One of my goals would be to convince the reader that the universe is so large and so old that anything is possible - and possible in some redundancy. I would argue that it should be impossible NOT to believe that alternate life forms not only existed, but existed on a broad universal scale. The novel would be subtitled “… a panspermia hypothesis.” Panspermia is a theory that suggests that life on earth, at least in part, arrived from somewhere in outer space. Most hypotheses on the subject revolve around random encounters with interstellar debris depositing pre-intelligent building blocks of life, leaving these building blocks to evolve here on Earth. Then, as most followers of science fiction know, some authors argue that intelligent life arrived intentionally from outer space, but according to these theories, they were, well, intelligent. These authors generally describe this intelligent life as transient – that is, they came and aided Earth’s native populations, arguing that there were signs of such intelligent life throughout the arts and crafts of the Earth’s ancient natives. Somewhere, I supposed, was a middle ground to be explored.
One of my earliest memories of learning was my geography lessons in grade school. It was during that period that I acquired a lifelong interest in maps, topography, oceans, seas, lakes, rivers, causes of weather. And accompanying these lessons was a diverse group of characters from around the world – their life influenced by their native geography. I was determined to weave geography, as well as geology, into the novel.
Also during this period my parents bought a set of the World Book Encyclopedia. During that first year I looked at every page of the set, mostly looking at the pictures, reading when the illustrations interested me. I have always been amazed how much of that material stuck with me. I have always been curious over a wide range of subjects and because of my initial love of the World Book set; I was attracted to objective social studies.
One of my geographic interests was of the Black Sea and surrounding countryside, a romantic backwater of relatively little known history. The ancient Greeks had planted some outpost colonies on its shores as had the Romans, Byzantines, Genoese and Venetians. The important and storied rivers that drain much of Europe into the Black Sea – the Danube, the Dnieper, the Dniester, the Don and the mother Volga (which nearly intersects with the Don close to the sea) is home to myriad cultures. Along with the rivers, one could imagine diverse cultures draining into the central repository of the Black Sea from all over Europe. But the Sythians stood guard over the area with their particularly fierce protection of the sea’s northern seaboard thwarting civilized expansion of the area. So far, history indicates that most new cultures arrived via the Dardanelles and the Bosporus from the Aegean Sea and the Mediterranean Sea beyond, no doubt because the earliest known advanced societies ruled from the shores of the Mediterranean and environs. In my initial research for this novel, I read a contemporary article concerning the Black Sea by Columbia University geology professors William Ryan and Walter Pitman. They held that the Black Sea was once four hundred feet lower than the Mediterranean Sea and that the Black Sea had obtained its current levels via a breach in an ancient land plug somewhere along the Bosporus - circa fifth or sixth millennium BCE. The possible social implications of such a monumental geologic event would certainly be something interesting to write about.
And, finally, as a devotee of anything geologic and geographic, I can’t count, for instance, the number of movies I have seen where the story was just so-so or downright awful, but the cinematography featuring the planet Earth served as the movie’s redemption. For those who have seen the television series, with its spectacular presentation, “Planet Earth,” you know what I mean. So as part of the backdrop, I would seek to feature our planet as one of the characters. I would attempt to allow the reader to bask in the cinematography, if you will, of the grandest Earthly spectacles known to man – rivers, mountains, gorges, prairies, oceans, deserts, and weather (from hurricanes to oceanic doldrums, and from the heat of equitorial regions to the bitter cold winters on a high mountain plateau) on the Planet Earth.
