The Atlanteans of Proxima b: Afterword
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As is customary there will be a couple of Thursdays without fiction. The next novella is currently being written, more on that below.
Thank you all for reading, it means a great deal to have you here. I wrote this novella as a continuation of short story because readers requested it, and there was more to explore (and still is, the idea could be done again and again with more depth and focus on the religious questions that I skimmed over). I wrote into the dark for most of it, piecing it together as I went until a vague idea of a destination appeared around halfway in. It's risky not knowing where you're going when writing serialised fiction as there is no opportunity to go back and edit previous chapters unless you're far enough ahead. At times I was ahead of schedule, at times I wasn't and I wove in as much as I could so nothing came across as surprising.
Epistolary writing is by its nature told, not shown, and this is further limited by the character doing the writing. Elements are skipped over, misinterpreted, or missed entirely, others are exaggerated or obsessed over. Changing the tense for certain scenes was an attempt to add urgency to the situation and I considered adding in spelling errors and other mistakes to illustrate the hurry the Captain was under but thought it was messy to read, besides some of the notes will have been voice recordings and spellcheck is probably perfect in the 28th Century. Having the device confiscated off the Captain presented an obvious problem but it wouldn't have made sense for the Atlantean's to have left him with it at every moment near the end which meant I had to skip time where events were happening and then have the Captain relay them hastily after the fact. The style is one I’ve used for other short stories, like Our Sable Moon, and I enjoy it a great deal because of its limitations.
On both the science and religion side I found myself out of my depth knowledge wise and if I were to revisit this idea, e.g. expand this novella into a novel, I would do better research and make it lean towards hard science fiction with religious themes. Make more of the anthropological angle and make a bigger deal of the language aspect.
Overall I enjoyed writing Proxima b even though it was the furthest out of comfort zone in terms of themes, style, and content.
Future Projects
The next novella is a fantasy story following a mage hunter and his apprentice as they attempt to investigate a murder and become embroiled in a world altering conspiracy The first few chapters are written and I plan to begin posting the first or second week of June.
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Thanks for reading.