As I’ve probably already said, I understood from the start that I would write only one extended work of science fiction. A prequel (or should that be sequel) to Lights in the sky is underway, but although the Alpha Mission looms large in the background, the new novel is already taking a somewhat magic realist turn! So far I’ve only got provisional titles (it was going to be the The World we left behind, but now the ‘left-behind’ or possibly ‘the left-over World’ are under consideration). One decision I have made is that I will write it under my mainstream nom de plume, Stephen Clare…
I think it’s important to try and articulate why I’ve written the trilogy and where the inspiration came from. The original inspiration is actually a nonfiction work, Brian Aldiss’ history of science fiction, Billion Year Spree (later published in a revised and expanded edition as Trillion Year Spree co-authored with David Wingrove), which I essentially used as the syllabus, if you like, of my own self-guided study of SF and related literature. Of course, like all generalisations this is an oversimplification! I started reading SF and other forms of imaginative literature well before I came across a dog-eared copy of Aldiss’ SF history in an East London second hand bookshop; but if you go through the book, all the fictional inspirations for LITS are there. So, Mr Aldiss, I am forever in your debt!
I’ve getting ahead of myself recently; the reason being that as I prepare more chapters of A Children’s Crusade (a Kurt Vonnegut reference!) for publication on this website, the inspiration for specific passages and episodes within the novel become apparent!
For example, I specifically reference William Blake in a future chapter by the simple expedient of having the protagonist, Marta Fernandes, study the great London mystic as part of her continuing education. Like the rest of the Children, Marta starts by resenting having to study such an apparently irrelevant subject as English Literature, but unlike the rest she ends up drawing parallels between her rather strange existence and subject matter of one of the Songs of Innocence and Experience, The Sick Rose.
Later references include Lewis Carroll (from Alice’s Adventures underground), and in the same chapter, the rather obvious debt I owe to the writings of Philip K Dick…
Both, of course, feature in Billion Year Spree…