Another two months, another post. I have no idea how blog and Substack writers come up with something to say once a week, every Tuesday, or whatever. It’s impressive, really, to have that much to say. I suppose I just don’t think that anything I’m thinking about is interesting enough for anyone to read. Which, thinking about it, is why I made this blog just for myself - so I don’t have to worry about what anyone thinks about what I have to say. What I’m trying to say, I guess, is that I wish I posted more, but I’m just happy to be posting at all.

It’s been slow on the novel front the last few months, because I’ve instead been trying to beat an older novella I wrote into shape. It’s a platonic love story, about finding deep, meaningful love outside the realms of romance, of realising someone’s your soulmate despite not wanting to have sex with them. It’s a topic I’ve always been interested in, because for a long time it was how I felt - that my ‘other half’, as Aristophanes called it, was my best friend, and not any of the girls I was dating at the time. In general, I never really believed in soulmates, other halves, ‘the one’, whatever. But then, after I read Gore Vidal’s autobiography Palimpsest, I thought that maybe I did, but not in the way all the Hollywood films and the romance books I never read spoke about it. In Palimpsest, the story itself, despite nominally being about his life and the interesting and famous people he wants to namedrop, is really about a boy named Jimmy he fell in love with when he was a teenager and who died away at war. The narrative is coloured, shaped, informed by Jimmy’s existence and absence, and there’s an undercurrent of sadness flowing through Vidal’s otherwise pretty hilarious writing. Despite his having been in a relationship with someone for nearly half a century by the time he wrote it, you can tell, even as he talks about getting drunk with Jack Kennedy or arguing with Norman Mailer, that Jimmy is the second subject of the autobiography, perhaps even higher on the list than Vidal himself.

Anyway, I was pretty inspired by what I discovered about myself while I read that, and so, a few years ago, I set out to write some autofiction about my platonic love story. (Vidal’s wasn’t platonic, actually, but something about the way he wrote inspired me nonetheless.) To begin with, I took a few pages I had about Berlin, inspired by Night Moves by Jessica Hopper, basically just the personal journals of her as she experienced life in her twenties while being part of the early 2000s garage rock revival in Chicago. I wanted to do something similar with Berlin, even though, at the time, I wasn’t really a part of any punk scene. (How things change.) But it evolved into a 25,000 word musing on what it meant to be platonically in love with a friend who didn’t love you back in the same way. And, since October or November last year, I’ve been refining that down into a tight 15,000 words - barely even a novella, any more; more a short story. Still, it has the heart of a novella, if not the word count.

I’m nearly finished, I think. As with my other work, I’ve been using Claude to help me edit. Claude doesn’t do any of the writing itself - it just offers suggestions on parts which aren’t working, tells me where to expand and cut, and I decide whether it’s talking shit or whether I should keep it. And so I lost nearly 10,000 words, and I’m pretty happy, now. All that’s left is to read the whole thing through, out loud, in one sitting, which I’ve been meaning to do for nearly three weeks now and haven’t managed to. The problem is that rereading it is actually quite a painful experience, more painful, even, than editing it was - emotionally and mentally. That is, editing itself is already the most difficult part of the writing process, and, because it’s essentially a memoir with some embellishments, rereading something so personal and painful isn’t the easiest job in the world. I was hoping I would desensitise myself to the emotions, which has happened to an extent, but I am nonetheless finding it hard.

Still, eventually I will, hopefully this weekend, if I can face it, if I manage to get enough sleep.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently, because I’ve been reading the Expanse, about why in most space science fiction, spacecraft are referred to with the military language of ships, and what an alternative could be for my own version of this, which is something I’ve decided I want to write. (Yes, another idea, of course.) There are reasonable historical reasons why this is the case: the earliest science fiction was mostly written by Englishmen around the turn of the twentieth century, and at that time the British Royal Navy was the most powerful in the world. Our Navy was a symbol of expansion and empire, and so it made sense to use that terminology. That language then got taken up by basically all future sci fi writers without a second thought - speaking of spaceSHIPS, of fleets, of corvettes and destroyers and carriers and all the rest - and it’s become the norm.

But why should it be? There are, to be sure, a lot of parallels between wet navy warfare and space navy warfare, at least in books (though I identified some issues here - of which more later), so at least to an extent it makes sense. Space, in some sense, is a vast ocean, and the way space travel would work, or at least would work in the sense of hardish-sci fi, would be far closer to being on a galley: you’re there for weeks, months, possibly years at a time, and (again problems, of which more later) there are different sizes of ship fulfilling different roles - carriers, destroyers, cruisers, etc.

I also find it telling that ground force language isn’t used whatsoever - at least, in the space sci fi I’ve read, you rarely hear about battalions and regiments until a landing force is involved. This, to me, makes more sense, because even in space warfare, there would be ground fighting to take over a planet or a spacestation, or whatever. I brought all this up to Claude, and it said something interesting: ‘ground forces language breaks down at scale because armies are organised around the assumption that you eventually run out of horizontal space.’ True, but the ocean eventually ends at the land, too, whereas space, for our intents and purposes, is infinite. And there’s something nice about a platoon of scout ships, a company of assault ships, and a battalion that functions as an enormous fleet (there it is again!) for full scale offensives.

All that being said, isn’t being in a spacecraft (and just to illustrate how ingrained it is, I initially wrote spaceship there without even thinking, before correcting it to spacecraft) more like flying rather than sailing? The language of aviation, at least on its surface, makes more sense. True, you don’t necessarily need wings in space, and so wingman might not make literal sense any more, but you also aren’t quite on a poop deck, either. Had space science fiction started being written after the Second World War, it might be more common in the literature to read of squadrons, sorties, bandits and intercepts. And it would scale, too: two aircraft are an element, four are a flight, squadron is eight to twenty (ish), and a wing is usually multiple squadrons.

The big issue I see with this is that the language of aviation - scrambling, sorties, bandits - implies quick but short-lived operations. Aircraft need things like carriers and bases in order to refuel, because they simply can’t go more than a few hours or a day, perhaps, without having to land somewhere. Claude put it nicely: ‘The airfield or carrier is home, and the aircraft is a weapon you briefly inhabit.’ At the distances in space, and the hypothetical distance between potential resupplies, the language breaks down somewhat; a sortie would have to be smaller craft (rock-hoppers, as they’re called in the Expanse) staging short strikes against relatively close targets. For anything longer than that, the language of the sea, of long-term wet deployment, definitely makes more sense. If you went extremely soft sci-fi, where faster-than-light travel is possible (so, you know, so soft it’s basically a mushy paste), then the language makes sense. The craft becomes a weapon that can be deployed quickly, that can be sortied, if you’ll allow me to verbify. For hard sci fi, unfortunately it doesn’t.

What’s nice about aviation language is that most of it is original. They didn’t take their language from the navy, but invented their own, or their own developed over time, as is more often the case with idiolects. So… why isn’t this the case with space warfare, aside from the historical reasons? I feel there’s an enormous opportunity for a really original language to be used that’s specific to space warfare and organisation, one that a writer could invent from the ground up, stealing and borrowing from other naval, aviation, and ground branches. I can’t think of any writer who’s done this. Even writers of space sci-fi that try to completely subvert the organisational structure of the military tend to leave the vocabulary alone, even as Tolkien invented multiple languages for his world which, in some senses, contains technology more familiar to us than that of the spacecraft.

Consider this. Military language used today comes from Norse, Dutch, Portuguese, Arabic, Latin, probably other languages I’m forgetting. The internet tells me that starboard and port are Viking words, and Admiral is Arabic, for example. Imagine a future space sci fi where there are other languages, which would inevitably develop if we’re talking a couple hundred years in the future, and those words, or their roots in the languages we know of today, are in use in military language. Something totally alien, which would fit the completely alien expanse (sorry to steal the word, Corey) of space.

Second, both naval and ground warfare operate, at their most basic level, on two planes. Space is three-dimensional (which is why I initially reached for aviation language when I was thinking about this), and that demands a new kind of language. Who are the most important people when it comes to space? Engineers, mathematicians, really. So why don’t we see more vocabulary that goes above the plane of the ecliptic, vocabularies of vectors and planes and apexes and envelopes? Why aren’t astronomical terms used, like apogees, occultations, perihelions? Claude suggested that a force holding position at a gravitational chokepoint could be an ‘occultation force’. I like this already. And structures could be organised around durations and functions, rather than sizes. If your enormous battlecarrier can only fly for a week before it has to refuel, it’s only suitable for certain operations. Your smaller corvette (and I still can’t get away from the naval jargon) that can fly for two years without having to restock has a different role, potentially a more valuable one. A yearer, a monther, a dayer, or something better than what I can come up with off the top of my head, makes a lot of sense when we’re talking about the distances of space.

One problem of inventing this language actually gives a fascinating solution. Military vocabulary - most of it, anyway - didn’t just fall out of the sky. During the Battle of Britain, the term ‘scramble’ was invented, as the aircraft had to get up and into the fight as quickly as possible. Now, it’s used regularly by English-speaking airforces around the world. In space, over the years that space exploration and especially engagements happened, something similar would occur. So if you know that there has to be history behind the language you’re using, you’re forced to INVENT that history for your novel, which leads to an extremely rich and alive world. This crazy, sci-fi sounding word you’re using instead of cruiser? It exists because of X specific event that happened in this sci fi world I’ve created - I didn’t just pull it out of my arse in an attempt to make my novel sound different. And for that reason, of course, lots of terms would be the same. The vocabulary of hierarchy still makes sense, as would having a wingman (if, indeed, the types of craft that need wingmen would even exist any more - of which more later), as would an escort, as would a scout. Some terms would remain; others would be born of history and necessity.

And you wouldn’t necessarily have to explain all, or any, of that history in the novel, as long as it was clear to the writer. You could, of course, if you wanted to flex your worldbuilding muscles, but in real life, plenty of origins of words have been forgotten or mythologised. Even scramble, the example I used earlier in this paragraph, might have messier origins than I let on. I just haven’t done my research properly. Here’s an interesting one: what do you think of when you read the word ‘tank’? Because of everything I’ve written in this post, you’re probably thinking of the armoured military vehicle. But that word was itself a codeword during the First World War for what the machine was. The original meaning of tank is, obviously, something that holds a liquid or gas, like a watertank. It was a piece of misdirection, and it’s just stuck, though it has basically no relation to the actual item in question. And in the military, tanks are often referred to as ‘armour’ - an armoured regiment is a tank regiment. Armour is something that protects the body, the soft bits, which makes far more sense - it’s exactly what a tank does. Not to mention the fact that tanks themselves are, of course, armoured. The word itself comes from armatura, the Latin, and means equipment, which is exactly what armour is.

As an aside, I learned of two others while I researched about this: “Deadline” comes from the line drawn around a Civil War prison camp — cross it and you were shot. Now it means when your article is due. “Blockbuster” originally referred to a bomb large enough to destroy a whole city block. The RAF used it during the Second World War. Now it means a successful film. And, an aside within an aside: there’s a famous idea that, after the Normans conquered England, our language developed on two tracks at the same time. So we have the word beef, which the rich people used for the meat they ate, and the word cow, which the poor people used who actually looked after the animal. The same with deer and venison, or pork and pig. Claude suggested the same is true of military language. Sword, shield, war, fight, are all Anglo-Saxon words. The organisational words - army, battle, captain, lieutenant, are French. And while this started as an aside, it actually has relevance to inventing space warfare vocabulary: the words for the organisation of units and battles would be different, potentially, from the words used by the crews and spacefarers themselves in their craft. Who built the institutions and who fought for them would, potentially, speak in different ways, invent different words, and those words would become entrenched in that history.

So that’s my rant, and the idea is that someone - probably not me, because I’m not smart enough, but maybe I’ll give it a go if I ever come up with an idea for a science fiction space opera - should come up with a more interesting vocabulary for spacecraft and their associated military institutions.

BUT. There’s a problem with everything I’ve said, a problem that extends also to ground, aviation, and naval language, when it comes to space warfare in general in science fiction: the uselessness of smaller craft.

In naval warfare, the carrier killed the destroyer. With a carrier, you ride out miles and miles away from your opponent, with a cruiser or two as an escort to make sure no submarine comes and blows you up, and you can send out planes without ever coming into danger yourself far further than any guns you mounted could fire. They made total logistical sense in that arena.

But if we assume that in a universe like the Expanse missiles have also become more and more technologically refined, what would ever be the point in smaller spacecraft? A corvette, a frigate, whatever you’d call them in the amazing new vocabulary you made up, become completely obsolete. There are no horizons to shoot over in space, and bullets and rockets just keep going until they hit something, or, more likely, don’t. Fights wouldn’t consist of carriers holding tens or hundreds of smaller craft; they would consist of enormous missile platforms that fire barrage after barrage at each other until one of the point defence cannons eventually makes a mistake and one gets through. In the navy, a carrier has an escort because it doesn’t do all the jobs - it can’t protect itself against a submarine while also sending out its aircraft. A carrier that does both of those jobs at once means if it gets disabled, the fight is totally over.

The same is true in space - if the capital ship (there it is again!) gets disabled, the fight is over. But a small escort frigate or cruiser isn’t going to help with that. There is no ocean underneath you - just empty vacuum. So all you need is to also have missiles and PDCs on the relative bottom of your capital ship, and you’re set. The only escort ships that would be needed would be for refuelling, resupply, and maybe some sort of electronic jamming - there I can’t think of a good reason this wouldn’t be done by the capital ship itself, too. If a missile essentially becomes a much safer, extremely manoeuvrable analogue to what a fighter plane does on a current wet navy carrier, why do you need corvettes and frigates and strike ships?

Unfortunately, the reality of my mind when it comes to literature ideas - taking everything to its logical endpoint, just absolutely bashing the logic out of everything - makes space warfare pretty fucking boring. You sit in your capital ship (or maybe you don’t even do that - maybe they’re unmanned, now), you fire your missiles, until one of your PDCs does a bad job, or you run out of ammunition. Luckily, I’ve read a lot of war memoirs, and they all revolve around one central point: war is extremely boring, until it isn’t. So that would still work for my novel, too. However, it does mean that inventing a full-blown vocabulary for it doesn’t make much sense.

Well, anyway. I’ve nattered on enough about this for now. This is the longest post on this blog now, I think, and it wasn’t meant to be. Maybe it should have been several posts, but ah well - I started, and I wanted to continue, so I did.

Finally, some housekeeping. The actual, real novel has been sitting in Novelcrafter, the first act finished, the second two waiting patiently - or not so patiently, actually - for me to finish them. It’s difficult to believe that the last time I worked on it was nearly six months ago, but it seems to be true. Getting back into it is going to be an exercise in mental fortitude; luckily, I’ve spent the last six months thinking of nearly nothing else, so I know where I am, know what’s happened, and (vaguely) know where it’s going next. It’s just sitting down to do it. Part of the reason I’ve not worked on it is because I’ve not been sleeping well, though I never do, really, and the other part is because I’ve been playing far too many video games, making myself feel guilty, and then not sleeping again because I’m lying in bed planning my writing, which I should have been doing instead of playing video games. Such is life. I’m only really writing this blog post so I can feel like I’m actually making progress on something other than Prison Architect.

I’m coming to the end of the penultimate Expanse novel, and I’m enjoying it, though the first five are still my favourite, I think. One thing I’ve noticed is that the authors aren’t afraid to stay in their characters’ head for several pages in each chapter before the action happens. This, interestingly, was something Claude told me not to do, because it was making my initial draft bloated and slow. Now I’m wondering whether I’ve cut too much out of the first act, and actually there were some interesting bits in there that I should revive. When I reread sections of the new draft, it felt a little breakneck to me when going through the chapters - like I was pushing the story on extremely quickly and unnecessarily. I still managed to get to the end of act 1 with a healthy 25,000 words, but I think if I brought back just a little of the thinking my characters did in the first version, the characters might feel a little more real. Anyway, something to think about. Or, for me to think about, rather.

The video game? It’s there, it’s waiting for me. All the systems are in place, the game is ugly but playable, and all I need to do is write the story. The problem is, three stories at once are too much for me, especially while I’m spending my time playing games rather than making them. Perhaps - and this is something I’ve thought to myself on a monthly basis over the last ten years - I need to write myself out a routine for every day, so I make the most of my time.

Then again, we’re all going to die, and nothing means anything. Just remember to wash your hands.

P.S. When the novella is finished, I will be posting it on this website for free, and recording it as an audiobook myself, also. Enjoy!