This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #495, on the subject of World Crises.
With permission of Valdron Inc I have previously completed publishing my first nine Multiverser novels,
- Verse Three, Chapter One: The First Multiverser Novel,
- Old Verses New,
- For Better or Verse,
- Spy Verses,
- Garden of Versers,
- Versers Versus Versers,
- Re Verse All,
- In Verse Proportion, and
- Con Verse Lea,
in serialized form on the web (those links will take you to the table of contents for each book). Along with each book there was also a series of web log posts looking at the writing process, the decisions and choices that delivered the final product; those posts are indexed with the chapters in the tables of contents pages. Now as I am posting the tenth, In Version, written in collaboration with Eric R. Ashley, I am again offering a set of “behind the writings” insights. This “behind the writings” look may contain spoilers because it sometimes talks about my expectations for the futures of the characters and stories–although it sometimes raises ideas that were never pursued, as being written partially concurrently with the story it sometimes discusses where I thought it was headed. You might want to read the referenced chapters before reading this look at them. Links below (the section headings) will take you to the specific individual chapters being discussed, and there are (or will soon be) links on those pages to bring you back hopefully to the same point here.
This is the eleventh post for this novel, covering chapters 121 through 132. Previous posts were:
- #476: Versers Deduce, covering chapters 1 through 12;
- #478: Character Conflicts, covering 13 through 24;
- #480: Versers Think, 25 through 36;
- #482: Versers Engage, 37 through 48.
- #484: Characters Maneuver, 49 through 60.
- #487: A World in Space, 61 through 72.
- #489: Battle Worlds, 73 through 84;
- #491: Verser Ventures, 85 through 96;
- #493: Verser Engagements, 97 through 108; and
- #494: Warring Worlds, 109 through 120.
There is also a section of the site, Multiverser Novel Support Pages, in which I have begun to place materials related to the novels beginning with character papers for the major characters, giving them at different stages as they move through the books.
History of the series, including the reason it started, the origins of character names and details, and many of the ideas, are in earlier posts, and won’t be repeated here.
Quick links to discussions in this page:
Chapter 121, Beam 191
Chapter 122, Kondor 250
Chapter 123, Slade 244
Chapter 124, Beam 192
Chapter 125, Brown 276
Chapter 126, Kondor 251
Chapter 127, Slade 245
Chapter 128, Beam 193
Chapter 129, Brown 277
Chapter 130, Kondor 252
Chapter 131, Slade 246
Chapter 132, Beam 194
Eric drafted this one, giving one major battle to the war but leaving Norax on the run somewhere aboard the ship.
We ran into a bit of confusion. In the Empire Throne World, where Slade and Derek currently were, I had suggested that the Little Green Men–the same little green men as were on Wanderer and Seeker–were there called Chlorophytes; this was because when you have many different “races”, as science fiction writers call them, they need names to distinguish them from each other. However, Eric started using the name in the Seeker world where Beam was, which was incongruous because a people that regards itself the only fully evolved life form would not use a distinguishing name for itself. We don’t call ourselves “homo sapiens” in normal use; we call ourselves “people”. This all had to be fixed in editing.
I drafted this. It did not contain the part I wanted to write, but I decided that should fit in the return trip, which would be the next chapter of that thread. We had agreed that there would be a damaged railroad bridge, that they could patch it, and that this would lead to Kondor remembering the log bridge he crossed in Verse Three, Chapter One. We were toying with other ideas as well.
Eric put this together. The alien races were mostly his, with very little input from me, and so he periodically took opportunities to flesh them out some.
The quote “wandering through a wilderness of mirrors” appears to be from an author named David Grann in a book entitled Killers of the Flower Moon.
Eric drafted this. It originally included suggestions from Bron that they tunnel into the bedrock beneath the ship, and Beam’s objections as to why that wouldn’t work, but I thought it relied on information Bron wouldn’t know at this point and cut it, replacing it with Beam’s suggestion that he should meet with the LGM officers.
We had agreed that Derek would work his way up in unarmed combat to somewhere between four and five hundred and then have his fourth loss; Eric created this combat to be the first loss.
I had been planning to write this at least since before writing the previous Kondor chapter; we had discussed it, and liked the idea that the trestle crossing would recall the log crossing of the first novel.
This was my work, fast-forwarding the competition some.
It struck me that the constant fighting could be a crucible for a crisis of Slade’s Norse faith. He believed that all things end in a great battle, but is a bit vague about whether that battle runs forever, or if not what happens after it. Six weeks of combat four days out of five has him wondering whether he would want to be in a perpetual war.
I pushed myself to write this so I could get my concerns on the page. It was a bit awkward, because Eric had been writing as if events were happening over many days, and I was of the view that the next day couldn’t come until somehow Beam’s people were given sleeping quarters and let a night pass. There were several minor changes to chapters since the meeting with Norax to eliminate any suggestion that more than one day had passed, and since everything ran on artificial light it was easy enough to suggest that Beam’s people were still awake until they were provided with quarters.
Eric wrote this up to the point where the Anders grabbed Derek’s wrist and left it hanging there; I picked it up and finished the fight. We had previously discussed having Derek win one by transforming into Morach and using the arrow, and I figured this was as good a time as any.
The Tivoci makes a cameo in this chapter, another of Eric’s minor races.
Kondor’s name came to the top of the pile, so I wrote this mostly to bring him home and to introduce the complication of what to do with the alien captives.
I had made a note that Kelp 1942 would want to know more about the versers’ special abilities following Derek’s transformation, so I came back and wrote this chapter to cover that.
I drafted this, but left open the question of whether Norax would already have reached the simulator room.
At this point, we were not anticipating that Beam would not return to their assigned quarters, and obviously neither was he, because he instructed that equipment be left behind.
This has been the eleventh and penultimate behind-the-writings look at In Version. If there is interest and continued support from readers we will endeavor to continue with more behind-the-writings posts and another novel.