Writing a book (and random artwork by random artists)!

As some of you might know, I've been hard at work (for a couple of years now), working on a science-fiction universe and a handful of narrative arcs, that I feel appeals to both newcomers to the genre, as well as hardcore fans and science enthusiasts. It's been a lot of messing around, researching, interviewing scientists and trying to figure out how to even write a book in the first place. I've found much inspiration in all kinds of media, from Doctor Who to Dune to Deus Ex, Mass Effect and Star Wars (just to name a few). But now I'm approaching the point at which everything moves from being just the skeleton of a story, to actual, self-contained narratives. The characters begin to talk and interact with one another, and I'm starting to flesh out the environments, so that they make sense in the minds of the readers.

As I got started, however, I felt like an important element was missing, something very common in interactive media, but not so much in books - additional lore. But lucky as I am, Dune came to the rescue with an excellent solution: Prefacing each chapter with a small piece of literature, written by someone from the fictional universe I'm creating. And so I wrote a draft for the very first thing you'll see, in the very first book, which I now want to share with you all:

“It’s always interesting to compare the real post-AI Earth, to what we imagined it to be like in fiction. We often pictured the dark metropolis, or the weirdly low-tech spacefaring civilizations, who seemed to have forgotten the full ramifications of their own technology. But the truth is, our minds are bleeding into reality, and we are now aesthetically closer to what was pictured in fantasy, than we ever were to the cyberpunk dystopia. Yet the corporate culture remains.”

Excerpt from ‘The World in Retrospect.’

The plan for the books (which are currently laid out as a trilogy, but that may be subject to change, of course) is to create a technological and societal odyssey. We start in our near future, then move forward, propelled into the unknown to explore the potential mysteries and wonders we might ourselves encounter one day. It's a blast to write, I can tell you that. I hope one day you'll feel the same way when reading it - when I'm done writing in, say, probably 500 years.

Also here's a few random pictures from my inspiration folder, alongside one of my favorite soundtracks. All rights to the original creators of the pieces (sorry, authors, I'll add credits whenever I track you down), thanks for letting me stare at your work when I have my writer's blocks:

These are just a tiny portion of the artwork I use to get my head into gear. As you might have noticed though, it's all environmental art. So here's a few art-pieces I like to refer to for a bit of inspiration on the character design. Note that I very rarely just describe a character as-is from another piece of work that I've seen. I like to look at all the substituent elements that make up the character as a whole, then take each of those elements individually and see how I can stitch them together, to more accurately reflect the persona I need it to portray. Because of this, the following pieces are a bit more of a mish-mash than the environmental art, but hopefully it'll give you a small idea of what I'm trying to do. Just take these with a (heavy) grain of salt:

In case you are wondering about the bear, I'm introducing the concept of AI-enhanced animals. If we can improve our own intelligence with the help of technology, we're only one step away from doing the same thing to our pets, sometimes to hilarious effect.