I noted with interest a few weeks ago that astronomers think they have discovered a potentially habitable planet in orbit around Proxima Centauri, the smallest star of the Alpha system (and the nearest star to Earth)…
Of course, in my fictional Centauran system, the habitable planet orbits Alpha Centauri B, but I can’t help feeling that I’ve passed some sort of test as a science fiction writer, by making a prediction that has turned out to be true!
There have been been intelligent beings placed in the Alpha Centauri system before (the Centaurans in the ‘90’s SF television series Babylon 5 spring to mind), but there’s never been serious speculation about such a planet been located so close in the real world!
A Children’s Crusade (indeed all of the trilogy novels), can be viewed as a series of short stories that just happen (when read together) to make up a novel…
The origin of the series was, it must be remembered, a SF story that I submitted (unsuccessfully) to Analog magazine; and the work exists in two forms: a series of short stories, and a novel of twenty two chapters!
The number of chapters is significant; twenty two (or so it appeared to me) was the average number of episodes making up a typical season of American television drama, and Lights in the sky was conceived from the start with adaptation in mind!
So far, I have written one screenplay, a pilot episode for the series, which will soon be available on this website.
Ironically, it needed two chapters worth of material to produce one screenplay of just under forty minutes; the minimum needed to fill one standard hour-long slot on American television.
So I guess that’s a half season then!