The art of balancing expectation, anticipation and release in storytelling went through a golden age during the early to mid twentieth century. In a world of explodamerating media connectiveness, opportunities abounded for small producers and unknown artists to showcase their wares in a hungry consumer market, left wanting by the slow death of established entertainment dinosaurs like Vaudeville.

Pulp fiction magazines (science-fiction, mystery, romances) and one-reel motion picture serials (science-fiction, westerns, cartoons) became staples of Western culture, with a particular strangehold on the imaginations of the New World where traditional divertisements were more easily displaced by the dynamic and mixed populations of the continent's young nations.

Because these stories and serial episodes were limited in length by the resources of their small publishers and producers, their authors had to hone their ability to use suspense. Paramount to each experience of consumption was the objective that the reader be left craving for the next installment, a week or more in the future -- a kind of voluntary hypnosis in which fealty was forged to the content by curiosity branded with the content's imagery.

Anxiety was transmuted to anticipation.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s this effect was perfected as a distraction from the trials of life, and married with the cinematic development of accessible escapism. In this way, Hollywood learned that people will consume very low quality content, as long as some of the basic buttons are pushed to transmute the usual repressions into temporary releases of all the right endorphins.

This explains both George Bush and Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code.

The latter example was particularly instructive to me, as it was readily apparent that the novel lacked much merit in terms of language, imagery or theme. What it did have, however, were chapters structured like episodes of Flash Gordon.

Marcia Lucas understood this when she took the steaming pile of chunky bile that was her husband's first cut of Star Wars, and chopped it back together into something that wasn't boring.

Thus, it became my mission to design a story to be delivered via the Web in a way that might approximate some of the elements of this past century's golden age. It was my hypothesis that while writing something on the fly would suffer many deficits, these might be overcome by installing bridges of suspense-release, and managing reader expectations so as to create the maximum emotional effect at moments of plot revelations. Hollywood has taught me that even a mediocre plot will do, so long as the revelations are appropriately framed.

We're about 100,000 words into the experiment now. And I think it's working.

People are writing to tell me that they're getting in trouble with their bosses at work. People are complaining to me that they should have slept, rather than re-read earlier chapters. Some are even saying, "How can I send you money, so that you can devote more time to writing new episodes faster?"

But this is all about me inviting you to be the judge. You see, time is running out. The story will be done, and then there will be no way for you to experience the fun of my suspense-release ride. (It's kinda like a waterslide, only you don't need a bathing suit and you won't have to worry about looking fat.)

Like I spammed, it's called Simon of Space. Here's the first chapter: I Think, Therefore.

Go on, give it a skim. Doesn't seem too bad, eh? Some familiar science-fiction elements, some quirky CheeseburgerBrown-style dialogue, the potential for interesting themes to be explored.

It's just one big hook, though. Here's another random chapter, from further on in Simon's adventures: A Face Of God. This is my attempt to capture some of actual wonder and disorientation and patience of space travel, as opposed to the hyperMcSonic astro cars and starblazing cosmic covered-wagons of much standard scifi.

Finally, is it possible to do space romance without pulling an Anakin-Padme and thereby causing the audience to vomit? You decide: A Jolly Holiday.

New episodes are usually posted three times a week. We've crossed the halfway mark and we're accelerating into the climax. Don't miss it. The blog will not stay up forever.

In conclusion I would now like to delivered my promised list of ten compelling reasons to become a reader of Simon of Space:

#1. It's free. And it is easily better than half the crap you're often invited to pay for.

#2. It's funny. Who can't use a giggle now and again?

#3. It's the up and coming thing, and by getting in now you'll be able to annoy people with your pointless bragging about having read the story while it was still being written. "Oh yeah," you'll say, "I knew about that shit way before it was Slashdotted."

#4. The more the merrier! The commentary is alive and well and living at Google. Join in on the plot speculation, scene dissections and typo corrections!

#5. It's touching, and thought provoking. What's scifi without maudlin pathos and diluted philosophy?

#6. Sometimes Dr. Who isn't on when you want to watch it.

#7. It provides something to do at work to break up the monotony of tossing paperclips into the trash from across your cubicle and pretending to look busy.

#8. It's got a few sexy bits. And some good old fashioned violence, too. I'd buy that for a dollar!

#9. If you're a fan of the scifi genre you can play "count the homages" as you discover each new reference to the ABCs of the golden age: Asimov, Bester, Clark! (Yes, I'm aware of Bradbury's work.)

#10. Because Douglas Adams is dead.

Once again, that's Simon of Space everybody -- Simon of Space dot Blog*Spot dot com. Thank you, and good afternoon.