a den of snakes and constricting compositions
How often do you think about the hivedoms of old? A queen, worshipped by a hundred coalescent drones, is more goddess than flesh: undying, but ever-decaying. No blade can wound an idea, but faults of mortal memory might. If you cannot remember your complete lineage, then I must recount these five.
First, the flavor and framing. You go to sleep as normal, but when you awaken, you find yourself transported to a dark, underground lair, all tunnels and chitinous furnishing, ornamented with distended protuberances and segmented geometries. You glance around for any indication of what’s going on, and then… Your abductors reveal themselves as changelings who’ve been surveilling you and those…
Whether it’s Worm or Worth the Candle, thoughtful stories often take power quantity to the logical extreme. Unique abilities are everywhere; the whole setting is lousy with them. But does this hold up to scrutiny? How do you even write such sheer abundance? One good idea requires creativity. A million requires statistics.
When you reblog a post on tumblr, you create a new post. It’s one of the weirder parts of how that hellsite is implemented. In programming terms, this is the difference between passing by reference and passing by value. On other sites, sharing a post is just a fancy way of linking to it. If the original gets deleted, it’s gone. Unless you saved a screenshot.
A friend mentioned how frustrating it is to try to come up with powers, only to realize “Worm already did that,” and the exercise becomes less fun as a result of that lack of novelty. I can sympathize. I’m not the only one to notice that parahuman powers have a particular flavor or to grapple with it while trying to generate powers . But I don’t find myself worrying about copying Worm. (In part,…
First, let me reintroduce Newcomb’s Problem. For this thought experiment, imagine there is a predictor capable of observing human behavior and correctly deducing how one will behave in the future. Maybe this predictor has psychic powers, or is really good at reading body language. I often see it described as a superintelligent AI system. More on that later.
What are hiveminds made of? Interconnected minds, obviously. Or is it more complicated than that? Are selves more than illusion — a mere cope for apes pretending to be human? Perhaps truly picking the brain of hivemind means studying ego death and decomposition.
A chrylurk is a swarm within a swarm: each one a mortal’s corpse twisted in metamorphosis then possessed and puppeted by mosquitoes, spiders and slugs; each a thread in the ghostly web woven to ensnare the collective in a grand eusocial symphony. It is nearly as infeasible to describe a chrylurk as to describe a tree. One could gesture vaguely — a trunk with branches with leaves — but the exact…
The way I usually explain how alchemy works is the existence of two magical substances. Essence is the fundamental basis of alchemy, and it arises from the dreams and desires of a conscious brain. Why this is so is oft-considered one of the great mysteries of the world. But essence is innately unstable and reactive; whenever it comes into contact with physical matter, combustion-subsumption…
A game of ascension and inevitable fall. Build a deck, strike and bind your cards to overcome the trials of the night, and pray you amuse the stars above.
You are a snake wizard and you’ve got $20 to buy the power to devour the world. Choose wisely.
It’s surprising to realize how little I’ve discussed worldbuilding on this site. All those essays about prose and plot and character, but any long-time fan of my work knows that my real passion is lore . I have plenty of opinions on how to best go about fleshing out a setting, with a particular emphasis on the mechanics of its speculative elements — which no doubt explains the length of this…
A veil softly clad the swamp, delivering it from desolation. The chrylurk foundress perched centermost of the web she’d woven. Her claws lightly brushed at the silk drawn atop of rotting log, combing away pollen grains and morning dew. Once, wizenblight had befestered this land to its very depths. The rot of all things, turning soul against itself, were no more than an abortive mockery of…
In retrospect, there is something quite fitting about the concept of a “scissor statement.” Rationalists are fond of it; just hanging around them over the years, I’ve heard brought up as casual shorthand many times. I myself have used it! It was coined by Scott Alexander almost eight years ago in the short story “Sort By Controversial” . There’s something so amusingly Scott Alexander about it.
Serivane was silk that had evanesced beyond the veil that separates the physical and the ephemeral. At least, that was the theory. This Hive we name Ravaging-With-Downpour was built in the caverns behind a grand waterfall at the very rim of the highlands. Serivane ghosted through stone just fine, but running water? The threads always seemed to fray a little bit faster faster.
A document in 9 sections: “A Sculptor Most Delicate” “Headstrong Hunter, Patient Weaver” “Between Contempt and Hysteria” “The River By Sunset” “Daily Communion Among Canyons” “Mischief Out of Sight” “Nubile Sculpture” “Weakness, Infested” “Enthralling Repetitions”
Eusapience is what comes next, a state of cognition beyond human consciousness. This comes in up the newest Vermin Cathexis short , but in summary: eusapience is the trait that distinguishes our minds from a true hivemind . Just as eusociality is organization and cooperation far beyond simple sociality, eusapience must be cognition and awareness much further beyond sapience. But what does this…
A document in 4 sections: “I.” “II.” “III.” “IV.”
—O Rancor? Line? (No response.) Where’d you scuttle off to? Noon sun floated high, but clouds and mist left the grasslands awash in gray. In faint wind, the land roiled like an lake with sharp green waves. The stalks didn’t reach her katathorax — dangerous place for the hive to operate, but such was the only territory left to claim. By rule, all who left the tunnels by day wore concealing cloaks —…
To Furtive Niona : Oh, miserably do I pick up the pen once more. To think, exscient I was, this exercise ever brought me any mote of joy or satisfaction! How could anyone descry these limp squiggles of ink and find in this anything but locus of limitation and confusion? I have begun this piece in the posture of a rant, then proceeded accordingly — and that alone is evidence enough of the…