ABOUT

How I Started Writing a Certain Story...

I remember being fascinated, as a little boy, by fragments of the first Star Wars. Later, some of the magic faded — perhaps I was simply looking for something different in space. Then came the dark first Terminator, followed by the grimy, hostile world of Alien.

Around the same time, I was leafing through an old astronomy book. I was surprised to discover that there are regions of intense radiation around Earth that can make space travel more difficult. The name “Van Allen belts” did not stay with me then, but the problem itself did.

More films and television series followed, with books in between. The ones that stayed with me most strongly were Stanisław Lem’s Tales of Pirx the Pilot, and later Frank Herbert’s Dune.

Back in the prehistoric days, when dinosaurs were still using Amigas, I came across Elite II. I still remember my first flight from Earth to Mars without autopilot.

After that, there was no stopping it: games, films, series and books. Over time I became more critical. That childlike “wow” came less often. Perhaps The Expanse still managed it...

The idea of writing my own story set in “deep space” first appeared when I was still in secondary school. Those early versions have survived to this day in handwritten notebooks.

Then came a long break, but the project never died.

Over time I began to notice that many science-fiction films, series and games leave certain issues in the background. I became increasingly interested in the things that are usually simplified or ignored for the sake of the plot: radiation and its effects on the human body, how the body behaves in near-vacuum conditions, acceleration loads, and the long-term consequences of living under gravity very different from Earth’s.

I was also bothered by the classic transparent cockpits inherited from fighter aircraft. In Elite Dangerous, the vulnerability of the canopy was even turned into a gameplay mechanic. I found another idea more convincing — decades earlier, Lem had already described spacecraft in which the direct view outside was replaced by camera systems that gave the pilot an image of the surroundings.

I began to feel that the environment and physics of space were often treated mainly as scenery — an interesting, spectacular addition.

What if I approached it the other way around?

What if space itself became the central problem, the challenge, and one of the most important forces shaping the story?

So I decided to try a different approach: keep space as realistic as possible. Respect the laws of physics and the limitations that follow from them, and only then place characters and action inside that environment.

Space should not adapt to my vision. My vision should arise from the conditions imposed by space.

Around 2020, the story I wanted to tell began to take on a more definite shape. I gathered my old sketches and notes into a single Obsidian database, and new chapters began to appear.

And more and more questions followed.

How will prolonged exposure to deep space affect the human body? Will permanent life really be possible on worlds or habitats with gravity significantly different from Earth’s? Can a world without a strong magnetosphere, such as Mars, truly be transformed into a place where humans can live permanently?

And what about society?

What might a future civilisation look like under post-scarcity conditions? Will security and widespread access to goods solve most of our problems, or will they instead create new ones — perhaps just as serious?

Combat in space raises another set of questions. Not so much the “3D formations” familiar from games such as Homeworld, but reconnaissance, trajectories and situational awareness.

Perhaps reconnaissance will matter more than the number of “proton cannons”.

Swarms of autonomous reconnaissance vehicles are difficult to ignore in that context. But that raises another question: how do we keep the human being relevant — with much slower reactions, limited information-processing capacity, and vulnerability to acceleration?

There was one boundary I could not get past, however: the distances between the stars.

Even highly efficient propulsion systems remain constrained by the speed of light, while concepts that might circumvent that limit rely on physics far beyond our present capabilities — and perhaps beyond what is possible at all.

Here I allowed myself one fundamental departure from known physics. Even so, I try to give it rules and consequences that are as internally consistent as possible. I hope future readers will forgive me.

Finally, there is AI.

We may reach a point where the infrastructure sustaining civilisation becomes so complex that no single human being can truly comprehend it. More and more decisions may have to be supported — or made — by computer systems and artificial intelligence.

Will such an AI become conscious? I doubt it.

Will it become malicious and “evil”? It seems more likely to me that it could do something catastrophic because of badly defined goals, poorly specified instructions, or flawed implementation.

Then again, who knows...

Paradoxically, in the real world AI may turn out to be one of the greatest opponents of my project.

If it continues to develop at its current pace, it is possible that by the time I finish and publish this story, the market will be flooded with content that generative AI can produce almost instantly.

In any case — if you have made it this far, I invite you to follow the project as it develops.

You will find something like a project journal in the STORIES section. You can also join the mailing list. That way I can let you know about progress and — I hope — eventually about the publication of the book.