Liner Notes 1
Some background information on the story Partial City Diplomacy (on Patreon) and on the fragment Cyclopean Gigastructure (on this blog).
I didn’t have a plan for the series when I started writing this story; by the time I had finished it I knew there would be 13 stories in total, had outlines for the next five stories, knew that story 7 would be the pivotal one, and that number 13 would be a slam bang finale tying everything up in a neat bow.
None of that plan lasted (except the number 13), but at least I had one. This story was unplanned. It also took about four months, mostly in 100 and 200 word bursts as a warm up exercise before writing (or re-writing) other things. If it has any coherence or a unified tone or theme, that mostly came from the second draft. I started off intending to write a pulpy adventure story and that’s what I got. Mission accomplished I suppose.
So where did this one come from? Well very explicitly it was trying to look like a piece of TV science fiction. Our dudes arrive on a planet, are faced with a problem, resolve it in some way, and clear off for the next episode. Partial City is a studio backlot put directly into the text; only as much of a building exists as is needed for the scene. The people of Partial City are clones; the same bodies taking different roles, like actors. Ella and Gunn escape the Labyrinth by going behind the scenes, short cutting the plot (device), and then shooting their way out.
The Energy Jammer is inspired by a bunch of things that people have used in stories when they want to stop high tech machinery working. Some notable examples include the stasis field in the final battle sequence in Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War; the Holtzman shield in Frank Herbert’s Dune, and of course every time Kirk’s phaser is useless and he has to do the leaping two-footed kick to beat an enemy.
Gunn, of course, came fully formed, the captain supposed to make a nice, simple reconnaissance and instead has to overthrow a warlord to rescue his crew. Is he really a hero? I pick this question up a few times in this series and have a look at it from some different angles, so if I had an answer it would be premature to discuss it.
The redoubt at the end of time! See novels by Stephen Baxter and Alistair Reynolds, The Last Question by Isaac Asimov and many other stories. See also this post by Patrick Stuart (not that Patrick Stewart).
Is the Gigastructure Cyclopean architecturally, as in made up of massive boulders with minimal clearance, or does it have one big eye? I can’t remember so have left that question open; if forced to answer, probably both.
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