Constellation: Making the Graphic Novel: Recent Episodes
Constellation
Armed with a completed second outline, we return for our 50th episode! This episode begins with a summary of the key changes planned for our second draft. In the next script, we’ll be fully integrating voiceover from page 1 and streamlining the way we present lobbies and the exec. We’ll also be revising Zoya’s plotline to have better logic and more forward momentum. Lastly, we’ll be adding seven mini stories as interstitials, which will expand the scope of the book and hopefully enhance the feeling that the Constellation is a vast, lived-in world.
In the second half of the episode we have a Review the Future style off-the-cuff discussion of AI trends, the SAG AFTRA strike, and the impact of recent technological developments on the relevancy of our story.
Script Content:
-Zoya and Csaba attend the Katallian service. They discover the portal door is locked and one way (but Ocean Songbird has a key). As early attendees they are drafted into a confession ritual.
-Meanwhile the priests discover an unauthorized conjuring, which leads them to find Cranium tied up.
-A struggle ensues in the church as Zoya and Csaba try to escape while the Katallian authorities try to stop them. Csaba uses the conjuring stone in a haphazard way that kills people. Zoya successfully escapes and declines to help Csaba, who is left behind.
Discussion:
-Why haven’t Zoya and Csaba attended a service like this before? Is it rare? Is it perhaps their actual initiation?
-How does the conjuring stone work? Is there a rule that Zoya understands Csaba does not? Ideally we are seeking a rule that causes Csaba to misfire with it (as opposed to not being able to make it do anything at all). The rule might stem from Katallian limits on conjuring or from the stone being a stock Constellation totem object. Does Zoya understand this rule because of her experience as a world creator, or because she gathered this information since she’s been on Katall, while Csaba failed to do so?
-Zoya’s dialogue as the elephant god assumes the children already grasp they’ve been tricked for their whole lives as opposed to just finding out about that moments before.
-Does Alltaf go through with its threat against Imerologia? What are the consequences to Zoya’s actions and do we even find out about them?
-Are we adequately setting up Zoya’s care for the Applonian children earlier in the script?
-How can we make the beginning and the ending echo each other?
Script Content:
-Zoya gets caught by Alltaf and assigned the task of killing Tim
-The leadup to Tim’s death from Zoya’s perspective
-The aftermath of Tim’s death: burying the body and lying to Cranium
-Caught by Cranium, Csaba knocks out Cranium and takes his conjuring stone
-Armed with the stone, Tim and Zoya head for the portal inside the church so they can escape Katall
Discussion:
-Conjuring staff was changed to a stone so that it can be smuggled into church.
-Do we need the scene of them getting to the church early and waiting to get in?
-What are the mechanics of the portal? What prevents Tim and Zoya from simply sprinting for it? Is it a one way door that is easier to enter than to leave? Is it only open during a key moment of the church ceremony?
-The sequence where Zoya lies about stealing the hunt-master’s axe is at odds with earlier scenes where she has ready access to an axe without needing to steal one.
-Does it make sense for Csaba to be behind a barrel when Tim and Zoya are talking? What is Csaba’s motivation for hiding?
-What is the POV of Zoya’s voiceover? We had discussed it originating from her trial testimony, but that seems probably too limiting of a rule.
Another double episode with pages from both Ted and Jon.
Script Content:
– Richard and Alexis urge Zoya to take Tim’s deal at the Gaia awards
-Zoya is initiated into Alltaf
-Zoya witnesses Tim trying to force his way through the Alltaf lobby
-Richard and Alexis coach Zoya to have Tim complete the first task for her
-Zoya shows Applonia to the Alltaf reps
-Richard and Alexis coach Zoya to have Tim complete the second task as well
Discussion:
-How do we justify Zoya entering Katall during the next phase of the story, when she has been raised to be suspicious of bad contracts? Perhaps a combination of (a) Richard and Alexis are not of the same mind on this issue and one of them is more willing to compromise and (b) Alltaf has some kind of leverage over either Imerologia or Zoya’s art career that can be used to strong arm Zoya into taking on a great risk.
-We need to find somewhere to establish what Imerologia is exactly.
In this double episode, we get pages from both Ted and Jon.
Script Content:
-Tim, Zoya, and Csaba build shelters on Katall
-Tim hunts for a suitable murder target
-Zoya offers Tim an out (he doesn’t take it)
-Tim discovers Cranium’s secret TV lair and decides to make Cranium the target
-Tim goes to murder Cranium, while Zoya and Csaba tag along
-Zoya kills Tim before he can kill Cranium
-Flashback to Zoya’s childhood education with Mr. Hygge and her parents
Discussion:
-Where is Tim’s head at during this period of murder planning?
-How does Tim feel about Csaba?
-Would the Katallians have IVs in their infirmary?
-Tim might justify killing a Katallian with the logic: “They’ve already chosen to die, this is just altering the timeline.”
-What tastes in television would Cranium have? If he’s not zero gen, then he’s not nostalgic, just enamored of old timey stuff for aesthetic reasons.
-Do we need to backfill Tim’s apparent contempt for Cranium and hypocrites who don’t stick to their principles? Or is it not real contempt and more just an attempt to justify what he is doing?
-Does Cranium hear Csaba say “Now, you got him!” And is it possible that Csaba was talking about Tim and not Cranium, anyway?
-How many pages are we allotting for Zoya’s flashbacks? Is the school scene too long?
-This is our introduction to Richard and Alexis so we should describe them more.
-The schooling scene needs to be a blueprint that can be referenced by two future scenes: the indoctrination of children on Applonia and Zoya’s Alltaf initiation.
-What is the underlying motivation behind Zoya’s voiceover? Makes sense for it to be anchored in the moment that she’s just killed Tim, since that’s when it begins.
Tim, Zoya and Csaba enter Katall, learn about the naturalist entrance contract, witness a service that includes funeral rites and penitence for conjuring, join the Katallian religion, receive the assignment of building a shelter. Discussion: nailing down Ocean’s gender, considering whether this sequence could be shorter, proposing the addition of Tim’s voiceover, flagging the moment when Zoya and Csaba are momentarily alone in the lobby (which we may see dramatized in Zoya’s storyline).
Tim meets Csaba for dinner at a fancy Magnurbia restaurant, Csaba tells the story of Alltaf’s founding, Tim receives instructions for the third trial, Zoya offers Tim the chance to back out. Discussion: whether Tim should know who he’s meeting for dinner, whether Csaba should be a well-known figure, whether the voiceover should be past/present, whether the dangerous world from the founding story was randomly generated or just randomly found, and whether Csaba should give off more sinister vibes, possibly threatening Tim’s family or hazing Zoya.
Visiting Pompeii, finding the clue “Come in, have a drink, stay a while”, getting attacked by a leopard, turning pain on to find the right door, turning mind altering substances on to cross the lava river, turning ejection off to unlock the final answer: “You must trust to be trusted.” Discussion: whether Tim should struggle more to complete the puzzle, the benefits of dramatizing regeneration in this part of the script, the possibility of drawing out the stone men sequence to really emphasize the world daring Tim to eject.
Taking the job in Applonia, posing as an elephant-headed god, building a temple for Applewhite, planting a backdoor, failing to help the Applonian people, onward to Wang’s world. Discussion: being an elephant versus just being invisible, defining the pain settings in Applonia, the meaning of “portal rights”, the nature of Tim’s moral choice, whether this […]
Receiving the first trial, finding the trial difficult, posting an ad, finding Applewhite. Discussion: introduction of voiceover, making Applewhite weirder, drawing on the Incal for exec inspiration.
Obtaining Alltaf’s address, fighting through Alltaf’s lobby, signaling to Zoya, blackmailing Zoya. Discussion: rules of Alltaf’s lobby, usefulness of the Bukhari reference, communication of blackmail stakes, how secret is Alltaf?
Magnurbia, Tim’s defaultist son, breaking up with Arturo. Discussion: How to handle the exec visually.
Tim and Zoya sign on the line, Gaia Awards nominees. Discussion: making the nominees interesting, scale of the Gaias, story perspective.
Gaia awards pre-party, Tim and Arturo panic about losing, and Tim proposes a deal to Zoya. Discussion: how to reveal Tim and Arturo’s panic, should concierge be an AI, comic book visual language.
This episode outlines the additional interstitial stories that will occur throughout the book.
Introducing the broad science fiction concepts and writing principles behind our next graphic novel.
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Everyone knows by now that self driving cars are coming soon. Somewhere in the next 3-20 years, the human driver will become a thing of the past. What will happen when these capabilities come online? We talk through the obvious and not so obvious consequences of self driving car technology, from unemployment of taxi drivers […]
In this more conversational episode, we discuss the abstract dichotomy of wielding technology rather than yielding to it. We discuss this wielding/yielding metaphor with regard to form factors, for example how is using a smart phone different from augmented reality glasses, or what’s the fundamental difference between a high functioning AI assistant that can act […]
In this week’s podcast we list the top ten living futurists. These are people who are highly influential in the area of futurology, either for being skillful popularizers or originators of major new ideas. Listen and find out if you agree with our choices. And if you think we made any major mistakes (either misguided inclusions or omissions) please […]
In this week’s podcast we tackle Emotional (sometimes called Affective) Computing — when computers read and respond to human emotions. We discuss the types of sensory data computers can read, like faces and inflection but also heat-mapping and pupil dilation. We also discuss how this capability might lead to a future that’s worse for liars […]
In today’s podcast, we discuss the possibility of “mind uploading,” or emulating a human brain inside a computer. We begin with a survey history of the concept, and then transition into a discussion of the sea of philosophical and ethical questions that uploading inevitably raises. Is whole brain emulation a realistic path to personal immortality […]
In this second part of our review of Capital in the 21st Century, we look at Thomas Piketty’s ideas from the point of view of speculation and futurism, and consider some of the criticisms of the book. Last week in Part 1, we covered the book’s basic ideas about how to measure and talk about […]
In this part one of our review of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century, we cover the book in detail and summarize its arguments and conclusions. In the next part, to be released next week, we will look at Piketty’s ideas from the point of view of speculation and futurism, and consider some of […]
In today’s podcast, we discuss Buckminster Fuller’s term ephemeralization. Many people today are searching for words to describe the tremendous power of technologies to do more with less. Modern expressions like “dematerialization,” “software is eating the world,” and “digitization of everything” can in many ways be subsumed by Fuller’s original term. Relevant Links: Video on […]
We’d all like to live in a better future, and for ages men have imagined what a theoretical best future might be like. What would a utopian society truly look like? Does the answer lie in external approaches like abundance, decentralization and transparency, or internal approaches like drugs, wireheading and genetic engineering? Is it even […]
In this podcast we examine the issue of inequality from the point of view of game design and ask whether a variety of resources are likely to become more or less unequal in the future. In addition to the obvious monetary dimension, we also discuss inequality as it relates to fame, user base, creativity tools, […]
In this week’s podcast we talk about the big topic of Network Neutrality. We define the term and talk about the differences between neutral and biased (or ‘diverse’) networks. We cover the history of the phone network, the Carterfone, and neutrality regulations in the U.S. We also cover the two major reasons to prefer a […]
On this podcast, we talk about games and the future. Eric Zimmerman has pronounced this the “Ludic Century” and has said the 21st century will be defined by games. We approach this idea from three points of view: first we talk about games as an entertainment medium and whether they might grow relative to passive entertainment […]
In this very short episode we do a simple thought experiment set at a mathematics competition. Three characters, each with a very different apparatus of enhanced intelligence, compete. One is highly educated, one is enhanced to be able to learn more quickly, and one offloads the complex tasks to an AI or crowd-sourced network. We […]
What is the future of television? Will today’s golden age continue? We discuss the current television model and why TV hasn’t been disrupted to the degree film and other media have, the real scarcity and artificial limits that are keeping it there, and make a prediction about the next ten years of television content. We […]
There is no doubt decentralized powerful technologies are coming, and the conventional wisdom is that you cannot control these things easily. In this episode, we discuss drugs, security, and general purpose computing as decentralized technologies that resist control. Will it be possible to control nearly invisible life-logging technologies of the future? What about gun control […]
In this week’s podcast we discuss money as a technology that has progressed through several versions. What’s wrong with our current version of money, and what might we do better in a future version? What are the pros and cons of modern day cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Freicoin? Is the uncertain nature of future […]
Today’s episode focuses on a thought experiment — assuming technological unemployment happens and capitalism continues in its current form, what new platforms might allow average folks to monetize the remaining scarce resources? What kind of jobs and economic platforms might arise in a future of automated labor? We discuss current platforms like Kickstarter and Etsy […]
Today on the podcast we talk about a simple way to predict the future — simply exaggerate current trends. But this doesn’t lead to accurate prediction, it leads to “Super-Now” predictions where everything is shinier, faster, or on steroids, but nothing is actually new. We cover a lot of classic and modern Sci Fi that […]
In this episode, we ask how culture would be impacted by radically increased lifespans. We go over the main arguments made by longevity research experts like Aubrey De Grey and Ray Kurzweil, and we discuss Sonia Arrison’s book 100+. We discuss expanded health spans and acknowledge that a right to die would be even more […]
In this podcast we return to the idea of technological unemployment: if it’s happening, what should we do? We consider three ways technological unemployment might be defeated: rising standards of living might outrun inequality, education and cognitive enhancement might solve our retraining problems, or new platforms and needs might emerge and create new demands. But […]
In this week’s podcast, we discuss common communications and computer interfaces in science fiction and ask whether those AI assistants and videophones really make sense. We retell David Foster Wallace’s story about the failure of the videophone from Infinite Jest, and we argue that Samantha from Her would be just as annoying as Microsoft Clippy. […]
In this week’s podcast we evaluate the relative plausibility of four dystopias commonly seen in science fiction: Post-Apocalypse, Alien/AI Oppression, Boot-in-the-Face, and Brave New World. These are all fun settings for exciting stories, but which makes the most sense from the perspective of speculation? Relevant Links Aldous Huxley’s Letter to George Orwell Decline of Scarcity […]
In this extra-long podcast, we review the important new book from MIT’s Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson, THE SECOND MACHINE AGE: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. The first half is a detailed, Cliffs-Notes version of the book’s arguments for those that have not read it; others may want to skip to […]
In this week’s podcast, we do the thought experiment of what happens in a theoretically super-abundant future: what things remain scarce and still retain economic value? Further, as we approach that point, where are the safe areas to try to find work? We list all the scarce goods we can think of in four categories: […]
On the podcast this week, we discuss the state of narrative in a world where technological change is accelerating. We start with William Gibson’s now decade-old attempt to write recent-past rather than near-future speculative work and continue to talk about the perceived rise in period, future and ambiguous time periods in contemporary films and novels. […]
Today’s podcast reviews Tyler Cowen’s new book Average is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation. The book’s thesis is that machine intelligence and other factors are driving a trend toward much greater inequality in America. We discuss Tyler’s conservative political persuasion and the relative plausibility of his near future vision. Will […]
In this week’s podcast, we review Her, Spike Jonze’s entertaining new movie about a human-AI relationship. How well does it hold up from the point of view of speculation? Is the world fully realized and consistent? Do the characters seem like they inhabit the world of the film? We discuss the construction of a near-future Los […]
An Intelligence Explosion is the idea that a greater-than-human intelligent machine will quickly design a greater-than-itself intelligent machine, and so on, until very rapidly the intelligence of artificial systems greatly outstrips that of humanity. Is this hard takeoff scenario realistic? Is it possible? Is there any way to encourage future super-intelligent machines to be friendly? […]
It’s easy to find alarmist articles fretting about how addicted to technology we are becoming. It’s true that we are increasingly reliant on technology and many of us spend exorbitant numbers of hours staring at screens. But is it fair to describe this behavior as addiction? What does it mean to be addicted to technology? […]
When we were growing up, kids knew how to use the internet and adults didn’t. Should we expect that our kids will have a similar experience? Are generation gaps declining as access expands, attitudes change, longevity increases, and interest trumps age as an indicator of knowledge? Rebellion largely seems irrelevant and the only exception to […]
We ask “Is privacy coming to an end, and if so, what does that mean exactly?” We examine progress in the areas of always-on surveillance and lifelogging, facial recognition, and other technologies that are eroding traditional spheres of privacy. Might this lead to tyranny or to greater tolerance? Is a transparent, sousveillance society that watches […]
What is technological unemployment, and should we be worried about it? Hosts Jon Perry and Ted Kupper discuss the problems associated with technological unemployment and some possible responses in this episode . Relevant Links Decline of Scarcity Article: A Detailed Critique of Race Against the Machine Decline of Scarcity Article: Ten Responses to the Technological Unemployment Problem Economic Possibilities […]
In this first episode of the REVIEW THE FUTURE podcast, we speculate on the topic of accelerating technological returns. If technological progress is truly accelerating, that has wide reaching implications. Relevant Links Decline of Scarcity Article: Is Technological Progress Accelerating or Not? Peter Thiel’s Founder’s Fund: What Happened to the Future? The Law of Accelerating […]