Couple of Hypothetical questions.

[MstrTal]

Ok I have a couple of questions that are purely speculative. One literally just popped into my head while watching TV a few moments ago. The other is something that has been cooking on and off in the back of my mind yet has never had a place in any of my projects until possibly now. Alright enough foreshadowing on to the questions.

Question #1: Writing the Blind. In a Novel where the narrative is 1st person POV would you keep the narrative in 1st person and describe the scenes by sound, touch and texture or would this be a valid exception to slip out of 1st person to another POV?

Question #2: This is an odd one. Given the fact that technology keeps getting more and more minimized and keeping in mind that I have embarked out of my comfort zone into SciFi and that I have previously mentioned my distinct lack of knowledge and comfort in regards to things like math and hard science I wonder about a planetary satellite network. The idea that has been peculating in my mind for years is a global network of basketball, or slightly larger, geosynchronously orbiting the planet. Spherical in nature and linked in a wireless array that shares power and information. power is shared via line of sight something along the lines of solar pulses. the spheres sun side collecting energy and redistributing to those along the network. Information shared much the same way a server or cloud based system does with nothing centralized in anyone unit. Granted I know it would take many thousands such units and is more than likely beyond our current tech levels so the question becomes how plausible is such a network?

 

[thaddeus6th]

On the first point, it's worth knowing that very few people are what might be called totally blind. Lots of blind people have extremely limited vision (being able to tell light from dark, for example) so you might want to include occasional and vague references to their vision. Of course, you could just make them 100% blind.

I'll have to pass on the second question, I'm afraid.

 

[iansales]

Satellite constellations already exist. One example is Iridium - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellation

However, the more satellites there are in the constellation, the harder to manage it becomes. Satellites don't stay in orbit indefinitely, the orbits will degrade over time. Also, a sphere would be a poor shape for a satellite. There's no need to streamline it, and steerable wings would be much more effective for solar-cell arrays.

 

[Venusian Broon]

Granted I know it would take many thousands such units and is more than likely beyond our current tech levels so the question becomes how plausible is such a network?

Would have thought solar cells and a battery would be sufficent to power an individual satellite, without having to resort to such an energy distribution system. Of course that would make 'em larger that basketballs - why do you want them so small?

Other sci-fi routes to power them that springs to mind, could be by laser/maser - i.e. fire an energetic pulse out to a special part of the satellite that can convert the radiation into electricity that is stored in the satellite. (Transfer of power by wireless is something I think you can already get for your home, so in principle I think it may be possible to do it to an orbiting satellite.)

I am no satellite expert, but I believe the lifetime of a satellite is really dependent on it's ability to manouver not it's energy requirements (sunlight is plentiful half the time!), i.e. to get them in the correct position, move them away from danger and correct for drifting etc... As, I believe these use (compressed gas?) thrusters they have a limited life span. Usually rather than let the satellite run of thruster gas in orbit - therefore becoming space junk and a hazard - they use the last of the gas to push it into the atmosphere to burn it up, or park it in a totally useless orbit.

The smaller the satellite the less space for such systems and therefore the shorter the lifespan. Satellites are really sunk costs (groan) despite orbiting our heads, as soon as you've got them in orbit that's it, it's on its own. Your proposal sounds frightfully expensive if it was designed to be a run of the mill satellite network. (If it was other purposes perhaps not, I can perhaps come up with a few alternative suggestions for a cloud of cheap robotical objects in orbit...SF of course.)

 

[JDP]

A character in my WIP is blind. I'm writing her POV as third-person limited, so it's described through her other senses/perception. Her other senses are pretty finely tuned, so she's rarely as a loss as to what's going on.

 

[MstrTal]

On the satellites to be honest its a concept I had about 20 odd years ago. The setting would be post apocalyptic dystopia. I guess my then adolescent mind thought that a globe spanning network of interlinked shiny death spheres watching our every move was a frightening thought. The solar pulse idea came from an article I read, at the time, about the concept of a satellite collecting solar energy that it would then beam down to a ground station to distribute across the power grids. I thought it would be a way to not only power the spheres but give them an excess of always available energy to pin point targets on the ground and as a possible means of propulsion to keep the array intact. The cloud based information sharing aspect came along years later as computing evolved. Obviously such an old (odd) idea of mine that is possibly being dusted off needs some dusting off and updating.

On the Blind character I do not have any experience with 3rd person limited. That could be interesting. However if the bulk of the work is in 1st person would switching to 3rd person limited be confusing to the readers or disrupt the flow of the work? Would the inclusion of a blind character necessitate a rewrite in a different narrative altogether?

 

[Venusian Broon]

I thought it would be a way to not only power the spheres but give them an excess of always available energy to pin point targets on the ground and as a possible means of propulsion to keep the array intact.

I see, it's a bit clearer now. Here are more of my half-baked thoughts .

The only problem I have with this developing picture is that just having energy - either in the form of heat or electricity generated from sunlight - does not help you propel the craft about. They'll need a propellent/reaction mass of some form that the satellites will have to take up with them (and use up, then becoming useless) or somehow generate in-situ (although I can't immediately see how this might work.)

I suppose you could create a giant fleet of robotic supply drones that are sent into orbit to replace the depleted supplies of reactant mass in the satellites on a regular basis - but is this overcomplicating it to save the idea?

 

[Ursa major]

Question #1: Writing the Blind. In a Novel where the narrative is 1st person POV would you keep the narrative in 1st person and describe the scenes by sound, touch and texture or would this be a valid exception to slip out of 1st person to another POV?

One shouldn't really draw too much attention to how the narrator sees, hears, smells and feels the world around them, simply restrict what is described to what the PoV character can see, hear, smell and touch, and then describe it.

Here's an almost reductio ad absurdum example of what you shouldn't be doing:

I heard Jim say, "That's a fine picture."
I saw Peter look at the picture and then heard him say, "It would have to be to cost $1,000,000."

So while you might, near the beginning of the story, point out how your narrator can know certain things, such as a technique a sighted person might not realise would work, simply because they have only to look, the storytelling might stall if the reader is constantly reminded of this.

You can always show - or is it tell? - how clever the narrator is in certain cases, just don't do it too often.

 

[MstrTal]

It is a dystopia I could see a series of defunct military silos that automatically launch replacement satellites as one becomes damaged or falls out of the array. If the satellites are cheap enough and the rockets are cheap enough then once the propellant that keeps them in place runs low they could "Dead Man" and drop orbit onto strategic targets perhaps. Might have to loose the spherical shape and small size though which sucks from an aesthetic view point.

 

[Montero]

A few suggestions.

1. Aim for space opera more than "pure" sf so you can get away with more black boxing.

2. Read autobiographies by blind or formerly blind people. I certainly remember reading several books by Sheila Hocken, who grew up blind and later had an operation that partially fixed her eyes. Her books are as much about her Guide Dogs as anything else but I do remember comments on how most. or all, her family had sight problems and that knocked over drinks and food on the dining table were routine, not a matter for angst and anger because they all did it.

3. While first person blind could work, as UM is saying - don't slow the story down too much with all the blind stuff.

4. For a "tech take" on blind - look at Auggie in the series Covert Affairs. Not an insider view as such, but he's pretty mobile.

 

[Galacticdefender]

A few suggestions.

1. Aim for space opera more than "pure" sf so you can get away with more black boxing.

2. Read autobiographies by blind or formerly blind people. I certainly remember reading several books by Sheila Hocken, who grew up blind and later had an operation that partially fixed her eyes. Her books are as much about her Guide Dogs as anything else but I do remember comments on how most. or all, her family had sight problems and that knocked over drinks and food on the dining table were routine, not a matter for angst and anger because they all did it.

3. While first person blind could work, as UM is saying - don't slow the story down too much with all the blind stuff.

4. For a "tech take" on blind - look at Auggie in the series Covert Affairs. Not an insider view as such, but he's pretty mobile.

Everyone sems to get this wrong. Space Opera and "pure sf" as you put it, are not mutually exclusive. In fact, there are even some Space Operas that lean towards Hard SF. Stuff by Alastair Reynolds, for instance.

A bit off topic, but guess I take offense every time someone says "space opera has less realism than sci-fi" because hard(ish) SF space opera is my favorite genre to write in.

 

[MstrTal]

Everyone sems to get this wrong. Space Opera and "pure sf" as you put it, are not mutually exclusive. In fact, there are even some Space Operas that lean towards Hard SF. Stuff by Alastair Reynolds, for instance.

A bit off topic, but guess I take offense every time someone says "space opera has less realism than sci-fi" because hard(ish) SF space opera is my favorite genre to write in.

I can understand your angst. Even though I have sunken myself almost exclusively into Contemporary Urban Fantasy for the last decade or more I used to read what I guess is considered Space opera. Granted at the time I never made the distinction. I always did prefer what seemed to me to be the more realistic and shall we say less Star Trekish novels. Of course I may be completely wrong as I am not that scientifically minded, in my own opinion, but authors like Elizabeth Moon comes to mind in the way she described space battles and the ships and armament used. Especially the way ships approached movement and gravity sources. Now it has been a long time so I may be remembering wrong and if so I apologize and you can disregard my choice of examples. I guess I am saying I prefer the fantastic wrapped in the plausible over say War Hammer 40,000. Not that I have anything against War Hammer.

 

[Galacticdefender]

Ooh, now Warhammer 40,000 is in the conversation. Better not get me started Actually, oddly enough, Warhammer 40,00 has more physically realistic space battles than a lot of other SF (say, Star Wars), on the rare occasion that a space battle is described. But any realism ends there, and the "rule of cool" takes over. Although Warhammer 40,000 has to be one of the most unique "space operas". There isn't anything as far as I am concerned that has such an awesome mix of science fiction, dark fantasy, and gothic architecture. For The Emperor!

Okay, I will stop being off topic now.

For a blind person, I might go into "third person omniscient" sometimes, so the reader at least knows the surroundings if it is necessary for the reader to know something that the character does not. Otherwise I would describe things from the character's perspective.

 

[MstrTal]

The whole blind thing is still such an odd mental conundrum to me. I want to try it out yet at the same time I only have one character that it would work with. However it would only work when he wears his blind fold to keep from killing people and sucking their souls out. It's shall we say complicated.

 

[Galacticdefender]

I've got a (minor) character who got his face burned off by a plasma bomb, so I'll probably have to write from a blind perspective too, if I don't decide to go ahead and kill him off. But this thread has made me kind of want to try writing a blind character for a bit, at least until he's killed when the ship they are serving on is destroyed

(Awesome, 200 posts!)

 

[Ursa major]

In an attempt to save that poor character's life, I would point out that he, as a minor character, doesn't have to become a PoV character.

 

[stephen.samuels]

Question #2: This is an odd one. Given the fact that technology keeps getting more and more minimized and keeping in mind that I have embarked out of my comfort zone into SciFi and that I have previously mentioned my distinct lack of knowledge and comfort in regards to things like math and hard science I wonder about a planetary satellite network. The idea that has been peculating in my mind for years is a global network of basketball, or slightly larger, geosynchronously orbiting the planet. Spherical in nature and linked in a wireless array that shares power and information. power is shared via line of sight something along the lines of solar pulses. the spheres sun side collecting energy and redistributing to those along the network. Information shared much the same way a server or cloud based system does with nothing centralized in anyone unit. Granted I know it would take many thousands such units and is more than likely beyond our current tech levels so the question becomes how plausible is such a netwo



You have to consider general relativity, specifically how are you going to get around it?

Realistically, a object that small should fall to the planet it obits, because of gravity. So how do you get around it?

There are two ways that I can think of. The first is to have them linked via an electromagnetic field, thus giving them stability.

However I prefer this way, give them dark energy emitters. dark energy is the mysterious force which counters gravity and keeps the universe expanding. You'd have to give its manipulation a back story though

 

[Venusian Broon]

Realistically, a object that small should fall to the planet it obits, because of gravity. So how do you get around it?

There is no reason to assume this. Some may get nudged into orbits that make them go through the atmosphere and burn up, some may hit the earth, some may escape the earth's gravity and go wandering about the solar system (and perhaps beyond). Some may orbit the Earth for ever.

The moon orbits the earth in an identical way to these satellites - but it's not falling into the earth. It's actually getting further and further away.

 

[Icyphoenix]

However I prefer this way, give them dark energy emitters. dark energy is the mysterious force which counters gravity and keeps the universe expanding. You'd have to give its manipulation a back story though

Dark Energy is more of an expansion energy. Gravity does not really come into the equation. But I agree with electromagnet, that should give it some form of moment seperate to propulsion.

 

[stephen.samuels]

There is no reason to assume this. Some may get nudged into orbits that make them go through the atmosphere and burn up, some may hit the earth, some may escape the earth's gravity and go wandering about the solar system (and perhaps beyond). Some may orbit the Earth for ever.

The moon orbits the earth in an identical way to these satellites - but it's not falling into the earth. It's actually getting further and further away.

A satellite of the size he was describing would need some sort of stabilization mechanism. Particularly if it was intended to be part of a larger network. I take your point, but I still think the dark energy emitters would be cool concept in this case. Dark Energy could alsso be the power source