Here's the microblog archive for chapter 2, let's get cracking on chapter 3! Sumana requested appropriate pictures to break up the huge wall of commentary text, so I'll be picking some from Wikimedia Commons/Flickr every week. This week's pictures are by Mike Baird and NASA Langley.
I'll mention "Vanilla" several times in this commentary, but here's
what I want to say now. "Vanilla" had a bunch of ET characters and I
was happy with their diverse physical designs, but most of them had
minds similar to human minds, or had adopted human ways of thinking as part of the contact mission. I'd mentioned a species called the
Farang, and implied that they were a big deal, but none showed up in
the story and almost nothing was said about them. I'm pretty sure I
was leaving myself some space to fill in later, so thanks, previous
self.
At the time I was starting the novel I had just read The Origin
Of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, and I
thought it would be cool to write a character with a dual mind. Not as
described in Jayne's book, because I felt like Neal Stephenson had
already gone there, but someone whose brain was dual-booting two
different operating systems. Thus was born Curic, the furry
ocean-predator anthropologist(s).
When I wrote Constellation Games I left space for "Vanilla"
to happen afterwards. If you know what happens in "Vanilla" you can
read between the lines of the novel and see "Vanilla" shaping up. But I dunno if I'm actually going to rewrite it--I had my
chance when we were deciding on bonus material, and I chose to write
new stuff with the CG characters instead. I think that's what you'll
want, and I feel like CG says a lot of what I wanted to say in
"Vanilla", more effectively.
I'm not really happy with this, but it came out of writing a
relatable story about computers instead of (first draft) accurately
recreating someone's boring retrocomputing weblog.
After I wrote "Vanilla" I read a Steven Baxter book (one of the
Manifold series) where humans discover but can't communicate
with an alien species, and name them the Gaijin. Same idea.
This convention was, of course, inspired by the Ferengi from
Star Trek. When I was a kid I read in some behind-the-scenes
book that the Ferengi were named from the Arabic "faranji". What? Who
named them that, in-universe? Was it humans? Why did the Ferengi go
along with it? It can't just be their name in English, because the name
of their home planet is "Ferengenar". That naming convention doesn't
make much sense for Star Trek Ferengi, but it could conceivably happen in a situation like the Constellation contact mission.
That's plenty long for one week's worth of commentary. Tune in next week for chapter 4, when Jenny will say, "We're going to use as little alcohol as possible."
(2) Tue Dec 13 2011 09:09 CG Author Commentary #3: "Rare Drop":
It's Tuesday, and time for the first subscriber-exclusive chapter of Constellation Games. (Check your spam folder.) Been holding out for a better deal? Here it is: for the rest of December, when you subscribe you get a gift subscription to give to a friend, so you'll have a speculation partner.
In 2007 I wrote a novella called "Vanilla" which laid out the
Constellation universe more or less as you see it in Constellation
Games. I couldn't get the novella published so I left it in the
metaphorical drawer until Simon Carless asked if I wanted to write a
serial novel for GameSetWatch, and then I sucked out all the
worldbuilding for Constellation Games.
This is probably obvious, but all the Constellation species
have names taken from different human cultures' terms for "alien" or
"outsider". Later on you'll see Gaijin, Inostransi, etc. Basically, I didn't want to come up with made-up names that you wouldn't remember. I tried
pretty hard to get these right and to not use terms solely intended to
offend, but if I screwed up, let me know and we can probably fix it in
the paperback.
- Comments:
Posted by emile at Wed Dec 14 2011 19:33
There aren't enough comments on the constellation games posts saying how totally awesome the book is so far. So. TOTALLY AWESOME SO FAR! Thanks.I was on the fence about whether I wanted to subscribe or wait for the hardcopy, because I'm a little iffy on how the flow will be with a week between chapters. But once I knew that ch. 3 was out there I couldn't seem to hold off.
Posted by Leonard at Wed Dec 14 2011 21:28
I'm glad you're liking it! I wrote the novel for serialization, it didn't get chopped up after I sold it, so it should flow pretty well.