Hello, dreamers. As of this week, I’ve entered the final phase of principal writing on The Ursa Frontier. I’m currently working on the first of either two or three chapters that will close out this novel. And so far it’s going better than I could have hoped.

Now, I only have a few minor kinks to work out before I move on to editing. And one of the more vexing of those is the focus of this week’s installment of the “Pioneer Sessions”.

About Time

Most science fiction is set in the future, obviously. That means one of the first important decisions a sci-fi writer must make (especially in hard sci-fi) is: just when, in the future, does this take place?

My timeline has been ambitious from the start. Years ago, when I first attempted what was then to be the first installment of the Pioneers series, I decided on a start point: 2094. Of course, that now places the events of the planned prequel Pathfinder less than seventy years in the future.

Now, the decision was not arbitrary. I spent several years researching history, technological progress, and social trends. And based on my backstory, the idea of humanity launching its first extrasolar mission before the end of the 21st century seemed perfectly feasible. And perhaps it still does.

But from there, things got a little hectic.

The problems began to arise when I looked at the practice of terraforming and settling exoplanets. My backstory for The Ursa Frontier includes the idea that there are at least two or three existing exocolonies by the time the Susan Constant departs the Solar System in 2113. That would mean humans would have to have identified suitable planets, traveled to them, terraformed them, and landed initial settlers on the surface all within twenty years of the first manned extrasolar mission being launched.

My stories try to take a more realistic approach to faster-than-light travel; even with an Alcubierre drive (warp drive), travel between stars is still measured in years. Even if I disregard the infrastructure required to mount a terraforming and colonizing expedition to an alien planet, there are still years worth of work that would go into such an endeavor. Essentially, humans would have to be launching colonial expeditions to exoplanets long before the first manned exploration mission even arrived at its destination. Which…seems unlikely.

Even before this latest work, I’d begun making changes to the timeline, and I did little to fully address them. Now, I find myself needing to figure all this out, and fast. At present, I’m toying around with the idea of pushing the events of The Ursa Frontier further into the future, by up to twenty years. Such a change would have far-reaching implications, not just for this novel but for all subsequent (and otherwise related) works. It’s not a decision to be taken lightly.

For the moment, I’m focused on finishing The Ursa Frontier and my final editing pass. But by this weekend, the question of the timeline will require an answer. – MK