McDevitt

Speaking of skill -- Jack McDevitt's got it. He's a science fiction writer, the guy who penned Polaris, which I really like (how much? Its one of the books I reread, just for the pleasure of the experience). He's got a good imagination for it -- enough to add the kind of technical heft that people like me prefer in science fiction, but balanced with a human interest that could work in just about any genre. And the other day, I actually got to suggest an idea to him.

It happened this way. One of the constructs in Polaris is 'avatars', which are computer simulations of a person, recorded at various times during their lives. It's never exactly explained how they're made, but the result is a hologram that can talk to you, answer questions about the original's life. At one point, I wondered why certain things about a specific avatar were news to the person talking to it, and then I thought well, of course, if you hadn't met the avatar before, it'd be news. But it got me to wondering if an avatar could remember prior sessions with someone -- if I called up one, and then did it again at a later date, would it remember that prior session? My guess was, no, but I asked the author via his web site, and he said no, an avatar couldn't remember -- but that that was an interesting question, and as he was working on a new book with avatars, he'd think about it .

Incidentally, his site has a section called Twelve Blunders - How Aspiring Writers Get It Wrong -- that's worth reading. Even if you don't have a desire to be published.