A journey to humanity's destiny
The Multi Epoch Challenge
Background
In 2020 I began considering writing a book which centred on the dramatic irony of a deep space mission, set far in the future, to a destination that had been intimately aware of humanity and its history for thousands of years.
The result is a character-led multi-epoch work of speculative fiction that will be published this autumn.
The Process
Writing the novel, with a working title of Hermes, in the spring of 2022 came surprisingly easy, what was much more difficult was to transfer the manuscript between differing formats for submission, and most difficult of all, was the task of drawing it to the attention of prospective Literary Agents.
Now in the summer of 2024, with a highly experienced long-standing publisher preparing the work for publication, I realise not only, how very difficult it is to succeed in having a first book published but how lucky I am to haver a publisher pushing the ceiling on it.
Part of the difficulty in assessing the novel, or, to put it another way, what I would find difficult if I was in the prospective shoes of an agent or publisher, is that the twenty-page overture, which takes up much of the requested submission space, is very different to the subsequent three movements. How can the atmosphere of Proto-Polynesia in AD 50 not be very different to Anglo Saxon and Tudor England in 1050 and 1550? And it is certainly entirely different again from the platform orbiting the Earth from which the deep space vehicle Hermes is launched in 2070.
Putting it even more simply, the beginning is not representative of the rest of the novel.
Whilst I accept It may be difficult to judge the work because of its narrative structure; I have found it a most satisfying and interesting challenge to write and to have set the story in these very different epochs.
In Movement 1 and 2, to ensure any chance of authenticity and to weave the threads of my story into the historical fabric of the time in a believable way, the first challenge was to research the history of the periods in which it was set, so as to create an authentic narrative. The by-product of this research resulted in some unexpected outcomes.
Naturally, I hope that people who read these sections will engage with the characters and find it entertaining but perhaps also, like me in creating the story, they will gain an insight into the historic period the book moves through. I certainty did and, I found it most surprising in a whole range of different ways, not least in comparing the preoccupations of the two eras and even the issues that face the United Kingdom in 2024.
The third movement, set in the relatively near future, produced an altogether different challenge. With speculative fiction you run the risk of simply getting it wrong or more to the point, being wrong footed by real outcomes. However, I and my fellow travellers in the reading group, have found it in equal parts oddly reassuring and concerning, that many of the themes and events hinted at it in the novel are being underwritten and becoming part of the real-world narrative.
The purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk and the landing of a craft on the Moon by India were in the future when the book was written; much as the photographs sent back to Earth by the James Webb Telescope and the forming of an alliance on artificial intelligence by Abu Dhabi and Microsoft. But all are central to the narrative.
I am also reminded when I consider this issue of how different the atmosphere of Movement 3 (2070) is to Movement 1 (1050), where in the latter’s case, the main preoccupation of the people of England at that time was to have enough food to put on the table to survive.
To finish, I return to the Overture. Originally it was designed to make its point quite gently, less character-centred and more thematic and symbolic. The difficulty with that approach is that the characters do not quite punch through; that remains the only feedback I have ever received on the manuscript, but it made me reconsider and has led to what is now in place. A disaster driven by a very personal jealousy, a power struggle and humanity’s capacity to be territorial... over everything, and fear of anything different.
As the creator of this multi-epoch work, I hope you can see that I cannot imagine how someone can really judge the work based on the first 10,000 words alone which merely tip the story over into the beginning of just the first movement.
So, in the meantime, as we wait for the path to publication to become clear, I have asked a musician who I admire, to create a short promotional trailer, which I very much hope you will find sits alongside my thoughts in this entry and stimulates visually.
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