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.
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.
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