Humanity cannot be trusted with at least one of these.

 

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Hey everyone! Andrew here.

This week has been a slow writing week but a good one for filling the well and recharging.
My mother is visiting us and I’ve been spending time with her, roaming around town and (more
recently) hiding out from a tropical storm which threatened to drown us all. We’re fine! Nothing
to worry about, but we did get a bit wet from the rain.

On the writing front, I have been working through the edited version of The Bone Singer with the
aim of compiling a final draft of the novel. I am still not there yet (I know, I keep saying that,
but it takes a lot of time to write a good novel and I want this to be my best work). Once the
final draft is compiled, it will need further editing, but this step moves me forward by ensuring
that I have all the main threads taken care of. And there are so so so many threads… I really enjoy the political drama and the complications, so I’ve made this more complicated than it probably needed to be. I know it is not everyone’s cup of tea,
but I think the politics creates depth. There is a lot going on in this world and when I think of this story, these twists and turns and intersecting events are what drives me to want to complete this novel.

The Future We Actually Want

I really loved the responses to my off-the-cuff comments last week about science fiction
stories being too sterile compared to the crews of actual vessels during the Age of Discovery.
Those crews were full of rough characters. Some were criminals, some were desperate, others
were antisocial types who couldn’t find other work. Some were seeking their
fortune or in it for the adventure. Those crews were a mixed bag. What they weren’t were polished scientific crews.

The responses you sent in were brilliant, and I want to address two things that kept coming up.

First: On the question of whether I will start writing bleak novels full of pessimism and darkness, the answer is no. I won’t,
because I also love the hope for the future that science fiction represents. The idea that there
will be challenges for humanity to deal with, some maybe even existential, but that we will
ultimately overcome them and spread out among the stars because the better parts of our
nature will prevail. We will not give up, not go quietly into the darkness. We will pull together
and raise each other up. We will adapt. We will use our intelligence and technology to conquer
whatever comes at us. That, to me, is what science fiction really represents at its core. Humanity
makes it. I’m not going to stop writing that. So if you were worried, please don’t be.

Second: a lot of you raised the idea of putting both types of crew member on the same ship, so
that the tension between them becomes the story itself. I love that idea. A lot. (More on this
below, where I share some of the specific things you sent in.)

Writing update

The Bone Singer has progressed. I am not going to promise a finish line
date because the novel apparently did not get that memo, but I am still moving forward (Thank you Rowena! You know why).

That’s it for this week!

All the best,
Andrew (ZZ)

Zero-Point Awakening – The Complete Series Books 1-8

This is a great collection of stories once I start reading I couldn’t put it down. Full action, drama, intrigue, and a little bit of treachery.

– Amazon 5 Star Review

An ex-pilot, a robot who won’t shut up, and a shipment of cheese that’s about to become a very serious problem.

A simple smuggling job. Naturally, it isn’t.

It wasn’t uncommon for people to disappear in the woodland named The Fingers.

But when twelve people vanish in a week, questions get asked and answers sought.

The relay station wasn’t supposed to be there.

Official records say it was destroyed decades ago. The crews who once operated it are long dead. Even the communication network it belonged to is gone from modern navigation charts.

He’s the galaxy’s worst scoundrel. She’s the bounty hunter who caught him. Now they’re stuck with each other — and the cuffs aren’t coming off.

Which future technology would go horribly wrong? Mind Reading Time Travel Fully Independent AI Memory Editing Gene Editing Other (let us know your view by replying)

Survey Result

And now, let’s take a look at last week’s poll results. We asked, “Which sci-fi future feels most likely within the next century?“
Here are the results:

• Blade Runner –> 36%
• WALL-E –> 18%
• Star Trek –> 18%
• Other –> 14%
• The Matrix –> 8%
• Dune –> 6%

Andrew: Blade Runner wins this one. More than a third of us think the most likely future is a rain-soaked
cyberpunk world where the sky is always grey and synthetic humans live as hunted
outcasts. The optimist in me wanted Star Trek to do better, but I’m mostly a realist so I’m nodding grimly instead and maybe smiling a little. I still don’t watch the news though!

What’s interesting is that Star Trek and WALL-E tied at 18% each. WALL-E! Which, if you think
about it, is quite a dark future wrapped up in a charming package. Somehow it feels a bit more hopeful than Blade Runner, and I think that is because
the story ends with a reason to try again. Maybe that is what us WALL-E voters are really
saying: not that the catastrophe is coming, but that we will always find a reason to start over.

Only 6% of us think Dune is where we are headed (don’t get me started on the topic of the Butlerian Jihad!), which is reassuring given that Dune involves
most of humanity being controlled by a feudal theocracy in a resource war over a single
commodity. Then again, I made the mistake of looking at the news on my phone this week, so… Sigh. 

Your Thoughts

We had a lot of folks write in over the last two weeks in response to the last newsletter and the topic of space opera and grit. Some of you want me to go grittier, some want me to stay “Star Trek.  Let me share a few to give you a flavour of what people were saying:

David wrote in with a super thorough response. Rather than picking one sci-fi future, David argued that we are already living in several of them simultaneously, forming “pocket zones” that mirror different genre scenarios. Love this way of thinking of things. It’s also a very Gibson-esque viewpoint in a “the future is not evenly distributed” kind of way (or however that quote goes). Drone-based policing and social scoring systems, as David points out, are not far-future speculation anymore, they are already being tested (and social scoring is in use in China). It is a kind of a version of The Matrix. Thanks David for the food for thought!

Others (like Coffee Hound — Thank you for writing in!) pushed back on the gritty direction (although I note that I am not necessarily leaning towards grit, just saying that things could be grittier).

Tim pointed out that the automation level of the ship determines much of how the crew behaves and their situation. Small automated crew equals relatively decent conditions. Large crew equals nuclear submarine. I like this analysis, and I do agree, but I also think there’s more to it. Such as the culture of the people, and the purpose of the voyage etc.

Mike asked what about having the crew contain both types? Which is frankly a really good call out. The friction between the Starfleet officer and the 1600s sailor on the same ship would make for an interesting clash. This same idea could be layered into other things I am working on too. Thanks Mike!

To Starla, who wrote in beautifully about the role science fiction plays as a refuge when the real world is hard. Fully agree. I am not going to take that away. Promise.

Thank you every one. I super appreciate everyone who wrote in. I know I did not mention everyone, but it’s hard to do it justice in a single newsletter.

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