Oh, boy, that change cascaded. The following scene, she is more scared and hurting and that was almost a total re-write as a result. And then the scene after that she's still feeling it. And I still have to revise the second dojo scene (that one, at least, was on my notes.) Then the big ones...Guns and Monet, and pretty much the entire Shirakawa-go sequence. And the epilogue. And tweak the love scene.
And then another full grammar check and proofing pass. And then re-format and re-upload. So a couple of weeks yet. I hope I still remember what was happening in Paris when I get back to Sometimes a Fox.
***
I thought I knew what I was going to work on next but the Venus idea still won't leave.
I've accepted it is going to have to be a bit rubber science. In my mind, it doesn't matter whether you openly flaunt known science, or you hand-wave around it with Clarke's Law; "A techno-wizard did it." I do sort of feel the second is too open to abuse. Once you've added mad wizards, err, nanotechnology to the setting, you can have it do anything.
The current world-building question I am dealing with is how this is steampunk. Not so much that I care if it meets some kind of genre box. No, the point is that steampunk sort of implies a world in flux. And I want a world in flux.
Sure, you could have lots and lots of exciting battles but still keep a sort of status quo. I'm thinking particularly Europe during the Napoleonic era, but that's probably because I've been at long last learning a little about that. But there's something less satisfying in knowing that no matter how exciting it is, at the end of it all that has changed are the faces on the money.
What is exciting is when new ideas are in the mix. When a war happens that changes the status quo for good. A French Revolution. Or a revolution in technology. Or (that old anime standby) some new power that one side is employing to completely change the world (rarely for the better).
I think I want a world that has that. Forces out of balance. Even if it is just a political entity that has reached critical mass and has influence that hasn't been seen on the world stage for hundreds of years. That's a thing I've thought about, too; books that have an unusual setting fall into two broad categories; ones in which it is background, and ones in which it is plot. That is; the difference between "Welcome to this strange place, now have adventures" and "Welcome to this strange place which is itself under threat."
(And that bit about empires opened up a whole side discussion about the map. You wouldn't have to stretch the real Venus too far to have bands of fast-moving air near the equator. Really, really fast. As in civilizations of each hemisphere hardly ever have contact with each other. And that spills into ideas of character; say, a reader viewpoint character who is new to this entire hemisphere...)
Another thing I'm puzzling over is tech. Really, it comes down to floating. How do things not fall? Is it gasbags? Propellers? That's one kind of look. Or what about floating wood? Or some other thing that flies or floats? Magic rocks, lost technology...?
I think the setting needs animal life, because it is hard to imagine the food chain without it, and there is so much plot and atmosphere even if all they are doing is sniping at birds for an added delicacy for the table. But that gives rise to the temptation to go biotech to solve all sorts of tech problems, and that's a very different look, and I rather like propellers better.
(It is rather tempting to come up with some natural basis for the cities, because then your ships can be basically airships and aeroplanes or otherwise constructs, dependent on their technology to stay in the air, but the cities can be stable and long-established. But I haven't been able to come up with anything that doesn't sort of lessen the miracle of floating cities. If there are random floating islands in the sky, then there could be millions of them just ripe for colonization and this whole "here we are suspended in the air, barely surviving" thing kind of goes away.)
And that opens up another discussion. Because if the convenient life is part of the original human terraforming, then this is basically Lost Technology. Except not just one quest item; built into the hull of every floating city. Which suggests there's a whole bunch of stuff spread all over. (Also pretty much requires that it either be 1) extremely long-lasting aka very Clarkian, or just barely in advance of what they can build now -- hence maintainable -- but that also implies potentially building more of it.)
Plus that leads to thoughts about the whole analogy. Air is an ocean thing. Is falling off the deck of a ship always certain death, or is there some sort of personal flotation? How have people adapted psychologically? Are they still afraid of falling or have they largely accepted this as a familiar danger? Ah, but maybe this is different between different societies. Like the tech they use. Like recycling -- a floating city that is living off hanging plants and passing birds probably wants to recycle as much organic matter as possible.
(Or is it a status act to burn or otherwise not give one's body back to the city? Or are there scavengers in the deep atmosphere and organic matter does eventually get recycled anyhow? So many options!)
And add to this mix that falling is absolutely Checkov's Gun; it is going to happen to one of the major characters. And be survived.
The one thing that seems clear is that I don't need to stick to one paradigm. For every way a culture and technology comes together, whether Sentinalese bow-hunters on an organic Sargasso of the air, or Brotherhood of Steel-like hoarders of old technology in their massive steel ships, I can come up with good excuses why they can be both in the same setting. And intersecting, which is the really fun part.
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