NaNoWriMo :: NaNoWriMo Blog

Hi,

Giving characters to each planet is not new in Hindu ancient literature, especially in astrology. There are many and many interesting stories around that.

According to them, Saturn is the son of Sun. While Sun is extremely good looking, fair in complexion,
Saturn happens to be dark in colour and in the least good looking. Therefore, Sun takes a dislike to Saturn. Saturn is much more powerful than his own father and if Saturn decides to punish human beings, Sun can do little to reverse it.

This is just one example and they give characters and colours (like green, orange, yellow) to all planets. They are powerful enough to interfere in the life of humans on earth , they should be offered particular grain to appease them and so on and so forth.

There is a huge gamut of literature in astrology and astronomy, nuclear physics, and space science in Sanskrit language.

Gosh! if only people could take time off to read them!

And what is not personified in Hindu way of life? We are always accused of worshipping hundred thousand gods.

I wish you all the best and I sincerely wish you had time to refer a few of the books atleast!

I, too, feel sorry for both Pluto and your plot, but I am delighted that you are joinng the huge NaNoWriMo family of misfits, nuts and general malcontents. Here's hoping you'll fit right in, if that's even possible. I'll see you in the winnner's circle on Dec. 1!

I love your idea!!!

Are you going to include anything about black holes and so on? That could be fun to interpret...maybe they're the unattractive ones! Ahahahaha. Ha. *pause* Ha.

Exploring a new side of long-distance relationships. Charming.

Stars? Comets? Asteroids? Are ringed planets vain about it? Or is that some sort of chastity belt feature? Are the gaseous ones...um...gassy? How about dark matter? Are there life forms on these other planets and how do they relate to the planets? Are any of these planets related? Can they cheat on each other?

*am really really tired but having too much fun to stop*

What's the interplanetary equivalent of a long walk on the beach? Are gravity and hormones the same thing? Do they have gender? If men are from Mars and women are from Venus, do those planets have a, you know, history? Are the stars just extra-famous and, if so, what for? Political position? How do they communicate? Does astrology relate to any of this? Can planets get married? Can they have babies? How about a planetary version of the seven year itch?

Okay, I better go now. I think I might be avoiding thinking about my own story...

usually, I am not interested in sci-fi, but if I read such a description on the back of the book, I'd be yours truly reader!

I am new here too, WISH YOU GOOD LUCK!!!!!!!! :)

This is not the lamest idea I ever heard. The lamest idea I ever heard is my historical sci-fi opera/puppet show set in the 1653 imaginary colonial space village of Kornblastory about the doomed love between a ham sandwich named and astronomy.

emo sci-fi sounds obscure and deliscious at the
same time.. there has been treatment of planets
having consciousness.. might mix some ancient history
in there with planetary chakra's.. there's evidence
in the vedas and quballah... i think time travel
sex scenes would be smooth.. wouldn't we all want to
have the perfect kiss last forever.. word avalanche
to all!

since a few other comic geeks have raised their heads, I'll chime in. There's a sentient planet in DC comics named Mogo, that is a member of the Green Lantern Corps. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mogo)
It/He was introduced in a fairly famous story by Alan Moore (author of graphic novels The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, V for Vendetta, From Hell, and The Watchmen, to name a few.)

But in any case, don't worry if the broader concept has been used before. Humans have been writing for 10,000 years, there are no completely original concepts. In the end, the "cool concept" is not what will make your book, but the quality of the writing.

Welcome Tavia. I really hope you enjoy your job. It sounds like a blast!

Seems there are quite a few "newbies" here, including yours truly. I've done some poetry in the past and even a 4 page short story that never seems to be finished.

Anyway, the idea of "sentient" planets seems to me as old as the hills... but you sound like you will give it a new twist. At least it sounds like it might come off as a comedy.

I'm just hoping I can come close to the aproximately 1,700 words a day I need to get through this.

Good Luck y'all

Well I guess welcome is in order! I didn't personally see the welcome wagon but I'm sure it'll be along shortly. Just wanted to say hello!

Hi,Tavia. I am new to NaNoWriMo myself. I have attempted novel writing before but could never seem to make it beyond novella length. Thus I have a file full of novel beginnings waiting for me to pick them back up someday.

Earlier this year I decided to take up the NaNoWriMo challenge when it came. I have new story ideas generating in my head right now. I just have to hold on until November 1st.

In folklore the earth is often depicted as sentient. I have depicted it as sentient in some of the poems I have written.

By reading some of the comments here I can just see poor Pluto offended after losing membership with his old social club with the other planets.

Ann McCaffrey!!!! Those are the ones I read and they were wonderful!!!! Powers that Be, and the followup books. Go for it!!!!
Marcy

There is a wonderful book out there which I have read and it is about a living planet. I only wish I could remember the name of it. I remember that it was a fairly thick paperback. The planet actually helps it's inhabitants. I will see if I can track it down.

I wish you much luck in your first endevor with NaNoWriMo. I did not complete my first attemp but am very willing to complete this one. I have learned alot over the last year about my craft and will give it my all.

YOU GO GIRL!!!!

Marcy

The living planet is pretty common. Almost a cliche. The last story I saw with it concerned someone trying to bring salvation to a living planet. -C

You have a complete cosmology available, if you accept some eastern influence.

The movie "Final Fantasy, The Spirits Within" lays out a living cosmology, assigning to each world a living spirit of a distinct character, and builds a science-fiction adventure on top of it.

Maybe help you frame it up?

If YOU were Pluto, Dark Lord of the Underworld, which designation would sound more appropriately Black Metal to you?

1. Planet
2. Binary Ice Dwarf Planet

Yeah, baby.

If someone were to label me a "dwarf planet" after years of being number 9 of 9, I would be very offended. "Little planet" would be politically correct. Sounds like a complex of some sort would develop, making me a small, cold resentful rock of ice.

I wouldn't inflict my inferior feelings on all 8 planets, though. Just that third one from the sun, the wet one with the big ego that started this whole mess in the first place.

I am a nanonewbie as well. I wish you luck on your stellar postion and with your writing adventure. Go for it and deal with the details later

KISS - Keep It Simple Sunshine

MJH

Emo-Sci-Fi, huh? I like it! Anything that has more than one hypen in it does it for me.

Congrats on your new job. It sounds VERY cool! And good luck with you're first NaNoWriMo! I'm participating for the first time this year as well, and couldn't be more excited. I know. I'm a nerd.

I like the idea ... roll with it.

Dozens of escutcheons made their craggy way across the old ship from bow to stern. Like bark on and old Douglass Fir or a Redwood of monolithic proportions the plated armor sections of the warship battle scarred and plasma blasted were badges of distinction on the oldest faster than light cruiser in the universe. I was her captain for a period of my life, but that was before the armor plates went up. Our mission was to explore.

Many of the entries in my log are lost to my memory. But I do remember that I rode her deeper into space than any person ever would. My memories are all a blur of senseless faces and intercepted radio transmissions snipped from galaxies far, far beyond my mortal capabilities of comprehension. I remember though that there were eight of us all told before the hull was decommissioned, and that of the eight that chained their souls to her hull, and her vast array of circuits, I, the explorer captained her further and deeper than any of the others.

For the ship to return in a useful state the scientists needed a human entity, a soul to pilot their ship, a creature with the will to live and survive, a desire to return home, in short someone with something to loose. I was well qualified, so they took me and jacked my mind into their AI machine, and we took of for the outer reaches of the Hubble telescope’s deepest visions.

When we arrived at the coordinates imposed upon our will, we lingered on for a short time taking pictures, sending data packets back home through the buoy chain of telecom satellites we had laid out together like Hansel and Gretel little bread crumbs to transmit data back home.

All I can say is that “it” is bigger than even Einstein could have imagined. Oppenheimer’s little fiasco out in New Mexico was nothing compared to the awe-striking destruction unleashed by the “it” out there. Lost in awe we were, but our commingling trespass across the grand vastness of mother universe did not go unnoticed. Our tiny ripples tugged the whiskers of some leviathan and it chose not to ignore our passage.

If you can imagine a catfish with the quills of a porcupine you may have read one too many of Lovecraft’s tales, but you would not be too far off, if you also understood that this creation was also a constellation in the skies of a distant place. It was a place in a place that humans had never known. It was a creature that haunted my dreams and the dreams of my kin for generations after my death.

The planet was a class M planet, so we dumped a few tons of probes on it. They that lived there followed us home as any curious, highly developed society, with questions about its aloneness and the vastness of the dark reaches of the “it” out there would have done.

Shortly after we arrived home, with “the-they” that lived out there fast on our heals, the they that built my ship began installing the plates of armor. My will had been spent. My core was retired. They jacked a new soul into the hull, the second of eight, and sent it out to do battle. All new software, specially developed, trained for a much more specific objective.

I stood with her a slave to her systems, and now I stand before her in this museum of technology and wonder if she feels any of the guilt that has steeped its way into my heart.

John Varley wrote a trilogy about a sentient planet of sorts. Check out Titan, Wizard, and Demon, in his Gaea series.

"The satellite-sized alien Gaea has gone completely insane. She has transformed her love of old movies into monstrous realities. She is Marilyn Monroe. She is King Kong. And now she must be destroyed."

That's the description of the last book in the series. Not really a spoiler. :)

And welcome aboard. Hope to meet you at one of the local events.

Sounds like a variation of mythology in this case, only in really big format. I would have to suggest not only reading up on astronomy, but mythology.

Yeah, planets can be sentient. It's been done in film (see Solaris) and in TV (see the Blake's 7 season two episode called Trial) and in video games (see Alpha Centauri).

It's also been used in fiction, albeit rarely (see Nemesis and Foundation Edge by Asimov, for example).

So my point is, regular SF devotees will accept the concept easily enough.

Anne McCaffrey also wrote three books with Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, Powers that Be, Power Lines, and Power Plays - the central theme of them is a planet that has become sentient and is finding ways to express itself. *grins*

This year will be my first year participating in NaNoWriMo too... and I have a bit of a quandry - I have two potential plots to work on. One of them needs a LOT of background detail worked out but would plenty long... The second one just needs a bit of research, but I'm not sure it'll make it to 50,000 words!

I don't know of a precedent for emotional planets (though Marvel has a bunch of junk in their comics about some "living planets" - I think the main one is named Ego), but a really, really fine episode of the Outer Limits, written by Harlan Ellison (who is the greatest. Guy. Ever.) does a fine, fine job of showing how sentient ships (named "Ship") feel emotions towards one another and towards the lone "human operators" (called "Man" and "woman") required to make them go.

I think the ep. is called "the Human Operators," and it's available through NetFlix. I can't recommend this one highly enough.

I envy your job. So. Much.

Were I not still a university student, I'd have applied for it myself and relocated. Alas, since I have other obligations, it is not to be... oh well, maybe there'll be an internship available somewhere down the line.

Anyways, welcome! I hope you enjoy working with the amazing, insane NaNoWriMo bunch.

I've read a couple stories where planets were sentient. Even a webcomic. Good luck with your novel this November. Don't let the Inner Editor get you down.

Oh. Right. That's what you said in the first place. D'oh! I am an idiot for not reading carefully enough.

Either that or it's a Senior Moment. I get to claim those now, you know. :-D

(The welcome still qualifies as genuine, though!)

I just know that Pluto's hurt feelings will work into this somewhere, right??

Welcome, Tavia, and go get 'em, in all directions!

I've never seen it done with planets, but a place to start might be Anne McCaffrey's Ship Who Sang series. It centers around the concept of a sentient (and more or less immortal) ship who falls for its very mortal captain. Maybe more serious than what you're going for . . . maybe you're thinking more Marvin the Paranoid Android and his onging complaints about the doors on the ship being too happy in the Hitchiker's Guide.

And the "add romance to time travel" part, there's a very real and growing market for it. They call it Paranormal Romance, and it's wide open for people to fall in love with people from other times, aliens, fairies, pan-dimensional beings, etc. There are lines coming out from everybody from TOR to Harelquin. (See Killing Time by Linda Howard as an example of time-travel romance.)

As for finding the true heart of modern man, I think that's what we're all trying to do with our novels, and I wish you the best of luck with it. I mean, what is modern man, anyway? (Okay, I can't help it, I'm a librarian -- have you read Feed by M.T. Anderson? It's about a future where we all have a souped-up version of the internet grafted to our nervous systems. Modern man? Yes?)

I think the main obstical of having a planet as a protagonist is that they can't actually break out of their orbits and DO anything. Or can they? Maybe with the right burst of NANO-induced enthusiosanity . . .

I think you can do it!

Amber

I think your new genre is a creative one, but alas, I would be unable to assist you, as I'm battling my own plot demons at the moment. Sorry.

But I do want to welcome you to the NaNoWriMo fold! Since you've said this is your first, I think you'll be pleased at how friendly and encouraging everyone tends to be here.

(Not that you haven't already received healthy doses of that in your non-office.)

I wish you the best of luck on your first Nano!
And again... Welcome!

First off, welcome, Tavia. This will be my first NaNoWriMo too and I'm doing sci-fi as well, though nothing like as high concept as you.

Personally my first thought when I heard the "Pluto - you're fired" decision was to imagine Pluto somehow in a bar, getting sozzled and moaning about how it used to be a planet, back in the day. Kind of like a washed up boxer. So your idea makes sense to me. Admittedly that may not be a good sign.

there's no way to sign up before 10/1, but you can still see the 2005 postings without logging in.

when we launch the 2006 site, the 2005 postings will still be available in the 2005 archive site: http://2005.nanowrimo.org

You got the coolest job! :-)

I am also planning a first time participation in NaNoWriMo this year...

I have a question - can I sign up before Oct 1 so I can see the previous years forum postings? I couldn't find a way to sign up....

I haven't heard of Emo-Sci-Fi, but what do I know? I like Cory Doctorow's sci fi, which of the sci fi I've read (not much), I would say that might come the closest.

Last 5 books:

When Corporations Rule The World
Cradle To Cradle
The Call
The Invitation
Explaining Creativity

dare I say it,

obviously, if you're writing fiction about the planets, you'd be a fool to ignore the classical sources we pull the planet names from.

Pluto/Hades is pining for his Persephone. For whatever reason, he has to fight Neptune/Poseidon not only for his love, but also (dragging in some of the more recent astronomical debate) his very right to exist in the heavens.

Pluto and his ally, Charon the ferryman (temporarily freed from his obligation to carry our fat asses across the styx) must fight an uphill battle alongside their allies Ceres, Chiron, and however-many-other-astronomic-names-you'd-care-to-reference to not only achieve recognition with the olympians/astrologically-or-astronomically-recoginized, but also to achieve his personal goal of union with his beloved Persephone.

Hell, if you don't write it, I may have to; even though my own plans drift in different directions