The BLAND Corporation

Having looked a bit over the inspirations (I'll return on them a bit later when discussing characters), I'll now log the basic setting of Rendezvous with NECA. This, of course, is not how things will show up in the story. Specifically, I'll not use a chronologic order for the back story. That will hinted at, later; the start itself is when the action is about to start. Sometime in the mid 2010s, maybe even tomorrow, a telescope photographs a previously unknown object in the distant reaches of the solar system. Somewhere beyond Saturn. More measurements help astronomers figure out its orbit. It is almost parabolic, with eccentricity slightly above 1. Meaning, it will get close to the Sun, then move away forever, like certain non-periodic comets. Also, and very peculiar, its orbital plane matches Earth's plane. There's no reason why a random extrasolar object would do that however. Unlike non-periodic comets, it is quite large. And wheel-with-long-hub shaped. Ther...

Over at Critique Circle, there's a thread about style analysis , specifically about a website that claims to tell you who you write most like . So why not, for the lulz, I tried a few chapters of my fanfic to see what author I most resemble. There's some variation between the chapters, of course, but the name that popped up most often is Arthur C. Clarke . You may recall I said I'm not a big fan of Clarke, stylistically, in one yesterday's posts . Incidentally, I fed that post to the website too, lo and behold, it seems written in the style of Arthur C. Clarke. How ironic. A pity the site doesn't provide more info. Like, what are the criteria for analysis, where the similarities are, some kind of merit figures, a list of other similar styles ... Still, it's a fun way to spend a couple seconds. I do wish I knew where I resembled Clarke though.

Ok, so part one of this "making of" series is about how this story idea appeared. Now let's look a bit at the source materials. "Rendezvous with Rama" is one of Clarke's most famous works. The setup is simple: some mysterious object (thereafter referred to as Rama) passes through the solar system. Humans notice it and its shape- "a perfect cylinder"- and decide that it's obviously artificial and should be investigated. Which they do: a ship meets with the object, crew gets inside, explorations ensues.

So ok, I'm a Prometheus fan. It's a guilty pleasure and beyond that I make no apologies. But I do sometimes find inspiration in negative opinions of the film. By far the most inspiring was a poster going by the netname "Jules" over at RPGMP3 forum. In this thread he (I assume he) opines that if Ridley Scott wanted an original SF series about heady questions, he should have just adapted some story from Arthur C. Clarke . (He suggested Rendezvous with Rama) Seeing that post made wheels turn in my brain. What if, I thought, I'd use those NECA action figures for Prometheus, Robot Chicken style, to do a stop motion adaptation of Clarke's Rama? Of course I'd have to squeeze the cast of the novel into something that fits on the NECA lineup, maybe make some changes to the script, but all in all it would be an interesting project. And, let's be real, totally impossible. I do not have the time, resources, nor skill to pull something like that off. Not by a l...

One advice given writers is to try and get their manuscript as clean as they can before passing it to someone else. A little care and self editing goes a long way to make a favorable first impression. Another advice given writers is to not try and mix the "editor" and "creator" inside them. Completely different modes of thought, and they don't work together well if used all at once. So when you write, just write, they say. Then, take a break- sometimes even months long- and return with fresh eyes and in editor mode. There's certainly something to be said about returning to something with fresh eyes. Returning to this blog, reading some of the previous posts, makes me do a facepalm. I committed at least one major howler in that post about the Mind over Money review which I've now marked. Not deleted- it deserves to stay there forever burned in internet memory. Gaaah. What a brainfart. And anyway, some of these posts are horribly long. Embarrassingl...

Soon after I posted my previous post (wow, that was almost five months ago?) I went on an internship at Willow Garage, to do research for my PhD thesis on motion planning. No, I'm not going to make PR2s take over the world yet. So far, one of the things I had them do was solve a very simple puzzle, in simulation (and made a couple videos about it: this one , this one , and finally this one ). For the other, well, check out the Willow Garage blog, you're bound to find my post there eventually. The internship was massively useful. I learned a lot by being in an actual robotics research collective; I wish I had gone on such a trip sooner. And also, Silicon Valley is an awesome place to be, at least if you can afford it. A geek nexus, with robotic competitions, museum parties, "crash and compile" events (drinking games + coding; what's not to like?). And then there's the Friday meeting of the Brewers club, made from employees of Willow Garage. There's thre...