Humanity’s first contact with an alien civilization. Only, there are no real humans for five billion miles. Are there?
Following the release of Orb Station Zero, I’m now writing a prequel novella about the first contact between humanity and the alien Orb. Almost finished the first draft and I hope the editing and rewriting won’t take too long (I always hope that. One day, it will turn out to be true!).
I’m really happy to be writing this, it’s been on my mind for about a decade now. I originally planned it as a Proper Novel, you know, something huge and mighty and extremely deep and meaningful. Perhaps, I thought, I shall compose this Great Work later in my life when I have cultivated my craft, honed it to the bleeding edge. This will be my Magnum Opus. But I’m old now, old as hell, in my mid-thirties so I’m just gonna bang it out instead.
I realised years ago that a few of my great scifi book ideas I had in the pages of my story ideas notebook would work really well together, as a series or at least take place in the same continuity. This one was going to be the first or second of them – and it still is, in terms of the story chronology. It features the first crewed mission to the outer solar system to make contact with the vast alien space station that is inviting us to go to there. It takes a long time to get all the way out beyond Neptune, almost two decades and the story is about how the crew deal with the consequences of a disaster than almost destroys the ship and cuts off all contact with Mission Control. And the crew are a pretty special bunch.
The chronologically second story in the sequence will be another prequel to Orb Station Zero. It’s like a scifi version Jean Claude Van Damme’s classic movie Bloodsport, only with less dick punches (maybe, no promises though). Not really. It’s more like a cross between the first ever Ultimate Fighting Champion tournament and… Apocalypse Now. I dunno, anyway, you’ll love it, honest.
These novella length prequels will fill in the early timeline to the story and hopefully help to bring more people into the series. Writing shorter than novel length fiction sounds pretty easy – you write say 25,000 words a lot quicker than 100,000 words. But you also have to make sure the story is structured correctly and you can’t get away with any bloated sections. Every word should count. Or at least, say, 75% of them. I’m trying to keep this prequel short but the truth is, it keeps getting longer. There’s so much to explain, so much to talk about. Oh man, why did I think I could explore what it means to be human in under a hundred pages?
Anyway, the first full length sequel to Orb Station Zero is a space marines squad / fighter pilot kind of scale military scifi story. That’s the one everyone will be rooting for after the ending of the first novel, so I need to get stuck into that asap. I have everything high level worked out, I think, I just want to prepare for this next one with military precision before I launch into it.
The sequel after that one, well, that’s going to be awesome too. Think sort of scifi post-apocalyptic. Plenty of time to get into that.
I’m itching to write all of these, I’ve been thinking about them so long I think I will be able to do it quickly.
What kind of scifi story do you like best? Action adventure? Military? Space Marine or Spaceship variety? Or more contemplative and cerebral? Let me know in the comments!
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Rama Seti didn’t exactly volunteer. His head was cut off and grafted onto the body of an 8ft tall, genetically engineered super soldier and then blasted into the outer Sol System. After all, someone has to battle the giant alien warrior and decide the fate of humanity.
It appeared beyond the orbit of Neptune. An alien space station, a threat to the Sol System and a gateway to the galactic wormhole network. For a century, humanity has sent a champion to fight for our future. Every one of our finest heroes was torn to shreds. This is our final chance.
First, Rama must survive four billion miles in the UNOPS Victory, training with the deadliest genetically engineered Marines, soldiers, fighters and killers the world has ever known. And each of them means to be the savior of humanity.
If you enjoyed Ender’s Game, Starship Troopers and Old Man’s War, you’ll love Orb Station Zero, the first in a new military science fiction series.