Implanted: Imagine a Future Where...

I just finished Implanted by Lauren C. Teffeau, which was recently awarded a 2018 SFR Galaxy Award, presented by judge Lee Koven.

Part of Lee's write up said this:

"If you have a smartphone, you probably unconsciously reach for it at times when you’re bored or need reassurance. It’s become a wonderful tether to loved ones that are far away."

Indeed. How many people today live the majority of their lives looking down into the view screen of their smart phones? They're in constant contact, even in situations where actual face-to-face socializing is expected. Family dinners, eating with friends at a restaurant, group outings, weddings and receptions--no matter the occasion some individuals have their attention firmly locked on the interface of their portable technology.

Often, they're even engaged with their phones when they shouldn't be for safety reasons, like driving or walking. I'm sure you've probably seen the videos where someone immersed in a text conversation falls head-first into a fountain or walks into a light post. Or on a more serious note, you've heard a news report about someone driving, operating a city bus or a commuter train having an accident that endangered lives, and it's later discovered they had been engaged in an interaction on their phone.

Our current connection via technology is considered by some to be absolutely essential. They can no longer carry on with their lives without being in constant contact with someone they know via their mobile devices.

Implanted takes our status quo a solid couple of leaps into the future, where cell phones are no longer something a person carries--the technology has been integrated into the brain. No more looking down at their cell phone screens to carry on a text exchange, now they can chat up a storm inside their heads as they go about their lives, and depending on the level of connection they allow the other party, they can also share their emotions and deepest thoughts.

It seems a natural transition from our current status quo. Cell phone technology is evolving, technology integration with the human brain is being researched, and it seems entirely plausible they'll merge at some point in the future. No need to unlock your phone and type out a quick note to a friend...just think it!

But the society in Implanted is no technological utopia.

Teffeau's novel explores a future where humankind has turned their environment into a toxic wasteland and they now must live inside domed cities to survive. This new facet of society has more than just infrastructure levels, but class levels according to where a person lives within the dome--whether it be the dark, dank and perilous streets of the Terrestrial District, or the brighter, airier, plusher, and more privileged environs like the Canopy or the Echelon.

And there is crime, intrigue, corruption, espionage, political manipulation and all the other facets of our current society happening within this contained ecosystem. But at least in this less-than-ideal future you always have your friends and family close by--as close as your next thought--24/7. Right?

Now imagine a person being completely cut-off from these connections to loved ones--whether by their own choosing, or someone else's. Imagine the emotional stress at being severed from those constant voices inside their heads, the separation anxiety, the feelings of aloneness. Imagine becoming a "disconnect," as these individuals are known in the domed city of New Worth.

That's the basic premise for Implanted, where a large cross-section of this culture-under-glass is revealed through the main character, Emery Driscoll. Also known as Liv. And also as M. Because individuals in this world tend to have technologically-necessary alter egos.

I found the various stages of connection to other individuals quite a fascinating spin on the idea. I also had to give a lot of thought to how I would react to the prospect of having real life technology expand into this area. Would I really want to have communication technology implanted inside my brain, knowing the capacity for some devious person to figure out how to hack it? With some of the rather frightening consequences of having smart technology in your home, imagine how the risk factor might be multiplied to the nth if that smart technology is someday a part of your mind?

Sobering.

Implanted also explores the dome-dwellers quest to return to the land, once the environment is deemed safe and suitable. The citizens of New Worth are almost on the verge of "emergence." Or are they?

There is a pretty major twist in the main character's arc which I won't disclose in order to keep this as spoiler-free as possible. Suffice it to say, technology in this strange domed biosphere has advanced in more areas than just personal communication technology.

There is a romance involved in this story and the consequences are explored of having a significant other share part of your mind. I did think the early romantic arc was a bit understated for my own personal taste, but it did become more satisfying as the story progressed. I would have liked to see the facets of the developing relationship delved into in a little more depth. There was so much to explore here, from an emotional standpoint.

Although the romance is happily resolved, it is a bit more of a Happy For Now than a Happily Ever After and I did get the distinct sense there was a "To Be Continued" in there, as well. All-in-all, it was a thought-provoking, well-written and highly imaginative debut novel that leaves plenty of room for pondering the what-ifs.

Have a great week.

SF MUSIC: FROM WOO-WOO TO JUST WRONG

When we think about the music for science fiction on the screen, big, sweeping scores usually come to mind. Thus Spake Zarathustra and Strauss waltzes behind spinning space stations in 2001: A Space Odyssey; bass drums and brass heralding the arrival of Darth Vader in Star Wars; a wordless soprano over a soaring orchestra in the early Star Trek.

But there are other, more subtle uses of music in SF films and television that are no less unforgettable. Take the 1951 classic alien invasion film The Day the Earth Stood Still, starring Michael Rennie and Patricia Neal (and the robot, Gort). The film was directed by the Hollywood heavyweight Robert Wise (The Sound of Music; Star Trek: The Motion Picture) and featured, for the first time, a weird instrument called the theremin as part of the soundtrack written by Bernard Hermann. The sound was so distinctive it has defined SF ever since, even entering the common vernacular as a descriptor for something far out, as in “Oh, yeah, UFOs and all that ‘woo-woo’ stuff.”

 

A similar shiver up the spine was achieved by playing two notes over and over again on the guitar with a little echo effect overdubbed on them to create theTwilight Zone television show theme. I was only six years old when Rod Serling’s brainchild first hit the airwaves—too young to be allowed to watch. But, believe me, I could hear the theme song from my bedroom, and it scared the bejeezus out of me! My youngest daughter tells me the music had the same effect on her when I watched the reruns with others in the family. 

The intro to The X-Files—starting with six high, electronic notes—had a similar evocative effect. Weirdness is coming, the truth is out there, and get ready to hide under the covers.

But sometimes the music chosen for an SF film has more to do with the everyday lives of its characters than the strange things they must encounter (or overcome) through the course of the story. One of my favorite scenes in a great little SF film called Super 8, written and directed by J.J. Abrams (Star Trek, Star Wars, Lost, Fringe, etc., etc.) is one where the geeky young heroes gather on a hill overlooking town and sing along to the radio: “M-m-m-my Sharona!” I was way past my young teen years in 1979 when The Knack did that song, but I could still relate to those kids (whose cinematic adventure involves inadvertently filming an escaped alien while making a movie.)

Occasionally, though, the attempt to use cool music in the SF background goes wrong. This is the case with Project Blue Book, now showing on the History Channel. The show is a fairly decent fictionalization of the U.S. Air Force investigations of UFO sightings in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, most of which were conducted by a physicist named Dr. J. Allen Hynek and his Air Force “keeper” Captain Michael Quinn. Hynek, of course, has since earned a reputation as a true believer, having written several books on aliens and UFOs and the like, despite the government’s attempts to discredit him.

The show is a little slow, but interesting enough, given that episodes are based on the real incidents of Project Blue Book (pictures of which are shown at the end of each episode). The problem I’m having is that, to spice things up, the music director has old blues or rhythm and blues music playing on car radios or in bars. 

Not that anybody below a certain age would know this, but in the late Forties, you wouldn’t have heard that kind of music played on mainstream radio, or in white bars or restaurants. Blues or R&B was called “race music,” and you would only have heard it in rural juke joints, city establishments catering to African-Americans, or perhaps on urban, limited-range radio stations. Mainstream pop radio was still playing Big Band music, or maybe “hillbilly” or “Western swing” music in the South or West. By the mid-to-late 1950s, things had changed. Radio had come to be dominated by a new mash-up of R&B and hillbilly music, something that would later be known as "rock and roll."

Most people wouldn’t care, but this is my jam. I collect music from the early 50s to the 60s. So, the show getting it wrong bothers me and takes me out of the story. You all know how that is. Whether it’s the physics of your starship's propulsion or the music on the radio in the background, details are important. Best the author--and the show runners--get them right.

Cheers, Donna

A different take on interstellar travel

The concept of interplanetary travel is a very important aspect of any space opera, where popping around from planet to planet is an integral part of the action. Think Star Trek, Star Wars, Firefly and the like.And, of course, my SF books.

Several years ago I wrote an article explaining my notion of interplanetary travel, which involved taking advantage of dimensions beyond our height, width, and depth geometry. This is an excerpt from that article.

"Take a piece of A4 paper. Let’s label two diagonally opposite corners as A and B. Starting from B, we can reach A by going straight up one side then along the top to A. Hang on, you say, wouldn’t you just go across the diagonal, thereby reducing the distance and time taken? Sure you would. Now curl the paper over into a cylinder. All you have to do to get from B to A is move along a straight line. The length of the line will depend on how you make the roll (short edges together or long edges together).

Now take point A in one hand and point B in the other and bring them together so they meet. Getting from B to A in this instance is like walking from one room into another."

 You'll find the full article here.

Recently I've been reading Holly Lisle's books set in her Settled Space universe. She has taken this idea of foldable space to a whole new level. In space it's possible to travel vast distances by using origami points. In one section of Hunting the Corrigan's Blood the MC, Cadence Drake, watches an old vid of Isas Yamamoto explaining how his hyperspace drive works.

“Akiko wanted a crane,” Yamamoto said, smiling down at his little girl. 

“And I was folding it for her—like so.” 

He handed the finished crane to his daughter and took a sheet of paper from the little carved table beside him. He lifted it up and made a crease in the paper, and then another. While he folded it, he talked. 

“It occurred to me that the nature of origami, that is, the art of folding paper, was very much like the problem humanity faced in reaching the stars. Origami is folding two-dimensional paper into three-dimensional objects. Space travel through hyperspace is the folding of a three-dimensional universe into four spatial dimensions to shorten the distances between points.”   

He held up the partially finished crane. It didn’t look like much yet. “You see—I am taking something that was in essence two-dimensional, and I am changing it into something three-dimensional.”

 ***

To me, this is a delightful combination of the concept of worm holes through space with the folding of space through multiple dimensions. The paths are fixed, straight lines from one origami point to another.

But there's more to it than that.

Later in the same section, Yamamoto says,

"Life is not a thing of three dimensions. It is not limited by up and across and back. Life encompasses space, and time, and it goes beyond that. It touches infinity. You sit watching me right now, and in another probability, another child who is also you sits watching another me. In another probability, another child who is also you sits where you are sitting, but that child isn’t listening the way you are. 

In an infinite number of probabilities, an infinite number of children who are also you do an infinite number of things, and none of them can see or hear each other. So how can all of these yous do similar things? You are linked together through hyperspace. The infinite number of three-dimensional yous are all part of a single meta-you, whose home is hyperspace.”

 ***

And that is significant because when a person goes through an origami point, they encounter all those other yous. Here's the first instance we come across of Cadence's ship going through an origami point.

"Space, still and silent and serene, filled with stars that promise everything. Everything. Think of the perfection of space, the glorious swirl of a nebula splashed against the velvet dark—

“Six…five…four…three…”

I am Cadence Drake, captain and owner of the Hope’s Reward. 

“Two.”

I am strong. I know who I am. 

“One.”

I know what I believe.

“Insertion.”

I was no longer alone. In my chair, in my head, I could feel the rest of myself, the multidimensional self that takes its mundane shapes as an infinite number of Cadence Drakes in an infinite number of universes connected by the fact that we are one. Infinite. Of a magnitude with the heavens. And we are more than infinite mirrored and fragmented parts; we are also a single whole. An Entity. We touch, we mirror, we remain Me through that portion of our self, or perhaps I should say Self, that has its home in hyperspace. A part of me can look infinity in the eye and not flinch. A part of me is enormous and magnificent and beyond the pain and the suffering and the despair of my infinite mirrored fragmented mortal three-dimensional lives; is so beyond my limitations and weaknesses and frailties that it regards the infinite parts of me with some tenderness but also with mild, superior amusement.  I am small, puny, insignificant. Mortal. Human. A creature of limited flesh and limited intellect, for a burning expanse of non-time forced to see myself not only as I am, but as I could be in all my infinite capacity, knowing that when the moment ends my sudden wisdom, my godhood, will be stripped from me and I will be thrown naked and shivering and frightened and mortal back into the domain of death.

And the infinite frightened fragments of my greater Self clamor in my head. I am a doctor, on my way to a new world, armed with hope and knowledge, but now fear, too, for I have never taken this shortcut through the stars. I am a dancer; and I am a thief; and a renegade and a lover and a mother and I am old and young and I have a thousand faces and a thousand names a million names a billion names and I know them all all all all and every detail of every life that goes with them and they are nothing nothing nothing because these fragments of my true self are nothing these tiny mortal scraps are meaningless are nothing but I am Cadence Drake I am Cadence Drake I am Cadence Drake— “

—I am Cadence Drake—”

 ***

This pull of the multi-verse happens every single time a person goes through an origami point. Which is why most people are placed in a form of suspended animation for the few moments it takes to go through. Ship's captains, however, have to be awake, aware and in control.

It's such a powerful image. Lisle uses this downside of space travel as an arc in her stories, not so much for the crossing itself but what goes through Cadence's head as she traverses the point. All the regrets, all the possibilities, all the 'if onlys'.

For most authors, real space disappears in hyperspace. We all remember the stream of stars in the Millenium Falcon's front screen. Other people imagine it as grey and formless. My shift space is a bit more colourful than most. I imagine it as a kaleidoscope, rather like those we played with as kids.

But this mental twist to inter-stellar travel is a new one to me. 

From a writing craft perspective, I also admired the way Lisle avoided an info-dump and explained what happens at origami poits as a narrative that is part of the story. We also learn a little about Cadence's history through this device. It's woth taking notes.

For readers, it's a space opera thriller and I loved it. You'll find my review of Hunting the Corrigan's Blood here.

Quotes from Lisle, Holly. Hunting the Corrigan's Blood (A Cadence Drake Novel Book 1) . Holly Lisle. Kindle Edition.

The Transport is AWAY! #amwriting #amediting #comingsoon

In other words...StarDog is off to the editor!

My former Pets in Space (1) story, now a full-blown novella after nearly a year's work, is off for its final prep before publishing as a standalone, when the story will take its place in my Inherited Stars Series as a prequel to the anchor novel, Inherit the Stars.

The story now includes expanded scenes, changed scenes, embellished scenes, an added love scene, and an epilogue that answers a lot more questions in the "what happens next" department.

I had a few readers comment that, although they loved the story and its conclusion, they still felt a little bad for the hero at the end. And yeah. I agreed there was a little more closure needed there. I did leave the poor guy out on a pretty precarious limb. In my defense, at the time it was originally written I was working under a word count limit...and it was already over by nearly 2000 words (which ended up being allowed in the original short. *Whew*)!

So that rather sudden conclusion has now been fleshed out in an all new epilogue.

I think the story has the same heart as the original, it's just grown up and added a lot more muscle. I'm also super happy with how much the story evolved in providing key insights into some of the future books.

I know it's been a couple of years since anyone has read the short story it was based on, so here's a quick reintroduction by way of the trailer I created for it.

[Sorry, ignore the last part. It's not yet available on Amazon. Hopefully soon!]

So, next up...

*cracks open Courting Disaster to begin upgrades*

*opens a brand new doc for a third StarDog story*

...at the same time!

Cover me, I'm goin' in!


And That's a Wrap!

The SFR Galaxy Awards have been announced! and with it, my host and coordinator duties have concluded for another year! *whew*

This year, 27 SFR Galaxy Awards were given out in seven rounds, once again supporting the double-bladed mission of the awards to find greatness in SFR and to help connect readers with books that might want to read.

The list has now been recreated on the SFR GalaxyAwards site (Awards Archives: click to see), but better yet, Carol Van Natta posted the entire list with buy links on her site, so you can easily grab the ones you want to read. Here's Carol's post: 2018 SFR Galaxy Awards

Oh, and might I also mention that a member of the Spacefreighters Lounge crew has once again been graced with an award. Congratulations to Donna on getting the nod for the latest novel in her Interstellar Rescue Series, Not Fade Away. Yay!

Have a great week!