Kryptos Synopsis
Oct. 4th, 2005 10:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellyssianIn an effort to spur myself on - perhaps even to complete a whole chapter! - and in the spirit of the "opening lines of your works-in-progress", which I rather butchered by including opening lines of completed works - I offer up the synopsis of my novel-to-be:
Kryptos
It has long been proposed that worlds may splinter off on simple decisions - a parallel universe may be created where a traveler turned left at an intersection, where in some other reality they turned right.
What if, nearly two millenia Before Common Era, Daedalus did not lose his son to the fiery heat of the sun? What if the brilliant inventor, father of robotics, was eclipsed by the son?
It is 1487 C.E., and the Macedonian Empire has maintained its position of technological and cultural supremacy for over two thousand years. The world is in the beginnings of a Renaissance, with developments in arts and science taking off once more with leaps and bounds.
The designs of sky galleons invented by a young da Vinci have matured for two decades, now entering major production in shipyards in Roma, Sicilia, Athens, and Byzantium, opening up accelerated trade routes not only amongst the city-states of the Empire itself, from Roma to Babylonia, but also to the far-flung reaches of the Known World. Travel from the Celtic Court of Britannia to the Mongolian Empire and the Khan's very palaces in Nipponia has been reduced from a handful of years to a handful of days.
With such capabilities finally becoming available, a man claiming to be from Italia has been invigorated and rekindles his desire to explore across Oceana. He has given up on convincing the small nation of Portugal that there is a large land mass free to colonise as they wish, just over the curve of the Earth, and has begun petitioning the Bretonnian Emperor, Ferdinand, to invest in the dream and expand his realm.
Along with these glorious dreams come darker things – The Black Death, having first struck The Threads in 541 C.E. and almost destroying the entire Weave little more than a century ago, was once again appearing and crippling critical systems throughout the Macedonian Empire. Sinister forces and secret societies work their intrigues, cloaked in the culture and technology of the times. And in the heart of the Macedonian Empire, an enigmatic tragedy will strike.
In the beautiful, fabled Hanging Gardens of Babylonia, a young noble is about to be cast into this web of conspiracy and espionage, and the fate of the entire Macedonian Empire will rest upon his shoulders, as he attempts to decipher the code of Kryptos.
Kryptos
It has long been proposed that worlds may splinter off on simple decisions - a parallel universe may be created where a traveler turned left at an intersection, where in some other reality they turned right.
What if, nearly two millenia Before Common Era, Daedalus did not lose his son to the fiery heat of the sun? What if the brilliant inventor, father of robotics, was eclipsed by the son?
It is 1487 C.E., and the Macedonian Empire has maintained its position of technological and cultural supremacy for over two thousand years. The world is in the beginnings of a Renaissance, with developments in arts and science taking off once more with leaps and bounds.
The designs of sky galleons invented by a young da Vinci have matured for two decades, now entering major production in shipyards in Roma, Sicilia, Athens, and Byzantium, opening up accelerated trade routes not only amongst the city-states of the Empire itself, from Roma to Babylonia, but also to the far-flung reaches of the Known World. Travel from the Celtic Court of Britannia to the Mongolian Empire and the Khan's very palaces in Nipponia has been reduced from a handful of years to a handful of days.
With such capabilities finally becoming available, a man claiming to be from Italia has been invigorated and rekindles his desire to explore across Oceana. He has given up on convincing the small nation of Portugal that there is a large land mass free to colonise as they wish, just over the curve of the Earth, and has begun petitioning the Bretonnian Emperor, Ferdinand, to invest in the dream and expand his realm.
Along with these glorious dreams come darker things – The Black Death, having first struck The Threads in 541 C.E. and almost destroying the entire Weave little more than a century ago, was once again appearing and crippling critical systems throughout the Macedonian Empire. Sinister forces and secret societies work their intrigues, cloaked in the culture and technology of the times. And in the heart of the Macedonian Empire, an enigmatic tragedy will strike.
In the beautiful, fabled Hanging Gardens of Babylonia, a young noble is about to be cast into this web of conspiracy and espionage, and the fate of the entire Macedonian Empire will rest upon his shoulders, as he attempts to decipher the code of Kryptos.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-04 07:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-04 08:18 am (UTC)(Considering it's been sitting, untouched, for over a year (two years?), the latter is maybe not such a good idea! =)
I'm debating posting excerpts - the first chapter actually has three sections, and each one might wind up becoming an independent chapter. The first section is "done", and the second is "done" about half-way through (according to the outline) - all the rest is outline only, and the outline gets very vague towards the end. I'm only part way through the timeline of actual history (both of the given time period and of the inventions I'm transposing down a few octaves, time-wise) and of the Kryptos timeline.
Given that this whole thing revolves around cryptography, I figure I might want to resolve the actual puzzle of it before I get too far into it, just to prevent any stickiness. Although I must say, I am planning on one big deus ex machina early on: Zeus himself gets involved in keeping things moving at (at least) one point.
Unfortunately, I still haven't unravelled the secrets of the real, actual Kryptos (at CIA Headquarters), so I don't know how much of a parallel I want to maintain between that monument and the one of the same name in the novel.
I do realize - found out during some of the research for Kryptos, actually - that it's somewhat a shame that a certain *somebody* published a completely unrelated novel regarding da Vinci and secret societies and codes. As he's had a modicum of success with his, some may see this as too much of a derivative.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-11 03:19 pm (UTC)as far as the work being derivative, i can only say perhaps...if your book is somewhat different and better written, then i wouldnt worry about it...i havent read that particular book but i heard that, despit its success, it's not that well written from a literary standpoint. Just write it and let the readers be the judge!
Did you read Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-11 03:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-04 08:11 am (UTC)