Re: virus: Re: virus-digest V1 #109

Dave Pape (davepape@dial.pipex.com)
Mon, 16 Dec 1996 13:19:15 GMT

At 01:17 16/12/96 -0600, you wrote:
>On Mon, 16 Dec 1996, Dave Pape wrote:
>
>> >I have observed that the most effective science fantasy builds at least 2
>> >or 3 of the 10 key delusions [the Chosen One Meme is one!], that
>> >Karl Menninger listed in his book "The Mind", into the plot. Doing this
>> >explicitly has improved my own fiction.
>>
>> What are the others? Don't worry, I don't write sci-fi, your royalties
>> are safe.
>
>Nonexistent royalties need not be protected.
>
>I'll find that over winter break [it helps if the book isn't 250 miles away!]
>
>One of my longer storylines uses the following concepts on the protagonist:
> 1) "Messiah complex"
> 2) "Mysterious Father"
> 3) "No one understands"

Hey, as an exercise, could you/we/I follow these complexes down to their
biological roots? Work out why it'd be evolutionarily adaptive to have a
brain which thought its host was the most important thing in the world?
(obvious)... Why we should be in awe of dad? (ensures efficient conditioning
by immediate genetic forebears)... etc?

>Asking a setting to carry a story more than two chapters requires more
>skill than I have.

Yes... I'm trying to write a kids' theatre show and a short film with a
friend in London... we're having massive trouble keeping plots on line. I'm
going to try and apply memetic theory to constructing plotlines... like,
when I actually KNOW some...

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose (The more things change, the more
it's a meme thing)

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