Excavation

So, even though I'm now firmly entrenched in the world of Palmer and Evans (two misfits who seem to take particularly nice holidays which end up not so nice), stuck somewhere between encouraging people to read and buy book 2 (In the Cool of the Moment), editing book 3 (In the Name of the Dark), reflecting on book 4 (In the Shallows of the Sea) and finishing book 5 (In the Cracks of the Hours), I found time for this new (not new) project.

In the mid 1990s, my English teacher at the time (Mrs Hobson - lovely) asked us to write something for a homework. I was in year 9, so aged 13-14 at the time and very much in love with science fiction, having discovered the worlds of Alien, Aliens, The X Files, Red Dwarf and all eras of Star Trek. Babylon 5 and more cerebral epics like 2001: A Space Odyssey would later join this list, but for then, I was intrigued by a group of misfit characters in a smooth, supposedly utopian world.

Where were all the losers in Star Trek? Why did the wasters in Red Dwarf only occasionally bump into the more suave dream-like heroes of standard sci-fi? Starting with character names inspired by the strangest source (Slimfast diet shake adverts!) I created a warring pair of siblings, equally useless, along with a drunken scumbag of a senior officer and a malfunctioning, rude computer (clearly inspired by Red Dwarf's Holly and 2001's HAL) stuck at the edge of known space with only each other for company.

My teacher considered it 'harsher' than my usual output and it was. It was sarcastic, rude, mean-spirited and bleak. Totally me, as it turned out. Before this I had written optimistic fantasy, being immersed in C. S. Lewis, Tolkien, Lloyd Alexander and the worlds of Knightmare, and my characters had all been heroes, wizards, elves and feisty warrior princesses. Now my characters were misanthropes, sore losers and drop outs. Those 2-3 pages of prose eventually became 300-odd typed up pages of a sci-fi epic from hundreds of scraps of ideas, sketches of spaceships and pictures cut out of catalogues to illustrate who was who.

Some people read it, some people loved it. I was quite happy with it, even if I used the story to praise my close friends, lambast my enemies and flatter my crushes. Typed up on an Atari ST and printed on a dot matrix computer, the original file was gone, but a few years ago, I was inspired to type the whole thing up again from the 20-year-old manuscript, playing down the obvious parodies, softening the edges on the harsher episodes and characters and updating the future-sci-fi ideas to include everyday ubiquitous inventions like apps and the internet.

Then I published it via Amazon's KDP system, just like my Palmer and Evans series, but only as a proof, just to see how it looked, and boy, did it look epic. 765 pages (even in small print) and a spine fat enough to support a gorilla's skull means I'll need to rethink how I really intend on publishing it for real. Re-reading it is a pleasurable trip down memory lane and I have missed these characters who I planned out further adventures for across a trilogy, then a quadrilogy of tales but never completed.

Maybe I will now!

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