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beccaelizabethI been thinking some more on my worldbuilding choices for my SF dystopia and how they relate to plot bunnies and character arcs.
I set up a world where everything has the most Order I could think of. Humans are cloned to preset patterns, educated in the exact same way, given the same technology at a deliberately retro level, and left to live out lives meant to be as predictable as possible. Computers are either really simple calculators or really just access terminals to, well, brains. Elite brains. Shiny plug in elite brains. But the idea is to keep computer tech under human control, so they just made it be humans. Information is screened and broadcast from central, media is all careful editing and documentaries and 'reality' TV. Guards are walking cameras who watch each other as carefully as the citizens. Jobs are assigned centrally via ability tests, which are mostly known in advance, because this isn't the first time that person has existed. Ultra control.
And there are characters to represent every part of that. A medical doctor, a computer expert who works in the job center, a reporter, some guards. Each has character arcs that explore extremes of their own work.
What I'm realising is that leaves me with a story that wants to end in as many different ways as there are people. Which generates a ton of plots and complications. Which would be cool... if I was aiming at a 100 episode US TV series. The BBC wants suggestions for 3 sets of 6 episodes. Maybe more, but how many shows ever get more? But even ignoring that, it's a story that pulls in so many different directions at once. Do they want to get rid of cloning or clone different people or make sure there's lots of happy clones? Do they want to make computers all silicon and independent and possibly turning into Skynet? I started with the reporter so clearly The People Must Be Told. Told what is pretty much all about the other characters. The Guards can realise that they've been arresting a ton of innocent people, and run through all the liberty/safety arguments. Which is less SF and therefor less interesting yet much easier to write. But then you crunch it together with the screens and teh cybertech and it gets very SF indeed.
But just now when I was trying to figure out the character progression for teh computer hacker I came up with an incredibly fantasy looking plot, because once you've got The Matrix going on in people's heads you can play at all sorts. Say you've got a set maximum of resources and it's mostly being used to do the things that make the world run to ordinary rules. Say that means to be a Trinity or a Neo you need to accumulate access to more resources, and those resources can only be the brains of other users. You'd end up with two branches of how to do that - voluntary and involuntary. To get volunteers we're talking democracy, or something like worship. You'd need a crowd of people settling down to do not much thinking and at most repetetive easily modelled action. While they were doing that their chosen one could do whatever they wanted to the rules, could do miracles. Like voting Doctor, you'd get one glowy saviour out of it, only some would be strictly local saviours of small range of powers and others would be global saviours with vast resources. You can model that out of GURPS religion more easily than you can from tech rules. But then there's the involuntary ways, where you would force people to not do much and not think much and tap their resources without them agreeing to it. Maybe you'd tie them up, or put them in slave camps, or maybe just run a factory and insist on no talking. Small repetetive things, days that go by in a blur, while the one with a tap on their brainpower gets grand cosmic powers. Or possibly you'd sell drugs, leave people blissed out and totally open to brain drain. The long term effects would be from running bad code or drawing too hard on the erratic availability of the userbase. All from needing more 'computers' to run the matrix code on. But then once you've got brains-as-computers and code-as-miracles you've got programs that go all viral or zombie botnet humans out of control of the original coder. And past that there's people-as-code, ghosts in the machine, the possibility that you can hop brains or become a distributed program and live as long as your worshippers, or zombie slaves.
That's a whole series in itself, with internally consistent rules and all.
But then you add to that the part from the ultratech biotech assumptions I'm running, that brains are computers that can only be used when the owner 'sleeps', and you've got two seperate systems, one where all the rules of 'magic' apply to those who can tap a powerbase, and the other where the rules of physics are absolute and you've got to get food in your body and maintain all basic life support. And some users would live in only one or only the other - be unconnected to the computers, or be lined up like 'batteries' in the Matrix and running all the time - but some users would live in both, treat one like the spirit world.
And hello to looping back to classic cyberpunk stuff via high fantasy.
And the outside pure physics world would be the SF dystopia that absolutely depends on the networked human brains, the Sleeper world, the potentially-Matrix fantasy setup.
And I've complicated the hell out of the initial setup.
... I started out with 8 people on a ship. Do I want the setup getting this complicated?
But it's so much fun!
So the dystopian government wouldn't want people going all Matrix in their sleep, they'd want them running the computers for their government like good little zombies, so they'd want to keep any creative stuff right out of it. But the dystopian government isn't the only one around. There'd be places that decide that the Matrix is a much more fun place to live and they'd wire themselves up in those battery arrays and go have fun on minimal physical resources. So introduce those dreamworlds to the dystopia and watch the fun start.
Pretty much like introducing F&SF to a Media world that's been fed a steady diet of Fact.
So that sounds like fun.
... just incredibly complicated fun.
I could leave out some strands. I could leave out clones or make it easier to go cyber. That would change the whole shape of the worlds. And simplify so I only tell one or two character's story.
And I haven't even mentioned the FTL assumptions and how they shape the world and need breaking and remaking.
So I think I've thrown interesting stuff together until I basically need to tell every SF story ever all at once OMG and... that probably wasn't most smartest...
I want to tell stories about how the important part of why cybermen are bad isn't the metal it's the reprogramming, and how actually leaving out the metal and keeping the mind control is considerable worse, because then you haven't got the strength and stuff and have even less choices. Stories that strike a balance with technology instead of being all scared of it. There's lots of different kinds of technology to tell that about. I think I need to pick one... except that's not how the world works...
I set up a world where everything has the most Order I could think of. Humans are cloned to preset patterns, educated in the exact same way, given the same technology at a deliberately retro level, and left to live out lives meant to be as predictable as possible. Computers are either really simple calculators or really just access terminals to, well, brains. Elite brains. Shiny plug in elite brains. But the idea is to keep computer tech under human control, so they just made it be humans. Information is screened and broadcast from central, media is all careful editing and documentaries and 'reality' TV. Guards are walking cameras who watch each other as carefully as the citizens. Jobs are assigned centrally via ability tests, which are mostly known in advance, because this isn't the first time that person has existed. Ultra control.
And there are characters to represent every part of that. A medical doctor, a computer expert who works in the job center, a reporter, some guards. Each has character arcs that explore extremes of their own work.
What I'm realising is that leaves me with a story that wants to end in as many different ways as there are people. Which generates a ton of plots and complications. Which would be cool... if I was aiming at a 100 episode US TV series. The BBC wants suggestions for 3 sets of 6 episodes. Maybe more, but how many shows ever get more? But even ignoring that, it's a story that pulls in so many different directions at once. Do they want to get rid of cloning or clone different people or make sure there's lots of happy clones? Do they want to make computers all silicon and independent and possibly turning into Skynet? I started with the reporter so clearly The People Must Be Told. Told what is pretty much all about the other characters. The Guards can realise that they've been arresting a ton of innocent people, and run through all the liberty/safety arguments. Which is less SF and therefor less interesting yet much easier to write. But then you crunch it together with the screens and teh cybertech and it gets very SF indeed.
But just now when I was trying to figure out the character progression for teh computer hacker I came up with an incredibly fantasy looking plot, because once you've got The Matrix going on in people's heads you can play at all sorts. Say you've got a set maximum of resources and it's mostly being used to do the things that make the world run to ordinary rules. Say that means to be a Trinity or a Neo you need to accumulate access to more resources, and those resources can only be the brains of other users. You'd end up with two branches of how to do that - voluntary and involuntary. To get volunteers we're talking democracy, or something like worship. You'd need a crowd of people settling down to do not much thinking and at most repetetive easily modelled action. While they were doing that their chosen one could do whatever they wanted to the rules, could do miracles. Like voting Doctor, you'd get one glowy saviour out of it, only some would be strictly local saviours of small range of powers and others would be global saviours with vast resources. You can model that out of GURPS religion more easily than you can from tech rules. But then there's the involuntary ways, where you would force people to not do much and not think much and tap their resources without them agreeing to it. Maybe you'd tie them up, or put them in slave camps, or maybe just run a factory and insist on no talking. Small repetetive things, days that go by in a blur, while the one with a tap on their brainpower gets grand cosmic powers. Or possibly you'd sell drugs, leave people blissed out and totally open to brain drain. The long term effects would be from running bad code or drawing too hard on the erratic availability of the userbase. All from needing more 'computers' to run the matrix code on. But then once you've got brains-as-computers and code-as-miracles you've got programs that go all viral or zombie botnet humans out of control of the original coder. And past that there's people-as-code, ghosts in the machine, the possibility that you can hop brains or become a distributed program and live as long as your worshippers, or zombie slaves.
That's a whole series in itself, with internally consistent rules and all.
But then you add to that the part from the ultratech biotech assumptions I'm running, that brains are computers that can only be used when the owner 'sleeps', and you've got two seperate systems, one where all the rules of 'magic' apply to those who can tap a powerbase, and the other where the rules of physics are absolute and you've got to get food in your body and maintain all basic life support. And some users would live in only one or only the other - be unconnected to the computers, or be lined up like 'batteries' in the Matrix and running all the time - but some users would live in both, treat one like the spirit world.
And hello to looping back to classic cyberpunk stuff via high fantasy.
And the outside pure physics world would be the SF dystopia that absolutely depends on the networked human brains, the Sleeper world, the potentially-Matrix fantasy setup.
And I've complicated the hell out of the initial setup.
... I started out with 8 people on a ship. Do I want the setup getting this complicated?
But it's so much fun!
So the dystopian government wouldn't want people going all Matrix in their sleep, they'd want them running the computers for their government like good little zombies, so they'd want to keep any creative stuff right out of it. But the dystopian government isn't the only one around. There'd be places that decide that the Matrix is a much more fun place to live and they'd wire themselves up in those battery arrays and go have fun on minimal physical resources. So introduce those dreamworlds to the dystopia and watch the fun start.
Pretty much like introducing F&SF to a Media world that's been fed a steady diet of Fact.
So that sounds like fun.
... just incredibly complicated fun.
I could leave out some strands. I could leave out clones or make it easier to go cyber. That would change the whole shape of the worlds. And simplify so I only tell one or two character's story.
And I haven't even mentioned the FTL assumptions and how they shape the world and need breaking and remaking.
So I think I've thrown interesting stuff together until I basically need to tell every SF story ever all at once OMG and... that probably wasn't most smartest...
I want to tell stories about how the important part of why cybermen are bad isn't the metal it's the reprogramming, and how actually leaving out the metal and keeping the mind control is considerable worse, because then you haven't got the strength and stuff and have even less choices. Stories that strike a balance with technology instead of being all scared of it. There's lots of different kinds of technology to tell that about. I think I need to pick one... except that's not how the world works...
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no subject
Date: 2009-09-06 11:25 pm (UTC)Kind of like when writing a musical, you end up writing the "book" - the plot and the dioluge - first, then go about putting in songs and choregraphy, and everything that makes a musical not a play.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-08 04:47 am (UTC)Also, writing a novel about how the big screen can change minds and save worlds doesn't seem to me to work so very much. Novels tend to be about how writing saves the world.
Did you read my script at all? Or did the world get busy?
no subject
Date: 2009-09-09 04:49 am (UTC)And when I meant book, I meant the "getting ready to write a musical" kind, not a novel. Maybe I should have said an outline?
no subject
Date: 2009-09-09 04:57 am (UTC)Ah! Translation achieved. Of course I write outline, or no knowing where going.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-07 06:21 am (UTC)Most people do it by picking one and hinting at the rest but not explaining absolutely everything about them.
Along those lines: possible food for thought. (http://yhlee.dreamwidth.org/70908.html)
no subject
Date: 2009-09-08 04:50 am (UTC)That's a useful link. But applying it remains hard.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-13 08:19 am (UTC)And is the Matrix really outside the Cosmos, when it resembles the Sleeper setup so much?