The Guardians--A Novel

I will be redoing most of this website over the next several weeks. Blogs will be back on schedule after March 15th. Thank you for reading!

The third major alien race that is encountered In The Guardians is the Aitans. Ever since I read Jurassic Park I wondered and played with the idea of “what if velociraptors or one of the other breads of raptor had evolved to be the dominant species on earth? What if they became intelligent like humans or more so? The Aitans are a journey down that road of thought. Physically they are a meter to a meter and a half tall velociraptorians.

As the entire story of The Guardians takes place in the Aitan’s star system, this fictional race of people obviously play a major role in the story. As a culture, I designed them on the peoples of earth that gave me the idea behind this novel: The Somali and the people of the Solomon Islands. Both nations have had a history of a rich cultural heritage and of falling on civil unrest and a failing government. These two nations have faced civil collapse.

The Solomon Islands was able, so far, to pull away from the vortex of becoming a failed state. This was due to the efforts of an international peacekeeping force—also an inspiration behind this novel. Operation Helpem Fren (also known as the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands) has been a strong influence in keeping the Solomon Islands from becoming another Somalia.

Somalia, on the other hand, has become a disaster despite the efforts of the various international peacekeepers, the UN, and others. This is a story of woe that should break the heart and stand as a warning to all of civilization. Somalia once was one of the important hubs of commerce and learning. At one time they were the center of several trading empires. They were once a melting pot of cultures that now has fractured between outlaws, pirates, religious zealots hungry not for the spread of their religion but for power and domination, and caught in the middle are the innocent, the people of various religions who want to live by their beliefs, and the disposed who cannot see the dawning of hope and believe they are in the midst of the long night.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for information on the blogs, stories, poems, and articles I write.

At the time I am writing this blog, I am excited to report that the first draft of The Guardians has been written and is in the drawer waiting for the second draft to start, which should be in a few weeks.

As I discussed in a previous blog entry, The Guardians has as an undercurrent to the plot the interaction of four races that are alien to each other. Last week I addressed the Howkian. This week, let us explore the Calicans. The Calicans are a feline race based upon the question of “what would have happened if Ancient Egypt never fell to the Romans and had somehow managed to survive into the space age?” I realize, with the ebb and flow of history that the odds would have been against it. But, this is science fiction, and I am the author of the story—which makes me ‘God’ in their universe, so—I win.

The Calicans are far from the first feline race to travel in the stars in a sci-fi universe. Nor is the connection to the ancient land of the sun a new concept to apply to them. However, usually the people are somehow tied up to the ancient civilization as if it never evolved. Regardless if evolution exists, a society must evolve to continue on into the future or wither on the vine and die.

The Calicans were an ancient race that explored space, grew their empire, and sought the knowledge of all they met. After a great war and invasion by a race that is only mentioned (and thus will not be presented in a blog until a different novel) the Calicans form an alliance with the Howkians and humans—forming a Commonwealth.
The trouble I have had with writing this race has been twofold: How not to just have the Calicans be a fictional race moving in the wrapping of an ancient mummy and how to make the character speak uniquely and behave in a feline fashion while still being understandable to the reader. The solution I took was a cheat. I put it off to tackle on the next draft. However, I have made my notes as I wrote and think I know how I will pull it off.

So why Ancient Egypt? And why a cat race? The answer is because of even in modern day, the Egyptians treat their cats like a sacred creature. The other reason is that they made more than one of their ancient gods to be human-feline hybrids. Seeing those statues and thinking in a sci-fi frame of mind, it is easy to picture such an alien race.

In my love of history, the Calicans are a salute to one of the first and great civilizations of mankind.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for information on the blogs, stories, poems, and articles I write.

At the time of this blog entry, I believe that the Guardians should be rough drafted in a week to two weeks. There will be a lot more work that will go into the next drafts, but I do believe that those who are my quality readers for this story will have something to read before Summer.

The Howkians are a salute to the Native American. On my grandmother’s deathbed, so the story goes as it occurred many years before I was born, it was revealed that there was Native American blood in my family. In today’s world that may not seem to be such a terrible secret. In her day, it was—in fact to point out the level of racism that existed at that time, being part Native American was considered to be worse than being part ANY OTHER minority. Note: My ancestor came off the reservation around the same time General Custer was killed.

While the exact nation that my heritage comes from is not known, I do have my guesses. As a child, when I first learned of this “great secret” I was inspired to explore that part of my heritage and I tried in vain to figure out which nation. That turns out to be a blessing as it allowed me to examine all (or nearly all) of the Native American cultures. It is unwise not to realize that there were/are many cultures in Native America and trying to categorize them as one is an error.

The Howkian is a race based on many of the Native American cultures including the Dakota, the Iroquois, the Cherokee, the Unami, and the Osage. I began to create the Howkian with a question: “What if the Native Americans when first encountered by the colonist had equal or better technology than the European?” Then placing this answer into a space age, faster than light, universe—and you have the Howkian.

The Howkians are physically pictured as tall bears. The bear in various Native American cultures is seen as a symbol of guardianship, power, and bravery. With those ideas, the culture of the Howkians is created. They are a philosophers, warriors, craftsmen and deeply loyal to those that they call friend. They are also a great ally to have in any fight.

The universe of the Guardians does not involve humanity conquering the Howkians, but rather the Howkians adopting the human race—as some nations did the early settlers in North America—and building a community based on common ground. While this may sound too much like utopia, believe me, it is. There is a hidden aspect to the relationship that will be exposed over time.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for updates to blogs, stories and poems I write.

Do alien races exist? Of course there is no scientific evidence (or for those who are conspiracy theory buffs—non that has been accepted at this point) that they do, but they are a normal prop in the writing of many science fiction stories. The Guardians handles the interactions between four species. One is human. The others are alien. All three of the alien species encountered in the first novel of the Guardians are based in some way upon a human culture. Why? I could write and create anything in this universe. So why base it on human cultures?

The answer is simple, but in two parts. The first part is something I have learned as a reader of science fiction and a writer over all these years. If you make the alien too alien, you lose the reader. Have you ever noticed how people prefer the familiar? We like to group ourselves and be surrounded by things we can identify and identify with. This concept also flows into writing. It does not mean that I cannot create some “off the wall” alien race and lose my reader. It means that if I want my reader to stay focused on the story and understand (if not like) my alien, it should be familiar. Since I am throwing 3 alien cultures into the mix, it would behoove me to keep it somewhat familiar so I don’t lose the reader either.

The second reason is not quite so simple. I truly believe that history repeats itself over and over and over again until we either learn from our mistakes correctly or we simply earn the “Darwin Award” and kill ourselves off for being too stupid to live. By basing the alien cultures on human cultures (past and present) I am able to have the reader explore a social or political issue through the eyes of that culture as well as their own. Allow me an example. Pretend for a moment that the question of Global Warming was faced in the ancient world. How would Rome, Greece, Egypt, Persia, India, the Han Dynasty of China faced the question? What of the other nations that existed (or were conquered)? Now, let’s change issues. Pretend again it was something that did exist during the time period: homosexual relations. Many of the ancient cultures addressed this and all differently. What about unemployment? Take the same questions and lets advance time: Victorian England, Napoleonic France, the Shogun periods in Japan. I think you understand where I am going with this. The cultures change and so does the approach to the political, social, and scientific responses—even if they never faced them (to our knowledge anyway.)

In the next four blogs I am going to address the cultures that will be in The Guardians. The future human culture will be last.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for information on blogs, stories , articles, and poems that I write.