Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Permian Extinction SFnal Settings

There are two ideas for stories that I suspect I will never actually get around to writing. They all sprung up while reading about the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event. They tickle the brain even so. When my brain tickles like that the best way to get rid of said pseudosensation is to write it out.

Epylium Aurora (or whatever exactly the name comes out to be) is exactly that sort of thing. The whole Rome in America scenario tickled and tickled and tickled until I finally decided that I wanted to spit it out. I tried to get it out on SHWI, but instead found that wasn't enough. I'm progressing nicely, if haltingly, there and it's slowly tickling less while gelling into a very nice tale (IMO). It will probably, even so, require a rewrite to a memorable story, but we will get to that when we get to that.

The PTE ideas are pretty simple. They have one commonality: there are no human characters here. That's pretty tough to write. However, if anyone has any ideas on how, be my guest, just give me a little credit for the idea, k?

The first story seed is nothing more than the thought that the PTE climate and related near death spiral of the ecosystem was nothing more than a botched attempt to 'terraform' the Earth. This could be written as a plucky Sklrop finding that there's something going wrong with the process and too many native critters are dying. That's the obvious plot. The alternative is that a Sklrop scientist is trying to figure out why the whole process that has worked so many times before is getting oh-so-mucked-up now.

The second seed is the PT Event was a combination of things. There was a sentient species that arose (handwave). They end up fighting a war that near destroys the planet...but not with their own species. The Ancient Enemy is a survivor of the Ediacara Fauna that's evolved for as long as our heroes fauna now has developed sentience and is Evil. Think Cthulhu meets paleontology in SF. The Permian sapients find the only way to desroy/plug the Evil in its place is to trigger the Siberian Traps...ending the world. However, that's better than letting the Evil out. It'd have to be written as a pretty bleak tale. As a side note, Lystrosaurus was the sapient's cattle.

That last one is pretty fascinating to play with mentally, but my cycles are limited these days and I play with too many ideas as it is. After Epylium Aurora - or Aurelia? Dawning Little Epic or Golden little epic...second seems better since I will not be revisiting that world again after I finish the book - Great Vision is the next project and its going to be a doozie to write. The world building exercise there is going to a major mental exercise. 75 million years in the future...plus or minus and in the post human world, posthuman climate, ecology, everything. There's a new sentient too and its figuring out its way...at the same time there's the story of the last days of humanity to tell in there too and one Woman's Great Vision. I can see how to plot it already, but I am not going to put anything to paper until after EA is done.

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