A question! Of science!

Is it:

(a) a simple matter of thermal engineering;
(b) complex but doable; or
(c) not possible

to maintain a large glasshouse - think Crystal Palace or Kew, large on an imperial scale - at a temperature cooler than the surrounding environment, despite all that sunlight beating in? I'm thinking about high-altitude vegetation transplanted to low altitudes: needing lots of light but susceptible to warmth...

And is your answer different if I tell you that we are trying to do this with steam-level technology, and on Mars?

Story Teller

Long long ago, in a country far far away, there was a magazine called Story Teller, which published illustrated stories for kids - and came with a cassette tape on the cover, featuring actors reading the stories. It was a lovely thing, and they paid well (£125 a story, if I remember rightly - and nearly thirty years ago, this was), and I did a lot of work for them.

M'friend ephiriel just sent me a YouTube link: and yes, indeed. They're posting the stories in their audio form, with visuals of the illos.

I suppose this must be a breach of my copyright, because I'm sure I didn't sell them broadcast rights of any kind - but if they're monetising this I don't see how, and actually it's kind of nice to see young-Chaz work out there again. I had utterly forgotten this story, until now...

Published!

Also in the self-promotionalising stakes: "Water Proof", the story Shannon Page and I wrote together is now published at Buzzy Mag. By all means click through, read and enjoy...

Insidiousness in action

Aaargh. So there I was, reading a webpage to which I will not link you, about why we don't have giant insects any more (for this is relevant to my interests); and I was learning about how we used to think insects breathed, and what we've discovered more recently, and everything was doing dandy until we came to the actual question, why we no longer had giant insects as in days of yore.

In addressing that question here, our starting point, from the Bible, is that insects were created; they did not evolve.

Rawr! *tears up web page in fury*

Worldbuilding (not an essay)

As we know, Bob, I do find it pretty much impossible adequately to describe my process. It's so internal and particularised, peculiar to me. Which of course is true for everybody, we know that everybody does it differently because the internet tells us so: but those who inhabit the far end of the spectrum from me, the people with spreadsheets and filecards and coloured pens and thumbtacks and string and outlines and synopses and plans, they do at least have a physical actual process they can describe and illustrate and editorialise.

Me? Um. Mumbley-mumble. I mostly start with a first line, and take it from there. No, that's not true: I mostly start with a title. Except when I don't. Sometimes I start with an idea - Steampunk Mars! or Fantasy Taiwan! - but that just sits in the back of my head and becomes. Sometimes it sits for years, as Taiwan did before I could write the Daniel Fox books; sometimes it's only a week or two, as Mars has been. Obviously that is not time enough to do an iota of the research I need in order to build a convincing world, but... yeah. Process, internal, obscure. That's not how I do things. I don't build a world and then inhabit it with story, any more than I plot a plot and then inhabit it with characters. Everything happens simultaneously, ish. I build as I plot as I write; the story is the journey is the headlights picking out the world ahead.

Ish.

As witness. Last week, Mars! Canals! Steam! Lots of unfocused excitement, and I ordered maps of Mars and books on Mars (none of which have arrived yet) and I lined up my SETI experts and my internets and to all appearances there I was, poised to do it properly, research and construct in advance of moving in.

A few days ago I was musing on empire and the Church of England and how it operates overseas. Which led me to graveyards, obviously; and thus to gravediggers, and therefore Hamlet and Harry Gotobed the sexton. There may be more to say, I thought, than this.

And I was musing on Crystal Palace and the Great Exhibition, and the World's Fair; and of course there must be a Worlds' Fair, with SteamMars! and SteamEarth! and SteamVenus! all contributing; and oh, if you had a Crystal Palace on Mars, it would be like a giant greenhouse, but can we invert it to keep things cool, and why would we want to do that, and...?

And I was musing on Martians, and water, and surely they would be amphibious, but - oh, wait. Different stages, they can be metamorphic! - Oh wait, didn't Heinlein do that? Well, I can too, damnitall. What's the biology of metamorphism, anyway? Do they have to be insectoid? - Well, why can't they be insectoid...?

And so on - but it's only musings, nothing happens, nothing goes any further in my head until I actually start writing a story. With an opening line, and preferably a title. And then it's not so much like dominoes falling as it is like flowers precipitating from a solution, all that potential storystuff crystalising out from the murky clouds of my thinking.

As witness, I started writing the gravedigger story a couple of days ago. It opens with an inappropriately-grand funeral, which he is standing watching, leaning on his shovel; and that event from his perspective is what solidifies the political structures, and the population mix, and the apparent relationship with native Martians, and what they're called - because everyone's a Martian, y'know? - and how they work biologically (they live backwards!) and and and...

That's how it works, for me. Sort of, insofar as I am able to describe it. As it happens, the Worlds' Fair is no part of this story, but then this story is no part of the novel that I really ought to be writing; but this story helps me define the world and I can't do that without writing it, so. And the Worlds' Fair may be three novels down the line and it may never get written at all, but it too helps to define the world, just by swimming around and being nebulous; but I'm poking at the greenhouse anyway, because giant greenhouse! That keeps things cool! It's inherently cool, and greenhouse-keeper is like gravedigger, it's a job that doesn't have its due recognition, and if I find a first line or a title maybe that'll be a story too, that'll colour in some other part of the world ready for when the novel needs to go there, and and and. Like that.

And now I'm off to SETI for a talk/demo about 3D imaging and the search for life on Mars. Because, y'know. Potentiation. Story. Stuff.

A discovery. Not a surprise.

Apparently, when I say "Out of the way!" to Mac, what I mean is, "It's okay, you just stay right there, I'll walk around you."

[Context: he likes to lie on the tiles in the middle of the kitchen floor. This is sub-optimal. But I was already performing Action B when I heard myself saying Line A...]

The last post. But one.

Heh. Actually what I set out to say in that long rambly thing about worldbuilding? Was actually just this: oh this is so frustrating I really want to be working on my new cool Martian story for I have drunk of Mars water and am drunk on it but I have this whole damn novel proof to read in a great hurry and oh

Just that, really. But I got distracted by a disquisition, I disquisited, and so forgot what I had meant to say.

Also, teatime on the red planet. If the British Empire colonised Mars, I'm damn sure they would take Camillia sinensis with them, and make plantations in the hills, and ensure that the Martian day contained an equivalent of four o'clock, somewhere between tiffin and a chota peg. I wonder if being grown in an alien soil would have a significant effect on the brew? On its colour, its content, its effect...? And what would they do for milk...?