Pros: Highly convincing portrayal of a particular personality.
Potential cons: Extensive telling of emotional states, low tension plot.
In Willow Thomson’s debut novel, Seeds of Change, plague and catastrophic climate change leave Earth uninhabitable. A wealthy leader gathers a group of space colonists, and they depart for an unexplored planet. Continue reading Seeds of Change by Willow Thomson, A Review
A successful character reads like a complete person with particular thought patterns and reactions, habits and tics. The best characters are consistent and believable, a person one might encounter in real life, for better or worse. How does an author fashion the mental world of diverse but credible characters? Continue reading Sensors and Intuitives in Neal Stephenson’s Novel, Anathem
Pros: Clever set up, interesting characters, timely topics
Possible Cons: Video game style climax and villain-tells-all scene. Roving point of view and a fair bit of “tell.”
The Echo Chamber is in part a tale of tech-corporate malfeasance, involving a rogue AI, a blender and ruthless Silicon Valley executives who build a social media “echo chamber.” This hypnotic virtual reality seduces most of the world’s population, trapping people in their own memories or with a personalized preconceived-worldview-comfort-zone. This shadow world is a paradise for pundits who spew, to put it politely, “non-evidence-based ideas about people and the environment.” The company dodges moral responsibility, citing freedom of access, acceptance and inclusion. Moral blinders allow massive corporate expansion with “no constraints, no thought of consequences.” Continue reading A Review of The Echo Chamber by Rhett J. Evans
An important point to bear in mind is that suitability can be very narrowly defined. Suitability might be personal, cryptic or ephemeral. Take for example the suitability of The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly. https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/throne-third-heaven-nations-millennium-general-assembly-9897
I stumbled upon this monumental artwork in the American Art Museum many years ago. It’s staggeringly peculiar for a number of reasons. First, it’s rather obviously constructed of tin foil and light bulbs. Second, it’s large, occupying it’s own room sized exhibition space. But best is it’s story. Continue reading Suitability of the One
Sternbert and Lubart (1999) defined creativity as the production of responses both novel (original, rare or unexpected) and suitable. Suitability depends on the venue: compelling in the arts, marketable in business, useful in science and technology or adaptive personally or socially.
This two component (production and suitability) definition changes creativity from a trait to a process in which a new idea is transformed into a compelling, marketable, useful or adaptive product. Given the number of steps involved, that nifty idea better fall on fertile ground. Continue reading Two-Part Creativity
