my apologies to science

Had my monthly meeting with my illustrator, one Ryan Dodgeson. He made pancakes, extra thick, I brought fresh croissants, and we downed it all with coffee. Somewhere between bites we talked a bit about the book we are working on.

The meetings were supposed to be a motivating factor. Once a month we pick a day to meet and I have to have a chapter ready to show and discuss. So far we have had two meetings and I have been prepared for both. More importantly they have been fruitful meetings of minds, with Ryan taking my visual ideas and making them better, and our banter (and the coffee) fueling new ideas.

These talks end up, for better or worse, me getting all worked up about Math, giving Ryan a mini-lecture about the number-theory that I love so much. Within one of these rants we decided that the book will feature the following inscription on the back-cover,

File Under: Math Fiction

The idea being that, while yes the book is set hundreds of years in the future, the tag of 'science fiction' would be misleading. Sure, sci-fi is the easiest way to explain the genre of the book;I can't count the number of times I used that term this weekend to explain it quickly. At the same time though, Math (infinity and everything to do with it) is what guides the whole book, whereas Science (organic robots that can live forever) is something I can use to make the Math into a story.

A question I got a lot this weekend is if I have the whole story for book planned out in my mind. The short answer is no, but I have been thinking about the details of the beginning of the story for the past 6 years or so. I confident that if I create a real enough backstory/world and characters within it, then I can let the math guide a story around them. 

Despite having no ending plotted, and being just past a third of the way through the writing the book, I already have my in-no-way-secret dream about where I hope the book will one day be published. Right here:

     

Jen and I just got back from our honeymoon in San Francisco and one of our stops was here, 826 Valencia, aka mcsweeneys. Clearly I went into their retail store with high expectations, which were exceeded in every way possible. Besides publishing a great quarterly, wonderful books (i.e. What is the What by Dave Eggers) , and a great magazine, they use this space for two other functions: one is their not-for-profit youth writing center which itself produces tonnes of writing. Browsing through one such youth-penned guide to SF we found out where to find one of the best meals I have ever eaten:

It tasted even better than it looks. I can feel my gut longing for it now. 

The other function of the storefront at 826 Valencia? Just another pirate supply shop, complete with buried treasure that younguns can barter for, walls of mysterious drawers, and removable floor boards where you can leave secret messages. They even had a drawer full of rotting lemons, to hold off the scurvy. My only advice to you if you ever go: be sure to read ALL of the 'mop' wall.

How big of a jump is it from pirates to androids? In my dreams, not such a big one...