C L Walker
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Science Fiction Serials - Pros and Cons

20/10/2014

 
As a few people have noticed, I’ve finally put up Dead Men Episode 7. I have no excuse for the delay beyond what I mentioned in the last post: The world needed me, and I rose to the occasion. I’m a superhero (In that I wear my underwear on the outside and lurk in the shadows).

There’s one more episode to go before this season is done. I’ll try to get it out there without a delay.

I wrote Dead Men for two reasons. First, I wanted to publish something more regularly and this seemed to be a way to do that. Second, I really wanted to try out the serial format. It’s something that hasn’t been practical for a long time and the form of it is intriguing. If the new publishing landscape allows me to experiment, why wouldn’t I?

Well, actually, because I don’t think people want it, not the way I’ve done it anyway. As much as I structure Dead Men like a TV show, people don’t want to consume their books that way. Or the people who were drawn to Dead Men don’t anyway. People have fallen away with each new release, and honestly, there weren’t that many to begin with.

I’ve enjoyed it – quite a bit – but it doesn’t make sense for me to continue doing it this way.

For one, I make less money. The percent Amazon pays out for a 99c sale (the price of each episode) is half that of anything $2.99 and over. I didn’t care, and still don’t, but it has to go in the cons section. A delightful person (/sarcasm) suggested that doing a serial is a cash grab, as though I’m breaking up a novel to sell it for more money. Even if this had been a deconstructed novel (it isn’t) I would have made less money than just releasing it all at once. If I’m trying to rip people off, I’m doing it wrong.

If I end an episode without finalising the plot (something I only really did once before the finale), people buy the next episode. It’s practically guaranteed. I don’t think they like the manipulation though, as they don’t necessarily move on to the following release. If I did a cliff-hanger at the end of every episode I’d have more sales (while still making less money), but I’d piss people off. I’d piss myself off.

So this doesn’t work for anyone, I guess. Though I enjoy the serial format I can’t make it work.

What to do…

I’ll release the next episode of Dead Men, then put together a Season 1 book a few weeks after, then take a break. But I’m far too stubborn (and stupid) to let go of something I like. There will be a Season 2 at some point next year, but I’ll release them all in one go. It will follow the same format, with standalone episodes and a season arc, but all in one book.

This lets me do cliff-hangers if I want to. It lets me take a longer break between episodes if I want to (because I’m the only one following along), something that makes me feel icky when I do it now. It lets me keep playing with the format without the risk of pissing people off because they don’t want to wait to see what will happen next. It’ll all be there, just a page turn away.

Dead Men Episode 7 is now live on Amazon. If I were you I’d wait for the next episode before buying it. Better yet, I’d wait for the Season 1 set to come out.

To those buying these final episodes, despite my warning in the description on Amazon that you probably shouldn’t: You rock, and I'm glad you're enjoying it. Drop me a line and I’ll send you a free copy of the Season 1 book when I’m done compiling it.

I have to write. You should go read a book.

Holding Pattern; Assembling Worlds.

8/10/2014

 
Hi. I’m the guy who normally chats shit in this space. You may have noticed that no shit chatting has been taking place lately. This is because I’m busy.

I’m on a deathmarch to get edits done on book 3 of Isaac’s Story: London (The City), as well as finishing the last two episodes of Dead Men. Both of these are almost done, but then I have to jump into the edits on book 4 of Isaac’s Story: London (The Line), and put together Season 1 of Dead Men.

Also the real world demands my attention, because the real world is needy and entitled. It thinks it can get all up in my face and tell me what to do, waving the need to pay rent and eat in the air like a mace. And it is right, dammit.

Anyway, I’ll try and write something interesting when I’m done writing interesting things in books.

I’ll be back. Go read a book.

P.S.
I've managed to carve out a few hours to play Dungeon Keeper 2, again. How have they not made more of these? (I don't count that bullshit mobile game, and neither does anyone else)
It sucks time, so I'm keeping it to a minimum. I'll sit down to slap some imps around and when I look up it's the next day, so I play with a timer. Same thing with Sim City (Not the recent one, which is also bullshit (I might be getting old)).

Anyway: Dungeon Keeper 2, yay. Good Old Games has a new release that runs perfectly on modern machines. I've only had one crash and it was probably my fault.

Buy it, because it's awesome. Then go read a book, 'cause there's a whole lot of awesome there too.

On Uplifted Humans. Or Why Cyber-Depp Doesn't Make Any Sense

1/10/2014

 
Last week I did a little review of Transcendence, starring Cyber-Depp. In it I said the movie didn’t make sense to me because there is no world where Cyber-Depp gets beaten by normal people, let alone taken by surprise when they attack. I’m going to expand on my judgement.

Imagine you’ve got a chimp in your lab (I assume you have a lab, of course). You make this chimp smarter using science-magic (the best kind of magic), increasing its intelligence until you can’t really call it an it anymore. You now need to call it Fred, as he is as intelligent as an adult human who doesn’t watch reality TV.

If you set Fred a task that is simple for a human to do, like reading a book, he’d have no trouble. Even if he had to sound out the words as he read them he’d still be so far above his former ape-friends that it would be ridiculous to even consider them the same species. Throw in some extra creativity and problem solving, and you’ve got a chimp king.

In a straight fight, our chimp Fred is still as strong and fast as he was, but now he can develop Chimp-Fu and kick all kinds of ass. In any task requiring his brain he wins. No contest. In fact, if he did get into a fight he’d be able to craft weapons to augment his strength and speed. He’d be emperor of the lab chimps in an hour.

See why Cyber-Depp losing any fight doesn’t make sense? No? Alright, try this instead:

Imagine you’ve got a hamster in your lab (which is kind of a zoo, and you probably need to clean up a bit before inviting people round). You make this hamster smarter using the same science-magic as before, increasing its intelligence until she asks who she is and you name her Wilma. Wilma is also intelligent enough not to watch reality TV.

Wilma isn’t going to be able to live in the world as easily as Fred does, because Wilma doesn’t have hands. She’s also really tiny. How do you think a fight between Wilma and any other hamster is going to go, despite her inability to utilise much of the human world? She can still create tools and develop Hamster-Fu. She can still out-think any of her former friends, and in her case she can do it with an ease Fred would be jealous of (because hamsters aren’t that bright).

Give her a little while to get the basics down and she’d be able to rebuild a bunch of the human world on her scale, at which point she becomes god-queen of the hamsters. In fact, given time and the desire to do so, Wilma could develop the tools to beat down the chimps too. She would have science, so size doesn’t matter.

So I can buy Cyber-Depp being smart enough to find the flaws in our security and exploit them, owning the internet in minutes, but I can’t then accept him losing when he is attacked at the end of the film. To pull off the former he should be something along the lines of Wilma the hamster, and we are the other hamsters. We don’t stand a chance.

I’ve got an alternate scenario though, which doesn’t require him to be Wilma. Perhaps he was just a lot faster than a human. He was already pretty smart but once he was uploaded he was able to think faster, so he had the time to find the exploits he needed to hack the planet, and the time to work out how to turn every now-exposed server into one big hive mind for himself, without compromising the original function of the server (somehow). When he starts moving funds around to make himself rich we see it happen in minutes, but in his subjective time it took him a day, or a month, or a million years. Whatever.

OK, you got me. The humans are now able to trick him because they are as smart as he is and they came up with a plan he didn’t think of (the plan was stupid and wouldn’t work, but most of the logic of this film comes straight from a nineties hacker film, so whatever). The film now makes sense, right?

Nope, random internet voice. You’ve got it wrong again.

If, with one of those super processors, he was fast enough to hack the planet, then how long do you think it would take his fully realised self to destroy his enemies? A tiny fraction of a second? An amount of time so small we don’t have a measurement for it?

It doesn’t matter, because he has nanotech in the air and he can watch everything at once. He can see them coming and work it all out long before it becomes a problem. Looooooooooooong before. He’s omnipresent, and compared to the puny humans, practically omnipotent.

Whether Cyber-Depp could think better thoughts or only think faster, he still wins. In any scenario that doesn’t involve another being as powerful (as smart or as fast), Cyber-Depp owns the world. And he sure as shit wouldn’t be surprised by the “genius” attack leveled against him.

The film Lucy does the whole intelligence increase, uplifted human thing better, even if it used the stupid “humans only use 10% of their brain” thing as a framing device.

The argument above doubles as the reasoning for why, if we’re going to create a self-aware, general-purpose artificial intelligence, we better get it right the first time. We better build in a level of ethics better than anything we’ve yet managed to devise. Because if we don’t we’re toast.

Go read a book.

    C.L. Walker

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