This is the fifth installment of Lory Kaufman’s World of History Camp Back Story.

This is the fifth installment of Lory Kaufman’s World of History Camp Back Story.
The Lens and the Looker and The Bronze and the Brimstone. In addition I have interviewed Lory. I enjoyed his books and I thoroughly enjoyed the fact that he is making history palatable to young people. Lory and I have emailed back and forth and he has been kind enough to allow me to “plumb the depths” of how he created his World of History Camp. Please note that I have no financial relationship with Lory, nor do I reap any benefits from posting his back story. I am making these posts because as a reader and an author I find the novel building process interesting and informative and I hope you will too. Plus you have the opportunity to garner a FREE book. (more on that later)

The World Of History Camp and AI

How far are we from artificial intelligence? I have an ap on my DroidX called SoundHound. If I hear a song and my aging mind can’t remember the title, group or the lyrics; all I have to do is start the ap, let my phone listen and it will tell me the artist’s name, the album title and ask if I would like the lyrics. I know that isn’t AI but I also know 5 years ago it wasn’t available. I keep a list of 3500 books on my phone because I really get annoyed when I inadvertently buy the same book multiple times. In other words, I really depend on/love my phone. How far away is true AI?

Artificial Intelligences (A.I.):

Some who have read The Lens And The Looker have asked, “Why did you give every human on the planet a companion artificial intelligence from birth?”

For me, the A.I.’s are a visual metaphor symbolizing that humans seem not to be able to work together without some faction undermining things. “What does this have to do with artificial intelligences?” you ask. Well, as I already mentioned, by the end of the 21st-century, I have humans on the brink of extinction. Plagues and bacterial infections are threatening calamity and some population centers are already collapsing. But, at the same time, human technology is also successfully creating synthetic intellects, superior to humans in many ways. (Given where we are with computer technology now, I don’t think this is actually out of the realm of possibility.)

So, as opposed to some dystopian literature, where A.I.s rebel against humans, I have chosen another road. In History Camp stories, artificial intelligences become the savior of humans, though not as benignly as one might think.

I’ve done it like this. Each person’s A.I. is with them from before birth. At first it acts as nanny to the baby and toddler, and a helper to the parents. Then the artificial intelligence takes on the role of tutor when the person becomes a youth, then adolescent, watching out for that individual and monitoring his or her progress. This role changes as the human grows into adulthood. Like a loving aunt or uncle today, the A.I. changes into a life-long friend and confidant. By constant and gentle vigilance, A.I.s allow humans to find their own path in life, as long as their actions don’t put at risk the long-term safety of society or that of the other life forms on the planet.

So, I guess the A.I.s are both the “philosopher kings” and the “protector class” of human kind. Humans have ceded ultimate control to the A.I.s. They are a benevolent police force, making sure that small factions of people can’t sabotage society’s long-term survival for their personal or tribal purposes, which, when I think of it, seems to be a big recurring theme in human history.

Another very important fact to understand about this situation is that the A.I.s do very little of the actual work for humans. It’s not like “The Jetsons” or some cheesy SF movies, where people walk around in identical plastic suits and use mass produced products. In the world of History Camp, individual craftsmanship and self- sufficiency is the new way of things. The A.I.s purpose is not to provide for humans, but to protect, love and nourish them. And the protection is mostly from ourselves and our natures.

Remember there will be a giveaway for each and every post. That’s a FREE book for each section of Lory Kaufman’s back story. Did I mention it is a FREE book?
How do you qualify for a FREE book?
Fine Print
Simply read the post and fill out the form below. Each entry will be assigned a number and those numbers will be input into a random number generator to choose the winner. I will email the winner. The winner’s address will be sent to Lory Kaufman who will be sending out the autographed books. If you have a specific name or nickname you wish the autograph to mention, please submit it with the form. Each winner will be announced at the posting of the next segment of Lory Kaufman’s back story. No purchases necessary and your email address will not be given to anyone else.
The next post will be Jan 9, 2012! when the winner of this month’s book will be announced. As an additional incentive for those of you who are actually reading the entire post, if you comment on any of my blog posts throughout the month I will input an additional entry to the contest.

This is the fourth installment of Lory Kaufman’s World of History Camp Back Story.

Congratulations to

Anne of Ontario  who has won a copy of Lory Kaufman's World of History Camp's The Lens and the Looker!  See the simple entry at the bottom of this post. 

This is the fourth installment of Lory Kaufman’s World of History Camp Back Story.
The Lens and the Looker and The Bronze and the Brimstone.   In addition I have interviewed Lory.   I enjoyed his books and I thoroughly enjoyed the fact that he is making history palatable to young people.   Lory and I have emailed back and forth and he has been kind enough to allow me to “plumb the depths” of how he created his World of History Camp.    Please note that I have no financial relationship with Lory, nor do I reap any benefits from posting his back story.   I am making these posts because as a reader and an author I find the novel building process interesting and informative and I hope you will too.   Plus you have the opportunity to garner a FREE book.  (more on that later)

The World of History Camp Population Is Fictional?

Think about this, the posts about The World of History Camp are explaining a fictional world and society, by definition it is made up!

     “Alright already, Lory,” you’re saying. “Get to the part where you tell us why you had your committee of elders pick 300 million as the number of people that should be on the planet.”  Okay, here’s how I came to that very specific number . . .

I made it up.

     No, no, no! Don’t go away! Don’t click the website shut! Please?

    Okay, thanks for staying with me. Let me explain.

     The 300 million figure in some ways seems high, in relation to humans historical numbers on the planet (the one million figure for 100,000 years before agriculture), and low compared to human, historical memories, (seven billion in only 10,000 years, and growing) but suffice it to say, the fictitious 22nd-century elders factored in that if humans could use technology to keep humans quality of life style high, but also have as the criteria for technology that it must be designed to make a small footprint on the Earth’s ecology, then a much higher number of humans could survive. The reality is, the number could be five hundred million or it could be two million. After all, this is just a fiction. But, hey, I’d love to hear from people what they think our human numbers should be – – and why.

This is a short post but it was the most logical spot for a break. Feel free to make comments, I am sure Lory is following these posts and he is serious about soliciting opinions. 

Remember there will be a giveaway for each and every post.  That’s a FREE book for each section of Lory Kaufman’s back story.   Did I mention it is a FREE book?
How do you qualify for a FREE book?
Fine Print

Simply read the post and fill out the form below.   Each entry will be assigned a number and those numbers will be input into a random number generator to choose the winner.  I will email the winner.  The winner’s address will be sent to Lory Kaufman who will be sending out the autographed books.   If you have a specific name or nickname you wish the autograph to mention, please submit it with the form.   Each winner will be announced at the posting of the next segment of Lory Kaufman’s back story.   No purchases necessary and your email address will not be given to anyone else.
 The next post will be December 9th  when the winner of this month’s book will be announced.   As an additional incentive for those of you who are actually reading the entire post, if you comment on any of my blog posts throughout the month I will input an additional entry to the contest.

This is the third installment of Lory Kaufman’s World of History Camp Back Story.

This is the third installment of Lory Kaufman’s World of History Camp Back Story.
The Lens and the Looker and The Bronze and the Brimstone.   In addition I have interviewed Lory.   I enjoyed his books and I thoroughly enjoyed the fact that he is making history palatable to young people.   Lory and I have emailed back and forth and he has been kind enough to allow me to “plumb the depths” of how he created his World of History Camp.    Please note that I have no financial relationship with Lory, nor do I reap any benefits from posting his back story.   I am making these posts because as a reader and an author I find the novel building process interesting and informative and I hope you will too.   Plus you have the opportunity to garner a FREE book.  (more on that later)

Population Explained:  300,000,000 is a huge number but is it?

So, why 300,000,000 was chosen as a sustainable population:

     As I started to mention earlier, in my back story, I envisioned a planetary council of elders determining a target number of humans that could be sustained by the ecosystem of the planet for an indefinite amount of millennium. I had them choose 300,000,000. I saw this happened in the last years of the 21st-century and they choose as a target deadline for reaching it, the early 24th-century. They impose a one child per couple law, among other things.

     The impetus for the drastic lowering were the many cataclysmic events in the latter half of the 21st-century; the rising of the oceans, droughts that starved millions, bacterial infections that wiped out billions and wars that cause Diasporas of whole populations. Refugees, like a diseased horde of locusts, limped from continent to continent, consuming, killing and dying. Wow, this short description outlines scores of great dystopian books that have been written since the middle of the twentieth-century, after the first atomic bombs were dropped and it was realized by many visionary writers that, finally, humans really did have the ability to really destroy the planet. Dystopian literature was born!

     However, at the end of my imaginary 21st-century, (and with me being an eternal optimist) I have humans starting to rebuild the world successfully. And luckily, this time, humans have retained enough knowledge and wisdom to not repeat the mistakes of the past; not to burn our library of Alexandria, fall into religious fundamentalism or create a fascist state. Finally, in the scenario of the History Camp world, humans rise from the ashes more or less, as one group. Why that was able to happen is described under several of the headings that follow, but let me mention a few of the fundamental truths that became burned into the brains of all humans.

1. It was recognized that for humans to survive, we must allow other species to survive. It became a common currency of thought that there is a complex underpinning to nature, a balanced, complex web of life, where we support and sustain each other. For these millions of other species to survive, we must share planetary resources. To share planetary resources, our numbers must be lower.
2. The concept was accepted that humankind had outstripped its biology, that is, nature could no longer keep human’s numbers in check. For millions of years, before agriculture and medicine, a certain reproduction rate was needed to keep a stable population of the estimated 1,000,000 homo sapiens on the planet. After the invention of agriculture, and because of our unique human unique brain, infant mortality rate steadily decreased and the average human lifespan increased. The inevitable outcome, population growth. With this in mind, it was decided in the late 21st-century, that, since nature could no longer control population size, it was our responsibility to do it ourselves. 
3. Besides agriculture and medicine, it was recognized that every invention humans created allowed its population to grow. Another accepted concept about inventions was that, during history, societal systems were always being tweaked to allow fewer and fewer people to control larger masses of industry and population. Some logical, future thinker then determined the following; the whole of human society must turn this reality on its head. Human kind must also burn into the front of its consciousness that the purpose of inventions must be to allow populations to remain small while helping to keep the individual’s quality of life high. This would not only allow the demands our biological selves made on the planet to remain small, but also allow us to expand the ability to express ourselves creatively or to just live our lives in peace.

     None of these ideas are expressed explicitly in the narrative of my story. After all, this is supposed to be an exciting action story. However, all these machinations is what a writer has to do when world building a credible future society.

Now we have an idea of what defined the population of The World of History Camp but what defined that specific number of 300,000,000? Read next month's installment to find out.  

Don't forget there will be a giveaway for each and every post.  That’s a FREE book for each section of Lory Kaufman’s back story.   Did I mention it is a FREE book?
How do you qualify for a FREE book?
Fine Print

Simply read the post and fill out the form below.   Each entry will be assigned a number and those numbers will be input into a random number generator to choose the winner.  I will email the winner.  The winner’s address will be sent to Lory Kaufman who will be sending out the autographed books.   If you have a specific name or nickname you wish the autograph to mention, please submit it with the form.   Each winner will be announced at the posting of the next segment of Lory Kaufman’s back story.   No purchases necessary and your email address will not be given to anyone else.
The next post will be November 9th when the winner of this month's book will be announced. .   As an additional incentive for those of you who are actually reading the entire post, if you comment on any of my blog posts throughout the month I will input an additional entry to the contest, please note in your comment your desire for the book.  

Plumbing the Depths of Lory Kaufman’s World of History Camp

I have reviewed two of Lory Kaufman’s World of History Camp books.

The Lens and the Looker and The Bronze and the Brimstone.   In addition I have interviewed Lory.   I enjoyed his books and I thoroughly enjoyed the fact that he is making history palatable to young people.   Lory and I have emailed back and forth and he has been kind enough to allow me to “plumb the depths” of how he created his World of History Camp.    Please note that I have no financial relationship with Lory, nor do I reap any benefits from posting his back story.   I am making these posts because as a reader and an author I find the novel building process interesting and informative and I hope you will too.   Plus you have the opportunity to garner a FREE book.  (more on that later)

Serialization was something I grew up with in both comics and the movies.   The cliff hanger ending set you up to plunk down your quarter for the movie or your dime for the comic to find out what happened next.   This serialization isn’t populated with cliff hanging endings.   It is however a plunge into the mind and world of Lory Kaufman, author of the History Camp series. 

I have read and reviewed The Lens and the Looker and The Bronze and the Brimstone, two of Lory’s books.   The premise that we should learn from history permeates the entertaining values of the books.   Having once taught history and having been mystified why so many students found something so exciting boring, I laud Lory for his efforts. 

Authoring several children’s books of my own, I am currently working diligently at trying to write a longer novel for an older age group.   I am discovering that there is a need for a back story or a “history” to properly frame my thoughts as I write.   Lory has been kind enough to share his back story of the History Camp and I will be posting it’s entirety over 6 different posts.  

In addition there will be a giveaway for each and every post.  That’s a FREE book for each section of Lory Kaufman’s back story.   Did I mention it is a FREE book?

How do you qualify for a FREE book?

Fine Print

Simply read the post and fill out the form below.   Each entry will be assigned a number and those numbers will be input into a random number generator to choose the winner.  I will email the winner.  The winner’s address will be sent to Lory Kaufman who will be sending out the autographed books.   If you have a specific name or nickname you wish the autograph to mention, please submit it with the form.   Each winner will be announced at the posting of the next segment of Lory Kaufman’s back story.   No purchases necessary and your email address will not be given to anyone else.

Let us begin… 

The World of History Camp

The background behind the futuristic worlds you’ll find in the History Camp stories.

      Most alternative history or futuristic novels don’t give you the back story of their civilizations. They just plop the reader into the middle of a characters lives and start writing, with a minimum of background. The writer lets the reader infer much of how that civilization works from what happens around the character. I do pretty much the same thing.   After all, it’s the story of the character that’s important, and the quality of its telling. But, behind the scenes, I, like all writers of future fiction, had to work out a general history for this world, to rationalize why things are the way they are. But then I thought, with the ability for a writer to now easily communicate with his readers through the internet, why not share the back story? Some readers might find it interesting. That’s what follows here.

      When finished, I see this section at around 20,000 words.  Right now, as my site opens, there are about 2,500 words. I’m hoping to add a couple of thousand words every month, after the first book is released, so come on back once and a while and see what’s new.

     So, here we go.  The History Camp novels take place, generally, in three time periods; the 24th and 31st-centuries, when the characters are in the future, and in the Verona Trilogy, they go back to 14th-century Italy. I’ve therefore broken the back story information into these three time periods and, for clarity, made title headers with subjects I think are of interest. 

The next post will be tomorrow rather than a month away.   That is because this actual portion of Lory’s back story is truncated due to my verbosity in its introduction.   Therefore you will have double the opportunity to win a book in the first month by commenting on the first two posts.   As an additional incentive for those of you who are actually reading the entire post, if you comment on any of my blog posts throughout the month I will input an additional entry to the contest.  


 

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