Well, I’ve taken a break from writing to concentrate on… writing – for my creative writing degree. Unfortunately, space opera science fiction doesn’t really fit into the non-fiction area of the assessments, nor does it fit the popular cinema course focused on Hollywood teen movies, or even the television studies stream that explores contemporary culture.
It’s difficult to focus on writing science fiction when everything else is pulling you back into the real world, so instead, I’ve gone back to something I used to do in the 90s. Write about the latest on Science Fiction TV releases. (Reporting in the real world on science fiction – you see what I did there!) We’ve entered the new golden age of science fiction TV with so many new shows being made and streamed through Netflix, Amazon and others, that it is the perfect time to start reporting on the golden sci fi year of 2020.
But online news services haven’t been quick to ‘nicheify’ their offerings, prefering to lump together anything remotely connected to science fiction and fantasy. As I’m only interested in stories set in space, preferably with aliens, I regularly find trying to read through these newsletters frustrating. Especially if the newsletter has a standard heading that says ‘latest science fiction news’ only to have just fantasy news below it.
And so, I’ve created Sci Fi News Bytes. A new weekly run down on Space Operas / Space Dramas. If it has aliens, spaceships, is set in the future, and much of the series is spent in space, then it’ll probably get a mention.
One more thing. If you haven’t seen it already, I strongly recommend you check out Another Life. While there are a few naff scenes, and the cutaways to Earth don’t seem to add much to the story, thankfully they’re few and far between. The space story line is awesome and takes up most of the screen time. And it’s got Katee Sackoff and Samuel Anderson! Official Netflix site here: Another Life
Temporal Incursion. Stellar Flash Book Three. By Neil A. Hogan
Available in Digital and in Print Formats from Amazon
Episode 1: The Hand Continued
Chapter 3
“27 scientists have
disappeared, and Victoria has a date. Interesting.” Patel leant back in his
chair with a curious look on his face, and steepled his fingers. “Very
interesting.”
“Putting aside Victoria’s
personal life for a moment, John, Proxibee is your jurisdiction. It’s my
understanding that the Secret Services has a gravity and frequency research
base there in association with the F.R.I. I realize you can’t personally
monitor all S.S.’s 100 billion projects, but 27 scientists?” Zhou paused and
leaned forward, looking Patel in the eye and smiling slightly. “You must be at
least a little curious. With me now in charge of the station, perhaps you
should check it out? You’re probably the best person for the job.”
Patel frowned. “Young
lady, you might now be my superior on this base, but I’m over 150 years old. It
is not possible for you to use subtle persuasion targeting my curiosity to get
me off this space station quite so easily.”
Zhou grinned. “Only
looking out for your best interests, of course. Your I.Q. is off the charts.”
She leant back in her chair. “This station must be incredibly boring for you.
You know. Really, really boring. After all, you did originally hire me so that
you didn’t have any excuse to stay.” She tapped her chin. “I know, maybe you
could go spelunking on Enceladus again until we find out some more information.”
Patel blinked. “Wait. You
are doing it again!”
“Then, tell me why you’re
still here? You’re practically maintaining all of human occupied space. Why hang
around Space Station X-1a?”
Patel allowed a slight
smile, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. He then turned to the center of
the room. “My turn to supply a recording, it seems. A.I. Display Saturn orbit
survey 15th February 2129 video stream. Reference: Temporal
Incursion. Slow the video to a speed we can comprehend. Authorization vibration
Doctor John Patel.”
“Confirmed,” said the
A.I. “Accessing. Displaying.”
An image materialized of
Saturn and its rings, blurred and seemingly frozen. A green, circular target
moved across the image then snapped at a tiny spot towards the center. It
zoomed to show a floating object shooting away from them, leaving a black line
through the rings in its wake.
The image shuddered as
the drone adjusted its position, flashing closer. What previously looked like a
glowing light now looked like it contained multiple stars flickering in and out
of it.
“Is it alien?’ asked
Zhou.
“One moment.”
The drone shot forward several
times as the light flashed further away from it, but it quickly lost it.
The recording turned off.
“So, maybe it was a drone
from another civilization,” offered Zhou. “You know, Earth has been visited by
billions of drones from other civilizations in just the past thousand years. As
UFO traffic officer monitoring Earth’s intersection, I should know.”
“Not exactly,” said
Patel. “It was a piece of time. In fact, a piece of reversed time. When we
retrieved the drone, we found it had become several minutes younger, just by
being near it.”
“But, time doesn’t usually
travel around in chunks. You can’t have time without space, or matter. They’re
inseparable. And it looked nothing like a rogue, hyperdense black hole.”
Patel leant back. “An
unsolved mystery. What concerns me is that, at that time, it wasn’t the only
one. There were several occurrences of these pieces of time in the Solar system
in 2129. Admittedly, most of them were on either side of the Oort cloud, apart
from one we suspect caused something similar to a Tunguska event in Bimini. But
one thing we know for sure is that they were all heading in one direction at
close to the speed of light.”
Zhou thought for a
second. “The date was just over four and a half years ago? And from the stars
in the background…”
“They should be arriving
at Proxima Centauri B any day now,” finished Patel. He got up off the chair.
“Which might even explain the missing scientists. So, I hope you don’t mind if
I hang about the station a bit longer?”
“But, what can we do
about Victoria?”
“Well,” Patel said as he
dissolved the door and exited. “I’m sure she can look after herself. And if she
runs into a micro time particle, I guess she’ll get a bit younger!” He nodded
goodbye to Zhou, and the door reformed behind him.
Zhou knew Patel was being
cryptic again. If the drone only had to be near the object for less than a
second to become a few minutes younger, she was sure Heartness wouldn’t just
gain a few years.
She could be quickly reduced to a fertilized egg.
Temporal Incursion. Stellar Flash Book Three. By Neil A. Hogan
Available in Digital and in Print Formats from Amazon
Alien Dimensions features stories by authors both new and experienced, exploring aliens and the future.
Issue 15 is the most recent edition, and I’m sure you’ll find the stories interesting.
This issue is a bit different in style to those issues that came before, in that I’ve also included some excerpts from previous authors’ novels, as well as some shorter length stories.
Issue 16 will be back to normal with longer stories, reduced promotional pages, and no excerpts, at this stage.
If you’ve loved Alien Dimensions so far, and wish to submit a story for the next issue, please read my guidelines here: Alien Dimensions Submission Guidelines. They’re quite restrictive! I’d rather you knew ahead of time what I’m looking for, rather than having to send out hundreds of rejection notices every day.
Having gone through most of the stories again that I’ve rejected over the past couple of years, I’ve discovered that there seems to be some kind of correlation between inventiveness and substance, and whether it has been written in the third person or not. As it has turned out, many of the stories I had to reject had been written in the first person.
First Person Storytelling
Why do you think that could be?
Is it because a first person story ends up being a stream of consciousness story where barely anything ends up happening?
Is it because there are so many published writers writing second-rate first person stories, and new writers attempt to emulate them, thinking this is how to write?
Or is it because first person story writing means the story gets bogged down in emotions and angst and reminiscences and circumspection, and everything else is described through how that one character perceives the world?
I’m not completely against first person storytelling, but I’d much prefer multiple characters and lots of head jumping, rather than a single first person view from beginning to end.
So, sadly, I’ve had to add ‘Written in the third person’ to the list of requirements. I realize this will probably reduce the amount of submissions to just one a month, but I think it will be for the best.
What do you think?
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