Tag: space colonization

The Magellan

One of my characters surprised me by bringing up the Magellan. I didn’t know he was aware of it. I thought the characters, stories and ideas were all kept segregated in my upstairs.

The Magellan is ‘conceived’ three hundred years from now. It existed in minds before then, though. It was only three hundred years from now that the impetus develops to create the necessary consortium of resources required for the ambitious projects. In my future worlds, greed, corporatism, and nationalism, along with war and disaster keep Humans from exploring space outside of a few Moon and Mars settlements.

A generational biosphere designed to explore beyond our solar system, Magellan is constructed in space. Part of its construction, equipment and plans is to send ships back to Earth every twenty-five years to bring materials and people back. But all trips are planned as a one way trip.

I thought of the Magellan and its mission a decade ago. As part of its loose story line, it went out there and all went well for about fifty years. Then there was no more, and it was mostly forgotten in the way that efforts are forgotten and yet remain part of history. That’s why I was surprised that one character suggests, “What if we encounter the Magellan or one of its return ships?”

Employing Mom’s tactics from my youth, I told the character I’d think about it.

I don’t know if he knows what that means.

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New Words

Skoth and fald have entered my writing vocabulary for my science fiction novel.

Skoth: skin clothing. Smart clothing which mimics Human skin’s respiration functions but also can shield and protect the body, and cover people so they don’t seem naked, while sculpting and shaping their forms according to their settings.

Fald: fake world. Artificial planetoids constructed to be planets for human activities, called falds to differentiate them from bioships and starships, moons, satellites and planets, and the other places Humans occupy in the far, far, far future.

These are both essentially future marketing terms.

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Apologies to Joss Whedon

Many science fiction works have affected and inspired me. Hundreds of books, of course, from fantasy like ‘The Hobbit’ and the ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy, to ‘hard’ science fiction, like Asimov’s Foundation series, and books and series by authors such as Bradbury, Clarke, Heinlein, Biggle, le Guin, Butler, and many more. The ‘Star Trek’ franchise is a large influence, but also ‘Battlestar Galactica’, movies like ‘2001: A Space Odyssey,’ ‘Bladerunner’ (along with several other movies based on Philip K. Dick’s works), ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ and more recent offerings such as ‘District 9’. One series and movie I really enjoyed, however, was Joss Whedon’s adventures of Malcolm ‘Mal’ Reynolds, and his crew on Serenity’.

Three things happen in my distant, planet terraforming, space-colonizing future. One is that people are still affected, inspired and shaped by these fictional works. Second, the series is often ‘rebooted’ multiple times. And third, when the reboot takes place, some fundamentals are changed.

Rebooting is a recent trend. We used to just call them a re-make. But as books and movies are rebooted, they’re often changed. Look at all the changes we’ve seen in the reboots and re-makes of Sherlock Holmes. They’re often updated (such as the ‘Holmes’ series, where Watson is a vet of the war in Afghanistan), or given new skills (see Robert Downey Jr’s performance of Guy Ritchie’s ‘Sherlock Holmes’), but their sex can be changed (like Lucy Liu playing Watson on ‘Elementary’), or their race (James West in ‘Wild, Wild West’), to provide new angles.

So, in my future setting, one of the characters was inspired by Joss Whedon’s ‘Serenity’. In their future, the movie was rebooted as a series, and then more movies followed. But Mal’s character was changed from a man to a woman. Mal was a man (in my version) who took on a female sex and appearance after his wife disappeared. See where all this is going? In a way, future Mal is a Josey Wales – Richard Kimball – Robin Hood aggregate. Mal is a female, with an all-female crew. Jayne, portrayed by Adam Baldwin, is re-named Mahrk, so the character, a female, would have a pseudo male name. My character fantasized about being Mal and traveling the universe in her own ship, and thus ended up working in space for a corporation.

Stealing from reality, many people actually believe Sherlock Holmes was a real person. Groups and societies are dedicated to this premise. Likewise, my hero, Handley, was once part of a group who believe Mal Reynolds was real, and part of a secret history that has since been covered up.

So, apologies to Joss Whedon for what I’m doing to your creation in the future, but thanks for giving it to us.

And now my coffee cup is empty, and I’m finished writing for today…for the moment.

4

Garbage Time

“Escapists.”

Her Lady was amused.

One man held center stage in a corner of like men. He seemed like a natural actor, with a voice that traveled the room like a machine gun firing.

“They’re living on the ship, what is it called again, the Stellar Queen? Which is made to be like a small world inside.” He waved a canape. “How is that different from living on a planet?”

A fellow industrialist, he was a large, trim man who could have been a professional athlete, from his looks and mannerisms, and not a venture capitalist. He didn’t know Her Lady was the agent behind the Stellar Queen. She’d taken pains to hide her early involvement, a simple matter if one had the means and resources to create the required fronts.

“Okay, sure, they’re traveling through the galaxies,” the man, an Australian whose name she didn’t recall, began again, “but again, so are planets. They’re all up there because they can’t cope with real life. You might as well call it a cocoon or a coffin. That’s what it really is, isn’t it? A huge coffin for a hundred thousand people, masquerading as a bio ship. Tell you what, it’s ridiculous. But they’re doing us a favor. We’re better off without people so weak willed and fearful that they’re attracted to abandoning real life and living on that thing.”

“Let’s go somewhere else,” Doctor Pollux suggested while leveling an impartial wide gaze on Her Lady.

Her Lady didn’t care, so she agreed. Privately, Her Lady scoffed at the Australian’s loud pronouncement, although, she agreed with a few points he gave, except he sketched with hard edges. She would soften and blend the points because matters were broader than that. “Are you afraid that I’ll be upset?” she asked Pollux.

“I know you better,” Pollux answered. “It’s for me. I prefer a more comfortable and less noisy environment.”

Her Lady nodded. “I was tempted to engage him and ask what he’s doing with his life, and how it was so different from those going onto the Stellar Queen.” She, who had spent a natural lifetime plus the time awarded the wealthy through medical technology, thought that many on the ‘natural worlds’ as such places as Earth and the other worlds were termed, spent most of their days in garbage time.

Garbage time was the concrete expression given when a sports game must continue to progress until time is reached even though the results are clear. Garbage also refers to a team playing out its schedule even though it has no chance of advancing into any play-offs. To Her Lady, however, garbage time was also assigned to those living with purpose, passing the day via tedious routines, usually because they wanted or needed money, but failed to do anything with the monies they accrued except stay alive.

“I’m sure he lives to make money,” she said to Doctor Pollux, “and acquire power and influence to better his life.”

The conversation varied along points made in previous discussions. Priding herself as seeing a broader rainbow of existence and thinking Her Lady was being simplistic, Doctor Pollux pointed out, “As I have said before, many people would not be living like that, were they not caught up in the machines’ gears. The comfort and confidence provided by a secure and healthy home life can’t be overstated.”

“Many people do not need to exist like that, if they had greater courage and self-confidence.” Her Lady’s eyes sparkled with the engagement of one of her favorite subjects. “Most people live lives of fear and desperation, ruing their lot while never attempting to change it.”

“I don’t think it’s so easily changed,” Pollux answered. “It’s such a complex issue of nature and circumstances.”

“What, money?”

“Besides money, besides willpower and courage, or fortitude. It’s a more deeply seated personal and unique issue that must really be addressed on an individual level.”

They were sufficiently away from others that they had private space. Sipping her wine, Her Lady said, “That is why I’m building the Stellar Queen.”

Attempting to breach the other’s secretive manner, Pollux considered Her Lady more carefully. The other seemed happy, even relieved that she was making a great revelation. She’d been working with Her Lady for some time and thought she’d developed an intelligent composite of the other. Both had been inspired by the old space adventure television shows, books, movies, and computer games when they were children. Thanks to Pollux’s great-grandmother, humanity was exploring the galaxy and completing the first wave of colonization on other worlds. Pollux had always assumed that this was why Her Lady was building the Stellar Queen.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

Turning away, Her Lady smiled and replied, “Yes, I know,” quickening her step and drinking her wine before Pollux could ask for more explanation.

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Her Lady

Five foot eight inches tall, rumored to be white with short dark hair and perpetually wearing sunglasses, the woman behind the Stellar Queen was mysterious.

She was at least eight hundred years old, well-established because she’d lived on the Stellar Queen for that long. Such a long life on one ship leads to rumors….

I lived for fifty years as a child and man on the Stellar Queen, enjoying my second childhood on the ship after I initiated my Do-over, so I was always watching out for her. I was never certain I saw her. There were rumors….

Her appearance was challenging not just because she was rarely seen but also because she practiced genetic designing to shape shift, leading her appearance to often change, even becoming an animal, such as the panther that was claimed to live on the Stellar Queen, or one of the unicorns in the forest. At least, those were were the rumors….

The Stellar Queen was her baby, along with Doctor Jharun Pollux, great-granddaughter of Doctor Jerol Pollux. Doctor Jerol Pollux was the famous discoverer of the dark elements. The elder Doctor Pollux, a funny point to write, was but twenty-four when she made her discoveries a hundred years before her great-granddaughter’s birth. Jharun Pollux and Her Lady were said to be contemporaries in their youth, and struck up a relationship from that era. ‘That era’ was when space exploration and colonization began blossoming, thanks to the dark elements of the elder doctor’s findings, but it was almost three hundred years later that the two women began collaborating on the Stellar Queen’s design and construction.

Most critically for the Stellar Queen, Doctor Pollux incorporated power generators using asteridium, chiridium, and lumenirium. Asteridium was the black element most commonly used in starships for propulsion but Pollux used it with a small lumenirium core to create the artificial sun that graced the Stellar Queen’s bio-dome, rising in the east, and setting in the west.

Chiridium was the more interesting choice for the ship’s power. Chiridium, named for chi, after the life force, is rarer, more difficult to mine and control. Myths related to its name and Doctor Jerol Pollux’s comments about it, can never be put down. As a dark element, some say it’s a dark life force. Both Doctors Pollux laughed about that, but with its AI ship overseer, many inhabitants and visitors thought the Stellar Queen was alive. Majorities of people recounted stories and gave interviews stating that something different was felt as soon as you boarded the ship.

Her Lady never made comments about it that anyone ever recorded. As odd and intriguing as her eight hundred year life aboard the Stellar Queen was, her disappearance without notice when she left was equally intriguing. She only told Rei the baker, famous for his goods from Trudy’s Valley, that she was leaving.

Being the only source, naturally, more rumors arose. One rumor was that one of her shapeshifting processes was disrupted, rendering her a monster that couldn’t be fixed, and that she still lived in secret on the Queen. Others claimed that she had never existed, that she had not created the Stellar Queen, but that it created her because the woman who had begun the project had died before it launched. More quietly, it was suggested that perhaps it wasn’t correct to think of the Stellar Queen as two separate entities, but that they were one, yet another project of the great Doctor Jerol Pollux, and her great-granddaughter.

Imagination can be a wild, untamed creature.

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