Or the world needs more quirks. You might have noticed by now that I have a rather, shall we say, quirky way of looking at things. Take the fact that I read recently that said by the time you finish reading a paragraph, 800 babies will be born. Surely logic says that if you don’t read this paragraph then 800 babies aren’t likely to be born which is just as absurd cos you can’t turn time backwards. I mean, how would the parents-to-be know what your reading habits would be nine months down the line?

Hello everyone

You might have noticed by now that I have a rather, shall we say, quirky way of looking at things. Take the fact that I read recently that said by the time you finish reading a paragraph, 800 babies will be born. Surely logic says that if you don’t read this paragraph then 800 babies aren’t likely to be born which is just as absurd cos you can’t turn time backwards. I mean, how would the parents-to-be know what your reading habits would be nine months down the line?



If it’s based on the number of people reading this editorial simultaneously then all of you have created an entire population just by reading which is equally absurd as saying all paragraphs are of equal length. Oddly, much of the population growth is in Asia and Africa and although there is some schooling there, would easy access to books do the reverse and would we see reading as a means to reduce population as a new or possible an old form of contraception? Then again, in the western world, television watching appears to have its own effect on some people in a similar way unless we believe a recent report about proclivities around TV sports programmes for the population.

Looking at things in odd ways tends to be my forte. As much a lateral as sideways way of thinking. The way people draw comparisons in such statistics makes me wonder if these people aren’t looking at the world in a similar way or just selecting similes that they think people are familiar with. But would it make sense the world over? I mean, if you’re Net connected, then you’re familiar with reading on a regular basis and maybe from different parts of the world. Although saying that, this doesn’t mean that all areas of the world will have easy regular access to books, let alone the Net, to read to fulfil the previous statistic. Then again, would they be worried by such statistics looking out from the inside of them where they have their own priorities? Would they have much familiarity with similes that they could equate or compare to something similar in their own countries? Maybe they read it but it doesn’t sink in and move on to the next subject which might well be making the statistic happen?

Then there’s the statistic that many families want a male child to carry on the family name but if there are more boys than girls then there’s going to be a massive reduction in population making that impossible anyway in the long term. We might well end up with some countries with only a male population. Hmm, that’s actually been done in Science Fiction, although in the film and on a different world. That was in ‘The Night Caller’ (1965) aka 'The Night Caller From Outer Space' for those outside the UK, it was an alien world and they were kidnapping Earth women to restore the balance. Is life going to copy fiction some decade down the line with an added TV slant but without the means to kidnap women from alien worlds? Do people selfishly really not look at what they are doing or look at the bigger picture and see it wouldn’t achieve what they thought. Then again, a quirky sideways mind tends to look at all possibilities and than just one or two alternatives.

Looking for things people have in common and there’s an interest in extreme numbers. They’re curious in the smallest and the greatest of anything. Some even go out of their way to contribute to them as they look at both extremes. Outside of mathematics, many numbers are just, well, numbers. The distance from the Earth to the Moon is as extreme as that of the distance to the outer planets for the difference it makes for any of looking at the possibilities of travelling that far. It becomes numbers purely because I doubt if anyone living today is going to stray beyond Mars without some vast breakthrough in space travel. Distance becomes immeasurable in the physical sense of the word and just a number. Is it wishful thinking that we can go so far or what attracts us to Science Fiction that we can fulfil such an experience that we can only imagine. Is it any wonder that distance becomes reduced to light years and parsecs to make the distances look smaller than they actually are? The same applies to age, especially when few people can appreciate time as thousands of centuries let alone millions of years since the Big Bang. It certainly reduces the number of zeroes on the page. Vastness would then only become real if you were suddenly marooned. It doesn’t change the overall distance, just how we perceive it.

Then again, is Science Fiction purely wish fulfilment? Do we relish an utopia as well as a dystopia future simply because it gives us something different to our present reality? As I’ve frequently commented before, so many things like computers, terraforming, bio-engineering, space travel – even in its limited capacity - and such are coming to fruition now. Not quite as SF imagined it but then there is no requisite to chuck a story at the discovery or invention. Come to think of it we do. Look at how many biographical stories of inventors where we’re shown the problems besetting them before they achieved their goals. We haven’t been beset by the problems of letting it take over just yet and if anything, SF has instilled some sense of caution in letting things get too far out of hand without some adequate supervision. Whether that will be the same when we create our first genuine artificial intelligence remains to be seen and who has the hand on the button that turns it on. Saying that, by the time an AI is functioning and writing its first book, the finger will already be off the button and the concern would be on how far it would be allowed to examine its cyberworld beyond its secluded laboratory setting. Personally, I doubt an AI will be any smarter than its inventors but we’ll just mistake the speed it thinks and access to knowledge with intellect. The real test will be whether it can come up with original thoughts and demonstrate some creativity. Until that happens, it’s what we have in our skulls that will out-class any AI.

Comparing how things relate to each other is more a means to getting a grip on the world about us and explaining it in terms that other people can understand from a common background. Even in this electronic age, the use of computers is just a change in format. I mean, how many of you older folk out there would have thought you‘d be typing on a keyboard one day when you probably wouldn’t have given a thought to owning a typewriter otherwise? Would you have thought to have kept a ledger for your accounts before you heard of a spreadsheet? Would you have thought to file things in a filing system before you heard of a database? Doesn’t such things encourage you to become a little more quirky with how you fill your time? If it does, then you’re obviously seeing things in a different way than you used to.

A sideways look at my own comments here brings up an interesting possibility of why we chuck stories at events. Maybe we need some fiction to make it easier to remember or learn from. Mythology is probably the earliest Science Fiction or fantasy we have but it no doubt evolved to make sense of the world. A rumble of thunder representing a god being angry or riding across the sky would have the same effect as telling what it really is and you need cover from the on-coming rain storm. Early people might not have known what it was but the simile would have given good advice without having to explain in detail. Would we move faster in supplying remedies to the fate of our current world if we forecast it better in fiction? Attempts at dysopia haven’t been that successful. Films of the same are even worse simply because it goes for personal stories of survival which aren’t likely to happen. Maybe we need a better balance of pessimism and optimism to see a way out of any situation.

So why not quirk and look at problems with other info randomly chucked in to see if it applies? It can’t just be me or people with imagination allowed to develop such an ability. It’s basically just a trick to freefall the brain and look at what you’re given from a different perspective. Chances are that it would be unlikely for everyone to see things in quite the same way. How it does benefit you is putting things into language that you can make sense of so you can explain something complicated to someone less informed. Bearing in mind how much communicating is done over the Net, improving your grasp of concept and explanation has got to be seen as an asset.

Is being quirky healthy? Hell yes. As one who has quirks – how catching I’m not sure – I can only say it can be useful not to look at things in the same way as everyone else. It also gives an edge when looking for solutions to problems, too. It means you look at the unorthodox as much as the orthodox before coming up with a viable answer or three. If anything, I’ve quickly adjusted to the idea that there doesn’t have to be one answer to a problem but several. When that happens, you then examine other factors like time and ease with practicability. How many of you at this stage would rely on your instinct to go for a solution and hope it’s right? This quirkiness doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll turn you into expert problem-solvers but if it improves the way you tackle problems so much the better.

Excuse me a moment, I have an idea...

Thank you, take care, good night and look at all solutions and shove some fiction at it for looking at possibilities.
Geoff Willmetts

editor: SFCrowsnest.co.uk

A Zen thought:

I write. Therefore I am.
I look and wonder how else I can do something?

Another real Zen thought but this time for potential writers: If you can express an opinion independently of others and aren’t likely to bend to the masses then you might show potential as a writer.