SCI-FI ON STEEMIT WITH CRYPTOGEE - Article - 4th Edition

steem-times (56)in #steem-times • 6 years ago (edited)

SCI-FI ON STEEMIT WITH CRYPTOGEE

by @warpedpoetic | Aug 13, 2018

There are loads of writers with awesome content on the steemit platform. Some of them have even found their way into the traditional press or have been able to self publish their works. Steemit is a veritable reader’s delight but unfortunately due to the fact that there are no rewards for reading stuff on the platform, not much reading is done here.

This is not to say that steemians do not read and enjoy created content on the platform but the focus is more on content creation than on content consumption. As a result, really great writing or interesting stories are missed by people who would have loved to engage with the story as well as with the author of the story.

I have found it to be true that there are fans of certain writers on the steemit platform and they show their love for the content by place such a blog on autovote. Soon it gets to the point when they no longer bother to read the content but let their votes speak for them. I do not know if that is satisfactory for writers as a whole. I know the value created by the upvote is quite important but then again, if you are a writer and you take your craft seriously, feedback is as valuable as steem or steem power.

At a time like this, when the price of steem has dumped to epic levels, it would seem that great content is not getting great rewards and to make matters worse, the feedback has dropped as well. Yes, lots of folks went on a break as the price dumped but then again if a writer has a certain following, he or she should still be able to get engagement from his or her fanbase. Is that not the idea behind this platform; community, interaction, friendship, social media?

WRITING SCI-FI ON STEEMIT

It would be fair to say that the fanbase of a writer on steemit is not dedicated but fickle and as a result there are content creators who despair and have found no way to get engagement from the readers on the platform. One of such writers, whose stories have captured my imagination time and time again is @cryptogee.

_{screenshot grabbed from @cryptogee's blog on steemit.}

I first discovered him by mistake. I was new on the blockchain then and still surfing for folks with huge rep to follow and engage with on their blogs with the hopes that they would return the favour. I had been advised not to spam the comment section but to leave comments that were worthy of the content I had read. So I hunted through the sea that is steemit, seeking with my harpoon for a whale or dolphin or a minnow even who was willing to read my comments and consider me worthy of an upvote.

I soon came across a post by @cryptogee. It was sci-fi story series which had already gotten to 30 plus episodes by the time I discovered it. I read the stories and I was hooked. He wrote and posted each episode every day and he was regular as clock work. I was always there to read it and I also commented. Weirdly, despite his large rep and the fact that he always replied comments on his posts and even upvoted them, he had very few comments on his posts. In fact, there were days when the post received just two comments and most of his upvoters did not comment on his post. It was like manna from heaven.

_{screenshot grabbed from @cryptogee's blog on steemit.}

I felt like I had found a backdoor into a steemit secret. I commented and engaged the writer for months until I became familiar to him and he started visiting my blog and reading my stuff.

Now, I am not here to talk about how to get a whale or a dolphin interested in your posts. I am hear to talk about the new series of science fiction that @cryptogee is working on presently. He titled it Metal Rain and it has so far gotten to chapter 15

From what I have read so far, the story is about a self replicating, conscious space vehicle from another planet viewing the Milky Way from its own point of view and drawing conclusions. I am yet to read some few later episodes but that is what I had gathered so far.

@cryptogee’s stories are filled with a lot of techie words and even steem, blockchain technology, nanomachines and all those futuristic science thingies that make techies orgasm on their aprons and lab coats can be found in his chronicles as he calls them. It shows a writer who has a certain level of knowledge about techie stuff and knows how to use it to create stories, conflict, character, psychological questions, cartharsis as well as climax.

Here is an excerpt from the ongoing serial;

_{It performed an internal check of its self-replicating system, around four hundred metres below its surface, it viewed its constructor, controller and copier. The blueprints that would make a near identical machine to itself, were held deep within its own mind.}
_{It was describing a one hundred million kilometre arc, at the end of which it would be directly facing the system it was heading for. The light it was seeing from the local star was roughly ten years old, as was the signal it intercepted just 4.824785999201 second(s) ago.}

_{Excerpt from chapter 1 of Metal Rain}

The stories are a pretty good read, so I enjoin you to go check the series out and engage the writer, not just with upvotes but with ideas and thoughts. You will find me at the comment section, I promise.