings around it or just trigger our sun to go supernova. Either way, we’d never know what happened, and the rest of the galaxy would be safe …
Jim Downey
*gee, that’d make an interesting premise for a SF novel, doncha think?
Filed under: Brave New World, Connections, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, tech, Wired, Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, Communion of Dreams, jim downey, predictions, science, Science Fiction, Tactum, technology, Wired, writing
From page two of Communion of Dreams:
He paused there at the railing, right hand manipulating the thin-film controls under the skin on the back of his left hand. Looking out over the herd of slowly moving animals, a see-through display came up before him. Nothing new on the nets. So, whatever the emergency was, it wasn’t public knowledge yet. He turned, opened the door to the station, and stepped inside.
From a new article on Wired this morning:
Gannon is exploring modeling techniques that use the human skin as their primary interface. Her prototype is called Tactum. Instead of creating free-floating models in software like CAD, Gannon’s setup uses a Kinect camera and a projector to create a virtual modeling environment right on your hand.
The projector beams blue lights onto the skin. That light represents the base geometry of the band you’ll eventually wear. The Kinect tracks your body and space and keeps the projection aligned. To adjust the design, you drag it with your fingers; there’s no layer of mediation, you just manipulate the form directly. “You could be pinching, touching, poking, prodding and that visual geometry on your arm without having to go through any computer,” Gannon says. “Your skin and hand are the equivalent of the mouse and keyboard.”
Another step in Communion of Dreams becoming reality.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Feedback, Podcast, Society, Survival, Violence, Writing stuff | Tags: belief, blogging, feedback, jim downey, loss, podcast, This I Believe, violence, writing
The folks at This I Believe have now put up the audio of me reading my essay “The Power to Forget“, as part of having it included in their weekly featured essay podcast, as I mentioned previously was in the works.
And I’d like to ask a favor: if you know of someone who might benefit from this essay, please share it with them.
No, not for any benefit to me. I’m not above self-promotion, but that isn’t why I ask for your help in this case. A decade ago when I wrote that essay, I had hoped that it might help others navigate through their own anger and loss. I thought that it had just disappeared into the foam of internet verbiage, until the people at This I Believe contacted me the beginning of this year. And now it feels somewhat like it has a second chance to do some good.
I don’t expect it to work miracles. Each of us who has suffered a loss — whether of a loved one, or our health, or our dreams, or an opportunity — have to deal with that loss in our own way. But it’s sometimes good to know what path others have taken, what worked for them. So maybe my essay will help someone.
Thanks.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Music, Writing stuff | Tags: jim downey, music, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, writing
It’s been a surprisingly long time. Sorry about that. Nothing to worry about. Mostly just life intervening; a pile-up of other projects needing my focused attention, an annoying but non-serious respiratory virus took the wind out of my sails. But there was something else, which I thought I’d share.
After finishing Chapter 12 of St Cybi’s Well, as I was looking forward to the rest of the story arc, and the outlines and notes I had made, I realized that I had reached the point where I needed to make some major revisions before I could continue. My plans for the rest of the book had become too at-odds with what the actual book was turning out to be.
For those who haven’t attempted a book-length work of fiction, this sort of thing happens. It’s not cause for panic. If you read/hear/watch author interviews, you’ll often come across the notion that stories and characters seem to ‘come to life’ for an author, who is then in the position of having to negotiate between what is happening on the page and what they intended. It’s a bit like being in a marriage (or a similar long-term relationship of any variety). If you’re smart, you learn how to sing that duet, share your voice to make something greater. You don’t entirely give up your vision of what you want to say with your story and characters, but you can’t be so insistent on that original vision that you lose the potentially interesting developments which occur naturally as part of the writing process. You’re telling a story, not writing an instruction manual. And stories don’t come from just within ourselves — they’re part of the larger human tapestry.
So, anyway. I went back, cut out about 2/3 of the original “Prelude”, made a number of other substantial edits to the chapters I’ve already written. And I’m adding in an “Interlude” between Chapters 6 and 7. There will be another “Interlude” to come between chapters later in the book, and then a “Coda” of sorts when the story is closed. Because I’ve learned to listen to the other voices on the page.
Back to it.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Failure, Science Fiction, Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, Communion of Dreams, failure, jim downey, literature, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, The Guardian, Tim Lott, writing
Gods, this is so painfully, penetratingly accurate: You think writing’s a dream job? It’s more like a horror film.
Just one excerpt:
However, as I emphasise to the fledgling writers who come and attend my Guardian Masterclass courses, writing novels for a living is hard – unimaginably hard, for those who have not tried it. I cannot imagine that it is less complex than brain surgery, or, indeed, the proverbial rocket science. To master dialogue, description, subtext, plot, structure, character, time, point of view, beginnings, endings, theme and much besides is a Herculean labour, not made more appealing by the fact that you always – always – fail.
And as I noted the other day, the knowledge that you are failing never leaves you, and it is only then that self-confidence can get you though. Maybe.
But Chapter 12 has been finished and put to bed. Now working on revisions for the rest of the story arc before getting into the next chapter.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 