space opera – Page 3 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

The Meaning of Home in Genesis Earth

Genesis Earth is a thought-provoking science fiction novel about humanity, isolation, and the search for home in a vast and empty universe. In this post, I explore the deeper themes behind the story—how the meaning of home shapes the characters, and what that says about us as human beings.

What does it mean to be human when everything familiar—home, society, the Earth itself—is gone? What does it mean to lose one’s home, or to never really have a home in the first place?

In Genesis Earth, a work of existential science fiction, the story of Michael and Terra explores what it means to be human when isolation pushes the boundaries of identity and connection. Michael and Terra grew up away from Earth, isolated and estranged from humanity’s homeworld.

Their need to be rooted in something (or someone) drives the core theme of belonging and identity in the book. The mission is supposed to be about discovery, but what they truly discover is themselves—how fragile, lonely, and deeply human they are.

Where the Idea Came From

The central concept of Genesis Earth is that humanity has created an artificial black hole and opened a wormhole to some unknown part of the universe. In order to create that black hole, though, they would need to travel far from Earth, on the fringes of our Solar System—hence the isolated colony mission where Michael and Terra grew up. And because of the long distances from the wormhole to the star system on the other end, their mission would isolate them even further, not only in space but in time. Everyone would be gone by the time they got back home, if they could even call it “home” by then.

All of this drove me to explore the meaning of home, and how it would play out for these characters who are so isolated and separated from the rest of humanity.

How the Meaning of Home Shapes the Story

In Genesis Earth, Michael begins as a dutiful scientist. He’s loyal to “the Mission,” but that loyalty is hollow—he’s chasing a ghost of Earth rather than living for anything real. His arc is about realizing that meaning doesn’t come from data or duty, but from connection.

The story strands two people—Michael and Terra—alone in deep space. The physical isolation mirrors their emotional one. Their arguments, awkward silences, and gradual trust-building drive the tension far more than the alien mystery.

The “alien ship” and “new Earth” they find are really reflections of humanity’s own legacy: ruins of a civilization that destroyed itself but left behind traces of what it once was. This discovery forces Michael to see that knowledge without empathy leads nowhere. The universe is full of dead monuments to reason untempered by love.

In the end, the story is less about finding Earth again—or finding home—as it is about beginning it anew, through human love and connection.

What the Meaning of Home Says About Us

Michael and Terra inherit a civilization that has mastered the stars but lost its soul. Their journey shows that intellect without empathy leads to extinction. We can map galaxies, but if we forget why we exist or who we’re doing it for, all that brilliance turns sterile and meaningless.

It’s a mirror to our own age: we’ve never known more, but we’ve rarely been lonelier. And ultimately, the message of Genesis Earth is that we are not defined by where we come from, but by whom we choose to love and what we choose to build. Heart and home matter more than hubris and knowledge.

Why the Meaning of Home Matters to Me

After I left home, I spent nearly two decades of my young life as something of a modern nomad, rarely living in one place for more than six months. During this time, my parents moved not once but twice, so I lost all connection to my childhood home.

This personal loss of home and sense of being uprooted was a major influence in the writing of this book, though I didn’t realize it at the time. And the conclusion that Michael and Terra ultimately come to—that “home” isn’t found in a place so much as it is in the depths of the connections with the people in your life—was something I experienced as well, as I ultimately settled down and started a family of my own.

Where to Get the Book

$1 off the ebook with coupon code: BUY DIRECT

FREE ebook when you buy the audiobook direct!

FREE ebook when you buy the paperback direct!

Is Genesis Earth for You?

Genesis Earth is an introspective, awe-driven, charactor-anchored YA science fiction novel. It’s not a laser-blasting space opera; rather, it’s a quiet, psychological odyssey through the cosmos, through the eyes of a lonely young explorer haunted by the memory of Earth. Through this book, readers will experience the loneliness of deep space, the mystery of first contact, and the fragile human connection between two young scientists flung far from home.

What Kind of Reader Will Love Genesis Earth?

This book is perfect for readers who:

Love hard SF stories of space exploration rooted in both plausible science and human emotion,
Enjoy classic SF from authors like Clarke and Asimov—thoughtful, concept-driven, but with relatable, human characters,
Appreciate slow-burn tension and stories that make them think, long after they set the book down,
Are fascinated by themes of first contact, isolation, coming-of-age, and the psychological cost of human exploration, and
Crave science fiction that feels possible, where the sense of wonder comes from realism, not fantasy.

If any of that describes you, then you should definitely give Genesis Earth a try!

What You’ll Find Inside

Genesis Earth follows a young scientist, Michael Anderson, and his mission partner Terra as they explore a dangerous anomaly on the far side of a wormhole, that could either threaten or hold the key to humanity’s future. The result is an immersive and contemplative book that starts as a psychological drama and turns into a story of discovery, both cosmic and personal: what it means to be human when Earth is a ghost and “home” is light-years away.

What Makes Genesis Earth Different

Fans of classic science fiction will recognize the trope of the lonely astronaut or scientist setting out to explore the unknown, but where most protagonists in classic hard SF are seasoned professionals, the explorers in Genesis Earth are barely adults, raised in isolation on board a space colony, and psychologically unprepared for what awaits them. The story explores beyond the question “can humanity survive?” and asks “what happens to the human soul when it’s untethered from home?”

Distinctive features include:

Psychological depth: The fraught relationship between Michael and Terra gives the story an undercurrent of tension and unease that’s rare in classic hard SF.
Tone: Quiet, human, and melancholic—more existential wonder than space adventure.
Perspective: Told through a deeply personal first-person lens, with an almost diary-like immediacy.
Balance: Seamlessly blends scientific authenticity (cryonics, wormholes, planetary science) with literary emotion.

What You Won’t Find

This book is not for readers seeking:

Fast-paced, action-heavy sci-fi with constant battles, explosions, or villains.
Romantasy or sexually explicit romance plots — while there is emotional tension, it’s subtle and cerebral, not sensual or melodramatic.
Soft or mythic sci-fi full of alien empires or space wizards — the story stays grounded in realism.
Hard nihilism or grimdark — while introspective and serious, the book is ultimately hopeful, not bleak or cynical.
Readers who dislike slow builds or introspective narration.

If you’re looking for Star Wars, this isn’t it. If you’re looking for Arthur C. Clarke’s emotional heir, you’ve found it.

Why I Think You Might Love Genesis Earth

I wrote Genesis Earth when I was a lonely, single young college student trying to find my place in the world. That personal struggle in my own life definitely affected the conflict and themes of the book. I read a lot of classic SF in this time, including books by Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Ursula K. Le Guin, Robert Charles Wilson, and Orson Scott Card, and I wanted to create something that was just as awe-inspiring and thought-provoking as the great books by those classic authors.

If you’re looking for a book that sticks with you long after you’ve read it, and helps you to find your own place in the world, you should definitely give Genesis Earth a try!

Where to Get Genesis Earth

$1 off the ebook with coupon code: BUY DIRECT

FREE ebook when you buy the audiobook direct!

FREE ebook when you buy the paperback direct!

Passengers, rearranged

I didn’t see this movie when it came out (even though I’ve been told it’s very similar to a lot of my early science fiction), but this analysis of the story structure is really amazing. And I have to admit, it makes it a MUCH more interesting movie if it starts with Jennifer Lawrence waking up, and focuses on her as the main character.

Starting with Chris Pratt is safe, but also boring, because it unambiguously makes him the good guy. But is he really? What if he’s not? What if that question is what drives the tension through most of the movie? What if she decides he’s the bad guy, and lets him die to save the ship, only to find herself alone in the end, contemplating the very same choice—whether to wake up another one of the passengers so that she doesn’t have to spend the rest of her life alone?

“Not gonna lie, the ending where she is contempating the exact same decision hits so good.” That’s one of the top comments, and I have to agree. But that gives the movie a little too much of a horror vibe for me. Instead, if I were writing it, I would have them separate long enough that she realizes, on her own, that she would have done the same thing that he did, even if she doesn’t admit it. So that when the accident happens and he has to sacrifice himself to save the ship, she decides to save him after all, not because she loves him, but because she forgives him (and also doesn’t want to be pushed to make that decision herself).

Or what if there never is an accident, and she decides she can’t forgive him, but since they can’t stand to be alone together the enter into a pact to wake up two more people: she wakes up another girl for him, and he wakes up another guy for her. That way, the bad guy is the other person, and the love interests can… maybe I’m overthinking this.

In any case, it’s a great thought experiment (though speaking from experience, it really does suck when you write half a book only to realize that most of it should be relegated to backstory).

Going for fun

They say that you should put as much of yourself as you can into what your right, and that’s true to some extent. But when you’re writing SF&F, there’s a much more important rule:

BE ENTERTAINING.

While I don’t think I’ve necessarily broken this rule, I haven’t always paid close attention to it. So for my current WIP, I’m pulling out the stops. I figure that the best way to entertain people in a book is to make it fun to read, and if it’s fun for me to write, I figure it will be fun for my readers as well. So my primary goal with this book is to have fun.

The working title is Gunslinger to the Stars, and if I had to give you the Hollywood pitch it would be this: Monster Hunter International meets Guardians of the Galaxy on the set of Firefly.

The main character is a freelance starship pilot named Sam Kletchka, who travels the galaxy taking various mercenary jobs. He was born and raised in the Gliese colonies, on a planet called New Texas, but although he was a gifted student, he dropped out of Earthfleet Academy his freshman year because he didn’t get stuck on a refitted Cold-War era submarine protecting colony ships in Earth-space (the galactics gave us cheap ground-to-orbit, which means that we used what we had when building our first fleet of starships).

The book starts when he gets stranded in the armpit of the galaxy, natch. The only other human who’s stranded there with him is an attractive twenty-something xenolinguist named Jane Carter, with whom he has a history. Let’s just say that she isn’t all that enthusiastic to see him.

At one point, he describes his guns:

MERCY is a supressed Ruger 22 Charger™ Rimfire Pistol. She’s fairly small and doesn’t pack much of a punch, but she’s as silent and stealthy as a Zan cloakship in deep space. Besides being perfect for cloak-and-dagger type stuff, Mercy is also good for hunting small game, on the few occasions where I’ve been stranded planetside without supplies.

The next two guns are really different components of the same gun, an AR-15 with two uppers that I can swap out depending on my needs. FAITHFULNESS is a suppressed 300 Blackout with a 9” barrel, perfect for boarding action. I use a homemade subsonic round with the ballistics tuned down just a notch, to allow for onboard fire that won’t accidentally puncture the ship’s hull. The suppressor is excellent for firing in confined spaces, and the standard 30 round magazine gives you plenty of firing capacity to stay in the fight.

RIGHTEOUSNESS is a .50 Beowulf upper that I can swap out for Faithfulness. This massive gun packs an enormous punch, enough to blow through a bulkhead and vent some atmo. I mix an oxidizer in the cartridges to allow it to fire in a vaccuum, making it an excellent weapon for extravehicular assaults. You just have to be careful to lock your magnetic boots firmly onto the ship’s hull, otherwise Newton’s third law will send you flying.

JUDGMENT is an M203 grenade launcher that attaches quite nicely onto Faithfulness and Righteousness. She makes the rifle a little heavier, but in zero gravity, that doesn’t really matter much. With the proper munitions, Judgment can light up a firefight like Christmas.

PRESERVATION is an 18” Mossberg 590A1™. She’s a tough little girl that can pack a serious punch. I keep her on the wall of my cabin within easy reach for home defense purposes. She has a capacity of 8+1, but I usually don’t load her with slugs unless I’m doing a breach and entry. The best thing about shotguns, though, is that the ammunition is super easy to fabricate. If I were going away for a while and could only take one gun with me, it would be Preservation.

LOVE is my father’s trusty old 1911. She’s been in the family for quite a while, and when I left the Gliese colonies for the stars, he wanted me to take her with me. She’s chambered in 9mm and has a capacity of 17+1. In spite of the .45’s stopping power, I prefer a good 9mm handgun simply for the increased accuracy and carrying capacity. Besides being stupidly rugged, the 1911 is also quite easy to maintenance or to fabricate replacement parts. For that reason, it’s the handgun of choice for most offworld colonists.

KINDNESS is the Gliese Arms 2011 .45 ACP that you’ve already met. The 2011 is a lot like the 1911, but the 140mm double stack magazine allows for a capacity of 14+1. As you already saw from the gunfight at the Oasis, Kindness has gotten me out of a lot of tough spots.

TRUST is a Himalayan Imports Chainpuri 15” Kukri: not a gun, but an excellent combat knife. The Nepalese Gurkhas were some of the most badass warriors of Earth, and the kukri is their signature weapon. I acquired Trust at the Earthfleet Academy on Luna, after winning a game of poker with my fellow cadets. She’s such a beauty, I wouldn’t dream of ever gambling her away.

Thing is, he’s as good with guns as he is horrible with women. As you can probably guess, hilarity ensues.

The book was actually inspired by the most recent Schlock Mercenary storyline, where one of the subplots involves rescuscitating Vog, the twelve million year-old member of an alien race that is functionally immortal. When the mercenaries revive him, he’s lost ten million years of his memories and thinks he’s an elite warrior from when his race was in its prime. Little does he know, his civilization has collapsed, and the mortal junior races have gotten a little uppity.

Thinking about the implications of immortality on intergalactic politics made me come up with a fantastic idea for a near-future space opera universe. When CERN does a new sub-atomic particle experiment, it alerts the galactics to our presence, much like Zefram Cochrane’s first flight with the warp drive alerts the Vulcans in Star Trek. The galactic junior races have all been patronized by the Immortals, who have built a massive jumpgate network that unites the galaxy together. The Immortals don’t interact with the junior races directly however: they use mediator races as proxies. And the Immortals aren’t interested in ruling the junior races so much as… I won’t spoil it for you.

In any case, that’s the story I’m writing right now, and even by chapter three it has been loads of fun so far. Lots of shooting, lots of action, lots of intergalactic secrets and intrigue. With luck, Gunslinger to the Stars should be out sometime early next year.

Trope Tuesday: Colony Ship

It’s been a while since I did the weekly Trope Tuesday posts, but those were a lot of fun and they still get a lot of traffic, so I’m going to bring them back with a couple of changes. Instead of focusing on the trope itself, essentially rewriting the description on the tvtropes page, I’m going to pick apart what I like about it and focus instead on the trope’s appeal. I’m also going to pick tropes that are in my own books, so that I can talk about how I’m using them.To kick things off, this week’s trope is the Colony Ship. A staple of space opera, this trope is exactly what it says on the tin: a giant starship, often a worldship or a starship luxurious, taking a band of colonists to settle the final frontier. Essentially, this trope takes the wagon train to the stars concept to its logical conclusion, since what is a wagon train but a band of hopeful colonists? And since this is space, there’s no limit to where you can take it!

I love this trope because it’s so hopeful. Even in dark post-apocalyptic stories like A Canticle for Leibowitz, the possibility of taking humanity to the stars shines like a beacon of hope, an interstellar ark that can fling a light into the future. No matter how badly we screw up Earth, we can still atone for our sins by starting over with a clean slate out among the stars.

One of the other things that makes this trope appealing is that it’s not that far removed from reality. On that other wiki, there’s an article on Generation Ships with a link to this very interesting academic paper on the feasibility of building giant worldships. Just as Science Fiction conceptualized satellites, robots, and cloning before they were actually built, this may very well be the case with interstellar colony ships as well. I doubt that NASA or SpaceX are currently working on any prototypes, but we’re definitely on a path that will lead us there, if we have the courage and tenacity to follow it through.

If faster-than-light travel is in play, then the people who set off on the colony ship are usually the same people who build the colony. If FTL is not in play, though, things get really interesting. Sanderson’s second law of magic states that the limitations of a magic system are inherently more interesting than the powers, and since sufficiently advanced space travel is itself a kind of magic (see Clarke’s third law), then it makes sense that sublight colony ships are more interesting than FTL ones.

Sublight colony ships come in two basic types: generation ships and sleeper starships. In a generation ship, the colony ship itself becomes something of a miniature world, often like a city in a bottle (with all of the juicy story implications that come with it). In a sleeper starship, the colonists freeze themselves in stasis, opening the possibility for stuff like lightspeed leapfrog.

In my current WIP, Heart of the Nebula, I’ve combined both of these subtropes to create a hybrid generation sleeper ship. The ships are designed for sublight travel through a region of space where FTL is impossible, but there are too many colonists to fit in all the cryotanks. Subsequently, those who don’t go to sleep have to turn their tiny little ship into a self-enclosed home. When the sleepers wake up, they find that they’ve become living relics to the great-great grandchildren of their friends and relatives.

The main character in Heart of the Nebula is James McCoy, who you might remember from Bringing Stella Home. Just before he goes into cryo, he rescues his people from a terrible enemy, so that when he wakes up he’s a living legend. People have been watching movies about his exploits and doing grade school reports on him for generations. But the thing that made him a legend also put a lot of lives at risk, so that he’s also an extremely divisive figure. To make things worse, most of his friends didn’t go into cryo, so they’re all gone by now. But their great-great grandkids are still around …

As you can see, Colony Ships can be a lot of fun to play with. I’m definitely having fun with it now, and I plan to return to this trope often in the future!

The most unmarketable story every conceived

I have an awesome idea for a story that absolutely, completely, 100% unmarketable. It blends two completely unrelated genres in such a way that it will almost certainly offend large numbers of readers in both. The best way to blend genres is usually to label it clearly as one and don’t let the others know that they’re invited. Well, with this particular story, that’s impossible.

The story blends Mormon religious fiction with Space Opera. It takes place in the Millennium, hundreds of years after Jesus Christ’s second coming to the Earth. The lamb has laid down with the wolf, and the lion eats straw like the ox. There are no more wars or armed conflicts: the swords of the Earth have been turned into plowshares, and the spears into pruning hooks. Satan has been bound, that he has no power over man, and Christ reigns in power and glory upon the Earth. People live to the age of a tree, and when their time comes, they are changed from mortality to immortality in the twinkling of an eye without tasting death. Resurrected beings regularly come down to visit the Earth.

All is not well, however. The events that launched the Millennium set off a thousand-year chain reaction that will turn the Earth to a sea of glass. At that time, it will become a great Urim and Thummim and be rendered uninhabitable for mortal beings. For that reason, Christ descended in power and glory to unite the nations of the Earth so that they could pool their resources and build a generation ship that will take the last remnants of humanity to the stars. This Millennial ark, the Starship Lachoneus, now represents the last hope for the continuation of humanity.

By now, you can probably see why this story is completely unmarketable. Science Fiction fans will be turned off by all the overtly religious stuff (I plan to make Jesus Christ an actual character), and Mormons will be turned off by all the Science Fiction mixed with their religion. There’s no doubt that I’ll offend large numbers of people in both genres if/when I ever write it.

At the same time, though, the concept really fascinates me. The Mormon version of Christ’s Millennial reign is completely different from most other Christian flavors, in ways that make for some very interesting story possibilities. For example, we believe that there will still be unbelievers in the Millennium–that people will still be free to reject Christ and deny the existence of God, even though He lives and walks among them. What kinds of life experience would lead a person to do that? And how would they react if Christ Himself took the time to have a personal chat with them?

Then there’s the question about which audience the book should be written for. Clearly, it’s meant for people who have at least a passing familiarity with Mormonism. It would be far too tedious for both myself and the readers if I had to stop and explain every religious reference. At the same time, though, I don’t feel that it’s right to limit the audience exclusively to Mormons. The Left Behind series was written almost exclusively for Evangelical Christians, and if you try to read those books, it readily becomes apparent that there’s a wide gulf between the gentile unbelievers and the faithful–not only in the books themselves, but in the eyes of the authors as well (full disclosure: I have only read parts of the first book). I don’t want this book to be that hostile or alien to anyone, whether they’re part of the intended audience or not.

By far, though, the most difficult issue is going to be the world building. What the heck is the Millennium supposed to be like? The last time any Mormon General Authority spoke in-depth about it was sometime in the 70s–not because we’re any less fervent in our Millennialist beliefs, but because whenever a church leader talks about it over the pulpit, people tend to freak out and think that the world is about to end (literally!). And aside from the issue of research, there’s the practical difficulties of fitting it all together in a way that doesn’t strain incredulity. If the lions, wolves, and other carnivorous animals no longer hunt or kill for their food, how can the Earth have a functioning ecosystem? If resurrected beings regularly visit the Earth, what’s to stop them from doing all our work for us?

In spite of all these challenges, though (or indeed, perhaps because of them), I really, really want to write this book. In some ways, I even feel like it’s something I’m supposed to write. I already have the title picked out: Starship Lachoneus, based off of a story from the Book of Mormon about a prophet who saved his people by gathering them all together for a lengthy siege that starved out their enemies and brought his people closer to God. I also have the first chapter planned out in my head, though as for the rest of the story, I have no idea.

For now, it’s probably just going to be another side project of mine. It might take years to get it done in a way that I find satisfactory. But it’s definitely something I plan to write, starting now.

Space Opera promo for free Kindle

Hey, just a quick post to let you know about a group promotion I’m participating in with a bunch of other science fiction writers. It’s a rafflecopter give-away, where we all pooled together to get a Kindle Paperwhite as the main prize.

There’s a bunch of things you can do to enter–for example, if you download a copy of Star Wanderers: Outworlder (Part I) (or really, just visit the book’s Amazon page through the rafflecopter link) that will get you an entry from me. Also, besides the Kindle grand prize, a bunch of us are giving away copies of other books to other winners as well. I’ll be giving away a few omnibus copies of Star Wanderers, so if you haven’t picked one up yet, here’s an opportunity to get one!

Besides my books, there’s a bunch of other books by science fiction writers as well–specifically, space opera like Star Trek or Firefly. These days, it seems like dystopian fiction and other Earth-based sci-fi dominates the charts, so if you’re looking for an escape to other stars and planets, here’s a chance to find some of that.

The promo ends this weekend, so you should probably check it out today or tomorrow if you want to pick up some of the free books. Outworlder will still be free after this promo, but I don’t know about the others.

Take care!

Starliner by David Drake

starliner Welcome to the Empress of Earth, the finest luxury liner in all of settled space. Whether you’re alien or human, first class or economy, there is a place on the ship for you. Just watch out for those Grantholmers and Nevassans–those planets are about to go to war, but don’t worry, the Empress is strictly neutral territory. The envoys from Earth will see to that. And as for the rumors that one of those sides might try to hijack the ship, I’m sure the crew is capable enough to deal with such threats. Even if they are unarmed…

I saw this book on my also-boughts on Amazon, so I decided to pick it up. It was an enjoyable read. David Drake is very good at showing competent characters dealing with all sorts of complicated problems, operating within a strict chain of command while sometimes bending the rules a bit to get the job done.

The book is really a series of small vignettes, all tied together through the main viewpoint character, Ran Colville. There is an overarching storyline about the Empress’s role as a coveted pawn in a larger interstellar war, but that only really drives the story at the very end. Really, it’s more of a slice-of-life story about the crew of the ship, punctuated by all of the strange and exotic stops along the way–and boy, are there plenty of those!

Even though the Empress is neutral, she’s a potentially valuable military asset that both sides in the Grantholm-Nevassan war want to capture. To complicate matters further, some of the passengers are dignitaries from either side. At one point, there’s a romance between the peacenik daughter of a Nevassan diplomat and the son of a Grantholmer nobleman who is honor-bound to fight in the war. That subplot was a lot of fun.

As you can imagine, there’s plenty of violence. And really, what would you expect from one of the world’s best military science fiction writers? Drake does a really good job showing the adrenaline-soaked excitement of combat, as well as all the ugliness. Even the mooks get a viewpoint from time to time, and when they die, it’s messy and traumatic. For that reason, the violence feels very realistic, especially in how it affects the main characters.

Ran is something of a player, so there is a fair amount of explicit sex (including a bit of inter-species action). Drake doesn’t mince words or shy away from the gritty details–he puts it all on the page as matter-of-factly as any other aspect of life. The sex was brief enough that it didn’t really bother me that much, but Ran’s relationship toward one of his coworkers takes a turn at the end that seemed to come completely out of left-field. I could understand why, for the purposes of the story, it had to happen, but the way it was handled I just didn’t buy it.

That was probably my biggest gripe. If I had another, it would be that the story seems to meander a bit in the first two-thirds, but the world-building was interesting enough that it didn’t really bother me. Overall, it was a fun, light read (well, light for military sf). The ebook version is free on Amazon, so it’s definitely worth picking up. If you haven’t read any David Drake yet, this isn’t a bad place to start.

Z is for Zenith

Has space opera passed its zenith?

Sometimes, it certainly looks that way. All the major stuff seems to be reprints of past series and reboots of decades-old franchises. Star Trek, Star Wars, Stargate, Battlestar Galactica, Ender’s Game, Dune, Babylon 5–all the big names seem to have had their start at least a generation ago. At any science fiction convention, you’re likely to see more gray-haired men than kids in their teens and twenties. And if you go to a publishing conference, new adult, urban fantasy, and paranormal romance are ascendant.

I’ve noticed that people are using the term “science fiction” increasingly to describe stories that don’t have anything to do with space. Dystopian, post-apocalyptic, steampunk, even time travel–all of these subgenres are certainly part of the fold, but they’re very different from the stories about starships and alien worlds. And then you have all the markets for short fiction that have been forced out of business–and even a few larger publishers, like Night Shade Books which is now selling off all its assets (read: authors) to avoid bankruptcy.

I remember going to World Fantasy 2010 in Columbus, Ohio, and feeling dismayed at the complete lack of science fiction. World Fantasy is (or was, at least) the premier professional conference for speculative fiction literature, but all of the attention was going to urban fantasy and steampunk. On the freebie table where publishers often dumped ARCs and review copies of their books, the only space opera stuff I really saw were a couple of titles by Glen Cook and one other guy–and I watched that table hawkishly for the full three days of the conference.

Sometimes, it seems as if it would be so much better if I had grown up in the 80s. That’s when science fiction really had its heyday. But all through the 90s, the genre seems to have been on the decline, much like NASA and the US space program.

So is space-centered science fiction on the way out? Have we passed the glory days, and it’s now just a long decline until it becomes an obscure niche, beloved by some, but enigmatic to others?

In spite of everything I said above, I actually don’t think so. In fact, I think we’re on the cusp of a science fiction renaissance, and that sci-fi geeks like myself will look back twenty years from now and wish that they were born in our era. Here’s why:

1) Scientific discoveries are transforming the way we see the universe.

The day I posted P is for Planets, NASA’s Kepler mission announced the discovery of three Earth-like worlds orbiting in the habitable zones of their stars. The existence of alien Earths is not conjecture–it’s a confirmed fact. As our ability to study these worlds improves, it’s only a matter of time, IMO, before we find a world that has life.

We’ve discovered the Higgs-Boson. We’re unraveling the fundamental building blocks of the universe. We’ve built telescopes to look back to the dawn of time itself, and we’re learning more about the cosmology of the universe every year. Perhaps even more remarkably, we understand now how little it is that we actually know–that the entirety of the observable universe is only about 5% of it, and even that’s optimistic.

All of this will take time to trickle down to the popular consciousness, but with all the new discoveries that are happening, I think that’s already in the process of happening. In particular, I think the recent discoveries in the realm of exoplanets and astrobiology are going to shake things up in a major way in the next five or ten years.

2) The privatization of space travel is paving the way for a rapid expansion into space.

The US space program has been plagued with funding problems since at least the end of the Cold War space race. Since the space shuttle program was retired just last year, the only way for our astronauts to get into space is through the Russian Soyuz spacecraft at Baikonur. If NASA had to put a man on the moon, they do not currently have the knowledge or technology necessary to do it.

In the private sector, though, it’s been a very different story. SpaceX has had a number of successful launches recently, most notably sending the first unmanned resupply capsule up to the International Space Station. And just a couple days ago, Virgin Galactic had the first successful test flight of its rocket-powered spacecraft.

It’s sad to see the space shuttle go, but there are a lot of reasons why the program was flawed and inefficient to begin with. By handing things off to the private sector and turning space exploration into a viable business venture, we can hopefully overcome those inefficiencies and eventually make space accessible to the general public.

And then you have the organizations like Mars One that are looking even further ahead to the colonization of Mars. There’s a groundswell of excitement for Martian colonization that is starting to get some real money behind it. Will it go anywhere? It’s hard to say right now, but even if it suffers another decade or two of setbacks, it’s getting public attention, especially from the younger generation.

3) Video games are bringing a fresh new look and feel to the genre.

Not all of the big sci-fi series hail from 70s and 80s. Halo started up as recently as 2001, and it’s a multi-billion dollar franchise with games, books–even Legos. In fact, there are lots of sci-fi video game franchises right now, many of them right on par with other classic space opera. Just look at Starcraft, for example, or Mass Effect, or Eve Online and Sins of a Solar Empire. The number of sci-fi games has been exploding.

In fact, this explosion has been happening for some time. While literary science fiction may have suffered something of a decline back in the 90s, that was the heyday of games like Master of Orion and Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri. Flight simulators like Flight Commander and X-wing proliferated like crazy, while even some of the classic RPGs like Final Fantasy borrowed heavily from science fiction tropes. And those are just a few of the games that I can list off the top of my head!

Whether or not literary sf is on the decline, a whole new generation has been introduced to the genre through the medium of video gaming. This is not just a small niche audience playing this stuff, either–in the US at least, Halo is as mainstream as Monopoly or Settlers of Catan. In fact, you could say that science fiction is more mainstream now than it ever has been, and a lot of that is due to sci-fi video games.

4) The e-publishing golden age is giving us thousands of new voices.

But what about the world of literary sf? Are we in a decline? Do people just not read science fiction anymore? How bright is the future for science fiction literature?

Actually, this is the area where I’m the most optimistic of all.

The publishing industry is changing at the speed of light, much in the same way that the music industry changed about a decade ago. Just as the MP3 revolution allowed all sorts of eclectic yet entrepreneurial artists to thrive without the oversight of record labels, the epublishing revolution is opening all sorts of doors for the enterprising author. And while the changes are driving publishers (such as NSB) out of business, they are enabling authors who only sell in the mid-list range to make a respectable living.

At Worldcon 2011, Ginger Buchanan (senior editor at Tor) asserted that there has never been a runaway science fiction bestseller. In the eyes of New York publishing, that may be true–but New York has a notorious record for missing the catch in pursuit of one big fish. Because of epublishing, whole new genres like New Adult that publishers thought would never sell are now going mainstream.

And even the niches that stay niches are becoming quite lucrative for the authors who can build a decent following. When author cuts out the middlemen and develops a direct relationship with the readership, it only takes a thousand true fans or so become a financial success. As Kris Rusch pointed out so aptly, those numbers may bring only scorn from New York, but for the writers who actually produce the content, that’s a vein of pure gold.

I can’t tell you how many success stories I’ve heard from fellow sci-fi writers over on the Kindle Boards, who started just for the grocery money and ended up quitting their day jobs. But as Hugh Howey pointed out, the runaway bestsellers are not the true story of the epublishing revolution–it’s the little guys who only sell a few hundred copies a month but are earning enough to support themselves writing what they love.

Indeed, we’re already starting to see an explosion of new science fiction, thanks largely to the ease of electronic self-publishing. I’ve only read a few of them so far, but Nathan Lowell stands out among them, as well as my good friend Kindal Debenham. These guys and so many others are bringing a fresh new voice to space opera, revitalizing the genre in ways that simply weren’t economical back in the days of Big Publishing.

So even if space opera as a literary genre isn’t quite large enough to go mainstream, it is large enough to support a wide range of new voices under the emerging business models. And as the epublishing revolution continues to mature, I think we’re going to see a new golden age comparable to the era of the pulp adventure stories.

I’ve been publishing my own work since 2011, and I can attest that there’s never been a better time to be a writer. I’m not quite making enough to go full-time yet, but at the rate things are going, it will only be a year or two before I realize my dream of making a living telling stories that I love. And if they’re the kind of stories that you love too, then that’s great news for all of us!

So has science fiction reached its zenith? I don’t think so. It went mainstream about a generation ago, which was definitely a huge moment, but for the last few decades it’s been in the process of branching out and rediscovering itself. Right now, I think we’re on the verge of a wonderful new renaissance that is going to blow us all away. As a lifelong reader and writer of science fiction, I certainly hope that’s the case. And because of the reasons listed above, I sincerely believe that it is.

W is for Wagon Train to the Stars

When Gene Roddenberry pitched the original Star Trek series back in the 60s, Westerns were all the rage. Consequently, he pitched his show as a “wagon train to the stars,” where a bunch of quirky characters on an awesome starship travel from adventure town to interstellar adventure town, exploring and pioneering the final frontier.

Sound familiar? Yeah, I thought so. The concept proved so catchy that it’s been redone time and again, from Battlestar Galactica to Firefly to Doctor Who. Even though Westerns aren’t nearly as popular as they used to be, many of its tropes are so well suited to Science Fiction that they drive the genre even today.

For example, adventure planets. In a typical Western, the characters travel from town to town, with a different adventure in each one. Well, in Science Fiction, the characters do the same thing, except that they’re traveling from planet to planet. And really, if you’ve got the ability to travel to other worlds, how can you not have an adventure in each one?

A large reason for the Western / Science Fiction crossover is the whole concept of space as the final frontier, which we explored earlier in this series with I is for Interstellar. There’s a very real sense of manifest destiny in the space exploration community, not because of humano-ethnocentrism (heck, we don’t even know we’re not alone in our local stellar neighborhood), but to ensure humanity’s long-term survival. The parallels between that and the westward movement in 19th century America aren’t perfect, but they do exist.

Similarly, as we explored in R is for Rebel, the notion of space as the final frontier has a special resonance with the American audience. The days of the old frontier may be over, but its spirit lives on in our culture, from guns to road trips to our glorification of the rugged, self-made individual. Today’s Science Fiction, especially the space-focused SF of Space Opera, grew out of the adventure fiction of the pulps, which thrived on that frontier American ethos.

In fiction, the frontier can still be found in two major genres: the Western, which is historical and therefore more backward-looking, and Science fiction, which is futuristic and therefore more forward-looking. Because Science Fiction isn’t burdened with all of the historical baggage of the traditional Western, it’s a much more flexible medium for story, readily adaptable to contemporary issues and concerns.

For example, where Star Trek echoes the large-scale nation to nation conflicts of the Cold War (Federation vs. Klingons and Romulans), the new Battlestar Galactica series echoes the much more asymmetrical conflicts of the post-9/11 world (Cylon agents who are indistinguishable from humans and may not even know that they are cylons). At the same time, the wholesale co-opting of Western tropes enables a latent sense of nostalgia, evident in the look and feel of Firefly, or the famous opening lines from Star Wars: A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

My first real experience with a wagon train to the stars type of story was probably Star Trek: Voyager, which I watched religiously with my dad every Wednesday night until maybe 9th or 10th grade. The Western-borrowed tropes are somewhat more muted in that series, but they exist, especially the planetville / adventure towns stuff. However, it wasn’t until Firefly and Serenity that I really experienced the awesomeness of a true Space Western. There were a lot of things in Firefly that I really loved, especially the character interactions, the gun-toting action scenes, and especially the starship Serenity. There were some things I didn’t like so much, like the fact that every planet is basically Wyoming, but overall I really enjoyed the show.

It wasn’t until I started getting more acquainted with straight-up Westerns that I saw the real potential for crossover between the genres. Stories about mountain men like Jeremiah Johnson really captured my imagination–what would this look like if it were set in space? In that sense, I came to the Space Western more from the classic Science Fiction side first, rather than the pulp adventure stuff. But once I discovered the crossover connection, it naturally found a way into my own work.

That’s basically how the story idea for Star Wanderers first came to me. I was lying on my bed, daydreaming about having my own starship like the Serenity, when I wondered what it would be like for a starship pilot to get roped into an accidental marriage like in the movie Jeremiah Johnson? The collision between the two ideas was like a supernova exploding in my brain. I rolled out of bed and started writing, coming up with chapter one of Outworlder almost exactly like it’s written today. And the more invested I became in those characters and that world, the more the story grew. I’m writing Part VII right now (Reproach, from Noemi and Mariya’s POV), and so long as people read them I’ll keep writing more.

Genre mash-ups and crossovers are a great way to keep things fresh and come up with some really interesting stories. Some genres aren’t very well suited for each other (Erotica and Middle Grade, for example), but others come together so well that they seem almost complementary. That certainly seems to be the case with Westerns and Science Fiction, at least here in the United States where the spirit of the frontier still echoes through the popular culture.

Tag: space opera