Wyken Seagrave talks about the pleasures and pains of inventing, developing, writing and podcasting of Time Crystal, the greatest adventure in the history of the Universe. He also explores the science behind the story, explaining which bits are invented and which bits are hard science.
Wyken reviews the science of Volume 1 and discusses the transition to Volume 2, which will commence on Feb 10.
Wyken talks about preparing a new Podiobooks volume and continues his explanation of negative energy strings by describing wormholes.
Wyken examines how Episode 24 of Time Crystal evolved during the recording of the podcast. In the science section he continues with his examination of negative energy strings.
Wyken talks about what Cjingha means by ‘negative energy’ and talks about his new format for Time Crystal Volume 1.
Wyken examines the book market and explores some of the problems facing an author-publisher attempting to sell books.
Wyken explains some strange music, discusses more re-organisation of the plot, announces a translation website and a new Time Crystal Store.
Wyken expands episode 20 during the podcast editing process, does the ironing, watches Harry Potter and thinks about re-organising his own plot.
Wyken describes how he uses photographs to help him research the visual appearance of scenes in Time Crystal, such as George and Alex landing at Malvoisin and flying down to Entrement. On the way he discovers some fascinating history which might help him in future episodes.
Wyken talks about the new Newsletter, the software and the ideas which arose from it. He also discusses l’Etranger by Albert Camus.
Wyken discusses finding the character’s voice, literally. In this case it is Sofie Dialektaki. He also announces a new newsletter and explains what will happen to profits from the sale of Volume 1.
Wyken talks about the joys and pains (literally!) of using audio editing software to produce podcasts, with especial reference to producing alien voices.
Wyken talks about Episode 15, the way the song was written and then he ponders on the following remark from Catriona: ‘I wish I knew more about all this (meaning pregnancy). Why don’t they teach things like this in school? D’you know they don’t even teach us first aid? It’s incredible when you think about it. I mean, they teach you about biology but don’t teach you the basics of saving somebody’s life! They could so easily make it part of the biology course, couldn’t they?’ Inspired by his own character, Wyken begins a campaign to support teaching first aid in schools. For every person who visits www.timecrystal.co.uk/firstaid and leaves a comment of support, Wyken will pay $1 to the St John Ambulance Schools Campaign. This could be the world's first campaign created by a character in a book!
Wyken reports on what he has learned about public relations and how it relates to the things he is already doing.
Wyken explores how to promote his work and also gives an update on the start of the LHC at CERN.
Wyken explains the various graphical methods he has used over the years to plot out scenes. This podcast is supplemented by a video and images on www.timecrystal.co.uk/blog
Wyken discusses how to write a scene, exploring the point of view character and whether to use the top-down or bottom-up method.
Wyken replays his interview with Rhonda Carpenter which was first broadcast on PodioRacket on October 8, 2009. You can get more of their broadcasts and listen to them live at www.podioracket.com.
Wyken continues his investigation of black holes by considering how quantum mechanics affects them, then he takes you on a journey into a black hole.
In an attempt to find out whether Sam could really have been swallowed by the black, Wyken investigates the general theory of relativity and its predictions about black holes.
Wyken talks about the difficulties of not having an editor and makes listeners an offer they cannot refuse in exchange for a little feedback.
Wyken Seagrave explores the mechanism by which the black hole causes the emergency stairs to collapse. This requires some knowledge of magnets and superconductors, helium cooling and quenches. It turns out Wyken’s idea of using quenches was a good one, since the LHC had a quench within a week of first starting up.
Wyken talks about CERN and the LHC and how scientists have assessed the risks associated with generating black holes and other novel particles. Mostly they rely on the evidence of cosmic rays but have never considered the possibility that a cosmic monopole might be trapped inside the beam pipe. So, he argues, there is an unassessed risk here.
Wyken explains the origin of the cosmic monopole. Do they exist and if so is it feasible that one might get trapped inside ATLAS?
Wyken talks about the characters in Time Crystal, how they were created and his problems in doing this and how he finally solved the problem.
Wyken talks about the many origins of the scenario for Time Crystal, explaining how he arrived at the final form of the story over a period of several years of research, but avoiding an spoilers!
Wyken talks about why he is writing Time Crystal and trying to tell the history of the Universe as a work of fiction. He also gives some insight into why he is creating the Art and Science podcasts.
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