Spheria (38 page)
Authors Note
Dear reader. I hope you enjoyed this novel as much as I enjoyed writing it. My objective was to create the story I have always wanted to read, and I think I achieved that. Specifically, I wanted to make a fun narrative based on thought provoking concepts. As Socrates declared on the eve of his death, “seek truth and wisdom… question everything”. Thus it was my intent not to provide answers, but to encourage questions. If you liked it,
please consider leaving me a review
where you bought it and
recommend it to your friends
. This is the only way an independent author can be found above the sea of noise out there.
Oh, one last thing, I have some great ideas for some sequels. The more successful this one becomes, the more likely there will be for continued adventures of the Polyans. In fact, if you sign up for my mailing list, I will send you a
free
related story called “Spheria: Olivia’s Log.” Sign up here:
http://www.codyleet.com/spheria-signup
Thank you,
Cody Leet
2016
P.S. I would sincerely enjoy hearing your thoughts, good or bad. You can contact me at any of the methods below.
Website:
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Appendix - Polyan Language
When I first embarked on writing Spheria, it was my goal to make the Polyans seem more “computerized.” In an attempt to show this, I set out to invent a new primitive written language that you might expect a computer AI to process easily. This I called “Polyan” as in “Polyans speak Polyan.”
After making the language, I wrote the first several chapters using this for all Polyan dialog. It soon became apparent that I could not effectively express emotion through this language, so could not develop characters through dialog, so abandoned this technique. It also created a learning curve for the readers, which would have become a barrier for entry, which I did not want to require. So I abandoned this idea. So if you feel, after reading this novel, that the Polyans are a little too human, it’s to allow good storytelling, at the expense of realism. Touch choices, but I feel it’s a more approachable novel as a result.
In case you’re curious what it would have looked like, the following is an excerpt from a talk that was going to be given by Ravi, the Sociologist on the project. This talk was describing how the team implemented the language.
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There were several things we just didn’t want to wait to see develop naturally, language was one of them. We wanted to give the Polyans a basic means of communication so we could focus on seeing how their culture evolved without their needing to invent that.
Our goal was to keep things very simple but expressive, and at the same time allow their speech to be human readable. So we crafted a basic structured grammar using a vocabulary based on a reduced set of English words. The results came out sounding like ‘caveman’, which was not an entirely unbelievable outcome.
In transcripts, you will always see their language expressed in Pascal case, where every word is capitalized, but without spaces. Distinct thoughts, or sentences, appear on separate lines. The structure of each sentence follows the pattern:
Some examples would be:
GrogJumpRock
ZuggClimbTree
A name followed by a colon at the beginning of a sentence will indicate the Polyan who is speaking. An example would be:
Grog: MeGoHunt
For those speaking to others, the recipient is named after the speaker, separated by an angle bracket, followed by a colon and the sentence.
Grog > Zugg : ThongGoNorth
If the recipient is the actor, as in the case of commands, the actor need not be mentioned again:
Zugg > Grog: GoNorth
Compare this to the following, which is a description of where Grog went:
Zugg: GrogGoNorth
One thing to note above is that tense is implied. The language is always in the “present” tense. If something happened in the past or future, a modifier is used to express the time frame:
(past)
Zugg: GrogGoWhereBefore
Grog: MeGoNorthYesterday
(present)
Zugg > Grog: GoNorth
Grog: MeGoNorth
(future)
Zugg > Grog: GoNorthLater
Grog: MeGoSouthTomorrow
Any statement can be converted to a question by either replacing the target with a question word or appending one after the target. The question words are: where, when, how, why, what, and ask. “Ask” is a special case that makes a sentence that looks like a statement into a question, analogous to a question mark.
Grog: ThongGoWhere
Zugg: GrogWantThongWhy
Grog: ZuggShareMeatAsk
Lastly, modifiers can be used after the sentence to behave essentially as adjectives, to provide emphasis on the target, or otherwise affect the meaning. Some Examples:
Zugg: GrogThrowRockFar
Grog: ZuggEatMeatCold
Instead of having variations of modifiers to show degrees, such as “cool”, “cold”, or “freezing”, we borrowed a concept from George Orwell’s Newspeak and added the “Plus” and “Minus” modifiers to express more or less of something:
(cold) Zugg: WaterIsCold
(cool) Zugg: WaterIsColdMinus
(very cold) Grog: WaterIsColdPlus
(freezing) Grog: WaterIsColdPlusPlus
The last modifier “not” is used to reverse the meaning of the sentence. Used as so:
Zugg > Grog: NotGoNorth
Grog: NotGoNorthWhy
Zugg: NorthIsColdPlusPlus
Putting it all together we can get rather complex conversations, like so:
Zugg: MeHuntBearLater
Grog > Zugg: NotGoNorth
Zugg: NotMeGoNorthWhy
Grog: NorthIsColdPlusPlus
Zugg > Grog: GoSouth
Zugg: BearIsSouth
Grog: MeKillBear
Grog: MeCookBear
Zugg > Grog: ShareMeatAsk
Grog > Zugg: MeGiveMeat