Near Future – Page 4 – Lights In The Sky

Blog entry supplemental ten: Life in the Alpha system and other implausibilities

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

Apologies for taking an absolute age to blog again… I have been busy writing, honestly; and the fourth novel of the Lights in the sky series, The leftover girl is nearly complete. One more chapter (the 22nd) needs to be written, with the working title, Kansas.

The chapter will bring my protagonist Tata to the end of her quest and will (hopefully) tie up most of the loose plot ends into a nice bundle… However, I’ve decided to leave some things unexplained about the nature of the new community our heroine finds herself in; firstly, because I haven’t decided how much I want to reveal (or indeed if it is all revealable!), and secondly, because it gives room for a sequel! There are a number of new developments in this chapter that would merit further investigation, and (you guessed it!), I can’t bear to leave the world of LITS just yet!

The presenting reason for this blog entry is again something I picked up from the scientific press, namely the recent discovery of two new exoplanets orbiting Tau Ceti, the second nearest Earth-like star to our own…

Both of these exoplanets (designated Tau Ceti e and f), life just within the habitable zone that surrounds their star (the so-called Goldilocks zone where liquid water is a possibility). It’s important to point out that the likelihood of life having got a foothold on either is fairly remote, as the nearer planet (e) would probably be too hot, and the one further out (f), rather too cold! Add to that the fact that they both lie within the massive debris disc that surrounds Tau Ceti, and this would rather be like Earth being at the heart of Sol’s Asteroid Belt, and subject to constant bombardment from asteroids, comets etc…

Nevertheless, it got me thinking and I decided to revisit the various articles on Alpha Centauri and recheck my facts! The results were encouraging. As I mentioned earlier, Proxima Centauri (sometimes referred to Alpha Centauri C!), has recently been identified as possessing a possible candidate for the fabled Earth-like planet! Had I been in possession of this information when I started the series I would probably have made Prox the location of my world. However Alpha Centauri A and B aren’t out of the race just yet! Theoretically, either or both could harbour the elusive new Earth, although nothing has been found as yet!

The main stumbling block to this appears to be the fact that the two stars are in a binary relationship, and the resultant tidal gravitational forces would have made the accretion of the mass of debris needed form a planet orbiting either of them very difficult (but not impossible!).

However (in my defense) I’d like to stress that Lights in the sky is a work of fiction, and my Alpha system is an imaginary realm. It is also worth pointing out that later in the series there are revelations that account for differences between the Alpha system of the series, and the one that we see in the night sky!

The other heartening thing I gleaned from the articles that I read was confirmation that the development of light sail propulsion systems (boosted initially by lasers, as in my series), would bring the travel time between systems down to decades rather than millennia…

Until next time

CE Stevens August 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 supplemental seven: …if we had but world enough and time

By C Stevens | 24th April 2017 | Comments 0 Comment

One of the principal attractions (to me) of writing science fiction is that you get to create your own world. This even has a technical term (it’s called world building!), and formed part of the syllabus of the one day course is writing SF that I did three years ago.
Of course, any form of creative writing involves a bit of this, but with mainstream fiction you’ve got much more to go on! SF and Fantasy require much more creativity in this regard as you’re often starting from scratch. This has its own perils; fantasy and sword and sorcery novels in particular tend to suffer from a plethora of daft (sometimes faintly ludicrous) names for things, people, beasts, countries, worlds etc etc.
To avoid this I’ve tried to ground my narrative with a greater sense of realism by writing the near (and hopefully horribly plausible) future. It’s really an alternative history (currently a popular genre, with the success of Amazon Studio’s television adaptation of Philip K Dick’s novel The Man in the High Castle), but this is future history rather an alternative past!
As I’ve said, this notion is extremely seductive as you get to play God, but also extremely satisfying and comforting as you create a world that you, the author, can escape to. And Lord knows we need that at the moment!
Mainstream critics (and even some authors) can be extremely disparaging about speculative fiction of all kinds; but this is essentially grounded in ignorance and a rather sniffy attitude towards genre fiction in general!
Any decent SF (or Fantasy) novel will contain all the characterisation, narrative experimentation, and philosophical speculation of a comparable mainstream novel, but in addition will require the creation of a convincing world, right down to the last detail! This is very complex and challenging and some of our (so-called) critics should give it a try!
One of the most challenging aspects is the so-called timeline (i.e. keeping all your ducks in a row temporally!), and the foregoing diatribe serves to introduce a new feature coming soon to the Lights in the Sky site; the Alpha Mission timeline, which will soon be added by my good friend Rob Tyler.
CE Stevens April 2017

Blog entry twenty three: On the road

By C Stevens | 18th March 2017 | Comments 0 Comment

On the road is the first chapter of The leftover girl, a companion volume to the Lights in the sky trilogy. This chapter is now available on this website as a taster for the new and so far uncompleted novel.
The title is an obvious literary reference, but our hero is an independent young woman rather than stereotypical male character normally found in the ‘road’ genre. We’ve met Tata before, and her narrative picks up a few months after when we last saw her, at the end of chapter five of The lost colony.
The novel is cast as a picaresque with Tata as the roguish proletarian heroine living on her wits among the corruption of post-Collapse Earth. She can shoot, fix her truck, scavenge, find work and fuel etc…
Occasionally she uses her body as part of the transaction, but always on her own terms. We learn little about why she’s on the road, apart from that she is fleeing unspecified ‘trouble!’ We do learn that she has hopes and dreams, poorly defined though these are…
The opening chapter also introduces to the post-Collapse world, characterised by migration, lawlessness, and the sense that towns and cities are becoming more isolated as communication between them breaks down.
The narrative takes the form of a picaresque odyssey as our hero journeys west from Olinda, her home of the last fifteen years, into the interior. We are introduced by dream sequence and flashback to one of the other narratives that will constitute the novel.
A dream the adult Tata has, while sleeping out under the stars in the high sierra, introduces us to her childhood self. We learn about her relationship with her over-protective mother, and we are also introduced to the other woman in her life, her mysterious benefactor, Mrs Choi. If this all seems rather Dickensian, this is, of course, my intention. The leftover girl is an adventure story; the emphasis here is on story, as much as on character, form, or mood. Lots of things happen, and the action is episodic, but this deliberate!
The plot of the opening chapter concerns itself with two chance encounters; firstly, with the mechanic who sells her the methanol she needs to move onwards in her quest. Tata doesn’t have the money to buy all the fuel she needs, so they settle on a different kind of trade. Although brief and perfunctory, the exchange has long term consequences that only become clear later on.
Her second encounter, with refugee family from Venezuela, lasts much longer (in fact it temporarily interrupts Tata’s quest), and has far more emotional resonance, especially as it reminds our hero of what she has lost. But in the end, the urge to move forward overcomes the temptation to stay, as Tata runs away again…
C.E. Stevens – March 2017

Blog entry supplemental six: The leftover girl

By C Stevens | 3rd February 2017 | Comments 0 Comment

As I’m now more than one hundred pages into the prequel to Lights in the sky, currently called The leftover girl, although this may change (mainly because the ‘such and such girl’ as the title of a novel has become something of a publishing cliche in the last few years!). If it does change it’s likely to change to The leftover world which is also apposite. One decision I have made is to use my SF non de plume C.E. Stevens, rather than Stephen Clare. This is practical reasons as I can continue to use this website, and I am less likely to confuse potential readers.
As I’ve probably said previously the new novel is written in a mainstream SF style with magical realist elements, and is set entirely on Earth. It has three narrative strands; opening with the story of the protagonist as an adult, continuing with a flashback to Tata’s childhood and adolescence, and then the third strand which follows the life of a third character, Helen Choi.
The Tata narrative dramatises life in Brazil, and by extension throughout the world, following the Collapse (a breakdown of civilisation resulting from climate change and resource depletion). Helen’s story is essentially the story of the Alpha Mission.
The book thus tells the story of Earth in the run up to the departure of the Alpha Mission probe, and what happens afterwards!
There obvious crossovers both within the book, and between this book and Lights in the sky. Tata knew Mrs Choi when she was a child, but never knew why the old woman had taken an interest in her. Her quest is geographical (to reach the fable ‘free communities in Amazonia), but also spiritual (to discover the truth about her own life and origins).
Both characters appear in Lights in the sky, although Helen Choi is only referred to (by Han, she’s his role model!). Tata appears on three separate occasions; twice in dreams/visions experienced by Marta Fernandes, and finally in a chapter of her very own!
One possible strategy I may employ is to use this chapter (The Jungle) as part of the text at the appropriate point in the narrative, which a nice exercise in intertextuality.
My intention is to post the first chapter of the novel on this website on the near future to act as an introduction, once I settle the question of the title!

Blog entry supplemental five: …for that interesting year ahead!

By C Stevens | 24th January 2017 | Comments 0 Comment

This year promises to be ‘interesting’ on a personal, as well as a political level…
Coincidentally, I’m going to be visiting America again in this time of change. Last time I went it was to volunteer for the US National Park Service in 2013 as part of my MA; this time it’s going to be a musical odyssey (Chicago to New Orleans) to mark entering my seventh decade.It will be interesting to take the pulse of America at the start of the Trump presidency, and see how people’s attitudes have changed from 2010 and 2013…
Back on the somewhat firmer ground of my literary plans, a big year lies ahead. My big project will be to publish A Children’s Crusade via an ebook platform and also print some hard copies which I can sell personally. This means that the book will disappear of this website at some point during this year, but I plan to replace it with the pilot screenplay Lights in the sky which also acts as an introduction to the trilogy.
The launch of the ebook will require me to be rather more proactive in promoting my writing than I have been up to now! Marketing tools to be deployed include YouTube readings, press kits, more submissions, more blogs, links to more forums etc etc.
You will also see changes to this website, likely to include a news bulletin to be added to the home page…
Away from promotion and marketing, the writing continues. I’m now more than a hundred pages into my fifth novel, provisionally entitled The leftover girl. The book is effectively a prequel to Lights in the sky, taking place on Earth in the run-up to, and the early years of, the Alpha Mission. It’s framed as mainstream SF novel (with magical realist elements), and for this reason I’ve decided (for the moment, at least!) to publish it under my mainstream pseudonym, Stephen Clare. But this decision may be reviewed (it would require another website for one thing!).
All the best

Blog entry supplemental four: We live in interesting times…

By C Stevens | 22nd January 2017 | Comments 0 Comment

The old Chinese curse is proving increasingly apposite in these troubling times. The election of Donald Trump is forcing me to rethink some of the predictions I made in chapter four of A Children’s Crusade. My assumption had always been that a future break-up of the United States would be as a result of the secession of South, the South-West, and Mid-Western states, following a pattern similar to that set in the Civil War. Obviously this was good dramatically as I could evoke many of the Romantic aspects of nineteenth century US history, but it now seems increasingly implausible.
From the vantage point of January 2017, it would seem more likely that any secession would come from the other side; with the prosperous, densely populated, culturally inclusive (and Democrat voting!) states of the East and West Coasts deciding that an electoral system that patently favours the Republicans and leads to the political agenda being set by the underpopulated, insular states in the middle of the country is unsupportable, and making plans to leave themselves!
I look forward (with a certain amount of trepidation!) to developments over the next twenty years, assuming we all live that long!
Happy New Year

Blog entry twelve: The Truman Show

By C Stevens | 19th August 2016 | Comments 0 Comment

Blog entry twelve: The Truman Show
In chapter twelve of A Children’s Crusade, entitled the Truman Show, we’re back on Earth; specifically the Earth of 2106!
The Earth we’re presented with is in stark contrast to the claustrophobic world of the Alpha Mission, with its nine human crew members; rather its a world of countless billions, each individual scrabbling for their place in the sun…
We get our first inkling as to the status back home of the Mission and the Children, with Marta da Guia’s rather jaundiced description of Marta Fernandes as a ‘…[Brazilian] national hero…’
There are other references later in the chapter (to the craze for all things crusty, and the cult of the Star Children), which confirm this first impression.
We are also told (indirectly) that the relationship between Marta on Alpha and her ‘Earthsister’ might be something more than interstellar pen pals, but the precise nature of the relationship eludes us. Eludes us, that is, until the crucial moment when Marta da Guia, fleeing civil disorder (and the implied threat to her privileged existence), says a prayer for her sister at the roadside shrine…
But how can this be?
Elsewhere in the chapter more detail is sketched in, of a world previously only dimly glimpsed. We begin to appreciate the hold the Networks have over the Mission, and we learn how this came about. And crucially, how the lives of the expedition crew members have been repackaged as cheap entertainment for a mass television and online audience…
We learn more about interface technology and the advantages it gives to the elite who use it; also learning about the downside…
And finally, we are vouchsafed a glimpse of a society in crisis…of a world descending into chaos…
On that cheery note…

Welcome

By C. E. Stevens | 12th January 2016 | Comments 0 Comment

Lights in the sky is the website for a series of novels set roughly a century from now.
So far the series comprises two completed novels, A Children’s Crusade, and The Fixed Stars, another book is underway, and a fourth is planned.
On this site you can find out more about the world of the novels, the characters (human and otherwise!), and the author. You can read a serialised version of the first book on the site, posted in regular installments over the next year, and you can also post comments and ask questions via the discussion board.

Look forward to hearing from you…

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