Steve —

There are many different ways to tell a story.

Little Raincloud Trout Riding Cloak made her way from Grandma’s house back to her home in the village. She went with important news and vital warnings for all of the people there…

I often pitched the early concepts of this project to Lucas as a kind of ‘Sci-Fi fairy tale’. In generating forthcoming Patreon/subscriber content I’ve played with fable and fairy-tale styles, building a history to the world that resembles more oral history and legends rather than accurately recorded and reported events.

Special Agent Jea Bauer huddled behind the nearest MoaiFungi, her syphon catched and ready.

“Chloe, the targets are on the move! I need you to open me a backdoor into the mainframe systems bus at CTU now!”

“I can’t Jea! Three of our agents all have family members held hostage by terrorists and it’s almost time for me to put my baby to bed.”…

A sharp, concise take on narrative would turn ‘The Constant Star’ from a tale of imagination and fantasy into a gritty procedural. If I cared to built out more of the technology and advancements possibly present in the TCS world, I could lean more into the techhead kind of story telling. However, I don’t think either Lucas or I are interested in TCS becoming the kind of property that generates technical manuals and fights between weebs & wonks online about whether or not Tackletracks use a cloud based navigation system or if their journeys are all hardwired into a biological recall format.

“Jeas’ journal, Haze-rise fifth of twenty two. I am making my way home under full leg power carrying vital information for the survival of the village. After consulting with Oba I have determined that unpredictable events are about to occur and it may be necessary that new precautions be taken…”

I’ve always wanted Jea’s story to tap into a kind of innocence for exploration, the purity of discovery and the delight of gaining knowledge. Knowledge itself can be treated either as a treasure or as a curse depending on one’s relationship to it. The story we follow Jea on isn’t one about gaining power through discovery or finding an advantage over others. It’s about learning the truth of the world around her, travelling to unknown places and seeing unknown things.

“Knowledge isn’t either good or bad. It’s what people judge of that knowledge after which generates morality.” Dr. House cynically states to his stricken fellows.

“You’re saying knowledge itself has no predisposition to ethics!” Protests Dr. Cameron, in her later seasons dark hair, not early season blonde. “If so you could use results from Nazi medical experiments  as a guide for treatment!”

“We DO use the results of Nazi experiments to guide treatment.” Points out a bored Eric Foreman.

The contents of a story do not necessarily dictate the way in which it is told. The choice of how to tell a story is just as important as what is contained inside its boundaries. I have a love for telling complicated character stories filled with action beats and impressive visuals, but what I especially wanted was for the art of TCS to take centre stage. When you have such a gifted creative as Lucas behind the artist wheel, you want the manner in which you weave a tale to compliment and highlight that amazing work, not stand in contrast to it.

When it comes to writing TCS I try at all times to keep the narrative short and concise, leaving out as much detail and precision as I can so as not to direct the reader’s experience down a path of technical nuances and petty details. The reader should feel what Jea feels looking upon these landscapes and their accompanying creatures. I choose to write TCS with as much focus on emotion as I can, eschewing the sci-fi details to be represented in the art rather than the words. I want folks to know that they can be just as amazed, impressed and curious about this world as Jea is, setting off on her explorations. I love writing slang speak and technical jargon, it’s incredibly fun. I wanted to challenge myself here. Rather than speaking in smart one-offs’ and clever in-jokes and references, I want our experience with Jea to be about as profound and genuine as possible. Reading sci-fi for years, the amazement at the profound is a strong theme in early publications and screen adaptations. That feeling is what I’ve wanted to recapture here. I think the influence is much more ‘Wizard of Oz’ than ‘STAR TREK: The Next Generation’, and I love every chance I get to continue on down this yellow-bricked road of science fantasy, waiting eagerly to find what’s at the end.