Books

Books
Books written by Ray Sullivan

Sunday 20 February 2011

What is Science Fiction? Part 2 - The Journeymen Backstory

In my last blog I discussed the back story to Parallel Lives.  In this blog I'm going to discuss The Journeymen back story.

In The Journeymen we learn about a planet nine light years away which developed a civilisation that explored incessantly, it's flora, fauna, geography and then extended to the exploration of space.  When it found a suitable planet (ours) it set up a colony that thrived.  Meanwhile, back on the home planet, relations started to slip, eventually resulting in a terrible war that killed billions of people and destroyed an entire continent.

That was tens of thousands of years ago.  About six thousand years ago the planet has recovered, provides a benign autocracy, has eleminated the need for war and has almost forgotten about the devastating wars.  Except that the wars left the bio-diversity too limited and the planetary population has started to decline. 

Contact with the original colony has been lost for tens of thousands of years.  Unfortunately much of the technology that they had developed previously has also been lost so it is decided to send a team of people on a multi genrational journey to the old colony hitching a ride on a comet that is known to pass by both planets on a two thousand year orbit.

Three generations and one bloody battle later with some of the people tasked to travel on the comet, the Sons of Arlgon, the Journeymen find themselves stranded on Earth, with the descendants of the original Colonists still preserving the required genetic material although many have interbred with ther indigenous population.  The technology is gone, there is no swift resolution possible.  So the Journeymen resolve to preserve the Colonist genetic lineage, while propelling the technology on Earth to provide the tools to get the genetic material home, at whatever cost necessary.

Fast forward to today and we find ourselves on a planet that is being driven to self-destruction by representatives from an alien race in a drive to develop the technology needed to get teh Colonist genetic material home.  In the middle of this one IB (interbred), Tom Roberts, finds that he is a pawn in a Journeyman plot that results in many people losing their lives.

In my next blog I'll explain the backstory to Skin, my latest published novel.

No comments:

Post a Comment