{"id":332,"date":"2014-12-26T12:00:28","date_gmt":"2014-12-26T17:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/?p=332"},"modified":"2014-12-17T22:06:01","modified_gmt":"2014-12-18T03:06:01","slug":"my-favorite-book-golden-girl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/2014\/12\/26\/my-favorite-book-golden-girl\/","title":{"rendered":"My Favorite Book: Golden Girl"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Golden<\/a>
Golden Girl<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We were traveling with our RV along the Mississippi River one trip, and camped at the water\u2019s edge at the Delabar State Park.\u00a0 When we went into the little town of Oquawka, Illinois for supplies, I was enchanted by the small town with its boat dock, charming little churches, and the park where it celebrated the Elephant Graveyard. It was a place small enough to walk around, and as I saw a few high-school aged people doing just that, I realized I needed to set a novel there.<\/p>\n

Oquawka was a place where its most important days were long past, and I supposed that\u2019s what led me to tackle a time travel story. I also wanted to explore some ideas about time travel itself. Most stories treat time shifting as a simple magic trick, with little cost or side effects. I\u2019d written a short story \u201cMaking It Fit\u201d that dealt with limits on time travel, and I had other ideas as well.\u00a0 I also had fond memories of \u201cThe Seesaw\u201d, part of A. E. van Vogt\u2019s Weapon Shop stories, which influenced how this kind of time travel worked.<\/p>\n

The title of the novel \u201cGolden Girl\u201d evolved during the writing of the tale, where the main character has to learn how her time travel works and use it in order to save the world from an asteroid impact.<\/p>\n

The asteroid sequence is one where I had to create an elaborate spreadsheet to calculate what the characters would be able to see during the event.\u00a0 That was fun as well.<\/p>\n

One of my favorite reasons for writing time travel stories is that it touches on a primal question.\u00a0 Are we predestined to act out our lives only one way, or will each and every act cause a new future — does free will control our lives?\u00a0 This story gave me the flexibility to touch on these questions and suggest that there are more ways of looking at this than we\u2019ve considered before.<\/p>\n

So, from asteroid calculations to odd side-effects of time travel, all taking place next to the Mississippi River, Golden Girl is my favorite.<\/p>\n

More about Golden Girl<\/a><\/p>\n

Next up — My Favorite Book: Follow That Mouse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We were traveling with our RV along the Mississippi River one trip, and camped at the water\u2019s edge at the Delabar State Park.\u00a0 When we went into the little town of Oquawka, Illinois for supplies, I was enchanted by the small town with its boat dock, charming little churches, and the park where it celebrated… Continue reading My Favorite Book: Golden Girl<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[11,5],"tags":[26,12,8,13],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4t90x-5m","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":335,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332\/revisions\/335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}