In A Different Place - Update #2 17/12/2024 io Saturnalia!
Something about a seasonal schedule, and I really did win a writing competition!
First, me and the Great Image Generator got together and knocked up a seasonal greetings card for all of you lovely subscribers. Here she is!
Yes, today, 17 December, it’s the start of Saturnalia. That’s the old Roman midwinter festival (dedicated to Saturn oddly enough), in case you didn’t know, in which everyone got drunk, ate too much, gave each other presents (including to the tree – no, they didn’t then allow their children to snatch them away again), probably got into a lot family arguments, vowed never to invite them back, decided to go to his parents next time, and celebrated the solar birthday of one of my favourite deities, Dionysus, God of Wine, Women, and Song (my three favourite things), seeing as the sun reaches its lowest point at the midwinter solstice, stays there for three days, then starts to rise again. The Roman Sol Invictus is of course another one of these 25 December things.
Do I even need to ask whether all that sounds amusingly familiar? No, of course I don’t.
So, I hope you have a happy midwinter festival, however you celebrate it. Saturnalia, if you choose that option, lasts until the 23 December. So have fun and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. Which gives you a lot of leeway.
And then soon, it shall be uphill all the way to Stonehenge.
That was a little added intro to the below. Before we embark on my update, which I’d actually started week before last, I’ll just give you a heads up on my probable seasonal schedule. Later this week, Thursday or Friday, haven’t decided which yet, there shall be a funny Classified K thing – don’t be put off by that, it really is amusing. I have decided to adopt a far more comedic approach to the conspiracy theory subculture (CTS). At the top of the CTS hit parade at the moment it’s the fake events narrative, so I have something to say about that, which will probably become part of an amusing series.
Following this, I think there will be another Saturday Pomes & Words involving some more of those pesky fragments (that’s microfiction, to you and me, girl, – who has just surpassed the 1000 subscribers milestone – well done Miguel – see what I did there? lol).
Then on Monday I have a lovely little seasonal Paschat thing for you. Not saying anything about that – it’s an enlightening surprise regarding something you may not have ever considered before with regards to the Zoo Hypothesis.
After that, I will let you get on with your carousing and your seasonal attempts to keep your children entertained (no mean feat), then I’ll probably do a Sci-Friday thing for a short Unofficial Katy-precursor story, which is the final free one from my Immigration Control collection (see below).
Then it’s the new year and I have no idea what’s coming next.
Anyway – there’s my schedule – here’s the rest of it.
I had been wanting to do this next update several months ago as it happens, because I got all excited back in August when I discovered I’d won a writing competition, and wanted to share that with you. That link takes you to the competition website (which doesn’t say much to be honest – it hasn’t been updated at all); I won the novella category with a story called A Kinder Rain. You’re probably thinking with the tone of that introductory sentence that it didn’t work out so well in the end. Well, that’s not entirely true. It was a genuine competition and I did genuinely win (first place too! Not second or third, but first!). The issue was a communication thing. I got the notification but then I didn’t hear from them for a while, so in my typical manner I got a little anxious, to say the least, with a whole load of almost paranoid imaginings going through my head, like maybe it was all a great joke at my expense.
I even have a certificate to prove it. Except it’s a pdf, so I can’t show it to you. You’ll just have to take my word for it.
So, my rational brain, however, sort of won the day in the end. The competition was free to enter, for a start. There’s an irony there because if there’d been an entry fee I wouldn’t have entered. Not just because of scam-related thoughts but simply because I can’t afford that kind of thing. And they can’t exactly do plagiarism and steal my story or they’d end up in real trouble. I did, though, have to chase them up by email. At which point they did, indeed, confirm that I’d definitely won. Then I didn’t hear from them again, so I chased them up again. I have gotten the impression that they are simply not very adept at communication. This may be because they are a software engineer and an entrepreneur. Specifically, they are the creators of the Wuri app, which uses AI-generated images to do visual storytelling (to enhance the text, as it were – there’s audio as well if desired I think). As you may have gathered, I have developed something of an affinity with the Great Image Generator, so I like this kind of thing.
One of the downsides, for me, was that my winning prize in monetary terms was a nice thousand dollars. Except that didn’t materialise, because they said they had some issues with their sponsor who had pulled out and they weren’t in a position to sue. Well, I don’t know about that, but they did, by way of a goodwill gesture, give me a third of the amount. So at least that confirms it’s all a real thing and not a scam. Another irony at my expense here is that the remaining 600-odd has now become precisely the amount we need to see us through this winter. Nature, however, provides (if you love her back) – I have been busy with my trusty Japanese pruning saw cutting up large chunks of one our evergreens that sheared off the main trunk back in early September. The wood is still a little green, of course, but it does burn. We don’t have central heating, you see, so this time of year takes me back to prehistoric times when human beings had to work for a living. If you want to understand what it is to be human, and recapture a spiritual maturity, live rurally without central heating. You’ll soon get the picture.
Anyway, that’s not all the prize entails. Even though so far they only use still images to accompany stories (with possible audio element), albeit with zoom in and out and across and suchlike, they are working on a moving images version, which apparently currently takes around 30 days I think. So one aspect of the prize is turning my story into a sort of cinematic novel. This is something which I found really exciting, so you can imagine how upset I got when I was convincing myself that it was all a big mistake.
This is especially the case because as you may have noticed I do write very visually and cinematically. That’s because of the approach I take to writing, which is very organic and meditative, in the sense that I immerse myself in the story and just let it happen inside my head, but I am actually seeing and hearing what’s going on (I do this multiple times before I even sit down to write it). This is especially true when it comes to dialogue. If you have been keeping up with Katrina, for example, you may have noticed how the dialogue scenes especially look a lot like a screenplay with added notes from the director and the actors. I don’t know whether some people might find that stylistically irritating, as I haven’t really had any feedback on it, but obviously people have choices and aren’t forced to read anything they don’t want to (although even if people didn’t like it I’d not change it). But as I say, it’s because I am immersing myself in the whole thing and truly watching it as if it were a movie. The fact that, amongst other things, Katrina is herself an actress, writer and director sort of makes for another self-conscious layer there.
Katrina is still indulging in her intermission, by the way, with a well-earned rest. Hopefully she shall be back in the new year, when things are going to get a bit more exciting, in this world and in hers.
Anyhow, when I was upset, and happy, a lot of that was about the story itself. I was especially happy not just because I won, but because I won with that particular story, which, if I am honest, is possibly my favourite science fiction story that I’ve ever written. I think it’s just beautiful, and the ending makes me weep every time. I am so incredibly proud of it, so I’m sure you can understand my emotions there.
Well, apparently the cinematic version of my story will be available within the next month, they tell me, so I will definitely provide you with the link if and when it’s ready. I’m really excited about it. Obviously, if it turns out to be shit, or they’ve somehow ruined my beautiful story, then I will probably just tell you that it all fell through and now I am upset again (depending on which is less humiliating). Actually I’m telling fibs there. I would give you the link because obviously it wouldn’t have been me who ruined it.
They also got their AI to do a sort of title page for the story, which looks like this:
It’s not bad, and I do like it. But in the seasonal spirit, I am minded to see what our own beloved Great Image Generator can come up with for a similar prompt. I would imagine their prompt was something like ‘teenage girl looking out over planet Venus from an orbiting terraforming station’ or similar. So let’s go with that one and see if the GIG rises to the challenge and comes up with something superior. By the way, I nearly always select the ‘epic’ option for these GIG images. Some of the stuff it comes up with in that option is truly breathtaking.
Not entirely accurate, perhaps, but I like it. So there. And that girl probably looks a lot more like the character than the other one.
As for your being able to read the original (text only) version, well, I’m going to be a little mercenary about that. The Wuri people don’t have ‘exclusive’ publication rights, so I am able to publish it here on my Substack, but I’m going to make it a paid only thing.
I do have other reasons for doing it that way, and the first is because thus far there has been little incentive for anyone to take out a paid subscription. So I need to do more paid-only content. The second reason leads me onto the other issue I wanted to talk about in this update. And this is because the story is included in my Immigration Control collection.
I will do a separate intro post about this collection at some point, which will contain all the links to the stories. But just to let you know, you may have already encountered some of these stories. At least the stories in Part I. The collection is essentially split into three parts, and given I have already given you nearly all of Part I, I have become minded to publish Parts II & III but make them the paid-only bit. If it serves for an enticement, the total word count is around 110k, with Part I being around the 45k mark.
Actually, I’ll just give you a little setlist here, with word counts and links where appropriate.
Prologue: Request Denied (2.5k)
Part I – Alt.Contact (44.5k)
XF (4.5k; I’m going to publish this one in the coming week – update, I already did it)
D-Zero Meson Oscillation (22k; self-contained Katrina-in-Paris origin story (Episode I in the series, in other words); version one; I split this into ten parts, so it’s really a novella)
Ciao, SETI! (16k; original version; this is in eight parts)
Fortunately, I was Saved by the Aliens (2k; you haven’t read this one yet – this is a kind of offbeat proto-version of the Unofficial Katy saga, or where the idea came from – I’ll publish this one soon too; on a Friday)
Part II – Exopolitics (16.5k)
Shipyard Ahoy! (2.5k; Already published at that link; any fan of classic Sci-Fi should smile at this one)
Quantum Topography 101 (1.5k; this one is a bit postmodern, being some instructions for new human students arriving at Tau Ceti Three for the QT101 course)
X&Y (12.5k; humans learn of the arrival of a large ETI spacecraft in orbit around Venus; it’s told from the ETI’s point of view; I’m minded to make this the first chapter in a novel)
Part II – Only Disconnect (35.5k)
The Silver Cord (10.5k; preparations for the first experimental voyage to Alpha Centauri carrying only one person; it’s part psychological, part spiritual)
A Kinder Rain (11k; a girl on a terraforming station orbiting Venus has just lost her mother, and decides to undertake a courageous trip to Gaia to help her father grieve; I was thinking about Venus a lot at the time)
Katy Disconnect (2k; this is a very offbeat little Unofficial Katy fragment)
Immigration Control (12k; a starseed has to pass through immigration control at JFK airport, and keeps drifting into memories of her previous life and why she is here on this planet; this is also vaguely a Katy story – it’s a bit different to the other Katy stories though, in the sense that it’s not a humour-laden one; you could think of it as another precursor story, hence it belongs in this collection rather than the Katy-proper collection; it also does a kind of crossover with the Paschats; it’s quite intriguing though as an insight into the Katy character and her formative background)
Epilogue: Sleeper Ship Monologue (I haven’t finished this one yet; during the very long journey each sleeper is awakened for one full cycle to roam the ship alone, with only the AI for company; this is a kind of prologue/fragment/outtake to X&Y)
My original setlist for this anthology also contained the other two Katy stories I’d written by that point, but then I sort of realised I should remove them and think about a dedicated Katy collection. I decided to leave Ciao, SETI! in there, though (and the offbeat Katy Disconnect, which mentions her fourteen incarnations – i.e. each one is a separate story), maybe with a view to giving people a little taster and introduction to the character. Likewise with the Katrina story D-Zero Meson Oscillation. I now currently have a total of five Katy stories (or six if you count the Immigration Control title story), totalling somewhere around the 65k mark I think. Given there will eventually be fourteen of these, that obviously entails more than one collection.
With all this in mind, along with my unavoidable eclecticism, I have become minded to add two new sections to this publication in order to accommodate all this. The ability to add separate sections is one feature of Substack which I really appreciate, given that aforementioned eclecticism. I am interested in (writing about) such a wide variety of stuff that it really only works if separated this way. I did briefly consider setting up a separate publication, but decided against that option due to the extra promotional work required (which I’m rubbish at anyway), plus the fact that if you hover over my handle, say if you see a comment from me on another person’s post or in the Notes feature, then it only displays one publication. That was the clincher for me with regards to the decision. Plus there is the fact which – it behooves me to remind my subscribers (I have a diverse range, of course, due to the eclecticism of course) that if you are not remotely interested in this or that section then you can click on ‘Manage Subscription’ and toggle on/off each section as you desire. I will not be offended in the slightest by this, if you thought you might feel guilty or insulting by doing such (in fact I probably wouldn’t know come to think of it).
I will of course have to do a lot of editing of posts in lieu of all this, so they’re all in the right sections, and also update the ‘about’ page (or re-write it, for that matter – as it’s a bit clunky and probably a little off-putting for a lot of potential new arrivals). And do a new pinned index. So I shall endeavour to do this over the holidays.
Thus far, all of my writing which isn’t Katrina-related tended to end up in the Alters section – which was my original intention). But then that got so ridiculously eclectic as to become utterly confusing. Even the pinned navigation post has become a bit of a hard slog. And that simply won’t do. So, with all this in mind, along with the recently added Paschats, I think the best way for me to proceed is to add an Unofficial-K section, obviously for all the Katy stories, along with the stories which she herself writes (including the one about the adolescent Paschat spewing ever-stinking excrement over the Prime Minister – I may endeavour to get this one finished for a Christmas story for you – update, I doubt that’ll happen, so I will try and make this one of my first new year projects), and then a Spec Fic section, for all the speculative fiction which doesn’t fit into the Paschats. So the latter is where Immigration Control would go. Although it’s true that Katy is a Paschat, I think she deserves her own section. Furthermore, with Jupiter in opposition right now I have been semi-consciously prompted into concentrating a lot more on being more spiritual, and that sort of writing definitely belongs in the Paschat section.
Here's some more of the GIG, this time doing an Ice Festival.
This raging eclecticism is a significant part of my problem. There really is so much going on inside my poor head that sometimes it gets overwhelming, and I just sort of shut off. But even if I’m not actually writing anything down, I am almost perpetually writing in my head. Except I keep switching from one thing to another. I don’t know how other people approach writing, but I tend to write things in my head first such that it’s usually somewhat fully formed by the time it’s ready to be turned into words. That way I can, hopefully, iron out all the inconsistencies and psychological continuity errors beforepaw, meaning it requires very little editing, if any, and I can do the whole thing organically.
Anyhow, you don’t want to hear about that. With regards to the Alters section, then, this will be more streamlined and accessible (I hope), and contain any of my writings which are not spec-fic- or Katrina-related. So that’s the poetry, the fairytales, the Pomes & Words feature, along with any other stories which occur to me (including from my Juvenilia – there’s certainly a few good things lurking there – it wasn’t all adolescent doggerel). Likewise, any offbeat philosophy and wryly ironic worldly observations will go there too (actually I already did one of those – Third Planet Reportage, which I am minded to make another new sporadic feature – maybe once a month).
I have a Pomes & Words lined up already, actually, which fits into my Afterlife Fragments thing (update, again I already did it – at that link), which maybe I’ll turn into a separate feature, partly just to make things a little more comprehensible. As I may have mentioned, I recently subscribed to the wonderful Miguel S. and his microfiction prompt thing. I don’t call it microfiction of course but rather fragments, perhaps out of nostalgia because fragments are what I did when I started properly writing. I’d just immediately write whatever popped into my head, and worry about putting them into a coherent narrative later. There’s a certain trust in fate there, I think. Although if I am focussing on a particular theme or subject over a period of time then one would expect there to be a natural relevance and coherence emerging anyway. Well, it usually worked. It's quite a spiritual thing, I’d say, in terms of the holistic, interconnectedness of everything.
Anyhow, I think I shall post that Pomes & Words later this afternoon, and post this update tomorrow (it’s Saturday today). The next thing on my list is to write something for the latest Lunar Awards Prompt Quest, which is due for a Gathering on Monday. I am minded to set myself the challenge of writing something in twenty-four hours, which is, well, Sunday. Or today, by the time you are reading this. Of course I shall delay posting this until then, so as not to bombard you with two posts on the same day, else you’ll get annoyed with me again, and we can’t have that.
Update [16/12/24]: as you may have gathered, I didn’t publish this update when I intended – this was because the Lunar Awards Gathering was actually on the Sunday, not the Monday, so in the end I only gave myself six hours to write the story rather than twenty-four. Well, I succeeded in my challenge, and you can read the story, Johnny Gone to Charon, at that link. It’s one of my humorous postmodern movie-story ones, and it is very enjoyable, if I say so myself.
Following this, I shall publish that next free story from Immigration Control, possibly next Friday I think (maybe I’ll look up this Sci-Friday thing I’ve heard about), along with an intro post (don’t worry – not on the same day!). So that’ll be next weekend’s lineup. [By now you know I already published XF; see above for link].
Then, in line with this eclecticism theme, I have some Classified-K stuff going on in my head. I have, however, recently decided to take a more offbeat, accessible and humorous approach, partly in the hope of that accessibility, and mindful of the inherent darkness of the subject matter, which people simply don’t want to hear, as there is enough horrorshow in the world as it is. So I am not going to be penning any personal attacks or exposures of particular people (unless, perhaps, they are the most obnoxious, vindictive right-wing types), partly out of a kind of self-preservation instinct (the risk of blowback, that is), but partly because it can be very easy to fall into the paranoid trap of assuming everyone of online influence must be some kind of agent or controlled opposition asset, when the more prosaic truth might be that they’re just an arsehole. There are, after all, a lot of them about.
So just because someone is pushing the desired subversive narrative, doesn’t make them a cognitive infiltration agent. Part of the purpose of all this subversion, after all, is to provoke these attitudes and opinions in other people, along with corralling and containing them into little resonance chamber honeypots. A lot of the nasty right-wing shit they come out with also serves as a sort of repulsion mechanism, a natural limiter as it were, limiting the number of so-called ‘conspiracists’ and deterring ‘normal but sceptical’ types from adopting dissident views. If those dissident views, after all, are associated with nasty, patriarchal, pseudo-Christian right-wing bigots then for any compassionate, spiritually-minded person (especially the alphas and the betas of this world), it becomes a poisonous place to be avoided. I’ll have to write something general about this, I think, without naming any names. Mind you, the Hopkins dramaturgy has progressed to Act II now, with the forces of antagonism mounting up against our hero of the resistance, so that perhaps demands a humorous theatrical review. That would have to be a paid-only one, though.
I think it would be better just to provide people with the tools to navigate all this wilderness of mirrors, to recognise controlled opposition when they see it and thereby distinguish between opinions and hypotheses which are worthy of consideration, and those which are not. Once you identify a subversive, after all, you can then look at what ideas they are pushing, avoid them (thus crossing them off your list of hypotheses, and narrow it down, Holmesian style), and understand what the intention of the cognitive infiltration is all about with regards to how they want dissidents to think, and what political views they should have (they’re definitely on the road to full-on fascism with the mask off, you may have noticed). Likewise, you can discern what the assets are studiously avoiding discussing, and realise that’s the stuff you should be thinking about. T’was ever thus, perhaps. Because the same insights apply to the so-called mainstream media, after all.
Still, I intend to go all Hamlet, Act III, scene 1, and get myself to a nunnery. Everything is so much safer there, in the protective arms of the Goddess.
So, I’m thinking of some offbeat articles about the arts of espionage and maybe a little history of it on the side. One of my all-time favourite spies, for example, is the notorious Kim Philby, and I have a very fascinating speculative and historical article about him which has been brewing in my head for the last week or so. So maybe I’ll start there. I seriously doubt any spooks reading this will have any objections to something like that. I’d imagine they’ll be a little relieved, as it happens. Not that they have anything to fear from little old me. If they thought they had something to fear they have more than enough ammunition to use against me. I am mindful of this, of course (and I do take note of clever shots across the bows, by the way, especially when encrypted in the most basic substitution code; maintaining an open communication channel does, indeed, serve to avoid regrettable decisions). Besides, I’m just a playful, mischievous fantasist, so go back to sleep.
So I shall endeavour to entertain them as much as you, darling readers. Believe it or not, they do read what I write, you know. And I enjoy that thought.
Yes, inform, educate, and entertain. Doing what the BBC is supposed to do, but doesn’t.
Anyhow, I think that’s it for my update. Which has turned into an end-of-year thing perhaps. If you want some stats, I have published 127 posts and I have 86 subscribers (update correction – 85 subscribers). I don’t know how many words that all amounts to (there should be a stat for that), but I reckon it’s probably somewhere in the 150-200k range. That’s fairly good going. Next year, however, having perhaps finally gotten my head around this Substack thing, I shall endeavour to be more systematic and less wildly oscillating. I don’t actually mind a jot if I don’t make 100 subscribers by the end of the year (or the one year anniversary beginning of January). Numbers are not important – for me, it’s the quality and the appreciation. It’s making people happy, from my part, and people liking what I do and supporting me, from their part. And I am very grateful to all my subscribers for that.
So, with all that in mind, I am finally going to sign off on this update post and wish everyone a very happy midwinter and a better new year. Of course it’s always the case that the years get progressively worse (because, quite simply, there are monsters running the show), but good wishes never did anyone any harm.
Midwinter festivals happen throughout our galactic sector, by the way. All it takes is for a planet to have an obliquity, and therefore seasons. If you have seasons, you have equinoxes and solstices, which would be noticed and celebrated, and also personified with stories and mythologies and everything else that goes with birthing and thriving a culture. All those other lifeforms out there, as it happens, aren’t much different from you after all.
I have a post about that one, actually. Let us safely deposit it in the coming soon box. Gift-wrapped, naturally.
Happy Saturnalia, and see you later. Be excellent to each other. And of course you are allowed to party on at this time of year. Humans have been doing that for several hundred thousand orbits, so keep up the good work.
Ciao!