This reminds me of how hard it must’ve been for witches to get potion ingredients in Shakespeare’s day. I mean, having to check to see whether the stillborn baby’s mother was in fact, a prostitute that gave birth in a ditch, having to double check the genealogy of the severed noses you’re adding to your potion to ensure they’re not half-byzantine or partially venetian, having to check to ensure that the mummy you’re using is a witch’s, and not cursed in and of itself, or belonging to a sorcerer, magus, or thaumaturgist; having to time your toad’s stay under a rock. Jeez, must’ve been horribly difficult to be a witch in those days.
Just re-read it this weekend, great book, and it came out 25 years ago! Of course, it would have been up on a whole different level if it had more rubber band references…
As an author, I’ve run into a similar problem. I put my character into a seemingly impossible situation, the kind of dramatic danger that has the reader asking, “How will he get out of this one?” Then I realize I’m the poor schmuck who has to figure out how. And I’m not as clever as my character is supposed to be.
Probably beats my current process of tearing my hair out for a couple weeks, asking my wife what she thinks, then doing something completely different.
The second panel, I must say that I find that having too much knowledge does NOT help you in this case.
Knowing too much will make your writing simply boring, unless you are willing to go a further step of ignoring your own knowledge, which defeats the purpose of having that much…
The trick to good futurist science fiction is to draft out all the scifi stuff first them treat it as just everyday tech in the story. Star trek communicators are today’s cell phones and they didn’t waste time on expositions on how stuff worked in the original series.
Same goes for a lot of the stuff from Gerry Anderson which is still iconic today even if the newer generations have no clue where those icons came from.
Let’s see… what was it my friend said? It was one of those really weird alternative story theories you hear about sometimes, like the Rugrats all being Angelica’s imagination, or Ash from Pokemon is actually in a coma. He told me someone told him this theory that the scientist never actually made dinosaurs at any point, because the DNA from the blood in the mosquito would have degraded over time to the point of complete unusability, even encased in amber, and that the creatures he had in the park were ones he cobbled together completely from the genes of existing animals. And basically the whole point in inviting the three guest-scientists was to test his creations to see if he was smart enough to fool the best minds in the world on the subject.
Oh snap!
Oh twang.
This reminds me of how hard it must’ve been for witches to get potion ingredients in Shakespeare’s day. I mean, having to check to see whether the stillborn baby’s mother was in fact, a prostitute that gave birth in a ditch, having to double check the genealogy of the severed noses you’re adding to your potion to ensure they’re not half-byzantine or partially venetian, having to check to ensure that the mummy you’re using is a witch’s, and not cursed in and of itself, or belonging to a sorcerer, magus, or thaumaturgist; having to time your toad’s stay under a rock. Jeez, must’ve been horribly difficult to be a witch in those days.
I happily enjoyed your comment, username AND profile pic – which added nicely to my enjoyment of today’s strip. Thank you.
Intensely random realistic fiction under 10 people will ever read it is! (Great comic today)
I didn’t even know Crichton wrote Jurassic Park… Found out through elasticpark.com… Whaddaya know, right?
Just re-read it this weekend, great book, and it came out 25 years ago! Of course, it would have been up on a whole different level if it had more rubber band references…
#GreatStripAdam
Well, let’s do webcomics instead
As an author, I’ve run into a similar problem. I put my character into a seemingly impossible situation, the kind of dramatic danger that has the reader asking, “How will he get out of this one?” Then I realize I’m the poor schmuck who has to figure out how. And I’m not as clever as my character is supposed to be.
You can always fall back on the good old standby …
“Rocks fall, everyone dies”.
If you want to go for cheesy 007, “rocks fall, bad guys die”
Probably beats my current process of tearing my hair out for a couple weeks, asking my wife what she thinks, then doing something completely different.
You could ask a bunch of people on a forum somewhere. Like here. Or somewhere else. Like, crowdsource plot solutions.
Ask a bunch of 5 to 10 year olds and then sort through the obvious Juvenal jokes [save those for latter] and go from there.
The second panel, I must say that I find that having too much knowledge does NOT help you in this case.
Knowing too much will make your writing simply boring, unless you are willing to go a further step of ignoring your own knowledge, which defeats the purpose of having that much…
Yes.
I find that I get too much into exposition when I know too much about some such.
The Martian would beg to differ! Lot of science but it’s brilliantly written.
Mind you…to be fair…it’s very rare to pull that off so well.
The trick to good futurist science fiction is to draft out all the scifi stuff first them treat it as just everyday tech in the story. Star trek communicators are today’s cell phones and they didn’t waste time on expositions on how stuff worked in the original series.
Same goes for a lot of the stuff from Gerry Anderson which is still iconic today even if the newer generations have no clue where those icons came from.
Elastic Park needs to be made into a movie with the Spinners’ Rubberband Man in the soundtrack.
Let’s see… what was it my friend said? It was one of those really weird alternative story theories you hear about sometimes, like the Rugrats all being Angelica’s imagination, or Ash from Pokemon is actually in a coma. He told me someone told him this theory that the scientist never actually made dinosaurs at any point, because the DNA from the blood in the mosquito would have degraded over time to the point of complete unusability, even encased in amber, and that the creatures he had in the park were ones he cobbled together completely from the genes of existing animals. And basically the whole point in inviting the three guest-scientists was to test his creations to see if he was smart enough to fool the best minds in the world on the subject.