Hard Sci-Fi (ciencia ficcion dura)

This blog is the long-delayed follow-up to the previous blog on Hard Science Fiction. Read the previous blog post here.

The original blog was posted on August 16th, so I have been extremely remiss in not getting around to the sequel. In my defense, I did move countries again (!) and have almost finished the 60,000 word Sci-Fi book around which this post is based.

So, in the last blog, I promised a discussion on Qualia and Quantum Consciousness. It is an extremely central theme of the book.

Qualia? Yup, it’s a word I hadn’t come across before I started writing the book. But in running through some research it popped up and I was hooked. My book’s (soon to be published, follow me here or on Goodreads for updates) major theme is interconnectedness, even across vast spatial distances and temporal barriers. Qualia helped me bridge those issues.

First termed by C. S. Lewis in 1929 (a bit of a pervert old CS, so factor that into your consideration of what follows), Qualia can be referred to as the phenomenal properties of experience, and experiences that have qualia are referred to as being phenomenally conscious.

OhhhhKayyyy? So let’s dumb that down a little. In terms that I can understand, it is the concept of why we all share a common set of properties of things that defy scientific explanation. The smell of a fine Bordeaux, the touch of the skin of a peach, the pain of a paper cut.

These things are essentially experiential, not experimental.

TBH – it is mostly a philosophical discussion, but it begins to touch on the subject of telepathy which of course makes scientists balk. For full disclosure, I am as far from being spiritual as is possible, but as one of the characters in my book states:

“But isn’t that puzzling to you?” Aroha looked around at the faces of the other researchers. They all looked back, serious as they considered the conundrum. “We all recognize the sensation of red, and we all agree when we see it, but we have no way to communicate it, and there is nothing in science that tells us what it should be like. The color red and the smell of the rose are examples of qualia. We humans perceive them as strong and firmly unified properties of our surroundings, of the real world, whereas in actual fact they are simply products of our consciousness.”

It made me sit up and think, and the concept that perhaps we ‘share’ what we consider to be unified properties, precisely because we ‘share’ elements of our consciousnesses, lent itself to what I think is a very strong chapter and a lead-in to the later stages of the book.

I am 5 (FIVE!) chapters from finishing the first draft. Close to the current word count of 60K, I am certain it will end up at 63-65K. I always add even as I edit.

Shannon Hale said it best “I’m writing a first draft and reminding myself that I’m simply shoveling sand into a box so that I can later build sandcastles.”

It is such a true quote. I am both exalted and at the same time dismayed by some of the chapters and the work that lies ahead, but it is by far my most adventurous and far-reaching novel and I am excited to get it finished.

Good grief!

Did you really read to the end of that blog? You may be the target reader for this book!

Go on, go on, go on…sign up for the blog to keep posted on release dates. I honestly think it might be more than OK.