'23kpc' Intro + Chapter 1: Resuscitating an Inert Narrative
"No pulse. Quick, hand me the paddles... Clear! CLEAR, damn it...!"
Like many novelists, from aspiring to master levels, I’ve gotten to the words “The End” in several long manuscripts and then decided — for good or ill — Well, that’s enough of that. Next project, please! And like many of them, I’ve not gotten to the words “The End” at all, in several long manuscripts. In most cases, these scraps wind up littering the floor of a hard drive or backup CD.
But in at least one case, I’ve not given up on the book yet, even though I haven’t looked at the manuscript for six or seven years…
Picture, if you will, a roughly spherical rock, almost a mile across and adrift in space: an asteroid, of metallic composition. Sometime in the next couple centuries, this rock is captured by an industrial megacorporation and mined for the valuable metals therein.
…but it’s not completely stripped. No. Instead, it’s carved up inside into floors and beams, pillars and columns: a gigantic, well, spherical building. Workers swarm the interior and mount walls, ductwork, plumbing, lighting; install appliances and HVAC equipment… Finally, a few years later, it’s ready — for inhabitants.
That’s the setting for “my science fiction novel,” called — for now, and maybe for good — 23kpc. The title refers to a distance: twenty-three thousand parsecs — about seventy-five thousand light years. (Not coincidentally, this is about three-fourths of the Milky Way’s diameter.)
I won’t bore you with further details, at least (ha) for now. I just wanted to set the scene, before getting into what I think are 23kpc’s more interesting features: the characters, dialogue, and story.
In broad outline, I wanted to write a sort of updated Dashiell Hammett Thin Man story, featuring a witty detective and his equally witty spouse… solving a murder mystery… on a spaceship hurtling across the galaxy. (Sorry, I can’t tell you where I got this idea; I simply can’t remember anymore.) After poking around a bit, I discovered the not-at-all-original idea of a spaceship built from a hollowed-out asteroid, and decided to go with that.
I didn’t want this to be a hard science-fiction tale. It’s narrated by the detective, who is no expert at all in technology. So there’s a lot of handwaving without explanation when it comes to how, exactly, the, uh, the things on the ship work. I didn’t care, even though I suspect most regular readers of science fiction would roll their eyes over one implausibility or another. I wasn’t in it, in short, to show the “how” of anything more complicated than what the detective could learn from the citizens of the space rock.
So then, here’s the status of the novel so far: thirty-six chapters, about fifty thousand words — about 180 typewritten pages. (Which might sound like a lot, but — trust me — is not. It probably needs to be about twice that length to be considered more than a novella.)
And here’s 23kpc’s first — short — chapter. We’ll see what happens from this point.
Missy, the wife of my bosom, didn't begin life as a Missy. She began it as something dubbed Minsterwood, her parents being folks of a romantic, imaginative nature; but no one, not even her parents, ever called her by that name. No, it was always Mincie, or Minnie, and she tells me that an old boyfriend experimented with Woody and Woods before she cast him into the outer darkness.
I laugh at that story whenever she repeats it, and remind her that life has blessed her, ever and finally, with only one old boyfriend: Guy Landis. That is to say, me.
On a Friday evening in our stateroom aboard the former asteroid now known as the ISS Tascheter, we have resumed this familiar, playful conversation. True, you can often find us in a familiar, playful conversation of some kind. But because the crew has lifted the booze-ration lid for the next several hours, Missy and I have just poured the first of our Lower Manhattans — a tipple of our own devising, with bourbon and Campari at its heart — and the evening's playfulness has just begun. Several old pals from a past sojourn on one of the lower decks are scheduled to arrive within the hour, and we look forward to much more laughter, and much bending of elbows and ears.
Such, anyway, is our fantasy of the moment. But who knows what adventures might lie ahead?
Our Pooch, Durwood, has been relegated to the back room for the evening. Durwood's not dangerous around company — the little things never are — and if you switch it into Rx'd mode and forget about it, it might take you hours even to notice (if you ever did) that it's been bobbing about up by the chandelier ever since. But Durwood, at least, has always been disruption-sensitive. (A stray bit in his Persona flipped in the wrong direction, maybe.) So when the doorbell rings before the first lip-print on the rim of my iceglass has refrosted, all bejeezus breaks out on the far side of the back-room door: much yapping and yipping and attacking of the door.
Missy lunges for The Pooch's remote, almost sloshing a bit of red booze on her silvery-slinky pants, and I venture to the door's peephole.
It's Matty, I see: Matthew Toricelli, our deck's purser and one of our very best pals. Of course, we've invited him to the evening's festivities. Naturally, he has accepted. But Matty's work duties make it unlikely that he'd show up an hour early — unless, of course, he's here on the job. When I open the door and let him in, such indeed proves to be the case.
"Guy," he says with a nod. "Missy," he adds, and layers a grin — just the polite side of a leer — over the nod he bestows on her. Matty can be even smoother with a woman than I can, even with this woman, and I might worry about that if he were half as good at cracking wise as I am. Or, give credit where et cetera, if Missy were not Missy.
"Down, boy," she says, brandishing Durwood's remote in Matty's direction and tugging the lapels of her jacket together in mock modesty. "If you're on duty, don't come sniffing around this door."
Which succeeds in reminding Matty he's there for a real reason, whatever it is, and he turns back to me — while still addressing us both: "I won't keep you. I can see you've still got a lot to do before company arrives." He laughs. "But if you can spare a few minutes…"
"For you," I say, "we can spare our entire weekend."
See what I mean? There are a few science-fictiony touches — iceglass, Persona, Rx’d mode, and why would “Pooch” be capitalized? But mostly I’m just relying on the reader’s intelligence to figure out what that stuff probably refers to, and/or their patient good will that I will eventually explain what’s important (while continuing to bleep over the rest). It’s science fiction for non-science-fiction readers, I guess.
No promises, and I have no idea in what form I might share more of this project. But I hope to get to a Chapter 37, and eventually to “The End.” We’ll see!
Update: June 2025
For the time being, this will be the only portion of 23kpc available online. The final chapter (45) was posted for paid subscribers at the end of May; I’m currently switching all other chapters to paid-subscribers-only status. In a while I’ll “unpost” all but this intro completely to give me some time to complete a second draft, a third, and so on, en route to publishing the book, one way or another. (Paid subscribers will get a free e-book version of the final pre-publication novel.)
Thanks as always for reading!
Weird. Not the excerpt, but the fact that I was thinking about this novel recently and wondering if you were ever going to resurrect it.