T is for Technology

April 23, 2014 by Roland Clarke

T is for Technology: In the world of Gossamer Steel the resource-hungry technology of the 20^th century has been forced to give way to low impact technologies with innovations that lean towards steampunk, solarpunk and greenpunk.

Wikipedia says, “Technology (from Greek τέχνη, techne, “art, skill, cunning of hand”; and -λογία, -logia) is the making, modification, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems, and methods of organization, in order to solve a problem, improve a pre-existing solution to a problem, achieve a goal, handle an applied input/output relation or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, including machinery, modifications, arrangements and procedures. Technologies significantly affect human as well as other animal species’ ability to control and adapt to their natural environments…”

From the wheel to cybernetics, technology has been used for both the positive advancement of society, and for the exploitation of people and destruction of the environment. Most of these technological advances have been since the Industrial Revolution in the 18^th Century, although prior to that there were some pivotal advances made in many parts of the world. However, the rapid advance in technological progress has depleted many precious finite resources. With the growing threat of global warming, another approach is needed and humanity already holds the knowledge to apply beneficial technology, like alternative energy sources, to advance forwards. [See also E is for Energy & M is for Mojave]

Printing press from 1811. ~ Photographed in Deutsches Museum Munich, Germany

T is also for Tamil, the inhabitants of the southern areas of Bhārata (India sub-continent), and followers of the Dravidian League.

PREVIOUS A TO Z POSTS:

A is for Array ~ B is for the Blood-Marked ~ C is for Corylus Avellana ~ D is for Duskweald ~ E is for Energy ~ F is for Feeniks ~ G is for Garuda ~ H is for Herders ~ I is for Ithaka ~ J is for Junk ~ K is for Kitsune ~ L is for Lorelei ~ M is for Mojave ~ N is for Native~ O is for Outcasts ~ P is for Punk ~ Q is for Quisling ~ R is for Ragnarök ~ S is for Seiðr

The brainchild of Arlee Bird, at Tossing it Out, the A to Z Challenge is posting every day in April except Sundays (we get those off for good behaviour.) And since there are 26 days, that matches the 26 letters of the alphabet. On April 1, blog about something that begins with the letter “A.” April 2 is “B,” April 3 is “C,” and so on. Please visit other challenge writers.

My theme is ‘The World of Gossamer Steel, the SF-fantasy setting for a series of short stories and novellas that portray the tales behind the MMORPG that is central to my crime novel ‘Wyrm Bait’.

Q is for Quisling

April 19, 2014 by Roland Clarke

Q is for Quisling: In the world of Gossamer Steel, the people of The Country (Scandinavia) are betrayed by people they once called friends, but now call Quislings.

A quisling is a person who collaborates with an enemy occupying force. The word originates from the Norwegian war-time leader Vidkun Quisling who was the head of a collaborationist regime in Norway during the Second World War.

The term quisling was coined by the British newspaper The Times in an editorial published on 19 April 1940, entitled “Quislings everywhere”, after the Norwegian Vidkun Quisling, who assisted Nazi Germany as it conquered his own country so that he could rule the collaborationist Norwegian government himself. The Daily Mail picked up the term, and the BBC then brought it into common use internationally. The Times’ editorial asserted: “To writers, the word Quisling is a gift from the gods. If they had been ordered to invent a new word for traitor… they could hardly have hit upon a more brilliant combination of letters. Aurally it contrives to suggest something at once slippery and tortuous.”

[Photo: Quisling [centre] visits the German propaganda companies’ large exhibition ”Soldier and Correspondent” in the National Gallery in Oslo on August 15th 1944. The exhibition was about German war reporters. ~ Courtesy of the Norwegian News Agency, Oslo]

Quisling [centre] visits the German propaganda companies’ large exhibition ”Soldier and Correspondent” in the National Gallery in Oslo on August 15th 1944. The exhibition was about German war reporters. ~ Courtesy of the Norwegian News Agency, Oslo

The term has been used in fiction to describe traitors and collaborators. In Kim Stanley Robinson’s Green Mars, the term is used to describe those early colonists who joined the side of Earth and the transnationals opposing the Martian faction in the conflict of 2061. In the novel World War Z by Max Brooks, quislings are those humans who after having a nervous breakdown have started behaving like zombies, often fooling fellow survivors but never the undead that they try to imitate.

Q is also for Quests, of which some are threads in Gossamer Steel, and for Qulin, a mythical hooved chimerical creature known throughout various East Asian cultures.

PREVIOUS A TO Z POSTS:

O is for Outcasts

April 17, 2014 by Roland Clarke

O is for Outcasts: In the world of Gossamer Steel, some of the Dravidian pirates are classed as outcasts due to their low caste, and yet they become essential to the future of Bhārata (India sub-continent), even though some also see them as outlaws.

An outcast is a person with social stigma or untouchability, who is rejected or ‘cast out’, as from home or society, or in some way excluded, looked down upon, ignored, or ostracised. On the Indian sub-continent the word pariah comes from the Tamil paraiyar, pl. of paraiyan “drummer”. At festivals it was the hereditary duty of members of the largest of the lower castes of southern India – parai is a “large festival drum.” The meaning of pariah was extended to embrace many groups outside the so-called clean caste groups and these low-caste groups, formerly known as “untouchables”, were renamed by the Indian social reformer Mahatma Gandhi as Harijans (children of the god Hari Visnu, or, simply, children of God).

Flag of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, an environmental action group against marine poaching and overfishing. ~ by David w ng / Wikipedia

In historical legal systems, an outlaw is declared as outside the protection of the law. In pre-modern societies, the criminal is withdrawn all legal protection, so that anyone is legally empowered to persecute or kill them. Outlawry was thus one of the harshest penalties in the legal system. In the common law of England, a “Writ of Outlawry” deprived the victim of all legal rights of the law, and others could kill him on sight as if he were a wolf or other wild animal. Women were declared “waived” rather than outlawed but it was effectively the same punishment. Outlawry has existed in many countries, from Scandinavia and Germany, to Australia. It has also been used as a political tool, when a regime declares the activities of its opponents illegal, even piratical.

In Gossamer Steel the oppressive Kali Cartel tries to marginalise the Dravidian League by portraying them as pirates, although they are struggling like others for what remains of the Earth.

O is also for Ond, the spiritual energy of The Country’s inhabitants.

PREVIOUS A TO Z POSTS:

M is for Mojave

April 14, 2014 by Roland Clarke

M is for Mojave: To the world of Gossamer Steel, Mojave is both a bane and a windfall. The Mojave Air and Space Port is where the solar array is launched from before the apocalypse. However, Morena Sokol finds her future and that of her family in the Mojave Desert.

The Mojave Air and Space Port, also known as the Civilian Aerospace Test Center, is located in Mojave, California, at an elevation of 2,791 feet (851 m). It is the first facility to be licensed in the United States for horizontal launches of reusable spacecraft, being certified as a spaceport by the Federal Aviation Administration on June 17, 2004. Occupying over 200 acres of a former Marine Corps training base, it is home to around 140 companies, many in the area of suborbital vehicle development. When it comes to global ‘firsts’ in flight, flight test, and aerospace, the Mojave Air and Space Port has been a consistent breaker of records and aerospace barriers, from The Scaled Composites Model 76 Voyager, the first aircraft in history to fly around the world without stopping or refueling (1986), to SpaceShipOne, the first non-governmental rocket ship to space (2004).

The Mojave Desert is situated between the Great Basin Desert to the north and the Sonoran to the south (mainly between 34 and 38°N latitudes). A rainshadow desert, the Mojave is defined by a combination of latitude, elevation, geology, and indicator plants. Elevations are generally between three and six thousand feet, although the famous Death Valley National Park includes both 11,049-foot Telescope Peak and the lowest point in the United States 282 feet below sea level at Badwater.

Ivanpah Solar Power Facility (California) with all three towers under load, Feb., 2014 ~ Sbharris

Ivanpah Solar Power Facility (California) with all three towers under load, Feb., 2014 ~ by Sbharris

There are several solar power plants in the Mojave Desert supplying power to the US electricity grid. Insolation (solar radiation) in the Mojave Desert is among the best available in the United States, and some significant population centres are located in the area. These plants can generally be built in a few years because solar plants are built almost entirely with modular, readily available materials. Some of the plants are on the eastern side near Boulder City, Nevada – SE of Las Vegas. The world’s largest solar plant, Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating project, is south-west of Las Vegas and opened on February 13, 2014. There are some others on the Californian side around Lancaster and Barstow, around an hour from the Space Port, proving a factual basis for the ‘accident’ that creates the world of Gossamer Steel.

M is also for the goddess Mielikki, Magerøya Isle in The Country, and for MMORPG Gossamer Steel avatar Manushri in @Wyrm Bait’.

PREVIOUS A TO Z POSTS:

E is for Energy

April 5, 2014 by Roland Clarke

E is for Energy: After the apocalypse that creates the Gossamer Steel world, the role of oil as an energy source diminishes rapidly as the means to produce and distribute its derivatives are devastated. The surviving enclaves are forced to turn to alternative energy sources, primarily solar, wind and the waves. There is also a powerful atmospheric charge to be tapped from The Storm that continues to divide the world and create Electro-magnetic interference.

All these renewables, except atmospheric charge, are viable today. The uptake on renewable sources depends on many factors, not least the individual country’s government and public opinion. The United Kingdom is the world’s leading generator of offshore wind power, and is currently seeing a healthy growth in onshore wind generation, while in the United States the favoured renewables varies from state to state. According to Wikipedia sources, “In 2010 renewable energy accounted for 17% of total energy consumption. Biomass heat accounted for 11%, and hydropower 3%…” “…In international public opinion surveys there is strong support for promoting renewable sources such as solar power and wind power, requiring utilities to use more renewable energy (even if this increases the cost), and providing tax incentives to encourage the development and use of such technologies. There is substantial optimism that renewable energy investments will pay off economically in the long term…”

English: Wind turbines in a rapeseed field in Sandesneben, Germany ~ Jürgen at Flickr

English: Wind turbines in a rapeseed field in Sandesneben, Germany by Jürgen at Flickr

Our industrialised society will continue to devour fossil fuels at an enormous rate, despite climate change and high oil prices, but inevitably they will run out. But will the Ravagers of Gossamer Steel destroy the world first? Or will an apocalypse herald a new fossil fuel-free world? A greenpunk future?

United Nations’ Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said that renewable energy has the ability to lift the poorest nations to new levels of prosperity. Thus, in Gossamer Steel, one of the leading enclaves is India.

“King Of Nagas & Kylin Carving On Teak” by kornnphoto

E in our A to Z tour of the Gossamer Steel world is also for the elves/elfes or Alfar; for the Elementals that are intrinsic to the Blood-marked and possess supernatural powers; and for Etiäinen, spirits summoned by Finnish shaman.

PREVIOUS A TO Z POSTS:

A is for Array

B is for the Blood-Marked

C is for Corylus Avellana

D is for Duskweald

My theme is ‘The World of Gossamer Steel’, the SF-fantasy setting for a series of short stories and novellas that portray the tales behind the MMORPG that is central to my crime novel ‘Wyrm Bait’.

Productivity: A Threefold Secret

April 2, 2014 by Roland Clarke

Snowdon & Portmeirion ~ Juanita Clarke

A month ago, in my First Wednesday of month post in the Insecure Writers Support Group – I worried about existing for Forty days cut off from the outside world. But my gloomy musings were inaccurate… as many of them are.

British Telecom may have failed to get us online but we can log on via a neighbour’s connection. So we are still alive and reasonably sane. I’ve just been online far less than normal, just long enough to get emails.

So has being without internet distractions, like social media and games, mean more writing?

Well no, but blame that on moving house. Once a few crucial writing things were out of boxes – pen and notebooks rather than computers – I began scribbling. Who wouldn’t with a view of Snowdon and Portmeirion. And I sense that there are lot more words as I gaze out the window.

Yet there was a part of me that worried about productivity.

Do you try to write at least so many words a day?

Are you daunted by how many books other authors publish each year?

I was. But I’ve realised that we all have to work at a different pace, and that pace will always depend on other factors like family commitments, job demands, genuine distractions, and in my case health.

When I was an equestrian journalist, I was able to write 12-20 articles a week. Short reports maybe, and I used a template system, but the facts had to be changed, plus the quotes. And there was the initial research which often meant two days at a weekend show. [Friday was my ‘day-off’/chill day.]

Dick Lane and his team of Lipizzaners at Brighton Driving Trials ~ Roland Clarke

However, poor health and retirement have brought a change in lifestyle so the secret of productivity has evolved, although it had probably always been threefold… I just wasn’t aware of it.

PACING: it is easier to tackle a task like a piece of writing if you pace yourself. There’s no point burning up in a frantic attempt to get thousands of words written. Over time I found that there were times when pushing myself too hard led to a day lost through exhaustion; and in my case that was how my MS first manifested. Write at a pace that suits you, rather than at a speed that someone else has set. Unless the deadlines are immovable, as with a newspaper deadline, it’s far better to make one that is realistic.

SELECTION: try to focus on the tasks that are crucial, coupled with those that you are inspired by – not distracted by. There will never be enough time to do everything so be selective. Having no fast internet connection has led to me making hard chances on what I read online every day… and I no longer read every email in detail. Fewer = more.

BALANCE: spending all our time working is never good. As writers our inspiration comes from many sources, so being glued to our writing all day is wasted time. Adding in other pursuits is essential. When I was confined to the house, I escaped into a game world, but from that I found the inspiration for the world of Gossamer Steel – my theme for the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge. In Wales it will be exploring the great outdoors, although there will still be gaming – my wife and I will always be gamers. Others might mention movies, good food or chocolate. All in moderation and in balance.

I won’t be measuring my new life in Wales in terms of words written or books published, but in terms of the peace of mind that comes from living a richer life. That is inspiration worth sharing in carefully crafted creations from the soul.

What do you feel creates words of worth, productivity or peace of mind?