Prediction – Page 3 – Lights In The Sky

Future history

By C Stevens | 31st January 2018 | Comments 0 Comment

Blog entry supplemental sixteen: Future history
My plan to write a series of short stories filling the background of the Lights in the sky universe went awry (after three stories), when one of the stories decided to turn itself into a novel!

So I’m now writing my sixth piece of extended fiction with the current title The Great Flood. If this sounds like historical fiction then that’s the point; writing about a putative future as if it were history, a common approach in science fiction!

As ever the intention is to write something that will appeal to the general reader, to a mainstream readership, in fact!

We’re in recognisable world (a possible criticism is that it’s a bit too like our own!). I think this is inevitable and a commonplace in fictional works set in a supposed future! I’m not futurologist, nor do I have clairvoyant powers! Most futuristic fiction reaches an accommodation with its audience… It’s different from the present day, but not too different! This provides reference points for the reader…

The trick would appear to be to introduce a number of technological, cultural, and social changes while maintaining a recognisable milieu…

This is complicated in the current times by the sheer pace of technological and related social and cultural transformations, but nothing is worse than supposed future world filled with supposed ‘developments’ which prove laughably wide of the mark (personal jetpacks and flying cars anybody!).

Science fiction reflects the time that it is written, anyway; and mine reflects a suspicion of and an apprehension with unchecked technological advance and economic change which is a part of the current zeitgeist! Obviously, another strand within the same zeitgeist welcomes this change with open arms…

This schism forms part of the ideological and cultural wars that characterise our times. This is very much a work in progress and it will change, as I modify and customise the text through the writing and editing process…

As ‘historical’ fiction the past is very much present in the world of the novel, manifesting both in the preoccupations of the main characters, and in the thematic elements and symbolism I intend to employ…

Stephen Clare January 2018

Goodbye and good riddance!

By C Stevens | 31st December 2017 | Comments 0 Comment

Blog entry supplemental fifteen: Goodbye and good riddance!
I find it difficult to remember a year that I’ve wanted to see the back of more than 2017, although 2018’s not looking too promising!

This year we’ve had the full horror of Donald Trump’s populism unleashed on the world, and the full implications of Brexit (as well as the sheer ineptitude of the current government!), have become clearer by the day…

Add to that the now widely accepted belief that the environmental cataclysm and the accompanying mass extinction event are underway and that there’s nothing we can do about it! Apologists are even now saying that this the way of the world and we should embrace the natural order of thing;, I would like to point out to these people that the species likely to disappear includes our own! Oh and President Trump thinks that some good old Global Warming would be good for his country! Maybe he should tell that to Californians…

Signs of optimism for next year include the possibility of a Democrat majority after the US midterms followed in short order by Trump’s impeachment, and a snap General Election that sweeps away the Maybot, and leads (at the very least) to more rational variety of Brexit… But I’m not convinced!

But hey, Birmingham’s got the 2022 Commonwealth Games!

My response to all this has been to take refuge once more in my fictional futures; Lights in the sky is finished, but Tales of the Collapse is well under way…

So far this consists of four short stories, with another one, The Great Flood, well underway!

Worrying, this last piece seems to want to grow beyond a mere short story and is threatening to become a novella (or maybe even a novel!)…

Happy New Year

C.E. Stevens December 2017

Blog entry supplemental thirteen: The rise of unreason

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

Back in the late 80’s, in more innocent times, I wrote a song based on a common minor key blues progression called The Rise of Unreason; this charted the rise of Christian fundamentalism and the religious right in America, and elsewhere. Over the years I have revised and added to this song, both lyrically and musically, in response to changing times; but after 9/11 it acquired a new resonance and urgency as Islamic Fundamentalism cast a growing shadow over both the West and the Muslim world.

The song is now in its fifth or sixth iteration, and has never seemed more relevant…

But, I think we’ve gone beyond the relatively well thought out irrationality of the religious fundamentalists (which at least has some basis in belief, scripture, and ideology, however extreme and archaic!), to something deeper.

The rise of narcissistic populists in the political sphere seems to have coincided with (or maybe unleashed!) a more general outbreak of irrational behaviour on the part of ordinary people not linked to any particular belief system. Everybody seems to be angry, but why should this be so at this point in our history?

Outbreaks of delusional behaviour are not new, and characterised much of the Mediaeval period, persisting into the early Modern Age. But the Enlightenment and the triumph of rational economic systems was supposed to have put paid to them. So what’s happening to bring them back to the fore?

Well, there are a number of suspects…

It’s worth revisiting Clarke’s dictum that ‘any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’ and apply it to our own societies. Technological change has been so rapid and so remarkable in recent years, that ordinary people are being left behind; marveling at what their new handheld devices can do, but not understanding the science that lies behind the tech. Not so long ago any reasonably well-read lay person could be expected to comprehend in broad terms the technological and scientific principles that underpin his or her civilisation; this is no longer the case! And irrationality has a habit of rushing in to fill such lacunae in our understanding…

And then there are the various existential threats our civilisation now confronts…

Some of the more improbable; the asteroid strike or the erupting supervolcano, are essentially beyond our current power to mitigate, and thus not worth considering, but others are clear and present dangers. Climate change, resource depletion, pollution and the potential impact of AI on employment are all things that human activity is responsible for, but rather than address the issues, large sections of the populace seem to want to deny they are happening altogether, or slip into a kind of helpless apathy.

Reaching for the irrational belief system is a symptom of all this…

Demagogues and despots have always known the emotional appeal of the irrational when times are tough and the solutions demanding and difficult, hence the election of right wing populists.

In our cultural life the appeal of the supernatural and of the superhero is strong at the moment; fantasy worlds to visit and fantasy heroes to rescue us.

Fundamentalist religion, I’ve mentioned, but there is also the growing popularity of pseudoscience, which rather than offering solutions re-frames the threat in mythic terms; the oft-promised arrival of Nibiru functions almost like a giant metaphor for the real dangers that we face. The next global extinction event has already started according to many scientists, and there’s plenty of evidence to support this view. The old chestnut of finding a new home for the human race has leapt off the pages of science fiction and into popular discourse, something I have referenced in previous blogs.

So what’s all this got to with your SF saga, I hear you ask?

Well, Lights in the sky anticipates the coming ecological cataclysm, but I’m thinking that my fictional doom is (in the best traditions of British SF), a rather cosy catastrophe! By the end of the series Gaia and her allies have staged a successful counterattack, and the biosphere is recovering nicely.

In the real world ‘the civilisation of the world as we know it’ would appear to be coming sooner than expected, and the cavalry doesn’t appear to be about to ride to the rescue…

C.E. Stevens October 2017

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 twenty four: The end of the road

By C Stevens | 6th September 2017 | Comments 0 Comment

I’ve finished Lights in the sky…

I’ll qualify that; I’ve finished the final novel in the series, the leftover girl, which (counterintuitively), is the first chronologically in the series. This is not to say that I’ll never return to the world of Alpha 5, I’ve left some loose ends and there are still stories to tell, but the main narrative is finished! It’s taken me four (or possibly five) years of living at least partially in a world of my own creation. The series covers a period of two centuries from the birth of Helen Choi right through to the death of last of the twins on Alpha 5…

So how do I feel?

Well, empty, grieving, directionless etc etc…

This is the first time that I haven’t had anything to write in nearly a year…

It’s like a bereavement, or possibly like the empty nest syndrome you get when your children finally leave home; the novels are like my children!

So how do I deal with this?

By doing the (to me) drudgery of promoting the series. I have a list of 15+ agents plus a number of independent publishers (you have been warned!). And I’m now looking to sharpen up my (rather blunt) act by making my website more visible and marketing my writing more effectively via social media (even!).

By writing something else!

Another volume of LITS (possible, but the safe option, and there’s always the danger of diminishing returns!)
By starting a completely new project (scary!)
By continuing the ‘Simon’ series (lacking enthusiasm for this at the the mo’, and compared to LITS it’s a teensy bit prosaic!)

So a bit of thinking to do, but plenty to get on with…

’til next time…

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 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 supplemental three: A real SF writer, already!

By C Stevens | 2nd October 2016 | Comments 0 Comment

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!

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