Hello, again, dreamers. As you know, at this point my work on Pioneers is done, at least for now. With querying set to begin, it’s safe to say I am now looking for a new novel project.

Most years, my writing tends to follow a cycle. By late spring, I begin searching for a new novel to write. I go through my notes on existing concepts, flesh out ideas for my overarching Dotiverse, and look for something that makes me think “Yeah, I can write this”. That’s where I am now.

So today, as I don’t currently have a work-in-progress, I’m going to devote this post to the question I’m asking myself right now: what’s next?

Pathfinder

As I mentioned in my last WIP Wednesday post, the idea for Pioneers started off as background notes for a very different project. I’ve always enjoyed sci-fi with rich lore, so when I set out to write a sci-fi series myself, I wanted to create a vast, detailed, Tolkien-esque background. That background work led to what I now call the Dotiverse.

As it currently stands, the timeframe of the Dotiverse (the period in which stories actually take place) begins in 2094, and extends well into the 23rd century. When I began homing on on Randall Holmes as the central character of these stories, I established 2094 as the effective beginning: the year in which humanity launched its first manned mission to an exoplanet. I’d written some rough background for Holmes by that point: in the original notes, he was one of only two men on a survey mission, which crash-landed on the sixth planet of the Vega star system. As I fleshed out my notes, however, I came to feel a story revolving around only one or two characters wouldn’t make for much of a novel. Thus, Pathfinder was born.

Much has changed since then. As I’ve said previously, my frustration with Pathfinder ultimately led to writing Pioneers. Once Pioneers was complete, naturally I moved right on to the next novel, The Pioneer Era. But there, once again I encountered frustration. This week, I’m going to focus on Pathfinder: where it lies on the Dotiverse continuity, what derailed it initially, and the recent developments that have led me to reconsider it.

So, when I set myself to writing Pathfinder, looking back I realize I had no idea what I was getting into. Most of my notes up to that point had focused on the Pioneer Wars: a major plot point set to take place in the mid- to late-22nd century. By then, I had written extensively about the technology and culture of mankind in the 22nd century. By taking up Pathfinder, I’d unwittingly opened up an entirely new region of my timeline. I knew nothing about the state of humanity in 2094; all I’d written about the 21st century up to that point was of the cataclysmic conflict and disease of the 2030s and 2040s, and their role in the rise of a unified global government. I knew what the world looked like in 2040 (bad), and what it looked like in 2140 (much better). I had yet to look at what lay between those two points.

Thus, as I do, I set myself to writing background notes, and from that a new picture emerged of a completely different era. In the Dotiverse, 2094 finds humanity in the midst of a formative period: mankind has become a spacefaring species. Humans are living and working throughout the solar system, on space stations, remote research outposts on the outer planets, and on spacecraft that take months, or even years to cross the vast distances between planets and moons. My original notes on the 22nd century often focused on various terraformed planets, including both planets and moons within the solar system. But in 2094 that hasn’t happened yet: colonists and researchers alike are confined to habitat domes.

Of course, for the purposes of Pathfinder, most of that didn’t seem to matter. The story focused on Pathfinder 7: a mission to the sixth planet of the Vega system. Everything else, I decided, was background. So even as I was still working on my notes, I began writing Pathfinder. And that, perhaps, was my biggest problem.

Recently, I’ve resumed writing on a languished side project: Beyond Pathfinder. A series of short stories, Beyond Pathfinder was originally intended as a tie-in project with the novel, meant to explore the world of 2094 in greater detail. While the crew of Pathfinder 7 left the solar system behind on their decades-long mission, the short stories would show life moving on in the solar system.

Of course, after I abandoned Pathfinder, work on the short stories ceased as well. I saw no need to continue writing them, and once work on Pioneers began, I feared they might serve as a distraction. But earlier this month, on a lark, I took another look at some of the stories. A few were quickly discarded. But the more I looked at most of them, the more I felt these stories were finally speaking to me. And I began writing. And I kept writing.

I am, by nature, a man of science. But writing, as I sometimes forget, is not a science. I’ve found that sometimes I just can’t write a story, no matter how much I want to. It’s not read. I’m not ready. So when a story speaks to me, when it really comes to life, I try not to resist the urge to run with it. And I’ve been running for three weeks now. It’s been a lot of fun, and it’s helped me to better understand this world I’ve created.

Perhaps the most important thing I’ve taken away so far is this: in 2094, Pathfinder 7 seems like a big deal, but for most humans it just isn’t. Of course mankind’s first extrasolar mission to another world is all over the news, but at this point it’s the only one. Just as few Americans stopped and stared when we launched the first Artemis mission recently, most humans in 2094 pay little attention to Pathfinder 7. For them, life goes on. And as the astronauts aboard Constellation lay frozen for their long journey to Vega, life goes on without them. For most humans in the solar system, nothing has changed. They have their own lives to worry about.

And, should I resume work on Pathfinder, that could be a liberating realization. My previous attempts often went out of the way to tie events on Earth back to the story. But really, once Pathfinder 7 leaves the solar system, nothing happening there really matters. It has little bearing on the events that ensue. And while future generations may look back upon Pathfinder 7 as a historic event (just as we look back on the Apollo missions), at the time most pay little attention. Life goes on. – MK