You love SciFi and I’m looking for readers – I think we could be a perfect match!
I’m just putting the finishing touches to Orphan Planet, the first book in my upcoming soft SciFi series, ‘Odyssey Earth.’ And here’s where you can find out a bit more about me, my writing and the cast of characters.
Soft SciFi, you say? I do, and here’s why. I’m not an astrophysics kind of guy. I couldn’t tell you how a spaceship works. But I love SciFi, and I like a good story and relatable characters, so I thought I’d write one of my own and fill it with people you might want to hang out with. It’s a space adventure set in a recognisable world, with characters with feelings and emotions. And jokes, lots of jokes. I also put in a snarky AI – a droll virtual companion – because that’s kind of obligatory in this kind of book, and anyway he makes me laugh.
Just to be clear, there’s no fantasy or magic. No dragons or swords. (I wouldn’t trust half the characters with a pointy sword, in any case.) But there’s a sense of wonder and adventure, as the story ranges out across our extraordinary galaxy, in all its mind-boggling scale and complexity, and I think there’s a kind of magic in that anyway.
I hope that’s the kind of stuff you like reading. I certainly love writing it. And if you stick with me on the journey, I’ll tell you a lot more about the coming adventures as the series develops.
What’s it all about?
What’s it about? Well, there’s a clue in the ‘Oops, wrong planet’ tag, and if I had to come up with another strapline, I’d probably go for ‘Colony ship gone wrong.’ Imagine a sixteen-year voyage across the galaxy in the ship, the ‘Odyssey Earth’, to deliver sleeping colonists to a new Earth-like planet. I liked that idea, but I wanted to make it about real people and not astronauts or science nuts.
So I put a teacher into cryosleep – they’ll need teachers one day on the new planet – and then woke him early to see what happens. And then I put him in charge of a bunch of teenagers on board the ship, at which point everything goes – well, let’s just say, not according to plan.
I don’t know if this is what every author finds, but I have to tell you that the characters have lives of their own. Often, I think I’m basically just observing from afar and then compiling an incident report. There are entire episodes and conversations that sprang from the slightest of events, that I really didn’t see coming. Just know that some of this story is literally writing itself, such is the mystery of the creative mind.
A playlist for the Odyssey Earth
A lot of the characters have excellent musical taste – I couldn’t possibly say where they get it from, *coughs modestly, if that’s a thing*.
So I compiled a spaceship playlist, which I thought I’d share. It inspires me when I write, and gives you an insight into what they listen to on the ‘Odyssey Earth’ on their journey through the galaxy.
You can grab it here on Spotify
What do you think – any great space songs I missed? (And don’t tell me ‘Space Oddity’. That’s about space-gone-wrong, which is not the vibe we want at all.)
I’ll be back next time with some insights about a few of the main characters, but if you want to get ahead of the crowd, then sign up for my newsletter and be part of the crew!
Rex Burke 