Jun 2, 2016

Greetings Followers of the Space Sloth, 

I’m sorry for the long silence. We took a quick vacation to Chicago and have been dealing with a moth infestation in our garage (any suggestions on that topic are appreciated). 

For this update I wanted to take a minute to talk about communication. All the sarcasm and adventure aside communication plays a really big role in the story. Our intrepid, but reluctant, crew does have to interact with a few other species during their journeys. I spent a fair amount of time considering how this inter-species communication would occur. Universal translators are great but didn’t seem to meet the tone of the story. I settled on using associations. 

Our memory works by forming associations, between images, sounds, smells, feelings, concepts… In the story the aliens communicate by searching for mental constructs that approximate the association they are trying to make. Two of the alien races are therefore given names we (i.e. humans) already know because they convey the same associations. The Krell and the Nephilim. 

I’ll leave it to you to ponder what those associations could be...:)

And hey, quick reminders. There is one more day for the Draftfest. If you haven’t already have a look at some of the drafts up and give some feedback. And the next contest is underway, the Nerdist Video Game Contest.