Sunday, October 14, 2007

The Worms Crawl In, The Worms Crawl Out

Last night on the Science Channel there was a show called "Super Worm" (which was on after "Super Jellyfish", which spawned an idea for another novel or perhaps a short story, but that's all for another time) about how awesome worms are. Close up footage. Worms doing the old in-out (actually more like the old in-in!), and a crazy German biologist going on about hermaphrodites (sweet, sweet hermaphrodites). Lots of information packed into an hour. Good stuff.

In France there is a parasitic worm whose host is a cricket. One interesting thing the worm does is to grow to many thousands of times the length of the cricket, without damaging any of the latter's internal organs. The worm wraps itself around the organs, essentially becoming a part of the cricket's system.

When the worm is fully mature, it does something amazing. The parasite mates in water, but the cricket is naturally disinclined to jump into the drink. So, the worm sends "instructions" to the cricket's body. These chemical instructions mimic those of the cricket's natural system, so the poor cricket finds nothing amiss with jumping into Francois's swimming pool while its faithful companion bursts out through the cricket's abdomen.

I seem to remember another parasite that does something similar to a particular species of ant.

If a relevant portion of a populace could be tricked into infesting themselves with a genetically engineered parasite (coded with THE WORD's instructions), that would absolutely eliminate the problem of disinclination to invasive surgery. At least a chapter could be devoted to the failures of this program.

Thank goodness for expanded cable!

Adopt-A-Newbie

I have been adopted by one Mike O'Leary. He will be my mentor through the NaNoWriMo process. Mike has won 6 times, participated 7 times. In return for his kindness, I have introduced him to Edogawa Rampo, the greatest Japanese short story writer of the 20th century. This is going to be a really good time.

Friday, October 12, 2007

Dares!

NaNoWriMo dare: Robots, an incurable disease, and/or cannibals. Of course I must stir in all three. The first two were already in the cauldron. The third feels inevitable, given the metaphor here, and my history.

Also someone dared the board to make up expletives and offensive terms. That's a wonderful idea. I will look up some etymology and craft something sexy to replace "fuck". Although (this has nothing to do with the dare, really) maybe this could lead to a word-count-boosting chapter about how the expletive "fuck" was phased out of the English language. We'll see.

There was a good dare about not violating known physical laws. I would take this dare, but at least a quarter of The Word Is Law will take place in an MMORPG (another semi-dare that I was going to do already). Violation of physical laws will be an eighth of the fun.

"Water" will be replaced with "dihydrogen monoxide". Perfect. Other common things will be treated in this way, not based on a dare, but for continuity.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Down the Memory Hole

Wednesday Guevara is dead. She was no longer useful. If you're feeling nostalgic for the old girl, check the Wayback Machine. Maybe it kept something in memorium. Also, wednesdayguevara is still my username on a couple of message boards.

My name is GK MacFadyen. Next month for NaNoWriMo, I am going to write the greatest science fiction novel ever written by a person with the initials GKM. Then I am going to sell that book- to you, perhaps, and to three or four other people at least.

Welcome to my new blog. Thank you for stopping by. More soon.