[color="#1C2837"]happy 80s-style science fiction and fantasy ... [color="#1C2837"] what catches my interest about a story idea is the escapism and wish-fulfillment that accompany the exploration of themes and identity

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[color="#1c2837"]Do you mean things like The Neverending Story?
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That's a pretty good example, although not quite what I was thinking of since it is a children's movie and I was thinking of more grown-up fantasy and science fiction and also anime made in the 80s. Basically I love 80s culture, there was a lot of optimism and self-confidence there that our culture doesn't have today. Postmodernism replaced that with ambiguity and a mix of cynicism and depression in the 90s. I was born in 1980 and grew up with hair bands, punk fashion, MacGyver, Jim Henson and George Lucas movies, the original Transformers and My Little Pony series, and the general impression that humans would soon be flying starships and genetically engineering pet dragons and spending their free time in virtual reality. My favorite science fiction and fantasy novels are mostly ones which were written in the 80s because they show worlds with that kind of culture. When I look at new fiction on bookstore shelves it's often dystopian, gritty, ambiguous, bitter, morose, or if it's positive it's about making do in a mediocre situation with a tight budget and frenemies, finding humor in one's inevitable failures. That's just not what I want to read.

I want to read about the team of bumbling and basically harmless villains who struggle perpetually against the equally bumbling and dumb but sweet heroes. I want to read about the guy who goes around playing elaborate non-cruel practical jokes on everyone, and the guy who can fix anything with bubblegum and a piece of wire. I want to read about masquerade balls where everyone gossips and finds each other ridiculous but just smiles benignly, and arranged marriages that work out happily. I want to read about futuristic societies I'd actually enjoy living in, and human/alien romances that work out happily, and telepathic bonds between a dragon and a rider or a mecha and a pilot. I could go on at ridiculous length here.

Have you ever heard Bowling For Soup's song 1985 ? I can definitely identify with that woman, although she's a bit older than me so the cultural landmarks are slightly different and I'm not married and don't have kids.

I think I totally feel what you're saying.

For a while now I've been wanting to write about ambition and ambitious people and avert the "ambition is evil" trope as hard as I can.

One persistent theme in a lot of sci-fi that really grates on me is this kind of "grah, technology is all just miserable anyway, whine whine".


Also, yep, totally know that song.

This touches on stuff I think about a lot and have discussed at length with my co-writer. However it is now 4 AM, and I will get back to this maybe Monday evening or something.

I am not writing down any themes because by the time I get to Ditch!, the design is not theme-based but problem-based. I start writing not with a message I want to tell, but with a problem I want to explore and solve. The writing is still very heavy in the meaning but I don't start with a defined message. The message is what I get at the end of the writing.

I like that symbolism for sails, I've never heard that before but it immediately makes sense and feels natural and resonant.

I probably don't start writing with a specific message in mind either, it's just that the process of writing synopses before/instead of stories makes it very fast to go from "issue I'd like to explore in a story" to "statement the climax of the story makes about the issue". On the other hand I have developed a bit of an aversion to exploring something I consider a deep problem in a story, because in the past when I have done this it has resulted in getting stuck a lot because there is no good answer to this kind of problem, or at least I don't have any idea what that answer might be. An example is my assessment that human nature is fundamentally incompatible with the universe. What can you do with that kind of problem? Changing human nature in fiction would just make the story feel false or preachy. Changing the fundamental nature of the universe in a story is possible but a fundamentally daunting task. Also, if there world were more naturally suited to humans it would eliminate a lot of the conflict which is the essence of story. In an ideal universe there might not be compelling problems to tell stories about.

On the other hand I have developed a bit of an aversion to exploring something I consider a deep problem in a story, because in the past when I have done this it has resulted in getting stuck a lot because there is no good answer to this kind of problem, or at least I don't have any idea what that answer might be. An example is my assessment that human nature is fundamentally incompatible with the universe. What can you do with that kind of problem? Changing human nature in fiction would just make the story feel false or preachy. Changing the fundamental nature of the universe in a story is possible but a fundamentally daunting task. Also, if there world were more naturally suited to humans it would eliminate a lot of the conflict which is the essence of story. In an ideal universe there might not be compelling problems to tell stories about.

I think your statement is too vague for me to understand. I need to know what you mean by some key terms: human nature, fundamentally, incompatible, universe.

Suppose I take out human in the scenario, are things in the universe compatible among themselves?

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On the other hand I have developed a bit of an aversion to exploring something I consider a deep problem in a story, because in the past when I have done this it has resulted in getting stuck a lot because there is no good answer to this kind of problem, or at least I don't have any idea what that answer might be. An example is my assessment that human nature is fundamentally incompatible with the universe. What can you do with that kind of problem? Changing human nature in fiction would just make the story feel false or preachy. Changing the fundamental nature of the universe in a story is possible but a fundamentally daunting task. Also, if there world were more naturally suited to humans it would eliminate a lot of the conflict which is the essence of story. In an ideal universe there might not be compelling problems to tell stories about.

I think your statement is too vague for me to understand. I need to know what you mean by some key terms: human nature, fundamentally, incompatible, universe.

Suppose I take out human in the scenario, are things in the universe compatible among themselves?
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Ahh, that's hard to explain. To answer your question, yes if you assume animals don't have real feelings and are just meat machines. But if you assume animals feel anxiety and loneliness and various human-like emotions, then no they wouldn't be compatible with the universe either. But, maybe you remember me talking about entropy as the "evil" force in an MMO where the player is a nature spirit whose 'job' is to increase life? I'd say entropy is the basic flaw of the universe. And I see the universe as a heartless machine which is partly random; the total opposite of humans who have an inbuilt instinct to create order and look for it in their surroundings, imagining it in the form of magic when there surroundings don't actually have meaningful order. So that's what "fundamentally incompatible" means - that humans can't possibly be happy or satisfied in the universe in any long-term way due simply to the humans being humans and the universe being the universe. (And, since we've been talking about the history of themes in our work, I'll mention that this was part of the theme of my "Coming Storm" entry years ago when we had the previous set of contests in this forum.)

According to your last post, the thesis is not unique about "human nature" but anything that wants, or expects the world to be a certain way. This includes a dog that likes to have its chewing bone around (not to be taken), the cat that likes to line up the mice it caught, or even the elephant that wants to protect its pub from predator.

So right now this is your statement as I understand it:

Anything that can have an unmet desire is incompatible with the universe because if the universe is perfect, then there should be no unmet desire.

What does "incompatible" mean?

Suppose you are the dog who likes to chew the bone before sleep. The world has a bone you can get. You can bring it home and chew it. Is the world compatible with you or not?

According to what I think, the universe would be incompatible if somehow the dog enters a universe where there is no bone, and the dog cannot change its desire of wanting to chew bone. In that case, I agree that the dog and the universe are incompatible. But what do you mean by "incompatible"? Is the dog that can find a bone to chew compatible with the universe?

Similarly, what does "compatible" mean to you?

To me, the basic definition of compatibility requires two objects. The basic image is a key and a lock. A key is said to be compatible to a lock if the key can open the lock. However, being compatible doesn't mean "designed for". For example, a door key that happens to be able to open the lock of a treasure chest is compatible to the treasure chest although the key is not designed for the treasure chest.

What does it mean to you if you say two things are "compatible"? Could you give an example of two things that are compatible?

This actually reminds me of an idea I was thinking about earlier this week.

We have a robot protagonist and his purpose is to entertain people. A live entertainer, maybe. But he runs into a problem; there is complacency, malaise, depression in the people of the largely post-work world he inhabits. People feel purposeless and people with drive find nothing meaningful to do, and to do things that robots are better at for the sake of doing them feels hollow.

The entertainer is concerned that such people will remove themselves from the human race through suicide. He doesn't know if he should worry about that or what if anything can be done about it or what to do. But his purpose is to make people happy, so he makes this his goal to solve this problem; make up a "good enough" "meaning of life" in a world that's good enough as it is.

[color=#1C2837][size=2]how do you decide what to write when you sit down to write? Do you write on any sort of schedule or quota, or just when the mood grabs you?

I never answered this. (I'll come back and read through more posts later tonight.)

When I wrote most I had a schedule where I would get up between 2 and 3 AM, make steamed rice & black coffee and sit on the kitchen floor with the Macbook and write until everyone else would start waking up. This got around 3k words a day typically. Today I must settle for "whenever I can find a moment" but like that is the best.

“Are humans fundamentally compatible with the universe?”

I asked Skyle one day when we were lying on the wheat field. She asked me what I meant.
I told her that someone asked about it on a forum. I said,

“The universe drives itself toward chaos, while human desires order. The two are at odds,
like a person who is trying to fill a leaking jug. Aren’t they fundamentally incompatible?”

“I guess they aren’t.” Skyle said casually.

She didn’t seem terribly interested. I continued:

“We say that a key is compatible to a lock if it can open the lock, and incompatible if it cannot.
If a dog wants to chew on a bone and the universe has a bone that the dog can find and chew,
is the universe being compatible or incompatible?”

“Compatible.”

Skyle said and sat up. She knew that there was a contradiction somewhere. She said,
“It is compatible because the universe isn’t taking the bone away from the dog in any way that
matters to the dog.”

“So, in the long run, if the sun burns out and everything on earth is going to die, then the universe
is no longer compatible with human, but as of now it is still compatible. Is that what you mean?”

“Yea, but I think some other things would probably run out way earlier than the sun to make it
incompatible.”

“Like air?” I asked.

“It could be.” She said.

She was staring at me in a way that tells me she was thinking about something else. She said,
“Actually the universe does not drive itself towards chaos. Stars don’t just die. They are also
reborn. The universe perpetually renews itself. So the universe isn’t incompatible with humans,
as long as they aren’t at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Yea, it would suck if a star is blowing up next door wouldn’t it?”

“It probably won’t be too bad.” Skyle said and lay back down.

Either Skyle isn't that familiar with physics or she lives in a different universe than this one. A universe that perpetually renewed itself would be a perpetual motion machine, a device which is impossible in light of the second law of thermodynamics.

Quote from Wikipedia: Entropy:

The second law of thermodynamics states that in general the total entropy of any system will not decrease other than by increasing the entropy of some other system. Hence, in a system isolated from its environment, the entropy of that system will tend not to decrease. It follows that heat will not flow from a colder body to a hotter body without the application of work (the imposition of order) to the colder body. Secondly, it is impossible for any device operating on a cycle to produce net work from a single temperature reservoir; the production of net work requires flow of heat from a hotter reservoir to a colder reservoir. As a result, there is no possibility of a perpetual motion system.[/quote]

Quote from Wikipedia: Ultimate Fate of the Universe:

The fate of the universe is determined by the density of the universe. The preponderance of evidence to date, based on measurements of the rate of expansion and the mass density, favors a universe that will continue to expand indefinitely, resulting in the "big freeze" scenario below.[sup][4][/sup] However, new understandings of the nature of dark matter also suggest its interactions with mass and gravity demonstrate the possibility of an oscillating universe.[sup][5][/sup]


Big Freeze or heat death
Main articles: Future of an expanding universe and Heat death of the universe The Big Freeze is a scenario under which continued expansion results in a universe that asymptotically approaches absolute zero temperature. It could, in the absence of dark energy, occur only under a flat or hyperbolic geometry. With a positive cosmological constant, it could also occur in a closed universe. This scenario is currently the most commonly accepted theory within the scientific community. A related scenario is heat death, which states that the universe goes to a state of maximum entropy in which everything is evenly distributed, and there are no gradients—which are needed to sustain information processing, one form of which is life. The heat death scenario is compatible with any of the three spatial models, but requires that the universe reach an eventual temperature minimum. [sup][6][/sup]


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The oscillating universe possibility instead says that the universe will reach a maximum expansion then snap back, contracting to a reverse big bang, which will destroy everything in the current universe; it will create a new universe but nothing of this one will remain to witness that.




What I was actually thinking about responding to your previous post is that the specific terms really aren't that important. I could convey the same problem by quoting Byron's poem Prometheus which compares the existence of mankind on earth to the myth of Prometheus chained to the rock and eaten alive by vultures every day, but unable to die because he is a god:

[sup]

[/sup]Like thee, Man is in part divine,
A troubled stream from a pure source;
And Man in portions can foresee
His own funereal destiny;
His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence[sup][/quote]
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In another poem Byron describes man as "Half deity, half dust, alike unfit To sink or soar". And several poems and songs by other authors which describe a human as a divine immortal soul trapped in a body of meat which is dying from the day it's born. The central concept, translated to less religious language, is that whatever human souls or consciousnesses are made out of, it is alien to the mundane mechanical world of biology, chemistry, and physics. Every human consciousness is a fish out of water, living for a few brief minutes in a surrounding their instincts don't apply properly to and their senses can't fully perceive while they feel themselves starving for something that doesn't exist and feel their body uncomfortably falling apart around them.

Neither you nor Skyle has to agree with this concept; it's a rather ugly and depressing concept, not something I believe in because it's pleasant but something believe in because I haven't found any way to escape it.