@alastair_m
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
The below are all science fiction. I have some technical papers published, not listed here.
T-Space Universe
This comprises several series and short stories. It turns out that many of the nearer stars have planets which were terraformed millions of years ago, and populated with Earth life, which has since diverged. Adventure stories, but the science – astronomy, biology, geology and even the physics (FTL notwithstanding) is as real as I can make it.The Alpha Centauri Trilogy – The prequel series: mankind’s first voyage to Alpha Centauri, political intrigue, survival, and strange discoveries.
First Landing
Sawyer’s World
The ReturnKakuloa: A Rising Tide – First in the 4-volume (planned) Kakuloa series, named for one of the planets in the Alpha Centauri system, which will span the first few decades of settlement and interstellar exploration.
Carson & Roberts Archeology Series – Fifty years after the Centauri expeditions, Hannibal Carson discovers an alien high-tech device masquerading as a stone-age talisman. Loosely, “Indiana Jones in space.” 5 books so far, more coming.
The Chara Talisman
The Reticuli Deception
The Eridani Convergence
The Centauri Surprise
The Pavonis InsurgenceRenee (and the Space Raiders) – Novelette, one of the “Jason Curtis” short adventures, set in early T-Space.
Miscellaneous Others
Alastair Mayer: A Sampler – A collection of short stories previously published in Analog and elsewhere. Includes a Jason Curtis story, and an SF/Fantasy crossover. I occasionally give away hardcopies of this at conventions, hence the title.
By the way, if anyone wants to take a look at my wiki, here’s the link: http://www.alastairmayer.org/wiki/Main_Page
It needs work. I’d rather write than edit the wiki. Don’t judge me. 😉 (If you don’t care about making it public, it’s probably a lot less work. My hope is that, with enough interested fans, it eventually becomes self-sustaining. Or I can afford a wikimaster.)
I use a wiki for this, based on the same MediaWiki code that Wikipedia uses (there are others). I wish I could say that I use it for everything, but the fact is I tend to have a collection of miscellaneous files that I then migrate to the wiki. (Also, I have both a private version of the wiki, on my home network, and a public one, off of my web site. This avoids spoilers for works in progress.)
It was part of my day job to maintain a departmental wiki (IT) for systems documentation, etc. The upside is that it makes it easy for me. The downside is that sometimes it reminds me of my day job. 😉
There’s a lot that hasn’t made it from my books to the wiki, since I tend toward “just-in-time” worldbuilding (Devid Weber face-palmed when I mentioned this on a panel) but I’m running up against the limits of that, especially as my series expands and there are more cross-references between books and subseries. This is where a wiki’s cross-linking ability shines.
Series are, I think, especially attractive in science fiction and fantasy. While series about a character are popular in other genres, SF/F requires so much world-building that it makes sense for an author to keep coming back to that pre-built world (and perhaps extending it). Readers also get invested in the whole universe, hence the popularity of shared-universe series or spinoffs from popular TV/movie series. (Of course because of licensing issues the latter are a tougher playground for indie writers.)
So far I have three (and counting) series within a single overall sci-fi universe, which means I have three different first volumes, each an entry point into that universe. (Currently at nine books (not counting shorts) with two actively in progress and another five in planning.) And yes, a bump to any one series ripples through the entire ‘verse.
At some point I hope to open up parts of my ‘verse to other authors, in no small part because I’d like to read those stories. There’s quite a bit of work involved in that though. (Series bible, editing and the usual work involved in an anthology.)
