| . |
- On Oddities Associated With
- Kate Thornton's
- "The Spiral Seas"
-
- Life is full of 'em. Coincidences.
-
- Some are ordinary, understandable. You make a die with 6 sides, and each one of those 6 sides is bound to come up if you roll the die often enough. But every once in a while, a 7th side shows itself, and you are left scratching your head with the wild surmise that *maybe* a cube can have *more* than 6 sides...
- .
-
- A few such coincidences have saved my hide, literally, in the past. I daresay if you live long enough, you may ALL have a small trove of such stories. I know my Dad, a military pilot from the 1920s on, had a whole landfill full of them. I'll have to do an article on that one of these days. (Say, Bernard, d'you suppose such things are born out of tsunamis in quantum foam?)
-
- .
- But, on to specifics:
-
- .
- Way back in early 1999, when I first offered to do illustrations for the famous old TITANzine, editor Chad Cottle passed me a story by a woman named Kate Thornton. The story was called "ORIGINS," and involved a supposition about the sources of civilization, one sited in Zimbabwe, Rhodesia, and another... elsewhere.
- .
-
- I read the story, got a good, clear set of images from it in my mind, then went to the internet for background material on Great Zimbabwe. (In the case of "ORIGINS," I had done a lengthy amount of research earlier in 1997 on Africa for one of my own stories, set in Morocco--in the course of which I'd looked around at quite a few African countries. I was amazed at the amount of fascinating information you could get, using the U.S. State Department website as a springboard. And of course the search engines. Did you know that every African country has a web presence, even those in the throes of revolution and civil war? Wonder what General Washington's would have been like?)
- .
-
- Having set up the montage as a good way to present story scenes compressed into one illustration, I set about doing character sketches, working from the story texts, colorizing, found appropriate real-world geographical/architectural images, and created the illustration. (As
- usual, we were under the gun to meet a deadline.) "Origins" had K.T.'s usual brief, deft character descriptions, so I had no trouble visualizing the people involved... something that often takes me several days fishing for clues with some writers.
- .
-
- We got the issue put to bed, and then, after living my other life for a short time, I decided it would be polite to send all the authors a nice, big image file of their story and illustration for their collection.
- After all, they got little else from their contributions.
- .
-
- Kate replied to her e-mail-with-attachment a few days later, saying she
- was "astonished" when she opened it. I took that as sheer, if polite, flattery. (Works every time.)
-
- .
- About a month later, I re-read Chad Cottle's editorial comments in the issue,
- and he mentioned that Kate had a website. I went there. As it came up,
- up also came a picture of Kate herself, outfitted in her Army uniform, it's true, but the picture also "astonished" me.
-
- .
- That was the woman I had sketched for the "Origins" illustration!
-
- .
- The similarity went beyond the sketch, because I had a real image of a person in mind, which, due to faulty artistic translation, didn't all make it to the sketchbook or screen.
-
- .
- OK, we exchanged a few notes on the oddity. So she was blond and blue-eyed, and had used a character something like herself in her story. On a Richter Coincidence Scale of 1 to 10 (yes, yes, I know, Richter's scale is open-ended, but above 10 you get into a section labeled 'When Worlds Collide,' reserved for Bronson bodies and their ilk--and have to go to the Torino Scale) I gave this a Coincidence Rating of about 4 or 5. (I'd experienced some in the past that ranked about 7 or 8, maybe 9, as I hinted above. More on such probability-quakes some other time.)
-
- .
- Well, years passed. TITANzine retired from the world stage.
-
- .
- I was greatly relieved for a while.
- .
- Chad had kept up the effort for more than three years. In the 18 months I was aboard, it had become apparent that Chad, Jody & Steve were either certifiably nuts, or they had to really love what they were doing. Reading through a stream of fiction, representing real, earnest, draining effort by people ranging in age from 10 to 90, covering a range of intellects that spanned an equally broad range but shifted up by at least 90, writing letters of encouragement, letters of rejection, of acceptance, working with writers to help improve their factual content, their general writing, and corresponding with those who were clearly doing you a favor to *give* you stuff that could stand on its own in most any pro publications... then doing the HTML programming (until tools could be afforded), editing for the web, grasping the story, coming up with illustrations, *doing* them, getting it all assembled and into place with almost a hundred active links that needed to *work...*
-
- .
- Does this conjure up an image of a long, mean, black braided leather whip? Well, it otta!
-
- .
- So, TITAN was gone, and peace reigned upon the face of the deep.
-
- .
- Peace.
-
- .
- Everything was calm, still, ordinary...
-
- .
- God, it was boring.
-
- .
- And so, THE SPIRAL SEA was born.
-
- .
- I'd toyed with other names. For instance "THE SPIRAL SEAS," plural, because I wanted the new zine to encompass both sf and fantasy, AND science fact with a
- close-to-the-reader experience. Having worked in scientific research for a good deal of my life, I knew that a lot more valuable ideas were out there than would ever make the staid, deliberate, limited-volume academic presses. Many insights sparked in the minds of researchers and
- their technical staff--I know, I'd seen it happening--which NEVER made it to the wider consideration of their colleagues, much less the world. Some of those insights later turned out to be right on the mark, and might have sped up understanding of their area of application by years or decades, if a means had been there to get such often only semi-formed ideas aired.
- .
-
- But. "THE SPIRAL SEAS" was grammatically difficult to handle. I kept
- running into cases where I needed a possessive... SEAS'S or SEAS'?
-
- .
- Clumbsy.
-
- .
- Besides, it put me back in mind of numerous interminable arguments with secondary school English teachers, about which convention was correct and why. Unfortunately, although I am sure I learned the rules THEN, I could never recall NOW which was right. Every time I came to a need to apostrophesize SPIRAL SEAS, I skidded to a halt and argued with myself.
-
- .
- So, ultimately, I settled on THE SPIRAL SEA. *THE* galaxy, rather than a whole universe full of 'em, would have to be the image the new zine cast forth on its masthead.
-
- .
- What on Earth does all of this have to do with Kate Thornton, web author extraordinaire? I'm gettin' to that.
-
- .
- I wanted to secure some of the best writers from the old TITAN days to
- launch SPIRAL SEA. So I wrote Kate, amongst others, and made my pleas.
-
- She responded positively, and with a little coyness. In a second e-mail a few days later, when she offered to send a story, she prefaced it with a short commentary, which I will pass on:
-
-
- .
- Dear Jack,
-
- .
- Thanks for the invite...
-
- .
- I have an original, unpublished story which I think might be right for you. Don't be put off by the idea that it is a dragon story - not all dragons breathe fire, live in the air and are evocative of King Arthur.
- .
- It's a near-future exploration of what space exploration can lead to - especially the types of ponderous, government or industry-sponsored exploration which is likely to take place. I think the days of the independent explorer (rich tourists on the Space Station notwithstanding) are over.
-
- .
- I titled this story, "The Spiral Sea" long before your magazine...
-
- .
- [Actually, the coincidence might stretch even further, because I first created the domain SPIRALSEA.COM in October of 1999, but wound up leaving it on a site-holder server for a year before getting this thing underway. -- Ed]
-
- .
- Wierd coincidence. I changed the title to "Scales of Justice" in order to submit it to a contest, but I like the original title better. (The story won under the original title, but as the editor failed to either publish the story or cough up the contest winnings, all rights reverted to me.) I will tighten it up and send it along if you are interested. I have kept it close, as it is a favorite theme of mine and I have been tinkering with it for a long time. I have to admit that I am inordinately fond of this story...
-
-
- .
- .
- Well, I ain't no dummy. Two coincidences of this strength had to be an omen.
-
- .
- Now, any scientist will tell you that "omens" really do exist. At their least
- sensational, they are merely chains of coincidences, tied by some common element. (I have heard, I must admit, that the common element is the nut in between.) But, experience enough of them in your life, and you are apt to claim Samuel Coleridge-itis, and willingly suspend your disbelief, at least temporarily.
-
- .
- So, you will see in the August issue of THE SPIRAL SEA, an excellent story of similar name but with no causative connection to TSS other than a chain of somewhat unlikely events.
-
- .
- Thank you, Kate Thornton.
-
- .
- And thank you, Sam Coleridge.
-
- .
- And folks, for use in a future article, feel free to send in some descriptions of your own odd-happenstances-tied-together-
- by-the-nut-in-the-middle. I am certain they would make for some fascinating reading.
-
- .
- Your fellow swimmer in the Sea,
-
- .
- .
- Jack Egan
- Editor
-
-
-
-
|
|
|
- THE CONCEPT OF
- REALITY CHECK
- IS STILL EVOLVING
Send your contributions electronically, or query if you propose to send physical
items, prints or manuscripts.
See our SUBMISSIONS
page for specific instructions.
Also, our CONNEXIONS page provides links to other websites
with potential relevance to your favorite topics.
|
|
-
-
- Mission
-
-
- Meet the
- Staff
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- Tech Cor ner
-
-
-
- Problems & Solutions
|
. |
