It’s nice to be at the cutting edge. Well, of my own progress as an SF writer, at least. One of the great strengths of the SF field is the way concepts and tropes are in constant flux, being shared and tweaked, refurbed and upgraded, modded and galvanised, rivetted for the steampunk milieu, or even just given go-faster stripes. Of course, some carping cynics will say that this is also a major weakness since it encourages lazy writing and a lack of speculative rigour, and I have to say that there’s a lot to that.

For my own part I must admit culpability in employing certain well-known, off-the-shelf notions like AIs, FTL drives, colony worlds, ancient aliens and so forth. But I do like to think that I have contributed something new with my own take on hyperspace. This is where hyperspace (as well as being a contiguous plenum which permits FTL travel) consists of levels upon levels upon deeper levels, each one being the compacted remains of an entire universe, piled one on top of another, sedimentary layers of dead universes that descend into the primal depths of reality.

To my knowledge no other writer has come up with this idea (a declaration sure to prompt evidence of wrongheadedness!). The closest I can think of is Philip Jose Farmer’s World Of Tiers books, and parts of David Brin’s Uplift books depicting 5 levels of hyperspace, each with its own gamut of strange lifeforms. Most of my readers will know that in the Humanity’s Fire universe there many more than 5 hyperspace levels, many inhabited by the eroded vestiges of the civilisations that once held sway when their universes consituted actual base reality.

Its such a neat idea. It offers a rich multiplicity of possible settings (which just goes to show how greedy I am, as if the possibilities of normal space aren’t fecund enough!) Then there are the technical difficulties of survival in the depths of hyperspace, not to mention the politics of migration up the levels as the lower ones become uninhabitable, broken and crushed as physical laws themselves cease to work in favour of sentient organic life. I must say that I’m looking forward immensely to writing further novels set in the Humanity’s Fire universe. There’s no shortage of ideas and I already have a few which leave me boggled with the narrative potential.

If there was a roomful of me’s, both me and my readers would get to enjoy new stories brought to wild fruition fairly soon. Sadly, there’s only little ol’ solo-me so we’ll all have to hurry up and wait while my grey matter goes about its ineffable business. But hopefully not too long cos I really want to see what the heck’s going on in those weird places.