What do bunnies dream?

I have come to the conclusion that bunnies dream of abandoned apple orchards. They dream of gnawing the bark, chewing the dropped branches, and eating all of the apples that drop to the ground with impunity. Perhaps in the wilder bunny dreams, there are abandoned fields of vegetables that are magically tended -- just for the bunnies.

If I pick up an apple and a knife, she's right at my feet. She'll look all cute, stand on her back legs and paw at my calves. Sometimes, she'll nip at my pants. I'll look down at that sweet little innocent face and be suckered into giving her a slice. BAM! She'll wolf down that slice faster than kids on crank. I've now seen her half-asleep trying desperately to eat her apple slice... she's so asleep, curled around her apple slice, sniffing it to make sure it's still there, until she can be awake and eat it.

Pig. With a cute face. PIG!

I'm debating putting a princess costume on her for halloween. A fat, pink princess. HA! Deprive me of sleep will you? At least I'M NOT THE PINK PRINCESS! You know... if I do that to her, she'll eat my soul while I'm sleeping... might want to hang on to my soul for a while longer...

OOOH! You know what happens after halloween, right? NANOWRIMO! Wewt! Come hell or high water this year, book one shall be done. I'm half of the mind to put recipes into the chapter names. Science Fiction, now with more recipes! Well, maybe I'll re-do them after November. No time to think about them now.

I've volunteered some of my time for a worthy goal lately. It's always funny when I volunteer for something. I never know if my advice will be acknowledged or used, although, for every time it hasn't, I've watched the same people I volunteered to help end up paying quite a bit to get the same advice from someone else. That's the part that cracks me up. It's like when I was teaching design -- I'd tell my students what I was testing them for, and they wouldn't listen, and I'd end up having to mark their submissions as failing. Then they'd come after they received their project back and tell me I never told them what I wanted. Of course, then I would dutifully point out their syllabus and the materials packet they received on the first day of class. It was always spelled out exactly what I was looking for in the projects.

Perhaps one day I'll just stop trying to help. LOL. What ya gonna do, eh? Kids these days.

Where are the 'what ifs' ?

It's not the 'what if' there was FTL that bugs me. What bugs me is that authors use it as a taxi service to get around places, there isn't a 'what if' to it anymore. It's been killed, by science, by bad writing, by authors that think it's 100% guaranteed. Well... it's not. In fact, the idea of accelerating to FTL travel presents a metric crap ton of problems for a human. (I'd like to see a new science fiction story with THAT concept -- woopsy, we accidentally obliterated a bunch of people by trying to accelerate them to faster than light... can we try again? oooops! obliterated them too. How about now? eeew... human goo.... ok, wait, I think we have it! hmmm. slushy humans... Ok, it would be more douglas adams than asimov, but it would be a 'what if' story!)

I don't have a problem with the FTL drives in stories, per se. Ursula K. Le Guin does a fascinating job of getting around to the 'people' in her stories without belaboring the FTL drives and that's what I want. What I find, however, are boring books about FTL drives, Time-Travel, and a bunch of other tropes that are little more than macguffins/devices/contrivances. I don't find any 'what if' about it... it's tired and tiring to read.

If authors would look at the amazing science we have available right now and wonder about what cool stuff can happen because of that, I think it would make for something back to the 'what if' that I want to read about. I mean, what IF you could use your printer and print yourself out a new ear?! What if you could give yourself new 'thoughts' by a chemical injection... what if you could copy someone else's thoughts through recording just their electrical impulses and let others experience those thoughts through a kind of shock treatment? (I've tried reading cyberpunk but .... most of the stuff in the genre is... not appealing to me at all... the ideas are, the writing isn't.)

I didn't like the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson -- but I did get a lot of 'what if' out of it -- and because of that, those books stay in my reading list. They're full of 'what if' ... just by taking current science and thinking about it. That's all I'm asking.

I just want science fiction to be about the wonders of science again. (which is why I write... I have wonders I want to share too...)
It's not that I don't want to hear the what-ifs... I just want the what-ifs to be based on good/newer science so that I'm not completely pulled out of my suspension of disbelief by the bad science *cough*michael crichton*cough*....

Bad Science = Bad Fiction.

I read an illiterate ranting somewhere that good science = bad fiction, and I was simply amazed at the level of unabashed ignorant tripe being spouted as 'truth' and 'fact' instead of 'uninformed media-speak opinion'.

The problem isn't that good science makes for bad fiction. The problem is that BAD science makes for terribly uninteresting, contrived and flat fiction (unless you're writing parody or douglas-adams-style-scifi.) If the science fiction writers actually used good science and scientific principles within their stories, then the readers wouldn't be stuck with massive tomes of scientific bunk relayed as 'all you can do' with the genre.

For example, in a discussion area for new writers, I read the following comment:
"Fast-than-light travel is a well-known fact that unless you can be really patient you need some sort of Star Drive go anywhere really interesting in space."

(don't even get me started on the illegibility of the writing...)
I'll just say this right now:
(accelerating to-) Faster than light travel is currently scientific crackpottery bunk, AND it is B O R I N G. Using space ships as just the hottest new way of zooming around to new places is the average travel novel with a plot device. And if you go the slow-way... a long-haul freighter is JUST a long-haul freighter, regardless of the contrivance that it's in space. There is far more interesting going on in your local neighborhood solar system than 'deep space' ... I mean, look at earth... Talk about ALIEN LIFEFORMS! Has anyone ever BEEN to NYC?!

Just say NO to FTL drives!

Speaking of long-haul freighters in space, has anyone ever actually considered the economics of sending X number of earth's best-and-brightest with all of our greatest-and-most-advanced-science to go start a colony on Y planet in Z solar system? No accountant that I've ever known would say, "OOOH! No return on investment for 3 centuries? SNAP! Let's get right on to funding this idea!" Hell, the accountants I've known would have a conniption fit over the idea of sending that much money off the planet even to somewhere like the moon - since there is no economic benefit to the moon (or even Mars for that matter to accountants.)

In order to have something like that happen, it's best to either skip over the actual colonisation-send-off and the reasons for it, or the 'boring' long-haul process.

And for the love of all that's holy out there, please, no more time-travel. Just stop.

Use good science. Write good fiction. Bad science is boring. In fact, if more science fiction writers spent more time reading scientific journals, physics and math books, cosmological research, etc. then I think the science fiction genre could really be outstanding.

Get away from the movies! Get away from the bad science! Do your research! Good Science Always Prevails!

Click!

As I was asking myself, "What would this character be reading?" I had the answer - AND - their drive / sub-plot arc drop into my lap.

It. All. Fits. Now.

All my "Why?" questions have been answered. This book is ready to fly out of my hands and into nanowrimo's gruel-churning machine for the draft that I will edit down to half-size and ... then... it will be ready for editing.

Today, it just clicked.

This will be the year these books FINALLY get out of my head and onto the typed page in a clear, unobtrusive way. YIPPEEEE!
I've got it! I've got it! I've got it! I've got it! I've got it!

Come on nanowrimo! I'm just blazing to go here!

Font Me!

Fontimus Maximus!
After a few days of work, the mathematically-pure letterforms, and all (and I do mean ALL) of the available ligatures are nearing completion! (This is where I give CBU tons and tons and tons of thanks for taking my old digital designs and staring endlessly at my handwriting of this language and creating the perfect glyphs, double ligatures and triples. MASTER at geometry, I'm telling you.)

This is a really great thing - because - NOW - I can include all of the beautiful original words in the footnotes and the appendices of the books.

I'm hoping to have all of the extraneous data out of the way for the 2007 Nano competition this year... which I think will be great. All my pieces are at my fingertips this year, and all the kabbalistic crap has been reduced to bare minimums.

I have almost 'all' of my WHY?! questions answered - and that's a great starting point. It's going to be a great year!