Come Aboard the New Horizons Mission
“It's just a ride, and we can change it anytime we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money. A choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your door, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one.
Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride: Take all that \ money that we spend on weapons and defense each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would many times over – not one human being excluded – and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace.”
- Bill Hicks
The New Horizons six part book series about a utopian vision of the future, a therapeutic thinking through of how it could all work out despite everything in reality trending so negatively. have written in journals since I was a teenager, but this was my first attempt at novel scale writing.
It starts in Vancouver 150 years in the future, and centres on a generational starship which leaves on a 150 year journey to a distant neighbouring star.
I remember the day I conceived to the original premise, a trilogy of books with the first entry being about those who chose to leave, those condemned to live and die on the ship, and the third about those burdened with trying to make a go of it when they finally arrived.
It didn't take long after finishing the third that I started writing the first of a sequel trilogy, which I am currently working on completeing. Some time after I understood the need for a more refined reader focused entry into the series, and I replaced Launch with Chasing Stars as the official first entry in the series.
I would point out that I conceived of and wrote of the original trilogy well before I read The Expanse, and any common elements are convergent design. I was focusing on reading the classics of science fiction to develop my writing and at some point begrudgingly conceded the need to read something more modern and I reached for The Expanse as some modern trash commercial fiction to read for reference. It was so good it made me want to stop writing because I knew I could never do it that well. So all due respect, but what I've written was original to me at the time. The differences are vast next to any common elements.
“You don't think ideas don't come out of nowhere, do you?“
- James Burke, Connections.
We all create, think, and invent in the same cultural soil.