WORLD-BUILDING: Mars and Sci-Fi worlds

After I finish writing Grayden's Tale (the first book in the Aelon Ere world), I may put that series to the side for a bit and begin working on the sci-fi story that Derek and I have been brainstorming over. There are more books to be written in Aelon Ere - I know what those books will be about, and I have written basic outlines for them. However, I am really itching to get my hands on this sci-fi story.

As per usual, many of the original ideas for this world came from my husband. We have a great writing partnership: I write whatever book I'm currently working on, while he dreams up the next world I will write in (even if the book I'm writing is only the first in a 3-4 book series... it means I'm always behind... but it also means I never have to finish a book and wonder, "What shall I write about next?")

For a little added context: this story's setting is a Mars Colony, 300 or so years from present day. This series of world-building posts are written by my husband, after I asked him a few questions about his process for world-building.

What was your inspiration for the Mars Colony in the sci-fi world you recently finished?

Derek: The Mars Colony has a history all its own. Obviously Mars Colony sci-fi is nothing new. The inspiration for it came from a simple idea: What would a crime/mystery TV show look like if you put 1920’s era costumes and detectives (think the Godfather or Untouchables) into the future in space, say 250 to 300 years from now?

I really got the idea from Star Trek: The Next Generation when Jean-Luc Picard would go on the holo-deck for some R&R as Dixon Hill (his favorite detective). Much like Aelon Ere, it definitely didn’t stay there. So that led to follow-up question: what is a logical progression of events between now and the setting of this “detective story” that would enable it to take place on a different planet? And how did humanity get there?

This was shaping up to some interesting research. Being a physics engineering major, I immediately started pondering the different ideas of FTL (faster than light travel). The conclusion I came to was that Lost in Space, Stargate, and many other stories had the right idea: wormholes just seem to make more sense than ships flying through space. Now how do you make it original? That led down the path of generational ships built in Earth Orbit and sent out to seed the nearby star systems. Which led down the path of energy consumption for travel, distance, and a whole host of other make-believe items that felt more fantasy than science (let’s ignore the fiction for a second). And that got me thinking about Mars. What if the technology was used to terraform Mars?

So a wormhole (gate) technology would somehow enable humans to make Mars hospitable. The inevitable question for me then was: why would someone do this? Starting to see a pattern? Answer a question get another question. The answer to the “why” became the basis of this whole world. I started writing a future-history that outlined geopolitical and economic events between present day and the future that would explain why humanity might have a FTL travel system, what its limitations were (and why), and how it changed the world. Similar to the automobile and the plane radically altering how humanity traveled, I assumed this gate technology would do the same.

I kept writing out the various segments I was looking for, and a couple key characters began popping up. Multi-national corporations and enigmatic tech tycoons began influencing events. Before I knew it, I was in a place that was ready to house my detective story from my original question. Politics, economics, military, technology, and social issues had all come together in the future-history that a setting had taken place for a detective to start investigating mysteries. It just so happens that the culture looks an awful lot like the 1920’s.