Ring Worlds, Dyson Spheres, Time Off and Marina Living

As followers of my blog will be aware, I'm currently writing two books simultaneously.  How's this going?  I'll get onto that in a bit.  Around two weeks ago I switched from writing "The Product of My Dreams" (a virtual reality novel) to "Time Off, A Proctor Novel".  I was feeling a little wrung out from writing The Product of My Dreams - it's a difficult book to write - so I decided to have a few days off from writing and this turned into ten days.  Frankly, life's a little tough at the moment and I sometimes allow myself to drift into depression, so perhaps that had some bearing.

Anyway, personal issues aside, on Tuesday of this week, I read through what I had written so far for 'Time Off', did some editing and yesterday, I finally got back to doing some writing - more on that in a bit.

Ringworlds and Dyson Spheres.

OK - this has nothing to do with 'Time Off' but instead refers to 'The Product Of My Dreams' which is set across millennia - actually, that's not entirely true, but you'll have to read the book to understand - it would be too great a spoiler to explain.  What is time anyway?  Like 'space' and 'distance' it is a human construct.  Current thinking has 'spacetime', an inextricable combination of space and time as the bedrock of our existence.  To split this into space and time is a misunderstanding of the nature of the universe.  Anyway - forget about that, it's not actually relevant - The Product of My Dreams might appear to mess with the underlying principles of physics, but it actually doesn't.  Remember, this is a Virtual Reality novel and as such, things are often not quite as they seem.

Right - I seem to already be well and truly off on a tangent, but just bear with me - we'll get to Ringworlds and Dyson spheres soon.  The Product of My Dreams is full of twists and complex ideas, right from the first chapter (which, by the way, is called 'Grab the spade and run').  Also, there's plenty of action.  When I say that the ideas are complex, it's not important to understand all of them - at back of it all is a story which delivers (as I say) plenty of action and comes together in a way that is not hard to understand, though it may be surprising.  I'm really enjoying writing it, but it is difficult.  It's one thing creating a universe and a time-frame and technology set, it's quite something else developing half a dozen of them, all at differing technology levels and then keeping all of that in your head.  Thank god for copious notes!  Though of course, that slows things down... ho-hum, labour of love and all that.  Oddly, this brings me on to (yeah, right, finally, I hear you groan) Ringworlds and Dyson spheres.

We're not that far off, ya know!  In all truth, we could start building a Dyson sphere around the sun within a few years.  All you need to do is mine a few asteroids, make a few solar panels and you're off.  The more solar panels you make, the more spaceships you can build and the more mining you can do.  Might take a while - especially at the start when you maybe only have a few space ships, but the process can feed itself and be largely automated, so as you collect more and more material, build more and more solar panels, gather more and more energy, the faster it progresses.

So what is a Dyson sphere?  No, I mean a lot of people will understand the concept of building a sphere around the sun to gather all of it's energy.  And I mean 'all', you silly scientists who think that a Dyson sphere would glow in the IR.  You are too closed minded and imagining a future where our technology hasn't really advanced.  How very nihilistic of you. (side note: not nihilistic in it's true sense, but if I said Duellistic would you know what I meant? Google Duell - and he didn't really mean it - it was something that pre-dated him "Everything that can be invented has been invented" is the quote, anyway - just some late 19th century tish.  Not really along the lines of 'all life is meaningless', anyway, so perhaps nihilistic isn't really appropriate, that's the point.) Tangent city today, huh?

So back to the question of what is a Dyson sphere.  A sphere around a star that gathers all of it's energy.  If we want to live on the inside surface of it, then the radius will have to be ~92,000,000 miles, giving it an internal surface area of 10¹⁷ square miles - to put that in context, the earth has a landmass area of ~10⁸ square miles or put another way, a Dyson sphere of the same radius that the earth is from the sun will have a billion times it's surface area.  As we're squidging seven billion people into one earth, that would suggest that we could squidge 7,000,000,000,000,000,000 (seven billion billion - a billion times as many people as we have now) people into a Dyson sphere and that would be without even building that many skyscrapers - we don't use a huge amount of the earth's surface area anyway.  Point is - it's vast.  And what if the whole sphere had three internal levels? ten? fifty? So why would we bother?  At least for thousands of years, we wouldn't need it and the way I figure it, the maintenance would be something of a nightmare.  So what would we do?  The answer seems relatively obvious.  A ringworld - a ring with a radius of 92,000,000 miles.  Add to this solar collector hemispheres much closer to the sun, and energy and space wouldn't be an issue for a very long time to come, and when it is? Well, we get on with building a Dyson sphere.

OK, so what would living on a ringworld be like?  I googled some artwork.

Very pretty, but really?  If the radius is 92,000,000 miles, then it would need to be at least in the order of four thousand miles across to give it any stability at all and would you really see it curve up and away from you?  It would be millions of miles before the curvature was noticeable and the atmosphere would preclude being able to see that far.  And what about night?  The sun would always be directly overhead.  OK - a series of solar panels that move around the inner surface of the ring, gathering energy and closing it off every sixteen hours to give eight hours of night.  Sounds reasonable, right?  Well - to get more, read The Product of My Dreams.

To get an accurate picture of what a Dyson sphere might be like is even tougher.  The tech would be so far beyond us - to quote Arthur C Clark, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".  Now, being a writer of (somewhat) 'hard' sci-fi (sci-fi that stands on an understanding of science - no midichlorians here - really 'hard-science' fiction) this doesn't sit entirely well with me so I have to stretch my understanding of science as far as it will go and a bit further - very hard work.

Anyway - enough on ringworlds and Dyson spheres - they appear in abundance in The Product of My Dreams - when it's out, read it and you'll get a good idea of where I'm going with all this.  To finish this segment, a quote:

"...she turned right and began a slow and lazy walk across the University campus. Quadrants and well-kept gardens separated the grand skyscrapers. At ground level you were hardly aware of the University's buildings soaring skywards. In Trentham, on the surface of the ringworld, apart from when you passed through groves of neatly pruned fruit trees, there was little shade, the enormous buildings needling towards the sun which was always directly overhead. In the few places where you could see through the tall buildings towards the horizon, the ringworld was so vast, that long before you could notice the curvature, the land was lost in atmospheric haze. Some years earlier, Cristie had looked through a college friend's telescope at the distant gap when one of the ring's enormous collectors covered most of the sky, but had found the dull grey line centred in the image unconvincing and certainly not the celebration of human achievement that her friend considered it to represent."

Time Off

OK, so now I'm back to writing "Time Off, A Proctor Novel".  It's very different to "The Product of My Dreams".  If you've read "Night Time in Shanghai" or any of the Proctor Novellas (I'm actually beginning to regret calling them 'novellas' - The Art of Living is 136 pages of 9 point script, so it's as long as a lot of full-on novels - just that to me, a proper sci-fi novel needs to be upwards of 200 pages), you'll know what my universe of that time is like.  As humanity is still in the process of spreading out to the stars, the worlds are often relatively low-tech and the society can be somewhat dystopian.

All my Proctor books are aimed at being fast-paced action stories, generally falling into the 'thriller' genre.  Most people who read them find them hard to put down - the action and the questions raised always drag you along to the next chapter.  This was always the aim, and it's reassuring to hear from readers that I've achieved it.

So here's a quote from chapter two:

"A few scars on his face and shaved head showed that this wasn't the first party he'd been sent to break up. Proctor took in the extent of his boosts. Sure, he was strong – probably stronger than Proctor himself, but he doubted if the man's bone and muscle augments were anything like as good quality as his own. His muscles were bigger but they looked over developed. Too much steroids and time in the gym and not enough time doing the sort of things that made a man naturally strong. They'd slow his actions in any fight, and although he clearly didn't realise it, he stood no chance against someone with the skills and speed of Proctor himself.

“Look, I don't give a fuck about whatever petty fight's going on between you and this whore, I just want another drink.” Proctor said to the man. Anger flared in the man's eyes and Proctor sighed. Oh well."

As you can imagine, violence follows.

So - writing two books at once...?

Well, to be frank, I'd quite like to get back to writing "The Product of My Dreams" but before I do, I *will* bring the word count of "Time Off" up to twenty thousand.  Currently it's 12,500 - halfway through chapter three.  "The Product of My Dreams" is forty thousand.

Anyway, when I'm writing one, I'm always keen to get back to the other.  They are very different books written in very different styles, and the anticipation of getting back to the book I'm not currently writing, gives me a surge when I finally do and I think that because of that, I'm writing some good stuff.  Also the switch between the two means I don't get too carried away with ultra-violence in "Time Off" or too introspective in "The Product of My Dreams" so for now at least, I'll stick with it.

Marina Life...

Still sat in my boat in Mercia Marina.  I plan to leave on 17 June and head south, eventually to Oxford.  I plan to pick my daughter up in Rugby on the way.  It's a few weeks of slow, lazy travelling.

Building work here goes on a pace - the steel framework of the new building is about half up now.  The riveting's a bit noisy.

You can see the back end of my boat in the pic - gives you a good idea of how close I am to it.

Spring is duckling/ gosling and cygnet time.  An onslaught of nature-cuteness abounds in the marina.

This weekend, there's a small floating market in the marina.  I get to meet up with my Facebook friend, Sue and also buy some joss sticks - all cool.

Anyway - enough - this has already taken up half my day, and yeah, OK, it's writing, but I need to get on with "Time Off".  So that's it for now.

"Proctor: The Art of Living" is now 99p for kindle, so go buy it.

Andy Ellis - Mercia Marina - May 2017.

Still Writing Two Books at Once, Visitors and Springtime in the Marina.

Still Writing Two Books at Once.

I spent about three weeks on The Product of My Dreams, adding around fifteen thousand words, and a couple of days ago, I switched back to writing Time Off.  So far, I've just re-familiarised myself with Time Off, edited the first two chapters and added around a thousand words, bringing it's word count up to eleven thousand.

For those that haven't read earlier posts, The Product of My Dreams is a virtual reality novel with a complex and deeply involved three thread storyline, written from the points of view of a young girl - six at the start of that thread - a young woman and an old woman.  The three storylines tell individual tales which seem only loosely linked to the story's end.  The story also studies the nature of stacked virtualities and ultimately, the nature of the universe.  The book should be around one hundred and forty-five thousand words when completed or approximately five hundred and thirty pages.

Time Off is a Proctor novel and follows on from the three existing Proctor Novellas, The Art of Living, The Art of Killing and The Art of Dying, all of which are available from Amazon in paperback or ebook.  My Author Page on amazon features these as well as my first full novel Night Time in Shanghai, published by Austin Macauley Publishers.  Time Off follows on in the action-packed fast-paced style of the Proctor Novellas, but as a novel, the book is more immersive and the storyline more complex.  I expect it to come in at around seventy-five thousand words or two hundred and sixty pages.

The Product of My Dreams

As I've said previously in my blog, The Product of My Dreams is very challenging to write.  As a middle-aged man, it's quite difficult for me to write from the point of view of a young woman in her twenties and even more difficult to write from the mind of a six year old girl.  The third thread is quite different to the other two and says more about the nature of stacked virtualities than it does about the old woman who is the protagonist of that thread.  I'm not sure if it would be easy to write from the point of view of an old woman, but the nature of the complexity of 'virtual space' makes this thread quite difficult to write anyway and when I do, I draw deep into my own mind, contemplating the nature of the virtual worlds and the universe in which they reside, and it can take me hours to get out again and manage normal human interactions once more.  So in three weeks or so, I've added around fifteen thousand words which isn't a massive amount, but I'm very happy with the way the story is developing.

A few quotes.

This section is from chapter six "Dreaming".  This is the second chapter of the six year old Claudia story thread.

"Claudia ran across the road, weaving between the holes in the smartmac surface and ducked through the open door of the bar. It was quite dark inside. One of the windows was half covered by a big shutter and the other was in the shadow of the building. Claudia stood and blinked a few times until her eyes adjusted. Behind the bar, someone had made a mess of the normally neatly stacked bottles. The floor was strewn with metal flasks, and lots of the glass bottles that normally stood there, containing a variety of brightly coloured liquids were gone. She knew the rebel mercs had been in here, so maybe they'd stolen them. Well, they were rebels and Claudia imagined that was the sort of thing rebels would do – take things that didn't belong to them."

A fairly short quote and certainly not the best I could have picked, but I don't want to post spoilers...

This next quote is from chapter seven "Heading home".  It's from the second chapter of the young woman - Cristie - thread.  I posted a few quotes from this chapter on Twitter, but this one concerns the nature of the 'real' and the stacked nature of virtualities.

"Most people simply accepted the life they lived as the 'real' but Cristie's own gut feeling and later, her training at the University, led her thoughts in another direction. Statistically, it was more likely that her own life was simply another twisting, miniscule thread in another equation that, once picked apart, would portray another elaborate tapestry that itself was a virtuality existing within a virtuality. It really shouldn't be hard to accept this, but most people simply didn't, or perhaps just didn't want to. To a majority, the whole concept seemed ridiculous – of course they existed in the real - “Just look around you, for god's sake!”. But then again, the virtualities where they took their holidays felt equally real, there was just something in the mind-set of the average human that didn't want to accept their existence as anything that might be perceived as anything less than 'real'."

I'm not going to add a quote from chapter eight "Substrate" as just about anything from the old woman thread would be a spoiler.

Time Off

I'm quite used to slotting myself into the head of Proctor, having first done so in Night Time in Shanghai and then revisiting for the three Proctor Novellas.  Time Off sees a somewhat world-weary Proctor attempting to find some peace and quiet in a small resort town on the holiday world of Finn.  But as usual, trouble comes knocking and Proctor's never one for not answering the door.  What seems like a relatively normal but deeply dangerous situation develops when Proctor runs into some old 'friends'.

Here's a quote from chapter two "Time for a few drinks"

"“For god's sake!” the woman shouted again. Proctor lifted his head a little and looked into a small mirror advertising one of the local brews called 'Saint Michael'. He moved his head to one side until he could see the woman. She wore a tiny pair of tight, denim-blue shorts with a matching bikini top. She had light but well tanned skin and a huge volume of curly bleached-blonde hair that cascaded all around, just past her shoulders. And the heavy make-up that seemed popular amongst those that shared her profession. Proctor had no time for whores and finding one that had got herself into trouble wasn't a rare thing. He returned his attention to his drink and emptied and refilled his glass once more. He shook the flask. Maybe half a shot left."

Writing two books?

So how's it going?  A good question.  Would I have written more if I'd just stuck to one?  I honestly don't know.  I find the first third of a book hardest to write - getting the story off the ground, inventing and describing new worlds, new characters and new situations.  At times, I can slow right down, barely managing a couple of thousand words in a week, and to be able to switch from one to the other at this stage, does seem to keep me focused.  As to the impact of changing from what is a fast paced, actiony storyline to a more complex thoughtful one, does seem to be helpful.  As I said in a previous blog post, going back to The Product of My Dreams and editing the first five chapters again, added a focus and brightness to them which had perhaps been a little lacking, and I was far happier with them after.  I held that focus for the following three chapters and when I've added a good chunk to Time Off, I'll go back and edit those.

I suppose this all means that I must think there's some value in writing the two books at the same time, but I do wonder if I'll feel the same way when the books start getting over one hundred thousand words combined.  When switching, I basically have to re-read everything I've written up to that point and that takes time.

Visitors and Springtime in the Marina.

Construction work continues in the marina.  The noise made by the groundworks was far less than the weeks of pile-driving that saw dozens (possibly hundreds) of fifteen foot piles sunk into the ground, sometimes doubled up.  They then added concrete footings to these and have just started on the steel framework of the building.

The steelwork's a bit noisier than the groundwork, but not as incessant as the pile driving was, so I don't find it distracts me too badly.  This shot was taken a couple of days ago and they've significantly added to it since.

There's quite a few ducklings popping up in the marina, but unfortunately, these seem to be mostly short-lived.  I've seen a mummy duck with thirteen ducklings and another with twelve, but only once each and I didn't see them again.  Apparently pike regularly take ducklings and in the marina, there's very little fishing (you can fish from the back of your boat, but not from marina property, and very few do) so there's lots of big fish around.  It always seems sensible not to wander around the jetties holding a camera (too much stuff goes 'plop' too regularly for me to want to do this) so I haven't managed to get any good shots.  This one - and you'll have to take my word for it - shows a mother duck with a dozen ducklings grouped around her swimming across the marina...

My daughter, Natasha and my very good friend David Metcalf have both been to visit me for a weekend each.  I gave up the main bed on my boat for both of them and slept on the back under the cockpit cover.  It had been lovely warm weather the week before Natasha arrived, but for the two nights she spent with me it was chilly.  We had a lovely meal in the Boardwalk Bar and restaurant in the Marina and I always treasure time I get to spend with my wonderful daughter, who I miss immensely now that she's at University.

When David came, the weather was a different story making it far more cosy on the back of the boat.  We went for meals at a local Indian Restaurant called Nadee and the most excellent Dragon in the nearby village of Willington.

So all in all, I'm having a great Spring and thoroughly looking forwards to taking my boat out for an extended trip along the canal.

As a side note, a twitter artist, @julesartvan did a quick sketch of a selfie I posted to twitter - if you feel inclined, you can bid for it on ebay - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/322503961853

Anyway - this post is getting a bit 'TL;DR' worthy, so we'll call it a day.  More soon.

Andy Ellis, Mercia Marina, May 2017.