Hi, I'm French, a natural born computer scientist and an open-source software lover, you may guess my job… I have so much imagination that sometimes it ends on paper or in computer, or simply stay alive in my mind. After sometimes, it may go on French writers' forum just like this one, or it just lies as reminding bytes spread on my hard drive going to one folder to another, moving from one backup to another. At the beginning of 2014, I've read a book which name is Utopia by Thomas More. It's an old book written around 1515. Now 500 years! It's a strange and great book. It is the one which introduced the word Utopia. It was forged by Thomas More for this essay. The original and powerful meaning of this word is generally a bit lost. It comes from Greek and has a special dual meaning. If you pronounce the beginning, U like you: a place that is nowhere. And if you you pronounce EU like Eutopia: the good place. Of course it means both. That's what which gave this word its original power: something above possibilities, or not yet (human) possible. So I decided to write my own Utopia, half a millennium later, as an anniversary gift, or a lifting. But the word Utopia, itself as lost it signification in the time, and now means for most people: impossible or like the term chimera, implausible. Of course now people may know the contrary of Utopia = dystopia. So many books or films, on this theme. But Utopia, it's much more rare. So this novel project, written in French, was much more difficult than I thought. So I rewrote it from scratch on a new form: a young-adult novel, thanks for Divergent and other Harry Potter, which inspired me that kind of writing. Why did I join an English writer forum? Because I need to improve my English. As you may read there's probably some grammatical mistakes or verb not correctly conjugated, etc. And also because I would like to translate my Short Stories in English to share with people not speaking French. As English is mainly the common language in which we can communicate, all around the world. My Short Stories will be a set of computer Hacker chronicles, I gonna use the short stories to test writing style. After I will put some selected stories into my novel to describe the evolution of my main character, which will first start as a young Hacker, next becoming a famous and tracked Pirate or Cracker having malicious activities, and he will progressively become much more altruism as he discovers things and gain power during the time. Those having the possibility to build Utopian cities and federating groups of joining people… But it's another story, first lets hack and become an evil Pirate!
Welcome to the forum! Your story premise sounds interesting. I haven't read Utopia, but I've always wanted to 'cause it was Corto Maltese's favorite book. It's an ambitious project to write in a foreign language (I should know!), so I wish you luck. French is a lovely language as well. I studied it for a couple of years, prompted by a Francophone character I wrote, so of course my French is atrocious, but I really like the language. Here's our New Member Quick Start to get you started. See you around! -Kat
Bon soir. Thank you for the suggestion of Utopia. I too am a programmer. There are a few here. Welcome!
I always do that, a sort of Curse, doing ambitious tasks or projects. (too ambitious?) For short stories it should be fine and it will teach me some great stuff I think. My first hacker's chronicle is finished in French. I will publish it on a French forum, making it living, and I will translate some version later. To see if I'm able to perform it. I also have good reading recommendation about hacker's story in English to read. Of course I've seen Mr.Robot first season. To be continued…
