Title : Concerning “Something New, Perhaps”
link : Concerning “Something New, Perhaps”
Concerning “Something New, Perhaps”
One of the strange blessings of being effectively unable to write about politics and current events at the moment is the availability of extra time to speculate. That’s a writer’s fuel, and not to be skimped or sloughed even at the busiest times. So I’ve been doing a lot of daydreaming about “the next book,” and what sort of story it should tell.
I like heroes and happy endings, as any Gentle Reader familiar with my fiction will already know. I also like substantial themes, so the reader can feel he got more out of the story than a few hours of entertainment. But I appreciate that the entertainment must come first and be unflagging – that the storyteller fails when he allows message to eclipse enjoyment.
So the other day, when I set fingers to keys, I started from a premise that’s not perfectly original: the counter-colonization of a depopulated Earth. A similar idea was employed some years ago: specifically, in Keith Laumer and Rosel George Brown’s novel Earthblood. My backstory conception differs from theirs, in that I postulate that Earth had been depopulated by genocidal yet entirely human wars and their aftermaths.
The Counter-Hegira from Cetia, Mankind’s sole colony world, is motivated by the steady intensification of the same sort of international, interracial, and inter-creedal animosities that gave rise to the wars that exterminated Man upon Terra. People are people, I reasoned, and the enmities they bear toward one another will go with them wherever they roam. Still, some Cetians are anxious to get away from the strife, even if it means an interstellar trek that will take eleven objective years (four months subjective at 99.95% of lightspeed).
The first question is: What will the 30,000 Counter-Hegirans do when they get to Earth?
- What sort of dispersion over the Earth’s surface will they elect?
- What sort of societies will they build?
- How high a technological level can they bring with them?
- Over a substantial interval – say four centuries – how high will that level rise?
- Will their offspring know any more peace than their forebears did on Cetia?
My supposition is that the population of Cetia would be distributed into races, creeds, and philosophies roughly the same way as that of Earth today. If that distribution is reproduced among the Counter-Hegirans, the history of Earth Renewed would tend to resemble that of our era. However, the history of our time, and of course of the Cetian milieu they fled, would be known to the Counter-Hegirans. Would they learn anything from it, or would implacable economic, sociological, religious, and philosophical forces result in the same sort of tensions, strife, and internecine warfare that we suffer today?
The story I think I’ll tell will be of one society on Earth Renewed that’s far more successful than the others, because of the insight and foresight of a lone genius. America had a gaggle of geniuses at her birth – a small but adequate gaggle – which resulted in a nation that bestrides the world. Could one man of sufficient brilliance, insight, and determination “pull off the trick” a second time? What would happen to the nation he founds over the centuries after his death?
And what will our hero-to-be, four centuries after the death of the Founder, need to do to preserve “the blessings of liberty” against the forces that seek to destroy them? Will he resemble anyone we know of today?
Stay tuned.
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