So I'd intended this story as a bit of utterly deranged fun, but it got out of control and ended up as a deep philosophical exploration, and now those of you who care will have to wade through the insanity.  I'm sorry.  I just can't seem to help myself.

I know that writing crossover fanfiction is considered one of the lower levels to which an author can sink.  Alas, I've always been a sucker for audacity, and I am the sort of person who couldn't resist trying to top the entire... but never mind, you can see for yourself.

Click on to read my latest story and first fanfiction, a Vernor Vinge x Greg Egan crackfic.

..fragments of a book that would never be written...

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Captain Selena, late of the pirate ship Nemesis, quietly extended the very tip of her blade around the corner, staring at the tiny reflection on the metal.  At once, but still silently, she pulled back the sword; and with her other hand made a complex gesture.

The translation spell told Hirou that the handsigns meant:  "Orcs.  Seven."

Dolf looked at Hirou.  "My Prince," the wizard signed, "do not waste yourself against mundane opponents.  Do not draw the Sword of Good as yet.  Leave these to Selena."

Hirou's mouth was very dry.  He didn't know if the translation spell could understand the difference between wanting to talk and wanting to make gestures; and so Hirou simply nodded.

Not for the first time, the thought occurred to Hirou that if he'd actually known he was going to be transported into a magical universe, informed he was the long-lost heir to the Throne of Bronze, handed the legendary Sword of Good, and told to fight evil, he would have spent less time reading fantasy novels.  Joined the army, maybe.  Taken fencing lessons, at least.  If there was one thing that didn't prepare you for fantasy real life, it was sitting at home reading fantasy fiction.

Dolf and Selena were looking at Hirou, as if waiting for something more.

Oh.  That's right.  I'm the prince.

Hirou raised a finger and pointed it around the corner, trying to indicate that they should go ahead -

With a sudden burst of motion Selena plunged around the corner, Dolf following hard on her heels, and Hirou, startled and hardly thinking, moving after.

(This story ended up too long for a single LW post, so I put it on yudkowsky.net.
Do read the rest of the story there, before continuing to the Acknowledgments below.)

"Allow me to make sure I have this straight," the hero said.  "I've been untimely ripped from my home world to fight unspeakable horrors, and you say I'm here because I'm lucky?"

Aerhien dipped her eyelashes in elegant acknowledgment; and quietly to herself, she thought:  Thirty-seven.  Thirty-seven heroes who'd said just that, more or less, on arrival.

Not a sign of the thought showed on her outward face, where the hero could see, or the other council members of the Eerionnath take note.  Over the centuries since her accidental immortality she'd built a reputation for serenity, more or less because it seemed to be expected.

"There are kinds and kinds of luck," Aerhien said serenely.  "Not every person desires their personal happiness above all else.  Those who are lucky in aiding others, those whose luck is great in succor and in rescue, these ones are not always happy themselves.  You are here, hero, because you have a hero's luck.  The boy whose dusty heirloom sword proves to be magical. The peasant girl who finds herself the heir to a great kingdom.  Those who discover, in time of sudden stress, an untrained wild magic within themselves.  Success born not of learning, not of skill, not of determination, but unplanned coincidence and fortunes of birth:  That is a hero's luck."

Sunlight enriched air already alive with curiosity, as dawn rose on Brennan and his fellow students in the place to which Jeffreyssai had summoned them.

They sat there and waited, the five, at the top of the great glassy crag that was sometimes called Mount Mirror, and more often simply left unnamed.  The high top and peak of the mountain, from which you could see all the lands below and seas beyond.

(Well, not all the lands below, nor seas beyond.  So far as anyone knew, there was no place in the world from which all the world was visible; nor, equivalently, any kind of vision that would see through all obstacle-horizons.  In the end it was the top only of one particular mountain: there were other peaks, and from their tops you would see other lands below; even though, in the end, it was all a single world.)

"What do you think comes next?" said Hiriwa.  Her eyes were bright, and she gazed to the far horizons like a lord.

Taji shrugged, though his own eyes were alive with anticipation.  "Jeffreyssai's last lesson doesn't have any obvious sequel that I can think of.  In fact, I think we've learned just about everything that I knew the beisutsukai masters know.  What's left, then -"

"Are the real secrets," Yin completed the thought.

Hiriwa and Taji and Yin shared a grin, among themselves.

Styrlyn wasn't smiling.  Brennan suspected rather strongly that Styrlyn was older than he had admitted.

Brennan wasn't smiling either.  He might be young, but he kept high company, and had witnesssed some of what went on behind the curtains of the world.  Secrets had their price, always, that was the barrier that made them secrets; and Brennan thought he had a good idea of what this price might be.

Follow-Up to: On Juvenile Fiction

Related to: The Simple Truth

I quote again from JulianMorrison, who writes:

If you want people to repeat this back, write it in a test, maybe even apply it in an academic context, a four-credit undergrad course will work.

If you want them to have it as the ground state of their mind in everyday life, you probably need to have taught them songs about it in kindergarten.

Anonym adds:

Imagine a world in which 8-year olds grok things like confirmation bias and the base-rate fallacy on an intuitive level because they are reminded of their favorite childhood stories and the lessons they internalized after having the story read to them again and again. What a wonderful foundation to build upon.

With this in mind, here is my challenge:

Look through Eliezer's early standard bias posts.  Can you convey the essential content of one of these posts in a 16-page picture book, or in a nursery rhyme children could sing while they skip rope?

Write the story, and post it here.  Let's see what we can come up with.

Follow-up To: On the Care and Feeding of Young Rationalists

Related on OB: Formative Youth

Eliezer suspects he may have chosen an altruistic life because of Thundercats.

Nominull thinks his path to truth-seeking might have been lit by Asimov's Robot stories.

PhilGoetz suggests that Ender's Game has warped the psyches of many intelligent people.

For good or ill, we seem to agree that fiction strongly influences the way we grow up, and the people we come to be.

So for those of us with the tremendous task of bringing new sentience into the world, it seems sensible to spend some time thinking about what fictions our charges will be exposed to.

(Part 8 of 8 in "Three Worlds Collide")

Fire came to Huygens.

The star erupted.

Stranded ships, filled with children doomed by a second's last delay, still milled around the former Earth transit point.  Too many doomed ships, far too many doomed ships.  They should have left a minute early, just to be sure; but the temptation to load in that one last child must have been irresistable.  To do the warm and fuzzy thing just this one time, instead of being cold and calculating.  You couldn't blame them, could you...?

Yes, actually, you could.

The Lady Sensory switched off the display.  It was too painful.

On the Huygens market, the price of a certain contract spiked to 100%.  They were all rich in completely worthless assets for the next nine minutes, until the supernova blast front arrived.

"So," the Lord Pilot finally said.  "What kind of asset retains its value in a market with nine minutes to live?"

(Part 7 of 8 in "Three Worlds Collide")

Standing behind his target, unnoticed, the Ship's Confessor had produced from his sleeve the tiny stunner - the weapon which he alone on the ship was authorized to use, if he made a determination of outright mental breakdown.  With a sudden motion, his arm swept outward -

- and anesthetized the Lord Akon.

Akon crumpled almost instantly, as though most of his strings had already been cut, and only a few last strands had been holding his limbs in place.

Fear, shock, dismay, sheer outright surprise: that was the Command Conference staring aghast at the Confessor.

From the hood came words absolutely forbidden to originate from that shadow: the voice of command.  "Lord Pilot, take us through the starline back to the Huygens system.  Get us moving now, you are on the critical path.  Lady Sensory, I need you to enforce an absolute lockdown on all of this ship's communication systems except for a single channel under your direct control.  Master of Fandom, get me proxies on the assets of every being on this ship.  We are going to need capital."