adelaidesean | "the inveitable" promotional post

A few months back I was feeling empty of ideas for space opera novels. Maybe not surprising, since I've written quite a few of them in the last decade--and maybe not such a bad thing either, given my recent experimentation with thrillers and crime. How many genres can a guy juggle, anyway?

Then came Jonathan Strahan with a chance to write for his Godlike Machines anthology, which got me thinking about old ideas. And got me writing, too. Old ideas plus a new story led to new ideas and, like magic, here I am with a whole new space opera idea, and some more good news:

My story "The Inevitable" has just been accepted into Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan's uber-anthology New Space Opera 2. This new story is set in the same world as "A Glimpse of the Marvellous Structure (and the Threat it Entails)", which is in turn set in the same world as "A Map of the Mines of Barnath", first published in Eidolon way back in 1995 and now my most-reprinted story.

Collected in Damien Broderick and David Hartwell's Australian best-of Centaurus and Hayakawa's The Best Science Fiction of the Nineties, plus the inestimable Magic Dirt, "Barnath" is a glimpse into a world I've always wanted to revisit. Well, I've revisited it twice now, and I'm pretty sure there'll be more on the way. I picture a big fat novel simply called Structure with a cast of thousands set in a multiverse more challenging than anything I've ever tackled before...

This may be my space opera swansong, or else it's the beginning of something entirely and wonderfully new. I don't know yet. Either way, it's good to have space opera ideas again. When the stars stop shining in your protagonist's eyes, you can't help but fear that you've come back to Earth one time too many, and may never reach escape velocity again.