A little bit of Earthloop
and a bit of news about SevenStoriesAboutTimeTravel.
Before we get to the excerpt, here’s some cool news about WHALE.
WHALE
I’ve been working on the Whale story for the last week or so, adding more character to it, seeing where it fits in the bigger picture. I’ve given our froglike alien treasure hunter a name, Duran, and polished his knowledge of human history (as you may be able to guess, his favourite human decade is the 1980s).
The story references the Tessun Rel, who are mythical figures in some alien cultures, so I know it’s part of a greater universe but the trick is now making it independent as a short story, whilst retaining those links that some of you really enjoy. The Tessun Rel are referenced in one throwaway line, so any casual readers just see it as worldbuilding. Lax Morales mentions them once in WBTH and that’s it, but that’s not enough to claim they take part in the same timeline. I’d like to fit WHALE in somewhere, but we’ll see. There is a point at which including these little stories into the wider universe of the novels is actually creatively limiting, rather than a fun challenge. So I’m undecided.
For now, it’s just a fun story about a frog trying to sell a dead astronaut to some cosmic horrors who own a planet-sized museum. Also alien cats are there. There’s no reason the Tessun Rel shouldn’t be in multiple realities. Lax managed.
The eBook will be 100% free and the new version of the story will be exclusively available through that eBook. I’ll post a link when it’s available.
EARTHLOOP
This is a scene in which Lax Morales and Nori Furukawa are discussing fate. It arrived in my head pretty much fully formed when I woke up this morning, so it might not make much sense right now.
Nori rested his tired hands against the desk. Behind him Lax Morales entered the room, a dark and intense concentration burning from his eyes. He hesitated before speaking, playing the words over again in his head before releasing them.
“When you are stood in your back room at five in the morning, watching the world wake up, asking yourself if free will is real, do you ever stop to consider if that question has purpose?”
“There will be a way out,” Nori said. “I can feel it.”
Lax ignored his attempt to change subject. “What is the point of such an enquiry in a deterministic universe?” he continued. Nori finally rose from the desk, staring at his old friend like a tired adversary. He barely had the energy to stand, let alone entertain this meaningless debate. Still, he wouldn’t let Lax win.
“The question is the purpose. To ask. To do science.”
“Not quite,” Lax said. “But good try. It has to do with reality itself. All philosophy and religion, all imagination. Painting, sculpture, art and architecture. Music, comedy. All of this is a parallel universe that humans voluntarily enter. It is a world with entirely different rules, even if on the surface it feels earthly. It is a world where fate is simplified and yet where characters can go against it. I feel that most of you know deep down that you’re set along certain tracks, that your temperaments and upbringing played a large part in where you are headed, just as your childhood obsession with space turned you into a physicist. But you don’t like that. None of you do.”
“Who would?” Nori interrupted.
“A lot of sentient beings go through this. My own people went through this. Determinism, when embraced by a society, leads to madness. The illusion of choice leads to joy. But not too much. It’s a balancing act. When you buy certain products in the supermarket you feel you are choosing between one company and another, between one creator and the next. But you’re not. At some point a long time ago someone bought all the factories. The same person profits regardless of your choice.”
“It’s a game,” Nori said.
“Exactly. A game that makes you feel like the animals feel, that your choice, left or right, up or down, is entirely up to you. That no force is nudging you either way.”
“And you think reality is like that?” Nori asked. Lax took Nori’s copy of A Brief History of Time and held it aloft.
“You first read this when you were eight years old, the day after its release.”
“That’s right,” Nori said.
“And you’re reading it again now.”
“Same copy.”
“Can I borrow it?”
“No.”
I really like that scene. I need to describe the house a bit more, but if you’ve seen the British comedy Outnumbered, it’s basically that house but with more dark wood furniture and a few posters about aliens. That book also becomes a major plot point, so I’m currently checking on the legality of including it…
What do you think of the excerpt?
Anyway that’s it. Thanks for reading!
