One of the things I'll be looking to do is to get greater interaction with readers and other writers.
So as from tomorrow, when I post the first page of a (very) rough synopsis, I'll be looking for readers of this blog --if there are any!-- to give their thoughts as to the viability of ideas and plot structure and suggest improvements if they wish.
That doesn't mean to say that everything that people suggest will go into Winter Song; I'll have the final say, as it's my book, but I'll listen sympathetically to character insights and plot suggestions, and scientific expertise will be seized upon with glee.
I'll name-check all contributors on the acknowledgements page as a thank-you.
Colin
January 8th
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Outline of Winter Song
This is a plotting, rather than a selling outline. They’re related, but the first is the ugly step-parent of the second.
Note to anyone looking at this embryonic version of an outline – this is a work in progress; therefore if you see something that doesn’t make sense, it’s probably because I haven’t yet got to it. So if it doesn’t make sense, ask – or better still, make a suggestion. Ultimately, the characters are my characters, and I’ll decide on the final plot, but I’m happy to take input from as many people as want to see their name on the acknowledgements page…
So -- Take a portion of Egil’s Saga from the Icelandic Sagas and cross with The Man Who Fell to Earth and Castaway, all set against a backdrop of something from a lost chapter of a novel such as A Fire Upon the Deep – no that last one is too specific. Anything Wide Screen Baroque / Space Opera will do.
One Paragraph Synopsis
An injured spacer crash-lands on a backward colony and is nursed back to health by a local woman; he must reach a beacon to summon rescue, which involves travelling across a hostile wilderness, and despite the fact that it will break the woman’s heart, she helps
him.
Context
It’s about a thousand years in the future, no one’s quite sure because everyone has their own calendar, even on Earth.
Humanity has made it out to the stars, and while it’s found life on other worlds, none of it is even sentient, let alone capable of civilization. Humanity isn’t quite as unique as some twen-cen theorists maintained, but it is unusual in breaking out of its home solar system.
And humanity being what it is, it’s splintered into almost countless factions, most of which spend their time varying between simply disagreeing with one another, and actually going to war.
The Ay-eyes (AIs) are the inevitable result of ever-increasing computer power. No one’s ever quite sure whether they attained the fabled Singularity, because before they became completely incomprehensible, they simply went off to odd bits of the galaxy and now do whatever odd things they do. They get blamed for everything, from supernovas to disappearing ships, and their presence is probably the one unifying thing that stops humanity from exterminating itself.
The Radicals still use AIs, but their power is limited, and anyone who uses them is viewed by suspicion by every other faction, including less extreme Radicals. Because both the Radicals and the Traditionals are less clearly-cut than some of their politicians would argue.
At the extreme end of the Radicals are the Ultras (can we come up with a better name?) who verge on being cyborgs, so enhanced are they. The less extreme ones use nanotech and Rejuve to extend their life-span to four, even five centuries, and are superficially indistinguishable from more mainstream Traditionals.
Up to the age of twenty, humans age much as we do now. Past twenty and Rejuve treatments kick in, and up to the middle years, the Rejuve treatments get more and more effective so that by the time someone looks say sixty, eight or nine years could only age them one year. Past those middle years and efficacy gradually wears off.
However, Rejuve prohibits preganancy, so if families want children, the woman has to come off Rejuve, and it can take several years for it to wear off; once the woman has had the child, the Rejuve only gradually assumes efficacy – the result can be shaving decades or even a century or more off a woman’s life. Unsurprisingly, cloning is more popular than ‘in utero’ pregnancies, and mainstream elements of both factions tend to use cloning, rather than traditional births. Radicals will marry clones of themselves are part of their extended family, and may even have ‘offspring,’ all of which are carefully monitored and enhanced.
Some Traditionals also use Rejuve, but are much more likely to have in utero childbirth as a preferred method of reproduction, and are unlikely to have clone-marriages – however some factions do embrace cloning. The more extreme Traditionals, the Sanctifiers, reject outside bodies such as Nanobytes, while The Mayflies even reject Rejuve, which contains nanotech elements – they will live to only a hundred to one-hundred and fifty.
There are frequent conflicts between the factions, and even mini-civil-wars, one of which the protagonist is caught on the edge of at the start of the novel.
Facing off against both factions, who assume Terraforming to some extent to be the default position of humanity are the Pantropists, the descendants of those who have instead adapted themselves to their environment rather than vice versa. By nature Radicals, the alterations are genetic, but they may even have adapted to breathe non-oxygen atmosphere.
Humanity’s march to the current position has not been a steady one. The Pantropists gradually fell from favour with many ‘human’ governments, especially as Terraforming grew easier, less expensive and less politically viable – although it is still not something undertaken lightly; often several worlds (or even planetary systems) will undertake a combined project – and earth-like worlds were slowly discovered. This falling-out led to The Interregnum about two centuries from now, in which many Pantropist worlds seceded from the wider embrace of humanity and/or ran out of money. So Pantropists are comparatively rare, and some have devolved so they no longer even recognize themselves or are recognizable as human. So it is with Ismund (the draft name for the world that is setting for Winter Song).
The second great conflict was The Long Night (perhaps I should have a world called Anderson – if anyone can think of an alternative to his phrase that’s as eerily evocative, I’ll gladly embrace it) an almost-century long conflict about two centuries before, which has left much of the old order in shambles, seen whole worlds destroyed, and left the Terraformers of Ismund with insufficient resources to finish the job of Terraforming Ismund.
Setting
Ismund is a lost colony world that’s been settled not once but twice; first by a group of Pantropists, then by a wave of Terraformers, whose attempts to alter the world are halted by an interstellar war cutting off their resources; neither set of descendants realize the truth of the other’s existence – both have lost their original culture, and the Pantropists do not even realize that they are human. By the time Allman crashes, society has devolved to something almost feudal, with individual farmsteads forming the bases of communities. There are also creatures, some of whom seem very reminiscent of Icelandic legend, like trolls and dragons, although they are not the creatures of myth. Nor are the rock-eaters, who form the staple diet of the Pantropist’s descendants.
Ismund is inhabitable to humans only between the tropics, and then really only in the summer above ground; much of the winter is spent underground.
North and south of the tropics are still –just- inhabitable for the adapted men, who have a sort of no-man’s-land of several hundred miles where men and trolls/giants live within hunting distance of one another.
And in the far south, just before Ship was destroyed, it spotted evidence of a crashed ship. A ship which maybe Allman can take back into orbit, even send a distress call, even – unlikely though it seems—fly it home…
Protagonists
Karl Allman is married to a clone-wife, and has a brood-wife with whom he has had a child, and a pair-husband. His brood-wife is pregnant, something they have been trying for for over forty years, so he is desperate to return home. Karl was bullied as a child (one bully made him drink bleach to watch what the nanobytes did to repair the damage – nanotech paradoxically makes life easier for bullies as its harder to damage a body irrepairably, although not impossible). The bully was short, stocky and dark – exactly like Ragnar. Karl is unable to hide his initial antipathy to Ragnar; antipathy that is more than returned.
Antagonists
Ragnar Helgrimsson; dark and intense – poetic yet brutal, given to violent fits of rage, but at the start seems merely sullen, and can turn on the charm when he chooses. In fact, in the beginning, when we first meet him, and he is with friends – and especially with women – he is very charming, and quite kind. But when he drinks, he turns ugly, and especially when he is around Karl, whose presence makes him feel threatened (he is jealous of the gene-sculpted spacer’s almost inhuman beauty) so tries to assert his masculinity, and when Karl defies him, his temper gets the better of him.
Catalysts
Bera Sigurdsdottir; Ragnar’s foster-daughter. Deformed, but pregnant by Ragnar at the start of the story, although she won’t admit the father’s identity. Her falling in love with Karl is the catalyst for the conflict, and when she decides to help him in defiance of Ragnar, things get very nasty.
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