science fiction – Page 5 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Trope Tuesday: Terraforming

One of the problems with interplanetary colonization is that Earth-like worlds are fairly rare (though possibly not as rare as we once thought). In our own solar system, the only other world that comes anywhere close (Mars) is a radiation-blasted desert with only the barest hint of an atmosphere and a surface temperature colder than Antarctica. To get around this problem, you can do one of two things: build an artificial enclosed environment to house the colony, or change the world itself to make it more Earthlike–in other words, terraform it.

The actual science of terraforming is far too complex (not to mention way over my head) to do it justice in this post. Instead, I’ll just point you to the Terraforming Wikipedia page as a starting point and focus on how the concept is used as a story trope.

According to tvtropes and Wikipedia, the term came from a 1942 novella by Jack Williamson titled “Collision Orbit.” The concept of changing the environment of an entire planet actually goes back much further, with H.G. Wells subverting the trope in War of the Worlds (instead of humans terraforming other worlds, the hostile Martians try to xenoform Earth to make it habitable for them). Before the U.S. and U.S.S.R. put probes on the surface of Mars and Venus, it was fairly common for writers to speculate that those planets were able to support human life, at least on a basic, rudimentary level. Once the science showed that that isn’t actually the case, terraforming as a story trope really began to take off.

Today, this trope occurs commonly across all ranges of the Mohs scale. Soft sci-fi stories (such as Firefly) use it as an excuse to have planets that look and feel like Earth. Hard sci-fi stories (such as Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars) use it as a fundamental premise, or to pose questions like “what is the ultimate destiny of human evolution?” or “how important is it to our species’ survival that we spread out beyond Earth?” Although it’s not something that we as a species have (yet) done, our present science seems to place it well within the range of the plausible, and that means that makes it fair game for any kind of science fiction.

In order to be believable, however, any significant terraforming project requires two things: resources and time. LOTS of time. We’re talking on the order of centuries and millenia here. Because of that, stories that use this trope generally fall into the following categories:

The terraforming happened a long time ago and is part of the world’s ancient (or near ancient) history.
The terraforming is on-going and directly impacts almost every element of the world’s culture and setting.
The terraforming has failed in some way, which may (or may not) make it a key element in the story conflict.

As with generation ships, the scope of this trope spans more than just the interests of a single character–it deals with the ultimate destiny of entire cultures and civilizations. In hard sci-fi stories, the planet that’s being terraformed may actually become more of a character in itself than the individual people who are terraforming it. Unless they have some form of immortality, they have little hope of ever seeing the ultimate end of it.

Of course, that almost makes the project more of a religion to the colonists than a science, with all sorts of interesting philosophical and story implications.

Why is this trope so widespread in science fiction? I can think of a few potential reasons. First, it hits on some of the key issues that lie at the very heart of the genre, such as the ultimate destiny of humanity and the ethical issues surrounding our ability to play God through the wonders of science. Also, it captures the imagination in a way that few other tropes can equal. Because the scope of any terraforming project is so vast, the implications touch on almost every key element of the story, including setting, character, and conflict.

But on an even more fundamental level, it hits on one of the key elements of any fantasy magic system: limitations. We can’t live on an alien world because the conditions are too hostile, but we can’t just wave our hands to make it Earth-like either. We have to undergo a painstaking, laborious process that could unravel at any point and throw everything we’ve worked for into chaos. We have to dedicate our whole lives to the project for dozens of generations before it will ever pay off. There are no shortcuts–none that won’t strain our readers’ suspension of disbelief, anyway. But if it all works out, then we will have created a new Earth–and how is that not magic?

Needless to say, I’m a big fan of this trope. I’ve used it in just about every science fiction story I’ve written, though I probably play with it the most in Star Wanderers. The main character of that story comes from a world where a terraformation project failed, having severe religious implications that drive the whole series. Sacrifice is largely set in orbit around a world that is midway through the terraforming process. Elswhere in the Gaia Nova universe, people build domes just as often to keep humanity from screwing over a terraformed world as they do to provide room to live on one that isn’t. After all this, though, I feel like I’ve only begun to scratch the surface of this trope. You can definitely expect to see it in my work in the future.

Trope Tuesday: Settling the (Final) Frontier

I love stories about colonization, especially when they’re set in space. There’s just something about a small group of rugged pioneers striking out into the harsh, unforgiving wilderness to make a new life for themselves. Maybe it’s just something about my American heritage, or all those 4x games I played as a kid, but I doubt it. Ever since the dawn of time, we humans have been on the move, looking for new and better places to call home. Small wonder, then, that so many of our stories, both ancient and modern, are about settling the frontier.

Since space is the final frontier, this trope is very common in science fiction. Heinlein was a huge fan of it, but he wasn’t the only one to play with it–not by a long shot. John Scalzi (The Last Colony), Nancy Kress (Crossfire), C.J. Cherryh (40,000 in Gehenna), Anne McCaffrey (Freedom’s Landing), and Kim Stanley Robinson (Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars) are just a few of the many science fiction writers who have explored this trope in their works. In recent years, several sci fi miniseries (Battlestar Galactica, Terra Nova) have used it as a major premise as well. And of course, you have all the classic 4x games like Masters of Orion and Alpha Centauri.

Space Colonies can come in a variety of different flavors:

Lost Colony — What happens when the original colonists lose all contact with the outside universe and no one thinks to check up on them for a while. Can either turn into a story of survival or a clash of cultures, if/when they ever re-establish contact.
Cult Colony — Religion is one of the few things that will drive massive numbers of people to leave everything behind and start over in a new world. Just look at the Pilgrims for a real-world examples. In space colonies of this type, you can expect to see some extremely radical people, since the isolation of deep space tends to compound their fundamentalist tendencies. Expect these to be both weird and frightening.
Space Amish — Something of a combination of the two, except with much more primitive technology. Expect to see log cabins, horse- (or giant lizard) drawn carriages, and other tropes closer to the Western genre. Sometimes, they may be hiding a superweapon.
Penal Colony — Australia in space (ahem…IN SPAAACE!!!). What happens when the empire needs a place to conveniently exile all the troublemakers and rabble rousers. Not a place for the faint of heart.
Wretched Hive — What happens to a penal colony when the prisoners actually run the place. Like the previous type, except taken up to eleven. Or not, depending on the history and culture. Tatooine is the eponymous example.
Death World — As the name would suggest, this is not the kind of place you’d want to homestead. Anyone who does is bound to be a badass. The Empire and the Federation often recruit most of their soldiers from here.
Company World — I couldn’t find this one listed on tvtropes. Basically, it’s a planet that is owned and governed entirely by a private corporation, which expects to make a tidy profit off of the place. The colonists are basically indentured servants (since robots simply wouldn’t do) and have almost no property or rights. Expect the story to be about sticking it to the man.

These are just a few of the many possibilities that you can play with when settling the frontier. In my opinion, however, the essential elements are as follows:

The story is not just about exploring a new world, but establishing some kind of a permanent presence there.
By coming to the new world, the colonists must leave everything from their old, familiar lives behind.
The colonists must resolve the story conflict through their own self-reliance, not by waiting for an outside force to save them.

I’ve only dabbled with this trope, but it does play a role in many of my stories, most notably in the Star Wanderers series. Genesis Earth also has elements of it as well, though it’s not the main driver for the plot. It is a major factor in Heart of the Nebula, though, the (currently) unpublished sequel to Bringing Stella Home. And in my future books, you can definitely expect to see this trope again.

Trope Tuesday: Space Cossacks

I’m going to take a break from the hero’s journey trope posts for a while, until I have the time to do them justice. In the meantime, let’s have a little fun.

Some of my favorite science fiction stories are the ones about a culture of nomadic starfaring people wandering the universe in search of a new homeworld. Earth is usually a half-forgotten legend, and their starships have probably seen better days. On tvtropes, the page for these stories is Space Cossacks, named after a real world culture in historic Russia that basically experienced the same thing, albeit on a terrestrial scale.

The description of this trope on the tvtropes page is so good, I’m just going to repost it here. Seriously, every one of those cross links is worthy of your click.

There is no hope and You Can’t Go Home Again. The Empire is spreading out. Even The Federation has too many Obstructive Bureaucrats. There is no way for free men to get out of the reaches of The Government and even mounting La Résistance will be of no avail.

So what do you do? You become Space Cossacks.

You flee to the border and live in a tough area where you all have to be sharp. You set up as Space Pirates or as Hired Guns or as Intrepid Merchants. Or all of these at once.

With you are various dissidents like people who feared being Made a Slave. There might be a Noble Fugitive or two, perhaps even a Defector from Decadence. You and your brave band of Fire-Forged Friends will struggle on to survive and maintain your freedom and heed no laws but your own.

One of the things that I think should qualify a story for this trope is that the society of space cossacks is just that: a community of people who share at least a few cultural bonds. Battlestar Galactica definitely qualifies, but I’m a little on the fence as to Firefly, since that story is more or less about a ragtag band of failed revolutionaries. Are the Browncoats all from the same culture, like the Kurds or the Circassians or the Ossetians, or are they just a pologlot group of frontiersmen from all over the settled worlds? Does it even matter?

In the end, I suppose it doesn’t. The spirit of this trope is a lot like that of Fighting for a Homeland: a bunch of displaced underdogs on the fringes of civilization trying to make their way in the universe. The nature of the conflict is such that by the end, they can’t help but form their own distinct subculture.

I don’t know why I love this trope so much. Maybe it has to do with the way it blends elements from the Western genre in a classic Science Fictional setting. Maybe it’s because I was born in the wrong century and naturally dream of settling the frontier. Maybe it’s because this is one of the best ways to get awesome space battles.

Whatever the reason, I can’t get enough of it, as you can probably guess from reading my books. In Bringing Stella Home, Danica and her band of Tajji mercenaries fit this trope to a T. Stars of Blood and Glory delves quite a bit deeper into their background, with Roman as a major viewpoint character. In Heart of the Nebula, the people of the Colony basically become Space Cossacks over the course of the novel. Both of those novels are currently unpublished, but I hope to put them up in the next year.

On the subject of roving bands of displaced Eastern Europeans, I listened to this Circassian folk song maybe a dozen times while writing this post:

Awesome stuff–I’m totally putting it in the soundtrack for my next Gaia Nova novel. Also, I’ll have to name a moon or a planet in the Tajjur system after Mount Elrus or something. Space Cossacks indeed!

Trope Tuesday: Wicked Cultured

nemo — What Captain Nemo does in his spare time, when he isn’t terrorizing the world of maritime shipping.

This week’s Trope Tuesday series post is by request from a reader.

Evil villains aren’t always grotesque, brutish, foaming-at-the-mouth barbarians. Quite often, they are wealthy and aristocratic, with exquisitely refined tastes and an extraordinary degree of eloquence. It isn’t just that evil is cool (though it may overlap with this), or that the barbarians have finally developed a fashion sense–it’s that the more refined and cultured a character is, the more evil they are as well.

This happens a lot more often than you might think. Magneto (X-men), Lucius Malfoy (Harry Potter), Hannibal Lector (Silence of the Lambs), Ganondorf (Zelda), Captain Nemo (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea), the Godfather (the Godfather), Kane (Command & Conquer), President Shinra (Final Fantasy VII), the Merovingian (The Matrix Reloaded), Grand Admiral Thrawn (Star Wars: Heir to the Empire and The Thrawn Trilogy), Khan (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan), Vetinari (Discworld), Captain Hook (Peter Pan), the Phantom (Phantom of the Opera) and every James Bond villain ever all fall squarely into this trope.

So why does this happen? I can think of a few reasons, though I’m sure there are others.

First, it hearkens back to the age-old romanticism vs. enlightenment debate. This is especially true of the fantasy genre, which tends to hearken back to a medieval golden age before the modern, industrial world, when life was simpler and people tended to live in picturesque rural villages instead of dense urban cities. If your hero is a farmboy in a world of knights and wizards, or a barbarian hero who strikes first and asks questions never, chances are that anyone with a sense of refinement or culture is going to find themselves on the wrong side of the story.

Second, it hearkens back to the mad scientist and the cautionary tale of science gone horribly wrong. As you might expect, this is much more common in science fiction, especially the classic dystopian stuff. The more scientific and enlightened a character, the more cultured they tend to be as well. In stories where science is bad, then, it should come as no surprise that these characters are also evil.

Another good reason to use this trope is to indicate that the villains are members of the Empire. Culture tends to happen when people of diverse talents and backgrounds are brought together, and the best way to bring them together is through conquest. Just look at the Romans. Almost every empire throughout history, no matter how brutal, has always produced an increase in some degree of culture. Even the Mongols gave way to Kublai Khan and the Silk Road. So in stories where the Evil Empire comes into play, having your villains be cultured can be a good way to show that.

The biggest reason for this trope, though, is that it makes the villains more complex and interesting. If being evil always meant living in a cave and eating raw meat, then every story would read like a badly written RPG, where the heroes keep grinding until all their stats are at 9999 or higher. And honestly, you have to admit that there’s something a little bit eerie about that guy who gets totally absorbed when playing the organ.

I haven’t played with this trope in a major way yet, but it does come into play a bit in Desert Stars, though only in a minor way. In Bringing Stella Home and Heart of the Nebula (forthcoming), Lars is pretty much the opposite of this (the Gentleman and a Scholar trope, though he did drop out of college). Probably the best example would be Heloise from Star Wanderers: Fidelity (Part II). She’s wealthy, fashionable, and decorates her apartment with wallscreen monitors that cycle through artistic photographs of deep space nebulae. She’s also one of the more dangerous female characters I think I’ve written. Who knows–maybe she’ll show up in another story before too long.

A few interesting things

In between teaching English and putting in my daily word count (between 1k and 2k most recently), I’ve come across some interesting things worth sharing. If you’re a fellow writer, I’m sure you’ll appreciate this stuff, but even if you’re just a reader, it’s worth checking out.

First, there’s an excellent article at The Nation on the rise of Amazon and how it took the publishing world by storm. The author isn’t very pro-Amazon, but he paints a much more reasonable and far-seeing picture than anything I’ve seen from the Amazon-bashers. If you’re interested in indie publishing at all, it’s a must-read.

The way I see it, Amazon has fundamentally changed the paradigm by cutting out the middle-man, facilitating a direct connection between readers and writers. Everyone who sees them as some kind of harbinger of the apocalypse is so focused on their particular niche that they fail to see all the positive ways in which the system is being remade.

For example, ebooks never go out of print–never. Isn’t that awesome? And yet some people turn around and claim that Amazon is on some kind of crusade to destroy books and literature. Wha?? Yes, they’re probably cannibalizing mass-market paperback sales, and perhaps even hardcover sales as well, but they’re also opening all sorts of new literary possibilities, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the days of Gutenberg.

Well, so much for that. The next item is a lot less controversial: it’s a round-table discussion from Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing in which several writers discuss productivity and various aspects of their writing process. If you’re a writer, this is definitely worth checking out–it’s probably the most comprehensive discussion on the subject that I’ve heard in a while.

Some of my takeaways: the best way to unblock yourself and get the writing flowing again is to take a walk. When I listened to the podcast, I was actually taking a walk for that very purpose–and it worked! Also, if you have the time but the writing isn’t flowing, it’s better sometimes to do something else rather than force it. If you do try to force it, chances are that you’ll just get a bunch of crap. For some writers, that’s just part of priming the pump, but for me, I’ve got to take the time to fill the well.

Third, I just listened to a fascinating interview on the Sword & Laser podcast with Todd McAffrey. I’d tell you what it’s about, but really, they went off on so many fantastic tangents, it’s really more interesting just for that. The practicalities of space exploration, human-host bacteria and emergent AI, the secrets of the human brain and the potential for long term collective consciousness–reminds me of an uber-nerdy conversation I had at the con-suite for World Fantasy 2010. Man, those were good times.

To be honest, I took issue with many of McAffrey’s comments. When it comes to science and engineering, he’s extremely intelligent, but when it comes to bio-ethics, the sociological implications of his ideas, and a general awareness of the proverbial 99% of humanity that still lives on less than $10 USD per day, I think he’s a little too short-sighted. But if you put us in a room together, the argument would be so fascinating it would definitely be worth listening to.

Finally, I just got the new cover art from Hideyoshi for Bringing Stella Home, and it is seriously kick-ass. Check it out!

Now that is what I call Science Fiction! Expect to see the updated ebook with the new cover in the next couple of weeks.

Up to my elbows in book surgery

That’s probably the best term for what I’m doing with Heart of the Nebula right now. Basically, I let some of my darlings live, and they grew some extra limbs and started drooling acid without my realizing it. But now, I’ve put enough distance between myself and the first draft that I have no qualms about grabbing the axe and chopping off heads.

Don’t worry; this is all a normal part of my creative process. Maybe someday, stories will burst fully formed from my head like Athena from the brow of Zeus, but for now, my ideas are a lot more like baby turtles–if I’m lucky, one or two out of a dozen will actually reach the water and survive. Protip: don’t follow the lights.

Speaking of ancient mythology, I’m reading the Argonautica right now, and I can’t help but notice that it would make a really, really, REALLY awesome science fiction story. No, seriously–think about it. A group of legendary heroes sets out on an epic voyage in search of some applied phlebotinum macguffin, have all sorts of adventures on strange and distant planets, get the girl to fall in love with the captain, and bring her back with them to their homeworld. It would also work well as a heroic fantasy, but space is so much more awesome.

Incidently, Kutaisi was the capital of ancient Colchis, where Jason and the Argonauts came seeking the golden fleece. People still speak of Medea as if she were a real person–generally, they think she was a dirty traitor who sold out her own people. But people still enjoy the love story, and if you keep your eyes open you can see restaurants and hotels named after her.

So yeah. Ancient Greek mythology + science fiction = win. You can definitely expect to see some more of that in my own writing in the future.

In other news, I recently did an interview on fellow indie author Ty Johnston’s blog. In it, I talk a little about my travel writing, what draws me to speculative fiction, my favorite number (hint: it’s 12), and my insights into the ancient Mayan calendar and the 2012 apocalypse. It was a lot of fun–you should definitely check it out.

If you would like to host me for an interview on your blog, shoot me an email! I’m always up for stuff like that. Otherwise, I’d better roll up my sleeves and get back to ~~hacking up~~ operating on my book.

Vortex by Robert Charles Wilson

Almost seventy years ago, the mysterious alien beings known as the Hypotheticals encased Earth in a force field and built a network of giant arches facilitating overland travel to other habitable planets. With access to the fossil fuel resources of half a dozen worlds, humanity is slowly killing its homeworld, even as it expands to other stars.

All of this matters little to Sandra Cole, however. A psychologist at the State Care facility in Texas, it’s all she can do to endure another day. But all of that starts to change when a police officer brings in a mysterious boy–a boy with a message from the future.

This is the third and final book in Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin trilogy, and it brings the series to a thoroughly satisfying conclusion. The first book introduced the Hypotheticals and hinted at some greater scheme that they were involved in, the second book further explored the universe while raising more questions about the Hypotheticals, and the last book follows the Hypotheticals to the end of time, answering these questions while taking nothing from the truly alien grandeur of it all.

However, like the other books, the story itself is not about the aliens, but the people who make contact with them. The high-concept science fiction goodness is all in there, but it’s framed by characters who are both human and relatable. I wasn’t as invested in these characters as the ones in Spin, but I was still very interested in seeing what happened with them.

The structure of the book is a lot like Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, with alternating chapters telling two stories that don’t connect until the very end. I finished the last half of it in practically one sitting, and the last chapter in a breathless sprint–much like Spin and Axis. The way everything came together, not only for this book but the entire series, was awesome.

I was really happy to see this series finish well, because the first book was a major influence for me in writing Genesis Earth. As I said in an earlier post, I don’t think anymore that this is the kind of science fiction I’ll write very often, but I sure love reading it. I wouldn’t recommend starting with this book, but if you like science fiction that makes you stand back and blink at the sheer magnificence of the universe, this is a series you should definitely check out.

Thoughts after finishing Vortex by Robert Charles Wilson

Whoa.

If I had to sum up my thoughts with one word, that would be it–though of course, by itself that word is hopelessly inadequate. Let’s just say that, for me at least, this was a truly astounding book, a literary journey that left me wide-eyed with my mouth hanging open, blinking wearily as I looked up from the last page and returned, reluctantly, to the world of physical reality.

I don’t plan to spend this blog post talking about how awesome this book is, however; I’ll save that for a review. Rather, I want to spend some time talking about how this book has influenced the way I think about science fiction and my own writing, and to share a few of my thoughts having just finished it less than an hour ago.

If anything, this book has shown me that science fiction–real science fiction–is about staring into the unblinking void of the cosmos with a deep and abiding need to find answers, or perhaps more accurately, to ask questions. This inevitably produces a sense of wonder, but that’s merely incidental; the genre is really about fulfilling an almost religious need to connect with something greater than oneself.

I enjoy reading science fiction and experiencing that connection, but I don’t need it–not in the way that I sense some of the grand masters of the genre truly did. Instead, I hunger for the sense of wonder and adventure that is more characteristic of fantasy. In my own writing, it’s not so much the grand sweep of the cosmos that interests me as much as the intimacies of human nature–which isn’t to say that the two are incompatible, but that my preferences lean more to the one than the other.

What I’m saying is that it’s not science fiction that I write, so much as science fantasy. I still feel drawn to space adventures and the trappings of science fiction–I’m not at all interested in writing about elves or dragons–but at their heart, the books I write are more fantasy than true science fiction.

Which might be a purely esoteric distinction to the average reader, but if it helps me to understand my own writing, it’s a distinction worth making. If science fantasy is the sub-genre that really speaks to me, then that’s the kind of literature that I should explore. Of course, it’s important to be well-read in multiple genres, but if there’s a particular one in which you want to write, it stands to reason that that’s the one on which you need to be an expert.

So that’s my new goal: to explore fantasy, science fantasy in particular, and the ways in which other sub-genres like space opera and space adventure lean more toward the fantasy side of things than pure science fiction. And to keep reading really awesome books.

The gulf between the generations

I just watched a fascinating interview with a 1960s White House intern who claimed to have an eighteen month affair with President John F. Kennedy. But the most interesting thing wasn’t the affair itself, but the way the President’s staff, the “fourth branch” of government (AKA the media), and the entire general public of 1960s America seemed more intent on keeping the secret than on facing the truth about JFK’s many affairs.

It seems that my parents’ generation had so much trust in their government that nobody would even raise the question–that to raise doubts about the integrity of the man who held the highest office in this country would itself be unconscionable. Rather than face the facts, the American public seemed unwilling to do anything that would shatter the gilded image of the man who led the free world. And that, quite frankly, is a mindset that I simply cannot understand.

In contrast, my own generation has very little trust in our government. We’ve been raised in an age of ambiguity, where the enemy doesn’t wear a uniform or pledge allegiance to a flag, but live quietly among us, until they strap a bomb to their bodies or turn a commercial airplane into a weapon of terror. Or at least, that’s the excuse our government gives us for an increasingly invasive security regime that infringes on our basic liberties, enables the military to hold us in detention indefinitely, and sends our soldiers overseas to fight increasingly senseless wars to “liberate” the people of oil-rich nations who don’t even want us there. As if that weren’t enough, the economic crash has taught us that all that stuff our parents taught us about equality and opportunity is really just a pack of lies–that the rich get bailouts while the rest of us foot the bill, and all that stuff about changing the world and being whatever you want to be…yeah. Lies, all of it.

My Dad had an interesting rebuttal to all this, though. He said that it wasn’t his generation that put the president on a pedestal–it was his generation that tore the pedestal down. During the 60s and 70s, the Vietnam era and the rise of the hippy movement, his generation fought back and made it acceptable for us to question the president, or to criticize the government, or to do all the things that we take for granted today. In fact, he said that we’re the ones who are backsliding into complacency, with our deafening echo chambers, our social media inanities, our reactive attachment to corporate brands and advertising, and our almost religious sense of entitlement.

I’m not totally convinced he’s right, but I do think there’s a fundamental gulf between these three generations. Our grandparents’ was the silent generation, where people were expected to keep to their own business and not rock the boat. Our parents’ generation was one of top-down media, where ABC, NBC, and CBS ruled the airwaves and told us all what to think, buy, and believe.

Ours is a much more peer-to-peer generation, but I worry that we’re turning into a collection of mindless herds who are turning the culture wars into a messy riot where we abandon civil dialog and rational thinking for a much more destructive mob mentality that isn’t really building anything, but tearing it all down.

Sometimes, it gets so frustrating that it makes me yearn for the days of the frontier, when anyone could leave it all behind and reinvent themselves somewhere out in the west. That’s probably why I’m so drawn to science fiction, where space is the final frontier. There really are times when I wish I could go to the stars and escape to it all, and I think that shows in my writing.

Maybe that’s why I feel so compelled to write Star Wanderers. It’s basically 80% wish fulfillment, about a guy who goes from planet to planet on the kind of spaceship I wish I had. It’s not all rosy, of course–space can be a cold, dark, and lonely place–but so can this world, when you’re lost and you don’t really know what you’re doing with your life.

Anyhow, those are just some of my random late-night thoughts about the situation in this country and how much things have changed over the decades. If I had a time machine and got a chance to go back to the 60s (after seeing The Empire Strikes Back on opening night, of course), I don’t know I’d be able to recognize this as my own country. But really, I don’t think I recognize anything as my own country anymore. Like Van Gogh, all I can say is the sight of the stars makes me dream.

Trope Tuesday: Space pirates with Kindal Debenham

For today’s Trope Tuesday post, I thought it would be fun to bring on my friend Kindal Debenham to speak about one of the tropes in his new book, Wolfhound.

Kindal and I were in the same writing group in college, and attended Brandon Sanderson’s English 318 class together. I just picked up a copy of his book, and it’s pretty good–definitely the kind of science fiction that I love. You can currently find Wolfhound on Amazon, as well as Kindal’s self-publishing site.

So anyhow, here’s Kindal’s discussion of space pirates in Wolfhound.

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Space pirates are kind of a staple in science fiction. We’ve seen them in all sorts of different forms since the genre came into being. As the trope states, though, there are basically two main classes. The first class is basically a bunch of violent criminals on a spaceship, kind of mirroring the behavior of modern day pirates in Somalia or Southeast Asia. The second are a corny recycled in space variant of the eighteenth century Caribbean pirate with robotic peg legs and a space parrot. Obviously one is a bit more realistic than the other. 🙂

The version I went for leans a lot more heavily on the first class of space pirates rather than the second. I wanted a smaller scale conflict in order to introduce my main character, and pirates seemed to be a good opponent to use for that purpose. Since the ship that Jacob Hull is on was partially based on the USS Constitution, I decided that I could use some of the pirates that ship fought during its history: the Barbary pirates.

These pirates weren’t your clichéd corsairs with parrots and a desire for plunder. The Barbary pirates were a collection of raiders that operated out of northern Africa. Their motivation was to support their nations by taking ships and capturing crews, which they then added to their fleet and put to work as slaves. In addition to raiding ships, the Barbary pirates also went on slave raids throughout southern Europe. They would accept tribute to ignore the ships of certain countries (think ‘protection money’ for a mob equivalent). The US had to pay about a fifth of the early national budget in tribute to these pirates until the politicians decided that guns were cheaper to buy—which led directly to the creation of the USS Constitution.

Building off of those ideas, I created the Telosian pirates. Vicious, more interested in valuable ransom for prisoners and well armed ships than simple cargo, and willing to do just about anything to satisfy their greed. With an utter ruthlessness only matched by their subtle plots, they made quite a good enemy for Jacob Hull and the rest of Wolfhound’s crew, and they were a much more interesting enemy to fight than a stereotypical Pirate-with-an-Eyepatch would have been. In my opinion at least, though I’m a little biased.

So those are the bad guys of Wolfhound—at least, they’re the majority of the bad guys—and believe me, they live up to their reputation as nasty pieces of work. Hope you guys enojoyed the background, and I hope I didn’t get too history nerd on you guys. See you around!