Well, I guess this is kind of a proposal....
After thinking it through a bit, I am considering creating a meta-fiction based on the Alien universe (see previous blog entry).
What I have in mind is a sort of House of Leaves layout, with a narrator reading and commenting on a book/article/etc. that he or she discovers. I spent some time thinking (as well as researching the "accepted" Alien universe), and came up with a possible project.
Going along the lines of HOL, the narrator is a medical officer stationed aboard the U.S.M. Auriga. The story takes place shortly after the Auriga had completed her trials (prior to the events of Alien Resurrection). The story begins with the Auriga returning to Earth after it made a small detour to Arcturus. Military officials on Arcturus had discovered the wreck of the long-believed-to-be-lost U.S.S. Maverick. They find secret files belonging to Weyland-Yutani hidden within the ship's hull. The Auriga was to take the files back to home base.
Our curious medical officer decides to take a peek at the files. There, he/she discovers the diary of a U.S.C.M. private named Alicia Hendrick who had been stationed aboard the Maverick. The officer discovers, through the files and the diary, that Weyland-Yutani had secretly organized two seperate "research" missions, the first to LV-426, the second (which the Maverick took part in) was to investigate the remains of her sister ship, the U.S.S. Sulaco. Here, only the diary provides information as to what happened to the Maverick and the Sulaco.
This story is losely based on a small question that popped into my head after watching Alien 3, "what if the alien queen (from Aliens) had left more than one egg aboard the Sulaco?"
The first egg hatched and resulted in Alien 3. This is the story of the second egg...
I'm still not sure if I want to do this in a House of Leaves style.
What do you guys think?
3 comments:
Fuck, I didn't even notice you posted this one. Okay, Dan, go back and check for my comments on your other entry in terms of what I think about the Alien fiction.
Sorry.
-A
Dan,
This comment alludes to your original entry, as well as Alex and Lance's comments upon it.
First off, your midterm wasn't a disaster - it was interesting that you were trying to do a CYOA more about institutions than individuals, but that also causes you some difficulties, and I'm guessing that that's the source of your dissatisfaction.
Lance is right that simply doing fiction isn't a desirable goal: you want to relate it to the contents of this class in some way, directly or indirectly. You want to be concerned with (to rehash myself, a professorial privilege), technologies of representation or with representing technologies.
Doing footnotes (as Lance indicates would be a possibility, and Alex has good suggestions, too. What you want to be sure of, though, is that if you're doing a creative project you're doing it using a technological/techniqueal (yes, I made that up) system which is correct/ideal for it.
I can see what everyone is trying to say.
I'm well aware that simply writing a normal fan-fiction is not actually going to relate this story with what we talked about in class.
This is why I am considering that idea I had which is similar to House of Leaves
One thing that I've been thinking about is what Joy brought up in class as her final project (using images). HOL used text to form images on some pages (the whole "is that a mosquito or a plane?" argument in class).
It's just an idea, but what if I used ONLY images for some of the pages? I have PhotoShop!
At the same time I don't really want to do that, because I feel it would ruin the fun of trying to picture the setting in your head (sometimes mental pictures are better than the image provided).
Hmm...I'll have to think about it.
I already have the "cover art" done and on the web:
Click Me!
What Alex said about radio transmissions between ships is a good idea (I'm thinking about using it, actually).
By the way, does anyone know what "Sulaco" means? The story is supposed to take place aboard the Sulaco's sister ship, and I want a name that goes along with Sulaco (like Titanic and Olympic, the names are based on two of the three races in Greek mythology: Titans and Olympians).
I already have three possibly names, but they don't go well with "Sulaco."
U.S.S. Maverick
U.S.S. Apollo
U.S.S. Helios
Getting back on topic.....
I'm probably going to use the same trick as Danielewski, using different fonts for different "voices" (or characters, whatever).
Now, how I am going to put this story online is a challenge. If I post it on dA (where I posted my midterm), I can have images and text at the same time. The problem comes with formatting. dA allows me to format text using some HTML, key word there is some.
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