History

The writing of my current project, set fourteen hundred and some years before the Jack Mack novels, has required a more extensive look at the history of that time. I’ve mentioned some of it in the novels without going into great detail. Now I need to be a little more exact about just what was going on.

I am not going to set an exact date on when the Orlova Drive was perfected and the age of interstellar travel began. Let’s say a couple hundred years from now or thereabouts. I’m entirely willing to say records from that time are too sketchy for anything more precise. We do better moving forward; all dates are counted from the time of that first jump. Jack McFee was born in the year Orlova 1420.

In those years between now and my stories, Earth suffered much. Climate change, famine, war. The ‘great powers’ fell, to be replaced by new ones. Yet exploration of the Solar system went on, humans expanding to Mars, the asteroid belt. Colonies appeared. It may be the troubles on Earth actually accelerated the move into space, in the somewhat vain hope of escaping. That is the world in which my scientists and pilots operate, one not so different in many ways from our own. And quite different in others.

I’ve mentioned ‘recent’ history here and there in what I’ve written so far. That’s the place to find out about it — and expect it to continue to expand as I complete the story.

The novelette ‘Mission Delayed’ I wrote a little while back tells of the discovery of a ship from two or three hundred years after the first jumps outward. The technology is, in many ways, much the same but with considerable refinement. Ion propulsion is still standard, a version of the Orlova Drive remains in service. The big advances in engines, in dampening fields, and much more I toss off as everyday technology in the Jack Mack novels is yet to come. However, there was definite development in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence, that plays an important role in those novels.

There’s a lot of interesting history hinted at in that period too. Whether it will ever be more than hints, is to be seen.

Frog Flight

My 'Jump Start' story topped out at 19,490 words, placing it firmly in novella-land. Now I need to write a couple more and put them together as a book. These will be related tales of the early days of the development of interstellar travel. This part (now that it is officially a part) is titled 'Frog-Flight,' from the code name of the jump ship project.

In theory, I could fit the completed novelette 'Mission Delayed' into the same book; it is set 1400 years later but deals with the discovery of a crashed ship from those early days. So...maybe but probably not!

First Jump

I'm two chapters and 2500 words into the new (and unexpected) project. This is likely to end up novelette length. We'll see about that. It's a story about the invention and implementation of the first jump drive, and the beginning of mankind's spread to the stars. This is set in the Jack Mack universe but some 1400 years before the novels.

I think maybe I'm seeing some subtle Asimov influences. Been reading through his catalog lately and revisiting stories I last read half a century ago.