News You Can Bruise for 2012 July 3 (entry 1)

(3) Tue Jul 03 2012 09:25 Constellation Games Author Commentary #32: "The Evidence of Absence": This chapter has the most artsy title in the book. It's a reference to the idea of negative space, of emptiness as a thing in itself. Every section of the chapter has something to do with negative space: the fossil imprint, the absence of Jenny from Ariel's life, the player character's amnesia in The Amulet of Manufactured Memory, and the holes in the ground where the garbage has been taken out. Part Three was originally called "Negative Space," and you'll see why in the last chapter.

It's not just Part Three though. Negative space shows up through the whole book: as the foundation hole where Ariel's house used to be, the fractal pits Tetsuo and Somn dug out of the moon to build Ring City, the expectation that contact missions always find dead civilizations, and, uh, Ariel's negative reaction to being in space. Part One of the novel is about Ariel and the Brain Embryo, whereas "Found Objects" is about Jenny and the reentry foam with a Brain Embryo-shaped hole in it. It's what we in the trade call symbolism.

Symbolic of what? The Fermi Paradox, basically. The fact that the more we narrow down which numbers should go into the Drake equation, the better it looks for life in the universe, yet here we are, alone, facing down an emptiness that has become a thing in itself. The idea behind the Constellation universe, going back to "Vanilla" before I came up with any of the backstory you see in the novel, is that we find out we're not alone and it doesn't help. We're all lonely together and some of us (here, Somn and Ariel) are lonelier than we were before.

In the first draft Somn actually referred to the fossil imprint as "the evidence of absence". I cut it because I couldn't imagine something that poetic making it through the Purchtrin-English translator. But that's what she was thinking. That's canon.

More stuff that's canon:

• I wrote about the likelihood of complex fossils on Mars back when I was working on the second draft. Conclusion: it's not very likely. However, the odds were boosted recently by the discovery of multicellular fossils on Earth much older than any previously found.

  I think the real stretch here is the idea that life evolved on Mars and then died out completely. Once bacteria show up, I don't think anything short of a supernova can make them go extinct. A supernova, or perhaps some... Creative License.

• Fossil molds happen all the time in real life (see picture), but most are due to causes other than mysterious extradimensional unlife.
• You'll see in "The Time Somn Died" that Somn has considerable experience with Ragtime's fossil imprints. But the real importance of this chapter to that story is her line "I nearly stayed behind."
• In the second draft the Somn scene was the last time Ragtime came up, which really pissed everyone off. The lack of any kind of resolution for this plotline was widely considered the number one problem with the book. That's why I added the Tetsuo scene to the next chapter: so Ariel could have a finalizing talk about Ragtime with someone who won't just dismiss his concerns. Just don't expect an explanation.
• Ariel's review of The Amulet of Manufactured Memory is probably the book's clearest example of the old literary trick where someone's seemingly innocuous writings reveal volumes about their mental state if you know what to look for. But I mostly think it's interesting from an exposition perspective.

  Considered as a human game, The Amulet of Manufactured Memory would be pretty unremarkable—single-player RPG featuring amnesiac protagonist of a different gender from the player. But for a Gaijin game that's really unusual. This is a great technique for conveying alien-ness—show something that the reader can facially identify with and show how it's unusual from an alien perspective. But I knew it was a trick I could only use once. (Gatekeeper is the same as Pong, but the point of that is it's a really simple game that gets independently invented all the time.)

• Amulet and Dana Light Is: Unauthorized were both heavily inspired by the specification for my ideal video game back in 2008. In my original notes for Constellation Games my ideal game actually showed up, as Unauthorized: Welcome to Earth. Sort of a Grand Theft Auto where instead of a human psychopath you play an alien invader. That game still exists in the Constellation universe, it's just not mentioned in the novel because Temple Sphere was more useful dramatically.

  (I suspect that weblog entry was also one of the main inspirations for Constellation Games itself, so thanks, Ben.)

  

• All the Gaijin game companies in the CDBOEGOACC have names that include some multiple of 3. This is kind of my tribute to Star Control II, in which all the captains of Ur-Quan Kohr-Ah ships were named "Death 701" or "Death 43" or "Death [some other prime number]". The tribute is most obvious for Amulet which was published by "9 Death To Various Obsolete Procedures".

  As long as I've got these cards out, there's a direct reference to Star Control II way back in chapter 2 (specifically, to Frungy), which I didn't mention before.

• I didn't notice this until I was writing this commentary, but both Amulet and What-the-Fuck Creek are games that tell the same basic story every playthrough, but tell it drastically differently every time. It's sort of the opposite of the Dhihe Coastal Coalition's fear of fiction. And given what I said a couple weeks ago about the lack of diversity within Gaijin castes, it might give insight into what it's like to be Gaijin.

  

• I like to imagine "Ke's Got No Name!" as the Gaijin equivalent of Odysseus's "Outis". In his review, Ariel calls his post-amnesia character "No-Name". That's a mistake on my part: "No-Name" was the character's name in the second draft, but that's not a Gaijin name, so I changed it. But let's say that's Ariel's nickname for the character. Apparently the rule of Gaijin names is that when I change one, I forget to go through and change it everywhere it shows up.
• Dana's line "I got dumped for an earlier version of myself who's dumber and greedier!" really resonates with some readers. Not my intention, but I'll take it.
• The Dana scene is Ariel's fourth sex scene in the novel. For the first two I ruined Ariel's life right after the sex scene. In chapter 30 it happened during the sex, and here the sex just indicates how low he's sunk already.

  I'm kind of annoyed at having written one of those books where the male lead has sex with every available female character, but I don't think anyone would confuse Ariel with James Bond. (In the event that you did confuse Ariel with James Bond, the management regrets that no refunds can be provided.)

• When I first wrote those limericks in chapter 18, I remember thinking "I bet Dana will really appreciate this, once she becomes capable of knowing that it happened". I did not anticipate how her appreciation would come out.
• It's nice that Ariel refuses a fake Jenny, though he might have any number of non-noble reasons for doing that.

  Dana knows a lot she shouldn't, but she doesn't know the Ariel/Jenny history. She's engaging in the same speculation you may have done prior to chapter 30.

• I seem to have a thing for purple dresses. The Captain in "Four Kinds of Cargo", which I wrote right after Constellation Games, wears a purple dress at one point. I guess what I'm saying is, keep rocking those purple dresses, ladies.
• Auslanders are the traditional science-fictional puffball aliens from the upper layers of a gas giant. (Recall that the proposed carbon-eating kites from chapter 15 are Auslander animals.) There was an Auslander bartender in "Vanilla" but I think the archaeologist in this chapter has a lot more character even though it's only got a couple lines.
• When I was writing the second draft I was worried that there'd be no gaming content in part three, because Ariel has set those interests aside for now. But there's plenty, it's just not similar to what came before. I'm thinking specifically of Ariel collecting from the archaeological dig, an idea I think is really nice, and not something I've seen elsewhere. (And I did add one more set of game reviews after selling the book.)

Next week is the last "normal" chapter of the book. After that it's all climax and denouement. Tune in next Tuesday to hear Curic give her heartwarming monologue, "I was trapped alone in a decaying world of the dead."

Image credits: The Ohio State University Radio Observatory and the North American AstroPhysical Observatory (NAAPO), Mark A. Wilson, Toys for Bob, Deror avi, 20th Century Fox (check out the deletion debate!)

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Comments:

Posted by Yatima at Tue Jul 03 2012 13:58

I just read the whole thing again cover to cover and it was better the second time. I am going to credit this book with making me realize I am an anarchist.

Posted by Ben Heaton at Tue Jul 03 2012 14:18

>I suspect that weblog entry was also one of the main inspirations for Constellation Games itself, so thanks, Ben.

You're welcome! This is not something I had suspected until now, and it comes as a pleasant surprise.

Posted by danima at Tue Jul 17 2012 13:41

The serialization is up to Chapter 34, now, and I'm liking the headlong rush to the end, but all the same:

As I was reading Chapter 32 for the first time, I got that creeping chill you get when you realize that you're coming to the end of a really good book and there won't be any more. I was sure I was going to come to this page and see a, "that's all, folks!"