I just finished drafting a science fiction novel as part of my thesis.  The difficulty wasn’t so much finding a plot — those are easy to come up with — but creating a world and keeping myself consistent in its presentation.  If I were doing a physics thesis, I’d have stacks of papers to keep me on track.  I could compare what I was doing against what’s been published and make corrections without having to remember everything or decide everything myself.  What’s the value of e today?  The same as yesterday and it’s published in a dozen different places.  But did Adam have two parents or four?  I have to decide that and stick with the answer because it has significant consequences.

A traditional novel is a linear narrative that takes the reader and changes them, along with the characters.  It has a beginning and an end, even if they are left out.  Part of the experience of science fiction is the reader’s immersion in an unfamiliar world.  This immersion can challenge preconceived notions that the reader brings to the text.

In my thesis, I make use of layers of conspiracy to engage the reader (the top layer being the text itself as a “conspiracy of one” on the part of the author to convince the reader that there’s a story).  I want the reader to toss around possible narratives that could explain what’s in the text and test them to see if they are consistent.  A kind of “scientific” fiction.  I invite exploration of the text and the world I build even though it is a static and linear presentation.

As the author, I find the world I’ve created to be quite engaging.  Almost all of the information I have on it isn’t in the novel.  Instead, the novel assumes that the reader is familiar with it already, as if the novel took place in a contemporary society.  I don’t explain a lot.  It’s just there.  If the point of view character wouldn’t notice it or act on it, then the narrative doesn’t cover it.  Any feelings of unfamiliarity on the part of the reader should be just culture shock.

The next step I want to take with the material in my thesis is to create a virtual world that reproduces the experience of the reader, but interactively.  While the original thesis invites a “passive interactivity” from the reader, I think it would work better as an interactive system that encourages active participation: a MUD.

I’ve been playing around with MUDs off and on for a while.  I’ve never gotten enough done to actually have a game to show, but I’m starting to get things organized: 216.32.80.146:6661/ (until my DNS secondary starts resolving the hostname [mofn.net] again).

A system such as a MUD allows me to have several complex plots going at once.  It allows the player to explore at their pace, even hopping between plots as they see fit.  World of Warcraft has done well in setting up their quests to push the player along in a narrative, but an overall limited set of goals isn’t yet apparent there.  My goal in a game is to have a few meta-plots that drive everything else, even to the point where players find out there’s really another plot (or conspiracy) behind the series they thought were the meta-plots.

I’m using the Dead Souls LPC mudlib as a basis.  It’s not open source or public domain, but it’s a free download.

I’d be interested in a session on interactive fiction, creating interactive worlds, perhaps even a walkthrough of LPC and a mudlib (which I could put together).

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