Writtenwyrdd

Hormesis (repost)

Reposted from August 13, 2008

"The theory of hormesis has been around for decades, but has long been met with scepticism or downright suspicion. In recent years, however, biologists have pieced together a clear molecular explanation of how it works, and hormesis has finally been accepted as a fundamental principle of biology and biomedicine. The question now is how to take advantage of hormesis to live longer and healthier lives."  Mark Mattson & Edwin Calabrese, New Science, 6 Aug 2008

Homeopathic medicine has been sneered at by allopathic believers for a long time now.  Probably since the Swiss physician and alchemist Paracelsus recognized the concept of hormesis, or "a process whereby organisms exposed to low levels of stress or toxins become more resistant to tougher challenges."  (See cited article.)  We also have been hearing in the news recently that a bit of germs and dirt actually innoculates the immune system, keeping it strong.

The advent of mechanical models of the universe affected philosophy and scientific thought as well.  You can see how the advent of Copernicus' postulation in 1543 that the Earth orbited the Sun had a profound affect.  Likewise, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes and Isaac Newtons' ideas fostered a burgeoning model of mechanistic life had effecuts upon the theories of medicine.  The 'magic' was discounted in favor of 'scientific' medicine.  Sometimes it wasn't very scientific and this baby and bathwater approach to deciding what was proper medicine ignored means of healing that were more effective.  Common sense was often forgotten as well in the fervor for new ways that embraced the mechanistic models of science.  (Note:  This is my loose interpretation of these events, not a genuinely well-researched treatise.)

Anyhow, medicine in the Dark and Middle Ages was, in part, a reflection of the male-oriented allopathic physicians seeking to control healthcare over the grannies and midwives who used knowledge of plants and 'what worked' over high-falutin' ideas like cupping and starvation to heal illness.  It was a product of religious and social tensions as much as it was about knowledge.

Starting with Hippocrites, who is credited as being the father of modern medicine, however in the middle ages, the collapse of the Greek and Roman empires caused a halt in the progression of medicine, and the repository of medical knowledge was maintained primarily at the monastery, which frequently had hospitals attached.  (See Wikipedia article on Medieval medicine.)  While astrology often got lumped in with medicine at this stage, herb craft and medicine practiced by outsiders--those who were not part of the religious heirarchy or doctors with political clout--were often labeled witches.  And medical philosophy was increasingly tied in with the Christian world view.

As Wiki explains, "As Christianity grew in influence, a tension developed between the church and folk-medicine, since much in folk medicine was magical, or mystical, and had its basis in sources that were not compatible with Christian faith. Spells and incantations were used in conjunction with herbs and other remedies. Such spells had to be separated from the physical remedies, or replaced with Christian prayers or devotions. Similarly, the dependence upon the power of herbs or gems needed to be explained through Christianity.The church taught that God sometimes sent illness as a punishment, and that in these cases, repentance could lead to a recovery. This led to the practice of penance and pilgrimage as a means of curing illness."

How does this relate to your novel?
In a worldbuilding mode, you might need a conflict wherein your character is in conflict with society over what he/she knows works and what is allowed.  Classic conflict for Church or State vs. Individual.  Even Big Biz vs. the Little Guy.  The motif is one of struggle against some amorphous juggernaut, a thing that cannot be stopped and must be either worked around or be crushed by it.

And hormesis, the idea that you can use a little of something to do good, could also be used in a magical scenario for your fantasy novel.

The important thing to take away from the discussion is, I believe, that large social institutions can influence--perhaps very wrongly--the growth and function of science.  And it can be to the detriment of a society.  The human Will To Be Stupid is so common...

Alien intelligence

From a link at Cute Overload, an article on tool using octopuses.  Basically, scientists studying a tropical species of octopus that live on, basically, a mud plain with no cover, are using coconut shells as portable shelters in which to hide while resting.  Thing is, they can move a lot faster without the shell, but persist in carrying the thing around even though locomotion for them becomes like tiptoeing while in a horse stance.  Because the shell is a useful tool for when they stop moving.

This brings up a few ideas for me about the topic of alien intelligences.  I mean, if octopi, which are apparently the smartest invertibrate, can figure out how to use an object (aka a tool) for a future need, then what else can be smart?  You could run about and ask of nearly anything, what if it were intelligent? and a panoply of attendant follow up questions can give you some interesting story starting places.

I'm particularly interested in true alien (off planet) intelligence and stories that might come from encounters with what we didn't understand was intelligent.  I mean, if the very planet you walk on takes offense at something you do, such as slaughtering its planty bits for salads...

But innerspace, the deep ocean depths, haven't been fully explored.  There could be all sorts of things living down in the dark.  Maybe we need to learn to speak with them so they can speak with the creatures living in the oceans of Saturn's moon, Titan.  Or maybe the critters living on Titan take exception to how we treat the creatures of our own inerspace?  Imagine how humanity might have to humble itself if it learned that there was something that we needed to survive, and the creatures at the bottom of the Mariana Trench were the only way to save our world from damage we've done to it?  Most of these ideas require a bit of scientific-sounding tap dancing to be workable, but as the basis for a plot, they aren't exactly new but are intriguing.

Anyhow, check out the link and watch the coconut-carrying octopus.  It's amazing.

SpecFic Holiday, anyone? Meet the Krampus!

Okay, not quite speculative fiction, but definitely mythological and something you likely never heard of before.  From the way cool site, Neatorama, we have an article on an old, pre-christian character who reminds me of what the Grinch should have been had he not been written in the 20th Century...

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Krampus is Making a Christmas Comeback

This Christmas, forget Santa. There’s a mythical creature that’s making a big comeback: the Krampus.

Popular in Alpine villages centuries ago, Krampus scared kids straight—his long red tongue upped the fear factor—and taught them that evil bows before good. He served Santa’s forerunner, kindly St. Nicholas, who had “the power to send Krampus back to hell,” says Austrian ethnologist Ulrike Kammerhofer-Aggermann. [...]

But by the 1800s, church leaders had marginalized Krampus. Now he’s enjoying a mini-revival, mainly for the fun of it. The Austrian state of Salzburg alone has 180 Krampus clubs, more than half set up since 1990, says Josef Moser, Jr., chairman of Austria’s Krampus Museum. Revelers roam streets in Krampus garb, rattle bells, and roar. “It feels good!” says Moser. Link 

Original post here.

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Ideas.  So many ideas!  Can you picture what would happen in a world where magic has returned (such as in the Ilona Andrews Kate Daniels series) and that very first Christmas?  What, exactly, comes down the chimney to a bad little boy?  Or perhaps it's about the warning you get before things Go South in a spectacular way because the Devil's agents are there to collect blasphemers when they hadn't been before?  Or perhaps the Old Ones or the Old Gods are stretching their limbs after being cramped between the pages of mythology and history texts for so darned long...and they are granting wishes and such no one expects to have granted.  And the possibility of so many old creatures and dieties--even saints or religious icons--being returned to the world during a season of hope (and now likely mayhem)...  And I must say, that if you were to write a holiday-focused horror or speculative work, the Krampus or some variation from pre-christian yore would be pretty cool.  Whoever gets to that first, wins.  But it won't be me this late in the game. 

I LIKE these ideas though.  *dons thinking cap for next Yule season*

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Christmas horror contest, anyone?  If there is any interest, I might hold one, prize to be determined.  We'd keep it to 500 word flash this time, or possibly a poem.  If I hadn't already done Chthulu as a prize, I could offer this little feller...except it's a bit too pricey.  But something.

Zombie story ideas revisited

Excerpted from a post dated January 6, 2008:

A few ideas to toy with.
1.  What sort of employment would be appropriate for zombies?  Places where lives could be saved by them or where literal mindedness would be useful-- Mining, deep sea work, space work, shoveling coal into furnaces, lifting heavy stuff, repetitive actions such as on assembly lines.  Corrollary:  What uses would be amusingly inappropriate?  Zombie pets, etc.

2.  What sorts of things could zombies do to cause a business or person trouble?  Maybe they get hungry and eat somebody or something of importance.  Maybe one malfunctions, e.g. develops free will, or gets stuck like a broken record.  Maybe somebody gets too good at producing these things and it threatens to take too many human jobs-- and employees have issues, which brings in unions, strikes, etc.

3.  Where would using zombies get a business into trouble?  Food handling, child care, dealing with the public, hospital staff, pet care...endless possibilities for inappropriate but cost-saving uses of the mindless-yet-programmable undead...   Maybe the people sold into becoming zombies are a form of China Syndrome (hazardous work conditions cover up) or Manchurian Candidate (assassination programming) units.

4.  Government uses for zombies?  Unkillable and merciless ground troops, riot control, chain gang workers, means of cleaning the streets of undesirables.

5.  Criminal uses for zombies?  Body disposal, voting fraud [you could title this one How The Vote Was Won, lol], mules for drugs or other substances, genetic engineering experiments gone wrong, terrorist weapons [in particular for religious groups seekign to take over the world, which, considering zombification is a voudoun tradition, might make for an interesting riff in and of itself.]  Or maybe the creation of zombies is a black market operation. 

6.  Other strange and unusual uses for zombies (many of which may be impractical but could be funny if you sell it well).  At the garbage dump, toxic waste conversion [title it 101 Uses For Zombie Shit], a mad scientist's failed experiments, a voudoun priest/ess's enforcer, a very straaaaange surrogate mother, a rather frightening Show & Tell offering for Jimmy's first-grade class, how a demented person gets even with her abusive parent/friend/spouse...

7.  Role reversal.  Zombies and normal humans change places.  A basic inversion that has some intriguing possibilities.  For example, in a world where the zombies have taken over, how do young humans feel about 'making the change' a bit early?  Do they curry favor to be zombified like young Turks curry favor or compete in office politiking in order to get that cushy corner office and promotion?  And what changes in the society that would follow from such a switch.

8.  Change the rules.  If zombies aren't mindless brain-eating killers with rotting flesh and a tendency to literal-mindedness...

9.  And then there are the really twisted ideas... like Zombie Love.  Eck.  Makes me think of the Evil Editor continuation where the woman keeps her husband's corpse on the front porch as a yard ornament...

The editors specifically request non-cliched zombies, so I guess your undead critters shouldn't be lurching about with arms extended, skin bone white with oozing eye sockets and a stench only a corprophage would love.  Maybe have one in a smoking jacket and smoking a pipe.  Discover he's erudite and chatty and happens to like chianti and fava beans with his brains...?

I cannot help but picture humor being involved, rather like Sean of the Dead.  I have a couple of ideas, which you may steal:
1.  Murder and mayhem at the national championship of the Zombie Breeder's of America.  It's rigged.  One of the judges is a sentient zombie...with an agenda.
2.  A young Turk pits his wits against the competition for a promotion and a corner office.  The twist: you should read the non-disclosure clause before you sign up for the competition, because failure is not an option.
3.  Greedy zombie manufactory didn't do its quality control.  Ooops!  Now for the cover up!
4.  Necrophilia and nuptials.  'Trophy' second-spouse is so determined to get married (and get the loot) he/she rigs a zombie raising to save the wedding after the fiancee is murdered.  Twist:  getting the marriage consummated and the will drawn up.  POV the first wife/husband, their angry murderous child, or the lawyer lover of the zombie-marrying spouse spouse. 
5.  The draft is reinstated, and Bill doesn't want Uncle Jiordi to be exhumed for combat.
6.  Zombie body parts 'accidentally' farmed out to transplant recipients.  Blackmarket chop shop suffers the revenge of a person who is turning into a different kind of zombie from the donor tissue.  A zombie without a master and a will of its own... Bwa ha ha...
7.  And, my personal fav, if zombification isn't magical but a recessive genetic trait which comes to the fore via some natural disaster causing the population to inbreed, or to occur on a colony planet, etc.... 

Biology for SF writing links

Biology in Science Fiction blog had an interesting link to an article about a Kenyan College professor, writer Joan Slonczewski, who offers a biology for SF course.  Links below for your edification.

Course syllabus here.
The course study guide here.
Student projects here.
Related wiki here.

Rethinking the spaceship

"[W]hat intrigues me is the possibility that the entire conceptual framework of the starship is a dangerously misleading dead-end, and that what we need is a new framework for thinking about interstellar travel."  Charles Stross, from his blog

Charles Stross has another thoughtful post on his blog, this time regarding spaceships.  Lots of food for thought there.

Mr. Stross has some excellent scientific information describing all sorts of things on his blog.  He's obviously a smart fellow.  But the thing I admit to taking away from the post?  I can't help but consider the quote above and thinking...What if there were some other way of transporting ourselves from our planet to another?

Hmmm... Whether you choose fantasy or science for the method, you can use many other means of interstellar or interworld travel.

How about psychic pilots - something similar to what Herbert uses in Dune? Or portal technology - similar to L'Engle's tesseracts or Dr. Who's Tardis -  where you step from one world to another.  Or technology that's so advanced (and not relevant to the plot) that we don't really care about the impossibility of exceeding the speed of light.  Or (and this is my favorite) the larger-dimensional character in the Jade D'Arcy series that shifts travelers through its dimension and thus from one location to another.

In any event, there are plenty of variations on travel modes from one world to another.  But if we put on our thinking caps, perhaps we can think of more.

Control the Proles?

ScienceDaily (Oct. 5, 2009)— A vaccine to treat cocaine dependence appears to reduce use of the drug in a subgroup of individuals who attain high anticocaine antibody levels in response, according to a report in the October issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Saw the above article in Science Daily that made me think 1984 or Brave New World could have used it.  Instead of drugging people into compliance, you could control them by vaccinating them against things the government doesn't like.  Such as illegal drugs.  Or booze.  Or tobacco.  Or greasy fried foods.  Or even relligious-linked choices so that you have to eat fish on Friday or avoid pork so you remain kosher!

These things aren't going to the be main thrust of your plot, but such sorts of governmentally enforced behaviors would affect your characters,and they are definitely a sign of eroded individual freedom and other sorts of socio-political issues that lead to larger plot issues--like your character being in conflict with society because, perhaps, he sells an antidote so your cigaretts give you that nice nicotine rush?

A new sort of drug dealer could be someone who deals in reversing immunization.

Or, a different idea, what if autism really is affected by components in vaccinations?  What if you had a character who knows how to reverse it?  Why would the govt do such a thing on purpose (if they have in your story)?

Apparently Isaac Newton predicted the Apocalypse

History Channel has all sorts of interesting things on it.  But upon learning that Isaac Newton predicted the Apocalype in 2060, I had this sudden thought:  Hey, Jesus is supposed to return during the End Times, and the dead are supposed to rise. 

Doesn't that mean then that Jesus brings on the Zombie Apocalypse?

Discuss.  My work here is done for the day. 

Strange thoughts I'm thinking

"I first met my future wife in the womb."*

That line popped into my head and startled me.  Don't ask me where it came from, it just arrived with all the incestuous possibilities and non-incestuous explanations.  Squiffy, that line.  I think I'm in love, because it implies a story.

You got any lines like that, lines that imply something interesting, a potential story you want to write some day when the idea grows, develops and ripens long enough?

As a sequel to my zombie story, "What Mother Never Told You," I have this line:  "I was late for my own funeral--again."  Can't wait until the idea catches up with that one!

*I was thinking maybe surrogate motherhood.  Some sort of weird twin bond where the surrogate gets pregnant with her own egg after being invitro-fied.  Thus setting up a weird connection in the mind of the protagonist.  I'm thinking it's horror.   

Using lists to get yourself moving

"Make a list of all your story ideas.  Yes, you read that right. ALL of them.  This is a great exercise because it gets your subconscious churning and forces it to choose what it truly wants to be working on, and with a little help from the Universe you could find yourself writing the next Harry Potter or Twilight. And it gives you an overall idea of what your themes are as a writer (and very likely the themes you have as a person). I absolutely believe that writers only have about six or seven themes that they’re dealing with over and over and over again. It’s my experience that your writing improves exponentially when you become more aware of the themes that you’re working with."  Alexandra Sokoloff 

Another great post from author and screenwriter Alexandra Sokoloff.  She makes a case for making lists to get to know what makes you tick as a writer, for winnowing through the myriad ideas we ALL come up with and finding the wheat, ignoring the chaff.  Listmaking is the main trick she recommends. 

And I think she has a point.  By making lists and rating ideas we really like, we can figure out what they have in common and perhaps why we want to write them.  She says it can help determine your personal themes for your writing, and that most of us have distinct ones.  Sometimes a few, sometims a single theme. 

But it is important to understand if you're picking a project that isn't for you before you waste a couple of months and stall!

The Packager

Robert Jackson Bennett over at Orbit Books blog has a great series of posts (fictional, I presume) about his unusual neighbor.  The tale is not yet finished, but the device the man describes sounds pretty cool.  Very science fiction and nicely written.  The first post is here.

Your brain doesn't suit our needs, Mr. Smith

In a recent post, Pacatrue mentions a fascinating breakthrough in brain imaging, which (as per usual) made my fingers twitch to type and my brain itch with an overflow of story possibilities.  (Original article here.)  In Paca's words:

"This is very, very cool, and could be seen as a breakthrough in cognitive science. The way most psychology works as of today is that the scientist thinks of a pattern that fits data, and then we guess that something like that pattern is what's actually in our minds. But this is because we've had no direct way to see what the mind was doing. We could only see general areas in use before with brain imaging. However, if they can truly see the way the brain is representing certain objects, then that could let us study how those objects are manipulated by the brain, which then let's us stop guessing about the mind and start observing how thought works."

The gist of the breakthrough is that scientists may soon be able to discern actual thoughts.  Or the various permutations/thinking styles of humans. 

Which made me think, as per usual, What If?   And of course my brain wandered into the dystopic.

Ideas. 

• What if being able to see different "thought types" leads to pigeonholing of people, not just the mentally ill, mentally damaged or mentally handicapped people, but also (Gattika style) people being denied certain educational or career opportunities--even the right to reproduce or rights to even read certain books or enjoy certain hobbies or music?  You could draw that "it's not for you" line just about anywhere, depending on what hot-button issue has raised its head and gotten some group to push through some sort of 'for the public good' legislation.  After all, we are continuously legislating morality or safety issues in the U.S.!
• I'm particularly enamored of how a culture could be wracked by limiting access to certain cultural experiences based on how 'suited' the individual's brain is to understand them  according to some governmental/scientific standard.
• Instead of having testing to see if the kids are learning what they should, we test their little haids and see if they are thinking mathematically in the proper way.  If not, shunted to some other school track.  And I can see how this sort of narrow-minded limitation of opportunity could actually shoot the society that practices this in the foot, because I don't believe a particular thinking style prevents a genius from popping up.  (Didn't they think Einstein was retarded at one time?)
• It might also prove a disadvantage to have intelligence or creativity frustrated.  In a super-rigid social network based upon mental classifications (whatever you want to call the thought-style categorization process) you would be making a mistake to compress people against their desires.  Desire will make of such limitations a pressure cooker, especially if class or economic limitations go along with them.  (Tanith Lee deals with this sort of thing in several of her adult books, specifically The Silver Metal Lover and Biting the Sun, and very interestingly too, as these are presented as utopian societies!)

There are more ideas which come to mind, but primarily I seem to be focused on how this tech could be used badly and the political, social and otehr pressures rising to create dissatisfaction and potential revolt in a society.  At the very least, an interesting fulcrum for conflict--particularly of the man vs. society variety!

The Japanese trends are so fascinating!

Check out this wiki on Japanese fashion, viz the Lolita styles.  Fascinating.

Does urban fantasy have to be urban? I'm asea on this issue (haha)

Vampire Wire (a great blog for fans of urban fantasy and vampire fiction) had a post recently that gave me an idea.  Not a new idea, because I'd had the vague notion previously, but an idea for a new story milieu.  That's dangerous!

The question was what we readers thought were underrepresented in the category of shapeshifters in our urban fantasies.  I particularly notice that nothing from the sea seems to be showing up in urban fantasy.  Probably because urban means not in the ocean or any setting that brings water into play with any real frequency.

But it could. 

We think urban fantasy and forget that a lot of cities (New York, Chicago, San Francisco, the whole state of Hawaii) have huge bodies of water next door.   These cities are literally dabbling their toes into the sea or into rivers--or both!  Why not use that great, untapped (pun intended) resource?

Or (and this thought put a gleam in my eye) what about having your 'urban' fantasy be set aboard a ship?  Or a small sailing craft?  You have urban things on a cruise ship, just not a city.  Or you literally have a sort of city on a military vessel (there are more people on an aircraft carrier than live in my town).  With all the infrastructure and the big ocean surrounding them you can have a plot involving sea creatures who can also walk as men.  Could be good.

A pure fantasy I read a couple years ago, The Aware by Glenda Larke, was set on an archipelago, and she had a lot of cool ideas in this story related to water and creatures from below the waves.  Check it out if you want a different fantasy read.  (The Aware is the first book in the Isles of Glory series.)

Now, I wonder if I can get a grant somewhere to learn to sail, buy a yacht and sail the Carribbean for a year or two...just for reasearch of course!

Is anybody else reminded of Frank Herbert?

A study published in the July 17 issue of the journal Science details how sandfish -- small lizards with smooth scales -- move rapidly underground through desert sand. In this first thorough examination of subsurface sandfish locomotion, researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology found that the animals place their limbs against their sides and create a wave motion with their bodies to propel themselves through granular media.  Science Daily article

Sand trouts...sandfish... Don't you love it when you think you find the possible inspiration for something in a classic sf novel? 

I don't have any specific ideas for this one, just the observation that small little details, like the sand trouts on Herbert's planet Dune, are totally plausible, whether or not he knew about sandfish lizards.  And if you have ideas that are truly unique in your worldbuilding, it might help if they are truly plausible as well.  Readers don't always require it, but if you feed them a mixed diet of likely and way out there, the way out there doesn't push the boundaries of their willingness to believe you quite so much.  (All bets are off for humorous writing, though.)

Robots and genetics can, apparently, go together

"...this model may provide a way to understand some of the social signals that we see in other species, many of which seem baffling to a human equipped with only common sense. In these experiments, the robots demonstrated how something that was inadvertent—random flashes of blue light—could become a life-or-death social cue, and lead to the evolution of strategic behavior for both the signal and the robot's response to it."

Another good one from Ars Technica, a scientific experiment (with robots!) which illustrates how a random mutation can become linked to a totally unrelated drive and response. 

I don't have any specific story idea, but it seems like a helpful tidbit to keep in mind when designing some alien creature.  The idea of weird random things becoming linked to vital survival traits like finding/protecting food, mating, etc. just appeals to me.

Faking DNA evidence is now possible...and easy

"If there's one application of modern genetics that the public has not only accepted but embraced, it's the use of DNA testing in criminal investigations. Courts have accepted DNA evidence as definitive, and it's difficult to imagine a movie or TV show that focuses on law enforcement but declines to use DNA testing as a plot device. The reason is simple: given a valid DNA sample, the tests can match it to its source with probabilities that exclude the rest of our planet's population. Those probabilities still hold, but some researchers have now looked into whether it's possible to fake a valid DNA sample, and they have come up with a disturbing answer: just about any molecular biology lab has the tools to do so."  From Ars Technica article, "CSI Fraud: researchers craft fake DNA evidence"

So, you had to know that with the growth of technology the common (yet intelligent) criminal's ability to fake evidence was going to get better, too.  Well, as I've long expected to hear, it's possible to fake DNA evidence.  And it's apparently fairly easy for any properly set up lab to do. 

Ideas.

• Big syndicates or other criminal groups with the money/resources are going to be protecting themselves by slipping faked evidence into the crime scene (either when they commit the crime or perhaps into the evidence locker...although the latter option is far too complex to my way of thinking, given that you'd have to have someone in the lab and the evidence lock up who could access the physical evidence in both sites--including falsifying chain of evidence on the sealed evidence bags, which have to be replaced once open.) 
• Big syndicate or (etc.) might actually want to kill someone off and frame a rival.  Might also work well as a spy thriller concept.
• Your clever revenge-prone protagonist decides to jam the spokes of some entity's little red wagon with falsified evidence.
• Or a government agency is busy setting up a particular group for some subversive reason, say a coup in the works.
• Terrorists take on their targets by first spreading chaos and discontent by setting up people who are key players--say in the White House Administration, government bureaucracy in the National Security Agency, FBI or Homeland Security. 
• Your future world is run by a corrupt government which determines who are undesireables and proceeds to set them up with fake evidence to remove them from a supposedly utopian world and into exile.  (Perhaps they need workers in colonies off planet, and few volunteers.  Getting malcontents off the planet would be the 'best' solution to the government, and gaining a legal excuse would give them the moral high ground.)

 There are a number of possibilities, and I'm sure that reality will provide them in the future. 

Means of intelligence gathering for your characters

As the old saying goes, there's more than one way to skin a cat.  Not that I've tried, but I'm sure you know what I mean! 

Recently, Laughingwolf had a post on how hackers have now discovered how to gather your data by interpreting electrical signals in outlets as far away as fifteen or twenty feet.  Or a laser beam's reflection can be interpreted in a similar manner.  Both of these are a bit scary, and I suspect are news to you as the are to me.

But it also is food for plot fodder, as you can add this means of spying to the tech options you allow your characters.  In particular, I think it would be useful to discover someone has been listening in, or as a trivial mention when we see some apparently paranoid measures taken to prevent this sort of listening in to your keystrokes.  (Or maybe your character in q uestion is a conspiracy theorist?)

 

Smart movement?

"Swinging their arms helped participants in a new study solve a problem whose solution involved swinging strings, researchers report, demonstrating that the brain can use bodily cues to help understand and solve complex problems."  Science daily article

 

Those of us who block out our characters' movements when writing had this concept down a long time ago. ;)

 

The study is the first to show that a person's ability to solve a problem can be influenced by how he or she moves.

 

A few snippets that I found thought provoking:

 

"[B]y directing the way people move their bodies, we are, unbeknownst to them, directing the way they think about the problem."

 

"Even after successfully solving the problem, almost none of the study subjects became consciously aware of any connection between the physical activity they engaged in and the solution they found."

 

"The results are interesting both because body motion can affect higher order thought, the complex thinking needed to solve complicated problems, and because this effect occurs even when someone else is directing the movements of the person trying to solve the problem," Lleras said.

 

"The new findings offer new insight into what researchers call "embodied cognition," which describes the link between body and mind, Lleras said."

 

"People tend to think that their mind lives in their brain, dealing in conceptual abstractions, very much disconnected from the body," he said. "This emerging research is fascinating because it is demonstrating how your body is a part of your mind in a powerful way. The way you think is affected by your body and, in fact, we can use our bodies to help us think."

 

Priming the [emotional] pump

"Priming...is when someone is exposed to a certain environment and their subconscious is activated, and then they tend to act in accordance with that environment without deliberate intent. Priming can manipulate behavior; if someone witnesses violent behavior, they would likely behave more violently."  Science Daily article

Priming is a term I hadn't run across before.  While you wouldn't be likely to mention the term in your novel, the concept might be valuable.  And it does describe an interesting phenomena that is possibly related to mob crowd behavior (or so I'd presume.)  And I find it an interesting concept to keep in mind when considering how your characters' surroundings affect their actions, say when they find themselves doing something they normally wouldn't do without thinking about it. 

Additionally, the article cites a study that indicates various types of song lyrics can prime emotional responses.  For example, "Itsy Bitsy Spider" can open the mind, whereas patriotic songs can close it.  Those running the study "wanted to see if the songs created a pro-social or an anti-social response. ...[P]reliminary findings showed that the patriotic songs had a negative effect on the participants, as shown through their responses to the survey's questions about other cultures and diversity. The patriotic songs made the participants close-minded and prejudiced." 

Emotions affect germ cells?

Here's an idea for you:  Your parents' emotional states have a profound affect upon your emotional makeup. 

 

According to this Science Daily article, a study "suggests that a wide range of chemicals that our brain generates when we are in different moods could affect 'germ cells' (eggs and sperm), the cells that ultimately produce the next generation. Such natural chemicals could affect the way that specific genes are expressed in the germ cells, and hence how a child develops."

 

I am sort of boggled by this concept, as you could go many crazy places with it:

• Big Brother manipulating people with subliminal messages to create a "slave" population of passive consumers;
• people consciously planning their grandchildren (or the next generation of of their utopian society, Hitler Youth or whatever) by manipulating the germ cells of their kids;
• clones grown for the purpose of properly stimulating and then harvesting "to order" germ cells--either in a government or private enterprise;
• germ cell factories (e.g. just organs clones) and stimulated/harvested via implant in hosts who are kept brain controlled for that purpose...which gives a new use for prisoners and is rather squicky;
• and more, mostly along the lines of how good ideas can go oh-so-wrong when the government steps in to control human breeding.

 

 

Is your character above the [natural] law?

Space.com offers a number of things that are fascinating to the non-scientist. As a writer, I find the articles are easily digestible and useful for idea fuel.

Take this article for example  which describes one potential means of using a black hole's singularity to pop over into another universe. As the article states,

"But some black holes have hybrid structures, theorists have long suspected. The new research shows that the hybrid singularity could contain both strong and weak sectors. 'It would allow the captain to navigate toward the sector where the singularity is weak,' Burko said. 'Experiencing only finite (and even small) effects (of stretching and squeezing), the spaceship could arrive at the singularity unharmed. While that still does not guarantee a peaceful traversing of the singularity, it keeps the possibility of doing so open. If that traversing becomes possible, it could open a 'tunnel' to another universe.'"

Extra-universal travel explained? Cool. But what about using black holes to jump across our own universe? The question that I've always had to consider when the possibility of extra-universal travel comes up in conversation (as it does so frequently) is this: Laws of physics that apply in our universe (Universe One) likely will differ over yonder in Universe Two.  Different universe, different physical laws, right?  It is a distinct possibility that another universe, another reality, will have variances or even completely different sets of rules.

For example, what about gravity? Or perception by the human mind? Is thought a powerful yet weak force like gravity, able to affect things in a field like gravity does? Is light perceived the same? So many questions.

But the biggest one for me is akin to the issue of going physcally backward or forwards in time:  Can a human being survive that sort of thing if we ever figure out how to do it? What happens to a living being subjected to the physical laws of a new universe? Can they survive what occurs to them? Is there some natural 'translation' that occurs allowing them to live and function? Is being in a new galaxy like living in a dream, where things make sense when you're there, but not once you are no longer in that realm?  And, most fascinating for me, do the 'rules' change when you translate yourself into another reality like that?  Is your natural response to, say, gravity, going to turn into the ability to consciously resist the new universe's version of gravity, e.g. to fly?  (Superman's powers stem from merely being on another planet, which wouldn't make a difference according to our understanding of physics; but into another reality, another universe?  I think that concept makes sense in that context!)

I have my own thoughts. What are yours?

Organic idea

Organic vs. Genetically Modified (GM) foods.  No matter your take on the science, these videos provide some possibles for world building. 

I am reminded of Karen Travis' Wes'har series, where GM crops are all that are available, and thus the world's food supply is in the iron fascist fist of global corporations. While that wasn't the main thrust of the novels (there being a great big story arc involving people, political issues, ecological issues and alien first contact) the Macguffin that is chased after initially is a pack of non-genetically modified crop genetics.  Without that particular quest for the story, the rest would not have followed.

Invincible Defense, anyone?

Gypsy scholar has an article on a proposal for an Invincible Defense.

Whether dealing with megalomaniacs in the real world (where it's darned scary) or in your spec fic tale, it's a fascinating idea...and I say it loving sarcasm.  Really.

Hikkikomori - an odd angst for your characters

I ran across a mention of hikkikomori the other day--some sort of social withdrawal being described in Japan.  It's akin to agoraphobia but more a fear of being around other people than of being outside, and possibly due to academic or social embarrassment/failures. Young men primarily.  See wiki article here.

 

Not exactly sure how to use this tid bit, but I liked it.  I think it might be an interesting thing to use when building a culture-focused and success-oriented society.

 

Ideas.
Your protagonist knows others like this. Your protagonist flirts with this problem. Your protagonist tries it, can't manage it or is denied by parental intervention. And the protagonist, though checked in his urge to avoid social/academic failure again, must thus find a new venue in which to fit when faced with the shame of returning to the outside world. This spawns a fascinating tangent to the life he has previously led.

 

 

 

What if you had a longer life?

When I saw that Madoff got 150 years in prison for his crimes, I figured he deserved it.  Not as badly as the Enron assholes who took thousands of peoples' retirement pensions away from them deserved to DIE, but Madoff does deserve his punishment. 

It occurred to me that Madoff wouldn't live to endure one hundred and fifty years of punishment...but I'd really like him to. 

And it further occurred to me...what if we had the technology to extend the life of a man? 

And what if we used that technology not for the average guy, nor for the rich...but for extending the life of criminals so that they die Five Freaking Minutes before their release from prison--after one hundred and fifty years?

I like that. 

One hundred and fifty years in prison... In those circumstances, a really long life would become a nasty punishment.

There's a story there someplace...

Awkwardness--another visual aid

They do say a picture is worth a thousand words.  Does this inspire you at all?  This moment of abject terror brought to you by Awkward Family Photos, a site that has many pictures that might inspire you with an idea, a scene, or give you something in the nature of a laugh.

Electricity-producing bacteria?

Liana Brooks had a link a while ago to this Daily Galaxy article on bacteria that collect metal and produce electricity.  The idea of an organic battery, or other means of powering, say, prosthetics, combat armor, smart weaponry (recall my smart bullet post a while back?)...

So many ideas, so little time...

The double edged device

Pure research for its own sake is probably the best way we have of discovering random things that eventually lead to dramatic breakthroughs that save lives, promote health and all good things.

But research can also be a double-edged and dangerous things.  Because we humans have a tendency to take neutral stuff, even stuff that can save lives, and twist it to ugly things.  This study disturbs me for that reason.  Imagine if the military had that sort of stuff and used it as an interrogation method.  Get someone seriously jonesing for a drug he's never taken.  While they might be tough-minded enough not to crack, add that withdrawal trauma to waterboarding or whatever other official "non torture" method of interrogation is in use at the time, and the victim might crack faster.

I can see using this in a novel.  I do hope no one uses it in real life, however.

But this dichotomy brings to mind a useful trait of devices that can be used for good or ill.  We need radioactive materials developed as sources for medical instrumentation and scanning devices, or for scanners at border ports, or to source the power of space probes.  We dread it because of nuclear bombs, North Korea becoming worryingly shrill and waving the "I'll nuke you!" flag just yesterday (re conflicts in the DMZ) being the latest example of why.

But this edge of danger to an item, a technology, a device can be really fruitful when used in a story.  You have a technology that has major benefits for life, the universe and everything...but it can also end life as we know it.  Whether that technology is your MacGuffin and your characters are chasing after it or trying to remove it from the hands of terrorists (24 anyone?) or it's just an ancillary item that suddenly is used in a surprizing way (I rather like this approach) after an innocuous introduction, tech like that can be very useful to your plot development.

It can also increase tension when something "bombproof" goes awry.  An example of this is in Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series.  She has a drug called "penta" which when used causes people to spill their guts.  The drug has vast implications because torture is not needed.  And we the readers chug along not worrying for Miles our protagonist until he's captured by an enemy and is injected with the drug.  Then we learn that a very few, including her protagonist Miles Vorkosigan, have an idiosyncratic reaction.  Penta doesn't work on him!  It works somewhat in that he can keep babbling to the point he says nothing really, because if he can segue into reciting something like Shakespeare he can't stop until he gets to the end.  I thought that was a clever device, because it both was funny, and it served to give the reader the sudden worry that Miles might be tortured instead of just questioned.  This added lots of tension!

Besides all that, itsn't it always intriguing and pleasing when something seemingly mundane suddenly arises as a great big nasty bugaboo?  As a reader I like having something 'normal' become part of a clever plot twist.  I suppose the danger is in being too clever, or trying this too often.  Like Goldilocks, that little housebreaker, you need to find what works juuuust right.

The Hawthorne Effect

A blog I stop by frequently for interesting ideas and plain old feel good tips is Vlad Dolezal's "Fun Life Development" blog (formerly known as "An Amazing Mind".)  A recent post on "The Hawthorne Effect" is an interesting tidbit of information which I thought useful to share for your future story plotting needs.

Basically, the Hawthorne Effect is that, when people know they are being observed, they are more efficient.  They don't need to even try; they just are.  The trick is, though, that you cannot be critical, you have to be neutral when you let someone know they are being observed.  So, you can have your evil genius use this principal by just mentioning to his lackeys, "I notice that you are using five bullets to kill the enemy when Evil Minion #5 is only using three," walking away and laughing while the Evil Minions automatically strive to do better.

Or something like that.

Seriously, though, you can have a cop utilize this human trait to effect, or your hero, or an artificial intelligence that is seeking to manipulate humanity (for their own good, of course.)  A parent can do so as well.

Might be a fun bit of business to use, or you could hang major plot elements off this concept.

The cool thing about The Hawthorne Effect is that it only improves the behaviors observed.  It could cause backfiring and poorer performance, though, if you do not word the mention neutrally and make the object of the experiment think s/he is being manipulated, criticized or ordered about.  If they feel out of control, you have lost.

Tracking technology

With the advent of gps and other technology for tracking people, I thought it worth a mention in relation to writing your urban fantasy or science fiction.  Particularly if you want to extrapolate from current tech to give your characters something new to use (or to complicate your plot and make life more difficult for your characters.) 

GPS systems and cellular phones can be traced.  This is likely old news to you all; but it is worth mentioning as a starting point.  Particularly since it can be used to track people by the bad guys as well as the good ones (cops and spys, oh my!).

What if your vampire hunter is 'tagged' with a teensy tracking device unbeknownst to her by a device such as this one?  Driveok, the site, advertises this device for tracking where your kids go; but it could be used by criminals, by cops, by vampires or werewolves or any paranatural critter!  It utilizes a gps device that is also a cellphone, and the thing apparently calls and gives you text messages.  You could have this thing update you with times at particular locations or real-time tracking data so you can follow it by receipt of the text messages!  How cool (and disturbing) is that?

These units are only a couple-three hundred bucks and have low maintenance fees for subscription.  Or, you could have your very own hightech system set up by your baddies. 

And this can be updated for futuristic worlds such as having space craft tracked that way--presuming the ftl communications issue is resolved in your world.  Or you could use the time lag to your plot advantage.

World Wide Busybodies

Horace Jeffery Hodges over at Gypsy Scholar has a great post on how high tech nosiness can change the world, and he references this article is on how Google Earth and a collaboration of people using their noodles have mapped out most of secretive North Korea's infrastructure and notable locations.  (Among other things, 47 restaurants versus 1200 dams, a 300 square mile prison and alleged nuclear plants.  Whew!)  Who knew that you could spy so effectively for a hobby of all things? 

Which all sounds to me like the premise for a cool story. (What doesn't?)

But picture this:  [Idea 1] Some activating event galvanizes the citizenry of many nations, opposing factions both political, cultural and religious, when some single country has something they all want.  Maybe it's a not-to-be-covered-up alien visit; maybe it's the announcement by one country's scientific community that they've discovered the secret to perfect health, youth or just the cure to cancer (or some mythical plague you have blistering the globe).  Maybe it's a means to stabilize the atmosphere.  There are many issues that might galvanize the worlds' citizens against a country that tries to hold some vital information for ransom.

And if something as egalitarian as the internet, as Google Earth of all things, can be a tool for finding out what's going on... 

I love the idea of disparate groups finding a common ground like that.  [Idea 2] You could even approach it from a cynical perspective, where aliens decide that nothing will unite mankind as much as an outside threat, so they provide one.  (I steal this idea whole from "Unwillingly to Earth" by Pauline Ashwell, an excellent book.)  In Ashwell's version, it is humanity seeking to prevent world war on another planet; but you can flip the idea on its head, too. (This book is also where I steal "the great Kathuzulum," which is a mythical land mentioned in that story.   The word just sticks in your head, doesn't it?)

Have you any other extrapolations to this idea you want to share, or books that employ these tactics?  Do let me know.  And, as always, happy writing!

The curse of invisibility

Natalie has a great post asking What If you were invisible?  To which I commented and wish to add some more.

Invisibility would create difficulties.  The character might not be able to see where her feet were (if she cannot see herself) or she would have difficulty getting by if she had to go nude to remain unseen.  (Like in the League of Extraordinary Gentleman when the Invisible Man is out in arctic weather naked as a jaybird.  Brrr.  Parts might snap off!)  

To reprise what I said on the blog post comments, I have wondered once or twice what the effect would be if no one remembered you as soon as you were out of sight.  (I might have seen this used someplace, but, ironically enough, I cannot recall where.)  But picture the effect on a kid who is suddenly cursed with this, and people start forgetting her as she's blotted from people's memories moments after she is done speaking with them or out of view.  Maybe it's how the Faeries recruit new members. Perhaps it's the effect of dying.  Or the result of some strange transformation inspired/caused by some other effect.  You could use a slow-acting invisibility spell that slowly dissolves a person's presence in the minds of others; or you could have an intermittant effect; or you could have it only affect the minds of certain people, sort of an inverse reaction to their emotional ties.  So that no one recalls your character if they love or like her, and can't forget her if they have a grudge?

Awesome possibilities.  Thanks, Natalie. 

When Hell Froze Over?

"Imagine a time when the entire universe froze. According to a new model for dark energy, that is essentially what happened about 11.5 billion years ago, when the universe was a quarter of the size it is today." Science Daily, May 11, 2009 (via their blog article here)

A frozen universe.  An intergalactic popsicle.  What a concept!

And, according to the article, "A cosmological phase transition — similar to freezing — is one of the distinctive aspects of this latest effort to account for dark energy — the mysterious negative force that cosmologists now think makes up more than 70 percent of all the energy and matter in the universe and is pushing the universe apart at an ever-faster rate." 

Now there's a bit of fun!  I can't help but see such an event as a cosmological milestone that would affect the primal (and heretofore unquestioned in the sense of things that are (generally, ignoring quantum physics or gross features beyond our human senses) immutable, even inscrutible.)

How, for example, would time function before vs. after The Big Popsicle Event (TBPE)?  What if the observed activities of time are reversed from their previous state?  What if before TBPE time runs backwards from where we are now?  Obviously it would appear to run forward to creatures then; but it wouldn't necessarily to us.  And what if time travel were possible, but only could truly run backwards from  our perspective if we jumped back 11.5 billion years so we were 'going forward' by going backwards?  I can imagine a few scenes from that.

So there's one idea to play with.  We can ask questions about gravity--what if gravity didn't exist before TBPE?  Or the polarity of atoms.  Say the electron was positive, the proton negative?  Or what if the reason some really weird effect, such as the photon being neither a particle nor a wave, are different in the pre-TBPE?  Essentially: What If physical laws were different, and how would the clash of pre-TBPE and post-TBPE matter interact?  Could the secret of wormholes be the remnants of TBPE harnessed, or a recreation on a small scale of its precursor.  Could attempts at insterstellar FTL travel initiate a new Big Popsicle Event?

I'm not up enough on the new quantum physics to let my imagination roam to more exotic locales than what you see here; but if you read up on bosons, quarks and what not you might find some interesting ideas blooming in the quantum realm, as well.  Of course, they need to create big effects in the gross world of man before you can use them in a novel.  But an interesting What If session nevertheless.

Now, happy writing you guys! 

The Horny Human

Okay, so now you're curious and think this post will be about sex, right?  Well, I yanked your chain.  You can hate me later.  But you should check out this weird medical factoid:  Humans can grow what for all intents and purposes are horns!  Weird, ugly, creepy, and generally an indicator of cancer or a tumor, these things have been documented throughout history. 

You've likely seen something about the Tree Man; the Discovery Channel had a show on him a few weeks ago, poor guy.  The Body Odd article sparked in me the instant thought Wow that would have been horrible back in the Dark Ages!  Because they'd see the growths and say you were a devil at worst, a witch at best.  Then you'd make a close acquaintance with the auto de fay or a burning stake. 

Just picture a scenario for your novel like that.  Your character has some natural medical oddity and it marks them as a witch.  We're all familiar with the third nipple, which is fairly common; something really creepy/odd like horns would be bad. 

It's not a new trope, but physical malformity has been a traditional mark of the devil.  You can use that and the underlying human nature to speak out against such discrimination; or you can appropriate the trope and tweak it, make it say something different.  

In Benighted/Bareback, the non-lunes' lives are dictated by their birth defects (see my review of the book.)  And this concept, while also not new, gives the author a means of speaking about humanity and human experience from the perspective of being different. 

How much of what we perceive is different because of the perceptual filters of our personal experience?  There's been a lot of talk since the racefail debacle about embedded prejudice, and yet no one digs into the nature of humankind and how all perception is related to this 'flaw'--which actually has a valid basis in survival back in the prehistoric day.

So, to get off this looping tangent and back to the main point, how do you take the trope of a deformity marking someone as evil or a demon/devil and turn it on its head?

A couple of options are obvious.  First, you can make such a thing a marker of good, say horns make you a servant of Good, an Angel, a Hero.  You could even take all the symbols of Christian or other religions/mythologies for evil and make them good.  Second, you could take the horns or whatever and instead of having them indicate good or bad, you have them opaque in meaning!  This is different because you can have characters who find meaning in these things (good or bad) while the culture as a whole doesn't notice them.  The notice/not notice issue can be a ploy, say the transparency is brainwashing, or it's a sign of egalitarianism at a fundamental level; and the character who notices the deformity (or whatever) doesn't get this, finds it difficult to adjust because s/he is an outsider. 

I can envision a number of other uses, but those two strike me as the most in line with my own writing style.  Ah well.  Enough blather about not much.  Happy writing to you!

Epic Fail, anyone?

 

Found a new amusing way to avoid writing: Epic Fail. Found via comment trail on Evil Editor's blog, it has kept me amused and not writing for a couple hours. I gathered it's an internet meme, so I looked it up at wiki with the result that I now know that Epic Fail is an ouroborous, a recursive definition because it seems to define it self. You ask, What is Epic Fail? And the answer is Epic Failure pointing to itself. Or something like that. The ultimate in joke, if you will.

 

The Internet Patrol defines Epic Fail thusly:

 In its purest form, epic fail means a catastrophic failure. Not just any failure - not just an “oopsy” - but a full stop, game over failure.

Like the Challenger exploding.  Or the Exxon Valdez.  Or Charles marrying Camilla.

But here is where it gets fuzzy. Because some people use the term “epic fail” to mean a failure that by its very show-stopping spectacularly failing nature comes full circle and actually “wins”.

Still others, perhaps those namby-pamby shrinking violet types, use it to mean something somewhat short of a spectacular failure, because they don’t have the cajones to actually come out and say “hey, you suck”, so they instead brand someone or something with “epic fail”. Or maybe they just haven’t (yet) experienced a full and complete failure, and so have nothing against which to benchmark for an epic fail.

 

Wikipedia has this to say:

"Fail" is the name of a popular Internet meme where users superimpose the word "fail" or "epic fail" onto embarrassing, ironic, or compromising photos or short videos. The meme is widely believed to come have from the arcade game Blazing Star. If you lose, the message "You fail it! Your skill is not enough! See you next time! Bye bye!" is shown.

 

The term "miserable failure" has also been popularized as a result of a widely known "Google bombing", which caused Google searches for the term to turn up the White House biography of George W. Bush.

 

Amusing, perplexing, and coming to a blog post near you.

 

 

Cyber security and your worldbuilding.

The issue of cyberspying, cypersecurity and cyberwar were all over the news recently. Apparently, the Chinese and Russians have both sought to map out our power infrastructure via cyberspying, leaving behind tools that could be activated in case of war, thus crippling our country at a critical moment.  Whether the worry is a valid one at this time is irrelevant for the writer; it could happen, so we can play with it a bit here.  MSNBC article here.

 

Can you imagine such a latent cyberbomb for your fictional world? Something that lies in wait, a stealth mode predator, waiting for a viral cue that sets it off?

 

Ideas.

The first thing that I think of is the article's literal scenario. Simultaneous to an attack, the power grid falls, communication systems fail and assorted physical attacks from sleeper cells do things like set off limited EMP strikes and conventional explosives. Nasty! (And thus I LIKE it!)

 

But what this really sparks for me is how to use this sort of scenario in a fantasy world. You could have both tech and magic that is blown to merry hell via such a stealthy set up. Think about it. How would stealth tripwires be set? Stealth magibombs? What sort of trigger would you use to set off a planted magic blast, and what types of magic would create havoc on your world?

 

Asking about magical attacks-from-within brings up even more questions. You need to consider how magic works, the strengths and weaknesses of the magical grid (if you world has a grid equivalent) and where it would be most easily disrupted. Would you be best off throwing a wrench in magical powr supplies, or by occupying the magical cops with a multitude of magical brush fires? Could the rerouting of magic into a big display drain the magic from other important workings, like security shields? Could such an act allow an entry of say an entity from another sphere or reality?

 

You can really play around with this idea. Have fun with it, my friends, and happy plotting!

Future architecture

I

've considered worldbuilding potential in many things of minor import in the building of your fantasy or science fiction world--such as waking routines or fashion and shoes.  Seems to me that even the simplest invention can have ripple effects that would influence esthetics and design choices for buildings, infrastructure and artworks. 

One concrete example (forgive the pun) is concrete itself.  The Romans' invention of concrete was partly based on the particular soils of their region (forgive the lack of research; I know this to be so, but can't recall the specifics) and concrete as well as superior architectural skills and stone working skills allowed for monumental public works projects, the Appian Way, the Coliseum, aqueducts that are still in use two thousand years later. 

So.  A small change in building materials, or even a loss of knowledge (as the Dark Ages clawed into the Renaissance and the peoples of Europe had to rediscover many previously known principles of building design and construction).  And a similar loss (how to make steel?) would precede a marked change in our present day choices to build high rise buildings.

Idea.
A new medium is going on sale this year:  Transparent concrete.  And I can imagine some expensive and innovative means to use this stuff.  Would you like to see a transparent bridge, for example?  Or could a similar technique be made for large slabs used for windows?  What would the addition of moldable yet transluscent concrete mean for the architect? 

Vocabulary inspired (again)

Looking up a word (which one being irrelevant at the moment) I ran across en brochette, which means 'on a skewer.'  Omygosh I immediately wanted to use this word in the next vampire party scene I wrote.  (One is coming up soonish.)  Human...served en brochette.  So bizarre. 

Who knew I would be inspired to start researching obscure (to me) terms for ways to serve food?  Bwahahaha!

Mind/body and your character

"The essential part of [the person transplanted to a new body], call it the soul or consciousness or whatever it is, still remains. The container has changed; the person remains the same. Who you are morally, who you are in memory, who you are in continuity, still exists. All the rules still apply. You have a new body and a new lease on life but that doesn’t mean you’ve cheated God or fate.

From a moral or teleological point of view, it’s no different from a heart or a liver transplant. Those would also extend your life and give you new opportunities. But you’re still obligated to follow the moral strictures of your god or your conscious and make sure you don’t treat the gift of life-extension as a “get out of jail free” card. It’s not a chance to abandon morality. It’s a chance to reaffirm it."  John Scalzi

In John Scalzi's interview at Tor.com, he discusses the reaction of a character who is placed in a replacement body.  And he states the above, apparently confident that who we are spiritually is transplanted along with the mind and personality and memories.

Which of course got me thinking, What If.

I think a key means of getting a new take on an old trope is to ask the assumptions that lay below the choice the writer made.  In this case, Scalzi is assuming that the soul and mind are going to transplant complete and unchanged to a new body.  Personally, I think the house dictates some of the personality; so I went in that direction in my thinking: What if the essential element that ties spirit to mind to flesh, forming a gestalt that equals our personality, is dependent on the flesh?  And what occurs to the individual who changes bodies?

That is an intriguing idea to me.  The consequences of not having the original flesh with its chemical and hormonal signals and relationships to affect thought and deed and emotion would possibly create a being who is no longer able to experience certain (or any) emotions, despite recalling these feelings.  It might even render the individual worse than a sociopath who 'gets' the rules of society but ignores them at will without guilt; it might render the changed individual so alien in thinking that he or she no longer can truly comprehend our drives and desires.

What if the newly bodied person finds that he can, without the blinkers of the original flesh, see the dynamics of humanity in a manner that leads him to think that he ought to 'fix' it, either by taking over or subverting the existing government in favor of a new one?  Or the old trope raising its head again: He decides humanity doesn't deserve to live? 

So many possibilities if you change the rules and assumptions.

A Rationale for Rabidity

I know you have met, or seen, or experienced in some fashion some individual somewhere who is, ahem, overly dedicated to a certain way of thinking, religion or product.  And An Amazing Mind blog has a wonderful talk on that. 

Have you ever met fanatic Linux fans?

You know, folks devotedly shouting that Linux is even better than sliced bread, that anybody still using Windows is stuck in the stone ages, that Linux has great anti-virus capabilities and it’s free and it’s awesome and…

And have you ever met a fanatic Google supporter?

I personally find there are plenty of fanatic Linux fans. But I haven’t met any fanatic Google fans yet. All the Google fans I have met (and there are millions of them) have been calm, almost matter-of-fact.

I’ve always wondered why that is. And I just found the answer in the book Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:

"You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it’s going to rise tomorrow.

When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths, or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it’s always because the dogmas or goals are in doubt."

I thought this quote a useful reading and insight for creating a more rounded version of this sort of character, in particular by showing their motivation via the above interpretation--because if your pov character understands them, it makes them (more) sympathetic to the reader even if they are being wholly obnoxious. 

It could even be really funny, say if you have the pov character (or the evil villian) psychoanallyze their opposing hero/villian by quoting things such as the above to rebut their contentions, and when the person gets all worked up and foaming at the mouth, toss out the bit about they only bluster because their goal or dogma is in doubt.  That could be a really funny scene.  Imagine if someone did that to Dr. Evil, for example.

Nanotubes and smart fabric

An MSNBC article on smart fabrics has some interesting ideas.  Basically 1) nanotubes conduct electricity and the means to create them are getting relatively cheap; 2) nanotubes can be applied to fabric permanently by merely dipping the cloth (or thread) into a solution containing the nanotubes; so 3) it's becoming easy to create clothing that can light up.  Specifically, this: 

While stringing a shirt with tiny lights is one potential use for the thread, a more likely use is for clothes that detect airborne allergens or human blood, or for gloves that can manipulate touch screens.

Bite the (magic) bullet

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29142985/

I'd say I am unmanned by this article, but, technically, I've never been a man so nature has taken care of that already.  Aaaaanyhow...I just don't feel I can do this particular topic justice.  But there are many ideas related to a magic pill that makes us fall in and out of love.  (For some reason, this article made me want to reread Silver Metal Lover.  It sort of works with Tanith Lee's worldbuilding in that book...)

Factoid to consider

Genes appear to influence intelligence by determining how well nerve axons are encased in myelin - the fatty sheath of "insulation" that coats our axons and allows for fast signaling bursts in our brains. The thicker the myelin, the faster the nerve impulses.  Medical Research News article

Taken loosely,  intelligence is primarily what makes us human more than any other feature.  There are barbed areas to tread in discussion inherited traits which lead to intelligence as well as the Nature v Nurture debate, whose answer seems to consistently boil down to "It depends." That said, the referenced article discusses an interesting factoid about the transmission of neural signals and how that can enhance intelligence. 

Basically, one aspect of being smart is that, for some, their brain works faster. Which begs the question: People with ADD who have a fast-operating brain might be statistically shown as smarter than average because of their ADD features.  Interesting.  A down side as a possibility.

Which got me thinking What if?  (I know you love it when I do that.)

Ideas.

• What if there are means to enhance intelligence, but it has a side effect of changing how the brain works overall, and it's embraced wholesale?  And what if the needs of the group (humanity as a whole) is not served by the wholesale change in all kids' brain function by such prenatal tweaking?  You could have all one type of personality with a high percentage of a "dysfunction" such as autism or ADD* which actually puts a drain on the production of goods and provision of services because there isn't anyone left who is willing to do long, dull, boring tasks.  Could cause a profound change in society.
• Or say humanity fear genetically enhancing their kids--except for a secret society (a la Boys from Brazil.)  It could be a small subgroup, say a scientist cabal; or a small nation bent on taking over the world one enhanced baby at a time; or a group of neo-fascists who want to raise up their own Super Dictator, cape and all.  Doesn't matter which you choose.  The question is, the abuse of genetics engineering or what may become a prenatal treatment of retroviral enhancement wouldn't be likely to show the children as inherently different, but they'd be (possibly) a new front in human evolution: the self-evolved.  And a subculture of the self-evolved, whatever their political and social dynamics as you determine them, would be an interesting consequence to the change.  As the possible scenario above, you don't know exactly what you might be getting into...
• And what if the change in the way people think changes humanity enough that we are no longer human?  I think this questions begs we writers to explore what it means to be human, and how good is this, how bad?  Humanity now generally feels master of the world, has a sense of god/spirituality, and uses tools and technology to shape the world to his pleasure.  But a new humanity, a humanity changed by the self-manipulation of our species, may very well be incomprehensible.  They may find everything (or selected bits) that mankind has treasured to be of no value.  Or they may be an evolutionary dead end of some sort, say artists who will create art rather than eat, or play piano until their fingers are literal bloody stumps, their passion is so great. 

One can go some strange places with this one.

Forget writing dystopic stories--it's here!

According to a OneWorld.net article, major banks are supporting corrupt regimes.  Oh, yay.  Banks becoming Orwellian props for tyranny?  Money talking?  Say it ain't so!  This really cheeses me off, but instead of getting political about it, let me just point this out to you as a motif to use in the science fiction dystopian story you are going to write.  Yeah.  That's it.

I read a few stories in the 80s and 90s where corporations became the new nationalities, and corporations had turf, but national boundaries were more referential than official.  You might be Canadian, but you were Fujimoto because that's where you worked and where your corporation 'nationality' was.  Svaha by Charles deLint was one such novel, if memory serves. 

But I never saw anything about banks in that capacity--until now, in the real news. 

You might want to take that idea to the extreme and have banks becoming the effective governments just like the corporations in Svaha and other such books.  Because when the mind of the researcher, the capacity to earn of the workers, and the ability to spend and consume of the buyers that run economies can be harnessed to feed the maw of a giant corporation or financial institution...then you have a real tyranny that eats people and shits them out again in a vicious cycle.  Great fodder for books, although very bad for reality.

Vampire factoid for your worldbuilding pleasure

Apparently an old belief was that 'vampires' spread disease by chewing on their shrouds after death, so bricks were placed into the deceased's mouth to prevent his/her from doing the gnoshing thing. This is an interesting bit of folklore I hadn't heard.  Reference New Scientist article here.

Can a stalker be funny? Or is this pathetic?

“[W]hen my husband unpacked his belongings from his ex-wife’s house, he kept finding little ’surprises.’ for example, although they did not go to high school together, she had signed his senior yearbook, and little notes and reproductions of wedding pictures were stuck in books and in pockets of his clothes.”

See, you want a quirk for a character, you don't have to look very far.  I provide (courtesy of passive-agressive notes in this post.)  (And you really should check out the picture on the post.)

Vocabulary to ideas again!

Schadenfreude (Pronounced: \ˈshä-d^ən-ˌfrȯi-də\): enjoyment obtained from the suffering of others.

Well, I knew this word long ago but hadn't heard it in so long I'd forgotten the meaning (not typical for me to have zero sense of a word's meaning). 

And vocabulary purely inspires me.  I can picture how one could use this word in a fictional world.  As follows:

• Horror:  A theme park called Schadenfreudia, where hapless souls (aka 'customers') are lured in and the paying customers are tortured, subjected to humiliation, and et cetera, and it turns out that not only are the paying customers paying for something they didn't want, they lose their souls in the process because the gatekeeper is Charon! And they paid him the cash to cross over!  Bwahaha!  (I mean, it could be a means of depopulating the world by Satan so he has a bit more elbow room to work; or  
  
• Schadenfreudia is a b&d club used as a setting in a Laurell K. Hamilton style dark fantasy. 
  
• Dark fantasy:  Fairies.  What more can I say?  Dark fairies embody schadenfreude.  Hand a lady a rose and when she sniffs it, the thing becomes a wad of dog doo.  Lure humans to drown because their floating hair and limbs 'look pretty'. The reasons for fairy actions are sooo ripe for schadenfreude as a motivation.
• Super hero:  Schadenfreude Man, who is an anti-(super)hero if there ever was one.  I suppose he or she could be a villain, but I like the idea of a dark hero, who does nearly as much bad as good because he CAN and he LIKES to, but he still follows his own moral code.  Maybe his superhero title could be Trainwreck??

And you know what?  Give me five minutes and I can get an idea from anything.  *Buffs nails on shirt*  Too bad I'm a bit slow on the follow through.  (You don't know how jealous I am of you guys who just whip out the prose.)

Had to share this.

Man rescued in portapotty - But the radio news report that sent me looking for this web article said the guy was found with raincoat on and goggles.  This may not be true, but have you ever considered strange fetishist behavior for oddball characters in your novels?

Remind me to tell you about the telephone 'survey taker' that smooth-talked my friend until she figured out what he was doing...

A few random thoughts...

A repost of some ideas I liked. 

• What if you were randomly dropped into an alternate reality-- be it past, future, alternate Earth, or alien??  There is no going back.  Ever.  How do you carve a new place for yourself?
• A talking cat/alien looking like a cat is an old trope.  But my cats always did seem like demons in fur jackets to me.  What if they are??
• Robert Anton Wilson managed to explain and tie together pretty much every current conspiracy theory (and create new ones, too) in his Illuminatus Trilogy.  He even tied Nazis, the Loch Ness Monster and (if memory serves) Captain Nemo.  What elements of currently popular conspiracy theories (Bigfoot, Creation Science, Chupacabra, lizardmen are taking over the world [a la the really out-there David Icke]) can you cobble together into a story?
• Science fiction technology that wouldn't work.  Fodder for spoof.
• What if matter had sentience, and every planet has its own personality?
• What if the act of entering another universe changes the traveller?  An unpredictable combination of two universes' physical laws...and sometimes unpredictably new results.  Can you say...superpowers?  Godhood? (Psst...this is the basis for a couple of my novel starts.)
• Every little child imagines, at one time or another, that he/she is really someone else, someone more special (like a princess or a superhero).  What if that turns out to be true?  (We've seen this one so often, but it is sooo evocative...)

Take the time out to list some what ifs for yourself.  It's interesting.  And be sure to practice asking these sorts of questions as you write.  That's where it's really beneficial.

• What if you were randomly dropped into an alternate reality-- be it past, future, alternate Earth, or alien??  There is no going back.  Ever.  How do you carve a new place for yourself?
• A talking cat/alien looking like a cat is an old trope.  But my cats always did seem like demons in fur jackets to me.  What if they are??
• Robert Anton Wilson managed to explain and tie together pretty much every current conspiracy theory (and create new ones, too) in his Illuminatus Trilogy.  He even tied Nazis, the Loch Ness Monster and (if memory serves) Captain Nemo.  What elements of currently popular conspiracy theories (Bigfoot, Creation Science, Chupacabra, lizardmen are taking over the world [a la the really out-there David Icke]) can you cobble together into a story?
• Science fiction technology that wouldn't work.  Fodder for spoof.
• What if matter had sentience, and every planet has its own personality?
• What if the act of entering another universe changes the traveller?  An unpredictable combination of two universes' physical laws...and sometimes unpredictably new results.  Can you say...superpowers?  Godhood? (Psst...this is the basis for a couple of my novel starts.)
• Every little child imagines, at one time or another, that he/she is really someone else, someone more special (like a princess or a superhero).  What if that turns out to be true?  (We've seen this one so often, but it is sooo evocative...)

Take the time out to list some what ifs for yourself.  It's interesting.  And be sure to practice asking these sorts of questions as you write.  That's where it's really beneficial.