Hi everyone,
I'm SCYNXTH, and I'm a few years into the process of writing a sci-fi novel (in French, my native language). I'm a great fan of Greg Egan and some of my work takes inspiration from him, and somehow that's what took me to the OAUP while I was googling for the word "exoself" to see who coined it first, if I could use it as my own, and if readers would understand without explaining it in the book. Turned out you were in top results, and there I fell pretty straight down the rabbit wormhole.
At first, I felt kinda bad because a couple of the ideas I'd had for my novel that didn't come from Egan were already here in the OAUP. Things like a scale for transcendent levels of consciousness, considerations about the continuity of identity during uploads, bottleworlds, virtual worlds simulating time travel, among other stuff. But that's the power of collaborative projects, one brain alone can't beat that. So I made up my mind and decided that if I didn't want to be called a plagiarist when my book goes out, I need to come out and embrace Orion's Arm entirely and consider my work to be inspired from it (even if somehow I was there first in my own timeline). I don't mind, because I love what I've found here. Everything is just so cool and awesome. It also validates me into thinking the ideas I've had are cool and awesome.
Once the bad feeling was gone, a good one came: after I had read everything that was available from Egan, there was no turning back. I keep devouring everything he writes, but Asimov or Clarke or Reynolds won't ever give me that wow moment again since Egan pushed the sense of wonder threshold so high. But Orion's Arm does reach that threshold (and is probably pushing it even further, though).
Another bad blow I got was the recent emergence of AI. AI is a major topic in my story and I had to rework some of it. On the other hand, GPT-4 has been helpful in outlining some of the new stuff, it definitely is a pretty neat brainstorming tool when you know what to ask from it and how.
As for using "exoself", well, I guess there can't be so many different cool names for cool stuff anyway.
I'm glad to be here! Cheers!
I'm SCYNXTH, and I'm a few years into the process of writing a sci-fi novel (in French, my native language). I'm a great fan of Greg Egan and some of my work takes inspiration from him, and somehow that's what took me to the OAUP while I was googling for the word "exoself" to see who coined it first, if I could use it as my own, and if readers would understand without explaining it in the book. Turned out you were in top results, and there I fell pretty straight down the rabbit wormhole.
At first, I felt kinda bad because a couple of the ideas I'd had for my novel that didn't come from Egan were already here in the OAUP. Things like a scale for transcendent levels of consciousness, considerations about the continuity of identity during uploads, bottleworlds, virtual worlds simulating time travel, among other stuff. But that's the power of collaborative projects, one brain alone can't beat that. So I made up my mind and decided that if I didn't want to be called a plagiarist when my book goes out, I need to come out and embrace Orion's Arm entirely and consider my work to be inspired from it (even if somehow I was there first in my own timeline). I don't mind, because I love what I've found here. Everything is just so cool and awesome. It also validates me into thinking the ideas I've had are cool and awesome.
Once the bad feeling was gone, a good one came: after I had read everything that was available from Egan, there was no turning back. I keep devouring everything he writes, but Asimov or Clarke or Reynolds won't ever give me that wow moment again since Egan pushed the sense of wonder threshold so high. But Orion's Arm does reach that threshold (and is probably pushing it even further, though).
Another bad blow I got was the recent emergence of AI. AI is a major topic in my story and I had to rework some of it. On the other hand, GPT-4 has been helpful in outlining some of the new stuff, it definitely is a pretty neat brainstorming tool when you know what to ask from it and how.
As for using "exoself", well, I guess there can't be so many different cool names for cool stuff anyway.
I'm glad to be here! Cheers!