The Universe of Open Your Eyes

So, I thought I’d prattle on for a bit here about the technology and ideas I used to create the universe/background for the book Open Your Eyes. Don’t worry about spoilers- I won’t give any of the plot away. I just plan on riffing on my original ideas and give you a feel for what the universe is like and I built things the way I did.

- Naming.
Yes, in the far future world everything has names based on Basque mythology. The ships, the characters, the technology. Is there a reason for this? Yes and no…the main reason is that I wanted to riff an existing mythology and place into space. But the more I wrote, the more things breathed and changed and created a life of their own. The actual skeleton of the original myth is still there…it’s just been warped by it’s journey through space and time.

- Organic Technology.
I wanted the technology in this book to be wholly alien. I wanted it to feel like an artifact discovered on the outer reaches of a galaxy, undiscovered by man. I chose to use an organic technology for most of the things in the universe of the book, and hybrid that with some nanotechnology and some other stuff.

- Immortality?
One of the things I loved about Ian Bank’s Space Operas is the idea of a Soul Catcher. I wanted to use something similiar, but delve a bit more into how they worked and how someone could actually die in the universe. Since people can be stitched back together using sentient nanocreations  and have their memories restored (or placed into a different body) with a soul-catcher esque technology, I wanted to draw a line in the sand, saying exactly how far this would extend. I wanted to define death, make it still possible in a world were it shouldn’t be.

- Dolls.
The concept of dolls. The idea that people must be deformed in order to pilot a ship through space (Hello Cordwainer Smith! You too, MJ Harrison!), but I felt that these deformed, transformed characters would still want an avatar that was more palatable to the human eye. The avatar would be their speaker, so to speak, and a mindless doll that is controlled via the ship and the pilot. These dolls would be constructed out of wax, and be more steampunk in fashion rather than organic.

- AI and the Ship’s Heart
Even though the ships are piloted by deformed people, they still need an AI. A human mind can only do so much. In the world of OYE this is known as the Ship’s Heart. The problem with AI is the problem with all matter in our known universe: entropy. Randomness eats away at their carefully coded souls, eventually driving them insane.

So, those are just a few concepts that went into the world of OYE. Anyone out there who’s read the book have any questions about the technology/world/characters of OYE?  Feel free to leave them in the comments.