A Brief History of Sol
Recently I’ve been spending most of my time gaming, watching movies, visiting friends, working on Darkwind and thinking about story ideas in the shower - this last activity usually being euphemistically referred to as “planning AHoS and The Weapon”. Today I did something a little different. I played a bit of FFIII DS, watched a movie, posted some ideas on the Darkwind forums, took a shower...and wrote a brand new ABHoS short.
It’s amazing how quickly you forget the incredible high that you get from writing during the periods when you aren’t do it, considering how pure and euphoric it is when you are.
I’ve added the new short to the end of this entry, and I’m hoping that some of the people that read my LJ will be willing to send some feedback my way. I’m not done with this yet, nor is it quite ready for prime time, so I’m not looking for things like spelling corrections and grammar fixes at this point. I’m interested impressions - what everyone thinks of the new style and approach.
There’s also going to be more of those new shorts soon, but I’m not going to be posting them here. Anyone that’s interested in being part of my new proofreading mailing list should email me - my online nick at Google’s mail service, if you didn’t know - if you want an invite.
-------------------------------
A Brief History of Sol
Week 1 - January 6th, 300 LY
A Brief History of Scott Allen
By Matthew A DeBarth
Today, the name of Scott Allen is known by everyone, and he has become an almost mythic figure. Popular belief has him boldly setting out from a desperate Earth to bring the wealth of the stars back to his beloved home for noble and selfless reasons, and while few people actually believe this highly sanitized version of history, it does have a certain appeal to it, especially to those of us living on Imperial Terra. The cold truth - that one of the most famous and important figures in human history cared nothing for Earth or anyone that lived there - does not sit particularly well with us. But Scott Allen was still a great man, and Terra’s view of him focuses on his more admirable traits and glosses over certain distasteful facts.
The Belt Alliance does not share our desire to paint him as a heroic figure, and their cultural memory of Scott Allen is that of a cold and calculating business man that rose to prominence at their expense. This is no more or less accurate than our own version of Scott Allen, and paints him using rather selective historical fact and a complete disregard of his actual motivations and intentions. It is worth noting at this point that the Belter’s dislike of Scott Allen is largely unfounded, since there weren’t any permanent settlers in the Belt until after his retirement, although it is true that Allen’s fortune - and that of his children, who were openly adversarial to the inhabitants of the Belt - was earned almost purely from shrewd exploitation of the then empty Asteroid Belt.
The Houses of Sol have two distinct and divisive versions of Allen, both entirely different and only slightly more historically accurate than those of the Imperial Terra or the Belt Alliance. While Scott Allen predates either Terra or the Belt, and we have views skewed by historical hindsight, he was actually a major figure in the history of the Houses of Sol, and the different Houses have a more direct investment in him than we do. Of course, he is remember heroically by the Lunar Houses and the eponymous House Allen, but somewhat less favourably by House Ares and House Aphrodite - understandable, given the historic animosity between House Luna and her allies and the lead Houses of both Mars and Venus.
And so the different groups that make up the Imperial Alliance of Sol have a group of different figures that stand in for the real Scott Allen of history, and they are all more myth and legend than truth. There is a great deal that could be written about the multitudinous different mythic Scott Allens that live in our collective cultural memories (and a great deal that has already been written), but that is a task for other writers. I am a historian, and I am interested only in the real man behind the different legends - a man that is simultaneously less fantastic and more interesting than any of the fictionalized versions.
It is also important to be honest and accurate about Scott Allen, given that the history of Scott Allen is a vital part of the early history of Sol. Any bias or selective remembrance of him in our history would be like building a tower on a foundation of regolith, so next week’s topic will be the means by which Scott Allen first settled the Moon, and his largely forgotten or misremembered reasons for doing it.
It’s amazing how quickly you forget the incredible high that you get from writing during the periods when you aren’t do it, considering how pure and euphoric it is when you are.
I’ve added the new short to the end of this entry, and I’m hoping that some of the people that read my LJ will be willing to send some feedback my way. I’m not done with this yet, nor is it quite ready for prime time, so I’m not looking for things like spelling corrections and grammar fixes at this point. I’m interested impressions - what everyone thinks of the new style and approach.
There’s also going to be more of those new shorts soon, but I’m not going to be posting them here. Anyone that’s interested in being part of my new proofreading mailing list should email me - my online nick at Google’s mail service, if you didn’t know - if you want an invite.
-------------------------------
A Brief History of Sol
Week 1 - January 6th, 300 LY
A Brief History of Scott Allen
By Matthew A DeBarth
Today, the name of Scott Allen is known by everyone, and he has become an almost mythic figure. Popular belief has him boldly setting out from a desperate Earth to bring the wealth of the stars back to his beloved home for noble and selfless reasons, and while few people actually believe this highly sanitized version of history, it does have a certain appeal to it, especially to those of us living on Imperial Terra. The cold truth - that one of the most famous and important figures in human history cared nothing for Earth or anyone that lived there - does not sit particularly well with us. But Scott Allen was still a great man, and Terra’s view of him focuses on his more admirable traits and glosses over certain distasteful facts.
The Belt Alliance does not share our desire to paint him as a heroic figure, and their cultural memory of Scott Allen is that of a cold and calculating business man that rose to prominence at their expense. This is no more or less accurate than our own version of Scott Allen, and paints him using rather selective historical fact and a complete disregard of his actual motivations and intentions. It is worth noting at this point that the Belter’s dislike of Scott Allen is largely unfounded, since there weren’t any permanent settlers in the Belt until after his retirement, although it is true that Allen’s fortune - and that of his children, who were openly adversarial to the inhabitants of the Belt - was earned almost purely from shrewd exploitation of the then empty Asteroid Belt.
The Houses of Sol have two distinct and divisive versions of Allen, both entirely different and only slightly more historically accurate than those of the Imperial Terra or the Belt Alliance. While Scott Allen predates either Terra or the Belt, and we have views skewed by historical hindsight, he was actually a major figure in the history of the Houses of Sol, and the different Houses have a more direct investment in him than we do. Of course, he is remember heroically by the Lunar Houses and the eponymous House Allen, but somewhat less favourably by House Ares and House Aphrodite - understandable, given the historic animosity between House Luna and her allies and the lead Houses of both Mars and Venus.
And so the different groups that make up the Imperial Alliance of Sol have a group of different figures that stand in for the real Scott Allen of history, and they are all more myth and legend than truth. There is a great deal that could be written about the multitudinous different mythic Scott Allens that live in our collective cultural memories (and a great deal that has already been written), but that is a task for other writers. I am a historian, and I am interested only in the real man behind the different legends - a man that is simultaneously less fantastic and more interesting than any of the fictionalized versions.
It is also important to be honest and accurate about Scott Allen, given that the history of Scott Allen is a vital part of the early history of Sol. Any bias or selective remembrance of him in our history would be like building a tower on a foundation of regolith, so next week’s topic will be the means by which Scott Allen first settled the Moon, and his largely forgotten or misremembered reasons for doing it.