Zak's Production Journal. - And so it begins

And so it begins

Apr. 6th, 2008 at 2:25 PM

After a lot of floundering around and picayune 'preparation' where I did silly things like name my characters and find out what BBS software they were running, last night I wrote the first scene in the 8-Bit Cyberpunk novel. This book is going to be absurdly fun to write and startlingly, it's also funny. I didn't realize I could even do that.

Music:Depeche Mode - Little 15

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pxcampbell wrote:

Apr. 7th, 2008 12:01 am (UTC)

Go you!

But, dare I ask, what is an 8-bit cyberpunk novel, anyway?

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voidmonster wrote:

Apr. 7th, 2008 02:01 am (UTC)

Well, it's a cyberpunk story insofar as it's about computer hackers, network cracking and exploitation, government agencies (and inter-agency rivalry), fringe music and the camaraderie engendered by various degrees of criminal behavior. It's 8-bit because it's all happening in the mid 80's using 8-bit computers.

There's also a sentient satellite that eats time, but that has nothing do with the 8-bit part.

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tomsalt wrote:

Apr. 7th, 2008 12:26 am (UTC)

I don't know if you were living here in the late 80s/early 90s, but San Diego used to have a truly staggering number of BBSs. After a fair bit of Google'ing I finally found a list that's fairly close to what I remember. This list, or one very similar, was published weekly in the free ComputorEdge 'magazine'. I remember spending hours (okay, I'm probably exaggerating here) going through the list with a phone book next to me to figure out which ones were toll calls (since we were all 619 back then) to prevent my parents getting a nasty surprise on their phone bill.

To me, there's only one thing those old BBSs had that the 'Net will never be able to replace properly. And that's multi-line chat-systems like AnarchyX where you could be 99.999% certain that if you suggested a (late night) Denny's run for coffee and face-to-face chatter, almost nobody would say "sorry, I'm not actually in SD". Ahhhh, nostalgia.

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voidmonster wrote:

Apr. 7th, 2008 02:06 am (UTC)

At some point I really wouldn't mind setting another story during that era of BBSes, because there was all kinds of cool stuff going on there.

The one I'm working on is the era just before multi-line BBSes really came into vogue (I'm pretty sure there *were* some multiline C64 boards, but the hardware to do it was exotic).

The characters in my book are all about the not getting a nasty surprise, but they're accomplishing it through a variety of less-than-legal methods. Phone hacking is the major organizing point for the characters.

Also, it's set in Kansas City. It makes the research easier, since I lived there with that hacker culture in that era. :)

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orogeny wrote:

Apr. 7th, 2008 08:25 am (UTC)

Congratulations on getting the words started. It already sounds funny. =D

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drumiller wrote:

Apr. 7th, 2008 07:26 pm (UTC)

/cheer

Yum. Sign me up for beta when you get to that point. Also, if you want to bounce more impression pings on ideas off me anytime, always feel free.

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And so it begins

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