Worlds-Apart Book O8 Hellfire is Now On-Line
For those of you new to the site, Worlds-Apart, is probably the internet's longest running, novel-form sci-fi series, but then again maybe it isn't. Funnier than Battlestar Galactica. More insightful than Far Out Space
Nuts. Better written than Plan 9 From Outer
Space (barely).
With a worldwide audience of several people, possibly more.
Worlds-Apart is a
back-to-basics sci-fi space opera (with some stylistic affectations) about
spaceships and strange worlds, not weird crap about bizarre beings with
unpronounceable names eating pudding, or gloomy, gritty dysfunctional
people wallowing in existential space-angst. No, the stories are classic
in form, but in execution bear as much resemblance to old and new sci-fi
as Buffy the Vampire
Slayer does to an old Bela Lugosi movie.
Okay, so what is it about? Well, imagine this. It's
roundabout the year 7000 AD. Far out on the other side of the galaxy lie
Sapphire and Republic, two of the last worlds colonized by humankind in
the era of the Great Galactic Commonwealth of about 2400 AD to 5200 AD.
Somewhere in the mid 53rd century, or thereabouts, human civilization on a
galactic scale collapsed. No one is sure why, but legend states that
humanity somehow pissed off a very powerful alien race called the
Tarmigans, who bombed most every human colony to somewhere between the
Stone Age and the Cell Phone Age.
Sapphire and Republic were (mostly) spared this
onslaught, but at the time of the collapse had only a few thousand
colonists each. Over the next two millennia, each has rebuilt a
technological, space-faring civilization, but each evolved a unique
society and culture (as has every world in the series, which is part of
the fun). Sapphire's people are freedom-minded, independent, and have a
laissez-faire system of government. Republic has become a Terry Gilliam's
Brazil-like state of bureaucracy and collectivism. In order to explore the
galaxy, and re-connect with the lost colonies of the Commonwealth, they
have had to combine resources and work together.
Their achievement is the
Pathfinder Ship Pegasus, one of nine enormous, multi-generational
starships built to explore the galaxy in hopes of finding the other lost
colonies and maybe Earth if they get lucky. Worlds-Apart covers the
journey of the Pathfinder Ship Pegasus as it journeys across the galaxy.
Each world they explore is covered in either a book or a story. Read them
in stretchy pants. It's for fun.
Writing Progress is tracked on the
Worlds-Apart Writing Blog , If you really must know.
