I was leading a pack of Metal Jacks, heading to LZ-4. We’d been retasked to help secure the area for reinforcements. Easy enough. Getting there was the problem. The whole damn city was hot, and there were at least fifteen blocks between us and the landing zone. It was like running a gauntlet, hostiles were all over the place—on the rooftops, in the alleys and windows, under cars, inside abandoned buses—just every-goddamn-where. 

We hammered down the street, loping along at a steady pace—around 30 kph—ignoring the constant ping of rounds bouncing off our armor. Unless they were rocking 50cals, bullets weren’t a concern. RPGs were a different story, though. Everyone had their eyes peeled. It only took a second to make your last mistake, and we all had better things to do that day than die. 

Topper was out in front, leading the way. She hooked a left at Foster Avenue, and then made a right onto Central. Hell…even rooks know better than to run a straight line. We had five blocks to go, when we came to an eight-lane intersection. Camden spotted three hostiles as soon as we came into the open. It was too late to turn back. 

“Go, go, go!” I sent the others through, while slowing to make myself the better target. It was the right thing to do. I was running rear—no one to obstruct if my Jack went down. 

I turned in stride, just in time to see a rocket whiz by. It missed my chassis by half a meter and struck something behind me, something close. I felt the impact from inside the cockpit. Smoke and dust flooded the street. Debris rained down, clanking against my armor. I sighted Camden’s hostiles huddled behind the tail of a car, fumbling with the launcher, trying to reload. They really should have thought ahead. 

I zeroed in and let my cannons rip. Turns out, I’m a much better shot than they were.

“All right, we’re clear. Keep moving. Five more blocks. And Topper…? You better keep us out of those goddamn wide lanes, you hear me?" I shook my head and picked up the pace. Rooks…there was always something they needed to learn.

###

For the past few months, I’ve been building a world for a new novel, tentatively titled Prince of the God Kings. The story focuses on a group of immortals that have been living in secret among humans on Rada, a world colonized long after the collapse of Earth. For the most part, I’ve been focused on the history of this world, trying to understand how things got to the point in time where the actual story takes place. I’ve had a lot of fun developing the characters, as they all have long rich histories and complicated relationships that the story’s protagonist, a human recently turn immortal, struggles to understand and negotiate as she tries to resolve the central conflict. 

For reasons explained in the story, the original Radean colony suffered a collapsed, losing most of their advanced technology and knowledge. This caused them to slip into a dark era, similar to the Dark Ages in Earth’s history—but perhaps a bit longer. As I often do, I’ve been drawing inspiration for the characters and locations from concept art I’ve found across the web, looking to gain a better understanding of some of the things these long-lived characters might have seen and done throughout their time, and also how they may have influenced the development of modern civilization. 

It’ll be a while before the novel is complete—haven’t even started drafting it yet—but here are some of the images that have been inspirational in the development of both the story's history and present, as well as some of the characters the tale revolves around. Deciding how I’m going morph and merge these ideas and concepts into a new cohesive narrative is definitely going to be fun, and a bit challenging, but I’m excited about the story and can’t wait to get started. 

Below are some of the artworks that have influenced the development of Rada and the upcoming novel Prince of the God Kings. 

In the near future, war drone technology has advanced and a new weapon has been unleashed—a humanoid drone stronger and faster than any soldier. But in the aftermath of a mysterious incident, damaged battle drone 237 is forced to go on the run with its programmer to try and take down their corrupt commander.

INITIUM
A daring pilot races against time to prevent a global disaster in this high-speed collaboration between Alexandre Dechel, Adrien Lambert, Emeric Larochette, and James Ross Greetham.

TELESCOPE
A cosmic archaeologist travels faster than light into deep space to capture images of the once vibrant planet. Telescope is a short film directed by Collin Davis and Matt Litwiller, written by Eric Bodge, and shot by Travis Labella

If you’ve been following my Facebook page and website for a while, you probably know I like to write, and that most of the things I share online are things that inspire me in one way or another. Sometimes that inspiration will come in the form of a character, civilization, or plot line. But often, it’s nothing more than a tone or feeling I find myself looking to capture or emulate in written form. The bits and pieces I collect while worldbuilding serve as markers, lighthouses in the dark to keep my imagination on the right course. Nine out of ten times, I have no idea how or where the material I’m saving will fit into my writing. At the time, I just know I like it, that there’s something in it that resonates with me, and I like how my mind responds to the image, music, poem, information, or whatever it is I’m engaged with.

Every month, I find more and more images to add to my Muse’s toolkit. Below are the top five from April, along with a brief explanation of why I saved them and how they may one day influence my writing, serving as beacons for my imagination.

Station, by Beomhee Lee   

This image makes me think of a hyper-advanced civilization, an old race that has long since mastered things like gravity, civil engineering, and mega-construction. They aren’t concerned about their cities falling from the sky, because, to them, an anti-grav generator is about as complicated as a toaster is to us. There are hundreds of failsafes and redundancies built into their city platforms, and the population isn’t the least bit concerned. If this were a human civilization, I’d imagine it to be in the far distant future. 

Stranded, by Dylan Cole

This is such an epic image. It’s also one of those details that can allow an author to say a lot about a storyworld in just a few lines of narrative exposition. Sure, showing a character traversing the stars in a nice ship lets the reader know it’s a spacefaring race, but placing that same character on a planet and having him/her look up and describe such an epic sight as this would say the same and immediately give the reader a sense of technological scale and history.

Titanfall concept art, by Tu Bui 

As a fan of military science fiction, I love images like this. They remind me of the grandness and scale that I want to capture when developing military fleets for large powerful civilizations—massive capital ships with impressive class names, like Guardian, Dreadnought, Hekatonkheires, and Titan. They’re the types of ships that make characters say, “Ahh…shit,” and can tip the scale of any battle when they enter the scene. Capital ships are one of the things I love most about military sci-fi, whether I see them in action or not, their mere presence makes me smile and appreciate the story a bit more. 

Umek, by Jack 

When I first saw this image, I thought of a mining operation. But now, a few weeks later, I think I see a rebel or pirate ship looking for a place to hide—probably a Star Wars influence, but I like the idea all the same. I also like the ship design, and the starlight cresting on the horizon. The image would make a great visual model for a scene. 

Mist Glider, by Calvin Chua 

While I do like the ship design in this image, I like the perspective even more. It has an introductory feel to it, and would make a great visual model when writing a scene, showing a ship for the first time through a character’s eyes. The goats on the hillside are a nice detail, too—good grounding. Any mountain dwelling animal would do. It’s the little things that bring a scene to life.  

I believe doubt is something all dreamers struggle with, a never-ending battle against that unseen force, always pressuring us to change direction, tone it down, or worse—to give up, to shelf the idea and start over with something a little more sensible, a little more realistic and less ambitious. I know I’m always questioning my ideas, wondering if the scene or chapter I just wrote is as good as I think it is, or if I’m just geeking out on my own characters and plots. Sometimes, it really is the latter, and I’m lucky to have a writing group that I know and trust. Their feedback helps me see the difference and make the right calls during revision.

Turns out, at least for me, that particular kind of doubt is more a fear of sharing the ideas and thoughts in my head than it is questioning the quality of my writing. I realized this last month, when I began sharing a lot of images on my Facebook Page that—for whatever reason—I had been holding on to. In my eye, the were all great images, and really got my imagination going, but week after week I kept passing them over, convinced I was just geeking out, and that they weren’t as share worthy as I thought when I downloaded them. Needless to say, I was more than a bit surprised to discovered they were some of last month’s top images. Like with my writing group, I’m lucky to have an online community of like minds (sci-fi fans) to share and discuss and speculate with. Whether introducing me to new perspectives or expanding or confirming my own ideas and concepts, the feedback and comments I receive have been—and continue to be—extremely valuable, helping me craft better fiction.

Below are the top five images from March. I put an asterisk next to the titles of the ones that I had been holding on to. Silly me. :)

I’ve been doing quite a bit of worldbuilding for my new novel, Sparrow’s Gate. It’s set in a different universe than Terracova: Archon, so I’ve got a lot of assets to develop. I have the plot pretty fleshed out, but have been doing more research than writing over the past month, collecting images and putting together a soundtrack of music scores to help me define the mood and pace, as well as learning about zoonotic diseases (yes, that’s a plot hint :-) ).

Looking back at the images I posted on my Facebook Page in February, I can see how my research and intent influenced my eye. That’s not to say that all of the images I shared last month are representative of the style and feel of the new novel’s storyworld, in fact, that’s far from the case. But the elements—characters, ships, space stations, portals, etc—do have bearing. It’s like when you’re thinking about buying a particular product, like a car or cell phone. As soon as you narrow your choices down to one or two, you suddenly begin to notice more of them in the world. The need to develop similar elements in my new novel was definitely guiding my eye last month. I found and shared a lot of good images, many of which sparked great conversations and brought some new perspectives to a few old sci-fi theories and tropes.

Below are the top five images from February—follower favorites based on likes, comments, and shares. 

John Liberto’s Requiem Approach Vector has a dark, ominous feel to it that just seems ripe for a story. A derelict ship and a giant spherical space station hovering in the void? It’s the perfect backdrop for an epic tale. The image received 383 likes, comments, and shares. 

Stephen Zavala’s Diving in the Clouds received 381 likes, comments, and shares. I’ve noticed images like these often do well. I think it’s because seeing a ship rocketing through the clouds, rising higher and higher, taps into our sense of adventure. We’re sci-fi fans. We dream of blasting off to explore the solar system and galaxy beyond. We see images like this and think, “Yes, please!”

Parallel Viking Spacecraft, by Levy Wang came in fifth overall, with 360 likes comments, and shares, but generated more comments than any other image. Most of the comments were related to the blue energy ring around the ship, speculating as to its purpose/function. A lot of good theories were put forth—inertia dampening field, warp field, an orbital stabilizer/anchor, protective shielding, and a few others. My favorite came from Angel Rivera, who speculated it could be a type of ram-scoop, used to collect the exotic particles believed to be caught in the warp field generated by an Alcubierre drive.

This image from matte painter and environment concept artist, Jacek Irzykowski was the top image on my Facebook page last week with 286 Likes. I love the environment depicted, and, judging from the comments the image received, so do others.

Underwater facilities like this remind me of how similar the environment is to space. While not nearly as hostile as the cold, radiation-soaked vacuum surrounding our planet, humans can’t live beneath the water without some form of protection. The pressure, the cold, and the lack of breathable air means we have to bring our environment with us in order to survive. It makes me wonder why we don’t spend more time building underwater habitats and colonizing the oceans. Seems like it would be great practice for space—a low-cost, local, and not to mention far less dangerous way to learn more about sustaining a small population in an artificial environment. 

Favorite Comments

"Totally cool . Perhaps we're looking at our future as the population grows."
~ Melissa A. Hamilton 

"Reminds me of seaquest dsv from the 90s and the old 50s/60s tv show which was pretty similar." ~ Graham Hart 

"With Earth's population predicted to reach 10 billion+ by 2050, I wonder how long it will be before floating/underwater cities become not just a reality, but a necessity."
~ Evan Hourihan