My Universe Keeps Expanding and Expanding…

I have been asking other bloggers and web-acrats whose sites I admire (and in some case rely on my sanity) for permission to link to them. Wha-du-ya-know! A few have graciously agreed! I am very grateful and honored. I’ve said previously that I am new at this and teaching myself technically and entrepreneurially how to get voice to the character I’ve held close for so long. It’s gratify that others are willing to give me opportunity to success and stumble by linking to them.

On the sidebar here (as well as the imaginedworld.us studio site) you will find the start of a links list. With time I hope they will grow. I am addicted to web-surfing and I love to discover new destinations. Asking to add a link to sites also permits me to let those content-owners know I appreciate all the time and effort they’ve put in. Who knew, they are also nice people! Please, check them out!

Stefan Ingstrand, Sweden’s answer to Indiana Jones, publishes Science Fiction Stories. It is a website of his own writing and served as one of my biggest sources of encouragement to try online self-publishing myself. At the moment, there are two series and a small collection of self-contained stories to choose from.

The award-winning Planet Magazine provides safe harbor for short science fiction and fantasy by emerging writers and illustrators—something I can identify with. The groundbreaking electronic zine has been encouraging its own brand of fun “online and in color” since March 1993, and its totally free! Yes, indeed, the Dark Gods are laughing…and having a good read!

Rowan Dai and his writing partner are writing a fantasy novel online. They are taking their collaboration from first draft to finished product right before your eyes. Along the way A Novel Idea shares great insight into the writing process with warmth and intelligence.

Eric and his friends at MyBlogLog want bloggers to become friends with other people who read your favorite blogs. To eee what else they're reading. To check out their MySpace and Friendster profiles and view their Flickr photostreams.

MyBlogLog is a communities service to empower authors and readers to operate at the same level. Everyone who reads a web site or blog can learn about and engage with one another, and in the process take the conversation to a whole new level. MyBlogLog enables you to take advantage of your existing presence on the Web and ties it into communities of like-minded readers and authors to add context to the conversations in which you take part.

Doug Chiang led George Lucas’ team of illustrators and conceptional artists on the Star Wars prequel films. Look at the droid army in Phantom Menace and you’ll see his signature design. Doug’s award-winning "Robota" imagines worlds where exotic creatures and robots co-exist with humans.

The Sci-fi Portal organizing a vast directory of science fiction and fantasy web links into a near comprehensive collection.

Scifi Chrome keeps up with what’s new in scifi and anime and it is a great place to show your fan-based site to the scifi community.

If you would like me to add a link to your blog or site, drop me an email.

What if...

What if your everyday experiences challenged the assumptions society and tradition demanded? What if others around you were suffering the indignities of inequality over class, gender, and heritage while you lived comfortably, enjoying the privileges those inequalities afforded? What if others were willing to fight and die for their beliefs, while you did no more than question your own? What would it take for you to risk everything and act on the truth in your heart?

Questions, such as these, have weighed on me for some time. Given world events of the last seven years, you probably are not surprised! But actually I have been wondering about “social responsibility and consciousness” for most of my adult life.

Like many issues, my way of exploring such themes is to invent characters and place them in situations where they are challenged to answer questions and live with their consequences. It’s a way of working through circumstance I don’t fully comprehend myself. Through the lives of invented characters I may never arrive at answers or a position, but I can better understand myself—at least, that’s the hope. I am sure I am not alone in this and that many creative people do what they do to work through what they see around them.

The questions I have about what turns a person from denial or neutrality about the social order to activist were actually sparked by events after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The former Soviet states of the early 1990, suddenly confronted by a complete break with their identity of more than fifty years, struggled with new economic and social realities.

Reunification was both glorious and painful for both sides—trying to fit into a world that’s comfortably western and capitalist while also trying to integrate groups of people abandoned by assumptions and a way of life long oppressed upon them. (My friends in West Berlin would write to me about those “uneducated greedy easterners.”) Russia struggled horribly early on with westernization. The Balkans, without the Communist social structure, succumbed to ethnic cleansing and civil war.

In the Times and elsewhere, I read remarkable stories of people coming to terms with not only a skewed troubled past but working to change their present, to look past capitalism’s failings and to carve a place in the new social order they found themselves in—often violently, sometimes peacefully, frequently inspirationally. New states were created and new social institutions manifested.

It was at this time that the characters of Faithful first introduced themselves and began to germanate in my imagination. Since then, they have morphed, but essentially remained on the same quest: what does it take to move from passive participation in the world to active. What does it take to abandon assumptions based on past prejudices and loyalties and embrace new worlds of thought?

Certainly today, as the Western world confronts the growing Islamic worldview, both moderate and radical, these questions hold significant relevance. Perhaps a fantasy story will not yield answers, but then a wise man once said that the journey is more important than the destination. Fantasy and science fiction has a long tradition of holding a mirror to society and reflecting humanity’s Medusa and it’s coat of many colors. I don’t know what conclusions the characters of Faithful will draw for me. I only hope I can make it as honest and interesting a journey as I can.

RICHARDSON

Launch!

Welcome to imaginedworlds and cross the threshold into original weblog storytelling with a distinctive science fiction and fantasy voice. We begin with a story to be serialized online called Faithful. Set in an alternate reality, you are invited to witness its world evolve as the story progresses. It is a multi-dimensional experience blogged in prose, graphic designs, artwork and any other means that broaden its universe.

There are plenty of other story blogs, many much better executed than imaginedworlds. This excursion hopes to have some fun, to offer someone somewhere an entertaining distraction, and to create an outlet through which I might learn something meaningful about myself.

I have always had a passion for story writing, although it’s been only a casually pursuit. I try to find a satisfying way to commit the characters in my head to some creative form: film, comics, prose, stage. I have always sought to combine these different communication forms in new ways and leverage my varied interests in comics, illustration, theatre, graphic design, media production, concept design and computer arts. Alas, my effort are often frustrated by time, money, a demanding professional career, levels of interest and, most of all, ability.

I have long been inspired by the abilities of others to realize flights of fancy. My heroes such as Doug Chiang, Chris Foss, Joss Weldon, Jim Lee, Michael Richardson, Roddenberry, Lucas, Asimov, are too numerous to list. Never schooled in any of the disciplines in which they are masters, I’ve set about to teach myself by trial and error using the (VERY) limited talent I have. Imaginedworlds is my self-tutorial.

I look forward to making many mistakes (and lots of crap!). I also look forward to seeing what I can accomplish, even if I am the only person who finds value. I’ve lived with a number of worlds in my imagination and if by exorcizing them online helps teach me a thing or two and helps me grow as a person, then it doesn’t matter what comes of it.

In the least, I hope I meet other like-minded people from whom I can learn something and share in their creativity. As much as I’m driven to tell my own stories and I certain hope this will lead me to entertainments created by others.

RICHARDSON