Grand Opening

Welcome to Quantum Sentience, a personal blog about science, science fiction, science fantasy (you'll know what I mean by this further down this post), entertainment and general stuff. Since I'm a budding writer, Ill also be posting excerpts from drafts of some stories I have written. I'll start off with the self-contained short stories first, so that I can write up longer stories while reviewing your comments and suggestions.

I mentioned science fantasy earlier. What is it? Well, its fictional stories that use magic or technology settings to develop non-fictional worlds. For example, steampunk would be more science fantasy than normal fantasy, as steampunk stories revolve on clockwork, magitech (magical technology) and steam-powered technology. The stories don't necessarily rely on any advanced science concepts (like wormholes, nuclear fusion, genetic engineering etc.) but they produce stories that take place in settings not possible with current technology (or magic, if you believe in it). Now, you'll ask, why not just say that they're plain fantasy? A lot of these stories often use these settings to do nearly the same thing that science fiction tries to do, which is to discern human nature and the human condition. That is to say, to put people in a situation, and observe how they react.

Is there a lot of science fantasy? Not all steam-punk stories are like I described. Often they are more thematically similar to thrillers. Some though do , like the book "Alchemy of Stone" by Ekatarina Sedia. This book takes place in an alternate world where there are clockwork robots powered by alchemy. The main character, Mattie , has a dilema. Her creator holds the literal key to her survival, but she wants to follow her own will and not of her masters'.

The idea of enslaved machinery is common in SF, but often the machinery are shown to be hostile and threatening to us fleshy humans. We have Mattie. though who is just as much a robot as any other, but more sympathetic to us humans. Her story is a slaves fight for freedom, something people understand to be a distinctly human story.

This reminds me of a concept known as the Uncanny Valley . The concept revolves around the social interaction of robots with humans. At first the robots are inhuman with bare minimum interaction, then comes a point where the robots have physicaly unthreatening physiques and imperfect human interaction. Humans would feel comfortable with these robots, as they would be pleasing to look at and interact with. The trough in this valley is then a point in the development of robotics that creates robots that look nearly human, with equivelantly near perfect interaction. Its the imperfections of these almost-human constructs that frighten people. Ill talk more about this concept in a later post.

Anyways, welcome to my blog. You can give me suggestions on what you want me to cover next. I will try to post at least once a week, though this is my first "real" blog, so please be gentle on me.