Expanded from its original appearance as a novella in ANALOG SCIENCE FICTION in 2007, SOME DISTANT SHORE tells the story of two star systems colliding, as Mike Christopher of the Earth starship Asaph Hall rushes to unlock their secrets.
But two alien races on the journey are keeping their own potentially deadly secrets.
It doesn’t help that the love of his life can’t handle the emotional stress of being near him, and he has to give the Earth ambassador on-the-job training!
A note from the author:
SOME DISTANT SHORE came about from my desire to tell a “big” story, one involving several alien races and some “Doc Smith” kinds of pyrotechnics with planets literally colliding, while not skimping on characterization.
If you don’t care about the characters in a story, all the plot machinations in the world won’t keep you reading. Even readers who couldn’t recount the plot of a single Sherlock Holmes story can point to the man’s unique characteristics -- his embrace of rationality over emotion, his need for his mind to be engaged in solving the puzzle of a murder or other crime, and how he resorts to the artificial stimulation of cocaine between cases.
One of my favorite quotes about characterization is from writer/director Joss Whedon (FIREFLY; THE AVENGERS): “You take people, you put them on a journey, you give them peril, you find out who they really are.”
I hope you enjoy the journey of Mike, Linna, Codari, Syradok, Govanek, and all the rest as they cope with perils both physical and emotional and they (and we) find out “who they really are.”
