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Of Brass Bras...
Jan. 6th, 2014 09:34 amThere is an old line about cold weather, witches and brass bras. Today is the kind of day that the line was conceived in. As I am at work, apparently I am one of the stupid people - the parking lot is half-empty. Apropos of the cold, an interesting article about what hypothermia feels like. The author nearly froze to death on a bike ride in the English countryside.
Culture Update, or To-be-written
It being too snowy, cold and generally lousy weather to go outside (I now understand why bears hibernate in winter) I decided to stay in. I read and watched pay-per-view TV. On the reading front, I read Jack McDevitt's novel Eternity Road. Set about 1500 years after a plague depopulates Earth, it was an interesting novel.
Back in the 1940s and 1950s, there was a sub-sub-genre of science fiction that I called "recontact" stories. The premise was that the canals of Mars had been built by humans, who had either colonized during a previous, now-lost advanced civilization or been taken to Mars by unknown aliens. Now, us stay-at-home humans found the "Martians."
The lack of canals put paid to that genre, although William Keith AKA Ian Douglas has made a nice living off of a variation on that theme. Having said that, I've always wanted to write a reconnection story, in which a human-colonized Mars gets cut off from Earth.
I've had several problems with that idea, besides the too-many-ideas-not-enough-hours problem. Simply put, I need a Mars that's just enough settled to be self-sufficient, yet not so settled as to be able to build / operate space ships, and I need a reason for them to not come back for a long time. It's a tough case of world-building. Eternity Road offered some ideas.
Culture Update, or To-be-written
It being too snowy, cold and generally lousy weather to go outside (I now understand why bears hibernate in winter) I decided to stay in. I read and watched pay-per-view TV. On the reading front, I read Jack McDevitt's novel Eternity Road. Set about 1500 years after a plague depopulates Earth, it was an interesting novel.
Back in the 1940s and 1950s, there was a sub-sub-genre of science fiction that I called "recontact" stories. The premise was that the canals of Mars had been built by humans, who had either colonized during a previous, now-lost advanced civilization or been taken to Mars by unknown aliens. Now, us stay-at-home humans found the "Martians."
The lack of canals put paid to that genre, although William Keith AKA Ian Douglas has made a nice living off of a variation on that theme. Having said that, I've always wanted to write a reconnection story, in which a human-colonized Mars gets cut off from Earth.
I've had several problems with that idea, besides the too-many-ideas-not-enough-hours problem. Simply put, I need a Mars that's just enough settled to be self-sufficient, yet not so settled as to be able to build / operate space ships, and I need a reason for them to not come back for a long time. It's a tough case of world-building. Eternity Road offered some ideas.
