Short story: The Last Word Part-1

So rather than rambling on about writing I thought I would share some of mine in the shape of the first part of a short story. This is based in the same universe as one of the novels I'm writing and when I was fleshing out the backstory of one of the characters this idea came to me. The concluding part will be up after the weekend:

The Last Word

Carmichael stood in the shadow cast by a street light and watched the door of the house that was his target; periodically looking away to check the time on the pocket watch he carried. If his timepiece was correct then he had no more than five minutes to wait until the moment to act arrived. His black topcoat and hat made him all but invisible with only the paleness of his thin face having the potential to betray him if any random stranger came strolling along the street, an eventuality that previous reconnaissance had proven was most unlike at this hour of the night. There was only one person that Carmichael was anticipating seeing the street tonight, indeed his entire plan centred on that individual making an appearance.

It was some four minutes later when the door of the house opened and a figure slouched out on to the street, a stocky figure with the collar of his coat pulled up to obscure his face. The gesture did nothing to disguise him from Carmichael. The man’s name was Roker and he was valet to the owner of the house. More to the point he was the only servant who actually lived on the premises and he had a habit of slipping away once his master had retired for the evening to drink and carouse at a public house with a highly dubious reputation. It was not behaviour that Carmichael would normally have approved of but it suited him quite well tonight.

Watching until Roker disappeared around a street corner Carmichael stepped out of the shadow and walked across the road, his stride measured so he was neither running nor creeping, simply a man about some ordinary business, certainly not a man planning to commit murder. Carmichael worked to maintain that manner as he climbed the short flight of granite steps and reached out to turn the door handle, he did catch his breath as he laid his hand on the cold metal but no passer-by would have noticed that, nor the small sigh Carmichael released as the handle turned and the door opened.

He closed the door behind him quickly and quietly and began to examine the hallway he was standing in. There were no sounds beyond that of a ticking grandfather clock set against wall and the hallway was in darkness. Fortunately for Carmichael his eyes remained adapted to the night and he was able to make out sufficient detail to proceed with his task. A rug ran down the centre of the hallway but the stairs themselves were bare polished wood. Carmichael was prepared for that, his shoes possessed soft rubber soles rather than leather and combined with Carmichael’s light tread they made almost no sound as he ascended the stairs.

There were four doors along the upper hallway but only one of them had a flickering thread of illumination leaking out beneath it. Carmichael marched up to it and cautiously opened it, prompting a voice to call out, “Roker? What are you doing…” The voice trailed off as the light revealed the figure of Carmichael filling the doorway.

The man in the bed was white haired with mutton chop whiskers that couldn’t hide how sunken his face was and the dim light of the lamp set beside the bed simply emphasised the lines and wrinkles in his face. He was holding a leather bound book in his hands that dropped to the bed covers as the man abandoned it and reached for the bell pull beside the bed.

“That will do you no good Mister Luscombe; we are quite alone in the house.”

Luscombe removed his thin, gnarled hand from the bell pull, “Curse that drunkard Roker!” He looked at Carmichael with a glare that was perhaps intended to be intimidating but his weak eyes and the half-moon glasses precariously perched upon his nose robbed it of any power as he commented, “If you have come to rob me sir then you have chosen the wrong establishment. The bulk of my money and valuable are safely within the vaults of Baring & Co. You will find little reward in robbing me.”

“Then it is fortunate for me that petty theft is not my goal.” Carmichael responded calmly.

“Then what the devil do you want?”

“Why your life Mister Luscombe, my name is Carmichael Gray and I am here as the agent of your overdue demise.”

Luscombe removed his reading glasses and squinted at Carmichael, “I am quite certain I do not know you sir, so what injury can I have inflicted on you to justify such an action? Or has one of my relatives become so desperate for their inheritance that they have hired an assassin to dispatch me?”

Carmichael could see that Luscombe didn’t take his statement seriously; yet. “Mister Luscombe I am motivated neither by malice nor profit, I am here because your recent illness should have been the end of you and you cannot be permitted to cheat fate. This is your time to die.”

Luscombe stared at Carmichael and then actually began to laugh, which swiftly degenerated into a coughing fit. When he recovered his composure his expression was one of disdain, “Utter rot, a man makes his own fate sir. If you know anything of my life you will know I have escaped death a dozen times, where were you on those occasions?”

Carmichael ignored the final question, “I know a great deal of your life sir, indeed a study of it was essential to my craft.”

“You call murder a craft?”

“No Mister Luscombe, acting as the agent of fate is my calling. My craft is the writing of obituaries.”

There was dead silence in the bedchamber for few moments and when Luscombe broke it his tone was one of utter incredulity, “Am I to understand that you intend to murder me, simply so you can write my obituary?”

Carmichael expression became pained, “Nothing so crass sir, it is quite the opposite indeed, it is through my obituaries that the fates tell me who it is that I must seek out and dispatch on their behalf.”

“That is preposterous, surely you must see that?”

Carmichael could tell Luscombe was playing for time but there was plenty to spare and he had found engaging with the soon to be departed sometimes elicited details that could be used to put a final polish on their obituary as they entertained the futile hope that some such revelation might gain them a reprieve. “It is not preposterous Mister Luscombe, there comes a moment in the composition of one of my obituaries when the pen seems to move of its own accord, the words coming from some other place and when that happens I know the person in question has been marked out by fate.”

“Fate as informed by your prejudices and opinions no doubt.” Luscombe sneered.

“Again you misjudge me. For years I worked at my craft without the fates calling to me, I was well regarded by those publications that employed me and it is their practise, though not one they publicize, to have a certain portfolio of obituaries to hand for prominent individuals whose age or actions meant death hovered close to them. For years I simply wrote those pre-emptive obituaries and placed them in my files against the day they were needed.”

“Until one day you decided to turn to murder?”

“Not murder sir, ensuring the proper order of things. As I said for years the fates did not call to me and then one day I was working on rewriting the final word on a gentleman who had vanished and was presumed deceased and for the first time I felt another hand moving my pen, guiding it to create something greater than I could have fashioned on my own.”

“Oh let me guess, the gentleman in question had the impertinence to turn up alive.”

Carmichael had warmed sufficiently to his subject that he missed the sarcasm of Luscombe’s remark, “Exactly and it troubled me greatly, why had this other, this higher power, imbued my writing with such grace if not to commemorate the passing of this man? I brooded over it for days until finally I understood.”

“That you are stark, raving mad? A lunatic who should be in strait jacket? Good god man how many people have you killed for your insane beliefs?”

“You Mister Luscombe will be the eighth, and since it is clear you have no useful remarks to offer I must be about my business.” Carmichael had taken half a step before he heard a sharp metallic click behind him.

Retcon Factor 5!

This blog was inspired by watching the new Star Trek Discovery and given the topic there will be spoilers, there will however be quite a bit of rambling before Discovery gets mentioned.

A retcon is:

in a film, television series, or other fictional work) a piece of new information that imposes a different interpretation on previously described events, typically used to facilitate a dramatic plot shift or account for an inconsistency.

One of the best known examples is where Darth Vader reveals he is Luke Skywalker's father in 'The Empire Strikes Back'. A revelation made all the more shocking given Obi Wan told Luke Vader murdered his father when they met in 'A New Hope'. This retcon, that Obi Wan lied to Luke, was sufficiently exciting and added so much to the story that fans embraced it. The same cannot be said for the infamous Dallas retcon where an entire season of the show was revealed to have been a dream.

These two instances lie at opposite ends of the retcon spectrum. Fans embraced Vader being Luke's father and it added a whole extra level to the conflict between them. On the other hand the Dallas retcon produced a mixture of fan outrage and media ridicule. Overall Dallas is probably more representative of the reaction to retcons, so if you have a well established fictional universe with a detailed canon you should perhaps be cautious when it comes to retconning, or just go full speed ahead and launch retcons left right and centre. This is where the spoilers start in case you hadn't already guessed.

I'm not even going to touch on the changes to the look of the Klingons, or the rather grimdark atmosphere even before the Federation gets into a war with them. Let's start with the lead character being Spock's foster sister. This comes as quite revelation as given the occasions on which the subject of family and loved ones came up in scenarios Spock was involved in. Somehow though the fact that his foster sister was infamous in Starfleet history never came up. Now it's just about possible to accept that maybe this just never came up in conversation for some reason, but this really cannot explain the subject of Prototaxites stellaviatori and the 'Spore Drive'. The basic idea is that there is a network of spores that at some quantum level forms a network that spans the galaxy and can potentially allow for instant travel across light-years. This is an incredible piece of technology, that simply does not exist at any future point in the Star Trek universe that viewers have seen. One might simply say this is a technology that fails and thus is never brought up, except that Discovery makes it clear the drive has its risks, but it does work. Even if it was too risky for Starfleet one has a hard time imagining that not one of the enemies they encountered over the next century felt the same way. Then even if you are willing to imagine that Discovery has another twist up its. sleeve, the captain demonstrates the network by putting Burnham in a chamber and showing her distant parts of space. Now there is simply no rational basis on which Starfleet is going to abandon a technology that lets them view hostile space without risking ships.

Now of course it's possible that Discovery will come up with ways of explaining the problems with the spore drive away, but frankly they shouldn't be putting themselves in that position. There are any number of holes in the Trek canon they could have chosen to expend what is a talented cast and production crew on. Likewise Michael Burnham is an interesting character without retconning a spurious connection to established characters. I'm still hoping for some brilliant twist that's going to make this all come right, but I can't saying I'm expecting one.

Money Makes The Universe go Around

So economics may not seem like something you want to work into your story, especially when you consider the short shrift given to the whole 'trade dispute' idea that opened 'The Phantom Menace'. In the real world though economics is at the heart of major historic events. Hitler's rise to power was fuelled by the economic disaster of the Great Depression. The American Revolution was set in motion by a dispute over taxation(which may have been what Lucas was trying to invoke). So if economics can be an intimate part of  real history surely you can weave into a fictional universe?

For Secession Campaign I have a major power(the Alliance) taking on a band of rebels(the Pioneer Republic) where the numbers stack up heavily in favour of the Alliance. In theory the alliance can afford to take the long view and fight a slow steady war of attrition against the rebels. Dramatically that wouldn't have been very satisfying, something had to put the Alliance under pressure to win the war fast. The answer I came up with was economics, the territory controlled by the Republic created the wealth that propped up the economy of the rest of the Alliance. Take that wealth away and the Alliance is facing a crash on the scale of the Great Depression.

In a universe of interstellar travel and trade there are other economic issues that have fascinating implications. We're living in a world where currency is increasingly digital, but that depends on a global computer network able to handle transactions in a fraction of a second.  If your universe lacks Star Wars instantaneous communications (or Star Trek replicators for that matter) what happens when you have to pay for something one planet and your bank is on another? Your going to need an honest to goodness hard currency, it may even be the case that your currency has to revert to the ancient system where coins had to made of something intrinsically precious, Silver, Gold, Unobtanium. Of course what if what constitutes precious differs from place to place? Perhaps your interstellar civilization runs on a barter economy.

All of this has potentially dramatic implications. In a fictional universe where currency is dependent on some precious material then a major find of said precious material could be the catalyst for competition and conflict. Where there is no currency any interplanetary power may behave in a thoroughly feudal manner, with taxes paid with foodstuffs, raw materials, manufactured goods, or even labour if a world has nothing else to offer. Tax collectors in that situation won’t be accountants sat in an office building, they’ll be the kind of people willing to make others part with their worldly goods to keep the state running.

 

Even if you have no interest or need to work economic matters into your story itself it can still play a valuable part in world building, helping to add texture and context to the back story. It can provide motivations for your characters and obstacles  for them to overcome. In the immortal words of the Notorious B.I.G. "Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems" and problems help to drive plot.

Prequels

Two of may favourite series of books have acquired spinoff prequels in recent months, Jack Campbell's 'Lost Fleet' and David Weber's 'Honorverse'. Both these prequels are set centuries before the main series and attempt to flesh out the history of their respective universes. The big difference is that where I really enjoyed Campbell's 'Genesis Fleet: Vanguard' I gave up on 'Manticore Ascendant: A Call to Duty'. There were a couple of minor reasons for my different reaction and one major reason. the minor ones were that unlike Lost Feet the main Honorverse series is still full of loose ends that need tying up and this is the third or fourth spinoff that's been launched, also in in contrast to previous Weber stories where the protagonists tend to be charismatic and super competent this time he, perhaps deliberately, has gone against type and created a protagonist who isn't at all charismatic, in fact a character I found positively aggravating

Neither of these things would have been a deal breaker, what made me give up was the book's continual attempts to build up dramatic tension around the fate of what amount to fixed points in the Honorverse, that is things which fans know full well are going to survive until the time of the main series books. it just struck such a false note with me that I couldn't finish the book. Now this isn't an issue specific to Manticore Ascendant, it seems to be a common problem with prequels, a genre which seems to be on the rise recently.

I had much the same problem with the Gotham TV series, the show set when Bruce Wayne is still young and centred around Detective James Gordon. It also insisted on cramming the cast full of characters from the future Batman canon. This meant that every time on placing some character in peril it's invariably one that we know is still around in the future and after a while it just becomes irritating.

Prequels don't have to be fall into this trap, I enjoyed the Genesis Fleet novel and Rogue One was a great movie. Both created an array of new characters and locations where the individual outcomes were unknown even if when you where it all ultimately leads. I suppose its the difference between real danger like skydiving versus the illusion of danger you get on a rollercoaster.

In essence I guess my view is that if you're going to create a prequel either avoid characters protected by the plot armour of future events or at the very least acknowledge their invulnerability and avoid putting them in phony peril.

Word Count

So after a long time I've finally decided to revive the blog. In the interests of full disclosure I'm finally about publish my first book on Amazon so I'm in desperate attention seeking mode. Now why didn't I just keep the blog going all this time instead of letting it lapse? Well to put it simply I work full time so there's only so many opportunities to sit down and write. That creates a dilemma, do I spend the time working on the next chapter of the book? Or do I put up a blog post, or respond to the latest posts on my Google + communities, or that alternatehistory.com thread that's grabbed my interest? Every word I write for one option is one less I'm going to have to time to type for the other, not to mention the time taken to come up with an idea for what to write.

Throw in the fact that I'm not the most social of creatures and the problems multiply. other people seem to have endless energy for talking about themselves, but I'm just not that interesting. That by the way turned creating an 'about the author' for the book something of a challenge, so I basically wound up writing about the things that influenced my writing in thoroughly meta manner. The practical upshot is I can't guarantee I'll be posting every day, but you can be sure when I post it will because the subject interests me, not just to fill the awkward silence.

...And the Kitchen Sink

I wound up reading some comics that were a spinoff from a popular fantasy show that shall remain nameless. I had avoided this for some time but I finally checked out a couple of digital copies. I didn't make it to the end of them alas. It wasn't the characterization or dialogue that dismayed me; it was the sheer sensory assault of the plot. In addition to the original fantasy premise the comics had apparently thrown James Bond(the OTT Roger Moore era Bond), Star Wars, Back to the Future, and a large measure of soap opera. It had everything bar the eponymous kitchen appliance, and then as the title says chucked that in as well.

I've written fan fiction based on TV shows in the past and I know that one of the pleasures of it is being able to open out the universe. On the page you have more time to flesh out characters and you don't have to worry about the cost of effects, location shooting, and a huge cast. This of course can also apply with your own original works; you start off with a plot that's compact and a handful of characters and as you write the plot opens out and you start having to create flow charts to keep track of the characters.

This is no bad thing of course but the problem comes when, as with the comic, more and more ideas just get thrown in without any consideration for the effect on the reader. The first thing that happens is the author starts to break the rules of their own fictional universe; a character suddenly acquires telekinesis or the power to fly where there had never even been a hint such an outcome was possible, and then character number two suddenly becomes a vampire to offset the powers of character number one and then character three becomes a time traveling cyborg because now they look a bit bland, and so on and so on until you have a mad melee of plot elements all competing with one another for the reader’s attention.

In the end this will destroy the readers suspension of disbelief and involvement with the characters, they spend their time wondering things like, 'if the character used X to get out of a situation on page 100 why don't they use it to get out of the similar situation on page 200?' instead of getting involved in the intricacies of the plot.

Ideas are a wonderful thing but you do need to spread them out.

No Fly List

So previously I dealt with the issue of why aliens haven't come visiting but reading this article at Cracked written by ISS astronaut Chris Hadfield(Note some NSFW language in the comments section) and I realized that there was one assumption that I hadn't addressed; that our eponymous aliens could actually travel into space to begin with.

It is in fact pretty astonishing that humans can survive in space, and I'm not talking about the machinery that provides air and water and heat to keep the astronauts alive. We are a species that evolved on a planet under 1g of gravity. When we travel into space that gravity goes away and somehow the human body puts up with the this. Your bladder may not work the way nature intended, your reflexes and instincts are all completely wrong and have to be relearned and yet somehow people manage.

Now barring miracles of technology an alien race is probably going to be following the same path as earthly space flight. That means chemical rockets launching cramped vehicles whose crews will have to endure zero gee on their flights. What if they simply can't endure? What if the myriad of symptoms that sometimes afflict human space travellers were endemic and permanent for our alien friends?
It maybe that with sufficiently advanced technology the aliens could overcome such difficulties but what are the odds they would ever make the necessary breakthroughs if they never take those first steps?

Perhaps the galaxy will belong to mankind not because of our intelligence but because of our cast iron stomachs...