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Current Work In Progress- Dieselpunk Space Opera
So, this is a project I started for NaNoWriMo a few years ago but didn’t get very far. It ended up stalling out at 12k words or so because I wasn’t sure what would happen. The novel, which I titled The Pilgrim’s War, will probably stick around for a while, although I’ve taken to calling the umbrella project Iron Horizons.
Essentially, it’s a space opera in the same sort of vein as Mass Effect or Foundation, but based on an alternate history that diverged around 1910ish- utilizing a continuation of 30s/40s aesthetics and alternate history. The Pilgrim’s War was set in the gear 2400ish, so approximately 450 years of alternate history to spread humanity into the neighboring sectors of the Milky Way. Hence- dieselpunk in aesthetic, technological base, and ideology (specifically: anti fascist, skeptical of technology, anti colonialist). But genre wise and scope, it’s space opera with centuries of alternate history, a galactic history currently developing in the aeons, and centuries more of future history.
A lot of these ideas were inspired by Tumblr- so it deals a lot with the posts about space mythology, star shanties, and the idea of humans as space orcs. I’ve always been a huge fan of maritime fiction books like Horatio Hornblower and the Aubrey/Maturin books, so I’ve based a lot of the spacefaring culture on continuing that sort of nautical tradition, but focusing more on the merchant spacers, privateers, and other civilians, especially space monks (inspired by the article on Tor).
So, like, the stories so far center mostly around a semi-retired privateer captain and a young monk on his initial pilgrimage before taking his final vows, but like, it's an entire alternate history based on the idea of pre-WW2 space flight and colonization. And in this case, it specifically means colonization in the European context since WW2 was sort of the start of the end of most of the European empires, if things had gone differently and there were empty moons and planetoids full of resources, would they have really abandoned colonialism? Personally, I suspect not.
A lot of this ended up being similar to, and retroactively inspired by, C.J. Cherryh's Alliance-Union series. It meshes well with the maritime influences- like why wouldn't the Earth governments outsource colonization to private organizations they can profit from, with little risk? I mean, look at the current space race- it's mostly billionaires already. I guess, in this case, it makes the old saying about how science-fiction is a futuristic story talking about the present very applicable.
I'll be honest- this is not a very optimistic setting, despite the wonders and beauty of space exploration. It's grim and hard and will eventually wipe itself out with an over-reliance on fossil fuels, but I guess that reflects the present. Add in the fact that space nazis are the main overarching villain for most of the alternate history, and it feels uncomfortably familiar. do i change that? keep it? I haven't decided quite yet, because it will mean this story is irreversibly tangled in modern-day politics.
