Will the Real Vulcan Please Stand Up

The second book in the interplanetary steampunk
adventures of Capt Robert Folkestone and Sgt
Felix Hand is available in print and Kindle editions

A common saying among writers and editors is that it is easier to write a first novel than a second one. When it came to writing my Great American (Steampunk) Novel, however, it was just the opposite. From idea and first words typed to publication, it took about six years for Shadows Against the Empire to come to fruition. Of course, a great deal happened in those six years, including a life-and-death struggle with a work-weasel, innumerable bouts of writers' block, several medical crises, the acquiring and firing of  a literary agent, multiple false starts, character and plot changes beyond count, and the abyss of retirement (which is not easy to adjust to after a lifetime of work). Eventually I escaped the razor-sharp teeth of the weasel, banished my inner demons (most of them), came to an uneasy peace with the people in my book, coped with retirement, and wrote the story. In contrast, the second book, Amidst Dark Satanic Mills, took about five months from idea to final draft. Personal crises aside, the main difference in the writing of the two books was that I knew my characters much better than I did on that first outing. Whenever I write a novel, I start with a character sheet on which I have mini-biographies of each person. A biography is great for consistency, such as making sure an eye-patch does not suddenly change eyes in the midst of a story or that a mechanical arm does not become a mechanical leg, but it does not really give you any clues about their personalities. In the first book, the characters grew into their roles through their dialogue, actions and reactions. By the time I reached the end of the first book, my characters were old friends. So, when it came to their second adventure, it was a reunion rather than a first date. They still surprised me from time to time, but even the best of friends can be challenging. There was a complication in writing the story, but it had nothing to do with the characters or the plot. No, it had to do with Star Trek.

Professor Lewis Swift--Astronomer & Searcher for Vulcan

While the previous book had been set mostly on Mars, Venus and Earth (London & Constantinople), I wanted the second novel to explore a bit more of my Victorian-inspired solar system, so after getting the action started on Mars and Earth (Paris), I expanded it to the Asteroid Belt and Mercury. I also wanted to take the story to a planet that had long fascinated me--Vulcan. No, not that Vulcan, the other Vulcan. What Vulcan would that be, you ask? The planet in our solar system orbiting between the Sun and Mercury. What? You can't find it? Okay, I admit it--it's not there, and maybe never was, but back in the Nineteenth Century many astronomers looked for it and a few claimed to have found it. One of the most prominent astronomers was the American Lewis Swift, whom I included as a character in the story. Professor Swift was supposed to make a cameo appearance, just enough to set Folkestone and Hand on the way to the mysterious secret headquarters of the nefarious MEDUSA organization. Well, that was the plan, but Professor Swift was so enthusiastic about discovering and naming the planet that I could hardly leave him behind on Mercury. The theoretical planet had always been called Vulcan, from the early 1800s on, but say "Vulcan" to anyone now and all they can think of is pointy ears.

Vulcan from the pulps.

Thanks a lot, Star Trek! I thought about bowing to tradition and calling the planet in the story Vulcan--let confusion reign! But I did not want the name to overshadow the plot, to, in effect, be a show stopper. Yes, I agonized over the issue. It seems silly to be so overwrought about such a small point, but, hey, that's what writers do best. Then I thought, Well, if Professor Swift wants to come along for the ride, then he can pay his way by providing a subplot which will not only uncomplicate the planet's name, but provide a little humor along the way. As it, turns out, Professor Swift was also known for naming more comets than any other astronomer at the time. In this alternate timeline, he is used to having his way in choosing the names of his comets. He feels he should have the same freedom in choosing the name of his planet, and he is not enamored with the tradition followed by the British Astronomical Society, mandating the use of Roman names for all planetary bodies. He wants to use the Greek equivalent Hephaestus instead. With a little help from Sergeant Hand (that cheeky Martian devil is always up for a bit of mischief) I was able to use the staid Professor Swift as a foil for taking jabs at tradition, officialdom and Star Trek. Having monkeyed with Planet Vulcan, I could not leave the Vulcans untouched. No pointy ears. No cool 60s hairdos. No raised eyebrows, superior smirks or vapid LLAP. Instead we have giant faceless fiery worms who drink lava and manipulate arcane energies. Take that, Star Trek!

The Other Solar System

I don't know about you, but I'm rather disappointed with the way our Solar System turned out. It's totally changed from the way it was when I was a lad. Not only have the planets gotten extreme makeovers, but we don't even have nine planets anymore, Pluto having been given the boot by some narrow-minded astro-boffins; any day now, I expect poor little Mercury to get a pink slip: "Sorry, Mercury, don't get all hot under the collar, but you're just too small to play with us...go whine to Pluto and all the other asteroids."

As recently as the 1970s (I know, some of you were not even born then, but that's not my fault) our Solar System was a place of mystery and adventure, the planets not very different than they were to the pulp writers of the previous generations, who set stories in the mines of Mercury, the jungles of Venus and the canals of Mars. Modern science has ripped away the mystery of those other worlds, not only taking away the hopes for grand adventures, but making the planets, to me at least, much less interesting. You can still read the old stories by Ray Cummings and Leigh Brackett, Arthur C Clarke and Otis Adelbert Kline, or Jack Williamson and H.P. Lovecraft, but the adventure is always tempered with a measure of wistful sadness, for now they are not science fiction stories of possible (if not probable) futures, but fables or fairy tales, and while we can still derive pleasure from them, it is not an enjoyment seasoned with anticipation. I like the classic view of the planets, so when I sat down to write Shadows Against the Empire, I set the action not in the Solar System as it is, but in the Solar System as it should have been, an alternate universe where old school astronomy still ruled.

The big thing about classic Mercury is that it is (or should be) tidally locked, as is our Moon, one side ever facing the sun. The planet being in such a situation creates stable climates on both sides of the planet, one metal-melting hot, the other cold as absolute zero, both of which can be endured and exploited; more than that, however, tidal-locked Mercury has a kind of temperate band between the two extremes, a "twilight zone" where colonies can be built. Isaac Asimov (writing as Paul French) sent his protagonists onto the hot half of Mercury in Lucky Starr & the Big Sun of Mercury, as did Alan E. Nourse with "Brightside Crossing." Writer Leigh Brackett located her cities in the Twilight Zone, and had two of her main protagonists, Eric John Stark and Jaffa Storm, born there. Two writers who took on non-human inhabitants of Mercury were Arthur C. Clarke, who described a Dark Side creature in Islands in the Sky, and Hal Clement, who wrote about the Bright Side's silicon occupants in Iceworld. During the 19th Century, astronomers observed a planet even closer to the sun than Mercury and called it Vulcan, but no one ever wrote about it...oh, the planet with the pointy-eared chaps? Sorry, not the same one.

Venus was always fun to speculate about, if only because our wild guesses about what lay beneath its thick cloud cover were just as valid as those of the astro-boffins with their big telescopes. Swamps, lizard men, jungles, tempestuous oceans, trackless deserts and soaring mountains, torrential rains that made Seattle look parched, and ancient cities connected by rivers dwarfing the Nile and Amazon. Anything went because no one could penetrate those clouds. And then came that terrible day when all us Venus theorizing space cadets found ourselves in the same position as Professor Harold Hill:

Marcellus Washburn: I heard you was in steam automobiles.
Professor Harold Hill: I was... till someone actually 'invented' one!

Not only did they use radar to tell us what the planet looked like under the thick canopy of roiling clouds but those darned Soviets actually landed a probe on Venus -- it melted. So much for jungles, swamps, oceans and even the poor old lizard-men. It was no tropic paradise as Ray Bradbury and H.P. Lovecraft had promised in two of their stories. Nor could we sail our schooners around the seas of Venus to encounter pirates and sea monsters as Edgar Rice Burroughs had assured us in the adventures of wrong-way astronaut Carson Napier in the Amtor (as the natives called Venus) Series, and as ERB wannabe Otis Adelbert Kline wrote in Prince of Peril and Port of Peril. No longer could China colonize Venus for the purpose of cultivating rice, as it did in Jack Williamson's Seetee Ship. Even the dark and dangerous cities visited by Northwest Smith, where segir (Venusian whisky) is cheap and life cheaper, went up in a poof of sulfurous smoke. In an instant, Venus went from Planet Mystery to Planet Hell. Thanks, Russia.

Of all the planets to transition from the "old" Solar System to the "new," Mars was perhaps the hardest hit, if only because everyone expected so much out of it. It wasn't just that we thought it might be the abode of life, we knew it. Even though we had never seen cities there, had never actually seen the blue waters of the canals, and had never received any signals from the Martians, we knew they were waiting for us...or coming to get us, as the case may be. In the Nineteenth Century a cash prize was offered to anyone who could prove life existed on another planet...except Mars. Burroughs populated it with all manner of creatures and ancient races, making it even more interesting than Earth. So did Ray Bradbury, C.L. Moore and Robert Heinlein; theologian and sometimes SF writer C.S. Lewis made Mars the abode of angelic beings in Out of the Silent Planet. As more information was gathered about Mars, the canals, the cities, the thin but breathable atmosphere...all went the way of dreams at the dawning. Some writers struggled on, but most sighed, grabbed the latest copies of Scientific American and Astronomy, and plotted new stories that did not depend upon Martians. A final farewell, a sort of eulogy, was published by F&SF in its November 1963 issue, A Rose for Ecclesiastes by Roger Zelazny.

I don't claim that good adventure stories cannot be written in the Solar System as it now exists, for I have read many over the years, but I do claim that the "new" astronomy put an end to the planetary adventure tale as it existed for more two centuries. Now, anyone who wants to set stories on the inhabited planets of our Solar System must either use human colonists, life-forms with which we can little contact, or establish an alternate universe where things went differently, as many steampunk writers (and me) have done. Otherwise, writers looking for adventures that involve swashbuckling or derring-do must either travel to Earth's past or seek new worlds out amongst the stars.

Of course, that does not mean our neighboring planet is entirely bereft of surprises...

So were Chinese Crested dogs.

Please, no carping about this one

Like this surprises anyone!

Obviously, he took the better offer.