Quantum Storytelling

So I’m plowing through Guerrilla Creativity by Jay Conrad Levinson. I’m on another hot marketing kick, and I thought this could help some of my fellow authors.

“A good place to connect with your prospects in the hopes of making yourself part of their identity is their inner circle. You must join the inner circle that surrounds each prospect. That circle includes the person’s family, friends, car, toothpaste, coffee, sports teams, soft drink, beer, breakfast cereal, clothing, community, and a lot more. Most people have developed an intimate relationship with all of these elements of their inner circle and often describe themselves as Pepsi lovers, Wheaties eaters, or Forty-Niners fans.

The products have actually become like a family, through a long-term relationship based on familiarity and trust.”

How do you plan to get into the inner circle of the reader’s life?

My smArtist friend made his post already, so I suppose mine is due. I’ve blogged in the past about the importance of taking breaks. If you have a decent camera and the will to explore, go get yourself some writing inspiration.

We went to a really cool abandoned grainery, and snapped some artsy shots. What becomes inspiring towards the writing aspect is what goes through your head as you wander some abandoned places like these. You often think “What was this for?” or “Why is this here?” when encountering mysterious mechanical devices and equipment. The environment begs many questions, which kickstarts the questioning mind.

Imagination is so often a visual exercise, as a writer you cannot afford to be without visual cues during the creative process. Get them wherever you can.

John over at SF Signal asks, “Why do you read science fiction?”

I thought this was one of those great, simple, honest questions that can be really enlightening when you explore the answers. I’ll up the ante a little though. Why write sci-fi as well?

The reasons I both read and write sci-fi are pretty simple but often overlooked. Sci-fi is great for those big “What if…?” ideas. I love interesting concepts, paradoxes, or the way the future and evolution of society has such a huge impact of everyday lives and philosophy. For example, only in sci-fi would you be able to ask:

“Given the nature of relativity, if you travel at the speed of light for 10 years away from Earth, by the time you returned three million years would have passed. What would Earth be like?”

I think the biggest exploration of this concept, that I know of, is Planet of the Apes. They think they have found an alien planet when in fact they’ve found a future alternate Earth.

“What would happen if a super intelligent robot got paranoid or went crazy?” - You’d have HAL, from 2001: a space odyssey

The Future

Getting more into the nitty gritty, one thing I love is just extrapolating current political situations in extreme ways towards the future. Immigration is a really hot issue right now in the U.S. Like everyone else, I have my own opinions. But being married into a Mexican family gives me a perspective that most of my fellow anglos don’t have. This isn’t just about illegal vs. legal, or basic right & wrong. There’s a human side, a human struggle to this. The future poses some interesting questions;

“What if they build a 2,000 mile fence like has been proposed? What if after the fence, they build a solid concrete wall? What if eventually they put armed guards on the wall? What if eventually they will have the choice and discretion to shoot anyone illegally crossing? Wouldn’t that be like the Berlin wall? It’s depressing, but entirely possible. How could the U.S. get like that? What circumstances would have to change or evolve to get us to that point?”

These are interesting questions to ask, and are one reason dystopias are a popular theme in sci-fi. You can extrapolate certain political situations into the future and find their extremes, which make for both a compelling story backdrop and also provide some excellent human drama.

Technology

Technology always changes philosophical expectations and can sometimes be downright weird. What would it be like talking to yourself? What if you could instantly clone yourself down to matching your current brain state? What would it be like to have another version of you with all the same memories, going around walking, talking, and living as if they were The Real One? The movie 6th Day explores this concept.

Here’s a freebie from my short story idea stockpile; “What if you could not only clone people, but objects as well? What if you could clone any item? A gun? A TV? A Ferrari? What would happen to the value of things, and our understanding of an item’s worth if we knew we could always and forever make more? If you and only you had one of these ‘item cloners’ what would you do? How would you hide it? You can’t use it without people eventually finding out! So… what if?”

The idea of constituting items or objects from the basic elements has been explored in Star Trek, and likely in other places. But has anyone examined the true implications of it?

What I love about sci-fi is also my beef with much of sci-fi as it stands–nobody takes the ideas far enough. The item-cloning idea is a perfect example. I think in Star Trek, the ability to materialize items instantly was taken for granted. It’s just a matter of fact.

But as a sci-fi concept, it’s NOT a matter of fact. In 2006 Earth terms it certainly wouldn’t be taken for granted. It’s a philosophical gold mine! You could instantly materialize food or other items, which could address world starvation issues. You could instantly materialize anything! Doesn’t that pretty much change everything? And what does it mean when anything can be had for free with a simple click of a button?

Philip K. Dick explored this concept in his short story AutoFac, about self-repairing automated factories that make human existence ‘too easy.’ The protagonists are a group of AutoFac-hating rebels who want to destroy the AutoFacs and return the power of craft & creation back to mankind.

Sci-fi allows philosophy, politics, and what it means to be human–allows those massive categories of things to be turned upside down, contents shaken out and dissected.

Could there be any better reason to love sci-fi?