Liner Notes for In Silence

Liner notes for my story In Silence.

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An abyssworld, an entire universe that is a cave system. This would make a good setting for a fantasy role-playing game, a mega-dungeon beyond all mega-dungeons, an underdark that has no overdark. Such a place would need no great explanation, it would simply exist, with creatures and whole civilisations blind or using light, however seemed most interesting.

This is science fiction, so perhaps we need an explanation. Where does the water come from and go? How do you have an ecology without light? All things I should probably address at some point, even if it’s mostly a backdrop for space opera heroics.

Of course it being space opera I could always blow it up rather than do the science.

We’ve always known the Patrol has incompetents – Gunn himself though equal to any challenge is sometime temperamentally unsuited to a situation. His rival, Commander Lord Richards, had the same flaw and more often unequal. Here we see the problem when there are too many jobs and not enough people to do them; someone who is not a good fit will be put in. Worse still, it’s an independent command for someone who can’t quite maintain control. The problems of management.

The first story started in the middle because I wanted to get going quickly; this one is slower paced, almost gentle, so I took the opportunity to take a look at the Platform, where Gunn and his crew are based. And this also introduces his management problems.

Does the final revelation work? I was trying to get the feeling of an old-school science fiction story where explores go somewhere, look at stuff and think they understand then discover there’s something stranger and fascinating going on. Not entirely consequential but enough to give them a humbling second thought.