(originally published November 16, 2014)
Every so often, an event comes along that is incredibly
interesting and while it has nothing in particular to do with a novel I’m
working on, I know the notes I’ll take will find their way into my
writing—sometime. The Radcliffe Institute’s science symposium about navigation,
Lost and Found, is a perfect example.
In a word—this symposium was intense. It started out with presentations on neuroscience. One of
the more accessible portions was the work of Eleanor Maguire, who studied the
growth of the hippocampus in taxi drivers from training onward through their
careers. As a result of memorizing London’s 25,000 streets, the hippocampus
grew, and MRIs revealed brain activity as the drivers planned and dealt with
unexpected obstacles using a simulation program. Upon retirement, the
hippocampus began to shrink, and returned to average size within two to three
years. Maguire’s research further demonstrated that people who say they have a
poor sense of direction typically fall into a category of people who are able
to recognize landmarks, but are unable to place them on a map. In contrast,
people who find their way around well were able to draw detailed maps after
playing a video game called Fog World. Maguire won an IgNobel award for her
research in 2003. Though the IgNobels make light of a lot of research, there
was also a good deal of appreciation for what she had discovered about brain
function and the ability to navigate.
What followed were presentations on animal navigation and
anthropological studies of migrations of people living in the South Pacific;
then we were on to two of the most interesting lectures: lost person behavior,
and navigation in outer space.
It was these afternoon sessions I found a lot of inspiration
as a writer. Professor Richard Feinberg talked about the different types of
tools used by cultures: the Carolinian star compass, the wind compass, star
paths, and so on. Whether you’re portraying a real human culture and need your
seafaring characters to know the trade winds as they cross the ocean, or
characters in a fantasy world are trying to determine how to find their way to
a land they’ve only heard about in legend, there were a lot of great details
that could help shape how your characters journey in known and unknown lands.
The most dynamic presentation of the day was about lost
person behavior. There are tons of novels and movies about people being lost,
or trying to find someone. Did you know there is a database of more than
100,000 people that characterizes their behavior based on the data collected by
search and rescue teams?
After obtaining information about all the wheres: Is it known where the person
went? Have they been lost before. If so, where were they found? Where have
other people been found if they have been lost in the same area? Is the person
a hiker, angler, mushroom forager, or straying child? Once an initial planning
point (IPP) has been determined, such as where the person’s abandoned bicycle
was found, search efforts begin in earnest. The person’s cognitive abilities provide
a wealth of detail that help search and rescue teams: Alzheimer’s patients tend
to stick within 15 meters of roads or paths, and usually stop wandering in a
short time. Autistic children are often drawn to light, water, and reflective
surfaces. There are distinct patterns that emerge ass data continues to be
collected. There are specific phases f being lost: (1) The error at the
Decision Point, (2) terrain analysis, (3) confirmation bias, or “bending the
map,” where people ignore the obvious signs they’re on the wrong track and are
convinced they know where they’re going, (4) phase of anxiety, (5) realization
of being lost, and (6) the self-rescue strategy, of which there are many.
Self-rescue strategies involve everything from deciding to
stay in a straight line to finding contour paths that reach a wider area, or,
staying put and hoping to be found. And over the years, statistics have changed
due to technology. In the past, most hikers headed down, with only a few
staying at the same elevation, and a good percentage heading up to get a view
of the vista in order to find the best path out. Now many hikers head up to a
higher elevation to find cell phone service.
These known patterns help establish several strategies for
finding people, and the maps of probability are based on these behaviors.
Robert J. Koester, the presenter of this amazing information, has written
several books on the subject. If being lost is at the heart of your plot, you
may want to seek these books out to make the lost person’s behavior, and that
of the rescue team’s, more realistic.
The final session of the day was perfect fodder for sci-fi
fans. With the study of pulsars, we have learned that they can serve as a sort
of GPS. In fact, the Pioneer 10 and 11 space probes carry plaques suggested by
Carl Sagan, to serve as a beacon to show any spacefaring alien life the way to
Earth. (Of course, if you’re a fan of Douglas Adams, you know this could be a
very bad idea, if the Volgons show up to read their poetry before blasting your
planet into pieces to build a galactic superhighway.)
The solar system at the bottom of the plaque is obvious. But
the star-like graph to the left? It maps 14 pulsars that were known at the time
of the plaque’s creation, and they position Earth at the center. Presenter
George Hobbs talked about how time and position could theoretically be used as
a GPS system in space, if a ship could map at least 4 pulsars. It was
fascinating to think of how this could be used in fiction. My fourth novel does
have space travel in it, but only as far out as Mars and the asteroid belt. But
thinking about using pulsars as a means of navigation made me want to send my
characters out even further into the galaxy.
I’ve always been a strong supporter of continuing education,
and believe it’s a key component for writers, regardless of genre or writing
style. There is a traditional image of writers being sequestered away in their
garrets, writing manically and producing book after book. But for
practicality’s sake, many of us need careers to support our craft. Publishing
houses offer little in the way of advances for a vast majority of authors, and even
in the indie world, being discovered by readers on a scale of being able to
live off the royalties is a challenge. Indeed, there are those who say authors
need to be connected to the world—the awesome blog run by the Alliance of
Independent Authors made
this point recently.
There are endless, free resources out there for authors to
use. And symposia such as these are of immense benefit to all kinds of writers.
