July 15
2023
Is my answer too far out there?
Someone from my writing critique group emailed me the following after reviewing my last chunk submission…
In regards to the Confederacy, they are protecting something, what is that something? 22 planets in 8 solar systems? I have no idea how the universe is parsed out, but clearly it is per your book.
And this is what I’m emailing back.
(Know your audience Dave, know your audience…)
+-
Hi, I’m just getting back to this.
The Confederacy is the government they have, it’s not that different from the Federal government we have. Federal is more centralized whereas Confederacy’s aren’t. They are protecting their citizens, as the US government does for us. In this instance, the Slithera incursion, or in our case, the Russians/Chinese.
Our solar system, the one with Earth in it, has 8 large body planets and a number of smaller planetoids. Our star orbits within the milky way, where there are over 200 million stars, each having a variable number of planets within each of them.
The Confederation is comprised of four member species (The Dogs, the Bugs, the Blobs, and of course Humans), and each species inhabits is spread across multiple star systems (roughly two hundred each) with each star system having the possibility of planets within them. Not all star systems have planets and not all planets are inhabitable.
My book takes place in a fictional version of our Milky Way galaxy. It is not all that different from the one we find ourselves in. Gravity works the same here as it does in my story. The only major difference, so far presented, is the inclusion of FTL (Faster Than Light) travel via the “jump” engines.
Another way to think about it as each star system is a house. Not all houses have inhabitants, some have multiple inhabitants. Some of these inhabitants are nice people you could live with (or on) while others are nasty and you don’t get along with them. The planets are the people and the houses are the various star systems. The street, or Confederacy, is the houses in close proximity.
This person was one of those I might have mentioned in a prior post about having no idea about how “space things” work.
(Know your audience Dave, know your audience…)