Lucy

Went to see the film Lucy a couple of days ago and besides being a very good action thriller it was also very thought provoking.

If their research is correct and I'm pretty sure it is, then most animals use about two point five percent of their brain and humans use only ten percent.  One could say look what we have managed to do with that ten percent.  You could also say look what we haven't done with that ten percent.  Yes we have built marvels of technology but at the same time we have driven our planet nearly to the edge of the largest mass extinction evident in history.

Compare that to the dolphin, the creature that is using twenty percent of its brain capacity and with it have developed an echo location system more advanced any human sonar.  That is mention in the movie.  What they don't mention in Lucy is a fact I learnt years ago from Carol Vorderman's program 'See Through Science' - the echo location of dolphins is so advanced that in shorter ranges it can actually see your skeleton.  It is a biological X-ray.  Dolphins have done that, not by working and fighting for it but rather by simply existing.

So does that film Lucy have a point when Morgan Freeman's character asks 'are humans more concerned with having rather than being?'  And the main question you have to ask is 'what could we do if we started using a higher percentage of our brains'?

I have to wonder because from the brain scan studies of autistics we already use different areas of our brains to homo sapiens so what doors are we opening?  Are autistics beginning to use a higher percent of our brains than homo sapiens?  Is that why we see so much more than 'normal' people?

I've been told that the reason that my brain over loads on information is because my 'editor' doesn't work.  I've always been told that normal humans have editors in their brains that cut out most of the details that they see and hear and that in autistics those editors do not work, hence why we can suffer from information over load and system crash.  But what if that is not true?  What if autistic are not so much 'editor broken' people but rather people who are more perceptive than other humans?  What if we are seeing more details because we are more whole than other people?

And besides speculation there still remains the estimation that eighty two percent of the human race now carry at least six to twelve of the genes involved with autism.  So, despite the fact that society has a problem with us, genetically we are viable.  So if our genetics continue to spread then eventually we will be the majority population, which means that eventually we will be able to shape society to suit us.

Society being changed by people who have a problem with change.  Isn't that divine irony?

Possibilities

This is a subject that I've been thinking about a lot in recent weeks, due in part to someone asking me to try and explain what makes me different from other people.  When I consider that for any length of time I find myself going back to the moment when I first realised why people talked to one another.

It was when I first held my sister in my arms as a baby and I can remember quiet clearly the instant that I realised that here, in this little body, was a different soul.  Even now the memory of realising at this little being had a different soul to me can shake me.  The realisation that she did not think the same thoughts as me, did not know what I knew, blew out more of my circuits that I can explain even now.  It sudden knowledge that we weren't just two different bodies but two different souls was a revelation as blinding as the vision on the road to Damascus.

Before that I had been silent because I thought that everybody knew what everybody else was feeling and thinking.  I thought that what one knew we all knew, what one thought we all thought.  I didn't like talking because to me it was a wasteful noise that stopped the music in my head.

What is more, even now I will have a moment when because I know something I expect everybody else to know it.

Having been looking at this for some time now I've started wondering something.  Is it possible that without knowing the meaning of the word telepathy, the infant autistic mind automatically assumes its existence?

Is that why we struggle with speech?  Because we are expecting knowledge and emotion to transfer on a wave length of the mind, a direct connection of thought to thought?

When Isaac Asimov wrote about the people of Ghia in 'Forward the Foundation' and 'Foundation and Earth' who, when they speak of themselves, say "I/We/Ghia" was he describing the world that autistics expect themselves to be born into?

Are autistics the people who are reaching for an evolution, not of the body, but of the mind?

And if that is so, then what is the human race throwing away by forcing us to close off that possibility and live life on society's current terms?

To Book Covers and Beyond

O.K. I'm doing a late night to type this one up but since I don't think that I'm going to have much time to write one up over the weekend I thought I better get one in quick.

The design for my book cover is progressing.  I'm pretty sure that I have the right lay out and format now, as inspired by the front covers of the Artemis Fowl books (big thanks to Eion Colfer and his design team!) however, I am struggling to get the right back ground colour.  It is being a pig and using up a lot more paper than I want it to.  I'm beginning to wonder if I should start looking through the sheets of coloured paper I have laying around the house.  I don't want to use dark blue because that would just be a total rip off of the a fore mentioned Artemis Fowl books and nobody likes a thief but a light coloured back ground just wouldn't look right.  Believe me I've tried it and it definitely doesn't look right.  Would a dark royal purple go well?

Any way, the main question I want to posse you lovely people who read my blog is this - when my book is published what would you like me to do on my blog?  I can do world descriptions or I can do character profiles?  Either/or is good or would you like me to do both?

I'm hoping that I can get the cover wrapped up soon and not just so I can start selling but also so that I can move on to other projects as I started work with my editor today on the second book in the series.

Galloping Gargoyles!  I've just realised that I need to do a series logo for the spine!  Great, even more work.  Hopefully it will all pay off when I'm up on the best selling lists.  Still until then it is more pressure for me to carry.  And no sight of that Time Turner I asked for a couple of weeks back.  Can you grow time in a pot do you suppose?

People say that writing is a job for lazy people that is the get rich quick route.  Sorry to disappoint you but it isn't.  It takes an awful lot of work and there are no guarantees of riches at the end of it, especially with the tax man eyeing up half of your profit.  Why can't he go and bother Amazon for a while?  Or maybe Vodaphone.  That would probably pay off half the national debt in one go, if the politicians didn't grab it all before it could get to there.

Any way, if I'm to get any sleep at all tonight I need to wrap it up there.  Talk again soon and let me know what you want me to do once the book is on the shelves.

Ghoulies, Ghosties and the Things That Go Bump in the Night

Last night I went on the Tuesday edition of the Norwich Ghost walk, also known as the Elmhill wall.

It was brilliant.  It turned up parts of Norwich's history that I didn't know existed and showed me a couple of buildings that I hadn't notice before.  One of them particularly in Tombland looks like the architect was high on something when he built it, especially when you view the back and discover the 'door to no where'.  Did the Tudors have reefer?  Or did they make do with dried banana skins?  That's a point, did they have bananas in those days?  I don't know but what ever the designer was smoking I don't think it was normal tobacco.

There were suitable ghoulies and ghosties wandering about, although the helicopter which persisted in buzzing around and making it difficult for all of us was a serious annoyance.  If I'd know who it was I be tempted to go and put a walnut down the exhaust pipe.

Anyway, the ghoulies and ghosties where brilliant and apparently 'Brother John' rather liked me.  I didn't think that monks where allowed that sort of thing but as my friend Stormie pointed out, they used to have a passageway that ran below the road so they could nip out to the Maid's Head Hotel for a sneaky drink.  If they were doing that you have to wonder what they were getting up to with the bar maid.

All in all, it was a thoroughly enjoyable night out and was highly entertaining and informative.  The Man in Black, as our host introduced himself, was brilliant at spinning a yarn and playing up the atmosphere.  If you like slightly creepy and rather funny then I high recommend going on one of the walk.  The Man in Black and his creepy crew can also do birthday parties but only if the ghosts are not on strike.

If you want to go on one of the walks, then just meet up outside of the Adam and Eve pub, Bishopsgate, Norwich at 7.30pm on Tuesday or Thursday night (they do a different walk on the different evenings) or check up www.ghostwalksnorwich.co.uk.

I loved every minute of the two hours and these a Halloween special coming up but apparently you need to book that one 'cause they've had to impose a number limit for health and safety reasons.  That and the ghosts get shy if there are too many people there.

Post Me a Time Turner Please

The title is a general cry for help right now because between my book, my script, my own artwork, a commission, work from the Norwich Writers' Circle (I'm the Membership Secretary) and the house work I am pretty much utterly swamped.

Let's put it this way, yesterday I had twenty five jobs on my list of jobs to do, today I have twenty two and counting.  It seems as fast as I chop one of them off the list another one jumps up and attaches itself to my butt.  I'm up to my aft in alligators and I can't find the plug to drain the swamp.

So saying, most of the big jobs are being to approach being complete.  The script for 'Sleeping Beauty: A Pantomime' is over half way done so I'm hoping to post that up on RPGnow for sale by the end of the month.  It will be interesting to see how well it does as I've already had two amateur dramatic groups voice interest in it.

The front cover of my book is also making head way.  I've found a design that I much prefer.  Writers' Tip: Keep the front cover of your book simple.  Have a look at the recent editions of the 'Farseer Trilogies' by Robin Hobb, 'Harry Potter' by J. K. Rowling and the 'Artemis Fowl' series by Eoin Colfer.  All of them hit the best seller charts and though the contents of the books are what gains you fans, it is the front cover that gets the books off the shelves in the first place.

I know that the new author wants recognition for their years of hard work crafting, researching, rewriting and generally sweating and bleeding over their manuscript (hello I am one remember) but I'm sorry to say that it is the book cover that turns your manuscript into a book and it is the book that sales.

That is still pretty cold comfort when you are rushing around disappearing up your own backside, wishing that you could be in two places at once (hence the plead for a time turner) and still trying to improve the world just a little bit.  Homo autistic I maybe, I still care about the fact that there are people in Africa starving because it gets £30 billion in aid and looses £129 billion to exploitation, most through so-called tax havens. (Check out World Development Movement for details.)

And politicians will still try and tell you that slavery was abolished centuries ago.