As is obvious, it has taken me some time to publish the 17th chapter of Sinaan Reis. I became very busy since the last update. This is a good thing for me, but sadly it has made it difficult to update here.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel, but not in the immediate future. The 17th chapter was always supposed to be the end of a portion of the story. It was always supposed to usher in the beginning of the next part of the story - which is where the real action is supposed to take place. All of the characters are in the right place.
While I had largely written Sinaan Reis well before beginning to post, I continued to edit, tweak, perfect (not that it is perfect). I have already started writing the next part, but it is not finished.
Therefore, there is no timetable for the next part. I look forward to writing it and finishing it. I've enjoyed this project, and your comments. I intend to continue it, and I thank you for your patience.
I've tried, in this story, to focus on the characters more than the world building. That said, the world in which they live (an imagined far future of our own world) is different from ours in a number of ways. I wanted some of the differences in their cultures to come through without excessive exposition, but I may have been a little too vague so I wanted to clear some things up.
One thing is that while monogamy is certainly the norm, and particularly in the Federation's inner planets, I wanted it to be clear that some parts of the Isles do not view that as the only norm. That is to say, many people practice it, but others do not, and this isn't out of the ordinary.
That said, the story really revolves around Sol. Sol was born and grew up on a space station in orbit around Mars, which is the seat of the Federation's power. He also spent several years in Kithira, which is a Federation-heavy planet in the Isles. The morals of Kithira are decidedly different from those of Mars. So he's tried to adapt to the world around him with mixed results.
Erinys is from Gia, which is a Isles city on the planet of Naxos that is dominated by moralists who have strong Federation leanings. She also spent time in Milos, which is through and through an Isles culture. So while she is more comfortable with the fact of the more lax morals found around much of the Isles, her upbringing was different from the Isles' norm.
One of the conflicts in the story is a conflict of points of view. Clearly, a far-future society will have different political systems than we have. Political theory changes a great deal in just 100 years. In the 1700s, the word libertarian had no meaning whatsoever. Even in 2023, its meaning is frequently unclear. But it is clear that Sol - despite viewing himself as a non-political player - has leanings that could be labeled libertarian.
Eliza's people may have views in common with this. They are clearly anarchists of a fashion. But they are certainly not anarcho-capitalists. Their views are more similar to those of late 1800s or early 1900s left-leaning anarchists. They also would likely not object to some level of state socialism.
As the conscience of the project, Erinys doesn't really have a natural political leaning. She's equally skeptical of everyone.
In terms of the sci-fi elements, the authors of the Expanse series once commented that they didn't want to write a hard sci-fi (that is, one that pays heavy deference to theories of science). Theirs was more like a soft sci-fi. When I typically think of a soft sci-fi, I tend to think of Star Trek, which tosses scientific-sounding babble into the script in order to give the sense that there's a consistent view of science that guides the show when that clearly is not the case. The Expanse was not that. It just avoided explaining scientific phenomena altogether other than to the extent that it was necessary to drive the plot.
Among the similarities between this project and that one (I started writing this story years before I ever heard of The Expanse, but the similarities are hard to ignore) is its soft sci-fi focus. I try when possible to make sense of scientific phenomena (like in discussing Sophie's programming). But science doesn't drive the story. The characters do, and they're driven by political forces largely governed by a faceless government.
I don't want to get too distracted in explaining the story. That isn't its purpose. Really, its purpose is catharsis. But the other purpose is to write at least a somewhat compelling narrative about how different people react to what they (rightly) view as an oppressive authoritarian regime. So I might make updates on this blog from time to time if I realize, once again, that some of my internal dialogue is getting lost in the storytelling. But if I don't, its because I'm trying my best to fit that internal dialogue into the story itself without excessive exposition.
"As you know, Sophie, the cultural norms on Thiaki are..." I'd sooner write about a rubber-headed alien with tentacles than do that.
Finally, one note about Sophie's POV. We don't get to see it ever because Sophie doesn't have the same internal narrative that the human characters do. As an AI, her internal narrative would be a string of ones and zeros. Instead, we see the effects of her programming and her internal narrative through her speech and actions. This is purposeful.