Complex Inorganic Substrate

I finished Stephen Baxter's Transcendent today. Then I went to T.G.I. Friday's for dinner, to ruminate partly on the future of humanity as expressed by Baxter and mostly to fill me stomach, which had only enjoyed a Pepsi up until that moment.

Briefly, Coalescent scared me, Exultant left me joyous, and Transcendant depressed me.

Taken all three together, Baxter implies there is no obvious purpose for humanity except to spread out and kill things, across galaxies if must be. During the short span, the span of one human's life, for instance, there is the possiblity for endless joy, progress, growth, depression, insanity and anything else you can think of. But in the full scope of things, there is only one constant: The universe will end, and there's no way out.

I hope that despite the implication that these three books are a trilogy (and they are, if loosely, sort of like his Manifold series), I hope that Baxter will write a fourth book, about the Michael Poole of Exultant, the Michael Poole that in Transcendant is eluded to. I don't know if his story is worth reading in its entirety, without more ambitious looks at what humanity will be or accomplish.

I also would wish for a more promising future for humanity, but even I, a non-physicist, non-philosphy-major, was able to reach the conclusion that if you look at the full timeline, the universe ends.

One of Baxter's most exciting concepts in Transcendent is the closed universe idea. If the universe is closed spatially, it must be closed in time as well (as basic as Einstein and other theoretical physicists spacetime). So if you go far enough ahead, you will wrap all the way around to the beginning. I'm glad he didn't bring up what that seam must be like, or how one went far enough ahead in time (or how, in Exultant, one goes backward in time using light speed, etc.), because it must be unimaginable.

Anyway, I wish he'd quit writing about the Coalescents (purposeless, hive-like, mindless human colonies), because they frighten the pants off me. It's one thing to say, humanity has no purpose because the universe is gonna end; it's another to say, yeah, and this group doesn't realize it, but they're already there. It's like giving in to the inevitable, instead of being human and fighting it.

Finally, I saw V for Vendetta. Go see it. I think you'll leave thinking, the world ain't so bad after all.

Happy St. Patty's Day, Yar!

I started reading Stephen Baxter's Transcendent today. I'll let you know what I think, but if it's anything along the lines of Coalescent or Exultant, which it should be, then I'll probably love it.

Also, the Web site has been updated again, with much fanfare and intensity.

Je Parle Anglais

The Web site is updated, again. I'm happy. Eric is a genius, and figured out artwork and the forum. The forum is now up. I'm not a big forum person. He is. Oh. Eric is my writing partner.

Our book is the product of many years working together, during which we have failed to kill each other. Many people would say this is a good thing. Make your own judgment^^.

During this time, we also have (thought we) completed three (3) books (one is shelved indefinitely, one is being rewritten to a different target audience, and the 3rd is the site), written rough drafts of four (4) more, and moved from within 30 minutes of each other to roomies to more than eight (8) hours away by plane. Thank insert-deity-here for the Internet, otherwise this would not work.

Anyway, onward and upward. Joy, rapture, etc., the site is updated again.

Particle Joke!

Ha ha you thought I wouldn't update the site! Fooled ya! The truth though, is that I fooled myself. Reverse psychology and all that. Yar! Particle man fights triangle man! Triangle WINS!!!!

Fleebedee Jeebedee 2.0

I also blame the media, insert-deity-here, and Kurt Vonnegut.

I would like to say I'm going to update the Web site tonight with a story. I would really, really be happy to suggest that such will be the case. I have my doubts about the truth of that statement however, as I leave for work in less than an hour and would have to edit 2,000 words in that span of time.

Not that this is impossible, far from it, actually. Only I'm out of coffee, see, and ... no excuses. The truth might be I just don't care, and I really hate to be honest about that, too.

Fleebedee Jeebedee

I can't write! The goal is 50K words in 31 days, and I haven't been able to write the past two days!

This is not due to writer's block. This is due to all my other interests and a tendency to put in the full eight hours of sleep the past few nights.

I blame this all on ICQ, IRC, FFXI, insert-anacronym-here, and Mondays!

Kicking And Screaming

I hate the Internet, in a kind of deep, satisfying way that is beyond explanation (i.e., irrational).

Yet there is this blog. And last night I started using IRC. A few weeks ago, I started playing in my second MMPORPG (massively multi-player online role-playing game), and also got ICQ (for actually the second time in my career, but still).

I had wondered how long it would take before I felt I needed to post something to that effect. I was hoping it would take longer, but no, fourth post. It's all a part of that "who I am" crap people need to live with: just because I hate it doesn't mean I won't do it.

And there are far worse things to hate than this last bastion of free speech, spam-oriented target of the casual hacker, porn-infested den of scum and villainy, and easy-access library to millions of so-so, true and false facts, speculations, opinions, diversions, games and people.

Words By The Thousands

I did it in January, I'm trying to do it in March. 50,000 words, 31days. You can see why I skipped February. The math was too hard.

Very simply, it's 1613 words per day on average. Great. As I've already skipped two days, I'm already trying to make those up, to get theaverage back to 1613. The first 500 are easy. The next 1,000 are tough, but around 1,500 words, the roll really begins because you look at the clock and go, hey, there's still 4 hours in the day, and I'm basically done. Just 100 more words. Next thing you know, 2,000 or more. That was Monday's writing.

The other way to make something like this work is to write in more than one story. This blog, for instance, doesn't count. But I have "The Gift of Magic" for the site, and a personal project tentatively titled "A Clone to Loan" to work on. "Gift" is serious, epic, Robert-Jordan-esque drama, and "Clone" is Terry Pratchett meets Douglas Adams and Kurt Vonnegut, with a bit of melodrama to color it.

Two distinct styles, a rigid schedule in which to work on (two days of "Clone" for one day of "Gift") and the term "writer's block" is removed from this author's vocabulary.

Onward. To work! And better things.

Zomg! Scrabble Rulues!

I had my best Scrabble round tonight. 410 points. The person I played against had 314. That's our best cumulutive score EVER, not to mention that I had 410 points, which is a personal best.

A New Error Unflods

Greetings, all.

It's possible I'm being stupid creating a blog, but I'm practically blogging every third day on the Web site for my book www.caligrean.com anyway, so it can't hurt too bad.

I'm a writer anyway, so it can't hurt. Doing this has given me the opportunity to procrastinate even longer on my goal of writing 2,300 words today. These words, technically, don't count toward that.

Onward and upward.