Other Worlds?

Beardecember 16th, 2014

(nü Icon Campaign Day 7 of 8)

Well, the original plan was to blog daily updates for the duration of my campaign, but somehow life got in the way once again.

Just finished watching Sword Art Online, which may just be my new favorite anime! In case it's not obvious from the content of the majority of my spec fic stories; I've been obsessed with the potential of virtual and parallel realities for as long as I can remember. This of course means that SAO strikes very close to home. Not to mention being a beautiful, well-acted and damn interesting series of speculative fiction stories within a mostly believable VR story MacGuffin.
 
All this got me thinking back to some of my earliest memories. Such as typing spec fic on a portable typewriter borrowed from my Grandfather.

I couldn't have been very old (maybe 8) and it seemed like the biggest treat in the world to be allowed a sheet of paper and access to such a mysterious creative implement.

Pecking away, one key at a time I recall writing a couple paragraphs about a boy my age that could visit a parallel dimension.

The boy went to a school that was fancy in comparison to my own and even featured a full-size swimming pool. The story started with the boy jumping off the diving board and deciding to visit the other reality where time passed more slowly than in the real world. Here he visited with strange alien friends before returning to the real world just in time to hit the water.

I think that the boy also visited the other world a second time before surfacing from the dive and that's all I remember. Not sure where the idea came from. All I can imagine is that I simply absorbed a huge amount of sci-fi ideology from my parents via osmosis.

Something about storytelling had me hooked and my first publically performed work was a puppet play in Grade 2. All the students had a chance to write a story, but only 4 plays were selected for performance. I don't recall anything about the story. Except that I thought it was funny to give my puppet the empty tube from a roll of toilet paper to use as a faux leg cast.

Other than the usual schoolwork, I can't think of anything else interesting I wrote while in public school. Although, some old newspaper clippings indicate I was actually winning money for poetry contests run for special occasions, such as Remembrance Day,

Later (after I'd left the public school system to be home-schooled) I took a creative writing course from a local journalist and author who's still involved with the Manitoulin Writer's Circle.

At 12, I was the youngest participant in the course and enjoyed the various assignments. I recall that one of them was to record a dream. The dream I chose was about a very vivid encounter with a character named the "Bag Lady Kitty" on the mainstreet outside the Community Hall.

This was so long ago that I remember nothing else, except for wondering about the contents of some of the more adult books at the library where we met weekly, such as Pet Cemetery.

Next time; how the virtual quest led directly to the discovery of Magic!

Quote of the Day : The deference between reality and virtuality is tenuous at best.

What's the first story you can remember making up?