I (and my son) had the privilege of spending a week with Mr and Mrs Kite back in 2011. Victor was 100% genuine in person and on the forum. There was no affectation. He would play his word games and tell stories around the kitchen table with the same enthusiasm as he would on the L&L forums. Without a moment’s hesitation, he could pivot to life advice or politics or religion. Even with his medical condition, he took the time and energy to drive my son and me over to Conwy. He arranged some travel without being asked. He even had a birthday party for my son.
Several times, Vic gave me advice that changed the course of my life. At least once a month we would reach out to each other and send emails back and forth. Whenever I had a tough decision looming, Vic was there to listen. It seemed he knew I needed to hear from him before I knew. “Yo Pilgrim! What are you up to? How is the A team [his name for my family]? I am here if you need me.”
I had covid in Feb/March 2020. Vic and I emailed a few times in April was “I’ve not been great, but I’m going to be OK.” He gave me a few details. My world went, to use one of Vic’s phrases, “arse over tits” and I didn’t notice the lack of messages. I didn’t send any either. In July Piggy reached out and upended my universe. To this day I can’t type messages like this in one session. I have to walk away and collect myself. Right now our spaniel is in my lap attempting to understand which of my body parts is damaged. The last time I made these noises, there was a large fishing hook stuck in my hand.
I don’t know that I’ve ever loved a man as much I still love Vic.
I’d like to vehemently debate the issue but, as you’re probably right, meh. Besides, the appendix of Dolphin to English would be longer than the novel.
Thank you @pigfender for organizing this and kudos to all for this monumental effort! It was so much fun!
On a personal note, this was a huge deal for me. I’ve never written fiction before (I come from a non-fiction writing background), and I’m super nervous about other people reading any of my writing, but decided to stick my neck out a bit in memory of my father who died a few weeks ago. He always thought I could be writer, and we were set to work on a novel together when he passed. Thank you all for this opportunity!
Today while talking about AI and synthetic biology, I was told that there is a dolphin in the cult classic Johnny Mnemonic (film) - Wikipedia — so this might help get our creative juices flowing when NiaD 11 rolls around! (And of coz one other other person now knows about the NiaD-er who writes dolphin into the book) The weirdest thing is this film was set in 2021. So I just want to tag @gr’s reply to me which takes into account the very real possibility of time travel: Novel-in-a-Day 1* - SPECIAL TENTH ANNIVERSARY EDITION - #291 by gr
Not to goad toward or discourage from such a ludicrous idea, but Douglas Adams managed to make novels that included interstellar dolphins. And if stealing the most valuable space ship in the universe doesn’t qualify a crew as pirates, I don’t know what does… even if they weren’t dolphin pirates.
Now, let’s not be hasty. When you go forward in time, your thought, your conscious mind, moves forward accordingly. It is not as though your brain state is immune to the passing of time! So, likewise we should suppose for backwards time travel, except in the other direction. You are twelve again, but thanks to the unpassing of time, so is your brain-mind and so everything is to you exactly as before. So, probably you are as unstuck in time as ol’ Stoney Stevenson. But unwittingly, because time travel is just imperceptible and useless that way.*
Happily though, this means the time travel app is totally doable, @Camy. With my SeeSaw Time Machine! you can swing (albeit unwittingly) through time with the best of them! Just 99¢!
-gr
The author of this post wishes to express his condolences for the summary destruction and loss herein of all your time-travel fantasies.
Actually grrrrrrr it’s worse than that. If one were to move through time we would have a problem with the ol’ matter/energy can’t be created or destroyed problem. Since thought/memory is an electro-chemical thing, our constituent part would have to redistribute to their correct position on the time line. This is most problematic with a jump forward as we would effectively remove large quantities of matter/energy from “now” and reinsert it “later”.
When I was a wee bairn I was given a copy of ‘The Third Eye’, written by a Tibetan Monk: Lobsang Rampa*. I became fascinated with astral travel - where the laws of physics are immaterial, and time and space inconsequential. In a nutshell: we all have an astral spirit, and once we learn to control it we can go anywhere or anytime we choose. Peachy!
All of us tried to astral travel, but nada. It turns out you need to open your third eye to succeed, which involves trepanning, and, as none of us felt up to getting jiggy with an electric drill, we called it a day.
What is probably more interesting is the life of Lobsang Rampa. It turns out the ‘Tibetan Monk’ was in fact the son of a Plumber from Devon in England… or was he? He wrote 18 books and one of them, Living with the Lama, was described as being dictated to Rampa by his pet Siamese cat, Mrs. Fifi Greywhiskers.
What I suppose I’m trying to say is that if we live in an infinite universe where Siamese cats can dictate books, then space faring dolphins and pirate parrots (sweet alliteration) are as least as likely as anything else we can imagine.
Oh, you think that’s bad? It’s even worse than that, Jaysen. Don’t even get me started. There is not world enough and spacetime to go into it. Surely the first problem you’re going to run into in your time travels is you. See, the minute you start heading back in time, you will find your moment-ago self standing there occupying more or less the same space as you. And there you have it: the explosion you were expecting. Time travel — it’s a real train wreck.
Unless of course you are lucky enough to have an immaterial spirit or you are up for the 1,500 light year jog to the nearest wormhole express.
Oh man! I’ve done the same thing. I face palmed so hard I gave myself concussion (literally ended up in a&e the next day from a seizure - not excusing my poor editing or writing for that matter!). It seems two of my sentences merged… how on earth did I miss that?
This has been such a wonderful experience and I have learnt so much.
Thank you!
Fingers crossed I’ll still be able to take part in October!
I’ve raised the matter/energy question with a few people that are “smarter” than me. One of them barked at me until I threw the ball. The other one prattled on about the how green play dough tasted better than white glue. I don’t think they really believe in time travel. I also inquired about faster than light travel via wormholes. That just degraded into digging and looking at worms prior to their consumption. Oddly, the “responsible party” for the dog was more concerned with worm consumption than the source of grant funding was for the undersized human.
