Hello, dreamers. With work on The Ursa Frontier complete, the time has come to move on. As of this week, I’m starting work on my next novel project. And though it’s one I’ve worked on before, I’m starting over from the foundation. Which means research first.

Aquarius 1

As longtime readers will know, I’ve twice attempted to write this story. It’s an intriguing concept, with interesting, messy characters and a very original premise. Its plot is fully laid out. But for various reasons, I’ve struggled to turn the corner. And the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realized that I was trying to build a house without a foundation.

When I first set out to write The Ursa Frontier, I began with research. I wanted to do something that hasn’t been done many times: to produce a complete alien planet and biosphere firmly rooted in accepted science. If that sounds daunting…well, it was. At first I was overwhelmed, wondering how I could possibly accomplish what I was trying to accomplish.

Narrowing things helped; I decided the entire first novel would be set in a single place: a river valley on one of Samarkand’s northern continents. That meant I didn’t have to worry about everything living on the entire planet, which helped. But I still had to produce a complete alien ecosystem. And it had to be one clearly adapted for its environment.

I spent the better part of a year on research. I read extensively not only on Mesozoic life (Cretaceous life in particular), but also on evolution and the history of life itself. The thinking was that if I could gain a firm grasp of how and why life evolved on our planet, it would provide a framework to determine how life would evolve on similar planets elsewhere.

It was a fascinating process, one that left me with a much better understanding of how life on our planet arrived at its current forms. But many of the lessons learned while researching for The Ursa Frontier simply don’t apply to Aquarius 1.

For the uninitiated, Aquarius 1 will follow the eponymous Aquarius 1 space mission. This sees the Earth Space Administration launch humanity’s first manned mission to a habitable exomoon, orbiting the planet Anima: a gas giant, and the sole planet orbiting Rigil Kentaurus. The moon, dubbed “Fatima” by the IAU, is similar in composition to several moons of our outer planets, notably Europa and Enceladus. However, unlike those moons, Fatima’s parent planet orbits within its star’s habitable zone. Thus, the entire surface of the moon is covered by an endless ocean.

Samarkand, the planet in The Ursa Frontier, was depicted as being largely similar to Earth. Smaller, rotating more rapidly, with a slightly more severe axial tilt. But the differences between Earth and Fatima are difficult to overstate. It’s a moon, which means it’s significantly smaller. That means its gravity is significantly weaker, which also means its atmosphere is thinner and extends further into space. It orbits a gas giant rather than a star and is tidally locked, which means its day-night cycle is far more complex. All of that will greatly affect its climate patterns. And I haven’t even gotten to the most striking aspect: its complete and perpetual lack of dry land.

The truth is, for obvious reasons I largely ignored marine life and ecosystems while researching for The Ursa Frontier. It wasn’t something I really needed to worry about (not yet, anyway). Which means at the moment I know very little about Fatima and how its climate and ecosystems operate. I have a lot of work to do.

It’s ironic that the main character of Aquarius 1, Karen Hernandez, is a marine biologist. As a child, my first dream job was being a marine biologist. I’d loved oceans and marine life, and the dream persisted until I got older and fell in love with aircraft and space travel. Now, as it turns out, to write a story about a marine biologist I need a crash course in marine biology. Over the coming months, I plan to give Aquarius 1 the “Ursa Frontier” treatment. I’m going to start from the ground up, reading about the history of Earth’s marine environments. I want to know more about how marine life on our planet evolved, what caused evolution to take the paths it took, and how life might evolve on an alien ocean covering a tiny moon.

The process has already begun; I’ve spent the past few nights researching placoderms, extinction events of the late Devonian, and evolution during the Ordovician period. Obviously life on Fatima won’t look much like the ancient organisms of our oceans. But perhaps they once did, so this is the right place to start.

Starting next week, I’ll be resuming my weekly “WIP Wednesday” posts, inviting readers into my research phase. Watch for next week’s inaugural post, where I’ll be writing about a major revelation I had recently. Until then, dare to dream. – MK