Author Archives: tony

NaNoWriMo: Day 1 update 3

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In the spirit of NaNoWriMo I’m not going back and editing the stuff I’ve written.  No time for re-writes.  However, I am going back and re-reading it (to keep consistent) and to see how I well or badly I think I did certain bits.

There’s one bit I’m pleased with so far (yes, I know, early days).  In the first major conversation of the story one guy is doing a lot of talking and is clearly agitated.  Twice I went to write “so and so, clearly agitated” and stopped myself, and instead, I wrote these.

Philip sat down again, clasping and unclasping his hands.

Philip stood, and then sat down again almost immediately.

… his hands returned to gripping his knees tightly.

Hopefully I got the show don’t tell bit right.

NaNoWriMo: Day 1 update 2

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Had a bit of a burst, got the main character in to a chat with his first contact, and that conversation drove the word count up.  Hopefully it drives the story along and doesn’t sound like I’m just telling a story.

NaNoWriMo word count:1868

NaNoWriMo: Day 1

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Day 1, and after a full breakfast, and some shopping, I still feel crap with the cold.  I really had no clue where to start the novel.  But I guess everything starts with the first letter.

590 words in now and actually quiet excited, because it’s already the most I’ve ever written in terms of a book.  I’ve written many thousands of words for roleplaying modules and backstory etc.  But this is the first time I’ve really had a go at writing an actual story for the sake of it.

The NaNoWriMo site is slow (they warned us it will be for a few days), and I’ve got an image link in the sidebar so the page may load slowly for a little while until things calm down.

Wish me luck.

NaNoWriMo word count: 570

Is science fiction inevitable?

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It appears to me, an uneducated sci-fi geek wannabe, that if the human mind can conceive of it, eventually we can bring it to fruition.  What was fiction in the early part of the last century is the reality of today.

I’ve just been watching a TV program which included robotic limbs, both as human limb replacements and as human limb extensions (for remote use in dangerous locations).  Limbs controlled by tiny electrical impulses from muscles, or by thought alone.  Semi-realistic limbs, with 4 or 5 mobile and flexible fingers.  Rather than guessing where we’ll be in 10 years, it’s easier to look back at where we were 10 years ago and imagine if we make the same rate of progress.

The same is true in so many areas of traditional sci-fi topics such as robotics, space travel, energy, communication.  I remember watching the black and white Flash Gordon and thinking how awesome it would be, to be able to see the person you were talking to on the phone.

Now video conferencing and videophone technology is increasingly commonplace.

It appears that at all scales (from space travel to the moon to the tiny elements of motors and computers), if sci-fi authors have imagined it, then science practitioners have brought it about and made it a reality.

I am sure that people more clever than me debate this all the time.  Asking questions about whether we make our own reality and hence anything we imagine can be made real, or that since sci-fi is based on a kernel of reality it’s bound to be possible to develop the ideas into real stuff.  But for me, I just like thinking about it.  Does sci-fi drive science research?  If you spent your youth watching C3-PO does that in turn result in your Robotics research taking the form of a large golden humanoid with a personality disorder?

Is it inevitable that most of the inventions of science fiction will become reality?

It’s Friday

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I really needed this Friday to turn up.  Unfortunately I’m on-call this coming week, but at least the cold is finally beginning to abate.  I’m left now with just a stuffed nose and an irregular cough, instead of a streaming nose and a constant cough, which is how it’s been for three days.

My stomach/chest muscles hurt from the coughing, I hate having colds. The wound on my thumb never really hurt, it’s odd.  i expected at least some pain, but it’s knit together pretty well and there’s only any soreness if I press it.  Had to move the dentist appointment to next week, couldn’t imagine sitting in the dentist chair coughing and trying to keep my mouth open.  So, got that fun to come next week, really really not looking forward to it.

D&D tomorrow and lunch with some friends on Sunday should be good, I’m hopeful the coughing will have totally gone by then.

National Videogame Archive

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One of the problems of blogging everything interesting you come across, as soon as you find it, is that you end up writing lots of small little blog posts.

Well, so be it.

I found this on the BBC News site.  In turn, that led me to this (save the video game).  Which inevitably led me here (the national videogame archive).

I think it’s a great idea.  There can be no doubt that videogames are the new rock and roll (and in fact, searching for “video games are the new rock and roll” on Google returns roughly 100 hits which agree with me), and in a few years the ties between film, videogame and other arts will be closer than ever.

If you immerse yourself in a videogame with 200 other people and tell a story and record the resulting images, why might it not be called a movie.

We should really preserve the history of videogames, the technology, the concepts and the games themselves in the same way we have with film, literature and other forms of art.  If I was to preserve some games it would be the Mega Drive version of the original Sonic the Hedgehog which I played to death in the very early 90’s, the Spectrum version of Bard’s Tale and F19 Stealth Fighter which got us through the first year of university on a friend’s Amstrad 1640 (you could hear the whistle of the engines from the other end of our floor).