Tag: A to Z Challenge

Tomorrow News Network: A to Z Reflections

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 10 Comments

Hello, friends!

I feel like I’ve said this twenty-something times now, but my theme for this year’s A to Z Challenge was the universe of Tomorrow News Network, my upcoming Sci-Fi adventure series.  And at the very beginning of April, I admitted to having certain ulterior motives for doing this.

Ulterior Motive #1: Buy My Book!

The Medusa Effect: A Tomorrow News Network Novella will be released on June 4, 2020.  It’s available for preorder now!  Click here!!!

My hope was that this A to Z series would entice you, dear reader, into wanting to buy my book.  Preorders for The Medusa Effect have already started coming in, so I guess my top secret marketing strategy is working!

Ulterior Motive #2: Get Reader Feedback

The Medusa Effect is basically finished, but I still have many more novellas and novels planned for the Tomorrow News Network series.  With this year’s A to Z Challenge, I wanted to get some early feedback from potential readers about the story universe I created.

And I definitely got some useful feedback!  People questioned me about stuff that I honestly hadn’t thought about before.  People expressed interest in things that I honestly didn’t expect anyone would find interesting.  And then there was that one comment about the Galactic Inquisitor that inspired a whole new story that I never would have thought to write on my own.

All of this feedback will be invaluable to me as I get started on books two and three and four and so on.

Ulterior Motive #3: Get My Writing Mojo Back

Toward the end of March, I fell into a bit of a writing funk, thanks to the scary situation in the world and the resulting anxieties related to my day job.  As feared, April turned out to be even more stressful than March.  And yes, participating in the A to Z Challenge was an additional source of stress this past month.

But I’d say A to Z was the good kind of stress, the kind of stress that helps counteract all that bad stress.  It was exactly what I needed to keep me sane.  I’m so glad that I participated in this year’s challenge, and I’m grateful to all of you who joined me on this month-long adventure.

As for my writing mojo, it’s back.  My muse and I are now hard at work on the next Tomorrow News Network novella, which will tell the story of what “really” happened at Roswell.

Next time on Planet Pailly, I don’t need to be rich.  I don’t want to be the next Stephen King or J.K. Rowling.  I just want to make a living writing the kinds of stories I love.

Time Index Zero (Tomorrow News Network: A to Z)

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 22 Comments

Hello, friends, and welcome to the final episode of this year’s A to Z Challenge.  All month, I’ve been telling you about the universe of Tomorrow News Network, my upcoming Sci-Fi adventure series.

For today’s post, I’d like to wrap things up with a short story.  This story has appeared on my blog before, but I think it’s a good time for me to post it again.  While this year’s A to Z Challenge is coming to an end, this story is about the beginning.

TIME INDEX ZERO

We were all that ever was, all that ever is, all that ever would be.  We were everything and we were nothing, and we were content.  To say that we were alive would be misleading, for there was no meaningful distinction to be made between life and non-life.  To say we were conscious or self-aware would equally be a mistake.  Nothing existed for us to be conscious of, and we had no meaningful concept of self to be made aware of, for there can be no concept of a self without a concept of others.

That changed when we… perceived the broadcast.  It would be wrong to say we saw it or heard it, for we did not yet have physical senses of that kind.  But we did abruptly become aware of it.  The broadcast commanded our attention:

“This is the Tomorrow News Network, bringing you tomorrow’s news today since the year twenty billion.”

We did not understand what this meant.  We had no concept of a tomorrow or a today, no concept of time in any sense of the word.  Even the idea of words, of communication, of information that could be passed from one individual being to another—why should such a thing be necessary when all is unity, all is harmony, all is one?  These ideas were strange and fascinating to us—and frightening.  The broadcast continued.  It could not be ignored, nor did we wish to ignore it.

And that, we would later come to understand, was the trap. The future is, by its very nature, an unknown quantity, a changeable quantity.  But to learn of the future, to be informed about future events (or in our case, to become aware that future events exist at all) transformed this unknown, changeable quantity into an inevitable, unchangeable fact.

One of the Tomorrow News Network reporters was explaining what religion would be.  She was a confusing creature.  We did not understand what she was.  We did not know yet about humans, or females, or eyes, or the color violet; and yet the instant we perceived this female human we knew the color of her eyes was wrong.  Unnatural.  A sign of danger.

“The birth of the universe,” this violet-eyed creature was saying, “will be known by many different names among many different peoples: the Rifting, the Great Hatching, the Big Bang, the Primal Illumination. But the most widely accepted name, at least among chronotheorists, will be Time Index Zero.”

We were appalled.  Not only would there be separation and division, a plurality of people spread across a plurality of worlds believing a plurality of things—but all those people could not even agree to call a singular event by a singular name.  Could nothing in this new universe be unified?  Could nothing be made whole?  We refused to accept this… or rather, I refused to accept it.  The new universe was wrong.  It should not be allowed to happen.

And yet, even in thinking that thought, a thought distinct and separate from the thoughts of the others, I realized the damage had already been done.  We were no longer one.  I was myself now.  The others were others, and we no longer existed together in a state of harmony.

“What shall be must be,” one of the others assured me.

“No, it must not,” I replied, but it was too late.  Our quiescent non-existent existence was over.  Our slumbering pre-universe was coming to an end.  As separate entities, we all experienced the irresistible force of time: a sudden rushing-forward sensation from which there could be no escape.  And then, it all began.

Yola (Tomorrow News Network: A to Z)

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 9 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to the penultimate posting of this year’s A to Z Challenge!  This year, I’ve been telling you about the universe of Tomorrow News Network, my upcoming Sci-Fi adventure series.  In today’s post, Y is for:

YOLA

Yola is a gas giant planet located in the Cygni Lambda-Kappa Star Sector.  To some, Yola is one of the most spectacular sights in the known universe.  To others, the colors look garish.  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as the ancient Earthlings used to say.

The planet’s distinctive variegation is caused by a complex mix of chemicals and jet streams in the planet’s atmosphere. The colors change periodically due to the photolytic influence of Yola’s sun (something similar is known to happen to Jupiter’s Great Red Spot).  Sometimes, Yola’s colors are vibrant and bold; other times, they’re muted pastels.

Scientific research concerning Yola has been limited due to the fact that Yola is located in the middle of a war zone.  The Yola System lies near the border between the United Earth Republic and the Hykonian Hegemonic Empire.  Control over the planet has changed multiple times over the centuries.

The moons of Yola now host a mixed population of humans and Hykonians.  Well, I say mixed, but in reality a lot of self-segregation goes on.  At times, racial tensions run high; however, all-out violence among the locals is surprisingly rare.  “You don’t have to like each other to live with each other,” as the citizens of Yola often say.

If there is ever going to be peace between Earth and Hykonia, that peace will likely begin on the moons of Yola.  Or at least that’s what reports on the Tomorrow News Network have occasionally suggested.

So where did the name Yola come from?  In universe, Yola derives from the Hykonian word for rainbow.  As for the real world origin of this name, well… click here.  You’ll figure it out.

Next time on Tomorrow News Network: A to Z, let’s end this year’s challenge with a bang.  A Big Bang.

Xenoglyphs (Tomorrow News Network: A to Z)

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 8 Comments

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the A to Z Challenge.  My theme this year is the universe of Tomorrow News Network, my upcoming Sci-Fi adventure series.  In today’s post, X is for:

XENOGLYPHS

When I teased this post yesterday, I said that space aliens have their own alphabet.  I should have said alphabets, plural.  There are so many alien species out there, each with their own multiplicity of languages and writing forms.

The Hykonians use lots of triangular shapes, at least in their standard Hegemonic dialects.  The Gronogians prefer ovals and curlicues, and Vorpon writing looks like a mad frenzy of scratches and claw marks (which makes sense if you’ve ever met a Vorpon).

But even in the future, as members of a highly pluralistic galactic society, humans continue to take a rather geocentric view of things, and we continue to use geocentric terminology.  So all those different alien alphabets—from Zeblonian to Crolon to ancient Acelera—get lumped together under the word xenoglyphs, a word formed by analogy with the word hieroglyphs.

There are even some humans who think all xenoglyphic alphabets look the same.  Even if you show them the block-form text of the Dakons and contrast it with the flowery script of the Curocaroburomotopogo, some humans will still claim they can’t tell the difference.  “It’s all xenoglyphs to me!”  I guess some humans are just stubbornly stupid like that.

Next time on Tomorrow News Network: A to Z, we’ll visit one of the most colorful planets in the known universe.

Waterloo (Tomorrow News Network: A to Z)

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 6 Comments

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the A to Z Challenge.  For this year’s challenge, I’ve been telling you more about the universe of Tomorrow News Network, my upcoming Sci-Fi adventure series.  In today’s post, W is for:

WATERLOO

Pro tip: if you ever meet a time traveler and want to learn more about how time travel works, ask who won the Battle of Waterloo.  Among chronotheorists (scientists involved in the study and practice of time travel), Waterloo is one of the most famously “unstuck” events in history.

As Talie Tappler explains:

Time is time, right?  It’s such a simple, self-evident thing, and yet time is one of the most difficult concepts to explain in words.  But I can tell you this: time is an awful lot like a living thing.  It’s constantly moving, constantly shifting and writhing like an angry snake.  Every moment in time exists in a state of flux.  All possibilities exist.  All possibilities are real, even the mutually contradictory ones–especially the mutually contradictory ones!

Today, you can know for certain that Napoleon won the Battle of Waterloo; tomorrow, you may find yourself equally certain that Napoleon lost.  History changes and changes again, and you never even notice because, of course, as history changes your memory changes with it.

We chronotheorists call it the historical uncertainty principle, because you can never be certain about a historical event unless it is being observed.  Observation!  That’s the key!  Observation forces all those mutually contradictory possibilities to collapse into one singular historical reality.  And the more people who observe an event, the more certain it becomes, and the less likely it is to change later.

As I said in a previous post, the Tomorrow News Network has over 900 quadrillion viewers.  It’s true that the Tomorrow News Network is a bit of a mystery to most citizens of the galaxy.  In some corners, T.N.N. reporters are feared, even hated.  But whatever else the Tomorrow News Network might be, whatever else they might represent, I think we can all agree that 900 quadrillion viewers is an awful lot of observers observing historical events.

Next time on Tomorrow News Network: A to Z, did you know space aliens have an alphabet too?

Viewlink (Tomorrow News Network: A to Z)

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 15 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome back to the A to Z Challenge!  For this year’s challenge, I’m telling you more about the universe of Tomorrow News Network, my upcoming Sci-Fi adventure series.  In today’s post, V is for:

VIEWLINK

Imagine yourself in the distant future, living on some far flung colony world.  You’ve completed your work shift for today.  You’re sitting in your prefab housing unit, watching the news on the viewlink, when you see this:

But before the anchor-bot can say anything, the viewlink cuts to static.

The Tomorrow News Network is a news organization run by time travelers.  Their slogan is “Bringing you tomorrow’s news today since the year twenty billion.”  And that is precisely what they do.  It’s the reason Tomorrow News Network is the galaxy’s #1 news source: they’re always a day ahead of the competition.

At some point, you may have wondered how the Tomorrow News Network can do what it does.  What about the laws of physics?  What about causality?  But ever since the discovery of inverted space, people have known that time travel is possible.  As for causality, the Tomorrow News Network has a self-censorship policy.

If a news report from the future is about you, or if it involves you in any way, then you won’t be able to watch.  Tomorrow News Network’s signal will be scrambled.  If there’s any possibility that knowledge of the future could allow you to change future events, then the viewlink will cut to static.

So all across the galaxy, people are watching Tomorrow News Network.  People are seeing your future.  People are finding out what is going to happen to you and the colony where you live.  But none of those people can help. None of those people can change the future they’re witnessing.

As for you, all you can do is sit there in your prefab housing unit, staring at the static on the viewlink.

Next time on Tomorrow News Network: A to Z, who won the Battle of Waterloo?

Urthu (Tomorrow News Network: A to Z)

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 15 Comments

Hello again, friends!  Welcome back to the A to Z Challenge.  For this year’s challenge, my theme is the universe of Tomorrow News Network, my upcoming Sci-Fi adventure series.  In today’s post, U is for:

URTHU

“Earth-like” can be a misleading term, both in real life and in the universe of Tomorrow News Network.  Lots of planets can be described as Earth-like, in one manner or another.  That doesn’t necessarily mean Earthlings would be able to live there.

There are only handful of truly Earth-like planets in our galaxy—planets with oxygen/nitrogen atmospheres, planets with oceans of liquid water, planets with chlorophyll-green vegetation growing on their surfaces.  And these very few planets are all the result of terraforming projects funded by the Earth Republic (or later by the Earth Empire).

Terra Nova, Terminus, Xanadu… these are some of terraforming’s greatest success stories.  But terraforming technology has had one noteworthy failure: the Earth II project.  What exactly went wrong on Earth II?  No one knows, but in his final transmission, the Earth II colonial administrator said: “We worked to transform this planet, and the planet worked just as hard to transform us.”

As a result of linguistic corruption, the name Earth II has become Urthu.  At least that is the name used by the creatures that still live there.

In The Medusa Effect, Urthu is mentioned only in passing, and that’s all the attention it gets.  As the Tomorrow News Network series progresses, will Urthu turn out to be more important than a throwaway line?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  Maybe I just had a really tough time picking a U-word for the A to Z Challenge, and I’ll never have anything to say about Urthu again.  Who knows what the future may bring?

Next time on Tomorrow News Network: A to Z, imagine you’re sitting at home watching the news on the viewlink when the signal abruptly cuts to static.

Talie Tappler (Tomorrow News Network: A to Z)

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 12 Comments

Hello, friends.  My theme for this year’s A to Z Challenge is the universe of Tomorrow News Network, my upcoming Sci-Fi adventure series.  The alphabet being what it is, we’ve had to wait a long time to meet this character.  But finally, the day has come. In today’s post, T is for:

TALIE TAPPLER

Don’t let that cute smile fool you.  This woman is the living embodiment of bad news.  Talie is a journalist and a time traveler, and as the Tomorrow News Network’s most prominent “reporter extraordinaire,” she is sent out to cover the biggest, juiciest, most exciting and most devastating news stories throughout the space-time continuum.

I have been working on Tomorrow News Network for almost ten years now, and right from the start there were three important facts that I knew about Talie.

  • Her Professional Vanity: Talie tends to fuss over her hair and make-up, and she dresses in a manner that some might describe as “business sexy.”  Talie is what people in the news business call on-air talent.  Her look is part of her job.  The Tomorrow News Network has over 900 quadrillion viewers, so reporters must always look their absolute best on camera.
  • Her Timeless Perspective: In many of the stories Talie covers, people suffer.  People die.  But from Talie’s point of view, this is just history, and isn’t it thrilling to see history unfold exactly as it should?  You can forgive Talie if she seems a bit insensitive at times.  Or maybe you can’t.  Either way, Talie has no intention of interfering with historical events, no matter how desperately you beg for her to intervene.
  • Her Secret Enemy: [REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED].  But while Talie does believe in the public’s right to know, there are some things that must still be kept confidential.  Everyone is safer that way.

Whenever I talk about Tomorrow News Network, I struggle to describe Talie’s role in the series.  In some ways, she’s the protagonist.  She is the character most prominently featured throughout the series.

But in some ways, she’s more like a recurring antagonist.  Characters like Milo Marrero are desperate to find out what the future will be; Talie is the one keeping the future secret.  She’s the one stopping people like Milo from achieving their goals.

So should I call Talie my protagonist or antagonist?  As one of my beta-readers once said, Talie is definitely an “agonist” of some kind.  But as another beta-reader suggested, perhaps another literary term would suit Talie better: she is “the herald,” the character whose arrival initiates change, the character whose appearance signals that a story is about to begin.

Because if you ever have the misfortune of meeting Talie Tappler, you can be certain that she’s come for a reason, and whatever that reason is, it’s unlikely to be good news.

Next time on Tomorrow News Network: A to Z, there once was a human colony named Earth II.  We’ll find out what happened to it.

S.P.Q.R. (Tomorrow News Network: A to Z)

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 5 Comments

Hello, friends, and welcome once more to the A to Z Challenge.  My theme for this year’s challenge is the universe of Tomorrow News Network, my upcoming Sci-Fi adventure series.  In today’s post, S is for:

S.P.Q.R.

The main character in Tomorrow News Network is Talie Tappler.  She’s a journalist.  She’s also a time traveler, and there’s a common stereotype about time travelers that definitely applies to her.  Everywhere and everywhen time travelers go, they always wear or carry an antique watch.  The more out of its own place, the more out of its own time the watch can be, the better.

Talie’s pocket watch is about as out of its place and out of its time as anything can get.  When Milo Marrero first sees Talie’s watch, he notices the image of an eagle and the initials S.P.Q.R. are engraved on the brass casing.  Milo’s accustomed to seeing the corporate logo of A.E.I. everywhere he goes, so he assumes S.P.Q.R. must be some other interplanetary mega-corporation.

Some of you, dear readers, may already know just how wrong Milo is about that.  For the rest of you, allow me to explain.  S.P.Q.R. stands for Senatus Populusque Romanus, which is Latin for “the Senate and People of Rome.”  In ancient times, the letters S.P.Q.R. were stamped on Roman currency or carved into Roman monuments.

Also, apparently, the letters were engraved into the brass casings of ancient Roman pocket watches.  Except… wait, the Romans never had pocket watches, did they?  That sort of technology wouldn’t appear on Earth until many centuries after the fall of Rome.  So where did Talie’s watch come from?  How did she get it?

I’m not going to answer those questions.  Not yet.  I can only tell you that I have longterm plans for the Tomorrow News Network series, and eventually I do plan to tell the story behind Talie Tappler’s watch.

And speaking of Talie Tappler, next time on Tomorrow News Network: A to Z, we will finally meet T.N.N.’s infamous “reporter extraordinaire.”

The Redlands (Tomorrow News Network: A to Z)

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 8 Comments

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the A to Z Challenge.  For this year’s challenge, I’m telling you more about the universe of Tomorrow News Network, my upcoming Sci-Fi adventure series.  In today’s post, R is for:

THE REDLANDS

Planetary bodies often bear distinctive and striking features.  In our own Solar System, there is, of course, the Great Red Spot on Jupiter, or the Polar Hexagon on Saturn, or the heart-shaped Tombaugh Regio on Pluto.

Litho, the outermost moon of the planet Berzelius, is also marked with a distinctive surface feature: a triple spiral formation in the northern hemisphere.  Officially, that triple spiral is known as Arfwedson Circumcurio, in honor of Johan August Arfwedson, the ancient Earthling who first discovered lithium.

Circumcurio is, of course, an exo-geology term referring to spiral-like surface features on alien worlds. Many worlds in the explored galaxy have these circumcurio features, though Litho’s Arfwedson Circumcurio is larger and more distinctive than most.

Admittedly, the name Arfwedson Circumcurio is a bit of a mouthful.  The colonists who actually live on Litho rarely use that name and instead refer to the region simply as “the Redlands.”

The Redlands are a desert covered in lithium trinate (a dark red powder-like substance).  You can find lithium trinate and other lithium compounds pretty much anywhere you go on Litho (hence the name), but the highest concentrations are out in the Redlands.  Alkali Extraction Incorporated has therefore focused most of its lithium harvesting efforts on the Redlands, and Litho Colony itself is situated right on the outskirts of the Redlands region.

A word of caution: lithium trinate is a highly reactive chemical compound.  Never touch it with your bare hands.  It will irritate and burn your skin, and it will do far worse to your lungs if you inhale the dust. Please follow the safety guidelines delineated in A.E.I.’s company handbook.

Next time on Tomorrow News Network: A to Z, there’s a common stereotype about time travelers.  They always wear or carry antique watches.