Demosthenes: Blog

Chapter 4 of Longshot has just been reposted after a careful edit: I find that a second pair of eyes always makes a tremendous difference in the final polishing of a text, and I'm very grateful to my editor for providing his. The original chapter included a few extra-silly errors that have now been eliminated.

One of the stand-out features of Longshot is the diversity of the biomes the vessel supports, inspired by films like Silent Running and novels such as John Varley's Titan. That diversity is not only on land, but also underwater, as explored in today's reposted chapter, reflecting my reef diving experience in the Lesser Antilles. The scene was inserted after the original posting of the chapter, so readers who haven't returned to the story for a while may want to peruse it again.

The editing process continues: chapter three of Longshot has been re-posted. My thanks, as always, to my editor for his corrections and feedback.

The science fiction I write tends to be "hard", in the sense that everything in it is scientifically possible: there's no faster-than-light travel, and details such as Longshot's antimatter drive and its rate of rotation have been exactingly researched, even if this information remains in the background of the story.

However, many stories require one aspect that is not fully factual in order to complete the plot. In technical discussions, this is called "handwaving"; in the realm of scientific hypotheses, they're commonly referred to as "blue fairies". Regardless of the pursuit, the idea is the same: there is a certain point in a conjecture where you don't know the details of how things work, but allow it in order for the rest of the argument to hang together.

Importantly, you're only allowed one blue fairy: anything more than that is considered cheating or fantasy. The same goes for my stories. Sometimes, as in Resonance, the blue fairy is central: there's no real explanation of how the protagonist's gift works, just that it does, while the rest of the story remains realistic. In Longshot, the unknown factor is the ship's climate. Longshot has thousands of square miles, but a polar cap and a desert separated by just fifty miles and a wealth of diverse biomes between them strains the ability of any technology to maintain a thermodynamic balance. In Longshot, it "just works", hopefully to the pleasure of the reader.

After the contributions of my editor Longshot Chapter 2 has been updated and reposted. Thankfully, the errors found so far are relatively few and small, but no less irksome for that. I'm very grateful to Yellow Peril for his corrections and feedback.

Over the past few months I've been rewriting previously published chapters in small ways, mostly to improve the narrative flow of the story to come. While these changes have not altered the central plot, readers of the original manuscript may want to take the time to peruse chapters as they're re-posted.

One unique aspect of Longshot's culture is that it is entirely agnostic. Askr and his family have no religion, do not worship the higher powers of their small world (Ship and the vanished Founders), and are devoid of any concept of blasphemy. At a practical level this means that I cannot use religious references in dialogue, not even the most casual "God", which I find an interesting challenge.

Of course, this doesn't necessarily imply that Longshot's culture will remain secular in the centuries to come...

The current world-wide epidemic and variations of shelter-in-place and physical distancing measures taken in each country have affected everyone differently, but a fairly common response to the pervasive invisible threat we're living with is a lack of motivation and decreased creative drive. This is particularly frustrating under the circumstances: with all the spare time I'm spending in quarantine, it should be a great opportunity to write, but I've found it very challenging to get anything done, feeling the energy and focus required to do so constantly out of reach.

In week three I've finally started to turn things around, with the very welcome assistance of a volunteer editor, who is working through the previously published chapters of Longshot. It's my intention to re-post chapters as they are corrected: the opening chapter was published this morning. With my editor's help, once we've made the final edits to the fourteen published chapters, I'll start to add fresh chapters: I have a dozen ready to go, and am trying to push further ahead.

As always, thank you very much for your readership and support!

With the generous help of a volunteer editor, I've fixed all of the posted chapters of Longshot to remove any remaining typos, although a few may still be lurking around.

Looking forward, the next sequence of chapters are getting very close to publication, with just a little more work to do. After editing and additional content, the six chapters I had originally projected to complete the first part of the novel have expanded to 10. I've also been working on a map of Longshot's interior, but it's taking some time, as I decided to make it topographic.

I hope to have new content for Longshot up in two weeks; I appreciate reader's patience and forbearance.