Colony – Lights In The Sky

Be careful what you wish for

By C Stevens | 4th January 2022 | Comments 0 Comment

Lights in the Sky began as a series anticipating an environmental catastrophe known as ‘The Collapse’, which leads to a general breakdown of science, civil society and nation states, resulting in the reduction of Earth’s human population to roughly one third of what it is today. I pushed my environmental catastrophe back to the beginning of the twenty second century (something which looks naively optimistic from our standpoint in 2022), I also invented a grand project, the Alpha Mission which is able to send a Probe to our nearest neighbour in interstellar space, the Alpha Centauri system. Conveniently, (for this is fiction, after all) the Probe finds the perfect Earth-like planet in orbit around Alpha Centauri A, one of the three stars that make up the system, effects a landfall and uses its autonomic resources to build a base. The artificial intelligence which controls the Mission is then able to bring its human colonists into existence.

Now before you accuse me of bandwagon jumping, I wrote the original short story that opens the series (then called Light-out) somewhere between the end of 2012 and beginning of 2013. I know this because I submitted the first draft of the story (without success) to Analog Science Fact and Fiction magazine on 20th April 2013. Many of the themes and concerns explored in the subsequent series of novels were not well known outside of SF circles, nor were they part of general public discourse at this point in our history. Few, for example, had heard of Elon Musk or SpaceX, that came later.

The Lights in the Sky series now stretches to seven completed novels, number eight (now retitled, hopefully for the last time, The Robot’s Progress) is nearing completion, and number nine (currently called Earthrise) is already underway.

I didn’t get everything right; for example, I didn’t anticipate a worldwide pandemic striking the planet in 2019/20; and, as mentioned previously, I have my breakdown of civilisation occurring at the beginning of the next century, when the middle of this one is now looking favourite. I was also unaware of the impact our rapidly diminishing groundwater reserves will have on the capacity of the world to feed its current population, let alone what is predicted.

But by and large, I think I did pretty well…

The notion that we should be seriously seeking a lifeboat for humanity in the form of a colony on a habitable world elsewhere, while a commonplace in SF circles, was not yet part of the zeitgeist. My version of the future sees a vast shadowy international body (the Alpha Project), funded by various governments, doing the heavy lifting, mainly because I had not anticipated the rise of commercial space exploration funded by billionaires.

I also shifted the location of our species’ lifeboat much further out. My technological solutions for getting my probe and its precious cargo to Alpha Centauri are not examples of ‘imaginary science’ in the tradition of Star Trek, but projections of existing technologies. Again, few people outside of research laboratories or the hard-core SF readership were talking about light sails as a means of crossing the interstellar gulf, now it has become a commonplace.

All of the above is extremely gratifying, as one of the usual motivations for writing in the genre is to engage in prediction. But I would also hasten to point out that this series is far more than an exercise in futurology, as story, character development, and philosophical discourse are at least as important, if not more so.

But don’t take my word for it; the first completed novel in the series, A Children’s Crusade, is published on this website, along with extracts from later novels in the series.

So why the caveat?

Well, I don’t really want to be right about these things. Anticipating a future where billions of people will die well before their time is not a comfortable thought, and as this once remote possibility looms ever larger, the old saw ‘be careful what you wish for’, starts to appear uncomfortably apposite.

The Author January 2022

Modern unicorns part one: Martian Colonisation

By C Stevens | 5th January 2021 | Comments 0 Comment

Have you noticed how the Tech Billionaires (aka the Robber Barons de nos jours) have adopted some of the presentational strategies of the New Right Populists? Specifically, they overpromise, an example being SpaceX’s recent assertion that they will have a Martian colony (or at least the groundwork for such a thing) in place by 2024!

Further examination of other less hi-profile pronouncements reveals that the true timetable is sometime in the 2030’s, but the high-profile announcement has done its job by creating a buzz around the whole endeavour, attracting the attention of tabloid and social media, and making said Tech Billionaire look potent and sexy.

We may well be closer to having the technical capability for sending this kind of probe to Mars, however I did read that the sheer mass of the thing means that getting into orbit, and off to the Red Planet with the necessary velocity, is currently not possible.

Furthermore, the real problems come later: achieving re-entry for such a large vehicle (even though we’re only talking about a lander) through the virtually non-existent Martian atmosphere will be Hellishly-difficult. Remember, at least half of Martian landings of unmanned vehicles have been unsuccessful, we only recall the successes. Splattering a probe across the Martian landscape may be unfortunate if it’s unmanned, but if it contains 4-6 brave astro/cosmonauts, the fallout will be much more serious.

But the first challenging issue will be getting those 4-6 brave astronauts there alive and in any fit condition to do useful work. It takes (with current technology) six months to get to Mars, that’s six months in microgravity which is really harmful to human physiology, six months confined in a space no bigger than a long-wheelbase Ford Transit van, exposed to potentially deadly radiation (not just solar flares which are a low probability risk, but cosmic rays which are ever present!).

It’s estimated that the astronauts will receive 70% of their safe lifetime dosage just getting to Mars, not to mention all the other health problems they will arrive in Martian orbit with, and then they’ve got re-entry to face!

I recently read this online article with an accompanying promotional video about an award-winning design for a Martian city, cunningly cut into the walls of a suitable cliff, so that the human (and animal) inhabitants, and the various trees and shrubs, have access to Martian daylight, while being protected by the rock above them from all that nasty U/V radiation and pesky cosmic rays.

The settlement looked very swish, but the article glossed-over the whole issue of who’s going to construct it. Now in my SF saga, Lights in the sky, the Alpha Probe has all those convenient self-aware humanoid robots to do the heavy lifting, and Alpha 5 is a considerably less hostile analogue of the Red Planet. But building this putative Martian city will require the early colonists to leave the sanctuary of the subarean caverns and be out on the Martian surface. Now the Martian surface is a very hostile environment; the atmosphere is tenuous at best, contains no oxygen (and virtually no water vapour), the place is cold, and the thin atmosphere and lack of a magnetic field means anything (or anybody) out there is bombarded by harmful radiation. So human operators, directing and operating the digging and construction equipment, will be at considerable risk and only able to work for short periods of time.

As I read through the article, I clocked some of the small print. The people living in this city of the future would be obliged to pay 300,000 Euros for a one-way ticket to Mars, and would then need to give 60-80% of their time (during their waking hours, presumably) working for the colony.

I thought about it and I realised there’s a word for this, and a colonial precedent; it’s called indentured servitude, and it was used by the British in Jamaica and Virginia to recruit a workforce for their sugar and tobacco plantations. It worked like this; get a load of destitute people from England, Ireland, Scotland or Wales (not hard to find in seventeenth century Britain) and pack them off to the West Indies or to Virginia on twenty year contracts. Historical sidebar: this practice is the reason there are Welsh-speaking people in Jamaica to this day.

But this model, while initially effective, only really worked in the short term. Two things did for it:

much of the enormous profit made from sugar and tobacco was reinvested back in Britain, and the resultant industrial revolution provided enough work for the landless and destitute former peasants, who no longer had to risk twenty years in a mosquito-ridden Hellhole to avoid starvation.
word had got back from the New World about how bad conditions actually were, and how surviving five years was good going, while seeing out all twenty of your indenture highly unlikely.

The next was entirely predictable in its awfulness; replace the reluctant indentured servant with African slaves who had no choice. I wonder who the Tech Billionaires will turn to when their supply of willing colonists dries up?

The Author January 2021

Swimming against the tide of history

By C. E. Stevens | 12th September 2019 | Comments 0 Comment

Discussing recent political developments as well as longer-term societal trends in my recent blogs has got me thinking, and my speculations have made me somewhat fatalistic.
I (and others of similar opinions and disposition), can hope, in the short term, for the amelioration of the current crises afflicting Western society. We can hope for a rational resolution of the Brexit issue domestically, we can hope that a Democrat is elected as US president in 2020, we can hope for a lot of things…
But there is such a thing as the tide of history, deeper and more fundamental changes that occur underneath short-term political developments. In my last blog I referenced a shift from what I referred to as a written culture to new culture mediated by artificial intelligence. Now I’m not arrogant (or ignorant) enough to suppose that I’ve come up with an original idea, but I think it’s likely that many cultural commentators and theorists writing on this matter will have a different standpoint to me. Many will welcome the change that appears to be happening, rather than regretting or fearing it.
But the point is that, irrespective of your standpoint, this is happening and the way people think, feel and act will change accordingly. People of my generation and way of thinking will rapidly become cut off, isolated in a culture that no longer understands them, and which they feel little or no affinity for. Small changes are straws in the wind; I still have a cheque book which I intend to use to pay some outstanding bills, pretty soon this won’t be an option; I like reading books and I spend some of my time writing them, but how long before a post-literate culture emerges where all books are audio books? Where people rely on virtual helpers such as Alexa to conduct all their transactions; I also like physical shops, but I fear for their survival.
All in all, I feel that pretty soon I’m going to be like an updated version of the protagonist of the 1960’s television series Adam Adamant Lives, an Edwardian adrift in contemporary society…
Of course, another trend, one that is proceeding quietly under all the sound and fury of contemporary politics, may put a stop to this ‘Brave New World’, at least for the majority.
I refer, of course, to the various elephants in the room, climate change, sea level rise, resource depletion, all the issues that drive the narrative in Lights in the sky. I note that in today’s press various scientific institutions, as well some obscenely-rich private citizens, are again discussing possible fall-back strategies should our actions make our planet uninhabitable. It’s the usual guff: NASA wants to colonise the Moon, Jeff Bezos wants to build vast environments orbiting the Earth, where the climate will be, ‘..like Maui, but every day!’, as last on seen the SF flick Interstellar, Elon Musk wants to nuke Mars etc…
I think it’s quite likely that at least some of these ideas will come to fruition, but on a strictly limited basis; probably consisting of a few scientists and military personnel living out barren lives underground on Mars or the Moon, while the rest of us left on Earth mostly die, and the unlucky survivors descend into savagery.
I recently bought the DVD (another soon to be obsolescent piece of tech) of Stanley Kubrick’s brilliant Cold War satire Dr Strangelove, and I think that Kubrick was being prescient here, just not in any way he could have imagined!
But that’s the problem with futurology, things never turn out quite the way you anticipated…
Which, of course, may mean that I’m being unduly alarmist.
Time will tell…
The Author September 2019

Blog entry supplemental twelve: New Earth and other fables

By C Stevens | 16th September 2017 | Comments 0 Comment

I eventually got round to watching The Search for a New Earth…

Hearteningly I had anticipated most of the issues and challenges outlined in the programme in my similarly-themed tetralogy Lights in the Sky…

What I hadn’t anticipated were: plasma rockets as a means of space propulsion rather more efficient than chemical rockets (I may substitute these in the relevant chapter, as it would only be a modest change), Proxima b as the Earth-like planetary destination, and artificially-induced hibernation as a means of dealing with the length of time needed to traverse the distance between here and the Centauran system…

But overall, not bad!

I enjoyed the programme (…at least at first!), but after a while it began to strain credulity, featuring as it did; postage stamp-sized space probes capable of reaching another star system (and beaming back data!), hibernating bears immune to radiation sickness, and hibernation-inducing serum obtained from hamsters, for Christ’s sake! And I began to wonder if the whole thing wasn’t some kind of late April Fool’s joke! Then I remembered the original Tomorrow’s World (my favourite television programme growing up!), anchored as it was by overly-enthusiastic, manically-grinning presenters, and showcasing (on a weekly basis) ground-breaking technological developments that were never heard of again!

But seriously folks, there were a couple of important issues that weren’t raised by the programme. Firstly, any manned mission to Proxima b would appear to be asking the putative crew members to spend twenty years of their lives in hibernation, time they would presumably never get back! The question of whether being in hibernation would slow the ageing process was never discussed, but it doesn’t seem to do so in the case of bears (or indeed, hamsters!).

Secondly, we have the elephant in the room! The Proxima expedition (like my Alpha Mission!), would do nothing for the billions left back on Earth, presumably to die miserably in the impending ecological catastrophe! Eventually, a significant number of those billions would realise this and start to seriously oppose these plans, asking (quite reasonably) why the effort and the (billions of) dollars going into an expedition to the stars aren’t being spent sorting out the problems here on Earth!

I was also re-assured by the rather precarious prospect offered to any settlement on the planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, with its one face permanently turned towards its primary (and being baked by its rays), while the other remains in deep freeze, and with only a thin strip of supposedly habitable planet between the two! I decided that, on reflection, I much preferred my world, Alpha 5, as the fictional destination for my explorers cum colonists…

Imaginary worlds need to be better than the one we live in, or why else would we invent them?

C.E. Stevens September 2017

Blog entry supplemental eight: Tapping into the zeitgeist

By C Stevens | 11th May 2017 | Comments 0 Comment

A few months ago I commented on the discovery of a potentially ‘Earthlike’ world in orbit around Proxima Centauri, and gave myself a pat on the back for very nearly predicting this in my SF series Lights in the sky. In my series the habitable world orbits Alpha Centauri B, rather than Proxima Centauri, but this is really a detail, given that the chances of finding such a world this close (less than 5 light years away), were dismissed as astronomical (pun intended!), prior to the discovery!
But it’s happened again!
Stephen Hawking’s forthcoming BBC documentary Expedition New Earth argues that we have approximately one hundred years to send a successful colonizing expedition to another habitable world. Lights in the sky is (of course) based on this premise, and charts the progress of such an expedition. The strapline of the Alpha Mission, the organisation behind the endeavour, is ‘Mankind’s lifeboat’, a recognition of the fictional threats to the survival of the our species (or at the very least of our civilization and our culture) that prompt the attempt. The series is set in a world where many of these potential threats have become all too real; where climate changes, rising sea levels, resource depletion and environmental degradation have led to war, famine, political instability, and mass migration, threatening the continued existence of our civilization and our culture.
Professor Hawking added a couple of new dangers that I had overlooked; specifically an asteroid strike, and new pandemics that our current antibiotics would be unable to control. The last of these was given new urgency (in my mind) by an article I read recently that warned of the dangers posed by the melting of permafrost throughout the Arctic and Antarctic regions. These (it argues) have the potential to release long-dormant microorganisms on human (and animal) populations, which would lack any resistance to them.
Critics of Hawking’s thesis have made a number of reasonable points, including the contention that sending a few colonists would do nothing for the billions left (presumably to die), back on Earth, that spreading our destructive culture to other worlds is hardly the actions of responsible culture, and finally, that the only winners in this scenario would be the Elon Musk’s of this world who would stand to make a killing in the inevitable hysteria that would follow a serious attempt to mount such an exhibition.
Not being a journalist I haven’t viewed the programme, and like the rest of us I will have to wait for it to be broadcast. But, in writing the series, I did think long and hard about the issues and do a fair amount of research.
I do think (even if a I say so myself!) that I have done a good job of reflecting many of the issues and concerns now being raised. The Alpha Mission, as portrayed in the trilogy, is very much the creation of a privileged elite. This elite is threatened by a popular uprising resulting from the dislocations the planet faces in my fictional future, and is opposed by radical elements who ( unsurprisingly), argue that the very existence of the Mission represents a huge distraction from the need to change our ways here on Earth, and which (even if successful), will do nothing for the mass of humanity.
Later on in the series, the expedition itself faces crucial choices; do they attempt to pursue the policies and philosophy of the organization which sent them (which I have characterised as Abrahamic!), or do they attempt to live in harmony with the biosphere of their new world.
I must stress that Lights in the sky is a work of fiction, and is not intended as futurology! I have also presented here a necessarily simplified take on a very complex series of novels; there’s a lot more going on, thematically and philosophically! But like all intelligent science fiction it attempts to dramatise the issues that face our culture and our species.
If you’ve come this far I would suggest that you start reading the first volume of the trilogy, A Children’s Crusade, which is serialized on this website, as well looking at previous posts which discuss many of the issues raised in the series.
C E Stevens May 2017

Blog entry twenty two: O brave new world

By C Stevens | 28th December 2016 | Comments 0 Comment

O brave new world is the suitably emotional climax to volume one, and is now available on this website. I make no apologies for pulling out all the stops on this one! The title is (of course) taken from Miranda’s speech in The Tempest, and was adapted by Aldous Huxley as the title of his famous novel.
In full the couplet reads ‘O brave new world, That has such people in’t!’
In the same way that Shakespeare’s ingenue marvels at the strange new visitors to her father’s island without being aware of the secrets they are concealing, the Children on Alpha 5 have hitherto marvelled at their world without comprehending its darker side…
The chapter marks the start of their disillusionment…
The title is doubly pertinent given the parallels between the eugenics practised in Huxley’s book, and the peculiar circumstances of the Children’s conception!
And at the end of volume one the world is remade, in a way that could not have been foreseen when the novel opened…
The shock and sorrow the crew feel after their friend Sal’s death is palpable to me, and I hope it comes over as forcefully to the reader; I have also tried to put across the new and unwelcome awareness of their own mortality that our little band all feel, as well as dramatising the sheer banality of what we experience in grief and loss…
Significantly it as Jorja who makes the overtures to Marta in the immediate aftermath, not the other way ’round. They have a mutual interest, the welfare of their friend, but it is the younger girl who has maturity, sensitivity and understanding to realise what is needed. This marks a change in Jorja, she’s growing up and making a conscious effort to become a better person, in the aftermath of her experience in the Barrier Range.
Marta, on the other hand, raises another nagging doubt about the benevolent intentions of the Nurses in their conversation on the way back to the Dome, although this is not immediately followed up.
Both girls find their new intimacy awkward, but grief makes strange bedfellows!
There are also further indications of Alphanian sentience (and, for the first time, possible benevolence) in their actions at the crash site, although Han, typically, is sceptical!
A few days later, we have a heartbreaking scene when Priya finally articulates her loss to Marta, together with her feelings of guilt that she wasn’t there to save him!
With the funeral coming up Jorja and Marta have to take charge and more or less shanghai Priya, forcing her to attend Sal’s funeral.
I’m also proud of this scene; both visually (where I reference the Lon Chaney film version of Phantom of the Opera), and for its dialogue.
Nurse Gee stage manages the event, and is of course, in her element! We learn that Salvatore was a practising Roman Catholic, and Marta’s observation as she views his corpse is based on personal experience.
Marta then makes a great speech where she articulates not just the grief our community feels, but also their collective hopes and fears in the troubling new world they find themselves in.
There are of course shades of Romeo and Juliet in Priya’s last goodbye to her love…
Time moves on; we join Marta and Jorge in a discussion which moves beyond the personal into metaphysics, as our heroine explains fully for the first time her new understanding of the world. This takes in predestination, the true meaning of her vision of the Midgard Serpent, and an overt reference to the ‘lights in the sky!’
Later they put their ‘modest proposal’ to Nurse Gee, and are surprised to find she is in full agreement with their plans. Later Marta is cynical about the reasons for Gee’s new enlightened viewpoint; the main narrative closes with Nurse Gee’s ringing declaration that signals a new chapter in the life of the Mission.
But we end with the vision Marta experiences when she links again with the Alphane sentience, foreshadowing some of what is to come later on…
So there we have it, book one closes, but plenty more to come…

Blog entry eight: Pandora’s box

By C Stevens | 29th May 2016 | Comments 0 Comment

Pandora’s box

As with my last post, the accompanies and is designed to be read with the next chapter of A Children’s Crusade to be uploaded, chapter eight, which is called Pandora’s box.
The classical reference is not intended to be canonical, rather metaphorical. The actions of the Nurses clearly do not release all of the evils of the world, but do, nevertheless, upset the apple cart!
In this chapter we begin to appreciate the scale of the planet as the kids prepare to go on their first solo flights in the new aircraft. Marta and Jorge’s relationship has developed, and survives a shocking revelation, to emerge stronger for it…
We learn more about the long-term plans of the Nurses, and we discern what is either a frightening lack of empathy on the part of Mission AI, or an indifference to the wishes and feelings of the ‘biological units’. Certainly they beginning to display an increasing ruthlessness in the way they implement these plans.
In the course of this, the emotional price exacted by the strange existence of the children becomes clearer.
To balance all the melodrama, we learn more about the nature of the Centauran system, and its implications for the history of Alpha 5… Oh, and the chapter finishes with a declaration of undying love…!

The Others

By C Stevens | 16th April 2016 | Comments 0 Comment

As the title suggests, the Others adds new characters to the story, and follows up on the revelations contained in the second chapter, revealing more hidden aspects of the Mission and our little settlement.
I think I decided fairly early on that six characters would not be enough to carry the story, and since Marta and Han were clearly not compatible, more potential mates were needed, especially if the Mission was to succeed in the secondary aim of founding a colony.
There was a long hiatus between the writing of the first chapter (originally conceived as as a stand-alone short story, entitled Light-out, and submitted to Analog Science Fiction & Fact in the autumn of 2013), and the decision to make it the basis of a novel. Needless to say the short story was rejected, and a cursory reading of the content of the magazine would probably have dissuaded me from submitting it in the first place. However, the feedback I received, although contained in a standard rejection letter, made a number of useful suggestions, including ensuring that the science used in the story was both plausible and accurate.
By the time I received the letter, I’d given up on the idea of a sequel to my first novel, a mainstream effort written under a different pen name, and decided that my next book would be a science fiction novel based on the characters, the scenario, and the concepts outlined in Light-out…
I wish I could say that I conceived the idea of a trilogy at this point, but the truth is I don’t remember. But when I revisited the short story and revised it to make more credible scientifically, I became increasingly convinced that I had something! Convinced, in fact, that I had created a world and characters with mileage in them, that I wanted to find out more about, and hopefully one that others would too…!
It may occur to you that, in certain aspects, a Children’s Crusade reads like a detective story, and this is very much how I view it! Alpha 5 is the problem, the mystery that needs to be solved, and I’m the detective; and the answers we discover along the way are the discoveries that I’ve made in the process of writing the series…
For fiction to work, it has to have a life of its own, dictated by the characters and the scenario. From dialogue comes character, and from character flow plot and action…
So in a sense the series writes itself, and in accepting that to be true, I’m consider myself privileged that this particular story has chosen me to be its medium…

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