Hello, dreamers. Research continues for my new work-in-progress.

Over the past week, I’ve finally found my way back into what I call “short fiction mode”. I’ve begun to again embrace the less-delayed gratification of completing a project comfortably within a week and moving swiftly on to the next one. Among other things, that’s helped to stave off the burning urge to dive right back into Aquarius 1.

I both love and hate this point in a project. I can see the plot clearly, I’m coming up with scenes and dialogue, and as the story pulls together in my mind the urge to just start writing is powerful. But just rushing into the project without sufficient research is what got me here in the first place. I have to do this the right way.

On the bright side, the research has been fascinating, and my study of mass extinctions last week has led me to a topic that is somehow both broader and narrower, in a way: extinction itself.

Aquarius 1

Ever heard of a eurypterid? If you’re not a paleontologist (or an obsessed amateur like me), the answer is probably “no”. And with good reason; it’s not like you’re liable to see one in an aquarium, or stumble across one at the beach. Which is probably for the best.

Eurypterids, otherwise known as sea scorpions, are an extinct group of arthropods (the phylum of invertebrates that includes modern insects, arachnids, and crustaceans, among others). Believed to have evolved during the late Cambrian or early Ordovician, they were the dominant form of life in Earth’s oceans during the Silurian Period, over four hundred million years ago.

At their height, eurypterids were vast and diverse, occupying a wide range of predatory ecological niches. They came in all shapes and sizes. Some were active predators, others likely benthic scavengers. Despite being called “sea scorpions”, many of them were also found in brackish and freshwater environments. There was a time in Earth’s history when they were everywhere.

But, as I said, you’ve surely never seen one alive, and that’s because they’re extinct. An entire group of highly-successful organisms, and they’re all gone. They’ve been gone for hundreds of millions of years.

So, what happened? How did such a successful organism lose the battle with evolution?

That, dear reader, is the question I find myself trying to answer.

It’s easy to create a wondrous alien biosphere of strange alien creatures that will wow the reader. But when writing hard sci-fi, science comes into play. Obviously I’d love to depict Fatima’s global ocean as one teeming with eurypterids. It sounds cool. But to do that, I’d have to first find a compelling reason for them to have persisted hundreds of millions of years longer on that moon than they did on Earth.

And it’s not just eurypterids. My recent research of Paleozoic and Mesozoic marine life has introduced me to all manner of fascinating creatures from our planet’s biological past. From rudists (reef-building mollusks) to placoderms (giant fish covered in armor plates), the history of Earth’s oceans offers no shortage of cool. But if I want to have armored fishes swimming through rows of pillar-shaped clams, I need to have a compelling scientific reason for it.

Much as was the case with The Ursa Frontier, in Aquarius 1 the environment, first and foremost, determines the biosphere. Much as is the case on our own planet. And I’m confident that, much as I did in The Ursa Frontier, I’ll be more than capable of producing an eye-popping and detailed alien biosphere within the realm of accepted science. But this only underscores my need for research before pressing on.

So after last week’s research on mass extinctions, this week I’ve produced a list of organisms that once dominated Earth’s oceans. I’m trying to sus out details on why, exactly, they either went extinct (as is the case with eurypterids) or simply became less common and diverse (like crinoids or jawless fish). In some cases, it’s been easy; many more primitive organisms likely went extinct mainly because more successful ones overtook them. But many others died out or declined because of extinction events. Volcanism, methane release, or impact events altered Earth’s environment so suddenly and drastically that they just couldn’t keep up.

I plan to spend the rest of the week immersed in research on what could only be called “evolutionary failure”. By understanding why various organisms from our past declined and went extinct, I’ll be able to produce a clearer picture of how life would evolve on Fatima. And from there, I can get to the really fun part: creating alien life. Writing sci-fi can be exhausting, but it has its perks. – MK