12/20/2002

Apparently, I was reading, somewhere on the Locus website, Fukuyama has his own views on what they're calling the Singularity idea of cultural and technological development (which I first came across in Vernor Vinge's books); he thinks it'll be a biological development, rather than a computer/whatever situation. Assuming any such thing happens at all. Just sort of interesting, in the light of having read a little of the Fukuyama book I got out of the library.

Not really done any writing the past week, more thinking about ideas. I'll probably keep the two fragments I tried to develop since I think they're good examples of scene setting, but again I think what I might eventually write will bear no resemblance to the ideas in those fragments. I'm off work for a couple of weeks now, so I should be able to work up enough guilt to actually get around to doing something useful. I got a copy of the manuscript for Angel Stations back from a friend in the writer's circle covered in little blue pen marks; I've been going through the story fixing a lot of the things suggested there. Always room for improvement, I guess.

My idea of what Against Gravity is about seems to have evolved into something completely different now. Now I have a picture of an old warrior-type who's been effectively washed-up in the aftermath of some kind of world war. The technology that's inside his body is itself not well understood, and it's still changing him from the inside out. Even though he's supposed to be 'kind' of a good guy, he symbolises a lot of the bad things that happened, and for that reason he finds himself increasingly shunned by the society of the time. He's supposed to protect and serve, etc, but he finds himself in a personal conflict. Some of his old war buddies want to go upwell into space and estabish their own society, seemingly with the aid of hinted-at sentient ai's. In that sense, it's effectively a 'breakout' story (or should they actually be in prison, or some kind of rehabilitation hospital? There's something to think about.). His old war buddies want to escape a society that once needed them but now rejects them. He still feels drawn to work on behalf of the human race when he thinks he's still needed. But as the nanotechnology etc. within him continues to change him in unpredictable ways, he finds himself suffering a special kind of dilemma - is he actually even human any more, or perhaps a machine that doesn't realise it isn't?

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