The Fortress in Orion
Page 23
“This was a nice piece of work,” said Cooper, shifting his weight uncomfortably, “but of course it was a pretty straightforward job.”
“Right,” said Pretorius. “Anyone could have done it.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” replied Cooper, feeling more uneasy as he approached the point of his brief visit. “No, it really was a very competent job.”
“I’m still waiting.”
Cooper stared at him for a moment. “We’ve got a situation in the Antares sector that’s a real stinker,” he said at last. “We’ve lost three good teams trying to crack it.”
“Shit!” muttered Pretorius. “Whenever you bastards reach a dead end, you come to me.”
“To you and your team—your Dead Enders,” agreed Cooper. He walked to the door. “Get well quick. I’d like to send you all out next month.”
Pretorius was still glaring at the door minutes after Cooper had walked out.
APPENDIX 1
THE ORIGIN OF THE BIRTHRIGHT UNIVERSE
It happened in the 1970s. Carol and I were watching a truly awful movie at a local theater, and about halfway through it I muttered, “Why am I wasting my time here when I could be doing something really interesting, like, say, writing the entire history of the human race from now until its extinction?” And she whispered back, “So why don’t you?” We got up immediately, walked out of the theater, and that night I outlined a novel called Birthright: The Book of Man, which would tell the story of the human race from its attainment of faster-than-light flight until its death eighteen thousand years from now.
It was a long book to write. I divided the future into five political eras—Republic, Democracy, Oligarchy, Monarchy, and Anarchy—and wrote twenty-six connected stories (“demonstrations,” Analog called them, and rightly so), displaying every facet of the human race, both admirable and not so admirable. Since each is set a few centuries from the last, there are no continuing characters (unless you consider Man, with a capital M, the main character, in which case you could make an argument—or at least, I could—that it’s really a character study).
I sold it to Signet, along with another novel titled The Soul Eater. My editor there, Sheila Gilbert, loved the “Birthright Universe” and asked me if I would be willing to make a few changes to The Soul Eater so that it was set in that future. I agreed, and the changes actually took less than a day. She made the same request—in advance, this time—for the four-book Tales of the Galactic Midway series, the four-book Tales of the Velvet Comet series, and Walpurgis III. Looking back, I see that only two of the thirteen novels I wrote for Signet were not set there.
When I moved to Tor Books, my editor there, Beth Meacham, had a fondness for the Birthright Universe, and most of my books for her—not all, but most—were set in it: Santiago, Ivory, The Dark Lady, Paradise, Purgatory, Inferno, A Miracle of Rare Design, A Hunger in the Soul, The Outpost, The Return of Santiago.
When Ace agreed to buy Soothsayer, Oracle, and Prophet from me, my editor, Ginjer Buchanan, assumed that of course those books would be set in the Birthright Universe—and of course they were, because as I learned a little more about my eighteen-thousand-year, two-million-world future, I felt a lot more comfortable writing about it.
In fact, I started setting short stories in the Birthright Universe. Two of my Hugo winners—“Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge” and “The 43 Antarean Dynasties”—are set there, and so are perhaps fifteen others.
When Bantam agreed to take the Widowmaker trilogy from me, it was a foregone conclusion that Janna Silverstein, who purchased the books (but moved to another company before they came out) would want them to take place in the Birthright Universe. She did indeed request it, and I did indeed agree.
A decade later I sold another Widowmaker book to Meisha Merlin, set—where else?—in the Birthright Universe.
And when it came time to suggest an initial series of books to Lou Anders for the brand-new Pyr line of science fiction, I don’t think I ever considered any ideas or stories that weren’t set in the Birthright Universe. He bought the five Starship books, and after some fantasies and Weird Western excursions, he has now commissioned the Dead Enders series to be set there as well.
I’ve gotten so much of my career from the Birthright Universe that I wish I could remember the name of that turkey we walked out of all those years ago so I could write the producers and thank them.
APPENDIX 2
THE LAYOUT OF THE BIRTHRIGHT UNIVERSE
The most heavily populated (by both stars and inhabitants) section of the Birthright Universe is always referred to by its political identity, which evolves from Republic to Democracy to Oligarchy to Monarchy. It encompasses millions of inhabited and habitable worlds. Earth is too small and too far out of the mainstream of galactic commerce to remain Man’s capital world, and within a couple of thousand years the capital has been moved, lock, stock, and barrel halfway across the galaxy to Deluros VIII, a huge world with about ten times Earth’s surface and near-identical atmosphere and gravity. By the middle of the Democracy, perhaps four thousand years from now, the entire planet is covered by one huge sprawling city. By the time of the Oligarchy, even Deluros VIII isn’t big enough for our billions of empire-running bureaucrats, and Deluros VI, another large world, is broken up into forty-eight planetoids, each housing a major department of the government (with four planetoids given over entirely to the military).
Earth itself is way out in the boonies, on the Spiral Arm. I don’t believe I’ve set more than parts of a couple of novels on the Arm.
At the outer edge of the galaxy is the Rim, where worlds are spread out and underpopulated. There’s so little of value or military interest on the Rim that one ship, such as the Theodore Roosevelt of the Starship series, can patrol a couple of hundred worlds by itself. In later eras, the Rim will be dominated by feuding warlords, but it’s so far away from the center of things that the governments, for the most part, just ignore it.
Then there are the Inner and Outer Frontiers. The Outer Frontier is that vast but sparsely populated area between the outer edge of the Republic/Democracy/Oligarchy/Monarchy and the Rim. The Inner Frontier is that somewhat smaller (but still huge) area between the inner reaches of the Republic/et cetera and the black hole at the core of the galaxy.
It’s on the Inner Frontier that I’ve chosen to set more than half of my novels. In 1968’s Space Chantey, the brilliant R. A. Lafferty wrote: “Will there be a mythology of the future, they used to ask, after all has become science? Will high deeds be told in epic, or only in computer code?” I decided that I’d like to spend at least a part of my career trying to create those myths of the future, and it seems to me that myths, with their bigger-than-life characters and colorful settings, work best on frontiers where there aren’t too many people around to chronicle them accurately, or too many authority figures around to prevent them from playing out to their inevitable conclusions. So I arbitrarily decided that the Inner Frontier was where my myths would take place, and I populated it with people bearing names like Catastrophe Baker, the Widowmaker, the Cyborg de Milo, the ageless Forever Kid, and the like. It not only allows me to tell my heroic (and sometimes antiheroic) myths but also lets me tell more realistic stories occurring at the very same time a few thousand light-years away in the Republic or Democracy or whatever happens to exist at that moment.
Over the years I’ve fleshed out the galaxy. There are the star clusters—the Albion Cluster, the Quinellus Cluster, a few others. There are the individual worlds, some important enough to appear as the title of a book, such as Walpurgis III, some reappearing throughout the time periods and stories, such as Deluros VIII, Antares III, Binder X, Keepsake, Spica II, some others, and hundreds (maybe thousands by now) of worlds (and races, now that I think about it) mentioned once and never again.
Then there are, if not the bad guys, then at least what I think of as the Disloyal Opposition. Some, like the Sett Empire, get into one war with humanity and that’s the end
of it. Some, like the Canphor Twins (Canphor VI and Canphor VII) have been a thorn in Man’s side for the better part of ten millennia. Some, like Lodin XI, vary almost daily in their loyalties, depending on the political situation.
I’ve been building this universe, politically and geographically, for a third of a century now, and with each passing book and story it feels a little more real to me. Give me another thirty years, and I’ll probably believe every word I’ve written about it.
APPENDIX 3
CHRONOLOGY OF THE UNIVERSE CREATED IN
BIRTHRIGHT:
THE BOOK OF MAN
YEAR ERA STORY OR NOVEL
1885 A.D. “The Hunter” (IVORY)
1898 A.D. “Himself” (IVORY)
1982 A.D. SIDESHOW
1983 A.D. THE THREE-LEGGED HOOTCH DANCER
1985 A.D. THE WILD ALIEN TAMER
1987 A.D. THE BEST ROOTIN’ TOOTIN’ SHOOTIN’ GUNSLINGER IN THE WHOLE DAMNED GALAXY
2057 A.D. “The Politician” (IVORY)
2403 A.D. “Shaka II”
2908 A.D. 1 G.E.
16 G.E. Republic “The Curator” (IVORY)
103 G.E. Republic “The Homecoming”
264 G.E. Republic “The Pioneers” (BIRTHRIGHT)
332 G.E. Republic “The Cartographers” (BIRTHRIGHT)
346 G.E. Republic WALPURGIS III
367 G.E. Republic EROS ASCENDING
396 G.E. Republic “The Miners” (BIRTHRIGHT)
401 G.E. Republic EROS AT ZENITH
442 G.E. Republic EROS DESCENDING
465 G.E. Republic EROS AT NADIR
522 G.E. Republic “All the Things You Are”
588 G.E. Republic “The Psychologists” (BIRTHRIGHT)
616 G.E. Republic A MIRACLE OF RARE DESIGN
882 G.E. Republic “The Potentate” (IVORY)
962 G.E. Republic “The Merchants” (BIRTHRIGHT)
1150 G.E. Republic “Cobbling Together a Solution”
1151 G.E. Republic “Nowhere in Particular”
1152 G.E. Republic “The God Biz”
1394 G.E. Republic “Keepsakes”
1701 G.E. Republic “The Artist” (IVORY)
1813 G.E. Republic “Dawn” (PARADISE)
1826 G.E. Republic PURGATORY
1859 G.E. Republic “Noon” (PARADISE)
1888 G.E. Republic “Midafternoon” (PARADISE)
1902 G.E. Republic “Dusk” (PARADISE)
1921 G.E. Republic INFERNO
1966 G.E. Republic STARSHIP: MUTINY
1967 G.E. Republic STARSHIP: PIRATE
1968 G.E. Republic STARSHIP: MERCENARY
1969 G.E. Republic STARSHIP: REBEL
1970 G.E. Republic STARSHIP: FLAGSHIP
2122 G.E. Democracy “The 43 Antarean Dynasties”
2154 G.E. Democracy “The Diplomats” (BIRTHRIGHT)
2239 G.E. Democracy “Monuments of Flesh and Stone”
2275 G.E. Democracy “The Olympians” (BIRTHRIGHT)
2469 G.E. Democracy “The Barristers” (BIRTHRIGHT)
2885 G.E. Democracy “Robots Don’t Cry”
2911 G.E. Democracy “The Medics” (BIRTHRIGHT)
3004 G.E. Democracy “The Politicians” (BIRTHRIGHT)
3042 G.E. Democracy “The Gambler” (IVORY)
3286 G.E. Democracy SANTIAGO
3322 G.E. Democracy A HUNGER IN THE SOUL
3324 G.E. Democracy THE SOUL EATER
3324 G.E. Democracy “Nicobar Lane: The Soul Eater’s Story”
3407 G.E. Democracy THE RETURN OF SANTIAGO
3427 G.E. Democracy SOOTHSAYER
3441 G.E. Democracy ORACLE
3447 G.E. Democracy PROPHET
3502 G.E. Democracy “Guardian Angel”
3504 G.E. Democracy “A Locked-Planet Mystery”
3504 G.E. Democracy “Honorable Enemies”
3505 G.E. Democracy “If the Frame Fits . . .”
3719 G.E. Democracy “Hunting the Snark”
4026 G.E. Democracy THE FORTRESS IN ORION
4375 G.E. Democracy “The Graverobber” (IVORY)
4822 G.E. Oligarchy “The Administrators” (BIRTHRIGHT)
4839 G.E. Oligarchy THE DARK LADY
5101 G.E. Oligarchy THE WIDOWMAKER
5103 G.E. Oligarchy THE WIDOWMAKER REBORN
5106 G.E. Oligarchy THE WIDOWMAKER UNLEASHED
5108 G.E. Oligarchy A GATHERING OF WIDOWMAKERS
5461 G.E. Oligarchy “The Media” (BIRTHRIGHT)
5492 G.E. Oligarchy “The Artists” (BIRTHRIGHT)
5521 G.E. Oligarchy “The Warlord” (IVORY)
5655 G.E. Oligarchy “The Biochemists” (BIRTHRIGHT)
5912 G.E. Oligarchy “The Warlords” (BIRTHRIGHT)
5993 G.E. Oligarchy “The Conspirators” (BIRTHRIGHT)
6304 G.E. Monarchy IVORY
6321 G.E. Monarchy “The Rulers” (BIRTHRIGHT)
6400 G.E. Monarchy “The Symbiotics” (BIRTHRIGHT)
6521 G.E. Monarchy “Catastrophe Baker and the Cold Equations”
6523 G.E. Monarchy THE OUTPOST
6524 G.E. Monarchy “Catastrophe Baker and a Canticle for Leibowitz”
6599 G.E. Monarchy “The Philosophers” (BIRTHRIGHT)
6746 G.E. Monarchy “The Architects” (BIRTHRIGHT)
6962 G.E. Monarchy “The Collectors” (BIRTHRIGHT)
7019 G.E. Monarchy “The Rebels” (BIRTHRIGHT)
16201 G.E. Anarchy “The Archaeologists” (BIRTHRIGHT)
16673 G.E. Anarchy “The Priests” (BIRTHRIGHT)
16888 G.E. Anarchy “The Pacifists” (BIRTHRIGHT)
17001 G.E. Anarchy “The Destroyers” (BIRTHRIGHT)
21703 G.E. “Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge”
NOVELS NOT SET IN THIS FUTURE
ADVENTURES (1922–1926 A.D.)
EXPLOITS (1926–1931 A.D.)
ENCOUNTERS (1931–1934 A.D.)
HAZARDS (1934–1938 A.D.)
STALKING THE UNICORN (“Tonight”)
STALKING THE VAMPIRE (“Tonight”)
STALKING THE DRAGON (“Tonight”)
STALKING THE ZOMBIE (“Tonight”)
THE BRANCH (2047–2051 A.D.)
SECOND CONTACT (2065 A.D.)
BULLY! (1910–1912 A.D.)
KIRINYAGA (2123–2137 A.D.)
KILIMANJARO (2234–2241 A.D.)
LADY WITH AN ALIEN (1490 A.D.)
A CLUB IN MONTMARTRE (1890–1901 A.D.)
DRAGON AMERICA (1779–1780 A.D.)
THE WORLD BEHIND THE DOOR (1928 A.D.)
THE OTHER TEDDY ROOSEVELTS (1888–1919 A.D.)
THE BUNTLINE SPECIAL (1881 A.D.)
THE DOCTOR AND THE KID (1882 A.D.)
THE DOCTOR AND THE ROUGH RIDER (1884 A.D.)
THE DOCTOR AND THE DINOSAURS (1885 A.D.)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo by Hugette
Mike Resnick has won an impressive five Hugos and has been nominated for thirty-one more. The author of the Starship series, the John Justin Mallory series, the Eli Paxton Mysteries, and four Weird West Tales, he has sold sixty-nine science fiction novels and more than two hundred and fifty short stories and has edited forty anthologies. His Kirinyaga series, with sixty-seven major and minor awards and nominations to date, is the most honored series of stories in the history of science fiction. Visit him at his website, http://mikeresnick.com/, on Facebook, www.facebook.com/mike.resnick1, or on Twitter @ResnickMike.