Forever Magazine Issue 11 by Neil Clarke

Author:Neil Clarke [Martin L. Shoemaker, Gregory Norman Bossert, Steven Gould]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: novella, science fiction, science fiction magazine, short stories, short story, space
Publisher: Wyrm Publishing
Published: 2015-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

Originally published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, September 2013.

A Few Words with Martin L. Shoemaker

What are the origins of this story?

In 2012, Richard Johnson, a great writer out of Melbourne, Australia, won the Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award. Rich couldn’t make the trip to the International Space Development Conference to accept the award, so he asked me (as the second place winner) to accept in his place. That resulted in my having dinner and drinks with Ben Bova, Baen editor/author Tony Daniel, and Bill Ledbetter (the contest administrator and a talented writer). It also resulted in my having lunch with a table of space industry insiders, including Buzz Aldrin! So I owe Rich a few pints of beer whenever I finally see him in person.

And every time this story is reprinted, I add another pint to that debt. After lunch, I attended Buzz’s presentation on his Mars Cycler plan, and I was hooked. I jotted down one brief story note: “Something aboard a Mars cycler.” I wrote down a lot of other story notes that day, so this one could’ve just gotten lost in the shuffle; but a couple of months later, I was musing on the idea in the shower, and I remembered something Buzz said: “It’s like an express train to Mars,” express meaning not “fast” but “no stops along the way.” Something clicked in my head, twice: first I put together the words “Aldrin Express”; and then immediately after came the title, “Murder on the Aldrin Express.” With a title like that, how could I resist?

I knew from the title that I had a hard science fiction mystery. I’m not an extensive mystery reader, but I’m fond of the fair mysteries of Ellery Queen: all the clues are there, with plenty of chances for the reader to put them together. I’m also (as evidenced by my bibliography) a big fan of hard science fiction. So I wanted a fair mystery in which the vital clue lay in the science of Mars. That meant I needed a competent “detective” to figure it out. I decided on the ship’s captain, but that immediately left me with a new question: why is a competent captain commanding a ship that goes back and forth to Mars but never stops? Wouldn’t he want to explore? And so I came up with Captain Nick Aames, a bitter, misanthropic man who LIKES this duty because it keeps him far away from almost all of humanity. But that makes for an unlikable protagonist, so on the advice of friends I added his best friend, the very likable Chief Anson Carver. The combination “clicked,” and the story grew naturally from there.

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