State of Play: May 2013

Today I passed a milestone...just about scraped past, but this month I have managed a hundred thousand words of intended-for-publication writing! I only realized that I was closing in on it yesterday, and I admit – pushed myself a little bit to get over the mark. So the statistics for this month's output are as follows:

Words: 100,453

Completed Books: 1 (Price of Admiralty)

Published Books: 0

Sales: 0

Next month, my goal is to obviously complete 'Not One Step Back' and ideally get them both up on Amazon, as well as get started on either 'Fermi's War', the next Battlecruiser Alamo book, or the first Hyperborea book – I haven't decided yet, and probably won't until I've finished 'Not One Step Back'.

Guess I'd better get on with it.

What if Star Trek had been Gene's role-playing campaign... (Part 2)

Since the previous session, KBEX-TV had started a new run of classic horror movies, and Gene had started to watch them with the idea of getting inspiration for new plots. He'd honestly thought that he might have accidentally self-destructed the 'Star Trek' campaign, and was slightly surprised when it turned out that actually, no-one really remembered the last session too much. This gave an odd twist to the next batch of episodes, and he had to do some hasty conversion – his plans for a horror campaign would have to be rapidly switched around. Rushing to find inspiration, he was fortunate enough to get a phone call from Bill. Apparently he was doing a term paper on 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde', and he wanted to really get 'into' the character by playing it in the campaign.

Bingo. What's more, the Spencer Tracy version of the book was playing the night before. As it turned out, his pre-session preparation for what would be called 'The Enemy Within' pretty much consisted of...watching that movie. Not to worry, he threw in some stuff about a wield alien civilisation with the power to divide men's souls, principally to give George something to do – he figured that the guy deserved to have a good story this session. Of course, that went wrong after George announced half an hour in that he had to go home...leaving that whole arc in the dust. Aside from George, Grace, Bill, Len and De all managed to make it to the session; the latter three had tremendous fun – though Gene wasn't particularly happy when during the 'role-playing', Bill and Grace began to make out. Once again, his plan to get laid through role-playing was working well for someone else.

The next session, 'Mudd's Women', Gene realised – diplomatically – that he couldn't make. Fortunately, an old friend of his called Roger volunteered to sit in as GM for a session; though his attendance was slightly less popular with the group. His session ended up being dominated by his GMPC, who spent his time cavorting with a trio of chemically-enhanced beauties...and the worst part of the session turned out to be when one of those 'beauties' attempted to romance Bill's character, not a performance that was particularly appealing. There was a group consensus that they would rather not have any guest GM for the moment – better the devil they knew!

Then came 'What Are Little Girls Made Of', written as a 'Majel' episode. Gene had attempted to schedule the games to coincide with her amateur dramatics group, but they didn't meet every week, and she was eager to get back into a game. In an effort to distance her from Len this time, he decided to beam her down to the planet, where he got to play her 'lost love'. His hope and expectation was that she would end up staying on the planet with him...in order to distract Bill, he invited him to bring his current girlfriend of the hour, Sherry, who actually dressed in character to the amazement of the rest of the group. (De was later rather annoyed that he'd missed that session.) Len got stuck on the ship with rather little to do except gawp...though the opportunities for that were quite extensive. When the session ended with Majel staying on the Enterprise, her lost love shot by Sherry...he realised that he was probably stuck with her in the group for a while.

The next one was just a horror plot, loosely based on 'Lord of the Flies' – what if all the adults were killed and the children went feral. Looking back, this would be remembered as a pretty good episode; Bill, Len, De and Grace got to mess around with some murderous teenagers, and once they got the idea that they couldn't simply phaser everything that moved, the session went pretty well. For once they managed to light on the critical cue, a 'life prolongation' disease that got out of hand. Much fun had by all.

And then it turned out that Bill was the only one who could make the next session. Which he announced by showing up when Gene had managed to convince one of his girlfriends to come over, Majel believing that he was 'gaming that night'. Annoyingly, Marianna leapt right into it, throwing herself into the part Gene improvised for her as a psychiatrist. (At the time, that was her major; she was able to throw in some pretty convincing psychobabble.) She really got into her scenes with Bill... to the point that when he went home, so did he.

For the next session, Gene decided he was going to bring in a big recurring enemy, and the whole gang showed up for 'The Corbomite Manoeuvre'. By this point, he'd drawn up some proper floorplans for the bridge, and even picked up a few 28mm figures to represent the PCs, so to make use of them he decided to set almost the whole episode on the bridge. The enemy was the 'First Federation', a race of midgets with highly advanced technology, such that they could only be defeated by great improvisation. The problem was that Gene had been a bit vague on what organisation the PCs belonged to...and somehow, they got the idea that they were working for the 'Federation'. The midgets did not go down well, generating rather too much humour – by the end of it, he'd decided that he would go with the flow, and that he needed to re-think his bad guys.

To be continued...

Mr. Exposition

Today was a surprisingly difficult writing day, probably one of the most frustrating in many ways for a while, but I managed to get past what I consider the hardest part of a novel. Scrivener records that I wrote almost eight thousand words today, but I actually made five thousand words of progress, so still about the average I've been maintaining every day – so I am satisfied enough. (I'm running about fifteen hundred words ahead of schedule for the moment.)

Psychologically, starting and finishing are the hardest part. That blank page when you start a new book can be extremely daunting; I know I usually manage a few false starts, even when I have a pretty word-on-word idea of what I'm about to write. The ending – again, by the time I'm there at the very least, I know what the beats are, I know the characters, so it should be easy, but given that this is the culmination of a lot of work, its hard to actually finish. In practical terms, however, the hardest part is about Chapters 3 through 8 – say five thousand to twenty thousand words into the book.

Avoiding a formula, the best way to open a book is with a puzzle, with a problem, or with action – something to immediately engage the reader, because of the one-one-one rule. A good first line takes the reader to a good first page which takes the reader to a good first chapter, and by that point there's a good chance that they will finish the book. A strong first couple of chapters is a must, but it should also be fairly straightforward. The plot is at the start, the characters are being introduced, and if the two of them are interesting enough to support a book, they will certainly be interesting when the reader first meets them.

Then comes the hardest part. The set up. For a few chapters, the critical thing is to introduce the plot. If the core problem is introduced in the first chapter, then the next few have to set up the threads and nuances of that plot, as well as the characters – the important characters need to be established to the point that the reader becomes familiar with them, enough to carry them through the remainder of the book. The catch is, of course, that this cannot become exposition, it cannot simply be characters talking. Things need to happen. That can be action, it can be argument, it can be debate, it can be anything, but something needs to happen to keep the reader engaged.

In my opinion, this is the hard part. Getting everything that is needed to support a reader's understanding of the remainder of the book, in a reasonably short space of time, in a clear enough way that the reader gets all the information you want them to have, without making them conscious that they are reading it. Not an easy thing to do. (To be fair, you can probably get away with a little exposition if needed. Sometimes it is just easier for all concerned to just say, “This is planet Omicron Persei VIII, with three moons. The primary settlement is on the second moon, and that is where we are going.”) A few paragraphs here and there is fine, IMO – especially if it obvious that it is making everyone's life easier. The reader doesn't want to have to interpret stuff he actually needs to know to make things work. (It also helps if this ends up deep in the book; there are a couple of pages along these lines in chapter 17 of 'Admiralty', but that's three-fifths of the way into the book, so I really hope that it won't prevent anyone from finishing it at that point!)

In good news – I think I have one more chapter to go before I've finished this point. About another three thousand words to go before I get to Uranus...

USS Essex

Today I started my 'early US naval history' reading with 'The USS Essex: And the Birth of the American Navy', an examination of the career of an early frigate, one launched by the citizens of a certain Salem, Massachusetts by public subscription during the Quasi-War. The Essex was involved in many of the key actions fought by the US Navy at the start of the 19^th century, but this is hardly surprising given the small size of the navy in those years; it constantly danced on the verge of being abolished entirely due to Gallatin's cost-cutting measures, and at one point fell as low as six ships.

The book is an interesting look at events such as the Quasi-War, the Tripolitarian War and the War of 1812; the frigate's greatest days took place during this period, when it took the first British prize in the war before heading to the Pacific, in a bid to support Chilean rebels and to most importantly, take on the British Pacific whaling fleet; wiping out this key economic asset would be a significant boost in damaging the British economy. The US was never going to defeat the Royal Navy at sea, the disparity in ship strength was too great, but it could fight a successful raiding war.

Captain David Porter, the commander of Essex, did a job that was both extremely successful yet incomplete; successful in that he captured numerous prizes, incomplete in that he captured them rather than destroying them. Instead, he hoped to sell them as prizes, but found no buyers – which meant that they were mostly recaptured by the British. What could have been a critical success was still a triumph...but given that the British got their ships back, it could have been greater. Further, Essex would be captured at the Battle of Valparaiso by British vessels, and would end its days as a prison barge owned by the British. A sad end for a proud ship.

The book was excellent, and for a quick introduction to the formation of the US Navy and a look at some of the early conflicts, I can recommend it, and personally I found especially the attacks on the British whaling fleet to be a great source of potential inspiration for the Triplanetary setting – lots of possible story material here. A well written book, and at present fairly inexpensive, and a good look at one of the 'second tranche' of frigates constructed; Essex was not one of the original 'Six Frigates' but was constructed at the height of national outcry over the Quasi-War.

As today's nugget of the Triplanetary Setting...

Operational History: Battlecruiser Alamo (As of 'Price of Admiralty')

UNSS Magellan

2144: Appropriations authorised by United Nations Office of Space Exploration.

2146: Construction commenced, Carter Station, Callisto.

2148: Construction halted, ship placed in mothballs.

2149: Seized by Provisional Government of Callisto.

CSS Alamo

2149: Provisional Naval Committee elects to complete ship as battlecruiser.

2150: Ship launched, proving flight. (Flight Commander Zaikin)

2151: Jovian Trojan Patrol, mining convoy duty. (Flight Commander Yorkina)

2153: Proxima Station, mining convoy duty. (Squadron Commander Zaikin)

2154: Sirius Station, convoy raiding. (Flight Commander Senkevich)

2155: Carter Station, repair and reconditioning. (Senior Flight Officer Pelcak)

2155: Jovian Trojan Patrol, mining convoy duty. (Squadron Commander Malerba)

2156: Proxima Station, convoy raiding. (Flight Commander Fisher)

2158: Carter Station, repair and reconditioning. (Flight Commander Pelcak)

2160: Proxima Station, mining convoy duty. (Flight Commander Kaleri)

2162: Barnard Station, mining convoy duty. (Flight Commander Zubinsky)

2164: Neptune Trojans, mineralogical survey. (Flight Commander Zubinsky)

TSS Alamo

2165: Deep Space Fleet, rapid response duty. (Lieutenant-Captain Marshall)

Not One Step Back: The First Step Forward

So, today the monkey flipped the switch and I started work; almost six thousand words, more than I had planned for today. I think that counts as a good start, though it was slow to begin...five hours to do two thousand words, then two thousand words an hour for two hours! I suppose I'll settle for that, after all, I only need to do it about another fourteen times to get the book finished! If I'm honest, I reckon it was probably the 'second book' jitters more than anything else. I know these characters a lot better now (and this time, all three of the important new characters will be written in within the first four or five chapters) so that is a bit easier...and it's fun throwing them into new situations.

Including a fighter battle! I opened this one with the hero riding his fighter into battle, and spent ages trying to make it feel right and be right; I didn't want this to be a 'World War 2 dogfight in space', I wanted to try and make it as it would actually be under these circumstances...so the fighters don't have cockpits, they are primarily flown on instruments by expert systems. The pilot is the decision-maker; this is true today, but by this point the physical requirement to pull a control stick is replaced by instructing the systems. Which is not a million miles away from where we are now. (As to why use humans? Humans are the decision-makers, and at least one of them needs to be operating in real-time. Or at least close to it.)

Fighters are a much bigger part of this book; in the first book, aside from the lead being a former fighter pilot, it didn't have any role – but in this book (very mild spoiler here that I will likely put in the blurb) Alamo gets its fighter squadron. Which is what brings in the new characters, because fighters need pilots, and with the connection to the commander, its inevitable that they are going to be a major part of the plot. (Heck, if they weren't going to be a major part of the plot, I wouldn't be bringing them in at all.)

I'm going to admit at this point that space fighters are cool. Which is the entire reason why I've gone to some effort to bring them on board Alamo, making it a 'hybrid ship', rather like one of the through-deck cruisers the Royal Navy – and to an extent, the Soviet Navy – introduced. That gives a key to what sort of fighters are usually going to be on board these ships, because they are always designed as 'sea control ships', primarily to hunt submarines, but in this context, the idea would be patrol craft to intercept small ships, perhaps to defend asteroid fields from rogue prospectors, or for that matter to raid such ships. This makes Alamo – and by extension, all battlecruisers in this setting – blockade guards or privateers. Which I think adds another great element to this, as well as being a logical extension of the battlecruiser principle.

For battlecruisers in actual use were generally misused. Giving them big guns suggested that they needed to be a part of a battle line, put up against warships as some sort of tactical naval cavalry...but that generally leads to glorious deaths. (See Jutland, Denmark Strait, and so on.) They are actually designed to hunt down cruisers, to hunt down surface raiders attacking merchant shipping, and in that role – when they were used in that role – they are successful. Naturally, as the Graf Spee proved (not a battlecruiser, but well, 'pocket battleship' is probably close enough) they are also excellent for hunting down merchant shipping themselves. Had two massive naval powers fought in the Pacific before naval aviation was developed, battlecruisers would have been incredibly valuable. (Say – US vs. Japan in 1920.)

So that's where the Battlecruiser Alamo comes from, and that is why the battlecruiser gets resurrected; in the Triplanetary setting, where there is a requirement to defend clusters of asteroids being mined across several star systems...this is a required concept.

Wow, this one rambled. I'll try and get more focused tomorrow.

Cover Preview

The cover for the forthcoming, 'Not One Step Back', as created by the amazing Keith Draws...

Two Days To Go...

I'm ready.

At least, near as dammit. On Monday, I start work on the second book in the Battlecruiser Alamo series, 'Not One Step Back'. (The story of how this was originally the first – and the three radically different drafts written under that title – I will leave for another day.) I'll be writing this book whilst I am revising the first, and my current plan is to put 'Price of Admiralty' a few days after I finish the draft of 'Step'. I had originally planned to alternate books, the first idea to get my sword-and-sorcery 'Hyperborea' series out of the starting gate, but somehow, when I got around halfway through 'Admiralty', that idea rather went by the wayside. I was starting to really like these characters, starting to really like the setting, and the last five days – which I forced myself to take as a break while I did other things – have been very strange. I want to be working in this universe again – especially as the feedback has been pretty good so far. (Very nice experience, and one that has settled an awful lot of nerves.) I think this is probably a pretty good thing!

My planned reading has a little gone by the board this week. Right now I'm going through 'Bernice Summerfield: The Inside Story', which could be described in many was as a closet history of the 'New Adventures' series of Doctor Who novels. None of which I have ever read. I'm reading it more for the evolution of setting and character concepts, the ongoing plot arcs and threads, and the like; this is all good stuff, and I'm finding it extremely useful when considering the potential future of what I am calling the 'Triplanetary' setting...for I don't necessarily intend that there will be only one series in that setting ultimately. Being on the threshold of the second book is probably a bit early to consider spin-offs...but if it takes off, it might well be a sensible idea, especially as characters start to get more and more lives of their own.

I think that loosely, I could describe the four books I have in mind now as an 'introduction'. All self-contained stories, of course, but with themes and arcs running through them that I hope to last for a long time, though one of them will be brought to something of a conclusion in the fourth book. (Something of a conclusion; I still hope to leave room for future extension of that particular plot line, and I don't want to go too deep into details.) The idea is to evolve the setting someone, to lay out characters, arcs and stories – to build a solid foundation for future works. That the theme of colonization, in one form or another, seems to be taking hold as a major part of all four of them is something of an accident, it wasn't really intended that way, but it seems to be moving in that direction. I won't know for sure until after book 4, of course, but calling this the 'Colonization' Arc is probably not a bad idea. (And the second arc will definitely be 'Exploration'. Lots of those stories to tell!)

Going to be hitting the early 19^th century pretty heavily next month, and during the writing of 'Step' in particular, as it is still the source of an awful lot of my inspiration. And that darn dissertation has certainly scratched an itch that I want to satisfy, not a small thing by any stretch of the imagination! I think there are about a dozen books to get through (I will try and review them – I have rather failed at that so far, but as this blog gets into its second month, that's something I intend to remedy.) Getting close to my first 'State of the Writer' monthly post as well, on May 31^st...that's something to think about as well. It would be nice to have managed more than a hundred thousand words in the month...a nice milestone to aim for, I think. (Currently, I intend to write two chapters and revise two of the previous chapters in a day – should be attainable. Then do the final proof-read...and get the darn thing up on Amazon!)

Career History, Lieutenant-Captain Daniel Marshall

Service History

1/2153: Attends Prometheus City Military Academy, Flight Training Specialist

2/2154: Assigned as Fighter Pilot, Tenth Interceptor Squadron, MSS Wright

6/2154: Assigned as Acting Flight Leader, Tenth Interceptor Squadron, MSS Wright

1/2155: Assigned as Flight Leader, Tenth Interceptor Squadron, MSS Osiris

9/2155: Assigned as Acting Squadron Leader, Tenth Interceptor Squadron, MSS Osiris

4/2156: Assigned as Squadron Leader, Tenth Interceptor Squadron, MSS Curtiss

9/2156: Assigned as Acting Wing Commander, Third Interceptor Wing, Phobos Station

1/2157: Assigned as Squadron Leader, Seventh Interceptor Squadron, MSS Yeager

4/2157: Assigned as Officer-In-Charge, Prospero Orbital Depot

7/2157: Attends Test Pilot School, Carter City, Callisto

4/2158: Assigned as Test Pilot, Fifteenth Experimental Squadron, Deimos Station

7/2158: Assigned as Deputy Project Pilot, XP-15 Crossbow

1/2160: Attends Prometheus City Military Academy, Staff College

7/2160: Assigned as Flight Leader, Ninth Patrol Squadron, MSS Wright

9/2161: Assigned as Deputy Operations Officer, MSS Wright

7/2162: Assigned Prometheus City Military Academy, Instructor in Small Ship Tactics

1/2164: Assigned as Squadron Leader, Twelfth Interceptor Squadron, MSS Curtiss

4/2165: Transfers to Triplanetary Fleet

5/2165: Assigned as Commanding Officer, TSS Alamo

Dates of Rank

1/2153: Third Lieutenant, Martian Space Service

1/2154: Second Lieutenant, Martian Space Service (Wartime)

5/2154: Second Lieutenant, Martian Space Service

6/2154: First Lieutenant, Martian Space Service (Wartime)

9/2155: Captain, Martian Space Service (Wartime)

9/2156: Major, Martian Space Service (Wartime)

4/2157: First Lieutenant, Martian Space Service

7/2160: Captain, Martian Space Service

1/2165: Major, Martian Space Service

4/2165: Lieutenant-Captain, Triplanetary Fleet

What if Star Trek had been Gene's role-playing campaign... (Part 1)

Inspired by this blog...what if Star Trek had been run as a long-running role-playing campaign....

Never has a campaign gone through more turmoil than Gene's. When he first read Starships & Spacemen, it was love at first sight; it almost felt as if he had written it himself, and he was desperately eager to get another campaign going. His only previous experience was with a single Recon campaign, and that had only managed two players – Gary and Robert, probably because instead of Vietnam, he'd decided to set his campaign in a military base, dealing with intrigue and scandal. He'd managed to cycle through a few other players, though, and made contact with a lot of potential players for a new campaign. His first thought was that he needed to make it more exciting – so a Space Western was his pitch. Lots of action, shooting, swordplay, intrigue. At that, his initial search for players was something of a failure.

His first session – despite advertising all over LA for people – only attracted four people. Jeff was a pretty seasoned player, who was interested in playing a 'dark, moody Captain', Len's only thought was 'I want to play an alien! Like, from Mars, or with pointed ears, or something'. Then came the women; his girlfriend Majel had been wanting to get into his campaign for ages, so he let her join the campaign – despite the fact that she really didn't seem to get how to role-play – and then was Laurel, a girl he'd met in a gaming store that he was trying to chat up. (Yeah, Gene was that sort of guy, but if you think having one GM's girlfriend at the table was bad enough...)

For the first adventure, which he called 'The Cage', he drew from a lot of old pulp fiction. There were weird telepathic mind-warping aliens, swordfights with big growling giants (statistics poached from Ray's Labyrinth Lord campaign), and lots of green dancing girls. Lots of green dancing girls. In a desperate attempt to keep Jeff in the campaign, he hit upon the idea of having pretty much every female character want to seduce him – something which backfired rather badly. Majel thought 'oh, that's what we're supposed to do' and played along, and so did Laurel. Len at least had a lot of fun playing his alien, but spent most of the episode stuck on the spaceship in orbit when Jeff decided to split the party. Which was never a good idea. After his original 'blast them out of there' ending went wrong with a catastrophic series of dice rolls by Majel, he ended up having to resort to a lousy 'deus ex machina' ending where the bad guys decided to...let the PCs go.

End of session. And almost end of campaign; it would be a month before he had another go. Attempts to contact Jeff failed when his wife intercepted the first phone call, and based on Jeff's descriptions of the first game, the wife put her foot down, and insisted that 'Jeff goes to the Bible Study with me instead to learn about Jesus'. O-kay. Majel had been a bit confused by the session but was pushing to play again...but given that one of Gene's ideas was to use the game to meet girls, he considered this a bit of a non-started. Laurel just wasn't returning phone calls or emails at all. The one up-side – despite everything, Len enjoyed playing his alien, and even came up with a load of new ideas for the character. Gene would spend the next few years regretting that he'd stopped reading at page ten – as page eleven was 'Vulcanian Psychic Powers'. Not that it seemed to matter.

Still – he'd put in a hell of a lot of work, and figured he'd have another go at the campaign, pretty much from scratch. Len was 'in', and said he'd talk to his friend Bill – and Gary said that he would 'have a go', but wasn't sure if he would stay in for the course. Gene ran into a rather odd girl at the game store called Sally, but she seemed interested as well, so...he had a group again! A month later, he sat down to 'Where No Man Has Gone Before', and they had a blast this time. Lots of fistfights, psychic powers, and when it turned out that Bill and Gary were old friends, they threw that in as well for fun. And then...it went wrong. Gene had expected they would work out that all they had to do was go back through the Barrier to reverse the effect – he'd thought it was pretty obvious. It wasn't. Instead – they decided to 'go home the slow way'. Rather, Bill did, and everyone else said 'meh'. Lots more rolls on the 'Random Psychic Powers' roll for Gary, and Sally insisted on joining in that fun as well, sending everything spiralling out of control. To try and rescue the game – and the campaign – Gene rolled a random encounter, an abandoned desert planet named (roll) Delta (roll) Vega. Sigh. A big fistfight, and Bill managed to defeat Gary and Sally, leaving their bodies in the dust. Understandably, they stopped returning Gene's emails when he suggested having another session. On the up side – Bill was hooked, and so was Len.

New players. God, not again – but this time Bill and Len were helping out as well. An old friend of Gene was back in town again, and so De joined the campaign as the 'crusty doctor', and Bill found two more players – Jimmy and George, who played a Scottish engineer (despite everyone groaning at the cliché) and a swashbuckling helmsman. (George had heard Len talking about the swordfight in the first session, and spent some points on swordfighting. Which he used once in the whole campaign, and then a tad gratuitously.) Another two of Gene's 'interests', Nicky and Grace, also joined in. From having too few players he now had too many – but only Bill, Len and De could guarantee coming to every session, so he figured that was OK.

The third session was 'The Man Trap' – only Jimmy couldn't make it for that one. Gene put together a planet-side adventure to introduce De's character, with an old girlfriend that had turned into a shapeshifting monster! Bill and Len got to fight it on the planet, while the rest of the PCs spent most of their time interacting with it, and the first of the problems emerged, as it became clear that Gene couldn't handle more than three or four PCs in an adventure. George spent some time chatting up Grace (well, she thought so at the time) so he was happy enough, but that wouldn't necessarily last.

Then came session four, 'Charlie X', where Gene made it up to Grace and Nicky; the former had the whole episode based around her dealing with a love-sick teenager (and god did Gene enjoy playing that character) and Nicky got to practice a song that she was about to post on Youtube. George and Jimmy both missed that one, but Jimmy promised that he would make the next one. At this point, everything seemed to be going pretty well – everyone was happy with their 'air time' in each session, and he'd decided to focus something always on the three people he knew would be at each session, and told the others that 'as long as I know you are coming, you'll get something fun to do'.

Session five, 'The Naked Time', was in retrospect probably what Gene had hoped would happen when he brought acid to the game. No-one could remember much about what had happened in that session, only that Jimmy had been the only one not to drop (I came here to game, damnit) and that at one point George messed around with Gene's fencing swords doing a bit of improvised LARPing. There were vague memories of Len wailing about 'loving his mother', but no-one could work out whether or not he was in character. Also – Majel came home about half-way through the session from her acting class, and insisted on joining in – and by then, Gene was too far gone to either notice or to complain when she started hitting on Len.

By some miracle, the group would stagger to session six the next week.

Whither Fighters?

Well, first of all – I've gone from 'thinking about' to 'clamouring at the bit' to start work on the next in the Alamo series. I've given myself a week off to think about it all properly, get everything arranged in my head, and more importantly to get the first of the beta readers' reports – which to my great relief continue to be pretty positive. Happy days indeed, though the biggest test, putting it on sale and seeing if it 'bites', remains to be seen. Currently that's some time in early June – pretty much boils down to incorporating feedback and the full proof read, though I've already worked out some of the howlers! Given that fighters form an important part of the next book, I've had to ponder them pretty heavily with regards to the setting. The priority – as ever – is keeping it realistic.

I think it boils down to three classifications of 'fighter'. The first of these is probably nearest to what we would classically consider a fighter – in that it is the atmospheric spaceplane. These are designed for upper-atmospheric interdiction, in an environment where you need fully-manned input. (Despite talk of drones, there is the constant danger of hacking. My thesis? Each 'fighter' has two-seats – the pilot and the swarm-jockey, the operator of a cloud of a dozen drones operated at close range from the fighter. Hacking the enemy's drones is as important as dogfighting him.) These probably have a good life-expectancy, because they are generally useful. You could base them on a planetary surface, and logically they would have that option, but they'd work better from a low-orbit space station. Or possibly a carrier; because if you were planning an invasion, this is where your control of the air comes into play. (In Triplanetary service, these are pretty rare, really. Mars might justify some, but the atmosphere isn't really dense enough. Titan's more likely to have some – Callisto won't.)

Then you have the interceptors. This brings to mind fast, sleek shapes, but in fact they have more resemblance to the Raptors from Battlestar Galactica. One pilot, three espatiers. Their job is to intercept small-to-medium ships and inspect them. The pilot gets you there, the espatiers conduct the inspection. These are going to be critical for enforcing blockades, and they can either be operated from space stations or again from carriers. Naturally, these will have weapon packages, and probably drones as well. (Sensibly, they would just operate drones. Realistically, they are going to have weapons of their own also, probably missiles.) These could be operated by a co-pilot, or by one of the espatiers – given that they are on board anyway. (This brings a new concept for a fire team – Sniper, Medic, Technician.) These again will probably be pretty common ships for a very long time, and could end up being the equivalent of a 'ship's boat' for smaller vessels as a side benefit. Everyone will have these in decent numbers. Probably the standard type of 'fighter'.

Finally, the shortest-lived classification – the bomber. Launched from carriers to deliver missiles to target. Now they have several different possible functions; they could 'tag' targets at close range, guiding in a cluster of larger missiles from other ships, operating a bit like the Pathfinders in World War II – helping have e-warfare countermeasures on the spot. As well as an instant 'abort' if necessary. These could drop bombs themselves, of course, either engaging space installations or enemy capital ships. The problem is that they are not very efficient. The only reason you would build them is if you are in some sort of emergency situation, and you need combat hulls in a hurry while larger capital ships are constructed. Given that the Interplanetary War came as a bit of a shock to both sides, I can actually see these being thrown together rather a lot in the early days, though increasingly obsolescent. Casualties and loss rates will be pretty high – think horse cavalry in World War I. That won't stop people trying to hold onto them, of course, and they might persist for a while. Again – all powers will have them. In decreasing numbers. Also – they would have a potential civilian market if converted to other uses, potentially orbital shuttles and the like. Designs would vary, but as I would expect them to carry drones, probably – but not necessarily – two-seaters. (They might make good training craft, potentially – another potential peacetime adaptation would be the two-seater trainer.)

To give an example of a Flight Group, the Battlecruiser Alamo is rated for the following:

3 Ship-To-Surface Shuttles (Capable of transporting an Espatier Squad)

6 Attack Craft (Interceptors/Fighters/Bombers)

1 Captain's Gig (Ceremonial Ship-to-Surface Shuttle, designed for the Captain and Aide)

Rules of the Road

I'm starting to seriously think about 'Not One Step Back' now, and one thing that is apparent is that the next book will be giving the FTL system a lot more of a serious workout. As a result, I decided to codify complete the 'rules' of the faster-than-light drive I'm using in what I think I have decided to call the 'Triplanetary' setting. First of all, above is a map of 'colonised space' as of 'Price of Admiralty', I'd meant to post it before, but this seems like an appropriate place for it. I'd like to thank the Internet Stellar Database for this one, and for the work I've been able to do for future books in the same series – it is a lot of fun to play around with that for a few hours, generating starmaps! (The map is made with 'yEditor', which I can also recommend.)

The map above focuses on worlds with permanent human presence, with the addition of Lalande 21185 (the setting for most of 'Price of Admiralty'). The bolded lines are systems with worlds inhabitable by humans; the dotted lines indicate a world that is marginally suitable for human habitation. For a little background – primarily, the interest is asteroid mining. The nature of FTL made it about as profitable to utilise asteroid belts around other stars as to exploit those around Sol, and during the era of the Interplanetary Wars, the Asteroid Belt was enough of a battleground to cause a lot of the big mining companies to move their operations to the stars. There has been little in the way of a systematic exploration of interstellar space at this point; all stars within one 'jump' of Sol have been visited, as well as most stars within two, but only a handful of further stars have been explored.

Proxima Centauri is the primary site for a lot of this mining, with Barnard's Star and Sirius also exploited – the former more for political reasons, the latter because the young star has some interesting exotic elements present in its asteroid belt. There are nascent colonies at Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani; at Epsilon Eridani II an event analogous to the oxygen revolution took place, and humanity got there early enough afterward that native life is still struggling to adapt – whilst Terran lifeforms are better suited to the environmental conditions, and are thriving. Tau Ceti IV is a water world, with a complicated native ecosystem; while humans can breathe the air and, with a little sterilizing, drink the water, all food must be grown. Long-term, Epsilon Eridani is regarded as the better prospect for colonisation. Both of these worlds were settled by the United Nations.

As for the drive itself; the Evans Drive was the result of a decades-long research program designed to find a way out of Sol System. The breakthrough was made at Cardiff University in 2087, a way to access hendecaspace, eleventh-dimensional space. The catch was that transition was only possible at points of gravitational stability – which effectively meant Trojan points. The bigger the better, as it turned out; Triton turned out to be around the low point for the planetary mass. (This gave Titan, Callisto and Triton accessible 'egress points'; the other Galilean moons technically have points, but Jupiter's radiation makes them out of bounds for humans.) Initially, travel took around three days for each light-year travelled, but rapidly refinements in calculating hendecaspace entry got that down to twenty-seven hours, which thus far has proven to be the fastest possible speed. The catch is that no more than a little over ten days can be spent in hendecaspace without the ship involved never coming out again – there are hundreds of theories on that, most focusing around a 'loss of dimensional stability'. This has equated to a limit of 9.1 light-years on trips made using the Evans Drive. Naturally, this is also extremely power intensive. As an example, the Thermopylae-class Battlecruiser carries sufficient Helium-3 to fuel three transitions, and takes roughly seven days to charge sufficient power in its SMES systems. Early ships were extremely limited in terms of tonnage, restricted essentially to small survey-ships, with a high risk factor; mastering the dimensional transition proved an extremely difficult task.

Four out of five of the alien races contacted are reported to use similar drive technology to that operated by humanity, though with different tricks – but all are extremely secretive regarding this technology, and have resisted any efforts to investigate their drives. Research is based largely on sensor data, as well as some reports from the few who have boarded their vessels. (The fifth alien race, encountered only once at Barnard's Star, used only STL-drive, operating large ships converted from asteroids. The Maktari were present in-system for nineteen months, only accepting limited contact, before returning to the stars having conducted mining operations in the outer parts of the system.)

While naturally work continues on refining the drive, progress was badly interrupted by the Interplanetary War; both sides targeted FTL researchers and installations, attempting to prevent the other side getting an advantage. Despite lagging significantly behind the United Nations originally, the Lunar Republic is now thought to be at the cutting-edge of technical research in this field, having offered safe haven to several key scientists during the war years.  

Kerbal, We Have A Problem

Well, the first two beta readers have reported in, I breathed a huge sigh of relief; they both liked it. Two down, four to go, but even so...I'm pretty pleased. Obviously there is a little shopping list of revisions I'm going to need to make, everything from simply typos to points that need stating a little more clearly, and a couple of character suggestions I think will really enhance the work – but in general, I'm satisfied thus far. The plan is – aside from a couple of bits and pieces – to basically put it on one side for a week at least. Then I'll spend a few hours putting all the changes into one document, and have a good long ponder and poke at the manuscript. Then the proof-reading (and thanks very much to me former job for giving me that skill – I used to be a demon) and then...I upload it onto Amazon. And see what happens next.

I must admit that I have felt very peculiar today, an odd sensation of feeling like I have forgotten something, like there is something I should be doing, but didn't. What I did do, however, was enact my own little version of Apollo 13, using the 'Kerbal Space Program'. This is a great little simulation that has become one of my greatest time-sinks – where effectively you build your own rockets and launch them on a variety of missions to moons, planets, or simply to orbit. It is possible to build space stations, probes – quite possible to operate your own complete space program. I've landed on several of the planets before, and trips to 'Mun' have become almost routine...but still some rather interesting things happen.

Today I decided to try an 'Apollo-style' mission, building a lunar lander and an orbiter, both launched on separate boosters, Ultimately, combined with refuelling tankers, my goal was to build a reusable interplanetary exploration vehicle that I could simply park in orbit when I wasn't using it, shuttling crews back and forth at will. The orbiter I named 'Daedalus', the lander 'Icarus'. By the time the mission was over I would have two more ship designs, neither of which I had planned. The first launches went very well – indeed, everything went completely according to plan. I found a couple of bugs in the Icarus design to change for future missions, but none of them were game-breakers, so I pushed on to a first Munar landing. Total success, and I returned to orbit, docking with the mothership. Pushing my luck a little, I then tried for a second landing, and it too was successful, one of the two crewmen getting out onto the surface for a spacewalk.

Then it went wrong. The automatic pilot fired, and with one man on the surface, started to launch. I got it back under control and brought the lander back down just half a kilometre away from the primary landing site, but this still presented a problem. There was now very little fuel left for the return...not enough as it happened. I barely scraped into orbit, a perigee of just twenty-nine kilometres. Fortunately the Mun has neither atmosphere nor high mountains. The orbiter, up at almost two hundred kilometres, didn't have the fuel for a rendezvous that far down. So two Kerbalnauts were stranded.

The solution – launch another ship! A rescue tug on the 'Daedalus' design, that I could pretty much use as is. The plan was to link up with 'Icarus', boost it to the correct orbit, and then transfer the two kerbalnauts across. Both ships could go home with their full crew complement. No problem. Daedalus II launched, made it to Munar orbit, closed for docking...and crashed into the lander. Both ships were fine, except that Daedalus II's rocket was destroyed. Now I had a real problem; I had to rescue six Kerbalnauts from Munar orbit. I contemplated building a capsule that could carry nine men, and dismissed it as impossibly heavy. The solution? Styx. An unmanned variant of the Daedalus that could fly itself to the remains of Daedalus II, pick up that crew, which could then complete the previous mission. Fortunately, this worked, though both ships were worryingly low on fuel by the time they got home.

This left another problem – a lot of space junk in odd orbits. This can actually cause difficulties with navigation, so I actually built a one-man capsule, 'Hermes', designed simply to deal with the trash. Surprisingly quite a lot of intricate maneovuering required to pull that off – it took two launches to complete the mission. Now, of course, I intend to have another go with the Daedalus vessels – there is another moon to reach yet, Minmus, and beyond that, the outer planets beckon...

First Draft Is Done!!!!

As I write this, well, frankly...I'm shattered. At around 1550 today I finished the first draft of 'Battlecruiser Alamo: Price of Admiralty'. Naturally it needs a lot of tweaks here and there – I haven't even done a proper proof-read yet – but on the first full skim-through I'm actually reasonably satisfied with it, which is a new feeling for me. Normally I hate my own work. Whether this is a good or bad thing remains to be seen, of course, and that's for the beta readers to tell me when they get back to me with their comments. That's likely to be a few days, so I'm going to do something that I probably need after twenty days at the grindstone – take a few days off! Of course, I'm already considering the next book in the series, which I will likely start working on before I've done the adjustments to the first. (I note that the draft ended up at 76,000; I suspect it will be nearer 80,000 after the tweaks. It was only a rough figure anyway.)

I learned a lot in the writing process. For a start, it confirmed my belief that I am what is termed as a 'discovery writer'. I don't do well when I am writing to an outline, and I think it is simply that once I write an outline, in my mind the story is 'finished' and I am less inclined to work on the grunt work of actually putting it on the page. I aimed to write this book in sixteen days, working on the principle of an average of 5,000 words a day, and I ended up finishing it in twenty days, working at 3,800 a day on average. I'd rather like to be moving a bit faster than that; there were a couple of days when I really flagged, and there were some other things that took up time, of course – but I probably could have made better use of the concentrated writing days I had. Paradoxically – next time I'm going to aim for a lower average and try and hit it – 4,500 words a day for eighteen days, aiming for about the same word length. Given that a lot of the setting building is done, and a lot of the guts of the primary characters have been fleshed out, it might go smoother this time. I'll have to see.

I very much like the universe I am working in; it's really beginning to feel 'home' to me, a comfortable environment. One key element that I hope I accomplished was to make it as realistic as possible given the subject matter – instead of 'unobtainium', it's nuclear fusion, the armaments are lasers and missiles. Instead of 'defensive shields' it boils down to electronic warfare and simply being in a place where the enemy weapons aren't. Gravity generated by rotation of a 'habitation ring' rather than a magic device. FTL is of course another matter entirely – but aside from making sure I have some consistent rules, that alone I have left as 'magic'. I hold out hopes that it will happen – but as I have said before, if I could come up with an FTL drive, I'd actually be at Proxima Centauri rather than just talking about it.

Now the waiting begins. Let's see what the beta readers say.

Three Chapters To Go

I called a halt a little early today to my work; only 2,500 words, but there was a reason – I've reached the chapter that is essentially the climax of the entire book. This one has to be a big deal, absolute and guaranteed, and I need to be at my best when I write it. It's going to be a long one, I think, a good four thousand words, and given that it is a continuous action piece the best course of action is to sit down and write it all in one go. Then two more chapters to tie up the last few loose ends, and I can get it sent off to my beta readers to see what they think. With a little luck, in two or three weeks time I'll be writing a triumphant blog post about its launch.

By which time, of course, I shall be hopefully well into writing the second book in the series, 'Not One Step Back', about which I am already thinking and taking notes...I pretty much have it at the same state now as I had 'Price of Admiralty' when I began that. (Incidentally, I'm pretty sure Alamo is going to end up at 78k or so on the draft, but my second drafts tend to lengthen rather than shorten. 82k is probably a good estimate of where it will finally end up. Of course, that also suggests that I will end up with another record writing session tomorrow, but I rather hope and expect that I will write a lot faster for the two concluding chapters than I have during the harder third-quarter of the book. (Every writer has his hard spot – therein lies mine. Far enough in that the initial excitement of a new project is gone, far enough from the end that it seems like a way off.)

Naturally there will be a blog post tomorrow, probably written when I am in a state of total exhaustion, talking about all the lessons I have learned getting this one done. It is something new to me in that this is the first novel I've been able to write in one go, with no real breaks or interruptions. I made at least some progress every day, though it wasn't quite a steady as I would have liked. Already pondering how I'm going to make those changes.

A few more books coming for next month's reading – which is going to be Early American Naval History. Not even the Civil War, earlier than that – the battles against the Barbary Pirates, the Quasi-War, the War of 1812, that sort of thing. A few bits and pieces are on their way so that I can get the entire month; as I finish each book I shall, naturally, review it for the blog. Really, I'm doing this because a large part of the setting for the Alamo books is heavily inspired on the early United States, and given that the books focus on the Triplanetary Fleet, where better to find ideas than the history of the time? I should have about a dozen books on the subject to get through over the course of the month. I think the Russian Civil War is likely to follow, but that's still up for decision – its as much a matter of what is interesting me at the time as anything else.

Of course – that is scheduled for the month of June, and there are still plenty of days remaining in this month, so in order to fill the gap I've decided to strengthen my knowledge of early-20^th century US military history a little, with biographies of Leonard Wood, Billy Mitchell, 'Black Jack' Pershing and Glenn Curtiss. All of these people have been on my 'to do' list for a while, with books sitting on my shelves ready to go, so I've decided to push ahead and read them as my research for the month. (Technically the Mitchell book is still on the way here, but it should be with me by the time I get to it. Suffice to say that I'll probably be doing that one last.)

All of these people were formative. Leonard Wood, aside from being Teddy Roosevelt's right-hand man in Cuba (probably putting it the other way round would be equally as accurate), was the first head of the Army not from the combat grades, and yet instrumental in preparing it for a modern war. That he was seriously pushed as the commander of the American Expeditionary Force in France in 1917 speaks volumes alone; the book I've chosen on him is 'Armed Progressive', by Jack C. Lane. General Pershing, of course, was the man chosen to fill that slot – another favoured by Roosevelt, promoted from Captain to Brigadier-General – something I doubt happens very often, somehow! His experiences during the First World War ought to be quite informative. For him I've chosen Smythe's 'Pershing – General of the Armies', which focuses on his Great War years. There is a previous volume 'Guerilla Warrior' that I couldn't get a copy of, but it's on my 'to find' list.

Then comes the flyers! Billy Mitchell I know best from the film 'The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell' the old Gary Cooper film, but he's basically the USAF's spiritual founding father, and an early advocate of strategic air power – as well as being the American Air Commander during the Great War. As controversial figures go, this one has them all. For him – I went for 'A Question of Loyalty' by Douglas Waller. I couldn't find a decent straight biography of the man, but the reviews I read suggest that this is close. Finally – Glenn Curtiss, another aviation pioneer that was instrumental in naval aviation in the United States – two sides of a coin, really. I know least about him...but he is figured as important, so I picked up 'Hero of the Air' by William Trimble, on the basis that the Naval Institute Press is usually pretty darn good. (I might augment that one with 'Two-Block Fox', a history of early carriers, if I end up waiting too long for Waller's book.)

A slightly lesser-known figure I decided to add at the last minute was Benjamin Foulois, whose claim to fame was that for a brief period - he was the entire United States Air Force! I stumbled across him when I was looking for a good Billy Mitchell book, and given that a good biography of him was available on the Air Force Historical website (the books their authors write are generally available as free PDF downloads - a nice touch) I decided to add him to the list. The book here is 'Foulois and the U.S. Army Air Corps. 1931-1935', by John F. Shiner.

Five books by the end of the month sounds reasonable enough to me as a start...not sure where to begin, but probably with Foulois. That way I can book-end with aviators!

Eurovision...

Tonight I engaged in one of my more favoured sports – Eurovision predictions. For the benefit of those fortunate not to know what I am on about, tonight was the night of the Eurovision Song Contest, an annual event where the combined nations of Europe get together to demonstrate that national bias is not dead. The primary problem is that as a result of the fall of the Iron Curtain, there are so many nations in the Baltic and Balkan regions that it swamps the vote; as it headed east into the Trans-Caucusus, a third little group emerged out there as well...the result being that usually the voting coalescences over a country from the Baltic, usually Scandinavia, one from the Balkans (generally a former part of Yugoslavia, not always the case though) and a former part of the Soviet Union.

Don't get me wrong, I actually enjoy the show...but a knowledge of geography, Eastern European History and recent patterns of immigration allows a prediction of how the votes will go that rather removes any need to actually watch the songs. Take tonight – Denmark won over a narrow win from Azerbaijan and the Ukraine, with Greece hot on their heels. Because the South-Eastern vote failed to narrow down on one or two countries, Denmark blasted through to a victory. The problem with this is simple – the United Kingdom, France, Germany and so on had the temerity to not break up into a dozen different nations over the last couple of decades. Put bluntly, there are fewer people to vote for us.

I can't help but think that this illustrates a problem with the concept of a directly-elected European President. If you want to see how such an election would go...well, Eurovision probably provides the best idea. It isn't particularly promising. It's all in good fun, though, and at some point we will win again. Even if we have to break up into England, Scotland, Wales, Ulster, and Cornwall to have any sort of a chance. Sounds like a good reason to me!!!

Thirty-One Years And Counting...

Well, today I celebrated by 31^st birthday by, well, goofing off a little! I had planned to put in a full day's work today, but it didn't happen. One chapter instead of two; still, three days solid work should see this first book done, and I reckon that isn't a small thing. I think I've pretty much decided not only that I'm going to immediately to the second Alamo book, but that I'm going to make it four and two. That isn't absolutely certain at this point, but I'm leaning that way. I already have the plot of the next one firming up in my mind, and I think I should probably take full advantage of that if I can. The current idea is that I take a few days off after finishing this one, then plough right into the second – you can be sure that I will chronicle this on my blog.

The Enterprise Experiment is coming to an end after two episodes. Last night I watched an episode where nothing happened. Literally. Some aliens had killed some other aliens, hooked them up to a machine to steal their precious bodily fluids (I dub them Ripperites) and the Enterprise crew...turned up. Had a look around, left, then Captain Archer – who seems to have decided that all decisions must take at least a day to make and have little basis in reason – turned around and started a Quincy-style investigation. Then the bad guys turned up, Doctor Thermian told him that humans had the same precious bodily fluids, and they cried for help to yet another alien ship which turned up. Sigh. There was some rubbish about a slug, and Ensign Sato learned a valuable life lesson while throwing gobblegook at an alien. (She apparently is better capable of translating previously unknown languages on the fly than a computer. Science!!!) So, that's that.

I will start another experiment shortly instead. Right now I'm in the middle of preparing for a new Labyrinth Lord campaign, starting in a couple of weeks time (I've been getting the itch to run again for a little while, and this is one that I haven't ever properly run) so that's occupying quite a bit of my 'not-writing' time...as is the Kerbal Space Program, about which more tomorrow, but once that's set up I'm going to start some researching. My library, as anyone who knows me will testify, is a bit bonkers. I have shelves on the history of spaceflight, on Early American Wars, on the Russian Civil War, on Polar Exploration, Roman History...it goes on like that. As part of my ongoing 'bring order to chaos' personal campaign, I intend to pick one topic a month and work on it. This will mean reviews for the blog, probably thoughts that I might write up in essay format...heck, I've wanted to have another go at that damn dissertation since I discovered the bloody thing. I'm a lot better writer and researcher now. I suppose, ten years on, I damn well should be, but I want to be a historian again. Been too long. (There is the possibility that a couple of books might come out of this as well – I've been wanting to write my 'history of the space race' for ages. And I don't think a good one-volume Russian Civil War has ever been written. I probably should learn Russian first for that though...which is on my to-do list, actually.)

Hmm...what else? I had a splendid birthday today, I should really flag that!!! A fantastic meal, great bundle of gifts, but more important than either of those the good wishes of a lot of great people. That's the main thing...in most ways, that's the only thing. I got to read the last Lost Fleet book – except that I hope it isn't the last. Detailed review to follow, but the gist is that it is a good book as part of a series, but doesn't really feel as if it caps off any of the ongoing threads that we really care about. I've been acting under the assumption that it is a trilogy, but I really hope that it isn't the case and there is another one – or possibly more than one – on the way. When I set out to write military science-fiction John Hemry/Jack Campbell was one of my big influences, I'll admit – the Lost Fleet books are my favourite milsf series of the last decade. Though I really should start those Kris Longknife books...I think a 'month of milsf' might be coming up at some point, though I intend to start with 'War of 1812...ish.' Probably.

The Promised Rant

Well, I suppose that yesterday I promised all of you good folks a rant about the first episode of Enterprise (yes, I did watch it) and I suppose I should deliver. So, we have an episode of Star Trek that essentially starts with a 22nd-century redneck shooting a Klingon with a 'plasma shotgun'. We find out in the process that all starships should be made out of the same metal that they use to build grain silos in the Midwest, as evidently even hyper-futuristic weapons are unable to penetrate them.

We have Captain Archer, who unfortunately seems to have seized the 'least convincing starship captain' award from Captain Janeway. He just doesn't seem credible, not at this point. Maybe it's because the plot leads him rather than the other way around, maybe because he just isn't sold to the audience as anything other than 'dead guy's son'. (Nepotism is obviously still alive and well in the 22nd-century; I guess they haven't managed to 'conquer' it yet.) T'Pol is working hard on filling the 'catsuit' requirement for all Starfleet bridges, with a side order of snark...her character development is entirely 'the script requires'.

As for the Star Trek universe – I think if I'd come across Vulcans being as smart-arse as this lot, I'd be wanting to knock them down too. A 'thanks but no thanks' was probably appropriate at this point – and this is a huge missed opportunity, as a story based on the politics of aid with Earth as the galactic equivalent of a Third World country receiving handouts from the 'West' would have been really interesting, and totally relevant to today...which is, I thought, what Star Trek was supposed to be all about?

The other characters...well, I actually liked Tucker, Mayweather, Sato and Reed. As 'people behind consoles' they seemed to work rather well. I have a horrible feeling that for the last three, that's about the last we're going to see of their characters, but I suppose time will tell. Dr. Phlox...god. I don't care what they call his species, he's playing a damn Thermian from Galaxy Quest. Hopefully that's going to change at some point, though I guess I have a horrible feeling that it won't.

And yet...this is not the end of the story. Because I actually rather liked the plot; I thought it held together pretty well, introduced the series pretty well, and I don't mind the idea of the 'Temporal Cold War' as a good excuse for some interesting stories and to excuse any ret-cons that they end up doing over the course of the series; that's fine with me. It's pretty obvious at this point that the plan was to do some Temporal War stuff, move into the Romulan War, and then form the Federation in the last season...that would have been a good arc to watch. Pity it never happened, but I suppose there is the relaunch to enjoy.

I'm going to carry on with this. No more reviews of individual episodes, probably, but I'm going to do each season when I complete it. I have thoughts about Enterprise now, but you know what – they are probably far too heavily tied into what I've heard on the net about the show, and that's unfair as well. I'm going to judge this one on its own merits.

Star Trek III: Nimoy's Revenge

I suppose I've put this one off long enough; my move to praise Star Trek III as being a better film than Star Trek II. Sit back, because this is going to be a good one. I will start my admitting that technically, in terms of direction and the like, II is a better film. It's a big flashy space opera with larger than life villains, deep explorations into what it is to grow old, the dealing with life and death, all the grand, amazing themes that resonate through, topped of with some half-decent science – and far too often, science is only a passing acquaintance of science-fiction films.

And yet...Star Trek III gives us some of the greatest, most dramatic moments ever seen in a Star Trek movie. It certainly gives us some of the best performances of any Star Trek movie before or since, and they can be broken down into a few key moments – because this movie, far from being a massive crescendo, has just a few scenes that make the whole thing truly shine.

1: The Death of David. Yes, Merritt Butrick is not great in this role, but by then – his character is dead, so it doesn't matter. It all boils down to one moment, and that is simple – Kirk falling on the deck, defeated. The instinctive reaction to collapse into his command chair, and he misses and stumbles onto the ground. William Shatner said in interviews that it was a glorious accident, but I don't believe that for a second. It says everything about the vulnerability of the character, and is a perfect metaphor for the situation.

2: Stealing the Enterprise. Eight and a half minutes from Starfleet officers to outlaws, and they all know exactly what they are doing and what it is going to cost them, and they don't care because it is all worth it to save their friend. The actors may have had their differences in real life, but none of that shows here as they all weigh in. Not to mention Uhura's moment with 'Mr. Adventure', which is so obviously just written in to give Nichelle Nichols something to do in this movie, but she does it so well that no-one watching cares. The Enterprise flying off while the new Excelsior breaks down...who isn't cheering that old ship onto one last mission.

3: Blowing up the Enterprise. OK, Spock's dead, so Saavik becomes Science Officer and they start some new adventures. Blow up the Enterprise? The eighth character? And again...there is a mourning process. That Montgomery Scott has to blow up his own ship is an amazing moment. Yes, I know that there are a lot of other canon ways to do this, I know that there were other options on the table, but the scene still works as a glorious sacrifice on Kirk's part to atone for the death of his son. That he gets to blow up a bunch of Klingons is just a side-line... (The novelisation has Kruge watching this, admitting that he has been beaten by Kirk, even though he things Kirk has died...that should have been in the movie. Good moment.)

4: Returning Spock to his body. Bye, bye, science, but who misses it at this point! We're already deep into metaphysics at this point, real physics long gone. But this whole scene is a fantastic moment, well played by a good actor, and Leonard Nimoy has an excellent scene here as well, played well.

5: The Bar Scene. There are hives of scum and villany in the Trekiverse? Cool. (Not a great scene, but when you watch it...it's pretty much the first time anyone's admitted that such things exist in the Federation at all. Makes it all rather more real.)

There are an awful lot of things wrong with this film, and I won't deny it. On technical grounds, it works far less well, but – Star Trek II was a great movie. Star Trek III is a better Star Trek movie. Because you could make Star Trek II as a 'generic' military SF movie, with very different characters, and it would still work as a movie. I find it totally impossible to see Star Trek III as anything other than what it is. It goes deep into the heart of the 'family', the core of what Star Trek was about. And hell, where no man? Spock went into death to look around. Beat that.

So, the ratings:

1: Star Trek III

2: Star Trek II

3: Star Trek I

It's not going to remain in this order for long. (My impassioned defence of Star Trek V as the best movie will have to wait until I get hold of some hallucinogens, I suspect.) Then the next point...there is a Star Trek series I have never really watched. Just the odd episode here and there...Enterprise. I actually thought that it was a really good concept, but the execution threw me off when I first watched it. So here's what I'm going to do. I already have the DVDs sitting on my shelf gathering dust, so why not break them out. One episode a night until I'm done, and then – if I enjoyed it sufficiently – I pick up the books and try them. (Not influenced at all by the fact that they've got Christopher L. Bennett writing in that line now, and he's pretty much my favourite Trek author.) My book review plans are iffy...I've pretty much decided to review them if I have something to say about them...but I will do reviews of each season of Enterprise, any books I read, and any individual episodes that pique my interest. Expect a rant tomorrow.

An interesting dilemma

So – I have an interesting quandary to ponder as I close in on the two-thirds mark of the first of the Battlecruiser Alamo books. I'm really enjoying writing it (oh no, what a total disaster) to the point that I am seriously beginning to consider starting the second in the series, 'Not One Step Back' (which was originally supposed to be the first, but hey, these things happen) pretty much as soon as I have finished the redraft on the first, probably around the start of next month. The trouble is that I'm slated to be working on 'Warlords of Hyperborea' next, a sword and sorcery fantasy novel, and the first in its series. My plan for the first six months of what I am really hoping will be a long writing career is to write three of the 'Alamo' books and three 'Hyperborea' books, alternating month on month, the idea being to build interest in both lines. Ultimately, my intention is to have three series going at the same time, preferably in different genres, largely so as not to swamp my series. If I'm doing three or four a quarter (because I am also planning to do a few stand-alones as well) then there's less chance of overloading the series with books.

The catch is this; Alamo – almost without my input, because it is really moving ahead by itself story-wise now in a strange way – has a long arc of its own that I rather want to get on with! The first book, as well as being a good story in its own right (at least, I certainly hope so!) introduces the setting and sets up a few of the long-term character arcs, as well as some hints of what is to come in the further exploration of the setting, but there are books that – according to the current plan – are three years away that I'm looking forward to getting to, and I have a vague idea of where things are four years down the road...and that's a lot of books! I'm beginning to really get to like some of these characters, largely because they are surprising me so much as I write them. (And to be fair – my new goal is to sell well enough to get this on the screen. Because some of this stuff would look really nice. I wrote one scene today that sounds totally implausible but in fact is drawn totally from life. That's as far as it gets with a spoiler.)

Hyperborea, however, is drawing me as well. That's a grand sword and sorcery setting in the old tradition, to the point that 'Warlords' isn't even one book; it's some long novellas and short stories, a collection in the style of the old Conan collections I love so much. As soon as I finish 'Admiralty', then I start re-reading some of those (at least, once I have read 'Guardian', the last of the Lost Fleet books) and don't think I'm not greatly looking forward to that! I pretty much know the setting, it's all in my head (I suppose I should take notes, but I don't seem to be very good at that. With Alamo I have frighteningly little down on paper) and the plots for the first dozen or so stories are essentially ready to go. I have a horrible feeling that I will be writing an analogous blog post in about a month from now, debating with myself whether I should return to Alamo or carry on with Hyperborea.

I think it's a question fundamentally of discipline. Its taken me a while, but I'm pretty much heading to a five thousand word a day standard, which isn't bad; I'd like to get to six or seven at some point, but five means a complete book in sixteen days – so half a month to write, half a month to prepare, basically. The last bridge I have to cross is pushing myself to write certain books at certain times, to make sure that I have that one book every month that I feel is an essential, especially if I'm going to be doing this full-time, and to make sure that my release schedule is balanced. Of course, dear readers, your book purchases could decide all of this for me; if they are stretched one way or the other then it will be hard to resist the temptation to focus more tightly on one side, or perhaps try something else entirely. I have a spy/action thriller set in the Russian Civil War in the pipeline as a potential third series, and I'm pondering a series set in Ancient Rome at some point, but both of those will require me to seriously crack into my shelves. Not something I have a problem with, per se, but these aren't the series I'm ready to write now.

All I know at the moment, then, after all of that, is this – fingers crossed the first Alamo will be on the cyber-shelves sometime in the first week of June. What comes after it at the start of July is rather more in the lap of the gods. I hope that one of them tells me!

What a Wonderful Space

Folks, we live in a world where this is real. That is a truly amazing thing.

And what is coming up over the next few years is just as amazing. In two years from now, New Horizons flies past Pluto and its moons, giving us our first close-up look at a Kuiper Belt object, and that promises to provide a major step forward for planetology. Within the same time-frame, the first suborbital tourist flights will have taken place, bringing the stars just a little bit closer for all of us. The Rosetta probe is about to conduct the closest ever examination of a comet in November next year, and that should provide us with a lot of interesting information about a critical part of our solar system.

Within the decade, private companies will be opening up access to space, at a fraction of the cost of anything NASA provided. Don't get me wrong – I loved Shuttle, it was a magnificent creation, but in my opinion it was a huge mis-step. If those funds had gone to keeping the Apollo/Saturn production lines open, then we'd have something at a cost comparable to Soyuz, but capable of a much wider range of capabilities. Never mind, we're getting them back again; SpaceX is slated to have its heavy-lift booster well within the decade, as well as its manned missions, and Boeing's running along similar lines. ISS is scheduled to be retired in 2020...but will it?

The Russians are already considering detaching their elements with a new core module to create a new space station specifically intended to service longer-ranged exploratory missions – the Moon and Mars. It's quite true that some elements of Station will be showing their age by then, heck, some of them are now, as the recent ammonia leak suggests. Other modules are a lot newer, though – even if the Station itself is abandoned and de-orbited, I can certainly see the Russian idea adopted for other modules, maybe even for Space Station II. (Launched by private companies, most likely, but it's going to happen. Probably with a four-star-hotel module, but it'll happen.)

We're in a period analogous to the gap between Apollo and Shuttle. Soyuz is beginning to show its age a little, but a recent upgrade seems to be going well, and it isn't as if they're reusing the modules. (Side bet – once private manned space kicks in, someone will licence Soyuz. The Russians would likely go for it if the money could be used to finance their next-generation capsule, whatever they are calling it this week.)

My predictions for 2020 in space?

• At least two space stations in orbit. (Out of three possibles – ISS, Chinese, Commercial. I wouldn't rule out the Russian OPSEK just yet, but it's very dependent on what happens with the Space Station Consortium.)
• A return to lunar orbit, probably as a tourist flight. (A bit risky this one, but within the limits of the hardware.)
• Private manned space flights that are not government-sponsored. (Corporate research, tourism, lots of possibles here. Unlikely a monopoly on space will last very long.)
• No manned landing on Mars. (Disappointing...but practical. We could do it – and I'm an optimist who expects it by 2030. The technology will be there by then in spades.)

Pick Up Your Rubbish!!!!

I have to admit that today I didn't make much progress with the book; a bare handful of words to at least register some forward motion for the day, because instead I spent the day in one of my local parks on a litter-picking and plant removal exercise. This work badly needed doing; an area usually closed off to the general public was full of junk, some of it quite odd (a cow pelvis, bundle of unread bank statements, something strange that was oozing...) Now, I don't mind spending the day doing work like this...

...actually, I tell a lie, I do. Not because I resent having to work, not because I have any problem spending the day cleaning up a park, but because a lot of it was completely unnecessary if people were not so disgusting. For me, a public park, a green space, is something to be cherished and protected, but too many people seem to view it as their own personal dustbin. We took out two dozen bags from a not-that-large space, mostly cans and plastic bags of one sort or another – do people think that these will just evaporate or be picked up by the rubbish fairy at some point?

There is enough pressure on most of these places as it is without thoughtless people adding more. For heaven's sake, if you are walking out in a park, and you finish your drink, look around for a dustbin rather than simply dropping it on the ground. Have a consideration for the other people that use the park, that prefer to see a nice green area to enjoy, but more than that, have some thought for the animals that use the park, and for the plants that grow in it, for in a city the environments they can use are few and far between as it is.

Vulcanoids and the War of 1812

This morning I woke up to find a sack full of books – yes, a sack – waiting for me on my doorstep; a package of books I ordered a few weeks ago from the States that had finally arrived. These are next on my list to read; as well as being on topics that are of interest to me, all of them should be useful as research for the Battlecruiser Alamo series. Yes, I will be reviewing them on the blog as I get through them. As it happens, I just finished the Rawnsley book, so I should be getting onto these shortly, though I did start a reread of Bagnall's 'Commodore: A Company on the Edge', a very interesting book about the rise and fall of the Commodore computer company. There'll be quite a few books coming in the near future; I just traded in for a nice big Amazon voucher, and since reading my dissertation again, my old interest in the War of 1812 has been sparked to the point that I may well pick up a few the books in the bibliography to take another look at.

I've always liked small wars as sources of inspiration for books; the Great Lakes are a great example of this, almost being a war in microcosm. The range of literature is usually such that it is possible to become familiar with much of the material, allowing you to look at the whole war in full context; context, as ever, is absolutely key. When looking at larger conflicts – World War II, the Civil War, the Napoleonic War, for example, the tendency is to focus on one area of the war to the exclusion of others, and when the whole range is encompassed, the problem is that too much has to be compressed, too much is left out for reasons of space and time. With smaller wars, all the different spheres can be looked at – political, economic, strategic, technological, tactical – all of them are easier to fit into their proper place. Which means that if one is basing a conflict on, say, the War of 1812, or the Quasi-War, it is a lot easier to get a 'complete' sense of how the war works, to bring a sense of reality to the work. I reckon this is vital.

Having said that, there also remains the 'cool idea' requirement. There have to be some elements to hook the reader, and when it comes to science-fiction, there is a huge range of sources to choose from, to the point that it really boils down to the 'random luck' element. It's almost impossible to seek out the 'cool idea', but it is certainly possible to learn to recognise them if they turn up; this is why so many authors have notebooks stuffed into their pockets, after all. These should not really be the focus of the plot, having said that; what these provide is the window dressing that makes the reader stop for a moment. The element that they will remember in a year's time (when they are wondering if there is a sequel, hopefully.)

I'll give you an example – something that actually isn't going in 'Price of Admiralty' but will be in the sequel 'Not One Step Back'. A few years ago, I was reading 'The Hunt for Planet X', a book discussing the discovery of new objects in the solar system, with an emphasis on the Kuiper Belt (another one of my little pet interests), but also covering the hunt for such objects as Vulcanoids – asteroids that theoretically might exist inside the orbit of Mercury. The best part is that one of the key projects to locate them was done from the back seat of an F-18 – yes, astronomy done from the back of a fighter jet. Scientific fighter pilots. You can bet I'm going to use that one!

Review: The Age of Invincible

Well, I'll start this off by stating that I actually finished this one a few days ago, and am currently ploughing through Andrew Rawnsley's 'The End of the Party', an excellent account of the second and third terms of the last Labour Government. I've got about a hundred pages to go – it is an extremely long book, more than eight hundred pages – and I'll be sure to put out a review when I'm done. Also some celebrating as I pass the half-way point; the last few days have been rather all over the place, slowing my progress a bit, but after the weekend I hope to return to the writing pace I was making earlier in the month. Still, half a novel in ten days ain't bad!

Back to the book at hand, though. Ostensibly, this book discusses HMS Invincible, and to a lesser extent her sister ships, which from the mid-1980s until today have been the only aircraft carriers in the Royal Navy. There is plenty of information about the ships and their deployments...but the context is not from an engineering standpoint, but rather from a political one – which, I should clarify, is exactly what I expected and wanted when I bought the book in the first place. I always intended it primarily as research for the 'Alamo' series.

Essentially, the one common assessment – for right or wrong – that has suggested the strength of a navy since the Second World War has been the presence of aircraft carriers. During the war, especially in the Pacific, the aircraft carrier was the iconic heart of the fleet; the battleships that had been expected to serve in that function found themselves of only limited use, technology having moved rapidly ahead of them – more rapidly than the steel for their construction could be cut.

The United States – despite some surprising early questions – was always destined to end up with a substantial carrier force, and throughout the Cold War maintained a significant fleet. It fell in numbers somewhat, but the individual carriers increased in size and complexity as the decades went on. Their fleet set a numerical standard for others to match, but by the 1960s, most of the nations that had adopted carrier aviation were beginning to drop out, either officially or on a practical basis. The Soviet Union never really treated it seriously; their carriers were designed for very specific functions related more to fleet protection than to power projection, the primary role for carriers in the Western world at that time.

Basically – when the time came for the British Government to build new carriers to replace the worn-out ones that had been constructed during World War II, they balked at the price, and instead moved to adopt a strategy of using 'island bases' around the world to project power and to protect the Royal Navy at sea. (The problems inherent in such a strategy would be obvious in the Falklands, where it took a titanic effort to simply drop a few bombs on a runway at Port Stanley.) The edict came down – no new aircraft carriers to be constructed.

This was not the end, however, and instead – as this book ably shows – the Royal Navy essentially had to sneak aircraft carrier capability through the back door. The concept of the 'through-deck cruiser' was created, a vessel that was designed to operate helicopters...but which with some inexpensive modifications could also operate VTOL aircraft. Which the British just happened to be the best in the world at making. (You can tell when a non-American plane is really good; the Americans buy it! That doesn't happen if there is any realistic alternative...but it happened for the Harrier.)

So the three 'Invincibles' were born, though they went through numerous funding and political crises – to the point that Invincible herself was offered to Australia as a replacement for its carrier, going out of service – just prior to the Falklands. That war prevented the sale of HMS Invincible, of course, and saw that the Royal Navy would have a brief resurgence in funding to keep it going past the tender mercies of John Nott...though now it faces a similar problem. (Well chronicled, though of course with the story not yet completed, in the same author's work 'Britain's Future Navy'.)

This book presents the political arguments well; there is an obvious bias in favour of the Navy in these pages, but the author doesn't tend to let it get in they way – well, not too much, anyway. The spectre of the feast of the full-size carrier that was cancelled prior to the design of Invincible is present throughout most of the book, and though the author has an obvious regard for the ships, there is a general 'what if...' wistful air on occasion. Very much well worth a read, though, and certainly recommended.