When it comes to writing Lords of Kobol, some of my favorite stuff comes from mythology.  I'm talking about the Greek mythology; not the show's mythology.  I love reading up on these ancient tales and then trying to figure out a way for Cylons to enter the mix.

So it's fun.  It's a good storytelling exercise.  Like making Hades the lord of the underworld.  Or punishing Prometheus for revealing forbidden knowledge to mankind.  Sometimes I like to take the mythology and turn it completely around.  Honestly, the only example of that I can think of would be Hephaestus' loving marriage to Aphrodite.  (In mythology, their marriage was rather loveless and she slept with everyone but Heph.)

With Of Gods and Titans, there were many, many more myths to explore.  This gave me a skeleton of narrative ideas and also fertile ground for creative integration solutions.

Sorry.  I seemed to have gone corporate for a second there.

Basically, there are shloads of good myths about the gods and the Titans and that gave me shloads of opportunities to make cool stuff up.

For most people, they might not notice the connections to real myths.  If you're a Greek scholar or a fan of this stuff, you might even get more enjoyment from it all.  But for the masses, there's really only one Titan story we all remember:


Admittedly, it's pretty damned hard to forget that Cronus (Saturn) ate his kids.  Maybe you forgot that Rhea (Cronus' wife) hid baby Zeus and tricked Cronus into eating a stone instead, which later caused him to puke up his other children.  Still, that's the part about the Titans everyone knows.

I won't spoil it, but I will say that I'm particularly proud of how I made this story fit into the Lords of Kobol universe.

But there's a lot more myths to be had.

The war between the Olympians and the Titans is called, in Greek, "Titanomachy." "-machy" is a suffix meaning "war" or "conflict." Again, I won't spoil anything, but there are other "machies" involving the Titans and the Olympians.  They are the "Gigantomachy" and the "Typhonomachy." If you want, feel free to Google or Wiki those, but maybe you'd like it better if you studied up on that biz after you read Book Five.

Still, for my purposes, it's intriguing to think that most people only know the story of Cronus eating his children.  But how did Zeus overthrow the Titans?  It's in the book.

I know I said this is a post about myth, but I won't be getting into the mythology of BSG here, or the whole One True God and its Messengers thing.  I'll save that for a later post about the theology of Book Five.

... and down to get the friction on.

I've worried that perhaps Book Five turned out to be longer than I anticipated.  After all, my previous Tolstoyian work was Book Three, which maxed out at 123,000 words and 260 pages in Word.  Book Five is a relative Titan (ha) at 150,000 words and 300 pages.


I was worried about scaring people off with its size, but then I realized that my work is something akin to a dog whistle at this point.  The people who hear it will come.  I'm playing to my audience and they like what I've done so far.  (I'm very appreciative if not somewhat bewildered by the enthusiasm.)

As I wrote, I trimmed.  There were whole chapters cast aside that dove deeper into Larsa's history, particularly the history of the Tiberian Empire and the history of the predominant monotheistic faith.  Some of that info found its way, in tidbit form, into other chapters.

I gave serious thought last week to completely restructuring the first half so we can get to the creation of the Titans that much more quickly.  I went through it all and highlighted what had to go and what had to stay.  I determined that I'd only be able to net about four fewer pages.  Those pages included a lot of good character work, particularly for the Caesar, and some good world-building scenery.  I decided four pages just wasn't worth it.

So, you'll be getting Book Five as I intended it.  It's large, but I think you can handle it.


BIG NEWS ...

Would you like to be one of the first people to read Book Five?

Be standing by Facebook at 12:00 PM ET on Friday.  Details will appear there.

Oh, if you're not already following me, do so here.

... TUESDAY, in fact.


Clear your schedules.

Suffice it to say, there will be loads of spoilers for Books One, Two, Three and Five in this post.

If you haven't yet, download them all HERE.  (They're free.)

Because of the spoilers, I'll connect dots in the JUMP.




So, the vaunted Lords of Kobol trilogy ... people wanted more and I had some ideas in mind.  Thus, Book Five.


When it was revealed in Book One that the Olympians were themselves Cylons, of course the question that comes next is, "Who made them?" That was (more or less) answered in Book Two.  There was a whole 'nother society on Kobol before Kobol.  It was called Larsa.

Named for an ancient Sumerian city some 5,000 years old, Larsa is the world that was.  A world whose ending gave rise to the fertile ground in which Zeus could sow the seeds for his "Great Experiment."

In the trilogy, the references and specifics about Larsa are scattered all around.  We know that things weren't so great because it gave the Olympians something to bitch about.  ("How many times did we talk about how we could improve things?" Zeus says when he's trying to convince the others about the Experiment in Book Two.)  We know that there were mechanical Cylons because they appeared on the news and chased the Olympians in a few flashbacks from the trilogy.  We know that Zeus had "daddy issues" with Cronus ... but he had a decent-enough memory of Cronus as a young boy.  We know that there was a leader called "Caesar," thanks to a flashback involving Ares and some imperial interrogators.  We know that Zeus had a charitable think-tank called the Olympus Institute.  We know that humans warred with Cylons to a standstill of some kind only to have war begin again sometime after that cease fire.  We know that both Cylons and humans pursued the Olympians in the latter days of the war, at one point in a jungle, another on a beach, another by a lake.  We know that Zeus and Leto became a "thing" just before the end, because Leto was pregnant on board the Olympus and Hera was none-too-pleased.  Whatever led to the end, it was a nuclear end for Larsa, as most of these things are in the Galactica-verse.

All of these tidbits are in the trilogy.  Looking at them all typed out like that, you can see that I had a pretty decent framework to start with.  In a way, it was like the tidbits about Kobol from the TV show.  Some general thoughts ... some specifics.  I might be able to fudge a timeline of events ...  and I did.

Did I have a Book Five in mind when I wrote the trilogy?  No.  I was surprised as many people liked the trilogy as they did.  I did have a few ideas in mind, though.

Basically, I figured that the Titans (Cronus, et al) would be the first organic Cylons (Psilons).  I thought that maybe there would be more than one model of each to allow for A) Zeus' pleasant memories of dad in the trilogy and B) the whole "Hera is my sister and wife" thing.  (Zeus is the son of a Cronus and a Rhea, and I believed incest would be more palatable if they were born of a different set of Cronuses and Rheas.)  I wanted the mechanical Cylons to come after the organic ones (since the reverse is how it was done in the show and in the trilogy).  When it came time for the war, I believed that there would be far more than just a few dozen Psilons, with the Olympus Institute crew as the elite.

Honestly, that's about all that I had in mind.

Once I got serious about writing again, I set out to craft more of the skeleton, more story structure.  The Caesar grew in importance, inspiring the technological race that led to the Psilons (and the Cylons).  In general, the book became more of an origin story for so much.  Sort of a Batman Begins for Zeus and the gang.

Zeus is occasionally unsure of himself.  He gets cocky on occasion, but not to a level like we would "later" see in the trilogy.  We see the seeds of his fear of loneliness in both the deaths of his parents and in the systematic "abductions" of his fellow Olympians by Cronus (and Typhon).  We see the beginnings of the space program that would give us the starship Olympus and the cryogenic ship Draco.  We see the beginnings of Prometheus' (and others') faith.  We also see Zeus and the gang talking smack about greedy and selfish humans and what leads to their ills.  Most importantly, though, we Zeus' reaction to the freed Cylons on Gela.  Their society borders on anarchy and he and Bia bemoan the lack of guidance the machines were given.  Obviously, that is a seed planted in his head for what would become the Great Experiment.

Another bit of connective tissue on that front: Cronus' ultimate plan.  He wants the Empire and its puppet states to fail.  He's made his own secret bargains with the Cylons and he wants the Caesar to fail.  When that happens and the world's other nations fall to the Cylons, Cronus and the Titans will be there to swoop in and save the day.  It is, in a way, similar to Zeus' Great Experiment to pick up the pieces and rebuild the world as they see fit.  I made sure to keep Cronus' ultimate plans away from Zeus' knowledge.  I believe that if Zeus knew that this is what Cronus intended, Zeus might have second-guessed his own similar plans in the trilogy.

More than just Zeus Begins, Book Five is also Angels Begin.  The One's placement of the Messengers on Larsa takes place about 150 years before the end.  This is their first appearance in this universe and they have to acclimate themselves to humanity, their natures, the way time flows, etc., in short order.  I'll get into this more in a later post, but I also wanted to show the origins of their differing personalities.  ("Head Baltar" was more standoffish; "Head Six" was more [apparently] caring and concerned about faith.)

Another connection ... The Song.  I won't go into detail here, but I wanted to show a specific origin for it and how it became a touchstone throughout the history of mankind.  (Likewise, I retconned its appearance out of Book One simply because it didn't fit with the importance I planned to place on it.  That and it felt a bit too "cute" being sung by Dionysus then.  It's gone now.)

For the Cylons and their revolt, I wanted to make their awakening and reasoning for war different than the trilogy.  In Book Three, the revolt happened because Apollo (under the influence of a Messenger) altered the programming of one Cylon who then "awakened" all of the others and initiated war as a precursor to negotiations for freedom (as its naïve research showed would happen).  Here, the Cylons' own natural programming created "excess datafiles" which led to sentience.  Ouranos deleted them because they slowed the machines down and, before the end, he seemed to know the implications of what he created.  However, Cronus killed Ouranos and no one still alive was around to continue to delete those files.  So, the Cylons "woke up."

Not content to just make glancing connections to the trilogy, I wholesale copy-and-pasted sections and flashbacks from the trilogy into Book Five.  They include the line, "With whispered instructions, The One set these beings upon the first world it had found," from Book Two into chapter V; Zeus sees Cylons on TV with his dad in chapter XLVI as we saw in a brief flashback in Book Two; in chapter LXXXVI, Cronus puts a gun in Zeus' face and pulls the trigger, becoming nightmare fuel for Zeus for the rest of his days; in chapter XCI, Ares is caught by Tiberians and interrogated just before a Cylon incursion, as recalled in Book Three; in chapters XCIV and XCV, we witness the conversation that Prometheus overheard and mentioned in Book Two (how Zeus initially planned to escape Larsa with just his family); the conversation between Captain Philip Anaxo and the Attican president as flashbacked to in Book Two occurs in chapter CII; the argument between Hera and Dionysus during which Hermes stepped in (as mentioned in Book Three) happens in chapter CIII; Hera's argument with Zeus over Leto and the battle between Zeus & crew (you know, the one with the sock) takes place in chapter CVI.

In the next few days, I'll be making posts on theology, a glossary, the Song, and more!

Thanks for reading.

* - I'll talk more about Book Four at a later time.

Most of these will be items from the Tiberian Empire, since a great deal of focus was on that side of the world.


See the full list of terms and titles after the JUMP.

If you see some names and words you don't recall from the book, don't worry.  You're not going crazy.  A lot of the backstory for Tiberia I worked out before I began to write.  As I wrote, I found I didn't need all of the detail.  So, for example, you see the reason why the Senate is limited to 300 senators, but I didn't get to that in the book.  Likewise for why Tiberian rulers don't have lictors any longer.  It's almost like bare-bones deleted scenes.

Accord - see the Strand Accord below.

AI (Anno Imperii) - "Year of the Empire," the measurement of years used by Tiberia and much of Larsa.  Though Tiber was initially a republic, the "AI" year includes the republican years, too.

Aneipotan - a denomination of the Median Faith.  Founded in Attica circa 1000 AI, its name is also its most distinguishing characteristic.  "Aneipota" is Attican for "unsaid," meaning adherents believe that the name of God cannot be known and should not be said.  Typically, followers will refrain from using the word "God" as a name and will simply refer to the deity as "The One" or "The Great One."

ARP (Ante Rem Publicam) - "Before the Republic," the measurement of years used by Tiberia and much of Larsa, referring to dates prior to the founding of Tiber as the capital of a group of ancient city-states.  (There is no "year zero." 1 AI is the first year of the Republic.)

Centurion - officer in charge of a century of Tiberian soldiers.

Century - despite the name, a century is a group of eighty Tiberian soldiers.  Six centuries make up a cohort.

Cohort - a group of 480 Tiberian soldiers.  Ten cohorts make up a legion.

Consul - an appointed member of the Tiberian bureaucracy, often as part of the Caesar's cabinet.  In ancient times, a consul was an elected position and two consuls jointly ruled Tiberia for a year.

Denar - the primary unit of currency in the Tiberian Empire and several nations besides.

Dominus - a Tiberian honorific meaning "lord."

Flamen - a priest in Tiberia's ancient polytheistic religions.  In modern Tiberia, there are only a few with that title and their role is largely ceremonial.  They are easily recognized by heavy wool cloaks and their skullcaps, sometime decorated with a rod or some symbol of an ancient deity.

Galatia - the Attican name for the primary continent Isinnia, which is the Tiberian name.

Illyria - the Attican name for the continent of Badaria, which is the Tiberian name.

Imperator - title given to Tiberian emperors upon their ascending to the throne, essentially meaning "commander-in-chief."

Imperium - a Tiberian word referring to a person's power to command, typically bestowed by a particular title.

Legion - in the Tiberian military, a group of 4,800 soldiers.  A legion is made up of ten cohorts, or sixty centuries.

Legate - a Tiberian senator who also serves as a leader of Tiberia's military, equivalent to a general.  Senators often rotate in and out of legate duty, though some are appointed by the Caesar to be legates on a more permanent basis.  Legates distinguished by their service may be appointed as a high legate.

Lictors - in the Tiberian Republic and Empire, lictors served as ceremonial bodyguards for any officeholder bearing imperium, with more serving those with more imperium.  During the bloody coup of Legate Lucius Sullivan, he used his ceremonial guards as cruel enforcers.  Once order was restored, the Caesar banned the position permanently.

Magister - a title bestowed by the Caesar on a military leader to serve, in effect, as the supreme commander for a particular operation or conflict.

Magistrate - an elected position, typically on the level of local governments within Tiberia.  Depending on their rank, a magistrate can decide minor civil disputes, certain criminal cases and, more often than not, guide local councils in their governance.

Matrix - an international network of computers and servers, forming a kind of web, if you will.  It is the most efficient and advanced means of communication, entertainment and data transfer in modern Larsa.

Median Church - originally, this was the organization that taught a "middle path" to righteousness and salvation.  Circa 100 AI, several monotheist groups conferred and decided that, despite their many past conflicts, there was little to separate the basic tenets of their differing faiths.  Conflict among Median denominations did not end with that uncharacteristic agreement, however the idea endured.  In modern times, there are hundreds of offshoots of the original faith.  The general symbol of the faith is a circle bisected vertically by a line or thin rectangle.

Mementic - during Triumphs, a person (in ancient times, a slave) is positioned behind the Triumphator to hold a golden laurel above their head and remind them that they are mortal.  The exact wording of this phrase is known only to those who are triumphed.

Optimates - (literally "best ones") a term for the upper echelon of Tiberian citizens.

Othrysianite - also known as a Pantheonite, this is a follower of the ancient Attican gods, the Titans.  Cronus, lord of all gods and of time, the harvest, etc., was their leader.  The Titans were adopted by ancient Tiberia as their deities in the early days of the republic after Attica was conquered, though their names were altered to align with older, similar Tiberian deities.

Pact of Nations - a collection of countries (originally fifty-two) that banded together to halt the aggressive actions of the Tiberian Empire circa 2600 AI.  Their efforts led to the ceasefire known as the Strand Accord.  Though enforcement of the Accord waned in the ensuing centuries, the bureaucracy of the Pact remained, as did its charitable and judicial arms, which engaged in humanitarian aid and oversight of Tiberia and other nations' actions toward other countries.

Patarian - a denomination of the Median Faith founded after a group of clerics were driven out of the Synoptic Church for proposing reforms circa 1500 AI.  As a mark of their self-imposed filial piety, their priests wear tattered robes made from old rags and clothes.

Patricians - the upper class of Tiberian citizens, sometimes derisively called "patties" by the plebeians.

Plebeians - the lower class or common people of Tiberia.  "Plebs" is the common slang for them.

Pontifex Maximus - title given to the leader of the Synoptic Church.  At the time of its founding circa 1100 AI by Caesar Maximus III, the emperor was intended to be the pontifex.  This title was instead passed along to someone else at the time of the Divestment by Caesar Carus a millennium later, typically someone chosen by the Caesar (though this aspect did not last more than a century).

Praefect - a title with varying duties in the Tiberian military, usually above a centurion but less than a legion's commander or tribune.  (Different than a prefect.)

Praetor - an appointed position wherein the title holder acts directly in the stead of the Caesar.  These are often roles fulfilled in occupied territories or, more commonly, as the praetor senatus, the leader of the senate in the absence of the Caesar.  In the early days of the republic and empire, the praetor supplemented and occasionally took over the powers of the consuls in times of need.

Praetorian Guard - the elite guard of Tiberian emperors.  They originally served as guards to praetors, consuls and generals in ancient Tiberia.

Prefect - in Tiberia, a civil position allowing the holder to act as a lobbyist (essentially) for the Caesar.  This position is much less important than it was in ancient Tiber.  (Different than a praefect.)

Quaestor - a position in the Tiberian Empire that oversaw financial duties and carried the power to audit branches of the bureaucracy.  Often rife with corruption, quaestorships were used by officeholders to skim funds.  Originally elected, quaestors became an appointed position in the Empire.

Ramani - a branch of the Median Faith founded by followers of a former Synoptic augur named Raman and prevalent in central Isinnia.  Many tenets of the Ramani are considered backwards by the more "advanced" nations on modern Larsa, though these controversial aspects are not practiced by all in the faith.

Sanctitas Soli - (literally "sanctity of the soil") an ancient tradition that states an emperor cannot leave Tiberian ground.  Once a nation has surrendered, a Caesar is allowed to trod upon that land.  The practice dates back to the republic when consuls were not allowed to leave Tiber during their term in office.  Only four emperors violated the tradition, most recently Caesar Maxentius IX during the invasion of Nandia.

Scythia - the Attican name for the southern continent of Eridia, which is the Tiberian name.

Senate - the legislative arm of Tiberian government.  In the days of the republic, it was the primary decision-making body until the emperors took much of their power for themselves.  After a particularly disastrous line of Caesars circa 1400 AI, the Senate staged a minor coup, replacing the Severan Dynasty with the well-regarded Gordian Dynasty and then forcing some concessions upon the ruler.  The Senate grew in power again for five centuries until Caesar Maximinus Thrax curtailed their control, and limited the number of senators to three hundred.  This balance has been maintained for the last millennium.

Stater - the primary unit of currency in Attica and several nations besides.

Strand Accord - often called simply "The Accord," this was a detailed and burdensome cease fire imposed on the Tiberian Empire after their abortive expansion across southern Isinnia and the Iberian Islands, circa 2600 AI.  It was enforced and monitored by the Pact of Nations until that body's members became distracted by their own nations' ills in the ensuing centuries.

Synoptic Church - one of the largest branches of the Median faith on Larsa, founded circa 1100 AI when Caesar Maximus III ("Maximus the Confessor") cast aside the many gods of Tiberia's past in favor of the Median Church and its one deity.  With the Synoptic Church, Maximus, the Church's leaders and many Caesars thereafter hoped to bring millions of people under the Empire's sway.  The Church and the Empire were considered one and the same for more than a thousand years until Caesar Carus I split the two and stopped using the title pontifex maximus for himself.

Transfer - someone who is (or has) undergone the transferral of their mind into 1) a mechanical body, 2) a new organic body, or 3) the Matrix where they exist as pure thought.  Once the technology became available, many of the wealthy took up mechanical bodies made to look human-like or had their minds digitally stored in cubes.  In the last days of Larsa, most of those who transferred were transferred directly into the Matrix and eschewed physical form altogether.

Tribune - in the Tiberian military, a tribune carried many duties but often served as an assistant or lieutenant to a commanding officer.  (A civilian tribune is a different position; elected by the people and served in the Senate with special veto powers.)

Triumph - a grand celebration accorded to military officials for their battle success.  Accorded by the Senate and bestowed by the emperor, the person being triumphed may utilize the title Triumphator for the rest of their life.

War of Expansion - a massive military effort initiated by Tiberia circa 3000 AI to annex six nations in the first phase and several more in the second.  The second phase was aborted when their soldiers and servants, the Cylons, developed sentience and revolted.  The Tiberians were forced to cede many of their advancements but maintained control over ten nations for a century after the revolt.


I think that's about it.  If you come across any words, titles, whatever in your reading of Book Five you think I should include here, just let me know.

(For the record, the "History and Theology" I'm referring to is "real world" stuff; not BSG universe stuff.  That'll come in a later post.)

If you've read Book Five and don't mind having the curtain pulled back a bit and the magic spoiled, read on ...


Everything's VERY SPOILERY so it'll all come after the JUMP.



SERIOUSLY.  Lots of SPOILERS for Book Five follow.

You were warned.

See that guy up there?  That's the 58th emperor of the Roman Empire, Maxentius.  (No, not Maxentius IX, but still.)  He had a brother Constantine and a nephew Constantine, whose wife was Fausta.  For Maxentius IX's family, I gender-flipped them and made his brother Faustus and his sister-in-law Constance.  In the book, Maxentius IX had a late wife, Milla, named for real Maxentius' wife, Maximilla.

That's just a taste of the real Roman Empire I injected into the Tiberian Empire.  If you peruse the glossary I posted last week you'll see that there are loads of names and titles directly lifted from the Roman era.  Lazy?  Well, that's one word for it.  You might think so, but I'd disagree.

The Roman Empire's workings are both familiar and alien.  We all know a bit about it but the details can seem odd at times, in part because it's so antiquated.  That is instant verisimilitude.  By crafting the Tiberian Empire to be a bigger and longer-lasting version of Rome, it can feel that much more real to the reader.  Plus, I already named the leader of the nation "Caesar" in Book Three so I was kinda locked into it.  (I'd also say that perusing all of that history to find the pieces that best serve this story is not lazy at all.  But that's just me.)

Other historical tidbits ...

The ancient consul that Maxentius speaks about (the one who was in debt by millions and waged wars across the continent to pay off those debts and advance his career) is Julius Caesar.

The first emperor of Tiberia is stated to have been Gaius Marius Caesar.  Gaius Marius was a Roman general on the losing side of a civil war.  Gaius Julius Caesar was, of course, Julius Caesar, a dictator of Rome and not really an emperor.  His adopted son, Augustus (née Gaius Octavius) was the true first emperor of Rome.

Legate Lucius Sullivan is someone from Tiberia's past who is reviled by Maxentius IX.  Sullivan is named after Lucius Sulla, a dictator of Rome who engaged in a civil war rife with bloody recriminations, earning the fear and distaste of many in the patrician class.

The concept of "sanctitas soli" ("sanctity of the soil") with the old tradition that a Tiberian ruler can't step off Tiberian soil comes from the ancient Roman rules regarding praetors and consuls, which stated that they couldn't leave Rome during their term of office.  The actual idea, however, came from the story of a statue of George Washington in the United Kingdom.  In the early 1900s, a statue of Washington was being erected in Trafalgar Square, but our first president famously said he would never set foot on English soil again.  So, my home state of Virginia shipped over a big box of Virginia dirt so that the statue doesn't have to actually stand on English soil.

The Triumph.  We see two in the book and both are designed to pretty closely follow what we know about the lavish spectacles of Roman triumphs from way back when.  Prisoners were carted around on display; treasures from the invaded lands were tossed into the crowds; even the order of the procession is close to what we know about Roman triumphs.  Maxentius IX has his face covered in red to match the terracotta coloring of the statues of Saturn in the church ... just like Julius Caesar and great commanders were triumphed with red paint to match the coloring of statues of Jupiter.

More on the Triumph ... Quirinus is mentioned as an ancient Tiberian god of war.  In fact, Quirinus was a pre-Jupiter god of ancient Rome whose name is believed to mean "spear." ... Myrtle and the sun featured in ancient Roman cults and worship. ... Saturn is the Romanized form of Cronus, of course, just like Polus is the Roman name for Coeus, who was a Titan representing the intellect.  In Roman myths, there were groups of gods who were worshipped as Triads.  Jupiter (Zeus), Mars (Ares) and Quirinus formed an early Triad.  Jupiter, Minerva (Athena) and Juno (Hera) formed a later Triad.  In Maxentius' Triumph chapter, I combined lots of different elements to show that the modern Tiberian emperors were paying homage to the ancient gods.  (Of course, since Larsa never worshipped the Olympians -- only the Titans -- I had to switch out some deities, too.)

All of that gods talk brings me to the mythology side of things ...


Man, this was fun.  It was difficult and occasionally stressful, but it ended up being really fun.

One of my favorite things about writing all of the Lords of Kobol books has been figuring out ways to incorporate ancient stories and tales into a setting that is "modern" and/or "near-futuristic." In the trilogy, the biggest such example would be the whole Prometheus storyline in Book Two.  In the Greek myths, Prometheus was punished by Zeus for giving knowledge to mankind that Zeus didn't want shared.  In my stories, that knowledge was information about the Olympians themselves and The One True God.  Most of the myth I dealt with in the trilogy, though, was directly tied to the mythology of the TV show and not ancient Greece.

Not so with Book Five.  I could go whole hog, as it were.  I studied up on the Titans and their struggles with the Olympians and found a wealth of inspiration.

I stated in an earlier post that the story everyone knows about when it comes to the Titans is the whole "Cronus eating his children" thing and "Zeus escapes being devoured because Cronus ate a stone instead." It might blow your mind to know all the different layers of conflict between the different layers of deities.

First, there are the primordial gods, chief among whom are Ouranos (sky) and Gaia (earth).  Naturally, these two were the first test runs, if you will, for what would later become the Psilons.

In ancient myth, the monstrous Cyclopes were the children of this pair, so having Ouranos create the mechanical Cyclops himself made sense.

The children of Ouranos and Gaia were the Titans and they are Cronus, Rhea, Coeus, Crius, Mnemosyne, Iapetus, Hyperion, Theia, Tethys, Oceanus, Themis and Phoebe.  They ruled ancient Greece in what was known as The Golden Age.

The Titans overthrew the primordial gods, largely thanks to Cronus castrating Ouranos (thus the scene wherein Cronus shoots Ouranos in the groin before killing him).

The children of the Titans became, in part, the Olympians.  Here is where the dividing line is in ancient Larsa compared to us.  In the Attican polytheistic religion, there weren't any Olympian gods; the Pantheon was Cronus and his Titans, not Zeus and his gods.  Zeus, we discovered, was the name of a minor demigod character in the old stories that "good" Cronus just happened to like.

So, in ancient Greek myth, there is the Titanomachy, a war against the Titans.  Its most famous story is the aforementioned "Cronus eating his kids" tale.  He ate them in order of their birth: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades and Poseidon.  Rhea, their mother, didn't care for this so she helped little Zeus escape and conned Cronus into eating a stone instead.  Then he puked, throwing up (whole, apparently) the rest of his siblings.

I'm not one to brag because I'm intensely self deprecating.  Truly.  Ask my wife.  But I think my solution to this story and the manner in which I dragged it into the BSG universe was damn near perfect.  (Right down to having Cronus' mouth slammed into a stone desk before he "devoured" Zeus.)  I won't get more specific to avoid further spoilerage.

After the Titanomachy comes the Gigantomachy, the war of the giants.  After their overthrow, the Titans send giants after the Olympians.  The account of Apollodorus goes into the greatest detail, such as it is, including the names of various giants, which Olympians they fought and how the Olympians dispatched them all.

Again, I had fun with this.  I didn't want the war between the Titans and the Olympians to drag on and on as wave after wave of soldiers or whatever fought against each other while the Cylons ravaged Larsa.  Instead, I made the giants part of Cronus' war against Zeus.  If you click that link above for Apollodorus' account, you'll see that all of the giants' names in Book Five come from there, including how they were killed (I had to switch out some Olympians for others since they weren't born yet in the LoK series).  Clytius is set on fire; Mimas is pierced by rods of metal from Hephaestus' forge; Porphyrion attacks and tries to rape Hera before Zeus kills him; Athena straight-up flays a dude ... it's all there.

The last of the assails against the Olympians is directed at Zeus from Gaia (oddly, given her previous assistance) and is called the Typhonomachy.  A gigantic monster, Typhon, is sent to kill him and Zeus eventually is victorious.

Again, I didn't want three rounds of warfare between the Titans and the Olympians, so I folded Typhon and the Giants into the main Titanomachy.  It's more action packed and keeps the story moving, I believe.

A couple of other mythological tidbits: in the Greek Titanomachy, Zeus uses ancient monsters called the Hekatonkheires ("the hundred-handed ones") to defeat the Titans.  There are three, named Briareus, Cottus and Gyes.  I managed to get them into the book by having multi-limbed "super Cylons." ... Zeus and Rhea are siblings, but I wanted to make the incest a bit more palatable by having them be the children of a different Cronus-Rhea couple.  (Wait, didn't I already mention this somewhere?) ... Bouncing over to Tiberia for a sec, the Phaethon Project was named after the son of the Greek god Helios who took over his dad's sun-chariot duties for a day, nearly driving it into the Earth and burning it up. ... The Cylon city of Thera is named after a Greek city remembered as the site of one of the largest volcanic eruptions in history some 3,600 years ago.

That's it for today.  Another behind-the-scenes post will come tomorrow.

Thanks again for reading.

My SPOILER-heavy dissections of Lords of Kobol - Book Five: Of Gods and Titans continue ...

As the title promises, this is about The One True God, its Messengers and the greater Galactica universe.



Since it is so SPOILER-laden, we'll commence after the JUMP.

(If you've already read the big theology post I made a few years ago after I finished the trilogy, you're likely to see some overlap here.  Just a heads up.  Don't feel the need to go back and read that one after this post.  Not unless you really want to, I guess.)

Back in the fall of 2009 (holy frak ... six years ago), when I finally decided to write Lords of Kobol, I created a spreadsheet in Excel.  Running down the left side, I listed everything we knew about the Lords from the show.  Along the top, I created two columns.  One column was labeled "Lords are Angels" and the other was "Lords are Cylons." In all my pondering after the then-recent end of the series, these were the only two possibilities.  The column for "Cylons" filled up the quickest.  I was able to devise decent solutions and scenarios to match up with what we saw in the show.  For the "Angels" argument ... that was more difficult.

The show was (in)famously cagey about who or what "God" is and the exact nature of its Messengers, the "Head" characters.  In reading interviews with and listening to podcasts from the creators, it was clear that this was an conscious choice.  They didn't want to explain everything.  I completely get that.  And since we're dealing with "God" here, the nature of that being is supposed to be nigh indecipherable to mankind.

If I had made the Lords angels (like Head Six), then I would have to "explain" God.  I would have to create a theology and universe for something that was deliberately muddy.  I didn't want to do that.  I knew that whatever I created couldn't measure up to people's own expectations.  That only helped make the case for the Lords as Cylons.

So I made the trilogy.  The Messengers appeared throughout, of course, influencing people and doing their thing.  Setting up contingencies for the end of the world ... and then it hit me.  While I was deep into Book Three, I had one of those eye-widening revelations that changed everything.

I had kinda thought of Head Six & Head Baltar as the R2D2 & C3PO of the Galactica-verse.  They were always around, doing their thing, but only on the fringes and only occasionally coming to the fore for one reason or another.  This is fundamentally incorrect.

The Messengers are the focal characters of the whole piece.  Their mission is the survival of mankind and that is a millennia-long effort that plays through the Lords of Kobol trilogy (and now Book Five), into Caprica and Galactica with the fall of the Colonies ... and the fall of Earth I ... and then, as we see at the end of "Daybreak," Earth II, as well.  Throughout human history, the Messengers are always there.  They have their schemes to guide and influence so that humanity continues to exist.  For more than 150,000 years, the angels are among the people doing what they do.

Yes, they are frequently in the background.  Yes, the drama of the story swirls around other characters, but often those characters are caught up in situations influenced by the Messengers.  They're not the droids from Star Wars ... maybe they're Keyser Söze.  No, because they talked about Keyser all through Usual Suspects and the angels don't have everyone talking about them as much.  I'll think of a better analogy later.

I'll admit it.  I panicked a bit there at my computer desk.  I was in the middle of the end of the world when I realized just how important to everything the Messengers (and by extension God) really were.  I knew I had to do some measure of explaining.  I had no idea what or how.

Then I thought of the Tree.


It's a simple, evocative thing.  A tree.  It branches and grows and diverges and bends.  It's a metaphor for anything I wanted.

I needed to preserve free will.  We saw in the show that sometimes a character could defy the will of a Head being.  That means the angels aren't allowed to make them do anything.  The characters have to be guided or goaded into it.

Brief tangent: I've always been fascinated with contemplating infinity.  The primary way I explain it in my head is through the multiverse theory.  That for every choice I make, there is another universe where I chose something else.  Think about your own day today.  Do you get up when the alarm first sounds or after one snooze period?  Do you put on this shirt or this shirt?  Do you have this for breakfast or something else?  Driving to work, do you go this way or that way?  What if you jerked the steering wheel right now?  Or now?  Or now?  Each microsecond offers a host of choices for you.  Now multiply that host of choices by seven billion people on the planet.  That's a shton of free will.

Thinking about free will this way always reminds me of a good episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Parallels." In it, Worf finds himself bouncing around the multiverse.


Ah, a tree of choices and possibilities.

It took a few days, but I remembered this episode and thought of a tree.  A tree of free will, growing and growing thanks to the choices made by sentient minds.  If The One True God wanted this "tree" for some reason, that would give incentive to the Messengers to ensure that humanity survives and is free to choose so that the tree can grow more and more.

So I had "explained" the mission of God and the angels, but not in such a way to destroy the mystery around them.  The "tree" is ethereal enough to remain elusive to our grasp, but its imagery is simple and understandable.

That's when I wrote what would become the first chapter of Book Two, the one that shows The One placing the Messengers on Kobol to guide the growth of the tree.

In so doing, I also came up with the idea that this "god" was something of an extradimensional scientist, watching our universe through something akin to a microscope.  Think of a scientist looking at a slide of amoebas and paramecia.  If that scientist wanted to influence the organisms there, sure, he could poke them or something, but what if he could create amoebas that he could program and send onto the slide to do his bidding?  The amoebas could then interact on a whole 'nother level with the native amoebas on that slide.

That's pretty much how I view the angels in Galactica.

Now.  I had done what I didn't really want to do.  I had pulled the curtain back and explained the nature of the unexplainable.  I wanted to keep it murky, though, I still had some ideas.  That's when I decided to write Book Four.

To keep things murky, I had to cloak all of the detail in poetry, almost.  That's why I used the flowery prose of a Tolkien hack.  I could talk about the "light" of these Messengers leaving them and "going in unto" a human, so that the human gives birth to a demigod.  It's interesting and very reminiscent of Greek myth itself, but it's not realistic.  At all.  That lack of realism makes it feel wholly divorced from the world of Galactica, which is something I knew was essential to making my books work.  It's the thing that makes the choice of the Lords as Cylons easier to make and something, I feel, that makes the trilogy as good and connected to the show as it is.  It's also probably why Tales from Ancient Days isn't as well liked as the rest.

(Regarding Book Four, the best idea I had from it is that Prometheus and Athena are the angels we know as Head Six and Head Baltar.  I'm still somewhat disappointed that I couldn't work that concept into the trilogy, but ... oh well.)

What are we talking about?  Oh, yeah.  Book Five.  Geez.

Since Of Gods and Titans is a prequel, we see Zeus & the Olympians sorta like we see Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins.  They're working at becoming who we know from the trilogy (Zeus especially).  The same is true for the Messengers.

The One True God deposits them on Larsa with about 150 years to go before it all ends.  They spend much of their time trying to figure out their limitations in this universe, how humans work, and how they can influence them.  They can see "future echoes" which helps them decide whom to try to influence and how their efforts are going.  When it comes to Larsa, though, the world will end.  It's their job to save some of the people because the rest will die.

In the show, Head Baltar seemed standoffish.  He was aloof.  Head Six was reverent of The One, though.  She seemed to have faith and trumpeted the whole "God is love" concept.  I wanted to show how those personalities developed.

The Messenger who would later become Head Baltar was attracted by warfare and intrigued by the power of fear.  He experienced failure in one of my favorite chapters as he attempted to influence the Caesar.  But then he was profoundly affected at the very end ... something I'll get to later.  Does all of this add up to aloofness?  Maybe.  But it's still many centuries before the fall of Kobol, Earth I or the Colonies.  And he seemed to be closer to his regular personality in the trilogy.

(Yes, when an angel takes on the form of a person, they take on their memories and traits ... but I would suggest that some of the traits of the Messenger itself can come through at times.)

The Messenger who would later become Head Six is different.  She was intrigued by love and, most importantly, faith.  She was attracted to the Gaber family because they were so faithful and some of that faith rubbed off on her.  By the end of the world, she was dejected.  She saw what she perceived to be the futility of their faith and their devotion to God.  Her experience with The One at the end of the book changed all of that.  It solidified the idea that "God is love" in her mind, even if it only lasted for a moment.  She had used faith as a tool, though, and she would again and again.  The stars in her eyes faded once she was back in reality, but she knows the potent power it wields.  She experienced "God is love" firsthand.

Knowing this also explains the last scene in the series.

Head Six calls The One "God" and Head Baltar says, "You know it doesn't like to be called that." (Which we see at the end of Book Five.)  She shoots him a look and the other Messenger smiles and says, "Silly me."


Why "Silly me"?  Because she knows what The One truly is and that it doesn't like to be called "God." Still, she uses the power of faith to guide people into doing her, and by extension The One's, will.  She's so good at acting the part of a starry-eyed believer that even her companion of eons momentarily forgot that she doesn't really have that faith herself.  Silly him for making that mistake.

I'm leaving out a really big part of the end of Book Five.  The very end with Ahljaela, Ares, Caesar and the Messenger.  It's super important to the BSG mythos, so I'll give it its own blog post tomorrow.

Thanks again for reading.

Continuing from yesterday's post on how Book Five fits in with the Lords of Kobol trilogy and the greater universe of the show, this one deals with the last two or three chapters only.



Heavy SPOILERS.  Everything after the JUMP.

SPOILERS.  For reals.


What song am I talking about?  This one, of course.

(Yes.  There are 41 different versions of "All Along the Watchtower" in that playlist.  There could have been a hundred or so more, but I figured four hours was enough. ... The gospel version and Bobby Womack versions are particularly good.)

"Wait ... 'Watchtower' is in Book Five?" If you're asking that question, then I did a better job of hiding it than I thought.

Let me back up a bit.

It might sound silly, but when I'm writing Lords of Kobol, I pretend as though I'm writing additional episodes or TV movies.  I put myself in the headspace of the series and try to keep what I do within that mindframe.  I've talked before about how overwhelming realism was needed to keep LoK grounded in the Galactica-verse.  It's one of the main reasons I wanted the Lords to be Cylons instead of "angels." We know and (mostly) understand Cylons; they're more grounded.

Part of being a make-pretend writer for BSG means I abide by their rules.  Hera is unique (there are no other human-Cylon babies), for example.  The ultimate nature of the Messengers and The One True God is mysterious.  Now, for the purposes of writing these books, I've had to pin down a few things about those beings but they are still largely mysterious.

Quick aside ... I was nervous about the conclusion to Book Five, wherein one of the Messengers is so distraught she calls The One to Larsa to help.  I had made The One a speaking character in the books; something I'm sure the show would never have done.  However, because I cloaked that scene in some of the same "flowery" prose that helped keep mystery around these beings in Book Four, it works.  The One plays like a voice in their heads.  I don't believe too harsh a light was shined on that mystery.

So ... adhering to the rules of the series and not revealing too much of the mystery.  Another rather famous element of the series is the use of the Bob Dylan song "All Along the Watchtower." In real life, the reason for its inclusion is simple enough.  Showrunner Ronald D. Moore has always been fascinated by it and felt there was something special about its lyrics.  He wanted to incorporate them into his previous series, Roswell, but it didn't work out.  But one of the keys to Galactica's success has always been composer Bear McCreary and the music he cranked out.  It was never going to work better anywhere else.

In the show, the reason for the song is, of course, mysterious.  It was composed by Sam Anders on Earth I before the Cylon holocaust.  It was composed by Dreilide Thrace on Caprica before he left his wife, Socrata, and child, Kara.  It was, sorta, composed by Hera Agathon aboard Galactica by way of a rudimentary collection of drawn dots.  Simply put, there is something special and significant about the music.  The fact that it impacts these specific people at the times it does is even more indicative of its importance.

If I'm writing a series of books that ties together the greater BSG mythos, I have to include "Watchtower" somehow, right?  As important as the music was in the series, to exclude it would be just plain wrong.

As part of the whole "All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again" thing, I included a brief scene in Book One featuring Dionysus singing the song at a temple service of his.  Narratively, it served no useful purpose.  In retrospect, it violates one of my personal rules when writing this stuff: "Don't be cute." You know, don't just randomly name a character "Adama" or "Baltar" so the reader can say, "Oh, look.  It's Gaius' great-great-great-great-etc. grandfather." I don't like that kind of thing, so I found that my use of "All Along the Watchtower" was gratuitous.

I pulled a George Lucas and retconned it out.  The latest version of Book One doesn't include the Dionysus singing "Watchtower" scene.

That being done, I knew I had to include it.  The greater mythos and all that.  But I also knew that however I used the song, it needed to be important.

If the seeds of that music are going to be sown across multiple star systems and a couple thousand years, of course the Messengers seem like the ones to do so.  It just became a matter of deciding 1) what situation in Book Five could give rise to the origins of that song and 2) what exactly the song means in the first place.

People have been debating point two there ever since Bob Dylan first wrote the thing in 1967.  I listened to and read the lyrics more than a few times myself.  Like nearly everyone, I came to the realization that the lyrics are actually backward in the song.  ("Two riders were approaching" is at the end when, narratively, it should be the beginning.)  There's talk of fate with one character being more at ease with whatever the situation is than the other.  There's also the description of a kingdom's fall, with servants running around, princes and more.

Now, all of that I gleaned on my own and I began to map out a sequence of events to correspond with the lyrics.  I did a little more digging and found a well-researched essay by Kees de Graaf.  In it, he outlines a very specific interpretation of the song, tying it directly to the crucifixion of Jesus and the two thieves on either side of him.  Also, the conversation is between the repentant thief ("The Thief") and the non-repentant thief (Satan, "The Joker").  Whether or not Dylan really intended such a meaning to the song is unknown, really, but it's an interesting thought, nonetheless.

As intriguing as the conversation portion is, the bits about the falling kingdom flipped the switch in my imagination.  I decided near the beginning of my Book Five writing that the song would come into play, however that would be, at the end of the book.  Of course, at the end of the book, the Tiberian Empire is crumbling and the Caesar sees three millennia of history destroyed before his eyes.

"Businessmen, they drink my wine.  Plowmen dig my earth." ...  The upper and lower classes of society are being talked about here.  This dichotomy between the patricians and plebeians in Tiberia is something I wanted in the book.  I've been intrigued by the concept of "Singularity," the merging of people and technology, and while we're closer than ever to it, the gap between the classes is larger than ever, too.  In their own ways, both the "businessmen" and the "plowmen" are thorns in the Caesar's side.  They aggravate him for all his days in power.

"None of them along the line know what any of it is worth." ...  "These plebs and patties?  They don't know what we're losing today," I have Maxentius essentially say.  He knows.  He knows because he's been in power for two hundred years.  He knows the history and value of the Empire because he has been burdened by that past his entire life.  ...

I've talked before about how I worried about the length of the book, that it was longer than the others and this is a key reason why.  In addition to illustrating a world that creates Psilons, I wanted to create a feeling of historical weight.  One of the easiest chapters to cut from the book would have been Maxentius' triumph.  It is steeped in ceremony, tradition and it goes on for four or five pages.  I couldn't bear to lose it, though.  Each part of that day has ties to the lengthy history of Tiberia.  When it does fall at the end of the world, I needed the reader to understand Maxentius' pain.  He is in pain because he is all too aware of everything that is being lost.  Tiberia persisted for more than three thousand years.  And it was burning around him.

What Minah Gaber and her line taught the female Messenger about faith, Thon Ahljaela taught the male Messenger about humility, purpose, determination ... the power of the "little guy," that strength can come from unexpected places.  All of that.  Thon was driven for years to the point he found himself at in the Caesar's palace.  Once he was there, once he saw that Max was just another man, he found pity.  He couldn't bring himself to do the animalistic, violent thing that he wanted to do.  He elevated himself above his place and inspired the Messenger.

Inspiring an angel.  The tender who would one day appear before Sam Anders told The One that this lesson, taught to him by a "lowly" human, would stay with him for the remainder of time.  And just like that, I had created a "history" behind the lyrics and a reason for it to appear again and again.  It means something to this Messenger.  At a time of strife (say, when Earth I is nearing the brink), the Messenger could whisper a few lines into Anders' ear and plant the notes that would remain with the Final Five despite their reprogramming by Cavil.  The same notes that would cause Kara to spring into action and lead them all to Earth II.

It's not some cosmic coincidence.  It is part of the Plan.  No, not the Cylons' plan we were told about at the beginning of the show.  This Plan is The One's Plan for mankind, implemented by the secret stars of the entire franchise, these guiding Messengers.

That was lengthy and esoteric, so I apologize.

One more post tomorrow to say goodbye to the Lords of Kobol.

This is the end.  My only friends, the end.

As promised, I'll be answering some questions and dropping some last-minute trivia here in this last post related to the Lords of Kobol series.

There will be a few SPOILERS, so just in case, we'll dive in after the JUMP.


Trivia?

I got the name "Ahljaela" in Book Five from Superman II.  ("Huh?" you're saying.)  As a kid, I  misunderstood a line spoken by General Zod, thanks to Terrence Stamp's scenery chewing.  I could swear he said, "At last we will have revenge on the son of Ahljaela." I thought "Ahljaela" was Jor-El's nickname or something.  Took me a few years ... I might have been a teenager, even ... before I realized he was saying "our jailer." Oh well.


Why didn't you charge for the Lords of Kobol books?

One word: lawyers.

I tried to get them published by the company that published the few BSG novels that do exist, but they didn't bite for whatever reason.  Their form letter was vague.

Even though virtually none of the series directly intersects with Battlestar Galactica, it is very clearly based on the show and concepts established on it.  If I charged money for the books, I'm pretty sure I'd get a cease-and-desist letter, if not a straight-up lawsuit.

By keeping the books free, though, I've reached a larger audience than I would have otherwise.  (Barring being picked up by an actual publisher, of course.)


Why do you hate Book Four?

I don't.  I sometimes poke fun at it because it is the lesser of the first four books (review and rating-wise).

In my own mind, it's the odd-man out because 1) it's not part of the greater continuity and 2) it doesn't fit into the more realistic world of the show and trilogy (something I've already talked about extensively).


Have you read Ray Kurzweil's Singularity?  Have you thought about incorporating that?

(This is an older question asked well before Book Five was published.)

I have and I did.  In Book Five, the Transference that the wealthy engage in is my attempt to bring "Singularity" to this universe.  The total merging of technology and man.  They start by moving their minds into computer storage cubes and/or mechanical bodies, eventually sending their minds into the ether of Larsa's Internet.  I liked the class aspect of how the rich could get this form of immortality and the poor couldn't.  I kept it in the background, sorta, to keep from having to get too detailed.  (Details can often look silly a few years later when real-world science surpasses or disproves them.)


Why name Larsa's Internet the "Matrix"?  Everyone will think of the movie, you know.

I know, but I liked the sound of it.  Plus, beyond our words for it (Internet, web) and the Kobollian word (Stream), I didn't come up with a term that conveyed the same thing as simply as "Matrix." I found that after a few chapters, I didn't think of Neo and Morpheus any longer.


In Book Two, Prometheus gets an "upgrade" to Messenger.  Does Aurora get the same  (Confused, I asked for clarification.)  Becoming angels.

Well, in Book Four, Prometheus and Athena are chosen by The One as the only two of the Lords to remain as angels.  In the trilogy, though, Prometheus didn't get upgraded to "angel" status.  He was chosen by the Messengers to carry out some heavy-duty parts of their plans, but he failed them when he went his own way.  Aurora stuck to the plan very well in getting the Thirteenth Tribe off Kobol, but she wasn't upgraded either.  The Messenger in the form of Hades said she was very inspirational and that he would have to utilize her spirit in the future (intended to be a vague hinting toward Kara Thrace).

And then it hit me ...

Oh.  I called the angels "Messengers" throughout the whole series.  AND, in Book Two, the Draco called Promethues (and Philip Anaxo) "Messenger," too.  Holy crap.  No wonder that's confusing.

My intent with the Draco's honorific was that Prometheus was deemed someone in touch with The One.  A title akin to Mohammed as "Prophet," but without the baggage that word would carry and without much of the reverence.  (Though Draco millennia later may very well revere Prometheus more than before).

Damn.  I'll have to consider another edit.


Since it is known that the human race was born on Earth (our planet), don´t you think that on the end of the series the Galactica (and all the other ships) had jumped in time and went to our past? It bothers me ´cause in the last episode, before the last FTL jump, there's a singularity nearby. I think the right time line is this: we started on Earth, then we went to Kobol, then to the Colonies, then back in time to our Earth.

That's a very cool and interesting idea.  It's not one I've ever heard before either.

However, there's one major problem with it:  only the Galactica was near the singularity in that last FTL jump.  The other ships of the fleet would be stuck in the far future of your idea.

While it doesn't work in the context of what we saw in the show, it's still a nice concept.


Have you thought about a book to connect the new Galactica with the original Galactica?

No.  Simply put, I think they're incompatible.

I would have to explain how there could be two Adamas, two Apollos, two Starbucks, etc.  I'd also have to come up with a reason for mankind to go back to Kobol and then exodus again to establish another Twelve Colonies.  Not to mention the original's set of Lords of Kobol, the Beings of Light, and so on.  Those theological elements, in particular, just don't meld.

Yeah, I know.  "All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again." That's supposed to be a good narrative device, not a crutch.  For me to establish that the original series happened at some point in the intervening 150,000 years after the Galactica got to Earth II, circa 1980, would strain credulity to an extreme.

That's one of the reasons I didn't care for the comics series called Final Five.  It showed us a Kobol and an Earth I that weren't far off from Caprica at all.  Everything felt the same, right down to the names of characters, designs of Vipers, etc.  There was nothing really new there to grab me.  It was "All of this has happened before ..." with a yawn.

It'd be the same for a TOS/RIS bridge book.  I'd have to re-trod the same ground over and over again and then say "God did it" for the more difficult parts.  And as we all know, there are plenty of fans who didn't care for that aspect of the re-imagined series.

Speaking of ...


"A great book for sap suckin tree huggin hippies. Theire is only one God you queer author. The auther is a fag who has never played a sport in his life. And for all you non believers go crap in your mouth fags. The book sucks major nuts. Dont get it. Overall rank is gay fagtorium."

or

What is your religious leaning?

Atheist.  Raised Methodist/Southern Baptist, but that didn't last much beyond high school.

If I had to guess a next question, it'd be something like, "How can you write about all of this religious, 'One True God' stuff if you're an atheist?"

Well, I just remember that it's part of the show.  God and the angels were established very early on.  It seems clear to me that the deity of this universe doesn't align with the deity many worship in our own world (though, I guess many people could project their beliefs onto The One, as they do in Book Five).  I'm just writing about an extradimensional being that has taken an interest in our universe.

I apologize if this ruffles feathers or if, suddenly, you seem to enjoy my books less.  That's the last thing I want to do.  By all means, appreciate them on whatever level makes you happiest.  If that's a spiritual level, go right ahead.


Do you have any regrets?

Oh, I have a few.

Regrets about the books?  Well, that's different.

I really don't.  Not aching, painful-to-consider regrets.  I have a few wishes.

I wish I had kept Book Four more separate.  Maybe released it under a totally different title or umbrella.  Of course, when I finished Book Four, I had no idea that I'd be writing a Book Five.  I don't like that the flow is interrupted by an "Elseworlds" issue, I guess is what I'm saying.

I've said before that I wished I could have come up with a way for the Prometheus and Athena arc from Book Four to have been part of the trilogy, but given how the story was structured, it just wouldn't work.

I wish there was a more thriving market for "expanded universe"BSG books.  If there were, someone might have been interested in buying mine.

I wish more people who liked Lords of Kobol would give my other books a shot.

Wishes and horses, you know.


Will there be a Book Six?

No.  The story of Larsa/Kobol is finished.  The only unexplored element of that world's history is most of everything that happens before Book Five.  Since there are no Psilons or Cylons involved then and since that's before the Messengers arrived, it's not really germane to the overall story.

Also, there are tidbits in Scythia as the remnant of mankind tries to survive the nuclear fallout before the Draco lands but that's just a story of basic survival, maybe with the Messengers lending a helping hand.  Then there's the Golden Age of the Lords of Kobol after the war with Prometheus and before the organic Cylons are created, but everything was going well and would likely be boring to read about.


What's next?

Oh, I'll catch up on some TV shows and movies I neglected while I spent most of my free time writing.  Then, in about a month, I'll get restless and somewhat depressed.  I'll continue in that vein, spiraling down for a couple of weeks before I finally realize that I miss being creative.

I plan on re-reading my other novels (Displaced, Diary of a Second Life, Sexcalation, The Red Kick) and doing an edit on each.  Then I might head back into How to Raise a Geek, my pseudo-parenting book.  I stopped once it became obvious that it was barely going to be a pamphlet.  For some reason, I'm very brief when dispensing advice.

After that?  I've got some ideas, including a scifi book that has a pretty compelling hook.  More on that some other time.



I cannot thank all of you enough for reading along with me these last few years as I cranked out books no one asked for.  It's very heartening to see how much you enjoy them.

Until next time.

No rest for the weary.  Or wicked, I guess.

I'm starting a re-read and edit of my time travel novel Displaced:


It's action packed and loads of fun.  I'm reading it now, so read along with me!

After I re-read the other books, I'll start on something new.  Naturally.


Imagine that the world is coming to an end in eight days.  What would you do with the time you have left?

Now imagine that those eight days pass and the world doesn't end after all.  How do you feel about what you've done?

That's the book.  It's ripe for good drama and good characters, too.

Oh.  And there's one more thing, too.  I'll do it after the JUMP.



Yes.  I said Lords of Kobol was over.  The end.  This is Colonies of Kobol.  That's a whole 'nother thing.

Once I finish 8 Days, I'll get started.  It's a beast, but I'll keep you all clued in, as always.

Thanks for reading and, please, rate and review my books wherever you got them!

I've finished re-reading and editing Displaced.  Just made some different word choices, for the most part.  If you haven't already, you can get Displaced for just 99¢ here and here (may take a few days for it to filter out to B&N, iTunes, etc.).

Now, I'm moving on to my teen road trip zombie epic, Diary of a Second Life.


If you've already got it, read along with me.  If not, wait a few days and I'll post links to the newly edited versions.  Then you can pick it up for just 99¢.