Sometimes you convince yourself that you’ve reached the end of something only to find you haven’t. This has happened several times with Lights in the sky, which started life as a short story, submitted (unsuccessfully) to Analog magazine, became a novel, grew into a trilogy and over the past few years has become a septet…
Well, it’s happened again…
I was always conscious that I needed to tell the story of various minor (and not so minor) characters introduced at various points during the series arc, and have found many ingenious ways of doing this. The story of Klara, the original self-aware automaton, and thus the prototype for all the nursemaids on Alpha 5, was to have been accommodated as a parallel narrative within …when you wish upon a star, which otherwise concerns itself with the story of the original Marta on Earth.
I’d written five ‘interludes’, telling Klara’s story from inception in the Alpha Mission laboratory of Dr Helen Choi, right through to her demise at the hands of a marauding band of Camposetta irregulars, more than half a century later. But when it came to it, this felt unsatisfactory, an unnecessarily perfunctory end for a much-loved character, however shocking in its brutal suddenness it might have been.
The solution was obvious; Klara will get her own book and so her future existence, beyond the confines of …when you wish upon a star, can be fully explored.
As usual the source material for the character’s future arc is to be found in the character’s thoughts, beliefs and actions. Without wishing to give anything away about a work in progress, it will become clear that her subsequent actions are entirely consistent with what we already know about her in the four chapters that currently exist.
The provisional title of the eighth book in the series is Klara, but this may change, and work on it will commence in earnest once the current novel is completed
Back in the increasingly surrealistic ‘real world’, it is clear neither Brexit nor the Pandemic will be resolved soon. We exist in the same curious but fevered state, swinging between fearing the worst, while seizing on the smallest crumb of comfort in the media that reassures us that things might not be quite as bad as anticipated.
As ever, COVID-19 is the great unknown; we just don’t know nearly enough about the virus that causes it to predict its long-term effects on our society, economy and personal well-being. We don’t even know for sure how many people have been infected, as the vast majority of cases appear to be asymptomatic, which makes a reliable estimate of the death rate from Coronavirus extremely difficult. We have no idea when (or if) it will mutate and whether this will make it more or less dangerous, though evidence from previous pandemics would appear to suggest that the ‘second wave’ will be worse than the first. Whether being asymptomatic the first time round will protect people from future infection, is again unknown, as is whether any of the dozens of potential vaccines currently being developed around the world will even be partially-effective.
This uncertainty is corrosive of our institutions whether they be commercial, political, artistic or sporting, and the long term implications of all of this can only emerge over time.
Brexit, by contrast, is more straightforward, as it becomes clearer by the day how damaging, short-sighted, irrational and essentially masochistic this whole enterprise is. I note that highly skilled and qualified people are already voting with their feet and choosing to relocate to countries within the Eurozone. They will presumably be followed by the flight of capital, as the wealthy (who are, of course, in possession of more than one passport) begin to remove themselves and their wealth from poor old Blighty, once the shit really begins to hit the fan. Ironically, the Brexit-supporting amongst them may be forced by deteriorating conditions in the United States, to relocate to Europe, of all places, where they will presumably continue to either, assure the rest of us that everything is going swimmingly, or blame us for the fact that it’s not. To quote an anonymous ballad sung by British soldiers in the Great War,

It’s the same the whole world over.
It’s the poor wot get’s the blame,
It’s the rich wot get’s the gravy,
Ain’t it all a bleeding shame?

The transformation of Kent into one huge lorry park, the end of most foreign travel, and shortages of food and essential medicines in the New Year are likely to be only the start…
But, of course, things may all turn out for the better…

The Author August 2020