Sunday, December 15, 2013
About
I'm starting this blog to document my thoughts for this story. It's existed for 8 years or so, now, and has a lot of bits written, mostly concerning Video Ezy's grand mother. I'm going to write snippets here, and just ideas. It probably won't be well-organised. Enjoy if you like.
The grandmother
In brief, she fled home on a Greyhound, passed a Video Ezy store in Calgary,
road a ferry or two, moved to Berkeley California to live with her
sister for a couple years, sat in on University lectures regarding the
environment, came home, studied to become a Terraforming specialist to
"save the planet", afraid it was doomed and became a pioneer on an
extraterrestrial colonisation project (Earth was saved anyway), grew up
wary of unfettered progress, stayed on the Martian (Lunar?) colony which
remained relatively conservative, where as Earth smoothed out and
liberalised. Her grand daughter was named Video Ezy, in part because
her daughter appreciated her stories of independence, especially given
the strain of her son-in-law's job taking him for months/a whole year.
Introduction
Greyhound 21 is the story of a girl who finds herself in a strange world after her mother dies and her absentee father sends her to a boarding school. It's about how she reacts to alien attitudes and culture she finds herself immersed in for four years, as she struggles to maintain her identity.
The inspiration came from standing around downtown Guelph, Ontario, one day, watching the city buses leave St. George's square. They were all very orderly in their starting and exits, majestic in physical size, and clear in their purpose. It made me think of small shuttles leaving a port in space. It was dark, a cold winter night, with beautiful snow all around. Thinking about the future, I decided I wanted the shuttles to be Greyhound, with the idea that the scrappy intercity bus company survives another century, and makes it into space. Thus, 21 for the end of the 21st century. I thought about writing about a pilot of one of them, but I didn't want a very weird space adventure. I've always thought that an important element of a good story is to be constrained. Constraints add meaning to the choices made within the story. I didn't want to leave the solar system, I didn't want to have alien visitors (I think most treatment of aliens in science fiction fail to capture the implications of another species developing independently in a different environment, and the implications of actually reaching interstellar travel). I thought an important element of this pilot would be how his life in space related to a typical life, or those around him. It would be more solitary, a lot of quiet and alone time, without typical bustle of being in a large, open environment filled with other living creatures. I thought a family or a friend would be good. I don't like writing love stories, though, so I didn't want to just deal with him and his partner. (Why is he a he? Because I was thinking of modeling him after myself.) However, I still wanted there be an important, close connection that absence wouldn't erase. So, a relative, in this case, a daughter.
I decided I wanted the daughter to have a reason for feeling or wanting a closer connection with him than his career allowed; she couldn't have anyone to displace it, she couldn't have another parent. Consequently, the story starts at her mother's death. Now she's suddenly alone, and it is here that she most wishes to have a connection with someone, a guardian who can account for her and make life safe. Then the implication of her losing her mother while her father has his career, where he's off planet for many months, over a year, comes up. She's young, she needs school. She's going to boarding school. He doesn't know how to raise her anyway.
Another major goal of Greyhound 21 is to be able to speculate about the future. What will happen politically, with technology, with society, with the environment, etc. Spending a while thinking about it, I chose some directions I wanted to go in. China rises. Nations federate. Technology grows, but perhaps not in the greatest leaps imaginable. Terraforming spares the planet, and results in a colony. Sciences improve. Society liberalises. I'm not exactly sure how to write from the perspective of someone who grows up in such a society, and I thought trying to do so would be alienating for any potential readers. So, instead, have someone with perspectives from now but then.
Consequently, the premise came about that the daughter will have grown up on a Martian (or Lunar) colony which will have proved ultimately conservative in the future (its founding by people who were wary of unfettered progress at the time the Earth was in crisis) but will seem a little liberal for today. Her life style will have been similar to today's in many ways (save for being on a different planet), so being sent to a boarding school on Earth, transplanted into a new Earth culture, will be an incredible shock.
For a taste of the future, totalitarian government, near omniscient, 0 true privacy. Consequently, they're very liberal with personal freedoms; you can do almost anything (including lots of things that are regulated now) because they can watch almost everything and enforce whatever they choose with impunity. But religions are scrutinised and limited. An artificially created language (heavily Chinese influenced) is the standard. Advanced science and medicine, most things can be cured. Some cybernetics. Designer drugs are legal (typically go through a testing process to ensure safety, advanced chemistry and understanding of neurology helps ensure effective, safe highs). Artificial economy; most jobs can be effectively accomplished through robotics or software (android-like things are rare, just for novelty (they often wouldn't make sense anyway); no robot revolution). Polyamory is very common, people still enter marriages for personal, traditional reasons, for religious reasons. Promiscuity is typical due to the absence of disease or pregnancy concerns. Etc.
Basically, a lot of life has shifted slightly outside of today's comfort zones. While I often tend towards more liberal perspectives today, she'll be in a vulnerable position with nothing left to ground her in this foreign environment. She'll spend her three years in boarding school trying to figure out what's important in life, and who she wants to be, resisting the pressures of her environment.
I have to go now, but here are a couple other notes.
The daughter, Video Ezy is named after her grandmother who ran away from home and assumed the pseudonym from a video rental store she passed through Calgary (the name actually comes from New Zealand though :D) on a Greyhound (which I've done 3 times).
Her mother could have been saved with technology used on Earth.
There's an old Victorian house still standing occupied by a reclusive old man.
The inspiration came from standing around downtown Guelph, Ontario, one day, watching the city buses leave St. George's square. They were all very orderly in their starting and exits, majestic in physical size, and clear in their purpose. It made me think of small shuttles leaving a port in space. It was dark, a cold winter night, with beautiful snow all around. Thinking about the future, I decided I wanted the shuttles to be Greyhound, with the idea that the scrappy intercity bus company survives another century, and makes it into space. Thus, 21 for the end of the 21st century. I thought about writing about a pilot of one of them, but I didn't want a very weird space adventure. I've always thought that an important element of a good story is to be constrained. Constraints add meaning to the choices made within the story. I didn't want to leave the solar system, I didn't want to have alien visitors (I think most treatment of aliens in science fiction fail to capture the implications of another species developing independently in a different environment, and the implications of actually reaching interstellar travel). I thought an important element of this pilot would be how his life in space related to a typical life, or those around him. It would be more solitary, a lot of quiet and alone time, without typical bustle of being in a large, open environment filled with other living creatures. I thought a family or a friend would be good. I don't like writing love stories, though, so I didn't want to just deal with him and his partner. (Why is he a he? Because I was thinking of modeling him after myself.) However, I still wanted there be an important, close connection that absence wouldn't erase. So, a relative, in this case, a daughter.
I decided I wanted the daughter to have a reason for feeling or wanting a closer connection with him than his career allowed; she couldn't have anyone to displace it, she couldn't have another parent. Consequently, the story starts at her mother's death. Now she's suddenly alone, and it is here that she most wishes to have a connection with someone, a guardian who can account for her and make life safe. Then the implication of her losing her mother while her father has his career, where he's off planet for many months, over a year, comes up. She's young, she needs school. She's going to boarding school. He doesn't know how to raise her anyway.
Another major goal of Greyhound 21 is to be able to speculate about the future. What will happen politically, with technology, with society, with the environment, etc. Spending a while thinking about it, I chose some directions I wanted to go in. China rises. Nations federate. Technology grows, but perhaps not in the greatest leaps imaginable. Terraforming spares the planet, and results in a colony. Sciences improve. Society liberalises. I'm not exactly sure how to write from the perspective of someone who grows up in such a society, and I thought trying to do so would be alienating for any potential readers. So, instead, have someone with perspectives from now but then.
Consequently, the premise came about that the daughter will have grown up on a Martian (or Lunar) colony which will have proved ultimately conservative in the future (its founding by people who were wary of unfettered progress at the time the Earth was in crisis) but will seem a little liberal for today. Her life style will have been similar to today's in many ways (save for being on a different planet), so being sent to a boarding school on Earth, transplanted into a new Earth culture, will be an incredible shock.
For a taste of the future, totalitarian government, near omniscient, 0 true privacy. Consequently, they're very liberal with personal freedoms; you can do almost anything (including lots of things that are regulated now) because they can watch almost everything and enforce whatever they choose with impunity. But religions are scrutinised and limited. An artificially created language (heavily Chinese influenced) is the standard. Advanced science and medicine, most things can be cured. Some cybernetics. Designer drugs are legal (typically go through a testing process to ensure safety, advanced chemistry and understanding of neurology helps ensure effective, safe highs). Artificial economy; most jobs can be effectively accomplished through robotics or software (android-like things are rare, just for novelty (they often wouldn't make sense anyway); no robot revolution). Polyamory is very common, people still enter marriages for personal, traditional reasons, for religious reasons. Promiscuity is typical due to the absence of disease or pregnancy concerns. Etc.
Basically, a lot of life has shifted slightly outside of today's comfort zones. While I often tend towards more liberal perspectives today, she'll be in a vulnerable position with nothing left to ground her in this foreign environment. She'll spend her three years in boarding school trying to figure out what's important in life, and who she wants to be, resisting the pressures of her environment.
I have to go now, but here are a couple other notes.
The daughter, Video Ezy is named after her grandmother who ran away from home and assumed the pseudonym from a video rental store she passed through Calgary (the name actually comes from New Zealand though :D) on a Greyhound (which I've done 3 times).
Her mother could have been saved with technology used on Earth.
There's an old Victorian house still standing occupied by a reclusive old man.
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