Lightspeed 2: TimeSphere
When I got done with Lightspeed I, and all its own glory, I took off for a little bit from writing, primarily because I was pretty much out of ideas at the time. I wasn’t ready to kill off Steve Rhodes, at least for the time being, but the thing was Lightspeed really didn’t have much of a sequel to it (after all, Rhodes retired, and that was it.) But I started to get lured back into the story-writing business in the summer, when I realized that I had a bit more time on my hands that I had originally thought I would have. So, in August of 2002, I commenced with Lightspeed II. It began with a family image: Rhodes was at the dinner table, just being there for everyone. I often pictured my grandmother’s old house on Gross Street in the Bloomfield section of Pittsburgh, and just the love that was shared there.
I understood that when I wrote about Steve Rhodes, now the admiral, it was supposed to be the fact that even though he seemed to inflect “I’m too old for this”, he always came back and knew he was the only person to do the job. And, lo and behold, it was again Rhodes’ job.
One of the characters that was a favorite of mine was Captain Alex Gillteither, who was sort of the insight leader of the mission. Alex was a married man with strong allegiances to Rhodes but not many other people. I think “Big G”, as I called him, had a lot of the attitude that “as long as I can pee in the morning, I can do this” kind of mantra. Later on, in the Clay episodes, he’s going to be Rhodes’ living spirit. But he’s an honest man, and just as good as a captain, in the story. And in a sense, he was there for Rhodes.
The main image I had wanted to create for the future world was a dark, barren planet, tinted with purples and burgundies, one that simulated the fallout of a long-standing nuclear war. I didn’t think of it as much of a political statement as it was to be just a perfect place for hell to breed, in a sense. It wouldn’t work as well to have nuclear winter or just no people around, a la “I Am Legend” but more like somewhere where one could embrace the hell in the world. The horse-drawn carriages and futuristic weapons seem to be antitheses of each other, but it adds to the unrest I tried to create for it.
The whole story line was simple: I wanted to show that imperialism was a statement not of unison but of the eventual road to civil discourse. And it was easy to pick someone to blame: India and Pakistan. I didn’t pick them so much for the nuclear power as much as it was supposed to be for the fact that I thought that if these two superpowers fought over land so much, eventually when they did agree on territory, wouldn’t they, in some sense, keep fighting as one? The bubble I put the rest of civilization in was quite the thing to make the story perfect, in a humanistic sense: If we could stay inside all our little bubbles, and not touch anything outside, we would all be OK – isolated, but OK.
The characters I put it in place were all supposed to be different to the touch in Moebia. The two brothers, Chasino and the other, were supposed to be the penultimate rulers, a sort of tyrant but with no weakness but his family, and the thought of fighting his brother. It was probably in my mind that family matters were the only way Lightspeed II was going to reel in the reader, and for starters, I chose someone that would be able to quell all our sibling rivalries.
Coree was a derivation of a girl I knew in high school, one that spoke to me seldom but always shared a laugh with. My creation of her was meant to signify someone that made Rhodes seem a little bit more human, a compassionate woman who struck Rhodes just right to get him to melt like butter in the sun. She was a mere woman, not supposed to be rich or fancy, but just perfect. In some ways, I saw Julia Roberts doing that position quite well, and to be honest, she would even perhaps need to be mellowed down.
The fact that Rikka was such a powerful character was the fact she was born liberated when I penned Lightspeed II. Very few stories have women who hold no enemies but trusts no man on earth, and it was good to see her in there. I initially was thinking about getting her active when I was writing, but it would be a little bit too much to have her be tough. So, in a total antithesis, I had her break down. But the thing is in a sense, she needed to have that release, and dammit, I would give it to her.
Then, there were Errico and Wells. Man, oh man, was that a fun thing to put in the story. I thought that it would be good to insert something to lighten up the story, because at one time, it was starting to get to the point where the drama was going to rip it apart. At first (and you can tell) I didn’t know which one would be the loud one, which was the smart one, but it was a good way to add humor. I knew that it would make things fluff up a little bit, and then we were going to have them go with Rhodes. They disappeared, but weren’t forgotten.
The biggest thing that I tried to do was make some resolution to Lightspeed’s mission, and it sort of worked. I wanted the ending to be dramatic, and the humanistic element which I had championed the whole time played into effect. Rhodes was given the chance to kill Chasino’s brother, but he wouldn’t do it. I knew he wouldn’t do it, and I wouldn’t let him. Family work is family work, and no man should have to end family ties of someone else’s kin.
The ending was quite dramatic, and I sort of pictured that pose from many movie endings, with the cameraman being swooped in and shunned out.
But the biggest block to Lightspeed II was the fact that I was starting to get the biggest enemy of all – writer’s block. About halfway through the story, at about the time Rhodes was ready to leave, I froze the story for a few months. At the time, I was batting winter depression, and when I was depressed, I tended to put down the scribe and pick up the SSRI’s. I started up again in a few months, but it was hard to finish the story in one piece.
I didn’t realize how large Lightspeed II was getting until I finished it. I didn’t do one continuous splurge on writing as I did later on, but I did do a fairly good pace. It was about as long as the sum of all the literary works, poems, et cetera, that I had done to that point. And it was tough doing that. But I had pride in it, and when I gave it to friends to read, they got it in a gold cover and my signature, and the reviews were OK, I guess.

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