Publisher: DSP Publications
Author: J. Scott Coatsworth
Cover Artist: Aaron Anderson
Length: 284 Pages
Format: eBook, Paperback
Release Date: 10/10/17
Pairing: MM
Price: 6.99, 16.99
Series: Liminal Sky (Book One)
Genre: Sci Fi, Space, Gen Ship, Apocalypse, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer
Blurb:
Some stories are epic.
The Earth is in a state of collapse, with wars breaking out over resources and an environment pushed to the edge by human greed.
Three living generation ships have been built with a combination of genetic mastery, artificial intelligence, technology, and raw materials harvested from the asteroid belt. This is the story of one of them—43 Ariadne, or Forever, as her inhabitants call her—a living world that carries the remaining hopes of humanity, and the three generations of scientists, engineers, and explorers working to colonize her.
From her humble beginnings as a seedling saved from disaster to the start of her journey across the void of space toward a new home for the human race, The Stark Divide tells the tales of the world, the people who made her, and the few who will become something altogether beyond human.
Humankind has just taken its first step toward the stars.
Excerpt:
“DRESSLER, SCHEMATIC,” Colin McAvery, ship’s captain and a third of the crew, called out to the ship-mind.
A three-dimensional image of the ship appeared above the smooth console. Her five living arms, reaching out from her central core, were lit with a golden glow, and the mechanical bits of instrumentation shone in red. In real life, she was almost two hundred meters from tip to tip.
Between those arms stretched her solar wings, a ghostly green film like the sails of the Flying Dutchman.
“You’re a pretty thing,” he said softly. He loved these ships, their delicate beauty as they floated through the starry void.
“Thank you, Captain.” The ship-mind sounded happy with the compliment—his imagination running wild. Minds didn’t have real emotions, though they sometimes approximated them.
He cross-checked the heading to be sure they remained on course to deliver their payload, the man-sized seed that was being dragged on a tether behind the ship. Humanity’s ticket to the stars at a time when life on Earth was getting rapidly worse.
All of space was spread out before him, seen through the clear expanse of plasform set into the ship’s living walls. His own face, trimmed blond hair, and deep brown eyes, stared back at him, superimposed over the vivid starscape.
At thirty, Colin was in the prime of his career. He was a starship captain, and yet sometimes he felt like little more than a bus driver. After this run… well, he’d have to see what other opportunities might be awaiting him. Maybe the doc was right, and this was the start of a whole new chapter for mankind. They might need a guy like him.
The walls of the bridge emitted a faint but healthy golden glow, providing light for his work at the curved mechanical console that filled half the room. He traced out the T-Line to their destination. “Dressler, we’re looking a little wobbly.” Colin frowned. Some irregularity in the course was common—the ship was constantly adjusting its trajectory—but she usually corrected it before he noticed.
“Affirmative, Captain.” The ship-mind’s miniature chosen likeness appeared above the touch board. She was all professional today, dressed in a standard AmSplor uniform, dark hair pulled back in a bun, and about a third life-sized.
The image was nothing more than a projection of the ship-mind, a fairy tale, but Colin appreciated the effort she took to humanize her appearance. Artificial mind or not, he always treated minds with respect.
“There’s a blockage in arm four. I’ve sent out a scout to correct it.”
The Dressler was well into slowdown now, her pre-arrival phase as she bled off her speed, and they expected to reach 43 Ariadne in another fifteen hours.
Pity no one had yet cracked the whole hyperspace thing. Colin chuckled. Asimov would be disappointed. “Dressler, show me Earth, please.”
A small blue dot appeared in the middle of his screen.
“Dressler, three dimensions, a bit larger, please.” The beautiful blue-green world spun before him in all its glory.
Appearances could be deceiving. Even with scrubbers working tirelessly night and day to clean the excess carbon dioxide from the air, the home world was still running dangerously warm.
He watched the image in front of him as the East Coast of the North American Union spun slowly into view. Florida was a sliver of its former self, and where New York City’s lights had once shone, there was now only blue. If it had been night, Fargo, the capital of the Northern States, would have outshone most of the other cities below. The floods that had wiped out many of the world’s coastal cities had also knocked down Earth’s population, which was only now reaching the levels it had seen in the early twenty-first century.
All those new souls had been born into a warm, arid world.
We did it to ourselves. Colin, who had known nothing besides the hot planet he called home, wondered what it had been like those many years before the Heat.
Buy Links
Excerpt – Author’s Note
For my guest post, I thought I’d share the author’s note from “The Stark Divide”:
“The Stark Divide” is my second novel, and the first in my “Liminal Sky” series. But it has a long and (forgive the pun) storied history.
Way back in high school, I wrote my first novel. It was a horribly derivative, poorly plotted fantasy sci-fi story with pegasuses (pegasi?) and elves and talking monkeys that to this day sits on a shelf in our office closet.
But my next book, “On a Shoreless Sea”, was something altogether different. It sprang out of the idea of mixing sci-fi and fantasy – creating a fantasy setting within a sci fi one. I was hugely inspired by sci-fi-fantasy authors like Anne McCaffrey, who built living, breathing, amazing worlds that combined dragons and spaceships. Places I wanted to visit, places where I wanted to live.
As a closeted gay teen, these places were my magical getaways, and as a budding author, I longed to create something similar that would be all my own.
I spent years working on that novel, bit by bit after work, late at night, and on weekends. Most of it was originally written before my coming out in 1992, so it didn’t contain any queer characters.
It was going to be my big break, the novel that would put me on the map in the publishing world. When it as ready at last – on October 26th, 1995 — I sent it to ten of the biggest sci-fi publishers. And then I waited.
One by one, they came back to me, and it was a bloodbath: “no longer accepting unsolicited unagented material;” “this material is not suited to our list;” “we are unable to review unsolicited manuscripts;” “we are not in the market for this kind of book;” “this book just isn’t to my taste;” “the work often seemed overworked and lacking focus;” and “It’s just not for us.”
On October 10th, 1996, almost a year later, I received my final rejection:
“The work is unusually promising, as the care you have given to nurturing your characters and your language is evident. I find, however, that the plot doesn’t quite pull together.”
Bless them for at least actually reading it and giving me some real feedback.
After that, I basically gave up. I made sporadic stabs at authoring again, but it never really stuck. Not until 2013. My husband Mark’s mother passed away, causing a big upheaval in our lives, and I made an offhand comment about how it had derailed my attempt to start writing once again.
Mark looked at me and called bullshit. “If you want to write, then write. The only thing stopping you is you.”
He was right. It was like a thunderbolt out of the blue. I had been making one excuse after another to avoid facing my own fear, that I wasn’t good enough to make it as a writer. It was time to get serious.
I pulled out “On a Shoreless Sea,” and re-read it. It needed work. A lot of work. But there was something there. The world I had created was fascinating, and I wanted to do spend more time in it.
Yet I had little to no idea how it ticked. What made this world work? Who built it? How, when and why?
So I set about finding out by writing the backstory. I wrote the initial part of the prequel, “Seedling”, in 2013-2014, telling the story of how the world started.
I went away from Forever for a while to write some other tales, but Forever kept calling me back. In 2015, I wrote part two, “Colony,” jumping forward ten years to see what has happened with the characters, and to tell the story of this new settlement in my rapidly growing world.
Finally, in 2016, I finished part three, “Refugee,” which starts another twenty years later, and deepens and richens the experience of this world to set us on our way.
At the Dreamspinner Retreat in 2015, I asked Lynn West to read “Seedling.” She liked it, and encouraged me to submit the whole thing when it was finished. I did, and DSP bought it in February 2017. It only took 21 years and four months from that first submission to finally see my little world get published.
So what about “On the Shoreless Sea?” I has plans. I want to rewrite it from scratch with a queerer cast, once I finish the intervening stories.
Don’t worry — I’ll get there. Turns out it’s a much shorter trip than the one between the stars.
Author Bio:
Scott spends his time between the here and now and the what could be. Enticed into fantasy and sci fi by his mom at the tender age of nine, he devoured her Science Fiction Book Club library. But as he grew up, he wondered where all the people like him were in the books he was reading.
He decided that it was time to create the kinds of stories he couldn’t find at his local bookstore. If there weren’t gay characters in his favorite genres, he would remake them to his own ends.
His friends say Scott’s mind works a little differently – he sees relationships between things that others miss, and gets more done in a day than most folks manage in a week. He loves to transform traditional sci fi, fantasy, and contemporary worlds into something unexpected.
Starting in 2014, Scott has published more than 15 works, including two novels and a number of novellas and short stories.
He runs both Queer Sci Fi and QueeRomance Ink with his husband Mark, sites that bring queer people together to promote and celebrate fiction that reflects their own lives.
Author Links:
No comments:
Post a Comment