Writing Blog Number 2 (continued)

20251219 Novel #34

Novel #34

Now… the next novel…
         This is the start of what I have come to call the Speculative Humour Cycle, a group of short novels written from here on out where I take speculative fiction (horror, fantasy, science-fiction) and add what I hope is a humorous spin to proceedings. I am still debating whether Gorgon With The Wind and Singer, Not The Song should be included as well.
         Anyway, this is for me where that series of novels started. All are around the same length, and I know it is very short in the novel scale of things, but they are there.
         Steele Blast And The Missing Planet was written with the idea that it would be the first of a series of stories with the same characters, but I could never find anything that leant itself to the humour I was aiming for after this was over. Still, this is the story. It borrows heavily from so many science fiction stories and tropes and the humour is probably distinctly Australian, but with a lot of word-play, like the good UK humour, and very little cringe-based US humour. In fact, one of the more expansive rejections said the humour would “go over the head of most Americans” (direct quote). I did try to argue the same was true of Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, but he rightfully pointed out I am no Douglas Adams.
         Anyway, Steele reluctantly decides to help a professor find a planet that has been deleted from all official records, helped by a humanoid alien. There’s a planet-sized space station, a low-speed vehicle chase, explosions, death, violence, a religious group of loonies and a robot who annoys everyone. The planet is found, but is more than expected and there are a lot of weird neologisms used throughout. I still think it is one of the better long stories I have written, so I hope it will find a home somewhere.
         I will say, it is humorous, but not a direct parody. Steele Blast himself started as a play on Han Solo, but became more like the George Peppard character from Battle Beyond The Stars, and then took on a life of his own later on. The robot was originally stolen from Treasure Planet (it was the only part of that film I didn’t like) but I downplayed the stupidity and made it more like the main robot character in Eric Idle’s Road To Mars, with singing instead of stand-up comedy. (That’s a bunch of old pop culture references no-one is going to get…)
         I do think this is a decent work. I just wish a publisher agreed with me…

Excerpt:
         He walked across and spun the map, then zoomed in until he was looking at what to me appeared to be nothing more than a blank bit. Just that – a blank bit. He palmed it and the legend that came up read, ‘Dark Nebulous Cloud Region. Prohibited entry. Information access denied.’
         That was odd. “Prohibited entry?” I asked. “Info access denied? What is this?”
         “Venus-4 is in there, a planet with a life reading off the scale,” he explained suddenly. “When the information was first collated, we knew it was a single star system with one of its three planets in the Cinderella Zone, and that one showing life. Venus-4. And then all information on it disappeared from computers and everything else. All we had was a blank. That was seven Mars years ago. I’ve been searching for the source ever since and finally found a copy of the original transmissions in an off-line data collection. The best thing was that the life-reading for Venus-4 was given as ten-point-seven initial.”
         “Okay, you lost me there. What’s a ten-point-seven life reading?”
         He blinked at me, then went on, “Earth is the standard, set as a one-point zero final reading. Terra-2 only had an initial of nought-point-five and a final of nought-point-eight-five.”
         “So…?”
         “There are life-forms there that they don’t want anyone to find out about, lots and lots of them. I’m sure of it. I want to know what they are!” He sounded like a general about to go into battle, which suited him as much as clothes would a newt.
         However, something unnerving nagged at the back of my mind. “What have you done so far?” I asked him with a façade of casualness.
         “Oh, the usual things,” he said. “I tried official channels, then academic ones, then I found an under-graduate who helped me hack into Central data, then I tried to break into the Chancellor’s quarters, and then I was sacked, so then…”
         “Hold on. You hacked Central Data?”
         “Didn’t find anything. Some student; couldn’t even get past the third firewall.”
         “On your own computer connection?”
         ”Well, of course.”
         Now I understood why the spats had been after him. The Sol solar system’s Central Data was not something you messed around with unless you wanted to be deleted. Not physically – I think – but in every other way possible. You end up completely homeless, friendless and penniless, and in space that’s never a good thing. Especially for some-one like Dr Hasluck.
         But what he said had me intrigued. New life-forms were potentially valuable – I personally made a packet in the craze for the so-called parrot-snakes from Calran. Looked like legless parrots with the heads, necks and tails of snakes, they ended up being some sort of parasitic worm. I sold a few consignments for a huge amount, then got out of it, and just in time because that was when they discovered the, well, side-effects. I had to get myself checked and have an injection with a needle the size of a ball-point pen, but at least my fingers and toes didn’t turn transparent and my urine didn’t contain living, squirming baby parrot-snakes. That would have been yucky.
         Of course, people never learn, and so the same thing happened with Octavian Eyeless Fish – which I never got in on – only this time it caused a bowel obstruction that made people vomit up their own excrement.
         Still, third time’s a charm, right?

Another long excerpt, but I am quite chuffed with this one. I think it would be not only a fun read but could make for a great film or TV mini-series.
         So, why comedy? At this time in my life, I went through a lot of personal upheaval… wife and I started having issues… separated from my kids… lost my work… forced out of sport… comedy was my coping mechanism.
         So be ready because there are a heap more stories in this series to come up. This is genuine space opera, and nothing else is this blatantly sci-fi, but there’s plenty more humour-based speculative fiction tales…