The next episode of the Scuttlebutt with The Phill podcast will feature my long-gestating space adventure series. The series is titled From the Earth to the Stars. The episode is intended to run for two hours. It will showcase an in-depth exploration of the lore and plans for this series.
The central idea behind the series is that the tropes of classic space adventures are accessible to us today. For example, Star Trek’s warp drive is available. The novels are set in an alternate timeline where the United States and Germany competed during the Cold War/Space Race. The timeline diverges from our own at the end of World War I.
Frank Sawyer is the protagonist of at least the first few novels of the series. He is a career astronaut working for a private spaceflight company called Vega Aerospace. He is the first commander of Earth’s first warp, the Ambitious. The spacecraft is staffed by a crew of six, including Sawyer, and two companion robots. Sawyer is a third-generation astronaut. His grandfather was the second man to walk on the Moon. His father was one of the first humans to travel to Saturn and its largest moon, Titan.
One of the first novels explores a science fiction universe where simple life is abundant throughout the cosmos. Intelligent spacefaring life is an exceedingly rare phenomenon. The novel’s author favors this solution to the so-called Fermi Paradox. The entire series explores this possible solution.
Writing for this story has taken twenty-three years to come to fruition. I began writing the earliest iterations of the story as early as September 2001. The first elements were assembled over two weeks. This period was between the 9/11 attacks on New York and the premiere of Star Trek: Enterprise. The story has seen several iterations, but this rendition will be the final version.
The series is intended to start life as a novel series. Ideally, it will slowly be adapted into feature-length films. Later, it will become at least two television series.
The episode will air live on Friday, September 27, 2024, at 2 PM PST. Join in!