Exodus

[woolleywrld]

Sorry, i posted before I could finish.
I was going to say that it does sound like Mara wears normal clothing in the New World. But I think that the fabric is different, lighter maybe, because when she is on the boat it says that her New World clothes can't withstand the harsh weather.
"Digital Books"????? Isn't that just a movie? That is a bit worrying!
And isn't "The Golden Compass" just the collective name of the trilogy? I thought they were making a film of all three books... I don't actually know, I haven't even read them yet. I'm in the process...

[Julie Bertagna]

Amazing photo, Namorvia, thanks for that! Now imagine the ice and snow melted into an interior sea, punctuated by mountains...

The urchins were indeed naked in Exodus but found clothing in the museum hoard then in the caves among the bones and skulls. The lumens in Exodus are a bit like the AOL girl (the New World has developed many synthetic materials including clothing and building materials) Feel free to start a Q&A thread, though your own ideas are interesting!

Sean Connery or Billy Connelly for Tain - now there's a thought. Don't know if I've ever said but Tain is actually inspired (craggy chin and all) by the late Orkney writer George Mackay Brown. Tain is my fictional tribute to him. There's a quote of GMB in Zenith.

I thought of the sky citizens as sounding quite neutral & 'transatlantic'. They travel between sky cities so there would be a motley mix of languages and accents (think of Star Trek!) Maybe quite a lot of Euan Macgregor transatlantic Scots accents in New Mungo...? If you are uprooted from the land probably accent flattens out.

[73, magic number]

Cool, what do you think of digital books Julie?

[Julie Bertagna]

Hi 73, do you mean the technology on which you would download and read a digital book? Or the concept of producing paper versions digitally? There are all sorts of issues over copyright and how to make sure authors would earn fair royalties if the right to copy and sell your work were open to everyone (it's hard enough to get fair royalties now, believe me).

I'm in two minds about the technology. Right now, I don't think there's anything to beat the technology of a paperback book - it's cheap, lightweight, you can take it anywhere, don't need batteries, etc...I've had books survive being dropped in baths and run over by buses. I'd argue it's one of the best bits of technology ever invented! And I love to own bookshelves full of actual books - I'm not sure if even the best digital book (paper or downloaded) can replace that. (But who knows? I've grown to love my laptop and ipod and can't imagine life without them though I've only had them a few years...)

But the other, green side of me says books downloaded without paper on a portable device must be the way to go, environmentally. No more chopping down forests, pulping excess copies.... but then it does use plastic, batteries, energy, so it is very green?

I'm interested to see how the technology will evolve.

What do you think?

[Namorvia]

Mara's cyberwiz is solar powerered so i'm waiting for that technology to develop, i like solar power. How much further do we have to advance before we're there, calculators can be pretty complex these days (showing graphs and stuff) and I have my PDA (palm top computer (what it is, not what PDA stands for, that i'm not sure of)) Which is no bigger than a calculator and while its not powered solarly it can do all sort; access the internet, play music, use word/exel/pwrpnt. And most/some phones can do that now too. I'd say its actually more powerful and useful than our families first computer back on Windows 3.1 and Dos. It might be worth experimenting into how much of our ever expanding array of gadgets, our mobiles, ipods, etc. could maybe be charged solarly. Admittedly most devices are to small to carry the pannels on themselves, but clothing, cars, buildings, all the places we keep our gadgets might be.

Ooh, that got carried away. Anyone ever see that film, i forget what its called, but i think its Mel Gibson and he thinks he's abducted by aliens and then he can think really clearly and one of the things he comes up with is using Chlorophyll on solar panels to make them more effective, i'm guessing it doesn't actually work otherwise we'd do it, but there could be some such "natural engineering" tricks out there that could help.

Apparently there was an artical in New Scientist a while back (a year or so now) about wind power, saying that they were looking at creating the wind power generators high up in the air suspended by the speed of the wind up there then they would just put a cable all the way down to the ground.

How did i get on to that... talk of batteries i think.
I prefer books to trying to read stories on a screen. I hung around a fantasy forum a while back and rather than read peoples stories on the screen i used to print them off. I even tend to print off my own stories occationally to edit them on paper. Its harder to change then, but easier to see what needs changing.

If they could find some way of having a book that could change the story inside it that would be good, maybe even better than a normal book, because it would be personal, like a diary, because you've read all your books in that one book. If someone came up with flexipaper you could it with braille, pins underneath push up the words then you push a button to change the page and it changes where the pins are for the next page. Not quite like a real book, but its an idea. Hmm, now my minds buzzing.

[Julie Bertagna]

What about this? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3568505.stm

Maybe this is how we'll read in the future...?

I'm with Namorvia; it has to be solar-powered or similarly green. There's so much green technology still to be developed. Imagining what could be is fascinating, and imagining new ways to exist on this planet is the way we have to go. I don't think there's an option!

I get a lot of mail asking about the technology and architecture - the way people live - in EXODUS and ZENITH. For me, speculative fiction (novels that 'wonder' about the future) works as an imaginative twist or projection of what exists here, now.


If the oceans rise, could towering sky cities and vast sea bridges ever exist? Well...

Here are the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpar. 32,000 windows. (It's easy to imagine the pinnacle as New Mungo's cybercathedral, and Fox perhaps in that lone bright window towards the top.)




Lake Pontachartrain Causeway, Louisiana, US (almost 24 miles long)



What's interesting is I only saw these images AFTER I had imagined them and written about them.


Floating cities? http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~bat/sea-city.html

In Zenith, there is a mountain city, set with scavenged car doors that the ocean has washed up. That outlandish idea came from a photo of a Palestinian child outside the front door of his home, which was a car door set in a dirt burrow in a bombed crater. Astonishing.

[73, magic number]

Wow. Floating cities and artificial land are cool, but what if solar energy isn't used- I mean, for industry and stuff, its not that cheap.

Take Dubai, its becoming so industrial and rich its evengot its own form of cruel entertainment. Kid'slaves' are tied to camels for racing. The training is harsh and the children get nothing, wheras the owners get all the money.Children are frequently deprived of food and water to keep them light.

And this is a tourist attraction!

Technology today is amazing and all, but the power it gives people is deluding.

On a happier note, I have found some photoswhich almost exactly match my view of the New Mungo towers!

[woolleywrld]

Wow! Those cities look amazing. And I do like the sound of digital books actually, I didn't even know what they were until I heard about them on this forum. I also love the feeling of having my own paper book, being able to fold the pages, I even like them smell of them...is that weird? But I am very forgetful, and I have lost a lot of books (after I read them thankfully). So a digital book like that which can hold, what was it, 500 texts? Now, that would be handy! But I also agree that it would be nicer if it was solar powered (although it does seem like it doesn't take toooo much to power it, 10,000 pages on 4 AAA batteries, not bad!)

I have seen in Denmark and other places they are already using wind power. They have windmills spread out across the ocean. I have also heard about people doing research trying to find a way to use hydrgen as energy. Its so available in the air and in water, it could happen someday.

Those Petronas Towers look amazing, that is almost exactly how I imagined the sky cities in my head! And that bridge, I never connected it with the bridge in the sky, although I am sure the bridge in the sky goes on a little longer than 24 miles, right?

[Julie Bertagna]

Actually, the causeway in the above photo is a similar idea to to the 'sea bridges' I imagined the New World building across the sea (using refugees from the boat camp as slave-power.)

'Sky tunnels' connect the many, vast towers of the New World sky cities - like having streets in the sky. (It's in a sky tunnel that Mara, literally, crashes into Fox.)

From today's Sunday Herald, this might be of interest to anyone who has read Exodus and imagined the floating refugee boat camp around the New World sky city:

PLAN TO FLOAT VILLAGES ON THE CLYDE
http://www.sundayherald.com/news/her..._the_clyde.php

AND

SUFFERING BENEATH THE SKYSCRAPERS
http://www.sundayherald.com/internat...708466.0.0.php

[Julie Bertagna]

And then there's this:

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/20...n_reading.html

It's not for me - like woolleywrld, I think there's nothing to beat the look, feel and scent of a crisp new book, or even the evocative fustiness of a 2nd hand one. I don't think you could compare it to a book though it's certainly a form of art/ text and if people enjoy it, great. I wonder if we will over time evolve brains that can only process information and text in thumb-friendly snippets.... and that would be the death of the book.

[woolleywrld]

Now that is just mental!!! Novels in a text message??? That completly defeats the purpose of reading! It's kind of cool that they are coming up with new ways of getting people to read "novels" but i guess you can't really call that a novel. It must be a completely new kind of media. It seems almost like a soap opera in text form. Cliff hangers and the like, haha. Oh well, whatever floats your boat I guess. But yes you're right, I prefer to be able to hold the book, fold the pages, etc. Cal me old fashioned but I think I'll stick with my paper rather than my phone.

[Julie Bertagna]

Fantastic images, 73.

I didn't know about the slave urchins. My own urchins in Exodus and Zenith were a take on the South American 'sewer urchins.' Sadly, real life is often more surreal and cruel than anything you could invent in fiction.

Here's another sea/ sky city image from among my hoard. There's another that I prefer but it was too big a file to upload. You can have a look on: http://solarvoyager.com/uploads/JanL...city_scene.jpg




Must dig out a few images I found that are very close to how I envisage the Noos (the New World's cyber-universe).

[woolleywrld]

I hadn't seen 73's pictures yet, those are amazing! The Dubai Towers...totally New Mungo!! That almost exactly matches how I saw them too! That is amazing.

Something else in the books that I have been thinking more about recently (actually I am writing a paper in my Sociology class and I am including Exodus and Zenith in my paper) is the socialisation of these kids in the future. The norms and beliefs they have based on how the world has changed. I love thinking about what could have changed or what may have been forgotten to make the people of Pomperoy worship the Man in the Middle (AKA Colonel Sanders!!). Or how Mara could have never heard of Mcdonalds or Irn-bru. They all have different values and even different knowledge of what kids today have. (This is a rare moment where I am truly excited about writing a paper! ) Anyone notice any other little things in the socialisation of these kids in the future?

[Namorvia]

Does anyone remember the film water world (i'm guessing there was a book which preceded it, but i've never looked), it was basically mad max on sea but it invisioned a world where the polar icecaps had melted and the world was flooded. Dirt was seen as an extremely valuable comodity because it could be used to grow food and also because it suggested that there might still be land somewhere out there. I tried briefly to find a picture of their floating villages and towns but I can't find one, they looked a bit like forts.

Another issue brought up recently in my lectures (I'm studying ecology) was kelp growth, i can't remember the exact figures and i can't find the notes that said it but they were comparing the gowth of kelp to terrestrial agricultural crops. The kelp grow fast because it would only take one large storm to destroy them, i think it was mentioned that in terms of forces a 5mph current under water would be the equivilent of a 25mph wind on land, so the kelp are under much greater forces, more likely to break so they need to grow and reproduce faster making them a much more useful crop providing we would all be willing to start eating it. That's not really a new idea though, its mentioned in Omen 2 and Soilent Green, in both its used to feed an overpopulated world and i think noos food is made of it isn't it (just dolled up to look like real food)

If my post seem scattered by the way i currently don't have a computer or the internet at my house so i'm only online in the library, yay!

[Mary Hoffman]

Originally Posted by woolleywrld

And isn't "The Golden Compass" just the collective name of the trilogy? I thought they were making a film of all three books... I don't actually know, I haven't even read them yet. I'm in the process...

The collective name for all three books is His Dark Materials. The Golden Compass is the American title of Northern Lights and hence for the film, otherwise it wouldn't get distributed in the US.

I don't know why your thread has been invaded by Philip Pullman, though, Julie.

Mary