Too Much Information
There's a new Fine Structure story out, called Too Much Information. In addition, the Crash stories have been incorporated into their own subdirectory, called 1970-. Some analysis of TMI and its implications has already started in the comments threads of my previous FS posts, and I'll have to revise my own thoughts in light of it, but for now:
Overall, I think it's gratifying how much we got right. The timeline seems broadly correct, Mitch Calrus is indeed immortal, Yuen is indeed Anne Poole (OK, that was pretty obvious) we were approximately right about the Antarctic dome, Crash Zero was indeed imminent, and the Crashes weren't nuclear war. I think I can even chalk up a partial score for my speculation that the Crashes might have been caused by a computer virus like Tyro. On the other hand, I don't think any of us twigged that the Crashes were caused by Poole and Calrus: nice misdirection there :-)
TMI, as usual, raises as many new questions as it answers; most obviously, what are they doing in the dome? What kind of calculation takes 20,000 years to complete? How, precisely, do the Crashes work, and where did they obtain the technology from? And how did Calrus avoid going insane if he's spent thousands of years inside a concrete dome in the Antarctic while Poole's been out having fun?
When I started doing this, I emailed Sam to let him know. He replied, in part:Here are some other interesting possible-red-herrings to think about:
* Who were/are the previous Powers?
* Are you sure Ashmore didn't do it? What about the other people in that story?
* Is it possible Yuen is lying?
* How many stories are you certain take place on Earth?
* How many stories are you certain take place in the present day?
* How long has Anne Poole been immortal for?
* What does "|[A]| = p(.,|[A]|)+1" mean?
One thing I will clarify is that "to be concluded" refers to just the four-part arc involving Yuen in the future, not the entirety of Fine Structure; you'll have noted that none of the existing story threads have been wound up yet. Once that fourth part is posted I'll probably separate the four-part story off as a separate subdirectory under another title, which is probably going to be "One Way Ticket". Also, the second-to-last line in "Forgotten Things In Space" confirms that the Edenites are human, and in Exponents Ching confirms that Powers are detected using "equipment".
Glad you're enjoying the story. Trust me, it will all make sense eventually :)
He also emailed me the other day to say that he'd spotted a hole in the timeline, and so he's retconned the publication date of Murphy et al's paper Generating Waveforms in Ambient Neutrality to 2002. My timeline (which relied heavily on that date) will need updating.
By the way, if anyone else is planning on blogging about FS, please leave a link here, so we can all follow what each other are saying :-)
Overall, I think it's gratifying how much we got right. The timeline seems broadly correct, Mitch Calrus is indeed immortal, Yuen is indeed Anne Poole (OK, that was pretty obvious) we were approximately right about the Antarctic dome, Crash Zero was indeed imminent, and the Crashes weren't nuclear war. I think I can even chalk up a partial score for my speculation that the Crashes might have been caused by a computer virus like Tyro. On the other hand, I don't think any of us twigged that the Crashes were caused by Poole and Calrus: nice misdirection there :-)
TMI, as usual, raises as many new questions as it answers; most obviously, what are they doing in the dome? What kind of calculation takes 20,000 years to complete? How, precisely, do the Crashes work, and where did they obtain the technology from? And how did Calrus avoid going insane if he's spent thousands of years inside a concrete dome in the Antarctic while Poole's been out having fun?
When I started doing this, I emailed Sam to let him know. He replied, in part:Here are some other interesting possible-red-herrings to think about:
* Who were/are the previous Powers?
* Are you sure Ashmore didn't do it? What about the other people in that story?
* Is it possible Yuen is lying?
* How many stories are you certain take place on Earth?
* How many stories are you certain take place in the present day?
* How long has Anne Poole been immortal for?
* What does "|[A]| = p(.,|[A]|)+1" mean?
One thing I will clarify is that "to be concluded" refers to just the four-part arc involving Yuen in the future, not the entirety of Fine Structure; you'll have noted that none of the existing story threads have been wound up yet. Once that fourth part is posted I'll probably separate the four-part story off as a separate subdirectory under another title, which is probably going to be "One Way Ticket". Also, the second-to-last line in "Forgotten Things In Space" confirms that the Edenites are human, and in Exponents Ching confirms that Powers are detected using "equipment".
Glad you're enjoying the story. Trust me, it will all make sense eventually :)
He also emailed me the other day to say that he'd spotted a hole in the timeline, and so he's retconned the publication date of Murphy et al's paper Generating Waveforms in Ambient Neutrality to 2002. My timeline (which relied heavily on that date) will need updating.
By the way, if anyone else is planning on blogging about FS, please leave a link here, so we can all follow what each other are saying :-)