Science Fiction
Date Published: June 20, 2018
Publisher:Lampworks Publishing
An archaeologist from a star-faring society faces a world of legends and impossible creatures...
StennGremm set out to solve the mystery of his ancestor’s disappearance but instead found himself stranded on a forgotten planet. A creature made of clay has just ground his vital technology into dust and is about to do the same to Stenn when he isrescued by the deadly and enigmatic swordswoman Gilwyr.Instead of studying the life of a medieval society, Stenn must now learn to survive it.However, his training in swordsmanship and court intrigue is cut short by the chaos that follows the murder of the heir to the throne.All the archaeological digs that he had led via telepresence had not prepared him to get dirt under his fingernails and blood on his hands!
Fleeing with Gilwyr and their mentor, Ox, Stenn begins a journey of discovery, both of this world and of himself. Who are the reclusive KirLeth who raised Gilwyr? What is the truth behind the legend of the Grimmerroth, the sorcerer who once laid waste to this land? Perhaps the answers may be found in the mysterious citadel that is said to be hidden in the desert far to the south. Stenn must combine his scientific insights with newfound skills and something that might be called magic to try to uncover the truth behind the legends before time runs out.
A fantasy adventure wrapped in a hard SF environment, Sellenria is a world where technology is myth, but myths are real. As the War of the Grimmerroth appears destined to replay itself, Stenn and Gilwyr must struggle to transcend their roles. The last war devastated the planet; this time it could extinguish all life on this unique world.
Guest Post:
Guest Post:
I'm no stranger to planning in my day job in IT. When the Accelerator was due to turn on and deliver data on a specific date, and my team had to have the storage and compute nodes ready to process the data, I became a big believer in planning each of the steps to complete. In other areas in my life, however, I take a different approach.
Take vacations for instance. We often get packed, get to the end of the driveway, and then ask ourselves "Are we going north or south?" There was one year when my wife and I realized that spring break was five days away, we had made no plans, our children would be out of school, and the daycare would be closed. We traded some miles for four tickets to London and reserved a rental car. For the next week, decided each morning over breakfast which way to go, and when evening came, we found a B&B near where we had ended up. If we wanted to stop at this castle, or that town square, or an archaeological site we saw on the map, there was no schedule to say we couldn't. We saw things we wouldn't have seen on a planned trip, met people we otherwise wouldn't have, and had a great time.
It should come as no surprise that I write much that way. What works for me is to set up a situation, imagine some characters, and let them start interacting. Soon they become autonomous beings with their own voices, desires, and quirks. Being a computer geek, I think of it as running a simulation in my head.
Very often I'll include objects or events in my story-telling, only to find out later that they are essential to the story. For instance, I began Sellenria with a journal that had been written by Stenn's ancestor to start him on his journey. Because he was an Archaeologist, an artifact seemed appropriate, so I threw in a gem. Before too long I discovered that the gem was a critical story element and the journal had little part to play, so I revised the journal out of existence and had the gem deliver the message. Many story elements throughout were invented on the spot and found a use for later. After finishing the first draft, I removed those bits that didn't contribute to the story in some way so they wouldn't become distractions.
However, like the trip to England where we knew we wanted to pass through Stonehenge and Oxford during our wanderings and end up at the airport at the end, I knew that Stenn had to visit Misthaven and Dalactus and end up at the Citadel for the final confrontation. Everything else was made up along the way in the service of getting to those points, but without a few waypoints, the story might have become lost.
Outliners and the discovery writers defend their methods on countless forums, mostly turning on arguments of getting the pacing right, keeping the story structured, and maintaining consistent plot lines. In my view, those are things the novelist has to keep in mind no matter the approach, no matter the toolset. You, the reader, will have to judge by the result, probably not even knowing which camp the author is in.
By the way, we never made it to Oxford on that trip, deciding to veer towards Stratford-upon-Avon instead. Taking that path, we happened upon a full-scale re-enactment of a medieval castle siege that we wouldn't have seen on our original route. That's life with a discovery writer.
About the Authors
Chuck Boeheim is a life-long denizen of physics laboratories, where he worked on the computing for major high-energy physics experiments. Daniel Elswit studied Archaeology in college and has worked in University IT ever since. Dan had ideas for a story about an archaeologist in a middle-earth-like setting, which Chuck hijacked to turn into a science fiction story set on an alien planet.
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