It's not about the coming war

My wife sent me a description of a book she thought I would like, a novel that contained elements of noir and cyberpunk, a frappe of William Gibson and Raymond Chandler (not all that unlikely of a combination considering "Neuromancer" and "Idoru" are kinds of mysteries, and they are a bit borrowed from Chandler's chassis). Scrolling through the description, my heart just sank.

In the far future universe of Richard K. Morgan's debut novel Altered Carbon, human consciousness has been digitized. Every human being is implanted at birth with a cortical stack, which records every second, every thought, every experience. If you have the money (or purchase the right insurance policy), you can be brought back to life after you die by the simple expedient of implanting your stack into a new body, a process known as sleeving. The penal system no longer stores live criminals, but only their digital selves. Travelers beam their minds across space via needlecast, and wake up in new sleeves. Wars are fought by troops whose minds are downloaded into bodies on-site -- troops like the Envoy Corps, the enforcement arm of the despotic UN Protectorate, which rules Earth and its colony worlds with an iron fist.


I've been here before. In the novel that I'm just starting, I've already run into devices or ideas that have been used before by bigger, better authors. A few weeks, I was in a panic over people who had a limited ability to see the future, only to find not only did William Gibson cover it, but so did P.K. Dick in a short story that recently was a Big Summer Movie Starring Tom Cruise.

But, in time, I got over my panic fest, thanks to my wife and friends of me. "Just write it anyway," they said. "We're sure you'll do a better job."

And off I go, like a good, ambitious squirrel, hopping around trees and cobbling together sentences and characters, until I read the description of "Altered Carbon." In that novel, the widget is implanted during birth. In my universe, one of the minor side stories involves the rich finding a way to zap into bodies to commit all sorts of yummy crimes with no trace of one's DNA or fingerprints. It's called "Corpsewalking," and, in keeping with the Faustian theme of the novel, you don't ask where the bodies came from. The gimmick ends up as a sort of escape pod near the novel's end.

It's not exactly the same, but it's a primitive kin in spirit. The whole idea of consciousness transference is nothing new, from "Frankenstein" to "Being John Malkovich" to "Ghost in the Shell." The first time I seriously noticed it was during an episode of "The Prisoner," although, looking back on it, it's a theme you can see just about an cyberpunk fiction or any horror novel involving demons and possession.

It's not new, but today I got very close shot across the bow. I get very upset and I panic visibly when I see something that looks like one of my ideas, thinking that I'll just be a copycat, that I'm useless and can't think of anything original, and that an army of invisible critics will deride me and bury me in insults. When you sit for a long time and try to carve a world out of your thoughts, the last things you want are someone planting a flag before you get there and a welcoming committee sharpening some long knives. The worst part is that the movie rights for the novel have already been sold. People who don’t read books will flock to the movies and remember the gimmick when my novel comes out.

So, back I go into the long, primordial darkness of creation, trying to make something more creative and interesting, trying to ignore the canon of really imaginative stuff you there. I need to explore what I have and not just torque it to be slightly better than what came before. And meanwhile, I try to do my best to not hurt myself with discouraging thoughts that hunt me like feral beasts.

It's days like this I wish I was more ignorant, or a faster typist.

And for The Vinman

Actually, I was born after TV went color, and just on the cusp of cable. I count myself in the Beavis and Butt-Head timeline of things when the duo said one episode:

Beavis: Hey, Butt-Head. Did you ever wonder what life was like before TV?
Butt-Head: Beavis, you idiot, there's always been TV. There's just more channels now.

Or words to that effect.

And as for Dan Rather shooting Saddam Hussein, sure...that'd be ratings gold, but what do you do for an encore? I mean, it's not like anyone is ever going to have a sit-down with ol' Dan ever again after he capped Saddam.


Today's Word: Count

From One Word

Numbers. Zero. Obsessive-compulsive. Finding order in a pile of objects and giving objects some sort of numerical value, even if it’s just a thing. It doesn't know it's the 13th in line or the fifth book on the table. It just is. Assigning names and numbers is all arbitrary, but not for the control freak doing it.