Although the novel would return the Titan crew to their journeys of exploration, they would still be dealing with their grief at the losses they and their civilization sustained. One thing that OaTS had to do was to follow up on David Mack’s Destiny trilogy, which brought great upheaval and destruction to the Federation. I found Over a Torrent Sea elsewhere in the same source poem, Shelley’s “The Cloud.” I still got to use the “daughter of earth and water” line, though, since its stanza made a perfect epigraph. The title wouldn’t fit, though, since Aili’s not a daughter of Earth. So I finally got to do a version of Daughter of Earth and Water after all. So he suggested expanding the B plot to full novel length - with the A plot to be saved for a later novel, perhaps TTN, perhaps something else. The thing was, though Marco didn’t dislike the A plot, every time it came to the fore he found himself impatient to get back to Droplet. I reworked the plot of Daughter with Aili Lavena as the lead and trimmed it down to subplot length - although I changed the dolphinlike aliens of Daughter to something more exotic. So this idea was on my mind when I was fishing (ha ha) for a pure-exploration B plot to my TTN novel. I realized that an Ocean Planet was the closest I could get to Droplet. It wouldn’t be a world of nearly pure liquid like I wanted, but that would be impossible anyway, since the water would be compressed to exotic high-temperature ices past a relatively shallow depth. Then I learned about the concept of an Ocean Planet, a newly theorized category of world made largely of water - essentially a Neptune-type planet without its hydrogen atmosphere. Over time, the idea got pushed to the back of my mind, something I hoped to revisit someday but had no serious plans for. But I could never really get that idea to work out plausibly. This was when I changed Archipel to Droplet. Over the years, I tried to rework it, and the Voyager episode “Thirty Days” inspired me to try to come up with a way a planet consisting almost purely of water could arise naturally and support life. But over time, I realized the story was too basic, the environment wasn’t exotic enough, and the plot was based on some outmoded ideas. Years ago, I had written a spec novel called Daughter of Earth and Water, involving the exploration of a world of ocean and islands called Archipel, a world I created a rich biosphere for. As I often do, I decided to cannibalize an old, unsold idea. So I wanted a pure-exploration subplot, ideally different in tone from the grand interstellar quest of Orion’s Hounds. The thing was, this would’ve been a revisit of something we’ve seen before in ST, and I feel TTN should be about discovering the new. Marco suggested doing a TTN proposal around the topic. After finishing Greater Than the Sum, I let Marco know I was available, and mentioned a particular topic I was interested in exploring. “It’s the kind of science fiction storytelling that Star Trek books don’t often do… a solid return to form for the Titan series.” - Steve Roby, Starfleet Library.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |