It seems as though I've reached a point of difficulty with my writing. Perhaps that is why I've started this blog, in the hopes of using this medium for discipline. Will I manage to say anything useful or of interest? I certainly hope so. My only fear is that this manages to somehow manifest as some sort of self-indulgent journal, strictly auto-biographical without any real insight.
If it does turn into this, it is your job, reader, to put me out of my misery. It may be the only way.
Now that I've got that out of my system, now to consider what exactly is on my plate concerning topics. I haven't kept a blog in years, and so distilling through all my thoughts has become more daunting than it used to be. This really is a shame and is, unfortunately, my own damned fault.
I guess for me the most obvious topic is my present creative endeavor that really hasn't managed to transform into an endeavor. I want to write a book. More specifically, I want to write a novel of fiction, set far into the future, yet without typical science-fiction elements. I do not want robots, or drugged masses or big brother. I want to explore the possibility of mankind's transcendence through the growth of society, the demise of our physical surroundings and, possibly, elements of human evolution. I also, of course, want to make this work fun in some way, maintaining an element of adventure, character intrigue and if possible, humor. I suppose the genre I imagine being post sci-fi fantasy, a fantastical world (because abilities exist that arguably are not available or possible in our world) that is set past the peak development of mankind's technological dominance. However, this will not be set at a time that is post-apocalyptic, but rather post-post-apocalyptic: a time that is beyond mass destruction that currently hangs over us. A time of re-growth that is yet aware of the past.
I can't recall the source, or if I can even remotely quote or paraphrase what I had heard. But once I heard of a theory that time, at least mankind's time on earth, works in cycles. That we build up, then fall repeatedly, and this would be beyond the sort of fall that Rome saw. That society reaches its peak, perhaps similar to present-day, and then diminishes and fades, including the memory of it, only to all begin again. I'm not entirely sure how much evidence this theory may have (I haven't encountered any, but was intrigued by the idea nonetheless). Yet, I am curious about how we (my own concept of the global we, mankind and human beings en masse) will endure past the devastation of our world, if we do at all. There's several works on what may come with a nuclear winter, a vastly devastating world war or if the supposedly imminent threat of nature's disasters finally comes to eradicate the order we maintain. But what if we were able to develop to a point that we could endure beyond these trials? What if some, though few, could not only survive but flourish as the earth recovered from the damage (both the damage done by us and to us)? Would we merely return to pre-historic man and start anew, requiring that language develop yet again along with technological development and social change? Or could we possibly, maybe, remember what was even without the great height of documentation and technological crutches? Would we do it better the second time?
The idealist would probably say yes. I suppose that through the process of writing this work, or some semblance of what I imagine, I will find where I stand on this question.
