Dot Antitote

Pale Blue Dot

This is cheesy, but for those of you who, like me, find the notions of the smallness of our planet compelling, a moving piece. Carl Sagan, despite his bitterness towards the end of his life, was a man who could put such notions more beautifully than anyone else I have come across.

The background for those who don't know: the photograph that is used as the basis of the "pale blue dot" concept is a real one. On February 14th, 1990, the Voyager 1 spacecraft, at that point roughly 4 billion miles from Earth, took a photo mosaic of the Solar System, looking back over its shoulder, as it were, on its way to the emptiness of interstellar space. The Earth, according to Wikipedia, occupied 0.12 pixels in the photo shown.

Presumptions

So I've decided to stop researching AIs and how brains work, stop writing notes and jotting down ideas, and just start my novel. For now I'm calling it simply "Process." Hey, it took me over four years to come with a title for that piece of garbage I wrote as a teenager, "Circle Writ on Water." I still like that title, but I hardly think the work was worthy of it. 1000 pages of throw-away material is certainly a good way to hash out your writing style, especially when capped with learning to write damn good college papers, if I do say so myself. Faust never knew what hit him...

260 words in and it's coming along quite well. I like this idea of creating an alternative present.

This is a damn good idea, and I don't think anyone else has done anything quite like this, so it would be a waste to not write something that uses it.

And not that anyone cares, but I have started Meaningless Phrases #2.