While I haven’t done a lot of writing, per se, it was a productive week.  Research is paramount when writing hard science fiction, and often it seems the more I expand my notes, the more I come across new questions demanding answers.  That being said, I feel better and better about where this story is going by the day.

The Pioneer

It seems I know this story better and better by each passing moment, as it continues to consume my thoughts.  After taking a week away from writing the story itself, I’ve begun focusing on two primary tasks: revising and reworking phase one, and planning out phase two.

On the first note, the more I read what I have so far of phase one, the more I see vast room for improvement.

As I’ve said, I essentially threw myself into this story.  I knew that in order to really make this work, I needed to force myself to actually write it, if only to show myself that I could, indeed, write this story.  I had little to go on, but to my delight I found that as I actually sat down and made myself start writing, the story developed organically.  The good news is that by the end of phase one, the story really had taken on a life all its own.  The bad news is that the work I’ve done since then has left the opening chapters far more wanting than I’d remembered.

Starting tomorrow I plan to take a stab at completely rewriting the first chapter, for starters.  It seems extreme, yes, but over the course of writing Wide Horizon I reworked the first chapter exhaustively, completely trashing and rewriting it more than once.  And the entire gist of the opening chapters didn’t change much over the course of writing it.  So much has changed since I began writing The Pioneer, from the personalities of the crew to the overall structure and function of the Susan Constant itself.  To that end, I feel a general rewrite would be best.

Moving on from there, I’ve begun fleshing out my notes for subsequent chapters.  Starting off, I’ve revisited my existing notes on the surface of Phecda 9.  The next phase of the novel begins with a planning meeting between the members of the Samarkand Administrative Board, held as the Susan Constant is moving into orbit around the planet.  Shortly thereafter, damage to the intra-system reconnaissance vehicle (the IRV) leads to the decision to land a small scouting party on the surface, comprised of Randall Holmes (the protagonist, an exobiologist and survival expert), Nina Stark (the engineering officer of the Susan Constant), and William Flanders (a colonist and conservationist).

Though I didn’t actually write anything this past week, I feel a deep sense of accomplishment.  Over the course of the week, I began laying the all-important groundwork for subsequent chapters, from fleshing out the flora and fauna of the planet to mapping out the topography of the landing site and eventual colony site, to designing the colony itself.  It’s been exhausting work, and I’m far from finished.  But I love where everything is heading.

Focusing my efforts on the general vicinity of the colony itself has helped rein in my work considerably.  As it currently stands, the site of the initial settlement will be a low plateau nestled into the southwest edge of a large river valley on the second-largest continent of the planet, dubbed Oregonia by the colonists due to the climate’s similarity to that of Oregon on Earth.  The valley, eventually known as the Sanctuary Valley, offers access to freshwater (in the form of a river that runs through the valley floor), abundant natural resources, and a series of clear land into which the colony can eventually expand.  The valley is largely covered in dense stands of conifers and primitive deciduous trees; as such, larger land-based fauna (ceratopsids and sauropods, for example) are mostly absent.  Most local wildlife is adapted to life within the confines of the forest, including raptors (similar to the austroraptor from Earth’s fossil record: a large, semi-avian pack hunter covered in drab feathers), the sloth-like isnashi (a stout, slow-moving herbivorous therapod), and of course the massive jing (a tyrannosaur covered in bright red plumage).

The colony itself will initially be comprised of five prefabricated structures.  The four primary habitation modules are constructed from the four quadrants of the Susan Constant‘s second gravity wheel, detached in orbit and dropped to the surface, forming a circle broken by footpaths that form an “X” between them.  Set at the center of the circle will be the Helix: a collapsible, three-lobed helical structure.  Designed to house administrative offices and control facilities, when fully deployed the helix will stand 150 meters tall, providing an unobstructed view of the surrounding area.  Set directly to the southwest is the physical plant: a large, hangar-like structure detached from the Susan Constant‘s central hub.  After planetfall, the plant houses storage facilities for the colony’s supplies and utility vehicles, as well as the main power station and printing facilities.

In addition to fleshing out the final details of the Susan Constant‘s design, this recent foray into colony-building has helped me to better understand the feel of the story.  As a fellow writer pointed out recently, far too often stories of space colonization focus on a struggle for survival, as human colonists fight for their lives, seemingly wholly unprepared for the challenges they will face.  It seems utterly ridiculous on the face of it: why would Earth send thousands of colonists the better part of a hundred light-years away to found a settlement on an alien planet, and not bother to put more than causal foresight into the plan?

In The Pioneer, the colonists arrive fully prepared for the challenges they’ll face, having planned for virtually every contingency, armed with a panel of experts gleaned from among the finest minds humanity has to offer.  Even then, however, no one can fully prepare for everything.  A lot can happen on an alien planet, with the nearest support a lifetime away, and ultimately the colonists will find themselves tested in ways they’d never anticipated.

Short Fiction

While I did little work in short fiction this week, I felt the need to talk about something else, if only in brief.  At some point in the coming week, I do plan to look over my recent pieces, one of which needs revising, and begin a new phase of submissions, however limited.

This couldn’t be going much better.  I have so much left to do, but I await each new challenge with zeal.  Keep reading, dreamers. – MK