A couple of things. First of all, I am about 90% complete with the 2nd draft of Volume III of Robot Dawn. I am struggling over the details of the most important chapter of the novel, which is essentially the resolution of the overarching conflict locked at the beginning of the Volume I. I do seem to be gathering steam and moving ahead after a couple of months struggling. The words seemed to come but the overall scheme of the chapter wouldn’t jell. Now I’m moving along rapidly.
On different subject: MidJourney, the AI visualization software. The more I use it, the less important it seems. Yes, at times I do turn to it for help visualizing, but over time it has come to seem derivative and repetitious. I’m beginning to see it more and more like searching the Internet for help visualizing. This business of working with AI is never quite what it seems. Thank goodness I have never used AI to generate words on the page. I tried it a couple of times, but it was pitiful. Besides, I want Robot Dawn to be mine and only mine, not some construct from algorithms that are pulling from other authors. Even when getting assistance from MidJourney, I only use it while stuck with visualization and use my own words from my novel as a prompt. But even then, I didn’t use the main focus of its images but to trigger my own imagination about background details. AI seemed impressive when I first began investigating it, but I have become more disillusioned with it and not planning to include any of my artwork generated by AI among the text of Robot Dawn as I once envisioned.
And a final subject. Instead of publishing this three-volume novel myself, I have decided to see if an agent would consider trying to find a publisher. I will submit it to one agent at a time until I make a final decision about how to go about publishing. It would be nice to see it out there among the novels published by major publishing houses. This is probably my last big writing project although I do have several more in development. I’m getting along in years and undoubtedly will be slower at getting words on the page.
In many ways Robot Dawn is a synthesis of my life ambition to understand the nature of reality. When I was a child, I went into the fields with my father at night to check the irrigation of our fields. I remember looking up at the night sky, the stars and the sweeping illumination of the Milky Way. I wanted to know what it was all about. I bought my first telescope at age 15 and studied electricity, chemistry and physics in high school. I became an astronautical engineer, MS from Stanford University. Quantum mechanics was my obsession. Worked of many Space Shuttle projects and missions to the outer planets. Helped put two spacecraft on Mars with the Viking Project as a flight mechanics expert.
Trying to understand human reality has been the central theme of my life, and I have explored it in depth in the 700,000 words of Robot Dawn. For ten years I have been working on it day and night. It’s been quite an adventure. Will be great to see it in print regardless of how it gets published.
