PunkPunk

What I really should be doing, now that the decks are cleared, is house-cleaning. And catching up at work. And finishing some music products.

Did a (too-long) walk today and that was tough enough. I'm under orders to refrain from heavy lifting anyhow. So scrubbing floors and carrying books and electronics to recycling not really on the things to do this week.

I'll be doing more than I currently expect if I can work two full days at work.

So it isn't the least appropriate use of time to Begin the Gather. I don't even know which book project I am likely to work on (I'm doing book projects rather than searching for something completely new because I've already got a target that I think will work.)

One of them is just an aesthetic deep dive. That would be fun. Pretty much, look at movies, games, images, fiction, cocktail recipes that all fit the retro vibe I'm looking at. The most active research part might be sitting down at a tiki bar or two.

Another is a visit-the-place dive, and I want to regain more health than I went into the operating room with if I'm going to be hiking around the American Southwest.

One is a really deep dive that has the disadvantage of being a whole lot of reading material away from being ready for. Someone has been asking a lot of annoying questions about the Sea Peoples on Quora lately, so it is back on my radar, but I'm not even up on what's been done on the Luwians, or how we better understand the Hittite Empire and their fall, much less whether we are firm on who the Sherden or Ekwesh are.

And then there's the Venus book.

When it comes to spreading the nets, first it goes wide. Then you focus in. Right now I'm starting to see just how wide it gets. Take "Solarpunk." That's art and philosophy movements, mostly -- like steampunk, they've retro-borrowed existing fiction as belonging (like Jules Verne being honorary steampunk), but there doesn't seem to be that much which is organic (ahem) to it.

It is described as being philosophically naive, a future-optimism with a DIY and egalitarian emphasis hearkening back to Whole Earth Catalog and that lot, with enough of a tech emphasis to remind me quite a bit of early Electronic Democracy evangelists.

But oh boy are there are lot of connections. Take just one...Afro-Futurism. Which I don't know what it is, even, except that apparently Wakanda is that way now. So there are a lot of weird paths you could explore just checking out if any of the concepts and ideas and, for that matter, tropes, are going to be of use in the kind of story I want to tell.

I haven't even distilled down to the elevator pitch yet. Um..."Waterworld in the Air." Yeah, that's not a bad take. Survivalism in rafts and boats. Some level of unsustainable practices, probably. Organizations in conflict with each other. A quest plotline.

Story-wise, it is all about The Swift, experimental airship, and its (of course!) motley crew representing every major socio-political body/trend so they can argue out themes. On an optimistic voyage of discovery that brings them to things that could threaten the whole world they know. 

But largely a string-of-incidents, Flash Gordon style, with oversized characters running into equally colorful new places and new dangerous situations. 

I stopped by the used bookstore on my walk but the only thing I picked up was a Paris mystery by a local author. Signed, too. So...there's that.