Anna Lempert
- I was reading Stranger in the Strange Land by Heinlein. A sci-fi classic from the 60s. Now , the author is an absolute genius in many respects but, boy , did he get the whole gender roles screwed up. Even by 60s standards you can call him a sexist. So , while I was reading the dialogs I would often come up with an alternative reply or action. In fact , I wanted to rewrite the whole story from a modern perspective. That got me thinking , if I did rewrite it , then maybe somebody else would want to rewrite it to reflect his views. And still it would be one-person-point-of-view book. But what I wanted was a broader catholic point of view. If there is a conflict in ideas , I would rather see two different people trying to prove or expose their points of view rather than one guy arguing with an imaginary opponent. You may miss quite a lot of valid points when you try to guess what your opponents will say and then rebuff those arguments. Today's web has created many opportunities for expressing your own ideas, gazillian discussion boards, plus sites like salon or slashdot. But they are all in thread format. Instead I want to see a story. I want to merge Role Playing Games with Salon, taking cues from Improvisational Theater and see what happens. So , the idea is to use wiki web by several people who will all take on personalities that they can totally engross in. And then it will be improv. Can you edit previous entries? I don't know. It may be a good idea , sometimes it makes sense to revisit old stuff. But it should probably be used with moderation and some rules should apply on how to handle events happening after the edit.
Which rules ? i don't know. So , this is the FirstBook.