jayroe

The way my mind works, I read for many simultaneous reasons. Even though I’m always trying to accelerate my reading speed, I take my time and highlight, dog ear and take notes, parsing the text for knowledge related to my primary interests: science and technology, the arts and culture, philosophy and religion. When I focus on a specific topic I strive to connect insights and fundamental principles of what I have learned in other areas.

I use this parallel approach to learning while researching and creating my comic ParticleSphere, now in the script writing phase. I seek out media that address as many of my interests as possible at the same time. This multitasking allows me to build conceptual structures that apply not only to a science fiction comic but my professional and personal interests as well. This process of assimilation and connection is why I like to use the phrase “everything is connected” as a general creative mantra.

The PS Status updates for the next few weeks will feature some of the books from my 2007 readings. These books are relevant material for anyone interested in the nature of technology past, present and future. All were in some way relevant to the story I have in mind and each one helped me better understand how I might get the thing on paper (well, in pixels at least).

This week’s book is Techgnosis: Myth, Magic & Mysticism in the Age of Information by Erik Davis. I have had this book in my collection for years and finally knocked it out. A mind-blowing work of cultural analysis that puts technology and spiritual culture into a tumbler and serves up a dirty techno-martini complete with a magical olive.

The world I’m attempting to create for ParticleSphere is my way of dealing with the coming genetic, bio- and robo- technological revolution where machines will become not only sentient but capable of taking human intelligence to the next evolutionary level. Particle’s personal avatar, Sphere, is a self aware general artificial intelligence without which Particle could not command her powers over space-time. At the same time, Particle often resents his presence because he acts as a limiting factor, a “voice of reason.”

Davis statement near the end of Techgnosis alludes to this type of human / AI relationship:

…technology is a trickster. We blame technologies for things that arise from our social structures and skewed priorities; we expect magic satisfactions from machines that they simply cannot provide; and we remain consistently hoodwinked by their unintended consequences. Technologies have their own increasingly alien agenda, and human concerns will survive and prosper only when we learn to treat them, not as slaves or simple extensions of ourselves, but as unknown constructs with whom we make creative alliances and wary pacts.

Next week, Jospeh Campbell’s The Power of Myth and why I think sending humans to Mars is dumb - why ancient mythology and modern futurists agree: humanity in it’s current form cannot explore space.

As a way to start ramping up my PS efforts, I’m going to start posting status updates once a week. Since it’s Thursday, I’ll shoot for every Thursday. This will not only be for my friends who ask about PS from time to time, but will also be a means of self-motivation. What prompted this after years of apparent inactivity? Well, music of course…

Since starting my personal sci-fi comic project, Particle Sphere, back in 2001, music has been a primary creative influence second only to science fiction itself. Over the years I’ve built a list in my mind of tunes that perfectly express the essence of what I’m trying to capture with my story and characters.

I recently discovered the artist Vienna Teng. Her music just feeds my creative soul. So, when I find material like that, I work my way through it looking for things to latch onto and use for inspiration. One such object is her tune Gravity… if I had to pick a theme song for Particle this would be it. It’s just perfect.

I have wanted to compile a playlist of music that I have used for energy while thinking and working on PS. I’ll start building it and include it in a future PS Status.

The general state of the comic is currently script writing and research. I have more than 16 single-spaced, typed pages of script and sketchbooks full of notes and drawings for the origin story, ParticleSphere.Alpha. I estimate that it will be around 40 pages by the end of the year. My goal is to finish the first draft before Christmas and send it out to friends for feedback.

I have been rapidly nailing down technical conventions and major story points, such as technological capabilities, full character names, plot twists and essential events of the narrative. One of the major conceptual problems I’ve been working on is how to do space battles in a post-Singularity era.

For example, if everything is composed of smart materials and nanotech with AI driven weapons and defense systems, how do you actually damage an opponent? Wouldn’t everything end in stalemate? What I don’t want to do is recreate sea battles in space, the standard issue sci-fi space battle cliché.

I’m going for something really different here.

So I’ve been thinking of basing all the warfare on a chess paradigm. Except instead of 2 dimensions, you’d have several million dimensions both real and synthetic with a wide array of varying environmental physics. And instead of 8 pawns, you’d have a billion… self-assembling, fully sentient AI driven, massively parallel, wormhole traveling quantum reactors using nano-engineered superconducting electromagnetic containment lenses capable of firing multidimensional sub-atomic beams that could cut a planet in half and trained via evolutionary algorithm with every conceivable war tactic and technique both human and alien… or something like that.

I’m sure a nice visual metaphor would sort it all out.

Next week’s status will go into some of the research I’ve been doing, books and source materials.

~ Will