Map Making Tutorial with Jessica Khoury, Part 5

We have something a little new and different for everyone on the League this week--a YouTube series on creating maps for novels! Author Jessica Khoury--who recently did a Reddit AMA on worldbuilding here--created a whole series for the blog. Please welcome here as you learn about making your own maps for your books!



Used in this tutorial:
Adobe Photoshop CS6 (check the website for a free trial version!)

For more info and resources for fantasy cartography, check out these sites!
ProFantasy Software (software specifically for fantasy cartography, less complex than Photoshop)
My Map Pinterest Board (a collection of maps for inspiration)



Jessica Khoury is August's Affiliate Blogger. To find out more about our guest author positions here at the League, click here.

Jessica Khoury is 23 years old. She has a B. A. in English and currently lives in Toccoa, Georgia. When not writing, she's usually directing stageplays or coaching soccer. Origin is her first novel.

Origin
by Jessica Khoury

Pia has grown up in a secret laboratory hidden deep in the Amazon rainforest. She was raised by a team of scientists who have created her to be the start of a new immortal race. But on the night of her seventeenth birthday, Pia discovers a hole in the electric fence that surrounds her sterile home--and sneaks outside the compound for the first time in her life. Free in the jungle, Pia meets Eio, a boy from a nearby village. Together, they embark on a race against time to discover the truth about Pia's origin--a truth with deadly consequences that will change their lives forever.

Map Making Tutorial with Jessica Khoury, Part 4

We have something a little new and different for everyone on the League this week--a YouTube series on creating maps for novels! Author Jessica Khoury--who recently did a Reddit AMA on worldbuilding here--created a whole series for the blog. Please welcome here as you learn about making your own maps for your books!



Used in this tutorial:
Adobe Photoshop CS6 (check the website for a free trial version!)

For more info and resources for fantasy cartography, check out these sites!
ProFantasy Software (software specifically for fantasy cartography, less complex than Photoshop)
My Map Pinterest Board (a collection of maps for inspiration)



Jessica Khoury is August's Affiliate Blogger. To find out more about our guest author positions here at the League, click here.

Jessica Khoury is 23 years old. She has a B. A. in English and currently lives in Toccoa, Georgia. When not writing, she's usually directing stageplays or coaching soccer. Origin is her first novel.

Origin
by Jessica Khoury

Pia has grown up in a secret laboratory hidden deep in the Amazon rainforest. She was raised by a team of scientists who have created her to be the start of a new immortal race. But on the night of her seventeenth birthday, Pia discovers a hole in the electric fence that surrounds her sterile home--and sneaks outside the compound for the first time in her life. Free in the jungle, Pia meets Eio, a boy from a nearby village. Together, they embark on a race against time to discover the truth about Pia's origin--a truth with deadly consequences that will change their lives forever.

Map Making Tutorial with Jessica Khoury, Part 3

We have something a little new and different for everyone on the League this week--a YouTube series on creating maps for novels! Author Jessica Khoury--who recently did a Reddit AMA on worldbuilding here--created a whole series for the blog. Please welcome here as you learn about making your own maps for your books!



Used in this tutorial:
Adobe Photoshop CS6 (check the website for a free trial version!)

For more info and resources for fantasy cartography, check out these sites!
ProFantasy Software (software specifically for fantasy cartography, less complex than Photoshop)
My Map Pinterest Board (a collection of maps for inspiration)



Jessica Khoury is August's Affiliate Blogger. To find out more about our guest author positions here at the League, click here.

Jessica Khoury is 23 years old. She has a B. A. in English and currently lives in Toccoa, Georgia. When not writing, she's usually directing stageplays or coaching soccer. Origin is her first novel.

Origin
by Jessica Khoury

Pia has grown up in a secret laboratory hidden deep in the Amazon rainforest. She was raised by a team of scientists who have created her to be the start of a new immortal race. But on the night of her seventeenth birthday, Pia discovers a hole in the electric fence that surrounds her sterile home--and sneaks outside the compound for the first time in her life. Free in the jungle, Pia meets Eio, a boy from a nearby village. Together, they embark on a race against time to discover the truth about Pia's origin--a truth with deadly consequences that will change their lives forever.

Map Making Tutorial with Jessica Khoury, Part 2

We have something a little new and different for everyone on the League this week--a YouTube series on creating maps for novels! Author Jessica Khoury--who recently did a Reddit AMA on worldbuilding here--created a whole series for the blog. Please welcome here as you learn about making your own maps for your books!



Used in this tutorial:
Adobe Photoshop CS6 (check the website for a free trial version!)

For more info and resources for fantasy cartography, check out these sites!
ProFantasy Software (software specifically for fantasy cartography, less complex than Photoshop)
My Map Pinterest Board (a collection of maps for inspiration)



Jessica Khoury is August's Affiliate Blogger. To find out more about our guest author positions here at the League, click here.

Jessica Khoury is 23 years old. She has a B. A. in English and currently lives in Toccoa, Georgia. When not writing, she's usually directing stageplays or coaching soccer. Origin is her first novel.

Origin
by Jessica Khoury

Pia has grown up in a secret laboratory hidden deep in the Amazon rainforest. She was raised by a team of scientists who have created her to be the start of a new immortal race. But on the night of her seventeenth birthday, Pia discovers a hole in the electric fence that surrounds her sterile home--and sneaks outside the compound for the first time in her life. Free in the jungle, Pia meets Eio, a boy from a nearby village. Together, they embark on a race against time to discover the truth about Pia's origin--a truth with deadly consequences that will change their lives forever.

Map-Making Tutorials from Jessica Khoury

We have something a little new and different for everyone on the League this week--a YouTube series on creating maps for novels! Author Jessica Khoury--who recently did a Reddit AMA on worldbuilding here--created a whole series for the blog. Please welcome here as you learn about making your own maps for your books!



Used in this tutorial:
Adobe Photoshop CS6 (check the website for a free trial version!)

For more info and resources for fantasy cartography, check out these sites!
ProFantasy Software (software specifically for fantasy cartography, less complex than Photoshop)
My Map Pinterest Board (a collection of maps for inspiration)



Jessica Khoury is August's Affiliate Blogger. To find out more about our guest author positions here at the League, click here.

Jessica Khoury is 23 years old. She has a B. A. in English and currently lives in Toccoa, Georgia. When not writing, she's usually directing stageplays or coaching soccer. Origin is her first novel.

Origin
by Jessica Khoury

Pia has grown up in a secret laboratory hidden deep in the Amazon rainforest. She was raised by a team of scientists who have created her to be the start of a new immortal race. But on the night of her seventeenth birthday, Pia discovers a hole in the electric fence that surrounds her sterile home--and sneaks outside the compound for the first time in her life. Free in the jungle, Pia meets Eio, a boy from a nearby village. Together, they embark on a race against time to discover the truth about Pia's origin--a truth with deadly consequences that will change their lives forever.

Growing a Story From A Seed

Where do ideas come from? There are too many answers to that question to count, but today I’m going to focus on giving you a snapshot of one way to tackle the getting of ideas.

I once heard Neil Gaiman say that everybody has ideas, but writers train themselves to notice them. To notice the playful daydreams and the ‘what ifs’ that float through all our brains on a daily basis. 

For me the ‘what if’, followed by the ‘what next’ are perhaps the most important parts of the daydream-to-idea-to-story sequence, and it all starts with a seed.

I recently saw an article about a group of medical specialists who have learned to oxygenate blood with an injection. It came about when one doctor watched a little girl die for lack of oxygen, and started thinking about ways to help her breathe that didn’t involve getting air down her windpipe. Now, they’re at the point of being able to oxygenate blood for up to half an hour via injection. A development like this, once widespread, could gift paramedics with the ability to save lives.

But, the article asked, what else could this mean? Could it help us spacewalk? Deep sea dive? What about climbing Everest without oxygen tanks? 

I thought this was fascinating, and for me, this is where the writer’s brain kicks in. The ‘what if’ is fascinating, and the ‘what next’ turns it into a story. What if we could spend extended periods of time underwater without any need for oxygen tanks? What next? Where would that lead? Could we explore underwater environments with greater ease? Could we look at ways to make them habitable? After all, with global warming, we’re looking at diminished landmass. Or we could take it in another direction—could I commute to work across the bay? All I’d need would be an injection, a waterproof suit to keep me dry, and some sort of propulsion. What would it be? An underwater motorbike? What would a city look like if rivers and bays became, essentially, roads? What sort of person might live there? Who could face an interesting dilemma?

The questions go on and on, and that’s before I even get to the question of spacewalks! Building a story is as simple—and as difficult—as that. A seed of an idea, and then a thousand iterations of ‘what if’ and ‘what next’, until just the right one comes along!

Let Me Google That for You

Since I imagine readers of this blog and/or League books probably enjoy thinking about words, I thought I'd highlight a nifty tool: the Google books Ngram Viewer.

As you'd expect, Google likes data. They're pretty much tracking everything that can possibly be tracked, which can be scary, but they also give their users a lot of access to that data. So what's an "Ngram"? Wikipedia defines it as:

In the fields of computational linguistics and probability, an n-gram is a contiguous sequence of n items from a given sequence of text or speech. The items can be phonemessyllablesletterswords or base pairs according to the application. The n-grams typically are collected from a text or speech corpus.

Basically, Google has provided us with a way to search for certain words or phrases that have appeared in books over a certain period of time, from about 1800 to 2008, then display the results on a graph to show their frequency of occurrence. The first things I plugged in when I discovered this a few years ago were topics related to the books I was writing. This is what the Google Ngram viewer displays for "parallel universe, alternate universe, multiple worlds":


That is awesome. See, physicist Hugh Everett III proposed his "many-worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics — the idea that a parallel universe exists for every action and decision we make — in 1957. The theory was promptly ignored in the scientific community until around the late 1970s and early 1980s, though it had appeared in science fiction for decades before that and grown in popularity, particularly in television shows like The Twilight Zone and Star Trek, and much later, Sliders. If you've been reading a lot of YA, you've probably noticed an increase in novels about alternate realities lately, and so has Google.

Let's try something even more popular. This is the search for "vampire":


This looks about right to me. Vampires have been around in folklore and fiction for a while before Bram Stoker wrote Dracula in 1897. But it sure looks like it really took off around 2005. Wonder what could account for that?

Okay, one more:

Whoa. Right?

I find this endlessly fascinating, almost as addictive as Wikipedia or TV Tropes (no links, you're welcome). What do you think of this tool? What sorts of terms are you interested in searching for?


THE MEME PLAGUE and Series Extras!

This week is the launch of Angie Smibert's THE MEME PLAGUE! It's so exciting to have another League member's trilogy finished! It feels like just yesterday that we started here, launching our debuts!

One of the coolest things about Angie's series is the extras. I've always loved how she has real-world things associated with her books.

For Memento Nora, she has tons of extras, including the free first chapter, teacher and classroom ideas for creating comics, and discussion questions.


Memento Nora by Angie SmibertMEMENTO NORA (Marshall Cavendish, April 1, 2011)

(This book now has it’s own website:www.mementonora.com. Pop over there for more info on inspirations, activities, and a cool educational project underway very soon.)


Nora, the popular girl and happy consumer, witnesses a horrific bombing on a shopping trip with her mother. In Nora’s near-future world, terrorism is so commonplace that she can pop one little white pill to forget and go on like nothing ever happened. However, when Nora makes her first trip to a Therapeutic Forgetting Clinic, she learns what her mother, a frequent forgetter, has been frequently forgetting. Nora secretly spits out the pill and holds on to her memories. The memory of the bombing as well as her mother’s secret and her budding awareness of the world outside her little clique make it increasingly difficult for Nora to cope. She turns to two new friends, each with their own reasons to remember, and together they share their experiences with their classmates through an underground comic. They soon learn, though, they can’t get away with remembering.


READ THE FIRST CHAPTER:

TEACHER / LIBRARIAN RESOURCES:

Please see the Memento Nora website for the following:

For The Forgetting Curve, she's got all the same, cool things. What better way to get your reluctant readers into reading than by enticing them with comics? It's awesome--and Angie's series lends itself to that so nicely.



THE FORGETTING CURVE (Marshall Cavendish, Spring 2012)


Aiden Nomura likes to open doors—especially using his skills as a hacker—to see what’s hidden inside. He believes everything is part of a greater system: the universe. The universe shows him the doors, and he keeps pulling until one cracks open. Aiden exposes the flaw, and the universe—or someone else—will fix it. It’s like a game.

Until it isn’t.


When a TFC opens in Bern, Switzerland, where Aiden is attending boarding school, he knows things are changing. Shortly after, bombs go off within quiet, safe Bern. Then Aiden learns that his cousin Winter, back in the States, has had a mental breakdown. He returns to the US immediately.


But when he arrives home in Hamilton, Winter’s mental state isn’t the only thing that’s different. The city is becoming even stricter, and an underground movement is growing.


Along with Winter’s friend, Velvet, Aiden slowly cracks open doors in this new world. But behind those doors are things Aiden doesn’t want to see—things about his society, his city, even his own family. And this time Aiden may be the only one who can fix things . . . before someone else gets hurt.


READ THE FIRST CHAPTER:

TEACHER / LIBRARIAN RESOURCES:

Please see the Memento Nora Series website (www.mementonora.com) for the following:


With the final book in this trilogy, Angie's done it again. She's got resources for "Maker Spaces" -- places where you can take something and "make" it into something else. This is something Winter, Aiden, and Lina do in THE MEME PLAGUE. Angie's done it again!






THE MEME PLAGUE (Skyscape, August 13, 2013)


It begins with the name JONAS W. on the side of a cardboard coffin—right before the funeral procession blows up. Then it’s the whisper in the back of Micah’s head: Your father betrayed his country. You can’t always trust your own brain. Not when you have one of the mayor’s mandatory chips in your skull. Micah knows that the chip developed by TFC (the corporation that runs the Therapeutic Forgetting Clinics) does more than just erase unpleasant memories—it implants new ones. The MemeCast warns citizens to “fight the hack.”

Micah and his friends have each lost something—a parent, a relationship, a home, maybe even their own identities as they remembered them to be. But together, they can make sure some things are never forgotten.

Election Day is coming, and Mayor Mignon is set to be elected to Congress. It’s time to build a new electronic frontier, one that’s not controlled by the mayor and his cronies. It’s time to get out the vote and shake up the system. It’s time to finally sayenough.


READ THE FIRST CHAPTER:

TEACHER / LIBRARIAN RESOURCES:
I have a lot of information for teachers, students, and librarians on the  Memento Nora Series website (www.mementonora.com).  The links particular to this book include:

If you haven't gotten your hands on this series yet, DO IT. Angie is also celebrating the launch of THE MEME PLAGUE with a giveaway! She's giving away the following prizes:
• Grand prize: (1) Kindle (courtesy of Amazon)—the basic 6” display / wifi one.
• (1)Complete set of the series. (MN, FC, MP). Signed if in US; unsigned and delivered through Book Depository if outside US.
• (3) Meme Plague (hard copy) plus swag.

Requirements to enter found on the Rafflecopter widget, and remember to please help out by donating to Feeding America.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Support Angie Simbert's THE MEME PLAGUE launch by donating to Feed America!

You might know that this week marks the release of the third book in the Memento Nora series by the League's very own Angie Simbert, but did you know how Angie is celebrating The Meme Plague's release? By encouraging readers to donate to Feeding America! More on that awesomeness in a moment, but first--- here's a little more info about the books.

This remarkable dystopian series features a world where a group of teens heads underground to fight a system that suppresses independent thought via the Therapeutic Forgetting Clinic, an organization that erases reality and replaces it with phony memories. The Meme Plague continues the series from Micah's point of view, and takes us down the rabbit hole of intrusive government, paranoia, and how to fight an enemy that can change your past at the drop of a hat.



Angie's charity drive for Feeding America ties in really well with her books, because in both the Forgetting Curve (book two) and the Meme Plague (book three), Micah does community service at a food bank. Since he and his mother lived in a homeless village, they know what it's like to have an empty stomach and depend on hand-outs to get by.

Not only that, but Feeding America is a cause near and dear to Angie's heart. When I asked her about her experience with the charity, here's what she had to say:

"A few summers ago--when I was writing book 2--I volunteered at the local Feeding America. I sorted donations from grocery stores and various food drives. And I've always been really impressed with the organization. They take the nonperishable food that might otherwise be thrown out because it's got dings or might be close to its expiration date, and they make sure it gets into the hands of the people who need it. And most of us are one or two major emergencies away from needing their services."

Contribute to Angie's food drive by donating to Feeding America today! According to her donation page, every $1 you donate helps provide up to EIGHT meals to people served by the Feeding America network. ONE DOLLAR--that's all! Angie says, "I hope you'll agree: by coming together, we can help end hunger in America. Give as much as you can -- every bit counts!"

Go to Angie's Feed America donation page here to learn more about donating


And any of these places to buy The Meme Plague.
And enter here for a chance to win the entire trilogy! 

We are so excited (for all of us readers and for Angie) that the final book in the series has released. Congratulations, Angie!

Envisioning the Future: Worldbuilding in the Memento Nora Series

This week we're celebrating the conclusion to Angie Smibert's Memento Nora series. Today I want to point out one of my favorite features of this book series--the worldbuilding.

Worldbuilding is an essential tool for any writer, even in a contemporary novel where the world is similar to the one we live in now, but it's often key in any sort of speculative fiction.

Angie does two key things in the Memento Nora series with worldbuilding: making a realistic world, but leaving it up to the reader to build upon it. These two things need to be in perfect balance to make a world work.

Making a Realistic World
This comes from thinking logically through the next steps. In the first book, Angie made Nora's world something that we're very close to having now: a government that disregards privacy, a society that would rather choose ignorance, and a world that is dictated through terror rather than peace.

It's a bleak world, made brighter through the glimmer of hope Nora and her friends provide. But the key is that it's a world that logically follows through with what our world currently is. We're on the cusp of this sort of society, and it wouldn't take much for this world to become our reality.

Leaving Details to the Reader
To me, this part of worldbuilding comes from respect: respect from the author for her readers. This is also, I find, one of the hardest parts of writing--knowing when to leave part of the story empty, and letting the reader fill in the blanks.

The simple truth is, the reader's imagination is far, far richer than anything the author can create. Angie tells us what we need to know about the world of her stories, but she doesn't hold the reader's hand, and she lets there be room for the reader's vivid imagination.

Like I said, this is a hard balance to find: showing enough detail to make the world distinct yet realistic, but still holding back enough to not block the reader from entry into the world. If you want to see worldbuilding done right, though, pick up Memento Nora and its sequels--especially now that you'll be able to read them all!

AND DON'T FORGET: check out Angie's post yesterday for a chance to win the complete series and to donate to the Feeding America drive. 

The Meme Plague Giveaway

THE MEME PLAGUE comes out today, and I'm keeping it simple for the release of this final book in the Memento Nora series. I'm giving away a complete set of the series: Memento Nora, The Forgetting Curve, and the Meme Plague. (See the Rafflecopter widget below.) And, in lieu of the traditional League hoopla, I'm asking readers to also think about contributing to the Feeding America virtual food drive I've set up.





For more information on the series, please check out www.mementonora.com and/or www.angiesmibert.com.

The 12th Doctor


It won't come as much of surprise that us Leaguers are huge Doctor Who fans. So of course we were all glued to our TV sets last Sunday as the BBC revealed who would be playing the 12th Doctor.

So after a bit of this:

And a lot of this:



The moment finally arrived, huzzah! Peter Capaldi is our new Doctor!!!


Now we've had a few days to get over our excitement and digest the news, here are our initial thoughts on number 12...

EUGENE MYERS

“I'll admit, I was hoping the creative team would be a little more daring with this Doctor, a little edgier. I would love to see a woman Doctor (other than the 13th Doctor as played by Joanna Lumley in Moffat's parody Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death) or a black Doctor. But in all honesty, casting the role older this time is a bit bold — though it's not as if they could have gone much younger, could they? Having seen Peter Capaldi perform in Torchwood: Children of Earth, Doctor Who, and Neverwhere, I'm satisfied that he has the talent to play the role and put his own unique spin on it. And hearing that he was once a major fan boy of the show is even more encouraging! Personally, I came to Doctor Who via the classic series when I was in high school. (My favorite Doctors are Tom Baker and Peter Davison, my favorite companion is Sarah Jane Smith.) So I'm not worried about a man in his mid-fifties taking control of the TARDIS, and in fact I'm pleased to see it return to its roots for this year's 50th anniversary. Allons-y!”

LISSA PRICE

“I like the new doctor. He's smart, has depth. But rather not see a love subplot with Clara please.”

BETHANY HAGEN

“I admit that I would have liked to see a woman or person of color as the next Doctor.  Science fiction is a playground of diversity, and if any show can have a not-white, not-male lead, it's Doctor Who.  That being said, I also immensely trust Steven Moffat--both with Doctor Who and Sherlock; if Steven Moffat thinks Peter Capaldi is the right fit for the doctor, then I believe him.  I also recognize that with the last few doctors, I've experienced some profound resistance (Christopher Eccleston can't be a the Doctor, he's a bad guy!  David Tennant is too twitchy!  Matt Smith is too young!) and then have been won over completely by their second or third episode.  And the same will happen with Peter Capaldi.”

BETH REVIS

“I think it's a great idea to have a slightly older (he's not decrepit by any means!) Doctor--mainly because I'm a little burnt out of the "I'm in love with the Doctor" theme that's been running lately. My favorite season so far has been the one with Donna specifically because the plot focused so much on the plot rather than the romance. I'd love something funny, something adventurous...

One thing I'd love to see is one final episode with River Song, where she has to work with the new, older Doctor. Just one last time...one time for her to say goodbye.”

GENNIFER ALBIN

"I'm always sad when there's a regeneration, because it feels like that doctor dies.  Yeah, I know, I know, he regenerates, but let's face it, each new doctor has his own personality and quirks.  I'm sure I'll love 12 just as I've loved each of the others, but just like having a second child or making a new friend or adding another man to the harem, it will be a different love."

ELIZABETH RICHARDS

"I don't think anyone was surprised when Peter Capaldi walked onto the set, but I'm pleased with the choice...although I had secretly hoped it would be a woman! There's something David Tennant-y about Peter Capaldi, which is exciting as number 10 is my favorite doctor. I can't wait to see what he brings to the character."

What are your thoughts on the new Doctor? Do you like the fact he's an older doctor? Would you preferred a bolder choice? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below!

A True Immortal on Earth

Have you heard of HeLa cells?
Have you heard of Henrietta Lacks?


Way back in medical school, I'd learned was that HeLa cells were originally taken from the cervical cancer cells belonging to a young, black woman named Henrietta Lacks in 1951. That they were the first human cell line that grew like crazy in cell culture, and were used to create the Polio vaccine which saved countless lives. In fact, so much research has been done on HeLa cells that chances are, every person has benefitted from Henrietta, in one way or another. I remember we all chuckled over the fact that over twenty tons of HeLa cells had been produced over the last several decades. Twenty tons of Henrietta!

But after the laughter died away, I was haunted by the idea that somehow, in some way, Henrietta was still alive. And that the story was a little too simply told.

What I didn't know then was this: that the cells were taken without Henrietta's consent. And that the family was kept in the dark while her cell line was sold and distributed throughout the world.

So while we writers and readers consider immortality, non-consensual scientific experimentation, and the oppression of the vulnerable in our sci-fi and fantasy books, it's important to note that these things aren't all fiction. They trace their imaginary roots in some very real history. 

This was one of the best books I've read this past year, mostly because it's not just a book of facts--it's a story. It's about Henrietta, her family, and the tumultuous relationship between the author and Henrietta's daughter, Deborah. And what's most important, it opens up an extremely difficult dialogue about ethics, race, and science.

For more information, check out the Lacks Family Website, Wikipedia on HeLa cells and Henrietta LacksRebecca Skloot's website, and this recent CNN article that reminded me to write this post. :)


Scientific Proof: Writers Use Mind Control

I read an article about how writing and hearing stories affects your brain. Brains are a pretty intriguing thing on their own, but throw writing into the equation? You know that's going to be some great info. Check out this gem:

Scientists have also found that telling a story can plant emotions, thoughts and ideas into the brain of the listener. In studies at Princeton University, the brain activity of a woman telling a story and her listeners was monitored and as she told her story, her listeners' brain activity went into sync with hers.

This means that writers have the ultimate power to influence others. With a powerful and evocative story, you can activate your readers' brains and make them feel like they are experiencing it first-hand, influencing the emotions you want them to feel.

(Source: Memolition)
photo credit: "lapolab" via photopin cc
Fascinating, no?

I figure there are two ways to look at it-- as a reader or as a writer. Take your pick.

As a reader:
Haven't you always wanted to get inside the head of your favorite author? Scientists have shown that you've actually been doing it all along! Every time you read a book and experience any emotion with it, your brain is in sync with the author's, and you both are experiencing the same emotion.

As a writer:
Did you see what it said up there? Writers have the ultimate power to influence others. Ever want to take over the world? There's scientific proof that you already are.




Terrifying Tuesday: Implanted Memories Edition

So scientists at MIT have found a way to implant false memories.   In mice specifically, and the memories are memories of pain--probably because pain is the easiest to observe, but also probably because the scientists at MIT are mad scientists that electrocute everything in sight.

So, to incept something, you inject a protein called channelrhodopsin-2 (which I think is the channel on my TV that the miniature train show is always on) and then use a fiber-optic cable to trigger cellular activity.  At the same time you trigger pain activity on the mouse's feet.  The scientists were then able to trick the mice into believing that the pain had happened in one box and not another--even when the mouse was put in a variety of different boxes, his false memory of the first held true. 

To me, what's exciting about this is that science fiction has predicted the ability to implant false memories for quite some time.  Philip K. Dick's "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" (also known as the short story that became that Arnold Schwarzenegger movie which then became that Colin Farrell movie) is an early example, but there's also Inception, Dark City, Vanilla Sky, and our own Angie Smibert's Memento Nora...like the invisibility cloak, false memories are an idea canvassed by fiction decades before the reality.  

If you can dream it, you can build it (or electrocute it.)