{"id":3072,"date":"2011-03-12T12:29:38","date_gmt":"2011-03-12T20:29:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/?p=3072"},"modified":"2011-07-29T08:25:58","modified_gmt":"2011-07-29T16:25:58","slug":"writing-advice-turing-outtake-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/12\/writing-advice-turing-outtake-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing Advice. Turing Rap. Interview. 3D CAs!"},"content":{"rendered":"

The writer Nisi Shawl emailed me today, asking for the best and worst writing advice I ever received, with an eye to using my answer in the Clarion West\u2019s spring newsletter. Here\u2019s what I said.<\/p>\n

The Best Advice on writing I ever read — and I don’t remember who said it, perhaps it was John Varley — was something to the effect that: “If you get a completely crazy idea for a twist on a scene, an idea you don’t think you dare use…go with it!”<\/p>\n

The Worst Advice, which came from any number of boilerplate how-to-write articles is this: “Don’t think <\/em>of starting work on the novel until you have a complete and detailed <\/em>outline, and then stick <\/em>to the outline!”<\/p>\n

Of course it’s useful to have an outline, but it’s folly to imagine you can really know how things are going to end up once you’re five or ten chapters in. I revise my outline constantly as I go along. As for sticking to an outline, see the Best Advice!<\/p>\n


\n[I bought two big tubes of my fave oil-paint colors yesterday, Cadmium Red Deep, and Cadmium Yellow Deep. You\u2019re looking at $100 of paint. Cadmium is expensive.]<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m working on Turing & Burroughs<\/em>, and it\u2019s going well. I\u2019m leading up to the big scene that I painted in \u201cA Skugger\u2019s Point Of View<\/a>\u201d\u009d last week.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want the cops to know that Alan is making a run for Los Alamos in hopes of getting hold of an H-bomb, so I took out an earlier passage where he tells his companions Judy and Ned what he\u2019s up to. I\u2019m kind of sorry to see this conversation go, as I thought it was funny. But I saved it into my \u201cNotes for the Turing & Burroughs\u201d\u009d document, and maybe I can use some of it later. For now, though, here it is.<\/p>\n


\n[One can never match Edward Weston\u2019s photos of calla lilies , but it\u2019s fun to shoot them anyway.]<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cMe, I\u2019m hip to the master plan, too,\u201d\u009d bragged Vassar. \u201cI picked up on it when were doing skugger conjugation. Uhn, uhn, uhn. <\/em>Alan wants to blow himself up with a hydrogen bomb from Los Alamos. Talk about your clear-channel radio! Shedding his light.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s something of a caricature,\u201d\u009d said Alan with a sigh. \u201cAnd I would request that everyone does their best to hide this kind information from anyone outside our circle.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

\u201cAn atomic bomb?\u201d\u009d said Judy, laughing. She took this for a joke. \u201cIn Los Alamos? I\u2019d love to tape the sounds.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd be sure to get Alan\u2019s last words,\u201d\u009d said Vassar. \u201cTh-th-th-that\u2019s all folks! Quaaaaaaak!\u201d\u009d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t always be a dumb-ass,\u201d\u009d said Ned. \u201cThis is real. An H-bomb\u2019s flash could spray skug vibes into everyone in the country. We\u2019d be home free after that.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou guys believe in the skugs that much?\u201d\u009d said Judy, changing tack. \u201cI keep thinking this is more like\u2014I don\u2019t know\u2014a virus that I caught, and I\u2019ll be well by the time I\u2019m in California.\u201d\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

Back in January 15, 2011, I signed fan Ron Corral\u2019s Kindle because he had The Ware Tetralogy <\/em>inside it! This was at an \u201cSF in SF\u201d\u009d event where I read from my forthcoming memoir, Nested Scrolls: A Writer\u2019s Life. <\/em> <\/p>\n

The reliable Rick Kleffel made a nice podcast of both my reading, and an interview with me before my reading, he just posted the interview on his blog \u201cThe Agony Column<\/a>.\u201d\u009d You can also get to the podcast via , click the icon below.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
<\/a><\/p>\n

Today\u2019s big, late-breaking, news is that my former San Jose State University computer science student Harry Fu has gotten his three-dimensional Belousov-Zhabotinsky-scroll cellular automata (3D BZ CAs for short) working again. I posted about this a few years ago, but link-rot set in, and now it\u2019s all good again.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Way to go, Harry. Nobody\u2019s ever seen three-dimensional CAs before except on supercomputers or using special hardware, especially not 3D BZ CAs, and our man Fu has these mofos working as a Java applet running Open GL!!!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Note the spontaneously forming scrolls. The first 3D BZ CA picture shows a 3D version of the Hodgepodge Rule, and this one is the 3D Winfree Rule.<\/p>\n

Gnarly much? Live mushrooms, vortices, jellyfish.<\/p>\n

So how can you, too, run Fu\u2019s applet? Go to Fu’s Welcome to CA 3D page <\/a>for an overview.<\/p>\n

And then proceed to o Fu’s CA3D download page<\/a>, which walks you through three steps for your Mac or Windows machine.<\/p>\n

(1) Make sure you have the latest and greatest version of Java, this would be version 6 today. Anyway, go and get the JRE (Runtime Environment) for your Mac or Windows system. You don't need the full developer’s kit, just the JRE. (2) Get JOGL (Java bindings for Open GL). (3) Run Fu’s application locally, as ca3D.jar or run it in your browser at Fu’s 3D CA Simulation page<\/a> (Caveat, right now the online version runs in Internet Explorer 8 for me, and in Firefox 3.6, but not in the current Firefox 4 RC1 release, although this prob may go away in the final Firefox 4. Harry says it runs in Safari on the Mac as well.). And in any case, it runs locally from the jar file.<\/a><\/p>\n

Geekin\u2019 OUT! And lovin\u2019 it. You realize, of course, that your brain<\/i> is a 3D BZ CA?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The writer Nisi Shawl emailed me today, asking for the best and worst writing advice I ever received, with an eye to using my answer in the Clarion West\u2019s spring newsletter. Here\u2019s what I said. The Best Advice on writing I ever read — and I don’t remember who said it, perhaps it was John […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3072"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3086,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3072\/revisions\/3086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}