Science Fiction
Date Published: 11/23/18
Publisher: Chandra Press
The remote Intergalactic Penal Colony on the planet Rijel 12 is a very profitable enterprise. Its desolate surface is an uninhabitable wasteland relentlessly scorched by its sun, but inside the planet is a vast treasure trove of the most precious resources in the galaxy.
Prisoners sentenced to Rijel 12 know it’s a one-way ticket. It used to be a convict would serve their time and come home. That stopped a while ago. Inmates are forced to work the mines in wretched conditions and the death rate is staggering. Luckily for the warden, new inmates arrive monthly to replenish the labor pool. Business has never been better.
From the darkness of their miserable existence, one prisoner decides to take a stand and begins to organize a resistance. Inmates rally to the cause and prepare for rebellion. Can the rag-tag rebels of ‘New Australia’ succeed in their quest for freedom or will the warden and the overpowering might of the Interplanetary Authority extinguish their only hope?
From new author, King Everett Medlin, comes an action-packed epic of hope, rebellion, and the quest for redemption.
Excerpt 1:
The hard life of mining killed off thousands of prisoners every year, and there was no predictable pattern to it. Stronger prisoners died in the mines just as easily as weaker prisoners. Determination to survive, or resentment at having been sent to this subterranean hell, could certainly sustain a being for a while, but accidents were quite common. Death could come easily, and at most any time. Prison administrators didn’t care. They didn’t have to. In another few weeks, there’d be a ship arriving with more prisoners anyway. Life deteriorated into a matter of brutal survival for the desperate beings on Rijel 12.
After half an Earth century of dumping unfortunate prisoners on the planet, the place had become a death sentence, and everyone knew it. Inmates would tell newly arrived prisoners, and even prison officials communicated the same message. As one infamously cruel guard used to put it to arriving convicts as they were processed in the receiving bay, “You have been sent here to die, and that is likely what you’ll do. Accept it, and your miserable existence here may end peacefully. Who knows? You may die tomorrow. We don’t know, and we don’t care. Work and you eat. Eat and you live. That’s all you need to know for now.”
And yet fifty Earth years after its creation, even when faced with such an impossible existence, amazingly, some beings learned how to survive. They adapted, and they overcame by creating a society of their own. Leaders arose, structure developed, and the situation stabilized, partly driven by necessity and partly due to the sheer determination of intelligent creatures seeking to exist, no matter what the circumstances. They figured out ways to live on.
There is so much out there that’s been written or used in screenplays already; using original concepts as well as old ideas that simply get rehashed or re-branded. But that’s not your problem! Chances are you’ve got your own crystal clear vision of the perfect Sci Fi novel and that’s plenty for now.
Just start writing it. I did. Started with nothing but a cartoon I’d seen of a woman with wrists tied, suspended through a hatchway into a gloomy chamber where dark figures reached up toward her as if she were a food offering. They were prisoners, I assumed, and because they appeared grotesque and deformed I had to figure they were subhuman at the very least, if not space aliens. From that disturbing image I formed the premise for Rijel 12: The Rise of New Australia. Within days I had a synopsis. Then I just had to tell everyone about it, starting with my wife. Went everywhere with a notepad to jot down scene ideas – bounced them off my mom, my sister, my brother, my coworkers, and my grown kids. Often they were helpful; especially when I described something that piqued their interest. And I can’t emphasize this enough: Holding back, fearing they might tell me it sounded confusing or stupid, got me nowhere. I needed feedback; even if it was painful.
Don’t worry how it all comes out at first, once you start committing fingers to keyboard. Expect a convoluted mess. Anticipate trying to put it all together into some coherent flow, spending hours reading and re-reading paragraphs. That’s what I went through. I found myself Googling scientific terms and researching historic figures. I explored new theories on space travel and methods for traveling at multiples of the speed of light. It would be necessary, I decided, if intelligent beings were to travel to distant star systems. Otherwise, I feared having my story sound juvenile or cartoonish. Simply SAYING that a spacecraft crossed thousands of light years and billions of kilometers to reach its destination wouldn’t cut it for me. I endeavored to explain how they could actually do it.
But that’s just me. You do it your way and I’m sure it’ll be fantastic. My advice is to address the SCIENCE part of your Science Fiction novel early and often; but if the story is compelling enough then no one’s going to quibble. Always be practicing your pitch: a thirty second summary of what the story’s about. It’s vital to your own personal understanding of what you’re setting out to accomplish.
Submit your final work to as many publishers as you can find. It’s all done online now. No one’s expecting a typed manuscript mailed to them with a SASE inside to use in sending back a rejection letter. And remember that you only need one yes. Twenty, even thirty-six no’s mean absolutely nothing. If you think the book is perfect then it is.
About the Author
King Everett Medlin has been writing since 2013 when he first developed the idea for Rijel 12. It was originally designed to be a SciFi series, with the objective of creating several short installments. Instead, he got a lucky break when Chandra Press from San Diego responded favorably to the original draft, deciding to publish it as a full-length novel. King lives in Denver, Colorado with his lovely wife Caroline and has two grown children. He's a graduate of the University of Oklahoma where he played college Rugby and remains a diehard Sooners fan to this day. His specialties are Science Fiction and Mystery/Suspense novels, focusing on unusual stories with intriguing plot-lines and amazing characters.
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