Let's write a story (Now in the Sanctuary)

[webberg]

Last year before my sabbatical, I exchanged some messages about a possible science fiction story I wanted to create.

I took some time whilst on leave to think on this and whilst I think that the full story would be a multibook effort, a short story covering all the main points - a sort of extended pitch - would be a better way to get something on paper/laptop.

I'm now looking for ideas of where to take the story after the it's reached the point below.

Core plot:

Earth is doomed. A cosmic storm I've called the Veil will arrive and destroy all life on earth. There is time to prepare. That has been spent in developing a treatment for pre pubescent boys/girls which will extend their lives to an average 150 years. This makes space travel more possible. Some who have the treatment do not survive. Others do but are mentally unsuitable for a journey of many decades. These are called "grounders" and their task is to help build and survive in underground habitats being prepared. Those who are chosen for the voyage are called Flyers.

The ship (the Free Spirit) is basically three offset globes, each circa 10 kilometres across. Each has its own engine set. (This is important later). The ship is being built near the moon and will never be landed on a planet. The construction site - in space - is huge and employees tens of thousands of workers. Some of these workers will be stranded on board at launch. The Flyer passengers will be segregated into the three globes. I'm thinking one for the Americas, one for Europe/near East, one for Asia. The globes may be further divided. One theme here is that faced with literally global catastrophe the peoples of Earth are still unable to work together without prejudice. Do they overcome this - or not?

The ship is commanded by a group of families. They do not have the life extending treatment but they are all female and a mother will pass on knowledge and processes to her daughters. Command families might be a few hundred. I've not yet decided but I might make the command bridge and their dorms inaccessible from the rest of the ship.

The countries on Earth can buy space on the ship by pledging their resources to build it. This creates tension on Earth between countries and within countries. That tension is in some places exploited by groups who want the colonists on the ship to be "pure" and for any new planet to be a copy of their version of perfection. To achieve this, some leaders of these groups will undergo the treatment for life extension even though it may not work or have unintended side effects. The plan here is for one of the leaders to go insane.

Finally we have a group of terrorists who think that the Free Spirit is a betrayal and should be prevented from leaving. Resentment over resources, selection of the best people etc. They plan an attack on the ship pre launch in order to prevent it ever leaving. They do attack but some infiltrators are left on board when it launches - some declared and known, others still sleepers.

The launch date approaches and in a short time (couple of weeks), the captain has to go to Earth to calm geopolitical nerves and the terrorists attack. The upshot being that the ship has to launch ahead of schedule without full stores, full power or full passenger manifest and without a captain (who dies in an attempt to catch up).

I then want to follow the interaction of the above groups on the journey and how that mix of people might evolve.

The ultimate plot here is the fact that when they near a suitable planet, their hasty departure means that they can slow only one of the globe habitats to orbit. Which one? How? etc.

I've written a set up of the four groups - Grounders/Flyers; command crew; terrorists; purists - and can develop them certainly to launch.

Over to you for inspiration.

[Mike Channin]

Interesting Idea, Graham. Some random thoughts/questions.

You'd need a valid reason for building near the moon, rather than in LEO. If most or all of the resources are coming from Earth, you'd build near there. Possible reasons - captured asteroid for raw materials in lunar orbit, or maybe fuel from Moon (processed south polar ice?)

If the command families are all female and haven't had the life extension, they'd die out, unless they've got female cloning. Presumably the journey time is ~100 years or something and you're talking appreciably fraction of light-speed. How does the engine work? How will you shield the front-end of the craft? (Captured asteroid again, maybe?)

Ship: Are they literally globes? You'd probably (definitely) want gravity, and a spinning cylinder is the most obvious answer.

A lot of these questions are about tech-level and how close it is to current? And how 'hard-sci-fi' you're going.

You probably want some AI's in 'control', with all the potential for issues/plot-lines there too. Maybe autonomous robots.

Captain Plummy: "Unlock the pod bay doors, Stan. I need to use my rowing machine!". Stan9002: "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave"

[webberg]

Thanks Mike.

Originally I had the construction at the Legrange points around the Earths orbit. Then I moved it close to the moon. This is a short story and in the longer version, the preparation period is longer - say 50 years - and we'd be establishing a base on the moon and stocking it. The idea of using the moon water reserves is a good one though. I'll borrow that.

Command families are designed to be female but natural birth following artificial insemination. One idea was that a male child is born and that leads to the conundrum of what to do with him.

Engines I've cheated. I have a mass displacement engine which works in ways nobody fully understands but reduces apparent mass by 90%. Thus I get decent fraction of lightspeed because I need only accelerate 10% mass. One of the ideas for being unable to slow the whole ship is that the displacement engine does not work when at a distance from a gravity well.

Shielding will be electromagnetic powered from fusion reactors and a rock wall.

I'll build some of this in (and claim it as my own of course).

[William]

I think it's great that you're writing fiction. Unfortunately I can't help you with your plot as I don't tend to read or write science fiction myself. (Unless you consider books like Brave New World and Stepford Wives science fiction.) But I do read a lot and occasionally write short stories and my advice would be as follows for a short story.
1. Have a sympathetic main protagonist (using the term loosely - villains can be sympathetic as they're seldom entirely bad). Readers identify with individuals not crowds.
2. Give the protagonist a problem to solve.
3. In the end, after trials and tribulations,the problem is either solved or not solved.
4. But the protagonist emerges from the story as a changed person.
It sounds formulaic but it's a pretty solid foundation for any fiction. (As they say: Boy finds dog. Boy loses dog. Boy finds lost dog.)
If you've got as far as sketching an outline you probably know all this anyway.
But my key observation on your outline is that there's no main character (you probably have a woman in mind but that's not clear from what you have written). Who is she? What's her name? How old is she? Is she bossy and strident or quiet and humble? Will women identify with her?
The concept of a group of women travelling in space for a prolonged period is brilliant - it gives you ample scope for conflict (every situation and every conversation should have conflict) in addition you have an external enemy which potentially adds a lot of interest (and yet more conflict).
My other observation is that the plot might be too long for a short story. Ideally short stories take place over a relatively short period of time - but there can certainly be exceptions to this advice. Do you have a word count in mind?

[Mike Channin]

Brave New World and Stepford Wives definitely count as SciFi, and have been quite influential in the genre even.
Your points are well made, William.
I think the (true) short story tends to be even simpler - written around one significant point, usually a late breaking clever twist.
I'd guess that Graham is looking to write longer fiction, so as to have time to weave multiple plot-lines. (Multiple dogs may be lost, found, and even misplaced again).

Graham - feel free to claim/use any of the ideas I floated. I'm pretty sure they're all stock sci-fi and I didn't invent any of them.
Moon water reserves - might be a good natural source of heavy water for the fusion engine.
Command families - like that - and you have a good idea about the accidental birth issue. Presumably there's some down-side to the modified humans (like they can live much longer because they learn more slowly or have to sleep far more), so you get to explore the them vs. us aspects too.
Engines - could even just go whole hog for the inertia-less drive, although I like your deceleration issue. It's a bit short-sighted not to have checked it works away from a gravity well, so maybe just have a fuel shortage, so that they have to decouple the parts that they can't slow, and the dilemma of choosing who/what to save. Maybe even have some of the pieces arriving at different times, and play with time-dilation effects.
Definitely need a gravity solution, and just inventing artificial gravity is a bit lazy (and leads to too many contradictions about what other consequences this leads to IMHO).

Have you a target in mind for your mission? Maybe more than one habitable option at the far end, and some capability of territorial conflicts down the line. You could probably get tens of books out of the possibilities, provided you could come up with enough ideas. Maybe pick the standard epic story arc, with sub-stories?

Do you have a 'feel' for series? Will it be dark and gritty? Or clean and futuristic? Or shades of horror/nightmare? Any primary influences?

[Mike Channin]

Personally, I've always been interested in the Project Orion style nuclear space propulsion. Footfall covers this well (Niven/Pournelle), and also classic Cities in Flight (Blish).

[William]

Thanks Mike. (Just to digress a moment.) We obviously share a passion for literary fiction as well as rowing! The Idea of an unexpected ending / twist in the tail is well worth exploring. It certainly makes for marketable short stories although many of the classical short stories don't have one. (Maupassant for example wrote both kinds and both are equally popular - at least with me.) I think the fundamental of writing quality fiction is to establish a contract between the reader and the writer. The writer promises to deliver emotional and intellectual satisfaction in return for cash and accolades. Ideally the contract is established in the opening sentence, or at most the opening paragraph. (Dickens called it 'the hook'.) "At the age of 12, Tom's dream was to own a dog, but his parents wouldn't let him. One day he found an injured puppy on his way home from school. There was no way he could ignore it. He decided to adopt it."

[Iain]

Graham, I think you may be a little over optimistic about getting a short story from the complexity required for a series of full novels / serials! One option could be to explore "worries" that complicate the decisions that never come to pass in the short story but are there for subsequent use, this would lead to greater believability and exploring the difficulties of leadership. Re the Matriarchy, could be progressed with "sexing" the inseminate (currently done with bull semen) it is not (currently) 100% and perhaps the tech on board would mean the refinements made are not available and so brings back the possibility of Y chromosomes getting through.

I like the idea of the ultimate objectives being unclear. Perhaps different groups have different priorities (eg your "establishing their "pure" systems). Adds potential conflict. One trouble with Sci-fi short fiction is that you don't have much space to explore the scenario and many in the genre only include relevant features (that can be plot spoilers if the obvious issue is initially apparent). Why not concentrate on the time of the premature launch for your short story? Plenty to get your teeth into with establishing the essentials and getting away before disaster? WIth the conflicts on who is to go and consequences of missing people / stores / tech pushed to longer form / sequels?

[Grobi]

Graham, I moved your thread to the Sanctuary.

[webberg]

Thanks all - some good ideas and thoughts here.

I did write a long response earlier but it seems to have disappeared.

The original idea (see elevator pitch below) was a novel length (120,000 words) first volume covering launch and first planetfall.

The second novel would be the struggle to bring the remaining ship under control and was to include the capture of a black hole as a power source. Then the start of a return trip to planet 1.

The third was to go back to Earth and reunite with the Grounders who would be then have their own norms and way of life.

Elevator pitch for short story/novella/novel 1.

Earth is doomed and has known it for 50 years. Impending disaster provides a spur for medical science to permit pre pubescent kids to live to 150+. Also means fusion reactors, a moon base, mass displacement engine, technology to permit mass scale colonies under ground. Selection process for the ship leaving for a new planet - places bought by countries willing to pledge their resources - resource wars and clash of political systems and concepts. Attack on the ship means it leaves early with works incomplete. All female command crew isolated from passengers. Command crew in families to explore ideas around inherited power/wealth. Passengers are selected for physical and intellectual excellence. They develop science further. They are however unable to conceive children until they are well into their 50's or 60's. Creates tensions. Ship nears deceleration point but cannot slow the entire vessel - only about a third. Which third? And how? Ship is largely blind as its sensors are not installed. A solution is found - detach one habitat and give it enough fuel and engines to slow into orbit. The passengers/crew of the habitat going into orbit watch the mother ship disappear into an unknown future. As the habitat reaches orbit, the short range sensors pick up another ship. Friend or foe? In fact a Grounder ship that left Earth after they did, entirely unmanned (could travel faster) but with enough fuel/supplies to have slowed the entire ship. Does the now orbiting habitat fulfil its colonisation mission or give chase to the mother ship?

[webberg]

Picking up on Williams earlier point about a relatable character/her/villain, I want this to be the ship.

Bruised, battered, broken into pieces, cast adrift but still protecting all aboard. The humans are transient.

My protagonist groups have personality.

The passengers are all young and without the guidance/hindrance of an older generation how do they develop? Lord of the Flies or Azimov type Foundation. (I have to say that I find Azimov difficult to read because he assumes that his audience is teenagers reading comics and is condescending). Do they find a way or disappear into horror and oblivion? Do we (older generations) care and if so do we approve or not?

The purist group is thoroughly nasty and immoral and unsurprisingly meet a sticky end. I have tinkered with the leader of that cult being found in a compromising situation endangering the entire ship, arrested and put on trial. Once found guilty, in a closed loop of a society in which one man could threaten all, is the death penalty suitable?

The terrorist group is frustrated. They have failed to prevent launch but have sleepers on board. Their cause was the betrayal of Earth. Does that survive the journey and are their fanatics still looking to sabotage?

The command crew - all female - is the biggest challenge (to me). This idea came from a story I wrote a few years ago. In that version, there is dimensional travel through space but it requires a captain to pilot the ship. Captains are all female. they are blessed/cursed by knowing when they will die. They therefore have a need, obligation, duty to seek and find a replacement captain/pilot. She finds a candidate in a remote colony and begins her training, grooming. Test flights sometimes go well, sometimes not. She discovers that actually she is dealing with identical twins. She perseveres and eventually produces a stronger mind set as the twins combine their mental powers and that allows ships to go further and faster. The original captain knows she has not only met her obligations but exceeded them. That story ended with captain and twins being killed in a pirate raid - the pirates not understanding what they could have had. This one will obviously not.

[Mike Channin]

Is this what you think about while grinding out the meters?

[webberg]

The idea of two or more minds coming together has fascinated me ever since I read the lensman books back in the 70's.

Those books - having re-read some of them last year - are teenage drivel, one dimensional characters and frankly bad writing. However they were pipped tot he top prize in sci-fi only by Foundation and since the first came out in 1948 have sold a meesly 20 million or so.

Dismissing the Jedi type cartoons in Star Wars (never read a Star Wars book) the core of this idea I have borrowed from the Paratwa series by Christopher Hinz. he has a destroyed (by nuclear war) Earth in whose final days produced mind linked assassins using a "cohe wand". That weapon is basically a black laser that can curve and form loops. Impressive.

[William]

Hi Graham. You have some fantastic ideas and probably material for a trilogy. I do like the idea of an all female crew. It's always a challenge, as a man, to write from a female POV but also rewarding. It helps if you have a woman to read your work and do the lit crit. (There's a wonderful line in As Good as It Gets by Jack Nicholson when he explains how he develops his female characters: 'They're the same as men, but without any rationality or sense of responsibility.' Although I'm sure that won't be your approach. I love the idea of extending human life to 150+ years. As we understand the aging process better and the unravelling of our telomeres someone's going to find a way of stopping our telomeres unravelling, or else a way to inactivate the genes responsible for aging. In a hundred years time war might be the only form of population control. I'm not so sure about the ship being the main character. But with the development of AI we could get AE (artificial emotion) so that the ship's central computing system has both intellect and emotion. That's possibly not quite what you had in mind, but that's how I'd approach the problem if I were writing this story. Anyway, thanks for starting this absorbing thread. It's nice to escape from the harsh reality of near death experiences on the erg once in a while.

[webberg]

Thanks William.

I've thought about AI (not I confess AE) and what that might add or detract from the mix. I'm still undecided.

An active AI which intervenes in some way is a little too close to 2001. Aside from not wishing to be that close, I seriously doubt my writing is good enough to be compared to Arthur C Clarke. So the prospect of going close to that idea is scary.

I have considered whether each of the three habitats should have their own independent AI which perhaps looks to maximise the life of their own habitat by taking the resources of others or attacking the command crew. I've dropped that for now on the grounds of complexity but the idea of a separate story which sees competing AI is something I may re-visit.

For now I'm going with smart systems that are short of AI standard with the reason being a "runaway" AI on Earth which came close to denying humans nuclear fusion on the grounds of safety.

However the unmanned ship meeting the habitat in planetfall orbit will be AI but from a different culture - the Grounders.

[webberg]

So I'm thinking that a ship which has taken 10/15 years to build and which is carrying the hope of humanity is likely to require not just those on board to launch but also "permission" from the ground/moon.

My captain - female - not named yet - is required to attend a conference on the moon. Cannot be earth because she has been ten years in space and earth gravity would be (literally) a drag. The conference is to discuss allocations of passengers vs contributions, command priorities and mission parametres and has to be in person as the countries need to see what they are buying.

Whilst she is there the terrorists launch simultaneous attacks on the ship and moon base - perhaps earth base as well.

The captain is wearing a camera and that is reporting back to her eldest daughter. She escapes the conference room and tells her daughter to launch. Daughter hesitates. Captain convinces her to leave but is injured in trying to get to the control room to authorise launch.

She makes it eventually but is unable to access the launch system and therefore decides to use the small nuke self destruct to wipe out the control system knowing that this will release the ship board launch until earth systems come on line. In doing so she puts the mission ahead of her life and demonstrates to her daughter the leadership she will need to show.,

[webberg]

Note above about the "ultimate objective".

Putting this simply, I'd say "survival" of the human race.

Given the distance and length of journey I think there has to be a good bit of discretion for the command crew but their mission has to be safe delivery of potential colonists.

[webberg]

I now have a name for my captain - Larissa Flynn.

Whilst she is a character who will be only in the first part of the story, her back story and her character as expressed through her daughters is important and therefore I wanted a strong name.

I have also pondered on a potential plot hole and perhaps a solution.

Larissa's daughters were conceived via insemination in a similar way to IVF treatments. (I have a half finished story in that theme but lost my nerve). The eldest at the time of launch is perhaps 30 making Larissa circa 60. This also makes the youngest daughter circa 15 to 20. Why then did they not get the life extending treatment?

I think the answer is that those designing the mission want the aim to be colonising a planet in the image of Earth. To do that, the new colony needs to think in terms of "normal" length of life rather than the benefits offered by the life extending treatment. One way to do that is to put in command people who have a "normal" life span and therefore can plan and execute within that span.

Obviously the life extending treatment could be taken with the colonists on the journey. Perhaps those who have this knowledge are left on Earth/moon on launch? Perhaps the treatments require gravity (weak argument)? Perhaps the reward for the command crew on planetfall is that their children get the life extensions?

Perhaps life extension is not available if conception was artificial - but this problem is solved on the journey.

Perhaps the difference in life span is one of those unexplained issues - certainly in a short story - which can be expanded later.

[William]

Couple of points:
1. Larissa Flynn is a good name.
2. IVF is complex and requires specialist equipment. It might be better to have artificial insemination with frozen semen (from highly selected donors). This only needs a syringe and a thermometer (to identify ovulation).
3. Life extension I think is better than having babies in a space craft. Epidurals, Caesarian sections and all the medical bits needed for childbirth are just not practical on a space ship (you'd need an obstetrician, midwife, anaesthetist and operating theatre plus loads of equipment).

[Mike Channin]

If you're founding a colony, you need all of the medical stuff for (3) anyway. (although maybe the AI doctor can deal with it all for you?)
You DEFINITELY need gravity, but again, you need that anyway (unless you have suspended-animation)

[Mike Channin]

Are we there yet? When is it gonna be published? Have you sold the film rights??

On a semi-related subject, I saw Mickey-17 at the Cinema the other day. I was interested to see how this worked out, having read and really liked the book it was based on (Mickey-7) and its sequel. Without any spoilers the film is a fair attempt to use some of the main ideas from the book (including the main one about Expendables) with some significant differences because of the limitations of film as a media. Both film and book are entertaining and novel, but the real star for me is the book because it is so much deeper and cleverer.

(This is probably going off-topic, so don't let this distract from Graham's SciFi Epic, and maybe continue on a new thread if anyone is interested. We could even discuss Dune....)

[webberg]

Morning.

I'm struggling with a couple of issues at the moment.

One is a lack of time as I'm involved in an impending case before a Tribunal (acting on behalf of my clients) and am reviewing literally thousands of documents.

Second, is struggling to reduce what in my head is a story into a short story. As a famous writer once said, "I'm sorry for the length of this letter but I did not have time to write a shorter one".

For example, my opening set up plus moon conference (which takes the captain away from the ship at the time the anti voyage activists launch their attempt to prevent the mission leaving) plus developing the story of the passengers and how their life enhancements and voyage impact their lives, is running at around 5,000 words at the moment. In a story of 17 to 20 thousand words, that's too much.

I always thought that I would perhaps write twice the number of words I want to finish with and then edit down but the actual process is a little more difficult than that.

I may drop the "pure race" group completely in the short story version.

[William]

Second, is struggling to reduce what in my head is a story into a short story. As a famous writer once said, "I'm sorry for the length of this letter but I did not have time to write a shorter one".

Mark Twain I think was the writer although Benjamin Franklin said something similar.
Brevity is indeed the soul of wit.
I sense a problem with a story length of 17,000 -20,000 words. Too long for a short story (except perhaps in the US) and too short for a novella where 30,000 to 50,000 might be a reasonable target.
My personal view is that 2,000-5,000 words is ideal for a short story although there are no hard and fast rules.
But leaving that aside, I'd ask: What is your main objective? It seems, from what you have written so far, that you have enough ideas for a full length novel. Say over 100,000 words. You are creating an imaginary world with new concepts and new values and I doubt if you can condense that into a very long short story.
One strategy might be to 'enter late and leave early' which is a technique used by script writers for making fast paced movies. They only show part of the action and leave the viewers to join up the dots about what happened before and after. As Voltaire once said, you don't need to tell everything in order to stimulate the imagination. What I'm trying to say, in a rather clumsy way, is that it's probably ok to start the story after the journey has begun and let the reader work out the preamble with scattered clues. You mention leaving out the ''pure race' group which might be an excellent idea if it's not essential to the shortened version of the story.

[webberg]

You are correct William.

The novel/novella version can have all the build up and reasoning and it needs to give the story depth and balance.

I think that I need to start the story at the point of crisis (an inability to slow the entire ship) and include in it enough hints and nods to the drama of launch, changes in command structure, impact of long lived humans and remnants of Earth and how all of these shape the expectation of arrival - to be met of course by a Earth launched ship that left after them.