It’s the principle!

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It’s 4:30am and I woke up furious.

I was driving after a rainstorm, and directly in front of me the light had changed red. The road was really slippery, and my car slid right out into the intersection. Thank goodness the intersection was clear, and so I was able to back up to where I should’ve stopped.

No problem, right?

But no, from out of nowhere comes a cop who starts writing me a ticket for running a red light. I get angry and start arguing, and pull out my phone to video the whole thing, and that makes the cop mad. The cop says it’s illegal for me to video him.

Now I am really pissed off because I know that’s false. I tell him I am gathering evidence for court because I intend to fight the ticket. I also tell him that it is not against law, and that I have the law printed out and sitting in my glove compartment. Because, in real life, I actually do! You can photograph anyone at any time in a public place. Anyone – including an officer – who tells you otherwise does not actually know what the law is.

So the confrontation has really escalated, and now the cop has his hand on his gun.

Now here’s the funny part. At this point I’ve already realized that I’m dreaming. I know, on a whim, I could have the guy struck by lightning, or sucked into a black hole, or simply delete him from my dream. I have the power!

But no, I continue arguing with the dream cop. Why? Because it’s the principle!

Finally I do wake up, and now I can’t go back to sleep, and I’m laying here in bed dictating this into my iPad.

You and You Again

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This is something I’m exploring in my current novel…

Take a computer program. It’s a set of code. Duplicate it, copy it, and run it on multiple machines. All of those copies are still the same computer program.

Take an artificial intelligence program, an A.I., and duplicate it the same way. Run it on multiple computers. Are they all the same program?

Happy Teleportation AccidentTake a person. You, for example. Send yourself back in time three days, so you can go have dinner with yourself. You’re both sitting at a table in a restaurant together. Are both of them actually you?

Step back into the time machine and go back to when you were ten years old. Are you and your ten-year-old self still the same person? Are you both you? Even though just about every cell in your body has been swapped out with new ones? You both think you’re you.

Step into an instant matter transporter (and, yes, I know this has been done in Star Trek) and something goes wrong. You’ve been duplicated down to the atomic level, and now you and the other you are standing right next to each other. You’re so identical that a molecular scanner can’t tell you apart. Are you both you? You both think you’re “you.”

Step into an instant matter transporter. It zaps you 1000 lightyears away, and also 1000 years into the past. But the way it works is that it instantly disassembles you at an atomic level, and then reassembles you — but not the same atoms, they’re quantum entangled atoms 1000 lightyears away, 1000 years in the past. The result is an exact duplicate of you in another space and time. You think you’re “you.” But are you … you?

You step back into the instant matter transporter, and get zapped back home, 1000 lightyears across space, 1000 years into the future — back to the time when you first left — and are reassembled again. An exact copy, the only one in existence, but now twice removed from the original. Are you still you?

“Anything Goes”

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nurturing-daleksAbout two weeks ago I finished my first draft of All You See Is Light, and the very next day I started a new novel, this one a mystery set in a post-Singularity universe. The working title is: Anything Goes. I meant it to be a lighthearted comedy much in the spirit of a Douglas Adams novel, but I guess my humor runs a bit darker than I thought because it’s already started to take some turns I didn’t expect.

For my friends who aren’t familiar with “the Singularity,” it’s a predicted event that some people take very seriously (and some others not so much so) where humanity and our creations get so intertwined that we can’t tell where the line is between man and machine. But it’s also a theoretical point in the future where we lose control of — and can no longer even understand the inner workings of — the devices we’ve created, because they’ve gained control of themselves and their own destiny, and begin to design and build their own machines. Thinking machines creating new machines on their own.

The Terminator movies are a good example of this, but it’s an example of the process going horribly wrong. In my story, it goes in the other direction — we lose control of the artificial intelligences, but instead of them hating humanity and wanting to destroy us, they take over and become our over-protective guardians.

So the questions I’m relentlessly exploring in this book are these:

  1. If we lose control over an omnipotent technology, and it assumes control of everything and strives to keep us from killing ourselves and our environment … is that necessarily a bad thing? Even if it’s extremely annoying?
  2. Is an exact duplicate of you, actually you?

Finished a New Manuscript

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Last weekend I finished the first draft of a new novel.

All You See is Light weighed in a 121,343 words, and is connected to, but not a direct prequel or sequel to, Eleven Days on Earth. It’s about a Texan teenager in 1977 who loses his parents to a plane crash, and has to go live with his swinger aunt and uncle in a small coastal town in California. He falls into the midst of a supernatural drama where he’s destined to help a mysterious, angelic woman remember who she is … and when the truth comes out, it puts the fate of the entire world in peril.

I’ve got a lot of rewriting to do, as this is the kind of story where I didn’t really know where it was going … I just let it lead me to where it wanted to go. So the earlier parts of the book will have to be revised quite a bit to support the later parts of the book.

In the meantime it’s sitting and cooling, and I’m plotting out my next one. It’s time to take a break from fantasy and do a fun science fiction comedy.

Your Guide to Scrivener

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scrivener_coverI’ve mentioned Scrivener here at least three times:

So you can tell I’m a big fan of this software. It’s about as simple as a complex piece of software can be — the beauty of it being that you don’t have to know how to use every single feature in order to use it. You can just open it and start typing, and slowly learn the features as you go.

That’s how I did it.

Despite there being great manuals, numerous “how-to” videos, and a great wiki, there was still room for a very quick, simple, guide to jump start you into the most useful features you might otherwise have missed. Like I have. Many times.

Here’s that guide, and it’s free: YOUR GUIDE TO SCRIVENER: THE ULTIMATE TOOL FOR WRITERS. Nicole Dioniso does a great job stepping you through the features that you didn’t know you need until you discover they exist. And these aren’t just wonky features you might use once every 7 years, either.

Have I mentioned Scrivener is awesome?

Scrivener is awesome. And so is this guide.

Obsessed with Creating

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It’s nice that I now have people bugging me about wanting to read the next book. It really does help to motivate me to keep working on it. Another thing that helps is that I have a whole series of books plotted out from a high level, all inter-connected.

There’s a work/life balance that I struggle to maintain. I’m obsessive compulsive to a degree, as when I get into something I really get into it. But then some other shiny object attracts my attention, and then I’m off obsessing about something else.

It happens with my day job too, and I really had to go to extremes to counteract that — my continued employment depended on it. But then I find I get so wrapped up in a work-related project that I bring it home and work on it here, too, and that demolishes my “writing time.” And then there’s my health. If I’m sitting all day at work, it’s not good that I come home and sit all night as well working on a novel. Or a blog. Or redesigning a website. Or editing a podcast. Etc.

One of the many rationalizations I’d made about buying a really nice camera is that it would prompt me to go OUTSIDE and WALK AROUND, taking pictures. But that’s sporadic. I go through phases where I’m only interested in photography (hence my writercam.com website). The problem is that I don’t want to go walking around with an expensive camera dangling around my neck all the time. This, of course, led to my rationalization about getting a phone with a good camera. Now I have a camera all the time, because that never leaves my side. Ever. If I don’t have it I break into a cold sweat and worry about it.

What it all boils down to is that I’m apparently obsessed with creating because I do it at home, at work, in my free time, practically during every waking moment. All too rare are the moments where I just relax, breathe, look at something pretty (without photographing or writing about it) and simply exist.

Is anyone else out there that way?