Liner Notes 3

Some background information on my story Post Historic Hunters (on the Patreon) and Plasma Pistols and Space Scooters (on the blog).

Liner Notes 3: Post Historic Hunters

Just in case it’s not clear by now, I’ll state here that the first six stories each have a different member of the crew as the protagonist. Having had Gunn in the first story, then Ella in the second (as the new recruit who needs things explained to her), now we get Gunn’s second in command, Rivers. (In fact we mostly just see Rivers and Ella. The team don’t really get to work together until story number five now I come to look at it, which is (perhaps) a flaw in the larger structure.) Here I attempt to answer the question – if the second in command is competent, why don’t they have a command of their own?

This also puts into place a bit of back story – Salamander Station – for later. What does the Deep Patrol do when it comes across a threat? How does it fight a war? Will there be threats other than the authorities refusing to talk to Gunn and his crew?

It was also time to see the carrier. Gunn’s ship and crew is small so we need somewhere to get a handle on the rest of the Deep Patrol. A base would be cool because it would be next to the most spectacular backdrop I could devise, but for continuing-plot reasons and also thematic reasons the Deep Patrol are nomads. (Though, like actual nomads, they do go and camp in places for months and even years at a time).

We get a little of the upper management style of the Deep Patrol, or at least this corner of it. Captain Angela Tiger doesn’t micromanage, but she will tell you exactly what you’ve done wrong after you screw up. The eating arse is supposed to be a threat by the way. She doesn’t do double entendres.

Gunn’s team are sometimes a bit dickish, so I put in Lord Richards and crew to be even bigger dicks and (more importantly) significantly worse at their jobs. Rocket Interceptor will be back.

Dinosaurs were always going to be in one or more stories. Why set up a space opera universe with scattered people and technologies, artificial ecosystems, biological constructs and cloning and not have dinosaurs? Give them some feathers because that’s the way they are these days. Intelligent? No, but make them fake it. Evolving fake intelligence to hunt actual intelligent beings is a dumb idea, but as a trap, or a leftover experiment from the Wavefront and the Unknown Powers behind it, now we’re getting somewhere. (This is, of course, my lazy way of dealing with the deep “whys” of the series. I’ll give you one or two or three whys, but eventually it comes down to “That’s what happened when the Wavefront came by,” or “The Unknown Powers did it and we don’t know why.”)


Liner Notes 3a: Plasma Pistols and Space Scooters

Every two-fisted* space ranger needs an iconic sidearm and the Plasma Pistol is the one the Deep Patrol uses. Which is a pity as at the same time as I wrote up the weapon, I turned the crew against it a bit in favour of nets and glue; non-lethal weaponry as a first choice in a fight. In theory the plasma pistol can be set on a low power, high dispersion setting, uncomfortable and stunning, but anything powerful enough to be useful will sometimes be permanently harmful. Trying to recast an energy weapon capable of cutting through spacehull alloy as a stunner is probably a step too far, even for this series.

Meanwhile the Space Scooter also gets short shrift in the series. I was intending to have them fly everywhere on them, but most of the stories are short enough that they go to a place and stay there and solve the problem of the episode. When I do make the team travel places on page, it’s usually another planet so they use the cutter. Still they get a flight or two out of the scooters later.



* Of course two-fisted usually means that they are able and willing to punch their way out of a situation rather than shoot; here I am using the vivid imagery of two-fisted space ranger to make my point more firmly than the still somewhat florid pulp-style space opera protagonist would do.

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