LughIldanach: Blog

While I have the full "Few" story in well-developed draft, I've slowed in my editing. For the Swarm Cycle, I have additional stories waiting behind "Few".

So, I decided to try something, not Something Completely Different in the Monty Python sense, but a different way of looking. A good deal of "Few" deals from my own experiences. I think many people realize that much of the weapons and systems engineering comes from knowledge of actual technology, and often minimal change to fit the Swarm Cycle. Since "Few" is early timeline, I actually have to wiggle a bit to fit with stories later in the cycle. Give Terry & Co. time to develop weapons, strategies, and tactics, and there might be incompatible "Feeling lucky, punks? Make my day."

What may be less obvious is that "Few" characters are mostly drawn from people I've known, and some of the strongest personalities come from experience in the sexual revolution of the seventies. It's not unfair to say that a good deal, although not all, of Terry is autobiographical.

This is even more so in "Green Berets", which draws from the same period but without the need to included an existential threat to humanity. Carol is a composite of actual people. There really was a strip club called Le Marquis, and I draw both from reality and what-ifs from it. Other characters also draw from reality. After finishing Chapter 2, though, I'm pleased to have Carol tapping on my shoulder and wanting to share some of her thoughts. Until a few minutes ago, I didn't know she had them. :-)

Readers have given me good feedback that in the early chapters, where there is a good deal of flashbacks to give context, it's hard to track the context. I'm going to start chapters with a "relative" date code such as Month -15 or Month 3.

Month 1 is when the threat becomes public, with the story "Average Joes".

Terry, as a senior intelligence officer, first learns about the Sa'arm in Month -18, but it will be some months, still before Month 0, before he puts together his household and teams. The household will also link to those of other early Sponsors, forming an informal Clan.

For a couple of years, I've been working with the wonderful group of Swarm Cycle authors. It happens that I have a background with real-world weapons and battle management systems, and I'm one of those "hard science" science fiction/wargamer people that like to have as much consistency as possible.

There's more of an author consensus, I think, that the AIs, and CAP score, weren't quite perfect when they first arrived. This story works, in part, because I can assume some very talented people were not scored appropriately in the early testing.

Fervent apologies that I've had some chapters duplicate or be in the wrong sequence. It appears that I have had some problems with the new file dialogue in MS Word 2013, being used to Word 2003. Anyway, I've asked the Swarm Cycle people to help out, and have someone double-check before additional chapters go.

Seven chapters should be up, hopefully corrected now, of a story of 28 chapters.