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Pandora's Star

A few years ago I had an idea for a novel. I even wrote a full synopsis, character list, complete with information about their own personal story arcs, and drafted the first twenty pages or so. It was going to be a trilogy, my magnum opus. The most ambitious piece of science-fiction I'd ever tried to write. It was going to be called "The Construction".

One day all the stars disappear. The Space Foundation call it "Star Blacking". A crew is assembled and a ship is sent out to the edge of the solar system, only to find that our solar system has been enclosed in a barrier, a shell. Alien's tell us it is for our protection, but then a war takes place outside the shell, and another set of alien's tell us they are attempting to free us from the imminent enslavement of humanity by the first aliens. Who do we believe? It sort of goes on from there...

Imagine my total disappointment when I recently picked up Peter F Hamilton's "Pandora's Star", only to find that the king of Space Opera got there first. There are a few minor differences but the principal is the same and so are the dilemmas faced by humanity.

So it's back to the drawing board for my magnum opus. Time for some new ideas. There's a beautiful moon in the sky tonight, and a stunning vista of stars. Always inspiring. New ideas area out there waiting to be had.
And it reminds me that there's a new character that's been bouncing around my head. His name is Derek Pytance. And for those of you who have read my short story collection "The Axiom Few", he's a new individual in that universe. Because I always wondered what would motivate a man to create something as powerful and omnipotent and calculating as the Biological Retro-Enabled Nth Dimensional Array (BRENDA to you and me...)

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