Collin’s Comments (group member since Jan 25, 2011)

Collin’s comments from the The Five Ghosts group.

I used to be able to write to music with lyrics, but now I find it impossible. I find that I stop writing entirely, fingers hovering over the keyboard, trying to remember what it was I wanted to write.

In high school I got some of my best writing done while listening to the Smashing Pumpkins' album "Machina and the Machines of God," stuff I look back on and ask, 'how did I write like this?'

These days it's all instrumental, or sung in a language I can't understand.

Music composed by Arvo Part is hugely relaxing; very meditative and perfect to have going on in the background. Sigur Ros too, if I'm not finding myself particularly easily distracted that day.

Oh, and thank you everyone! Although now I feel like I really need to start writing this! ;-)

"M" is sort of a working title. M stands for M-theory which is so far the best bet on the 'theory of everything,' a way of describing why everything in the universe works the way it does.

And from what I've read thus far, it's weird. Like, really weird. So weird that most of this book's develoment will probably be taken up with research!

Now, why is the theory called 'M'? Ask a different scientist and she/he'll give you a different answer! 'Membrane,' 'Mystery,' 'Matrix (ya, rly),' and even 'Monster' have been used to stand in for 'M'. Really, it's String Theory, only stings with width.

I was thinking of giving our mysterious stranger a symbol on prominite part of his anatomy wherever he goes and whatever he is in the shape of our 'M' to help tie it in even more, but I still might change it.

Tristan wrote: "Give me an hour or two and I'll be back with your review of this description of your story :)"

*waits* ^_^

My overly ambitious sci-fi:

"M" by C.M.

'A trillion years into the future, the last surviving civilizations of the universe have gathered by the last burning star. And it has started to die.

Living in ships that orbit this star, these cultures have independently built simulated worlds to artificially live out their lives. Some try to simulate reality, creating planetscapes that look most like what they believe their home worlds used to be; many choose to design worlds that reflect an ideal, or fantasy, or an old folktale. Most want nothing to do with the other, neighboring species, preferring to live in autonomous peace.

Then a stranger arrives.

In a ship of unknown design and origin, its pilot can hack into these simulated worlds, taking on the form of each species. "He" is attempting to gain their trust, to gain information from all the last advanced civilizations of the universe.

"His" mission?

To find a way out of this dead, cold universe, and into a new, living one part of the foam that makes up the multiverse. And to take everyone with "him".

Seen from the viewpoint of this visitor, "he" will travel through mystic deserts, the perpetual battles of an artificial war, and into landscapes that are mere expressions of mathematical concepts. He will become beings of carbon, silicon, and those with hardly any form at all.

In the quest for the sciences of the very large and the very small, our scientist will become many things. But knowledge is not always forth coming. Xenophobia still exists, even at the end of everything; and one who can become anything is the least trusted of all.'

Rachel wrote: "I keep trying to start Dune, and I keep failing. I wonder why that is."

It's really a 'you have to be in a certain mindset in order to enjoy this' kinda book.

i.e. stoned/drunk.

Okay, not really.

It kinda has an odd ending, one that most definitely ends this part in the series, but ends on a rather out of place line.

At least, it felt out of place to me. It seemed like it would have been more appropriate mixed in somewhere earlier in the book, not the end of it.

Over all certainly better than any of the film adaptations!

It wasn't until just now I realized that, while I started and quite enjoyed The Graveyard Book, for some reason I never finished!

Shame on me!

So I second it!