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May 19, 2005

Info-Dump on Page Six

I've been banging the flippers at the keyboard again. So far I've got 5300 words of the latest version of ANTIMATTER VOODOO. Guess what? It's essentially a rewrite of a book I nearly finished late last year called WHISTLER (also known, for a time, as THE FAR UPTIME). I realised that every other idea I've had since that book died at the 82,000-word mark has slowly incorporated more and more ideas from this earlier work, to the point where I began to see that something in my subconscious really wants me to write this damned book, no matter what it takes.

The original WHISTLER featured a 16-year-old protagonist. The new version features a young protagonist as well, but he's about 18 now, so I can skip all the angst-of-school crap. I'm also setting it in a different environment from the books in the ORBITAL BURN set, so I don't have all that continuity baggage getting in the way.

One thing I have kept from the various ideas I've had since abandoning the first versions of W is the notion of somebody turning up, from the future, with a briefcase of some kind containing an amount of antimatter. At the moment I'm thinking anything up to about a kilo (2.2 pounds) of liquid antihydrogen or something, or possibly metallic frozen antihydrogen. My reading about antimatter tells me that a kilogram of this stuff, if allowed to contact normal matter, would be like several very large nukes going off at once.

Not that there's anything wrong with that! /Seinfeld>.

Otherwise, it's pretty much that earlier book's premise again, but with some minor alterations (such as I've mentioned), and whatever else suggests itself along the way. I'm also currently pondering the popular hard-sf notion of the "Singularity" (the point where technological development and change accelerates off the scale, where superintelligent humans or machines become possible, where vast networks of linked computers "wake up" into consciousness, and where people can upload their minds into computer systems, etc--go here for an interesting set of essays and articles about the whole thing), and in particular what the world would be like for regular people left behind when it all takes off. Popularisers for the Singularity idea like to talk about how everybody will become transhuman immortals with godlike intelligence, etc etc, but it strikes me that anything amazing like that would almost certainly wind up controlled by an oligopoly or cartel, or the like, and you'd have to pay money to access that kind of transformation. I suspect not everyone will be able to afford whatever it will cost, and you'd wind up with an all-new version of haves and have-nots, and ultimately (at least) two divergent types of human beings.

Anyway. I've been banging my head against this whole "trying to write ANTIMATTER VOODOO" for a long time now. I've had some very serious and very miserable "dark night of the soul" moments, too. In the end, it seems to me, all you can do is just put one word down, and another one after that, and keep going as long as you can.

What also helps? Focussing your head exclusively only on what's true for this character and this situation. Forget all the external worries that have worried me these past months, like, "Is this sellable?" "What if nobody likes it?" etc. Forget all that crap. Forget even "is it any good?" It's not for you, the author, to judge. Let editors and the like figure that out for you. If your prose is at least clean and okay, and you've tried your best to tell the truth about your characters and their troubles, it will probably work out.

This is where I'm at right now. I've been keeping quiet over the last week about the feeble progress on this thing, aware of how many times I've tried in the past to get a head of steam going, only to have it all collapse. Now that I've hit 5K, that's gone goal met. Next goal is 20K, the point where my Nanowrimo effort last year foundered. I don't know if I'll get there. If I don't, I'll try again, and again, and again. The thing wants me to write it, and I can see I won't get any rest until I do.

In other news: not many headaches in recent times. Yay!

Posted by adrian at May 19, 2005 08:28 PM

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Posted by: Charlie at May 27, 2005 01:30 AM

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