Attempted First Chapter

Basically I dropped into the show-don't-tell trap and accidentally wrote an outline for a proper novel.

Yes. I'll use it.

If there was one thing I learned in my first incarnation on Earth, if I wanted something done right I had to do it myself.

In this case it was to lead a raid on a native village. These were generally known as pest control operations. Given the very hostile history between human colonists and the stone age natives of the planet this was putting it mildly.

The first starship to reach the Alpha Centauri system was the Mayflower. She was built to order for and operated by Edward and Carl Cook. Their family that had been in the orbital solar energy business for over a century. She was, and remains to this day, the most advanced starship ever designed and launched by humans. She had a crew of two hundred and carried one thousand colonists in cryostasis. She had antimatter rocket engines and was designed to reach half the speed of light and perform the journey to Alpha Centauri in ten years.

During the deceleration phase of the mission Mayflower had released two probes for a fly-through reconnaissance of the system. As a result of the probes two planets were found that were apparently fit for human habitation.

Orbiting Alpha Centauri A was a world that was slightly larger than Earth, had a denser atmosphere, and appeared to have and an advanced biosphere. It was named Eden.

Orbiting Alpha Centauri B was a world that was slightly smaller than Earth, had a thinner atmosphere, and appeared to have a simple biosphere. It was named Zion.

Based on this information the Cook Brothers had decided to explore and possibly settle on the planet Eden.

Based on the orbital survey it appeared that the planet had never been hit by a major asteroid, a K-T impactor rock. Commonly known as a dinosaur killer. And from the initial landings on several continents it appeared the dominant form of animal life were large dinosaurian lizards.

Mammals had never developed on the planet.

The brothers decided to establish their colony on an isolated continent with the smallest dinosaurs.

It was after the infrastructure had been built, some forests had been cleared, and some crops had been planted that it was discovered that the colonists had neighbors.


The new neighbors had simply walked into the colony unannounced. They appeared to be friendly and curious at first.

They were scientifically classified as Reptantis Sapiens Eden. And at the time they were commonly called Repts. They were a bilateral biped reptile species with scales and feathers instead of bare skin and hair. They also had developed basic a basic set of wood and stone hand tools. Some Rept tribes had already developed primitive agriculture and had built villages that should have been seen from orbit.

The tool set included flint tipped spears and arrows. It was at this time the Repts should have seen as a potential problem.

From records recovered decades later it appeared that the Cook Brothers saw the Repts as people who could be uplifted to the status of civilization and as potential customers and employees. They also disregarded suggestions that the Repts were a potential danger to the colony.

The Cook Brothers were Americans. By the time they departed from the Solar System they had no living memory of any aspect of life in a frontier environment. They were also comfortable in their technological superiority. They had dismissed all suggestions that basic security measures, such as building a stockade around the colony or arming all the colonists, should be taken.

Edward and Carl Cook, and the fifteen hundred and twenty seven colonists on the ground with them, paid for their stupidity with their lives.

Of the inhabitants of the Plymouth Colony, only one hundred and twenty eight men, women, and children made it to the landing field during the native assault. They boarded the landing craft and lifted off to the still orbiting Mayflower. There were sixteen crew members aboard to maintain her in operational condition.

It was clear to everyone on board that there was no other place on the planet Eden they could land and resettle. After a long, drawn out, and very well recorded discussion they decided to use their remaining antimatter fuel and transit to the planet Zion.

They never looked back.

Upon arrival they stripped out the ship as thoroughly as possible. Even going as far as to remove the auxiliary fusion power plant and bring it to the surface. They learned to live on the surface of Zion. They learned to domesticate the simple plants and some of the few animals that were found there.

In spite of the small initial population the settlement on Zion was thriving when the second wave of human colonists arrived in the system.

Thsi may end up being a three part novel.

Thought For The Day

I went home with a waitress, the way I always do,
How was I to know, she was with the Cylons too?

Post of the day

I've finished the second chapter of the novel.

http://otherles.livejournal.com/11890.html

First Chapter

I just posted the first chapter of my novel on my Live Journal page.

This is not set in the Official Traveller Universe.

http://otherles.livejournal.com/11664.html

A Literary Demolition Of DORSAI!

Or how not to write a science fiction novel.

As part of my project to write a science fiction novel I am re-reading DORSAI! Yes, the exclamation point is part of the title. This is the first novel in a series of ubermensch fantasies by Gordon R. Dickson. I am reading it with the intent of deconstructing it as an example of military science fiction with mercenaries. My goal as a novelist is to create a depiction of a similar band of mercenaries and show how a rational nation would be deal with them.

Here’s the first paragraph from the chapter titled MERCENARY III:

Returning again up the corridor toward the bow of the ship, Donal allowed himself to wonder, a little wistfully, about this incubus of his own strange difference from other people. He had thought to leave it behind with his cadet uniform. Instead, it seemed, it continued to ride with him, still perched on his shoulders. Always it had been this way. What seemed so plain, and simple and straightforward to himself, had always struck others as veiled, tortuous, and involved. Always he had been like a stranger passing trough a town, the ways of whose people were different, and who looked on him with a lack of understanding amounting to suspicion. Their language failed on the doorstep of his motives and could not enter the lonely mansion of his mind. They said “enemy” and “friend”; they said “strong” and “weak”–“them” and “us”. They set up a thousand arbitrary classifications and distinctions which he could not comprehend, convinced as he was that all people were only people–and there was very little to choose between them. Only, you dealt with them as individuals, one by one; and always remembering to be patient. And if you did this successfully, then the larger, group things came out right.

Can you understand that? Was Dickson an English Literature major at the U of M?

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION, the periodical that published this serially in 1959 did pay a penny a word. But this amount of barely incomprehensible verbiage is simply absurd.

Dickson attempts to recreate the European political environment prior to the Treaty Of Westphalia (1648), a time when the use of specifically raised and organized mercenary units was commonplace. Civil wars within what should be sovereign nation states are commonplace. Dickson also creates a moral nightmare. A universe where the Right Of Life is legally negated. An individual may be conscripted by the state and forced to work on another world in trade for another worker with knowledge in another field. Or die as cannon fodder in a foreign war. And the penalty for an individual who broke this so-called contract is death.

Dickson may not have understood the concept of government. But then he was a graduate of the University Of Minnesota.

What is very apparent when reading this and the other works in the series is that Dickson adopted a Platonist metaphysics. What passes for philosophy is a gibberish of Eastern Mysticism and Racial Collectivism along with the open practice of magic. In fact the overall plot of the series, such it was, is completely dependent on the occurrence of magical events. It would more accurate to describe this series as a work of fantasy instead of science fiction. In THE FINAL ENCYCLOPEDIA, Dickson actually wrote a scene set on the Platonic World Of Forms. And at the end of the initial novel Dickson has his protagonist literally commanding the antagonist to suffer. And the antagonist magically does so.

If reality is unreal in a fictional universe, why bother to write about it?

Free Literature

I was wring a science fiction novel. At a bit past 42,000 words I decided that two aspects, the extinction event on Earth and the villains where a bit too absurd, So I'm starting over again.

If anyone wants to read the existing MS send me an e-mail.

lesbates_traveller at yahoo dot com

Announcement

I finally gave in to temptation and tried to lurk on the Baen's Bar forums.

I've been banned.

Gosh, what a surprise.