News You Can Bruise for 2012 March 20

(8) Tue Mar 20 2012 08:59 Constellation Games Author Commentary #17: "Their First Contact Was Better": This chapter has the best title in the whole book. Just gettin' that out of the way. This week sets up the plot for the next couple months while focusing the action on the emotional core of Part Two: Ariel's relationships with other ~~humans~~ people from Earth.

I really liked the comments from last week's commentary--two people I didn't know were reading said hello, Brendan responded to my evaluation of his reader commentary, and my friend Zack (whose name I stupidly misspelled) disputed my use of Creative License. If you're enjoying these commentaries, please do say hi in the comments.

Look on last week's Twitter archive, ye mighty, and despair. Tetsuo won't be posting for a while because of the Internet blackout. Here's this week's commentary:

The original name for Part One was "Company", and Part Two was "Crunch Time". "Hardware" and "Software" aren't as snappy individually, but this way the names form a coherent mini-story. (The final part is called "Artwork".)
In part one (I don't like the way that looks when capitalized, so let's try it not) we focused on two Constellation species, the Farang and the Aliens. Part two introduces the Gaijin, not through a single Curic-level character but through bit characters and the human use of their technology. I'll defer their commentary, since all you've seen at this point is Tammy mentioning that she talked to He Sees The Map And He Throws The Dart!.
This chapter has the scene on the ISS I mentioned back in December 2009, where I fudged the system the astronauts use to call home. This has been... Creative License.
Phillip (not Moe!) is another one of those fun one-shot characters like the hippie in chapter 2. Like many one-shots, I suspect Phillip is more interesting the less you know about him, so let's move on.
Check out the "Mallory" reference! ("Mutant's Revenge cocktail arcade cabinet") In the same scene where Jenny mentions 3D printing! Does this mean Constellation Games takes place in the same universe as "Mallory"? No, sorry, they just share a fictional video game. By a supreme act of will I've not written a big block of nerd analysis about why they can't be the same universe. (The real reason is that if space aliens showed up in the "Mallory" universe, it would retroactively become ineligible for publication in Futurismic.)
But, speaking of "Mallory", my friend Alexei recently told me about ANGELINA, an AI system that designs video games and then simulates a person playing the games to find the ones that are fun. This means basically everything from "Mallory" now exists in real life, a mostly horrifying prospect.
Smart paper, the arrival of which Ariel is dreading, is another import from "Vanilla". But in "Vanilla" it was just a generic piece of near-future tech. Now it's Constellation tech that's effectively being given to humanity as a bribe. ("But not like flashy desperate jewelry.") We've seen with the False Daylight that a computer embodies the values of the culture that created it. Smart paper was kind of bland in "Vanilla", effectively a flexible iPad. Now it's a Gaijin computer repurposed by the Constellation for use by humans, which is a lot more fun.
I hope you don't feel it's a terrible spoiler that I'm talking about smart paper like it's going to figure in the book at some point, totally eliminating the possibility that Ariel and Jenny have a huge conversation about it in this chapter but it never shows up.
In "Vanilla" the smart paper was called vellum, but that was just so you'd know to differentiate it from static paper. "Vellum" was probably a brand name. Now it's just "smart paper", and near the end of the book, Ariel just calls it a "paper computer", because "smart paper" is the kind of dumb name you use for a technology when it's new.
I think the diner banter between Ariel and Jenny came out really well. I wanna say the same of the Ariel/Tammy flirting, but an author praising their own sexy writing is just asking for trouble.
As the story turns to Ariel's intraspecies relationships, he becomes a less reliable narrator. Here, he puts up a public blog post with part of a conversation, then "real life"s the remainder of the conversation, which is full of stuff he needs to keep secret.
"So what's he editing out of the 'real life' sections?" you may ask. Well may you ask. Because of the tight POV I can't show you that within the novel, but you'll see some of it in "Found Objects", the Jenny story.
Maybe you were wondering how Dana Light could possibly be a major character in the novel. Wonder no more!
BTW, if you figured this out earlier, or if you guessed incorrectly, or even didn't think about it at all, I'd like to hear about it. It's always tricky putting together a plot twist without springing it prematurely, and I'm interested in hearing how readers react, because I really like when I'm reading a book and the author successfully pulls off something like this.
Of course, since you've been reading the commentary you knew that something was going to happen involving Dana. My hope is that up to this point, most readers have thought of Dana as just a commentary on Bai's personality, when she's actually more important than Bai.

And there we go. Be sure to tune in next week, when Ariel's all like, that's right, motherfucker, you're not the only one who can use paper. Oh, and Tetsuo writes a game review!

Image credits: NASA, unknown, Flickr user puuikibeach.

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