One Step Closer to Block World

I'm Writing a Science Fiction Novel!

I’ve been wanting to write a novel for a long time, specifically, a science fiction novel. I had a really terrible idea for a ham-fisted philosophy of mind science fiction & fantasy (SFF) novel three or four years ago which I thankfully abandoned. It was convoluted and just awful. Then I had another really terrible idea about a nested simulation hypothesis novel, which I probably got from watching too much Rick & Morty. Ultimately, I decided not to start messing with simulations, virtual worlds, and augmented reality in novel form just yet. But after nixing these two, I didn’t have anything left in my intellectual queue—SFF novel wise.

Then one day the idea for Block World blasted me all at once as I was submitting the final edits for a journal article I had accepted to the Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness. You can view the penultimate version of the paper here, it’s a survey of philosophical problems facing the attribution of machine consciousness. I don’t want to give away too much of the plot, but it hit me as I was reflecting on my updated version of Ned Block’s Nation of China Argument against naïve machine functionalism—so the super nerds reading this may be able to tell where I’m going to go but shoot me a private message so you don’t blow it.

At first, I thought Block World would be a great short story that I could write up on my SFF Substack sub-section—Sages, Mages, and Wisdom Machines—but as I kept thinking about the plot, it continued to grow and invite me in deeper until I realized there’s a whole novel there. Finally! A novel novel idea that may not suck.

Obviously I’ll need a better artist than myself!

So, I got to work writing down the plot in a brand-new notebook. The characters grew, and new ones kept popping in out of nowhere. The story forced me to learn some theoretical physics and topological geometry for my FLT (faster than light travel). I had to bone up on archetypes and mythopoesis because Ursula k. Le Guin and C.S. Lewis convinced me they’re the way to go since they run much deeper than allegory. I had to bone up on some history of philosophy facts. And I had to dial down the on-the-nosedness of a bunch of philosophical and theological lessons I wanted to teach.

I thought I might be ready to start writing the novel back in July 2024, but something told me I should read some more SFF to prime the pump more and to make sure I don’t step on too many worn-out tropes. So I moved my start date back to November, 2024 and I got to work reading and listening to lots more classic SFF, modern SFF, great SFF, and not so great SFF.

Well, it’s November now, so I have to begin—and indeed I have begun! As of yesterday, November 1^st 2024, I started writing my first ever SFF novel, Block World. I’m pretty stoked.

Why am I telling you guys?

Well, first and foremost I’m telling you guys as another brushstroke in my attempts at painting myself into a corner. I really want to write this novel. The more people I tell, the more people are going to ask me about it. I’m looking to take away my options and give myself the eustress I need to actually make this happen.

Secondly, many of you already read my SFF short stories here on Substack, and you may be the only people actually interested in this project. If you’re in this small but loyal class of elites, then thank you and get hyped! It’s coming! And let’s say I write the book but can’t sell it to a publisher, which is a very real possibility, then I will most likely publish it here on Substack chapter by chapter for paid subscribers. So whatever the case, Block World will see the light of day (for good of for ill).

I’m tempted to say much more about the plot but there are lots of homages and Easter eggs that will play much better if you find them by yourselves, also I don’t want to get scooped (a philosopher’s nightmare), and things may continue to change and develop so I’d hate to promise something that ends up getting changed or cut. But let me just share some of the influences that I’ll be incorporating and overlaying since those won’t get cut from the novel:

- David vs. Goliath archetype

- David, King Saul, & Jonathan archetype

- Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy (This one’s pretty key)

- Ned Block’s Nation of China thought experiment

- Out of The Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis

- Dune (Originally serialized in Analog SF magazine as two novels “Dune World” and “The Prophet of Dune”, Dune World played a role in my desire to name mind “Block World”)

- The Hobbit (some LOTR and Silmarillion as well but I’m really trying not to play with Tolkien too much)

- Plato’s Republic (This one is also pretty key)

- Various Conan the Barbarian stories (for the action)

- Sun Eater (Also trying not to steal from Christopher but he’s playing with Dune and Tolkien, and Star Wars so it may be hard to avoid overlap)

So, there you go, if you like some of those, then hopefully you’ll enjoy Block World—I’ll do my best not to be (too) derivative, too preachy, or too verbose. I do have a kind of Golden-Agey/Pulp SF writing style—that old “show don’t tell” heavy dialogue style—but it comes more from Philip K Dick than from reading lots of Golden Age SF (which I haven’t done, though I have been reading lots of Asimov in my novel prep). So hopefully that style isn’t too frustrating for modern fantasy enjoyers.

I’m a philosopher first and foremost so the dialogical style of narrative comes more natural since that’s what’s going on in my head all the time. [“‘All the time?’ Really? Are you saying you literally dream in dialogues?” “Shut up, the context is clear enough to know that I didn’t mean that as a strict universal quantifier.” “Words have meaning! Your statement ranges over ‘all’ times, and thus it’s clearly false. There’s no way you aLwAyS have dialogues going on in your head”].

So what’s the time line on this? I wish I knew. There’s really no telling. Somedays I can sit down and write a 2,500 word story in a couple hours and sometimes it takes me 3 or 4 sessions across multiple days. But my friend Christopher Ruocchio, author of the Sun Eater series, filled me in on his writing method and it fit pretty closely with how I wrote my 120 page Systematic Theology Master’s thesis back in seminary. That is, write out a very detailed outline, including lots of the actual text which will comprise the final book, then once you have the outline complete, start writing.

Ruocchio writes in the early mornings and I think he said he tries to get 1,200 to 1,700 words down a day. This seems to work very well as he’s been pumping out massive books at a pretty good pace. So my goal is to create a very detailed outline of Block World by the end of November and then come up with a daily word count goal to hit until the novel is complete. I don’t want it to be overly massive—I do have a bunch I want to say but I’m going to show restraint for the good of the plot and the sake of my readers. This might be an embarrassingly naïve goal, but I’m thinking I could probably have it done by July 2025. We’ll see. Until then, I’ll continue to try and hone my craft by writing SFF short stories here under the Sages, Mages, and Wisdom Machines sub-section.

Thanks for all the support thus far and if you think of it, pray that I can actually get this done and do a great job.