But when I put that onto the page, it ended up sucking the joy out. I think that’s probably one of the reasons it took so long. That aside, I just couldn’t progress things as planned, so ultimately I decided to keep them together. As a result, Dyaho was now the one to settle down in his place of birth, not Jint. Pretty different from what I’d originally imagined, but all the same, I managed to wrap a bow on this section of the saga.
From here on out, I plan to focus more on the tides of history roiling between the stars than on the personal affairs of the characters. There will be more opportunities to paint the pictures of the opposing nations in greater detail, as well. I’ve expounded on various aspects of the Humankind Empire of Abh, but I haven’t depicted the other interstellar powers much at all (which is not to say I didn’t give them any thought).
The Humankind Empire of Abh and planar space navigation are inextricably tied. After all, a power like the Empire would seldom come about without it (or any other hypothetical form of faster-than-light travel using warp points). Actually, I’ve forgotten whether I came up with the Empire as a power capable of ruling over a world where planar space navigation is possible, or whether I came up with planar space navigation to make the concept of the Empire work. Either way, they fit each other to a tee.
It was a relief I was able to make sense of the world-building and mechanics there, but what about the enemy nations? It’d have been lame if I made their political systems exactly the same as the Empire. So I pondered whether a nation-state with modern-society sensibilities could possibly arise in such a world. I’ll spare you the long process; I concluded that, while it wasn’t impossible, it would be more difficult to maintain for larger-scale polities. It wasn’t a conclusion I was thrilled about, but I did have fun thinking up conditions I could apply to make such a society viable. The more I came up with, the farther away the nations of my fiction veered from my image of what a nation-state entailed, but that wasn’t a bad thing. These nations which advocate for democracy share much in common with what the average modern Japanese person would associate with a democracy, but they also differ in myriad ways.
I haven’t yet come up with the name of the section to follow the Dyaho Trilogy. I just know that that will probably happen to them, and then that will happen there, which’ll lead to that, that, and that... And then a distinct new segment of the saga will come together.
My pace will be slow, but please, stick with me.
Here’s hoping this time it will go according to schedule — I say, while tormented by doubt.
10-Feb-01
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Copyright
Banner of the Stars: Volume 3
by Hiroyuki Morioka
Translated by Giuseppe di Martino
Edited by Brandon Koepp
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2001 Hiroyuki Morioka
First published in Japan in 2001 by Hayakawa Publishing Corporation
The book is published by arrangement with Hayakawa Publishing Corporation
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property.
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The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
Ebook edition 1.0: May 2020
