Social breakdown – 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 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 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 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…

December 2024
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