It’s official! I’m working with Scott Kildall and Samantha Tan (co-founder of Eco Labs) on the first exoplanet mission fof Scott’s work titled Exotopia.
The first mission is to the TRAPPIST-1 system, which I knew nothing about when we started. There’s a lot we do know about it, though, as I discovered after I’d sketched out some of the scenes I wanted to write. With a few changes, I was back on track. We know a lot about the TRAPPIST-1 system because it is the closest system (presently) which has *known* exoplanets orbiting the star. Seven actually — all rocky and “Earth like” (meaning rocky). And they’re only 40 light years away. One of the first things the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope is going to look at is the TRAPPIST-1 system. I’m a bit intimidated about the data it will gather. Hopefully, everything they find will totally line up with my story and it’ll all work out just fine. It’d suck to be rendered obsolete before we get the event set up.
The story prompt is we recieve a directed laser signal from the TRAPPIST-1 system around our time now and spend the next ~50 years developing FTL travel to stop by for a visit.
Writing can be a lonely business, sitting in your basement, your laptop your only friend, so it’s been really fun collaborating with Scott and Sam. Other people are hell, but Scott and Sam have been great to work with. It’s really pleasant to have other people around to bounce ideas off of instead of having circular arguments in your head and wondering where the line of insanity is.
We’re using an open source application called Twine to create the branching story lines. It’s pretty cool. I might try it out on a future project to create a choose-you-own-adventure style story, though I’d probably need some art to go with it.