In the distant past, before dark energy was fully understood, faster than light travel was thought to be a fantasy. But for Rial Dunbar, navigating a faster-than-light cargo ship is routine. It’s his job. It can be a demanding job. And sometimes a dangerous one. Especially in the Kanteaon to Aeroday trade in xai leaf where the ships are hard driven to make the fastest possible passage through the shifting currents of interstellar gas and dust of the Kalfer Rift. So yes, Dunbar has some tales to tell.
The Starfaring Life opens with a simple tale. A tale of one downside leave that gets complicated, and dangerous, in the company of one Cera Marn, the power mate of a rival ship. Marn has a problem – a bookie has sent an auton and a couple of thugs to collect a gambling debt. It's a debt that Marn doesn’t feel obliged to pay. It’s a matter of principle with her. The race was fixed. Or so she says. And so she leads her debt collectors on a merry chase, with Dunbar in tow.
A few post back, I talked about the rejection slips I had collected some 40 years ago for a fantasy novel, a speculative fiction novella and a short story. About that time Amazon’s Vella program for serial stories was announced, with a vague start date. I thought it might work for me as an advertising venue for my main work. But if I wanted to use it, before there were 10,000 other space operas, I needed to come up with a story, and fast. It struck me that in my old speculative fiction novella, The Hybrid-Worlder, I had the bones of a quick story in hand.
I forget the exact plot of the original story. The hybrid-worlder was some sort of lost creature on the small, interstellar port moon of Aeroday. Some years later, I used that setting but changed the plot for a comic book idea I was working on at the time. The hybrid-worlder creature became a pet of a gambler who used it to collect credits from deadbeat punters. That, I decided, would be the plot of my proposed serial story, but I’d lose the creature altogether. Instead I’d use an auton, a sentient machine, along with a couple of thugs in tow to be the debt collecters.
I would, however use the “universe” I had created for my narrator, Rial Dunbar, along with the setting I invented for the Hybrid-Worlder. That was a small moon which was the interstellar port of Aeroday. This little moon had been cored like an apple during its move into orbit from one of the outer worlds, and this core serves as the interstellar port. Think of it as a river port that runs from pole to pole of the moon with wharves, shipyards and factories set on the surface of the core. The moon's surface had been divided up into compounds for the embassies of the former Aerodayian empire, but is now given over to the local population. An artificial gravity was installed on the surface and around the core, which, holds in a livable atmosphere, including in its hollow core.
The original story was based on the China tea clippers of the 1850-70’s. Each season tea was loaded on to the fastest purpose-built clipper ships, which then raced halfway around the world to be the first to deliver the new tea to London. Very serious businessmen spent a lot of money in designing and building of the fastest ship possible for this specific trade. They hired the best captains and crew, and then ran them like racing yachts in order to claim victory in this yearly tea race. An amazing story of a mix between commerce and sport that had enchanted me when I discovered it back in college. I use a similar story as the backdrop of my original story, and retained it for The Starfaring Life. Tea is now xai leaf, and the world of Kanteaon is China, and the Kalfer Rift represent the very demanding navigation required for a fast passage through the South China Sea of old.
And that is the basis of my serial. I have one complete story cycle to offer. More might follow if there is a demand for them. Who knows how this will work out? Time will tell. But it should go live in mid to late July. Stay tuned.
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