FA+
Shop
Thoughts about writing sci-fi and the passage of time.
3 years ago
So I've started work on the final chapter of Conversion -- which I keep calling an "epilogue," when "denouement" is the more accurate term, I need to get better about that so as not to throw off peoples' expectations. And just musing on things, like how just a random writing experiment became what's basically a novel and a setting.
I'm also thinking about how I've been working at the story and setting long enough that I remember writing Dana and Linda's first appearance in chapter 3, and trying to come up with a future nickname for what was then commonly referred-to as an 'e-cigarette,' partially as an early attempt to seed hypothetical future lingo into the story but also largely because I just hated the term. And in the process I created a term that I've grown to hate more and more every time I come across it when going back to reference something. And I don't mean 'hating my own older writing' like a lot of people do (I mean, I do hate my own older writing, but that's irrelevant), I mean I am embarrassed by the term and regret coming up with it.
(I just checked, and while apparently I edited it out of a couple of places when I updated the formatting and forgot until just now, I didn't get them all. This isn't a challenge to find them, but a warning and an apology.)
But my point is that in between creating those characters and today, a perfectly cromulent term -- 'vape pen' -- has come into common parlance, so when I do the collected edition I can properly fix that. (And while that term may not still be in use in the future, I like it well enough I think it'll last a while. Worst-case scenario, I come up with something better and call the characters old-fashioned.) But it's just amusing to think about, especially as a challenge regarding sci-fi taking place in the future to reflect the progression of technology and other stuff and trying not to become outdated. This isn't even an obstacle specifically for near-future science fiction; while they're not small enough to fit in a human skull without needing special cooling, to be fair, for the last 15 years we've had supercomputers that outperform Data's positronic brain from Star Trek: The Next Generation. (We don't know about the main ship's computer, as the writers deliberately used fictional units for processing power to dodge this specific issue.)
Similarly, when trying to adapt the comic book Global Frequency to television back in 2002 (which didn't work out due to network suit bullshit), the producers had trouble with the fact that the characters in the comic carry cell phones with then-advanced capabilities (technically possible but not available for civilian use at the time), intended to be plausible 'day-after-tomorrow' technology. (By the way, those phones would be on par a bog-standard smartphone a decade later, so that worked out.) For the show, they tried to walk the line between 'obsolete by the time this episode airs' and 'basically magic,' and it was a constant struggle. On at least one occasion they thought they found that sweet spot, only to discover less than a week later that a semi-underground electronics market in Singapore was offering components that would have made it possible to build the phones.
I dunno, I don't have anything clever to wrap this up on other than to say that despite the writer's failings as a human being (which he is supposedly working on), Global Frequency is still an incredible comic and I recommend reading it. It's just a 12-issue limited series, low-continuity, so easy to read in bits. Also, while the video quality isn't great because it comes from a 2002 screener copy and there isn't exactly an HD remaster coming any time soon, I highly recommend looking up the leaked Global Frequency pilot on YouTube.
I'm also thinking about how I've been working at the story and setting long enough that I remember writing Dana and Linda's first appearance in chapter 3, and trying to come up with a future nickname for what was then commonly referred-to as an 'e-cigarette,' partially as an early attempt to seed hypothetical future lingo into the story but also largely because I just hated the term. And in the process I created a term that I've grown to hate more and more every time I come across it when going back to reference something. And I don't mean 'hating my own older writing' like a lot of people do (I mean, I do hate my own older writing, but that's irrelevant), I mean I am embarrassed by the term and regret coming up with it.
(I just checked, and while apparently I edited it out of a couple of places when I updated the formatting and forgot until just now, I didn't get them all. This isn't a challenge to find them, but a warning and an apology.)
But my point is that in between creating those characters and today, a perfectly cromulent term -- 'vape pen' -- has come into common parlance, so when I do the collected edition I can properly fix that. (And while that term may not still be in use in the future, I like it well enough I think it'll last a while. Worst-case scenario, I come up with something better and call the characters old-fashioned.) But it's just amusing to think about, especially as a challenge regarding sci-fi taking place in the future to reflect the progression of technology and other stuff and trying not to become outdated. This isn't even an obstacle specifically for near-future science fiction; while they're not small enough to fit in a human skull without needing special cooling, to be fair, for the last 15 years we've had supercomputers that outperform Data's positronic brain from Star Trek: The Next Generation. (We don't know about the main ship's computer, as the writers deliberately used fictional units for processing power to dodge this specific issue.)
Similarly, when trying to adapt the comic book Global Frequency to television back in 2002 (which didn't work out due to network suit bullshit), the producers had trouble with the fact that the characters in the comic carry cell phones with then-advanced capabilities (technically possible but not available for civilian use at the time), intended to be plausible 'day-after-tomorrow' technology. (By the way, those phones would be on par a bog-standard smartphone a decade later, so that worked out.) For the show, they tried to walk the line between 'obsolete by the time this episode airs' and 'basically magic,' and it was a constant struggle. On at least one occasion they thought they found that sweet spot, only to discover less than a week later that a semi-underground electronics market in Singapore was offering components that would have made it possible to build the phones.
I dunno, I don't have anything clever to wrap this up on other than to say that despite the writer's failings as a human being (which he is supposedly working on), Global Frequency is still an incredible comic and I recommend reading it. It's just a 12-issue limited series, low-continuity, so easy to read in bits. Also, while the video quality isn't great because it comes from a 2002 screener copy and there isn't exactly an HD remaster coming any time soon, I highly recommend looking up the leaked Global Frequency pilot on YouTube.
