Liner Notes for Welcome To Novapolis

The liner notes for the first in my TetraHedron sequence, Welcome To Novapolis.

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Here we are again at the start of another science fiction serial. Having created my perfect space opera playground, a universe in which my characters could travel from world to world and discover almost anything it seemed something of a waste not to bring it out, dust it off, tweak the engine a bit and set it going.

Obviously I have immediately introduced the TetraHedron, an artefact that gives access to four other universes.

If you’ve forgotten or never read the previous serial it shouldn’t matter as the stories here will bring you up to speed. For the incurably curious the stories are indexed here.

A slightly revised version is available as an ebook or print on demand paperback under the title Oracular Operations.

In case you’re wondering what happened to Tommy Gunn and his crew since the last set of stories, they’ve spent the intervening time fighting a war against the Last Venture, an aggressive mind-controlling space empire. Rather than write that I extracted my best ideas and put them into this serial as flashbacks.

Novapolis! I have had the idea for a world-city, split into feuding clans renaissance-style for quite a while; it was on the list for the first Tommy Gunn serial. Renaissance-style is what I’m going for here. Glittering aristocrats who mix business and pleasure, refinement and violence. Meanwhile on the outskirts there are groups still more brutal, in this case immediately hitting one of the notes I had down very early when planning the TetraHedron sequence, namely the phrase Weaponised Humans. The screamers are a blatant version of this idea. There will be subtler ones to come. Also more obvious ones too, I may be playing with ideas more than before, but this is still an action-adventure.

Gunn’s usual problem is trying to get anyone to talk to him. In a divided, balkanised world there will always be someone to talk to, and this will immediately create a whole list of friends and enemies for you. Some of whom will unleash war pigs on you.

Gunn manages to avoid a duel here but I assure you he’ll be involved in a formal fight at some point in the series.

Novapolis is a world city, but inside out; it clings to the interior of a space. In the centre are the moving lights that approximate a daily cycle, and also the dimensional gate node. I have some ideas of how it works; as it’s another universe, and so has a different set of physical laws not to mention the purpose of the gate builders it’s a bit weird.

I haven’t done the calculations, that might have proved it impossible, breaking the story, or worse still I might get them wrong and look like an idiot.

What can come out a dimensional gate? Anything can come out of a dimensional gate. Anything. Gunn is taking a big risk here, bringing people out. But as he says, it’s risk her has to take, one set in train by Captain Sharp’s explorations.

He’s going back in next month and might find... anything?