"What Do You Give The Alien Who Has Everything?" is coming along swimmingly. Instead of doing the barbecue-and-fireworks thing for Independence Day, I spent most of the weekend indoors typing - and I loved it. I am deep in the zone and very pleased with how the story is coming together. I can't wait to share it with you. It's hard to do a word count for a Choose Your Own Adventure, but by my best estimation, I wrote over 10,000 words this weekend - and that's just a small fraction of the story's total length. So far. ;-P
A couple of people have asked me whether I plan to make the original "What Do You Give the Man Who Has Everything?" available again. I don't think so, no. When you read "What Do You Give the Alien," you'll see that a good 80% of "What Do You Give the Man" is still in there, and you'll have about eighty times as much new story on top of the old.
This won't be a long post; I don't suppose many people are spending their weekend online anyway. But I to talk for a minute about another subject, completely unrelated to what's above. In between bouts of writing over the weekend, I started reading another Jeff VanderMeer book, City of Saints and Madmen. It's a collection of interconnected stories centering on a fantastical, slightly steampunk city called Ambergris. There are monsters, both human and inhuman. There is fungus. But this book is so unlike the Southern Reach series that it's hard to believe they were written by the same author.
Now, City of Saints and Madmen didn't grip me immediately the way Annihilation and Authority did. In fact, I actually thought at first that I'd wasted my money buying it. Then the book took the same kind of hard left turn that VanderMeer pulled off at the beginning of Authority, and I'm pretty sure I actually said "holy fucking shit" out loud. You might think you know where the first story is heading. You might think you know where VanderMeer wants you to think it's heading, and that you know where it's really heading instead. Well, he is trying to make you think it's heading somewhere - and he's probably even trying to make you think you know where it's really heading in spite of where it appears to be heading. But you'll still be wrong about where it's heading.
If you're confused, you're meant to be.
5 comments:
Oh, *that's* where those pictures on my Facebook feed keep coming from! I was wondering!
Wow - much writing!
Also, OK, I'll ask a specific question. There's like two lines from "What Do You Give The Man" that I really loved but I don't remember them exactly and this is sad. They're the lines about the realization everyone woke up with about how John Dominic is in charge. Are they going to be in the new story? *Crosses fingers*
Yep, Bitstrips. ;-) It's a fun little app.
Your question is a little hard to answer, not because I'm trying to keep the new plot a secret, but because I don't quite know how to explain the changes I've made.
It sounds like you're referring to the sudden realization everyone had in the original story, that John Dominick ruled the planet and they couldn't do anything to oppose him. That's not *quite* how it works in the CYOA, but I hope you'll like the new version of the takeover.
First, you need to know that there are two "Imperators": Steven Dominick and Julia Alexander. That way, readers have a choice of whether to risk getting brainwashed by a man or a woman.
Second, in order to give the CYOA an appropriate level of tension, I couldn't make the Imperators' control as total as it was in the original story. In the new version, they can send out "pacification fields" of varying sizes and strengths (*Why* they vary is one of the mysteries you can solve as you read the story) whenever they need to make something happen or stop something from happening. They originally took over with a field strong enough to make all earth's nations destroy their most powerful weapons and forget how to make more. That same field stupefied the average person on the street so thoroughly that they could hardly move or think for three days - but it didn't last.
At the time the CYOA begins, the Imperators generally leave the pacification field turned off or set very low, so people can resist them if they put some effort into it. But they feel defeated anyway because the pacification fields are a continuing threat, and the Imperators have provided convincing evidence that they can't be killed. They've also overcome a joint raid by SEALs and the British SBS, enslaving all those soldiers in the process. And they're holding lots of world leaders and royalty as happy hostages. ;-)
Does that answer your question? If it doesn't, I'll be glad to say more.
ooh! That is super exciting! Very looking forward to Julia Alexander :)
My question was actually literally about the *phrases*. Something like 'John Dominic is in charge of the world. This is the way things are and that's it'. Or... something (as noted, I can't remember them very well, sadly).
So, yes, this does answer it, in that clearly they will not be in the new version. Ah well. Sometimes one loses things, I suppose. I will take solace in the upcoming cool things!
(I will admit to being a bit tempted to say that does not answer the question, so that I can learn more about said cool things. But I am honorable :) )
:-) I think you'll like Julia Alexander. She and Steven (who isn't quite like John was) have very different personalities - and there's a reason for that. It's another mystery you can solve as you read.
Anyway, I went back to the old story (saved on my hard drive) and found the passage you were thinking about. Here it is:
Until today, most of the world had felt only a flick of the Master's whip. Five months ago, on what should have been a perfectly ordinary day, they had all been struck with a simultaneous realization: "John Dominic rules the earth. I will always obey him. I will never rebel against him." They hadn't even known who John Dominic *was* then, but it didn't matter. Those three simple statements were as incontrovertible as gravity. When the man proclaimed himself Emperor of the planet and disbanded all other forms of government, not a single voice raised in protest.
!! Thank you!
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