The Guardians--A Novel

One of the greatest joys and challenges in writing science fiction is the creation of the universe in which the story lives. Every genre of fiction contains a universe of some kind. Horror, crime drama, westerns, historical drama, and others have their own universe. Their universes are generally grounded into the real world. Fantasy and science fiction can create new worlds to explore.

One of the more fascinating aspects of creating your own universe from scratch is the deeper understanding you obtain of your own culture and the historical cultures that it was built upon. If we look at our world today we can still see the echoes of the ancient Roman Republic and Empire in western culture. In eastern culture, the influence of the Han Dynasty runs through the content of Asia like the roots a tall strong tree. When you draw from that social history—not the focus of dates and events so much on how people lived, thought, worked and played—you unearth a buried treasure that gives you the author and your readers an amazement as if you had opened a chest of buried gold . . .for you never know what might lie just behind the next page.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for blogs and updates to my articles, short stories, novels, and novellas that I am writing.

I am posting this on all my blogs. Due to an extra project at my “bill paying job” I have been finding it hard to find time to write, nevertheless blog. I hope to have that schedule under control soon. Please keep checking for updates. I hope to have one up by the end of the weekend on all of these.

Thank you
David Alan Lucas

In the last blog of The Guardians, I expressed my surprise at the task before me to re-imagine and rewrite my former novel Voices of Command. At that time I did not realize to what level the task would be. I am tossing the whole previous story in the proverbial incinerator and starting from scratch. Part of this reason is that I original wrote Voices of Command in a traditional science fiction story telling style that is reminiscent of Star Wars, Star Trek, and other like stories. That story telling style is now scrapped.

I love history and am a firm believer in Santayana’s philosophy: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” As a student of history, I se the past in new guises returned under the noses of those who are living it. This premise was originally applied to Voices of Command in an aspect of a new republic being born and then facing the threats from without and from within as the young United States began to do under the presidency of John Adams. It was that period of history I originally turned to.

As I begin to re-imagine this story, I find that my original premise does not work any longer. Instead, I am turning my eye further back in history—to the ancient Roman republic. We shall see what this affords me.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for continued updates on the novels, novella and short stories I am working on.

Only a few short years ago, the science fiction world saw the return of a cult favorite to the television screen. It was a colossal undertaking done by the producers, the writers, the cast and the crew of the science fiction show “Battlestar Galactica.” When the re-imagined series first came on the air it was met with mixed reviews by the fans of the 1970 version. At first I was not sure if I liked it. I soon became a fan and fascinated as a writer wondering how the writers of the show and Glen Larson could redo the entire story and keep the same over arching plot. I never imagined I would have to do the same with one of my own stories.

In 2000, I almost had a novel titled Voices of Command published. The story had been rewritten to change the characters to match the wants of the publisher and in the end, the story itself was killed. I put the typed manuscript into a box and let it sit. Over the years that followed I went through a divorce, deaths of my father and many of my friends. I took the story out to try to rework it back to the original version only to put it away out of frustration. These were years when my writing all but shriveled and died.

As I have finally returned to writing and feel the muse has risen from the ashes of the past, I looked at Voices of Command and realized I was glad that it had not been published. It was a naïve story told in the days before America had been successfully attacked by terrorist. The world—or the view of the United States has of the world—has changed since then. I have changed. We have seen the darkness and light, happiness and bitterness, dreams and despair. I cannot rewrite the original tale. I can re-imagine it, bring out a level of grit that was not there before.

It is still a story of hope in the face of overwhelming fear, but it is a story that must—like my muse—rise from the ashes and rediscover its true nature. So, I return to re-plotting the tale and wondering who or what will remain in the new story and how things will change.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for updates on the blogs, short stories and novels I write.