Welcome to the shadowy and not-so-shadowy space behind Sally's books. If you're not familiar with this blog, scroll down to see what it's all about.Space Skipper (Post 49)
Space Skipper (2007) is the first story in the eight-volume "Spacesports" series.
I have no idea what I was thinking to offer to write a series of books about a sporting team. I have close to zero interest in team sports and only the very sketchiest idea about the rules of any organised sport. Faced with the reality of science fiction plus sport, I decided to set the series on and around a space station called Space Station Nova and I invented a team sport called 3D.
Nova's population is made up of three different factions; shipborn, those born on the wandering colony ships, planetborn, those born on planets and stationborn, those born on space stations. They don't get along, and only one thing brings them together; their shared passion for 3D.
In this first story, Luke's great ambition is to play in the junior 3D team with his friend Ellie, but his chances are low. There is huge competition to get into the team, and the team owner, Mayor Klikwitz, detests Luke's grandfather, Prof. This story tells how Luke finally gets his wish, and introduces the rest of Gold Team, Pavros, Ellie and Janna.
The story is a traditional team-based sports story, but inventing the team sport and working out its rules bent my brain into a different shape. 3D is played in a cylindrical dome with low gravity so the players play through three dimensions. I remember spending some time drawing diagrams to work out how the sport would look. Best of all, I didn't have to learn any rules... I just made them up and wrote them down so as to be consistent.
Hey, if the sport of 3D is ever played for real, at least I'll know what's going on!
About the Blog
Sally is Sally Odgers; author, manuscript assessor, editor, anthologist and reader. (Sally is me, by the way, and I am lots of other things too, but these are the relevant ones for now.)
The goal for 2017 is to write a post a day profiling the background behind one of my books; how it came to be written, what it's about, and any things of note that happened along the way. If you're an author, an aspiring author, a reader or just someone who enjoys windows into worlds, you might find this fun. This preamble will be pasted to the top of each post, so feel free to skip it in future.
The books are not in any special order, but will be assigned approximate dates, and pictures, where they exist.
Sounds like a fun story - and it's great when you can invent your own games :)
ReplyDeleteIt was the only way I could do it after a near disaster with Hit For Six... which is a topic for another blog post.
ReplyDelete