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Post by redsycorax on Feb 21, 2024 2:33:09 GMT
Ah. If the Book of Answers was created by either Hermes (or Thoth, or any analogous knowledge deity), then the circumstances and depiction of its divine origins might well overwhelm limited human or mortal sensory capabilities, driving them mad, injuring them or killing them instantly. Therefore, there's a failsafe clause written into the text of the Book, perhaps in the form of a strong protective enchantment, that protects mortal users from sustaining such injuries or death through denying them access to images of the full divine grandeur of its original creation. Actually, that would definitely fit Hermes as the originator, because Zeus once vaporised one of his female human lovers when he reluctantly granted her request to appear to her in his full divine glory. That could easily be in the back of Hermes mind when he created it.
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Post by DocQuantum on Feb 21, 2024 2:36:02 GMT
Another thing about Storybook Smith's magic book is that you could actually write in the book and change reality itself. For example, in the Judgement Day miniseries, a kid reads about his horrible future as a petty criminal who is shot dead while robbing a liquor store at 19. He doesn't like that future, obviously, so he crosses it out and writes a better story for himself, in which he becomes first a great scientist and then a famous super-hero, leader of Youngblood. I suspect the Book of Answers probably doesn't work that way, though.
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Post by dans on Feb 21, 2024 13:26:04 GMT
From all the prior discussion of the Book of Answers, I'm going to use these parameters in the story I write. But that is a Times Past story, and it is about one man and his use of the Book, so anyone who wants to use it in the future can suggest that the current owner has found a way to use it in ways that Doc Yale didn't. So don't take these as limits on the use of the Book, they are Doc Yale's limits:
* The Book of Answers will not show its own origin. Whether that is because it was created by a god from a pantheon who wanted to protect humans from the glory of godhood, as redsycorax suggests, or some other reason. It may be related to the inability to see the Beginning of Time, as shown in the Krona saga in the E1 Universe.
* The Book of Answers is always adding new information, rather than having been created with 'all the answers'. In particular, it may be able to offer up predictions for the future, but those predictions are only based on information already in the Book. It cannot actually record real future events until they happen. Any future predictions based on current information may be affected by what the questioner expects or wants to see.
* If there are alternate Answers to a question, the Book's ability to determine the 'right' answer is limited. For example, if you ask 'Who is the most beautiful woman in the world today?" the Book might offer up several billion answers, showing every living woman who has at least one person who thinks she is the most beautiful woman in the world.
* It is not possible for any human to write directly into the Book. The method the Book uses to gather information is unknown, but inaccessible for human users. So one cannot control future events by writing them into the book.
* The Book can change its appearance to match the expectations of the user. It can also reveal Answers in various ways, controlled (perhaps subconsciously) by the user. It may show text, pictures, or audio-video. I don't think it can project answers directly into the brain; I think the user must ask a question and open the book and look at the pages of the book to find the answers.
* I don't think the user needs to ask the question aloud, as neither Gallowglass or Doc Yale is ever shown actually asking the Book a question verbally.
* Asking questions of the Book might produce an overwhelming volume of answers, none of which are specific enough to use, depending on the question. For example, if you ask the book how to get rich, it might tell you several ways to get rich: inherit lots of money; steal lots of money; earn lots of money; get people to give you lots of money; discover something worth lots of money. Not very helpful, until you start asking more specific questions... Another example: one answer to the question "How do I keep healthy for the rest of my life?" might be "Die immediately".
That's as far as I've got so far. All of these qualities will be limited to Doc Yale's use of the Book; if someone doesn't agree, Gallowglass can use it differently.
Here are a couple of questions for the group:
* Is the information stored in the Book only information generated by humans, or does it know what animals know? (So, would the Book know "What is the best game trail through this forest?" because the deer that live in the forest always use the same trail? Would the knowledge of microbes count? ("What is currently on the bottom of this river?")
* Does 'someone' (see the question above) need to know the Answer? If the Book were asked for the chemical composition of the water in a creek in the woods, would it be able to analyze the water and provide the answer, or, because no one has actually done the analysis, would it only be able to provide generic information about what is usually found in creek water?
* Are the Book's answers updated in real time or might there be a delay before new information is added to the Book? I did think of a novel application, but it depends on how current the information in the Book is, and how information reaches the Book. Here's an example. Doc Yale is watching a poker game from a remote location, and one of his minions is playing. As each player picks up his hand, Doc asks the Book what the player is seeing right now, so he knows what all the hands are, and he signals his minion about what he should do. Digging further into this scenario, if the dealer has stacked the deck, Doc may know the order of the cards in the deck?
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Post by DocQuantum on Feb 21, 2024 17:50:35 GMT
One limit that is likely for humanity only. It probably does not talk of life on other planets unless connected to humans somehow.
Gallowglass used the book to take the time to learn of all the natural plants that had ever grown on Earth since the dinosaur age, as mentioned in Fever of Death. The book isn’t mentioned but the way he got that info can be inferred to be from the Book of Answers.
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Post by redsycorax on Feb 22, 2024 23:46:37 GMT
Perhaps the book is isomorphic for the world that it's on at the time? If it were taken to some other inhabited planet, or alternate universe, its content might reformat itself and refocus its scrutiny to specific questions about that planet or alternate Earth?
If it were possibly an instrument of an omnipotent deity, it might indeed have highly specific details about non-human species behaviour and specific water tributary chemical content. Hey, perhaps it has a 'virtue' failsafe that refuses to disclose information that is contrary to that deity's prescribed moral code, so it might not provide information about specific activities like gambling, alcohol consumption or how to engage in criminal activity, particularly if that activity can foreseeably and tangibly injure or kill others?
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Post by dans on Feb 23, 2024 0:10:24 GMT
Perhaps the book is isomorphic for the world that it's on at the time? That's a good question, thanks! I think the answer to that is a qualified 'yes': the holder of the Book of Answers can't answer questions about a planet it has never 'been to'. Since it has always been on Earth 1, it can't currently answer questions about conditions on some planet in the Magellan Galaxy or Earth 2. Unless it obtains knowledge from thinking beings. If that is the case, if a thinking being who has visited other planets comes to Earth 1, the Book _may_ learn what these beings know about other planets. I'm going to qualify the limits I plan to use when I write again, because I don't want anyone else to have a great idea for using the Book and be stymied because of the limits I impose. Based on feedback I've received, the Book is going to know what 'people' know or have known in the past on Earth 1, and it may know what any extra-planetary visitors to Earth 1 knew at the time of their visits. But Doc Yale, the user of the Book, will never ask any questions about extra-planetary knowledge. So here's some examples: If he wants to use the Book to get rich by collecting gold nuggets, he can ask where the closest location is that gold nuggets have ever been found. If he asks if there are more nuggets there right now, the answer is probably going to be "Don't know" (unless maybe there are active prospectors working that same stream right now). He might ask "Where's the nearest buried pirate treasure?" and the Book should know that answer, since someone had to bury that treasure. But if he were to ask "Where's the location of a sunken pirate ship?" the Book would know where the ship went down (to the limit of accuracy of the ship's navigator) but not where it ended up. The next author who wants to use the Book could just decide that Doc Yale didn't know how to ask the right questions, and the Book of Answers can reveal all kinds of things that Doc Yale never discovered... Thanks for your patience with all these questions, everyone!
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Post by DocQuantum on Feb 23, 2024 1:18:24 GMT
I'm sure there would be plenty of ways to use the Book of Answers, but what I'm interested in is how it would play out in a typical adventure.
Say, if there was a Doc Harvard Yale comic-book story from the golden age (not the origin story, but an everyday adventure indicative of his usual adventures), how would it read?
The Book of Answers is small enough to fit in a pocket, since it's only 3 times the size of a Gideon Bible (and those things are pretty small), so it's not like he has to lug around a gigantic book the size of Destiny's book. So does Harvard Yale ever use his fisticuffs in his adventures, like a typical 1940s hero, or is the never-ending supply of knowledge enough for him?
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Post by johnreiter902 on Feb 23, 2024 1:55:24 GMT
It seems to me he would have to use fist-fighting, when the time comes to actually capture the bad guys.
The running theme in his golden age stories would probably be that, anytime he encounters a mystery, or needs some information to deal with a crime or catch a criminal, he just whips out the book, mutters to himself for a minute, and produces the solution.
For example
a company managers comes into work to find the safe burgled Doc Yale consults his book, and it tells him the burglar was Slim Sam Donovan. He looks up Slim Sam's current location, and the book gives him the address. Doc Goes there and captures Slim Sam (fisticuffs here). But he needs evidence (the book of answers is not admissible in court). So he asks the book where the loot is hidden. He then calls int he police and shows them all the evidence they need to lock up Slim Sam
case closed
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Post by dans on Feb 23, 2024 2:34:53 GMT
that does seem to be what would happen, based on the things we have discussed. Not very interesting, actually, he always knows who done it, where they are right now, where the evidence is, what kind of guns the bad guy carries, where he conceals his weapon, what kind of car he drives, whatever you want to know about a crime. Even killing witnesses won't help...
It is only when he is actually taking action, and something unexpected occurs, that there is any drama.
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Post by DocQuantum on Feb 23, 2024 2:42:31 GMT
I could imagine several plots would revolve around the Book being temporarily lost or stolen, and used by others for their own ends, either crooked or innocent, or somewhere in between. I say temporarily as a certainty, because we know Doc died with it in his pocket, so he always got it back.
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Post by redsycorax on Feb 23, 2024 3:54:46 GMT
But should it be used for malevolent purposes? If it was created by an ethical being of any sought, surely there should be an inbuilt morality clause preventing that contingency?
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Post by DocQuantum on Feb 23, 2024 7:22:14 GMT
Yeah but in Doc Harvard Yale #18's "The Madness of Wealth," his old nemesis Darius Dayton is clearly able to easily circumvent any unethical uses of the Book of Answers to make himself one of the wealthiest men in the world overnight. In fact, he uses it even better than Doc Yale ever did. Of course, by the end of the story, the Book also ends up driving him crazy, and by the time he gets out of the hospital after all that electroshock therapy (this was the early 1940s, remember), he was a changed man.
And then there was the time the Book fell out of Doc's pocket, and 13-year-old Penny Miller found it. She used it to make herself to get better grades as well as become more popular at school, until the other girls found out about the book she always had with her, and everything fell apart. It passed through the hands of at least ten more kids (with varying degrees of success for each) before Doc finally tracked it down.
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Post by dans on Feb 23, 2024 16:16:44 GMT
Holy Moley! Where did you find issue #18? It's the only one I'm missing!! Would you be interested in selling it? What condition?
The Penny Miller story was the lead in issue 24, the same issue where Doc first teamed up with the Stainless Steel Cat in the second story.
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Post by redsycorax on Feb 23, 2024 23:06:24 GMT
Okay, let's amend that, slightly. What say the Book can permit opportunist uses but have them result in consequences and penalties for the book's misuse, which appears to be what Doc describes in that reference to continuity. All the same, there have to be limits beyond the scope of simple avarice for increased wealth, or academic achievement. What if the likes of Hitler or Mussolini got their hands on it, for instance? Surely it should not be used to kill people whether on an interpersonal or institutional scale, or severely injure them?
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Post by dans on Feb 24, 2024 0:48:28 GMT
How about we assume that the Book of Answers won't give answers when the purpose of the question is to actively deliberately harm another person? It judges on intent...
I am just going to assume that Doc Yale doesn't misuse it that way, and that he never finds out what happened to past users who did...
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